RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Gospel and Gospels Gossuer
of Christian fellowship. These conclusions are the secure results of exegesis. They prepare for the patient study of the Johannean Problem. The Johannean literature as a whole decisively demonstrates the existence of a " John " in Asia Minor. The Johannean organism of literature together with the exegesis of the Fourth Gospel places its author deep within the Jewish Christianity of the first century. Confusion begins when Papias is brought into court. Does he attest the existence of two " Johns," one of them the apostle, and both of them the disciples, the personal followers of Jesus? Prolonged study of Papias has possibly thrown our minds slightly out of bearing. Papias being in court with the results of exegesis, the controversy over the two Johns loses much of its importance. The mind of the Fourth Gospel requires a personal disciple of Jesus for its author. The Gospel or its first text (possibly worked over by the Johannean " School ") was published in Ephesus in the last decade of the first century. The law that applies to the other Gospels, namely, that they were shaped under pressure at the strategic points of a militant Christianity, applies in full force here. Ephesus and its region were the critical point in the religious movements of the Empire during the first century. It is not an accident that the Logos doctrine of the Fourth Gospel became the speculative platform of the Church Catholic.
The Gospels taken together furnish a life of Christ as the subjective and corporate needs of the apostolic or prophetic age shaped it. It is not a life of Christ in the scientific sense. Beyond question
the vital interpretation of the Chris-
14. Conclu- tian consciousness has fused itself, in
sion. varying degrees, with the facts and
words reported. But the modern critic is in serious danger of confounding the subjectivity of academic individualism with the prophetic subjectivity of an age controlled by corporate consciousness and corporate aims. The fact that the Gospels were so largely shaped and published as law, and the fact that the publication of the canonical Gospels falls within a period of thirty years (66-96?), a period, moreover, distant but a single generation from the original words and events in the life of the Savior, are sufficient security to Christians for the conviction that the first cause and the primary reality of the Gospels is the person and mind of Jesus. See the articles on the separate Gospels. Henry S. Nash.
Bibliography: The reader should consult the literature under the separate articles on the individual Gospels, also the works on N. T. Introduction, those on the life of Christ and on the Apostolic Age. Not to be overlooked are the introduction and prefaces to works named in and under Harmony of the Gospels, e.g., A. Wright, Synopsis, London, 1903. Consult further: C. Weizsaeker, Untersuchungen iiber die evangelische Geschichte, Tubingen, 1901; P. Ewald, Das Hauptproblem der Evangelienfrage, Leipsic, 1890; A. Wright, Composition of the Four Gospels, London, 1890; idem, Some N. T. Problems, ib. 1898; F. P. Badham, The Formation of the Gospels, ib. 1892; A. J. Jolley, The Synoptic Problem, ib. 1893; B. F. Westcott, Introduction to the Study of the Gospels, ib. 1895; E.Roehrich, LaComposiliondes evangiles, Paris, 1897; J. C. Hawkins, Horce synopticce, London, 1899; P. Wernle, Die synoptische Frage, Freiburg, 1899; W. Wrede, DasMessiasgeheimnis in den Evangelien, Gottingen, 1901; J. Well-
hausen, Einleitung in die drei ersten Evangelien, Berlin, 1905; T. C. Burkitt, The Gospel Hist, and its Transmission, Edinburgh, 1906; J. E. Carpenter, The First Three Gospels, their Origin and Relations, London, 1906; G. Salmon, The Human Element in the Gospels, ed. N. J. D. White, ib. 1906; A. Julicher, Neue Linien in der Kritik der evangelischen Ueberlieferung, Giessen, 1906 (a criticism of the late works of Wrede, Wellhausen, and Harnack, giving the present situation of the problem); F. Blass, Die Entstehung und der Charakter unserer Evangelien, Leipsic, 1907; A. Harnack, Sprilche und Reden Jesu, ib. 1907; Eng. transl., The Sayings of Jesus, London, 1908 ; H. Loriaux, L'Autorite des evangiles, Paris, 1907; C. T. Ward, Gospel Development, Brooklyn, 1907; P. Wernle, The Sources of our Knowledge of the Life of Jesus, London, 1907; A. Loisy, Les Evangiles synoptiques, vols, i.-ii., Paris, 1907-08; T. Nicol, The Four Gospels in the Earliest Church History, Edinburgh, 1908; B. Weiss, Die Quellen der synoptischen Ueberlieferung, Leipsic, 1908; DB, ii. 234-249, supplementary vol., pp. 338-343; EB, ii. 1761-1898 (elaborate, important, with a classified literature).
GOSS, CHARLES FREDERIC: Presbyterian; b. at Meridian, N. Y., June 14, 1852. He was educated at Hamilton College (B.A., 1873) and Auburn Theological Seminary, from which he was graduated in 1876. After several years as a home missionary, he was called in 1885 to the pastorate of the Moody Church, Chicago, but was forced by ill health to resign five years later. He then resided for two years at Kettle Falls, Wash., after which he was assistant pastor of the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York City, for a year. Since 1894 he has been pastor of Avondale Presbyterian Church, Cincinnati. Theologically he is in general sympathy with the methods and results of the historico-critical study of the Scriptures, and accepts the " Brief Statement " of the Westminster Creed. Besides several novels, he has written Life of D. L. Moody (Hartford, Conn., 1900); Just a Minute (Philadelphia, 1904); and Husband, Wife, and Home (1905).
GOSSNER, JOHANNES EVANGELISTA : German minister; b. at Hausen bei Ober-Walstatt (near Augsburg) Dec. 14, 1773; d. at Berlin Mar. 20, 1858. He studied at the University of Dillingen and at the seminary of Ingolstadt, and was ordained priest in 1796. After officiating at Dillingen, Seeg, and Augsburg from 1797 to 1804, he was appointed parish priest at Dirlewang, where he remained for seven years. He had long entertained pronounced Evangelical convictions which at length made him consider the advisability of leaving the Roman Church. Despite the advice of his mystical Lutheran friend, Schoner of Nuremberg, he resigned his pastorate at Dirlewang, and engaged in literary pursuits, also accepting a small benefice at Munich. The Roman Catholic party unfrocked Gossner for his views in 1817, and two years later he was appointed religious instructor at the gymnasium at Dusseldorf. From 1820 to 1824 he officiated as pastor of a German congregation at St. Petersburg, but his attacks on the celibacy of the clergy forced him to resign, and in 1826 he openly joined the Evangelical Church. In 1829 he was appointed pastor at the Bethlehem Church at Berlin, where he officiated for seventeen years. During his stay in Berlin he developed a great and beneficial activity, founding schools and asylums,
Goths G-otteskasten