2. The intellectual impossibility that St. John should have written the Fourth Gospel.

1. Respecting the difference of Christ's mode of teaching as recorded in St. John and in the Synoptics, he remarks:—

"It is impossible that Jesus can have had two such diametrically opposed systems of teaching; one purely moral, the other wholly dogmatic; one expressed in wonderfully terse, clear, brief sayings and parables, the other in long, involved, and diffuse discourses; one clothed in the great language of humanity, the other concealed in obscure, philosophic terminology; and that these should have been kept so distinct as they are in the Synoptics, on the one hand, and the Fourth Gospel on the other. The tradition of Justin Martyr applies solely to the system of the Synoptics, 'Brief and concise were the sentences uttered by Him: for He was no Sophist, but His word was the power of God.'" [106:1] (Vol. ii. p. 468)

To take the first of those assertions. So far from its being "impossible" that Jesus "can have had two such diametrically opposite modes of teaching," it is not only possible, but we have undeniable proof of the fact in that remarkable saying of Christ recorded by both St. Matthew and St. Luke: "All things are delivered unto Me of My Father, and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him." (Matth. xi. 27). The author of "Supernatural Religion" has studied the letter of this passage very carefully, for he devotes no less than ten pages to a minute examination of the supposed quotations of it in Justin and other Fathers (vol. i. pp. 402-412); but he does not draw attention to the fact that it is conceived in the spirit and expressed in the terms of the Fourth Gospel, and totally unlike the general style of the discourses in the Synoptics. [107:1] The Fourth Gospel shows us that such words as these, almost unique in the Synoptics, are not the only words uttered in a style so different from the usual teaching of our Lord—that at times, when He was on the theme of His relations to His Father, He adopted other diction more suited to the nature of the deeper truths He was enunciating.

Then take the second assertion:—

"One [system] expressed in wonderfully terse, clear, brief sayings and parables, the other in long, involved, and diffuse discourses."

Again:—

"The description which Justin gives of the manner of teaching of Jesus excludes the idea that he knew the Fourth Gospel. 'Brief and concise were the sentences uttered by Him, for He was no Sophist, but His word was the power of God.' (Apol. I. 14) No one could for a moment assert that this description applies to the long and artificial discourses of the Fourth Gospel, whilst, on the other hand, it eminently describes the style of teaching with which we are acquainted in the Synoptics, with which the Gospel according to the Hebrews, in all its forms, was so closely allied." (Vol. ii. p. 315)

Now I assert, and the reader can with very little trouble verify the truth of the assertion, that the mode of our Lord's teaching, as set forth in St. John, is more terse, axiomatic, and sententious—more in accordance with these words of Justin, "brief and concise were the sentences uttered by Him," than it appears in the Synoptics.

To advert for a moment to the mere length of the discourses. The Sermon on the Mount is considerably longer than the longest discourse in St. John's Gospel (viz., that occupying chapters xiv., xv., xvi.). This is the only unbroken discourse of any length in this Gospel. The others, viz., those with Nicodemus, with the woman at Sychem, with the Jews in the Temple, and the one in the Synagogue at Capernaum, are much shorter than many in the Synoptics, and none of them are continuous discourses, but rather conversations. And, with respect to the composition, those in St. John are mainly made up of short, terse, axiomatic deliverances just such as Justin describes.