Epistles of John - The Preterist Archive

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XVI
ST JOHN THE APOSTLE, AND HIS WRITINGS.
sense in which he supplements or completes the Synoptists.
has been already observed that St John, according to his individual
endowment and personal peculiarity, was the only one
who was overruled to seize and retain certain individual aspects
of the nature and the doctrine of Jesus. First, to wit, those
utterances of our Lord concerning His eternal relation to the
Father, and His eternal, pre-temporal and supra-temporal, oneness
of essence with the Father (John iii. 13, 17, v. 17, vi. 33,
51, vii. 16, 28, viii. 58)— an aspect of the teaching of Christ
which, in opposition to that which the Lord lays down concerning
His historical work upon earth, and his historical relation
to men, may assuredly with perfect propriety be described as
" the speculative aspect," and to the apprehension of which a
" philosophical" tone and culture of mind (using this expression,
of course, in the widest sense) must be supposed. 1 But,
secondly, also those sayings of our Lord concerning the mystical
relation of unity and fellowship of life into which He would
enter with His people through the Holy Spirit. (John iii. 8,
ch. vi., ch. xiv. 16 seq., xv. 1 seq., xvii. 21-23.) The question
now arises, whether the individuality and personal characteristics
of the Apostle was the only factor in the case ; whether it was
this alone which prompted him to supplement and perfect the
picture which the Synoptists had given of the person and teaching
of Christ (mark, not that he invented or feigned anything
new and unhistorical, but that he gave a representation of an
aspect of the historical and real Christ which he alone had apprehended
in all its depth and fulness), or whether there was
also co-operating, as the second factor, an actual necessity of the
Church, which was beginning to be pressingly felt at the period
when St John wrote.
He who should hesitate to admit this, must be prepared to
deny that the providential wisdom of God had assigned to St
John any peculiar and independent vocation in the joint apostolical
work of founding the Church. St Peter and St Matthew
had it for their vocation to found the Christian Church among
the people of Israel, and to bear their testimony to Jesus as the
Fulfiller of the prophecies ; the same St Peter and St Mark
had it for their vocation first to bear the tidings concerning
It
1
Against LutliarJt, S. 227.