clearer confidence in His mission than that which He implies when He invites all men to come to Him and trust themselves with Him, or when He forgives sin, and proclaims Himself the Messiah, God’s representative on earth ?
Can we then claim that all that is reported in this Gospel as uttered by our Lord was actually spoken as it stands? This is not claimed. Even the most conservative critics allow that John must necessarily have condensed conversations and discourses. The truth probably is that we have the actual words of the most striking say- ings, because these, once heard, could not be forgotten. And this plainly applies especially to the sayings regarding Himself which were most likely to astonish or even shock and startle the hearers. These at once and for ever fixed themselves in the mind. In the longer discussions and addresses we have the substance but cannot at each point be sure that the very words are given. No doubt in the last resort we must trust John. But whom could we more reasonably trust? He was the person of all others who entered most fully into sympathy with Christ and understood Him best, the person to whom our Lord could most freely open His mind. So that although, as Godet says, we have here “ the extracted essence of a savoury fruit,’ we may be confident that this essence perfectly preserves the flavour and peculiarity of the fruit.
Neither ought it to be forgotten that there occur in the Gospel passages which strikingly illustrate the desire of the author to pre- serve the very words of our Lord. In chap. xii. 33, e.g., we find an interpretation given of the saying recorded in verse 32. This is unintelligible on the hypothesis that the author was himself com- posing the discourses which he attributes to Christ. Any author who is expressing his own ideas, and writing freely out of his own mind, even although he is using another person as his mouthpiece, will at once deliver his meaning. To suppose that John first put his own words in the mouth of Jesus, and then interpreted them, is to suppose an elaborateness of contrivance which would reduce the Gospel to a common forgery. Cf. vii. 39.
While, then, it cannot be affirmed that the internal evidence uniformly points to the Johannine authorship, neither can it be said that it is decisively against it. There are difficulties on either alternative. But when to the internal evidence the weight of external attestation is added, by far the most probable conclusion is that the Fourth Gospel is the work of the Apostle John, and that it is historically trustworthy.
Between the affirmation and denial of the Johannine authorship