The Son of God
Passages in which Jesus is called “the Son of God” by others, Himself sometimes adopting the name: —
Matthew ii. 15; iii. 17; iv. 3, 6; viii. 29; xiv. 33; xvi. 16; xvii. 5;
xxi. 37, 38; xxvi. 63, 64; xxvii. 40, 43, 54. Mark i. [1], 11; iii. u; v. 7; ix. 7; xiv. 61, 62; xv. 39. Luke i. 32, 35; iii. 22; iv. 3, 9, 41; viii. 28; ix. 35; xx, 9; xxii. 70.
Passages in which Jesus calls Himself “the Son”: — Matthew xi. 27 (thrice); xxii. 2; xxvii. 43; xxviii. 19. Mark xiii. 32. Luke x. 22 (thrice).
Passages in which Jesus calls God His Father: — Matthew vii. 21; x. 32, 33; xi. 25, 26, 27; xii. 50; xxv. 13; xvi. 17,
27; xviii. 10, 19, 35; xx. 23; xxiv. 36; xxv. 34; xxvi. 29, 39, 42,
53; xxviii. 19. Mark viii. 38; xiii. 32; xiv. 36. Luke ii. 49; ix. 26; x. 21, 22; xxii. 29, 42; xxiii. 34, 46 j xxiv. 49.
III.
THE SON OF GOD*
‘I A HE other self-designation of our Lord is “the ■*- Son of God.’’ Jesus does not make use of it Himself in the Synoptists; but it is frequently applied to Him by others, when He accepts it in such a way as to appropriate it to Himself. He makes use sparingly on His own initiative of the abbreviated form, “the Son,” evidently with the same force; and He often speaks of God as “the Father,” or “My Father,” or “My Father who is in heaven,” in a way
* Weiss: Neutestamentliche Theologie, § 17. Beyschlag: Neutestamentliche Theologie, I. 54 ff. Holtzmann: N. T. Theologie, I. 265 ff. Stevens: The Theology of the New Testament, Chapter V. Bovon: Theologie du Nouveaie Testament, pp. 412 ff. Nosgen: Christus der Menschen- tmd Gottessohn. Nosgen: Geschichte Jesu Christi, pp. 290 ff., 470 ff. Grau: Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu, cap. VIII. Beyschlag: Die Christologie des Neuen Testaments, pp. 40 ff. Dalman: Die Worte Jesu, cap. X. Gore: Bampton Lectures, 1891. Gore: Dissertations. Wendt: Die Lehre Jesu, II. 428 ff.
that involves the consciousness that He is the Son of God.
The terms “Son of man” and “Son of God” appear to form a pair; and they describe so aptly the two sides of our Lord’s person that it is no wonder that this should have been taken to be their original meaning. So they have been interpreted from very early times; and so they are understood by ordinary readers of the Bible to this day. As, however, we found reason to modify this assumption in the case of “the Son of man,” so, in investigating this other term, we must not rashly yield to the impression conveyed by the mere sound of the words.
At all events there is no likelihood that Jesus invented this phrase; for it occurs frequently in the Old Testament, and it has a wide range of application in the Bible.
Thus, first, it is applied to angels. In the Book of Job we read that at the creation of the world “the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” In the same book an occasion is mentioned when “the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them,” where it is not quite clear whether Satan is reckoned as one of the sons of God, or whether he is an intruder forcing himself in where he has no right to be.* The reason why the angels are called by this name may only be that they are creatures of God, as we call a poet’s works the children of his imagination; or it may more probably be that, as spiritual beings, they bear a resemblance to God, whb is a spirit.
Secondly, the term is applied to the first man. In the third chapter of St. Luke the genealogy of our Lord is traced back from generation to generation, each member of the series being described as the son of his father, till Adam is reached, “who,” it is added, “was the son of God.”f This may mean simply that God was the Author of his being; though it is more likely that there is also a reference to the fact, mentioned so impressively in the first chapter of Genesis, that Adam was made in the image of God. This raises the question, whether all the children of Adam might not be called by this name. It would seem to be in the spirit of Scripture to answer this question affirmatively; and, if many passages cannot be quoted in favour of this application, there is at least one which weighs very heavily — the Parable of the Prodigal Son. The prodigal in the far country is still a son, though a lost one.
* Job xxxviii. 7; i. 6; ii. 1.
f Luke iii. 38: ‘ASa/x toii Ocoii.
Thirdly, the term is applied to the Hebrew nation as a whole. For example, Moses was sent to Pharaoh with this message, “Thus saith the Lord, Israel is My son, even My firstborn, and I say unto thee, Let My son go.”* And in Hosea ii. I Jehovah says, “When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called My son out of Egypt.” These quotations show very clearly the idea at the root of this designation: Israel was the son of God as the object of His special love and gracious choice. The entire Old Testament, however, is pervaded by the correlative idea, that sonship implies likeness, or at all events the obligation to be like the Father. Thus in Malachi i. 6, Jehovah says, “A son honoureth his father, and a servant his master; if I then be a Father, where is mine honour? and, if I be a Master, where is My fear?” It would be a natural transition from the application of the term to Israel as a whole to apply it to individual Israelites; and this appears to have been effected at least in New Testament times; for, in argument with Jesus, the Jews affirmed (John viii. 41), “We have one Father, even God “; and Jesus Himself said of the Jews to the Syrophcenician woman, “Let the children first be filled.”
Fourthly, the kings of Israel, or at least some of
* Exod. iv. 22, them, bore this title. Thus Jehovah said of Solomon, “I will be his Father, and he shall be to Me a son.”* In Psalm lxxxix. an ancient oracle is quoted in which Jehovah says of King David, “He shall cry unto Me, Thou art my Father, my God, and the rock of my salvation. Also I will make him My firstborn, higher than the kings of the earth.” But the most remarkable expression of this idea is to be found in the second Psalm, where the king of Israel is represented as surrounded by a combination cf enemies threatening his throne; whose machinations, however, are interrupted by an oracle, probably conceived as uttered in thunder from the sky, which proclaims “Thou art My son, this day have I begotten thee;” and, before this angry and irresistible declaration of the divine will, the confederated heathen melt away. In this psalm two names occur which were destined to have an extraordinary history — “the Messiah” and “the Son of God” — and the king appears in the closest connexion with God, as joint-ruler with Him and as the object of His love and choice. His figure is highly idealized, and it may be doubted whether it could ever, as Hupfeld asserts it did, have represented the Israelitish kingship in general. Applied to most of the actual kings
* 2 Sam. vii. 14.
it would have been gross and hyperbolic flattery; * and, if any rules of sobriety are to be observed in interpretation at all, it is more natural to understand it only of an excellent actual king or, still better, of someone whom the best of the actual kings typified. The reason for designating the kings by this title was, that the nation culminated in them, and perhaps that the great position they held was one in the bestowal of which there was specially manifested the electing love of God.
Fifthly, in the New Testament believers in Jesus Christ are everywhere described by this name — “To as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe in His name.” One reason in their case is that they have been born of God — “Being born again not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.” A further reason is that they are like God. On this Jesus Himself lays the greatest stress: “Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you; that ye may be sons of your Father which is in heaven; for He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.”f And to these two has to be added the third reason,
* So Nosgen: Der Menschen- und Gottessohn, p. 144. t John i. 12; 1 Peter i. 23; Matt. v. 44, 45, R.V.
that they are objects of God’s special and distinguishing love — “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God; therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not.”*
Thus, the term is applied to angels, to men, to the Jewish nation as a whole, to the Jewish kings, and to all saints; and the principal ideas which it embodies are, that those bearing the name are derived from God as their Author, that they are the objects of His love and choice, and that they are like Him in character and conduct.
Such being the wide and varied application of the term, the question arises, from which of these points it was that the title was transferred to our Lord. And the almost universal verdict of scholarship is that its application to Jesus arose from its application to the kings of Israel, He being the King to whom these all pointed forward. In short, this term, like “the Son of man,” is messianic. Such is the accepted view, which, however, I wish to submit to a thorough examination.
It is commonly asserted that the term is a synonym for the Messiah in the apocryphal books;
* 1 John iii. I.
but for this the evidence is slender. There is a passage in the end of the Book of Enoch where God is made to say “I and My Son” will do something; but it occurs in one of the most meaningless paragraphs of that incoherent production. Two or three references are also usually given to 4 Esdras; but the value of these may easily be estimated from the following specimens: “For My Son Jesus shall be revealed with those who are with Him, and they that remain shall rejoice for four hundred years;” “And it shall come to pass after these years that My Son Christ shall die, and all men that have breath.” *
It has already been remarked that in the Synoptists the term is for the most part applied to Jesus not by Himself but by others; and from this circumstance it has been argued that its sense must be messianic, because it is manifest that the phrase was diffused among the people as a title of the expected deliverer, f
A close study of the instances does not, however, lend this conclusion very clear support.
* Enoch cv. 2; 4 Esdras vii. 28, 29.
t Beyschlag, Neulestamentliche Theologie, I. 66; “Dieses Vorkommen im Munde anderer zeigt von vornherein, dass der Name ein im Alten Testamente wurzelender, in Israel bereits gangbarer war, und so ist auch fur den Sinn, in vvelchem Jesus ihn fur sich selbst in Anspruch nimmt, aufs Alte Testament zuruckzugehen.”
In the first chapter of St. Luke the angel of the Annunciation calls the Child to be born of Mary by this name, not because He is to be the Messiah, but for the reason stated in these words: “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore also that Holy Thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” * The derivation of His human nature from the special creative act of God is here the reason of the name — a reason akin to that on account of which it is also given by St. Luke to Adam. I do not remember any other place in Scripture where this precise point of view recurs.
When the centurion at the foot of the cross said, “Truly this was the Son of God,” “f” the likelihood is, that he, a heathen, was thinking of a hero like the sons of divine fathers and human mothers of whom there were many in the mythology of Greece and Rome.
Demoniacs are reported to have cried out to Jesus as “the Son of God “; and it might be supposed that in their mouths this was a popular name for the Messiah, especially as they sometimes addressed Him in so many words as the Messiah.
* Luke i. 35.
t Or, more correctly, “a son of God,” Mark xv. 39
But there is something peculiar about their testimony. The Evangelists evidently look upon their exclamations as proceeding not so much from the possessed human beings as from the demons by whom they were possessed, and we are no judges of the meaning which would be attached to this term by such intelligences, except that Jesus was dreaded by them as the Strong One by whom their power was to be broken. Still less can we narrow down the meaning attached to the name by the prince of devils, when he played with it in our Lord’s temptation.*
“They that were in the ship” on the occasion when Jesus stilled the tempest and rescued St. Peter from the waves, “came and worshipped Him, saying, Of a truth Thou art the Son of God.” f If by this they meant that He was the Messiah, it was a remarkable anticipation of the confession at Csesarea Philippi; but it looks more like an involuntary recognition of the divine in Jesus, extorted by the overwhelming impression produced by the miracle.
In the confession at Csesarea Philippi, which St. Matthew records two chapters later, St. Peter says, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God “; and it is contended that the second phrase is only a variation of the first, without the addition
* Matt. viii. 29; Mark iii. 11; Luke iv. 41; Matt. iv. 3, 6. t Matt. xiv. 33. of anything new such as is involved in the meaning attached by theology to the name. This is rendered the more probable by the fact that St. Mark and St. Luke omit the second title altogether; for is it conceivable that they would have done so if St. Peter had proclaimed his faith not only in the messiahship of Jesus but in His deity? This passage is the strongest support of the view that the name is messianic. Yet many instances might be quoted to prove that arguments based on omissions in one or even two Evangelists are far from trustworthy.*
Analogous is our Lord’s confession before the high priest. According to St. Matthew the high priest asked, “I adjure thee by the living God that Thou tell us, whether Thou be the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said. “Here, it is contended, the very collocation of the words proves that the phrases are equivalent; and, besides, a Jewish high priest could have used the Old Testament phrase in no other sense. On the other hand, St. Luke describes this scene in a way that excites dubiety. Jesus is asked,” Art Thou the Christ? tell us. And He said unto them, If I tell you, ye will not believe; and, if I also ask you,
* Matt. xvi. 16; Mark viii. 29; Luke ix. 20.
ye will not answer Me nor let Me go. Hereafter shall the Son of man sit on the right hand of the power of God. Then said they all, Art Thou then the Son of God? And He said unto them, Ye say that I am.” Here the question, “Art Thou the Son of God? “is separated from the question,” Art Thou the Christ? “and it is not obvious that it means the same thing. Perhaps it does; but it looks more as if the reply of Jesus to the first question had suggested to His interrogators that He made a claim beyond even that of being the Messiah. Accordingly they asked, in angry curiosity, if He was the Son of God; and how great was the shock caused by His affirmative answer is shown by their instant and unanimous decision, that He had committed blasphemy. If the claim to be” the Son of God “implied nothing more than a human messiahship, wherein consisted the blasphemy? * Holtzmann, a passionate denier of the traditional theology, says,” The blasphemy can only have been found in this, that a man belonging to the lower classes, one openly forsaken of God, and going forward to a shameful death, should have dared to represent Himself as the object and fulfilment of all the divine promises given to the nation. Such a claim smote in the face
* Matt. xxvi. 63, 64; Luke xxii. 66-71.
all the presuppositions and the conclusions of the Jewish faith and irritated the national susceptibilities to the uttermost.” * This is admirable special pleading, yet everyone must recognise that the blasphemy was far more obvious if the phrase meant what this scholar denies.
Besides, it is not to be forgotten that St. John says, “The Jews sought the more to kill Him, because He not only had broken the Sabbath, but said also that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God “; and again, “The Jews answered Him, saying, For a good work we stone Thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that Thou, being a man, makest Thyself God.” “(” These statements are not, properly speaking, portions of the Johannine theology: they are historical testimonies as to the sense attached by the Jews to their own charge of blasphemy and as to the claim of Jesus to be the Son of God; of course they may be misrepresentations, but there is no ambiguity about them; and it is not a departure from our plan in the present lectures of deriving the teaching of Jesus from the Synoptists alone to quote them here for what they are worth. J
* N. T. Theologie, I. 266.
t John v. 18; x. 33.
% Dorner has the weighty words {Lehre von der Person Christi, p. 79):” Das Wort Sohn Gottes bei den Synoptikern
To sum up: the meaning attached to this title when applied to Jesus by others is not uniform. In some cases it may be messianic; but the common element seems rather to be the recognition in our Lord of something above the level of ordinary humanity.
The use of the name by Jesus Himself is naturally what interests us most.
From whence did He derive it? Are we to suppose that, like those, who applied it to Him, He picked it up from the religious vocabulary of the period or borrowed it from the Old Testament? Another source is conceivable — namely, the voice from heaven at His baptism, repeated in the Transfiguration. In some minds there may exist doubt as to the objectivity of this occurrence; but, even were it supposed to be purely subjective, it would be an accurate indication of what were the sentilasst sich nicht zurtickfuhren auf die Bedeutung dieses Wortes im A. T.; er ist nicht bloss, wie David, oder andere Konige Israels, oder wie Fromme dieses Volkes oder Propheten, Sohn Gottes: er erscheint uberhaupt nicht wie einer unter andern, nicht als einer der Sonne Gottes, sondern als der Sohn, der Einzige, der Geliebte. Ihm gegenuber stehen die grossten Manner und Propheten wie Sot’Xoi vor dem vlos.” He goes on to describe His sonship as threefold — physical, ethical and official; and of these the second depends on the first, and the third on the first and second.
ments of Jesus at the time. What it most emphasizes is His consciousness of being the object of the divine love. Even if “My Son” means nothing else than “Messiah,” yet the adjective “beloved” is added, together with the phrase, “in whom I am well pleased.” Thus the personal predominates over the official.
This is the phenomenon which encounters us everywhere, when we take a survey of His own language; and, it will be observed, it is precisely the reverse of what we found upon a detailed examination of His use of the term “Son of man.” The official meaning of that term is the one which makes everything clear, whereas the personal sense is rarely prominent, even if it can with certainty be traced at all; but in the use of this term, while the reference to messiahship is sometimes present as a suggestive undersense, the reference to an interior relation between person and person is uniform. So it manifestly is in the very first recorded saying of Jesus, “Wist ye not that I must be in My Father’s house? “; and in the last, “Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.” *
* Luke ii. 49; xxiii. 46. In the latter passage Jesus is quoting from the Old Testament; but He adds “Father” to the quotation — a very significant addition.
There is one passage in which this intense consciousness of personal relationship to God comes out with peculiar clearness and force, as the sense denoted by Jesus when calling God “the Father” and Himself “the Son.” It occurs in a scene commemorated by both St. Matthew and St. Luke; and the two accounts combined enable us to bring the circumstances vividly before our eyes.*
Jesus had been discoursing sadly on the reception He had met with at the hands of His generation, and reproaching the cities in which most of His mighty works were done, when the Seventy returned overflowing with gladness at the success of their mission. And ‘’ in that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit j” and said, I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, O Father; for so it seemed good in Thy sight.” He had been looking back with bitter disappointment to the refusal of the learned and the influential to have anything to do with His cause; but the appearance of the Seventy, with their enthusiastic report, so brought home to Him the success of His confidence in the honest and good hearts which He had attracted from the
* Matt. xi. 25-30; Luke x. 21, 22.
t “In the Holy Spirit” (R.V.).
ranks of the common people that He was able completely to rise above His depression and rejoice in the whole course of His ministry as the disposition of God. Then He added, as if sunk in a beatific soliloquy — and these are the words which express so wonderfully the intimacy of His relation to God — “All things are delivered unto Me of My Father; and no man knoweth the Son but the Father, neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him.”
The opening words, “All things are delivered unto Me of My Father,” have been very variously interpreted. Some have given them the widest possible scope, understanding Jesus to be claiming lordship and government over the universe. Modern interpreters restrict them as much as possible — Weiss to the control of all things essential to His messianic work, while Holtzmann thinks they only express the claim that His doctrine is of God. The meaning most consistent with the context seems to be, that all His fortunes are of divine appointment — the disagreeable as well as the agreeable — all are working together for good; and in this assurance His spirit finds rest. But the next words are those which carry us into the sanctuary of His secret life: “No man knoweth the Son but the Father, neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him.” * These words may be a continuation of the thought just hinted at: God alone knows the course of the Son’s career, seeing clearly its glorious issues beyond its present intricacies; and the Son alone knows the Father’s design, and, therefore, He can bear without repining the disappointments of apparent failure. But this is only the minimum of meaning which can belong to the words; and their full meaning is probably much more comprehensive. At all events the impressiveness of the parallel between the Father’s knowledge of the Son and the Son’s knowledge of the Father can escape no one; and the saying is an incomparable expression of mutual intimacy, serene trust and perfect love. No wonder that Jesus burst out of His soliloquy with the memorable words on His lips, “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” He felt in Himself a joy great enough to satisfy the whole world. He held the secret of peace, and could invite all to come and receive it from Him.f
* fiovXrjTai aTTOKaXvyj/ai.
t Keim thinks that the great passage must have ended thus: “and he to whom the Father will reveal Him” (the Son). But
Even the least enthusiastic writers kindle into unwonted warmth in speaking of this utterance; but they hasten to add, that of course the sonship of Jesus was not specifically different from that of all believers. Sonship is the highest expression for the relation to God to which He raises those who receive Him, and it places them on the same platform with Himself. This dogmatic assertion is, however, confronted by the fact, that in all the Gospels Jesus carefully distinguishes His own sonship from that of His disciples. He speaks constantly of “My Father” and of “your Father,” but never of “Our Father.” Feeble attempts have been made to break down this distinction, but totally without avail. The fact, if substantiated, is a cardinal one, and it is useless, in face of it, to assert that obviously His sonship must be the same as ours.
A similar piece of dogmatism, very common at present, is the assertion that of course the sonship of Jesus was ethical, not metaphysical. Certainly it was ethical, consisting in the harmony of His mind and will with the thoughts and purposes of God, and in the affection and delight felt by Jesus for
surely this also is implied. Keim’s long exposition of this passage, which he considers the loftiest utterance of the self-consciousness of Jesus, is very fine. Holtzmann also calls it the pinnacle of Jesus’ testimony to Himself.
God and of God for Jesus. But it does not follow in the least that, because ethical, it was not metaphysical. On the contrary, the ethical always rests on the metaphysical; and ethical unity becomes less possible the farther any two beings are metaphysically separated from each other. The sympathy between a beast and a man is imperfect, because they are metaphysically so far apart; on the contrary, the union of man and woman is capable of such completeness because, though between them there exists the difference of sex, yet both partake in the same human nature. Men, as we have seen, may be called the sons of God for a variety of reasons; yet the union between God and man is a distant one; and this not only for ethical reasons, but for the metaphysical one that their natures are distinct. Angelic nature is nearer the divine; yet even here sonship is a figure of speech. No doubt the question whether any higher sonship is possible — a sonship as perfect in the divine region as sonship is in the human — is metaphysical; but to deny this is as pure a piece of dogmatism as to affirm it.
We must rid ourselves of all such preconceptions, if we wish to receive on our minds the simple and natural impression made by the testimony of Jesus about Himself.
In the parable of the Wicked Husbandman He describes the owner of the vineyard as sending first servant after servant to receive the fruits, but then, after much premeditation, as sending his own son, his well-beloved *; and by this figure, the peculiarity of which consists not in his office, but in his relation to the sender, Jesus obviously intended Himself. It reminds us of His claim elsewhere to be above the kings and the prophets — “A greater than Solomon is here,” “A greater than Jonah is here.” f
This again recalls the well-known passage where He demands of the scribes, whose son the Messiah is, and, when they reply, “The son of David,” immediately demands, why, then, David calls Him Lord. J We shall have to deal on a subsequent page with the notion that Jesus raised this question in order to deny the Davidic origin of, the Messiah; but what we are here concerned with is the subtle insinuation that the Messiah is the Son of God in such a sense that He is rightly styled David’s Lord. What must this sense be?
There is a saying of Jesus about His own sonship which is frequently quoted as the final refutation of the Church doctrine on the subject, because in it He confesses His ignorance of the date of His second coming —” Of that day and that hour knoweth no
* Mark xii. 6. t Matt. xii. 41, 42. $ Mark xii. 35-37.
man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.“* This saying does not stand alone: it is akin to many other statements in the Gospels, made by Jesus or about Him, in which His true and proper manhood is clearly brought out; but perhaps there is no other passage which has done so much to keep the mind of the Church sound on this great doctrine and to restrain it from extravagance in the statement of the opposite one. It has not by any means been overlooked. On the contrary, in recent times especially it has attracted the attention of theologians; and the most interesting contributions to modern Christology — the so-called Kenotic theories — have been founded on this more than any other text of Scripture, except the saying of St. Paul that the Son of God “emptied” Himself.f That by these efforts the mystery has
* Mark xiii. 32.
t Of the teaching of Jesus on this subject we can hardly speak, as He offered no explanation of His ignorance. Stated dogmatically, the question is this: How can the omniscience of the Second Person of the Trinity be reconciled with the ignorance of Jesus? The answer of theology is, that there took place at the incarnation a kenosis (from eavrov itLtvaa-ev, Phil. ii. 7), by which the Second Person of the Trinity emptied Himself of certain of His attributes, till the period of His humiliation was completed. Great diversity of opinion has, however, prevailed as to the manner in which this kenosis ought to be conceived; and all the Kenotic theories, as they are called, have been rejected by some eminent theologians. Full information will be found in been cleared away I do not say; but the Church has been anew convinced by them that no theory of our
Bruce’s Hicmiliation of Christ. The problem has recently received a remarkable access of interest in English theology in connexion with the burning question of our Lord’s relation to the criticism of the Old Testament. The weightiest utterance is that of Gore in the book entitled Dissertations, where the second dissertation is on “The Consciousness of our Lord in His Mortal Life.” There is an American book just published — Hall: The Kenotic Theory. See also Mason, The Conditions of our Lord’s Life on Earth, and Adamson, Studies of the Mind in Christ; also the books on the Incarnation by Ottley, Powell and GifTord. During recent discussions a word of Tholuck has often recurred to my mind:” Nun ist das menschliche Wissen ein zwiefaches — das welches, unter grosserer oder geringerer ausserer Anregung, rein innerlich sich entwickelt, deukend oder anschauend, und das welches nur menschlich gelernt und dem Gedachtniss eingepragt werden kann. Ist die Entwicklung des Erlosers die allgemein menschliche, so kann dasjenige Wissen innerhalb der religiossittlichen Sphare, insbesondere das zur Auslegung erforderliche, welches nur auswendig zu lernen ist, ihm nur bekannt und zuganglich gewesen sein gemass der Bildungstufe seiner Zeit und den Bildungsmitten seiner Erziehung, seines Umgangs. Es liessen sich Belege beibringen, dass auch in solchen der gelehrten Exegese angehorenden Fragen, wie nachdemhistorischen Zusammenhange einer Stelle, nach Verfassung und Zeitalter eines Buches, ein originaler Geistesblick auch ohne Schulbildung das Richtige zu diviniren vermag, — das hochste Maass dieses divinatorischen Blickes lasst sich dem Erloser zuschreiben, immer aber wird derselbe das eigentliche wissenschaftliche Studium nicht ersetzen. Nicht Wissenschaft, auch theologische nicht, der Welt zu offenbaren, war der Erloser erschienen, sondern die religiossittliche Wahrheit der Menschheit auszusprechen und der Menschheit darzuleben. — Das alte Testament im neuen Testament, p. 60,
Lord’s person can be correct which does not recognise that there is a mystery. In fact, there is no saying of Jesus which makes this more indubitable; for He evidently states it as an astonishing thing that He does not know. He specifies four planes of being and of knowledge — that of men, that of angels, that of Himself, and that of God. “Of that day and that hour,” He says, “knoweth no man, no, not the angels, neither the Son, but the Father.” Evidently the Son is above not only men but angels, and knows more than they.
The conclusion would seem to be that He is a being intermediate between the angels and God. But this impression is corrected by the greatest of all the sayings in which He calls Himself the Son: “Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost” — where the Son is named with the Father and the Holy Ghost in a way that suggests the equality of all three, and an act of worship is directed to them jointly.* This is the verse next
*” It has of course often been made an objection against the originality of this formula, that it is only once mentioned in the New Testament, while, on the other hand, the phrase ’ to be baptized in (or into) the name of the Lord Jesus’ occurs more than once in the Acts of the Apostles. But, whatever force such an objection may have been supposed to have, has been greatly weakened since the discovery of The Teaching of the Twelve the last of the Gospel of St. Matthew; and of course to those to whom the bodily resurrection of our Lord, with all that follows, is mythical, such words will carry no conviction; but to those who believe in His risen glory, they will appear perfectly congruous with the great occasion on which they were uttered.
Thus it would appear that, while Jesus took this title into His mind either from His religious environment or from the voice from heaven, it became to Him mainly an expression for His own relation to God; and this relationship was not only unique, but reached up beyond the competency of men or angels, till He named Himself in the same breath with the Father and the Holy Ghost as an object of worship. It has, I venture to avow, been no effort of mine to find in the name the meaning at which we have arrived. Had the evidence led to a different conclusion, I would have accepted it without hesitation. But I have been led on step by step by the sheer force of Christ’s own testimony. It remains
Apostles. For that early document, which is sometimes referred to as if it represented a Christianity more original than that of the New Testament, mentions twice over the formula of baptism into the threefold name, and thus interprets the expression which it also uses in common with St. Luke, that of being ’ baptized into the name of the Lord.’” — Gore, Ihe Incarnation of the Son of God, p. 84.
to enquire what other testimony on the point His words contain apart from this particular name.
I. There is, in connexion with our Lord’s miracles, a long series of remarkable utterances, in which He commands the paralyzed to arise, the blind to open their eyes, the demons to depart out of the possessed, the stormy sea to be calm, and so on. Most of them are extremely concise, as, “I will, be thou clean,” “Peace, be still,” “Ephphatha,” and the like; but in this very brevity there is a sublime impressiveness, like that of the words in the first chapter of Genesis: “Let there be light, and there was light.” Even more impressive are the passages where He conveys the same powers to His disciples, as He sends them forth to preach and heal in His name — such as Matt. x. 7, 8: “As ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand; heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils; freely ye have received, freely give.” The fact, indeed, that such powers were exercised by the disciples proves that the working of miracles was not in itself evidence of anything superhuman in the miracle-worker. Some of the Old Testament prophets worked miracles too. Yet there is a difference. The scale on which Jesus acted entirely threw the prophets who were before Him into the shade; and the power of the disciples was entirely derivative.
In the Book of Acts we have an apostolic miracle described which must have been typical; and, in performing it, St. Peter says to the subject on whom it took place, “^Eneas, Jesus Christ maketh thee whole; arise, make thy bed.”* Words could not betray more clearly that the power with which the apostles acted proceeded from their Master. It may be said that He, in like manner, was only the organ of the power of God working through Him; and this would be true. Yet would it be the whole truth? His miracles frequently produced an overwhelming impression of the divine glory embodied in His person. The exclamation of “those in the ship,” when He stilled the storm, has been already quoted; and the terror of St. Peter, when he cried, “Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord,” must have been repeated in many a sensitive mind on similar occasions. Remarking on the state of mind which prompted St. Peter’s exclamation, an enlightened modern commentator says: “It burst upon his perception that the Lord God of Israel was beside him in that boat. The claims of Jesus suddenly rose upon Peter’s conviction to those of the Highest. He is proved to be both God and Lord.”f And, .although this may go too far in the way of
* ix. 34.
t Laidlaw: The Miracles of our Lord, in loco.
formulating the apostle’s thought, yet it is not too much to say that the apostle received vague and vast impressions which were equivalent to this thought, and were destined in the course of time to condense into it.
2. Another series of sayings in which our Lord’s superhuman self-consciousness betrays itself is that in which He comes forward as the supreme and final Revealer of truth. Frequently such sayings commence with the formula, “I say unto you,” or, “Verily I say unto you.” This phrase occurs more than thirty times in St. Matthew alone; and everyone will recall instances in which it falls on the ear with an extraordinary weight of authority. He not only sets up His own word in opposition to the authority of the scribes of His time and the tradiditions of the past, but even to the authority of Moses. With sovereign freedom He declares one law of Moses to be only a concession to the hardness of heart of his contemporaries; and by His great statement, that not that which goeth into the man defiles but that which cometh out of him, He sweeps away at one stroke whole pages of Mosaic legislation.* It may be said that this was only the prophetic function in its most perfect development.
* Mark vii. 19. Observe the R.V. translation:” This He said, making all meats clean.’’
And this is true; but is it all the truth? The greatest of the prophets prefaced their oracles with, “Thus saith the Lord,” but Jesus deliberately substitutes for this formula the simple claim, “I say unto you.” When the most intricate moral and religious questions are submitted to Him, He does not hesitate a moment, because the will of God is perfectly familiar to Him. It is often said that one of the peculiarities of the Johannine Christ is that He is intimate with the secrets of the unseen world; but this characteristic is far from being confined to the Fourth Gospel. In the Synoptists, too, Jesus speaks like one to whom the scenery of the other world is native and familiar. Thus He says, that a sparrow does not fall but God marks it; and that the hairs of those whom He is dissuading from carefulness are all numbered. The angels of children do always behold the face of the heavenly Father. When surrounded by those sent to arrest Him, He declared that, had He but asked it, His heavenly Father would have sent to His rescue twelve legions of angels.* He assured the thief on the cross, “To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise.” Many similar sayings might be adduced to show His acquaintance with both the near and the
* Matt. x. 29, -^o; xviii. 10; xxvi. 53.
n6 THE CHRISTOLOGY OF JESUS
remote future; but these are reserved for a later lecture.
3. A third remarkable series of sayings consists of those in which He lays His claims upon the conscience, and states what will be the consequences of acknowledging or of rejecting these. One of the great and characteristic words of His ministry was, “Follow Me,” which He employed with remarkable effect in instances known to all, and which He must have employed in many more that have not been recorded. The power of this form of address doubtless lay in the indescribable charm of His personality and in the attraction with which a life in His company drew those who were capable of aspiration; but there lay in it, also, an authority of a more sovereign description which He never attempted to conceal. When one whom He had called asked to be allowed to go first and bury his father, He said, “Let the dead bury their dead.” He warned those who might be disposed to follow Him that they must not only sacrifice the prizes of the world, but even hate father and mother, wife and children; and He did not hesitate to forewarn His disciples that they would be brought before principalities and powers, would be stripped and maltreated, and would even lose their lives.* The * Matt. viii. 22; Luke xiv. 26.
one sufficient compensation, however, for every hardship would be that they suffered for His sake. These claims are not embodied in one or two exceptional sayings: they were the daily language of Jesus. Who was He who dared to make such claims? He repeated in every form of expression, that the eternal destiny of His hearers would depend on their attitude to Himself. Even His disciples, when they went forth in His name, carried in their persons the fate of those with whom they came into contact, for whosoever received them received Him, and whosoever received Him received the Father who had sent Him; but whosoever rejected them brought down the contrary doom upon his soul.*
4. A very remarkable series of sayings, though not an extended one, is that in which He claims to forgive sins. The most outstanding case was that of the man borne of four who was let down through the roof to be healed. When Jesus pronounced this man’s sins forgiven, a charge of blasphemy was instantly raised. The opponents did not believe that the man’s sins were forgiven or that Jesus could forgive them.f Of course, however, anyone can pretend to forgive sins, because forgiveness belongs to a region which is beyond the
* Matt. x. 14, 40.
t Luke v. 21; vii. 49.
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control of human observation. The reply of Jesus was, that He would do something within the sphere of human observation which He could not do if He was capable of lying; but, if His word took effect in the visible sphere, this would prove that it had taken effect in the world invisible. Thereupon He healed the man. Against the supposition that Jesus in this transaction claimed anything superhuman the argument has been advanced, that He subsequently empowered the apostles to do the same thing. Obviously, however, the forgiveness of sins by them rested on His authority: it was purely declaratory and ministerial. And it may be said that in the same way His forgiveness was no more than the declaration that God had forgiven. He did not say so, however — not even when He was accused of blasphemy and might, by such an explanation, have escaped from the charge. The natural sense of His words undoubtedly is, that the authority rested in His own person.
5. There remain a few very great sayings which I need not attempt to include under any rubric. They are well entitled to stand alone and to be separately pondered. They need little exposition or remark.
In the exaltation of mind produced by St. Peter’s great confession, Jesus said to him, “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” * It is with a kind of bewilderment that one thinks of the claims implied here in every line. No wonder that those who look upon Jesus as no more than a man try to make out that He never uttered the words. But their magnificent assurance fits Him well.
Is there not the same superhuman greatness in the appeal, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not?” f Is not this the same voice as that which of old claimed to have borne Israel through the wilderness as an eagle, fluttering over her nest, carries her young upon her wings?
Repeatedly He promised to be with His own in the future, when in bodily presence He would be far away. Thus, when they were confronted with the opposition of the great and powerful,” I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your
* Matt. xvi. 18, 19.
t Matt, xxiii. 37.
adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist “; and again, when, escaping from the persecution of society, they should meet for fellowship and prayer, “Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.” *
The greatest saying of all is, appropriately, the last: “All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth... and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” f Many attempts have been made to define and confine these extraordinary words, but, like Samson’s strength, they burst the withes of definition; and those only know what they mean who, in prayer with their fellow-Christians, have felt the personal nearness of Him whom, having not seen, they love.
It is possible to take such great sayings one by one and either discredit them as unauthentic or deplete them of their meaning. The former is habitually done, for example, by Holtzmann, the latter by Wendt. According to Holtzmann such words are the rudimentary beginnings of dogma: that is to say, they did not proceed from the lips of Christ, but were crystallized from the consciousness of the primitive Christians. J But our knowledge
* Luke xxi. 15; Matt, xviii. 20. t Matt, xxviii. 18-20. % N.T. Theologie, I. 352 ff.
of primitive Christianity dates very far back; the earliest epistles of St. Paul, as dated by the latest scholarship, stand at but an inconsiderable distance from the death of Christ; and not only is the Christ of St. Paul’s earliest writings the very same, in all essentials, as the Christ of his later writings — the same, for example, as He of the Epistle to the Philippians, who, “being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God,” and has “a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father” — but St. Paul’s Christ was the Christ of primitive Christianity. On other subjects there was fierce controversy in the primitive Church, but on this there was none. Now, is it credible that there should have been such unanimity about a cardinal belief like this, if Christ’s own words had contained no hint of it, but rather the reverse? Wendt takes each saying by itself, and having laboriously shown the very least it can possibly have meant, then assumes this to have been the original meaning. But it is often not the natural meaning; and one gets tired of this continual shallowing of everything that Jesus said. The truth is, if Jesus meant no more than Wendt makes Him say, He was the most paradoxical and hyperbolical teacher that has ever appeared, and He alienated His hearers by mystifications, when a few words of common sense, such as Wendt now speaks for Him, would have cleared away all difficulties and conciliated the minds of men.
These divine sayings of our Lord do not look like fragments of a different formation, but are congruous with all His words, of which they form the natural completion. You may attempt to take them from Him and assign them to other minds, or you may suppose that in some way, without the agency of any actual minds, they were crystallized from the atmosphere of the apostolic age; but this is forcework; and, when the hand of violence is removed, they revert to their Author and fill out the lineaments of the great personality which rises upon us in the Gospels. I do not attribute to Jesus dogmatic statements or make Him responsible for the phraseology of the creeds. His utterances were of a totally different character: they were remarks made in passing, hints dropped of which He may sometimes hardly have been conscious, impressions rayed forth from his personality on the minds of others, and fitted at first to produce states of feeling rather than definite beliefs. But what I cannot credit is, that by the time of the earliest Christian records His followers had already distorted and mistaken Him altogether, so that the history of Christianity was built from the very foundation on a misunderstanding and a misrepresentation, behind which we must, after two thousand years, get back, if we are to have a real Christ and a genuine Christianity. “Back to Christ” is the watchword of theology in this generation; and I will repeat it with an enthusiasm born of a lifelong study of His words; but, when I go back to Him, I do not find a Christ who puts to shame the highest which His Church has taught about Him He is different indeed — far more simple, actual and human — yet in all that is most essential He is the same Son of God as for nineteen centuries has inspired the lives of the saints and evoked the worship of the world.