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

v. We speak, therefore, not of what we know, but, as I have said, by an act of faith, of that which would be if we knew. In this attitude we make allowance for possible and probable defects in our sources: we make allowance for all the disturbing influences that have brought them into the shape in which we see them. But in doing this, we have the consolation of feeling that any element of mistake that has come in under this head has been all of the nature of extension. The miracles of primitive Christianity are certainly not a series of fictions. There certainly was among them a large nucleus of events that really had the character claimed for them, that were really due to the operation of a Divine cause, and really bore witness to the presence of such a cause. If there was anything beyond this of a less trustworthy character, we may be sure that it was framed on the analogy of that which is verifiable, or that would be verifiable if we possessed instruments and methods capable of dealing with it.

This principle of extensions is, I believe, of the first importance in the scientific reconstruction of primitive Christianity. It at once explains and covers the transition from that which is permanent to that which is not permanent. It signifies ‘the removing of those things that are shaken, ... that those things which are not shaken may remain.’ As, for instance, in the case of the belief in Inspiration, there is undoubtedly a reality underlying the popular belief both of ancient and of modern times, so, also, in the case of miracle we may be sure that there is an inner reality, which no criticism will ever dissolve, though it may succeed in making us conscious that the descriptions of eighteen centuries ago no longer satisfy the thought of to-day.

iii. The Gospel embodies ocular Testimony.

For these reasons I do not wish it to be supposed that I regard all difficulties as removed and every question as closed, if I insist upon the conclusion that has so far seemed to be emerging from our study—the conclusion that the Gospel is the work of an eye-witness of the events, who is describing for us what he had himself actually seen. I do not want to use any kind of argumentative coercion. I fully believe that the author of the Gospel occupied this position; and yet I do not mean, by asserting this, to impose upon others the necessary consequence that everything happened (i. e. that we can realize it to ourselves as having happened) exactly as it is described. For my own part I abstain from attempting to re-write the narrative. I know that any such attempt is foredoomed to failure. Still more do I refuse to follow those who peremptorily dismiss all that they cannot understand. I cherish and value very highly the assurance that we have to do with the work of an eye-witness. And yet, as I have said, I accept the result with a certain reserve, with the consciousness that there is something unexplained and which I perhaps myself shall never be able to explain.

This does not prevent me from making what I can of the easier incidents, in which one seems to see one’s way more clearly. I will give an example. One of the great passages discussed at the outset of our inquiries is typical and significant in the light which it throws on the mental attitude of the writer. We are told how, as he stood at the foot of the Cross, he saw the side pierced, and blood and water flow from the wound. It is in connexion with this that we have one of those solemn asseverations (whether made by the writer for himself or by some one else for him) of the truth, resting upon his own ocular testimony, of the fact that he is recording. The whole incident evidently made a deep impression upon him, for he goes on to quote it as a direct fulfilment of two distinct passages of Scripture. And again, in his First Epistle, he refers to the peculiar phenomenon which he had seen as one that was fraught with mystical meaning.

Now physicians tell us that what the Evangelist actually saw was not, strictly and literally, what he has described. The efflux from the side was not exactly blood and water, though it might quite well have had an appearance like that of blood and water, and the Evangelist no doubt supposed it to be what he says. The blood was real blood, but that which looked like water was a sort of lymph or serum. This would serve equally well to suggest the train of thought which the Evangelist attached to it. It is easy to understand how what was for him a strange phenomenon at first struck the eye and then dwelt in his mind, and as he often returned to it and pondered over it, at last took definite shape, as a visible emblem, divinely produced, of a principle deeply rooted in the Christian religion, the principle that found expression in its two leading Sacraments.

Clearly here it is permissible to distinguish between the fact itself for which we have this explicit testimony, and the train of speculation to which it gave rise. The speculations are such as in all ages have naturally commended themselves to devout minds. There have always been those who have had so strong a sense of the unity of things, of the ‘pre-established harmony’ between the material and the spiritual, that the ‘outward shows’ of external nature ‘the earth and every common sight,’ have seemed to reflect and symbolize that which is unseen. We may well believe that there is broad fundamental truth underlying these dim intuitions, though it may be another thing to say that in any particular case the harmony that is guessed is precisely that which the Divine Artificer intended. But the point on which I should wish to lay stress is, that the order of thought is from the observed fact to the idea, and not backwards from the idea to a fact imagined to correspond with it. And in regard to the Fourth Gospel, I think we may lay down that the Evangelist always starts from something that he has seen. It is possible that his mind, acting retrospectively on his memory of the physical impression, may emphasize features in the impression that were not so distinct at the time when it was given. But the notion that the Gospel is a pure romance woven entirely out of the creations of the brain seems to me contrary to its whole character.

I do not wish at all to imply—I desire expressly to guard myself against implying—that other miracles in the Fourth Gospel can be explained so simply as that of the pierced side. On the wider question I have just said what I have to say. But for my present purpose, in its bearing upon the criticism of the Fourth Gospel, I content myself with maintaining, that St. John’s descriptions of the supernatural always start from facts that had come under his own personal observation, or that of others who were very near to him.

iv. A Patristic Parallel.

So far as the treatment of the supernatural has been made a ground of objection to the Gospel, I think we may take a warning from critical experience in another field. I quoted in the second Lecture several instances in which criticism has distinctly changed its mind and come back to a view far more in accordance with tradition than that which at one time prevailed. One of these instances was taken from the literature of the beginnings of Monasticism, and more particularly from the Vita Antonii ascribed to St. Athanasius. I pointed out how the whole class of literature to which this treatise belongs has been definitely set upon its feet again. After being at one time very radically treated, it is now widely accepted as in great part resting upon good first-hand authority. One of the arguments alleged against the Athanasian treatise turned upon the miracles contained in it. But at the present time that argument would be differently stated. Whereas it used to run, This treatise contains miracles of a kind that must be unhistorical, and therefore it cannot be the genuine work of St. Athanasius; now it would run, This treatise is certainly a genuine work of St. Athanasius, and therefore we must make of the miracles what we can: a judicious estimate of them is given by Dom Cuthbert Butler in his Lausiac History of Palladius (1898), pp. 192-6. In like manner I should like to reverse the objection that is often brought against the Fourth Gospel and to say, that there is strong reason for regarding it as a first-hand authority, and that the recognition of this should be a postulate of any examination of its bearing upon the question of the supernatural.