Now I am not going to maintain that, if one of us had been an
eye-witness of the Life of Christ, the profound teaching of which I have
just given an outline would have seemed to him to bear the same kind of
proportion to the sum total of His teaching that it bears in the Fourth
Gospel. By the essential conditions of the case it could not be so. It
is this particular kind of teaching which the Evangelist specially
wishes to enforce; and, in order to enforce it, he has singled out for
his narrative just those scenes in which it came up—those and, broadly
speaking, no others.
We have seen that in regard to this teaching there is a very large
amount of coincidence between St. Paul and St. John. We shall have
presently to consider what is the nature and ground of this coincidence,
how it arose and what relation it implies between the two Apostles. But
before going on to this, we must first ask ourselves how far it can be
verified by comparison with the Synoptic Gospels. It is right to look
for such verification, however much we may be convinced that these
Gospels are an extremely partial and fragmentary representation of all
that Christ said and did. Even a modern biography, contemplated perhaps
during the life-time of its subject, and actually begun soon after his
death, will only contain a tithe (if he is a really great man) of his
more significant acts and sayings. But those who attempted to write what
we wrongly call Lives of Christ did not, as it would seem, for the most
part even begin to do so or make preparations for beginning for some
thirty years after the Crucifixion, when the company of the apostles and
intimate disciples was already dispersed, or at least in no near contact
with the writers[66]. We have only to ask ourselves what we should
expect in such circumstances. And I think we should find that our
expectations were fully borne out if we were to compare together the
contents of the oldest documents, those of the _Logia_ with the
Mark-Gospel, and those of the special source or sources of St. Luke with
both. The amount and value of the gleanings which each attempt left for
those who came after tells its own story.
But if we do not expect that the Synoptic Gospels would be in the least
degree exhaustive in the materials they have preserved for us from the
Life of Christ, we might be sure that their defects would be greatest in
regard to the class of teaching with which we are at present concerned.
It is teaching of a kind that might perhaps haunt the minds of a few
gifted and far-sighted individuals, but would certainly fall through the
meshes of the mind of the average man. It was this very fact, as we have
seen, which prompted the Fourth Evangelist to write his Gospel. The
externals of the Lord’s Life he recognized as having been adequately
told; but it was just the profoundest teaching and some of the most
significant acts that had escaped telling, and that he himself desired
to rescue from oblivion.
We must therefore be content if we can verify a few particulars. We must
not from the outset expect to be able to do more. And we must be still
more content if these particulars show by their character that they are
fragments from a much larger wreckage, that they are what we might call
chance survivals of what had once existed on a much larger scale.
We concluded our sketch of the Christology of the Fourth Gospel by
speaking of the data which it contained for the doctrine of the Trinity.
These however are only data. It is perhaps a little surprising that the
only approach to a formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity occurs not
in St. John but at the end of the Gospel of St. Matthew (xxviii. 19). I
am of course well aware that this part of the First Gospel is vigorously
questioned by the critics. I am prepared to believe myself that the
passage is a late incorporation in the Gospel; and antecedently I should
not say that we had strong guarantees for its literal accuracy. But
then—this is an old story, so far as I am concerned, and I must
apologize for introducing it, but I cannot leave the point unnoticed—how
are we to explain that other remarkable verse that occurs at the end of
the second Epistle to the Corinthians (2 Cor. xiii. 14)? This familiar
three-fold benediction must have had antecedents; it must, I should say,
have had a long train of antecedents. The most adequate explanation of
it seems to me to be that the train of antecedents started from
something corresponding, something said at some time or other, in the
teaching of our Lord[67]. I fully believe that the hints and intimations
of a Trinity that we find scattered about the New Testament have their
origin ultimately in the teaching of Christ. Apart from this, how could
the conception have been reached at so early a date? For 2 Corinthians
must in any case fall between 53-57 A.D.[68]
Let us work our way backwards through another of the hints. We have seen
that the coming of the Paraclete is described in the Fourth Gospel as a
return of Christ to His own. Are there any parallels for this in the
Synoptic Gospels? Not exactly, because the two things are not brought
into combination. But we have on the one hand distinct predictions of
the activity of the Holy Spirit after the departure of Christ. For
instance:
‘When they deliver you up, be not anxious how or what ye shall
speak.... For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father
that speaketh in you’ (Matt. x. 19, 20).
And in St. Luke’s version of the promise as to answers to prayer, the
Holy Spirit is spoken of as imparted to the believer:
‘If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your
children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy
Spirit to them that ask him?’ (Luke xi. 13).
The gift of the Holy Spirit in connexion with prayer is one of the
topics in the Last Discourse as recorded by St. John. On the other hand
there are in the Synoptics remarkable allusions to the continued
presence of Christ with His people. Such is that which follows
immediately upon the verse about Baptism in the threefold Name: ‘Lo, I
am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.’ And in Matt. xviii.
20, ‘Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in
the midst of them[69].’ Wendt connects this last passage with the
instances in which acts done in the name of Christ and for the benefit
of His followers are spoken of as though they were done to Him. For
instance, ‘Whosoever shall receive one of such little children in my
name, receiveth me: and whosoever receiveth me, receiveth not me, but
him that sent me’ (Mark ix. 37; cf. Luke x. 16; Matt. xxv. 40). Wendt
goes on to dilute the meaning of these allusions. He would make them
mean no more than that such actions have the same value and the same
reward as though they were done to Christ. But the ascending series is
against this: ‘Whosoever receiveth Me, receiveth not Me, but Him that
sent Me.’
And once again we have to ask, what is the origin of all those passages
in the Epistles, where St. Paul speaks of the _solidarity_ between
Christ and the whole body of the faithful, so that in that extraordinary
phrase the sufferings of His Apostle actually fill up or supplement the
sufferings of Christ (ἀνταναπληρῶ τὰ ὑστερήματα τῶν θλίψεων τοῦ Χριστοῦ,
Col. i. 24)?
The existence of such passages suggests the probability—and indeed more
than probability—that there were others like them, but more directly
didactic and expository, which have not been preserved. The Fourth
Gospel contains some specimens of this teaching; but that Gospel and the
Synoptics together rather give specimens of a class of teaching than
make any approach to an exhaustive record of all that our Lord must have
said on these topics.
We have seen that the Synoptic Gospels distinctly represent our Lord as
the Jewish Messiah. They represent Him as filled from the first with the
consciousness of a mission that is beyond that of the ordinary teacher
or prophet. He taught as one having authority, and not as the scribes.
The demoniacs recognized in Him a presence before which they were awed
and calmed. He took upon Himself to forgive sins, with the assurance
that those whom He forgave God also would forgive. He called Himself, in
one very ancient form of narrative, ‘Lord of the sabbath.’ He did not
hesitate to review the whole course of previous revelation, and to
propound in His own name a new law superseding the old. He evidently
regarded His work on earth as possessing an extraordinary value. He was
Himself a greater than Solomon, a greater than Jonah; and, what is
perhaps more remarkable, He seems to regard His own claim as exceeding
that of the whole body of the poor (‘Ye have the poor always with you
... but Me ye have not always’). As His teaching went on, He began to
speak as though His relation to the human race was not confined to His
life among them, but as though it would be continued and renewed on a
vast scale after His death; He would come again in the character of
Judge, and He would divide mankind according to the service which (in a
large sense) they had rendered, or not rendered, to Him.
These are a number of particulars which helped to bring out what there
was extraordinary in His mission. By what formula was it to be described
and covered? It was described under the Jewish name ‘Messiah,’ with its
various equivalents. Among those equivalents, that which the apostolic
generation deemed most adequate was ‘the Son of God.’ One of the
Synoptic Gospels says expressly that He applied this title to Himself
(Matt. xxvii. 43), and it is quite possible that He did so, but critical
grounds prevent us from laying stress upon the phrase. On two great
occasions (the Baptism and Transfiguration) the title is given to Him by
a voice from heaven. But only in a single passage (Matt. xi. 27; Luke x.
22) is there anything like an exposition of what is contained in the
title. The mutual relation of the Father and the Son is expressed as a
perfect insight on the part of each, not only into the mind, but into
the whole being and character of the other.
Different critics have dealt with this saying in different ways.
Harnack, in his famous lectures, gave it the prominence that it
deserves, but at the same time reduced its meaning, in accordance with
his generally reduced conception of Christianity. His exegesis tended to
limit the peculiar knowledge of the Son to His special apprehension of
the truth of Divine Fatherhood. M. Loisy demurs to this. He says:
‘There is clearly involved a transcendental relation, which throws
into relief the high dignity of the Christ, and not a psychological
reality, of which one cannot see the possibility in respect to God.
The terms Father and Son are not here purely religious, but they
have already become metaphysical; theological and dogmatic
speculation has been able to take hold of them without greatly
modifying their sense. There is only one Father and only one Son,
constituted, in a manner, by the knowledge that they have of one
another, absolute entities the relations of which are almost
absolute[70].’
Perhaps this is a little exaggerated in the opposite direction to
Harnack. Still I believe it to be in the main right. The mutual
knowledge of the Father and the Son rests upon their essential community
of nature. But, having recognized this, M. Loisy goes on, with what I
cannot but think singular levity, to cast doubt upon the passage. He
regards the whole context in St. Matthew as a sort of psalm based upon
the last chapter (li) of Ecclesiasticus; and he ascribes it not to our
Lord, but to the tradition of the early Church.
This is far from being a favourable specimen of Biblical criticism. We
have only to set the two passages side by side to estimate its value. It
is possible enough that there are reminiscences not only of this, but of
other passages of Ecclesiasticus and of other books in the mind of
speaker or writer[71]. We might conceive of a defining phrase here or
there being due to the Evangelist and suggested by such reminiscences.
Or we might conceive of Christ Himself going back in thought (as well He
might) to the invitation of personified Wisdom. There would be nothing
strange in either supposition. The New Testament everywhere takes up the
threads of the Old, and is not confined to the Jewish Canon. But in any
case the materials thus supplied are entirely recast; and the whole
passage (‘Come unto Me,’ &c.) bears the inimitable stamp of one Figure,
and only one[72].
The truth is that in the Synoptic Gospels, as well as in the Fourth,
there is really a mysterious background, though we see less of the
attempt to pierce it. These simple-looking sayings are not so simple as
they seem. To take, for instance, one upon which we have touched, ‘he
that receiveth you, receiveth Me, and he that receiveth Me, receiveth
Him that sent Me.’ The words are almost childlike in their simplicity,
and yet they lead up to the highest heights, and down to the deepest
depths. No doubt we may rationalize it all away, if we please. We may
shut out the mystery from our minds. But we shall not keep it out for
long.
Just when we are safest, there’s a sunset-touch,
A fancy from a flower-bell, some one’s death,
A chorus-ending from Euripides—
And that’s enough for fifty hopes and fears
As old and new at once as nature’s self,
To rap and knock and enter in our soul.
There is a movement perhaps on a large scale, like the Bentham period in
England in the first half of the nineteenth century, or the sceptical
and deistical period a hundred years earlier, and it seems as though
everything were to be made clear and intelligible, and the conscience
and soul of men were not to be troubled by phantoms any more. And then
there come ‘Lake Poets,’ or an ‘Oxford Movement,’ and the other world,
the old world, all comes back again; and the forces that try to restrain
it are snapped like Samson’s withes.
The reason appears to be that these very clear outlines are always
obtained by omissions or suppressions that are artificial, and do not do
justice to the wonderful richness and subtlety either of the human mind
or of the powers that work upon it.
4. Interpretation of these Relations between the Synoptic Gospels, St.
Paul and St. John: Alternative Constructions.
These comparisons that we have just been instituting between the
Synoptic Gospels, St. Paul, and St. John raise a very large question, a
question involving nothing less than our whole construction of the
history of the Apostolic Age.
It is becoming more and more the custom with the left wing of critical
writers to make the most fundamental part of Christianity, the pivot
teaching of the New Testament, an invention of St. Paul’s. St. John is
only the chief of his disciples. According to these writers primitive
Christianity, the genuine Christianity, loses itself in the sands, or is
represented, let us say, deducting the stress on the Mosaic Law, by the
sect of the Ebionites. It is St. Paul who strikes out the new road; and
the writer whom we call St. John follows him in it. The attempt of this
later writer to supply a historical basis for Paulinism, holds good only
in appearance. The teaching which it puts into the mouth of Jesus is in
no sense an antecedent of the teaching of St. Paul, but a product of it.
Here, for instance, is a trenchant statement of the position.
‘The Fourth Gospel derived this importance, lasting long beyond the
time of his birth, from its having bridged over the chasm between
Jesus and St. Paul, and from its having carried the Pauline Gospel
back into the life and teaching of Jesus. It is only through this
gospel that Paulinism attains to absolute dominion in the theology
of the Church.... Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Redeemer of the
world, is for John as well as Paul the core and centre of
Christianity. And, moreover, John’s Christology is Pauline in all
its important features—the Son of God who was with God in heaven,
and was sent by God upon earth, the Mediator of creation, the God of
Revelation of the Old Testament, the Son of Man from heaven, as
Paul, too, called Him. And the chief object of His coming into the
world is the atonement by means of His death.... The whole of the
Johannine theology is a natural development from the Pauline. It is
Paulinism modified to meet the needs of the sub-apostolic age. Two
important consequences follow from this. There is no Johannine
theology by the side of and independent of the Pauline. Luther
already felt this clearly, and he understood something of the
matter. John and Paul are not two theological factors, but one. Were
we to accept that St. John formed his conception of Christianity
either originally or directly from Jesus’ teaching, we should have
to refuse St. Paul all originality, for we should leave him scarcely
a single independent thought. But it is St. Paul that is original;
St. John is not. In St. Paul’s letters we look, as through a window,
into the factory where these great thoughts flash forth and are
developed; in St. John we see the beginning of their transformation
and decay.’ Wernle, _Beginnings of Christianity_, ii. pp. 262, 264,
274 f. (E. T.).
Nothing could be clearer. And by reason of his clearness and boldness of
statement Wernle is an excellent representative of the whole school; for
what he asserts in set terms is really presupposed by a number of other
writers who do not assert it. It remains for us to ask, Is this
construction of the early history of Christianity tenable?
Two Preliminary Remarks.
Before I attempt to answer this question, there are two remarks that I
should like to make upon it.
i. We observe here, as in so many other cases, that the theory reflects,
not so much the essential disposition and proportions of the facts as
the state of the extant evidence. Hardly anything has come down to us
from the early years, at least for the first three decades, of the
Mother Church; and from that which has come down to us, the earlier
chapters of the Acts and the Epistle of St. James, criticism would make
considerable deductions. I think that these deductions are greater than
ought to be made, but their existence cannot be ignored. What we know of
the Mother Church has to be pieced together by inference and
constructive imagination. On the other hand for St. Paul we have in any
case an impressive body of certainly genuine epistles. It is natural
enough that the mind should be dominated by these, and that the
assumption should be made—for it is pure assumption—that the leading
ideas of these epistles are an original creation.
ii. But there is nothing really in the Epistles themselves to bear out
this assumption. St. Paul does not write as though he were a wholesale
innovator. He does not write as though he were founding a new religion.
On the contrary, he lays great stress in a familiar passage (1 Cor. iii.
11) on the fact that the foundation is already laid. In another place (1
Cor. xv. 11) he speaks as though it made no difference whether he were
the preacher or others, the belief of Christians was the same. St. Paul
has indeed his special views and his special controversies, but they do
not affect the main point. He assumes that this is common to all
Christians.
This brings me to some of the points on which we have to test the
theory, as it is stated by Wernle.