John 1:18

Ver. 18. “ No one has ever seen God; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has revealed him to us. ”

The absence of a particle between John 1:17-18 is the proof of a very intimate relation of thought or feeling between the two. The second becomes thus, as it were, an energetic reaffirmation of the preceding. And in fact, what is this truth born for the earth in the person of Jesus Christ, according to John 1:17, if it is not the perfect revelation of God described in John 1:18 ?

The true knowledge of God is not the result of philosophical investigation; our reason can seize only some isolated rays of the divine revelation shed abroad in nature and in conscience. It does not succeed in making of them a whole, because it cannot ascend to the living focus from which they emanate. The theocratic revelations themselves, which were granted to the saints of the Old Covenant, contained only an approximate manifestation of the divine being, as the Lord caused Moses to understand, at the very moment when He was about to make him behold something of His glory: “Thou shalt see my back; but my face shall not be seen” (Exo 33:23). This central and living knowledge of God which is the only true knowledge, and which has as its symbol sight, was not possessed by any man, either within or outside of the theocracy, not even by Moses.

The word God is placed at the beginning, although it is the object, because it is the principal idea. One can know everything else, not God! The perfect ἑώρακε, has seen, denotes a result, rather than an act, which would be indicated by the aorist: “No one is in possession of the sight of God, and consequently no one can speak of Him de visu. ” The full truth does not exist on earth before or outside of Jesus Christ; it truly came through Him. The Alexandrian reading God only-begotten, μονογενὴς θεός, or, according to א, the (ὁ) only-begotten God, long since abandoned, has found in Hort a learned and sagacious defender, who has gained the assent of two such scholars as Harnack and Weiss. The received reading has been defended, with at least equal erudition and skill, by the American eritic, Ezra Abbot, in an article in the Bibliotheca Sacra, Oct., 1861, and in a more recent essay in the Unitarian Review, 1875. The result of these studies with reference to the external testimonies, is:

1. That the two readings must have already co-existed in the second century. It is probable that both of the two are found already in Irenaeus. The received reading was read in the Itala and by Tertullian; the other, that of the Alexandrian authorities, by Clement of Alex.;

2. That the latter is found only in the Egyptian documents (Fathers, versions and manuscripts), and that the documents of all other countries present the received reading; thus for the West, the Itala, Tertullian and all the Latin Fathers without exception, the only exception which has been cited, that of Hilary, is only apparent, as Abbot proves: in Syria and Palestine, the ancient Syriac translation of Cureton, Eusebius, Chrysostom, Theodoret, etc.; and, what is more surprising, in Egypt Athanasius himself, the most inflexible defender of the divinity of Christ.

Does it not seem to follow from this, that the Alexandrian reading is due to a purely local influence, which goes back even to the second century? As to internal reasons, as favoring the Alexandrian reading, stress may be laid upon its unique and wholly strange character; for it is said to be more improbable that it should be replaced by the received reading, which has a more simple and common character, than that the contrary could have taken place. But it may also be asked whether a reading which does not find its counterpart in any writing of the New Testament, and in any passage of John himself, does not become by reason of this fact very suspicious. To account for its rejection it is enough that an explanation be given as to how it may have originated and been introduced, and Abbot does this by reminding us how early readings like the following were originated: the Logos-God, which is found in the second century in Melito and Clement of Alexandria, and the epithet θεοτόκος, mother of God, given to Mary. Hence, readings like these: the body of God, instead of the body of Jesus, John 19:40, in A; or all were waiting for God, instead of all were waiting for Him (Jesus), Luke 8:40, in; or the Church of God which He purchased with His own blood, instead of the Church of the Lord, etc. (Acts 20:28), in א and B. It is curious that it is precisely these same two MSS., which especially support the reading God, instead of Son, in our passage. It would be difficult, on the other hand, to explain the dogmatic reason which could have substituted here the word Son for God. The Arians themselves, as Abbot has well shown, had no interest in this change; for they were able to make use of the Alexandrian reading to prove that the word God could be taken in a weakened sense, and designate a divine being of second rank, inferior to the Father; it was for them the best means of getting rid of the word God applied to the Word in John 1:1.

So Athanasius himself does not hesitate to use the received reading; as for ourselves, we cannot hesitate. The absence of any parallel to the Alexandrian reading and its very pronounced doctrinal savor seem to us, independently of external criticism, sufficient reasons for rejecting it. It is true that Hort and Weiss urge against the received reading the article ὁ, the, before the title only-begotten Son, for the reason that Jesus, not having been yet called by this name in the Prologue, could not be thus designated with the definite article. This objection falls to the ground through the true explanation of John 1:14, where the words only-begotten Son cannot denote an only-begotten Son in general, as Weiss will have it, and can only be applied to the Word made flesh. Moreover, even without this preceding expression, no reader, when reading the words: “The only-begotten Son has revealed him to us” could for an instant doubt concerning whom John meant to speak.

The character of complete revelator ascribed here to Jesus is explained by His intimate and personal relation with God Himself, such as is described in the following words: who is in the bosom of the Father. The participle ὁ ὤν, who is, is connected in a very close logical relation with the following verb: He has revealed. As Baumlein says, it is equivalent to ὅτι ὤν, inasmuch as He is; thereupon rests His competency to reveal.

The figure which John employs might be derived from the position of two nearest guests at a banquet (John 13:23); but it seems rather to be borrowed from the position of a son seated on his father's knees and resting on his bosom. It is the emblem of a complete opening of the heart; he who occupies this place in relation to God must know the most secret thoughts of the Father and His inmost will. The word κόλπος, bosom, would by itself prove that the mystery of the Son's existence is a matter, not of metaphysics, but of love, comp. John 17:24: “Thou didst love me before the foundation of the world.” The omission of the words ὁ ὤν in א is a negligence condemned by all the other MSS. Must we, with Hofmann, Luthardt and Weiss, refer the words: “who is in the bosom of the Father” to the present glorified condition of Jesus? But the heavenly state which Jesus now enjoys cannot explain how He was able to reveal the Father perfectly while He was on the earth. We must then, in that case, refer the revealing act of Jesus to the sending of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, which is implied by nothing in the text. Or is John thinking especially of the divine condition of the Logos before His coming to the earth? But that would be to say, that the knowledge of God which Jesus communicated to men was drawn from the recollections of His anterior existence. We cannot admit this. In fact, everything which Jesus revealed on earth concerning God passed through His human consciousness (see on John 3:13, John 6:46). I agree, therefore, in opinion rather with Lucke, that this present participle ὁ ὤν, who is, refers to the permanent relation of the Son to the Father through all the stages of His divine, human and divine-human existence. He ever presses anew with an equal intimacy into the bosom of the Father, who reveals Himself to Him in a manner suitable to His position and His work at every moment. The form εἰς κόλπον, instead of ἐν κόλπῳ (the prep. of motion, instead of that of rest), expresses precisely this active and living relation. The bosom of the Father is not a place, but a life; one is there only in virtue of a continual moral act.

If John substitutes εἰς here for πρός of John 1:1, this arises simply from the difference between the object κόλπος, the bosom, which denotes a thing, and the object θεόν, God, which designated a person. The word τοῦ πατρός, of the Father, is not merely a paraphrase of the name of God; this term is chosen in order to make the essential contents of the revelation brought by the Son understood. He manifested God as Father, and for this He did not need to give speculative teaching; it was enough for Him to show Himself as Son. To show in Himself the Son, was the simplest means of showing in God the Father. Thus, by His filial relation with God, Jesus has initiated earth into the most profound secret of heaven, a secret which the angels themselves perchance did not yet sound completely. Outside of this revelation of the divine character, every idea which man forms of God is incomplete or imaginary in a certain measure, an idol, as John says (1Jn 5:20).

The pronoun ἐκεῖνος, he, has here, as ordinarily in John, a pregnant and even exclusive sense: “he and he alone!” It is impossible to explain the use of this pronoun, as Weiss would do, by the contrast with a nearer subject, which would be the Father Himself. The employment of the word ἐξηγεῖσθαι to explain, to make known, is often explained by the technical use of it which was made by the Greeks, with whom it denoted the explanation of divine things by men charged with this office, the ἐξηγηταί. The simplicity of John's style hardly harmonizes with this comparison, which, besides, is not necessary in order to the explanation of the word. The apostle uses it absolutely, without giving it any complement. It is to the act, rather than its object, that he desires to draw attention, as in the first clause of John 1:16 (we have received): “He has declared; really declared!” Every one understands what is the object of this teaching: God first, then in Him all the rest. To reveal God, is to unveil everything.

With this 18th verse we evidently come back to the starting-point of the Prologue, to the idea of John 1:1. Through faith in Christ as only-begotten Son, the believer finds again access to that eternal Word from whom sin (the darkness, John 1:5) had held him apart. He obtains anew, in the form of grace and truth (John 1:16-18), those treasures of life and light, which the Word has spread abroad in the world (John 1:4). Sin's work is vanquished; the communion with heaven is re-established. God is possessed, is known; the destiny of man begins again to be realized. The infinite dwells in the finite and acts through it; the abyss is filled up.

At the same time, these last words of the Prologue form, as Keil says, the transition to the narrative which is about to begin. How did Jesus Christ reveal the Father? This is what the story to which the apostle passes from John 1:19 onward is to relate.

General Considerations on the Prologue.

I. The Plan.

Three thoughts sum up this remarkable passage and determine its progress: The Logos (John 1:1-4); the Logos unrecognized (John 1:5-11); the Logos received (John 1:12-18). Between the first and second subjects John 1:5 forms the transition, in the same manner as John 1:12-13 form that between the second and third. Finally, the last verses of the Prologue bring back the mind of the reader to the first words of the passage.

This plan seems to us the only one which is harmony with the apostle's thought. We shall convince ourselves of this by recognizing, in the sequel of this study, the fact that the entire narrative is founded upon the three factors which have been indicated and that its phases are determined by the appearance, and the successive preponderance of these three essential elements of the history.

II. The Intention of the Prologue.

There are three very different ways of viewing this subject.

I. The Tubingen School think that the author proposed to himself to acclimate in the Church the doctrine of the Logos. Finding that speculative idea in the systems of his time, he wished to build the bridge between the Church and the reigning philosophy. And as, in his whole narrative, he had no other aim except to realize this design by illustrating this dominant idea of the Logos, by means of certain acts and discourses more fictitious than real, he did not hesitate to inscribe at the beginning of his book the great thought which forms its synthesis namely, that of an eternal being intermediate between the infinite God and the finite world.

If it is so, it must be acknowledged that the theorem of the Logos is the end of the work, and that the person of Jesus is nothing more than the means. Is this, indeed, the meaning of this Prologue? Who can think, in comparing John 1:1 and John 1:14, that the second of these verses is there for the sake of the first, and not the reverse? No; the author does not wish to take us on a metaphysical walk in the depths of Divinity, in order to discover there the being called Logos; he wishes to make us feel all the grandeur and all the value of the person and work of Jesus Christ, by showing us in this historical personage the manifestation of the divine Logos. It is not the fact of the incarnation (John 1:14) which is at the service of the thesis of the Logos (John 1:1); it is this thesis which prepares the way for the account of this capital fact of human history. By nothing is the opposition between the speculative intention which Baur ascribes to the Prologue (as to the whole Gospel) and the real aim of this passage, better indicated, than by the explanation which that scholar is obliged to give of John 1:14. To that verse, which is the centre of the whole passage, Baur gives an altogether subordinate place. John does not mean that the Logos becomes incarnate, but simply that He is made visible by a kind of theophany. This fact, according to Baur, has no value for the accomplishing of salvation; it serves only to make us perceive more clearly all its sweetness. This explanation is sufficient to show the contradiction between the thought of the Tubingen professor and that of the evangelist.

II. Reuss avoids such an exaggeration; he understands that the historical person of Jesus is the end and that the theory of the Logos can, in any case, be only a means. The author, in possession of the Gospel faith, seeks to give a rational account to himself of his new belief, and for this purpose he undertakes to draw, outside of the Gospel, from the contemporary philosophy an idea capable of becoming for him the key of Jesus' history, and of raising his faith and that of his readers to the full height of religious speculation. Our Prologue is the initiation of the Church into the true Gnosis. This is also the result of Lucke's study. To explain the Prologue thus, whether one wills it or not, is to give up the authenticity of the entire work. For it is impossible to ascribe to an apostle of Jesus such an amalgam of contemporary metaphysics with the conception of the person of his Master. So the author of this explanation has ended, after much hesitation, by placing himself in the number of the adversaries of the authenticity. By a fatality he was obliged to come to this point. There was, indeed, for the Apostle John, if he was really desirous to deposit in a written work the theory of the Logos, which had thrown a clear light for him upon his own faith, a simple means of establishing for the Church this new view. It was that of setting it before the Church in an epistle; there was no need of using for this purpose the means very equivocal in a moral point of view of a Gospel narrative.

Reuss regards the procedure which he attributes to the author as unconscious on his part and, consequently, as innocent. But the fact that the author all along avoids putting the word Logos into the mouth of Jesus, clearly proves that he acted with reflection, and that he had the consciousness of not having this name from the lips of Him to whom he applied it. As to the innocence of this matter, history has passed judgment, and its judgment is severe. History says, indeed, that among all the writings of the New Testament, the Gospel of John and particularly the Prologue have especially contributed to establish in the Church Jesus-worship, that is to say from the standpoint of those who think after this manner a remnant of paganism. Julian the Apostate could well say: “This John who declared that the Word was made flesh must be regarded as the source of all the evil.” This is the result of John's speculative desires; he has thrown into the Gospel the leaven of idolatry, corrupted the worship in spirit and truth, and even troubled at its source the purity of the Christian life, for eighteen centuries. Only at the present day does the Church awake from this long infatuation of which he was the author, and return to a sound mind. Thus so far as he is concerned has the Master's promise been verified: “He who heareth you, heareth me!”

When we penetrate the thought of the Prologue we see clearly that the doctrine of the Logos is not to the author's mind superimposed upon his faith, but that it forms the foundation and essence of it. If Jewish unbelief with regard to Jesus was something so monstrous, it is because He was not only the Messiah, but the Word who had come into the midst of His own. If the faith of the Church is so great a privilege for itself, it is because, by uniting it with Jesus, it puts the Church again in communication with the divine source of life and light, with the Word Himself. This Logos-idea, then, belongs to the essence of John's faith; it is no longer for him a means, as Reuss claims, but an end, as Baur would have it.

III. This idea was simply a result. It was evolved for John from the sum of his reflections on the person of Jesus. He himself describes to us in John 1:14 the way in which this work was accomplished in him. The Son of God was revealed to him in the person of Jesus through the glory full of grace and truth which distinguished this man from every other man; and he inscribed this discovery at the beginning of his narrative, in order that he might make the reader understand the decisive importance of the history, which was about to pass under his eyes; here is not one of those events which we leave after having read it, that we may pass on to another: “These things have been written, that you may believe, and that believing you may have life” (John 20:31). The question in this history is of eternal life and death; to accept, is to live; to reject, is to perish. This is the nota bene by which John opens his narrative and guides the reader.

But why employ so singular a term as Logos?

III. The Idea and Term Logos.

We have here to study three questions: 1. Whence did the evangelist derive the notion of the Logos? 2. What is the origin of this term? 3. What is the reason of its use? Having discussed these questions in the Introduction (pp. 173-181), we will notice here only that which has a special relation to the exegetical study which we are about to undertake.

1. First of all we establish a fact: namely, that the Prologue only sums up the thoughts contained in the testimony which Christ bears to Himself in the fourth Gospel. Weiss mentions two principal points in which the Prologue seems to him to go beyond the testimony of Christ: 1. The notion of the Word by which John expresses the pre-historic existence of Christ; 2. The function of creator which is ascribed to Him (John 1:3).

Let us for a moment lay aside the term Logos, to which we will return. The creative function is naturally connected with the fact of the eternal existence of the Logos in God. He who could say to God: “ Thou didst love me before the creation of the world,” certainly did not remain a stranger to the act by which God brought the world out of nothing. How is it possible not to apply here the words of John 5:17: “As the Father...I also work,” and John 5:19-20: “The Father showeth the Son all that he doeth...,” and: “Whatsoever things the Father doeth, these doeth the Son in like manner.” Add the words of Genesis 1:26: “Let us make man in our image,” to which John certainly alludes in the second clause of John 1:1 of the Prologue. All the other affirmations of this passage rest equally on the discourses and facts related in the Gospel; comp. John 1:4: “ In Him was life...,” with John 5:26: “ As the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself; ” John 1:9: “ There was the true light,” with John 8:12 and John 9:5: “ I am the light of the world...He that followeth me shall have the light of life; ” John 1:7: “ John came to bear witness,” with John 1:34:

“ And I have seen, and have borne witness that this is the Son of God,” and John 1:33: “ Ye have sent unto John, and he hath borne witness to the truth; ” what is said of the presence and activity of the Logos in the world in general (John 1:10), and in the theocracy in particular (to His home, His own, John 1:11), previous to His incarnation, with what Jesus declares in chap. 10 of the Shepherd's voice which is immediately recognized by His sheep, and this not only by those who are already in the fold of the Old Covenant (John 1:3), but also by those who are not of that fold (John 1:16), or what is said of the children of God scattered throughout the whole world (John 11:52); the opposition made in the Prologue (John 1:13) between the fleshly birth and the divine begetting, with the word of Jesus to Nicodemus (John 3:6): “ That which is born of the flesh is flesh; that which is born of the Spirit is spirit; ” the notion of Christ's real humanity, so earnestly affirmed in the Prologue (John 1:14), with the perfectly human character of the person and affections of the Saviour in the whole Johannean narrative; He is exhausted by fatigue (John 4:6); He thirsts (John 4:7); He weeps over a friend (John 11:35); He is moved, even troubled (John 11:33, John 12:27); on the other hand, His glory, full of grace and truth, His character as Son who has come from the Father (John 1:14-18), with His complete dependence (John 6:38 f.), His absolute docility (John 1:30, etc.), His perfect intimacy with the Father (John 1:20), the divinity of the works which it was given Him to accomplish, such as: to give life, to judge (John 1:21-22); the perfect assurance of being heard, whatsoever He might ask for (John 11:41-42); the adoration which He accepts (John 20:28); which He claims even as the equal of the Father (John 1:23); the testimony of John the Baptist quoted in John 1:15, with the subsequent narrative (John 1:27; John 1:30); the gift of the law, as a preparation for the Gospel (John 1:17), with what the Lord says of His relation to Moses and his writings (John 1:46-47); John 1:18, which closes the Prologue with the saying in John 6:46: “ Not that any one hath seen the Father, except He that is from the Father, He hath seen the Father; ” the terms Son and only-begotten Son, finally, with the words of Jesus in John 6:40: “ This is the Father's will, that He who beholds the Son...;” John 3:16: “ God so loved the world, that He gave His only- begotten Son,” and John 3:18: “ Because he hath not believed on the name of the only-begotten Son of God. ” It is clear: the Prologue is an edifice which is constructed wholly out of materials furnished by the words and the facts of Jesus' history. It contains of what is peculiar to John only the idea and term Logos applied to His pre-existent state. It is certainly this term, used in the philosophical language of the time, which has led so many interpreters to transform the author of the Prologue into a disciple of Philo. We shall limit ourselves here to the mentioning of the essential differences which distinguish the God of Philo from the God of John, the Logos of the one from the Logos of the other. And it shall be judged whether the second was truly at the school of the first.

1. The word λόγος, in John, signifies, as in the whole Biblical text, word. In Philo, it signifies, as in the philosophical language of the Greeks, reason. This simple fact reveals a wholly different starting-point in the use which they make of the term.

2. In Philo, the existence of the Logos is a metaphysical theorem. God being conceived of as the absolutely indeterminate and impersonal being, there is an impassable gulf between Him and the material, finite, varied world which we behold. To fill this gulf, Philo needed an intermediate agent, a second God, brought nearer to the finite; this is the Logos, the half-personified divine reason. The existence of the Logos in John is not the result of such a metaphysical necessity. God is in John, as in all the Scriptures, Creator, Master, Father. He acts Himself in the world, He loves it, He gives His Son to it; we shall even see that it is He who serves as intermediate agent between men and the Son (John 6:37; John 6:44), which is just the opposite of Philo's theory. In a word, in John everything in the relation of the Logos to God is a matter of liberty and of love, while with Philo everything is the result of a logical necessity. The one is the disciple of the Old Testament interpreted by means of Plato and Zeno; the other, of the same Old Testament explained by Jesus Christ.

3. The office of the Logos in Philo does not go beyond the divine facts of the creation and preservation of the world. He does not place this being in any relation with the Messiah and the Messianic kingdom. In John, on the contrary, the creating Logos is mentioned only in view of the redemption of which He is to be the agent; everything in the idea of this being tends towards His Messianic appearance.

4. To the view of Philo, as to that of Plato, the principle of evil is matter; the Jewish philosopher nowhere dreams, therefore, of making the Logos descend to earth, and that in a bodily form. In John, on the contrary, the supreme fact of history is this: “ The Logos was made flesh,” and this is also the central word of the Prologue.

The two points of view, therefore, are entirely different, and are even in many respects the antipodes of each other. Nevertheless, we notice in Philo certain ideas, certain terms, which establish a relation between him and John. How are we to explain this fact?

The solution is easy: it is not difficult to find a common source. John and Philo were both Jews; both of them had been nourished by the Old Testament. Now three lines in that sacred book converge towards the notion of an intermediate being between God and the world. 1. The appearances of the Angel of the Lord (Maleach Jehovah), of that messenger of God, who acts as His agent in the sensible world, and who sometimes is distinguished from Jehovah, sometimes is identified with Him; comp. e.g., Gen 16:7 with John 1:13; again, Gen 32:28 with Hosea 12:4-5. God says of this mysterious being, Exodus 23:21: “ My name (my manifested essence) is in him. ” According to the Old Testament (comp. particularly Zechariah 12:10, and Mal 3:1), this divine personage, after having been the agent of all the theophanies, is to consummate His office of mediator by fulfilling here on earth the function of Messiah. 2. The description of Wisdom, Proverbs 8:22-31; undoubtedly this representation of Wisdom in Proverbs appears to be only a poetic personification, while the Angel of the Lord is presented as a real personality.

3. The active part ascribed to the Word of the Lord. This part begins with the creation and continues in the prophetic revelations comp. Psalms 107:20; Psalms 147:15, and Isaiah 55:11, where the works accomplished by this divine messenger are described.

From the time of the Babylonish captivity, the Jewish doctors united these three modes of divine manifestation and activity in a single conception, that of the permanent agent of Jehovah in the sensible world, whom they designated by the name of Memra (Word) of Jehovah (מיממרא דיהוה). It cannot be certainly determined whether these Jewish learned men established a relation between this Word of the Lord and the person of the Messiah.

This idea of a divine being, organ of the works and the revelations of Jehovah in the sensible world could not, therefore, fail to have been known both by John and by Philo. This is the basis common to the two authors. But from this starting-point their paths diverge. John passing into the school of Jesus, the idea of the Word takes for him a historical significance, a concrete application. Hearing Jesus affirm that He is before Abraham; that the Father loved Him before the creation of the world,...he applies to Him this idea of the Word which in so many different ways strikes its roots into the soil of the Old Testament, while Philo, living at Alexandria, becomes there the disciple of the Greek philosophers, and seeks to interpret by means of their speculations and their formulas the religious ideas of the Jewish religion. We thus easily understand both what these two authors have in common, and what distinguishes them and even puts them in opposition to each other.

II. With respect to the term Word, frequently used, as it already was, in the Old Testament, then employed in a more theological sense by the Jewish doctors, it must have presented itself to the mind of John as very appropriate to designate the divine being in the person of his Master. What confirms the Palestinian, and by no means Alexandrian, origin of this term, is that it is used in the same sense in the Apocalypse, which is certainly by no means a product of Alexandrian wisdom; comp. Acts 19:13: “And his name was the Word of God. ” Philo, as he laid hold of this Jewish term Logos, in order to apply it to the metaphysical notion which he had borrowed from Greek philosophy, could not do so without also modifying its meaning and making it signify reason instead of word. This is what he did in general with regard to all the Biblical terms which his Jewish education had rendered familiar to him, such as archangel, son, high-priest, which he transferred to speculative notions according to the method by which he applied the word angels to the ideas of Plato.

We see, therefore: it is the same religion of the Old Testament, which, developed on one side in the direction of Christian realism, on the other in that of Platonic idealism, produced these two conceptions of John and of Philo, who differ even more in the central idea than they resemble each other in that which envelops it.

In applying to Jesus the name Word, John did not dream, therefore, of introducing into the Church the Alexandrian speculative theorem which had for him no importance. He wished to describe Jesus Christ as the absolute revelation of God to the world, to bring back all divine revelations to Him as to their living centre, and to proclaim the matchless grandeur of His appearance in the midst of humanity.

III. But can the employment of this extraordinary term on his part have occurred without any allusion to the use which was made of it all about him in the regions where he composed his Gospel? It seems to me difficult to believe this. Asia Minor, particularly Ephesus, was then the centre of a syncretism in which all the religious and philosophical doctrines of Greece, Persia and Egypt met together. It has been proved that in all those systems the idea of an intermediate divine being between God and the world appears, the Oum of the Indians, the Hom of the Persians, the Logos of the Greeks, the Memar of the Jews. If such were the surroundings in the midst of which the fourth Gospel was composed, we easily understand what John wished to say to all those thinkers who were speculating on the relations between the infinite and the finite, namely: “That connecting link between God and man, which you are seeking in the region of the idea, we Christians possess in that of reality, in that of history; we have seen, heard, touched this celestial mediator. Listen and believe! And by receiving Him, you will possess, with us, grace upon grace. ” In introducing this new term into the Christian language, therefore, John had the intention, as Neander thought, of opposing to the empty idealism on which the cultivated and unchristian persons around him were feeding, the life-giving realism of the Gospel history which he was proposing to set forth.

IV. The Truth and Importance of the Teaching of the Prologue Respecting the Person of Jesus Christ.

If the Prologue is the summary of the testimonies which Jesus bore to Himself in the course of His ministry, the teaching of John in this passage can no longer be regarded as the last term of a series of phases by means of which the Christological conception passed into the midst of the Church; it is at once the most normal and the richest expression of the consciousness which Jesus had of His own person. Renan is not indisposed to accept this result. Only in this estimation of Himself which Jesus allowed Himself to indulge, he sees the height of self-exaltation. But this explanation is incompatible with the moral character of Jesus. If He overrated Himself even to folly, how are we to understand that inward calm, that profound humility, that unalterably sound judgment, that so profoundly true appreciation of all the moral relations, whether between God and man, or between man and man, which Renan himself recognizes in Him? The kingdom of truth and holiness which has come from the appearance of Jesus is enough to set aside the suspicions of His modern biographer and to decide in the evangelist's favor. The critic might limit himself to calling in question the historical accuracy of the discourses which John puts into the mouth of Jesus. But we think that we have demonstrated the full confidence which we are obliged to accord to them (Introd., pp. 93-134). They cannot be separated from the facts with which they are closely connected, and these facts are as well, not to say better, guaranteed than those of the Synoptics (Introd., pp. 68-93).

Reuss urges, as an objection, a contradiction between the Prologue, in which the perfect equality of the Father and Son (such as ecclesiastical orthodoxy professes) is taught, and the authentic words of Jesus in the Gospel, starting from the idea of the subordination of the Son. The exegesis of the Prologue has proved that this contradiction does not exist, since subordination is taught in the Prologue, as clearly as in the discourses. Let us recall the expressions: “ he was with God,” John 1:1; “the only-begotten Son,” John 1:14; “ who is in the bosom of the Father,” John 1:18; these expressions imply subordination as much as any saying related in the Gospel. Reuss' mistake is that of wishing by all means to identify the conception of the Prologue with the Nicene formulas.

Baur does not believe in the possibility of reconciling the notion of the incarnation with that of the miraculous birth taught in the Synoptics. But if we take this expression, became flesh, seriously, as Baur does not the alleged contradiction is solved of itself. As in this case the subject of the Gospel hisory is not longer, as Baur claims, the Logos continuing in His divine state, but a true man, the fact of a real birth of this man, whether miraculous or natural, becomes a necessary condition of his human existence.

The most serious objection is derived from the difficulty of reconciling the pre-existence of Christ with His real humanity. Thus Lucke, while fully recognizing that there is something dangerous in the rejection of the pre- existence, thinks, nevertheless, that this dogma implies a difference of essence between the Saviour and His brethren, which seriously compromises both His character as Son of man, and His redemptive function. Weizsacker takes his position at the same point of view. He acknowledges that the communion of the Son with the Father is not simply moral; that Jesus did not gain His dignity as Son by His fidelity; but that it is, much rather, the presupposition of all that He did and said; that His moral fidelity maintained this original relation, but did not produce it; that, it is the unacquired condition of the consciousness which He had of Himself. On the other hand, he maintains that the superior knowledge which Christ possessed, could not be the continuation of that which He brought from above; for that origin would take away from it the progressive character, limited to the task of each moment, which we recognize in it and which makes it a truly human knowledge. And, as for the moral task of Jesus, it would also lose its truly human character; for where would be the moral conflict in the Son, if He still possessed here below that complete knowledge of the divine plan which He had had eternally in the presence of the Father? There are, therefore, in the fourth Gospel according to this critic, two Christs placed in juxtaposition: the one, truly man, as Jesus Himself teaches in harmony with the Synoptics; the other, divine and pre-existent the Christ of John. In attempting to resolve this difficulty, we do not conceal from ourselves that we are entering upon one of the most difficult problems of theology. What we shall seek after, in the lines which follow, is not the reconciliation of Scripture with any orthodoxy whatever, but the agreement of Scripture with itself.

The Scriptures, while teaching the eternal existence of the Word, do not, by any means, teach the presence of the divine state and attributes in Jesus during the course of His earthly life. They teach, on the contrary, the complete renouncing by Jesus of that state, with a view to His entrance into the human state. The expression: the Word was made flesh (John 1:14), speaks of the divine subject only as reduced to the human state; it does not at all, therefore, suppose the two states, divine and human, as co-existent in Him. The impoverishment of Christ of which Paul speaks 2 Corinthians 8:9, and His voluntary emptying of Himself described in Philippians 2:6-7, have no meaning except as we see in this renunciation of the divine state and the entrance into the human mode of existence two facts which were coincident. The Gospel history confirms these declarations. Jesus does not on earth any longer possess the attributes which constitute the divine state. Omniscience He does not have. He Himself declares His ignorance on a particular point (Mark 13:32). In our Gospel, also, the expression: “ When he heard that the Jews had cast him out...” (John 9:35), proves the same thing. In general, every question put by Him would have been only a pretence, if He had still possessed omniscience. He possessed a superior prophetic vision, undoubtedly (John 4:17-18); but this vision was not omniscience. And I do not think that the facts by any means confirm the opinion of Weizsacker, that John's narrative ascribes to Jesus a knowledge which was a reminiscence of His heavenly knowledge. The exegesis will show that Jesus never enunciated anything whatsoever which did not pass through His human consciousness. No more does He possess omnipotence. For He prays and is heard (John 11:42); as for His miracles, it is the Father who works them on His behalf (John 1:36). He is equally bereft of omnipresence. He rejoices in His absence at the time of the sickness of Lazarus (John 11:15). His love, perfect as it is, is nevertheless not divine love. This is immutable; but who will maintain that Jesus in His cradle loved as He did at the age of twelve, and at the age of twelve, as He did on the cross? Relatively perfect, at each given moment, His love increased from day to day, both in intensity and with reference to voluntary self-sacrifice, and in extent and with reference to the circle which it embraced, at first His family, then His people, then the whole of mankind. It was a truly human love. For this reason, St. Paul says: “The grace of one man, Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:15). His holiness was, also, a human holiness; for it was realized at every moment only at the cost of a struggle, through renouncing lawful enjoyment and the victory over the no less lawful dread of pain (John 12:25; John 12:27; John 17:19 a.). This holiness is so human that it is to pass into us and become ours (John 17:19 b.). All these texts clearly prove that Jesus did not possess, while on earth, the attributes which constitute the divine state. And, indeed, how could He otherwise terminate His earthly career by asking back again the glory which He had before His incarnation (John 17:5)?

Can we conceive of such an emptying of Himself on the part of a divine being? Keil, while acknowledging that there is here a problem which has not yet been solved, thinks that the emptying of the divine attributes took place through the very fact of the entrance of the subject who possessed them into a more limited nature. Steinmeyer, likewise says: The very fact of the entrance into a material body had the effect of reducing to the condition of latency the qualities which befit an absolute personality. We might carry back to this idea the saying of Paul (Php 2:7): “He divested himself (emptied), having taken the form of a servant,” by making the act expressed in the participle having taken the antecedent and condition of that which is expressed by the finite verb: “ he divested himself. ” But we may also conceive of the act of voluntary divesting as preceding the entrance into the human state, and as being the condition of it. And it is rather to this idea, as it seems to me, that the passage in Philippians leads us. However this may be, Scripture does not, by any means, teach that He came to earth with His divine attributes a fact which implies that He had renounced not only their use, but also their possession. Even the consciousness of His anterior existence as a divine subject would have been incompatible with the state of a true child and with a really human development. The word which He uttered at the age of twelve years (Luke 2:49) is alleged; but it simply expresses the feeling which Jesus had already at that age of being entirely devoted to the cause of God, as a well-disposed son is to the interests of his father. With a moral fidelity like His, and in the permanent enjoyment of a communion with God which sin did not impair, the child could call God His Father in a purely religious sense, and without resulting in a consciousness within Him of a divine pre-existence. Certainly the feeling of His redemptive mission must have developed itself from his early age, especially through the experience of the continual contrast between His moral purity and the sin by which He saw all those who surrounded Him affected, even the best of them such as Joseph and Mary. The only one in health in this caravan of sick persons with whom He made His journey, He must early have had a glimpse of His task as physician and have inwardly consecrated Himself wholly to it. But there is in the Gospel history not a word, not an act attributed to Jesus which leads us to suppose in the child or the youth the consciousness of His divine nature, and of His previous existence. It is to the apocryphal gospels that we must go to seek this contra- natural and antihuman Jesus. It was, if we mistake not, on the day of His baptism, when the moment arrived at which He was to begin to testify of Himself, of what He was for God and of what God was for Him and for the world, that God thought it fit to initiate Him into the mystery of His life as Son anterior to His earthly existence. This revelation was contained in the words: “Thou art my Son,” which could not refer only to His office as Messiah, since they were explained by the following words: “In thee I am well-pleased.” He recovered at that time that consciousness of Sonship which He had allowed to become extinguished in Him, as at night, as we surrender ourselves to sleep, we lose self-consciousness; and He was able from that moment to make the world understand the greatness of the gift which was made to it and of the love of which He was the object on God's part.

The following, therefore, as it seems to me, are the constituent elements of this mysterious fact:

1. As man was created in the image of God and for the divine likeness, the Logos could, without derogation, descend even to the level of a human being and work out His development from that moment in truly human conditions.

2. Receptivity for the divine, aspiration towards the divine, being the distinctive feature of man among the other natural beings, the essential characteristic of the life of the Logos made man must be incessant and growing assimilation to the divine in all its forms.

3. This religious and moral capacity of the Logos having entered into human existence is not to be measured by that which each particular man possesses. Through the fact of His miraculous birth, He reproduces not the type of a determinate father, but that of the race itself which He represents a second time, as it had been represented the first time by the father of all mankind. In Him, therefore, is concentrated the aspiration of the whole race, the generic and absolute receptivity of humanity for the divine. Hence the incomparable character of this personality, to which all are forced to render homage.

4. Having arrived at the consciousness of His eternal relation to God, the Logos can only aspire to recover the divine state in harmony with the consciousness which He has of Himself; but, on the other hand, He is too closely connected with humanity to consent to break the bond which unites Him to it. There remains, therefore, only one thing: to raise humanity with Himself to His glory and thus to realize in it the highest thought of God, that which St. Paul calls “the purpose of the wisdom of God for our glory” (1 Corinthians 2:7), the elevation of man, first, to communion with Christ, and then, in Him, to the possession of the state of the Man-God. This is the accomplishment of the eternal destiny of believers, as St. Paul also states it in Romans 8:29-30.

The course of the development of the earthly life of Jesus is easily understood when we place ourselves at this point of view. By His birth as a member of the race, as Son of man, humanity finds itself replaced in Him at its normal starting-point; it is fitted to begin anew its development, which sin had perverted. Up to the age of thirty, Jesus accomplishes this task. He elevates humanity in His own person, by His perfect obedience and the constant sacrifice of Himself, from innocence to holiness. He is not yet conscious of Himself; perhaps, in the light of the Scriptures, He begins to have a presentiment of that which He is in relation to God. But the distinct consciousness of His dignity as Logos would not be compatible with the reality of His human development and with the accomplishment of the task assigned to this first period of His life. This task being once fulfilled, the conditions of His existence change. A new work opens for Him, and the consciousness of His dignity as well-beloved Son, far from being incompatible with the work which He has still to accomplish, becomes the indispensable foundation of it. Indeed, in order to bear witness of God as Father, He must necessarily know Himself as Son. The baptism is the decisive event which opens this new phase. Meeting the aspirations and presentiments of the heart of Jesus, the Father says to Him: “ Thou art my Son. ” Jesus knows Himself from this moment as the absolute object of the divine love. He can say now what He could not have said before: “ Before Abraham was, I am. ” This consciousness of His dignity as Son, the recompense for His previous fidelity accompanies Him everywhere from this hour. It forms the background of all His manifestations in acts and words (see Weizsacker's fine passage, pp. 120, 121). Heaven is opened to Him and He testifies of what He sees there. The baptism, however, while giving to Jesus His consciousness of Sonship, did not give back to Him His state of Sonship, His form of God. There is still an immense disproportion between that which He knows Himself to be and that which He really is. Herein, especially, there is for Him the possibility of temptation: “ If thou art the Son of God...” Master of all, He disposes of nothing, and must at every moment address Himself with a believing and filial heart to the paternal heart of God. It is only through the resurrection and the exaltation which follows it, that His position is placed on the level of the consciousness which He has of Himself, and that He recovers the divine state. Henceforth, all the fullness of the divinity dwells in Him, and that humanly, and even, as Paul says, bodily (Col 2:9). Finally, ten days after His personal assumption into the divine glory, He begins from the day of Pentecost to admit believers to a participation in His state of sonship. He thus prepares the day on which, by His Parousia, He will consummate outwardly their participation in His glory, after having re-established in them the perfect holiness which was the basis of His own exaltation. Living images of the Logos from our creation, we shall then realize that type of divine-human existence which we at present behold in Him. Such was the divine plan, such was the last wish of Jesus Himself (John 17:24): “ Father, I will that where I am, they also may be with me. ”

The true formula of the incarnation, according to our Gospel, would, therefore, be the following: That filial communion with God which the Logos realized before His incarnation in the glorious and permanent form of the divine life, He has realized in Jesus since His incarnation in the humble and progressive form of human existence.

The school of Baur think that they discover an essential difference between John's conception and that of Paul respecting this point. The latter could have seen in the pre-existent Christ only the prototypic man, but not a divine being. This view is rested upon 1 Corinthians 15:47: “The first man, derived from the earth, is earthy; the second man is from heaven.” But this conclusion, which is founded upon no other passage, has really no support in this one. The whole fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians has an eschatological bearing, for it treats of the resurrection of the body. The words cited, therefore, apply to the now glorified Christ, and not to the pre-existent Christ; this is also proved by the words which immediately follow: “ As is the earthly (Adam), such are they also that are earthly (men in their present state): as is the heavenly (Christ), such are they also that are heavenly (the believers risen from the dead). For as we have borne the image of the earthly, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. ” Certainly, Paul does not mean to say that we shall bear the image of the pre-existent Christ, but that of the Christ as man raised from the dead and glorified. Even the term second (man) would be sufficient to prove this; since the pre-existent Christ would be the first Adam, the Adam Kadmon of Jewish theology. The idea which Baur finds in this passage is, moreover, incompatible with two other expressions of the same epistle, in which two divine functions, the creation of the universe and the leading of Israel through the wilderness, are ascribed to the pre-existent Christ (John 8:6 and John 10:4). These functions surpass the idea of a mere heavenly man.

When Paul calls Christ “ the image of the invisible God,” “the first-born before every creature,” the one “in whom all things have been created and all things subsist” (Col 1:15-16), he says exactly what John says, when he calls Him the Word (the image of the invisible thought), and when he adds: “All things were made by Him, and nothing which has been made was made without Him.” The two terms, image and Word, express, under two different figures, the same notion: God affirming with an affirmation which is not a simple verbum volens, but a living person, all that He thinks, all that He wills, all that He loves that is most perfect, giving thus in this being the word of His thought, the reflection of His being, the end of His love, almost His realized ideal. Let us picture to ourselves an artist capable of giving life to the master- piece of his genius, and entering into personal relation with this child of his thought; such is the earthly representation of the relation between God and the Word. This word is divine; for the highest affirmation of God cannot be less than God Himself. It is eternal; for God cannot have begun at any time to affirm Himself. It is single; for it is His absolute saying, the perfect enunciation of His being, consequently His primordial sovereign utterance, in which are included, in advance, all His particular sovereign utterances which will re-echo successively in time. It is, accordingly, this Word who, in his turn, will call forth all beings. They will be His free affirmation, as He is Himself that of God. He will display in the universe, under the forms of space and time, all the riches of the divine contents which God has eternally included in Him. The creation will be the poem of the Son to the glory of the Father.

This notion of the Word, as a creative principle, has the greatest importance as related to the conception of the universe. The universe rests thereby on an absolutely luminous basis, which secures its final perfection. Blind and eternal matter, fatal necessity, are banished from a world which is the work of the Word. The ideal essence of all things is absolutely protected by this view.

The notion of the person of Christ which is contained in the Prologue is of decisive importance for the Church.

If the supreme dignity ascribed to Jesus is denied Him, however worthy of admiration this Christ may be, humanity may and should always “ look for another; ” for the path of progress is unlimited. The gate thus remains open for one who comes afterward: “I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not; another shall come in his own name, and him ye will receive” (John 1:43).

But if in Jesus the Word was really made flesh, there is no higher one to be looked for. The perfect revelation and communication of God are accomplished; eternal life has been realized in time; there is nothing further for every man but to accept and live, or to reject and perish.

We understand, therefore, why John has placed this preamble at the head of his narrative. Faith is not faith that is to say, absolute, without reserve except so far as it has for its object that beyond which it is impossible to go.

FIRST PART: FIRST MANIFESTATIONS OF THE WORD. BIRTH OF FAITH. FIRST SYMPTOMS OF UNBELIEF. 1:19-4:54

As compared with the two parts which are to follow, of which one specially traces out the development of unbelief (v.-xii.), the other, that of faith (xiii.-xvii.), this First Part has a character which may be called neutral. It serves as the starting-point for the two others. It contains the first revelations of the object of faith and unbelief, of Jesus as Son of God. Jesus is declared to be the Messiah and Son of God by John the Baptist; a first group of disciples is formed about Him. His glory beams forth in some miraculous manifestations within the circle of His private life. Then He inaugurates His public ministry in the temple, at Jerusalem. But this attempt having failed, He limits Himself to teaching, while performing miracles and collecting about Himself adherents by means of baptism. Finally, observing that, even in this more modest form, His activity gives umbrage to the dominant party at Jerusalem, He withdraws into Galilee, after having sowed by the way the germs of faith in Samaria. This summary justifies the title which we give to this First Part, and the more general character which we ascribe to it as compared with those which follow.

The evangelist himself seems to have wished to divide it into two cycles by the distinctly marked correlation between the two remarks, John 2:11 and John 4:54, which are placed, one at the end of the story of the wedding at Cana:

“ This was the beginning of Jesus' miracles which took place at Cana in Galilee; and He manifested His glory, and His disciples believed on Him; ” the other, which closes this whole Part, after the healing of the nobleman's son, “ Again, Jesus did this second miracle when He came from Judea into Galilee. ” By the manifest correlation of these two sentences the evangelist calls attention to the fact that there were, in this first period of Jesus' ministry, two sojournings in Judea, each of which terminated with a return to Galilee, and that both of these returns were alike marked by a miracle performed at Cana. This indication of the thought of the historian should be our guide. Accordingly, we divide this Part into two cycles the one comprising the facts related John 1:19 to John 2:11; the other, the narratives John 2:12 to John 4:54. In the first, Jesus, introduced into His ministry by John the Baptist, fulfills it without as yet going out of the inner circle of His first disciples and His family. The second relates His first steps in His public ministry.