CHAPTER V.
THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
The evidence that to John the Apostle is to be ascribed the Fourth Gospel, is worthy of the best attention we can bestow upon it. After that apostle had been dead half a century, this book, as is acknowledged by our author and all other critics, occupied a prominent place among the manuscripts of the Christians, with the name of John, as the author, attached; and the question now arises, after nearly eighteen centuries of belief in its authorship and authority, is there reasonable ground for doubting that it can be properly attributed to the apostle who was the companion, disciple, and bosom friend of Jesus? I think the question may be answered with confidence upon the evidence within our reach.
In the first place, Irenæus believed it was the Gospel according to John the Apostle; and who was Irenæus, that his belief in it should be good evidence? He was not John's contemporary, but there was one between John and Irenæus who was so intimate with both that the link of evidence is fully to be relied upon, and that link is Polycarp. Therefore, Irenæus, who was a hearer of Polycarp, can tell us something about it. Now Polycarp was born in the time of Nero, so he was for thirty-two years a contemporary of John's, and was his disciple. And Irenæus says in a letter written to a person called Florinus, and preserved by Eusebius: "When I was yet a youth, I saw thee in Asia Minor, at Polycarp's house, where thou wert distinguished at court, and obtained the regard of the bishop. I can more distinctly recollect things which happened then than others more recent, for events which happened in youth seem to grow with the mind, and to become part of ourselves. So I can tell the place where the blessed Polycarp used to sit and discourse, and his going out and coming in, and the manner of his life, and his personal appearance, and his discourses to the people, and how he related his intercourse with John, and the rest who had seen the Lord; and how he rehearsed their sayings, and what things there were which he had heard from them about the Lord, and about His miracles, and about His doctrine; and how Polycarp, having learned from the eye-witnesses of the Word of Life, narrated all things agreeably with the Scriptures. And to these things, by God's mercy bestowed on me at that time, I used diligently to listen, writing the remembrance of them, not on paper, but in my heart; and, by God's grace, I am always meditating affectionately upon them."[56]
Now we may be certain that Polycarp would be likely to know the truth of the matter, and Irenæus declares that "John, the disciple of the Lord who leaned on the bosom of the Lord at supper, wrote the Apocalypse."[57] So we have here reliable evidence that John wrote both the Apocalypse and the book whose author leaned on our Lord's bosom at supper. Not only this from Polycarp. There is extant "The Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians," which Irenæus believed to be genuine, and in it we find these words: "For whosoever doth not confess Jesus Christ hath come in the flesh, is antichrist." I compare this with the words in John's Epistle: "And every spirit that confesses not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is not of God, and this is that spirit of antichrist." Our author says it is not a verbatim quotation. I say it is a quotation, if not verbatim. It is acknowledged that the author of the First Epistle of John and the Fourth Gospel is the same, the ideas and style being so much alike. "The two writings," says Rénan, "present the most complete identity of style, the same peculiarities, the same favourite expressions."
It is impossible to doubt that Polycarp would have learned from John himself whether he was the author of a Gospel; and if Irenæus had never heard Polycarp allude to the Gospel as John's, he could not have believed in it as he did, and have plainly stated that John wrote it and the Apocalypse. There would have been in this case a justifiable inference from "silence." If Polycarp in his teaching had never alluded to John's Gospel, it would have been so strange that Irenæus would have deemed it spurious altogether, and unworthy of the estimation with which he regarded it; for it is one of the four Gospels that he fancifully likens to the four corners of the earth, the four principal winds, and the four wings of the Seraphim. It is to be remembered that our author acknowledges Irenæus so regarded all the four Gospels, for he alludes (p. 91) to "the arbitrary assumption of exclusive originality and priority for the four Gospels" by Irenæus, Tertullian, and Epiphanius. It is evident that this Fourth Gospel could not have first appeared as late as A.D. 150, but must have been in existence long before; and on the testimony of Irenæus, through Polycarp, from John himself, its authenticity may be considered established.
The evidence from the work of Hippolytus, entitled, "The Refutation of all Heresies," that Basilides quoted from the Fourth Gospel, our author dismisses in one paragraph (p. 371), having fully referred to the testimony from that writer in treating of the Synoptics. There are, however, two very distinct passages which cannot be objected to as quotations, and the attempt to get rid of them by the substitution of the plural pronoun "they" for the singular one "he," in the text of Hippolytus, is an utter failure. The first is from John i. 9, "The true Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world;" and the words in "The Refutation," by Hippolytus, are, "And this, he says, is that which has been stated in the Gospels, 'He was the true Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.'" The other is, "Mine hour is not yet come," agreeing with John ii. 4. The discovery of the work, "The Refutation of all Heresies," in the year 1841, at Mount Athos, by the erudite Minoides Mynas, a Greek, in the employ of the French Government, was important as bearing on this question, for it proves that the Fourth Gospel was in existence thirty years earlier than the Tübingen criticism asserted. Our author's want of appreciation of the evidence found in Hippolytus is one of the weakest points in his book.
Is the Fourth Gospel quoted by Justin Martyr? Our author says, No! I say, Yes! to the question. In his Dialogue with Tryphon (p. 316) occur the words, "I am not the Christ, but the voice of one crying," which is evidently from that Gospel, for we know of no other which makes John the Baptist say the same. He says "the evangelical work of which Justin made use was obviously different from our Gospels, and the evident conclusion to which any impartial mind must arrive is, that there is not only not the slightest ground for affirming that Justin quoted the passage (as above) from the Fourth Gospel, from which he so fundamentally differs, but every reason on the contrary to believe that he derived it from a particular Gospel, in all probability the Gospel according to the Hebrews" (p. 302). I remark, that the words, "I am not the Christ, but the voice of one crying," could not be quoted from the Gospel according to the Hebrews if that supposed independent book did not contain them, and there is no evidence that it did. On the contrary, our Gospel of Matthew, compiled, as we suppose, partly from it, would have in that case had the words; and as it has not, and as only John's Gospel has them, the inference is clear that Justin had seen the latter, as well as the other Gospel or Gospels from which the earlier part of the sentence is taken. The whole of Justin's sentence is as follows: "For John sat by the Jordan and preached the baptism of repentance, wearing only a leathern girdle and raiment of camel's hair, and eating nothing but locusts and wild honey." Men supposed him to be the Christ, wherefore he cries to them, "I am not Christ, but the voice of one crying (or preaching). For he cometh who is greater than I, whose shoes I am not meet to bear."
We find in the second "Apology" (p. 94) these words: "Christ said, 'Except ye be born again ye may not enter into the kingdom of heaven;" and in the very same line is continued the reference to the conversation with Nicodemus, in these words: "But that it is impossible for those who have been once born to enter into their mother's womb, is plain to all." I scarce need remind you how the statement of Christ and the question of Nicodemus are as close together in the Fourth Gospel. The passage there is, "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother's womb and be born?" The two sentences, coming together in both, leaves no doubt that Justin used the Fourth Gospel, for there is nothing like them in any of the other Gospels.
It is something to have from Justin Martyr the evidence that Jesus taught Nicodemus that a man cannot see the kingdom of God without being born of the Holy Ghost. If Justin quoted from an earlier Gospel, it is against our author's non-superhuman theory; and if from our Gospels, it is equally so. But, supposing that he could prove that Justin did not quote, that would not prove that the books were not in existence. Paul's Epistles, 1 Thessalonians, Galatians, 1 Corinthians, and Romans, all written not later than the year 58, are they quoted, as we might suppose they would be, by Justin? We know nothing as to the extent of his library. He might have had copies of all these Gospels and Epistles, or none at hand to quote verbatim from. Was there a concordance, to help a writer to be exact, after the modern demand?
The internal evidence of the Fourth Gospel is, perhaps, not so appreciable by our author as the external, on account of his foregone conclusion that the superhuman is incredible. But as "there is no feasible explanation of the Divine origin of Christianity without acknowledging the Divine mission of Jesus," so is there no possible explanation of the Fourth Gospel without a recognition of the evangelical doctrine of the triune in the Divine Nature—the threefold manifestation of the one God. Exclude from the Fourth Gospel the idea of the Holy Spirit having inspired John to write it, and there naturally follows the attempt to exclude the book from its historical and authoritative position. It has a perfectly harmonious place in the superhuman means by which spiritual truth is exhibited and enforced for the benefit of mankind, but that place is an advanced one. It was the last of inspired utterances, and it presupposes the development that it supplements, and which it designs to promote. The Holy Spirit, "the God of peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that Great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant," to make us "perfect in every good work to do His will," must be recognised and duly honoured if the Bible is to be understood and Christianity successfully exhibited and defended. Let us turn to the book. It opens with allusions to the dignity of Christ the Messiah which no philosophy known in Alexandria had a conception of. Philo and his Platonic school discoursed of the Logos; but their doctrine is distinct from that of this Gospel. Justin takes up their idea, as our author shows (p. 278), and draws a distinction between the Logos and Jesus, describing Jesus Christ as being made flesh by the power of the Logos; for Justin says,—"Through the power of the Word, according to the will of God the Father and Lord of all, he was born a man of a virgin."[58] Philo says,[59]—"The Logos of God is above all things in the word, and is the most ancient and most universal of all things created." I do not deny that Justin got ideas of the Logos from the Old Testament and from the writings of Philo, as shown by our author, but I submit that he confused their doctrine with the more developed truth of the New Testament. "It is certain," he says (p. 291), "that both Justin and Philo, unlike the prelude to the Fourth Gospel, place the Logos in a secondary position to God the Father, indicating a less advanced stage in the doctrine. 'He calls the Word constantly the first-born of all created beings'" (p. 292). Our author says,—"We do not propose in this work to enter fully into the history of the Logos doctrine" (p. 280). Had he done so, he could not have shown that the doctrine reached to the height of the apostolic conception. There is no allusion to the Divinity of the Logos, as John and Paul assert; and no reference to the unquestionable statement of Scripture that, in the Word made flesh, we have a revelation of the mysterious triune nature of Jehovah. A vague notion of it is found in many idolatrous systems of religious worship, and its prevalence is an indication of the truth which tradition, from primitive revelation, has handed down; but the mystery, as Paul says, was hidden for ages and generations, and was not made manifest until, in the fulness of time, the scheme of Redemption was fully unfolded. The gospel is called by Paul "the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began, but now is made manifest by a clear interpretation of the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith."[60] To concentrate the doctrine in the Fourth Gospel and Paul's later epistles, and then repudiate the writings, is a mode of sustaining the denial of it which is far from being successful. This doctrine is evidently one of the essential elements of Christian truth. As the bread which sustains our bodily life, so the bread of the life of the soul, may be decomposed, but none of the elements must be left out of it if it is to be of use. In the Old Testament we find many passages which show the plurality in the Divine nature. The doctrine, it is true, was not so revealed as to be conspicuous at the time, for if it had been, it would have been misunderstood, and thus tended to interfere with the schooling which the Jews were undergoing to cure them of their proneness to idolatry; but with the New Testament in our hand we see what, without it, would be still hidden in obscurity. As we read the Fourth Gospel in the light of this doctrine, how it harmonises with the "plan of salvation" which believers in all evangelical Churches call Christianity! The book professes to be written that men, believing in Jesus Christ, may have eternal life; records the testimony of John the Baptist that Jesus was the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world (i. 29); and announces the important dogma that the supernatural influence of the Holy Spirit is indispensable to overcome the unwillingness of the soul of man to receive the truths of the Divine revelation. "No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him" (vi. 44). "Except a man be born of the Spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God." It testifies to the Divine nature of Jesus in the most explicit manner. "Therefore the Jews sought to kill him," because he said "God was his Father, making himself equal with God" (v. 18). "That all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father" (v. 23). "If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also" (viii. 19). "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am" (viii. 58). "It is he (the Son of God) that talketh with thee. And he (the man who had been blind) said, Lord, I believe. And he worshipped him" (ix. 38). "I and my Father are one" (x. 30). "For blasphemy" (we stone thee), "and because thou, being a man, makest thyself God" (x. 36). "Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?" (xi. 25, 26). "Jesus said, Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify him in himself, and shall straightway glorify him" (xiii. 32). "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father" (xiv. 9).
The doctrine of what we call (not having a better word) the personality of the Holy Spirit is clearly indicated in such passages as the following:—"I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you" (xiv. 17). "But the Comforter, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you" (xiv. 26). "It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment" (xvi. 7). "When he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will show you things to come" (xvi. 13). The seventeenth chapter I will not refer to in part, but specify entire, begging the reader to meditate on its marvellous comprehensiveness and expressiveness.
Much of the teaching of Jesus would be so far above the comprehension of the disciples when they heard it, that it would not be likely to be impressed on their memory. The Holy Spirit was to be sent, to bring all things to their remembrance; and it is only by this promise being fulfilled that we can understand the inspired words of the Fourth Gospel.
Could Jesus have said what He is described in this book to have said, if God had not been with Him as He never was with any other man? If such a question be pertinent, how utterly needless the further question, Could the book have been written by the nameless unknown some one whom the hypothesis of its non-Johannine origin substitutes as the author?
Whatever difference there is between the composition of the Fourth Gospel and the Apocalyse, there is, at all events, a striking analogy between the opening verses of the former and those in the latter, where the faithful and true witness is referred to as "the beginning of the creation of God,"[61] and as being set down with His Father upon His throne. In the preface to each of the addresses to the seven Churches Christ assumes the attributes and prerogatives of the Deity. The prominence given to the mysterious doctrine of the Divinity of Christ is as great in the one as the other.
It is somewhat singular that from Rénan, who so utterly rejects the miraculous, we should have such a decided opinion that it is appropriately entitled the Gospel according to John. After saying, "I dare not be sure that the Fourth Gospel has been entirely written by a Galilean fisherman," he writes in his introduction to the "Life of Jesus": "No one doubts that towards the year 150, the Fourth Gospel did exist, and was attributed to John. Explicit texts from Justin, Athenagoras, Tatian, Theophilus of Antioch, and Irenæus, show that from thenceforth this Gospel mixed in every controversy, and served as corner-stone for the development of the faith. Irenæus is explicit. Now he came from the school of John, and between him and the apostle there was only Polycarp. The part played by this Gospel in Gnosticism, and especially in the system of Valentinus, in Montanism, and in the quarrel of the Quartodecimans, is not less decisive. The school of John was the most influential in the second century, and it is only by regarding the origin of the Gospel as coincident with the rise of the school, that the existence of the latter can be understood at all."
"The First Epistle, attributed to John, is certainly by the same author as the Fourth Gospel. Now this Epistle is recognised as from John by Polycarp, Papias, and Irenæus. But it is, above all, the perusal of the Fourth Gospel itself which is calculated to give the impression that John must have written it. The author always speaks as an eye-witness. He wishes to pass for the Apostle John. If, then, this work is not really by the apostle, we must admit a fraud of which the author convicts himself. Now, although the ideas of the time respecting literary honesty differed essentially from ours, there is no example in the apostolic world of a falsehood of this kind. Besides, not only does the author wish to pass for the apostle, but we see clearly that he writes in the interest of this apostle."
As to the difference in language and style between it and the Apocalypse, it is not altogether unusual for an author to produce works which differ greatly from each other. An instance is mentioned by the Rev. Kentish Bache, in his letter to Dr. Davidson. "William Penn, within one and the same year (1668) wrote two different works, entitled 'The Sandy Foundation Shaken,' and 'Innocency with her Open Face.' The former pamphlet is circulated by the Unitarians as a tract demolishing the doctrine of the Trinity, while the latter is an earnest defence of that very doctrine; and yet Penn protests that his belief had undergone no change" (p. 35).
One of the difficulties in the way of the reception of the Fourth Gospel is the raising of Lazarus from the dead, which the Synoptics do not record. A probable explanation is suggested by Grotius, who says, as Lazarus was living when the Synoptics were written, and as "the chief priests consulted that they might put him to death, because that by reason of him many of the Jews went away and believed on Jesus,"[62] the publication of the miracle would have exposed Lazarus to more intense hostility, and endangered his life.
Our author makes the strange assertion that "the Fourth Gospel, by whomsoever written—even if it could be traced to the Apostle John—has no real historical value, being at best the glorified recollections of an old man, written down half a century after the events recorded" (p. 467). This bold assertion ignores the fact that the impressions of early life are, as a rule, indelibly fixed on the memory. Of no historical value, though written by John! Our author knows perfectly well that such an event as the raising of Lazarus from the dead could never fade from the memory of those who witnessed it. Does he overlook, or suppress, the consideration that John's recollection would be daily refreshed by the teaching of the principles of a gospel which consisted of these events and discourses? We can as well conceive of the Duke of Wellington having forgotten, when he was eighty years old, the campaigns of the Peninsula and the battle of Waterloo, as John forgetting the memorable transactions in the life of his Master with which he was so closely identified. Besides, we do not know that the materials for John's book had not long before been noted down. It is not probable that he who wrote the Apocalypse in the year 68 would put nothing into writing of the memoirs until close upon the time when the book was published. Such is not the mode of authorship now, and was not then. Supposing the apostle to have died, leaving behind him unarranged materials, including notes and memoranda made at various times, and that these were, with fidelity, but with more scholarship than John possessed, transcribed, edited, and made a book of, entitled "The Gospel according to John," we have an explanation of the linguistic difficulty which does not overstep the limits of reasonable probability.
Well may Dr. Davidson acknowledge "it is not easy to account for the early belief of its Johannine origin;" and that "if a disciple of John wrote it, he had learned more than his master." It would have been "strange if such an author had continued unknown." If we reject the Johannine origin, we have to believe that during the fifty years between John's death and the time of the book's general acceptance as his there lived some one capable of writing it, of whom history and tradition are silent. This is certainly a large matter for sceptical credulity to swallow. How much easier to believe that the refinement and beauty of composition, whose charm has captivated the world, is the work of a Grecian disciple, who wrote under the superintendence, if not dictation, of the apostle who only could have furnished the materials at the time when it was written. At the close of the first century all the other apostles were dead, and for its authorship we cannot look beyond the circle which surrounded Jesus at the instituting of that ever-abiding memorial of Him, "The Lord's Supper."
Among the anomalies of our author's hypothesis we have to think of the apostles living in the first century, and attaining their reputation as writers during the second. In the first century men appear, but without their writings. In the second century the writings come to light, but without the men. How unnatural, says Dr. Christlieb, is this! Who can fail to see that the hypothesis is incredible?
"We invariably find that an age which is fertile in literary productions is followed by a conservative period, in which the productions of the foregoing period are collected and digested—first the classical, then the post-classical. Does the second century, in other respects, bear the impress of a productive classical period in literature? On the contrary, its undoubted products breathe a spirit which bears the same relation to the New Testament writings as does the tenour of a post-classical age bear to that of the age preceding it. Did these writings, especially the Fourth Gospel, belong to 'unknown' authors, they would be perfectly inexplicable phenomena as compared with all the other products of that period. It has been well said that it were no less absurd to ascribe the most inspiriting writings of Luther to the spiritless period of the Thirty Years' War, than to transfer the Gospel of John to the middle of the second century."[63]
"Notwithstanding their warm Christian life, the writings of the second century evince such a remarkable dearth of new ideas that one plainly sees how, after the spiritual flood-tides of the first century, the ebb had set in."[64]
"Compare, for instance, the clear and sober-minded spirit of the New Testament epistles, or the quiet sublimity of the Gospel of John, with the epistles of Ignatius, the enthusiasm of which degenerates into a well-nigh fanatic desire for martyrdom; or with the Pastor of Hermas, and the value ascribed by him to ascetic rigour; or with the epistles by Clement of Rome, which tell the fable of the phœnix as a fact; or, again, with the Epistle of Barnabas, which delights in insipid allegories, and gives the most absurd typical interpretations of the Old Testament, justifying Neander's remark, that here we encounter quite another spirit than that of an apostolic man."[65]
Our author produces such a mass of evidence from the early writers, confirmatory of the truths of the Gospel, that his criticism tends to opposite conclusions. Supposing he can prove that the canon of Scripture is not unassailable, he has not accomplished much. It is of more value to have confirmation of the facts and principles of Divine truth, than to be assured that the authorship, construction, compilation, or arrangement of the Scriptures, are just what the Church of Rome authoritatively pronounced. Because we cannot positively settle certain questions of little comparative importance, are we to surrender our faith in essentials? Are we to let the conjectures and queries of German cavillers, with their "Yea, hath God said," destroy our cherished faith and hope? God forbid! It is not the preservation or infallibility of the apostolic writings which makes His incarnation, death, and resurrection, facts in the history of our race. The facts make the history, not the history the facts. Europe was saved from Oriental despotism by Leonidas at Thermopylæ, and the valour and patriotism of the Greeks; by Charles Martel in the eighth century; and again by Prince Eugene in the seventeenth century; but it is not because history has truly or imperfectly recorded these facts that we enjoy to this day the great benefits resulting to civilisation from their heroism.
The truth of Christianity does not, at all events, rest on the quotations of the early Fathers, and our author would have accomplished but little had he proved that there were none found. In the first ages of the Church, when the events were fresh, the voice of the preacher was the channel which conveyed the saving gospel to the souls of men, and there was not the same necessity for reference to the written records as in after times. When a century had elapsed after the death of Christ, then the records of the first disciples became of importance. They then came into prominence, and were abundantly quoted, as our author acknowledges. As time went on that importance increased, and about three hundred years after the events the Emperor Constantine ordered Eusebius to have fifty copies of the Holy Scriptures fairly inscribed on parchment, the use whereof he tells Eusebius he "knew to be absolutely necessary to the Church." Eusebius gives us the emperor's entire letter. They were not so absolutely necessary when most of the Fathers wrote whom our author has referred to. I do not want any written record to prove to me that the Spaniards in the Peninsular War, seventy years ago, poisoned the bread of the British troops. I lived in my youth with an old Christian soldier and his wife who were in the campaign, and used to amuse me with their experience of such facts, as we sat round the fire on a winter's evening. Nor of the American War of Independence do the people of the present generation depend entirely on writings or books for the proof that it took place. Two lives reach from date to date, and no evidence can be stronger than such.
Until we have better reason than our author has adduced for altering our estimate of these sacred writings, so often assailed, but maintaining serenely, century after century, their high pretensions as a message from heaven to culture our moral and spiritual nature, and guide us thither, we should be foolish, oh, how foolish! to question their authority or neglect their guidance. Because we cannot be sure that the Bible is in every detail the perfect transcript of Divine revelation, we are to abandon the only solace that humanity possesses, the only theory which accounts for the wickedness which, without its teaching, is such an anomaly to all else in creation, the only bond which binds society in brotherhood, and makes social existence capable of including happiness here, or the hope of life hereafter. Better a misunderstood revelation than none at all. Better a glimpse of immortality, than the negation which is utter darkness, and makes the issue of existence only death.