According to Saint John
by , Boston: Little, Brown and Company. 1925. 8vo. xv+315 pp. $3.50. (An Atlantic Monthly Press Publication.)
THE Fourth Gospel is probably the most perplexing of the standing enigmas of the New Testament. Who wrote it? When and where was it written? What was the purpose of the writer? Was he an apologetic allegorist or a plain matter-of-fact historian or a mixture of both? Was he an eyewitness or had he, though not an eyewitness, first-hand information? What is the relation of the Gospel to the first three Gospels? Such are a few, but only a few, of the hard questions which clamor for an answer. Lord Charnwood, a devout and scholarly layman favorably known to the American public by his admirable life of Abraham Lincoln, seeks to solve the problem, so far as it is capable of solution, in a volume which is the first written in such a way as to appeal to the nonprofessional student of the New Testament.
The author has at least three advantages, and they resemble those which enabled J. R. Seeley, more than a generation ago, to produce the best life of Christ that had up to that time appeared in England. Lord Charnwood has a wide knowledge of literature and history ; he is free from the weakness of the professional scholar in things Biblical, of not being able to see the wood for the trees; and he can write attractive and lucid English, a rare accomplishment among theologians. He keeps before himself throughout the essential matter: Does this Gospel throw any light on the features of the historical Jesus and the spirit of His teaching?
He sees clearly and rightly emphasizes the signal contribution of this Gospel to the Christian religion, its identification of Jesus with the creative Source of life, and its views of Christianity as a new phenomenon in history, a religion universal and divine. The Kingdom of God is not Jewish or eschatological; it is eternal life, a present possession. And yet one is haunted with the feeling that Lord Charnwood has never really grappled with the problem of the first three Gospels and has never steeped himself in the tradition as represented by Mark of what is clearly, in general outline, the real sequence of events. Nor does he appear to recognize certain well-established conclusions as to the connection between the Fourth Gospel and the First Epistle of John. If critical inquiry has proved anything, it has proved that the writer of these two books is one and the same person, yet Lord Charnwood, while ascribing the Epistle to John the Apostle, hesitates to make him the author of the Gospel, and is inclined, on the whole, to believe that we have here the work of an unknown disciple who was influenced by him.
Then again, apart from matters of detail, let the reader dispassionately consider the way in which, in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus gradually discloses His Messiahship to the disciples while firmly keeping it back from all others, and then let him turn to the Fourth Gospel and read how from the very beginning Jesus openly proclaims this secret. The Baptist is represented by the writer of the Fourth Gospel as bearing witness to Christ’s Messiahship, yet it is the Baptist who, according to Matthew and Luke, sent a little later his disciples to Christ with this message: ‘Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?’ We are forced to face the dilemma: either Mark’s outline is historical — in which case that of the Fourth Gospel is not — or it is unhistorical, and all the critical labor of a century spent on the Synoptic problem has been thrown away.
Interesting, and even illuminating here and there, as Lord Charnwood’s book is, it must be pronounced a failure on the main issue. The Gospel according to Saint John still remains an unsolved riddle.
SAMUEL MCCOMB