ARTICLE IV.

WHAT IS THE TRUE MEANING OF JOHN 14: 28?

BY M. STUART, PROF. SAC. LIT. IN THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, AT

ANDOVER.

John 14 : 23. Ηκούσατε, ὅτι ἐγὼ εἶπον ὑμῖν· Υπάγω, καὶ ἔρχομαι πρὸς ὑμᾶς. Εἰ ἠγαπᾶτέ με, ἐχάρητε ἂν, ὅτι πορεύομαι πρὸς τὸν πατέρα· ὅτι ὁ πατήρ μου μείζων μού ἐστί.

Ye have heard that I said to you: I go away and come to you. If ye loved me, ye would have rejoiced that I am going to the Father; For the FATHER IS GREATER THAN I.

THE well-informed reader of the Scriptures needs not to be reminded, that this text has given occasion to a great variety of interpretations. Less still does he need to be told, that trinitarian views respecting the Godhead of the Redeemer seem at first view to be thwarted by a direct declaration on the part of the Saviour himself, that the Father is greater than he.

A hasty reader may, no doubt, easily draw the conclusion, that to affirm the full equality of the Son with the Father, is to contradict the express and unequivocal assertion of the Son himself; and that all the texts of Scripture which seemingly declare such an equality, must therefore be modified and explained so as to be rendered harmonious with such an assertion. This, or something equivalent to it, has often been said; and, it is probable, will often be said hereafter. Indeed, if we merely consider the form and manner of the declaration before us, we may easily suppose that some honest and even intelligent minds may be not a little embarrassed and perplexed by it.

Is it capable of a fair and unprejudiced exegesis, which will free such minds from their perplexity? I will not venture upon the declaration, at present, that it is; but I design to make an effort, in the sequel, to give it a fair interpretation. If I should succeed, the reader who has

been perplexed must then judge for himself, whether it will aid him in any good measure to relieve himself of the embarrassment which he has been accustomed to feel.

First of all, I must request a moment's attention to the necessary implication of a part of the verse before us, in consequence of its grammatical structure. I refer to the clause, εἰ ἠγαπᾶτέ με, ἐχάρητε ἂν ὅτι πορεύομαι πρὸς τὸν πατέρα. Every reader, who is well acquainted with the laws of Greek syntax, will perceive at once, by the very form of this clause, that a negative is necessarily implied with respect to both of its parts. When the Greeks wish to state a conditional proposition, with a plain implication that neither part of the condition had been fulfilled, they usually employ the Imperfect tense preceded by εi (if) in the first clause or protasis, and the same tense or some other Praeterite with &r in the second clause or apodosis. For example: εἰ τοῦτο ἔλεγες, ἡμάρτανες ἄν, i. e. if thou shouldst say this, thou wouldst err; where the implication of course is, that the person addressed has not said what is alluded to, and therefore has not erred. Examples may be found every where in the New Testament of the same idion. Thus in Luke 7: 39, οὗτος, εἰ ἦν προφήτης, ἐγίνωσκεν ἂν, etc., This man, if he were a prophet, would have known, etc.; that is, he is not a prophet, and therefore does not know. So in Heb. 4: 8, εἰ γὰρ αὐτοὺς ̓Ιησοῦς κατέπαυσεν, οὐκ ἂν περὶ ἄλλης ἐλάλει, for if Joshua had given them rest, then would he not speak respecting another [rest]. The undoubted implication is, that Joshua did not give them the rest to which the writer refers, and therefore he [God] has spoken concerning another rest. This last implication, although as now stated it is affirmative in form, is still the converse of what is apparently said in the apodosis or second clause of the conditional proposition. If the reader wishes to pursue the investigation of this usage still further, I refer him to Luke 17:6. John 5: 46. 8: 42. 9: 41. 15: 19. 18: 36. Gal. 1: 10. Heb. 8: 4. 1 Cor. 11: 31. Indeed, almost every page of the New Testament will furnish him with examples. In some of these, however, v of the apodosis is omitted; e. g. John 9 : 33, εἰ μὴ ἦν οὗτος παρὰ θεοῦ, οὐκ ἠδύνατο ποιεῖν οὐδέν, if this man were not of God, he could do nothing, i. e. he is of God, and therefore he performs miraculous opera

tions.

What has been said particularly of the Imperfect tense above, is true also of the Aorist and Pluperfect. But these vary the meaning of such propositions merely as to time and continuance of action, not as to the nature of the conditional proposition. The reader who wants more satisfaction as to usage in respect to the Aorist and Pluperfect, may consult Matt. 11: 21. 12: 7. 1 Cor. 2: 8. Rom. 9: 29. John 18:30. Acts 18: 14. 1 John 2: 19. John Without &v, Rom. 7:

11: 21, all with &r in the apodosis. 7. John 15: 22. 19: 11.

I will merely add here, that the classical writers every where afford examples of the like construction and idiom; which the reader may find exhibited abundantly in Winer's New Testament Grammar, $ 43, 2, seq., and specially in Kühner's Greek Grammar, $ 820, seq.

In the text before us (John 14: 28), the second clause of the conditional sentence has the Aor. II. (passive form), instead of an Imperfect, which stands in the first clause. By the use of the Aorist, the second clause is made to refer to a past time; which agrees well with the design of the speaker. Jesus does not mean to deny that his disciples would so love him, in future, as to rejoice that he had gone to the Father; but he means to intimate that hitherto the measure of their love had not been so great, or rather, perhaps, that the kind of affection which they had hitherto cherished for him was not so pure, spiritual, and exalted, that they could rejoice (as they ought to do) because he was going to the Father.

The denial of love, in some sense or other, is put beyond a question by the form of discourse. But to what extent this denial reaches, is a question which can be settled only by the nature of the case and the cast of the context. Calvin has hit the right point here; at least, so it seems to me. In cases of such a nature he is certainly very apt to hit the true sense. I translate his words: "The disciples, beyond a doubt, loved Christ; but still, in a manner different from what was becoming. There was something carnal mingled with their affection, so that they could not bear to be separated from him. But if they had loved him in a [purely] spiritual manner, nothing would have been more grateful to them than his return to the Father."

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Indeed, an absolute denial of affection is not to be supposed, and cannot well be imagined, in this case; not any more than absolute assertion is to be supposed in the declarations recorded in John 15: 22, 24, "If I had not come and spoken to them, they had not had sin. . . . . If I had not done among them the works which no other man has done, they had not had sin," etc. As in these cases comparative guilt only can be meant, so in the case before us, it is only a comparative failure of love-of spiritual love-which the Saviour designs to allege, in the way of gentle rebuke to his disciples, and also as an explanation of the ground or reason why they did not cheerfully receive his intimations respecting his departure from them.

The reason why the disciples ought to have been joyful, rather than dejected and sorrowful as they then were, is assigned by the last part of the verse: ὅτι ὁ πατήρ μου μellow pov bort, because my Father is greater than I. This declaration presents the only serious difficulty contained in the verse before us; and to this our attention will now be directed.

It is not my design to give a minute history of all the interpretations which have been given of this clause, or to comment upon them. This would be tedious to the read

It would moreover be needless, in case a satisfactory interpretation can now be established. But respect for the recent interpreters of John's Gospel, Olshausen, Tholuck, and F. Lücke, demands that I should not pass by their exegesis without some notice.

I begin with Olshausen; whose work, on a considerable portion of the New Testament, seems to have acquired no small degree of celebrity among evangelical Christians in Germany.

The substance of his interpretation is, that the disciples were bound to rejoice in the departure of Christ and his return to the Father, because it was better for him, viz. the Saviour, that he should so do. The reason why it was better, he states thus: "Since the Son proceeded from the Father, there must always be a longing in him to return to the Father."

Olshausen undoubtedly had in his mind the various declarations made by Jesus, that he came out from God, and must return to God; and more especially, we may well suppose that his thoughts were turned to the declara

tion of Paul respecting Christ Jesus, Phil. 2: 6, where, after first stating that Christ was originally ἐν μορφῇ θεοῦ, in the form of God, he subjoins, in respect to his incarnate condition, the assertion avrò èxévoos, he emptied himself, or he made himself comparatively of no account, or (in other words) he laid aside his glory and took on himself the form of a servant. To declarations of this nature, Olshausen seems plainly to have attached ideas of a metaphysical and mystical nature. One is struck, on reading his Commentary, with the resemblance of his views either to the latεασuós [extension, enlargement] of Sabellianism, or to the emanation theory of the Oriental world, particularly of the Parsees. The Sabellians, in order to illustrate the immutable unity of the divine nature, compared God, in his developments of Son and Spirit, to the apparent enlargement of the rising and setting sun, while the luminary itself always remains unchanged. Parsism, which derives its origin from Zoroaster and the Zendavesta, (and the like as to Brahmanism and Bhudism), regarded the original and eternal Godhead as giving rise to emanations from himself of natures divine, who were the creators and governors of all things, and the objects of religious worship. Thus Oromasd and Ahriman (both originally good) were regarded as the authors of all things good and evil, and the dispensers of all events. But both were still regarded as derived and secondary divinities; and both, after the penitence of Ahriman, were to be swallowed up again, at some remote future period, in the original Source of all being.

How deeply this emanation-scheme of doctrine was rooted in the feelings and views of the Oriental world, is evident enough, not only from its almost boundless extent in the East, in one form and another, but from the extensive and long continued influence it had among the doctors of the Christian church. It was familiarity with this doctrine-with the idea of derived and dependent Godhead-which led most of the early Christian fathers to believe and to maintain, that Christ, as to his divine nature, is derived and dependent. Son of God, according to their views and interpretation, can mean nothing more nor less, than that the Redeemer of men is in his divine nature truly, and in some sense literally, the offspring of God the Father, as well as in his human nature. "All the