My Path to Atheism

by Annie Besant

* Alford.

How great is the contrast between that discourse and the Sermon on the Mount.... In the last discourse it is His Person rather than his teaching which is especially prominent. His subject in that discourse is Himself.

Certainly he preaches himself in His relationship to His redeemed; but still he preaches above all, and in all, Himself. All radiates from Himself, all converges towards Himself.... in those matchless words all centres so consistently in Jesus, that it might seem that "Jesus Alone is before us."* These and similar differences, both of direct teaching and of the more subtle animating spirit, I propose to examine in detail; but before entering on these it seems necessary to glance at the disputed question of the authorship of our history, and determine whether, if it prove apostolic, it must therefore be binding on us.

I leave to more learned pens than mine the task of criticising and drawing conclusions from the Greek or the precise dogma of the evangelist, and of weighing the conflicting testimony of mighty names. From the account contained in the English Bible of John the Apostle, I gather the following points of his character: He was warm-hearted to his friends, bitter against his enemies, filled with a fiery and unbridled zeal against theological opponents; he was ambitious, egotistical, pharisaical. I confess that I trace these characteristics through all the writings ascribed to him, and that they seem to be only softened by age in the fourth gospel. That John was a warm friend is proved by his first epistle; that he was bitter against his enemies appears in his mention of Diotrephes, "I will remember his deeds which he doeth, prating against us with malicious words;" his unbridled zeal was rebuked by his master; the same cruel spirit is intensified in his "Revelation;" his ambition is apparent in his anxiety for a chief seat in Messiah's kingdom; his egotism appears in the fearful curse he imprecates on those who alter his revelation; his pharisaism is marked in such a feeling as, "we know we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness." Many of these qualities appear to me to mark the gospel which bears his name; the same restricted tenderness, the same bitterness against opponents, the same fiery zeal for "the truth," i.e., a special theological dogma, are everywhere apparent.

* Liddon.

The same egotism is most noticeable, for in the other gospels John shares his master's chief regard with two others, while here he is "the disciple whom Jesus loved," and he is specially prominent in the closing scenes of Jesus' life as the only faithful follower. We should also notice the remarkable similarity of expression and tone between the fourth gospel and the first epistle of John, a similarity the more striking as the language is peculiar to the writings attributed to John. It is, however, with the utmost diffidence that I offer these suggestions, well knowing that the greatest authorities are divided on this point of authorship, and that the balance is rather against the apostolic origin of the gospel than for it. I am, however, anxious to show that, even taking it as apostolic, it is untrustworthy and utterly unworthy of credit. If John be the writer, we must suppose that his long residence in Ephesus had gradually obliterated his Jewish memories, so that he speaks of "the Jews" as a foreigner would. The stern Jewish monotheism would have grown feebler by contact with the subtle influence of the Alexandrine tone of thought; and he would have caught the expressions of that school from living in a city which was its second home. To use the Greek philosophy as a vehicle for Christian teaching would recommend itself to him as the easiest way of approaching minds imbued with these mystic ideas. Regarding the master of his youth through the glorifying medium of years, he gradually began to imagine him to be one of the emanations from the Supreme, of which he heard so much. Accustomed to the deification of Roman emperors, men of infamous lives, he must have been almost driven to claim divine honours for his leader. If his hearers regarded them as divine, what could he say to exalt him except that he was ever with God, nay, was himself God? If John be the writer of this gospel, some such change as this must have passed over him, and in his old age the gradual accretions of years must have crystallised themselves into a formal Christian theology. But if we find, during our examination, that the history and the teaching of this gospel is utterly irreconcilable with the undoubtedly earlier synoptic gospels, we must then conclude that, apostolic or not, it must give place to them, and be itself rejected as a trustworthy account of the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth.

The first striking peculiarity of this gospel is that all the people in it talk in exactly the same style and use the same markedly peculiar phraseology, (a) "The Father loveth the Son and hath given all things into his hand." (b) "For the Father loveth the Son and showeth him all things that Himself doeth." (c) "Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hand." These sentences are evidently the outcome of the same mind, and no one, unacquainted with our gospel, would guess that (a) was spoken by John the Baptist, (b) by Jesus, (c) by the writer of the gospel. When the Jews speak, the words still run in the same groove: "If any man be a worshipper of God, and doeth His will, him He heareth," is not said, as might be supposed, by Jesus, but by the man who was born blind. Indeed, commentators are sometimes puzzled, as in John iii. 10-21, to know where, if at all, the words of Jesus stop and are succeeded by the commentary of the narrator. In an accurate history different characters stand out in striking individuality, so that we come to recognise them as distinct personalities, and can even guess beforehand how they will probably speak and act under certain conditions. But here we have one figure in various disguises, one voice from different speakers, one mind in opposing characters. We have here no beings of flesh and blood, but airy phantoms, behind whom we see clearly the solitary preacher. For Jesus and John the Baptist are two characters as distinct as can well be imagined, yet their speeches are absolutely indistinguishable, and their thoughts run in the same groove. Jesus tells Nicodemus: "We speak that we do know and testify that we have seen, and ye receive not our witness; and no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven." John says to his disciples: "He that cometh from heaven is above all, and what he hath seen and heard that he testifieth, and no man receiveth his testimony." But it is wasting time to prove so self-evident a fact: let us rather see how a Christian advocate meets an argument whose force he cannot deny. "The character and diction of our Lord's discourses entirely penetrated and assimilated the habits of thought of His beloved Apostle; so that in his first epistle he writes in the very tone and spirit of those discourses; and when reporting the sayings of his former teacher, the Baptist, he gives them, consistently with the deepest inner truth (!) of narration, the forms and cadences so familiar and habitual to himself."* It must be left to each individual to judge if a careful and accurate historian thus tampers with the words he pretends to narrate, and thus makes them accord with some mysterious inner truth; each too must decide as to the amount of reliance it is wise to place on a historian who is guided by so remarkable a rule of truth. But further, that the "character and diction" of this gospel are moulded on that of Jesus, seems a most unwarrantable assertion. Through all the recorded sayings of Jesus in the three gospels, there is no trace of this very peculiar style, except in one case (Matt. xi. 27), a passage which comes in abruptly and unconnectedly, and stands absolutely alone in style in the three synoptics, a position which throws much doubt on its authenticity. It has been suggested that this marked difference of style arises from the different auditories addressed in the three gospels and in the fourth; on this we remark that (a), we intuitively recognise such discourses as that in Matt. x. as perfectly consistent with the usual style of Jesus, although this is addressed to "his own;" (b), In this fourth gospel the discourses addressed to "his own" and to the Jews are in exactly the same style; so that, neither in this gospel, nor in the synoptics do we find any difference—more than might be reasonably expected—between the style of the discourses addressed to the disciples and those addressed to the multitudes. But we do find a very marked difference between the style attributed to Jesus by the three synoptics and that put into his mouth by the fourth evangelist; this last being a style so remarkable that, if usual to Jesus, it is impossible that its traces should not appear through all his recorded speeches. From which fact we may, I think, boldly deduce the conclusion that the style in question is not that of Jesus, the simple carpenter's son, but is one caught from the dignified and stately march of the oratory of Ephesian philosophers, and is put into his mouth by the writer of his life. And this conclusion is rendered indubitable by the fact above-mentioned, that all the characters adopt this poetically and musically-rounded phraseology.

* Alford.

Thus our first objection against the trustworthiness of our historian is that all the persons he introduces, however different in character, speak exactly alike, and that this style, when put into the mouth of Jesus, is totally different from that attributed to him by the three synoptics. We conclude, therefore, that the style belongs wholly to the writer, and that he cannot, consequently, be trusted in his reports of speeches. The major part, by far the most important part, of this gospel is thus at once stamped as untrustworthy.

Let us next remark the partiality attributed by this gospel to Him Who has said—according to the Bible—"all souls-are Mine." We find the doctrine of predestination, i.e., of favouritism, constantly put forward. "All that the Father giveth me shall come to me." "No man can come to me except the Father draw him." "That of all which He hath given me I should lose nothing." "Ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep." "Though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not on him: that the saying of Esaias the prophet might be fulfilled." "Therefore, they could not believe because that Esaias said," &c. "I have chosen you out of the world." "Thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given him?" "Those that thou gavest me I have kept and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition, that the Scriptures might be fulfilled." These are the most striking of the passages which teach that doctrine which has been the most prolific parent of immorality and the bringer of despair to the sinner. Frightfully immoral as it is, this doctrine is taught in all its awful hopelessness and plainness by this gospel: some "could not believe" because an old prophet prophesied that they should not-So, "according to St. John," these unbelieving Jews were pre-ordained to eternal damnation and the abiding wrath of God. They were cast into an endless hell, which "they could not" avoid. We reject this gospel, secondly, for the partiality it dares to attribute to Almighty God.