Chapter I Its Purpose and Theology “Many other signs did Jesus in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye might have life through his name.” In these words, which form the close of the original Gospel, the Fourth Evangelist has himself indicated that the general scope and character of his work. He declares, in the first place, that he has not aimed at presenting a complete and consecutive account of the life of Jesus. He has made a selection from the material before him, and deliberately omitted a large number of facts. Again, he acknowledges his main purpose in making this selection has been t impress a certain belief on the minds of his readers. The narrative I composed with the set 2. intention of proving that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. The fundamental difference between the Fourth Gospel and the Synoptics is thus marked out explicitly by John himself. His statement may be contrasted with that of Luke in the address to Theophilus with which he prefaces his gospel. The writer’s design, as there indicated, is simply to record the facts, in a narrative more exact and orderly, more complete in detail, than those which were already in circulation. This fidelity to the historical tradition was undoubtedly the chief aim of the Synoptic writers. Their work may here and there bear traces of theological colouring, but their first interest was in the facts. Heir part was not to interpret, but simply to record, as clearly and faithfully as they might, the actual events on which the new religion based itself. John, on the other hand, starts with a certain conception of the Person and life of Christ, and reads the facts in the light of it. They are valuable to him only as they afford evidence and illustration of a given belief. For this reason he dispenses with the fuller historical detail and contents himself with a few outstanding episodes, which witness in a signal manner to the divine worth of Jesus Christ. Writing as he does with an express theological intention, John not only selects his material but adapts and modifies it. This result followed necessarily from his method. The historian who approaches his subject with a strong pre-possession sees all the events from one particular point of view; 3. unconsciously to himself he alters the perspective, and reads his own meaning into words and incidents, and disregards circumstances which seem to him immaterial. This, as become apparent from the most superficial comparison with the Synoptics, has been the procedure of the Fourth Evangelist. The import of the fact is always more valuable to him than the fact itself. Incidents are transposed in order to fit in more effectively with that general plan, and are so described as to bring out their hidden purport. In his endeavour to accentuate the meaning of his story the writer is led naturally to introduce a large element of spoken discourse. Each incident is followed by a speech or dialogue in which its inward significance is unfolded, and these discourses appear to be composed freely, according to the method employed in the narrative proper. Words actually uttered by Jesus are expanded and interpreted. Sayings are ascribed to Him which He may not literally have spoken, but which express His essential thought, as the evangelist conceive it. John tells us, then, that he wrote with a definite purpose, which guided him in the treatment of his material. He proceeds to describe that purpose as a twofold one, “that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye may have life through His name.” His interest on the one had is in the historical Person of Jesus, in whom he recognizes the Son of God revealed in the flesh But he desires at the same time to emphasize the abiding value and purpose of the historical life. 4. Jesus Christ was more than a wonderful figure in the past. His appearance on earth had been only the beginning of a larger, enduring life, and it was still possible for His people to maintain fellowship with Him and to receive His quickening. The central purpose of the gospel is defined in these words, “that ye may have life through His name.” in the Jesus who passes before us as a Person in history we are meant to be able to recognize the eternal Christ, who is still revealed, as an inward, life-giving presence, to those that believe in Him. One significant phrase in this passage, which forms John’s own account of the aim and character of his work, may be taken as the point of departure for a larger survey. “That Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.” The Messianic title of Jesus is here co-ordinated with a higher title or rather is superseded by it; and this use of the double title may be regarded as an index to the nature of the Gospel as a whole. It is a work of transition, in which primitive Christianity is carried over into a different world of thought. 1. The transition in the first place, is from one age to another. The date which may be assigned to the gospel with a fair degree of certainty (the first or second decade of the second century) coincides with the most critical period in the history of the Church. I that third generation after Christ the new religion had became finally separated from its historical origins. The last representatives of the Apostolic age had passed away. The primitive hopes and impulses had spent themselves. The 5. bonds with the mother religion of Judaism, which Paul had loosened, had been definitely broken. If Christianity as to endure as a living faith, it had to embody itself in new forms and come to an understanding with the ideas and interests of the modern time. It was the work of the Fourth Evangelist to transplant the religion of Christ into the new soil before its roots had time to wither. From the age immediately behind him, in which the primitive tradition was a living force, he carried the gospel over into his own generation. To perform this task, it was not enough to simply transmit the facts. Jesus had appeared at a given time in history, and His teachings had been influenced and in some respects limited by the conditions of that time which had now fallen into the past. If the message was to continue as a life-giving power, it must be re-interpreted in terms of the new modes of thinking. The story of Christ’s coming must be told in fresh language, with a different emphasis, so that it might appeal to the second century as it had done in the first. Moreover, in the course of its hundred years of development the original Christian message had unfolded itself into a far larger significance. The great mind of Paul had worked on it. The experience of a growing church, gathered out of many different races and classes, had thrown new lights on its meaning. Even the heresies which had sprung up from time to time had served to suggest the wider bearings of genuine Christian truths. These later developments seemed, at first 6. sight, alien to the primitive gospel, but they had grown out of it, and belonged to its real import. To understand the work of Christ it was necessary not only to consider His actual life and teaching, but to take into account this great movement to which He had given the impulse. The Evangelist in his picture of Jesus invests Him with the grandeur which in His lifetime had not been fully apparent. He reads into His recorded words the deeper meaning which they had disclosed to later thinkers. He presents the facts of the divine life, not s men saw them at the time, but as they appeared long afterwards in the retrospect of an enlightened faith. 2. Again, there is a transition not only to a new age, but to a different culture. In order that the religion might naturalise itself in the larger Gentile world to which, since the days of Paul, it had chiefly appealed, it required to find expression in the Hellenic modes of thought. Paul himself had adopted Greek categories into his thinking, but his system as a whole was Jewish in character, imperfectly intelligible to the Hellenic mind. The writer of the Fourth Gospel, not content with employing a Greek idea here and there, attempts an entire re-statement of the Christian message in terms of the current philosophy. Jesus, according to the primitive tradition, was the Messiah, who had come o inaugurate the promised kingdom of God. In the Fourth Gospel the Messianic idea is replaced by that of the Logos. The proclamation of the kingdom becomes the message of “eternal 7. Life.” Jewish conceptions are translated in almost every instance into the language of Greek speculation. It was impossible thus to transpose he Christian doctrine without modifying, often to a serious extent, its original character. The Greek ideas which John employs never correspond more than partially with the ideas of Jesus, and are sometimes alien to the whole spirit of His teaching. Yet it may fairly be argued that the Hellenic form is in some respects more adequate than the Jewish. There was a breadth and idealism in the thought of Jesus which transcended the limits imposed on Him by the Jewish modes of utterance. We cannot but feel in reading the Synoptic Gospels that He has sometimes to pour new wine into old bottles, to overstrain the language and imagery of traditional Hebrew thought in order to find expression for His message. The ideas of the Messiah and the kingdom of God, to take the most signal instances, meant infinitely more to the mind of Jesus than the names themselves could be made to signify. He was continual hampered by the inadequacy of the names which as a Jewish teacher He was nevertheless constrained to use. The Fourth Evangelist, when he breaks with the literal tradition, and substitutes the language of Greek reflection for the actual words employed by Jesus is not necessarily unfaithful to the Master’s teaching. On the contrary, he gives truer expression in many cases to the intrinsic thought. There were elements in the gospel messages, and these among the most valuable, which could not come to their own until 8. they had received a new embodiment in Hellenic forms. 3. In yet a third way, as has been already indicated, the work of John effects a transition. It carries over the revelation of Christ from the world of outward fact to that of inward religious experience. At the time when the Gospel was written, that critical time which followed the close of the Apostolic age, Christianity was threatened with two great dangers, either of which would have destroyed its power as a living religion. There was a tendency on the one hand to dissolve the historical fact of the life of Jesus into a vague speculation. His life had now receded into the past; and the second generation, to which His personal influence had been mediated by His own disciples, had likewise disappeared. It seemed as if nothing remained but to sublimate the actual history into a philosophical allegory and so make it yield a certain permanent value. The other tendency, opposite to this, was equally destructive of vital faith. There were those who clung to the mere reminiscence, which was fading more and more into the distance. Their religion was wholly a matter of tradition, and was destitute of inward impulse and spiritual reality. Christianity, once separated from its historical beginnings, seemed to have no choice but to proceed in one or other of these two directions, –either to evaporate as a philosophy or to petrify as a mechanical tradition. That it was able to continue as living faith was due mainly to the work of John. He presented 9. the life of Jesus in its eternal meaning, and showed how true discipleship was still possible to those who had not seen and yet had believed. He claimed that this inward fellowship was even closer and more real than the outward one. And at the same time he assigned to the historical fact of Christ’s appearance its necessary value. From the empty speculations of his time he went back to the actual record, and insisted that the Christ who manifests Himself to faith is one with Him who lived among us His larger works, His eternal presence, cannot be understood apart from that historical revelation. It is the supreme service of the Fourth Evangelists that he interpreted the vision of faith by the light of the Gospel story. He ensured for all time the Christ of inward experience should be no ideal abstraction, but the living Master who had once been manifest in the flesh. In these three well-marked directions the Gospel is a work of transition, and this fact explains not a few of its main difficulties. The writer had to deal with diverse elements, and has not wholly succeeded in fusing them. His general purpose was to re-mould the original tradition according to his new conception of its meaning, but there was much in it that could neither be discarded nor yet find a natural place in the altered plan. Again and again we meet with isolated ideas which cannot be reconciled with the characteristic Johannine thought. They can only be regarded as fragments of earlier doctrine that have simply 10. been taken over without any, or with very imperfect, attempt at assimilation. It is customary to speak of these alien fragments (the more important of which will be considered in due place) as “concessions” made by the evangelist to current modes of belief. This account of them, however, is scarcely just. A thinker who is reaching forward to a larger conception of truth does not break entirely with the common beliefs of the age. Even when they clash with his own belief he is not himself fully conscious of the opposition, and still allows room for them in his scheme of thought, although in spirit he has transcended them. John “concedes” no doctrine which he does not himself share with the primitive Church, but many of the doctrines thus taken over from the earlier times have ceased to be vital to him. They are incorporated in his work without in any way modifying its inward character. Apart, however, from these alien fragments which do not enter into its substance, the Gospel is by no means uniform in its presentation of doctrine. The author, writing in a period of transition, is continually striving to find place within the same system for opposite types of thought and belief. He recognizes the elements of truth in widely different conceptions, and seeks to preserve them all and to make them supplement and illuminate each other. This union of opposites which meets us constantly in the Gospel has led to the most diverse views as to its ultimate character and intention. It has been represented s a 11. Gnostic manifesto, and as an orthodox reply to Gnosticism; as a vindication of the historical facts and as a bold attempt to explain them away; as a thoroughgoing exposition of the Logos idea, and as a simple narrative in which the Logos idea disappears after the prologue. Some critics find it dominated by a polemical interest, but differ as to the object of the polemic; others interpret it as an ecclesiastical document, or as a work of speculation or as a manual of practical religion. The Gospel offers itself to this wide variety of explanations, all of which can be supported more or less convincingly. It stands, as a matter of fact, at the conflux of many different currents in the life and thought of the Christian Church, and cannot be explained by any one hypothesis. We have rather to acknowledge the diversity of its teaching, and to see in this one chief element in its permanent value. More than any other book in the New Testament it has witnessed to the comprehensiveness of Christianity, and has afforded a meeting-ground for all the different types of religious temperament and thought. The blending of various tendencies which marks the Gospel as a whole is no less visible when we examine its teaching n detail. Only a few examples, which will considered more fully at a later stage, need be offered in illustration. The “world” is regarded sometimes as wholly evil—the realm of darkness over against the light, and elsewhere as the object of the love of God. Man, according to one order of passages, decides for 12. himself whether he will respond to Christ; according to another, he is determined by a power outside of him. The miracles of Jesus are alternately put forward as the main proof of his divine claims, and disparaged as a quite secondary evidence. An intellectual view of religion is combined with a strongly ethical view. The idea of an eternal life in the future stands side by side with that of a life realized here and now. The sacraments are regarded as mystically efficacious in themselves, and again set aside as mere symbols of true spiritual influences. The Church as an outward institution is put in the forefront, and on the other hand religion is identified with an inward, personal fellowship with Christ. The Spirit is another name for the exalted Christ, and almost in the same verse a separate power. “Belief,” which is sometimes hard to be distinguished from the Pauline “faith,” is elsewhere little more than an intellectual assent. The number of examples might be multiplied almost indefinitely f we took into account the minor discrepancies in John’s thought. Nearly every sentence in the Gospel might be paralleled with another which appears to indicate a view of different tenor. These inconsistencies, whether real or apparent, can be partly accounted for by the peculiar position of the writer, who stands between two epochs, two worlds of culture. But we shall find that to a large extent they have their roots in one grand antimony which pervades the Gospel from end to end, and creates an actual cleavage in its religious teaching. 13. The revelation through Christ is explained in the prologue as a temporary appearance in the flesh of the eternal Logos. This doctrine f the Logos, borrowed through Philo from the Greek philosophical thinkers, had nothing to do with the original Christian message. For the ethical view of the Person and life of Jesus it substituted a view which can only be described as metaphysical. Christ as Logos was a heavenly being, different in nature from man; and nothing could be predicated of Him except that he was eternal, self-existent, one from the beginning with God. The evangelist sets out with this conception, and there can be little doubt that it pervades his whole narrative, although he does not revert after the prologue to the express Philonic term. But no one can read the Gospel in any spirit of sympathy without feeling that the theological view is combined with another altogether different character. To John, as to the Synoptic writers, the revelation has come through the actual life of Jesus, and he seeks to explain by his theory of the incarnate Logos the impression which that life made on him. He has recourse to the highest philosophical categories in order to justify his faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the Life-giver. The doctrine of the Logos was, however, by its very nature inadequate to his purpose. It belonged to a world of abstract speculation, and Jesus had revealed the Father by His love and goodness, by the moral glory and divineness of His life. In the Fourth Gospel we have really two distinct conceptions, which are con- 14. stantly interchanging but can never be reconciled. Jesus is, on the other hand, the Logos, a supernatural being who makes God manifest because he partakes Himself of the divine essence. On the other hand, he is the Saviour in whom we know grace and truth. The Gospel moves throughout on these two conceptions of the Christian revelation, and they are never brought into real harmony. Instead of vainly striving to harmonise them, we have to acknowledge an inner contradiction which affects the Johannine teaching at its very center. The frequent oppositions of thought that meet us in the Gospels are traceable, therefore, to two main causes. An earlier type of Christian belief is combined with another which had arisen at a later time in a different environment; and a revelation given through a historical life is interpreted by means of a philosophical doctrine, with which it cannot, in any true sense, be reconciled. But we must further allow due weight to the temperament of the writer himself, who with all his speculative genius is not primarily a theologian, but a man of profound religious feeling. Ideas flow in upon him from various sources—from primitive Christian tradition, Paulinism, Alexandrian speculation; and he does to attempt to reason them out, or to co-ordinate them into a system. They ay stand in mutual contradiction, but as long as he responds to them with some side of his religious nature, he is willing to accept them. He tests them, not by any 15. logical criterion, but by an inward tact and sympathy. Hence the widely different elements that find place side by side within his Gospel; and hence also the indefinable unity in which these conflicting elements are held together. They have all formed part of a living experience, and have spiritual affinity to each other even when they appear most diverse. It is here, perhaps, that we come upon the crucial difficulty in the interpretation of this writing of John. We have to deal not so much with a thinker whose system may be examined by the ordinary logical rules, as with a unique religious temperament. Ignorant as e are of the personality of the writer, we are for ever deprived of the ultimate key to his Gospel It is necessary to bear in mind that the Johannine tradition, even more than the Pauline, is bound up with a personal temperament and experience. The theology of Paul would in great measure be a riddle to us if we knew nothing of the individual life out of which it had shaped itself. Our knowledge of the man himself, of his early training, his conversion and the circumstances that led up to it, his activities as an Apostle, his personal sympathies and characteristics—supplies the light in which his whole thought becomes intelligible. In the case of John we have so much light, and have to feel our way dimly, with the help of some vague acquaintance with the times and conditions in which he worked and the sources from which he drew. The result has been that criticism has too often attempted to construe his 16. Gospel externally. It has been treated as little more than a compilation in which various fragments of earlier systems are pieced together, while the personal factor has been left entirely out of sight. Now it cannot be too strongly emphasized that this factor, which is outside our range of knowledge, is yet the ultimate and all-important one. Whatever is borrowed from previous thinkers is not simply taken over, but is penetrated with new meanings; and much as we are assisted in the right understanding of the Gospel by various collateral lines of research, we have to deal in the last resort with the writer himself, and his own individual conception of the message of Christ. The individual character of the work is strikingly marked in the very method of its composition. It has been noted already that John did not set himself to write a complete history, but only to enforce a given view of the Christian revelation in the light of selected facts. He is thus left free to shape his narrative on a deliberate artistic plan, and it unfolds itself with something of the ordered majesty and simplicity of a Greek tragedy. First, in a solemn prologue, our minds are prepared for the action which is to follow; and then the divine life passes before us in its few cardinal episodes. In the first four chapters the Light is seen rising on the world, and all men appear to welcome and respond to it. Then follows a period of uncertainty, when friends and enemies begin to take their sides (v. and vi). In 17. the next section (vii.-xii.) the world settles down into definite antagonism, while the few whom Jesus has chosen are drawn to Him ever more closely. At last He is left alone with this small company of His true disciples, and reveals his innermost heart to them in the quiet of the supper-room (xiii-xvii.). Meanwhile the hatred of His enemies, like the love of His chosen friends, has reached its height, and in the remaining chapters we see Him overwhelmed by the powers of darkness, yet in the end rising victorious. The story thus groups itself around one central motive, that of the judgment, the sifting out of men, effected by the coming of Christ. After the first wonder has spent itself, the two classes of children o flight and darkness begin to emerge definitely. Those who are repelled from Jesus become more intensely hostile, while those who accept Him are won to an always deeper and more intimate faith. This separation of their men by their attitude to the Light is the governing motive of the book, and as such it serves an artistic as well as a theological purpose. By his conception of Jesus as the Logos, the writer was compelled to regard him as a stationary figure. There could be no inward development of His character or consciousness, no reaction of circumstances upon His life. As the story of the Incarnate Logos the Gospel could be nothing more than a series of repetitions, without any real sequence or unifying interest. The difficulty is overcome by the aid of that other motive, which enables the narrative to 18. march forward with a natural dramatic progress. Jesus Himself remains sovereign and impassive, awaiting His “hour”; but the effect of His presence on the world becomes more and more decisive. A judgment is in process, and we follow it stage by stage to the great climax. The deliberate artistic purpose which governs the main structure of the Gospel is apparent also in matters of detail. Every reader has been struck with the contrast between the prevailing tone of mystical thought and the vivid realism of many of the separate pictures. The book abounds in clearly drawn portraits of character. Disciples who stand in the Synoptics are little more than names stand out in John with definitely marked features. The more prominent actors in the history (e.g. Peter, Judas, Pilate) are carefully individualized. Even those persons who have no real part in the action, and are only introduced for the purposes of doctrinal discussion (Nicodemus, the woman of Samaria, the Blind man), are endowed with some distinctness of character. In like manner the writer delights in little pictorial touches which serve to give a concrete reality to his narrative. He records dates, hours, names of places. He works out special episodes with a wealth of lively detail. He adds an individual reference to vague statements in the Synoptics. (Peter was the man who struck, and Malchus the man wounded; Judas objected to the waste of ointment; Thomas is the representative of the “some who doubted.”) He introduces, often with wonderful effect, dramatic 19. contrasts and circumstances. (“And it was night.” “Jesus wept.” “Behold the man!” “What is truth?”) These are but a few examples of that study of the vivid and concrete which forms one of the best marked characteristics of the Fourth Gospel, abstract and theological as it is in its main teaching. The favourite argument for the general authenticity of the narrative is base on this feature in its composition, but the force of the argument disappears on closer analysis. I can be shown that many of the apparently lifelike details have a symbolic value, and are in reality nothing but veiled allegorical allusions. Possibly, if we had an adequate clue to the evangelist’s aims and methods, a side-reference of this kind could be discovered in almost every instance. Apart, however, from its allegorical value, the picturesque detail in John’s narrative can be set down, not to the accurate memory of the eye-witness, but to the fine instinct of the literary artist. All the more that the prevailing tenor of his work was abstract and meditative, he felt the need of relieving it with touches of lively colour. The elaborate character of the work becomes still more apparent when we look with closer attention at its inner structure. A manner of writing is adopted which admits of singularly little variation, so that it is difficult at times to distinguish between the words of Jesus Himself and the commentary which follows them. This monotony of the Johannine style, due to a certain uniform, semi-rhythmical construction of sentence, has often 20. been remarked. It is evidently intentional, and imparts to the whole book an air of majesty and religious awe, in keeping with its high argument. A similar uniformity is traceable in the conduct of almost all the dialogue in which Jesus takes part. The method invariably adopted is this;—a dark saying is thrown out by Jesus is I misapprehended by His hearers, and He then repeats the original saying, and proceeds to amplify and explain it. Whole chapters (e.g. v. vi. viii.) consist of a series of such dark utterances, misunderstood and then interpreted. A regular method is likewise followed in regard to the miracles. They are performed by Jesus on His own initiative, and embody great spiritual truths which are not apparent to the onlookers. Thus they serve as introductions to the several discourses, in which they are expounded in their inward significance. The allegorical nature of many of the instances and allusions contained in the Gospel has already been indicated. In the case of the miracles, John himself invites us to consider the outward event as the vehicle of a hidden meaning; and his narrative, down to its minutest details, appears to be saturated with symbolism. Even where his chief interest is to record facts as they actually happened, he is careful to place them in such a light as to bring out a deeper spiritual import which was concealed in them. A conspicuous example is the incident of the spear-thrust, vouched for in the most emphatic manner as strictly historical. It was the unanswerable proof that Jesus really died upon the Cross, and 21. the evangelist is solicitous, above all, to establish the fact. Yet even here the outward event merges in the symbol. The water and blood that issued from the side of Christ typify the double work effected by Him, and the two sacraments in which it is appropriated by the believer. In like manner, throughout the Gospel we have to reckon with a strain of allegorical intention woven in at every point with the narrative proper. “Earth things” are to this writer the shadow of “heavenly things,” and they are chiefly valuable to him for the sake of those higher truths dimly reflected in them. A particular interest attaches itself in connection to John’s use of numbers. In view of his relation to the allegorical school of Philo, we are prepared to find the mystical value of numbers playing a part in his work, and this expectation is borne out to a greater extent than is at first evidence. Definite allusions are indeed comparatively few, but it has often been noted that a numerical scheme appears to be constantly before his mind. Jesus makes his journey thrice to Galilee and thrice to Jerusalem, there are three Passovers and three other feasts; the Baptist makes three appearances as witness; Jesus is thrice condemned, speaks thrice from the Cross, appears three times after His Resurrection. Seven, the other sacred number, likewise prominent. There are seven miracles, seven references to the “hour”; the formula “I am,” introducing some type under which Jesus describes Himself, occurs seven times, as also the solemn 22. asseveration, “These things I have spoken to you,” in the final discourse. It is even probable that the structure of the Gospel as a whole is determined by these two numbers, three and seven. The book can be articulated into seven main sections, each of which falls naturally into three main parts; and a still further subdivision on the basis of the sacred numbers can be carried out with sufficient plausibility. This method f analysis is at best conjectural and may easily be overstrained, but it is distinctly possible that John worked consciously on a scheme of numbers in the composition of his wok. Such a plan might seem at first sight to place a fatal restraint on he free activity of genius, but we have instances of great creative work—for example the poem of Dante—produced under still stricter limitations. To minds of a certain type the observance of a rigid system is no burden, but rather a necessary condition to elevated and harmonious thought. Enough has been said to prove that the Fourth Gospel, in outward appearance so unstudied and spontaneous, is in reality a work of complex art. It bears traces of elaborate design, alike its plan as a whole and in all separate details. We are prepared, therefore, to discover a similar complexity in the content of the Gospel. We can assume that in its thought as in its composition it is not simple, but is full of hidden intention, and meaning involved in meaning. This will become more evident as we examine more closely into its religious and theological meaning. 23. Meanwhile a new light is thrown on the broad question which meets us at the outset—What is the aim with which this Fourth Gospel was written? In view of the evangelist’s express statement, the answer to this question might seem to present little difficulty. He wrote in a purely religious interest, “that, believing in Jesus Christ as the Son of God ye may have life through His name.” This statement does not, however, cover the whole of the purpose of the Gospel. It arose, like the other New Testament writings, out of the immediate life and needs of the early Church; and we cannot but feel, when we study it with some attention, that the religious aim is combined with a more practical one. Again and again we come on passages that seem capable of a double interpretation. They can be explained, quite naturally, in the light of that larger purpose which the writer professes to have kept before him; but they have a bearing, still more direct and evident, on certain definite questions that agitated the Church at a given time. What, then, was the real aim of our evangelist? Are we to regard him as a purely religious teacher, concerned only with the timeless element in Christianity? Or was he rather a man of his age, whose thought was chiefly determined by the immediate conditions under which he lived? Much of the discussion which in recent times has gathered around these questions becomes irrelevant when allowance is made for the element of complexity that belongs to the very essence of the Fourth Gospel. It is fair to assume that in such a work a number of 24. intentions may be equally present, and so involved with one another that they cannot be easily separated. There is no reason to set aside John’s own statement when he declares that his aim was in the first instance religious; but this paramount aim was complicated in his mind with others, imposed on him by the particular circumstances of his time. They can be traced with more or less distinctness in every chapter of the work, and continually influence its main teaching. These subordinate aims may be grouped, for the sake of convenience, under two divisions. In the first place, the evangelist seeks to repel the attacks to which Christianity was subject, from several different sides, in the early years of the second century. His narrative is so presented as to serve an urgent polemical interest. He writes, in the second place, as a representative of the Church, with the object of building up the Church idea. It might seem, indeed, that nothing could be further removed from the field of ecclesiastical debate than this “spiritual Gospel” of John. The Church is not once alluded to by name; the mind of the writer dwells among eternal truths which appear to have little to do with Church polemics and controversies. None the less we shall find reason to believe that the thought of the Church is constantly present to him. The story of the beginnings of Christianity is described in such a manner as to adumbrate the later development, in which an ordered community, with its set laws and sacraments, continued the work of Christ. A 25. whole region of John’s thinking becomes intelligible only when we take account of this ecclesiastical interest which underlies his gospel. In need hardly be said that this division is not to be regarded as a strict one. The polemical purpose intersects at every turn with that which we have defined as the ecclesiastical; and in like manner both of the subordinate aims fall into harmony with the supreme religious aim. Written as it is with a threefold strain of intention, the Gospel impresses us throughout with a sense of magnificent unity. The complex elements of which it is composed are all fused and vitalized by the prevailing motive—“that ye may believe in the Son of God, and have life through His name.” Here, gain, the method of the Fourth Evangelist may in some measure be illustrated from that of Dante. The poem, like the Gospel, is governed by a spiritual purpose, and depends on this for its whole power and meaning. Blended, however, with the central purpose, there are various subordinate aims which may often seem to have little relation to it. The poet concerns himself with the politics of his time, with the theological controversies, with the many-sided intellectual movement, so that the higher intention is sometimes half buried. It cannot be maintained on that account that the quarrel of Guelph and Ghibelline is the whole key to the Divine Comedy; and just as little can we interpret the Fourth Gospel by dwelling on its minor issues. These have their place and cannot be overlooked, but the religious 26. aim is paramount, and everything else must be explained in the light of it. A few of the more striking characteristics of the Gospel have thus been indicated, and require to be borne in mind as we proceed to the more detailed criticism. It has been seen, in the first place, that John, by his own testimony, is not so much the reporter of historical facts, as a religious teacher who seeks to get behind the facts to their essential import. To his mind the idea was everything, and the outward event a mere shell and symbol. He considers it not only permissible but necessary to re-shape the tradition in order to render it transparent, more clearly significant of the spiritual truth conveyed in it. Again, his work was in more ways than one the product of an age of transition. It presented the Christian message to a new time, under the forms of a different culture. It sought to unite in one picture the two revelations of Christ—that which He had given through His earthly life and that which He still gives through His inward, eternal presence. Johannine theology thus represents the mingling of several currents of thought which do not altogether lose the traces of their original diversity. We meet constantly with types of doctrine which are not entirely harmonized, which even stand in mutual contradiction. The actual reminiscence of Jesus is combined throughout with a metaphysical theory derived from Greek speculation. Once more, the Gospel is no simple, spontaneous utterance, as it might appear to be, but a 27. work of elaborate art. In its most casual allusions we need to be prepared for some deeper allegorical meaning concealed beneath the immediate one. Its main religious intention is interwoven continually with various subordinate aims, polemical and ecclesiastical. The evangelist, so far as we know him from his work, was no secluded thinker, but an active leader in the Church in a difficult time. His Gospel is the purest exposition of the absolute religious spirit; but we have also to regard it as a contemporary document, written in the full whirl of the passion and controversies of the second century. The writing of John is therefore a book of contrasts, of seeming contradictions. It combines a narrative at times intensely real and human, with a profound metaphysic. It is concerned at once with the eternal verities of religion and with the practical issues of a given age. It finds room within itself for the most diverse types of thought, Greek, Pauline, early Christian. It defends the orthodox faith of the Church, and at the same time borrows faith from Gnosticism. With its matchless simplicity of literary form, it is a complex work of art. With its dependence on previous thinkers, alike in its main ideas and in detail, it impresses us more than any other book by its absolute originality. These are only a few of the contrasts in this wonderful Gospel, which makes a different appeal to every variety of Christian temperament and experience. The mystic, the churchman, the philosopher, the man of simple thought and feeling, have 28. all responded alike to the teaching of John. He gave the chief impulse to the development of dogma; he has also acted, in every age of the Church, as the liberalising influence in Christian thought. Finality is impossible in the interpretation of such a book. Each new attempt to explain it is fragmentary at the best, and sends us back to the Gospel itself with a deeper sense of its ultimate mystery.