The advantage his scheme gave him as a preacher to the Gentiles is too obvious to be dwelt on. As a Greek by birth and culture, he was interested in the fate of other nations besides the Jews. A system of religion adapted to the traditions and satisfactory to the hopes of a peculiar people,—a national, exclusive religion in the benefits whereof none but Jews might share, and from whose grace no lineal descendant of Abraham could be excluded, did not commend itself to this man, half Jew, half Greek. The faith that obtained his allegiance, and awoke his zeal must possess ahumancharacter by virtue of which its message could be carried to all mankind. Such a faith his new theory of the Christ gave him. He could say to his Greek friends: "This religion that I bring you is no Hebrew peculiarity. Its Christ is no son of David, but a son of God; its heaven is no Messianic kingdom in Judæa, but a region of light above the skies; its principle is faith, not obedience to a ceremonial or legal code; it dispenses entirely with the requirements of the law of Moses; makes no account of sacrifices or priests; presumes on no acquaintance with Hebrew scriptures, or reverence for Hebrewmen; questions of circumcision and uncircumcision are trivial and impertinent. The religion of Christ addresses you as men, not as Jewish men; it appeals to the universal sense of moral and spiritual infirmity, and offers a moral and spiritual, not a technical deliverance; instead of limiting, it will enlarge you; instead of binding, it will emancipate you; its genius is liberty, through which you are set free from ceremonialism, ritualism, dogmatism, moralism, and are made partakers of a new intellectual life."
Not all at once did this scheme unfold itself before the apostle's vision. Gradually it came to him as he meditated alone, or experimented with it on listeners in remote places. Naturally, he avoided the associations of the people he had persecuted, and the teachers they looked up to. He had nothing to learn from them; he understood their system and was dissatisfied with it, in short, rejected it. Their Jewish Messiah, literal, national, hebraic, was not an attractive personage to his mind. The promise of felicity in a Jewish kingdom of heaven was not enchanting. The daily life of the believers in Jerusalem was formal, unnatural, repulsive to one who had "walked large" in foreign cities and realms of thought. The apostles, Peter, James, John, had nothing important to tell him that he did not know already. The earthly details of the life of Jesus might have interested him, but the interior character and the human significance ofthe Christ were the main thing, and these he may have thought himself more in the way of appreciating by a temporary retirement to the depths of his own consciousness. Having matured his thoughts, he did put himself in communication with the original disciples, with what result is frankly stated in his letter to the Galatians: "To those who seemed to be somewhat (what they were is no concern of mine, God accepteth no man's person), but who in conference added nothing to me, I did not give way, in subjection, no, not for an hour." So heated he becomes, as he remembers this interview, that he can scarcely write coherently about it. The two conceptions of the Christ and his office were so far apart, that he did not, to his dying day, form intimate relations with the teachers of the primitive gospel. They taught an uncongenial scheme.
From the first, Paul's sphere of action was the Gentile world to which his message was adapted. If his first appeal was addressed to Jews, it was simply because Christianity, as he understood it, being an outgrowth from Jewish thought, a development of Jewish tradition, should naturally be more intelligible and more welcome to them than to people who had no historical or literary preparation for it. But he took the broad ground with them, and addressed his word to outsiders the moment stubbornly dogmatical Jews declined to receive it on his terms. Theattempt made by the author of the "Acts of the Apostles," to show that Paul modified or qualified his scheme to bring it into harmony with the older scheme that he supplanted, fails from the circumstance that the writer discerns no peculiarity in his theory of the Christ, and consequently misses completely the ground of any antagonism.
This is written in the persuasion that the "Acts of the Apostles" is not trustworthy as history; has in fact no historical intent, but belongs to the class of writings that may be called conciliatory, or mediatorial, designed to bring opposing views together, to heal divisions, and smooth over rough places. By pulling hard at both ends of the string, dragging Peter towards Paul, and Paul towards Peter, ascribing to both the same opinions, imputing to both the same designs, and passing both through the same experiences, the author would make his readers believe that they stood on the same foundation. The grounds of the opinion above stated cannot be given here; but there are grounds for it, and solid ones, as any one may discover who will take the pains to look at Edward Zeller's essay on the "Acts," or any other argument from an unprejudiced point of view. The conclusion may be arrived at, however, by a shorter process, namely, by taking Paul's Christology as given by himself in his own letters, and then considering how completely it is excluded from the book. It seems tothe present writer nothing less than certain, as plain as any point of literary criticism can be, that the "Acts of the Apostles" is not to be relied on for information respecting the life and opinions of the apostle Paul. In this opinion writers belonging to very different schools of religious philosophy, Mackay, for example, and Martineau, are cordially agreed. This must henceforth be regarded as one of the points established. The firmer the apprehension of Paul's peculiarity, the stronger is the conviction that the description of his conduct in the book of "Acts" must be fanciful. If he tells the truth, as there is no reason to doubt, the unknown author of the "Acts" romances.
The necessity that Paul was under of commending his christology to the Jews, a self-imposed necessity in part, inasmuch as his own genius being Jewish, imposed it on him, embarrassed the movement of his mind to such a degree that he was never able to do perfect justice to his own theory. Much time was spent in explaining his conduct to orthodox Jews, or in answering questions raised by hebrew casuistry. The epistle to the Romans, the most labored of his compositions, is a long argument addressed to his countrymen in Rome, with the design of persuading them that Jehovah was quite justified in accepting Gentiles who conformed to his requirements, and in rejecting children of Abraham who did not. This is the burdenof the letter. The argument is lighted up by splendid bursts of eloquence, and diversified by keen remarks on points of psychology. But, omitting two or three of the chapters and scattered passages in others, the remainder is intellectually arid and devoid of human interest. The same may be said of the letter to the Galatians. The epistles to the Thessalonians, and those to the Corinthians, are occupied chiefly with matters of local and incidental concern. It is probable that Paul's genius was disastrously circumscribed within hebrew limits after all; that he never completely emancipated himself even from the old time traditions of his people; that the Jewish half of the man was not the weaker half. A philosopher he was not; a theologian, in the great sense, he was not; a metaphysician he was not; a psychologist he was not. He was an apostle, a preacher. The problems he discussed were formal rather than vital, and the spirit in which he discussed them was the temper of the dogmatist rather than that of the seer. However this may be, it may be affirmed that his system contained no strictly original ideas; that his leading thoughts, and even the phases of his thought, were borrowed from the literature of his nation, or, at least, may be found there.
It is a frequent remark that, but for St. Paul, Christianity might have had no life out of Judæa; which is tantamount to saying that it might have had no prolonged or extended life at all, but would haveperished as an incidental phase of Judaism. The remark is essentially just; at the same time it must be remembered that the Christianity which Paul devised and planted was a system quite unlike that of his predecessors, though still another phase of Judaism, a divergent and cosmopolitan phase.
Other pieces of literature, Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians, Hebrews, which, whether the compositions of Paul or not, contain developments of his thought, and may be called "Pauline," carry further his central speculation and apply his principle to the new problems that presented themselves in the social life of the religion; yet these do not go beyond the lines of Jewish thought. The significant passage in Philippians, "Who, although he was in the form of God, thought not that an equality with God, was a thing he ought greedily to grasp at," suggests the Greek mythus of Lucifer, who fell because, being already the brightest of beings, he was discontented with a formal inferiority of rank. His crime consisted in rapaciously grasping at a power which was, in all but the name, his own. The Christ, in contrast, was satisfied with the substance; he willingly resigned pretension to the position. But the Greek mythus was the reflection of a legend from the farther East, and came to this author more naturally through Judaism than through Paganism. According to Neander's classification the Gnostics, from whom this theosophic conception came,were Judaistic. Gieseler's classification leads to the same inference, for the Alexandrian Gnosis was the product of Greek thought, blended with Jewish. The classification of Gieseler has regard to the source whence the speculation came; that of Neander to the tendency of the speculation. In whichever aspect we view the myth, its Jewish character is apparent. The writer has pushed his speculations into new fields that yet lay within the ancestral domain. He describes the Christ as being but the semblance of a man, in "fashion" a man, not in substance. The thought is a further development, yet a strictly logical one, of Paul's idea that the Christ was made "in the likeness of sinful flesh." The two expressions are parallel, in fact identical; "body," in Pauline phrase being, from the nature of the case, "sinful body." The writer speaks of the dominion of the Christ as extended over the three spheres, heaven, earth, and the under-world; scarcely thereby enlarging the scope of a previous thought, for as much as these spheres were comprehended in the dominion of the Christ who "created the worlds," the new worlds that constituted the new creation, whereof he was Lord.
The letter to the Hebrews, an exceedingly elaborate exposition of the close relation between the new faith and the old, an argument and a plea for the new faith as containing in substance all that the old contained in form, is Jewish in coloring throughout, an exaggerationof Jewish ideas. The argument is that Christianity excels Judaism in its own excellencies. The Christ is called "high priest," "perpetual priest," possessing the power to confer endless life. By the sacrifice of himself he has entered at once into the holy of holies. He has tasted death for every man—another way of saying that he has deprived death for every man of its bitterness. He has destroyed the devil who held the kingdom of death. He has reconciled man with God by abolishing death, and with death sin, which is the strength of death. The Christ is represented as the author of salvation to all that obey him; he lives forever to make intercession; his blood purges men's consciences from reliance on dead works; he, once for all, has devoted himself to bear the sins of many; he will come again, and bring salvation to such as wait for him; all these are merely completed expressions of the idea enunciated by Paul.
The Christ himself is described in this epistle as "the appointed heir of all things;" "the brightness of God's glory and the express image of His person;" "upholding all things by the word of His power;" "the First Begotten;" "the object of adoration by the angels." To support this view, the Old Testament is ingeniously quoted and misapplied. The influence of Jewish thought appears also in the passages that describe the Christ as an agent, appointed to his office; an official, "sitting at the right hand ofthe Majesty on High;" as fulfilling His mission and obtaining His glory through suffering; as subjected to human experiences of temptation; as strictly sub-ordinate to God.
The scriptures entitled "Colossians" and "Ephesians" betray still greater familiarity with Alexandro-Jewish conceptions, and a yet deeper sympathy with them. The Christ is here "the image of God, the first-born of every creature." It is declared that "by Him were all things created that are in heaven and on earth; things visible and invisible; thrones, dominions, principalities, powers; by Him and for Him they were created." "He is far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, whether in this world or the world to come." He is "all in all." He is the pleroma, the fulness, the abyss of possibility. "The fulness of the Godhead dwells in Him visibly." He exhausts the divine capacity of expression. He is the reality of God. Towards mankind he is the reconciler. In him "all things are gathered together in one." By the blood of his cross he has made peace and reconciled all things to himself; things on earth and things in heaven. In a striking passage, the writer of "Ephesians" describes the Christ as first descending into the under world to release the captives bound in the chains of Satan, and thence ascending up on high and sending down gifts to men.
Both of these compositions abound in Gnostic phraesology. The abstruse terms "Mystery," "Wisdom," "Æon," "Prince of the Powers" recur again and again, and always with the cabalistic meaning. The writers are caught in the meshes of Oriental speculation, and apparently make no effort to extricate themselves. On the contrary, they welcome their enthralment, taking the binding cords to be guiding strings towards the truth. So far, again, instead of escaping from the Jewish tradition we are tethered to it more securely than before. The literature of the New Testament is seen to be still a continuation and completion of the literature of the Old. The earliest form of the Messianic doctrine is completely distanced. Scarcely a trace of it remains. Of the throne of David not a word. Not a word of Moses and the Prophets, of the historical fulfilment of ancient prediction, of the temple worship, of the chosen people. Pharisees and Sadducees are alike omitted. The very word "kingdom," as denoting a visible Messianic reign, is dropped. But the territory of Judaism has not been abandoned. Galilee is deserted; Jerusalem is overthrown; but the schools of the rabbins are open.
It will be remarked that the moral teaching is more vague and mystical than it was in the early time. The theological spirit prevails over the human; the ecclesiastical supersedes the ethical. Practicalprinciple is postponed to theoretical doctrine. The virtues prescribed are ghostly, technical; the graces of a church, not the qualities of a brotherhood. The intellectual air is thinner and more difficult to inhale. The spiritual atmosphere is not inspiring. Intelligence can make nothing of writing like this: "The husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the Church; and He is the Saviour of the body. Therefore, as the Church is subject to Christ, so let wives be subject in all things to their husbands. Husbands love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church, and gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word; that He might present it to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish." The absence of rational ground for duty in the most familiar relations of life could not be more explicitly declared than in a passage like this. That such an age should have had a scientific system of morality cannot be expected; but that the traditional system should have been lost, and a fantastical one set up in its place, is a testimony to the influence of the mystical spirit. The fanciful morality of a small and enthusiastic body may be interesting to the members of the body and influential on their conduct; but it is no evidence of health in the moral constitution of the generation. The representationof the Christian warfare as a conflict "not against flesh and blood,"—that is, against organized evil in society and the State,—"but against principalities, against powers, against the princes of darkness, against wicked spirits that dwell in the air," is another evidence that conscience had become visionary. Such reasoning is of a piece with the argument for there being four gospels and no more, namely, that there were four quarters of the heaven, and four winds; or with the argument for perpetual virginity, that it supplied the Church with vestals. Such theologising shows how far speculation may be separated from reality and yet be entertained by human minds.
The author of the fourth Gospel is unknown, but it is incredible that this wonderful book, wonderful for finish of literary execution as well as for vigor of intellectual conception, was written by a Galilean fisherman; a man of brooding and morbid disposition, whose intemperate zeal earned for him the title "son of thunder;" who, according to Luke, proposed to call down fire from heaven to consume certain Samaritans that declined to receive the master; who, according to the same authority, rebuked certain others that conjured by the Christ's name, but did not join his company; who, through his mother, asked for one of the best seats in the "kingdom;" a man who was most intimately associated with the James described in a former chapter; a man who late in life, had a reputation for intolerance which started a tradition of him to the effect that being in the public bath, and seeing enter the heretic Cerinthus, herushed out, calling on all others to follow, if they would not be overwhelmed by the ruin such a blasphemer would pull down on their heads. All the traditions respecting John are to the same purport; his constant association with James and Peter, both disciples of the narrowest creed; his advocacy of chiliasm, the doctrine of the millennial reign of a thousand years, as testified to by Ephesian presbyters on the authority of Irenæus; the description of him, reported by Eusebius, as a "high priest wearing the mitre," standing in the order of succession therefore as a hierarch of the ancient dispensation, a churchman maintaining the ancient symbolical rites.
That such a composition as the fourth Gospel was written by such a man, in his old age too, the laws of literary criticism cannot admit. To the present writer the ungenuineness of the fourth Gospel has for several years seemed as distinctly proved as any point in literary criticism can be. To maintain the Johannean origin of the book, it must be assumed that the apostle lived to an extreme old age, nearly double the full three score years and ten allotted to mankind; that his entire nature changed in the interval between his youth and his senility; that, without studying in the schools, he became a profound adept in speculative philosophy; and that by the same miraculous bestowment, he acquired a skill in letters surpassing that of any in his generation, farsurpassing that of Paul, who was an educated man, and completely casting into the shade Philo, the best scholar of a former era. All this, too, must be assumed, for there is not a fragment of the evidence to support the bold presumption of authorship.
The book belongs nearer to the middle than the beginning of the second century, and is the result of an attempt to present the Christ as the incarnate Word of God. The author is not obliged to go far to find his materials; they lie ready shaped to his hand in the writings of Philo and the Gnostics of his century. The thread of Hebrew tradition, has, by this time, become exceedingly thin; vestiges of the popular Jewish conception appear, but faintly, here and there. Nicodemus recognizes the divine character of the Christ by his power to work miracles. The Christ respects the tradition which accorded special privileges to the genuine "children of Abraham;" he declares to the woman of Samaria that "salvation is of the Jews;" he announces that eternal life consists in the knowledge of God, and the acceptance of his Son. Moses is said to have written of the Christ. Father Abraham rejoiced to see his day. Isaiah sang his glory, and spake of him. The brazen serpent is a type of his mission to deliver.
For the rest, the conceptions of deity, of providence, of salvation, of the eternal world, are quite different from the recognized Hebrew conceptions—thetitle given to God sixty times in the gospel, while the word "God," occurs less than twenty, is "Father," and this term is used, not in the sense of Matthew's "Our Father in Heaven," which describes the Old Testament Jehovah under his more amiable aspect, but rather as designating theabyss of potential being, as the term is employed in the trinitarian formula, in which the Godhead is broken up into three distinctions; the declaration "God is Spirit," or, as the language equally well permits, "Spirit is God," intimates that the individuality of God has disappeared, that the idea of deity has become intellectual. The one hundred and thirty-ninth psalm expresses perhaps as mystical an apprehension of God as the old Hebrew thought admits of, but that psalm retains the divine individuality; the limits are nowhere transgressed; it is a sympathetic, regardful eye that searches the secret place, and an attentive mind that notes the unarticulated thought. The intelligence loses no point of clearness in becoming penetrative. But in the fourth Gospel, the individuality is gone altogether. The Father "loveth," but with an abstract, impersonal sympathy; the Father "draweth," but with an organic, elemental attraction; the Father "hath life in himself," and hath given the Son to "have life in himself;" but neither the possession nor the communication of this power implies the bestowal of a concrete gift. The Father "judgethno man, but hath given all judgment to the Son"—a phrase intimating that he had gone into retirement, had withdrawn from active interest in human concerns, had sunk into the depths of the Absolute. The expression "God is Spirit," taken alone, conveys no idea that is not contained in the Hebrew conception of the formless Jehovah; but when taken in connection with other expressions, it is seen to convey something more, and something different. The formless God may be strictly local; the "Spirit" is diffused.
In this book, the Christ takes the place of God, as the revealed or manifest God; he is the Logos, the incarnate word. "He was with God in the beginning." "All things were made by him." "In him was life, and the life was the light of men." "He hath life in himself." He is the only begotten son, who came down from heaven; he is in heaven. All judgment is committed to him; in him the divine glory is manifest; apart from him is no spiritual life; he is the vine, the door; he is the intercessor through whom prayer must be transmitted in order to be made availing.
The divine presence is taken out of nature, and transferred to the spiritual world; God is made ecclesiastical and dogmatic. Men are saved, not by natural piety and excellence, but by faith in the Christ as the Logos. The whole sum of Christianityis conveyed in this one position:the manifestation of the Divine Glory in the Only Begotten Son. This manifestation is of itself, the coming of salvation, the gift of God's life to mankind. By this, the Christ overcomes the powers of darkness and evil. He has come a light into the world; by him come grace and truth; to believe in him is a sign of God's working. He that cometh to him shall never hunger; he that believeth on him shall never thirst. It is enough that blind men believe; to die, believing in him, is to live; to live, believing in him, is to be saved from the power of death, and made immortal. To believe in him is the same thing as to believe in the Father. Not to believe in him, is to be consigned to spiritual death with sinners; to believe on the Son is to have everlasting life. This idea recurs with monotonous perseverance, some sixty times.
That this conception of the Christ is not original with our author has already been said many times. It had been in the world two hundred years before his day, and had worked its way into the substance of the later Jewish thought. The personification of the divine reason early occurred to the Jews who had been touched with the passion for speculation in the city of Alexandria. Long ago attention was called by Andrews Norton, among ourselves, to bold personifications of wisdom and the divine reason, in the Apocrypha of the Old Testament. "She is the breath ofthe power of God, a pure influence proceeding from the glory of the Almighty. She is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God, and the image of his goodness." Chapters seven and eight of the Book of Wisdom contain an apotheosis of wisdom as the creative power. In the eighteenth chapter the imagery grows much stronger. "Thine almighty word leaped down from heaven out of thy royal throne, as a fierce man-of-war into the midst of a land of destruction." The twenty-fourth chapter of Ecclesiasticus is devoted to the same theme. The Word is described as a being: the first born of God; the active agent in creation; having its dwelling-place in Israel, its seat in the Law of Moses.
Philo pushes the speculation much further. The Logos is with him a most interesting subject of discourse, tempting him to wonderful feats of imagination. There is scarcely a personifying or exalting epithet that he does not bestow on the divine Reason. He describes it as a distinct being; calls it "A Rock," "The Summit of the Universe," "Before All Things," "First-begotten Son of God," "Eternal Bread from Heaven," "Fountain of Wisdom," "Guide to God," "Substitute for God," "Image of God," "Priest," "Creator of the Worlds," "Second God," "Interpreter of God," "Ambassador of God," "Power of God," "King," "Angel," "Man," "Mediator,""Light," "The Beginning," "The East," "The Name of God," "Intercessor." The curious on this subject may consult Lücke's Introduction to the Fourth Gospel, or Gfrörer's Philo, and he will be more than satisfied that the Logos of the fourth Gospel is the same as Philo's, and has the same origin.
Christian scholars who admit this have been anxious to break the force of the inference, by allowing the similarity of the conception and then supposing the evangelist to have stated the doctrine that he might stamp it as heresy. But he nowhere does stamp it as heresy. He puts it boldly on the front of his exposition and constructs his whole work in conformity with it. Instead of refuting it or denouncing it, he carries the idea out in all its applications, supplementing it with a completeness that Philo never thought of.
The Logos becomes a man; "is made flesh;" appears as an incarnation; in order that the God whom "no man has seen at any time," may be manifested. He has no parentage; is not born, even supernaturally; he passes through no childish passages; receives no nurture in a home; has no experience of growth or development. The incident of his baptism by John in the sacred river is carefully excluded, that whole episode, so important in the earliest narratives, being dismissed in the phrase, "Upon whom thou shalt see the spirit descending,and remaining on him, the same is he that baptizeth with the Holy Ghost." John says of him: "This is he that, coming after me, is preferred before me, for he existed before me." "I saw the spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him." "I knew him not, but came, baptizing with water, that he might be made manifest to Israel." "I am a voice crying in the desert." Every word negatives the notion that the Logos received consecration at the hands of a prophet of the old dispensation. He is pre-existent; he comes from heaven; he is full of grace and truth; of his fulness all have received, grace upon grace.
The temptation is omitted for the same reason. The divine word cannot, even in form, undergo the experience of moral discipline. The bare suggestion of evil taint is foreign to him. He must not come near enough to evil to repel it. A dramatic scene in Matthew represents the conflict between the Messiah and the Prince of the World; a conflict inconceivable in the case of a divine being who is, by nature, Lord of the entire spiritual universe,—whose mere appearance dispels the night.
Even the story of the transfiguration, which in some respects would seem admirably illustrative of the logos theory, is omitted, probably for the reason that Moses and Elias are the prominent personages in it.
As a thing of course, the agony in the garden of Gethsemane is unmentioned. A suggestion of it occurs in a previous chapter, (XII. 27), but in another connection, and for an opposite purpose, namely, to extort a tribute to the glory of the Logos.
The cross on which the Word is suspended, is transfigured into an elevation of honor. On it the Son of God endures no mortal agony; by it he is "lifted up" that he may "draw all men" unto him. His crucifixion is a consummation, a triumph. He mounts, shows himself, and vanishes away. The suffering is an appearance of suffering. The shame is turned to glory. The tormentors are agents in accomplishing a transformation. The god passes, without a groan or an expression of weakness; clear as ever in his perceptions, seeing his mother and the beloved disciple standing together, he says: "woman, behold thy son; son, behold thy mother." Knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, he said "I thirst;" having received the vinegar, he remarked "it is finished," bowed his head, and gave up the ghost. From his dead form issue streams of water and blood, a last sign, as the conversion of water into wine was the first, that the dispensation of Law, symbolized by John's water baptism, and the dispensation of the spirit symbolized by wine and by blood, were both completed in him.
The resurrection of the Christ is not described asthe resurrection of a body, but as the apparition of a spiritual form. It is not recognized by Mary through any external resemblance to a former self, but through a spiritual impression; it stands suddenly before her, forbids her touch, is not palpable, and as suddenly disappears; the Logos ascends "to the Father;" returns, bringing the spirit that he had promised; enters the chamber where the disciples are gathered, the door being carefully closed from fear of the Jews, enters without opening the door, is visible for an instant, and is no more seen; re-enters for the purpose of giving palpable demonstration of his reality to the doubting Thomas, who, however does not accept it, receives the skeptic's homage and again disappears.
These apparitions and occultations are frequent in the gospel, the Christ's outward form being only a façade, removable at pleasure. The numerous comings and goings, hidings, disclosures, presences, absences, are accounted for on this supposition, better than on any other. He goes up to the feast at Jerusalem, not openly, but "as it were in secret," veiled, disguised. He comes before the crowd many of whom must have been familiar with his person, but is unrecognized; he discloses himself for a moment, speaks exciting words that raise a tumult, and then, at the height of the turmoil, becomes invisible. "They sought to take him; but no man laid hands on him,for his hour was not yet come." On a subsequentoccasion his hearers, intensely aroused by his language, took up stones to cast at him; but he "hid himself, and went out of the temple,going through the midst of them, and so passed by." His enemies sought to take him, but "he escaped out of their hands." Having spoken, he departs, and hides himself; but again, without apparently changing his locality or absenting himself for any period, he is again heard proclaiming his mission.
There is no history in this book. The incarnate Word can have no history. His career being theological, the events in it cannot be other than spectral. He is not in the world of cause and effect. His actions are phenomenal; the passages of his life do not open into one another, do not lead anywhere; nothing follows anything else, nothing moves; there is no progress towards development. The biography is a succession of scenes, a diorama. There are no sequences or consequences. Stones are taken up, but never thrown; hands are uplifted to strike, but no blow is delivered. The movement to arrest is never carried out. The miracles are not deeds of power or mercy, they are signs, thrown out to attract popular attention, demonstrations of the divine presence; sometimes merely symbolical foreshadowings or interpretations of speculative ideas, as in the case of the turning of water into wine at the "marriage feast;" the opening of the blind man's eyes, signifying that he wascome a light into the world; the resurrection of Lazarus, a scenic commentary on the text, "I am the resurrection and the life." These are pictures not performances. None of them are mentioned in the earlier traditions, for the probable reason that they never occurred, never were rumored to have occurred. They were designed by the artist of the fourth Gospel, for his private gallery of illustrations. The artist was a Greek Jew who took Hebrew ideals for his models, but he was sometimes obliged to go far to find them. The hint for the conversion of the water into wine, may have come from the legends of Israelite sojourn in Egypt, where Moses, the first deliverer, turned water into blood, the mystical synonym of wine; Elisha may have furnished a study for the elaborate picture of the blind man's cure, and Isaiah may have supplied the motive for it, in his famous prophecy that the eyes of the blind shall be opened. The studies for the grand cartoon of Lazarus were made possibly while the artist mused over the stories of Elijah raising the son of the widow, or of Elisha reviving one already dead by mere contact with his bones.
In the veins of the Logos flows no passionate blood. His language is vehement, but suggests no corresponding emotion; the words are not vascular. Certain superficial peculiarities of these discourses are noticeable at once, their length, their stateliness, their absoluteness, their loud-voiced, declamatory character,their oracular tone. But little scrutiny is required to discover that they are monotones; that their theme is always the same, namely, the claims of the Christ; that they unfold no system of moral or spiritual teaching, proceed in no rational order, arrive at no conclusions; that they contain no arguments, answer no questions, meet no inquiring states of mind; that they resemble orations more than discourses of any other kind, but are unlike orations, in having neither beginning middle nor end, in quite lacking point and application, in proceeding no whither, in simply standing still and reiterating the same sublime abstractions, without regard to logical or rhetorical proprieties.
This being discovered, the conclusion follows swiftly, that the divine Logos could not discourse otherwise. His addresses, like his deeds, are designed to be revelations of himself; expressions, not of his thoughts, but of his being, not of his character, but of his nature. They are the Word made articulate, as his wonders are the Word made mighty, as his form is the Word made visible. A human being, seeking to convince, persuade, instruct mankind, will from necessity pursue a different course from the divine Reason presenting itself to "the world." Its very audiences are impersonal, consisting not of individuals or of parties, but of abstractions labelled "Jews," who come like shadows, so depart.
So unhuman is the Christ, so entirely withoutnear relations with mankind, that when he has left the world, a substitute may be provided for him, in the shape of the Holy Spirit, another personality proceeding from him and his Father, and appointed to complete his work; to reprove the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment; to guide the disciples into all truth; to bring to their remembrance all that had been said to them; to comfort them, and abide with them for ever. The idea loses itself in vagueness at times, now being identified with the Christ, now appearing as a Spirit of Truth, now being an indwelling presence, now an effluence from the Logos. But all the while something like an individual consciousness is preserved; the spirit is as palpable as the Logos himself was. Here is already the germ of a trinity maturing within the bosom of the Hebrew monotheism. The process has been simple; the consecutive steps have been inevitable. But in the process the solid ground of Judaism has been left; the massive substance of the ancient faith has been melted into cloud.
How entirely nebulous it has become under the action of speculative mind is strikingly apparent on examination of the ethical characteristics of the fourth gospel. The concrete virtues of the ancient race, the honest human righteousness and charity have disappeared, and in their place are certain spectral "graces" which have quality of a technical, butlittle of a human sort. That, according to the Logos doctrine men are saved, not by natural goodness or piety but by faith in the Christ, is written all over the book. But this is not the point. It is not enough that character has no saving power, it is dispensed with; and instead of it, something is set up which possesses none of the elements of character. The compact principles of human duty which hold so large a place in the Old Testament scriptures, and are so essential in the earliest Messianic conception, are not found here, at all. The sermon on the mount is omitted. The beatitudes are unmentioned. The parables are not remembered. There is no chapter in the book that bears comparison in point of moral vigor or nobleness with the twelfth chapter of Romans, or the thirteenth chapter of Corinthians. Humanity has shrunk to the dimensions of an incipient Christendom. The men and women whom the Jesus of Matthew addresses, to whom Paul makes appeal, are men and women no more; not even Jews by race, not even a knot of radical Jews; they are "disciples," "believers," "brethren." Christians, not fellow men, are to love one another. "So shall ye be my disciples, if ye have love one for another." "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples." Of the broad human love, the recognition of brotherhood on the human ground, duty to love those who arenotdisciples, there is not a word. The commonfaith, not thecommonnature, is the bond. The promises in the fourteenth chapter, the warnings in the fifteenth, the counsel in the sixteenth, the consecration in the seventeenth are all for the believers, not for the doers; for the doers only so far as they are believers, and within the limits of the believing community. The tender word "love" shrinks to ecclesiastical proportions. "If a man love me he will keep my words; and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our abode with him;" but the words are not words of exhortation to practical righteousness, they are words of admonition against unbelief. "If ye love me, keep my commandments;" but the commandments are not the wholesome enactments of the Hebrew decalogue, but a bidding to "walk by the light while ye have the light," "to do the will of Him that sent me," which is "to believe on him whom He hath sent." "He that believeth not is condemned already in his not believing in the only begotten Son of God." There is no sweeter word than "love;" there is no more comprehensive law than the law of love; but when love is changed from a virtue to a sentiment, and when the duty of practising it is limited to members of a doctrinal communion, the practical issue is more likely to be sectarian narrowness than human fellowship.
As the speculation rises the spectral character of the morality becomes more startling. The so-calledepistles of John carry the Logos idea considerably further than the gospel does. The mission of the Logos is more sharply discriminated. He is described as a sin offering. "He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." "The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin." "He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him is no sin." The word "manifested" is the key to the doctrine. "The Son of God wasmanifestedthat He might destroy the works of the devil." It is the same conception as in the gospel; the Prince of Light confronting the Prince of Darkness, shaming him andattractingaway his subjects. The anti-Christ now comes into view; the sin unto death is named; the second advent is announced, though not according to the millennial anticipations of a former day. "He that denieth that Jesus is the Christ is a liar." "Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God." "Every spirit which confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God." Belief or unbelief in the incarnation of the Logos is made the test of one's spiritual relationship, marking him as a candidate for eternal felicity in the realm of the blessed, or as a victim of endless misery in the realm of Satan. Thus the very heart of natural goodness is eaten out. Of virtue there remains small trace. A great deal of very strong language is used about sin, butsinsare notparticularized. Sin, as an abstraction, a principle, a power, a force, a deep seated taint in the nature, ineradicable except by the infusion of a new spirit of life, is represented as the dreadful thing; and Love, another abstraction, is raised to honor as a spiritual grace, equally unconnected with the human will. "Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is Love." The words have a deep and tender sound. But the consideration that "the beloved" are those only who confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, that all others are the reverse of "beloved," causes that neither the depth nor the sweetness remains. The love does not mean compassion, or pity, or good-will, or helpfulness; it has no reference to the poor, the needy, the sick, sorrowful, wicked; it has no downward look, is destitute of humility, is as far as can well be from the love described by Paul in his perfect lyric. It is, we may say, the opposite of that, being a quality that distinguishes the elect from the non-elect, and makes their special election the more sure.
The literary character of the fourth gospel must be remarked on as a peculiar indication of the mental exhaustion that accompanies the last stages of an intellectual movement. The literature of the century preceding Jesus fairly throbs with personal vitality.It is scarcely more than an expression of individual energies. The earliest writings of the New Testament, the genuine letters of Paul, are animated in every line by his own vehement personality; the speculative portions of them stir the blood, so real are the issues presented, so vital are the interests at stake. Shapeless, and sometimes incoherent, the thoughts tumble out of the writer's overcharged heart. The Christ is an ideal personage, but his mission is tremendously real; we are moved by a battle cry as the apostle's ideas burst upon us.
The literature of the succeeding period, though more elaborate and self-conscious, bearing traces of reflection, and even artifice in composition, is yet warm with the presence of a real purpose. But the fourth gospel is a purely literary work; a composition, the production of an artist in language. Its author, perhaps because he was simply an artist in language, is unknown. Trace of an historical Jesus in it there is none. No breath from the world of living men blows through it; no stir of social existence, no movement of human affairs ruffles its calm surface. The people are not real people, the issues are not real issues, the conflict is not a real conflict. We have a book, not a gospel.
The writer formally announces the subject of his spiritual drama, and then proceeds to develop it, according to approved rules of literary art. Firstcomes the prologue, setting forth in a few sententious passages the cardinal idea of the piece. This occupies eighteen verses of the first chapter, and is followed by the introduction of John the Baptist and his testimony. This occupies eighteen verses more. The manifestation of the Logos to the first company of disciples is described with due circumstance in the remainder of the chapter. The symbolical opening of the public ministry, at Cana, the first open "manifestation of the glory" in the miracle of turning water into wine, by which is signified the calling to substitute a spiritual for a natural order, occupies the first ten verses of the second chapter. Then the ministry of revelation begins, with signs and demonstrations. The city of Jerusalem is chosen as the scene of it; and the scene never changes for longer than a moment, and then it changes without historical, or biographical motive. The cleansing of the temple is placed at the beginning, with undisguised purpose to announce his claim, and the dialectical contest is opened. Nicodemus, "a ruler of the Jews," seeks a nocturnal interview, betrays the ignorance of the kingdom which characterizes all save the regenerate, even the wisest, and gives occasion to the Christ to declare the intrinsic superiority of the Son of God, and the conditions of salvation through him; Nicodemus furnishing the starting point for a lofty declamation which soars beyond him into the region oftranscendental ideas. The Baptist, instead of doubting, as in Matthew, and sending an embassy to the Christ to ascertain the reasons of his not disclosing himself, is himself questioned by skeptical disciples, and re-assures them by words that are an echo of the Christ's own.
The interview with the woman of Samaria is introduced for the purpose of extracting another confession of the Christ's supremacy from a different order of mind. Nicodemus represented Judaism in its pride of authority and learning. The woman of Samaria represents the ignorant, superstitious, yet stubborn idolatry reckoned by the Jews as no better than heathenism; her "five husbands" are the five sects into which Judaism was divided. She too is pictured to us as sitting by a well anddrawing water. The conversation begins with the Christ's declaration of his power to create perennial springs of water in the heart, and leads immediately up to the great disclosure of himself. Superstition, like superciliousness, listens and is persuaded. The mention of Galilee is necessary to account for the episode in Samaria, but nothing occurs there. The next scene is laid again in Jerusalem. Thewaterof Bethesda is brought into competition with the quickening spirit of the Christ; the cure of the sick man introduces a mystical discourse on the spiritual sufficiency of the Son of God.
Another scene is presented, and once more inJerusalem. Another series of tableaux is arranged. This time the Christ is pictured as breaking bread andwalking on water, whence occasion is taken to descant on the bread of life. For the purpose of making a fresh appearance in Jerusalem, and presenting his claim under a new aspect, Galilee is called into requisition again, but as usual, the drama is enacted in Jerusalem, which is the centre of the opposition. This time, the Christ, having declined to go up in his own character to meet his critics, goes up in disguise, incognito, and amazes the congregated multitude by his superb assumptions of authority, and his overwhelming denunciations of all who do not receive him; denunciations so uncompromising, that dissensions are created. "Some would have taken him, but none laid hands on him." As always, the demonstration results in bringing out his friends and enemies, in showing who were and who were not his own, which is the aim and end of every manifestation. The Logos presents himself, makes his statement, asserts his prerogative, offers the alternative of spiritual life or death, and retires, leaving the result to the spiritual laws.
The story of the woman taken in adultery which immediately follows this passage, probably made no part of the original gospel, as it appears out of all connection. It is pronounced by some of the best critics to be ungenuine. The obvious improbabilityof its incidents, the locality of it,—the Mount of Olives,—the Christ's mysterious proceeding of writing on the ground, and his unaccountable verdict, deprive the tale of all but literary interest. It is interesting in a literary point of view, or would be if it were set in literary relations; for it illustrates the Christ's supremacy, his supernatural power of rebuke and insight, his authority to grant absolution on purely theological grounds. The doctrine that none but the guiltless are entitled to pronounce sentence on guilt would put an end to censorship of every kind, but is quite in accordance with the ethical tone of the book. The author however, turns the incident to no account, but proceeds with new scenes in his speculative drama. "I am the light of the world; he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life;" the Christ enters once more into the old debate, once more the claim is challenged, once more the angry discussion flows on, becoming, at this juncture more violent than ever; terrible denunciations leap from the divine lips; the adversaries are called a devil's brood, liars, murderers at heart. At the close of the final outburst, the unseen hands raise the visionary stones, but "Jesus hid himself, went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by."
The speech however is continued; the main doctrine of it, namely that the Christ is the Light of theWorld, being illustrated by the miracle of giving sight to a man "blind from his birth,"—the story being told at great length and with exceedingly minute detail, so as to cover every point of circumstance. This seems to be a critical moment in the development of the idea. The vehemence subsides for a time, and the light of the world shines gently as a shepherd's lantern showing wandering sheep the way to the true fold. But the softest word stirs up anger; the "Jews" take up stones, not to throw them, but to exhibit temper, and the act closes tranquilly like those that preceded it.
The resurrection of Lazarus prepares the way for the closing scenes. That such a story, so artificially constructed, so evidently introduced for effect, told by one writer and not as much as alluded to by the others, told with so much circumstance and with so little regard for biographical probability, told for a dogmatical purpose, and fitted into the narrative at the precise juncture where a turning point was wanted, should be accepted as history by any unfettered mind; that a critic like Renan, professing a profound reverence for the character of Jesus, should have admitted it as in some sense true, and should have been driven in explanation of it to a theory utterly fatal to the moral character of the "colossal" man he celebrates, thus sacrificing the moral greatness of Jesus to a perverse sense of historical truth, proves theobstinacy of traditional prejudice. The narrative is too evidently a literary device, one would think, to deceive anybody of awakened discernment. Its manifest artifice is such that it alone would be enough to cast suspicion on all the miraculous narrations of the book.
"From that day forth the Jews took counsel together to put him to death." The crisis has come, and events hasten on towards the catastrophe, which, as has been said, was no catastrophe, but a consummation. Mary, instead of sitting at his feet as a disciple, anoints them with spikenard and wipes them with the hair of her head; the holy woman performing the act elsewhere ascribed to a sinner, the act itself being a ceremony of consecration, instead of a mark of penitence. The triumphal entry into Jerusalem, elsewhere described as the Messiah's own project, is converted into a spontaneous demonstration in his honor, rendered by "much people," who had heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. "Certain Greeks" present themselves and ask an introduction, as to a royal personage. They are the first fruits of the Gentile world; their coming is welcomed as a sign of final victory. "The hour is come," says Jesus, on receiving them, "that the Son of Man should be glorified." The heavens echo his exclamation; an audible voice, interpreted as the voice of an angel, pronouncing the glorification certain and eternal. TheSon of God adds his own interpretation, confirming that of his friends; prophesies the speedy judgment of the world and his own elevation to glory by means of the cross, makes his last statement, and the dialectical war is at an end.
The rest of the life is given to the disciples. The last supper, its agony and distress of mind omitted, is an occasion for impressing on "his own" the lesson of mutual love. The departure of Judas on his errand is the signal for a burst of rapture. Words of consolation, mingled with promises of the "Spirit of Truth," "The Comforter," words of blessing too follow, intended to beget in his friends the feeling that, though absent, he will still be present with them. They are bidden to remember him as the source of their life; are admonished to keep unbroken the spiritual bond that unites them to him in vital sympathy; are assured that the mission he came to earth to discharge will be fulfilled by the Holy Ghost; and finally are solemnly consecrated by priestly supplication as the rescued children of God.
The story of the arrest is told in a strain equally suited to the idea on which the book is constructed. In full consciousness of his position, Jesus steps forth out of the shadow of mystery to meet Judas and his troop, who have come, expecting to find him in his garden retreat. The soldiers, over-awed by the apparition, start backward and fall to the ground, prostrate beforethe Son of God. The trial goes on before Annas and Caiaphas, priests, and Pilate, Roman viceroy. The powers of Church and State pronounce on him; before the powers of Church and State he announces himself and makes his royal claim. In the presence of the High Priest, who is scarcely more than a name in this proceeding, introduced in order that Judaism might have one more opportunity of rejecting the majesty of heaven, Jesus suffers an indignity at the hands of one of the prelate's officers; but Pilate, the pagan, shudders before the awful personage who tells him that he could have no power at all except it were given him from above; that he was but a tool of providence. The guilt of the execution is thus transferred from his shoulders to destiny; for the Jews, no less than the governor, are fated. The hour of glorification has come, and the Son of Man moves with stately step towards his ascension.
The process of withdrawal from the visible sphere has already been described. It is not effected at once. As a lantern in the hand of one walking in a wood flashes out and again hides itself, becoming dimmer and dimmer until finally it quite disappears, so the Son of God is many times visible and invisible before he vanishes altogether from sight. No bodily ascension is necessary to bear away one whose coming and going are not conditioned by space or time. His form has always been atranslucent veil, which could at pleasure be removed. His mission ended, there is no more occasion for his self-revelation, and he is unseen. The unreality of a representation like this must be too apparent to be argued.
From this exposition it appears that the New Testament literature is, in some sort, to the end, a continuation of the literature of the Old Testament. As the earliest phase of Christianity was Judaism, with a belief in the Messiah's advent superadded, so the first literature of Christianity is the literature of Judaism, written on the supposition that the Christ has come. Judaism is Christianity still expectant of a Christ to come, or, as with the radical Jews, unexpectant of a personal Messiah; Christianity is Judaism with the expectation fulfilled. The Judaic element was not limited to the little knot of Jerusalemites who hung about the holy city and waited there for the Christ's coming; it was conspicuous in the system of Paul, and so far from being absent from the later form, known by the name of John, determines the cardinal idea of that, and shapes its bent. Whatever additions are made, grow out of this cardinal idea, as branches from its stem. The strict monotheism of the Hebrew faith is sacrificed to the Messianic conception. The Christ in time becomes a twin Deity, a Holy Ghost being required to fill up the gulf between godhead and humanity.
But for the fury of the discord that arose anddeepened between the Jews who accepted the Christ and the Jews who preferred still to wait for him, the later, as well as the earlier form of Christianity, might possibly have been merged in Judaism. The believers in the Messianic advent were radical to the point of fanaticism. They were the restless advocates of change, agitators, revolutionists. Their passionate zeal could not brook indifference or coolness. Nothing short of a fervid allegiance satisfied them. The recusants had to bear hard names, as the gospels attest. The ill-fortune of the Messiah, the bitter opposition he encountered, his untimely death, were charged upon the faithlessness of the nation who would not confess him. These, and not the Roman Government that actually put him to death, were held answerable for his crucifixion; thus a discord was planted, which all the generations of Christendom have failed to eradicate. There has, from that time to this, been implacable hatred between Christian and Jew.
The separation, which might have been healed or obliterated, had this been the sole cause of it, was widened by the subsequent breach between the christians themselves, which drew attention off from the previous issue. The position taken by Paul, that the mission of the Christ was extended to the Gentiles and comprehended them on precisely the same conditions with the Jews, was exceedingly disagreeableand even shocking to the conservatives, who held that the Christ was sent to Israel only, and especially to that portion of Israel that clung tenaciously to the traditions of the law. The necessary criticism of the Law which Paul's position required, the apparent disrespect shown to Moses and the prophets, the disregard of the ancestral claim set up by the "children of Abraham," the substitution of an interior principle—faith—which any heathen might adopt, for the old fashioned legal requirements to which none but orthodox Jews could conform, was hardly less than blasphemous in their regard; and a feud was begun, which in violence and rancor, excelled the quarrel between the orthodox christians and the Jews. The traces of this controversy, plainly marked in the writings of Paul, are visible on the literature of his own and of the succeeding period, and disappear only in the events of greater significance incident to the fall of Jerusalem, the complete dispersion of the Jews, and the blending of parties in the Western Empire. Ferdinand Christian Baur may have pushed too far in some directions, his theory that the entire gospel literature of the New Testament was determined as to its form by the exigencies of this controversy, the canonical books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and the "Acts of the Apostles" all being written in the interest of reconciliation; but his fundamental position, as in the case of Strauss, has never been carried, or evenshaken, by assault. The extreme points in controversy are fixed with a good deal of certainty. Paul's own statement in the second chapter of Galatians is fairly explicable only on the supposition of a violent collision, the nature of which is there defined, the bearings of which are indicated in that and in other undoubted writings of the apostle. Many passages therein are unintelligible on any other hypothesis. The Apocalypse and the Epistle of James, as clearly set forth the opposite view, in language and implication of the strongest kind, and in a spirit of decided antagonism. The "Acts of the Apostles" is, as elsewhere hinted, prepared with a view of making it appear that no controversy existed; that Peter carried the gospel to the Gentiles, and that Paul insisted on the validity of circumcision, the mark of initiation into the Jewish church. The narrative is so forced, the incidents so artificial, the aim so evident, the limitation of view so marked, that the book betrays its own character. To admit the genuineness of the "Acts" is to throw into confusion the little history that we certainly know, and to unfix the continuity of events. How far the three first gospels correspond in purpose with the "Acts," is a nice question, which need not be answered here, which may be left unanswered without detriment to the soundness of the general theory. Whether or no the controversy was of such absorbing moment, whether or no it lasted as long as Baurbelieves, or exerted as wide an influence on literature, its effect in drawing the thoughts away from the earlier dispute between the Messianic and the anti-Messianic Jews, and in detaching the christians from their original associations is unimpaired. From the breaking out of that dispute, which occurred within fifteen or twenty years of the crucifixion, at the latest, Christianity followed its own law of development.
But, though thus discarded, disowned, finally detested, the very name of Jew, as early as the fourth gospel, being associated with a stiff-necked bigotry impenetrable to conviction, the old religion maintained its sway over the child that had taken its portion of goods and gone away to make a home of its own. The Palestinian and Asiatic literature of the young faith bears the stamp of its Hebrew lineage, as has been shown. The Christ sprung from its bosom, was instructed in its schools, was glorified through its imagination. The resurrection was its prophecy; the heaven to which he ascended was of its building and coloring; the throne whereon he seated himself was of its construction; the Father at whose right hand he reigned was its own ancient deity. His very name, the name he continues to bear to this day,—Messiah—is the name whereby she loved to describe her own ideal man. In the depth of his degradation, in the heat of his persecution, in the agony of his despair, the Jew could reflect that his relentlessoppressor owed to him the very faith he was compelled to curse. The victim was the conqueror. The reflection may still have been bitter; whatever sweetness it brought was flavored with vengeance, except in the greatest souls who loved their religion better than their fame.