Chapter VIII: Part 8

We have seen that the Synoptic Gospels distinctly represent our Lord as the Jewish Messiah. They represent Him as filled from the first with the consciousness of a mission that is beyond that of the ordinary teacher or prophet. He taught as one having authority, and not as the scribes. The demoniacs recognized in Him a presence before which they were awed and calmed. He took upon Himself to forgive sins, with the assurance that those whom He forgave God also would forgive. He called Himself, in one very ancient form of narrative, ‘Lord of the sabbath.’ He did not hesitate to review the whole course of previous revelation, and to propound in His own name a new law superseding the old. He evidently regarded His work on earth as possessing an extraordinary value. He was Himself a greater than Solomon, a greater than Jonah; and, what is perhaps more remarkable, He seems to regard His own claim as exceeding that of the whole body of the poor (‘Ye have the poor always with you ... but Me ye have not always’). As His teaching went on, He began to speak as though His relation to the human race was not confined to His life among them, but as though it would be continued and renewed on a vast scale after His death; He would come again in the character of Judge, and He would divide mankind according to the service which (in a large sense) they had rendered, or not rendered, to Him.

These are a number of particulars which helped to bring out what there was extraordinary in His mission. By what formula was it to be described and covered? It was described under the Jewish name ‘Messiah,’ with its various equivalents. Among those equivalents, that which the apostolic generation deemed most adequate was ‘the Son of God.’ One of the Synoptic Gospels says expressly that He applied this title to Himself (Matt. xxvii. 43), and it is quite possible that He did so, but critical grounds prevent us from laying stress upon the phrase. On two great occasions (the Baptism and Transfiguration) the title is given to Him by a voice from heaven. But only in a single passage (Matt. xi. 27; Luke x. 22) is there anything like an exposition of what is contained in the title. The mutual relation of the Father and the Son is expressed as a perfect insight on the part of each, not only into the mind, but into the whole being and character of the other.

Different critics have dealt with this saying in different ways. Harnack, in his famous lectures, gave it the prominence that it deserves, but at the same time reduced its meaning, in accordance with his generally reduced conception of Christianity. His exegesis tended to limit the peculiar knowledge of the Son to His special apprehension of the truth of Divine Fatherhood. M. Loisy demurs to this. He says:

‘There is clearly involved a transcendental relation, which throws
into relief the high dignity of the Christ, and not a psychological
reality, of which one cannot see the possibility in respect to God.
The terms Father and Son are not here purely religious, but they
have already become metaphysical; theological and dogmatic
speculation has been able to take hold of them without greatly
modifying their sense. There is only one Father and only one Son,
constituted, in a manner, by the knowledge that they have of one
another, absolute entities the relations of which are almost
absolute[70].’

Perhaps this is a little exaggerated in the opposite direction to Harnack. Still I believe it to be in the main right. The mutual knowledge of the Father and the Son rests upon their essential community of nature. But, having recognized this, M. Loisy goes on, with what I cannot but think singular levity, to cast doubt upon the passage. He regards the whole context in St. Matthew as a sort of psalm based upon the last chapter (li) of Ecclesiasticus; and he ascribes it not to our Lord, but to the tradition of the early Church.

This is far from being a favourable specimen of Biblical criticism. We have only to set the two passages side by side to estimate its value. It is possible enough that there are reminiscences not only of this, but of other passages of Ecclesiasticus and of other books in the mind of speaker or writer[71]. We might conceive of a defining phrase here or there being due to the Evangelist and suggested by such reminiscences. Or we might conceive of Christ Himself going back in thought (as well He might) to the invitation of personified Wisdom. There would be nothing strange in either supposition. The New Testament everywhere takes up the threads of the Old, and is not confined to the Jewish Canon. But in any case the materials thus supplied are entirely recast; and the whole passage (‘Come unto Me,’ &c.) bears the inimitable stamp of one Figure, and only one[72].

The truth is that in the Synoptic Gospels, as well as in the Fourth, there is really a mysterious background, though we see less of the attempt to pierce it. These simple-looking sayings are not so simple as they seem. To take, for instance, one upon which we have touched, ‘he that receiveth you, receiveth Me, and he that receiveth Me, receiveth Him that sent Me.’ The words are almost childlike in their simplicity, and yet they lead up to the highest heights, and down to the deepest depths. No doubt we may rationalize it all away, if we please. We may shut out the mystery from our minds. But we shall not keep it out for long.

Just when we are safest, there’s a sunset-touch,
A fancy from a flower-bell, some one’s death,
A chorus-ending from Euripides—
And that’s enough for fifty hopes and fears
As old and new at once as nature’s self,
To rap and knock and enter in our soul.

There is a movement perhaps on a large scale, like the Bentham period in England in the first half of the nineteenth century, or the sceptical and deistical period a hundred years earlier, and it seems as though everything were to be made clear and intelligible, and the conscience and soul of men were not to be troubled by phantoms any more. And then there come ‘Lake Poets,’ or an ‘Oxford Movement,’ and the other world, the old world, all comes back again; and the forces that try to restrain it are snapped like Samson’s withes.

The reason appears to be that these very clear outlines are always obtained by omissions or suppressions that are artificial, and do not do justice to the wonderful richness and subtlety either of the human mind or of the powers that work upon it.

4. Interpretation of these Relations between the Synoptic Gospels, St.
Paul and St. John: Alternative Constructions.

These comparisons that we have just been instituting between the Synoptic Gospels, St. Paul, and St. John raise a very large question, a question involving nothing less than our whole construction of the history of the Apostolic Age.

It is becoming more and more the custom with the left wing of critical writers to make the most fundamental part of Christianity, the pivot teaching of the New Testament, an invention of St. Paul’s. St. John is only the chief of his disciples. According to these writers primitive Christianity, the genuine Christianity, loses itself in the sands, or is represented, let us say, deducting the stress on the Mosaic Law, by the sect of the Ebionites. It is St. Paul who strikes out the new road; and the writer whom we call St. John follows him in it. The attempt of this later writer to supply a historical basis for Paulinism, holds good only in appearance. The teaching which it puts into the mouth of Jesus is in no sense an antecedent of the teaching of St. Paul, but a product of it.

Here, for instance, is a trenchant statement of the position.

‘The Fourth Gospel derived this importance, lasting long beyond the
time of his birth, from its having bridged over the chasm between
Jesus and St. Paul, and from its having carried the Pauline Gospel
back into the life and teaching of Jesus. It is only through this
gospel that Paulinism attains to absolute dominion in the theology
of the Church.... Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Redeemer of the
world, is for John as well as Paul the core and centre of
Christianity. And, moreover, John’s Christology is Pauline in all
its important features—the Son of God who was with God in heaven,
and was sent by God upon earth, the Mediator of creation, the God of
Revelation of the Old Testament, the Son of Man from heaven, as
Paul, too, called Him. And the chief object of His coming into the
world is the atonement by means of His death.... The whole of the
Johannine theology is a natural development from the Pauline. It is
Paulinism modified to meet the needs of the sub-apostolic age. Two
important consequences follow from this. There is no Johannine
theology by the side of and independent of the Pauline. Luther
already felt this clearly, and he understood something of the
matter. John and Paul are not two theological factors, but one. Were
we to accept that St. John formed his conception of Christianity
either originally or directly from Jesus’ teaching, we should have
to refuse St. Paul all originality, for we should leave him scarcely
a single independent thought. But it is St. Paul that is original;
St. John is not. In St. Paul’s letters we look, as through a window,
into the factory where these great thoughts flash forth and are
developed; in St. John we see the beginning of their transformation
and decay.’ Wernle, _Beginnings of Christianity_, ii. pp. 262, 264,
274 f. (E. T.).

Nothing could be clearer. And by reason of his clearness and boldness of statement Wernle is an excellent representative of the whole school; for what he asserts in set terms is really presupposed by a number of other writers who do not assert it. It remains for us to ask, Is this construction of the early history of Christianity tenable?

Two Preliminary Remarks.

Before I attempt to answer this question, there are two remarks that I should like to make upon it.

i. We observe here, as in so many other cases, that the theory reflects, not so much the essential disposition and proportions of the facts as the state of the extant evidence. Hardly anything has come down to us from the early years, at least for the first three decades, of the Mother Church; and from that which has come down to us, the earlier chapters of the Acts and the Epistle of St. James, criticism would make considerable deductions. I think that these deductions are greater than ought to be made, but their existence cannot be ignored. What we know of the Mother Church has to be pieced together by inference and constructive imagination. On the other hand for St. Paul we have in any case an impressive body of certainly genuine epistles. It is natural enough that the mind should be dominated by these, and that the assumption should be made—for it is pure assumption—that the leading ideas of these epistles are an original creation.

ii. But there is nothing really in the Epistles themselves to bear out this assumption. St. Paul does not write as though he were a wholesale innovator. He does not write as though he were founding a new religion. On the contrary, he lays great stress in a familiar passage (1 Cor. iii. 11) on the fact that the foundation is already laid. In another place (1 Cor. xv. 11) he speaks as though it made no difference whether he were the preacher or others, the belief of Christians was the same. St. Paul has indeed his special views and his special controversies, but they do not affect the main point. He assumes that this is common to all Christians.

This brings me to some of the points on which we have to test the theory, as it is stated by Wernle.

5. Objections to the Critical Theory.

Let us think for a moment what the theory involves. It involves that the Pauline Gospel not only conquered the West, but that it came flooding back in a great reflux-wave all over the East. The East, on this theory, has no power of resistance; it surrenders at discretion. How does this accord with the evidence?

i. In order that there should be this conquest and annexation of the whole Church by the Pauline Gospel it is implied, and it is of the essence of the theory to imply, that there was a broad and well-marked difference between this Pauline Gospel and the general belief of the Church, more particularly of the Mother Church. But St. Paul himself expressly disclaims any such difference; he was anxious that there should not be any, and he took steps to guard against the possibility that serious divergence might have come between them unawares. He tells us that he compared notes with the leading apostles at Jerusalem, to make sure that he and they were preaching substantially the same thing: ‘I laid before them the gospel which I preach among the Gentiles, but privately before them who were of repute, lest by any means I should be running, or had run in vain’ (Gal. ii. 2). And again, at the end of the conferences, he tells us how James and Peter and John gave to him and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship, as a pledge of their substantial agreement (ibid. ver. 9).

It is true that there were points of discussion, which in other sections of the Church amounted to controversy, between St. Paul and the Judaean Christians. But the Epistle to the Galatians allows us to see the full extent of these debatable matters; and, by defining them, it also defines the extent of the common ground of agreement. What we should call the doctrine of the Person of Christ certainly comes under the latter head, and not under the former. The Mother Church was not Ebionite, or St. Paul would have been in still sharper antagonism to it than he was.

ii. It was this substantial agreement between St. Paul and the leading Apostles that saved the Church from a formidable rupture. Such glimpses as we have of the Judaean churches do not at all give us the impression that they would have submitted meekly to Pauline dictation. No doubt there was a considerable prejudice against St. Paul personally; but it was a prejudice that turned upon other things altogether than his teaching about Christ. We have in Acts xxi. 20-5 a graphic description, which is also full of verisimilitude, of the kind of ways in which St. Paul came into collision with the Jewish Christians; but his teaching about Christ was not one of them.

iii. We have seen that the confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, was common ground for all Christians. It was on this ground that St. Paul and the Judaean churches felt themselves one. They also felt themselves one in what we ought not to call the doctrine of the Trinity, but in those root-facts out of which the doctrine of the Trinity afterwards came to be formulated. There was doubtless still room for variety of speculation. There was room for different interpretation of current terms and current beliefs. The doctrine of the Church had as yet a certain fluidity. St. Paul might take one line, and Cephas another, and Apollos a third. And yet Christ was not divided. There was a consciousness of union underlying these differences. There was a sense, that could not as yet be put adequately into words, of certain great facts, of certain fundamental beliefs, by virtue of which the Church was one.

iv. It is out of this common ground, and not out of the special features of the Pauline theology, that the teaching of the Fourth Gospel really sprang. True, there are resemblances and affinities between details in the theologies of the Evangelist and the Apostle. But it does not follow that these were borrowed by the one from the other[73]. If they had been, we may be sure that there would have been clearer evidence of the fact. Somewhere in the group of Johannean writings there would have been a side-glance at St. Paul that we should have understood. As it is, the two great Apostolic cycles stand majestically apart. There may be a connexion between them, but it is a connexion in the main underground. There is no direct affiliation, but the parentage of both lies behind. Many a seed sprouted in the early years of the Pentecostal Church: but it was not this apostle or that who made them grow; the seeds were sown before Pentecost, and they had their watering and their growth and their increase from the same Hand.

It is true that we cannot give chapter and verse for all this. The books from which chapter and verse might have been taken were never written. Even in our own much-lettered age, how many a pregnant thought is there that is not caught and fixed in writing! And what sort of record should we have of the thought, say, of America or England for some fifteen years, if the chronicle of it were compressed into a single document of the length of the first twelve chapters of the Acts?

The best record of the thoughts that grew and fructified in those momentous early years is to be found not in the Acts but in the Gospels; and the fact that it is to be sought there shows whence the impulse really came. It may seem a truism to maintain that Jesus Christ was the real Founder of Christianity, and that He founded it by what He was, and not by what men imagined Him to be. Of course to many Christians it will seem a truism to say this; the simple Christian never thought otherwise; but there are Christians who are not simple, and who may be encouraged to search with a closer scrutiny to see if the old account of the origin of Christianity is not the best, indeed the only account possible. The New Testament is scattered with hints, which are not more than hints, arrow-heads as it were pointing back to Christ. These are a profitable subject of study—none more profitable. If we pay attention to these hints, and if we look for the roots of St. Paul’s teaching, I do not think we shall say that Christianity—the Christianity of nineteen centuries—was his invention, and that St. John did but follow in his train.

6. Larger Objections.

The kind of study that I have just been recommending is strictly critical; but the theory of which I have been speaking carries us out beyond the narrower ground of criticism into the wider field of history and teleology. I may just for a moment in conclusion touch on this. It may supply us with a warning that there is at least a strong presumption that the theory which fathers the teaching of St. John upon that of St. Paul, and St. Paul’s teaching upon itself, with no higher sanction behind, cannot well be true. Such a theory would mean that quite a half, and the most important half, of the fundamental theses of historical Christianity, were a mere human invention which those who have had the wit to discover them to be a human invention may go on to treat as nothing better,—to bestow on them perhaps a certain amount of praise in relation to their time, but to regard them as something that the world has outgrown. This is a view that in the present day, avowedly or unavowedly, is very largely taken. On this view there is a real nucleus of truth in biblical Christianity, but that nucleus in the light of modern science is seen to be very small indeed; all the rest is surplusage. The misfortune for the theory is that it is not only on the nucleus of truth, but very largely upon the surplusage, that nineteen centuries of Christians have lived.

Now I am quite prepared to believe that most great truths that do not come under the head of Mathematics or Physical Science have had a certain amount of surplusage attached to them; there has been husk and kernel, flower and sheath. I quite believe that men do

‘rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.’

But I cannot help thinking that, on the theory of Wernle and his friends, the surplusage is too great, the dead self too large. The course of history, as this theory would describe it, seems to me contrary to the analogy of what we otherwise know of the dealings of God with man. If we look, for instance, at the Old Testament, we see a gradual preparation for the coming of Christ, a gradual elevation and expansion of religious ideas, on the whole a nearer approximation to truth. All of us, critics and non-critics, would give substantially the same account of this; we should all of us at least see in it progress. But when we come to Christianity, Wernle and his friends see in it a far larger proportion of what is not progress but depravation and corruption, not the gradual expansion and purification of true ideas, but the wider dissemination of ideas that are false. There are nearly fourteen centuries of the dissemination of these false ideas; then comes a sudden spasmodic effort of partial relief; and at last, in the latter half of the nineteenth and in the twentieth centuries, there is some sort of approach to a rediscovery of truth. It seems to me difficult to describe this view of history as anything else than a systematic impeachment of Divine Providence.

I do not wish to press the point. As I have said, we have left behind the region of criticism, and entered upon another that is not only very wide but that some of you may think rather outside my subject. The Christian, it seems to me, ought to have a comprehensive view of the purpose of God in history; he ought to be able to adjust this to his fundamental beliefs. And I would only ask you to consider how far this can be done on the theory I have been discussing.

Footnote 64:

A few sentences here are repeated from my article in Hastings, _D. B._
iv. 575.

Footnote 65:

_Atonement and Personality_, p. 194. Compare the important and
detailed exposition, pp. 154-9, 168 f., 180-2.

Footnote 66:

I do not doubt that the most active period for the putting together of
material for Gospels was the decade 60-70 A.D. At the beginning of
this period St. Mark had not yet taken up his task; and his Gospel
forms the base of the other two Synoptics. The Matthaean _Logia_
perhaps by this time were collected.

Footnote 67:

I cannot regard this argument as at all invalidated by Dr. Drummond’s
three sermons, _The Pauline Benediction_ (London, 1897). At the same
time I can quite accept the view that the Apostle’s words are ‘the
seed rather than the final expression of Christian theology.’

Footnote 68:

With the above may be compared Dr. Hort’s comment (ad. loc.) on 1 St.
Peter, i. 1, 2, and other Trinitarian passages referred to in
illustration: ‘In no passage is there any indication that the writer
was independently working out a doctrinal scheme: a recognized belief
or idea seems to be everywhere presupposed. How such an idea could
arise in the mind of St. Paul or any other apostle without sanction
from a Word of the Lord, it is difficult to imagine: and this
consideration is a sufficient answer to the doubts which have, by no
means unnaturally, been raised whether Matt. xxviii. 19 may not have
been added or recast in a later generation.’

Footnote 69:

Compare the Fifth of the Oxyrhynchus _Logia_.

Footnote 70:

_L’Évangile et L’Église_, p. 78 f.

Footnote 71:

H. J. Holtzmann, for instance, points to Is. xiv. 3; xxviii. 12; lv.
1-3; Jer. vi. 16; xxxi. 2, 25, but especially Ecclus. iii. 6; vi. 24,
25, 28, 29; li. 23-30.

Footnote 72:

Contrast the treatment of the passage by M. Loisy with the way in
which it is singled out by Matthew Arnold (_Literature and Dogma_, p.
214 f.). Indeed the course of the most recent criticism has borne in
upon me more and more that, far from being a stumbling-block, it is
really the key to any true understanding of the Christ of the Gospels.
If we had not had the passage, we should have had to invent one like
it!

Footnote 73:

I do not of course mean to deny all influence of St. Paul upon St.
John in the shaping or formulating of Christian ideas. But the
ultimate origin of those ideas goes further back than to St. Paul.

LECTURE VIII
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE GOSPEL

I. Summary of the Internal Evidence.

All our discussions have for their object, not the production of rounded and symmetrical theories but the ascertainment of truth. We must take the data as we find them. If they do not as they stand sustain a clear conclusion, we cannot make them do so. And it seems to me far better frankly to confess the fact than to strain the evidence one way or the other. We may state the case with such indications of leaning as we please, but always with the reservation that a slight change in the evidence, the discovery or recovery of a single new fact, might turn the scale.

This is, I think, the position of things in regard to some of the outlying parts of the problem of the Fourth Gospel. One broad conclusion seems to stand out from the evidence, internal as well as external. The author was an eye-witness, an Apostolic man—either in the wider sense of the word ‘Apostle’ or in the narrower. So much seems to me to be assured; but round that broad conclusion there arises a cluster of questions to which I cannot give a simple and categorical answer.

I will come back to these questions in a moment. But I ought perhaps first to remind you of the point to which the previous argument has brought us, and of the grounds on which the main proposition is based.

I take it to be a fundamental element in the question that in several places (especially xix. 35, xxi. 24; cf. i. 14, 1 John i. 1-3), the Gospel itself lays claim to first-hand authority. This is a different matter from ordinary pseudonymous writing. The direct and strong assertions that the Gospel makes are either true or they are a deliberate untruth. Between these alternatives I have no hesitation in choosing. I do not think that we should have the right to make so grave an imputation as that implied in the second on anything but the clearest necessity. But the first alternative appeared to me to be confirmed by a multitude of particulars: first, by a number of places in which the author of the Gospel seems to write from a standpoint within the Apostolic circle, or in which he gives expression to experiences like those of an Apostle; and secondly by the very marked extent to which the narrative of the Gospel corresponds in its details to the real conditions of the time and place in which its scene is laid, conditions which rapidly changed and passed away.

This constitutes the internal argument for the authentic character of the Gospel. It is met and, as I conceive, strongly corroborated by the nature of the external evidence.

II. The External Evidence.

1. The Position at the end of the Second Century.

In regard to this I would not spend time in refinements upon some of the scanty details furnished by the scanty literature of the first half of the second century. I would rather take my stand on the state of things revealed to us on the lifting of the curtain for that scene of the Church’s history which extends roughly from about the year 170 to 200. I would invite attention to the distribution of the evidence in this period: Irenaeus and the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons in Gaul, Heracleon in Italy, Tertullian at Carthage, Polycrates at Ephesus, Theophilus at Antioch, Tatian at Rome and in Syria, Clement at Alexandria. The strategical positions are occupied, one might say, all over the Empire. In the great majority of cases there is not a hint of dissent. On the contrary the four-fold Gospel is regarded for the most part as one and indivisible. Just in one small coterie at Rome objections are raised to the Fourth Gospel, not on the ground of any special and verifiable tradition, but from dislike of some who appeal to the Gospel and from internal criticism of which we can take the measure. Just at this period of which I am speaking these dissentients appear and disappear, leaving so little trace that (as we have seen) Eusebius, who is really a careful and candid person, and has ancients like Origen and Clement behind him, can describe the Gospel as unquestioned both by his own generation and by preceding generations (p. 65 _supra_).

Let us for the moment treat these great outstanding testimonies as we should treat the reading of a group of MSS. The common archetype of authorities so wide apart and so independent of each other must go back very far indeed. If we were to construct a _stemma_, and draw lines from each of the authorities to a point _x_, representing the archetype, the lines would be long and their meeting point would be near the date at which according to the tradition the Gospel must have been composed. A tradition of this kind, so wide-spread and so deep-rooted, could not have arisen if it had not had a very substantial ground. Suppose we allow for a moment that it is something in itself a little short of absolutely decisive, there comes in to reinforce it what we have just been speaking of as the result of internal criticism, that the Gospel is the work of an eye-witness, a member of the circle which immediately surrounded our Lord. That is also a position which seems to me very strong.

I submit that this is a much fairer statement of the case than that (e. g.) which we find in Schmiedel (_Enc. Bibl._ ii. 2550):

‘Instead of the constantly repeated formula that an ancient writing
is “attested” as early as by (let us say) Irenaeus, Tertullian, or
Clement of Alexandria, there will have to be substituted the much
more modest statement that its existence (not genuineness) is
attested only as late as by the writers named, and even this only if
the quotations are undeniable or the title expressly mentioned.’

This is a characteristic example of the spirit in which the author writes—much more that of the lawyer speaking to his brief for the prosecution than of the scholar or historian. The criticism is couched in general terms: as far as it applies in particular to the Gospel of St. John the _caveat_ is superfluous, because all the three writers named, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Clement of Alexandria bear witness expressly to the genuineness of the Gospel, and not only to its existence. The witness of Heracleon is still more important. To recognize a writing is one thing; to recognize it as sacred is another; to comment upon it as so sacred and authoritative that its contents can be interpreted allegorically is a third: and all this is so early as _c._ 170. But apart from this the whole form of the statement is unjust. It leaves entirely out of account the extreme scantiness of the material from which evidence could be drawn in the period before the year 180. To me the wonder is that the evidence borne to the New Testament writings in the extant literature prior to this date should be as much as it is and not as little.

2. Earlier Evidence.

But Dr. Schmiedel certainly understates that for the Fourth Gospel. He assumes that no trace can be found of this earlier than 140. A single item of the evidence, which he does not notice, is enough to refute this. I refer to our present conclusion of the Gospel of St. Mark. We may say with confidence that its date is earlier than the year 140—whether we argue from the chronology of Aristion, its presumable author, or from its presence in the archetype of almost all extant MSS., or from the traces of it in writers so early as Justin and Irenaeus. But I may take it for granted that the added verses imply not only the existence but up to a certain point the authority of the Fourth Gospel.

But, besides this, Dr. Schmiedel assumes the negative results of an inquiry, which he has conducted very lightly, and the scale on which he was writing compelled him to conduct lightly, into the bearings of the literature older than 140. I am not so sure as he is that there is no allusion to the Gospel in Barnabas or Hermas, where it is found (e. g.) by Keim, or in the Elders of Papias, where it is found (e. g.) by Harnack. The questions raised in these cases are too complex and too delicate to be quite worth discussing from the point of view of that legal proof which for Schmiedel seems alone to have any value. But Ignatius and the _Didaché_ are of more tangible importance. I am inclined to think that justice has rarely been done from this point of view to Ignatius. It is not so much a question of close coincidence in expression. There I should perhaps allow that Dr. Schmiedel is within his rights in denying what Dr. Drummond and Dr. Stanton affirm. The evidence of Ignatius is obscured by the fact that, unlike Polycarp[74], he is not given to exact quotation. Polycarp is by far the weaker man; it is natural to him to express his thoughts in the words of others. But Ignatius has a rugged strength of mind which digests and assimilates all that comes to it, and if it reproduces the thoughts of others, does so in a form of its own[75]. But I do not think there can be any doubt that Ignatius has digested and assimilated to an extraordinary degree the teaching that we associate with the name of St. John. If any one questions this, I would refer him to the excellent monograph, _Ignatius von Antiochien als Christ und Theologe_, by Freiherr von der Goltz (_Texte und Untersuchungen_, Band xii). It will be best to give the conclusion to which this writer comes in his own words, as I agree with it largely but not quite entirely. He says:

‘The question is whether Ignatius came to appropriate this world of
thought through reading our Fourth Gospel, or whether he must be
held to be an independent witness to this mode of thinking. Up to a
certain point the preceding investigation has already shown that the
latter is the case. Although, for instance, certain details might
seem to point to borrowing from the Fourth Gospel, yet this peculiar
religious Modalism, this mysticism, this combination and
accentuation of the same points, this special form of faith in
Christ, and, in general, this identical mode of thought and belief
could not be simply transferred by means of a book to one who had
not in other ways taken up the same ideas and made them his own.
There is also proof from various turns given to the thought, as from
his use of an independent terminology, that the author is in
possession of “Johannean” ideas as his own property. So that in case
we really came to the result that Ignatius was acquainted with the
Fourth Gospel, we should have indeed to refer to that acquaintance
the portrait that he draws of Christ and some details, but in spite
of that we should have to hold fast the conclusion that in
appropriating his general conception of things, Ignatius must have
come under the prolonged influence of a community itself influenced
by Johannean thought’ (p. 139).

It will have been observed that the reason for thinking that the affinity of thought between Ignatius and St. John is not to be explained by the use of a book, is not because of its slightness but because it is really too deep to be accounted for in that way. It is true that the affinity goes very deep. I had occasion a few years ago to study rather closely the Ignatian letters, and I was so much impressed by it as even to doubt whether there is any other instance of resemblance between a biblical and patristic book, that is really so close. Allowing for a certain crudity of expression in the later writer and remembering that he is a perfervid Syrian and not a Greek, he seems to me to reflect the Johannean teaching with extraordinary fidelity. This applies especially to his presentation of the doctrine of the Incarnation, to his conception of the Logos, and of the relation of Christ at once to the Father and to the believer. In the writers of the next generation to Ignatius e. g. in Justin—the conception of the Logos is infected by Greek philosophy, giving to it more or less the sense of reason, whereas in Ignatius the leading idea is, as we have seen it to be in St. John, that of revelation. Nowhere else have we the idea of the fullness of Godhead revealed in Christ grasped and expressed with so much vigour. What difference there is is of the nature of exaggeration. It is not wrong to say that the language of Ignatius tends towards Modalism. But it is just because he has grasped ideas, for every one of which there are parallels in the Fourth Gospel, with so much intensity.

I can quite allow that Ignatius has so absorbed the teaching that we call St. John’s as it were _in succum et sanguinem_ that the relation cannot be adequately explained by the mere perusal of a book late on in life. There is something more in it than this. Von der Goltz would explain it by the hypothesis that Ignatius had resided for a considerable length of time in a ‘Johannean’ community like the churches of the province of Asia. There is however no hint of anything of the kind in the letters. It is I think Harnack who somewhere remarks that from the opening of the letter of Ignatius to Polycarp we should infer that the latter was a stranger to the writer.

It would be more natural to fall back on the tradition that Ignatius was an actual disciple of St. John. But this tradition appears first in the _Martyrium Colbertinum_; in other words there is no evidence for it before the fourth century. Indeed Zahn has sketched in a plausible manner the process by which we may conceive it to have arisen[76]. Still there is ample room in the dark spaces of the lives both of Ignatius and of St. John for some more or less intimate connexion between them. The alternative seems to me to be, either to suppose something of this kind, or else to think that Ignatius had really had access to the Johannean writings years before the date of his journey to Rome, and that he had devoted to them no mere cursory reading but a close and careful study which had the deepest effect upon his mind.

If the Fourth Gospel was really the work of St. John, the chronology would leave quite sufficient room for this hypothesis. But in any case the phenomena of the Ignatian letters seem to me to prove the existence, well before the end of the first century, of a compact body of teaching like that which we find in the Fourth Gospel. For even Dr. Schmiedel, I suppose, would hardly wish us to invert the relationship, and to say that the Evangelist took his ideas from Ignatius. But if the substance of the Fourth Gospel existed before the end of the first century, that is surely a considerable step towards the belief that the Gospel existed in writing, and the other reasons that we have for thinking that it had been written are so far confirmed.

A smaller item of proof tending in the same direction is supplied by the _Didaché_. It is well-known that the very ancient Eucharistic prayer contained in that document has the remarkable phrase ‘to make perfect in love,’—‘Remember, Lord, Thy Church to deliver it from all evil and to perfect it in Thy love,’ which it is natural to compare with 1 John iv. 17, 18; John xvii. 23. The coincidence cannot be wholly accidental, though the question must be left open whether the phrase comes directly from a writing or only circulated orally[77]. The problem is the same as that which has just met us in the case of Ignatius, though on a much smaller scale. As far as it goes, it helps to strengthen the conclusion that has just been drawn.

Between Ignatius and Irenaeus we have Papias, Justin, and the greater Gnostics. In view more particularly of the discussion by Schwartz, I think it may be said that Papias probably knew the Gospel and recognized it as an authority. That Justin also used it I think we may take as at the present time generally admitted; and from the extent to which he used it I do not think that any inference can be drawn. Professor Bacon complains that the suggestions which have been put forward to account for the somewhat sparing use which he makes of it are not satisfactory[78]. Probably they are not in the sense of carrying conviction that any one of them is right to the exclusion of others. There must always be this difficulty where we are quite in the dark, and where the whole chapter of accidents is open before us. It is no doubt a sounder method to fall back with Dr. Drummond simply upon our ignorance[79]. But to say that the negative side of Justin’s evidence in any sense cancels the positive seems to me untenable.

As to Basilides and Valentinus, though there remains in my own mind a slight degree of probability that they really used the Gospel, I admit that this probability is not of a kind that can be strongly asserted where it is challenged. At the same time I cannot think Schmiedel’s hypothesis at all probable that ‘the Fourth Gospel saw the light somewhere between A.D. 132 and A.D. 140[80], and that although it was not used by the founders of the great Gnostic schools, it was at once adopted by their disciples. This is an instance of the way in which Dr. Schmiedel and his friends, when they light upon a hypothesis that favours the negative side, content themselves with stating it, as if it must at once carry conviction; and form no mental picture of the conditions with a view to ascertain whether the hypothesis is or is not probable. We may be pretty sure that the Fourth Gospel did not come in surreptitiously in this way, like a thief over the wall, and at once obtain recognition without any examination of credentials.

I do not hesitate to say that this theory of the late origin of the Gospel is not one that will work, or bear to be consistently carried out. On the other hand, if we assume the traditional view, all the evidence falls into line; we have an adequate cause for the authority which from the first attached to the Gospel; and, allowing for the scantiness and critical drawbacks of the materials from which our evidence is drawn, we have a picture quite as satisfactory as we can expect of its gradually expanding circulation.

So far, our course has been straightforward. The salient points stand out in orderly succession, and they all rest on solid foundations. But when we come to closer quarters, and try to reconstruct for ourselves the circumstances under which the Gospel was written, and which attended the first two or three decades of its history, the case is otherwise. Many questions may be raised that cannot be categorically answered. Bricks cannot be made without straw; and positive history cannot be written on the ground of mere surmises and possibilities. All I would contend for is that no valid argument can be brought from the facts as they stand against the Gospel; it is another matter, and will require longer time and perhaps further discoveries, before we can paint on the canvas of history a picture strictly harmonious and coherent in all its parts.

III. Unsolved Problems.

1. The relation of the Gospel to the Apocalypse.

Of the questions that are still _sub judice_ one of the most difficult is that of the relation of the Gospel to the Apocalypse. The Apocalypse is a book on which criticism is very far from having said its last word. I should like to express myself about it with great reserve. But I do not think that in any case an argument can be drawn from it against the Gospel. I will quote two very unprejudiced opinions. Harnack writes as follows:—

‘I confess my adhesion to the critical heresy which carries back the
Apocalypse and the Gospel to a single author, always presupposing
that the Apocalypse is the Christian working-up of a Jewish
apocalypse (I should be prepared to say of several Jewish
apocalypses—to me this seems beyond our power to unravel). I mark
off the Christian portions very much as Vischer has done, and see in
them the same spirit and the same hand which has presented us with
the Gospel[81].‘

We remember that in Harnack’s view the author is not the Apostle but the Presbyter.

And then Bousset, who has written the commentary on the Apocalypse in Meyer’s series, though he does not go quite so far as Harnack, places the two works in close relation to each other. After a careful examination of the language of the Apocalypse he sums up thus:—

‘It is certainly right when this Johannean colouring of the language
is set down to the account of the last redactor of the Apocalypse
(Harnack, Spitta). But here too it may be seen that this redactor
has transformed the material before him more thoroughly than is
commonly supposed. The linguistic parallels adduced seem to justify
the supposition that the Apocalypse also proceeds from circles which
stood under the influence of John of Asia Minor[82].’

There are many to whom these opinions will seem paradoxical, but there is much to be said for them. I quote them, however, only to show that the two problems must be worked out independently, and that they need not necessarily clash with one another.

2. The date of Papias.

The next question on which I will touch is the date of Papias, which has a subordinate but rather important bearing upon the group of questions with which he is connected.

I am by no means sure that the late date now commonly assigned to him is right (c. 145-60, Harnack). It turns upon a statement in De Boor’s fragment, supposed to be made by Papias, that some of those who were raised from the dead by Christ lived till the time of Hadrian. A very similar statement is quoted by Eusebius from the _Apology of Quadratus_ (_H. E._ iv. 3, 2). I suspect that there has been some confusion at work here. Experience shows that nothing is commoner than for the same story to be referred to different persons. In the case of Quadratus we have his own words in black and white, whereas the attribution to Papias is vague and may be only a slip of memory[83]. On the other hand Irenaeus expressly calls Papias ‘one of the ancients’ (ἀρχαῖος ἀνήρ), a phrase that I do not think he would have used of a time so near his own as 145-60. Besides, when we look into the great passage, Eus. _H. E._ iii. 39, the standpoint appears to be that, at latest of the third generation, or more strictly where the second generation is passing into the third, if we suppose that Aristion and the Presbyter John were still alive. The natural date for the extracts in this chapter seems to me to be _circa_ 100.

3. The death of the Apostle John.

De Boor’s Fragment is more precise in its assertion, ‘Papias, in his second book, says that John the divine (ὁ θεολόγος) and James his brother were slain by the Jews.’ ‘John the divine’ is naturally questioned; it is defended by Schwartz, but may quite well be due to the fragmentist. The main arguments against the statement are the silence of the early writers, especially Eusebius, and the possibility of confusion between John the Baptist and John the Apostle, or between red martyrdom and white. No doubt this is one of the better examples of the argument from silence, and no doubt we must reckon with the possibility of mistake. Still I do not feel that the statement altogether loses its force. I said something about it in Lecture III; I will at present only add that supposing it were true, the language of Papias about the two Johns can be explained more satisfactorily.

4. The son of Zebedee and the beloved disciple.

I cannot disguise from myself that if the elder John really perished at an earlier stage in the history, the position of the younger becomes much clearer. There would then be no difficulty in the way of identifying him at once with the beloved disciple and with the author of the Gospel and Epistles. We should indeed have all the advantages of Harnack’s theory without its disadvantages. We should not be compelled to attribute to the Ephesian Church any fraudulent intention or practice. We should only have to regard the younger John as succeeding in a manner to the place of the elder, much (as I said) in the way that James the brother of the Lord succeeded to the place of the elder James.

I do not wish to prejudge the question. But those who are familiar with its intricacies will, I think, agree with me that it would be a real gain to have only one claimant to the Ephesian tradition[84].

5. John of Ephesus and his Gospel.

We must in any case think of John of Ephesus as ‘the aged disciple,’ for to our modern ears some such double name as that expresses most adequately the feeling that surrounded him. He called himself by preference ὁ πρεσβύτερος, but we have unfortunately no sufficient rendering for this in English. ‘Elder’ and ‘Presbyter’ have both contracted the associations of office, and of a rather formal kind of office that has lost too much of its original meaning, for the natural authority of age was at first always conveyed in it. I suppose that the Apostle thought of himself most of all as a memory—the last and strongest link with those wonderful years. It was this especially that gave him his sense at once of dignity and of responsibility. When his disciples spoke of ὁ πρεσβύτερος, I imagine that they meant, as we might say, ‘the Venerable’; they looked up to him with a feeling of awe tempered with affection.

It was at Ephesus, the capital of Proconsular Asia, that he whom we too may call ‘the Venerable’ held his modest court, and from thence that he went on circuit, organizing and visiting the little congregations formed in the cities and greater towns of the province. We have a glimpse of these activities in the famous story of the Robber Chief. We are more concerned with the contemplative side of his life, with that inward retrospect which occupied his mind. I do not doubt that it is true that the other Gospels, as they came into circulation among the churches, were brought to him, and that he expressed his approval of them. The story makes him speak with unique authority, which has about it however nothing artificial, but is just the natural deference for one who of all men living was in the best position to know the things of which he spoke. His approval of the other Gospels was calm and objective, but critical. I believe that the precious statements that Papias has preserved for us about the compositions of St. Mark and St. Matthew are really fragments of his criticism. I accept also as literally true the story that it was partly because he felt that there was something wanting in the older records, and partly because of the urgency of those around him, that the old man at last was himself impelled to write. Browning’s ‘Death in the Desert’ presents him at a later stage—at the last stage of all—but as an imaginative reproduction of the circumstances and frame of mind in which the Gospel was written, it is the best that I know.