kingdom of God is at hand, there lies already the dawn of the aiòv péλλwv; and especially from the day in which He Himself, as the Risen One, became a partaker of the alv μéλλwv, the new and higher order of the world, in which there is no more death or birth, but an immortal life like the angels, has already begun to dawn and overarches the lower earthly world, open at all times for those who have overcome the world, and have become ripe for the world of perfection. This view we may fancy that Jesus held, at least from the time when first He came to look for His own resurrection, not as an awakening at the last day, but within three days. The charm of the old Jewish view was broken up even for His friends by Christ's resurrection, and they had no point to look forward to except their own perfection. This alone gives a reasonable meaning to the obscure intermediate state; and the wide kingdom of the other world, in which are gathered those who have departed from the earth, is also found, when approached from this side, to have the same moral interest as we have already found in our examination of the idea of the final judgment. There we may see an innumerable multitude of human lives rising higher or sinking lower according to the result of their life on earth, as in the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. But over all stands, as the goal of perfection, the heaven of the sons of the resurrection. And this means not only that many whom the closing judgment of their life on earth has carried far down, like the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, are able perhaps to raise themselves again and strive to reach that starry heaven, but also that many whom the angels have carried over into a better existence, such as Lazarus, have not yet therewith attained to the eternal house of the Father. The poor Lazarus and the penitent thief have passed into Paradise, but that is not the heaven of the sons of the resurrection of which mention is made in Luke xx. 35 f. The patriarchs and prophets are, according to Matt. viii. 11, Luke xiii. 28, to sit at the festive table of the kingdom of heaven; how much they must have grown in the other world in order to be capable of that, when in this world the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than the greatest prophet! (Matt. xi. 11). These are perhaps strange considerations, in

view of the conceptions of the world beyond, in which we have been trained. But with this conception of ours we have scarcely got beyond the formal notions of Judaism which Jesus found in existence, while the peculiarity of His teaching on this matter lies in this, that He treats these notions as symbols, and, indeed, as insufficient symbols (all symbols are at bottom insufficient), and breaks through them, just as insufficient, with His ideas. If the ideas which we have offered as peculiar to Him cannot be demonstrated fully by way of exegesis, since the form in which they are presented stands in the way, yet they are attested by their harmony with Jesus' fundamental view of the kingdom of God and of the human soul. If the kingdom of God in its perfection is nothing else than the fellowship of the perfected righteous with the eternally good and perfect One, and if the life of the soul inviolably follows the great divine law of moral development, how could Jesus have regarded the relation of man to the kingdom of heaven as closed with that earthly death on which He never lays a special weight? These intimations of a development after death do not exclude the thought of an end, they do not even make it uncertain. surely as in nature all growth reaches its height and then continues no further, but makes way for another life springing from that which has thus reached maturity, so surely does Jesus expect the moral world some day to reach its maturity. And, indeed, He thinks of a maturity of the two powers of good and evil contending in the moral world, of the wheat and the tares, as it is said in the parable (Matt. xiii. 24-30, 37-43). All those ideas of sin being still pardonable in that world do not lead Him to the speculative conclusion of a universal restoration. He speaks rather of a worm that dieth

not.

As

He pronounced over a man the sentence, It were better for him that he had never been born" (Matt. xxvi. 24). He spoke of the sin against the Holy Ghost which cannot be forgiven. Though we take that first saying as proverbial, and, therefore, not to be dogmatically strained; though we point out in the last utterance that it is only a word of warning which is meant to prevent the sin against the Holy Ghost, but does not suppose it as already committed; yet He always considered it possible for human freedom and sin to

go so far that the power of surrendering to grace might be lost. Whether and how far that will become reality He leaves to the omniscient Father, just as He leaves to Him the sitting on His right hand and on His left (Matt. xx. 23), or the day and hour of the world's judgment. When a hearer on one occasion, touched by the earnestness of His teaching, asked Him, "Lord, are there few that be saved?" He did not answer him with yes or no, but gave the one answer that was of use, "Strive to enter in at the strait gate," for the mere desire does not gain an entrance for us (Luke xiii. 33 f.). On the other hand, He was certain that the eternal Father will perfectly accomplish His purpose of love with the children of men; the completed kingdom of God remains the constant unspoken background of all His predictions. He did not paint with excessive colours; knowing that here He had to do with what "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived (1 Cor. ii. 9), He represented it quietly in the simplest images. At one time He finds. material for His parables in the bright festal room with its hospitable meal, at another time the throne-room in which the king sits judging, surrounded by his friends who share in his government. The ideas of deep satisfaction in loving fellowship with Himself and with one another, and of an exalted kingly activity (Matt. xxv. 21; Luke xix. 17), complement each other. But every attempt to make the unseen conceivable is rendered impossible by the idea that a wholly new world is to be realised; God the Father is rich enough not to need to copy the present world in the next; He has creative power to set up in it something really new and infinitely higher (Matk xii. 24, 25). Yet as from the seed the harvest proceeds by a true development, the completed kingdom of the Father, in which the righteous will shine as the sun (Matt. xiii. 43; cf. Dan. xii. 3), will be nothing else than the harvest of that kingdom of God which Jesus, as God's sower, has planted here on earth.

BOOK II

THE TEACHING OF JESUS ACCORDING TO

THE GOSPEL OF JOHN

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

§ 1. THE JOHANNINE QUESTION

THE Fourth Gospel presents itself as a second chief source for the teaching of Jesus. Recently, however, many voices have, with great self-assurrance, called in question its character as such. The so-called critical school in this matter still follows on the whole the hypothesis of Baur. According to this hypothesis, the Fourth Gospel is not a work of the Apostle John, but a production of the second century, a writing that has no independent historical foundation, nor even a real historical purpose. In the form of a life of Jesus, the theological opinions which are first stated in the prologue are developed; it is, in fact, to use Hase's appropriate expression, the romance of the Logos. If this view of the Fourth Gospel were established, it would not show us the teaching of Jesus, but only a post-apostolic theology. Certain modifications of the critical hypothesis give a different result. The great difficulties, both of the traditional and of the modern critical conception of this remarkable book, have called forth attempts at mediation, in which many are now inclined to trust. The book is recognised to be of Johannine origin; it has underlying it a genuine tradition, which has been edited

in post-apostolic times. But if we recognise that the author had historical information at his disposal, we have still to ask, Which are the genuine words of Jesus; and especially if, as in the latest attempt of that kind, the division between the genuinely Johannine elements and later additions were essentially a division between the discourses and the historical narratives of the Gospel? biblical theology would seem to be justified in making confident use of the first.1 But all these mediating hypotheses are in themselves so untenable and weak. The definiteness with which, in our Gospel (xix. 35, xxi. 24), the eye-witness is attested as the composer of the book, excludes in every case the assumption of a pious disciple who had afterwards, in a literary way, worked up oral communications of the Apostle John. The enigmas which the discourses of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel present are not less great than those of the historical narratives for him who does not make aversion to miracles his sole principle of criticism; and, at the same time, the completeness of the literary plan and execution, as well as the symmetry of the style and the religious character, render impossible every attempt to establish here diverse primary elements. And so the more recent critical treatment simply results in this alternative, either the Gospel must be conceived and recognised as the work of an eye-witness and personal disciple of Jesus, or, with its genuineness, we must also give up its historical credibility, and regard it as a purely ideal production of the second century.

§ 2. GENUINENESS OF THE GOSPEL

We, for our part, are firmly convinced of the correctness of the first position, though we do not deny the great and manifold difficulties which the Gospel of John puts in the way of the historical consideration of the life of Jesus. But we hold that these may be solved, and that they are little in comparison with the mountain of difficulties, or rather impossibilities, which stand in the way of a thorough acceptance of the hypothesis of "The Logos romance," and before which its advocates are wont to close their eyes. The reasons

1 Cf. Wendt, Die Lehre Jesu, Bd. i. (1886), and my criticism of this book in the Göttinger Gel. Anzeigen of the same year, No. 15.