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Updated: June 29, 2025
The Second Christian Stage, the Johannine writings, are fully understandable only as posterior to St. Paul the most enthusiastic and influential, indeed, of all our Lord's early disciples, but a convert, from the activity of a strict persecuting Pharisee, not to the earthly Jesus, of soul and body, whom he never knew, but to the heavenly Spirit-Christ, whom he had so suddenly experienced.
There is a sense in which he might say with the Johannine Christ, "He that receiveth me receiveth Him that sent me"; for yielding to his magnetism, men really yield to the drawing of the Spirit itself. And when they do this, their lives are found to reproduce though with less intensity the life history of their leader.
When the Johannine writers speak of the blood of Christ, they mean the outpoured, forthgiven life of the eternal Son of God, the ideal humanity, perfectly and centrally expressed in Jesus of Nazareth.
He was no match in controversy for Mr. Wendover, and he did not mean to attempt it. One morning the Squire unexpectedly plunged into an account of a German monograph he had just received on the subject of the Johannine authorship of the fourth Gospel.
This can be seen in the Fourth Gospel, and in the allied Johannine Epistles. The writer is fully aware of the danger, and protests against Docetism, but his own writings with very small changes would have been admirably adapted for Docetic purposes.
And this Christ-Spirit effects and maintains the universal brotherhood of mankind, and articulates in particular posts and functions the several human spirits, as variously necessary members of the one Christian society and Church. Now the Johannine Gospel indeed utilizes considerable Synoptic materials, and does not, as St. Paul, restrict itself to the Passion and Resurrection.
Quain, whose learning exceeded even theirs so the elders sarcastically ventured to surmise was not ashamed to believe in the inspiration of the Old Testament; he could reconcile the chronology of the earth's crust with the first chapter of Genesis; he had a satisfactory explanation of the Johannine gospel; and his mere existence was an impregnable fortress from which the adherents of the banner of belief could not be dislodged.
Surely it is a significant fact that the New Testament contains a whole series of books the Johannine books which have as their very burden the eternal significance of the historical: eternal life in Jesus Christ, come in flesh, the propitiation for the whole world.
The author remains unknown, the age uncertain. The book, however, can hardly have appeared before the time of the Montanist movement, that is, toward the end of the second century. Scholars now rate far more highly than did Baur the element of genuine Johannine tradition which may lie behind the Fourth Gospel and account for its name.
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