The Pulpit Commentary — John — Volume 1 — Section 111

In tono and. sugges~ion wiL~ that which occurs in the Fourth Gospel. This sing lo textual fact IS sulfic1ent to dispose of large part of the al!eD"ation. 0 It h~s been said," Instead_ of saying tha.t God crealed the world, as the synoptists do, a kmgdom of darkness exists from the beginning under the dominion of the prince of this world. This being is hostile to God; he is the devil, Satan, the wicked one. Decause of his essential opposition to God, he is connected with matter." It is unfor-' tunate that no passage from either of the synoptists is fortbcomin[)' in vindication of this contrast. In Mark x. 6 Jesus speaks of the "making " of me; male and female at the beginning of the creation ( a,,., dpx:;,s 1<Tf,m,,s). The connection and the reference to Gen. i. 27 show that there is no dogmatic assertion of the creation out of nothing, even there. We are told that" all things (i-ylvi!To) became, came into bein", throuah the Logos." What right has any critic to say that ;, 6~fi ("matter") is exclud:d from ';.&VTa; and that the devil, because of his opposition to God, is connected with mailer 1 '' Dark- ness" is not referred to by the author until he bas -spoken of life, and the Lif0 which is the Light of "men." The darkness is not chaotic or acosmic, but moral, and the antagonism between "light" and "darkness" is not dualistic in the philosophic sense. It is no other than a current placitum of the Old Testament. Gen. i. 2-5 : " darkness" is simply the negation of light; in Ps. xviii. 28 it is the symbol of sorrow; Ps. xci. 6, the physical region where the unknown causes of evil dwell (Ps. cxii. 4:; Isa. lviii. 10; and cf. Luke i. 79 and Matt. vi. 23, where it represents the moral condition of those whose spiritual vision is bleared or blinded). As to the existence of the devil, or Satan, the synoptists have more to say than the Fourth Gospel, and it is in Matthew's and Luke's account of the temptation of Christ that the relation of the o«l.ffo"-o• to the world is most explicitly asserted. "The wicked one," ~ 1ro1111po,, does not in this sense appear in John, unless eh. xvii. 15 be such a reference; but if so, then Matt. v. 37; vi. 13; xiii. 19; xiii. 38; Luke xi. 26, convey the same idea more forcibly. The synoptists describe the kingdom of Beelzebub and Satan as set over against the kingdom of God, und as "standing" because of its in ward organization and the obedience and loyalty of its subjects. The Gnostics have made far more use of this conception than they have of the Johannine revelations of the father of lies. "JeSUll," in the Fourth Gospel, according to Dr. Davidson, "for this reason does not pray for the world, which is incapable of conversion, but for his disciples." Is this conceivably the meaning of John, who puts eh. iii. 16, 17 into the lips of the Lord? cf. eh. i. 29 (John the Baptist); iv. 42 (the Samaritans); vi. 33, 51; viii. 12; xii. 47; xvi. 8; xvii. 21. "Not until the prince of this world is expelled from his kingdom, as the result of Christ's death, shall all men be drawn into the faith and fellowship with the Word." The assault delivered at the might of Satan by the incarnation of Christ, the victorious issue from temptation, and victory over death, is one of the great themes of the New Testament. There is more reason in a supposed Gnostic origin of Luke x. 17-20 than for a solitary reference to the prince of this world in the Fourth Gospel (cf. Heh. ii. 14:; Col. ii. 16). A docetio element is attributed to the representation by the Fourth Gospel of the humanity and bodily life of our Lord. The fact is that there is no book in the New Testament which more explicitly demonstrates the physical life and perfect humanity of the Lord Jesus. His father and mother and brothers are spoken of, his weariness and thirst, his tears, his human affections, his dress, his fuod, his spittle, his touch, his flesh and blood, his bones and wounded side. He is "made flesh ; " he dies; his body is embalmed; his garments are divided; and, after his resurrection, he partakes of fish and bread. To say that all this does not alter the case, because in eh. vii. 30; viii. 59; x. 39; and xviii. 6, the docetic view is implied, is very wilful, seeing that these passages all have actual and close parallels in the synoptic Gospels. Hilgenfeld has pressed especially the sympathy of the Fourth Gospel for Valentinianism, and specially finds in eh. viii. 4:3, 4:4: the Gnostic idea of the creation of the devil by a god of inferior rank, such as that which the Ophites found in the God of the Jews (see notes); and the reference to the Gnostic idea of "the father of the devil," which appears to us to be a mistranslation, and to introduce elements entirely foreign to the whole teaching of the Gospel. The opposition between the children of God and the children of the devil is manifest in Gospel and Epistle, but the distinction i8 not ~ed on a primordial difference of essence, but on the different act of the will, which leaves the responsibility of being in one or the other category with men, l\nd not either with  nxii INTRODUCTION TO