On

image of Christ, because all he had and all he was had come to him through his perfect inward surrender to Christ, this Gospel, with all its freedom and subjectivity, still remains the most faithful image and memorial of Jesus which any man could produce. From this conception of the book follows the standard by which we are to estimate John's contribution to the teaching of Jesus. In general, we can only consider it as a most valuable supplement to the synoptic tradition. The aged apostle, who manifestly knew the synoptic Gospels (cf. iii. 34, vi. 70, xi. 2), had no other reason for telling his story than the sense that the person of Jesus had impressed itself on him in a unique way, and that he possessed stores of reminiscences which had not found a place in the synoptic tradition, and which he did not wish to die with him. the other hand, in his treatment of his own reminiscences, which is far more subjective than in the Synoptists, there is less attempt at verbal accuracy of reproduction, and it is just possible that the evangelist's own ideas, and the theology which was taking shape in his mind,-using the word theology in the wider sense, exercised an involuntary influence on the reproduction. Consequently, we have always to consider the teaching of Jesus, as given in John, in its relation to what the Synoptics record. Where it positively agrees with these, we have confirmation of the genuineness of what the Synoptics give us. Where it goes beyond these, but moves in the same direction, we may consider it as a credible extension of lines of teaching which in the synoptic tradition have not, perhaps, got justice. If, on the other hand, trains of thought are found which cannot be naturally inserted into the doctrinal scheme of the Synoptics, but would require us to reinterpret that scheme in some artificial sense, we must then trace back these trains of thought, not to Jesus Himself, but to His exponent.

The simplicity which characterises the Johannine world of thought, as compared with the manifoldness of the Synoptists, permits us here to comprehend the whole doctrinal matter under four points of view

I. God and the world.

II. The testimony of Jesus to Himself.

III. The founding of salvation.

IV. The setting forth of eternal life.

CHAPTER II

GOD AND THE WORLD

§ 1. THE IDEA OF GOD

"My

The relation of God to the world, as conceived in the Johannine discourses of Jesus, has been found to be Hellenic, Philonic, dualistic; but an impartial statement of the real facts of the case will show us that all the views, coming into consideration here, move on the synoptic lines. Even according to John, Jesus knew that He bore a new idea of God, the perfect and saving idea. "Not that any man hath seen the Father," he says (vi. 46), in contrast with the current knowledge of God which is denied to no one, save He which is of God, He hath seen God." And this is the eternal life which He desires to procure for all, "that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Him whom Thou hast sent" (xvii. 2, 3). This new and saving knowledge of God has here also its simple and great expression in the name Father. Father," "your Father," "the Father," occurs in the Synoptics; only "My Father" appears more frequently, and “your Father" expressly only in xx. 17, while the plain “the Father" is the most usual. There is nothing to indicate that the meaning of this name is different from what it is in the Synoptics; and especially any trinitarian significance is absent here also. The Father is not one divine person beside other divine persons, but He is, as is expressly said in vi. 27, v. 44, xvii. 3 : ὁ θεός, ὁ μόνος θεός, ὁ μόνος ἀληθινὸς θεός. That this God is also described (iv. 24) as πveûμa, is not a speculative, but a practical religious utterance, made for the purpose of deducing from His nature the true worship of God. It signifies the elevation of God above all limits of space, and at the same time His relationship with our inner life, in virtue of which He is not bound to outer places of worship, but is to be sought in our own souls. Great and new as is this foundation of the true worship in spirit and in truth, yet the same idea lies at the basis of the synoptic predictions of the ναὸς ἀχειροποίητος which is to be set up (Mark xiv. 58).

But Tveûμa is Cwn, the true life is Spirit, and the Spirit alone true life (vi. 63, τὸ πνεῦμά ἐστιν τὸ ζωοποιοῦν, κ.τ.λ.), and therefore it is evident that God is conceived simply as the source of life. He is the Cv TаTИp in the highest sense, the living God (vi. 57) whose royal right it is to raise the dead and make alive (v. 21). He alone has originally Conv ἐν ἑαυτῷ (ν. 26). But in the fact that He does not keep this wealth of life to Himself, but communicates it, and that, in particular, He has made His Son to be a source of the true and eternal life for all (καὶ τῷ υἱῷ ἔδωκεν ζωὴν ἔχειν ἐν éavr), He first shows His true nature, viz. His love, for love is self-communication. The proclamation of the ἀγάπη θεοῦ, as His true ethical nature, pervades the whole Gospel. God loved His Son before the world was. (xvii. 25); but this eternal love for the Son is the same as that with which He enfolds His disciples (xvii. 23, 26); nay, He has so loved the world as to give up to it His dearest, His only-begotten Son (iii. 16). It is thus that, in John, Jesus explains the synoptic idea of the absolutely good One, the els ȧyalós (Mark x. 18). The declarations of God's character, ἀληθής, δίκαιος, ἅγιος, show that the other side of this idea is not wanting; He is the original pattern of all virtue, His eternal love is most holy. Jesus designates the Father (viii. 26) as Him who is true, because His word can be relied on, because He can only speak truth who is ever the same and faithful. He calls Him righteous Father in the intercessory prayer (xvii. 25), in that part of His nature in which the world knows Him not, but He knows Him; that is, certainly not in the sense of mere penal righteousness, but of His whole moral perfection. And He calls upon Him as the Holy One (xvii. 11) where He prays Him to keep the disciples in the evil world, and to sanctify them in His truth; that is, He calls on Him, as one completely separated from the evil that rules in the world, who desires men to be holy, and makes them holy as He is Himself.

§ 2. THE IDEA OF THE WORLD

Jesus conceives the world as the widest object of the eternal love: "God so loved the world" (iii. 16). The world, 15

BEYSCHLAG.-I.

in what sense? The Johannine discourses of Jesus use the concept kooμos in a threefold sense. Sometimes κόσμος is simply the world of sense-as when mention is made of " the light of this world," that is, the sun (xi. 9), or of the KaтαBoλn Kooμou, that is, the creation of the visible world. But this visible world has meaning for Jesus only in so far as it comprehends and bears humanity. The world in the sense of history, the world of men, is to Him the xóopos proper. To this He knows that He was sent, just as He sends His disciples into it (xvii. 18). This xóoμos, the aggregate of beings who are capable of believing and receiving life eternal, He knows to be beloved of God. But-and this brings us to the third sense in which He uses the word-the world as a whole knows nothing, and desires to know nothing, of this love, it finds itself estranged from God and at enmity with Him, ruled by a spirit entirely different from that of the eternal truth and love; and in this sense Jesus says that He and His are not of the world (xvii. 14), and speaks of Satan as the prince of this world (xii. 31). The world has not, however, ceased to be the object of the divine love on account of this ungodly condition; on the contrary, in this condition it first becomes the object of the supreme demonstration of love, which aims at saving those who are lost (iii. 16). It is a complete misunderstanding to infer, from the keen emphasising of the actual contrast between God and the world, an original contradiction of the two. It is only the profound contrast of idea and reality which Jesus emphasises. Certainly this idea, even at the beginning, stood high above the reality. The καταβολὴ κόσμου only laid the foundation of what was to grow up from earth until it reached the heaven of the idea. We gather that from the distinction of heaven and earth, which is here repeated in different words, but in no different sense from that of the Synoptics. It has been found surprising that in the Fourth Gospel Jesus should not reckon heaven as part of the world, the xóoμos, as if that were not His natural way of thinking. He thinks of heaven-just as when in the Synoptics He speaks of treasure in heaven, or of the heavenly origin of John's baptism-not as another world of sense above the earth, but as the ideal world, with its eternal 1 So Pfleiderer, Urchristenthum, p. 478.

realities, in which alone God has His home, although He is present in the world also. That is specially clear in the passage (vi. 32) where He refuses to ascribe the quality of heavenliness to the manna which, in the Jewish view, had certainly fallen from heaven, and claims that quality solely for the spiritual gifts of God which appeared in Him, and through which eternal life is communicated. There is an eternal Sofa Oeoû, a gleam and splendour of the eternal light, a divine self-revelation which is intended for the world, and to convey which the world itself was created. It is this glory of God's self-revelation that fills heaven; with it Jesus was invested by God before the world was; in a veiled form He had it on earth, and gave it to His own (xvii. 22), though He first receives it in fulness as the exalted head of a saved humanity (xvii. 5; cf. with vv. 2, 3). And heaven is the kingdom of the eternal glory of God that is displayed without interruption, but which must come down to earth, and realise there the kingdom of heaven. This makes the words of Jesus (i. 51) intelligible: "Henceforth ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man." Heaven, where the eternal blessings and the divine revelations are, stands open, and these blessings are imparted wherever the Son of Man is, who has come to bring the kingdom of heaven near, there is a blessed tide of benefits from earth to heaven, from heaven to earth, whereever He is, and in this the disciples will henceforth share. This, by the way, is the one passage in John's Gospel in which Jesus speaks of the angels, and the absolutely symbolic sense of the representation is manifest. The angels are just "the angels of God," the several rays of His glory shining out; they are not persons, intermediate between Him and a world otherwise God-forsaken. They are not even inhabitants of heaven, in contrast with men dwelling on the earth. Heaven is indeed a Father's house with many mansions (xiv. 2), but the pilgrims who are to find their quarters there are children of men (xvii. 24). The objects of the eternal love lie in the world of men. The children of men are called to find their true home, as children of God, in the world of eternal life, and in communion with God the Father.