thoroughly Hellenistic it also is in its cast,82 in what it reports and what it omits - in short, in its
whole aim; how adapted to Hellenist wants its presentation of deep central truths; how suitably,
in the report of His Discourses - even so far as their form is concerned - the promise was here
fulfilled, of bringing all things to remembrance whatsoever He had said.83 It is the true Light
which shineth, of which the full meridian-blaze lies on the Hellenist and Hellenic world. There is
Alexandrian form of thought not only in the whole conception, but in the Logos,84 and in His
presentation as the Light, the Life, the Wellspring of the world.85 But these forms are filled in the
fourth Gospel with quite other substance. God is not afar off, uncognisable by man, without
properties, without name. He is the Father. Instead of a nebulous reflection of the Deity we have
the Person of the Logos; not a Logos with the two potencies of goodness and power, but full of
grace and truth. The Gospel of St. John also begins with a `Bereshith' - but it is the theological,
not the cosmic Bereshith, when the Logos was with God and was God. Matter is not pre-
existent; far less is it evil. St. John strikes the pen through Alexandrianism when he lays it down
as the fundamental fact of New Testament history that `the Logos was made flesh,' just as St.
Paul does when he proclaims the great mystery of `God manifest in the flesh.' Best of all, it is
not by a long course of study, nor by wearing discipline, least of all by an inborn good
disposition, that the soul attains the new life, but by a birth from above, by the Holy Ghost, and
by simple faith which is brought within reach of the fallen and the lost.86
80. The Gnostics, to whom, in the opinion of many, so frequent references are made in the writings of St.
John and St. Paul, were only an offspring (rather, as the Ge rmans would term it, an Abart) of
Alexandrianism on the one hand, and on the other of Eastern notions, which are so largely embodied in
the later Kabbalah.
81. A complement, not a supplement, as many critics put it (Ewald, Weizsäcker, and even
Hengstenberg ) - least of all a rectification (Godet, Evang. Joh. p. 633).
82. Keim (Leben Jesu von Nazara, i. a, pp. 112-114) fully recognises this; but I entirely differ from the
conclusions of his analytical comparison of Philo with the fourth Gospel.
83. St. John xiv. 26
84. The student who has carefully considered the views expressed by Philo about the Logos, and
analysed, as in the Appendix, the passages in the Targumim in which the word Memra occurs, cannot
fail to perceive the immense difference in the presentation of the Logos by St. John. Yet M. Renan, in an
article in the `Contemporary Review' for September 1877, with utter disregard of the historical evidence
on the question, maintains not only the identity of these three sets of ideas, but actually grounds on it
his argument against the authenticity of the fourth Gospel. Considering the importance of the subject, it
is not easy to speak with moderation of assertions so bold based on statements so entirely inaccurate.
85. Dr. Bucher, whose book, Des Apostels Johannes Lehre vom Logos, deserves careful perusal, tries
to trace the reason of these peculiarities as indicated in the Prologue of the fourth Gospel. Bucher
differentiates at great length between the Logos of Philo and of the fourth Gospel. He sums u p his
views by stating that in the Prologue of St. John the Logos is presented as the fulness of Divine Light
and Life. This is, so to speak, the theme, while the Gospel history is intended to present the Logos as
the giver of this Divine Light and Life. While the other Evangelists ascend from the manifestation to the
idea of the Son of God, St. John descends from the idea of the Logos, as expressed in the Prologue, to
its concrete realisation in His history. The latest tractate (at the present writing, 1882) on the Gospel of
St. John, by Dr. Müller, Die Johann. Frage, gives a good summary of the argument on both sides, and
deserves the careful attention of students of the question.