Let us point out the chief characteristics of this book which distinguish it from the Synoptical
Gospels.- The fourth Gospel is the Gospel of the Incarnation, that is, of the perfect union of the
divine and human in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, who for this very reason is the Saviour of the
world and the fountain of eternal life. "The Word became flesh." This is the theoretical theme. The
writer begins with the eternal pre-existence of the Logos, and ends with the adoration of his incarnate
divinity in the exclamation of the sceptical Thomas: "My Lord and my God!" Luke’s preface is
historiographic and simply points to his sources of information; John’s prologue is metaphysical
and dogmatic, and sounds the keynote of the subsequent history. The Synoptists begin with the
man Jesus and rise up to the recognition of his Messiahship and divine Sonship; John descends
from the pre-existent Son of God through the preparatory revelations to his incarnation and
crucifixion till he resumes the glory which he had before the world began. The former give us the
history of a divine man, the latter the history of a human God. Not that he identifies him with the
Godhead (ὁ θεός); on the contrary, he clearly distinguishes the Son and the Father and makes him
inferior in dignity ("the Father is greater than I"); but he declares that the Son is "God" (θεός), that
is, of divine essence or nature.
And yet there is no contradiction here between the Evangelists except for those who deem
a union of the Divine and human in one person an impossibility. The Christian Church has always
felt that the Synoptic and the Johannean Christ are one and the same, only represented from different
points of view. And in this judgment the greatest scholars and keenest critics, from Origen down
to the present time, have concurred.
For, on the one hand, John’s Christ is just as real and truly human as that of the Synoptists.
He calls himself the Son of man and "a man" (John 8:40); he "groaned in the spirit" (11:33), he
"wept" at the grave of a friend (11:35), and his "soul" was "troubled" in the prospect of the dark
hour of crucifixion (12:27) and the crime of the traitor (13:1). The Evangelist attests with solemn
emphasis from what he saw with his own eyes that Jesus truly suffered and died (19:33–35).^1052
The Synoptic Christ, on the other hand, is as truly elevated above ordinary mortals as the
Johannean. It is true, he does not in so many words declare his pre-existence as in John 1:1; 6:62;
8:58; 17:5, 24, but it is implied, or follows as a legitimate consequence. He is conceived without
sin, a descendant of David, and yet the Lord of David (Matt. 22:41); he claims authority to forgive
sins, for which he is accused of blasphemy by the Jews (quite consistently from their standpoint of
unbelief); he gives his life a ransom for the redemption of the world; he will come in his glory and
judge all nations; yea, in the very Sermon on the Mount, which all schools of Rationalists accept
his genuine teaching, He declares himself to be the judge of the world (Matt. 7:21–23; comp.
limpidité de narration qui fait le charme des évangélistes primitifs! Ceux-ci n’ont pas besoin de répéter sans cesse que ce qu’ils
racontent est vrai. Leur sincérité, inconsciente de l’objection, n’a pas cette soif fébrile d’attestations répétéesqui montre que
l’incrédulité, le doute, ont déjà commencé. Au ton légèrement excité de ce nouveau narrateur, on dirait qu’il a peur de n’étre
pas cru, et qu’il cherche à surprendre la religion de son lecteur par des affirmations pleines d’emphase." John Stuart Mill (Three
Essays on Religion, p. 253) irreverently calls the discourses in John "poor stuff," imported from Philo and the Alexandrian
Platonists, and imagines that a multitude of Oriental Gnostics might have manufactured such a book. But why did they not do
it?(^1052) Notwithstanding such passages Dr. Davidson asserts (II. 278): "In uniting the only-begotten Son of God with the historical
Jesus, the evangelist implies the absence of full humanity. The personality consists essentially of the Logos, the flesh being only
a temporary thing. Body, soul, and spirit do not belong to Jesus Christ; he is the Logos incarnate for a time, who soon returns
to the original state of oneness with the Father."
A.D. 1-100.