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critical theologian will have the friends of God whom Christ recognised to be by birth men of the Spirit, coming to the light and believing in Christ in virtue of a metaphysical necessity; and they make the reprobates found by Christ to be by birth children of Satan, children of the λn and σkoτía, who -as is expressly declared of them (v. 44, viii. 43)—could not by a natural necessity come to Jesus and hear His word. In both of the passages adduced, où dúvaobe was not spoken in the sense of a reproach, that is, their impotence was conceived as not excluding the freedom of the will; v. 44 and also iii. 19, 20 expressly characterise this moral inability as the result of a morally perverted condition of life, and the où éλETE ἐλθεῖν πρός με, ἵνα ζωὴν ἔχητε in v. 40 stands guarding moral freedom. Moreover, the advocates of that forced exposition overlook two things. First, that the synoptic Jesus makes a like distinction among men, only in somewhat different terms. He not only distinguishes good and evil,—and indeed good and evil in relation to the treasure of the heart (Matt. xii. 35),— He also opposes, with regard to their capacity or incapacity for the kingdom of heaven, those who are called blessed and those over whom He has to pronounce a woe; on the one hand are the merciful, the pure in heart, and those who suffer for righteousness, and on the other are the generation of vipers; He even says that the knowledge of saving truth given to the disciples, and withheld from the ignorant multitude, is "hidden from the wise and prudent, and revealed to babes" (Mark iv. 11; Matt. xi. 25, xiii. 11). The other point that should not have been overlooked is the circumstance that the Johannine Christ in no way excludes from salvation, and the conversion which leads to salvation, even those whom He at present treats as hardened by their own guilt. He tells those same people, to whom He cries (v. 44): "How can ye believe, who receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God?" that He speaks to them in order that they may be saved (v. 34), and repeatedly places over against the obstinate contradiction which He meets with in the world the hope of a great and universal conversion of the world, when He will be lifted up (viii. 28 xii. 31, 32, xvii. 20, 21). Thus, in the Johannine words of Jesus, the wideness of God's grace and the necessity of a free

choice for its realisation are not less firm than in the Synoptics. "God so loved the world, that every one who believes may have eternal life" (iii. 16; cf. 1 John ii. 2); and "Whosoever is willing to do His will shall know that My doctrine is of God" (vii. 17). But these two things, the universality of grace and the reality of freedom, exclude every distinction of pneumatic and hylic from our Gospel.

§ 5. ESTIMATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

On the other hand, it would be a real Gnostic mark if the Johannine Christ, whilst recognising a general revelation of God in the pre-Christian period, should pass over or depreciate the particular revelation of the old covenant. This also has been asserted regarding the Johannine sayings of Jesus. Appeal has been made to the expression, "your law," which appears twice (viii. 17, xiii. 34)-an expression which seems to indicate an outside standpoint. The extreme Gnostic rejection of Moses and the prophets has been found in the saying (x. 8): "All who came before Me were thieves and robbers"; nay, some have gone so far as to discover in the Johannine sayings a Demiurgus, the God of the old covenant, but not the Father of Jesus Christ. But in fact the recognition of the Old Testament revelation and Scriptures is manifest in a quite overwhelming way. Though the evangelist, writing for those who were Gentile Christians by birth, thought it needless to repeat in detail Jesus' attitude towards Moses and the prophets in His discussions with His contemporaries, which occupies so much space in the Synoptics, yet in every way he makes us see that Jesus did take up this attitude. The Old Testament is to the Johannine Christ also the Holy Scriptures, which must be fulfilled (xvii. 12), and cannot in any phrase be broken, or declared not binding (x. 35); John and Matthew (v. 17-19) are here at one. In no Gospel does Jesus appeal more frequently and more expressly to the Old Testament Scriptures than in the fourth (for example, iii. 14, vi. 45, vii. 38, xv. 25, xvii. 12). Certainly that dreary study of the letter, without feeling for the living word of God, which was practised by the scribes, as if it could give them eternal life, He rejects in characteristic

words, which our translation unfortunately does not correctly render (v. 39); but in the same breath He certifies that the Holy Scriptures do testify of the Messiah, that in them the Father has beforehand testified of Him (v. 37, 39). And of those to whom the Old Testament revelation was given, He says: Abraham loved the truth, and rejoiced to see the day of the Messiah; and he saw it (in the other world), and was glad (viii. 56). Moses testified of the Messiah, and will accuse the scribes before God because of their unbelief (v. 45, 47). John the Baptist was a burning and shining light, and bore witness to the truth regarding Jesus (v. 33, 35). How is it possible, in presence of this, to apply the words (x. 8): πάντες, ὅσοι ἦλθον πρὸ ἐμοῦ, κλέπται εἰσὶν καὶ λησταί—whether πρὸ ἐμοῦ be genuine or not—to Moses and the prophets? The reference must be to the scribes and Pharisees who in the lifetime of Jesus attempted to catch away from Him His sheep, that is, the men in Israel who had turned towards Him. And even the striking expression, "your law," whether it was really used by Jesus, or merely put into His mouth by the evangelist, stands on both occasions, not in the sense of "your law with which I have nothing to do," but "your law to which you attach such. absolute value, and which is your highest authority." As in the case of the Synoptics (cf. Matt. xii. 5), He appeals here also (vii. 23) to the law itself against the reproach of breaking the law. In the law is revealed that will of God, which makes him who earnestly desires to do it sensible that Jesus' teaching is of God (vii. 17). Finally, in the controversy between the Jews and the Samaritans about the right place of worship, Jesus places Himself, so far as the question can be answered historically, on the side of the legitimate tradition: "We know what we worship, you know it not for salvation is of the Jews" (iv. 22). It may be said that Jesus' whole estimate of the Old Testament in the Fourth Gospel is mirrored in this remarkable passage. Above all,

It is manifest to every reasonable expositor that ipvvärs here is indicative and not imperative, as Luther has translated; for how could any one base a summons to Bible reading in the words: "In them ye think ye have eternal life." But our Church tradition never gives up a mistranslation which has got its place in the store of familiar texts.

He here expressly acknowledges that He worships the same God as His people do in Jerusalem; and the same is implied in the story of His cleansing the temple (ii. 16), where He calls it "My Father's house." That destroys all critical fancies of a Demiurge in the Fourth Gospel to be distinguished from God the Father, as the God of the Jews. Then He acknowledges that His people were chosen first for salvation by God: "We know what we worship: salvation is of the Jews." That universal revelation of God which even the heathen receive leaves Him still an unknown God. And God desires to be known by man, and to be worshipped with clear understanding (iv. 23), and that was made possible to the Jews in a higher degree. Then that universal revelation made salvation possible for individuals, but not for the world; that required a process in history, which is found in Jewish history—ἡ σωτηρία ἐκ τῶν Ἰουδαίων ἐστίν. But these words mark also the limitations of Judaism which the synoptic Christ indicates in the words: "The law and the prophets prophesied until John, but from the days of John the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence." In the God whom they worshipped in the temple at Jerusalem, the Jews did not see the Father; he only has seen the Father who is of Him (vi. 46). And therefore, even in the case of the Jews, the worship of the Father in spirit and in truth was not yet possible, although the Father seeks for it as the only worship which sanctifies and makes blessed. In a word, salvation comes historically from the Jewish nation, but the Jewish nation did not produce it; it is only the earthly cradle in which salvation is laid by heaven. It must be begotten of God, and brought into the world in Him.

CHAPTER III

THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF

§ 1. THE PROBLEM

At this point we arrive at that which is by far the most important to our evangelist, the self-consciousness of Jesus,

If,

and the words in which He expressed that consciousness. in the Synoptics, this stands more in the background, behind the preaching of the kingdom of heaven, John rather brings it into the foreground of his Gospel, in order to make all else fall into the background. But not only is the testimony of Jesus to Himself far more frequent in John than in the Synoptics, it is also far more sublime, as it rises to declarations of a former heavenly life, and so there arises for us here one of the most important problems of New Testament theology, which at the same time on the side of biblical theology is really the kernel of the so-called Johannine question. The question is whether what Jesus says of Himself in John is or is not in harmony with what is found in the Synoptics; is the selfconsciousness of Jesus as John reports it, in spite of all the loftier heights which he discloses, not fundamentally a true human consciousness as the Synoptics represent? or does it move on a quite different level, and is it at bottom the consciousness of the personal Logos, that is, of a divine person who only afterwards descended and took upon Himself a human form? The latter is the common conception both of the orthodox and critical theology; but the orthodox theology starts here in its attempt to establish on scriptural grounds the old Church Christology, or the modern kenotic transformation of it, whilst the critical theology finds in the anti-synoptic and docetic Christology of the Fourth Gospel the most convincing proof of its unhistorical character, which at the same. time would cut the ground from below the whole orthodox theory. Let us examine, first, the parts of Jesus' testimony to Himself in John which are paralleled in the Synoptics, and then the facts which go further.

§ 2. JESUS THE MESSENGER OF GOD

To begin with, Jesus appears in the Fourth Gospel quite in the same relation to the Messiah idea as in the Synoptics. He knows that He is the Messiah, but He suppresses this name. When His first disciples, who had been directed to Him by John the Baptist, greet Him as the Promised One, and exclaim one to another, "We have found the Messiah of whom Moses and the prophets have written" (i. 41, 45), He

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