Apologeticae sive Theologiae Fundamentalis, Tomus I: Demonstratio Christiana

¹

The testimony of the evangelists to the divinity of the Savior coincides with the testimony that Jesus Christ himself gave to his own divine nature. This holds especially for the Synoptics, who simply report the "gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God"² adding almost nothing of their own. John, too, faithfully narrates the history of Jesus,³ yet with the design of celebrating the divinity of Jesus ex professo. Hence the Johannine christology exhibits a method of its own and a form of its own.

1. The proper method of the Johannine christology.

At the time when the Synoptic evangelists were writing, the divinity of Jesus was believed without doubt by all Christians, as is evident from the letters of St. Paul. There was therefore no need to insist much on this fundamental truth of the Christian religion. But as the first century was drawing to a close and the second beginning, Cerinthus, the Nicolaitans, and other Judeo-Gnostic heretics called the divine nature of Jesus into question. For this reason St. John does not merely touch upon the divine deeds and words of Jesus after the manner of the earlier evangelists, but deliberately defends the thesis of the divinity of the Savior. And indeed:

a) That the Johannine Gospel was written to this end, that by the authentic testimony of the last apostle⁴ the divinity of Jesus Christ might be established against the Judeo-Gnostic heresies, is attested by unanimous tradition.⁵ But the evangelist himself also says that he wrote "that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name".⁶ Therefore immediately in the prologue of the Gospel he sets forth the human and at the same time the divine nature of Christ; then he records the testimony of John the Baptist concerning the origin, preexistence, and divine sonship of Christ;⁷ finally, in the course of the narrative, he hands down chiefly those works and words by which Jesus professed his divinity.

b) The Epistle, the companion of the Gospel, insists still more earnestly on the divinity of Jesus Christ. Faith in the divinity of the Son of God and love toward him is a divine commandment: "And this is his [God's] commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ⁸ ... Every one who loves him [the Father] who begot him, loves also the one born of him⁹ ... In this the love of God was made manifest in our regard, that God sent his only-begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him¹⁰ ... In this we have come to know the love of God, that he laid down his life for us.¹¹" Faith in the divinity of the Son overcomes the world and gives eternal life: "Who is there that overcomes the world, if not he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God¹² ... And this is the testimony, that God has given us eternal life. And this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who has not the Son has not life. These things I am writing to you, that you may know that you have eternal life, you who believe in the name of the Son of God.¹³" Whoever professes or denies that the Son is God, professes or denies also that the Father is God: "Every one who denies the Son has not the Father; he who confesses the Son has the Father also¹⁴? He who believes in the Son of God has the testimony of God in himself. He who does not believe the Son, makes him a liar, because he does not believe the testimony that God has borne concerning his Son¹⁵ ... And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding, that we may know the true God and be in his true Son. This is the true God and eternal life.¹⁶"

c) The Apocalypse transfers to the glorious Christ the testimony that elsewhere is ascribed to God the Father:¹⁷ "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end... Behold, I am living for ever and ever, and I have the keys of death and of hell.¹⁸" The prophet John, worshipping before the throne of the Lamb of God,¹⁹ joyfully describes his divine glory thus: "And I saw and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the living creatures and the elders: and the number of them was thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice: Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and divinity and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing. And every creature that is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in it, I heard all saying: To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb: blessing and honor and glory and dominion for ever and ever. And they adored him who lives for ever and ever ... And they cried with a loud voice, saying: Salvation to our God, who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb."²⁰

John therefore sets forth the divinity of Jesus Christ by his own proper method — alike in the Gospel, in the first Epistle, and in the Apocalypse. Whereas the other writers of the New Testament, and especially the Synoptic evangelists, proclaim the Savior as true God only on occasion, St. John deliberately enunciates and defends the thesis of the divinity of the Messiah and Son of God.

2. The proper form of the Johannine christology.

The Johannine christology is distinguished also by its proper form. Whereas by the other sacred writers Jesus Christ is never expressly called the Word (ὁ λόγος), St. John binds the whole doctrine of the incarnate Son of God together under the single name of the "Word".

In Asia Minor, namely, where the apostle of love was writing, the Alexandrian-Philonic theory of the Logos or Word was on every tongue.²¹ Philo the Jew, relying on ideas partly Platonic, partly Stoic, taught that God is so exalted that he could have had nothing to do with the material world; that God therefore could not have created the prime matter of the world, but that this rather is uncreated and eternal; and that God could not even have formed matter, but for forming it made use of a certain intermediate being, which they call the Logos or Word. This Word is neither God, nor man, nor any other concrete person, but an abstract idea according to which God had decreed that the world should be formed.

In order to overthrow these errors, St. John, retaining the husk, that is, the Philonic word "Word", and rejecting the kernel, substituted for it a wholly Christian reality. He does call Jesus Christ the Word, but he describes this Word as a concrete, divine, eternal person, who in his own time not only formed the world, but created it, gave it life, enlightened it by revelation, and finally, assuming human nature, redeemed men and, endowing them with grace and supernatural truth, made them adopted sons of God.

This doctrine of the Word of God St. John sets forth at once in fullest form in the prologue of the Gospel: "In the beginning [from eternity, before any thing existed] was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God [θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος]. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him [not only formed, but made, i. e. created], and without him was made nothing that has been made [so that both the eternity of matter and the activity of an intermediate being are excluded]. In him was life, and the life [that] was the light [supernatural] of men; and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness concerning the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but was to bear witness concerning the light. There was the true light, which enlightens every man who comes into this world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But to as many as received him he gave the power of becoming sons of God; to those who believe in his name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us,²² and we saw his glory [divine = τὴν δόξαν], glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth."²³

The now human-divine life of the Word dwelling among men John narrates in the course of his Gospel. That the whole fourth Gospel is truly the Gospel of the Logos, or Word of God, John affirms at the beginning of his first Epistle.²⁴ To the same doctrine of the Word of God St. John insists again in the context of the same Epistle and of the Apocalypse.²⁵

The christological form of the "Word" is therefore proper and beloved to John. Not that he neglected the other appellations by which Jesus is called in the whole New Testament: Son of David, Son of Man, Messiah, Son of God, Lord, God; nay, these appellations occur in the Johannine writings more frequently than the title of Logos or Word of God. Yet all that is declared of Jesus Christ by those appellations taken together, John comprehends in that one title: Word of God, Word of light, Word of life, Logos. The Johannine title of the Word contains the whole christology, and aptly enunciates above all the metaphysical filiation and the true divinity of Jesus Christ. In this sense and for this reason the name of the Word and the Johannine doctrine of the Word passed over into later theology.

Nevertheless, notwithstanding the new method and form, the Johannine christology in substance coincides with the christology of the earlier sacred writers, with the faith of the primitive Church, and with the testimony of Jesus himself.

This the contemporaries of St. John expressly attest, subscribing the fourth Gospel as follows: "This is that disciple [John] who bears witness concerning these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his witness is true."²⁶ Nothing was more dear to John than that the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as it had been preached from the beginning, should be preserved intact and unchanged: "As for you, let that abide in you which you have heard from the beginning", says John. "If that abides in you which you have heard from the beginning, you also shall abide in the Son and in the Father."²⁷ Indeed he insists again that he hands on and teaches only what he has seen and heard from Christ himself: "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have handled, of the Word of life — and the life was made manifest, and we have seen and bear witness and announce to you the life eternal, which was with the Father and appeared to us — what we have seen and have heard we announce to you, that you also may have fellowship with us, and our fellowship may be with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.²⁸ "He who saw it has borne witness, and his witness is true. And he [John] knows that he speaks the truth, that you also may believe ... that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name."²⁹