YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THE LIBRARY OF THE
DIVINITY SCHOOL

THE

Doctrine of Saint John

j3u GBssap in Biblical tfytolowg

BY
WALTER LOWRIE, M.A.
MISSION PRIEST IN THE CITY MISSION, PHILADELPHIA

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
91 and 93 Fifth Avenue, New York
LONDON AND BOMBAY

Copyright, 1899,
By Longmans, Green, and Co.

A U rights reserved.

SSnibtrsitrj ^ress:
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U. S. A.

TO THE
VERY LEARNED FACULTY
OF
Princeton Wtjta logical Semmatg,
TO WHOSE TUITION I OWE THE INCEPTION OF THIS STUDY,
AS I OWE ITS COMPLETION TO THE OPPORTUNITY
OF FOREIGN STUDY WHICH I ENJOYED AS
NON-RESIDENT FELLOW OF
THEIR SCHOOL,
I HAVE THE HONOR TO DEDICATE
THIS BOOK.

N.B. — The system of scripture reference which is here
adopted has for some years been used in Germany, and has
been lately adopted in certain standard English works. It
is especially convenient for the present purpose, since the
references are in the main to but two books, the Gospel
and the First Epistle of S. John. The larger numeral refers
to the chapter; the smaller, to the verse. The Gospel is
always intended when no other reference is indicated, ex
pressly or in the context. S. John's Epistles are denoted
by the Roman numerals I., II., and III. Other writings
are quoted by name, abbreviated as usual.

Preface
This essay was originally presented as an academic
thesis. During the years which have since elapsed,
I have followed up the study with interest, although
I have never had time to devote myself professedly
to it. This presentation of the subject, although it is
far more than a mere revision, reproduces substan
tially the conception of the earlier study ; and it is set
forth with the more confidence, because it has thus
stood the test of time, of broader study, and of more
mature reflection.
This essay aims at interpreting the theology of
S. John as a whole. There is an abundance of
detailed exegetical studies of S. John's writings ;
there are also many valuable studies of the several
component parts of S. John's theology: but it ap
pears as if no one had seriously undertaken to do
for S. John what has in a measure been accomplished
in the case of S. Paul ; — to give such an exposition
of his thought as shall comprise, not only all of his
theology — in the sense that every topic of his
theology is discussed between the covers of a single
book, — but his theology as a whole, as a system.
It would not be difficult to arrange the several topics
of the Johannine doctrine according to the familiar

Vlll

PREFACE

rubrics of ecclesiastical theology or according to any
arbitrary scheme ; but it is a matter of very great dif
ficulty, as it is also of very great importance, to arrange
S. John's doctrine according to a system which reflects
the peculiar complexion of his own thought. It is
chiefly in this respect that this essay may claim to be
an independent contribution. To this interest, to the
aim of giving a total impression of S. John's theology
as an organic unity, every thing has been subordi
nated, and something perhaps sacrificed in the dis
cussion of the several parts. A glance at the table
of contents will show with how much care the con
struction of S. John's doctrinal system has been
studied. I cannot claim that this scheme is estab
lished beyond the need of revision; the only hope
one can cherish in such a case is that it may approve
itself to be a more or less close approximation to the
normal, natural development of S. John's doctrine.
It will attest its own correctness just in so far as it
avails to illuminate S. John's specific doctrines, and
to render intelligible their correlation.
I had hoped that, by dwelling upon the salient
features of S. John's doctrine, by making prominent
the unity of his thought, by omitting technical details,
literary references, and any thing which might inter
fere with the smooth continuity of the exposition, this
book might be made available for a far larger circle
of readers than is accustomed to interest itself in
theological science. That purpose I have had in
mind throughout; and although, in reviewing the

PREFACE ix
work, I cannot claim that I have altogether succeeded,
I still cannot devise any way to make it easier read
ing without making it the poorer. The subject is
in itself peculiarly fit to enlist a popular interest ; in
importance it is not inferior to any theme which can
occupy the human mind ; and with the attention which
it undeniably deserves it will be found at least as
easy of comprehension as the system of any pagan
philosopher. I have made in the text almost no references to
authorities, but I cannot forbear mentioning here a
few books which have proved of capital importance
for this study. If I mention first the well known
work of Bernard Weiss, " Der johanneische Lehrbe-
griff," it is less as an expression of satisfaction with its
treatment, than as an acknowledgment of the fact
that it has had a leading influence in the study of the
subject, and remains to-day the only book — with
the exception of the recent work of Professor Stevens
of Yale University — which deals exclusively with the
Johannine theology, and professes to give a complete
representation of it. There are other works to which
I must acknowledge more serious obligation, although
they are but indirect or partial contributions to the
study: E. Haupt, "Com. on the ist Epistle of
John," Eng. trans.; Franke, "Das Alte Testament
bei Johannes;" Schlatter, "Der Glaube im Neuen
Testament." It will be readily recognised that a work
like the present must be far more broadly indebted
than this scant acknowledgment would reveal.

x PREFACE
Biblical theology draws its material from so many
sources that it would be impossible to remember,
even were it thought worthwhile to note, where credit
ought to be bestowed. But no fellow augur will see
in the smoothness of the text an evidence of scant
labour ; nor, it is to be hoped, will the unlearned see
therein an undue claim to originality.
This essay was not designed in the interest of
apology : nothing in fact could be further from the
spirit in which the study was begun. But it is evi
dent that the study of the Johannine writings can
not be pursued without eventually facing and settling
the question of their genuineness and authenticity.
Biblical theology cannot be altogether divorced from
such problems, and they are consequently discussed
in the introduction, though only so far as is necessary
for the understanding of S. John's thought.
I trust that the avowal that this book is a work of
imagination will not raise a prejudice against it as
though it were therefore bereft of any solid foundation
in fact. Nowhere within the sphere of biblical study
is the faculty of imagination so indispensable as in
this work of literary interpretation. It is in precisely
the same sense, and without the least prejudice to
reality, that imagination is a requisite of all higher
scientific work ; and in the case of historical, as well as
in that of physical science, the only applicable test of
truth is this: whether the imaginative construction
— the hypothesis — is able to account for the facts.
One might set to work to interpret the Johannine

PREFA CE xi
writings upon the hypothesis that the author was an
Alexandrian under the influence of Philo's philos
ophy, or an antagonist of the gnosticism of the
second century, or himself a gnostic, or a Gentile
Christian of the second generation under the influence
of S. Paul. Some constructive hypothesis one must
have, all of these have been maintained, and I treasure
the hope that the working hypothesis of the present
essay : namely, that the author was a Galilean, a com
panion of the Lord, and no other than the Apostle John
who according to unimpeachable tradition survived all
other apostles and proclaimed the message in an age
when he alone could say " I saw ; " — that this
hypothesis may prove itself adequate as no other can
to the test of illuminating the characteristics of the
Johannine writings, and in so far dispose of the pre
judice against their authenticity, which, despite the
remarkable accessions of external evidence and the
significant admissions on the score of internal criticism,
intrenches itself in the assertion that the doctrinal
system of the Johannine writings is such as could not
have been formulated by the Galilean companion of
Jesus — a proposition which in the last resort is
founded upon the conviction that one who had
personally known Jesus as a man could not believe
Him to be God.
WALTER LOWRIE.
Philadelphia, June, 1899.

CONTENTS

CONTENTS xv

INTRODUCTION
BIBLICAL THEOLOGY IN GENERAL  3-9
Common recognition of the importance of Biblical Theology.
Vagueness of the prevalent conceptions of it.
Definition of Biblical Theology.
It is not a rectification of Systematic Theology ;
nor a study of detached ideas ;
nor a mere topical arrangement of the results of exegesis.
It is the exposition of the author's thought as a whole ac
cording to the relation of emphasis, of co-ordination
and sub-ordination, which the different terms had for
him.
It is an historical study ; — an interpretation of the author in
terms of his own philosophic method ; not a translation
into equivalent modes of modern thought.
Method of study.
Sources: the genuine writings, — and documents which re
veal phases of contemporary thought with which the
author was in touch.
Helps: commentaries, and special studies of the character
istics and the doctrinal ideas of the New Testament.
Comparative construction : the characteristic labour of Bib
lical Theology.
Method of exposition.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION — continued
SPECIAL PROBLEMS INVOLVED IN THE STUDY
OF THE DOCTRINE OF S. JOHN  10-17
Problems peculiar to the study of each author.
Depending upon the extent and character of the literary
sources ;
and upon the date and possible affinities of the author.
Various claims in respect to the date and affinities of the Johan
nine writings must be examined.
Peculiar character of the Johannine sources and their value for
Biblical Theology.
Genuineness of the Gospel and the Epistles, — and the
Revelation.
A normal expression of the author's thought without con
troversial bias.
Valuation of the Gospel as a source of Johannine theology :
the speeches of Jesus, — assimilation of Jesus'
teaching in S. John's own thought.
character and arrangement of the composition an
index of the author's point of view.

CONTENTS

xvn

THE DOCTRINE OF S. JOHN
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF S. JOHN'S
THOUGHT  21-46
The leading peculiarities of the Johannine writings are an index
to the fundamental characteristics of the author's thought.
The comparison with the Synoptic Gospels reveals the distinct
aim of S. John's work.
The author's acquaintance with the Synoptists.
Correction, explanation, and supplement of the tradition
can be regarded as aims only in a very subsidiary degree.
The distinguishing mark of the Fourth Gospel is the char
acter of its representation of the significance of the Per
son of Christ.
The pre-eminent aim of the author is seen to be a teaching
which relative to Christ's Person was higher ; — not than
the belief current in the Church, but than the repre
sentation of any previous account of the Lord's life.
This fundamental difference between the Synoptists and the
Fourth Gospel is explained by the fact that the latter
alone was written by a companion of the Lord.
The combination of a preponderating representation of the
subjective significance of Christ's manifestation with
the most emphatic contention for its objective reality,
is explained by the historical position of the author.
The intuitional character of S. John's thought, in contrast
to a speculative or dialectical method.
The constant and close attachment of S. John's thought to
the Person of Christ as the revelation of the Father.
The Aramaic traits of S. John's language furnish a hint of
the Hebraic affinities of his thought.
Construction of the Johannine theology.

xviii CONTENTS

SCHEME OF ARRANGEMENT OF S. JOHN'S
DOCTRINE
I. GOD  49-72
GOD IS LIGHT  49-57
God the centre of theology.
The meaning of " Light."

THE TRUE GOD  57-63
b h\i\9ivh ; fiKl!*-

THE FATHER  63-72
(The personality of God.)
(God the Creator.)
Fatherhood in a real sense. — 6 yevvfiaas.
The only begotten Son
The children of God.
God the source of life.
Fatherhood in an ethical sense.
The Father and the Nation.
The Father and the Son.
The Father and the children.
God is love.

CONTENTS xix
SCHEME OF ARRANGEMENT OF S. JOHN'S
DOCTRINE — continued

73-94

II. THE LOGOS WITH GOD 
JESUS' SELF-WITNESS .... 73-82
The only begotten Son.
Divinity of the Son.
Pre-existence of the Son.

S. JOHN'S DOCTRINE OF THE LOGOS 82-94
S. John's own estimate of Christ.
S. John's use of the term Logos.
The motive of S. John's choice of the term.
Content of S. John's doctrine of the Logos.

III. THE ZOSMOS LYING IN DARKNESS . 95-112
THE WORLD AS THE SPHERE OF HUMAN
LIFE .  95-98
S. John's slight interest in the material aspects of the world.
Heaven and earth.
The material chaos is the analogy of the ethical darkness.

THE DARKNESS .

The revelation of the old covenant.
The Jews in the Fourth Gospel.
Sin.

XX CONTENTS

IV. THE LIFE MANIFESTED  113-216
THE PARALLEL WITH THE FIRST CHAP
TERS OF GENESIS  113-118
THE WORD BECOME FLESH .... 1 18-127
The nature of the Incarnation.
The Son of man.
The Messiah.
The Incarnation a manifestation of God's glory.
A. SALVATION OUT OF THE WORLD 128-155
1. The whole world as the object of salvation.
2. The division amongst men.
3. The doom of the world.
4. The election of the children of God out of
the world.
God's election.
The covenant people.
The sacrifice and lustration of the Covenant.
B. REALISATION OF THE POSITIVE CON
CEPT OF SALVATION THROUGH THE
REVELATION OF THE TRUTH, (or THE
APPROPRIATION OF LIFE) . . . 156-216
The New Birth.'— The Light of Life 162-186
Christ the Truth.
The Spirit of truth.
Believing and knowing.
Eternal Life  186-194
The Children of God. — Fellowship 194-216
Theology and ethics.
Likeness to God.
The new commandment.
Confidence.Prayer.

* INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION
BIBLICAL THEOLOGY IN GENERAL
ONE is under no necessity to-day of offering an
apology for Biblical Theology. Divers trends
of thought have combined to give it an importance
General Recog- anc* an interest which is sure to come to
nition of Biwi- popular recognition. The prevalent re-
eo oey vulsion from metaphysical dogmatism has
encouraged in Christian thought a return to authority,
in one or another form ; — and by no means least to
the Apostolic norm in the New Testament Canon.
Authority may seem a strange term to use in con
nection with the distinctively modern appreciation of
the New Testament Scripture, but it actually is as an
authority that it is regarded, if only in the historical
sense, as the unique record of the faith of the first
generation of Christians. The distinction of modern
Biblical study from this point of view has been that
instead of seeking corroboration in the Biblical text
for the separate propositions of the current church
theology, it has been peculiarly open to the influence
of the modern historical method, and ready to recog
nise that our sacred books are as well worthy as any
others of the rigid scrutiny with which we have learned
to interpret all historical texts.

4 INTRODUCTION
The diversity however of the influences which have
encouraged the study of this subject has contributed
vagueness of to render vague and various the concep-
conception tions of its scope and aim. Of defini
tions there is a lack ; but from the character of the
numerous books which have been issued under this
name, one may infer that prevalent notions of Bib
lical Theology are loose enough to include at the
one end a systematic theology which is marked by
copious employment of Biblical texts, and at the
other, a mere exegetical study of separate words and
ideas. No doubt in the study of any subject, and particu
larly in the inception of a study, there must be differ-
Deflnitionoi ences of treatment corresponding to the
Biblical The- various degrees of completeness — rather
0l0Ey incompleteness — at which the study has
arrived. At this date we must be thankful for many
studies which are partial and subsidiary. It is, how
ever, a just ground of complaint that many works
which go under the name of Biblical Theology have
nothing whatever to do with it, and implicitly belie its
ideal. The ideal of Biblical Theology is nevertheless
capable of being defined with perfect precision and
in a way which can hardly be subject to difference of
opinion. It is not a rectification of systematic theology ; for
systematic theology revised is systematic theology
what it is not sti11' and neither clashes with nor coin
cides with the new and intermediate disci
pline in question. Neither is it a study of Biblical
words and ideas in severalty; nor a mere topical
arrangement of the results of such studies.

BIBLICAL THEOLOGY IN GENERAL

s

It stands midway between exegesis and systematic
theology. It clings very closely to the form of Bibli-
it is Exposition cal conceptions and at the same time
in Terms of a strives to comprehend them in terms of a
ys em system. Its special mark is this, that it
studies separately the several Biblical documents in
relation to the individual authors, with the aim of re
producing the theological standpoint of each writer.
The only postulate we have to demand is one which
cannot readily be refused: it is, that no two men
think precisely alike ; but under the same terms they
understand different things, and under different terms,
the same thing ; — that the common Apostolic doc
trine was by the individual authors at least distributed
in different ways, expressed under various terms, and
with different emphasis. This, however, in no wise
prejudices the fact that there is a substantial unity of
doctrine throughout the New Testament; and it is
by the method of Biblical Theology alone that such
a fact can be established. An idea can be compre
hended only as a part of a system, the study of an
author's thought as a whole throws back a flood of
light upon the several items of exegetical inquiry, and
it is in this that Biblical Theology attains its charac
teristic expression.
In characterising Biblical Theology as an historical
study we define it on two sides. In the first place, it
An Historical ls not directly interested in the bearing
study 0f the Biblical truths upon the religious
life; it is history, not homily. The truth or false
hood, the moral value, of Biblical doctrine cannot
for one moment be a matter of indifference ; but in
this study we are concerned simply to learn what

6 INTRODUCTION
was the meaning of the author. In the second place,
it does not seek to go beyond the historical stand
point of the author, to extract universally valid pro
positions, to extend by inference — no matter with
how faultless a logic — the sphere of his ideas, nor to
subject his conceptions to the unity of an alien
system. It does not aim to go one jot beyond the
circle of ideas native to the consciousness of the
writer ; it does not seek to translate the author into
equivalent modes of modern thought; but to inter
pret him in terms of his own philosophic method.
The sources with which Biblical Theology has to
deal in constructing the theological doctrine of the
various Biblical authors are of course
Method of Study .... . . . ,
primarily the genuine writings (and re
ported speeches) of the author. But inasmuch as
these sources are in the form of history or epistle, in
which the theological material is occasional, and for
the most part subordinate to a hortatory
aim, they are not available for our pur
pose so simply and directly as were they syste
matic theological treatises ; and the theological data
which they furnish are rarely abundant enough to
define the author's position on all sides. For our
construction we are therefore dependent in no incon
siderable degree upon such sources of information
as reveal the phases of contemporary thought with
which the author was in touch. Chief among these
are of course the Hebrew Scriptures, with their con
temporary Judaic interpretation, as being in fact the
chief ground of the unity which underlies the diversity
of New Testament doctrinal forms. One can hardly
overestimate the importance of the Old Testament

BIBLICAL THEOLOGY IN GENERAL J
as the matrix of Christian doctrine ; and any study
which fails to give due weight to this consideration is
sure to be astray. Hardly second in importance are
the New Testament Scriptures as a whole. Whatever
of individuality we may find in an author, we are at
least equally bound to recognise the common factor
of Apostolic doctrine. Each man wrote in the Church
and for the Church, assuming a comprehension and a
reception of his teaching on the basis of the common
faith. It is a question for Biblical Theology to settle
rather than to assume, whether besides the individ
ualities of the several authors there are to be discov
ered distinct schools of thought within the Apostolic
period. But it is certain at least that the strongly
marked individuality of S. Paul was not without
influence upon his associates ; and we must expect to
find differences in the forms of conception of the
several authors corresponding to their dependence
upon Hebraic or Hellenic modes of thought. How
far Hellenic philosophy, or the speculations of Hellen
istic Judaism, may throw light upon New Testament
doctrinal systems, is an open question. The attempt,
however, in any large sense to derive New Testament
doctrine from Greek philosophy is egregiously un-
historical ; — if for no other reason, because of the
difference of the problems in which they were inter
ested. That the Greek stress was upon metaphysics
and the Christian upon religion is a fact patent: but
the further difference is to be noted that even the
Greek religion was expressed in terms of ethics, while
the Christian ethics was expressed in terms of theology.
But the language of the New Testament is Greek, and
this fact of itself, besides requiring extended lexical

8 INTRODUCTION
study in Greek sources, raises the question how far
the Greek language, which was the product as well as
the instrument of Greek philosophy, may have in
fluenced the formal development of New Testament
thought. It is moreover important to recognise that
our New Testament Scriptures were formulated in an
age in which Greek culture was disseminated through
out the world, which therefore was distinguished, in a
degree to which no subsequent age has attained, by
clear thought and right reason.
Biblical Theology, although in many respects it
proceeds upon a new principle of interpretation, is
not under the necessity of beginning the
study of the Bible de novo. The rich
heritage of the faithful study of past ages is the basis
upon which alone our present development is possible,
and its fruits are directly available for our purpose.
The great exegetical commentaries are the chief
reliance of Biblical Theology; the few which have
been written with this aim specially in view have of
course a more immediate value. The acute histori
cal studies of this century in the developments of the
Apostolic age have a still more lively bearing upon
our subject. And as the most immediate helps we
must count the numerous special studies in New
Testament doctrine, most of which are more or less
in line with our conception, taking account of the
diversity of doctrinal types.
But the characteristic labour of Biblical Theology
begins where the helps cease. Biblical Theology is
r„-.*™^ „ essentially constructive ; it rises from
Construction i i ¦
the close inspection of single texts to
an apprehension of the author's thought as a whole.

BIBLICAL THEOLOGY IN GENERAL 9
Minute and patient exegetical study is indispensable ;
but no less necessary and more characteristic of this
study is the broader view, the imaginative faculty
checked by the historic sense, by the aid of which
the scattered details are co-ordinated in a constructive
reproduction of the author's thought. Both of these
labours constantly interact; there is a perpetual
back and forth, a comparison of text with text, of
hypothesis with proof, of the particular with the
general ; and out of this labour grows Biblical Theol
ogy, with its representation which is at least an
approximation to the lively unity of the author's
thought. It is manifestly impracticable to carry the reader
through this elaborate study. Following the well
known maxim that the order of instruction is the
opposite of the order of investigation, the signs
of labour must in the main be expunged from the
Method of Ex- face of the treatment ; — the results only
position appear, and they are in a sense the
proof of their own validity, in so far as they demon
strate themselves adequate to explain and to har
monise the author's characteristic ideas. The process
of study may be allowed to appear only so far as
may be necessary to the understanding of the
point of view. Intelligibility must be the key-note
of exposition.

SPECIAL PROBLEMS INVOLVED IN THE STUDY
OF THE DOCTRINE OF S. JOHN
THE study of each author meets us with special
problems of its own, depending upon the extent and
problems pecu- character of the literary sources, upon
liar to each their date, and upon the possible affin-
Anthor jtjes Qr- ^g, wr;ter. It is manifestly a
more difficult matter to determine the theological
position of such men as S. Peter, or S. James, or S.
Luke; than that, for instance, of S. Paul, in whom
the logical faculty came to clearer expression, and
whose writings, not only by reason of their greater
compass, but by the very fact of their predominant
controversial character, give a sharper definition to
his theology.
There are certain widely accepted claims in re
spect to the date and the philosophical affinities of
the Johannine writings which must be carefully
weighed in the course of study, but which, in so far
Date and Aff in- as they are not adopted, cannot without
ities of s. John prejudice to clearness and unity come to
expression in the finished exposition. Nevertheless
we shall see in the course of the treatment that the
marked predilection which has been shown for S.
John by the Mystics and kindred thinkers is due in
part to a misinterpretation of his thought. The con
tention that he manifests a type of thought akin to
the Platonic realism — whether independent or de
rived — can only be misleading. There is a trait

SPECIAL PROBLEMS II
which we may denominate the Johannine idealism ; but
it is of a Hebrew, not of a Greek mould. The claim
that the Epistle of S. John, or the Gospel, or both,
exhibit the influence of the Gnosticism of the second
century has been discredited by the fanciful pro
cedure of its adherents; and we shall see that the
so-called dualism which is so prominent a trait of
the Johannine writings is of a very different character
and suggests a widely different explanation. Not so
readily can we dispose of the claim that the Johannine
writings show substantial dependence upon the thought
of Hellenic Judaism ; of the apparent Antijudaism of
the Gospel ; or of the Tubingen hypothesis which,
ever seeking a " tendency," finds in S. John's Gospel
the purpose of expressing the life of Christ in
harmony with the regnant gentile Catholicism of the
second century. These questions must come to
consideration in the course of the essay; and in
particular, the problem of the relation of S. John to
Philo will be treated in connection with the Logos
idea, where it will be seen how slight is the clew
which has led into this path. It cannot fairly be
considered a proof of prejudice that one abides by
the traditional account of the authorship and date of
the Johannine writings. At all events the traditional
hypothesis like every other must be judged by its
fitness to explain the phenomena of the writings in
question, — and of all the writings.
When we consider the Johannine sources (the Gos
pel, the three Epistles, and the Revelation) with
character and reference to their value for Biblical The-
yataeofthe ology, the first question is not whether
Johannine °J ^
sources they are genuine, but whether they may

12 INTRODUCTION
be ascribed to a common author. The question of
genuineness is one which is rather to be proved than
posited by Biblical Theology. For it
Genuineness r ... , , .
must be evident that these documents,
be they written when or by whom they may,
furnish data for the determination of the writer's
thought, and that on this interpretation depends in
part the decision of the authorship. Biblical The
ology would lose its apologetic value were it to
assume what it is in a position to prove. Neverthe
less the claim of perfect impartiality upon such a point
as this is a vain boast. The Johannine authorship
of the Fourth Gospel is the most vital question of
New Testament criticism; here if anywhere is the
line which divides a rationalising interpretation of
Christianity from one which can in any sense be
called orthodox. With this question we decide
whether among those who heard, who saw with their
eyes, who beheld, and handled with their hands, we
have any witness that the person of Jesus impressed
in such wise his familiar companions that they recog
nised him as God : — not in the easy fashion of a
polytheism which deified every emperor, but in the
sense of the exalted Hebrew monotheism in which
they were bred. It is marvellous to note how certain
schools of thought, without even raising the question
of Johannine authorship, reconstruct their Chris
tianity upon a basis which is valid only in the case
of its negation. But however the issue may be
obscured, it is this question which must decide in the
last resort how we are to regard the central fact of
Christianity. For if S. John wrote, it is not possible
to say that the genius of S. Paul foisted upon the

SPECIAL PROBLEMS 1 3
church a conception of Christ which was strange
to the original Apostles. If S. John testified to be
holding in the humble manifestation of Jesus " a
Glory as of the only begotten of the Father " ; then is
there a flaw in the numerous " lives of Jesus " which,
on the basis of a critical selection out of the synoptic
accounts, represent his earthly manifestation as " emp
tied " of all traits of divinity which might inspire the
thought that he was more than man. About the
decision of such a question hosts of presuppositions
gather, and not the least is the presumption that one
who had known Jesus as a man could not believe
him to be God. If in a question of so great moment
Biblical Theology may not furnish the decisive settle
ment, it can at least declare the bearing of the inter
nal evidence pro or con. And this essay, so far as its
apologetic bearing is concerned, has at the very least
a value in rebuttal, and sets a nihil obstat upon the
claim of Apostolic authorship. The hypothesis that
the author was the Galilean disciple of Jesus, the
" pillar " of the Jerusalem church, the venerable
" presbyter " of the churches of Asia Minor, is not
however to be judged merely upon its own merits,
but in connection with a criticism of the opposing
hypotheses which reveals their relative unfitness.
The acknowledgment of the common authorship
of the Gospel and the Epistles (or rather the patent
fact which renders denial trivial) contributes much to
the simplicity of our task. This already provides us
with material which in compass is greater than the
writings of any other of the New Testament authors
except those of S. Matthew, S. Luke and S. Paul;
and is exceeded by S. Paul alone in the abundance

14 INTRODUCTION
of its information upon the writer's theological stand
point. It is this sufficiency of unquestionable mate
rial which renders the question of the genuineness of
the Apocalypse one of secondary — at least not vital
— importance to Biblical Theology. The authorship
of the Apocalypse is so widely disputed, and the
question is altogether one of so great difficulty, that
it would seriously impair the value of the study of
S. John's theology to assume its genuineness. It is
generally admitted that the Apocalypse differs so
widely in style and in religious outlook from the
other Johannine writings as to make it exceedingly
difficult to conceive how they could have been pro
duced by a common author. On the other hand the
points of resemblance are so marked that even those
who deny the genuineness of both are compelled to
derive them from a common school of thought. It is
not difficult to imagine that, with the difference in
date which we may readily assume, and with some
new light upon the genesis, aim, and meaning of the
Apocalypse, the contrarieties which now arrest our
judgment may be dissipated. Biblical Theology may
conduce to this result by proving a fundamental
agreement in theological conception: but it can do
this only by maintaining its independence and by
studying each document for itself.
When we compare the Johannine writings with
those of S. Paul, we notice that whereas the latter,
s. John's writ- by reason of their predominantly contro-
ingsaiJonnai versial character define more precisely
Expression .1 ., , ... ,, . . J '
the authors position; the writings of
S. John, by the fact that they are developed without
controversy, with a normal, natural emphasis and

SPECIAL PROBLEMS 1 5
direction, have a value for the purposes of Biblical
Theology which is hardly if at all inferior. This
characteristic of S. John's writings is certainly not
due to any lack of appreciation of the errors which
threatened the Church, or of readiness to oppose
them (witness the first part of the Revelation and
the practical admonitions of the Epistle) ; but prob
ably to the fact that S. John was not equipped for
controversy ; — denunciation, " fire from heaven," was
his r61e. He knew but one way to oppose error,
and that was to state the truth — fully, with all the
majesty that it assumed in his own contemplation —
and let it work. Behind the Johannine writings we
seem to feel as it were the presence of a world power
which is able to oppress the Church, not only by
physical violence, but by spiritual delusion : but all
the attempts that have been made to represent the
Johannine writings as expressly formulated to con
trovert one or another form of error, are wrecked
upon the fact that the author's expressions have
nowhere the precision of reference which we must
expect in such a case, and most of all from a man
of so downright and ardent a disposition as he mani
fests. The importance of this peculiarity for the
purpose of our study cannot be overestimated; it
assures us that we have no casual or imperfect repre
sentation, no colouring nor warping of the exposition
under the influence of a transitory interest; but an
expression of S. John's native and inmost thought
developed with perfect spontaneity from the depths
of his intuitional and emotional nature.
There is however another feature of the Johan
nine writings which appears at first sight to be an

l6 INTRODUCTION
effectual stumbling-block in the way of our study
of S. John's doctrine. The Gospel which is by far
•n. n i « our most abundant source is in the form
i. I1G vOSp6X flS a
source of s. of a history, and purports to give, not
eoogy prjmar;iy g_ John's doctrine, but the
teaching of Jesus. If therefore we are to maintain in
any sense the authenticity of the reported speeches
of Jesus, it seems as though we must be restricted,
for the special purpose of our study, to the mere
comments of the author, which constitute a relatively
insignificant part of his work. This, however, is a
problem which is by no means so difficult of solution,
nor so open to controversy, as might be imagined.
The question of the historicity of the speeches of
Jesus in the Fourth Gospel, vital as it is for the
religious interest, is not one of immediate concern
to Biblical Theology: we are here exclusively con
cerned with the doctrines of the writer. But without
the least prejudice to the substantial authenticity of
these reports, it takes but slight attention to the
subject, but slight familiarity with the contrast be
tween the Synoptic Gospels and S. John's, to con
vince one that they are not verbatim reports, that in
form at least they reflect the peculiarities of S. John,
who puts, not only in the mouth of Jesus, but of the
Baptist and of the Jews, the same characteristic lan
guage which we find him employing in his Epistle ;
— to realise in short that the speeches of Jesus con
tain only what S. John had completely assimilated
and made his own, and that the Fourth Gospel is, as
we call it, the Gospel according to S. John.
Thus the Gospel is vindicated as a source of prime
importance for the study of the Johannine theology.

SPECIAL PROBLEMS

17

The very character and arrangement of the compo
sition, the aim and the scope of it, also furnish data
of the very highest value for the determination of the
author's theological standpoint. Here we are al
ready entering upon the theme of the next chapter,
in which we pass from these preliminaries to the
exposition proper.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF
S. JOHN'S THOUGHT

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF S. JOHN'S
THOUGHT
We are able even from a general survey to make
some highly important deductions in regard to the
F^tn^Tth"8 characteristic theological standpoint of
Writings Reveal the author.
££££3T 0ne of our most important problems,
of the Author one which serves more than any other
to fix the place of the author and the prevailing
Aim of the emphasis of his thought, is that in re-
6081,61 gard to the aim of his Gospel.
The proposition that the author of the Fourth
Gospel was acquainted with our Synoptists, though it
Acquaintance *s one which — to use an expression of
with the Jeremy Taylor's — has " more truth than
evidence on its side," is nevertheless so
generally accepted that, without going aside from
our purpose to argue it out, we must estimate its
significance for our conception of S. John's Gospel.
Proceeding from this consideration, men often draw
certain very serious and by no means harmonious
deductions with regard to the aim of S. John's work.
Now the first thing which strikes one in the compar
ison of S. John's Gospel with the Synoptists, is their
difference, both in form and in material. What then
was the relation of the author to these earlier
correction or authorities? Manifestly he was not bent
Supplement Uke S. Luke I 1-3 upon compiling a

22 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
history from various sources; it is his sovereign
independence which is the most noteworthy fact in
this connection. His aloofness amazes us. Now and
again we think we detect an allusion to, an expla
nation or correction of, a Synoptic incident, yet so
elusive is it that only in the rarest cases can we attain
any confidence that the definite account was before
his mind. Yet all the while we know that both he
and his readers were familiar with several accounts
of the Lord's life, some of which were held in singu
lar veneration; and we find him relying upon this
current information to such an extent that the omis
sions of his Gospel constitute a very notable feature
of it. The birth in Bethlehem, the Davidic genealogy,
the Baptism, the Temptation, the Transfiguration, the
Pater noster, the institution of Baptism, the Last
Supper, and the Ascension, are not recorded by
S. John. Some however are indirectly alluded to and
others plainly presupposed; and at all events it is
scarcely claimed any longer that S. John's omissions
are implicit denials. If we take note of the points
which seem to be corrections in minor detail of the
traditional account, as for instance the date of the
Crucifixion, they are revealed so incidentally as to be
practically ineffective for correction and quite in
adequate to constitute the author's set aim. It is
moreover commonly conceded that the impression
which the Gospel makes of unity of design, the stamp
of a single moulding principle, precludes the idea that
the form of its development was subordinated to a
purpose of incidental correction or supplement. But
what if the work were intended to traverse, not
incidentally, but in principle, the Synoptic represen-

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 23
tation of Jesus? Manifestly, if it were an Apostle
who found this course necessary, he could not in any
honesty have refrained from explicit denunciation of
the false tradition. But what if it were rather a
philosopher of a later age who wished to coin a
representation of Jesus' life more in harmony with the
developed doctrine of the Church, but precisely on
account of his lack of authority dare not break openly
with the venerated tradition? So far as regards the
particular point at issue this might be admitted a
plausible explanation. But then it is observed (and
here is one of the turning points of the criticism) that,
both in detail, and in the general account of the
course and significance of events, the author displays
an exactness of information which is inconceivable in
a dreamer of the second century. This throws a
strong light upon the question of the author's authority
and upon the reliableness of his representation as a
whole. Of such traits, the most commonly acknowl
edged is the representation of repeated attendance
upon the feasts at Jerusalem, with the consequent
prolongation of Jesus' ministry and of his activity
in Jerusalem in particular. Without this hint the
development of the history recorded in the Synoptists
is not readily conceivable. To meet this it is sug
gested that the author, though not S. John, was an
immediate disciple who wrote out of the fulness of
his reminiscence of the Apostle's teaching. But we
can at least say that this sovereign attitude toward
the tradition looks as if it pointed to an author who,
in the confidence of his personal and intimate witness
of the facts which he had " seen" and " heard " and
" handled," could not feel cumbered about the pre-

24 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
potence of any external authority ; who rather wrote at
a time when he was weighted with the consciousness
that beside himself, " there is left on earth
No one alive who knew (consider this) —
Saw with his eyes and handled with his hands
That which was from the first the Word of Life."
Supplement in some sense was the aim, for a supple
ment the Gospel practically is : but it is precisely in
regard to the motive of this supplement that we are
interested. The aim was not the presentation of
specific new material, for that end would have been
more simply accomplished by adhering to the scheme
of the Synoptic account. It did not claim to com
plete the record of the events of Jesus' life, for the
author naively confesses that " there are also many
other things which Jesus did, the which if they should
be written every one, I suppose that even the world
itself would not contain the books that should be
written 21 25.
We approach the solution when we note that the
material is selected with particular design. The inci
dents recorded are fewer than in the Synoptic accounts,
but they are narrated in more detail and with more
appreciation of both their pragmatic and their dog
matic significance. The miracles are not only differ
ent, but greater; and not only greater (in the sense
of manifesting more clearly the exercise of super
natural power), but peculiarly adapted — according
to S. John's constant and express point of view — to
serve as "signs"; — that is, not only as legitima
tions of Jesus' mission, but as manifestations of its
character.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 2$
Every consideration leads us to conclude that
the aim of the Gospel is accurately represented in
A Representation S' John's own declaration : "Many other
ofthesignifl- signs therefore did Jesus in the presence
iSsonistiie8 °^" trie disciples, which are not written in
Mark of the this book ; but these are written that ye
Gospel may believe that Jesus is the Christ,
the Son of God; and that believing ye may have
life in his name" 20 3031. This valuation of Jesus'
miracles is particularly expressed in relation to that
" beginning of signs " which he did in Cana of
Galilee, which served to manifest his glory and en
courage the faith of his disciples 2 ». But it is not
only Jesus' signs; it is also his teaching which has
in the Fourth Gospel a special reference to his Per
son. Jesus' self-witness is nowhere else so constant,
so clear and so lofty. To this difference in the con
tent of Jesus' teaching corresponds a difference of
form which hints at its explanation. It is commonly
remarked that along with the other notes of differ
ence which characterise the speeches of Jesus in the
Fourth Gospel, with the absence of the clear-minted
gnomic utterances which were so eminently adapted
for oral transmission, there fails too the parabolic
mode of teaching which was the most notable dis
tinction of Jesus' discourses according to the Synop
tists. Nevertheless there is an abundance of lively
natural imagery in S. John, and it would be nearer
the truth to say that in S. John we have the parable
elucidated, and explained, as it was in Jesus' esoteric
instruction of the disciples. That there was an eso
teric trait in Jesus' teaching, meant only for the closer
disciples, is clearly expressed in the Synoptic ac-

26 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
count, Matt. 13 10. The parables were for the people,
" the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven " only for
the disciples. S. John's representation then is to
this effect, that the preponderance of Jesus' teaching
was with regard to his own Person : what he was,
and what men must believe about him. But S. John
carries this esoteric trend even further; for, as he
sees in the saying of Caiaphas 11 49-52 a prophecy
which was quite aside from the conscious meaning
of the speaker, so in the speeches of Jesus he reads
a meaning which even the Apostles themselves did
not divine at the time 7 39. More remarkable still
however, and more significant, is the fact that the
whole character of the representation, the general
scheme of the Gospel, is designed to bear upon this
very point. Everything is made to hinge upon the
appreciation or rejection of Jesus, upon belief or dis
belief in him, upon men's ability to see, or their
blindness to God's manifestation in him.
All of these considerations unite in representing
that the aim of S. John's Gospel was a higher char-
Tne Teaching of a acterisation of the significance of Christ's
Higher signifi- person. In the first place, it was higher
cance of Christ's ., , . ,. . ,. c
Person is the Aim than his own earlier appreciation, for
oftheGospei " that Jesus is the Christ," in 20 31, is
doubtless a confession of much deeper import than
the identical confession of S. Peter recorded in Matt.
16 16, and " Son of God" means more than is repre
sented in the genealogy of S. Luke. Not only was
the Resurrection a crisis for the disciples' apprecia
tion of Jesus, but S. John doubtless through all the
years of his life grew to fuller and fuller comprehen
sion of the profound words and mighty deeds of

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS

27

which he was witness. In fact this development in
appreciation of the truth, and particularly of the truth
concerning Jesus, is an idea persistently reiterated
in S. John's Gospel in connection with the mission of
the Comforter 1426 15^ 16 «-m. And in S. John's
reminiscence, " I have yet many things to say unto
you, but ye cannot bear them now," " He shall
glorify me, for he taketh of mine, and shall declare it
unto you," we read his own consciousness of a life
spent in learning, of a long period of spiritual guid
ance which had taught him to see all acquisitions of
truth in their reference to Jesus, and to value them
as they conduced to glorify him. In the second
place, his characterisation of Jesus' Person was higher,
not than the belief current in the Church (for he
shows no consciousness of writing against prevailing
opposition, and the very term Logos is introduced
without explanation, as a thing familiar at least to
the circle of readers immediately in view) ; not
higher than the standpoint of the writers of the
Synoptic Gospels (witness S. Luke's relation to
S. Paul) : but higher than the prevailing representa
tion, and supplemental to it in precisely this respect.
The characteristic difference between the Synoptic
Gospels and the Fourth Gospel, which is so often
accounted to the discredit of the latter, is explained
simply by the fact that S. John's Gospel alone was
composed by a companion of the Lord.
peiaione com- " That the Gospels of S. Luke and of
posed by an Eye- s. Mark were not written by " those who
witness . , , . .
from the beginning were eye-witnesses
and ministers of the word," is expressly declared by
the one and assumed in the very name of the other.

28 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
There is also in the Gospel of S. Matthew no single
trait, far less an explicit claim, to distinguish it, in
respect to its character and origin, from the other
two; and the modern critical theory, which is ac
cepted almost as widely as the historical method itself,
and in this instance is accordant with early tradition,
posits an employment of literary (or oral) sources
by all the Synoptists alike. There are grave diffi
culties in the way of a concordant estimate of the
nature of these sources; but that the Synoptic ac
counts as we now have them were dependent upon
sources, single or sundry, written or oral, and were
in this sense secondary, is a matter of general agree
ment. It is worth while to linger a moment upon
this subject that we may glean such credit as it
suggests for S. John's Gospel. Now between the
account compiled by one who had no personal experi
ence of the recorded events, and that of an eye-witness,
there is an essential difference. This is not neces
sarily, as it is often assumed, a difference of historical
accuracy, but of independence. The speeches of
Jesus which are recorded in the Synoptic Gospels
are in a sense their own legitimation : quite apart
from the confirmation the Gospels receive from their
acceptance by the Church, no one will dispute that
they represent substantially, and even with formal
accuracy, the character of Jesus' teaching. These
sententious, gnomic utterances, these familiar para
bles, were not only peculiarly adapted to take the
attention of the people ; but in a degree only equalled
by rhythmic forms they were also suited for accurate
oral transmission. Such sayings as readily riveted
themselves upon the memory, such as were most

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 29
readily intelligible to the people, which must there
fore have formed the staple of Apostolic preaching ;
— such, and such alone, could have constituted the
oral Gospels which probably preceded the written.
It is in the highest degree creditable to the faithful
ness of the Evangelists that they remain throughout
subservient to the authority of their sources : it can
not be claimed that they have coloured the speeches
of Jesus from their individual standpoints, at the most
one can infer their own peculiarities of thought from
their selection and arrangement of their material. We
can imagine that had S. John written a diary it would
have been found similar to the Synoptic account in
this respect, that the words and deeds would have
been recorded with simple objectivity and with pre
cisely that degree of appreciation which they in
fact received at the time ; though even in that case
there would have been an emphasis upon the things
which seemed specially significant to him. But
S. John's Gospel is something very different from
a diary; something different, too, from mere story
telling. It has been claimed that this Gospel is not a
history but a philosophy ; and with a certain amount
of truth, for his account is not chiefly interested in
the narration of events, but in the significance which
they had with respect to Christ. Written, as is uni
versally assumed, in his extreme old age, it repre
sents what the Gospel had then come to mean to him,
and what he would have all men understand it to
mean. He had a certain liberal disregard of formal
accuracy, which was due to his consciousness that all
that he had learnt was from Christ, that his teaching
was Christ's teaching, and that he consequently could

30 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
not misrepresent the truth, as he strove to exposit, in
his own terms and to a generation which stood
already far both in time and place from the facts
which he relates, the central significance of the mani
festation of him who was the Christ, the Son of God.
I shall struggle no longer to picture the standpoint
from which S. John wrote, for Robert Browning has
done it with rare historic insight in " A Death in
the Desert." " Since much that at the first, in deed and word,
Lay simply and sufficiently exposed,
Had grown (or else my soul was grown to match,
Fed through such years, familiar with such light,
Guarded and guided still to see and speak)
Of new significance and fresh result ;
What first were guessed as points, I now knew stars,
And named them in the Gospel I have writ."
He would have all others see as he saw, confident
that his vision was no subjective idealisation; but
that, however he himself may have failed in that
earlier day to see, the truth was nevertheless there
manifested in objective reality, and only because men
were blind did they fail to see, only because they were
deaf did they fail to hear.
" Then stand before that fact, that Life and Death,
Stay there at gaze, till it dispart, dispread,
As though a star should open out, all sides,
Grow the world on you, as it is my world."
This considerable excursion into the province of
Biblical criticism is only justifiable inasmuch as it has
subjective and brought to notice many of the peculiar-
objective ities of S. John's Gospel which must be
kept in view, and in especial the relation of his thought

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 31
to the Person of Christ which is the most outstanding
moment of his doctrinal presentation. This line of
thought leads us directly to the consideration of
another characteristic of a general nature without
which the organisation of S. John's thought must be
incomprehensible, or at least self-conflicting. This is
the fact that together with a preponderating repre
sentation of the subjective significance of Christ's
manifestation (according to which the revelation of
God in Christ seems to be of itself sufficient for the
accomplishment of salvation) S. John contends most
emphatically for the objective reality of the things nar
rated. It seems at first sight as though he were inter
ested only in the moral effectiveness of the revelation ;
but again it is " that which we have heard, that which we
have seen with our eyes, and our hands have handled,"
and the orthodox confession is " that Jesus Christ is
come in the flesh." This is not the manner of a man
who stands far from the event and is solely concerned
with its philosophical or ethical importance. The
comparison with S. Paul is instructive in this con
nection. For him also the objective reality of the
great dogmatic facts of Christ's life is of essential
importance : but the difference lies in this, that
whereas S. Paul in accordance with his analytic
genius abstracts the dogmatic moment from the lively
unity of its personal and ethical connection (it is the
death and the resurrection of Christ which are the
indispensable basis of his dogmatic scheme), S. John
has ever before his eye the life of Jesus as a whole,
and finds in it at one and the same moment the basis
of dogmatic inference (its objective importance), and
its subjective value as the highest revelation. It is

32 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
for this reason that he regards the Incarnation as the
prime fact, precisely because it is the most inclusive
category. It is not that S. John's emphasis lay upon the
Incarnation in the narrower sense, as a particular
moment in Jesus' career (his birth, the inception of
his life) ; or as a separable dogma, contrasted for
instance with his Death. " The Word became flesh "
1 14 is rather (like " coming " i 9, " manifested "Lis
and " sent " I. 4 14) an expression for the total mani
festation of Christ (birth, life, death, and resurrection) ;
and serves at once to denote a dogmatic fact and to
express the significance of Christ as the Revealer of
God 1 is. This characteristic of S. John runs through
and through his representation, and the failure to take
account of it is largely responsible for the common
though erroneous opinion that the Death, the Resur
rection, and the Ascension of Christ have no dogmatic
importance in the Fourth Gospel. It is unquestion
able that the prevailing emphasis of S. John is upon
the subjective appropriation of salvation through the
revelation of the truth, and it seems at times 6 s3 as
though in this interest he were bent upon rationalis
ing the objective facts of Christ's life. The fact is
however that these two ranges of ideas subsist side by
side without the least consciousness on the part of the
writer of any contrast, far less of any contradiction,
between them.
S. John's treatment of the " works " of Jesus throws
light upon his conception of Jesus' Work in the
greater sense. The miraculous works of Jesus,
S. John calls " signs " ; and not only by this name,
but by his constant representation, he reveals his con
ception of them as expressions of Christ's mission,

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 33
and that in a double character : as wonders, exceed
ing the limits of natural force, they legitimate his
mission as from God 3 2 ; as symbols they reveal the
character of his mission 6 2. In the first point of view
it is the greatness of the miracle which is significant
5 20 7 31 ; in the second, it is its kind 10 32. The resur
rection of Lazarus owes its importance not merely to
its character as a wonder, but to the fact that it mani
fests Jesus as the Resurrection and the Life. Similarly
the healing of the blind man brings out the idea of
light, the feeding of the multitude, the idea of bread,
and the beginning of signs in Cana surely owes its
significance as a manifestation of his glory to some
thing more than the mere natural impossibility of the
wonder, — it reveals in fact the contrast between the
attitude of Jesus and the traditional position of Israel;
between the regime of ceremonial purification (to
which John the Baptist still belonged), and the glad
life-giving wine of the Gospel. Air the signs of Jesus
serve to manifest in visible and earthly form the charac
ter of his work in the more real though invisible sphere.
But the idea that " the signs " are for S. John merely
symbolical representations of the thought contained
in Jesus' word, leaves out of consideration the fact
that with even greater emphasis he denominates them
" works? As signs, Jesus' works are practically
words ; but it must not be overlooked that word and
work are constantly contrasted, that each is in a
certain sense the supplement of the other, each being
in its own special way a ground of faith. The signi
ficance of Jesus' miracles lies very essentially in this,
that they represent works wrought, as well as truth
taught. A mere talking Christ does not help the,
3

34 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
world; the Son therefore manifests himself (and also
reveals the Father) as a worker 5 17. The " works "
have for S. John a special importance, distinguished
from that of the " words " in this, that they reveal the
will and the might to perform that which is promised
in the " word." Therefore it is not the speech but
the deed of Christ which is essentially the ground of
faith ; — " if I do not do, believe me not " 10 37. The
" word " is a ground of faith only in so far as it
includes in itself the assurance that the " work" will
follow, and this confidence it rightly evokes because it
comes from God. The Father not only speaks, but
he " doeth his works " 14 10.
In another aspect however the " word " is raised in
dignity above the " work " ; and that not only because
it brings to expression more perfectly than the
material sign the significance of Jesus' Person and
promise; but because precisely as word it belongs
to a higher sphere, is namely " spirit " 6 64, whereas
the work considered merely as a wonder belongs to
the earthly sphere and is " flesh." It is from this
point of view that the insufficiency of the sign as a
motive of faith is frequently emphasised. " Flesh,"
the sphere in which the sign is wrought, has not with
S. John any connotation of evil, of sin ; it is simply un
profitable 6 63, — flesh generates only flesh and cannot
raise itself to the sphere of spirit 3 6. It cannot how
ever be supposed that in 663, Jesus means to cast
discredit upon the miracle of the loaves, for it was a
work of God though wrought in the earthly sphere,
it was also a sign and hence in a sense a word ; —
thought wedding itself to fact. Spirit and flesh,
elsewhere contrasted, here become one; each of

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 35
Jesus' works is an epitome of his Work in its totality,
for in each is exemplified the Word becoming flesh.
We can thus see how it is that the works of Jesus
have at one and the same time and inseparably the
significance of a deed done in all objective actuality,
and of a revelation whose importance lies in its sub
jective appreciation.
This helps us to understand the constant blending
— we cannot say confusion — of subjective and ob
jective, which may be observed in S. John's treatment
of Jesus' " Work" 174 in the greater sense. The
same passage, chapter 6, serves as a transition to
this subject. As Jesus' words in verse 63 cannot be
supposed to disallow the divine significance of his
miracle ; neither can they be considered an attempt
to rationalise the " hard saying." If eating his flesh
meant nothing more than accepting the revelation
contained in his teaching, there would have been left
in this saying no cause of stumbling. The real and
objective importance of Christ's descent from heaven
6 38, his death 6 s>, and his ascension 6 62, is not nullified
by the fact that they are at the same time vehicles of
revelation and in this sense have the same significance
(quickening, spiritual, life-giving) as the words that
he speaks. In the hard saying 6 52-59 about the eating
of his flesh we are compelled to recognise — quite
apart from its obvious association with the sacrament
of the Last Supper — a reference to his death in
terms of sacrifice, and after every attempt has been
made to rationalise it in terms of revelation and
spiritual communion, there must remain a residuum
of absolutely objective character ; — or else Jesus
made use of an expression which was needlessly

36 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
offensive to his disciples. It was not the eating of
his flesh in objective reality, which was stigmatised as
unprofitable, and opposed to the spirit ; but the blind
ignorance of the people who could not see in his
words the profound spiritual idea of sacrifice. In
saying, " The words that I have spoken unto you are
spirit, and are life," he cannot be supposed to be
explaining a sentence which was imperfect and
enigmatical ; but in the most solemn way, and in the
face of misunderstanding, he bears witness to the
foregoing words as the perfect and ultimate expres
sion of truth ; — for the words which are spirit and
life are none other than these, " Except ye eat the
flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have
not life in yourselves."
S. John in every individual moment of Jesus' life
and in his total manifestation sees these two factors,
word and work; and though he distinguishes them,
he never thinks of them as separable. They stood
in a relation of contrast ; and yet the work was in a
sense a word, and the word, a work. That Christ's
word was at all times a work was a conception very
essential to S. John. It was suggested by the crea
tive word in the first chapter of Genesis, and was thus
immediately connected with his use of the term
Logos in the prologue. The power of Christ's word
is seen not only in the performance of his miracles,
but in the fact that it was a powerfully efficient and
life-giving revelation. And so the word wrought
and the work taught, and yet each was a distinct
factor essentially irreducible to the terms of the other,
though both became one in the Incarnation of the
Logos. Of these two factors, it was doubtless the

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 37
word, the idea of revelation, upon which S. John
predominantly dwelt; but both are to be felt often
where only one is expressed, and neither can be
counted to nullify the other. How naive was S.
John's mode of thought may be seen sufficiently
from one example : " Herein was the love of God
manifested in us . . . that he sent his Son the pro
pitiation for our sins " I. 4 9 '°. Here in accord with
S. John's constant conception the significance of
Christ's coming (sending) into the world, and in
particular of his death, lay largely in the revelation
which was thereby made of God's love ; and yet the
death of Christ remains none the less a propitiation,
and quite apart from any subjective apprehension of
it, he views it as the propitiatory sacrifice " also for
the sins of the whole world " I. 2 *.
It has been necessary to dwell so long on this
point because it is precisely here that S. John is
most commonly and fatally misinterpreted. S. John's
doctrine cannot be evaporated into a mere subjective
system of revelation, faith, knowledge, life ; it grasps
the mere fact, the flesh, and finds in it a significance'
which is not to be ignored because, as a mystery
transcending the understanding, it is not a frequent
topic of the exposition. If this were not so, we
should indeed be obliged to ascribe the Johannine
writings to a speculative genius of the second century,
who stood far from the facts, and valued only the
moral effectiveness of the tale. We should be forced
to admit that a Palestinian Jew could not have strayed
so far from the pragmatic postulates of his inherited
faith. But with the appreciation we have just gained
of S. John's mode of thought we may perceive that so

38 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
far from its being the reflection of a philosopher, it is
the intuition of an eye-witness which best serves to
explain this characteristic blending of subjective and
objective in a unity, which is nothing else than the
unity of a person. The Person of Christ was for S.
John the grand fact, which he estimated on all sides,
but did not analyse. With this characteristic of the
Johannine writings the historical situation of the
Apostle John is not only in no way inconsistent;
we may rather say that such a situation is demanded
as the only adequate explanation of the facts.
There are many other characteristics of the Johan
nine writings which are elucidated by the character,
the position and the development of S. John. His
early passage through the school of the Baptist to
the inmost circle of Christ's followers, his gradual
and spontaneous development, help in particular to
explain the difference between him and S. Paul.
There was for him no essential opposition between
Law and Gospel ; for the freedom of his early Galilean
life was not crushed in Pharisaic bondage. He had
The intuitional learned the law from Christ, and although
character of s. Jesus' attitude toward law was radically
oug neWj 5 John found it natural to express
the teaching of Christ, and indeed the sum of his
self-revelation, as the "new commandment." He
had passed through no such sudden spiritual revolu
tion as S. Paul, and hence did not like him conceive
of the conflict of good and evil as fought out within
the sphere of the individual conscience. Though he
recognised the opposing principles quite as vividly,
he did not name them, from the standpoint of the
human consciousness, Flesh and Spirit; but, in view

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 39
of the great world drama which he beheld enacting
about him (as in the Apocalypse), Light and Dark
ness. The nature of S. John's thought is profoundly
contemplative and intuitional. Nothing can be further
from truth than to call him speculative. He never
speculates, he sees. He is called the Seer of the
Apocalypse ; he might be called no less aptly the
Seer of the Gospel, the Seer of the Epistle. He
sees a drama : the conflict, and finally the victory, of
the powers of Light over the Darkness; and he
simply writes what he sees. He sees the earthly
manifestation of the Son of God ; and he pictures it
in his Gospel :
" To me that story — ay, that Life and Death,
Of which I wrote ' it was,' — to me it is ;
— Is, here and now ; I apprehend nought else."
He leans upon Jesus' breast, looking into the beloved
face which reveals to him the light of the Glory of
God ; and in the full inspiration of that sight he turns,
in his Epistle, to impart to his brethren the practical
significance, the moral result, of that manifested life.
Logical analysis, dialectical method in general, was
quite foreign to S. John. His thought moves grandly
in the sphere of a few profound ideas the significance
of which he develops by contrast. For the anti
thetical expression which is so characteristic of his
writings he finds the immediate suggestion in the
parallelism of Hebrew literature. Moreover in what
seem at first to be disconnected antitheses there is a
real progression of thought, and a mode of develop
ment which, far as it is from representing a continuous
deductive sequence, has nevertheless all the formality

40 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
of a syllogism. But antithesis is for S. John far more
than a literary form or a figure of speech. It is the
expression of his deepest thought. He sees every
thing in its essential character, and hence in fun
damental contrast ; — not blended and mingled with
its opposite as it is in phenomenal experience. The
fundamental contrast between God and all that is not
of God, he names according to its different aspects :
Light and Darkness, Life and Death, Love and Hate.
The Logos is conceived of in no theosophic manner
as the mediator of this contrast ; • — he was manifested
to destroy the works of the Devil, the Darkness is to
be abolished, and is already passing away before the
shining of the true Light.
S. John distinguishes between different stages of
development; but he sees in the germ the potency
of the fruit, and therefore eternal life is actually
possessed by the believer now, though its full fruition
is to be expected in the hereafter. Appreciation of
Christ's Person and confidence in his might is called
faith, in every stage, from the lowest to the highest,
and at every stage it works eternal life because it
makes that knowledge to be truly living, upon which
eternal life depends ; we have even now a true knowl
edge of God which works in us his likeness, though
we shall be perfectly like him only " when we see
him as he is."
S. John's ideas, not only in the Gospel but in the
Epistle, cluster more closely about Christ than do
those of any other writer. It may not be just to say
The close Reia- that S' Johll's thought is swayed more
tion of s. John's than another's by the Christian point
Th.ugl.tto Christ Qf yiew. but there js jn this respect a

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 41
peculiarity in his mode of thought which is best
brought out by a comparison with S. Paul. This
difference between S. Paul and S. John is in accord
with the mental peculiarities we have already noted.
S. Paul's doctrine is no less securely rooted in Christ ;
but he is free to move away from that central point
along the chain of a dialectical argument, his thinking
moves in enthymemes, and so his ideas, which are no
less really attached to the centre, are attached less
directly. S. John on the other hand, as we have
found, simply sees and knows and tells. S. Paul can
draw arguments from all sides, examples from law,
inductions from history, analogies from nature ; and
although he converges them all upon the central
truth he thereby exhibits a point of difference from S.
John. S. John never moves a step away from the
centre. That word which he uses with predilection
to describe the close relation of the believer to
Christ— "dwelleth," or "abideth," in him — might
be used to describe this characteristic of his thought ;
it abides in him. When I study S. John's Epistle, I
picture him leaning still upon Jesus' breast, and ever
gazing into his face. If there is any question to
solve, he finds the answer there. No argument is
needed ; — or only one step of argument, as he
directly subsumes the case under the idea of the
nature of God. If there is a problem raised by the
lack of harmony in the brotherhood, he looks up
into the face of God and in that look he knows that
'* he that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is
love." If the brotherhood is tempted to sin, the
denunciation comes with a directness and absoluteness
which is simply perplexing and inconceivable except

42 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
from this point of view. We see again the ardent,
fiery spirit of the Son of Thunder; the same man
who in the Apocalypse anathematised the lukewarm,
and ever sees things in their deepest nature as con
trasts. Looking into the face of Jesus, into that face
which is to him the perfect revelation of the love and
holiness of God, he cannot but say : " He that sin
neth hath not known God." A very simple but
significant illustration of the constant attachment of
S. John's thought to Christ is his use in the Epistle
of the pronouns He and Him (ai/Tos, iKelvos) for
Christ (or God), but with grammatical reference so
loose that the reader is often puzzled about the
syntax. It is only because it is manifest that the
thought of Christ is constantly uppermost in S.
John's mind that there is no real hesitancy in deter
mining the reference of these familiar pronouns. In
reading S. John's Epistle we adapt ourselves so
thoroughly to his spirit that it seems in the end
natural to refer to ' Him ' as though He were always
the subject of the preceding clause. There is how
ever often a real difficulty in distinguishing whether
the reference is to Christ or to God I. I 5-10, though
the discussion of commentators on this point is quite
beside the mark, for the significance of this apparent
looseness of expression is just this, that to S. John it
was all the same : he knew the Father only as he was
revealed in the Son, and his inmost thought was reg
ulated by the truth which he recorded, " I and the
Father are one" 10 30.
The very language of S. John reflects the simplicity
of his mental processes. It also indicates his affinity
with Hebrew thought ; and the hint which we derive

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 43
from this general consideration is confirmed by the
more particular study of the relation of S. John's
The Aramaic ideas to the Old Testament. This is a
Traits of point of the utmost importance for the
guage Furnish study of S. John, for not only does the
Hetor^cAfHni °iuestion OI" authorship hinge upon it,
ties of his but its appreciation affects quite radically
Thought tne interpretation and construction of the
Johannine theology. Depending as we must upon
delicate inference for the establishment of the author's
system of theology, it cannot but be of prime interest
for us to know whether the background of his thought
about God and the world was Hebrew or Greek. We
cannot in our study proceed upon the mere assump
tion of the traditional view of the author's relation to
Judaism ; but still less dare one neglect this assump
tion, or without proof to the contrary, deny that
which is the intended implication of the Gospel itself.
In the detailed treatment of S. John's several ideas
we shall notice the close relation to Old Testament
conceptions, and the total impression must be that the
author was bred in the atmosphere, and instinctively
clothed his ideas in the forms, of Jewish thought. We
have here only to remark upon the Aramaic charac
teristics of S. John's style ; a more objective consider
ation, and one which, though it carries the main
assumption with it, is less a subject of dispute.
The consideration of linguistic peculiarities, is, in
its very nature, a study too minute to be presented
here with proof and reference. But the following
points are obvious enough to be perceived even in
the English translation. That the Gospel was written
for Greek-speaking Christians is shown by the frequent

44 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
explanation of Aramaic words and Hebrew customs.
To this agrees the unimpeachable tradition that
S. John found the later sphere of his activity in
the essentially Heathen-Christian communities of
Asia Minor. The Gospel was therefore originally
written in Greek. Yet notwithstanding a certain readi
ness and ease in the use of the Greek tongue, which
presumes a prolonged residence in Greek surround
ings, one can still distinguish through the Greek dress
the type of the mother tongue of the Palestinian. The
most general signs of it are : the simple and un-
periodic structure of the sentences ; the monotonous
connection of sentences by " and," " but," " then," to
the neglect of the rich store of particles which in
Greek served to express so precisely the logical
relation of the clause ; the circumstantiality and
monotony of the expressions ; and the fondness for
antithesis and parallelism. Aramaic characteristics
of speech are so predominant that some have been
tempted to suppose an Aramaic original of the Greek
text. The Gospel, which is relatively poor in direct
quotations, is largely coloured by implicit references
to the Hebrew Scriptures ; and in the Epistle, which
contains no direct quotations at all, the expression is
so obviously moulded by the Old Testament that its
Hebraistic affinity has been urged as a ground for
distinguishing its author from that of the Gospel. In
the same direction point the use of Hebrew words
and names (rabbi, rabboni, Cephas, Messias, Gabbatha,
Golgotha) especially the " verily verily " (amen
amen), and the explanation of Siloam 9 7 ; the famili
arity with the places and customs of Palestine, with
the relations of Jews and Samaritans, and with the

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 45
different parties within Judaism. These consider
ations justify us in seeking at least a close relation
between S. John's thought and the theology of the
Old Testament, and suggest the presumption that the
lacunce of his exposition are to be supplied from
the current conceptions of contemporary Judaism.
The following construction of the Johannine the
ology proceeds from a recognition of these pre
dominant characteristics of the author's thought : of
the principle of contrast which is regulative of his
thought through and through, and is expressed by
Light and Darkness and the whole line of correlative
antitheses ; of the intuitive faculty which represents
stages of development pictorially, dramatically, in
terms of vision, rather than under the rubrics of logic ;
of the blending of subjective and objective, which
without prejudice to the real importance of Christ's
work represents, in a manner not exclusively yet
characteristically Johannine, the accomplishment and
content of salvation in terms of revelation, light,
knowledge ; and of the background of Jewish thought
which determines the conception of God and of the
world, and finds the specific content of salvation in a
new and filial relation to God in the community of
the chosen brotherhood. The great contrast is that
between God and the world. This contrast is not so
much resolved as revealed by the manifestation of
the Logos, who even " in the flesh " is not a synthesis
of God and not-God ; but, as one who is essentially
and perfectly God and Light he provokes in the
Darkness a continual judgment (jcplaii) and separ
ation between the light-loving elements and those
which are constituted in their inmost nature children

46 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
of the Devil. This manifestation of the Son of God
in the world effects at once the destruction, " passing
away," of the kingdom of evil and the gathering to
gether of the children of God into one ; and both are
accomplished as well by what is objectively wrought
by him, as by the inherent power of his revelation of
the truth ; — by his work as well as by his word.
This scheme of thought is presented under the
following topics:
I. God.
II. The Logos with God.
III. The Kosmos lying in Darkness.
IV. The Life Manifested.
A. Salvation out of the world.
I. The doom of the world.
2. Election of the children of God.
B. Realisation of the positive concept of
salvation.
I. The New Birth.
2. Eternal Life.
3. The Children of God. — Fellowship.
Likeness to God.
Love.Confidence.
Prayer.

THE THEOLOGY OF S. JOHN

I
GOD
GOD IS LIGHT
S. JOHN justifies the name of Theologian, which
appears in the traditional title of the Apocalypse,
God the Centre by the central position which he gives to
of Theology the doctrine of God. Although the Gos
pel is professedly a history of Jesus' life, and the Epistle
is mainly intent upon the solution of the practical
problems of the Christian brotherhood, S. John's
teaching is throughout and in the strictest sense
theology. For the history which he records is in
every detail the revelation of God, and his ethics is
simply resolved into the imitation of God. There are
advocates nowadays of a " Christo-centric " the
ology: the word is obviously a solecism; but no
where is the impropriety of the distinction which is
here raised between Christo-centric and Theo-centric
better shown than in the writings of S. John. We
have already remarked upon the absolutely central
position which Christ occupies in S. John's thought ;
but we saw at the same time how in his Epistle he
blends his reference to Christ with his reference to
the Father. Christ is the centre of his theology, but
just for that reason God is. For one of the prime
articles of his faith is the profession of Christ " I and
the Father are one" 1030. The whole significance
4

5°

GOD

of Jesus depends upon his relation to God : upon the
fact that as the only begotten Son he is the only
" exegete " of the Father I is ; as the Word (which
in the beginning was with God, which was God) he
was, not only in word, in work, in character, but in
nature, the revelation of God. The high faith which
he demanded in the last hour of intercourse with the
disciples was, " that I am in the Father and the Father
in me ; he that hath seen me hath seen the Father "
149 1°. And with all it is the Father and not the
Son which is the centre of S. John's thought. The
lofty self-consciousness of Jesus, which is so promi
nent in the Fourth Gospel, finds no higher expression
than the relation of son to father ; and precisely this
Gospel which would teach the very highest signifi
cance of Jesus' Person is most untiring and emphatic
in its assertion of the subordination of the Son as
son. The assertion, " The Father is greater than I"
1428, is not an anomaly, but the key-note of Jesus'
self-witness. The passages are too numerous for
reference in which Jesus himself testifies to the der
ivation of all his power from the Father. This is
indeed implicit in the name itself, and is expressed
in almost all of his utterances about the Father. It
is the Father who sent him 1249 639 8-6; his life
and his death is in keeping with his Father's com
mandment 1510 10 is; he came not to do his own
but the Father's will 5 30 ; his works are the Father's
works and done in his name 10 25 37; he speaks only
of what he has seen 8 38, heard 1 5 15, and learnt 8 28 from
the Father ; his very life is derived from the Father
5 26 6 57 ; and his position in the world is completely
characterised by this, that he is not as one who comes

GOD IS LIGHT 5 1
in his own name, but " I am come in my Father's
name " 5 43.
It is clear from the foregoing that God is to S. John
the subject of all-absorbing interest. And we are
prepared for the solemn emphasis with which, in the
opening of his Epistle 1 8, he sums up the good tid
ings of Christ in a single proposition about God:
" God is light, and in him is no darkness at all."
There is in the whole range of the New Testament
no second passage which can be placed along side of
this as a considerate and solemn statement of the
essential content of Christ's revelation to men. The
importance which S. John attaches to this utterance
is shown, not only by its immediate introduction,
" This is the message which we have received from
him, and announce unto you " ; but by the position
which it occupies at the beginning of the Epistle, and
by the general introduction of the first four verses.
These introductory verses make it plain that the
message which he here summarises is not only what
he had learnt from the words of Jesus, but is the
epitome of his total manifestation. It is evident that
S. John intends here to express, so far as language
can express, " the Word of life," " the manifested life!'
" what we have seen and handled" as well as " what
we have heard!'
This passage is an important proof of the just
ness of S. John's judgment, the right proportion of
his thought, which, with all its emphasis
upon the saving revelation of Christ,
realises that the message attains its highest and most
universal expression, not in a proposition concerning
the fate of man, but in a demonstration of the char-

52 GOD
acter of God. That S. John was able to pack the
Gospel message into one proposition, is due to the
fact that he speaks in symbols ; and precisely on this
account is it difficult to give a matter of fact interpre
tation of this brief but all embracing definition. The
employment of symbolical language is characteristic
of S. John, and it is this which enables him to ex
press his whole theology in the compass of a few
profound ideas, the relations of which to each other
undergo protean changes according as one or another
side of the symbolical reference is predominant. This
is an elusive mode of thought, and nowhere more so
than in the case of the term light.
There is another respect in which this sentence is
highly characteristic of S. John, namely in its anti
thetical form. It is in this case hardly more than a
question of form, for the negative clause adds no new
conception, though it gives definition, and heightens
immensely the impression of moral conviction, with
its impetuous denial : " and darkness in him there is
none ! "
The commonest use of the word light in S. John is
also in accordance with the simplest and most obvi
ous suggestion of the figure. When Jesus says " I
am the light of the world " 8 « 9 S) the term is appar
ently used with the same simplicity of significance as
in Mat. 5 m, " Ye are the light of the world," denot
ing the pervading moral influence of pure example,
Mat. 5 13-16, it being the attribute of light that it
shines and giveth light to all that are in the house, as
it is of salt that it giveth savour to that with which it
comes in contact. This simple application of the
figure in the sense of moral revelation and enlighten-

GOD IS LIGHT 53
ment is still clearer in 123536, "Yet a little while is
the light among you. Walk while ye have the light,
that the darkness overtake you not; and he that
walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth."
But here the ethical meaning passes into the soteri-
ological, " Believe on the light, that ye may become
sons of light," and reminds us that with S. John the
highest meaning which he attaches to a word is
seldom quite absent from it, even in what appears a
simpler and lower use. Nevertheless for the under
standing of S. John's use of this term we must hold fast
to the fact that its primary significance is that of
revelation, manifestation. The most objective use of
it in this sense is in 3 20 «, " For every one that doeth
ill hateth the light, and cometh not to the light, lest
his works should be reproved. But he that doeth the
truth cometh to the light, that his works may be made
manifest, that they have been wrought in God."
It must however be evident that this active signi
fication falls short of many of S. John's uses of the
term. And in fact the passage just quoted makes it
clear how the terms light and darkness might acquire
a purely ethical significance as the spheres, or even
the very principles, of good and evil. In this sense
S. Paul uses them, Eph. 5 8 9 6 » II. Cor. 6 m, and that
this is an element in S. John's idea is shown by his
use of darkness in an active sense and as a positive
concept is 12 35 I. 2 ". We can here observe the
influence of the Old Testament point of view (com
mon also in Greek generally), according to which
light denotes a state of undisturbed happiness, of
prosperity, and of salvation, just as darkness means
a state of perdition, because every form and develop-

54

GOD

ment of life is conditional upon light. In accordance
with this, light with S. John denotes not only the con
dition of happiness 5 35, but of life itself 8 -2. It hence
gains a more positive content, as an effective force, a
power which works a change in objects, as well as
reveals their character. Still, all of this does not
suffice to explain the use of the word in I. 1 5, where
it is regarded, not as an active force, but as an
immanent quality. God is light cannot be taken as
an assertion of the essential nature of God as com
posed of light-substance, for this would be, to S.
John especially, a matter of comparatively little
interest, and could not in any sense be regarded as
an expression — far less as the complete expression
— of the revelation given in Christ. Neither can it
denote merely the fact that God is a being clear and
intelligible, and that self-revelation is his very nature ;
for the " walking in the light " and " in darkness " of
the following verses dwells upon the ethical import
of the terms. The fact is that S. John's use of light
in this passage is so emphatic, so evidently consider
ate and weighty, that it is more reasonable to inter
pret all other uses of the term by means of this, than
to narrow this magnificent statement to the dimen
sions of what is conceived to be his common use.
Now it is absolutely certain that S. John found in
Jesus the revelation of God as holiness, power, and
love; and this much at least must be included in
the expression God is light. And it is not hard to
see how he came to use this expression in this sense.
For regarding light primarily as revelation — that
which reveals — and regarding Christ as the man
ifestation of the life I. 1 2 and of the truth, he could

GOD IS LIGHT 55
not fail to think also of the content of the revelation,
— holiness, power, justice, love. For light is not
only that which reveals, it is also a substance of
particular character, and it is because of its substantial
character that it reveals, and not only reveals, but
" makes light " Eph. 5 13 whatever it manifests. It is
a beneficent power which produces joy and life. It
is therefore by no means strange that S. John should
employ this word to express the immanent quality of
God ; nor does this expression stand alone, as is
commonly supposed ; for we can read back from this
and see, in the sayings which describe Christ and the
Logos as light, the same conception, that he is the
sum of all the revelation of good which he brings.
And though the content of this saying must be
supplied from elsewhere, namely from the whole
Gospel, it is none the less a statement of the highest
importance. For it shows not only that God was the
essential subject of S. John's Gospel; but how ab
solutely the Logos — who was light — was conceived
as the revelation of God ; — what the Logos man
ifested himself to be, that God is. And it shows how
thoroughly S. John grasped " the message " as good
tidings, as joy and life, as the brightest message that
could possibly be conceived ; — " no darkness at all."
Although this whole store of ideas is not expressed by
the term light itself, it was a matter of great moment
to S. John that he had a word with which he could
associate the whole sum of the Gospel message, and
the essential nature of God. It was characteristic
of S. John to express much in little, and we need not
be afraid to see in this word also an active signification.
As it is the very nature of the " word " to reveal, so

56 GOD
it is the nature of light to shine, to give light ; and it
is surely not going beyond S. John's idea, when we
see here an expression of God's activity 5 '7 towards
his creatures; when we see, in the light which tri
umphs over the darkness, an expression of God's
might ; — a might which is especially manifested by
the production of the fruits of light in the children
who walk in his light I. 1 7. There is still another
aspect under which God is thought of in relation to
light. The divine Glory which from time to time
was manifested to Israel was thought of as an envelope
of light; and this idea has a marked influence upon
the use of the word in the New Testament. We
read : " the glory of God shone " Luke 29; " the
brightness of his glory" Heb. 1 3; the light which over
shadowed Christ on the mount is called " the glory "
II. Pet. 1 17 ; and S. Paul in connection with the glory
of Moses' countenance II. Cor. 3 7, speaks of " the
light of the Gospel of the glory " 4 4, and " the light
of the knowledge of the glory of God " 4 6. This
idea is especially prominent in the Apocalypse : " the
earth was lightened with his glory" 18., and "the
glory of God did lighten it " 21 23. But in the writ
ings which we are studying, the only passage in
which it appears to have definitely influenced S.
John's thought is I. 1 7 " as he is in the light." The
form of this expression is doubtless determined by
the parallel, " walk in the light," but it shows also
how natural it was to speak of the light as the element
in which God lives, as darkness is the element which
characterises the world. There are obvious sugges
tions from many points of view for the choice of this
symbol; but having once chosen it S. John invests

THE TRUE GOD 57
it with a depth of meaning peculiarly his own, and
the expression in I. 1 5 is so far from being a solitary
use, that we must regard it rather as the climax of a
series, and read back into even the apparently simple
uses of the term something of the pregnancy of this
extraordinary summary of theology, God is light.
THE TRUE GOD
The Logos become flesh revealed not only an idea
of God characterised by attributes of goodness,
mercy and love ; but by revealing these qualities in
his own person he reveals them as realities, and God
as the essentially existing. S. John, like the other
Apostolic writers, had no interest in the contention
that God is, as the mere contradictory of the prop
osition God is not ; but in a deeper sense, in the sense
that God is the source of all existence, S. John does
very strongly emphasise this proposition. He prob
ably included this idea in his conception of light as
the positive reality opposed to the negative dark
ness; but he had in the word true a less doubtful
and more definite expression for it. The proposition
" God is spirit " 4 24 includes not only the idea that
his nature is different from the objects of sense ; but
more particularly and positively, that he is a reality
of a higher sort. This is not a definition of merely
speculative interest, its practical bearing is shown in
the requisition that the true worshippers must wor
ship God in "spirit and in truth " 423 24; — that is, in
a way corresponding to reality. We shall see else
where how close is the relation of the words spirit
and truth ; and the relation also of the truth to faith

58 GOD
and to salvation is discussed under another topic.
Here we have to consider God as the true I. 5 20.
This word, true, with the substantive and adverb,
truth and truly, (aKft)Qi)<i, aXqdivos, aXrjdeui, aX'qBSi's,
afirjv) are used so significantly by S. John that we
have no need to rely upon the striking expression of
the Apocalypse " Which is and which was and which
is to come " 1 4 8 to demonstrate his interest in the
assertion of the essential reality of God's existence.
The connection of Ex. 3 14 shows that the description
of God as " the existing" (6 &p) is not prompted by
a metaphysical interest, but in accordance with the
practical character of Hebrew thought it is set forth
as the ground of faith. So also the description of
him as " the true " (top aXifOivov) I. 5 20 is to be
considered, according to the analogy of Hebrew
thought, as the ground of the confidence of faith.
The common connotation of the English words true
and truth is, like the root meaning of the correspond
ing Greek words, a relative idea ; it denotes the cor
respondence of an object with its idea, or, in an
opposite sense, of an idea with the reality. On the
other hand the root meaning of the Hebrew words
(f0{<> DON) and their constant use, is similar to the
root meaning of our English words and their oc
casional use. As true and truth are akin to troth
and trust, so the whole range of words derived from
the Hebrew root in question express faithfulness,
reliability, and even faith itself. The Greek word has
an intellectual cast, it has to do with ideas and their
relation to the facts which they are assumed to rep
resent; the Hebrew word deals primarily not with
propositions, with their adequacy and veracity; but

THE TRUE GOD 59
with persons and things, and it describes them as
realities which may be leaned upon, relied upon,
trusted. This range of Hebrew (Aramaic) words
influences profoundly S. John's use of the correspond
ing Greek terms; the Hebrew meaning is super
added to the Greek, but as the word truth does not
thereby lose its intellectual connotation, it is brought
from this side also into close relation to faith as an
act of perception. There is at least a striking com
mentary to this Hebraism of S. John's in Rev. 3 m.
Christ is there called, by a simple transliteration of
the Aramaic word, "the amen" (a/t^j/), and S. John
merely translates this expression when he calls Christ
or God "the true" (o a\7)div6<;). The constant use
of the double " amen amen " in S. John's Gospel is a
sign of his attachment to this Hebrew word. There
is a clear distinction in S. John's use of the two ad
jectives a\r)6ri<i and aXqdivos ; the former abides
more closely by the radical meaning of clear, manifest,
that which is true in distinction from that which
is mendacious, it remains a relative idea demanding
another subject in regard to which the person or
thing is true ; it is aXrjdivo? which is used to express
the positive, real rather than relative, significance of
the Hebrew idea. It describes the subject in ques
tion in its absolute nature, and thereby ascribes to it
truth as its proper and essential character. The con
trast which defines 0X17^979 is generally that between
veracity and falsehood ; while that suggested by
aXifdivot is between essential and effective reality,
and empty and deceptive appearance. The Hebrew
analogy extends even to individual expressions. The
connection of true and truth with witness 5 33 etc.

60 GOD
and with judgment 8 >s is thoroughly Hebraic.
" He who sends me is true " 7 28 has its parallel in
Jer. 26 >s; "lead you into all the truth" 16 13, in Ps.
25 5. Truth and light 1 9 I. 2 s are also brought into
connection in the Psalter 43 3. The " true vine "
15 ¦ has its counterpart in Jer. 2 21. There are other
instances in which the form of S. John's expres
sion may be shown to be influenced by an Aramaic
phrase, and still others in which his idea is seen to
be thus determined.
After this general explanation we can approach the
proper subject of this section with the consideration
of the expression " full of grace and truth " in 1 14.
The high significance which S. John attaches to this
utterance is shown not only by the fact that it stands
in the Prologue; but by the evident intention of
summarizing in this verse the positive significance of
Christ's manifestation ; and by the contrast in which
he sets this expression to the Old Testament revela
tion 1 '7. It is significant too as the solitary recurrence
in the New Testament of the Hebrew f|J3X1 HDn
(" lovingkindness and truth ") so commonly applied
to God's revelation of himself Ex. 34 6 II. Sam. 2 f>
Ps. 251° 40 >ou 8615 983 115 1 1382. This pair of
ideas appears in the Synoptists in the form " mercy
and faith " (to eXeo? Kal i\ wwrTt?) as qualities to be
exercised by men ; whereas S. John with " grace and
truth " (J] %apt? nal rj aKrjOeid) reproduces precisely
the Hebrew idea of qualities displayed by God. In
Ex. 34 & the revelation of God is given in his solemn
proclamation of his name as full of mercy and truth.
When in the Prologue this solemn designation is
transferred to the Logos, it is as an expression of his

THE TRUE GOD 6 1
glory as the only begotten from the Father, and rests
upon the fact that precisely as the only begotten Son
he is the interpreter of the invisible God 1 18. The Law,
which characterised the Old Testament economy i >?,
was but an imperfect revelation of God because it
represented him only in terms of such injunctions as
could be practically enforced in human society;
whereas the more perfect revelation expressed by
" the Name," which was in old time merely " pro
claimed," was first " beheld " in the Word become
flesh. That which was God's peculiar character and
glory is at the same time Jesus' distinction, his
personal possession and his gift to the world. Jesus
himself is therefore the truth 146 because in him the
sum of the qualities hidden in God is presented and
revealed to the world. By the very fact of his com
ing in fulfilment of promise, by his coming in the
flesh, and by the ethical quality of the life which he
manifests, he reveals God as the true, in the sense of
the faithful, the reliable, the absolutely real. The
truth is divine ; it does not come into being through
human perception and speech, but exists in perfect
completeness above and apart from any intellectual
appreciation on the part of men. Only within the
world can there be ascribed to it a becoming (iyevero)
1 >7, and here it acquires existence and might through
Jesus' work and witness. The truth is divine, and yet
S. John never speaks of God's truth, any more than
of God's light, or of God's life. He does not dis
tinguish a double light, human and divine ; but light
and life are a unit, belonging peculiarly to God, and
what there is in the world of light and life is the pro
duct and gift of God. In the same way he concen-

62 GOD
trates the idea of truth into an undivided unity, it is
God's nature and being, he is " the only true " (rbv
fiovov aXrjdivov) 173. " The truth " does not comprise
information upon every subject; it is limited to the
revelation of God in Christ (or through the Spirit)
16 13-15. This which on one side expresses absolutely
the divine nature as reality, expresses also its relation
to men. For the truth has relation to the conscious
spiritual activity of man, to the " understanding "
(hidvoiav), and can be "known" I. 5 832; *' God's
word is truth " 17 '7 ; and so like " light" it represents
God's nature in terms of an active force, and in
relation to his rational creation. It is in this con
nection that the Spirit and the truth are brought into
relation 423, the Spirit is "the Spirit of the truth"
14 17 15 26 16 13; " the Spirit is the truth'' I. 5 6. In
this connection too truth and life are brought together
I. 5 20, and in their union constitute " the way " to God
14 6. All things in the world which have reality in
the deepest sense partake of it from God; hence
"the true light" 1 9 I. 2 s, "the true bread" 632,
" the true food " and " drink " 6 55, " the true vine "
15 1. S. John speaks of that which is " truly love"
I. 2 5 I. 3 18 in distinction from love which is mere
pretence, of " the true worshippers " 4 23, of being
" truly disciples" 8 31. The opposite of truth is a lie, a
conception which does not merely indicate con
scious and intentional deception ; but the whole realm
of mere appearance, of deception, of naught. As the
truth belongs to God, so the lie characterises Satan,
and he who in his inmost being is dependent on him
and fashioned after him has him for " father." The
truth, as God's nature, is the root of all worthy human

THE FATHER 63
existence; man maybe" of the truth " 1837 I. 3 '9 as
he may be " of God," and both conceptions coin
cide 1837 847. The truth is connected both with
knowledge and with deed; both expressions are
used : " to know the truth," and " to do the truth "
832 321. In fact its closest relation is to deed, and
only secondarily does it come into relation to knowl
edge 7 17 I. 1 6 3 18.
We have been obliged here to anticipate certain
aspects of S. John's idea of truth which come more
properly under another topic. It was necessary to
study the word at once on all sides in order that we
might understand the significance which S. John
attached to the definition of God as the true. Under
this term he describes him, not only as one who is
veracious and faithful 333 (a covenant keeping God
I. 1 9 ; — see faithful and true of the Apocalypse 3 m,
also Holy and true, true and just) ; but as the essential
reality. He describes him, not only as the true God
in distinction from other national deities, and from
" idols," but as " the alone true." We are in position
now to appreciate the solemnity of the final utterance
of the Epistle, in which S. John expresses the absolute
confidence of his faith : "And we know that the Son
of God is come, and hath given us an understanding,
that we know the True, and are in the True, in his Son
Jesus Christ ; — this is the true God and eternal life."
THE PATHER
That S. John thought of God very definitely as a
person is a sure deduction from his relation to He
brew thought ; but it was also determined
' "" " by the fact that God was revealed to him

64 GOD
in a person, Jesus. Therefore with all the use he
makes of such abstract terms as light and truth, which
are equally apt to describe an impersonal deity, and
might represent his activity as readily in terms of
emanation as of conscious voluntary action, his favour
ite name for God is " the Father."
S. John does not use the word, create (proieiv) ; but
eyevero has practically that meaning in I 3 ; and we
might almost say that this verse — " with-
TheCreator , . „ , T
out him, the Logos, " was not any thing
made " — is expressly formulated to leave room for
the superior creative activity of God. The close
parallel, which we shall later study, between the
Prologue and the first chapter of Genesis puts it be
yond a doubt that S. John thought of God as Crea
tor; the omission of a statement to this effect is
mtrely significant of the fact that he did not dwell
with any interest upon the material factors of the
world. It was not however as Creator that God was Father.
This much vaunted doctrine of " the Fatherhood of
God " in the universal sense, is not a Christian idea
at all; it has no point of contact with Hebrew
thought, nor is there a single passage in the New
Testament which expresses it ; — except S. Paul's
quotation before the Areopagus, from " certain of
your poets " : " For we are also his offspring." It is
in fact a heathen idea, and is to be distinguished
from the Christian idea, not only for the sake of his
torical accuracy, but because it is not capable of the
depth of meaning which we find attached to God's
Fatherhood in the New Testament and especially in
S. John.

THE FATHER 65
S. John, like the Greek poet, thinks of God's children
as " his offspring " in a very real sense ; not however
„ .... „ in virtue of their material creation in the
God the Begetter _
flesh, but of the new birth " of the Spirit "
3 3-7. S. John's expression in 1 12, " to them gave
he the right to become children of God," suggests a
nominal or legal conception of the status of the chil
dren of God, like S. Paul's sonship by adoption ; but
the real sense of fatherhood by begetting is expressed
in the same sentence : " which were begotten, not of
bloods, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will
of man, but of God." And in I. 3 1 the privilege of
merely nominal sonship is exceeded by the real
relation : " Behold what manner of love the Father
hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called chil
dren of God; — and are" (tckrjOGsiiev, Kal ia/jiev).
This conception of the real nature of God's parental
relation is everywhere predominant with S. John,
and doubtless affected his choice of the word " chil
dren " (reKva) rather than sons (viol) , to express a
likeness of nature rather than a position of privilege.
The name Son is reserved for Christ.
The profound significance of S. John's idea of God,
as the begetter of life, in relation to the children,
The only Begot- ls demonstrated by the fact that the same
ten Son and the terms are used to describe his relation to
" "' " the Son. The favourite expression which
S. John uses to describe Christ's nature and privilege
is that of " Son " 1 34 20 31 1. 2 22 23 5 5 20 etc. ; and Jesus
himself makes no higher claim 3 35 36 5 23 19 7. " The
only begotten Son," an expression which S. John
I 14 1. 4 9 and Christ 3 16 lS both use, denotes his unique
relation of love and privilege. Both terms suppose
5

66 GOD
likeness, and Christ's fitness to reveal God rests upon
the unique acquaintance of the only begotten Son
with the Father and upon his likeness to him, I 18.
Yet notwithstanding this peculiarity of his nature
and position, notwithstanding also the fact that the
children are never called sons (far less can any
other be called the Son) there is a very close
analogy between the position of the Son and of the
children. The word children denotes privilege I »,
I. 3 ., and also likeness to God I. 3 2. Still more
clearly does the act of begetting imply likeness in the
children, as well as in the unique Son : " That which
is born of the Spirit is spirit" 3 s; " If ye know that
he is righteous, ye know that every one also that
doeth righteousness is begotten of him " I. 2 29 ;
" Every one that loveth is begotten of God "47; in
I. 3 9 it is expressly the " seed " of God which works
conformity to his likeness, " Whosoever is begotten
of God doeth no sin, because his seed abideth in him,
and he cannot sin, because he is begotten of God."
The analogy is brought out still more strongly in
I. 5 ', where both are spoken of under the same term,
" Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is
begotten of God: and whosoever loveth him that
begat loveth him also that is begotten of him," and
in I. 5 18, " We know that whosoever is begotten
(yeyevvrjfiivos) of God sinneth not ; but that he that
was begotten (yevvqOt-k) of God," Jesus, " keepeth
him." This conception is founded in the idea of God
as the source of all life, and is therefore intimately
connected with S. John's idea of eternal life as the
pre-eminent gift of God in Christ. That God is life,

THE FATHER fa
is with S. John — although it is not expressed in
the same way — an idea co-ordinate with, "God is
God the source love," "God is light," and "the true
of life Qod." The idea of the divine Fatherhood
is compounded of the two ideas, life and love: the
true God is also eternal life I. 5 20. We have to note
again that in connection with God's Fatherhood S.
John is not thinking of life in the earthly sense, but
always in the profound significance which he attaches
to eternal life. In this sense God alone is the source
of life, " the Father has life in himself, and to the
Son he gave to have life in himself" 5 26. Thus the
Son becomes the medium of life for men 1 6 57, and
he it is in a sense who constitutes them the children
of God 1 «. Christ is therefore himself " the life "
1 1 25 14 6 ; he is " the bread of life " 6 35 ; and apart
from him there is no life possible for men I. 5 n -2.
The idea of the new birth is not peculiar to S.
John (compare ¦jrdKivyevecrla'i Tit. 3 5 and arayei^cra?
I. Peter 1 3 23) ; but the connection of this idea with
that of the divine Fatherhood, the welding of three
several ideas into one chain — the Father, begetting,
life — is altogether his own. When we come however
to consider the ethical relation involved in father
hood, it is not at first so obvious in what respect S.
John has exceeded even the Jewish standpoint. It
is true that in the Old Testament Scriptures it was
The Father of the only the rarer "eights of psalmody and
nation prophecy which rose to the conception
of God as a Father; it had not become a current
name. In contemporary Judaism however, as the
New Testament itself is sufficient to prove, it had
already become a familiar designation of God, a

68 GOD
common address in prayer, and a boast of Jewish
privilege. There is in the Synoptic account no hint
that Christ's common reference to " your Father "
was in any way strange to Jewish ears. On the other
hand the expression " my Father " gave the highest
offence, according to John 5 «s ; and evidently be
cause God was regarded as the Father of the cov
enant Nation as a whole, and so while the common
address " Our Father " 8 41 was in vogue the particular
claim was disallowed. In the Synoptic accounts it
seems as if Christ were constantly bent upon bring
ing home to his disciples the Father's individual
relationship to them and care for them. This same
purpose is accomplished also according to S. John's
narrative, but in a widely different way. S. John, so
far from particularising the relationship, seems to
generalise it ; his phrase is " the Father," never " our
Father," and but once " your Father." This phrase
however does not denote a fatherhood of wider
range ; it is not the Father and mankind, but " the
Father and the Son," " the Father " equals " my
Father." In S. John's Epistle particularly " the
Father " appears as a set theological designation of
God in distinction from " the Son," and the name is
used with the same significance even in the speeches
of Christ in the Gospel. That it was so used by
Christ is by no means impossible (it was not a late
theological development, it is not only the terminol
ogy of S. Paul, but of the strictly Jewish-Christian
circle, Acts 2 33 Jas. 1 27 3 9) ; but it is impossible to
suppose that he confined himself to this strict use,
that he did not commonly use also the familiar
Synoptic phrases " your Father " and " our Father."

THE FATHER gg
S. John's own peculiar mode of representation is,
however, excellently designed to display Christ's
method of bringing home to his disciples the in
timacy of God's relation as Father. Just as the
The Father and significance of the Father as the be-
theSon getter of life is seen primarily in his
relation to the only begotten Son ; so too the Father's
ethical relation to the children is interpreted in terms
of his loving relation to the Son. The constant rep
resentation of S. John's Gospel is to the effect that
Jesus did not speak in the terms of popular usage of
the Fatherhood of God as a relation common to
himself and his disciples; but that he appropriated
it peculiarly to himself, and thereby immeasurably
exalted the intimacy and the reality of the concep
tion. When he speaks of the Father it is almost
always in relation to himself and in a way which is
practically equivalent to my Father. He emphasises
his unique knowledge of the Father 646 (compare
Luke 1022), and the Father's unique love toward
him 3 35 5 20 17 24. This relationship is so close that
he can say " I and the Father are one " 103°, " I am
in the Father and the Father in me" 14", and he is
in such sense the medium between the Father and
the children, that God's love to men is conditioned
by their love to Christ 14 20-23.
The significance of this strictly consistent usage of
S. John lies in this, that having so deepened the idea
of the Father as the most intimate and personal
relationship of love, he all at once in his last hour of
communion with his own transfers to them the fulness
The Father and °f this divine paternity, in the saying:
the children « My Father and your Father" 20 17.

70 GOD
In his high-priestly prayer he says, "that the love
wherewith thou lovest me may be in them" 1726.
Having brought his disciples into this relationship of
children to the Father, he has brought them so close,
he has established a relationship so real, that his
own mediatorial position is in a sense superseded;
for though the disciples are instructed to pray in his
name 1624, he nevertheless adds, "I say not unto
you that I will pray the Father for you; for the
Father himself loveth you" 162627. Though our
union with the Father is mediated by the Son, (" I
in them and thou in me" 1723 1420) it is not on that
account less real and close; for S. John speaks in
his Epistle of " our fellowship with the Father and
with his Son Jesus Christ " 1 3 as co-ordinate relations.
We " abide in the Son and in the Father " I. 2 24, for
with S. John the one includes the other, and we see
again the significance of his loose employment of the
personal pronouns, when he says, " hereby know we
that we are in him " I. 2 5. The Father has displayed
his active interest by the fact that he " hath sent the
Son, the Saviour of the world " I. 4m; and he it is
who also sends the Spirit of truth as " another Com
forter " 141626 who like Christ abides in us 14 17.
It is very clear that the more richly the idea of God's
Fatherhood is developed, so much the more impossible
is it to think of it in relation to the world in general.
At any rate in S. John's doctrine of the Father, as
defined by the whole range of ideas with which it is
associated, the relation is limited to those whom
Christ has chosen out of the world 1 5 19. It is evident
that the chain of ideas which with S. John constitute
one side of the divine Fatherhood (the particular act

THE FATHER

71

of begetting, the new birth, and eternal life) were not
realised in the case of all men. Even " his own "
(the nation which boasted that God was their Father
841) received Christ not I n, thereby proving that
they were not true children of God 8 42 ; " but as
many as received him, to them gave he the right to
become children of God " 1 «. God's Fatherhood
therefore is no longer limited to the Nation; his
children are scattered abroad and are brought to
gether into one community by Christ's death 1 1 52.
S. John is not unjustly lauded as the Apostle of
love. A strong emphasis upon love is common to
the New Testament writers, but S. John is more than
all others insistent upon it, both as an attribute of God
and as the duty of man. God's love is an attribute
of his Fatherhood, and in this deeper sense its sphere
is of course limited to the children : " Behold what
manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us,
that we should be called children of God "
I. 3«; " Herein was the love of God mani
fested in our case, that God hath sent his only begot
ten Son into the world, that we might live through
him " I. 4 9. From this last verse we see too that
God was revealed as love, not only by Christ's loving
service and sacrifice I. 3 <5 ; but by the very sending
of the only begotten Son as a veritable sacrifice on
the part of the Father ; and that his love is thereby
revealed not as a complacent affection, but as an
active impulse.
We must notice here, as we shall have to do again,
that notwithstanding S. John's representation of the
children as chosen out of the world, and of the world
itself as wholly evil, wholly opposed to God; he

72

GOD

nevertheless regards God's love and his purpose of
salvation in a universal aspect. God's relation to
men as Creator is wider than that as Father, and
as Creator too he loves his creatures. God's love
moreover is not in the last resort founded upon man's
love to him : " Herein is love, not that we loved God,
but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the pro
pitiation for our sins " I. 4 ><> 19. " God so loved the
world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that who
soever believeth on him should not perish, but have
eternal life " 3 -6. In this verse we have the most
universal expression of God's love towards his whole
rational creation. This love of God, not only towards
the Son, and the children, but towards his whole
universe, is after all the necessary deduction from the
principle that in his very nature, and independent of
object, God is love I. 4 9 "6.

II
THE LOGOS WITH GOD
JESUS' SELF-WITNESS
We have seen in the last chapter that the love
of God (which is not an occasional manifestation of
his will, but the constant and essential attribute of
his nature) was, in the broadest sense, directed toward
The only Be- the world ; more particularly, toward the
gotten son children chosen out of the world ; and in
a unique sense, toward the only begotten Son. We
have to observe now that God's love was never with
out an object ; but that even " before the world was,"
" in the beginning," God had in the Son the most
perfect object and the most complete reciprocation
of his love. This is included in Jesus' self-witness,
according to S. John, and constitutes one of the most
notable traits of the Fourth Gospel. Upon the pre
dominance of Jesus' self-witness in the Fourth Gospel,
and upon its relation to the aim of the author, we
have already commented (pages 25-27). We have
here to study the precise content of his claim in so far
as concerns his relation to God. Jesus' own witness
is expressed in terms of Sonship : .S. John's doctrine
of Jesus' Person is most characteristically formulated
in connection with the term Logos. With all that we
have already observed of S. John's assimilation of
Jesus' speeches to the peculiarities of his own diction,

74 THE LOGOS WITH GOD
it is notable in this instance to what extent he dis
tinguishes the form and content of Jesus' self-witness
from his own dogmatic deductions. Not only does he
never attribute the use of the term Logos to Jesus ; but
in his own pronouncements in the Prologue and in
the Epistle he associates both with the Logos and with
the Son ideas which advance beyond the explicit terms
of Jesus' self-witness. The distinction is so clear that
some even base upon it the claim of a difference of
authorship as between the Prologue and the rest of
the Gospel. It is however only by minimising the
significance of Jesus' claim to be the Son of God, and
by extravagantly embellishing S. John's doctrine of
the Logos, that any incongruity can be proved. The
fact is rather calculated to enhance our estimation of
the historicity of the account ; for it shows that the
author was conscious of a distinction between what he
had learned directly from the teaching of Jesus and
what he had gained through meditation upon the
things which he had seen and heard, and that he was
not disposed to obscure that distinction in any essential
part of his representation.
The inquiry as to the meaning of the expression
" the Son of God " is commonly embarrassed by the
prepossession that it must have but one definite
significance. The fact is rather that with S. John
it must, almost as a matter of course, be susceptible
of many meanings. Here too we have to deal with a
term which was of cardinal importance in Jesus' own
teaching; and we might reasonably expect to find
his psedagogical method illustrated here as it is else
where by the use of a term capable of ascending
significance. Jesus adopted the name, kingdom of

JESUS' SELF-WITNESS 75
God, not because in its familiar connotation it actually
conveyed to the people his idea, but because it was
capable of expressing it. The confession that Jesus is
the Christ meant one thing in the early days of his
ministry, and doubtless quite another and higher
thing after his resurrection. He was accustomed, as
a method of teaching, to seize upon an expression
which was current in a lower significance, and raise
it to its highest terms. This paedagogical principle is
peculiarly clear in the use of the word Son ; for it
was more obviously a matter of choice, not forced
upon him as a necessary element of the current
Messianic terminology; and in the second place, not
being an arbitrary expression but a natural analogy,
it was peculiarly apt for the purpose of raising the
disciples from a lower, through a whole range of
ascending significations, to the highest conception.
We have already seen how Jesus enhanced and
enriched the word Father ; we have an exact parallel
in his use of the word Son. S. John was prompt
to appreciate a method of teaching which was so
thoroughly in harmony with his own type of thought ;
and, although it is sometimes asserted that he does
not note as the Synoptists do a progression in the
self-witness of Jesus, it is rather true, if we attend to
this peculiarity, that he marks more clearly than
others the progress of the disciples' appreciation of
the significance of Jesus' claim. There is, corres
ponding to the progress of Jesus' ministry, a certain
advance in the nature and clearness of his claim;
and though this is less formally marked in the
Fourth Gospel than elsewhere, it is the Fourth
Gospel pre-eminently which furnishes the clue to

y6 THE LOGOS WITH GOD
the progress and culmination of the Messianic con
troversy to which Jesus' appearance gave rise ; —
which reveals at each stage the new estimation (on
the part of those who reject him as well as of those
who receive) of Jesus' claim, which in itself remains
constant in the assertion of his divine Sonship. The
expression " Son of God " is therefore with S. John
not a constant quantity, but an ascending scale, it
runs through the whole gamut, from the expression
of a relation which every Israelite might claim 103536,
(Ps. 82 6), up to the definite note of divinity I. 5 20 21.
From this point of view there is really no difficulty in
understanding S. John's use of this term ; for there
is no longer any necessity of paring down the highest
and most definite expressions to match the simplest
use. We shall find that the notion of Christ's Sonship
gains a special significance from its connection with
the peculiar elements of Johannine thought, but in the
name itself there is of course nothing peculiar to
S. John. It is used also by the Synoptists, but with
this difference, that whereas in the Fourth Gospel it
represents Christ's constant claim from the beginning,
in the Synoptic Gospels it appears as the witness
which the most striking aspects of his manifestation
extort from his disciples, and as the culmination of
his self-witness in the very end of his ministry. With
the Synoptists " the Son of man " is the predomi
nating expression, and serves as a transition to the
higher name ; with S. John the expression " the Son
of God " is, as we have seen, itself capable of effect
ing the transition from lower to higher, and " the Son
of man " though used in much the same way has its

JESUS' SELF-WITNESS J J
own peculiar significance more distinctly marked.
The absolute expression " the Son " is common to
both, though it is much more frequent in S. John. It
occurs in fact but once (exclusive of its use in the
parables) in the Synoptic account Mat. 1 1 27 (Luke
10 22) : All things have been delivered unto me of my
Father : and no one knoweth the Son, save the Father;
neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he
to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him. This
single utterance however corresponds so precisely in
form and substance to the more frequent expressions
concerning the Son and the Father in the Fourth
Gospel 646 10 15 that we cannot fail to see in it a hint
of a more common use of " the Son of God " and
" the Son " than the Synoptists have expressly re
corded. It was probably an advantage of the term, Son of
God, that it had no such current use in the Old Testa-
Diyinityoithe ment as would definitely fix its meaning.
Son It is applied to the Children of Israel as
the highest expression of their relation to God, and
more particularly to Israel's theocratic king. It is
doubtless in no higher sense that, in the Book of
Enoch and in the Fourth Book of Esdras, God is
represented as calling the Messiah his Son. We
have besides this no other information except that
derived from the New Testament concerning the
relation of this term to the Messianic idea. From
the Gospels we gather that the term was actually
associated with the Messianic hope, and that Jesus
could not call himself the Son of God without
suggesting a Messianic claim. We see however
that the emphasis with which he employed the

78 THE LOGOS WITH GOD
name suggested a significance much higher than was
popularly accorded to the Messiah 1033. The Old
Testament uses the term " begotten " as a metaphor
in connection with the divine Sonship Ps. 27; but
we have already seen that S. John uses the idea
of begetting in a real sense, as an analogy, even in
connection with the Children of God, and we might
expect that as the Father's love was shown in an
altogether unique way towards the Son, so the idea
of begetting in reference to him would have a value
absolutely sui generis. The expression " only be
gotten Son," which is peculiar to S. John, represents
primarily the relation of tender love; but it can
hardly fail to have also with S. John the significance
of real derivation from the divine nature I. 5 «. The
children also were begotten; but if the relation of
the Son to the Father were upon the same plane as
that of the children, we should expect him to be
called, as by S. Paul, " the first begotten among
many brethren" Rom. 829 — see Rev. is. Instead
of that he occupies an absolutely singular relation to
God as the only begotten Son. S. John still further
heightens the distinction of Christ's position by re
fraining from the use of the expression sons (viol) of
God in relation to men, and by substituting for it the
word children (reKva). It must be affirmed that the
ethical relation which is everywhere prominent in
the expression which we are studying rather suggests
than excludes a substantial relation. There is no
doubt that in the Epistles "the Son" denotes a
nature more closely allied to God than to man. The
constant conjunction of the Son and the Father is of
itself sufficient to establish S. John's doctrine on this

JESUS' SELF-WITNESS 79
subject. It may even be asserted that there is noth
ing in S. John's Epistle to suggest any discrepancy
between his employment of the names Father and
Son, and their significance in the Trinitarian formula.
The believer's relation to the Father and to the Son
is expressed in the same terms I. 2 22-24, and the last
verse but one of the Epistle includes both " him that
is true, and his Son Jesus Christ " in the affirmation,
" This is the true God and everlasting life." There
is also no doubt that " the only begotten Son " of the
Prologue is substantially equivalent to " the Logos,"
and it therefore makes no difference whether verse 14
is to be translated " as an only begotten," or " as the
only begotten ; " — in either case he shares the divine
" glory." Jesus' self-witness can hardly be said to
fall short of this, though it may perhaps be more
justly said to lead up to it. He too calls himself the
only begotten Son 3 -6 18 ; he is the Son, and he uses
this name in the same significant association with the
Father as it is used in the Epistle. When he said
" my Father worketh even until now, and I work,"
he so associated himself with the Father as to justify
the claim of the Jews that in calling " God his own
Father " he was " making himself equal with God "
5 17 is. In 8 54 he discriminates his own position very
sharply from that of the Jews in the contrast " my
Father — your God." Again Christ's claim to be
Son of God was accounted by the Jews to be equiva
lent to, " That thou being a man, makest thyself
God " ; and although Jesus shows how a lower mean
ing might be attached to the term Son of God, it
cannot be supposed to be S. John's intention to
represent him as disclaiming the higher significance

80 THE LOGOS WITH GOD
IO 33-36. Still again, before Pilate, it is charged against
him as the sin of blasphemy that he " made .. himself
the Son of God" 19 -7. This identification with God,
though it was not necessarily included in the name Son,
was plainly enough expressed in Jesus' self-witness.
What the Father doeth, that doeth the Son ; as the
Father quickeneth, so the Son quickeneth whom he
will ; like the Father, the Son also has life in himself;
and men must honour the Son even as they honour the
Father 5 19-26. He claims that " all things which the
Father hath are mine " 16 15 ; " He that hath seen me
hath seen the Father " 14 19 ; he says " Believe in
God, believe also in me " 141; he demands for him
self the same sort of belief, "that I am " 8 24 ; he iden
tifies himself with the Father in a very remarkable
way when he says, " we will come unto him and make
our abode with him " 1423. It is in the light of such
testimony we must read the claim, " I and the Father
are one " 10 3°, and " I am in the Father and the
Father in me " 14 » ; and not reduce it to the
dimensions of the similar expressions which denote
the relation of believers to God.
When on the other hand Jesus says, " My Father is
greater than I" 1428; when he represents his powers
5 26 36, his doctrine 8 28, and his mission 4 34 5 as
derived from the Father ; there is nothing to hint at
any difference other than that which is assumed in
the relation of Sonship and Fatherhood.
Jesus' self-witness was given like God's revelation
of old time in divers portions and in divers manners.
He did not straightway announce his highest claims ;
he strove to lead men up to the loftiest appreciation
of his person. He did not even at the end sum up

JESUS' SELF-WITNESS 8 1
the divers elements of his self-witness in a single
adequate statement ; for even at the end he had many
things to say to the disciples which they could not
bear till after the resurrection. In particular he did
not make the express claim that he was God ; he
doubtless could not have done so without thereby
putting a fatal stumbling-block in the way of the
disciples' growing faith 20 28. But if we sum up the
details of Jesus' testimony about himself, without
the least sophistication of exegesis, the total impres
sion can hardly be other than this : that he had the
consciousness and made the claim of being of the
same nature as God. If we cannot suppose that
S. John appreciated the metaphysical analysis which
is presupposed in the expression "the same sub
stance " in the Nicene Creed, we can surely express
his conception of Jesus' witness, by saying that he in
contrast with men was of the same kind as God.
Still another question arises, whether Jesus ex
pressed the fact of his pre-existence, or left it to
Pre-existence be inferred from his general claim of
of the Son divinity. The fact is however that Jesus'
consciousness of pre-existence is so clearly expressed
in the Fourth Gospel that one wonders how it
can be called in question. It is not proved by
the frequent expressions which represent him as
"sent" or even "sent into the world; " for such ex
pressions are used of John the Baptist and others.
Nor is it indubitably expressed in the claim of learn
ing from the Father, of doing and saying what he has
seen and heard with him ; for this might conceivably
be the result of inspiration and of inspired vision.
There are other expressions too which denote deri-
6 ,

82 THE LOGOS WITH GOD
vation from God, but not pre-existence ; — "I came
forth and am come from God " 8 42 cf. 17 s. We might
certainly rely with great confidence upon the many
expressions which represent him as coming down from
heaven 331 63338414251; but this is still further de
fined by statements which would seem to admit of
no possibility of misunderstanding. He speaks of " the
Son of man ascending where he was before " 6 62 ; he
says " I came out from the Father, and am come into
the world ; again I leave the world, and go unto the
Father" 1628. In his great prayer he says, " for thou
Iovedst me before the foundation of the world " 1 7 24 ;
and he speaks of " the glory which I had with thee
before the world was " 175. In the light of this clear
witness, we can read the significance even of those
statements which we have but just now set aside as
insufficient of themselves to denote Christ's heavenly
origin. But Jesus' testimony does not end here, with
the claim of relative pre-existence. He demands
belief in himself as the absolute existence : " Believe
that I am " 8 24 ; " Before Abraham was I am " 8 54?
It is impossible to interpret this strange saying, with
out connecting it (cf. Rev. 1 4 etc.) with the solemn
proclamation of God's name I AM recorded in Ex.
3 14. In this reference we see the full significance of
Jesus' claim.
S. JOHN'S DOCTRINE OF THE LOGOS
The foregoing discussion has been limited to the
proof of two propositions: that the self-witness of
Jesus in the Fourth Gospel expresses a consciousness
of pre-existence, and leads up to the statement of his

5. JOHN'S DOCTRINE OF THE LOGOS 83
s John's own divinity 20 23. It has thereby omitted
Estimate of very many items of Jesus' claim, some
Christ u- U 4. <-u 4- •
even which are germane to the topic
and others which are more properly discussed in
relation to his Messianic mission in the world. So
predominant is Jesus' self-witness in the Fourth
Gospel, and so rich is its content, that a full and
detailed discussion of it is incompatible with either
the brevity or clearness of the exposition we have in
hand. Most of Jesus' utterances, and most of the
pragmatic situations of the Gospel, bear on this
point; for it was in this interest (pp. 26 seq.) that
the Gospel was composed.
That which S. John represents as Jesus' express
teaching cannot however be studied apart from his
own estimation of Jesus' Person. We see even in
the Fourth Gospel how S. John, like the rest of the
Apostles, beginning with the Baptist's witness to the
Lamb of God 1 36, quickly rose from the mere respect
due to Jesus as Rabbi 1 38 to an appreciation of him as
the Messiah 1 41. But S. John's Gospel is not so well
designed to display the origination and development
of his faith, as it is to express his ultimate conclusion.
And although the confession, that Jesus is the Christ,
was doubtless raised to a much higher significance
than he at first accorded it ; although it is included
in his statement of the aim of his Gospel (" That ye
might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of
God " 20 3'), and remains to the last the orthodox
confession of faith ; the name itself was not capable
of expressing S. John's highest conception of what
Jesus was in himself and in his relation to God. The
name Son of God on the other hand, as we saw inci-

84 THE LOGOS WITH GOD
dentally under the preceding topic, proved itself
adequate at every stage for the expression of the new
meaning with which it was associated. We have seen
also that there is a difference to be noted between the
self-witness of Jesus according to the Fourth Gospel
and S. John's own utterances about him ; though the
trend of the foregoing discussion has been to show how
slight after all the difference is. The historical mani
festation of Jesus as interpreted by his self-witness in
word and work was not only the foundation and start
ing-point of S. John's belief, but in the main covers
it, and coincides with it, even in the form of expres
sion. Beyond this however S. John does advance;
and by sinking himself deeper and deeper in the con
templation of the eternal divine existence of the Son
he reaches a standpoint which was possible only in
the light of Christ's resurrection, and which he is
scrupulous to distinguish, in some respects at least,
from Jesus' own testimony. This developed point of
view he presents not at the end of his Gospel, like
S. Thomas' confession "My Lord and my God"
which was the culminating expression of the disciples'
faith after the Resurrection; but at the very begin
ning, and as the standpoint from which the whole
earthly history of Christ must be regarded.
This advance which S. John makes beyond the ex
press testimony of Christ, and this manner of treating
history, are commonly described as speculative. This
s. John's use of word, although we cannot strictly refuse to
the Term Logos admit it) suggests almost jnevitably an
erroneous idea of S. John's method. S. John's specu
lation (pp. 38 seq.), if it may be so called, is at all
events not of the dialectical sort which advances by a

S. JOHN'S DOCTRINE OF THE LOGOS 85
chain of reasoning from one proposition to another ;
it does not start with an a priori thesis (as it is
assumed to do in the so-called doctrine of the Logos)
and work out a rational system : but it starts with
given fact which it is intent upon understanding in
its relations and in its deepest nature. S. John is
interested not in pursuing deductions from, but in
seizing and expressing the very nature of, the object
of his contemplation ; and hence it is that a name be
comes not his starting-point, but his goal. A name
has with S. John the same deep significance which is
accorded it in all Semitic thought. It is not a ful
crum for argument, a premise suggesting further
conclusions ; but a finished product, a minted coin, the
significance of which lies in the fact that it already per
fectly expresses the nature of the object which it
names. It is precisely this value that the name Word
has for S. John, and the degree of importance which
he attached to it is to be seen not so much in the
Prologue and in the Epistle, as in Rev. 19 13 " His
name is called the Word of God" (cf. verse 12).
Nothing could be more unreasonable than the assertion
that Philo's philosophy of the Logos furnished S. John
with an entirely new conception of Christianity. His
sober and restrained use of the term is of itself
enough to refute such a claim. It is a pure assump
tion which on the mere pretext of this name foists
upon S. John a cosmological philosophy of emanations
which is not borne out by any of the affirmations
which he actually makes about the Logos. Neither
can it be proved that his use of this name has any
point of contact with the contemporary rabbinical
personification of the Word and Wisdom, which

86 THE LOGOS WITH GOD
seems also to be a product of the current philosophy
of emanations. It remains at the most a possibility
that the name Logos was familiar in some such sense
to S. John and to the circle for whom he wrote, and
that his adoption of it was thereby suggested and
facilitated. But the actual content of his idea is
drawn exclusively from the Old Testament ; and in
asmuch as this is an adequate explanation of the
origin of the term, any other is superfluous. More
over S. John's doctrine of the Word is wrought out
so characteristically, and correlated so closely with
his ideas of light and life, as to suggest that, even if
we were to consider it a highly speculative system, we
must consider it a system original with S. John.
The truth is, the common opinion to the contrary
notwithstanding, that S. John's idea of the Logos is
not a thing deeply mysterious and unintelligible ; but
one which, both in its origin and meaning,
The Motive of . ,A ,- , , ,, .it . .,_.
s. John's choice is quite peculiarly clear. JNI either is it in
of the Term any wjse tjje \ieyt but the incidental pro
duct of his system of thought. This being
the case we shall see more clearly as we advance in
the study of S. John how precisely this word was
adapted to his thought. But we have already seen
enough of the general characteristics of his thought
to enable us to appreciate at this point the motive
of his choice.
We are puzzled at first to account for the necessity
for any name higher than that of Son to express
Jesus' divine nature and relationship. We have-
studied the exalted significance which S. John attaches
to this name. His affirmation in regard to the Son
rises to a supreme height when at the conclusion of

S. JOHN'S DOCTRINE OF THE LOGOS 87
the Epistle he says, " This is the True God and ever
lasting Life." Still more significant would be the
assertion of 1 18, if we may accept a strongly supported
text — "the only begotten God." This expression
retains the idea of begetting which is implied in son-
ship (including the ideas of origin, of love and of
dutiful subordination), and at the same time affirms
absolute identity of nature. Such an expression
cannot be accounted unnatural to S. John ; but it is
obviously ill adapted to the solution of the problem
which confronted him, and for which he was seeking
not so much an explanation as a name. The name
Son indeed so far from solving rather throws into
relief the problem which for S. John and the Church
of his age was substantially the same as that which
engaged the Church during the three succeeding cen
turies ; and which in both instances was solved in much
the same way. The problem was this : that having
risen to an appreciation of the Son, as not only in a
general sense divine, but of the same kind as God, and
actually God ; and yet at the same time (as was inevi
table from the whole character of Jesus' manifestation
and self-witness) personally distinguished from God ;
his belief seemed to be set in irreconcilable contra
diction to the fundamental monotheism ingrained in
his race. This contradiction could not fail to be felt
so soon as his faith emerged from the purely practical
sphere into the light of reasoned thought. The prob
lem expressed itself in the form of an equation : The
Father who is God plus the Son who is God = one
God. To a Hebrew who believed that Jesus was God
in a real sense this was the problem of problems ; —
incomparably more pressing than that of God's

88 THE LOGOS WITH GOD
relation to the world. And this was the problem
which S. John met by the use of the name Logos.
The name Son was unsuited to meet this precise
difficulty, because its chief stress lay upon the idea
of personality, and so upon the distinction in the God
head. What was wanted was a name which would
designate Jesus according to his nature, and in sub
stantial identification, not only with God in the ab
stract, but with the God of the Old Testament. We
can state thus precisely the problem to be solved ;
but we cannot by any means affirm that S. John could
have solved it in only one way ; nor can we presume
to point out the steps which necessitated his choice
of the name Logos ; — or in fact of any solution at all.
We can see however how the choice was materially
narrowed by certain important considerations. For
if it is actually the Apostle John with whom we have
to deal, nothing is more sure than that he must seek
his solution, not in the metaphysical conceptions of
Greek thought, but in the more naive forms of Semitic
(particularly Old Testament) representation. In the
second place, S. John's predominant interpretation of
salvation in terms of revelation (the Life of God
becoming the light of men, and producing life in
them) suggests at least that this thought must be
made prominent also in his chosen designation for
Christ. This we actually see realized in the choice of
the term Logos or Word, which was suggested, not by
the poetical personification of the Old Testament, but
by its simplest and most ordinary employment in the
formula of prophecy (" The word of the Lord came to
me,") and in the creative fiat (" And he said — and
it was so ") ; — as the word of power, and as the word
of revelation.

S. JOHN'S DOCTRINE OF THE LOGOS 89
The study of the first three verses of the Epistle
serves at once to justify the foregoing argument,
content of the anc* to introduce us to the essential con-
Doctrineofthe tent of S. John's idea of the Logos.
1. " That which was from the beginning,
that which we have heard, that which we have seen
with our eyes, that which we beheld and our hands
handled, concerning the Word of life 2. (and the life
was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness,
and declare unto you the life, the eternal, which was
with the Father, and was manifested unto us) ; 3. that
which we have seen and heard declare we unto you also,
that ye also may have fellowship with us."
It is a matter of discussion in the first place whether
" the Word of life " in this passage is used in the
same personal significance which it has in the Pro
logue, or merely in the sense of the life-giving reve
lation which Christ brought. This question is at
least serious enough to suggest how very readily this
expression might rise from the designation of Christ's
saving revelation to the name for the Revealer himself.
According to the common New Testament use, " the
word of God," " the word of the Lord," or simply
" the word," denotes the powerful, life-giving revela
tion of the Gospel, Heb. 4 « ; it is not applied to the
Old Testament as a whole, but only to such sayings as
contain a prophecy of the Gospel, or are actually the
expression of God's own message to the prophets.
With S. John especially all the words of Christ are a
powerfully energetic revelation; all Christ's sayings
are thought of as an unit 1.2 s etc. ; this word is to be
kept, for it is itself a commandment I. 2 7 ; it is the
truth, find as such directly sanctifies 1717; its recep-

90 THE LOGOS WITH GOD
tion delivers from death 851 and from judgment 1247;
the words Qij/iara) of Christ are spirit and life 663.
In the Apocalypse also " the word of God " is used
with very marked emphasis, even where it is not, as
in 19 13, employed as a personal name. When we
note how closely " the Word of life " I. 1 ¦ seems to
be related to this usage, we can realize how natural
after all was S. John's use of the name Word in the
Prologue. But even in this verse we cannot admit
that the expression means simply the revelation of
life ; — if for no other reason, because it would leave
us without any clew to explain the extraordinary
grammatical construction, and in particular the change
from the relative construction to the prepositional
phrase "concerning (trepi) the Word of life." The
verb of the whole sentence is " we declare " (dirayyek-
~KofjLev), and if it was simply a question of the message
which he had heard from Christ S. John must inevit
ably have construed it as the direct object of the
verb, as in verse 5. It is obvious too that the con
tent of this clause is defined by the relative clauses
which precede it : " That which was from the begin
ning, which we have heard, seen, handled, etc."
What does S. John intend by that? He surely does
not mean the Son of God himself; or why should he
express himself so strangely in the neuter? More
over we should in this case have in I. 1 ¦ something
different presented as the object of his declaration
from that which is named in I. 1 2. Substantially at
least the content of the first verse must be the same as
that eternal life which, in the second, is declared to
have been with the Father and to have been mani
fested unto us ; — only in form it is not then thought

5. JOHN'S DOCTRINE OF THE LOGOS 9 1
of as the concrete representation of eternal life, but,
abstractly, as that which constituted the eternal
nature of the Son, and yet was revealed in sensible,
historical manifestation. The Son of God was the
subject of the saving message of the Gospel precisely
in so far as in him was, and was manifested, that true
and eternal life which being manifested became light
1 4 — that is, the revelation of the true God and of
his Son Jesus Christ — and so by bringing to men the
knowledge of God, mediated to them the eternal life
itself 173. It is this essential nature of the Son of
God which the Apostle would represent as the con
tent of his declaration ; and in order to embrace this
in one word, he breaks the relative construction with
this clause, "concerning the Word of life"; — the
Word himself was not the subject of his declaration,
but that which had been manifested as his essential
nature. When in I. 1 5 he sums up the message in the
declaration, " God is light," this is indeed the sum
mary of Jesus' manifestation in word and work, but it
is not the Logos himself; — therefore the expression,
" concerning the Logos." The controversy is idle,
whether " the Word of life " represents the Word
which has life, or the Word which gives life ; for we
have already seen that according to S. John's most
characteristic mode of thought he is both. The
essential nature of the Son of God is marked not only
by the fact that he has eternal life in himself, but that
he is able to impart it to men. Therefore it is that
in the relative clause the fact of his existence in the
beginning is associated with his historical manifes
tation ; and the life is spoken of as that " which was
with the Father and was manifested unto us."

92 THE LOGOS WITH GOD
We see, therefore, from the first verses of the
Epistle that the term " Word," though it is strictly a
personal title of Christ, designates him not so much
according to his personality, as according to his
essential nature ; and this accounts for a mode of
expression which is often held to suggest that " the
Word of life" is here used quite impersonally and
as a designation of the Gospel revelation. When we
turn to the Prologue we find the term Word em
ployed in quite the same way, but with more various
and more express associations. It is there stated
that " the Word was in the beginning." The expres
sion of the first verse of the Epistle — "from the
beginning " — is slightly different, because the Word
is there considered only in so far as he is the subject
of the Gospel proclamation, that is, as he was histori
cally manifested to the senses ; whereas in the Pro
logue we are pointed to his timeless existence " with
God." It was similarly stated in the second verse of
the Epistle that " the life was with the Father," and
it is justly remarked that the preposition 7rpo? in
stead of irapa. denotes not mere juxtaposition, but
lively personal community. A stricter, though un-
idiomatic, rendering would be " towards God." It is
further stated, and by a turn of expression which is
very emphatic, that " the Logos was God." This
triple affirmation is in a certain degree isolated from,
not to say contrasted with, the statements which
follow. It constitutes the complete expression of
what the Word is in his relation to God. In verses
2 and 3 it is announced that he who was in the be
ginning with God became the medium of creation :
" All things were made through him, and without

S. JOHN'S DOCTRINE OF THE LOGOS 93
him was not anything made that hath been made."
It is further stated, on a line with the second verse
of the Epistle, " In him was life " ; and life is here
brought into a relation with light — "and the life
was the light of men " — which we shall learn to
appreciate fully only after the discussion of a later
topic (pp. 162 seq.). But even now we can very
well understand the expression in so far as it affirms
that the Word was also the medium of revelation.
This thought is continued down to verse 14: "The
light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness ap
prehended it not " 1 5. The Baptist as a mere wit
ness is distinguished from the true light 1 6-8. " The
true light, which lighteth every man, was coming
into the world. He was in the world, and the world
was made through him, and the world knew him not.
He came unto his own, and his own received him
not " 1 9-«. It is here affirmed that corresponding to
the universal relation which the Logos has to the
world as its creator, he is also universally the media
tor of revelation. But he can particularly claim the
Jewish people as "his own" on the ground of his
special revelation to them through the Old Testa
ment prophets ; as by the acceptance of the revela
tion which he personally brings, men become truly
the children of God 1 12.
In all this there are substantially but three assertions
which are not included in Jesus' self-witness, nor ex
pressed with reference to the Son of God. The first :
oneness of nature with God, is, as we have seen, the
particular point of S. John's belief which prompted
the invention of such a designation as the Word. The
second and third : participation in the creation, and

94 THE LOGOS WITH GOD
mediation in the revelation of truth, were on the
other hand not improbably suggested by the name
Word itself. We shall see in another place, where we
discuss in detail the relation of the Prologue to the
first chapter of Genesis (pp. 113^.), how near lay
the suggestion of attributing to the personal Word of
God the act of creation. In the idea of Son there
was already included the special fitness to interpret
the Father's nature and will, and this was a pre-emi
nent factor of Jesus' claim ; but it is not unlikely that
this very name which S. John chose to designate the
Son of God as pre-incarnate first brought to expression
in his own mind the idea that he was in old time also
the medium of revelation; — that he in fact was the
Word which came to the prophets.
The Word which was in the beginning with God,
and participated in God's work of creation and revela
tion, is brought into relation with the historical Christ
in the simple affirmation, " The Word became flesh"
1 14. With this however we pass from the subject of
this section to the Logos as manifested in the world ;
— a theme which we shall have to postpone to page
1 1 8 seq.

Ill
THE KOSMOS LYING IN DARKNESS
THE WORLD AS THE SPHERE OF HUMAN LIFE
S. JOHN conceives very vividly the contrast between
the divine nature and the created world. As God
is light, and in the light; so is the world charac
terised by darkness. But this contrast, strongly as it
s. John's sught is marked, has no point of contact with
S^^a^P1"1050?1"0 dualism; for "darkness" is
of the World an ethical conception, and the world
which S. John has in mind is not the material universe as
such, but "the sphere of human existence The slight
interest which S. John shows in the material aspects
of the world proves how utterly alien to his thought
are the cosmological speculations which have been
attributed to him as the motive of his so-called
doctrine of the Logos. He needed no intermediary
to bridge the gulf between the invisible God and the
sensible world ; for this was not the contrast which
occupied his mind. Even human nature itself as it is
physically constituted is not evil ; and therefore the
Logos, who is God and not a being of intermediate
grade, can become flesh. God through the Logos
created the world, and there is not anything which
is excepted from this relationship of creature to
Creator. There is therefore no radical opposition
between the world as such and God ; and even the

96 THE KOSMOS LYING IN DARKNESS
world of human existence which has fallen into
rebellion against him is the object of his love and
saving effort. The world is not the sphere in which
God ordinarily dwells; but it is a sphere into which
he can come, and in which he may even dwell
(tabernacle) for a time i 9 «° 14. There is nothing to
suggest that S. John departed in any respect from
the common Biblical view of the world. There is
very little in his writings which bears upon this
question, because it simply was not a subject of
interest to him.
There is another contrast in which the world is
involved, and that too is the familiar Old Testament
contrast of heaven and earth. These two spheres are
Heaven and contrasted not only in character, but in
Earth space, as "above" and "below" 823, in
harmony with the constant representation of the Old
Testament ; — " heaven above and the earth beneath "
Deut. 5 8. The lower world he also calls " this world "
(0 Koo-fiot ovros) 8 23 in contrast to the higher, or
heavenly world ; though the name world itself usually
suffices to denote the sphere of human existence in
distinction from heaven in which God is 1628 171113.
S. John is consistent and thorough with his represen
tation of above and below ; it is doubtless more than
a figure of speech. The Spirit 1 22, the angels 1 s> and
the Son of man 3 13 3> 6 33 38 41 seq. 5° seq. 58 62 are repre
sented as descending (Karafialveiv, avtodev epy^eaOai)
from heaven, and their return is an ascent (avafialvew).
Heaven is not only separated in space from the earth,
but is itself conceived in truly Jewish fashion in terms
of space. In the Father's house are " many man
sions " in which Jesus on his return thither will pre-

THE SPHERE OF HUMAN LIFE 97
pare a place for his disciples 14 2 ; and this probably
indicates the Biblical conception of heaven as a place
characterised by many grades. About the constitu
tion of heaven S. John does not however speculate
any more than he does about the constitution of the
earth : the religious interest is everything to him, and
heaven and earth are only the sphere in which the
drama of salvation is enacted.
The contrast between God and the world, between
darkness and light, just because it is an ethical con
trast, is one of prime importance to S. John, and
affects the whole scheme of his representation. Both
heaven and earth are represented in Gen. 1 1 as
equally the creation of God ; and S. John doubtless
comprises them both in the third verse of the Pro
logue: "All things were made through him; and
without him was not anything made which was
made." He does not however so much think of
them as constituting one universe, but rather as ex-
The Material hibiting the moral contrast which has
chaos and the come about within God's creation; and
** esshe thinks of the world as an object re
quiring salvation out of the evil and darkness into
which it has fallen. Darkness, as an ethical condi
tion, could not have been the original and necessary
character of the world : it came about as an historical
development, and (as we shall see on page 108 seq.)
in no other way than that which is represented in the
Book of Genesis, namely, through sin. But, however
it came about, darkness is the character of the world
as Jesus finds it. It is into a realm of spiritual dark
ness and death that he comes bringing light and life.
This world, which as we have seen is simply the
7

98 THE KOSMOS LYING IN DARKNESS
totality of human nature, or the sphere of human
life, S. John conceives, after the analogy of the chaos
which preceded the material creation, as the object
of God's saving work, the matter of a veritable new
creation. Here too it is the same divine Word which
effects the re-creation ; the first boon which he brings
is light (a spiritual light, " the light of men " i 4) ;
and this conditions all spiritual life.
THE DARKNESS
Important as this antithesis between God and the
world certainly was in the development of S. John's
thought, and absolutely as he expresses the fact that
when Christ came as a light into the world he found
it simply darkness, we cannot allow the absoluteness
«... „ , i* of this antithesis to determine in detail
The Revelation
of the Old his conception of the state of mankind
Covenant before the Incarnation. For in the first
place, although " the darkness apprehended not the
light " 1 5, " and his own received him not " in;
there were nevertheless those who did receive him
1 12, and before they became his they belonged to
the Father 176. There were in fact already at his
coming two classes of men : those who hate the light
because they do evil, and those who come to the
light because they do the truth 3 2021. And Jesus'
work consists in part in this, that he separates out of
the darkness those who by God's choice and their
own disposition are inclined to the light (see pp. 133
seq.). In the second place, S. John recognises in
the Jewish Scriptures a revelation from God, and in
the Jewish nation a peculiar relation to God and
knowledge of Him.

THE DARKNESS 99
We have already interpreted the ninth verse of the
Prologue to mean that the Logos is the medium of
God's universal revelation of Himself to men, and
that he was that even before his coming into the
world. But at any rate to his chosen people God did
give special revelations of his character and of his
purpose, and the value of such revelation is shown
pre-eminently in the fact that Christ himself is the
subject of Old Testament prophecy. " Isaiah saw
his glory, and he spake of him " 12 41 ; Moses wrote
of him 5 47 cf. 1 45, and also the prophets. The divine
mission of John the Baptist 1 6 is specially empha
sised in the Fourth Gospel ; though not the light 1 8,
he nevertheless even as a witness to the true light
was himself " the lamp which burneth and shineth "
5 35. S. John's interpretation of Caiaphas' counsel
11 5> seq. shows very strikingly his conception of
prophecy as the official distinction of the Jewish
nation even in the moment when they were consum
mating the disruption of the covenant relation.
The Scriptures of the Old Testament possess a
value as a revelation of truth quite apart from the
fact that they contain the word of God spoken to the
prophets : the various sacred writings are conceived
of as a unit, as " the Scripture " (a term which is used
to denote the Old Testament as a whole 738, and its
individual utterances 19 37), and this Scripture " can
not be broken " 10 35. S.John is not one whit behind
any other Apostle in his estimate of the worth and
trustworthiness of the Scriptures, both in respect to
the facts which they narrate, and to the revelation
which they contain respecting God and Christ. His
references to the Old Testament are hardly less

IOO THE KOSMOS LYING IN DARKNESS
numerous than those of S. Matthew, and he surpasses
all other Evangelists in the emphasis which he lays
upon the fulfilment of prophecy in Christ. The
Scriptures as a whole testify of Christ 5 39, and this
witness is found not only in passages which are ex
pressly prophetic, but in the Psalms 19242837, and even
in the Law 19 36 3 m. It is this prophetic char
acter of the Scripture which had the predominant
interest for S. John. So complete was the Scriptural
prophecy of Jesus, that had the disciples really known
the Scripture, they would have known what must
happen to him 20 9. So too it was of course the
prophetic character of Scripture which gave it its
abiding worth for the Church. The word Law, on
the other hand, is used to describe the Scriptures in
respect to their significance for the Jewish nation.
Christ in addressing the Jews speaks of " your Law "
8 17 10 35, and of " Moses' Law" 723, whereas in his
use of the word Scripture there is no such expression
of personal detachment. This, however, is not to be
taken as a proof that Jesus repudiated the obligation
of the Law for himself and for his disciples ; for when
he says, " Which of you convicteth me of sin? " 8 46 he
must be understood as challenging comparison be
tween his conduct and the Law; and even in the
alleged cases of Sabbath-breaking he justifies his
action by a right interpretation of the Law 722.
Neither is it to be supposed that S. John, distinguish
ing sharply between the two principal divisions of
the Scripture, the Law and the Prophets, honors the
one and rejects the other; for in Philip's call to
Nathanael 1 45 the two are most intimately combined ;
— "of whom Moses in the Law, and the Prophets

THE DARKNESS 101
did write." S. John did not even, like S. Paul, think
of the Law as the fundamental contrast to the Gospel.
The contrast expressed in i 17 is Pauline only in
form : " For the Law was given by Moses ; grace
and truth came by Jesus Christ." Here the Law is
supposed to be a thing good in itself, or the peculiar
excellence of the gift of Christ would not be made to
appear by the comparison. The point of the com
parison is suggested by the preceding verse, " Of his
fulness we have all received, and grace for grace."
It is as the inexhaustible gift of God that the Gospel
is contrasted with the Law, which, whatever its excel
lence, came not in the guise of a gift, but of a requi
sition. It is true that the term Law did not express
to the Christian, as it did to the Jew, the predominant
note of religion : and this usage which we note in
S. John is precisely that which was natural in the age
in which he wrote ; — when the Jews clung to the
Old Testament as Law, while the Church valued it
as Scripture. Nor is there reason to think it unnat
ural in the mouth of Christ, since the constant trend
of his teaching was away from the legalising spirit
which dominated Judaism.
It seems natural to suppose that the Je,ws, to whom
God had from time to time made revelations of Him
self, to whom His Prophets even then came, and
who had in the Scriptures a veritable witness to
Him, must be accounted to have some knowledge of
Thejewsinthe God before Christ came to them; and in
Fourth Gospel fact Christ does allow that they have such
knowledge, at least, in contrast with the Samaritans
4 22. It seems therefore hard to account for the abso
luteness of S. John's judgment of the world as dark-

102 THE KOSMOS LYING IN DARKNESS
ness at the appearing of Christ. We cannot dismiss
this as an exaggeration of his antithetical mode of
thought; nor can we suppose that such knowledge
as the Jews had was simply outshone by the bright
ness of the coming light, or overlooked in the thought
of the universality of surrounding darkness; for the
Gospel does not represent the Jews as merely included
in the darkness, but as the very representatives of it.
The rdle which is accorded the Jewish opponents
of Jesus, is in fact one of the most prominent pecu
liarities of the Fourth Gospel, and constitutes a
problem which is justly accounted of great impor
tance. From beginning to end of the Gospel, S.
John's representation moves on the lines of this
opposition between Christ and the Jews 1 i» 20 19
and 7 & 8 ; and it requires but a glance to see
that in it is summed up that opposition of the world
to Christ which makes his very being in the world a
conflict with the world 1633. This conflict with the
Jews conditions so thoroughly S. John's whole repre
sentation, that it has been singled out as the special
aim of the Fourth Gospel. This however it cannot
be, in view of S. John's express declaration in 203-
(see page 25 seq.). On the other hand it is not
sufficiently explained by a reference to the author's
literary peculiarity, his preference for antithetical
expression; nor does the Jewish unbelief serve
merely as the dark background which throws into
stronger relief the picture of Jesus' divine glory.
Either case would presume a certain indifference on
the part of the author to the fate of the Jewish nation.
The problem strictly is this: What significance are
we to attach to the Evangelist's employment of the

THE DARKNESS 103
Jews as the representatives of the unbelieving world?
If the problem is rightly expressed in this form, it
shows how insufficient is the apparently near-lying
answer, that it was as a matter of fact Jewish unbelief
with which Jesus had to contend. For the peculiarity
of S. John's representation is not that it was with the
Jews Jesus had to deal, but that it was the Jewish
people as such which opposed itself to Jesus' revela
tion, and brought to manifestation the alienation of
the world from God and the hate of the darkness for
the light. That is plainly enough expressed in the
general name the Jews under which S. John as a rule
represents the antagonists of Jesus ; — without mark
ing their individuality more particularly. This use
of the national name to denote indiscriminately the
various opponents of Jesus, is in contrast with the
Synoptic account; and it is doubtless referable in
part to the fact that S. John was addressing readers
to whom the distinction between the Jewish religious
parties was no longer familiar. But it cannot be
taken to indicate that the author himself was un
familiar with the precise conditions within the Jewish
nation in the time of Christ. For hand in hand with
this summary treatment of the Jews as the opponents
of Jesus, there runs through the whole Gospel a rep
resentation of the individual elements with which
he had to deal. S. John distinguishes in a very
characteristic way between the rulers and the people,
725 seq. 48 seq. 183s, between Jews, Galileans and
Pereans, between the easily moved multitude which
the feasts brought together in Jerusalem, and the
proper inhabitants of Jerusalem 7 20 25. No Evangel
ist is better informed than he about the recognition

IO4 THE KOSMOS LYING IN DARKNESS
which Jesus received from all classes of the nation,
from the lowest to the highest ; and about the applause
which he received when for the moment he seemed
to realise the Messianic expectation n 48 12 19. He
makes it plain, too, that it was not so much the masses
of the people that opposed him ; as the rulers, the
official representatives of the nation 7 48 49- Of this
ruling class he mentions, now the Pharisees, now the
high-priests, and again both together, as the recog
nised heads of the nation, and as coming together in
Sanhedrim to pronounce an official judgment. This
very specification, however, serves to render more
definite the fact that in picturing the opposition of
the Jews S. John is following a tendency which is
calculated to represent the apostasy of the nation.
If we must acknowledge such a tendency, there are
but two possible explanations of its motive: in the
manner in which the Evangelist speaks of the Jews,
he manifests the most uncompromising anti-judaism;
or he betrays, by the very interest which he bestows
upon this trait of his composition, his personal
interest in the Jewish nation and in its fate.
In spite of the fact that the anti-judaism of the
Fourth Gospel has been so loudly contended for, and
has so seriously prejudiced the question of its
authorship, there is in fact no expression in the
Gospel of ill-will against the Jews; — nothing even
which could match the " woes " recorded by the
Synoptists. It cannot be claimed that there is in S.
John's account any exaggeration of the hostility
which Jesus actually encountered from the Jews.
We learn also from, the Synoptists that the Jews were
less ready to believe than the Galileans, who were

THE DARKNESS IO5
not so directly under the influence of the scribes and
priests who gave the dominant tone to Judaism ; and
the Jewish opposition comes in for more extended
notice in the Fourth Gospel, because the author has
chosen to dwell particularly upon the episodes of
Jesus' ministry in Judea. On the contrary there is
frequent reference to belief among the Jews, extend
ing even to the highest circles 12 42. The resurrection
of Lazarus leads " many Jews " to faith in Jesus, 1 1 45,
and to a definite separation from his opponents 12 n.
Even the covert faith of Nicodemus and of Joseph of
Arimathaea comes finally to public expression 3 2
193839. And S. John recognises that it is primarily
in "this fold " that Jesus finds his sheep 10 16.
If the hypothesis of anti-judaism proves itself in
sufficient to account for the whole problem we are
considering, the other alternative must receive its
due recognition. There is no lack of positive support
for the view that the Evangelist regards with personal
interest, even with intimate sympathy, the fate which
overtook the Jewish nation in consequence of its
attitude towards Jesus. (I follow here very closely,
as I have followed more freely throughout this para
graph, the exposition of Franke : " Das alte Testament
bei Johannes," page 17 seq.). Even in the earliest
expression which denotes the role accorded to the
Jews in the Fourth Gospel 1 ", the Evangelist speaks
of the rejection of the Logos by " his own" (ol 1S101)
as of a fact of tragic significance. And the retrospect
of 12 37 seq. shows that he stood before the unbelief of
the nation as before a problem which was only then
solved for him when he found the doom of the
covenant people predicted in the words of the

106 THE KOSMOS LYING IN DARKNESS
Prophet. Even then, however, he looks back to
the fact that faith was actually present, though not
decided enough to endure the separation from the
Synagogue. As moreover in another passage it is
rejection from the Synagogue which deters from a
free confession of Jesus 9 22, or results from it 9 34 seq.;
so in the prophetic word which is quoted in 16 2 one
detects plainly enough what was the trial which the
Evangelist found hardest of all the hardship which
the following of Jesus brought with it 1225 15 18 1633
17 u I. 3 >3 ; — namely, the breach with the Synagogue,
which was therefore most surely the home of his
religious life. Then however he as well as S. Paul
was a Hebrew of the Hebrews Phil. 3 5 II. Cor. 11 22,
and in the one case no more than in the other can
we speak of anti-judaism. The same fact which
appeared to S. Paul the great mystery of the economy
of grace, Rom. 1 1 25, is also for S. John the highest
problem of the history of salvation : the fact that a
congregation of believers out of all the world, without
reference to race, enjoys salvation in Christ, while the
covenant people remains shut out from it. He how
ever, looking back from a more advanced develop
ment of history, sees the fact more clearly than S.
Paul, and speaks not merely of a partial and tempor
ary rejection of Israel, but undertakes to show how,
in the place of the iBioi, the Old Testament people of
God's possession, in whose midst Jesus appeared,
1 n, another congregation of t'Stoihad been constituted
13 ¦; and, on the ground of a common faith, not
of a common lineage, had become God's children,
1 12 seq.
We see, therefore, that S. John's treatment of the

THE DARKNESS 107
Jews as the representatives of the darkness of the
world does not imply any prejudice against their
original covenant relation to God, nor against their
actual reception of revelation in time gone by, and
present possession of it in the Scripture. Christ
affirms that " salvation is of the Jews," 4 22 ; he asserts
that if they were truly Abraham's children, they
would do the works of Abraham 8 39 ; that if they
had believed Moses, they would have believed him
5 46 ; and that the very Scriptures upon which they
rely, bear testimony to him 5 39. The Jews therefore
are characterised as darkness, not because no light
has shone upon them, but because the light has not
penetrated them. Light and darkness are ideas
which lie strictly in the moral and not in the intellec
tual plane. The light does not illuminate mechanically
from the outside, it demands rather a willing accep
tance into the heart. The darkness therefore which
rejected the light of the Logos remained none the less
darkness because he had shone upon it. It was of
the Jews of his own time that Jesus affirmed, " Yt
have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his
face " 5 37 ; — specifying the two forms in which God's
revelation came in old time : by vision and by voice.
But not only does no new revelation come to them ;
they do not even understand the Scriptures which
they have inherited and which they study 5 3940, and
hence they do not receive the witness which the
Father bears to the Son 5 37, because God's word finds
no abiding-place in them 5 38. As they are unable to
perceive God's witness, so they do not understand
Christ's speech, because they cannot hear his word
8 43.

108 THE KOSMOS LYING IN DARKNESS
Since it is in the rejection of Jesus that the dark
ness of the world comes to pre-eminent expression,
we realise that for S. John, unbelief is the superlative
of sin. The Jews are regarded as the
Sin J °
representatives of the evil power of the
darkness in its struggle against the light, not because
they were peculiarly distinguished for sensual sins
and overt transgressions of God's Law, but because
they refused to receive the light. Christ's coming into
the world is itself a judgment, and the decision
which men make for or against him, lays bare the in
most disposition of the heart ; — " and this is the judg
ment, that light is come into the world, and men
loved darkness rather than light; for their works
were evil " 3 19. Unbelief is not a category which
includes all sins ; but it is the test which cuts deep
est, and which most conclusively manifests the bent
of the heart. The rejection of the light is not only
significant in itself as a moral preference for dark
ness ; but it further argues an evil life in the man
who shuns the light 3 20 21. So predominant is this
idea, of sin that Jesus says, " If I had not come and
spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now
they have no excuse for their sin. He that hateth me
hateth my Father also. If I had not done the works
which none other did, they had not had sin : but now
they have both seen and hated both me and my
Father " 1 5 22-24. And when at the last he promises
that " the Paraclete will convict the world in respect
of sin," he defines the sin of the world in the clause,
"of sin, because they believe not in me" 1589
The sin of the antichrist is variously stated as the
denial " that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh " I. 4 2

THE DARKNESS IO9
II. 7, " that Jesus is the Christ " 1. 2 22, or as the denial
" of the Father and the Son ; " in any case it concerns
this crucial attitude of unbelief, which is the sin par
excellence for S. John. In the same way, in accord
ance with this characteristic of S. John, we must
understand the " sin unto death " I. 5 16 17. We cannot
understand it as anything other than a deliberate
apostasy from Christ which involves a definitive
crisis of the soul. It is the sin not of the outsider,
but of the " brother" who has seen Christ and hated
him. S. John does not however confine himself to the
consideration of the sin of unbelief; In the last pas
sage which we quoted he contrasts sin unto death with
sin in general : " All unrighteousness is sin ; and
there is a sin not unto death " I. 5 17. The expres
sion, " sin is lawlessness," which we find in the
Epistle 3 4, shows his fundamental adherence to the
Old Testament conception of sin. Sin is therefore
not limited to those who are guilty of the overt act of
denial of Christ 15 22; even those to whom the mani
festation of Christ's light has not come are in a state
of sin ; for it is into a world already sinful that Christ
comes, " to take away the sin of the world " 1 29 I. 3 5.
It is a world completely sinful ; for sin is co-exten
sive with the darkness, and it is expressly stated of
the world, after the Christian community has been
separated from it, that it " lieth all of it in the Evil
One " I. 5 19. The condition of sin is compared to
bondage 8 34. Sin is in a negative sense death (the
absence of life), and it is only by faith that we pass
out " of death into life " 5 24 I. 3 M. It is out of a
perishing condition Christ saves us 3 16. In a certain

HO THE KOSMOS LYING IN DARKNESS
sense it is natural for men to sin ; for, in a way quite
familiar to the Old Testament, the pleasures of the
world are regarded as enticements away from God.
" For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and
the lust of the eyes, and the vainglory of life, is not of
the Father, but of the world " I. 2 16. Flesh however
is not thought of as an evil principle, any more than
is the eye ; nor can we take Christ's sentence in 3 6,
" That which is born of the flesh is flesh," as an
expression of the necessary sinfulness of humanity,
for it means only that the earth-born is unable to
transcend the earthly sphere without a begetting from
above. Neither is the world itself to be considered evil
by virtue of its physical constitution; for it is the
creation of the Logos. S. John does nevertheless trace
back all particular acts of sin to a single principle of
sinfulness, and finally to the Devil himself, who rules
in the world 14 3°, and whom Christ comes to cast
out 12 31.
S. John uses both the noun sin (dfiaprla) and the
verb to sin (apaprdveiv) in two senses : to denote the
power or principle of sin, or to denote concrete acts
of sin. The latter sense he generally expresses by
the plural, sins ; but it is not always possible to
distinguish which idea is uppermost in his thought.
This distinction helps in part to explain how in the
Epistle he can denounce the claim of sinlessness 1 s,
and yet assert that " he that sinneth hath not seen
him, hath not known him " 3 6. The Christian even
is often guilty of particular acts of sin for which con
fession and forgiveness is required ; but as he has
been freed from the bondage of sin 8 36, and is no
longer under its slavish control, he cannot habitually

THE DARKNESS III
practise it, nor abide in it, still less can he be guilty
of sin in its superlative form, by denial of Christ. We
have seen also that sin is lawlessness I. 3 4, and in'
that expression there lies a conception more peculiar
to S. John than at first appears ; for law is no longer
presented in the form of many precepts, but summed
up in Christ's example of love. As sin against God
is thought of chiefly as rejection of his light, so all
sin against man is included in the idea of hate, the
transgression of the law of love. This sin is traced
back to Cain " who was of the Evil One, and slew his
brother " I. 3 «. It is likely that S. John did not
think so much of the unity of the sinful race as
derived from Adam, as of the moral contrast within
the race, between the children of God and the children
of the Devil ; of this contrast Cain was the represen
tative, and his sin was for S. John the antitypal sin.
But even Cain's sin is traced to the fact that he
was of the Evil One, who himself " was a murderer
from the beginning," 8 44. " He that doeth sin is
from the Devil, for the Devil sinneth from the begin
ning " I. 3 8. Christ says to the Jews : " Ye are of
your father the Devil, and the lusts of your father it
is your will to do " 8 44. As to the origin of the Devil
himself, we can simply say that S. John shows no
sign that he speculated at all about it. And if he did
not speculate about it, it is difficult to believe that
he departed so far from the common doctrine of the
Church as to represent the Devil as in any sense co
ordinate with God, as the eternal principle of evil.
Notwithstanding an expression like that we have just
quoted, which seems to represent a derivation of
nature from him, he is simply the tempter, as we see

112 THE KOSMOS LYING IN DARKNESS
in the case of Judas 13 *. And although S. John
does thus dwell upon the contrast within the human
face between the children of God and the children
of the Devil, although he often represents the differ
ence between them as something which antedated
their conscious choice of Jesus 10 3 5 16; we cannot
find here a metaphysical distinction between the two
classes, which necessitates their relation to Christ.
For, in thorough keeping with the Old Testament,
this difference is traced to God's choice, they were
his before they were Christ's 17 6; and yet their own
choice remains one of perfect freedom, expressing
the character of their will. It is because men love
darkness rather than light, that they reject Christ
and are therefore justly judged 3 19. In 9 41 the
maxim is expressed, that physically necessitated
action, even if it amounted to the rejection of Jesus,
cannot be accounted sin : " If ye were blind, ye would
have no sin : but now ye say, We see : your sin
remaineth."

IV
THE LIFE MANIFESTED
PARALLEL WITH THE FIRST CHAPTERS OF
GENESIS
WE have now before us the two great generic ideas
of Darkness and Light, which represent the contrast
between the human and the divine, between God and
the world. We have been able with reasonable certi
tude to deduce even from S. John's indirect utter
ances, his view of the nature and disposition of
God, and of the condition of the world. But funda
mental as these topics are, they are only the intro
duction to the themes with which S. John most
expressly and predominantly deals. Light and Dark
ness, as we have come to understand them, are in a
sense the postulates of S. John's theology : they are
the colours with which his picture is painted. The
contrast involved in these two facts represents also
the problem which S. John's doctrine solves. But
the all-absorbing fact to S. John is not that the world
lieth in darkness, nor even that God is light; but that
the divine light has actually come into the darkness.
He sees the world perishing in darkness and death ;
he sees God as one who is light and in whom is no
darkness at all : but he does not speculate upon
these two facts, he does not even strive to delineate
them, he is content to name them in two words.
8

114 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
What he does describe minutely, what he dwells
upon almost exclusively, is the process by which the
light, entering into the darkness, overcomes it and
saves the world. The proposition that " God is
light " does not merely express the immanent nature
of God ; but also the fact that, as it is the very nature
of light to shine, so it is God's nature to manifest
himself. The " heavenly things " which Jesus reveals
— in contrast to the " earthly things " which the
teacher of Israel might be supposed to know — are
summed up in this: " God so loved the world, that he
gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on
him should not perish, but have eternal UJe" 3 16. It
is the Logos become flesh, the life and the light
manifested in the world, the Messiah come to save
the world, eternal life, the new birth, the conditions
and fruits of divine sonship ; — it is with these themes
that S. John is constantly occupied ; and upon them
the great majority of his utterances in both Epistle
and Gospel directly bear. This is the region of
Johannine doctrine with which we have yet to deal ;
and here it is we find the most obvious as well as
the most interesting of the Johannine peculiarities.
Before we proceed more closely to the study of
this section, we must examine the highly interesting
parallel which exists between the Prologue of the
Gospel and the first Chapters of the Book of Genesis.
Some features of this parallel we have already had
occasion to note ; some of them are suggested at the
very first glance ; but the parallel extends much
further and more into detail than is commonly sup
posed. Its importance at this point is that it helps
us to realise S. John's thoroughly objective, one

PARALLEL , WITH GENESIS 1 1 5
might almost say pictorial, conception of the sphere
and operation of redemption; and that it furnishes
luminous points of suggestion for the construction of
this chapter of Johannine thought.
The first hint of this relation of thought is the very
first phrase of the Gospel, " In the beginning." This
could scarcely have been written without a reminis
cence of the first words of the Old Testament Scrip
ture ; and it obviously suggests that the author is
about to write a second Book of Genesis, an account
of a new creation. If we have in the Prologue a
parallel with Genesis, the phrase, " in the beginning,"
must in the two instances denote not the same, but a
different time ; it is therefore worth while observing
that the word " beginning " in S. John's use com
monly refers to the commencement of the Gospel
dispensation, to the time of the appearance of Christ
16 4 1. 2 724 II. 56. The several ideas which are com
mon to the first chapters of Genesis and to the Pro
logue are : the creative Voice — the Word ; the light
and the darkness ; and the various manifestations of
life. It is a question rather curious than grave,
whether " the Spirit of God " in Gen. 1 5 is not an
other point of contact with the Gospel re-creation ;
but it is at least not at all improbable that Christ's act
of breathing out the Holy Spirit upon his disciples
20 22 was associated in S. John's mind with God's
breathing into man the breath of life as recounted in
Gen. 2 7. We may account it likely that S. John's idea
of eternal life was associated with " the Tree of Life ; "
and it is possible that his close association of knowl
edge and life has some connection with the two trees
of the Garden (see the Apocalypse for this and other

Il6 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
analogies with the terrestrial Paradise). With these
common ideas as the subject-matter, the parallel is
worked out as follows. In Genesis we are directed to
God as the Creator of the heavens and the earth.
Before us lies a material chaos enveloped in dark
ness; into which presently at the utterance of the
creative word shines the light ; — which appears later
in concrete manifestation as " lights." The creation
proceeds by the instrumentality of the Word to effect
a still further division, of the waters from the waters,
and of the waters from the land. The first part of
creation is thus effected by means of simple mechan
ical separation; further development is wrought by
the introduction of the various stages of life ; — from
the green herb to the beast wherein is a living soul.
Man is not only the climax of this order of living souls ;
but he is constituted a different kind by the breath
of God. This supreme and unique product of crea
tion proceeds, according to the divine command, to
multiply and fill the earth.
The world for S. John is, as we have repeatedly
remarked, simply the dwelling-place of mankind, the
sphere of human souls. This psychical sphere has
been thrown by sin into a state of spiritual chaos ; it
is under the power of darkness and of the Evil One ;
and hence it is the object of salvation, which S. John
thinks of as a new creation. Accordingly, quite
parallel with Genesis, his description takes for its
"beginning" the commencement of the re-creation.
" In the beginning," in timeless duration extending
back from this point, we are pointed to the Word,
who was with God, who was God. He is disclosed
as the original Creator of all things. As in Genesis

THE PARALLEL WITH GENESIS \\f
" the earth was without form and void, and darkness
was upon the face of the deep; " so here there lies
before us a spiritual chaos which is enveloped in spiri
tual darkness. As in Genesis the first moment of
creation is the creative word, " Let there be light," so
here the Word is the personal Creator, and he also
was light ; — a spiritual light, the light of men. By
him a separation is effected between the different ele
ments of the world, and order is brought out of
chaos. We shall see subsequently (pp. 130 seq.)
how thoroughly regulative of his thought, and even
of the order of his narrative, is this idea of the divi
sion which the very appearance of Christ as the light
brings about among men. But not only was he light;
" in him was life." He brings eternal life to men,
and this as we shall see is thought of, not as a mere
prolongation of physical existence which would else
be broken off by death, but as an entirely new and
superadded gift, which has its beginning in the new
birth. This new birth (" not of bloods, nor of the
will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God ")
is parallel to the first divine gift of psychical life in
Gen. 2 7. This life consists in the felicity of knowl
edge of and fellowship with God : it is truly possessed
from the moment of the new birth, but there is a
development of it corresponding to the develop
ment in knowledge. The detailed process of the
production of physical life in Genesis, has its counter
part in the development of this one life; just as the
separate moments of creation are here blended in
the continuous operation of the personal Word. A
glance at the table of contents (pages vi and vii) will
show how these guiding principles of thought are

Il8 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
wrought out in S. John's doctrine ; — for it is not
only the Prologue, but the whole Gospel, which S.
John, in the terms of this introduction, would set
forth as a second Book of Genesis.

THE WORD BECOME FLESH
Before we study the effects produced in the world
by the coming of the Word, we must consider what
The Mature of was involved in the very fact of this
the incarnation "coming" out of the heavenly into the
earthly sphere. In i u we have the summary ex
pression, " the Word became flesh." This is not
meant as a complete and formal definition of the act
whereby the Logos came into relation with humanity;
for this has actually been the theme of the preceding
verses, and is expressed generally in the simple
word " came." But by this phrase is expressed the
fact that in coming amongst men, he became what
all men are : namely, flesh. The image of the fol
lowing phrase, "tabernacled among us," might
suggest that the Logos merely dwelt in a human body,
as a form of manifestation. But to become flesh
means something more than to assume a body:
Flesh is human nature, it is always animated flesh,
the seat of the human soul; and to become means
actually to be something one was not before. S.
John, however, presents us with no theory; he has
merely data to set before us. What could be more
thoroughly a datum of his experience than the fact
that Jesus was man ; whatever theorising he did on
this subject, was not to represent how the Logos
became man, but how the man Jesus was God.

THE WORD BECOME FLESH 1 19
In spite of the fact that S. John in the very Pro
logue lets us into the secret of Jesus' divine nature,
^ _ „„. and that he composes his Gospel with
TheSonofMan . . r ,,...,...
the distinct purpose of establishing belief
in him as the Son of God ; he nevertheless drama
tises him before us as man. As a man he appears
in the familiar relations of family life : with his
mother and his brethren he attends a wedding, evi
dently within the circle of his friends or relatives 2 ™ ;
he abides for a time in the family circle at Capernaum
2 12 ; his brethren even undertake to lecture him
about his conduct 7 3-8 ; and from the cross he dis
plays his care for his mother 192526. As a man
Jesus wept at the grave of Lazarus, 1 1 35 ; he was
troubled in soul at the thought of death 1227; and
shows even a momentary hesitation whether he shall
not pray to be delivered from this hour. In 8 4° he
actually calls himself a man. But his truly human
consciousness is expressed nowhere so clearly as in
his relation to God. Notwithstanding the exalted
character of his self-witness, in his human existence
he bears even to the Father the relation of a man to
God 20 17; he prays to his Father 1227 and chapter 17 ;
he thanks him for his gifts 6 ", and also for hearing
his petitions 1 1 41. Though S. John thinks of the
Logos as the Creator of all things, he represents the
miracles of Jesus, not as proceeding from his own
inherent power, but as given him by the Father, in
answer to his prayer, and for a special occasion 1 1 22
41 5 36 14 10. When Jesus says that he seeks not his
own will, but the will of him that sent him 5 30 6 37,
he postulates the double possibility of following his
own human will, or the will of God. When he says

120 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
that he seeks not his own honor, but that of his
Father 8 49 50, he implies that the mastering of self-
will and self-gratification was for him, as for other
men, a moral task. The Father's will is expressed
for him, as it is for other men, as an external will, as
a "commandment," 124950; and his life therefore
like that of other men lies under the stress of obliga
tion ; — he includes himself with his disciples under
the ethical must : " We must work the works of him
that sent me," 9 4 R. V. This, however, is no irk
some duty, for the fulfilment of his Father's will is his
greatest joy 434.
To express the fact of Christ's truly human con
dition, S. John like the Synoptists uses Jesus' self-
chosen name " the Son of man." And this name is
peculiarly significant, for it expresses not only the
fact that Christ was a man among men, but that his
original condition was something quite different; for
the name would have no force as applied to one who
self-evidently and as a matter of course was man
and nothing else. The passage (Dan. 7 13) which
suggested Christ's use of this name, expressed also
the thought that this Son of man was from heaven,
and was to establish upon earth an everlasting king
dom. S. John shows at least that this reference was
understood by the Jews, for they are offended at
Jesus' allusion to the departure of the Son of man
from the earth 12 34 ; — an idea apparently so contrary
to the Scriptural prophecy. The name " Son of
man " was capable however of representing something
more than the common Messianic doctrine; and in
two passages in particular its peculiar significance is
very clearly marked. In 5 27 Jesus says that the

THE WORD BECOME FLESH 12 1
Father gave the Son authority to execute judgment,
" because he is the Son of man." The judgment
which is here spoken of consists in this, that some
hear, while others do not hear Christ's word 5 24 25.
This implies that he is a son of man whose word can
be heard and apprehended, and because he is this,
because he comes into this real relation with men,
God gives him authority of judgment — cf. 3 19. In
the discourse of the sixth chapter concerning the true
bread of life which comes down from heaven, we see
that it is as Son of man that Jesus gives this bread 627.
This meat from heaven can be brought only by the
Son of man who himself also is from thence ; and it
can be imparted to men only by one who like him
comes into relation with men. Moreover, as the~7
highest revelation of God is given in Christ's loving ;
sacrifice upon the cross, through which it becomes ,
possible that men may eat his flesh and drink his
blood 653, it is clear that only as his is a true human
life can it be relinquished in death ; and on the other
hand, that only as he is the highest revelation of God
can his death impart life.
The word Messiah, like every other name which
was employed to express the position of the Logos
in his earthly manifestation, was used also
The Messiah J
to express his higher relationship. The
Messianic idea (expressed not only under the title
" the Christ," but also under other terms) is as com
mon in the Fourth Gospel as in any other; and the
Fourth Gospel more clearly than any other furnishes
the clue to the process by which the popular Messi
anic doctrines, which at first disposed the people to
welcome Jesus, turned them subsequently to enmity,

122 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
and finally brought about the national rejection of a
Messiah who corresponded so poorly to their dog
matic preconceptions. It is charged however that
S. John has suffered the idea of the Messiah, and its
corollary the kingdom of God, to fall into the back
ground ; and has superseded it with the higher con
ceptions involved in the terms, Logos and Son. The
importance, however, which the Messianic hope had
for him is shown generally by the fact that Jesus'
constant conflicts with the Jews revolved about this
subject. And the fact that Jesus is therein repre
sented as repudiating the Messianic notions of the
Jews, cannot indicate on the part of the author either
indifference or opposition to the Messianic idea itself;
for we see also in the Synoptic Gospels that Jesus'
whole ministry was occupied in raising to a higher
plane the popular conceptions of the Messianic King
and his kingdom. We cannot fail to note the zeal
with which S. John throughout his whole Gospel
pursues the proof of Jesus' Messianic character ; from
the witness of the Baptist, to the circumstances of
his passion. It certainly appears as if the Messianic
problem had a special interest for him just because it
was a Jewish question and involved the fate of the
Nation. We cannot help noticing a joyful note in
the Evangelist's reminiscence of those first days
which (as the unnamed disciple) he passed with
Jesus I 40: and the key-note of those days was the
glad assurance, " we have found the Messiah " 1 42.
Nor did this name, much as it must have gained in
significance, become old and out of date ; for he
uses this title in the Epistle, and expresses the very
aim of his Gospel in this, " that ye may believe that

THE WORD BECOME FLESH 123
Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God." We must
perforce forbear to pursue in detail the Messianic
question in the Fourth Gospel. The discussion,
minute and prolonged as it would have to be,
would not contribute to our general appreciation
of the Johannine theology. Apart from the subtle
suggestions of criticism, one would unhesitatingly
form the opinion that S. John had the same interest
in the Messianic character of Jesus as had the other
Evangelists. The title, Christ, never became with
him a mere personal name, an adjunct of the name
Jesus; but always retains its original force. He
speaks, it is true, of "Jesus Christ; " but always with
the significance of Jesus the Messiah. Although it
"is true that the confession which in the Epistle is
emphatically made the test of orthodoxy — "that
Jesus Christ is come in the flesh " — is directed
especially against the Gnostic denial that the heav
enly aeon Christ was identical with the man Jesus;
yet it at least includes the assertion of his real
Messianic character. Jesus does not expressly say
to the world " I am the Christ ; " but neither does
he do so in the Synoptic accounts. When the Jews
however asked him to tell them plainly, " if thou art
the Christ," Jesus answered, " I told you, and ye
believe not" 10 24 25; — implying that this has been
all along the substance of his claim. In the same
manner he acknowledges Pilate's question, " Art thou
a king then?" 1837. If S. John does not generally
employ the Messianic title in connection with what
is nevertheless fundamentally his Scriptural proof of
Jesus' Messianic character, this may be very obviously
explained by the fact that for his gentile readers the

124 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
distinctly Messianic idea was of less interest than it
was to the author himself, whereas the Scriptural
legitimation in itself was still — as it has continued
to be — of the liveliest interest. It remains to note
the fact that Jesus' familiar word, "the kingdom of
God," is recorded in only two passages of S. John's
Gospel 335 18 36. This however only corresponds
to the fact that this name did not remain in the
Apostolic age a common designation of the Christian
community. What may have been the causes which
led to its disuse, we need not speculate; but there
was at least one very obvious motive, namely, the
fear of rousing the ready suspicion of the Roman
Empire against the Church as a political faction
(cf. 19 12). It is quite in accordance with the design
of S. John's Gospel — which was an interpretation
rather than a record — that he should omit even so
striking a feature of Jesus' teaching; — or rather
omit the word, in order that he might interpret the
thing in terms familiar to his readers. On the other
hand he uses the Messianic title of King more fre
quently and emphatically than any other evangelist.
It is as " the King of Israel " that Nathanael hails
him 1 49 ; as King that he makes his triumphal en
trance into Jerusalem 12 13 ; and it is as King that he
stands before the judgment-seat of Pilate, and as
King is put to death.
We have seen that the Logos in his earthly mani
festation condescended so to divest himself of his
proper divine attribute of power, that even the signs
The incarnation which he performed were not manifesta-
of the Glory 0? tions of his creative omnipotence, but
the logos rather given him, or performed for him,

THE WORD BECOME FLESH 12$
by the Father. In coming into the world, he
descended from heaven; and in a certain real sense
was separated from God 3 '6, and became subject like
a creature to God's commandment, and to the ethical
conditions of human life. The divine glory which he
had with the Father before the creation of the world,
and which was restored to him upon his ascension,
he was deprived of in his earthly life 175. There
was however no incompatibility in this contrast be
tween the eternal glory and the earthly humility of
the Logos ; it was resolved very simply by the con
ception of the mission of the Son. This idea so
common with S. John, " that the Father sent the
Son," is used at once to express his subordination
7 ' ,8 cf- 3 l6> and his exalted relation to the Father 8 16.
The deprivation which he thereby suffered of the
divine power and glory, was essential to the accom
plishment of his mission as a man amongst men.
But there were on the other hand certain possessions
of his original state which he could not put away
from him without defeating the very purpose of his
mission. The Evangelist's comments upon Jesus'
surprising knowledge of men, and of the events which
were to complete his Messianic career 6 16 26 647 30 13
1 11 163° 21 17, do not expressly ascribe to him divine
omniscience, though they do declare that he was
endowed with such insight as was requisite for his
Messianic work. There was however one sort of
knowledge which Jesus as the Revealer of God (in
word as well as in work) must and did possess in no
partial and creaturely way : that was the knowledge of
God. His constant witness was to the effect that he
possessed, as no other could possess, the perfect

126 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
knowledge of God; and that this was derived, not
from speculation, nor from prophetic inspiration, but
from the reminiscence of that which he had seen in
his intimate heavenly intercourse with the Father.
Moreover, as the appreciation of his own nature was
of essential importance to men, he must retain, and
he did retain, a perfect self-consciousness of what he
was and whence he came 8 u. Even this knowledge
however he reveals to men only under the terms of
his mission, as a commandment of his Father 1249.
As one who came also to impart life to men 10 io, he
possessed life in an unique way ; — " in himself" 5 26.
This is associated with his possession of that perfect
knowledge of God, which is a condition of eternal
life; but he also claims the power "to take again,"
as he also of his own will " lay down," his human,
physical life 10 18; — though this also he expresses
as a " commandment received from my Father."
It is therefore not difficult to see why, in spite of
facts which might justly be used to represent the
earthly manifestation of the Son of God as a state of
humiliation (as S. Paul thinks of it; — see especially
Phil. 2s-n), S. John does not think of it in this aspect.
It is of the Word Incarnate, he says, " we beheld his
glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father "
1 m. And this, in connection with the expression
" tabernacled," suggests the Shekinah, the glory with
which God himself appeared among his people in
the tent in the wilderness. It was in the man Jesus
he had learned to know what God is, and his earthly
manifestation he could not therefore regard as an
obscuration of divinity, but as the only means
whereby the divine character could be adequately

THE WORD BECOME FLESH 127
manifested to men. The very fact that Jesus in his
own person revealed God not so much in terms of
might as of love, is proof that this is the most exalted
attribute of God, his peculiar glory, and the very
character of the light which is his nature I. 1 5.
Because therefore the love of Christ was shown
supremely in just those moments which from another
point of view might be regarded as the very depths
of his humiliation — his menial service 133-17, his
betrayal, and his death — S. John regards them as
the highest expression of his glorification among
men; — which was at the same time a glorification
of the Father 13 31. It is in short as the light of the
world that Jesus appears in the world. And although
S. John notices the obstacles of prejudice and mis
conception which hindered the Jews from believing
upon him ; he is nevertheless assured that even his
earthly manifestation so clearly expressed his divin
ity, so clearly revealed him as light, that only those
who were blinded by the darkness, or who wilfully
turned away their eyes, could fail to see. To the
proof of Jesus' divinity which the conscience ought
to possess in the mere beholding of him, there is
added Jesus' self-witness, the witness of the Baptist,
and of the Scripture, and of the works which his
Father gives him ; — these also serve to glorify him,
and to render it the more inexcusable that any should
refuse to receive him for that which in his very nature
he is, and which he manifests himself to be 1240. It
is the very clearness of the moral decision involved
in the acknowledgment or the denial of Jesus which
explains the position of the Son of man in the world
at once as Saviour and as Judge.

A. SALVATION OUT OF THE WORLD
1. The Whole World as the Object of Salvation
One cannot fail to be struck with the universal
reference which S. John's language attributes to
Christ's saving work in the world. Not only is he in
the world as Saviour ; but he is sent as " the Saviour
of the world " I. 4 h, and this sending is an expression
of God's love for the world 3 16. The Baptist points
to him as " the lamb of God, which taketh away the
sin of the world " 1 29) and he himself testifies that he
will give his flesh " for the life of the world " 6 s«.
This language is the more remarkable, because accord
ing to S. John's predominant use of this word in his
Epistle, and Christ's uniform use of it in his last dis
course with his disciples, it denotes, not the totality
of human existence, but the evil remnant which is left
after the Christian community has been gathered out.
It is the evil world power, in contrast to the Church ;
it is not merely an unbelieving world, but a persecuting
world 17 14 I. 3 13, which openly and violently displays
its antagonism to Christ and to all who are his.
S. John beholds the whole world lying in the Evil
One I. 5 19. This indicates more than that subjection
to darkness and sin which characterised the whole
world at the coming of Christ: it has already seen
and rejected Christ; it is therefore ripe for judgment
12 31, for the reproof of its sin of unbelief 16 8 9; and

SALVATION OUT OF THE WORLD 129
Christ's attitude towards it is only that of conqueror
16 33; in that last hour he even forbears to pray for it
179, although he still looks forward to an ultimate
turning of the world to belief through the ministry
of his disciples 17 20 21. It is of course not in this
exclusive sense, denoting particularly the evil residue,
that S. John uses the word when he speaks of the
Logos coming into the world, and of Christ as the
Saviour of the world : but it is in a sense which
includes also this evil element; for it is the whole
world. This universal reference is put beyond a doubt
when he says, " he is the propitiation for our sins; and
not for ours only, but also for the whole world" I. 2 2.
It is not as though he were Saviour of both the good
and the bad ; for the whole world was in darkness
and sin, and the discrimination of the two classes was
subsequent to his manifestation, and a result of it,
though not the purpose of it. Although Christ's
manifestation in the world is actually a judgment, and
although that which he actually accomplishes is in 9 39
represented as the purpose of his coming; there is
really nothing in S. John's representation to contradict
the solemn assertion : " God sent not his Son into the
world to condemn the world ; but that the world should
be saved through him" 3 17 12 47. For Christ's judg
ment of the world consists simply in this, that God's
loving gift of light to the world has as its inevitable
consequence the revealing of the darkness, or rather,
it presents the test which reveals the fundamental
bent of every heart. " And this is the judgment, that
the light is come into the world, and men loved the
darkness rather than the light " 3 19. It is this figure
of the light which again makes S. John's meaning
9

I30 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
clear and consistent. Jesus proclaims himself the
light of the world 8 ¦* 1246, and in 95 he represents
that being in the world, he must be its light. It is
this perfectly objective mode of thought which ex
plains S. John's meaning. Just as the light shines in
the world, and shines none the less because the dark
ness apprehendeth it not; so, in the simplicity and
directness of his thought, he beholds Jesus lying
objectively before the world as the sacrifice and
propitiation for its sin; and none the less for all —
intended for all, available for all — that some do not
accept the reconciliation which he offers. As the
Baptist in early days pointed him to Jesus as " the
lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world ; "
so finally he saw him hang upon the cross, " lifted
up " before the eyes of the whole world, " as Moses
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness," " that every one
that believeth in him may have eternal life " 3 m 15.
2. The Division amongst Men
The Fourth Gospel records no more striking say
ing of Jesus, considering the circumstances of its
utterance, than that before Pilate and the rulers of
the Jewish nation : " To this end have I been born,
and to this end am I come into the world, that I
should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that
is of the truth heareth my voice " 1 8 37. At this word
the apparent relationships in that hall of judgment
are dissolved, inverted, and Jesus appears as Judge
for the condemnation of his judge and of his accusers,
who thereby proved that they were not of the truth,
because they heard not his voice. It is characteristic

SALVATION OUT OF THE WORLD 13 1
ei S. John that he represents the apostasy of the
nation as culminating in the official act of its chiefs in
delivering Jesus up to the Roman power. He does
not record the extenuating words from the cross,
" they know not what they do," Luke 23 34, nor in
any wise admit that the rulers and people were acting
in ignorance, Acts 3 17 : it was the clear rejection, on
the part of the nation and its rulers, of the Messianic
King. It is rather Pilate whose conduct is pityingly
extenuated on the ground that he exercises his power
only subordinately 19 ", and under the dread of
offending his master 19 12; whereas it is Jesus' own
nation and the chief priests who delivered him unto
him, who have the "greater sin," 1835 19 «. This,
as we have seen, is in accordance with S. John's con
stant representation, that the very manifestation of
the truth (which is the light) is in itself the judgment
of the world. In 8 43 Jesus says, " why do ye not
understand my speech? Even because ye cannot hear
my word." This however is not a necessitated deaf
ness, although it is traced back to the fact that the
Devil is their father ; for it is expressly said, " The
lusts of your father it is your will to do " 8 44. Con
sistent with his claim that he is not in the world as
Judge, though a judgment is accomplished by his
presence, he says : " If any man hear my sayings,
and keep them not, I judge him not; for I came not
to judge the world, but to save the world. He that
rejecteth me, and receiveth not my sayings, hath one
that judgeth him: the word that T spake, the same
shall judge him in the last day" 124748. The judg
ment which is ascribed to Jesus' word, his truth, and
his light, is in the above instances represented as a

132 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
judgment of condemnation, for S. John uses the word
almost always with this implication. In the third
chapter, however, where he speaks of the judgment
accomplished by the light, although the word is used
simply in the sense of condemnation (" He that be
lieveth is not judged: he that believeth not hath
been judged already," 3 18 cf. 3 19,) he nevertheless
notices the double effect of the light: upon them
who come to it, as well as upon them who hate it
3 20 „. In another place he uses the word judg
ment itself in its original sense of mere discrimination ;
and denotes that the judgment which Christ is actually
accomplishing in the world, is one which includes
blessing as well as ban: "that they which see not
may see ; and that they which see may become
blind " 9 39. This is parallel to the saying recorded
by S. Luke: "not to give peace, but division" 12
51 seq. This reminds us that also according to the
Synoptic account, Jesus' earthly manifestation in
some sense forestalls the final judgment. But it is
peculiarly characteristic of S. John, who thinks of
the blessings of the Gospel (salvation and eternal life)
as substantially present here and now, to think of the
judgment also as virtually realised in the present.
And this does not merely mean that the final judg
ment has only to pronounce upon the works already
done on earth, Rev. 20 u ; but the division itself, the
segregation of the evil and the good, Mat. 25 32, is in
some sort accomplished by Christ's manifestation
upon earth. This idea of the division accomplished
by Jesus amongst the men who heard his word, is one
which to a very marked degree conditions the com
position of the Fourth Gospel. Besides the passages

SALVATION OUT OF THE WORLD 1 33
upon which we have been commenting, there are no
others so explicit of S. John's view ; but we see that
the whole Gospel is arranged with a view to demon
strate the diverse effects which the word of Jesus had
upon his hearers, and to display the division which
from the beginning of his ministry began to accom
plish itself amongst men. It is hence expressly
mentioned after many of his notable sayings or works,
that " there arose a division among the multitudes
concerning him" 743 916 10 19 cf. 712. This divi
sion proceeded even to a sifting of his own followers
666; Judas finally " went out" and left Jesus at last
alone with his true friends 133'. This sifting con
tinued in the Apostolic Church ; and the apostasy of
its members was regarded as a sign that they had
never really belonged to the community: "They
went out from us, but they were not of us ; for if
they had been of us, they would have continued with
us: but that they might be made manifest how that
they all are not of us " I. 2 19.
The division which is thus accomplished in the
world is not a mere incident of Christ's manifesta
tion; it is, as regards the children of God, an essen
tial step in the work of salvation. It has been already
suggested that we may perhaps find here a parallel
to the account of creation, according to which the
mechanical division of the elements of the world
preceded the production of life. At any rate it is a
matter of real importance that the children of God
should be separated from the evil elements of the
world. It is especially in Jesus' final familiar dis
course with his true friends, and in his prayer for
them, that the contrast between the disciples and the

134 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
world is expressed. Just as surely as they are " in
the world" 131 17 ¦>, just so surely are they " not of
the world" 15 19. "They are not of the world even
as I am not of the world" 17 16. And this is ex
plained by the fact that he has chosen them (or that
God has given them him 175) " out oi the world"
15 19. At the end of his Epistle S. John expresses
the vivid consciousness which the Christian com
munity had of its separateness from the world : " We
know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth
in the Evil One " 5 19. There is more than i. mere
negative advantage in this separation of the children
of God from the world ; or rather this very act in
cludes the formation of a Christian community, which
can oppose itself as a unit to the world which itself
is thought of as a unity represented in the person of
the Prince of this world, and constitutes both a per
secuting and a tempting power. The formation of a
community out of the elements scattered abroad in
the midst of the darkness of the world, is expressed
in the saying, " that he might also gather together
into one the children of God who are scattered
abroad" 11 52. This is expressed also in the tenth
chapter in Christ's parable of the shepherd. There
too it is the voice of Christ which collects the flock,
10 5, and there are other sheep besides those of the
Jewish fold which he must "bring" "and they shall
become one flock, one shepherd " 10 ¦&. This idea of
unity is profoundly emphasised in Jesus' prayer, in
which, looking into the future and beyond the circle
of his present disciples, he entreats, " for them also
who believe on me through their word; that they
may all be one ; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in

SALVATION OUT OF THE WORLD 1 35
thee, that they also may be in us: that the world
may believe that thou didst send me" 17 20 21. We
see from this quotation, and in general by a reference
to the whole prayer, that this unity of the disciples
is of the highest importance in manifold directions.
In the first place, it is a positive good in itself, and
the condition of fellowship with one another, and
with God in Christ. It is further of importance, not
only for protection against the world, and as a means
of hostilely overcoming it; but as a means of gain
ing disciples out of the world, and even winning the
world itself to faith. In this is seen the reason why,
though Christ leaves the world, the disciples must
remain in it; why they must be in it, though not of
it ; for Christ has sent them into the world, even as
the Father sent him into the world 17 18 cf. I. 417.
We see therefore that this division which is brought
about by the shining of the light of truth in the
world, thereby gathering together into one the scat
tered children of God as against the collective might
of darkness, is the first and fundamental effect of
Christ's work of salvation, as regards both the indi
vidual and the community. Notwithstanding the
mystical element of S. John's thought, and his vivid
sense of personal union with Christ and God, salva
tion is not to be thought of apart from the commu
nity, which is the expression of separation out of the
world and of adherence to Christ.

3. The Doom of the World
We have seen how slight a stress S. John lays
upon the developments of the future ; that he does

136 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
not dwell upon the conceptions of now and then, but
of here and there, above and below, heaven and
earth. But nevertheless there lingers in his expres
sion, " this world " (6 k6o-/jio<; ovto<s), the implication
of another and a future world. He looks forward to
Christ's coming again 14 3, which can only be under
stood, in the common New Testament sense, of the
Parousia. And this coming is regarded not only
with reference to his receiving of his own unto him
self, but also as a judgment; for it requires a certain
boldness and confidence to face him "at his coming"
I. 228 — or as it is said in I. 4 17, "in the day of judg
ment " — which only they who abide in him, and are
perfected in love, can possess. S. John's references
to the " last day " and to " the day of judgment "
are far too emphatic to allow us to suppose that they
are merely occasional lapses into the language of the
current representation which had however no place
in the scheme of his own thought. The language
which we considered under the last topic, concerning
Christ's judgment as in a sense already accom
plished, is very far from excluding — it rather pre
supposes — a future day of judgment. When Jesus
asserts that he has come not to judge, but to save the
world, he is expressly contradicting the Jewish ex
pectation that the Messiah at his coming was to
judge the world ; in particular, to right the wrongs
of his people, and execute vengeance upon their ene
mies. Jesus repudiates this interpretation of his
mission, but he by no means denies the necessity
of a definite judgment of mankind. The decisive
sundering of the wicked from the righteous is essen
tial to the idea of completed salvation ; the Christian

SALVATION OUT OF THE WORLD

137

theology therefore retained the Jewish idea of the
Messianic judgment, only it deferred it, as the de
veloped situation demanded, to a second coming of
the Messiah. When the Fourth Gospel represents
that Christ by his very manifestation accomplishes a
judgment which is not only a sentence upon, but in
some measure a separation of, the faithful and the
unbelieving ; it cannot be supposed that a future act
of judgment is thereby rendered superfluous ; it is
rather supposed by the whole character of this repre
sentation that Christ, who is not now here to perform
judgment — although his very manifestation does in
effect accomplish it — will perform it hereafter. For
notwithstanding his denial that his present mission is
one of judgment, Christ confirms the Jewish doctrine
in so far as this, that judgment is a Messianic func
tion. He claims that " the Father hath committed
all judgment unto the Son " 5 22 ; and again, " he
gave him authority to execute judgment, because he
is the Son of man " 5 27. Even the special blessing
which Christ imparts, the eternal life which S. John
thinks of predominantly as a present possession, is
not complete in itself, but requires still a special
exercise of Christ's power in raising up the body at
the last day 639-41 cf. 11242s. In 527-29 the judg
ment which is committed unto the Son of man, is
expressly associated with the resurrection, " in which
all that are in the tombs shall hear his voice, and
shall come forth ; they that have done good, unto
the resurrection of life ; and they that have done ill,
unto the resurrection of judgment." Christ's word
accomplishes a judgment upon earth ; it is his word
also which shall judge a man at the last day 12 48.

138 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
There is nothing to suggest that S. John's idea of the
last day is in any way different from the conception
which was common to Jewish and Christian theology.
According to the Jewish doctrine, time is divided
into two ages or ceons, the age present, and the age
to come. The " last day " is the end of the present
age and ushers in the new. Like the other Apostles,
S. John expects this consummation in the near future.
In his Epistle he writes, " it is the last hour "I. 2 18.
This is not the same as the last day ; it means rather
the hour preceding the day; for it is marked by the
signs which were to precede the consummation, and
the coming of Christ, namely, by the appearance of
the antichrist I. 2 18-22. S. John speaks of many anti
christs, and displays here his disposition to see the
fulfilment of prophecy in the events transacting about
him; but there is in this no essential contradiction
to the prophetic tradition of a single antichrist, for
the spirit of the " many false prophets " is one, and
as " the spirit of error " it is contrasted with " the
Spirit of truth " I. 4 6.
The belief in a final day of judgment is thus incon-
testably clear in S. John's writings cf. Rev. 20 12 13.
Far less clear is the nature of the punishment which
is meted out to the unbelieving world. S. John, whose
interest is engrossed with the positive accomplish
ment of salvation, does not dwell with predilection
upon the reverse of the picture. It is in general suf
ficient to know that the world is judged ; this judg
ment is however further expressed by the fact that
"the prince of this world shall be cast out" 12 3.
cf. \6 ... Christ has " overcome the world" 1633, and
S. John as he writes his Epistle sees the world as a

SALVATION OUT OF THE WORLD 139
power which is indeed still able to persecute and
tempt the Church, but which the Church can over
come through the superior might of Christ 4 4, and
which already " is passing away with its lusts " 2 17.
In his parable of the vine Jesus says, " If a man
abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is
withered ; and they gather them, and cast them into
the fire, and they are burned "156. The very phrase
ology of this verse recalls the saying, likewise para
bolic, of Mat. 13 40, according to which the gathering
and burning of the tares occurs " in the consumma
tion of the age." Both the Jewish and the Christian
view of the last judgment represented it as a partition
of life and death, and "the resurrection of judgment"
which S. John contrasts with " the resurrection of
life " 5 29 would seem to indicate the same concep
tion. As eternal life was the specific gift which
Christ brings to the world, we can hardly conceive
that the punishment of the wicked could consist in
anything but the deprivation of this gift, namely, in
abandonment to death. This would seem to accord
peculiarly well with the characteristics of S. John's
thought. The " sin unto death " of which S. John
speaks in his Epistle 5 16, refers primarily to the Jew
ish discrimination between sins, the legal penalty of
which was death, and such as admitted of ritual
atonement: but doubtless S. John thought of the
eternal death which is God's final punishment for
sin; — cf. Rev. 21 8 "the second death." As the
immunity of believers from judgment is founded
upon the fact that they have already " passed out of
death into life," so the doom of him that loveth not
is simply expressed as an abiding in death I. 3 14.

140

THE LIFE MANIFESTED

The condemnation of the world, so far as it concerns
the positive completion of salvation, is satisfied in
this, that every evil thing opposed to God is
abolished. 4. The Election of the Children of God
We have seen that the division which is brought
about by Christ's appearance among men results, on
the one hand, in the dissolution of the previous cove
nant relation of the Jews by their own re-
God's Election . . ,.,,, -i , ., .,
jection of the Messiah; and on the other,
in the establishment of a new family of God's children
upon the ground of their believing reception of him.
The company which is thus gathered together, sepa
rated from the world, and drawn to God, by their lov
ing reception of the light, is nothing less than a new
covenant congregation which steps into the place
vacated by the old. They also are Jesus' " own "
(cf. 1 M with 13O; and being his, they are the
Father's possession and the people of God 10 .4 26 29
17 9 10. But no people can by its own choice become
God's possession : it is only by God's free grace that
men are called into his fellowship. It was a maxim
in Israel that God had not chosen the nation on
account of its superior excellence or might, but
because he loved his people. It was no otherwise in
the new covenant relation : it was Jesus' choice and
not their own which constituted the disciples his
possession 15 .6 .9; and in the last resort it was God
himself who separated them from the world and
brought them to Jesus 176; they were his because
they were already his Father's and were given unto

SALVATION OUT OF THE WORLD 141
him 63739 IO 29 172. This time however God's elec
tion was not a national but an individual one. It was
indifferent to the question of race 1 .3 ; the Jews
themselves were accorded no privilege above other
peoples, but as many of them as were truly Christ's
sheep were " put forth " of the Jewish fold (e/c/SaXj?
10 4 cf. 934), in order that they, as well as the children
of God who were scattered throughout the world,
might be gathered together as one flock under one
shepherd 10 16 1 1 52.
Notwithstanding the individuality of God's choice,
S. John emphasises highly the unity of the flock;
and although God's people are thus gathered from
out all the world, they are even more thoroughly
sundered from the world, more radically contrasted
with the world, than were the covenant race of old.
The covenant This we have briefly discussed under an-
Peopie other topic, pp. 130 seq. Because they
are not of it, God's people must expect the world's
hatred 1520; while they are in the world they must
endure persecution, but they may nevertheless " be
of good cheer," for Jesus has " overcome the world"
1633; — or, as S. John says in his Epistle, " greater
is he that is in you than he that is in the world " 1. 4 4.
This separation of the people of God from the
world is not a nominal, but a real one : they are not
only called the children of God, but such they are
I. 3 ¦. They are " in truth " what the people of the
Old Covenant were in a figure. The Christian is
God's child because he is actually begotten of God.
This relation manifests itself by ethical likeness to God
I. 2 29 3 9 4 7, which in heaven will be perfected I. 3 2,
and which on earth constitutes a family in which

I42 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
brotherly love, as among actual brothers, is perfectly
spontaneous and natural I. 512. Israel was called
God's vine, Ps. 80 Jer. 2 21 Hos. 10 ¦ ; but Christ is
" the true vine " and his disciples are the branches
15 1 seq. In contrast to the Jews — whose worship
was nevertheless an intelligent one 4 22 — the Christians
are " the true worshippers," and " worship the Father
in spirit and in truth " 4 23. Instead of the figurative
Temple, Jesus' body is the true Temple 2 21, because
it more really represents God's presence among men.
The essential importance of the Temple is that it
represents God's abiding presence among his people.
In the Christian community, as in the heavenly
Jerusalem, Rev. 21 22, there is no temple needed, " for
God himself and the Lamb are the Temple thereof."
Even when Jesus has ascended to heaven, it is still
true that God is in the midst of his people I. 4 4 ; and
the idea of the Temple is completely fulfilled in the
mystical union of the believer with God, in his taking
up his abode within each disciple 1423, of which we
are assured " by the Spirit which he gave us " I. 3 24
4 "3. The people of God, who in reality do not belong to
the world, are sent into the world, even as Christ was
sent into the world 17 is; and for the purpose of this
mission they must be sanctified " in truth," as Christ
sanctified himself 1 7 19. They are to be a holy people,
as Israel was of old, set apart and consecrated to the
Lord. This sanctification is wrought by God 17 17,
and by Christ 17 .9; but it requires also on the part of
the believer continuous ethical effort to preserve him
self from all contamination of the world I. 3 3 cf. 152.
Christians are engaged in an ethical struggle with the

SALVATION OUT OF THE WORLD 143
world. They must keep themselves pure, not only
from idolatry, but from every such relation to the
world, and to the things which are in the world, as
would prove essential community with it. They may
not love the world, nor the specious pleasures which
it offers, " for all that is in the world, the lust of the
flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the vainglory of life, is
not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world
passeth away, and the lust thereof" I. 2 16 17 The
result of this struggle is not doubtful, for in the last
resort it is God's might and not man's which gains the
victory. Christ has overcome the world, and his
victory is the ground of the disciples' confidence 16 33.
The victory of the children of God over the world is
grounded in the fact, that " greater is he that is in you
than he that is in the world " I. 4 4. " We know that
whosoever is begotten of God sinneth not; but
he that was begotten of God keepeth him, and
the Evil One toucheth him not" I. 5 «8. It is clear
from this last verse that S. John cannot think of the
possibility of a true member of the family of God
falling away into apostasy. The more decidedly
man's relation to God is traced back to God's own
choice and work, so much the more difficult is it to
think of the continuance of this relationship as depen
dent upon human fickleness. The very fact however
of the extension of the Christian community in the
world, brings with it the possibility that heterogeneous
elements may mix with it. Deceivers I. 2 4 and
deceived I. 1 s, Christians only "in tongue" I. 318,
even children of the Devil I. 3 1°, false teachers and
lying prophets, can for a time appear as members of
the cemmunity, although they are of the world, and

144 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
finally return to the world where they belong and
where they find a hearing I. 4 5. The community,
like the individual, must continually purify itself from
the contamination of the world ; and S. John sees in the
severing of these false members from the Church, the
proof " that they all are not of us " I. 2 19.
But not only is the final victory assured for the
children of God ; they are altogether kept from sin.
Upon this point S. John's statements are clear and
emphatic enough, but they seem to be involved in a
radical contradiction. On the one hand he says:
" Whosoever is begotten of God doeth no sin, because
his seed abideth in him, and he cannot sin, because
he is begotten of God" I. 3 9. It is only in appear
ance that this contradicts I. 1 7-1°, for this is in a sense
the continuation of the Baptist's preaching of repent
ance, and may perhaps be referred especially to sins
committed before the cleansing by the blood of Jesus,
which is received upon entrance into the Christian
community, and he goes on to warn those who have
become Christians against sin. This requires him
however either to leave quite hopeless the brother
who does nevertheless commit sin ; and with his
absolute, " He that sinneth hath not seen him, neither
knoweth him," to cut him off from any communion
with God ; or to point out to him some still remain
ing possibility of forgiveness. This latter he does by
pointing to Jesus and his priestly intercession with
God I. 2 1. Jesus' sacrifice was made once and for
all I. 2 2, but his priesthood is perpetual and eternal.
The contradiction which is here involved in S. John's
expression, is only partly resolved by distinguishing
between sin as a habit, and particular acts of sin (see

SALVATION OUT OF THE WORLD 1 45
page no), for S. John's language does not con
sistently observe this discrimination. For S. John, as
for the Jews, sin is transgression of law (dvop.la) I. 3 4.
The Old Covenant discriminated between sins of
ignorance, for which pardon might be had through
ritual atonement, Num. 1 5 27) and sins done " with a
high hand," which involved irrevocable separation
from the Covenant, Num. 15 30 31. So also S. John
distinguishes between the wilful (cf. Heb. 10 26) breach
of God's Covenant, which irretrievably forfeits that
eternal life which is to be had only in the Christian
brotherhood, and sins for which a brother's inter
cession may still avail to obtain restoration to com
munion in the brotherhood, and to participation in
life I. 5 .6. The distinction is however not quite the
same in the two cases, for the Christian Law is no
longer expressed in external ordinances, which a man
might in ignorance transgress; but in the single
principle of likeness to God, of love ; therefore as so
inward an affair that it is at bottom impossible to
conceive of any transgression of it which is not a pre
sumptuous breach of covenant, a manifestation of
radical subjection to the darkness and to the dominion
of the Devil, to whom all hatred is traced. But sin is
a broader conception than this : " all unrighteousness
(d&iKla) is sin " I. 5 17 ; every instance of yielding to
the temptations of the world, of straying from the way
of absolute rectitude, although it does not involve a
radical deflection of the heart from God, is sin ; —
" and there is sin not unto death." This is explained
symbolically in the Gospel, by Jesus' washing of the
disciples' feet : " He that is bathed needeth not save
to wash his feet, but is clean every whit "13 1°. The

146 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
lustration of the New Covenant cleanses perfectly and
for ever, there is needed no second bath, but only a
washing of the feet from such contamination as is
inevitable to all who walk in the world.
There is one instance in which even the necessity
of confession and forgiveness for the Christian is quite
left out of account. In I. 3 18-20 it is said : " Children,
let us not love in word, neither with the tongue ; but
in deed and truth. Hereby shall we know that we
are of the truth, and shall assure our heart before
him, whereinsoever our heart condemn us ; because
God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all
things." In the consciousness of fulfilling God's
commandment by a genuine love of the brethren, the
Christian need not be for ever perturbed by his own
conscience convicting him of particular delinquencies,
for God who knoweth all judgeth according to the in
most disposition of the heart. It was in this thought
S. Peter found relief, when after his fall Jesus examines
him : " Lovest thou me ? " — His own heart testified
against him, accusing him of denial; but in the assur
ance of true love, he appeals to the superior knowl
edge of him who knows all : " Lord, thou knowest all
things ; thou knowest that I love thee "21 is-17.
We have seen in the foregoing how readily S. John
applies to the Christian community, the ideas of
covenant relationship which were familiar to the
Jews. It is therefore a ground for some surprise
that he does not use the word covenant, nor expressly
contrast the Christian community with the Jewish.
This seems to indicate that, although he felt for him
self a personal necessity of constructing his theology
in the terms of Hebrew thought, he did not find in

SALVATION OUT OF THE WORLD 147
the idea of the Covenant the highest expression of
the salvation brought by Christ; and that in this
instance, as in so many others, he avoided the use of
words which were alien to his gentile readers.
How unserviceable this word was for the expression
of the idea of salvation to native heathen, we can see
from the devices by which S. Paul, Gal. 3 .s, and the
author of Hebrews 9 16 seq. sought to adopt it to their
modes of thought.
It is a ground of far more surprise that he also
omits the name which designated Christ's disciples,
in their organised unity, as the people of God. The
word Church (iKKXtjcrla) occurs only in the third
Epistle, and then only in relation to the individual
congregation III. 6 9 10. There was of course no reason
for its use in the Gospel, and its omission in the
Epistle may be an accident. At any rate no one
could lay more emphasis than does S. John upon
the conceptions which were most fundamental to the
Christian idea of the Church; in particular upon
the unity of the whole brotherhood, the very idea
which the name Church in its universal reference was
meant to express. The pre-eminence of the Apostles
is also clearly recognised 1320 15 16 17.8 20 21 I. i3
4 6 II. 10 III. 9 seq., and it is recorded in 20 23 how
Christ bestowed upon them plenipotentiary author
ity; though their unique function in the Church is
more commonly referred to the fact that they are
true witnesses of the historical manifestation of Jesus,
having been with him from the beginning 15 27 193s
I. 1 1-5 . As however it is God's power which protects
the disciple from evil, and as direct fellowship with
him is the highest Christian ideal; so too it is the

148 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
distinction of the people of the New Covenant as the
prophet foretold, Jer. 3 1 34, that " they shall be all
taught of God " 6 45. It is no longer necessary for
every man to teach his brother, for the Holy Spirit
directly teaches them all things 142s. In the same
way it is said in the Epistle : " Ye have an anointing
from the Holy One, and ye know all things " 2 20.
Even the Apostolic teaching is not indispensable to
God's children who are thus gifted with prophetic
inspiration of the truth : " And as for you, the
anointing which ye received of him abideth in you,
and ye need not that any one teach you ; but as his
anointing teacheth you concerning all things, and is
true, and is no lie, and even as it taught you, ye abide
in him " I. 2 27.
We have in this chapter already studied a number
of the traits which mark the Christian community as
God's covenant people; but we have still to note
the most important element of the Covenant. If a
company of sinful men gathered out of the world was
to be brought into real communion with God ; it
could be accomplished only by doing away with that
which on the part of men constituted an absolute
impediment to such communion : with all impurity,
and above all with sin. This obvious condition de
termined the conception of the foundation of the Old
The sacrifice Covenant; and the New also could not
rfST011 even be thought of apart from the ideas
covenant of purification and expiation. It is the
more necessary to emphasise this point because it is
frequently asserted that the idea of atonement has
absolutely no place in S. John's writings, and that
Christ's death has importance only as a manifestation

SALVATION OUT OF THE WORLD 1 49
of his love. Some even of those who admit S. John's
authorship of the Epistle, contend that his emphatic
representations of Christ's death in the aspect of a
sacrifice, are merely echoes of conceptions elsewhere
current in the Church, and have no organic place in
S. John's theology. But the Gospel too furnishes
very distinct expressions of the objective significance
of Christ's death ; and although it is unquestionably
true that the idea of atonement does not — as with
S. Paul and the author of Hebrews — occupy the
foremost place in his representation ; that indeed it -
recedes before the predominant representation of the -
moral effectiveness of Christ's revelation ; it never
theless remains the sine qua non of fellowship with
God. Jesus is not only Truth, Light, and Life ; he
is also " the propitiation for our sins" I. 2 2. In I.
4 10 this is actually represented as God's purpose in
sending the Son. And when in the preceding and
parallel verse, God's purpose is defined in different
terms — " in order that we might live through him "
— it is clear that the author thinks of men as fallen
into a state of death through their sin, and saved
from this judgment by Christ's sin-offering. With
this hint we see the significance of such words as 6 51,
that Jesus' flesh offered in death will give life to the
world. The world is in a state of death on account
of sin, and therefore in need of salvation, which in
such a case cannot be thought of apart from atone
ment 3 17 442 1247 I. 414. And if we have a right
to interpret I. 4 9, according to the following verse,
we cannot read the similar saying in the Gospel 3 16,
without a reference to Jesus' death. At any rate
there is a reference to Jesus' death in verse 14 of the

150 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
same chapter, if we may interpret it as S. John does
the similar saying 12 33.
The significance of Jesus' death is thought of more
particularly with reference to the very foundation of
the New Covenant congregation. It is not only the
shepherd's voice which gathers together the scattered
sheep and constitutes them one flock 10 16; the lay
ing down of his life is also necessary to this end
10 11 15 17. And although Jesus' death cannot ac
cording to the terms of the parable be represented
in a sacrificial aspect ; the thought is expressed that
it avails not only to save the life of the sheep from
the wolf's attack 10 12, but to give them a more abun
dant life 10 10. How important this conception was
for S. John himself, we see in 1 1 50-52 : " It is expe
dient for you that one man should die for the people,
and that the whole Nation perish not. Now this he
said not of himself: but being high priest that year,
he prophesied that Jesus should die for the Nation ;
and not for the Nation only, but that he might gather
into one the children of God that are scattered
abroad." He here interprets Caiaphas' astute counsel
as a prophecy of Jesus' death as a sacrifice for the
Nation, and more particularly as the covenant sacri
fice which constituted the scattered children of God
one people. It is likewise S. John's own interpreta
tion of Jesus' words, which represents his death as
the event which draws all men unto him 123233. In
17 19 Jesus represents himself more expressly as the
covenant sacrifice which consecrates his disciples as
God's people : " For their sakes I consecrate myself,
that they themselves also may be consecrated in
truth." In view of the fact that Jesus has already

SALVATION OUT OF THE WORLD 151
entered upon the way to his death, this saying can
only refer to his sacrificial consecration to God ; and
the consecration of his disciples, which he thereby
effects, is a consecration to God's possession as a cove
nant people (cf. Heb. 2 " 10 1° 13 12). This is a con
secration " in truth," because it in reality accomplishes
that which the Old Covenant sacrifices of beasts repre
sented only in a figure. Jesus' death as a covenant
sacrifice has reference solely to the covenant people.
Although we have seen that his saving work, and in
particular his "propitiation," is "for" the whole
world I. 2 2 ; it is effectual only for those who stand
within the covenant congregation. The Old Testa
ment idea of the Covenant was essentially that of
peculiar and exclusive privilege : the New Covenant
was likewise' exclusive, though only those were ex
cluded who were self-excluded. The forgiveness of
sins was one of the privileges of the Old Covenant,
and it was prophetically promised as one of the
special blessings of the New. It is therefore thor
oughly in accord with the Old Testament view when
S. John represents that only he who by walking in
the light has come into fellowship with God, and
stands thereby in fellowship with God's people, can
enjoy the cleansing of his sins through Christ's blood
I. 1 7. The same conception is postulated in the use
of the Old Testament phrase, " faithful and just "
(trio-rift Kal SiKaios) I. I 9. It is only in relation to the
Covenant that God's mercy in forgiving sins can be
characterised as an act of faithfulness and justice;
but where the covenant atonement is already pro
vided, and the confession of sins is truly made, for
giveness is simply a consequence of God's faithfulness

152 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
to his promise and his righteousness in observing the
covenanted terms.
Christ's sacrifice, like the sacrifice of the Covenant
in Ex. 24, was made once for all. Moreover, in the
Christian dispensation there was no provision of re
peated sacrifices for recurrent sins ; for the purpose
of Christ's coming was, both by his sacrifice 1 29, and
by his total manifestation I. 3 5, " to take away
sins ; " and we have already seen that for God's chil
dren, sin and the sinful power is already radically
overcome and abolished.
It would indeed be strange if the sacrificial idea
were ignored in a Gospel which begins with the
Baptist's witness to the lamb of God 1 29, and ends
by representing Jesus' death as occurring on the very
day, perhaps at the very hour, when the Passover
was wont to be slain. It was Jesus himself who
represented his death as a covenant sacrifice of atone
ment when at the Last Supper he took the cup, and
said : " This is my blood of the Covenant." The
phrase is clearly a reproduction of Ex. 24 8, cf. Heb.
9 20. S. Mark 14 24 adds, " which is shed for many; "
and S. Matthew 2628, still further, "for the remission
of sins." S. Paul I. Cor. 1 1 25, and S. Luke 22 20, unite
in calling it the cup of " the New Covenant in my
blood ; " and this conception was firmly rooted in
the Church. We cannot point to any single sacrifice
of the Old Testament cultus as the exclusive type of
Christ's sacrifice : it fulfilled the idea of sacrifice in
general. It was in particular the foundation of a
covenant ; but many of the sacrifices recorded in the
Old Testament besides that of Ex. 24 were of this
character. The Passover, Ex. 13, was a covenant sac-

SALVATION OUT OF THE WORLD 153
rifice of earlier date, and more primitive type ; and
many of its inspiring ideas have survived in the
Christian Eucharist. It represented not only a na
tional, but a family covenant, and like every covenant
sacrifice its benefits were shared only by those who
ate it. It was also more closely a type of Christ's
sacrifice, because of its particular reference to deliver
ance from death. S. John does not record the insti
tution of the Christian Passover: it was sufficiently
well known through the earlier Gospels, and through
the common practice of the Church. But Jesus' dis
course in chapter 6 51-58 is an indubitable reference
to it: his hard saying could not have been com
pletely intelligible till after his sacrificial death. We
have already observed how in this chapter S. John
blends the subjective and objective points of view :
in verse 40 it is " he that beholdeth the Son, and
believeth on him has eternal life ; " whereas in
verse 54 it is " he that eateth my flesh and drinketh
my blood." But this does not render less real the
reference to Jesus' objective sacrifice; it is rather
this element which is the ultimate explanation of the
life-giving effect of his manifestation. Here too it is
the eating of the sacrificial flesh which conditions
communion with Christ 6 56, the gift of eternal life
6 53 58, and resurrection from the dead 6 54, or escape
from death 6 50. It is true that the idea of sacrifice
is not only blended with other conceptions, but alto
gether raised from the plane of merely ritual and
legal conception, to the loftiest mysticism; but it
shows nevertheless how fundamental was the notion
of sacrifice in S. John's estimation of Christ's work.
We have still to speak of the lustrations of the

I54 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
New Covenant. Ritual lustrations were a special
feature of the old dispensation, and a general cleans
ing with water was particularly prophesied as a pre
paration for the coming of the Messiah, Ez. 3625. S.
John lays very special emphasis upon the Baptist's
mission, as the preparation for the Messiah ; and
although he does not expressly consider the char
acter and necessity of S. John's baptism, he had the
less reason to do so because it survived in the Chris
tian practice, and was therefore a matter of universal
acquaintance. He does not however disparage S.
John's baptism with water, by contrasting it with the
spiritual baptism of the Messiah 1 26 31 33 ; for the
same form was continued by Christ and his disciples
3 22, 4 1. Jesus closely associated himself with the
Baptist 3 11 when he spoke to Nicodemus about the
ethical cleansing which was necessary for entrance
into the kingdom of God 3 3 5. This baptism was
indeed one of the Spirit, as well as of water; but
Jesus nevertheless classes this ethical purification
amongst the earthly things which a teacher of Israel
might be supposed to understand, and which he him
self had witnessed as the fruit of the Baptist's mission
3 10-12. Necessary as it was, however, the cleansing
with water did not involve the forgiveness of sins,
which was possible only on the ground of Christ's
sacrifice. This difference between Christ's purifica
tion and that of the Baptist, S. John suggests in the
Epistle 5 6-9. Christ came, not like the Baptist "with
the water only," " but with the water and with the
blood ; " and this serves as his witness that he is the
one to whose coming the Scripture testifies. For
although the Scripture testifies that the Messianic

SALVATION OUT OF THE WORLD 155
era must begin with a cleansing with water, Ez. 36 25,
it is not therefore the bringer of the water who is " he
that cometh," for the Scripture also testifies to a
general remission of sins on the ground of a sin offer
ing, which Jesus made in his blood. This explains
the interest with which S. John notes the mingling of
water and blood from Jesus' pierced side 193435.
Blood I. 1 9, as well as water, is a purifying agent,
and we are almost compelled to suppose that S. John
had in mind Zechariah's prophecy of the " fountain
opened for sin and for uncleanness "13 ¦, which follows
almost immediately after the phrase which he quotes
in this connection, " they shall look on him whom
they pierced " 19 37 Zech. 12 10. We see now the im
portance of the triple testimony which he adduces in
the Epistle 5 7-9. It was to Isaiah's prophecy, par
ticularly to chapter 53 (cf. 5921), that the Baptist
himself implicitly referred 1 29, to express the con
trast between his own mission and that of the Messiah.
The Messiah must come not with baptism alone, but
with the blood of atonement, and with the gift of the
Spirit. It is thus that Jesus came : with the water of
baptism and the blood of atonement he brings also
the gift of the Spirit 7 37-39 ; — therefore, " the Spirit
beareth witness, because the Spirit is the truth "
I. 5 7, and all three, the Spirit, the water, and the
blood, agree in one witness, which is the witness of
God concerning his Son I. 5 8 9, as the Messiah who
comes in fulfilment of prophecy.

B. REALISATION OF THE POSITIVE CONCEPT
OF SALVATION THROUGH THE REVELA
TION OF THE TRUTH
Under the general topic of this chapter, The Life
Manifested, we have thus far considered what is in
volved in the very fact of the coming of the Logos
into the world and his becoming flesh : the judicial
discrimination which is effected amongst men by his
manifestation in the world ; the consequent doom of
the world, and the election out of the world of a
covenant people, who through Christ's death enjoy
forgiveness and cleansing from sin, and access to God.
These considerations have to do predominantly,
though not exclusively (for we would not sharply
draw a distinction where S. John does not draw it),
with the objective aspects of salvation. But we have
already remarked that the preponderating emphasis
of S. John's representation lies rather upon the sub
jective appropriation of salvation, which also is the
more positive conception, because it deals not with
what man is saved from, but with what he is saved
to; with the positive realisation of salvation in the
children of God, rather than with its mere conditions.
Eternal life is the key-note of this section, and with it
we consider the whole range of ideas with which it is
most characteristically associated. Of these, the first
is the truth, which Christ himself revealed, and after
him and in his stead the Spirit. The truth, or the
light, being appropriated by faith, issues in the knowl-

POSITIVE CONCEPT OF SALVATION 157
edge of God, which at once produces life in men, and
constitutes an essential element of it; — an essential
element, but not the whole of the idea of life ; for
fellowship in its triple form (with Christ, with the
Father and with the brethren), which is as we have
seen brought about by the death of Christ, and yet in
this connection seems to be more directly conditioned
by the believing reception of the light, is the chief
element of S. John's idea of life, and the very fulness
of Christian joy. This divine life in God's children is
both manifested and tested by filial likeness to the
Father. Christian ethics is from this point of view
the spontaneous fruit of the true life ; although it is
also directly conditioned by a true knowledge of God,
and displayed by imitation of him ; — pre-eminently
by love. It is, as we might expect, in the Epistle
rather than in the Gospel that we find the clearest
and most developed expression of S. John's own
thought. We have seen that S. John derived his
doctrine not only from Jesus' express teaching, but
from meditation upon his manifestation as a whole ;
and though this is peculiarly true of his estimate of
the significance of Jesus' Person, it is likewise true of
his conception of the boon which he bestowed upon
the world ; — of that eternal life which is appropriate
to the Christian community, its nature, its genesis, and
the forms of its manifestation. This is not to deny
what we have already repeatedly noticed, that almost
all of S. John's characteristic ideas occur also in
Christ's speeches; and in general we may say that
no idea emerges in the Epistle which has not its text
in the Gospel. But it is perfectly in accordance with
the nature of the case that the Epistle, which is the

158 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
normal expression of S. John's religious conscious
ness, presents his own theological conceptions more
prominently. The ideas which we have to consider
in this section — the Spirit and the truth, faith and
the knowledge of God, the new birth and eternal life,
the Christian fellowship and likeness to God — are all
of them common in the New Testament, and yet each
is in itself and in its associations in greater or less
degree peculiar to S. John. We have however to
guard against two misconceptions at this point. In
the first place we must not regard this scheme of
thought as though it were a system complete in itself
and independent of the more objective considerations
we have just been studying; for, though we have here
isolated it for the sake of clearness of treatment, it is
not thus discriminated by S. John, but is, as we have
seen, associated so closely with the purely objective
significance of Christ's work, that the same fact is at
the same time regarded from both points of view (see
page 30^^.). In the second place, we must not ex
aggerate the independence of S. John's thought in this
particular ; for even this most characteristic sequence
of thought has its root in the Old Testament. The
Son of God, by his essential likeness to the Father,
revealed God to men, and so placed them in that true
communion with him which is the very fruition of
eternal life. This is the briefest expression of S.
John's Gospel. There is no single passage which so
completely sums up this message as the penultimate
verse of the Epistle, " We know that the Son of God is
come, and hath given us an understanding, that we
know (Bidvoiav Xva yivdxTKtofjiep) him that is true, and
are in him that is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. This

POSITIVE CONCEPT OF SALVATION 159
is the True God and eternal life." This saying is how
ever in its most significant part the reproduction of
an Old Testament promise ; — "I will give them a
heart to know me, that I am the LORD " Jer. 24 7.
In the same verse, the consequence of God's disclosure
of himself in the very hearts of men is expressed in
this, that " they shall be my people, and I will be
their God." This mutual approach and appropriation
on the part of God and his people is virtually a new
covenant which rests upon a new and intimate knowl
edge of God. And another passage which is in many
respects parallel, Jer. 3 1 31-34, promises expressly the
establishment of a new covenant, in place of the one
which had been broken, upon the basis of forgiveness
of sins, and of such a knowledge of God as should
make his law an inward revelation, written upon the
heart. In the very nature of the case, a positive relation
of men to God can come about only by his revelation
of himself. It was God's revelation of himself on
Sinai which, more positively than the sacrifices
there inaugurated, brought Israel into covenant
relation to God ; and God's covenants with the Patri
archs rested upon a new revelation of his Name,
Gen. 32 29 Ex. 6 3. According to the Hebrew idea, a
name ought to be descriptive of the essence of the
object named; and it is on this account that the
Name by which God reveals himself is a matter of
such profound significance. S. John retains this
pregnant Hebraism, recording Jesus' profession of the
accomplishment of his mission, " I manifested thy
Name unto the men whom thou gavest me out of the
world" 176; and his prayer, "Holy Father, keep

l6o THE LIFE MANIFESTED
them in thy Name " 17 ". The Name by which God
has made himself known to the Church, is most
adequately expressed by S. Paul : " The God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ " Eph. 1 3 Col. 1 3
II. Cor. 1 1 31; and S.John's idea is substantially the same
when he records that unique saying in which Jesus
made over to his disciples the conception of the divine
paternity which he had hitherto so highly exalted by
appropriating it to himself: " My Father and your
Father, and my God and your God " 20 17.
Old Testament prophecy was at one in the expec
tation that the Messianic time would be distinguished
by a more profound and more general knowledge of
God Is. n 9 5921 Joel 3 1 seq., so that all being taught
of God, would need no human teachers, Jer. 31 34; and
that there would be wrought therewith a radical moral
change in the Nation Is. 1 27 2923 32 ¦ seq. 15 seq. 33 5
Ez. 1 1 19 362s seq. Zeph. 312. But the prophetic
pictures differed very distinctly in respect to the
instrumentality by which this new revelation was to
be brought about. Jeremiah thought rather of a
quickening and deepening of the religious conscious
ness, which did not require an actual manifestation of
God ; other prophets however expect such a reve
lation of the divine glory as shall surpass even the
manifestation upon Sinai, Is. 40 5. The inauguration
of the era of salvation will unquestionably be God's
own work; but, as in the establishment of the Old
Covenant, this may be accomplished through chosen
instruments ; and therefore it is a prophet that is ex
pected, Deut. 18 15 .8, or especially the Messianic King
who shall realise God's will upon earth by the estab
lishment of God's kingdom, Jer. 33 152.. The diversity

POSITIVE CONCEPT OF SALVATION l6l
of the prophetic pictures of the coming age, explains
the variety in the Messianic expectation which Jesus
encountered among the Jews. It furnished also a prob
lem for Christian theology to solve. For from the
beginning the Church was confident of possessing in
Jesus all that God had promised his people ; and it
had therefore to show how the diverse lines of
prophecy terminated in him. It is S. John's distinction
to have solved this problem more perfectly than any
other writer in the New Testament. He represented
Jesus not only as Prophet and as King, but as God ;
— the Word of God become flesh, manifesting the
divine glory in his own person, and thus imparting
the vision of God to men. The advance which S.
John makes from the revelation which Jesus was able
to impart by reason of his perfect knowledge of God,
to the revelation which was given in his work and in
his nature, the vision of God in the Person of Jesus ;
is — although it is not without analogy in other parts
of the New Testament — the most characteristic and
the most precious contribution which he has made to
Christian theology. The preponderance of this idea
in S. John's writings, his representation of the saving
potency of the revelation of God in Christ, which of
itself regenerates, sanctifies, produces eternal life,
establishes fellowship with God and amongst the
brethren, and conditions the Christian morality; is so
far from being a strange departure from the Old
Testament type of thought, that it is rather, beyond
any other representation of the New Testament, the
most faithful to the prophecy of the Messianic age,
which likewise pictured salvation predominantly in
terms bf the revelation and knowledge of God.

162 THE LIFE MANIFESTED

The New Birth — The Light of Life
We have already studied the significance of S.
John's definition, " God is light; " we have seen that
God is also the source of life, and that the Logos who
Christ the was °f like nature was therefore the light
Truth of the world, the life which he shared
with the Father becoming the light of men. Keep
ing in mind these fundamental conceptions, we have
here merely to consider how this divine life is imparted
to God's children ; how the truth — that is the reve
lation of God through Jesus' word and work — being
appropriated by faith, issues in that knowledge of
God which is the condition of eternal life.
In the first place we have to consider the relation
of Christ himself to this impartation of life through the
truth. We have only to rehearse at this point what
has been more fully stated in another place (especially
page 86 seq.). We have seen how S. John's whole
theology turns on this point ; how his choice of the
name Logos was itself conditioned by the desire to
represent Jesus as the personal revelation of God ;
how Jesus is the Way to life just because he is the
Truth 14 6; how his revelation is the light which con
ditions life 8 12. Jesus himself represents his mission
in the world as essentially a " witness," a recounting
of the " heavenly things '' which he had seen with
the Father 3 " .2 ; and it is his " interpretation " of the
invisible 1 is, his " message " concerning the nature of
God I. 1 5, which is for the Evangelist the chief end
of his manifestation. Among the so-called offices of
Christ, it is that of Prophet which is pre-eminent in

POSITIVE CONCEPT OF SALVATION 163
S. John's representation. Jesus' claim to be King
rests upon the fact that he bears witness to the truth,
and this is in fact the very end and aim of his birth
and mission in the world 18 37. It is S. John especially
who gives us information about the popular estimation
of Jesus as a prophet 1 ai 25 6 m 7 40. The Baptist
witnesses to him as to a prophet : " He whom God
hath sent " — the ambassador of God par excellence —
who " speaketh the words of God," and like every
prophet is furnished with God's Spirit, but unlike any
other prophet, " not by measure " 3 34. It is his pro
phetic function which Jesus makes prominent when he
says, " The words which thou hast given unto me, I
have given unto them " 17s; when he represents him
self as " sent," particularly in the saying, " The Father
which sent me, he has given me a commandment
what I should speak" 1249. Jesus speaks of himself
as a prophet 4 44, and associates himself closely with
the Baptist 3 ». He describes himself as " a man
that hath told you the truth, which I heard from God "
8 40. It is thus that S. John carries out in his histori
cal representation the general conception of Christ as
the revealing Word and the light of the world.
Jesus is the medium of life to the world 10 28 17 2
I. 495.1 12. We have seen that this is along one
line of thought particularly referred to his sacrificial
death ; along the line which we are at present pursu
ing, it is referred to the fact that he is the revelation
of God. He is the medium of life, because he is the
" Word of life " I. 1 1. He is the life manifested
I. I 2, and the revelation of the divine nature which
in him has been brought within the apprehension of
human faculties — heard, seen, beheld, handled — is

1 64 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
the foundation of the Christian fellowship 1. 1 3, and the
ground of Christian joy I. 1 4. But it is not only
the total manifestation of God in the Word, nor the
expression of the divine nature as light; which is
life-giving 8 «, and conditions Christian fellowship ;
Jesus' several sayings, his words, are also life-giving
(prjpara) 66369; his commandment is eternal life
12 5°; and abiding in his word, or keeping it, insures
deliverance from death 8 s>, is the condition of true
discipleship 831, and of fellowship with God 1423.
So also in chapter 10, it is Jesus' voice which draws
together the scattered sheep into one flock 10 3 ¦& 27.
Jesus' word has also the power to cleanse 15 3, and
this power — as indeed every other which is ascribed
to it — is due to the fact that it is in reality the
Father's word, and that it is the truth 17 17. It is the
truth which sanctifies, and which makes free 8 32.
Walking or abiding in the truth I. 3 19 II. 4 III. 3 4, is
the same as walking or abiding in the light I. 1 7 2 10.
The knowledge of God is the condition of eternal
life ; and this is what is meant in 1 7 3 : " This is eter
nal life, that they should know thee the only true
God, and him whom thou didst send, Jesus Christ."
This was not a notion strange to the Jews, for they
themselves thought to possess eternal life in the
revelation of their Scriptures (an idea which has
many points of contact in the Old Testament, Deut.
32 47, particularly in the wisdom literature, see Ps.
1 19 50 93); and Christ's assertion was to the effect
that his revelation, as the only adequate one, could
alone give life.
S. John's representation reaches its highest ex
pression in 6 40, " that every one that beholdeth the

POSITIVE CONCEPT OF SALVATION 1 65
Son, and believeth on him, should have eternal life "
cf. 1245; — just as in the case of the serpent, Num.
218 (see 3 14) : He that looketh shall live.
We have hitherto considered the vision of God
only as it was manifested by Jesus' bodily presence
The spirit of upon earth. But the same Gospel whose
t™1" earlier part treats of the coming of the
light into the world 1 9 3 19 123546, treats at the
end of Jesus' departure out of the world 13 1. It
would be a poor fulfilment of the prophecy which
promised an enduring covenant, and an eternal pres
ence of God among his people, if with Jesus' ascen
sion the newly given vision came to an end, and
remoteness succeeded again to the close relation of fel
lowship with God which Jesus had established. Jesus'
departure from the world was in fact a turning-point of
the highest importance. The sensible, visible mani
festation of God before all the world came thereby to
an end. That Jesus was the light of the world as
long as he was in the world 9 5, signifies that for the
world at least his departure was the disappearance
of the light and the closing in of darkness 123536.
Hence it is said, " the life was the light of men," and
" he was in the world " 1 4 10. Jesus' separation from
the world signified therefore a judgment upon it
12 31 16 10. Because the world has neither recognised
nor received God's revelation 1725 I. 3 1 it falls back
into the dominion of the darkness 12 35. The illumi
nation which is experienced in Christ is however an
enduring one for those who by faithful reception of
the light have broken the bonds of the darkness 1246
812, and become sons of light 1236. For them the

1 66 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
true light continues to shine I. 2»; they are in the
light I. 2 9, and " walk in the light, as he is in the light "
I. i 7 ; and so is fulfilled in them the promise made
concerning Jerusalem: "The LORD shall be thy
everlasting light " Is. 6o 20.
Jesus' departure out of the world had moreover the
effect of revealing him more clearly as the Son of
man who was from heaven 3 13, and of removing the
causes of stumbling which were due to an imperfect
recognition of his nature 66162. But above every
thing else, the " lifting up " of the Son of man 3 m,
serves to make him accessible to the faith of all 3 15.
S. John is perfectly well aware of the double mean
ing of this expression. He finds in it indeed a hint
of the mode of Jesus' death 1233 1832, and so de
rives from Jesus' own words a proof of the signifi
cance of his death. He also sees in it a revelation of
Jesus' veritable character and dignity 8 28, and of his
love and obedience to the Father 14 31. But above
all it denotes, according to its primary meaning, his
transcendence of earthly limitation and elevation to
heaven, whence he can exercise universal rule, and
make his saving work effectual for all 12 32. The de
parture from this world which is accomplished in his
death, is therefore anything rather than a breaking off
of his relation with the world. Only as the one who
gives his life, in order that he may take it again 10 17
1224, does Jesus attain to the universal significance
which his mission demands 1016H 52. Jesus' reveal
ing work not only continues, but in becoming more
spiritual, more immediate and more inward, it is able
to lay aside the restrictions which clung to his earthly
teaching 1625. It is precisely as he is exalted to

POSITIVE CONCEPT OF SALVATION 1 67
heaven that Jesus is able to come into the most in
ward and direct relation with his disciples ; — "I in
them and they in me."
The conception of Jesus' continued influence upon
and presence among his disciples, is founded upon
the idea of his " coming again," which S. John dis
tinguishes, as well from his visible reappearance after
his resurrection, 16 16 seq. as from his final return
143. Jesus will not leave his disciples orphaned, he
will come, and though hidden from the world he
remains for them an enduring vision. His unity with
the Father constitutes the ground of the disciples'
fellowship with God. It is no longer /, but " We
will come and make our abode with him " 14 1823.
This coming again of Jesus, and abiding forever
with his disciples, is explicitly referred to the gift
of the Holy Spirit. In a broader sense, in the sense
which was current in the Old Testament, the Spirit
of God was said to be bestowed upon Jesus to equip
him for his Messianic mission 3 34, cf. 1 1 32. S. John
is however consistent in his representation that the
Spirit, in the special Christian significance, could not
be given until Jesus was glorified 7 39, cf. 20 22 ; and
he explains Jesus' earlier references to the Spirit, as
prophecies of that which was to be given. Accord
ing to S. Luke also the gift of the Spirit belonged
exclusively to the exalted Christ, Luke 24 49 Acts 2 33.
It was only then, Acts 1 5, that he justified the testi
mony of the Baptist, that he should baptise with the
Holy Spirit, Mark 1 8.
Corresponding to the importance which was at
tached to the pouring out of God's Spirit in the
prophetic picture of the Messianic age, S. John lays

1 68 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
upon it greater stress than does any other Evangelist ;
and more clearly than any other he shows what con
stituted the peculiarity of that operation of the Spirit
which was the special privilege of the people of the
New Covenant. It is as the Paraclete — or Advo
cate — that the Spirit is most characteristically repre
sented by S. John. The fact that he is a substitute
for Christ is pointedly expressed in 14 16, where he is
called " another Paraclete," who shall be with the
disciples forever, though Jesus separates from them
167. In the first instance quoted, it is the Father
who sends the Spirit at Christ's prayer: in the
second, it is Christ himself who is the sender. As
the Spirit is " sent," he is not thought of — as Christ
is in I. 2 1 — as an advocate with the Father on be
half of men; neither is he the Advocate or repre
sentative of Christ ; but, according to the plain sense
of the words, he is the representative of God, as
Christ himself also was. This therefore is the signi
ficance of the Paraclete, that God perpetuates through
another representative the close union with his people
which they had enjoyed in the presence of Jesus ; so
that his dwelling in his Church is unending. And
this presence of God is so much the closer, because
the Paraclete abides not only with his people, but is
in them 14 17. Jesus' departure is therefore their
advantage, since it is the condition of their reception
of the more, and more universally, effective Paraclete
167, who shall guide them into all the truth 16 13,
and reveal to them what they were unable to bear
from Jesus' lips 16 12. There is even a beholding of
the Spirit, which is the special privilege of God's
people in contrast to the world 1417.

POSITIVE CONCEPT OF SALVATION 169
It is this conception of the Paraclete as the teacher
of the truth, which constitutes the most important
element in S. John's doctrine of the Spirit, and
which brings it into line with his philosophy of sal
vation. Notwithstanding the mystical note in S.
John's doctrine, namely, his conception of the Spirit
as dwelling in the disciples, he does not represent him
as operating upon the will in an irrational manner ;
but, like Christ himself, through the reason, by the
revelation of the truth. As Jesus' saving work is
predominantly represented as a revelation of the
truth ; so likewise is that of his substitute, God's
other Advocate. He is "the Spirit of truth" 14 17
1526 16 13 I. 46; or, as it is said in I. 5 6, "the
Spirit is the truth." As the Spirit of truth, he is a
witness to Christ 1 5 26, and a guide into all the truth
16 13 ; and under whatever name he is referred to, he
is constantly regarded as a teacher. In 1426 he is
called the Holy Spirit, but his work here likewise is
expressed in the same terms : " He shall teach you
all things." Even when S. John speaks of the Spirit
under the Old Testament symbol of an " unction,"
the effect of this anointing from the Holy One
(namely Christ) is that we " know all things " I. 2 2027.
As it is Jesus' revelation of the truth which is vir
tually the inception of eternal life ; so is it only by a
birth from above by water and the Spirit that one
can enter into the kingdom of God 3 5. Revelation,
spirit and life, are expressly brought into connection
with one another in the saying of Jesus : " It is the
Spirit that maketh alive; the words that I have
spoken unto you are spirit, and are life " 6 63. Ac
cording to S. John's conception of the Spirit's work,

170 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
Christian baptism must be viewed as an " illumina
tion ; " — as it was also called in the early Church,
after the analogy of the gentile mysteries.
The association of the Spirit with the gift of life,
is very subtly intimated in S. John's Gospel under
the Old Testament symbolism of water. S. John's
explanation of one of Christ's sayings as referring to
the Spirit who "was not yet," 739, — justifies us in
seeing this reference in other sayings of the same
character. This interpretation of Jesus' words as a
prophecy of the Spirit, is connected directly with the
saying, " He that believeth on me, -as the Scripture
hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living
water " 7 38. And S. John's interpretation is justified
by Is. 44 3, which was probably the Scripture Jesus
had in mind, and which expresses the pouring out of
the Spirit under the image of a pouring out of water
upon a thirsty land. It was however directly from
Jesus that thirsty souls were called upon to drink 737.
Jesus' words were spirit and life, and they were there
fore "living water" 410, " a well of water springing
up unto eternal life " 4 14. This thought has also
another association in S. John's Gospel. Jesus' body
is the true and eternal Temple 2 19 22, which can in
deed be destroyed by the hand of man, but only to
be raised again after a short interval by God's power.
In this too S. John sees a fulfilment of Scripture 2 22.
For what the prophets foretold of the Temple in the
coming age, that out of it should proceed a river of
blessing and life, Ez. 47 1-12, cf. Joel 3 18 Zech. 14 8
Ps. 46 4 Rev. 22 . seq., is fulfilled of the glorified
body of Christ, whence proceed the " rivers of living
water " which S. John interprets by reference to the

POSITIVE CONCEPT OF SALVATION 171
gift of the Spirit. We can probably see in this an
other reason why he dwells with so much emphasis
and with so great mystery upon the flowing of water
from Jesus' pierced side 19 3435, cf. I. 5 6-s. That well
of living water, which in Jesus had begun to spring
4 m, was not sealed up by his departure from the
earth, but chiefly then it flowed like a river from his
exalted body.
Although the Paraclete takes the place of Christ
and carries out his work, S. John does not intend to
represent that the revelation of the Spirit makes a
material advance beyond the revelation given by
Jesus, or that any other is in the same sense as he
the mediator of truth to men. For as in the Epistle
the teaching of the " unction " is to the effect that the
disciples abide in Christ I. 227; so in the Gospel
the teaching of the Paraclete is simply a witness to
Christ 1 5 26, a calling to remembrance of his words
1426, a drawing from his fulness, a taking of his
things to declare them unto his disciples 16 m. The
Spirit indeed " shall declare things to come " 16 13 ;
but his principal witness is to the past, to the historic
fact of Jesus' manifestation, and his witness is in this
case co-ordinate with that of the water and the blood
I.5 7 8, and with that also of the Apostles themselves
15 26.
Thus Jesus himself remains in an unique sense the
mediator of truth and life to believers, and it is thus
made possible for those also "who have not seen
and have believed " 20 29, to enjoy a teaching from
God, and in some sort a vision of Christ.
In the relative independence which S. John as
cribes to the Paraclete, we see reflected the high

172 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
significance of the Spirit as the medium of revelation
which the Jewish theology already dimly recognised,
and which the Christian theology expressed in the
trinitarian formula.
Hitherto throughout this study our attention has
been directed almost exclusively to the consideration
Beiievingand °f God's work in the salvation of men :
Knowing vi\\}n. this paragraph we begin the study
of man's part in the process of salvation ; — namely,
his appropriation of the divine gift, and the fruitful
consequences thereof. It is not enough that God's
work is accomplished ; man too has a work to per
form. Salvation is primarily the establishment of a
relation between God and man, and this demands a
mutual work, because it is a relation between person
and person. This fact is very obvious, and it was
moreover thoroughly recognised by the Jews. Jesus'
speeches in the Synoptic Gospels deal predominantly
with the conditions of true discipleship, that is with
the terms of participation in the kingdom of God.
This question is of no less radical importance for S.
John: the condition of fellowship with God is ex
pressed by walking in the light, abiding in Christ
and in his word. The way however in which this
question is answered,, constitutes a very marked
contrast between the Synoptists and S. John. Jesus'
speeches in the Fourth Gospel deal chiefly with the
significance of his own person ; but this, far from ex
cluding the motive which was predominant in the Syn
optical speeches, actually expresses the fundamental
condition of salvation — that is of entrance into the
kingdom — as the believing recognition of his nature

POSITIVE CONCEPT OF SALVATION 1 73
and worth. In coming to receive the baptism pre
liminary to entrance into the kingdom, the question
was from the Jewish point of view inevitable,
" Teacher, what must we do ? " Luke 3 10-14. The
condition of remaining in covenant relation with God
was the keeping of his covenant Law.) Consequently
Jesus expresses the conditions of eternal life in terms
of moral conduct, and with express reference to the
Law, Mat. 19 16-21 Mk. 10 17-21. But Jesus' conception
of law was so broad, so startling, so hostile to the
legalistic spirit of Judaism, as to rouse the suspicion
of the scribes. One of them therefore pointedly asks
him this question, " Teacher, what shall I do to in
herit eternal life? " " tempting him " to entangle him
self in a clear contradiction to the Scriptures, Luke
10 25-37. This same question recurs in S. John's
Gospel. Jesus interprets Nicodemus' secret visit, and
his acknowledgment of him as " a teacher come from
God " 3 1 2, as a request for instruction about the con
ditions of entrance into the kingdom of God 3 3 5,
and he answers it by a demand for moral regenera
tion, which however is traced back to belief in the
Son of man 3 15. This question recurs explicitly in
6 28, " What must we do, that we may work the works
of God? " And the ruling conception of the condi
tion of life and salvation is conclusively expressed in
Jesus' reply, " This is the work of God, that ye be
lieve on him whom he sent " 6 29. This is S. John's
way of disposing of the question which so engrossed
S. Paul and S. James (see especially Gal. 3 5 Jas.
2 24). For S. Paul it was an alternative, faith or
works ; for S. James, faith with or without works :
for S. John the contrast simply did not exist, he had

174 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
made no such analysis; faith is the work which is
required for participation in life. With no writer less
than S. John however is faith viewed as a work meri
torious in itself, and deserving of salvation on account
of its moral quality as an act. This striking saying
of Jesus does no doubt express the fact that believing
is more than a passive receptivity. It is with the
labour which is requisite for man's earthly sustenance
that he compares the work required " for the meat
which abideth unto eternal life; " but on the other
hand this is a meat which is not in any wise to be
earned, but " which the Son of man shall give unto
you " 6 27. Christ's gift to the world is primarily the
revelation of the truth ; and this of itself produces in
man eternal life and its consequent fruits. But it is
not enough that the truth, that is the light, shines
upon men ; it must be received into them. Inasmuch
as the truth which Christ reveals is not a bare philo
sophical conception, but is distinctly within the moral
sphere, it can be received only by a moral act — by
an act of the will — which is the expression of the
deepest disposition of the heart. In this sense, faith
is a work, it expresses a positive activity on man's
part. And yet, as the condition of salvation, it is
regarded with complete abstraction of the intellectual
or moral difficulties which have to be overcome, and
of the active element of moral choice which it in
volves : from this point of view the question is simply
whether one has the truth ; and therefore seeing God
and knowing him are, as conditions of life 17 3 I. 3 6,
precisely on a par with believing on him. So far
therefore is this saying of Jesus from substituting the
work of faith for the works recognised by the Law as

POSITIVE CONCEPT OF SALVATION 175
conditions of life, that it rather does away altogether
with the legalistic conception of works. The antithesis
between justification by works and justification by
faith, which was so radically important in S. Paul's
system, and which proved itself so peculiarly liable
to misunderstanding, simply does not emerge at all
in S. John's theology. This is not merely because
the idea of justification is completely strange to his
thought ; but because he was not even conscious of
the rather barren analysis of faith and works, which
so puzzled the readers whom S. James addressed.
He did not feel the antithesis between salvation by
law and by grace. He had not passed through the
spiritual crisis which S. Paul experienced in turning
from the Law to faith. Therefore, without thinking
of the Law as in any sense the antithesis of the Gos
pel, he expressed the Gospel itself in terms of law ;
— though practically, as soon as he had come to
regard Jesus' revelation of love as the Law, and as
the new commandment, the Law in the contemporary
Jewish sense was as completely done away as it was
for S. Paul. We see in this instance, as in many
others, how S. John's theology resolves the apparent
contradictions of earlier Apostolic teaching. S.
James' discrimination between faith which is accom
panied by works, and faith without works, was simply
impossible to one who like S. John conceived of
faith as imparting the true life, and producing the
appropriate moral fruits of life, just in proportion as
it was the apprehension of a true knowledge. S.
John's theology did not suggest, as S. Paul's did, II.
Pet. 3 16, the possibility that moral conduct might in
any way be divorced from the idea of salvation, Rom.

176 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
3861. His system as a whole was so constituted
as to render transparent, beyond the possibility of
misconception or of cavil, the relation of faith to sal
vation : it is simply the willing reception of the light
of life. There is a peculiarity of S. John's language
which serves materially to prevent ambiguity in his
conception of faith : it is that the word faith (trlo-ris;)
occurs but once in the writings we are considering;
instead of the substantive, he uses the verbal forms,
to believe (trio-reveiv), and for the negative, to believe
not (oi ¦jTio-reveiv). This is notable in the first place,
because it shows his close attachment to the Aramaic
form of expression : he simply translates the Aramaic
forms into Greek, though he also makes use of the
rich capacity of the Greek tense system. In the
second place, and in respect to the point which espe
cially concerns us here, because he thus avoids the
ambiguity which was almost inseparable from the use
of the substantive. The substantive, faith, may de
note either the object of belief, that is, the proposition
which is believed, Jude 3 ; or the absolute act of
belief, without reference to any particular object (as
commonly in the Epistle to the Hebrews). S. John,
by the exclusive use of the verbal form with a dis
tinct reference to the object, lays emphasis neither
upon the object, nor upon the act, but upon the fact
that the object is appropriated by the subject. It is
true that he frequently uses the verb absolutely, as
far as the grammatical construction is concerned;
but it is never absolute in sense, an object is always
clearly implied, and the more obviously because for
S. John there is but one object of faith, namely, Jesus.
The ambiguity attaching to the word faith is exem-

POSITIVE CONCEPT OF SAL VA TION 1 77
plified in the single case of S. John's use of it I. 5 4 5 :
we are here at a loss to decide whether the faith
which overcometh the world, is the creed, " that
Jesus is the Son of God ; " or the act of moral sur
render to him. In the next verse however S. John
returns to the verbal form, and disposes of this
apparent alternative by a conception which in a
measure includes both of the ideas which we have
suggested : " And who is he that overcometh the
world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of
God." The orthodox creed is not a victorious power
except as it is received by faith : still less has the act
of faith any moral significance for S. John apart from
its object. Faith in Jesus, if not precisely a virtue,
was highly significant of a man's moral nature ; but
faith in itself was not a virtue for S. John, and he
therefore never associates it with any distinctively
moral quality. It is not associated with patience,
nor with hope (virop,ovr\, eKirli), conspicuous as was
the development of these ideas in New Testament
language. With the exception of " hope" in I. 3 3,
these words do not occur at all in S. John's writings
(exclusive of the Apocalypse) : the verb to hope
occurs once 5 45, in sharp contrast to faith, as the
characteristic of Judaism. It was perhaps because
the word salvation suggested the Jewish attitude of
hope, rather than the Christian attitude of faith, that
S. John avoids its use ; — it occurs once 422, "for
salvation is of the Jews." The word Saviour occurs
but twice, and to save (with reference to Jesus' work)
four times. I have consequently been in doubt of
the propriety of using the word salvation as the title
of two of the main topics of S. John's theology, and

178 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
I have done so only because it is the term in most
current use. Salvation is moreover a negative term,
and as such it was unsuited for the expression of S.
John's predominantly positive conceptions. He sub
stitutes for it the word, eternal life ; and this which is
not only a positive, but a present possession, is there
fore not the object of hope but of faith ; and faith is
more accurately regarded as the appropriation than
as the condition of life.
Corresponding to the ruling conception bf S. John's
theology — the life of God, being manifested, becomes
the light of men, and so produces life in them — the
idea of faith occupies in his writings a position of the
greatest importance. We have only to recall what
was said (pp. 130 seq.) of the division wrought among
men by the manifestation of the light, to understand
the crucial importance of the idea of faith in the
Fourth Gospel. The ruling motive of S. John's
narrative is the representation of the reception which
Jesus encountered from the various classes of men
with whom he came in contact. S. John, in striking
contrast to the Synoptists, represents this in terms of
faith : they believed, or they believed not. Unbelief
is not a mere negative conception, though even from
this point of view its consequence could only be death,
because it foregoes the gift of life. But it is more
than not knowing God ; it is the rejection of him 15 24.
It therefore not only involved condemnation 16 s 9,
but justified it, in as much as the refusal to come to
the light argues an evil life 3 19 20. We have already
seen that for S. John the sin is " that they believe not
in me." Believing in him, on the other hand, is the
condition of a begetting from God 1 12 13.

POSITIVE CONCEPT OF SALVATION 179
The foregoing discussion exhibits the place and
significance of the idea of faith in S. John's system.
It is as simple as it is fundamental ; and although
S. John employs this conception in manifold relations,
although it is a progressive term, corresponding at
each stage to the believer's subjective appreciation
of the significance of Jesus' Person and the content
of his self-witness, progressing also in steadfastness
as well as in content ; its fundamental significance is
nevertheless throughout transparent as the acceptance
of Jesus for what he is, and in particular with appreci
ation of his relation to God. The attitude of men
toward Jesus is expressed also in a variety of other
ways, though faith has strictly no synonym in the
New Testament. Men's attitude toward the light —
the figure under which Jesus and his revelation is
represented — is expressed by, receiving it or not
receiving it 1 5 ; by coming to it or coming not ; by
hating it or loving it 3 20 21 ; and even by believing in
it 1236. We have also the expressions, hearing his
voice 18 38 10 3 16 (cf. 8 43 " because ye cannot hear my
word"), knowing his voice 10 4 5, coming unto him
5 40 6 35 37 44 45 65, following him 8 12 10 4 5 27 21 19 22, know
ing him 10 .4 14 17 17 3 (cf. v. 25) I. 2 14 3 1 5 20, seeing
him 14 9 I. 3 6, and of course pre-eminently, believing
in him.
Jesus as the object of faith is distinguished from
all others by a form of expression which is highly
significant of S. John's idea of faith as a personal and
mystical relation. It is in regard to Jesus alone that
men are said to believe in (or unto) him (ek avrov). It
is no contradiction to this that S. John speaks of
believing in the light 12 36, for the light is Christ him-

l8o THE LIFE MANIFESTED
self. It corresponds to the Aramaic affinities of
S. John's language, that he translates the common
D15JO f'QPT into Greek: rno-Teveiv ek rb ovo/ia. As
the Synagogue spoke of faith in God's Name; so
S. John speaks of faith in the Name of Jesus 1 12 2 23
3 18 I. 5 i3. The construction with et? makes the Name
an object of faith in precisely the same way as Jesus
is himself, for the Name is the expression of the
person. With reference to God, the construction is
not so uniform. Either with the name God, or with
such a paraphrase as " him who sent me," the con
struction is usually the simple dative ; but there are
two exceptions, in which Jesus speaks of believing in
God. In both cases the construction is determined
by the fact that Jesus would represent the close con
nection, we might rather say identity, of faith in him
and faith in God 1244 14 1.
Even in relation to Jesus however the simple
dative construction is often used ; but in these in
stances we can see that the change of construction
denotes a change of sense, and that, instead of the
profound New Testament idea of faith and believing,
we have here the simple Classical sense of giving
credence to one 42. 5 46 84546 103738 14 h. Belief in
Jesus' words and works is expressed by the dative ; —
though we have in one instance I. 5 10 77-. els rr)v fiaprv-
plav. The construction with on (that) is not uncom
mon; but it is false to conclude that the object of
faith is, therefore, a proposition about Christ, rather
than Christ himself; for it is worthy of note that the
content of these object clauses — as for example 20 31
" That ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the
Son of God " — is always a proposition which ex-

POSITIVE CONCEPT OF SALVATION l8l
presses in the most essential terms what Jesus is, and
is therefore equivalent to a definition of what he is as
the object of faith ; — believing in Jesus as the Christ,
the Son of God.
We have finally the expression, to believe through
some one or some thing (bid twos or ti). The very
vision of Jesus as the light ought to be sufficient to
elicit faith: but inasmuch as men are able to see
only gradually what he is, he does not discard the
testimony of external witnesses. It was in the first
place through the Baptist that men believed in Jesus
I 7; it was then through his works that they learned
to believe in him 10 38; through the word of the
Samaritan woman 4 39, men were led to a faith which
is afterwards confirmed through his own word 1442;
and finally, he looks forward to the time of his de
parture from the world when men shall believe in
him through the word of his disciples 1720.
Jesus' whole ministry was a schooling of his dis
ciples in faith ; they attained but slowly to an ade
quate appreciation of his nature and dignity. But
even an imperfect recognition of him he does not
call unbelief, but faith. Every acknowledgment of
him which reveals a movement towards the truth
Jesus greets as faith. Even the Twelve did not
attain to a complete knowledge of the fulness of
Christ's Person till after his resurrection: it was
Thomas the doubter who first made the adequate
confession, " My Lord and my God " 20 28. There
was also a strengthening of faith which went hand in
hand with its enrichment. Faith is not attainment ;
it is a stretching out towards it. S. John refuses to
consider the possibility that one who had really seen

1 82 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
and known Jesus could fall back again into sin ; but
no such finality is involved in faith ; it might not only
exist imperfectly, but cease altogether ; — or, as in
8 30-40, turn instantaneously to murderous hate. Not
even does the faith of the Apostles continue con
stant: to their confession of faith just before the
Passion, " By this we believe that thou earnest forth
from God," Jesus answered, "Do ye now believe?"
— not suggesting a doubt of the reality of their faith,
but denoting that the hour approaches when they
shall believe no longer 16 30-32. This insecure and
changeable faith was indeed far from representing
the goal of Jesus' training of the Apostles. It had
to attain to a fixed and unalterable confidence ; and
this too was reached only after the resurrection. To
express this faith as an abiding condition, rather than
as a momentary act, the ordinary construction with
the verb does not suffice; and therefore Jesus uses a
substantive expression — " Be not faithless, but be
lieving (fit) diriarot dXKa rnaros) — for the first and
only time on the occasion of Thomas' recovery to
Faith 20 27. With faith thus perfected in content and
in constancy, the first draft of the Gospel fitly ended.
Closely and emphatically associated with the idea
of believing, is that of knowing. The idea of know
ing is, corresponding to the whole character of S.
John's theology, one of his most important concepts.
We dare not ask however what is S. John's idea of
knowledge ; for, as in the case of faith, the substan
tive is never used. The object of knowledge is not a
proposition about God (or Christ), but the person
himself. S. John does not speak of knowledge about
God, but of knowing him. It is true that knowing,

POSITIVE CONCEPT OF SALVATION 183
like believing, is often expressed with an object
clause (yivdoo-Keiv on, knowing that) ; but the pro
positions which are thus grammatically expressed as
the objects of knowledge are in content identical
with those which are represented as the objects of
faith : " that I am " 8 28, " that thou didst send me "
1725 "that I am in the Father" 1420; — as these
are believed, so also are they known. The prop
ositions therefore which are thus expressed as the
objects of knowledge, are such as define the essen
tial character of the person known, and S. John's
highest and most characteristic expression remains
that with the direct personal object: to know Christ,
to know God 147 173 I. 241314 4678 520. In S.
John's highest use of this term there is distinctly a
personal relation involved, an idea of acquaintance.
How far he is from thinking of a mere theoretical
knowledge, we see in his characteristic employment
of elSov, which denotes such knowing as comes
through seeing ; and of Oewpelv avrov to behold him
640 12 45.
Believing, so far from being contrasted with know
ing, seeing, and beholding, is expressly associated
with them. The multitude demand of Jesus a sign,
in order that they may "see and believe" 630; we
have in I. 4 16 " we know and have believed," in 6 69
" we have believed and know," in 10 38 the disciples
are required to believe in order that they " may
know and understand," and in 6 40 we have " he that
beholdeth the Son and believeth in him." These
ideas are however by no means synonymous, and
they are in fact distinctly enough discriminated.
Believing is referred pre-eminently to Jesus, whereas

1 84 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
the relation of men to God is expressed more com
monly as knowing him. The profound breach be
tween the world and God, which expresses itself in
their unbelieving treatment of Jesus, is not called un
belief in God, but ignorance of him 728 855 15 21 163
1 7 25. The result which accrues from knowledge of
Jesus is not faith in God, but knowledge of him 8 19
147. It corresponds to this, that with reference to the
Holy Spirit it is not believing which is spoken of, but
knowing and beholding 14 17 I. 426. Even in rela
tion to Christ, the idea of believing recedes, and that
of knowing takes its place, in view of his ascension
and the consequent beginning of his more perfect
and spiritual relation to his disciples. Whereas in
view of his earthly manifestation Jesus demanded,
" believe that I am" 8 24; in view of his heavenly it
is said, "when ye have lifted up the Son of man, then
shall ye know that I am " 8 28. In the day when the
disciples behold him again, "In that day shall ye
know that I am in my Father " 14 20. It is also highly
significant of the relation of these two ideas, that
while there is great emphasis upon Jesus' knowledge
of God 729 8 55 10 15 1725 there is no mention of his
faith in God. This is the more remarkable because
Jesus represents his own relation to the Father as the
perfect pattern, according to which that of his disciples
is to be fashioned. As he is in the Father and the
Father in him, so are the disciples in him and he in
them; as he knows the Father, so do they know
him ; as he abides in the Father's love, so do they in
his ; as he keeps the Father's commandment, so do
the disciples keep his. But with all these parallels,
there is no analogous comparison between his faith

POSITIVE CONCEPT OF SALVATION 1 85
in the Father, and his disciples' faith in him. Jesus'
relation to God is never expressed in terms of faith.
To this we have to add that the truth is represented
as the object of knowledge 8 32 I. 2 21 though not of
faith ; — and so also is love I. 3 .6.
Both of these conceptions, knowing and believing,
have therefore their own peculiar sphere of applica
tion, and the mark which chiefly distinguishes them
is this, that believing connotes a characteristic exer
cise of the will. The fundamental idea of faith, both
in Hebrew and in New Testament Greek, is that of
trust. This has by no means disappeared from S.
John's use of the word. The use of iricrreveiv in 2 24
is indeed unique ("Jesus trusted himself not unto
them " ) ; but the idea of trust appears very plainly
in the single instance in which we have the expres
sion, to believe in God, els rbv Oeov 14 .. Faith is
here contrasted with trouble of heart at Jesus' depart
ure. The construction (with et?, " unto ") is here
peculiarly significant, when in view of his death,
which seems to render him unavailable as an object
of faith, he urges his disciples to turn their faith
towards God ; — not as resting in him, but as strug
gling towards him. As his disciples had through
faith in him been led to a true faith in God ; so now
he hopes that their trustful faith in God will carry
them through this supreme crisis, and preserve their
faith in him ; — " believe also in me." Faith has in
this instance, as in many others, a special relation to
difficulties to be overcome. It is for this reason that
man's relation to God is expressed rather under the
terms of knowledge than of faith. Whatever difficul
ties a man has to overcome in making a personal

1 86 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
surrender of himself to God, they are not such as are
represented by the idea of faith. If God is known,
he is therewith manifest as man's sole good ; and the.
reasonableness of surrender to him is immediately
included in the very idea of God, from which might
and majesty are inseparable. But in the case of him
whose divine majesty is obscured by his earthly
manifestation in the flesh, the act of adhesion is im
possible except through an act of trust, and more
especially on the part of those who on account of
their ignorance of God have many inward hindrances
and objections to overcome. It is therefore not with
out its significance, that the first man whose faith in
Jesus is mentioned, is that Nathanael, whose preju
dice showed itself in the objection, " Can any good
thing come out of Nazareth?" And the Gospel
originally ended with the faith of Thomas whose
trust in Jesus had been so profoundly shattered that
even the testimony of his fellow disciples could not
convince him. The victory which overcometh the
world I. 5 4, which triumphs over every inward and
outward obstacle, and apprehends the Incarnate One
as the eternal Word, is an act of trust, and from this
the idea of faith gains a significance which differen
tiates it from that of knowledge.
Eternal Life
" And the witness is this, that God gave unto us
eternal life, and this life is in his Son " I. 5 ". This
verse is one of the most compendious statements of
S. John's message of salvation. To understand what
eternal life is, and how it is mediated to man and

POSITIVE CONCEPT OF SALVATION 187
appropriated by him, is to know his Gospel. We
have already seen the profound significance of the
Father as the source of life, of the Son as the
medium of life, and of the children as sharers in
the divine life by reason of the divine begetting.
We have also seen that life — or at least deliver
ance from the common doom of death — is directly
dependent upon the sacrificial death of Christ.
The gift of life, as the positive content of salva
tion, is more particularly the theme of the chap
ter upon which we are now engaged, in which we
have already considered Jesus' manifestation of the
truth which makes eternal life possible for men, and
man's believing acceptance of the truth which is the
condition of his appropriation of life ; which also we
shall conclude with the study of the moral fruits of
life in the children of God. We have therefore in
this section to consider only what eternal life is in
itself, and in particular to define it against a common
and radical misconception, which represents it exclu
sively as the product of the revelation of the truth,
and its fruition therefore as consisting solely in the
contemplative knowledge of God. The purely intel
lectual and speculative interest which is here pre
sumed in S. John, this barren abstraction of life,
would not only place the Apostle in irreconcilable
contradiction to all New Testament thought, and set
him in close association with Gnostic theories, but
would involve an intolerable contradiction in his own
thought. Nothing could be more objective and real
than S. John's conception of life as we have hitherto
studied it; imparted as it was out of the fulness of
the divine life, and guaranteed for men by Christ's

1 88 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
willing surrender of himself to death. We have in
deed repeatedly noted those characteristics of S.
John's thought — the close association of light and
knowledge with life — which seem to justify the
opinion which we here reject. Misconception of this
phase of S. John's thought is by no means unnatural,
but it rests upon a superficial idea of his theology as
a whole. It leaves out of account his thoroughly
objective conceptions of life, which are however a
part of his characteristic development, and can in no
wise be explained as mere echos of current Christian
language. More than all, it fails to appreciate the
mystical element in S. John's conception of faith and
knowledge, as a personal relation, a relation of fel
lowship with God. Knowledge is at once the condi
tion and the privilege of fellowship with God ; and it
is in this communion, and not in any speculative
knowledge about God, that eternal life consists ; —
to know the True, and to be in the True, is eternal
life I. 5 20. Whatever therefore is a condition of
knowledge and fellowship, is likewise a condition of
life. There is no conception which is more commonly
noticed as a Johannine peculiarity, and probably
none which is really more characteristic, than that of
eternal life. The term itself is not peculiar to S.
John, he shares it with the Synoptists and with the
New Testament writers in general. But his concep
tion of it as a present possession is quite unique and
can be paralleled only by partial analogies from other
writers. With the Synoptists, eternal life is a prize
to be hoped for, something to be " inherited ; " the
commonest expression is "to enter into life; " or it

POSITIVE CONCEPT OF SALVATION 1 89
is said explicitly, " He shall receive in the age to
come eternal life" Mk. 10 30. S. John's phrase, on
the other hand, is "to have life; " and almost the
whole Gospel is proof for the statement that he re
gards it as a privilege already possessed in the recep
tion of Jesus and the fellowship with God which is
made possible through him. It is eternal therefore,
not in the sense that it belongs exclusively to the
coming age ; nor even in the sense that everlasting
duration is its dominant note ; far less does it repre
sent an indefinite prolongation of man's natural life:
it is eternal because it belongs to the eternal sphere
of being, which S. John discriminates from the
earthly, not according to the category of time, but of
place ; it is the life which Christ has brought from
the heavenly to the earthly sphere. It is an entirely
new gift, superadded to man's creaturely and physi
cal life ; it is therefore an intensive conception, repre
senting not an infinite prolongation of life, but an
unbounded amplification of it ; — to have life " more
abundantly " or " in excess " 10 m. S. John does not
define his idea of life ; but strictly speaking he gives
no definition of any of his terms. Particularly such
ruling conceptions of his theology as light and life,
he regards now from one side, and now from another,
without seeking by a guarded expression to define
them in their totality. In fact the significance of
these essentially symbolic terms lies in the fact that
they exceed expression, and defy definition. As the
figure of light represented to S. John the totality of
the divine perfection, so did the figure of life denote
the totality of the blessings enjoyed in and through
Christ. As surely as this is true, we see the inade-

190 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
quacy of knowledge alone as the definition of life.
The most definite proof which is offered in defence
of this definition of life, is 17 3 " This is life eternal,
that they should know thee the only true God, and
him whom thou hast sent, Jesus Christ." But in the
first place, this is an example of S. John's way of
regarding a conception from but one side at a time ;
and in the second place, the verse is not a definition
even in form ; — " This is life, in order that they may
know." It is quite as apt to represent, knowledge as
the medium of life, as to define it as its special con
tent. This however is not to deny that the revelation
of the truth, and the consequent knowledge of God,
is at once the means of imparting life to men, and
one of the peculiar privileges of the children of God.
This is sufficiently clear from our study of the signi
ficance of Jesus' manifestation in general, and in par
ticular from S. John's conception of faith as the
apprehension of the revelation of the divine in Jesus.
Both knowledge and faith are constantly associated
with life, but chiefly as the conditions of life.
There is however another term, which properly
comes in between knowledge and life, which it is
the more important to notice here because it is
so little regarded : it is the term fellowship. Fel
lowship with God stands in a close, and in a sense
in a reciprocal, relation to knowledge. A true
knowledge of God is necessary to a true fellow
ship with him ; but fellowship with God cannot
but issue in a fuller knowledge. On the other hand
it stands in the closest relation to life; like knowl
edge it is a condition of it, but it is also, and far more
adequately than knowledge, the fruition of it. As in

POSITIVE CONCEPT OF SALVATION

191

6 56 seq. the life which is to be had by participation in
Jesus' flesh and blood, is associated with personal
communion with him and through him with the
Father ; so in the Epistle 2 24 2S " If that which ye
heard from the beginning abide in you, ye also shall
abide in the Son and in the Father : and this is the
promise which he promised us, even life eternal " cf.
I. 5 20. So also in I. 1 3 4, the message of the Gospel
is the condition of fellowship with the Church, and
that in turn, of fellowship with the Father and the
Son ; and this constitutes the fulness of joy. Next
to eternal life, it is fellowship with God which most
commonly serves to describe the peculiar blessedness
of the children of God. There is no conception
which S. John develops more richly than this;
besides the expression, " to have fellowship with
him," and the whole range of terms which represent
God (the Son, or the Spirit) as " coming," and as
" dwelling " among men, we have the formula of mys
tical union, " being in him " and " dwelling in him."
As Christ's mystical union with the Father is the
ground and content of his own life 6 57 14 10 19 seq., so
must his corresponding communion with his disciples
impart to them the same life which he possesses
through the Father's abiding in him. It is for this
reason that eternal life may be said to be derived
from the knowledge of God, because such knowledge
is a condition of communion with God. The revela
tion of the truth in Jesus is therefore life, because it
is the way to the Father 14 6.
It is accordant with the whole range of S. John's
thought that he thus represents eternal life as a present
possession: for he likewise represented all of the

I92 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
blessings of the New Covenant as already realised, at
least in germ, with the coming of Christ ; — and in
this too he is completely in accord with the Synoptical
saying, " The kingdom of God is in the midst of you "
Lk. 1 7 21 cf. Mat. 1228. Slight however as is his
emphasis upon the developments of the coming age,
S. John could not altogether avoid reference to the
eschatological bearing of his idea of eternal life. This
reference is seen especially in 12 25, " He who hateth
his life in this world shall save it unto life eternal."
Through this expression, characteristic as it is of
S. John, there glimmers the familiar Synoptic con
trast between the two worlds. In antithesis to " this
world," eternal life here represents the future world.
If we are right in this, we may see the same reference
in 6 27 ; " The meat which abideth unto eternal life ; "
and in 4 m "A well of water springing up unto eternal
life; " and finally in 436 " He who reapeth gathereth
fruit unto life eternal." In Synoptic language this
last would be expressed as a harvesting for the
kingdom of God.
This eternal life which is enjoyed in communion
with the Father through the Son, which is in fact a
participation in the divine life, cannot of course be
thought of as subject to decay or death. Therefore
in the sixth chapter, quite parallel to the expression,
" He that eateth my flesh hath eternal life " 6 54, we
have, " If any man eat this bread, he shall live for
ever " 6 51 58, and, " that a man may eat thereof, and
not die" 650. Eternal life has in itself the potency
of continuous existence, it is indifferent to death and
the dissolution of the body, and is the earnest of an
everlasting existence in plenitude of life. Therefore

POSITIVE CONCEPT OF SALVATION 193
it is said, " He that believeth on me, though he die,
yet shall he live" 11 =5. But as the resurrection of
the body is, in Hebrew and in New Testament
thought, essential to the full fruition of life, and as
this is not given in the idea of eternal life itself, it is
therefore added as an independent conception : " For
this is the will of my Father, that every one that be-
holdeth the Son, and believeth on him, should have
eternal life ; and I will raise him up at the last day "
6 40 cf. 39 54. And whereas in 6 57 the life of the believer
is represented as depending upon Christ's possession
of life from the Father; in 14 19 the believer's continu
ance in life is assured by Christ's triumph over death.
The consideration of the consummation of life in
the coming age was of the less importance for S. John
because he conceived of it as effecting no change
which was not in the nature of a mere development
of that which the believer already possessed. " He
that believeth cometh not into judgment, but hath
passed from death unto life " 5 24 cf I. 3 14. We can
however understand how from this point of view
S. John can speak of life as a present possession, and
yet in the expression "the resurrection of life" 5 29
add a completing idea. As he enjoyed eternal life
in communion with God, and refers this in turn to
knowledge of God, we have the double consequence :
that wherever there is faith in Christ as the Son of
God, there is eternal life; but that as faith grows
riper, and knowledge deeper, the possession and
fruition of that life becomes ever fuller and richer.
From the knowledge which is by faith, to that which
consists in beholding God 1724 1. 32, there is indeed
such a progress in the attainment of the perfected
•3

194 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
life as makes it appear almost a new possession ; —
though even here we have not to think of a higher
life taking the place of a lower, but eternal life is in
its very conception the same heavenly blessing, above
and below, for ever.
The Children of God — Fellowship
We have already had occasion to note, several
times, and from various points of view, S. John's em-
Tneoiogy and phasis upon the idea of fellowship in its
EtUcs double form ; — with the Father and the
Son, and with the brethren. These two aspects of the
Christian fellowship are not separable even in thought :
" that they may all be one ; even as thou, Father,
art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us "
172.. It is one indivisible fellowship; and while on
the one hand a man can remain in this community
only by abiding in Christ, the vine 156; it is on the
other hand no less truly a condition of fellowship
with God, that the fellowship of believers with one
another be realised by observing the commandment
of brotherly love I. 3 24. This is justified by the con
sideration, " He that loveth not his brother whom he
hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not
seen?" I. 420. The idea of children of God includes
two moments of thought : the filial and the brotherly
relationship. From S. John's emphasis upon the
latter we may see how far he was from regarding
eternal life as the mere contemplative knowledge of
God. It is a life which is to be exercised in the
sphere of the Christian brotherhood, and it finds its
satisfaction in the fellowship with the brethren, as

POSITIVE CONCEPT OF SALVATION

195

well as in the fellowship with God. The Christian
fellowship and eternal life are the two ideas into
which S. John has analysed the kingdom of God : as
eternal life represents the blessings of the kingdom ;
so does the brotherhood represent its sphere. Love,
the principle of fellowship, directed towards the Father
and towards the brethren, is the complete expression
of the moral life, the fulfilment of the law of the king
dom. It is at once the privilege and the duty of
fellowship. Love is indeed regarded as a command
ment ; but more characteristically as the spontaneous
fruit of the true life. As the Father is love, and as
the Son has manifested this love to the world ; the
life which he thereby imparts to men can be nothing
else but a life of love. Likeness of the children to
the Father, filial and brotherly affection, is the conse
quence of their begetting from God, and the natural
expression of their condition as children. Love is
therefore the test of the presence of true life in man ;
and in the assurance of meeting this test, lies the filial
confidence which casts out all fear.
The above paragraph is a brief rehearsal of the
points with which we have to deal in this chapter.
It exhibits the relation of the Johannine theology to
the Johannine ethics. With no other writer in the
New Testament is the relation of theology
Likeness to God ... ... ,
to life so transparent, so immediate, and
so necessary. It is chiefly in the Epistle that the
ethical bearing of S. John's doctrine is expressed :
S. John's ethics is the blossoming out in the moral
sphere of the fundamental ideas of his theology.
The strongest proof of the common authorship of
the Gospel and Epistle is the fact that the latter is

196 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
the necessary moral consequence of the former. S.
John's whole system is in the highest sense practical,
and it is capable of being brought to bear with un
matched force upon every individual problem of the
moral life. S. John however does not descend to
particulars : as in his Gospel he sums up his theology
in a few general ideas, so in his Epistle he dwells
upon the great central conceptions of morality. The
Christian morality is summed up in the idea of like
ness to Jesus, which is the same thing as likeness to
God, and is expressed particularly by love. S. John
does not extol love more highly than S. Paul; it is
rather because he includes under this one term the
whole catalogue of Christian virtues, that he has
received the name, Apostle of love. Notwithstand
ing his strong emphasis upon the moral walk, he
mentions in the Epistle but one concrete case of
conduct : " But whoso hath this world's goods, and
beholdeth his brother in need, and shutteth up his
compassion from him, how doth the love of God
abide in him? " I. 3 17. This example serves to dis
play the discrepancy between love which is only in
word and in the tongue, and the love in deed and in
truth which is ready to lay down life for the brethren,
as " he " laid down his life for us I. 3 16 18. This in
stance recalls the Epistle of S. James 2 15 16, though
the single point of comparison rather serves to direct
attention to the contrast which between these two
epistles is in every other respect so marked. There
is in fact no greater contrast within the New Testa
ment than that between the Epistle of S. James, with
its many moral precepts unrelated by any moral
theory ; and that of S. John, with its single precept

POSITIVE CONCEPT OF SALVATION

197

of love, as the outcome of his whole theology. The
concrete examples of discipline, admonition, and
exhortation, with which S. Paul's Epistles abound,
stand also in strong contrast to the generalities of
S. John's Epistle. This however is referrible in part
to the fact that S. John's work is not properly an
epistle ; it is rather a dissertation accompanying his
Gospel, and its aim and destination is too general to
allow of reference to the particular situation of any
individual community. We learn from the Third
Epistle, which is a personal letter, how S. John might
deal with particular cases of discipline III. 9 1°.
It is however a ground of surprise, that S. John,
who was the companion of Jesus throughout his
earthly ministry, and who represents Christian moral
ity in terms of likeness to God as he was revealed in
Jesus, nevertheless does not — any more than S. Paul
— adduce the traits of Jesus' earthly life as the pat
tern for the disciples' imitation. Here, as through
out the New Testament, it is the imitation of God
which is the rule of the Christian life ; and it is there
fore just those features of Jesus' life in which he most
conspicuously transcended the human measure and
manifested the divine, which are set forth as the
disciples' example. As S. Paul thought of even " the
meekness of Christ " II. Cor. 10 1, as manifested tran-
scendently not in his earthly walk, but in his descent
from heaven to earth, Phil. 2 3-8 ; so S. John sees love
exemplified not in Jesus' kindly intercourse with his
disciples, but in his gift of his life for them 15 13, I.
3 16 (his love "unto the end" 13 i), and in God's gift
of his Son 3 16 I. 4 9. It is therefore Christ's sacrifice
of his life which is the example of love for the world,

198 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
and when S. John expresses the norm of Christian
conduct under any other terms, it is by such general
conceptions as, walking in the light, as he is' in the
light I. 1 7, or, " He that saith he abideth in him
ought himself also to walk even as he walked " I. 2 6.
The term " walking " represents the most general
conception under which conduct can be regarded,
and in reference to this last passage, S. Augustine
points out that " walking " may be " bearing " only,
[Christus] fixus in cruce erat et in ipsa via ambulabat :
ipsa est via caritatis. There is another general con
ception under which S. John represents the conduct
required of the Christian : that is the Old Testament
conception of righteousness. As he emphasises the
righteousness of the Father 1725 I. 1 9, and of Christ
I. 2 1 ; so he says, " If ye know that he is righteous,
ye know that every one also that doeth righteousness
is begotten of him " I. 2 29. Righteousness is with
S. John not a soteriological, but an ethical concep
tion; there is no trace of S. Paul's idea of imputed
righteousness ; on the contrary he warns his readers
against the misinterpretation to which this conception
was so liable : " Children, let no man lead you astray :
he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he
is righteous " I. 3 7 cf. v. 10. Finally we have the
ritual conceptions of consecration and purity : " And
for their sakes I consecrate (or sanctify) myself, that
they themselves also may be sanctified in truth "17 19.
And in I. 3 3 " Every one that hath this hope on him
purifieth himself, even as he is pure."
As the divine life which was in the Logos became
manifested as love, and so was the light of men 1 4 ;

POSITIVE CONCEPT OF SALVATION

199

so must also that eternal life, which has been thereby
The Hew com- imparted to believers, manifest itself in
mandment them iikewise as light and love> This
must be displayed not only in such a way as will
satisfy themselves of the reality of their possession of
life; but that the world may know that they are
Christ's disciples 13 35. This is S. John's most char
acteristic way of representing love in the disciple as
the spontaneous fruit of life. It is therefore the more
noteworthy that he should express it also in terms of
law, as a commandment 13 34. Few as are the ethical
precepts attributed to Jesus in the Fourth Gospel, he
is nevertheless represented repeatedly as enjoining the
keeping of his commandments ; and this exhortation
is taken up by S. John still more frequently in the
Epistle. We have already remarked that S. John has
no aversion to the expression of Christian morality
in terms of commandment, although his use of the
word law (vo/x,os) exclusively in reference to Judaism
probably indicates his consciousness of the radical
difference between the two dispensations. He had
however as completely superseded the legalistic stand
point as had S. Paul himself. And his idea of the
"new commandment" has nothing in common with
that of the " new law" (/eatvo? vofios), which early in
the second century became current to designate the
Christian revelation as the successor and counterpart
of the Old Testament Law. It was by including all
particular commandments in the one commandment
of love according to the measure of God's love, that
S. John dissolved the whole conception of Jewish
legalism as it was expressed by " the ten thousand
precepts of the Torah."

200 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
But if we can find no hint of legalism in S. John's
use of the word commandment, we do find in it a
proof of his close relation to Old Testament thought,
and of his strong emphasis upon the moral walk.
S. John had no notion of a contemplative knowledge
of God which found in itself its end and satisfaction.
To know God was to keep his commandments I. 2 3.
Neither did he know of any love of God which was
mere feeling, and found its end solely in religious
adoration. To love God is to keep his word and his
commandments I. 25 5 « seq. II. 6. True love is
shown in work (iv epya>) I. 3 is, as God's love also
was displayed in his work 3 16 I. 4 9. Love to Christ
shows itself by keeping his commandments 14 21 23, as
his love to the Father was shown by fulfilling his
commandment 14 31. No one was better aware than
S. John that the tree of knowledge is not the tree of
life ; that it is not knowing, but doing which makes
blessed 13 17; that to the having of Jesus' command
ments, must be added the doing of them 14 21 ; to the
hearing of his sayings, the keeping of them 12 47. The
presence of the light in the world is an admonition to
walk in the light 12 35. As God has revealed to men
his truth, so is it his commandment that they walk in
the truth II. 4.
All commandments are finally included in the one
commandment of love to the brethren. S. John
actually calls this "the commandment" II. 5, and
characterises it absolutely as " his (Jesus') command
ment " I. 3 23 4 21, as indeed Jesus himself had called
it " my commandment " 1 5 " i7. In the commandment
of love, S.John sums up the whole " message" I. 3 n,
and the peculiarity of his ethical conception appears

POSITIVE CONCEPT OF SALVATION 201
especially in I. 3 10 where he represents righteousness
as equivalent to brotherly love. This whole con
ception however is thoroughly in accord with the
general characteristics of S. John's thought. As he
saw the revelation of God not only in Jesus' words,
but in his manifestation as a whole ; so, rather than
in his individual precepts, it was in the total impression
of his life, as love unto the end, that he read the new
commandment. As God's revelation of himself was
his law for the old covenant, so was the new reve
lation in Christ the new commandment. It is char
acteristic of S. John that he represents the imitation
of Jesus under the terms of the ethical " ought "
(6cf>ei\ei) I. 2 6 3 16 cf 411.
It doubtless seems strange that Jesus in enjoining
love should call it a new commandment; as though
it had never been recognised in the old Law. It
appears indeed as if the Synoptic account also would
represent as original with Jesus the summary of the
Law in the double commandment of love to God, and
to one's neighbour, Mat. 22 35 seq. Mk. 12 28 seq. But
on the other hand a certain lawyer summarised the
Law in the same terms, Lk. 10 25 seq.; and since these
words are a quotation from two of the most familiar
passages of the Law, Deut. 6 5, Lev. 19 18, it would not
be strange if they had been a common formula with
the scribes. S. John himself meditated upon the
paradox involved in the name new commandment.
In the Second Epistle he says, "Not as though I
wrote to thee a new commandment, but that which
we had from the beginning, that we love one another"
II. 5. Again in the First Epistle he calls it, " The
message which ye heard from the beginning " 3 ».

202 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
And yet it is also new, at once both old and new, as
he says in the second chapter, " Beloved, no new com
mandment write I unto you, but an old commandment
which ye had from the beginning. Again, a new
commandment write I unto you " 1 .3 7 8 cf. I. 3 9 ">.
The significance of Jesus' designation of love as a
new commandment is fully seen only when we study
the occasion upon which he first enunciated it 13 31-35.
With the departure of the betrayer, Jesus found him
self at last alone in the company of his true disciples,
whom he had gathered out of the world, and whom
he had finally purified. In the constitution of this
little company he sees his earthly work finished, and
himself and his Father glorified 13 31. As one family
they had just partaken of the new covenant meal
which Jesus had instituted ; he himself looks forward
to his departure from them 13 3233, and to his offer
ing of the covenant sacrifice 17 19. When therefore
he gives to his disciples a commandment which shall
distinguish them from all the world 1335, what can
this mean but the new law for the New Covenant?
This is a commandment which fulfils all that the
prophets had foretold of the law of the New Cove
nant. As a law of love, it is of course written upon
the heart, Jer. 31 33 32 4°; there is in this law no servi
tude 1 5 15, but the only true freedom 8 32 seq. God's
law in this form ceases to be a burden. As in Mat.
1 1 30 Jesus says, " My yoke is easy and my burden is
light; " so S. John says, " His commandments are
not grievous " I. 5 3. Love, as the social law of the
New Covenant, is directed specially towards " one
another; " as the love of the Father is showed pre
eminently towards his children, so is their love to be

POSITIVE CONCEPT OF SALVATION 203
directed especially towards the brethren. This partic
ularism is brought out with great force by the whole
character of S. John's representation. It cannot
however be considered a retrogression from the stand
point of Mat. 5 44 seq.; for in this commandment
the whole wealth of Jesus' love comes to expres
sion, and the very constitution of the new com
munity guards it against the narrow and exclusive
particularism which marked the national theocracy.
In the very announcement of this commandment,
Jesus contemplates the relation of his disciples to the
whole world 13 35. " Hereby shall all men know that
ye are my disciples ; " — by a love which in its in
tensity is displayed especially towards the household
of faith ; but which triumphs through the Church for
the world.
But there is still another respect in which this
commandment is new. It is new not only because it
was formulated for a new relationship, but because it
was enjoined according to a new measure, or meas-
urelessness: "As I have loved you" 1334. So S.
John explains in I. 2 8, it is new, " because the dark
ness passeth away, and the true light already shin-
eth." The love of Jesus was about to be displayed
in its fulness — et? Te\o? — " Greater love hath no
man than this, that a man lay down his life for his
friends "15 13. Henceforth we have a new definition
of love; and S. John says, " Hereby know we love,
because he laid down his life for us; and we
ought to lay down our lives for the brethren " I. 3 16.
Here we have a new ideal of love ; — love in excelsis.
Love with S John is not a mere sentiment of bene
volence and good feeling, but a passion; not the

204 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
correlative of dislike, but of hate and murder; —
" not as Cain was of the Evil One and slew his
brother " I. 3 12.
It is noteworthy that in S. John's writings there is
no commandment of love to God, nor even any ex
hortation of love to Christ. And yet in the Old
Testament this was the commandment which held
the first place cf. Mat. 22 38. This commandment
was there however the more necessary because of the
merely formal relation in which the people of the
Old Covenant stood to God as Father, and Jesus had
actually to remark upon the lack of love to God on
the part of the Jews 5 42. But as the relation of the
Christian community to God is a real and inward
one, founded not only in his election, but in his
begetting of them ; and on the part of the disciples,
in their immediate experience of God, love to God
was a matter of course, and throughout S. John's
writings it is simply assumed. It is a matter of
course that every child of God " loveth him that
begat " (rbv yevvrjcravra), and it is a consequence of
this, that he " loveth him also that is begotten of
him " I. 5 .. The two commandments are really one :
" for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath
seen, cannot love God whom he hath not seen ; " but
as the love of God is the postulate of the Christian
community, only the love of the brethren remains to
be enjoined as a commandment ; — " And this com
mandment have we from him, that he that loveth God
love his brother also " I. 4 20 21. How thoroughly fun
damental this idea is with S. John, we see from the
turn which it gives to his expression. " Beloved, if
God so loved us " — we might expect the obvious de-

POSITIVE CONCEPT OF SALVATION 205
duction, so we ought to love him — but instead we
have, "we ought also to love one another" I. 41,.
Likewise in I. 3 16, " Hereby we know love, because
he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay
down our lives" — not for him, but — "for one an
other." This is precisely in accord with Jesus' signi
ficant teaching according to the Synoptic Gospels:
" Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren,
even these least, ye did it unto me " Mat. 25 40 cf.
John 13 20. The only way in which, after Christ's
departure cf. 12 7 8, the disciples' love can be showed
towards him " in deed," is by works of lovingkindness
towards his brethren I. 3 17 18.
As S. John comprised in the one idea of love, the
whole conception of Christian morality; he must
especially have associated with it the ideal of meek
ness and lowliness of heart, Mat. 1 1 29, which is so
significant a trait of Jesus' precept and example in
the Synoptic account. And in fact, just before he
enjoined the new commandment he had washed the
Apostles' feet 13 "-17. In this symbolic act he repre
sented, more clearly than his words had ever done,
the character of the meekness which he required. It
was not thinking lowly of oneself, nor adopting a
lowly attitude; but assuming a lowly position. It
was a yoke, a burden, the willing (" in heart ") as
sumption of the position of a servant ; — and this not
with reference to God or Christ (a position too obvi
ously just), but towards one's fellow men. " If I then
your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye
also ought" — note the same turn of expression we
have been studying — " to wash one another's feet."
It was not enough that S. Paul recognised himself

2o6 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
" a servant of Jesus Christ," Rom. i • ; he also says,
we recognise " ourselves as your servants for Jesus'
sake " II. Cor. 4 5.
Corresponding to S. John's representation of the
Christian morality in terms of a commandment, he
makes prominent also the idea of reward. The single
passage in which he regards hope as the motive of
Christian conduct I. 3 3, implies this conception.
There is the same implication in the exhortation to
abide in Christ, " that we may have boldness, and
not be ashamed before him at his coming " I. 2 28 ;
and in I. 4 17 " boldness in the day of judgment " is
regarded as the reward of perfected love. The idea
of reward is more expressly represented in the Second
Epistle v. 8 than in any other passage in the Scrip
ture : " Look to yourselves, that ye lose not the
things which we [or ye] have wrought, but that ye
receive a full reward." This is not entirely peculiar
to the Epistle. The idea of " wages " is at least
figuratively applied to the religious sphere in 436.
And even Jesus' own work, which is done in fulfil
ment of the Father's commandment 10 18 12 49, looks
for the Father's reward. He expects to be glorified,
because he himself had glorified the Father, and had
accomplished the work which he had given him to
do 1745. And in 15 10 the abiding of the disciples in
Jesus' love, is conditioned upon their keeping his
commandments ; as his abiding in the Father's love,
is conditioned upon his keeping the Father's com
mandments. We have already discussed S. John's doctrine of the
knowledge of God. But S. John employs the word to

POSITIVE CONCEPT OF SALVATION 207
know (both oi&a/jiev and yivdta-KOfiev) also in another
confidence and very different way. The trait we have
here to remark belongs exclusively to the
Epistle, and is one of its most conspicuous features.
It was natural for S. John, who regarded salvation as
a present possession, to think of it also as fact which
was capable of being experienced and known, of
being also tested and verified. Therefore he says:
" These things have I written unto you, that ye may
know that ye have eternal life " 5 13. And this con
fidence of salvation is expressed pre-eminently in the
last verses of the Epistle : " We know that we are of
God, and the whole world lieth in the Evil One.
And we know that the Son of God has come, and
hath given us an understanding, that we know him
that is true, and we are in him that is true, in his Son
Jesus Christ." This knowledge of one's salvation is
not an intuition, nor does it rest upon any subjective
ground : there is no more practical trait in S. John's
writings than the character of the tests which he
proposes for the assurance of salvation. His funda
mental maxim is this : " If we know that he is right
eous, we know that every one also that doeth
righteousness is begotten of him " I. 2 29. Strongly
as the orthodox faith is emphasised as the test for
discerning between the spirits of error and the Spirit
of truth I. 4 . cf. 2 22 23, it is never expressly mentioned
as a ground for a disciple's certainty of possessing
eternal life. As love is the test whereby the world
may know the disciples of Christ 1435, and as the
false brother is discerned by his lack of compassion
towards a brother in need I. 3 17 ; so has each dis
ciple to judge of the reality of his own salvation by

208 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
the same objective test, by the proof of a love which
is " in deed and in truth " I. 3 18. " Hereby shall we
know that we are of the truth " I. 3 19. On the other
hand it is said : " Hereby we know that we love the
children of God, when we love God and keep his
commandments" 5 2. But as love of the brethren is
the most objective test, it is that which is most in
sisted upon : " We know that we have passed from
death unto life, because we love the brethren " 3 14.
It is practically the same thing when the keeping of
his commandment, or his word, is made the test.
We have in 2 3 a highly characteristic expression :
" Hereby we know that we know him, if we keep his
commandments " cf. 2 5. There is also a test of a
different character, which is at least not a purely sub
jective one ; that is the witness of the Spirit, who is
not only a witness to the historical facts of Christ's
life, but a witness also to his abiding presence in his
disciples 3 24 4 13. But not only may the disciple be
thus confidently assured of that which constitutes the
Christian's present possession; in one of the rare
instances in which S. John looks forward to the per
fection of the believer's life in the other world, he
regards that too as the object of knowledge : " We
know that when he shall be manifested, we shall be
like him, for we shall see him as he is " 3 2. But as
the future life is only the perfection of that which
we now have, and advances to perfection ever
by the same means (that is by the knowledge of
God), he might well count that the future life was
assured by the verification of eternal life in the
present.

POSITIVE CONCEPT OF SALVATION 209
Into close connection with the Christian confidence
which we have just been considering, S. John brings
Prayer the idea of Praver : " If our heart con
demn us not, we have boldness towards
God, and whatsoever we ask we receive of him,
because we keep his commandments, and do the
things which are pleasing in his sight " I. 3 22. " And
this is the boldness we have towards him, that, if we
ask anything according to his will, he heareth us :
and if we know that he heareth us whatsoever we ask,
we know that we have the petitions which we have
asked of him " I. 514 15.
In addition to the great prayer of the seventeenth
chapter, there are more frequent references to Jesus'
prayers in the Fourth Gospel than in any other. It
has been noted that the prayers of Jesus are expressed
by the verb ipcordco and those of the disciples, by
alrem. The attempt however to explain the principle
of S. John's consistent discrimination of these two
terms has not been fruitful : they both mean, to ask,
and S. John does not use at all the specific word for
prayer, rrpoo-ev-^eiv. He comes nearer however to
giving a doctrine of prayer than does any other
writer in the New Testament. The possibility of
address to God in prayer was simply assumed by all
Christian writers. Prayer was not a new thing with
Christianity; but prayer in the name of Jesus was,
and it is upon this S. John dwells.
Participation in the Messianic salvation was in
prophecy made dependent upon " calling upon the
name of the Lord " Joel 3 s. S. Peter and S. Paul
agree in interpreting this as a calling upon Jesus as
one who has been exalted to be Lord, Acts 2 21 cf. 36
14

2IO THE LIFE MANIFESTED
Rom. 10 " seq. " Calling upon the name of Jesus "
appears together with baptism as the condition of
salvation, Acts 22 16. And in Acts 9 m I. Cor. 1 ^
II. Tim. 2 22 Christians are actually distinguished as :
" Those who call upon the name of the Lord Jesus
Christ." So important was it, and so distinguishing
a characteristic of the Christian community, that they
addressed their prayers to Jesus as well as to God.
This conception appears also in S. John's Gospel,
though the early and prevalent misunderstanding of
his expression has occasioned even a corruption in
the text upon which our Authorised Version is based.
We have however even in that text Jesus' express
assurance that he himself will answer his disciples'
prayers : " And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name,
that will / do " 14 13. But according to the true
text (according to the oldest MSS. J$ B and C and most
Versions cf. Tischendorf, Westcott and Hort, and
Rev. Ver.) prayer is thought of as being offered also
directly to Jesus : " If ye shall ask me anything in my
name, that will I do " 14 14. The omission of " me "
in this verse was evidently due to the feeling that
there is an incongruity in the thought of addressing
Jesus himself in his name. From the true text how
ever we see that no such incongruity existed for
S. John; we see on the contrary that he does not
speak of prayer directed to the Father in Jesus' name.
In 15 16 the phrase " in my name " is to be connected
with " he may give," as appears very clearly in the
parallel expression 16 23 (according to the true text.
See Rev. Ver.). According to the conception that ask
ing in Jesus' name means direct address to him, we have
a suitable interpretation for 1626: "In that day ye

POSITIVE CONCEPT OF SALVATION 211
shall ask in my name ; and I say not unto you that I
will pray the Father for you." Jesus here explains to
his disciples that prayers addressed to him do not
have to be passed on to the Father. The exalted
Christ is so thoroughly the dispenser of all gifts to
the Church, that whatever the Father himself gives is
given in Jesus' name 1426 15 16 1623. This is not in
anywise to derogate from the Father's supremacy;
for in the verse we have just quoted it is assumed
that the Father is pre-eminently the hearer of
prayer, and Jesus' power to answer prayers directed
to him, is grounded upon the fact that " the Father
himself loveth you, because ye have loved me." And
in 14 13 the fulfilment of the disciples' petitions by
Jesus is said to be a glorification of the Father in the
Son. There is a contradiction in Jesus' representation
of the possibility of addressing prayers to him : whereas
he says in 1623, "And in that day ye shall ask
(epmrr\o-ere) me nothing. Verily verily I say unto
you, If ye shall ask anything of the Father, he will
give it you in my name ; " we have on the other
hand in 1626 " In that day ye shall ask (alrrjo-eo-Qe) in
my name," and in 14 n " If ye shall ask me anything
in my name, that will I do." It has been noted that
the verb used in the first instance is that which is
elsewhere used only in reference to Jesus' prayers,
and it may be that an understanding of S. John's dis
crimination between these two words would resolve the
contradiction. But a careful study of the passage
shows how difficult it is to give them any interpretation
which does not involve some confusion. We can see
however in a general way, from this whole range of
passages that S. John would represent the equivalence

212 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
of prayers addressed to the Son and to the Father.
This was in accordance with the whole trend of his
theology. As in the Epistle the reference of the
personal pronouns seems often to be to the Father
or to the Son indifferently; so even here we have
a perfectly neutral expression in regard to prayer:
" Ask whatever ye will, and it shall be done unto
you " 157. In these parting words of Jesus it was in
no wise necessary to emphasise the fact that the
Father is a hearer and answerer of prayer; but it
was decidedly necessary for him to assure his disciples
in that moment of farewell that, though they might
no longer address him as they had been accustomed
to do while he was on earth, nevertheless prayer to
the Father constituted intercourse also with him, and
the Father's gifts were given in his name. More than
that; they may ask him directly in his name.
Hitherto his disciples had talked to him familiarly ;
but they shall do so no longer 16 23. The old inter
course is about to be broken off, but a new form of
intercourse is to take its place, as Jesus ceases to be
the object of their social faculty and becomes the satis
faction of their religious nature : " Hitherto ye have
asked nothing in my name : ask, and ye shall receive,
that your joy may be fulfilled " 1624. We see espe
cially from this last phrase that in all of his utterances
about prayer Jesus aimed at comforting his disciples
with the assurance that the intercourse in which they
then rejoiced would be continued — though in a new
form, in his name, that is in such wise as they held in
tercourse with God — and would be proved by the
reception of the gifts which they asked. It is for this
reason his words are so unqualified and emphatic:

POSITIVE CONCEPT OF SALVATION 213
"Whatsoever ye ask, it shall be done." We have
however in the Epistle the qualification, " according
to his will "5 m; and in the verse following we have a
thought with which doubtless S. John had often com
forted his own heart in view of the apparent failure of
his prayers : " And if we know that he heareth us
whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the
petitions which we have asked of him."
It is after all surprising that S. John's expression
" ask in his name " should have been so commonly
misunderstood. The phrase more usual in the New
Testament is, as we have noted above, " to call on
the name of the Lord Jesus Christ." But S. John's
expression stands, in one respect at least, much nearer
to the Hebrew formula from which they both are
derived. The Hebrew ill IT DBO N"lp cf. Joel 3 5
is strictly " to call in the name of Jehovah ; " and
S. John's expression is, apart from his substitution of
the word "ask" for "call," the simplest possible
adaptation of the Hebrew phrase : " to call (or ask) in
the name of Jesus." This interpretation is substanti
ated unanimously by the Greek commentators. And
at all events, from the correct text of 1414, we see that
the understanding of this phrase which at first sight
seems to us most obvious — a reference, that is, to the
use of the name of Jesus as the concluding formula of
prayer addressed to the Father, expressive of the fact
that the ground of confident approach is his merit —
that this understanding is in reality by no means
adequate inasmuch as it fails to afford any endurable
interpretation of the expression, " ask me in my
name." It is a consideration of great importance
that we have here an explicit reference by S. John

214 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
to prayer addressed to Jesus: it is of scarcely less
moment that we have this thought expressed by so
striking a Hebraism. It is true that the Old Testa
ment furnishes no precise parallel (such e. g. as " call
upon me in my name Jehovah,") but such an ex
pression would surely not be foreign to the profound
Hebraic conception of the " name." Whether or not
however we interpret this phrase in the sense of direct
address to Christ, we are obliged to recognise in it
the pregnant force of the Hebrew idea. And just be
cause in Hebrew the significance of the " name " is so
large and so inclusive, we cannot be surprised at the
transition (especially in 162324) from " asking in my
name" to " receiving in my name," which appears to
us so sudden and so harsh. We have in the Old Testa
ment not only " to call in the name of the Lord " (or
" in my name ") I. Kings 18 24 Isa. 41 25 64 7 Zeph. 3 9
Zech. 139 (and elsewhere frequently), and, to lift up
one's hands in his name, Ps. 63 4; but, to "walk in the
name of the Lord " Micah 4 5 Zech. 1012, and various
other expressions. For this interpretation in general
see Franke, Das alte Testament bei Johannes, pp. 25 1
seq. It may not be possible to account completely for
S. John's use of the word " ask " to the exclusion of
the generic word for prayer. But certainly it was
not intended to exclude adoration and thanksgiving
from the notion of prayer : petition being the most
specific conception of prayer carries all else with it.
We can see too that the prayer of petition was the
most apt to express to the disciples the assurance of
continued intercourse with Jesus. For it is only by
the answer to prayer that the reality of the mutual

POSITIVE CONCEPT OF SALVATION 21 5
relation can be verified. That prayer is not merely
the expression of man's attitude towards God, but a
veritable means of communication with him, involving
also a reciprocal response on his part, is absolutely
essential to S. John's conception. For prayer is a part
of his doctrine of fellowship. The ground of confi
dence in prayer, whether it be addressed to the
Father or to the Son, is this : " For the Father himself
loveth you " 16 27. And the condition of prayer is :
" If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you "157.
It is therefore as the assurance of continued fellow
ship with Christ, that the answer to prayer is said to
fulfil the Apostles' joy 1624; — an expression which
is almost invariably associated with the fruition of
fellowship in one or another of its forms ; with one
another, or with God in Christ 15 n 162022 I. 1 4.
Prayer is not only the fulfilment of the joy of fel
lowship with the Father and the Son; it has also
a relation to the fellowship which exists among the
brethren. S. John expressly considers the subject of
intercessory prayer : " If any man see his brother
sinning a sin not unto death, he shall ask, and he will
give him life " I. 5 l6. Prayer for a sinning brother is
a special example of intercession, and it is also its
most specific form. The brother who sins is cut off
from the Christian fellowship. All sin separates from
God ; but " there is sin not unto death ". I. 5 17 ; sin that
is, which, though it of course cuts one off from life,
does not do so irretrievably. As the sinner is thus
cut off from the fellowship, and can therefore no
longer pray in the covenant Name, it is the duty of
the brother to intercede for him, and God will give
him life.

2l6 THE LIFE MANIFESTED
When we review from this point the whole of
S. John's theology, it is impossible not to recognise
it, at once in its profundity, and in its simplicity; in
its close attachment to God in Christ, and in its ready
application to the moral walk ; in its irenic quality, its
unity, and its transparency ; — it is impossible not to
recognise it as the fit legacy of that disciple whom
Jesus loved, who for the sake of his witness was kept
so long in the world, but now
" Lies as he once lay, breast to breast with God."

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