Read Ebook: The Criticism of the Fourth Gospel Eight Lectures on the Morse Foundation Delivered in the Union Seminary New York in October and November 1904 by Sanday W William

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LECTURE I

SURVEY OF RECENT LITERATURE 1

LECTURE II

CRITICAL METHODS. THE OLDEST SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 42

LECTURE IV

THE PRAGMATISM OF THE GOSPEL 109

LECTURE V

THE CHARACTER OF THE NARRATIVE 142

LECTURE VI

THE DOCTRINE OF THE LOGOS, AND ITS INFLUENCE ON THE GOSPEL 185

THE CHRISTOLOGY OF THE GOSPEL 205

THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE GOSPEL 236

LECTURE I SURVEY OF RECENT LITERATURE

The subject of these lectures illustrates in a striking way the fluctuations and vicissitudes of critical opinion as presented before the public. The facts remain the same, and the balance of essential truth and error in regard to them also remains the same; but the balance of published opinion is a different matter, and in regard to this the changes are often very marked and very rapid.

What I have been saying amounts to a confession that my purpose is apologetic. I propose to defend the traditional view, or something so near to the traditional view that it will count as the same thing. It is better to be clear on this point at starting. And yet I know that there are many minds--and those just the minds to which I should most like to appeal--to which this will seem to be a real drawback. There is an impression abroad--a very natural impression--that 'apologetic' is opposed to 'scientific.'

In regard to this there are just one or two things that I would ask leave to say.

We are all really apologists, in the sense that for all of us some conclusions are more acceptable than others. No one undertakes to write on any subject with his mind in the state of a sheet of white paper. We all start with a number of general principles and general beliefs, conscious or unconscious, fixed or provisional. We all naturally give a preference to that which harmonizes best with these beliefs, though all the time a process of adjustment may be going on, by which we assimilate larger conclusions to smaller as well as smaller to larger.

If I defend a traditional statement as to a plain matter of fact, I am the more ready to do so because I have found--or seemed to myself to find--as a matter of experience, that such statements are far more often, in the main, right than wrong. It is a satisfaction to me to think that in this experience, so far as it relates to the first two centuries of Christian history, I have the distinguished support of Professor Harnack, who has expressed a deliberate opinion to this effect, though he certainly did not start with any prejudice in favour of tradition. Of course one sits loosely to a generalization like this. It only means that the burden of proof lies with those who reject such a statement rather than with those who accept it.

I cannot but believe that there is a real presumption that the Christian faith, which has played so vast a power in what appear to be the designs of the Power that rules the world, is not based upon a series of deceptions. I consider that, on any of the large questions, that view is preferable which does not involve an abrupt break with the past. It is very likely that there may be involved some modification or restatement, but not complete denial or reversal.

To say this is something more than the instinct of continuity--something more than the instinct expressed in such words as--

'I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.'

It is the settled belief that there is a Providence that shapes our ends, and that this Providence never has wholly to undo its own work, but that there is a continuous purpose running through the ages.

That is the sense--and I do not think more than that--in which I plead guilty to being an apologist. I hope there is such a thing as 'scientific apology' or 'apologetic science,' and that this is entitled to fair consideration along with other kinds of science. I would not for a moment ask that anything I may urge should be judged otherwise than strictly on its merits.

I began by saying that the nearer past, the last three or four years, has been distinguished by the successive appearance of a number of prominent books on the criticism of the Fourth Gospel, which have been all on the negative side. Those I mentioned are not only negative, but they have taken the more extreme form of negation. Not content with denying that the author of the Gospel was the Apostle St. John, they insist at once that the true author is entirely unknown, and that whoever he was he stood in no direct relation to the Apostle. It has been the special characteristic of the last few years, as compared with the preceding period, that this more extreme position has been held by writers of note and influence. If we take the period from 1889 to 1900--or even if we go further back, say, from 1870 to 1900, the dominant tendency had been different. Opinion had seemed to gravitate more and more towards a sort of middle position, in which the two sides in the debate could almost reach hands to each other. There was a distinct recognition on the critical side of an element in the Gospel of genuine and authentic history. And, on the other hand, there was an equally clear recognition among conservative writers that the discourses of our Lord in particular were reported with a certain amount of freedom, not as they had been actually spoken but as they came back to the memory of the Apostle after a considerable lapse of time. While the critics could not bring themselves to accept the composition of the Gospel by the son of Zebedee himself, they seemed increasingly disposed to admit that it might be the work of a near disciple of the Apostle, such as the supposed second John, commonly known as 'the Presbyter.'

If this was the state of things six or seven years ago, and if this description might be given of the general tendency of research in the decade or two preceding, the same can be said no longer. The threads that seemed to be drawing together have again sprung asunder. The sharp antitheses, that seemed in the way to be softened down and harmonized, have asserted themselves again in all their old abruptness. The alternatives are once more not so much between stricter and less strict history as between history and downright fiction, not so much between the Apostle and a disciple or younger contemporary of the Apostle as between a member of the Apostolic generation and one who was in no connexion with it.

I am speaking of the more pronounced opinions on either side. Whereas seven or eight or fifteen or twenty years ago the most prominent scholars were working towards conciliation, at the present time, and in the near past, the most strongly expressed opinions have been the most extreme. The old authorities, happily for the most part, still remain upon the scene, and they have not withdrawn the views which they had expressed; but other, younger writers have come to the front, and they have not shown the same disposition for compromise. They know their own minds, and they are ready enough to proclaim them without hesitation and without reserve.

The consequence is that the situation, as we look out upon it, presents more variety than it did. There are many shades of opinion, some of them strongly opposed to each other. It is no longer possible to strike an average, or to speak of a general tendency. The only thing to be done is for each of us to state his view of the case as he sees it, and to appeal to the public, to the jury of plain men, and to the rising generation, to decide between the competing theories.

Another veteran scholar, who has continued his laborious and unresting work upon the Fourth Gospel during this period, Dr. Bernhard Weiss, suffers less from this cause. Not that the writings of Dr. Weiss are much easier or more attractive in outward form. But one has a feeling that the Berlin Professor is more in the main stream--that he is more in touch with other opinion on the right hand and on the left. For this reason one finds him, on the whole, more helpful. Every question, as it arises, is thoughtfully weighed, and a strong judgement is brought to bear upon it. Each edition of Dr. Weiss' books is conscientiously revised and brought, so far as can be reasonably expected, up to date. This untiring worker, as he enters upon the decline of a long life, has the satisfaction of looking back upon a series of volumes, always sound and always sober, which have contributed as much as any in this generation to train up in good and wholesome ways those who are to follow. Dr. Weiss' work upon the Fourth Gospel is distinguished at once by his steady maintenance of the Apostolic authorship and by his steady insistence on the necessity of allowing for a certain freedom of handling. This freedom in the treatment, more particularly of the discourses, Dr. Weiss was practically the first writer to assert on the conservative side. He has sometimes stated it in a way that I cannot but think rather exaggerated.

Along with Bernhard Weiss it is natural to name Dr. Willibald Beyschlag, of whose dignified conduct of the proceedings at the Halle Tercentenary reports reached us in England, followed--as it seemed, too soon--by the news of his death on Nov. 25, 1900. Beyschlag was a good average representative of the liberal wing of the defenders of the Fourth Gospel, who also combine its data with those of the Synoptics in reconstructing the Life of our Lord. His style has more rhetorical ease and flow than that of Weiss, and he states his views with confidence and vigour; but one feels that in his hands problems are apt to become less difficult than they really are. For a reasonable middle position, a compromise between extremes on both sides, we may go to Beyschlag as well as to any one; but it may be doubted whether he really sounds the depths of the Gospel.

An Englishman addressing an American audience must needs pause for a moment over the first of these three names. It is the more incumbent on me to do this because as a young man, at a time when encouragement is most valued, I was one of many who profited by Dr. Ezra Abbot's generous and self-denying kindness. He opened a correspondence with me, and sent me not only his own books but some by other writers that I might be presumed not to possess, and it was touching to see the care with which corrections were made in these in his own finely formed hand. I would fain not only pay a tribute of reverence to the memory of Dr. Abbot, but also, if I may, repay a little of my own debt by holding up his example to the younger generation of American scholars as one that I would earnestly entreat them to adopt and follow. I do not know how far I am right, but I have always taken the qualities of Dr. Ezra Abbot's work as specially typical of the American mind at its best. His work reminds one in its exactness and precision of those fine mechanical instruments in which America has so excelled. To set for oneself the highest possible standard of accuracy, and to think no time and no pains misspent in the pursuit of it, is a worthy object of a young scholar's ambition.

In like manner we, in England, have a standard proposed to us by Dr. Westcott's famous Commentary on St. John. It is the culminating product of a life that was also devoted to the highest ends. It is characteristic of Dr. Westcott that the Commentary was, I believe, hardly altered in its later editions from the form in which it first appeared. This was due to the thoroughness and circumspection with which the author had in the first instance carried out his task. I believe that in spite of the lapse of time Dr. Westcott's Commentary remains, and will still for long remain, the best that we have on the Fourth Gospel, as it is also the best and most characteristic work that its author bequeathed to the world.

Dr. Ezra Abbot has in many ways found a worthy inheritor in Dr. Drummond; and it is perhaps true that the positive results which he obtained are adequately embodied in Dr. Drummond's book, though as a model for work of the kind the older essay can never become antiquated. But, speaking generally, I should think it a great misfortune if the better examples of this older literature were thrust out of use by the newer and more advanced criticism. I believe it to be one of the weak points in that criticism that it too much forgets what has been done. It contents itself with an acceptance that is often grudging or perfunctory and always inadequate of results that have been really obtained. The scheme of argument common to the older writers was to prove, in gradually contracting circles, that the author of the Gospel was a Jew; that he was a Jew of Palestine; that he was a contemporary; and an actual companion and eye-witness of the ministry of our Lord. We must expect the last two propositions to be matter for some controversy, and I shall return to them later; but it seems to me that scant justice is done to the argument as a whole.

Since this paragraph was written I have come across some words of Professor von Dobsch?tz, which are so much to the point that I am tempted to quote them:

'That the Gospel not only shows a good knowledge of Palestinian localities but also a thoroughly Jewish stamp in thought and expression, is one of the truths rightly emphasized by conservative theology which critical theology is already, though reluctantly, making up its mind to admit: the Hellenism of the Fourth Gospel, together with its unity, belongs to those only too frequent pre-conceived opinions, on the critical side too, which are all the more obstinately maintained the more unfounded they are.'

Would that all critical writers were so clear-sighted and so candid!

The really crucial point in the argument relating to the Fourth Gospel is whether or not the author was an eye-witness of the events which he describes. In any case, if we are to take the indications of the Gospel itself, the author must be identified with 'the disciple whom Jesus loved.' But it does not quite necessarily follow that this disciple is also to be identified with the Apostle John, the son of Zebedee. Internally there seems to be a fair presumption that he is; and externally, the evidence seems to be clear from the time of Irenaeus onwards. But neither the presumption in the one case, nor the evidence in the other, is so stringent as to exclude all possibility of doubt. We shall have presently to consider the whole question upon its merits. But in the meantime we note that in recent years the hypothesis has been definitely put forward that the author of the Gospel was not the Apostle John, but another disciple--some would say a disciple of his--of the same name, commonly known for distinction as 'the Presbyter.' The existence of this second John, if he really did exist, rests upon a single line of an extract from Papias, a writer of the first half of the second century. He too is called a 'disciple of the Lord'; so that he too may have been an eye-witness as fully, or almost as fully, as the Apostle.

The hypothesis which ascribes the Gospel to this John the Presbyter has taken different forms, some more and some less favourable to the historical truth and authority of the Gospel.

From a conservative point of view the most attractive form of the hypothesis is that put forward by the late Dr. Hugo Delff, of Husum, in Hanover, to some extent adapted and defended by Bousset in his commentary on the Apocalypse, and by one or two others. The theory is that the beloved disciple was not of the number of the Twelve, but that he was a native of Jerusalem, of a priestly family of wealth and standing. We are expressly told that he was 'known to' the high priest ; and he seems to have had special information as to what went on at meetings of the Sanhedrin . These facts are further connected with the statement by Polycrates, Bishop of Ephesus, towards the end of the second century, that the John who lay upon the breast of the Lord 'became, or acted as, priest and wore the frontlet of gold' . This John is claimed as one of the 'great lights' of the Churches of Asia.

The theory opens up interesting vistas, the discussion of which must, however, be reserved. It is consistent with the attribution of a high degree of authenticity to the Gospel. At the same time it ought to be said that Delff himself regarded certain portions of our present Gospel--more particularly those relating to the Galilean ministry--as interpolations.

Without going all the way with Delff, and without raising the question as to the identity of the beloved disciple, other writers who have inclined towards a middle position took the view that the Gospel was the work of John the Presbyter, whom some of them regarded as a disciple of John the Apostle. At the head of this group would stand Harnack and Sch?rer, who have examined the external evidence very closely. The assigning of the Gospel to John the Presbyter, or to some unnamed disciple of the Apostle, was indeed the key to the compromise offered by those who came nearest to the traditional position at the end of the eighties and in the early nineties.

However this may be--and the subject is one of which I hope to speak in more detail--in any case it must be somewhere within the limits marked out by Delff on the one hand, and Harnack with his allies and followers on the other, or else by means of the theories that I am just about to mention, that an understanding must be reached between the two sides, if that understanding is at all to take the form of compromise.

Where two or more persons are concerned in the composition of a book, the relation between them may be through a written document, or it may be oral. Hitherto we have been going upon the latter assumption: the mediating theories that we have been considering, so far as they were mediating, have treated the writer of the Gospel, whatever his name, as a disciple or associate of St. John the Apostle; and the information derived from him is supposed to have come by way of personal intercourse. But it is quite conceivable that St. John may have set down something on paper, and that some later Christian--disciple or not--took this and worked it up into our present Gospel. Accordingly, various attempts have been made at different times to mark off a Gospel within the Gospel, an original authentic document derived from a first-hand authority--either the Apostle or the Presbyter--and certain added material incorporated in the Gospel as we now have it. Many of these attempts are obsolete and do not need discussion. It has already been mentioned that Delff--without any clear necessity even from his own point of view--cuts out more particularly the Galilean passages and some others with them as interpolations. These additions to the Gospel he regards as the work of the author of chap. xxi. But the most systematic and important experiments in this direction are those of Dr. Wendt and Dr. Briggs.

In my opinion all attempts of this kind are fore-doomed to failure. The underlying motive is to rescue some portion of the Gospel as historical, while others are dismissed as untrustworthy. At the same time it is allowed that the separation can only be made where there is a real break in the connexion. On this Schmiedel pertinently remarks:--

'There is much reason to fear that distrust of the authenticity of the substance often causes an interruption of the connexion to be imagined where in reality there is none. Many passages of the same sort as others, which give Wendt occasion for the separating process, are left by him untouched, when the result would not be removal of some piece held to be open to exception in respect to its contents; the ground for exception which he actually takes, on the other hand, is often altogether non-existent.'

I look with considerable distrust on many of the attempts that are made to divide up documents on the ground of want of connexion. I suspect that the standard of consecutiveness applied is often too Western and too modern. But the one rock on which it seems to me that any partition theory must be wrecked is the deep-seated unity of structure and composition which is characteristic of the Gospel. Dr. Briggs turns the edge of this argument by referring the unity to the masterful hand of the editor. It is, no doubt, open to him to do so; but we may observe that, if in this way he makes the theory difficult to disprove, he also makes it difficult to prove. I must needs think that both in this case and in Dr. Wendt's the proof is quite insufficient. I would undertake to show that the distinctive features of the Gospel are just as plentiful in the passages excised as in those that are retained. Perhaps the most tangible point made by the two critics is the attempt to distinguish between the words for 'miracle': 'works' they would assign to the earlier writer, and 'signs' to the later. We remember, however, that the combination of 'signs' and 'wonders' occurs markedly in St. Paul, e. g. Rom. xv. 19, 2 Cor. xii. 12, and is indeed characteristic of early Christian literature long before the Fourth Gospel was written.

Another very original suggestion of Dr. Briggs' which would be helpful if we could accept it, is that we are not tied down to the chronological order of the Gospel as we have it, but that this too is due to the later editor, who has arranged the sections of his narrative rather according to subject than to sequence in time. I am prepared to allow that the narrative may not be always strictly in the order in which the events occurred; and it is true that there are some difficulties which the hypothesis would meet. At the same time we cannot but notice that the order is by no means accidental, but that attention is expressly drawn to it in the Gospel itself; see . And some incidents seem clearly to hang together which Dr. Briggs has divided .

I fear that the learned Professor is seeking in a wrong direction for a solution of the problem of the Gospel. But I would be the last to undervalue the vigorous independence and the fearlessness and fertility in experiment that are conspicuous in all his writings.

Perhaps I should be right in saying a few words at this point about Professor B. W. Bacon of Yale. His view is not as yet quite sufficiently developed in print for me to be clear how much he would refer to oral transmission and how much to a written source. He distinguishes three hands in the Gospel. I gather that the first would be that of the Apostle, but he as yet stands dimly in the background. Then comes the main body of the Gospel, without the Appendix. This is ascribed to John the Presbyter, whom--rather by a paradox--Professor Bacon would seek in Palestine and not in Asia Minor. Lastly there is the editor who works over the whole.

We shall probably not be wrong in classing with these writers the eminent scholar Dr. H. J. Holtzmann of Strassburg. It is indeed characteristic of Dr. Holtzmann's method to avoid anything like dogmatic assertion of his own opinion, to work in with subtle skill a kaleidoscopic presentation of the opinions of others, while himself remaining in the background. He does indeed leave room for a rather larger amount of authentic tradition in the Gospel than the other writers mentioned. Still, in the main his position is sceptical, both as to the Asian tradition of St. John, and as to the historical character of the Gospel.

Another of the older writers, Dr. O. Pfleiderer, is even more thorough-going as an allegorist. For him the Gospel is from first to last a didactic work in the guise of history; it is a 'transparent allegory of religious and dogmatic ideas.' He would place the first draft of the Gospel about the year 135, the last chapter and the First Epistle about 150. But I have long thought that this attractive writer, though interesting and instructive as a historian of thought, is a 'negligible quantity' in the field of criticism proper.

The other four German writers whom I have mentioned all belong to the younger generation. Dr. Schmiedel is the eldest, and he is not yet quite fifty-three: J?licher, the next on the list, is forty-seven. And as they belong to the younger generation, so also they may be said to mark the rise of a new School, or new method of treatment, in German Theology. The Germany for which they speak is not the dreaming, wistful, ineffective, romantic Germany of the past, but the practical, forceful, energetic and assertive Germany of the present. All, as I have said, are able writers; and the type of their ability has much in common, though they have also their little individual differences. They have all a marked directness and lucidity of style. What they think they say, without hesitation and without reserve; no one can ever be in any doubt as to their meaning. They are all apt to be somewhat contemptuous, not only of divergent views, but of a type of mind that differs from their own. Of the four, J?licher and especially Wernle have the warmer temperament; Schmiedel and Wrede are cold and severe. Wrede writes like a mathematician, who puts Q. E. D. at the end of each step in the argument--though it would be a misfortune if the demonstration were taken to be as complete as he thinks it. Schmiedel is rather the lawyer who pursues his adversary from point to point with relentless acumen: if we could grant the major premises of his argument, there would be much to admire in his handling of the minor; but the major premises, as I think I shall show, are often at fault. J?licher is just the downright capable person, who sees vividly what he sees and is intolerant of that which does not appeal to him. Wernle alternately attracts and repels; he attracts by his real enthusiasm for that with which he sympathizes, by his skill in presentation, and his careful observance of perspective and proportion; he repels by aggressiveness and self-confidence.

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