All our discussions have for their object, not the production of rounded
and symmetrical theories but the ascertainment of truth. We must take
the data as we find them. If they do not as they stand sustain a clear
conclusion, we cannot make them do so. And it seems to me far better
frankly to confess the fact than to strain the evidence one way or the
other. We may state the case with such indications of leaning as we
please, but always with the reservation that a slight change in the
evidence, the discovery or recovery of a single new fact, might turn the
scale.
This is, I think, the position of things in regard to some of the
outlying parts of the problem of the Fourth Gospel. One broad conclusion
seems to stand out from the evidence, internal as well as external. The
author was an eye-witness, an Apostolic man—either in the wider sense of
the word ‘Apostle’ or in the narrower. So much seems to me to be
assured; but round that broad conclusion there arises a cluster of
questions to which I cannot give a simple and categorical answer.
I will come back to these questions in a moment. But I ought perhaps
first to remind you of the point to which the previous argument has
brought us, and of the grounds on which the main proposition is based.
I take it to be a fundamental element in the question that in several
places (especially xix. 35, xxi. 24; cf. i. 14, 1 John i. 1-3), the
Gospel itself lays claim to first-hand authority. This is a different
matter from ordinary pseudonymous writing. The direct and strong
assertions that the Gospel makes are either true or they are a
deliberate untruth. Between these alternatives I have no hesitation in
choosing. I do not think that we should have the right to make so grave
an imputation as that implied in the second on anything but the clearest
necessity. But the first alternative appeared to me to be confirmed by a
multitude of particulars: first, by a number of places in which the
author of the Gospel seems to write from a standpoint within the
Apostolic circle, or in which he gives expression to experiences like
those of an Apostle; and secondly by the very marked extent to which the
narrative of the Gospel corresponds in its details to the real
conditions of the time and place in which its scene is laid, conditions
which rapidly changed and passed away.
This constitutes the internal argument for the authentic character of
the Gospel. It is met and, as I conceive, strongly corroborated by the
nature of the external evidence.