Christ; and in the beloved disciple who knew no middle ground, but demanded undivided loyalty
and whole-souled devotion to his Master. In him the highest knowledge and the highest love
coincide: knowledge is the eye of love, love the heart of knowledge; both constitute eternal life,
and eternal life is the fulness of happiness.^820
The central truth of John and the central fact in Christianity itself is the incarnation of the
eternal Logos as the highest manifestation of God’s love to the world. The denial of this truth is
the criterion of Antichrist.^821
The Principal Doctrines.
I. The doctrine of God. He is spirit (πνεῦμα), he is light (φῶς) he is love (ἀγάπη).^822 These
are the briefest and yet the profoundest definitions which can be given of the infinite Being of all
beings. The first is put into the mouth of Christ, the second and third are from the pen of John. The
first sets forth God’s metaphysical, the second his intellectual, the third his moral perfection; but
they are blended in one.
God is spirit, all spirit, absolute spirit (in opposition to every materialistic conception and
limitation); hence omnipresent, all-pervading, and should be worshipped, whether in Jerusalem or
Gerizim or anywhere else, in spirit and in truth.
God is light, all light without a spot of darkness, and the fountain of all light, that is of truth,
purity, and holiness.
God is love; this John repeats twice, looking upon love as the inmost moral essence of God,
which animates, directs, and holds together all other attributes; it is the motive power of his
revelations or self-communications, the beginning and the end of his ways and works, the core of
his manifestation in Christ.
II. The doctrine of Christ’s Person. He is the eternal and the incarnate Logos or Revealer
of God. No man has ever yet seen God (θεόν, without the article, God’s nature, or God as God);(^820) John 17 3; 15:11; 16:24; 1 John 1:4.
(^821) Comp. John 1:14; 3:16; 1 John 4:1-3.
(^822) John 4:24; 1 John 1:5; 4:8, 16. The first definition or oracle is from Christ’s dialogue with the woman of Samaria, who
could, of course, not grasp the full meaning, but understood sufficiently its immediate practical application to the question of
dispute between the Samaritans and the Jews concerning the worship on Gerizim or Jerusalem.
A.D. 1-100.