The Making of the New Testament

"The Elder" does not give his name, and it is hopeless for us to try to guess it, though it was of course well known to his "beloved" friend "Gaius," to whom the third letter (the outside envelope) was addressed. We have simply three epistles, one (3rd John) personal, to the aforesaid Gaius, who is to serve as the writer's intermediary with "the church," because Diotrephes, its bishop, violently opposes him. Another (2nd John) is addressed to a particular church ("the elect lady and her children"), in all probability the church of Diotrephes and Gaius. It may be the letter referred to in 3rd John 9. The third (1st John) is entirely general, not even so much modified from the type of the homily toward that of the epistle as Hebrews or James; for it has neither superscription nor epistolary close. And yet it is, and speaks of itself (i. 4; ii. 1, 7, 9, 12-14, etc.) as a literary product. It is not impossible that this group of 'epistles,' one individual, one to a particular church, one general, was composed after the plan of the similar group addressed by Paul to churches of this same region, Philemon, Colossians, and the more general epistle known to us as Ephesians. They may have been intended to accompany and introduce the Gospel written by the same author, just as the prophecies of Rev. iv. – xxi. are introduced by the 'epistles' of Rev. i. – iii., or as Luke-Acts is sent under enclosure to Theophilus for publication under his patronage. At all events, be the connection with the Gospel closer or more remote, to learn anything really reliable about the writer and his purpose and environment we must begin with his own references to them, first in the letter to Gaius, then in that to "the elect lady and her children," then in his 'word of exhortation' to young and old, of 1st John. Thus we shall gain a historical approach finally to that treatise on the manifestation of God in Christ which has won him the title since antiquity of the 'theologian.'

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

Second John is perfectly definite in its purpose. After congratulating the "elect lady" on those of her children (members) whom the writer has found leading consistent Christian lives, he entreats the church to remember the "new commandment" of Jesus, which yet is not new but the foundation of all, the commandment of ministering love. The reason for this urgency is that "many deceivers are gone forth into the world, even they that confess not that Jesus Christ cometh in the flesh" (ver. 7). And here we come upon a very novel and distinctive application of an ancient datum of 'prophecy,' clearly differentiating this writer from the author of Revelation. The Doketic heresy is explicitly identified with "the deceiver and the antichrist." That must have been a new and surprising turn for men accustomed to connect the antichrist idea with the persecuting power of Rome. Satan, as we know, had been repeatedly conceived as operating through the coercion of outward force brought against the Messiah and his people through the Beast and the false Prophet (Rev. xiii.). There was good authority, too, for a mystical "man of sin" setting himself forth as God in the temple (2nd Thess. ii. 4), or for connecting Daniel's "abomination that maketh desolate" with the sufferings of the Jewish war and the later attempts of false prophets to deceive the elect with lying wonders (2nd Thess. ii. 9; Mark xiii. 22; Rev. xiii. 14). But this was a new application of the prophecy. To declare that the heretical teachers were themselves antichrists was to call the attention of the church back from outward opposition to inward disloyalty as the greater peril. And the identification is not enunciated in this general warning alone, but fully developed and defended in two elaborate paragraphs of the 'word of exhortation' (1st John ii. 18-29; iv. 1-6). When, therefore, we find Polycarp in his letter (110-171) quietly adopting the idea, almost as an understood thing, declaring "For every one who shall not confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is antichrist" (vii. 1), it becomes almost a certainty that he had read 1st John.27

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

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

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

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

It is when we approach the Fourth Gospel by way of its own author's adaptation of his message to the conditions around him that we begin to appreciate it historically, and in its true worth. The spirit of polemic is still prominent in 1st John, but the Gospel shows the effect of opposition only in the more careful statement of the evangelist's exact meaning. It is a theological treatise, an interpretation of the doctrine of the person of Christ, written that the readers "may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing they may have life in his name" (xx. 31). In an age so eagerly bent on ascertaining the historic facts regarding Jesus' life, and the true sequence of events (Luke i. 1-4), it is insupposable that an author so strenuous to uphold the concrete reality of the church's historic tradition should not give real history so far as he was able. He could not afford to depreciate it in the face of Doketic myth and fancy and contempt for a "Christ in the flesh." The idea that such a writer could deliberately prefer fiction to fact is most improbable; ten times more so if he was the only surviving representative of the twelve, a Galilean disciple even more intimate than Peter with Jesus from the outset. But real history was no longer attainable. The author of the Fourth Gospel reports no event which he does not take in good faith to be fact. Yet it must be apparent from his own statement of his purpose as well as from the very structure of the book that he does not aim to be a historian, but an interpreter of doctrine. He aims to give not fact but truth. And his handling of (supposed) fact has the freedom we should expect in a church teacher of that age, and of the school of Paul the mystic. The seven progressive "signs" that he narrates, culminating in the raising of Lazarus, are avowedly (xx. 31) illustrative selections from a multitude of current tales of miracle, aiming to produce that faith in Jesus as the Son of God which will result in "life," i. e. the eternal life which consists in his indwelling (1st John v. 20). They are not described as acts of pity, drawn from one with whom the power of God was found present to heal. Jesus does not yield as in the Synoptics when compassion for trusting need overcomes reluctance to increase the importunity that interfered with his higher mission. Their prime purpose is to "manifest the glory" of the incarnate Logos, and Jesus performs them only when, and as, he chooses. Pity and natural affection are almost trampled upon that this "manifestation of his glory" may be made more effective (ii. 4; iv. 48; ix. 3; xi. 4-6, 15). As in Paul, there is no exorcism. This most typical and characteristic miracle of Petrine story (Mark iii. 15; Acts x. 88) has disappeared. Or rather (as in Paul) the casting out of Satan from his dominion over the entire world has transcended and superseded it (John xii. 31-33; cf. Col. ii. 15). In John, requests for miracle, whether in faith or unbelief, always incur rebuke (ii. 4; iv. 48; vi. 30-36; vii. 4-7; xi. 3-15). Jesus offers and works them when "his hour" comes, whether applied for or not (v. 6-9; vi. 6; ix. 1-7). His reserve is not due to a limitation of almighty power; for the power is declared explicitly to be his, in his own right (v. 21; xi. 22, 25, 42). He restrains it only that faith may rest upon conviction of the truth rather than mere wonder (ii. 23-25; iii. 2 f.; iv. 39-42, 48; vi. 29-46; xiv. 11). He is, in short, an omniscient (i. 47-50; ii. 25), omnipotent Being, temporarily sojourning on the earth (iii. 13; xvi. 28).

The dialogue interwoven with these seven signs is closely related in subject to them. It does not aim to repeat remembered Sayings, but follows that literary form which since Plato had been the classic model for presenting the themes of philosophy. The subject-matter is no longer, as in the Synoptics, the Righteousness required by God, the Nature and Coming of the Kingdom, Duty to God and Man. It is the person and function of the speaker himself. Instead of the parables we have allegories: "seven 'I am's'" of Jesus, in debate with "the Jews" about the doctrine of his own person as Son of God.

This uniformity of topic corresponds with a complete absence of any attempt to differentiate in style between utterances of Jesus, or the Baptist, or the evangelist himself, in Gospel or Epistles. Had the writer desired, it is certain that he could have collected sayings of Jesus, and given them a form similar to those of Matthew and Luke. He does not try. The only device he employs to suggest a distinction is an oracular ambiguity at first misunderstood, and so requiring progressive unfolding. The main theme is often introduced by a peculiar and solemn "Verily, verily."

As with the 'signs' the lingering Synoptic sense of progress and proportion has disappeared. At the very outset John the Baptist proclaims to his followers that his own baptism has no value in itself. It is not "for repentance unto remission of sins." It is only to make the Christ "manifest" (i. 19-34). Christ's atonement alone will take away the sin (i. 29), Christ's baptism alone will convey real help (i. 34). Jesus, too, proclaims himself from the outset the Christ, in the full Pauline sense of the word (i. 45-51; iv. 26, etc.). He chooses Judas with the express purpose of the betrayal, and forces on the reluctant agents of his fate (vi. 70 f.; xiii. 26 f.; xviii. 4-8; xix. 8-11).

All this, and much more which we need not cite, makes hardly the pretence of being history. It is frankly theology, or rather apologetics. We have as a framework the general outline of Mark, a Galilean and a Judæan ministry (chh. i. – xii.; xiii. – xx.), with traces of a Perean journey (vii. 1 ff.). This scheme, however, is broken through by another based on the Mosaic festal system, Jesus showing in each case as he visits Jerusalem, the higher symbolism of the ceremonial (ii. 13 ff. Passover; v. 1 ff. Pentecost; vii. 1 ff. Tabernacles; x. 22 ff. Dedication; xii. 1 ff. Passover). There is in chh. i. – iv. a 'teaching of baptisms' and of endowment with the Spirit corresponding roughly to Mark i. 1-45. There is in ch. v. a teaching of the authority of Jesus against Moses and the Law, corresponding to Mark ii. 1 – iii. 6. There is a teaching of the 'breaking of bread' corresponding to Mark vi. 30 – viii. 26 in John vi., though this last has been related not merely to the brotherhood banquet ('love-feast') as in Mark, but anticipates and takes the place of the teaching as to the Eucharist (cf. John vi. 52-59 with John xiii.). There is a Commission of the Twelve like Matt. x. 16-42, though placed (with Luke xxii. 35-38) as a second sending on the night of betrayal (xiii. 31 – xviii. 26). There is dependence on Petrine Story, and to some extent on Matthæan Sayings. In particular John xii. 1-7 combines the data of Mark xiv. 3-9 with those of Luke vii. 36-50; x. 38-42 in a curious compound, making it certain that the evangelist employed these two – and Matthew as well, if xii. 8 be genuine (it is not found in the ancient Syriac). Yet our Synoptic Gospels are not the only sources, and the material borrowed is handled with sovereign superiority. In short, as even the church fathers recognized, this Gospel is of a new type. It does aim to "supplement" the others, as they recognized; but not as one narrative may piece out and complete another. Rather as the unseen and spiritual supplements the external and visible. This Gospel uses the established forms of miracle-story and saying; but it transforms the one into symbol, the other into dialogue and allegory. Then by use of this material (supplemented from unknown, perhaps oral, sources) it constructs a series of interpretations of the person and work of the God-man.

Of one peculiarly distinctive feature we have still to speak. Where the reader has special need of an interpreter to attest and interpret a specially vital fact, such as the scenes of the night of the betrayal, or the reality of Jesus' propitiatory death (denied by the Doketists), or the beginning of the resurrection faith, Peter's testimony is supplemented and transcended by that of a hitherto unknown figure, who anticipates all that Peter only slowly attains. This is the mysterious, unnamed "disciple whom Jesus loved" (xiii. 23 ff.; xviii. 15 f.; xix. 25-37; xx. 1-10; cf. Gal. xx. 20), a Paul present in the spirit, to see things with the eye of spiritual insight. There is no transfiguration-scene and no prayer of Gethsemane in this Gospel – Transfiguration is needless where the glory shines uninterrupted through the whole career. Prayer itself is impossible where oneness with the God-head makes difference of thought or purpose inconceivable. Hence the prayers of Jesus are often only "for the sake of those that stand by" (xi. 41 f.). The same is true of the Voice from heaven at the scene which takes the place of Transfiguration and Gethsemane in one (xii. 27-33). Jesus will not ask for deliverance from that hour, because he had sought it from the beginning. His prayer is "Father, glorify thy name." The Voice, which some take to be an angel speaking to him (cf. Luke ix. 35; xxii. 43) is for the sake of the bystanders. The Voice at his baptism likewise is not addressed to him (the incarnate Logos does not need a revelation of his own identity) but to the Baptist.

So again and again Synoptic scenes are retouched and new scenes are added in a way to present a consistent picture of the "tabernacling" of the pre-existent Son of God in human flesh. As we review the whole, and ask ourselves, What is the occasion of this strange new presentation of the evangelic message? we begin to realize how indispensable is the key which the evangelist has himself hung before the door. Many and complex are the problems which confront us as we move through this heaped-up tangle of anecdote, dialogue, and allegory. There is room for the keenest scrutiny of criticism to determine, if possible, when, and how, and from what sources these meditations were put together. But nothing that critical insight, analysis, and comparison can furnish avails so much to throw real light upon the work as what the evangelist himself has done, by setting forth in a prologue (i. 1-18) the fundamental principles of his conception.

In a word evangelic tradition as it had hitherto found currency still lacked the fundamental thing in the Christology of Paul – the Incarnation doctrine. Paul conceived the story of Jesus as a supernal drama, beginning and ending in heaven at God's right hand. Even Matthew and Luke, carrying back the adoption to Son ship from the baptism to the birth of Jesus, had not essentially changed the pre-Pauline point of view. Still there was no pre-existence. Jesus was not yet shown as the Wisdom of God, through whom all things were created, the "heavenly man," the second Adam, taking upon him the form of a servant, humbling himself and becoming obedient unto death, rich, and for our sakes becoming poor. He was still, even in Mark, just the prophet mighty in deed and word, raised up by God from among his brethren, and for his obedience exalted to the messianic throne of glory. How could this satisfy churches trained in the doctrine of Paul? We should almost rather marvel that the Synoptic narratives ever found lodgment at all, where Paul had preached from the beginning a doctrine of the eternal Christ.

And the transformation is not one whit more radical than we ought to anticipate. The Transfiguration story had been a halting attempt to embody Pauline doctrine in Petrine story. But apart from the obvious hold afforded to mere Doketism, how inadequate to Paul's conception of the "Man from heaven"! The Fourth evangelist depicts the person of Jesus consistently and throughout, despite his meagre and refractory material, along the lines of Pauline Christology. There is no concession to Doketism, for in spite of all, and designedly (iv. 6; xix. 28, 34), Jesus is still no phantasm, but true man among men. There is no hesitation to override, where needful, on vital points the great and growing authority of 'apostolic' tradition. Tacitly, but uncompromisingly, Petrine tradition is set aside. The "disciple whom Jesus loved" sees the matter otherwise. In particular, apocalyptic eschatology is firmly repressed in favour of a doctrine of eternal life in the Spirit. The second Coming is not to be a manifestation "to the world." It will be an inward indwelling of God and Christ in the heart of the believer (xiv. 22 f.).30 The place of future reward is not a glorified Palestine and transfigured, rebuilt Jerusalem. The disciple, like Paul, will "depart to be with Christ." The Father's house is wider than the Holy Land. It has "many mansions," and the servant must be content to know that his Master will receive him where he dwells himself (xiv. 1-3; xvii. 24).

To realize what it meant to produce the 'spiritual' Gospel that comes to us from Ephesus shortly after the close of the first century we must place ourselves side by side with men who had learnt the gospel of Paul about Jesus, the drama of the eternal, pre-existent, "heavenly Man," incarnate, triumphant through the cross over the Prince of this world and powers of darkness. We must realize how they found it needful to impregnate the 'apostolic' material of Petrine and Matthæan tradition with this deeper significance, preserving the concrete, historic fact, and the real manhood, and yet supplementing the disproportionately external story with a wealth of transcendental meaning. The spirit of Paul was, indeed, not dead. Neither Gnostic heresy could dissipate it, nor reactionary Christianized legalism absorb it. It had been reborn in splendid authority and power. In due time it would prove itself the very mould of 'catholic' doctrine. The Fourth gospel, as its Prologue forewarns, is an application to the story of Jesus as tradition reported it of the Pauline incarnation doctrine formulated under the Stoic Logos theory. It represents a study in the psychology of religion applied to the person of Christ. Poor as Paul himself in knowledge of the outward Jesus, unfamiliar with really historical words and deeds, its doctrine about Jesus became, nevertheless, like that of the great Apostle to the Gentiles, the truest exposition of 'the heart of Christ.'