Part 7 (2/2)

On the other hand men like the author of the Pastoral Epistles, Ignatius and Polycarp, with their almost panic-stricken resort to the authority of the past, were not perpetuating the true spirit of the great Apostle.

Their reliance was on ecclesiastical discipline, concrete and ma.s.sive miracle in the story of Jesus, particularly on the point of the bodily--or, as they would have said, the ”fleshly”--resurrection. Their conception of his recorded ”words,” made of them a fixed, superhuman standard and rule, a ”new law.” Teachers of this type, much as they desired and believed themselves to be perpetuating the ”sacred deposit”

of Paul, were in reality conserving its form and missing its spirit.

Such men would gladly ”turn to the tradition handed down,” of the Matthaean Sayings, and the Petrine Story. But in the former they would not find reflections of the sense of Son s.h.i.+p. They would find only a supplementary Law, a new and higher set of rules. In the story they would not discover the Pauline view of the pre-existent divine Wisdom tabernacling in man, producing a second Adam, as elder brother of a new race, the children and heirs of G.o.d. They would take the mysticism of Paul and bring it down to the level of the man in the street. Jesus would be to them either a completely superhuman man, approximating the heathen demi-G.o.d, a divinity incognito; or else a man so endowed with ”the whole fountain of the Spirit” as to exercise perpetually and uninterruptedly all its miraculous functions. The story of the cross would be hidden behind the prodigies.

Least of all could the importation of apocalyptic prophecy do justice to the Pauline doctrine of the 'last things.' True, Paul is himself a 'prophet,' thoroughly imbued with the fantastic Palestinian doctrines.

He, too, believes in a world-conflict, a triumph of the Messiah over antichrist. More particularly in one of his very earliest epistles (2nd Thessalonians) we get a glimpse into these Jewish peculiarities. But these are always counterbalanced in Paul by a wider and soberer view, which tends more and more to get the upper hand. His doctrine of spiritual union with Christ, present apprehension of ”the life that is hid with Christ in G.o.d,” a doctrine of Greek rather than Hebrew parentage, prevails over the imagery of Jewish apocalypse. In the later epistles he expects rather to ”depart and be with Christ” than to be ”caught up into the air” with those that are alive and remain at the 'Coming.' So even if Paul did have occasion again and again to defend his Jewish resurrection-doctrine against the Greek disposition to refine it away into a mere doctrine of immortality, his remedy is not a mere falling back into the crudities of Jewish millenarianism. Least of all could he have sympathized with the nationalistic, and even vindictive spirit of Rev. iv.-xxi., with its great battle of Jerusalem helped by Messiah and the angels, against Rome helped by Satan and the Beast.

Paul's doctrine of the resurrection of the ”body” by ”clothing” of the spirit with a ”tabernacle” derived ”from heaven,” his hope of a messianic Kingdom which is the triumph of humanity under a ”second Adam,” has its apocalyptic traits. It is a victory over demonic enemies, ”spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places”; but it has the reserve of an educated Pharisee against the cruder forms of Jewish prophecy. It shows the mind of the cosmopolitan Roman citizen and philosophic thinker, not merely that of the Jewish Zealot.

How salutary if Paul himself could have lived to control the divergent elements among his churches, to check the subjective individualism of the Gnostics on the one hand, and the reactionary tendencies of the orthodox on the other. His parting words to his beloved Philippians are sadly appreciative of how needful it was for their sake that he should ”abide in the flesh” (Phil. i. 24). Yet there was one thing still more expedient--that he should abide with them in the spirit. And that is just what we find evidenced in the great 'spiritual' Gospel and its accompanying Epistles from Ephesus.

Debate still rages over a mere name, attached by tradition to these writings that themselves bear no name. The t.i.tles prefixed by early transcribers attribute them to ”John.” But they are never employed before 175-180 in a way to even remotely suggest that they were then regarded as written by John, or even as apostolic in any sense. And when we trace the tradition back to its earliest form, in the Epilogue attached to the Gospel (John xxi.) it seems to be no more than a dubious attempt to identify that mysterious figure, the ”disciple whom Jesus loved.” If, however, we postpone this question raised by the Epilogue, the writings can at least be a.s.signed to a definite locality (Ephesus) and a fairly definite date (_c._ 105-110), with the general consent both of ancient tradition and of modern criticism. This is for us the important thing, since it enables us to understand their purpose and bearing; whereas even those who contend that they were written by the Apostle John can make little use of the alleged fact. For (1) the little that is known of John from other sources is completely opposed to the characteristics of these writings. They are characterized by a broad universalism, and reproduce the mysticism of Paul. To attribute them to the Pillar of Gal. ii. 9, or the Galilean fisherman of Mark i. 19 and ix. 38, it becomes necessary to suppose that John after migrating to Ephesus underwent a transformation so complete as to make him in reality another man. (2) The meagre possibility that the basis of Revelation might represent the Apostle John becomes more remote than ever. Now it is a curious fact that critics who hold to the much-disputed tradition that the Apostle John wrote the Gospel and Epistles, although these writings make no such claim, and have no affinity with the known character, show as a rule remarkable alacrity to dismiss the claims of Revelation, which positively declares John to have been its author, and has far stronger evidence, both internal and external, in support of the claim, than have either the Gospel or the Epistles. We may prefer the style and doctrine of the Gospel and Epistles, but this playing fast and loose with the evidence can only discredit criticism of this type.

(3) The value of the demonstration of Johannine authors.h.i.+p would lie in the fact that we should then have a first-hand witness to the actual life and teaching of Jesus, immeasurably superior to the remote and indirect tradition of the present Synoptic sources. But as a matter of real fact those who maintain the Johannine authors.h.i.+p do not venture to a.s.sert any such historical superiority. On the contrary they consider the Synoptic tradition not only historically superior to ”John,” as respects both sayings and course of events, but they are apt to attribute to this Galilean apostle an extreme of Philonic abstraction, so that he even prefers deliberate ”fiction” to fact. Thus the reasoning employed to defend the tradition destroys the only factor which could give it value.

On the other hand it is possible to disregard these secondary disputes, which aim only to increase or diminish the authority of the writings by a.s.serting or denying that they were written by the Apostle John, and to approach the interpretation of them on the basis only of what is really known, accredited both by ancient tradition and by modern criticism. On this basis we can safely affirm that they originated in Ephesus early in the second century, 'spiritualizing' what we have designated 'apostolic'

teaching, while at the same time strongly reacting against Doketic and Antinomian heresy. By such a procedure we shall be employing modern critical methods to the highest practical advantage in the interest of genuinely historical interpretation.

Even those who find minute distinctions in style and point of view between the Epistles and Gospel of John will admit that all four doc.u.ments emanate from the same period, situation, and circ.u.mstances, and represent the same school of thought. We shall make no serious mistake, then, if we treat them as written by the same individual, and even as intended to accompany one another. We shall have the example of so high an authority as Lightfoot, who considered 1st John an Epilogue composed to accompany the Gospel in place of the present Epilogue (John xxi.). Moreover the distinctions in the ancient treatment of 1st John and the two smaller Epistles are all subsequent to the attribution of the Gospel and First Epistle to the Apostle, and a consequence of it.

For 1st John and the Gospel had always been inseparable, and having no name attached could easily be treated as the Apostle's. But 2nd and 3rd John distinctly declare themselves written by an ”Elder”; and in the days when men still appreciated the distinction between an Elder and an Apostle it was felt to be so serious a difficulty that 2nd and 3rd John were put in the cla.s.s of ”disputed” writings. In reality 1st John and the Gospel are just as certainly the work of an ”Elder” as 2nd John and 3rd John, though no declaration to that effect is made. Moreover 1st John and the Gospel may safely be treated as from the same author; for such minute differences as exist in style and point of view can be fully accounted for by the processes of revision the Gospel has demonstrably undergone. This is more reasonable than to imagine two authors so extraordinarily similar to one another and extraordinarily different from everybody else.

”The Elder” does not give his name, and it is hopeless for us to try to guess it, though it was of course well known to his ”beloved” friend ”Gaius,” to whom the third letter (the outside envelope) was addressed.

We have simply three epistles, one (3rd John) personal, to the aforesaid Gaius, who is to serve as the writer's intermediary with ”the church,”

because Diotrephes, its bishop, violently opposes him. Another (2nd John) is addressed to a particular church (”the elect lady and her children”), in all probability the church of Diotrephes and Gaius. It may be the letter referred to in 3rd John 9. The third (1st John) is entirely general, not even so much modified from the type of the homily toward that of the epistle as Hebrews or James; for it has neither superscription nor epistolary close. And yet it is, and speaks of itself (i. 4; ii. 1, 7, 9, 12-14, etc.) as a literary product. It is not impossible that this group of 'epistles,' one individual, one to a particular church, one general, was composed after the plan of the similar group addressed by Paul to churches of this same region, Philemon, Colossians, and the more general epistle known to us as Ephesians. They may have been intended to accompany and introduce the Gospel written by the same author, just as the prophecies of Rev.

iv.-xxi. are introduced by the 'epistles' of Rev. i.-iii., or as Luke-Acts is sent under enclosure to Theophilus for publication under his patronage. At all events, be the connection with the Gospel closer or more remote, to learn anything really reliable about the writer and his purpose and environment we must begin with his own references to them, first in the letter to Gaius, then in that to ”the elect lady and her children,” then in his 'word of exhortation' to young and old, of 1st John. Thus we shall gain a historical approach finally to that treatise on the manifestation of G.o.d in Christ which has won him the t.i.tle since antiquity of the 'theologian.'

Third John shows the author to be a man of eminence in the (larger?) church whence he writes, old enough to speak of Gaius with commendation as one of his ”children,” though Gaius himself is certainly no mere youth, and eminent enough to call Diotrephes to answer for his misconduct. He has sent out evangelistic workers, some of whom have recently returned and borne witness ”before the church” to their hospitable reception by Gaius. For this he thanks Gaius, and urges him to continue the good work. The main object of the letter, however, is to commend Demetrius, who is doubtless the bearer of this letter as well as another written ”to the church” (2nd John?). This letter, the author fears, will never reach its destination if Diotrephes has his way. There is very little to indicate whence the opposition of Diotrephes arises, but what little there is (ver. 11) points to those who make claims to ”seeing” G.o.d and being ”of” Him, without adequate foundation in a life of purity and beneficence. The letter ”to the church” is more explicit.

Second John is perfectly definite in its purpose. After congratulating the ”elect lady” on those of her children (members) whom the writer has found leading consistent Christian lives, he entreats the church to remember the ”new commandment” of Jesus, which yet is not new but the foundation of all, the commandment of ministering love. The reason for this urgency is that ”many deceivers are gone forth into the world, even they that confess not that Jesus Christ cometh in the flesh” (ver. 7).

And here we come upon a very novel and distinctive application of an ancient datum of 'prophecy,' clearly differentiating this writer from the author of Revelation. The Doketic heresy is explicitly identified with ”the deceiver and the antichrist.” That must have been a new and surprising turn for men accustomed to connect the antichrist idea with the persecuting power of Rome. Satan, as we know, had been repeatedly conceived as operating through the coercion of outward force brought against the Messiah and his people through the Beast and the false Prophet (Rev. xiii.). There was good authority, too, for a mystical ”man of sin” setting himself forth as G.o.d in the temple (2nd Thess. ii. 4), or for connecting Daniel's ”abomination that maketh desolate” with the sufferings of the Jewish war and the later attempts of false prophets to deceive the elect with lying wonders (2nd Thess. ii. 9; Mark xiii. 22; Rev. xiii. 14). But this was a new application of the prophecy. To declare that the heretical teachers were themselves antichrists was to call the attention of the church back from outward opposition to inward disloyalty as the greater peril. And the identification is not enunciated in this general warning alone, but fully developed and defended in two elaborate paragraphs of the 'word of exhortation' (1st John ii. 18-29; iv. 1-6). When, therefore, we find Polycarp in his letter (110-171) quietly adopting the idea, almost as an understood thing, declaring ”For every one who shall not confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is antichrist” (vii. 1), it becomes almost a certainty that he had read 1st John.[27]

Footnote 27: Not 2nd John; for it is only in 1st John ii. 18 that the elder speaks of ”many antichrists,” identifying each separate Doketist with the apocalyptic figure. In 2nd John vii. it is the heresy itself as a phenomenon which const.i.tutes _the_ antichrist.

Our elder's warning ”to the church” (perhaps more particularly its governing body) is to beware of these deceivers; not to receive them, nor even to greet them, because they ”go onward” (are 'progressives') and do not ”abide in the teaching of Christ.” To abide in this ”teaching” is the church's only safeguard.

If next we turn to the more general epistle known as 1st John the lack of any superscription is more than counterbalanced by the writer's full and explicit declarations regarding motive and occasion. The epistle was certainly intended to be read before entire congregations. Of part of it at least the author himself says that it was ”written concerning them that would lead you astray” (ii. 26). Comparison of the full denunciation with what we know of Doketism from its own writings, such as the so-called _Acts of John_ (_c._ 175), shows very plainly what type of heresy is meant. Moreover we have the Epistles of Ignatius, written to these same churches but a few years later, and the detailed descriptions of the Doketist Cerinthus and his doctrines given by Irenaeus, together with the explicit statement that the writings of John were directed against this same Cerinthus.

Yet 1st John is far more than a mere polemic. The author writes to those ”that believe on the name of the Son of G.o.d, that they may know that they have eternal life” (v. 13). This certainly is the result of the conscious indwelling of the Spirit of Jesus. It is not evidenced, however, by boastful words as to illumination, insight and knowledge, but by practical obedience to the one new commandment; for ”G.o.d is love, and he that _loveth_ (not he that hath _gnosis_) is begotten of G.o.d and knoweth G.o.d.” This inward witness of the Spirit is a gift, or (to use our author's term) an ”anointing” (_i. e._ a 'Christ'-ening), whose essence is as much beyond the Greek's ideal of wisdom, on the one side, as it is beyond the Jew's ideal of miraculous powers on the other. It is a spirit of ministering love corresponding to and emanating from the nature of G.o.d himself. This is ”the teaching of Christ” in which alone it is safe to ”abide.”

But again as respects the historic tradition of the church our author is not less emphatic. He values the record of an actual, real, and tangible experience of this manifested life of G.o.d in man. The ”progressives” may repudiate the mere Jesus of ”the flesh,” in favour of one who comes by water only (_i. e._ in the outpouring of the Spirit in baptism), and not by the blood of the cross. For the doctrine of the cross was a special stumbling-block to Doketists, who rejected the sacrament of the bread and wine.[28] The actual sending of G.o.d's only-begotten Son into the world, the real ”propitiation” for our sins (so lightly denied by the illuminati), is a vital point to the writer. The sins ”of the whole world” were atoned for in Jesus' blood actually shed on Calvary. The church possesses, then, in this story a record of fact of infinite significance to the world. The Doketists are playing fast and loose with this record of the historic Jesus. They deny any value to the ”flesh” in which the aeon Christ had merely tabernacled as its ”receptacle” between the period of the baptism and the ascension--an event which they date _before_ the death on the cross.[29] They are met here with a peremptory challenge and declaration. The experience of contact with the earthly Jesus which the Church cherishes as its most inestimable treasure is the a.s.surance, and the only a.s.surance that we have, of real fellows.h.i.+p with the Father; for ”the life, the eternal life” of G.o.d in man, the Logos--to borrow frankly the Stoic expression--is known not by mere mystical dreams, but by the historic record of those who personally knew the real Jesus. The manifestation of G.o.d, in short, is objective and historical, and not merely inward and self-conscious; and that outward and objective manifestation may be summed up in what we of the Christian brotherhood have seen and known of Jesus.

Footnote 28: In the _Acts of John_ the Christ spirit which had been resident in Jesus comes to John after he has fled to a cave on the Mount of Olives from the posse that arrested the Lord. The sweet voice of the invisible Christ informs him there that the blinded mult.i.tude below had tortured a mere bodily shape which they took to be Christ, ”while I stood by and laughed.” In the _Gospel of Peter_ Jesus hung upon the cross ”as one who feels no pain” and was ”taken up” before the end.

Footnote 29: See note preceding.

It is when we approach the Fourth Gospel by way of its own author's adaptation of his message to the conditions around him that we begin to appreciate it historically, and in its true worth. The spirit of polemic is still prominent in 1st John, but the Gospel shows the effect of opposition only in the more careful statement of the evangelist's exact meaning. It is a theological treatise, an interpretation of the doctrine of the person of Christ, written that the readers ”may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of G.o.d, and that believing they may have life in his name” (xx. 31). In an age so eagerly bent on ascertaining the historic facts regarding Jesus' life, and the true sequence of events (Luke i. 1-4), it is insupposable that an author so strenuous to uphold the concrete reality of the church's historic tradition should not give real history so far as he was able. He could not afford to depreciate it in the face of Doketic myth and fancy and contempt for a ”Christ in the flesh.” The idea that such a writer could deliberately prefer fiction to fact is most improbable; ten times more so if he was the only surviving representative of the twelve, a Galilean disciple even more intimate than Peter with Jesus from the outset. But real history was no longer attainable. The author of the Fourth Gospel reports no event which he does not take in good faith to be fact. Yet it must be apparent from his own statement of his purpose as well as from the very structure of the book that he does not aim to be a historian, but an interpreter of doctrine. He aims to give not _fact_ but _truth_.

And his handling of (supposed) fact has the freedom we should expect in a church teacher of that age, and of the school of Paul the mystic. The seven progressive ”signs” that he narrates, culminating in the raising of Lazarus, are avowedly (xx. 31) ill.u.s.trative selections from a mult.i.tude of current tales of miracle, aiming to produce that faith in Jesus as the Son of G.o.d which will result in ”life,” _i. e._ the eternal life which consists in his indwelling (1st John v. 20). They are not described as acts of pity, drawn from one with whom the power of G.o.d was found present to heal. Jesus does not yield as in the Synoptics when compa.s.sion for trusting need overcomes reluctance to increase the importunity that interfered with his higher mission. Their prime purpose is to ”manifest the glory” of the incarnate Logos, and Jesus performs them only when, and as, he chooses. Pity and natural affection are almost trampled upon that this ”manifestation of his glory” may be made more effective (ii. 4; iv. 48; ix. 3; xi. 4-6, 15). As in Paul, there is no exorcism. This most typical and characteristic miracle of Petrine story (Mark iii. 15; Acts x. 88) has disappeared. Or rather (as in Paul) the casting out of Satan from his dominion over the entire world has transcended and superseded it (John xii. 31-33; _cf._ Col. ii. 15). In John, requests for miracle, whether in faith or unbelief, always incur rebuke (ii. 4; iv. 48; vi. 30-36; vii. 4-7; xi. 3-15). Jesus offers and works them when ”his hour” comes, whether applied for or not (v. 6-9; vi. 6; ix. 1-7). His reserve is not due to a limitation of almighty power; for the power is declared explicitly to be his, _in his own right_ (v. 21; xi. 22, 25, 42). He restrains it only that faith may rest upon conviction of the truth rather than mere wonder (ii. 23-25; iii. 2 f.; iv. 39-42, 48; vi. 29-46; xiv. 11). He is, in short, an omniscient (i. 47-50; ii. 25), omnipotent Being, temporarily sojourning on the earth (iii. 13; xvi. 28).

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