Paul Wilhelm Schmiedel

“ We find the doctrine of the logos fully developed in the Jewish thinker
Philo, who was twenty to thirty years older than Jesus. In his native
city, Alexandria, in Egypt, he had the best opportunity of imbibing
Greek philosophy, and of combining it with the ideas which he himself
cherished as a Jew. Consequently, the logos is the pattern and producer
of things, as we found it on Greek soil; but it cannot be the deity
himself (that would conflict with Philo's Jewish faith) ; it is simply a
second divine being, who is subordinate to the God of the Old
Testament. ”

“ Jesus parables are special gems in his discourses. We never cease to be
charmed by their vividness, the freshness of their colouring, and their
appropriate application to the religious and moral problems of life,
and we feel that they really must have been the best means of bringing
eternal truths home to simple people in whom dwells half unconsciously
so deep a desire for them. The Fourth Gospel does not contain a single
parable. The only passage that approaches the parabolic form is that in
which Jesus compares himself to a vine and his disciples to the
branches (xv. 1-8) ”

“ That is Jesus' own idea.
His death means salvation to him, and therefore to his cause
also--salvation to his disciples.
As the death of the Passover lamb means salvation to the Israelites in
a critical hour, so in like manner in another critical hour the death
of Jesus means salvation to his disciples.
He who will preserve the life of his body, shall lose it; he who loses
it, as Jesus now wills to lose it, will save it. By thus deciding in
favour of death and saving his own soul, Jesus' death is the salvation
of his cause and of his disciples. ”

“ But the
statement was truly a greater one when it could be said that the Logos,
whose work the deepest thinkers had found to be necessary if the divine
influence was to come into the world, was no other than Jesus. While
the conception of Jesus as a Son of God might make an impression on the
lower classes among the Gentiles, that of Jesus as the Logos would
attract the people of culture. And, as a matter of fact, it was very
important that Christianity should not always remain a religion merely
for uncultured and uninfluential people. ”

“ Papias
distinguishes between two persons with the name John: the Apostle and
the person whom he calls "John, the Elder." Both belong to the
"disciples of the Lord," but each in a different sense. The Apostle was
a constant disciple of Jesus; the other was not; in fact, it may be
that he only heard Jesus a few times in his early youth. When the first
century came to an end, and the persons who could boast of a personal
acquaintance with Jesus died out, it became easier for the title of
honour, "disciple of the Lord," to be applied to one who, strictly
speaking, little deserved it. ”

“ WHAT KIND OP PERSON WAS THE FOURTH EVANGELIST?
If this means that we must give up the idea of naming some well-known
person as the author, we are, nevertheless, very well able to form a
clear idea of the writer of the Fourth Gospel. In seeking to do so, we
have come back, after making a long circuit, to our starting-point, for
we have to consult the Gospel itself. To have been able to write such a
book, the author must have been one of the leading spirits of his age. ”

“ Beyond question there are people who think such a picture of Jesus as
the Fourth Gospel gives not merely beautiful in the sense in which even
a fairy-tale may be felt to be beautiful, but also more trustworthy
than that of the Synoptics. They are not concerned to find Jesus
humanly intelligible in his whole character; on the contrary, the less
human it is, the truer does it seem to them to be. ”

“ When the author of the Fourth Gospel takes up another position,
different from that of the Gnostics and more akin to the faith of the
Church, arid yet in many points agrees with them we would like much to
know whether this mingling is due entirely to a want of clearness or
whether it admits of a more satisfactory explanation. At that time,
when so many competing ideas were brought to the notice of the
individual, it is not inconceivable that many persons might appropriate
something of one and some thing of another, without being able really
to blend the two. ”

“ Humanly
speaking, Jesus must have been so cruel as to keep away from Bethany
for two more days, because otherwise the miracle which he proposed to
do would not have been so great as if it did not happen until the
fourth day after Lazarus' death. We ought not. however, to apply this
human point of view; if we are to do the Evangelist justice, we ought,
just as he does, to identify our selves to such an extent with this Son
of God who has come from heaven, as to approve entirely of his
demonstrating his exaltation, his dignity, and his omnipotence in the
strongest possible way. ”

“ But the
pleasure which they thus give themselves is premature. Supposing that
Jn. drew from a tradition--for the time being we are willing to assume
that he did--have we then disposed of the question, Why do the
Synoptics know nothing about this tradition? Who was the first to know
of it? Was it the Apostle John? Could he really, in Jesus' lifetime,
have noted certain things of which Peter and the other apostles had no
experience? And yet the Synoptists themselves drew from the
communications of the Apostles or of their disciples! ”

“ Christianity does not purpose to be a system of Wisdom, based upon
theory; it is a religion which appeals to Jesus. Therefore in a book
which is to make an impression he must be represented as coming forward
and saying: "a new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one
another;" "I am the Light of the world;" "I am the Bread of Life;" "I
am the Resurrection and the Life" (xiii. 34; viii. 12; vi. 35; xi. 25) .
At Jesus hand the Christians, and with them the Fourth Evangelist,
wished to receive no less than all that they thought themselves
entitled to hope for. ”

“ The logos
is then the reasonable order which rules in the world, and so we are
able to express ourselves, even if we cannot believe that the world is
ruled by a deity who possesses a consciousness of himself.
In this sense Heraclitus (about 500-450 B.C.) introduced the term
"logos" into Greek philosophy. Plato (427-347) , without using this
term, assumed a world of ideas in which the highest, the idea of the
Good, represents the deity. These ideas he regards as the original
patterns of which all particular things in the material world are only
copies. ”

“ It is quite
clear that, in view of what we have said, Jesus cannot have called
himself Son of God in a sense that only applies to himself, on the
ground, for instance, that he proceeded from God in a manner different
from that in which human beings come into existence at their birth; he
can only have done so in a sense in which all men can become what he
was, that is to say, sons of God who are equally ready to obey
absolutely the Father in heaven, but at the same time rely upon His
love, just as a human son relies upon the love of his human father. ”

“ Go your way and
tell John the things which ye do hear and see: the blind receive their
sight and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and
the dead are raised up and the poor have good tidings preached to them. ”

“ A being so high and divine cannot
really have a body which consists of earthly matter. Consequently, the
Gnostics could only explain in one of two ways. Either the Christ who
came down from heaven was only in an external way united to an ordinary
man Jesus, who was born of Joseph and Mary, but was righteous in a
peculiar degree: that is to say, he came down upon him at the baptism
in the Jordan, but left him again before he suffered death, so that the
person who underwent suffering was only the man Jesus. ”

“ In particular, I know
that to say that God was obliged to use miracles for the purpose of
proving Jesus to be the Saviour of the world is a bare assertion and
cannot be proved. The Bible tells us that Paul, as well as Jesus, and
very many ordinary persons in the Christian communities, and in fact--a
still more important point--even the disciples of the Pharisees and
other contemporaries of Jesus, possessed the power of working miracles
(Rom. xv. 19; 2 Cor. xii. 12; 1 Cor. xii. 9 f., 28; Mt. xii. 27, vii.
22 f.; Mk. ix. 38-40) ; and yet none of these was ever regarded as the
Saviour. ”

“ The Evangelist, however, does not actually go so far. He already
declares against the Gnostics when in i. 3 he says that by the Logos
the world was made, and so not, as they taught, by subordinate divine
beings, who had no correct understanding of the way to do it, but by
the highest and only representative of God. True, if we were inclined
to conclude from this, that this Being must have made it quite
according to God's will, it would certainly be hard to under stand why,
notwithstanding, it is a kingdom of darkness, deception, and death. ”

“ Jesus lived, by making Jesus himself say in Jn. xvi. 12 f., that the
disciples could not at the time understand many other things which he
had to say to them, but that after his death the Holy Spirit would come
and lead them into all truth.
But it was, in particular, the captivating ideas of Gnosticism that the
Fourth Evangelist appropriated (pp. 152 f. 158-160) . He did a great
service to his age by showing that one could be a thinker, appreciate
knowledge, stand in the midst of a stream of thoroughly intellectual
movements, and yet remain a faithful son of the Church. ”

“ But the words admit of another
translation: "If any one is not born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of
God." This is evidently the meaning which Nicodemus attaches to the
words when he puts his counter-question, and this, at least externally,
is not so senseless. Such ambiguity in Jesus language is no accident;
it occurs again on very many occasions. When, as we have just
mentioned, Jesus promises to give bread or meat to his hearers, on
first thoughts and until we have realised that there is a deeper
meaning in the words, we cannot help thinking that he really means
ordinary food. ”

“ The idea
that the end of the world is at hand is reckoned with, in spite of the
seventh emperor, by representing in xvii. 10 that he will reign for a
short time.
Here again we can note well how the Apocalypse borrows its descriptions
from an older prophecy, which it held to be sacred, and how at the same
time it adapts this prophecy to its own present. This enables us to
understand fully such a figure as that of the beast, which is really
very curious. In other cases as well, the author continually takes his
expressions and even whole sentences from the Old Testament. ”

“ Here, then, for the first
time in our list of explanations we meet with the idea that the death
of Jesus meant the removal of sin; but the Old Testament pattern
presupposed is always a kind of offering which (as above, 2 c) produced
sanctification, that is to say, consecration, and so such a condition
of purity as is necessary if people are to regard themselves as
consecrated to God.
8. The stricter idea of a sin-offering, without which forgiveness of
sins is not possible, is applied to Jesus' death, (a) without any
qualification as regards the predecessors of Paul, 1 Cor. xv. ”

“ The attainment of everlasting happiness means, however, not merely
forgiveness of past sins, but, quite as much, the averting of future
sins; and this again (a) Paul ascribes to Christ's death in which he
finds all the salvation that has ever been brought to mankind. The
reason for the experience that again and again without fail man is led
to commit sin, he finds in the fact that his body consists of flesh
(Rom. vii. 14-25) , that is to say, of that same matter which, according
to Greek philosophy, is evil by nature (p. 149) . ”

“ In other words, the things of which they were reminded
(and rightly reminded) , when they thought of the Feedings, were not
events in the life of Jesus, but discourses, in which he had compared
his teaching with bread, by which the soul is satisfied. Now it
suddenly dawns upon us also why more bread is said to have remained
over than there was at first. Had the bread been real, this would have
been a pure miracle. On the other hand, when Jesus propounds his
teaching, it is quite natural that it should arouse new ideas in the
minds of his hearers, and awaken new impulses ”

“ It does not surprise them that Jesus spoke to the people about his
coming from heaven in a way that they could not under stand at all;
were his teaching intelligible, it seems to them it would not have been
so sublime as it must certainly have been. Taking examples from
history, we will only add that Clement of Alexandria as early as about
A.D. 200 called the Gospel of John the pneumatic Gospel, that Luther
called it the true, unique, tender Gospel of Gospels, and that
Schleiermacher (ob. 1834) ranked it high above the Synoptics. ”

“ In the
second century the idea grew up that the bishop of a community must
have been consecrated to his office through the laying-on of hands
either by an apostle or by a bishop who had received his own
consecration at the hands of an apostle. It was thought that the
capacity to fill the office of bishop, the so-called "charisma of
office," could be transferred from one person to another only through
this laying-on of hands by a consecrated person, and the first of such
a series must always be an apostle. ”

“ Had Jesus thought his
own death necessary before forgiveness of sin could be realised, he
would have been obliged to say to him: "No, no, I did not mean that;
you must wait until I have died for you on the cross." And yet before
the declaration in Mt. xi. 28 he was silent about it!
On the last evening of his life, Jesus said: "this is my body;" "this
is my blood of the covenant, which is shed for many" (Mk. xiv. 22-24) .
But only Mt. tells us that he added "for forgiveness of sins;" ”

“ The words at the beginning of this sentence mean, not that this
sickness will not cause the death of Lazarus, but that it will not lead
to his remaining dead, for, as the concluding words show, Jesus knew
beforehand that he would raise Lazarus, and that the miracle would
serve for his own glorification. And he could only effect this and
exceed all other miracles if he allowed the fourth day to come before
he arrived at the sepulchre, since only then could any return to life
be considered out of the question (see p. 19) . ”

“ THE APOSTLE JOHN NOT IN EPHESUS.
Another thing that lends the strongest support to this conclusion is
the fact that none of the Christian writers before Irenaeus knows
anything of a stay of the Apostle John in Asia Minor; and yet this same
John, who on the occasion of the meeting of Paul with the original
apostles at Jerusalem (Gal. ii. 1-10 and Acts xv.) appears by the side
of Peter and James (the brother of Jesus) as one of the three pillars
of the first community, is one of the most important persons in
primitive Christianity.
We will point to one fact only. ”

“ Those who persist in
attempting to reconcile the two natures, are not agreed, even down to
the present day, as to whether they ought to say, as Paul says (see
above, p. 146) , that Jesus, when he came down from heaven to earth,
laid aside his divine characteristics, or that he kept them, hiding
them during his earthly life. As regards the Fourth Gospel, we must say
that it quite certainly does not take the first of these positions. And
even as regards the second view, it only presents the thought that on
earth Jesus was endowed with all his divine characteristics ”

“ In the division which is made between God and the
world, the Epistle does not go so far as the Gospel. The Evangelist's
most significant train of thought is to the effect that God does not
give his gifts directly to men, but to Jesus. Jesus is the first to
bestow them upon men (xv. 9 f.) ; none can come to the Father save
through him (xiv. 6) . There are not wanting in the Gospel, as we have
indicated already (p. 161) , sayings which represent the idea, assumed
throughout the Epistle (ii. 24; iii. 24; iv. 12 f., 15 f.) ”

“ Further, as to the Gnostics belief that they had in themselves the
divine "seed," the author maintains again that it is really he and
those who think with him who possess it as their own. And on this point
he ventures to make the strongest statement found in his Epistle:
"Whosoever is begotten of God doeth no sin" (iii. 9; v. 18) . By these
he means himself and his party. And this is said by the same person who
just before (i. 8, 10) has reproached his opponents in these words: "If
we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not
in us." ”

“ The idea that he was
the Logos only carries us one step beyond this teaching. And yet it is
this alone that gives rise to the doctrine that Jesus brought
redemption, not by his death, but by his appearance upon earth. Thus we
have here an exemplification of the great law of intellectual progress,
that very often one truth proceeds from another only by the pathway of
error. Jn. only succeeded in arriving at the truth which already
existed in the Life of Jesus, by adopting the second of Paul's mistakes
and carrying it farther. ”

“ But this means at the same time that one must be a member
of the Church and submit to the ordinances of the Church; for example,
to those of the Second Epistle of John (verse 10 f.) , which forbids one
to receive Christian brethren who hold different doctrines, or even to
greet them. People are now divided into those who are in communion with
the Church and are blessed, and those who are outside and are not; and
the fact that one belongs to the Church is apt, moreover, to depend
more on faith than on that doing of the will of God which Jesus
required so continually in the Synoptics. ”

“ Personally it does not seem possible to me that at this decisive hour
when Jesus celebrated the Passover with his disciples for the last
time, he should have thought more of the bodily needs of his followers
than of the needs of their souls. He himself said, "Fear not those who
kill the body, but those who can kill the soul," &c. And are we to
suppose that in face of that calamity which was about to rush upon them
through his death, he thought these words no longer applied? ”

“ If we thought of doing
so, we should have to give verbatim an almost endless number of
passages from all the writers of the second century, in order to enable
the reader to decide whether or not they betray a knowledge of the
Fourth Gospel. We should be obliged, further, in the case of all these
writers to state when they wrote, or rather, since in most cases the
matter is not certain, to make inquiry and try to fix the most likely
date. Ten years earlier or later here mean a very great difference. ”