The Lost Gospel and Its Contents Part 6

THE PRINc.i.p.aL WITNESS.--HIS TESTIMONY SUMMED UP.

From all this it is clear that Justin had not only seen and reverenced St. John's Gospel, but that his mind was permeated with its peculiar teaching.

I hesitate not to say that, if a man rejects the evidence above adduced, he rejects it because on other grounds he is determined, cost what it may, to discredit the Fourth Gospel.

Let us briefly recapitulate.

Justin reproduced the doctrine of the Logos, using the words of St.

John. He a.s.serted the Divine and human natures of the Son of G.o.d in the words of St. John, or in exactly similar words. He reproduced that peculiar teaching of our Lord, to be found only in St. John, whereby we are enabled to hold the true and essential G.o.dhead of Christ without for a moment holding that He is an independent G.o.d. He reproduced the doctrine of the Logos being, even before His Incarnation, in _every_ man as the "true light" to enlighten him.

He reproduces the doctrine of the Sacraments in terms to be found only in the Fourth Gospel. He reproduces, or alludes to, arguments and types and prophecies and historical events, only to be found in St. John's Gospel.

It seems certain, then, that if Justin was acquainted with any one of our four Gospels, that Gospel was the one according to St. John.

What answer, the reader will ask, does the author of "Supernatural Religion" give to all this? Why, he simply ignores the greater part of these references (we trust through ignorance of their existence), and takes notice of some three or four, in which, to use the vulgar expression, he picks holes, by drawing attention to discrepancies of language or application, and dogmatically p.r.o.nounces that Justin could not have known the fourth Gospel.

Well, then, the reader will ask, from whom did Justin derive the knowledge of doctrines and facts so closely resembling those contained in St. John?

Again, we have reference to supposed older sources of information which have perished. With respect to the Logos doctrine, the author of "Supernatural Religion" a.s.serts:--

"His [Justin's] doctrine of the Logos is precisely that of Philo, and of writings long antecedent to the fourth Gospel, and there can be no doubt, we think, that it was derived from them."

("Supernatural Religion," vol. ii. p. 297.)

It may be well here to remark that, strictly speaking, there is no Logos _doctrine_ in St. John's Gospel,--by doctrine meaning "scientifically expressed doctrine," drawn out, and expounded at length, as in Philo.

The Gospel commences with the a.s.sertion that the Logos, Whoever He be, is G.o.d, and is the pre-existent Divine nature of Jesus; he does this once and once only, and never recurs to it afterwards.

The next pa.s.sage referred to is the a.s.sertion of the Baptist, "I am not the Christ," and the conclusion of the author is that "There is every reason to believe that he derived it from a particular Gospel, in all probability the Gospel according to the Hebrews, different from ours."

(Vol. ii. p. 302.)

The last place noticed is Justin's reproduction of John iii. 3-5, in connection with the inst.i.tution of baptism. After discussing this at some length, for the purpose of magnifying the differences and minimizing the resemblances, his conclusion is:--

"As both the Clementines and Justin made use of the Gospel according to Hebrews, the most competent critics have, with reason, adopted the conclusion that the pa.s.sage we are discussing was derived from that Gospel; at any rate it cannot for a moment he maintained as a quotation from our fourth Gospel, and it is of no value as evidence for its existence." ("Supernatural Religion," vol. ii. p. 313.)

We have now tolerably full means of judging what a wonderful Gospel this Gospel to the Hebrews must have been, and what a loss the Church has sustained by its extinction.

Here was a Gospel which contained a harmony of the history, moral teaching, and doctrine of all the four. As we have seen, it contained an account of the miraculous Birth and Infancy, embodying in one narrative the facts contained in the first and third Gospels. It contained a narrative of the events preceding and attending our Lord's Death, far fuller and more complete than that of any single Gospel in the Canon. It contained a record of the teaching of Christ, similar to our present Sermon on the Mount, embodying the teaching scattered up and down in all parts of SS. Matthew and Luke, and in addition to all this it embodied the very peculiar tradition, both in respect of doctrine and of history, of the fourth Gospel.

How could it possibly have happened that a record of the highest value, on account both of its fulness and extreme antiquity, should have perished, and have been superseded by four later and utterly unauthentic productions, one its junior by at least 120 years, and each one of these deriving from it only a part of its teaching; the first three, for no conceivable reason, rejecting all that peculiar doctrine now called Johannean, and the fourth confining itself to reproducing this so-called Johannean element and this alone? It is only necessary to state this to show the utter absurdity of the author's hypothesis.

But the marvel is that a person a.s.suming such airs of penetration and research [63:1] should not have perceived that, if he has proved his point, he has simply strengthened the evidence for the supernatural, for he has proved the existence of a fifth Gospel, far older and fuller than any we now possess, witnessing to the supernatural Birth, Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus.

The author strives to undermine the evidence for the authenticity of our present Gospels for an avowedly dogmatic purpose. He believes in the dogma of the impossibility of the supernatural; he must, for this purpose, discredit the witness of the four, and he would fain do this by conjuring up the ghost of a defunct Gospel, a Gospel which turns out to be far more emphatic in its testimony to the supernatural and the dogmatic than any of the four existing ones, and so the author of this pretentious book seems to have answered himself. His own witnesses prove that from the first there has been but one account of Jesus of Nazareth.

SECTION XI.

THE PRINc.i.p.aL WITNESS ON OUR LORD'S G.o.dHEAD.

The author of "Supernatural Religion" has directed his attacks more particularly against the authenticity of the Gospel according to St. John. His desire to discredit this Gospel seems at times to arise out of a deep personal dislike to the character of the disciple whom Jesus loved. (Vol. ii. pp. 403-407, 427, 428, &c.)

On the author's principles, it is difficult to understand the reason for such an attack on this particular Gospel. He is not an Arian or Socinian (as the terms are commonly understood), who might desire to disparage the testimony of this Gospel to the Pre-existence and G.o.dhead of our Lord. His attack is on the Supernatural generally, as witnessed to by any one of the four Gospels; and it is allowed on all hands that the three Synoptics were written long before the Johannean; and, besides this, he has proved to his own satisfaction, and to the satisfaction of the Reviewers who so loudly applauded his work, that there existed a Gospel long anterior to the Synoptics, which is more explicit in its declarations of the Supernatural than all of them put together.

However, as he has made a lengthened and vigorous attempt to discredit this Gospel especially, it may be well to show his extraordinary misconceptions respecting the mere contents of the Fourth Gospel, and the opinions of the Fathers (notably Justin Martyr) who seem to quote from it, or to derive their doctrine from it.

The first question--and by far the most important one which we shall have to meet--is this: Is the doctrine respecting the Person of Jesus more fully developed in the pages of Justin Martyr, or in the Fourth Gospel? We mean by the doctrine respecting the Person of Jesus, that He is, with reference to His pre-existent state, the Logos and Only-begotten Son of G.o.d; and that, as being such, He is to be worshipped and honoured as Lord and G.o.d; and that, in order to be our Mediator, and the Sacrifice for our sin, He took upon Him our nature.

The author of "Supernatural Religion" endeavours to trace the doctrine of the Logos, as contained in Justin, to older sources than our present Fourth Gospel, particularly to Philo and the Gospel according to the Hebrews. The latter is much too impalpable to enable us to verify his statements by it; but we shall have to show his misconceptions respecting the connection of Justin's doctrine with the former. What we have now to consider is the following statement:--

"It is certain, however, that, both Justin and Philo, unlike the prelude to the Fourth Gospel (i. 1), place the Logos in a secondary position to G.o.d the Father, another point indicating a less advanced stage of the doctrine."

From this we must, of course, infer that the author of "Supernatural Religion" considers that Justin does not state the essential G.o.dhead of the Second Person as distinctly and categorically as it is stated in the Fourth Gospel. And as it is a.s.sumed by Rationalists that there was in the early Church a constantly increasing development of the doctrine of the true G.o.dhead of our Lord, gradually superseding some earlier doctrine of an Arian, or Humanitarian, or Sadducean type; therefore, the more fully developed doctrine of the G.o.dhead of our Lord in any book proves that book to be of later origin than another book in which it is not so fully developed.

The author of "Supernatural Religion" cannot deny that Justin ascribes the names "Lord" and "G.o.d" and Pre-existence before all worlds to Jesus as the Logos, but he fastens upon certain statements or inferences respecting the subordination of the Son to the Father, and His acting for His Father, or under Him, in the works of Creation and Redemption, which Justin, as an orthodox believer who would abhor Tritheism, was bound to make, and most ignorantly a.s.serts that such statements are contrary to the spirit of the Fourth Gospel.

I shall now set before the reader the statements of both St. John and Justin respecting the Divine Nature of our Lord, so that he may judge for himself which is the germ and which the development.

The Fourth Gospel once, and once only, sets forth the G.o.dhead and Pre-existence of the Logos, and this is in the exordium or prelude:--

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with G.o.d, and the Word was G.o.d."

The Fourth Gospel once, and once only, identifies this Word with the pre-existent nature of Jesus, in the concluding words of the same exordium:--

"The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we behold His Glory, the glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth."

Except in these two places (and, of course, I need not say that they are all-important as containing by implication the whole truth of G.o.d respecting Christ), there is no mention whatsoever of the "Word" in this Gospel.

The Fourth Gospel gives to Jesus the name of G.o.d only in two places, _i.e._ in the narrative of the second appearance of our Lord to His apostles a.s.sembled together after His Resurrection, where Thomas is related to have said to Him the words, "My Lord and my G.o.d;" and in the words "The Word was G.o.d" taken in connection with "the Word was made flesh." The indirect, but certain, proofs by implication that Jesus fully shared with His Father the Divine Nature are numerous, as, for instance, that He wields all the power of G.o.dhead, in that "whatsoever things [the Father] doeth these doeth the Son likewise"--that He is equal in point of nature with the Father, because G.o.d is His own proper Father ([Greek: idios])--that He raises from the dead whom He wills--that He and the Father are One--that when Esaias saw the glory of G.o.d in the temple he saw Christ's glory; and, because of all this, He is the object of faith, even of the faith which saves.

But, as my purpose is not to show that either Justin or St. John hold the G.o.dhead of our Lord, but rather to compare the statements of the one with the other; and, inasmuch as to cite the pa.s.sages in which Justin Martyr a.s.sumes that our Blessed Lord possesses all Divine attributes would far exceed the limits which I have proposed to myself, I shall not further cite the pa.s.sages in St. John, which only _imply_ our Lord's G.o.dhead, but proceed to cite the _direct_ statements of Justin (or rather some of them) on this head.

Whereas, then, St. John categorically a.s.serts the G.o.dhead of our Lord in one, or, at the most, two places, Justin directly a.s.serts it nearly forty times. The following are noticeable:--

"And Trypho said, You endeavour to prove an incredible and well-nigh impossible thing; [namely] that G.o.d endured to be born and become man. [69:1] If I undertook, said I, [Justin] to prove this by doctrines or arguments of men, you should not bear with me. But if I quote frequently Scriptures, and so many of them, referring to this point, and ask you to comprehend them, you are hard-hearted in the recognition of the mind and will of G.o.d." (Dial. ch. lxviii.)

Again:--

"This very Man Who was crucified is proved to have been set forth expressly as G.o.d and Man, and as being crucified and as dying."

[69:2] (Dial. ch. lxxi.)

Again, Justin accuses the Jews of having mutilated the Prophetical Scriptures, by having cut out of them the following prophecy respecting our Lord's descent into h.e.l.l:--

"The Lord G.o.d remembered His dead people of Israel who lay in the graves; and He descended to preach to them His own Salvation."

(Dial. ch. lxxii.)

Again:--