[121] I venture to differ absolutely from Dr. Moffatt as to the nature and character of the Fourth Gospel. It is not a history of the career of Jesus, in which narrative would be the most important feature. It states in the form which had gradually taken shape in the mind of John his way of understanding certain scenes -- a very small number of scenes -- in the life of Christ: these episodes in the Saviour's teaching were those that had decided and moulded his own conception of the nature of Christ and his own belief about Christ. He had pondered them, talked of them, and preached them, hoping to make others feel as he felt. The account of the teaching set forth by Jesus is affected by the quality of John's mind; that is admitted; but [122] the account is not discoloured thereby. It is the interpretation of Christ's words by a very great genius after a long series of wonderful experiences. The writer had lived in the company of Jesus. He had been one of the leading spirits in that critical period when the line of growth in the Church was determined. He had gone down into the valley of death, had lived there, rising above its terrors, and had come up alive. Such experiences had placed him at last on a higher plane than that on which ordinary men live.

In this Gospel we have the ripened results of his life and thought. It stands apart and alone, nearly related to the letters of Paul, yet in a class by itself. It is the most wonderful book that ever was written. The rest of the New Testament leads up to it, and it is the completion and the final expression of all that lies in the rest.

Dr. Moffatt seems to regard it as composed with some idea of keeping up the dignity of the Logos though he candidly acknowledges on page 527 that John "is too Christian to have [123] committed the error of depicting an entirely superhuman . . . Jesus". In passing we note the rather comic touch about John's being "too Christian" Dr. Moffatt almost seems to consider John as deliberately working up a picture of a false Jesus, but as "too Christian " to forget altogether that He was a man. Yet in the end of the paragraph he rightly quotes Dr. Inge, that John "is idealizing (showing the highest significance of) a historical figure".

One does not always know when one has pinned the Author down to a definite opinion. He quotes some other person, who says something essentially different and contradicts the real implication of his own statements. ' The highest significance of a historical figure" is what John shows in the Gospel; but it is not what Dr. Moffatt describes him as showing.

We note here the Author's appreciation of things "well said by others," and his talent for quoting them in an interesting and striking fashion (see Section I). They do not always suit each other; but they are always good and often excellent.

[124] A fact that is specially impressive, though unnoted by Dr. Moffatt, is that in the Fourth Gospel the Son is clearly subordinated to the Father, obeying the "Father's word," acting according to His commandment. According to Dr. Moffatt, John lays all the "emphasis on the self-determining authority of Jesus," and "from first to last He is master of His course" (p.526). Jesus however lays all the emphasis on the commandment and word of the Father (VII. 17, X. 18, XII. 49, 50, XIV. 24, 31, etc.).

This relation of Jesus to the Father seems to me to be incompatible with "the self-determining authority of Jesus," of which Dr. Moffatt speaks, or with any intention of maintaining the dignity of the Logos.

Thus we have the antithesis: towards men Jesus speaks with absolute authority and Divine right; towards God He bears Himself as obedient and human. This absolute authority is an idea characteristic of John, who in the Revelation speaks to his Churches with the same absolute and complete authority, because he is speaking the words that have been entrusted to [125] him to transmit, yet with the same absolute obedience to the instructions and orders revealed to him. 1 It is this identity of the underlying and informing spirit that stamps the two books, in spite of serious differences in superficial qualities, as the work of one writer.

The question has already been put in Section XVI whether the Gospel of John is so Greek in feeling, or so suited for the Gentiles, as is commonly assumed. A strongly Semitic spirit seems to me to dominate the Gospel, though it is the spirit of a Semite who had passed through the varied experiences of John. The Gospel of Matthew seems to be most frequently quoted in the second century writers, not the Gospel of John. 2 As Principal Iverach points out emphasis came to be laid on John's Gospel, not during the con- [126] version of the Nations, but only after Christological questions began to be prominent. John's writing was ahead of his own time, and was not elicited by the spirit and the questions and the desires of those among whom be lived. As Jesus did, so John influenced his age. Jesus created new needs: He educated His world:

He aroused in it (as education always does) new susceptibilities, new aspirations, a new sense of want and of sin. Neither the figure of Jesus in the Gospels, nor the Fourth Gospel, was created by the needs of the age. They created those needs by elevating and educating the minds of men.

Another idea, which seems in my judgment wholly external, false and uncomprehending, appears in such phrases as that on page 522, where Dr. Moffatt says that John "has worked in the Pauline antithesis of grace and law and Pauline ideas like God's sending of His Son and God's love". 1 The Author seems to imagine that the [127] Asian Jew (or Jews), who composed this Gospel and gave it the false appearance of being written by an eye-witness recording his own testimony, deliberately set to work to gather together ideas from various sources and to weld them together with extraordinary skill, just as our modern Author has set to work to go through exactly the same process with similar skill.

The critic who studies the Fourth Gospel from this point of view is already at the outset turning in the wrong direction. The farther he proceeds, the more distant is he from the truth. This Gospel has nothing "worked into " it. It is a growth, a vital organism, the expression of a life's experience. That John took from Paul such an idea as God's love or God's sending of His Son could only be laughable. On that supposition the only possible line of argument is that which Dr. Moffatt follows: the writer who had to learn such ideas from Paul, the writer who had not learned them from Jesus, could not [128] possibly be John, but must be some later person or persons, masquerading under the character of a companion of Jesus.

In this way the conclusion which is finally reached is already involved in the initial sup-position. The discussion on the Gospel resolves itself into an answer to the question, "who can have written the Fourth Gospel, and how can he have come to write it, if we start with the assumption that John had no part, share or lot in it?" For the honest student of literature or of history, the value of such a discussion, conducted on such principles, is nought. We look for a fair attempt to answer the previous question, "Did, or did not, John write this Gospel?" and the second question is quietly substituted for the first, while the answer to the first is assumed.

As "Sources" of this Gospel Dr. Moffatt enumerates three besides the Old Testament, viz., Paulinism, Philonism, and Stoicism. I am sure the Author does not really think that out of these four "Sources" the Fourth Gospel can flow. Soon afterwards he admits another [128] "Source," the Synoptic tradition. There is just one " Source"; and that is the personal knowledge, the wide experience, the intellect, the character and the power of John the disciple; but Dr. Moffatt does not take this factor into the reckoning. He wipes out John in a word, p. 315, and then settles the problem of the Fourth Gospel.

FOOTNOTES:

1 "Letters to the Seven Churches," p.79 f.

2 A rough indication of the tendency is seen in the quotations in the "Apostolic Fathers " (mostly Gentiles). Take the lists from the indices. In Lightfoot's edition we have forty-nine from Matthew and only twelve from John (admitting three by Ignatius) ; in the translation which forms part of the Ante-Nicene Library, eighty-four are assigned to Matthew, fifty-two to John a good many of these are dubious, yet the proportion serves as a guide,

3 Grace and law, 1.17, compare Rornans VI. 14; sending of His Son, III.17, compare Gal. IV. 4 f.; God's love, III.16, compare Eph. II.4. I take the Author's quotations, but observe that here (where it is a question of borrowing Pauline ideas) Ephesians is accepted, though in the treatment of Paul’s Epistles Ephesians is rejected.