EVERY one, at least in the educated classes, knows that the authenticity
of the fourth gospel has been long and widely disputed. The most
careless reader is struck by the difference of tone between the simple
histories ascribed to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and the theological and
philosophical treatise which bears the name of John. After following
the three narratives, so simple in their structure, so natural in their
style, so unadorned by rhetoric, so free from philosophic terms,--after
reading these, it is with a feeling of surprise that we find ourselves,
plunged into the bewildering mazes of the Alexandrine philosophy, and
open our fourth gospel to be told that, "In the beginning was the word,
and the word was with God, and the word was God." We ask instinctively,
"How did John, the fisherman of Galilee, learn these phrases of the
Greek schools, and why does he mix up the simple story of his master
with the philosophy of that 'world which by wisdom knew not God?'"
The general Christian tradition is as follows: The spread! of
"heretical" views about the person of Jesus alarmed the "orthodox"
Christians, and they appealed to John, the last aged relic of the
apostolic band, to write a history of Jesus which should confute their
opponents, and establish the essential deity of the founder of their
religion. At their repeated solicitations, John wrote the gospel which
bears his name, and the doctrinal tone of it is due to its original
intention,--a treatise written against Cerinthus, and designed to
crush, with the authority of an apostle, the rising doubts as to
the pre-existence and absolute deity of Jesus of Nazareth. So far
non-Christians and Christians--including the writer of the gospel--are
agreed. This fourth gospel is not--say Theists--a simple biography
of Jesus written by a loving disciple as a memorial of a departed and
cherished friend, but a history written with a special object and to
prove a certain doctrine. "St. John's gospel is a polemical treatise,"
echoes Dr. Liddon. "These are written that ye may believe that Jesus
is the Christ, the Son of God," confesses the writer himself. Now, in
examining the credibility of any history, one of the first points
to determine is whether the historian is perfectly unbiassed in his
judgment and is therefore likely give facts exactly as they occurred,
un-coloured by views of his own. Thus we do not turn to the pages of a
Roman Catholic historian to gain a fair idea of Luther, or of William
the Silent, or expect to find in the volumes of Clarendon a thoroughly
faithful portraiture of the vices of the Stuart kings; rather, in
reading the history of a partisan, do we instinctively make allowances
for the recognised bias of his mind and heart. That the fourth gospel
comes to us prefaced by the announcement that it is written, not to give
us a history, but to prove a certain predetermined opinion, is, then,
so much doubt cast at starting on its probable accuracy; and, by the
constitution of our minds, we at once guard ourselves against a too
ready acquiescence in its assertions, and become anxious to test its
statements by comparing them with some independent and more impartial
authority. The history may be most accurate, but we require proof
that the writer is never seduced into slightly--perhaps
unconsciously--colouring an incident so as to favour the object he
has at heart. For instance, Matthew, an honest writer enough, is often
betrayed into most non-natural quotation of prophecy by his anxiety to
connect Jesus with the Messiah expected by his countrymen. This latent
wish of his leads him to insert various quotations from the Jewish
Scriptures which, severed from their context, have a verbal similarity
with the events he narrates. Thus, he refers to Hosea's mention of the
Exodus: "When Israel was a child then I loved him and called my son
out of Egypt," and by quoting only the last six words gives this as a
"prophecy" of an alleged journey of Jesus into Egypt. Such an instance
as this shows us how a man may allow himself to be blinded by a
pre-conceived determination to prove a certain fact, and warns us to
sift carefully any history that comes to us with the announcement that
it is written to prove such and such a truth.
Unfortunately we have no independent contemporary history--except a
sentence of Josephus--whereby to test the accuracy of the Christian
records; we are therefore forced into the somewhat unsatisfactory task
of comparing them one with another, and in cases of diverging testimony
we must strike the balance of probability between them.
On examining, then, these four biographies of Jesus, we find a
remarkable similarity between three of them, amid many divergencies of
detail; some regard them, therefore, as the condensation into writing
of the oral teaching of the apostles, preserved in the various Churches
they severally founded, and so, naturally, the same radically, although
diverse in detail. "The synoptic Gospels contain the substance of the
Apostles' testimony, collected principally from their oral teaching
current in the Church, partly also from written documents embodying
portions of that teaching."* Others think that the gospels which we
possess, and which are ascribed severally to Matthew, Mark, and Luke,
are all three derived from an original gospel now lost, which was
probably written in Hebrew or Aramaic, and variously translated into
Greek. However this may be, the fact that such a statement as this has
been put forward proves the striking similarity, the root identity, of
the three "synoptical gospels," as they are called. We gather from them
an idea of Jesus which is substantially the same: a figure, calm, noble,
simple, generous; pure in life, eager to draw men to that love of the
Father and devotion to the Father which were his own distinguishing
characteristics; finally, a teacher of a simple and high-toned morality,
perfectly unfettered by dogmatism. The effect produced by the sketch of
the Fourth Evangelist is totally different. The friend of sinners has
disappeared (except in the narrative of the woman taken in adultery,
which is generally admitted to be an interpolation), for his whole time
is occupied in arguing about his own position; "the common people"
who followed and "heard him gladly" and his enemies, the Scribes and
Pharisees, are all massed together as "the Jews," with whom he is in
constant collision; his simple style of teaching--parabolic indeed, as
was the custom of the East, but consisting of parables intelligible to
a child--is exchanged for mystical discourses, causing perpetual
misunderstandings, the true meaning of which is still wrangled about by
Christian theologians; his earnest testimony to "your heavenly Father"
is replaced by a constant self-assertion; while his command "do this and
ye shall live," is exchanged for "believe on me or perish."
* Alford.
How great is the contrast between that discourse and the Sermon on
the Mount.... In the last discourse it is His Person rather than his
teaching which is especially prominent. His subject in that discourse is
Himself.
Certainly he preaches himself in His relationship to His redeemed; but
still he preaches above all, and in all, Himself. All radiates from
Himself, all converges towards Himself.... in those matchless words all
centres so consistently in Jesus, that it might seem that "Jesus Alone is
before us."* These and similar differences, both of direct teaching and
of the more subtle animating spirit, I propose to examine in detail; but
before entering on these it seems necessary to glance at the disputed
question of the authorship of our history, and determine whether, if it
prove apostolic, it _must_ therefore be binding on us.
I leave to more learned pens than mine the task of criticising
and drawing conclusions from the Greek or the precise dogma of the
evangelist, and of weighing the conflicting testimony of mighty names.
From the account contained in the English Bible of John the Apostle, I
gather the following points of his character: He was warm-hearted to his
friends, bitter against his enemies, filled with a fiery and unbridled
zeal against theological opponents; he was ambitious, egotistical,
pharisaical. I confess that I trace these characteristics through all
the writings ascribed to him, and that they seem to be only softened by
age in the fourth gospel. That John was a warm friend is proved by his
first epistle; that he was bitter against his enemies appears in his
mention of Diotrephes, "I will remember his deeds which he doeth,
prating against us with malicious words;" his unbridled zeal was rebuked
by his master; the same cruel spirit is intensified in his "Revelation;"
his ambition is apparent in his anxiety for a chief seat in Messiah's
kingdom; his egotism appears in the fearful curse he imprecates on those
who alter _his_ revelation; his pharisaism is marked in such a feeling
as, "we know _we_ are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness."
Many of these qualities appear to me to mark the gospel which bears
his name; the same restricted tenderness, the same bitterness against
opponents, the same fiery zeal for "the truth," i.e., a special
theological dogma, are everywhere apparent.
* Liddon.
The same egotism is most noticeable, for in the other gospels John
shares his master's chief regard with two others, while here he is
"_the_ disciple whom Jesus loved," and he is specially prominent in the
closing scenes of Jesus' life as the _only_ faithful follower. We should
also notice the remarkable similarity of expression and tone between
the fourth gospel and the first epistle of John, a similarity the more
striking as the language is peculiar to the writings attributed to
John. It is, however, with the utmost diffidence that I offer these
suggestions, well knowing that the greatest authorities are divided on
this point of authorship, and that the balance is rather against the
apostolic origin of the gospel than for it. I am, however, anxious
to show that, _even taking it as apostolic_, it is untrustworthy and
utterly unworthy of credit. If John be the writer, we must suppose
that his long residence in Ephesus had gradually obliterated his Jewish
memories, so that he speaks of "the Jews" as a foreigner would. The
stern Jewish monotheism would have grown feebler by contact with the
subtle influence of the Alexandrine tone of thought; and he would have
caught the expressions of that school from living in a city which was
its second home. To use the Greek philosophy as a vehicle for Christian
teaching would recommend itself to him as the easiest way of approaching
minds imbued with these mystic ideas. Regarding the master of his youth
through the glorifying medium of years, he gradually began to imagine
him to be one of the emanations from the Supreme, of which he heard so
much. Accustomed to the deification of Roman emperors, men of infamous
lives, he must have been almost driven to claim divine honours for _his_
leader. If his hearers regarded _them_ as divine, what could he say to
exalt _him_ except that he was ever with God, nay, was himself God? If
John be the writer of this gospel, some such change as this must have
passed over him, and in his old age the gradual accretions of years must
have crystallised themselves into a formal Christian theology. But if we
find, during our examination, that the history and the teaching of this
gospel is utterly irreconcilable with the undoubtedly earlier synoptic
gospels, we must then conclude that, apostolic or not, it must give
place to them, and be itself rejected as a trustworthy account of the
life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth.
The first striking peculiarity of this gospel is that all the people
in it talk in exactly the same style and use the same markedly peculiar
phraseology, (a) "The Father loveth the Son and hath given all things
into his hand." (b) "For the Father loveth the Son and showeth him all
things that Himself doeth." (c) "Jesus, knowing that the Father had
given all things into his hand." These sentences are evidently the
outcome of the same mind, and no one, unacquainted with our gospel,
would guess that (a) was spoken by John the Baptist, (b) by Jesus, (c)
by the writer of the gospel. When the Jews speak, the words still run in
the same groove: "If any man be a worshipper of God, and doeth His will,
him He heareth," is not said, as might be supposed, by Jesus, but by the
man who was born blind. Indeed, commentators are sometimes puzzled, as
in John iii. 10-21, to know where, if at all, the words of Jesus stop
and are succeeded by the commentary of the narrator. In an accurate
history different characters stand out in striking individuality, so
that we come to recognise them as distinct personalities, and can even
guess beforehand how they will probably speak and act under certain
conditions. But here we have one figure in various disguises, one voice
from different speakers, one mind in opposing characters. We have here
no beings of flesh and blood, but airy phantoms, behind whom we see
clearly the solitary preacher. For Jesus and John the Baptist are two
characters as distinct as can well be imagined, yet their speeches are
absolutely indistinguishable, and their thoughts run in the same groove.
Jesus tells Nicodemus: "We speak that we do know and testify that we
have seen, and ye receive not our witness; and no man hath ascended
up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven." John says to his
disciples: "He that cometh from heaven is above all, and what he hath
seen and heard that he testifieth, and no man receiveth his testimony."
But it is wasting time to prove so self-evident a fact: let us rather
see how a Christian advocate meets an argument whose force he cannot
deny. "The character and diction of our Lord's discourses entirely
penetrated and assimilated the habits of thought of His beloved Apostle;
so that in his first epistle he writes in the very tone and spirit of
those discourses; and when reporting the sayings of his former teacher,
the Baptist, he gives them, consistently with the deepest inner truth
(!) of narration, the forms and cadences so familiar and habitual to
himself."* It must be left to each individual to judge if a careful and
accurate historian thus tampers with the words he pretends to narrate,
and thus makes them accord with some mysterious inner truth; each
too must decide as to the amount of reliance it is wise to place on a
historian who is guided by so remarkable a rule of truth. But further,
that the "character and diction" of this gospel are moulded on that of
Jesus, seems a most unwarrantable assertion. Through all the recorded
sayings of Jesus in the three gospels, there is no trace of this very
peculiar style, except in one case (Matt. xi. 27), a passage which comes
in abruptly and unconnectedly, and stands absolutely alone in style
in the three synoptics, a position which throws much doubt on its
authenticity. It has been suggested that this marked difference of style
arises from the different auditories addressed in the three gospels and
in the fourth; on this we remark that (a), we intuitively recognise such
discourses as that in Matt. x. as perfectly consistent with the usual
style of Jesus, although this is addressed to "his own;" (b), In this
fourth gospel the discourses addressed to "his own" and to the Jews are
in exactly the same style; so that, neither in this gospel, nor in
the synoptics do we find any difference--more than might be reasonably
expected--between the style of the discourses addressed to the disciples
and those addressed to the multitudes. But we _do_ find a very marked
difference between the style attributed to Jesus by the three synoptics
and that put into his mouth by the fourth evangelist; this last being a
style so remarkable that, if usual to Jesus, it is impossible that its
traces should not appear through all his recorded speeches. From which
fact we may, I think, boldly deduce the conclusion that the style in
question is not that of Jesus, the simple carpenter's son, but is one
caught from the dignified and stately march of the oratory of Ephesian
philosophers, and is put into his mouth by the writer of his life. And
this conclusion is rendered indubitable by the fact above-mentioned,
that all the characters adopt this poetically and musically-rounded
phraseology.
* Alford.
Thus our first objection against the trustworthiness of our historian
is that all the persons he introduces, however different in character,
speak exactly alike, and that this style, when put into the mouth of
Jesus, is totally different from that attributed to him by the three
synoptics. We conclude, therefore, that the style belongs wholly to the
writer, and that he cannot, consequently, be trusted in his reports of
speeches. The major part, by far the most important part, of this gospel
is thus at once stamped as untrustworthy.
Let us next remark the partiality attributed by this gospel to Him Who
has said--according to the Bible--"all souls-are Mine." We find the
doctrine of predestination, i.e., of favouritism, constantly put
forward. "_All that the Father giveth me_ shall come to me." "No man can
come to me except the Father draw him." "That of all _which He hath given
me_ I should lose nothing." "Ye believe not, _because_ ye are not of
my sheep." "Though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they
believed not on him: _that the saying_ of Esaias the prophet _might be
fulfilled._" "Therefore, they _could not believe because_ that Esaias
said," &c. "I have chosen you out of the world." "Thou hast given him
power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to _as many as
Thou hast given him?_" "Those that thou gavest me I have kept and none
of them is lost, but the son of perdition, _that the Scriptures might
be fulfilled._" These are the most striking of the passages which teach
that doctrine which has been the most prolific parent of immorality and
the bringer of despair to the sinner. Frightfully immoral as it is, this
doctrine is taught in all its awful hopelessness and plainness by this
gospel: some "_could not_ believe" because an old prophet prophesied
that they should not-So, "according to St. John," these unbelieving Jews
were pre-ordained to eternal damnation and the abiding wrath of God.
They were cast into an endless hell, which "they _could not_" avoid. We
reject this gospel, secondly, for the partiality it dares to attribute
to Almighty God.
We will now pass to the historical discrepancies between this gospel and
the three synoptics, following the order of the former.
It tells us (ch. i) that at the beginning of his ministry Jesus was at
Bethabara, a town near the junction of the Jordan with the Dead Sea;
here he gains three disciples, Andrew and another, and then Simon Peter:
the next day he goes into Galilee and finds Philip and Nathanael, and on
the following day--somewhat rapid travelling--he is present, with
these disciples, at Cana, where he performs his first miracle, going
afterwards with them to Capernaum and Jerusalem. At Jerusalem, whither
he goes for "the Jews' passover," he drives out the traders from the
temple, and remarks, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I
will raise it up:" which remark causes the first of the strange
misunderstandings between Jesus and the Jews, peculiar to this Gospel,
simple misconceptions which Jesus never troubles himself to set right.
Jesus and his disciples then go to the Jordan, baptising, whence Jesus
departs into Galilee with them, because he hears that the Pharisees know
he is becoming more popular than the Baptist (ch. iv. 1-3). All this
happens before John is cast into prison, an occurrence which is a
convenient note of time. We turn to the beginning of the ministry of
Jesus as related by the three. Jesus is in the south of Palestine, but,
hearing that John is cast into prison, he departs into Galilee, and
resides at Capernaum. There is no mention of any ministry in Galilee and
Judaea before this; on the contrary, it is only "from that time" that
"Jesus _began_ to preach." He is alone, without disciples, but, walking
by the sea, he comes upon Peter, Andrew, James, and John, and calls
them. Now if the fourth gospel is true, these men had joined him in
Judaea, followed him to Galilee, south again to Jerusalem, and back to
Galilee, had seen his miracles and acknowledged him as Christ, so it
seems strange that they had deserted him and needed a second call, and
yet more strange is it that Peter (Luke v. i-ii) was so astonished and
amazed at the miracle of the fishes. The driving out of the traders from
the temple is placed by the synoptics at the very end of his ministry,
and the remark following it is used against him at his trial: so was
probably made just before it. The next point of contact is the history
of the 5000 fed by five loaves (ch. vi.), the preceding chapter relates
to a visit to Jerusalem unnoticed by the three: indeed, the histories
seem written of two men, one the "prophet of Galilee" teaching in its
cities, the other concentrating his energies on Jerusalem. The account
of the miraculous, feeding is alike in all: not so the succeeding
account of the conduct of the multitude. In the fourth gospel, Jesus
and the crowd fall to disputing, as usual, and he loses many disciples:
among the three, Luke says nothing of the immediately following
events, while Matthew and Mark tell us that the multitudes--as would be
natural--crowded round him to touch even the hem of his garment. This is
the same as always: in the three the crowd loves him; in the fourth it
carps at and argues with him. We must again miss the sojourn of Jesus in
Galilee, according to the three, and his visit to Jerusalem, according
to the one, and pass to his entry into Jerusalem in triumph. Here we
notice a most remarkable divergence: the synoptics tell us that he
was going up to Jerusalem from Galilee, and, arriving on his way at
Bethphage, he sent for an ass and rode thereon into Jerusalem: the
fourth gospel relates that he was dwelling at Jerusalem, and leaving it,
for fear of the Jews, he retired, not into Galilee, but "beyond Jordan,
into the place where John at first baptised," i.e., Bethabara, "and
_there he abode_" From there he went to Bethany and raised to life a
putrefying corpse: this stupendous miracle is never appealed to by the
earlier historians in proof of their master's greatness, though
"much people of the Jews" are said to have seen Lazarus after his
resurrection: this miracle is also given as the reason for the active
hostility of the priests, "from that day forward." Jesus then retires
to Ephraim near the wilderness, from which town he goes to Bethany, and
thence in triumph to Jerusalem, being met by the people "for that they
heard that he had done this miracle." The two accounts have absolutely
nothing in common except the entry into Jerusalem, and the preceding
events of the synoptics exclude those of the fourth gospel, as does the
latter theirs. If Jesus abode in Bethabara and Ephraim, he could not
have come from Galilee; if he started from Galilee, he was not abiding
in the south. John xiii.-xvii. stand alone, with the exception of the
mention of the traitor. On the arrest of Jesus, he is led (ch. xviii.
13) to Annas, who sends him to Caiaphas, while the others send him
direct to Caiaphas, but this is immaterial. He is then taken to Pilate:
the Jews do not enter the judgment-hall, lest, being defiled, they could
not eat the passover, a feast which, according to the synoptics, was
over, Jesus and his disciples having eaten it the night before. Jesus is
exposed to the people at the sixth hour (ch. xix. 14), while Mark tells
us he was crucified three hours before--at the third hour--a note of
time which agrees with the others, since they all relate that there
was darkness from the sixth to the ninth hour, i.e., there was thick
darkness at the time when, "according to St. John," Jesus was exposed.
Here our evangelist is in hopeless conflict with the three. The accounts
about the resurrection are irreconcilable in all the gospels, and
mutually destructive. It remains to notice, among these discrepancies,
one or two points which did not come in conveniently in the course of
the narrative. During the whole of the fourth gospel, we find Jesus
constantly arguing for his right to the title of Messiah. Andrew speaks
of him as such (i. 41); the Samaritans acknowledge him (iv. 42); Peter
owns him (vi. 69); the people call him so-(vii. 26, 31, 41); Jesus
claims it (viii. 24); it is the subject of a law (ix. 22); Jesus speaks
of it as already claimed by him (x. 24, 25); Martha recognises it
(xi. 27). We thus find that, from the very first, this title is openly
claimed by Jesus, and his right to it openly canvassed by the Jews.
But--in the three--the disciples acknowledge him as Christ, and he
charges them to "tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ" (Matt. xvi.
20; Mark viii. 29, 30; Luke ix. 20, 21); and this in the same year that
he blames the Jews for not owning this Messiahship, since he had told
them who he was. "from the beginning" (ch. viii. 24, 25); so that, if
"John" was right, we fail to see the object of all the mystery about it,
related by the synoptics. We mark, too, how Peter is, in their account,
praised for confessing him, for flesh and blood had not revealed it to
him, while in the fourth gospel, "flesh and blood," in the person of
Andrew, reveal to Peter that the Christ is found; and there seems little
praise due to Peter for a confession which had been made two or three
years earlier by Andrew, Nathanael, John Baptist, and the Samaritans.
Contradiction can scarcely be more direct. In John vii. Jesus owns that
the Jews know his birthplace (28), and they state (41, 42) that he comes
from Galilee, while Christ should be born at Bethlehem. Matthew and Luke
distinctly say Jesus was born at Bethlehem; but here Jesus confesses
the right knowledge of those who attribute his birthplace to Galilee,
instead of setting their difficulty at rest by explaining that though
brought up at Nazareth, he was born in Bethlehem. But our writer was
apparently-ignorant of their accounts. We reject this gospel, thirdly,
because its historical statements are in direct contradiction to the
history of the synoptics.
The next point to which I wish to direct attention is the relative
position of faith and morals in the three synoptics and the fourth
gospel. It is not too much to say that on this point their teaching is
absolutely irreconcilable, and one or the other must be fatally in the
wrong. Here the fourth gospel clasps hands with Paul, while the others
take the side of James. The opposition may be most plainly shown by
parallel columns of quotations:
"Except your righteousness "He that _believeth on the_ Son
exceed that of the scribes and hath everlasting life."--iii. 36.
Pharisees, ye shall _in no
case_ enter Heaven."--Matt. v. 20.
"Have we not prophesied in "He that believeth on Him _is
thy name and in thy name done not condemned_."--iii. 18.
many wonderful works?"
"Then will I profess unto them...
Depart...ye that work iniquity."
--Matt. vii. 22, 23.
"If thou wilt enter into life, "He that believeth not the Son
keep the commandments."--Mark shall not see life."--iii. 36. x. 17-28.
"Her sins, which are many, are "If ye believe not that I am he
forgiven, _for she loved_ much."-- ye shall die in your sins."--viii.
Luke vii. 47. 24.
These few quotations, which might be indefinitely multiplied, are
enough to show that, while in the three gospels _doing_ is the test of
religion, and no profession of discipleship is worth anything unless
shown by "its fruits," in the fourth _believing_ is the cardinal matter:
in the three we hear absolutely nothing of faith in Jesus as requisite,
but in the fourth we hear of little else: works are thrown completely
into the background and salvation rests on believing--not even in
God--but in Jesus. We reject this gospel, fourthly, for setting faith
above works, and so contradicting the general teaching of Jesus himself.
The relative positions of the Father and Jesus are reversed by the
fourth evangelist, and the teaching of Jesus on this head in the three
gospels is directly contradicted. Throughout them Jesus preaches the
Father only: he is always reiterating "your heavenly Father;" "that
ye may be the children of your Father," is his argument for forgiving
others; "your Father is perfect," is his spur to a higher life; "your
Father knoweth," is his anodyne in anxiety; "it is the Father's good
pleasure," is his certainty of coming happiness; "_one_ is your Father,
which is in heaven," is, by an even extravagant loyalty, made a reason
for denying the very name to any other. But in the fourth gospel all is
changed: if the Father is mentioned at all, it is only as the sender of
Jesus, as _his_ Witness and _his_ Glorifier. All love, all devotion, all
homage, is directed to Jesus and to Jesus only: even "on the Christian
hypothesis the Father is eclipsed by His only begotten Son."* "All
judgment" is in the hands of the Son: he has "life in himself;" "the
work of God" is to believe on him; he gives "life unto the world;" he
will "raise" us "up at the last day;" except by eating him there is "no
life;" he is "the light of the world;" he gives true freedom; he is the
"one shepherd: none can pluck" us out of his hand; he will "draw all men
unto" himself: he is the "Lord and Master," "the truth and the life;"
what is even asked of the Father, _he_ will do; he will come to his
disciples and abide in them; his peace and joy are their reward. Verily,
we need no more: he who gives us eternal life, who raises us from the
dead, who is our judge, who hears our prayers, and gives us light,
freedom, and truth, He, He only, is our God; none can do more for us
than he: in Him only will we trust in life and death. So, consistently,
the Son is no longer the drawer of believers to the Father, but the
Father is degraded into becoming the way to the Son, and none can come
to Jesus unless Almighty God draws them to him. Jesus is no longer the
way into the Holiest, but the Eternal Father is made the means to an end
beyond himself.
* Voysey.
For this fifth reason, more than for anything else, we reject this
gospel with the most passionate earnestness, with the most burning
indignation, as an insult to the One Father of spirits, the ultimate
Object of all faith and hope and love.
And who is this who thus dethrones our heavenly Father? It is not even
the Jesus whose fair moral beauty has exacted our hearty admiration. To
worship _him_ would be an idolatry, but to worship him--were he such as
"John" describes him--would be an idolatry as degrading as it would
be baseless. For let us mark the character pourtrayed in this fourth
gospel. His public career begins with an undignified miracle: at a
marriage, where the wine runs short, he turns water into wine, in order
to supply men who have already "well drunk" (ch. ii. 10). [We may ask,
in passing, what led Mary to expect a miracle, when we are told that
this was the first, and she could not, therefore, know of her son's
gifts.] The next important point is the conversation with Nicodemus,
where we scarcely knew which to marvel at most, the stolid stupidity
of a "Master in Israel" misunderstanding a metaphor that must have been
familiar to him, or the aggressive way in which Jesus speaks as to the
non-reception of his message before he had been in public many months,
and as to non-belief in his person before belief had become possible.
We then come to the series of discourses related in ch. v. 10.
Perfect egotism pervades them all; in all appear the same strange
misunderstandings on the part of the people, the same strange
persistence in puzzling them on the part of the speaker. In one of them
the people honestly wonder at his mysterious words: "How is it that he
saith, I come down from heaven," and, instead of any explanation, Jesus
retorts that they should not murmur, since no man _can_ come to him
unless the Father draw him; so that, when he puts forward a statement
apparently contrary to fact--"his father and mother we know," say the
puzzled Jews--he refuses to explain it, and falls back on his favourite
doctrine: "Unless you are of those favoured ones whom God enlightens,
you cannot expect to understand me." Little wonder indeed that "many
of his disciples walked no more with" a teacher so perplexing and so
discouraging; with one who presented for their belief a mysterious
doctrine, contrary to their experience, and then, in answer to their
prayer for enlightenment, taunts them with an ignorance he admits was
unavoidable. The next important conversation occurs in the temple,
and here Jesus, the friend of sinners, the bringer of hope to the
despairing--this Jesus has no tenderness for some who "believed on him;"
he ruthlessly tramples on the bruised reed and quenches the smoking
flax. First he irritates their Jewish pride with accusations of slavery
and low descent; then, groping after his meaning, they exclaim, "We have
one Father, even God," and he--whom we know as the tenderest preacher
of that Father's universal love--surely he gladly catches at their
struggling appreciation of his favourite topic, and fans the hopeful
spark into a flame? Yes! Jesus of Nazareth would have done so. But
Jesus, "according to St. John," turns fiercely on them, denying the
sonship he elsewhere proclaims, and retorts, "Ye are of your father,
the devil." And this to men who "believed on him;" this from lips which
said, "_One_ is your Father," and He, in heaven. He argues next with the
Pharisees, and we find him arrogantly exclaiming: "_all_ that ever came
before me were thieves and robbers." What, all? Moses and Elijah, Isaiah
and all the prophets? At length, after he has once more repulsed some
inquirers, the Jews take up stones to stone him, as Moses commanded,
because "thou makest thyself God." He escapes by a clever evasion, which
neutralises all his apparent assertions of Divinity. "Other men have
been called gods, so surely I do not blaspheme by calling myself God's
son." Never let us forget that in this gospel, the stronghold of the
Divinity of Jesus, Jesus himself explains his strongest assertion "I and
my Father are one" in a manner which can only be honest in the mouth of
a man.* We pass to the celebrated "last discourse." In this we find
the same peculiar style, the same self-assertion, but we must note,
in addition, the distinct tritheism which pervades it. There are
three distinct Beings, each necessarily deprived of some attribute of
Divinity: thus, the Deity is Infinite, but if He is divided He becomes
finite, since two Infinites are an impossible absurdity, and unless
they are identical they must bound each other, so becoming finite.
Accordingly "the Comforter" cannot be present till Jesus departs,
therefore neither Jesus nor the Comforter can be God, since God is
omnipresent. Since, then, prayer is to be addressed to Jesus as God,
the low theory of tri-theism, of a plurality of Gods, none of whom is
a perfect God, is here taught. In this discourse, also, the Christian
horizon is bounded by the figure of Jesus, the office of the Comforter
is sub-servient to this one worship, "he shall glorify me." Jesus, at
last, prays for his disciples, markedly excluding from his intercession
"the world" he was said to have come to save, and, as throughout this
gospel, restricting all his love, all his care, all his tenderness to
"these, whom Thou hast given me." Here we come to the essence of the
spirit which pervades this whole gospel. "I pray for them; I pray not
for the world: not for them who are of their father the devil, nor for
my betrayer, the son of perdition." This is the spirit which Christians
dare to ascribe to Jesus of Nazareth, the tenderest, gentlest,
widest-hearted man who has yet graced humanity. This is the spirit, they
tell us, which dwelt in _his_ bosom, who gave us the parables of the
lost sheep and the prodigal son. "No," we answer, "this is not the
spirit of the Prophet of Nazareth, but" (Dr. Liddon will pardon the
appropriation) "this is the temper of a man who will not enter the
public baths along with the heretic who has dishonoured his Lord."
* "For a good work we stone thee not, but for blasphemy;
and because that thou being a man makest thyself God." Jesus
answered them, "Is it not written in your law, I said, ye
are gods? If he called them gods unto whom the word of God
came (and the scripture cannot be broken), say ye of him
whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world,
Thou blasphemest, because I said I am the son of God?"
This is the spirit of the writer of the gospel, not of Jesus: the
egotism of the writer is reflected in the words put into the mouth of
his master; and thus the preacher of the Father's love is degraded into
the seeker of his own glory, and bearing witness of himself, his witness
becomes untrue. I must also draw attention to one or two cases of
unreality attributed to Jesus by this gospel. He prays, on one occasion,
"because of the people who stand by:" he cries on his cross, "I thirst,"
not because of the burning agony of crucifixion, but in order "that
the Scriptures might be fulfilled:" a voice answers "his prayer," "not
because of me, but for your sakes." This calculation of effect is very
foreign to the sincere and open spirit of Jesus. Akin to this is the
prevarication attributed to him, when he declines to accompany his
brethren to Judaea, but "when his brethren were gone up then went he
also up to the feast, not openly but as it were in secret." All this
strikes us strangely as part of that simple, fearless life.
We reject this gospel, sixthly, for the cruel spirit, the arrogance, the
self-assertion, the bigotry, the unreality, attributed by it to Jesus,
and we denounce it as a slander on his memory and an insult to his noble
life.
We may, perhaps, note, as another peculiarity of this gospel--although I
do not enter here into the argument of the divinity of Jesus,--that when
Dr. Liddon, in his celebrated Bampton Lectures, is anxious to prove
the Deity of Jesus _from his own mouth_, he is compelled to quote
exclusively from this gospel. Such a fact as this cannot be overlooked,
when we remember that "St. John's gospel is a polemical treatise"
written to prove this special point. We cannot avoid noting the
coincidence.
We have now gone through this remarkable record and examined it in
various lights. At the outset we conceded to our opponents all the
advantage which comes from admitting that the gospel _may_ be written
by the Apostle John; we have left the authorship a moot point, and
based our argument on a different ground. Apostolic or non-apostolic,
Johannine or Corinthian, we accept it or reject it for itself, and not
for its writer. We have found that all its characters speak alike in a
marked and peculiar style--a style savouring of the study rather than
the street, of Alexandria rather than Jerusalem or Galilee. We
have glanced at its immoral partiality. We have noted the numerous
discrepancies between the history of this gospel and that of the three
synoptics. We have discovered it to be equally opposed to them in morals
as in history: in doctrine as in morals. We have seen that, while it
degrades God to enthrone Jesus in His stead, it also degrades Jesus,
and so lowers his character that it defies recognition. Finally, we
have found it stands alone in supporting the Deity of Jesus from his own
mouth.
I know not how all this may strike others; to me these arguments are
simply overwhelming in their force. I tear out the "Gospel according to
St. John" from the writings which "are profitable" "for instruction
in righteousness." I reject it from beginning to end, as fatally
destructive of all true faith towards God, as perilously subversive of
all true morality in man, as an outrage on the sacred memory of Jesus of
Nazareth, and as an insult to the Justice, the Supremacy, and the Unity
of Almighty God.