Johannine Theology (continued) – Johannine Theology (continued)

Johannine Theology (continued)

The gift of the Spirit is an "anointing from the Holy One" (1 John 2:20); and the result of this "anointing" is that "ye know all things" (or that "ye all have knowledge"; the reading is doubtful), and "need not that any one teach you" (1 John 2:27). The apostle's comfort concerning his readers, encompassed as they are by the snares of Antichrist, is that they have a Divine Teacher, who continually enlightens their understanding, strengthens their convictions and ministers to them an invincible assurance of the truth of the Gospel. "The anointing abideth in you .... and teacheth you concerning all things." The spirit is not a source of independent revelation, but makes the revelation of Christ effectual. The truth is placed beyond all reach of controversy and passes into absolute knowledge: "Ye know all things." It may be added that the history of Christianity furnishes an always growing verification of this Johannine doctrine of a living power of witness and enlightenment present in the church, by which, notwithstanding the constant hindrance of human imperfection, the development of the Christian faith has been steadily advanced, its forgotten or neglected factors brought to remembrance. Old truths have been presented in new aspects and filled with fresh life, and all has been brought to pass with marvelous adaptation to the church's needs and in proportion to its receptivity.

(2) Other Aspects.

In other directions the doctrine of the Spirit is less developed. The agency of the Spirit in regeneration is repeatedly and emphatically declared in a single passage (John 3:5–8), but is nowhere else referred to either in the Gospel or the First Epistle. More remarkable still, neither in Gospel nor Epistle is the Holy Spirit once spoken of as the Divine agent in sanctification. There is no passage resembling that in which Paul speaks of the ethical "fruit of the Spirit" (Galatians 5:22,Galatians 5:23). The Spirit is the Spirit of truth, the revealer, the inspirer of faith, but is never spoken of as the Spirit of love or holiness. If those who are begotten of God cannot sin, it is not because God's Spirit, but because "his seed," abideth in them (1 John 3:9). The explanation of this peculiarity (which has been little observed) in the Johannine theology may be that the Spirit's work of revealing Christ is regarded as all-inclusive. Thus enabling Christ's disciples to abide in Him as the branch in the vine, He secures also their bringing forth "much fruit" in all Christlikeness of character and conduct.

2. The Person of the Spirit:

Passing now from the work to the Person, we observe that in the Fourth Gospel the attribution of personality to the Spirit reaches the acme of distinctness. He is "another Paraclete" (John 14:16 margin), personal as Christ Himself is personal; and all the functions ascribed to Him--to remind, to teach, to testify, to guide, to convict--are such as are possible only to a personal agent. Nor is it otherwise in the First Epistle. The expressions in it which have been alleged (Pfleiderer and others) as inconsistent with personality (the "anointing," 1 John 2:20; "He hath given us of his Spirit," 4:13) require no such interpretation. The "anointing" denotes the Spirit, not in His essence or agency, but as the gift of the Holy One with which He anoints believers (compare John 7:38,John 7:39); and the expression "He hath given us of his Spirit" (as if the Spirit were a divisible entity) is no more incompatible with personality than is the saying "to Him whom he hath sent ...., God giveth not the Spirit by measure" (John 3:34), or than our speaking of Christians as having more or less of the Spirit.

His Deity Implied.

The essential Deity of the Spirit is nowhere explicitly asserted, but is necessarily implied in His relation both to Christ and to the church as the "other Paraclete." There is not, however, the same theological development as is achieved regarding the Logos. The Divinity of Christ is grounded in an essential duality of being within the Godhead itself; but there is no similar effort to trace back the threefoldness in the revelation of God, as Father, Son and Spirit, to an essential threefoldness in the Divine nature. The fact is that both historically and logically the doctrine of the Spirit as the third person in the Godhead depends upon that of the Divine Son as the second. It was through its living experience of the Divine in Christ that the church first developed its thought of God beyond the simple monotheism of the Old Testament; but having advanced to the conception of a twofold Godhead, in which there is Fatherhood and Sonship, it was bound to enlarge it still further to that of a threefold Godhead--Father, Son and Spirit. The Son and the Spirit were equally manifestations of God in redemption, and must equally stand in essential relation to the Divine existence.

V. Doctrine of Sin and Propitiation.

This theme is not elaborated. It is characteristic of the Johannine writings that salvation is looked at from the terminus ad quem rather than from the terminus a quo. The infinite good, eternal life, is more in view than the infinite evil, sin. It seems safe to say that the author of these writings at no time had that intense experience of bondage to the law of sin and of death which so colors Paul's presentation of the gospel. It was, moreover, no part of his plan to expound the doctrine of propitiation; nor had he any original contribution to make on this head to the sum of New Testament thought. But it is a quite unwarrantable criticism which denies that the saving work of Christ, in the Johannine conception, consists in deliverance from sin.

1. Sin:

It is true that Christ not only takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), but also draws it forth in its utmost intensity and guilt. All sin culminates in the rejection of Christ (John 15:22); the Spirit convicts men of sin because they "believe not" on Him (John 16:9). "Every one that committeth sin is the bondservant of sin" (John 8:34); but what reveals the true character of this bondage is that in the presence of the light, men "loved the darkness" (John 3:19). That the malign quality and power of evil are fully revealed only in the presence of perfect goodness, that the brighter is the light, the darker is the shade of guilt created by its rejection--all this John teaches; but such teaching is by no means peculiar to him, and to infer from it that "to his mind sin in itself involves no moral culpability" is nothing more than a way-ward paradox.

In the Epistle the guilt of sin as constituting an objective disability to fellowship with God is strongly emphasized. "If We say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves" (1 John 1:8). The phrase "to have sin" is peculiar to John, and specifically denotes the culpability of the agent (compare John 9:41; John 15:22,John 15:24; John 19:11). Sin is essentially that which needs God's forgiveness (1 John 1:9; 1 John 2:1,1 John 2:2); and to this end an intercessor and a propitiation have been provided. Such culpability is universal: "If we say that we have not sinned, we"--not only deceive ourselves--"we make him a liar" (1 John 1:10).

A second passage (1 John 3:4–9) emphasizes the ethical quality of sin--its antagonism to the nature of God and of the children of God. The word which defines the constitutive principle of sin is "lawlessness" (1 John 3:4). Sin is fundamentally the denial of the absoluteness of moral obligation, the repudiation of the eternal law upon which all moral life is based. In other words, to sin is to assert one's own will as the rule of action against the absolutely good will of God. But again, the Epistle gives the warning that "all unrighteousness is sin" (1 John 5:17). Everything that is not right is wrong, Every morally inferior course of action, however venial it may appear, is sin and contains the elements of positive guilt. The perplexing topic of "sin unto death" demands too special treatment to be dealt with here.

2. Propitiation:

(1) In the Gospel.

The paucity of reference in the Fourth Gospel to the propitiating aspect of Christ's redemptive work has been seized upon as proof that, though the writer did not consciously reject the orthodox doctrine, it was really alien to his system. But such a criticism might be directed with almost equal force against the Synoptics. It was no part of John's plan, as has been said, to expound a doctrine of propitiation; yet his frontispiece to the ministry of Jesus is "the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world"; and, as Dr. Inge has pointed out, the same type of the Paschal Lamb underlies the whole narrative of the Passion. In the high-priestly prayer our Lord expressly represents Himself as the covenant-sacrifice which consecrates His disciples as the people of God (John 17:19); while the Synoptic "ransom for many" is paralleled by the interpretation of Christ's death as effectual "for the nation; and not for the nation only, but that he might also gather together into one the children of God that are scattered abroad" (John 11:51,John 11:52; compare 1 John 2:2).

(2) In the Epistle.

In the Epistle the doctrinal statement is much more explicit. The fact of propitiation is placed in the forefront. The passage which immediately follows the Prologue (1 John 1:6–2:2) introduces a group of ideas--propitiation, blood, forgiveness, cleansing--which are taken directly from the sacrificial system of the Old Testament, and are expressed, indeed, in technical Levitical terms. The mode of action by which Christ accomplished and still accomplishes His mission as the Saviour of the world is: "He is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world" (1 John 2:2). Propitiation has its ultimate source in the moral nature of God. It is no device for inducing a reluctant Deity to forgive; it is the way by which the Father brings back His sinning children to Himself. In John's conception it is the supreme act of God's supreme attribute, love. "Herein is love" (1 John 4:10). Yet it is a real work of propitiation in which this love goes forth for man's salvation--a work, that is, which expiates the guilt of sin, which restores sinful offenders to God by rendering their sin null and inoperative as a barrier to fellowship with Him. This propitiatory virtue is regarded as concentrated in the "blood of Jesus his Son" (1 John 1:7), that is to say, in the Divine-human life offered to God in the sacrifice of the cross. This, if we walk in the light as He is in the light, "cleanseth us from all sin"--removes from us the stain of our guilt, and makes us clean in God's sight. In virtue of this, Christ is the penitent sinner's advocate (paraclete-helper) with the Father (1 John 2:1). The words "with the Father" are highly significant. Even the Father's love can urge nothing in apology for sin, nothing that avails to absolve from its guilt. But there is one who can urge on our behalf what is at once the strongest condemnation of our sin and plea for its remission--Himself, "Jesus Christ the righteous" (1 John 2:1). "And he (Himself) is the propitiation for our sins." John does not speak of Christ as "making propitiation"; He, Himself, in virtue of all He is--Jesus Christ, in whom the Divine ideal of humanity is consummated, in whom the Father sees His own essential righteousness revealed, Jesus Christ the Righteous--is both propitiation and intercession. The two acts are not only united in one person, but constitute the one reconciling work by which there is abiding fellowship between God and His sinning people.

(3) One with New Testament Teaching.

In this statement of the doctrine of propitiation, memorable as it is, there is nothing notably original. It tacitly presupposes, as New Testament teaching everywhere does, that God, in bestowing the sovereign grace of pardon and sonship, must deal truthfully and adequately with sin as a violation of the moral order; and with John, as with other New Testament writers, the necessity and efficacy of sacrifice as the means by which this is accomplished are simply axiomatic. His great contribution to Christian thought is the vision of the cross in the heart of the eternal love. How suggestive are these two statements when placed side by side! "Herein is love .... that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4:10); and "Hereby know we love (recognize what it is), because he laid down his life for us" (1 John 3:16). God's sending His Son and Christ's laying down His life are moral equivalents. The sacrifice of Christ is the sacrifice of God. John's doctrine of propitiation follows as a moral necessity from his doctrine of God. If God is love, nothing is more inevitably true than that He suffers on account of human sin; and to deny Him the power to help and save men by bearing their burden would be to deny to Him love's highest prerogative.

VI. Eternal Life.

The development of the conception of eternal life must be set along with the doctrine of the moral nature of God and the doctrine of the incarnation as one of the greatest contributions of the Johannine theology to New Testament thought. With this conception the Gospel begins (John 1:4) and ends (John 20:31); and, in like manner, the Epistle (1 John 1:2; 1 John 5:20). The designation most frequently employed is simply "the life" (he zoe); 17 times in the Gospel and 6 times in the First Epistle it is described qualitatively as "eternal"; but the adjective brings out only what is implicit in the noun. In harmony with the universal Biblical conception, John regards life as the summum bonum, in which the reality of fellowship with God consists, which therefore fulfills the highest idea of being--"perfect truth in perfect action" (Westcott). Christ Himself is "the life" (John 14:6), its only bestower and unfailing source (John 14:19). He came that we might have it abundantly (John 10:10).

1. Ethical Rather than Eschatological:

But this conception is uniquely developed in two directions. While the eschatological element is not lost, it is absorbed in the ethical. The ideas of duration and futurity, which are properly and originally expressed by the adjective "eternal" (aionios = belonging to an eon--specifically to "the coming eon"), become secondary to that of timeless moral quality. Always life is regarded as a present possession rather than as future felicity (e.g. John 3:36; John 20:31; 1 John 3:14,1 John 3:15; 1 John 5:12). For John the question whether it is possible to make the best of both worlds is meaningless. Eternal life is the best, the Divine, kind of life, whether in this world or another. It is the kind of life that has its perfect manifestation in Christ (1 John 1:2; 1 John 5:11). To possess that nature which produces thoughts and motives and desires, words and deeds like His, is to have eternal life.

2. Metaphysical Aspect:

Metaphysically the conception undergoes a development which is equally remarkable, though in the judgment of many, of more questionable value. It has already been seen (see above, II) that life is conceived as the animating principle or essence of the Divine nature, the inward energy of which all its activities are the manifold outgoing. And this conception is carried through with strict consistency. The spiritual life in men, which is "begotten of God," is the vital essence, the mystic principle which is manifested in all the capacities and activities of Christian personality. It does not consist in, and still less is it a result following, repentance, faith, obedience or love; it is that of which they are the fruits and the evidences. Thus instead of "This do, and thou shalt live" (Luke 10:28), John says, conversely, "Every one also, that doeth righteousness is (= has been) begotten of" God (1 John 2:29); instead of "The just shall live by faith" (Romans 1:17, the King James Version), "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is (= has been) begotten of God" (1 John 5:1). The human activity is the result and proof of Divine life already imparted, not the condition or means of its attainment. In the Johannine conception life is cause, not effect; not phenomenon, but essence; not the complex whole of the qualities, activities and experiences of the spiritual man, but that which makes them possible--the inscrutable, Divinely communicated principle (John 3:8) in which the capacity for them is given and by which also it is realized.

Reply to Criticism.

This Johannine conception of life is vigorously criticized as importing into the interpretation of Christian experience principles and modes of thought borrowed from Greek philosophy. But the tendency to infer causes from effects and to reason from phenomena to essence is not peculiar to Greek philosophy; it is native to the human intellect. The Johannine conception of spiritual life is closely analogous to the common conception of physical life. We do not conceive that a man lives because he breathes and feels and acts; we think and we say that he does these things because he lives, because there is in him that mystic principle we call life. Only to the thinker trained in the logic of empiricism is it possible to define life solely by its phenomena, as e.g. "the continuous adjustment of internal to external relations" (Spencer). The ordinary mind instinctively passes behind the phenomena to entity of which they are the manifestation. The Johannine conception, moreover, lies in the natural line of development for New Testament thought. It is implicit in that whole strain of our Lord's synoptic teaching which regards doing as only the outcome of being, and which is emphasized in such utterances as "Either make the tree good, and its fruit good; or make the tree corrupt, and its fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by its fruit" (Matthew 12:33); as also in the whole Pauline doctrine of the new creation and the mystical indwelling of Christ in the members of His body. And while it is no doubt true that the Johannine conception of life was immediately influenced by contact with Hellenism, it is one which was sure, sooner or later, to emerge in Christian theology.

3. Development of Doctrine:

(1) Source in God.

In the development of the doctrine we note the following points. (a) The sole and absolute source of life is God, the Father, revealed in Christ. "The Father hath life in himself" (John 5:26). He is the "living Father" by whom the Son lives (John 6:57); the "true God, and eternal life" (1 John 5:20). Eternal life is nothing else than the immanence of God in moral beings created after His likeness; the Divine nature reproducing itself in human nature; the energy of the Spirit of God in the spiritual nature of man. This is its ultimate definition.

(2) Mediated by Christ.

Of this life Christ is the sole mediator (John 6:33,John 6:17; John 11:25; John 14:6). The witness is that "God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in his Son" (1 John 5:11). This mediation is grounded in the relation, eternally subsisting within the Godhead, of the Loges to the Father. The life manifested and seen in the historic Christ (1 John 1:1) is "the life, the eternal life," which existed in relation to the Father (1 John 1:2). By the incarnation of the Son the eternal life in its Divine fullness has become incorporate with humanity, a permanent source of regenerative power to "as many as received him" (John 1:12). It is His own relation to the Father that He reproduces in men (John 17:23).

(3) Through the Spirit.

In the communication of this life the Spirit is the one direct agent (John 3:5–8; see above, under IV).

(4) The Divine "Begetting."

The act of Divine self-communication is constantly and exclusively expressed by the word "beget" (gennao--John 1:13; John 3:3,John 3:5–8; 1 John 2:29; 1 John 3:9, etc.). The word is of far-reaching significance. It implies not only that life has its ultimate origin in God, but that its communication is directly and solely His act. In how literal a sense the Divine begetting is to be understood appears very strikingly in 1 John 3:9: "Whosoever is begotten of God doeth no sin; because his seed abideth in him." The unique expression "his seed" signifies the new life-principle which is the formative element of the "children of God." This abides in him who has received it. It stamps its own character upon his life and determines its whole development.

(5) The "Children of God."

Those who are "begotten of God" are ipso facto "children of God" (tekna theou, John 1:12; John 11:52; 1 John 3:1,1 John 3:2,1 John 3:10; 1 John 5:2). The term connotes primarily the direct communication of the Father's own nature; and secondarily the fact that the nature thus communicated has not as yet reached its full stature, but contains the promise of a future glorious development. We are now children of God, but what it fully is to be children of God is not yet made manifest (1 John 3:2). Participation in this life creates a family fellowship (koinonia) at once human and Divine. Those who are begotten of God and walk in the light have "fellowship one with another" (1 John 1:7). They are "brethren" and are knit together by the instincts (1 John 5:1) and the duties of mutual love (John 13:34; John 15:12; 1 John 3:16; 1 John 4:11) and of mutual watchfulness and intercession (1 John 5:16).

On the Divine side they have fellowship "with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ" (1 John 1:3). In this Divine fellowship the life "begotten" is nourished and sustained; and no term is more characteristic of the Johannine vocabulary, alike in Gospel and Epistles, than the word "abide" (menein), by which this is expressed. There is, however, a noticeable difference in the modes of statement. In the Epistle, the formulas almost exclusively employed are these: "God abides in us," "We abide in God," "God abides in us and we in him." In the Gospel the reciprocal indwelling is that of Christ and His disciples (John 15:4–10), which has its Divine counterpart in that of the Father and the Son (John 14:10; John 17:23; John 15:10). This diversity is consistent with the different points of view occupied in the two documents. The Gospel is christocentric; the Epistle, theocentric. In the one is given the concrete presentment of the incarnate Son; in the other the immediate intuition of the Divine nature revealed in Him. While the theme common to both is the "Word of life," the special theme of the Gospel is the Word who reveals and imparts the life; in the Epistle it is the life revealed and imparted by the Word, and the thought of the indwelling Christ is naturally carried up to the ultimate truth of the indwelling God.

(6) The Divine Abiding.

The vitalizing union by which the Divine life is sustained in those who are begotten of God consists in two reciprocal activities, not separable and not identical--God's (or Christ's) abiding in us and our abiding in Him. As in the similitude of the vine and the branches (John 15:1–10), the life imparted is dependent for its sustenance and growth upon a continuous influx from the parent source: as it is the sap of the vine that vitalizes the branches, producing leaf and blossom and fruit, so does the life of God support and foster in His children its own energies of love and truth and purity. But to this end the abiding of God in us has as its necessary counterpart our abiding in Him. We can respond to the Divine influence or reject it; open or obstruct the channels through which the Divine life flows into ours (John 15:6,John 15:7,John 15:10; John 8:31). Hence, abiding in God is a subject of instruction and exhortation (John 15:4; 1 John 2:27 f); and here the idea of persistent and stedfast purpose which belongs to the word menein comes clearly into view. As the abiding of God in us is the persistent and purposeful action by which the Divine nature influences ours, so our abiding in God is the persistent and purposeful submission of ourselves to that influence. The means of doing this are stedfast loyalty to the truth as it is revealed in Christ and announced in the apostolic Gospel (John 8:31; John 15:7; 1 John 2:27), keeping God's commandments (John 14:23; John 15:10; 1 John 3:24), and loving one another (1 John 4:12,1 John 4:16). Thus only is the channel of communication kept clear between the source and the receptacle of life.

VII. Human Nature and Its Regeneration.

The necessity of regeneration is fundamental to the whole theological scheme (John 3:3,John 3:5,John 3:7). Life which consists in union with God does not belong to man as he is naturally constituted: those who know that they have eternal life know that it is theirs because they have "passed out of death into life" (1 John 3:14; John 5:24).

1. The World:

The unregenerate state of human nature is specially connected with the Johannine conception of the "world" (kosmos). This term has a peculiar elasticity of application; and Westcott's definition--"the order of finite being, regarded as apart from God"--may be taken as expressing the widest idea that underlies John's use of the word. When the kosmos is material, it signifies

(1) the existing terrestrial creation (John 1:10; John 13:1; John 16:28), especially as contrasted with the sphere of the heavenly and eternal. When it refers to humanity, it is either

(2) the totality of mankind as needing redemption and as the object of God's redeeming love (John 3:16; 1 John 2:2; 1 John 4:14), or

(3) the mass of unbelieving men, hostile to Christ and resisting salvation (e.g. John 15:18). Of the world in this sense it is said that it has no perception of the true nature of God and the Divine glory of Christ (John 1:10; John 17:25; 1 John 3:1); that it hates the children of God (John 15:18,John 15:19; John 17:14; 1 John 3:13); that the spirit of Antichrist dwells in it (1 John 4:3,1 John 4:4); that to it belong the false prophets and their adherents (1 John 4:1,1 John 4:5); that it is under the dominion of the wicked one (John 12:31; John 14:30; John 16:11; 1 John 5:19); that the constituents of its life are "the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the vainglory of life" (1 John 2:16); that it passeth away (1 John 2:17); that Christ has conquered it (John 16:33), and that "whatsoever is begotten of God" conquers it (1 John 5:4) by the power of faith in Him (1 John 5:5).

Thus the "world" (in this darker significance) is composed of those who still love the darkness rather than the light (John 3:19), who, when Christ is presented to them, obstinately retain their blindness and enmity. Nevertheless, the "world" is not beyond the possibility of salvation. The Holy Spirit, acting in the Christian community, will convince the world with regard to sin and righteousness and judgment (John 16:8); and the evidence of the unity of Divine fellowship among Christ's disciples will lead it to believe in His Divine mission (John 17:23).

2. Two Classes in the Human Race:

Thus, it is true that John teaches "a distinction of two great classes in the human race--those who are from above and those who are from beneath--children of light and children of darkness." But that he teaches this in any Gnostic or semignostic fashion is an assertion for which there is no real basis. He distinguishes between those who love the light and those who love the darkness rather than the light, between those who "receive" Christ and those who "will not" come unto Him that they may have life. This distinction, however, he traces to nothing in the natural constitution of the two classes, but solely to the regenerating act of God (John 1:13; John 6:44). His doctrine of regeneration is, in fact, his solution of the problem created by the actual existence of those two classes among men--a problem which is forced upon every thoughtful Christian mind by the diverse and opposite results of evangelism. It is this that lies behind such utterances as these: "Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice" (John 18:37); "Ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep. My sheep hear my voice .... and they follow me" (John 10:26,John 10:27); "Every one that hath heard from the Father, cometh unto me. No man can come unto me except it be given unto him of the Father" (John 6:45,John 6:65). In these and all similar passages, belief or unbelief in Christ, when He is presented, depends upon antecedent spiritual predisposition (John's equivalent to the Pauline predestination). There exists in certain persons what is lacking in others, a power of spiritual vision by which Christ is recognized, a capacity and a predisposition to receive Him. But this predisposition is not (any more than Paul's predestination) theirs by gift of nature. John refuses to find its source in human personality (John 1:13; 1 John 5:1). The children of God are not a superior species of the genus homo. They are men who have passed from death into life, and who have done so because they are begotten of God. John's doctrine is thus the antithesis of Gnosticism. The Gnostic distinction of two classes in the human race glorified men; its proper and inevitable fruit was spiritual pride. The effect of John's doctrine is to humble man and glorify God, to satisfy the innermost Christian consciousness that not even for their appropriation of God's gift in Christ can believers take credit to themselves; that in nothing can the human spirit do more than respond to the Divine, and that, in the last analysis, this power itself is of God. Regeneration in the Johannine sense is not to be identified with conversion. It is the communication of that vision of truth and that capacity for new moral activity which issue in conversion. The doctrine of regeneration contained in the Johannine writings is the fullest recognition in the New Testament that all the conscious experiences and activities of the Christian life are the result of God's own inscrutable work of begetting in the depths of human personality, and of renewing and replenishing there, the energies of the Divine.

VIII. The Church and Sacraments.

1. The Church:

While the word "church" is not found, the idea lies near the base of the Johannine theology. The Divine life communicated to men creates a Divine brotherhood, a "fellowship" which is with the Father and "with his Son Jesus Christ" (1 John 1:3) and also "one with another" (1 John 1:7)--a fellowship which is consecrated by the self-consecration of Jesus (John 17:19), in which men are cleansed from all sin by His blood (1 John 1:7), and which is maintained by His intercessory action as the Paraclete with the Father (1 John 2:1). This fellowship is realized in the actual Christian community and there only; but it is essentially inward and spiritual, not mechanically ecclesiastical, In the visible community spurious elements may intrude themselves, as is proved when schism unmasks those who, though they have belonged to the external organization, have never been partakers of its real life (1 John 2:19). Only among those who walk in the light of God does true fellowship exist (1 John 1:7).

2. The Sacraments:

From the doctrine of the Divine nature as life and light one might a priori infer the possibilities of a Johannine view of the sacraments. It is evident that there is room in the Johannine system of thought for a genuinely sacramental mode of Divine action--the employment of definite external acts, not as symbols only, but as real media of Divine communication. On the other hand, the truth that God is not life only but light also--self-revealing as well as self-imparting--would necessarily exclude any magical ex opere operato theory by which spiritual efficacy is attributed either to the physical elements in themselves or to the physical act of participation. And (though there is little or no explicit statement) such is the type of doctrine we actually find. With regard to all sacramental rites the universal principle applies: `It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing' (John 6:63).

(1) Baptism.

Yet baptism is the physical counterpart of the Spirit's work in regeneration, and great importance is attached to it as the means of admission to the new life of the kingdom (John 3:5).

(2) The Lord's Supper.

The omission of all reference to the institution of the Lord's Supper (the incident of the feet-washing and the proclamation of the new commandment taking its place in the Gospel-narrative) is thought to indicate that John was conscious of a tendency to attach a superstitious value to the outward observance, and desired emphatically to subordinate this to what was spiritual and essential. The omission, to whatever motive it may have been due, is counter-balanced by the sacramental discourse (John 6:1–71). While the language of this discourse is not to be interpreted in a technically eucharistic sense, its purpose, or one of its purposes, undoubtedly, is to set forth the significance of the Lord's Supper in the largest light. Christ gives to men the bread of life, which is His own flesh and of which men must eat that they may live (John 6:50–55). "He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood abideth in me and I in him." This eating and drinking is essentially of the Spirit. It signifies a derivation of life analogous to that of the Son Himself from the Father. "As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father; so he that eateth me, he also shall live because of me" (John 6:57). To "eat the flesh" of the Son of Man is to receive spiritual nourishment from Him, to live by His life. Yet there is nothing in John's way of thinking to exclude a real sacramental efficiency. "The act which is nothing when it is performed ignorantly and mechanically is of sovereign value to those who have apprehended its true meaning. The material elements represent the flesh and blood of Christ--His Divine Person given for the life of the world. He is present in them, not merely by way of symbol, but actually; but there must be something in the recipient corresponding to the spiritual reality which is conveyed through the gift. The outward act of participation must be accompanied with belief in Christ and a true insight into the nature of His work and a will to know and serve Him. The sacrament becomes operative as the bread of life through this receptive spirit on the part of those who observe it" (Scott, The Fourth Gospel, 127-28).

IX. Eschatology.

1. Type of Thought Idealistic:

The type of mind revealed in the Johannine writings is one that instinctively leans to the ideal and the spiritual in its contemplation of life, grasping what is of universal significance and dwelling upon events only as they are the embodiment of eternal principles. Where this fashion of thought is so strongly developed, the eschatological, like the historical, becomes secondary.

2. Yet History Not Ignored:

In John there is but one life--the eternal; and there is but one world--the world of the ideal, which is also the only real. Yet he is not an idealist, pure and simple. For him events are not merely symbols; history is not allegory. The incarnation is a historical fact, the Parousia a future event. His thought does not move in a world of mere abstractions, a world in which nothing ever happens. His true distinction as a thinker lies in the success with which he unites the two strains of thought, the historical and the ideal. The word which may be said to express his conception of history is "manifestation" (compare John 2:11; John 9:3; but especially 1 John 1:2; 1 John 2:19,1 John 2:28; 1 John 3:2,1 John 3:5,1 John 3:8; 1 John 4:9). The incarnation is only the manifestation of `what was from the beginning' (1 John 1:1,1 John 1:2); the mission of Christ, the manifestation of the love eternally latent in the depths of the Divine nature (1 John 4:9). The successive events of history are the emergence into visibility of what already exists. In them the potential becomes actual.

3. Nor Eschatology:

Thus John has an eschatology, as well as a history. He profoundly spiritualizes. He reaches down through the pictorial representations of the traditional apocalyptic, and inquires what essential principle each of these embodies. Then he discovers that this principle is already universally and inevitably in operation; and this, the present spiritual reality, becomes for him the primary thought. Judgment means essentially the sifting and separation, the classification of men according to their spiritual affinities. But every day men are thus classifying themselves by their attitude toward Christ; this, the true judgment of the world, is already present fact. So also the coming and presence of Christ must always be essentially a spiritual fact, and as such it is already a present fact. There is, in the deepest significance of the word, a perpetual coming of Christ in Christian experience. This, however, does not prevent John from firmly holding the certainty of a fuller manifestation of these facts in the future, when tendencies shall have reached a final culmination, and principles which are now apprehended only by faith will be revealed in all the visible magnitude of their consequences.

4. Eschatological Ideas:

We shall now briefly survey the Johannine presentation of the chief eschatological ideas.

(1) Eternal life.

It has already been said that the most distinctive feature in the conception of eternal life is that it is not a future immortal felicity so much as a present spiritual state. The category of duration recedes before that of moral quality. Yet it has its own stupendous importance. In triumphant contrast with the poor ephemeralities of the worldly life, he that doeth the will of God "abideth for ever" (1 John 2:17); and the complete realization of the life eternal is still in the future (John 4:36; John 6:27; John 12:25).

(2) Antichrist.

The view of Antichrist is strikingly characteristic. Tacitly setting aside the lurid figure of popular traditions, John grasps the essential fact that is expressed by the name and idea of Antichrist (= one who in the guise of Christ opposes Christ), and finds its fulfillment in the false teaching which substituted for the Christ of the gospel the fantastic product of Gnostic imagination (1 John 4:3). But in this he reads the sign that the world's day has reached its last hour (1 John 2:18).

(3) Resurrection.

While the Fourth Gospel so carefully records the proofs of Christ's resurrection, noticeably little (in the Epistle, nothing) is made of the thought of a future resurrection from the dead. For the Christian, the death of the body is a mere incident. "Whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die" (John 11:26; compare John 8:51). Regeneration--union with Christ--is the true resurrection (John 6:50,John 6:51,John 6:58). And yet, again, the eschatological idea is not lost. Side by side with the essential truth the supplementary and interpretative truth is given its right place. "Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day" (John 6:54 the King James Version). If Christ says "I am the life: whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die," He also says "I am the resurrection: he that believeth on me, though he die, yet shall he live" (John 11:25).

(4) Judgment.