immense antiquity could no
longer be gainsaid, it was suddenly ascertained that the Bible had from
the outset asserted that antiquity; and in our own day we have seen
an elegant popular writer perverting the testimony of the rocks and
distorting the Elohistic cosmogony of the Pentateuch, until the twain
have been made to furnish what Bacon long ago described as "a heretical
religion and a false philosophy." Now just as in the popular thought of
the present day the ancient Elohist is accredited with a knowledge of
modern geology and astronomy, so in the opinion of the fourth evangelist
and his contemporaries the doctrine of the Logos-Christ was implicitly
contained in the Old Testament and in the early traditions concerning
Jesus, and needed only to be brought into prominence by a fresh
interpretation. Hence arose the fourth gospel, which was no more a
conscious violation of historic data than Hugh Miller's imaginative
description of the "Mosaic Vision of Creation." Its metaphysical
discourses were readily accepted as equally authentic with the Sermon
on the Mount. Its Philonian doctrines were imputed to Paul and the
apostles, the pseudo-Pauline epistles furnishing the needful texts. The
Ebionites--who were simply Judaizing Christians, holding in nearly its
original form the doctrine of Peter, James, and John--were ejected from
the Church as the most pernicious of heretics; and so completely was
their historic position misunderstood and forgotten, that, in order to
account for their existence, it became necessary to invent an eponymous
heresiarch, Ebion, who was supposed to have led them astray from the
true faith!

The Christology of the fourth gospel is substantially the same as that
which was held in the next two centuries by Tertullian, Clement of
Alexandria, Origen, and Arius. When the doctrine of the Trinity was
first announced by Sabellius (A. D. 250-260), it was formally condemned
as heretical, the Church being not yet quite prepared to receive it.
In 269 the Council of Antioch solemnly declared that the Son was NOT
consubstantial with the Father,--a declaration which, within sixty
years, the Council of Nikaia was destined as solemnly to contradict.
The Trinitarian Christology struggled long for acceptance, and did not
finally win the victory until the end of the fourth century. Yet from
the outset its ultimate victory was hardly doubtful. The peculiar
doctrines of the fourth gospel could retain their integrity