The Individualism of the Fourth Gospel

Abstract

than it is in the present climate of theology. For the'Liberal Protestant' frame of thought it was easy to recognise the kingship of God in each individual who accepted the will of God, but harder to grasp the idea of Christianity as incorporation by baptism into membership of the Body of Christ-a corporate existence, entered upon and maintained sacramentally and institutionally. It is one of the results of the revival of 'biblical theology' that, of the two, the latter emphasis-the corporate and the sacramental--has come to be widely recognised as closer to the roots of authentic Christianity. But this recovery of a theology of the Church has tended to swing the pendulum too far, sometimes actually to distort the picture and to engender an unwarranted suspicion of anything that sounds 'individualistic'. The famous Lucan saying (Lk. xvii 21) about the kingdom of God being ivTO;q utCov is today generally so interpreted as to rescue it from the unacceptable inward and individual sense; or, if there were an acceptable alternative today, it might be to blame 'Luke the Hellene' for introducing an alien individualism into the doctrine of the kingdom. It is almost a slur on a biblical writer-or else on his expositor-if an individualistic note is detected. That may be a caricature of the situation. But if it contains even a modicum of truth, then perhaps it is not untimely to enter a plea for a reappraisal of the Johannine outlook in this particular respect. To that end I offer this essay, uncertain whether it will meet with approval from the distinguished scholar in whose honour it is presented; certain only that I am deeply indebted to him, both for warm personal friendship when I stayed at Erlangen in I952, and for all that I have learnt from the publications he has generously presented to me, including a copy of his important Theologie des