uisite helps, to doubt that the writer of
it believed that Jesus pre existed as the Divine Logos, and that
he became incarnate to reveal the Father and to bring men into the
experience of true eternal life. John declares this, in his first
epistle, in so many words, saying, "The living Logos, the eternal
life which was with the Father from the beginning, was manifested
unto us;" and, "God sent his only begotten Son into the world that
we might live through him." Whether the doctrine thus set forth
was really entertained and taught by Jesus himself, or whether it
is the interpretation put on his language by one whose mind was
full of the notions of the age, are distinct questions. With the
settlement of these questions we are not now concerned: such a
discussion would be more appropriate when examining the genuine
meaning of the words of Christ. All that is necessary here is the
suggestion that when we show the theological system of John it
does not necessarily follow that that is the true

31 John i. 21; ix. 2.

teaching of Christ. Having adopted the Logos doctrine, it might
tinge and turn his thoughts and words when reporting from memory,
after the lapse of many years, the discourses of his Master. He
might unconsciously, under such an influence, represent literally
what was figuratively intended, and reflect from his own mind
lights and shades, associations and meanings, over all or much of
what he wrote. There are philosophical and literary peculiarities
which have forced many of the best critics to make this
distinction between the intended meaning of Christ's declarations
as he uttered them, and their received meaning as this evangelist
reported them. Norton says, "Whether St. John did or did not adopt
the Platonic conception of the Logos is a question not important
to be settled in order to determine our own judgment concerning
its truth."32 Lucke has written to the same effect, but more
fully: "We are allowed to distinguish the sense in which John
understood the words of Christ, from the original sense in which
Christ used them."33

It is to be observed that in all that has been brought forward,
thus far, there is not the faintest hint of the now current notion
of the Trinity. The idea put forth by John is not at all allied
with the idea that the infinite God himself assumed a human shape
to walk the earth and undergo mortal sufferings. It is simply said
that that manifested and revealing portion of the Di