You will think perhaps that I have been a long time in approaching the
direct treatment of the Fourth Gospel. It is quite true that I have
thought well to begin the approach from a distance, as it were by sap
and trench, before planting my guns—such as they are. I have indeed the
ambition in this course of lectures not only to state a case in regard
to the Fourth Gospel, but also at the same time to contribute, if I may,
to the work so admirably initiated by Dr. Drummond, of commending by the
way what I conceive to be sound principles of criticism, as contrasted
with others which I consider unsound. It happens that a discussion of
the Fourth Gospel specially lends itself to this purpose.
In accordance with what I have been saying, you will not expect of me
any new and startling theory to account for the phenomena of the Fourth
Gospel. I am content to go back to the oldest categorical statement in
respect to it that history has handed down to us. It seems to me that
this statement, plain and direct as it is, really gives an adequate
explanation, if not exactly of everything, yet at least of all the
salient points that need explaining.
Eusebius (_H. E._ vi. 14. 7) has preserved for us the substance of a
passage from the _Hypotyposes_, or _Outlines_, of Clement of Alexandria,
which he says that Clement derived from the ‘early Presbyters’
(παράδοσιν τῶν ἀνέκαθεν πρεσβυτέρων), and which dealt among other things
with the order of the Gospels. After speaking of the other Evangelists,
he says that ‘last of all John perceiving that the bodily (or external)
facts had been set forth in the (other) Gospels, at the instance of his
disciples and with the inspiration of the Spirit composed a spiritual
Gospel.’
A very similar tradition had been given by Eusebius in an earlier book
(iii. 24). He heads the chapter, ‘On the Order of the Gospels,’ and in
the course of it he writes as follows:
‘Nevertheless, of all the disciples of the Lord, only Matthew and
John have left us written memoirs, and they are reported (κατέχει
λόγος[32]) to have been led to write under pressure of necessity.
Matthew, having previously preached to the Hebrews, when he was
about to go to other peoples, committed to writing the Gospel that
bears his name in his native tongue, and so by the written book
compensated those whom he was leaving for the loss of his presence.
And when Mark and Luke had by that time published their Gospels,
they say that John, having before spent all his time in oral
preaching, at last came also to write for some such reason as this.
The three Gospels first written having been by this distributed
everywhere, and having come into his hands, they say that he
accepted them, bearing witness to their truth, but (adding) that
there was only wanting to their record the narrative of what was
done by Christ at first and at the beginning of His preaching.’
At this point Eusebius digresses to show that what was said was true.
The first three Evangelists began the main body of their narrative after
John the Baptist was cast into prison; but St. John expressly tells us
that, at the time of the events related in his early chapters, John was
not yet in prison. Any one attending to this, Eusebius said, would no
longer suppose that the Gospels were at variance with each other, and
would see that John had reason for being silent as to the genealogy of
our Saviour’s human descent, as this had been already written by Matthew
and Luke, and for beginning with His divinity, as though this had been
reserved by the Holy Ghost for him as one greater than they. These last
are the words of Eusebius, who is very probably influenced by his
recollection of the language of Clement. Unfortunately we cannot locate
the rest of the tradition. It would be only a guess to suppose that it
came from Hippolytus, at the time of his controversy with Caius. But in
any case there is a good deal of evidence to show that the opening
sections of the Gospels were being much canvassed towards the end of the
second and at the beginning of the third century. The passage is in
general agreement with Clement, and avoids his mistake in saying that
the two Gospels containing the genealogies were the first to be written.
Really Clement alone has all the essential points, which are these:
1. The Gospel is the work of St. John the Apostle—for there is no
doubt that he is intended.
2. It was written towards the end of his life, after the publication
of the other three.
3. The three Gospels were in the hands of the Apostle, and he had
read and up to a certain point approved of them.
4. What he himself undertook to write was a Gospel, not a biography;
the difference is important.
5. In contrast with the other Gospels it was recognized as being in
a special sense ‘a spiritual Gospel.’
I believe that these data will enable us to understand all the facts,
both those which are more favourable to the Gospel and those which are
in a sense less favourable.
1. The best of reasons is given for all those marks of an eye-witness
which we shall see to be present in great number and strength. They
point to a first-hand relation between the author and the facts which he
records. If the Gospel is not the work of an eye-witness, then the
writer has made a very sustained and extraordinary effort to give the
impression that he was one.
2. By throwing the Gospel to the end of the Apostle’s life, a
considerable interval is placed between the events and the date of its
composition. That means that the facts will have passed through a
medium. Unconsciously the mind in which they lay will have brought its
own experience to bear upon them; it will have a tendency to mix up the
plain statement of what was said and done with an element of
interpretation suggested by its own experience. And this will be done in
a way that we should call ‘naïve,’ i. e. without any conscious
self-analysis. The mingling of objective and subjective will take place
spontaneously and without reflection. The details will not be given out
exactly as they went in; and yet the writer will not be himself aware
that he is setting down anything but what he heard and saw.
3. The relation of the Fourth Gospel to its predecessors accurately
corresponds to that described in the tradition. On the one hand their
contents are very largely assumed; and on the other hand the author does
not hesitate, where he thinks it necessary, to correct them. The
relation is easy and natural; it at once accounts for the selection of
the incidents narrated. The author evidently felt himself at liberty to
select just those incidents which suited his purpose.
4. And that purpose, it is important to remember, was not by any means
purely historical. The author was writing a Gospel, not a biography in
the modern sense of the word. His object was definitely religious, and
not literary. He tells us in set terms what he proposed to do: ‘These
things are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the
Son of God; and that believing ye may have life in His name.’ He did not
really aim at a complete narrative of external events or an exhaustive
study of a complex human character. He aimed at producing faith; and he
sought to produce it by describing at length a few significant
incidents, taken out of a much larger whole.
5. The previous writings that came into his hands were also Gospels; and
they too were intended to produce faith. But in this direction the
author of the Fourth Gospel felt that something more remained to be
done. Christendom had its Gospels, but not as yet exactly ‘a spiritual
Gospel.’ A ‘spiritual Gospel’ meant one that sought to bring out the
divine side of its subject. When St. Paul at the beginning of the
Epistle to the Romans draws an antithesis between the Son of David
‘according to the flesh’ and the Son of God ‘according to the spirit of
holiness,’ he is anticipating exactly this later contrast between the
Gospels of the bodily life and of the spirit. ‘Spiritual’ means ‘indwelt
by the Spirit of God.’ And it was that side of the life of Christ in
which the Spirit of God was seen living and working in Him that the
fourth evangelist undertook specially to describe.
If, then, it is objected that the Gospel is onesided, that it gives
undue prominence to this divine side, we begin by asking what is meant
by undue, what standard of measurement marks it as undue. Obviously the
standard is that which we have just dismissed as altogether beside the
mark, the standard of the modern biography. The Gospel does not in the
least profess to do what the modern biographer does; but what the writer
does profess to do, he was perfectly within his right in doing. He
desired to set forth Christ as Divine. If that is to be onesided, of
course he is onesided. Clement tells us why he did it. It was because he
thought that the physical and external side, the human side of his
subject, had had justice done to it already. In this respect the older
Gospels were adequate, and he had no special wish to add to them. The
one thing he did feel called upon to add, and that he knew he could add,
was a fuller delineation of the divine side. He is not to be blamed for
doing the very thing which he proposed.
The paragraph in Clement of Alexandria is stated by him to be derived
from ‘the early presbyters.’ They were a good authority; probably, if
not altogether identical with the group drawn upon by Papias, yet at
least in part identical with it. Papias and Irenaeus on the one hand,
and Clement of Alexandria on the other, are just two branches of the
same tree, or at least two suckers from the same root. That root is
often called the School of St. John. It is from the School of St. John
that they ultimately derive their information about St. John. What
authority could be better?
It is not possible to say how far the language of Clement comes from the
Presbyters, and how far it is his own. The phrase ‘a spiritual Gospel’
may be his own coinage, an early effort of descriptive criticism,
putting into words what he felt to be the distinctive characteristic of
the Gospel. In any case the phrase is a happy one; it just expresses, in
the briefest compass, that which really most differentiates the Fourth
Gospel from the other three.
Footnote 22:
_Ignatius_, i. 405.
Footnote 23:
See the story in the Moscow MS. of the _Martyrium Polycarpi_
(Lightfoot, _Ignatius_, iii. 402), which professes to be taken from
‘the writings of Irenaeus.’
Footnote 24:
_Character and Authorship_, p. 348.
Footnote 25:
_Ibid._ p. 213.
Footnote 26:
_Chronologie_, p. ix.
Footnote 27:
_Ibid._ p. 678.
Footnote 28:
_Chronologie_, p. 679.
Footnote 29:
_Ibid._, p. 680.
Footnote 30:
_Chronologie_, p. 695.
Footnote 31:
_Ueber d. Tod_, &c., p. 31.
Footnote 32:
On this phrase see Hort, _Judaistic Christianity_, pp. 170-3.
LECTURE III
THE STANDPOINT OF THE AUTHOR