STUDIES IN THEOLOGY
A Critical Introduction to the New Testament.
By ARTHUR SAMUEL PEAKE, D.D.
Faith and its Psychology.
By the Rev. WILLIAM R. INGE, D.D.
Philosophy and Religion.
By the Rev. HASTINGS RASHDALL, D.Litt. (Oxon.), D.C.L.
(Durham), F.B.A.
Revelation and Inspiration.
By the Rev. JAMES ORR, D.D.
Christianity and Modern Social Issues.
By WILLIAM CUNNINGHAM, F.B.A., D.D., D.Sc.
A Critical Introduction to the Old Testament.
By the Rev. GEORGE BUCHANAN GRAY, D.D., D.Litt.
History of Christian Thought from the Apostolic Age
to the Reformation.
By HERBERT B. WORKMAN, D.Litt
History of Christian Thought from the Reformation
to Kant.
By A. C. MCGIFFERT, Ph.D., D.D.
History of Christian Thought since Kant.
By the Rev. EDWARD CALDWELL MOORE, D.D.
The Christian Hope: A Study in the Doctrine of the
Last Things.
By W. ADAMS BROWN, Ph.D., D.D.
The Theology of the Gospels.
By JAMES MOFFATT, D.D., D.Litt.
The Text and Canon of the New Testament.
By ALEXANDER SOUTER, D.Litt.
THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS
* I wrote with my pencil in my Common Prayer Book
Vita ordinanda.
Biblia legenda.
Theologiae opera danda.
Serviendum et laetandum.
. Serupulis obsistendum.'
DR. JOHNSON.
THE THEOLOGY OF
THE GOSPELS
BY
JAMES MOFFATT, D.D., D. LlTT.
YATES PROFESSOR OF NEW TESTAMENT GREEK AND EXEGESIS
MANSFIELD COLLEGE, OXFORD
LONDON: DUCKWORTH & CO.
3 HENRIETTA ST., COVENT GARDEN
1912
tff
fescrved
TO
MY COLLEAGUES IN MANSFIELD
259939
PREFACE
THE bulk of the following pages formed the sub-
stance of a course of lectures which I had the honour
of delivering under the Alexander Robertson Trust
in the University of Glasgow, during January and
February of this year. In working over the materials
afresh for the purpose of publication I have made
considerable additions to the argument at various
points, but, even so, the volume is not a classified
survey of the various theological and religious con-
ceptions which may be found within the compass
of the gospels. My aim has been different. What
these pages attempt to do is to present a study of
the central and salient features in the theology of
the gospels, taking theology in its stricter rather
than in its wider sense. The standpoint for estimat-
ing the characteristic position of the gospels in the
development of primitive Christian reflection is
determined by the message and personality of
Jesus. The gospels voice the faith of Jesus Christ
in different keys, but the theme of their fugue-like
variations is never forgotten amid all their windings,
and it ought to be dominant in any study of their
symphonies. Angelology and almsgiving, for
example, enter into the religious scope of the gospels,
but such notes only sound in relation to the eon-
t rolling theme which uses them in its larger chords.
\Vhen Paul spoke to the Athenians, he took his
x THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS
text from an inscription on some local altar, to an
unknown god. He began by assuring his audience
that he could tell them what they were worshipping
in devout ignorance, and tried in this way to get a
hearing for the gospel of Jesus. According to a
Greek bishop of the tenth century, who wrote a
commentary on Acts, the inscription dated from a
complaint of Pan that the Athenians had neglected
to acknowledge him. Consequently, after winning
a victory over the Persians with the help of Pan,
they erected an altar to him, and in order to guard
against any similar danger in other directions if
they neglected a god who was unknown to them,
' they erected that altar with the inscription to an
wnknown god, meaning " in case there is some other
god whom we do not know, be this erected by us
in his honour, that he may be gracious to us though
he is not worshipped by us owing to our ignorance." :
It is not clear where (Ecumenius got this story about
the origin of the Athenian altar, but it supplies an
apt setting for the argument of the apostle's address.
Paul did not mean that Jesus was a divine being
who was required to make their pantheon complete.
His point was that the religion which he preached
in the name of Jesus was one which left no such
blank spaces in the universe, no tracts of experience
where human life was exposed to unknown powers
of life and death, over which the God of Jesus did
not avail to exercise control. Unluckily he was
interrupted before he could develop his argument,
but his epistles show how he would probably have
worked out the relations of the Christian God to
the universe of men and things. Now this also is
the motive which underlies the theology of the
PREFACE xi
gospels ; as the tradition develops, even prior to
the climax of the Fourth gospel, we can feel the
instinctive desire to present Jesus as adequate to
all the needs of the human soul, and to state His
revelation in such a way as to cover the entire
experience of believing men. The messianic cate-
gories naturally tended at first to make the range
of this interest religious rather than cosmic, if we
may use an antithesis which is convenient but not
accurate. So far as apocalyptic took account of the
universe, it had a short and sharp solution. Yet
even within the earlier phases of the synoptic
theology it is possible to detect the implicit convic-
tion that faith in Jesus Christ has cleared up the
religious situation of men and made the world an
intelligible unity. The genesis of this conviction
lies in the faith of Jesus Himself. The interest of
the gospels, in the aspect of their theological develop-
ment, is the deepening appreciation of the signifi-
cance which attaches to His personality ; from one
side and another they witness consciously and
unconsciously to the belief that Jesus is Lord of
all powers visible and invisible, and that to worship
the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ is to
be freed for ever from that ignorance of the world
which haunts men with a variety of superstitious
fears.
It is in the light of this fundamental and charac-
teristic motive that the theology of the gospels
reveals its vital unity amid the variations which
catch the eye upon the surface of their pages. The
differences between them are little, compared to
the difference between them and what followed or
preceded them. Any text-book of the New Testa-
xii THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS
ment theology provides some account of the Jewish
presuppositions and environment of Jesus, then an
outline of His teaching on the basis of what are
considered to be the authentic materials extant in
the synoptic sources or traditions, thirdly an appre-
ciation of the apostolic theology which has blended
with the preaching of Jesus in the records, and finally,
a special section on the Fourth gospel which dis-
criminates the characteristic theology of that
writing from the synoptic tradition, on the one
hand, and Paulinism upon the other, with an attempt,
depending for its positive results upon the author's
critical position, to distinguish what (if any) are
the authentic sayings and thoughts of Jesus which
may be embedded in the Johannine interpretation.
It is a method of procedure which has its own
advantages, but I have no intention of handling the
materials on such lines. This is not a handbook
to the gospels, nor a study of the teaching of Jesus,
nor an outline of Christian dogma. The following
pages contain no more than a group of studies, and
they are grouped in order to be as far as possible
genetic and compact. Whether this attempt to
reset the salient data is pronounced successful or
riot, I am convinced that it is more suitable to the
plan of the present series than the conventional
arrangement of the text-books. The index at the
end of the volume and the outline of contents pre-
fixed to each chapter, will enable the reader to find
any topic or passage without loss of time.
JAMES MOEFATT.
OXFORD, July 1, 1912.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PACK
THE GOSPELS AND THEIR THEOLOGY, .... 1
Instinctive objection to the association of theology and the
gospels.
Various reasons for this feeling.
In what sense theology is organic to the gospels.
Different senses in which the four gospels are theological.
The problem of tendency and interpretation :
(i) Practical.
r (ii) Speculative.
Further problems :
(a) Is there a theology of the gospels as distinct from
the rest of the New Testament ?
The relation of Paulinism to the gospels.
(b) Is the theology of the gospels a unity ? The synoptic
gospels and the Fourth.
(c) Is the canonical text of the gospels free from later
doctrinal modification ?
(d) Was the theology of the gospels affected by the
passage from Aramaic into Greek ?
The common element in the theology of the gospels.
Distinctive features of the gospels as gospels.
Specific character of their 'theology.
CHAPTER II
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE GOSFELS, . . . .41
How far is the theology an eschatology ?
Pveccnt research into this question.
xiii
xiv THE THEOLOGY OP THE GOSPELS
^ I-'AOK
The problem synoptic rather than Johannine.
Definition of apocalyptic element, in view of
(a) Sayings which involve that the 'kingdom' was in a
sense present, as well as future, for Jesus.
(b) Significance of prayer, in this connection.
(c) Significance of the ethical teaching of Jesus, in rela-
tion to his eschatology.
Meaning of the 'kingdom,' present and future; the
antinomy presented by the evidence of the gospels on
this point.
Solutions of the antinomy :
(i) The influence of the apostolic church. The
' tendency ' solution.
(ii) Varying emphasis on eschatology at different
periods in the life of Jesus. The 'biographical'
solution,
(iii) Element of pictorial language in the teaching
of Jesus. The ' literary ' solution.
Transmutation of eschatology by Jesus.
CHAPTER III
THE GOD OF JESUS, . . . . . 85
Practical interests of the teaching of Jesus about God :
() The Fatherhood and providence.
Not a justification of idleness or recklessness.
(6) The Fatherhood and the kingdom.
Relation to the divine purpose.
(c) Relation to the miracles.
God and nature.
The transcendental and the immanent God.
The divine presence mediated through Christ.
Jesus and current Jewish titles of God.
His avoidance of the term 'Holy,' and its significance.
The 'righteousness ' of God as the Father, involving love.
Further implications of this :
(i) The self-sacrifice of the divine love,
(ii) Unique manifestation of this in the person and
vocation of the Son.
CONTENTS xv
PAGE
iii) The relation of the Father to human sin.
(iv) The severity and majesty of God as Father.
The function of the Son in the Father's
order of judgment, penitence, and for-
giveness.
CHAPTER IV
9
THE PERSON OF JESUS, .127
The coming of Jesus an epoch.
Significance of his personality in the light of
(a) His divine sonship :
Development of the tradition, through the birth-
stories to the Fourth gospel.
(b) The ' Servant of Y"ahveh ' prophecies :
Directions of this influence.
(c) The ' Son of man ' tradition :
Linguistic problem connected with this title.
Synoptic data and their significance.
(d) The ' Son of David' title.
(e) The ' Beloved ' as a messianic title.
(/) The ' Lord ' as a divine title.
(ff) The synoptic category of ' Wisdom.'
(A) The Johannine category of the Logos.
Belief in Jesus as the Christ : inner development.
The common elements of the christology of the first three
gospels and the Fourth.
Summary.
CHAPTER V
THE SPIRIT OF JESUS, 177
Meaning of the f Spirit ' in connection with Jesus.
Only two references in his teaching :
(i) The Holy Spirit and his own vocation,
(ii) The Spirit in the witness of the disciples before hostile
tribunals.
xvi THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS
PAGE
When did Jesus impart the Spirit to the disciples?
View of the Fourth gospel.
Development of the conception in the Fourth gospel :
(a) The Paraclete.
(I) The Spirit of truth.
(c) In relation to baptism.
(d) In relation to the Lord's Supper.
(e) In relation to the person of Christ.
The synoptic anil the Johannine views.
Conclusion,
BIBLIOGRAPHY, 211
INDEX, . . 215
THE THEOLOGY OP THE GOSPELS
CHAPTER I
THE GOSPELS AND THEIR THEOLOGY
6 THE theology of the gospels ! ' some will exclaim
in dismay, ' and we verily thought the gospels were
a refuge from theology ! ' This is an attitude
towards the religion of Jesus Christ and its records
with which it is often impossible not to feel a certain
sympathy. To be deep in the history of the church,
and especially of its creeds, is for many just persons
to acquire a more or less legitimate suspicion of
theology in connection with the vital religion which
breathes upon them as they turn back to the simple
pages of the gospels. They know, or think they
know, what theology has been and done ; in a number
of cases its services to Christianity seem to have
been accompanied by results which are irrelevant,
if not positively injurious, to such faith in the living
Christ as the gospels commend; its associations
have been so generally with intellectualism and
formalism, with a stereotyped presentation of the
Christian religion in the phraseology and categories
of some philosophical system, which rapidly became
a source of embarrassment to ordinary people, that
it is not altogether surprising to catch a persistent
sense of relief in the popular conviction that the
A
2 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
gospels at any rate leave no room for the intrusion
of theology, and at the same time to detect a
corresponding sense of resentment when that con-
viction is challenged or modified. Nearly forty
years ago a German critic published a rather bitter
and despairing monograph upon what he called
Die Christlichkeit der heutigen Theologie. 1 His thesis
was that theology had invariably played the traitor
to Christianity, that no theology could be called
Christian, and that theology had, in fact, destroyed
the Christian religion. The spirit of this protest
is shared by many who would not agree with its
arguments or objects. So far as the New Testament
is concerned, they would be perfectly willing to
let Paul's theology go, but they would claim the
gospels as documents of religion and not of theology,
documents of the faith in its pure, pre-theological
phase. Theology is the theory of a religion ; it
stands to personal faith as the theory of aesthetics
stands to poetry, as botany to life in the field or
garden. Theology is listening to what man has to
say about God ; personal religion, on the other
hand, is man listening to God, and this is what the
gospels mean. To speak of ' the theology of the
gospels ' is a contradiction in terms.
Nevertheless, it is reasonable to speak of the
theology of the gospels. There is theology behind
even their most spontaneous pages, and they do
not cease on that account to be gospels. We may
even add, it is because they mirror an experience
which tends to become conscious of its issues in
history and nature, that they are gospels.
1 A second edition of F. Overbeck's essay (1879) was issued in
1903.
i.] THE GOSPELS AND THEIR THEOLOGY 3
The reluctance to admit this is based upon an
antipathy to theology in general, which is not
unintelligible, and which is by no means confined
to the place of the unlearned. Theologies have
tended to insist upon the acceptance of doctrines
as if they possessed some virtue in themselves which
enabled them to become practically a substitute
for the life of personal experience which they in-
terpret. Is it so with the theology of the gospels ?
Upon the contrary, the reverse is the case. Such
a tendency may be felt, it is true, within the theology
of the Fourth gospel, but the motto for all the
four gospels might be found not unfairly in the
words used by the writer of the Fourth to define
his purpose : These are written that you may believe
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that
believing you may have life in his Name. 1 They are
interpretations of Christ, written from faith and
for faith, in order to inspire and instruct Christian
life within the churches ; they are not documents
which interpose doctrines between the soul and
Jesus. From one point of view it is hardly adequate
or even accurate to speak about ' the testimony ' of
the gospels. That phrase suggests a subject or
person who is in need of testimony, whose character
and claims require to be authenticated before a
suspicious and uncertain audience. Now, it is
true that there is an apologetic element in the
gospels which corresponds to this idea. They are
written in several instances with a view to objections
felt by the Jewish, Jewish - Christian, or Greek
world of the day ; there was the Jewish faith
with an uncrucified messiah, for example, and the
1 John xx. 31.
4 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
Greek with no messiah at all. But fundamentally
their audience is one of those who believe already,
and the doubts and uncertainties which they essay
to remove are occasioned by the relation of human
faith to Christ. Their best apologetic is the positive
confession of their faith. So far as they introduce
doctrines, it is to confirm that faith by drawing out
its basis in the person of Christ, and by thus proving
it is more than a pious intuition. The underlying
principle is that personal belief in Christ carries
with it convictions of His relation to God and the
world which are organic to the religious experience.
Even their theology, such as it is, may be said to
be implicit rather than explicit, for the most part,
until we come to the Fourth gospel, where a special
interpretation of the person of Christ, semi-philo-
sophic, semi-mystical, lies on the surface of the
record as well as of the prologue. In the synoptic
gospels what we see are beliefs in action, or actions
which involve certain beliefs. Jesus does not teach
any summa theologiae. He acts for God and teaches
about God with an underived note of authority.
His presence sets in motion a common life which is
determined by His revelation of God's character
and purpose, and the churches in which and for which
the gospels were written were not schools of
theology, but communities organised for the worship
of God and the service of His kingdom in the Spirit
of Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, the most elementary
and spontaneous experience of the Christian religion,
then as now, involved what may be termed without
inaccuracy dogmatic or theological conceptions.
When Paul reminded the Christians of Corinth
that the first principles of their faith included a
i.] THE GOSPELS AND THEIR THEOLOGY 5
belief that Christ had died for their sins according
to the scriptures of the Old Testament, he was not
expressing a Pauline theologumenon, but a belief
without which there would have been no Christianity
at all. It is difficult even for the simple piety
which with a sure instinct finds its way to the direct
and vital passages of revelation in the gospels, to
ignore the fact that the religion of Jesus does involve
a theology of some kind. 1 It meets us on the very
threshold of Matthew and Luke, to say nothing of
John. 2 Even in what is sometimes regarded as
the most human and realistic of the gospels the
reader comes upon a divine voice and vision at the
baptism, the personality of Satan, and the environ-
ment of unclean spirits in disease, before he reaches
the end of the first chapter in Mark. Something
has to be made of all this. We must come to terms
with the problems started by designations like
The Son of God, the Son of man, the Logos, and the
Spirit. Whether these are retained or dropped,
in either case there is a pronouncement upon Jesus
and early Christianity which has to justify itself
before the criticism of the records and the larger
criticism of the Christian consciousness.
There is also a natural impatience and suspicion
of theology not only as irrelevant if not injurious to
the Christian heart, but as an invasion of the rights
which belong to the mind. Christian theology has
sometimes been presented in ways which threaten
1 'The word "God" is a Theology in itself (Newman, The Idea
of a University, p. 26).
2 A theology implies a philosophy, in the sense that it presupposes
some theory of knowledge and therefore of personality. The Fourth
gospel, from this point of view, has a much more articulate theology
than its predecessors.
6 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
to foreclose the inquiry and activity of thought by
elevating the phraseology of some particular age
to a position of finality. How does the study of
the theology of the gospels bear upon this objection ?
In the first instance, it reveals a rich and flexible
variety of conceptions which proves that the primitive
church was not committed to any stereotyped theory
of the person of Christ in relation to God and the
world. In the second instance, the gospels afford
a standard and a spirit for that revision and re-
adjustment of Christian theology which is from
time to time the duty of the living Church. The
gospels are a refuge from theologies which have
ceased to represent the Christian experience with
adequate fulness and accuracy. But they are not a
refuge from theology, except when theology either
lifts some transient element to a position of primacy
or imposes upon the gospels the schemes of a later
fashion in philosophy.
The former danger is always with us. The
theology of the gospels, like the theology of any
age or movement, is related to the contemporary
conceptions of the world and of God ; it is moulded
and coloured by current ideas of nature and the
supernatural, otherwise it would have been un-
intelligible and ineffective for its period. But it
embodies classic and fundamental elements to which
these are not essential, and for which fresh expressions
can be found, more consonant with the advance of
knowledge and experience. This means more than
the fact of current cosmic and psychological beliefs
entering into the minds of those who transmitted
the tradition of Jesus ; it means that they formed
part of the religious world of Jesus Himself. The
i.] THE GOSPELS AND THEIR THEOLOGY 7
theology of Christianity is not simply a transcript
of everything that Jesus thought and said about the
world. There are elements even in His teaching, e.g.
on demonology and eschatology, which have not
passed over into our world. The Fourth gospel,
with its characteristic attitude of reticence to both
of these elements, is enough to show that they are
not vital to the fundamental beliefs of Christianity,
and tha^t they may be dropped or modified without
loss to the faith. The varying emphasis of even
the synoptic gospels upon certain aspects of the
person of Jesus indicates that the theology of the
gospels was already conscious of the problem
which vexes modern theology with regard to the
christological issue, and that it anticipates the lines
along which that problem is to be met.
The second of the two dangers which have been
just mentioned is equally perennial. There is a
vivid expression of it in one of Pascal's private
letters to a novice of Port-Royal. 1 He quotes from
Mark xiii. 14-15 : When you see the abominable
thing in the place where it ought not to be, then let
no one turn back to his house to take anything away.
' Mais cette parole est etonnante. II me semble que
cela predit parfaitement le temps ou nous sommes,
ou la corruption de la morale est aux maisons de
saintete, et dans les livres des theologiens et des
religieux ou elle ne devrait pas etre.' The whole
chapter seems to him a prediction of the contemporary
degradation of the Christian religion in the Roman
church and in the French world alike. ' Ce chapitre
de I'Evangile, que je voudfais lire avec vous tout
entier, finit par une exhortation a veiller et a prier
1 Pensees de Pascal (6d. Havet), ii. pp. 341-2.
8 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
pour eviter tous ces malheurs, et en effet il est bien
juste que la priere soit continuelle quand le peril
est continuel.' If Pascal's suspicion of theology
was justified in the seventeenth century, it has been
more than justified since then, outside as well as
inside the church of Rome. It has prompted the
movement ' Back to Christ ' from the formulas and
speculations which had usurped the place of Jesus
in the minds of His people, or, in Lessing's neat
antithesis, from the Christian religion to the religion
of Christ. One drawback to this movement has
been that in casting back to Christ, or rather to the
Jesus of history, moderns have often taken back a
Christ of their own creation, a conception of Jesus
which is tacitly read into the gospels. And this
error is bound up with another, with the failure to
see that the very contact with the Jesus of the
gospels involves a theological reconstruction 1 a
reconstruction, doubtless, in which the fundamental
and vital factor is the life of Christ, not any doctrine
about His person, but still a reconstruction which
calls out the thoughts of faith, ' thoughts of things
which,' in Sir Thomas Browne's phrase, ' thoughts
but tenderly touch.'
v From the standpoint of modern theology 2
Christocentric views may be as logically superseded
1 In the sense that Christianity cannot remain a religion of intui-
tions, without reflection upon its relation to life and nature. Of.
Caird's Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers, i. 6 f . ('It
has never been, and can never be, a religion of simple faith ; or, if it
ever relapses into such a faith, it immediately begins to lose its
spiritual character, and to assimilate itself to religions that are lower
in the scale').
2 Of. Troeltsch, Die Bedeutung der Geschichtlichkeit Jesu fur den
Glauben, 1911, pp. 15 f.
i.] THE GOSPELS AND THEIR THEOLOGY 9
as geocentric conceptions in cosmology or anthropo-
centric ideas in metaphysics, but the theology of the
gospels represents the religious interpretations and
experiences of men within the apostolic church
for whom the world had been transformed by the
revelation of God in Jesus Christ, and to whom the
worship and service of God had become a new
reality through the Spirit of the Lord. The data
and materials of this theology lie in the divine
revelation made through Jesus Christ. It is the
character and purpose of Christ, His personality,
His disclosure of the divine nature in word and deed,
the experiences to which His Spirit gave rise it is
these that form the staple of any theology which
we find within the gospels. 1 Its subject and object
is faith as a moral decision evoked by the call and
claim of Jesus as God's Son. A theologian ought
therefore to feel at home in the study of the gospels,
not because he can forget for a little that he is a
1 To the age in which the gospel traditions arose the Old Testa-
ment was a rich source of proof for the Christian attitude to Judaism,
Jesus, and the future. The evangelists drew upon it as a Christian
book, inspired by the Spirit of God, and their use of it went much
further than the appeal to prophecies of Christ. But (i) Jesus Him-
self drew upon the deeper ideals and prophecies, and (ii) the attempt
to explain large sections of the gospel narratives and fundamental
conceptions of Christ's teaching as no more than the reproduction of
Old Testament passages does not carry us very far. Tertullian's
' Lex radix evangelii ' is an epigram rather than a historical estimate,
and as for the narratives, Wellhausen's comment (on Mark iv. 38)
holds good : * This story is not the echo of the story of Jonah. It is
rarely the case that the gospel stories owe their origin to Old Testa-
ment prototypes. . . . What was known and handed down about
Jesus really did not agree with what the Old Testament contained
about the messiah and what the Jews expected of him ; it was only
with difficulty that one could show how the contradictions disappeared
before the eyes of the enlightened.'
10 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
theologian, but because lie is breathing in their
pages an atmosphere charged with the fresh experi-
ences and intuitions which are essential to any
theology which deserves the name of Christian. 1
He will first of all put himself into their attitude
towards Jesus Christ, not because that involves the
adoption of a first-century view of the world, but
because it is a religious attitude which is determined
by the Spirit of the Lord within the Church. Before
we can safely reason from the gospels we have to
share their position towards the great personality
behind and above them. No inferences from
their contents are valid apart from a sense of the
redeeming facts and truths which inspire them,
and which are larger than any contemporary elements
in the records or in the historical setting which
they presuppose. The amount of relativity in
the theology of the gospels only looks formidable
when they are approached along the avenue of
mechanical preconceptions or hyper-sceptical pre-
judices.
M. Anatole France quotes the defiant retort of
a modern Frenchman, M. Charles Maurras, when
some one cited against him a saying from the gospels :
' Je ne me soucie pas de savoir ce que quatre Juifs
obscurs ont pense de Jesus-Christ ! ' 2 The authors
of the gospels were obscure ; at least, their person-
alities are obscure to us at the present day, with
the exception of Luke. But some of the greatest
truths of religion have come from the pen of
anonymous writers ; the gospels in this respect are
on the same plane as the larger part of the Old
1 Cf. Father Tyrrell's Medievalism, p. 129.
2 In The English Review (April 1910), p. 45.
i.] THE GOSPELS AND THEIR THEOLOGY 11
Testament. Besides, to reflect a theology is not
the same thing as to be a theologian. Nor do the
gospels represent three or four writers each of
whom is engaged in reproducing a conception of
Christ from his devout ego ; what they voice is
the common faith as it was held in various circles of
the apostolic church, and this common faith rests
upon the thoughts of Jesus Christ, upon His con-
victions of God, His judgments of men, His attitude
to the world. Through the idealisation of the
records, through their tacit corrections and avowed
predilections, through categories which are only
partially adequate, through misconceptions and
exaggerations, through the refraction of con-
temporary interests and preoccupations, a theology
shines which is not wholly obscure, and through the
theology a Figure which is still less obscure.
It is important to keep in view the range and
organic character of these variations in the develop-
ment of the theology of the gospels. The climax of
the Fourth gospel is the appeal of the risen Christ :
Be not faithless but believing, and the reply of Thomas
(the last words addressed to Christ by a disciple)
expresses the end at which the writer conceives faith
will arrive under the growing revelation of God in
Christ : My Lord and my God. What the theology
of the gospels mirrors is the process, or rather the
processes, of experience and reflection which ripened
faith into this fundamental conviction of the Church.
The Fourth gospel puts back into the life and teach-
ing of Jesus on earth convictions and experiences
of His spiritual significance which only dawned in
their fulness upon the Church after the resurrec-
tion. This is a source of endless perplexity to the
12 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
historical critic. It is not a feature which is wholly
absent even from the synoptic gospels, but the
extent to which it prevails in the Fourth gospel
constitutes a problem by itself. The plus of preach-
ing, which enters into the synoptic record as a
product of the early church's testimony, becomes
in the Fourth gospel at several points a surplus
of religious and theological reflection, which often
obscures and sometimes resets the historical outlines
of the ministry and teaching of Jesus as these can
be unravelled in the sources of the first three gospels.
But the theological continuity between the Fourth
gospel and its predecessors is not so difficult to
trace once the former is regarded as primarily an
interpretation of faith in the historical manner.
The theology of Mark, for example, is not a
description of how a genial humanitarian Jesus went
about doing good, unconscious of any specific divine
functions. Mark's gospel is the story of Jesus as
a supernatural figure, compelling homage from the
invisible world of demons, and exercising the powers
of divine forgiveness and authority on earth as
Son of God and Son of man. Mark, as Wellhausen
observes, is not writing de vita et moribus Jesu. He
essays indeed to make His personality vivid, but
that personality has a divine vocation which supplies
the controlling interest of the story : Jesus is the
Christ, the Son of God. In this respect the Christo-
logy of Mark is not so distant from the essential
features even of the Fourth gospel. It is possible
to feel this affinity, apart from the special argument
of J. Weiss (Das alteste Evangelium, pp. 97 f.), that
Mark's use of the titles ' Son of man ' and ' Son of
God ' proves his acceptance of the Pauline idea of
i.] THE GOSPELS AND THEIR THEOLOGY 13
Jesus as a Man descended from heaven. Mark,
like Paul and the author of the Fourth gospel,
does not explain how the divine being took flesh ;
in this respect his christology is less developed than
that of Matthew or Luke, but the fundamental
conception of the person of Christ is already present
in his gospel, and present as the dominant feature
of the story. \
Matthew's theology is at once more precisely
messianic and more definitely Christian in the
sense that Jesus as the Son of God is more than
messiah. As the Son of the Father and as the Lord
of men, He occupies a place which does not depend
on any arguments from prophecy. Faith in Him
is made more explicit. Some of the most perplexing
antinomies in Matthew's gospel spring out of the
juxtaposition of sayings which imply a long
perspective for the kingdom and eschatological
predictions of the most pronounced type, of Jewish-
Christian sections and catholic apergus ; there is
also a noticeable reserve in the use of the exorcism
traditions, which bulk so largely in the Marcan
estimate. But it is in the sphere of ethics rather
than of theology proper that Matthew's gospel
differs from that of his predecessor. 1 The theological
characteristics are also due in the main to the rabbinic
methods of the author, which tend to present the
christology in a less naive and popular form than
Mark's narrative.
1 The author has a twofold object in view : to explain to Jewish
Christians how God's kingdom, which Jesus had inaugurated, was so
different from the traditional theocracy of expectation, and to re-
assure Gentile Christians who were perplexed by its apparent limita-
tion to Israel. See B. Weiss, Die Quellen der Synoptischen Ueber-
lieferung, pp. 234 f.
14 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
Luke's theology is as catholic as Matthew's in
spirit and more so in expression. The wider rela-
tion of Jesus to humanity shimmers through the
Jewish environment. He is the son of Adam, not of
Abraham or David, in the genealogy, and as the Son
of God He occupies a place which is more intelligible
than Matthew or even Mark represents, to non-
Jewish readers. In the accounts of the resurrection
Luke is distinctly realistic ; more than once there is
a materialising of the story, which contrasts with
Matthew. But the theological estimate, even with
its increasing emphasis on the Spirit, is essentially
true to that of his predecessors, while in several
respects it forms a development in the direction of
the Fourth gospel. Keim insists that metaphysics
are beginning already to attach themselves to the
personality of Jesus ; so far as this means that Jesus
is not ceasing to occupy a unique position towards
God even while the messianic character is becoming
a less important category, it is accurate.
There are varieties of interpretation here, which
evince a certain maturing of faith, but they are neither
casual nor irresponsible. A survey of such variations
is apt to leave the impression that the theological
aspect of the tradition, if not the historical, is due
mainly if not entirely to speculative interests
operating within a world of heterogeneous messianic
and Hellenic ideas about the Son of God. It is
necessary therefore to recollect two facts : in the
first place, that these interpretations of Jesus as the
Christ arose from the instinctive desire to represent,
in terms of current thought, the person of One
whom the churches worshipped as their Lord ;
and in the second place, that this desire was also
I.] THE GOSPELS AND THEIR THEOLOGY u*
motived repeatedly by practical exigencies. The
former aspect is more generally recognised than the
second, but both need to be considered fairly in
order to appreciate the genesis of the theology of
the gospels. The setiological motive led to the
preservation and the shaping of traditions about the
rites and laws and future of the society which owed
its origin to the faith of Jesus. The apologetic
aspect of that motive, as in the case of Matthew and
the Fourth gospel especially, sharpened interest in
the anti-Jewish or rather anti-Pharisaic attitude of
Jesus. Finally, the internal controversies of the
early church, especially the trouble over the Law,
inevitably affected the christology, and started
fresh attempts to present in historical form the
relation of Jesus to Israel and to the world outside
Israel. In addition to all this, there was the
influence of contemporary history, which must have
affected in particular the tradition of the eschatologi-
cal sayings. c The transmission of sayings as to the
future, and the actual unfolding of that future,
went on side by side. It seems inevitable that the
latter should affect the former.' l All this does not
rule out tendency, conscious as well as unconscious,
from the gospels. What it does is to emphasise
the practical, religious motive in many of the
modifications which the tradition presents, and to
bring out the fact that such variations were not
idiosyncrasies of the authors. They point back
not to four obscure Jews but to what may be termed
communal instincts communal instincts which
ultimately rest upon an inherent belief in Jesus as
the Christ. A study of the gospels from the
1 H. B. Sharman, The Teaching of Jesus about the Future, p. 138*
16 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
historical or from the literary standpoint would
require to estimate the genesis and growth of such
tendencies, to assign the midrashic element its
proper value, and to distinguish the sections where
some religious idea is presented in historical form,
where a miracle has grown out of a parable or a
religious belief in the course of tradition, for example,
or where some incident is symbolic. The theological
appreciation of the gospels cannot entirely dispense
with such methods of treatment, but its primary
concern is with what the writers believed about
Jesus rather than with the exact forms in which
they happened to express that belief. No doubt,
it is the beliefs which have sometimes created the
history. But the beliefs, however naively expressed,
were not floating in the air ; they are organic to the
substantial faith without which there would not
have been any gospels at all, and that faith was
not created by any crisis, practical or speculative,
through which the primitive church had to pass.
The theology of the gospels has been shaped by
the exigencies and experiences of the apostolic age,
but it was not their simple product. In one aspect,
it is the reflection of the very faith which enabled
the early Christians to be Christians. In another
aspect, it suggests that the creative genius of the
Founder is not to be overlooked in estimating the
records drawn up by His adherents. When the
gospels contain sayings which appear to suit some
crisis or situation in the apostolic age, it does not
necessarily follow that they arose from that period
or have been shaped to harmonise with it. Tendency
in the church was not more creative than Jesus. ' Of
course, there are numerous instances of hysteron-
i.] THE GOSPELS AND THEIR THEOLOGY 17
proteron in the gospels the merest suggestion of
practical aim or purpose leads to a hysteron-proteron,
and the gospels follow practical aims yet it by
no means follows that saying after saying must have
been coloured and corrected in accordance with the
circumstances of later times.' x This is a sound canon.
It applies particularly to the references to persecution,
but it has a wider range, and it must be allowed
to qualify any inferences that may be drawn as to
the presence and extent of tendency in the recorded
speeches of Jesus throughout the synoptic tradition.
At the same time, there is a speculative back-
ground to the theology of the gospels. There were
christologies, messianic 2 and in a sense Hellenic,
before the gospels, before even Christianity, and
the special views of the gospels are sometimes
expressed either in terms of these or with a more or
less conscious reference to them. It is necessary,
however, for our present purpose to restrict the
theology of the gospels to the religious ideas of
Jesus and the evangelists, so far as they were
conscious of their range and origin. There is a
misty hinterland behind conceptions like the Son of
man, the Logos, the incarnation, and the last judg-
ment, which involves researches into comparative
religion beyond the pale of Judaism. All such con-
ceptions we shall take as they were used by Jesus
1 Harnack, The Sayings of Jesus, p. 204.
2 The interpretation of the Old Testament, allegorical and other-
wise, depends on the principle that Christ was the end of the divine
revelation in Judaism, and that the law and the prophets were there-
fore to be read in the light of the end. The theology of the gospels
contains, amid its uses of the Old Testament, a substantially correct
estimate of the preceding literature of Judaism ; it is employed to
illustrat3 rather than to prove the Christian belief in Jesus.
B
18 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
and the authors of the gospels, without discussing
e.g. the rise of the animistic view which lies behind
the faith in demons and angels and the Spirit, or
even the relation between the Oriental avatar idea
and the Fourth gospel's christology. Still further, it
is irrelevant to the central problems of the theology
of the gospels to enter into detailed discussion of
the affinities between Pharisaic Judaism and the
religion of Jesus, or to give explicit resumes of the
difference between His teaching and contemporary
scribism. It is sufficient to keep the latter before
one's mind. The relation of Jesus to the Law,
for example, is an outcome of His consciousness as
messiah, and in these pages it is noticed simply
from that standpoint ; otherwise it falls under the
category of His ethical praxis rather than of His
theology. The latter is concerned with the inner
principles of His religion, which determined the
course of His career and His attitude to questions
like those of divorce, the sabbath, and the temple.
The theology of the gospels was a cause as well as
an effect, however. It marks the rise of a creative
genius on the soil of Judaism, and it entered into the
history of the Christian Church. To understand the
gospels we ought to study their influence as well as
their environment and origin, and in a manual of
New Testament theology or a history of dogma
this consideration is borne in mind. Here space
forbids more than a glance at the most important
movement in the theology of the period, namely,
the religious system of Paul. The relation between
this and the gospels is one of interaction. It is
now recognised that the tendency to minimise
Paul's interest in and acquaintance with the life of
I.] THE GOSPELS AND THEIR THEOLOGY 19
Jesus has been carried beyond what the data of his
epistles warrant. In that sense, the primitive
tradition of Jesus which underlies the synoptic
gospels had an effect on Paulinism. Jesus was
something more to Paul than a figure round which a
floating christology crystallised. But the theology
of the gospels is not the theology of Paul ; the
sources of the synoptic writings, Mark in its primitive
form and Q, cannot be dated earlier than the
Pauline movement, and it is the effect of Paulinism
upon the gospels, not vice versa, which has to be
considered.
(a) This raises the first of the preliminary problems
regarding the critical use of the gospels for the
purpose of ascertaining their theology : Is there a
theology of the gospels apart from the rest of the
New Testament ? Were they merely transcripts of
the teaching of Jesus, upon which the epistles were
comments, it would be at once possible to answer
such a question in the affirmative. But the gospels
are products of the apostolic age, and their origin
is significant for any appreciation of their contents.
It is impracticable, on the other hand, to treat them
as no more than products of the apostolic faith,
uncontrolled by any definite gospel of Jesus behind
them. What the theologian has to do is to de-
termine the extent to which the tendencies and
interests of the primitive church affected the tradi-
tion at any given point, and this involves intricate
questions of historical and literary criticism, many
of which are still unanswered. There is the prob-
lem of the parables, for example. How far has
the conception of the Church moulded the con-
ception of the Reign in the parabolic traditions of
20 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
Matthew and even of Mark ? Have later associa-
tions of the Church been carried over into the
primitive words of Jesus upon the Reign of God in
more parables than those of the drag-net and the
tares ? Or has the hypothesis of the equivalence of
Church and Kingdom in Paul been exaggerated ?
Again, is a section like Mark viii. 27-x. 45 (as Bacon
and Wellhausen independently argue) substantially
a projection of later Christian views into the original
tradition, an unhistorical expansion of the Christian
credo that the Christ must suffer ? Here also, we
may suspect, there is exaggeration. The occurrence of
several logia in the passage which are vouched for
by Q, and the presence of undoubtedly historical
incidents in the narrative, help to confirm the
impression that this section on the Christ and the
cross is not out of keeping in the main with the
situation of Jesus and His disciples. Similarly it
is impossible to regard the predictions of the
resurrection or the declarations of the messianic
vocation as purely apostolic ; without some basis
in the teaching and life of Jesus their form and
existence in the tradition are not explicable. Thus
the term Son of man, in its messianic sense, is not
wholly due to the pious reverence of the early
Christians, who were responsible for attaching
divine significance to a name which in the original
Aramaic upon the lips of Jesus meant no more
than ' man ' or ' some one,' or a self -designation.
This we shall see later on. Meantime it is enough
to point out that such problems meet the theologian
as he proceeds to use the gospels for his special
purposes, and that they forbid us to take the
documents either as pure products of tendency
L] THE GOSPELS AND THEIR THEOLOGY 21
or as uncoloured transcripts of some original and
authoritative teaching. Before any one of them
was written Paul had thought and taught. It is
true that the theology of the early church embraced
a variety of types which cannot be reduced to Jewish
and Gentile Christianity respectively, much less to
the influence of the great apostle ; but he was the
first theologian of the Church, his letters present a
fairly clear outline of his views, and his influence
therefore has to be taken primarily into account as
a factor in the evolution of the religious conceptions
which the four gospels voice, in so far as these
cannot be traced back with certainty to the teaching
of Jesus Himself.
With regard to the Fourth gospel, the relation
is comparatively clear. By the time it was composed
the great Pauline struggle with the Jewish Christians
had been long since fought and won. The writer
practically assumes the freedom of Christians from
the Law while the Law was given through Moses,
grace and truth came through Jesus Christ, the world-
wide range of Christ's mission, and the supersession
of Judaism as a religious system. In its christology,
as well as in its conceptions of the Spirit, of the
union between the believer and Christ, of freedom,
of glory, and even of faith, the Fourth gospel bears
ample traces of the Pauline theology. In almost
every instance the writer has modified or expanded
what he has taken over ; his theology is not simply
a development of Paulinism, but Paulinism is one
of its most important presuppositions. ' Upon one
side, we may characterise what is essential and
original in the Johannine view by saying that it
represents a synthesis of the primitive apostolic
22 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
tradition with Paulinism,' * although we must add
that some conceptions which are apparently due
to the latter may have been anticipated in the
former or elsewhere.
The problem of the relation of Paulinism to the
synoptic gospels comes to a head in the criticism
of Mark, where one critic alleges that to understand
Mark the reader must forget all about Paulinism, 2
while others only differ in the extent to which they
assign the operation of Pauline influences upon the
narrative and teaching of the gospel. Once or
twice there are water-marks of the evangelist's
Pauline environment, for example in the connota-
tion of the term gospel, in the determinism of the
parabolic theory (iv. 10-12), which is upon the whole
more likely to have come from the Pauline view of
Israel's rejection than from any eschatological
theory upon the part of Jesus, and also in the
symbolic allusion to the rending of the veil of the
temple. But the characteristic features of the
gospel hardly show any impact of conscious or
radical Paulinism ; the universalism e.g. is prophetic
rather than Pauline ; and the use of non-Pauline terms
like the Son of man proves that the author adhered
to the primitive tradition rather than to the Pauline
soteriology. I share the opinion of those who
1 A. Titius, Die Johanneische Anschauung unter dem Gesichts-
punkt der Seligkeit, p. 2.
2 Wernle, Die Synoptische Frage, pp. 199 f. ' The specific features
of Paulinism are entirely absent from Mark. . . . The Christology
contradicts that of Paul in almost every point.' This position is
more easily held by those who, like Wernle, still believe in a Petrine
tradition behind Mark. The best examination of the problem is
by the great French critic Lagrange in his edition of Mark (pp.
cxl.-cL).
i.l THE GOSPELS AND THEIR THEOLOGY 23
conclude that the so-called Paulinism of Mark
does not amount to very much after all. 1 The
gospel is in the main undogmatic ; so far as it is
dogmatic it is not specifically Pauline.
As for Q, it is generally recognised that, so far
as its characteristic features can be made out, it
was not stamped with Paulinism. The Palestinian
circles in which it originated represented a type of
primitive theology which in all likelihood lay out-
side the direct influence of the apostle's teaching.
The character of Matthew's gospel, with the Jewish-
Christian tinge of certain strata, naturally marks it
off from Paulinism ; as a matter of fact, it is anti-
Pauline tendency which is usually discovered 2 in this
gospel by those who bring it into any relation to
the apostle. Luke's friendship with Paul places his
work in a different category. The narrative of the
Lord's Supper, for example (even in its shorter
form), and the occasional use of Pauline phrases
and terms (e.g. in xxi. 34-6), betray the writer's
affinity with Paulinism, but the remarkable thing
is that there are so few specifically Pauline ideas
wrought into the texture of a gospel whose author
stood within the Pauline circle. The atmosphere
of the primitive church can be felt ; c Paulinism '
as a doctrine of the person of Jesus Christ is oon-
1 Cf. Menzies, The Earliest Gospel, p. 39.
2 Imagined, sometimes. Thus Professor Bacon (Beginnings of
Gospel Story, p. 132) comments severely upon Matthew's version of
Christ's answer to the rich young ruler: to make obedience to the
commandments the condition of entrance into life eternal, he declares,
is ' a photographic revelation of that Jewish- Christian legalism against
which Paul brought to bear all the powers of his logic and of his life. '
Who wrote, Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing,
but the keeping of the commandments of God ?
24 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
spicuously absent. A scrutiny of the very passages
where Pauline influence is most likely to have been
present discloses the fact that ' Luke has not appro-
priated any specific doctrine of Paul, but only made
his own in all their generality the gains of the great
apostle's life-work freedom from the law, and the
assurance that salvation is open to all.' x There are
occasional traces of Pauline language as well as
thought, e.g. in viii. 12, x. 8 (cf. 1 Cor. x. 27), and
xx. 38 (=Rom. vi. 10, xiv. 7-8), but Luke could be
a friend of Paul without sharing his specific theology,
and an analysis of the Third gospel turns the
{ could be ' into c was.'
(b) The foregoing discussion has already opened
up a further query : Is it feasible, and if so in what
sense, to speak about a theology of the four gospels ?
Even the three synoptic gospels have their special
characteristics, and then there is the familiar problem
of the differences between the general synoptic
theology and the Johannine.
As for the former problem, the exhaustive and
intricate processes of synoptic criticism are apt to
engross us till we forget to view
' The parts
As parts, but with a feeling of the whole.'
Important as their characteristics are for the
study of primitive religion in the apostolic churches,
their common characteristic is more important still.
We raise questions, more or less vital, about the
gospels, but the gospels have only one question to
put to us : What think ye of Christ ? and they put
1 Schmiedel, Encyclopaedia Biblica, p. 1841.
i.] THE GOSPELS AND THEIR THEOLOGY 25
it, sure of what the answer ought to be. No amount
of discrepancies and idiosyncrasies should be allowed
to obscure this predominating interest, especially
as all three have a close literary connection. Besides
some special sources which underlie the First and
the Third gospels respectively, Mark's gospel, either
in its present form or in an earlier shape, has
been employed by Matthew and Luke, both of
whom also seem to have drawn, in different ways,
upon an earlier collection of the sayings of Jesus,
to which the convenient term Q is usually applied.
Critics are still divided upon the question whether
Mark used Q, or vice versa, or even whether there
was any literary connection between them. For
the purpose of discovering the theology of the
gospels, however, such points are of subordinate
importance. It would be more relevant if we
could be sure of the precise contents and therefore
of the theological colour of Q, particularly in
relation to the apocalyptic eschatology. But even
this is still uncertain. What is certain, as we have
already seen, is that the tendency to magnify the
person of Jesus Christ, which is the characteristic
feature of the Fourth gospel, is already present in
the synoptic tradition from the first. It is well
marked in the structure of Matthew and Luke
even as compared with the earlier Mark. The
most casual reader can hardly miss alterations in
one or both of the later synoptic gospels which
were plainly due to the growing reverence for Jesus
as the Christ. Not only is there a disposition, as
it has been said, to spare the twelve to soften one
or two sayings and incidents which appeared to
reflect upon the memory and reputation of the
26 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
Church's early leaders and, on the other hand,
to bring their importance into more relief, but the
religious value of Jesus to the Church appears to
have operated to some extent in the direction of
toning down expressions which seemed too frankly
human, and of altering others in order to convey
an impression of Christ's person more consonant
with the pi etas of the apostolic church. Thus
both Matthew and Luke suppress the flash of anger
which Jesus showed in the synagogue at Capernaum
(Mark iii. 5), and His indignation, later on, at the
disciples who tried to prevent the mothers from
bringing their children for a blessing (Mark x. 14).
There are repeated instances of this tendency, but
such phenomena are neither numerous nor important
enough to justify the hypothesis that the synoptic
gospels represent a gradual apotheosis of Jesus in
the faith of the early church. Whether we postulate
an earlier form of Mark or not, both of the main
traditions or sources which underlie the synoptic
gospels attest a primitive belief in Jesus as the
Christ ; they presuppose a confession of faith
which reaches back prior to Paul, and the essential
characteristics of their christology point to their
independence of the contemporary Pauline theology.
To quote only one instance of a synoptic implicate
for a Johannine theologumenon : the conception
of Christ as chosen by a pre-temporal act of God
for His mission on earth is not confined to the Fourth
gospel ; it appears, in a messianic form, in the
synoptic view of God's good pleasure as shown in
the election of the messiah to carry out the divine
purpose of revelation on earth. Thus a passage
like the adapted quotation in Matt. xii. 18 (Behold
i.] THE GOSPELS AND THEIR THEOLOGY 27
my Son, whom I adopted, my Beloved, in whom my
soul took delight) is exactly parallel to the Johannine
description of Christ as Him whom the Father con-
secrated and sent into the world. What is emphasised
in the Fourth gospel is in the background of the
synoptic theology ; still, it is there.
Such conceptions of God and Christ or of the
world we are accustomed to term ' Johannine,'
since they are presented in a document which the
second century associated with the authorship of
John. But this presentation is only their final and
classical form. The ' Johannine ' theology embodies
conceptions like those of the Logos and of the
Spirit which had been already current, in incipient
forms, throughout not only Egyptian and Hellenistic
circles but even the earlier theology of Paul and the
synoptic gospels, and the less isolated we make
them the more characteristic they become. The
stamp of comparative originality is upon Johannine
conceptions like those of light and truth and glory.
Nevertheless, even such ideas presuppose an
atmosphere of common interest and sympathy.
They are typical of a mode of thought at the close
of the first century, which had been growing for
decades in certain circles, and which renders explicit
and coherent a number of earlier intuitions of the
primitive Christian religion within as well as without
the first three gospels.
It is certainly the case that the element of inter-
pretation is considerably larger in the Fourth gospel
than in the first three. In the dialogues and even
in the prayers of Christ there are deliberate arguments
and statements about the relation between God and
Christ, between Christ and men, between the world
28 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
and God. The object of the book is, no doubt,
practical and spiritual, but the predominant con-
ception is that of the supreme value which attaches
to the person of Christ as the incarnate Logos through
whom the divine reality has entered this unsub-
stantial world, and in whom the believing man
attains to life eternal. At first sight it does
appear as though theology had prevailed over faith.
We may feel that the doctrinal significance of Christ's
person, cosmological and mysterious, has lifted an
Alexandrian theosophy * into the place formerly
occupied by the simpler self-revelation of Jesus
in word and deed. This is not the final impression
of the book, however. There are other elements
which modify such a verdict. At the same time,
it is not unreasonable to forecast, from the trend
of recent criticism, that some of the historical
sections iiv the synoptic tradition will be found
closer to the Johannine stories than has hitherto
been imagined. One or two of the synoptic miracles,
for example, show the same creative pressure of
tendency as the Johannine the naive dramatisation
of a belief in an anecdote, the symbolic story, or the
passage of a parable into a miracle. As an offset
to this, we may count not only the recognition of
1 Kreyenbiihl (Evangdium d. Wahrheit, i. 383 f.) asserts that in
the prologue it is Plato whom we hear, not Philo, and that if there
is any allusion to the latter it is by way of polemic. It is true that
John's Logos is not a vice-god or a subordinate divine power, but the
Philonic background of the Fourth gospel's theology is unmistakable.
Where the gospel reminds us of Plato is in the dialogues as much as
in the prologue ; the dialectic, which aims at confounding the
opponents and which develops arguments in narrative form, recalls
the Platonic method even more than the prologue recalls the Platonic
spirit.
i.] THE GOSPELS AND THEIR THEOLOGY 29
superior historical traditions in the Fourth gospel
(as e.g. the date of Christ's death), but what is
more important for our present purpose the
perception of so-called c Johannine ' conceptions
present, though as a rule in more or less undeveloped
form, within the synoptic theology. The loss, from
the standpoint of historicity, is counterbalanced
by a gain theologically.
To sum up, the religious view of Jesus Christ
which the synoptic gospels represent, under all
their idiosyncrasies and characteristic categories,
carries with it presuppositions which led not
unnaturally to the later estimate of His person in
the pages of the Fourth gospel. The latter's
christology was not simply the attempt of an
independent thinker to restate, in terms of the
Logos idea, a conception of Christ which Paul had
been primarily responsible for domiciling within
the faith of primitive Christianity. The germs of it
may be found within the theology of the synoptic
gospels. The more consistently we refuse to
harmonise at any cost the theological as well as the
historical contents of the four gospels, the better
we shall be able to realise that their authors might
have protested with justice, though we or an angel
from heaven were to preach any gospel other than
what we preached to you, let him be anathema. That
was indeed the passionate protest of one whose
theology was distinctive, if anything was distinctive
in early Christian thought, and it might be argued
that the author of the Fourth gospel, for example,
like Paul, was more revolutionary than perhaps he
realised. A great thinker, like a great reformer,
will sometimes claim, in all good faith, that he is
30 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
only reproducing what is common to himself and
his age, although in reality, as events prove, he is
less conservative than he imagines. But while the
plane of thought in the Fourth gospel is obviously
different from that which characterises the general
strata of the first three, it is the same Jesus who is
behind and above all four. There are traits common
to the Fourth gospel and its predecessors, and
these are not confined to the use of similar language
nor to the occasional presence of elements native
to the earlier church's belief which are preserved
amid the distinctive and original ideas of that gospel
itself. It is through the latter, not outside of them,
that historical criticism can detect features which
mark a line of continuity between the first three
gospels and the Fourth in point of their theology.
(c) The fact that within the compass of the
gospels there are instances of changes introduced
by a later writer for the sake of doctrine raises the
further question : May not the text of the canonical
gospels have been modified or amplified at certain
points in the interests of later Christian belief ?
The abstract possibility of this is not to be denied.
The text of the gospels was probably more liable
to corruption and change of this kind during the
early period than later, when they came to be
safeguarded by their ecclesiastical position, and it
is just in the earlier period that it is naturally difficult
to obtain evidence for such changes from the textual
phenomena of the manuscripts.
Four characteristic instances in which such a
process has been legitimately suspected are (i)
the elimination, for harmonising purposes, of this
day have I begotten thee, in favour of in thee am I
i.] THE GOSPELS AND THEIR THEOLOGY 31
well pleased, in the text of Luke iii. 22 ; (ii) the
insertion, in whole or part, of the rock-saying in
Matt. xvi. 18-19 ; (iii) the expansion of the original
text of Matt, xxviii. 19, as given by Eusebius, into
the trinitarian form of the canonical text ; and (iv)
the alteration in the text of John i. 13, which turns
it into a witness for the dogma of the virgin-birth.
These are only specimens of this hypothesis, but
they are typical. Each has to be considered on
its merits. 1
(i) The special reading preserved by D (also, a b c
ff 2 1 r) might be due to the desire of approximating
the bath-qol verbally to Ps. ii. 7, or it may be taken
to reflect the original form of the saying, which was
afterwards altered owing to a sense of discrepancy
between this impartation of the Spirit (as con-
stituting Jesus God's Son) and the story of the
virgin-birth in the same gospel or the narrative of
the baptism in Mark and Matthew. The latter view
(so e.g. Blass, Spitta, Usener, Pfleiderer, Zahn,
Wernle, Conybeare ; see the present writer's
Introduction to the Literature of the N.T., p. 269)
seems upon the whole more likely, whatever may
have been the original significance attached to the
phrase or its relation to the foregoing section of the
gospel. 2 The reading is vouched for as early as
Justin Martyr, and its remarkably wide prevalence
in the second and third centuries is a factor in its
favour. In this case there is reason to suspect
1 Further instances of such primitive readings, altered subsequently
for theological purposes, in Zahn's Introduction to N. T. , iii. 38 f.
2 On the question of its presence in Q, cf. Salmon's Human
Element in the Gospels, pp. 56 f., and Harnack's Sayings of Jesus,
pp. 310 f.
32 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
that the alteration was due to a doctrinal interest,
which found the Lucan text, Thou art my Son, to-day
have I begotten thee, inconvenient and misleading.
(ii) The entire Matthean passage, xvi. 18-19, is one
of the author's Jewish-Christian insertions, in which
it is extremely difficult to conjecture what, if any,
was the original basis (cf. the present writer's Intro-
duction, pp. 252 f.). The hypothesis that one if
not both of the verses must be the work of a second-
century editor, who used some apocryphal logion
in the interest of the Petrine supremacy, has
been developed recently by M. Guignebert in his
Primaute de Pierre et la venue de Pierre a Rome
(Paris, 1909). Unfortunately, there is no textual
evidence here to support the conjecture ; it is
purely a question of internal evidence, which is
apt to be decided upon presuppositions about the
likelihood of Jesus mentioning the church at all,
or about the ecclesiastical functions which are
assigned to Peter. The latter are probably more
than the ordinary Protestant interpretation admits,
but they are far from justifying the later
Roman interpretation ; the absence of the saying
from the Petrine gospel of Mark, its omission by
Luke, and its deliberate correction by the author of
the Fourth gospel, are sufficient to indicate the
importance attached to it by the early church, if
it did exist in the original text of Matthew.
(iii) There is an equal lack of MSS. evidence in
support of the contention that Matt, xxviii. 19
originally ran as follows : Go ye therefore and make
disciples of all nations [in my name], teaching them
to observe whatsoever I have commanded you. Here,
as in the case of (ii), the Syriac versions are unfor-
i.] THE GOSPELS AND THEIR THEOLOGY 33
tunately defective, but this Eusebian form of the
text, which omitted the baptismal formula, must
have been current at an early date ; it is doubtful,
to judge from Apol. i. 61, whether Justin knew the
canonical form, and the latter is more likely to be
an expansion of the former than vice versa. The
absence of anything equivalent in the Lucan tradition
or even in the appendix to Mark (xvi. 15 f.) also
tells in favour of the view that the shorter form of
the text was original (cf. Prof. Lake's statement
in Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics,
ii. pp. 379 f.), and that the longer form emanated
from the same circles or at any rate from the same
liturgical and ecclesiastical motives as gave rise to
xvi. 18 f. But the evidence does not amount upon
the whole to much more than a possibility. 1
(iv) Both early patristic evidence and evidence
from the Latin versions support the singular read-
ing of John i. 13 : Who was born. The canonical
plural reading is actually described by Tertullian
as a gnostic corruption of the text (see especially
Zahn's note on John i. 13). 2 In reality, the singular
was probably an early modification of the plural in
the interests of the growing dogma of the virgin-
birth, but even if that reading were adopted it
1 It is the connection of the threefold name with baptism, rather
than the occurrence of the former, that is the main difficulty. The
threefold name, which forms the basis for the later trinitarian
peculations, exists already in Paulinism ; whether the form of 2 Cor.
xiii. 14 was due, as Harnack conjectures, to anti-Jewish controversy,
and whether the alternative form of God, Christ, and the angels
(cf. Luke ix. 26 ; 1 Tim. v. 21) was a less developed stage, we have
no means of determining exactly.
2 It is also read by Blass, and by Resch (Paralleltexte zu Johannes,
pp. 57 f.)-
C
34 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
would not follow that it implied such a dogma.
It would rule out a mother as well as a father. The
context simply implies that the children of the
Father owe their position to His love and choice
through Jesus. There is no evidence, on the other
hand, to suggest that the Word became flesh by the
descent of the Spirit at the baptism. The mode of
the incarnation is left undetermined, and the
christology of the gospel, like that of Paul, enters
into no speculation whatever upon the subject.
The Son was sent ; for religious purposes, that
thought sufficed. What i. 13, in the singular as
well as in the plural reading, asserts is the sole
activity of God, as opposed to human initiative.
The plural reading, in the light of the context,
implies that to be born of God is to have faith,
and that this is due wholly to divine influence
(You did not choose me, it was I who chose you)
a characteristic note of the Fourth gospel. No
satisfactory reason can be assigned for the change
of the singular into the plural, whereas not only
dogmatic but even grammatical reasons (the imme-
diately preceding avrov) would explain the reverse
process.
It is probable that such alteration of the canonical
texts must have gone further than is commonly
supposed, or than the present state of the texts
enables us to determine. But it is to be noted that
in these four test cases the doctrinal alteration is
generally in the line of sharpening an interest
already present, not for the purpose of introducing
some novel dogma. The question is one of emphasis
rather than of addition. The messianic endowment
of Jesus as Son of God at the baptism, the association
i.] THE GOSPELS AND THEIR THEOLOGY 35
of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the virgin-birth,
and even the leading position of Peter in some
circles of the early church, are vouched for, inde-
pendently of these additions and expansions. From
the theological point of view, they mark not the
incorporation of fresh elements so much as the
evolution of elements which were already present
in the primitive theology of the gospels them-
selves.
(d) Finally, there is the minor question of language.
The passage of the tradition in its pre-canonical
stages from the vernacular Aramaic to the written
Greek in which our gospels and most of their sources
were composed, cannot have been without some
effect upon the contents of the tradition at several
points. ' Whereas Jesus spoke in Aramaic, the
most concrete and unmetaphysical of languages, he
is reported in Greek, the most metaphysical.' 1 But
it is almost entirely in the Fourth gospel that this
semi-metaphysical tinge appears ; when we attempt
to translate the synoptic sayings back from Greek
to Aramaic the results are rarely of importance,
so far as regards theology. There is nothing about
Himself or God in the canonical gospels which Jesus
could not have said intelligibly in Aramaic. He
could even have called Himself Son of man in that
language without the risk of being misunderstood
(see below, Chapter iv.). The appearance of the
written gospels in Greek, after the earlier Aramaic
tradition, which was for the most part oral, had
nothing like the significance for their theology
which the later adoption of terms like ovo-ia and
1 Matthew Arnold, Literature and Dogma (popular ed., 1883),
p. 144.
36 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
persona had for the development of christology in
the Church. Christianity as we know it has come
to us through the Greek gospels, and for the purpose
of their theology it is seldom necessary to take
special account of the Aramaic background behind
any term or saying.
As a matter of fact, it is better here and elsewhere
in the criticism of the gospels to stand back from
the trees in order to see the forest. Detailed
exegesis of the gospels has its own function ; elaborate
research into the Aramaic substratum, the minutiae
of the literary variants between the gospels, and
the special features which differentiate one from
the other, is an indispensable discipline. But the
common faith is larger and deeper than such
characteristics and idiosyncrasies. They are usually
eddies or currents in the river. They are differences
of the second and third degree, seldom if ever of the
first. The significant thing, for the theology of the
gospels, is the attitude to Christ which they pre-
suppose and illustrate in different ways, the funda-
mental conviction that with Jesus a new relationship
to God has been effected and inaugurated. It is
uncritical to reach this common postulate by the
path of harmonising ; the gospels show how it
developed gradually and how various aspects of it
appealed to different circles in the early church.
But it is equally irrelevant to allow the mind to
become absorbed in the pursuit of exegetical details
till it loses the perspective of the whole. The
open secret of our religion, says a later writer * (quoting
from some early Christian hymn), is admittedly great
i 1 Tim. iii. 16.
i.] THE GOSPELS AND THEIR THEOLOGY 37
He who was
Manifested in the flesh,
Vindicated by the Spirit,
Seen by angels,
Preached among the nations of men,
Believed on throughout the world,
Taken up to heavenly glory.
The theology of the gospels, unlike Paulinism,
has no place for the doctrine of Christ's revelation
to angelic beings after the resurrection, 1 but it
corresponds to the remaining features of this primitive
confession ; the modern distinction between the
historical and the supernatural in the vocation of
Christ is ignored, and the essential fact of Christianity
is found in the person of Jesus Christ. By common
confession that was the distinctive note of the new
religion, which was struck by all, whether they were
writing a hymn or a gospel. The mystery or open
secret was the personality of Christ. This was
what distinguished the gospels from Judaism and
Hellenism alike, and it is a difference which is
immensely greater than any differences between
one gospel and another. As early as the second
century it had become common in some circles to
suppose that when Paul mentioned my gospel and
spoke of the brother whose praise in the gospel 2 was
widespread throughout the churches, he was
referring to a written gospel, and specifically to the
gospel of Luke. The significance of this error
lies in its witness to a particular contemporary
application of the term ' gospel.' From denoting
1 Cf. the Ascension of Isaiah, x.
* 2 Cor. viii. 18.
38 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
the message of Jesus as the Christ, i.e. the Christian
religion, it had begun to centre upon the acts and
words of Jesus, and then, by a natural evolution,
upon the written records of the Lord's life. The
epistles preached Christ, but they were not gospels.
The term was restricted to the books which described
what Jesus began both to do and to teach until the day
on which he was received up. 1 It is right to emphasise
the importance of this singular limitation for the
history of the Church, if for no other reason than that
it indicates ' to what an extent the communication of
the words and deeds of the Lord must have formed
from the very first the main content of the glad
tidings, when the two were denoted by the same
name and no other.' 2 The epistles and the gospels
alike sprang out of the Gospel, but it was only
the latter form of early Christian composition which
drew to itself the sacred name, and this is all the
more striking as there was nothing in the original
meaning of the Greek term or in the literary structure
of the four books to set the process in motion.
Such an estimate of the gospels helps to deter-
mine the sense of what ' theology ' means in con-
nection with them. By ' theology ' the pre-Christian
Greeks meant some account of the divine beings or
being, and this general sense of the term, as the
conception or definition of the God worshipped in
any given religion, reappears, for example, in
Hooker. 3 ' The whole drift of the Scripture of
God, what is it but only to teach Theology ?
Theology, what is it but the science of things divine ? '
1 Acts i. 1.
2 Harnack, The Constitution and Law of the Church, p. 308.
3 Eccles. Polity, Book in. viii. 11.
I.] THE GOSPELS AND THEIR THEOLOGY 39
Among some of the Greek theologians, however,
the term came to have a more restricted range ;
it was confined to the ascription of a divine nature
to Christ, and consequently tended to become a
technical expression for that aspect of christology
which the Logos idea of the Fourth gospel popularised.
It would be unbalanced to hold that the gospels are
theological in the latter rather than in the former
sense of the term. ' Theologia deum docet, a deo
docetur, ad deum ducit ' that is true of the gospels ;
even in the Fourth gospel it is the conception of
God which is still dominant, though the person of
the Son has assumed a larger prominence, relatively
to the Father, than in the synoptic tradition. At
the same time, the fundamental interest of the
gospels, from the theological point of view, is the
divine significance of Jesus, just as there is also
a concentration upon His personality which equally
prevents us from describing or from treating the
theology of the gospels as a general account of things
divine upon the basis of Christianity. The Fourth
gospel does extend its survey more definitely to the
relations of God through Christ to the universe as
well as to men, but even this cosmic extension has
its limitations, and it is far from making the person
of Christ subsidiary or supplementary. 1 We shall
proceed therefore to discuss first the God of Jesus ;
this opens up into the question of the person
of Jesus, since the revelation of God is mediated
1 ' The centre of gravity in theology can never be shifted from the
person of Christ. The Jesus whom we call Master is at once the
historical Jesus of Nazareth and that ideal form which becomes more
and more glorious as man's moral capacity increases' (Cheyne in
Expositor, sixth series, vol. iii. pp. 270-1).
40 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
by His life as well as by His teaching ; finally, we
shall trace the evolution of the conception of the
Spirit of God in relation to Jesus, which, in the
Fourth gospel, furnishes a standpoint for inter-
preting the theology of the gospels in general.
Before entering upon any of these topics, however,
it is essential to face the eschatological problem
in the tradition, not simply because this happens
to be a matter of special interest at the present
day, but also because everything depends upon the
answer which we give to the question : Is the
theology of the gospels an eschatology pure and
simple ?
n.] THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS 41
CHAPTER II
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS
IN the fifth book of the Prelude Wordsworth de-
scribes how, after reading Don Quixote on a summer
day beside the sea, he dreamed a dream. He seemed
to watch a Bedouin Arab riding up to him with a stone
under one arm and a brilliant shell in the other hand.
When the dreamer held up the shell to his ear he
' Heard that instant in an unknown tongue
Which yet I understood, articulate sounds,
A loud prophetic blast of harmony ;
An ode, in passion uttered, which foretold
Destruction to the children of the earth
By deluge now at hand.'
The rigorous and vigorous eschatological theory of
the gospels, as presented by a critic like Schweitzer,
puts a similar alternative before the mind : the
story of Jesus is either a stone, meaningless and
unimpressive, or a shell in which you hear only a
loud prediction of imminent doom. The theology
of the gospels is an eschatology or it is nothing.
What Jesus was and taught is unintelligible except
in the light of His intense passion for setting astir
forces that would deluge the world with all the
woes which usher in the last act of bliss in the
supernatural drama of the universe.
Schweitzer's book, Von Reimarus zu Wrede, is
42 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
brilliantly written. It has had the further advan-
tages of a generous notice from Dr. Sanday and an
exceptionally good rendering into English. 1 For
these reasons many people have been led to regard
him as more representative than he really is, and
by scoring points, as it is not difficult to do, against
several of his extreme positions, to imagine that
they have succeeded in dismissing the claims of
the eschatological theory which he champions. As
a matter of fact, that theory is more persuasively,
because more moderately, presented by two of his
predecessors, Otto Schmoller and J. Weiss, the
former in a prize essay on ' The Doctrine of the
Kingdom of God in the New Testament Writings '
(1891), which anticipated the issues of the modern
eschatological movement, the latter in the second
edition of his monograph on ' The Preaching of
Jesus about the Kingdom of God ' (1900). Words-
worth closes his dream by telling how the Arab
finally said he intended to bury the shell which had
sounded the prophecy of doom. This is the proper
fate for the rigid eschatological theory of the gospels ;
we have no use as historical critics or as Christians
for an interpretation of Jesus, however brilliant,
which will not allow us to hear any notes in His
teaching and mission except those of imminent
and inevitable catastrophe. But there are elements
in the tradition of the gospels which remain even
after Schweitzer's shell is buried, elements which
render the precise basis and range of the eschato-
logical outlook in the theology of the synoptic
gospels a real and a baffling problem.
i The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1910), by Rer. W. Montgomery,
Cf. further Dr. Sanday's Life of Christ in Recent Research.
n.] THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS 43
The problem may be put sharply by throwing
two words 1 of Jesus into juxtaposition. Verily I
say to you, There are some of those standing here who
shall not taste of death till they see the kingdom of
God arrive with power. Set that beside this : So
is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed on
the earth ; and should sleep and rise night and day,
and the seed should spring up and grow, he knows not
how. The earth bears fruit of herself ; first the blade,
then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. But when
the fruit is ripe, straightway he putteth forth the sickle
because the harvest is come. Here there is a climax
in view, a climax which has a messianic ring about
it, but which need not be unauthentic on that
account. The parables contained ' the mystery
of the kingdom,' and part of that mystery was the
new and startling conception of the relation of
Jesus to it. The contrast between the two sayings
is not that the one contemplates an abrupt crisis,
while the other looks forward to a long gradual
process of evolution ; it is that the denouement is
in the one case an event in the immediate future
which is identified with the real arrival of the kingdom
of God, while in the other it is the end of an inward
development in which the kingdom is regarded as
present through the ministry of Jesus. The gospels
contain sayings which belong, some to the one group,
some to the other. The problem is to determine
how both are psychologically possible for Jesus,
and to what extent the one has affected the other
during the course of tradition prior to the canonical
gospels. Which element is the more likely to have
been accentuated in the apostolic age ? Is either,
i Mark ix. 1 and iv. 26-29.
44 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
in whole or in large measure, due to the tendencies
and interests of the later church in which and for
which the gospels were drawn up ? These are the
kind of questions which are started by the presence
of the eschatological stratum in the text of the first
three gospels.
The first three, because there is no real problem of
eschatology in the theology of the Fourth gospel.
There are problems, but not of eschatology proper
as in the criticism of the synoptists. There is an
outlook now and then upon the end, but the dominant
interests lie elsewhere, in the eternal life which
becomes the present experience of those who put
their faith in the living Christ. In the synoptic
gospels it is still possible to trace the primitive
tradition that Jesus expected His return as messiah
during the course of the present generation, although
He did not know the exact date of this outward
crisis in the affairs of men. It is probable that
the influence of the imminent fall of Jerusalem
helped to intensify this expectation in some
Palestinian circles of the church, but it was not
created by the turn of events. The incorporation
of the small apocalyptic fly-leaf is an incidental
proof not only of their outlook upon the situation,
but of the basis which that outlook must have had
in the authentic teaching of Jesus Himself. Matthew
and Luke show here and there how the churches
met in various ways the need of a wider horizon
for the prospects of the Christian faith, chiefly by
laying deeper stress on the religious motives and
interests of the eschatological passion which Jesus
had voiced, upon His absolute confidence that His
death would further the interests of the kingdom,
ii.] THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS 45
His calm conviction that the establishment of the
kingdom depended on the will of God, not on any
circumstances of human arrangement or enterprise,
and His belief that in the realisation of the Father's
good purpose for men He was destined to have a
commanding place. But, even with this alteration
of emphasis, the gospels preserve sayings of Jesus
which must have seemed perplexing to the
widening consciousness of what was involved in the
Christian enterprise. These sayings survive because
they had come down from authentic tradition ;
probably they were not felt to be so strange as they
seem to a modern reader, but at any rate it was not
till later that another evangelist reinterpreted the
faith in a form which was not bound up with
eschatological or apocalyptic categories. He did
not look forward to see the glory of Christ ; he had
seen it, he saw it, in the Lord's life and spirit of
self-sacrifice. The Coming One had come. It was
no longer a question of anticipating a glory of
dramatic interposition from the clouds of heaven ;
in the person of Jesus the Son all that was glorious
and divine was manifested. 1 In the Fourth gospel
the emphasis is shifted from the return to the
resurrection of Christ. He had indeed returned
to the life of His followers in fuller measure than
before, and the Spirit, His alter ego, meant His living
presence in their hearts as an inspiring and revealing
power. Life eternal is not an eschatological boon
but the immediate experience of faith. The judg-
i In the synoptic tradition this glorifying occurs once, during the
life of Jesus, at the transfiguration, when the imminence of His death
is represented as eliciting a special mark of approval from God (cf.
the Lucan version, ix. 32).
46 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
ment is not a dramatic catastrophe at the close of
the present age so much as a process of inward
discrimination conditioned by the attitude adopted
by men to the person of Christ. 1 It is through the
resurrection that the real victory has been gained
over the world a victory of Christ as the giver of
eternal life over death and the flesh. All this
transmutation of the primitive tradition is presented
in a gospel which claims that such spiritual con-
ceptions are the larger truth into which the Spirit
of Christ had initiated His Church ; in modern
phraseology, it is asserted that they are an
organic development of the gospel for which Jesus
stood.
How far, and how, can this claim be justified ?
The answer to such questions depends upon a
critical estimate of the synoptic tradition. It is
not enough to show that traces of what may be
termed (though inadequately) a spiritualisation of
the eschatological data can be detected already in
the earlier synoptic writers. The essential point
is to ascertain whether this entire movement which
culminates in the Fourth gospel starts from elements
which are vital to the faith of Jesus Himself ;
not only that He occasionally spoke words which
cannot be fitted into any thorough-going eschato-
logical theory of His teaching, but that His con-
ceptions of God and the kingdom and His own
person involved a religious attitude towards the
future which did not find congenial or complete
expression in the apocalyptic categories of the
age.
1 The germ of this goes back to Jesus Himself; it is an expansion
of the thought which underlies Luke xvii. 20.
ii.] THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS 47
It is more than a mere paradox to say that the
first thing in the gospels is their conception of the
last things. The theology of the gospels, like every
theology which arises within the Christian sphere,
involves a teleology. Whatever value we assign
to the eschatological element in the gospels, there
is enough of it to bear witness to this vital conviction
of the religious mind, that the present relation
of God and man, the hopes and endeavours of men
on earth, and the entire range of their love and
loyalty, are unintelligible except in the light of a
destiny which the divine purpose has been and still
is working out in history. In religion, as Bitschl
used to insist, we have to do not only with God and
the soul, but with God, the soul, and the world.
What is a possession of the soul must be related,
somehow, to the world of which the soul is part and
over which the soul's God is Lord. Theology
means a conception of God in relation to the
universe, and this in turn implies not simply a sense
of the divine power in what moderns describe as
Nature, not simply a valuation of God's presence,
but a conviction of His purpose as the end. It is
the end which gives meaning to the present. The
end is not always present to the religious con-
sciousness, it lies sometimes below the horizon ;
but it is always there. The common antithesis
between ethical and eschatological breaks down
upon examination. Eschatology was not void of
ethical impulse and discipline in primitive Chris-
tianity ; and the ethical element rested on an
eschatological, though not always on an apocalyptic
basis.
How organic the strictly eschatological element
48 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
was to the teaching of Jesus may be inferred from
the mere fact that the saying, 1
Heaven and earth will pass away,
But my wards will never pass away,
occurs in an apocalyptic context : Truly I tell
you that this generation will not pass away until it
all comes to pass. The delay which confronted the
Church when the synoptic gospels were composed
was embarrassing, but the eschatological predictions
of Jesus formed so vital a part of His gospel that
they were retained ; in fact, as the insertion of the
small apocalypse shows, they were not only edited
occasionally by way of smoothing down their in-
congruities with the subsequent cause of events,
but also now and then sharpened and expanded.
Thus the synoptic gospels, by their loyalty to this
element in the primitive tradition, confront us
with the paradox that the most confident word of
Jesus upon the permanent value of His sayings
guarantees the very class of sayings which appear
to be least permanent.
Another incidental proof of this element and of
its place in the teaching of Jesus is afforded by the
survival of the difficult saying 2 : When they persecute
you in this city, flee to the other, and if they persecute
you in the other, flee to the next ; for truly I tell you,
You will not cover the cities of Israel before the
Son of man comes. The saying interrupts the
context, and its Jewish horizon is out of keeping
not only with passages like xxiv. 14, xxviii. 19, etc.,
but with the words immediately preceding it
1 Mark xiii. 31 ; Matt. xxiv. 35 ; Luke xxi. 33.
2 Matt. x. 23.
n.] THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS 49
in verses 18 and 22, which presuppose a mission to
pagan nations beyond the pale of Israel. The point
of the counsel seems to be that the evangelists need
not be afraid of exhausting the available cities of
refuge within Palestine. The end will come before
ever they manage to get over them all !
But alongside of sayings which thus prove the
predominance of the apocalyptic hope within the
preaching of Jesus there are others which suggest
,that He transmuted, as He took over, this belief in
the near advent of the kingdom.
(a) There are several sayings which imply that
Jesus regarded the kingdom as a present reality in
connection with His own person and teaching. The
chief of these is the well-known passage in Luke
xvii. 20-1 : On being questioned by the Pharisees
when God's kingdom was to come, he replied, God's
kingdom is not coming with observation, nor shall
men say, Lo here ! or Lo there ! for, behold, God's
kingdom is within you (CI/T&S vp&v CO-TIV). Whatever
was the original Aramaic of this saying, it is upon
the whole clear that Luke took it to express the
inward character of the kingdom. Had he under-
stood it as equivalent to a statement that the kingdom
would appear suddenly among men, he would have
used his favourite term 4i/ /xeo-o) instead of evros.
Even if ei/ros meant ' among,' it would imply most
naturally that Jesus described the kingdom as
already present, and this is much more the case when
we render it ' within.' The word you does not rule
this out, for the original reference, as Wellhausen
points out, was not confined to the Pharisees. ' The
kingdom of God here, as in the parable of the leaven,
is conceived as a principle working invisibly in the
D
50 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
hearts of individuals.' The phrase
T^/orjcrews means that the signs of it can be either
seen or foreseen externally. Jesus denies that
this is to be the case with God's Reign, as He under-
stood it and inaugurated it. As He said elsewhere,
no sign of the Reign was to be vouchsafed to the
present generation except such inward signs and
tokens as belonged to the nature of the Reign itself.
The Lucan saying does not necessarily exclude a
catastrophic future as the climax of the Reign ;
it simply insists that the Reign of God is already
present in such a form that the present generation
is responsible for its attitude to this manifestation
of God.
The unlikelihood of the CO-TII/ being proleptic
in this saying is heightened by the cognate saying
of Q preserved in Matt. xii. 28 (=Luke xi. 20) :
// / cast out demons by the Spirit [Luke has, the
finger] of God, then God's kingdom has already come
upon you (e</>#ao-cv !<' vfj.a$). This does not mean
that the kingdom is imminent, as though the cures
and exorcisms of Jesus were a harbinger of the new
era which is on the point of coming ; it means that
the new era has already begun to challenge and
invade the present sway of the devil on earth. As
the context indicates, the messianic power of Jesus
on earth denotes an inroad upon the demons who,
under Satan, have control of men, and this inroad is
the entrance of God's kingdom upon its final career.
Once more, this line of thought is corroborated
by the other saying from Q (Matt. xi. ll=Luke
vii. 28) upon John the Baptist : He who is least
within the kingdom of heaven is greater than he (John).
It is conceivable that the present tense here is
n.] THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS 51
dramatic, but the natural and literal sense is more
likely, in view of the context. John had sent to
make sure that Jesus was really the messiah, and
the reply of Jesus is followed up by an address to
the crowd upon the epoch-making significance of
John as the forerunner of the new messianic era.
No man yet, says Jesus, has been greater than John ;
nevertheless, he only stands at the threshold of the
kingdom. Then follows the word about the storming
of the kingdom from the days of John till now, which
implies that the kingdom was within reach of
earnest men when Jesus spoke. He was conscious
that His mission was fulfilling the old Isaianic
prophecies. His reply to John denotes not the
sense that a new era was in course of preparation,
but that it was already inaugurated, and it is of
this new order that He speaks.
The saying which immediately follows is a further
proof of the conception of the kingdom as incipient
in the ministry of Jesus :
Matt. xi. 12-13 Luke xvi. 16
From the days of John the Till John, the law and the
Baptist until now the prophets I Thereafter the
kingdom of heaven suffers kingdom of God is
violence and the violent preached, and every one
press into it. presses into it.
For all the prophets and the
law prophesied till John.
In Matthew this is followed up by the remark :
And if you will receive it, this is the Elijah who was
to come, which gives the clue to the previous saying.
Jesus apparently is alluding to the contemporary
tradition (cf . Edujoth 8 7 ) that Elijah would come
52 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
' to exclude from Israel those who had been received
by force, and to receive into Israel those who had
been excluded by force.' This dual function, of
rejecting members who had forcibly and fraudulently
claimed a place in the community, and of welcoming
those who had been violently shut out from their
rights, 1 has been inaugurated, Jesus argues, by
John, when his mission is properly viewed. Only,
his mission reversed the popular Jewish idea. In
the Christian era, dating from John's movement,
the tax-gatherers and sinners, hitherto excluded
on the score of their disreputable character, are
thronging into God's kingdom which Jesus preached,
and those who claimed a place in it on the score of
birth and orthodoxy are being excluded.
Again, when the high-minded scribe 2 delighted
Jesus by confessing not only that God was one,
but that to love him with the whole heart and the whole
understanding and the whole strength, and to love one's
neighbour as oneself, is far more than all holocausts and
sacrifices, Jesus told him : You are not far from God's
kingdom. This word implies that the kingdom is
not eschatological but present in the moral and
spiritual order, just as in Matt. xxi. 31 (The tax-
gatherers and harlots are entering the kingdom of
God before you) and xviii. 3-4.
Sayings like this amount to a cumulative proof.
When the scribe e.g. is told that he is not far from
God's kingdom, and when the wealthy young Jew
is asked to sell all his property, if he means to be
perfect, and follow Jesus, the underlying idea is
practically the same, that adhesion to the cause
and person of Jesus Christ is the condition under
i Cf. Luke xi. 52. * Mark xii. 34.
n.] THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS 53
which the sound moral life blossoms into the flower
of a true faith and love for God. Wellhausen
endeavours to discount the force of such passages
by identifying the kingdom with the Church, and
arguing that this identification presupposes the
death of Jesus. But there is nothing in the context
of either passage which involves the death of Christ
as a motive for such adhesion, and in the cognate
saying about the least in the kingdom being greater
than John (who, for all his importance to the
kingdom, had not become a personal disciple of Jesus)
it is needless to discover an identification of the
present kingdom and the Christian Church. What
this series of allusions indicates is that the reign of
God has already begun in some sense here and there
on earth. It is no answer to this to argue that
faith would then be superfluous ; on the one
hand, the visible signs of the presence of the
kingdom were only partial and we might almost
say preliminary, and on the other hand, such as
they were they were capable of misinterpretation.
It was possible to deny their validity. Zealots who
strained their eyes for signs of a political rising
could not recognise the kingdom in unselfishness
and purity of heart and the forgiving spirit ; where
Jesus saw the real and royal presence of the Father
they could only see unpatriotic, poor-spirited
creatures. It was the same with some of the
Pharisees, in their own way. They ascribed the
cures wrought by Jesus to a connivance, on His
part, with the devil. What He recognised as signs
of the divine reign on earth, due to the working of
the Spirit through His personality, they deliber-
ately described as diabolic.
54 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
The attitude of Jesus towards the expulsion of
demons, as proving the entrance of the divine
kingdom upon the present order, implies further
that He extended the same thought in other directions.
It was not a belief which was connected simply
with what is called the supernatural antagonism of
God and the devil. We cannot draw such a dis-
tinction for the world of Jesus. The healings which
He effected were bound up with the forgiveness of
sins, and if the kingdom was present in the anti-
demonic aspect it was equally present in the
revelation of God's character and purpose through
the attitude of Jesus towards the sinful and the
burdened. His preaching of the new righteousness,
His revelation of the Father's nature in deed as
well as in word, constituted an immediate proof that
the relationship to God which He called life was a
present gift. 1 Jesus looked into the future for the
final ratification and consummation of the gift,
but it was of a gift already bestowed upon the
experience of trust and loyalty. The reality of the
Reign does not depend for Him upon the dramatic
denouement of the apocalyptic eschatology. It
is the reverse. That future is assured by the
character and purpose of God as already manifested
in His mission and personality. Jesus never uses
the term ' hope,' but it is hope in the living God
which dominates His message, hope rising from a
deep, inward consciousness of God's loving will for
men. When He declared the kingdom of God is
at hand He was not speaking out of apocalyptic
calculation, but from His assurance that through
1 See on this aspect of the kingdom Dr. G. F. Barbour's Philo-
sophical Study of Christian Ethics, pp. 186 f .
ii.] THE ESCHATOLOGY OP THE GOSPELS 55
Him God was about to exercise the sovereign sway
of His good purpose. The avoidance of detailed
calculations may have been due in part to His
conviction that the end was imminent ; but they
were superfluous, for a deeper reason. It was His
belief in God's character which rendered detailed
schemes and programmes of the future irrelevant,
just as it convinced Him that the kingdom, with
its apparently unpromising beginnings in the pre-
sent, was sure of a glorious consummation.
This is one reason why Jesus spoke of the kingdom
in parables and occasionally explained their meaning
to the disciples. His conception of the divine
Reign had elements of novelty which did not tally
with current ideas on the subject. The parables
contained the mystery of the kingdom* His message
on the nature of the kingdom was a revelation, which
only the sympathetic could understand. Whether
it included the destiny of Himself as messiah is a
question which is more easily asked than answered.
If so, and if the explanations contained references
to His own future, their substance has been preserved
for the most part in other forms. But in itself
the conjecture is not altogether improbable ; the
messianic, personal background shimmers through
Mark iv. 29 and xii. 6, for example. His view of the
kingdom implied teaching about His relation to its
character, course, and end, and out of that teaching
some of the passages referring to the death and resur-
rection may have come. In any case, the kingdom
1 Mark (iv. 11) here has preserved the original form ; the plural of
Matthew and Luke is secondary. The ' mystery ' cannot be confined
to the nearness of the kingdom that was openly proclaimed by John
the Baptist as well as by Jesus.
56 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
parables are not popular illustrations of the obvious. 1
The kingdom as He revealed it, for example, had
a future out of all proportion to its present unim-
pressive scale and size on earth (Mark iv. 30 f.).
But, again, this future was not to come in a wholly
cataclysmic fashion ; its growth resembled leaven,
not a sudden interposition of the supernatural
within the natural order. It is noticeable, for
example, how many of the parables are directed
against impatience for the speedy advent of the
kingdom. This applies not only to the parable of
the seed growing secretly (Mark iv. 26-9), which
is one of several sayings addressed to a mood
of wonder why the messiah of God should be so
inactive in the line of vigorous challenge and
propaganda, but also to the parable of the ten
virgins (Matt. xxv. 1-13), which warns the disciples
to be prepared for delay in the final coming of the
Lord.
Consequently the parabolic instruction of Jesus
was doubly surprising. It was surprising both in
form and in context, for there were no parables
about the kingdom of heaven in rabbinic teaching,
and the outline which Jesus drew of the character
and future of that kingdom ran counter to some of
the most cherished ideas of piety. Its messianic
nature, as determined by the Fatherly purpose of
God, involved a widening of its range which sounded
strange to contemporary Judaism. No doubt, the
contemporary use of ' malkuth ' in Jewish piety
(e.g. in the phrase about accepting the yoke of the
divine sovereignty) tells decidedly against the view
1 Cf. on this Dr. H. B. Sharman's Teaching of Jesus about the
Future, pp. 315 f.
H.] THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS 57
that the Reign of God upon the lips of Jesus must
have been eschatological to be intelligible. The
fact of Judaism, with its observance of the Torah
and its worship of the true God, was a witness, even
in the untoward position of the nation, to the
divine sovereignty. It is true, as Volz points out,
that the Reign of God was considered to have not
only a prospect of future manifestation but already
a number of loyal subjects on earth, and that in
both of these respects the rabbinic and the synoptic
views were agreed. Yet ' in spite of the predomin-
ance of eschatological sayings on the kingdom in
the synoptic gospels, it is a fact that Jesus did
transform the Reign of God from something which
was eschatological, prepared already, and only to
be waited for in an attitude of passivity, into some-
thing which developed historically and which was
to be achieved ; He thereby converted into a unity
the two lines (eschatological and inward) of the
/2acriAeta rov Otov, which ran parallel in the theo-
logical system of Judaism.' 1 The indications of
this higher synthesis are not confined to the say-
ings which have just been noted ; they are borne
out, as we shall see, by the conception which Jesus
had of God and of His own vocation. Meantime,
however, it is enough to lay stress upon these specific
allusions to the presence of the kingdom as a proof
that the attitude of Jesus to this eschatological
hope of Judaism can hardly have been so rigid as the
eschatological theorists make out.
(b) In the second place, it is inaccurate to argue
that Jesus conceived the kingdom would come
without any effort upon the part either of Himself
1 Judische Eschatologie, pp. 299-300.
58 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
or even of His disciples. He regarded His own death
as a vital stage in the fulfilment of God's purpose.
It was the will of the Father that He should thus
sacrifice Himself for the sake of men ; this was the
outcome of His consciousness as God's Son, who was
to carry out a role like that of Yahveh's Servant
(cf. Chapter rv.). The conception of the throes or
birth-pangs of suffering which were to precede the
messianic era was already present, but this was not
the primary source of the impulse which led Jesus
to seek Jerusalem and suffer there.
Furthermore, His efforts to awaken penitence and
to sustain earnest prayer for the kingdom point
to a belief that the new order of things involved
more than passive expectancy upon the part of
men. 1 The command to pray, Thy kingdom come,
was more than an injunction to breathe a pious sigh
for the future. Jesus believed profoundly in the
power of prayer to affect even the will of God in
the matter of the coming kingdom. The Father
was willing to be entreated. Men must be content
to leave the how and when in His hands, but, while
Jesus discouraged any attempt like that of the zealots
to force the issue, and while He disclaimed any know-
ledge of the exact period of the crisis, He did not
inculcate any fatalism. The burden of His teach-
ing on prayer is that man, by earnest prayer, by
the concentrated effort of the soul in devotion and
desire, may ' bring the power of faith to bear upon
the divine purpose.' 2
This is an aspect of the kingdom to which modern
1 This is the thought of Acts iii. 19-20 and Matt. ix. 37-38.
2 Cf. Prof. E. F. Scott's The Kingdom and the Messiah, pp. 134 f.,
where this point is admirably argued.
n.] THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS 59
readers often find it difficult to do justice ; they
are under the influence of preconceptions about
natural law, and in looking back to the age of Jesus
they are apt to identify His sayings about the divine
intervention with a sort of Oriental fatalism. But
the theology of the gospels, and especially their
eschatology, is not intelligible unless it is realised
that Jesus meant by prayer more than resignation
to the will of God. A later writer once said that
Christians should not only look out for but actually
hasten the arrival of God's Day, 1 and this is the
thought which underlies the teaching of Jesus upon
the kingdom as an object of prayer. The faithful
are to wrestle with God for the speedy accomplish-
ment of His purpose ; the Fatherly goodness of God
and His royal authority forbid prayer becoming
a form of dictation or a wild, impatient complaint,
but they invite the earnest efforts of the faithful to
hasten His interposition. All this, again, is hopelessly
inconsistent with the uncompromisingly predestin-
arian view of the eschatologists.
(c) Thirdly, there are sections of the ethical teach-
ing in the synoptic gospels which cannot be brought
under the eschatological category, as if Jesus only
taught conduct which was appropriate to the interval
preceding the final advent of the kingdom. It is
not eschatology which supplies e.g. the motive for
loving one's enemies, or the point of stories like
those of the good Samaritan and the profligate son.
The tendency of an ultra-eschatological view here
is either to depreciate the moral teaching of Jesus
or to reduce His interest in the present world to some
casual glances which were irrelevant to His main
1 2 Peter iii. 12.
60 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
passion for the future. Jesus was much more than
an ethical teacher. He was a prophet and more
than a prophet. But His conception of God renders
it impossible for us to believe that His teaching upon
character and conduct was transitory, and sub-
ordinate in principle to the eschatological hope of
the coming kingdom. In the beatitudes, for example,
there is not simply a description of those who are
predestined to the future kingdom. Jesus lays
down the qualities and characteristics which belong
to the kingdom itself, and endeavours to prepare
men for it by inducing repentance or a change of
heart and life. He is enunciating the laws and
principles of the coming reign, when God is to rule
as the Father over men, and He shows how even
during the present age, with its handicaps and
hindrances, men may observe these laws and enter
into the Spirit of the Father. The future coming
of the kingdom will alter many of the conditions of
the present order. But it will belong to men just
as they are already qualified to receive it ; the new
righteousness, which is its soil and atmosphere,
is implicit in the present relations of men to God
which Jesus seeks to create and foster. To read
the gospels as if they meant that Jesus despaired
entirely of the present world, or as if His ethical teach-
ing were provisional and temporary, is to throw His
mission even more out of focus than if the apocalyptic
element were explained away altogether. For
example, His argument against amassing riches is not
that this is not worth a man's while, since the final
catastrophe is so near ; it is that such a concentra-
tion of heart upon outward possessions is at variance
with a free devotion to the Father. Or again, in
n.] THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS 61
speaking of marriage He never takes up the position
that, in view of the imminent end, such natural ties
had better be left alone. It was Paul, not Jesus,
who said : The fashion of this world is passing away
. . . the time is shortened (1 Cor. vii. 26 f.), and used
this consideration of the present distress to dis-
courage marriage.
Both in Q and in Mark, in the former more than
in the latter, there are strata of the teaching of
Jesus which do not rest upon the eschatological
passion for the urgency of the end, and these strata
belong to the most characteristic of the gospels.
It is necessary to read the latter with a sense of
proportion. The mind of Jesus is larger than the
apocalyptic theory would allow, and no sort of
justice is done to it unless the absolute validity
which He attached to the truths of pardoning love,
trust in God, and the higher righteousness is candidly
admitted. 1
These three considerations bring out the critical
attitude of Jesus to the current conception of the
kingdom of God, an attitude due to the new religious
ideas for which He made it the vehicle. No doubt,
the outlook of Jesus upon the future is not to be
1 Loisy (Jtsus et la Tradition Evangtlique, pp. 127, 131) puts this
frankly. 'L'idee du regne de Dieu s'epanouissait en doctrines ou
1'on pent discerner trois elements : le nationalisme traditionnel, ou ce
que le Dieu d'Israel fait pour son peuple ; une regie de vie morale,
qui se fonde sur un principe de religion universelle ; la transforma-
tion du monde, le triomphe complet de Dieu, pour que 1'elite d'Israe
et de 1'humanite puisse jouir paisiblement du bonheur dans la
justice.' In the teaching of Jesus, 'le nationalisme de 1'idee se
trouve en partie corrige par 1'importance essentielle donnee a son
aspect moral, soit en ce qui regarde les moyens de sa realisation,
soit en ce qui regarde les conditions requises pour etre admis au
royaume.'
62 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
confined to sayings about the kingdom ; it embraces
a wider prospect, just as the emphasis upon the
present reality of the divine Reign emerges in sections
of His teaching which are not specifically connected
with the /3ao-i\La. But naturally it was the con-
ception of the divine Reign of the Father which
embodied most of the characteristic ideas of Jesus,
and it is here that the antinomy of the present and
the future is most sharply expressed.
The Greek term /^ao-iAcia, as used in the gospels,
is better translated ' reign ' or ' sovereignty ' than
' kingdom ' in perhaps the majority of instances.
The latter rendering suggests associations of organisa-
tion and territory which are misleading, and even
although it has to be retained for the sake of general
convenience, the sense attached to it must be
primarily the personal rule of God over His people,
the divine government as realised through the
faithful obedience of men to their royal Father in
heaven ; in a word, c reign ' rather than ' domain.'
Now, the coming of God's kingdom with power is the
final return of Jesus as the Son of man within the
present generation (Mark viii. 38-ix. 1), and Matthew
makes this explicit by his version of the second
saying (xvi. 28), which substitutes the Son of man
coming in His kingdom for the kingdom of God come
in power. Incidentally, it is a proof of the com-
parative independence of the Marcan christology as
against the Pauline (cf. Rom. i. 4), which assigns
the full power of Christ as Lord to the resurrection,
not to the second advent ; but primarily it bears
witness to the urgent hope of Jesus. Whether He
spoke of the kingdom simply, or of the kingdom of
God, is indifferent. The usage of the gospels varies
H.] THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS 63
on this point significantly. Thus Mark and Luke
alike speak of the kingdom or the kingdom of God,
while Matthew's favourite expression is the kingdom
of heaven (17 /3acriA.ia TWV ovpav&v) a phrase which,
apart from two allusions in the gospel of the Hebrews
and the Fourth gospel (iii. 3, 5), 1 is peculiar to
Matthew among the early gospels. It denotes a
kingdom already present and prepared in heaven,
and on the point of being established on earth by
the intervention of God. Whether the addition of
heaven is connected with the Jewish impersonal
synonym for God, or whether the phrase in Matthew
has a specially transcendental and eschatological
value, it is not easy to say. Its usage may form
part and parcel of the increased eschatological
element, which is prominent in Matthew ; or, it
may have been altered in Mark and Luke into
expressions which were more intelligible to Greek
and Roman Christians. It is doubtful if Matthew
intended to draw any sharp distinction between the
kingdom of heaven as the future realm to be intro-
duced by the Son of man, and the kingdom of God
as in a sense present upon earth. In two of the
references to the latter the reading is uncertain
(vi. 33, xix. 24), and more than once the kingdom of
heaven is used in a sense which is not necessarily
eschatological (e.g. xi. 11, 12; xiii. 31; xxiii. 13).
In any case, the primary eschatological sense of
eia as the Reign is brought out by its use and
1 Also in the Oxyrhynchite logion (second of second series). The
reading in John is doubtful, but in any case Matthew's phrase is not
an approximation to the Johannine idea of the Father's house
(xiv. 2, 4), as if the pious were to be taken up to the kingdom in
heaven.
64 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
context in many other passages of the gospels,
apart altogether from the addition of TU)V ovpav&v.
On one or two occasions, e.g. in Matt. xxi. 43
(The kingdom of God sliall be taken from you and given
to a nation which produces its fruits), the term is
used in a more popular and general sense ; it is
implied that the Jews as the ancestral -people of God
possess it now in the sense of the theocracy. Their
acknowledgment of God as King means their posses-
sion of the kingdom here and now, though their
refusal of Jesus is to deprive them of this privilege.
But such a use is exceptional. Equally exceptional
is the occasional use by Jesus of the phrase : My
kingdom. Thus Luke (xxii. 29-30) makes Him speak
of the realm as His own : / bequeath to you a realm,
as my Father bequeathed to me, that you may eat and
drink at my table in my realm. John characteristically
emphasises this aspect of the realm in one of his rare
allusions to it (xviii. 34 f.) : Pilate said to Him, Are
you the king of the Jews ? . . . Jesus replied, My
realm does not belong to this world. In a sense the
divine realm might be said to belong to the Son of
man as the divine inaugurator of it. A priori, there
is no reason to doubt that Jesus may have spoken
of it as His. But the eschatology of the gospels
does not include the conception of a /3acriAeta X/OIO-TOU,
as distinguished from the /2a<riAeia Oeov. J. Weiss x
has argued that the language of Matt. xiii. 41 and
Mark ix. 1 involves such an idea, corresponding
to the Pauline view in 1 Cor. xv. 24 f . and Col. i.
13 ; but this double-stage interpretation, which he
admits was not held by Jesus, is not absolutely
essential to either of these sayings in the gospels.
i Predigt*, pp. 40 f.
n.] THE ESCHATOLOGY OP THE GOSPELS 65
The Marcan passage does not rest on an antithesis
between the kingdom in weakness and in power.
The former notion would never have occurred to
the early church, and it is pressing language into
dogmatic moulds to find a difference between the Son
of man's kingdom and the Father's in the Matthean
parable. Elsewhere the kingdom is called Christ's
(Matt. xvi. 28, xx. 21), in a way which suggests that
the distinction is one of aspect rather than of stages.
It is interesting to trace the changes made by
Paul and the apostolic church in Christ's concep-
tion of the kingdom, and to notice how several of
its cardinal items are expressed often in other terms ;
but it is more important to ascertain the modifica-
tions which Jesus Himself introduced into the signifi-
cance of this ancient belief. Thus, He stood aside
from the traditional view that the present Reign
of God in Israel would sometime and somehow pass
into a world-wide recognition of God as Israel's
God by the nations, as well as from the cognate
hope that the future would witness the overthrow
of the Roman power, which represented the con-
temporary antithesis of the divine Realm. The
subtle favouritism, the nationalistic idea of God, and
the external reliance on political methods, which
were involved in such hopes, were alien to Jesus. A
large number of messianic expectations looked
forward to a national re-establishment of Judaism
as the sovereign power ; others, of a more specifically
apocalyptic character, soared into the transcendental
region of a heavenly Jerusalem and a supernatural
change to be effected in the universe. The former
occasionally blended with the latter ; the one took
over elements from the other. The messiah now
66 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
and then became a transcendent, supernatural
figure rather than a Davidic scion, and the heavenly
order of the new age was more than once presented
in forms which owed something of their definiteness
and popularity to the realistic messianism of the
older prophecies. The theology of the gospels
shows in outline, but without ambiguity, how Jesus
stood towards this heterogeneous and many-sided
conception. So far as the advent and future of
the divine Reign went, He approximated to the
position of the Pharisees rather than to that of the
Zealots. The latter are opposed in several of His
explicit sayings against the use of force, but His
indifference to their patriotic propaganda is even
more significant. Probably it gave more mortal
offence. c At great political crises he who opposes
the patriots is not so likely to be considered their
worst foe, as he who ignores them. It was not that
our Lord preached submission to Rome, though no
doubt the decision as to the tribute money was
capable of being represented in that light it was
that He roused a spirit which moved in another
plane than that of resistance or submission to
imperial power.' * On the other hand, He differed
radically from the Pharisees on the question of the
repentance and righteousness which were essential
to inheritance in the kingdom of God to come.
History and experience had disillusionised the
Pharisees. They saw that the coming of the divine
Reign on earth must be an act of God in the dim
future, which would be supernatural, not brought
on by any rebellion against the power of Rome.
Like the Sadducees, though for higher motives, they
i Miss Wedgwood, The Message of Israel, p. 305.
n.l THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS 67
were prepared to acquiesce temporarily in the
status quo of the Roman suzerainty. The nation-
alist and political form of the messianic hope was
therefore challenged on two sides : by the more
transcendent expectation of a Davidic Son of man
which appealed to some apocalyptic circles, and by
the temper which discountenanced any messianic
movement as dangerous. Jesus undoubtedly was
in more sympathy with the former than with the
latter, but the kingdom which He preached was of
so unique a character that it enabled the Pharisees
to make capital out of His supposed anti-Roman
tendencies, just as it disappointed those who secretly
expected that a messiah would be at least sympathetic
with the patriotic hopes of the popular mind about
the restoration of the kingdom to Israel.
The eschatological element of the kingdom in
the preaching of Jesus was not merely apocalyptic,
however. Apocalyptic was invariably eschatological,
but eschatology was not invariably apocalyptic. A
closer analysis of the transcendental apocalyptic
idea in Judaism shows that this very passion for
a vivid effective revelation of God in the immediate
future involved frequently a spiritualising tendency,
and the criticism of the gospels lays bare the striking
fact that the Jesus who shared this form of eschato-
logical hope believed in a God who was by no means
the distant deity of conventional apocalyptic, but
a living, loving Father. 1 The belief of Jesus in God,
which is fundamental for the valuation of the eschato-
logical element in the gospels, is a warning against
1 Jesus uses the term 'kingdom* where the rabbis often spoke of
' the age to come ' ; He never uses * kingdom ' as a periphrasis for the
more direct expression of God's real and immediate intervention.
68 THE THEOLOGY OP THE GOSPELS [CH.
all rough-and-ready identifications of the message
of Jesus on the kingdom with the apocalyptic schemes
in whose dialectic many of His sayings happen to
be couched. It is in His conception of God, more
than in the derivative conception of the kingdom,
that we can discover the faith for which He lived
and died. As God the Father was not merely or
even mainly an object of hope for Himself or for
men, it followed that the Realm or Reign could not
be relegated exclusively to the age to come ; much
less could it be confined to the sons of Israel. The
kingdom to Jesus was not an abstract, vague con-
dition of humanity, but neither was it defined in
terms of an antithesis to the pagan powers of the
world. It was the order and sphere of bliss for
men, bliss being conceived as perfect loyalty to the
will of the Father, or as Life (cf. Matt. viii. 22,
Luke xv. 32, Mark ii. 19, Matt. xii. 28) in the fullest
sense of the term; and both aspects (the latter
marks a transcending of the eschatological idea)
were related to the special functions which the
Christ of God had to discharge in order that men
might participate in the fellowship of heaven. Thus,
the kingdom was to come for the Jews, but not
because they were Jews, and not for Jews only ;
the condition of entrance was not a punctilious
observance of the Torah, as the Pharisees interpreted
it. If Jesus ever hoped that Israel as a whole would
repent, He appears soon to have realised that the
religious authorities and the mass of the people were
obdurate. He had more hope of the world in general
than of His own people, and He faced death, not in
a mood of eschatological desperation, but in the
consciousness that His self-sacrifice would avail to
ii.] THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS 69
redeem the wider circle. As the Son of the Father,
who loved men in spite of their sins ; as the Servant
of God who, in His great pity and love, was willing
to suffer in order to redeem men, He went with hope
and courage to the cross. The conviction that He
must die, to carry out the Father's purpose, would
carry with it the hope of resurrection as a triumph
over the forces of death and sin, but the inspiration
of this hope lay in His profound faith ; He drew it, as
He drew the consciousness of God the living Father
which sustained it, from His inward communion
with the Father, not from an apocalyptic dogma
about the prospects of the kingdom.
The vital element in this apocalyptic phase of the
theology which the gospels present as an embodi-
ment of what Jesus thought and believed, is not
simply a heroic faith in the power of God to carry
out His purpose of regeneration and redemption
for men amid conditions which intimidated and
discouraged all but the most ardent souls on earth.
It is that. When these things begin physical cata-
strophes, supernatural terrors, national convulsions
take heart and lift up your heads, for your redemp-
tion is drawing near. 1 But it is more than that.
This confidence in the power and goodness of God
is bound up with the person of Jesus Christ. The
eschatological hope anticipates a future in which
the bliss and relief are mediated through the divine
Christ ; God is to reign over a people for whom
Jesus has given His life as a ransom, for whom He
has shed His blood, to bring them into the new
relationship of sons to the heavenly Father. Finally,
the future hope lays a moral obligation upon those
i Luke xxi. 28.
70 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
who cherish it. Ethical excellence does not win
the kingdom, but without the ethical temper of
unworldliness it cannot be received. Take heed to
yourselves, lest your hearts be overlaid by debauchery
and drunkenness and worldly cares, and so that Day
come on you suddenly like a snare. For come it will
on all who dwell on the face of the whole earth. Be
watchful and pray at every season that you may have
strength to escape all that is coming to pass, and to
stand in presence of the Son of man. It is the eschat-
ological hope which supplies at least the motive for
the counsels to watchfulness and zeal during the
interval of waiting. The developing theology of the
gospels shows how the early Christians gradually
became sensible that faith in God and in the future
was not necessarily bound up with this or any other
apocalyptic expectation ; but, even in transcending
the primitive eschatology, they carry on the religious
and ethical instinct which it embodied ; they attest
the fact that the attitude of Jesus to the future
kingdom meant neither a purely supernatural deity,
nor an attitude of passive unethical expectancy upon
the part of men, nor an order of things in which His
own person was transcended.
But, while this process of reflection is carried out
most fully in the Fourth gospel, the synoptic gospels
reveal the antinomy of the present and the future
within the consciousness of Jesus an antinomy,
without which the subsequent developments of the
primitive Christian theology are inexplicable. The
kingdom is to be inherited and entered when He
returns. That is the one side, attested by a score
of sayings. The other side is that God's reign has
begun with His messianic mission, that it is not
ii.] THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS 71
simply imminent but actually inaugurated in measure.
This consciousness of the present era as the climax
of the past and the beginning of a glorious future
is expressed or implied in a whole series of passages,
but one of the most explicit is the beatitude (Matt,
xiii. 16-17=Luke x. 23-4) of Q
Blessed are your eyes for they see,
and your ears for they hear :
I tell you,
many prophets and just men have desired to see
what you see,
but have not seen it :
and to hear what you hear,
but have not heard it.
There is nothing here of the ' ulterioris ripae amor,'
which, according to the rigid eschatological theory,
was the mood invariably inculcated by Jesus. He
felicitates the disciples on the nevelation of God
which they were privileged to enjoy in their inter-
course with Himself, here and now. It was an
experience which, as He elsewhere urges, carried
rich promise for the future of the kingdom, but it
was none the less a present reality ; the disciples
saw the fulfilment in Jesus of the long-expected
redemption of God, and heard the notes of the final
message of good news for man. This is a word
which shows the new era had begun with Jesus ; it is
not merely that He was in the future to herald the
Reign of the Father, but that already He was inaugurat-
ing it by His presence and vocation among men. The
consciousness of God and of God's purpose which
breathes in a saying like this, reveals a range of
mind which is deeper and wider than any apocalyptic
72 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
theory of the gospel can embrace. Such a concep-
tion of the messianic kingdom betrays an originality
and independence which throws a pencil of light on
a number of other passages, and the problem is to
harmonise it psychologically with the cross-light
thrown by the futuristic sayings.
(i) The first explanation of such an antinomy,
which occurs to the mind of a modern critic, is that
it must be due to the differences between the religion
of Jesus and the later standpoint of the apostolic
churches which more or less deliberately moulded
the tradition of that religion to the current interests
and preconceptions of the day. The influence of
this factor may be traced in various directions,
without much trouble. It is clear that the gospels
have not only laid special stress upon some eschato-
logical sayings, but ' eschatologised ' others which
originally had no reference to the future, (a) The
incorporation of the small apocalyptic tract in Mark
xiii.=Matt. xxiv. ; (b) the eschatological setting and
shape given by Matthew to the saying on the Way
(vi. 13), and to the (vii. 21) word about the formal
use of ' Lord, Lord,' whose original reference is pre-
served by Luke (vi. 46) ; (c) the saying about the
first and the last, which has been changed in the
course of transmission from a law of the present
life (connecting with the situation of Mark ix. 35 f.
Luke xxii. 26) into details of the eschatological
future ; (d) the homiletic application of the refer-
ence to Jonah (Matt. xii. 40) ; * (e) finally, the
1 This, like the sharpening of the prediction about rising on the
third day, or after three days, is apostolic ; it also marks the begin-
ning of the tendency to elaborate the descensus ad inferos, which
otherwise has no place in the theology of the gospels.
ii.] THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS 73
eschatological turn given by Luke (xviii. 1 ff.) to
the parable of the widow and the judge, which seems
originally to have inculcated the duty of constant
prayer, but, perhaps owing to the word ' avenge,'
to have been adapted to a special situation of the
early church ; these are only specimens of the
process at work, but they will suffice to indicate
its general character and motives.
A fair example of the opposite movement is afforded
by Matthew's version of the beatitudes, which tends
to bring out not only their spiritual but their immedi-
ate aspect more than is the case with Luke. 1 Most
of the data which point in this direction, however,
are special sayings for which there is no parallel in
any of the other two gospels.
The likelihood is that both processes were at work
within the early church. There are passages in the
gospels where the intense belief of Jesus that the
crisis would arrive suddenly and speedily has been
smoothed down, or if we choose to say so
spiritualised ; there are others where the inward-
ness of His teaching may be conjectured not unfairly
to have been somewhat narrowed during the course
of transmission through the Palestinian communities.
The evidence for these modifications is drawn ulti-
mately from an analysis of the synoptic tradition
which is rather hypothetical so far as it rests upon
Q. We can hardly be sure enough of the latter 's
contents to enable us to say whether its eschatology
1 Luke's probable omission of Thy kingdom come (in original text
of xi. 3-4), apparently on account of its eschatological association,
or because of the semi- political connotation which it might suggest
to Gentile readers, is, however, noticeable, especially in view of his
change (xix. 38) in the cry of the crowd at the entry into Jerusalem.
74 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
was of a less developed type than that of Mark. Such
a conclusion assumes too readily that Q did not
contain much if any of the material which happens
to be preserved in Mark ; besides it depends largely
on the decision between the relative merits of the
Lucan and Matthean versions. But apart from
what is problematical on this line of reconstruc-
tion, it must be admitted that the movement of
early Christian theology which Paul, for example,
represents, i.e. the movement from a predominating
to a subordinate eschatological interest, need not
have been typical of the apostolic religion as a
whole. Whatever date we assign to Mark, and
whatever his relation to Q may have been, the pro-
babilities are that the attitude of the early church
to the eschatological tradition of Jesus was not
homogeneous and stereotyped. The apocalyptic
temperature would rise and fall, partly according
to circumstances, partly according to the inherited
temperament of certain circles. In estimating the
effect of the early church's beliefs upon the words
of Jesus and also upon the record of His ministry,
it is fair to allow for the possibility that there was
a tendency in some quarters to give an eschatological
and somewhat conventional turn to the tradition,
just as in other circles and at other periods the
opposite drift would prevail. The latter tendency
is apt to engross the attention of the modern student,
especially in view of the culmination which is pre-
sented in the Fourth gospel, but the former is not
to be overlooked, It is true that upon the whole
there is a broad movement of thought, illustrated
by Paulinism, from the more to the less with regard
to apocalyptic eschatology, from the kingdom to
ii.] THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS 75
the Church as the centre of interest ; but, as the
history of early Christianity and the internal data
of the synoptic gospels indicate, this was not by
any means uniform. The more realistic and primi-
tive view repeatedly found expression, and there
are traces of it in the special modifications which
Matthew and Luke more than once introduce into
the tradition.
There are serious objections, however, to a posi-
tion like that of Wellhausen on this point. He
attributes the strictly eschatological emphasis to the
later Church, and will have nothing to do with the
theory that Jesus was bound up in an eschatological
series of predictions. On the other hand, while he
recognises in the parables, for example, distinct
traces of the conception that the kingdom of God
is a present reality, present in germ within the situa-
tion which the parables presuppose, he identifies
the kingdom as present with the Church, and thus
practically removes from the teaching of the historical
Jesus not only the definitely eschatological element,
but the complementary references to the present
order of the divine kingdom. The weakness of this
position is not that it recognises the influence of the
apostolic church upon both sides of the preaching
of Jesus ; it is the dogmatic standard which Well-
hausen imposes upon the historical materials. The
Jesus who is left, after both of the deductions have
been made which are considered necessary, is not
a Jesus who by His teaching or actions could have
given rise to such a movement as the early Christian
faith. There is not enough left in His teaching or
in His personality to account either for the visions
which, according to Wellhausen, produced the belief
76 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
that He had risen from the dead, or^for the forms
which that belief assumed within the primitive
theology.
(ii) The source of such antinomies in the preaching
of the kingdom really lies deeper than any interaction
of a primitive tradition and a later consciousness
of the apostolic church. It was not the theology
of the gospels which created them all ; some of them,
and some of the most vital, go back to the very con-
sciousness of Jesus Himself. The element of apoca-
lyptic eschatology cannot be eliminated from His
preaching, and neither can the stress laid upon the
kingdom as in a true sense present, like a germ, in
His personal ministry among men. Unless the
latter is admitted, no less than the former, the
subsequent development of early Christian theology
is not easily explained, and we are obliged to explain
away with more ingenuity than historical success
some authentic features of the mission of Jesus. It
is a further problem to do justice to the presence
of both elements within the consciousness of Jesus
a problem which belongs ultimately to the study
of His life. Did the eschatological interest, it may
be asked, belong specially to one period of His
teaching ? Was it mainly due to the influence of
John the Baptist, and did He gradually reach a more
inward conception of the kingdom through deeper
reflection and experience ? Or was the apocalyptic
passion thrown up by the later experiences of Israel's
obduracy ? Did the earlier preaching of God the
Father, and of the sonship of men through trust
and obedience, give place, during the period after
Csesarea Philippi, to a definitely messianic propa-
ganda which found its climax and heart in the near
IT.] THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS 77
future ? A solution of the problem, on such psycho-
logical and historical lines, has been more than once
attempted. The former hypothesis implies that the
gospel of Mark has antedated the prospect of suffer-
ing in the record. This is not absolutely impossible ;
on other grounds it has been conjectured that the
cycle of conflict-stories in ii. 1-iii. 6 belongs probably
to the neighbourhood of xii. Both hypotheses are
complicated, however, by the inadequate evidence
afforded by the sources (as we have them) for any
vital development of this chronological character.
Neither can do more than furnish an approximate
hint for the grouping of the data ; the augmenting
of the eschatological element after Csesarea Philippi,
for example, is obvious, but the element itself is
not wholly absent from the previous teaching.
Instead of distinguishing periods or successive
phases it is better to allow for the varying emphasis
laid by Jesus on different aspects of the kingdom.
Less weight attaches to another hypothesis that the
sayings which seem to denote any presence of the
kingdom really express no more than the speaker's
intense conviction that it was imminent, as if in
saying ' it is here,' he meant to declare vividly, { it
is upon you.' This might apply to one or two
phrases, but it does not cover all. It is not, in fact,
upon the interpretation of a few isolated passages
that the solution of the problem depends, but on
the general messianic consciousness of Jesus, which
has to be estimated from a wider range of evidence.
If any series of phases could be made out from the
synoptic material, it would be on the lines adum-
brated by Ba^ensperger in his monograph, Die
messianisch-apoJcalyptischenHoffnungen des Judentums
78 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
(1903) : a preliminary stage in which the conception
of the kingdom for the most part resembled the
ordinary apocalyptic view, then a phase during
which it became more inward and occasionally even
a present reality in some sense for Jesus, and finally
a fresh presentation of the kingdom as transcen-
dental and future. Baldensperger does not claim,
of course, that these phases were definitely succes-
sive. They overlapped ; the point of view repre-
sented by the second, for example, in the central
parabolic teaching, was not entirely absent from
the first or the third. As we have them, the
gospels probably support a theory like this better
than almost any other, and the very appearance of
complication which clings to it is a better proof of
genuineness than the simplicity which the others
claim. Life, as Jesus found it in the messianic
vocation, with new ideals to realise and convey,
was not simple. The complexity of the situation
involved a changing emphasis on various aspects
of the kingdom, and anything is better than to
attempt an explanation of his experience by crush-
ing it into a strait formula, or by regarding it as the
undeviating pursuit of an eschatological ideal.
(iii) Neither is it feasible to argue that Jesus
simply employed pictorial forms of thought and
language, often drawn from eschatological tradi-
tion, to express His deeper faith, and that the evan-
gelists not only misplaced some of these sayings,
but often failed to do justice to their imaginative
and plastic character. There is force in this con-
tention, but it does not furnish a complete clue to
the problem. The abuse of metaphor has certainly
been one of the standing errors in theology : either
ii.] THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS 79
too much or too little has been made of it, in the
interpretation of the words of Jesus. The Oriental
picturesqueness of His teaching has often been
ignored or minimised, with unfortunate results for
the appreciation of His ethics as well as of His
theology ; and in the opposite direction, under the
fear of modernising, we are apt to make serious
mistakes by insisting that Oriental expressions in
the gospels must be taken literally. 1 It is possible
that even the evangelists were not free from the
latter tendency, not because they were not Orientals,
but because their standpoint was lower than that
of the religious genius of Jesus. His language was
often poetic and figurative. He frequently spoke
in a popular metaphorical style, which was admir-
ably effective for His purpose of impressing the
conscience and imagination, and it is hopelessly
prosaic to deduce theological inferences from such
dramatic or vivid expressions. As the Old Testa-
ment prophets are enough to show, preaching in
its highest reaches inevitably assumes an almost
lyric or symbolic note ; its aim is to suggest and
inspire, not to use words of which it can be
said pedantically c this means that.' We
can recognise this figurative element in such
sayings as these : // you have faith as a grain of
mustard seed, you would say to this sycamine tree,
Be thou rooted up and be thou planted in the sea ; and
it would have obeyed you / came not to bring peace
but a sword ; or, in another direction, in the vivid
and passionate intensity which throbs under such
1 There are some apposite remarks upon the valuation of Hebrew
metaphor and allegory in Professor R. H. Kennett's In Our Tongues
(1907), pp. 7 f.
80 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
concentrated demands as that a disciple shall hate
his father and mother, or let the dead bury their dead.
These tremendous requirements witness to the white
heat with which Jesus, in moments of supreme
tension, viewed the devotion requisite to His cause
on earth. Or, again, when He exclaimed, with
reference to the success of the disciples in their
mission, I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning,
the metaphorical note is quite audible. This does
not mean that Jesus spoke of Satan and demons
figuratively ; the kingdom of God which as messiah
he had come to inaugurate, meant the collapse of
that hierarchy of evil spirits which He believed were
in control of the present age. But it does mean
that His language even upon such subjects must
be interpreted naturally and freely, and that some
of His eschatological utterances were vivid, semi-
allegorical expressions which were never intended
to be taken literally. It is too easy to literalise
the symbolic or poetic element into an unreal
estimate of what He said and meant. When the
profligate son in the parable came to his sober senses
and returned to his home, with moral penitence
triumphing over false pride and shame, he acted
upon his belief in his father's unwearied affection.
By a moral act of trust he determined to cast himself
upon the parental love from which he had foolishly
and wilfully broken away. And, when he was
restored, the terms of the welcome were : This, my
son, was dead and is alive again, he was lost and he is
found. It would not be safe to infer from this that
the words, e.g., of Matt. xi. 4 f. are to be taken allegori-
cally. It is possible, but not certain, that when
Jesus said, The dead are raised up, He meant the
n.] THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS 81
quickening of life in the penitent. But some place
must be left for this symbolic and pictorial element
in the apocalyptical teaching of Jesus. When He
said, // you are willing to receive it, this is Elijah, who
is to come, He was enunciating a principle which
underlay more than His estimate of John the Baptist.
There was a freedom in the way He expressed current
and conventional ideas, as well as in the way He
recast them. To make allowance for this does not
carry us to any final solution of the apocalyptic
antinomy in His preaching, but it is one considera-
tion which is essential to an adequate estimate and
statement of the data in question. 1
No one of these proposed solutions is really
satisfactory. Each contributes some element, but
neither singly nor collectively do they yield any
valid answer to the question. Ultimately it is an
historical problem, for a study of the conscious-
ness of Jesus rather than for the theology of the
gospels. The latter assumes both elements and
correlates them with less difficulty upon the whole
than a modern reader finds, partly because personal
piety is seldom sensible of theological difficulties to
the point of embarrassment, partly because the
synoptic gospels at anyrate were composed mainly
under the same time- view as that under which Jesus
1 ' Our modern notions of Christ's eschatology are often based on
an underrating of the extent to which He used material imagery, and
of the extent to which He was absorbed whereas His disciples were
by no means similarly absorbed in spiritual thought. . . . We
Christians go wrong in poring over the apocalyptic imagery without
bearing in mind that, if it came from Christ, it was used according to
Hebrew prophetic precedent by One whom we believe to have been
more spiritual than any Hebrew prophet.' Abbott, The Son of
Man, 3583.
F
82 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
Himself lived and thought. The vital point to be
grasped, however, is that neither the apocalyptic nor
the present emphasis can be ruled out of the teach-
ing of Jesus on the kingdom. And if any psychological
aid is sought in order to meet the situation which is
thus created, the theology of Paul supplies what we
want. It is instructive to recollect how this synthesis
of the present and the future is corroborated by the
religious mind of Paul. The apocalyptic form of
eschatology which even to the end remains in the
background of his doctrine did not prevent him from
recognising that the kingdom was already a present
experience of believers, through the Spirit of the
risen Christ. The kingdom-idea, for him, is only
one of several categories ; it has not the central
position that it occupies in the theology of the
gospels. The ' family-aspect,' which is present in
the teaching of Jesus, is developed by Paul, particu-
larly in connection with his view of adoption. But
he speaks of the kingdom as present in the authority
of an apostle, 1 and of the kingdom as denoting
righteousness, joy, and peace in the Holy Spirit,
as the sphere of Christian service, 2 and as the posi-
tion of forgiveness and fellowship into which
Christians have already entered. The Christian
hope looks forward to the appearance of Christ ;
the resurrection is not undervalued ; but the period
of the divine Reign has begun. ' God has delivered
us from the power of darkness and transferred us
into the kingdom of His dear Son.' 3 We have no
business to assume that what was possible to Paul
was beyond the reach of Jesus. The very fact that
an eschatological background lies behind most of
i 1 Cor. iv. 20. 2 Rom. xiv. 17 f. s Col. i. 13.
IL] THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS 83
Paul's sayings about the present kingdom emphasises
the organic character of the latter to a religious view
of the Reign of God, and serves to buttress the con-
viction that Jesus was not bound rigidly to a futur-
istic hope. Here as elsewhere the disciple is not
greater than his master. If the primitive theology
of the church succeeded in penetrating to some
consciousness of the present kingdom, under the
experience of the Spirit, it is an inversion of proba-
bilities to deny that the mind of Jesus was unequal
to such a range and depth of insight. It is necessary
even to assume that the Pauline position must have
been anticipated by that of the Lord in this respect.
Jesus, then, used not only apocalyptic language
but apocalyptic ideas, at certain moments of His
life. If we cannot, without arbitrariness, read all His
teaching and actions in the light of an eschatological
enthusiasm, we cannot, without almost equal violence,
eliminate the realistic eschatological hope from the
record of His career. At the beginning, as at the
end, He was sustained by the belief that the kingdom
was close at hand. This was the form taken by
His faith in God's purpose of goodwill ; it was not
merely the form into which the early church, in
the over-eagerness of its messianic ardour, threw
His teaching on the kingdom. But the essential
significance of the kingdom for Jesus is not to be
found by interpreting it in the light of earlier or
contemporary apocalyptic hopes. The kingdom
varied even there with the particular conception
of God or of messiah, and when Jesus took over
this ancestral hope of Judaism, He modified it
inevitably by connecting it with His profounder
conceptions of God's nature and of His own destiny.
84 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
This transmutation of the idea gives the starting-
point for the development which culminated in the
Fourth gospel, by showing that the stress upon the
inward and present aspect began not with the early
church but with Jesus Himself. As Von Dobschutz has
happily expressed it, c in the teaching of Jesus there
is a strong line of what I would call transmuted
eschatology. I mean eschatology transmuted in the
sense that what was spoken of in Jewish eschatology
as to come in the last days is taken here as already
at hand in the lifetime of Jesus ; transmuted at the
same time in the other sense that what was expected
as an external change is taken inwardly : not all
people seeing it, but Jesus' disciples becoming aware
of it.' * The reasons for this transmutation lie in
Jesus' consciousness of God as the Father and of
His own Sonship. Both of these determine the
conception of the new realm or reign of God which
He came to inaugurate, and it is to the study of their
meaning that we must now pass.
i The Eschatology of the Gospels (1910), p. 150.
ra.] THE GOD OF JESUS 85
CHAPTER III
THE GOD OF JESUS
PHILO, the Alexandrian contemporary of Jesus,
closes his treatise, De Opificio Mundi,with a summary
of the five supremely important lessons which are
taught by Moses in the Genesis-story of the creation,
(i) To refute atheists, he teaches that God really
exists ; (ii) to refute polytheists, he shows that
God is one ; (iii) in opposition to those who hold
that the universe is eternal and self-existing, he
emphasises its creation by God, (iv) and also its
unity, as the work of the God who is Himself
one, in opposition to speculations about a plurality
of worlds ; (v) finally, we learn the truth of provi-
dence, ' for it must needs be that the Maker should
duly care for what He has made, just as parents
take thought for their children.' Jesus never called
God the creator. He believed the Genesis-tradi-
tion, as is evident from His references to sex and
the sabbath, but He generally states in other forms
the moral and religious significance which attaches
to the doctrine of creation. God is the Father, for
Jesus, but not because He is creator. The truth of
the divine providence is connected specifically with
the Fatherly interest of God. Jesus assumes the
Jewish belief in the existence and the unity of God ;
He did not require to teach men that God forgave
sins, and His teaching contains no theories about
86 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
creation ; He never had to argue with people who
denied the power or righteousness of God. 1 The
stress of His teaching falls on the practical issues of
belief in God as the Father of men.
(a) The first of these is that the Father cares for
their interests. Thus, in the very act of insist-
ing that His disciples must subordinate every other
consideration to the interests of the divine kingdom,
Jesus assures them that God the Father is not in-
different to such matters as their food and clothing.
Your Father knows that you need these ; only seek
his kingdom and they shall be added to you. 2 The
very dangers and deaths which may be encountered
in the Christian mission lie within His fatherly
providence :
Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing ?
Yet not one of them drops to the ground without your
Father.
Fear not, then : you are of far more value than
sparrows*
This is a belief which dominates the central concep-
tion of God's relation to men, in the theology of the
gospels. But it neither absolves men from legitimate
activity in the matter of providing for themselves,
nor from prudence in safeguarding life against
normal dangers. By His actions as well as by His
teaching, Jesus shows that this unswerving trust
in God as the Father implies a use of ordinary
1 The omniscience of God is assumed, but in the religious sense of
Matt. vi. 4, 6, 18 (cf. ver. 32), not as a dogma.
2 Luke xii. 31.
3 So Wellhausen on Matt. x. 31, arguing that irdK\&v is a mistrans-
lation of the Aramaic original as above rendered.
m.] THE GOD OF JESUS 87
means to secure one's livelihood, and a recourse to
reasonable precautions in order to ensure one's
personal safety. It does not justify carelessness or
presumption. The doctrine of the divine provi-
dence, which is implicit and explicit in the gospels,
is not a premium put on the recklessness even of
good men. A concrete example of this is afforded
by the refusal of Jesus to be deterred from His
mission by the reported threat of Herod to murder
Him (Luke xiii. 31 f.). He replied, Go and tell that
fox, Behold I cast out demons and perform cures to-day
and to-morrow, . . . to-day and to-morrow and the
next day I must go on. The third day I shall be
perfected. The providence of God is over Him
until His mission is accomplished. But it is not
accomplished without suffering. With a touch of
deep irony, He adds : For it is impossible that any
prophet should perish except in Jerusalem. The Holy
City must retain its monopoly of killing the messengers
of God ! Nevertheless, even this fate is part of
God's providence, since without it the divine work
of Jesus could not be accomplished. He believes
in this providence and has courage to face risks
in carrying out God's purpose, but at the same time,
as His withdrawal from Galilee and His precautions
before the Last Supper show, this is perfectly con-
sonant with a careful avoidance of needless dangers.
When they persecute you in one city, He told His dis-
ciples similarly, flee to another.' 1 But the clearest
1 Matt. x. 23. This text was abused in the later church by weak-
kneed Christians who, in times of persecution, as Tertullian caus-
tically remarked (de Corona, i.), thought there was no word equal to
it in the gospel. The best comment on the verse is Acts xvii.
10, 14.
88 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
statement of the principle involved is presented
by the temptation-narrative in Matt. iv. 5-6, where
Jesus refuses to presume upon the providence of
God by thrusting Himself into dangerous positions,
and expecting God to intervene on His behalf. The
point is that in order to believe in God's provi-
dential care, it is not necessary to claim arbitrary
proofs of it. The first temptation is to abuse the
feeling of independence which comes from the con-
sciousness of divine sonship, by claiming exemption
from the ordinary duty of relying upon God's good-
ness in the sphere of natural wants ; the second is,
to abuse the feeling of dependence by an arbitrary
test of God's willingness to intervene miraculously
on behalf of those who are in peril. Jesus believed
God's angels had charge of the faithful. But He
declined to presume on this belief in providence ;
He felt that the more genuine it was, the less it would
look for such exceptional proofs of the divine interest.
The same thought recurs in Matt. xxvi. 53, and
again in connection with the function of angels in
providence. The popular belief in angels, which
Jesus shared, is most prominent in the birth-stories
of Matthew and Luke. Mark has comparatively
few allusions to them, and there is little special
development of the belief in the other gospels ;
while Matthew's 1 special parables, like Luke's (xv.
10, xvi. 22), mention angels (xiii. 39, xxv. 41), and
while an angel appears in connection with the resur-
rection (xxviii. 2, 5), 2 Luke twice in one passage
(xii. 6-9) substitutes the angels of God for the original
1 The saying in xviii. 10 is the only other allusion peculiar to this
gospel. It is a reference to guardian angels.
2 Cf. John xx. 12 for a different tradition.
''in.] THE GOD OP JESUS 89
My Father in heaven (Matt. x. 29-33). The reticence
of the Fourth gospel upon angels is connected with
its omission of any reference to demons. So far as
the synoptic tradition is concerned, the function of
angels in the life of Jesus is confined to their support
in crises (Mark i. 13, Luke xxii. 43) ; they are to be
His agents and retinue in the final establishment of
the kingdom, but they play a noticeably small role
in mediating between men and God, compared
with their corresponding functions in Judaism. The
direct and deep faith of Jesus in God as the Father
tended to confine the operations of providence and
the mediation of revelation to His immediate con-
tact with men. 1
(b) A further outcome of this fundamental belief
in God's fatherly providence is the conviction that
He is able to see His purpose through, and to ensure
the success of His cause in the world. The relation
of the Father to the order of the universe implies
that this spiritual aim will be effected, and this
purpose of the kingdom is brought out in three ways.
(i) ' Faith, 5 says Mazzini, ' requires a purpose that
shall embrace life as a whole, that shall concentrate
all its manifestations, and either direct its various
energies or subordinate them to the control of a
single activity ; it requires an earnest, unshaken
belief that the purpose will be attained, a profound
conviction of a mission and the obligation to fulfil
that mission, and the consciousness of a supreme
power that watches over the believer's progress to the
goal. These elements are indispensable. Where any
1 It is by angels that God's will is done in heaven {Matt. vi. 10), and
the condition of Christians at the resurrection is to be angelic (Mark xii .
25), i.e. according to Luke (xx. 36), immortal as well as unmarried.
90 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
one of them is lacking, we may have a sect, a school,
a political party, but not a faith, not an hourly self-
sacrifice for the sake of a great religious ideal.' The
words which I have italicised point to a religious
conviction which finds expression in the Fatherhood
of God as represented by the teaching of Jesus.
There is no doctrine of God's omnipotence, 1 in the
sense of later dogma, but there is an equivalent for
it which meets the moral and spiritual needs of faith.
This is expressed in the saying, / praise thee, Father,
Lord of heaven and earth, that while thou hast concealed
this from the wise and shrewd, thou hast revealed it to
the children. 2 Here the words Lord of heaven and
earth are not an otiose or formal epithet ; they are
intended to suggest that the fatherly purpose of
God in Jesus Christ has the full power and force
of the universe behind it ; it is effective in the
natural order. This invocation of Jesus guarantees
that the God on whom Christians rely for their
personal faith is adequate to carry out the divine
purpose to which they are committed by their self-
surrender. The God of Jesus has control of the
natural powers by which Christians are surrounded
and apparently thwarted here and there. The
Father is ' Lord of heaven and earth,' and as such
He is competent to have His will done on earth as
in heaven. According to the teaching of Jesus, our
faith in God the Father justifies us in believing that
in the mysterious world of Nature an absolute value
1 Note the context of the saying, With God all things are possible
(Matt, xix. 26). The will or plan of God can be thwarted (Luke vii.
29-30) ; there is no determinism about it. How often I would . . .
and you would not !
2 Matt. xi. 25.
ra.] THE GOD OP JESUS 91
attaches to our personalities, as they are directed
to the ends of God. The theology of the gospels,
in this respect true to the teaching of our Lord,
is interested in creation mainly from such a prac-
tical point of view. There is no attempt to explain
the dualism of God and evil. The final triumph
of God is assumed, as the religious basis of the
eschatological hope.
(ii) This hope of the good time coming, when the
power of the Father will come fully into play, was
vital to the faith of Jesus. He whose will is done
in heaven by the angels is willing and able to have
it done also upon earth, and this effective climax
is the outcome of His redeeming providence in the
present. On the one hand, it was the aim of Jesus
to create and foster in His disciples the character
which corresponded to the future realm and reign
of God the Father ; purity of heart, brotherly love,
a forgiving spirit, and genuine humility, He taught,
were the qualities which gave men a title to the bliss
of the reign to come. Again, one of the motives
for courage and hope, under the stress of the present
evil order, was the conviction that it was temporary ;
the Father would ere long vindicate His loyal sons.
Similarly, the renunciation of the world for the sake
of a higher devotion to the interests of the Reign,
was represented as sure of a reward in the shape
of fuller life. The underlying thought is that the
Fatherhood of God means a royal authority. To be
His sons is to be sons (Matt. viii. 12, etc.) of the
kingdom, i.e. members of the heavenly order which
it is His will to realise. There is no opposition
between the fatherly kindness of God and the
divine kingship in the gospels ; the latter is an
92 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
aspect of the former. Belief in God the Father
involved confidence in His supreme power over the
universe, and this found expression in the concep-
tion of His reign. 1 He who was Lord of heaven,
where His will was done by the spiritual beings of
the upper order, would prove Lord of earth as well,
through the fulfilment of His royal purpose of love
for men through Christ.
(iii) Another line of suggestion is afforded by the
place assigned to miracles in connection with the
personality of Jesus. The real aim of His healing-
miracles was to induce the reverent recognition of
God's power as manifested in Himself ; thus the
Samaritan leper, when he saw he was cured, returned
glorifying God . . . and giving him (i.e. Jesus)
thanks (Luke xvii. 15-16). These works of healing
represent the pity and power of God exercised
upon men ; they are cures which are meant to
deepen faith in the merciful and strong character
of the Father, whose kingdom Jesus has come to
establish. Furthermore, the miracles which are
conditioned by faith in the recipient of the divine
benefits 2 witness to the truth that the reign of God
concerns the physical as well as the spiritual well-
being of men, and that the goodwill of the Father
1 Cf. Titius, Der Paulinismus, pp. 32 f. (< Orientals do not recog-
nise our sharp distinction between the family and the state-organisa-
tion. . . . The distinction between family and kingdom must be
entirely ignored in connection with the mind and preaching of
Jesus ').
2 That is, according to the usual synoptic tradition. In the Fourth
gospel the cr^eta elicit faith rather than presuppose it; they are
what an ancient writer would have called dperal 0eou, demonstrating
the divine 'glory' of Christ for the sake of producing faith in
Himself.
ra.] THE GOD OF JESUS 93
embraces all sides of human nature (cf. Matt. xi. 4 f.),
with the power of reaching and healing it at every
point. The distinction between these healing miracles
and the Nature-miracles is unreal, from the stand-
point of the gospels. The diseases and disorders
which Jesus cured, as part of His work for the
Father's kingdom, belonged to the sphere of Nature
over which God ruled for the benefit of His people.
The apologetic value, therefore, of the so-called
Nature-miracles was the demonstration that the
God who produced spiritual miracles upon the souls
of men had at His command the powers of the
universe.
The relation of God's providence to the natural
order is illustrated not only by the ' miracles,' how-
ever, but by the direct teaching of our Lord. It is
significant that the God of Jesus is vividly present
in the simple processes of Nature. To the theology
of the gospels, as distinguished from the lurid con-
ception of the main apocalypses and from the
average rabbinic doctrine, Nature is instinct with
the divine Spirit. The world of what moderns call
inanimate Nature is not profane to Jesus, and this
is a dominant note in His teaching upon the
character of God.
Observe how the flowers of the field grow f They
neither toil nor spin ;
Yet, I tell you, even Solomon in all his grandeur
was not robed like one of these.
And if God so clothes the grass of the field which to-day
is and to-morrow is thrown into the oven,
men of little faith, shall he not much more clothe
you ?
Matt. vi. 28 f.
94 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
This recalls the older appeal of the psalmists to
Nature as a proof of the divine goodness, but it
stands out from contemporary Judaism in its dis-
tinctive appreciation of the religious as well as the
aesthetic side of the world. ' Almost all Christ's
moral precepts might be paralleled or illustrated
by something in Hebrew or Jewish literature. This
praise of the beauty of flowers cannot, apparently,
be so paralleled. And it helps Christians to approxi-
mate to a realisation of the spiritual attitude of
Christ's conception of beauty and glory in the moral
world. Of all Christ's sayings it is the most original.' l
Another passage in the Sermon on the Mount points
to the same belief in the living God of Nature :
Swear not by heaven,
For it is God's throne :
Neither by the earth,
For it is the footstool of his feet. 2
This prohibition of careless swearing is character-
istic of the best Jewish piety, and the phrasing of
the saying itself suggests a verbal reminiscence of
the post-exilic oracle in Isaiah Ixvi. 1-2 :
Thus saith Yahveh : Heaven is my throne,
And the earth is my footstool.
What Jwuse then would you build for me,
And what place of habitation ?
Only, we notice that Jesus does not use these
words in order to prove that God does not dwell
in houses made by hands. As a matter of fact, He
assumes God's presence in the temple His Father's
house (cf. Luke ii. 49) on a later occasion when He
1 Dr. E. A. Abbott, The Son of Man, p. xiv. and 3565 d.
2 Matt. v. 34-35.
in.] THE GOD OF JESUS 95
again refers to the contemporary abuse of oaths
(Matt, xxiii. 22) :
Does not a man who swears by the temple swear also
by him who inhabits it ?
And does not he who swears by heaven swear by God's
throne and by him who is seated on it ?
The saying is another glimpse of the directness
and inwardness with which He viewed the earth as
God's earth, for all its evil and pain. Nothing is
more remote from the teaching of the gospels than
a deistic view of the world. 1 Even the lurid tinge
which apocalyptic eschatology imparted to some of
the later predictions does not remove the deeper
aspect of the living Father as present in the world
of men and things, to bless the former and in their
interests to control the latter. It is much the same
intuitive feeling which Browning voices through
his Luria :
' My own East !
How nearer God we were ! He glows above
With scarce an intervention, presses close
And palpitatingly, his soul o'er ours :
We feel him, nor by painful reason know !
All changes at his instantaneous will,
Not by the operation of a law
Whose maker is elsewhere at other work.
His hand is still engaged upon his world
Man's praise can forward it, man's prayer suspend,
For is not God all-mighty 1 To recast
The world, erase old things and make them new,
What costs it him? So, man breathes nobly there.'
1 Cf. e.g. John v. 17. The difficulty of reconciling the problem of
God with Nature, and of explaining the relation between an absolute,
spiritual being and the material creation, which vexed the soul of the
later gnostics, is not directly present to the theology of the gospels.
96 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
' His hand is still engaged upon His world.' The
gospels present the life of God in the natural world
as active on behalf of His moral and spiritual interests
in human life. His control of Nature permits the
full growth of the human soul into His own likeness,
and the full accomplishment of His redeeming
purpose in this universe of pain and suffering and
sin.
It is at this point that the theology of the gospels
anticipates a modern problem of the religious con-
sciousness, the difficulty of believing in a transcen-
dental God who is great and high, and at the same
time of trusting in a God who is present in the most
intimate life of the soul. According to the gospels,
the immanence of God is not confined to Nature as
opposed to human nature, nor to human nature as
distinguished from the sphere of natural forces and
elements. The Father is King and Lord of the
universe, not in an external sense, but as creating
and sustaining it for His own ends, and this implies
that He wills to come into direct relation with those
in whom these ends are to be fulfilled. Jesus teaches
that the reign or realm of God the Father is the
realisation of His will on earth as it is in heaven.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. The spirit of
this prayer means that the Christian identifies his
will with the will of God, as directed to the realisa-
tion of the divine realm in this world, the realm
being the life and activity of God's household. It
is the same thought which underlies Christ's teach-
ing, that when life is surrendered for the sake of
Himself and the gospel it is truly won ; men take
up their life again, under this devotion to the great
cause of God, and find that it is really life in the
in.] THE GOD OP JESUS 97
deepest sense of the word. In other words, the
renunciation of the lower self, with its narrow and
particular ends, in favour of the will of God, brings
a man into the closest experience of the living God,
and at the same time reveals a divine purpose
which transcends the finite sphere of human activities.
From one point of view, as the Fourth gospel puts it
(xiv. 23), such a man lives the life of God ; if a man
love, me which, as the context shows (cf. ver. 21),
implies obedience to the commands of Christ he
will keep my word, and my Father will love him,
and we will come to him and make our abode with
him. This is not equivalent to any mystic absorp-
tion of the human personality in the divine. It is
not upon the mere unity of God and man that com-
munion with God depends. Such a view invariably
tends to reduce communion to an abstract or imper-
sonal relationship between either finite beings and
some absolute essence of which they are so many
differentiations, or between the dewdrop and the
shining sea of deity into which it slips. The gospels
represent communion with God in terms of sonship,
which involves kinship and dependence. This con-
ception practically carries with it the elements
which a modern doctrine of Immanence is designed to
conserve the essential affinity of man to God, the
sacredness and worth of the present life, and the near-
ness of God to man in moral and spiritual experience.
Thus the theology of the gospels is saved from
the danger into which later theologies of the mystic
type have more than once slipped the danger of
allowing the consciousness and contemplation of
God to distract life from moral devotion to the
interests of the divine service and kingdom. It
G
98 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
is based on faith in the risen Christ, and therefore
this communion of God and man is regarded as
mediated through the Son. Now, the condition
of the presence of Christ is invariably obedience
to His will as a will of service and fealty. Go . . .
and lo ! I am with you always* One of the later
rabbis is reported to have said, as a deduction
from Malachi iii. 16, that ' two who sit together
and are occupied with the words of Torah have the
Shekinah among them ' (Pirqe Aboth, iii. 3). Jesus,
according to Matthew (xviii. 20), promises His
divine presence to any two or three of His disciples
who have met in Ms name. This is an anticipa-
tion of the Fourth gospel's doctrine of the indwelling
of Christ, and elsewhere in that gospel (e.g. i. 14)
there are traces of the Hebrew conception of the
Shekinah or * Presence of the Glory ' having been
fused with the Logos-idea of the evangelist, a fusion
which was all the more natural as the Shekinah
and the Memra, or Word, were sometimes almost
indistinguishable. But the point of the Matthean
saying 2 is, that the divine presence of Jesus not
only corresponds to the older conception of God's
nearness to the faithful, but is conditioned by
1 Matt, xxviii. 19.
2 There is nothing in the gospels which exactly corresponds to the
mystical expansion of this saying in the famous Oxyrhynchite logion,
which (in Blass's restoration) runs: Wheresoever two are, they
are not godless, and where there is one only, I say, I am ivith him.
Raise the stone, and there thou shalt Jind me; cleave the tree, and I
am there. The divine presence with the individual saint is argued as
in Pirqe Aboth, iii. 9 ; but the rest of the saying is pantheistic, as the
gospels are not. Compare the description of the Christian soutar in
George Macdonald's novel, Salted with Fire (p. 183), as ' turning up
ilkamuckle stane to luik for his Maister aneth it.' The thought,
quid interius Deot is otherwise put by Jesus,
m.] THE GOD OF JESUS 99
devotion to His person and cause (cf. the context).
The theology of the gospels might be described
as the grammar and syntax of that personal religion
whose spirit prompts the cry, Father, Father. The
revelation of God which gave rise to this faith was
the effect of the teaching and personality of Jesus.
The distinctive factor in Christianity is not that
He taught God was the Father of men, but that
God was His Father ; it was in virtue of this unique
consciousness of sonship that He called men to
come to Him and learn the secret of sonship, and He
mediated the knowledge of it by His life and death
and resurrection, no less than by His words. The
teaching of Jesus on this point or on any other cannot
be severed from His personality and vocation. He
was the Son of God in order to bring men into son-
ship, by enabling them to lay hold of the redeeming
love of the Father, and this required more than words.
At first, however, it is principally the conception
of God in His teaching which is before us. Now, a
religion may call God by several names, but there
are titles for God without which it would not be
itself, and for Christianity the supreme title is that
of ' Father.' Its distinctive meaning as the charac-
teristic description of God in the gospels is further
brought out by a comparison of the current Jewish
titles which Jesus either ignored or used sparingly.
Among the chief of these were The Lord (o
The Blessed (6 evAoyrjros), 1 The Most High (6 ui/
1 In Mark xiv. 61 (the high priest's challenge), Are you the messiah,
the son of the Blessed ?
2 In Mark v. 7, an adjuration of the demoniac. It is doubtful
whether the Lucan use is a personal predilection of the evangelist, or
reflects an occasional habit of Jesus.
100 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
or, under the influence of an ultra-reverential feeling,
simply The Name 1 or Heaven (cf. Mark xi. 30,
Luke xv. 18, 21, John iii. 27, for incidental traces of
this usage). Once, 2 in the threatening prediction
made to the Jewish authorities, he calls God by the
Jewish allusive title of The Power (Mark xiv. 62=
Matt. xxvi. 64), 3 possibly because ' He desires to
warn the Jews that in condemning " the Son of man "
on earth, they are turning God into a " Power,"
instead of a Father, in heaven, and are preparing
for themselves, in the Son, not a mediator revealing
the Father, but a judge seated at the right hand of
the Power ' (Abbott, The Son of Man, 3309). In any
case, He does not speak of God as the Almighty.
The Father's divine power, as we have already
seen, is presented in other language with special
reference to the interests of Christians and the
kingdom.
A similar attitude characterises the teaching of
Jesus with regard to the ' holiness ' of God. The
Lord's Prayer begins, Our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name. As the name or rather the
character of God is Father, the prayer is for the
deeper and wider knowledge not of His transcend-
1 Cf. e.g. the high priest's confession in Joma, iii. 8, '0 Name, I
have sinned before Thee, I and my house ; Name, do Thou make
atonement,' etc.
2 The gospel of Peter preserves the cry of Jesus on the cross as My
Power, my Power, thou hast left me, but this is not necessarily a
divine title ; it may denote the higher spiritual power of His own
personality.
3 Luke writes the power of God (xxii. 69), either because he wished
to avoid this unfamiliar synonym for God, or because he took the
earlier phrase (as it might be taken, though less probably) as an
equivalent for the right hand of power (Swd/xetus^an adjectival
genitive).
m.] THE GOD OF JESUS 101
ence but of His fatherly nature. Reverence for God
as the Father is what Jesus teaches in this petition
or aspiration. The sacred name for Him was not The.
Holy One but Father ; it was as Father that God
was to be reverenced and honoured. Jesus deepens
as He carries on the conception of God as the Father,
the Father not simply of the community but of
the individual also, and of the individual man not
simply of the individual Israelite. He is the royal
Father of men, not because He created them, nor
because He rules them, but because they stand to
Him in a moral relation of kinship and dependence.
But it is His Spirit which is described as holy, not
Himself. The association of remoteness and ritual
which had gathered round the divine name of ' holy,'
probably accounted for Jesus' avoidance of it ; the
moral purity and passion which it denoted, were
expressed by Him in terms of the Father's love as
opposed to sin in man. It was His profound con-
ception of the divine love which embraced what
had hitherto been grouped mainly under the special
category of holiness in the description of God's
character. As the Father, God inspired, for Jesus,
the moral reverence and humility which His holiness
had elicited in Judaism, and not only inspired but
deepened them. The fact that Jesus avoided this
term accounts for its comparative rarity in the
theology of the primitive Christians. ' Holiness ' had
associations which were inconsistent with their
religious experience of God as the Father, and its
valid elements were expressed in other ways. It is
not unlikely, too, that the adjective was avoided
as a divine epithet owing to the fact that the Greeks
never applied it to their deities. The convert
102 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
instinctively felt that heavenly or in the heavens was
more appropriate than the less familiar and less
obvious Jwly (ayios). 1
There is only one passage in the gospels where
c holy ' is definitely applied to God, i.e. in John
xvii. 11. Holy Father, keep them in thy name
(i.e. keep them faithful to thy nature and revela-
tion of Father) which thou hast given to me, that
theirs may be a unity like ours. The last words are
reiterated throughout the prayer (ver. 20 f., 24 f .), and
denote its special object. Christ's desire, according
to the writer, is that His people may be kept from
the divisive, unbrotherly spirit of the world ; Keep
them from the evil one, who rules with a spirit of hate
the world in which they have to live and work.
Their sphere is the relationship and attitude in which
they call God Father, as revealed in Christ, and
thus form a brotherhood on earth. 2 This passage is
therefore an expansion of the thought in the synoptic
Lord's Prayer. The term holy is chosen in opposi-
tion to that of the world, but the idea is not dissimilar
to the Lord's Prayer, viz., that to pray for the
Father's name being hallowed, implies absolute
loyalty to His will, trust in His love, and forgive
us our debts, as we forgive our debtors a temper of
unvarying forgiveness in the lives of those who thus
call Him Father. In fact the term holy, in John
xvii. 11, is probably an equivalent for the synoptic
heavenly, which is never applied to God by the
writer of the Fourth gospel. Holy Father is practi-
1 Kattenbusch, Das Apostolische Symbol, ii. 687.
2 This is the real life (ver. 17, corresponding to the true character
of their God) to which he devotes them, setting them apart for its
propagation in this world.
in.] THE GOD OF JESUS 103
cally another mode of expression for Father in
heaven*
What is totally absent from this conception of
God as Father, is the notion that any ceremony is
required upon the part of man to render honour and
glory to Him, or to thank Him publicly and formally
for His goodness. The theology of the gospels does
not know such a deity ; it tacitly supersedes the older
ideas of a God, to which such practices were relevant
as the moral elements in sacrifice. The God of
Jesus is to be worshipped, according to the Fourth
gospel, as Father in spirit and in truth (iv. 23) ; He
is honoured and served in a life which, inspired by
His spirit, is faithful and loving in the common duties
of this world. The externalities of ritual and cere-
mony, with their local circumstances, belong to the
sphere of the flesh, which in the Johannine usage is
the material and lower antithesis to the divine world
of the spirit as the only reality. The basis for this
conception of inward worship is laid down by Jesus
in the anti-Pharisaic passage at the opening of
Matthew vi. where the genuine ideal of righteousness
is defined, in the sphere of ordinary life as well as
of worship. Jesus requires a passionate devotion to
this righteousness (Matt. v. 6, 10), and promises that
it will be satisfied in the realm of God. He connects
it with the realm of God, not simply as the require-
ment but as the atmosphere and content of that
realm or reign (cf. Mark xii. 29-31). The righteous-
ness and the kingdom of God are not only associated
(Matt. vi. 33, seek first the kingdom and his righteous-
1 This term, which is practically confined to Matthew's gospel, is
allied to that of the kingdom of heaven (see above, p. 63). For argu-
ments against its originality, cf. Abbott's Son of Man , 3492.
104 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
ness), 1 but by being brought under the common
and supreme category of life are practically identified.
What Jesus meant by the term which we translate
righteousness, was the conduct and character which
corresponded to the fatherly love of God (cf. Matt.
v. 43 f.) 3 and this meant a share in His own life. 2
The outstanding feature of this righteousness,
which differentiates it from any formal or legal
conception, is spontaneous, ungrudging, unreserved
love.
Love your enemies and pray for your persecutors,
That you may prove sons of your Father in heaven :
For he makes his sun rise on the evil and the good,
And rains upon the just and the unjust. 3
Jesus prohibits any restriction of love and pity
to those who are kind to ourselves. The doctrine
sounds heroic to ordinary human nature, but Jesus
does not present it as heroic. He grounds His
demand upon the natural attitude of the Father,
upon what Francis of Assisi called ' the great courtesy
of God.' He assumes that men enjoy the benefits
of rain and sunshine from the hand of the Father,
and argues that a similar generosity must stream
out from their hearts upon the undeserving. Love
1 ' Righteousness ' is one of Matthew's favourite terms, and in this
passage it is uncertain whether the Lucan omission is not more
correct. If it is retained, it denotes not the character of God but the
moral and spiritual requirements which He makes upon those who
are sons and citizens of His kingdom.
2 The remark of Wisdom xii. 19 : Thou hast taught thy people that
the righteous should be a lover of men (<J>i\dv6pwiroi>) occurs in a
nationalistic passage, but it is based on the conception of God's
gracious nature (yer. 12).
3 Matt. v. 44 f.
iii.] THE GOD OP JESUS 105
is the absolute character of God, love even for the
undeserving. The Most High is kind to the thankless
and the evil. Be pitiful, even as your Father is
pitiful. This is the Lucan parallel to Matthew's
word You are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father
is perfect, as your love extends even to your enemies. 1
The moral claim is that the sons of the kingdom
must reproduce in their own lives the spirit of their
royal Father, especially towards those who have
wronged them.
This conception of God's nature is interwoven
with every fibre of the Christian message. It is
illustrated by the identification of love to God with
sympathy and service, by Christ's insistence that
forgiveness and charity must not be allowed to
stand aside on any pretext not even on the pretext
that worship has prior obligations. Go and learn,
said Jesus once, what this saying means : I desire
mercy, and not sacrifice. He said this to clinch His
reasons for associating with the tax-gatherers and
sinners of Galilee, a proceeding which scandalised
the Pharisees ; and this points to a second method
by which the character of God was interpreted by
Him. His welcome, extended to classes which were
treated as beyond the pale by the religious authorities,
was a practical demonstration of the divine purpose
in its graciousness. The whole attitude of Jesus
to sinners has a theological significance which tallies
with His teaching upon God's fatherly and gracious
1 It is in this brotherly love that the moral personality develops
into the life of God. This is the motive of the higher ' righteousness.'
It anticipates a reward, not in the sense of recompense which can
be claimed for merit laid up by almsgiving and the like, but as the
consequence and fruition of the inward spirit which aspires to the
character of the Father.
106 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
love to all sorts and conditions of men. Jesus pro-
claims by act as well as word the holy love of God
seeking out the sinful, welcoming the lost and
harassed, restoring the penitent to God's favour,
and assuring men of their place in the Father's
heart. Now this message has presuppositions and
consequences which involve more than appears upon
the surface.
(i) The first is, the self-sacrifice of love in God as
well as in man. A vivid ray of light is thrown upon
the character of God by the terms in which Jesus
passionately rebuked Peter for seeking to dissuade
Him from going up to suffer and die at Jerusalem.
And he began to teach them that the Son of man must
endure great suffering, and be rejected by the elders and
the high priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after
three days rise again. He spoke of this frankly and
explicitly. Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke
him. But Jesus turned round and, seeing his dis-
ciples, rebuked Peter, saying, Begone, thou Satan, for
thy thoughts are man's, not God's. 1 The intensity
of this reproof insists that suffering is in the line
of God's heart and mind. Human feeling is apt to
shrink from pain and death ; it naturally assumes
that these must be incompatible with the divine
nature. Even Peter, who is forward to hail Jesus
as the Christ of God, is shocked at the idea that
his Master should dream of exposing Himself to
ignominy and distress ; his conception of the divine
purpose cannot yet admit the idea of a messiah
who triumphs through suffering. Jesus reverses his
view, as untrue to the mind of God ; ov Covets
TO. TOV Otov dAAa ra Twi/ ai/^/owTTwi/. God's way is
i Mark viii. 31 f.
m.] THE GOD OF JESUS 107
not the line of shrinking from self-sacrifice. To
choose the path leading to the cross is to mind the
things of God, i.e. to act upon His motives and to
sympathise practically with His aim. When Jesus
introduced into the conception of the apocalyptic
Son of man the startling function of suffering, He
was implicitly revolutionising the entire scheme of
messianic eschatology. When He showed that He
must go forward on this line, that it was the only
divine course to take, the only course open to any
one who understood the real purpose and method of
God, He was giving an interpretation of the divine
Spirit which controlled the kingdom.
If there was not for His contemporaries, there is for
us, a dramatic significance in the very locality of this
decision. 1 Caesarea Philippi lay outside Judaea, and it
was associated with more faiths than one. In the high
red limestone cliff, from which the Jordan bubbled,
there was a huge cave or grotto, sacred to the worship
of Pan and the nymphs a worship consecrated by
the Macedonian Greeks, who had settled in the
district after Alexander the Great's conquest. Pan,
the god of green fields and grazing flocks, represented
the joyful worship of the Greek world as it aban-
doned itself to the natural instincts of life. There
was another local cult, however. On the cliff
above the grotto a white temple stood, where the
Roman emperor was worshipped. This temple had
been erected by Herod after the visit of Caesar
Augustus ; it denoted a form or phase of supersti-
tion which glorified pomp and authority, not Nature.
Now, both of these contemporary religions were
1 Cf. Dr. G. A. Smith's Historical Geography of Palestine,
pp. 474 f.
108 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
the antithesis of the religion which Jesus revealed
to the disciples at Caesarea Philippi, when He began
to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem
and suffer and be killed, in obedience to the prompt-
ing of His God.
This is one of the most striking proofs of what
Jesus believed His God to be. Anticipations of the
divine nature as implying self-sacrifice and sympathy
had been already voiced here and there both within
Judaism and Hellenism, by the fifty-third chapter
of Isaiah, e.g., by sayings like In all their affliction
he was afflicted which the finer faith of the rabbis
dwelt upon with emphasis, and also, throughout
the higher reaches of Greek and Oriental thought,
by the contemporary belief hi the dying and suffer-
ing god of the cults. These are glimpses of the
light that was coming into the world in full splendour
through the person of Jesus Christ. But how difficult
it was to believe that the higher life came through
dying to self, and that it is divine to bear suffering
willingly for the sake of others, is shown by Peter's
blunt remonstrance. He was shocked at the notion
of the Son of God actually dreaming of anything so
humiliating and unworthy as pain and self-sacrifice.
The pageant of apocalyptic eschatology dazzled
his eyes till they failed as yet to recognise where the
true glory of life lay. It required the facts of the
passion and the cross and the resurrection to convince
the disciples that Jesus was right in His reading of
God's character, and therefore He revealed the
nature of the Father, not simply by telling men of
His intuitions, but by acting as He believed in the
line of God and pointing men, through what He did
and suffered, to the essential spirit and motives of
m.] THE GOD OF JESUS 109
the Father. The parables enshrine with unrivalled
clearness the fatherly and forgiving goodness of God.
But, as Jesus showed at Caesarea Philippi, the deeds
of our Lord His entire vocation, His attitude to
life and death set forth even with greater vividness
the real interests of God. He who has seen me has
seen the Father, says the Christ of the Fourth gospel.
That saying sums up the meaning of Christ's life
as a practical revelation of God's character and
purpose ; x it renders explicit what is more or
less implicit in the synoptic tradition, the divine,
redeeming love which led up to the cross.
It was the sin of man, bound up with the evil of
the world, which necessitated this utter self-sacrifice.
Jesus had to overcome more than wrong views
about God ; He had to meet the sin of the world
as a positive opponent of the Father. To Him the
forgiveness of sins was the negative side of bliss or
entrance into fellowship with God. It was by reveal-
ing the true character and realising the gracious
purpose of God, that He sought to produce a genuine
repentance, and on the other hand to reassure those
who had a sense of sin. When, therefore, He
demanded repentance because the kingdom of God
is at hand, the conception of the kingdom deter-
mined the nature of the repentance which was
required ; the motives for the latter were found in
God's fatherly love, with its corollary of brotherly
1 * A son may reveal a father in two ways : either by being like
him so entirely in his image as to be justified in saying, He that
hath seen me hath seen my father or by manifesting a constant
reverential, loving trust, and thus testifying that the father is worthy
of such a trust. Jesus revealed the Father in both these ways'
(Erskiue, The Spiritual Order, p. 250). The former is mainly charac-
teristic of the Fourth gospel, the latter of the synoptists.
110 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
service, and both of these are represented in the life
and death of Jesus ; He lives and dies to bring them
home with power to the conscience of men, amid
the sins of worldliness and hatred which exclude
from the kingdom.
(ii) The special and unique work which Jesus had
thus to do, in connection with the purpose of God,
implied a corresponding relation between Him and
the Father. This topic partly belongs to the next
chapter, but it is cognate to our present discussion,
since the character of God as the Father of Jesus
is the basis of the general Fatherhood which underlies
the synoptic tradition as well as the Johannine.
The chief passage which voices this aspect of the
synoptic theology is Matt. xi. 26-7 :
All has been given over to me by my Father :
And no one knows the Son except the Father
Nor does any one know the Father except the Son,
And he to wliom the Son chooses to reveal him.
The last word has to be supplied. The original
has no accusative after reveal, and the object of the
Son's revelation might include Himself as well as
the Father. It is possible that the last clause thus
refers to both of the preceding, as Irenseus suggested
(Adv. Haer. iv. 6. 3, especially his comment on the
phrase, which runs, teaching of Himself and of the
Father). In any case Jesus speaks of God as His
Father, and of Himself as the Son, in a specific
sense. The saying at the transfiguration (Mark ix. 7)
and some other allusions corroborate the view that
this was not an isolated usage, which may be
explained away in Matt. xi. 26-7 as the projection
of a c Johannine ' idea into the synoptic tradition.
It is the expression rather than the thought which &
m.] THE GOD OF JESUS 111
is exceptional in this passage. Jesus is here as
elsewhere the Son, not because He is the messiah,
but in virtue of a unique relation to the Father. It
is through His consciousness of a distinct relation
to God as the Father, that the consciousness of the
messianic vocation is interpreted by the evangelists.
Jesus is presented as the Son of God who has a
divine calling to fulfil on behalf of men. He is
conscious of His divine Sonship as He is conscious
of this vocation to realise the purpose of God the
Father for men. The latter was determined for
Him by His relation of Sonship to God.
In the second century some Christians, like the
Marcionites, used the aorist (eyvu>) to corroborate
their distinction between the God of the Old Testa-
ment and the God of Jesus. ' Those who would
like to be wiser than the apostles,' says Irenaeus
(Adv. Haer. iv. 6. 1), 'write the passage thus : " No
one has known the Father except the Son, nor the
Son except the Father, and he to whom the Son
has chosen to reveal Him," interpreting it as though
the true Gpd had been known by no one prior to
the coming of our Lord, and denying that the God
whom the prophets announced was the Father of
Christ. 5 This gnostic reading is adopted for other
reasons by several editors including Harnack, who
also contends (Sayings of Jesus, pp. 272 f.) that the
clause, who the Son is but the Father, was interpolated
from Matthew into Luke (x. 22) at an early stage, and
that the original Lucan text which represents the
saying better than the Matthean form simply ran
All has been given over to me by the Father,
And no one has known the Father except the Son,
And he to whom the Son reveals Him.
112 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
But neither Harnack's facts nor his inferences
in the textual field of early Christian quotations are
beyond challenge ; 1 the aorist eyi/w is gnomic rather
than historic, and therefore is not out of place in the
canonical form of the text ; even the omission of
the second clause, though more defensible, 2 spoils
the rhythm and balance of the passage. It has to be
remembered that the consciousness of His messianic
calling and character as God's Son had been a revela-
tion to Jesus at the baptism. It was a revelation
to Peter at Caesarea Philippi flesh and blood have not
revealed this to thee, but my Father in heaven ; though
Peter failed to understand the full significance of
the revelation. And to Jesus Himself it was a
mystery. No one knows the Son but the Father. It
was only through steadfast obedience to the Father's
will, through prayer and temptation, that He came
to realise the meaning of His Sonship for Himself
and for men.
The bearing of the passage upon God's Fatherhood
is that God was the Father of Jesus in a special
sense, and that Jesus was conscious of a filial
intimacy and communion which enabled Him to
reveal God's character as none else could, and to
realise God's redeeming purpose for the sons of
men. There is no definition of the divine nature ;
there is no assertion of a metaphysical relationship
1 Cf. Dom Chapman in Journal of Theological Studies, 1909, pp.
552-66, though it is not necessary to find the occasion for the thanks-
giving in the neighbourhood of Matt, xvi., and to regard the ravra
of ver. 11 as the revelation of the divine Sonship. The general sense
is paralleled by John v. 20 and vii. 16.
2 It occurs, however, as early as Justin Martyr. The variations in
the order of the two clauses do not seem of primary significance, in
spite of Harnack's pleading.
m.] THE GOD OP JESUS 113
between the Father and the Son. It is not until we
reach the Fourth gospel that we get any definition
of the nature of God. There (iv. 24) alongside of the
Fatherhood of God we find the statement that God is
Spirit, i.e. devoid of what is material, lifted above the
realm of the flesh. But these words have a specific
bearing on the freedom of the Christian God from
any embodiment in a cultus : they belong to the
general conception of the divine nature in the Fourth
gospel, on the one hand, and on the other they fall
to be interpreted by the conception of the divine
Fatherhood. The God who is spirit is the Father.
The usage of Father in this absolute sense, in the
Fourth gospel, practically corresponds to the
synoptic title of the Father in heaven, or the heavenly
Father. It is hardly possible, without over-subtlety,
to draw distinctions between ' the Father ' and c my
Father,' on the lips of the Johannine Christ, and
in some other passages it is an equivalent for the
synoptic ' our Father,' a phrase which is absent
from the Fourth gospel, where it is expressly
avoided in one passage (xx. 17), in order to keep
before the mind the unique Sonship of Christ, in
virtue of which men attain to their position in
the Father's household. The technical use of the
phrase ' the Father ' in the Johannine theology is
due to the reflective element, which regards the
religious sonship of men as well as of Christ as
resting ultimately on the nature of God, who is the
source of life. The kinship and dependence which are
implied in sonship are viewed against a background
of essential relationship. There is an approach to
the older idea of fatherhood as creative, but at the
same time the creative or life-giving nature of God as
H
114 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
the Father is pre-eminently exhibited in its religious
and ethical aspects, and this controlling interest
of the writer helps to prevent the so-called meta-
physical element from rendering the argument
abstract or speculative. Thus even the relation of
Jesus to the Father is not stated in exclusively
metaphysical terms. 1 It is represented as a moral
and spiritual tie, in which Christ confesses His
dependence on the Father : He remains within the
love of the Father by keeping the Father's com-
mandments (xv. 10, viii. 29, etc.), and the same con-
ditions apply to men (xiv. 15, xvii. 6, 10). To
become children of God, to come to the Father, is
to have faith ; and the course of the religious life is
summed up in the pregnant sentence,
// you keep my commandments,
you shall remain within my love :
even as I have kept my Father's commandments
and remain within His love.
(iii) It is the fatherly love of God which also
explains the new sense of joy and freedom breathed
by Jesus into the souls of men. He gave them
confidence in the character of God, especially with
regard to the fears and hesitation born of sin.
The Father did not view men as totally depraved ;
they were captives to be released from the slavery
of evil, sick folk to be cured, wandering souls to be
brought back to the father's household, disobedient
sons to be reasoned with. The synoptic gospels
contain no theory of sin. They show how Jesus
viewed it as a transgression of the divine law, as a
choice of the world in preference to God above all,
1 Cf. J. Weiss, Die tfachfolge Christi, pp. 45 f., 54 f,
raj THE GOD OP JESUS 115
or as egoism over against God and man. He spoke
of it as a debt, a disease, a defilement. It was
punished by suffering in this world, and by exclu-
sion from the presence of God in the world to come.
Jesus had much to say about its punishment, especi-
ally in the case of the impenitent, and more to say
about its forgiveness, about the willingness of the
Father to receive the disobedient back again, about
His unvarying love for His children even in their
waywardness. He had little or nothing to say
about the origin of sin. Beyond the fact that man
was responsible for his offences against the law of
God, and that sin arose from within, from the evil
will or the weakness of the flesh, there is no direct
clue to Christ's view of how sin came into being.
He does not speculate, for example, upon the evil
impulse, as the rabbis did. What sin involved is
brought out rather in the sacrifice which its pardon
required from Him as the Son ; it is in its conse-
quences for Himself that the seriousness of human
sin becomes evident.
In the Fourth gospel the conception of sin is
worked out to some extent. The thought of forgive-
ness is presented in terms of the giving of life eternal,
however, rather than in the simpler synoptic manner,
and this may account for the fact that an entire
cluster of questions remains unanswered how the
Logos became incarnate, how the darkness originated
which confronted the light in a universe created by
God, or how the devil came to be the opponent of
God. At one point the last-named problem does
appear to be raised, in viii. 44 f., where it is said that
the devil was a murderer from the beginning and has
no place in the Truth, for the Truth is not in him.
116 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH,
When he tells a lie he is speaking from his own nature, 1
for a liar he is and the father of lies (or falsehood).
When eo-T^Kev ev, which is rendered has no place in,
is taken as an equivalent for fell from or failed to keep
his place, in, the Truth, a basis may be found for a
doctrine of the devil's fall : but this interpretation is
unnecessary, and there is nothing else in the passage
to suggest such a mythological speculation, not even
in the cryptic allusion either to the envy of the devil,
which brought about the fall of Adam, or more pro-
bably to the murder of Abel. The only confirma-
tion of such an idea would be the closing words, if
they were rendered, as they might be grammatically,
for his father also is a liar. This view was apparently
taken by Macarius Magnes, who translates the first
words of verse 44, you are of the father of the devil.
It would tally with the Gnostic theory that the
devil's father was a demiurge or archon, Sabaoth,
the God of the Jews. Such an exploitation of
Gnostic mythology, in the interests of anti-Jewish
propaganda, would be entirely out of keeping,
however, with the general tone of the gospel. To
meet the difficulties of the existing text, it has
been proposed either to change the subject after
the Truth is not in him, and read when any one tells
a lie, he is speaking from his own nature (or, in keep-
ing with his own family), for his father also (i.e. the
devil) is a liar ; or to restore the original reference
of the words to Cam you are of Cain and are fain
to do his murderous desires (Wellhausen), etc. But
neither of these expedients is plausible. The
1 Dr. Abbott suggests that e/c r&v idiwv here may mean that the
devil speaks out of men as his family (Johannine Grammar, 2378,
2728).
ra.] THE GOD OF JESUS 117
Johannine idiom points to the usual rendering,
you are of your father the devil ... a liar he is and
the father thereof.
Even in the Fourth gospel, however, where the
dialectic used for the controversial purposes of the
writing naturally tends to elaborate some of the
antitheses connected with the problem of sin, it is
remarkable that several of the specific allusions to
sin are historical and apologetic. Thus both in viii.
21, 24, and xvi. 9, the primary reference is to the
sin of Judaism in rejecting Jesus, the Son of God,
as the true messiah. You shall die in your sins,
if you do -not believe that I am (He who is from
above, ver. 23, the divine Son) ; this epitaph on
unbelieving Judaism is filled out by the declaration
that the Spirit of Christ will enable the disciples
to show how the resurrection vindicated the char-
acter and mission of Jesus, by proving that the
world was wrong in refusing to believe in His
divine authority, and in condemning Him to death.
The same idea reappears in xv. 22 f. and ix. 41,
where the sin of Judaism in refusing to accept Christ
is equivalent to the unpardonable sin of the synoptic
tradition. Even in the argumentative passage,
viii. 34 f., the primary reference is also apologetic.
Judaism, by its deliberate enmity to Christ, proves
that it has no vital and permanent place in the
household of God the Father. Such unbelief is sin,
and any one who commits sin is the slave of sin ; slaves,
unlike sons, do not belong essentially to the house-
hold. In fact, this deadly unbelief of Judaism
identifies them with the household of Satan, the
antagonist of God, and deprives them of any claim
to be legitimate members of the elect household
118 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
in which Christ, as the Son of God, has authority.
This latter thought widens out in the phrase, j if the
Son frees you from sin, you will be really free,
i.e. vital members of the divine household, in full
possession of sonship. The context of the phrase
shows how this freedom is bestowed and received.
If you remain within my word (i.e. within the element
of my reve^tion of God, living in harmony with
its environment), you are really disciples of mine,
and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make
you free. Freedom from sin, therefore, means the
acceptance of Christ's revelation as a revelation of
sonship to God the Father, which is bound up with
faith in Himself. The sin which is contemplated
is the special sin of those who deliberately refuse
to avail themselves of Christ in order to enjoy the
life of God. In a word, this sin is sin against the
light ; it can only be committed by those who are
brought face to face with the final revelation of
God in His Son Je.sus Christ, and who prefer their
traditional religion, or irreligion. Finally, we may
add, this is borne out by the parallel antithesis in
xv. 14-15, where Christ contrasts slavery not with
sonship but with friendship. You are my friends
if you do what I command you. I no longer call you
slaves, for a slave does not know what his master does ;
but I have called you friends, for I have made known
to you all that I heard from my Father. Here the
intimate confidence which is the mark of the Chris-
tian experience and obedience is again mediated by
the revelation of Christ.
It is the same conception of freedom, though in a
less theological sense, that underlies the argument of
Jesus about the payment of the temple dues (Matt,
xvii. 24 f.), where He contrasts the sons of God
m.] THE GOD OF JESUS 119
with aliens ; the former, i.e. Christians, are ' free,'
the latter, i.e. the Jews, are in bondage. ' The word
" liberty," ' as Dr. Carpenter observes, ' does not
occur in the first three Gospels. But the idea is
everywhere.' l Whether viewed as release from the
tyranny of Satan and the evil spirits, or as deliver-
ance from the minute, vexatious regulations of the
Law, or as a disentanglement from hampering scruples
and doubts about the goodness of God, the kingdom
as preached by Jesus lifted a load from the conscience
of many. There is nothing in the synoptic theology
which quite corresponds to the antithesis of Law
and Christian freedom in Paul ; even in the Fourth
Gospel the freedom of Christ is rather from the
material nature which thwarts the Spirit and faith.
But the personality and mission of Jesus revealed
a conception of God's nature which seemed like
coming into the open air from a close room. He
was a Father willing and eager for men's salvation,
for their return to true sonship, for their release
from the bondage and false freedom of sin. Jesus
said, The Son of man came to seek and save the lost.
Before Him, on this mission, the cross loomed, as
the outcome of His work : behind Him lay the
eternal love of the Father 2 for His own. The
supreme obstacle to the coming of the Father's
kingdom was the sin of the people ; and repentance
was the condition of receiving it
1 Only heart-sorrow
And a clear life ensuing. 7
1 Dr. J. Estlin Carpenter, The First Three Gospels, p. 374.
2 This is specially prominent in the Fourth gospel, with its
emphasis on the truth that it is the Father who prompts and inspires
the work of the Son (v. 30 ; vii. 17-18, 28 ; viii. 28, 42 ; xii. 49 ; xiv.
10, etc.).
120 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
This 1 is the thought of Mark ii. 10 f., that Jesus,
as Son of man, has authority on earth to forgive sins
as well as to cast out evil spirits. The Satan, whose
agents possess the bodies of men, is also the tempter,
and messiah's work is to pronounce forgiveness as
well as to cure diseases, both being expressions of
the divine will for men. Consequently, the death
of Jesus, or the Son of God, is connected primarily
with the forgiveness of sins, as the supreme boon
of the kingdom which overthrows the anti-divine
reign of sin and death. But even Mark's gospel
which lays special stress upon the authority of
Jesus over evil spirits, does not state the meaning
of His death in terms of a victory over the
devil. Man's rebellion and despair are to the fore-
front, to be overcome by God's forgiveness. It
is curious that the Fourth gospel, which omits all
the instances of exorcism from the ministry, does
connect the Passion with the devil (xiv. 30, xix. II), 2
but this is due to the special pragmatism of that
gospel ; Judas, e.g., is represented as possessed
by Satan (xiii. 2) for his work of treachery. The
conception of the crucifixion as the work of the
evil spirits of this world, which Paul reproduces
(1 Cor. ii. 8), is significantly absent from the theology
of the synoptic gospels a fresh proof, by the way,
of their independent attitude towards the christology
1 In some circles of contemporary Jewish piety, the messianic
reign was expected only after a period of national repentance ; e.g. in
Assumptio Mosis, i. 17-18, God is to be worshipped in the temple
c until the day of repentance, in the visitation wherewith the Lord
shall visit them in the consummation of the end of the days.' After
the fall of the temple, this belief continued to prevail in rabbinic
theology.
2 There are slight traces of this view already in Luke (e.g. xxii. 53).
m.] THE GOD OF JESUS 121
of Paulinism. 1 It is in Ignatius and the subsequent
theology that the antithesis of the devil and God
in the saving work of Christ becomes really prominent.
(iv) Finally, it is this revelation of love as the
character of God the Father which involves the
tremendous severity of judgment upon those who
are guilty of the worst sin in the world the sin
against love, deliberate rejection of love as the
one power of life. 2 It is to this conviction of Jesus
about the Father that His passionate invectives
against all who misrepresented God are due, as well
as His warnings against those who deliberately
trifled with the love of God, or with its costly
expression in His own mission. The full orb of the
divine Fatherhood, in the gospels, includes majesty
and awe as well as loving-kindness. The modern
sentimental view of the Fatherhood as celestial
good-nature is wholly inadequate to the teaching
of Jesus, either as regards the forgiveness or the
punishment of sins.
The implicates of forgiveness are brought out in
the tremendous saying (Matt. x. 28=Luke xii. 4-5) :
Be not afraid of those who kill the body, but are
unable to kill the soul. Rather be afraid of him who
is able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna. Or,
in the fuller Lucan version : / tell you, my friends,
1 In the eschatological section of Matt. xxv. 31 f. the righteous
inherit the kingdom prepared for them before the foundation of the
world, whereas the selfish and worldly are consigned to the eternal
fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels.
2 On the Jewish scheme, the judgment formed an essential part of
the doctrine of the Law. When the latter was replaced or restated
as love to God, implying love to one's neighbour, the conception
of the divine judgment was correspondingly humanised and at the
same time rendered more stringent.
122 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
be not afraid of ilwse who kill the body, and after that
can do nothing further. I mil show you whom to
fear ; fear him who has the power after death of casting
into Gehenna. Yea, I tell you, be afraid of him. So
Jesus judges the sin of cowardice, which amounts
to a denial of God through the love of self. As the
context shows, such a traitorous preference of one's
safety and comfort to the interests of the kingdom
is visited by exclusion from the presence of God.
Whosoever denies me before men, I mil deny him
before my Father in heaven. The selfish and cowardly
are disowned by the Jesus of whom they have been
ashamed on earth. Once again we are thus brought
round to the close connection between God's action
and the power of Jesus Christ ; the cause of God
is bound up with the character and words of Christ,
and the judgment upon unfaithful servants of the
cause is represented indifferently as punishment at
the hand of God, and repudiation by Jesus Christ.
This is an outcome of the relation between God
the Father and His kingdom. The righteousness
of the latter involves the forgiveness and the
judgment of trespasses, and this is what the mission
of Jesus, as God's representative, signifies. ' The
kingdom of God is the centre of all spiritual faith,
and the perception that that kingdom can never
be realised without a personal centre, a representa-
tive of God with man and man with God, was the
thought, reaching far beyond the narrow range of
Pharisaic legalism, which was the last lesson of the
vicissitudes of the Old Testament dispensation ' (En-
cyclopaedia Biblica, 3063). The bearing of this truth
upon the forgiveness of wrongdoing and rebellion may
be illustrated from the setting as well as from the con-
m.] THE GOD OP JESUS 123
tents of the parables in Luke xv. The tax-gatherers
and sinners were all flocking to Jesus, and this
aroused the indignation of the Jewish authorities.
They murmured, saying, This man welcomes sinners
and eats with them ! The reply of Jesus is conveyed
in three parables, only the third of which, at first
sight, seems exactly apposite. The action of the
woman who searches the house till she discovers the
lost piece of money, and of the shepherd who will
not rest till he has brought back the stray sheep to
the fold, corresponds to a Jesus who seeks men,
rather than to one who is criticised for allowing them
to seek Him. Apparently, it is in the third parable
of the profligate son, who voluntarily returns to
find a welcome at home, that the full justification of
the relations between Jesus and the local sinners
is presented. Now, it is no doubt true that in the
first two parables, as in the third, Jesus is primarily
defending Himself. So far from being embarrassed
or compromised by associating with the disreput-
able sinners who were attracted to His company, He
declares that this is the real happiness of His minis-
try, a moral joy with which any one who understands
the divine heart should sympathise. Rejoice with
me, instead of criticising me. But inferentially He
is defending the instinct which led these religious
outcasts to associate with Him. Repentance, He
argues, as a return to the love and law of God, is
welcome to God just because it is the end for which
God works and waits in human life. The point of
the first two parables, where the initiative is repre-
sented as wholly God's, is that there is joy in heaven
over a single penitent sinner. And the same note
of joy is struck in the third parable, where the father
124 THE THEOLOGY OP THE GOSPELS [CH.
does nothing to induce the son's return. Let us be
merry, for this my son was dead and is come to life
again, he was lost like the coin and the sheep and
he is found.
What Jesus therefore means to teach is the
double appeal of God which motives human repent-
ance. On the one hand, there are natures into
which He requires, as it were, to break, in order to
arouse them to their danger and loss. Upon the
other hand, repentance may be stirred apparently
without any direct interposition of God. The latter
is the conception of the third parable ; but even
there the unconscious desires for a truer life, under
the impulse of reconciliation, are the effect of the
Father's Spirit working seriously on the conscience.
The stress of the third parable is not to be confined
to the latter part, in which Jesus deliberately answers
the churlish attitude of the scribes and Pharisees
as represented by the elder brother. The first part,
in which the profligate son dares to return home and
finds that his penitence is not presumptuous, is a
shield thrown over the people who had ventured
near to Jesus to listen to His revelation of God's
love and pity. God the Father is ready to forgive ;
He takes sin seriously, and those who also take it
seriously find He is a God who loves to pardon.
In either case, the motive of repentance lies in the
character of God, and this is the new element which
makes the teaching and mission of Jesus a gospel.
When Jesus began His ministry, His message ran :
The kingdom of God is at hand, repent (Mark i. 15).
Even the call to repentance is in itself a gospel. It
implies that men can really turn to God ; they are
not helpless automata in a world of unmoral deter-
m.] THE GOD OF JESUS 125
minism. But the gospel of repentance, as Jesus pro-
claimed it, has still further claims to novelty. It was
an advance upon any revelation of God even within
Judaism. Sinners drew near to hear him. c Surely,'
says Mr. Montefiore, 1 ' this is a new note, something
which we have not yet heard in the Old Testament
or of its heroes, something which we do not hear in
the Talmud or of its heroes. . . . The virtues of
repentance are gloriously praised in the rabbinical
literature, but this direct search for, and appeal to,
the sinner are new and moving notes of high import
and significance. 5 Only, it has to be recollected
that these sinners did not merely venture close to
Jesus to listen to Him. They were welcomed by Him
to God. He associated with them, the Pharisees
complained. His gospel of repentance was not
simply an announcement that God was a forgiving
Father, but a practical expression of what that
forgiveness meant, in its moral obligations of loyalty
and obedience. And this in turn involved still more.
The death as well as the life of Jesus was necessary
to the full disclosure of God's heart of mercy and
welcome. The Father's dealings with sinful men
issued in the sacrifice of Jesus as the supreme appeal
to the conscience. Take a word like this : // thy
brother sins, rebuke him ; and if he repents,
forgive him (Luke xvii. 3, cf. Matt, xviii. 15). The
forgiveness which a Christian is to grant to his
erring brother depends upon the penitence of the
latter. But it is the duty of the Christian to induce
that penitence by pointing out to the offender his
wrongdoing, by bringing home to him a sense of
1 Cf. The Synoptic Gospels, i. pp. Ixxviii, 86 ; ii. 574, 985 ; Some
Elements of the Religious Teaching of Jesus, p. 57.
126 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
his sin. He has a moral right not only to our forgive-
ness but to our rebuke. Now, what corresponds
to that in the relation of God to men ? Forgive us
our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against
us. In this prayer we are taught by Jesus to expect
that God will treat us as we treat our offending
brothers, and bring home to us our offences. Rebuke
him ; that is the first part of our moral responsi-
bility to any one who has sinned. What is God's
rebuke of us when we go wrong ? What is it that
we have a right to expect from God as the supreme
inducement to penitence ? The theology of the
gospels answers that God the Father sent His Son
to deal with this sinful state of men. It is the con-
fession of the church, in the Fourth gospel, that
God so loved the world that he gave his own Son to
save men from destruction. The presuppositions of
this belief are presented already in the synoptic
tradition ; God creates the very desire for forgive-
ness by bringing home to men what sin means to
Him and to themselves, as a sin against love ; and
this forgiveness, with the judgment on which it
rested, needed the sacrifice of Jesus to reach men
fully. The details of this religious truth belong to
the- christology proper, but the fundamental basis
underneath it is the inexorable love of the Father
for men as interpreted through the Son, which the
relation of the coming of the kingdom to the death
of Jesus in the synoptic tradition brings out in one
deep aspect.
iv.] THE PERSON OF JESUS 127
CHAPTER IV
THE PERSON OF JESUS
' WE modern theologians,' says Schweitzer, 1 ' are
too proud of our historical method. . . . There was
a danger of our thrusting ourselves between men and
the gospels, and refusing to leave the individual
rnan alone with the sayings of Jesus. There was a
danger that we should offer them a Jesus who was
too small, because we forced Him into conformity
with our human standards and human psychology.'
What the sayings of Jesus indicate about His own
person is primarily its epoch-making, its absolute
significance for men. We have already (p. 71)
found this consciousness of His supreme position
in the great beatitude of privilege :
Blessed are your eyes, for they see,
And your ears, for they hear.
I tell you, many prophets and just men 2 Jiave longed
to see what you see but have not seen it,
And to hear what you hear but Iwve not heard it.
In Matthew this follows a quotation from Isaiah,
which is also cited in the Fourth Gospel, and for
much the same purpose (xii. 39 f.), to account for
the obduracy of the public, who are no longer the
1 The Quest of the Historical Jesus, p. 398.
2 Luke substitutes kings for just men.
128 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
Galileans but the Jews, and also to explain, charac-
teristically, that Isaiah the prophet had a vision
of the pre-existent Christ or Logos. These things
said Isaiah because he saw his glory, and he spoke of
him. The latter conception had been already ex-
pressed in the phrase, Your father Abraham exulted
to see my day. The Fourth gospel thus deepens
and at the same time reverses the synoptic saying.
The prophets and just men of the Old Testament
had not simply longed to see the messianic day of
Jesus Christ ; they had seen it. The pragmatism
of the Logos-idea enables the writer of the Fourth
gospel to believe that the saints and prophets of
the Old Testament had more than anticipations of
the end ; their visions and prophecies were due to
the pre-existent Christ who even then revealed His
glory to their gaze. The glory of Yahveh which
Isaiah saw in his vision was really the glory of the
pre-existent Logos, who became incarnate in Jesus
Christ.
The theology of the Fourth gospel thus elaborates
the truth that the mission of Jesus had been antici-
pated in the history of Israel. This is the idea of
the saying in viii. 56 : Your father Abraliam exulted
to see my day. It is the conception of Paul (e.g.
Gal. iii. 16 f.), who also traces a messianic significance
in Gen. xvii. 17 ; and Philo, before him, had explained
(De Mutat. Nominum, 29-30), commenting on the
Genesis-passage, that Abraham's laughter was the
joy of anticipating a happiness which was already
within reach ; ' fear is grief before grief, and so
hope is joy before joy.' But Philo characteristically
avoids any messianic interpretation, such as the
Fourth gospel presents.
iv.] THE PERSON OF JESUS 129
There is another passage in the book of Isaiah
where some prophet of the exile, describing his
divine mission to Israel, exclaims :
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
Because he has anointed me to preach good tidings
to the poor,
He has sent me to proclaim release for captives and
recovery of sight for the blind,
To set the bruised free,
To proclaim the Lord's year of welcome and our
God's day of vengeance.
Luke (iv. 16 f.) relates how Jesus read this passage
in the synagogue at Nazareth, as far as the Lord's
year of welcome, when He stopped and began His
address by telling the audience that this passage
of prophecy was fulfilled there and then before
them in His own mission to Israel. The omission
of the last clause by Jesus is significant. As the
later author of the Epistle to Diognetus put it
(7) : Was He sent to rule, to inspire fear and
terror ? By no means. God sent Him in gentle-
ness and meekness, as a king sending his royal
son. . . ; sent Him to save, to persuade, not to use
force, for force has nothing to do with God. But
it is the larger conception of Christ's person and
mission as the fulfilment of older prophecy, and as
the inauguration of a new religious era, which is
most prominent a conception which dominates
the theology of the gospels, and which is derived
from the consciousness of Jesus Himself. The
supreme significance of His work for men rests upon
the unique relation between Him and the Father,
I
130 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
and this is expressed in the various titles which were
applied to Him, or which He applied to Himself.
A brief survey of these will suffice to give an
outline of His person and functions in the new
order of things which His mission introduced.
(a) The first is His divine Sonship.
According to the gospels the consciousness which
Jesus had of His Sonship was a consciousness of
purpose, a consciousness of being sent to fulfil the
ends of God on earth. It is the good pleasure of
the Father to give men the kingdom (Luke xii. 32),
and this boon is mediated through Jesus, who reveals
to men the true nature of God their King and Father,
and dies to inaugurate His reign on earth. The
messianic consciousness was the specific form which
this sense of vocation assumed for Jesus, but it
was determined and shaped by his inner conscious-
ness of God's character as His Father and the Father
of men. This is of fundamental importance, and it
requires to be held firmly in order to see the
relevant data in their true proportions.
The voice of divine approval at the baptism and
at the transfiguration, which hails Jesus as the Son
of God, denotes primarily His consecration to the
will of the Father. But the consciousness of Sonship
did not date from the baptism ; otherwise it would
be no more than His consecration to the messianic
task which now dawned upon Him. His con-
ception of the latter cannot be understood apart
from the deeper relationship of His nature to God
which underlay it. The salient feature of the baptism-
stories, so far as the theology of the gospels is con-
cerned, is that they denote the filial rather than the
messianic consciousness of Jesus at the outset of
iv.] THE PERSON OF JESUS 131
His ministry. 1 The functions of Christ in the
kingdom are determined through His personal
relation to the Father. He is messiah because He
is God's Son ; He is not God's Son simply in virtue
of His messianic calling. It was His very concep-
tion of God as Father, as His Father in a unique
sense, and as the Father of men, that determined
His preaching of what the kingdom meant, and
differentiated it from current conceptions, eschato-
logical, rabbinic, and nationalist. This is the
primary factor in the christology of the gospels, and
unless it is assigned its full weight the ideas of the
kingdom, of man, and of the world fail to occupy their
proper focus. ' With the most careful and reverent
application of psychological methods, it is obvious
that our Lord's consciousness of Sonship must have
preceded in time the consciousness of messiahship,
must indeed have formed a stepping-stone to the
latter. ... In His soul the consciousness of what
He was must have come first, and only when this
had attained to the height of consciousness of Son-
ship could the tremendous leap be taken to the
consciousness of messiahship.' 2 What is on the
whole central, therefore, is the sense of His special
union with the Father. The messianic consciousness
is a modification of this, and no estimate of the aim
and function of Jesus is adequate unless it allows
for the fact that He was messiah and more than
messiah, that His consciousness of service to God
and man lay behind the messianic vocation, instead
1 Cf. especially the Lucan version (iii. 21-22), which brings out the
personal and spiritual experience underlying the new sense of vocation.
2 Harnack, Sayings of Jesus, pp. 245-6. This aspect has been
emphasised especially by Baldensperger.
132 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
of springing out of it, and that the very critical
attitude which He took up towards current messianic
hopes, transcendental no less than political, was due
to this fundamental consciousness of Sonship to
the Father. This is the fact against which the
theories of rigorous eschatology beat in vain.
When Schweitzer, for example, asks, ' What is there
to prove that Jesus' distinctive faith in the Father-
hood of God ever existed independently, and not
as an alternative form of historically-conditioned
messianic consciousness ? ' the only answer is,
circumspice. Unless the critic insists upon view-
ing the teaching of Jesus through a small, rigid glass
of messianic eschatology, there are few things more
luminous than the fact that the messianic vocation
of Jesus has always to be understood as conditioned
by His special consciousness of Sonship, and not
vice-versa. It is the filial, not the messianic con-
sciousness of Jesus which is the basis of Christianity.
This is the conviction which determines the theology
of the gospels, and it is also a conviction which
goes back to the mind of Jesus Himself.
The voice at the baptism, Thou art my Son, the
Beloved, in whom I am well pleased, blends the two
ideas of the Son of God in the second Psalm, and of
the servant of Yahveh in Isaiah xlii. Whether or
not the second Psalm was originally messianic, as
Wellhausen claims, a messianic significance was
attached to it before Jesus in some circles of Jewish
piety. 1 Though the use of Son of God to denote
messiah does not seem to have been prevalent, it was
not entirely unknown. But while it is applied to Jesus,
in the gospels, it is never used by Him to denote His
i Cf. G. H. Box, The Ezra- Apocalypse (1912), pp. Ivi-lvii.
iv.] THE PERSON OF JESUS 133
own person. God is His Father, and the title Son of
God is an inference from that position of divine Son-
ship, but He speaks of Himself as the Son, not as the
Son of God, 1 as e.g. in the saying : No one knows about
that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, not
even the Son, but only the Father (Mark xiii. 32=
Matt. xxiv. 36). This correlation of the Son and
the Father is only strange when it is isolated from
other allusions like of Him shall the Son of man be
ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father
(Mark viii. 38). The conception seems to belong not
only to the primitive gospel tradition, but to Jesus
Himself. So difficult in fact did the acknowledg-
ment of ignorance on the part of Jesus seem to some
early Christians that Luke, who elsewhere reproduces
sayings of Jesus which employ Son, KO.T eoxrjv, in
this connection (e.g. x. 22), omits the present saying,
and puts a smoother version of it into the lips of
the risen Christ (Acts i. 7 : It is not for you to know
the times or seasons, which the Father has kept in his
own power).
Again, the consciousness of Sonship reappears
in Matt. xi. 25 f. : Father, Lord of heaven and earth, I
praise thee that while thou hast concealed these things
from the wise and shrewd, thou hast revealed them to the
children. Yea, Father, I bless thee that such was thy
pleasure. Jesus is thankful that the true knowledge
of God is not a monopoly confined to experts and
exponents of the Jewish Torab, but, on the contrary,
1 The Fourth gospel twice (x. 36, xi. 4) puts the title on his lips.
The allusion in Matt, xxvii. 43 (he said) 1 am God's Son] is probably
an editorial reference to Wisdom ii. 18 (if the just man is the son
of God, he will lielp him and deliver him from the hand of his
opponents).
134 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
that it is open to the unsophisticated sons of men.
It is from another point of view that Paul argues
(Rom. ii. 17-20) : You bear the name of Jew, you rely
on the Torah, you boast of God and know His will, you
are certain tJiat you are a light for those who are in
darkness, a teacher of children (lojTriW) ! The apostle
is contrasting the inconsistent Jew with the moral
pagan, whereas Jesus is primarily contrasting the
professional authorities of Judaism with the humble
and despised V^TTIOI. Primarily, for in the parable of
the royal banquet which the original guests despised,
the ultimate guests are drawn from outside Judaism
(Matt. xxii. 8-9). What Jesus emphasises here,
however, is the accessibility of the divine revela-
tion which He was conscious of mediating for men.
He resented, on behalf of these simple children of
God, the elaborate developments of Pentateuchal
law which burdened the conscience and perplexed
the soul (Matt, xxiii. 4= Luke xi. 46). Only, He is
not merely championing their rights, as if He admitted
that the scribes and Pharisees really had the keys
of the Father's knowledge and kingdom. He
claims for Himself the supreme authority in the
sphere of divine revelation. The hope of these
defrauded and despised ^TTIOI does not lie in any
reform upon the part of the authorities ; it lies in
His own commission from the Father to reveal the
true and open way of life (see above, pp. 90 f.) Con-
sequently, in the consciousness of this unique rela-
tion to the Father, He adds : Come to me, all who
are toiling and burdened, and I (Kayo>, emphatic) will
refresh you. Take on you (this is the meaning and
purpose of come) my yoke (i.e. the method of religion
which I impose, in contrast to the Pharisaic yoke
iv.] THE PERSON OF JESUS 135
of the Torah) and learn from me, for I am meek and
lowly in heart and you will find your souls refreshed.
For my yoke is not hard to bear, my burden is not heavy.
What enabled Him to confront the religious needs
of men with serene confidence in His message and
mission, was the conviction that He possessed a
knowledge of God's character which was adequate
to the situation. He knew the Father, as none else
did, and He had the power of conveying this know-
ledge to others through His own personality. 1 It
was as the Son, in far more than a merely messianic
sense, that He called men to learn the open secret
of His religion.
The supernatural position of Jesus as the Son of
God in Mark's narrative, is explained by the birth-
stories of Matthew and Luke as involving an absence of
human paternity. To Mark Jesus is practically Son of
God as messiah, who is invested with divine authority
(cf. iii. 11), though it is improbable that the evangelist
regarded Him as owing His divine Sonship to the
reception of the messianic spirit at baptism. Whether
the words Son of God in the title of the gospel are
authentic or not, they represent correctly the stand-
point of the evangelist. Jesus is a heavenly being,
sent by God as His only and well-beloved Son, to
accomplish the purpose of the kingdom ; 2 and this
1 The Herodotean saying (ix. 16. 8) tyOlffrq d ddfoy iffrl ruv tv
&v9p&iroi.(Ti ai/r?;, TroXXa <f>pov^ovra. /Aydevbs Kpar&iv affords an
interesting contrast. Matthew puts the call of Jesus to men im-
mediately after the thanksgiving for the Father's revelation to him-
self ; it is the latter which makes the former possible. Christ's
knowledge of God was a power in itself.
2 On the authenticity of the parable in xii. 1 f. cf. Professor
Burkitt's paper in Transactions of Third International Congress for
the History of Religions , ii. pp. 321 f.
136 THE THEOLOGY OP THE GOSPELS [CH.
is what lends point to the argument, e.g. of xii. 35 f .
(cf. xiv. 61 f.), 1 as well as to the remark wrung from
the pagan officer at the cross, Truly this man was a
son of God. The evangelist means to suggest by the
latter testimony the deeper sense of the title. What
underlies the birth-stories, again, is the conception
that the messianic consciousness of sonship is based
upon a special consciousness of Sonship to the
Father. This is the only adequate explanation of
the deeper sayings of Jesus in the gospels which refer
to His divine Sonship, and the development which
the birth-stories chronicle is organic to it. They
are naive attempts to express the Christian sense of
what was implied in the unique filial consciousness of
Jesus, and even in grounding the latter upon a basis
which Jesus Himself never mentioned, they both
witness to the fact (or at any rate to the conviction)
that His Sonship was more than messianic. Thus
while Luke has the same Isaianic passage as Matthew
in his mind (i. 31), he prefers to present the virgin-
birth in terms more intelligible to Christians who
were familiar with the mythology of the Greek and
Roman world ; and while it is Jesus the messiah
whose birth he chronicles, he nevertheless chronicles
it in a way that is not Jewish. The word to Mary
is : The Holy Spirit mil come upon thee, and the power
of the Most High will overshadow thee : therefore shall
the holy thing which is to be born be called God's
Son. At this stage 2 the divine Sonship of Jesus is
understood as an essential and unique relation
1 Emphasised in Luke xxii. 70-71.
2 Later on, the doctrine of the virgin-birth was used in the interests
of the anti-docetic propaganda ; but there is no trace of this motive
in Matthew or in Luke.
iv.] THE PERSON OF JESUS 137
between Him and God which is His from birth. The
Sonship is still connected vitally with the Holy
Spirit, though it is associated with the birth of Jesus,
not with the baptismal experience. The tradition
of the virgin-birth therefore embodies an apostolic
interpretation of the divine Sonship of Jesus, which
implies what a modern would call a metaphysical
relation between the Father and the Son. It is not
a relationship which Jesus ever puts forward in
His teaching. Even the gospels which open with
this prologue to His mission never represent Him
as adducing it on His own behalf ; they do not,
for example, refer His sinlessness to it. The value
of it, theologically, is that it confirms the concep-
tion of the divine Sonship which is presented by Q
and even by Mark. It is a developed stage of the
positive tradition, but instead of denoting the
transmutation of an originally messianic Sonship
into one of nature, it represents a more realistic
statement of the latter. It is not inaccurate to
say that 'nowhere,' even in the synoptic tradition,
' do we find that Jesus called Himself the Son of God
in such a sense as to suggest a merely religious and
ethical relation to God a relation which others
also actually possessed, or which they were capable
of attaining or destined to acquire.' x
The theological significance of the birth-stories
in Matthew and Luke is conveyed otherwise by the
Fourth gospel. Here, the divine Sonship of Jesus,
as the only-begotten Son, is not associated with His
birth ; His incarnation as the Logos is only a form
of that eternal Sonship which He enjoyed with the
Father as an essential relation in His nature. The
1 Dalman, Words of Jesus, p. 287.
138 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
Son (of God) is not simply one sent by God into
the world on a messianic mission, but the only-begotten
(6 p>j/oyci/?7s), who is specifically related to the
Father as a divine being (i. 18), akin to God in
nature and at the same time dependent upon Him.
Among the sons of God (i. 12, cf. x. 35) He is the
only-begotten (i. 14, 18 ; iii. 16, 18). The author uses
Son of God as a higher equivalent for the Christ
(xx. 31) ; the phrase is applied chiefly to Jesus,
whereas He applies the term Son specially to Him-
self a conception which expands the thought of
Matt. xi. 24= Luke x. 22. The Johannine use of
the term, therefore, differs in two essential aspects
from the Pauline. Christ is the Son of God with
power, not by His resurrection, but by His incarna-
tion an advance in the latter idea beyond the
synoptic view. Again, the pre-existence of Christ
in the Fourth gospel is more definite and at the
same time more inclusive than in Paulinism. It is
messianic, but more than messianic ; the prologue
connects it with the Logos, and, as if to prevent this
being confused with any ideal or abstract pre-exist-
ence, the pre-incarnate relation of Christ and God
is described as that of Son and Father. After the
resurrection the Son regains the position which
He formerly held (e.g. xvii. 5).
In the conception of Son of man l the idea of
pre-existence was already implied, but it is not
present explicitly in the synoptic theology ; here
as elsewhere (see above, pp. 26-27) the idea remains in
the background. What the Fourth gospel does is
to develop a thought organic to the synoptic christ-
1 Cf. Fiebig's Der Menschensohn, pp. 121 f., and Titius, Jesu Lehre
vom Reiche Gottes, pp. 118 f.
iv.] THE PERSON OF JESUS 139
ology, and to develop it specially in connection with
the characteristic doctrine of the Logos and the
divine Sonship. Thus to take a single illustra-
tion it is the supreme function of the Logos-
Christ to disclose the real Name or nature of God,
which He Himself knows as the pre-existent Son ;
but this disclosure is not the work of a mere mysta-
gogue. The very context in which the technical
term (e^y^o-aro) l occurs, indicates the atmosphere
of the writer's thought. This disclosure is the
spontaneous expression of God's love for the world ;
it is the Son who brings home to men the passion
of God's heart for their sonship, not simply by acting
for God, but by mediating the real life of God in
His own person. The entire process of the incarna-
tion, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus lies within
the fatherly love of God for men, and the latter is re-
vealed directly in and through the mission of the Son.
(6) A similar transcendence of the messianic role
is furnished by the place of the Servant of Yahveh
conception in the consciousness of Jesus. In the
baptismal voice (see above, p. 132) as elsewhere, the
messianic application of Isaiah xlii. f. is taken up into
the filial consciousness of Jesus as consecrated for the
work of the Father among men. There was a partial
anticipation of this synthesis in Ps. Solomon xvii.,
and it ought not to be forgotten that even the original
Servant-prophecy was not quite devoid of messianic
traits. The older messianic conception was indeed
transcended, but it left some of its characteristic
elements in the higher union, and the Servant retains,
not incongruously, one or two subordinate features of
messiah as a royal conqueror. c It was natural and
1 John i. 18.
140 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
necessary that the die, from which the coins with
the royal stamp had proceeded, should be broken,
the royalistic form of the messianic conception having
become antiquated with the hopeless downfall of
the kingdom of Judah ; but equally so that frag-
ments of the die should be gathered up and fused
with other elements into a new whole.' l This
formed a basis for that synthesis of the royal divine
Son of the second Psalm and the Isaianic Servant
of God which occurs in the baptism- voice. But the
most distinctive feature in the use which Jesus
made of the Servant-prophecy is His extension
of the messianic significance to the prophecy of the
suffering Servant in Isaiah liii. The point of the
latter passage is that the extraordinary change in the
position and prospects of the Servant proves a revela-
tion to the nations. But a revelation of what ? Of
the fact that the Servant's suffering was due to their
sins, not His own, and that it led to their healing.
The remorseful chorus of the nations cry :
He was despised, and we held him of no account.
But he bore our sicknesses,
And carried our sorrows,
While we deemed him stricken,
Smitten by God and afflicted.
Yea, for our transgressions was he pierced,
For our iniquities was he bruised :
The chastisement that brought us peace fell on him,
And with his bruises we have been healed.
We had all strayed like sheep,
We had turned every one to his own way ;
And Yahveh laid on him
The penalty of us all.
i Cheyne, The Prophecies of Isaiah, ii. pp. 216-17.
iv.] THE PERSON OP JESUS 141
Jewish theology had already felt its way to the
truth that the sufferings and death of the righteous
avail to atone for others. It was partly deduced
from this great Servant-passage in the fifty-third
chapter of Isaiah, which was occasionally inter-
preted of Moses, on the strength of Exodus xxxii. 32.
It was also connected with the martyrs, particu-
larly after the Maccabean struggle. With Jesus
it became a vehicle of the truth that as God's Son,
in the special aspect of the messianic vocation, He
must suffer for men according to the will of God.
This role of the Christ had been partially anticipated
by the Jewish faith which voiced itself in the passages
upon the Servant of Yahveh. Whether the Servant
was originally an individual or Israel personified,
matters very little for our present purpose. It was
as an individual that he was conceived by Jesus
and the early church, and it is in this light that the
sayings of the gospels are to be interpreted. Thus we
read : They brought him many who were possessed by
demons, and he expelled the spirits with a word and
healed all who were sick. Here the evangelist sees
in the ministry of healing a fulfilment of the Servant
of Yahveh's career : Himself he took (i.e. took
away) our sicknesses and bore our diseases (Matt. viii.
16-17). Or, again, as we read in the Fourth gospel,
Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of
the world. The Greek term (aipw) differs from that
used by Matthew to translate Isaiah liii. 4, but it
means practically the same idea. Once again
(in Matt. xii. 16 f.) the Servant-passages are
specifically applied to Jesus ; in fact, the identifi-
cation of our Lord with Yahveh's Servant is one of
the most notable features in the primitive apostolic
preaching, especially as recorded in the book of
142 THE THEOLOGY OP THE GOSPELS [CH.
Acts. It was to the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah that
the early church, prior to Paul, had gone back for a
proof of its belief that Christ died for our sins. This
was the scripture, and the significance attached to it
is profoundly suggestive. But a critical study of the
gospels proves that it was more than the reflection
of the early church upon this scripture. There is
evidence to show that it was present to the mind
of Jesus Himself, and that He saw in the character
and mission of the suffering Servant anticipations
of His own career.
According to the Ebed - Yahveh passages, the
ideal community or Servant undergoes a purifying
discipline of suffering which fits it to carry out
Yahveh' s redeeming purpose for the world. The
Servant undergoes humiliation and agony, but his
mission is glorious and his sufferings are vicarious.
Now (i) it is when this element of vicarious suffer-
ing, in the Servant - conception, is adequately
estimated, that the basis e.g. for the drastic eschato-
logical view begins to give way. Jesus, we are some-
times told (e.g. by J. Weiss, Die Predigt Jesu vom
Reiche Gottes, pp. 238 f.), began by attempting to
create penitence throughout the nation, and thereby
to prepare the people for the coming of the kingdom.
But ' convinced that the kingdom could not come,
on account of the inadequate penitence which His
preaching had evoked, He finally determined that
His own death must be the ransom-price.' The
consciousness of this need, however, in the light of
the Servant-prophecy, was not an after-thought. It
must have been present to His mind more or less
definitely from the first.
(ii) Again, it throws light on the truth that the death
iv.] THE PERSON OF JESUS 143
of Jesus was a free gift to men, and that He viewed it
as a voluntary sacrifice for their sake. This con-
ception underlies the language of the acted parable
which we call the Lord's Supper, when He took
the bread and the cup, representing His personality,
as dedicated to death, and gave them to the disciples.
The Son of man, he had just said, goes away as it
has been written of him meaning that the Son of
man was to fulfil the mysterious prophecy of the
Servant of Yahveh who had to disappear from the
earth by a death of violence, only to return in
triumph for the accomplishment of God's saving
purpose. Jesus freely yields Himself to this divine
plan for the world. The Fourth gospel, in its own
way, reproduces this conception (x. 17 f.), but it is
present in germ within the earlier synoptic tradi-
tion, where the Christian is called upon to be ready,
if need be, to lose his life for the cause, while Jesus
gives His. It is the prerogative of the Lord to give
His life for the sake of His people. This thought
is presented in a twofold antithesis, in contrast to
the selfish craving for life which might tempt Him
to spare Himself the cost, and in contrast to the idea
that His death was forced upon Him involuntarily.
The former is synoptic, the latter Johannine, but
the former also enters into the Johannine conception,
(iii) Furthermore, in the remonstrance of John
the Baptist and the reply of Jesus, as recorded by
Matthew (iii. 15), while we can hear the difficulty
felt by the early church about the baptism of the
sinless Son of God, the very answer is significant, as
compared with that of the gospel of the Hebrews.
When Jesus replies, it behoves us to fulfil all righteous-
ness, He is identifying Himself with the people for
144 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
whom He came to live and labour. It is most pro-
bable that the underlying idea of the phrase is the
consecration of the righteous Son and Servant to
God's interests among a faulty and perverse genera-
tion.
(iv) Once more, it is important to recollect that
the horizon of the Servant-belief is the world, not
Israel. The Servant stands plainly between
Yahveh and the nations, with a commission from
the former to the latter. He shall announce, justice
(i.e. true religion) to the nations . . . and in His name
the nations shall trust. This is definitely applied to
Jesus by Matthew (xii. 18, 21), just as Luke (ii. 32)
sees in Him the fulfilment of the Servant-promise,
/ ivill set thee for a light to the nations. The universal
range which is implicit in the message of Jesus goes
back to this element in the conception of the Servant.
But it may be illustrated from another side. It is
prosaic and unreal to suppose that when a word
of the Old Testament leapt to the mind and lips of
Jesus, He was conscious of its context. But some
passages were plainly wells of revelation for Him,
and since the narrative of the baptism proves that
the second Psalm was one of these at this period, it
is more than possible that He had brooded over not
only the divine assurance Thou art my Son, this
day have I begotten thee bat the divine promise,
which immediately follows Ask of me, and I will
give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the
uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. This,
at any rate, formed the ground of one of the subse-
quent temptations, and it throws some light upon
the range of His consciousness and vocation.
(v) Finally and fundamentally, it is in the light
iv.] THE PERSON OF JESUS 145
of the Servant- prophecy in Isaiah liii. that we ought to
read the ransom-saying of Matt. xx. 28= Mark x. 45 :
The Son of man has not come to be ministered to but
to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.
The first part of the saying is the climax of the
preceding argument that greatness in the kingdom
of God is measured by service, and that this prin-
ciple applies to the Son of man who inaugurates
the kingdom, as well as to its members. The second
part implies that the messianic vocation for Jesus
involved not only a career of humble service but a
service which culminated in death and in death,
not as a catastrophe, but as a source of eternal
profit to many. The problem is to ascertain why
and how the death of Jesus should produce this effect.
In Isaiah liii., as we have seen, the extraordinary
impression and influence of the Servant's death 1
upon the outside world is left unexplained, and at first
sight it seems as if this were also the case in the
synoptic passage. The term ransom (\vrpov) is
never used elsewhere by Jesus. He does not add any
explanation of it here, and it has been attributed
naturally by some critics to the influence of Paulin-
ism. But the term is not Pauline, and the authen-
ticity as well as the present position of the saying can
be established if the context is broadly interpreted. 2
1 In Matthew's version of the voice at the Transfiguration (xvii. 5)
the words in whom I am ivell pleased, or on whom I have set my seal
of approval, or on whom I have fixed my choice, are repeated from the
baptism-story. They imply the Servant- prophecy (cf. Mark i. 11 =
Isa. xlii. 1-4; Matt, xii.- 18-21).
2 See on this point Professor E. F. Scott's The Kingdom and the
Messiah, pp. 230 f. ; Professor Denney's Death of Christ, pp. 34 f. ;
Titius, Jesu Lehre vom Reiche Gottes, pp. 147 f. ; and Earth's Haupt-
probleme des Lebens Jesu 3 (1907), pp. 199 f.
K
146 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
An appreciation of the Marcan logion involves pro-
bably the admission of some element of truth in the
view which Dr. E. A. Abbott has stated, 1 viz. that the
synoptic references to Jesus being delivered up mean
not betrayal but the deeper delivering up of His life
to be an intercessory sacrifice for sinners, as in the
Servant-prophecy of Isaiah liii. 12. There is reason to
believe that Jesus Himself thus predicted His death as
a vicarious sacrifice. He was to suffer many things
and be rejected, like the Servant ; like him also, He was
to be delivered up (LXX of Isa. liii. 12) for the trans-
gressors. It is not necessary to complicate the argu-
ment by supposing that the last three words were
part of the original prediction of Jesus, but the data
substantially support Dr. Abbott's general thesis.
For our present purpose, this is important on account
of the light which it throws upon the bearings of an
apparently isolated word like that about the ransom.
We obtain a valuable hint as to the context of such
a saying, and this view of the statement about being
delivered up corroborates the impression that the
thought of His death as a vicarious sacrifice was not
foreign to the mind of Jesus, and that the back-
ground of the thought was really furnished by the
Servant-prophecy in relation to His own deeper view
of the messianic vocation. We may note in passing
that another indirect trace of this circle of ideas is
furnished by the earlier saying, wliat shall a man give
as an equivalent for his life ? (avraAAay/Aa rrjs fax*)*
OLVTOV, Matt. xvi. 26=Mark viii. 37). Here selfish
indulgence is pronounced the ruin of life, while real
life is to identify oneself at all costs with the interests
of Jesus and the gospel. Besides, the metaphor of
i In Paradosis (1904), pp. 3 f. ; cf. The Son of Man (1910), 3254 f.
iv.] THE PERSON OF JESUS 147
ransoming is used, as already in Ps. xlix. 8 f., 1 for
regaining or securing life when it is in imminent
danger of death.
The kingdom which as Son of man He thus came
to establish meant the forgiveness of sins and eternal
life ; both of these boons had to be realised in face
of the evil order of the present age which held men
down under the forces of the Evil One. When Jesus
therefore speaks of giving His life as a ransom for
the common good of men, He is thinking of some-
thing deeper than securing by His death the immunity
of the disciples from danger, 2 or dedicating His life
to an expenditure of pain and sympathy with man-
kind which meant a continuous costly effort, 3 or doing
for men what any member of the human race could do,
i.e. sacrificing Himself for their sakes. 4 The phrase
certainly expresses what Jesus meant when He
spoke of saving the lost, but this involved for Him
a unique function as the Son of man who by His
death was to complete the divine purpose which
He had come to fulfil. Set in this light, the
saying seems linked to the preceding words,
instead of forming, as some contend, an incongruous
pendant. He had just told James and John that
1 The thought of Job xxxiii. 24 is even closer, in some ways, as
it suggests the connection of sin and death (cf. Enoch xcviii. 10,
4 Mace. xvii. 21 f.).
2 Schmiedel in Encyclopaedia Biblica, 1887.
3 Abbott (ibid., 3271) : ' The effort might in some sense be called
a "ransom." It was already, so to speak, an expenditure, drop by
drop, of His life-blood, to be summed up in the pouring forth of His
soul on the Cross.'
4 This is only possible if, with 0. Holtzmann (Life of Jesus,
p. 167 f.) Son of man is taken here, and in Luke xix. 10, in a
generic sense.
148 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
it was not for Him l to assign (Sovvai) positions
of privilege in the kingdom, and had followed
. up this by adding that any one who wished to
be chief among them was to be the servant of all.
He now declares that the Son of man, who heads
the kingdom of God, occupies that position by His
service of men, and that He can and will give (Sovvai)
His life to secure theirs.
From this it is a straight line to the confession
of the Te Deum, ' When thou hadst overcome the
sharpness of death, thou didst open the kingdom
of heaven to all believers.' But historically rather
than theologically, the saying is illuminated by the
previous prophecies of the Old Testament. ' To
understand Him it is sufficient to remember that
the redemptive value of the sufferings of the righteous,
an atonement made for sin not through material
sacrifice but in the obedience and spiritual agony
of an ethical agent, was one idea familiar to prophecy.
It is enough to be sure, as we can be sure, that He
whose grasp of the truths of the Old Testament
excelled that of His predecessors, did not apply
this particular truth to Himself in a vaguer way, and
understand by it less, than they did. His people's
pardon, His people's purity foretold as the work
of a righteous life, a perfect service of God, a willing
i Luke, who omits the ransom-saying as well as the logion of
Matt. xvi. 26 = Mark viii. 37 the former, because he omits the whole
passage about the son of Zebedee which led up to it reproduces the
thought of humble service in connection with the Last Supper (xxii.
24 f.), and inserts a saying (xxii. 29 f.) which makes Jesus promise
what he declines to promise to the sons of Zebedee. Luke's concep-
tion of redemption is narrower than that of Jesus (cf. i. 68, ii. 38,
xxi. 28, xxiv. 21) ; he also avoids referring to the ^i/x 7 ? of Jesus
(cf. the omissions here and in xxii. 40, with the significant change
in Acts ii. 27, 31).
iv.] THE PERSON OF JESUS 149
self-sacrifice He now accepted as His own work,
and for it He offered His life and submitted to death.
The ideas, as we have seen, were not new ; the new
thing was that He felt they were to be fulfilled in
His person and through His passion.' l
It is thus plain that the suffering Servant concep-
tion was organic to the consciousness of Jesus, and
that He often regarded His vocation in the light of
this supremely suggestive prophecy. It is the bap-
tism voice which marks the earliest token of this
attitude upon the part of Jesus. It may indeed
appear to some that there is nothing particularly
notable, and perhaps something rather artificial,
in the mere combination of two different sayings
from the Old Testament. But the facts are other-
wise. The perception of a link between such
sayings, the insight which penetrates to the un-
suspected unity behind both, may be truly epoch-
making. If it was ' a brilliant flash of the highest
religious genius ' 2 to combine Deuteronomy vi. 4-5
with Leviticus xix. 18, uniting the love of God with
the love of man, surely it was not less when Jesus
recognised in His own character and career the union
of the Isaianic Servant of Yahveh 3 and the messianic
royal son of the second Psalm ? Such combinations
are not the cool and clever result of a scribe poring
over the Old Testament texts. They witness to a
depth of religious insight and experience which is
creative. They interpret not texts but a Life.
1 Dr. G. A. Smith, Jerusalem, ii. 547-8.
2 Montefiore in the Hibbert Journal, vol. iii. p. 658.
3 See above, p. 132. But this does not imply that the synoptic Son
is a mistranslation of the Isaianic Servant, owing to the ambiguity of
TTCUS (Abbott, From Letter to Spirit, 805 ff.).
150 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
(c) The allied conception of the Son of man also
serves to bring out the significance of the Servant-
prophecy for Jesus. It is not a title to be isolated.
c The " Father in heaven," the " kingdom of God,"
and " the Son of man," form a trinity of ideas which
have developed organically to the religious con-
sciousness of Jesus, and which are reciprocally to
be defined and understood ; in them His preaching
has reached its climax.' 1 What the Son of man
specially emphasises is the divine mission of Jesus
in connection with the messianic kingdom. He seems
to have preferred this title to that of c messiah ' ; 2
it is used comparatively freely, and apparently
without any indication that it was unintelligible.
At the same time, it is an open question whether it
was used invariably with a messianic connotation,
and how far Jesus attached a special nuance to it.
The first open admission of His messianic voca-
tion (Matt. xvi. 13, 21 f.=Mark viii. 27, 31 f., cf. Luke
ix. 18, 22 f.), is connected with this term.
Who do men say thai 7, W ho do men say that I
the Son of man, am ? am ?
Here Matthew inserts I, 3 taking Son of man as
an equivalent for the first personal pronoun on the
lips of Jesus, and this may represent the origin of
the title in some of the synoptic passages. 4 Matthew
also appears to correlate the Son of man and the Son
of God (ver. 16) in this passage, as terms for the
1 Holtzmann, Das messianische Bewusstsein Jesu, p. 54.
2 Or to ' Son of David.' ' Son of man ' had this advantage, that it
was free or capable of being freed from particularistic limitations.
3 By some early authorities jue is omitted, but the omission, even
if better supported, would hardly alter the sense.
4 E.g. in Luke vi. 22.
iv.] THE PERSON OF JESUS 151
human and divine aspects of the mysterious person-
ality of Jesus, but the important feature of the saying
is the explicit subsequent avowal of the messianic
calling in terms of the Son of man conception.
This raises the further question, whether the prior
references to Son of man are misplaced, or equivalent
to a non-messianic title.
In the story of Jesus curing the paralytic
man (Mark ii. 1 f.^Matt. ix. l-8=Luke v. 18 f.),
the closing words of Matthew about the crowd
glorifying God who had given such power to men,
have naturally suggested that originally Jesus said,
man (not, the Son of man) has power on earth to
forgive sins. This, it is argued, was the sense of the
Aramaic. Jesus meant no more than to assert that
if to err was human, to forgive was human as well
as divine ; He claims that man, in virtue of his true
humanity, can forgive sins. This is plausible, but
not, I think, adequate to the context of the saying.
The point of the story is blunted if the climax is
reached in a statement that man, no less than
God, has the right to forgive sins. The cure which
follows and clinches the declaration of forgiveness
is the outcome of the divine or quasi-messianic
functions claimed by Jesus as bar-nascha, and, unless
the story is arbitrarily dissected, His right to forgive
and His power of dealing with disease are to be taken
as co-ordinate elements of His personality. The
issue between Jesus and His critics is not the pre-
rogatives of man, but the specific power of God which
operates through Jesus as Son of man. 1 The f orgive-
1 So e.g. Dalman, Fiebig, Loisy, Denney, and Montefiore ; also
Wrede (Zeitschrift fur die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft (1904),
p. 355 f. ), though he had previously taken the opposite view.
152 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
ness of sins was not directly assigned to messiah by
the Jews, so far as our extant sources permit us to
judge, but it was one of the privileges of the new era, 1
and as the representative of God, who inaugurates
as well as announces that new era, Jesus assumes
the right of conferring the boon.
It is more plausible to suppose that in the next
saying, The Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath
(Mark ii. 28= Matt. xii. 8, Luke vi. 5), we have a mes-
sianic expansion of what originally was a claim for
human rights as opposed to the Sabbatarian rigour
of the Jewish law. But even this is not a necessary
inference. Matthew leads up to the saying by a
passage of his own (verses 5-7), from Q or elsewhere,
which ranks Jesus higher than the temple. Mark
reaches the same end by saying, the sabbath was
made for man, not man for the sabbath. Luke argues
directly from the precedent of David to the authority
of the Son of man. But if the Son of man is accepted
as authentic in the earlier passage, there is a proba-
bility that it was original here. Besides, the con-
nection is good. Jesus vindicates the right of the
disciples because they are His ' disciples ; as Son of
man He claims to set aside the later elaboration of the
sabbath-law which encroached upon human needs.
What David could do for his followers, He, the Son
of man, can do for His disciples. Had the original
Aramaic simply meant ' man ' in both sentences of
Mark, it would have been translated as such uniformly,
and, besides, Jesus would not have claimed that man
was master of the sabbath which God had instituted. 2
1 Of. Jer. xxxi. 34, Ezek. xxxvii. 23, Isa. xxxiii. 24 (and the
inhabitant shall not say, I am sick : the people that dwell therein
shall be forgiven their iniquity).
2 Cf. Loisy, Les Evangiles Synoptiques, i. 512.
iv.] THE PERSON OF JESUS 153
From the historical point of view, it therefore
remains an open question whether these two refer-
ences, prior to Csesarea Philippi, are not antedated.
From the theological point of view, the decision is
of subordinate importance, once it is admitted that
Son of man in both passages is neither generic nor
a colourless self- designation.
The messianic connotation of the title, on the lips
of Jesus, includes humanity and apocalyptic triumph
in the future. *Lt expressed, as one critic has said,
' the messianic consciousness of Jesus in three dis-
tinct directions. It announced a messiah appointed
to suffer, richly endowed with human sympathy, and
destined to pass through suffering to glory.' l All
theories that Jesus used it to denote some one other
than Himself some future agent of God or that
it merely expressed His consciousness of personal
humanity, may be set aside without hesitation.
There is an unequivocal class of authentic logia where
it cannot possibly represent ' man,' e.g., the Son of
man has nowhere to lay his head (Matt. viii. 20
Luke ix. 58), the Son of man came eating and drinking
(Matt. xi. 19= Luke vii. 34), and Judas, betray the
Son of man with a kiss ! (Luke xxii. 48). Both of
the former probably belong to Q, and in the second
the term ' man ' lies near (and they say, here is a man
fond of eating and drinking). This suggests a doubt
about the assertion that Aramaic had no means of
distinguishing between ' man ' and c Son of man,'
a doubt which is confirmed by the fact that when
Daniel was read and translated in the synagogues,
it must have been possible to feel that the Greek
term ' like a son of man ' represented something
1 Bruce, The Kingdom of God, pp. 176 f.
154 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
different from what was meant by the ordinary
Aramaic bar-nascha. By the tone of His voice, by
the very context in which the term was used, Jesus
could have conveyed to His hearers the special
significance which the relevant Greek sayings of
the tradition imply. The latter do not allow us
to interpret the Son of man invariably as merely a
generic term for man, or an equivalent for ' some-
body,' or for 'I.' 'I doubt,' says Wellhausen,
* whether the term " Son of man " ftrst acquired its
messianic significance in Greek, although it was
easier in Greek than in Aramaic to distinguish it
from " man." . . . The Jerusalemite Christians
would already distinguish between the specific and the
generic " barnascha." ' l If they could, Jesus could.
The messianic connotation of ' bar-nascha,' which is
denied on linguistic grounds by some scholars, is
rendered more than probable by an exegesis of the
synoptic data, which do not permit an exclusive
reference of the term in its messianic sense to the
later theology of the Church. If it was easier
to distinguish the term ' man ' in Greek than in
Aramaic, it was still easier to make such a distinc-
tion and emphasis in oral than in written Aramaic,
and the procedure of the Jerusalemite Christians
is unintelligible, unless Jesus had already given a
hint of the special meaning which He attached
to the term as a designation of His own messianic
personality.
It is not by accident that Son of man never occurs
in the narrative of the gospels. The careful avoid-
ance of the term in such passages 2 is an indication
1 Einleitung in die drei ersten Evangelien 2 , p. 130.
2 Even though the Lord is used, e.g., by Luke as well as John.
iv.] THE PERSON OF JESUS 155
that the evangelists did not read back the concep-
tion right and left into the tradition of Jesus. It is
unlikely that the original apocalyptic use of the term
led them to extend it to other passages as a self-
designation of Jesus, for there is no obvious reason
why it was only extended to some passages, and on
the other hand, it has an apt significance in nearly
all. The Son of man, as a present and as a future
designation, corresponds to the double sense in
which the kingdom of God appears in the tradition ;
it is a title closely associated with the divine realm,
of which the Son of man is the founder and herald.
The organic connection between the two justifies
us in retaining the term in the synoptic logia
which is un-apocalyptic, as well as in believing
that it had an eschatological significance for Jesus
Himself,
The critical alternatives are (a) to eliminate from
the title any messianic content, or (b) admitting such
a content, to eliminate the title from the teaching
of Jesus, and to regard it as a catchword of the
apostolic age (so especially, Bacon and on other
grounds Brandt, Die Evangelische Geschichte, pp.
562 f.), or (c) to take it as a title which Jesus used,
half to reveal and half to conceal the significance
of His personality, an indefinite expression which,
partly owing to its earlier history and partly to
the larger synthesis in which He set it, meant
more than a merely messianic function. Neither
(a) nor (b) will cover all the data. When the Son
of man passages are turned back into the original
Aramaic vernacular, the generic sense of the term
more than once proves jejune or unnatural, and any
other sense fails on the whole to satisfy the
156 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
context. Again, in view of the appearance of the
term in a messianic sense in the early source of
Acts vii. 56, it is difficult to date its rise after Paul's
death or to find the avenue for its introduction into
the synoptic tradition in Q or the small Apocalypse.
The conclusions of Lietzmann and Wellhausen are
not so final that we need to be intimidated by them
into a rejection of the term upon linguistic grounds,
as used by Jesus in a special sense, even though the
extant references may not always bear the precise
weight which the evangelists attach to them. An
examination of the synoptic data seriatim vindi-
cates the hypothesis that Jesus called Himself c Son
of man,' and that the significance of this self-desig-
nation is to be found not simply in the apocalyptic
tradition, as a title for the future functions of the
Christ, but in the larger sphere of His conscious-
ness as expressed particularly through the Servant
of Yahveh prophecies.
The presence one might almost say the predomin-
ance of the Danielic Son of man is evident not only
in sayings which, in their present form at any rate,
bear the stamp of the apostolic Church, but in others
which were certainly spoken by Jesus Himself. A
fair example of the former class may be found in the
closing paragraph of Matthew's gospel (xxviii. 18f.),
where the phrase, all power (authority) is given to me
in heaven and on earth, is an echo of the Danielic
prediction that there was given him (i.e. the Son
of man) dominion and glory and a kingdom. 1 The
leading example of the latter class of sayings is the
1 This symbolic application of a highly symbolic prediction suggests
that the reply of Jesus to the high priest, which is couched in terms
of the same prediction, contains a figurative element.
iv.] THE PERSON OP JESUS 157
crucial reply of Jesus to the high priest and his
colleagues :
Mark xiv. 62. Matt. xxvi. 64. Luke xxii. 69.
You will see the Son You will see the Son The Son of man
of man sitting at of man sitting at will be seated
the right hand of the right hand of at the right
the Power and the Power and hand of the
coming on the coming with the Power of God,
clouds of heaven. clouds of heaven.
The 7r' a/on with which Matthew, and the d/rd
TOV vvv with which Luke, introduces the saying,
may be glosses ; Luke's suppression of the predic-
tions about messiah coming on the clouds (which,
however, he reproduces later in Acts i. 9-11) and
being seen by His former judges, reflects at any rate
the theology of an age which had outlived the first
generation. Jesus is condemned not for claiming
to be the Son of man, but for admitting that He was
the Son of God (ver. 70, cf. Mark xiv. 63), a higher
title than messiah (cf. John xx. 31), but his pre-
diction speaks of the Danielic Son of man returning
in power to fulfil the royal divine purpose which
His death was supposed to check. It might appear
recondite to find in the words seated at the right
hand an allusion to Ps. ex., were it not that Jesus
appears to have already quoted that psalm during
the last days of His life (cf. Mark xii. 36). The
psalm, as a messianic ode, had a great career in the
theology of the early church (cf. Mark xvi. 19,
1 Cor. xv. 24 f., Heb. i. 11 ., etc.). It is the
prediction of the Danielic Son of man coming on
the clouds which is the core of the saying, how-
ever, and this cannot be interpreted simply as the
aspect in which the opponents who condemn Jesus
158 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
will henceforth have to regard Him, i.e. as judge
instead of as redeemer. 1 Either the Marcan form is
original, or that which Luke has reproduced but which
Matthew preserves in a conflate reading, retaining
and coming on the clouds of heaven, in spite of its in-
compatibility with the introductory from henceforth.
The primary and ultimate source of such Son
of man passages is the prediction of Dan. vii. 13, a
description which, by the time of the Similitudes of
Enoch, had become definite and personal ; the figure
like a Son of man who symbolises Israel in the apoca-
lyptic vision of Daniel is now the Son of man, a
supernatural pre-existent being, who sits on the
throne of His glory, which is also God's throne, as
the judge and ruler of men. But the Enochic Son
of man has no career on earth ; He is only revealed
in the latter days of resurrection and judgment,
except that the community of the righteous know
Him through the prophecies of the Old Testament.
Furthermore, this Son of man is related to God
not as the Father but as the Lord of Spirits.
Now it is the references in the gospels to suffering
and death as the prelude to the Son of man's final
victory, and to His career of lowly service and dis-
cipline on earth, which constitute the significance
of the title for Jesus. The apocalyptic origin and
setting of the title would be corroborated if it were
true 2 that Son of man represented, even prior to
Daniel, a semi-mythologica-1 conception of some First
Man, a heavenly personality parallel to the figure of
messiah, who returns with divine powers of restoring
1 Cf. above, p. 100, and Abbott's The Son of Man, 3313-14.
2 Cf. Gressmann's Ursprung der Israelitisch-jildischen Eschato-
logie, pp. 360 f.
iv.] THE PERSON OF JESUS 159
life at the end of history. The term would thus
belong to the technical and traditional vocabulary
of eschatology ; it was capable of transformation,
as" when the author of Daniel interpreted it nationally
instead of individually, but it regained its messianic
associations later and finally furnished the basis
for the specific conception of Jesus. The theory
has its attractions, but it is not certain yet whether
Gressmann has discovered an Ariadne's thread or a
mare's nest. In any case, the term as present to the
consciousness of Jesus and His age went back to
the Daniel-Enoch cycle, so far as it suggested a
messianic role. But, while the Son of man specially
suggests the future career of Christ as the judge of
men, who is only to enter on the full vocation of
messiah after death, the passages which associate
the Son of man with suffering point to a character-
istic modification or expansion of the term by Jesus.
Neither in the royal divine Son of God of the second
Psalm, nor in the Danielic Son of man, was there any
place for a career of suffering and death. What the
synoptic tradition represents as a feature of the
mind of Jesus is due to the infusion of the suffering
Servant's role into these conceptions. As soon as
Peter hails Him with the title of the Christ, the Son
of God, He begins to explain that the Son of man
must suffer . . . and be killed and be raised on the third
day. Nothing could well be more incongruous with
the traditional apocalyptic role of the Son of man
than such a destiny. The idea that the messiah
was to die, after a life of humane service upon earth,
was as unprecedented as the idea of a messiah who
fulfilled teaching and prophetic functions among
men. It is striking when the mysterious and super-
160 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
natural figure of the Son of man as presented by
Daniel and Enoch is identified by Jesus with Him-
self, in the flash of prediction to the high priest ;
but it is even more striking when He is associated
with humiliation and suffering. The clue to such
a remarkable consciousness upon the part of Jesus
is furnished by ' the inward synthesis of these two
ideas of the past in an ideal, nay in a Personality
transcending them both.' l The allusion to Isaiah
liii. 12 in Luke xxii. 37 implies that the Servant-ideal
was fulfilled by Jesus in more points than in the
special mode of His death ; in the light of it as of
nothing else can we understand the bearing of several
of the Son of man passages.
The dozen references to Son of man in the Fourth
gospel are independent of the synoptic tradition ;
they reflect a theology which presupposes but
amplifies the messianic significance of the title for
the personality of the incarnate Christ. Primarily, the
element of supernatural pre-existence is emphasised,
as in iii. 13 No one has ascended to heaven, except
him wlio came down from heaven, the Son of man who
is in heaven, and vi. 62 What if you see the Son of
man ascending where he was before ? This involves
the return of the Son of man to heavenly glory, a
thought which the writer connects not with the
second coming, but with the ascension, or lifting
up. For the latter idea he uses a suggestively
ambiguous term (v^ovo-Oat), 2 which might denote
either crucifixion (viii. 28) or exaltation in glory, 3
1 R. H. Charles, The Book of Enoch 2 , p. 308.
2 Cf. Dr. E. A. Abbott's Johannine Grammar, 2211 b, c ; 2642 &.
3 E.g. in the LXX of the Servant-prophecy, Isa. Iii. 13, idoti
6 TTCUS /JLOV Kal v\//(i)0r
iv.] THE PERSON OF JESUS 161
and sometimes seems to include both (xii. 32, 34).
In iii. 14-15, the conviction that the Son of man
must be lifted up is expressed by a comparison of the
serpent which Moses lifted up before the Israelites
in the wilderness ; c compared with the synoptic pre-
dictions of the passion and resurrection, this figure
of the serpent seems recondite and abstruse,' * but
it is employed to bring out the positive communica-
tion of life through the death and resurrection of
Jesus, and not merely the divine necessity of His
passion. Similarly, the two allusions to the Son
of man being glorified (one public, xii. 23, and the
other private, xiii. 31) imply that the crucifixion,
for all its apparent degradation and defeat, is the
true means of expressing and realising the divine
nature ; through the sufferings and self-sacrifice of
Jesus, the real glory of God comes out. The words
are a slightly elaborate equivalent for the synoptic
phrase about minding the things of God (see above,
p. 107). When the writer comes to speak of the
communication of the divine life to the faith of men,
he develops his argument in a series of subtle and
paradoxical comments upon the manna in the wilder-
ness, as he had already applied this semi -allegorical
method to the legend of the serpent. The mystical
interpretation of the Lord's Supper as a vital union
between the participant and the living Christ (vi. 53)
is farther from the teaching of the synoptic Jesus than
the earlier saying (vi. 27) that eternal life is to be
given to Christians by the Son of man, for him God
the Father has sealed (i.e. certified or set apart for
this purpose), but the latter phrase is to be read in
the light of the former. The thought, though not
J Dr. E. A. Abbott, The Son of Man, 3407, i.
L
162 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
the expression, in i. 51, is simpler : You shall see
heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and
descending upon the Son of man. As the context
indicates, the idea is that Jacob's dream of com-
munion between God and men is to be fulfilled for
the Church in the person of Christ. The angels,
says Philo in his exposition of Gen. xxviii. 12 (de
Somniis, i. 22), are so-called, because they 'report
(StayycAAovo-i) the Father's injunctions to the chil-
dren, and the needs of the children to the Father.'
This is the function of Christ, then, to maintain
unbroken communion between God and His people ;
consequently the metaphorical expression of the say-
ing covers much the same thoughts as are presented
by the author of Hebrews in the description of
Jesus as the high priest of men. ' In and with Him,
visibly for those who are His, heaven is upon earth.' *
In most of these passages, and particularly in that
last quoted, the term Son of man has obviously
outgrown its primary messianic significance, and it
may be held that this is true even of the references
to the Son of man as judge. The reading in ix. 35
is doubtful. But if Son of man is preferred there
to Son of God, the idea (cf. ver. 39) is of His judg-
ment as in v. 27 : The Father has granted Him the
right to exercise judgment, because He is the Son of
man. The underlying thought is almost that of Acts
xvii. 31, Heb. iv. 15, and even Matt. xxv. 31, but the
critical process which the person of Christ sets in
motion for men tends to overshadow the more
dramatic and eschatological view of judgment which
the synoptic theology had put forward. Upon the
1 Julius Grill, Untersuchungen tibcr die Entstehung des vierten
Evangeliums (1902), p. 48.
iv.] THE PERSON OF JESUS 163
whole, therefore, the Fourth gospel assumes, rather
than emphasises, the humanity suggested by the
term Son of man, while it elaborates the super-
natural as distinguished from the apocalyptic asso-
ciations of the title.
(d) An important inference for the messianic con-
sciousness of Jesus follows from the discussion with
the scribes over the Davidic messiah (Mark xii. 35-
37, Matt. xxii. 41-46, Luke xx. 41-44), in which He
corrects the popular l inference that the true messiah
needs to be a scion and heir of David who would fulfil,
as the Psalter of Solomon expected, the nationalist
hopes of Judaism, by overthrowing the Roman yoke
and subduing the Gentiles into a position of respectful
homage to the purified and triumphant Jews. The
messianic role which Jesus was conscious of fulfilling
had no relation to the Jewish monarchy. He appears
to have accepted the title, but He repudiated both
the stress laid upon it and the royalist associations
with which it was invested. The authority he had
to exercise was through humble love and service,
and not through any material* con quest such as had
been for long expected from messiah as a Davidic
scion. This is one of the points made by the story of
the entry into Jerusalem, which is connected with
the prediction of Zechariah's humble king of peace
(Matt. xxi. 5), but which explicitly differs from the
setting of his entry in the group of oracles 2 which have
been incorporated in Zech. ix.-xiv., by ignoring the
1 Compare the appeal of Bartimaeus, Jesus, son of David, and the
welcome of the crowd at his entry into Jerusalem, besides the remark
of the crowd in Matt. xii. 23.
2 The influence of these oracles on the gospel tradition in other
directions maybe seen,e.^., in Matt. xxvi. 31=Zech. xiii. 7 (scattering
of disciples), Matt, xxvii. 9 f. =Zech. xi. 13 (price of potter's field),
164 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
re-establishment of Israel in Palestine after the de-
feat of their pagan oppressors. It is rather significant
that neither here nor elsewhere did Jesus call Himself
Son of David ; the evangelists who attach more im-
portance than He did to the title, explain that He
was born in the Davidic line (cf. e.g. Matt. i. 1 f ., John
vii. 42), but He Himself laid no claim to this, although
it is quite possible that His family were of Davidic
descent.
This is borne out by the further fact that Jesus
does not appear to connect the new covenant, of which
He speaks at the Last Supper, with the messianic
fulfilment of the Davidic hope. Such a fulfilment
would have been consonant with several lines of the
older Jewish tradition (e.g. Pss. Ixxxix. 27, and cxxxii.
11, Ezek. xxxvii. 24-25, Ps. Sol. xvii. 5f., 23 f.),and in
the primitive Church the resurrection of Jesus was
interpreted in the light (Acts xiii. 34) of the enig-
matic prediction (Isa. Iv. 3),
/ will make an everlasting covenant with you,
Even the sure mercies of David.
But while Jesus at the Last Supper speaks of the
kingdom in terms of the covenant-idea, He does not
associate it with the fulfilment of the messianic hope
in its Davidic form. What made Him sit loose
to the latter ideal was His higher conception of the
messianic vocation in connection with the Servant
of Yahveh, rather than a preference for some more
Luke xxii. 20=Zech. ix. 11 (blood of covenant), and John xix. 37=
Zech. xii. 10 (penitence for murder of Jesus). More than two cen-
turies after the death of Jesus one of the rabbis (T. B. Sanhedr., 98 a)
explained that the messiah would come as in Dan. vii. 13, if Israel
proved worthy, but that if they proved unworthy He would come
upon an ass, like Zechariah's prince, i.e. humbly.
iv.] THE PERSON OF JESUS 165
apocalyptic ideal of messiah, or a desire to emphasise
his divine (as contrasted with a Davidic) Sonship,
though we may admit that the latter thought is not
entirely to be ruled out of the argument.
(e) The inward aspect of the messianic conscious-
ness is further expressed in the voice of divine
approval (Matt.iii. 17, Marki. 11, Matt. xvii. 5, etc.),
Thou art my Son, my beloved, in thee am 1 well
pleased. Here 6 ayaTrryrds is a separate title,
equivalent to The Beloved, which is again, for the
gospels, practically synonymous with The Elect, 1 or
Chosen One (cf. Matt. xii. 18, Luke ix. 35), a pre-
Christian messianic title, which is specially used by
Luke (cf. xxiii. 35), possibly owing to the influence
of Enoch. But this does not imply that Jesus
regarded Himself as God's Son because He was
conscious of being the Chosen of the Father's love.
The term Beloved is primarily messianic, as it is in
the 'Ascension of Isaiah,' where, like Son of God
and Son of man elsewhere, it has passed from a
designation of Israel into a title of Israel's messiah.
But neither in the theology of the gospels, any more
than in Ephesians or Barnabas (3, 4) or Ignatius,
is it a central term ; and the personal rather than
the official sense of the name, which is implied in
the synoptic usage, is shown by the adjectival use
in Clement of Rome (lix. 2-3) as well as in the
Johannine periphrasis (iii. 35, v. 20, x. 17, xv. 9). 2
(/) Jesus did not often speak of God as the Lord
(6 Ku/3ios),and none of the rare allusions 3 to Himself
1 The Meet is an early variant reading for the Son in John i. 34.
2 In Eph. i. 6 it reproduces the son of His love in Col. i. 13.
3 Matt. vii. 22 (Luke vi. 46), Matt. xxi. 3=Mark xi. 3=Luke xix.
31, 34, and Matt. xxiv. 42; indirectly in Matt. xxii. 43 f. (how does
David call him Lord f), Matt. xxv. 37 f. (Lord t when did we see thee t)
166 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
as Lord is beyond doubt ; they may represent an
original 'rabbi' or 'master, 5 which has been
amplified into the divine title by the evangelists.
The latter process is specially clear in Luke's
use of the term as applied to Jesus in narrative or
in address. This was partly due to its popularity
among Gentile Christians as a more intelligible
synonym for messiah or Christ, partly also to the
growing sense of His divine nature. Both considera-
tions, but especially the former, led to the title being
applied to Jesus during His lifetime, 1 although even
according to Luke (Acts ii. 36) He really became Lord
at the resurrection. There is no clear trace in the
theology of the gospels of any tacit protest against
the contemporary tendency to apply the term to
the Roman emperors. In the one passage where
such a reference might be expected (Luke xxii. 26 f .),
the term Lord is not employed.
(g) It is at first sight strange, in view of the later
popularity of the term, that the conception of Wisdom
as a personified divine power was not employed by
the theology of the gospels. Yet, apart from the
saying which claims for Him a wisdom superior
to that of Solomon (Matt. xii. 42), Wisdom occurs
only in two passages : (a) that of Matt. xi. 19=
Luke vii. 35, and (6) that of Luke xi. 49. In the
former, upon the practical vindication of Wisdom,
Wisdom means the divine providence which in-
spires both John the Baptist and Jesus in their
different roles. This enters also into the con-
ception of the second passage, where Luke per-
sonifies Wisdom, and puts into her lips, possibly
1 So in the gospel of Peter ; on the religious significance of the
term, see Kattenbusch's Apost. Symbol, ii. 596 f.
iv.] THE PERSON OP JESUS 167
as a quotation from some lost sapiential book, words
which Matthew (xxiii. 34 f .) attributes in an expanded
form to Jesus Himself : Therefore the Wisdom of God
has said, I will send to them prophets and apostles,
some of whom they will kill and drive out, that the
blood of all the prophets shed from the beginning of
the world may be required of this generation: . . . yea,
I tell you, from this generation shall it be required. In
the pre-Christian book of Jubilees (i. 12) God promises
Moses : / shall send witnesses unto them, that I may
witness against them, but they will not hear, and will
slay the witnesses also, and they will persecute those
who seek the Law. The interest of this parallel is
heightened by differences between it and the passage
from the gospels. In the latter (cf. especially
Luke xi. 45 f .) the thought is that the rigid authorities
and interpreters of the Law will be responsible
for the murder of God's witnesses, whereas the
object of Jubilees is to uphold the validity of the
Law. In the second place, the context of the passage
in Jubilees suggests that, in spite of this hostile
attitude to the divine witnesses, Israel will ulti-
mately repent. The gospels, on the other hand, do
not anticipate anything except impenitent enmity
from the Jewish nation as a whole.
When we pass on to the Fourth gospel, it is to
find several of the older conceptions of Wisdom
expressed, in more or less modified form, but the
conception itself absent from beginning to end. In
the Book of Wisdom, Wisdom becomes practically a
personified organ of the divine creation, revelation,
and ethical inspiration, with cosmic functions which
are assigned by Philo to the Logos as well. In the
latter writer, however, the Logos is more prominent
168 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
than Wisdom, and this approximates to the stand-
point of the Fourth gospel's theology, although, in
contrast to Philo, the evangelist excludes Wisdom
entirely from his delineation of Jesus as the Logos. 1
The very term (<jo<$>ia.) is deliberately omitted, with
the cognate term yrwo-ts. The Christ of the Fourth
gospel declares / am the Truth, but not / am the
Wisdom. It is as the incarnate Logos, not as the
incarnate Wisdom of God, that Jesus is the Christ,
the Son of God. The most probable explanation
of this avoidance of o-o&a is that it was due not only
to the feminine form of the word, but to the role
which Wisdom had already begun to play among the
aeons of Gnostic theosophy, where its functions and
characteristics are distinctly lower than in the pre-
Christian developments of the later Judaism. Even
in the Similitudes of Enoch, the conception of
the divine Wisdom blends with that of the Son of
man, although the connection is left unexplained
(xlii.). Wisdom came to make her dwelling among
the children of men and found no dwelling place ; like
the Logos of the Johannine prologue, men would
not receive the divine messenger, but preferred
darkness to light, welcoming unrighteousness instead
of Wisdom. Only, whereas the Enochic Wisdom
returned to heaven baffled, the Logos became flesh
and carried out the purpose of God amid the faith-
lessness and disobedience of men.
(h) The specific category of the Logos, in the
Fourth gospel's theology, embraces not merely the
functions of Wisdom but of more than one of the
1 In the Poimandres theosophy, where the doctrine emerges of the
Logos as the divine Son, a second God whom men learn to reverence,
there is a similar absence of the Wisdom idea.
iv.] THE PERSON OF JESUS 169
other synoptic categories for the person of Jesus.
The Greek term Logos (Aoyos) denoted not simply
reason, but the speech in which reason uttered itself
to men. Now the Greek speculations upon the
Logos had been primarily concerned with the
problem of the relation between the created universe
and God, which was solved by the theory that the
divine reason pervaded the visible world. Philo,
working on the Jewish conception of the Word, made
the Logos the organ of God's self-revelation to men
as well as of His creative power ; he thus overcame
the dualism between the world and a transcendent
God, and conserved the principle of spontaneous
self -revelation ; but this was at the expense of
consistency, for his view of the Logos wavers between
a more or less independent divine agent and an
impersonal expression of the divine mind and will.
It is difficult to ignore the Philonian background for
this idea in the Fourth gospel, but the genesis of
the Logos-idea is less important for our purpose
than its exodus. It was baptized by the Fourth
gospel into Christ, and served to guide generations
of believing men into a fuller apprehension of Jesus
than the previous messianic categories of the synoptic
theology could have done.
Take the prologue to the Fourth gospel, to which
the term, though not the thought, is confined.
Phrase after phrase in it is carefully chosen to set
aside some misconception of what Christ was as
the true Logos. The Logos existed in the very
beginning not an inferior seon or emanation, sub-
sequent to the original order of things, as e.g. the
Valentinian Gnostics taught; the Logos was in vital
relation with God, the Logos was divine by nature
170 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
not a mere heavenly aeon as the Gnostics argued,
but with God in the very beginning of things in
unrivalled supremacy. It was through this Logos
alone that God created the universe. Through the
Logos everything came into being, and apart from the
Logos no existence came into being a side-stroke at
the Gnostic theories of creation through angels or a
plurality of inferior aeons, of matter as self-existent,
and of the creator as distinguished from the redeemer.
Here the Logos is, as it was to Philo in his own way,
the sole organ or instrument of creation. Then
follows the work of the Logos within the created
universe of men. Life in the pregnant sense of
the term was in the Logos, as divine, and that
Life was the Light of men, 1 as opposed to the Gnostic
doctrine that the powers of creation were at issue
with the highest revelation of God. The Light
shines in the Darkness, but the Darkness has not under-
stood it (cf. iii. 19, xiii. 30). This is the Johannine
form of the synoptic antithesis between the realms
of Satan and God. Then comes an implicit contrast
between the Logos and John the Baptist, whose
ministry, in opposition to some current exaggera-
tions, is ranked subordinate and transient. He was
simply sent by God to bear testimony to the Light.
The real Light, which enlightens every man, was
coming into the world ; even when John entered on
his career of testimony, the Light was breaking
round him upon men. But instead of accepting
John's testimony, and allowing themselves to be
enlightened, mankind denied and rejected Him. He
entered into the world the world which came into
being through him (and not through any demiurge)
1 Note the connection in iii. 16 f., 19 f., and viii. 12.
iv.] THE PERSON OF JESUS 171
but the world did not recognise him. He came to
what was his own, but his own people did not welcome
him. On the other hand, this tragedy is set off
by success. Those who do accept him to them he
has given the right of becoming God's children, that is,
to those who believe in his name, who owe their birth
to God, not to human blood, nor to any impulse of
the flesh, nor (as some Gnostics taught) to the human
will. So the Logos became flesh (instead of a phantom
Jesus, as the docetic Gnostics taught), and tarried
among us, and we saw his glory glory such as an
only son has, who comes from his father, full of grace
and truth. . . . From his fulness (instead of from
a variety of Gnostic aeons) we have all received grace
after grace 1 ; for while the Law was given through
Moses (and therefore, being divine, is not to be re-
jected as the Gnostics did), grace and truth have come
through Jesus Christ (the Christian revelation of God's
reality needed a deeper and more personal medium
than that of a Jewish lawgiver). This gracious
embodiment of the divine reality is due to the
person of the divine Son. No one, not even Moses,
has ever seen God, but he has been unfolded by the
only divine One who lies (once more, after His in-
carnate life on earth) upon the Father's breast (see
above, p. 139).
It only remains to add that in the name of ' Jesus '
there was no specifically religious meaning. Matthew's
gospel, in the birth-section, attaches a pregnant
1 Compare Philo's words in DC Posteritate Caini, 43 : ' God always
measures out and apportions with reserve His first graces (%dpiras),
ere the partakers grow sated and wanton ; then He bestows others in
place of them (er^pas avr e/cetVwi/) . . . and so forth, always new for
old (t/^as avri T
172 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
sense to it : Thou shall call his name ' Jesus? for he
shall save his people from their sins, an obvious play
upon the etymology of the Hebrew original (' Yahveh
is salvation '), but no such significance is felt by any
of the contemporaries of Jesus. As for * Christ '
(xpio-rds, maschiah), it meant c the anointed One,'
not one who had been anointed ; it was a technical
term * for God's vassal or regent who was to execute
His royal purpose upon earth. Curiously enough,
it is in the Fourth gospel alone, which (in spite of
iv. 25 and xx. 31) is the least messianic of the four
gospels, that the term ' messiah ' is preserved
(cf. i. 41). The Christ, whom Matthew hails at the
outset as the true Immanuel (' God with us '), indeed
promises at the close to be with His people for ever.
And this presence is the presence of One who has
passed through death for the sake of men, the pre-
sence of the Jesus who came to save His people from
their sins, and saved them by shedding His blood
for the forgiveness of sins (xxvi. 28). The concep-
tion is that Christ mediates a new relationship
between God and man ; He has complete power and
authority over the people of God His Father. This
idea (see above, pp. 142 f.) is one stage on the road
to the Johannine view, but the conception of the
mystical presence of Christ is presented by the
Fourth gospel in terms of contemporary Hellenistic
mysticism rather than along the lines of the Jewish
view. 2
1 Never used absolutely, however, for the messiah till the gospels
and the apocalypse of Baruch (cf. E. A. Abbott, The Son of Man,
3062, i.-iv.).
2 On this unio mystica, in relation to contemporary Hellenistic
religion, see especially Reitzenstein's Poimandres, pp. 245 f.
iv.] THE PERSON OP JESUS 173
The increasing stress which begins to be laid upon
faith in Christ is cognate to this belief in His spiritual
presence. The qualities which draw out religious
confidence are present in the Jesus of the synoptic
tradition ; He appeals for loyalty for His sake, and
accepts the grateful homage of men. But it is faith
in God rather than faith in Himself which is upper-
most in His teaching. His divine authority invests
Him with a unique claim, but the explicit allusions
to faith in Himself are scanty. Besides Luke viii.
50, l there is the saying about the little ones who believe
in me (Matt, xviii. 6). The words in me are not
quite certain of their place in the text of the Marcan
parallel (ix. 42), and their absence would tend to
invalidate Matthew's phrasing, 2 as a touch of his
higher christology. But the words are more con-
gruous to the Marcan context than to the Matthean,
and their presence in the latter text is probably
due to the fact that the author found them already
in Mark. Taken along with the general attitude of
Jesus to God and men, they express the truth that
He required a confidence in Himself as God's Son
and Servant, with a devotion which involved trust
and confidence in His divine power. He asked
for more than belief in His word. He sought to
attach men to Himself as God's Servant and Son.
' God is undoubtedly the only and the ultimate object
of faith, but what the synoptic gospels in point of
fact present to us on this and many other occasions
1 Als6 the crucial importance of men's attitude to himself, Matt.
x. 32-33= Luke xii. 8-9.
2 Merx insists that they are part of the original Marcan text,
on the ground that they were omitted in order to leave the term
'believe' as an equivalent for the 'fides salvifica' of the Church.
But he will not accept the phrase as a genuine utterance of Jesus,
174 THE THEOLOGY OP THE GOSPELS [CH.
is (to borrow the language of 1 Pet. i. 21), the spectacle
of men who believe in God through him. 9 1 The
soteriological aspect of this faith is naturally pro-
minent in the Fourth gospel, where it is definitely
put forward in xiv. 1. The phrase starts a problem
of translation, for which the most suggestive solu-
tion resembles that proposed by Hort : Let not your
heart be troubled. Believe believe in God and in me,
' the first suggestion being of constancy opposed to
troubling and fearfulness, and the second of the
ground of that constancy, rest in God, itself depend-
ing on rest in Christ.' 2
To sum up :
The Jesus of the primitive Church was a Jesus
whom believers hailed and worshipped as the Christ
of God. My point is that an examination of the
earliest records, of the sources behind Mark and the
other two synoptic gospels, shows that the messianic
drapery or setting of His person was not the result
of Paulinism impinging upon the pure and original
memory of a humanitarian figure, who lived and
died for the sake of a message which amounted to
little more than a doctrine of theism plus brotherly
love. 3 This is a conclusion upon which several lines
of research converge. It was brought out by the
recent Paul and Jesus controversy, ratified by the
simultaneous investigations into the theology of
Mark and Q, and corroborated, with independent
1 Denney, Jesus and the Gospel, p. 255.
2 Cf. Hort's note on 1 Peter i. 21. In John vi. 47 the Syriac
versions add in God to believeth, some of the later uncials in me.
3 We cannot explain primitive Christianity either as the trans-
formation of the Jesus of history into the Christ of faith, or as the
evolution of a Jesus-cult out of a current series of christological
doctrines.
iv.] THE PERSON OF JESUS 175
vigour, by the eschatological school. Only, the aid
of the eschatologists is not to be accepted on their
own terms. ' Whatever the ultimate solution may
be,' says Schweitzer, ' the historical Jesus of whom
the criticism of the future will draw the portrait
. . . will be a Jesus who was messiah and lived as
such.' That is a welcome and significant admission,
but the messianic consciousness of Jesus is not the
ultimate clue to His personality, and still less a
messianic consciousness which is narrowed to the
eschatological scheme. It is at this point that
we join issue with the eschatologists. In the desire
to find a real Jesus behind the mediaeval regalia of the
creeds, the earlier movements of criticism repeatedly
tended to create a Christ in the likeness of modern
rationalism and moralism, who was messiah, if He was
messiah at all, in the role of a great religious reformer.
In the conviction that such attempts were unsatis-
factory, from the historical rather than from the
religious point of view, the eschatologists have thrown
into brilliant relief the supernatural features which
dominate the messianic consciousness of Jesus, not
merely of the primitive Church. Thus far, they
argue, and no farther shalt thou go. Beyond that,
research cannot proceed without recourse to what
is termed psychology, and psychology is the cardinal
sin here in the eyes of Schweitzer and his allies. To
use psychological methods in estimating the con-
sciousness of Jesus is to be ' modern.' I confess that
to attempt a non-psychological exposition of the
Son of man passages in the gospels, for example,
seems to me as promising and legitimate as it would
be to propose a non-philosophic inquiry into Plato's
allusions to the daemon of Socrates. The rationalis-
176 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
ing and modernising explanations of Jesus have
not been due to too much but to too little psychology ;
if they have failed to do justice to the Christ of the
gospels, the fault has lain elsewhere than in the
refusal to estimate so great a personality on the
score of texts and current ideas.
It is the recognition of this filial consciousness of
Jesus as the crucial element in the synoptic christology
which really enables us to understand the continuity
between the first three gospels and the Fourth. In
the latter the messianic categories fall comparatively
into the background, but the absorption of the
Fourth gospel in the relation between the Father and
the Son is theologically, rather than historically,
organic to the underlying basis of the synoptic
christology. 1 When the filial consciousness of
Jesus is seen to be prior to the messianic, the start-
ing-point for the special christology of the Fourth
gospel is at once granted. This is brought out even
when we turn to a conception which at first sight
marks one of the broadest differences between the
first three gospels and the Fourth, viz. the conception
of the Spirit.
1 The final and absolute significance of Christ, which the primitive
tradition expressed in terms of His messianic judicial function, now
appears as His eternal presence through the Spirit.
v.] THE SPIRIT OF JESUS 177
CHAPTER V
THE SPIRIT OF JESUS
THE phrase c the Spirit of Jesus ' only occurs once
in the New Testament, and it is not in the gospels.
Luke uses it, in the sequel to the third gospel, to
describe a mysterious arrest laid upon Paul and
his companions, as they endeavoured to begin a
Christian mission in Bithynia : They were attempting
to make their way into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus
did not allow them. 1 The difficulty of the expression
was felt at an early period, and led to the omission
of the words of Jesus from some texts of Acts. Pro-
bably it denoted a vision of Jesus which appeared
to Paul or Silas in prophetic ecstasy, although the
more common phrase, as the context indicates, was
simply the Holy Spirit, or the Spirit. But, whatever
Luke meant, it is not in this sense that we can speak
of the Spirit of Jesus in connection with the theology
of the gospels. Neither is it in the trinitarian sense ;
still less, in the opposite and un technical sense of the
disposition or genius which characterises the teach-
ing of Jesus. It is true that this last connotation of
spirit is not entirely absent even from the vocabulary
of Paul ; although he normally employs spirit in
the sense of a divine power acting on the Christian
and the church through the person of the risen
1 Acts xvi. 7.
M
178 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
Christ, there are instances in which he seems to
use the term spirit in connection with human faculties
and temperament as a modern would. But by the
Spirit of Jesus, as a rubric for some of the contents
of the gospels, we mean (a) the divine power pos-
sessed by Jesus on earth, and (b) the divine power
which came upon His followers after His resurrec-
tion, rendering their life stable and effective.
Jesus has a spirit of His own, like any one else
(cf. Mark ii. 8, viii. 12), but the second Marcan
passage is omitted, and the former altered, by
Matthew and Luke, possibly from considerations of
reverence, although Matthew describes how Jesus
gave up his spirit on the cross (xxvii. 50 ; cf. Eccles.
xii. 7, Luke xxiii. 46). Luke, on the other hand, adds
that Jesus as a child developed in spirit (^parcuoirro
Trvcv/xart), and lays stress upon the power and
presence of the Holy Spirit in Jesus during His
ministry (cf. e.g. iv. 1, 14, iv. 18 f., x. 21). In the
Fourth gospel ' the spirit ' of Jesus is twice men-
tioned (xi. 33, xiii. 21) in connection with perturba-
tion of soul, quite in the popular usage of the term ;
the characteristic doctrine of the Spirit has to be
sought elsewhere.
(i) In the synoptic gospels, the only occasion on
which Jesus mentions the Spirit in connection with
His mission is in self-defence, when the Pharisees
declared that His power of expelling evil spirits was
due to collusion with Satan. He claims that He
exercises this power by the Holy Spirit, i.e. as pos-
sessed by the Spirit of God, which works for the
establishment of the divine reign on earth by over-
throwing the reign of Satan (Matt. xii. 28, a passage
from Q, where Luke characteristically cf. i. 55,
v.] THE SPIRIT OF JESUS 179
66, 71, 74 changes the Spirit into the finger of God). 1
In the following paragraph, which asserts that no
one can pillage a strong man's house unless he first
seizes the strong man himself, Jesus implies that His
exorcisms are the result of a previous victory over
Satan. This consciousness of messianic authority
over the great antagonist of God reaches back to
the experiences of the temptation which followed
his reception of the Spirit at baptism (Marki. 9-13=
Matt. iii. 13-iv. 11), and Luke corroborates the con-
nection by associating the Isaianic prophecy of the
Spirit with the opening of the mission of Jesus at
Nazareth (iv. 17 f.). According to the naive cos-
mogony which is presupposed in the theology of the
gospels, Jesus in or by the Spirit of God confronts
the authority of Satan as represented by the evil
spirits of disease. The sufferers whom He cures are
tv 7n/i;/Ao,Tt aKa#a/oTo>, 2 possessed by unclean spirits,
as opposed to the pure Spirit of their deliverer, and
it is the sense of His irresistible approach, heralding
the reign of God, which excites the anger and dismay
of the unclean spirits. According to Mark especially,
they recognise their conqueror and yield sullenly
to His superior power (cf. i. 23 f., iii. 11, v. 2 f.,
vii. 25, ix. 17 f.), as He invades their territory.
It is this consciousness of being an organ of the
Holy Spirit which prompts the saying of Jesus
(preserved in Q, Matt. xii. 32= Luke xii. 10, as well
as in Mark iii. 29), that blasphemy against the Holy
1 In later theology the Holy Spirit is called the Finger of God
(cf. Augustine on Ps. xc. 11), partly on the basis of this passage.
2 The wicked (iro^pd) spirits of Luke vii. 21 and viii. 2 are not
essentially different (cf. Matt. xii. 46). This belief is said to have
been specially prevalent in Galilee.
180 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
Spirit, such as the Pharisees uttered in ascribing
his exorcisms to Satanic influence, was beyond all
pardon. These works of supernatural power authenti-
cated Him as God's representative, whom it was
perilous to despise, according to the Hebrew con-
ception of prophetic authority (cf. e.g. Num. xvi.
29 f., Deut. xviii. 19). Jesus, however, claims not
simply to speak the divine prophetic word, but to
act under the divine Spirit, as the messiah or medium
of God's redeeming purpose upon earth.
In Mark's version, blasphemy against the Holy
Spirit is unpardonable, whereas the sons of men
are forgiven any other sin of blasphemy. Thus
it is pardonable to curse God for sending trouble,
as Job was tempted to do, because man is often
ignorant of the truly wise and kind purpose which
lies behind apparently hostile dealings of God.
Jesus was perfectly frank in His teaching on this
point. He knows that God often seemed indifferent
and callous, e.g., in the sphere of answers to prayer. 1
Men are sometimes tempted to be unjust to God
because He seems unjust to them.
' Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face,'
but those who see only the frowns are apt to criticise
Him harshly. Such transgressions, even although
they are unfair, are pronounced pardonable, because
they are due to the sufferer's inability for the time
being to understand the mysterious ways of pro-
vidence. It is a very different matter when acts
of God, such as the expulsion of the evil spirits by
Jesus, which are obviously beneficent, are attributed
i Cf. A. B. Bruce, The Parabolic Teaching of Jesus, pp. 147 f.
v.] THE SPIRIT OP JESUS 181
to Satan. Here there can be no question or plea of
inadvertence. 1 The sin is blasphemy of a deliberate
kind, and when the scribes out of sheer malice sneered
at the cures of Jesus as due to collusion with the
devil, when they would do anything rather than admit
or let other people admit His claims to be acting
in the power of God, He declared passionately that
their malignant attitude put them beyond the reach of
forgiveness. Whosoever shall blaspheme against the
Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an
eternal sin. Here the Holy Spirit is the power of
God manifested in the works of Jesus. He spoke
in this way, Mark adds, because they said, He has an
unclean spirit. But the identification of Jesus with
the Holy Spirit, in this connection, does not depend
upon the evangelist's comment ; it is implicit in the
argument.
The other version reproduced by Matthew arid
partly by Luke, contrasts blasphemy against the
Holy Spirit with blasphemy against the Son of man.
Son of man here means Jesus in His human aspect
as the messiah ; it is in the last degree unlikely
that the term was originally generic, and that the
contrast was between insulting criticism of a human
being and blasphemy against the divine Spirit. So
far as the two renderings of the original Aramaic
are concerned, however, the probability lies on the
side of Matthew's. To the primitive Christians,
as Schmiedel points out, it would appear the height
of blasphemy to say that blasphemy against Jesus
1 There is nothing in the context to support Oscar Holtzmann's
idea that the scribes viewed the good works of Jesus as a clever device
of Satan to beguile men, first of all, and thus get them more completely
into his power.
182 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
was pardonable, and unless the saying had been
extant in some authoritative source like Q, it is
unlikely that it would have been constructed out
of the Marcan version. The reverse is much more
probable, as indeed Wellhausen considers was the case
in the saying of Mark iii. 28. We may claim, on the
whole, that this consideration outweighs the difficulty
of interpreting the saying intelligibly, as implying a
distinction between Jesus the Son of man and Jesus
as an agent of the divine Spirit. It would be easier if
Son of man here were a personal self -designation, but
in any case Jesus was speaking of Himself, and one
clue to His meaning lies in the misjudgment of His
family (Mark iii. 20 : They said, He is beside himself).
By omitting this, from motives of reverence, Matthew
and Luke have failed to supply a contemporary
illustration of what blasphemy against Jesus as the
Son of man really was. 1 His relatives might be par-
doned for their crude misapprehension of His actions ;
but for people like the scribes, who were face to face
with His supernatural acts of healing, to discredit
Him by asserting that He was inspired by the devil
instead of by the pure Spirit of God was unpardon-
able. The difference between the two versions is
one of form, therefore, rather than of spirit. Mark's
tends to identify Jesus with the Holy Spirit ; a
calumny against Him is a blasphemy against the
very power of God. The other version contrasts
the Son of man and the Spirit, and yet includes
the scribes' calumny against Jesus, ' the most sense-
less and infamous accusation which they ever
uttered,' 2 under the category of sins against the
1 Cf. also Luke ix. 51 f., xxiii. 34.
2 Keira, Jesus of Nazara, iv. 9.
v.] THE SPIRIT OF JESUS 183
Spirit ; it is pronounced more than a personal
insult to Jesus, which might be due to thoughtless-
ness or ignorance. The main drawback to the latter
view is that such a distinction between the two
aspects of Jesus seems to indicate a theological
position of the early church, rather than what
He would have been likely to say Himself in the
historical situation presupposed. 1
(ii) The allusions to the Spirit in the teaching of
Jesus are comparatively rare. 2 It is promised to
the disciples as a special equipment for defence,
when they are brought before civil and religious
tribunals, pagan and Jewish. Jesus assures them
that in such moments they will be inspired to speak
the apt and telling word, instead of being left to
their own resources. Do not be anxious beforehand
about what you are to say ; say whatever is given to
you at that hour, for it is not you who speak but the
Holy Spirit. Mark puts this promise among the
final directions of Jesus, in the eschatological section
of the gospel (xiii. 11). Matthew sets it earlier, in
the instructions of Jesus for the mission of the
twelve during His lifetime, and presents a slightly
altered version : Do not be anxious about how or what
you are to say, for it is not you who speak but the Spirit
of your Father which speaks through you (TO XaXovv
1 To profane the Name of God was for Judaism a form of irreverence
which could not be forgiven in this life. According to Joma, 86 a :
* For uch a sinner repentance cannot suspend his punishment, nor
can the Day of Atonement atone, nor can suffering avail to purify. '
The Enochic references to a sin against the Spirit are dubious (xx. 6,
Ixvii. 10).
2 Once the Spirit is mentioned as the source of Old Testament inspir-
ation (Mark xii. 36 = Matt. xxii. 43). Luke, though partial otherwise to
the doctrine of the Spirit, corrects this Jewish expression (xx. 42).
184 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
v, x. 19-20.) Luke again replaces the Holy
Spirit in Mark's logion by the personal Jesus :
Settle it in your hearts not to plan your answer before-
hand ; I myself will give you a mouth and wisdom
which all your adversaries will be unable to resist or
refute (xxi. 14-15). Here the telling effect of a
Christian defence is heightened, but the remarkable
feature is that Luke, who elsewhere goes beyond
Mark and Matthew in emphasising the place of the
Spirit in the teaching of Jesus, should omit it in
favour of Jesus Himself (cf. xxiv. 49). His parallel
to the Matthean logion is set unhistorically as a
pendant to another saying upon the Spirit : Do not
be anxious about how or what you are to answer or
say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that hour
what has to be said (xii. 11-12), but the modification in
xxi. 14-15 marks the first stage of the process which
ends in the Fourth gospel, under the influence of
Paulinism, with the correlation of Christ and the
Spirit, the latter being no longer a special equip-
ment for exorcising demons or making an effective
confession, but the principle of a new life. The
developed stage of reflection in Luke's version is
indicated not merely by the change of an adequate
testimony into an irresistible defence, but by the sub-
stitution of Jesus for the Spirit. The latter touch
points to the view elaborated in the Fourth gospel,
where the Spirit (Trapa/cA^ros) as the alter ego of
Jesus animates and inspires Christians for effective
testimony in face of an incredulous world (John xiv.
26, xv. 26, xvi. 13).
The background of the apostolic age is obvious
in Luke's version especially ; compare passages like
Acts xvi. 24, 2 Tim. iv. 16, 1 Cor. ii. 13, Eph. vi. 19,
v.] THE SPIRIT OF JESUS 185
and the experiences of Stephen and Paul. But the
tone of the saying, particularly in its Marcan form, is
consonant with the teaching of Jesus. The Spirit is
promised not as the principle of a new life but as a
special equipment for emergencies, which ensures
an adequate witness to the gospel, not the personal
safety of the witnesses. This is on the lines of the
Old Testament conception of the Spirit as prophetic
and inspiring. There is no attempt, as in the Fourth
gospel, to follow Paul in grouping under the Spirit
faith, love, fellowship, and life eternal. Jesus
stated these in other terms, and it is an incidental
proof of the authenticity of this saying that it con-
fines the Spirit to the special emergencies which met
the Christian in his vocation of witnessing to the
messianic cause, instead of connecting the Spirit
with Jesus Himself or representing it as given in
answer to prayer.
So far as the theology of the synoptic gospels is
concerned, Jesus never imparted the Spirit to His
disciples, nor did He even promise it explicitly.
Luke supplements this omission in part by substi-
tuting the Holy Spirit for good things in the saying
from Q which originally ran as follows : // then you,
evil as you are, know to give good gifts to your children,
how much more shall your Father in heaven give good
things to those who ask Him (Matt. vii. ll=Luke xi.
13), and in Marcion's edition of the gospel this was
reiterated in the substitution of may thy Holy Spirit
come upon us and cleanse us for the first or second
petition of the Lord's Prayer. But it is noticeable
that the prediction of John the Baptist that Jesus
was to baptize, not with water but with the Holy
Spirit (*v irvevfjLOLTi ayt'w, Mark i. 8), is not echoed
186 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
by Jesus Himself. 1 Luke interprets it as fulfilled
after the resurrection in the outburst of spiritual
ecstasy at Pentecost (Luke xxiv. 49, cf. Acts i. 4),
and this was probably the normal view of the early
church. Yet, in one important passage of the
Fourth gospel (xx. 22-3), the impartation of the
Spirit is associated with an appearance of the risen
Lord. He breathed on them and said to them, Receive
the Holy Spirit :
Whosesoever sins you forgive, they are forgiven ;
Whosesoever sins you retain, they are retained.
The symbolims of the passage is partly visible
already in the Philonic system. Commenting on
Gen. ii. 7, Philo (Legum Alleg. i. 13), observes that
' there are three tilings, what breathes in, what
receives the breath, and what is breathed in ; what
breathes in is God, what receives God is 6 vovs,
and what is breathed in is TO 7rvu/xa.' Through
the medium of the Spirit God conveys to man the
power (reivavTOS TOV Otov TYJV afi eavrov SvvafJiiv SLO,
TOV fJLGO-OV TTVeVfJLOLTOS Ot^pt TOV VTrOKtlptVOv) of knOWmg
and touching the divine nature, and the reason why
Trvor? is used instead of Tn/ev/za in the former part
of Gen. ii. 7 is that 7rve/xa is associated with energy
and intensity (TO /zev yap Trveiyxa vevo^Tat KOTO, TT)V
icrxyv KCU evTOvtav /cat 8vva.fjLiv) 9 whereas irvorj is a
gentle, mild breath. Consequently, while the heavenly
man or the voOs fashioned after God's own likeness
may be said to partake of the Spirit, the material
1 Jesus appears to have invested the disciples with the power of
exorcising as well as of healing (in his name?) in token of the divine
reign which they were to announce (Matt. ix. 35, Luke ix. 1-2, Matt.
x. 1), but this is not a fulfilment of John's prediction.
v.] THE SPIRIT OF JESUS 187
man or the vovs CK TTJS v\rjs only participates in the
milder effluence of the divine Being. The Fourth
evangelist, however, refrains from associating the gift
of the Spirit with a new creation of the soul ; he
connects the vital power of it especially with
forgiveness.
Now, this is a conception of the Spirit which is
significant in several directions. As Baur has pointed
out, ' The Spirit only comes in His fulness after the
close of the earthly life of Jesus, and thus stands, as
the universal Christian principle, high above the per-
sonal authority even of the apostles.' 1 The word-
ing of this statement is not beyond criticism, but it
is substantially accurate. Elsewhere in the Fourth
gospel the author is not content, like Luke, to ignore
the special claim on behalf of Peter, which had led in
some Jewish Christian circles to the shaping of the
saying in Matt. xvi. 19 ; he is careful to suggest
Peter's subordination to the favourite disciple.
Furthermore, he broadens out even the general
promise of Matt, xviii. 18 into a promise 2 for the
disciples as a body, and associates it with the Spirit.
Finally, this incident in the upper room is the
Johannine equivalent for the Lucan story of the
bestowal of the Spirit at Pentecost. The writer's
aim is to connect the Spirit as closely as possible
with the person of Christ, a connection which is not
prominent in the Lucan story, where moreover the
Spirit is ecstatic or explosive rather than an expres-
sion for the indwelling presence of the living Christ.
According to the Johannine pragmatism (xv. 26,
1 Church History of the First Three Centuries, i. 178.
2 Von Dobschtitz (Ostern und Pfingsten, 1903) further identifies
1 Cor. xv. 6 with this scene.
188 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
xvi. 7, etc.), this reception of the Spirit follows the
return of Jesus to the Father, and it is therefore
possible that the latter change is supposed to have
taken place between ver. 17 and ver. 19. In any
case there is no such interval of time as in the
Lucan story or even in Matthew's gospel (xxviii. 20).
Jesus is glorified and the Spirit is forthwith bestowed
by Him directly on the Church, without any sugges-
tion that it was to be mediated to others through
the agency of the apostles. 1 This does not imply
that the author was indifferent to the historical
function of the apostles in the course of early Chris-
tianity. It simply marks his desire to emphasise
the significance of the Spirit as the very life of Christ
in men, and to connect that Spirit, on the one hand,
with the risen Jesus directly, and on the other hand,
with the experience, 2 not merely with the particular
activities, of the Church. The description of the
Spirit being breathed upon the disciples is not
exactly harmonious with the semi-personal concep-
tion which pervades the previous chapters (xiv.-xvii.) :
it is more realistic than we might expect from what
precedes. But the motive of the incident obviously
is to safeguard against the idea that the Spirit in the
Church is anything else than the Spirit of Christ
Himself, or that it can be mediated except through
direct personal touch with Him. 3 According to
1 This is the thought which, in another connection, underlies John
iv. 23 f.
2 Philo (De Plantatione, 5) explains Gen, ii. 7 (God breathed into
man's face the breath of life, evtirvevo-e . . . Trvoty fays) to mean that
man, by receiving the breath of the divine lips, was changed into the
likeness of Him who imparted the breath.
3 The Spirit which those who believed in him were to receive (vii.
39). Here trust is equivalent to personal dependence.
v.] THE SPIRIT OF JESUS 189
the Johannine view, the faith and fellowship of the
Church rest not upon the Spirit of God so much as
on the Spirit conceived as the Spirit of Christ, on
the Spirit as the alter ego of the risen Jesus, whose
functions are bound up with the revelation of God in
His Son. The indwelling of the Spirit is equivalent 1
to the presence of Christ in the heart of Christians. 2
The Spirit is another 3 comforter, who carries on in
the new conditions the relation of Jesus to His dis-
ciples on earth, and raises that relationship to an
eternal and spiritual tie between men and God.
The Fourth gospel reproduces the synoptic concep-
tion that the Spirit did not exist for the Church
till Jesus died and rose again (vii. 39). The precise
form in which the thought is expressed is not synoptic,
but the thought itself is. There could be no Spirit,
in the Christian sense of the term, until Jesus had
passed from earth ; only when He was glorified
could the Spirit come into play within the sphere
of faith as an inspiring and animating power.
The fourth evangelist sums up this characteristic
1 The two conceptions of (a) Christ in heaven, dwelling through
His alter ego in the hearts of His people ; and (b) Christ personally
indwelling, are complementary expressions of the same religious
experience. Both were already suggested by Paul, but they were
needed specially by the Fourth evangelist, as he never speaks of
Christians dwelling in the heavenly places or having their life hid
with Christ in God. See on this Beyschlag's New Testament Theology,
i. 279 f.
2 Dr. Abbott (Johannine Grammar, 2352-53) subtly distinguishes
three stages in xvi. 16-17 : the Spirit is to be with them (pcO' v^uv }
for ever, not for a short time as Jesus had been in the flesh : also, it
is to be at home with them (Trap' VJMV /x^et), since they possess a
spiritual affinity with the truth : finally, it is to be in them (KO.I w
vfjtiv <JTW}, i.e. in their inmost being.
1 It is hardly possible to regard this term as ' another than your-
selves' (Abbott, Johannine Grammar, 2793-94).
190 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
theology of the Spirit in two phrases ; the Paraclete
and the Spirit of truth.
(a) The former (irapaK^Tos) has no English equi-
valent. ' Comforter ' is too one-sided, unless it is
recollected that ' comfort ' etymologically means
to strengthen. ' Advocate ' is closer to the original
sense of the Greek term, but no functions of inter-
cession are ascribed to the Spirit. Neither is much
light thrown upon the Johannine usage by the fact
that the Targum employs p'raqlita for the angelic
messenger who intervenes in Job xxxiii. 23 f . to bring
man to his senses before it is too late : except that
here as in Philo the term ' Paraclete ' has acquired
the meaning of instructor or interpreter in things
divine, with the natural connotation of helpfulness
and encouragement. The insight and aid afforded
by the Spirit as Paraclete, according to the Johannine
theology, may be said to relate almost entirely to
the higher gnosis of the personality of Christ. All
fresh intuitions and experiences of the Christian
life are referred to the operation of the Spirit as
Paraclete. It is also through the Church, as exercis-
ing authority in the life and witness of Christians
to the living Christ, that the Spirit convicts the
outside world 1 of the tragic error which it makes
in refusing to take Christ at His own and at the
Church's valuation. The presentment of Christ as
the light and love of God rejected by men will
bring home to their conscience the sin of crucifying
and denying Him : the resurrection, proved by the
presence of the Spirit in the Church, shows that He
did not perish as a criminal, but lives with the.
Father, while the real crime lies with those who put
i xvi. 7-11.
v.] THE SPIRIT OF JESUS 191
Him to death as a blasphemer : finally, this vindica-
tion of Christ by the resurrection l proves that the
devil, as prince of the present world, is doomed,
since the living presence of the Spirit in the Church
means that Christ has been victorious over the forces
of death and the devil. The three lines along which
the world is thus confounded and condemned are
not separate but converging. They are different
directions taken by the same overwhelming force
of testimony which is generated by the Spirit in the
Christian community, witnessing through the very
existence of that community as a spiritual body to
the living Lord. The third is a climax only in
form. The expectation of judgment, by being
transferred to the sphere of the Spirit, ceases to be
eschatological in the synoptic sense. ' The judg-
ment upon the world which the primitive Christian
community looked for at the future coming of the
messiah is regarded by the Hellenic evangelist as
already fulfilled in the fact that Christ, by His death
and by His being glorified in the Spirit of the Church,
had been proved to be the holy One of God, and the
victorious conqueror of the world.' 2 The very fact
that the writer uses a technical term of apocalyptic
eschatology (IXeyxetv) in this spiritual sense seems
to emphasise the transformation of the conception.
The apocalyptic counterpart left no doubt as to
the ' conviction ' being one of doom (cf. Rev. i. 7,
Fourth Esdras xii. 32 f., etc.), and this is possibly the
primary meaning of the Fourth evangelist, although
he does not develop the line of thought. For this
1 This may be the allusion in the obscure phrase of 1 Tim. iii. 16,
He was vindicated by the Spirit. See above, p. 37.
2 Pfleiclerer, Primitive Christianity, iv. 221.
192 THE THEOLOGY OP THE GOSPELS [CH.
reason, among others, it is unlikely that the con-
vincing power of the Spirit in this passage denotes
the overwhelming, mysterious effect which was
sometimes produced on outsiders or on recalcitrant
Christians by utterances from the lips of men who
were possessed by the prophetic Spirit (instances in
1 Cor. xiv. 24 f., Ignat. ad Phil. 7). 1 The impression
which the Spirit is described as conveying, in the
Johannine doctrine of conviction, is at once more
general and less remedial.
(b) The Spirit of Truth is a synonym for the Para-
clete, but it is wholly confined to the operation of
the Spirit on the community (contrast xvi. 7 and
xvi. 13). The phrase itself is as old as the Testa-
ments of the Patriarchs (cf. Test. Jud. 20), but the
specific sense of the term is determined by the
Johannine usage of truth 2 as reality, as the trans-
cendent and absolute divine life which is fully
manifested in the person of Jesus, God's Son. Christ
is Himself the truth, and the Spirit of truth is His
Spirit, mediating for men that personal participa-
tion in the eternal life of God which is described as
the knowledge of God and of His Son Jesus Christ.
The antithesis to truth is the unsubstantial as well
as the false, and the corresponding antithesis is that
between the flesh and the Spirit, or between light
and darkness. As the grace and the truth of God
i.e. the gracious reality, or the real grace came
through Jesus into the world, the Spirit of truth
carries on this full disclosure of the divine nature
to the faith of the elect and susceptible.
1 So Weinel, Die Wirkungen des Geistes und der Geister (1899),
pp. 53, 189.
2 Cf. Hastings 1 Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, ii. 768-71.
v.] THE SPIRIT OF JESUS 193
Attempts have been made sometimes to connect
both epithets. Thus Dr. Abbott suggests that the
Paraclete is called the Spirit of truth, or the Holy
Spirit, in order to safeguard the doctrine against
any superstitious notion of the Advocate procuring
special favours from God contrary to justice ; simi-
larly the references to the divine origin of the Para-
clete in xiv. 16, 26, xv. 26, must be interpreted, on
his theory, as emphasising the fact that the Advocate
of Christians is not ' one of the ordinary kind the
kind that takes up a client's cause, good or bad, and
makes the best of it. 5 J It is extremely doubtful, how-
ever, if such a shade of meaning was present to the
mind of the writer. The term Paraclete was probably
used by him without any such consciousness of its
literal legal associations, and in calling the Spirit
the Spirit of truth, he simply defines its sphere as
the unfolding of the divine reality of life in Christ.
The full truth into which the Spirit initiates the
faithful is the absolute manifestation of God in the
person of Jesus Christ. He will glorify me, for he
wilt take of mine and declare it to you. The higher
insight into the meaning of the life of Jesus, which
is presented in the Fourth gospel, is thus defended
as legitimate over against the vagaries of Gnostic
speculation on the one side, and the opposite dis-
inclination to advance beyond the Jewish Christian
or messianic categories of interpretation which had
been current among the first generation of the
disciples.
The writer does more, however, than justify his
own interpretation of Christ. He anticipates fresh
insight into the meaning of the Lord, provided that
1 Cf. Johannine Vocabulary, 1720 1-, Johannine Grammar, 1932,
N
194 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
the historic incarnation is maintained as primary.
It is the work of the Spirit to unfold more and more
of that meaning, as believing men keep in contact
with Him who is Himself the Reality. The Fourth
gospel provides for further self-expression on the
part of the Christ to His Church, and these revela-
tions in the future and of the future lie within the
progressive witness of the Spirit to faith. They are
described in xvi. 13-14 :
He will declare to you the things that are to come.
He mil glorify me :
for lie Kill take of mine and declare it to you.
The former function is the Johannine equivalent
for the synoptic eschatological predictions, and
represents the normal Church's view of the Spirit
as the inspirer of hope for the future. But the
second declaration is more characteristic of the
gospel's theology, 1 and though it would be unfair
to read the former exclusively in the light of the
latter, it is on the latter that the stress falls.
The distinctive sense of ' truth ' in the Fourth
gospel, as an equivalent for the reality of the divine
nature, suggests that the Spirit of this dXrjOtia would
be mediated in some sense through baptism and
the Lord's Supper. In the current Hellenistic
theology the Spirit or essence of the deity was
1 It corresponds to the synoptic view that the full meaning of the life
of Jesus only dawned upon the Church after His death, and that the
latter was needed in order to reveal His divine messianic significance
(cf. Luke xxiv. 25-27, 45). This prompted the interest in the proof
from prophecy, especially, but the theology of the gospels is still
remote from the later Gnostic view, based on Acts i. 3, that Jesus
imparted esoteric teaching during the interval between the resurrec-
tion and the ascension.
v.] THE SPIRIT OP JESUS 195
imparted to worshippers not simply through ecstasy
but through participation in sacred rites and creeds,
by means of which the devotee was invested with
immortality and freed from the corruption of the
flesh. It is a moot point how far the language of
the Fourth gospel, which undoubtedly recalls this
popular theology of the cults, denotes a reaction
against it or against its introduction into the Chris-
tian cult. At any rate, the connection of the Spirit
with baptism and the Lord's Supper is stated in a
fashion which has no exact parallel in the synoptic
gospels.
(c) In iii. 1 f. there may be an implicit contrast
between the Christian sacrament of baptism and the
ritual hope of regeneration which characterised
some of the mysteries and cults, but, if so, this
reference is wholly secondary to the main theme of
the passage, which is to present the Christian con-
dition of access to God over against the Jewish,
The setting of the idea in a dialogue between Jesus
and a Jewish rabbi is sufficient to suggest what was
in the writer's mind. Christian baptism, admitting
the convert to God's kingdom, is a regenerating
process which makes him in reality what the Jewish
proselyte was in name, ' a new-born child, 5 initiating
him into the mysteries of the divine household. 1
The subsequent allusion to light (verses 19 f.) corro-
borates this. Proselytes to the monotheism of the
Jews should be heartily welcomed, says Philo (De
Pcenitenlia, i.), since ' although they were formerly
blind they have received their sight, beholding
light most brilliant out of darkness most profound.'
1 In iii. 3 (cf. Justin's Apol. i. 61) we have a development of Matt.
xviii. 3.
196 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
The radical change of nature upon which Jesus
insisted when He declared that men must turn and
become like little children before they could enter
the kingdom, is thus presented in the Fourth gospel
as regeneration, a birth from above, which works an
entire transformation of life. The necessity of this
birth from the Spirit is traced to the nature of man
as flesh. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and
that which is born of the spirit is spirit. As the pro-
logue had already pointed out, those who become
children of God by faith in Christ are born of God, not
of any human impulse or effort. This is the theo-
logical interpretation, from the side of God, of the
experience which the synoptic gospels present as a
moral change upon the part of man in response to
God's call ; as a theological interpretation it bears
a predestinarian and semi-metaphysical appearance
which is characteristic of the Fourth gospel, the more
so that this gospel avoids terms like repentance and
turning. But elsewhere faith is presented as the
vital condition of the new birth, and even in the
context of this passage it is subsequently recognised.
From the outset baptism into the name of Christ
had connoted an inward personal union with the
nature of the Lord. Paul had deepened this relation
by his faith-mysticism, and in the Fourth gospel
there is as little sense of any contradiction or dis-
crepancy between the spiritual process and the rite
with which it was bound up in the normal practice
of the Church. The writer significantly lays stress
upon the work of the Spirit as the decisive factor.
Indeed there would be no difficulty in understanding
the thought of this passage were it not for the fact
that he once co-ordinates water incidentally with the
v.] THE SPIRIT OF JESUS 197
Spirit. Unless one is born of water and the Spirit he
cannot enter God's kingdom. The clause would fall
at once into harmony with its context, and with the
deepest principles of the Johannine theology, if the
words uSaros KCU were omitted 1 as a later sacramen-
tarian gloss. Even when they are retained, they
cannot be assigned any primary importance for the
argument, in view e.g. of the fact that baptism is
elsewhere omitted (cf. i. 12) in the description of
how men become children of God. Baptism is inter-
preted as the initial act of entrance into the kingdom,
on primitive lines, but the Spirit occupies the fore-
ground of the argument, and it is no longer the Spirit,
as in the primitive ecstatic view, but the Spirit as
the creative power of God which produces the divine
life. This is slightly closer to the Pauline conception
than to the teaching of the sub-Pauline theology,
e.g., in Titus iii. 5, where it is argued that God saved
us not on the score of good conduct not, as John
would say, by the flesh but by the bath of regeneration
(Xovrpov TraXtyycveo-ias) and renewal by the holy Spirit
which he poured out richly upon us through Jesus
Christ, or again in Eph. v. 26, where Christ purifies
the Church by the bath of water lv pyj^ari. The
Fourth gospel assumes the outward rite, but lays all
the stress upon the spiritual attitude to God through
Christ which lends value and meaning to it.
(d) It is a parallel conception which is presented in
chapter vi., where again the vivifying power of the
Spirit is brought forward, this time more promin-
ently and in connection with eating and drinking.
Here it is not a question of sustaining the life im-
1 So e.g. Kirsopp Lake, Influence of Textual Criticism on New
Testament Exegesis (1904), pp. 1 f.
198 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
parted at baptism, but of receiving the divine life.
The metaphor is changed from birth to eating and
drinking, in order to bring out the active side of the
relationship on the part of men, but there is no sug-
gestion of food mystically mediating life eternal
to those who have already been born through baptism
into the life of God.
There were three elements in the primitive theology
of the Lord's Supper : it was viewed as (a) a com-
memoration of the sacrificial death of Jesus, which
inaugurated the new order of things for the Church ;
(b) as a medium of spiritual union between the living
Lord and his people ; and (c) as a bond of brotherhood
which closely knit the latter together in the mystical
body of which the Lord was head. These elements
are not separate ; they are connected with one
another, and all are present, more or less distinctly,
in the various representations of the Supper which
have been preserved. But the emphasis varies : now
one, now another, is prominent. In the theology
of the Fourth gospel it is (b) which is uppermost.
We can feel the vibration of (a) ! in one or two
allusions like The bread which I will give is my flesh
for the life of the world (vi. 51), but (c) is absent from
the discussion ; it is on (b) that the writer concen-
trates his attention. Here, as in the relation of the
Spirit to baptism, the prominent interest is not the
social or unifying conception, but the inward tie of
the Christian to the Lord ; the corporate aspect
bulks less in the writer's mind than the individual.
But although the Fourth gospel omits the synoptic
Supper, probably owing to its eschatological associ-
1 The sacrifice which preceded an ancient sacramental meal was not
directly present to the Johannine type of theology.
v.] THE SPIRIT OF JESUS 199
ations in part, 1 it restates a fundamental idea of the
earlier view. The synoptic words, this is my covenant-
blood, plainly refer to the blood which Moses sprinkled
on the Israelites (Exod. xxiv. 8) to ratify their
covenant with Yahveh. They imply that by His
self-sacrifice in death men are to enjoy the long-
promised new covenant with God. His death is not
the end of all things for the disciples ; it is the begin-
ning of the new order of communion with God in
which the highest hopes of forgiveness and fellowship
will be realised through the relation of God to men
which His sacrifice establishes. This is corroborated
by the other reference of the saying to the Servant
of Yahveh, of whom it is said, / give thee for a
covenant of the people (ets SiaOriKfjv yevovs, Isa.
xlii. 6, cf. xlix. 8). Here the function of the Servant
is to mediate a covenant between Yahveh and His
people. 2 Such an association of Christ's death with
the new covenant which cannot be emended out of
the text is sufficient to prove that the bond of
communion is intended to unite God and His people
through Jesus. This is the primary and original
sense of the tradition. It is in Paulinism that the
further conception of unity between Christians is
introduced, not in the specific restatement of the
1 According to the Fourth gospel (xix. 35, 36), again, Christ's body
was not broken. The mystic significance of this did not harmonise
with the earlier praxis of the Lord's Supper as the breaking of the
bread which represented the Lord's body.
2 Note the LXX. version of Isa. liii. 11-12 (the Lord is willing),
dLKaiGxraL dtKaiov eS dovXetiovra 7roXXo?s, Kal rds afiaprias avrwv
CLVTOS avoicrei. SLCL TOVTO avrbs K\rjpovo[j,'f)(Ti TroXXotfs . . . &j>0' &v
irape566'rj els Bdvarov i) ^VXT) atfrou, where we have not only the
Servant in relation to many, but the yielding up of his ^u%^ on their
behalf (see above, p. 146).
200 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
supper, but in the previous context, where Christians
are viewed as the body of Christ. We have no right
to read this back into the synoptic (Mark-Matthew)
tradition, as e.g. Wellhausen and Kattenbusch pro-
pose to do, not even although the element of
brotherhood and mutual unity in the Lord's Supper
reappears in the liturgical passage of the Didache
(9-10). The latter tradition makes it all the more
strange that the Fourth gospel, which is so concerned
to emphasise the unity of Christians through their
relation to Jesus Christ, should fail to employ the
Lord's Supper as a symbol and sacrament of com-
munion. A partial clue to the omission may be
found, however, in the so-called Epistle to the
Ephesians, which also concentrates upon the unity
of the Church and yet significantly ignores the Lord's
Supper as a proof and symbol of brotherhood (iv. 4 f .).
There is one Body and one Spirit, even as you were
called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith,
one baptism. The Fourth gospel's distinctive con-
tribution to the theology of the Last Supper is an
emphasis upon it as the means of union between
Christians and Christ who is the imparter of the
divine life or spirit.
It presents this characteristically in connection
with the feeding of the five thousand (vi. 1-14, 26 f.).
Down to verse 51 (or 5 la) there is no difficulty ;
the homily, in Johannine fashion, represents Christ
as the source of spiritual nourishment for believing
men, which is communicated to, and assimilated by,
personal faith. / am the bread of life ; he who comes
to me shall never hunger, and he who believes on me shall
never thirst. . . . I am the living bread, descended from
heaven ; if any one eats of this bread he shall live for
v.] THE SPIRIT OF JESUS 201
ever. It is at this point that the difficulty begins.
The following intermediate passage down to verse 56
(57, 58) insists that eternal life depends upon eating
the flesh and drinking the blood of the Son of man.
Then the dialogue explains this strange language.
To prevent any misconception, it is pointed out that
the food is the heavenly personality of the risen Son
of man. It is the spirit i.e. the ascended Christ
who imparts life, the flesh is of no use whatever. The
words I have spoken to you are spirit and life. And,
as if to emphasise the fact that this is the determin-
ing and crucial thought of the entire dialogue, Peter
confesses, Thou hast words of life eternal.
It is natural that the middle and so-called c sacra-
mental ' passage should have raised critical suspicions
of an interpolation or an authentic source which
has been worked over by the evangelist ; but, even
taking the entire section as it stands in the canonical
text, we can do justice to its theology from the
historical point of view by recalling the fact that
this realistic tendency, against which the author of
Hebrews protests (xiii. 9 f.) in the name of spiritual
Christianity, is carried out still further as the post-
apostolic age proceeds. By the time of Justin
Martyr the bread and wine of the Supper effect a
change in the bodies of the participants which
guarantees to them eternal life, very much as in the
contemporary mysteries. Now, the Fourth gospel is
sometimes held to reflect an earlier stage of this
tendency, and sometimes to express a sympathy
with such sacramental views which is hardly recon-
cilable with the author's more spiritual standpoint.
For each of these interpretations, especially for the
latter, a case can be made out. But there is good
202 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
reason to hold that neither is adequate to the entire
synthesis and situation of the Fourth gospel. What
the author seeks to do is to show that the communi-
cation of the Spirit and life eternal is independent of
any such feeding upon the Christian deity as present
in the bread and wine of the Supper. This is one
reason why he deliberately omits the institution of
the Supper on the last night, and why at an earlier
stage in the gospel he as deliberately inserts a para-
graph full of realistic sacramental language in a con-
text which indicates how it ought to be taken. As
the long passages of table-talk in chapters xiv.-xvii.
plainly indicate, he was thoroughly alive to the
communion of Christians with Christ and one another,
which shone out in the sacrament from Paul to the
Didache. But we have no clue to the significance
which he attached to the Supper in the praxis of
the Church, except the indirect clue to be found hi his
attitude of aloofness towards the realistic tendency
of the age. Among the mystically minded it has been
usual either to remain indifferent to the sacrament
of the Lord's Supper, or to permeate its ritual with
an inner significance of their own. The history of the
Church offers instances of both attitudes. It is not
possible, however, to determine the positive outlook
of the Johannine theology upon this sacrament. The
probabilities are that it did not differ essentially
from that of Paul and Luke. According to the
eschatological passage in the Apocalypse of Baruch
(xxix. 3 f.), at the beginning of messiah's revelation
those who hunger and thirst are to be miraculously
fed in the latter days by the manna which is again
showered from heaven, after which the messiah
comes back in glory, and those who have fallen
v.] THE SPIRIT OF JESUS 203
asleep in the hope of Him are raised from the dead.
The Fourth gospel represents the living Christ as
the real, spiritual manna which is to be enjoyed here
and now by those who believe. Thus in the interpre-
tation both of baptism and the Lord's Supper it is
the Spirit which dominates the argument, the Spirit
in connection with the personality of the risen Christ.
Now, in the Fourth gospel the Pauline antithesis of
flesh and spirit is conceived as a cosmic antithesis.
The world or KOO-/XOS is opposed to the divine nature,
which is spirit, light, love, and truth. But the
antithesis is not left as a metaphysical or moral
dualism. The Father loves the world, and his love
is the source of Christ's mission. Christ, as the
Sent and the Son of God, has the Spirit in full
measure ; He possesses the divine life, and mediates
it for men through His words or p^fiara. It is signifi-
cant that in the third and the sixth chapters alike
these ' words ' are put forward in the climax of the
argument. He whom God has sent speaks the words
of God, for God does not give the Spirit by measure.
It is the Spirit which gives life . . . the words I have
spoken to you are spirit and life. The words are
semi-personified, like the Spirit. They have a role
not unlike that which Philo assigns to the logoi'or
8wa/xis in relation to the Logos ; 1 they are not
utterances or words, in the modern sense, so much
as real powers of the divine nature, acting on behalf
of God or Christ. Only their effect is not repre-
sented as magical, and indeed it seems to be in view
1 Of. M. Goguel, La notion Johannique de L? Esprit et ses antt-
cgdents historiques, p. 103. The p^/xara of the Fourth gospel really
stand between the synoptic \6yoi of Jesus and the semi-metaphysical
of Philo.
204 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
of such a misconception that the author refers to
them in connection with baptism and the Lord's
Supper. The divine life which the words express and
convey is conditioned by obedience and trust on the
part of men ; thus only do they taste the heavenly gift.
(e) In relation to the person of Christ, the Spirit,
according to the representation of the Fourth gospel,
occupies a position different from that of the synoptic
tradition.
The birth-stories of Matthew and Luke represent
a somewhat developed stage of reflection in their
association of the Spirit with the personality of
Jesus, as compared with the baptism-stories (see
above, pp. 136 f.). It was felt that prior to His
mission Jesus must have been invested with the
Spirit, and at the same time that the Spirit must
have been more to Him than an equipment for the
messianic vocation. Matthew, therefore, like Luke
(i. 35) and Ignatius, 1 ascribes the conception of
Jesus by his mother to the Spirit (i. 18, 20), while
Luke, who is even more influenced by the apostolic
age as the age of the Spirit, adds that John the
Baptist was filled with the messianic Spirit from his
birth (i. 15, 17), and that his parents also possessed
the prophetic Spirit (i. 41, 67), 2 like Simeon (ii. 25 f.).
The Fourth gospel, instead of employing the idea of
a virgin-birth, emphasises the fact that the divine
Spirit remained upon Jesus at the baptism (i. 32-33),
a touch which also appears in the gospel according
to the Hebrews, 3 although the latter apparently
1 Ad. Ephes. xviii. 2.
2 Also i. 47, if the Magnificat was originally spoken by Elizabeth.
3 ' When the Lord had ascended from the water, the entire foun-
tain [the Greek original /coXv/u/3770/oa was a confusion for /c6Xi//^3ts of
v.] THE SPIRIT OP JESUS 205
omits any reference to the dove-symbolism. The
Fourth gospel thus develops in its own way (cf. iii.
34-35 with Luke iv. 1, 14) Luke's emphasis upon
the permanent endowment of Jesus with the Spirit,
and if the union of the divine Spirit with the person
of Jesus appears superfluous 1 after the incarnation
of the Logos, it is hardly more so than the endow-
ment of the Spirit at baptism after the Lucan explan-
ation of the birth of Jesus. The logical position was
to argue that such a supernatural being did not
require the Spirit. Justin Martyr's theology reaches
this stage : We know it was not because he needed
baptism or the Spirit that came upon him 2 like a dove,
that he came to the river (Dial. 88). The Fourth
evangelist might have taken this view (cf. xi. 42), but
he retains the incident of the Spirit's descent at
baptism as a sign (o-rj^lov) for John the Baptist ;
it had not any specific significance for his own
christology, but it served to emphasise the superi-
ority of Christianity to the contemporary sect of
John the Baptist's disciples and their sympathisers
within Judaism.
One remarkable feature of this theology of the
Spirit in relation to the birth of Jesus is that it never
associates the Spirit with the beginning of a new
the Spirit descended and rested upon him.' But the original of the
reference is probably the Enochic (xlix. 3) prediction that the Spirit
of wisdom would dwell in messiah.
1 Strictly speaking, the Fourth gospel cannot be said to describe the
baptism ; it is only referred to by John the Baptist for the purpose
of explaining how he came to recognise Christ.
2 The tradition from which Justin takes his previous touch of the
dove-Spirit 'fluttering' is reproduced in Od. Sol. xxiv. 1 (The dove
fluttered over the messiah). On the dove-symbol, cf. Conybeare in
Expositor (ninth series), ix. 451 f., Cheyne's Bible Problems, pp. 83 f.,
237 f., and E. A. Abbott in From Letter to Spirit, 685-724.
206 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [OH.
creation in Jesus as the second Adam (cf. Luke iii.
38). According to one rabbinic conception, the
Spirit brooded like a dove over the waters at the
creation of the world, but there is not the slightest
hint that a similar idea of the Spirit as the presiding
principle of the new order occurred to the authors
of the gospels. Had they shared this view, they
would not have left the symbolism of the dove in the
narrative of the baptism. Even the Fourth gospel
does not identify the birth of Jesus with the incarna-
tion of the Spirit of God. According to its theology,
the function of the Spirit in relation to the person
of Christ is to inspire the utterances which reveal the
nature and purpose of God (cf. iii. 31-34, vi. 63). This
corresponds to its function in the Church (cf. xiv. 26),
which deals with these revelations through Christ
as its material, except that, while the Son possesses
the Spirit in complete measure, Christians simply
receive it in part (iii. 32, cf. 1 John iv. 13). 1 As
for the functions of the Spirit in relation to the
indwelling Christ in chapters xiv.-xvi., they are as un-
defined as they are in relation to the Logos ; in the
prologue the Spirit is absent, in the rest of the gospel
the Logos. Probably in both cases the idea of the
Spirit partially coalesces with the other conception ;
the latter is specifically Johannine, and logically
takes the place of the former, but the author carries
on from the synoptic tradition and Paulinism the
Spirit-idea, without definitely explaining its place
in the light of his characteristic categories. 2 It
1 The conception of the indwelling Spirit naturally is not quite
consistent with this view.
2 A similar difficulty occurs in Philo, where the conception of the
Spirit in relation to the Logos and Wisdom is also uncertain.
v.] THE SPIRIT OF JESUS 207
forms one expression for the personal religious
experience, parallel to those of the Logos and the
indwelling Christ ; but the writer, like Paul, tends to
confine the relations of God and the Christian to the
Spirit, grouping under the category of the Logos the
cosmic and providential functions which in Hebrew
thought were subsumed under Wisdom or the Spirit.
The contrast between the amount and the char-
acter of the references to the Spirit in the synoptic
and Johannine theologies is at first sight remarkable,
even perplexing. It is possible, of course, that
owing to its messianic associations the idea of the
Spirit may have occupied a larger place in the
teaching of Jesus than the synoptic records would
suggest, and some critics, e.g., Dr. Kattenbusch l
and Dr. E. A. Abbott, 2 even argue that a basis may
be found for some of the Johannine sayings on the
Spirit. Thus the former considers that words like
God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must
worship him in spirit and in truth (iv. 24), the
Spirit bloweth where it listeth (iii. 3, 8), and it is
the Spirit who imparts life, the flesh is of no use
whatever (vi. 63), are fairly genuine. 'Certainly,' he
adds, ' Paul did not go beyond his master when he
told the Corinthians what were the greater x^/cuV/mra.'
This is true, but it does not imply that Jesus, e.g.,
must have used a term like the Aramaic Parklete,
which was variously paraphrased by the synoptic
1 Das Apostolische Symbol, ii. 674 f.
2 The Son of Man, 3618 ff. Titius (Jesu Lehre vom Reiche Gottes,
160 f.) also argues that if Jesus was convinced that the disciples would
share in the future glory of His kingdom and life (Mark x. 45, xiv.
24), it is reasonable to suppose that He told them how this mediation
would be effected, and that the conception of the Spirit formed the
best Old Testament idea for such instruction.
208 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS [CH.
writers. There are organic correspondences of
thought between the Fourth gospel's view of the
Spirit in relation to Christ and some elements, un-
connected with the Spirit, in the synoptic tradition.
' At any rate, the thought of John xvi. 7, which is
not positively developed until xvi. 13 f., seems to me
to be too great for any one except Jesus. This
conviction, held in spite of all the untoward experi-
ences of the preceding days, that his return to the
Father, so far from interfering with His training of
the disciples, would, on the contrary, carry it to
completion, appears to me to be so congenial to the
dauntless faith and humility of the Lord, and so
essential as a link in His conceptions of what His own
end and the end of the world implied, that in spite
of the silence of the synoptic gospels I must attribute
those words to Him.' 1 However this may be, the
difference between the messianic Spirit of the earliest
tradition in the synoptic gospels and the indwelling
Spirit of the Fourth gospel is surely too great to
permit of us reading back the latter into the
theology of Jesus. It is an interpretation of His
person, rather than an utterance of His own faith.
Instead of attempting to harmonise the synoptic
and the Johannine sayings on the Spirit, or of trying
to find some basis for the latter in the historical
teaching of Jesus, it is better for our present purpose
to recall the inner significance of the Spirit idea in
the Fourth gospel. What it lays stress on is that the
religious value of Jesus consisted in His essential
nearness to the God of love, the eternal and sublime
One who revealed Himself thus to the faith and need
of men. This absolute significance of Jesus is repre-
1 Titius, Jesu Lehre votn Reiche Gottes 164.
v.] THE SPIRIT OF JESUS 209
sented in the synoptic theology as a rule by other
terms than those of the Spirit. The Fourth gospel,
by developing the Spirit from the older messianic
sphere into one more congruous with the Greek
mind, is able to express the personality of the risen
Lord in terms of the Spirit, but the religious content
remains under the verbal differences ; the theo-
logical evolution from the naive synoptic view to
that of a personified hypo stasis ought not to be
allowed to obscure the identity of the devotional
instinct which really prompts the more complex
statement. This instinct still moves under the
influence of the historic Jesus. It is the incarnate
Logos which furnishes the material for the insight
and vital energy of the Spirit in the community.
He will take of mine and declare it to you. The
theology of the Fourth gospel, as of the first three,
would be impossible apart from the historical reve-
lation of God in Jesus, and equally impossible if the
life of Jesus on earth had exhausted that revelation.
In this aspect, the doctrine of the Spirit in the Fourth
gospel renders explicit what is presupposed in the
earlier records.
It has an important bearing also upon the interpre-
tation of the gospels in general as records of theology.
Some Jewish rabbis, in the second century, used to
attach a punning significance to the Greek term for
the gospel, emyyeAtoi/. It is just ( awon gilion, they
said, a piece of blank paper, a page without meaning
or value. There are methods of treating the religious
ideas of the gospels, within as well as outside the
Church, which render them practically a blank page
for faith. One is the tendency to explain the
Christian ideas independently of a historical Jesus,
210 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS
or to minimise the cardinal and creative significance
of His personality for the beliefs which are associ-
ated with His name. Another is to confine His
religion to a literal, historical reproduction of what
He said and did on earth, identifying Him with some
eschatological or humanitarian propaganda of His
own age. Such methods, by minimising or exagger-
ating the historical significance of Jesus, are untrue
to the standpoint of religious faith from which the
four gospels are written, faith in the living Lord who
said, according to the Fourth (xvii. 26), / have
made known to them thy name, and I will make it
known. Theologies can be got from other stand-
points, but none of them will be a theology of the
gospels, and it is very doubtful if any of them will
prove to be much of a gospel at all.
BIBLIOGKAPHY
A NUMBER of the more important treatises have been
mentioned already. The following is only a selected list
from the immense literature on the subject.
On Mark's gospel : A. Menzies, The Earliest Gospel ;
B. W. Bacon, The Beginnings of Gospel Story ; J. M.
Thompson, Jesus according to S. Mark] M. Goguel,
L'fivangile de S. Marc et ses rapports avec ceux de
Mathieu et de Luc ; J. Weiss, Das Aelteste Evangelium ;
Wrede, Das Messiasgeheimnis in den Evangelien ; La-
grange, fivangile selon Saint Marc.
On Luke's gospel : Godet's Commentaire ; B. Weiss,
Die Quellen des Lukasevangeliums ; A. B. Bruce, The
Kingdom of God\ Colin Campbell, Critical Studies in
S. Lukes Gospel.
On Matthew's gospel : B. Weiss's edition in Meyer's
Kommentar (1898) ; Zahn, Das Evangelium des Mat-
thaus ; W. C. Allen in The International Critical Com-
mentary ; Klostermann and Gressmann in Lietzmann's
Uandbuch zum Neuen Testament.
On John's gospel : Godet's Commentaire (fourth
edition); Westcott's edition of the Greek text (1908);
the editions by Zahn and Loisy ; J. Drummond, Character
and Authorship of the Fomth Gospel ; E. F. Scott, The
Fourth Gospel, its purpose and theology ; Wrede, Character
und Tendenz des Johannesevangeliums.
Also, the editions of all four gospels by H. J. Holtz-
211
212 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS
mann in the Handcommentar, by Schanz, Wellhausen,
and Merx (Syriac text). Loisy's Jesus et la tradition
primitive stands to his Evangiles Synoptiques as Monte-
fiore's Jowett lectures on Elements of the Religious
Teaching of Jesus stand to his Synoptic Gospels.
On the general study of the gospels : Wellhausen's
Einleitung in die drei ersten Evangelien (second edition) ;
Burkitt's Gospel History and its Transmission ; Salmon's
Human Element in the Gospels ; Von Soden's Die wichtig-
sten Fragen im Leben Jesu Denney's Jesus and the Gospel j
Batiffol's Six Lecons sur les Evangiles ; Spitta's Streit-
fragen der Geschichte Jesu ; Streeter's essays in the recent
Oxford book of Studies in the Synoptic Problem,
and the older but by no means antiquated volume of
Weizsacker's Untersuchungen ueber die evangelische
Geschichte.
Keim's Jesus of Nazara (six volumes) is still the most
adequate study of the life of Jesus, upon the whole, in
spite of its critical basis. The theological aspect is
stated from different sides in the shorter sketches by
Sanday (Outlines of the Life of Christ), and Barth
(Hauptprobleme des Lebens Jesu, third edition), or in
Bousset's Jesus, Piepenbring's Jesus historique, and at
greater length in N. Schmidt's Prophet of Nazareth,
O. Holtzmann's Life of Jesus, A. Reville's Jesus de
Nazareth, and Count D'Alviella's L* Evolution du dogme
Catholique, vol. i. Les Origines.
On the religious ideas of the gospels : Harnack's
What is Christianity ? with Loisy's reply, L'jfivangile et
Vfiglise ; the second volume of Eitschl's Christliche Lehre
von der Rechtfertigung und Versohnung ; Wendt's
Teaching of Jesus ; x Batiffol's L' enseignement de Jesus \
1 The second German edition (1901) has been slightly modified
under the influence of J. Weiss, as may be seen even from his papers
in the fifth volume of The Expository Times.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 213
Piepenbring's Les Principes fondamentaux de VEnseigne-
ment de Jesus ; Gar vie, Studies in the Inner Life of
Jesus ; Monnier, La Mission historique de Jesus ; Du
Bose, The Gospel in the Gospels ; Jiilicher's Gleichnisreden
Jesu ; BischofFs Jesus und die Rabbinen ; J. M. King,
The Theology of Christ's Teaching; G. H. Gilbert's Revela-
tion of Jesus Meinertz, Jesus und die Heidenmission ;
H. C. King, The Ethics of Jesus ; H. J. Holtzmann's
Messianische Bewusstsein Jesu ; P. Gardner's Exploratio
Evangelica (second edition) ; J. E. Carpenter, The His-
torical Jesus and the Theological Christ ; C. F. Nolloth's
The Person of our Lord and Recent Thought; Dunk-
mann's Der historische Jesus, der mythologische Christ,
und Jesus der Christies, and Steinmann's Geistige Off en-
bar ung Gottes in der geschichtlichen Person Jesu. Also
Wobbermin's Geschichte und Historie in der Religions-
luissenschaft, the second and fourth volumes of Pfleiderer's
Primitive Christianity, Wernle's Beginnings of Christi-
anity, Drummond's Hibbert Lectures on Via, Veritas,
Vita ; Hort's Hulsean Lectures on The Way, the Truth,
and the Life-, Dr. E. A. Abbott's indispensable series
Diatessarica, with its eight volumes of suggestive
material; Dalman's Words of Jesus, Haupt's Eschatolo-
gischen Aussagen Jesu, F. Krop's La Pensee de Jesus sur
le Royaume de Dieu d'apres les fivangiles synoptiques,
Shailer Mathew's Messianic Hope in the New Testament,
L. A. Muirhead's Eschatology of Jesus, and von Dobschiitz's
Eschatology of the Gospels. Father Tyrrell's posthumous
Christianity at the Cross-roads, an attempt to use
Schweitzer for dogmatic purposes, suffers from a tendency
to paradox. The first and third volumes of Titius's
Neutestamentliche Lehre von der Seliglceit are studies in
the synoptic and Johannine theologies respectively ; the
latter is discussed, with special reference to the Logos,
by J. Grill in his Untersuchungen uber die Entstehung
des vierten Evangeliums, and by J. S. Johnston in The
Philosophy of the Fourth Gospel. The christological
problem is handled in J. Weiss's Christ : the Beginnings
214 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS
of Dogma, Pfleiderer's Early Christian Conception of
Christ, P. Gardner's Historic View of the New Testament,
A. Robinson's Study of the Saviour in the Newer Light
(second edition), B. W. Bacon's Jesus the Son of God,
and Cheyne's Bible Problems, from one standpoint ; and
from another by A. M. Fairbairn in his Christ in Modern
Theology, M. Lepin in Jesus, Messie et Fils de Dieu,
B. B. Warfield's The Lord of Glory, W. L. Walker in
The Cross and the Kingdom, D. W. Forrest in The Christ
of History and Experience, P. T. Forsyth in The Person
and Place of Jesus Christ, Canon Sanday in Christologies
Ancient and Modern, Bishop Gore in The Incarnation of
the Son of God, and D. La Touche in The Person of
Christ in Modern Thought. Pfanmuller's Jesus im Urteil
der Jahrhunderte, and the Hibbert Journal Supplement
Jesus or Christ ? present various facets of opinion.
It is needless to enumerate the relevant articles in the
various Bible dictionaries and encyclopaedias, or the
sections in any standard treatise upon New Testament
Theology like G. B. Steven's, Holtzmann's, Bovon's,
Feine's, Beyschlag's, or Weinel's.
The critical attitude to the gospels, which is presup-
posed in this volume, will be found stated at length in
the writer's Introduction to the Literature of the New
Testament (second edition), or in Professor Peake's con-
tribution to the present series.
INDEX (a)
ABBOTT, E. A., 81, 94, 100, 116,
146 f., 161, 189,193.
Aboth, Pirke, 98.
Advent, the second, 44, 45 f.,
191.
Angels, 37,881, 162.
Apocalyptic element in gospels,
67.
Apologetic element in gospels, 3.
Aramaic, 35, 152 f.
Arnold, Matthew, 35.
Ascensio Isaiae, 37. 165.
Assumptio Mosis, 120.
BACON, B. W.,23.
Baldensperger, 77 f. , 131.
Baptism of Jesus, 31, 130 f.,
179.
Baptism of Christians, 195 f.
Baruch, Apocalypse of, 202.
Baur, 187.
Beatitudes, the, 60, 73.
< Beloved, The, '165.
Birth, stories of Christ's, 136 f.,
204 f.
Blasphemy, 180 f.
Browning, 95.
Bruce, A. B., 153,180.
CAESAREA PHILIPPI, 106 f.
Caird, E., 8.
Canon, effect of the, 30 f.
Carpenter, J. E., 119.
Charles, R. H., 160.
Cheyne, T. K., 39, 140.
Christ : meaning of term, 172 ;
presence of, 97 f., 172; revela-
tion of the Father, 71, 109, 119.
Christology, 9, 37, etc.
Church, sayings on the, 32, 187 f. ;
gospels and the, 15 f., 37 f.
Consciousness, filial conscious-
ness of Jesus, 110 f., 130 f,
Covenant, the new, 164 f.
Creation, 85 f.
DALMAN, 137.
Daniel, 156 f.
David, son of, 163 f.
Demonology, 50, 54, 120, 178 f.
Denney, 173-4.
Didache, the, 200.
Diognetus, epistle to, 129.
Dobschiitz, von, 84, 187.
Dove, symbolism of the, 205.
JBdujoth, 51.
Emperor, worship of the Roman,
107, 166.
Enoch, book of, 158 f., 168, 205.
Erskine of Linlathen, 109.
Eschatology, 41 f.
Eternal life, 45.
Ethics of Jesus, 47, 59 f., 69 f.
215
216
THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS
FAITH : characteristics of, 9, 53 ;
in Jesus, 173.
Family, the kingdom a, 82, 92.
Fatherhood of God, 99 f., 112 f.,
121 f.
Fellowship with God, 97 f.
Figurative element in gospels,
78 f.
* Finger' of God, the, 179.
Forgiveness, doctrine of, 120.
Fourth gospel, 5, 11 f., 21 f.,
27 f., 44 f.; prologue, 169 f. ;
relation to synoptists, 24 f. ,
196, etc.
Francis of Assisi, 104.
Freedom, 117 f.
GLORIFYING of Jesus, the, 160 f.
Gnostics, 169 f., 194.
God, as Father, 68 f., 85 f. ; as
King, 91 f. ; titles of, 99 f.
' Gospel,' meaning of term, 37-8.
Gospels, rise and aim of, 6 f.,
10 f., 15 f.
Gospel of Hebrews, 63, 204.
Gospel of Peter, 100,166.
Gressmann, 159.
Grill, 162.
HARNACK, 16 f., 38, 111 f., 131.
Heaven, kingdom of, 63, 103.
Herodotus, 135.
Historical Jesus, the, 174, 209 f.
Holiness of God, 100 f.
Holtzmann, H. J., 150.
Holtzmann, Oscar, 147 5 181.
Hooker, 38.
Hope, 54.
Hort, 174.
IGNATIUS, 121, 192, 204.
Immanence, 96 f.
Irenaeus, 110.
JESUS: meaning of name, 171-172;
messianic vocation, 17 f. , 49 f. ,
175 ; sacrificial death, 141 f.,
172 ; teaching, 44 f., 54 f., 78 f.
John the Baptist, 50 f., 170,
204.
Joma, 100, 183.
Joy, 114f.
Judgment, doctrine of, 45 f., 121,
162, 176, 191.
Justin Martyr, theology of, 33,
201, 205.
Jubilees, book of, 167.
KATTENBUSCH, 166, 207.
Keim, 14, 182.
Kingdom of Christ, 64.
Kingdom of God, the, 53, 56, 109,
etc.
Kreyenbiihl, 28.
LAGRANGE, 22.
Law, the, 134.
Logos, the, 28, 137 f., 167 f,
Loisy, 61.
< Lord,' the title, 99, 165 f.
Love, brotherly, 105 ; God's,
106 f., 120, 203.
Luke's Gospel, 14, 23, 73, 148.
MACARIUS MAGNES, 116.
Macdonald, George, 98.
Mark's Gospel, characteristics of,
5, 12 f., 22 f.
Matthew's Gospel, characteristics
of, 13, 23, 63.
Maurras, C., 10.
Mazzini, 89.
Merx, 173.
Messianism, 65 f., 130 f., 153 f.
Miracles, 92 f.
Montefiore, 125, 149.
Mystery of the kingdom, the,
43 f., 55.
INDEX
217
NATURE, God in, 93 f.
Newman, 5.
OLD TESTAMENT, use of, 9, 17,
183.
Omnipotence, 90.
Omniscience, 86.
Overbeck, 2.
Oxyrhynchite Logia, 63, 98.
PARABLES, the, 19 f., 43 f., 55,
123 f.
Paraclete, 184, 190 f.
Pascal, 7.
Paulinism, 18 f., 82, 128, 138,
196, 199.
Pentecost, 186, 187.
Pfleiderer, 191.
Pharisees, 53, 66.
Philo, 28, 85, 128, 162, 169, 170,
186, 188, 195, 203.
Poimandres, 168, 172.
'Power, the,' 100.
Prayer, doctrine of, 58 f.
Prayer, the Lord's, 73, 100.
Pre-existence, 26, 138.
Proselytes, 195.
Providence, doctrine of, 85 f.
*Q,' problems connected with,
23f.,25, 73 f.
RABBIS, 67, 164, 206, 209.
Ransom, doctrine of, 145 f.
Redemption, 147.
Repentance, 124 f., 142.
Resurrection, 72, 117, 161, 189 f.
Righteousness, the higher, 103.
Ritschl, 47.
SABBATH, the, 152.
Sacrifice, the divine, 106 f.
Schmiedel, 24, 181.
Schweitzer, 41 f., 127, 132, 175.
Scott, E. F., 58.
Servant of Yahveh, 139 f., 199.
Sharman, H. B., 15.
Shekinah, 98.
Sin, doctrine of, 109 f., 114 f.,
119 f.
Smith, G. A., 107, 148.
Solomon, odes of, 205.
Solomon, Psalter of, 139, 163.
Son of God, 131 f.
Son of Man, 20, 150 f.
Sonship of men, divine, 91 f.
Spirit, the, 177 f.
Supper, the Lord's, 164, 194 f.
TEMPLE, 94 f.
Temptation, the, 88.
Tertullian, 9, 33, 87.
Text of gospels, 30 f.
Theology, suspicions of, 1 f.,
5 f. ; meaning of, 38 f. ; neces-
sity of, 5, 8.
Titius, 21-2, 92, 207 f.
Traditions, origin of, 14 f.
Transfiguration, 45, 145.
* Truth,' in Fourth gospel, 192 f.
VIRGIN-BIRTH, stories of, 33,
136 f.
Volz, 57.
WEDGEWOOD, Miss, 66.
Weiss, J., 12, 42, 64, 142.
Wellhausen, 9, 12, 49, 53, 75, 86,
154.
Wernle, 22.
Wisdom, conception of divine,
166 f. '
Wisdom, book of, 104, 133.
Wordsworth, 41.
'Words 'of Christ, 203.
World, the, 47.
Worship, 103.
ZEALOTS, the, 53, 66.
Zechariah, book of, 163.
218 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS
INDEX (6)
Genesis ii. 7, p. 186.
,, xvii. 17, p. 128.
Exodus xxiv. 8, p. 199.
,, xxxii. 32, p. 141.
Job xxxiii. 24, pp. 147, 190.
Psalm ii. 7, pp. 132 f., 144.
xlix. 8 f., p. 147.
,, ex., p. 157.
Isaiah vi. 9-10, p. 127.
xlii. 1 f., p. 144.
lii. 13, p. 160.
,, liii. If., p. 140.
liii. 12, pp. 146, 199.
Ixi. 1-2, p. 129.
Ixvi. 1-2, p. 94.
Daniel vii. 13, pp. 158 f.
Matthew i. 21, p. 172.
i. 23, p. 172.
iii. 15, p. 143.
,, v. 34-35, p. 94.
v. 44 f., p. 104.
vi. 13, p. 72.
vi. 28 f., p. 93.
,, vi. 33, p. 103.
vii. 21, p. 72.
viii. 16-17, p. 140.
,, viii. 20, p. 153.
ix. 13, p. 105.
x. 19-20, pp. 183-184.
x. 23, pp. 48, 87.
x. 28, p. 121.
x. 31, p. 86.
xi. 4f.,p. 80.
xi. 11, p. 50,
xi. 12-13, p. 51.
xi. 19, pp. 153, 166.
Matthew xi. 25, pp. 90, 133.
xi. 26-27, pp. 110 f.
xii. 16-17, p. 141.
xii. 18, pp. 26, 144.
,, xii. 28, pp. 50, 178.
xii. 32, p. 179.
,, xii. 40, p. 72.
xiii. 16-17, pp. 71, 127.
xvi. 13, p. 150.
xvi. 18-19, pp. 32, 187.
,, xvi. 26, p. 146.
xvii. 24 f., p. 118.
,, xviii. 3-4, p. 195.
,, xviii. 6, p. 173.
,, xviii. 18, p. 187.
,, xviii. 20, p. 98.
,, xix. 26, p. 90.
xx. 28, pp. 145 f.
xxi, 31, p. 52.
,, xxi. 43, p. 64.
xxii. 41f.,pp. 163, 165.
,, xxiii. 22, p. 95.
,, xxiii. 34 f., p. 167.
xxv. 31 f., p. 121.
,, xxvi. 64, p. 157.
xxviii. 19 f.,pp. 32 f.,
98, 156 f., 188.
Mark i. 1, p. 135.
i. 8, p. 185.
i. 15, p. 124.
ii. 1 f., pp. 77, 151.
,, ii. 10 f., p. 120.
,, ii. 28, p. 152.
,, iii. 5, p. 26.
,, iii. 20, p. 182.
iii. 29, p. 179.
INDEX
219
Mark iv. 11, p. 55.
iv. 29, pp. 43, 55.
iv. 38, p. 9.
,, viii. 27, pp. 20 f.
viii. 31 f., pp. 106 f.
ix. 1, p. 43.
ix. 42, p. 173.
x. 14, p. 26.
x. 45, pp. 145 f.
xii. 34, p. 52.
xiii. 11, p. 183.
xiii. 14, p. 7.
,, xiii. 31, p. 48.
,, xiii. 32, p. 133.
xiv. 21, p. 143.
xiv. 61-62, pp. 136, 157.
xv. 39, p. 136.
Luke ii. 32, p. 144.
iii. 22, pp. 31, 131.
,, iv. 16 f., p. 129.
vi. 46, p. 72.
vii. 29-30, p. 90.
,, vii. 35, p. 166.
x. 22, p. 111.
xi. 13, p. 185.
xi. 49, p. 166.
xii. 6-9, p. 88.
,, xii. 10, p. 179.
xii. 11-12, p. 184.
,, xii. 31, p. 86.
,, xiii. 31 f., p. 87.
,, xv. 1 f., pp. 123 f.
,, xvii. 3, p. 125.
,, xvii. 15-16, p. 92.
,, xvii. 20, pp. 46, 49 f.
,, xviii. 1 f., p. 73.
xx. 42, p. 183.
xxi. 14-15, p. 184.
xxi. 28, p. 69.
xxii. 37, p. 160.
,, xxii. 48, p. 153.
,, xxii. 69, pp. 100, 157.
xxii. 70, pp. 136, 157.
Luke xxiv. 49, p. 184.
John i. If., pp. 169 f.
,, i. 13, pp. 33 f.
i. 17, p. 21.
,, i. 18, p. 139.
,, i. 29, p. 141.
,, i. 34, p. 165.
i. 51, p. 162.
iii. 3, pp. 195f., 207.
iii. 13, p. 160.
iii. 14-15, p. 161.
iv. 24, pp. 113, 207.
,, v. 17, p. 95.
vi. If., pp. 197 f.
vi. 51f.,pp. 198 f., 200 f.
,, vi. 62, p. 160.
,, vi. 63, p. 207.
vii. 39, pp. 188, 189.
,, viii. 34 f., p. 116.
,, viii. 44 f. , p. 115.
,, viii. 56, p. 128.
,, ix. 35, p. 162.
x. 17 f., p. 143.
,, xii. 391, p. 127.
,, xiv. 1, p. 174.
,, xiv. 16, p. 189.
,, xiv. 23, p. 97.
xv. 10, p. 114.
xv. 14-15, p. 118.
xvi. 7-11, pp. 190, 208
xvi. 9 f., 190 f.
xvi. 13, pp. 192, 194, 208.
,, xvi. 14, pp. 193 f.
,, xvi. 16-17, p. 189.
,, xvii. 5, p. 138.
,, xvii. 26, p. 210.
xix. 35, p. 199.
,, xx. 22 f., pp. 186 f.
xx. 271, p. 11.
,, xx. 31, p. 3.
Acts i. 1, p. 38.
i. 3, p. 194.
,, i. 7, p. 133.
220 THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPELS
Acts ii. 36, p. 166.
,, vii. 56, p. 156.
,, xvi. 7, p. 177.
Gal. iii. 16 f., p. 128.
1 Cor. ii. 8, p. 120.
,, vii. 19, p. 23.
,, vii. 26 f., p. 61.
x. 16 f., pp. 199 f.
,, xv. 3, pp. 4-5, 142.
xv. 6, p. 187.
2 Cor. viii. 18, p. 37.
xiii. 14, p. 33.
Rom. i. 4, p. 138.
ii. 20, p. 134.
,, xiv. 17 f., p. 82.
Col. i. 13, pp. 64, 82, 165.
Eph. i. 6, p. 165.
iv. 4f.,p. 200.
v. 26, p. 197.
1 Timothy iii. 16, pp. 36 f., 191.
Titus iii. 5, p. 197.
1 Peter i. 21, p. 174.
2 Peter iii. 12, p. 59.
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