Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (872 page)

But in thus interpreting the words
e
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,
theologians have been by no means unprejudiced. Least of all Calvin; for when he says, the papists maintain a real penetration of the body of Jesus through closed doors in order to gain support for their tenet that the body of Christ is immense, and contained in no place,
ul corpus Christi immensum esse, nulloque loco contineri obtineant:
it is plain that he combats that interpretation of the words of John merely to avoid giving any countenance to the offensive doctrine of the ubiquity of Christ’s body. The more modern expositors, on the other hand, were interested in avoiding the contradiction which to our perceptions is contained in the statement, that a body can consist of solid matter, and yet pass without hindrance through other solid matter: but as we know not whether this was also a contradiction in the view of the New Testament writers, the apprehension of it gives us no authority to discard that interpretation, providing it be shown to be in accordance with the text. We might certainly, on a partial consideration, understand the expression
the doors being shut,
t
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, as an intimation of the anxious state into which the disciples were thrown by the death of Jesus. But already the circumstance that this particular is repeated on the appearance of Jesus before Thomas excites doubts, since if the above was the only meaning, it was scarcely worth while to repeat the observation.
^||
But as in fact in this second instance the above cause for the closing of the doors no longer exists, while the words
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are immediately united with
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* Calvin, Comm. in Joh. in loc., p. 363 f. ed. Tholuck.

† Thus Suicer, Thes. s. v.
q
u
r
a
.
;
comp. Michaelis, 5
.
265.

‡ Tholuck and Olshausen, in loc.

§ Griesbach, Vorlesungen über Hermeneutik, s
.
305; Paulus, s. 835. Comp. Lücke, 2, s. 683 ff.

|| Vid. Tholuck and De Wette, in loc.
he comes
: what was before the most apparent meaning, namely, that they are intended to determine the manner of the coming of Jesus, is here heightened into a probability.
^*
Further, the repeated statement that Jesus came when the doors were closed is again followed by the words
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h
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V
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,
which even in connexion with
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, to which they are related as a more precise determination, imply that Jesus suddenly presented himself, without his approach having been seen: whence it is undeniably evident that the writer here speaks of a coming without the ordinary means, consequently, of a miraculous coming. But did this miracle consist in passing through the boards of the doors? This is combated even by those who espouse the cause of miracles in general, and they confidently appeal to the fact, that it is nowhere said, he entered
through
the closed doors
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.
^†
But the Evangelist does not mean to convey the precise notion that Jesus, as Michaelis expresses himself, passed straight through the pores of the wood of which the doors were made; he merely means that the doors were shut and remained so, and nevertheless Jesus suddenly stood in the chamber, — walls, doors, in short all material barriers, forming no obstacle to his entrance. Thus in reply to their unjust demand of us, to show them in the text of John a precise determination which is quite away from the intention of this writer, we must ask them to explain why he has not noticed the (miraculous) opening of the doors, if he presupposed such a circumstance? in relation to this point Calvin very infelicitously refers to Acts xii. 6 ff.
,
where it is narrated of Peter, that he came out of the closed prison; no one, he says, here supposes that the doors remained closed, and that Peter penetrated through wood and iron. Assuredly not; because here it is expressly said of the iron gate of the prison which led into the city, that it
opened to him of its own aœord
(v. 10). This observation serves to give so lively and graphic an idea of the miracle, that our Evangelist would certainly not, in two instances, have omitted a similar one, if he had thought of a miraculous opening of the doors.

Thus in this narrative of John the supernatural will not admit of being removed or diminished : nor is the natural explanation more satisfactory in relation to the expressions by which Luke describes the coming and going of Jesus. For if, according to this Evangelist, his coming was
a standing in the midst of the disciples,
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,
his going
a becoming invisible to them,
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: the concurrence of these two representations, taken in connexion with the terror of the disciples and their mistaking him for a spirit, will hardly allow the supposition of anything else than a miraculous appearance. Besides, if we might perhaps form some idea how Jesus could enter in a natural manner without being observed into a room filled with men: we should still be at a loss to imagine how it could be possible for him, when he

* Comp. Olshausen, 2, s. 531, Anm.

† Thus, besides Calvin, Lücke, ut sup. ; Olshausen, 530sat at table at Emmaus, apparently with the two disciples alone, to withdraw himself from them unobserved, and so that they were not able to follow him.
^*

That Mark, under the words
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m
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f
h
understands a form miraculously altered, ought never to have been denied;
^†
but this is a point of minor importance, because it involves only the narrator’s own interpretation of the circumstance which had been already stated, but with a different explanation, by Luke: namely, that the two disciples did not know Jesus. That Mary Magdalene took Jesus for the gardener, was hardly, in the view of the Evangelist, the consequence of his having borrowed the gardener’s clothes: rather, the spirit of the narrative would require us to explain her not knowing him by supposing that her eyes were
held
k
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t
e
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s
q
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,
Luke xxiv. 16), or that Jesus had assumed
another form
; while her taking him for the gardener might then be simply accounted for by the fact that she met the unknown man in the garden. Nor are we authorized by the evangelical narratives to suppose a disfiguration of Jesus by the sufferings of the cross, and a gradual healing of his wounds. The words
Touch me not
in John, if they were to be regarded as a prohibition of a touch as painful, would be in contradiction, not merely with Matthew, according to whom Jesus on the same morning — that of the resurrection — allowed the women to embrace his feet, but also with Luke, according to whom he on the same day invited the disciples to handle him; and we must then ask, which representation is correct? But there is nothing at all in the context to intimate that Jesus forbade Mary to touch him for fear of pain; he may have done so from various motives: concerning which, however, the obscurity of the passage has hitherto precluded any decision.
^‡

But the most singularly perverted inference is this: that the infrequent and brief interviews of Jesus with his disciples after the resurrection are a proof that he was as yet too weak for long and multiplied efforts, arid consequently was undergoing a natural cure. On this very supposition of his needing bodily tendance, he should have been not seldom, but constantly, with his disciples, who were those from whom he could the most immediately expect such tendance. For where are we to suppose that he dwelt in the long intervals between his appearances? in solitude? in the open air? in the wilderness and on mountains? That was no suitable abode for an invalid, and nothing remains but to suppose that he must have been concealed among secret colleagues of whom even his disciples knew nothing. But thus to conceal his real abode even from his own disciples, to show himself to them only seldom, and designedly

* Olshausen, ut sup. s. 530.

† Comp. Fritzsche, in Marc. p. 725
.

‡ See the various explanations in Tholuck and Lücke, of whom the latter finds an alteration of the reading necessary. Even Weisse’s interpretation of the words (2, s. 395 ff.), although I agree with the general tenor of the explanation of which it forms a part, I must regard as a failure.to present and withdraw himself suddenly, would be a kind of double dealing, an affectation of the supernatural, which would exhibit Jesus and his cause in a light foreign to the object itself so far as it lies before us in our original sources of information, and only thrown upon it by the dark lantern of modern, yet already obsolete, conceptions. The opinion of the Evangelists is no other than that the risen Jesus, after those short appearances among his followers, withdrew like a higher being into invisibility, from which, on fitting occasions, he again stept forth.
^*