Now the passages pointed out as references to the fourth Gospel, it will
be remembered, distinctly differ from the parallels in the Gospel, and
it seems to us clear that they arise naturally out of the antithetical
manner which the writer adopts from the Epistles of Paul, and are based
upon passages in those Epistles closely allied to them in sense and
also in language. The simile in connection with which the words occur
is commenced at the beginning of the preceding chapter, where Christians
are represented as living as strangers even in their native land,
and the very essence of the passage in dispute is given in the two
sentences: "They are in the flesh, but do not live according to the
flesh" [------], which is based upon 2 Cor. x. 3, "For we walk in the
flesh, but do not war(2) according to the flesh" [------], and similar
passages abound; as for instance, Rom. viii. 4... "in us who walk not
according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit; 9. But ye are not
in the flesh but in the Spirit [------]: 12...
So then, brethren, we are debtors not to the flesh, that we should live
after the flesh" [------] &c., &c. (Cf. 4, 14.). And the second: "They
continue on earth but are citizens of heaven" [------], which recall
Philip, iii. 20: "For our country (our citizenship) is in heaven"
[------].(3) The sense of the passage is everywhere found, and nothing
is more natural than
{359}
the use of the words arising both out of the previous reference to
the position of Christians as mere sojourners in the world, and as the
antithesis to the preceding part of the sentence: "The soul dwells in
the body, but is not of the body," and: "Christians dwell in the world
but are not of the world." Cf. 1 Cor. ii. 12; vii. 31; 2 Cor. L 12. Gal.
iv. 29, v. 16 ff. 24, 25, vi. 14. Rom. viii. 3 ff. Ephes. ii. 2, 3, 11
ff. Coloss. iii. 2 ff: Titus ii. 12. James i. 27. There is one point,
however, which we think shows that the words were not derived from the
fourth Gospel. The parallel with the Epistle can only be made by taking
a few words out of xvii. 11 and adding to them a few words in verse 14,
where they stand in the following connection "And the world hated
them, because they are not of the world" [------]. In the Epistle, in a
passage quoted above, we have: "The flesh hates the soul, and wages war
against it, although unjustly, because it is restrained from indulgence
in sensual pleasures, and the world hates Christians, _although in no
way wronged by them, because they are opposed to sensual pleasures_."
[------].Now nothing could more clearly show that these analogies are
mere accidental coincidence, and not derived from the fourth Gospel,
than this passage. If the writer had really had the passage in the
Gospel in his mind, it is impossible that he could in this manner have
completely broken it up and changed its whole context and language. The
phrase: "they are not of the world" would have been introduced here as
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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