LIFE THROUGH HIS NAME

The reader may not be very much concerned with what is called the

`Higher Criticism'; for the Scriptures speak too plainly to the

quickened understanding to need external proofs.  We must not,

however, forget that inability to meet criticism, or failure to bring

forward evidence, may mean that, at some important moment, our

witness may be blunted and some friend or acquaintance left in

The Gospel of John has been more severely criticised than the other

three, and its genuineness has been denied. It is not our intention here

to load our pages with ancient names, or with many extracts from

antiquity. We give a few pointed references. Clement of Alexandria

(A.D. 150-215) writes:

`St. John, the last (of the evangelists), when he saw that the

outward bodily facts had been set forth in the (existing) Gospels,

impelled by his friends (and) divinely moved by the Spirit, made a

spiritual Gospel'.

One of the earliest and most important witnesses in this connection

is Iren -us (born A.D. 98), who knew and had conversed with

Polycarp, himself a disciple of John. Iren -us unhesitatingly ascribes

the fourth gospel to John, and speaks of this belief as of universal

acceptance in his day.

Victorinus of Pettan wrote of John and his Gospel:

When Valentus and Cerinthus and Ebion and others of the school

of Satan were spread throughout the world, all the bishops of the

neighbouring provinces came together to him to constrain him to

commit his own testimony to writing (Migne Patrol v. 333).

In connection with this quotation it is interesting to note that

Cerinthus taught that Christ was a man, and nothing more, and that He

was the son of both Joseph and Mary - a doctrine that is most

definitely refuted in the opening of John's Gospel. Iren -us also writes

of John as being `willing, by the publication of his Gospel, to take

away the error which Cerinthus had disseminated amongst men'. He

tells us, moreover, that John remained at Ephesus up to the time of the

Emperor Trajan.