INTERNATIONAL THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY THE THEOLOGY NEW TESTAMENT/ BY GEORGE BARKER STEVENS, PH.D., D.D, ^DWIGHT PROFESSOR OF SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY IN TALE UNIVERSITY NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1914 COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS C i- n (* o TO MY TEACHER COLLEAGUE AND FRIEND GEORGE PAEK FISHEK, D.D., LL.D. I DEDICATE THIS BOOK IN GRATITUDE AND AFFECTION PREFACE THE aim of this volume is to set forth, in systematic form, the doctrinal contents of the New Testament accord- ing to its natural divisions. The general method pursued is that which is now common in this branch of theological science. Brief explanations of the mode of treating cer- tain portions of the New Testament, with respect to which important critical differences exist among scholars, are given in the chapters introductory to the several parts of the work. My indebtedness to other writers has been acknowledged by means of references to the literature of the subject in the footnotes. But all such acknowledgments must, of necessity, be very partial. I wish especially to express my obligations to the writings of my teachers in earlier years, Professors Weiss and Pfleiderer. Wendt's Teach- ing of Jesus has been very helpful, especially in its treat- ment of critical and historical considerations bearing upon interpretation. Beyschlag's New Testament Theology has been read with interest and profit. Holtzmann's Lehr- buch der neutestamentlichen Theologie is a valuable encyclo- paedia for the student of the subject. Its summaries of the results of critical exegesis and its copious citations from the most recent literature render it a work of great value for reference. Professor Bruce's writings have been of real service, especially his volume on the theology viii PREFACE of Paul. No one has written on the subject with finer insight and discrimination. The brilliant treatise of Pro- fessor Menegoz, entitled Le Peche et la Redemption d'apres St. Paul, has afforded me many useful suggestions. With each of these writers, however, I have felt compelled, in some points, to disagree. Differing judgments are inevi- table in a field so wide and difficult. Even where there is agreement in exegesis, differences will arise in the effort to trace the origin and to estimate the significance of such New Testament ideas as those concerning the person and work of Christ. Appended to the volume will be found a select bibliog- raphy which comprises the most important recent litera- ture of the subject. Articles and brochures on minor topics in Biblical Theology, which would be likely to interest only the specialist, have not been included. In accordance with its somewhat general purpose the list is limited to more comprehensive works. A much fuller bibliography, arranged on a different principle, is prefixed to Holtzmann's Lehrbuch. As respects its aim the present work is not apologetic or controversial. It seeks to expound, not to defend. It also recognizes the boundaries between the explicit teach- ings of the New Testament and inferences which may be drawn from them, however natural or apparently necessary such inferences may seem to be. The limitations of space which were prescribed for the volume have rendered it necessary to bestow careful attention upon the question of proportion and to present the various subjects which are discussed as succinctly as possible. Every chapter has involved a study in condensation. PREFACE IX The reader will observe that while much importance is attached to the influence of current ideas upon the teach- ing of Christ and the apostles, I dp not believe thatJDhris- tianity is a mere product of the^iggjn which it arose. I hold to the unique ano^ distinctive originality of Jesus and to the supernatural origin of his gospeL The truths and facts which constitute this gospel are, indeed, historically conditioned, and of these historical conditions the Biblical theologian must take full and careful account. But that movement of God in human life and history which we call Christianity transcends its historical relations and limita- tions, and can be justly estimated only by recognizing its divine origin and singularity. This view of the Christian religion is not merely an assumption which is carried into the present study, but equally a conclusion which is estab- lished by the study itself. GEORGE BARKER STEVENS. YALE UNIVERSITY, January, 1899. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION SINCE its publication in 1899 this work has been sub- jected to several revisions. Besides correcting misprints and removing other inaccuracies, I have rewritten, from time to time, a number of paragraphs, amounting in all to several pages. It appeared desirable that some changes of statement should be made at several points where, in the original edition, I seemed to have crossed the boun- daries of biblical into the province of speculative theology. These changes were made in the determination to adhere strictly to the presentation of the New Testament data and to refrain from all doctrinal inferences and judg- ments. The bibliography at the end of the book has been en- larged as new works on the subjects here discussed have appeared, and into it have now been incorporated the names of the most recent treatises. By successive addi- tions it has grown from a list of seventy-six titles to one of one hundred and twenty. It is hoped that, in its pres- ent form, it will prove adequate to the student's needs for some time to come. The reception with which this volume has met at the hands of students and teachers of theology has been most gratifying, and it is a pleasure to make the effort to meet the demand for its continued use by the issue of this re- vised and improved edition. G. B. S. YALE UNIVERSITY, April, 1906. CONTENTS PART I THE TEACHING OF JESUS ACCORDING TO THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS CHAPTER I PAQB INTRODUCTORY 1 CHAPTER H THE GOSPEL AND THE LAW 17 CHAPTER III THE KINGDOM OF GOD 27 CHAPTER IV THE SON OF MAN 41 CHAPTER V THE SON OF GOD 54 CHAPTER VI THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD 65 CHAPTER VH GOOD AND EVIL SPIRITS 76 CHAPTER Vin HUMAN NATURE AND SINFULNESS 92 xi Xll . CONTENTS CHAPTER IX PAGE THE TRUE RIGHTEOUSNESS 104 CHAPTER X THE MESSIANIC SALVATION 119 CHAPTER XI THE CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD 135 CHAPTER XII THE PAROUSIA AND THE JUDGMENT 150 PART II THE TEACHING OF JESUS ACCORDING TO THE FOURTH GOSPEL CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY 167 CHAPTER II THE IDEA OF GOD 177 CHAPTER III THE SINFUL WORLD 187 CHAPTER IV JESUS' TESTIMONY TO HIMSELF 199 CHAPTER V THE HOLY SPIRIT 213 CHAPTER VI ETERNAL LIFE . , 224 CONTENTS Xlll CHAPTER VII MM ES?PATOLOGY 234 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY 245 CHAPTER II THE DISCOURSES IN THE ACTS 258 CHAPTER in THE EPISTLE OF JAMES . 276 CHAPTER IV THE FIRST EPISTLE OF PETER 293 CHAPTER V THE EPISTLE OF JUDE AND SECOND PETER .... 312 PART IV THE THEOLOGY OF PAUL CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY 325 CHAPTER n FLESH AND SPIRIT 338 CHAPTER in ADAM AND THE RACE 349 Xiv CONTENTS CHAPTER IV PAGE THE LAW OF GOD ......... 362 CHAPTER V THE DIVINE PURPOSE ......... 375 JESUS CHRIST .......... 389 CHAPTER VII THE DEATH OF CHRIST ........ 403 CHAPTER VIH JUSTIFICATION ..... , * . 417 CHAPTER IX THE HOLY SPIRIT ......... 431 CHAPTER X SOCIAL MORALITY ......... 446 CHAPTER XI THE CHURCH .......... 458 CHAPTER XII ESCHATOLOGY ......... , 470 PART V CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY 483 CHAPTER n THE OLD AND THE NEW COVENANT . . . . 490 CONTENTS XV CHAPTER IH PAS* THE MEDIATOR 498 CHAPTER IV THE HIGH PRIESTHOOD OF CHRIST 506 CHAPTER V FAITH AND HOPE 515 PART VI THE THEOLOGY OF THE APOCALYPSE CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY 523 CHAPTER II THE LAMB OF GOD 536 CHAPTER HI THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY .,.,... 543 CHAPTER IV THE ANTICHRISTIAN WORLD-POWER 550 CHAPTER V CONFLICT AND VICTORY 557 PART VII THE THEOLOGY OF JOHN CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY 564 XVI CONTENTS CHAPTER II PASS THE IDEA OF GOD 569 CHAPTER m THE LOGOS .577 CHAPTER IV THE WAY OF SALVATION . 586 BIBLIOGRAPHY 593 GENERAL INDEX . . 597 INDEX OF TKXTS **< 605 THE THEOLOGY NEW TESTAMENT PAKT I THE TEACHING OF JESUS ACCORDING TO THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY ' THE task which lies before us in this part of our work is to present as clear a picture as possible of the teaching of Jesus on the basis of the Synoptic Gospels. The accountofhi8_teaching which is preserved in the fourth Gospel is so different in form from that contained in the Synoptics that it requires a separate treatment. In con- nection with the study of tne^fourth Gospel, the two types of tradition will be brought into frequent comparison. 2_ Jesus did not commit his jteaching to wHfr'rig- He spoke his message^hd dfd his work, and left the recording of his words and deeds to those whose lives had been deeply impressed with their divine significance and value. How long a time passed before the first disciples began to make written memoranda of the Lord's life we cannot say, but, probably, several years. At first there would be_ no occasion to write narratives of his sayings and acts, since they were vividly photographed upon the memories of all his followers. The leading events of his life and his most characteristic sayings were preserved in oral tradition, and B 1 2 THE SYNOPTIC TEACHING OF JESTJS were constantly rehearsed, in a more or less stereotyped form, in the preaching and teaching of the apostles. ^As^ time passed on however, it became necessary to compose, Britten narratives of the Lord's words and deeds. The gradual dispersion of the Christian community from Jeru- / salem, the addition of new members to the company who required definite instruction, and the passing away of some/ of the eye and ear witnesses, would be among the motives! which would prompt to the writing of these narratives. The prologue of Luke's Gospel (i. 1-4) is very instructive in this connection. Luke says that before he wrote his Gospel many narratives (St^^o-et?) of the Lord's life had been written. 1 He implies that these were, in general, fragmentary and insufficient ; that he was acquainted with some of them, and proposed to use them in constructing his own fuller account of Jesus' life. These numerous writers (TroXXot) of primitive Gospels, as we may call them, had written, Luke says, in accordance with the tradition of the Lord's words, which had been handed down from the beginning (of his ministry) by those who had seen and heard him (avr^jrrai) . These earlier writers to whom Luke refers were not themselves apostles or im- mediate disciples, but they were acquainted, at first hand, with the primitive tradition of the Lord's words and deeds as it had been preserved among the eye and ear witnesses. That^originajjbradition may have _be_en_oral, or wntterijjjr bothj these writers had access to it, and based their narratives upon it, and Luke, in turn, had access to their work, besides possessing independent knowledge, derived from carefully tracing the course of events from the very beginning (avwOev) of the Master's life. Moreover, in dedicating his book to a certain Theophilus, probably a man of noble birth who had recently become a convert and who was, perhaps, the author's patron, Luke dis- 1 The so-called Login of Jesus, recently discovered in Egypt, are of interest as illustrating the existence, in the second century, of a hitherto unknown collection of reputed sayings of Jesus. Even if unauthentic, thpy illustrate the many, if not the earlier, efforts which were made to preserve the Lord's words in writing. I INTRODUCTORY 3 closes to us one^ of the first uses of the written the instruction and confirmation in faith and cer-\ tainty of those who were dependent upon the testimony of others for accurate knowledge of Jesus' teaching and work. Have any of theseprimitive Gospels to jwhichjLuke refers nbeen^preservedT^to us.? The Gospel of Mark is Eobblv__"ng_ of thgm. A critical comparison of Mark and Luke shows that Luke has freely used our second Gospel in the construction of his narrative. Moreover, the earliest tradition which has been preserved to us, the testimony of Papias, 1 recorded in Eusebius, 2 respecting the origin of Mark's Gospel, agrees strikingly with Luke's description of the earlier Gospels, which he knew and used. Papias testifies that Mark was known as the inter- preter of Peter ; that he wrote down with accuracy, but not in chronological order, the events of Jesus' life ; but that he did this from information given him by Peter, because he was not himself an eye-witness. 3 This would accord exactly with what Luke says : He drew up a narrative in accordance with knowledge which had been delivered to him by an eye-witness (Peter). IJ^Jsonejof^ the best attested results of NewTestament Gospel is_the earliest of our j]iree Synoptics, and that it supplied_the framework on which the Gospel of Luke js BuTMark was one of the " many " to whom Luke refers. He was not an apostle nor was he a personal follower of Jesus. Does there still remain to us any specimen of the tradition which the first disciples who personally accom- panied Jesus preserved? Have we any written narrative 1 Fapias was bishop of Hierapolis, in Phrygia, and died about 163. According to Irenseus (d. about 202) he was a disciple of the apostle John. Against Heresies, Bk. V. ch. xxxiii. 4. He composed a treatise in five books (now lost) entitled, Interpretation of the Lord's Oracles, \oytuw KvpiaKuv itirwffis (or, ifriyfatit). a Ecclesiastical History, III. 39. 8 The testimony of Irenaeus is to the same effect : " Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter." Against Heresies. Bk. III. ch. i. 1. 4 THE SYNOPTIC TEACHING OF JESUS which emanates directly from an apostle or other eye- witness? Turning again to the section of Eusebius just cited, we find this quotation from Papias : " Matthew com- posed the Oracles (TO, \6yia~) in the Hebrew dialect, and each one interpreted them as he was able." Irenseus con- firms this assertion. 1 If this ancient testimony is cor- rect, we have here a trace of a primitive, apostolic, written source. c Numerous perplexing questions now arise concerning this writing which Papias calls the Oracles, or Logia, into which I cannot here enter at length. For a discussion of them I must refer the reader to treatises on New Testa- ment Introduction. It is, at present, the general belief of scholars that this tradition is trustworthy, and that the Hebrew Logia of Matthew is the principal literary^ basis of our first Gospel. In my own judgment this is a ^second. jsecure result of NP.W TftstameaJL^^^'sir The \6yia of Matthew would be an example of the tradition (TrapdSoaris ; cf. trapeSoo-av') of the eye-witnesses (avTOTrrai) upon which the many (TroXXoi') mentioned by Luke had based their narratives (St^Tjo-et? ; Lk. i. 1-4). It is _prpbable_that the Logia consisted mainly of sayings .and discourses of Jesus connected together byjbriej^historical jiarratives ; that this writing ^wasTearly translated into GreekTanoTTncorporated into our first Gospel by another hand than that of Matthew. We thus get the elements of the " two-source theory," of the Synoptics now common among scholars. It may be stated thus: Mark, the^oldestof our Svnogticsin. their present form, is, according to^aplaSj^based primarily on ri <5ther sources were"probably open to him; Weiss holds that Matthew's Logia was one of these, but this view is disputed by other scholars. Mack was freely useoLby both the first and third evangelists- *^, ^ " *"". __ "if ...... _ " "" ** - These two waiters also freely used Matthew's Logia, each . ~ j-^"' ^.^ _ . _ ir i "~ ,,_ | __ W i ~ combining this writing, with Mark innis own way. Their commonTISuTlndependent, use^Of" tHe Logia goes far to explain their agreement in places in which they are inde- 1 " Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect," etc. Against Heresies, Bk. III. ch. i. 1. 1 INTRODUCTORY 5 pendent of Mark. Thus Mark and the Logia are the " two sources " referred to in this theory. 1 It cannot be said, in general, whether, the first or the ^^is^hasjpQrfi_fedthfiilly presftryf!^ thg j^prvatnlu*. Now one, now the other, gives its narratives in greater fulness or in more natural connections. From the way in which the Logia material is distributed in the first Gospel, it has happened that many sayings have fallen out because they found no point of connection with the Mark narrative, which Luke, by his method of using the former, has preserved. Ij^t thej^OTe JL _pmbable j^hajt the original order of the Logia material is better preserved in Luke. In the first Gospel the sayings are more frequently grouped together on the principle of internal kinship, without re- gard to their original connection. On thgjqjiestion whether there is a direct, interdependence between the firsj^ami third Gospels, specialists are^divjdfid*. Holtzmann and Wendt hold that Luke knew and used our first Gospel ; Weiss is of the contrary opinion. It will thus be seen that according to the view which I adopt as probable, our first^ Gospel is JipJa JJn_lts_prgsent form, the_wprk of the apostle Matthew. The traditional designation of it as " The Gospelaccor3ing to Matthew " is, however, justified, since it is an amplification of Mat- thew's Logia. For convenience I shall use the name "Matthew" when I refer to the book which bears his name, in the same way as I do " Mark " and " Luke." 1 It must, however, in fairness, be mentioned that a considerable num- ber of scholars doubt the correctness of the Papias tradition, and call in question theories based upon the supposition of a Matthaic Logia. It may happen that the^" two-gnu r pft fV> pvry " will be mpdjfied_by later_criti- Icism, orevSn sopplanted. It cannot be claimed that, in itself, it presents a final solution of the Synoptic problem. It should, therefore, be held, not as a demonstrated truth, but as a working hypothesis the best which criticism has, thus far, attained. I have used it as such. The sub- stance of my portrayal of the teaching of Jesus would not be materially affected by its modification. I cannot doubt that the elements which entered into the formation of our Gospels were so numerous, and their combination so complicated that no theory is capable of fully explaining all the facts. The truth of such theories should be regarded as approxi- mate, and their evidence as probable only. 6 THE SYNOPTIC TEACHING OF JESUS These three forms of the Synoptic tradition, emanating, as they do, from three different hands and yet being, to a great extent, interdependent and based upon common documents, give rise to very perplexing questions when the narratives are treated critically and in detail. It has long been felt that the scholar's work was not done when the three narratives were adjusted to each other as in- geniously as possible and printed side by side. The strik- ing similarities and the no less striking differences still remain to be explained. Variations of order and apparent repetitions of events need to be accounted for. These problems^ have given_lJse_JtQ-the^ jscience of_Gosel-criti- cism, or Higher Criticism as applied to^theGospelsT This 'department of Biblical learning has been diligently culti- vated in recent times, and to it such specialists as Holtz- mann, Weiss, Wendt, and Resch have devoted the most painstaking and conscientious labor. It deals with the literary and historical problems to which a critical com- parison of the narratives gives rise. Itsjwork logically precedes, that-ol^exj&gesjsj and, in many cases, lias an im- portant bearing upon interpretation. In the portrayal of the teaching of Jesus which follows I shall hope not to contravene any well-established result of criticism. Although the purpose of my work does not require me directly to discuss the questions which arise within this field, and the limits of this volume would not permit it, yet I shall, in the more important instances, refer the reader to works in which such problems are considered and shall indicate the bearing of the points at issue. 1 fr It is a question ofj/he^utmost importance for the student ;of our subject, how the views of our sources at which criti- cism has arrived, affect the_reliability of our Synoptic Gos- 1 The first or untranslated part of Wendt's work, Die Lehre Jesu, 1 shall cite by that title. The second or translated part, originally entitled Der Inhalt der Lehre Jesu, I shall cite from the translation which bears the title, The Teaching of Jesus. For the convenience of most readers, 1 shall cite the translation of Weiss's Leben Jesu instead of the original, and so in the case of other German works of which there are translations in common use. Whenever practicable and useful, I shall also add, in parenthesis, references to the original. INTRODUCTORY 7 pels. No one of them is the immediate product of an apostle or other eye-witness. In time and authorship they belong to the next generation after that of Jesus himself. _ p - " -- _ _ ^f~~~~ They are, however, based upon apostolictradition. Mark rests mainly, as we have seen, upon information derived from Peter which, through the incorporation of Mark into Matthew and Luke, is one main source of both the other Synoptics. The other principal source is an apostolic writing, the Logia of Matthew. We have, then, an apos- tolic basis for our first three Gospels which entitles them, in a purely historical judgment, to make a strong claim to trustworthiness. If this interdependence and use of com- mon materials which criticism recognizes, have confused certain details and occasioned a misapprehension of some events and sayings, we can only say that this was inevita- ble in such a process of collation and revision as both external testimony and internal evidence prove to have taken place. The substantial^truthfulness of the Synoptic. picture of our Lord s life is only the more naturally and realistically attested. If criticism has been compelled to discredit those methods of argument by which the older Apologetics sought to prove that all three Synoptics really emanated from apostles, and by forced harmonizing and strained interpretation explained away differences and rec- onciled discrepancies, it^h^ls substituted for this claim of formal infallibility for_the_Tjospels a~ valid and defensi- trustworthiness. It maintains^ tnat the Gospels rest upon reliable testimony and that they can stand upon the same grounds on which other historical narratives stand. Their authors were competent men who possessed information respecting their subject not, indeed, complete, but yet sufficient for their purpose and wjio, therefore, wrote of Christ's words ami-deeds with knowledge, intelligence, honesty, and ^sympathy. If this claim is a more modest one than that which was for- merly made, it has the advantage of being the one claim which the Gospels make for themselves and the additional advantage of agreeing alike with the earliest Church tradi- tion and with the phenomena of the Gospels themselves. 8 THE SYNOPTIC TEACHING OF JESUS Thejvariousjtypes of. ^ew^Testament^ teaching^ have of late been studied, with_cQj,istant^reference to their histori- cal background The teaching of Jesus, for example, is viewed in its connection with Old Testament thought and with the religious ideas which prevailed among the Jews in his time. To the first of these relations we shall devote a separate chapter. The relations of likeness and of dif- ference between the popular religious teaching of the later Judaism and the teaching of Jesus form a theme too vast to admit of full discussion in this volume. Of recent writers on our present subject Wendt, in his Teaching of Jesus, and Holtzmann, in his Lehrbuch der neutestament- lichen Theologie, have most elaborately portrayed this popular teaching and exhibited its relations to the doc- trine of Jesus. To these works I shall, from time to time, refer. It will serve OUT present purpose, however^briefly tion between Jewish ideas and the thougEt of Jesus. ~The later Jewish teaching and the doctrine of Jesus alike had their historical roots in the Old Testament. But the former ^alT'TIev^ and fanciful interpretations ; the latter freely and inde- pendently by Gxgan^ng^ the germs of essential spiritual truth which were implicit in the Old Testament religion. Both the scribe and Jesus held fast to the Old Testamenj but they used it in the most different ways. To the scribe it was a repository of external rules and distinctions, ad- mitting of endless subdivision and extension ; to_Jesus_Jt^ )* was a, provisional expression of great spiritual truths and laws which needed to be rescued from the limitations in I whicjTthey had been enclosed an d^given their true, unU ^ versal scope and validity, V "Tp its outward form jand method the teaching of Jesus was much likejthat which prevailed mills tijne_._ He stood orUat irt'fne midst of a group erf discipIelTof "other hearers and explained and illustrated his thoughts. His teaching was largely embodied in pithy, pointed sayings which were designed and adapted to impress the popular mind. He taught rather by suggestion than by presenting a full and INTRODUCTORY 9 systematic view of any subject. It_is unlikely, that the extended groups of didactic sayings which appear in the Ijrospels aa if they constituted continuous discoursesjwere. {nail cases, spoken at one time. They are often collec- "tions of sayings which have been massed together, as, for example, the "Sermon on the Mount" and the group of parables in Mt. xiii. jegus^frgquently taught by the use of examples. For instance,neexplained the nature of true righteousness (Mt. v. 20 sq.) by citing from the Old Testament and from Rabbinic teaching, maxims which were either imper- fect or inadequate in themselves, or were erroneously applied by the people. Sometimes he taught by action, as when he took a child in his arms in order to emphasize the necessity of childlikeness in those who would be mem- bers of his Kingdom. But_pne_of^ the most striking forms qf_Jfisus^teaching was_the parable. A parable is a narra- tive of some real or imaginary event in ilature'or in com- mon life, which is adapted to suggest a moral or religious truth. The parable rests upon some correspondence, more or less exact, between events in nature or in human expe- rience, and the truths of religion. Wendt distinguishes two classes of parables : 1 (l^those in which some fact in the actual world is adduced as illustrating a moral or religious principle, and (2^hose in which some imagined events, or series of eveTtteT which might naturaHy~hap- pen, is narrated to illustrate a spiritual truth or process. Examples of the first sort of parables are : " They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick " (Mk. ii. 17), and the sayings about sewing a piece of un- dressed cloth upon an old garment (Mk. ii. 21) and about a kingdom divided against itself (Mk. iii. 24). It is the second class of parables the parable-stories, such as those of the Sower (Mk. iv. 3 It is necessary now to illustrate,_in,_some important points, that popular Jewish theology which background_and prasiippnaitin? pf so nrmp.ri of Jeans' teap.h- ing. We will notice, first, the Jewish idea^of fiod. The idea of God's exaltation~abo ve the world was carried so far by the Jews of Jesus' time that he was almost separated from the world. God was chiefly thought of as a judge or governor. His relations with men were conceived of in a legal, rather than in a yjitalj way. God was an ac- countant who exactly credited all good deeds, and, with equal exactness, estimated and punished all transgressions a traditional form which the explanation had taken in the teaching of the community. Most interpreters have not hesitated, in spite of the absence of a formal and precise congruity in the explanation, to ascribe It to Jesus himself. Wendt, Teaching, I. 125, attributes this interpreta- tion to Jesus, although he thinks it has been displaced from its original connection. See Lehre Jesu, p. 30 sq. 1 In this connection I would refer to the exhaustive study of the para- bolic teaching of Jesus in Julicher's Gleichnisreden Jesu. 12 THE SYNOPTIC TEACHING OP JESUS of his law. It will readily be seen how the extreme de- velopment of this idea would tend to exclude the truth of God's gTacefrom lihe^mmda^of men-, for the verjTidea of GocFiTgrace is that he treats menbetter than they deserve. \j, This conception of God exerted a most potent influence \ on practical_religion. The 15od who was far away irTthe Heavens had made a revelation of his will in the laws and ceremonies of the Pentateuch, and religion consisted, to the mind of the Jew, in strict obedience to all the require- ments of this legal system. The main ejnphasis_wa!jjic- cordingly, laid on the. &xjbernafeof_religion as means_pt pleasing GocTajicr winmnghiiT favor. ^ There^wfre, howeverTlmpoHEmt etements oL_tmth in the popular Jewish idea of God. The transcendence of Gpd his independence of the world and superiority to it was strongly emphasized, but the complementary truth of God's constant presence in the world was corre- spondingly obscured. And with this transcendence were associated ideas of arbitrariness, legal strictness and harsh- ness, rather than ideas of moral excellence or love. So perverted an idea of God's nature and relations to the world could only lead to superficial conceptions of his will and requirements. The allusions which Jesus made to the religious ideas of the Pharisees show what popular religion had become. It was a round of ceremonies and observances most of which had nothing to do with the state of the heart and life a tithing of mint, anise, and cummin, while judgment and the love of God were for- gotten. ^We are thus led to the consideration of the current idga of righteousness among the Jews in contrast to that which JesulTpfesehts. TEeir ideaT of righteousness grewjmt of their conception of GiicL an^othis revelation. Jt-Son^ jisted In Obedience to <3omm^^menta_jind these com- "mandments were looked at in quite an^ external way. The rich young ruler who came to Jesus asking what he should do to inherit eternal life (Mk. x. 17 Old Testamentjiad presented the idea that God had hpjstnwpd pp.mi1iqjprivileges upon the Jews^in 'order that th^y fc HHoigkt s {.)e_the bearers of true religion to the world. They, on the other hand, considere 1 Cf. Stanton, The Jewish and the Christian Messiah, pp. 122, 123; Schiirer, Jewish People, Div. II. 29. 12. 2 See Dalman, Der leidende und der sterbende Messias der Synagoge, who has shown that the dying Messiah, ben Joseph, and the suffering Messiah, ben David, must be kept entirely distinct. Cf. Weber, Jiidische Theologie, 79. The contrary view is represented by Wunsche, Die Leiden des Messias. ? 16 THE SYNOPTIC TEACHING OF JESUS jeges as destined for .^themselves alone. The favors of heaven should stop with them and be their exclusive pos- session. This attitude of mind involved the great per- version of Israel's history. By failing to receive Christ and his world-wide conception of salvation, they broke with the sublime purpose of God in their own history, and failed to attain the true goal of their existence as the theocratic people. These illustrations of Jewish ideas will serve to show how uncongenial to the spiritual truth of Jesus was the soil in which he must plant it. To the thought of his age God was afar off, his service was a round of rites and /observances, righteousness was an externaL_and_largelv_a non-moral, affair, ajid the great hope of the nation was to ^TuTxIue, by divine intervention, the surrounding nations and to obtain supremacy over the world. With all these ideas and hopes the teachings of Jesus came into the sharpest collision. He aimed to show men that God was near to them and that they could live in fellowship with him. He taught that all outward rites were valueless in themselves and that God cared most about the state of the heart. For him righteousness consisted in Godlikeness; that is, in love, service, and helpfulness. r CHAPTER II THE GOSPEL AND THE LAW 2. / iN^la^teagMng^^g^us jbook his stand, as_we_have seen, upon the Old TestamentjELe THcTiiot aim to introduce a wholly new religion. He clearly foresaw that some of his disciples would suppose that it was his purpose to break with the Old Testament system, and he warned them against this serious mistake by telling them that any of them who should feel themselves free to break the least commandment of the Old Testament law, and should teach others accordingly, should be called the least in the King- dom of God (Mt. v. 19). His constant manner of speak- ing in regard to the Jewish religion and Scriptures shows the reverence in which he held them. 1 ^ tf There is in one of his parables a significant expressionjji regard to the^gradiaa^ BrQg'ress^of jngjEruthm the^ world:^ " First^n^nbladeTtn^en the ear, after that the fufl coriTm the ear" (Mk. iv. 28). This statement might be fitly applied to the whole process of revelation of which the Old Testament represents the earlier stages. It would as truly describe Jesus' idea of this process as it does the growth to which he immediately applied it. The Old Testament represents the first steps in a great course of revelation and redemption which reaches its consummation in Christ himself. 2 This question is not to be answered in a single sentence or definition. The fulfilment QJLjthe old L sjgteni by the new is a great jiistpnc process, thea3equate understancf- ing of which requires^ a careful study of the whole New Testament. Its salient features, however, may be briefly indicated. J.esus fulfils^ the Old Testament system _by rounding out into ideal r,omjVlf,tftn,eaq wha.t, is innpnTQl^p! uijihat system. In this process of fulfilment, all that is imperfect, provisional, temporary, or, for any reason, need- less to the perfect religion, falls away of its own accord, and all that is essential and permanent is conserved and embodied in Christianity. Some of the elements of this fulfilment are as follows : T (1) Jesus fulfils the law perfectly in his own personal life. The character of Jesus was the realization of the fdeaf which the law contemplated. He was a perfectly 20 THE SYNOPTIC TEACHING OP JESUS righteous person, and it was righteousness which the law demanded and aimed to secure. But it is not merely or mainly the personal fulfilment of the law's ideal to which Jesus refers in saying that he came to fulfil the law. 2 ) (2) Jesus falfilledjthe law inhis teaching by setting forth thej^jn the absolute truths of religion ana the juni- versal principles of goodnega^ This point may best T>e Illustrated from the context of the passage under review. Our Lord says that the true righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees (v. 20). Their righteous- ness consisted in the punctilious observance of the bare letter of the law, quite to the neglect of its spirit. Jesus then proceeds to show the difference between such exter- nal, superficial righteousness and that which corresponds to the law's true ideal. He says (y. 21 s^.) : You have in the Old Testament the commandment, Thou shalt not kill. It is commonly supposed that to refrain from the actual, overt act of murder is to keep that commandment, but I tell you that he only truly keeps it who refrains from anger and hate. In the sight of God, hate is the essence of murder. He thus finds the seat of all goodness, and of all sin in the heart, that is, in the sphere of the motives and the desires. y ^ In like manner, he declares that the essence of adultery is in the lustful desire and the impure look. He thus makes_^iglitepusness an mwardand moral affair. It de- pends upon~the state of the heart. This truth he next illustrates by reference to a more subtle distinction (vv. 33-37). He cites the commandment which requires men to speak the truth, and to perform their vows unto God. It appears that under cover of this second requirement the Jews permitted themselves to make subtle distinctions between vows or oaths taken "to Jehovah," and those taken, for example, " by the heaven," or " by Jerusalem." Oaths taken in Jehovah's name were regarded as more sacred and binding than those not so taken, and thus an easy way was opened for disregarding the real sacredness of vows and promises. Jesus strikes at the root of all these hollow and dishonest distinctions, and discounte- THE GOSPEL AND THE LAW 21 nances altogether the use of oaths in apparent confir- mation of one's word. Such oaths, he says in effect, are either meaningless or irreverent. Let your simple word be enough. Esteem that to be as binding as if you had coupled your statement with Jehovah's name. The Jews had made the commandment of truthfulness an instrument of untruthf ulness ; Jesus insists upon a truthful heart which, to use a modern phrase, makes one's "word as good as his bond." y I The illustrations of fulfilment thus far given are examples of the way in which Jesus penetrated in his teaching to the inner meaning of Old Testament precepts and exhibited their true ideal requirements, as against the superficial application of them which regarded them as relating to outward action only. Now, however, he takes an^example oLan Old Testament^ legal principle to whio.h in itsglf^hft qbjecjg: "Ye" have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth (Ex. xxi. 24) ; but I say unto you, Resist not him that is evil," etc. (vv. 38, 39). The principle here cited was a part of the Mosaic system. It was a law of retaliation which magistrates were to apply under certain restrictions in the punishment of crimes ; it was popularly applied to justify personal, private revenge. Unwarranted as this application was, we cannot justly say that it was this alone to which Jesus objected. The prin- ciple which he enunciates is certainly opposed to retaliation itself T ftionprh not to retribution ._ The rule that the wrong- doer was to suffer the same~~kind~of an injury which he had done to another represented a rude kind of justice which was better than none ; but it did not accord with the spirit of the teaching of Jesus. 1 5 As a final example of fulfilment he cited the command- ment: "Thou sbalt )fnrfi thy nni^hh^l (Lev. xix. 18), and joinecTwith it the popular addition which was derived 1 The legal rule in question was not merely a ley, retributionis, but a lex talionis. All penal legislation proportions penalty to crime, but it does not punish in kind ; much less does it countenance the private redress of wrongs. The teaching of Jesus here cannot, therefore, be con- strued into a disapproval of civil penalties in general. 22 THE SYNOPTIC TEACHING OF JESUS by inference from it: "and hate thine enemy " (Mt. v. 43). Jesus, on the contrary, set forth the ideal import of the commandment and illustrated and enforced the duty which it enjoins by showing that the love of God, which is the type of all true love, is not niggardly, but large and gener- ous. He then concludes : " Ye therefore shall be perfect (that is, complete in love generous, helpful, and forgiv- ing), as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Mt. v. 48). Luke's version of this saying which, in the judgment of many, is the more original form of it is : " Be ye merci- ful, even as your Father is merciful" (vi. 36). These are examples of the way in which Jesus fulfilled the law in his teaching, both by rescuing its true import from the perversions and exaggerations to which the scribes had subjected it, by recognizing the ethical imperfections in the law itself, and by replacing them by absolute principles of truth and right which are universally applicable. (3) This fulfilment preservedjill that was of rjermanp"* value and validity for religion in the Old Testament y_stejn^ Jesus taught that this whole sysEempin all its parts, was involved in the process of fulfilment. He did not illustrate in detail how the fulfilment applied to the various parts of the law. We must ascertain this from the nature of the gospel and from the history and teaching which the New Testament records. Whatever there was of moral or religious significance in the various regulations of the Old Testament cultus will be found to have been conserved in the comprehensive principles of Jesus. He fulfils_ihe_propl3ieta_by_ realizing their_ highest ideals of religionno less than^ by accomplishing their^ predictions. The great fact in this connectionls that Jesus fulfils,..the JewishThistory as ji_ whole ; in him the development of repealed, religion culminates; he is its realization and its {oal7 The aspirations and hopes of the nation had been directed for centuries to some great consummation, some wonderful expansion of the kingdom of God ; this Christ came to accomplish, but into its realization the greater part of the Jewish nation, through blindness and perversity, did not enter. THE GOSPEL AND THE LAW 23 (4) The process of fulfilment involves the j^assingLaoEay ^fjhhgJ21lLTg stamftnt svstem ajy^- As the fulfilling of the blossom by the fruit involves the passing away of the former, so does the new system replace the old. This view of the matter is abundantly recognized in the teach- ing of our Lord and his apostles. He described his truth as new wine which must not be put into the old bottles of Judaism (Mt. ix. 17). He said that his gospel was not merely a new patch which was to be sewed onto the old garment of the law ; it was rather a new garment complete and sufficient in itself (Mt. ix. 16). It is of interest to observe, just here, that this teaching is quite in accord with what the prophgjs thpms Q 1vf, in their highest inspirations, had~discerned and intimated concerning their own religious system. They frequently recognize its inadequacy and temporary character and predict that it is to pass away by being merged into some- thing higher. 1 What religion, besides Judaism, ever pre- dicted its own abrogation? It is one of the most signifi- cant facts of prophecy that the loftiest spirits in the nation were led to look for the dawning of larger truth, and for a more complete form of the Kingdom of God. But when it is said that the Old Testament system is abrogated in the new, it is of capital importance to observe that the ney replaces the old, not by destruction, but by fulfilment. The new does not reject and discard the old ; it preserves and embodies it, just so far as it has elements of permanent value for the world's religion. The fulfil- ment is therefore, an organic process ; the new comes out of the old by a natural and orderly process of development. In that process what is unessential falls away of its own accord, while all that is essential and permanently useful is taken up into Christianity, more completely developed and applied, and reinforced by higher motives on the plane of broader principles. 2 1 See, especially, Jer. xrxi. 31-34. 2 This subject has important practical bearings upon Christian thought and life, to which a brief reference may here be made. The Christian world has never very clearly perceived what was its relation to the Old 24 THE SYNOPTIC TEACHING OF JESUS Christ did not fulfil a^parl qfjthe law merelvjjmt the whole oi; it. He did not complete the rituaTpart of the Old Testament alone, but all its moral parts as well. This is but to say that il"was not merely the ritual ele- ment of the law which was imperfect and temporary, but the moral element also. Many a moral maxim and prac- tice of the Old Testament, as we have seen, was below the plane of Jesus' ideal morality. If he fulfils the system in all its parts, then must the system ogjmcApass away. And this is the fact in the case. On no othersupposition Testament religion. How discordant and inconsistent have been the pre- vailing views on this subject. Commonly some rough distinction has been made between those parts of the system which were supposed to be binding and those from which the Christian was believed to be free, but this distinction rested on no well-defined principle. The discrimination has ordinarily been perfectly arbitrary, having no better grounds than those of practical convenience. No Christians, in our time, hold that they must observe the Old Testament rules respecting meats and drinks, or suppose that they are bound to observe the sacrificial system. But this was not always so. In the apostolic Church there was a large party who held that it was necessary for the Christian even to keep the whole law of Moses in order to be saved. (See, e.jr., Acts xv. 1). Th,eiE_jdgw gaa that Christianity wag-arMad-Oladdition or appendix to Judaism and tEat their former religion, in all its particulars, was in full force and per- petually binding. Paul had his sharpest conflicts with this party. He showed that they were quite consistent, though consistently wrong. In insisting on the necessity~oT a continued observance of circumcision, they logically committed themselves to the keeping of the whole law. But it was impossible that Christians should long continue to observe the whole Mosaic ritual, and the effort to do so was less and less consistently made. In modern times we not infrequently find Christians who have con- scientiously placed themselves under some part of the old system, believ- ing that, for some special reason, it is binding upon them, while from the observance of its other regulations they readily excuse themselves. It may be tjie law of tithes, which is regarded as still binding, or the regula- tions relating to marriage or to the Jewish Sabbath which are considered to be of perpetual obligation. But the question arises : On what principle is one requirement of the system observed while the others are neglected ? Did Jesus specify those which were temporary and those which were per- petually binding ? If he did not, how are they to be distinguished ? It is common to make a distinction between the ceremonial and the moral parts of the law, and to suppose that, while the former are done away, the latter are still binding upon Christians. But this distinction is recognized neither in the Old Testament nor in the New ; it is a modern division of the law which it is quite convenient and natural for us to make, but one of which a quite unwarrantable use is commonly made. THE GOSPEL AND THE LAW 25 can the New Testament references to the subject be natur- ally explained ; on no other view can a clear definition be given of the relation of the two Testaments. The conclusion, then, to which^weare led is, that the whoIeTDlct Testament system, in aUits parts, jyai]_taken up into the process of fulfilment and that ^ of permanent value and validity have been made partjmi t parcel of the gospeL To the old system as such we have no need to go back, because the gospel is its completion, and we have no occasion to supplement Christianity by additions from Judaism. But the Old Testament has not thereby been destroyed, but fulfillpjl. On this distinction between destruction ancTfulfilment turns the true solution of the question under consideration. The fulfilment is, by its very nature, a conserving process; ifo rejects ^nothing which it can ^use, but embodies it in its perfect result. All tlie ^essentials of the Old Testament are jpreserveji in the New, and TE is as" parts "oT~the gospeTbf Christ that they are binding upon the Christian man. He is not under the Old Testament system, or, to state the case more fully, he is under only so much of it as has been taken up and incorporated into Christianity, and he is under that because it is a part of Christianity, not because it is a part of the Old Testament religion. If it is asked, Isjaot the Chris- tian under the authority of the ten commandments j tEeT is, In their Old Testament form and as part of that system, he is not. The essential substance of the ten com- mandments/consists of changeless principles of righteous- ness, and is therefore a part of Christianity ; in that sense thefihristy,n is under tbejsommandments. and in no other. le duty to obey parents, for example, is as urgently in- culcated in the gospel as in the commandments, and is, of course, perpetually binding, but the reason by which it is enforced in the Old Testament that by obedience one may win a long residence in the land of Canaan is not applicable to us. The truth which we are considering, stated on its positive side, is that Christianity is complete and sufficient in its_ejf as a guide to laitn ana action. The whole philosophy of 26 THE SYNOPTIC TEACHING OF JESUS the subject is in that most expressive figure of Jesus to which we have referred : His gospel is not a patch to be sewed on the old garment of Judaism, but a wholly new garment. We might carry out the figure a step further by saying quite in harmony with his thought that into the texture of that garment have been woven all the elements of Judaism which are adapted to become parts of its permanent and perfect structure. r While, then, we are not under the old system at all, it (must always have the greatest value in helping us to [understand historically its ow^T'ftlffilment Tti Christianity. To speak in Paul's language, the Old Testament is glori- ous, but not with " the glory that surpasseth " (2 Cor. iii. 10) ; that is, it has its true glory in the fact that its mission was to prepare for and to usher in a more perfect system. It was glorious, not so much in itself, as in the great end which it contemplated. In this view it will be seen that the old system could well be both temporary and divine. Its glory lay in the * very fact that it was to give itself up to decay in order that from it, as from the seed, a larger life might spring. Had this truth been clearly seen by the Church of the apostolic age, many great controversies and alienations would have been avoided. It was naturally hard for those who had been reared and trained as Jews to see the sufficiency and * independence of Christianity and to recognize the comple- mentary truth that the Jewish religion had waxed old and was ready to vanish away. To this difficulty of transcend- ing their ancestral religion and of apprehending the new- ness and sufficiency of the gospel, Jesus refers in the saying : " No man having drunk old wine desireth new ; for he saith, the old is good" (Lk. v. 39). It required a vision to convince Peter of the largeness and newness of the gospel, and even then he did not continue consistent in his conviction. The whole dispute about circumcision which so tried the soul of the apostle Paul would have been settled in an instant if all could have seen Christ's truth of fulfilment. It was incapable of real settlement except upon Paul's bold principle that the Christian is not under the law, either in whole or in part. /Of "SOY, /SO CHAPTER III THE KINGDOM OF GOD y<9 "The Kingdom of God " is one of the phrases which we most frequently hear on the lips of Jesus. We may there- fore believe that it represents one of his most fundamental and characteristic ideas. According to Mark, his first announcement of the " Gospel of God " consisted in his saying, " The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe in the gospel" (i. 15). Our purpose requires us to examine the historical basis of the conception, the development of it by our Lord, and its fitness to serve the ends of his teaching and work. 1 We observe at the outset that Matthew usually employs the phrase, "the Kingdom of heaven," instead of "the Kingdom^ of God?' Several difficult questions arise in connection with the former term : Does it mean the same a,s "JjteKingdpm pf Jjod " ? What is the force of the defining genitive " of heaven " (T ovpav&v) ? Was this titleprobably^employed by Jeans himself? There is no indication in Matthew's usage that the phrase " the King- dom of heaven " bears any different sense from its alterna- tive designation. The two are used interchangeably in the first Gospel (cf. Mt. vi. 10, 33; xii. 28; xxi. 21, 43). It seems probable that the genitive denotes the origin and the consequent attributes nf thp. Kingdom. 2 In contrast 1 Several monographs on the subject have appeared within recent years, such as: E. Issel, Die Lehre vom Reiche Gottes im neuen Testa- ment, 1891 ; O. Schmoller, Die Lehre vom Reiche Gottes in den Schriften des neuen Testaments, 1891 ; J. Weiss, Die Predigt Christi vom Reiche Gottes, 1892 ; A. Titius, Jesu Lehre vom Reiche Gottes, 1895 ; W. Lut- gert, Das Reich Gottes nach den synoptischen Evangelien, 1895. 2 So Beyschlag, .V. T. Tfieol. I. 42 (Bk. I. ch. ii. 1). Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, I. 371 (orig. p. 299), following Schurer, maintains 27 28 THE SYNOPTIC TEACHING OP JESUS to earthly kingdoms, this Kingdom is heavenly in origin and character ; it is governed by heavenly, that is, spiritual and eternal, laws. 1 It emanates from heaven, and heaven is the seat of the authority which obtains within it. Its law is the will of God. It exists among men in proportion as they live in conformity with the divine will, and realize in personal and social life the purposes of God's holy love. The Kingdom of God on earth is therefore the domain in *" whigh jGod's holy will is done in and amongmgn. "" *- We must now consider its relation to Old ^Testament ideas. Jewish religious thought was penetrated withjihe idea of a^ coming King and Kingdom. Out of Zion the law was to go forth (Is. ii. 3) ; the herald of good tidings should declare, Thy God reigneth (lii. 7) ; a great suc- cessor of David should sit upon the throne of Israel (Jer. xxiii. 5 ; xxxiii. 17). In later prophecies, under the stress of foreign oppression, the idea of a coming Kingdom of God which should overthrow all opposing powers came out in even stronger relief : " In the days of those kings that "heaven" is here a metonymy for " God." The Rabbinical use of this periphrasis, to which Wendt appeals, cannot establish this view in the face of the fact that our sources never represent Jesus as using "heaven" as a name for God (per contra, see Mt. v. 34). Weiss understands by "Kingdom of heaven," the Kingdom to be perfected in heaven, in contrast to the Jewish theocracy. Bibl, Theol., 138, c. 8. 1 Beyschlag, I. 42 (Bk. I. ch. ii. 1), holds that it was the title which Jesus preferred to use. Wendt, Teaching, I. 371 (orig. p. 299). thinks that Jesus did not use the phrase, because Luke, even where he follows the \6-yta, uses "Kingdom of God," and because the first evangelist, even when incorporating Mark into his narrative, employs " Kingdom of heaven." Cf. Briggs, Messiah of the Gospels, p. 79. Weiss, Bibl. Theol., 138, c. 8, gives a wholly different reason for holding that Jesus did not speak of the " Kingdom of heaven." The term was "selected by the evan- gelist, because with the fall of Jerusalem the hope of a perfecting of the theocracy in Israel on earth vanished." Bruce, Kingdom of God, p. 59, aptly points out that while Jesus' employment of the phrase (in the sense which Weiss attaches to it) would be quite out of the question on Weiss's theory that Jesus conceived of the Kingdom as consisting merely in the realization of Jewish theocratic hopes, it is quite competent to inquire whether his use of it is not in itself quite as probable as this theory. The phrase does not seem to be used in the eschatological sense which Weiss attaches to it. In any case, the natural meaning of the title does not favor Weiss's theory of Jesus' doctrine of the Kingdom. THE KINGDOM OP GOD 29 shall the God of heaven set up a Kingdom which shall never be destroyed, nor shall the sovereignty thereof be left to another people; but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever " (Dan. ii. 44). The suffering and degradation of the nation under foreign rule during the years immediately preceding Christ's appearance served to intensify, if they also served to secularize, this expectation. The propheticdeclarations^ concerning the coming 1 King- dom are looted, in~turn7in the whole Old Testament con- ception of the relation of God to his pp.nplp. The idea or a government of God among men a "theocracy," as Josephus happily expressed it was absolutelyninda- mental in the life of the Jewish nation. It lay at the basis of the covenant-relation. As God's " peculiar treas- ure," Israel was to be unto him "a Kingdom of priests, and an holy nation" (Ex. xix. 5, 6). When, therefore, Jesus spoke of the Kingdom of God he spoke the language of current religious thought in Judaism. He touched a responsive chord in the heart of the nation. We may find just here the motive of Jesus in employing the term, and the fitness of it for the purposes of his teaching. It is a priori probable from the dominance of the idea under consideration in Jewish thought that the phrase "Kingdom of God" was a current expression in Israel. The term is several times employed in the New Testament in such a way as to indicate that it was in common use among the people (Mk. xv. 43; Lk. xiv. 15, xvii. 20). The nation was living in constant expectation of its appearance (Lk. xix. 11 ; Acts i. 6). That Jesus' idea o|^ the Kingdom was intended to have some connection with the Old Testament Messianic hope and with the Expectations current in bis time does not admit of reaspn- ab e doubtZ The point to be determined is, How ?ar was Jesus' conception of the Kingdonrnew? This ques- tion CanHBe satisfactorily answered only after an investi- gation of the teaching of Jesus upon the subject. One or two general considerations, however, may here be pre- sented. 30 THE SYNOPTIC TEACHING OF JESUS ' ^ The noblest minds in the Jewish nation, such as the great prophets, conceived it to be the destiny of Israel to bear the knowledge of God^which she possessed to all TnanTdnjL The Messianic King was to have universal sway. His Kingdom was to be as wide as the world. The knowledge of Jehovah was to fill the earth. Nations should come to its light, and kings to the brightness of its rising (Is. Ix. 3, 4; Jer. xxxi. 34). But to this splendid ideal the nation as a whole did not rise, and it sank farther and farther away from it as the time drew near the birth of Christ. The great coming good was more and more conceived of as ji monopoly of divine favor to be enjoyed by Israel alone, and thus the Kingdom or reign of God, instead of embracing in its idea and intent the whole human family, became narrowed so as to include only the lineal descendants of Abraham. At the same time the idea of the Kingdom becarQft more and jmnrft worldly, or political. TKe idea of power which, in the prophetic con- ception of the Kingdom had been combined with that of righteousness, became th^dominant element in the Messi- anic hope. The Messialrxq^s conceived of as a second David, who should reconstitute the Jewish nation in power and glory, throw off the yoke of foreign domina- tion, and trample Israel's enemies in the dust. The later Jewish literature is permeated with this conception of the Messianic reign, and the New Testament contains unmis- takable traces of its prevalence at the time of Christ. , ^ The question now arises : Di^ Jesus fall into line with these Jewish conceptions or did he rise hig-h afooyjLtliem even as they were cherished by the loftiest prophetic minds ? Weiss Has elaborated and defendedthe^Qrjae^view. 1 He hotels thaTilTWasJihe exgectationoF Jesus^to reconstitute the Jewish nation in freedom, prosperity, and happiness. The course of events, however, gradually forced his mind away fa)m_jjiejfoeam of political independence and tem- poral well being to the idea of founding a spiritual society composed of such as were possessed of certain qualities of heart. 1 In his various writings, but most fully in his Life of Christ. THE KINGDOM OF GOD 31 5 ' Now, while we do not deny a development in Jesus' joe trine ofjthe Kingdom, we cannot help thinking that this is a statement of the case which the facts do npJLjyarrant. IThis theory does not attribute to the mind of Jesus as great k breadth and spirituality of view as the prophets them- |elves enjoyed. It is derogatory to the originality of Jesus. We maintain, on the contrary, that he took UP the best ideals of Jewish prophecy and lifted them to even grander heights^ He seT~sside the limitations of view in which -~ p, the idea of the Kingdom of God had been apprehended in Old Testament times, and gave that idea its true univer- sality and spirituality. The Kingdom_pf God was for him something- iatgej, because more^piritual^ than jfche JewLsn state had ever been: something more spiritual than any outward organization could ever be. Jesus' ideaToF the Kingdom was rooted in the Old Testament, but it rose above the limited conceptions in which the Old Testament had presented the Messianic hope ; much more did it rise above th&j?oj>u.lar_ ideals and jjtand in sharp contrast to them. f^ This view is confirmed by the very way in which Jesus appeared announcing his Kingdom. He proclaimed it as something new anoLxHstinp-tiye. The time of preparation for it had passed ; he was now to begin its establishment (Mk. i. 15). What he says of his truth in general is applicable to his doctrine of the Kingdom ; it is new cloth and must not be stitched onto the old garment of Juda- ism ; it is new wine and must not be put into old wine- skins (Mk. ii. 21, 22). It was not strange that the people were astonished at his teaching (Mt. vii. 28, 29 ; Mk. i. 27), because there was in it a breadth of view and an ele- vated spirituality to which they were~whoily unaccustomed. 1 Biit wehave still more direct r7" perous political commonwealth.^ TTie Gospels narrate a series of incidents in which his view comes out in strong- est contrast to that conception. What else, indeed, is the meaning of his^ieniptatioji^at the very beginning of his ministry? Whatever view be taken of the historical 32 THE SYNOPTIC TEACHING OF JESUS character of that event, all our sources bear witness to the fact that on the very threshold of his public work Jesus facecLthe choice between the temporal and spiritual con- ceptions of his messiahship. The popular demand for a wonder-worEng leader who should achieve power and glory in the world he promptly and decisively repudiated. He chose instead the method of spiritual leadership and the way of self-sacrifice. C ) The same idea of the Kingdom is clearly'reflected when, being asked, who is greatest in the Kingdom of God, he replies that humility is the test of greatness inJbhaJLKing- dom (Mt. xviii. 4). Of similar import is his saying that TieTwho serves most is greatest in his Kingdom (Mt. xx. 5&)r But even more sharply does the ^contrast between the political conception of the Kingdom and Jesus' idea appear when, being asked by the Pharisees when the Kingdom of God should come, he said, " The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation : neither shall they say, Lo here ! or, There ! for lo, the Kingdom of God is in the of you" (Lk. xvn. zO, 21). In view ot tins coh- trast we are not surprised to find that after the resurrec- tion his disciples had not entered sufficiently into his thought to suppose that the expected Kingdom had yet been established. " We hoped that it was he which should redeem Israel " (Lk. xxiv. 21), they said, but it is clear that they regarded this hope as disappointed. To the same purpose was the question which they put to him during the forty days: "Lord, dost thou at this time restore the Kingdom to Israel?" (Acts i. 6). It is obvi- ous that by the redemption of Israel and the restoration of the Kingdom to Israel they referred to the ^establishment of^the Jewia^ ****,$ aH the fulfilment of the nation's hopes for temporal prosperity and victory over its foes. Jesus' whole teaching and conduct during his entire ministry had not seemed to them, who had constantly heard and ob- served him, to have accomplished anything in this direc- tion. From their standpoint he had done nothing which looked toward Israel's redemption. It may not be per- fectly easy to explain why, on the supposition that Jesus' THE KINGDOM OF GOD 33 view was in sharp contrast to the popular idea, his dis- ciples had not been able to rise into fuller sympathy with his conception; but it is_certainly far harder to explain why, on the supposition that his view resembled the popu- lar expectation, the disciples, who still cherished the popu- lar idea, should have regarded his teaching and action as / standing in sharpest contrast to all their long-cherished (Jiopes. No conclusion is warranted except this, that the teaching of Jesu^conp.praing hJR Kingdom and his method of 'establTshingjt^WOTB so wholly out of line with the ambi^ lions and expectations of the "Jewish pegpTe that evelThis own disciples were ready, at the encFofJiis public career, to" declare his anticipated work a failure. But this con- clusion may be lurther tested by what Jesus directly taught concerning the nature of the Kingdom and the ^method of its progress. 5 / Jesus taught that membership in the Kingdom was de- pendenflTpon certain ethical andjspiritual qualities^ The Kingdom is composed of those who possess a certain kind of character. It cannot, therefore, be an outward organi- zation whose members are bound together by any such bonds as common ancestry, language, self-interest, or the occupancy of a common territory. If Matthew's version of the beatitudes is followed, they cojitain a forcible setting- fortlTot meT spiritual qualifications for membersjnpjn the Kingdom. Humility, meekness, eager desire for right- eousness, mercifulness, purity of heart, and peacemaking are the conditions of participating in the Kingdom and the characteristics of its members. It has been the more common view of interpreters that Matthew's version was more original than Luke's (vi. 20 $sJ^i^in^n^hints_respeGtiiig the nature of the Kingdomisttmtaj^ejJ^in^^^ Jesus taught hisTdfsciples to pray : "Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth" (Mt. vi. 10). The second of these petitions is an explanation and ampli- fication of the first. 1 The Kingdom comes in proportion Holtzmann, Wendt, and Briggs, however, hold to the greater originality of Luke's version. According to Wendt, the beatitudes originally ex- pressed, not the conditions of participating in the salvation of the King- dom, but the worth of this salvation : Even the poor are really rich ; the sorrowful are really happy, if they possess this heavenly good. The woes are regarded as the reverse side of these blessings. Lehre Jesu, pp. 53- 57. A similar view is taken by Briggs, who urges literary considerations in favor of the originality of Luke, and lays stress upon the voluntariness of the poverty and hardships which were the condition of sharing in the blessings of the Kingdom. Messiah of the Gospels, pp. 172, 173. 1 Wendt, Lehre Jesu, pp. 97, 98, following Luke's version (xi. 2 sq.) of the prayer in preference to Matthew's, treats the words: "Thy will be done," etc., as an addition by the first evangelist. No reason is given for this judgment, and it seems to involve an unwarranted impoverish- ment of the prayer. Weiss justly remarks that the first petition points to the preliminary condition, the third to the final purpose of the coming Kingdom, thus suggesting a logical sequence and completeness of thought. Moreover, a reminiscence of the third petition is found not only in Mat- thew (xxvi. 42), but in Luke (xxii. 42). "Luke," adds Weiss, "has omitted this petition, because if the second one is fully granted, it involves the fulfilment of the third ; and that was sufficient for his Gentile readers. It was not without special purpose, however, that Jesus added this request THE KINGDOM OF GOD 35 as God's will is done among men. The Kingdom is ^pn> posed_of_all_wjio__obej that_will. The perfect doing of (rod's will by men would be the perfection of his Kingdom on earth. Although Jesus has nowhere explicitly defined the phrase, Kingdom of God, a clear view of its essential nature, as he conceived it, is implied in these words. They justify the conclusion that by the Kingdom of God Jesus meant "the reign of divine love exercised J>y God in his grace over bunian hearts__believing^ in_ hls""lave7 and con- stratnecl thej i elj5 r to yield him gralefuTaflecBon and devoted Another prominent idea of Jesus respecting the King- dom is tha/t |fc ig a growing affair. Its coming is a long historical process. Various aspects of this progress of the Kingdom in the world are set forth in a group of parables which are designed to illustrate its nature. One of the most significant of these is preserved by Mark alone (iv. 26-29). It likens the growth of the Kingdom to the slow and mysterious development of seed-grain when it is sown in the earth. It pictures the husbandman as sowing the seed and then waiting while Nature does her work. He sleeps and rises awaiting the movement of the divinely appointed process, and powerless to understand the mys- tery of growth. Meantime, the natural processes are going forward. " The earth bringeth forth fruit of herself ; first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear." " So is the Kingdom of God." It comes slowly, silently, mysteriously. Divine forces are operating to carry for- ward its development. In a rudimentary form the King- dom of God had always been in the world ; in an important sense it came when Christ came and entered upon his historic mission ; but in a still wider view it keeps on coming through all the courses of human history, and The perfect realization of the Kingdom of God will undoubtedly bring with it the fulness of all promised blessings, but the desires of the disciples were still preponderatingly directed to the external welfare of the nation." Life of Christ, II. 350 (Bk. IV. ch. xi.) ; cf. Das Matthausevangelium, p. 184. 1 Bruce, Kinydom of God, p. 46. 36 THE SYNOPTIC TEACHING OF JESUS reaches its culmination only in the completion of the work of redemption. , ^ ] Of the other parables which are based upon the analogy f between spiritual and natural growth (Mt. xiii.) that of 1 the Sower is designed to depict the reception with which his truth meets from various classes of hearers ; that of the ) Mustard-seed describes the great results which flow from y small beginnings the extension of the Kingdom, while the parable of the Leaven depicts the tendency of the King- ttom to permeate society the intensive development of the spiritual life in humanity. \t ^ ' The incomparable value of the Kingdom, justifying the greatest sacrifice in order to obtain it, is set forth in the parable of the Treasure hid in the field and in that of the Merchant seeking goodly pearls, while the parables of the Tares and of the Drag-net set forth the idea that the outward appearance of belonging to the Kingdom will be assumed by some who are not genuine members of it; there will be counterfeit Christians whom God alone can distinguish from the true. These parables also serve, indirectly, to illustrate the nature of the Kingdom's de- velopment. It encounters constant hindrance and embar- rassment arising from the insusceptibility and wickedness with which it constantly meets, and is compelled to con- tend. Again, the Kingdom is universal in its design and scow. It is for all who fulfil the spiritual conditions of partici- pating in its benefits. It knows no racial, social, or terri- torial limits. It is true that Christ offered himself and his Kingdom to the Jewish people. They were the people of revelation. Their history had been a special preparation for the coming of the Kingdom in its completed idea and form. To them, therefore, an economic precedence was accorded, in agreement with the providential law which Paul afterwards enunciated : " To the Jew first, and also to the Greek" (Rom. i. 16). The Jews were the "sons of the Kingdom " (Matt. viii. 12) by right and privilege, but not in such a sense that they should not be "cast forth" in case they failed to fulfil the conditions of repent- THE KINGDOM OF GOD 37 ance, humility, and purity of heart. This the nation as a whole did. " Therefore," said Jesus, " the Kingdom of God shall be taken away from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof" (Mt. xxi. 43). The teaching of Jesus concerning his Kingdom has everywhere the note of universality in it. It was for all men who would enter it. The most abandoned sinners might enter it, and did enter it in greater numbers than did the religious leaders of the time (Mt. xxi. 31). To say that the Kingdom is universal in idea is but to say that Christ came to save the lost. The Kingdom is a gracious boon to sinful and needy humanity. Its universality is involved in its spirituality. No external limitations can be imposed upon its destination so long as the conditions of entering it are internal. As for the apostle Paul the universality of the gospel stood connected with the inner condition of receiving it, namely, faith, so in the teaching of Jesus there is the closest connection between the spirit- ual conditions of entering the Kingdom and its essential universality. John the Baptist may have conceived of the Kingdom of God whose coming he heralded as consist- ing of a purified Israel the "wheat" of the nation which should be left after the " chaff " had been winnowed out and consumed by the Messiah, but the conception of Jesus was vastly broader and higher. He knew that his King- dom was not to come in the world by any quick transfor- mation of the Jewish nation as such or by some sudden stroke of divine power as the people expected and as even the prophets often described it as doing. He knew that it would not spring up complete in some great crisis, but that its coming would be a great and gradual movement of God in history which should go on through the ages. It results from this conception that the Kingdom may be spoken of now as present, now as future. It was already present in its beginnings when Jesus was on earth, yet its consummation was future. He dwells now on the one, now on the other aspect of his Kingdom without speaking explicitly of the relation of the two aspects and without any consciousness of contradiction between them. That 38 THE SYNOPTIC TEACHING OF JESUS which involves a world-historical process must be, at anj given moment, in the nature of the case, both past, pres- ent, and future. The most explicit recognition of the Kingdom as a present fact is found in such passages as : " The Kingdom of God is among you " (eVro? vpwv, Lk. xvii. 21) ; " The Kingdom of God is come upon you" (e 5 v/^a?, Mt. xii. 28). But numerous other passages imply the same idea, as when Jesus says that from the days of John the Baptist the Kingdom of heaven was being taken by violence (Mt. xi. 12) stormed, as it were, by the lost and perishing in their eager desire to enter it. In like manner the parables of the Sower, the Tares, the Mustard-seed, and the Leaven all rest upon the view that the Kingdom is a present force which has already begun to develop itself in the world. Jesus spoke of persons who were entering it at the time (Mt. xxi. 31 ; xxiii. 13), and called upon men to seek it (Mt. vi. 33), and to enter the narrow door into life (Mt. vii. 13), which is but a name for the blessing of the King- dom. Moreover, the humblest member of the Kingdom of God (Mt. xi. 11), that is, the least disciple of Christ, is said to be greater than John the Baptist ; that is, he enjoys greater privileges and stands upon a higher plane of reve- lation. This saying assumes that the Kingdom is a pres- ent reality. And yet, entrance into the Kingdom is often spoken of as something that is to take place in the future, and the Kingdom itself described as something that is yet to come. When Jesus said, on one occasion, that some of those who heard him speak should not die till they saw the Kingdom of God come with power (Mk. ix. 1), he doubtless referred to some future epoch at which the Kingdom should ad- vance to a new stage of its development. When, again, he spoke of the time when men should come from the east and from the west to sit down in the Kingdom of God (Lk. xiii. 29), and when, at the last supper, he referred to the repast which he should enjoy with his discip}3S in the Kingdom of God (Mk. xiv. 25), he seems clearly to uave had in mind the consummation of the Kingdom in THE KINGDOM OF GOD 39 heaven. He probably spoke of the Kingdom in this es- chatological sense when he said to his disciples that unless their righteousness exceeded that of the scribes and Phari- sees they should not enter into the Kingdom of God (Mt. v. 20). Both the present and the future aspect of the Kingdom are recognized in the words : " Whosoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child, he shall in no wise enter therein " (Mk. x. 15). The question now arises : On what principle is this ap- parent inconsistency in the use of the title to be explained? Some scholars hold that, at the beginning of his ministry, Jesus did expect that his Kingdom in its heavenly perfec- tion was to be suddenly and miraculously introduced, and that he afterwards came to perceive that the Kingdom was to be established on earth by a process of development. 1 On this view one set of expressions might be regarded as reflecting his less mature conception, and the other as dis- closing a new aspect of his thought concerning the King- dom. The capital objection to this theory is that we do not find Jesus speaking in his earlier sayings of his King- dom as belonging to some future epoch, and supplement- ing this idea later by referring to it as already present, and as subject to an earthly development. 2 Another solution is that Jesus always thought of his Kingdom as future, and the apparent references to it as already present are merely proleptic, and really refer to the course of Christian history which must precede the coming of the Kingdom. This view is frequently ex- pressed in Meyer's Commentary. It seems to me to pro- ceed upon an unnatural interpretation of many texts. It is, for example, a singular inversion of a natural sequence of ideas to suppose that the petition : " Thy Kingdom come," refers to the end of the world, and that the suc- ceeding petition, " Thy will be done on earth," etc., refers to a condition which must be fulfilled in the life of believ- ers before the previous petition can be realized. It is 1 So, substantially, Beyschlag, Leben Jesu, and Baldensperger, Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu, passim. 8 For a detailed critique of this theory, see Wendt, Teaching, I. 380 sq. 40 THE SYNOPTIC TEACHING OF JESUS equally unnatural to interpret the words : " The Kingdom of God is among you," as meaning only that the Messiah, the King and bearer of the Kingdom, was in their midst (Meyer). We conclude, therefore, that the varied language of Jesus respecting the coming of this Kingdom is best ex- plained by supposing him to have taken a comprehensive view of its nature and progress. He conceived of the Kingdom as already present, but in its fuller development and in its final perfection it was still future. This large, free use of the term, according to which now one, now another, aspect of the Kingdom is dwelt upon, renders it impossible to define the Kingdom adequately in any single formula. It is difficult to define, not because it means nothing in particular, but because it means so much. Specific features of Christ's conception of the subject will come up for consideration as we proceed. CHAPTER IV THE SON OF MAN ' To determine the meaning of the title " Son of man " is one of the most difficult tasks which confront the stu- dent of the New Testament. When we carefully examine the passages in which it is used in the Synoptics we find that they naturally fall into three classes. In jgne^ group ^ of sayings the title is used with reference to Jesus^artlily * / O ^^^^^^^*MBHMMMHB^^ life: "The Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sms" (Mk. ii. 10); "is Lord of the Sabbath" (ii. 28); " hath not where to lay his head " (Mt. viii. 20) ; " is come to seek and to save that which is lost" (Lk. xix. 10). In a second group the title is associated with his sufferings 2. O 1. -_. o and aeafn : " The Son of man must suffer many things " (Mk. viii. 31) ; " is delivered up into the hands of men " (Mk. ix. 31) ; " goeth (to death) even as it is written of him" (Mk. xiv. 21). In a third group the title is used in 7 connection with his pjarousia. Examples of this usage are: "Then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven" (Mt. xxiv. 31), and "When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the angels with him," etc. (Mt. xxv. 31). The second of these groups of pas- sages emphasizes the hmnj]iation, the third the majesty, of the Son of man. Most of the passages of thenrst group may be regarded as more or less akin to those of the second or the third. The question, then, may be put in this form : Does the title denote primarily humiliation,*-, or some kindred thought, or does it suggest exaltation and majesty ? A preliminary question arises here : was " the Son of man" a current Messianic title in Jesus' time? Most 41 e 42 THE SYNOPTIC TEACHING OF JESUS scholars have answered this question in the negative. 1 In favor of this view it is said that Jesus' use of the title per- plexed the Jews, who thereby showed that they were not familiar with it : " How sayest thou, ' the Son of man ' must be lifted up ? Who is this, ' the Son of man ' ? " (Jn. xii. 34). But to this it is replied that it was the strangeness of the new conception of the Son of man, not the strangeness of the title itself, which perplexed the Jews. The idea that the Messianic Son of man should suffer death was what surprised and shocked them, and led them to say : " We have been taught to think that the Messiah abides forever ; who is this Son of man who must suffer and die?" 2 The conclusion that the designation was not a current Messianic title has also been derived from the question which drew out Peter's confession (Mt. xvi. 13). Jesus asks : " Who do men say that the Son of man is ? " Various replies are given, among them Peter's that he is the Messiah, showing that " the Son of man " in this question could not have been understood by the dis- ciples as a synonym for the Messiah. This would be a forcible consideration but for the fact that Matthew's ver- sion of the incident is an amplification of the simpler narra- tive in Mark (viii. 27), where the title " Son of man " is not employed in the conversation. Moreover, it is not found in Luke's version of the narrative (ix. 18 sq.~). No conclu- sion, therefore, can be drawn from this passage, although, as Professor Bruce has pointed out, it may still be claimed that " the substitution of the title for the personal pronoun by the first evangelist is significant, as showing that at the time when his Gospel was written, the name ' Son of man ' was not regarded as a synonym for Christ." 3 A much more forcible argument in favor of the supposi- tion that " the Son of man " was not a Messianic title in 1 So Stanton, The Jewish and the Christian Messiah, p. 240 ; Drum- mond, The Jewish Messiah, p. 284 ; c/. Ch. I. Sec. IV. ; Holtzmann, Neutest. Theol. I. 262. 2 So Meyer in loco, and Schiirer, The Jewish People, Div. II. Vol. III. p. 69 ( 32. 2). 8 The Kingdom of God, pp. 167, 168. THE SON OF MAN 43 current use in Jesus' day is, that although he carefully avoided making a public declaration of his messiahship, and sought to prevent such a declaration from being made by others down to the end of his Galilean ministry, he applies the name " Son of man " to himself frequently and from the first. If the title had been understood as a synonym for Messiah, this use of it would have been equivalent to a declaration of his messiahship. It is replied that Jesus used the title enigmatically, meaning by it something quite different from what it meant in popular usage. 1 But this answer is hardly sufficient, because if the phrase had been a current Messianic title, the people would have understood him by the use of it to proclaim himself as the Messiah, whatever differences there might have been between their conceptions and his of Messiah's character and work. It is easy to see how in the application to himself of a current Messianic title, he might mean more than the people meant by it, but it is not easy to see how he could have meant less than to proclaim that he was the Messiah. In that case how could his use of it have been really "enigmatic"? Another consideration looking towards the conclusion that the phrase was not a current Messianic title is this : " the Son of man " was a self-designation of Jesus. The Synop- tists have not themselves applied this name to him, and they lead us to infer that his immediate disciples did not. 2 Why should they have refrained from the use of a familiar Mes- sianic title which he himself so freely employed? The reply is made that the fact that they refrained from its use was due to its enigmatic character ; 3 but was it really enig- matic if familiar to them and to the people generally as a synonym for Messiah? These last two considerations seem to me to have a good deal of weight in favor of the view that the title was not commonly used or understood as a name for the Messiah. 1 So R. H. Charles, Book of Enoch; appendix B : "The Son of Man ; its Origin and Meaning," p. 317. 2 The title is not used by Paul, and occurs but once in the Acts (vii. 66). It is found eleven times in the Fourth Gospel. Charles, op. cit., p. 316. 44 THE SYNOPTIC TEACHING OF JESUS / ^ The bearing upon our inquiry of the use which is made of the phrase " Son of man," in the similitudes of the Book of Enoch (chs. xxxvii.-lxxi.), is uncertain, because their date is disputed. In those chapters the title is frequently used as a Messianic designation, as, for example : " And I asked the angel who went with me and showed me all the hidden things, concerning that Son of man, who he was, and whence he was," etc. (xlvi. 1), "For the Son of man has appeared and sits on the throne of his glory," etc. (Ixix. 29). If these portions of the book are post-Christian, the passages would merely illustrate the Messianic sense which the title had in Christian usage. If, on the contrary, they are pre-Christian, 1 we should have one example (if the only one), of a Messianic use of the title to which the usage of Jesus may have attached itself. Even on this view, how- ever, we could not be sure that Jesus was familiar with this usage, and it might have been too limited and excep- tional to have influenced his own. ~) Is When these various considerations are taken together, we think that they establish the conclusion that the title was not in current use as a designation of the Messiah. It was not, however, an unknown term ; it was found in the Old Testament. It may have been occasionally employed in a Messianic sense, but it was not current coin in the speech of the people concerning the Messiah. There was something distinctive in Jesus' use of it. Although not a new title, it received from his hand a certain stamp of originality and uniqueness. We turn, then, to the question of its origin and connec- tion with Old Testament language. The Hebrew use of the term " son " to denote a relation of likeness or parti- cipation in that to which sonship is predicated, is familiar, and has passed over into the New Testament. The " son of the handmaid" (Gal. iv. 30) is a servant; the "sons of the Kingdom" (Mt. viii. 12) are those who should participate in its truths and blessings. So a "son of man " may mean simply one who shares human qualities, 1 As SchUrer maintains, JewtsA People, Div. II. Vol. III. p. 66 ( 32. 2) ; Charles, op. cit., p. 30, assigns the Similitudes to 95-64 B.C. THE SON OF MAN 45 as, for example, frailty or mortality, in contrast to God, thus : " What is man, that thou art mindful of him, And the son of man, that thou visitest him?" (Ps. viii. 4.) In this way " Son of man " becomes an emphatic designa- tion for man in his characteristic attributes of weakness and helplessness (Num. xxiii. 19; Job xvi. 21; xxv. 6). In this sense the title is applied about eighty times to Ezekiel as a reminder of his weakness and mortality, and as an incentive to humility in the fulfilment of his prophetic calling. In Dan. vii. a symbolic description is given of foreign nations under the designation of "beasts." Finally, the seer beholds, in contrast to these powers whose dominion ceases, another figure coming with the clouds of heaven and establishing an everlasting Kingdom: "I saw in the night visions, and, behold, there came with the clouds of heaven one like unto a son of man, and he came even to the ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a king- dom, that all the peoples, nations, and languages, should serve him : his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his Kingdom that which shall not be destroyed" (Dan. vii. 13, 14). This passage is com- monly understood to be a picture of Israel which, in con- trast to the " beasts," the foreign nations, is likened to the noble human form. That it describes the nation, rather than an individual, is rendered probable by verse 27: "And the Kingdom and the dominion, and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High," etc. The phrase "one like unto a son of man" was no doubt popularly understood as referring to the person of the Messiah. 1 1 Some modern scholars hold this interpretation. Schultz says : "Daniel probably thinks of the Messiah as descending in the last days from heaven, where he dwells with God, and revealing himself in a heavenly form like one of the angel-princes whom the book is elsewhere accustomed to describe as 'like unto a son of man' " (Dan. viii. 15; x. 5, 16). 0. T. Theol. II. 439, 440. 46 THE SYNOPTIC TEACHING OF JESUS It is this passage which, without doubt, underlies the usage of the Book of Enoch. It may be regarded as in the highest degree probable that the use of the title " Son of man " by our Lord had a point of connection with this passage. If so, the con- nection would suggest that " the Son of man " was a title of dignity, and that it belonged to Jesus as the founder of the imperishable Kingdom of God. The apocalyptic origin and use of the term would, moreover, accord well with Jesus' frequent use of the title in connection with his assertions concerning his parousia and the consummation of his Kingdom. A brief survey must now be taken of the principal theories which have been common among scholars respect- ing the meaning which Jesus attached to this self-designa- tion^ Among these we note the following: $ I @D The title meant for Jesus simply " thej\|essiah,^ and was derived directly from Dan. vii. 13. So, e.g., Meyer : " Jesus means nothing else by this title than ' the Messiah'; he means nothing else than the Son of man in the prophecy of Daniel." 1 This view encounters the diffi- culty, already noted, that if Jesus meant by the title simply > " the Messiah," he would have been proclaiming his mes- Y/3 siahship from the beginning of his ministry, which is quite contrary to the Synoptic representation. This theory fits very well the use of the title in the apocalyptic pas- sages, but is inadequate in view of such references as those to the ministrations and non-ascetic life of the Son of man. "^ ffi "Son of man" means the ideal, typical, representr_ live man. This interpretation has been widely current since Schleiermacher. The following are typical expres- sions of it: "> " He calls himself ' Son of man ' because he had ap- peared as a man ; because he belonged to mankind ; be- cause he had done such great things for human nature ; because he was himself the realized ideal of humanity." 2 1 Commentary on Mt. viii. 20. 8 Neander, Life of Christ (Bohn ed.>, p. 90. THE SON OF MAN 47 Reuss says that what is declared by the title " Son of man " is the fact of " the realization of the moral ideal in the person of him who assumed such a name." 1 Stan- ton says : " It is clear that Christ by his phrase repre- sented himself as the head, the type, the ideal of the race." 2 The view advanced by Baur and others, who speak of the Son of man as one qui humani nihil a se alienum putat, and combine this conception with the Danielic idea of majesty, is hardly more than a variation of this theory. Examples of the way in which the theory is applied are : Since the sabbath was made for man (Mk. ii. 27), it falls within the province of his authority who, as the representative man, makes all human inter- ests his care. The Son of man, although he is the ideal man, has not where to lay his head (Mt. viii. 20). y ) Attractive as this theory is, and .true- as its fundamental idea is, in itself considered, there is a serious difficulty in supposing that Jesus used the title under consideration in the sense proposed. The theory finds no point of con- nection between Jesus' use of the term and that which we observe in the Old Testament, unless it combines its characteristic idea, somewhat arbitrarily, with the concep- tion in Daniel. The extra- Biblical use of the phrase lends no support to this interpretation. In fact, this exolana-- tion is too abstract and philosophical to be native to Pales- tinian Judaism, and bears the marks of modern reflection. & *~ wP 1 Th e title may be regarded as connected, primarily, witn the Old Testament representations which use the phrase to emphasize finite lowliness and weakness (in Ezekiel and elsewhere). The popular interpretation of Dan. vii. 13 in a Messianic sense enabled Jesus to avail himself of the phrase as a Messianic designation, although for his mind its content was derived from the Old Testa- jnent representations, which use the term " Son of man " to express creaturehood, weakness, and lowliness. For him there was no contradiction between the Messianic dignity and the human weakness, humility, and suffering 1 History of Christian Theology, I. 199 (orig. I. 231). * The Jewish and Christian Messiah, p. 246. 48 THE SYNOPTIC TEACHING OF JESUS in which his Messianic work should be wrought. On this view we may say that the Daniel passage supplies the form, and the other Old Testament expressions con- cerning the Son of man the content of Jesus' idea. This view is elaborated by Wendt. 1 I must say respecting it that it does not seem natural to explain a Messianic title by reference to an Old Testament usage which was not J o . . _- Messianic and was not popularly supposed to be. More- over, this explanation does not seem to accord very well with the majesty which is ascribed to the Son of man in the apocalyptic passages in our sources ; nor does it seem to me that Wendt succeeds in giving a natural explana- tion of its use in the passages concerning forgiveness and^he sabbath (Mk. ii. 7, 28). 2 "") ^p| Another type of explanation makes use of the Old Testament concept of the Servant of Jehovah in explain- ing the title. Mr. Vernon Bartlet has combined this idea with the theory which I have just explained. 3 Rev. R. H. Charles combines that idea with the notion of majesty found in Daniel, which he regards as the primal source of the designation. 4 According to this view, the notion which is given in Daniel has been influenced and developed by apocalyptic usage, such as we find in the Book of Enoch. In that book the Son of man is a super- natural Being, who sits upon God's throne and possesses universal dominion. The conception furnished by Daniel seems to have been blended with the idea of the Servant of Jehovah, found in the exilic Isaiah. Now when Jesus took up the title, he transformed the conception, as he did all popular ideas, by giving it a deeper or more spirit- ual significance. This transformation is best understood if we suppose that the idea of majesty derived from Dan- iel was modified and spiritualized by having combined with it the idea of the suffering Servant of Jehovah, as pre- 1 Teaching of Jesus, II. 139 sq. (orig. p. 440 sq.). 2 Teaching of Jesus, II. 145 (orig. p. 446). 8 The Expositor, December, 1892. 4 The Book of Enoch; appendix B : " The Son of Man ; its Origin and Meaning" (1893). THE SON OF MAN 49 sented in the second Isaiah. Thus Jesus' use of the title would be analogous to the one clear example of its Messianic import in pre-Christian literature its use in the Book of Enoch. " These two conceptions," says Mr. Charles, " though outwardly antithetic, are, through the transformation of the former, reconciled and fulfilled in a deeper unity in the New Testament Son of man." 1 In Jesus these two characters meet and blend. He is supernatural, majestic, and powerful, but his glory is displayed in self-renunciation and service. His_greatness..is his condescending and sacri- ficial love. He is greatest, but, as such, is servant of all, " If then, we bear in mind the inward synthesis of these two ideals of the past in an ideal, nay, in a Personality transcending them both, we shall find little difficulty in understanding the startling contrasts that present them- selves in the New Testament in connection with this designation." 2 Accordingly it is explained that although the Son of man is homeless, yet he is Lord of the sabbath ; although despised, rejected, and crucified, yet he is Judge of mankind. While tjiis_yiew, no doubt, contains important elements of truth, it encounters the difficulties which we have already noticed in the supposition that " the Son of man " was a current Messianic title. The apparent combination of these two Messianic ideals of Daniel and Isaiah in the Book of Enoch gives but a very uncertain basis for the conclusion that Jesus made a similar combination of them in the title " Son of man." This conclusion must remain precarious while the date of the Similitudes remains so uncertain, and is especially so in view of the doubt that Jesus was in any case familiar with them. 3 We have seen that, in all probability, our^LorcTs use of the title had some historical connection with the passage in Daniel. Thatjmay, therefore, be made the starting-point 1 Op. tit., p. 315. 2 Op. cit., p. 316. 3 Cf. Briggs, The Messiah of the Gospels, p. 25 ; Weiss, Bibl. Theol 16, a. 50 THE SYNOPTIC TEACHING OF JESUS in any effort to explain its meaning. We have also found good reason for believing that it was not a synonym for Messiah, but that it had for the mind of Jesus some unique and distinctive meaning. In naming himself by preference "Son of man" he did not proclaim himself as Messiah. Yet by the title he must have meant to connote qualities which were fundamental in his character. ft I At this point a philological consideration is brought to view which seems important for the discussion. Jesus spoke Aramaic ; 6 vibs rov avOpomov is a Greek translation of the Aramic term barnasha which he used. Wellhausen says : " With emphasis Jesus uniformly used this most universal generic name (Son of man) to designate his own ego. But that name signifies man and nothing further; the Arameans have no other expression for the concep- tion." 1 Wellhausen further maintains that the use of the title by Jesus has no connection with Dan. vii. 13, and that it was because the first Christians erroneously understood the title as a Messianic designation that they translated it by 6 f 109 rov avdpa)7rov, instead of by o avOpwrros, its proper meaning. These opinions, however, are inferences which do not necessarily follow from the alleged Aramaic usage of the phrase. 1 2- It by no means follows from the fact that " Son of man " in Aramaic is a generic designation for man that Jesus could have meant nothing distinctive by the word. By the way in which he used it and the emphasis which he placed upon it, he would be able to impart to it a distinc- tive signification. Particularly would this be the case if, as is probable, the title was in some degree familiar as a designation of majesty. The Gospels show that Jesus did riot avoid the use of the simple J. If " the Son of man " had been for him a perfectly colorless synonym for the personal pronoun /, he would need to have said this Son of man, in order to give the phrase any force as a self- designation. He must, therefore, have used the title to 1 Tsraelit. u. JM. Geschichte, p. 312. A critique of Wellhausen's vie* by Oettli will be found in No. 6 of the Easier Kirchenfreund (1896). For other references, see Holtzinann. Neutest. Theol. I. 256. THE SON OF MAN 51 mark in some way what was peculiar to himself. 1 The question, then, takes this form : What sort of dignity^ what kind of a claim, did Jesus implicitly assert in so naming himself? It is probable that the title designated for Jesus characteristics^ hisj^snnality which accorded with his peculiar life-work. We have seen that the conception whicb^best represented his life-task was that of the King- dom of God. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that as Son^pjT man he conceives himself as head and founder J of the Kingdom of God. The origin and use of the title, so far as we can trace them, accord with this supposition. In Daniel it is the theocratic king who is likened to a son of man. If the usage, of which that in the Book of Enoch is an illustration, influenced our Lord's employment of the term, it would quite naturally fall into line with this explanation, as the Son of man there appears as the glorious founder and head of God's Kingdom. The use of the title in our sources accords well with this view. As his Kingdom is both present and future, so, as Son of man, he has certain experiences to undergo in founding the Kingdom here on earth and a manifestation in glory await- ing him in the consummation of that Kingdom. Espe- cially does this explanation fit the apocalyptic passages which speak of the Son of man as coming in his Kingdom. But since it is through healing, teaching, suffering, and death that Jesus is to establish his Kingdom, it is no less natural to find the Son of man described as engaged in these various works and experiences connected with his calling. y>j r~^ O i To substantially this conclusion an increasing number of scholars now adhere. Despite minor points of differ- ence they agree in making the title in question correlative to the Kingdom of God. I will present a few illustra- tions : ty Y Weiss says " No doubt every Israelite who believed. in Scripture could, in consequence of prophecy, know or a Son of man who, because Jehovah would bring about the completion of salvation through him, had such a divine i See Beyschlag, N. T. Theol. I. 67 (Bk. I. ch. iii. $ 5). 52 THE SYNOPTIC TEACHING OF JESUS calling as no one had ever had, and as no one after him could have." 1 Cf *> The conclusion of Beyschlag is similar. After reviewing the passages, he says : " All these widely diverging utter- ances have one thing in common ; they all treat of the offi- cial sufferings and doings of Jesus ; they all speak of him in so far as he has the task of setting up the Kingdom upon earth." " The Son of man is the divinely invested bearer of the Kingdom that descends from above, that is to be founded from heaven ; it is he who brings in the Kingdom of God." 2 * Holtzmann concludes his investigation thus: "Jesus is and is called Son of man, on the one hand, in every place where by forgiving and healing, teaching and suffer- ing, he proclaims, extends, arid represents the Kingdom of God; but, on the other hand, and especially where, coming on the clouds of heaven, he consummates the Kingdom." 8 ^ This view admits of a natural application to the passages which present the greatest difficulties for other theories. It falls within his province as the founder of the Kingdom to forgive sins (Mk. ii. 10), and to interpret the true sig- nificance and use of the sabbath (Mk. ii. 28). The living of a natural, social (non-ascetic) life (Mt. xi. 19) and the relinquishment of the comforts of home-life (Mt. viii. 20) were conditions for the fulfilment of his heavenly vocation. To speak against his person is less heinous than to deride the Holy Spirit of truth and goodness which speaks in his words and deeds (Mk. iii. 28, 29). To seek and to save the lost (Lk. xix. 10) is an essential part of his work who offers the blessings of his Kingdom to the most wretched and sinful. All thesejpassages of the first groug (see page 41) depict or allude to aspects of his work as founder of the Kingdom. The numerous passages which refer to the ^sufferings and death of the Son of man (Mk. viii. 31 ; ix. 131 ; Mt. ix. 12 ; Lk. xxiv. 7, et a.) simply describe an es- sential conditi^n^ojbhejujfilment of his_calling. an expe- Theol. 16, b. a N. T. Theol. I. 64 (Bk. I. ch. iii. 6). Neutest. Theol. I. 2f3 THE SON OF MAN 53 rience which he knew both from prophecy and from his own consciousness to be essential to the completion of work. But corresponding to the rejection, suffering, and death which he is to experience is the glory with which the Son of man shall come in his Kingdom. The humiliation is off- set by the exaltation. And there is no contradiction be- tween these, since he^ who most humbles himself shall be most exalted (Lk. xiv. 11). The King comes to his throne by the way of the cross. Humility and majesty meet and blend in the character and experience of the Son of man. Was the title, then, for Jesus' own mind a name for Messiah? I believe we must adopt the conclusion to which our whole investigation points, that it had Messi- anic significance for Jesus ; that it was a veiled designa- tion of his_messiahshi.p. We have seen that it was_npt in 'popular "use as a Messianic title. Its use by our Lord jyould no.t therefore carry an explicit assertion of messiah- ship. His use of it involved the claim of a unique mis- sion; a calling distinguishing him from all others. .4s his disciples came to know the nature of that calling, they wouid~lnevitably conclude that it veiled the claim and involved the fact that he was the Messiah. In this way thTterm, though not in itself an equivalent for Messiah, would easily become a Messianic title in actual usage. In the later usage which the Synoptics reflect the apoc- alyptic usage the title could only have been understood by the disciples as a practical equivalent for Messiah, or, at least, as implying messiahship. The term as used by Jesus was more generic than Messiah^jind just on this account it was adapted to his use. But the head and founder of the Kingdom of God was in reality the Messiah, and the more explicit he made his claim to found and complete his Kingdom, the more naturally would "Son of man " assume the character of a Messianic title. And thus this " most unassuming name," " this title which is no title, but the avoidance of every such thing," l easily came to signify what it was used to veil but no less truly implied. 1 Beyschlag, N. T. Theol. I. 66 (Bk. I. ch. iii. 6). CHAPTER V THE SON OF GOD 6s ri> Kpir^piov rov Oeov. See the Hebrew Lexicon of Brown Briggs, and Driver, under D' 58 THE SYNOPTIC TEACHING OF JESUS vah said unto me (the anointed king), Thou art my son ; this day have I begotten thee " (installed thee in thy kingly office). (5) ^The nation of Israel : " Thus saith the Lord, Israel is my son, my firstborn,^ etc. (Ex. iv. 22). This relation is still more fully elaborated in the song of Moses (Deut. xxxii. 6-10). l From these examples it will be seen that the Old Tes- tament idea of sonship to God is that of special nearness to him of special endowments or privileges conferred by him. The nation, its members, especially its king, bear this name as the chosen representatives of Jehovah the special objects of his providential favor and the agents for accomplishing his will. A " son of God " in the Old Testament sense is one uniquely loved, chosen, and en- dowed by God. The title is not used as a specific desig- nation for the Messiah, although the passages cited in which the ideal theocratic king is called Jehovah's " son " and " first-born," point to the appropriateness with which the Messiah might be called par eminence "the Son of God." The historical basis of such a usage is undoubtedly laid in the Old Testament. If the head of the nation is in a peculiar sense God's son, with even greater^propriely^ may the antitypical king~who is to sit on David's throne forever and establish his kingdom to all generations be so designated. In this usage whic^ : w^~have""lraceb^ welmd, no doubt, the generic sense which the title bears in its application to Jesus, although we may expect to find something distinctive in that application of it. Among extra-canonical Jewish writings only the Book of JEnoch and^ fourth Esdras employ the title in question. Examples of its use are as follows : (Jehovah speaks) " For I and my Son will unite with them forever in the paths of uprightness in their lives ; and ye will have peace." 2 "For my Son, Messias, shall be revealed with those that are with him," etc. (4 Es. vii. 28). "And it shall come to pass after these years that my Son, Christ, 1 See Briggs, Messianic Prophecy, pp. 100, 129. a Enoch, CV. 2. THE SON OF GOD 59 shall die," etc. (4 Es. vii. 29). The title is similarly used several times in chs. xiii and xiv. S This usage is clearly a reproduction of that found in the Old Testament, but with this_ jUstinctive feature thatj^my Son 77 isjhere almost a synonym for "Messiah." Since the Messiah is the special object of JeTiovahV love and favor he is preeminently his Son. This sonship to God was inseparable_from^tib.e idea of messiahship. Only one wKo was the Son of God in a special seliise could be the Messiah. From Jewish usage, then, it appears that the title was in occasional use as an approximate synonym for "the Messiah/! This^ same relation between the two terms seems to exist in the JNew Testament usage ^ In Mat- thew's version of Peter's confession the two titles are united in such a way as to indicate that they are kindred but not strictly synonymous : /f^/Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Mt^xvi. 16). 1 The same cor- relation is found in the language of the high priest jf)" Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed? " (Mk. xfr. 61 ; cf. Mt. xxvi. 63). Xlu- bulk tttSBScases the title has an official sound. It is noticeable how Jesus in speaking of himself inJhoth/cbnnections calls himself " the Son of man." The title which was closely allied to " the Messiah " he carefully avoided, except when speaking of that inti- mate fellowship which he sustained with the Father. Jesus did indeed admit that the title was applicable to Him in its officiaTsense, but in his own spontaneous use of ithe denoted by it rather a personal relation of fellow- shijDjind intimacy with God. " According to the JewisE "iclea " (which is reflected in the two passages just noticed), " the_Messianic- Jdng. was- Z*0-iSon of God'; according to Jeans' idea, * the Son of God ' as such was the Messianic ; king." 2 ^^^c. y We now turn to a more particular examination of Jesus' direct use of the title in its application to himself and to 1 If the shorter forms in Mark and Luke be regarded as more original than this, we have still the significance of the first evangelist's^Wmbina- tion of the titles to consider. a Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, II. 133 (orig. p. 436). t>U THE SYNOPTIC TEACHING OF JESUS others. The most significant passage is one which both Matthew and Luke have preserved from the Logia : " All things have been delivered unto me of my Father : and no one knoweth the Son, save the Father ; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him " (Mt. xi. 27 ; Lk. x. 22). Here Jesus asserts in connection with his sonship to God a unique and incomparable knowledge of God and inti- macy with him. That^ the sonship_pf Jesus, as here asserted, has in it something distinctive as compared to the sonship of other men, cannot We doubted.^ Besides the Affirmation of an altogether exceptional mutual knowl- edge between him and God, we observe that God is to him the Father and he is to God the Son in an absolute sense. In addition to these considerations it must be remembered that Jesus never_elsewhere puts himself _in the same category with others when sp.fia.king of God!s fatherhood _or_men.'& aonship to God . Is the sonship of_ Jesus^to God essentially different from that of other men, orisTt^Ifferent only in degree ; different"ui the sense^of j^emg^nbrmal and perfect while theirs is but partially realizedjn t l act ? <> This inquiry raises another question : What constitutes men " sons of God " ? Glorified spirits are said to resem- ble the angels ami so to be " sons of God, being sons of the resurrection" (Lk. xx. 36). Peacemakers are "sons of God " (Mt. v. 9), and men are required to love all men, even their enemies, in order that they may become (yev7)o-0e) sons of their Father who is in heaven (Mt. I v. 45). Thus it appears that conformity to God's will, ' likeness to him in moral motJves_ajid_action, constitutes 'jnen sons of God. God is perfectly goool; he blesses all, the unjust as well as the just. Men become sons of God by becoming like him. This likeness of men to God m its perfection would~mvolve completeness of love (Mt. v. 48). ^ I * Now it is noticeable that other men become sons of God ; Jesus is the Son of God without qualincationJ He does not have to attain this sonship by gradual or partial approach, but possesses it from the first. He perfectly THE SON OF GOD 61 fulfils the divine will, absolutely conforms to the divine good pleasure. He perfectly knows God as his Father in the most intimate and unbroken fellowship. The title Son is for him rather personal than official ; as he uses it, itTemphasizes rather hjs relation to^ God than his relation to jiis life-work. In view of these distinctive features of Jesus' language concerning his own sonship and that of other men, our previous question recurs : Was his sonship different from that of other men in degree only or also in kind? All will admit that hifl snnahip is unique in the jignse that its ideal is perfectly realized in him, while in others frjsjhnt partially fnlfillp.d. Beyschlag says that there is in his sonship " a sublimity and uniqueness of his relation to God which raises him above all other sons of men." l He regards the sinlessness of Jesus as proving that his relation to the Father is original, perfect, and absolute, and that his sonship is thus perfect and absolute, while that of others is but partial and relative. 2 Wendtjthinks that Jesus occasionally " designated himself in distinction from all others as ' the Son of God ' in a preeminent sense." " He has thus regarded himself as ' the Son of God ' Kar ef o^p, since he knew that this mutual relation of loving intercourse subsisted between God and himself in unique perfection." 3 Most recent scholars also agree that the term " Son jrf God " as used in the Synoptics is primarily an ethical one. It emphasizes the perfect union, the absolute intimacy, and mutual knowledge which subsist between the Father and^Jesus^ It is, as we have seen, a personal rather than an official name. It speaks of a relation sustained to God, whether applied to Jesus or to others. The term is not used in a metaphysical sense as denoting Commu- nity of essence. If the use of the title involves some^ thing_mpre than ethical union, it must be by suggestion and implication, rather than^by_direct assertion. Those i N. T. Theol. I. 71 (Bk. I. ch. iii. 8). 3 Leben Jesu, pp. 178, 179. Teaching of Jesus, II. 125, 128 (orig. pp. 429, 432). 62 THE SYNOPTIC TEACHING OF JESUS who hold that it implies no such significance may fairly challenge their opponents to show that it does. They stand upon the direct and primary reference of the title and may maintain that its import is exclusively ethical until something more is shown to be involved in it. It is not strange that at this point there should be a diyiding_of ihfi-ssrays. Wendt, for example, holds that the language of our sources does not warrant us in ascribing to the paternal and filial relation which Jesus regarded as exist- ing between God and himself, a character different in princi- ple from the paternal and filial relation which, according to his teaching, exists between God and the members of his Kingdom. 1 Bey_shlag, after reviewing the passage, says very emphatically : " All these facts make it so certain that the consciousness of Jesus was at bottom purely human, that only an unconquerable dogmatic prejudice, springing from scholastic tradition and misunderstanding of what religion requires, can resist the force of this testi- mony." 2 He maintains the sinlessness of Jesus and the absolute ethical uniqueness of his relation to God, but asserts that the notion that these facts involve a con- sciousness of preexistence or any character transcending human perfection is " a very curious error," through fall- ing into which Paul and John started Jjie Church on ^ wi^pjigjDath in the development_oTtibLeQlogy. i A wicTely different conclusion is drawn by jleuss. After discussing the title "Son of God," he concludes that the relationship which it emphasizes is, indeed, ethi- cal. But he adds that its use necessarily gives rise to further reflection. " In other words," he continues, " this moral relation, if it is really such as we have just de- cribed, does not explain itself, nor is it explained, by any analogies supplied by the history of man. We are neces- sarily led to regard it as the manifestation of a metaphysi- cal relation of a much higher order, and absolutely beyond the reach of any analogy our world can furnish." 3 Reuss 1 Teaching of Jesus, II. 124 (orig. p. 429). 8 N. T. Theol. I. 75 (Bk. I. ch. iii. 10). Hist. Christ. Theol. I. 202 (orig. I. 234, 236). THE SON OF GOD 63 concludes that the apostolic theology wp g a lfigif.ima.t,p. development from Jesus' self-testimony as given in the Synoptics. In an elaborate article on " The Formation and Con- tent of the Messianic Consciousness of Jesus," l Hermann- Schmidt has discussed the view maintained by JBeyschlag that the Synoptic representation does _ not carry us Deyond an ethical human perfection in Jesus. He maintains that we cannoT^neeaurselYag thus from meta- physical^considerations in treating'of this subject, so long as we deal earnestly with the fact of Jesus* sinless- ness. It is futile, argues Schmidt, to assert the ethical perfection of Jesus, and then leave it unexplained and in- explicable. Jesus' consciousness of his sinlessness and of the perfect realization in himself, of the moral ideal, is not accounted for unless a fundamental and permanent dis- tinction between himself and other men is recognized. "The ethical as sucTTis always mediated through the will ; now there meets us in a race in which all others are in themselves igcapiable of reaching the right relation of sonship, a personality which not only can of itself become, but from the first is^ what, in case of others, can only be attained through aid from without, so that the conclusion cannot be avoided that a peculiar essence, a specific nature, and, indeed, one that is not mediated through the will, lies at its basis ; that is, that the life of Jesus has a distinc- tively metaphysical background." 2 I V We must, of course, draw a line very carefully between the__preeise- meaning of our passages as determined by exe- gesis and inferences, however natural, which are derived from that meaning. But we must also admit that the exe- getical result, in the case before us, raises a problem re- specting the person of Jesus Christ, with which the mind cannot decline to deal. As Son of God Jesus stands in a unique relation to the Father. The title involves Jiisjethi- Now we cannofsimpiy stop short with these assertions ; to do so is to decline the problem to 1 Studien u. Kritiken, 1889, p. 423 sq. 2 Op. cit., 435. t 64 THE SYNOPTIC TEACHING OF JESUS which this uniqueness gives rise. Why was Jesus the only sinless man ? Was his sinlessness an accident ? Why has it never been repeated ? If,jis Js admitted, he possessed the clear consciousness of sinlessness, what is the explana- tion of so exceptional and marvellous a fact ? These questions lead over into the field of doctrinal theology which it is not my purpose to enter. My present task requires me simply to expound the conception of the person of Christ which is presented in our sources. The passages examined ascribe to him thejsonsciousness of jsin^ less perfection and of perfect unio'n with God.,, The~nature_ of that union they do not describej_its inner mystery they fnaktT ncT effort to resolve. The Synoptic tradition does hot Tefer T-o the preexistence of Christ. That basis or background of his uniqueness we meet first in Paul. It must here suffice to have pointed out that even the data furnished by the Synoptics do give rise to a great problem concerning the person of Christ. How is he to be explained ? What is the nature of that relation to God which he sustains and which is certainly represented as unique and incomparable ? I have already indicated divergent explanations. We shall see that Paul and John answered these questions by attributing to Christ a personal, eternal preexistence with God. v, J^v. &U. tl* CHAPTER. VI THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD / THE teaching of Jesus concerning God rests upon an Old Testament basisi In contrast to the pantheistic and polytheistic systems .which prevailed among ancient ori- ental nations, Jesus adhered to the Jewish conception of Jehovah as the one only God, the Almighty Creator and Lord of all. He emphasized the spirituality and holiness of God. The doctrine of Jesus _is the ethical monothe- ism of Israelitish religion, elevated, enriched, and purifi^T There is nothing in his doctrine for which the Old Testa- ment does not supply a beginning and basis. It would not, however, be correct to surjpose that Jesus addeoTliothing to the'DH Testament idea of (jrod. "True to his principle that he had not come to destroy, but to Julfil (Mt. v. 17), he cleared away from the foundations which had been laid in the earlier stages of revelation what was temporary and inadequate, and reared upon them a permanent structure. He illustrated the maxim which he commended to his followers when he said that the representatives of his truth and Kingdom would bring out of their treasures things new and old (Mt. xiii. 52). This fulfilling of the idea of God did not consist in sup- plying foreign elements, but in developing, expanding, and clarifying the germs of doctrine which the Jewish people alreadv~possessed, and especially iiTl'el?cumg__tiMJiir jdea from certain prevalent misapplications and- false inferences.^ It would not have accorded with the genius of Jesus' teacliing for him to give_any direct and formal instruction concernmg_the nature of God. He do^gqiQjtjaim-to^define God ; he rather describes how he acts. His teaching is ' r" " 66 66 THE SYNOPTIC TEACHING OF JESUS not abstract, but concrete. In apothegm and parable he pictures how God feels, and what God does in certain conditions. C He aims to rescue the idea of God from the realm of cold and powerless abstraction, and to make it a practical, living power in the heart J Jesus sought to in- spire in men an intense and constant sense of God's pres- ence and care. Hence he did not speak of the attributes of God, but unfolded his character and set forth its relation to human life. It was not so much the terminology of Jesus which was new ; it was the way in whichfhe filled old terms with new meaning by taking them into the field of character. When, for instance, he spoke of God's fatherhood, he showed by what he said about it that it meant for him a certain disposition of God towards men a way of feeling and acting towards them, and involved a corresponding attitude and action on man's part towards him.) "^ In speal^mg of God, Jesus mainly employed two jtitles, Kfng~and Father. Tha former is frqfr infrp.qufent.1y nagd. I It is, indeed, a noticeable fact that although he spoke so loften of the Kingdom of God, he seldom spoke of God as \King. It is, however, quite consonant with the principles which we have just noticed, that Jesus did not discard this current Old Testament designation of Jehovah. He referred, quite in the spirit of Is. Ixvi. 1, to the exaltation of God on his heavenly throne, and described Jerusalem as "the city of the great King" (Mt. v. 35). It is Jehovah in his mode of dealing with men who is pictured in the parables of the Unmerciful Servant (Mt. xviii. 23 *^.) and of the Marriage Feast (Mt. xxii. 2 s^.), both of which begin: "The Kingdom of heaven is likened unto a cer- tain king." This quite incidental and indirect recogni- tion of the kingship of God is to be supplemented by such recognitions of the divine power and sovereignty as are involved in the title, "Lord of heaven and earth" (Mt. xi. 25), and in the frequent ascription to God of bound- less prerogative and power (Mk. x. 27; xii. 24; xiv. 36; Mt.x. 28). I -i ^> jjjit Jesus* characteristic name jfor God was " Father." THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD 67 He not only spoke of God as his own Father, but as jhe Father of men. In this too he built upon the Old Testa- ment, althouglT greatly elevating and widening its idea. "Father" was not indeed the prevalent designation of God in Israel. It is not found, for example, in the Jews' book of devotion, the Psalms, although in one place God is there likened to a Father (Ps. ciii. 13). 1 The prevailing name for God is " King " ; e.g. : " my King and my God " / (Ps. v. 2); "The Lord of hosts is the King of glory" (Ps. xxiv. 10) ; and men are often described as the King's "servants" (Ps. xxvii. 9; xxxi. 16). In the Old Testament God's fatherhood designates a special relation, which he sustains to the Jewishpeople. This idea finds frequent expression in the prophets. The deliverance of the nation from Egypt was the favor of a Father to a child: "When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt " (Hos. xi. 1). The sin of the people is often pictured as the disobedience of children towards their Father: "I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me " (Is. i. 2). Sometimes the idea of fatherhood is rather in- directly suggested than directly asserted, and God is com- pared to an earthly father in his tenderness or his severity: j "The Lord thy God bare thee as a man doth bare his son" ' (Deut. i. 31) ; " As a man chasteneth his son, so the Lord' thy God chasteneth thee" (Deut. viii. 5). In general, the fatherhood of God to Israel denotes his gracious interest in the nation and the providential care wEich he exercises over it in making it the vehicle of his revelation and in preparing it to be his agent for ushering in'the Messiah. "Is ^phraim"(the northern kingdom) my dear son? is he a pleasant child? for as often as I speak against him, I do earnestly remember him still : therefore my heart is stirred for him ; I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the Lord" (Jer. xxxi. 20). The exilic Isaiah lifting up a plaintive voice from the midst of the nation's disasters, dwells upon the comforting assurance that, even 1 " Like as a Father pitieth his children, So the Lord pitieth them that fear him." 68 THE SYNOPTIC TEACHING OF JESUS if the people's ancestors (who are apparently regarded as a species of patron saints) should cease the care for them, Jehovah will not forget them : " For thou art our Father, though Abraham knoweth us not, and Israel doth not ac- knowledge us: thou, O Lord, art our Father; our Re- deemer from everlasting is thy name " (Is. Ixiii. 16). Of. Mai. ii. 10: "Have we not all one Father?" etc. According to this idea of God's fatherhood it was natural that Jehovah should Jbe^ especially described as Father to theTEeocratic king, the head and representative of the JO^~ tion,~arid the type of the Messianic King, who should be preeminently God's Son and who should reign forever.. The prophet Nathan, speaking on behalf of Jehovah to David the king, tells him that a descendant of his shall build Jehovah's house, and adds : " I will be his Father, and he shall be my son" (2 Sam. vii. 14). A similar idea meets us in Ps. Ixxxix. 26, 27, where the theocratic king is described as confessing Jehovah to be his Father, and Jehovah as declaring him to be his first-born son, the highest of the kings of the earth. What we observe, then, in this Old Testament jdeajaf fatherhood is thatjtwas special rather than universal? and tnat~it "Had not vet become the determining' conception of God's character. God's attitude towards Israel was fatherly, but it was not yet seen that he is, in his very essence, fatherly love, and that all! men are the objects of his care and compassion. The_ legal idea of God was still thedpminant one. Power and transcendence were "the attributes most emphasized. The recognition of these was right and important, but it was liable to a one-sided development, and such a development it received, espe- cially in the later Judaism. The legalism and the ritual- ism of the later Jewish period sprang, in great measure, from the failure of the people to complement the truth of God's kingly power with the truth of his fatherly love. Legal subjection, expressing itself in rites which were thought to pay honor to God's transcendent majesty, rather than filial reverence and moral obedience, was the dominant note of Pharisaic piety. THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD 69 We have already seen in examining the title " Son of God," how frequently Jesus speaks of God as his own Father, and that he appears to assume some distinction between the relation of the Father to himself and that to which he refers when he speaks of God as the Father of other men. It is with this latter relation only that we Eave now to do. v The first question which meets us is, whether or not Jesus represents Chad as the Jather pf~ all men. TEe "answer totEIs question must be involved in the effort to determine in_precisely what sense Jesus used the. term "Father." It might be used to denote that com- plaisant love which God has for the obedient, but which cannot be felt towards the wilful sinner. Many have held that Jesus uses it in this sense, and that he speaks of God as Father only in relation to believers or the righteous. It is a fact that the prevailing usage of Jesus, according to our sources, is to speakf aT Gd3~ as the Father of his owTT disciples. Of this the Sermon on the Mount presents ample evidence. The discourse is indeed a collection of sayings uttered at various times and places, but it is rep- resented as spoken to the disciples, and there is no critical ground for doubt that at least the earlier portions were so spoken. Addressing his disciples, he says : " Let your light shine, and so glorify your Father " (Mt. v. 16) ; " Love your enemies, that ye may be the sons of your Father" (v. 45); " Be complete in love, as your heavenly Father is" (v. 48) ; " Pray sincerely, and your Father will reward you " (vi. 4, 6, 8) ; and in this connection he teaches his disciples to pray, beginning : " Our Father " ; unwarranted. The fatherhood of God in the teaching of / Jesus is neither mere creatorship, nor is it merely a name ' for the attitude of approval or complaisance which corre- sponds to obedience and goodness on the part of men. It denote_s_jcalher the gracious loving attitude of God towards all men. God is Father to all men, not merely becauselie made all men, but because he made them for himself and kindred to himself, and because they are capable of realiz- ing the sonship to him which corresponds to his father- hood. His fatherhood embraces his universal benevolence. Let us test this view by reference to the passages which bear upon it. Jesus teaches his disciples to love all men, even their enemies. In so doing they show themselves to be sons of God, that is, like God ; " for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and unjust" (Mt. v. 45). Here the argument is simply this: Sonship to God consists in moral likeness to the Father; love all men, whether good or bad, for that is what the Father does. How plain it is that it is as the Father that ? God loves and blesses all; that his fatherhood is the * ground and source of this boundless beneficence. Yet jt, is also quite clear that beneficence is not the whole mean- ing of fatherhood. ~ God sustains the relation of Father only to personal, moral beings. Jesus says to his disciples : 1 In Matthew this passage, in a slightly changed form, is appended as a comment or explanation to the Lord's prayer (vi. 14, 16). THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD 71 It is your Father, not theirs, who feeds the birds (Mt. vi. /,26). God's fatherhood includes a personal ethical relation* as welTas the disposition of benevolence. It can exist only where the correlative sonship may also exist. God's essential self-imparting goodness and man's creation in God's moral image are the two fundamental elements of God's fatherhood, and they unite to give it the note of universality. God's universal fatherhood is grounded both in what he is and in what he has made man to be. HJJ must be the Father of all men, because he is perfect in love (Mt. v. 48), adj^^_isrjit_pnce_the sum of his in- herent moral perfections, the motive of creation, and the basis of man's kinship jto- him. 1 > 1 The parable of the Prodigal Son proceeds upon the truth of God's fatherhood. \ This significance does not depend merely upon the fact that Jesus pictures the atti- tude of God towards men by describing the action of a human father. In other parables God is represented by a king and by a householder. It is the content of the parable, rather than its form, which makes it a picture of God's fatherhood. Its purpose is to set forth the divine compassion towards the undeserving. The obedient son is the type of the loyal Jewish religionist ; the wayward son is the type of the lost and despised sinner. The parable shows how God seeks to save the lost; how he calls, not the righteous, but sinners to repentance. He does not deal with men in mere retributive justice, but in abounding generosity. The parable is a picture of the divine grace. It uses the relations of the human family for its purpose, the most natufal and appropriate rela- tions which it could use, but it is the truth of God's love and pity for even the worst of men which makes it a les- 1 An unwarranted appeal in proof of Jesus' universal conception of God's fatherhood is sometimes made to Mt. xxiii. 1-9: "Then spake Jesus to the multitudes and to his disciples, . . . One is your Father which is in heaven." But apart from the fact that "Father" (Abba) is here used in a technical sense, as a teacher's title denoting a source of authority, it is evident from the context that the words, " One is your Father" are parallel to, "One is your master, even the Christ," and were addressed to his disciples. 72 THE SYNOPTIC TEACHING OP JESUS son in the meaning of the divine fatherhood. The same lesson is taught, however, by other analogies in other para- bles and in various forms of speech which are not para- bolic. The divine fatherhood is the divine love seeking to bring men into that fellowship with God of which they were made capable and for which they are destined. 1 ^ . We cannot doubt that in the thought of Jesus God is the Father of all men. Does it follow that all men are sons of God? In other words, are the terms "Father" and "son of Godj^^used in strict correlation ? We IfincTon examination that this is^ not the fact. God is always lov- ihg and gracious, whatever men may be. His fatherhood cannot be impaired. He always remains, if we may so speak, what he ought to be ; he always corresponds per- fectly to his idea. With men, however, this is not the case. Ideally and in possibility all menjirejJiideedL sons of GocL_ But men arejiot actually what they are ideally. The~con'eTation between God's fatherhood and man's son- ship should be perfect; but on account of sin it is not so. On man's side the true relation which " fatherhood " and "sonship" express has been impaired by sin. God is the Father of all men, since he, on his side, always remains what he ought to be ; but men must become sons of God (in the true sense of moral kinship to God) because their side of the relation has been impaired, and it is by a change in them that this relation of fellowship and like- ness must be restored. Hence our sources speak only of the obedient as sons of God in the true sense of sonship. Others have forfeited their proper sonship by sin, although It is still theirs by rightland possfpllityjbut they regainjt only by repentance and return to GocTin obedience and loveT^Tn other words, Jesus does not designate as sonship thVTdnship of nature which all men have with God, but 1 "Fatherhood is love, original and underived, anticipating and unde- served, forgiving and educating, communicating and drawing to its heart. Jesus felt, conceived, and revealed God as this love which itself per- sonal applies to every child of man. That he really desired to charac- terize the eternal heart of God in this way as the prototype of the human father's heart, is shown by his own express comparison between the_two " (Mt. vii. 11). Beyschlag, N. T. Theol. I. 82 (Bk. I. ch. iv. 2). 1 THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD 73 jreserves tliat tgjcni to expj^ss_the.jilQafiOpiritual relation whicnis~^qnstituted by faith and obedience. This dis- tinction underlies the.laugiia'ge of the Synoptists as clearly as it is stated in the fourth Gospel (i. 12): "As many as received him, to them gave he the right (or privilege) to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name." This same conception of God's fatherhood and of man's true sonship to God is presented in the parable of the Prod.igal Son. Of both the sons God is the Father ; but the younger son forfeits by disobedience and ingratitude his true filial standing. As he himself expresses it, he is " no more worthy to be called " a son. In the true moral sense he is not what a son should be. The natural relation to his Father, however, still remains as the possible basis for the reconstitution of the true relation of obedience and fellowship. He is a son in possibility still ; nothing can ever make it untrue that he was born in his Father's house and that he has a rightfto his Father's bounty as soon as he is willing on his part to fulfil his side of the relation. If he has lost the rights and dignity of sonship, he has lost them by his own unfilial life, and they belong^to him, and may be his as soon as he will " arise and go to his Father," and in penitence and obedience seek his favor and blessing. God is the Father of all men ; in the sense of kinship of nature to^rod all men are sons of God ; but, in the higher. sense in which Jesus used the word, they only aresons of God who seek to fulnTT^heir" true delation to "cEence to his~will, and etnTcarlikeBess to him. The father- hood df^God and the sonship of men to God find their )oint of Bunion in the fact that both terms refer to moral character, the fatherhood denoting God's perfect goodness, the sonship man's likeness to God. Both describe the cor- respondence of the beings to which they are applied to their idea. The two terms are therefore ideally correla- tive, and this ideal correlation is the basis of an actual cor- relation which is realized in proportion as man fulfils his true destiny. Other terms than that of Father are used in our sources 74 THE SYNOPTIC TEACHING OF JESUS to designate the ethical nature of God, but they point to no different conception of the divine character from that which we have reached. fjj>rl jft-flfljjjpr^erfect,. complete (W\eto9, Mt. v. 48), but it is clear from the context that this perfection is perfection of love.' God is complete in love; in that he bestows his blessings generously and with- out partiality upon all. Men are not thus complete. Even the best of them are inclined to do good only to those who do good to them; to salute only those who salute them (Mt. v. 46, 47). Thus love becomes only a slightly en- larged selfishness. Earthly parents may, indeed, be good to their children and delight to give them good gifts, yet their interest and sympathy for others are likely to remain extremely limited. Jesus is obliged to say of them that with all their generosity and affection, they are still " evil " (Trovrjpol oire A similar view may be taken of such expressions as these : " Him shall the Son of man also confess before the angels of God " (Lk. xii. 8) ; " There is joy in the presence of the angels of God -over one sinner that re- penteth" (Lk. xv. 10). Certainly the idea in the first of these passages is the same as we find in Mt. x. 32 : " Him will I also confess before my Father which is in heaven." Nothing is subtracted from the positive content of Jesus' teaching if " the angels of God " in such expressions be understood as " a kind of poetic paraphrase for God him- self" (Beyschlag). With even greater naturalness may the term be so understood in the parabolic description of Lazarus as being carried away after his death "by the angels into Abraham's bosom " (Lk. xvi. 22). That the teaching of Jesus presupposes the real existence of an order of superhuman and holy beings is highly probable ; but his references to them are too incidental and indefinite to warrant us in holding that he intended to commit him- self to any positive doctrine of their nature and functions. His language concerning them so far as we can judge from our sources was quite reserved ; he used the popu- lar ideas about angels to a certain extent, but always as means to some end lying beyond ; hence his words which touch upon the subject are usually symbolic or pictorial ; they do not readily yield themselves to a literal interpre- tation, but are more naturally understood in a semi-poetic sense. Just as the popular thought of Jesus' time conceived of the activity of God in the world as mediated through good angels, so it attributed the power of evil, both natural and moral, to the agency of wicked spiiits. These spirits were thought of as constituting a kingdom of evil of which GOOD AND EVIL SPIRITS 83 Satan is the head. These malignant powers especially their chief are perpetually active in bringing all manner of evils upon men. In the Old Testament Satan had been described as the accuser, adversary, or destroyer of man- kind ; he is employed as a minister of God for the testing and chastisement of men. In the Book of Job Satan pre- sents himself among the sons of God, the mighty messen- gers of Jehovah, and to him is given permission to put Job to the severest tests in order to determine whether his service to God is genuine and disinterested or prudential and selfish. The evils which he proceeds to inflict upon Job as tests of his sincerity are what we call natural evils sickness, loss of property and of children. The question now arises : How far does the language of Jesus recognize or attest these and kindred ideas ? f j?_ Without doubt the names "Satan," "devil," and "evil one" are more prominently connected with moral than with natural evil in our sources. In the narrative of the temptation as given by Matthew (iv. 1-11) and Luke (iv. 1-13) it is Satan who presents to Jesus alluring pros- pects of success if he will abandon the divinely appointed path in the pursuit of his Messianic vocation and adopt methods which accord with the popular expectation. Of the origin of this highly figurative and pictorial descrip- tion we cannot be certain. Not improbably its substance was communicated to the disciples by Jesus himself as a picture of the two paths which lay before him at the begin- ning of his ministry. What is quite certain, in any case)\ is that Satan here appears as the embodiment of the popu-j I lar Jewish Messianic expectations. If the words TOV TTOVIJ- pov in Matthew's version of the Lord's prayer are to be taken as personal (" the evil one "), then we have in the Synoptics a clear reference to Satan as the source of temptation to evil ; but this conclusion is doubly doubtful because, in the first place, it is quite possible that TOV v should be taken as impersonal ("evil"), 1 and, 1 Undoubtedly the majority of modern interpreters render "the evil one"; so Morison, Broadus, Meyer, Holtzmann, R.V. ; but many still prefer the abstract meaning, "evil," found in the A.V. ; e.g., 84 THE SYNOPTIC TEACHING OF JESUS further, because the shorter form of the prayer, as given by Luke (xi. 1-4), which does not contain these words, is probably the more original. 1 Both Matthew and Luke have preserved from the Mark- source the explanation of the parable of the Sower, in which Jesus says : " When they have heard, straightway cometh Satan, and taketh away the word which hath been sown in them" (Mk. iv. 15; Mt. xiii. 18; Lk. viii. 12). The references to Satan as " the enemy '* who sows tares among the wheat (Mt. xiii. 28, 39) are to be employed less confidently because there is some reason to think that the parable of the Tares (peculiar to Matthew) is an am- plification of the parable of the Growing Seed in Mk. iv. 26-29, and that its exposition (xiii. 36-43) was an inter- pretation emanating from the evangelist or in current use among the early disciples. It bears the marks of an alle- gorizing interpretation of the details of the parable and appears to conduct to a different goal, the judgment and its issues, from that which the parable itself contem- plates, which is to show how his disciples must feel and act in view of the fact that there will be counterfeit Christians among them. 2 But whatever view be taken on these latter points, it is a fair question whether in these figurative discourses the references to Satan may not be as figurative as the rest of the language. When it is said that Satan snatches away the seed that is sown in the heart, it is obvious that " seed " and " heart " are figurative designations for truth and the mind which apprehends it. It is not easy to show that " Satan " in such expressions means more than the spirit of worldliness which neutral- izes the power of divine truth. Quite in accord with the representations in Job which describe Satan as the tempter who puts the devotion of Lange, Alford, and Weiss. Professor L. S. Potwin, in the Bibliotheca Sacra, April, 1891, has strongly defended this view on various grounds, among them this, that the Septuagint often designates evil by iroviipbv, with and without the article, but does not designate Satan by 6 wovrip6t. 1 See Wendt, Lehre Jesu, pp. 97, 98. 2 Cf. Weiss, Matthdusev., p. 352; Wendt, Lehre Jesu, pp. 178 179 , Holtzmann, Hand com. ad loc. GOOD AND EVIL SPIRITS 85 men to the test, is the language of Jesus to Peter: " Satan asked to have you, that he might sift you as wheat " (Lk. xxii. 31). Here the testing process to which the Twelve are exposed appears to be the stress under which they are to be placed in deciding between the higher and the lower view of Jesus' work and Kingdom. They are to undergo a test analogous to that to which Jesus himself was subjected in his temptation. Again, Satan is called "the prince of the demons," who, as head of a kingdom of evil spirits, may be likened to a "strong man" guarding his house. Men who have been seized by his vassals are his " spoil " and cannot be rescued except by one who is more powerful than the chief himself (Mk. iii. 22-27; Mt. xii. 25-29; Lk. xi. 17-22). In such passages the view taken of " Satan " must be involved in that which is adopted respecting demons and demoniacal possession. ' > We find that on an earlier occasion when Peter repudi- ated the idea of a suffering Messiah, Jesus rebuked him in these words : "Get thee behind me, Satan : for thou mindest not the things of God, but the things of men " (Mk. viii. 33; Mt. xvi. 23). Here "Satan" is evidently used as a symbolic name for opposer or tempter. Peter's hos- tility to the divinely appointed course which Jesus must pursue sprang from that ambitious and worldly spirit which was the product of popular Jewish Messianic hopes. He was acting the part of an adversary to God in protest- ing against the cross, as the goal of his Master's life. In this connection we should observe the striking words of Jesus to the Seventy upon their return from their mission : " I beheld Satan fallen as lightning from heaven " (Lk. x. 17). This is certainly a figurative exclamation strongly reminding one of the words in Isaiah's satirical ode against the Babylonian tyrant : " How art thou fallen from heaven, O day star, son of the morning ! " (Is. xiv. 12). But whether the whole conception, including that of Satan, is figurative, or only that of the swift fall from heaven, while Satan is still thought of as an actual person, depends largely upon the view taken of the " possession " whose cure was the occasion of the exclamation. The one per- 86 THE SYNOPTIC TEACHING OF JESUS fectly clear reference to Satan as the cause of physical infirmity is contained in the description of the deformed woman who "could in no wise lift herself up," as one "whom Satan had bound eighteen years" (Lk. xiii. 11, 16) - 1 The same idea, however, is implied in the represen- tation of the "demonized" (JhufAOVityfAevoi) as Satan's "spoil," so far as their "possession" is identified with physical maladies ; and to that subject we must now turn. 2 Characteristic examples of this " possession " are as follows : The man " with an unclean spirit " in the syna- gogue at Capernaum which, when Jesus exorcises it, tears the man and cries with a loud voice (Mk. i. 21 sq. ; Lk. iv. 31 sq.} ; the Gerasene demoniac who dwelt among the tombs, gashed his body with stones, and could not be tamed, being inhabited by a " legion " of demons (Mk. v. 1 sq. ; Mt. viii. 28 sq. ; Lk. viii. 26 sq.~) ; a dumb man who spake as soon as the demon which had caused his dumb- ness was cast out (Mt. ix. 32, 33; cf. Lk. xi. 14 and Mt. xii. 22) ; the little daughter of a Syropho3nician woman who was "grievously vexed with a demon" and who, when healed, went home and lay down upon the bed, re- stored to health (Mk. vii. 25 sq. ; Mt. xv. 22 sq.} ; the epileptic boy (Mt. xvii. 15) who had a " dumb spirit " and who often fell into fire and water and rolled on the ground and frothed at the mouth when the demon seized him (Mk. ix. 17 sq. ; Mt. xvii. 14 sq. ; Lk. ix. 37 sq.}. These are all the examples of " possession " which are described with any detail in our sources. 3 1 The idea that it is the special province of Satan to inflict sickness and other natural evils upon men appears in Paul's epistles : 1 Cor. v. 5 ; 2 Cor. xii. 7 ; 1 Thess. ii. 18 ; 1 Tim. i. 20. 2 I would commend to the reader the discussion of this subject by Row in The Supernatural in the New Testament (1875), and the remarks by Bruce in The Miraculous Element in the Gospels (1895). 8 The healings of the "blind and dumb" man (Mt. xii. 22) may be a repetition (so Wendt, Lehre Jesu, p. 100) of the cure already related by Matthew (ix. 32, 33) in close agreement with Lk. xi. 14. The woman "whom Satan had bound" (Lk. xiii. 16) is not explicitly said to have been "possessed." If these two cases are counted, they make seven in all. GOOD AND EVIL SPIRITS 87 f S y On the general subject we observe : (1) All the symp- toms which are described are such as characterize one or another physical or mental malady. If the phenomena were not attributed to demoniacal possession, we should experience no difficulty in explaining all the examples as cases of disease, such as paralysis, deafness, loss of speech, epilepsy, and insanity. The argument for the reality of possession by demons must rest entirely upon the fact that this term is applied in the Gospels to these maladies, and not at all upon the nature or peculiarities of the symptoms which are described. We note, moreover, that the casting out of demons is commonly associated in our sources with the healing of the sick (Mt. x. 8 ; Mk. i. 34 ; iii. 15 ; Lk. , xiii. 20), although it is distinguished from such healing. St (2) We find that others besides Jesus " cast out demons." Whatever these maladies were, it is certain that both Jesus and his disciples recognized the ability of exorcists to cure them in some instances. On one occasion the disciples saw one casting out demons in Jesus' name and rebuked him because he did not join their company; but Jesus said : " Forbid him not, for there is no man who can do a mighty work in my name and be able quickly to speak evil of me" (Mk. ix. 38, 39; Lk. ix. 49, 50). Again, when the Pharisees charged him with casting out demons by the aid of their prince, he replied : " If I by Beelzebub cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast them out ? therefore shall they be your judges " (Lk. xi. 19; xii. 27). One of the claims which those who call Jesus Lord and do not obey his precepts, will make in the judgment is (according to Matthew's version) that they have by his name cast out demons (Mt. vii. 22). It is thus evident that, whatever these maladies were, there were men who, in some cases, succeeded in curing them. / f^