i. Passages which make a direct claim.
I am treading on very familiar ground, but I must ask you to forgive me if I begin by quoting the opening words of the First Epistle:
‘That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the Word of life (and the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare unto you the life, the eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us); that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you also, that ye also may have fellowship with us: yea, and our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ: and these things we write, that our joy may be fulfilled’ (1 John i. 1-3).
The prima facie view of this passage undoubtedly is that the writer is speaking as one of a group of eye-witnesses. But there are two ways in which this inference is turned aside.
1. Harnack[[34]] and some others take it as referring not to bodily but to mystical vision.
2. Others, again, think of the writer as speaking in the name of a whole generation, or of Christians generally.
In regard to the first of these explanations we note that the word θεᾶσθαι is used twenty-two times in all the New Testament, including the present passage; and in every one of bodily and not of mental or spiritual vision. And whatever sense we may put upon seeing or hearing, it is difficult to explain such a strong expression as ‘that which ... our hands have handled,’ where the writer seems to go out of his way to exclude any ambiguity, in any other sense than of physical handling.
In regard to the second explanation we observe that there is a contrast between ‘we’ and ‘you,’ between teachers and taught. The teachers are in any case a small body; and they seem to rest their authority, or at least the impulse to teach, on the desire to communicate to others what they had themselves experienced. I have therefore little doubt that the prima facie view of the passage is the right one. The writer speaks of himself as a member of a small group, like that of the Apostles, but a group that may include all who had really seen the Lord and who afterwards took up the work of witnessing to Him.
The other passage, John i. 14, is more ambiguous: ‘the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father), full of grace and truth.’ If this had stood alone, it might have seemed an open question whether ‘we beheld’ was not used in a vague sense of Christians generally—or even of the human race, as ‘tabernacled among us’ just before might mean ‘among men.’ But the more specific reference would be more pointed; and it is favoured by the analogy of the passage of which we have just been speaking as well as of those which follow.
In both the above cases the writer is speaking in his own person. This is not quite so clear in xix. 35, where, after describing the lance-thrust and the pierced side, the narrative goes on, ‘And he that hath seen hath borne witness, and his witness is true: and he (ἐκεῖνος) knoweth that he saith true, that ye also may believe.’ Is the writer by these words objectifying, and as it were looking back upon himself, or is he pointing to some third person unnamed in the background? Both views are antecedently possible. Perhaps the latter is more consistent with the ordinary use of ἐκεῖνος. If we accept it, then I should be inclined to think with Zahn that ἐκεῖνος points to Christ. It would be just a formula of strong asseveration, like ‘God knoweth’ in 2 Cor. xi. 11, 31, &c. There would be a near parallel in 3 John 12, ‘Demetrius hath the witness of all men, and of the truth itself: yea, we also bear witness; and thou knowest that our witness is true.’ This view is the more attractive because it is in keeping with the habit of thought disclosed in the Gospel. As the Son appeals to the witness of the Father, as it were dimly seen in the background, so also it would I think be natural for the beloved disciple to appeal to the Master who is no longer at his side in bodily presence, but who is present with him and with the Church in spirit: ‘he who saw the sight has set it down in writing ... and there is one above who knows that he is telling the truth.’
This is the view that, after giving to it the best consideration I can, I am on the whole inclined to accept. I could not, however, agree that there is anything really untenable in what may be called the common view, that the asseveration is of a lower kind, and that the author is simply turning back upon himself and protesting his own veracity. The use of ἐκεῖνος to take up the subject of a sentence is specially frequent and specially characteristic of this Gospel; and as the author systematically speaks of himself in the third person, it seems to me that the word may also naturally refer to himself so objectified: ‘he who saw the sight has set it down ... and he is well assured that what he says is true.’
In any case, however, I must needs think that the bearing witness is that of the written Gospel, and that the author of the Gospel is the same as he who saw the sight. The identity is, it seems to me, clenched by xxi. 24, to which I shall come back in a moment.
At this point I may be permitted to interject a speculation—shall I call it a pious speculation? it certainly does not profess to be more—as to the origin of the peculiar way the Fourth Evangelist has of referring to himself. The idea can only be entertained by those who think that the writer was really a companion of the Lord, either an Apostle or one very near to the Apostles. Is it not possible that such a one may have been influenced by the way in which the Master referred to Himself? It is characteristic of the Synoptic Christ that He constantly speaks of Himself objectively as ‘the Son of Man.’ May we not suppose that the Evangelist, through long and familiar intercourse, came insensibly and instinctively to adopt for himself a similar method of oblique and allusive reference? It is of course not quite the same thing; but there seems to be enough resemblance for the one usage to suggest the other. The beloved disciple had a special reason for not wishing to obtrude his own personality. He was conscious of a great privilege, of a privilege that would single him out for all time among the children of men. He could not resist the temptation to speak of this privilege. The impulse of affection responding to affection prompted him to claim it. But the consciousness that he was doing so, and the reaction of modesty led him at the same moment to suppress, what a vulgar egotism might have accentuated, the lower plane of his own individuality. The son of Zebedee (if it was he) desired to be merged and lost in ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved.’
There is nothing in the least unnatural in this; it is a little complex perhaps, but only with the complexity of life, when different motives clash in a fine nature. The delicacy of attitude corresponds to an innate delicacy of mind. When one reads some of the criticisms on this attitude, one is reminded of a sentence in an English classic, Cowper’s indignant remonstrance at Johnson’s treatment of Milton.
‘As a poet, he has treated him with severity enough, and has plucked one or two of the most beautiful feathers out of his Muse’s wing, and trampled them under his great foot[[35]].’
Samuel Johnson, excellent person as he was, is not the only critic who has had the misfortune to be born (metaphorically, if not physically) with a ‘great foot’ and a heavy hand.
The Gospel closes with a scene in which the writer refers in his usual oblique way to himself. I cannot think that there is any real reason for the assumption, which is so often and so confidently made, that the last chapter is an appendix written after the author was dead. On this point, again, I entirely agree with Dr. Drummond, ‘It is surely conceivable that the aged disciple, feeling death stealing upon him, might point out that no words of Jesus justified the expectation which had arisen among some of his devoted friends[[36]].’ The complete identity of thought and style, and the way in which this last chapter is dovetailed into the preceding (‘This is now the third time that Jesus was manifested to the disciples’; compare at the beginning of the Gospel the counting up of the first Galilean miracles, ii. 11, iv. 54), seem to prove that the last chapter is by the same hand as the rest of the Gospel[[37]].
But at the very end another hand does take up the pen; and this time the writer speaks in the name of a plurality; ‘This is the disciple which beareth witness of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his witness is true’ (xxi. 24). The critics who assert that the Gospel is not the work of an eye-witness, and even those who say that the last chapter was not written by the author of the whole, wantonly accuse these last words of untruth. That is another of the methods of modern criticism that seem to me sorely in need of reforming. I hope that a time may come when it will be considered as wrong to libel the dead as it is to libel the living.
I accept, then, this last verse as weighty testimony to the autoptic character of the Gospel. It is easy to see that the two concluding verses are added on the occasion of its publication by those who published it. They, as it were, endorse the witness which it had borne to itself.