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

11. In studying a narrative of this kind we should bear in mind, as well as we can, the whole career of the writer: we should divide it into its successive stages, and we should be constantly asking ourselves which stage of his experience is reflected in the shape that each portion of the narrative takes. If the conception which results as a whole appears to be such as naturally starts from direct contact with the facts, that will supply us with a much easier explanation than any which involves the wholesale use of fiction.

12. There are different kinds of portraiture; and it does not at all follow that a portrait to be real must be full of movement and action. There are some minds that, from peculiarity of mental habit, although they preserve what they once saw or heard with great distinctness and fidelity, nevertheless easily travel away from these recollections of observed fact and glide into a train of reflection which is almost soliloquy. The author of the Fourth Gospel appears to be a writer of this kind.

13. He himself lays so much stress upon ocular testimony that we must give him credit for such testimony, even where it is not altogether easy for us to follow him.

14. This applies particularly to his reports of miracle. But in judging of these reports, we must before all things bear in mind that the personal disciples of Jesus and the whole first generation of Christians certainly believed that they were living in the midst of miracle, and certainly held that belief to be an important constituent in their conception of Christ.

15. If we would form an adequate idea of what we call ‘the supernatural’ in the dealings of God with men, we must not begin by ruling out all that transcends our common experience. We must keep it in our minds even where we feel that there are features of it that we do but imperfectly understand. More light may be given to us by degrees.

16. All our Gospels together present us with a view of the life and words of Christ to which, if we did but know it, there would be much to be added. The first Christians were acquainted with many particulars under both heads which to us are entirely lost. These particulars contributed in an important degree to the total impression which they formed of the Person of Christ.

17. The conception was naturally fullest and most adequate in the Mother Church, i. e. in the Church in which the immediate followers of Christ were for the longest time collected. It was here, and nowhere else, that that conception of His Person was formed which dominated all parts of the Church, and which carried with it certain corollaries as to the nature of God and his dealings with men that became a permanent body of belief.

18. St. Paul no doubt developed certain portions and aspects of this body of belief, but it is quite impossible and contrary to the evidence that he can have invented its main propositions.

19. We may be sure that St. John did not draw directly from St. Paul, but, firstly, from his own recollections, and in the second place, from the store of common memories and common doctrine that was the possession of all Christians and especially of those who had been nearest to the Master.

20. If we attempt a reconstruction of the main lines of the progress of the Church in the early and in subsequent centuries, such reconstruction ought to be worthy of its subject. In other words, it ought to be one in which we can really see the finger of God.