The Criticism of the Fourth Gospel / Eight Lectures on the Morse Foundation, Delivered in the Union Seminary, New York in October and November 1904

by W. Sanday

Epilogue on the Principles of Criticism.

And now that we have come to the end of this brief sketch of the history of the Gospel for the first hundred years or so of its existence, I may perhaps turn in conclusion to the other object which has been present to my mind throughout this course of lectures, and attempt to collect and state, also in the most summary form, some of the underlying principles of criticism which have from time to time found expression in the lectures and which I desire to submit for your consideration, more especially where they differ from much current practice. I consider them to be self-evident; but their obviousness has at least not prevented them from being too often disregarded. The main points would, I think, be as follows:—

1. In judging of the external evidence for any ancient writing, it is always important to observe not only the details of the evidence itself (date, genuineness, authority, freedom from ambiguity, the precise point attested), but also the extent of the area from which it is drawn and the proportion which it bears to the extant literature of the period which it covers. The first step should be an attempt to realize by an effort of the imagination the proportion between (1) the whole of the extant evidence, (2) the amount of the material that yields this evidence, (3) the amount of the material, once extant but now no longer extant, which might have contributed evidence if we had it. In other words, what we have to consider is not only the actual, positive evidence available, but the distribution of this evidence and its relation to the real lie of the facts—no longer accessible to us but as they may be imaginatively reconstructed.

2. In particular, when use is made of the argument from silence, the first question to be asked is, What is silent? It may well be that the literature supposed to be silent is so small that no inference of any value can be drawn from it.

3. In any further use of the argument from silence full allowance should be made for common human infirmity in the persons who are silent—for oversight forgetfulness, limited range of thought. It is always desirable that the application of the argument from silence should be checked by comparison with verifiable examples from actual experience, whether that experience is derived from ancient life or from modern.

4. The presumption is that plain statements of fact may be trusted, unless there is a distinct and solid reason to the contrary. Even where there is a considerable interval of time between the fact and the statement, it may be presumed that the writer who makes the statement had connecting links of testimony to which he had access and we have not. In any case it is worth while to ask ourselves whether it is not probable that such connecting links existed.

5. In such plain statements the presumption further is that the writer meant what he says, or appears to say. Not until this apparent sense has proved wholly unworkable is it right to tamper with his express language, whether by emendation of the text or putting upon his words a sense that is not obvious and natural.

6. The imputation of conscious deception or fraud is to be strongly deprecated, except with writers of ascertained bad character, and even then the imputation should not be made without substantial reason.

7. All imputations of motive, and especially of sinister motive, should be carefully weighed, and it should in particular be considered whether the supposed motive is one that was likely to be in operation under the historical conditions of the time and circumstances of the writer affected.

8. It should never be forgotten that human nature is a very subtle and complex thing—usually far more subtle and complex than any picture of it that we are likely to form for ourselves. Hence it is improbable that the enumeration of motives by the critical historian will really exhaust the possibilities of the case. Many seeming inconsistencies, whether of character or of statement, are really less than they seem, and quite capable of conjunction in the same person.

9. Where a simple cause suffices to explain a group, especially a large group, of facts, it is better not to assume a cause that is highly exceptional and complicated. This rule seems to apply to the indications of an eye-witness in the Fourth Gospel.

10. Such indications do not in the least exclude the natural effect of lapse of time and the unconscious action of experience and reflection on the mind of a writer who sets down late in life a narrative of events that had happened long before.

11. In studying a narrative of this kind we should bear in mind, as well as we can, the whole career of the writer: we should divide it into its successive stages, and we should be constantly asking ourselves which stage of his experience is reflected in the shape that each portion of the narrative takes. If the conception which results as a whole appears to be such as naturally starts from direct contact with the facts, that will supply us with a much easier explanation than any which involves the wholesale use of fiction.

12. There are different kinds of portraiture; and it does not at all follow that a portrait to be real must be full of movement and action. There are some minds that, from peculiarity of mental habit, although they preserve what they once saw or heard with great distinctness and fidelity, nevertheless easily travel away from these recollections of observed fact and glide into a train of reflection which is almost soliloquy. The author of the Fourth Gospel appears to be a writer of this kind.

13. He himself lays so much stress upon ocular testimony that we must give him credit for such testimony, even where it is not altogether easy for us to follow him.

14. This applies particularly to his reports of miracle. But in judging of these reports, we must before all things bear in mind that the personal disciples of Jesus and the whole first generation of Christians certainly believed that they were living in the midst of miracle, and certainly held that belief to be an important constituent in their conception of Christ.

15. If we would form an adequate idea of what we call ‘the supernatural’ in the dealings of God with men, we must not begin by ruling out all that transcends our common experience. We must keep it in our minds even where we feel that there are features of it that we do but imperfectly understand. More light may be given to us by degrees.

16. All our Gospels together present us with a view of the life and words of Christ to which, if we did but know it, there would be much to be added. The first Christians were acquainted with many particulars under both heads which to us are entirely lost. These particulars contributed in an important degree to the total impression which they formed of the Person of Christ.

17. The conception was naturally fullest and most adequate in the Mother Church, i. e. in the Church in which the immediate followers of Christ were for the longest time collected. It was here, and nowhere else, that that conception of His Person was formed which dominated all parts of the Church, and which carried with it certain corollaries as to the nature of God and his dealings with men that became a permanent body of belief.

18. St. Paul no doubt developed certain portions and aspects of this body of belief, but it is quite impossible and contrary to the evidence that he can have invented its main propositions.

19. We may be sure that St. John did not draw directly from St. Paul, but, firstly, from his own recollections, and in the second place, from the store of common memories and common doctrine that was the possession of all Christians and especially of those who had been nearest to the Master.

20. If we attempt a reconstruction of the main lines of the progress of the Church in the early and in subsequent centuries, such reconstruction ought to be worthy of its subject. In other words, it ought to be one in which we can really see the finger of God.

21. The workings of Divine Providence, as we have experience of them, do not indeed always correspond to what we should antecedently expect. They are such as belong to a world, not of perfect, but of imperfect beings. The Divine purpose as we see it, does not take effect at once, but by slow and gradually expanding degrees.

22. In a world so mixed and chequered progress also has been mixed and chequered; it has not been exactly what we, with our limited faculties, could at once recognize as ideal. It has been progress by tentative experiment, by gradual formulation, by description, at first rough and approximate, but improved little by little as time went on. Any reconstruction of Christian history which agrees with these broad conditions is legitimate, I mean, any reconstruction which recognizes the tentative, experimental, imperfect but gradually improved formulation of Christian belief. It is incumbent upon us, in our own day, to take our part in the attempt to formulate our conceptions of truth, whether historical or doctrinal, with all the accuracy in our power; and we may be quite sure that future generations will improve upon anything that we leave behind us.

23. Any method of reconstructing history on these lines is, as I have stated, legitimate and worthy of a Christian who is loyal to his faith. But a view of history that cannot be expressed in terms fit to describe the operation of Divine Providence; that sees in it nothing but huge blunders and gross deteriorations; that regards the Church of Christ as built on fundamental untruth, which only becomes worse and not better as the centuries advance; such a view seems to me to be not loyal and not really Christian.