But Dr. Schmiedel certainly understates that for the Fourth Gospel. He
assumes that no trace can be found of this earlier than 140. A single
item of the evidence, which he does not notice, is enough to refute
this. I refer to our present conclusion of the Gospel of St. Mark. We
may say with confidence that its date is earlier than the year
140—whether we argue from the chronology of Aristion, its presumable
author, or from its presence in the archetype of almost all extant MSS.,
or from the traces of it in writers so early as Justin and Irenaeus. But
I may take it for granted that the added verses imply not only the
existence but up to a certain point the authority of the Fourth Gospel.
But, besides this, Dr. Schmiedel assumes the negative results of an
inquiry, which he has conducted very lightly, and the scale on which he
was writing compelled him to conduct lightly, into the bearings of the
literature older than 140. I am not so sure as he is that there is no
allusion to the Gospel in Barnabas or Hermas, where it is found (e. g.)
by Keim, or in the Elders of Papias, where it is found (e. g.) by
Harnack. The questions raised in these cases are too complex and too
delicate to be quite worth discussing from the point of view of that
legal proof which for Schmiedel seems alone to have any value. But
Ignatius and the _Didaché_ are of more tangible importance. I am
inclined to think that justice has rarely been done from this point of
view to Ignatius. It is not so much a question of close coincidence in
expression. There I should perhaps allow that Dr. Schmiedel is within
his rights in denying what Dr. Drummond and Dr. Stanton affirm. The
evidence of Ignatius is obscured by the fact that, unlike Polycarp[74],
he is not given to exact quotation. Polycarp is by far the weaker man;
it is natural to him to express his thoughts in the words of others. But
Ignatius has a rugged strength of mind which digests and assimilates all
that comes to it, and if it reproduces the thoughts of others, does so
in a form of its own[75]. But I do not think there can be any doubt that
Ignatius has digested and assimilated to an extraordinary degree the
teaching that we associate with the name of St. John. If any one
questions this, I would refer him to the excellent monograph, _Ignatius
von Antiochien als Christ und Theologe_, by Freiherr von der Goltz
(_Texte und Untersuchungen_, Band xii). It will be best to give the
conclusion to which this writer comes in his own words, as I agree with
it largely but not quite entirely. He says:
‘The question is whether Ignatius came to appropriate this world of
thought through reading our Fourth Gospel, or whether he must be
held to be an independent witness to this mode of thinking. Up to a
certain point the preceding investigation has already shown that the
latter is the case. Although, for instance, certain details might
seem to point to borrowing from the Fourth Gospel, yet this peculiar
religious Modalism, this mysticism, this combination and
accentuation of the same points, this special form of faith in
Christ, and, in general, this identical mode of thought and belief
could not be simply transferred by means of a book to one who had
not in other ways taken up the same ideas and made them his own.
There is also proof from various turns given to the thought, as from
his use of an independent terminology, that the author is in
possession of “Johannean” ideas as his own property. So that in case
we really came to the result that Ignatius was acquainted with the
Fourth Gospel, we should have indeed to refer to that acquaintance
the portrait that he draws of Christ and some details, but in spite
of that we should have to hold fast the conclusion that in
appropriating his general conception of things, Ignatius must have
come under the prolonged influence of a community itself influenced
by Johannean thought’ (p. 139).
It will have been observed that the reason for thinking that the
affinity of thought between Ignatius and St. John is not to be explained
by the use of a book, is not because of its slightness but because it is
really too deep to be accounted for in that way. It is true that the
affinity goes very deep. I had occasion a few years ago to study rather
closely the Ignatian letters, and I was so much impressed by it as even
to doubt whether there is any other instance of resemblance between a
biblical and patristic book, that is really so close. Allowing for a
certain crudity of expression in the later writer and remembering that
he is a perfervid Syrian and not a Greek, he seems to me to reflect the
Johannean teaching with extraordinary fidelity. This applies especially
to his presentation of the doctrine of the Incarnation, to his
conception of the Logos, and of the relation of Christ at once to the
Father and to the believer. In the writers of the next generation to
Ignatius e. g. in Justin—the conception of the Logos is infected by
Greek philosophy, giving to it more or less the sense of reason, whereas
in Ignatius the leading idea is, as we have seen it to be in St. John,
that of revelation. Nowhere else have we the idea of the fullness of
Godhead revealed in Christ grasped and expressed with so much vigour.
What difference there is is of the nature of exaggeration. It is not
wrong to say that the language of Ignatius tends towards Modalism. But
it is just because he has grasped ideas, for every one of which there
are parallels in the Fourth Gospel, with so much intensity.
I can quite allow that Ignatius has so absorbed the teaching that we
call St. John’s as it were _in succum et sanguinem_ that the relation
cannot be adequately explained by the mere perusal of a book late on in
life. There is something more in it than this. Von der Goltz would
explain it by the hypothesis that Ignatius had resided for a
considerable length of time in a ‘Johannean’ community like the churches
of the province of Asia. There is however no hint of anything of the
kind in the letters. It is I think Harnack who somewhere remarks that
from the opening of the letter of Ignatius to Polycarp we should infer
that the latter was a stranger to the writer.
It would be more natural to fall back on the tradition that Ignatius was
an actual disciple of St. John. But this tradition appears first in the
_Martyrium Colbertinum_; in other words there is no evidence for it
before the fourth century. Indeed Zahn has sketched in a plausible
manner the process by which we may conceive it to have arisen[76]. Still
there is ample room in the dark spaces of the lives both of Ignatius and
of St. John for some more or less intimate connexion between them. The
alternative seems to me to be, either to suppose something of this kind,
or else to think that Ignatius had really had access to the Johannean
writings years before the date of his journey to Rome, and that he had
devoted to them no mere cursory reading but a close and careful study
which had the deepest effect upon his mind.
If the Fourth Gospel was really the work of St. John, the chronology
would leave quite sufficient room for this hypothesis. But in any case
the phenomena of the Ignatian letters seem to me to prove the existence,
well before the end of the first century, of a compact body of teaching
like that which we find in the Fourth Gospel. For even Dr. Schmiedel, I
suppose, would hardly wish us to invert the relationship, and to say
that the Evangelist took his ideas from Ignatius. But if the substance
of the Fourth Gospel existed before the end of the first century, that
is surely a considerable step towards the belief that the Gospel existed
in writing, and the other reasons that we have for thinking that it had
been written are so far confirmed.
A smaller item of proof tending in the same direction is supplied by the
_Didaché_. It is well-known that the very ancient Eucharistic prayer
contained in that document has the remarkable phrase ‘to make perfect in
love,’—‘Remember, Lord, Thy Church to deliver it from all evil and to
perfect it in Thy love,’ which it is natural to compare with 1 John iv.
17, 18; John xvii. 23. The coincidence cannot be wholly accidental,
though the question must be left open whether the phrase comes directly
from a writing or only circulated orally[77]. The problem is the same as
that which has just met us in the case of Ignatius, though on a much
smaller scale. As far as it goes, it helps to strengthen the conclusion
that has just been drawn.
Between Ignatius and Irenaeus we have Papias, Justin, and the greater
Gnostics. In view more particularly of the discussion by Schwartz, I
think it may be said that Papias probably knew the Gospel and recognized
it as an authority. That Justin also used it I think we may take as at
the present time generally admitted; and from the extent to which he
used it I do not think that any inference can be drawn. Professor Bacon
complains that the suggestions which have been put forward to account
for the somewhat sparing use which he makes of it are not
satisfactory[78]. Probably they are not in the sense of carrying
conviction that any one of them is right to the exclusion of others.
There must always be this difficulty where we are quite in the dark, and
where the whole chapter of accidents is open before us. It is no doubt a
sounder method to fall back with Dr. Drummond simply upon our
ignorance[79]. But to say that the negative side of Justin’s evidence in
any sense cancels the positive seems to me untenable.
As to Basilides and Valentinus, though there remains in my own mind a
slight degree of probability that they really used the Gospel, I admit
that this probability is not of a kind that can be strongly asserted
where it is challenged. At the same time I cannot think Schmiedel’s
hypothesis at all probable that ‘the Fourth Gospel saw the light
somewhere between A.D. 132 and A.D. 140[80], and that although it was
not used by the founders of the great Gnostic schools, it was at once
adopted by their disciples. This is an instance of the way in which Dr.
Schmiedel and his friends, when they light upon a hypothesis that
favours the negative side, content themselves with stating it, as if it
must at once carry conviction; and form no mental picture of the
conditions with a view to ascertain whether the hypothesis is or is not
probable. We may be pretty sure that the Fourth Gospel did not come in
surreptitiously in this way, like a thief over the wall, and at once
obtain recognition without any examination of credentials.
I do not hesitate to say that this theory of the late origin of the
Gospel is not one that will work, or bear to be consistently carried
out. On the other hand, if we assume the traditional view, all the
evidence falls into line; we have an adequate cause for the authority
which from the first attached to the Gospel; and, allowing for the
scantiness and critical drawbacks of the materials from which our
evidence is drawn, we have a picture quite as satisfactory as we can
expect of its gradually expanding circulation.
So far, our course has been straightforward. The salient points stand
out in orderly succession, and they all rest on solid foundations. But
when we come to closer quarters, and try to reconstruct for ourselves
the circumstances under which the Gospel was written, and which attended
the first two or three decades of its history, the case is otherwise.
Many questions may be raised that cannot be categorically answered.
Bricks cannot be made without straw; and positive history cannot be
written on the ground of mere surmises and possibilities. All I would
contend for is that no valid argument can be brought from the facts as
they stand against the Gospel; it is another matter, and will require
longer time and perhaps further discoveries, before we can paint on the
canvas of history a picture strictly harmonious and coherent in all its
parts.