Expositor's Bible: The Epistles of St. John
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Title: Expositor's Bible: The Epistles of St. John
Author: William Alexander
Editor: Sir W. Robertson Nicoll
Release date: September 16, 2012 [eBook #40775]
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE: THE EPISTLES OF ST. JOHN ***
Produced by Douglas L. Alley, III, Marcia Brooks, Colin
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THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE
EDITED BY THE REV.
W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, M.A., LL.D.
_Editor of "The Expositor," etc._
THE EPISTLES OF ST. JOHN
BY
WILLIAM ALEXANDER, D.D.
LONDON
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
27, PATERNOSTER ROW
MDCCCXCVI
THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE.
_Crown 8vo, cloth, price 7s. 6d. each vol._
FIRST SERIES, 1887-8.
Colossians.
By A. MACLAREN, D.D.
St. Mark.
By Very Rev. the Dean of Armagh.
Genesis.
By Prof. MARCUS DODS, D.D.
1 Samuel.
By Prof. W. G. BLAIKIE, D.D.
2 Samuel.
By the same Author.
Hebrews.
By Principal T. C. EDWARDS, D.D.
SECOND SERIES, 1888-9
Galatians.
By Prof. G. G. FINDLAY, B.A.
The Pastoral Epistles.
By Rev. A. PLUMMER, D.D.
Isaiah I.--XXXIX.
By Prof. G. A. SMITH, D.D. Vol. I.
The Book of Revelation.
By Prof. W. MILLIGAN, D.D.
1 Corinthians.
By Prof. MARCUS DODS, D.D.
The Epistles of St. John.
By Right Rev. W. ALEXANDER, D.D.
THIRD SERIES, 1889-90.
Judges and Ruth.
By R. A. WATSON, M.A., D.D.
Jeremiah.
By Rev. C. J. BALL, M.A.
Isaiah XL.--LXVI.
By Prof. G. A. SMITH, D.D. Vol. II.
St. Matthew.
By Rev. J. MONRO GIBSON, D.D.
Exodus.
By Very Rev. the Dean of Armagh.
St. Luke.
By Rev. H. BURTON, M.A.
FOURTH SERIES, 1890-1.
Ecclesiastes.
By Rev. SAMUEL COX, D.D.
St. James and St. Jude.
By Rev. A. PLUMMER, D.D.
Proverbs.
By Rev. R. F. HORTON, D.D.
Leviticus.
By Rev. S. H. KELLOGG, D.D.
The Gospel of St. John.
By. Prof. M. DODS, D.D. Vol. I.
The Acts of the Apostles.
By Prof. STOKES, D.D. Vol. I.
FIFTH SERIES, 1891-2.
The Psalms.
By A. MACLAREN, D.D. Vol. I.
1 and 2 Thessalonians.
By JAMES DENNEY, D.D.
The Book of Job.
By R. A. WATSON, M.A., D.D.
Ephesians.
By Prof. G. G. FINDLAY, B.A.
The Gospel of St. John.
By Prof. M. DODS, D.D. Vol. II.
The Acts of the Apostles.
By Prof. STOKES, D.D. Vol. II.
SIXTH SERIES, 1892-3.
1 Kings.
By Very Rev. the Dean of Canterbury.
Philippians.
By Principal RAINY, D.D.
Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther.
By Prof. W. F. ADENEY, M.A.
Joshua.
By Prof. W. G. BLAIKIE, D.D.
The Psalms.
By A. MACLAREN, D.D. Vol. II.
The Epistles of St. Peter.
By Prof. RAWSON LUMBY, D.D.
SEVENTH SERIES, 1893-4.
2 Kings.
By Very Rev. the Dean of Canterbury.
Romans.
By H. C. G. MOULE, M.A., D.D.
The Books of Chronicles.
By Prof. W. H. BENNETT, M.A., B.D.
2 Corinthians.
By JAMES DENNEY, D.D.
Numbers.
By R. A. WATSON, M.A., D.D.
The Psalms.
By A. MACLAREN, D.D. Vol. III.
EIGHTH SERIES 1895-6.
Daniel.
By Ven. Archdeacon FARRAR.
The Book of Jeremiah.
By Prof. W. H. BENNETT, M.A., B.D.
Deuteronomy.
By Prof. ANDREW HARPER, B.D.
The Song of Solomon and
Lamentations.
By Prof. W. F. ADENEY, M.A.
Ezekiel.
By Prof. JOHN SKINNER, M.A.
The Minor Prophets.
By Prof. G. A. SMITH, D.D. Two
Vols.
THE
EPISTLES OF ST. JOHN
_TWENTY-ONE DISCOURSES_
With Greek Text, Comparative Versions, and Notes
Chiefly Exegetical
BY
WILLIAM ALEXANDER
D.D., D.C.L. OXON., HON. LL.D. DUBLIN
BRASENOSE COLLEGE, OXFORD
LORD BISHOP OF DERRY AND RAPHOE
_FOURTH EDITION_
London
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
27, PATERNOSTER ROW
MDCCCXCVI
Hujus scriptis illustratur,
Illustrata solidatur
Unitas Ecclesiæ.
ADAM OF ST. VICTOR
_Seq._ xxxi. (_S. Johannes Evangelista_).
PREFACE.
It is now many years ago since I entered upon a study of the Epistles
of St. John, as serious and prolonged as was consistent with the often
distracting cares of an Irish Bishop. Such fruit as my labours
produced enjoyed the advantage of appearing in the last volume of the
_Speaker's Commentary_ in 1881.
Since that period I have frequently turned again to these
Epistles--subsequent reflection or study not seldom filling in gaps in
my knowledge, or leading me to modify former interpretations. When
invited last year to resume my old work, I therefore embraced
willingly the opportunity which was presented to me.
Let me briefly state the method pursued in this book.
I. The First Part contains four Discourses.
(1) In the first Discourse I have tried to place the reader in the
historical surroundings from which (unless all early Church history is
unreal, a past that never was present) these Epistles emanated.
(2) In the second Discourse I compare the Epistle with the Gospel.
This is the true point of orientation for the commentator. Call the
connection between the two documents what we may; be the Epistle
preface, appendix, moral and devotional commentary, or accompanying
encyclical address to the Churches, which were "the nurslings of
John"; that connection is constant and pervasive. Unless this
principle is firmly grasped, we not only lose a defence and
confirmation of the Gospel, but dissolve the whole consistency of the
Epistle, and leave it floating--the thinnest cloud in the whole
cloudland of mystic idealism.
(3) The third Discourse deals with the polemical element in these
Epistles. Some commentators indeed, like the excellent Henry Hammond,
"spy out Gnostics where there are none." They confuse us with uncouth
names, and conjure up the ghosts of long-forgotten errors until we
seem to hear a theological bedlam, or to see theological scarecrows.
Yet Gnosticism, Doketism, Cerinthianism, certainly sprang from the
teeming soil of Ephesian thought; and without a recognition of this
fact, we shall never understand the Epistle. Undoubtedly, if the
Apostle had addressed himself only to contemporary error, his great
Epistle would have become completely obsolete for us. To subsequent
ages an antiquated polemical treatise is like a fossil scorpion with a
sting of stone. But a divinely taught polemic under transitory forms
of error finds principles as lasting as human nature.
(4) The object of the fourth Discourse is to bring out the image of
St. John's soul--the essentials of the spiritual life to be found in
those precious chapters which still continue to be an element of the
life of the Church.
Such a view, if at all accurate, will enable the reader to contemplate
the whole of the Epistle with the sense of completeness, of remoteness,
and of unity which arises from a general survey apart from particular
difficulties. An ancient legend insisted that St. John exercised
miraculous power in blending again into one the broken pieces of a
precious stone. We may try in an humble way to bring these fragmentary
particles of spiritual gem-dust together, and fuse them into one.
II. The plan pursued in the second part is this. The First Epistle (of
which only I need now speak) is divided into ten sections.
The sections are thus arranged--
(1) The _text_ is given in Greek. In this matter I make no pretence to
original research; and have simply adopted Tischendorf's text, with
occasional amendments from Dr. Scrivener or Prof. Westcott. At one
time I might have been tempted to follow Lachmann; but experience
taught me that he is "audacior quàm limatior," and I held my hand. The
advantage to every studious reader of having the divine original close
by him for comparison is too obvious to need a word more.
With the Greek I have placed in parallel columns the translations most
useful for ordinary readers--the Latin, the English A.V. and R.V. The
Latin text is that of the "Codex Amiatinus," after Tischendorf's
splendid edition of 1854. In this the reader will find the Hieronymian
interpretation as it stood not more than a hundred and twenty years
after the death of St. Jerome, an interpretation more diligent and more
accurate than that which is supplied by the ordinary Vulgate text. The
saint felt "the peril of presuming to judge others where he himself
would be judged by all; of changing the tongue of the old, and carrying
back a world which was growing hoary to the initial essay of infancy."
The Latin is of that form to which ancient Latin Church writers gave the
name of "rusticitas." But it is a happy--I had almost said a
divine--rusticity. In translating from the Hebrew of the Old Testament,
St. Jerome has given a new life, a strange tenderness or awful cadence,
to prophets and psalmists. The voice of the fields is the voice of
Heaven also. The tongue of the people is for once the tongue of God.
This Hebraistic Latin or Latinised Hebrew forms the strongest link in
that mysterious yet most real spell wherewith the Latin of the Church
enthrals the soul of the world. But to return to our immediate subject.
The student can seldom go wrong by more than a hair's breadth when he
has before him three such translations. In the first column stands St.
Jerome's vigorous Latin. The second contains the English A.V., of which
each clause seems to be guarded by the spirits of the holy dead, as well
as by the love of the living Church; and to tell the innovator that he
"does wrong to show it violence, being so majestical." The third column
offers to view the scholarlike--if sometimes just a little pedantic and
provoking--accuracy of the R.V. To this comparison of versions I attach
much significance. Every translation is an additional commentary, every
good translation the best of commentaries.
I have ventured with much hesitation to add upon another column in
each section a translation drawn up by myself for my own private use;
the greater portion of which was made a year or two before the
publication of the R.V. Its right to be here is this, that it affords
the best key to my meaning in any place where the exposition may be
imperfectly expressed.[1]
(2) One or more Discourses are attached to most of the sections. In
these I may have seemed sometimes to have given myself a wide scope,
but I have tried to make a sound and careful exegesis the basis of
each. And I have throughout considered myself bound to draw out some
great leading idea of St. John with conscientious care.
(3) The Discourses (or if there be no Discourse in the section, the
text and versions) are followed by short notes, chiefly exegetical, in
which I have not willingly passed by any real difficulty.
I have not wished to cumber my pages with constant quotations. But in
former years I have read, in some cases with much care, the following
commentators--St. Augustine's _Tractatus_, St. John Chrysostom's
Homilies on the Gospel (full of hints upon the Epistles), Cornelius à
Lapide; of older post-Reformation commentators, the excellent Henry
Hammond, the eloquent Dean Hardy, the precious fragments in Pole's
_Synopsis_--above all, the inimitable Bengel; of moderns, Düsterdieck,
Huther, Ebrard, Neander; more recently, Professor Westcott, whose
subtle and exquisite scholarship deserves the gratitude of every
student of St. John. Of Haupt I know nothing, with the exception of an
analysis of the Epistle, which is stamped with the highest praise of
so refined and competent a judge as Archdeacon Farrar. But having read
this list fairly in past years, I am now content to have before me
nothing but a Greek Testament, the Grammars of Winer and Donaldson,
the New Testament lexicons of Bretschneider, Grimm, and Mintert, with
Tromm's "Concordantia LXX." For, on the whole, I really prefer St.
John to his commentators. And I hope I am not ungrateful for help
which I have received from them, when I say that I now seem to myself
to understand him better without the dissonance of their many voices.
"Johannem nisi ex Johanne ipso non intellexeris."
III. It only remains to commend this book, such as it is, not only to
theological students, but to general readers, who I hope will not be
alarmed by a few Greek words here and there.
I began my fuller study of St. John's Epistle in the noonday of life;
I am closing it with the sunset in my eyes. I pray God to sanctify
this poor attempt to the edification of souls, and the good of the
Church. And I ask all who may find it useful, to offer their
intercessions for a blessing upon the book, and upon its author.
WILLIAM DERRY AND RAPHOE.
THE PALACE, LONDONDERRY,
_February 6th, 1889_.
MERCIFUL GOD, we beseech Thee to cast Thy bright beams of light upon
Thy Church, that it being enlightened by the doctrine of Thy blessed
Apostle and Evangelist St. John, may so walk in the light of Thy
truth, that it may at length attain to the light of everlasting life,
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] I venture to call attention to the rendering "very." It enables
the translator to mark the important distinction between two words:
αληθης, _factually_ true and real, as opposed to that which in point
of fact is mendacious; αληθινος, _ideally_ true and real, that which
alone realizes the idea imperfectly expressed by something else. This
is one of St. John's favourite words. In regard to αγαπη I have not
had the courage of my convictions. The word "charity" seems to me
almost providentially preserved for the rendering of that term. It is
not without a purpose that ερως is so rigorously excluded from the New
Testament. [So also from the Epp. of Ignatius.] The objection that
"charity" conveys to ordinary English people the notion of mere
material alms is of little weight. If "charity" is sometimes a little
_metallic_, is not "love" sometimes a little _maundering_? I agree
with Canon Evans that the word, strictly speaking, should be always
translated "charity" when alone, "love" when in regimen. Yet I have
not been bold enough to put "God is charity" for "God is love."
CONTENTS.
PAGE
PREFACE v
_PART I_.
DISCOURSE I.
THE SURROUNDINGS OF THE FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. JOHN 3
DISCOURSE II.
THE CONNECTION OF THE EPISTLE WITH THE GOSPEL OF
ST. JOHN 21
DISCOURSE III.
THE POLEMICAL ELEMENT IN THE FIRST EPISTLE OF
ST. JOHN 39
DISCOURSE IV.
THE IMAGE OF ST. JOHN'S SOUL IN HIS EPISTLE 54
PART II.
SOME GENERAL RULES FOR THE INTERPRETATION OF THE
FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. JOHN 75
SECTION I.
TEXT AND VERSIONS 79
DISCOURSE I.
ANALYSIS AND THEORY OF ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL 80
DISCOURSE II.
ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL HISTORICAL NOT IDEOLOGICAL 88
SECTION II.
TEXT AND VERSIONS 100
DISCOURSE III.
EXTENT OF THE ATONEMENT 102
DISCOURSE IV.
MISSIONARY APPLICATION OF THE EXTENT OF THE
ATONEMENT 106
SECTION III. (1)
TEXT AND VERSIONS 117
DISCOURSE V.
THE INFLUENCE OF THE GREAT LIFE WALK A PERSONAL
INFLUENCE 118
SECTION III. (2)
TEXT AND VERSIONS 133
SECTION III. (3)
TEXT AND VERSIONS 134
DISCOURSE VI.
THE WORLD WHICH WE MUST NOT LOVE 136
DISCOURSE VII.
USE AND ABUSE OF THE SENSE OF THE VANITY OF THE
WORLD 149
SECTION IV.
TEXT AND VERSIONS 164
DISCOURSE VIII.
KNOWING ALL THINGS 166
SECTION V.
TEXT AND VERSIONS 179
SECTION VI.
TEXTS AND VERSIONS 185
DISCOURSE IX.
LOFTY IDEALS PERILOUS UNLESS APPLIED 188
SECTION VII.
TEXT AND VERSIONS 204
SECTION VIII.
TEXT AND VERSIONS 207
DISCOURSE X.
BOLDNESS IN THE DAY OF JUDGMENT 210
SECTION IX.
TEXT AND VERSIONS 220
DISCOURSE XI.
BIRTH AND VICTORY 223
DISCOURSE XII.
THE GOSPEL AS A GOSPEL OF WITNESS; THE THREE
WITNESSES 236
DISCOURSE XIII.
THE WITNESS OF MEN (APPLIED TO THE RESURRECTION) 241
DISCOURSE XIV.
SIN UNTO DEATH 254
DISCOURSE XV.
THE TERRIBLE TRUISM WHICH HAS NO EXCEPTION 260
SECTION X.
TEXT AND VERSIONS 274
_SECOND EPISTLE_.
TEXT AND VERSIONS 279
DISCOURSE XVI.
THEOLOGY AND LIFE IN KYRIA'S LETTER 282
_THIRD EPISTLE_.
TEXT AND VERSIONS 297
DISCOURSE XVII.
THE QUIETNESS OF TRUE RELIGION 300
PART I.
"JOHANNIS EPISTOLÆ, ULTIMUSQUE PRIMÆ VERSICULUS, IN EPHESUM IMPRIMIS
CONVENIUNT."
(BENGEL _in Act._ xix. 21.)
DISCOURSE I.
_THE SURROUNDINGS OF THE FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. JOHN._
"Little children, keep yourselves from idols."--I JOHN V. 21.
After the example of a writer of genius, preachers and essayists for the
last forty years have constantly applied--or misapplied--some lines from
one of the greatest of Christian poems. Dante sings of St. John--
"As he, who looks intent,
And strives with searching ken, how he may see
The sun in his eclipse, and, through decline
Of seeing, loseth power of sight: so I
Gazed on that last resplendence."[2]
The poet meant to be understood of the Apostle's spiritual splendour of
soul, of the absorption of his intellect and heart in his conception of
the Person of Christ and of the dogma of the Holy Trinity. By these
expositors of Dante the image is transferred to the style and structure
of his writings. But confusion of thought is not magnificence, and mere
obscurity is never sunlike. A blurred sphere and undecided outline is
not characteristic of the sun even in eclipse. Dante never intended us
to understand that St. John as a writer was distinguished by a
beautiful vagueness of sentiment, by bright but tremulously drawn lines
of dogmatic creed. It is indeed certain that round St. John himself, at
the time when he wrote, there were many minds affected by this vague
mysticism. For them, beyond the scanty region of the known, there was a
world of darkness whose shadows they desired to penetrate. For them this
little island of life was surrounded by waters into whose depths they
affected to gaze. They were drawn by a mystic attraction to things which
they themselves called the "shadows," the "depths," the "silences." But
for St. John these shadows were a negation of the message which he
delivered that "God is light, and darkness in Him is none." These
silences were the contradiction of the Word who has once for all
interpreted God. These depths were "depths of Satan."[3] For the men who
were thus enamoured of indefiniteness, of shifting sentiments and
flexible creeds, were Gnostic heretics. Now St. John's style, as such,
has not the artful variety, the perfect balance in the masses of
composition, the finished logical cohesion of the Greek classical
writers. Yet it can be loftily or pathetically impressive. It can touch
the problems and processes of the moral and spiritual world with a
pencil-tip of deathless light, or compress them into symbols which are
solemnly or awfully picturesque.[4] Above all St. John has the faculty
of enshrining dogma in forms of statement which are firm and
precise--accurate enough to be envied by philosophers, subtle enough to
defy the passage of heresy through their finely drawn yet powerful
lines. Thus in the beginning of his Gospel all false thought upon the
Person of Him who is the living theology of His Church is refuted by
anticipation--that which in itself or in its certain consequences
unhumanises or undeifies the God Man; that which denies the singularity
of the One Person who was Incarnate, or the reality and entireness of
the Manhood of Him who fixed His Tabernacle[5] of humanity in us.[6]
It is therefore a mistake to look upon the First Epistle of St. John
as a creedless composite of miscellaneous sweetnesses, a disconnected
rhapsody upon philanthropy. And it will be well to enter upon a
serious perusal of it, with a conviction that it did not drop from the
sky upon an unknown place, at an unknown time, with an unknown
purpose. We can arrive at some definite conclusions as to the
circumstances from which it arose, and the sphere in which it was
written--at least if we are entitled to say that we have done so in
the case of almost any other ancient document of the same nature.
Our simplest plan will be, in the first instance, to trace in the
briefest outline the career of St. John after the Ascension of our Lord,
so far as it can be followed certainly by Scripture, or with the highest
probability from early Church history. We shall then be better able to
estimate the degree in which the Epistle fits into the framework of
local thought and circumstances in which we desire to place it.
Much of this biography can best be drawn out by tracing the contrast
between St. John and St. Peter, which is conveyed with such subtle and
exquisite beauty in the closing chapter of the fourth Gospel.
The contrast between the two Apostles is one of _history_ and of
_character_.
_Historically_ the work done by each of them for the Church differs in
a remarkable way from the other.
We might have anticipated for one so dear to our Lord a distinguished
part in spreading the Gospel among the nations of the world. The tone
of thought revealed in parts of his Gospel might even have seemed to
indicate a remarkable aptitude for such a task. St. John's peculiar
appreciation of the visit of the Greeks to Jesus, and his preservation
of words which show such deep insight into Greek religious ideas,
would apparently promise a great missionary, at least to men of lofty
speculative thought.[7] But in the Acts of the Apostles St. John is
first overshadowed, then effaced, by the heroes of the missionary
epic, St. Peter and St. Paul. After the close of the Gospels he is
mentioned five times only. Once his name occurs in a list of the
Apostles.[8] Thrice he passes before us with Peter.[9] Once again (the
first and last time when we hear of St. John in personal relation with
St. Paul) he appears in the Epistle to the Galatians with two others,
James and Cephas, as reputed to be pillars of the Church.[10] But
whilst we read in the Acts of his taking a certain part in miracles,
in preaching, in confirmation; while his boldness is acknowledged by
adversaries of the faith; not a line of his individual teaching is
recorded. He walks in silence by the side of the Apostle who was more
fitted to be a missionary pioneer.[11]
With the materials at our command, it is difficult to say how St. John
was employed whilst the first great advance of the cross was in
progress. We know for certain that he was at Jerusalem during the
second visit of St. Paul. But there is no reason for conjecturing that
he was in that city when it was visited by St. Paul on his last
voyage[12] (A.D. 60); while we shall presently have occasion to show
how markedly the Church tradition connects St. John with Ephesus.
We have next to point out that this contrast in the _history_ of the
Apostles is the result of a contrast in their _characters_. This
contrast is brought out with a marvellous prophetic symbolism in the
miraculous draught of fishes after the Resurrection.
First as regards St. Peter.
"When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he girt his fisher's
coat unto him (for he was naked), and did cast himself into the
sea."[13] His was the warm energy, the forward impulse of young life,
the free bold plunge of an impetuous and chivalrous nature into the
waters which are nations and peoples. _In_ he _must_; _on_ he _will_.
The prophecy which follows the thrice renewed restitution of the
fallen Apostle is as follows: "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, When
thou wast young, thou girdest thyself, and walkedst whither thou
wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy
hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou
wouldest not. This spake He, signifying by what death He should
glorify God, and when He had spoken this, He saith unto him, Follow
Me."[14] This, we are told, is obscure; but it is obscure only as to
details. To St. Peter it could have conveyed no other impression than
that it foretold his martyrdom. "When thou wast young," points to the
tract of years up to old age. It has been said that forty is the old
age of youth, fifty the youth of old age. But our Lord does not
actually define old age by any precise date. He takes what has
occurred as a type of Peter's youthfulness of heart and
frame--"girding himself," with rapid action, as he had done shortly
before; "walking," as he had walked on the white beach of the lake in
the early dawn; "whither thou wouldest," as when he had cried with
impetuous half defiant independence, "I go a fishing," invited by the
auguries of the morning, and of the water. The form of expression
seems to indicate that Simon Peter was not to go far into the dark and
frozen land; that he was to be growing old, rather than absolutely
old.[15] Then should he stretch forth his hands, with the dignified
resignation of one who yields manfully to that from which nature would
willingly escape. "This spake He," adds the evangelist, "signifying by
what death he shall glorify God."[16] What fatal temptation leads so
many commentators to minimise such a prediction as this? If the
prophecy were the product of a later hand added after the martyrdom of
St. Peter, it certainly would have wanted its present inimitable
impress of distance and reserve.
It is in the context of this passage that we read most fully and truly
the contrast of our Apostle's nature with that of St. Peter. St. John,
as Chrysostom has told us in deathless words, was loftier, saw more
deeply, pierced right into and through spiritual truths,[17] was more
the lover of Jesus than of Christ, as Peter was more the lover of
Christ than of Jesus. Below the different work of the two men, and
determining it, was this essential difference of nature, which they
carried with them into the region of grace. St. John was not so much
the great missionary with his sacred restlessness; not so much the
oratorical expositor of prophecy with his pointed proofs of
correspondence between prediction and fulfilment, and his passionate
declamation driving in the conviction of guilt like a sting that
pricked the conscience. He was the theologian; the quiet master of the
secrets of the spiritual life; the calm strong controversialist who
excludes error by constructing truth. The work of such a spirit as his
was rather like the finest product of venerable and long established
Churches. One gentle word of Jesus sums up the biography of long years
which apparently were without the crowded vicissitudes to which other
Apostles were exposed. If the old Church history is true, St. John was
either not called upon to die for Jesus, or escaped from that death by
a miracle. That one word of the Lord was to become a sort of motto of
St. John. It occurs some twenty-six times in the brief pages of these
Epistles. "If I will that he abide"--abide in the bark, in the Church,
in one spot, in life, in spiritual communion with Me. It is to be
remembered finally, that not only spiritual, but ecclesiastical
consolidation is attributed to St. John by the voice of history. He
occupied himself with the visitation of his Churches and the
development of Episcopacy.[18] So in the sunset of the Apostolic age
stands before us the mitred form of John the Divine. Early
Christianity had three successive capitals--Jerusalem, Antioch,
Ephesus. Surely, so long as St. John lived, men looked for a Primate
of Christendom not at Rome but at Ephesus.
How different were the two deaths! It was as if in His words our Lord
allowed His two Apostles to look into a magic glass, wherein one saw
dimly the hurrying feet, the prelude to execution which even the saint
wills not; the other the calm life, the gathered disciples, the quiet
sinking to rest. In the clear obscure of that prophecy we may discern
the outline of Peter's cross, the bowed figure of the saintly old man.
Let us be thankful that John "_tarried_." He has left the Church three
pictures that can never fade--in the Gospel the picture of Christ, in
the Epistles the picture of his own soul, in the Apocalypse the
picture of Heaven.
So far we have relied almost exclusively upon indications supplied by
Scripture. We now turn to Church history to fill in some particulars
of interest.
Ancient tradition unhesitatingly believed that the latter years of St.
John's prolonged life, were spent in the city of Ephesus, or province
of Asia Minor, with the Virgin-Mother, the sacred legacy from the
cross, under his fostering care for a longer or shorter portion of
those years. Manifestly he would not have gone to Ephesus during the
lifetime of St. Paul. Various circumstances point to the period of his
abode there as beginning a little after the fall of Jerusalem (A.D.
67). He lived on until towards the close of the first century of the
Christian era, possibly two years later (A.D. 102). With the date of
the Apocalypse we are not directly concerned, though we refer it to a
very late period in St. John's career, believing that the Apostle did
not return from Patmos until just after Domitian's death. The date of
the Gospel may be placed between A.D. 80 and 90. And the First Epistle
accompanied the Gospel, as we shall see in a subsequent discourse.
The Epistle then, like the Gospel, and contemporaneously with it, saw
the light in Ephesus, or in its vicinity. This is proved by three
pieces of evidence of the most unquestionable solidity.
(1) The opening chapters of the Apocalypse contain an argument, which
cannot be explained away, for the connection of St. John with Asia
Minor and with Ephesus. And the argument is independent of the
authorship of that wonderful book. _Whoever_ wrote the Book of the
Revelation must have felt the most absolute conviction of St. John's
abode in Ephesus and temporary exile to Patmos. To have written with a
special view of acquiring a hold upon the Churches of Asia Minor,
while assuming from the very first as _fact_ what _they_, more than
any other Churches in the world, must have known to be _fiction_,
would have been to invite immediate and contemptuous rejection. The
three earliest chapters of the Revelation are unintelligible, except
as the real or assumed utterance of a Primate (in later language) of
the Churches of Asia Minor. To the inhabitants of the barren and
remote isle of Patmos, Rome and Ephesus almost represented the world;
their rocky nest among the waters was scarcely visited except as a
brief resting-place for those who sailed from one of those great
cities to the other, or for occasional traders from Corinth.
(2) The second evidence is the fragment of the Epistle of Irenæus to
Florinus preserved in the fifth book of the Ecclesiastical History of
Eusebius. Irenæus mentions no dim tradition, appeals to no past which
was never present. He has but to question his own recollections of
Polycarp, whom he remembered in early life. "Where he sat to talk, his
way, his manner of life, his personal appearance, how he used to tell
of his intimacy with John, and with the others who had seen the
Lord."[19] Irenæus elsewhere distinctly says that "John himself issued
the Gospel while living at Ephesus in Asia Minor, and that he survived
in that city until Trajan's time."[20]
(3) The third great historical evidence which connects St. John with
Ephesus is that of Polycrates, Bishop of Ephesus, who wrote a synodical
epistle to Victor and the Roman Church on the quartodeciman question,
toward the close of the second century. Polycrates speaks of the great
ashes which sleep in Asia Minor until the Advent of the Lord, when He
shall raise up His saints. He proceeds to mention Philip who sleeps in
Hierapolis; two of his daughters; a third who takes her rest in Ephesus,
and "John moreover, who leaned upon the breast of Jesus, who was a high
priest bearing the radiant plate of gold upon his forehead."[21]
This threefold evidence would seem to render the sojourn of St. John
at Ephesus for many years one of the most solidly attested facts of
earlier Church history.
* * * * *
It will be necessary for our purpose to sketch the general condition
of Ephesus in St. John's time.
A traveller coming from Antioch of Pisidia (as St. Paul did A.D. 54)
descended from the mountain chain which separates the Meander from the
Cayster. He passed down by a narrow ravine to the "Asian meadow"
celebrated by Homer. There, rising from the valley, partly running up
the slope of Mount Coressus, and again higher along the shoulder of
Mount Prion, the traveller saw the great city of Ephesus towering upon
the hills, with widely scattered suburbs. In the first century the
population was immense, and included a strange mixture of races and
religions. Large numbers of Jews were settled there, and seem to have
possessed a full religious organisation under a High Priest or Chief
Rabbi. But the prevailing superstition was the worship of the
Ephesian Artemis. The great temple, the priesthood whose chief seems
to have enjoyed a royal or quasi-royal rank, the affluence of pilgrims
at certain seasons of the year, the industries connected with objects
of devotion, supported a swarm of devotees, whose fanaticism was
intensified by their material interest in a vast religious
establishment. Ephesus boasted of being a theocratic city, the
possessor and keeper of a temple glorified by art as well as by
devotion. It had a civic calendar marked by a round of splendid
festivities associated with the cultus of the goddess. Yet the moral
reputation of the city stood at the lowest point, even in the
estimation of Greeks. The Greek character was effeminated in Ionia by
Asiatic manners, and Ephesus was the most dissolute city of Ionia. Its
once superb schools of art became infected by the ostentatious
vulgarity of an ever-increasing parvenu opulence. The place was
chiefly divided between dissipation and a degrading form of
literature. Dancing and music were heard day and night; a protracted
revel was visible in the streets. Lascivious romances whose infamy was
proverbial were largely sold and passed from hand to hand. Yet there
were not a few of a different character. In that divine climate, the
very lassitude, which was the reaction from excessive amusement and
perpetual sunshine, disposed many minds to seek for refuge in the
shadows of a visionary world. Some who had received or inherited
Christianity from Aquila and Priscilla, or from St. Paul himself,
thirty or forty years before, had contaminated the purity of the faith
with inferior elements derived from the contagion of local heresy, or
from the infiltration of pagan thought. The Ionian intellect seems to
have delighted in imaginative metaphysics; and for minds
undisciplined by true logic or the training of severe science
imaginative metaphysics is a dangerous form of mental recreation. The
adept becomes the slave of his own formulæ, and drifts into partial
insanity by a process which seems to himself to be one of indisputable
reasoning. Other influences outside Christianity ran in the same
direction. Amulets were bought by trembling believers. Astrological
calculations were received with the irresistible fascination of
terror. Systems of magic, incantations, forms of exorcism, traditions
of theosophy, communications with demons--all that we should now sum
up under the head of spiritualism--laid their spell upon thousands. No
Christian reader of the nineteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles
will be inclined to doubt that beneath all this mass of superstition
and imposture there lay some dark reality of evil power. At all events
the extent of these practices, these "curious arts" in Ephesus at the
time of St. Paul's visit, is clearly proved by the extent of the local
literature which spiritualism put forth. The value of the books of
magic which were burned by penitents of this class, is estimated by
St. Luke at fifty thousand pieces of silver--probably about thirteen
hundred and fifty pounds of our money![22]
Let us now consider what ideas or allusions in the Epistles of St.
John coincide with, and fit into, this Ephesian contexture of life and
thought.
We shall have occasion in the third discourse to refer to forms of
Christian heresy or of semi-Christian speculation indisputably
pointed to by St. John, and prevalent in Asia Minor when the Apostle
wrote. But besides this, several other points of contact with Ephesus
can be detected in the Epistles before us. (1) The first Epistle
closes with a sharp decisive warning, expressed in a form which could
only have been employed when those who were addressed habitually lived
in an atmosphere saturated with idolatry, where the social temptations
to come to terms with idolatrous practices were powerful and
ubiquitous. This was no doubt true of many other places at the time,
but it was pre-eminently true of Ephesus. Certain of the Gnostic
Christian sects in Ionia held lax views about "eating things
sacrificed unto idols," although fornication was a general
accompaniment of such a compliance. Two of the angels of the Seven
Churches of Asia within the Ephesian group--the angels of Pergamum and
of Thyatira--receive especial admonition from the Lord upon this
subject. These considerations prove that the command, "Children, guard
yourselves from the idols," had a very special suitability to the
conditions of life in Ephesus. (2) The population of Ephesus was of a
very composite kind. Many were attracted to the capital of Ionia by
its reputation as the capital of the pleasures of the world. It was
also the centre of an enormous trade by land and sea. Ephesus,
Alexandria, Antioch and Corinth were the four cities where at that
period all races and all religions of civilised men were most largely
represented. Now the First Epistle of St. John has a peculiar breadth
in its representation of the purposes of God. Christ is not merely the
fulfilment of the hopes of one particular people. The Church is not
merely destined to be the home of a handful of spiritual citizens. The
Atonement is as wide as the race of man. "He is the propitiation for
the whole world;" "we have seen, and bear witness that the Father sent
the Son as Saviour of the world."[23] A cosmopolitan population is
addressed in a cosmopolitan epistle. (3) We have seen that the gaiety
and sunshine of Ephesus was sometimes darkened by the shadows of a
world of magic, that for some natures Ionia was a land haunted by
spiritual terrors. He must be a hasty student who fails to connect the
extraordinary narrative in the nineteenth chapter of the Acts with the
ample and awful recognition in the Epistle to the Ephesians of the
mysterious conflict in the Christian life against evil intelligences,
real, though unseen.[24] The brilliant rationalist may dispose of such
things by the convenient and compendious method of a sneer. "Such
narratives as that" (of St. Paul's struggle with the exorcists at
Ephesus) "are disagreeable little spots in everything that is done by
the people. Though we cannot do a thousandth part of what St. Paul
did, we have a system of physiology and of medicine very superior to
his."[25] Perhaps _he_ had a system of spiritual diagnosis very
superior to ours. In the epistle to the Angel of the Church of
Thyatira, mention is made of "the woman Jezebel, which calleth herself
a prophetess,"[26] who led astray the servants of Christ. St. John
surely addresses himself to a community where influences precisely of
this kind exist, and are recognised when he writes,--"Beloved,
believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of
God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.... Every
spirit that confesseth not Jesus is not of God."[27] The Church or
Churches, which the First Epistle directly contemplates, did not
consist of men just converted. Its whole language supposes Christians,
some of whom had grown old and were "fathers" in the faith, while
others who were younger enjoyed the privilege of having been born and
brought up in a Christian atmosphere. They are reminded again and
again, with a reiteration which would be unaccountable if it had no
special significance, that the commandment "that which they heard,"
"the word," "the message," is the same which they "had from the
_beginning_."[28] Now this will exactly suit the circumstances of a
Church like the Ephesian, to which another Apostle had originally
preached the Gospel many years before.[29]
On the whole, we have in favour of assigning these Epistles to Ionian
and Ephesian surroundings a considerable amount of external evidence.
The general characteristics of the First Epistle consonant with the
view of their origin which we have advocated are briefly these. (1) It
is addressed to readers who were encompassed by peculiar temptations
to make a compromise with idolatry. (2) It has an amplitude and
generality of tone which befitted one who wrote to a Church which
embraced members from many countries, and was thus in contact with men
of many races and religions. (3) It has a peculiar solemnity of
reference to the invisible world of spiritual evil and to its terrible
influence upon the human mind. (4) The Epistle is pervaded by a desire
to have it recognised that the creed and law of practice which it
asserts is absolutely one with that which had been proclaimed by
earlier heralds of the cross to the same community. Every one of these
characteristics is consistent with the destination of the Epistle for
the Christians of Ephesus in the first instance. Its polemical
element, which we are presently to discuss, adds to an accumulation
of coincidences which no ingenuity can volatilise away. The Epistle
meets Ephesian circumstances; it also strikes at Ionian heresies.
Aïa-so-Louk,[30] the modern name of Ephesus, appears to be derived
from two Greek words which speak of St. John the divine, the
theologian of the Church. As the memory of the Apostle haunts the city
where he so long lived, even in its fall and long decay under its
Turkish conquerors,--and the fatal spread of the malaria from the
marshes of the Cayster--so a memory of the place seems to rest in turn
upon the Epistle, and we read it more satisfactorily while we assign
to it the origin attributed to it by Christian antiquity, and keep
that memory before our minds.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Cary's _Dante_, _Paradiso_, xxv. 117. Stanley's _Sermons and
Essays on the Apostolic Age_, 242.
[3] Apoc. ii. 24.
[4] John xiii. 30 cf. 1 John ii, 11.
[5] εσκηνωσεν εν ἡμιν.
[6] This characteristic of St. John's style is powerfully expressed by
the great hymn-writer of the Latin Church.
"Hebet sensus exors styli;
Stylo scribit tam subtili,
Fide tam catholicâ,
Ne de Verbo salutari
Posset quicquam refragari
Pravitas hæretica."
_Adam of St. Victor, Seq._ xxxii.
[7] John xii. 20-34, especially ver. 24.
[8] Acts i. 13.
[9] Acts iii. 4, v. 13, viii. 14.
[10] Gal. ii. 9.
[11] Acts iii. 4, iv. 13, viii. 14. The singular and interesting
manuscript of Patmos (Αι περιοδοι του θεολογου) attributed to St.
John's disciple, Prochorus, seems to recognise that St. John's chief
mission was not that of working miracles. Even in a kind of duel of
prodigies between him and the sinister magician of Patmos, the
following occurs. "Kynops asked a young man in the multitude where his
father then was. 'My father is dead,' he replied, 'he went down yonder
in a storm.' Turning to John, the magician said,--'Now then, bring up
this young man's father from the dead.' 'I have not come here,'
answered the Apostle, 'to raise the dead, but to deliver the living
from their errors.'"
[12] Gal. ii. 9; Acts xxi. 17, _sqq._
[13] John xxi. 7.
[14] Ibid., vers. 17, 18, 19.
[15] The beginning of old age would account sufficiently for the
anticipation of death in 2 Peter i. 13, 14, 15.
[16] δοξασει ver. 19. The lifelike _shall_ (not _should_) is part of
the many minute but vivid touches which make the whole of this scene
so full of motion and reality--"I go a fishing" (ver. 3); "_about_ two
hundred cubits" (ver. 8); the accurate αιγιαλος (ver. 4. See Trench,
_On Parables_, 57; Stanley, _Apostolic Age_, 135).
[17] διορατικωτερος. S. Joann. Chrysost.--_Hom. in Joann._
[18] _Euseb. H. E._, iii. 23. See other quotations in Bilson,
_Government of Christ's Church_, p. 365.
[19] _Ap. Euseb. H. E._, v. 20.
[20] _Adv. Hæres._, lib. iii., ch. 1.
[21] ἱερευς το πεταλον πεφορεκως--"Pontifex ejus (sc. _Domini_) auream
laminam in fronte habens." So translated by S. Hieron. _Lib. de Vir.
Illust._, xlv. The πεταλον is the LXX. rendering of צִיץ, the
projecting leaf or plate of radiant gold (Exod. xxviii. 26, xxxix.
30), associated with the "mitre" (Lev. viii. 9). Whether Polycrates
speaks literally, or wishes to convey by a metaphor the impression of
holiness radiating from St. John's face, we probably cannot decide.
[22] Acts xix. 20, 21. In this description of Ephesus the writer has
constantly had in view the passages to which he referred in the
_Speakers Commentary, N.T._, iv., 274, 276. He has also studied M.
Renan's _Saint Paul_, chap, xii., and the authorities cited in the
notes, pp. 329, 350.
[23] St. John ii. 2, iv. 14.
[24] "We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against," etc. Eph.
vi. 12-17.
[25] _Saint Paul_, Renan, 318, 319.
[26] For the almost certain reference here to the Chaldean Sybil
Sambethe, see Apoc ii. 20, Archdeacon Lee's note in _Speaker's
Commentary, N.T._, iv. 527, 534, 535, and Dean Blakesley (art.
_Thyatira, Dict. of the Bible_).
[27] 1 John iv. 1, 3.
[28] 1 John ii. 7, ii. 24, iii. 11; 2 John vv. 5, 6. The passage in
ii. 24 is a specimen of that simple emphasis, that presentation of a
truth or duty under two aspects, which St. John often produces merely
by an inversion of the order of the words. "Ye--what ye _heard_ from
the beginning let it abide in you. If what from the _beginning_ ye
heard abide in you" (ὁ ηκουσατε απ' αρχης ... ὁ απ' αρχης ηκουσατε).
The emphasis in the first clause is upon the _fact_ of their having
_heard_ the message; in the second upon this feature of the
message--that it was given in the _beginning_ of Christianity amongst
them, and kept unchanged until the present time. Cf. εντολη παλαια
(ii. 7) with αρχαιος = "of the early Christian time," in Polycarp,
_Ep. ad Philipp._, i.
[29] Acts xviii. 18-21. To these general links connecting our Epistles
with Ephesus, a few of less importance, yet not without significance,
may be added. (1) The name of Demetrius (3 John 12) is certainly
suggestive of the holy city of the earth-mother (Acts xix. 24, 38).
Vitruvius assigns the completion of the temple of Ephesus to an
architect of the name, and calls him "servus Dianæ." (2) St. John in
his Gospel adopts, as if instinctively, the computation of time which
was used in Asia Minor (John iv. 6, xix. 4--Hefel. _Martyrium S.
Polycarp_. xxi.). On the same principle he speaks in the Apocalypse of
"day and night" (Apoc. iv. 8, vii. 15, xii. 10, xiv. 11, xx. 10); St.
Paul, on the other hand, speaks of "night and day" (1 Tim. v. 5). It
is a very real indication of the accuracy of the report of words in
the Acts that, while St. Luke himself uses either form indifferently
(Luke ii. 37, xviii. 2), St. Paul, as quoted by him, always says
"night and day" (Acts xx. 31, xxvi. 7). (3) Is it merely fanciful to
conjecture that the unusual αγαθοποιων (3 John 11) may be an allusion
to the astrological language in which alone the term is ever used
outside a very few instances in the sacred writers? "He only is under
a good star, and has beneficent omens for his life." Balbillus, one of
the most famous astrologers of antiquity, the confidant of Nero and
Vespasian, was an Ephesian, and almost supreme in Ephesus, not long
before St. John's arrival there. Sueton., _Neron._, 36.
[30] Aïa-so-Louk, a corruption of ἁγιος θεολογος, _holy theologian_
(or ἁγια θεολογου, _holy city of the theologian_). Some scholars,
however, assert that the word is often pronounced and written
_aiaslyk_, with the common Turkish termination _lyk_. See _S. Paul_
(Renan, 342, note 2).
DISCOURSE II.
_THE CONNECTION OF THE EPISTLE WITH THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN._
Συναδυσι μεν γαρ αλληλοις το ευαγγελιον και ἡ επιστολη. _Dionys.
Alexandr. ap Euseb., H. E., vii., 25._
"And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be
full."--1 JOHN i. 4.
From the wholesale burning of books at Ephesus, as a consequence of
awakened convictions, the most pregnant of all commentators upon the
New Testament has drawn a powerful lesson. "True religion," says the
writer, "puts bad books out of the way." Ephesus at great expense
burnt curious and evil volumes, and the "word of God grew and
prevailed." And he proceeds to show how just in the very matter where
Ephesus had manifested such costly penitence, she was rewarded by
being made a sort of depository of the most precious books which ever
came from human pens. St. Paul addresses a letter to the Ephesians.
Timothy was Bishop of Ephesus when the two great pastoral Epistles
were sent to him.[31] All St. John's writings point to the same place.
The Gospel and Epistles were written there, or with primary reference
to the capital of Ionia.[32] The Apocalypse was in all probability
first read at Ephesus.
Of this group of Ephesian books we select two of primary
importance--the Gospel and First Epistle of St. John. Let us dwell
upon the close and thorough connection of the two documents, upon the
interpenetration of the Epistle by the Gospel, by whatever name we may
prefer to designate the connection.
It is said indeed by a very high authority, that while the "whole
Epistle is permeated with thoughts of the person and work of Christ,"
yet "direct references to facts of the Gospel are singularly rare." More
particularly it is stated that "we find here none of the foundation and
(so to speak) crucial events summarised in the earliest Christian
confession as we still find them in the Apostles' creed." And among
these events are placed, "the Birth of the Virgin Mary, the Crucifixion,
the Resurrection, the Ascension, the Session, the Coming to Judgment."
To us there seems to be some exaggeration in this way of putting the
matter. A writing which accompanied a sacred history, and which was a
spiritual comment upon that very history, was not likely to repeat the
history upon which it commented, just in the same shape. Surely the
Birth is the necessary condition of having come in the flesh. The
incident of the piercing of the side, and the water and blood which
flowed from it, is distinctly spoken of; and in that the Crucifixion
is implied. Shrinking with shame from Jesus at His Coming, which is
spoken of in another verse, has no meaning unless that Coming be to
Judgment.[33] The sixth chapter is, if we may so say, the section of
"the Blood," in the fourth Gospel. That section standing in the
Gospel, standing in the great Sacrament of the Church, standing in the
perpetually cleansing and purifying efficacy of the Atonement--ever
present as a witness, which becomes personal, because identified with
a Living Personality[34]--finds its echo and counterpart in the
Epistle towards the beginning and near the close.[35]
We now turn to that which is the most conclusive evidence of connection
between two documents--one historical, the other moral and spiritual--of
which literary composition is capable. Let us suppose that a writer of
profound thoughtfulness has finished, after long elaboration, the
historical record of an eventful and many-sided life--a life of supreme
importance to a nation, or to the general thought and progress of
humanity. The book is sent to the representatives of some community or
school. The ideas which its subject has uttered to the world, from their
breadth and from the occasional obscurity of expression incident to all
great spiritual utterances, need some elucidation. The plan is really
exhaustive, and combines the facts of the life with a full insight into
their relations; but it may be missed by any but thoughtful readers. The
author will accompany this main work by something which in modern
language we might call an introduction, or appendix, or advertisement,
or explanatory pamphlet, or encyclical letter. Now the ancient form of
literary composition rendered books packed with thought doubly difficult
both to read and write; for they did not admit foot-notes, or marginal
analyses, or abstracts. St. John then practically says, first to his
readers in Asia Minor, then to the Church for ever--"with this life of
Jesus I send you not only thoughts for your spiritual benefit, moulded
round His teaching, but something more; I send you an _abstract_, a
compendium of contents, at the beginning of this letter; I also send you
at its close a key to the plan on which my Gospel is conceived." And
surely a careful reader of the Gospel at its first publication would
have desired assistance exactly of this nature. He would have wished to
have a synopsis of contents, short but comprehensive, and a synoptical
view of the author's plan--of the idea which guided him in his choice of
incidents so momentous and of teaching so varied.
We have in the First Epistle two synopses of the Gospel which
correspond with a perfect precision to these claims.[36] We have: (1)
a synopsis of the _contents_ of the Gospel; (2) a synoptical view of
the _conception_ from which it was written.
1. We find in the Epistle at the very outset a synopsis of the
contents of the Gospel.
"That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, that
which we have seen with our eyes, that which we gazed upon, and our
hands handled--_I speak_ concerning the Word who is the Life--that
which we have seen and heard, declare we unto you also."
What are the contents of the Gospel? (1) A lofty and dogmatic
_proœmium_, which tells us of "the Word who was in the beginning with
God--in Whom was life." (2) _Discourses_ and utterances, sometimes
running on through pages, sometimes brief and broken. (3) _Works_,
sometimes miraculous, sometimes wrought into the common contexture of
human life--looks, influences, seen by the very eyes of St. John and
others, gazed upon with ever deepening joy and wonder. (4) _Incidents_
which proved that all this issued from One who was intensely human;
that it was as real as life and humanity--historical not visionary;
the doing and the effluence of a Manhood which could be, and which
was, grasped by human hands.
Such is a synopsis of the Gospel precisely as it is given in the
beginning of the First Epistle. (1) The Epistle mentions _first_,
"that which was from the beginning." There is the compendium of the
proœmium of the Gospel. (2) One of the most important constituent
parts of the Gospel is to be found in its ample preservation of
dialogues, in which the Saviour is one interlocutor; of monologues
spoken to the hushed hearts of the disciples, or to the listening
Heart of the Father, yet not in tones so low that their love did not
find it audible. This element of the narrative is summed up by the
writer of the Epistle in two words--"That which we heard."[37] (3) The
_works_ of benevolence or power, the doings and sufferings; the
pathos or joy which spring up from them in the souls of the disciples,
occupy a large portion of the Gospel. All these come under the
heading, "that which we have seen with our eyes,[38] that which we
gazed upon,"[39] with one unbroken gaze of wonder as so beautiful, and
of awe as so divine.[40] (4) The assertion of the _reality of the
Manhood_[41] of Him who was yet the Life manifested--a reality through
all His words, works, sufferings--finds its strong, bold summary in
this compendium of the contents of the Gospel, "and our hands have
handled." Nay, a still shorter compendium follows: (1) The Life with
the Father. (2) The Life manifested.[42]
2. But we have more than a synopsis which embraces the contents of the
Gospel at the beginning of the Epistle. We have towards its close a
_second_ synopsis of the whole framework of the Gospel; not now the
theory of the Person of Christ, which in such a life was necessarily
placed at its beginning, but of the human conception which pervaded
the Evangelist's composition.
The second synopsis, not of the contents of the Gospel, but of the aim
and conception which it assumed in the form into which it was moulded
by St. John, is given by the Epistle with a fulness which omits
scarcely a paragraph of the Gospel. In the space of six verses of the
fifth chapter the word _witness_, as verb or substantive, is repeated
_ten_ times.[43] The simplicity of St. John's artless rhetoric can
make no more emphatic claim on our attention. The Gospel is indeed a
tissue woven out of many lines of evidence human and divine. Compress
its purpose into one single word. No doubt it is supremely the Gospel
of the Divinity of Jesus. But, next to that, it may best be defined as
the Gospel of _Witness_. These witnesses we may take in the order of
the Epistle. St. John feels that his Gospel is more than a book; it is
a past made everlastingly present. Such as the great Life was in
history, so it stands for ever. Jesus _is_ "the propitiation, _is_
righteous," "is _here_."[44] So the great influences round His Person,
the manifold witnesses of His Life, stand witnessing for ever in the
Gospel and in the Church. What are these? (1) The Spirit is ever
_witnessing_. So our Lord in the Gospel--"when the Comforter is come,
He shall witness of Me."[45] No one can doubt that the Spirit is one
pre-eminent subject of the Gospel. Indeed, teaching about Him, above
all as the witness to Christ, occupies three unbroken chapters in one
place.[46] (2) The _water_ is ever witnessing. So long as St. John's
Gospel lasts, and permeates the Church with its influence, the water
must so testify. There is scarcely a paragraph of it where water is
not; almost always with some relation to Christ. The witness of the
Baptist[47] is, "I baptize with water." The Jordan itself bears
witness that all its waters cannot give that which He bestows who is
"preferred before" John.[48] Is not the water of Cana that was made
wine a witness to His glory?[49] The birth of "water and of the
Spirit,"[50] is another witness. And so in the Gospel section after
section. The water of Jacob's well; the water of the pool of Bethesda;
the waters of the sea of Galilee, with their stormy waves upon which
He walked; the water outpoured at the feast of tabernacles, with its
application to the river of living water; the water of Siloam; the
water poured into the basin, when Jesus washed the disciples' feet;
the water which, with the blood, streamed from the riven side upon the
cross; the water of the sea of Galilee in its gentler mood, when Jesus
showed Himself on its beach to the seven; as long as all this is
recorded in the Gospel, as long as the sacrament of Baptism, with its
visible water and its invisible grace working in the regenerate,
abides among the faithful;--so long is the water ever witnessing.[51]
(3) The Blood is ever "witnessing." Expiation once for all;
purification continually from the blood outpoured; drinking the blood
of the Son of Man by participation in the sacrament of His love, with
the grace and strength that it gives day by day to innumerable souls;
the Gospel concentrated into that great sacrifice; the Church's gifts
of benediction summarised in the unspeakable Gift; this is the
unceasing witness of the _Blood_. (4) Men are ever witnessing. "The
witness of men" fills the Gospel from beginning to end. The glorious
series of confessions wrung from willing and unwilling hearts form the
points of division round which the whole narrative may be grouped. Let
us think of all those attestations which lie between the Baptist's
precious testimony with the sweet yet fainter utterances of Andrew,
Philip, Nathanael, and the perfect creed of Christendom condensed into
the burning words of Thomas--"my Lord and my God."[52] What a range of
feeling and faith; what a variety of attestation coming from human
souls, sometimes wrung from them half unwillingly, sometimes uttered
at crisis-moments with an impulse that could not be resisted! The
witness of men in the Gospel, and the assurance of one testimony that
was to be given by the Apostles individually and collectively,[53]
besides the evidences already named includes the following--the
witness of Nicodemus, of the Samaritan woman, of the Samaritans, of
the impotent man at the pool of Bethesda, of Simon Peter, of the
officers of the Jewish authorities, of the blind man, of Pilate.[54]
(5) The witness of God occupies also a great position in the fourth
Gospel. That witness may be said to be given in five forms: the
witness of the Father,[55] of Christ Himself,[56] of the Holy
Spirit,[57] of Scripture,[58] of miracles.[59] This great cloud of
witnesses, human and divine, finds its appropriate completion in
another subjective witness.[60] The whole body of evidence passes from
the region of the intellectual to that of the moral and spiritual
life. The _evidence_ acquires that _evidentness_ which is to all our
knowledge what the sap is to the tree. The faithful carries it in his
heart; it goes about with him, rests with him day and night, is close
to him in life and death. He, the principle of whose being is belief
ever going out of itself and resting its acts of faith on the Son of
God, has all that manifold witness in him.[61]
It would be easy to enlarge upon the verbal connection between the
Epistle before us and the Gospel which it accompanied. We might draw out
(as has often been done) a list of quotations from the Gospel, a whole
common treasury of mystic language; but we prefer to leave an undivided
impression upon the mind. A document which gives us a synopsis of the
_contents_ of another document at the beginning, and a synoptical
analysis of its predominant idea at the close, covering the entire work,
and capable of absorbing every part of it (except some necessary
adjuncts of a rich and crowded narrative), has a connection with it
which is vital and absorbing. The Epistle is at once an abstract of the
contents of the Gospel, and a key to its purport. To the Gospel, at
least to it and the Epistle considered as integrally one, the Apostle
refers when he says: "these things write we unto you."[62]
St. John had asserted that one end of his declaration was to make his
readers hold fast "fellowship with us," _i.e._, with the Church as the
Apostolic Church; aye, and that fellowship of ours is "with the
Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ;" "and these things," he
continues (with special reference to his Gospel, as spoken of in his
opening words), "we write unto you, that your joy may be fulfilled."
There is as truly a joy as a "patience and comfort of the Scriptures."
The Apostle here speaks of "your joy," but that implied _his_ also.
All great literature, like all else that is beautiful, is a "joy for
ever." To the true student his books are this. But this is so only
with a few really great books. We are not speaking of works of exact
science. Butler, Pascal, Bacon, Shakespeare, Homer, Scott, theirs is
work of which congenial spirits never grow quite tired. But to be
capable of giving out joy, books must have been written with it. The
Scotch poet tells us, that no poet ever found the Muse, until he had
learned to walk beside the brook, and "no think long." That which is
not thought over with pleasure; that which, as it gradually rises
before the author in its unity, does not fill him with delight; will
never permanently give pleasure to readers. He must know joy before he
can say--"these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full."
The book that is to give joy must be a part of a man's self. That is
just what most books are not. They are laborious, diligent, useful
perhaps; they are not interesting or delightful. How touching it is,
when the poor old stiff hand must write, and the overworked brain
think, for bread! Is there anything so pathetic in literature as Scott
setting his back bravely to the wall, and forcing from his imagination
the reluctant creations which used to issue with such splendid
profusion from its haunted chambers?
Of the conditions under which an inspired writer pursued his labours
we know but little. But some conditions are apparent in the books of
St. John with which we are now concerned. The fourth Gospel is a book
written without _arrière pensée_, without literary conceit, without
the paralysing dread of criticism. What verdict the polished society
of Ephesus would pronounce; what sneers would circulate in philosophic
quarters; what the numerous heretics would murmur in their
conventicles; what critics within the Church might venture to whisper,
missing perhaps favourite thoughts and catch-words;[63] St. John cared
no more than if he were dead. He communed with the memories of the
past; he listened for the music of the Voice which had been the
teacher of his life. To be faithful to these memories, to recall these
words, to be true to Jesus, was his one aim. No one can doubt that the
Gospel was written with a full delight. No one who is capable of
feeling, ever has doubted that it was written as if with "a feather
dropped from an angel's wing;" that without aiming at anything but
truth, it attains in parts at least a transcendent beauty. At the
close of the proœmium, after the completest theological _formula_
which the Church has ever possessed--the still, even pressure of a
tide of thought--we have a parenthetic sentence, like the splendid
unexpected rush and swell of a sudden wave ("we beheld the glory, the
glory as of the Only-Begotten of the Father"); then after the
parenthesis a soft and murmuring fall of the whole great tide ("full
of grace and truth"). Can we suppose that the Apostle hung over his
sentence with literary zest? The number of writers is small who can
give us an everlasting truth by a single word, a single pencil touch;
who, having their mind loaded with thought, are wise enough to keep
that strong and eloquent silence which is the prerogative only of the
highest genius. St. John gives us one of these everlasting pictures,
of these inexhaustible symbols, in three little words--"He then having
received the sop, went immediately out, and _it was night_."[64] Do we
suppose that he admired the perfect effect of that powerful
self-restraint? Just before the crucifixion he writes--"Then came
Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns, and the purple robe, and
Pilate saith unto them, Behold the Man!"[65] The pathos, the majesty,
the royalty of sorrow, the admiration and pity of Pilate, have been
for centuries the inspiration of Christian art. Did St. John
congratulate himself upon the image of sorrow and of beauty which
stands for ever in these lines? With St. John as a writer it is as
with St. John delineated in the fresco at Padua by the genius of
Giotto. The form of the ascending saint is made visible through a
reticulation of rays of light in colours as splendid as ever came from
mortal pencil; but the rays issue entirely from the Saviour, whose
face and form are full before him.
The feeling of the Church has always been that the Gospel of St. John
was a solemn work of faith and prayer. The oldest extant fragment upon
the canon of the New Testament tells us that the Gospel was undertaken
after earnest invitations from the brethren and the bishops, with solemn
united fasting; not without special revelation to Andrew the Apostle
that John was to do the work.[66] A later and much less important
document connected in its origin with Patmos embodies one beautiful
legend about the composition of the Gospel. It tells how the Apostle was
about to leave Patmos for Ephesus; how the Christians of the island
besought him to leave in writing an account of the Incarnation, and
mysterious life of the Son of God; how St. John and his chosen friends
went forth from the haunts of men about a mile, and halted in a quiet
spot called the gorge of Rest,[67] and then ascended the mountain which
overhung it. There they remained three days. "Then," writes Prochorus,
"he ordered me to go down to the town for paper and ink. And after two
days I found him standing rapt in prayer. Said he to me--'take the ink
and paper, and stand on my right hand.' And I did so. And there was a
great lightning and thunder, so that the mountain shook. And I fell on
the ground as if dead. Whereupon John stretched forth his hand and took
hold of me, and said--'stand up at this spot at my right hand.' After
which he prayed again, and after his prayer said unto me--'son
Prochorus, what thou hearest from my mouth, write upon the sheets.' And
having opened his mouth as he was standing praying, and looking up to
heaven, he began to say--'in the beginning was the Word, and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God.' And so following on, he spake in
order, standing as he was, and I wrote sitting."[68]
True instinct which tells us that the Gospel of St. John was the fruit
of prayer as well as of memory; that it was thought out in some valley
of rest, some hush among the hills; that it came from a solemn joy which
it breathed forth upon others! "These things write I unto you, that your
joy may be fulfilled." Generation after generation it has been so. In
the numbers numberless of the Redeemed, there can be very few who have
not been brightened by the joy of that book. Still, at one funeral after
another, hearts are soothed by the word in it which says--"I am the
Resurrection and the Life." Still the sorrowful and the dying ask to
hear again and again--"let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be
afraid." A brave young officer sent to the war in Africa, from a
regiment at home, where he had caused grief by his extravagance,
penitent, and dying in his tent, during the fatal day of Isandula,
scrawled in pencil--"dying, dear father and mother--happy--for Jesus
says, 'He that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out.'" Our English
Communion Office, with its divine beauty, is a texture shot through and
through with golden threads from the discourse at Capernaum. Still are
the disciples glad when they see the Lord in that record. It is the book
of the Church's smiles; it is the gladness of the saints; it is the
purest fountain of joy in all the literature of earth.
* * * * *
NOTE A.
The thorough connection of the Epistle with the Gospel may be made
more clear by the following tabulated analysis:--
The (A) _beginning_ and (B) the _close_ of the Epistle contain _two_
abstracts, longer and shorter, of the contents and bearing of the
Gospel.
A.
_i._--1 John i. 1.
1. "That which was from the beginning--concerning the Word of Life" =
John i. 1-15.
2. (_a_) "Which we have _heard_" = John i. 38, 39, 42, 47, 50, 51, ii.
4, 7, 8, 16, 19, iii. 3, 22, iv. 7, 39, 48, 50, v. 6, 47, vi. 5, 70,
vii. 6, 39, viii. 7, 58, ix. 3, 41, x. 1, 39, xi. 4, 45, xii. 7, 50,
xiii. 6, 38, xiv., xvii., xviii. 14, 37, xix. 11, 26, 27, 28, 30, xx.
15, 16, 17, 19, 21, 23, 27, 29, xxi. 5, 6, 10, 12, 22.
(_b_) "Which we have seen _with our eyes_" = John i. 29, 36, 39, ii.
11, vi. 2, 14, 19, ix., xi. 44, xiii. 4, 5, xvii. 1, xviii. 6, xix. 5,
17, 18, 34, 38, xx. 5, 14, 20, 25, 29, xxi. 1, 14.
(_c_) "Which we gazed upon" = _ibid._
(_d_) "Which we have handled" = John xx. 27 (refers also to a
synoptical Gospel, Luke xxiv. 39, 40).
_ii._--1 John i. 2.
1. "The Life was manifested" = John i. 29--xxi. 25.
2. (_a_) "We have seen" = (A. _i._ 2 (_b_)).
(_b_) "And bear witness" = John i. 7, 19, 37, iii. 2, 27, 33, iv. 39,
vi. 69, xx. 28, 30, 31, xxi. 24.
(_c_) "And declare unto you" = John _passim_.
"The Life, the Eternal Life, which"
א "Was with the Father" = John i. 1-4.
ב "And was manifested unto us" = John _passim_.
B.
_i._--1 John v. 6-10.
Summary of the Gospel as a Gospel of _witness_.
1. "The Spirit beareth witness" = John i. 32, xiv., xv., xx. 22.
2. "The water beareth witness" = John i. 28, ii. 9, iii. 5, iv. 13,
14, v. 1, 9, vi. 19, vii. 37, ix. 7, xiii. 5, xix. 34, xxi. 1.
3. "The blood beareth witness" = John vi. 53, 54, 55, 56, xix. 34.
4. "The witness of men" = (A. _ii._ 1 (_b_)) Also John i. 45, 49, iii.
2, iv. 39, vii. 46, xii. 12, 13, 17, 19, 20, 21, xviii. 38, xix. 35,
xx. 28.
5. "The witness of God" =
(_a_) Scripture = John i. 45, v. 39, 46, xix. 36, 37.
(_b_) Christ's own = John viii. 17, 18, 46, xv. 30, xviii. 37.
(_c_) His Father's = John v. 37, viii. 18, xii. 28.
(_d_) His works = John v. 36, x. 25, xv. 24.
_ii._--1 John v. 20.
We know (_i.e._, by the Gospel) that--
1. "The Son of God is come" (ἡκεν), "has come and is here."
Note.--בָאחִי = ἡκω, LXX. Psalm xl. 7. "_Venio_ symbolum quasi Domini
Jesu fuit." (Bengel on Heb. x. 7), the _Ich Dien_ of the Son of the
Father--εγω γαρ εκ του θεου εξηλθον και ἡκω. "I came forth from God,
and am here" (John viii. 4) = John i. 29--xxi. 23 (John xiv. 18, 21,
23, xvi. 16, 22, form part of the thought "is here").
2. "And hath given us an understanding" = gift of the Spirit, John
xiv., xv., xvi. (especially 13, 16).
3. "This is the very God and eternal Life" = John i. 1, 4.
The whole Gospel of St. John brings out these primary principles of
the Faith,--
That the Son of God has come. That He is now and ever present with His
people. That the Holy Spirit gives them a new faculty of spiritual
discernment. That Christ is the very God and the Life of men.
FOOTNOTES:
[31] Bengel, on Acts xix. 19, 20, finds a reference to manuscripts of
some of the synoptical Gospels and of the Epistles in 2 Tim. iv. 13,
and conjectures that, after St. Paul's martyrdom, Timothy carried them
with him to Ephesus.
[32] Renan's curious theory that Rom. xvi. 1-16 is a sheet of the
Epistle to the Ephesians accidentally misplaced, rests upon a supposed
prevalence of Ephesian names in the case of those who are greeted.
Archdeacon Gifford's refutation, and his solution of an unquestionable
difficulty, seems entirely satisfactory. (_Speaker's Commentary, in
loc._, vol. iii., New Testament.)
[33] It has become usual to say that the Epistle does not advert to
John iii. or John vi. To us it seems that _every_ mention of the Birth
of God _is_ a reference to John iii. (1 John ii. 23, iii. 9, iv. 7, v.
1-4.) The word αιμα occurs _once_ only in the fourth Gospel outside
the sixth chapter (xix. 34; for i. 13 belongs to physiology). Four
times we find it in that chapter--vi. 53, 54, 55, 56. Each mention of
the "Blood" in connection with our Lord _does_ advert to John vi.
[34] The masc. part. οι μαρτυρουντες is surely very remarkable with
the three neuters (το πνευμα, το ὑδωρ, το αιμα) 1 John v. 7, 8.
[35] 1 John i. 7, v. 6, 8.
[36] See note A. at the end of this Discourse, which shows that there
are, in truth, _four_ such summaries.
[37] ὁ ακηκοαμεν.
[38] ὁ εωρακαμεν τοις οφθαλμοις ἡμων.
[39] John xx. 20.
[40] ὁ εθεασαμεθα, 1 John i. 1. The same word is used in John i. 14.
[41] John xix. 27 would express this in the most palpable form. But it
is constantly understood through the Gospel. The tenacity of Doketic
error is evident from the fact that Chrysostom, preaching at Antioch,
speaks of it as a popular error in his day. A little later, orthodox
ears were somewhat offended by some beautiful lines of a Greek sacred
poet, too little known among us, who combines in a singular degree
Roman gravity with Greek grace. St. Romanus (A.D. 491) represents our
Lord as saying of the sinful woman who became a penitent,
την βρεξασαν ιχνη
ἁ ουκ ἑβρεξε βυθος
ψιλοις τοτε τοις δακρυσιν.
"Which with her tears, then pure,
Wetted the feet the sea-depth wetted not."
(_Spicil. Solesmen._ Edidit T. B. Pitra, _S. Romanus_, xvi. 13, _Cant.
de Passione._ 120.)
[42] 1 John i. 2. The Life with the Father = John i. 1, 14. The Life
manifested = John i. 14 to end.
[43] The A.V. (1 John v. 6-12) obscures this by a too great
sensitiveness to monotony. The language of the verses is varied
unfortunately by "bear record" (ver. 7), "hath testified" (ver. 9),
"believeth not the record" (ver. 10), "this is the record" (ver. 11).
[44] 1 John ii. 2-29, iii. 7, iv. 3, v. 20.
[45] John xv. 26.
[46] John xiv., xv., xvi., Cf. vii. 39. The witness of the Spirit in
the Apostolic ministry will be found John xx. 22.
[47] John i. 19.
[48] John i. 16, 31, 33.
[49] John ii. 9, iv. 46.
[50] John iii. 5.
[51] John iv. 5, 7, 11, 12, v. 1, 8, vi. 19, vii. 35, 37, ix. 7, xiii.
1, 14, xix. 34, xxi. 1, 8. In the other great Johannic book water is
constantly mentioned. Apoc. vii. 7, xiv. 7, xvi. 5, xxi. 6, xxii. 1,
xxii. 17. (Cf. the το ὑδωρ, Acts x. 47.)
[52] John i. 19, 29, 32, 34, 35, 36, 41, 45, 47, xix. 27.
[53] John xv. 27.
[54] John iii. 2. The Baptist's final witness (iii. 25, 33, iv. 39,
42, v. 15, vi. 68, 69, vii. 46, xix. 4, 6). Note, too, the
accentuation of the idea of _witness_ (John v. 31, 39). It is to be
regretted that the R.V. also has sometimes obscured this important
term by substituting a different English word, _e.g._, "the word of
the woman who _testified_" (John iv. 39).
[55] John viii. 18, xii. 28.
[56] Ibid. viii. 17, 18.
[57] Ibid. xv. 26.
[58] Ibid. v. 39, 46, xix. 35, 36, 37.
[59] Ibid. v. 36.
[60] This sixth witness (1 John v. 10) exactly answers to John xx. 30,
31.
[61] ὁ πιστευων εις τον υιον, κτλ (v. 10). The construction is different
in the words which immediately follow (ὁ μη πιστευων τω θεγ), not even
giving Him credence, not _believing Him_, much less _believing on Him_.
[62] The view here advocated of the relation of the Epistle to the
Gospel of St. John, and of the brief but complete analytical synopsis
in the opening words of the Epistle, appears to us to represent the
earliest known interpretation as given by the author of the famous
fragment of the Muratorian Canon, the first catalogue of the books of
the N. T. (written between the middle and close of the second
century). After his statement of the circumstances which led to the
composition of the fourth Gospel, and an assertion of the perfect
internal unity of the Evangelical narratives, the author of the
fragment proceeds. "What wonder then if John brings forward each
matter, point by point, with such consecutive order (tam constanter
singula), even in his Epistles saying, when he comes to write in his
own person (dicens in semetipso), 'what we have seen with our eyes,
and heard with our ears, and our hands have handled, these things have
we written.' For thus, in orderly arrangement and consecutive language
he professes himself not only an eye-witness, but a hearer, and yet
further a writer of the wonderful things of the Lord." [So we
understand the writer. "Sic enim non solum visorem, sed et auditorem,
sed et scriptorem omnium mirabilium Domini, per ordinem profitetur."
The fragment, with copious annotations, may be found in _Reliquæ
Sacræ_, Routh, Tom. i., 394, 434.]
[63] For whatever reason, four classical terms (if we may so call them)
of the Christian religion are excluded, or nearly excluded, from the
Gospel of St. John, and from its companion document. _Church_, _gospel_,
_repentance_, occur nowhere. _Grace_ only once (John i. 14; see,
however, 2 John 3; Apoc. i. 4; xxii. 21), _faith_ as a substantive only
once. (1 John v. 4, but in Apoc. ii. 13-19; xiii. 10; xiv. 123.)
[64] ἡν δε νυξ. John xiii. 30.
[65] John xix. 5.
[66] Canon. Murator. (apud Routh., _Reliq. Sacræ_, Tom. i., 394).
[67] εν τοπω ἡσυχω λεγομενω καταπαυσις.
[68] This passage is translated from the Greek text of the manuscript
of Patmos, attributed to Prochorus, as given by M. Guérin.
(_Description de l'Isle de Patmos_, pp. 25-29.)
DISCOURSE III.
_THE POLEMICAL ELEMENT IN THE FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. JOHN._
"Dum Magistri super pectus
Fontem haurit intellectûs
Et doctrinæ flumina,
Fiunt, ipso situ loci,
Verbo fides, auris voci,
Mens Deo contermina.
"Unde mentis per excessus,
Carnis, sensûs super gressus,
_Errorumque nubila_,
Contra veri solis lumen
Visum cordis et acumen
Figit velut aquila."
_Adam of St. Victor_, Seq. xxxii.
"Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the
flesh is of God. Every spirit that confesseth not [that] Jesus
Christ [is come in the flesh] is not of God."--1 JOHN iv. 2, 3.
A discussion (however far from technical completeness) of the
polemical element in St. John's Epistle, probably seems likely to be
destitute of interest or of instruction, except to ecclesiastical or
philosophical antiquarians. Those who believe the Epistle to be a
_divine_ book must, however, take a different view of the matter. St.
John was not merely dealing with forms of human error which were local
and fortuitous. In refuting _them_ he was enunciating principles of
universal import, of almost illimitable application. Let us pass by
those obscure sects, those subtle curiosities of error, which the
diligence of minute research has excavated from the masses of
erudition under which they have been buried; which theologians, like
other antiquarians, have sometimes labelled with names at once uncouth
and imaginative. Let us fix our attention upon such broad and
well-defined features of heresy as credible witnesses have indelibly
fixed upon the contemporaneous heretical thought of Asia Minor; and we
shall see not only a great precision in St. John's words, but a
radiant image of truth, which is equally adapted to enlighten us in
the peculiar dangers of our age.
Controversy is the condition under which all truth must be held, which
is not in necessary subject-matter--which is not either mathematical
or physical. In the case of the second, controversy is active, until
the fact of the physical law is established beyond the possibility of
rational discussion; until self-consistent thought can only think upon
the postulate of its admission. Now in these departments all the
argument is on one side. We are not in a state of suspended
speculation, leaning neither to affirmation nor denial, which is
_doubt_. We are not in the position of inclining either to one side or
the other, by an almost impalpable overplus of evidence, which is
_suspicion_; or by those additions to this slender stock, which
convert suspicion into _opinion_. We are not merely yielding a strong
adhesion to one side, while we must yet admit, to ourselves at least,
that our knowledge is not perfect, nor absolutely manifest--which is
the mental and moral position of _belief_. In necessary
subject-matter, we know and see with that perfect intellectual vision
for which controversy is impossible.[69]
The region of belief must therefore, in our present condition, be a
region from which controversy cannot be excluded.
Religious controversialists may be divided into three classes, for each
of which we may find an emblem in the animal creation. The first are the
nuisances, at times the numerous nuisances, of Churches. These
controversialists delight in showing that the convictions of persons
whom they happen to dislike, can, more or less plausibly, be pressed to
unpopular conclusions. They are incessant fault-finders. Some of them,
if they had an opportunity, might delight in finding the sun guilty in
his daily worship of the many-coloured ritualism of the western clouds.
Controversialists of this class, if minute are venomous, and capable of
inflicting a degree of pain quite out of proportion to their strength.
Their emblem may be found somewhere in the range of "every creeping
thing that creepeth upon the earth." The second class of
controversialists is of a much higher nature. Their emblem is the hawk
with his bright eye, with the forward throw of his pinions, his rushing
flight along the woodland skirt, his unerring stroke. Such hawks of the
Churches, whose delight is in pouncing upon fallacies, fulfil an
important function. They rid us of tribes of mischievous winged errors.
The third class of controversialists is that which embraces St. John
supremely--such minds also as Augustine's in his loftiest and most
inspired moments, such as those which have endowed the Church with the
Nicene Creed. Of such the eagle is the emblem. Over the grosser
atmosphere of earthly anger or imperfect motives, over the clouds of
error, poised in the light of the True Sun, with the eagle's upward wing
and the eagle's sunward eye, St. John looks upon the truth. He is indeed
the eagle of the four Evangelists, the eagle of God. If the eagle could
speak with our language, his style would have something of the purity of
the sky and of the brightness of the light. He would warn his nestlings
against losing their way in the banks of clouds that lie below him so
far. At times he might show that there is a danger or an error whose
position he might indicate by the sweep of his wing, or by descending
for a moment to strike.
There are then _polemics_ in the Epistle and in the Gospel of St.
John. But we refuse to hunt down some obscure heresy in every
sentence. It will be enough to indicate the master heresy of Asia
Minor, to which St. John undoubtedly refers, with its intellectual and
moral perils. In so doing, we shall find the very truth which our own
generation especially needs.
The prophetic words addressed by St. Paul to the Church of Ephesus
thirty years before the date of this Epistle had found only too
complete a fulfilment. "From among their own selves," at Ephesus in
particular, through the Churches of Asia Minor in general, men _had_
arisen "speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after
them."[70] The prediction began to justify itself when Timothy was
Bishop of Ephesus only five or six years later. A few significant
words in the First Epistle to Timothy let us see the heretical
influences that were at work. St. Paul speaks with the solemnity of a
closing charge when he warns Timothy against what were at once[71]
"profane babblings," and "antitheses of the Gnosis which is falsely so
called." In an earlier portion of the same Epistle the young Bishop is
exhorted to charge certain men not to teach a "different doctrine,"
neither to give "heed to myths and genealogies," out of whose endless
mazes no intellect entangled in them can ever find its way.[72] Those
commentators put us on a false scent who would have us look after
Judaizing error, Jewish "stemmata." The reference is not to Judaistic
ritualism, but to semi-Pagan philosophical speculation. The
"genealogies" are systems of divine potencies which the Gnostics (and
probably some Jewish Rabbis of Gnosticising tendency) called
"æons,"[73] and so the earliest Christian writers understood the word.
Now without entering into the details of Gnosticism, this may be said
of its general method and purpose. It aspired at once to accept and to
transform the Christian creed; to elevate its faith into a philosophy,
a _knowledge_--and then to make this knowledge cashier and supersede
faith, love, holiness, redemption itself.
This system was strangely eclectic, and amalgamated certain elements not
only of Greek and Egyptian, but of Persian and Indian Pantheistic
thought. It was infected throughout with dualism and doketism. Dualism
held that all good and evil in the universe proceeded from two first
principles, good and evil. Matter was the power of evil whose home is in
the region of darkness. Minds which started from this fundamental view
could only accept the Incarnation provisionally and with reserve, and
must at once proceed to explain it away. "The Word was made flesh;" but
the Word of God, the True Light, could not be personally united to an
actual material system called a human body, plunged in the world of
matter, darkened and contaminated by its immersion. The human flesh in
which Jesus appeared to be seen was fictitious. Redemption was a drama
with a shadow for its hero. The phantom of a redeemer was nailed to the
phantom of a cross. Philosophical dualism logically became theological
_doketism_. Doketism logically evaporated dogmas, sacraments, duties,
redemption.[74]
It may be objected that this doketism has been a mere temporary and
local aberration of the human intellect; a metaphysical curiosity,
with no real roots in human nature. If so, its refutation is an
obsolete piece of an obsolete controversy; and the Epistle in some of
its most vital portions is a dead letter.
Now of course literal doketism is past and gone, dead and buried. The
progress of the human mind, the slow and resistless influence of the
logic of common sense, the wholesome influence of the sciences of
observation in correcting visionary metaphysics, have swept away æons,
emanations, dualism,[75] and the rest. But a subtler, and to modern
minds infinitely more attractive, doketism is round us, and accepted,
as far as words go, with a passionate enthusiasm.
What is this doketism?
Let us refer to the history and to the language of a mind of singular
subtlety and power.
In George Eliot's early career she was induced to prepare for the
press a translation of Strauss's mythical explanation of _the Life of
Jesus_. It is no disrespect to so great a memory to say, that at that
period of her career, at least, Miss Evans must have been unequal to
grapple with such a work, if she desired to do so from a Christian
point of view. She had not apparently studied the history or the
structure of the Gospels. What she knew of their meaning she had
imbibed from an antiquated and unscientific school of theologians. The
faith of a sciolist engaged in a struggle for its life with the fatal
strength of a critical giant instructed in the negative lore of all
ages, and sharpened by hatred of the Christian religion, met with the
result which was to be expected. Her faith expired, not without some
painful throes. She fell a victim to the fallacy of youthful
conceit--I cannot answer this or that objection, _therefore_ it is
unanswerable. She wrote at first that she was "Strauss-sick." It made
her ill to dissect the beautiful story of the crucifixion. She took to
herself a consolation singular in the circumstances. The sight of an
ivory crucifix, and of a pathetic picture of the Passion, made her
capable of enduring the first shock of the loss which her heart had
sustained. That is, she found comfort in looking at tangible reminders
of a scene which had ceased to be an historical reality, of a sufferer
who had faded from a living Redeemer into the spectre of a visionary
past. After a time, however, she feels able to propose to herself and
others "a new starting point. We can never have a satisfactory basis
for the history of the man Jesus, but that negation does not affect
the Idea of the Christ, either in its historical influence, or its
great symbolic meanings."[76] Yes! a Christ who has no history, of
whom we do not possess one undoubted word, of whom we know, and can
know, nothing; who has no flesh of fact, no blood of life; an idea,
not a man; this is the Christ of modern doketism. The method of this
widely diffused school is to separate the _sentiments_ of admiration
which the history inspires from the _history_ itself; to sever the
_ideas_ of the faith from the _facts_ of the faith, and then to
present the _ideas_ thus surviving the dissolvents of criticism, as at
once the refutation of the facts and the substitute for them.
This may be pretty writing, though false and illogical writing is
rarely even _that_; but a little consideration will show that this new
starting point is not even a plausible substitute for the old belief.
(1) We question simple believers in the first instance. We ask them
what is the great religious power in Christianity for themselves, and
for others like-minded? What makes people pure, good, self-denying,
nurses of the sick, missionaries to the heathen? They will tell us
that the power lies, not in any doketic idea of a Christ-life which
was never lived, but in "the conviction that that idea was really and
perfectly incarnated in an actual career,"[77] of which we have a
record literally and absolutely true in all essential particulars.
When we turn to the past of the Church, we find that as it is with
these persons, so it has ever been with the saints. For instance, we
hear St. Paul speaking of his whole life. He tells us that "whether we
went out of ourselves it was unto God, or whether we be sober, it is
for you;" that is to say, such a life has two aspects, one God-ward,
one man-ward. Its God-ward aspect is a noble insanity, its man-ward
aspect a noble sanity; the first with its beautiful enthusiasm, the
second with its saving common sense. What is the source of this?
"_For_ the love of Christ constraineth us,"--forces the whole stream
of life to flow between these two banks without the deviations of
selfishness--"because we thus judge, that He died for all, that they
which live should no longer live unto themselves, but to Him who for
their sakes died and rose again."[78] It was the real unselfish life
of a real unselfish Man which made such a life as that of St. Paul a
possibility. Or we may think of the first beginning of St. John's love
for our Lord. When he turned to the past, he remembered one bright day
about ten in the morning, when the real Jesus turned to him and to
another with a real look, and said with a human voice, "what seek ye?"
and then--"come, and ye shall see."[79] It was the real living love
that won the only kind of love which could enable the old man to write
as he did in this Epistle so many years afterwards--"we love because
He first loved us."[80]
(2) We address ourselves next to those who look at Christ simply as an
ideal. We venture to put to them a definite question. You believe that
there is no solid basis for the history of the man Jesus; that His life
as an historical reality is lost in a dazzling mist of legend and
adoration. Has the idea of a Christ, divorced from all accompaniment of
authentic fact, unfixed in a definite historical form, uncontinued in an
abiding existence, been operative or inoperative for yourselves? Has it
been a practical power and motive, or an occasional and evanescent
sentiment? There can be no doubt about the answer. It is not a
make-belief but a belief which gives purity and power. It is not an
ideal of Jesus but the blood of Jesus which cleanseth us from all sin.
There are other lessons of abiding practical importance to be drawn
from the polemical elements in St. John's Epistle. These, however, we
can only briefly indicate because we wish to leave an undivided
impression of that which seems to be St. John's chief object
_controversially_. There were Gnostics in Asia Minor for whom the
mere _knowledge_ of certain supposed spiritual truths was all in all,
as there are those amongst ourselves who care for little but what are
called clear views. For such St. John writes--"and hereby we do _know_
that we _know_ Him, if we keep His commandments."[81] There were
heretics in and about Ephesus who conceived that the special favour of
God, or the illumination which they obtained by junction with the sect
to which they had "gone out" from the Church, neutralised the poison
of sin, and made innocuous for _them_ that which might have been
deadly for others. They suffered, as they thought, no more
contamination by it, than "gold by lying upon the dunghill" (to use a
favourite metaphor of their own). St. John utters a principle which
cleaves through every fallacy in every age, which says or insinuates
that sin subjective can in any case cease to be sin objective.
"Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law, for sin is the
transgression of the law. All unrighteousness is sin."[82] Possibly
within the Church itself, certainly among the sectarians without it,
there was a disposition to lessen the glory of the Incarnation, by
looking upon the Atonement as narrow and partial in its aim. St.
John's unhesitating statement is that "He is the propitiation for the
whole world." Thus does the eagle of the Church ever fix his gaze
above the clouds of error, upon the Sun of universal truth.
Above all, over and through his negation of temporary and local errors
about the person of Christ, St. John leads the Church in all ages to
the true Christ. Cerinthus, in a form which seems to us eccentric and
revolting, proclaimed a Jesus not born of a virgin, temporarily
endowed with the sovereign power of the Christ, deprived of Him
before his passion and resurrection, while the Christ remained
spiritual and impassible. He taught a _commonplace_ Jesus. At the
beginning of his Epistle and Gospel, John "wings his soul, and leads
his readers onward and upward." He is like a man who stands upon the
shore and looks upon town and coast and bay. Then another takes the
man off with him far to sea. All that he surveyed before is now lost
to him; and as he gazes ever oceanward, he does not stay his eye upon
any intervening object, but lets it range over the infinite azure. So
the Apostle leads us above all creation, and transports us to the ages
before it; makes us raise our eyes, not suffering us to find any end
in the stretch above, since end is none.[83] That "in the beginning,"
"from the beginning," of the Epistle and Gospel, includes nothing
short of the eternal God. The doketics of many shades proclaimed an
ideological, a misty Christ. "Every spirit which confesseth Jesus
Christ as in flesh having come is of God, and every spirit which
confesseth not Jesus, is not of God." "Many deceivers have gone out
into the world, they who confess not Jesus Christ coming in
flesh."[84] Such a Christ of mist as these words warn us against is
again shaped by more powerful intellects and touched with tenderer
lights. But the shadowy Christ of George Eliot and of Mill is equally
arraigned by the hand of St. John. Each believer may well think within
himself--I must die, and that, it may be, very soon; I must be alone
with God, and my own soul; with that which I am, and have been; with
my memories, and with my sins. In that hour the weird desolate
language of the Psalmist will find its realisation: "lover and friend
hast thou put from me, and mine acquaintance are--_darkness_."[85]
Then we want, and then we may find, a real Saviour. Then we shall know
that if we have only a doketic Christ, we shall indeed be alone--for
"except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, ye
have no life in you."[86]
* * * * *
NOTE.
The two following extracts, in addition to what has been already said
in this discourse, will supply the reader with that which it is most
necessary for him to know upon the heresies of Asia Minor. 1. "Two
principal heresies upon the nature of Christ then prevailed, each
diametrically opposite to the other, as well as to the Catholic faith.
One was the heresy of the Doketæ, which destroyed the verity of the
_Human Nature_ in Christ; the other was the heresy of the Ebionites,
who denied the _Divine Nature_, and the eternal Generation, and
inclined to press the observation of the ceremonial law. Ancient
writers allow these as heresies of the first century; all admit that
they were powerful in the age of Ignatius. Hence Theodoret (_Proœm._)
divided the books of these heresies into two categories. In the first
he included those who put forward the idea of a second Creator, and
asserted that the Lord had appeared illusively. In the second he
placed those who maintained that the Lord was merely a man. Of the
first, Jerome observed (_Adv. Lucifer._ xxiii.) 'that while the
Apostles yet remained upon the earth, while the blood of Christ was
almost smoking upon the sod of Judæa, some asserted that the body of
the Lord was a phantom.' Of the second, the same writer remarked that
'St. John, at the invitation of the bishops of Asia Minor, wrote his
Gospel against Cerinthus and other heretics--and especially against
the dogma of the Ebionites then rising into existence, who asserted
that Christ did not exist before Mary.' Epiphanius notes that these
heresies were mainly of Asia Minor (φημι δε εν τη' Ασια). _Hæres._
lvi." (Pearson, _Vindic. Ignat._, ii., c. i., p. 351.)
2. "Two of these sects or schools are very ancient, and seem to have
been referred to by St. John. The first is that of the Naassenians or
Ophites. The antiquity of this sect is guaranteed to us by the author
of the _Philosophumena_, who represents them as the real founders of
Gnosticism. "Later," he says, "they were called _Gnostics_, pretending
that they only _knew the depths_." (To this allusion is made Apoc. ii.
24, which would identify these sectaries with the Balaamites and
Nicolaitans.) The second of these great heresies of Asia Minor is the
doketic. The publication of the _Philosophumena_ has furnished us with
much more precise information about their tenets. We need not say much
about the divine emanation--the fall of souls into matter, their
corporeal captivity, their final rehabilitation (these are merely the
ordinary Gnostic ideas). But we may follow what they assert about the
Saviour and His manifestation in the world. They admit in Him the only
Son of the Father (ὁ μονογενης παις ανωθεν αιωνιος), who descended to
the reign of shadows and the Virgin's womb, where He clothed Himself
in a gross, human material body. But this was a vestment of no
integrally personal and permanent character; it was, indeed, a sort of
masquerade, an artifice or fiction imagined to deceive the prince of
this world. The Saviour at His baptism received a second birth, and
clad Himself with a subtler texture of body, formed in the bosom of
the waters--if that can be termed a body which was but a fantastic
texture woven or framed upon the model of His earthly body. During the
hours of the Passion, the flesh formed in Mary's womb, and it alone,
was nailed to the tree. The great Archon or Demiurgus, whose work that
flesh was, was played upon and deceived, in pouring His wrath only
upon the work of His hands. For the soul, or spiritual substance,
which had been wounded in the flesh of the Saviour, extricated itself
from this as from an unmeet and hateful vesture; and itself
contributing to nailing it to the cross, triumphed by that very flesh
over principalities and powers. It did not, however, remain naked, but
clad in the subtler form which it had assumed in its baptismal second
birth (_Philosoph._, viii. 10). What is remarkable in this theory is,
first, the admission of the reality of the terrestrial body, formed in
the Virgin's womb, and then nailed to the cross. The _negation_ is
only of the _real_ and permanent union of this body with the heavenly
spirit which inhabits it. We shall, further, note the importance which
it attaches to the Saviour's baptism, and the part played by water, as
if an intermediate element between flesh and spirit. This may bear
upon 1 John v. 8."
[This passage is from a _Dissertation--les Trois Témoins Célestes_, in
a collection of religious and literary papers by French scholars (Tom.
ii., Sept. 1868, pp. 388-392). The author, since deceased, was the
Abbé Le Hir, M. Renan's instructor in Hebrew at Saint Sulpice, and
pronounced by his pupil one of the first of European Hebraists and
scientific theologians.]
FOOTNOTES:
[69] "Proprium est credentis ut cum assensu cogitet." "The intellect
of him who believes assents to the thing believed, not because he sees
that thing either in itself or by logical reference to first
self-evident principles; but because it is so far convinced by Divine
authority as to assent to things which it does not see, and on account
of the dominance of the will in setting the intellect in motion." This
sentence is taken from a passage of Aquinas which appears to be of
great and permanent value. _Summa Theolog._ 2^a, 2^æ quæst. i. art. 4.
quæst. v. art. 2.
[70] Acts xx. 30.
[71] τας βεβηλους κενοφωνιας, και αντιθεσεις της ψευδωνυμου γνωσεως. 1
Tim. vi. 20. The "antitheses" may either touch with slight sarcasm upon
pompous pretensions to scientific logical method; or may denote the
really self-contradictory character of these elaborate compositions; or
again, their polemical opposition to the Christian creed.
[72] μυθοις και γενεαλογιαις απεραντοις. 1 Tim. i. 3, 4.
[73] Irenæus quotes 1 Tim. i. 4, and interprets it of the Gnostic
'æons.' _Adv. Hæres._, i. Proœm.
[74] Few phenomena of criticism are more unaccountable than the desire
to evade any acknowledgment of the historical existence of these
singular heresies. Not long after St. John's death, Polycarp, in
writing to the Philippians, quotes 1 John iv. 3, and proceeds to show
that doketism had consummated its work down to the last fibres of the
root of the creed, by two negations--no resurrection of the body, no
judgment. (Polycarp, _Epist. ad Philip._, vii.) Ignatius twice deals
with the Doketæ at length. To the Trallians he delivers what may be
called an antidoketic creed, concluding in the tone of one who was
wounded by what he was daily hearing. "Be deaf then when any man
speaks unto you without Jesus Christ, who is of Mary, who truly was
born, truly suffered under Pontius Pilate, truly was crucified and
died, truly also was raised from the dead. But if some who are
unbelieving say that He suffered apparently, _as if in vision, being
visionary themselves_, why am I a prisoner? why do I choose to fight
with wild beasts?" (Ignat., _Ep. ad Trall._, iv. x.) The play upon the
name doketæ cannot be mistaken (λεγουσιν το δοκειν πεπονθεναι αυτον,
αυτοι οντες το δοκειν). Ignatius writes to another Church--"What
profited it me if one praiseth me but blasphemeth my Lord, not
confessing that He bears true human flesh. They abstain from Eucharist
and prayer, because they confess not that the Eucharist is flesh of
our Saviour Jesus Christ." (_Ep. ad Smyrn._, v. vi. vii.)
[75] The elder Mr. Mill, however, appears to have seriously leaned to
this as a conceivable solution of the contradictory phenomena of
existence.
[76] _Life_ vol. ii., 359, 360.
[77] Much use has here been made of a truly remarkable article in the
_Spectator_, Jan. 31st, 1885.
[78] 2 Cor. v. 13-15.
[79] John i. 43.
[80] 1 John iv. 19.
[81] 1 John ii. 3.
[82] 1 John iii. 4, v. 17.
[83] Every one who reads Greek should refer to the magnificent
passage, _S. Joann. Chrysos., in Joann., Homil._ ii. 4.
[84] 1 John iv. 2; 2 John v. 7. See notes on the passages.
[85] Psalm lviii. 18.
[86] John vi. 53.
DISCOURSE IV.
_THE IMAGE OF ST. JOHN'S SOUL IN HIS EPISTLE._
"He that loveth pureness of heart, for the grace of his lips the king
shall be his friend."--PROV. xxii. 11.
ὁ θεμελιος.... ὁ δευτερος σαπφειρος.--APOC. xxi. 19.
"We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not; but he that is
begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him
not. And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in
wickedness. And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath
given us an understanding that we may know Him that is true, and
we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ. This is
the true God and eternal life."--1 JOHN v. 18-20.
Much has been said in the last few years of a series of subtle and
delicate experiments in sound. Means have been devised of doing for
the ear something analogous to that which glasses do for another
sense, and of making the results palpable by a system of notation. We
are told that every tree for instance, according to its foliage, its
position, and the direction of the winds, has its own prevalent note
or tone, which can be marked down, and its _timbre_ made first visible
by this notation, and then audible. So is it with the souls of the
saints of God, and chiefly of the Apostles. Each has its own note, the
prevalent key on which its peculiar music is set. Or we may employ
another image which possibly has St. John's own authority. Each of the
twelve has his peculiar emblem among the twelve vast and precious
foundation stones which underlie the whole wall of the Church. St.
John may thus differ from St. Peter, as the sapphire's azure differs
from the jasper's strength and radiance. Each is beautiful, but with
its own characteristic tint of beauty.[87]
We propose to examine the peculiarities of St. John's spiritual nature
which may be traced in this Epistle. We try to form some conception of
the key on which it is set, of the colour which it reflects in the
light of heaven, of the image of a soul which it presents. In this
attempt we cannot be deceived. St. John is so transparently honest; he
takes such a deep, almost terribly severe view of truth. We find him
using an expression about truth which is perhaps without a parallel in
any other writer. "If we say that we have fellowship with Him and walk
in darkness we lie, and are not _doing the truth_."[88] The truth then
for him is something co-extensive with our whole nature and whole
life. Truth is not only to be _spoken_--that is but a fragmentary
manifestation of it. It is to be _done_. It would have been for him
the darkest of lies to have put forth a spiritual commentary on his
Gospel which was not realised in himself. In the Epistle, no doubt, he
uses the first person singular sparingly, modestly including himself
in the simple _we_ of Christian association. Yet we are as sure of the
perfect accuracy of the picture of his soul, of the music in his heart
which he makes visible and audible in his letter, as we are that he
heard the voice of many waters, and saw the city coming down from God
out of heaven; as sure, as if at the close of this fifth chapter he
had added with the triumphant emphasis of truth, in his simple and
stately way, "I John heard these things and saw them."[89] He closes
this letter with a threefold affirmation of certain primary postulates
of the Christian life; of its _purity_,[90] of its _privilege_[91], of
its _Presence_,[92]--"we know," "we know," "we know." In each case the
plural might be exchanged for the singular. He says "_we_ know,"
because he is sure "_I_ know."
In studying the Epistles of St. John we may well ask what we see and
hear therein of St. John's character, (1) as a sacred writer, (2) as a
saintly soul.
I.
We consider first the indications in the Epistle of the Apostle's
character as a sacred writer.
For help in this direction we do not turn with much satisfaction to
essays or annotations pervaded by the modern spirit. The textual
criticism of minute scholarship is no doubt much, but it is not all.
Aorists are made for man, not man for the aorist. He indeed who has
not traced every fibre of the sacred text with grammar and lexicon
cannot quite honestly claim to be an _expositor_ of it. But in the
case of a book like Scripture this, after all, is but an important
preliminary. The frigid subtlety of the commentator who always seems
to have the questions for a divinity examination before his eyes,
fails in the glow and elevation necessary to bring us into communion
with the spirit of St. John. Led by such guides, the Apostle passes
under our review as a third-rate writer of a magnificent language in
decadence, not as the greatest of theologians and masters of the
spiritual life--with whatever defects of literary style, at once the
Plato of the twelve in one region, and the Aristotle in the other; the
first by his "lofty inspiration," the second by his "judicious
utilitarianism." The deepest thought of the Church has been brooding
for seventeen centuries over these pregnant and many-sided words, so
many of which are the very words of Christ. To separate ourselves from
this vast and beautiful commentary is to place ourselves out of the
atmosphere in which we can best feel the influence of St. John.
Let us read Chrysostom's description of the style and thought of the
author of the fourth Gospel. "The son of thunder, the loved of Christ,
the pillar of the Churches, who leaned on Jesus' bosom, makes his
entrance. He plays no drama, he covers his head with no mask. Yet he
wears array of inimitable beauty. For he comes having his feet shod
with the preparation of the Gospel of peace, and his loins girt, not
with fleece dyed in purple, or bedropped with gold, but woven through
and through with, and composed of, the truth itself. He will now
appear before us, not dramatically, for with him there is no
theatrical effect or fiction, but with his head bared he tells the
bare truth. All these things he will speak with absolute accuracy,
being the friend of the King Himself--aye, having the King speaking
within him, and hearing all things from Him which He heareth from the
Father; as He saith--'you I have called friends, for all things that I
have heard from My Father, I have made known unto you.' Wherefore, as
if we all at once saw one stooping down from yonder heaven, and
promising to tell us truly of things there, we should all flock to
listen to him, so let us now dispose ourselves. For it is from up
there that this man speaks down to us. And the fisherman is not
carried away by the whirling current of his own exuberant verbosity;
but all that he utters is with the steadfast accuracy of truth, and as
if he stood upon a rock he budges not. All time is his witness. Seest
thou the boldness, and the great authority of his words! how he utters
nothing by way of doubtful conjecture, but all demonstratively, as if
passing sentence. Very lofty is this Apostle, and full of dogmas, and
lingers over them more than over other things!"[93] This admirable
passage, with its fresh and noble enthusiasm, nowhere reminds us of
the glacial subtleties of the schools. It is the utterance of an
expositor who spoke the language in which his master wrote, and
breathed the same spiritual atmosphere. It is scarcely less true of
the Epistle than of the Gospel of St. John.
Here also "he is full of dogmas," here again he is the theologian of
the Church. But we are not to estimate the amount of dogma merely by
the number of words in which it is expressed. Dogma, indeed, is not
really composed of isolated texts--as pollen showered from conifers
and germs scattered from mosses, accidentally brought together and
compacted, are found upon chemical analysis to make up certain lumps
of coal. It is primary and structural. The Divinity and Incarnation of
Jesus pervade the First Epistle. Its whole structure is
_Trinitarian_.[94] It contains two of the three great three-word
dogmatic utterances of the New Testament about the nature of God (the
first being in the fourth Gospel)--"God is Spirit," "God is light,"
"God is love." The chief dogmatic statements of the Atonement are
found in these few chapters. "The blood of Jesus His Son cleanseth us
from all sin." "We have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the
Righteous." "He is the propitiation for the whole world." "God loved
us, and sent His Son the propitiation for our sins." Where the Apostle
passes on to deal with the spiritual life, he once more "is full of
dogmas," _i.e._, of eternal self-evidenced oracular sentences, spoken
as if "down from heaven," or by one "whose foot is upon a
rock,"--apparently identical propositions, all-inclusive, the dogmas
of moral and spiritual life, as those upon the Trinity, the
Incarnation, the Atonement, are of strictly theological truth. A
further characteristic of St. John as a sacred writer in his Epistle
is, that he appears to indicate throughout the moral and spiritual
conditions which were necessary for receiving the Gospel with which he
endowed the Church as the life of their life. These conditions are
three. The first is _spirituality_, submission to the teaching of the
Spirit, that they may know by it the meaning of the words of
Jesus--the "anointing" of the Holy Ghost, which is ever "teaching all
things" that He said.[95] The second condition is _purity_, at least,
the continuing effort after self-purification which is incumbent even
upon those who have received the great pardon.[96] This involves the
following in life's daily walk of the One perfect life-walk,[97] the
imitation of that which is supremely good,[98] "incarnated in an
actual earthly career." All must be purity, or effort after purity, on
the side of those who would read aright the Gospel of the immaculate
Lamb of God. The third condition for such readers is love--_charity_.
When he comes to deal fully with that great theme, the eagle of God
wheels far out of sight. In the depths of His Eternal Being, "God is
love."[99] Then this truth comes closer to us as believers. It stands
completely and for ever _manifested_ in its work _in us_,[100] because
"God _hath sent_" (a mission in the past, but with abiding
consequences)[101] "His Son, His only-begotten Son into the world,
that we may live through Him." Yet again, he rises higher from the
_manifestation_ of this love to the eternal and essential principle in
which it stands present for ever. "In this _is_ the love, not that we
loved God, but that God loved us, and once for all sent His Son a
propitiation for our sins."[102] Then follows the manifestation of
_our_ love. "If God so loved us, we also are bound to love one
another." Do we think it strange that St. John does not first draw the
lesson--"if God so loved us, we also are bound to love God"? It has
been in his heart all along, but he utters it in his own way, in the
solemn pathetic question--"he that loveth not his brother whom he
hath seen, God whom he hath not seen how can he love?"[103] Yet once
more he sums up the creed in a few short words. "We have believed the
love that God hath in us."[104] Truly and deeply has it been said that
this creed of the heart, suffused with the softest tints and sweetest
colours, goes to the root of all heresies upon the Incarnation,
whether in St. John's time or later. That God should give up His Son
by sending Him forth in humanity; that the Word made flesh should
humble Himself to the death upon the cross, the Sinless offer Himself
for sinners, this is what heresy cannot bring itself to understand. It
is the excess of such love which makes it incredible. "We have
believed the love" is the whole faith of a Christian man. It is St.
John's creed in three words.[105]
Such are the chief characteristics of St. John as a sacred writer,
which may be traced in his Epistle. These characteristics of the
author imply corresponding characteristics of the man. He who states
with such inevitable precision, with such noble and self-contained
enthusiasm, the great dogmas of the Christian faith, the great laws of
the Christian life, must himself have entirely believed them. He who
insists upon these conditions in the readers of his Gospel, must
himself have aimed at, and possessed, spirituality, purity, and love.
II.
We proceed to look at the First Epistle as a picture of the soul of
its author.
(1) His was a life free from the dominion of wilful and habitual sin
of any kind. "Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin, and he
cannot continue sinning." "Whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not;
whosoever sinneth hath not seen Him, neither known Him." A man so
entirely true, if conscious to himself of any reigning sin, dare not
have deliberately written these words.
(2) But if St. John's was a life free from subjection to any form of
the power of sin, he shows us that sanctity is not sinlessness, in
language which it is alike unwise and unsafe to attempt to explain
away. "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves." "If we
say that we have not sinned and are not sinners, we make Him a liar."
But so long as we do not fall back into darkness, the blood of Jesus
is ever purifying us from all sin. This he has written that the
fulness of the Christian life may be realised in believers; that each
step of their walk may follow the blessed footprints of the most holy
life; that each successive act of a consecrated existence may be free
from sin.[106] And yet, if any fail in some such single act,[107] if
he swerve, for a moment, from the "true tenour" of the course which he
is shaping, there is no reason to despair. Beautiful humility of this
pure and lofty soul! How tenderly, with what lowly graciousness he
places himself among those who have and who need an Advocate. "Mark
John's humility," cries St. Augustine; "he says not '_ye_ have,' nor
'ye have _me_,' nor even '_ye_ have Christ.' But he puts forward
Christ, not himself; and he says '_we_ have,' not '_ye_ have,' thus
placing himself in the rank of sinners."[108] Nor does St. John cover
himself under the subterfuges by which men at different times have
tried to get rid of a truth so humiliating to spiritual
pride--sometimes by asserting that they so stand accepted in Christ
that no sin is accounted to them for such; sometimes by pleading
personal exemption for themselves as believers.
This Epistle stands alone in the New Testament in being addressed to
two generations--one of which after conversion had grown old in a
Christian atmosphere, whilst the other had been educated from the
cradle under the influences of the Christian Church. It is therefore
natural that such a letter should give prominence to the constant need
of pardon. It certainly does not speak so much of the great initial
pardon,[109] as of the continuing pardons needed by human frailty. In
dwelling upon pardon once given, upon sanctification once begun, men
are possibly apt to forget the pardon that is daily wanting, the
purification that is never to cease. We are to walk daily from pardon
to pardon, from purification to purification. Yesterday's surrender of
self to Christ may grow ineffectual if it be not renewed to-day. This
is sometimes said to be a humiliating view of the Christian life.
Perhaps so--but it is the view of the Church, which places in its
offices a daily confession of sin; of St. John in this Epistle; nay,
of Him who teaches us, after our prayers for bread day by day, to pray
for a daily forgiveness. This may be more humiliating, but it is safer
teaching than that which proclaims a pardon to be appropriated in a
moment for all sins past, present, and to come.
This humility may be traced incidentally in other regions of the
Christian life. Thus he speaks of the possibility at least of his
being among those who might "shrink with shame from Christ in His
coming." He does not disdain to write as if, in hours of spiritual
depression, there were tests by which he too might need to lull and
"persuade his heart before God."[110]
(3) St. John again has a boundless faith in prayer. It is the key put
into the child's hand by which he may let himself into the house, and
come into his Father's presence when he will, at any hour of the night
or day. And prayer made according to the conditions which God has laid
down is never quite lost. The particular thing asked for may not
indeed be given; but the substance of the request, the holier wish,
the better purpose underlying its weakness and imperfection, never
fails to be granted.[111]
(4) All but superficial readers must perceive that in the writings and
character of St. John there is from time to time a tonic and wholesome
_severity_. Art and modern literature have agreed to bestow upon the
Apostle of love the features of a languid and inert tenderness. It is
forgotten that St. John was the son of thunder; that he could once wish
to bring down fire from heaven; and that the natural character is
transfigured not inverted by grace. The Apostle uses great plainness of
speech. For him a lie is a lie, and darkness is never courteously called
light. He abhors and shudders at those heresies which rob the soul first
of Christ, and then of God.[112] Those who undermine the Incarnation
are for him not interesting and original speculators, but "lying
prophets." He underlines his warnings against such men with his roughest
and blackest pencil mark. "Whoso sayeth to him 'good speed' hath
fellowship with his _works_, those wicked _works_"[113]--for such heresy
is not simply one work, but a series of works. The schismatic prelate or
pretender Diotrephes may "babble;" but his babblings are wicked words
for all that, and are in truth the "works which he is doing."
The influence of every great Christian teacher lasts long beyond the day
of his death. It is felt in a general tone and spirit, in a special
appropriation of certain parts of the creed, in a peculiar method of the
Christian life. This influence is very discernible in the remains of two
disciples of St. John,[114] Ignatius and Polycarp. In writing to the
Ephesians, Ignatius does not indeed explicitly refer to St. John's
Epistle, as he does to that of St. Paul to the Ephesians. But he draws
in a few bold lines a picture of the Christian life which is imbued with
the very spirit of St. John. The character which the Apostle loved was
quiet and real; we feel that his heart is not with "him that
sayeth."[115] So Ignatius writes--"it is better to keep silence, and yet
to _be_, than to talk and _not to be_. It is good to teach if 'he that
sayeth doeth.' He who has gotten to himself the word of Jesus truly is
able to hear the silence of Jesus also, so that he may _act_ through
that which he _speaks_, and _be known_ through the things wherein he is
_silent_. Let us therefore do all things as in His presence who dwelleth
in us, that we may be His temple, and that He may be in us our God."
This is the very spirit of St. John. We feel in it at once his severe
common sense and his glorious mysticism.
We must add that the influence of St. John may be traced in matters
which are often considered alien to his simple and spiritual piety. It
seems that Episcopacy was consolidated and extended under his fostering
care. The language of Ignatius (probably his disciple) upon the
necessity of union with the Episcopate is, after all conceivable
deductions, of startling strength. A few decades could not possibly have
removed Ignatius so far from the lines marked out to him by St. John as
he must have advanced, if this teaching upon Church government was a new
departure. And with this conception of Church government we must
associate other matters also. The immediate successors of St. John, who
had learned from his lips, held deep sacramental views. The Eucharist is
"the bread of God, the bread of heaven, the bread of life, the flesh of
Christ." Again Ignatius cries--"desire to use one Eucharist, for one is
the flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup unto oneness of His
blood, one altar, as one Bishop, with the Presbytery and deacons."[117]
Hints are not wanting that sweetness and life in public worship derived
inspiration from the same quarter. The language of Ignatius is deeply
tinged with his passion for _music_.[118] The beautiful story, how he
set down, immediately after a vision, the melody to which he had heard
the angels chanting, and caused it to be used in his church at Antioch,
attests the impression of enthusiasm and care for sacred song which was
associated with the memory of Ignatius.[119] Nor can we be surprised at
these features of Ephesian Christianity, when we remember who was the
founder of those Churches. He was the writer of _three_ books. These
books come to us with a continuous living interpretation of more than
seventeen centuries of historical Christianity. From the fourth Gospel
in large measure has arisen the sacramental instinct, from the
Apocalypse the æsthetic instinct, which has been certainly exaggerated
both in the East and West. The third and sixth chapters of St. John's
Gospel permeate every baptismal and eucharistic office. Given an
inspired book which represents the worship of the redeemed as one of
perfect majesty and beauty, men may well in the presence of noble
churches and stately liturgies, adopt the words of our great English
Christian poet--
"things which shed upon the outward frame
Of worship glory and grace--which who shall blame
That ever look'd to heaven for final rest?"
The third book in this group of writings supplies the sweet and quiet
spirituality which is the foundation of every regenerate nature.
Such is the image of the soul which is presented to us by St. John
himself. It is based upon a firm conviction of the nature of God, of
the Divinity, the Incarnation, the Atonement of our Lord. It is
spiritual. It is pure, or being purified. The highest theological
truth--"God is Love"--supremely _realised_ in the Holy Trinity,
supremely manifested in the sending forth of God's only Son, becomes
the law of its common social life, made visible in gentle patience, in
giving and forgiving.[120] Such a life will be free from the
degradation of habitual sin. Yet it is at best an imperfect
representation of the one perfect life.[121] It needs unceasing
purification by the blood of Jesus, the continual advocacy of One who
is sinless. Such a nature, however full of charity, will not be weakly
indulgent to vital error or to ambitious schism;[122] for it knows the
value of truth and unity. It feels the sweetness of a calm conscience,
and of a simple belief in the efficacy of prayer. Over every such
life--over all the grief that may be, all the temptation that must
be--is the purifying hope of a great Advent, the ennobling assurance
of a perfect victory, the knowledge that if we continue true to the
principle of our new birth we are safe. And our safety is, not that we
keep ourselves, but that we are kept by arms which are as soft as
love, and as strong as eternity.[123]
These Epistles are full of instruction and of comfort for us, just
because they are written in an atmosphere of the Church which, in one
respect at least, resembles our own. There is in them no reference
whatever to a continuance of miraculous powers, to raptures, or to
extraordinary phenomena. All in them which is supernatural continues
even to this day, in the possession of an inspired record, in
sacramental grace, in the pardon and holiness, the peace and strength
of believers. The apocryphal "Acts of John" contain some fragments of
real beauty almost lost in questionable stories and prolix declamation.
It is probably not literally true that when St. John in early life
wished to make himself a home, his Lord said to him, "I have need of
thee, John;" that that thrilling voice once came to him, wafted over the
still darkened sea--"John, hadst thou not been Mine, I would have
suffered thee to marry."[124] But the Epistle shows us much more
effectually that he had a pure heart and virgin will. It is scarcely
probable that the son of Zebedee ever drained a cup of hemlock with
impunity; but he bore within him an effectual charm against the poison
of sin.[125] We of this nineteenth century may smile when we read that
he possessed the power of turning leaves into gold, of transmuting
pebbles into jewels, of fusing shattered gems into one; but he carried
with him wherever he went that most excellent gift of charity, which
makes the commonest things of earth radiant with beauty.[126] He may
not actually have praised his Master during his last hour in words which
seem to us not quite unworthy even of such lips--"Thou art the only
Lord, the root of immortality, the fountain of incorruption. Thou who
madest our rough wild nature soft and quiet, who deliveredst me from the
imagination of the moment, and didst keep me safe within the guard of
that which abideth for ever." But such thoughts in life or death were
never far from him for whom Christ was the Word and the Life; who knew
that while "the world passeth away and the lust thereof, he that doeth
the will of God abideth for ever."[127]
May we so look upon this image of the Apostle's soul in his Epistle
that we may reflect something of its brightness! May we be able to
think, as we turn to this threefold assertion of knowledge--"_I_ know
something of the security of this keeping.[128] _I_ know something of
the sweetness of being in the Church, that isle of light surrounded by
a darkened world.[129] _I_ know something of the beauty of the perfect
human life recorded by St. John, something of the continued presence
of the Son of God, something of the new sense which He gives, that we
may know Him who is the Very God."[130] Blessed exchange not to be
vaunted loudly, but spoken reverently in our own hearts--the exchange
of we, for I. There is much divinity in these pronouns.[131]
NOTES.
NOTE A.
1 John iv. 8, 9, 10. Modern theological schools of a Calvinistic bias
have tended to overlook the conception of the nature of God as
essential or substantive Love, and to consider love only as
_manifested_ in redemption. Socinianising interpreters understand the
proposition to mean that God is simply and exclusively benevolent. (On
the inadequacy of this, see Butler, _Anal._, Part I., ch. iii., and
Dissertation II. of the Nature of Virtue.) The highest Christian
thought has ever recognised that the proposition 'God is Love'
necessarily involves the august truth that God if _sole_ is not
_solitary_. ("Credimur et confitemur omnipotentem Trinitatem--unum
Deum _solum_ non _solitarium_." Concil. Tolet., vi. 1.) "Let it not be
supposed," said St. Bernard, "that I here account Love as an attribute
or accident, but as the Divine essence--no new doctrine, seeing that
St. John saith 'God is love.' It may rightly be said both that _Love_
is _God_, and that love is _the gift of God_. For Love gives love; the
essential Love gives that which is accidental. When Love signifies the
Giver, it is the name of His essence; when it signifies His gift, it
is the name of a quality or attribute." (_S. Bernard., de dil. Deo_,
xii.). "This is nobly said. God is love. Thus love is the eternal law
whereby all things were created and are governed--wherewith He who is
the law of all things is unto Himself His own law, and that a law of
love--wherewith He bindeth His Trinity into Unity." (_Thomassin. Dogm.
Theol._, lib. iii., 23.)
NOTE B.
ἡ ῥιζα της αθανασιας και ἡ πηγη της αφθαρσιας· ὁ την ερημον και
αγριωθεισαν φυσιν ἡμων ηρεμον και ἡσυχιον ποιησας, ὁ της προσκαιρου
φαντασιας ῥυσαμενος με και εις την αει μενουσαν φρουρησας (_Acta
Johannis_, 21). These sentences are surely not without freshness and
power. One other passage is worth translating, because it seems to
have just that imaginative cast which makes the Greek Liturgies, like
so much else that is Greek, stand midway between the East and West;
and because it apparently refers to St. John's Gospel. "Jesus! Thou
who hast woven this coronal with Thy plaiting, who hast blended these
many flowers into the flower of Thy presence, not blown through by the
winds of any storm; Thou who hast scattered thickly abroad the seed of
these words of Thine"--(_Acta Johannis_, 17).
FOOTNOTES:
[87] Apoc. xxi. 19, 20.
[88] 1 John i. 6, cf. John iii. 21. In the LXX. the phrase is only
found once, and is then applied to God: αληθειαν εποιησας (Neh. ix.
33). It is characteristic of St. John's style that _doing a lie_ is
found in Apoc. xxi. 27, xxii. 15.
[89] Apoc. xxii. 8.
[90] 1 John v. 18.
[91] Ibid. 19.
[92] ἡκει, "has come,--and is here."--Ibid. 20.
[93] _S. Joann. Chrysost., in Johan._, Homil. iii., Tom. viii., 25,
36, Edit. Migne.
[94] Huther, while rejecting with all impartial critics the
interpolation (1 John v. 7), writes thus: "when we embrace in one
survey the contents of the Epistle as a whole, it is certainly easy to
_adapt the conception_ of the three Heavenly witnesses to one place
after another in the document. But it does not follow that the mention
of it just here would be in its right place." (_Handbuch über der drei
Briefe des Johannes._ Dr. J. E. Huther.)
[95] 1 John ii. 20.
[96] 1 John i. 7, iii. 3.
[97] 1 John ii. 6.
[98] "Imitate not that which is evil, but that which is good" (3 John
12). A comparison of this verse with John xxi. 24 would lead to the
supposition that the writer of the letter is quoting the Gospel, and
assumes an intimate knowledge of it on the part of Caius. See
Discourse XVII. Part ii. of this vol.
[99] See note A at the end of this discourse.
[100] 1 John iv. 9.
[101] απεσταλκεν.
[102] απεστειλεν.
[103] 1 John iv. 20.
[104] 1 John iv. 16.
[105] πεπιστευκαμεν την αγαπην, 1 John iv. 16.
[106] For the aor. conj. in this place as distinguished from the pres.
conj. cf. John v. 20, 23, vi. 28, 29, 30. Professor Westcott's refined
scholarship corrects the error of many commentators, "that the Apostle
is simply warning us not to draw encouragement for license from the
doctrine of forgiveness." The tense is decisive against this, the
thought is of the single _act_ not of the _state_.
[107] εαν τις ἁμαρτη, 1 John ii. 1.
[108] _In Epist. Johann._, Tract. I.
[109] 1 John ii. 12, is, of course, an important exception.
[110] 1 John iii. 19, 20.
[111] See Prof. Westcott's valuable note on 1 John v. 15. The very
things literally asked for would be τα αιτηθεντα, not τα αιτηματα.
[112] 2 John 11.
[113] 3 John 10.
[114] _Mart. Ignat._, i. _S. Hieron, de Script. Eccles._, xvii.
[115] ὁ λεγων, 1 John ii. 4, 6, 9.
[116] _Ignat. Epist. ad Ephes._, xv., cf. 1 John ii. 14, iv. 9, 17,
iii. 2.
[117] _S. Ignat. Epist. ad Philad._, iv.; cf. _Epist. ad Smyrn._,
vii.; _Epist. ad Ephes._, xx.
[118] The most elaborate passage in the Ignatian remains is probably
this. "Your Presbytery is fitted together harmoniously with the Bishop
as chords with the cithara. Hereby in your symphonious love Jesus
Christ is sung in concord. Taking your part man by man become one
choir, that being harmoniously accordant in your like-mindedness,
having received in unity the chromatic music of God (χρωμα Θεου
λαβοντες), ye may sing with one voice through Jesus Christ unto the
Father."--_Epist. ad Ephes._, iv. The same image is differently
applied, _Epist. ad Philad._, i.
[119] The story is given by Socrates. (_H. E._, vi. 8.)
[120] 1 John iv. 7, 12.
[121] 1 John ii. 6, 9, i. 7-10, ii. 1, 2.
[122] 1 John i. 7, ii. 2, iv. 3, 6; 2 John 7-11; 3 John 9, 10.
[123] 1 John iii. 19, v. 14, 15, iv. 2, 3, v. 4, 5, 18.
[124] These sentences do not go so far as the mischievous and
antiscriptural legend of later ascetic heretics, who marred the beauty
and the purpose of the miracle at Cana, by asserting that John was the
bridegroom, and that our Lord took him away from his bride. _Acta
Johannis_, XXI. _Act. Apost. Apoc._, Tisch., 275).
[125] This legend no doubt arose from the promise--"if they drink any
deadly thing it shall not hurt them" (Mark xvi. 18).
"Virus fidens sorbuit." Adam of St. Victor, _Seq._ XXXIII.
[126]
"Aurum hic de frondibus,
Gemmas de silicibus,
Fractis de fragminibus,
Fecit firmas."--_Ibid._
There is something interesting in the persistency of legends about St.
John's power over gems, when connected with the passage, flashing all
over with the light of precious stones, whose exquisite disposition is
the wonder of lapidaries. Apoc. xxi, 18, 22.
[127] See note B at the end of the Discourse.
[128] 1 John v. 18.
[129] Ibid. v. 19.
[130] Ibid. v. 20.
[131] Said by Luther of Psalm xxii. 1.
PART II.
SOME GENERAL RULES FOR THE INTERPRETATION OF THE FIRST EPISTLE OF ST.
JOHN.
I. SUBJECT MATTER.
(1) The _Epistle_ is to be read through with constant reference to the
_Gospel_. In what _precise form_ the former is related to the latter
(whether as a preface or as an appendix, as a spiritual commentary or
an encyclical) critics may decide. But there is a vital and constant
connection. The two documents not only touch each other in thought,
but _interpenetrate_ each other; and the Epistle is constantly
_suggesting_ questions which the Gospel only can answer, _e.g._, 1
John i. 1, cf. John i. 1-14; 1 John v. 9, "witness of men," cf. John
i. 15-36, 41, 45, 49, iii. 2, 27-36, iv. 29-42, vi. 68, 69, vii. 46,
ix. 38, xi. 27, xviii. 38, xix. 5, 6, xx. 28.
(2) Such eloquence of _style_ as St. John possesses is _real_ rather
than _verbal_. The interpreter must look not only at the words
themselves, but at that which _precedes_ and _follows_; above all he
must fix his attention not only upon the _verbal expression_ of the
thought, but upon the _thought itself_. For the formal connecting link
is not rarely omitted, and must be supplied by the devout and candid
diligence of the reader. The "root below the stream" can only be traced
by our bending over the water until it becomes translucent to us.
_E.g._ 1 John i. 7, 8. Ver. 7, "the root below the stream" is a
question of this kind, which naturally arises from reading ver.
6--"must it be said that the sons of light need a constant cleansing
by the blood of Jesus, which implies a constant guilt"? Some such
thought is the latent root of connection. The answer is supplied by
the following verse. ["It is so" for] "if we say that we have no sin,"
etc. Cf. also iii. 16, 17, xiv. 8, 9, 10, 11, v. 3 (ad. fin.), 4.
II. LANGUAGE.
1. _Tenses._
In the New Testament generally tenses are employed very much in the same
sense, and with the same general accuracy, as in other Greek authors.
The so-called "enallage temporum," or perpetual and convenient Hebraism,
has been proved by the greatest Hebrew scholars to be no Hebraism at
all. But it is one of the simple secrets of St. John's quiet thoughtful
power, that he uses tenses with the most rigorous precision.
(_a_) The _Present_ of continuing uninterrupted action, _e.g._, i. 8,
ii. 6, iii. 7, 8, 9.
Hence the so-called _substantized_ participle with article ὁ has in St.
John the sense of the continuous and constitutive temper and conduct of
any man, the principle of his moral and spiritual life--_e.g._, ὁ λεγων,
he who is ever vaunting, ii. 4; πας ὁ μισων, every one the abiding
principle of whose life is hatred, iii. 15; πας ὁ αγαπων, every one the
abiding principle of whose life is love, iv. 7.
The Infin. Present is generally used to express an action now in
course of performing or _continued_ in itself or in its results, or
_frequently repeated--e.g._, 1 John ii. 6, iii. 8, 9, v. 18. (Winer,
_Gr. of N. T. Diction_, Part 3, xliv., 348).
(_b_) The _Aorist_.
This tense is generally used either of a thing occurring only once,
which does not admit, or at least does not require, the notion of
continuance and perpetuity; or of something which is brief and as it
were only momentary in duration (Stallbaum, _Plat. Enthyd._, p. 140).
This limitation or isolation of the predicated action is most
accurately indicated by the usual form of this tense in Greek. The
aorist verb is encased between the augment ε- past time, and the
adjunct σ- future time, _i.e._, the act is fixed on within certain
limits of previous and consequent time (Donaldson, _Gr. Gr._, 427, B.
2). The aorist is used with most significant accuracy in the Epistle
of St. John, _e.g._, ii. 6, 11, 27, iv. 10, v. 18.
(_c_) The _Perfect_.
The Perfect denotes action absolutely past which lasts on in its
effects. "The idea of completeness conveyed by the aorist must be
distinguished from that of a state consequent on an act, which is the
meaning of the perfect" (Donaldson, _Gr. Gr._, 419). Careful
observation of this principle is the key to some of the chief
difficulties of the Epistle (iii. 9, v. 4, 18).
(2) The form of _accessional parallelism_ is to be carefully noticed.
The second member is always in advance of the first; and a third is
occasionally introduced in advance of the second, denoting the highest
point to which the thought is thrown up by the tide of thought,
_e.g._, 1 John ii. 4, 5, 6, v. 11, v. 27.
(3) The _preparatory touch_ upon the chord which announces a theme to be
amplified afterwards,--_e.g._, ii. 29, iii. 9--iv. 7, v. 3, 4; iii.
21--v. 14, ii. 20, iii. 24, iv. 3, v. 6, 8, ii. 13, 14, iv. 4--v. 4, 5.
(4) One secret of St. John's simple and solemn rhetoric consists in an
_impressive change_ in the order in which a leading word is used,
_e.g._, 1 John ii. 24, iv. 20.
These principles carefully applied will be the best commentary upon
the letter of the Apostle, to whom not only when his subject is--
"De Deo Deum verum
Alpha et Omega, Patrem rerum";
but when he unfolds the principles of our spiritual life, we may apply
Adam of St. Victor's powerful and untranslatable line,
"Solers scribit idiota."
SECTION I.
GREEK TEXT. LATIN.
Ὁ ἩΝ απ' αρχης, ὁ Quod fuit ab initio,
ακηκοαμεν, ὁ ἑωρακαμεν quod audivimus, et
τοις οφθαλμοις ἡμων, vidimus oculis nostris,
ὁ εθεασαμεθα, και αι quod perspeximus, et
χειρες ἡμων εψηλαφησαν manus nostræ temtaverunt,
περι του λογου της ζωης· de Verbo vitæ;
και ἡ ζωη εφανερωθη, et vita manifestata
και ἑωρακαμεν, και est, et vidimus et testamur,
μαρτυρουμεν, και απαγγελλομεν et adnuntiamus
ὑμιν την vobis vitam æternam,
ζωην την αιωνιον, ἡτις quæ erat apud Patrem,
ην προς τον πατερα, et apparuit nobis: quod
και εφανερωθη ἡμιν· vidimus et audivimus,
ὁ ἑωρακαμεν και ακηκοαμεν, et adnuntiamus vobis,
απαγγελλομεν ut et vos societatem
ὑμιν, ἱνα και ὑμεις habeatis nobiscum, et
κοινωνιαν εχητε μεθ' societas nostra sit cum
ἡμων· και ἡ κοινωνια Patre, et Filio eius Iesu
δε ἡ ἡμετερα μετα του Christo. Et hæc scripsimus
πατρος και μετα του vobis ut gaudium
υιου αυτου Ιησου nostrum sit plenum.
Χριστου· και ταυτα
γραφομεν ὑμιν, ἱνα ἡ
χαρα ὑμων ἡ πεπληρωμενη.
AUTHORISED VERSION. REVISED VERSION.
That which was from That which was from
the beginning, which the beginning, that
we have heard, which which we have heard,
we have seen with our that which we have
eyes, which we have seen with our eyes,
looked upon, and our that which we beheld,
hands have handled, and our hands handled,
of the Word of Life; concerning the Word
(for the life was of life (and the life was
manifested, and we manifested, and we
have seen _it_, and bear have seen, and bear
witness, and show unto witness, and declare
you that eternal life, unto you the life, the
which was with the eternal _life_, which was
Father, and was manifested with the Father, and
unto us;) that was manifested unto
which we have seen us); that which we
and heard declare we have seen and heard
unto you, that ye declare we unto you
also may have fellowship also, that ye also may
with us: and truly have fellowship with
our fellowship _is_ with us: yea, and our fellowship
the Father, and with is with the
his Son Jesus Christ. Father, and with his
And these things write Son Jesus Christ: and
we unto you, that your these things we write,
joy may be full. that our joy may be
fulfilled.
ANOTHER RENDERING.
That which was ever
from the beginning,
that which we have
heard, that which we
have seen with our
eyes, that which we
gazed upon, and our
hands handled--_I
speak_ concerning the
Word who is the
Life--and the Life
was manifested, and
we have seen, and
bear witness, and declare
unto you the
life, the eternal _life_,
as being that which
was ever with the
Father, and was manifested
unto us: that
which we have seen
and heard declare we
unto you, that ye also
may have fellowship
with us: yea, and that
fellowship, which is
our _fellowship_, is with
the Father and with
His Son Jesus Christ.
And these things write
we unto you, that your
joy may be fulfilled.
DISCOURSE I.
_ANALYSIS AND THEORY OF ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL._
"Of the Word of Life."--1 JOHN i. 1.
In the opening verses of this Epistle we have a sentence whose ample
and prolonged prelude has but one parallel in St. John's
writings.[132] It is, as an old divine says, "prefaced and brought in
with more magnificent ceremony than any passage in Scripture."
The very emotion and enthusiasm with which it is written, and the
sublimity of the exordium as a whole, tends to make the highest sense
also the most natural sense. Of what or of whom does St. John speak in
the phrase "concerning the Word of Life," or "the Word who is the
Life"? The neuter "that which" is used for the masculine--"He
who"--according to St. John's practice of employing the neuter
comprehensively when a collective whole is to be expressed. The phrase
"from the beginning," taken by itself, might no doubt be employed to
signify the beginning of Christianity, or of the ministry of Christ.
But even viewing it as entirely isolated from its context of language
and circumstance, it has a greater claim to be looked upon as _from
eternity_ or _from the beginning of the creation_. Other
considerations are decisive in favour of the last interpretation.
(1) We have already adverted to the lofty and transcendental tone of
the whole passage, elevating as it does each clause by the
irresistible upward tendency of the whole sentence. The climax and
resting place cannot stop short of the bosom of God. (2) But again, we
must also bear in mind that the Epistle is everywhere to be read with
the Gospel before us, and the language of the Epistle to be connected
with that of the Gospel. The proœmium of the Epistle is the subjective
version of the objective historical point of view which we find at the
close of the preface to the Gospel. "The Word was made flesh and dwelt
among us;" so St. John begins his sentence in the Gospel with a
statement of an historical fact. But he proceeds, "and we delightedly
beheld His glory;" that is a statement of the personal impression
attested by his own consciousness and that of other witnesses. But let
us note carefully that in the Epistle, which is in subjective relation
to the Gospel, this process is exactly reversed. The Apostle begins
with the personal impression; pauses to affirm the reality of the many
proofs in the realm of fact of that which produced this impression
through the senses upon the conceptions and emotions of those who were
brought into contact with the Saviour; and then returns to the
subjective impression from which he had originally started. (3) Much
of the language in this passage is inconsistent with our understanding
by the Word the first announcement of the Gospel preaching. One might
of course speak of hearing the commencement of the Gospel message, due
surely not of seeing and handling it. (4) It is a noteworthy fact that
the Gospel and the Apocalypse begin with the mention of the personal
Word. This may well lead us to expect that Logos should be used in the
same sense in the proœmium of the great Epistle by the same author.
We conclude then that when St. John here speaks of the Word of Life,
he refers to something higher again than the preaching of life, and
that he has in view both the manifestation of the life which has taken
place in our humanity, and Him who is personally at once the Word and
the Life.[133] The proœmium may be thus paraphrased. "That which in
all its collective influence was from the beginning as understood by
Moses, by Solomon, and Micah;[134] which we have first and above all
heard in divinely human utterances, but which we have also seen with
these very eyes; which we gazed upon with the full and entranced sight
that delights in the object contemplated;[135] and which these hands
handled reverentially at His bidding.[136] I speak all this concerning
the Word who is also the Life."
Tracts and sheets are often printed in our day with anthologies of
texts which are supposed to contain the very essence of the Gospel.
But the sweetest scents, it is said, are not distilled exclusively
from flowers, for the flower is but an exhalation. The seeds, the
leaf, the stem, the very bark should be macerated, because they
contain the odoriferous substance in minute sacs. So the purest
Christian doctrine is distilled, not only from a few exquisite flowers
in a textual anthology, but from the whole substance, so to speak, of
the message. Now it will be observed that at the beginning of the
Epistle which accompanied the fourth Gospel, our attention is directed
not to a sentiment, but to a fact and to a Person. In the collections
of texts to which reference has been made, we should probably never
find two brief passages which may not unjustly be considered to
concentrate the essence of the scheme of salvation more nearly than
any others. "The Word was made flesh." "Concerning the Word of Life
(and that Life was once manifested, and we have seen and consequently
are witnesses and announce to you from Him who sent us that Life, that
eternal Life whose it is to have been in eternal relation with the
Father, and manifested to us); That which we have seen and heard
declare we from Him who sent us unto you, to the end that you too may
have fellowship with us."
It would be disrespectful to the theologian of the New Testament to
pass by the great dogmatic term never, so far as we are told, applied
by our Lord to Himself, but with which St. John begins each of his
three principal writings--THE WORD.[137]
Such mountains of erudition have been heaped over this term that it has
become difficult to discover the buried thought. The Apostle adopted a
word which was already in use in various quarters simply because if,
from the nature of the case necessarily inadequate,[138] it was yet more
suitable than any other. He also, as profound ancient thinkers
conceived, looked into the depths of the human mind, into the first
principles of that which is the chief distinction of man from the lower
creation--language. The human word, these thinkers taught, is twofold;
inner and outer--now as the manifestation to the mind itself of
unuttered thought, now as a part of language uttered to others. The word
as signifying unuttered thought, the mould in which it exists in the
mind, illustrates the eternal relation of the Father to the Son. The
word as signifying uttered thought illustrates the relation as conveyed
to man by the Incarnation. "No man hath seen God at any time; the only
begotten God which is in the bosom of the Father He interpreted Him."
For the theologian of the Church Jesus is thus the Word; because He had
His being from the Father in a way which presents some analogy to the
human word, which is sometimes the inner vesture, sometimes the outward
utterance of thought--sometimes the human thought in that language
without which man cannot think, sometimes the speech whereby the speaker
interprets it to others. Christ is the Word Whom out of the fulness of
His thought and being the Father has eternally inspoken and outspoken
into personal existence.[139]
One too well knows that such teaching as this runs the risk of
appearing uselessly subtle and technical, but its practical value will
appear upon reflection. Because it gives us possession of the point of
view from which St. John himself surveys, and from which he would have
the Church contemplate, the history of the life of our Lord. And
indeed for that life the theology of the Word, _i.e._, of the
Incarnation, is simply necessary.
For we must agree with M. Renan so far at least as this, that a great
life, even as the world counts greatness, is an organic whole with an
underlying vitalising idea; which must be construed as such, and
cannot be adequately rendered by a mere narration of facts. Without
this unifying principle the facts will be not only incoherent but
inconsistent. There must be a point of view from which we can embrace
the life as one. The great test here, as in art, is the formation of
a living, consistent, unmutilated whole.[140]
Thus a general point of view (if we are to use modern language easily
capable of being misunderstood we must say a theory) is wanted of the
Person, the work, the character of Christ. The synoptical Evangelists
had furnished the Church with the narrative of His earthly origin. St.
John in his Gospel and Epistle, under the guidance of the Spirit,
endowed it with the theory of His Person.
Other points of view have been adopted, from the heresies of the early
ages to the speculations of our own. All but St. John's have failed to
co-ordinate the elements of the problem. The earlier attempts essayed
to read the history upon the assumption that He was merely human or
merely divine. They tried in their weary round to unhumanise or
undeify the God-Man, to degrade the perfect Deity, to mutilate the
perfect Humanity--to present to the adoration of mankind a something
neither entirely human nor entirely divine, but an impossible mixture
of the two. The truth on these momentous subjects was fused under the
fires of controversy. The last centuries have produced theories less
subtle and metaphysical, but bolder and more blasphemous. Some have
looked upon Him as a pretender or an enthusiast. But the depth and
sobriety of His teaching upon ground where we are able to test it--the
texture of circumstantial word and work which will bear to be
inspected under any microscope or cross-examined by any
prosecutor--have almost shamed such blasphemy into respectful silence.
Others of later date admit with patronising admiration that the
martyr of Calvary is a saint of transcendent excellence. But if He who
called Himself Son of God was not much more than saint, He was
something less. Indeed He would have been something of three
characters; saint, visionary, pretender--at moments the Son of God in
His elevated devotion, at other times condescending to something of
the practice of the charlatan, His unparalleled presumption only
excused by His unparalleled success.
Now the point of view taken by St. John is the only one which is
possible or consistent--the only one which reconciles the humiliation
and the glory recorded in the Gospels, which harmonises the otherwise
insoluble contradictions that beset His Person and His work. One after
another, to the question, "what think ye of Christ?" answers are
attempted, sometimes angry, sometimes sorrowful, always confused. The
frank respectful bewilderment of the better Socinianism, the gay
brilliance of French romance, the heavy insolence of German criticism,
have woven their revolting or perplexed christologies. The Church
still points with a confidence, which only deepens as the ages pass,
to the enunciation of the theory of the Saviour's Person by St.
John--in his Gospel, "The Word was made flesh"--in his Epistle,
"concerning the Word of Life."
FOOTNOTES:
[132] See the noble and enthusiastic preface to the washing of the
disciples' feet (John xiii. 1, 2, 3).
[133] The phrase probably means the Logos, the Personal "Word who is
at once both the Word and the Life." For the double genitive, the
second almost appositional to the first, conf. John ii. 21, xi. 13.
This interpretation would seem to be that of Chrysostom. "If then the
Word is the Life; and if this Christ who is at once the Word and the
Life became flesh; then the Life became flesh." (_In Joan. Evang._ v.)
[134] Gen. i. 1; Prov. viii. 23; Micah v. 2.
[135] Cf. John vi. 36, 40. The word is applied by the angel to the
disciples gazing on the Ascension, Acts i. 11. The Transfiguration may
be here referred to. Such an incident as that in John vii. 37 attests
a vivid delighted remembrance of the Saviour's very attitude.
[136] Luke xxiv. 39; John xx. 27.
[137] Gospel i. 1-14; 1 John i. 1; Apoc. i. 9.
[138] "He hath a name written which _no one knoweth but He
Himself_,--and His name is called THE WORD OF GOD" (Apoc. xix. 12,
13). Gibbons' adroit italics may here be noted. "The Logos, TAUGHT in
the school of Alexandria BEFORE Christ 100--REVEALED to the Apostle
St. John, ANNO DOMINI, 97" (_Decline and Fall_, ch. xxi.). Just so
very probably--though whether St. John ever read a page of Philo or
Plato we have no means of knowing.
[139] The following table may be found useful:--
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| THE WORD IN ST. JOHN IS OPPOSED. |
+------------------------------+----+------------------------------+
|(A) To the Gnostic Word, | |(A) Uncreated and Eternal. |
| created and temporal | as |"In the beginning was |
| | |the Word." |
+------------------------------+----+------------------------------+
|(B) To the Platonic Word, | |(B) Personal and Divine. |
| ideal and abstract | as |"The Word was God." |
| | |"He"--"His." |
+------------------------------+----+------------------------------+
|(C) To the Judaistic and | |(C) Creative and First Cause. |
|Philonic Word--the type | |"All things were made |
|and idea of God in | as |by Him." |
|creation ... | | |
+------------------------------+----+------------------------------+
|(D) To the Dualistic Word-- | |(D) Unique and Universally |
|limitedly and partially | |Creative. "Without Him |
|instrumental in creation. | as |was not anything made |
| | |that hath been made." |
+------------------------------+----+------------------------------+
|(E) To the Doketic Word-- | as |(E) Real and Permanent. "The |
|impalpable and visionary | |Word became flesh." |
+------------------------------+----+------------------------------+
[140] _Vie de Jesus_, Int. 4.
DISCOURSE II.
_ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL HISTORICAL NOT IDEOLOGICAL._
"That which we have heard."--1 JOHN i. 1.
Our argument so far has been that St. John's Gospel is dominated by a
central idea and by a theory which harmonises the great and many-sided
life which it contains, and which is repeated again at the beginning of
the Epistle in a form analogous to that in which it had been cast in the
proœmium of the Gospel--allowing for the difference between a history
and a document of a more subjective character moulded upon that history.
There is one objection to the accuracy, almost to the veracity, of a
life written from such a theory or point of view. It may disdain to be
shackled by the bondage of facts. It may become an essay in which
possibilities and speculations are mistaken for actual events, and
history is superseded by metaphysics. It may degenerate into a romance
or prose-poem; if the subject is religious, into a mystic effusion. In
the case of the fourth Gospel the cycles in which the narrative moves,
the unveiling as of the progress of a drama, are thought by some to
confirm the suspicion awakened by the point of view given in its
proœmium, and in the opening of the Epistle. The Gospel, it is said, is
_ideological_. To us it appears that those who have entered most deeply
into the spirit of St. John will most deeply feel the significance of
the two words which we place at the head of this discourse--"which we
have heard," "which we have seen with our very eyes," (which we
contemplated with entranced gaze) "which our hands have handled."
More truly than any other, St. John could say of this letter in the
words of an American poet:
"This is not a book--It is I!"
In one so true, so simple, so profound, so oracular, there is a
special reason for this prolonged appeal to the senses, and for the
place which is assigned to each. In the fact that _hearing_ stands
first, there is a reference to one characteristic of that Gospel to
which the Epistle throughout refers. Beyond the synoptical
Evangelists, St. John records the words of Jesus. The position which
_hearing_ holds in the sentence, above and prior to _sight_ and
_handling_, indicates the reverential estimation in which the Apostle
held his Master's teaching.[141] The expression places us on solid
historical ground, because it is a moral demonstration that one like
St. John would not have dared to invent whole discourses and place
them in the lips of Jesus. Thus in the "_we have heard_" there is a
guarantee of the sincerity of the report of the discourses, which
forms so large a proportion of the narrative that it practically
guarantees the whole Gospel.
On this accusation of ideology against St. John's Gospel, let us make
a further remark founded upon the Epistle.
It is said that the Gospel systematically subordinates chronological
order and historical sequence of facts to the necessity imposed by the
theory of the Word which stands in the forefront of the Epistle and
Gospel.
But mystic ideology, indifference to historical veracity as compared
with adherence to a conception or theory, is absolutely inconsistent
with that strong, simple, severe appeal to the validity of the
historical principle of belief upon sufficient evidence which pervades
St. John's writings. His Gospel is a tissue woven of many lines of
evidence. "Witness" stands in almost every page of that Gospel, and
indeed is found there nearly as often as in the whole of the rest of
the New Testament. The word occurs _ten_ times in five short verses of
the Epistle.[142] There is no possibility of mistaking this prolixity
of reiteration in a writer so simple and so sincere as our Apostle.
The theologian is an historian. He has no intention of sacrificing
history to dogma, and no necessity for doing so. His theory, and that
alone, harmonises his facts. His facts have passed in the domain of
human history, and have had that evidence of witness which proves that
they did so.
A few of the stories of the earliest ages of Christianity have ever been
repeated, and rightly so, as affording the most beautiful illustrations
of St. John's character, the most simple and truthful idea of the
impression left by his character and his work. His tender love for
souls, his deathless desire to promote mutual love among his people, are
enshrined in two anecdotes which the Church has never forgotten. It has
scarcely been noticed that a tradition of not much later date (at least
as old as Tertullian, born probably about A.D. 150) credits St. John
with a stern reverence for the accuracy of historical truth, and tells
us what, in the estimation of those who were near him in time, the
Apostle thought of the lawfulness of ideological religious romance. It
was said that a presbyter of Asia Minor confessed that he was the author
of certain apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla--probably the same strange
but unquestionably very ancient document with the same title which is
still preserved. The man's motive does not seem to have been selfish.
His work was apparently the composition of an ardent and romantic nature
passionately attracted by a saint so wonderful as St. Paul.[143] The
tradition went on to assert that St. John without hesitation degraded
this clerical romance-writer from his ministry. But the offence of the
Asiatic presbyter would have been light indeed compared with that of
the mendacious Evangelist, who could have deliberately fabricated
discourses and narrated miracles which he dared to attribute to the
Incarnate Son of God. The guilt of publishing to the Church apocryphal
Acts of Paul and Thecla would have paled before the crimson sin of
forging a Gospel.
These considerations upon St. John's prolonged and circumstantial
claim to personal acquaintance with the Word made flesh, confirmed by
every avenue of communication between man and man--and first in order
by the hearing of that sweet yet awful teaching--point to the fourth
Gospel again and again. And the simple assertion--"that which we have
heard"--accounts for one characteristic of the fourth Gospel which
would otherwise be a perplexing enigma--its _dramatic_ vividness and
consistency.
This dramatic truth of St. John's narrative, manifested in various
developments, deserves careful consideration. There are three notes in
the fourth Gospel which indicate either a consummate dramatic instinct
or a most faithful record. (1) The delineation of _individual
characters_. The Evangelist tells us with no unmeaning distinction,
that Jesus "knew all men, and knew what is in man!"[144] For some
persons take an apparently profound view of human nature in the
abstract. They pass for being sages so long as they confine themselves
to sounding generalizations, but they are convicted on the field of
life and experience. They claim to know what is in man; but they know
it vaguely, as one might be in possession of the outlines of a map,
yet totally ignorant of most places within its limits. Others, who
mostly affect to be keen men of the world, refrain from
generalizations; but they have an insight, which at times is
startling, into the characters of the individual men who cross their
path. There is a sense in which they superficially seem to know all
men, but their knowledge after all is capricious and limited. One
class affects to know men, but does not even affect to know man; the
other class knows something about man, but is lost in the infinite
variety of the world of real men. Our Lord knew both--both the
abstract ultimate principles of human nature and the subtle
distinctions which mark off every human character from every other. Of
this peculiar knowledge he who was brought into the most intimate
communion with the Great Teacher was made in some degree a partaker in
the course of His earthly ministry. With how few touches yet how
clearly are delineated the Baptist, Nathanael, the Samaritan woman,
the blind man, Philip, Thomas, Martha and Mary, Pilate! (2) More
particularly the _appropriateness_ and _consistency_ of the language
used by the various persons introduced in the narrative is, in the
case of a writer like St. John, a multiplied proof of historical
veracity.[145] For instance, of St. Thomas only one single sentence,
containing seven words, is preserved,[146] outside the memorable
narrative in the twentieth chapter; yet how unmistakably does that
brief sentence indicate the same character--tender, impetuous, loving,
yet ever inclined to take the darker view of things because from the
very excess of its affection it cannot believe in that which it most
desires, and demands accumulated and convincing proof of its own
happiness. (3) Further, the _language_ of our Lord which St. John
preserves is both morally and intellectually a marvellous witness to
the proof of his assertion here in the outset of his Epistle.
This may be exemplified by an illustration from modern literature.
Victor Hugo, in his _Légende des Siècles_, has in one passage only
placed in our Lord's lips a few words which are not found in the
Evangelist.[147] Every one will at once feel that these words ring
hollow, that there is in them something exaggerated and factitious--and
_that_ although the dramatist had the advantage of having a _type_ of
style already constructed for him. People talk as if the representation
in detail of a perfect character were a comparatively easy performance.
Yet every such representation shows some flaw when closely inspected.
For instance, a character in which Shakespeare so evidently delighted as
Buckingham, whose end is so noble and martyr-like, is thus described,
when on his trial, by a sympathising witness:
"'How did he bear himself?'
'When he was bought again to the bar, to hear,
His knell rung out, his judgment, he was struck
With such an agony, he sweat extremely,
And something spoke in choler, _ill and hasty_;
But he fell to himself again, and sweetly
In all the rest show'd a most noble patience.'"[148]
Our argument comes to this point. Here is one man of all but the
highest rank in dramatic genius, who utterly fails to invent even one
sentence which could possibly be taken for an utterance of our Lord.
Here is another, the most transcendent in the same order whom the
human race has ever known, who tacitly confesses the impossibility of
representing a character which shall be "one entire and perfect
chrysolite," without speck or flaw. Take yet another instance. Sir
Walter Scott appeals for "the fair licence due to the author of a
fictitious composition;" and admits that he "cannot pretend to the
observation of complete accuracy even in outward costume, much less in
the more important points of language and manners."[149] But St. John
was evidently a man of no such pretensions as these kings of the human
imagination--no Scott or Victor Hugo, much less a Shakespeare. How
then--except on the assumption of his being a faithful reporter, of
his recording words actually spoken, and witnessing incidents which he
had seen with his very eyes and contemplated with loving and admiring
reverence--can we account for his having given us long successions of
sentences, continuous discourses in which we trace a certain unity and
adaptation;[150] and a character which stands alone among all recorded
in history or conceived in fiction, by presenting to us an excellence
faultless in every detail? We assert that the one answer to this
question is boldly given us by St. John in the forefront of his
Epistle--"That which we have heard, which we have seen with our
eyes--concerning the Word who is the Life--declare we unto you."
St. John's mode of writing history may profitably be contrasted with
that of one who in his own line was a great master, as it has been
ably criticised by a distinguished statesman. Voltaire's historical
masterpiece is a portion of the life of Maria Theresa, which is
unquestionably written from a partly ideological point of view. For,
those who have patience to go back to the "sources," and to compare
Voltaire's narrative with them, will see the process by which a
literary master has produced his effect. The writer works as if he
were composing a classical tragedy restricted to the unities of time
and place. The three days of the coronation and of the successive
votes are brought into one effect, of which we are made to feel that
it is due to a magic inspiration of Maria Theresa. Yet, as the great
historical critic to whom we refer proceeds to demonstrate, a
different charm, very much more real because it comes from truth, may
be found in literal historical accuracy without this academic rouge.
Writers more conscientious than Voltaire would not have assumed that
Maria Theresa was degraded by a husband who was inferior to her. They
would not have substituted some pretty and pretentious phrases for the
genuine emotion not quite veiled under the official Latin of the
Queen. "However high a thing art may be, reality, truth, which is the
work of God, is higher!"[151] It is this conviction, this entire
intense adhesion to truth, this childlike ingenuousness which has made
St. John as an historian attain the higher region which is usually
reached by genius alone--which has given us narratives and passages
whose ideal beauty or awe is so transcendent or solemn, whose
pictorial grandeur or pathos is so inexhaustible, whose philosophical
depth is so unfathomable.[152]
He stands with spell-bound delight before his work without the
disappointment which ever attends upon men of genius; because that work
is not drawn from himself, because he can say three words--which we have
_heard_, which we have _seen_ with our eyes, which we have _gazed_ upon.
NOTES.
Ch. i. 2, 4.
Ver. 2. _Us_, _we_.] "The nominative plural first person is not always
of _majesty_ but often of _modesty_, when we share our privilege and
dignity with others" (_Grotius_). The context must decide what shade
of meaning is to be read into the text, _e.g._, here it is the we of
modesty, as also (very tenderly and beautifully) in ii. 1, 2, v. 5. It
rises into _majesty_ with the majestic, "we announce."
Ver. 4. "_These things._"] Not even the _fellowship_ with the Church
and with the Father and with the Son is so much in the Apostle's
intention here as the record in the _Gospel_.
_We write unto you._] In days when men's minds were still freshly full
of the privilege of free access to the Scriptures, these words suggested
(and they naturally enough do so still) the use of the written word, and
the guilt of the Church or of individuals in neglecting it. This has
been well expressed by an old divine. "That which is able to give us
full joy must not be deficient in anything which conduceth to our
happiness; but the holy Scriptures give fulness of joy, and therefore
the way to happiness is perfectly laid down in them. The _major_ of this
syllogism is so clear, that it needs no probation; for who can or will
deny, that full joy is only to be had in a state of bliss? The _minor_
is plain from this scripture, and may thus be drawn forth. That which
the Apostles aimed at in, may doubtless be attained to by, their
writings; for they being inspired of God, it is no other than the end
that God purposed in inspiring which they had in writing; and either God
Himself is wanting in the means which He hath designed for this end, or
these writings contain in them what will yield fulness of joy, and to
that end bring us to a state of blessedness.
"How odious is the profaneness of those Christians who neglect the holy
Scriptures, and give themselves to reading other books! How many
precious hours do many spend, and that not only on work days, but holy
days, in foolish romances, fabulous histories, lascivious poems! And why
this, but that they may be cheered and delighted, when as full joy is
only to be had in these holy books. Alas, the joy you find in those
writings is perhaps pernicious, such as tickleth your lust, and
promoteth contemplative wickedness. At the best it is but vain, such as
only pleaseth the fancy and affecteth the wit; whereas these holy
writings (to use David's expression, Psalm xix. 8), are 'right,
rejoicing the heart.' Again, are there not many who more set by
Plutarch's morals, Seneca's epistles, and suchlike books, than they do
by the holy Scriptures? It is true, there are excellent truths in those
moral writings of the heathen, but yet they are far short of these
sacred books. Those may comfort against outward trouble, but not against
inward fears; they may rejoice the mind, but cannot quiet the
conscience; they may kindle some flashy sparkles of joy, but they cannot
warm the soul with a lasting fire of solid consolation. And truly, if
ever God give you a spiritual ear to judge of things aright, you will
then acknowledge there are no bells like to those of Aaron, no harp like
to that of David, no trumpet like to that of Isaiah, no pipes like to
those of the Apostles." (_First Epistle of St. John, unfolded and
applied_ by Nathaniel Hardy, D.D., Dean of Rochester, about 1660.)
FOOTNOTES:
[141] The appeal to the senses of _seeing_ and _hearing_ is a trait
common to _all_ the group of St. John's writings (John i. 14, xix. 35;
1 John i. 1, 2, iv. 14; Apoc. i. 2). The true reading (καγω Ιωαννης ὁ
ακουων και βλεπων ταυτα. Apoc. xxi. 8, where _hearing_ stands before
_seeing_) is indicative of John's style.
[142] 1 John v. 6-12.
[143] That the "Acts of Paul and Thecla" are of high antiquity there
can be no rational doubt. Tertullian writes: "But if those who read
St. Paul's writings rashly use the example of Thecla, to give licence
to women to teach and baptize publicly, let them know that a presbyter
of Asia Minor, who put together that piece, crowning it with the
authority of a Pauline title, convicted by his own confession of doing
this from love of St. Paul, was deprived of his orders." (Tertullian,
_De Baptismo_, xvii.) On which St. Jerome remarks--"We therefore
relegate to the class of apocryphal writings, the περιοδος of Paul and
Thecla, and the whole fable of the baptized lion. For how could it be
that the sole real companion of the Apostle" (Luke) "while so well
acquainted with the rest of the history, should have known nothing of
this? And further, Tertullian, who touched so nearly upon those times,
records that a certain presbyter in Asia Minor, convicted before
_John_ of being the author of that book, and confessing that as a
σπουδαστης of the Apostle Paul he had done this from loving devotion
to that great memory, was deposed from his ministry." (St. Hieron.,
_de Script. Eccles._, VII.) See the mass of authority for the
antiquity of this document, which gives a considerable degree of
probability to the statement about St. John, in _Acta Apost. Apoc._,
Edit. Tischendorf.--Proleg. xxi., xxvi.
[144] John iii, 24, 25.
[145] Those who are perplexed by the identity in style and turn of
language between the Epistle and the discourse of our Lord in St.
John's Gospel may be referred to the writer's remarks in _The Speakers
Commentary_ (N. T. iv. 286-89). It should be added that the Epp. to
the Seven Churches (Apoc. ii., iii.)--especially to Sardis--interweave
sayings of Jesus recorded by the Synoptical evangelists, _e.g._, "as a
thief," Apoc. iii. 3, cf. Mark xiii. 37; "book of life," Apoc. iii. 5,
cf. Luke x. 20; "confessing a name," Apoc. iii. 5, cf. Matt. x. 32;
"He that hath an ear," Apoc. iii. 6, 13, 22, and ii. 7, 11, 17, 29.
This phrase, found in each of the seven Epp., occurs nowhere in the
fourth Gospel, but constantly in the Synoptics. Cf. Matt. x. 27, xi.
15, xiii. 19, 43; Mark iv. 9, 23, vii. 16; Luke viii. 8, xiv. 35; cf.
also "giving power over the nations," Apoc. ii. 26--with the
conception in Matt. xix. 28; Luke xxii. 29, 30. The word _repentance_
is nowhere in the fourth Gospel, nor given as part of our Lord's
teaching; but we find it Apoc. ii. 5, 16, iii. 3, 19. If the author of
the fourth Gospel was also the author of the Apocalypse, his choice of
the style which he attributes to the Saviour was at least decided by
no lack of knowledge of the Synoptical type of expression, and by no
incapacity to use it with freedom and power.
[146] John xi. 16.
[147]
"Qui me suit, aux anges est pareil.
Quand un homme a marché tout le jour au soleil
Dans un chemin sans puits et sans hôtellerie,
S'il ne croit pas quand vient le soir il pleure, il crie,
Il est las; sur la terre il tombe haletant.
S'il croit en moi, qu'il prie, il peut au même instant.
Continuer sa route avec des forces triples."
(_Le Christ et le Tombeau._) Tom. i. 44.
[148] King Henry VIII., Act 2, Sc. 1. Contrast again our Lord before
the council with St. Paul before that tribunal. In the case of one of
the chief of saints there is the touch of human infirmity, the
"something spoken in choler, ill and hasty," the angry and
contemptuous "whited wall"--the confession of hasty inconsiderateness
(ουκ ἡδειν--ὁτι εστιν αρχιερευς) which led to a violation of a precept
of the law (Exod. xxii. 28).
[149] Preface to _Ivanhoe_.
[150] _How_ the great sayings were accurately collected has not been
the question before us in this discourse. But it presents little
difficulty. It is not absurd to suppose (if we are required to
postulate no divine assistance) that notes may have been taken in some
form by certain members of the company of disciples. The profoundly
thoughtful remark of Irenæus upon his own unfailing recollection of
early lessons from Polycarp, would apply with indefinitely greater
force to such a pupil as John, of such a teacher as Jesus. "I can
thoroughly recollect things so far back better than those which have
lately occurred; for lessons which have grown with us since boyhood
are compacted into a unity with the very soul itself." (τη ψυχη
ἑνουνται αυτη) _Euseb._, v. 29. But above all, whatever subordinate
agency may have been employed in the preservation of those precious
words, every Christian reverently acknowledges the fulfilment of the
Saviour's promise--"The Comforter, the Holy Ghost, He shall teach you
all things, and bring all things to your remembrance _whatsoever I
have said unto you_" (John xiv. 26).
[151] Duc de Broglie. _Revue des deux Mondes._ 15 Jan. 1882. Coxe,
_House of Austria_, vol. iii., chap. xcix., p. 415, sqq.
[152] John xiii. 30, xi. 35, xix. 5, xxii. 29-35.
SECTION II.
GREEK. LATIN.
Και αυτη εστιν ἡ Et hæc est adnuntiatio
αγγελια ἡν ακηκοαμεν quam audivimus
απ' αυτου, και ab eo, et adnuntiamus
αναγγελλομεν ὑμιν, ὁτι vobis, quoniam Deus
ὁ Θεος φως εστιν, και lux est, et tenebræ in
σκοτια εν αυτω ουκ εστιν eo non sunt ullæ. Si
ουδεμια. εαν ειπωμεν dixerimus quoniam societatem
ὁτι κοινωνιαν εχομεν μετ' habemus cum
αυτου, και εν τω σκοτει eo et in tenebris ambulamus,
περιπατωμεν, ψευδομεθα, mentimur, et
και ου ποιουμεν την non facimus veritatem:
αληθειαν· εαν δε εν si autem in luce ambulamus
τω φωτι περιπατωμεν, sicut et ipse
ὡς αυτος εστιν εν est in luce, societatem
τω φωτι, κοινωνιαν εχομεν habemus ad invicem,
μετ' αλληλων, και et sanguis Iesu Christi,
το αιμα Ιησου του Filii eius, mundat nos
υιου αυτου καθαριζει omni peccato. Si
ἡμας απο πασης ἁμαρτιας. dixerimus quoniam
Εαν ειπωμεν ὁτι peccatum non habemus,
ἁμαρτιαν ουκ εχομεν, ipsi nos seducimus,
ἑαυτους πλανωμεν, και et veritas in nobis
ἡ αληθεια εν ἡμιν ουκ non est. Si confiteamur
εστιν. εαν ὁμολογωμεν peccata nostra,
τας ἁμαρτιας ἡμων, fidelis et justus est,
πιστος εστι και δικαιος, ut remittat nobis peccata
ἱνα ἁφη ἡμιν τας nostra, et emundet
ἁμαρτιας, και καθαριση nos ab omni iniquitate.
ἡμας απο πασης αδικιας. Si dixerimus
εαν ειπωμεν ὁτι ουχ quoniam non peccavimus,
ἡμαρτηκαμεν, ψευστην mendacem faciemus
ποιουμεν αυτον, και ὁ eum, et verbum
λογος αυτου ουκ εστιν εν eius in nobis non est.
ἡμιν. Filioli mei, hæc scribo
vobis, ut non peccetis:
Τεκνια μου, ταυτα sed et si quis peccaverit
γραφω ὑμιν, ἱνα μη advocatum habemus
ἁμαρτητε· και εαν τις apud Patrem, Iesum
ἁμαρτη, παρακλητον Christum iustum et
εχομεν προς τον πατερα, ipse est propitiatio pro
Ιησουν Χριστον δικαιον· peccatis nostris, non
και αυτος ιλασμος εστι pro nostris autem tantum
περι των ἁμαρτιων ἡμων· sed etiam pro
ου περι των ἡμετερων totius mundi.
δε μονον, αλλα και περι
ὁλου του κοσμου.
AUTHORISED VERSION. REVISED VERSION.
This then is the message And this is the message
which we have which we have
heard of Him, and declare heard from Him, and
unto you, that announce unto you,
God is light, and in that God is light, and
Him is no darkness at _in_ Him is _no darkness_
all. If we say that we at all. If we say that
have fellowship with we have fellowship
Him, and walk in darkness, with him, and walk in
we lie, and do not the darkness, we lie, and
the truth: but if we do not the truth: but
walk in the light, as if we walk in the light,
He is in the light, as He is in the light,
we have fellowship one we have fellowship one
with another, and the with another, and the
blood of Jesus Christ blood of Jesus His Son
His Son cleanseth us cleanseth us from all
from all sin. If we say sin. If we say that
that we have no sin, we have no sin, we
we deceive ourselves, deceive ourselves, and
and the truth is not in the truth is not in us.
us. If we confess our If we confess our
sins, He is faithful and sins He is faithful and
just to forgive us _our_ righteous to forgive us
sins, and to cleanse us our sins, and to cleanse
from all unrighteousness. us from all unrighteousness.
If we say that If we say that
we have not sinned, we have not sinned,
we make Him a liar, we make Him a liar,
and His word is not in and His word is not in
us. My little children, us. My little children,
these things write I these things write I
unto you, that ye sin unto you, that ye may
not. But if any man not sin. And if any
sin, we have an man sin, we have
advocate with the an Advocate with the
Father, Jesus Christ Father, Jesus Christ
the righteous: and He the righteous: and He
is the propitiation for is the propitiation for
our sins: and not for our sins; and not for
our's only, but also for ours only, but also for
_the sins of_ the whole the whole world.
world.
ANOTHER VERSION.
And this is the message
which we have
heard from Him and
are announcing unto
you that God is light,
and darkness in Him
there is none. If we
say that we have fellowship
with Him and
are walking in the
darkness, we lie and
are not doing the truth;
but if we walk in the
light as He is in the
light we have fellowship
one with another,
and the blood of Jesus
His Son is purifying
us from all sin. If we
say that we have not
sin, we mislead ourselves
and the truth
in us is not. If we
confess our sins He is
faithful and righteous
that He may forgive
our sins and purify us
from all unrighteousness.
If we say that
we have not sinned a
liar we are making
Him, and His word is
not in us. My children
these things write I
unto you that ye may
not sin. And yet if
any may have sinned,
an Advocate have we
with the Father Jesus
Christ _who is_ righteous:
and He is propitiation
for our sins; yea, and
not for ours only but
also for the whole
world.
DISCOURSE III.
_EXTENT OF THE ATONEMENT._
"My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin
not. And if any man sin we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus
Christ the righteous: and He is the propitiation for our sins, and
not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world."--1
JOHN ii. 1, 2.
Of the Incarnation of the Word, of the whole previous strain of solemn
oracular annunciation, there are two great objects. Rightly understood
it at once stimulates and soothes; it supplies inducements to
holiness, and yet quiets the accusing heart. (1) It urges to a
pervading holiness in each recurring circumstance of life.[153] "That
ye may not sin" is the bold universal language of the morality of God.
Men only understand moral teaching when it comes with a series of
monographs on the virtues, sobriety, chastity, and the rest.
Christianity does not overlook these, but it comes first with
all-inclusive principles. The morality of man is like the sculptor
working line by line and part by part, partially and successively. The
morality of God is like nature, and works in every part of the flower
and tree with a sort of ubiquitous presence. "These things write we
unto you." No dead letter--a living spirit infuses the lines; there is
a deathless principle behind the words which will vitalize and
permeate all isolated relations and developments of conduct. "These
things write we unto you that ye may not sin."
(2) But further, this announcement also soothes. There may be isolated
acts of sin against the whole tenor of the higher and nobler life.
There may be, God forbid!--but it may be--some glaring act of
inconsistency. In this case the Apostle uses a form of expression
which includes himself, "we have," and yet points to Christ, not to
himself, "we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ"--and that
in view of His being One who is perfectly and simply righteous; "and
He is the propitiation for our sins."
Then, as if suddenly fired by a great thought, St. John's view broadens
over the whole world beyond the limits of the comparatively little group
of believers whom his words at that time could reach. The Incarnation
and Atonement have been before his soul. The Catholic Church is the
correlative of the first, humanity of the second. The Paraclete whom he
beheld is ever in relation with, ever turned towards the Father.[154]
His propitiation _is_, and He _is_ it. It _was_ not simply a fact in
history which works on with unexhaustible force. As the Advocate is ever
turned towards the Father, so the propitiation lives on with unexhausted
life. His intercession is not verbal, temporary, interrupted. The
Church, in her best days, never prayed--"Jesus, pray for me!" It is
interpretative, continuous, unbroken. In time it is eternally valid,
eternally present. In space it extends as far as human need, and
therefore takes in every place. "Not for our sins only," but for men
universally, "for the whole world."[155]
It is implied then in this passage, that Christ was _intended_ as a
propitiation for the whole world; and that He is _fitted_ for
satisfying all human wants.
(1) Christ was intended for the whole world. Let us see the Divine
intention in one incident of the crucifixion. In that are mingling lines
of glory and of humiliation. The King of humanity appears with a scarlet
camp-mantle flung contemptuously over His shoulders; but to the eye of
faith it is the purple of empire. He is crowned with the acanthus
wreath; but the wreath of mockery is the royalty of our race. He is
crucified between two thieves; but His cross is a Judgment-Throne, and
at His right
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