CHAPTER XXXII CLEMENS LENDS SILANUS THE FOURTH GOSPEL

Clemens waited patiently for me to resume our conversation. Soon it occurred to me that I had been unreasonable in my expectations if the circumstances were as he had described them. Suppose this new gospel to have originated from the reminiscences of John the son of Zebedee, a fisherman of Galilee, and the aged author of such a book as the Apocalypse. How could such traditions, if set down exactly as they came from the old man’s lips, fail to abound in Jewish phrases and thoughts such as I had met with in the apocalyptic work? But these would have made the gospel very unsuitable for Greeks and Romans and indeed for almost all except Jews. It was therefore natural, and indeed almost necessary, that the old man’s recollections, after being imparted to his friends, who would probably be the elders of Ephesus, should be freely interpreted, or perhaps paraphrased, in a form fit for all readers. Such interpreters, or such an interpreter, might not always be perfectly successful.

It was foolish of me not to have foreseen this. But still I was disappointed. “This,” said I, “adds a new element of uncertainty, if John has sometimes preserved traditions of Christ’s words translated from the Jewish tongue.” “It does,” said Clemens, “and so does another fact that applies both to Greek and to Hebrew or Aramaic. You know that, in Greek, ‘he said’ or ‘used to say,’ or ‘it says,’ often signifies ‘he meant’ or ‘it means.’ The same is true in Hebrew. Hence if an evangelist or scribe, after giving Christ’s actual words, for[313] example, ‘Do righteousness,’ were to add ‘But he meant, Do alms’—because, in Hebrew, ‘righteousness’ often means ‘alms’—it would be possible to misinterpret the addition as meaning ‘But he [also] said (or, used to say) Do alms,’ thus erroneously creating a second precept. For these and other reasons I cannot feel sure that the saying ‘I thirst,’ about which we were just now conversing, may not be a paraphrase of the Lord’s words about being ‘forsaken.’ John the son of Zebedee may have known that the latter words were misunderstood from the first by the soldiers, and also that they were misinterpreted by some Christians. Hence I think the aged apostle may have prayed for a revelation as to the true meaning of the words, and it may have been revealed to him, ‘The Lord said—that is, He really said, His real meaning was—that He “thirsted”.’ This indeed would be a surprise or paradox compared with what the gospel says elsewhere. But the scriptures are full of such paradoxes.”

“But how ‘elsewhere’?” said I. “Do you mean that here Christ feels thirst whereas ‘elsewhere’ He quenches thirst? I do not remember that.” “I forgot,” replied Clemens, “that you had not read the new gospel. That gospel represents Christ as saying to a sinful woman, ‘Give me to drink,’ and afterwards, to the same woman, ‘He that believeth on me shall never thirst,’ and, after that, to the Jews, ‘If any one be athirst, let him come unto me and drink.’ This same gospel says that the ‘food’ of the Son is to do the will of the Father. This, then, may be described as His meat and drink. If, therefore, He ‘thirsts,’ He is athirst to do the Father’s will, so that He hungers and thirsts for righteousness in the souls of sinful men and women, thirsting to free them from thirst by giving them the water of life. All through His life He has not thirsted because the living water has been passing freely from the Father to Him and from Him to others. But now, on the point of death, the Giver of the water of life is Himself caused to thirst for it! The Father, in His infinite love, causes the Son Himself to thirst for that love! Instead of helping others, the Son is constrained to ask as it were to be helped—in order that He may help others better. This is perhaps the[314] deepest and most wonderful of all the Lord’s deep sayings—‘I thirst for the righteousness and love of God, that I and mine may be in the Father, and that the Father may be in me and mine.’ In the end, this will be one of the Lord’s words that ‘will never pass away.’ But what was its effect at the time? When Socrates uttered his last wishes, Crito was at hand to say, ‘This shall be done.’ But when Christ cried ‘I thirst,’ no friend was at hand to satisfy that thirst, and the cry was taken by the soldiers as meaning, ‘I thirst for a little of your sour wine’!”

“It seems to me,” said I, “that you regard this gospel, not exactly as history, but as history mingled with poetry or with vision?” “Not quite so,” said Clemens. “I should prefer to say, ‘as history interpreted through spiritual insight or poetic vision.’ I take the historical fact to be that there came into the world, as man, a divine Being, endowed with a power of drawing man and God into one, by drawing the hearts of men towards Himself, and, through Himself, to the Father. Making men one with Himself, He also made them one with each other in Himself. This is the great historical fact, the fact of facts, foreordained before the foundation of the world. This, then, is the fact that needs to be brought out clearly in the history of Christ—not the facts (though they are facts) that the Pharisees often washed their hands and that the daughter of Herodias danced before John the Baptist was beheaded. Well, then, put yourself in the position of—whoever it was that wrote this fourth gospel, say, ‘the Elder.’ Imagine him returning fresh from an interview with the old man John, the son of Zebedee, who will not allow himself to be called a ‘son of thunder’?.”

“But why,” said I, “should he not have allowed himself to be called John the son of Zebedee? And why should he object to be called one of the sons of thunder, if Jesus called him so?” “As to the latter name,” replied Clemens, “I very much doubt whether Mark has translated the term correctly; I will tell you why, another time: but assuredly he was not a noisy ‘son of thunder’ as we should understand the phrase in the west.

“As to the former name, you will find in this gospel that[315] ‘Simon son of John’ is thrice mentioned as Peter’s name, in a passage where Peter is rebuked for having denied his Master. It is, so to speak, his name after the flesh, his unregenerate name. ‘Peter,’ or ‘stone,’ is his regenerate name. So, ‘John son of Zebedee’ would be this disciple’s unregenerate name. The fourth gospel never uses that name except once, in the phrase ‘the sons of Zebedee,’ on the same occasion on which Peter is rebuked as ‘Simon son of John.’ For the most part John the son of Zebedee is described (in this gospel) as ‘the other disciple’—that is, the one as yet unheard, the one whose testimony is still to be given. Or else, the name is connected with Christ’s love—‘the disciple that Jesus loved.’ He feels that he owes all that he has, his very being, to the fact that Jesus loved him, that Jesus made him what he now is. Moreover Jesus gave him, by perpetual visions after His death, an insight into the meanings of His words uttered before death. Hence he might feel that Christ’s words, once dark sayings, have now become clear. From being old, they have become quite new, so as to require an altogether new record.”

“I am not sure,” said I, “that I understand your meaning. Do you hold that the fourth gospel differs from the three because of the special character of John the son of Zebedee, or because of the special interpretation of ‘the Elder’?” “Because of both,” said Clemens. “Then,” said I, “you think that John the son of Zebedee, far from being a ‘son of thunder’ in the sense in which Pericles might be so called by Aristophanes, was a man of a retiring and vision-seeing nature, who merged himself in Christ; and that his namesake, the Elder, believed that the aged apostle was as it were a mirror, in whom, and in whose traditions, it was possible to discern more of Christ’s real expression than in the ancient document of Mark.”

“That comes near the truth, I think,” replied Clemens. “And yet I should be very far from denying that Mark, and the other early gospels, are right in several features apparently omitted by John—for example, Christ’s love of ‘the little ones,’ and His anxiety lest they should be caused to stumble, and His insistence on the necessity of receiving the Kingdom of God as[316] little children. But it seems to me that some of these precepts about ‘little ones’ may have been misunderstood so that the brethren needed Paul’s warning, ‘Be not little children in your minds,’ and again, ‘In malice be babes, but in understanding be men.’ The root of all these precepts was the divine feeling of ‘littleness,’ or ‘childhood,’ or ‘sonship.’ This is realised in the Son of God doing the will of the Father. In order to do that will on earth, He must be always keeping His eyes on the Father in heaven. The earlier gospels represent Christ with His eyes fixed on the ‘little ones’ on earth, the sick, the sorrowful, the ignorant, the sinful. That also is true. The new gospel appears to me to attempt to shew how the two truths are combined.”

“But you surely do not mean to say,” I exclaimed, “that Jesus, in the new gospel, never makes mention of the ‘little ones’ or the ‘little children,’ so frequently mentioned by the earlier evangelists!” “I do indeed,” replied Clemens. “He does not make mention of either term once, except that, after the resurrection, seeing the disciples engaged in labour that has lasted through the night and effected nothing, He calls to them and says ‘Little children!’ But yet, although He does not elsewhere use the word ‘children,’ He has the thought constantly before Him. At the beginning of the gospel, He teaches that men must be ‘born from above,’ that is, become little children in the eyes of God. Towards the end, He uses a mother’s word to them (‘teknia,’ ‘darlings’). He also says, ‘I will not leave you orphans,’ and declares that His disciples are to be in Himself, the Son. Now to be in the Son, means to be made ‘a little child’ in the perfect sense of Christ’s meaning.”

“Perhaps,” said I, “this explains why Paul seldom mentions the word ‘little children’.” “‘Seldom’,” said Clemens, “is not the right word. Paul never mentions it, except in the warning I mentioned above. Moreover John, in his epistle, says, ‘I have written unto you little children, because ye have known the Father.’ That word ‘known’ goes to the root of the matter. The essence of ‘little childhood,’ in Christ’s sense, is not ignorance, but knowledge—‘knowing the Father.’ And ‘knowing the Father’ implies loving the Father, or desiring the Father.[317] There are cases where ‘desire’ may perhaps be well substituted for ‘love,’ so as to indicate that kind of love which leads one onwards to the object desired. This gospel seems to me to attempt to express—if I may so speak in accordance with the prophets of Israel—a desire of God for man, producing a desire of man for God. The work of the Son of God is to unite these two desires. This is a great mystery, a mystery past mere logic, that God, the Creator, should ‘desire.’ Yet I accept it—as it has been expressed by a certain holy woman of Athens, whom I verily believe to have been inspired by God, ‘The Son of God chose to be lifted up upon the tree of the Cross that we might receive the food of angels. And what is this food of angels? It is the desire of God, which draws to itself the desire that is in the depths of the soul and they make one thing together’.”

This saying was beyond me at the time. But I felt that it contained truth, and that I should grow into some apprehension of it. And what Clemens had said, though very strange at first, had been gradually growing to seem possible and even reasonable, if one may use the word concerning that which accords with the spiritual Logos—namely, that the Son of God, being human, was caused to feel forsaken by God, and to desire God, and to ask why this strange feeling of forsakenness, this unwonted, unsatisfied desire, was brought upon Him by the Father. Then, according to the saying of this holy woman of Athens, the answer of the Father was, “In receiving this forsakenness and this desire for my presence, thou art receiving from me my desire, which draws up to me thy desire, and they two make one together.”

But to return to Clemens, whom I began to trust all the more because I felt that he was keeping back nothing from me. “What I am attempting,” said he, “to express, but expressing very feebly, is this. I am trying to put myself in the position of the Elder, preaching the gospel for John the son of Zebedee in Ephesus, some time after the aged apostle returned from his martyrdom in Patmos, when he was quite decrepit and no longer able to be carried into the midst of the congregation, to utter even a few words. If I came into that old man’s presence[318] and heard from him traditions about the Master, whom he loved and who loved him, I might say, ‘Here indeed is a revelation of Christ. Here I feel Christ Himself.’ Nevertheless, on going out, I might find it very hard to make a chronological and consecutive history out of his utterances. Sometimes he might be describing past fact; sometimes he might be prophesying the future; sometimes he might speak of the past as if still present—as though he were even now with his Master in Cana or Jerusalem; sometimes he might be rapt in a present ecstasy; sometimes he might be describing ecstatic visions of the past; sometimes he might speak in poetic metaphor, sometimes in literal prose; but always he would be penetrated and imbued with the love of Christ. The result—for me, I confess it—would be that I should go out, thinking, ‘This is not history in the common sense of the term. But it is something, I will not say better, but more needed by the church, than a mere history of facts such as a writer like Mark could have given with fuller information. It gives glimpses into a divine and human personality that includes in itself a real history—a history of a great invisible war of good against evil, a great invisible redemption, God coming down to earth to lift man up to heaven’.”

“But,” said I, “do not Matthew and Luke give these glimpses in their description of the incarnation?” “I should rather have said,” replied Clemens, “that, instead of giving glimpses, they attempt to describe a spiritual fact in the language of material history. John, you will find, does not make this attempt. He simply says that ‘the Logos became flesh.’ Then he introduces disciples believing in their Master as Messiah, undeterred by their supposition that He is ‘the son of Joseph’ and ‘from Nazareth.’ John assumes all through his gospel that Jesus came down from heaven and is to go up thither again. He refuses to recognise that this coming down and this going up are impossible for the Son of God incarnate as the son of Joseph. All this appears to me true. And in many respects I admire this little book more than I can find time or words to express. Yet I must deal frankly with you and confess that this new gospel, like the rest, appears to me[319] inadequate. What gospel would be otherwise? All the written records of Christ’s words and acts seem to me to have, as their main use, the awakening in us of a want of something more, a sense of something insufficient and imperfect and unjust to the reality, so that we cry vehemently to God for the reality, the living truth, the spiritual light—such light as no words or books can give us. The Spirit alone can bestow it, crying within us Abba, Father. Some interpreters, however, seem in a special degree to have ‘the mind of Christ.’ Among the foremost of these seems to me to stand ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’.”

“I understand,” said I, “at least I think I do, a little. You mean that the written biographies must first make the reader feel that they are dead in comparison with the living person. Then the reader is to feel drawn towards his ideal of the living person, and more and more drawn, so that in the end?.” “In the end,” said Clemens, “assuredly the living Person will come to him, or draw him to Himself, if he will but be patient in waiting, walking according to the light he already has.” On this he rose to depart. “One word more,” said I. “You told me that John gives nearly a quarter of his gospel to the doctrine of the Lord on the night on which He was delivered over. Does he give much space to the period after the resurrection? And what does he say about that? Does he agree with Matthew and Luke?”

“No,” said Clemens, “he differs greatly, and, as it appears to me, deliberately, intending to correct them. For example, Matthew represents certain women as taking hold of Christ’s feet, before He sends them to carry word to His ‘brethren.’ John says that Jesus said to Mary Magdalene, ‘Touch me not for I am not yet ascended to my Father,’ and then sends her to His ‘brethren.’ Luke says that Christ said to all the disciples, ‘Handle me,’ to shew that He was not a bodiless spirit. John says that an offer of this nature was made to Thomas, but mentions no such offer to any other disciple. Luke says that the disciples gave Jesus food and He ate. John says that Jesus gave food to the disciples. In all these points John appears to me to be nearer than Matthew and Luke to the truth. And sometimes I think that the touching of Christ’s body by the[320] disciples in the Eucharist, that is to say, the touching of the bread and tasting of the wine in our sacred meal, has been taken by Luke (if not by Matthew) in a literal sense”—here Clemens agreed with Scaurus—“whereas John understood the meaning correctly. But at the same time I think that the Saviour may have been visibly present at the Eucharist, shewing the wounds in His body, though it was not a body that could be touched.”

“Does it not seem to you,” I asked, “that this agrees better with Paul’s descriptions of the manifestations of Jesus after death?” “Yes,” said Clemens, “and in other respects John seems to me to be nearer the truth. For he apparently represents Christ as having ascended to the Father before He could be ‘touched,’ that is to say, before His spiritual body and blood could be imparted to the disciples. Moreover, whereas Matthew places before the Resurrection a tradition relating how Christ imparts to the disciples authority to bind and to loose i.e. to forgive sins, John places it afterwards. And John also describes Peter as plunging into the water and coming to Jesus after the Resurrection,—which seems to me a symbol of Peter passing through the waters of temptation to the Saviour whom he had denied. But Matthew places it before the Resurrection and takes it literally, as though Peter tried to walk on literal water and was nearly drowned, but for the Lord’s help.”

“Then,” said I, after a long pause—for I was not prepared to find Clemens so far in agreement with Scaurus, an unbeliever, concerning the facts of the Christian histories—“you are very far indeed from saying, ‘I believe in every word of the gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke, as being historically accurate.’ Nay, I can hardly think you would say that, even about the gospel of John?” “Assuredly,” he replied, “I would not say that about any of the gospels. Indeed, dear friend, do you yourself think you would venture to say as much as that, even about the history of your favourite Thucydides? And does it not seem to you that, in any book that describes the life of a man, the greater the man, and the more living the life, the greater must be the failure of the book, and the deadness of the[321] book, as compared with the inexpressible spirit, not to be expressed in any book, no, not in a universe of books?”

Then, rising, and pointing seaward, “Look!” he said, “the moon is up already! Now indeed I must stay with you no longer. I have done my best to deal fairly with you, even to the point perhaps of being not quite fair to this little book, which I now hold in my hand, and am about to place in yours, if you desire it. But are you sure that you do still desire it? If you do indeed, I shall most gladly lend it, and you can return it to me, this time to-morrow, at the house of Justus. But be honest with me as I have tried to be with you. Do not take it as yet if you are not prepared to read it as a book that comes from the east through a western medium; a book that mingles, so as not always to be clearly distinguished, words of the Lord with words of the evangelist, facts and visions, histories and prophecies, metaphors that may be misunderstood, and poems that may be taken as literal prose. It will make you feel perhaps irritated, certainly unsatisfied. Perhaps you may end in saying, ‘I want much more, I want to see the person to whom this book points, but whom no book can make me feel.’ Then it will have done you good. But perhaps you will put it aside and say, ‘I want no more’.”

He paused, and looked anxiously at me. “In that case,” continued he, “I shall have done you harm. But what say you? After this warning, do you—a Roman with Greek training, a reader of Homer and Thucydides—do you still desire to see this little volume that is neither a true poem nor a true history, a biography that hardly professes to draw the life of Jesus as He was, but only to make us feel that it must be felt, if at all, through ‘a disciple whom Jesus loved’?” I assured him that I greatly desired to read it and thanked him with all my heart for the loan, and for the frankness of his warning. “Farewell,” said he, placing the book in my hand, “my friend, my brother—brother in the search after truth, farewell!” “Your help,” said I, as he turned away from me, “has been more like that of a father.” He stopped and looked round at me for a moment. “Would indeed,” said he, “that it might prove so! Farewell!”