i. The treatment of Miracle in the Fourth Gospel.
I cannot regard anything that we have hitherto had to deal with as
constituting a substantial set-off against the arguments previously
urged for the authentic and autoptic character of the Gospel. It is
otherwise when we come to its manner of presenting the Supernatural. It
must be confessed that the miracles in the Fourth Gospel, while in the
main they run parallel to those in the Synoptic Gospels, yet do appear
to involve a certain heightening of the effect. The courtier’s servant
is healed from a distance; the impotent man had been thirty-and-eight
years in his infirmity; the blind man who was sent to wash in the pool
of Siloam had been blind from his birth; Lazarus had lain four days in
the tomb.
Not only do these details imply an enhancement of the supernatural, but
it seems that the author of the Gospel valued them specially for that
reason. They fall in entirely with his purpose in writing. He sees in
them so many striking illustrations of the glory of the Christ. He had
been himself keenly on the watch for the manifestations of that glory,
and he delighted to record them in the hope that they might impress his
readers as they had impressed him.
We must not make too much of the details I have just mentioned. There is
no real difference of principle. The healing of the centurion’s servant
is telepathic like that of the courtier’s son. The woman with the issue
of blood had been ill for twelve years, and had spent all her living on
physicians. From the way in which blind Bartimaeus describes his
sensations we should infer that he too had never had his sight. Death is
death; and Jairus’s daughter and the widow’s son at Nain were as dead as
Lazarus. Really, on this point, there is little to choose between the
Gospels, as there is little to choose between the documents out of which
the Synoptics are composed.
A common form of objection is that which lays stress on the isolation of
the narrative of the raising of Lazarus. So notable a miracle, it is
urged, would have been sure to leave traces of itself in the other
Gospels. And I quite allow that the argument from silence has more force
here than in many of the other cases in which it is used. And yet even
here it is easily, and I feel sure it is often, much exaggerated. The
only document of which the author seems to have had the intention of
making any sort of collection of miracles was the ground-document of the
Synoptics—we may say, our present St. Mark. Neither the _Logia_ nor the
special source or sources of St. Luke do more than mention incidentally
a very few. But when we think of the way in which St. Mark is said to
have composed his Gospel, it is evident that his collection of miracles
could not be in the least exhaustive. He was dependent in the main upon
the preaching of St. Peter, the object of which was not historical or
biographical, but the edification of its hearers. If it is true (and it
is as yet hardly proved) that St. Mark had access also to the _Logia_,
that was a collection of sayings rather than of acts. So that there is
no one source that we should expect to have anything like a complete
enumeration of miracles.
On the other hand, if we turn to what I have called the special source
or sources of St. Luke, how vividly do they bring home to us the
incompleteness of the whole previous record! St. Mark apparently tried
to collect parables as well as miracles; so also did the _Logia_. And
yet neither of these documents has any trace of the Prodigal Son, or the
Good Samaritan, or the Pharisee and the Publican, or the Rich Man and
Lazarus, or the Rich Man cut off before he could enjoy his wealth, or
the Importunate Widow, or the Unrighteous Steward. We should have
thought it incredible beforehand that any one who professed to make
collections with a view to a Life of Christ at all could have omitted, I
will not say all, but any two or three of gems like these. And yet we
have two considerable works, both including a collection of parables,
and yet in neither of them is there a vestige of any one of the group I
have mentioned. Even the conspicuous example of the Raising of Lazarus
does not shake me in my distrust of the argument from silence.
ii. Method of approaching the Question of Miracle.
And yet I can well understand the reluctance to accept narratives of
miracle. I can well understand a nineteenth or twentieth-century reader
taking up the Fourth Gospel and saying at once and off-hand, ‘The writer
of this cannot have been an eye-witness of the events he describes.’ I
have little doubt that it is the same sort of off-hand impression which
is really at work in the minds of many of the critics. They acquire the
impression in the course of a rapid perusal; or rather it attaches
itself to the recollection that they bring with them of what they learnt
in their childhood. They do not try to shake it off; it is always there
at the back of their minds; and it colours, and I must needs think
discolours, all the elaborate and learned study that they make of the
Gospels in maturer years.
This question of miracles has been occupying my mind for some time; and
I think that at once the most candid and the best procedure that I can
follow in regard to it will be just to lay before you the provisional
conclusions that I have reached as provisional, as a stage in the
investigation of a subject that does not at all profess to be final, but
that I hope contains something of truth and something that may be
helpful to others as it has been to myself.
The one main principle in the treatment of miracle that I should like to
urge would be the importance of keeping as distinct as we can two
things, the attitude of mind in regard to miracles of the
contemporaries—those before whom they are said to have happened and on
whose testimony they have come down to us—and our own attitude now in
the twentieth century. It seems to me that our difficulties are much
increased, and that we are prevented from realizing the full strength of
the case for miracles, by confusing these two things.
If we take first the attitude of the contemporaries, it seems to me that
several fixed points come out in regard to them on which we may really
take our stand with great confidence.
(i) The first point is that what these men fully believed to be miracles
undoubtedly happened. We have evidence on this head that is strictly
first-hand, the evidence of those who believed that they had wrought
miracles themselves, as well as that they had witnessed the working of
miracles by others.
(ii) The second point is that this evidence is absolutely bona fide. Our
best example is, I suppose, St. Paul. It is a good exercise to collect
the allusions to miracles in the Epistles of St. Paul, to ‘signs and
wonders,’ to δυνάμεις or ‘acts of power,’ to special gifts of the
Spirit. There can be no doubt that St. Paul was possessed with the
conviction that he was living in the midst of miracle. This conviction
lies behind and permeates all his thought in the same natural,
spontaneous, inevitable way in which he performed, or saw others
perform, the most ordinary functions of nature, eating or drinking or
sleeping or breathing.
(iii) We observe further that these extraordinary phenomena of which he
was conscious had for him the value of miracle. The ancients conceived
of miracle as a mark of the presence and co-operation of Deity. The man
who could work miracles showed thereby that God was actively with him.
Hence the working of miracles served to authenticate teaching; it was
the proof of commission from God. It was in this sense that St. Paul
appealed to his own miracles as the ‘signs of an apostle’ (2 Cor. xii.
12), and in this sense that he claimed that his preaching carried with
it ‘the demonstration of the Spirit and of power’ (1 Cor. ii. 4; cf.
Rom. xv. 19).
(iv) If we enlarge our view and look away from the performance of
miracle by individuals to the great part which the belief in miracle has
played in the history of mankind, and more particularly in the history
of the Christian Church, we cannot, I think, fail to see that it must
have had a providential function. I do not hesitate to introduce
teleology. The history of the evolution of the world and of man is such
that we are compelled to think of it as designed; in other words we are
compelled to think that the Power which lies behind phenomena has had a
purpose, which is at least analogous to purpose in man. There may be
some paradoxical features in the carrying out of this purpose, due to
the peculiar conditions under which it has operated; but these cannot
obscure the broad lines of purposeful development; and over a
considerable tract of that development the belief in miracle has played
a substantial part, and a part that we can see to be deeply interwoven
with some of the culminating events in the history of the human race.
Some of us might be content to stop at this point; we might be content
to accept a belief that has been so ingrained in the mind of man and so
important in its effects and associations simply as it stands. But the
curiosity of science is not easily satisfied, and in the present day
especially it goes on to press the further question, After all, what was
it that really happened? We can see clearly enough what St. Paul (e. g.)
believed to have happened, but how far did this belief of his correspond
to the fact? Were these miracles that he assumes real miracles?
When we ask these questions, it is well to remember that we are still in
the region of relative ideas; we do not mean so much What is the
absolute reality of what happened? as How should we describe it—we, with
our twentieth-century habits of thought and improved scientific
categories?
It is here that we get on to the really difficult ground. It is ground
that by the nature of the case must be difficult, because it means that
we have to put a twentieth-century construction upon first-century
records. It is as if a present-day physician were dependent for his
diagnosis of the facts upon Galen or Hippocrates; or rather, the real
state of the case is worse still, for that would be at least comparing
science with science, the science of one century with the science of
another, whereas the data that we have to go upon are not scientific (in
the sense of proceeding from experts), but rather represent popular
ideas and popular assumptions.
i. In spite of these difficulties there are still, I cannot but think,
some general considerations that may help us. The first is that the
cause must be in some degree commensurate with the effects. Christianity
is in any case a very stupendous fact; and it will not do to explain it
as arising out of a series of trivial misunderstandings.
ii. The evidence of the Gospels is not quite equal in quality to that of
the Epistles. It is the evidence of men reporting what they or others
had seen, not (so far as appears) that of men who had felt the current
of miraculous energy actually thrill through themselves. St. Paul had
felt this; it was part of the experience on which he looked back, and
which he felt to be intimately bound up with the whole success of his
mission.
And yet we have to remember that the miracles of St. Paul and his
companions and contemporaries are secondary, whereas those of the
Gospels are primary. They are like the waves caused by an earthquake,
but they are not themselves the earthquake. If Christ had not come first
and done the things that never man did, there would have been no Day of
Pentecost, no outpouring of the Spirit, no overmastering impulse that
carried men like St. Paul from one end of the Mediterranean to the other
‘in the power of signs and wonders, in the power of the Holy Ghost’
(Rom. xv. 19).
iii. The argument is therefore _a fortiori_. The disciple is not above
his master, or the servant above his lord. All these subordinate
manifestations, though we have in some ways better evidence for them, do
but point back to the one supreme manifestation, the Incarnation of our
Lord Jesus Christ. We must never forget that behind the alleged miracles
of the Gospels we have the absolutely greatest spiritual force that the
world has ever known. If our knowledge is as yet very imperfect of the
influence of spirit upon matter in general, it is inevitably still more
imperfect of this crowning instance of the spirit-world in contact with
the material. When we argue upwards from the analogy of the known to the
unknown, we must always leave a large margin for the interval between
the point at which our common experience, and even higher extraordinary
experience, ends, and the point at which this highest of all human
experiences begins. Even a strictly scientific method should be
conscious of its own limitations; when it has done all that it can do,
it should be aware that its ladders are still too short to scale the
height that has to be scaled; it must leave room for a venture of faith
beyond the furthest horizon of sight.
iv. We are not called upon to believe that anything is really contrary
to, or in violation of, nature St. Augustine laid down, some fifteen
centuries ago: ‘Portentum ergo fit non contra naturam sed contra quam
est nota natura’ (_De Civitate Dei_, xxi. 8). We can always exercise an
act of faith, that if we really knew what had taken place, and if we
really knew the highest laws of the universe, there would not be any
contradiction between them. As it is, there is a double margin of error:
it is difficult, and in many cases impossible, for us so to translate
the language of the distant past into the idiom of the present as to be
sure that we can realize what are the facts that we have to deal with;
and, even if we had got the facts, we should still have but a very
imperfect knowledge of the causes by which they were determined.
v. We speak, therefore, not of what we know, but, as I have said, by an
act of faith, of that which would be _if_ we knew. In this attitude we
make allowance for possible and probable defects in our sources: we make
allowance for all the disturbing influences that have brought them into
the shape in which we see them. But in doing this, we have the
consolation of feeling that any element of mistake that has come in
under this head has been all of the nature of _extension_. The miracles
of primitive Christianity are certainly not a series of fictions. There
certainly was among them a large nucleus of events that really had the
character claimed for them, that were really due to the operation of a
Divine cause, and really bore witness to the presence of such a cause.
If there was anything beyond this of a less trustworthy character, we
may be sure that it was framed on the analogy of that which is
verifiable, or that would be verifiable if we possessed instruments and
methods capable of dealing with it.
This principle of _extensions_ is, I believe, of the first importance in
the scientific reconstruction of primitive Christianity. It at once
explains and covers the transition from that which is permanent to that
which is not permanent. It signifies ‘the removing of those things that
are shaken, ... that those things which are not shaken may remain.’ As,
for instance, in the case of the belief in Inspiration, there is
undoubtedly a reality underlying the popular belief both of ancient and
of modern times, so, also, in the case of miracle we may be sure that
there is an inner reality, which no criticism will ever dissolve, though
it may succeed in making us conscious that the descriptions of eighteen
centuries ago no longer satisfy the thought of to-day.
iii. The Gospel embodies ocular Testimony.
For these reasons I do not wish it to be supposed that I regard all
difficulties as removed and every question as closed, if I insist upon
the conclusion that has so far seemed to be emerging from our study—the
conclusion that the Gospel is the work of an eye-witness of the events,
who is describing for us what he had himself actually seen. I do not
want to use any kind of argumentative coercion. I fully believe that the
author of the Gospel occupied this position; and yet I do not mean, by
asserting this, to impose upon others the necessary consequence that
everything happened (i. e. that we can realize it to ourselves as having
happened) exactly as it is described. For my own part I abstain from
attempting to re-write the narrative. I know that any such attempt is
foredoomed to failure. Still more do I refuse to follow those who
peremptorily dismiss all that they cannot understand. I cherish and
value very highly the assurance that we have to do with the work of an
eye-witness. And yet, as I have said, I accept the result with a certain
reserve, with the consciousness that there is something unexplained and
which I perhaps myself shall never be able to explain.
This does not prevent me from making what I can of the easier incidents,
in which one seems to see one’s way more clearly. I will give an
example. One of the great passages discussed at the outset of our
inquiries is typical and significant in the light which it throws on the
mental attitude of the writer. We are told how, as he stood at the foot
of the Cross, he saw the side pierced, and blood and water flow from the
wound. It is in connexion with this that we have one of those solemn
asseverations (whether made by the writer for himself or by some one
else for him) of the truth, resting upon his own ocular testimony, of
the fact that he is recording. The whole incident evidently made a deep
impression upon him, for he goes on to quote it as a direct fulfilment
of two distinct passages of Scripture. And again, in his First Epistle,
he refers to the peculiar phenomenon which he had seen as one that was
fraught with mystical meaning.
Now physicians tell us that what the Evangelist actually saw was not,
strictly and literally, what he has described. The efflux from the side
was not exactly blood and water, though it might quite well have had an
appearance like that of blood and water, and the Evangelist no doubt
supposed it to be what he says. The blood was real blood, but that which
looked like water was a sort of lymph or serum. This would serve equally
well to suggest the train of thought which the Evangelist attached to
it. It is easy to understand how what was for him a strange phenomenon
at first struck the eye and then dwelt in his mind, and as he often
returned to it and pondered over it, at last took definite shape, as a
visible emblem, divinely produced, of a principle deeply rooted in the
Christian religion, the principle that found expression in its two
leading Sacraments.
Clearly here it is permissible to distinguish between the fact itself
for which we have this explicit testimony, and the train of speculation
to which it gave rise. The speculations are such as in all ages have
naturally commended themselves to devout minds. There have always been
those who have had so strong a sense of the unity of things, of the
‘pre-established harmony’ between the material and the spiritual, that
the ‘outward shows’ of external nature ‘the earth and every common
sight,’ have seemed to reflect and symbolize that which is unseen. We
may well believe that there is broad fundamental truth underlying these
dim intuitions, though it may be another thing to say that in any
particular case the harmony that is guessed is precisely that which the
Divine Artificer intended. But the point on which I should wish to lay
stress is, that the order of thought is from the observed fact to the
idea, and not backwards from the idea to a fact imagined to correspond
with it. And in regard to the Fourth Gospel, I think we may lay down
that the Evangelist always starts from something that he has seen. It is
possible that his mind, acting retrospectively on his memory of the
physical impression, may emphasize features in the impression that were
not so distinct at the time when it was given. But the notion that the
Gospel is a pure romance woven entirely out of the creations of the
brain seems to me contrary to its whole character.
I do not wish at all to imply—I desire expressly to guard myself against
implying—that other miracles in the Fourth Gospel can be explained so
simply as that of the pierced side. On the wider question I have just
said what I have to say. But for my present purpose, in its bearing upon
the criticism of the Fourth Gospel, I content myself with maintaining,
that St. John’s descriptions of the supernatural always start from facts
that had come under his own personal observation, or that of others who
were very near to him.
iv. A Patristic Parallel.
So far as the treatment of the supernatural has been made a ground of
objection to the Gospel, I think we may take a warning from critical
experience in another field. I quoted in the second Lecture several
instances in which criticism has distinctly changed its mind and come
back to a view far more in accordance with tradition than that which at
one time prevailed. One of these instances was taken from the literature
of the beginnings of Monasticism, and more particularly from the _Vita
Antonii_ ascribed to St. Athanasius. I pointed out how the whole class
of literature to which this treatise belongs has been definitely set
upon its feet again. After being at one time very radically treated, it
is now widely accepted as in great part resting upon good first-hand
authority. One of the arguments alleged against the Athanasian treatise
turned upon the miracles contained in it. But at the present time that
argument would be differently stated. Whereas it used to run, This
treatise contains miracles of a kind that must be unhistorical, and
therefore it cannot be the genuine work of St. Athanasius; now it would
run, This treatise is certainly a genuine work of St. Athanasius, and
therefore we must make of the miracles what we can: a judicious estimate
of them is given by Dom Cuthbert Butler in his _Lausiac History of
Palladius_ (1898), pp. 192-6. In like manner I should like to reverse
the objection that is often brought against the Fourth Gospel and to
say, that there is strong reason for regarding it as a first-hand
authority, and that the recognition of this should be a postulate of any
examination of its bearing upon the question of the supernatural.
I observe that at the Church Congress recently held at Liverpool, in the
discussion on New Testament Criticism, Mr. F. C. Burkitt made use of an
argument very similar to this, and that exception was taken to it at the
end of the debate by the Bishop of Salisbury, on the ground that the
miracles in the Gospels and in the _Historia Lausiaca_ are too different
to be compared. Of course I perfectly acknowledge the difference. I
would not for a moment wish to press the argument for more than it is
worth. At the same time, it seems to me that we must not despise the day
of small things; we must not reject an analogy simply because it is
incomplete. It rarely happens that an analogy entirely covers that with
which it is compared. Many an argument is employed _a minori ad maius_;
and I do not doubt that it was in that sense that Mr. Burkitt wished his
words to be taken, as I should wish mine.
Footnote 54:
_Theol. Literaturzeitung_, 1893, col. 181 ff.
LECTURE VI
THE DOCTRINE OF THE LOGOS, AND ITS INFLUENCE ON THE GOSPEL
The Fourth Gospel is like one of those great Egyptian temples which we
may see to this day at Dendera or Edfu or Karnak—and we remember that
the Temple on Mount Zion itself was of the same general type—the
sanctuary proper is approached through a pylon, a massive structure
overtopping it in height and outflanking it on both sides. The pylon of
the Fourth Gospel is of course the Prologue; and this raises at the
outset two important questions: I. What are the affinities of its
leading thought; or, in other words, what is its place in the history of
thought and the history of religion? and II. In what relation does the
prologue stand to the rest of the Gospel? I need not say that both these
points have been, and are being still, actively debated.