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§ 3. EVIL

If this is the Johannine Christ's idea of the world, there is no reason for further attributing to Him any other than biblical views as to the first step towards its realisation, viz. the creation of the world. If, indeed, there lay at its basis an Alexandrian, Philonic, or semi-Gnostic view of the world, as has been asserted by critics, then the contrast of good and evil, conceived in some metaphysical sense, would have to be traced back to the contrast of spirit and matter. But this is not the case. In the first place, the cáp, the sensuous material part of man, is by no means conceived as in itself the principle of evil, because, springing from the eternal An, it is something in itself innocent and created by God. No trace of an ascetic spiritualising can be discovered in our Gospel. Though, according to iii. 6, the σáp can only, of course, produce σápka, sensuous life, and though it is on that account of no service for eternal life as compared with the quickening Spirit (vi. 63), yet in Christ the flesh, as the vessel of the TVEûμа, becomes a means of eternal life (vi. 55-58). How could that be the case if in and of itself it were evil? Though it is equivalent only to the sensuous and mortal part of human nature, and even of Christ's nature, yet it was in His flesh that Christ was able to offer Himself a sacrifice for the life of the world (vi. 51). Neither natural evil nor moral evil is traced to its origin in the Johannine discourses of Jesus, which is little like the Gnostic's way. The question of the origin of natural evil is brought before Jesus in connection with the man born blind (ix. 1 f.); but whilst He denies the Jews' opinion that particular evil follows upon particular sin, He refuses to give any answer to the general question as to the origin of evil. Ask not—that is the meaning of His noble answer-whence misery in its manifold forms has come into the world; ask, rather, for what purpose it is there. It is there that the works of God may be made manifest in it, and that its conquest may serve to glorify the eternal love. Moral evil, as we can easily understand, is more searchingly treated, though entirely in a biblical and synoptic way. The name and concept of sin is the general biblical ȧuapría, which expresses the voluntary

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departure from the divine will. A distinction is made, in biblical and synoptic fashion, between sins of ignorance which are not imputed, and conscious wilful sins which remain (before the eyes of God the Judge). "If ye were blind ye would have no sin; but now ye say we see, therefore your sin remains" (iv. 41; cf. xv. 22, 24, xvii. 25). Again,-just as in the synoptic words about the tree and its fruits,—sin is not applied solely to the individual act, but its root is sought in the disposition in the fundamental bias of the heart, "Whosoever committeth sin," it is said (viii. 34), "he is the servant of sin." Whosoever surrenders himself to it cannot, when he pleases, shake himself free from it, but is permanently ruled by it. And all, even the best and most pious, with one exception, bear in some way this yoke, and need not merely reformation, but renewal from the bottom of the heart, ere they can enter into the kingdom of God: "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God" (iii. 3, 5). But the Johannine Christ does not go further than this exhibition of the perverted and corrupt state of man, the moral error which has become a second nature. He does not deduce sin from sensuality, nor from Adam, nor even from the devil. The latter assertion is indeed disputed, and a dualistic and Gnostic element found in the phrase, "a deceiver and murderer from the beginning," who is likewise. the "prince of this world." In point of fact, the Johannine discourses of Jesus do contain a declaration about Satan which goes beyond the synoptic utterances, and might be interpreted as an account of the origin of evil. In the controversy with the Jews (chap. viii.), the devil is made the father of his slandering and murderous opponents. It is said of him that "He was a murderer from the beginning, and abideth not in the truth, for there is no truth in him; when he speaketh a lie he speaketh of his own, for he is a liar, and the father of it" (viii. 44). This is an unmistakable allusion to the history of the fall in Gen. iii., where the serpent, afterwards interpreted as Satan, deceived the first man, and brought him to death by means of this deception. But that neither confirms the orthodox theory that Satan is a fallen angel,—the oux eσтηkev does not say he stood not, but simply he stands not, in the truth,-nor does it favour the

dualistic Gnostic view that he is by nature a false god opposed to the true, an eternal principle of evil. For the avoρwπóкἀνθρωπόκτονος ἀπ' ἀρχῆς can only be referred to the beginning of man's history, not to the beginning of all things, or of the devil himself he could only be aveрwπóктоvos ever since there were men. Thus, although we had in this passage a deduction of human sin from the devil, the devil's sin itself remains unaccounted for, and therefore the origin of evil is unexplained. But in reality we have not even a derivation of human sin from Satan; it is not those who have sinned from Adam, but the slandering and murderous opponents of Jesus, who are traced to him as their father. Now as Jesus in no case means to say that His opponents are created by the devil, it is manifest that father here does not mean so much author as prototype (ψεύστης καὶ ὁ πατὴρ αὐτοῦ), and that the whole saying means only that the spirit of deceit and murderous hatred which rules the world estranged from God is specially powerful in them, and that they are his genuine children. Conceived thus, this saying of Jesus about Satan in John's Gospel sums up His judgment on the actual condition of the world. While God is the eternal spirit of truth and love, truth and love do not rule in the world as it is, but the spirit of deceit and of hatred—he is the prince (ruler) of this world. And the idea of Satan which Jesus here makes use of expresses nothing else than the united power of the evil that dominates the world in its perfect hostility to God. The reason why the same attention is not given here to the side of natural evil as in the Synoptics, where Satan is also the principle of all derangements of mind and body, lies in a peculiarity of John's style. Not only are the demoniacs of the synoptic narrative not mentioned by John, but the sensuous side of sin gives way to the spiritual, pride, deceit, malice, in which the ungodly nature reaches its climax. It scarcely needs to be noted that this view of sin which has its parallel in the Synoptics, in the special keenness of Jesus' opposition to Pharisaism, entirely contradicts its derivation from matter.

§ 4. THE UNIVERSAL REVELATION OF GOD IN THE WORLD

Notwithstanding the hostility of the world towards God, which receives its most pointed expression when Satan is called the ruler of this world, God is not remote from or a stranger to this world. On this side also the critical dictum that Philonism is the key to our Gospel, and especially that the sayings of Jesus in it have been fabricated from the Logos idea, refutes itself. In Philo, and according to the very root idea of the Logos doctrine, God is present and active within the world simply through the Logos, who in particular has to draw men to God. In the Johannine sayings of Jesus there is nothing to hinder the direct activity of God on the world, and, in particular, the Father Himself draws the souls of men to His Son. My Father worketh hitherto," cries Jesus (v. 17) to the Jewish rulers when they sought to reprove Him for healing a man on the Sabbath, by adducing the example of God's rest on the Sabbath after the six days' work of creation. God did not merely create the world long ago, He has never ceased to be creatively active in it, but He also governs the moral world, notwithstanding the prince of this world. This government appears chiefly in negative fashion as an avenging moral order of the world. He judges no man (v. 22), but He makes evil or unbelief its own judge (iii. 18). Whoever rejects His light and truth, His holy and good self-revelation, and His word that testifies of it, remains in darkness and deception. Whoever will not take from Him the true eternal life, abideth in death, that is, in the opposite of eternal life. He will die in his sins, as it is said in viii. 21, 24, that is, be destroyed in soul and body (cf. Matt. x. 28). But this negative penal government of the world is supplemented by a positive saving one, and this does not begin with Christ, in whom, of course, it is completed, and it was not confined even to the sphere of the old covenant, it extended to the whole world. "It is written in the prophets," says Jesus, vi. 45, "they shall all be taught of God; every man that hath heard and learned (ualov) of the Father cometh to me." He speaks here of men who have still to come to Him, the Saviour, that is, of non-Christians whom also, in x. 16 (other sheep have I who are not of this fold), He expressly

describes as Gentiles. The Father speaks to them and draws. them near, as it is said immediately before (vi. 44), without doubt through His revelation in nature and history, through reason and conscience. That applies to all, as it is written, "they shall all be taught of God," though it is not said they shall all hear and learn, take note of and lay to heart. Nor do those who hear and learn attain at once to the perfect and saving knowledge of God, which Jesus has and gives to His own (vi. 46; cf. xiv. 9). But they do come to Him who can show them the Father, and lead them to Him. They are prepared for the perfect revelation of God that appears in Him. Nay, they do their works even now in God, that is, they live and act, so far as they can, in the element of the true and good, and so when the eternal light has appeared in Christ, they come joyfully to this light, that their works may be made manifest that they are wrought in God, that is, that their efforts, directed to the good and true, may here receive their crown (iii. 21). The Johannine Christ thus knows of friends of God in the pre-Christian and non-biblical world, whose inmost bent is towards the eternal light-like the Queen of Sheba, who came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon (Matt. xii. 42). Such men are of the truth (xviii. 37), of God (viii. 47), although they do not know this God in Christ as their Father. These men are not, therefore, exempt from the rule, "except a man be born again," " but they will joyfully go through the narrow gate as soon as it is shown to them. Others, indeed, prefer the darkness to the light, because they will not give up their works, which belong to the darkness, and they hate the light when it appears, because it makes manifest their evil works, as the Jewish leaders at the time of Jesus did (iii. 19, 20). It is wonderful what the critical theology has made out of these two classes of men, which the Johannine Christ finds existing in the world and distinguishes. The critical theology has discovered in these two classes the pneumatics and hylics of Gnosticism, instead of rejoicing in the fact that Jesus-in contrast to our traditional Augustinianism, which colours the non-Christian world all black without distinction-sets forth here a clear distinction, which, however we believe in the universal need of salvation, no impartial view can avoid. The

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