The Religious Thought of the Greeks, from Homer to the Triumph of Christianity

by Clifford Herschel Moore

This fourth Gospel was apparently written at Ephesus, probably between 100 and 110 a.d., by one who was well acquainted with the philosophy and mysticism of his time; he was also strongly influenced by Paul. If the Johannine Epistles are not by the same author, they represent the same range of ideas as the Gospel, and we are therefore justified in using them together with it.

The fourth Gospel is much more an interpretation than a history of Jesus’ person and life; it takes for granted that its readers are acquainted with the facts; and it assumes that the church is one universal body.

Let us now consider the opening words of this Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that hath been made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness apprehended it not. There came a man, sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for witness, that he might bear witness of the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came that he might bear witness of the light. There was the true light, even the light which lighteth every man, coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and they that were his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And 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.”[320]

Here then are two fundamental ideas: first, the eternal existence and divine nature of Christ who is the Word, the Logos of philosophic speech, and second, the revelation of God to man through the incarnate Word—“the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” The concept of the Logos as the world-reason we saw first appear in the philosophy of Heraclitus; then the idea developed through the centuries until the Logos was equivalent to the reason of God, at once existing in God and being his expression. As such it was a part of Alexandrian thought, being found, for example, in Philo. The Logos of the philosopher, however, was the agent connecting a transcendental god with the divine creation, making and sustaining the world. In so far the Johannine statement is in accord with current thought and expression, although we should probably be wrong if we affirmed that the author was drawing on Philo directly; it is far more probable that he was simply using ideas and language common in the intellectual circles of the day. But if we compare the idea of the Logos in the Johannine prologue with that in Philo we observe a profound and striking difference between the two. For Philo, as we have just said, the Logos was an abstract entity which existed for cosmological purposes; in the Johannine thought, although the Logos is the creator of the world, he is much more: he is incarnate in mortal flesh that he may reveal God to man and bring man salvation. The author wished to show that the creator and revealer were one, that the Logos had appeared as a man on earth. Now this emphasis on the human side of Jesus, the son of God, was in all probability due to the arguments of some incipient Gnostics who denied that the Christ had come in the flesh, and this polemic purpose goes far to explain the abruptness of the prologue. When once the statement has been made the philosophical language dealing with the Logos is dropped; yet the position and emphasis of the ideas in the prologue were calculated to assure the enlightened readers of the fourth Gospel that the witness of the generation which had seen Jesus was true and must be accepted.[321] The first purpose of the author was to set forth the prime significance of the personal human Jesus, with whom men had lived on familiar terms and from whom they had learned the deepest truths.[322]

How then, according to this writer, does the incarnation of the Word of God in the human Jesus bring salvation to men? The first answer is given by the use of a symbol which is employed in six passages in the Gospel:[323] Christ is the light which lighteth every man; that is, the function of the incarnate Word is to bring the light of true insight, which is knowledge of God,—and Jesus in himself brings that knowledge. So Jesus declared that he was the light of the world, come to illumine the darkness of sin and ignorance in which men dwelt by manifesting the Father to them. He said in answer to Philip: “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father; how sayest thou, Shew us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I say unto you I speak not from myself: but the Father abiding in me doeth his works. Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works’ sake.”[324] These words show also that knowledge could come only from belief; hence followed the necessity of believing in Jesus as the incarnation of the Word of God, and in the truth of his teachings. It is the knowledge of the truth thus acquired which sets men free.[325]

Yet the knowledge of God revealed to the believer through faith in Christ was not to the author’s mind the sole factor in securing salvation. We have seen how prominent love is in the teachings of Christ, as reported by the synoptic writers; to this element the Johannine writer returned and made it almost preëminent. Love is the definition of God himself in the First Epistle;[326] love was the motive which prompted God to reveal himself to the world through his only begotten son who by that revelation and in his person brought salvation to men.[327] To love one another was the new commandment which Christ gave his followers, and the measure of their love was his love for them; it was also to be the proof to the world that they were his disciples.[328] Love, then, was at once the warrant of their hope and the evidence of the new life into which they were reborn through belief in Christ and acceptance of him as the revealer of God to men.

This new life is expressed in the fourth Gospel as a mystical union with Christ which cannot be distinguished in its essence from that of the Pauline epistles; only the way of entrance into it is differently described. Paul makes faith the gate; although the Johannine author does not lay less emphasis on faith than Paul,[329] he does not look at it in quite the same way as the earlier writer, and he speaks of the entrance into the true relation with Christ as a new birth—using the same idea as the pagan mystics. The new birth was described as of the spirit, whereas the first was of the flesh,[330] and the believer’s vital relation to Christ was symbolized by the figures of the vine, of the bread, and of the water of life.[331]

Pauline influence may possibly be seen also in the Johannine doctrine of the Holy Spirit—at any rate the fourth Gospel shows that at the time it was written a belief in the Holy Spirit was well established, so that the germ of the doctrine of the Trinity was already planted.[332] The Holy Spirit is variously referred to as the Advocate or Helper, and the Spirit of Truth, which was to be the active agent in edifying believers and rebuking the world when Christ was no longer in the flesh.[333]

The purpose of the fourth Gospel then was first to prove that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God, and secondly to bring men to a belief in this fact which would give them life in Christ.[334] The idea that salvation is present spiritual experience culminates in the Johannine writings; the doctrine that those who hear and believe have already entered into eternal life is clearly stated.[335]

Let us now summarize the fundamental ideas of primitive Christianity which we have been examining in this lecture. In the first place, because of his nature and his teachings Jesus was regarded as the revealer of God to men, and at the same time, being the Christ, he was held to be their saviour and redeemer. Paul emphasized Christ’s death and resurrection, John the incarnation as the great central facts. Secondly, love and faith and their effects on man’s relation to God and to his fellow-men were made the essential elements in the Christian life. Thirdly, the doctrine of the mystic union of the believer with the divine Christ and that of the indwelling Holy Spirit were fundamental in both the Pauline and Johannine writings. Revelation, faith, mystic union with the Divine, salvation—our previous studies have shown us that these ideas were both familiar and welcome in the Greco-Roman world of the first century of our era.