I began by saying that the tendency towards _rapprochement_ which was
characteristic of the eighties and nineties, gave way towards the end of
the century, and has been succeeded in recent years by conspicuous
instances of uncompromising denial, at once of the apostolic authorship
of the Gospel and of its historical character. The names of Jülicher,
Schmiedel, Wrede, Wernle, Jean Réville and Loisy are sufficient evidence
of this.
We shall probably not be wrong in classing with these writers the
eminent scholar Dr. H. J. Holtzmann of Strassburg. It is indeed
characteristic of Dr. Holtzmann’s method to avoid anything like dogmatic
assertion of his own opinion, to work in with subtle skill a
kaleidoscopic presentation of the opinions of others, while himself
remaining in the background. He does indeed leave room for a rather
larger amount of authentic tradition in the Gospel than the other
writers mentioned. Still, in the main his position is sceptical, both as
to the Asian tradition of St. John, and as to the historical character
of the Gospel.
It may be observed in passing that Dr. H. J. Holtzmann of Strassburg
should be carefully distinguished from his younger cousin Oscar
Holtzmann, who is now Professor at Giessen. Dr. Oscar Holtzmann
published a monograph on the Fourth Gospel in 1887, and he has since
brought out a _Life of Christ_ which has lately been translated into
English. The two cousins occupy much the same general position; the
younger has not the distinction of the elder, but he compensates to some
extent by greater clearness and definiteness in the expression of his
views.
Another of the older writers, Dr. O. Pfleiderer, is even more
thorough-going as an allegorist. For him the Gospel is from first to
last a didactic work in the guise of history; it is a ‘transparent
allegory of religious and dogmatic ideas[14].’ He would place the first
draft of the Gospel about the year 135, the last chapter and the First
Epistle about 150[15]. But I have long thought that this attractive
writer, though interesting and instructive as a historian of thought, is
a ‘negligible quantity’ in the field of criticism proper.
The other four German writers whom I have mentioned all belong to the
younger generation. Dr. Schmiedel (who though a Swiss Professor is, I
believe, German by birth) is the eldest, and he is not yet quite
fifty-three: Jülicher, the next on the list, is forty-seven. And as they
belong to the younger generation, so also they may be said to mark the
rise of a new School, or new method of treatment, in German Theology.
The Germany for which they speak is not the dreaming, wistful,
ineffective, romantic Germany of the past, but the practical, forceful,
energetic and assertive Germany of the present. All, as I have said, are
able writers; and the type of their ability has much in common, though
they have also their little individual differences. They have all a
marked directness and lucidity of style. What they think they say,
without hesitation and without reserve; no one can ever be in any doubt
as to their meaning. They are all apt to be somewhat contemptuous, not
only of divergent views, but of a type of mind that differs from their
own. Of the four, Jülicher and especially Wernle have the warmer
temperament; Schmiedel and Wrede are cold and severe. Wrede writes like
a mathematician, who puts Q. E. D. at the end of each step in the
argument—though it would be a misfortune if the demonstration were taken
to be as complete as he thinks it. Schmiedel is rather the lawyer who
pursues his adversary from point to point with relentless acumen: if we
could grant the major premises of his argument, there would be much to
admire in his handling of the minor; but the major premises, as I think
I shall show, are often at fault. Jülicher is just the downright capable
person, who sees vividly what he sees and is intolerant of that which
does not appeal to him. Wernle alternately attracts and repels; he
attracts by his real enthusiasm for that with which he sympathizes, by
his skill in presentation, and his careful observance of perspective and
proportion; he repels by aggressiveness and self-confidence.
The two French writers also have something in common, though they belong
to different communions. We are not surprised to find that both have an
easy grace of style, to which we might in both cases also give the
epithet ‘airy,’ because both are fond of speaking in generalities which
are not always in the closest contact with facts; both are
thorough-going allegorists, and regard the whole Gospel as a pure
product of ideas and not literal history. In spite of their difference
of communion, M. Loisy is on the critical side of his mind as
essentially rationalist as his Protestant _confrère_, though he brings
back, by an act of faith which some of us would call a _tour de force_,
in the region of dogmatics what he had taken away in the field of
criticism.
It seems to me that there is one word that requires to be said, though I
am anxious not to have my motive misunderstood in saying it. I do not
wish to do so in the least _ad invidiam_. Controversy is, I hope, no
longer conducted in that manner. I speak simply of an objective fact
which has too important a bearing on the whole question to be ignored.
When I read an argument by Professor Schürer, and try to reply to it, I
am conscious that we are arguing (so to speak) in the same plane. I feel
that the attitude of my opponent to the evidence is substantially the
same as my own. Whatever the presuppositions may be deep down in his
mind, he at any rate keeps them in abeyance. No doubt we differ widely
enough as to detail; but in principle I should credit my opponent with
an attitude that is really judicial, that tries to keep dogmatic
considerations, or questions of ultimate belief as much in suspense as
possible, and to weigh the arguments _for_ and _against_ in equal
scales. But when I pass over to the younger theologians, I no longer
feel that this is so; we seem to be arguing, not in the same, but in
different planes. There is a far-reaching presupposition not merely far
back but near the front of their minds. I cannot regard them as fellow
seekers in the sense that we are both doing our best to ascertain how
far the events of the Gospel history really transcended common
experience. I take it that on this point their minds are made up before
they begin to put pen to paper.
They all start with the ‘reduced’ conception of Christianity current in
so many quarters, that is akin to the ancient Ebionism or Arianism. But
so far as they do this their verdict as to the Fourth Gospel is
determined for them beforehand. The position is stated with great
frankness by Mr. Conybeare:
‘It may indeed be said that if Athanasius had not had the Fourth
Gospel to draw texts from, Arius would never have been confuted. Had
the fathers of the third, fourth, and fifth centuries not known this
Gospel, or not embraced it as authentic, the Church would have
remained semi-Ebionite, and the councils of Nice and Ephesus would
never have taken place[16].’
This does not indeed quite correspond to the facts. To make it do so, we
should have to blot out St. Paul, and other parts of the New Testament,
as well as St. John. But just so far as the reasoning holds good, it is
obvious that we may invert it. If a writer starts with a conception of
Christianity that is ‘semi-Ebionite’ or ‘semi-Arian,’ he is bound at all
costs to rule out the Fourth Gospel, not only as a dogmatic authority,
but as a record of historical fact.
Another characteristic is common to the writers of the School of which
we are speaking. The complexity of a critical hypothesis very rarely
stands in the way of its adoption; but a very little psychological
complexity acts as a deterrent. For instance, after quoting from B.
Weiss some rather exaggerated language as to the freedom used by the
evangelist in reproducing the discourses, Schmiedel goes on thus:
‘As compared with such a line of defence, there is a positive relief
from an intolerable burden as soon as the student has made up his
mind to give up any such theory as that of the “genuineness” of the
Gospel, as also of its authenticity in the sense of its being the
work of an eye-witness who meant to record actual history[17].’
So far from being an ‘intolerable burden,’ it seems to me that Weiss’
theory is not only in itself perfectly natural, nay inevitable, but that
it is also specially helpful as enabling us to account at one and the
same time for the elements that are, and those that are not, strictly
genuine in the report of the discourses.
Jülicher writes to much the same effect as Schmiedel; and the passage
which follows is indeed very characteristic of his habit of mind:
‘The defenders of the “genuineness” of the Gospel indeed for the
most part allow that John has carried out a certain idealization
with the discourses of Jesus, that in writing he has found himself
in a slight condition of ecstasy, in short, that his presentation of
his hero is something more than historical. With such mysticism or
phraseology science can have no concern; in the Johannean version of
Christ’s discourses form and substance cannot be separated, the form
to be assigned to the later writer, and the substance to Jesus
Himself: _sint ut sunt aut non sint!_...’
To please Professor Jülicher a picture must be all black or all white;
he is intolerant of half-shades that pass from the one into the other.
And no doubt there are some problems for the treatment of which such a
habit is an advantage, but hardly those which have to do with living
human personalities.
The French writers, like the German, have a certain resemblance to each
other. To some of these points I shall have to come back in detail
later. I will only note for the present that they are both allegorists
of an extreme kind. I would just for the present commend to both a
passage of Wernle’s:
‘This conception, however, of the Fourth Gospel as a philosophical
work, to which the Alexandrines first gave currency, and which is
still widely held to-day, is a radically wrong one. John’s main
idea, the descent of the Son of Man to reveal the Father, is
unphilosophical.... So, too, the Johannine miracles are never
intended to be taken in a purely allegorical sense. The fact of
their actual occurrence is the irrefragable proof of God’s
appearance upon earth[18].’
If the miracles of the Fourth Gospel were facts there was some point in
the constant appeals that the Gospel makes to them; but there would be
no point if these appeals were to a set of didactic fictions.
Within the last few months a monograph has appeared, which from its
general tendency may be ranged with the works of which we have been
speaking, though in its method it rather stands by itself, E. Schwartz,
_Ueber den Tod der Söhne Zebedaei_ (Berlin, 1904). Dr. Schwartz is the
editor of Eusebius in the Berlin series, and his point of view is
primarily philological. He writes in a disagreeable spirit, at once
carping and supercilious. The only generous words in his paper are a few
in reference to the Church historian. He exemplifies copiously most of
the procedure specially deprecated in these lectures. His monograph has,
however, a value of its own, from the precise and careful way in which
he has collected and discusses the material bearing upon the history of
the Evangelist and of the Gospel in the first and earlier part of the
second century.