Kitabı oku: «The Freedom of Science», sayfa 22

“It is my unyielding conviction,” so speaks A. Harnack, and his is perhaps the most telling expression of this dogmatic mood, “that anything that happens within time and space is subject to the laws of motion. Hence, that in this sense, i. e., of interrupting the natural connection, there cannot be any miracles.” One simply does not believe such things. “That a tempest at sea,” thus Harnack again, “could have been stilled by a word we do not believe, nor shall we ever again believe it.” Similarly reads Baumgarten's declaration regarding the resurrection of Christ: “Even if all the reports had been written on the third day, and had been transmitted to us as a certainty … nevertheless modern consciousness could not accept the story.” And W. Foerster writes: “The supposition that such interferences do not occur, and that everything in the world is advancing steadily and in accordance with fixed laws, forms the indispensable presumption of scientific research.” And H. von Sybel holds “An absolute concord with the laws of evolution, a common level in the existence of things terrestrial, forms the presumption of all knowledge: it stands and falls with it.”

This is the presumption, from which is drawn the most extravagant conclusion, which, though so manifestly improper, is made the basis for rejecting the entire supernatural religion of Christianity. Because God's Incarnate Son, in a small town of Palestine, once turned water into wine, will the Christian housewife lose her confidence in the stability of water? When it was suddenly discovered that the orbit of the planet Uranus was not a perfect ellipsis, as required by the law of Kepler, was it thought that these deviations are impossible because there must not be any exception to the law of perfect elliptical movements? Happily, this law continued to be accepted without deeming an irregularity impossible, and shortly afterwards Neptune was discovered and found to be the cause of the disturbance. But anything miraculous, no matter how well proven, must be considered unacceptable by reason of such unsound presumption. Philosophical a-priorism is superior to facts.

Thus St. Augustine tells in his work “De civitate Dei” (1. xxii. c. 8) of a number of miracles happening in his time, of which he had knowledge either as eye-witness or by authentical reports from eye-witnesses. E. Zeller renders judgment on the historical value of the statement as follows: “The narrator is a contemporary, and partly even an eye-witness, of the events reported: by virtue of his episcopal office he is particularly commissioned to closely investigate them; we know him as a man overtowering his contemporaries in intellect and knowledge, second to none in religious zeal, strong faith, and moral earnestness. The wonderful events happened to well-known persons, sometimes in the presence of big crowds of people; they were attested and recorded by official order.” Hence the statement must be accepted without objection. But must it not also be believed? is the query of an unbiassed listener. Not in the judgment of one who is in the tyrannical yoke of his presumptions. “What are we to say about it?” continues Zeller, and finds that “in this unparalleled aggregation of miracles we can after all see nothing else but a proof of the credulity of that age.”The report is incontestable, but it must not be believed!

In our times Lourdes has become the scene of events which are founded on facts, and the miraculous character has been proven at least of some of them. Bertrin, in his “Histoire critique des evénéments de Lourdes,” deals with the attitude of the physicians toward the miracles. The believing physician can enter upon his investigation without prejudice: not so the unbelieving physician and scientist, who is shackled by his prejudice against the possibility of miracles. Of this a few examples:

“How did you get cured?” was the question put by a physician to a young woman who, after having suffered for four years from a suppurating inflammation of the hip joints, complicated by caries, had a few days previously suddenly regained her full health. Pains and sores had disappeared. “By whom was I cured? By the Blessed Virgin!” “Never mind the Blessed Virgin,” replied the physician. “Young woman, why don't you admit that you had been assured in advance that you would get well. You were told that, once in Lourdes, you would suddenly rise from the box wherein you were lying. That sort of thing happens – we call it suggestion.” The girl replied, unhesitatingly, that it did not happen this way at all. Finally the physician offered her money if she would admit having really been cured by suggestion. The girl declined the offer. – Another girl arrived in Lourdes, with a physician's attestation that she was a consumptive. She is cured after the first bath. At the bureau of verification her lungs were found to be no longer diseased. Her physician's statement having been very brief, a telegram was sent to him as a matter of precaution, asking him for another statement without, however, informing him of the cure. The physician immediately wired back: “She is a consumptive.” This was also the opinion of other physicians who had treated the girl. The girl joyfully returns home, and hurries to her physician, requesting him to certify to her cure. He does so quite reluctantly. Upon reading his certificate, she discovers that it said she had been cured, but only of a cough. The case of consumption of his original testimonial had changed into a cough. His dread of a miracle had induced this physician to commit a falsehood.

A. Rambacher, as he relates in a pamphlet, sent the scientific treatise on Lourdes by Dr. Boissarie to Prof. Haeckel, with the request to read it, in order to gain a better notion of the existence of a supernatural world. After some urging he finally received the following reply, which speaks volumes for the attitude of the natural scientist towards facts: “With many thanks I hereby return the book by Dr. Boissarie on the Great Cures of Lourdes which you sent me. The perusal of the same has convinced me anew of the tremendous power of superstition (glorified as ‘pious belief’) of naïve credulity (without critical examination), and of contagious collective suggestion, as well as of the cunning of the clergy, exploiting them for their gain… The physicians, said to testify in behalf of the ‘miracles’ and the supernatural phenomena, are either ignorant and undiscerning quacks, or positive frauds in collusion with the priests. The most accurate description of the gigantic swindle of Lourdes I know of, is that of Zola in his well-known novel… With repeated thanks for your kindness … Ernst Haeckel.” Against all the facts in evidence this dogmatic scientist was safely intrenched behind the stone wall of his presumptions. He knew in advance that everything was superstition or the fraud of cunning priests, that all physicians who certified to cures were quacks and cheats. Zola's tendentious romance considered the best historical source! Mention should be made here how this celebrated novelist dealt with facts at Lourdes. In the year 1892, the time of the great pilgrimage, Zola went to Lourdes. He wanted to observe and then tell what he had seen. An historical novel it was to be; time and again he had proclaimed in the newspapers that he would tell the whole truth. At Lourdes all doors were opened to him; he had admittance anywhere; he could interview and obtain explanations at will. How he kept his promise to report the truth may be shown by a single instance: Marie Lebranchu came to Lourdes on August 20, 1892, suffering from incurable consumption. She was suddenly cured, and never had a relapse. One year after her cure she returned to the miraculous Grotto. The excellent condition of her lungs was again verified. Now, what does Zola make of this event? In his novel the cured girl suffers a terrible relapse upon her first return home, “a brutal return of the disease which remained victorious,” we read in Zola's book. One day, the president of the Lourdes Bureau of Investigation introduced himself to Zola in Paris, and asked him “How dare you let Marie Lebranchudie in your novel; you know very well that she is alive and just as well as you and I.” “What do I care,” was Zola's reply, “I think I have the right to do as I please with the characters I create.” If a romancer desires to avail himself of this privilege he certainly has not the right to proclaim his novels as truthful historical writings, much less may others see in such a novel the “most accurate description of the events at Lourdes.”

Renan at one time said: “Oh, if we just once might have a miracle brought before professional scientists! But, alas! this will never happen!” He borrowed this saying from Voltaire, with the difference that the latter demanded God to perform a miracle before the Academy of Sciences, as if there were need for miracles in a physical or chemical laboratory. Those who desire in earnest to investigate miracles ought to go where they are performed. And even there, where the eyes can see them, it also takes good will to acknowledge them. In this respect an interview is instructive which Zola once had with an editor. The latter asked: “If you were witness to a miracle, that would occur under strictest conditions suggested by yourself, would you acknowledge the miracle? Would you then accept the teachings of the faith?” After a few moments of serious thought, Zola replied: “I do not know, but I do not believe I would” (Bertrin). On April 7, 1875, there came to the Belgian sanctuary, Oostacker, a Flemish labourer, by name Peter de Rudder, whose leg had eight years before been broken below the knee, and who was then suffering from two suppurating cancerous sores, that had formed at the place of the fracture and on the foot. He suddenly was entirely cured. The case was investigated in a most exact way. In 1900 a treatise concerning the case was published by three physicians. E. Wasmann had as early as 1900 published a short extract of it in the “Stimmen aus Maria Laach.” In February, 1907, when, at Berlin, he delivered his lectures which were followed by a discussion, his opponents, headed by Prof. Plate, did not know of this article. When they learned of it, some time afterwards, he was put under the ban because he “had degraded himself to the position of a charlatan by vouching with his scientific repute for the happening of a miraculous cure”; and they said “they would fight him in the same way as they would fight every quack, but as a scientist he was discarded.” Plate had on the evening of the discussion asked of the assembled scientists the question: “Have we ever observed anything like a suspension of the natural laws? The reply to it is an unconditional ‘we have not’; consequently Theism becomes inadmissible to the natural scientist.” Here, in the de Rudder case, is found the required instance. But Plate knows, in advance of any investigation, that it is a fairy tale, believed without critical examination. And Prof. Hansemann, another opposing speaker of that evening, subsequently sent word to Wasmann that: “One can pretty well judge what to think of a natural scientist who publishes such stuff. For this reason I now declare that I shall never in future, no matter how or where, enter into discussion of matters of natural science with Mr. Wasmann.” When on a certain occasion Hegel was advised that some facts did not agree with his philosophical notions, he replied: “The more pity for the facts.”

The English natural scientist, W. Thomson, once said before the British Society at Edinburgh: “Science is bound by eternal honour to face fearlessly every problem that can be clearly laid before it.” The equally famous Faraday, in the name of empirical research, demands of its adherents the determination to stand or to fall with the results of a direct appeal to the facts in the first place, and with the strict logical deductions therefrom in the second. In general these principles are adhered to so long as religious notions are not encountered. But as soon as these are sighted, the engine is reversed, and all scientific principles are forgotten.

A science led by this spirit will set out to emancipate man's moral conduct of life from God and religion. Indeed, the first postulate of modern ethics directs that morality must be independent of religion. That God and eternal salvation is the end of man, the ultimate norm of his moral life, that God's Command is the ultimate reason of the moral obligation, and divine sanction its strongest support, it does not want to acknowledge. Here, too, we find the principle of natural causality in operation. “As in physics God's will must not be made to serve as an explanation, so likewise in the theory of moral phenomena. Both the natural and the moral world, as they exist, may point beyond themselves to something transcendental. But we cannot admit the transcendental … a scientific explanation will have to be wholly immanent, and anthropological” (Paulsen). According to this approved principle of ignoration, the supreme aim and law of a morality without religion is man, his earthly happiness, and his culture.

Its aims, according to Prof. Jodl, one of its noted champions, are: “Promotion of moral life, fostering of a refined humanity, development of a true fellow-feeling, without the religious and metaphysical notions upon which mankind hitherto has mostly built its ethical ideals.” Kant was the pioneer here: “In so far as morality is based on the conception of man as a free, being, it requires neither the idea of a superior being to make him cognizant of his duties, nor any motive but the law itself in order to observe it … hence morality for its own sake does not by any means need religion.” This is the viewpoint of the autonomous man, who is his own law. “From the viewpoint of authority,” so tells us E. von Hartmann, “autonomy does not mean anything else but that in ethical matters I am for myself the highest court without appeal… The God, Who in the beginning spoke to His children from a fiery cloud … has descended into our bosom, and, transformed into our own being, speaks out of us as a moral autonomy.” Diis extinctis successit humanitas.

“Although an individual representative of science may be a believer in God in his private life,” so argues the English philosopher, W. James, “at any rate the times have passed when it could be said that the heavens announce to science the glory of God, and that the heaven shows the works of His hands.” The flight from divinity, atheism open or disguised, is the psychological effect of the liberal principle. Free thought aims to free man of all authority, it aims at severing from religion his entire existence, marriage, state, schools, and likewise science. “It is undeniable,” we hear from the lips of champions of modern man, standing on the pinnacle of religious liberalism, “that there is a certain forsakenness in this existence of man, as compared to a life brightened by the idea of a God,” but that forsakenness is not purchased too dearly, for “it is the solitude of autonomy, a possession so precious that no price for it could be too high” (Carneri).

Indeed, these modern men use even plainer language: science is applauded for having at last freed man from God. With Kant's principle that we cannot know anything of the supernatural, we are told, there “were thrown overboard the cosmogonic notions of the Semitic races, notions that have so severely oppressed our science and religion, and are still oppressing them… By this insight an idol is smashed. In a previous chapter I called the Israelites the worshippers of abstract idols; now, I believe, I shall be fully understood.” Indeed, we understand. It means: Away with God. “This German metaphysics frees us from idolatry and reveals to us the living divinity in our own bosom” (Chamberlain).

This is the manner in which this free thought, within science and without, is fulfilling the earnest admonition of the Psalmist: “Seek ye the Lord and be strengthened: seek His face evermore” (Ps. civ. 4), and it turns into irony the words: “This is the generation of them that seek Him, of them that seek the face of the God of Jacob” (Ps. xxiii. 6).

“I Know not Jesus Christ, His Only Begotten Son, Our Lord.”

Where the thought of independence and of this world enslaves the minds, and holds them captive in harsh aversion to the supernatural, an objective judgment on the nature and history of the Christian religion, to say nothing of the Catholic Church, can hardly be hoped for. What may be expected is that we will also meet here with a science which, with its hands held before the eye that fears the light, wards off and combats everything that is specifically Christian. It is to be feared only that it will turn light into darkness regarding the view of life, as also the doctrine and history, of the Christian religion.

Regarding the Christian view of life we need only read the superficial and yet so arrogant discussions of Christian philosophy, as found in Paulsen, Wundt, or E. von Hartmann. From this judicial bench the wisdom of Him, of Whom it is said “And we saw His glory, full of grace and truth,” we see condemned, if not even treated with subtle ridicule.

Let us for instance take Paulsen's presentment of the “View of Life under Christianity.” Whoever reads it, and believes it, to him the teaching of Jesus Christ can only be, what the Apostle said it was to the heathens, foolishness. No longer can he have adoration for its Founder, but rather the pity that one has for an enthusiastic visionary devoid of any knowledge of the world and men. The wisdom taught by Christ is distorted into a sombre grimace, while side by side with it the conception of life of Hellenic paganism is transfigured into a beautiful ideal.

We are told there: “While classical antiquity saw as the task of life the perfect development of the natural powers and talents of man, … Christianity with clear consciousness makes the contrary the goal of life.” “The cultivation and exercise of intellectual faculties was of great importance to the Greeks… Primitive Christianity looks upon reason and natural cognition with indifference, even with suspicion and contempt … indeed, natural reason and knowledge are an obstacle for the kingdom of God. Christianity at first was indifferent, even inimical, not only to philosophy and science, but also to art and poetry. It cuts off not only sensual but also æsthetical gratification,”because St. John condemned the gratification of the eyes (which means something quite different from æsthetical gratification) Christianity is said to reject “the arts of the Muses and athletics: they belong to that sowing of the flesh of which the harvest is perdition.” “What the Christians valued highly was not erudition and eloquence, but silence. Silence is the first thing recommended by Ambrose” (and he the great and renowned representative of early Christian eloquence!). There is more: “In the primitive view the first virtue was valour, especially valour in war; indeed, in Greek and Latin speech the word 'virtue' meant valour; the Christian's virtue, however, is patience and endurance. He does not draw the sword; to him are expressly forbidden not only anger, hatred, and private revenge, but even litigation.”

In this tendentious strain Paulsen continues, with exaggerations and misrepresentations that have nothing in common with science. According to the Greek view, he says, high-mindedness was a great virtue, but, naturally, the Christian is not allowed to have it; “the virtue of the Christian is humility,” i. e., in Paulsen's sense low-mindedness; this is “the starting point of Christianity.” True, the author assures us that Christianity of to-day is no longer the one he is describing; it has adapted itself more to the world. But it is sad to have this gloomy, visionary fanaticism described to us as the one which was taught by the words of Jesus Himself.

The adherent of this Christianity looks upon governments and their aims as something essentially foreign to it, even to be an official “would doubtless have been felt as a contradiction”; but a sudden change is said to have taken place under Constantine. Earthly joys and benefits, the holy ties of the family, those that Jesus in person blessed at Cana, they were, according to St. Paul, so we are told, in the spirit of Christ things to avoid and condemn.

And how are these theological discoveries proven, what sources are quoted in substantiation? By some arbitrarily selected passages of the Scriptures, that one must hate father and mother, wife and child, brother and sister; that the poor in spirit are blessed, that the lust of the eye is sinful, that evil should not be resisted; and in quoting these passages all scientific interpretation is carefully avoided, all the writers who have amply explained them are ignored. And what the scriptural passages fail to prove must be demonstrated by some extreme statement borrowed from Tertullian, who is generally prone to exaggeration. As a matter of course, gloomy Christianity then seems inferior to the brilliancy of Greek paganism; Christianity is directly a danger to civilization; it may be good enough for those tired of life. “The objection has been made that the fulfilment of this command would destroy our entire civilization. Most probably this would be the case. But where is it written (in Holy Writ) that our civilization must be preserved?” We have here the picture formed of the doctrine of Christ by the world, whereof the Lord has predicted: the world will hate you. Paulsen admits frankly: “Whence this hatred? Because the Christian despises that which to the world is the highest good. There can be no better reason for hating any one…”

It is easy to understand that one who has for a long time mentally abandoned his Christian faith, cannot carry in mind its picture as undistorted as he did in his better days, and as would conform to reality. But it is reprehensible to exhibit in public this picture, without having previously and conscientiously examined the main lines, to see whether they are not caricatures. And they are caricatures, traced by a hand that is led by the mood of a secret anti-Christianity.

A treatment identical with that of its view of life is accorded to the doctrine and history of the Christian religion. Not science and uncorrupted truthfulness, but antipathy, presumption, harsh denial of everything divine, only too often point the way. Let us listen again to the author named above, since he knows to express modern thought with a clearness and precision almost unequalled by any one else.

It made a painful impression to find in the Christmas number, 1908, of the liberal-theological “Christliche Welt” a posthumous article by Fr. Paulsen: “What think you of Christ: Whose Son is He?” The article was without doubt one of the last he had written. It contains the program of modern liberal science. “With the seventeenth century,” we read there, “begins the reorganization of the theory of the universe by science. Its general tendency may be described by the formula: Elimination of the supernatural from the natural and historical world.” “Consequently, no miracles in history, no supernatural birth, no resurrection, no revelation, in fact no interference by the Eternal in temporal events.” Hence, the man who “thinks scientifically in this wise can have no doubt that the old ecclesiastical dogma cannot be reconciled with scientific thought.” This, of course, amounts to a complete renunciation of positive Christianity.

This scientific thought, in the words of Baumgarten, “rejects any projection of the supernatural into tangible reality”; especially is “the metaphysical genesis and nature of the Saviour highly offensive to our ethical consciousness,” even “absolutely unbearable.” The Christian religion can no longer be permitted to overtower other religions by its supernaturalness. “The distinction between a revealed and a natural religion becomes an impossibility,” says W. Bousset. And Wundt declares: “Christianity, as an ‘absolute’ or a ‘revealed’ religion, would stand opposed to all other religious development, as an incommensurable magnitude. This point of view, evidently, cannot be competent for our speculations.”

Having become the ruling mode of thought, these presumptions determine from the outset the results to be obtained by “research,” and they force it to violate its own method, so that it may be dragged along the by-ways and false ways of a mistaken, philosophical a-priorism, thereby making freedom of science a mockery. From the abundant material at our disposal let us take only one example, viz., the Modern Criticism of the Gospels.

The Gospels contain many records of facts of a supernatural character, of miracles and prophecies. That these records are necessarily false is the first principle of the historical, or critical, method, as it is called. “As a miracle of itself is unthinkable, so the miracles in the history of Christianity, and in the Christianity of the New Testament, are likewise unthinkable. Hence, when miracles are nevertheless narrated, these narratives must be false, in as far as they report miracles: that is, either the relation did not happen at all, or, if it did, there was a sufficient natural explanation”; “the historian must under all circumstances answer, ‘No,’ to the question whether the report of a miracle is worthy of belief” (T. Zeller). Thus instructed, “unprejudiced” research proceeds to construct its results of the investigation of the genuineness, time and date, of the writing of the Gospels and of the Acts, as well as of their credibility. Let us see how this is done.

The tradition of the early Church, as well as intrinsic evidence, testify that the first Gospel was really written by the Apostle Matthew, and this certainly before the destruction of Jerusalem. Liberal-Protestant criticism, however, assigns its origin to a time after the year 70, chiefly for two reasons: First, the striking prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem, conforming so accurately to the actual event, could have been written only after the year 70; otherwise it would have amounted to a real prophecy subsequently fulfilled, a conclusion that cannot be accepted. The second reason is this: The contents of St. Matthew's Gospel is already wholly Catholic, hence it must have been written during a later, Catholic, period. For as there can be no influences from above, and as everything is evolved in a natural way, the principle must govern: that the more supernatural and the more dogmas, so much later the period in question; at first there could have been only a religion of sentiment without dogma, which gradually developed into Catholic dogmatism. Similar are the presumptions which direct modern research in respect to the genuineness of the other Gospels and the Acts. A few proofs:

Prof. Jülicher thinks that, “While we cannot go prior to the beginning of the second century, because of external testimony, we cannot on the other hand maintain a later date. The most probable time for our Gospel is the one shortly before the year 100…” Why? “Because the ill-fitting feature in the parable of the wedding feast, that the king in his wrath, because his invitation had been made light of, sent forth his armies and destroyed those murderers and burned up their city, could hardly have been invented before the conflagration of Jerusalem” – a prophecy, namely, of the coming destruction of Jerusalem cannot be admitted. “But to my mind, the decisive point is found in the religious position of Matthew. Despite his conservative treatment of tradition, he already stands quite removed from its spirit; he has written a Catholic Gospel… To Matthew the congregation, the Church, forms the highest court of discipline, being the administrator of all heavenly goods of salvation; his Gospel determines who is to rule, who to give laws: in its essential features the early Catholicism is completed.”

Jülicher arrives at a similar conclusion in his research on St. Luke's Gospel: “That Luke's Gospel was written sometime after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 a. d., is proven beyond any doubt, by xxi. 22-24, where the terrible events of the Jewish war are ‘foretold.’… All arguments in favor of a later date of writing concerning Matthewhold good also of Luke.” Even more unreserved is O. Pfleiderer, until recently a prominent representative of liberal-Protestant theology at Berlin: “In this Gospel we find the elements of dogma, morals, the constitution of the developing Catholic Church. Catholic is its trinitarian formula of christening, this embryo of the Creed and of the apostolic symbol. Catholic is its teaching of Christ … Catholic, the doctrine of Salvation … Catholic are the morals … Catholic, finally, is the importance attached to Peter as the foundation of the Church and as the bearer of the power of the key.” In regard to this latter point Pfleiderer remarks expressly: “In spite of all attempts of Protestants to mitigate this passage (Matt. xvi. 17-20) there is no doubt that it contains the solemn proclamation of Peter's Primacy.”The unsophisticated reader thereupon would be likely to deduct: If the oldest Gospel is already Catholic, then it must be admitted that earliest Christianity was already Catholic. In so reasoning he might have rightly concluded, but he would have shown himself little acquainted with the method of liberal science. This infers contrariwise: early Christianity must not be Catholic, hence the Catholic Gospel cannot be so old, it must be the fraudulent concoction of a later time; “hence the origin of the Gospel of Matthew is to be put down not before the time of Hadrian; in the fourth century rather than in the third.”

A. Harnack fixes the date of the Gospel at shortly after 70, because “Matthew, as well as Luke, are presupposing the destruction of Jerusalem. This follows with the greatest probability from Matt. xxii. 7 (the parable of the marriage feast).” This is to be held also of Luke's Gospel. “This much can be concluded without hesitation: that, as now admitted by almost all critics, Luke's Gospel presupposes the destruction of Jerusalem.”

Remarkable is Harnack's latest attitude towards the Acts; it shows again that the results of modern biblical criticism are less the results of historical research than of philosophical presumptions. In his “Acts of the Apostles” Harnack admits: “Very weighty observations indicate that the Acts (hence also the Gospels) were already written at the beginning of the sixties.” In substantiation he cites not less than six reasons which evidently prove it: they are based upon the principles of sound historical criticism. “These are opposed solely by the observation that the prophecy about the catastrophe of Jerusalem in some striking points comes near to the actual event, and that the reports about the Apparition and the legend of the Ascension would be hard to understand prior to the destruction of Jerusalem. It is hard to decide… But it is not difficult to judge on which side the weightier arguments are” (viz., on the part of the contention for an earlier date). Yet Harnack is loath to accept the better scientific reasons: they must suffer correction by presumptions. He formulates his final decision in the following way: “Luke wrote at the time of Titus, or during the earlier time of Domitian (?), but perhaps (only perhaps, in spite of decisive arguments) already at the beginning of the sixties.” (Recently Harnack recedes to the time before the destruction of Jerusalem without, however, acknowledging a divine prophecy of this catastrophe.) Similar is this theologian's proof that the fourth Gospel could not have been written by John, the son of Zebedee; because xxi. 20-23 (I will that he tarry till I come) cannot be a prophecy, but must have been written down after the death of the favourite disciple. “The section xx. 20-23 obviously presupposes the death of the beloved disciple; on the other hand he cannot be left out of the 21st Chapter. This 21st Chapter, however, shows no other pen than that which had written Chapters 1-20. This proves that the author of Chapter 21, hence the author of Chapters 1-20, could not have been the son of Zebedee, whose death is there presupposed.” The whole argument again rests upon the refusal to hold possible a prophecy from the lips of Jesus.

The main reason, however, for disputing the genuineness of the fourth Gospel, although external tradition and internal criterions testify to it as the writing of St. John, is, because it teaches so clearly the divinity of Christ: and this must be denied. Significant are, for instance, the words in which Weizsäcker sums up his objections to this gospel: “That the Apostle, the favorite disciple according to the Gospel, who sat at the table beside Christ, should have looked upon and represented everything that he once experienced, as the living together with the incarnate divine Logos, is rather a puzzle. No power of faith and no philosophy can be imagined big enough to extinguish the memory of real life and to replace it by this miraculous image of a divine being … of one of the original Apostles, it is unthinkable. Upon this the decision of this point will always hinge. Anything else that may be added from the contents of the Gospel is subordinate.”This means, Christ cannot be admitted to be a Divine Being – impossible. An eye-witness could not take Him for it: therefore, this “miraculous picture of a Divine Being” cannot have been the work of an eye-witness.

Like the genuineness of the Gospels, so is also their credibility beyond a doubt. Two of them are written by Apostles, the two others by Disciples of the Apostles: they also have all the marks peculiar to writings of eye or ear witnesses, or of persons who have heard the narratives directly from the lips of eye-witnesses. Nor would any one doubt their credibility if they did not report supernatural facts. But, this being the case, infidel research is bound to arrive at the opposite result.