Part 7

"The Word is the image of God by which the whole world was created" (p. 275);

surely, I say, he would have used the name of one who had been in his day such a champion of the Jewish people, and had suffered such insults from Caligula on their account. [100:1]

Nothing seems more appropriate for the conversion of Trypho than many of the extracts from Philo given by the author of "Supernatural Religion." Herein, too, in this matter of Philo and Justin, the author of "Supernatural Religion" betrays his surprising inconsistency and refutes himself. He desires it to be inferred that Justin need not have seen--probably had not seen, even one of our present Gospels, because he does not name the authors, though there is abundant reason why the names of four authors of the Memoirs should not be paraded before unbelievers as suggesting differences in the testimony; whereas it would have been the greatest assistance to him in his argument with Trypho to have named Philo; and he does not. We would not infer from this, as the author of "Supernatural Religion" does most absurdly in parallel cases, that Justin "knew nothing" of Philo; had not even seen his books, and need not have heard of him; but we must gather from it that Justin did not associate the name of Philo with the Logos doctrine in its most advanced stage of development. Many other facts tend to show that Justin made little or no use of Philo. In the extracts given by the author of "Supernatural Religion" from Philo, all culled out to serve his purpose, the reader will notice many words and phrases "foreign" to Justin; for instance, [Greek: deuteros Theos, organon de Logon Theou, di' hou sympas ho kosmos edêmiourgeito]. More particularly the reader will notice that such adjectives as [Greek: orthos, hieros (hierôtatos)] and [Greek: presbys (presbytatos)] are applied to the Word in the short extracts from Philo given by the author of "Supernatural Religion," which are never applied to the Second Person of the Trinity in Justin. In fact, though there are some slight resemblances, the terminology of Philo is, to use the words of "Supernatural Religion," "totally different from" and "opposed to" that of Justin, and the more closely it is examined, the more clearly it will be seen that Justin cannot have derived his Logos doctrine from Philo.

The other question is, "from whom did Justin derive his identification of the Logos with Jesus?"

Not from Philo, certainly. We have shown above how St. John lays down with authority the identity of the Logos with the pre-existent Divine Nature of Jesus, not in long, elaborate, carefully reasoned philosophical dissertation, but in four short, clear, decisive enunciations. "In the beginning was the Word"--"The Word was with God"--"The Word was God"--"The Word was made flesh."

We have seen how these were the manifest germs of Justin's teaching. Now, if at the time when Justin wrote the Fourth Gospel, as we shall shortly prove, must have been in use in the Church in every part of the world, why should Justin be supposed to derive from Philo a truth which he, being a Jew, would repudiate? Justin himself most certainly was not the first to identify the Logos with Jesus. The identification was asserted long before in the Apocalypse, which the author of "Supernatural Religion" shows to have been written about A.D. 70, or so. In fact, he ascertains its date to "a few weeks." Supposing, then, that the Apocalypse was anterior to St. John, on whose lines, so to speak, does Justin develope the Logos doctrine? Most assuredly not on Philo's lines (for his whole terminology essentially differs from that of the Alexandrian), but on the lines of the fourth Gospel, and on no other.

Let the reader turn to some extracts which the author of "Supernatural Religion" gives out of Philo. In p. 265, he gives some very striking passages indeed, in which Philo speaks of the Logos as the Bread from heaven:--

"He is 'the substitute ([Greek: hyparchos]) of God,' 'the heavenly incorruptible food of the soul,' 'the bread from heaven.' In one place he says, 'and they who inquire what nourishes the soul ... learnt at last that it is the Word of God, and the Divine Reason' ... This is the heavenly nourishment to which the Holy Scripture refers ... saying, 'Lo I rain upon you bread ([Greek: artos]) from heaven' (Exod. xvi. 4). 'This is the bread ([Greek: artos]) which the Lord has given them to eat.'" (Exod. xvi. 15)

And again:--

"For the one indeed raises his eyes to the sky, perceiving the Manna, the Divine Word, the heavenly incorruptible food of the longing soul." Elsewhere ... "but it is taught by the initiating priest and prophet Moses, who declares, 'This is the bread ([Greek: artos]), the nourishment which God has given to the soul.' His own Reason and His own Word which He has offered; for this bread ([Greek: artos]) which He has given us to eat is Reason." (Vol. ii. p. 265.)

Now the Fourth Gospel also makes Jesus speak of Himself as the "Bread of Life," and "given by the Father;" but what is the bread defined by Jesus Himself to be? Not a mere intellectual apprehension, _i.e._ Reason, as Philo asserts; but the very opposite, no other than "His Flesh;" the product of His Incarnation. "The bread that I will give is My Flesh," and He adds to it His Blood. "Except ye eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink His Blood, ye have no life in you."

Now this also Justin reproduces, not after the conception of Philo, which is but a natural conception, but after the conception of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel, which is an infinitely mysterious and supernatural one.

"In like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our Salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His Word, and from which our blood and flesh are by transmutation nourished is the Flesh and Blood of that Jesus Who was made flesh." (Apol. I. ch. lxvi.)

I trust the reader will acquit me, in making this quotation, of any desire to enunciate any Eucharistic theory of the presence of Christ's Flesh in the Eucharist. All I have to do with is the simple fact that both Philo and St. John speak of the Word as the Bread of Life; but Philo explains that bread to be "reason," and St. John makes our Lord to set it forth as His Flesh, and Justin takes no notice of the idea of Philo, and reproduces the idea of the fourth Gospel.

And yet we are to be told that Justin "knew nothing" of the Fourth Gospel, and that his Logos doctrine was "identical" with that of Philo.

SECTION XVIII.

DISCREPANCIES BETWEEN ST. JOHN AND THE SYNOPTICS.

The author of "Supernatural Religion" devotes a large portion of his second volume to setting forth the discrepancies, real or alleged, between the Synoptics and the Fourth Gospel.

In many of these remarks he seems to me to betray extraordinary ignorance of the mere contents of the Fourth Gospel. I shall notice two or three remarkable misconceptions; but, before doing this, I desire to call the reader's attention to the only inference respecting the authorship of this Gospel which can be drawn from these discrepancies.

St. John's Gospel is undoubtedly the last Gospel published; in fact, the last work of the sacred canon. The more patent, then, the differences between St. John and the Synoptics, the more difficult it is to believe that a Gospel, containing subject-matter so different from the works already accepted as giving a true account of Christ, should have been accepted by the whole Church at so comparatively recent a date, unless that Church had every reason for believing that it was the work of the last surviving Apostle.

Take, for instance, the [apparent] differences between St. John and the Synoptics respecting the scene of our Lord's ministry, the character of His discourses, the miracles ascribed to Him, and the day of His Crucifixion, or rather of His partaking of the Paschal feast. The most ignorant and unobservant would notice these differences; and the more labour required to reconcile the statements or representations of the last Gospel with the three preceding ones, the more certain it is that none would have ventured to put forth a document containing such differences except an Apostle who, being the last surviving one, might be said to inherit the prestige and authority of the whole college.

It would far exceed the limits which I have prescribed to myself to examine the Fourth Gospel with the view of reconciling the discrepancies between it and the Synoptics, and also of bringing out the numberless undesigned coincidences between the earlier and the later account, of which the writer of "Supernatural Religion," led away by his usual dogmatic prejudices, has taken not the smallest notice.

The reader will find this very ably treated in Mr. Sanday's "Authorship of the Fourth Gospel" (Macmillan).

My object at present is of a far humbler nature, simply to show the utter untrustworthiness of some of the most confidently asserted statements of the writer of "Supernatural Religion."

I shall take two:

1. The difference between Christ's mode of teaching and the structure of His discourses, as represented by St. John and the Synoptics respectively.

2. The intellectual impossibility that St. John should have written the Fourth Gospel.

1. Respecting the difference of Christ's mode of teaching as recorded in St. John and in the Synoptics, he remarks:--

"It is impossible that Jesus can have had two such diametrically opposed systems of teaching; one purely moral, the other wholly dogmatic; one expressed in wonderfully terse, clear, brief sayings and parables, the other in long, involved, and diffuse discourses; one clothed in the great language of humanity, the other concealed in obscure, philosophic terminology; and that these should have been kept so distinct as they are in the Synoptics, on the one hand, and the Fourth Gospel on the other. The tradition of Justin Martyr applies solely to the system of the Synoptics, 'Brief and concise were the sentences uttered by Him: for He was no Sophist, but His word was the power of God.'" [106:1] (Vol. ii. p. 468)

To take the first of those assertions. So far from its being "impossible" that Jesus "can have had two such diametrically opposite modes of teaching," it is not only possible, but we have undeniable proof of the fact in that remarkable saying of Christ recorded by both St. Matthew and St. Luke: "All things are delivered unto Me of My Father, and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him." (Matth. xi. 27). The author of "Supernatural Religion" has studied the letter of this passage very carefully, for he devotes no less than ten pages to a minute examination of the supposed quotations of it in Justin and other Fathers (vol. i. pp. 402-412); but he does not draw attention to the fact that it is conceived in the spirit and expressed in the terms of the Fourth Gospel, and totally unlike the general style of the discourses in the Synoptics. [107:1] The Fourth Gospel shows us that such words as these, almost unique in the Synoptics, are not the only words uttered in a style so different from the usual teaching of our Lord--that at times, when He was on the theme of His relations to His Father, He adopted other diction more suited to the nature of the deeper truths He was enunciating.

Then take the second assertion:--

"One [system] expressed in wonderfully terse, clear, brief sayings and parables, the other in long, involved, and diffuse discourses."

Again:--

"The description which Justin gives of the manner of teaching of Jesus excludes the idea that he knew the Fourth Gospel. 'Brief and concise were the sentences uttered by Him, for He was no Sophist, but His word was the power of God.' (Apol. I. 14) No one could for a moment assert that this description applies to the long and artificial discourses of the Fourth Gospel, whilst, on the other hand, it eminently describes the style of teaching with which we are acquainted in the Synoptics, with which the Gospel according to the Hebrews, in all its forms, was so closely allied." (Vol. ii. p. 315)

Now I assert, and the reader can with very little trouble verify the truth of the assertion, that the mode of our Lord's teaching, as set forth in St. John, is more terse, axiomatic, and sententious--more in accordance with these words of Justin, "brief and concise were the sentences uttered by Him," than it appears in the Synoptics.

To advert for a moment to the mere length of the discourses. The Sermon on the Mount is considerably longer than the longest discourse in St. John's Gospel (viz., that occupying chapters xiv., xv., xvi.). This is the only unbroken discourse of any length in this Gospel. The others, viz., those with Nicodemus, with the woman at Sychem, with the Jews in the Temple, and the one in the Synagogue at Capernaum, are much shorter than many in the Synoptics, and none of them are continuous discourses, but rather conversations. And, with respect to the composition, those in St. John are mainly made up of short, terse, axiomatic deliverances just such as Justin describes.

Take, for instance, the sentences in the sixth chapter:--

"I am the bread of life."

"He that believeth on me hath everlasting life."

"I am that bread of life."

"This is the bread that cometh down from heaven, that a man should eat thereof and not die."

"My flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed."

"It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing."

And those in the tenth:--

"I am the door of the sheep."

"I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep."

"I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine."

Then, if we compare parables, the passage in the Fourth Gospel most resembling a parable, viz., the similitude of the Vine and the branches, is made up of detached sentences more "terse" and "concise" than those of most parables in the Synoptics.

The discourses in St. John are upon subjects very distasteful to the author of "Supernatural Religion," and he loses no opportunity of expressing his dislike to them; but it is a gross misrepresentation to say that the instruction, whatever it be, is conveyed in other than sentences as simple, terse, and concise as those of the Synoptics, though the subject-matter is different.

We will now proceed to the last assertion:--

"One [system of teaching] clothed in the great language of humanity, the other concealed in obscure philosophic terminology."

What can this writer mean by the "philosophic terminology" of our Lord's sayings as reported in the Fourth Gospel? If the use of the term "Logos" be "philosophic terminology," it is confined to four sentences; and these not the words of Jesus Himself, but of the Evangelist. I do not remember throughout the rest of the Gospel a single sentence which can be properly called "philosophical."

The author must confound "philosophical" with "mysterious." Each and every discourse in the fourth Gospel is upon, or leads to, some deep mystery; but that mystery is in no case set forth in philosophical, but in what the author of "Supernatural Religion" calls the "great language of humanity." Take the most mysterious by far of all the enunciations in St. John's Gospel, "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His Blood, ye have no life in you." What are the words of which this sentence is composed? "Eat," "flesh," "blood," "Son of man," "life." Are not these the commonest words of daily life? but, then, their use and association here is the very thing which constitutes the mystery.

Again, take the salient words of each discourse--"Except a man be born again"--"be born of water and of the Spirit." "Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst." "As the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself." "All that are in the graves shall hear His voice and shall come forth." "The bread that I will give is My flesh." "If ye believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins." "As the Father knoweth Me, even so know I the Father." "I am the Resurrection and the Life." "Whatsoever ye shall ask in My name, that will I do." "If I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you but: if I depart, I will send Him unto you."

It is the deepest of all mysteries that one in flesh and blood can say such things of Himself; but it is a perversion of language to speak of these sayings as "philosophical terminology." They are in a different sphere from all more _human_ philosophy, and, indeed, are opposed to every form of it. Philosophy herself requires a new birth before she can so much as see them.

I must recur, however, to the author's first remark, in which he characterizes the discourses of the Synoptics as "purely moral," and those of St. John as "wholly dogmatic." This is by no means true. The discourses in the Synoptics are on moral subjects, but they continually make dogmatic assertions or implications as pronounced as those in the Fourth Gospel. In the Sermon on the Mount, for instance, the preacher authoritatively adds to and modifies the teaching of the very Decalogue itself. "Ye have heard that it was said TO them of old time" (for so [Greek: errhethê tois archaiois] must properly be translated); "but I say unto you." Again, Jesus assumes in the same discourse to be the Object of worship and the Judge of quick and dead, and that His recognition is salvation itself, when He says, "Not every one that saith unto Me Lord, Lord, shall enter," &c. "Many shall say to me in that day, Lord, Lord," &c., "then will I profess unto them, I never knew you, depart from me all ye that work iniquity."

Take the following expressions out of a number of similar ones in St. Matthew:--

"I will make you (ignorant fishermen) fishers of men" (implying, I will give you power over souls such as no philosopher or leader of men has had before you). (iv. 21.)

"Blessed are ye when men shall persecute you for My sake." (v. 11.)

"If they have called the master of the house (_i.e._ Jesus) Beelzebub, how much wore shall they call them of His household." (x. 25.)

"He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of me" (so that the holiest of human ties are to give way to His personal demands on the human heart). (x. 37.)

"He that loseth his life for My sake shall find it." (x. 39)

"No man knoweth the Son, but the Father." (xi. 27.)

"In this place is One greater than the temple." (xii. 6.)

"The Son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath Day." (xii. 8.)

"In His (Christ's) Name shall the Gentiles trust." (xii. 21.)

"In the time of harvest I will say to the reapers," _i.e._ the angels. (xiii. 30.)

"The Son of man shall send forth his angels." (xiii. 41.)

"I will give unto Thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven." (xvi. 19.)

"Where two or three are gathered together in My Name there am I in the midst of them." (xviii. 21.)

"He, [God], sent His servants--He sent other servants--Last of all He sent unto them His Son, saying, they will reverence My Son." (xxi. 37.)

These places assert, by implication, the highest dogma respecting the Person of Christ. Who is He Who has such power in heaven and earth that He commands the angels in heaven, and gives the keys of the kingdom of God to His servant on earth? What Son is this Whom none but the Father knoweth, and Who alone knoweth the Father, and Who reveals the Father to whomsoever He will? What Son is this compared with Whom such saints as Moses, David, Elijah, Isaiah, and Daniel are "servants?" Those dogmatic assertions of the first Gospel suggest the question; and the Fourth Gospel gives the full and perfect answer--that He is the Word with God, that He is God, and the Only-begotten of the Father. The Epistles assume the answer where one speaks of "Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought it not a thing to be tenaciously grasped to be equal with God," and another speaks of God's own Son, and another compares Moses the servant with Christ the Son; but the fullest revelation is reserved to the last Gospel. And herein the order of God's dealings is observed, Who gives the lesser revelation to prepare for the fuller and more perfect. The design of the Gospel is to restore men to the image of God by revealing to them God Himself. But, before this can be done, they must be taught what goodness is, their very moral sense must be renewed. Hence the moral discourses of the Synoptics. Till this foundation is laid, first in the world, and then in the soul, the Gospel has nothing to lay hold of and to work upon; so it was laid first in the Sermon on the Mount, which, far beyond all other teaching, stops every mouth and brings in all the world guilty before God; and then the way is prepared for fuller revelations, such as that of the Atonement by the Death of Christ as set forth in the Epistles of St. Peter and St. Paul, and the revelation culminates in the knowledge of the Father and the Son in the Fourth Gospel.

With respect to the assertion of the author of "Supernatural Religion," that the discourses in this Gospel are, as compared with those in the Synoptics, _wholly_ dogmatic, as opposed to moral, the reader may judge of the truth of this by the following sayings of the Fourth Gospel:--

"Every one that doeth evil hateth the light."

"He that doeth truth cometh to the light."

"God is a Spirit, and they who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth."

"They that have done good [shall come forth] to the Resurrection of Life."

"How can ye believe who receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh of God only?"

"If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God."

"The truth shall make you free," coupled with

"Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin."

"If I your Lord and Master have washed your feet, ye ought also to wash one another's feet."

"A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another as I have loved you."

"He that hath My commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me."

These sayings, the reader will perceive, embody the deepest and highest moral teaching conceivable.

One more point remains to be considered--the impossibility that St. John, taking into account his education and intellect, should have been the author of the Fourth Gospel. This is stated in the following passage:--

"The philosophical statements with which the Gospel commences, it will be admitted, are anything but characteristic of the son of thunder, the ignorant and unlearned fisherman of Galilee, who, to a comparatively late period of life, continued preaching in his native country to his brethren of the circumcision.... In the Alexandrian philosophy, everything was prepared for the final application of the doctrine, and nothing is more clear than the fact that the writer of the Fourth Gospel was well acquainted with the teaching of the Alexandrian school, from which he derived his philosophy, and its elaborate and systematic application to Jesus alone indicates a late development of Christian doctrine, which, we maintain, could not have been attained by the Judaistic son of Zebedee." (Vol. ii. p. 415)

Again, in the preceding page:--