THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS.--HIS TESTIMONY TO ST. JOHN.
We have now to consider the citations (or supposed citations) of Justin
from the fourth Gospel. These, as I have mentioned, are treated by the
author of "Supernatural Religion" separately at the conclusion of his
work.
Whatever internal coincidences there are between the contents of
St. John and those of the Synoptics, the external differences are
exceedingly striking, and it is not at all to my present purpose to keep
this fact out of sight. The plan of St. John's Gospel is different, the
style is different, the subjects of the discourses, the scene of action,
the incidents, and (with one exception) the miracles, all are different.
Now this will greatly facilitate the investigation of the question as to
whether any author had St. John before him when he wrote. There may be
some uncertainty with respect to the quotations from the Synoptics, as
to whether an early writer quotes one or other, or derives what he cites
from some earlier source, as for instance from one of St. Luke's [Greek:
polloi].
But it cannot be so with St. John. A quotation of, or reference to, any
words of any discourse of our Lord, or an account of any transaction as
reported by St. John, can be discerned in an instant. At least it can be
at once seen that it cannot have been derived from the Synoptics, or
from any supposed apocryphal or traditional sources from which the
Synoptics derived their information.
The special object of this Gospel is the identification of the
pre-existent nature of our Lord with the eternal Word, and following
upon this, His relation to His Father on the one side, and to mankind on
the other.
He is the only begotten of the Father, God being His own proper Father
[Greek: idios], and so He is equal to the Father in nature (John v. 18),
and yet, as being a Son, He is subordinate, so that He represents
Himself throughout as sent by the Father to do His will and speak His
words.
With reference to mankind He is, before His Incarnation, the "Light that
lighteth every man." After and through His Incarnation He is to man all
in all. He is even in death the object of their Faith. He is the
Mediator through whose very person God sends the Spirit. He is the Life,
the Light, the Living Water, the Spiritual Food.
Justin Martyr repeatedly reproduces in various forms of expression the
truth that Christ is the eternal "Word made flesh" and revealed as the
"Only-begotten Son of God," thus:--
"The first power after God the Father and Lord of all is the Word,
Who is also the Son, and of Him we will, in what follows, relate how
He took flesh and became man." (Apol. I. Ch. XXXII.)
Again:--
"I have already proved that He was the only-begotten of the Father
of all things, being begotten in a peculiar manner [Greek: idiôs],
Word and Power by Him, and having afterwards become man through the
Virgin." (Dial. ch. cv.)
Now, we have in these two passages four or five characteristic
expressions of St. John relating to our Lord, not to be found in any
other Scripture writer. I say "in any other," for I believe that not
only the Epistles of St. John, but also the Apocalypse, notwithstanding
certain differences in style, are to be ascribed to St. John.
We have the term "Word" united with "the Son," and with "Only begotten,"
and said to be "properly (propriè; [Greek: idiôs]) begotten;" a
reminiscence of John v. 18, the only place in the New Testament where
the adjective [Greek: idios] or its adverb [Greek: idiôs] is applied to
the relations of the Father and the Son, and we have this Word becoming
flesh and man.
Now Justin, in one of the places, writes to convince an heathen emperor;
and, in the other, an unbelieving Jew; and so in each case he reproduces
the sense of John i. 1 and 14, and not the exact words. It would have
been an absurdity for him to have quoted St. John exactly, for, in such
a case, he must have retained the words "we beheld his glory, the glory
as," which would have simply detracted from the force of the passage,
being unintelligible without some explanation.
Again, we have in the Dialogue (ch. lxi.) the words "The Word of Wisdom,
Who is Himself this God begotten of the Father of all things." Now here
there seems to be a reproduction of the old and very probably original
reading of John i. 18, [48:1] "The only begotten God who is in the bosom
of the Father." Certainly this reading of John i. 18 is the only place
where the idea of being begotten is associated with the term "God."
We next have to notice that Justin repeatedly uses the words "God" and
"Lord" in collocation as applied to Jesus Christ; not "the Lord God,"
the usual Old Testament collocation, but God and Lord, thus:
"For Christ is King and Priest and God and Lord," &c. (Dial. ch.
xxxiv.)
Again:--
"There is, and there is said to be, another God and Lord subject to
the Maker of all things." (Dial. lvi.)
Now the only Gospel in which these words are to be found together and
applied to Christ is that according to St. John, where he records the
confession of St. Thomas, "My Lord and my God" (John xx. 28).
Again: St. John alone of the Evangelists speaks of our Lord as He that
cometh from above [Greek: ho anôthen erchomenos], as coming from heaven,
as "leaving the world and going to the Father" (John iii. 31; xvi. 28),
and Justin reproduces this in the words:--
"It is declared [by David in Prophecy,] that He would come forth
from the highest heavens, and again return to the same places, in
order that you may recognize Him as God coming forth from above and
man living among men." (Dial. ch. lxiv.)
Again: though St. John asserts by implication the equality in point of
nature of the Father and the Son (John v. 18), yet he also very
repeatedly records words of Christ which assert His subordination to the
Father. Nowhere in the Synoptics do we read such words as "I can of mine
own self do nothing." "I seek not mine own will, but the will of the
Father which hath sent me" (John v. 30): "My meat is to do the will of
Him that sent me, and to finish His work" (iv. 34; also John vi. 38): "I
have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, He gave me a
commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak." (xii. 49)
Now Justin Martyr reproduces these intimations of the subordination of
the Son:--
"Who is also called an Angel, because He announces to men whatsoever
the Maker of all things, above Whom there is no other God, wishes to
announce to them." (Dial. ch. lvi.)
Again:--
"I affirm that He has never at any time done anything which He Who
made the world, above Whom there is no other God, has not wished Him
both to do and to engage Himself with." (Dial. lvi.)
Again:--
"Boasts not in accomplishing anything through His own will or
might." (Ch. ci.)
Let the reader clearly understand that I do not lay any stress
whatsoever on these passages taken by themselves or together; but taken
in connection with the intimation of the Word and Sonship asserted in
St. John, and reproduced by Justin, they are very significant indeed.
St. John asserts that Jesus is the Word and the Only Begotten--that He
is "Lord" and "God," and equal with the Father as being His Son (v. 18);
but, lest men conceive of the Word as an independent God, he asserts the
subordination of the Son as consisting, not in inferiority of nature,
but in submission of will.
Justin reproduces in the same terms the teaching of St. John respecting
the Logos--that the Logos was the Only Begotten, God-begotten, Lord and
God. And then, lest his adversaries should assume from this that Christ
was an independent God, he guards it by the assertion of the same
doctrine of subordination of will; neither the doctrine nor the
safeguard being expressly stated in the Synoptics, but contained in them
by that wondrous implication by which one part of Divine truth really
presupposes and involves all truth.
We have now to consider St. John's teaching respecting the relation of
the Logos to man. One aspect of this doctrine is peculiar to St. John,
and is as mysterious and striking a truth as we have in the whole range
of Christian dogma.
It is contained in certain words in the exordium of the Fourth Gospel:
"That [Word] was the true light which lighteth every man that cometh
into the world."
This passage embodies a truth which is unique in Scripture: that in the
Word was Life, that the Life was the Light of men, and that that Light
was (even before the Incarnation) the true Light which lighteth every
man.
This, I say, is a truth which is not, that I am aware of, to be found,
except by very remote implication, in the rest of Scripture. And yet it
is continually reproduced by Justin in a way which shows that he had
drunk it in, as it were, and he used it continually as the principle on
which to explain the vestiges of truth which existed among the heathen.
Thus:--
"We have been taught that Christ is the first-born of God, and we
have declared above that He is the Word of Whom every race of men
were partakers; and those who lived reasonably (or with the Logos,
[Greek: hoi meta logou biôsantes]) are Christians, even though they
have been thought Atheists; as among the Greeks, Socrates and
Heraclitus, and men like them." (Apol. I. ch. xlvi.)
Again:--
"No one trusted in Socrates so as to die for this doctrine, but in
Christ, Who was partially known even by Socrates (for He was and is
the Word Who is in every man)," &c. (Apol. II. ch. x.)
Again, in a noble passage:--
"For each man spoke well in proportion to the share he had of the
spermatic Divine Word, [51:1] seeing what was related to it. But
they who contradict themselves in the more important points appear
not to have possessed the heavenly wisdom, and the knowledge which
cannot be spoken against. Whatever things were rightly said among
all men are the property of us Christians." (Apol. II. xiii.)
There cannot, then, be the smallest doubt but that Justin's mind was
permeated by a doctrine of the Logos exactly such as he would have
derived from the diligent study of the fourth Gospel. But may he not
have derived all this from Philo? No; because, if so, he would have
referred Trypho, a Jew, to Philo, his brother Jew, which he never does.
The speciality of St. John's teaching is not that he, like Plato or
Philo, elaborates a Logos doctrine, but that once for all, with the
authority of God, he identifies the Logos with the Divine Nature of our
Lord. No other Evangelist or sacred writer does this, and he does.