The same verse may help us to form an estimate of the theory of M.
Loisy. So far as ‘the theology of the Incarnation’ is meant to express
the same thing, the phrase is certainly justified. And if M. Loisy
intends it to be at the same time a paraphrase for the doctrine of the
Logos, we can have no objection. At least the only objection we need
have would be that he is using a vaguer and more general term, when he
might use one that is both definite and characteristic. As a rule, one
is more likely to get at the heart of a writer’s meaning by laying
stress on the peculiar and individual elements in his teaching, and not
on that which he shares with others.
But the question how far either M. Loisy or Dr. Grill has succeeded in
defining the root-idea of the Gospel is after all only secondary. The
real issue is not as to the accuracy of the definition, but as to the
nature of the relation which is pre-supposed between the root-idea, the
principle which covers the plan and object of the Gospel, and the
narrative of which the main body of the Gospel consists. If I may speak
for a moment of the leading idea, not of St. John but of M. Loisy, I am
afraid that the tendency, if not the purpose, of his whole book is to
convict the author of the Gospel of writing fiction where he professes
to write fact. ‘The theology of the Incarnation’ is a euphemism which is
meant to describe the Gospel as from end to end allegory and symbol, the
product of an idea and not of reality.
M. Loisy, we all know, occupies a peculiar position. His criticism is
radical and destructive, but he believes himself to bring back as faith
what his criticism has destroyed. Few recent writers have left less of
the Fourth Gospel standing as solid history; but at the same time he is
a dutiful son of his Church, and what the Church accepts he also accepts
as true. There can hardly be any doubt that the Church, as far back as
we can trace its convictions, regarded the Fourth Gospel as strictly
historical. If it had not done so, it is very questionable whether the
Church itself would have taken the shape it did. There are many in these
days who, if they followed M. Loisy as a critic, would find it very hard
to follow him as a theologian. They are not a little perplexed to
understand how he himself can reconcile the two trains of his thinking.
That, however, is his own affair, with which outsiders are not
concerned. But they are greatly concerned to know whether or not his
criticism is sound. There is no doubt at all that the Fourth Gospel
expresses the Evangelist’s ‘theology of the Incarnation.’ It expresses
it, but is it the product of it? Has it no more substantial foundation
than an idea? Is it history, or is it fiction? That is the great and
vital question to which we must address ourselves more directly in the
next lecture.
Footnote 55:
Réville, _La doctrine du Logos_, p. 67.
Footnote 56:
Grill, p. 218.
Footnote 57:
Ibid., p. 114. Philo’s word for ‘interpreter,’ however, is not cognate
with that used by St. John.
Footnote 58:
Ibid., pp. 115-26.
Footnote 59:
Drummond, _Philo Judaeus_, ii. 237-9; Grill, pp. 133-6.
Footnote 60:
The main passage is _Vit. Mos._ iii. 14.
Footnote 61:
That accomplished scholar P. Wendland points to the tendency to attach
the Stoical idea of the λόγος specially to Hermes and the Egyptian
Thoth. He quotes from Cornutus (_temp._ Nero) τυγχάνει δὲ ὁ Ἑρμῆς ὁ
λόγος ὤν, ὃν ἀπέστειλαν πρὸς ἡμᾶς ἐξ οὐρανοῦ οἱ θεοί. Hermes is the
messenger of the gods, and communicates their will to men; and it is
conceivable that the use of the term λόγος in connexion with him may
have in some slight degree suggested, or prepared the way for, its use
in connexion with the new revelation. See _Christentum u. Hellenismus_
(1902), p. 7.
Footnote 62:
_Entstehung d. vierten Evang._ i. 4-31, 87 ff.
Footnote 63:
_Le Quatrième Evangile_, p. 98: ‘Les observations précédentes et tout
ce qu’on a remarqué touchant le caractère du quatrième Evangile
prouvent suffisamment que la théologie de l’incarnation est la clef du
livre tout entier, et qu’elle le domine depuis la première ligne
jusqu’à la dernière.’
LECTURE VII
The Christology of the Gospel