under divine judgment. In dealing with the human predicament,
Pauline Motives for the Christian Mission 83
unwilling to be a reflection of the divine nature; he aspired after deity itself. The paradox of man's lot is that, thus aspiring to deity, he rather fell under the power of the demonic. "For although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened" (Rom. 1:21). Men became subjected to "the
prince of the power of the air" (Eph. 2:2), fell under "the dominion
of darkness" (Col. 1:13), became "slaves to the elemental spirits
of the universe" (Gal. 4:3), victims of "death" (Rom. 5:12). To
Paul these descriptions were not the philosopher's proud attack
on human stupidity, implying that man could do better if he would
only choose to do so. This was rather a description of the radical
dislocation within man to which all are victims, himself included.
"Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me... ?" was the con-
fession of his own futility apart from Christ (Rom. 7:24).
But this futility of man's Adamic nature has been overcome by Jesus Christ, the "last Adam" (1 Cor. 15:45). "He has delivered
us from the dominion of darkness" (Col. 1:13), he has overcome death (1 Cor. 15:20 ff.), and he "delivers us from the wrath to come" beyond death (1 Thess. 1:10). Through this deliverance he has overcome man's alienation from God, restoring him to his rightful sonship and sending "the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba! Father!'" (Gal. 4:6). It is the duty and privilege of the Church to answer the human cry, "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me... ?" with the ringing answer: "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (Rom. 7:24 f.)
2. Paul also was motivated to mission by the fact that man is under divine judgment. In dealing with the human predicament, Paul insists that "the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against
all ungodliness and wickedness of men" (Rom. 1:18). If this were but an isolated statement, it might well be dismissed. But Paul refers to this concept over and over again, always in the most serious vein (Rom. 2:5 ff., 9:22; Eph. 5:6; Col. 3:6; 1 Thess. 2:16). Some have sought to avoid the implications of this by holding that the wrath of God is an "impersonal" thing, "an inevitable process of cause and effect in a moral universe." 1° It is more Biblical . to think of wrath as "a personal activity of God...the eternal
C. H. Dodd, The Epistle to the Romans (London: Hodder & Stoughton, — os 1932), pp. 23 f.
84 THE BIBLICAL BASIS
reaction against evil without which God would not be the Moral Governor of the world." 1 God's wrath is never in conflict with His love. The opposite of love is hatred, not wrath. Divine wrath is God's holy love in action against sin.
Furthermore, to indicate that God's wrath was not merely the impersonal operation of a moral law which is the nemesis of evil in this life, Paul speaks of a hardening of heart which does not acknowledge that "God's kindness is meant to lead . . . to repentance," and is "storing up wrath...on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed." "Wrath and fury," rather than being impersonal forces, are contrasted with "glory and honor and immortality" and "eternal life' (Rom. 2:4 fis) 2
Although we move in the area of mystery here, and although universalism is an inviting prospect, it is difficult to see how Paul could have taken God's wrath so seriously if he felt that ultimately
all men would be saved. Hendrik Kraemer seems to be moving on truly Pauline grounds when he writes:
"Hardening of heart" is in Greek oxAnpoxapdia, "kardiosklerosis." It is a terribly clear word to express that this is a hopeless lethal case. The more so, when we remind ourselves that in the Bible "heart" is man in the totality of his being. These cases exist, just as there exists the mystery of Judas. Without minimizing in the least the Biblical teaching that the gospel... is meant for the whole world, we should not lose sight of the important marginal flashes the Bible throws on the mystery that man can get by his own acts into an irretrievable situation, and that God puts the seal upon it by making it irretrievable.15
To do all that can be done to dissuade men from such an irretrievable course is a part of the motivation to mission. As this discussion has indicated, it is by no means the only motive, and if it were withdrawn, there would be ample motivation for the Church's mission. But that this is one motive which we would do well to ponder seems inescapable. Paul-worked constantly under the stimulus of this motive, and even kept always before his mind the solemn
fact that he, too, was to be judged at the last day. "Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade men" (2 Cor. 5:11).
"A. M. Hunter, Interpreting Paul's Gospel (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1954), p. 79.
_* Op. cit., p. 380.
The Gospel According to St. John
and the Christian Mission
BXe PEN. DeAcy-E. Y.
The Gospel according to John has played a decisive part on many occasions when the Church's conception of its mission was in doubt, in recent as well as former times. More than any other book of the Bible, it caused Christian theologians of the West to return to the | study of Christian sociology, and to insist that Christian social action must be governed by the Christian revelation of God. During the critical years of "the new theology" and the apparent triumph of liberalism, when everyone was questing for the "Jesus of history," it protested by its presence in the New Testament against the identification of "history" and "theology," and affirmed that theology must exist in its own right. As the subject of several notable commentaries, it has helped to show how theology may answer the questions which history leaves unanswered, and has inevitably come more and more into the center of New Testament study as that study has recovered its authentic preoccupation with theology. The result of putting it into the hands of learned students, whether of the great religions of Asia or of Judaism, has not seldom been their conversion to the faith of Christ. It has spoken authoritatively alike to those drawn to mysticism and to those schooled in philosophy. It is not surprising that at the Tambaram Conference in 1938 it was claimed that "the all-embracing activity — of Jesus Christ, as well before as after his incarnation, found in the ~
eae oo
86 THE BIBLICAL BASIS
Gospel of St. John, is of the greatest importance with regard to world mission work."
Yet, is it right to speak of "the Johannine approach to the world mission of the Church," as though this Gospel had a conception of Christ, or a conception of man, or a conception of the Holy Spirit, altogether different from those found in the rest of the New Testament; or as though this Gospel alone defines and justifies a particular missionary assumption and technique? The question must be examined, not so much in order to assess the relation of the Fourth Gospel to the rest of the New Testament as it is understood today, a quarter of a century after the Tambaram Conference, as to define once again (as the Church must continually try to do) the ways in which the Christian Gospel may be shown to be relevant to the thinking of those still without Christ in the world.
Twenty-five years ago the Fourth Gospel was commonly studied in contrast to the three "Synoptic Gospels." These were held to share a common point of view, precisely in distinction to that of the Fourth Gospel. At that time, their "authors" or "redactors"—those responsible for their final shape—were regarded as the least important factor in their composition. Even though it was becoming accepted that nowhere in the Synoptic Gospels could the student identify history that was not already selected and recounted under the influence of prior "interpretation," this "interpretation" was held to represent—particularly if recognizable in more than one of the supposedly separable strands of Synoptic tradition—the common mind of the Church in very early (indeed, in apostolic) times. Here, it was maintained, was sufficient basis for the study of the mind of Christ; sufficient basis, therefore, for presenting Christ to the world today. The Fourth Gospel, it was conceded, might also contain material of similar significance; but in practice it was left on one side, as representing the mind of only part of the Church, in an age almost entirely removed from direct apostolic influence.
Since those days a very considerable reassessment has taken place. Dr. C. H. Dodd has taught that the Fourth Gospel follows Mark in many respects more directly than do Matthew and Luke, and has "a close affinity with the apostolic preaching." Hoskyns has affirmed that the Fourth Gospel is the first and best commentary _ on Mark. On the other hand, the first three Gospels have increas-
__ ingly come to be studied for their individuality—not so much for
ae tae
St. John's Gospel and the Christian Mission 87
the sources that appear to lie behind them as for their author's or redactor's patent intention and purpose. The common idea that the first three Gospels preserve (no doubt in fragments and disorder) what might be described as "photographs" of the Jesus of
history, whereas the fourth is a "portrait," has given way to the recognition that all four Gospels are best regarded as portraits. No
doubt there are differences of form—the first three Gospels, for
instance, share an episodic style conspicuously different from the
allusive continuity of the fourth. But a difference that matters more
is the difference in the deliberate intention of the author. Professor
C. K. Barrett has summed it up as follows:
Each of the evangelists begins his work by tracing back the activity of Jesus to its origin (dpy7): Mark to the work of the Baptist and the baptism of Jesus, with the descent of the Spirit and the divine pronouncement, Thou art my Son; Matthew and Luke to the birth of Jesus from a virgin; John to the creation, and beyond it. Each intends to prepare his readers for understanding the ensuing narrative; Jesus can be understood only as Messiah, as Son of God, and as Logos. John alone, however, gives the narrative about Jesus an absolute theological framework1
This difference must be borne in mind even when the fundamental unity of the New Testament is being emphasized—as has also become common during recent years. The fundamental unity of all four Gospels consists in their common preoccupation with the self-revelation and redemptive achievement of God, with the good news of His unique and ultimate act of salvation, with which —and this too is equally true of all of them—the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus are essentially and inextricably connected. Their portraits of Jesus may be said to differ inasmuch as each wrote in a particular situation in the history of the Church, and to the best of his ability and understanding presented Jesus so as to show how, in him and by him, and through his death and resurrection, God's mercy and truth offered all men all that they needed in that particular situation. To men with the burden of Old Testament prophecy ringing in their ears, with an intense expectation of the promised Messiah of God, with their eyes looking for the first — sign of God's kingdom come on earth; to men crying out for the ©
vindication of God's justice, for the unleashing of His compassion, —
the Marcan introduction should have been enough. For those —
1The Gospel According to St. John (London: S.P.C.K., 1955), p. 125.
88 THE BIBLICAL BASIS
familiar with Jewish-Christian controversy, or who, while knowing
the Old Testament, were far removed from the atmosphere of Messianic expectation, Matthew and Luke open with the account of the birth of Jesus. Wise men worship the Holy One of God, to shepherds the wonder of his birth is revealed—scenes anticipating, perhaps, the scenes with which both these Gospels end, when the disciples worship the risen Christ. The theological understanding of Jesus implied for the readers of Mark by messianic allusions is not heightened in Matthew and Luke—that would be impossible— it is safeguarded by a more obviously theological definition of his person. The potential misunderstanding, that he became Messiah "by adoption" at the Baptism (no doubt unthinkable to the author of Mark) is at the same time precluded. It remained for the Fourth Evangelist to make the theological definition of Jesus unmistakable in a world so vague and various in its conceptions of divinity that even the fact of virgin birth might not seem to constitute an absolute claim to Godhead. In Professor Barrett's words: "The only perspective in which the work of Jesus, and his relation to the Father, could be truly seen and estimated was that of eternity." Jesus is therefore presented as "the Word who was in the beginning with God, who himself was God."
Although St. Paul did not name Jesus the Word of God, he reached a similar Christology by what seems to have been a similar process. In his Epistle to the Colossians he has moved away—not from the historical Gospel delivered by Christ to the apostles—but from the presentation of that Gospel in such terms as might have seemed relevant only to Jews nourished on the Old Testament Scriptures. It is perhaps possible to show how St. Paul learned by experience to begin where his readers or hearers were; to start from their intellectual apprehension—true or false—of the revelation of God. However this may be, when writing to the Colossians he appears to be fully aware that, owing to the conception of the universe they shared with much of the hellenistic world, they were doubtful whether Christ could have power to save except in the lowest of the spheres by which men believed the earth to be surrounded. Surely there were higher powers intervening between man and the ultimate Godhead. St. Paul takes cognizance of their conception of the universe, their cosmogony, only in order to insist on the ultimate authority of Christ. To accept him as possessing restricted authority is to misunderstand him altogether. Rather, he alone is
St. John's Gospel and the Christian Mission 89
the truth to which even men's false and shadowy conceptions point,
for he alone is the truth of God.
St. Paul and the Fourth Evangelist agree, but not because they were speculative theologians who naturally used the language of contemporary syncretistic philosophy. They were anything but speculative theologians. They agree because they were consciously con-
cerned to show the absolute implications of the Christian faith that
Jesus is the Gospel and that the Gospel is Jesus, to men familiar
with the jargon of religion and philosophy that was popular for many years throughout much of the Roman Empire. When the
Gospel is offered to men, it is Christ himself who is offered to them,
and received by them. But, to be confronted by Christ is to be
confronted by God, nothing less. Jesus, then, is the beginning and
the end; the first creator and the final judge; the ultimate truth both
of God and of humanity. Truly man as well as truly God, he
mediates between God and man, offering us true knowledge of
God, salvation from sin and death, eternal life in union with God. It follows that there is no genuine insight or authentic experience of man of which Jesus Christ is not the true meaning and the ultimate fulfillment. And it follows also that even where man is groping after a half-truth, or is imprisoned in a false interpretation of life =~ and the world he lives in, Christ is still the truth to which it should be possible to direct his eyes, if not by analogy, yet at least by contrast; if not by arguing directly from men's actual conceptions, yet at least by repudiating them so as to bear witness to the truth.
Dr. Dodd has suggested that the Fourth Gospel was not written for Christians but for intelligent, educated people in the GrecoRoman world, conversant with contempory syncretisms of Jewish religion and Greek thought, men of respectable morality and humane idealism, in an attempt to lead them on from what they already accepted, to correct their ideas and finally redefine them in — terms of the Gospel of Christ crucified and risen. Others prefer to think that the Fourth Gospel was written for Christians acquainted
with the tradition represented for us in the three Synoptic Gospels,
but in danger of misunderstanding it, in an attempt to make them
see the full implications of what they were ignoring or limiting _ through overfamiliarity and superficiality. Both these approaches to
the Fourth Gospel are relevant to the Church's missionary task.
But, whatever readers the Fourth Evangelist had consciously in —
mind, and whatever assumptions of his may have conditioned his
90 THE BIBLICAL BASIS
method, what is even more relevant is his apprehension that Jesus reveals and makes accessible the truth and grace of God to men, in the world they live in, so as to make sense both of that world and of their own lives in it. When everything possible has been done to discover the background of such great Johannine terms as "word,
life, light, truth, way"; when we have found, or failed to find, parallels to the Evangelist's references to birth, water, wind, eating, drinking, meat, darkness, death; the fact remains that in each case it is the fundamental human experience connected with the imagery that provides the most illuminating clue to the Evangelist's purpose. The vocabulary in which the Jesus of the Fourth Gospel speaks about himself and about God is furnished by the essential pattern, by the raw material, of ordinary human life.
This does not mean that mere consideration of the context and conditions of human life in the world leads automatically to the contemplation of the truth of God. Perhaps it should mean that,
and would mean that in an unfallen world. But men as this Gospel knows them are in the darkness which does not apprehend the truth. Even such a man as Nicodemus, for instance, has no inkling of the meaning of Christ's conversation about birth, water, and wind. To be in darkness is to interpret such things as having meaning only in themselves, in their actuality. A religious man can show himself to be in darkness by his attitude to material things. On the other hand, Jesus reveals the truth of God by showing in himself the true meaning of such things—and this always involves, implicitly if not explicitly, his life, death, and resurrection. A supreme example of this, in this Gospel, may be found in its theme of life. True life—to which all life should bear witness—is new life from above: life originating from and located in God. Such is Jesus' own
life. But even his own life can be misapprehended.as though it were something originating in time and space, something existing— though temporarily only—in its own right and strength.
Through death then must the origin and nature and locus of his
life be laid bare, and the true origin, the true nature, the true locus of all life be revealed. At that point, reached historically because the clash between his life-giving ministry, summed up in his raising of Lazarus, and the blindness of the Jews is ultimate, his words,
"I am the resurrection and the life" begin to be fully apprehensible to those with faith. Apprehension remains the gift of God. It can be _ described only as the achievement of the Holy Spirit bestowed upon
St. John's Gospel and the Christian Mission 91
his disciples through Jesus Christ's death and resurrection. But—
and this is most striking—this apprehension illuminates the whole
life which Christian men and women have to live in the world while
yet being not of the world. In their living of this life in faith, the Holy Spirit reveals to them the meaning both of Christ's life and
of their own. It is not simply that through Christ's death they have
seen human life pointing beyond itself to eternal life with God. In
seeing it thus pointing beyond itself they have seen (though only by faith) human life established and revealed in its full meaning;
its truly amazing meaning; its glory.
According to the Fourth Gospel, the raw material of human life furnishes the essential Christian vocabulary because, through his
life, death, and resurrection, Christ rules out the worldly, ma-
terialist, or exclusively humanist interpretation of life—not in the interests of some dualism, as though reality is to be found in the realm of ideas or through spiritual ecstasy, but in the interests of a true understanding—better, of an authentic living—of life as it is. Life in this world is therefore the more fully understood the more fully it is interpreted by reference to Christ crucified and risen. To put this the other way round, Christ crucified and risen is the key to all life, and through the Holy Spirit we see all life marked with a his cross and consummated in his resurrection. It is usually assumed that when the author of the Fourth Gospel wrote:
He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not. He came to his own home, and his own people received him not
he was already thinking of the historical advent and rejection of Jesus. Of course he could not help thinking of it—it was the source of his whole understanding of the Gospel. But he also had in mind : the eternal "advent" of Christ, in his creation and BGS of: ae the world, as well as his particular "advent" to "his own' " people = through the prophets and seers and all those to whom a true in- : sight had been given. God confronts man, through Christ, first in the pattern of creation and history, secondly in the calling and * history of Israel, thirdly, in his coming in flesh and blood. But it — is this third "coming" which enables the author of the Fourth ~ Gospel—and which should enable us—to discern in his other two _