Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadLange Commentary - John
(Show All Books)
Verse Commentaries:
GOSPEL
ACCORDING TO
JOHN
by
JOHN PETER LANGE, D.D.
Professor Of Theology At The University Of Bonn
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN REVISED, ENLARGED, AND EDITED
by
PHILIP SCHAFF, D.D.
Professor Of Theology In The Union Theological Seminary, New York
VOL. III. OF THE NEW TESTAMENT: CONTAINING THE GOSPEL OF JOHN
SPECIAL INTRODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN EDITION
THE GOSPEL OF JOHN
Matthew, writing in Palestine, and for Jews, and observing, in accordance with his former occupation and training, a rubrical and topical, rather than chronological, order, gives us the Gospel of the new Theocracy founded by Christ—the Lawgiver, Messiah, and King of the true Israel, who fulfilled all the prophecies of the old Dispensation. His is the fundamental Gospel, which stands related to the New Testament as the Pentateuch does to the Old. Mark, the companion of Peter, writing at Rome, and for warlike Romans, paints Christ, in fresh, graphic, and rapid sketches, as the mighty Son of God, the startling Wonder-Worker, the victorious Conqueror, and forms the connecting link between Matthew and Luke, or between the Jewish-Christian and the Gentile-Christian Evangelist. Luke, an educated Hellenist, a humane physician, a pupil and friend of Paul, prepared, as the Evangelist of the Gentiles, chiefly for Greek readers, and in chronological order, the Gospel of universal humanity, where Christ appears as the sympathizing Friend of sinners, the healing Physician of all diseases, the tender Shepherd of the wandering sheep, the Author and Proclaimer of a free salvation for Gentiles and Samaritans as well as Jews. From John, the trusted bosom-friend of the Saviour, the Benjamin among the twelve, and the surviving patriarch of the apostolic age, who could look back to the martyrdom of James, Peter, and Paul, and the destruction of Jerusalem, and look forward to the certain triumph of Christianity over the tottering idols of Paganism, we must naturally expect the ripest, as it was the last, composition of the gospel history, for the edification of the Christian Church in all ages.
The Gospel of John is the Gospel of Gospels, as the Epistle to the Romans is the Epistle of Epistles. It is the most remarkable as well as the most important literary production ever composed by man. It is a marvel even in the marvellous Book of books. All the literature of the world could not replace it. It is the most spiritual and ideal of Gospels. It introduces us into the Holy of Holies in the history of our Lord; it brings us, as it were, into His immediate presence, so that we behold face to face the true Shekinah, “the glory of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” It presents, in fairest harmony, the highest knowledge, and the deepest love, of Christ. It gives us the clearest view of His incarnate Divinity and His perfect Humanity It sets Him forth as the Eternal Word, Who was the source of life from, the beginning, and the organ of all the revelations of God to man; as the Fountain of living water that quenches the thirst of the soul; as the Light of the world that illuminates the darkness of sin and error; as the Resurrection and the Life that destroys the terror of death. It reflects the lustre of the Transfiguration on the Mount, yet subdued by the holy sadness of Gethsemane. It abounds in festive joy and gladness over the amazing love of God, but mixed with grief over the ingratitude and obtuseness of unbelieving men. It breathes the air of peace, and yet sounds at times like a peal of thunder from the other world; it soars boldly and majestically like the eagle towards the uncreated source of light, and yet hovers as gently as a dove over the earth; it is sublime as a seraph and simple as a child; high and serene as the heaven, deep and unfathomable as the sea. It is the plainest in speech and the profoundest in meaning. To it more than to any portion of the Scripture applies the familiar comparison of a river deep enough for the elephant to swim, with shallows for the lamb to wade. It is the Gospel of love, life, and light, the Gospel of the heart taken from the very heart of Christ, on which the beloved disciple leaned at the Last Supper. It is the type of the purest forms of mysticism. It has an irresistible charm for speculative and contemplative minds, and furnishes inexhaustible food for meditation and devotion. It is the Gospel of peace and Christian union, and a prophecy of that blessed future when all the discords of the Church militant on earth shall be solved in the harmony of the Church triumphant in heaven.
Let us hear some of the most striking testimonies of divines, philosophers, and poets, which tend at the same time to describe more fully its characteristic peculiarities.
Origen, the father of biblical exegesis, calls the fourth Gospel the main Gospel, and says that those only can comprehend it who lean on the bosom of Jesus, and there imbibe the spirit of John, just as he imbibed the spirit of Christ.
Chrysostom, the ablest expounder and greatest pulpit orator of the Greek Church, extols, with all the ardor of his eloquence, the celestial tones of this Gospel: it is, he says, a voice of thunder reverberating through the whole earth; notwithstanding its all-conquering power, it does not utter a harsh sound, but is more love-bewitching and elevating in its influence than all the harmonies of music. Besides, it awakens the awe-inspiring consciousness, that it is pregnant with the most precious gifts of grace, which elevate those who appropriate them to themselves above the earthly pursuits of this life, and constitute them citizens of heaven and heirs of the blessedness of angels.
Jerome, the most learned of the Latin fathers, says: “John excels in the depths of divine mysteries.”
Augustine, the greatest of all the fathers, after speaking of the differences of John and the Synoptists, and the incomparable sublimity of the Prologue, gives him the preference and says: “John did but pour forth the water of life which he himself had drunk in. For he does not relate the fact without good reason, that at the Last Supper the beloved disciple laid his head on the Lord’s bosom. From this bosom his soul drank in secret. Then he revealed this secret communion to the world, that all nations might become partakers of the blessings of the Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection.”
Luther speaks of the Gospel of John as being “the unique, tender, genuine, leading Gospel, that should be preferred by far to the others, John records mainly the discourses of Christ in his own words, from which we learn truth and life as taught by himself. The rest dwell at length upon his works.”
Calvin appropriately designates it as the key that opens the way to a right understanding of the other three. This Gospel reveals the soul of Christ; the others seek rather to describe His body.
Lessing pronounces it, without qualification, to be the most important portion of the New Testament.
Ernesti calls it “The heart of Christ.”
Herder enthusiastically exclaims: “Written by the hand of an angel!”
Schleiermacher, in his “Weihnachtsfeier,” expresses his own preference for John’s Gospel in the language of Edward, the third speaker at the festival: “The mystic among the four Evangelists communicates but little information about particular events, and does not even relate the actual birth of Christ, but eternal, childlike Christmas joys pervade his soul.”
Commentators of recent date, such as Luecke, Olshausen, Tholuck, Meyer, Alford, Godet, and Lange, share the same preference.
“The noble simplicity,” says Tholuck, “and the dim mystery of the narration, the tone of grief and longing, with the light of love shedding its tremulous beam on the whole—these impart to the Gospel of John a peculiar originality and charm, to which no parallel can be found.” He also applies to it, in an elevated sense, the language of Hamann in reference to Claudius: “Thy harp sends forth light ethereal sounds that float gently in the air, and fill our hearts with tender sadness, even after its strings have ceased to vibrate.”
Meyer, the ablest grammatical exegete of the age, who is rather dry and jejune, and apparently indifferent to dogmatic results, but who, by a life-long study of the Word of God, gradually rose from rationalistic to an almost orthodox standpoint, and marks, this steady progress in the successive editions of his valuable commentary, endorses Luther’s eulogy, and expresses the conviction that “the wonderful Gospel of John, with its fulness of grace, truth, peace, light, and life,” is destined to contribute to a closer union of Christians.
Dr. Lange calls the fourth Gospel “the diamond among the Gospels which is most fully penetrated by the light of life, and which reflects the glory of the Godhead in flesh and blood, even in the crown of thorns.”
Dr. Isaac da Costa, of Amsterdam, in a discriminating analysis of the peculiarities of the four Gospels, says of the fourth: “As John was the special object of his Master’s choice, so is his Gospel a select and exquisite production.…It is a voice from heaven; it is the language of a seer. It is a Gospel from the height, and likewise from the depth.…We find in it something more than the artless and childlike simplicity of St. Matthew’s narrative; more than the rapidity and terseness of St. Mark’s record; more than the calm and flowing historical style of Luke. With that artlessness, and that terseness, and that calmness, there is here mingled a higher and more elevated tone—a tone derived from the monuments of the remotest sacred antiquity, as well as from the hidden depths of the most profound theology; a tone reminding us sometimes of the Mosaic account of creation, sometimes of the wise sayings of Solomon, sometimes akin even to the later theology of Jewish-Alexandrine philosophers.”
Dean Alford thus speaks of John: “The great Apostle of the Gentiles, amidst fightings without and fears within, built in his argumentative Epistles the outworks of that temple, of which his still greater colleague and successor was chosen noiselessly to complete, in his peaceful old age, the inner and holier places. And this, after all, ranging under it all secondary aims, we must call the great object of the Evangelist: to advance, purify from error, and strengthen that maturer Christian life of knowledge, which is the true development of the teaching of the Spirit in men, and which the latter part of the apostolic period witnessed in its full vitality. And this, by setting forth the Person of the Lord Jesus in all its fulness of grace and truth, in all its manifestation in the flesh by signs and by discourses, and its glorification by opposition and unbelief, through sufferings and death.”
Canon Brooke Foss Westcott represents the Synoptical Gospels as the Gospel of the Infant Church, that of St. John as the Gospel of its maturity; the former as containing the wide experience of the many, the latter as embracing the deep mysteries treasured up by the one. “No writing,” he continues, “combines greater simplicity with more profound depths. At first all seems clear in the childlike language which is so often the chosen vehicle of the treasures of Eastern meditation; and then again the utmost subtlety of Western thought is found to lie under abrupt and apparently fragmentary utterances. St. John wrote the Gospel of the world, resolving reason into intuition, and faith into sight.”
Bishop Wordsworth applies to the Gospel of John, as compared with the Synoptists the words of the marriage feast at Cana: “Thou hast kept the good wine until now “(Joh_2:10).
Henry Parry Liddon: “St. John’s Gospel is the most conspicuous written attestation to the Godhead of Him Whose claims upon mankind can hardly be surveyed without passion, whether it be the passion of adoring love, or the passion of vehement and determined enmity.”
Not only theologians, but profound philosophers also have been particularly fascinated by the Introduction (Joh_1:1-18), which may be regarded as a compendium of the highest philosophical wisdom. Fichte, during the latter and more religious period of his life, and Schelling, in his Philosophy of Revelation, regard John as the typical representative of the perfect ideal church of the future. And this idea, already suggested by a mediæval monk, Joachim de Floris, has taken root in the theological consciousness of the nineteenth century.
Finally, poets too have lavished their praises on this mysterious and wonderful production of the Apostolic age.
Adam of St. Victor, one of the greatest poets of the Latin Church, who died about 1192, describes John in one of the finest and most musical stanzas ever written in Latin or any other language:—
“Volat avis sine meta
Quo nec vates nec propheta
Evolavit altius;
Tam implenda, quam impleta,
Nunquam vidit tot secreta
Purus homo purius.”
In another poem, on the four Evangelists, after praising Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Adam of St. Victor places John above them all:—
“Sed Joannes ala bina
Caritatis aquilina,
Forma fertur in divina
Puriori lumine.”
The pious and childlike German poet Claudius, of Wandsbeck, who remained faithful in an age of almost universal skepticism and apostasy, gives perhaps the best description of the Gospel of John in these words, which are conceived in the very spirit of the Evangelist:—
“Above all do I like to read the Gospel of John. There is something truly wonderful in it: twilight and night; and athwart flashes the vivid lightning, A soft evening sky, and behind the sky, in bodily form, the large full moon! Something so sad, so sublime, so full of presage that one can never weary of it. Every time I read John, it seems as if I could see him before me reclining on the bosom of his Master at the Last Supper—as if his angel were standing by my side with a lamp in his hand, and, when I come to particular passages, would clasp me in his arms and whisper a word in my ear. There is a great deal that I do not understand when I read; but I often feel as if John’s meaning were floating before me at a distance; even when my eye lights on a dark place, I have nevertheless a presentiment of a grand and glorious sense that I shall some day understand. On this account I grasp eagerly at every new exposition of John’s Gospel. But alas! the most of them only ruffle the evening clouds, and the bright moon behind them is left in peace.”
In putting the case so strongly, I do not mean to deny the valuable learning, acumen, and a certain measure of honest earnestness in some of the negative critics of our age. There are among them skeptics of the order of Thomas, who loved and found the truth, as well as skeptics of the tribe of Pilate, who connived at the crucifixion of the Truth. The inquiring doubt of the former has a useful and important mission in the church, and has done good service in solving the problems connected with the origin, character, plan, and mutual relations of the Gospels.
A live Commentary in a live age must be written in full view of these modern attacks, and the new aspects and relations which old truths and facts have assumed. Reference direct and indirect to the present state of the controversy is as important and necessary in a critical work as the frank record of the bitter hostility of the Jewish leaders in the Gospels. The old and the new phases of opposition to the Christ in the flesh explain and illustrate each other.
I have no misgiving as to the ultimate result. I am as confident as I am of my own existence that the Gospel of John will come triumphant out of this fiery ordeal. The old doctrinal opposition of the Alogi has long passed into history. Bretschneider’s critical battery was soon silenced and spiked by the commander himself. The heavier artillery of Strauss, Baur, Renan, and their sympathizers has nearly spent its ammunition without effecting a single breach in this fortress. Indeed, the latest and wisest utterance from the Tübingen School on the Johannean question is the significant concession, that the fundamental ideas of the fourth Gospel lie far beyond the horizon of the Church in the second century, and indeed of the whole Christian Church down to the present day.
I accept this statement both as a just tribute of an able and honest opponent to the value of the Gospel, and as a confession of the entire failure of modern criticism to disprove its apostolic origin. Verily, no man in the second century, no man in any subsequent age or section of the Church could have written, or could now write, such a work. More than this, no man in the first century could have written it but John the Apostle, and even John himself could not have written it without inspiration.
To declare such a Gospel, which is admitted to reach the highest attainable or conceivable height of moral purity and sublimity, beyond which the Christian world has been unable to go to this day—to declare such a Gospel a conscious fiction, not to use the plain term, a literary forgery, of some obscure, unknown, and unnamable pseudo-John in the second century, involves not only a psychological and literary impossibility, but also a moral monstrosity almost as great as the blasphemous charge of the Jewish hierarchy, that Christ Himself was an impostor and in league with the devil. The compromise-hypothesis, which divides it between truth and fiction, by admitting the historical truthfulness either of the discourses of Jesus, or of the narrative portions, is set aside by the unmistakable unity in language and thought of the fourth Gospel, which is a work of instinctive literary art, complete and perfect in all its parts.
We are shut up to the choice either to adopt the whole as historical, or to reject the whole as an invention. Were the Gospel of John not a Gospel, but some secular story, it would, with half the evidence in its favor, be admitted as genuine by scholars without a dissenting voice. For it is better attested than any book of ancient Greece and Rome, or modern Germany and England. The unanimous testimony—heretical as well as orthodox—of antiquity reaching to the beginning of the second century, i.e., almost to the lifetime of John, the language and style, the familiarity with Jewish nature and Palestine localities, the minute circumstantiality of account, the number of graphic touches and incidental details which unmistakably betray an eye-witness, the express and solemn testimony of the writer to have witnessed the issue of blood and water from the pierced side of Jesus, and his indirect and delicate self-designation as the most favorite among the chosen Twelve, the high and lofty tone of the whole narrative, the perfect picture of the purest and holiest being that walked on the face of this earth—all point irresistibly to the conclusion that the fourth canonical Gospel is the composition of none other than the inspired Apostle whom Jesus loved, who leaned on His breast at the last supper, who stood at the cross and the open tomb, and who personally witnessed the greatest facts which ever occurred or ever will occur in the history of mankind.
The work was first intrusted to the late Rev. Edward D. Yeomans, D. D. From his rare ability and experience as a translator, and his admiring appreciation of Lange, he was admirably qualified for the difficult task; but before he had half finished the first draft of a translation, he was called to his rest in the prime of his life and usefulness (at Orange, New Jersey, August 26,1868), and left his manuscript as a sacred legacy in my hands. It is due to the memory of an esteemed and dearly beloved friend and co-laborer, who was one of the purest and noblest Christian gentlemen I ever knew, that I should insert his last letter to me on the subject:—
Orange, N. J., June 13, 1868.
My Dear Dr. Schaff:—I have been again attacked with a return of the difficulty which caught me in the pulpit some four months ago. It has now shown itself distinctly mental, and has been more acute. Just four weeks ago it laid me up, and I have been unable till now to apply myself even to such a letter as this. I am strictly forbidden study for at least two months, and must then return to nothing beyond what my congregation requires, if I can return even to any good part of that.Providence now plainly shows me that my work on Lange must cease. I suspected this, as I wrote yon some months ago; but hated positively to abandon it. I must now, however, relieve myself entirely of all connection with it. And I send you herewith, by express, the original and your books you have lent me, and all my own manuscripts.
I feel sad over this failure. It has the look of an entire failure on my part. It has, however, a very different side, when I remember that, after assuming the work, Providence called me, in succession, to the organization of two new parishes—devolving far more pastoral work upon me than my continuance in my already formed parish at Trenton would have required….
This continual delay of John I have been continually hoping to cut short. I can now only redeem it by offering you the free use of these MSS. of mine, with not the slightest pecuniary claim, and with no appearance of my name in the concern. This I most cheerfully do, and pray you leniently to accept it. My MSS., I see, need revision, as you will see by the first bunch, which I revised and have considerably changed. I cannot do anything further to them in the way of revision. I must positively retire from all connection with this great, and to me most engaging work. I only hope you will be able so to shape your work that John can go into no other hands but your own.
I am obliged to write with effort, to compose a letter. But, my dear and inestimable friend, I could not fairly express my heart to you, with my best powers, not only over my apparently mortifying failure to fulfil this important and long-promised service, but over this termination of a long, and to me most pleasant and profitable association with you in the highest walks of theology; though my part has been that of a mere amanuensis, in another tongue, to your own brains and learning. I am only the more happy to think that this terminates only an association of the letter, and touches not our personal friendship and companionship in the least, nor our association in laboring for the propagation of the common truth, as it is in Jesus.
I cannot say more, but must cut myself short with assuring yon that, with all my heart.
I am, as ever, yours, E. D. Yeomans.
It was a sad pleasure to me to prepare the neat manuscript of my departed friend for the press. I treated it with scrupulous regard to his memory, which I shall ever sacredly cherish, hoping for a blissful reunion in a better world.After considerable delay, I happily secured the assistance of an unusually gifted lady, Miss Evelina Moore (a grand-daughter of Bishop Moore of Virginia), who, with womanly instinct and intuition, penetrated to the very heart of John and his commentator, and finished the translation from Chs. 9 to 21 to my entire satisfaction.
In the Homiletical Department, from the tenth chapter to the close, I am also greatly indebted to the valuable aid of the Rev. Dr. Craven, of Newark, who, with conscientious fidelity, selected the best thoughts and suggestions from the Catena Patrum, from Henry, Burkitt, Clarke, Ryle, Barnes, Owen, Stier, Krummacher, and other practical commentators, not already noticed by Lange. His additions are marked with his own name; they will be found in no way inferior to the corresponding selections of the German original, from Starke, Gossner, Gerlach, Schleiermacher, Heubner, etc., and help to make this department a complete thesaurus.
For the preparation of the Text, with the Critical Apparatus and the numerous additions to the Exegesis proper (enclosed in brackets), as well as for the final revision and editing of the whole Volume, I am responsible myself. My endeavor has been to combine the most valuable results of ancient and modern, European and American labors on the fourth Gospel, and to make the Commentary permanently useful for study and reference.
The revision of the Authorized English Version was, of course, made directly from the Greek, and with constant reference to the latest critical sources, viz.: the eighth large edition of Tischendorf now in course of publication, Tregelles (Luke and John, 1861), Alford (Gospels, 6th ed. 1868), and advanced sheets of Westcott and Hort’s forthcoming edition of the Greek Testament, which were kindly furnished to me by my friend Canon Westcott. In examining these critical editions of German and English scholars, I have gained the conviction that we are steadily approaching a pure and reliable text of the Greek Testament. Lachmann, following the hints of Bentley and Bengel, boldly opened the way by departing from the comparatively modern and unreliable “textus receptus,” and substituting for it the oldest text that can be obtained from the uncial manuscripts, the oldest versions and the quotations of the ante-Nicene fathers. The discovery and publication of the Sinaitic code (Aleph) by Tischendorf, has given additional weight to the readings of the uncial MSS. (A. B. C. D. etc.). In the great majority of variations I find a remarkable agreement between the best German and English critics. The latter are almost entirely unknown even to the best German commentators. Lange, with sound critical judgment, follows chiefly Lachmann, but could not make use of the eighth edition of Tischendorf, whose first volume (containing the Gospels) was not completed till 1869, and presents many variations from his former editions.
In the Exegetical and Critical Department I have carefully compared and freely used (always with due credit) the latest editions of the best commentaries on John, especially Meyer (fifth edition of 1869, which has 684 pages to 586 of the fourth edition of 1861, and required constant rectification of Lange’s frequent references to earlier editions), Alford (6th ed. 1868), and Godet (1865), who respectively represent the present state of German, English, and French research on the Johannean Gospel. On the more important passages I have also examined Origen (Com. in Evang. Joh.), Augustine (124 Tractates on the Gospel of John, Tom. III., Part II., pp. 290–826, Bened. ed.), Chrysostom (88 Homilies on John, Tom. VIII., pp. 1–530, Bened. ed.), among the fathers; Luther and Calvin, among the reformers; Grotius, Bengel, Olshausen, De Wette-Brückner (5th ed. 1863), Tholuck, Hengstenberg, Luthardt, Stier, Webster and Wilkinson, Wordsworth (5th ed. 1866), Barnes, and Owen, among more recent exegetes. The very elaborate Calvinistic commentary of Lampe (1724), and the classical work of Lücke (3d ed., 1840), I had previously studied with care, when, in the first year of my academic career (1843), I wrote out a full course of lectures on the Gospel of John for my students in the University of Berlin. On all the principal passages I found myself in agreement with the views of my youth.
The American edition, then, is to a large extent a new work. It exceeds the German, which numbers only 427 pages (third edition), by more than one-third. It has not only 228 more pages, exclusive of the Preface, but each page, owing to the smaller type, contains two more lines (70 to 68). Add to this the fact that the whole Critical Apparatus (which is almost entirely new), and many of my exegetical notes are set in still smaller type; and it may be fairly said that the contents of this one volume, if leaded and printed in larger type, would fill four ordinary octavo volumes. I state this in justice to the publishers, who sell Lange’s Commentary at so low a price, in proportion to the vast cost of manufacture, that only a large and steady sale can save them from serious loss.
It would have been a more easy, certainly a more agreeable, task to prepare, on the basis of my own lectures, and on a simpler plan, an original Commentary in unbroken composition, instead of improving, supplementing, and adapting a foreign work, with constant restraints thrown around me. I confess that Dr. Lange has often sorely tried my patience and defied my efforts to interpret his uncommon sense to the common sense of the English reader. But, with all his defects, if such they may be called, he has rare qualifications for sounding the mystic depths and and scaling the transcendent heights of John ; and, in my humble judgment, he has dug more gold and silver from the mine of this Gospel, than any single commentator before him. He sees “the clear full-moon” behind the clouds, and where he does not see, he feels, divines, and adores. Every reader must admire his elaborate care, fertile genius, and lovely Johannean spirit.
Of the merits of my own additions others may judge. With all the minute labor bestowed upon it, the work is far from coming up to my own imperfect standard of a Commentary on this marvellous Gospel. At the end of my task I feel more strongly than ever that our best efforts to interpret the unfathomable depths of the words of the eternal Son of God, as recorded by His favorite disciple, are but the stammerings of a child. “Now we see through a glass, darkly,” and know only “in part;” but the time will come when we shall see “face to face,” and know “even as we are known.” “It doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”
One more volume remains to complete the American edition of the New Testament division Of this Bible-work. The Commentary on the Revelation of John has recently appeared in German, and the English edition has been intrusted to able hands. A full Index of the whole work is also in course of preparation.
PHILIP SCHAFF.
Bible House, New York, May 1871.[Shine graciously upon Thy Church, we beseech Thee, O Lord; that, being enlightened by the doctrine and filled with the mind of Thy blessed Apostle and Evangelist, Saint John, whom Jesus loved, it may come at last into Thy beatific presence, and enjoy the rewards of everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.—Collect for St. John’s Day, the second day after Christmas.
[Volat avis sine meta
Quo nec vates nee propheta
Evolavit altius:
Tam implenda, quam impleta,
Nunquam vidit tot secreta
Purus homo purius.
Soaring far beyond the height
Of the bard or prophet old;
Truth fulfilled, and truth to be,—
Never purer mystery
Did a purer tongue unfold!—]
or
THE GOSPEL OF THE ETERNAL IDEA OF THE HISTORY OF CHRIST
OR OF HIS ETERNAL PERSONALITY, AND HIS KINGDOM OF LOVE, CONSIDERED AS THE REALITY AND FULFILMENT WHICH ALL SCRIPTURE AND THE WORLD SYMBOLIZE
(JOHN'S SIGN : THE EAGLE.)
INTRODUCTION
§ 1. JOHN, THE EVANGELIST AND APOSTLE, IN HIS PECULIAR CHARACTER AND LIFE.
John, as a man, represents a firmness and unity of ideal turn, in which even inherent sinfulness veils itself without hypocrisy in the noble forms of devout zeal (Luk_9:54), proud aspiration (Mar_10:35), and perhaps even courtly ease (Joh_13:16). As a Christian and an Apostle, he represents in the Church an apostolate of the heart and spirit of Jesus, in which be attracts even little catechumens with the patriarchal charms of kindliness; while he remains, even for the awakened and believing, veiled in a mysterious and ghostlike glimmer, in which he is often rather revered and praised, than heard through and studied out. To most every-day Christians he is too much of a Sunday nature for them to make themselves familiar with; and if his apostolic and churchly dignity did not shield him, scholars of the ordinary stamp would doubtless be inclined to consider him, for his great, heaven-high, and world-embracing conceptions, fantastic or visionary.
We may try to catch the transcendency, the idealness of his nature, by analogies. Somewhat thus: As Plato was related to Socrates, so is John to Christ. Or: The Evangelist John opens to us a deep, shadowy, presageful insight into infinity, like a night illumined by the moon (Asmus Claudius; see Tholuck’s Introduction to his Commentary, p. 7 [Krauth’s translation, p. 22]). Or, again, according to the ancient Church symbol of this Apostle; As the eagle soars against the sun, so John, in high flight of spirit, faces the sun of revelation in Christ (e.g., Alcuin; see Credner’s Einleitung in das Neue Testament, p. 57; Heubner, Johannes, p. 214). That John is most easily intelligible when taken as the contemplative disciple, in distinction from the practical disciple, the Apostle Peter, is palpable. The two apostles form the centre of the two halves of the apostolate, in which the operation of Christ shades itself off in the world; and from this point of view Andrew and the sons of Alpheus, James the Less, Simon Zelotes, Judas Lebbæus, and, as to natural talent, Judas Iscariot, range on the side of Peter; James the Elder, Philip, Thomas, Bartholomew-Nathanael, and Matthew, on the side of John. Our Evangelist is thus, in any case, balanced in his predominantly ideal tendency by the other side, as the Apostle Peter in his practical tendency is supplemented by his opposite.
But within this one sublime tendency itself there are opposites enough, which paraphrase this richest apostolic life. A repose of gaze, a predominance of insight, which, in the intensity of its light-like nature, easily springs into a lightning-flash; in other words, a serenity which manifests itself in the most glowing heartiness; a spiritual intuition which, with the most distinct logical consciousness, chooses the richest symbolical expression; an intellectual femineity of fervent surrender to the beloved central object of all its contemplations, displaying a masculine energy in the most copious organizing and formative works (Gospel, Epistles, Apocalypse) ; an originality which enriches itself with all the available material of religious learning (Logos-doctrine, Apocalyptics); a fervor of love which, in the keenest distinctions between light and darkness, proves its devoted personalness and its holiness; therefore a child-like and virgin-like nature, which unconsciously displays itself in an angelic majesty: all this pervaded with an unlimited depth of humility longing for salvation, and with a heroic faith, which, in assurance of consummation, soars above the already condemned world;—these are some of the antithetic features in which the character of John opens to us in the copiousness of his life.
And, like every predominantly ideal life, the life of John reveals itself most clearly in definite, more actual lines reflected from other characters. We prefer, therefore, to sketch his life by contrasts.
1. John and Salome. (See Mat_4:21; Mat_20:20; Mar_15:40; Mar_16:1; comp. Mat_27:56). John was the son of Zebedee, a fisherman of Galilee, residing we know not certainly whether at Bethsaida (Chrysostom, and others) or Capernaum (on this latter supposition, see Lücke, Comment., p. 9). His mother was Salome, who no doubt was a sister of Mary, the mother of the Lord (Joh_19:25; comp. Wieseler, Studien und Kritiken, 1840, iii p. 648); and he himself, with his probably older brother James, was bred to his father’s calling. The family has been styled a poor fishing family (Chrysostom) ; Lücke shows (p. 9) that it must have possessed some wealth. Zebedee had hired servants (Mar_1:20), and a partnership in business (Luk_5:10); his wife Salome was one of the women who supported the Lord from their means (Luk_8:3), and embalmed his body; John himself owned a property (Joh_19:27.) Whether this property, and his residence in Jerusalem, were the ground of his acquaintance in the house of the high-priest Caiaphas, cannot be determined. “Jerome unwarrantably inferred from that acquaintance that the family of John belonged to the better class.”
Of his father Zebedee we know very little, yet enough. We may suppose that he consented to the discipleship of his sons, and probably (unless he died before Salome joined in the itinerancy of Jesus) to the discipleship of his wife. That “his mind seems not to have risen above the pursuit of earthly things” (Credner), is not necessarily to be inferred from his continuing at his nets. The family seems to have been fully of the sort who, familiar, in true Israelitish piety, with the Old Testament, were at that time living in quickened hope of the Messiah (Luk_2:38). Salome especially shared this hope with womanlike surrender of soul. It is remarkable that the New Testament apocrypha, and the legends, relate the affinity of Salome and her family with the Lord, without knowing the true connection. Salome is said to have been now a daughter, now a sister, now a former wife of Joseph. She looks spiritually like a sister of Mary; noble of thought like her, she is more ambitious, more wilful, and therefore, on the other hand, more visionary (see Mat_20:20), though in spirit the true mother of a John and a James in cheerfulness of self-sacrifice (Luk_8:3; Luk_23:55), and in that strength of attachment as a disciple, in which she remained steadfast under the cross. At the cross we lose sight of the noble woman (compare, however, Act_1:14), who probably, with her sister Mary, lived a considerable time with her sons in Jerusalem in the house of John. We know not what part she may have had in John’s coming so early into the school of his namesake, the Baptist. All the indications are, that she was the motherly fosterer of the great gifts of her sons, their guide on the path of the future toward the New Testament salvation.
How variously did the seer-like, expectant spirit of the women then on the sea of Galilee bear itself toward the New Testament future ! The Mary in Nazareth becomes the chosen handmaid of the Lord; the Mary in Magdala lapses for a while, probably in wealthy circumstances, to a free-thinking, antinomian life of sensual love, misinterpreting the new time; Salome kindles in her sons the fire of a Messianic hope and search. Perhaps James, the more practical, was her favorite; John was her richer inheritance.
2. John and James. Probably James (major) was the older in relation to John as well as the other James, for he is always placed before John. Both were named, from their common traits, “sons of thunder” (Mar_3:17; comp. the Comm. on Matthew, Mat_10:2). It is simply inconceivable that the Lord, as Gurlitt thought (Studien und Kritiken, 1829, No. 4; comp. Leben Jesu, i. p. 281), should have given the two sons of Zebedee this name in pure censure. Though the well-known anger of the two brothers against a Samaritan city (Luk_9:51), as is not at all improbable, gave occasion for this epithet, yet the Lord must have intended to denote and immortalize, not the sinfulness of His disciples, which was disappearing under the working of His Spirit, but only such a trait of character as was in itself capable of sanctification, though it had expressed itself sinfully here. Nathanael asks, in a sinful way: “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” Christ calls him, immediately after, a true Israelite, in whom is no guile. As in him a sinful haste in judgment was associated with noble uprightness, so, in the sons of thunder, that carnal zeal dwelt with an energy, a loftiness and decision of moral feeling, an exalted strength of character, which may utter itself in indignation like lightning. Theophylact referred the name to the thunder-like elevation and depth of their discourse ( ìåãáëïêÞñõêåò êáὶ èåïëïãéêþôáôïé ). Lücke remarks, that even the metaphorical sense of the Greek âñïíôᾷí is not quite suitable to this; still less the Aramaic øֶâֶùׁ (p. 17). But energy, grandeur, elevation of mind, according to the Old Testament import of thunder and storm, are, at all events, well expressed by this title. (See Psalms 29.) That the name does not occur more frequently, is doubtless due to its being a collective name of both the brothers. But John gradually acquired a surname of his own: “the disciple whom Jesus loved;” the friend of Jesus in the most eminent sense, the bosom friend, who lay on His breast; hence, among the fathers, ἐðéóôÞèéïò (Lücke, p. 14). And James had to be distinguished from the other James, as the son of Zebedee; and thus, in his case also, the surname remained unused. But he proved himself the spiritual brother of John on his entrance upon his discipleship (Mat_4:21) ; in the fiery zeal just mentioned (Luk_9:51) ; in that well-known request of the sons of Zebedee, which was at the same time the request of their mother (Mar_10:35 ; Mat_20:20) ; and his superior character was recognized by the Lord, who made James, with Peter and John, in the select triad, a confidant of His highest mysteries (Mat_17:1; Mat_26:27).
But if John takes precedence of him as the companion of Peter in the Lord’s most special errands of symbolical prophetic meaning (Luk_22:8), and if afterwards, in the apostolic fortunes of the brothers, the greatest contrast appears which is to be found in the history of the apostles, there must have been also a contrast in the character of the two. We suppose that the lofty energy of soul in James received from his mother Salome a practical direction, and hastened to outward action; while John found his highest satisfaction in ideal action, developing and reproducing his impressions. Hence it was probably James in particular who, in the indignation against the Samaritan village, and in other cases, urged to action; while John was perhaps the one to ask the Lord: “Wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven?” And again, it was probably James in particular who forbade the exorcist casting out devils in the name of Jesus (Mar_9:38), and who afterwards was foremost in the request for the first place in the kingdom of the Lord. We infer this from the fact that James the Elder seems at the first to have been, above all others, the leader or representative of the church at Jerusalem. At all events, it could not have been without reason that he was the first seized by Herod Agrippa I. in his persecution of the apostles (Act_12:1).
Thus the elder son of Zebedee was the first martyr among the apostles, while the younger was almost the last of the apostles (Simon Zelotes probably died later, about 107, a martyr’s death) to be taken home, and, after a temporary exile, died a natural death, toward the end of the century. John, with his contemplative, stately, ideal mind, went angel-like through life. As he did not interfere directly and by main force with the world, he was little heeded by the world; though, by virtue of his hidden depth of life, lie was doubtless a mighty lever of motion, an awakener of kindred spirits, even from the time he was a disciple of the Baptist.
The contrast between the two sons of Zebedee may also explain the fact that James the Elder is only once mentioned in the fourth Gospel, Joh_21:2. The Evangelist used only those materials of the gospel history which would completely present his ideal view. Notices of James lay in another direction. Even his mother John mentions only in circumlocution; and he speaks in the same indirect way of himself. (See Joh_20:4; Joh_21:7.)
3. John the Evangelist and John the Baptist. A John represents in the gospel history the deepest trend of the Old Testament, as it prepares for and points to the first advent of Christ (Joh_1:6) ; a John again represents the New Testament, which proceeds from Christ, as, in its deepest current, it prepares for the second coming of Christ in glory (John 21). God is gracious, is the name of the forerunner, who is greater than all the prophets; God is gracious, is the name of the disciple of Jesus who does not die. Believing hope of the Messiah made the younger son of Zebedee, even in youth, a disciple of John; believing certainty of the Messiah makes him one of the first to enter the discipleship of Christ (Joh_1:35); and that, at the words of the Baptist: “Behold the Lamb of God.” Indeed, it is a characteristic, that the ideal Apostle has taken even the Baptist entirely on his evangelical side, leaving the severe preacher of the law and of repentance quite out of view. The difference between the treatment of the Baptist in the Synoptical Gospels and in John exactly corresponds with the difference in the portraiture at Christ. And yet it is the same Christ, the same John the Baptist, viewed on the side most congenial to this disciple.
The Old Testament John was to the New Testament John the voice of the gospel spirit of the Old Testament (Joh_1:23), the witness-bearer of God who pointed to Christ. In this spirit the disciple was joined to the master in a fellowship which embraced the strongest antithesis. In energy of moral indignation he could assuredly vie with the Baptist; and the words of John the Baptist: “He shall baptize you with fire,” “He will burn up the chaff,” might have been in his mind when he wished to baptize with fire and burn the Samaritan village.
But by degrees the mighty contrast appeared between the master senescent in spirit, legal, ascetic, austere, and practical, and the disciple eternally youthful, contemplative, joyful, festal, hovering over the earthly world. The christology of the Baptist ended in the historical Messiahship of Jesus of Nazareth, and His priestly atoning sufferings and kingly judging; the christology of the son of Zebedee transfigured heaven and earth into an emblem and copy of the universal Christ. And between the later disciples of John the Baptist and the theology of John the Divine, this contrast became a very chasm.
Nevertheless, both names doubtless have given the name John unlimited currency in Christendom. Every encyclopædia testifies how many princes, scholars, and divines are graced with this name; and how many popes—sometimes, shamelessly enough, without a breath of the spirit of John—have chosen his name for their decoration.
4. John and Andrew. The fisherman’s son John had gone with the fisherman Andrew from Bethsaida into the school of the Baptist on the Jordan. That Andrew was one of the foremost pioneering spirits among the apostles, is attested by the few traces of him in the gospel history, and by the legend. (Leben Jesu, ii. 2, p. 695; comp. Winer: Andreas), Andrew brought Simon Peter, his brother, to Jesus. It is possible that John had, in like manner, won over his brother James. At all events, both Andrew and John were men of pioneering, progressive mind. Hence they were admitted, with Peter and James, to the confidential eschatological discourse of Christ on the Mount of Olives (Mar_13:3). But they led off on different paths: the one on the path of missionary action, the other on the path of that knowledge which overcomes the world.
5. John and Judas Iscariot. If we can suppose that Judas the traitor had blinded most of the disciples by his Messianic enthusiasm, and was able often to carry them with him (Leben Jesu, ii. 2, p. 702; comp. p. 651 sqq.)—indeed, that he had probably been received into the circle upon the special intercession of the disciples in their blind confidence—John was the first to see through him (Joh_6:71; Joh_12:6; Joh_13:27). The silent depth of a solid enthusiasm and devotion finds itself instinctively repelled by the flaring fire of an impure ambition. And as Judas was the serpent which coiled himself upon the bosom of the Lord (Joh_13:13), John lay on the breast of Jesus as a chosen friend. Even he might often grieve Him (Luk_9:54; Mar_9:38; Mar_10:35), and for a moment forsake Him, but he soon returns to His side (Joh_18:16), and, though not a confessor in word, as he was not yet required to be, he is a confessor in act, as he stands and waits with the mother of Jesus beneath the cross (Joh_19:26).
6. John and Abraham, or, John the Friend of Jesus. As Abraham was distinguished above all the men of the Old Covenant by being called, in a special sense, a “friend of God” (Jam_2:23), so John is honored above all the men of the New, as the friend of Jesus. And in both cases the reason of this eminence must have lain in an energy of personal knowledge or steadfast love in these friends of God and Christ, arising from a particular Divine election. Abraham was called by a personal God into a personal covenant, and, by his self-surrender to the personal God, his own personal life was transfigured and secured to him down to an endless posterity; for this personal love he gave up home and friends, and all things, and gained the promise of the Holy Land and an hereditary kingdom (Gen_12:1-7). So John resigned himself to the knowledge of the world-embracing, divine personality of Christ, with a devotion which cast the whole world into the shadow of Christ. In this contemplation of the personal Christ he acquired that peculiar radiance in which he appears as the friend of Christ. Judas loved Jesus for a while for the sake of the Messianic kingdom as he conceived it; the other disciples, on the path of their discipleship, loved Jesus and His kingdom; John found all in the person of Jesus: kingdom and redemption, Father and home.
Hence he is at first one of the disciples, in the general sense (John 1; Matthew 4); then, one of the twelve (Matthew 10); then, one of the three (Matthew 17); then, one of the two (Luk_17:18); at last, the one who lies on the bosom of Jesus (Joh_13:23), to whom Jesus commits His mother at the cross (John 19), to whom alone He promises a tarrying till He come again (John 21), and to whom, on the island of his exile, the Lord once more appears in personal majesty, long after His personal appearances among His people have ceased (Revelation 1).
7. John and Mary. That a special affinity of spirit existed between the mother and the friend of the Lord, might naturally be presumed, and is confirmed by the direction of Christ upon the cross. It would be contrary to all christological principles to suppose that Jesus, by that bequest, severed and abolished His human relation to His mother. The kingdom of glory glorifies human relations; it no more annuls them, than it abolishes the human nature of Christ himself. But the comfort of intimate friendship, which contributes to the edification of His people, Christ appoints to these two sufferers. To Mary and John the form of Christ had become most copiously and most purely transfigured. Mary seems to have led, for a considerable time, a quiet life in communion of spirit with John in his house at Jerusalem (Joh_19:27; see the article “Maria,” in Winer). Both lived in joyful musing on the past, the present, and the future of the Lord. Without doubt they formed a most efficient support of the congregation at Jerusalem, which was the whole church at first; and Mary might well have had a mental part in the “one tender leading Gospel.”
John himself, indeed, was a predominantly feminine nature, if by that be understood the perfect receptivity and self-surrender which is proper to all religious feeling and exercises of faith. (See the article “John” in Herzog’s Encyclopœdia, by Ebrard.) But a feminine nature, in the stricter sense, he cannot be called. He was great not merely in receiving and feeling, but also in contemplative reproduction, statement, and imagination, though his statement and imagination were eminently ideal. More sublime compositions than the fourth Gospel and the Revelation cannot be conceived. This plastic, creative work, was by no means of the nature of secular art for being ideal. It produced awakening and edifying creations for the Church. But John also, in his way, labored practically, as much perhaps as Peter, only in a direction less striking to the eye.
8. John and Peter; or, John and the first half of the apostolic age. It is not correct to call Peter, without qualification, the first of the apostles. Peter and John mark the contrast in the position of the apostles between Christ and the world. John is the first on the side of the apostolate toward Christ; Peter, the first on the side toward the world, and in that view truly the first of the apostles in the stricter sense. If, therefore, John for the most part stands in lofty silence beside the speaking and acting Peter (Acts 3, 8, 15), we should greatly err if we should take him for a mute or in any way passive figure, according to the measure of his silence. John had no talent for popularity; he was always too much the whole man for that (see the above-mentioned article of Ebrard), too directly exposed his inward views and movements; but it may well be supposed that, as a support, a spiritual guide, he exerted almost as determining an influence upon Peter, as Peter exerted upon the world and the Church. The indications of this we find, for example, in John 18, 20, , 21. So far as Peter might still need human advice, he found his privy council in the house of John and Mary; though we need not attribute to this circumstance the fact that in the apostolic council at Jerusalem he stood so firmly for the freedom of faith (Acts 15), while soon after, at Antioch, where he was without the guidance of John, he wavered once more, and should have found his support in Paul. We at last find John, however, in that council in Jerusalem (about the year 53 [50]), and find him, with Peter and James the Less, one of the three pillars of the church (Galatians 2). If there was at that time any definite demarcation of the three several positions of those pillars in the Jewish mission, as there was between that mission as a whole and the Gentile mission of Paul, James, it seems to be certain, was the president of the mother-church at Jerusalem, Peter more especially devoted to the Hebrew Diaspora, John to the Hellenists, or the Jews and proselytes of Grecian education.
This explains the wavering of Peter at Antioch, and his journey to Babylon to the Jews resident there; and it explains the later residence of John in Asia Minor, and his doctrine of the Logos, which we regard as determined by his intercourse with Hellenistic Jews. This direction of John’s labors rested upon the universal destination which Christ had assigned him (John 21).
Peter may be said to have laid the foundation of the Christian Church, as a historical martyr; John, as a spiritual martyr, to have embraced in his mind all the ages of the development of the Church; to form her ideal, mystical background; to move through the dark times of her conflicts and through her predominantly practical tendencies as the great unknown, notwithstanding the thousand Johns in Christendom; perpetuating himself especially in all the healthful mystical and contemplative theology, to break forth in the end of the days with his full spiritual operation, and present to the Lord, as a bride adorned for her husband, a John-like church, matured in spiritual life.
Thus, as Peter was the first of the apostles in their relation to the world, John was the first in their relation to Christ. The talent of Peter was ideally practical; that of John, practically ideal. Peter is the chief of the working, edifying, upbuilding spirits of the Church; John, the chief of the contemplative. In John, the basis of enthusiasm or devotion to Christ was not an inexhaustible impulse to do, but a deep, wondering celebration of the eternal fact and work of the perfection of Christ. The fundamental characteristic of Peter was energetic heart; that of John, reposing heartiness. John’s piety, therefore, like that of Peter, has the character of the highest purity. In his humility he goes, with great delicacy, even to the suppression of himself, his mother, and his brother James, in his Gospel; introducing himself merely as “a disciple” of Christ (Joh_1:40), or as “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (Joh_13:23); his mother Salome, only as sister of the mother of Jesus (Joh_19:25); and James the Elder but once, as son of Zebedee. In like manner, through the terrors of the world his heart goes almost equally undisturbed. In the house of the high-priest he stands upright beside the falling Peter. His love has the character of tender depth; his believing knowledge is an intuitive beholding, rising to lyric stateliness. The ideas of love, life, and light, hatred, death, and darkness, are the fundamental elements of his ideal conception of Christianity and the world. Hence, to him, the Logos, as the original unity of these three elements, is the groundwork—the glory (the äüîá ), or the absolute manifestation ( ἐðéöÜíåéá ), the final goal of the revelation of God. Peter sees the glory of Christ chiefly in the mighty unfolding of the glory of His kingdom; John sees all the glory of the kingdom of Christ comprised in the single glory of His personal exaltation and His future appearing. But his contemplativeness is not an idle posture; it is the energy of faith; it therefore supplies a silent force which proves itself preëminently an inwardly purifying agency in the Church; and it therefore expresses itself in the strongest abhorrence of evil. Thus John clarifies the Christian doctrine, the body of believers, the Church. And as, therefore, the contemplative Apostle was called to enlarge and complete the New Testament in all its constituent elements [historical, didactic, and prophetic], so also the purifying