The Christology of Jesus

‘I “‘HE present generation is under the impression that it has discovered the teaching of Jesus. It would be absurd, indeed, to speak as if our own age had been the first to appreciate the beauty and the power of our Lord’s words; for since the Christian Church began, the sentences of the Sermon on the Mount have found a lodgment in the memory of Christendom more secure than any other words whatever; the Parables have never in any century failed to charm; and the Farewell Discourses in the Gospel of St. John have in every generation been the solace of the Christian heart in its most solemn moods. Nevertheless, in our own day our Lord’s words have obtained a prominence never accorded to them before. We now separate them from the rest of Scripture, with which formerly they were indiscriminately mingled, and assign them a commanding authority. Their unique theological value is acknowledged. It is recognised, in short, that Jesus is the best teacher of His own religion.

This change is due to deep causes, to trace which thoroughly would be a long and arduous task.

Perhaps it may be best assigned to one of those mysterious movements in the depths of the human spirit which it is difficult to scrutinise and account for, but by which, under the guidance of Providence, one epoch is made to end and another to begin. Suddenly, you can hardly tell how or why, one way of thinking about things, which has long appeared to be the only possible way, becomes disused, and a new way becomes so easy and universal that people can hardly realise that things have not always been seen in this light. At the Reformation the Pauline mode of conceiving Christianity fitted into the necessities of experience; and the Christian mind rose up to take possession of its heritage as it is unfolded in the Pauline Epistles. The forms of truth there deposited are so priceless that it took long to bring them fully to light; the theological consciousness was aware of profiting by the robust efforts which it had to put forth in the process of acquisition; and so the predominance of this view of Christianity lasted long. But it could not last forever, because the Bible is rich enough to contain other ways of conceiving Christianity; and these were certain, some time or other, to get their turn. What Novalis says of Shakspeare — that in his works “the last and deepest of observers will still find new harmonies with the infinite structure of the universe, concurrences with later ideas, affinities with the higher powers and senses of man” — is far truer of the Bible. Humanity, under the training of history, is always being made ready to understand and appreciate some new portion of the Word of God, and some book or section of Scripture is big with a secret which it can only disclose to those providentially prepared for its reception. Everyone is aware how at present, in the Old Testament, the writings of the prophets, after being long neglected, are coming into such prominence that every young minister of ability is discoursing from them; and in the same way, in the New Testament, we are moving from the Epistles to the Gospels. Rabbi Duncan was one of those lofty and sensitive spirits which catch the first rays of an approaching time, and he foretold this change: “I have certainly,” he said, “more of the Pauline Epistles than of the four Gospels in my nature; but, were I a younger man and to begin my studies again, the Gospels would bulk more prominently in my attention than they have done.” As has been hinted, there is an overruling Providence in the matter: when the flock have long been in one section of the pasture and have nibbled it bare, the great Shepherd leads them into another, where the grass is lush and uncropped; and there they abide till the fields which they have left have had time to grow again.

It may only be another way of stating the same reason to say, secondly, that the recognition of the importance of the words of Jesus has been prepared for by the extraordinary attention bestowed in the present century on His life. At the Reformation it was on the work of Christ that the thoughts of men were concentrated; and this long remained the supreme and ruling conception of theology. Ever and anon, however, J I is person came into prominence; and in the present century the most intense study has, owing to a variety of causes, been directed upon the details of His earthly life. Archaeology, the exploration of Palestine, the history of the century in which He was born, and many other subsidiary sciences have been pressed into the service; and the Son of man has been made to walk forth in breathing reality before the eyes of men, who have eagerly followed every step of His course from the manger to the cross. But under this close inspection of the records His words could not fail to attract attention. Accordingly everyone who wrote of His life expressed the hope to write some day on His words likewise. At last the press begins to teem with this new burden; and in the next fifty years the books on the teaching of Jesus will probably be as numerous as in the last fifty have been those on His life. Observers who watch closely the signs of the times in the theological world are wont to keep an eye on the young Privatdocenten in the German universities. When these begin, as if by general consent, to write on any topic, it may be taken for granted that this subject is in the air, and will be heard of everywhere before long. And of late they have been taking, in full cry, to the teaching of Christ. The first monograph on the subject which I remember came from the pen of a French theologian, M. Meyer, in 1883*; then followed, at a considerable interval of time, The Kingdom ofGodoi Dr. Bruce; then Wendt’s Teaching of Jesus but now it is scarcely possible to take up a theological catalogue without seeing the announcement of one or more monographs on the whole or on some special aspect of the subject.

* Le Christianisme du Christ, dealing only with the words of Jesus recorded by St. Matthew.

f Dr. Robertson’s excellent handbook in the Guild Series of the Church of Scotland deserves special notice as the first popular presentation of the subject.

And the demand in the public mind is equally keen; for multitudes are saying, that they only need to know for certain what Jesus believed in order to believe the same.

Another cause which has stimulated interest in this subject has been the rise of Biblical Theology.* The old view of the Bible was that it is a unit, all its parts forming one glorious whole and conspiring to convey one divine message; and this view expresses an eternal truth. But it is also manifest that the Bible is a library of books, differing enormously as to age, style and contents. If they all convey one message, yet they severally embody different parts and aspects of it; and, if the unity of Scripture is a grand truth, its variety lies more obviously on the surface. To see how revelation grew from simplicity to complexity, and how the germ unfolded into leaf, flower and fruit, is to follow the course of a spiritual romance; and it brings Biblical knowledge into line with the ideas of evolution so characteristic of our time in all the other departments of knowledge. In the New Testament we see how elementary conceptions of Christianity,

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