ARTICLE IV. THE GOSPEL OF JOHN, AS INDICATING THE STATE OF Translated from the German of Baur, by ALFRED H. GUERNSEY, New York. [FERDINAND CHRISTIAN BAUR, born in 1792, and since 1826, Professor-Ordinary of Theology in the University of Türbingen, deservedly occupies a high place among the latest German theologians. His labors have taken a historical or historico-critical direction; and in them he has manifested an extraordinary power of analysis and combination exerted upon a full survey of all the materials belonging to his subject. Among his numerous productions may be spe cified an essay on the "Christ-Party in the Church of Corinth," published in the "Tübinger Quartalschrift, für Theologie," in which he demonstrates that the apostle Peter never was at Rome, and, consequently, that the pope can in no sense be the successor of Peter. Other important questions bearing upon Catholicism he satisfactorily disposes of in his "Apollonius of Tyana and Christ, or, the Relations of Pythagoreanism and Christianity." On the other hand, he is no less opposed to the school of Hengstenberg than to Catholicism. In several works, among which are "Symbolism and Mythology, or, the Natural Religion of Antiquity;" "The Manichæan System;" "The Christian Gnosis, or, the Christian Philosophy of Religion in its Historical Development;" "The Christianity of Platonism, or, Socrates and Christ," he endeavors to develop and support the doctrine, that the history of religions is, throughout, but the history of God in the finite, and that all forms of belief are but phases in the development of the original idea of religion. Baur originally took his stand on the philosophy of Schleiermacher, and his work on the Natural Religion of Antiquity, may be considered as but an amplification of some hints thrown out in Schleiermacher's "Einleitung zur Glaubenslehre." In this work Baur displays so much eloquence and vigor of thought, that he may be regarded as the successor to his master's genius. The critical labors of Baur extend over the whole New Testament canon. The extract herewith given is from his latest work, entitled, "Critical Researches concerning the Canonical Gospels, their Relation to each other, their Character and Origin." All commentators have remarked the striking affinity, which, notwithstanding many diversities, exists between the first three Gospels; and the no less striking diversity be tween them and the Gospel of John. This diversity, as far as the exterior of the Gospels is concerned, relates to the questions of time and place, and is so great as to make it evident that in one, at least, the order of time has not been followed. Most commentators have followed the chronology of John, in their attempts at harmonizing the gospel narratives. Baur adopts the contrary view. He groups together the three Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, under the name of the Synoptical Gospels, and supposes them to be composed with a prevailing historical aim; while the Gospel of John he supposes to be composed with a metaphysical and dogmatical view; with the design not so much to relate actual events, as to set forth the nature of Christianity in its highest stage of development. It is an ideal rather than an actual narrative. He furthermore holds that it is not the composition of the apostle to whom it is attributed, but is in all respects an anonymous work, and he further considers the last chapter of it to be spurious. This, in brief, is the standpoint from which he surveys the Gospels. Affirming to the irreconcilable contradictions between these Gospels, and denying the authenticity of the last, which yet is the exponent of Christianity in its highest form-higher even than that set forth by the apostle Paul-it is clear that he cannot admit of the inspiration of our canon, in any sense which we should admit to be answerable to the term. With these views he of course treats the Scriptures precisely as he would any other work under discussion, applying the same tests, and using the same liberty of comment. It is needless to say that this is not the standpoint of the Biblical Repository; and that, so far, it has no sympathy with the prevailing school of German commentators. But it cannot be denied, that from this standpoint some of the most acute and far-seeing surveys have been made into the domains of Biblical knowledge. What then shall be done? We may ignore all the labors of German scholarship. We may in lexicography refuse the aid of Gesenius, because of his "Neology," and cling to Parkhurst; we may refuse, for the same reason, to avail ourselves of the labors of De Wette, Rosenmüller, and Baur, resting content with Scott, Henry, and Clarke. If we do not think this the wiser course, it only remains to take the Germans as they are; avail ourselves of their labors, and avoid their errors. Yet in all things evil there is a germ of good. Truth is so many-sided that if it be only looked at, even from a false standpoint, some new views must be obtained; and we have only to be careful not to adopt as true, views whose seeming truth arises from being gained from an erroneous point of observation. If a number of observers, from stations so widely apart from ours as that occupied by the German commentators, see precisely the same things that we do from ours, it surely is a strong corroborative argument for that view being correct. It would seem, for instance, that a Trinitarian, if he needed confirmation in his belief that the Gospel of John teaches the divinity of Christ, would receive it when he learned that a writer of the acuteness of Baur, looking at that Gospel from a point the whole diameter of its orbit distant from his own, should yet pronounce that the setting forth of this doctrine is the great object of the evangelist. An author like Baur is under no temptation to wrest the Scriptures for support to a favorite doctrine; for if they conflict with his views, he regards their teaching as incomplete or erroneous. He who believes a certain doctrine to be true; and also holds that the Scriptures teach all truth infallibly, lies under the danger of assuming that the given doctrine must be contained in them; and of searching the Scriptures for proof for his view, rather than to discover what they really teach. The error of the Germans may serve to detect our own opposite error; or, if our view accord with theirs on the teaching of the Bible on any point, it may convince us that we have not fallen into that error. On the whole, then, it seems to admit of no question that, as interpreters of such a school do exist, and as they bring into the support of their views those high resources of scholarship and talent, which cannot fail to produce many valuable results, the theological literature of our country cannot without loss to itself refuse to take cognizance of their labors.-TRANSLATOR.] In the discourses of Jesus, as found in the Gospel of John, as we have shown, the high absolute importance which the evangelist ascribes to the person of Jesus, and which is expressed in the idea of the Logos, comes forth with all the energy of a consciousness filled with it. It is just this importance given to the person of Jesus which marks the position of this Gospel in the progressive development of the Christian sentiment of primitive times. In the books of the New Testament canon, if we overlook the intermediary transitions, there may on the whole be distinguished three types of Christian doctrine, three principal forms of religious sentiment, which constitute so many stages in the progress of the development of that sentiment. The first of these forms is repre sented in the synoptic Gospels, and in those books of the New Testament cognate with them. Here we see that phase of Christianity which stands nighest to Judaism, is the most closely connected with it, and was the earliest to break away from it, and assume an independent significance of its own. Here the absolute significance of Christianity is this; that it is the Law spiritualized and made universal, with the new covenant of the forgiveness of sin, which Jesus, as the Messiah or the Son of God in the higher Messianic sense, had established through his death. The Epistles of Paul present the second form, in the contrast of the Law and the Gospel, and in the significance, higher than the signoptic conception of the Messiah or Son of God, which the ascended Christ has, as the object of faith in the Pauline sense, or as Lord of the church. The Gospel of John raises itself above this form also; transcending even the doctrinal system of the minor Pauline Epistles, it presents Jesus, as the subject of the evangelical history, absolutely identical with the Logos, who was from eternity with God, and who himself was God. In the Pauline standpoint we have the nearest measure for that of John. The relation between these two standpoints may be thus defined:-That in the relations of men to God, which with Paul is the harmonizing of opposites, only effected by struggle and contest, is with John the repose of a unity lying above these opposites; and that in respect of the person of Christ, which with Paul is always a human-divine relation, is with John one absolutely divine. The chief opposition with which the Pauline system is concerned, is that which is developed in the theocratic history of the Jewish people, or of the old covenant, between the Law, or sin attaining its full power by means of the Law, and the grace of God in the gospel, forgiving sin, and doing away with it:-or, as far as the seat of sin is in the flesh, the anthropologic contest between the flesh and the spirit. Involved in this opposition, man can only attain the consciousness of the forgiveness of sin by faith in Christ, as the object of faith, who suffered and died for the sins of the world, and himself became sin and the curse of the law. By this faith man is justified before God, and becomes thereby one with Christ, so that he accomplishes in himself the same process of victory over sin, the slaying of its power, and enfranchisement from the Law, which constitute what is essential in the atoning death of Christ. And the chief significance of the person of Christ, consists in the fact that he has this significance for faith in him; or that he is the Son of God who died for the sins of the world, reconciling the world with God by his death; with which is intimately connected, that as having died and risen again, and now raised to the right hand of God, or ruling with the power of God, he is Lord of the church. Yet in his divine power and dignity he is essentially human. He is the second or heavenly man, in contradistinction to the first or earthly; or, as the principle of sin, done away with through his death, is properly the flesh (odos), in opposition to the spirit (veu), he is the spiritual man, who, in distinction from the earthly has in himself the quickening spirit (veuа woлоlov), or spirit of holiness (πνεῦμα ἁγιοσύνης). If we compare the Pauline system in this respect with those two fundamental ideas of the synoptic standpoint-the fulfillment of the law in the gospel, and the forgiveness of sin subjoined to the law-it may be easily perceived, that this system is only the harmonizing development of those two opposing ideas, hitherto unharmonized. As soon as the forgiveness of sin and enfranchisement from the power of the law came to be considered in their more definite import, they could only be conceived of as a process of reconciliation accomplished in the death of Jesus; and the higher was the representation of the death of Jesus, and of the work of reconciliation fulfilled by it, in the same proportion must the importance of the person of Christ become greater. But nevertheless, as long as the ascending way, so to speak, from below upwards to the Divine power and dignity of Christ was followed, and the Divine in him, in its ultimate relations, could thus be considered as an accident subjoined to his substantial human nature -beyond which we are not justified in going by the undoubtedly authentic epistles of Paul-so long the Christian sentiment had not as yet attained its ultimate point. The Pauline Christ, in every stage of the conception, is but the man Christ Jesus, raised to the Divine dignity. Christ is essentially man, since even as coming from heaven, he is called at the same time man (1 Cor. 15: 47). It remains for this way, ascending from the finite to the absolute, to substitute the other way wherein the consideration proceeds from above downwards, and where the substantial thing in the person of Christ is not the human, but that which is in itself divine -is the Logos, identical with the absolute being of God. From this standpoint the whole aspect of the essential nature of Christianity becomes changed. The first and essential thing in Christianity is then, not that self-completing process-objective in the atoning death, subjective in the faith in its atoning power-a process rendered necessary by the power of the law and of sin, and succeeding through such stern opposition; but the very essence of Christianity is the revelation of the glory of God in the only-begotten of the Father, the fullness of the Father's grace and truth contained in the Incarnate One, in which everything incomplete, finite, and negative pertaining to the law given by Moses, is absolutely abolished. The manifestation of the only-begotten Son is itself the absolute working out of salvation, the immediate impartation to humanity of the Divine nature. The Logos, as the principle of light and life, entering into this contest between light and darkTHIRD SERIES VOL, V., No. 4 5 1 ness, attracts, as kindred to himself, all who by faith in him become children of God; and this union with him in faith, which as such is also a doing (ov av, iii. 21), comprehends in itself simply everything which from the Pauline standpoint can only be conceived of as an opposition, only to be reconciled by a series of various crises. In short:-That which from the anthropologic standpoint of Paul, is the ever-deepening contest in the subjective consciousness of the individual, between the flesh and the spirit, the law and grace is from the metaphysical standpoint of John, the objective contest of the two principles, embracing the physical and moral world, of light and darkness, and the process of the Logos glorifying himself in conflict with the unbelief of the world, and in this very glorification bringing all back to absolute oneness with himself. Whatever may be thought of the objective relations of these various standpoints, it is at least certain that the developed sentiment of John could have the Pauline standpoint only as its preparative. From the Pauline standpoint only could one proceed to that of John, but could not, on the contrary, turn back to the former from the latter. The Gospel of John must therefore belong to a period when an advance had been made beyond the Pauline form of Christianity. The same thing is shown by the relations which in this Gospel Christianity sustains to Judaism and Gentilism. According to the principal passage bearing upon this point ("Ye worship ye know not what, we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews," 4: 22)-Judaism has indeed this absolute advantage over Gentilism, that its worship was one of knowledge, that is, it was directed toward the true object of the religious sentiment; while that of the Gentiles-to which in this passage the Samaritan is equivalent-was in relation to its object, an erring and ignorant worship. If, as is said in 17: 3, it be eternal life that men should know the only true God, then had the Jewish people alone the absolute truth. Therefore the Messianic salvation could come from the Jews only (4:22); from them only could come the Messiah, who should be the Redeemer of the world (4:42). With the knowledge of the true God is therefore connected in the Old Testament a continual prophecy of and reference to him who should be sent from the only true God as the Redeemer of the world. Moses had written of the Messiah: "Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me; for he wrote of me."-5: 46. In the writings of the prophets, the theme is the Messianic period: "It is written in the prophets, And they shall all be taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me."-6: 45. Abraham rejoiced to see the day of the Messiah (8: 52), and Isaiah, in the vision of his glory, prophesied of him (2: 41). The Old Testament religion is shown to be the true one, because in the most |