were ignorant of the sure promise of a common salvation yet
to be brought. While the Jews indulged in glowing and exclusive
expectations of the Messiah who was gloriously to redeem them, the
Gentiles were "aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers
from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in
the world." Fourthly, in the fulness of time long after "the
Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen, had
preached the gospel beforehand unto Abraham, saying, In thy seed
shall all nations be blessed" "Christ redeemed us from the curse
of the law, being made a curse for us, that the blessing promised
to Abraham might come upon the Gentiles." It was the precise
mission of Christ to realize and exemplify and publish to the
whole world the fulfilment of that promise. The promise itself
was, that men should be released from the under world through the
imputation of righteousness by grace that is, through free
forgiveness and rise to heaven as accredited sons and heirs of
God. This aim and purpose of Christ's coming were effected in his
resurrection. But how did the Gentiles enter into belief and
participation of the glad tidings? Thus, according to Paul: The
death, descent, resurrection, and ascent of Jesus, and his
residence in heaven in a spiritual form, divested him of his
nationality.13 He was "then to be known no more after the flesh."
He was no longer an earthly Jew, addressing Jews, but a heavenly
spirit and son of God, a glorified likeness of the spirits of all
who were adopted as sons of God, appealing to them all as joint
heirs with himself of heaven. He has risen into universality, and
is accessible to the soul of every one that believeth. "In him
there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision,
barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free." The experience resulting in a
heart raised into fellowship with him in heaven is the inward seal
assuring us that our faith is not vain. "Ye Gentiles, who formerly
were afar off, are now made nigh by the blood of Christ; for he
hath broken down the middle wall of partition between Jews and
Gentiles, having abolished in his flesh the enmity, namely, the
law of commandments in ordinances, in order to make in himself of
twain one new man. For through him we both have access by one
spirit unto the Father. Now, therefore, ye are no more strangers
and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and of the
household of God." Circumcision was of the flesh; and the vain
hope of salvation by it was confined to the Jews. Grace was of the
spirit; and the revealed assurance of salvation by it was given to
the Gentiles too, when Christ died to the nationalizing flesh,
rose in the universalizing spirit, and from heaven impartially
exhibited himself, through the preaching of the gospel, to the
appropriating faith of all.
The foregoing positions might be further substantiated by applying
the general theory they contain to the explication of scores of
individual texts which it fits and unfolds, and which, we think,
cannot upon any other view be interpreted without forced
constructions unwarranted by a thorough acquaintance with the mind
of Paul and with the mind of his age. But we must be content with
one or two such applications as specimens. The word "mystery"
often occurs in the letters of Paul. Its current meaning in his
time was "something concealed," something into which one must be
initiated in order to understand it.
13 Martineau, Liverpool Controversy: Inconsistency of the Scheme
of Vicarious Redemption.
The Eleusinian Mysteries, for instance, were not necessarily any thing
intrinsically dark and hard to be comprehended, but things hidden
from public gaze and only to be known by initiation into them.
Paul uses the term in a similar way to denote the peculiar scheme
of grace, which "had been kept secret from the beginning of the
world," "hidden from ages and generations, but now made manifest."
No one denies that Paul means by "this mystery" the very heart and
essence of the gospel, precisely that which distinguishes it from
the law and makes it a universal method of salvation, a wondrous
system of grace. So much is irresistibly evident from the way and
the connection in which he uses the term. He writes thus in
explanation of the great mystery as it was dramatically revealed
through Christ: "Who was manifested in the flesh, [i. e. seen in
the body during his life on earth,] justified in the spirit,
[i. e. freed after death from the necessity of imprisonment in
Hades,] seen of angels, [i. e. in their fellowship after his
resurrection,] preached unto the Gentiles, [i. e. after the gift
of tongues on Pentecost day,] believed on in the world, [i. e. his
gospel widely accepted through the labors of his disciples,]
received up into glory, [i. e. taken into heaven to the presence
of God.]" "The revelation of the mystery" means, then, the visible
enactment and exhibition, through the resurrection of Christ, of
God's free forgiveness of men, redeeming them from the Hadean
gloom to the heavenly glory. The word "glory" in the New Testament
confessedly often signifies the illumination of heaven, the
defined abode of God and his angels. Robinson collects, in his
Lexicon, numerous examples wherein he says it means "that state
which is the portion of those who dwell with God in heaven." Now,
Paul repeatedly speaks of the calling of believers to glory as one
of the chief blessings and new prerogatives of the gospel. "Being
justified by faith, we rejoice in hope of the glory of God." "Walk
worthy of God, who hath called you unto his glory." "We speak
wisdom to the initiates, the hidden wisdom of God in a mystery,
which before the world [the Jewish dispensation] God ordained for
our glory." "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God:
behold, I show you a mystery: we shall all be changed in a moment,
and put on immortality." In the first chapter of the letter to the
Colossians, Paul speaks of "the hope which is laid up for you in
heaven, whereof ye have heard in the gospel;" also of "the
inheritance of the saints in light:" then he says, "God would now
make known among the Gentiles the mystery, which is, Christ among
you, the hope of glory." In the light of what has gone before, how
significant and how clear is this declaration! "All have sinned,
and failed to attain unto the glory of God; but now, through the
faith of Jesus Christ, [through the dispensation brought to light
by Christ,] the righteousness of God [God's method of salvation]
is unto all that believe." That is, by the law all were shut up in
Hades, but by grace they are now ransomed and to be received to
heaven. The same thought or scheme is contained in that remarkable
passage in the Epistle to the Galatians where Paul says the free
Isaac and the bond woman Hagar were an allegory, teaching that
there were two covenants, one by Abraham, the other by Moses. The
Mosaic covenant of the law "answers to the Jerusalem which is on
earth, and is in bondage with her children," and belongs only to
the Jews. The Abrahamic covenant of promise answers to "the
Jerusalem which is above, and is free, and is the mother of us
all." In the former, we were "begotten unto bondage." In the
latter, "Christ hath made us free."
We will notice but one more text in passing: it is, of all the
proof texts of the doctrine of a substitutional expiation, the one
which has ever been regarded as the very Achilles. And yet it can
be made to support that doctrine only by the aid of arbitrary
assumptions and mistranslations, while by its very terms it
perfectly coincides with nay, expressly declares the theory which
we have been advocating as the genuine interpretation of Paul. The
usual commentators, in their treatment of this passage, have
exhibited a long continued series of perversions and sophisms,
affording a strong example of unconscious prejudice. The correct
Greek reading of the text is justly rendered thus: "Whom God set
forth, a mercy seat through the faith in his blood, to exhibit his
righteousness through the remission of former sins by the
forbearance of God." For rendering [non-ASCII characters]
"mercy seat," the usus loquendi and the internal harmony of meaning
are in our favor, and also the weight of many orthodox authorities,
such as Theodoret, Origen, Theophylact, OEcumenius, Erasmus, Luther,
and from Pelagius to Bushnell. Still, we are willing to admit the
rendering of it by "sin offering." That makes no important
difference in the result. Christ was a sin offering, in the
conception of Paul, in this sense: that when he was not himself
subject to death, which was the penalty of sin, he yet died in
order to show God's purpose of removing that penalty of sin
through his resurrection. For rendering [non-ASCII characters]
"through," no defence is needed: the only wonder is, how it ever
could have been here translated "for." Now, let two or three facts
be noticed.
First, the New Testament phrase "the faith of Christ," "the faith of
Jesus," is very unfairly and unwarrantably made to mean an
internal affection towards Christ, a belief of men in him. Its
genuine meaning is the same as "the gospel of Christ," or the
religion of Christ, the system of grace which he brought.14 Who
can doubt that such is the meaning of the word in these instances?
"Contend for the faith once delivered to the saints;" "Greet them
that love us in the faith;" "Have not the faith of our Lord Jesus
Christ with respect of persons." So, in the text now under our
notice, "the faith which is in his blood" means the dispensation
of pardon and justification, the system of faith, which was
confirmed and exemplified to us in his death and resurrection.
Secondly, "the righteousness of God," which is here said to be
"pointed out" by Christ's death, denotes simply, in Professor
Stuart's words, "God's pardoning mercy," or "acquittal," or
"gratuitous justification," "in which sense," he says truly, "it
is almost always used in Paul's epistles."15 It signifies neither
more nor less than God's method of salvation by freely forgiving
sins and treating the sinner as if he were righteous, the method
of salvation now carried into effect and revealed in the gospel
brought by Christ, and dramatically enacted in his passion and
ascension. Furthermore, we ask attention to the fact that the
ordinary interpreter, hard pressed by his unscriptural creed,
interpolates a disjunctive conjunction in the opposing teeth of
Paul's plain statement. Paul says, as the common version has it,
God is "just, and [i. e. even] the justifier." The creed bound
commentators read it,
14 Robinson has gathered a great number of instances in his
Lexicon, under the word "Faith," wherein it can only mean, as he
says, "the system of Christian doctrines, the gospel."
15 Stuart's Romans i. 17, iii. 25, 26, &c.
"just and yet the justifier." We will now present the true meaning
of the whole passage, in our view of it, according to Paul's own
use of language. To establish a conviction of the correctness of
the exposition, we only ask the ingenuous reader carefully to
study the clauses of the Greek text and recollect the foregoing
data. "God has set Christ forth, to be to us a sure sign that we
have been forgiven and redeemed through the faith that was proved
by his triumphant return from death, the dispensation of grace
inaugurated by him. Herein God has exhibited his method of saving
sinners, which is by the free remission of their sins through his
kindness. Thus God is proved to be disposed to save, and to be
saving, by the system of grace shown through Jesus, him that
believeth." In consequence of sin, men were under sentence of
condemnation to the under world. In the fulness of time God
fulfilled his ancient promise to Abraham. He freely justified
men, that is, forgave them, redeemed them from their doom, and
would soon open the sky for their abode with him. This scheme of
redemption was carried out by Christ. That is to say, God
proclaimed it to men, and asked their belief in it, by "setting
forth Christ" to die, descend among the dead, rise thence, and
ascend into heaven, as an exemplifying certification of the truth
of the glad tidings.
Thirdly, Paul teaches that one aim of Christ's mission was to
purify, animate, and exalt the moral characters of men, and
rectify their conduct, to produce a subjective sanctification in
them, and so prepare them for judgment and fit them for heaven.
The establishment of this proposition will conclude the present
part of our subject. He writes, "Our Saviour, Jesus Christ, gave
himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity and
purify unto himself a peculiar people zealous of good works." "Let
every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity." In
various ways he often represents the fact that believers have been
saved by grace through Christ as the very reason, the intensified
motive, why they should scrupulously keep every tittle of the
moral law and abstain even from the appearance of evil, walking
worthy of their high vocation. "The grace of God that bringeth
salvation to all men hath appeared, teaching us that, denying all
ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly,
righteously, and godly in this present world." Bad men, "that obey
not the gospel of Christ," such characters as "thieves,
extortioners, drunkards, adulterers, shall not inherit the kingdom
of God." He proclaims, in unmistakable terms, "God will render to
every man according to his deeds, wrath and tribulation to the
evil doer, honor and peace to the well doer, whether Jew or
Gentile." The conclusion to be drawn from these and other like
declarations is unavoidable. It is that "every one, Jew and
Gentile, shall stand before the judgment seat of Christ and
receive according to the deeds done in the body; for there is no
respect of persons." And one part of Christ's mission was to exert
a hallowing moral influence on men, to make them righteous, that
they might pass the bar with acquittal. But the reader who
recollects the class of texts adduced a little while since will
remember that an opposite conclusion was as unequivocally drawn
from them. Then Paul said, "By faith ye are justified, without the
deeds of the law." Now he says, "For not the hearers of the law
are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified
in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus
Christ." Is there a contradiction, then, in Paul? Only in
appearance. Let us distinguish and explain. In the two quotations
above, the apostle is referring to two different things.
First, he would say, By the faith of Christ, the free grace of God
declared in the gospel of Christ, ye are justified, gratuitously
delivered from that necessity of imprisonment in Hades which is
the penalty of sin doomed upon the whole race from Adam, and from
which no amount of personal virtue could avail to save men.
Secondly, when he exclaims, "Know ye not that the unrighteous
shall not inherit the kingdom of God?" his thought is of a
spiritual qualification of character, indispensable for positive
admission among the blest in heaven. That is to say, the impartial
penalty of primeval sin consigned all men to Hades. They could not
by their own efforts escape thence and win heaven. That fated
inability God has removed, and through Christ revealed its
removal; but, that one should actually obtain the offered and
possible prize of heaven, personal purity, faith, obedience,
holiness, are necessary. In Paul's conception of the scheme of
Christian salvation, then, there were two distinct parts: one,
what God had done for all; the other, what each man was to do for
himself. And the two great classes of seemingly hostile texts
filling his epistles, which have puzzled so many readers, become
clear and harmonious when we perceive and remember that by
"righteousness" and its kindred terms he sometimes means the
external and fulfilled method of redeeming men from the
transmitted necessity of bondage in the under world, and sometimes
means the internal and contingent qualifications for actually
realizing that redemption. In the former instance he refers to the
objective mode of salvation and the revelation of it in Christ. In
the latter, he refers to the subjective fitness for that salvation
and the certitude of it in the believer. So, too, the words
"death" and "life," in Paul's writings, are generally charged, by
a constructio proegnans, with a double sense, one spiritual,
individual, contingent, the other mechanical, common, absolute.
Death, in its full Pauline force, includes inward guilt,
condemnation, and misery, and outward descent into the under
world. Life, in its full Pauline force, includes inward rectitude,
peace, and joy, and outward ascent into the upper world. Holiness
is necessary, "for without it no one can see the Lord;" yet by
itself it can secure only inward life: it is ineffectual to win
heaven. Grace by itself merely exempts from the fatality of the
condemnation to Hades: it offers eternal life in heaven only upon
condition of "patient continuance in well doing" by "faith,
obedience to the truth, and sanctification of the spirit." But
God's free grace and man's diligent fidelity, combined, give the
full fruition of blessedness in the heart and of glory and
immortality in the sky.
Such, as we have set forth in the foregoing three divisions, was
Paul's view of the mission of Christ and of the method of
salvation. It has been for centuries perverted and mutilated. The
toil now is by unprejudiced inspection to bring it forward in its
genuine completeness, as it stood in Paul's own mind and in the
minds of his contemporaries. The essential view, epitomized in a
single sentence, is this. The independent grace of God has
interfered, first, to save man from Hades, and secondly, to enable
him, by the co operation of his own virtue, to get to heaven. Here
are two separate means conjoined to effect the end, salvation.
Now, compare, in the light of this statement, the three great
theological theories of Christendom. The UNITARIAN, overlooking
the objective justification, or offered redemption from the death
realm to the sky home, which whether it be a truth or an error is
surely in the epistles, makes the subjective sanctification all in
all. The CALVINIST, in his theory, comparatively scorns the
subjective sanctification, which Paul insists on as a necessity
for entering the kingdom of God, and, having perverted the
objective justification from its real historic meaning,
exaggerates it into the all in all. The ROMAN CATHOLIC holds that
Christ simply removed the load of original sin and its entailed
doom, and left each person to stand or fall by his own merits, in
the helping communion of the Church. He also maintains that a part
of Christ's office was to exert an influence for the moral
improvement and consecration of human character. His error, as an
interpreter of Paul's thought, is, that he, like the Calvinist,
attributes to Christ's death a vicarious efficacy by suffering the
pangs of mankind's guilt to buy their ransom from the inexorable
justice of God; whereas the apostle really represents Christ's
redeeming mission as consisting simply in a dramatic
exemplification of the Father's spontaneous love and purpose to
pardon past offences, unbolt the gates of Hades, and receive the
worthy to heaven. Moreover, while Paul describes the heavenly
salvation as an undeserved gift from the grace of God, the
Catholic often seems to make it a prize to be earned, under the
Christian dispensation, by good works which may fairly challenge
that reward. However, we have little doubt that this apparent
opposition is rather in the practical mode of exhortation than in
any interior difference of dogma; for Paul himself makes personal
salvation hinge on personal conditions, the province of grace
being seen in the new extension to man of the opportunity and
invitation to secure his own acceptance. And so the Roman Catholic
exposition of Paul's doctrine is much more nearly correct than any
other interpretation now prevalent. We should expect, a priori,
that it would be, since that Church, containing two thirds of
Christendom, is the most intimately connected, by its scholars,
members, and traditions, with the apostolic age.
A prominent feature in the belief of Paul, and one deserving
distinct notice as necessarily involving a considerable part of
the theory which we have attributed to him, is the supposition
that Christ was the first person, clothed with humanity and
experiencing death, admitted into heaven. Of all the hosts who had
lived and died, every soul had gone down into the dusky under
world. There they all were held in durance, waiting for the Great
Deliverer. In the splendors of the realm over the sky, God and his
angels dwelt alone. That we do not err in ascribing this belief to
Paul we might summon the whole body of the Fathers to testify in
almost unbroken phalanx, from Polycarp to St. Bernard. The Roman,
Greek, and English Churches still maintain the same dogma. But the
apostle's own plain words will be sufficient for our purpose.
"That Christ should suffer, and that he should be the first that
should rise from among the dead." "Now is Christ risen from among
the dead and become the first fruits of them that slept." "He is
the beginning, the first born from among the dead, that among all
he might have the pre eminence." "God raised Christ from among the
dead, and set him at his own right hand16 in the heavenly places,
far above every principality, and power, and might, and dominion."
The last words refer to different orders of spirits, supposed
16 Griesbach argues at length, and shows unanswerably, that this
passage cannot bear a moral interpretation, but necessarily has a
physical and local sense. Griesbachii Opuscula Academica, ed.
Gabler, vol. ii. pp. 145-149.
by the Jews to people the aerial region below the heaven of God.
"God hath" (already in our anticipating faith) "raised us up
together with Christ and made us sit in heavenly places with him."
These testimonies are enough to show that Paul believed Jesus to
have been raised up to the abode of God, the first man ever
exalted thither, and that this was done as a pledge and
illustration of the same exaltation awaiting those who believe.
"If we be dead with Christ, we believe we shall also live with
him." And the apostle teaches that we are not only connected with
Christ's resurrection by the outward order and sequence of events,
but also by an inward gift of the spirit. He says that to every
obedient believer is given an experimental "knowledge of the power
of the resurrection of Christ," which is the seal of God within
him, the pledge of his own celestial destination. "After that ye
believed, ye were sealed with that holy spirit of promise which is
the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the
purchased possession." The office of this gift of the spirit is to
awaken in the believing Christian a vivid realization of the
things in store for him, and a perfect conviction that he shall
yet possess them in the unclouded presence of God, beyond the
canopy of azure and the stars. "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man conceived, the things which God hath prepared
for them that love him. But he hath revealed them unto us; for we
have received his spirit, that we might know them." "The spirit
beareth witness with our spirit that we are children and heirs of
God, even joint heirs with Christ, that we may be glorified [i. e.
advanced into heaven] with him."
We will leave this topic with a brief paraphrase of the celebrated
passage in the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. "Not
only do the generality of mankind groan in pain in this decaying
state, under the bondage of perishable elements, travailing for
emancipation from the flesh into the liberty of the heavenly glory
appointed for the sons and heirs of God, but even we, who have the
first fruits of the spirit, [i. e. the assurance springing from
the resurrection of Christ,] we too wait, painfully longing for
the adoption, that is, our redemption from the body." By longing
for the adoption, or filiation, is meant impatient desire to be
received into heaven as children to the enjoyment of the
privileges of their Father's house. "God predetermined that those
called should be conformed to the image of his Son, [i. e. should
pass through the same course with Christ and reach the heavenly
goal,] that he might be the first born among many brethren." To
the securing of this end, "whom he called, them he also justified,
[i. e. ransomed from Hades;17] and whom he justified, them he also
glorified," (i. e. advanced to the glory of heaven.) It is evident
that Paul looked for the speedy second coming of the Lord in the
clouds of heaven, with angels and power and glory. He expected
that at that time all enemies would be overthrown and punished,
the dead would be raised, the living would be changed, and all
that were Christ's would be translated to heaven.18 "The Lord
Jesus shall be revealed from
17 That "justify" often means, in Paul's usage, to absolve from
Hades, we have concluded from a direct study of his doctrines and
language. We find that Bretschneider gives it the same definition
in his Lexicon of the New Testament. See [non ASCII characters]
18 "Every one shall rise in his own division" of the great army of
the dead, "Christ, the first fruits; afterwards, they that are
Christ's, at his coming."
heaven, with his mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance
on them that know not God and obey not the gospel of Christ." "We
shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, at
the last trump." "We who are alive and remain until the coming of
the Lord shall not anticipate those that are asleep. For the Lord
himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of
the archangel, and with the trump of God;19 and the dead in Christ
shall rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught
up with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so we
shall always be with the Lord. Brethren, you need not that I
should specify the time to you; for yourselves are perfectly aware
that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night." "The
time is short." "I pray God your whole spirit, soul, and body be
preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." "At
his appearing he shall judge the living and the dead." "The Lord
is at hand." The author of these sentences undeniably looked for
the great advent soon. Than Paul, indeed, no one more earnestly
believed (or did more to strengthen in others that belief) in that
speedy return of Christ, the anticipation of which thrilled all
early Christendom with hope and dread, and kept the disciples day
and night on the stretch and start of expectation to hear the
awful blast of the judgment trump and to see the glorious vision
of the Son of God descending amidst a convoy of angels. What
sublime emotions must have rushed through the apostle's soul when
he thought that he, as a survivor of death's reign on earth, might
behold the resurrection without himself entering the grave! Upon a
time when he should be perchance at home, or at Damascus, or, it
might be, at Jerusalem, the sun would become as blood, the moon as
sackcloth of hair, the last trump would swell the sky, and,
"Lo! the nations of the dead, Which do outnumber all earth's
races, rise, And high in sumless myriads overhead Sweep past him
in a cloud, as 'twere the skirts Of the Eternal passing by."
The resurrection which Paul thought would attend the second coming
of Christ was the rising of the summoned spirits of the deceased
from their rest in the under world. Most certainly it was not the
restoration of their decomposed bodies from their graves, although
that incredible surmise has been generally entertained. He says,
while answering the question, How are the dead raised up, and with
what body do they come? "That which thou sowest, thou sowest not
that body which shall be, but naked grain: God giveth it a body as
it hath pleased him." The comparison is, that so the naked soul is
sown in the under world, and God, when he raiseth it, giveth it a
fitting body. He does not hesitate to call the man "a fool" who
expects the restoration of the same body that was buried. His
whole argument is explicitly against that idea. "There are bodies
celestial, as well as bodies terrestrial: the first man was
19 Rabbi Akiba says, in the Talmud, "God shall take and blow a
trumpet a thousand godlike yards in length, whose echo shall sound
from end to end of the world. At the first blast the earth shall
tremble. At the second, the dust shall part. At the third, the
bones shall come together. At the fourth, the members shall grow
warm. At the fifth, they shall be crowned with the head. At the
sixth, the soul shall re enter the body. And at the seventh, they
shall stand erect." Corrodi, Geschichte des Chiliasmus, band i. s.
355.
of the earth, earthy; the second man was the Lord from heaven; and
as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the
image of the heavenly; for flesh and blood cannot inherit the
kingdom of God." In view of these declarations, it is astonishing
that any one can suppose that Paul believed in the resurrection of
these present bodies and in their transference into heaven. "In
this tabernacle we groan, being burdened," and, "Who shall deliver
me from this body of death?" he cries. If ever there was a man
whose goading experience, keen intellectual energies, and moral
sensibilities, made him weary of this slow, gross body, and
passionately to long for a more corresponding, swift, and pure
investiture, it was Paul. And in his theory of "the glorious body
of Christ, according to which our vile body shall be changed," he
relieved his impatience and fed his desire. What his conception of
that body was, definitely, we cannot tell; but doubtless it was
the idea of a vehicle adapted to his mounting and ardent soul, and
in many particulars very unlike this present groaning load of
clay. The epistles of Paul contain no clear implication of the
notion of a millennium, a thousand years' reign of Christ with his
saints on the earth after his second advent. On the contrary, in
many places, particularly in the fourth chapter of the First
Epistle to the Thessalonians, (supposing that letter to be his,)
he says that the Lord and they that are his will directly pass
into heaven after the consummation of his descent from heaven and
their resurrection from the dead. But the declaration "He must
reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet," taken with its
context, is thought, by Bertholdt, Billroth, De Wette, and others,
to imply that Christ would establish a millennial kingdom on
earth, and reign in it engaged in vanquishing all hostile forces.
Against this exegesis we have to say, first, that, so far as that
goes, the vast preponderance of critical authorities is opposed to
it. Secondly, if this conquest were to be secured on earth, there
is nothing to show that it need occupy much time: one hour might
answer for it as well as a thousand years. There is nothing here
to show that Paul means just what the Rabbins taught. Thirdly,
even if Paul supposed a considerable period must elapse before
"all enemies" would be subdued, during which period Christ must
reign, it does not follow that he believed that reign would be on
earth: it might be in heaven. The "enemies" referred to are, in
part at least, the wicked spirits occupying the regions of the
upper air; for he specifies these "principalities, authorities,
and powers."20 And the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews
represents God as saying to Jesus, "Sit thou on my right hand,
until I make thine enemies thy footstool." Fourthly, it seems
certain that, if in the apostle's thought a thousand years were
interpolated between Christ's second coming and the delivering of
his mediatorial sceptre to God, he would have said so, at least
somewhere in his writings. He would naturally have dwelt upon it a
little, as the Chiliasts did so much. Instead of that, he
repeatedly contradicts it. Upon the whole, then, with Ruckert, we
cannot
20 The apocryphal "Ascension of Isaiah," already spoken of, gives
a detailed description of the upper air as occupied by Satan and
his angels, among whom fighting and evil deeds rage; but Christ in
his ascent conquers and spoils them all, and shows himself a
victor ever brightening as he rises successively through the whole
seven heavens to the feet of God. Ascensio Vatis Isaia, cap. vi x.
see any reason for not supposing that, according to Paul, "the
end" was immediately to succeed "the coming," as [non-ASCII
characters] would properly indicate.
The doctrine of a long earthly reign of Christ is not deduced
from this passage, by candid interpretation, because it must be
there, but foisted into it, by Rabbinical information, because
it may be there.
Paul distinctly teaches that the believers who died before the
second coming of the Savior would remain in the under world until
that event, when they and the transformed living should ascend
"together with the Lord." All the relevant expressions in his
epistles, save two, are obviously in harmony with this conception
of a temporary subterranean sojourn, waiting for the appearance of
Jesus from heaven to usher in the resurrection. But in the fifth
chapter of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians he writes,
"Abiding in the body we are absent from the Lord." It is usually
inferred, from these words and those which follow them, that the
apostle expected whenever he died to be instantly with Christ.
Certainly they do mean pretty nearly that; but they mean it in
connection with the second advent and the accompanying
circumstances and events; for Paul believed that many of the
disciples possibly himself would live until Christ's coming. All
through these two chapters (the fourth and fifth) it is obvious,
from the marked use of the terms "we" and "you," and from other
considerations, that "we" here refers solely to the writer, the
individual Paul. It is the plural of accommodation used by common
custom and consent. In the form of a slight paraphrase we may
unfold the genuine meaning of the passage in hand. "In this body I
am afflicted: not that I would merely be released from it, for
then I should be a naked spirit. But I earnestly desire,
unclothing myself of this earthly body, at the same time to clothe
myself with my heavenly body, that I may lose all my mortal part
and its woes in the full experience of heaven's eternal life. God
has determined that this result shall come to me sooner or later,
and has given me a pledge of it in the witnessing spirit. But it
cannot happen so long as I tarry in the flesh, the Lord delaying
his appearance. Having the infallible earnest of the spirit, I do
not dread the change, but desire to hasten it. Confident of
acceptance in that day at the judgment seat of Christ, before
which we must all then stand, I long for the crisis when, divested
of this body and invested with the immortal form wrought for me by
God, I shall be with the Lord. Still, knowing the terror which
shall environ the Lord at his coming to judgment, I plead with men
to be prepared." Whoever carefully examines the whole connected
passage, from iv. 6 to v. 16, will see, we think, that the above
paraphrase truly exposes its meaning.
The other text alluded to as an apparent exception to the doctrine
of a residence in the lower land of ghosts intervening between
death and the ascension, occurs in the Epistle to the
Philippians: "I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to
depart and to be with Christ, which is far better; but that I
should abide in the flesh is more needful for you." There are
three possible ways of regarding this passage. First, we may
suppose that Paul, seeing the advent of the Lord postponed longer
and longer, changed his idea of the intermediate state of deceased
Christians, and thought they would spend that period of waiting in
heaven, not in Hades. Neander advocates this view. But there is
little to sustain it, and it is loaded with fatal difficulties. A
change of faith so important and so bright in its view as this
must have seemed under the circumstances would have been clearly
and fully stated. Attention would have been earnestly invited to
so great a favor and comfort; exultation and gratitude would have
been expressed over so unheard of a boon. Moreover, what had
occurred to effect the alleged new belief? The unexpected delay of
Christ's coming might make the apostle wish that his departed
friends were tarrying above the sky instead of beneath the
sepulchre; but it could furnish no ground to warrant a sudden
faith in that wish as a fulfilled fact. Besides, the truth is that
Paul never ceased, even to the last, to expect the speedy arrival
of the Lord and to regard the interval as a comparative trifle. In
this very epistle he says, "The Lord is at hand: be careful for
nothing." Secondly, we may imagine that he expected himself, as a
divinely chosen and specially favored servant, to go to Christ in
heaven as soon as he died, if that should happen before the Lord's
appearance, while the great multitude of believers would abide in
the under world until the general resurrection. The death he was
in peril of and is referring to was that of martyrdom for the
gospel at the hands of Nero. And many of the Fathers maintained
that in the case of every worthy Christian martyr there was an
exception to the general doom, and that he was permitted to enter
heaven at once. Still, to argue such a thought in the text before
us requires an hypothesis far fetched and unsupported by a single
clear declaration of the apostle himself. Thirdly, we may assume
and it seems to us by far the least encumbered and the most
plausible theory that attempts to meet the case that Paul believed
there would be vouchsafed to the faithful Christian during his
transient abode in the under world a more intimate and blessed
spiritual fellowship with his Master than he could experience
while in the flesh. "For I am persuaded that neither death
[separation from the body] nor depth [the under world] shall be
able to separate us from God's love, which he has manifested
through Christ." He may refer, therefore, by his hopes of being
straightway with Christ on leaving the body, to a spiritual
communion with him in the disembodied state below, and not to his
physical presence in the supernal realm, the latter not being
attainable previous to the resurrection. Indeed, a little farther
on in this same epistle, he plainly shows that he did not
anticipate being received to heaven until after the second coming
of Christ. He says, "We look for the Savior from heaven, who shall
change our vile body and fashion it like unto his own glorious
body." This change is the preliminary preparation to ascent to
heaven, which change he repeatedly represents as indispensable.
What Paul believed would be the course and fate of things on earth
after the final consummation of Christ's mission is a matter of
inference from his brief and partial hints. The most probable and
consistent view which can be constructed from those hints is this.
He thought all mankind would become reconciled and obedient to
God, and that death, losing its punitive character, would become
what it was originally intended to be, the mere change of the
earthly for a heavenly body preparatory to a direct ascension.
"Then shall the Son himself be subject unto Him that put all
things under him, that God may be all in all." Then placid virtues
and innocent joys should fill the world, and human life be what it
was in Eden ere guilt forbade angelic visitants and converse with
heaven.21 "So when" without a
21 Neander thinks Paul's idea was that "the perfected kingdom of
God would then blend itself harmoniously throughout his unbounded
dominions." We believe his apprehension is correct. This globe
would become a part of the general paradise, an ante room or a l
ower story to the Temple of the Universe.
previous descent into Hades, as the context proves "this mortal
shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the
saying which is written, 'Death shall be swallowed up in victory.
O Death, thou last enemy, where is thy sting? O Hades, thou gloomy
prison, where is thy victory?'" The exposition just offered is
confirmed by its striking adaptedness to the whole Pauline scheme.
It is also the interpretation given by the earliest Fathers, and
by the Church in general until now. This idea of men being changed
and rising into heaven without at all entering the disembodied
state below was evidently in the mind of Milton when he wrote the
following lines:
"And from these corporeal nutriments, perhaps. Your bodies may at
last turn all to spirit, And, wing'd, ascend ethereal, may, at
choice, Here, or in heavenly paradise, dwell."
It now remains to see what Paul thought was to be the final
portion of the hardened and persevering sinner. One class of
passages in his writings, if taken by themselves, would lead us to
believe that on that point he had no fixed convictions in regard
to particulars, but, thinking these beyond the present reach of
reason, contented himself with the general assurance that all such
persons would meet their just deserts, and there left the subject
in obscurity. "God will render to every man to the Jew first, and
also to the Greek according to his deeds." "Whatsoever a man
soweth, that shall he also reap." "So then every one of us shall
give an account of himself to God." "At the judgment seat of
Christ every one shall receive the things done in his body,
according to that he hath done, whether it be good or whether it
be bad." From these and a few kindred texts we might infer that
the author, aware that he "knew but in part," simply held the
belief without attempting to pry into special methods, details,
and results that at the time of the judgment all should have exact
justice. He may, however, have unfolded in his preaching minutia
of faith not explained in his letters.
A second class of passages in the epistles of Paul would naturally
cause the common reader to conclude that he imagined that the
unregenerate those unfit for the presence of God were to be
annihilated when Christ, after his second coming, should return to
heaven with his saints. "Those who know not God and obey not the
gospel of Christ shall be punished with everlasting destruction
from the presence and glory of the Lord when he shall come." "The
end of the enemies of the cross of Christ is destruction." "The
vessels of wrath fitted for destruction." "As many as have sinned
without law shall perish without law." But it is to be observed
that the word here rendered "destruction" need not signify
annihilation. It often, even in Paul's epistles, plainly means
severe punishment, dreadful misery, moral ruin, and retribution.
For example, "foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in
destruction and perdition," "piercing them through with many
sorrows." It may or may not have that sense in the instances above
cited. Their meaning is intrinsically uncertain: we must bring
other passages and distinct considerations to aid our
interpretation.
From a third selection of texts in Paul's epistles it is not
strange that some persons have deduced the doctrine of
unconditional, universal salvation. "As in Adam all die, even so
in Christ shall all be made alive." But the genuine explanation of
this sentence, we are constrained to believe, is as follows: "As,
following after the example of Adam, all souls descend below, so,
following after Christ, all shall be raised up," that is, at the
judgment, after which event some may be taken to heaven, others
banished again into Hades. "We trust in the living God, who is the
Savior of all men, especially of them that believe." This means
that all men have been saved now from the unconditional sentence
to Hades brought on them by the first sin, but not all know the
glad tidings: those who receive them into believing hearts are
already exulting over their deliverance and their hopes of heaven.
All are objectively saved from the unavoidable and universal
necessity of Hadean imprisonment; the obedient believers are also
subjectively saved from the contingent and personal risk of
incurring that doom. "God hath shut them all up together in
unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all." "All" here means
both Jews and Gentiles; and the reference is to the universal
annulment of the universal fatality, and the impartial offer of
heaven to every one who sanctifies the truth in his heart. In some
cases the word "all" is used with rhetorical looseness, not with
logical rigidness, and denotes merely all Christians. Ruckert
shows this well in his commentary on the fifteenth chapter of
First Corinthians. In other instances the universality, which is
indeed plainly there, applies to the removal from the race of the
inherited doom; while a conditionality is unquestionably implied
as to the actual salvation of each person. We say Paul does
constantly represent personal salvation as depending on
conditions, as beset by perils and to be earnestly striven for.
"Lest that by any means I myself should be a castaway." "Deliver
such an one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the
spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus." "Wherefore we
labor, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of the
lord." "To them that are saved we are a savor of life unto life;
to them that perish, a savor of death unto death." "Charge them
that are rich that they be humble and do good, laying up in store
a good foundation, that they may lay hold on eternal life." It is
clear, from these and many similar passages of Paul, that he did
not believe in the unconditional salvation, the positive
mechanical salvation, of all individuals, but held personal
salvation to be a contingent problem, to be worked out, through
the permitting grace of God, by Christian faith, works, and
character. How plainly this is contained, too, in his doctrine of
"a resurrection of the just and the unjust," and of a day of
judgment, from whose august tribunal Christ is to pronounce
sentence according to each man's deeds! At the same time, the
undeniable fact deserves particular remembrance that he says, and
apparently knows, nothing whatever of a hell, in the present
acceptation of that term, a prison house of fiery tortures. He
assigns the realm of Satan and the evil spirits to the air, the
vexed region between earth and heaven, according to the demonology
of his age and country. 22
Finally, there is a fourth class of passages, from which we might
infer that the apostle's faith merely excluded the reprobate from
participating in the ascent with Christ, just as some of the
Pharisees excluded the Gentiles from their resurrection, and there
left the subject in darkness.
22 A detailed and most curious account of this region, which he
calls Tartarus, is given by Angustine. De Gen. ad. lit. lib. iii.
cap. 14, 15, ed. Benedictina.
"They that are Christ's," "the dead in Christ, shall rise."
"No sensualist, extortioner, idolater, hath any inheritance
in the kingdom of Christ and of God." "There is laid up a crown of
righteousness, which the Lord shall give in that day to all them
that love his appearing." In all these, and in many other cases,
there is a marked omission of any reference to the ultimate
positive disposal of the wicked. Still, against the supposition of
his holding the doctrine that all except good Christians would be
left below eternally, we have his repeated explicit avowals. "I
have hope towards God that there shall be a resurrection both of
the just and the unjust." "We must all appear before the judgment
seat of Christ." These last statements, however, prove only that
Paul thought the bad as well as the good would be raised up and
judged: they are not inconsistent with the belief that the
condemned would afterwards either be annihilated, or remanded
everlastingly to the under world. This very belief, we think, is
contained in that remarkable passage where Paul writes to the
Philippians that he strives "if by any means he may attain unto
the resurrection." Now, the common resurrection of the dead for
judgment needed not to be striven for: it would occur to all
unconditionally. But there is another resurrection, or another
part remaining to complete the resurrection, namely, after the
judgment, a rising of the accepted to heaven. All shall rise from
Hades upon the earth to judgment. This Paul calls simply the
resurrection, [Non ASCII Characters] After the judgment, the
accepted shall rise to heaven. This Paul calls, with distinctive
emphasis, [Non ASCII Characters] the pre eminent or complete
resurrection, the prefix being used as an intensive. This is what
the apostle considers uncertain and labors to secure, "stretching
forward and pressing towards the goal for the prize of that call
upwards," [Non ASCII Characters] (that invitation to heaven,)
"which God has extended through Christ." Those who are condemned
at the judgment can have no part in this completion of the
resurrection, cannot enter the heavenly kingdom, but must be
"punished with everlasting destruction from the presence and glory
of the Lord," that is, as we suppose is signified, be thrust into
the under world for evermore. As unessential to our object, we
have omitted an exposition of the Pauline doctrine of the natural
rank and proper or delegated offices of Christ in the universe;
also an examination of the validity of the doubts and arguments
brought against the genuineness of the lesser epistles ascribed to
Paul. In close, we will sum up in brief array the leading
conceptions in his view of the last things. First, there is a
world of immortal light and bliss over the sky, the exclusive
abode of God and the angels from of old; and there is a dreary
world of darkness and repose under the earth, the abode of all
departed human spirits. Secondly, death was originally meant to
lead souls into heaven, clothed in new and divine bodies,
immediately on the fall of the present tabernacle; but sin broke
that plan and doomed souls to pass disembodied into Hades.
Thirdly, the Mosaic dispensation of law could not deliver men from
that sentence; but God had promised Abraham that through one of
his posterity they should be delivered. To fulfil that promise
Christ came. He illustrated God's unpurchased love and forgiveness
and determination to restore the original plan, as if men had
never sinned. Christ effected this aim, in conjunction with his
teachings, by dying, descending into Hades, as if the doom of a
sinful man were upon him also, subduing the powers of that prison
house, rising again, and ascending into heaven, the first one ever
admitted there from among the dead, thus exemplifying the
fulfilled "expectation of the creature that was groaning and
travailing in pain" to be born into the freedom of the heavenly
glory of the sons of God. Fourthly, "justification by faith,"
therefore, means the redemption from Hades by acceptance of the
dispensation of free grace which is proclaimed in the gospel.
Fifthly, every sanctified believer receives a pledge or earnest of
the spirit sealing him as God's and assuring him of acceptance
with Christ and of advance to heaven. Sixthly, Christ is speedily
to come a second time, come in glory and power irresistible, to
consummate his mission, raise the dead, judge the world, establish
a new order of things, and return into heaven with his chosen
ones. Seventhly, the stubbornly wicked portion of mankind will be
returned eternally into the under world. Eighthly, after the
judgment the subterranean realm of death will be shut up, no more
souls going into it, but all men at their dissolution being
instantly invested with spiritual bodies and ascending to the
glories of the Lord. Finally, Jesus having put down all enemies
and restored the primeval paradise will yield up his mediatorial
throne, and God the Father be all in all.
The preparatory rudiments of this system of the last things
existed in the belief of the age, and it was itself composed by
the union of a theoretic interpretation of the life of Christ and
of the connected phenomena succeeding his death, with the elements
of Pharasaic Judaism, all mingled in the crucible of the soul of
Paul and fused by the fires of his experience. It illustrates a
great number of puzzling passages in the New Testament, without
the necessity of recourse to the unnatural, incredible,
unwarranted dogmas associated with them by the unique, isolated
peculiarities of Calvinism. The interpretation given above, moreover,
has this strong confirmation of its accuracy, namely, that it is
arrived at from the stand point of the thought and life of the
Apostle Paul in the first century, not from the stand point of the
theology and experience of the educated Christian of the
nineteenth century.
CHAPTER V.
JOHN'S DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
WE are now to see if we can determine and explain what were the
views of the Apostle John upon the subject of death and life,
condemnation and salvation, the resurrection and immortality. To
understand his opinions on these points, it is obviously necessary
to examine his general system of theological thought. John is
regarded as the writer of the proem to the fourth Gospel, also of
three brief epistles. There are such widely spread doubts of his
being the author of the Apocalypse that it has seemed better to
examine that production separately, leaving each one free to
attribute its doctrine of the last things to whatever person known
or unknown he believes wrote the book. It is true that the
authorship of the fourth Gospel itself is powerfully disputed; but
an investigation of that question would lead us too far and detain
us too long from our real aim, which is not to discuss the
genuineness or the authority of the New Testament documents, but
to show their meaning in what they actually contain and imply
concerning a future life. It is necessary to premise that we think
it certain that John wrote with some reference to the sprouting
philosophy of his time, the Platonic and Oriental speculations so
early engrafted upon the stock of Christian doctrine. For the
peculiar theories which were matured and systematized in the
second and third centuries by the Gnostic sects were floating
about, in crude and fragmentary forms, at the close of the first
century, when the apostle wrote. They immediately awakened
dissension and alarm, cries of heresy and orthodoxy, in the
Church. Some modern writers deny the presence in the New Testament
of any allusion to such views; but the weight of evidence on the
other side internal, from similarity of phrase, and external, from
the testimony of early Fathers is, when accumulated and
appreciated, overwhelming. Among these Gnostic notions the most
distinctive and prominent was the belief that the world was
created and the Jewish dispensation given, not by the true and
infinite God, but by a subordinate and imperfect deity, the
absolute God remaining separate from all created things, unknown
and afar, in the sufficiency of his aboriginal pleroma or fulness.
The Gnostics also maintained that Creative Power, Reason, Life,
Truth, Love, and other kindred realities, were individual beings,
who had emanated from God, and who by their own efficiency
constructed, illuminated, and carried on the various provinces of
creation and races of existence. Many other opinions, fanciful,
absurd, or recondite, which they held, it is not necessary here to
state. The evangelist, without alluding perhaps to any particular
teachers or systems of these doctrines, but only to their general
scope, traverses by his declarations partially the same ground of
thought which they cover, stating dogmatically the positive facts
as he apprehended them. He agrees with some of the Gnostic
doctrines and differs from others, not setting himself to follow
or to oppose them indiscriminately, but to do either as the truth
seemed to him to require.
There are two methods of seeking the meaning of the introduction
to the fourth Gospel where the Johannean doctrine of the Logos is
condensed. We may study it grammatically, or historically;
morally, or metaphysically; from the point of view of experimental
religious faith, or from that of contemporary speculative
philosophy. He who omits either of these ways of regarding the
subject must arrive at an interpretation essentially defective.
Both modes of investigation are indispensable for acquiring a full
comprehension of the expressions employed and the thoughts
intended. But to be fitted to understand the theme in its
historical aspect which, in this case, for purposes of criticism,
is by far the more important one must be intelligently acquainted
with the Hebrew personification of the Wisdom, also of the Word,
of God; with the Platonic conception of archetypal ideas; with the
Alexandrian Jewish doctrine of the Divine Logos; and with the
relevant Gnostic and Christian speculation and phraseology of the
first two centuries. Especially must the student be familiar with
Philo, who was an eminent Platonic Jewish philosopher and a
celebrated writer, flourishing previous to the composition of the
fourth Gospel, in which, indeed, there is scarcely a single
superhuman predicate of Christ which may not be paralleled with
striking closeness from his extant works. In all these fields are
found, in imperfect proportions and fragments, the materials which
are developed in John's belief of the Logos become flesh. To
present all these materials here would be somewhat out of place
and would require too much room. We shall, therefore, simply
state, as briefly and clearly as possible, the final conclusions
to which a thorough study has led us, drawing such illustrations
as we do advance almost entirely from Philo.1
1 The reader who wishes to see in smallest compass and most lucid
order the facts requisite for the formation of a judgment is
referred to Lucke's "Dissertation on the Logos," to Norton's
"Statement of Reasons," and to Neander's exposition of the
Johannean theology in his "Planting and Training of the Church."
Nearly every thing important, both external and internal, is
collected in these three sources taken together, and set forth
with great candor, power, and skill. Differing in their conclusions,
they supply pretty adequate means for the independent student to
conclude for himself.
In the first place, what view of the Father himself, the absolute
Deity, do these writings present? John conceives of God no one can
well collate the relevant texts in his works without perceiving
this as the one perfect and eternal Spirit, in himself invisible
to mortal eyes, the Personal Love, Life, Truth, Light, "in whom is
no darkness at all." This corresponds entirely with the purest and
highest idea the human mind can form of the one untreated infinite
God. The apostle, then, going back to the period anterior to the
material creation, and soaring to the contemplation of the sole
God, does not conceive of him as being utterly alone, but as
having a Son with him, an "only begotten Son," a beloved companion
"before the foundation of the world." "In the beginning was the
Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. He was
in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and
without him was nothing made that was made." The true explanation
of these words, according to their undeniable historical and their
unforced grammatical. There is an English translation of it, by
Professor G. R. Noyes, in the numbers of the Christian Examiner
for March and May, 1849, meaning, is as follows. Before the
material creation, when God was yet the sole being, his first
production, the Logos, was a Son, at once the image of himself and
the idea of the yet uncreated world. By him this personal Idea,
Son, or Logos all things were afterward created; or, more exactly,
through him, by means of him, all things became, that is, were
brought, from their being in a state of conception in the mind of
God, into actual existence in space and time. Thus Philo says,
"God is the most generic; second is the Logos of God."2 "The Logos
is the first begotten Son."3 "The Logos of God is above the whole
world, and is the most ancient and generic of all that had a
beginning."4 "Nothing intervenes between the Logos and God on whom
he rests."5 "This sensible world is the junior son of God; the
Senior is the Idea,"6 or Logos. "The shadow and seeming portrait
of God is his Logos, by which, as by an assumed instrument, he
made the world. As God is the original of the image here called
shadow, so this image becomes the original of other things."7 "The
intelligible world, or world of archetypal ideas, is the Logos of
the world creating God; as an intelligible or ideal city is the
thought of the architect reflecting to build a sensible city."8
"Of the world, God is the cause by which, the four elements the
material from which, the Logos the instrument through which, the
goodness of the Creator the end for which, it was made."9 These
citations from Philo clearly show, in various stages of
development, that doctrine of the Logos which began first arguing
to the Divine Being from human analogies with separating the
conception of a plan in the mind of God from its execution in
fact; proceeded with personifying that plan, or sum of ideas, as a
mediating agent between motive and action, between impulse and
fulfilment; and ended with hypostatizing the arranging power of
the Divine thought as a separate being, his intellectual image or
Son, his first and perfect production. They unequivocally express
these thoughts: that God is the only being who was from eternity;
that the Logos was the first begotten, antemundane being, that he
was the likeness, image, immediate manifestation, of the Father;
that he was the medium of creation, the instrumental means in the
outward formation of the world. History shows us this doctrine
unfolded by minute steps, which it would be tedious to follow,
from the Book of Proverbs to Philo Judaus and John, from Plato to
Justin Martyr and Athanasius. But the rapid sketch just presented
may be sufficient now.
When it is written, "and the Logos was God," the meaning is not
strictly literal. To guard against its being so considered, the
author tautologically repeats what he had said immediately before,
"the same was in the beginning with God." Upon the supposition
that the Logos is strictly identical with God, the verses make
utter nonsense. "In the beginning was God, and God was with God,
and God was God. God was in the beginning with God." But suppose
the Logos to mean an ante mundane but subordinate being, who was a
perfect image or likeness of God, and the sense is both clear and
satisfactory, and no violence is done either to historical data or
to grammatical demands. "And the Logos was God," that is, was the
mirror or facsimile of God. So, employing the same idiom, we are
accustomed to say
2 Mangey's edition of Philo, vol. i. p. 82.
3 Ibid. p. 308.
4 Ibid. p. 121.
5 Ibid. p. 560.
6 Ibid. p. 277.
7 Ibid. p. 106.
8 Ibid. p. 5.
9 Ibid. p. 162.
of an accurate representation of a person, It is the very man
himself! Or, without the use of this idiom, we may explain the
expression "the Logos was God" thus: He stands in the place of God
to the lower creation: practically considered, he is as God to us.
As Philo writes, "To the wise and perfect the Most High is God;
but to us, imperfect beings, the Logos God's interpreter is
God."10
The inward significance of the Logos doctrine, in all its degrees
and phases, circumstantially and essentially, from first to last,
is the revelation of God. God himself, in himself, is conceived as
absolutely withdrawn beyond the apprehension of men, in boundless
immensity and inaccessible secrecy. His own nature is hidden, as a
thought is hidden in the mind; but he has the power of revealing
it, as a thought is revealed by speaking it in a word. That
uttered word is the Logos, and is afterwards conceived as a
person, and as creative, then as building and glorifying the
world. All of God that is sent forth from passive concealment into
active manifestation is the Logos. "The term Logos comprehends,"
Norton says, "all the attributes of God manifested in the creation
and government of the universe." The Logos is the hypostasis of
"the unfolded portion," "the revealing power," "the self showing
faculty," "the manifesting action," of God. The essential idea,
then, concerning the Logos is that he is the means through which
the hidden God comes to the cognizance of his creatures. In
harmony with this prevailing philosophy one who believed the Logos
to have been incarnated in Christ would suppose the purpose of his
incarnation to be the fuller revelation of God to men. And
Martineau says, "The view of revelation which is implicated in the
folds of the Logos doctrine that everywhere pervades the fourth
Gospel, is that it is the appearance to beings who have something
of a divine spirit within them, of a yet diviner without them,
leading them to the divinest of all, who embraces them both." This
is a fine statement of the practical religious aspect of John's
conception of the nature and office of the Savior.
Since he regarded God as personal love, life, truth, and light,
and Christ, the embodied Logos, as his only begotten Son, an exact
image of him in manifestation, it follows that John regarded
Christ, next in rank below God, as personal love, life, truth, and
light; and the belief that he was the necessary medium of
communicating these Divine blessings to men would naturally
result. Accordingly, we find that John repeats, as falling from
the lips of Christ, all the declarations required by and
supporting such an hypothesis. "I am the way, the truth, and the
life." "No man cometh unto the Father but by me." But Philo, too,
had written before in precisely the same strain. Witness the
correspondences between the following quotations respectively from
John and Philo. "I am the bread which came down from heaven to
give life to the world."11 Whoso eateth my body and drinketh my
blood hath eternal life."12 "Behold, I rain bread upon you from
heaven: the heavenly food of the soul is the word of God, and the
Divine Logos, from whom all eternal instructions and wisdoms
flow."13 "The bread the Lord gave us to eat was his word."14
"Except ye eat my flesh and drink my blood, ye have no life
10 Mangey's edition of Philo, vol. ii. p. 128.
11 John vi. 33. 41.
12 Ibid. 54.
13 Quoted by G. Scheffer in his Treatise "De Usu
Philonis in Interpretatione Novi Testamenti," p. 82.
14 lbid. p. 81.
in you."15 "He alone can become the heir of incorporeal and divine
things whose whole soul is filled with the salubrious Word."16
"Every one that seeth the Son and believeth on him shall have
everlasting life."17 "He strains every nerve towards the highest
Divine Logos, who is the fountain of wisdom, in order that,
drawing from that spring, he may escape death and win everlasting
life."18 "I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if
any man eat of this bread he shall live forever."19 "Lifting up
his eyes to the ether, man receives manna, the Divine Logos,
heavenly and immortal nourishment for the right desiring soul."20
"God is the perennial fountain of life; God is the fountain of the
most ancient Logos."21 "As the living Father hath sent me, and I
live by the Father, so he that eateth me, even he shall live by
me."22 Does it not seem perfectly plain that John's doctrine of
the Christ is at bottom identical with Philo's doctrine of the
Logos? The difference of development in the two doctrines, so far
as there is a difference, is that the latter view is
philosophical, abstract; the former, practical, historical. Philo
describes the Logos ideally, filling the supersensible sphere,
mediating between the world and God; John presents him really,
incarnated as a man, effecting the redemption of our race. The
same dignity, the same offices, are predicated of him by both.
John declares, "In him [the Divine Logos] was life, and the life
was the light of men."23 Philo asserts, "Nothing is more luminous
and irradiating than the Divine Logos, by the participation of
whom other things expel darkness and gloom, earnestly desiring to
partake of living light."24 John speaks of Christ as "the only
begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father."25 Philo says,
"The Logos is the first begotten Son of God," "between whom and
God nothing intervenes."26 John writes, "The Son of man will give
you the food of everlasting life; for him hath God the Father
sealed."27 Philo writes, "The stamp of the seal of God is the
immortal Logos."28 We have this from John: "He was manifested to
take away our sins; and in him is no sin."29 And this from Philo:
"The Divine Logos is free from all sins, voluntary and
involuntary."30
The Johannean Christ is the Philonean Logos born into the world as
a man. "And the Logos was made flesh, and dwelt among us, full of
grace and truth." The substance of what has thus far been
established may now be concisely stated. The essential thought,
whether the subject be metaphysically or practically considered,
is this. God is the eternal, infinite personality of love and
truth, life and light. The Logos is his first born Son, his exact
image, the reproduction of his being, the next lower personality
of love and truth, life and light, the instrument for creating and
ruling the world, the revelation of God, the medium of
communication between God and his works. Christ is that Logos come
upon the earth as a man to save the perishing, proving his pre
existence and superhuman nature by his miraculous knowledge and
works. That the belief expressed in the last sentence is correctly
attributed to John will
15 John vi. 53.
16 Philo, vol. i. p. 482.
17 John vi. 40.
18 Philo, vol. i. p. 560.
19 John vi. 51.
20 Philo, vol. i. p. 498.
21 Ibid. pp. 575, 207.
22 John vi. 57.
23 John i. 4.
24 Philo, vol. i. p. 121.
25 John i. 18.
26 Philo, vol. i. pp. 427, 560.
27 John vi. 27.
28 Philo, vol. ii. p. 606.
29 1 John iii. 5.
30 Philo, vol. i. p. 562.
be repeatedly substantiated before the close of this chapter: in
regard to the statements in the preceding sentences no further
proof is thought necessary.
With the aid of a little repetition, we will now attempt to make a
step of progress. The tokens of energy, order, splendor,
beneficence, in the universe, are not, according to John, as we
have seen, the effects of angelic personages, emanating gods,
Gnostic aons, but are the workings of the self revealing power of
the one true and eternal God, this power being conceived by John,
according to the philosophy of his age, as a proper person, God's
instrument in creation. Reason, life, light, love, grace,
righteousness, kindred terms so thickly scattered over his pages,
are not to him, as they were to the Gnostics, separate beings, but
are the very working of the Logos, consubstantial manifestations
of God's nature and attributes. But mankind, fallen into folly and
vice, perversity and sin, lying in darkness, were ignorant that
these Divine qualities were in reality mediate exhibitions of God,
immediate exhibitions of the Logos. "The light was shining in
darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not." Then, to reveal
to men the truth, to regenerate them and conjoin them through
himself with the Father in the experience of eternal life, the
hypostatized Logos left his transcendent glory in heaven and came
into the world in the person of Jesus. "No man hath seen God at
any time: the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father,
he hath revealed him." "I came down from heaven to do the will of
Him that sent me." This will is that all who see and believe on
the Son shall have everlasting life. "God so loved the world that
he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him
should not perish, but have everlasting life." "The bread of God
is He who cometh down from heaven and giveth life to the world."
The doctrine of the pre existence of souls, and of their being
born into the world in the flesh, was rife in Judea when this
Gospel was written, and is repeatedly alluded to in it.31 That
John applies this doctrine to Christ in the following and in other
instances is obvious. "Before Abraham was, I am." "I came forth
from the Father and am come into the world." "Father, glorify thou
me with the glory which I had with thee before the world was."
"What and if ye shall see the Son of Man ascend up where he was
before?" As for ourselves, we do not see how it is possible for
any unprejudiced person, after studying the fourth Gospel
faithfully with the requisite helps, to doubt that the writer of
it believed that Jesus pre existed as the Divine Logos, and that
he became incarnate to reveal the Father and to bring men into the
experience of true eternal life. John declares this, in his first
epistle, in so many words, saying, "The living Logos, the eternal
life which was with the Father from the beginning, was manifested
unto us;" and, "God sent his only begotten Son into the world that
we might live through him." Whether the doctrine thus set forth
was really entertained and taught by Jesus himself, or whether it
is the interpretation put on his language by one whose mind was
full of the notions of the age, are distinct questions. With the
settlement of these questions we are not now concerned: such a
discussion would be more appropriate when examining the genuine
meaning of the words of Christ. All that is necessary here is the
suggestion that when we show the theological system of John it
does not necessarily follow that that is the true
31 John i. 21; ix. 2.
teaching of Christ. Having adopted the Logos doctrine, it might
tinge and turn his thoughts and words when reporting from memory,
after the lapse of many years, the discourses of his Master. He
might unconsciously, under such an influence, represent literally
what was figuratively intended, and reflect from his own mind
lights and shades, associations and meanings, over all or much of
what he wrote. There are philosophical and literary peculiarities
which have forced many of the best critics to make this
distinction between the intended meaning of Christ's declarations
as he uttered them, and their received meaning as this evangelist
reported them. Norton says, "Whether St. John did or did not adopt
the Platonic conception of the Logos is a question not important
to be settled in order to determine our own judgment concerning
its truth."32 Lucke has written to the same effect, but more
fully: "We are allowed to distinguish the sense in which John
understood the words of Christ, from the original sense in which
Christ used them."33
It is to be observed that in all that has been brought forward,
thus far, there is not the faintest hint of the now current notion
of the Trinity. The idea put forth by John is not at all allied
with the idea that the infinite God himself assumed a human shape
to walk the earth and undergo mortal sufferings. It is simply said
that that manifested and revealing portion of the Divine
attributes which constituted the hypostatized Logos was incarnated
and displayed in a perfect, sinless sample of man, thus exhibiting
to the world a finite image of God. We will illustrate this
doctrine with reference to the inferences to be drawn from it in
regard to human nature. John repeatedly says, in effect, "God is
truth," "God is light," "God is love," "God is life." He likewise
says of the Savior, "In him was life, and the life was the light
of men," and reports him as saying of himself, "I am the truth,"
"I am the life," "I am the light of the world." The fundamental
meaning of these declarations so numerous, striking, and varied in
the writings of John is, that all those qualities which the
consciousness of humanity has recognised as Divine are
consubstantial with the being of God; that all the reflections of
them in nature and man belong to the Logos, the eldest Son, the
first production, of God; and that in Jesus their personality, the
very Logos himself, was consciously embodied, to be brought nearer
to men, to be exemplified and recommended to them. Reason, power,
truth, light, love, blessedness, are not individual aons, members
of a hierarchy of deities, but are the revealing elements of the
one true God. The personality of the abstract and absolute fulness
of all these substantial qualities is God. The personality of the
discerpted portion of them shown in the universe is the Logos.
Now, that latter personality Christ was. Consequently, while he
was a man, he was not merely a man, but was also a supernatural
messenger from heaven, sent into the world to impersonate the
image of God under the condition of humanity, free from every
sinful defect and spot. Thus, being the manifesting representative
of the Father, he could say, "He that hath seen me hath
[virtually] seen the Father." Not that they were identical in
person, but that they were similar in nature and character, spirit
and design: both were eternal holiness, love, truth, and life. "I
and my Father are one thing," (in essence, not in personality.)
Nothing can be more
32 Statement of Reasons, 1st ed. p. 239.
33 Christian Examiner, May, 1849, p. 431.
unequivocally pronounced than the subordination of the Son to the
Father that the Father sent him, that he could do nothing without
the Father, that his Father was greater than he, that his
testimony was confirmed by the Father's in a hundred places by
John, both as author writing his own words and as interpreter
reporting Christ's. There is not a text in the record that implies
Christ's identity with God, but only his identity with the Logos.
The identity of the Logos with God is elementary, not personal.
From this view it follows that every man who possesses, knows, and
exhibits the elements of the Divine life, the characteristics of
God, is in that degree a son of God, Christ being pre eminently
the Son on account of his pre eminent likeness, his supernatural
divinity, as the incarnate Logos.
That the apostle held and taught this conclusion appears, first,
from the fact, otherwise inexplicable, that he records the same
sublime statements concerning all good Christians, with no other
qualification than that of degree, that he does concerning Christ
himself. Was Jesus the Son of God? "To as many as received him he
gave power to become the sons of God." There is in Philo a passage
corresponding remarkably with this one from John: "Those who have
knowledge of the truth are properly called sons of God: he who is
still unfit to be named a son of God should endeavor to fashion
himself to the first born Logos of God."34 Was Jesus "from above,"
while wicked men were "from beneath"? "They are not of the world,
even as I am not of the world." Was Jesus sent among men with a
special commission? "As thou hast sent me into the world, even so
have I also sent them into the world." Was Jesus the subject of a
peculiar glory, bestowed upon him by the Father? "The glory which
thou gavest me I have given them, that they may be one, even as we
are one." Had Jesus an inspiration and a knowledge not vouchsafed
to the princes of this world? "Ye have an unction from the Holy
One, and ye know all things." Did Jesus perform miraculous works?
"He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also."
In the light of the general principle laid down, that God is the
actual fulness of truth and love and light and blessedness; that
Christ, the Logos, is the manifested impersonation of them; and
that all men who receive him partake of their Divine substance and
enjoy their prerogative, the texts just cited, and numerous other
similar ones, are transparent. It is difficult to see how on any
other hypothesis they can be made to express an intelligible and
consistent meaning.
Secondly, we are brought to the same conclusion by the synonymous
use and frequent interchange of different terms in the Johannean
writings. Not only it is said, "Whoever is born of God cannot
sin," but it is also written, "Every one that doeth righteousness
is born of God;" and again, "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the
Christ is born of God." In other words, having a good character
and leading a just life, heartily receiving and obeying the
revelation made by Christ, are identical phrases. "He that hath
the Son hath life." "Whosoever transgresseth and abideth not in
the doctrine of Christ hath not God." "This is the victory that
overcometh the world, even our faith" in the doctrine of Christ.
"He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him." "He
that keepeth the commandments dwelleth in God and God in him." "He
that confesseth that Jesus is the Son of God, God
34 Philo, vol. i. p. 427.
dwelleth in him and he in God." "He that doeth good is of God."
"God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son."
"The Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding that
we may know the true God and eternal life." From these citations,
and from other passages which will readily occur, we gather the
following pregnant results. To "do the truth," "walk in the
truth," "walk in the light," "keep the commandments," "do
righteousness," "abide in the doctrine of Christ," "do the will of
God," "do good," "dwell in love," "abide in Christ," "abide in
God," "abide in life," all are expressions meaning precisely the
same thing. They all signify essentially the conscious possession
of goodness; in other words, the practical adoption of the life
and teachings of Jesus; or, in still other terms, the personal
assimilation of the spiritual realities of the Logos, which are
love, life, truth, light. Jesus having been sent into the world to
exemplify the characteristics and claims of the Father, and to
regenerate men from unbelief and sin to faith and righteousness,
those who were walking in darkness, believers of lies and doers of
unrighteousness, those who were abiding in alienation and death,
might by receiving and following him be restored to the favor of
God and pass from darkness and death into life and light. "This is
eternal life, that they should know thee, the only true God, and
Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent."
The next chief point in the doctrine of John is his belief in an
evil being, the personality of wickedness, and the relation
between him and bad men. There have been, from the early
centuries, keen disputes on the question whether this apostle uses
the terms devil and evil one with literal belief or with
figurative accommodation. We have not a doubt that the former is
the true view. The popular denial of the existence of evil
spirits, with an arch demon over them, is the birth of a
philosophy much later than the apostolic age. The use of the term
"devil" merely as the poetic or ethical personification of the
seductive influences of the world is the fruit of theological
speculation neither originated nor adopted by the Jewish prophets
or by the Christian apostles. Whoso will remember the prevailing
faith of the Jews at that time, and the general state of
speculative opinion, and will recollect the education of John, and
notice the particular manner in which he alludes to the subject
throughout his epistles and in his reports of the discourses of
Jesus, we think will be convinced that the Johannean system
includes a belief in the actual existence of Satan according to
the current Pharisaic dogma of that age. It is not to be
disguised, either, that the investigations of the ablest critics
have led an overwhelming majority of them to this interpretation.
"I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the evil
one." "He that is begotten of God guardeth himself, and the evil
one toucheth him not." "He that committeth sin is of the devil,
for the devil sinneth from the beginning." "Whosoever is born of
God cannot sin. In this the children of God are manifest, and the
children of the devil." "Ye are of your father the devil, and his
lusts ye will do." There can be no doubt that these, and other
passages of a kindred and complementary nature, yield the
following view. Good men are allied to God, because their
characteristics are the same as his, truth, light, love, life,
righteousness. "As he is, so are we in this world." Bad men are
allied to the devil, because their characteristics are the same as
his, falsehood, darkness, hatred, death, sin. "Cain, who slew his
brother, was of the evil one." The facts, then, of the great moral
problem of the world, according to John, were these. God is the
infinite Father, whose nature and attributes comprehend all holy,
beautiful, desirable realities, and who would draw mankind to his
blessed embrace forever. The goodness, illumination, and joy of
holy souls reflect his holiness and display his reign. The devil
is the great spirit of wickedness, whose attributes comprehend all
evil, dark, fearful realities, and who entices mankind to sin. The
wickedness, gloom, and misery of corrupt souls reveal his likeness
and his kingdom.
The former manifests himself in the glories of the world and in
the divine qualities of the soul. The latter manifests himself in
the whole history of temptation and sin and in the vicious
tendencies of the heart. Good men, those possessing pre eminently
the moral qualities of God, are his children, are born of him,
that is, are inspired and led by him. Bad men, those possessing in
a ruling degree the qualities of the devil, are his children, are
born of him, that is, are animated and governed by his spirit.
Whether the evangelist gave to his own mind any philosophical
account of the origin and destiny of the devil or not is a
question concerning which his writings are not explicit enough for
us to determine. In the beginning he represents God as making, by
means of the Logos, all things that were made, and his light as
shining in darkness that comprehended it not. Now, he may have
conceived of matter as uncreated, eternally existing in formless
night, the ground of the devil's being, and may have limited the
work of creation to breaking up the sightless chaos, defining it
into orderly shapes, filling it with light and motion, and
peopling it with children of heaven. Such was the Persian faith,
familiar at that time to the Jews. Neander, with others, objects
to this view that it would destroy John's monotheism and make him
a dualist, a believer in two self existents, aboriginal and
everlasting antagonists. It only needs to be observed, in reply,
that John was not a philosopher of such thorough dialectic
training as to render it impossible for inconsistencies to coexist
in his thoughts. In fact, any one who will examine the beliefs of
even such men as Origen and Augustine will perceive that such an
objection is not valid. Some writers of ability and eminence have
tried to maintain that the Johannean conception of Satan was of
some exalted archangel who apostatized from the law of God and
fell from heaven into the abyss of night, sin, and woe. They could
have been led to such an hypothesis only by preconceived notions
and prejudices, because there is not in John's writings even the
obscurest intimation of such a doctrine. On the contrary, it is
written that the devil is a liar and the father of lies from the
beginning, the same phrase used to denote the primitive
companionship of God and his Logos anterior to the creation. The
devil is spoken of by John, with prominent consistency, as bearing
the same relation to darkness, falsehood, sin, and death that God
bears to light, truth, righteousness, and life, that is, as being
their original personality and source. Whether the belief itself
be true or not, be reconcilable with pure Christianity or not, in
our opinion John undoubtedly held the belief of the personality of
the source of wickedness, and supposed that the great body of
mankind had been seduced by him from the free service of heaven,
and had become infatuated in his bondage.
Just here in the scheme of Christianity arises the necessity,
appears the profound significance in the apostolic belief, of that
disinterested interference of God through his revelation in Christ
which aimed to break the reigning power of sin and redeem lost
men from the tyranny of Satan. "For this purpose the Son of God
was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil."
That is to say, the revelation of the nature and will of God in
the works of the creation and in the human soul was not enough,
even when aided by the law of Moses, to preserve men in the
truth and the life. They had been seduced by the evil one into
sin, alienated from the Divine favor, and plunged in darkness
and death. A fuller, more powerful manifestation of the
character, claims, attractions of the Father was necessary to
recall the benighted wanderers from their lost state and restore
them to those right relations and to that conscious communion with
God in which alone true life consists. Then, and for that purpose,
Jesus Christ was commissioned to appear, a pre existent being of
most exalted rank, migrating from the super stellar sphere into
this world, to embody and mirror forth through the flesh those
characteristics which are the natural attributes of God the Father
and the essential conditions of heaven the home. In him the
glorious features of the Divinity were miniatured on a finite
scale and perfectly exhibited, "thus revealing," (as Neander says,
in his exposition of John's doctrine,) "for the first time, in a
comprehensible manner, what a being that God is whose holy
personality man was created to represent." So Philo says, "The
Logos is the image of God, and man is the image of the Logos."35
Therefore, according to this view, man is the image of the image
of God. The dimmed, imperfect reflection of the Father, originally
shining in nature and the soul, would enable all who had not
suppressed it and lost the knowledge of it, to recognise at once
and adore the illuminated image of Him manifested and moving
before them in the person of the Son; the faint gleams of Divine
qualities yet left within their souls would spontaneously blend
with the full splendors irradiating the form of the inspired and
immaculate Christ. Thus they would enter into a new and
intensified communion with God, and experience an unparalleled
depth of peace and joy, an inspired assurance of eternal life. But
those who, by worldliness and wickedness, had obscured and
destroyed all their natural knowledge of God and their affinities
to him, being without the inward preparation and susceptibility
for the Divine which the Savior embodied and manifested, would not
be able to receive it, and thus would pass an infallible sentence
upon themselves. "When the Comforter is come, he will convict the
world of sin, because they believe not on me." "He that believeth
on the Son hath eternal life; but he that believeth not is
condemned already, in that he loveth darkness rather than light."
"Hereby know we the spirit of truth and the spirit of error: he
that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not
us." "Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ?"
The idea is, that such a denial must be caused by inward
depravity, could only spring from an evil character.
In the ground thought just presented we may find the explanation
of the seemingly obscure and confused use of terms in the
following instances, and learn to understand more fully John's
idea of the effect of spiritual contact with Christ. "He that
doeth righteousness is born of God." "He that believeth Jesus to
be the Christ is born of God." "He that denieth the Son, the same
hath not the Father." "He that hath the Son hath life." These
passages all become perspicuous and concordant in view of John's
conception of the inward unity of
35 Philo, vol. i. p. 106.
truth, or the universal oneness of the Divine life, in God, in
Christ, in all souls that partake of it. A character in harmony
with the character of God will, by virtue of its inherent light
and affinity, recognise the kindred attributes or characteristics
of God, wherever manifested. He who perceives and embraces the
Divinity in the character of Christ proves thereby that he was
prepared to receive it by kindred qualities residing in himself,
proves that he was distinctively of God. He who fails to perceive
the peculiar glory of Christ proves thereby that he was alienated
and blinded by sin and darkness, distinctively of the evil one.
Varying the expression to illustrate the thought, if the light and
warmth of a living love of God were in a soul, it would
necessarily, when brought into contact with the concentrated
radiance of Divinity incarnated and beaming in Christ, effect a
more fervent, conscious, and abiding union with the Father than
could be known before he was thus revealed. But if iniquities,
sinful lusts, possessing the soul, had made it hard and cold, even
the blaze of spotless virtues and miraculous endowments in the
manifesting Messiah would be the radiation of light upon darkness
insensible to it. Therefore, the presentation of the Divine
contents of the soul or character of Jesus to different persons
was an unerring test of their previous moral state: the good would
apprehend him with a thrill of unison, the bad would not. To have
the Son, to have the Father, to have the truth, to have eternal
life, all are the same thing: hence, where one is predicated or
denied all are predicated or denied.
Continuing our investigation, we shall find the distinction drawn
of a sensual or perishing life and a spiritual or eternal life.
The term world (kosmos) is used by John apparently in two
different senses. First, it seems to signify all mankind, divided
sometimes into the unbelievers and the Christians. "Christ is the
propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the
sins of the whole world." "God sent not his Son to condemn the
world, but that the world through him might be saved." It is
undeniable that "world" here means not the earth, but the men on
the earth. Secondly, "world" in the dialect of John means all the
evil, all the vitiating power, of the material creation. "Now
shall the Prince of this world be cast out." It is not meant that
this is the devil's world, because John declares in the beginning
that God made it; but he means that all diabolic influence comes
from the darkness of matter fighting against the light of
Divinity, and by a figure he says "world," meaning the evils in
the world, meaning all the follies, vanities, sins, seductive
influences, of the dark and earthy, the temporal and sensual. In
this case the love of the world means almost precisely what is
expressed by the modern word worldliness. "Love not the world,
neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the
world, the love of the Father is not in him."
In a vein strikingly similar, Philo writes, "It is impossible for
the love of the world and the love of God to coexist, as it is
impossible for light and darkness to coexist."36 "For all that is
in the world," says John, "the lust of the flesh, and the greed of
the eyes, and the pomp of living, is not of the Father, but is of
the world. And the world passes away, with the lust thereof: but
he that does the will of God abides forever." He who is taken up
and absorbed in the gauds and pleasures of time and sense has no
deep spring of religious experience:
36 Philo, vol. ii. p. 649.
his enjoyments are of the decaying body; his heart and his thoughts
are set on things which soon fly away. But the earnest believer in
God pierces through all these superficial and transitory objects
and pursuits, and fastens his affections to imperishable verities:
he feels, far down in his soul, the living well of faith and
fruition, the cool fresh fountain of spiritual hope and joy, whose
stream of life flows unto eternity. The vain sensualist and hollow
worldling has no true life in him: his love reaches not beyond the
grave. The loyal servant of duty and devout worshipper of God has
a spirit of conscious superiority to death and oblivion: though
the sky fall, and the mountains melt, and the seas fade, he knows
he shall survive, because immaterial truth and love are deathless.
The whole thought contained in the texts we are considering is
embodied with singular force and beauty in the following passage
from one of the sacred books of the Hindus: "Who would have
immortal life must beware of outward things, and seek inward
truth, purity, and faith; for the treacherous and evanescent world
flies from its votaries, like the mirage, or devil car, which
moves so swiftly that one cannot ascend it." The mere negation of
real life or blessedness is predicated of the careless worldling;
positive death or miserable condemned unrest is predicated of the
bad hearted sinner. Both these classes of men, upon accepting
Christ, that is, upon owning the Divine characteristics incarnate
in him, enter upon a purified, exalted, and new experience. "He
that hates his brother is a murderer and abides in death." "We
know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the
brethren." This new experience is distinctively, emphatically,
life; it is spiritual peace, joy, trust, communion with God, and
therefore immortal. It brings with it its own sufficient evidence,
leaving its possessor free from misgiving doubts, conscious of his
eternity. "He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in
himself." "Hereby know we that we dwell in him and he in us,
because he hath given us of his spirit." "That ye may know that ye
have eternal life."
The objects of Christ's mission, so far as they refer to the
twofold purpose of revealing the Father by an impersonation of his
image, and giving new moral life to men by awakening within them a
conscious fellowship with Divine truth and goodness, have already
been unfolded. But this does not include the whole: all this might
have been accomplished by his appearance, authoritative teachings,
miracles, and return to heaven, without dying. Why, then, did he
die? What was the meaning or aim of his death and resurrection?
The apostle conceives that he came not only to reveal God and to
regenerate men, but also to be a "propitiation" for men's sins, to
redeem them from the penalty of their sins; and it was for this
end that he must suffer the doom of physical death. "Ye know that
he was manifested to take away our sins." It is the more difficult
to tell exactly what thoughts this language was intended by John
to convey, because his writings are so brief and miscellaneous, so
unsystematic and incomplete. He does not explain his own terms,
but writes as if addressing those who had previously received such
oral instruction as would make the obscurities clear, the hints
complete, and the fragments whole. We will first quote from John
all the important texts bearing on the point before us, and then
endeavor to discern and explain their sense. "If we walk in the
light as God is in the light, the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son,
cleanseth us from all sin." "He is the propitiation for our sins."
"Your sins are forgiven through his name."
"The whole world is subject to the evil one." These texts, few and
vague as they are, comprise every thing directly said by John upon
the atonement and redemption: other relevant passages merely
repeat the same substance. Certainly these statements do not of
themselves teach any thing like the Augustinian doctrine of
expiatory sufferings to placate the Father's indignation at sin
and sinners, or to remove, by paying the awful debt of justice,
the insuperable bars to forgiveness. Nothing of that sort is
anywhere intimated in the Johannean documents, even in the
faintest manner. So far from saying that there was unwillingness
or inability in the Father to take the initiative for our ransom
and pardon, he expressly avows, "Herein is love, not that we loved
God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation
for our sins." Instead of exclaiming, with the majority of modern
theologians, "Believe in the atoning death, the substitutional
sufferings, of Christ, and your sins shall then all be washed
away, and you shall be saved," he explicitly says, "If we confess
our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins." And
again: "Whosoever believeth in him" not in his death, but in him
"shall have eternal life." The allusions in John to the doctrine
of redemption and reconciliation do not mean, it is plain enough,
the buying off of the victims of eternal condemnation by the
vicarious pains of Jesus. What, then, do they mean? They are too
few, short, and obscure for us to decide this question
conclusively by their own light alone. We must get assistance from
abroad.
The reader will remember that it was the Jewish belief, and the
retained belief of the converts to Christianity, at that time,
that men's souls, in consequence of sin, were doomed upon leaving
the body to descend into the under world. This was the objective
penalty of sin, inherited from Adam. Now, Christ in his
superangelic state in heaven was not involved in sin or in its
doom of death and subterranean banishment. Yet at the will of the
Father he became a man, went through our earthly experiences, died
like a sinner, and after death descended into the prison of
disembodied souls below, then rose again and ascended into heaven
to the Father, to show men that their sins were forgiven, the
penalty taken away, and the path opened for them too to rise to
eternal life in the celestial mansions with Christ "and be with
him where he is." Christ's death, then, cleanses men from sin, he
is a propitiation for their sins, in two ways. First, by his
resurrection from the power of death and his ascent to heaven he
showed men that God had removed the great penalty of sin: by his
death and ascension he was the medium of giving them this
knowledge. Secondly, the joy, gratitude, love to God, awakened in
them by such glorious tidings, would purify their natures, exalt
their souls into spiritual freedom and virtue, into a blessed and
Divine life. According to this view, Christ was a vicarious
sacrifice, not in the sense that he suffered instead of the
guilty, to purchase their redemption from the iron justice of God,
but in the sense that, when he was personally free from any need
to suffer, he died for the sake of others, to reveal to them the
mighty boon of God's free grace, assuring them of the wondrous
gift of a heavenly immortality. This representation perfectly
fills and explains the language, without violence or arbitrary
suppositions, does it in harmony with all the exegetical
considerations, historical and grammatical; which no other view
that we know of can do.
There are several independent facts which lend strong confirmation
to the correctness of the exposition now given. We know that we
have not directly proved the justice of that exposition, only
constructively, inferentially, established it; not shown it to be
true, only made it appear plausible. But that plausibility becomes
an extreme probability nay, shall we not say certainty? when we
weigh the following testimonies for it. First, this precise
doctrine is unquestionably contained in other parts of the New
Testament. We have in preceding chapters demonstrated its
existence in Paul's epistles, in Peter's, in the Epistle to the
Hebrews, and in the Apocalypse. Therefore, since John's
phraseology is better explained by it than by any other
hypothesis, it is altogether likely that his real meaning was the
same.
Secondly, the terms "light" and "darkness," so frequent in this
evangelist, were not originated by him, but adopted. They were
regarded by the Persian theology, by Plato, by Philo, by the
Gnostics, as having a physical basis as well as a spiritual
significance. In their conceptions, physical light, as well as
spiritual holiness, was an efflux or manifestation from the
supernal God; physical darkness, as well as spiritual depravity,
was an emanation or effect from the infernal Satan, or principle
of evil. Is it not so in the usage of John? He uses the terms, it
is true, prevailingly in a moral sense: still, there is much in
his statements that looks as if he supposed they had a physical
ground. If so, then how natural is this connection of thought! All
good comes from the dazzling world of God beyond the sky; all evil
comes from the nether world of his adversary, the prince of
darkness. That John believed in a local heaven on high, the
residence of God, is made certain by scores of texts too plain to
be evaded. Would he not, then, in all probability, believe in a
local hell? Believing, as he certainly did, in a devil, the author
and lord of darkness, falsehood, and death, would he not conceive
a kingdom for him? In the development of ideas reached at that
time, it is evident that the conception of God implied an upper
world, his resplendent abode, and that the conception of Satan
equally implied an under world, his gloomy realm. To the latter
human souls were doomed by sin. From the former Christ came, and
returned to it again, to show that the Father would forgive our
sins and take us there.
Thirdly, John expected that Christ, after death, would return to
the Father in heaven. This appears from clear and reiterated
statements in his reports of the Savior's words. But after the
resurrection he tells us that Jesus had not yet ascended to the
Father, but was just on the point of going. "Touch me not, for I
am not yet ascended to my Father; but go to my brethren, and say
unto them, I ascend unto my Father." Where, then, did he suppose
the soul of his crucified Master had been during the interval
between his death and his resurrection? Dormant in the body, dead
with the body, laid in the tomb? That is opposed to the doctrine
of uninterrupted life which pervades his writings. Besides, such a
belief was held only by the Sadducees, whom the New Testament
stigmatizes. To assume that such was John's conception of the fact
is an arbitrary supposition, without the least warrant from any
source whatever. If he imagined the soul of Jesus during that time
to have been neither in heaven nor in the sepulchre, is it not
pretty sure that he supposed it was in the under world, the common
receptacle of souls, where, according to the belief of that age,
every man went after death?
Fourthly, it is to be observed, in favor of this general
interpretation, that the doctrine it unfolds is in harmony with
the contemporary opinions, a natural development from them, a
development which would be forced upon the mind of a Jewish
Christian accepting the resurrection of Christ as a fact. It was
the Jewish opinion that God dwelt with his holy angels in a world
of everlasting light above the firmament. It was the Jewish
opinion that the departed souls of men, on account of sin, were
confined beneath the earth in Satan's and death's dark and
slumberous cavern of shadows. It was the Jewish opinion that the
Messiah would raise the righteous dead and reign with them on
earth. Now, the first Christians clung to the Jewish creed and
expectations, with such modifications merely as the variation of
the actual Jesus and his deeds from the theoretical Messiah and
his anticipated achievements compelled. Then, when Christ having
been received as the bringer of glad tidings from the Father died,
and after three days rose from the dead and ascended to God,
promising his brethren that where he was they should come, must
they not have regarded it all as a dramatic exemplification of the
fact that the region of death was no longer a hopeless dungeon,
since one mighty enough to solve its chains and burst its gates
had returned from it? must they not have considered him as a
pledge that their sins were forgiven, their doom reversed, and
heaven attainable?
John, in common with all the first Christians, evidently expected
that the second advent of the Lord would soon take place, to
consummate the objects he had left unfinished, to raise the dead
and judge them, justifying the worthy and condemning the unworthy.
There was a well known Jewish tradition that the appearance of
Antichrist would immediately precede the triumphant coming of the
Messiah. John says, "Even now are there many Antichrists: thereby
we know that it is the last hour."37 "Abide in him, that, when he
shall appear, we may not be ashamed before him at his coming."
"That we may have boldness in the day of judgment." The
evangelist's outlook for the return of the Savior is also shown at
the end of his Gospel. "Jesus said not unto him, 'He shall not
die;' but, 'If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to
thee?'" That the doctrine of a universal resurrection which the
Jews probably derived, through their communication with the
Persians, from the Zoroastrian system, and, with various
modifications, adopted is embodied in the following passage, who
can doubt? "The hour is coming when all that are in the graves
shall hear the voice of the Son of Man and shall come forth." That
a general resurrection would literally occur under the auspices of
Jesus was surely the meaning of the writer of those words. Whether
that thought was intended to be conveyed by Christ in the exact
terms he really used or not is a separate question, with which we
are not now concerned, our object being simply to set forth John's
views. Some commentators, seizing the letter and neglecting the
spirit, have inferred from various texts that John expected that
the resurrection would be limited to faithful Christians, just as
the more rigid of the Pharisees confined it to the righteous Jews.
"Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, ye
have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood
hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day."
37 See the able and impartial discussion of John's belief on this
subject contained in Lucke's Commentary on the First Epistle of
John, i. 18-28.
To force this figure into a literal meaning is a mistake; for in
the preceding chapter it is expressly said that "They that have
done good shall come forth unto the resurrection of life; they
that have done evil unto the resurrection of condemnation." Both
shall rise to be judged; but as we conceive the most probable
sense of the phrases the good shall be received to heaven, the bad
shall be remanded to the under world. "Has no life in him" of
course cannot mean is absolutely dead, annihilated, but means has
not faith and virtue, the elements of blessedness, the
qualifications for heaven. The particular figurative use of words
in these texts may be illustrated by parallel idioms from Philo,
who says, "Of the living some are dead; on the contrary, the dead
live. For those lost from the life of virtue are dead, though they
reach the extreme of old age; while the good, though they are
disjoined from the body, live immortally."38 Again he writes,
"Deathless life delivers the dying pious; but the dying impious
everlasting death seizes."39 And a great many passages plainly
show that one element of Philo's meaning, in such phrases as
these, is, that he believed that, upon their leaving the body, the
souls of the good would ascend to heaven, while the souls of the
bad would descend to Hades. These discriminated events he supposed
would follow death at once. His thorough Platonism had weaned him
from the Persian Pharisaic doctrine of a common intermediate state
detaining the dead below until the triumphant advent of a Redeemer
should usher in the great resurrection and final judgment.40
John declares salvation to be conditional. "The blood of Christ"
that is, his death and what followed "cleanses us from all sin, if
we walk in the light as he is in the light;" not otherwise. "He
that believeth not the Son shall not see eternal life, but the
wrath of God abideth on him." "If any man see his brother commit a
sin which is not unto death, he shall pray, and shall receive life
for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do
not say that he shall pray for it." "Beloved, now are we the sons
of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know
that when he [Christ] shall appear we shall be like him, for we
shall see him as he is. Every man that hath this hope in him
purifieth himself, even as he is pure." The heads of the doctrine
which seems to underlie these statements are as follow. Christ
shall come again. All the dead shall rise for judicial ordeal.
Those counted worthy shall be accepted, be transfigured into the
resemblance of the glorious Redeemer and enter into eternal
blessedness in heaven. The rest shall be doomed to the dark
kingdom of death in the under world, to remain there for aught
that is hinted to the contrary forever. From these premises two
practical inferences are drawn in exhortations. First, we should
earnestly strive to fit ourselves for acceptance by moral purity,
brotherly love, and pious faith. Secondly, we should seek pardon
for our sins by confession and prayer, and take heed lest by
aggravated sin we deprave our souls beyond recovery. There are
those who sin unto death, for whom it is hopeless to pray. Light,
truth, and the divine life of heaven can never receive them;
darkness, falsehood, and the deep realm of death irrevocably
swallow them.
And now we may sum up in a few words the essential results of this
whole inquiry into the principles of John's theology, especially
as composing and shown in his doctrine of a
38 Vol. i. p. 554.
39 Ibid. p. 233.
40 See vol. i. pp. 139, 416, 417, 555, 643, 648; vol. ii. pp. 178,
433.
future life. First, God is personal love, truth, light, holiness,
blessedness. These realities, as concentrated in their
incomprehensible absoluteness, are the elements of his infinite
being. Secondly, these spiritual substances, as diffused through
the worlds of the universe and experienced in the souls of moral
creatures, are the medium of God's revelation of himself, the
direct presence and working of his Logos. Thirdly, the persons who
prevailingly partake of these qualities are God's loyal subjects
and approved children, in peaceful communion with the Father,
through the Son, possessing eternal life. Fourthly, Satan is
personal hatred, falsehood, darkness, sin, misery. These
realities, in their abstract nature and source, are his being; in
their special manifestations they are his efflux and power.
Fifthly, the persons who partake rulingly of these qualities are
the devil's enslaved subjects and lineal children: in sinful
bondage to him, in depraved communion with him, they dwell in a
state of hostile banishment and unhappiness, which is moral death.
Sixthly, Christ was the Logos who, descending from his anterior
glory in heaven, and appearing in mortal flesh, embodied all the
Divine qualities in an unflawed model of humanity, gathered up and
exhibited all the spiritual characteristics of the Father in a
stainless and perfect soul supernaturally filled and illumined,
thus to bear into the world a more intelligible and effective
revelation of God the Father than nature or common humanity
yielded, to shine with regenerating radiance upon the deadly
darkness of those who were groping in lying sins, "that they might
have life and that they might have it more abundantly." Seventhly,
the fickle and perishing experience of unbelieving and wicked men,
the vagrant life of sensuality and worldliness, the shallow life
in vain and transitory things, gives place in the soul of a
Christian to a profoundly earnest, unchanging experience of truth
and love, a steady and everlasting life in Divine and everlasting
things. Eighthly, the experimental reception of the revealed grace
and verity by faith and discipleship in Jesus is accompanied by
internal convincing proofs and seals of their genuineness,
validity, and immortality. They awaken a new consciousness, a new
life, inherently Divine and self warranting. Ninthly, Christ, by
his incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension, was a
propitiation for our sins, a mercy seat pledging forgiveness; that
is, he was the medium of showing us that mercy of God which
annulled the penalty of sin, the descent of souls to the gloomy
under world, and opened the celestial domains for the ransomed
children of earth to join the sinless angels of heaven. Tenthly,
Christ was speedily to make a second advent. In that last day the
dead should come forth for judgment, the good be exalted to
unfading glory with the Father and the Son, and the bad be left in
the lower region of noiseless shadows and dreams. These ten points
of view, we believe, command all the principal features of the
theological landscape which occupied the mental vision of the
writer of the Gospel and epistles bearing the superscription,
John.
CHAPTER VI.
CHRIST'S TEACHINGS CONCERNING THE FUTURE LIFE.