it forth in its positive aspects, and not with special reference to the errors of his time.
The third theory, known as the “irenic” or conciliatory, maintains that the Gospel was intended to reconcile divergent religious views, and to bring into their right relation truths which heresy perverted. The Gospel is conciliatory in fact, not from detinite intent, but from the very nature of the sub- ject—the Word made flesh, in which all religious controversies are reconciled. “Just as it rises above controversy while it condemns error, it preserves the characteristic truths which heresy isolated and misused. The fourth Gospel is the most complete answer to the manifold forms of Gnosticism, yet it was the writing most used by the Gnostics. It contains no for- mal narrative of the institution of sacraments, and yet it pre- sents most fully the idea of sacraments. It sets forth with the strongest emphasis the failure of the ancient people, and yet it points out most clearly the significance of the dispensation which was committed to them. It brings the many oppositions —antitheses—of life and thought, and leaves them in the light of the one supreme fact which reconciles all, the Word became Jjlesh ; and we feel from first to last that this light is shining over the record of sorrow and triumph, of defeat and hope ” (Westcott).
The object is distinctly stated in the Gospel itself. “These are written that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that, believing, ye may have life in His name” (xxi. 80, 31). The last of these three—life in Christ through faith—is the key to the two others. The readers were already disciples; and in vindicating the two propositions that Jesus is the Christ and that Jesus is the Son of God, the ob- ject was not to lead to the acknowledgment of His divine mis- sion, but to exhibit these as the ground of a living communion of believers with God, and of a richer spiritual life. The char- acter of the Gospel is predominantly historic. Even the doc- trinal portions have a historic background and a historic em- bodiment. The doctrine, for instance, of the essential antago- nism between light and darkness, it set forth in the narrative of the hostile attitude of the Jews toward Christ; and the dis-