The Pulpit Commentary — John — Volume 1 — Section 117

IX. THE TEACHING OF THE FoUBTH GosPEL. Numerous hypotheses touching the occasion of the production of the Gospel vanish if the main thesis which has been sustained throughout the foregoing pages be proved. We a.re brought back from the agitations of Gnostic heresy to earlier struggles. The speculations a.re less complicated; the struggle between the Hellenic and Hebraic element in the Church less severe than in the days of Marcion, Justin, and the Olemen- tines. The ea.rly influence of the Cerinthian ideas was a source of agitation in the Church. The perfect humanity of the Son of God was doubted on the one side, his enthronement as our "Lord God" spurned on the other. The aged apostle was induced to add to the widely circulated synoptic literature his own richest reminiscences of the teaching of the Master. The fulness of this instruction may be usefully exhibited by reducing it to the following heads or groups of thought.1 I. Tl,e teaching of the Gospel, whether on the lips of Jesw or the evangelist himself, t=ching the Godhead. We have already shown that there are fundamental distinctions in the style and vocabulary of John and of the Johannine Christ; but it is more than probable that John's own style was framed by the influence which his communion with the Lord had exerted upon him.. There can be no doubt that the thoughts of Jesus inter- penetrated him. He was saturated with them, and they gave a character to all his own meditations on the outcome and meaning of the Lord's life. The prologue is the generali- zation of all the teaching of our Lord, and is based line by line, thought by thought, upon the teaching of Jesus and the special activities that he records. The teaching of John may be derived, therefore, from every part of the Johannine writings. The concrete presentation in the Old Testament of" the One," "the only God," the free creation of all things by the Word or Spirit of his own eternal essence, is the basis of the J c,hannine teaching. The unli.kenable One of Isaiah; God invisible not merely to the eyes of flesh, but even to the faculties of human intellect, which cannot find God by searching; God dwelling (as St. Paul says) in the inaccessible ligbt;-was a fundamental idea with the apostle. "No one bath seen God at any time" ( eh. i. 18) is a saying 1 The literature on this subject is extensive. A few only of the recent writings on the subject may be mentioned. Neaoder,' History of the Planting and Tre.ining of the Christian Church' (Eng. tranB., iL 1-58). Reuss, 'H.ietoire de la Theologie Chretienne,' ii. 369- 564 • also his 'Theologie Johaonique.' Schmid and Van Oosterzee have, in thoir • Biblical Th~logies of the New Testament' (Eng. trans.), separated the theology of Obrist as contained in the Gospel from that of John himself in his prologue and Epistles and Apocalypse. Baur,' Biblische Theologie,' represents the doctrinol system of the Fourth Gospel as the highest fo~m of Ne'!I' Testameut teaching, risin!l' a?ove both Judais~ and PauliniBm, and accentuatrng the di1ference between them. Kosthn, 'Der Lehrbegnff des Eve.ngeliDIDB und der Briefe Johannis' (1843) is from the Tiibingen standpoint of dogmatic and polemical aim of the writer. B. Weiss, 'Biblical _Theology _of th~ New Test_ument' (Eng. trnns.), ii. 311-421; Hilgenfeld, '. Das E".angehum und die Bnef~ John:nn1s !moh ihrem Lehruegriff <l'1l'ge;rt;ellt; Thoma,' Die Genesis des Johauoes-Evangelinma e1n Be1trag zu seiner Aoslegung, Ge11Chichte uud Kritik' (J 882), pp. I 71-302.  THE GOSPET, ACCORDTNG •ro ST. ,JOUN. oxxix