Category: History - Religious
wishing to discredit the argument from silence in general. And it is true that in the place to which he refers I had in mind only a particular application of the argument. Still I am afraid that I do wish to see its credit abated. At least it is my belief that too much use is...
wishing to discredit the argument from silence in general. And it is true that in the place to which he refers I had in mind only a particular application of the argument. Still...
23. iv. It is out of this common ground, and not out of the special featuresof the Pauline theology, that the teaching of the Fourth Gospel really sprang. True, there are resemblances and affinities between details in the theologies of the Evangelist an...
18. xviii. 15, 16, bring out the broad providential, governing andenergizing activity; Ps. cvii. 20; Wisd. xvi. 12, emphasize the redemptive activity in the narrower sense. All these ideas really underlie the Prologue, though they do not all r...
9. x. And another difficulty, or set of difficulties, turns round thestatement of De Boor’s Fragment. It is certainly strange that this statement appears in no other early authority, and especially that no hint of it is found in Eusebius. I am no...
13. vi. 4, where it is well known that there is strong patristic evidencefor omitting ‘the Passover,’ so that this feast, like that in ver. 1, would be unnamed. At the same time readings that rest entirely on patristic quotations are notoriously prec...
17. v. We speak, therefore, not of what we know, but, as I have said, by anact of faith, of that which would be _if_ we knew. In this attitude we make allowance for possible and probable defects in our sources: we make allowance for all the disturbing...
12. ii. And we are confirmed in this opinion by the further observation thatthe points on which he differs from his predecessors are for the most part and to all appearance indifferent for any particular purpose that he seems to have had in writing. He...
10. vi. 15, the people are represented as coming to take Him by force andmake Him king; and at the entry into Jerusalem He is greeted as the King of Israel, and the prophecy of Zechariah is applied to Him, ‘Behold thy King cometh, &c.’ In all this th...
2. xi. 47-53; and the Gospel has some precise details not found elsewhereThis whole group of facts is in any case one of which we must take notice. In any case it forms an important element in the portrait that we are to construct for ourselves of th...
21. i. In order that there should be this conquest and annexation of thewhole Church by the Pauline Gospel it is implied, and it is of the essence of the theory to imply, that there was a broad and well-marked difference between this Pauline Gospel...
15. ii. The evidence of the Gospels is not quite equal in quality to that ofthe Epistles. It is the evidence of men reporting what they or others had seen, not (so far as appears) that of men who had felt the current of miraculous energy actually thrill...
7. viii. If these expressions had stood alone, there need be no greatdifficulty. We may be pretty sure that the beloved disciple, even if he had not been one of the original Twelve, would be called an Apostle in the wider sense, like St. Paul and...
3. iv. Yet another alleged point in the testimony of Papias would beexplained on this theory, and is not easily explained on the view which identifies the John who wrote the Gospel with the son of Zebedee. Since the publication of De Boor’s Frag...
8. ix. So far it would seem that a really strong case can be made out fordistinguishing the Evangelist from the son of Zebedee and identifying him with the beloved disciple. My wish is not to make out a case either way, but to state the facts as impa...
20. ii. But there is nothing really in the Epistles themselves to bear outthis assumption. St. Paul does not write as though he were a wholesale innovator. He does not write as though he were founding a new religion. On the contrary, he lays great str...
6. vii. It is a remarkable fact that some of our best authorities, whilethey leave no doubt as to the identification of the John who figured so conspicuously at Ephesus with the beloved disciple, abstain from expressions that would identify him with...
19. i. We observe here, as in so many other cases, that the theory reflects,not so much the essential disposition and proportions of the facts as the state of the extant evidence. Hardly anything has come down to us from the early years, at least for th...
22. iii. We have seen that the confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Sonof God, was common ground for all Christians. It was on this ground that St. Paul and the Judaean churches felt themselves one. They also felt themselves one in what we ought no...
16. iv. We are not called upon to believe that anything is really contraryto, or in violation of, nature St. Augustine laid down, some fifteen centuries ago: ‘Portentum ergo fit non contra naturam sed contra quam est nota natura’ (_De Civitate Dei_, x...
4. v. Now Schwartz assumes that if John perished by the sword like hisbrother James, he did so at the same time and at the hands of Herod Agrippa I, in the year 41. Of course he can only do this by throwing over the data in the Acts, which I do no...
11. i. The Evangelist had the Synoptic Gospels before him; and, where heIt follows that he was a person who was conscious of writing with authority. If he had not been, and if he was only desirous of insinuating his own views under cover of a great...
5. vi. If the younger son of Zebedee had died in this or some other way,there would be nothing to prevent us from supposing that the John who took up his abode at Ephesus was the beloved disciple. And it would really simplify the history, and make e...
14. i. In spite of these difficulties there are still, I cannot but think,some general considerations that may help us. The first is that the cause must be in some degree commensurate with the effects. Christianity is in any case a very stupendous fac...