The Situation in November, 1903. 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.
In November last (1903), when I definitely accepted the invitation so kindly given me by your President, and definitely proposed the subject on which I am about to speak, the criticism of the Fourth Gospel had reached a point which, in my opinion, was further removed from truth and reality than at any period within my recollection. There had followed one another in quick succession four books—or what were practically books—three at least of which were of conspicuous ability, and yet all as it seemed to me seriously wrong both in their conclusions and in their methods. To the year 1901 belong the third and fourth editions, published together, of the justly praised and largely circulated Introduction to the New Testament of Professor Jülicher of Marburg (now translated into English by the accomplished daughter of Mrs. Humphry Ward), the second volume of Encyclopaedia 2Biblica, containing a massive article on ‘John, Son of Zebedee,’ by Professor P. W. Schmiedel of Zürich, and a monograph on the Fourth Gospel by M. Jean Réville of Paris.[1] To these was added in the autumn of last year a complete commentary on the Gospel by the Abbé Loisy, whose more popular writings were at the time attracting so much attention. A profound dissent from the conclusion arrived at in these works was one of my main reasons in offering to discuss the subject before you. The feeling was strong within me that in this portion of the critical field—and I do not know any other so vital—the time was one of trouble and rebuke; that there was a call to me to speak; and that, however inadequate the response to the call might be, some response ought to be attempted.
These were the motives present to my mind in the month of November when I chose my subject. But by the beginning of the year (1904) the position of things by which they had been prompted was very largely changed. The urgency was no longer nearly so great. Two books had appeared, both in the English tongue, which did better than I could hope to do the very thing that I desired—one more limited, the other more extended in its scope, but both maintaining what I believe to be the right cause in what I believe to be the right way. These books 3were The Gospels as Historical Documents, Part I, by Professor V. H. Stanton of Cambridge, and The Character and Authorship of the Fourth Gospel by Dr. James Drummond, Principal of Manchester College. I should be well content to rest the case, as I should wish it to be stated, on these two books, especially the second. But by the time when they appeared I was already committed to my task. As I have said, one of them is limited in its scope; and the other—admirable as it is, and heartily as I agree with its principles as well as with most of its details—is perhaps not quite so complete on all points as it is on some; so that there may still be room for such a brief course of lectures as you ask of me, partly to reinforce points already made, and partly, it may be, in some small degree to supplement them.
What I have been saying amounts to a confession that my purpose is apologetic. I propose to defend the traditional view, or (as an alternative) 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.
(1) We are all really apologists, in the sense that for all of us some conclusions are more acceptable 4than 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.
(2) Even in the strictest science it must not be supposed that the evidence will always point the same way. The prima facie conclusion will not always be necessarily the right one. It cannot be, because it is very possible that it may conflict with some other conclusion that is already well established. A balance has to be struck, and some adjustment has to be attempted.
(3) 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.
5(4) 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 6all 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 7ago, 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 8strike 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.
1. Conservative Opinion.
 
It must not be thought that conservative scholars have shown any weakening of confidence in their cause. Quite the contrary. The latest period, which has seen so much recrudescence of opposition, has also seen not only the old positions maintained by those who had maintained them before, but an important accession to the literature on the Fourth Gospel—from the hand of a veteran indeed, but a veteran who had not before treated the subject quite directly. I refer to Zahn’s monumental Introduction to the New Testament, 2 vols., published in 1899, with which may be taken vol. vi of the same writer’s Forschungen z. Gesch. d. neutest. Kanons published in 1900. It is no disparagement to other workers in the field of Early Christian Literature to say that Dr. Zahn is the most learned of them all. We could indeed count upon our fingers several who know all that really needs to be known; but Dr. Zahn has a singular command of the whole of this material in its remotest recesses. He keeps a keen eye not only on theological literature proper, but on everything that appears in the world of scholarship that might have any bearing upon the questions at issue. An indefatigable industry he shares with more than one of his colleagues; 9but he is surpassed by none in the vigour and energy of mind with which he works up his knowledge.
And yet, with all his masterly erudition, and imposing as is the monument which he has erected of it, I am afraid that I should have to call it in some ways a rather isolated monument. There is something in Dr. Zahn’s work and in his position that is rather solitary. He has indeed his fidus Achates in Professor Haussleiter of Greifswald, and I do not doubt that his influence is widely felt among theologians of the Right. It is an encouragement to all who are like-minded to know that this strong tower of learning and character is with them. But it is hardly to be expected that Dr. Zahn’s writings, especially his greater writings, should ever be popular. Those closely packed pages, with long unbroken paragraphs and few helps to the eye and to readiness of apprehension, are a severe exercise for the most determined student: to any one else they must be forbidding. And when such a student has made his way into them, he is apt to find in them every quality but one. The views expressed on all points, larger and smaller, testify unfailingly to the powers of mind that lie behind them, but the one thing that they do often fail to do is to convince. There has fallen upon the shoulders of Dr. Zahn too much of the mantle of von Hofmann: if he were a little less original, he would carry the reader with him more.
Another veteran scholar, who has continued his laborious and unresting work upon the Fourth Gospel 10during this period, Dr. Bernhard Weiss[2], suffers less from this cause. Not that the writings of Dr. Weiss are much easier (they are a little 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 11reached 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[3].
In this respect writers like Luthardt (died Sept. 21, 1902) and Godet (died Oct. 29, 1900), who are nearer to the old-fashioned orthodoxy, are more satisfactory. Of these writers we have fairly recent editions: Luthardt’s Kurzgefasster Kommentar came out in a second edition in 1894, and a posthumous edition of Godet’s elaborate and weighty work began to appear in 1902. With such books as these we may group the reprint of the commentary by Drs. Milligan and Moulton (Edinburgh, n. d.) and the two commentaries, in The Expositor’s Bible (1891-2) and in The Expositor’s Greek Testament, 1897, by Dr. Marcus Dods.
12In the same connexion may also be mentioned a little group of French writings, headed by Six Le?ons sur les évangiles (Paris, 1897), by Abbé (now Monsignor) Pierre Batiffol—slight, but with a note of real distinction both in style and matter; an Introduction by Abbé Jacquier (Histoire des Livres du N. T., Paris, 1903), and a commentary by Père Calmes (Paris and Rome, 1904)—both (as it would seem) sufficiently competent and modern but not specially remarkable.
Besides these there are three works on the conservative side which English-speaking readers at least can never forget—the searching examination of the external evidence by Dr. Ezra Abbot (Boston, 1880, reprinted in Critical Essays, 1888); articles in The Expositor for the early months of 1890 by Bp. Lightfoot (reprinted with other matter bearing upon the subject in Biblical Essays, 1893); and the classical commentary on the Gospel (first published as part of the Speaker’s Commentary) by Dr. Westcott. Of these three works two stand out as landmarks in theological literature; Dr. Lightfoot’s papers were somewhat slighter and less permanent in form, consisting in part of Notes for Lectures, though they bear all the marks of his lucid and judicious scholarship, and though they are I think still specially useful for students.
An Englishman addressing an American audience must needs pause for a moment over the first of these three names[4]. It is the more incumbent on me to do 13this 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 14that 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 (with the article on Origen) the best and most characteristic work that its author bequeathed to the world.
In this connexion I must needs mention another American scholar and divine, to whom I am also bound by personal ties of affectionate regard—the veteran Dr. George Park Fisher of Yale. It is matter for thankfulness that he has been able to give to the world, carefully brought up to date, a new edition of his Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief (1902). The pages devoted to the Fourth Gospel are, like the rest, full of knowledge and suffused with sweet reasonableness and mild wisdom. Dr. Fisher’s attitude is perhaps not exactly that of the younger men, but it certainly is not any less near to the ideal. If I were a tutor or professor in an American seminary, there is no book that I should more warmly recommend to my pupils. To imbibe its spirit would be the best training they could have. I should think it especially excellent as a starting-point for further study. It would implant nothing that would have to be unlearnt.
Dr. Ezra Abbot has in many ways found a worthy 15inheritor 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, (1) that the author of the Gospel was a Jew; (2) that he was a Jew of Palestine; (3) that he was a contemporary; and (4) 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 Dobschütz, 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 16too frequent pre-conceived opinions, on the critical side too, which are all the more obstinately maintained the more unfounded they are[5].’
Would that all critical writers were so clear-sighted and so candid!
2. Mediating Theories.
 
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 (180-90) 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 17too 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[6], 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[7]’ the high priest (John xviii. 15); and he seems to have had special information as to what went on at meetings of the Sanhedrin (vii. 45-52, xi. 47-53, xii. 10 ff.). 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’ (Eus. H. E. v. 24. 2 ff.). This John is claimed as one of the ‘great lights’ of the Churches of Asia.
18The 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 Schürer, 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.
One of the very best of these attempts is by Professor von Dobschütz, of Jena, in his brightly written Probleme des apostolischen Zeitalters[8] (Leipzig, 1904), to which reference has been made. Dr. von Dobschütz goes with Delff (whom he does not mention) so far as to describe the fourth Evangelist as a native of Jerusalem, and to identify him with John of Ephesus. He does not, however (at least explicitly), identify him with the 19beloved disciple; and he treats him as rather the figure behind the author, than the actual author, of the Gospel. He also, I cannot but think, makes the mistake of questioning the unity of the Gospel. Probably, if we had his views in full—which as yet we have not—they would come under the next head, and not under that of which we are now speaking.
In Great Britain a theory similar to Harnack’s has found expression in Dr. James Moffatt’s Historical New Testament (Edinburgh, 1901), and in other quarters. In America, it is represented by Professor McGiffert, and, more or less nearly, by Professor Bacon. Of the latter I hope to say a word presently; the former, if I might hazard the opinion, has not yet said his last word on the Fourth Gospel. While I recognize in what he has written many sound and true observations, there seem to be two strains in his thought which are not as yet fully harmonized.
Even Professor Harnack, whose influence is greatest, has not, I venture to think, been quite consistent in the view that he has taken. The Gospel may be assigned to the Presbyter or to some other disciple, and yet have different degrees of value ascribed to it as a historical document. In this respect it seems to me that Dr. Harnack has rather blown hot and cold: in his Chronologie d. altchristlichen Litteratur he blew hot; in his more recent lectures (E. Tr. What is Christianity? p. 19 f.), and, if I am not mistaken, on Monday last he blew cold[9]. A good deal turns on the description of 20John the Presbyter by Papias. In the text of the extract as it stands both John the Presbyter and Aristion are called ‘disciples of the Lord.’ There is some tendency among critical writers to get rid of these words as a gloss; if they are retained, they may be taken in a stricter or a laxer sense; but if they really cover a relation such as that of the ‘beloved disciple,’ there could not be a better guarantee of authenticity.
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.
3. Partition Theories.
 
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 21on 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[10]. But the most systematic and important experiments in this direction are those of Dr. Wendt and Dr. Briggs.
After a preliminary sketch of his theory in the first edition of his Lehre Jesu (1886), i. 215-342, Dr. H. H. Wendt brought out in 1900 an elaborate and fully argued analysis of the Gospel, carefully dissecting each section and assigning the parts either to the Apostolic author or to the later redactor. Approximately similar results were obtained independently with a less amount of published argument, by Dr. C. A. Briggs in his General Introduction to the Study of Holy Scripture (1899), p. 327, and in his New Light on the Life of Jesus (1904), pp. 140-58. A like theory has been put forward by Professor Soltau (Zeitschrift f. d. neutest. Wissenschaft, 1901, pp. 140-9).
22In 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[11].’
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 23in 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 (e. g. ii. 11, iv. 54, xxi. 14). And some incidents seem clearly to hang together which Dr. Briggs has divided[12] (e. g. i. 29, 35, 43, where the connexion is natural historically, as well as expressly noted by the Evangelist).
I fear that the learned Professor is seeking in a 24wrong 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 (I believe) 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.
The two articles lately contributed to the Hibbert Journal (i. 511 ff., ii. 323 ff.)[13] are highly original, very incisive, and exceedingly clever. My objection to them would be that they are too clever. Professor Bacon has been to Germany, and learnt his lesson there too well. At least I find myself differing profoundly from his whole method of argument. The broad simple arguments that seem to me really of importance (Irenaeus, Heracleon, Polycrates, Tatian, Clement of Alexandria) he puts aside, and then he spends his strength in making bricks with a minimum 25of straw, and even with no straw at all (the argument from silence).
4. Uncompromising Rejection.
 
I began by saying that the tendency towards rapprochement which was characteristic of the eighties and nineties, gave way towards the end of the century, and has been succeeded in recent years by conspicuous instances of uncompromising denial, at once of the apostolic authorship of the Gospel and of its historical character. The names of Jülicher, Schmiedel, Wrede, Wernle, Jean Réville and Loisy are sufficient evidence of this.
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.
It may be observed in passing that Dr. H. J. Holtzmann of Strassburg should be carefully distinguished from his younger cousin Oscar Holtzmann, who is now Professor at Giessen. Dr. Oscar Holtzmann published a monograph on the Fourth Gospel in 1887, and he has since brought out a Life of Christ 26which has lately been translated into English. The two cousins occupy much the same general position; the younger has not the distinction of the elder, but he compensates to some extent by greater clearness and definiteness in the expression of his views.
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[14].’ He would place the first draft of the Gospel about the year 135, the last chapter and the First Epistle about 150[15]. 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 (who though a Swiss Professor is, I believe, German by birth) is the eldest, and he is not yet quite fifty-three: Jülicher, 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 27has 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, Jülicher 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. Jülicher 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.
The two French writers also have something in common, though they belong to different communions. We are not surprised to find that both have an easy grace of style, to which we might in both cases also 28give the epithet ‘airy,’ because both are fond of speaking in generalities which are not always in the closest contact with facts; both are thorough-going allegorists, and regard the whole Gospel as a pure product of ideas and not literal history. In spite of their difference of communion, M. Loisy is on the critical side of his mind as essentially rationalist as his Protestant confrère, though he brings back, by an act of faith which some of us would call a tour de force, in the region of dogmatics what he had taken away in the field of criticism.
It seems to me that there is one word that requires to be said, though I am anxious not to have my motive misunderstood in saying it. I do not wish to do so in the least ad invidiam. Controversy is, I hope, no longer conducted in that manner. I speak simply of an objective fact which has too important a bearing on the whole question to be ignored.
When I read an argument by Professor Schürer, and try to reply to it, I am conscious that we are arguing (so to speak) in the same plane. I feel that the attitude of my opponent to the evidence is substantially the same as my own. Whatever the presuppositions may be deep down in his mind, he at any rate keeps them in abeyance. No doubt we differ widely enough as to detail; but in principle I should credit my opponent with an attitude that is really judicial, that tries to keep dogmatic considerations, or questions of ultimate belief as much in suspense as possible, and to weigh the arguments for and against in equal scales. But when I pass over to the younger 29theologians, I no longer feel that this is so; we seem to be arguing, not in the same, but in different planes. There is a far-reaching presupposition not merely far back but near the front of their minds. I cannot regard them as fellow seekers in the sense that we are both doing our best to ascertain how far the events of the Gospel history really transcended common experience. I take it that on this point their minds are made up before they begin to put pen to paper.
They all start with the ‘reduced’ conception of Christianity current in so many quarters, that is akin to the ancient Ebionism or Arianism. But so far as they do this their verdict as to the Fourth Gospel is determined for them beforehand. The position is stated with great frankness by Mr. Conybeare:
‘It may indeed be said that if Athanasius had not had the Fourth Gospel to draw texts from, Arius would never have been confuted. Had the fathers of the third, fourth, and fifth centuries not known this Gospel, or not embraced it as authentic, the Church would have remained semi-Ebionite, and the councils of Nice and Ephesus would never have taken place[16].’
This does not indeed quite correspond to the facts. To make it do so, we should have to blot out St. Paul, and other parts of the New Testament, as well as St. John. But just so far as the reasoning holds good, it is obvious that we may invert it. If a writer starts with a conception of Christianity that is ‘semi-Ebionite’ or ‘semi-Arian,’ he is bound at all costs to rule out the Fourth Gospel, not only as a dogmatic authority, but as a record of historical fact.
30Another characteristic is common to the writers of the School of which we are speaking. The complexity of a critical hypothesis very rarely stands in the way of its adoption; but a very little psychological complexity acts as a deterrent. For instance, after quoting from B. Weiss some rather exaggerated language as to the freedom used by the evangelist in reproducing the discourses, Schmiedel goes on thus:
‘As compared with such a line of defence, there is a positive relief from an intolerable burden as soon as the student has made up his mind to give up any such theory as that of the “genuineness” of the Gospel, as also of its authenticity in the sense of its being the work of an eye-witness who meant to record actual history[17].’
So far from being an ‘intolerable burden,’ it seems to me that Weiss’ theory is not only in itself perfectly natural, nay inevitable, but that it is also specially helpful as enabling us to account at one and the same time for the elements that are, and those that are not, strictly genuine in the report of the discourses.
Jülicher writes to much the same effect as Schmiedel; and the passage which follows is indeed very characteristic of his habit of mind:
‘The defenders of the “genuineness” of the Gospel indeed for the most part allow that John has carried out a certain idealization with the discourses of Jesus, that in writing he has found himself in a slight condition of ecstasy, in short, that his presentation of his hero is something more than historical. With such mysticism or phraseology science can have no concern; in the Johannean version of Christ’s discourses form and 31substance cannot be separated, the form to be assigned to the later writer, and the substance to Jesus Himself: sint ut sunt aut non sint!...’
To please Professor Jülicher a picture must be all black or all white; he is intolerant of half-shades that pass from the one into the other. And no doubt there are some problems for the treatment of which such a habit is an advantage, but hardly those which have to do with living human personalities.
The French writers, like the German, have a certain resemblance to each other. To some of these points I shall have to come back in detail later. I will only note for the present that they are both allegorists of an extreme kind. I would just for the present commend to both a passage of Wernle’s:
‘This conception, however, of the Fourth Gospel as a philosophical work, to which the Alexandrines first gave currency, and which is still widely held to-day, is a radically wrong one. John’s main idea, the descent of the Son of Man to reveal the Father, is unphilosophical.... So, too, the Johannine miracles are never intended to be taken in a purely allegorical sense. The fact of their actual occurrence is the irrefragable proof of God’s appearance upon earth[18].’
If the miracles of the Fourth Gospel were facts there was some point in the constant appeals that the Gospel makes to them; but there would be no point if these appeals were to a set of didactic fictions.
Within the last few months a monograph has appeared, which from its general tendency may be 32ranged with the works of which we have been speaking, though in its method it rather stands by itself, E. Schwartz, Ueber den Tod der S?hne Zebedaei (Berlin, 1904). Dr. Schwartz is the editor of Eusebius in the Berlin series, and his point of view is primarily philological. He writes in a disagreeable spirit, at once carping and supercilious. The only generous words in his paper are a few in reference to the Church historian. He exemplifies copiously most of the procedure specially deprecated in these lectures. His monograph has, however, a value of its own, from the precise and careful way in which he has collected and discusses the material bearing upon the history of the Evangelist and of the Gospel in the first and earlier part of the second century.
5. Recent Reaction.
 
Far as I conceive that all these writers have travelled away from the truth, they followed each other in such quick succession that it would have been strange if public opinion had not been affected by them. To one who himself firmly believed in St. John’s authorship of the Gospel, and in its value as a record of the beginning of Christianity, the outlook last autumn seemed as, I said, very black. A single book dispelled the clouds and cleared the air. Dr. Drummond’s Character and Authorship of the Fourth Gospel is of special value to the defenders of the Gospel for two reasons: (1) because it is the work of one who cannot in any case be accused of dogmatic prepossessions, as it would to all appearance be more favourable 33to his general position that the Gospel should not be genuine or authentic; and (2) because the whole work is something more than a defence of the Gospel; it is a striking application to a particular problem of principles of criticism in many respects differing from those at present in vogue, and at the same time, as I cannot but think, a marked improvement on them.
To these points must be added the inherent qualities of the book itself—the thorough knowledge with which it is written, its evident sincerity and effort to get at realities, its nervous directness and force of style, its judicial habit of weighing all that is to be said on both sides.
Perhaps the most important and the most far-reaching of all the corrections of current practice is a passage in the text with the note appended to it upon the argument from silence. The text is dealing with the common assumption that because Justin quotes less freely from the Fourth Gospel than from the other three, therefore he must have ascribed to it a lower degree of authority.
‘But why, then, it may be asked, has Justin not quoted the Fourth Gospel at least as often as the other three? I cannot tell, any more than I can tell why he has never named the supposed authors of his Memoirs, or has mentioned only one of the parables, or made no reference to the Apostle Paul, or nowhere quoted the Apocalypse, though he believed it to be an apostolic and prophetical work. His silence may be due to pure accident, or the book may have seemed less adapted to his apologetic purposes; but considering how many things there are about which 34he is silent, we cannot admit that the argumentum a silentio possesses in this case any validity.’
To this is added a note which raises the whole general question:
‘An instructive instance of the danger of arguing from what is not told is furnished by Theophilus of Antioch. He does not mention the names of the writers of the Gospels, except John; he does not tell us anything about any of them; he says nothing about the origin or the date of the Gospels themselves, or about their use in the Church. He quotes from them extremely little, though he quotes copiously from the Old Testament. But most singular of all, in a defence of Christianity he tells us nothing about Christ Himself; if I am not mistaken, he does not so much as name Him or allude to Him; and, if the supposition were not absurd, it might be argued with great plausibility that he cannot have known anything about Him. For he undertakes to explain the origin of the word Christian; but there is not a word about Christ, and his conclusion is ?με?? το?του ε?νεκεν καλο?μεθα ?τι χρι?μεθα ?λαιον θεο? (Ad Autol. i. 12). In the following chapter, when he would establish the doctrine of the resurrection, you could not imagine that he had heard of the resurrection of Christ; and instead of referring to this, he has recourse to the changing seasons, the fortune of seeds, the dying and reappearance of the moon, and the recovery from illness. We may learn from these curious facts that it is not correct to say that a writer knows nothing of certain things, simply because he had not occasion to refer to them in his only extant writing: or even because he does not mention them when his subject would seem naturally to lead him to do so[19].’
The remarkable thing in this note is not only its independence and sagacity, but more particularly the 35trained sagacity which brings to bear upon the argument just those examples which are most directly in point and most telling.
Professor Bacon, in the first of his recent articles (Hibbert Journal, i. 513), good-naturedly defends the present writer from the charge of 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 made of the argument, and that too much weight is attached to it. There are two main objections to the way in which the argument is often handled. (1) The critic does not ask himself what is silent—what extent of material does the argument cover? Often this extent is so small that, on the doctrine of chances, no inference can rightly be drawn from it. And (2) experience shows that the argument is often most fallacious. Dr. Drummond’s examples of this will I hope become classical[20].
Dr. Drummond’s book contains a multitude of 36passages like the above and exhibiting the same qualities. Many of them are a vindication of popular judgement as against the far-fetched arguments of professed scholars. The excellence of his method seems to me to consist largely in this, that he begins by making for himself an imaginative picture of the conditions with which he has to deal, not only of the particular piece of evidence which shows upon the surface, but of the inferential background lying behind it; that he thus escapes the danger of the doctrinaire who argues straight from the one bit of evidence before him to the conclusion; and that he also constantly tests the process of his argument by reference to parallel conditions and circumstances in our own day which we can verify for ourselves.
If I were to express an opinion on the characteristic positions which Dr. Drummond takes up, I think it would be that, whereas he seems to me to overstate a little—but only a little—the external evidence for the Gospel, he at the same time somewhat understates the internal evidence. He gives his decision against the Fourth Gospel sometimes where I cannot help thinking that a writer of equal impartiality would not necessarily do so. It would also be unfair if I did 37not say that his general estimate of the historical trustworthiness of the Gospel is lower than I should form myself.
I have spoken of Dr. Drummond’s book first because of its importance as a landmark in the study of the Gospel, and because it covers the whole of the ground with which we are concerned. But another book preceded it by a week or two in the date of its publication, which as yet deals only with a limited portion of this ground, and yet which, unless I am mistaken, presents qualities similar in general character to those of Dr. Drummond, though perhaps the expression of them is rather less striking. I refer to Dr. Stanton’s The Gospels as Historical Documents, Part I. Dr. Stanton’s book is planned on a larger scale than Dr. Drummond’s in so far as it includes all four Gospels; but as yet he has only dealt with the external evidence bearing upon their early use. An important part of the volume is naturally that devoted to the Fourth Gospel. Like Dr. Drummond, Dr. Stanton also presents a marked contrast as to method with the group of continental writers that we have just been considering. It was therefore a matter of special interest that his book should be reviewed a few months after its appearance by Dr. Schmiedel in the Hibbert Journal (ii. 607-12). It is not very surprising that Dr. Stanton was moved to reply to his critic in the next number (pp. 803-7). There is a direct antithesis of contrasted and competing principles.
It may naturally be thought that I am a biased 38judge in such a case; but I confess that it seems to me that the advantage is very much on the side of my countryman. He shows without much difficulty that Dr. Schmiedel has seriously misrepresented him. Indeed one might say that the critic’s representation of views and arguments was not so much derived from the book he was reviewing as from his own internal consciousness of what might be expected from an apologist. This, however, is the personal, and more ephemeral, aspect of the controversy. It is of more general interest to note the critical assumptions made in the course of the review. The writer admits that his opponent ‘not unfrequently gives the impression of being animated by the sincere resolve to maintain nothing save only what can be assumed with certainty.’ ‘With certainty’ is characteristic; the writer attributes to Dr. Stanton (in this case) what he would have aimed at doing himself. In the eyes of the school to which Dr. Schmiedel belongs, I will not say exactly that all the data of which they approve are certain, but they are treated very much as if they were; in building up an argument upon them, possibilities easily and imperceptibly glide into probabilities, and probabilities into certainties. Dr. Stanton disclaims the idea of dealing with certainties; he would only profess to adduce facts on a nicely graduated scale of probability, which by their cumulative weight went some way to carry conviction.
‘Concerning Barn. iv. 14, [Dr. Stanton] says (p. 33) with justice that this is our earliest instance of the citation of a saying of Christ as “scripture.” 39In the year A.D. 130, the date upon which he rightly fixes for the composition of the Epistle of Barnabas, this estimate of the Gospels would have been in the highest degree surprising, since it is not until A.D. 170 that the next examples of such an estimate make their appearance.’ Dr. Schmiedel goes on (1) to have recourse to the accustomed expedient of suggesting that Barnabas is quoting, not from the words of the Gospel which are identical, but from a passage in 4 Ezra which is quite different; and (2) if that expedient fails, to represent the quotation as a ‘winged word,’ though it is expressly introduced by the formula ‘it is written.’
However, it is not of either of these points that I wish to speak, but rather to call attention to what Dr. Schmiedel thinks would be ‘in the highest degree surprising.’ Why so surprising? What substantial ground have we for expecting anything else? In the first place Dr. Schmiedel begins by exaggerating the significance of the phrase ‘it is written,’ as though on its first extant occurrence it would necessarily imply full canonical authority. And then he goes on to lay stress upon what is really little more than the absence of literature. If we take the whole extant Christian literature between the years 130 and 170 A.D., it would not fill more than a thin octavo volume, and by far the greater part of that is taken up with external controversy. What sort of argument can be drawn from such a state of things as to the exact estimate which Christians formed of their own sacred books? No valid argument can be 40drawn from it either way, and it is far better simply to confess our ignorance. It is reasonable to suppose that there was a gradual development in the process by which the Gospels attained to the position that we call canonical; but the data to which we have access do not allow us to map out its stages with any precision.
It seems to me to be a fundamental defect in the reasoning of Dr. Schmiedel and his school that they fail to see that the real question is, not simply, What is the evidence for this or that proposition? but, What is the relation which the extant evidence bears to the whole body of that which once existed, and how far can we trust the inferences drawn from it?
I pass over some quite unwarrantable assumptions which Dr. Schmiedel makes as to the apologetic point of view: such as that, ‘if there can be shown to be resemblance between a canonical and a non-canonical writing, the former is uniformly to be regarded as the earlier’; and that ‘Apocryphal Gospels would not have been used in the influential circles of the Church.’ Apologists would lay down nothing of the kind, though in a certain number of concrete cases they may think that the priority of a canonical to a non-canonical writing does not need arguing, and though they may also think that in some particular case the evidence for the use of an Apocryphal Gospel by a Church writer is insufficient.
Dr. Schmiedel easily satisfies himself that he has refuted an argument bearing on the Fourth Gospel. Professor Stanton had rightly maintained, ‘There 41must have been good grounds for believing that the Fourth Gospel was founded upon the apostolic testimony in order to overcome the prejudice that would be created by the contrasts between it and the Synoptics.’ He has shown, I think, in his reply, that the instances alleged against this are not relevant, and also that the part played by the two ideas of Apostolicity and Catholicity in the forming of the Canon are not quite correctly stated by his opponent. But even if they had been as stated the original contention would still have been left standing, because agreement with previously accepted writings was part of the idea of Catholicity. It is a sound argument to say that a work so independent as the Fourth Gospel must have come with good credentials to obtain the place which it held.
Lastly, when Dr. Schmiedel speaks so imposingly of ‘the silence of the entire first half of the second century in regard to the sojourn of the Apostle John in Ephesus,’ I would once more ask him what this silence amounts to. What is the total bulk of the literature on which the argument is based? Is it possible to draw from it an inference of any value at all[21]?