The Lord of Glory

by B. B. Warfield

INTRODUCTORY:

THE DESIGNATIONS OF OUR LORD IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

They … crucified the Lord of Glory.
—1 CORINTHIANS 2:8.

Who is this King of Glory?
The LORD of hosts,
He is the King of Glory.
—PSALM 24:10.

THE DESIGNATIONS OF OUR LORD

Pervasive Witness of N. T. to Christ

The proper subject of the New Testament is Christ. Every page of it, or perhaps we might better say every line of it, has its place in the portrait which is drawn of Him by the whole. In forming an estimate of the conception of His person entertained by its writers, and by those represented by them, we cannot neglect any part of its contents. We can scarcely avoid distinguishing in it, to be sure, between what we may call the primary and the subsidiary evidence it bears to the nature of His personality, or at least the more direct and the more incidental evidence. It may very well be, however, that what we call the subsidiary or incidental evidence may be quite as convincing, if not quite as important, as the primary and direct evidence. The late Dr. R. W. Dale found the most impressive proofs that the Apostles themselves and the primitive Churches believed that Jesus was one with God, rather in the way this seems everywhere taken for granted, than in the texts in which it is definitely asserted. "Such texts," he remarks, "are but like the sparkling crystals which appear on the sand after the tide has retreated; these are not the strongest—though they may be the most apparent—proofs that the sea is salt: the salt is present in solution in every bucket of sea-water. And so," he applies his parable, "the truth of our Lord's divinity is present in solution in whole pages of the Epistles, from which not a single text could be quoted that explicitly declares it."

Scope of this Discussion

We need offer no apology, therefore, for inviting somewhat extended attention to one of the subsidiary lines of evidence of the estimate put upon our Lord's person by the writers of the New Testament and by our Lord as reported by them. We certainly shall not, by so doing, obtain anything like a complete view of the New Testament's evidence for the dignity of His person. But it may very well be that we shall obtain a convincing body of evidence for it. What we purpose to do is to attend with some closeness to the designations which the New Testament writers apply to our Lord as they currently speak of Him. These designations will be passed rapidly under our eye with a twofold end in view. On the one hand we shall hope, generally, to acquire a vivid sense of the attitude, intellectual and emotional, sustained by the several writers of the New Testament, and by the New Testament as a whole, to our Lord's person. On the other, we shall hope, particularly, to reach a clearer notion of the loftiness of the estimate placed upon His person by these writers, and by those whom they represent. We are entering, then, in part upon an exposition, in part upon an argument. We wish to learn, so far as the designations applied to our Lord in the New Testament are fitted to reveal that to us, how the writers of the New Testament were accustomed to think of Jesus; we wish to show that they thought of Him above everything else as a Divine Person. For the former purpose we desire to pass in review the whole body of designations employed in the New Testament of our Lord; for the latter purpose, in passing this material in review, we desire to order it in such a manner as to bring into clear relief its testimony to the profound conviction cherished by our Lord's first followers that He was of divine origin and nature. In prosecuting our exposition we shall seek to run cursorily through the entire New Testament; in framing our argument we shall lay primary stress on the Gospels, or rather on the Synoptic Gospels, and adduce the remaining books chiefly as corroborative and elucidative testimony to what we shall find in the evangelical narratives. Thus we hope to take at once a wide or even a complete view of the whole field, and to throw into prominence the unitary presupposition by the entire New Testament of the deity of our Lord.

Designations of Our Lord in the Synoptic Gospels

We turn, then, first to the Gospels, and in the first instance to the Synoptic Gospels. We observe at once that‚ on a prima facie view, the designations they apply to our Lord fall into three general classes. They seem to be either purely designatory, generally honorific, or specifically Messianic. Of all purely designatory designations, the personal name is the most natural and direct. We can feel no surprise, therefore, to learn that our Lord is spoken of in the Gospels most commonly by the simple name of 'Jesus.' Nor shall we feel surprise to learn that the simplest honorific titles are represented as those most frequently employed in addressing Him,—'Rabbi,' with its Greek renderings, 'Teacher' and 'Master,' and its Greek representative, 'Lord.' No Messianic title again is more often met with in the narrative of the Gospels than the simple 'Christ,' although on our Lord's lips 'the Son of Man' is constant. The general effect of the narrative on the reader, who passes rapidly through it, noting particularly the designations employed of our Lord, is a strong impression that He is thought of by the writers, and is represented by them as thought of by His contemporary followers and by Himself, as a person of high dignity and unquestionable authority; and that this dignity and authority were rooted, both in their and in His estimation, in His Messianic character. If we are to take the designations employed in the Gospel narratives as our guide, therefore, we should say that the fundamental general fact which they suggest is that Jesus was esteemed by His first followers as the promised Messiah, and was looked upon with reverence and accorded supreme authority as such. Whether this impression is fully justified by the evidence when it is narrowly scrutinized; and if so what the complete significance of the fact so established is; and whether more than appears upon the surface of it is really contained in the fact—these are matters which must be left to a closer examination of the details to determine.

Starting Point of the Survey

In undertaking such a closer examination of the details, it will conduce not only to clearness of treatment, but also to surety of result, to take up the several Gospels separately. And perhaps it may be as well to begin with the Gospel of Mark. It is the briefest and in some respects the simplest and most direct narrative we have of the career of our Lord. It may be supposed, therefore, to present to us the elements of our problem in their least complicated shape.

THE DESIGNATIONS OF OUR LORD IN MARK

Narrative Designation

In Mark what we may call the narrative designation of our Lord is uniformly the simple 'Jesus.' Mark employs no other designation in his entire narrative.2 On the other hand, he places this designation, in its simplicity, in the mouth of no one else. In the heading of his Gospel he sets, it is true, that "solemn designation of the Messianic personality," 'Jesus Christ.' This is a designation not only which occurs nowhere else in this Gospel,4 but which occurs elsewhere in the four Gospels only rarely and only in similar formal connections. It seems already, here at least, to be employed as a proper name. But in the narrative itself, as we have intimated, Mark uses only the simple 'Jesus,' which nevertheless he never represents as used by others either in speaking of or in speaking to Jesus.

Popular Designation

The name by which Jesus was popularly known to His contemporaries, according to Mark, was apparently the fuller descriptive one of 'Jesus of Nazareth' (10:47, 16:6, 14:67). On one occasion He is represented as addressed by this full name (1:24), and on two others by the name 'Jesus,' enlarged by a Messianic title ('Jesus, Son of the Most High God' 5:7, 'Jesus, Son of David' 10:47). The inference would seem to be that 'Jesus' was too common a name to be sufficiently designatory until our Lord's person had loomed so large, at least in the circles to which the Gospels were addressed, as to put all other Jesuses out of mind when this name was mentioned. The employment of the simple 'Jesus' as the narrative name in this Gospel is, therefore, an outgrowth of, and a testimony to, the supreme position He occupied in the minds of Christians.

Formula of Address

The formula by which Jesus is represented by Mark as ordinarily addressed is apparently the simple honorific title, 'Rabbi,' by which in that age (Mt 23:7) every professed teacher was courteously greeted. The actual Aramaic form 'Rabbi' occurs, however, but seldom in his narrative, and only on the lips of Jesus' disciples (9:5, 11:21, 14:45, Judas in betraying Him); although the parallel form 'Rabboni' occurs once on the lips of a petitioner for healing (10:51). In its place stands customarily its simplest and most usual Greek rendering, 'Teacher' (διδάσκαλε). The general synonomy of the forms of address, 'Teacher,' 'Master,' 'Lord' (διδάσκαλε, ἐπιστάτα, κύριε), as all alike Greek representatives of 'Rabbi,' is fully established by a comparison of the parallel passages in the Synoptics, as well as by such defining passages as Jno 1:38, 20:16.

What is to be noted here is that in his report of the forms of address employed by those conversing with Jesus, Mark confines himself among Greek formulas to 'Teacher' (διδάσκαλε) as his standing representation of 'Rabbi.' The use of 'Lord' (κύριε) in 7:28 is not strictly an exception to this, since the speaker on that occasion was a heathen, and 'Lord' (κύριε) may be best viewed as indicative of this fact. It is the common Greek honorific address, equivalent in significance to the Jewish 'Rabbi' or 'Teacher.'

Significance of 'Teacher'

The address 'Teacher' is used by Mark broadly, and is put upon the lips both of our Lord's disciples in their ordinary colloquy (4:38, 9:38, 10:35, 13:1), obviously as their customary form of addressing Him; and of others who approached Him for every variety of reason (5:35, 9:17, 10:17, 20, 12:14, 19, 32). There does not necessarily lie in this mode of address, therefore, anything more than a general polite recognition of our Lord's claim to be a teacher and leader of men, although of course this recognition may rise on occasion above mere courtesy and become the expression of real reverence and dependence and a recognition of His authority and sovereignty. When something like this was insincerely or frivolously expressed, our Lord was offended by it, as in the case of the rich young ruler who addressed Him flatteringly as 'Good Teacher' (10:17). But when the expression was sincere it was received by Jesus in good part and the recognition of His authority involved in it welcomed and responded to, even when the authority suggested far exceeded that of an ordinary Rabbi and involved at least Messianic claims (10:35, 9:38, 4:38). Not only does He accept this designation; He even adopts it, instructing His disciples to speak of Him to others as 'the Teacher' (14:14),—and there is involved perhaps in this adoption of the title all that is expressed in the declarations of Mt 23:1–12. Although not necessarily recognized as all that He was by every one who approached Him saying 'Teacher,' yet under this designation He certainly is recognized as claiming and certainly does claim an authority above that of those who shared the title of 'Teacher' with Him (1:22, 27 etc.).

Significance of 'Lord'

Similarly we are not quite at the end of the matter when we say that the heathen woman in addressing Him as 'Lord' (7:28) only makes use of the common Greek honorific address. When one comes to a religious teacher petitioning so great a benefit, the honorific title which is employed is apt to be charged with a far richer meaning than mere courtesy or respect. And Jesus received it in this case at its full value; in a sense bearing some relation to His own appellative use of the same term, 'Lord' (κύριος), when He declared Himself 'Lord of the Sabbath' and 'David's Lord' as well as his 'Son' (2:28, 12:36, 37). It is in this appellative use of the term 'Lord' by Jesus indeed that we may discover the deepest significance of the application of that title to Him (1:3, 2:28, 11:3, 12:36, 37 [12:9, 13:35]). It is no doubt sometimes very difficult to determine whether in a given instance it refers to God or to Jesus, a fact which has its significance. But the certain cases will themselves carry us very far. When, for example, Jesus is quoted as declaring that "the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath" (or, perhaps, "of the Sabbath, too"), the implication is that He is Lord of much more than the Sabbath, and that this His Lordship is an appanage of His Messianic dignity.15 And when He is represented as arguing with the scribes over the significance of the title 'Son of David' (12:36, 37), it cannot be doubted that He had Himself as the Messiah in mind; and, whatever else His words suggest, they certainly intimate that He held Himself as the Messiah to be greater than David as truly as He was greater than Solomon (Mt 12:42); that, in a word, David (as that prophetic monarch himself recognized) was no more His father by virtue of His descent from him, than he was His servant by virtue of his essential relation to Him. He was at the very least, and was predicted by David himself as, David's sovereign.

Such being the conception of His lordship which was in His mind, we must assume it was this lofty dignity which He claimed for Himself when He instructed His disciples, whom He sent to bring Him the ass's colt which was to bear Him into Jerusalem, to tell those who might dispute their right to it, that "the Lord hath need of him" (11:3); and this is borne out by the strongly Messianic character of the whole transaction (verses 9, 10, cf. Mt 21:4, 5, Jno 12:14, 15). And surely some such implications attend also the semi-parabolic designation of Himself as the 'Lord of the House' whose coming is to be watched for (13:35). And at least as much as this is involved when the evangelist identifies Him with 'the Lord' whose way was to be made ready for Him by the ministry of John the Baptist in fulfillment of the prophetic declarations of Isaiah and Malachi (1:3); for the alterations in the language of the declarations introduced by the evangelist make clear his purpose to apply these phrases directly to Jesus.

It is not necessary to presuppose that 'Rabbi' underlies this appellative use of 'Lord' (κύριος). In Mark 12:37 (and probably also 1:3) the underlying term is Adhoni, and elsewhere it is doubtless Maran, or Marana (or Maraʾa). In other words the implications of the term in this application of it are those of supremacy and sovereignty. Whence it emerges that Jesus is represented as claiming for Himself (2:28, 12:36, 37, 13:35, 11:3), and as being recognized within His own circle as possessing (11:3), supreme sovereignty,—a sovereignty superior to that of the typical king himself (12:36, 37), extending over the divinely ordained religious enactments of the chosen people (7:28, cf. 7:15–19), and entitling Him to dispose of the possessions (11:3) and the very destinies of men (13:35). There is here asserted not only Messianic dignity and authority, but dignity and authority which transcend those ordinarily attributed even to the Messiah (12:36, 37), and are comparable only to those of God Himself (1:3).

Messianic Designations

The transition from such a designation of Jesus as 'Lord' to the designation of Him as 'Messiah,' is only a passage from the general to the particular. What is noteworthy is, therefore, not that specifically Messianic titles are freely assigned to Jesus in the narrative, but that no other titles than Messianic ones seem to be employed of Him. There is indication indeed that our Lord was recognized as a prophet (6:15, 8:28); in point of fact, that He recognized Himself as a prophet (6:4). It is clear indeed that He was widely spoken of as a prophet and that He Himself accepted the designation as appropriate. But this is little emphasized in this Gospel, and would form no exception to the rule that no designations are suggested for Jesus except Messianic titles. Neither can we consider the designations 'Bridegroom' (2:19, 19, 20) and 'Shepherd' (14:27), which Jesus seems to have applied incidentally to Himself, exceptions. In the former of these Jesus, discoursing of John the Baptist (2:18) doubtless with intentional reference to a saying of his which is recorded for us only in John (3:29), identified Himself on the one hand with the 'Bridegroom' of Old Testament prophecy (cf. Hos 2:19), and set Himself forth on the other as the Head of the people of God now to be gathered into the promised kingdom: in other words, the designation is Messianic to the core. And certainly not less is to be said of His identification of Himself with the mysterious 'Shepherd' of Zech 13:7, who is the fellow of the Lord of Hosts (14:27 || Mt 26:31; and cf. 6:34 || Mt 9:36; and see Mt 25:32, eschatologically; and Jno 10:2). By the side of these it may also be necessary to recognize as a Messianic designation, the epithet 'Beloved,' which is applied to Him in the divine commendations of the Son—"Thou art my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased," "This is my Son, the Beloved" (1:11, 9:7). But apart from these more unusual designations none are applied to Jesus in the whole course of the narrative by any of the characters introduced, including Jesus in His own person, but familiar Messianic titles. These occur in considerable variety, and include not only the simple 'Christ' with its equivalents, 'the King of Israel' or 'of the Jews,' and 'the Son of David,' but also the more significant ones of 'the Holy One of God' and 'the Son of God,'—varied to 'the Son of the Most High God,' and 'the Son of the Blessed,'—and Jesus' own chosen self-designation, 'the Son of Man.'

'Jesus Christ'

The evangelist himself nowhere in the course of his narrative speaks of Jesus by one of these titles. As we have seen, his narrative name of our Lord is exclusively the simple 'Jesus.' No reader will doubt, however, that he considered all of them applicable to Jesus; and he announces his book, in the heading he has prefixed to it, as intended to recount the origins of "the Gospel of Jesus Christ"—possibly adding also the further Messianic designation of "the Son of God." This compound name 'Jesus Christ' occurs extremely rarely in the Gospels, and never except in the most formal and ceremonious circumstances. It appears, indeed, to be reserved as an august name, weighted with the implication of the entire content of Jesus' claims, and therefore suitable only for setting at the head of documents designed to exhibit His life and work, or at the opening of accounts of significant periods or acts of His career. It is very fairly described by Holtzmann, therefore, as "the solemn designation of the Messianic personality."24 Although in it the term 'Christ' has ceased to be an appellation and become a portion of a proper name, its use as such bears all the stronger testimony to the ascription of the Messiahship to Jesus. Other Messiah than He had ceased to be contemplated as conceivable, and the very appellation 'Messiah' had become His distinguishing name.

'The Christ'

Although this compound name occurs nowhere else in Mark, and the reverse combination, 'Christ Jesus,' which is also in use in Acts and Paul, never, the simple 'Christ' appears in his narrative with sufficient frequency to evince that it was a favorite designation of the Messiah (8:29, 12:35, 13:21, 14:61, 15:32), applied as such to Jesus (8:29, 14:61, 15:32) in order to mark Him out as the Messiah; and accepted as such by Jesus, who thus asserts Himself to be the Messiah (8:30, 14:62, cf. 9:41, 12:35, 13:21). Its significance, as the simplest of all Messianic titles, is well brought out by the synonyms with which it is coupled. When Peter assigned it to our Lord in his great confession (8:29), our Lord at once takes it up as the equivalent of His own favorite self-designation of 'the Son of Man.' When our Lord would instruct the scribes with respect to the real dignity of the Messiah, He asks them how they can speak of the Christ as 'the Son of David,' when David himself calls Him his 'Lord' (12:35, 37). When the high-priest at His trial adjured Him to say whether He was 'the Christ, the Son of the Blessed,' in His assenting reply He calls Himself the 'Son of Man' (14:62, 63). And in like manner the scoffing Jews mockingly addressed Him as He hung on the cross as 'the Christ, the King of Israel' (15:32). In all these instances the term is obviously used as an appellation, and has no different content from the general one common to all the designations which impute Messiahship. It is the complete synonym of 'the King of Israel' (15:32), 'the Son of David' (12:35), 'the Son of the Blessed' (14:61), 'the Son of Man' (8:31, 14:62). In a word it is the general title of the Messianic Sovereign, whom Jesus claims to be in His acceptance of this designation, and whom He is asserted to be by its application to Him by His followers.

Anarthrous 'Christ'

In the remarkable passage, 9:41, alone does 'Christ' appear without the article. And therefore it has been frequently supposed to be employed there not as an appellation but as a proper name, and therefore again to be out of place on Jesus' lips and to be accordingly an intrusion into the text from the later point of view of His followers. There seems to be no reason, however, why 'Christ' (χριστός) even without the article may not be taken appellatively (cf. Lk 23:2); and in that case, no reason why our Lord may not have told His followers that no one who should do them a benefit "in the name that they are the Christ's," i. e., on the ground that they are the servants of the Messiah, should lose his appropriate reward. In this view our Lord would no doubt be once again claiming for Himself the Messianic dignity; but He would not be doing it in language inappropriate upon His lips, especially at a period in His ministry subsequent to the great confession of Peter at Cæsarea Philippi (8:29), after which, we are expressly told (8:31, 32), Jesus began to teach both formally and quite openly what and who He was and what was to befall Him in the prosecution of His mission. The thought thus brought out differs in nothing from that of Mt 10:42 and the mode of expressing the thought is equally appropriate with that recorded there, on the lips of One who knew Himself to be Teacher and Lord only because He was the Christ. At the same time it must not be too easily assumed that our Lord could not speak of Himself as 'Christ' taken even as a proper, or quasi-proper, name, although we need not dwell upon this at this point.

Royal Titles

It was because He announced Himself as the 'Christ' and was widely understood to possess claims upon that dignity that, when He was arraigned before Pilate, it was precisely upon His pretensions to be 'the King of the Jews' that He was interrogated (15:2, 26). On Jewish lips this title naturally was corrected to 'the King of Israel' (15:32), which again is identified with the appellation 'the Christ' (15:32). In this form also Jesus was far from repelling the Messianic ascription, but on the contrary expressly allows it (15:2). To all appearance, however, neither 'the Christ,' nor 'the King of Israel,' was more current as a Messianic designation than the kindred form 'the Son of David' (12:35, cf. 11:10), though this title appears in Mark's narrative only once as actually applied to Jesus (10:47, 48). The blind man at the gates of Jericho, hearing that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by, and wishing to ask a favor at His hands as the expected King of Israel, knew no better name by which to address Him than 'Son of David.' It was the faith thus expressed which Jesus commended in him when He responded to his appeal,—thus accepting this Messianic title also (10:49, 51, 52, cf. 11:10). It is quite untenable, therefore, to suppose that Jesus wished to repel this designation in the question He put as He taught in the temple (12:35), "How say the scribes that the Christ is the son of David," when "David himself" (and speaking "in the Holy Spirit") "calls Him rather Lord?" He does not deny that He is David's son; He asserts that He is David's Lord. It seems, therefore, not quite exact even to say that He wishes to suggest that His sonship derives from a higher source than David: that He is, in a word, the Son of God rather than of David. But it seems clear that He desires to intimate that as Lord of David He was something far more than was conveyed by the accustomed—and so far acceptable33—title of 'Son of David': and something of this higher dignity than mere kingship belonging to Him is doubtless inherent in this, therefore, higher Messianic title of 'Son of God.'

'Son of God'

This higher title, if it is not applied to Jesus by Mark himself in the heading of his Gospel (1:1), is at least in the course of the narrative repeatedly represented as applied to Him by others, and is expressly approved as so applied not only by the evangelist (3:11), but by our Lord Himself (14:62). The form of the title varies from the simple 'Son of God' ([1:1] 3:11, cf. 15:39) to the 'Son of the Blessed' (14:61) and the 'Son of the Most High God' (5:7). It is, in the instances recited by Mark, found chiefly on the lips of the unclean spirits whom Jesus cast out (3:11, 5:7); though it is employed also, apparently as a culminating Messianic title, by the high priest at His trial, seeking to obtain from Jesus an acknowledgment of His great pretensions (14:62), and was frankly accepted by our Lord as fairly setting these pretensions forth (14:63). As a Messianic title it differs from those which have been heretofore engaging our attention, in emphasizing, as they do not, the supernatural side of the office and functions of the Messiah: He comes as the representative of God to do God's will in the world. From this point of view another Messianic title applied to Him by a demoniac—'the Holy One of God' (1:24),—ranges with it: and the employment by the unclean spirits of this class of titles only (cf. 3:11 and 1:34) may be due to the fact that they were voices from the spiritual world and were as such less concerned than the people of the land with national hopes or earthly developments.

'The Son'

By the side of the passages in which the precise title 'Son of God' is employed, there stands another series in which Jesus speaks of Himself, or is represented as spoken of by God, simply as 'the Son' (13:32, cf. 12:6, 1:11, 9:7), used obviously in a very pregnant sense: and these naturally suggest their correlatives in which He speaks of God as His 'Father' in the same pregnant manner (8:38, cf. 13:32, 14:36). The uniqueness of the relation intended to be intimated by this mode of speech is sharply thrust forward in the parable recorded in Mark 12. There were many slaves who were sent one after the other to the rebellious husbandmen; but only one son—who is called "the beloved one," a term which is not so much designatory of affection as of that on which special affection is grounded, and is therefore practically equivalent to "only begotten," or "unique." It is possible that it is by this epithet that God designates this His Son on both of the occasions when He spoke from heaven in order to point Him out and mark Him as His own (1:11, 9:7)—"This is my beloved Son." The meaning is that the Son stands out among all others who may be called sons as in a unique and unapproached sense the Son of God. Of course it is possible to represent this as importing nothing more than that the person so designated is the Messiah, singled out to be the vice-gerent of God on earth; and it is noticeable that it is as the Messiah that Jesus calls God appropriatingly 'His Father' when He declares that the Son of Man is to come in the glory of His Father with the holy angels (8:38), and certainly it was in lowly subjection to the will of God that He prayed at Gethsemane, "Abba, Father, remove this cup from me" (14:36). But this explanation seems scarcely adequate; in any case there is intimated in this usage a closeness as well as a uniqueness of relation existing between Jesus and God, which raises Jesus far beyond comparison with any other son of man. And that remarkable passage, 13:32, in which Jesus declares His ignorance, though He be the Son, of the day of His advent, exalts Him apparently above not men only, but angels as well, next to the Father Himself, with whom rather than with the angels He seems to be classed.

Our Lord's own Testimony to His Messiahship

All these Messianic designations are represented as not only ascribed to Jesus but accepted by Him. They are not, however, currently employed by Him; as reported in this narrative, He does indeed make occasional use of them—'the Christ' (9:41, cf. 8:29, 12:35, 13:21), the 'Son of David' (12:35), the 'Son [of God]' (13:32, cf. 12:6)—but only exceptionally. The Messianic designation which He is represented as constantly applying to Himself is also one peculiar to Himself—'the Son of Man.' That this designation is actually employed as a Messianic title, is apparent not only from its obvious origin in the vision of Daniel 7:13, to which reference is repeatedly made (8:38, 13:26, 14:62), but also from the easy passage which is made, in the course of the conversations reported, from one of the other designations to this, whereby they are evinced as its synonyms. Thus in 8:31 in sequence to Peter's confession of Him as 'the Christ,' we are told that Jesus began to teach that "the Son of Man must suffer many things." Similarly in 13:26 our Lord notifies us that although many "false Christs" shall arise who may deceive men, yet when certain signs occur, "then shall they see the Son of Man coming." Again when exhorted to declare whether He is "the Christ, the Son of the Blessed" (14:61), He responds in the affirmative and adds: "And ye shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power." Evidently if we are to ask, 'Who is this Son of Man,' we must give answer, shortly, 'The Christ of God.' And it lies in the evidence not only that this was the underlying conception of our Lord as reported in this Gospel but also that it was—however dimly—apprehended by those He addressed. There is perhaps no single passage in Mark so clear to this effect as John 12:34, where the multitude are represented as puzzled by our Lord's teaching that the "Son of Man must be lifted up," in view of their conviction that "the Christ abideth forever." "We have heard out of the law," they say, "that the Christ abideth forever: and how sayest thou that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?" This is as much as to say that that 'Son of Man' who is the Messiah is known to them and is known to them as the eternal King: but no other 'Son of Man' is known to them—who is to be "lifted up" from the earth that He may draw all men unto Him. The same implication is latent, however, in the instances reported by Mark, the conversations recorded in which would have been unintelligible had there not been in the hearers' minds some intelligence of the phrase 'Son of Man' as a Messianic title, although it was apparently not a Messianic title either in such current use that it came naturally to their lips or so unambiguous as to be easily comprehended by them in all the implications which our Lord compressed into it.

'Son of Man'

The difficulty created by our Lord's use of this phrase seems, indeed, as represented by Mark, not so much to have lain in apprehending that it involved a claim to Messianic dignity, as in comprehending the character of the Messianic conception which He expressed by it. The constant employment of this designation of Himself by our Lord in preference to the more current ones, such as, say, 'Son of David' or 'King of Israel,' appears to mark in effect an attempt on our Lord's part, in claiming for Himself the Messianic dignity, at the same time to fill the conception itself with a new import. The nature of the revolution which He would work in the Messianic ideal current among the people, in other words, is signalized by His avoidance of the current designations of the Messiah and His choice for His constant use of a more or less unwonted one which would direct their attention to a different region of Old Testament prophecy. He says, in effect, In the conception you are cherishing of the Messianic king, you are neglecting whole regions of prophecy, and are forming most mistaken expectations regarding Him: it is from the Son of Man of Daniel rather than from the Son of David of the Psalms and Samuel that you should take your starting point. No single title, of course, sums up the entirety of our Lord's conception of the Messianic function: there are elements of it adumbrated in very different sections of Old Testament prediction. But He elected, apparently, to point to the picture which Daniel draws of the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth as furnishing a starting point for a revision of the Messianic ideal current among those to whom His preaching was in the first instance addressed.

It may be difficult, in view of the varied elements which entered into His Messianic conception, to infer with confidence from the substance of the sayings in which Jesus refers to Himself as the 'Son of Man,' precisely the Messianic conception He understood to be covered by that designation. And much less can we suppose that His whole Messianic idea is embedded in these sayings. He refers to Himself by this designation in only a portion of the sayings which must be utilized in an attempt to determine His Messianic conception; and there is no reason to suppose that He always uses this designation when giving utterance to conceptions which He subsumed under it. Nevertheless, having guarded ourselves against rashness of inference and undue narrowness of view by reminding ourselves of these obvious facts, we must certainly, in an attempt to discover the significance of the designation 'Son of Man' in the Gospel of Mark, begin by observing the actual connections in which Jesus is represented in that Gospel as employing it, with a view to discovering, as far as possible, from the substance of these sayings the actual implications which it embodied for Him, and through Him for the writer of this Gospel who reports just these sayings from His lips.

Usage of 'Son of Man'

From these sayings, then, we learn that the life of the 'Son of Man' on earth is essentially a lowly one: He came not to be ministered unto, but to minister (10:45). Suffering belongs therefore to the very essence of His mission (8:31, 9:12, 31, 10:33, 14:21, 41) and has accordingly been pre-announced for Him in the Scriptures (9:12, 14:21). But this suffering is not in His own behalf, but for others, the form of His ministry to whom is "to give His life a ransom for many" (10:45). But just because His death is a sufficing ransom, death cannot be all: having given His life as a ransom for many the 'Son of Man' shall rise again (8:31, 9:9, 31, 10:34). Nor is this vindication by resurrection all. He is to "rise again" after three days (8:31, 9:31, 10:34), but is to "come" again "in clouds with great glory and power" (13:26, cf. 14:62) at some more remote, undesignated time (13:32), to establish the Kingdom in which He shall sit at the right hand of power (14:62). At this His coming He "shall send forth the angels and gather together His elect from the four winds, from the uttermost part of the earth to the uttermost part of heaven" (13:27); and shall show Himself ashamed of all who shall have been ashamed of Him and of His words in the adulterous generation with which He dwelt on earth (8:38). It is clearly the judgment scene that is here brought before us, and the eternal destinies of men are represented as lying in the hands of the 'Son of Man.' "His elect," "those whom He has chosen," are gathered into the Kingdom; His enemies, those who have rejected Him, are left without. Accordingly it is not surprising that He who came to give His life a ransom for many (10:45) and who is to come again in order to distribute to men their final destinies should have authority given Him even while on earth to order the religious observances by which men are trained in the life which looks beyond the limits of earth (2:28) and even to forgive sins (2:10). Perhaps in the light of 8:38, 13:27, in the phrase "on earth" we may see a contrast not so much with the "power" of God to forgive sins "in heaven" (cf. verse 7), as with the authority to award the destinies of all flesh (13:27 "His elect"; 8:38 those that are ashamed of Him) hereafter to be exercised in the heavenly kingdom by the 'Son of Man' Himself.

Meaning of 'Son of Man'

What perhaps most strikes us in this series of utterances is its prevailing soteriological, or perhaps we should say soteriologico-eschatological, rather than christological bearing. To Mark the 'Son of Man,' as reflected in the sayings he cites from the lips of the Lord, is the divinely sent Redeemer, come to minister to men and to give His life a ransom for many, who as Redeemer brings His chosen ones to glory and, holding the destinies of men in His hands, casts out those who have rejected Him—even while yet on earth preadumbrating the final issue by exercising His authority over religious ordinances and the forgiveness of sins. Little is said directly of the person of this Redeemer. It is a human figure, ministering, suffering, dying,—though clothed already with authority in the midst of its humility (or should we not rather say, its humiliation?)—which moves before us in its earthly career: it is a superhuman figure which is to return, clothed in glory—"sitting at the right hand of power" and coming with the clouds of heaven (14:62), or "coming in clouds with great power and glory" (13:26)—"in the glory of His Father with the holy angels" (8:38), those holy angels who are sent forth by Him to do His bidding, that they may gather to Him His chosen ones (13:27). Although there are intermingled traits derived from other lines of prophecy, the reference to the great vision of Daniel 7:13, 14 in these utterances is express and pervasive, and we cannot go astray in assuming that Jesus is represented as, in adopting the title of 'Son of Man' for His constant designation of Himself, intending to identify Himself with that heavenly figure of Daniel's vision, who is described as "like to a son of man" in contrast with the bestial figures of the preceding context, and as having committed to Him by God a universal and eternal dominion. Primarily His purpose seems to have been to represent Himself as the introducer of the Kingdom of God; and in doing so, to emphasize on the one hand the humiliation of His earthly lot as the founder of the kingdom in His blood, and on the other the glory of His real station as exhibited in His consummation of the kingdom with power. So conceived, this designation takes its place at the head of all the Messianic designations, and involves a conception of the Messianic function and personality alike which removes it as far as possible from that of a purely earthly monarchy, administered by an earth-born king. Under this conception the Messianic person is conceived as a heavenly being, who comes to earth with a divinely given mission; His work on earth is conceived as purely spiritual and as carried out in a state of humiliation; while His glory is postponed to a future manifestation which is identified with the judgment day and the end of the world. In the figure of the 'Son of Man,' in a word, we have the spiritual and supernatural Messiah by way of eminence.

MARK'S CONCEPTION OF OUR LORD

If, now, we review the series of designations applied to our Lord in the Gospel of Mark, as a whole, we shall, we think, be led by them into the heart of Mark's representation of Jesus.

A Divine Intervention in Christ

What Mark undertook in his Gospel was obviously to give an account of how that great religious movement originated which we call Christianity, but which he calls "the Gospel of Jesus Christ"—the glad tidings, that is, concerning Jesus Christ which were being proclaimed throughout the world. To put it in his own words, he undertook to set forth "the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ" (1:1). The account which he gives of the beginning of this great religious movement, by means of his 'Gospel,' is briefly that it originated in a divine intervention; and that this divine intervention was manifested in the ministry of the divinely promised and divinely sent Messiah who was no other than the man Jesus. This man is represented as coming, endowed with ample authority for His task; and as prosecuting this task by the aid of supernatural powers by which He was at once marked out as God's delegate on earth and enabled, in the face of all difficulties and oppositions, to accomplish to its end what He had set His hand to do.

Christ's Life Thoroughly Supernatural

It is idle to speak of Mark presenting us in his account of Jesus with the picture of a purely human life. It belongs to the very essence of his undertaking to portray this life as supernatural; and, from beginning to end, he sets it forth as thoroughly supernatural. The Gospel opens, therefore, by introducing Jesus to us as the divinely given Messiah, in whom God had from the ages past promised to visit His people; heralded as such by the promised messenger making ready the way of the Lord; and witnessed by this messenger as the "mightiest" of men, who bore in His hands the real potencies of a new life (1:8); and by God Himself from heaven as His Son, His beloved, in whom He was well pleased (1:11). Anointed and tested for His task, Jesus is then presented as entering upon and prosecuting His work as God's representative, endowed with all authority and endued with all miraculous powers. His authority was manifested alike in His teaching (1:22), in His control of demonic personalities (1:27), in the forgiveness of sins (2:10), in His sovereignty over the religious ordinances of Israel (2:28), in His relations to nature and nature's laws (4:41), in His dominion over death itself (5:42). As each of these typical exercises of authority is signalized in turn and copiously illustrated by instances, the picture of a miraculous life becomes ever more striking, and indeed stupendous. Even the failure of His friends to comprehend Him and the malice of His enemies in assaulting Him, are made by the evangelist contributory to the impression of an utterly supernatural life which he wishes to make on his readers. So little was it a normal human life that Jesus lived that His uncomprehending friends were tempted to think Him beside Himself, and His enemies proclaimed Him obviously suffering from "possession" (3:20–30). Whatever else this life was, it certainly was not, in view of any observer, a "natural" one. The "unnaturalness" of it is not denied: it is only pointed out that this "unnaturalness" was systematic, and that it was systematically in the interests of holiness. What is manifested in it, therefore, is neither the vagaries of lunacy nor the wickedness of demonism. What is exhibited is the binding of Satan and the destruction of satanic powers (cf. 1:27 et saepe). To ascribe these manifestations to Satan is therefore to blaspheme the Spirit of God. Nobody, it appears, dreamed of doubting in any interest the abnormality of this career: and we should not misrepresent Mark if we said that his whole Gospel is devoted to making the impression that Jesus' life and manifestation were supernatural through and through.

Jesus the Messiah

This is, of course, however, not quite the same as saying that Mark has set himself to portray in Jesus the life of a supernatural person. Whether the supernatural life he depicts is supernatural because it is the life on earth of a supernatural person, or because it is the life of a man with whom God dwelt and through whom God wrought, may yet remain a question. Certainly very much in Mark's narrative would fall in readily with the latter hypothesis. To him Jesus is primarily the Messiah, and the Messiah is primarily the agent of God in bringing in the new order of things. Undoubtedly Mark's fundamental thought of Jesus is that He is the man of God's appointment, with whom God is. Designating Him currently merely by His personal name of 'Jesus,' and representing Him as currently spoken of by His contemporaries merely as 'Jesus of Nazareth' and addressed by the simple honorific titles of 'Rabbi,' 'Teacher,' 'Lord'—His fundamental manifestation is to him plainly that of a man among men. That this man was the Messiah need not in itself import more than that He was the subject of divine influences beyond all other men, and the vehicle of divine operations surpassing all other human experience. It may fairly be asked, therefore, what requires us to go beyond the divine office to explain this supernaturally filled life? Will not the assumption of the Messiahship of Jesus fully account for the abounding supernaturalism of His activity as portrayed by Mark? Questions like these are in point of fact constantly raised around us and very variously answered. But it behooves us to be on our guard respecting them that we be not led into a false antithesis, as if we must explain Mark's presentation of the supernatural life of Jesus either on the basis of His office as Messiah or on the basis of His superhuman personality.

There is no necessary contradiction between these two hypotheses; and we must not introduce here a factitious "either—or." What it behooves us to do is simply to inquire how the matter lay in Mark's mind; what the real significance of the Messiahship he attributed to Jesus, and represented Jesus as claiming for Himself, is; and whether he posits for Jesus and represents Him as asserting for Himself something more than a human personality.

Jesus' Person Enhances His Designations

We cannot have failed to note in reviewing the designations applied in the course of Mark's narrative to our Lord, a tendency of them all when applied to Him to grow in richness of content. The term 'Lord' is merely an honorific address, equivalent to our 'Sir': but when applied to Jesus it seems to expand in significance until it ends by implying supreme authority. The term 'Messiah' is a mere term of office and might be applied to anyone solemnly set apart for a service: but when applied to Jesus it takes on fuller and fuller significance until it ends by assimilating Him to the Divine Being Himself. He who simply reads over Mark's narrative, noting the designations he applies to our Lord, accordingly, will not be able to doubt that Mark conceived of Jesus not merely as officially the representative of God but as Himself a superhuman person, or that Mark means to present Jesus as Himself so conceiving of His nature and personality. The evidence of this is very copious, but also often rather subtle; and, in endeavoring to collect and appreciate it, we might as well commence with some of the plainest items, although this method involves a somewhat unordered presentation of it.

Jesus a Superangelic Person

Let us look, then, first at that remarkable passage (13:32) in which Jesus acknowledges ignorance of the time of His (second) coming. Here, in the very act of admitting limitations to His knowledge, in themselves astonishing, He yet asserts for Himself not merely a superhuman but even a superangelic rank in the scale of being.

In any possible interpretation of the passage, He separates Himself from the "angels in heaven" (note the enhancing definition of locality, carrying with it the sense of the exaltation of these angels above all that is earthly) as belonging to a different class from them, and that a superior class. To Jesus as He is reported, and presumably to Mark reporting Him, we see, Jesus "the Son" stands as definitely and as incomparably above the category of angels, the highest of God's creatures, as to the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, whose argument may be taken as a commentary upon this passage (Heb 1:4, 2:8). Nor is this passage singular in Mark in exalting Jesus in dignity and authority above the angels. Already in the account of the temptation at the opening of His ministry we find the angels signalized as ministering to Him (1:13), and elsewhere they appear as His subordinates swelling His train (8:38) or His servants obeying His behests (13:27, "He shall send the angels"). Clearly, therefore, to Mark Jesus is not merely a superhuman but a superangelic personality: and the question at once obtrudes itself whether a superangelic person is not by that very fact removed from the category of creatures.

Jesus of Heavenly Origin

A similar implication, as has already been pointed out, is embedded in the title 'Son of Man,' which Mark represents as our Lord's stated self-designation. The appeal involved in it to Daniel 7:13, 14 is a definite assertion for the Messiah of a heavenly as distinguished from an earthly origin, with all the suggestions of preëxistence, divine exaltation and authority, and endless sovereignty necessarily connected with a heavenly origin. It would be impossible to frame a Messianic conception on the basis of this vision of Daniel and to suppose the Messiah to be in His person a mere man deriving His origin from the earth. This is sufficiently illustrated indeed by the history of the Messianic ideal among the Jews. There is very little evidence among the Jews before or contemporary with our Lord, of resort to Daniel 7:13, 14 as a basis for Messianic hopes: but wherever this occurs it is the conception of a preexistent, heavenly monarch who is to judge the world in righteousness which is derived from this passage. No other conception, in fact, could be derived from Daniel, where the heavenly origin of the eternal King is thrown into the sharpest contrast with the lower source of the preceding bestial rulers. Judaism may not have known how to reconcile this heavenly origin of the Messiah with His birth as a human being, and may have, therefore, when so conceiving the Messiah, sacrificed His human condition entirely to His heavenly nature and supposed Him to appear upon the earth as a developed personality. That our Lord does not feel this difficulty or share this notion manifests, in the matter of His adoption of the title 'Son of Man' as His favorite Messianic self-designation, His independence of whatever Jewish tradition may be supposed to have formed itself. But His adoption of the title at all, with its obvious reference to the vision of Daniel,5 necessarily carried with it the assertion of heavenly origination and nature.

Jesus' Earthly Life a Mission

This in turn carried with it, we may add, the conception that He had "come" to earth upon a mission, a conception which does not fail to find independent expression in such passages, as 1:38, 2:17, 10:45. For, that the assertions in these passages that He "came forth" to preach, that He "came" not to save the righteous but sinners, that He "came" not to be ministered unto but to minister and to give His life as a ransom for many, refer to His divine mission (cf. also 11:9, 10), lies on their face. It is suggested by the pregnancy of the expressions themselves, and the connections in which they are employed; and it is supported by the even more direct language of some of the parallels. In themselves these expressions may not necessarily involve the idea of preëxistence (cf. 9:11 and Jno. 1:7 of John the Baptist); but they fall readily in with it, and so far suggest it that when supported by other forms of statement implying it, they cannot well be taken in any other sense.

Jesus' Functions Divine

It is, however, above all in the picture which Jesus Himself draws for us of the 'Son of Man' that we see His superhuman nature portrayed. For the figure thus brought before us is distinctly a superhuman one; one which is not only in the future to be seen sitting at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven (14:62)—in clouds with great power and glory (13:26), even in the glory of His Father with the holy angels (8:38) who do His bidding as the Judge of all the earth, gathering His elect for Him (13:26) while He punishes His enemies (8:38); but which in the present world itself exercises functions which are truly divine,—for who is Lord of the Sabbath but the God who instituted it in commemoration of His own rest (2:28), and who can forgive sins but God only (2:10, cf. verse 7)? The assignment to the Son of Man of the function of Judge of the world and the ascription to Him of the right to forgive sins are, in each case, but another way of saying that He is a divine person; for these are divine acts.

The Uniqueness of Jesus' Sonship

We have already had occasion to point out the uniqueness and closeness of the relation to God which is indicated by the designation 'Son of God' as ascribed to Jesus. In the parable of Mark 12 not only is it emphasized that God has but one such son (verse 6), but He is as such expressly contrasted with all God's "servants" (verses 2 and 4) and expressly signalized as God's "heir" (verse 7). As we read this parable the mind inevitably reverts again to the representation of the Epistle to the Hebrews, which in its doctrine of the Son (cf. Heb 1:4, 3:6 etc.), might almost appear a thetical exposition of it. And in the immediate recognition of Jesus as the 'Son of God' by the evil spirits—"as soon as ever they caught sight of Him"—we can scarcely fail to see a testimony from the spiritual world to a sonship in Jesus surpassing that of mere appointment to an earthly office and function and rooted in what lies beyond this temporal sphere. It is noteworthy also that when responding to the adjuration of the high priest to declare whether He were 'the Christ, the Son of the Blessed,' Jesus points apparently to His exaltation at the right hand of power and His coming with the clouds of heaven, which they were to see, as the warranty for His acceptance of the designation: as much as to say that to be 'the Christ, the Son of the Blessed,' involves session at the right hand of God and the eternal dominion promised in Daniel (Mk. 14:62). And it is noticeable farther that immediately upon our Lord's acceptance of the ascription the high priest accused Him of blasphemy (14:63), which appears to be an open indication that to claim to be 'the Son of the Blessed' was all one with claiming to be a divine person. Even the heathen centurion's enforced conviction, as he witnessed the circumstances of Jesus' death, that this man certainly was 'a Son of God,' appears to be recorded for no other reason (15:39) than to make plain that the supernaturalness of Jesus' person was such as necessarily to impress any observer. No doubt a heathen centurion is but a poor witness to Jesus' essential nature; and no doubt his designation of Him as "a son of God" must needs be taken in a sense consonant with his standpoint as a heathen. But it manifests how from his own standpoint Jesus' death impressed him—as the death, to wit, of one of superhuman dignity. And its record seems to round out the total impression which Mark appears to wish to make in his use of the phrase, viz., that the superhuman dignity of Jesus was perforce recognized and testified to by all classes and by every variety of witness. The spiritual denizens of another world (1:24, 1:34, 3:11, 5:7), the appointed guardians of the spiritual life of Israel (14:61), Jesus Himself (12:6, 13:32, 14:62), God in Heaven (1:11, 9:7), and even the heathen man who gazed upon Him as He hung on the cross, alike certify to His elevation, as the Son of God, in the supernatural dignity of His person, above all that is earthly, all "servants" and "ministers" of God whatever, including the very angels. Certainly this designation, 'Son of God,' is colored so deeply with supernatural implications that even apart from such a passage as 13:32 where the superangelic nature of the Son is openly expressed, we cannot avoid concluding (cf. especially 12:6, 14:62, 15:39) that a supernatural personality as well as a supernatural office is intended to be understood by it. And if so, in view of the nature of the term itself, it is difficult to doubt that this supernaturalness of personality is intended to be taken at the height of the Divine. What can the Son, the unique and "beloved" Son of God, who also is God's heir, in contradistinction from all His servants, even the angels, be—but God Himself?

Jesus Assimilated to Jehovah

It has already been suggested that something of this implication is embedded in the employment of the designation 'Bridegroom' (2:19, 20) of our Lord. For there is certainly involved in it not merely the representation, afterwards copiously developed in the New Testament, of our Lord as the Bridegroom of the people of God, by virtue of which His Church is His bride (Mt 22:2, 25:1, Jno 3:29, Rom 7:4, 2 Cor 11:2, Eph 5:29, Rev 19:7, 21:2, 9), but also a reminiscence of those Old Testament passages, of which Hos 2:19 may be taken as the type (cf. Ex 20:5, Jer 2:20, Ezek 16:38, 60, 63), in which Jehovah's relation to His people is set forth under the figure of that of a loving husband to his wife. In other words, the use of 'the Bridegroom' as a designation of our Lord assimilates His relation to the people of God to that which in the Old Testament is exclusively, even jealously, occupied by Jehovah Himself, and raises the question whether Jesus is not thereby, in some sense, at any rate, identified with Jehovah. This question once clearly raised, other phenomena obtrude themselves at once upon our attention. We are impelled, for example, to ask afresh what sense our Lord put upon the words of the 110th Psalm, "The Lord said unto my Lord, 'Sit Thou on my right hand till I make Thine enemies the footstool of Thy feet,' " when (Mk. 12:35 et seq.) He adduced them to rebuke the Jews for conceiving the Christ as only the son of David, whereas David himself in this passage, and that speaking in the Spirit, expressly calls Him his Lord? It is not merely the term 'Lord' which comes into consideration here; but the exaltation which the application of the term in this connection to Him assigns to the Messiah. The scribes would have had no difficulty in understanding that the Messiah should be David's "greater son," who should—nay, must—because Messiah, occupy a higher place in the Kingdom of God than even His great father. The point of the argument turns on the supreme exaltation of the Lordship ascribed to Him, implying something superhuman in the Messiah's personality and therefore in His origin. Who is this 'Lord' who is to sit at the right hand of the 'Lord' who is Jehovah, and to whom David himself therefore does reverence? It is hard to believe that our Lord intended—or was understood by Mark to intend—by such a designation of the Messiah, who He Himself was, to attribute to Him less than a superhuman—or shall we not even say a divine—dignity, by virtue of which He should be recognized as rightfully occupying the throne of God. To sit at the right hand of God is to participate in the divine dominion,15 which, as it is a greater than human dignity, would seem to require a greater than human nature. To be in this sense David's Lord falls little if anything short of being David's God.

Jesus Identified with Jehovah

In estimating the significance of such a passage, we must not permit to fall out of sight the constant use of the term 'Lord' in the LXX version of the Old Testament for God. There it is "practically equivalent to God (θεός) and is the rendering of the solemn name of Jehovah." The writers of the New Testament, and Mark among them, must be understood to have been thoroughly familiar with this use of the term, and could scarcely fail to see in its appellative application to Christ a suggestion of His deity, when the implications of the context were, as we have seen them repeatedly to be, of His superhuman dignity and nature. Particularly when they apply to Him Old Testament passages in which the term 'Lord' refers to God, we can scarcely suppose they do so without a consciousness of the implications involved, and without a distinct intention to convey them. When, for example, in the opening verses of Mark, we read: "Even as it is written in Isaiah the prophet, Behold I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way; The voice of one crying in the wilderness, make ye ready the way of the Lord, make His paths straight,—[so] John came," etc., we cannot easily rid ourselves of the impression that the term 'Lord' is applied to Jesus. The former of the two prophetic citations here brought together is distinctly made to refer to Christ, by a change in the pronouns from the form they bear in the original—though the reference in the original is to Jehovah: and this by an inevitable consequence carries with it the reference of the latter also to Christ. But in the original of Isaiah 40:3 again the reference of the term 'Lord' is to Jehovah. Here we see Jesus then identified by means of the common term 'Lord' with Jehovah. Of course it may be said that it is not Jesus who is identified with Jehovah, but the coming of Jesus which is identified with the "advent of Jehovah" to redeem His people predicted so frequently in the Old Testament.22 And this explanation might serve very well in the absence of other indications in this Gospel that Jesus was viewed as a superhuman being. In the presence of such indications, however,—especially so clear an instance as is afforded by the saying of Jesus in 13:32—and in the presence of other suggestions of the identification of Jesus with the Jehovah of the Old Testament,—such as is afforded by His adoption of the title of 'Bridegroom,'—the natural implication of joining this prediction to its fellow in which we hear of the "messenger" coming "before the face" of Jesus ("thy") and "preparing His way" ("thy"), must be permitted to determine the question in favor of the application of the term 'Lord' to Jesus Himself. And in that case it is the person of Jesus which is identified with Jehovah.

Mark's Method

It cannot be doubted, therefore, that Mark sees in Jesus a supernatural person,—not merely a person endowed with supernatural powers, but a Person in His own personality superior to angels and therefore standing outside the category of creatures. He does not, however, dwell upon this. It emerges in his narrative, almost, we may say, by accident. This is in accordance with the character of his undertaking, which is illustrated by many kindred phenomena. His is not the Gospel of reflection: it is the Gospel of action. This evangelist is not accustomed to stop to muse upon the events he records or to develop all their significance. He does not attempt to give even a full record of the teaching of Jesus. He has set himself to exhibit "the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ"; and he exhibits this "beginning" in a vivid picture of the wonderful career of the divine Messiah, preserving only casually certain of our Lord's sayings as substantial elements in his presentation of His career and only incidentally suggesting what our Lord was in describing what He did. His concern is to portray fully the supernatural life which Jesus lived, at the beginning of the Gospel, as the fountain from which has flowed the great movement in which he was himself an actor. In doing this his method is of a piece throughout. He does not record for us, for example, the great saying in which Jesus declares: "All authority has been given unto me in heaven and in earth" (Mt 28:18). He simply exhibits the exercise of this authority by Jesus in detail (1:22, 27, 2:10, 28, 3:27, 4:41, 5:42, etc.); leaving it to the reader to infer the gift. Similarly he does not stop in his rapidly moving narrative to say, "Lo, here is a supernatural person": much less does he pause to develop that conception into its implications. He does not even charge himself to cite from Jesus' lips His own claims to divine origin and His own conception of His unique relations with the Father. What he gives us on these themes is incidental to the narrative and falls out in it almost by accident.

Mark's Silence

What he gives us is ample, nevertheless, to make it clear that Mark was not ignorant of these things. How can it be said that Mark knows nothing of the preëxistence of Christ when he records Jesus' constant application to Himself of the title 'Son of Man'? How can it be said that he knows nothing of the supernatural birth of Jesus when he records Jesus' assertion of a superangelic nature for Himself? How should one above angels enter into the sphere of human life except by a supernatural birth? Unless we consider it more credible that Mark claimed for Him an even more supernatural descent as an adult from heaven? Mark, in a word, leaves the exposition of these things to others. It is Matthew and Luke who complete the story by the record of the supernatural birth. It is John who develops all the implications of Jesus' preexistence. But all that these bring to expression in their fuller accounts is implied in Mark's narrative, in which he incidentally tells us of the dignity of that person's nature whose wonderful career he has undertaken to describe. And there is no reason why we should suppose him ignorant of the implications of his own facts, especially when his purpose in writing did not call for the explication of these implications. In a word, it seems clear enough that there lies behind the narrative of Mark not an undeveloped christology, but only an unexpressed one. To give expression to his christology did not lie within the limits of the task he had undertaken.

Mark's Conception of the Messiahship

We must guard ourselves especially from imagining that the recognition found in Mark of the deity of Jesus is in any way clouded by the emphasis he places on the Messiahship of Jesus as the fundamental fact of His mission. We have already had occasion to point out that the Messiahship and the deity of Jesus are not mutually exclusive conceptions. Even on the purely Jewish plane it was possible to conceive the Messiah a supernatural person: and He is so conceived, for example, in the Similitudes of Enoch and the Visions of 4 Esdras. The recognition of the deity of Jesus by Mark—and by Jesus as reported by Mark—in no way interferes with the central place taken in Mark's narrative—and in Jesus' thought of Himself as reported by Mark,—by our Lord's Messianic claims. It only deepens the conception of the Messiahship which is presented as the conception which Jesus fulfilled. The result is merely that the Christian movement becomes, from the point of view of the history of the Messianic ideal, an attempt to work a change in the current conception of the Messianic office—a change which involved its broadening to cover a wider area of Old Testament prophecy and its deepening to embody spiritual rather than prevailingly external aspirations. We have already noted that our Lord's preference for His self-designation of the title 'Son of Man' over other more current titles is indicatory of His enlarged and enriched conception of the Messiahship: and we have already hinted that even the title 'Son of Man' only partly suggests the contents of His conception, elements of which found their adumbration in yet other portions of Old Testament prediction. Among these further elements of Old Testament prophecy taken up into and given validity in His conception, there are especially notable those that portray the Righteous Servant of Jehovah, culminating in the 53d chapter of Isaiah, and those that set forth what has appropriately been called the "Advent of Jehovah,"—the promises, in a word, of the intervention of Jehovah Himself to redeem His people. It may be very easy to do less than justice to the Messianic ideal current among the Jewish people at the time of our Lord, centering as it did in the hope of the establishment of an external kingdom endowed with the irresistible might of God. Of course this Kingdom of God was conceived as a kingdom of righteousness; and it may be possible to show that most of the items that enter into the Old Testament predictions, including that of redemption from sin, were not wholly neglected in one or another form of its expression. The difference between it and the Messianic conception developed by Jesus and His followers may thus almost be represented as merely a difference of emphasis. But a difference of emphasis may be far from a small difference; and the effect of the difference in this case certainly amounted to a difference in kind. This new Messianic ideal is unmistakably apparent in Mark's conception and in the conception of Jesus as represented by Mark's record of His sayings. We can trace in Mark's record the influence of factors recalling the Righteous Servant (10:45, 9:12, 14:21, 1:24) and the Divine Redeemer (1:3) as well as the Danielic Son of Man. But these factors attain fuller expression in the records of the other evangelists. So that here too we find them bringing out into clearness what already lies in Mark rather than adding anything really new to his presentation.

THE DESIGNATIONS OF OUR LORD IN MATTHEW

When we turn to Matthew's Gospel, and observe the designations applied in it to our Lord, what chiefly strikes us is that it runs in this matter on precisely the same lines with Mark, with only this difference, that what is more or less latent in Mark becomes fully patent in Matthew.

The Narrative Name, and Exceptions

The narrative name of our Lord is in Matthew (as in Mark) the simple 'Jesus'; which (as in Mark) never occurs as other than the narrative name, with the single exception (which is no exception) that in announcing His birth the Angel of the Lord is reported as commanding, "Thou shalt call His name Jesus" (1:21). And not only does Matthew, like Mark, reserve the simple 'Jesus' for his narrative name, but, also like Mark, he practically confines himself to it. The only outstanding exceptions to this are that Matthew sets (like Mark) the solemn Messianic designation 'Jesus Christ' in the heading of his Gospel (1:1), and follows this up (unlike Mark) by repeating it both at the opening of his formal narrative (1:18), and at an important new starting point in his narrative (16:21 v. r.); and that he employs a certain fulness of designation throughout the formal genealogy with which the Gospel begins, by which he places the 'Jesus' of whom he is to speak clearly before the readers and clearly as the Messiah. "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham" (1:1) is the phraseology with which he opens this genealogy: he closes it with the words, "Mary of whom was born Jesus surnamed Christ" (1:16); and in the summary which he adjoins he calculates the generations "unto Christ" (1:17)—a designation which meets us again at 11:2. Thus Matthew in beginning his Gospel leaves no room for doubting that he purposes to present the story of Jesus' life as the life of the Messiah; but as soon as he has given that formal emphatic enunciation, he takes up the narrative with the simple 'Jesus' and with only the two breaks at 11:2 and 16:21 v. r. carries it on with the simple 'Jesus' to the end. The simple 'Jesus' occurs thus in his narrative about 139 times, and is replaced only by the compound 'Jesus Christ' (1:1, 18, 16:21; v. r., cf. 1:16), and by the simple 'Christ' (1:17, 11:2, cf. 1:16), each, at most three times.

'Christ' as a Proper Name

In this sparing use of 'Jesus Christ' and 'Christ' by Matthew himself, the term 'Christ' appears to be employed not as an appellative but as a proper name. In 2:4, no doubt, "the Christ" is used in the general sense of "the Messiah": Herod did not inquire of "the chief priests and scribes of the people" where Jesus was born, but where, according to prophecy, "the Messiah should be born": but just on that account there is no direct reference to Jesus at all here. The commentators are very generally inclined to look upon the use of "the Christ" in 11:2 as a similar instance, as if what John had heard in the prison was that "the works of the Messiah"—such works, that is, as were expected of the Messiah,—were occurring abroad; and accordingly sent and asked Jesus whether He was indeed "the Coming One." Attractive as this explanation is, however, it scarcely seems to fit in with the connection. Jesus' exhibition of His works to the messengers would hardly in these circumstances have been an answer to John's inquiry, so much as rather a refusal to give an answer. And the connection of the pronoun "Him" in verse 3 with its antecedent "Christ" of verse 2 appears to require us to take that term not as a general but as a particular one: John surely is not said to have sent to "the Messiah" and inquired of "Him" whether He was the Messiah. In other words if "the Christ" (ὁ Χριστὸς) can be taken as a proper name, designating Jesus, surely it must be so taken here. And that it can be so taken and is so taken by Matthew, its use in 1:17 appears to show.

"The Christ" in 1:17 also has sometimes, to be sure, been understood as the general term, "the Messiah." But this throws it out of range not only with the other names in this simple summary, wherein the corresponding terms in the accounting are most simply given—Abraham, David, the Babylonian deportation; but also with the precedent phrase, 'Jesus, surnamed Christ,' of verse 16 to which it refers back and which it takes up and repeats. For that the 'Christ' in this phrase is a simple proper name is not only suggested by the absence of the article with it, but is indicated by the currency of a similar mode of speech in the case of like instances of double names. It appears then that the addition, "surnamed Christ," is intended in this passage as a formal identification of the particular Jesus in question; and the employment of "Christ" instead of "Jesus" in the subsequent summary (verse 17) is perhaps best explained in the interests of this clearness of designation, the article accompanying it having the force of "the aforesaid Christ."

Why so Seldom Used

Matthew thus notifies us at the beginning of his narrative that the 'Jesus' with whom he is to deal has another name, to wit, 'Christ' (1:16), and so prepares the way for an occasional employment of this other name (1:17, 11:2). Our only surprise is that he employs it so seldom. The account to be given of this is probably that, after all, in the circles for which Matthew wrote, this 'Jesus' had become so unapproachably the only 'Jesus' who would come to mind on the mention of the name, that the more distinctive surname 'Christ' was not needed in speaking of Him to secure His identification; it is employed, therefore, only when some suggestion of His Messiahship was intruding itself upon the mind, as is the case certainly at 11:2; and no doubt also at 1:17; and we may add equally so in 1:1 (cf. "the Son of David"), 1:18 and 16:21 (cf. v. 20), where the compound 'Jesus Christ' occurs. This is to recognize, of course, that the surname 'Christ' was the name of dignity as distinguished from the simple name of designation, and preserved, even when employed as a proper name, its implications of Messiahship; but this is in any event a matter of course and should not be confounded with the question of its appellative use. The employment of the term 'Christ' as a proper name of Jesus so far from losing sight of His claim to Messiahship, accordingly, bears witness to so complete an acquiescence in that claim on the part of the community in which this usage of the term was current, that the very official designation was conceived as His peculiar property and His proper designation (cf. 27:17–22). The sparingness of Matthew's employment of it, on the other hand, manifests how little our Lord's dignity as Messiah needed to be insisted on in the circles for which Matthew wrote, and how fully the simple name 'Jesus' could convey to the readers all that was wrapped up in His personality.

Jesus' Popular Name

Besides this sparing use of 'Jesus Christ' and 'Christ,' then, Matthew makes use in his own person of no other designation in speaking of our Lord than the simple 'Jesus,' although on three occasions he adduces with reference to Him designations which he finds in the prophets: 'Immanuel' (1:23), 'Lord' (3:3), 'the Nazarene' (2:23). The implications of the first two of these we may leave for later reference. The last bears witness to the fact that Jesus was currently known by His contemporaries as "a Nazarene," that is to say, that His ordinary distinctive designation among the people in the midst of whom His ministry was passed would be, 'Jesus the Nazarene,' as the maid, indeed, is recorded to have spoken of Him in the court of the high priest (26:71). This exact designation, however, does not elsewhere occur in Matthew's narrative, although its broader equivalent, from the standpoint of a Jerusalemite, 'Jesus the Galilean,' is represented as employed by the companion maid (26:69), and the multitude seeking to do Him honor is represented as describing Him with great fulness as "the prophet Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee" (21:11). The simple 'Jesus,' as has been already pointed out, He is not represented as called, except by the angel announcing His birth (1:21), but Pilate is quoted as designating Him by His full name, "Jesus, surnamed Christ" (27:17, 22), and we are told that there was set over His head on the cross the legend, "This is Jesus, the King of the Jews" (27:37). In both instances the adjunct is, no doubt, scornful, though it is less obviously so on Pilate's lips than in the inscription on the cross.

Early Use of 'Christ' as a Proper Name

The employment by Pilate of the full name, 'Jesus, surnamed Christ,' seems to bear witness that already before Jesus' death He had been so prevailingly spoken of as the Messiah that this official designation might seem to have become part of His proper name. The alternatives are to suppose that Matthew does not report the exact words of Pilate, who may be thought rather to have used the phrase appearing in the parallel passage in Mark—"the King of the Jews"; or else that the term Christ is employed here in its full official sense as an appellative,—"Jesus who is commonly called the Christ."10 The former, however, is a purely gratuitous suggestion; Mark and Matthew do not contradict but supplement one another. And the latter seems not quite consonant with the language used. There seems, moreover, really no reason why we may not suppose Pilate to have caught the term "Christ" as applied to Jesus, and to have understood it as a proper name, especially when we are expressly told by Luke (23:2) that the accusation which was lodged against Him took the form that He had proclaimed Himself to be "Christ, a King." Nor, indeed, does there seem any compelling reason why it may not already have been employed of Jesus by His followers sufficiently constantly to have begun to be attached to Him as at least a quasi-proper name (cf. 11:2). On heathen ears, as we know, the term "Christ" was apt to strike as a proper name; and, in any event, the title 'Christ' began very early, at least in Christian circles, to be appropriated to Jesus in much the connotation of a proper name, because men did not wait for His death before they began to hope it would be He who should deliver Israel.12 If we may suppose, as in any event we must, that even as a proper name, or as a quasi-proper name, there clung to the term 'Christ' a sense of its honorific character, it would appear quite possible that Pilate, "knowing that it was from envy that they had delivered Him up," meant by giving Jesus His full and evidently honorific name, to play upon the multitude, that they should demand "Jesus, surnamed Christ," rather than Barabbas.

Simple Honorific Addresses

Like Mark, Matthew represents Jesus as customarily addressed by the simple current honorific titles. The actual Aramaic form, 'Rabbi,' however, oddly enough, is retained only in repeating the only two remarks recorded in Matthew's narrative as made to the Lord by Judas Iscariot (26:25, 49). Its usual Greek rendering, 'Teacher' (διδάσχαλε), also takes a relatively inferior place in Matthew, being largely supplanted by the more Greek 'Lord' (κύριε), perhaps as the representative of the Aramaic Mâri. A tendency seems even observable to reserve 'Teacher' (διδάσκαλε) for the non-committal, respectful address of those who were not followers of Jesus (12:38, 22:16, 24, 36, 9:11, 17:24, cf. 19:16). It is employed, however, in the case of a scribe who came to Jesus and declared his purpose to become His constant follower (8:19, cf. 19:16). And our Lord places it on His disciples' lips when He instructs them to "go into the city to such a man, and say unto him, The Teacher says, My time is at hand; I keep the passover with my disciples at thy house" (26:18). Similarly in didactic statements He refers (10:24, 25) to the relation between Him and His followers as well under the terms of 'Teacher and disciple' as under those of 'servant and Lord,' 'the Householder and the household': and forbids His followers to be called 'Rabbi,' because He alone is their 'Teacher,' as pointedly as He forbids them to be called 'guides,' because He, the Christ, alone is their 'Guide' (23:7–10).

Master of the House

Two new terms are brought before us in these last-quoted declarations,—'House-master' (οἰκοδεσπότης, Mt 10:25, 24:43; cf. Mk 13:25) and 'Guide' (καθηγητής, 23:10 only in N. T.); both of which seem to have higher implications than 'Teacher' (διδάσκαλος), although both are placed in the closest connection with it as its practical synonyms (10:24, 25, 23:8, 10). 'Guide' (καθηγητής) occurs indeed nowhere else: and we can say of it only that our Lord chose it as one of the designations which expressed His exclusive relation to His disciples. He was their only Teacher, Guide, Master and Lord. But 'House-master' (οἰκοδεσπότης) seems to have been rather a favorite figurative expression with Him, to set forth His relation to His disciples, whether in didactic or in parabolic statement. In one of His parables, indeed, it is not He who is the 'House-master' (οἰκοδεσπότης), but God, while He is God's Son and Heir (21:33 et seq.) in distinction from the slaves which make up otherwise the household; and the uniqueness of His relation to the Father as His Son is thrown up into the strongest light, and is further emphasized in the application, where Jesus speaks of Himself as the chief cornerstone on which the Kingdom of God is built (verse 42) and on their relation to which the destinies of men hang (verse 44). In other parables, however (13:24 et seq.‚ 20:1 et seq.), the 'House-master' (οἰκοδεσπότης) is Jesus Himself, and the functions that are ascribed to Him as such have especial reference to the destinies of men. As the 'House-master' (οἰκοδεσπότης) He distributes to men the rewards of their labors in accordance with His own will, doing as He will with His own (20:15): and bears with the tares in the field in which He has sown good corn until the time of harvest shall come, when He will send the reapers—who are "His Angels"—to gather them out and burn them with fire (13:24 et seq., 36 et seq.). In a word, to the 'House-master' (οἰκοδεσπότης) who is expressly pressly identified with 'the Son of Man' (13:38) the inalienably divine function of Judge of the earth is assigned, and it is with this high connotation in His mind that He speaks of Himself as such, over against His "domestics," when He warns them not to expect better treatment at the hands of men than He has received (10:25). The implications of sovereignty inherent in the term run up in its application therefore into the sovereignty of God: as 'House-master' (οἰκοδεσπότης), Jesus is pictured as our divine Lord.

'Lord' as an Address

If 'Teacher' (διδάσκαλε) somewhat sinks in value as an honorific form of address in Matthew as compared with Mark, its more Greek equivalent, 'Lord' (κύριε), on the other hand, is more frequently and variously employed by Matthew than by Mark. It appears upon the lips alike of applicants for our Lord's mercy, whether Jewish (8:2, 9:28, 17:15, 20:30, 31, 33) or heathen (8:6, 8, 15:22, 25, 15:27), and of His disciples (8:21, 25, 14:28, 30, 16:22, 17:4, 18:21, 26:22); but never on the lips of one who is not in some sense a follower of Jesus, either as suitor for His grace or as His professed disciple. 'Lord' (κύριε) is accordingly a higher mode of designation in Matthew than 'Teacher' (διδάσκαλε), and imports a closer bond of connection with Jesus and a more profound and operative recognition of His authority. It occurs some twenty-one times as a form of address to Jesus, and, besides once as an address to God (11:25), only a single time (to Pilate, 27:63), outside of parables, as an address to anyone else. Even in its parabolic use, indeed, its reference is always (except 21:30 only) either to God (18:25, [26], 27, 31, 18:32, 34, 21:42, cf. 6:24) or to Jesus pictured in positions of supreme authority ([13:27]; 20:8, 24:45, 46, 48, 50, 25:[11], [11], 18, 19, [20], 21, 21, [22], 23, 23, [24], 26, cf. 10:24, 25). It cannot be said, of course, that this supreme authority is explicit in every case of the actual use of the term: in a number of instances the term may express no more than high respect and a general recognition of authority, and in several instances it is represented in parallel passages in the other evangelists by one or another of its lower synonyms. But its tendency is distinctly upwards; and no reader can fail to catch a very high note in its repeated use, or can feel surprise when it is observed to be connected usually with at least Messianic implications (15:22, 20:30, 31, 7:21, 21) and is found occasionally to be suggestive of something even higher (25:37, 44). Nor will he be surprised to perceive that in its highest connotation it appears characteristically upon the lips of our Lord Himself, who represents men as seeking to enter the Kingdom of Heaven by crying to Him 'Lord, Lord' (7:21), and as addressing Him on the Day of Judgment as He sits King on the throne of His glory by the appropriate title of 'Lord' (25:37, 44). In the latter case, of course, nothing is lacking of recognition of divine majesty itself: this 'Lord' is not only "the Son of Man" come in His glory with all the angels with Him (verse 31), 'the King' (verses 34, 40) seated on the throne of His majesty (verse 31), but 'the Judge of all the earth,' distributing to each man his eternal destiny, according to the relation in which each stands to His own person.

'Lord' as an Appellation

It is clear enough from passages like these that our Lord is represented by Matthew as conceiving His relation to His followers as very properly expressed by the term 'Lord.' But the appellative use of the term of Jesus is nevertheless not common in Matthew. No more in Matthew than in Mark is Jesus spoken of by the evangelist himself or represented as freely spoken of by others as 'the Lord.' Even in the words of the angel at the tomb, "Come, see the place where the Lord lay" (28:6), the words "the Lord" are probably not genuine. Nevertheless, on the lips of our Lord Himself the appellative use of the term does occur, and that in no low significance. He declares Himself as 'the Son of Man' to be 'Lord of the Sabbath' (12:8). He instructs His disciples in requisitioning the ass and her colt for His formal entry into Jerusalem to reply to all challengers with the simple words, "The Lord has need of them" (21:3),—and the narrator connects this instruction with the fulfillment of the prophecy that the King of Zion shall enter it "riding upon an ass, and upon a colt, the foal of an ass" (verse 5). He warns His followers that as they know not on what day 'their Lord' cometh (24:42),—that Lord who is the Son of Man, who is to come in glory for the judgment of the world (verse 44),—they are to preserve a constant attitude of watchfulness. And in accordance with these declarations He explains that though David's son, He, the Christ, is much more than David's son,—as David himself in the Spirit recognized,—even David's 'Lord' (22:43–45), and that, a Lord who sits on the right hand of the Lord who is Jehovah. It is in full harmony with these definitions of His Lordship cited from the Lord's own lips that the evangelist himself (3:3) applies to Him the term 'Lord' in that prophecy of Isaiah, in which there is promised "a voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make ye ready the way of the Lord," Jehovah; thus identifying His coming with the promised advent of Jehovah and His person with Jehovah who was to come. However little therefore the mere form of address 'Lord' as applied to Christ may necessarily imply in Him a superhuman dignity, it is clear that the actual Lordship accredited to Him by Matthew, and by Himself as reported by Matthew, stretches above all human claims.

Messianic Titles

We cannot fail to have observed, as we have contemplated these honorific addresses and titles accorded to our Lord, that it is His Messianic dignity which proximately underlies them all. And we shall be prepared by this observation to note that with Matthew as with Mark, the presentation of Him as the promised Messiah belongs among the primary ends of the evangelist, and that in the process of this presentation a considerable number of Messianic titles are ascribed to Him. Matthew bears witness, like Mark, to be sure, that the people recognized in Him a prophet (21:46, 21:11, 16:14) and that Jesus Himself was far from repelling this attribution (13:57); but little stress is laid upon this and it may be easily understood that prophetic powers were conceived by Matthew, as by Mark, to be included in His Messianic endowment. We have seen that he himself calls Jesus in the formal opening of his Gospel (1:1), at the beginning of the narrative proper (1:18), and at the new beginning marked by His open proclamation of His dignity (16:21), by the solemn compound name of 'Jesus Christ,' thus carefully announcing His Messianic claims as governing the very frame-work of his Gospel. And we have seen him following up this ceremonious use of the full name 'Jesus Christ' in the opening of the Gospel, by explaining the term 'Christ,' which forms a part of it, as a surname of Jesus due to the recognition of Him as the Messiah (1:16), on which account He forms the natural termination of the genealogy begun in Abraham (1:17); and by implying that His works marked Him out as the Messiah (11:2), so that the imprisoned John, hearing of them, was impelled to inquire into their meaning. How widespread the knowledge of His Messianic claims was is witnessed by the adjuration of the high priest at His trial, "I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ" (26:63), and the bitter sport His judges made of Him (26:68) as they smote Him and demanded, "Tell us, Christ, who smote thee."

Our Lord's Own Messianic Claims

Evidently our Lord's claim to the Messianic dignity is intended to be represented as having been clear, constant and emphatic: so a part of Himself in the popular understanding that His heathen judge already conceived the title 'Christ' as only His surname (27:17, 22, cf. 11:2). And indeed Matthew's narrative leaves us in no uncertainty that Jesus had claimed this title for Himself from His earliest ministry. When the Baptist, having heard of the works He did, sent from his prison to ask Him whether He was 'the Coming One' (11:3), He replied with no doubtful indication that He was indeed 'the Christ.' When Peter (16:16) in his great confession declared Him "the Christ, the Son of the living God," Jesus pronounced the declaration a revelation from heaven (16:17), and only charged His disciples not as yet to reveal the fact that He was "the Christ" (16:20). It was evidently to elevate the conception current as to the Christ whom He represented Himself as being that He put to His opponents the searching question, how could the Christ be merely David's son, when David himself, in the Spirit, spoke of Him as his Lord—a Lord seated on the right hand of God (22:41–46). Because He was, as 'the Christ,' the sole 'Guide' to His followers, He would not have them be called guides, even as they should put no earthly person in the place of their one Father in heaven (23:10). The name 'the Christ,' He explained (24:5), was exclusively His own, and it would be a usurpation, therefore, which could only lead astray, if others should come "in the strength of His name, saying"—therefore falsely,—"I am the Christ." When the high priest adjured Him to tell whether He were "the Christ, the Son of God" (26:63) He, accordingly, solemnly accepted the title and explained that in accepting it He took it in its highest connotation (26:64)—in so high a connotation indeed that His judges promptly pronounced what He had spoken blasphemy. It is, therefore, only in imitation of Jesus Himself that Matthew treats the designation of 'the Christ' as Jesus' peculiar property and—though of course without emptying it of its lofty connotation—deals with it as His proper name by which He might be currently designated.

The Simple Messianic Designations

The ascription of the title 'Christ' to Jesus carries with it naturally certain other Messianic titles which are involved in it. The simplest of these is 'the Coming One,' based apparently on Mal 3:1 or Ps 40:7 or 118:26, and itself the basis of a customary method of pregnant speech of the Messiah as "coming." This designation is applied to Jesus in the question of the Baptist—"Art thou the Coming One, or do we look for another?" (11:3), which Matthew records as having been called out by the report brought the Baptist of the "works of Christ"—using the name of 'Christ' here instead of 'Jesus,' contrary to his custom, apparently under the influence of this train of thought. And the evangelist records in accordance with this designation a series of sayings of our Lord in which He speaks pregnantly of having "come" (5:17, 9:13, 10:34, 20:28, cf. 10:40), as well as certain popular ascriptions to the same effect (21:9, 23:39).
Even more directly connected with the title, 'Christ,' however, is that of 'King': and we find Matthew accordingly recording the ascription of that title to Him in the heathen form of 'the King of the Jews,' alike by the wise men of the east who came to worship Him in His cradle (2:2) and by the Roman governor at His trial (27:11, cf. 27:37) and the mocking soldiery (27:29). Jesus accepts it at Pilate's hands, despite the heathen form which he gives it, and which the priests (27:42) correct to the more acceptable 'King of Israel.' Of more significance is Matthew's application to Him, when He entered Jerusalem in triumph, of the prophecy of Zechariah, "Behold thy King cometh unto thee," etc. (21:5). But, of course, the deepest significance of all attaches to our Lord's own use of the title 'King' with reference to Himself in the great judgment scene of Mt 25:31 seq. (verses 34 and 40). Here, calling Himself the 'Son of Man,' He ascends the throne of His glory, and as King, not of Israel, but of all flesh, dispenses their final awards to all, according to their several relations to Himself. Such a King certainly was something more than a 'Son of David' (22:43 seq.). But that designation also belongs to Him as the 'Christ,' God's Anointed, who was to occupy the Davidic throne, and accordingly it is represented that the sight of His Messianic works led Him to be recognized no more as 'the Coming One' (11:3) than as 'the Son of David' (12:23, 9:27, 15:22, 20:30, 31, 21:9, 45, cf. 1:1)—and that He by no means refused the ascription (esp. 21:9, 15).

Meaning of the 'Son of God'

Obviously, however, no lower title would suit the state of this Messianic King than that highest conceivable one, 'the Son of God.' It is likely that there were supernatural implications in the mind of the evangelist even when he applied to the persecuted infant Jesus the prophetic summary of Israelitish history, "Out of Egypt did I call my Son" (2:15), although at first sight we might seem to be moving here in the atmosphere of a merely official sonship. In every other instance of the adduction of this designation in Matthew these supernatural implications are thrust prominently forward. The very point of Satan's temptation of our Lord was that He should exercise the supernatural powers which necessarily belonged to Him—if He were indeed really 'a Son of God' (4:3, 6, cf. 8:29). Similarly the confession wrung from the disciples by the spectacle of His control of the forces of nature, emphasizes as strongly as possible the supernaturalness of the Being who is capable of such works (14:33). In Peter's great confession (16:16) the adjunction of 'the Son of the Living God' to the simple 'Christ' is no more without its high significance than the similar adjunction in the high priest's adjuration (26:63) of 'the Son of God' to the simple 'Christ.' In both instances the intention is to go beyond the mere designation of our Lord as the Messiah, and to bring into relief the supernaturalness of His person. Even when the Jews railed at Him as He hung on the cross that He had proclaimed Himself 'the Son of God' (27:40, 43), the point of their scoff was that He had laid claim to a supernatural relationship which implied supernatural powers. Nevertheless, the deepest connotations of the Sonship to God come out most plainly in connection with the less technical forms of this designation. At the apex of these stands, of course, the double attestation which, it is recorded, was given to Jesus from heaven itself as God's 'Son,' who because His 'Son' was also His 'Beloved,' His chosen, in whom He was well pleased (3:17, 17:5). But quite worthy of a place by the side of these supreme attestations is the allusion which our Lord makes to Himself in one or two of His parables, as the 'Son,' in differentiation from all "servants" of God whatsoever; as God's Son and unique Heir, who, despite what those to whom He was sent should do unto Him, shall be constituted by God's marvelous working the stone which is the head of the corner (21:37–38); and as the King's Son, all those unworthy of a place at whose marriage feast should have their part in the outer darkness where is the weeping and the gnashing of teeth (22:2). This 'Son' obviously is no less in origin and nature divine than in His working in the earth the Lord of the destinies of men.

Culminating Assertions

But perhaps the most illuminating passages in this reference remain yet to be adduced. These are those three remarkable utterances of our Lord which are recorded at 24:36, 11:27 and 28:18–20. The first of these we have already ready met with in Mark. It is that difficult saying in which our Lord declares that "concerning the day and hour" of His coming "no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor yet the Son, but the Father only"—which differs from the parallel in Mark significantly only in the added emphasis placed on the exclusion of all others whatsoever from this knowledge by the adjunction to the exception of the Father of the emphatic word "only." The elevation of the Son here to superangelic dignity, as the climax of the enumeration of those excluded from the knowledge in question is reached in His name—no one at all, not even the angels of heaven, nor yet even the Son—is what it particularly concerns us to note, implying as it does the exaltation of the Son above the highest of creatures, "the angels of heaven." The second of the utterances in question (11:27) is in some respects the most remarkable in the whole compass of the four Gospels. Even the Gospel of John contains nothing which penetrates more deeply into the essential relation of the Son to the Father. Indeed, as Dr. Sanday suggests, "we might describe the teaching of the Fourth Gospel" as only "a series of variations upon the one theme, which has its classical expression in" this "verse of the Synoptics": "All things were delivered unto me by 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." The point of the utterance, it will be seen, is that in it our Lord asserts for Himself a relation of practical equality with the Father, here described in most elevated terms as the "Lord of heaven and earth" (v. 25). As the Father only can know the Son, so the Son only can know the Father: and others may know the Father only as He is revealed by the Son. That is, not merely is the Son the exclusive revealer of God, but the mutual knowledge of Father and Son is put on what seems very much a par. The Son can be known only by the Father in all that He is, as if His being were infinite and as such inscrutable to the finite intelligence; and His knowledge alone—again as if He were infinite in His attributes—is competent to compass the depths of the Father's infinite being. He who holds this relation to the Father cannot conceivably be a creature, and we ought not to be surprised, therefore, to find in the third of these great utterances (28:18–20) the Son made openly a sharer with the Father (and with the Holy Spirit) in the single Name of God: "All authority was given me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you; and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." Having in the former passage (11:27) declared His intercommunion with the Father, who is the Lord of heaven and earth, Jesus here asserts that all authority in heaven and earth has been given Him, and asserts a place for Himself in the precincts of the ineffable Name. Here is a claim not merely to a deity in some sense equivalent to and as it were alongside of the deity of the Father, but to a deity in some high sense one with the deity of the Father.

Less Common Messianic Titles

Alongside of these more usual Messianic titles, there are found in Matthew, as in Mark, traces of the use of others of our Lord, apparently less current among the people. In Matthew, too, for example, we find Jesus represented as designated from heaven 'the Beloved,' who has been chosen out by God as His representative (3:17, 17:5), and as identifying Himself with the mysterious Shepherd of Zechariah who is Jehovah's fellow (26:31). And we find Him here also not only designating Himself the 'Bridegroom' (9:15), but elucidating the designation in a couple of striking parables (the parable of the Ten Virgins, 25:1 seq., 5, 6, 10: and the parable of the Marriage of the King's Son, 22:1 seq.), the suggestion of which is that the fate of men hangs on their relation to Him; that men all live with reference to Him; and it is He that opens and shuts the door of life for them. The high significance of these designations as applied to Jesus has already been pointed out when we met with them in Mark. It is more important, therefore, to observe here that the implicit reference in Mark to the 'Servant of Jehovah' as a designation of Jesus is made explicit in Matthew by the formal application to Him of the prophecy in Isaiah 40:1 seq. (12:18 seq.) as a divine prediction of the unostentatiousness of His ministry, in its striking contrast with the expectations which had been formed of the Messiah's work on the basis of the predictions centering around the Anointed King, the Son of David.

The 'Son of Man'

This unostentatiousness entered also into the conception of the Messiah expressed in our Lord's favorite self-designation of 'Son of Man,'—which in Matthew's representation, too, appears as the standing Messianic designation which our Lord employs of Himself, occurring as such about thirty times. The Messianic character of this designation is placed beyond all doubt by its interchange with other Messianic titles (16:13, cf. verses 16, 20, 17:9, cf. verse 10 [the forerunner of Messiah]; 24:27, cf. verse 23, 26:64, cf. verse 63): and the conception suggested by it of the Messiah, as judged by the substance of the passages in which it occurs, differs in nothing from that derived from the passages in Mark except that it is illuminated by more details. Here, too, we learn that the 'Son of Man' came to minister,—or more specifically for the purpose of redemption: "the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many" (20:28). Suffering and death were, therefore, His appointed portion (17:12, 17:22, 20:18, 26:2, 24, 45), as indeed Scripture had foretold (12:40). But after death is the resurrection (17:9, 22, 20:19, 12:40), and after the resurrection the "coming" in great glory to judge the world (10:23, 24:27, 30, 39, 44, 26:64). There is nothing here which we had not already in Mark, but everywhere details are filled in. The fortunes of the earthly life of the 'Son of Man' are traced. We learn that He lived like other men, without asceticism,—"eating and drinking" (11:19); but lived a hard and suffering life,—He had not where to lay His head (8:20). His task was to sow the good seed of the word (13:37). As part of His lowliness, it emerges that blasphemy against Him is forgivable, as it is not against the Holy Ghost (12:32). And the suffering He is called on to endure runs out into death (17:12, 22). It would not be easy to give a more itemized account of the sufferings He endured at the end than Mark gives, but they are all set down here, too (20:18), as also is the promise of the resurrection (12:40, 17:9, 23, 20:18). When He shall come again is left here, too, in the indefinite future (24:36, cf. 10:23), but the suddenness of its eventuation is emphasized (24:27, 37, 39, 44).

The details become notably numerous again, however, when the purpose and accompaniment of this coming are adverted to (13:41, 16:27, 19:28, 24:31, 25:31, 26:64). The 'Son of Man' is "henceforth to be seen sitting at the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven" (26:64, 24:30). He is to come in the glory of His Father with His angels (16:27), for all the angels are to be with Him (25:31). The end of His coming is to pass judgment on men and to consummate the Kingdom. "For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then shall He render unto every man according to his deeds" (16:27)—and this is "to come in His kingdom" (16:28). There is naturally a punitive side to this judgment and a side of reward. Of the punitive side we are told that "when the sign of the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory shall appear," "all the tribes of the earth shall mourn" (24:30); and that He "shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that cause stumbling and them that do iniquity, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth" (13:41). On the side of reward we are told that "those who have followed Him, in the regeneration when the 'Son of Man' shall sit on the throne of His glory" "also shall sit upon twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel" (19:28). For "He shall send forth His angels with a great sound of trumpets, and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds; from one end of heaven to the other" (24:31), and "then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the Kingdom of their Father" (13:43). It is obviously the universal judgment that is here brought before us; and the consummation of the Kingdom, when by this judgment all that is impure is drafted out of it and the chosen are made sharers in the universal regeneration. The whole scene of the judgment is pictured for us with great vividness in the remarkable passage, 25:31–46, where all the nations are depicted as summoned before the throne of the 'Son of Man's' glory and separated according to their deeds done in the body—interpreted as relating to Him—to the eternal inheritance of the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world or to the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. The 'Son of Man' appears here accordingly as the King on His throne apportioning to men their eternal destinies.

The High Meaning of 'Son of Man'

Clearly, according to Matthew's account of our Lord's declarations, the 'Son of Man' has His period of humiliation on earth, living as other men (11:19), sowing the seed (13:37), having not where to lay His head (8:20) as He ministers to men (20:28), forgiving even blasphemy against Himself (12:32) and all indignities (17:12, 22), down to death itself (17:22, 20:18)—and yet even while on earth having authority to forgive sins (9:6) and to regulate religious ordinances (12:8), and dying only that He may ransom others (20:28). And He has also His period of exaltation, when having risen from the dead (12:40, 17:9, 23, 20:18) He in due time comes in His glory, surrounded by His servants the angels (16:27, 25:31, 24:31), and gathers to Himself His chosen ones whom He has ransomed by His death (24:31, 13:43) and, cleansing His Kingdom of all that is unclean, sets it up in its destined perfection (16:28). The picture that is drawn is clearly, then, a picture of voluntary humiliation for a high end, with the accomplishment of the end and return to the original glory. In order to bring all its implications out in their completeness we have only to recall what Matthew tells us, on the one hand, of the 'Son' who is superior to angels (24:36), who is God's adequate and exclusive Revelation, knowing Him even as He is known (11:27), who is sharer with the Father in the one ineffable Name (28:18–20); and, on the other, in the opening chapter of his Gospel, of the supernatural birth of this heavenly Being, breaking His way to earth through a virgin's womb in fulfillment of the prophecy that He should be called "Immanuel," "God with us." For it can scarcely be doubted that Matthew means this name 'Immanuel' (1:23) to be interpreted metaphysically of Jesus, and therefore adduces the prophecy as a testimony to the essential deity of the virgin-born child,—and indeed the angel messenger himself is recorded as not obscurely indicating this when he explains that the child whose birth he announces shall be called Jesus "because it is He that shall save His people from their sins"—thus applying to the promised infant the words spoken in Ps 130:8 of Jehovah Himself: "And He shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities." The very name 'Jesus' for Matthew, as truly as that of 'Immanuel' itself, is thus freighted with an implication of the deity of its bearer: and this is only a symbol of the saturation of his Gospel with the sense of the supreme majesty of the great personality whose life-history as the promised Messiah he has undertaken to portray.

MATTHEW'S CONCEPTION OF OUR LORD

Profundity of Matthew's Suggestiveness

In seeking to form an estimate of the significance of this list of designations ascribed to Jesus in Matthew, it does not seem necessary to attempt to draw out separately, as we attempted to do in the case of Mark, the evidence they supply to the primary emphasis laid in Matthew upon the Messianic dignity of Jesus and that they supply to the recognition of the divine majesty of His person. It lies on the very face of these designations that by Matthew, as truly as by Mark, Jesus is conceived in the first instance as the promised Messiah, and His career and work as fundamentally the career and work of the Messiah, at last come to introduce the promised Kingdom. And it lies equally on their very face that this Messiah whom Jesus is represented as being is conceived by Matthew, and is represented by Matthew as having been conceived by Jesus Himself, as a "transcendent" figure, as the current mode of speech puts it, i. e., as far transcending in His nature and dignity human conditions.

So clear is this in fact that our interest as we read instinctively takes hold in Matthew of matters quite other than those which naturally occupy it in Mark. In Mark the attention of the reader is attracted particularly to the implications of the superangelic dignity ascribed to the Messiah; and he finds himself unpremeditatingly noting the evidence of the presupposition of His heavenly origin and relations, of His pre-existence, of His more than human majesty, of His divine powers and functions. These things are so much a matter of course with Matthew that the attention of the reader is drawn insensibly off from them to profounder problems. This Gospel opens with an account of the supernatural birth of Jesus, which is so told as to imply that the birth is supernatural only because the person so born is not of this world, but in descending to it fulfills the prophecies that Jehovah shall come to His people to dwell among them and to save them from their sins. From the very outset, therefore, there can be no question in the mind of the reader that he has to deal not merely with a supernatural life but with a supernatural person, all whose life on earth is a concession to a necessity arising solely from His purpose to save. No wonder rises in him, therefore, when he reads of the supramundane powers of this person, of His superhuman insight, of His supernatural deeds. That He is superior to the angels, who appear constantly as His servants, and is in some profound sense divine, clothed with all divine qualities, strikes him as in no sense strange. The matters on which he finds his mind keenly alert rise above these things, and concern the precise relations in which this superangelic, and therefore uncreated, Being is conceived to stand to the Deity Himself.

Richness of His Implications

It is not possible to avoid noting that all the designations applied to Jesus in this narrative tend to run up at once on being applied to Him into their highest implications. Even the simple name 'Jesus' is no exception to this. For here it is represented as itself a gift from heaven, designed to indicate that in this person is fulfilled the promise that Jehovah shall visit His people,—for it is He who, in accordance with the prediction of the Psalmist (130:8), shall save His people—His people, although, in accordance with that prediction, they are Jehovah's people—from their sins (1:21). Similarly the simple honorifics 'Master' and 'Lord' rise in Matthew's hands to their highest value; 'Master' becomes transformed into the more absolute "Master of the House" with His despotic power, governing all things in accordance with His will (20:15) and disposing of the destinies of men in supreme sovereignty (10:25, 13:24 seq., 36 seq.); and 'Lord' becomes the proper designation of the universal King and Judge (25:37, 44) whose coming is the coming of Jehovah (3:3). As the 'Christ' He is pictured as sitting less on David's throne than on God's (22:43, 44); as 'King,' less as the ruler of the nation for Israel than as Judge of all the world for God (25:31 seq.); as 'Bridegroom' as holding in His own hands the issues of life (22:1, 25:1); as 'the Son of Man' as passing through humiliation only to His own proper glory (16:27, 24:30, 26:64); as 'the Son of God' less as God's representative and the vehicle of His grace than as God's fellow (11:27) and the sharer with the Father in the one ineffable Name (28:18–20). Thus the reader is brought steadily upwards to the great passages in which Matthew records Jesus' supreme self-testimony to His essential relations with His Father, and his attention is quite insistently focused upon them.

Assimilation of Jesus With God

"All things were delivered unto me of my Father," says Jesus, as reported in one of them (11:27): "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. Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Thus our Lord solemnly presents Himself to men as the exclusive source of all knowledge of God, and the exclusive channel of divine grace. No one can know the Father save through Him, and through Him alone can rest be found for weary souls. And this His exclusive mediation of saving knowledge He makes to rest upon His unique relation to the Father, by virtue of which the Father and Son, and all that is in the Father and Son, lie mutually open to each other's gaze. Attention has been called to the fact, and it is important to observe it, that the whole passage is cast in the present tense, and the relation announced to exist between the Father and Son is, therefore, represented not as a past relation but as a continuous and unbroken one. What our Lord asserts is thus not that He once was with the Father and knew His mind, and is therefore fitted to mediate it as His representative on earth: it is that He, though on earth, still is with the Father and knows His mind—yea, and will know it unchangeably forever. The relations of time do not enter into the representation. Our Lord presents Himself as the sole source of the knowledge of God and of the divine grace, because this is the relation in which He stands essentially to the Father,—a relation of complete and perfect intercommunion. The assertion of the reciprocal knowledge of the Father and Son, in other words, rises far above the merely mediatorial function of the Son, although it underlies His mediatorial mission: it carries us back into the region of metaphysical relations. The Son is a fit and perfect mediator of the divine knowledge and grace because the Son and the Father are mutually intercommunicative. The depths of the Son's being, we are told, can be fathomed by none but a divine knowledge, while the knowledge of the Son compasses all that God is; from both points of view, the Son appears thus as "equal with God."

Identification of Jesus With God

But even this is far from the whole story. The perfect reciprocal knowledge of each by the other which is affirmed goes far towards suggesting that even equality with God falls short of fully expressing the relation in which the Son actually stands to the Father. Equality is an external relation: here there is indicated an internal relation which suggests rather the term interpenetration. There is a relation with the Father here suggested, which transcends all creaturely possibilities, and in which there is no place even for subordination. The man Jesus does indeed represent Himself as exercising a mediatorial function; what He does is to reveal the Father and to mediate His grace; and that because of a delivery over to Him by the Father. But this mediatorial function is rooted in a metaphysical relation in which is suggested no hint of subordination. Rather in this region what the Father is that the Son seems to be also. There is mystery here, no doubt, and nothing is done to relieve the mystery. All that is done is to enunciate in plain words the conception of the relation actually existing between the Father and Son which supplies their suitable account to all those passages in Matthew in which there seems to be suggested a confusion of Jesus with God, whether in function or in person. If this be the relation of Son and Father—if there is a certain mysterious interpenetration to be recognized between them—then it is no longer strange that to Jesus is attributed all the functions of God, including the forgiveness of sins and the universal judgment of men, nor that in Him is seen the coming of Jehovah to save His people, in His presence with men the fulfillment of the prophecy of 'Immanuel,' God-with-us, in the coming of John the Baptist to prepare His way the fulfillment of the prophecy of the messenger to make the way of Jehovah straight, and the like. All things were delivered to Him, in short, because He is none else than God on earth.

Participation of Jesus in the Name

Of quite similar import is the great declaration with which the Gospel closes. In this our Lord, announcing that all authority was given to Him in heaven and earth—that is, that universal dominion was committed to Him—commands His disciples to advance to the actual conquest of the world, baptizing all the nations into the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and promises to be Himself with them unto the end of the world (28:18–20). In the absence of the former passage, it might conceivably be possible to look upon the dominion here claimed and the conjunction here asserted of the Son with the Father in the future government of the Kingdom as having no rooting in His essential nature but as constituting merely a reward consequent upon our Lord's work. In the presence of that passage we cannot void this, however, of its testimony to essential relations. And the relation here assigned to the Son with respect to deity is the same as was suggested there. The significant point of this passage is the singular "Name." It does not read, "Into the names"—as of many, but of one,—"Into the Name" of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The Father, the Son and the Spirit are therefore in some ineffable sense one, sharers in the single Name. Of course it is what we know as the Christian doctrine of the Trinity which is suggested here, as it was less clearly suggested in the former passage, and as this doctrine is needed in order to give consistency and solidity to the pervasive suggestion of Matthew's entire narrative that Jesus, whose career he is recounting, is in some higher sense than mere delegation or representation not merely a superhuman or superangelic or supercreaturely person, but an actually Divine Person, possessed of divine prerogatives, active in divine power, and in multiform ways manifesting a divine nature. It were impossible for Matthew to paint Jesus as he has painted Him, and to attribute to Him what we have seen him attributing to Him, without some such conception as is enunciated in these two great passages in his mind to support, sustain and give its justification to his representation. So far from these passages offending the reader as they stand in Matthew's Gospel, therefore, and raising doubts of their genuineness, we should have had to postulate something like them for Matthew, had they not stood in his Gospel. Matthew's portrait of Jesus and the self-witness he quotes from Jesus' lips to His estate and dignity, in other words, themselves necessitate a doctrine of His nature and relations with God very much such as is set forth in these passages: and we can feel perfectly assured, therefore, that these passages represent with great exactness what Matthew would tell us of Jesus' deity and what he would report as Jesus' own conception of His divine relations. And what they tell us—we must not balk at it—is just that Jesus is all that God is, and shares in God's nature as truly as in God's majesty and power.

THE DESIGNATIONS OF OUR LORD

IN LUKE AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS

We meet very much the same series of designations applied to our Lord in Luke as in the other Synoptists. But they are applied with some characteristic differences.

The Narrative Designations

In Luke, too, the ordinary narrative designation of our Lord is the simple 'Jesus,' which occurs about seventy-seven times. This simplest of all designations is not so exclusively employed in the narrative of Luke, however, as in those of Matthew and Mark. There is an occasional variation in Luke to the more descriptive designation of 'the Lord' (7:13, 19, 10:1, 39, 41, 11:39, 12:42, 13:15, 17:5, 6, 18:6, 19:8, 22:61, 61, fourteen times). No other designation than these two, however, occurs as a narrative designation in Luke, although in three instances Luke makes use of another in his narrative. In two of these instances he is apparently repeating words from the lips of others: he tells us that it had been revealed to Simeon that he should not die until he had seen 'the Lord's Christ' (2:26) and that Bartimæus was told that 'Jesus of Nazareth' was passing (18:37). In the remaining instance he remarks that the evil spirits knew that Jesus was 'the Christ' (4:41); where 'the Christ' is not strictly a designation of Jesus, but the general term 'the Messiah.' These instances exhibit Luke's willingness to speak of Jesus as the Messiah indeed; but are scarcely exceptions to the general fact that he himself designates Jesus in the course of his narrative only as 'Jesus' and as 'the Lord.' As in the other Synoptists, the simple 'Jesus' in Luke is also practically reserved for the narrative designation. Only in the two instances of the annunciation of His name by the angel (1:31), which is no exception, and in the address to Jesus on the cross by the dying thief (23:42) is this rule broken. But, as in the other Synoptists, the name 'Jesus' occurs in compound forms of address to Him recorded by the evangelist,—'Jesus, Thou Son of God' (8:28), 'Jesus, Thou Son of David' (18:38), 'Jesus, Master' (17:13); and at the hands of the evil spirits (4:34), the people (18:37) and His disciples (24:19) alike, 'Jesus the Nazarene'—whence it emerges that it was by this name that He was popularly identified.

Ordinary Forms of Address

The ordinary forms of address applied to Jesus in Luke are the simple honorifics, 'Teacher,' 'Master,' 'Lord,' employed, however, with a certain discrimination. The Aramaic form 'Rabbi' does not occur in Luke at all. Its common Greek rendering, 'Teacher' (διδάσκαλε), seems to be treated as the current noncommittal honorific, especially appropriate on the lips of those who were not, or at least not yet, His disciples (7:40, 10:25, 11:45, 12:13, 18:18, 19:39, 20:21, 28, 39, 8:49, 9:38). The only exception to its employment by this rule is supplied by 21:7, where we are told that certain of His disciples "asked Him saying, 'Teacher,' " etc. That it was not thought inappropriate as a form of address from His disciples to Him is also evinced, however, by the report of His own employment of it on two occasions. He instructs His followers, in preparing the last passover meal for Him, to say to the goodman of the house, "The Teacher saith unto thee, where is the guest-chamber, where I shall eat the passover with my disciples" (22:11); and He tells them, broadly indeed, but no doubt with some, though certainly remote, reference to Himself and them, that "the disciple is not above his teacher; but every one when he is perfected shall be as his teacher" (6:40). The choice of the term 'Teacher' (διδάσκαλος) in these two passages appears to be due to the correlative "disciples" occurring in each; and it remains true that 'Teacher' (διδάσκαλε) as a form of address is characteristic in Luke, of non-followers of our Lord.

'Master'

The place of 'Teacher' on the lips of His followers is partly taken by a new term for 'Master,' peculiar to Luke (ἐπιοτάτης), which however occurs only six times (5:5, 8:24, 45, 9:33, 49, 17:13), only one of which (17:13) forms an exception or quasi-exception to the rule that the term indicates that the user of it stands in the closest relation to Jesus, and acknowledges Him as his Superior Officer—Chief, Commander, Master, Leader. This quasi-exception occurs in the case of the ten lepers who, we are told, lifted up their voices and said, "Jesus, Leader, have mercy on us." Perhaps there is an intention to convey the impression that these lepers, formally at least, recognized the authority of Jesus completely. We cannot account 5:5 another such exception, since the whole tone of the narrative indicates that this was not the first call of Peter to become Jesus' disciple (cf. Jno 1:42), but his call to become Jesus' constant companion. There is no such direct use of Jesus in Luke (or in Mk) as in Matthew of the figurative expression 'Master of the House' (οἰκοδεσπότης), although the term occurs in parables with reference to Him (13:25, 14:21).

'Lord' as an Address

The prevailing form of address to Jesus in Luke is, however, the ordinary Greek honorific 'Lord' (κύριε), used, however, obviously as an honorific of especially high connotation. It is put upon the lips, indeed, of outsiders, suitors for mercy (5:12, 7:6, 18:41, 19:8) and possibly others (9:59, 61, 13:23); and our Lord's own remark to the effect that some called Him 'Lord, Lord,' who did not do the things He said (6:46) shows that it might be insincerely used of Him. But this very passage also indicates that to address Him as 'Lord' was to acknowledge His authority and involved subjection to His commandments, and accordingly the term is represented as employed chiefly by His professed followers (5:8, 10:17, 40, 11:1, 12:41, 17:37, 22:33, 38, 49). Something of its high implication, when so used, may be caught from 5:8 in comparison with 5:5. When our Lord, having used Simon's boat for a pulpit, commanded him to let down his nets for a draught, Simon responded with the respectful address which implied that he recognized Jesus as his 'Superior Officer' (ἐπιοτάτης), "Master, we toiled all night, and took nothing: but at Thy word I will let down the nets." But when he saw the resultant miraculous draught, he fell at Jesus' knees and said: "Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord"—using now the higher honorific, 'Lord' (κύριε). Obviously the address 'Lord' on the lips of Jesus' followers was charged with very high significance, and this is borne out in its entire use.

'Lord' as an Appellative

Such a constant mode of address as 'Lord' by His followers, naturally would beget the habit of speaking of Jesus among themselves as 'the Lord'; and we can feel no surprise therefore that Jesus, in giving them instructions how to reply to possible objections to their taking the ass He sent them for as He was about to enter Jerusalem, placed this designation on their lips. "Say," He said, "the Lord hath need of him" (19:31); and accordingly they said (v. 34), "The Lord hath need of him" (cf. 12:36, 42, 43 seq.). This instruction is recorded by all the Synoptists, and the usage which it involves of the term 'Lord' of Jesus as an appellative designation might very well, therefore, have been illustrated in the narratives of them all. The copious designatory employment of the title 'Lord' of Christ, however, is characteristic of Luke. It is placed on the lips of the disciples themselves in this designatory form at 24:34, and it occurs in two passages in the opening chapters of the Gospel—in the elevated language of the angelic announcement in the combination, 'Christ the Lord' or 'the anointed Lord' (2:11), and in the response of Elisabeth (1:45) in which she expresses her wondering awe that "the mother of her Lord" should come to her. Obviously in such usages the term connotes a very high dignity, certainly Messianic at the least. It is also employed of Himself by our Lord in the question He is recorded by all the Synoptists as putting to the scribes as to the significance of David's prediction of the Messiah as his 'Lord' (20:41 seq.)—again, obviously with a high connotation. But the particularly significant fact in this connection is its current employment by Luke himself as an alternative narrative designation to the simple 'Jesus' (7:13, 19, 10:1, 39, 41, 11:39, 12:42, 13:15, 17:5, 6, 18:6, 19:8, 22:61, 61). It does not seem easy to detect any special significance in the interchange of these designations; the reason for the passage from one to the other seems either purely literary or at least obscure. The meaning of the appearance of this narrative employment of the term in Luke seems, therefore, to be merely that in the usage of Luke in his own person there emerges a reflection of a usage evidently common among the disciples of Jesus from the beginning, but not chancing to be copiously illustrated in the personal literary manner of Mark and Matthew: the usage, namely, of currently speaking of Jesus as 'the Lord.'

Significance of 'Lord'

This implies, naturally, that Jesus stood to His disciples for whatever the title 'Lord' meant to them. There is involved in it certainly the recognition of His Messianic dignity, and there is included, therefore, the recognition in Him of all that they saw in His Messianic dignity. So far, we suppose, we may be sure that, as has been suggested, He was thought of as 'Lord' in contrast to the earthly potentates who were claiming lordship of men, and especially in contrast with the emperor in Rome, the 'Lord' by way of eminence in all men's minds. To Jesus, rather than to the emperor, was allegiance due. But we must not forget that the allegiance expressed to Jesus rested on a spiritual basis, while, perhaps, it is going too far to suppose that the divine claims of the imperial monarch were held clearly in mind.11 The simplest thing to say is that the term 'Lord' was applied to Jesus by Luke obviously with the deepest reverence and obviously as the expression of that reverence.

The full height of this reverence may be suggested to us by certain passages in which the term 'Lord' occurs in citations from the Old Testament, where its reference is to Jehovah, though in the citations it seems to be applied to Jesus. Like the other Synoptists, Luke cites, for instance, from Isaiah the promise of a voice crying in the wilderness, "Make ye ready the way of the Lord, make His paths straight" (3:4), and applies it to the coming of John the Baptist whom he represents as preparing the way for Jesus' manifestation. As in the case of the other evangelists, the inference lies close that by 'the Lord' here Luke means Jesus, whose coming he thus identifies with the advent of Jehovah and whose person he seems to identify with Jehovah. On the other hand, in passages like 1:17, 76, although the language is similar, it seems more natural to understand the term 'Lord' as referring to God Himself, and to conceive the speaker to be thinking of the coming of Jehovah to redemption in Jesus without necessary identification of the person of Jesus with Jehovah. The mere circumstance, however, that the reader is led to pause over such passages and to consider whether they may not intend by their 'Lord'—who is Jehovah—to identify the person of Jesus with Jehovah, is significant. We should never lose from sight the outstanding fact that to men familiar with the LXX and the usage of 'Lord' as the personal name of the Deity there illustrated, the term 'Lord' was charged with associations of deity, so that a habit of speaking of Jesus as 'the Lord,' by way of eminence, such as is illustrated by Luke and certainly was current from the beginning of the Christian proclamation (19:31), was apt to carry with it implications of deity which, if not rebuked or in some way guarded against, must be considered as receiving the sanction of Jesus Himself.

The 'Prophet'

The leading designations of Jesus in Luke, as in the other Synoptists, however, are, broadly speaking, Messianic. In other words, it is distinctively as the Messiah that Luke sets forth Jesus and represents Him as having conceived of Himself and as having been revered by His followers. We find in Luke, as in the other Synoptists, to be sure, traces of a widespread recognition of Him as a prophet (7:16, 39, 9:8, 19). His followers set their hopes upon Him in that office (24:19); and indeed with no uncertainty He Himself assumed the rôle of a prophet (4:24, 13:33, 34). But no more in Luke than in the other Synoptists is this particularly emphasized, and in Luke, too, the prophetic character is, no doubt, conceived as part of the Messianic function,—as indeed the collocation of His prophetic calling and His redemption of Israel in the thought of the disciples going to Emmaus not obscurely suggests (24:19, 21, cf. also 7:16).

'Saviour'

Luke also records from the mouth of the angel announcing the birth of Jesus the new designation of 'Saviour'—if we can call a designation new which is so plainly adumbrated in a passage like Mt 1:21 (cf. also Lk 19:10). But this is so little un-Messianic that it is not only connected with the Messianic prophecies by adjacent references (1:47, cf. 2:30, 3:6), but is expressly defined as Messianic in the annunciation itself: "a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord" (2:11). Like Mt 1:21, this passage clearly indicates that to the circle in which Jesus moved His coming as the Messiah was connected with the great series of prophecies which promised the advent of Jehovah for the redemption of His people, as truly as with those which predicted the coming of the Davidic King. The terms, "a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord," are, indeed, an express combination of the two lines of prophecy, and import that the Child who was born in the city of David was both the promised Redeemer of Israel and the Anointed King that was to come. Question may arise, indeed, as to how we are to construe these collocated designations. Some would wish us to take each separately, with an indefinite article to each: "There is born to you a Saviour, who is an Anointed One, a Lord." Others17 suggest that at least 'Messiah' and 'Lord' be kept separate: "There is born to you a Deliverer, who is Messiah, Lord." In either of these constructions we have three separate designations which so far explain one another: this Child is at once a Saviour, the promised Messiah, and Sovereign Lord of men and angels—for it is an angel who speaks these words. The essential meaning cannot be far from this in any case. Even if we should read "who is Messiah, the Lord," or even "who is an anointed Lord,"19 we have got but little away from this general sense: in either case what is said is that the Saviour is the promised Messiah and therefore entitled to our obedience as our Lord. Nor is much more said if we give the phrase the utmost definiteness possible, and translate, "There is born to you this day in the city of David that Deliverer who is the Messiah, the Lord,"—as, on the whole, we think we ought to read it, in the light of the distinction made between the two designations 'Messiah' and 'Lord' in such a passage as Acts 2:36, where Peter declares to the house of Israel that God has made Jesus both 'Lord' and 'Christ.' The precise distinction intended to be signalized between 'Christ' and 'Lord' is, no doubt, difficult to trace: perhaps there lies in it a testimony to the wider content of the idea of Messiahship than that of mere sovereign power; perhaps a testimony to a higher connotation of the term 'Lord' than that of mere Messianic dignity. In any event there is here a declaration that in this Child born in the city of David, the functions of Redemption, Messiahship and Supreme Lordship are united.

'The Lord's Christ'

Almost immediately afterward we are told that it had been revealed to Simeon that "he should not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ" (2:26)—an Old Testament expression (Ps 2:2, cf. Lk 9:20, Acts 4:26) here applied to the infant Jesus, who is by it identified as the promised Messiah. Accordingly in announcing the birth of this Child, who is thus so emphatically presented as the Messiah, the angel is represented as describing Him as 'the Son of the Most High God,' to whom should be given the throne of His father David, for an everlasting dominion (1:32); and as explaining the Divine Sonship of this Holy Child as due to, or rather as evidenced by, His supernatural birth (1:35). The latter of these two declarations is clearly the explanation of the former. The angel had promised Mary that she should bring forth a son who should rightly bear the great name of the 'Son of the Most High God,' and he now explains that this Holy Son of hers shall be a supernatural product, and should by His supernatural advent be witnessed as rightly bearing the name of 'Son of God.' That the title 'Son of God' bears in it a Messianic implication is clear from the functions ascribed in verses 33, 34 to the child so designated, but that this Messiah was conceived as something more than human appears to be implied in the connection of His claim upon the title of 'Son of God' with the supernaturalness of His birth. Perhaps it is not reading too much into the passage to say that His preëxistence and heavenly descent are asserted,—certainly His heavenly, or supernatural, origin is asserted. This 'Son' is not merely to be attended with supernatural assistance and so to exhibit supernatural gifts: He is of supernatural origin, and therefore so far of supernatural nature. Already in the opening chapters of his Gospel, devoted to an account of the birth and infancy of Jesus, therefore, Luke makes it plain that the Jesus whose history he is to recount was first of all the Messiah of God, and as such was of supernatural origin and therefore holy, was to establish the throne of David in perpetuity, and was to be recognized as Lord of men and angels.

In accordance with these declarations, recorded in the opening of the Gospel, Luke tells us that the evil spirits knew Jesus to be 'the Christ' and greeted Him by the title 'Son of God' (4:41), and records Peter's great confession in the form of "Thou art the Christ of God" (9:20), and Jesus' ready acceptance of it, as also His acquiescence in the ascription of the title of Messiah, 'Christ,' to Him by His enemies ('the Christ,' 22:67, cf. 23:39; 'Christ a King,' 23:2). Such an ascription of the title 'Christ' to Him by His enemies (22:67, 23:2, 35, 39) is the best of all proofs that it was commonly employed of Him by His followers. But the significant fact for us is that in accepting it at their hands Jesus claims it for Himself (22:67, 23:2). We are not surprised, therefore, to find Him using it of Himself when, after His resurrection, He expounded from Scripture to His followers the doctrine of the Suffering Messiah and applied it to Himself (24:26, 46), even as He had at an earlier point expounded to the scribes (20:41) the doctrine of the Reigning Messiah with an equally clear application of it to Himself. He who was David's 'Lord' as truly as his 'Son' was to enter upon His Lordship only through suffering, a suffering which should lay the basis of a preachment in His name of repentance and remission of sins (24:46). Here again is the Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord: and the Gospel ends much on the same note on which it began.

'The King'

The royal dignity of this 'Anointed King' (23:2) is of course dwelt upon in Luke as in the other Synoptics. But the precise term 'King' is not of frequent occurrence. His disciples as He entered Jerusalem on the ass's colt acclaimed Him as "the King that cometh in the name of the Lord" (19:38), and when the Pharisees appealed to Him to rebuke them therefor—employing the simple formula of respect, 'Teacher,' in addressing Him and thereby repudiating His Messianic claim by the contrast of this address with the title of 'King'—Jesus was so far from yielding to their request that He declared that if His disciples held their peace the very stones would cry out and recognize Him as the Messianic sovereign (cf. Lk 3:8, Mt 3:9). Similarly, when the Jews accused Him to Pilate as representing Himself to be "Christ, a King" (23:2), and that governor accordingly demanded of Him whether He was 'the King of the Jews,' our Lord was so far from denying the ascription that He expressly accepted the designation (23:3), and thus brought it about that He was mocked on the cross by this title, and had it set over His head (23:37, 38). The equivalent title 'Son of David' also is recorded as having been given Him by an applicant for His mercy as a recognition of His authority to heal (18:38, 39, cf. 1:32, 69), and by no means repudiated when (20:41 seq.) Jesus explained that He was something much more than David's son.

'God's Elect', 'God's Holy One'

In the midst of the designations we have somewhat rapidly adduced, clustering around the central title 'Christ,' there is one which we should not pass over unnoticed because it has not met us heretofore. The mocking Jews, scoffing at Jesus as He hung on the cross, are represented as flinging in His face His claim to be 'the Christ of God, His Chosen' (23:35). The same designation occurs in the account of the transfiguration, where the voice from heaven is represented by Luke as declaring of Jesus, "This is my Son, my Chosen" (9:35). No doubt the Greek is not quite the same in each instance: ὁ ἐκλεκτός of the one is replaced by ὁ ἐκλελεγμένος in the other. But doubtless the underlying Messianic title is the same in both instances. It is rooted in Isaiah 42:1, "Behold my servant whom I uphold; my chosen in whom my soul delighteth," etc. (where the parallel terms are ὁ παῖς and ὁ ἐκλεκτός), and emerges into view even in pre-Christian Jewish usage (Enoch 40:5, 45:3, 53:6, 39:9, etc.). The conception seems to be not essentially different from a designation which has already met us in Mark (1:24) and which occurs also in the parallel passage of Luke (4:34), but elsewhere in the New Testament only at Jno 6:69—'the Holy One of God.' For it does not seem likely that this epithet, in the first instance at least, refers to the moral purity of the Messiah, but rather probable that it designates Him as One whom God has "separated out, equipped and dedicated to His service," in a word as 'the Consecrated One.' In this understanding of it, it stands in close relation to the epithet, 'the Elect One,' and unites with it in emphasizing the unique loftiness of the Messianic office. At the same time it seems difficult to believe that there is no implication of moral purity, or perhaps we would better say moral exaltation, in the epithet, as used whether by Peter (Jno 6:69) or by the demoniacs (Mk 1:24, Lk 4:34), although this reference may be secondary. It is scarcely conceivable that the demons could recognize a mere official-standing on sight (Mk 3:11), while the contrast between the moral perfection or exalted nature of Jesus and their uncleanness may be presumed to have obtruded itself upon their consciousness, whenever they were brought into His presence. Along with these titles we must note also that Luke, too, makes use of the title 'the Beloved,' though only at the baptism of our Lord (3:22), replacing it at the transfiguration by 'the Chosen One' (9:35), and thus exhibiting the essential synonymy of the two.

Meaning of 'Holy'

It may be profitable to recall at this point that the epithet 'holy' is applied to our Lord also at the annunciation of His birth by the angel, when it was explained that it was the circumstance that His birth was not according to nature, but due to the coming down upon Mary of the Holy Ghost and the overshadowing of her by the power of the Most High, which justified the Holy Thing which was being begotten in being called 'the Son of God' (1:35). The epithet is not elsewhere applied to Jesus in this Gospel, except in 2:23, where the precept of the law is quoted in reference to Him, that "every male that openeth the womb shall be called holy to the Lord"—where it is obviously the conception of consecration which is prominent. In the present passage, however, it seems equally plain that it is not the notion of being set apart for God so much as that of being in Himself worthy of reverence and calling out veneration which is prominent. He who is thus supernaturally born is "holy" in the sense that He brings with Him something of the superhuman character belonging to His origin, and is thus not set apart among men, but is by nature distinguished from men—shall we not say, "separate from sinners"?

Nevertheless, the title 'Son of God' as applied to our Lord in Luke is closely connected with His Messianic office: though, of course, it is not limited to that office in its implications. It occurs in this precise form but seldom. Besides the declaration of the announcing angel that He shall be called the 'Son of the Most High' (1:32)—evidently with a Messianic connotation, as the subsequent context shows, but by no means equally evidently with none but a human connotation, as also the subsequent context assures us (1:35),—it occurs only in the narrative of the Temptation, on the lips of Satan (4:3, 9), and elsewhere on the lips of evil spirits (4:41, 8:28 'Son of the Most High God') who knew He was the Christ, and in the mouth of His judges when they adjured Him to tell whether He were 'the Christ,' and on His answering that they should from thenceforth see Him, 'the Son of Man,' seated at the right hand of God, demanded afresh, "Art thou, then, the Son of God?" (22:70). It seems clear, indeed, from these passages that the title 'Son of God' was conceived as a Messianic title, and so far as the synonym of the simple 'Christ'; but it is difficult not to gather from them also that it gave expression to a higher Messianic conception than was conveyed by the simple 'Christ.' The brief conversation recorded as taking place between our Lord and His judges seems to have, in fact, the precise purport that in accepting the designation of 'the Christ' He does so in such a manner as to pour into it a higher content than His judges were willing to accord to it—a higher content which they felt was more appropriately expressed by another title,—the 'Son of God.' Whence it seems to follow that 'Son of God,' while a current Messianic designation, was a Messianic designation charged with a higher connotation than merely that of the Messianic King—a conclusion we have already drawn from 1:32, 35.

'The Son'

The higher connotation of Sonship to God is, however, in Luke, as in the other Synoptists, most clearly expressed by the undefined term 'Son.' Luke, as well as the others, records the divine proclamation of the Sonship of Jesus from heaven, on the occasion as well of His baptism as of His transfiguration: "Thou art my Son, the Beloved; in thee I am well pleased" (3:22), "This is my Son, the Chosen" (9:35): and gives us the parable in which Jesus, with evident reference to Himself (20:13, 14), talks of the wicked husbandmen, to whom, after they had evil-entreated his servants, the lord of the vineyard sent in the end his 'beloved son' who was the heir. Luke also records a number of those pregnant sayings in which Jesus appeals to God as in a unique sense His 'Father': and he begins this series of pregnant sayings at so early a period as to make it clear to us that it represents a unique filial consciousness coeval with the dawn of our Lord's intelligence. Already in His earliest youth He could speak of being "in His Father's house" as His natural place of abode (2:49), even as in later life He lived in constant communion with the Father (10:21, 21, 22, 27, 23:34, 46), and equally naturally spoke of "the kingdom His Father had appointed Him" (22:29), and at the end spoke of His readiness to send forth "the promise of His Father" (24:49). The glory He expected to enter, it is to be observed, was no less His own than His Father's glory (22:29). But above all, Luke records for us that remarkable passage (10:21, 22) in which our Lord declares the perfect mutual knowledge which exists between the 'Father' and 'Son,' by virtue of which the 'Son' is constituted the sole adequate revealer of the 'Father'—that 'Son' to whom all things were declared by His 'Father': on the basis of which He announces that the things seen and heard in Him are the things which prophets and kings have desired to see and hear and have not. The phraseology in which Luke repeats this great saying differs slightly from that found in Matthew. But the two evangelists agree in all that is essential. In both it is unlimitedly "all things" that are said to have been delivered by the 'Father' to the 'Son,' so that God is affirmed to hold back nothing, but to share all that He has with the 'Son.' In both the intimate knowledge of the 'Father' and 'Son' of each other is affirmed to be alike complete, exhaustive and unbrokenly continuous. In both the 'Son' is represented to be the sole source of knowledge of God. But in Luke it is said, not that the 'Father' and 'Son' know each other, but that each knows "what the other is," that is to say, all that each is. It would be difficult to frame a statement which could more sharply assert the essential deity of the 'Son.'36

The 'Son of Man'

Our Lord's own favorite designation of Himself is, however, in Luke as in the other Synoptists, 'the Son of Man'; and as in the other Synoptists, this designation is in Luke exclusively a self-designation of Jesus' own. For obviously when the angel at the empty tomb is represented as saying, "Remember how He spake unto you when He was yet in Galilee, saying that the Son of Man must be delivered up into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified and the third day rise again" (24:7),—this is not an instance of the employment of this title by another than Jesus, but only another attribution of it to Jesus. The title occurs in Luke about twenty-five times, and in the same collocations and with the same import as in the other Synoptists. If we attempt, therefore, to derive from the substance of the passages in which it is employed a notion of the conception which was attached to it, we arrive at the same conclusion as in the case of the other Synoptists. In Luke, the purpose of the coming of the 'Son of Man' is declared in the form, "The Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost" (19:10).

Accordingly human destiny is connected absolutely with the relations of men to Him. Those are blessed whom men hate and ostracise and reproach, casting out their name as evil, if it be for the 'Son of Man's' sake (6:22). For everyone who shall confess Him before men, him shall the 'Son of Man' confess before the angels of God (12:8); and on the other hand every one who denies the 'Son of Man' in the presence of men shall be denied in the presence of the angels of God (12:9), and whosoever shall be ashamed of the 'Son of Man' and of His words, of him shall the 'Son of Man' be ashamed when He comes in His own glory and that of the Father and of the holy angels (9:26). That nevertheless blasphemy against the 'Son of Man' may be forgiven as blasphemy against the Spirit may not (12:10), doubtless belongs to the humility of His earthly life before He has come in His glory. For in this life He comports Himself like other men, eating and drinking (7:34), passing a hard and suffering existence (9:58), and so fulfilling the Scriptures (18:31 seq.). Meanwhile, however, He exercises even on earth the authority to regulate religious observances (6:5) and to forgive sins (5:24). In other words, the sufferings He endures (9:44, 22:48) are not the result of fate or chance, and do not belong to Him by right, but are voluntarily undertaken as part of His mission (18:31, 32, 17:25, 24:7). They issue in death indeed (9:22, 18:33, 22:22, 24:7), but after death comes resurrection (9:22, 11:30, 18:33, 24:7); and after resurrection, in its own good time, a return in His appropriate glory (22:69, 9:26, 12:40, 17:22, 24, 18:8, 21:27, 22:69). The humiliation over, at once the 'Son of Man' is seated at the right hand of the power of God (22:69), and when He comes again He will come "in a cloud with great power and glory" (21:27),—a glory described as "His own glory, and the glory of His Father and of the holy angels" (9:26). The suddenness of this coming is adverted to (12:40, 17:22–24, 26, 30), and the main fact emphasized, that it is in point of significance the day of judgment, when the destinies of men shall be finally assigned them by the 'Son of Man' (21:36, 12:8, 9:26): destinies which shall be determined according to the attitude which each has occupied towards the 'Son of Man' on earth (12:8, 9:26). To all His enemies it is therefore a day of vengeance (18:8), and only as one prevails to stand before the 'Son of Man' can he hope to escape the dread which His coming brings to the earth (12:36). The picture, it will be seen, is the picture of a Redeemer and Adjuster who comes in humiliation to save, and returns in glory to gather up the results of His work and finally to adjust the issues of the historical development of the world. Whence does He come to save? There is no plain declaration. We are left to infer it from the obvious connection of the title with the oracle of Daniel 7:13, from the more narrative portions of the Gospel, as e. g., the opening chapters where the supernatural birth of Jesus is set forth in detail and with all its implications, and from the very clear suggestion that the whole career of the 'Son of Man,' in its earthly manifestation and its subsequent glory alike, is of a piece and is the outworking of a definite plan of action held clearly in His own mind from the first and carried firmly out in every detail of His living.

Jesus' Mission

The sense of His mission which is thus inherent in the favorite Messianic designation He applied to Himself finds expression also in other forms of locution which Luke reports our Lord as employing. Thus, for example, He is reported as speaking of Himself repeatedly as "coming" with obvious pregnancy of meaning, possibly with some reference to the expectation of the Messianic coming which found embodiment in the designation of the Messiah as 'the One to Come,'—a designation in Luke also reported as applied to Jesus hypothetically by John the Baptist (7:19, 20),—but certainly with its chief implication in a profound sense of His mission ([3:16]; 4:34, 5:32, 7:19; [cf. 7:33 of John the Baptist], 19:10), and possibly with some contrast in mind with His second coming (9:26 [12:36 seq.] 18:8, 21:27). Without essential difference of meaning this "coming" is interchanged with "being sent"—the author of the "mission" being thus more clearly indicated as God. Thus Luke varies Mark's language (1:38) in recording our Lord's declaration that "He had come forth" specifically to preach, by giving it rather: "for therefore was He sent" (4:43)—plainly indicating that "came" and "was sent" alike refer to His divine mission. Possibly in this variation there is an allusion to the passage from Isaiah which Jesus read in the synagogue at Nazareth (cf. Lk 4:18), but in any event the term is unambiguous, and is elsewhere repeated (9:48, 10:16), and from it we may at least learn that according to the representation in Luke also Jesus prosecuted His work on earth under a sense of performing step by step a task which had been given Him to do and which He had come into the world to perform.

The 'Bridegroom'

We need call attention only in passing to the record by Luke also (5:34, 35) of Jesus' employment of the figure of the 'Bridegroom' with reference to Himself and His relations to God's people, thus declared to be His Bride, as they were currently represented as the Bride of Jehovah in the Old Testament. In this remarkable saying, preserved in all three of the Synoptics and assigned by all of them to the earlier portion of His ministry, we have evidence not only that Jesus regarded His ministry as a mission He had come to perform, and already knew that it involved His death, but that He conceived this mission as Messianic and the Messiahship as a divine function, so that His coming was the coming of Jehovah, the faithful husband of His people (Hos 2:19).

The general impression left on the mind by this series of designations is that Luke was less interested in the preëxistence of our Lord than in His divine quality and the divine nature of His mission. To him Jesus was the authoritative Teacher, the God-appointed Messiah, the heaven-sent Redeemer from sin and divine Founder of the Kingdom of righteousness, the Judge of all the earth, Lord of men and angels, and God's own Son, between whom and the Father there persists unbroken and perfect communion. If there is scarcely as full a witness to these things in his general narrative as meets us in Matthew, there is an air thrown over the whole of settled conviction which is very striking; and the reader carries away with him the impression that the engrossment of the evangelist with his narrative represses much more testimony to the divine dignity of the Messiah than actually finds expression in his pages.

THE JESUS OF THE SYNOPTISTS

Variety of Titles Used

There has now passed under our observation the whole series of designations applied to Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels. They are somewhat numerous, but all to much the same effect: and they unite to suggest a unitary conception of His person of the highest exaltation. Our Lord is called in these Gospels, 'Jesus,' 'Jesus of Nazareth,'1 'the Nazarene,' 'Jesus the Galilean,'3 'Jesus the prophet from Nazareth of Galilee,' 'Jesus surnamed Christ.'3 'Jesus Christ,' 'Jesus the Son of David,'1 'Jesus King of the Jews,' 'Jesus, Master,'4 'Jesus the Son of the Most High God.' He is addressed respectfully, passing up into reverently, by the titles of 'Rabbi,'2 'Rabboni,' 'Teacher'1 (διδάσκαλε), 'Master' (ἐπιστάτα), 'Lord' (κύριε): and He is spoken of by Himself or others by the corresponding appellatives, 'Teacher,'1 'Guide' (καθηγήτης), 'House-Master' (οἰκοδεσπότης), 'Lord.'1 obviously with the highest implications these appellatives are capable of bearing. More specifically He is described as to His office and person by a long series of recognized Messianic titles: 'the Coming One,' 'the Prophet,1 'the Christ,' 'the King of the Jews,'1 'the King of Israel,' 'the King,'7 'the Son of David,' 'the Son of Abraham,' 'God's Chosen One,'4 'the Holy One of God,' 'the Servant (παῖς) of God,' 'the Son of God,'1 'the Son of the Blessed,' 'the Son of the Most High,'4 'the Son of the Most High God,' 'the Son of the Living God,'3 'God's Son,' 'the Son,'1 'the Son of Man,' 'the Saviour who is Christ the Lord,'4 'Immanuel,' 'the Shepherd who is God's Fellow,'2 'the Bridegroom,' 'the Beloved.'1

Extent of Jewish Use

We have spoken of these designations as recognized Messianic titles. They emerge as such on the pages of the Gospel narrative. But it is natural that their actual use as such by the Jews contemporary with our Lord admits of illustration from the very scanty remains of their literature which has come down to us in very varying measures. Suffice it to say that those of them which are most frequently found in the Gospel narrative and which seem most significant for it, already occur in the narrow compass of the Book of Enoch, the Apocalypse of Baruch, 4 Esra, and the Psalms of Solomon: 'the Christ,' 'the Son of David,' 'the Chosen One of God,' 'the Son of God,' 'the Son of Man.' The matter is of no great importance and requires to be noted chiefly that the richness of the Messianic vocabulary capable of being intelligibly employed in Jesus' day may be appreciated, and that therefore the varying designations assigned to Jesus in the Gospels may occasion no surprise.

Old Testament Foundation

This rich body of designations is rooted, in all its items, not in current Messianic speculation, but in Old Testament prophecy; and is a witness not so much to the Messianic thought of Jesus' day as to the great variety of the modes of representation adopted in Old Testament revelation to prepare the people of God for His future intervention for their redemption. The focusing of all these lines of prediction in Jesus, and their satisfaction in His manifestation, is one of the phenomena which marked His appearance, and differentiates the movement inaugurated by Him from all other Messianic movements in Judaism—whether movements of thought merely or of action. He came forward and was recognized as the embodiment of the whole Messianic preformation of the Old Testament, moderating the current one-sided exaggeration of some elements of it and emphasizing other elements of it which had been neglected, transfiguring elements of it which had been crassly apprehended and compacting the whole into a unitary fulfillment unimagined before His appearance. What it particularly behooves us to take note of at the moment is the emphasis with which Jesus is presented, by means of this long series of designations, as the Messiah, and the exalted conception of the Messianic dignity which accompanies this emphatic attribution of it to Him. Nothing is left unsaid which could be said in simple and straightforward narratives to make it clear to the reader that Jesus is the Messiah: and nothing is lacking in what is said to make it clear that this Messiah is more than a human, even a divine, person.

Jesus' Messianic Claims

It belongs to the emphasis which is placed on His Messianic character that no room is left for that development of Jesus' Messianic consciousness which it has been the chief desire of many modern students of His career to trace. Nor, indeed, is room left for justifiable lagging of recognition of His Messiahship on the part of His followers or of His contemporaries. He is exhibited as already conscious of His unique relation to God as His Son, in the sole incident that is recorded of His early youth (Lk 2:49). He is represented as beginning His ministry under the profound impression necessarily made upon Him by His solemn designation as the Messiah by John the Baptist (Mt 3:14), confirmed as this was by a voice from the opened heavens proclaiming Him God's Son, His Beloved, in whom God was well pleased (Mt 3:17, Mk 1:11, Lk 3:22), and by His terrible experience of testing by Satan as the Son of God (Mt 4:3, 6, Lk 4:3, 9), and His succoring by the angels (Mk 1:13). Accordingly He is represented as opening His ministry by publicly applying to Himself the prophecy of Isaiah 61:1 with its enumeration of the works of the Messiah (Lk 4:17, 18 seq.), and as entering at once upon the performance of those works, not merely accepting the ascriptions of Messianic dignity to Him which they elicited (Lk 5:8, 4:34, 41, Mk 1:24, 34, Mt 8:17, etc.), but Himself appealing to them as the criteria of His Messiahship (Mt 11:3, Lk 7:19). He is represented as, under the impulse of His sense of His mission (Mk 1:38, Lk 4:43), preaching throughout the land in accents of authority (Mk 1:22, Lk 4:32), asserting His power over the religious ordinances of the people (Mk 2:28, Mt 12:8, Lk 6:5), and exercising His authority not only over unclean spirits (e. g., Mk 1:27) and the laws of nature (4:41), including even death (5:43), but over the moral world itself, in the divine prerogative of forgiving sins (2:10). Not only, however, is He represented as thus openly taking the position of Messiah and assuming the authority and functions of the Messiah (cf. Mt 7:21, 29) before the people: He is represented as from the first speaking of Himself as the Messiah in the use of His favorite Messianic designation, as frequently as He could be expected to do so in the circumstances in which He was placed and with the purpose which governed His entire course of life (Mt 8:20 || Lk 9:58, Mt 9:6 || Mk 2:10, Lk 5:24, Mt 10:23, Mt 11:19 || Lk 7:34, Mt 12:8 || Mk 2:28, Lk 6:5, Mt 12:32, 12:40, Lk 6:22, Mt 13:41; before the confession of Peter at Mt 16:16 ||). When these instances of self-expression are taken in connection with those of reception of the Messianic ascription from others (e. g., Mk 1:24, 3:11, 5:7, Mt 4:3, 6, 8:29, 14:33, Lk 4:41, 8:28, 4:3, 9, Mt 9:27, 15:22), it will be seen that the early ministry of Jesus, as represented by the Synoptists, was marked by practically continuous assertion or confession of His Messiahship.

Divergence From Current Expectations

If, then, John the Baptist doubted in prison whether He was 'the Coming One' (Mt 11:3), or it was only through a revelation from heaven that Peter attained to confess Him with firm faith 'the Christ, the Son of the Living God' (Mt 16:16, 17), this was not because of any lack of opportunity to learn of His Messiahship, but because they were foolish and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets had spoken and their eyes were holden that they should not know Him as He walked with them in the way (Lk 24:16, 25). So little were they left in ignorance of who it was to whom they listened as their Teacher, and obeyed as their Master and reverenced as their Lord, that it is represented that angelic messengers descended from heaven to announce Him as the promised Messiah before His birth (Lk 1:32, 35, 2:11, 26), that the predicted messenger who should go before the Lord, coming to redeem His people, pointed Him out as the One who should come after Him (Mt 3:11 ||), that God Himself proclaimed Him from heaven as His Son (Mt 3:17 ||), that Satan and his subject spirits recognized Him on sight as the One who had been appointed to destroy them (Mk 1:34, 5:7 || etc.), and that His whole career and teaching alike were ordered to convey to every seeing eye the great intelligence. The difficulty, according to the representation of the evangelists, was not that there was not evidence enough that here was the Messiah of God, the King come to His Kingdom; but that the evidence was not of the nature that had been expected and therefore puzzled men's minds rather than convinced them. The gist of our Lord's message to the Baptist (Mt 11:3) was not that John might see in His works such things as he had been looking for in the Messiah, but that he might see in them such things as he ought to be looking for. "Go and tell John that these are the kinds of things you see in me—the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up; and the poor have the good tidings preached to them: and blessed is he who shall find none occasion of stumbling in Me!" It is as much as to say, "Go and tell John to revise his conception of the Messiah, and to look and see if it is not these things which, according to the Scriptures (Is 61:1), should mark His work: go and tell John, I am indeed He who is to come, but I am not the manner of Messiah who is expected to come."

Transfigured Conception of Messiah

Accordingly the Synoptic narrative is marked no more by the stress it lays on the Messiahship of Jesus than by the transfigured conception of this Messiahship which it in every line insists upon. This constantly vibrating note is already struck in the supernatural announcements of the birth of Jesus. It is the Son of David who is to be born (Mt 1:20, Lk 1:27, 32), the promised King (Mt 2:2, Lk 1:33); but, above all else and before all else, that Saviour who is Christ the Lord (Lk 2:11), and whose name shall be called Jesus, because it is He who in fulfillment of the ancient prophecy promising the coming of Jehovah to His people, shall save His people from their sins (Mt 1:21). It is not merely a spiritual function which is here announced for this Messiah: it is also a divine personality. Who is that Saviour who is Christ "the Lord," and whose name shall be called Jesus because He shall save from their sins His people—"His" people, let us take good note, Jesus' people, although it is clear it is Jehovah's people who are meant? No wonder that it is immediately added that in this birth there is, therefore, fulfilled the prophecy of the issue from a virgin of one whose name is to be called Immanuel, which is, being interpreted, "God with us" (Mt 1:23).

The note thus struck is sustained throughout the Gospel narrative. This Messiah who Jesus is, is certainly the Son of David, the King of Israel. But the Kingdom He has come to found is the kingdom of righteousness, not merely a righteous kingdom: it is the Kingdom of Heaven, not a kingdom of the earth: the Kingdom of God, not of men. We may see its nature in Daniel's splendid dream of the heaven-founded kingdom of the saints of the Most High (Dan 7:13, 22–27); the method of its establishment in Isaiah's vision of the Righteous Servant of Jehovah, who bears the sins of His people and preaches the good tidings to the meek (esp. Is 53 and 61); the person of its founder in that most glorious of all prophecies of the Old Covenant: "Lo, your God will come; He will come and save you!" (Is 35:4); "the voice of one that crieth, Prepare ye in the wilderness the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God; … the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together, … Behold your God! Behold the Lord God will come … He shall feed His flock like a shepherd, He shall gather the lambs in His arms, and carry them in His bosom, and gently lead those that give suck" (Is 40:1 seq.). To put it in one sentence, the Messianic ideal which is presented in the Synoptics as fulfilled in Jesus finds its Old Testament basis not merely in the prediction of a Davidic King who reigns forever over the people of God, but, interpreting that kingdom in the terms of Daniel's dream of a heaven-founded kingdom of saints, interweaves with it the portraitures of the Servant of Jehovah of Isaiah and the fundamental promise that Jehovah shall visit His people for redemption.

Highest Designations

The special vehicles of the exalted view of the person of the Messiah embodied in this ideal are, so far as the Messianic designations are concerned, first of all that of the 'Son of Man,' then that of 'the Son of God,' or rather, in the more pregnant simple form, of 'the Son'; and outside of the Messianic titles proper, the high title of 'Lord.' The history of these designations is somewhat obscure, and, although they all have their roots set in the Old Testament, is illustrated by only scanty usage of them in Jewish literature prior to our Lord's time. 'The Son of Man' occurs only in the Similitudes of Enoch and in 4 Ezra: the exact title 'Son of God' does not seem to occur at all,13 though in an interpolated fragment of the Book of Enoch (105:2) and in 4 Ezra the Messiah is represented as spoken of by God as 'My Son.' It is noteworthy that in this rare Jewish usage both titles appear in connection with a transcendental doctrine of the Messiah,15 and it may be that it is the unwontedness of a transcendental doctrine of the Messiah in Judaism which accounts for the little use made in Jewish speculation of them, because these titles were felt to be implicative of more than human qualities. Their emergence into more frequent use in the Gospels would in that case be connected with the emphasis laid, according to their representation, upon the essential divinity of the Messiah by Jesus and His followers.

Meaning of 'Son of Man'

Certainly the Messianic conception represented as expressed by Jesus through His constant employment of the title 'Son of Man' of Himself, is that of a supermundane Being entering the sphere of earthly life upon a high and beneficent mission, upon the accomplishment of which He returns to the heavenly sphere, whence He shall once more come back to earth, now, however, not in humiliation, but in His appropriate majesty, to gather up the fruits of His work and consummate all things. The characteristic note of 'the Son of Man' on earth is therefore a lowliness which is not so much a humility as a humiliation, a voluntary self-abnegation for a purpose. He came under the conditions of human life (Mt 11:19 ||) on a mission of mercy (Lk 19:10) which involved His self-sacrifice (Mk 10:45 ||), and therefore lives a life unbefitting His essential nature (Mt 8:20). For, when He tells the questioning scribe that the 'Son of Man' is worse off than the very foxes, who have holes, and the birds of the air, who have nests, since He has not where to lay His head (Mt 8:20), the very point of the remark is the incongruity of the situation. Accordingly even on earth He exercises an authority which does not belong to His condition: though destined to be set at naught by men, to be evil-entreated and slain, yet He has power to regulate the religious observances of the people of God (Mk 2:28) and even to forgive sins (2:10). And when His lowly mission is accomplished He ascends the throne of the universe (Mk 14:62, Mt 19:28); and in due time will return in His glory and render to every man according to his works, seated as King on the universal judgment seat (Mk 8:38, Mt 25:31). The connection of the title with the dream of Daniel 7:13, 14 is obvious: the point of connection lying in the conception of the Kingdom of God, which Jesus came to introduce, and which He finds particularly promised in Daniel 7:13, 14, apparently because it is there depicted, specifically in contrast with the earthly kingdoms which it supercedes, as a Kingdom of heaven. But there is much more expressed by the title than is discernible in the dream of Daniel, and that not least with reference to the person of the founder, who is conceived, in Jesus' idea, as represented by the Synoptic record, not merely as a supermundane, perhaps angelic, figure, but distinctly as superangelic, transcending all creaturely relations,17 and finding His appropriate place only by the side of God Himself, whose functions He performs and whose throne He occupies as King.19

Meaning of 'Son of God'

The conception attached in these Gospels to the designation 'Son of God' is in no respect less exalted. The title does occasionally occur, to be sure‚ in circumstances in which this exalted significance seems more or less in danger of being missed. For example, it is employed by the Jewish officers at the trial of Christ as in some sense a synonym of the general Messianic title 'Christ' (Mk 14:62, Mt 26:63, Lk 22:70, cf. Mt 27:40, 43); it is also employed, according to Matthew's account, by Peter in his great confession alongside of the term 'Christ' (16:16); and on one occasion Jesus' disciples, having witnessed a notable miracle, cried out as they did Him reverence, "Of a truth Thou are the [or, a] Son of God" (Mt 14:33). Such passages, no doubt, illustrate the use of the term as a Messianic title. But it seems clear enough that they illustrate its use as a Messianic title of inherently higher connotation than, say, the simple term 'the Christ' as a general synonym of which it is employed. The very point of the Jews' approaching Jesus with this particular Messianic title appears to have been—as the form of the narrative in Luke may suggest—to obtain a confession which would enable them from their point of view to charge Him with blasphemy. That is to say, the implications of this Messianic title in their minds seem to have been such that its use by a mere man, or by one seemingly a mere man, would involve him in claims for himself which were tantamount to blasphemy. It seems equally clear that Peter in acknowledging Jesus to be the Messiah (Mt 16:16) intended by adjoining to the simple, "Thou art the Christ" the defining phrase "the Son of the Living God" to attach an exalted conception of the Messiahship to Him. And it is fairly obvious that the frightened disciples in the boat (Mt 14:33),—though certainly they understood not and their heart was hardened (Mk 6:51),—yet expressed out of their distracted minds at least the sense of a supernatural presence when they cried out, "Truly Thou art"—possibly "a," not "the"—"Son of God." Their exclamation thus may in its own degree be paralleled at least with that of the centurion at the cross (Mk 15:39, Mt 27:54), "Truly this man was a Son of God"—which surely is the natural expression, from his own point of view, of his awe in the presence of the supernatural.

This series of exceptional instances of the employment of the term 'Son of God' will scarcely, therefore, avail to lessen the general impression we get from the current use of the title, that it designates the Messiah from a point of view which differentiates Him as 'the Son of God' from the children of men, and throws into emphasis a distinct implication of the supernaturalness of His person. It seems to be on this account that it is characteristically employed by voices from the unseen universe. It is by this term, for instance, that Satan addresses Jesus in the temptation, seeking to induce Him by this exploitation of His supernatural character to perform supernatural deeds (Mt 4:3, 6, Lk 4:3, 9). It is by this term (Lk 4:41) that the demons greet Him when they recognize in Him the judge and destroyer of all that is evil (Mk 3:11, 5:7, Mt 8:29, Lk 8:28, 4:41). It is by this term that the angel of the annunciation is represented as describing the nature of her miraculous child to Mary: "He shall be great," he announced, "and shall be called the Son of the Most High God." And in doing this, it must be noted, the angel connects the title no more with His appointment to a supernatural service than with the supernaturalness of His origin: because Mary's conception should be supernatural, therefore, that holy thing which was being begotten should bear the name of the 'Son of God' (Lk 1:32, 35). It is by the term 'My Son' above all that God Himself bore witness to Him on the two occasions when He spoke from heaven to give Him His testimony (Mk 1:11, 9:7, Mt 3:17, 17:5, Lk 3:22, 9:35)—adding to it moreover epithets which emphasized the uniqueness of the Sonship thus solemnly announced. It would seem quite clear, therefore, that the title 'Son of God' stands in the pages of the Synoptics as the supernatural Messianic designation by way of eminence, and represents the Messiah in contradistinction from children of men as of a supernatural origin and nature.

It is, however, from our Lord's own application of the term 'the Son' to Himself that we derive our plainest insight into the loftiness of its implications. Already in the Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen (Mk 12:6, Mt 21:37, Lk 20:13, cf. Mt 22:1), He sets Himself as God's Son and Heir over against all His servants, of whatever quality; which would seem to withdraw Him out of the category of creatures altogether. And this tremendous inference is fully supported by the remarkable utterance in which, in declaring His ignorance of the time of His future coming, He places Himself outside of the category even of angels, that is of creatures of the highest rank, and assimilates Himself as Son to the Father (Mk 13:32, Mt 24:36). It is carried out of the region of inference into that of assertion in the two remarkable passages in which He gives didactic expression to His relation as Son to the Father (Mt 11:27, Lk 10:22, Mt 28:19). In these, He tells us He is co-sharer in the one Name with the Father, and co-exists with the Father in a complete, perfect and unbroken interpenetration of mutual knowledge and being. The essential deity of the Son could not receive more absolute expression.

Meaning of 'Lord'

The difficulty of forming a precise estimate of the implications of the application of the term 'Lord' to Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels arises from the confluence of two diverse streams of significance in that term. On the one hand Jesus may be and is called 'Lord' by the application to Him of a title expressive of authority and sovereignty commonly in use among men: above all others who have a right to rule He has a right to rule. On the other hand, Jesus may be and is called 'Lord' by the application to Him of a current Biblical title expressive of the divine majesty: much that was said of the 'Lord' in the Old Testament Scriptures was carried over to Him and with it the term itself. When, then, we meet with an instance in which Jesus is called 'Lord' we are puzzled to determine whether there is merely attributed to Him supreme authority and jurisdiction, or there is given to Him the Name that is above every name.

That the designation 'the Lord' had attached itself to Jesus during His lifetime so that He was thus familiarly spoken of among His followers is perfectly clear from the Gospel narrative. It is indeed already implied in the instruction given His disciples by Jesus to bring Him the ass's colt on which He might make His entry into Jerusalem. He could not have instructed them to say to possible objectors, "The Lord hath need of him" (Mk 11:3, Mt 21:3, Lk 19:31), unless He had been accustomed to be spoken of as 'the Lord.' That He was accustomed to thinking of Himself as their 'Lord' follows also from such a passage as Mt 24:42 (cf. Mk 13:35): "Watch, therefore, for ye know not on what day your Lord cometh"; and indeed from the didactic use of the term of Himself in encouraging or warning His followers (Mt 10:24), and its free employment in parabolic pictures, where He represents Himself as the 'Lord' over against His servants (Lk 12:36, 43). In what sense the term is used in such allusions is not, however, immediately obvious. The opposition of it to "slaves" in such passages as Mt. 10:24, Lk. 12:36, 43 leads to its instinctive interpretation in the sense of ownership and sovereignty, and does not appear to call for direct divine implications save as the absoluteness of the sovereignty which is suggested may surpass that enjoyed by men. Perhaps something to the same effect may be said of Luke 1:43 where Elisabeth, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, expresses her wondering joy that "the mother of her Lord" should come to her. Clearly she intends to express by the designation the height of at least Messianic glory: but it does not seem obvious that her thought went beyond the delegated glory of the divine representative. In a passage like Luke 5:8, however, there seems to be an ascription to Jesus of a majesty which is distinctly recognized as supernatural: not only is the contrast of 'Lord' with 'Master' here express (cf. v. 5), but the phrase "Depart from me; for I am a sinful man" (v. 8) is the natural utterance of that sense of unworthiness which overwhelms men in the presence of the divine, and which is signalized in Scripture as the mark of recognition of the divine presence. The 'Lord, Lord' of Mt. 7:21, 22 also obviously involves a recognition of Jesus as the Lord of life, and in Mt. 25:37, 44 'Lord' is the appropriate address to the King on the judgment throne of the whole earth. In these instances the sense of the mere supernatural gives way to the apprehension of that absolute sovereignty over the destinies of men which can belong to deity alone; it is this 'Lord' in whose name all the works of life are done, by whose determination all the issues of life are fixed.

If in such instances we appear to be employing the word in its highest connotation of sovereignty, in such instances as the discussion of David's words in the 110th Psalm we seem to rise into a region of actual divine ascription. Here, with obvious reference to Himself, our Lord argues that when David in the Spirit represents the Lord as saying to his Lord, "Sit thou on My right hand," he ascribes a dignity to the Messiah very much greater than could belong to Him simply as David's son (Mk. 12:36, 37). That seems as much as to say that sovereignty of the royal order, however absolute, is too low a category under which to subsume this Lordship: and therefore appears to point to a connotation of 'Lord' beyond illustration from human analogies. The question inevitably obtrudes itself whether our Lord does not intend to suggest that David applies the divine name itself to the Messiah. That the evangelists may very readily have so understood Him seems evident from their own application to Jesus of the term 'Lord' in Isaiah 40:3,—representing the incommunicable name of Jehovah as it does,—in their account of the mission of the Baptist, whom they consentiently speak of as the forerunner of Jesus, fulfilling the prophecy of the coming of the voice of one crying, "Prepare ye in the wilderness the way of the Lord, make His paths straight" (Mk. 1:3, Mt. 3:3, Lk. 3:4). And there remains the remarkable passage in the angelic annunciation to the shepherds of the birth in the city of David of that "Saviour" who is "Christ the Lord" (Lk. 2:11). It seems impossible to suppose that the term 'the Lord' here adds nothing to the term 'the Christ'—else why is it added? But what can the term 'Lord' add as a climax to 'Christ'? In 'Christ' itself, the Anointed King, there is already expressed the height of sovereignty and authority as the delegate of Jehovah. The appearance is very strong that the adjunction of 'Lord' is intended to convey the intelligence that the 'Christ' now born is a divine Christ.

This appearance is greatly strengthened by the consideration that the appeal to prophecy in calling the Messiah 'the Saviour' is an appeal to the great series of predictions of the advent of Jehovah for the redemption of His people (cf. Mt. 1:21): and also by the general context in which this annunciation is placed, which contains a sustained attempt to make the supernaturalism of this birth impressive, and includes the declaration that the child here designated "the Saviour who is Christ the Lord" is in His person the 'Son of the Most High God' (Lk. 1:32) and is marked out as such by a supernatural birth (1:35). Nor should we permit to fall out of our sight the circumstance that this passage occurs in a context in which the term 'Lord' appears unusually frequently, and always, with this exception and that of 1:45, of Jehovah. It would be very difficult for the simple reader to read of the angel of 'the Lord' and of the glory of 'the Lord' in Lk. 2:9, and of 'the Lord' making known in verse 15, and, in the middle of these statements, of 'Christ the Lord' in verse 11, and not institute some connection between it and its ever-repeated fellows: especially when he would soon read in verse 26, of "the Christ of the Lord." That at least a superhuman majesty is here ascribed to Jesus seems scarcely disputable: and there appears a strong likelihood that this supernaturalness is meant to rise to the divine. In any event it is clear that the term 'Lord' is sometimes applied to Jesus in the Synoptics in a height of connotation which imports His deity.

Synoptical Christ Divine

It is not necessary to add further evidence, derived from less frequently employed designations of our Lord, that a true deity is ascribed to His person in the Synoptic Gospels. On the basis of the considerations already presented it is abundantly clear that the Synoptists conceived Jesus, whom they identify with the Messiah, as a divine person; and represent Him as exercising divine prerogatives and asserting for Himself a divine personality and participation in the divine Name.

THE JESUS OF THE SYNOPTISTS THE PRIMITIVE JESUS

Significance of Synoptical Testimony

That we may estimate the significance of the testimony to the Divine Christ which we have seen to be borne by the Synoptists, we must bear in mind that it cannot be taken as merely the individual opinion of three writers. It must be recognized as reflecting the consentient conviction of the community which these three writers represent and for which they wrote. And this is equivalent to saying that we have here the conception of Jesus which prevailed in the primitive age of the Christian propaganda.

Date of the Synoptics

This might not be so obvious if we could follow certain extremists who, largely in order to escape this very conclusion, have wished—formerly in much greater numbers than more recently—to assign the composition of the Synoptic Gospels to a period somewhat late in the second century. It will be allowed by most reasonable men to-day that these Gospels were all written before A. D. 80, and belong at latest to the seventh and eighth decades of the first century. Our own conviction is very clear that they were all written before A. D. 70, and therefore belong to the seventh decade at the latest. In the seventh decade of the first century, therefore, it was of faith in the Christian community that Jesus Christ was a divine person. And this evidence is retrospective. What was with such firmness universally believed of the nature of the founder of the Christian religion in the seventh decade of the first century, had not first in that decade become the faith of the Church. But only a short generation, as we conventionally count generations—something like five and thirty years—intervened between the death of Jesus and the composition of the Synoptic Gospels. It is impossible to suppose that the conception of Jesus had radically altered in this brief interval; that a primitive humanitarianism for example had in the course of thirty or forty years been transformed into a universal conviction of the deity of Jesus, such as is expressed with simplicity and unstudied emphasis in our Gospels. The witness of the Synoptic Gospels is accordingly a witness to the aboriginal faith of Christians.

Earlier Documentary Basis

Nor is the force of this conclusion weakened by attempting to get behind our Gospels and appealing to the yet earlier documents out of which they may be thought to have been framed. Grant that our Gospels belong to the second generation of documents; and that behind them lie still earlier documents upon which they depend. These earlier documents cannot be presumed to have presented a portrait of Jesus radically different from that which all three of their representatives have derived from them. We have simply pushed back ten, fifteen, or twenty years our literary testimony to the deity of Jesus: and how can we suppose that the determinative expression of the Church's faith in A. D. 50 or A. D. 40 differed radically from the Church's faith in A. D. 30—the year in which Jesus died? The assurance that our Gospels rest on earlier documentary sources becomes thus an additional assurance that the conception of the person of Jesus which they present in concert is the conception which held the mind and heart of the Church from the very beginning.

The Sources of the Synoptics

How fully justified this conclusion is may be illustrated by examining the conception of Jesus imbedded in the hypothetical sources which the several schools of criticism reconstruct for our Synoptics. In each and all of them is found the same portrait of the supernatural Christ. Probably the theory of the origin of the Synoptics most in vogue just now is still the so-called "two-source" theory, in some one or other of its forms. According to this theory, our three Synoptics in their main substance are compounded out of two important primitive documents, which may be conveniently called 'the original Mark' and 'the Matthean sayings.' The former of these is supposed to be substantially and, in the view of many critics, very closely indeed, represented by our present Mark; while from the latter a good portion of the material in Matthew and Luke not also contained in Mark is thought to be derived,—certainly what is common to these two Gospels apart from Mark, and doubtless also something not reproduced in both of them. According to the present most fashionable form of this theory, then, we are reading substantially a primitive evangelical document when we read our present Mark. Some suppose the primitive Mark to have been a longer document than our present Mark, some suppose it to have been a shorter document, some suppose it to have differed from it not more than one textual recension may differ from another,—say a "Western" MS. of Luke from a "Neutral" one. But few would care to contend that the general portrait of Jesus drawn in it differed markedly from that which lies on the pages of our present Mark. The Jesus brought before us in our present Mark, however, is, as we have seen, distinctly and distinctively a supernatural person: and it must have been this same distinctly and distinctively supernatural Jesus, therefore, which was set forth in the primitive Mark.

Christology of the Primitive Mark

Indeed, we can demonstrate this without difficulty. For it is easy to show that it is impossible to construct a primitive Mark which will not contain this portrait of a supernatural Jesus. Take what is probably the most irrational hypothesis of the nature of the primitive Mark which has ever been suggested,—that which would confine its contents strictly to the matter common to all three Synoptics, as if each Gospel must be supposed to have transferred into its substance every word which stood in this common source of them all. Even in the broken sentences of the absurd "telegraphese" Gospel, which on this hypothesis is supposed to represent the primitive evangelical document, the portrait of the divine Christ is ineffaceably imbedded. In it, as in the larger Mark, the stress of the presentation is laid on the Messiahship of Jesus, which is copiously and variously witnessed. Peter in his great confession declares Him the 'Christ' (8:29) and the declaration is accepted by Jesus Himself; as also, when adjured by the High Priest at His trial to say whether He is the 'Christ,' He acknowledges that He is, in the highest sense (14:61, 62). The implied claim to kingly estate He also expressly makes (15:2, 32); as also the involved claim of being the promised 'Son of David' (10:47, 48),—although His conception of the Messiahship was so little exhausted by this claim that He takes pains to point out that the Messiah was acknowledged by David himself to be his 'Lord,' using the term obviously in a high sense (12:35). That He was familiarly spoken of by His disciples as 'Lord' is also made evident (11:3); and He Himself asserts that His Lordship is high enough to give Him authority over the religious ordinances of Israel (2:28). The tradition applies, indeed, the term 'Lord' to Him in citations from the Old Testament, where it stands for Jehovah Himself (1:3). The evil spirits greet Him by the high title of 'Son of God' (5:7), and the same title is suggested to Him as a synonym of the Messiah in His accusation (14:61), and in neither case is it repelled. He Himself indeed in a parable represents Himself as in a unique sense the 'Son' and 'Heir' of God, differentiated as such from all "servants" whatsoever (12:6, 7); and receives the testimony of heaven itself that He is God's 'Son' and His 'beloved Son' (1:11, 9:7). He speaks of Himself, however, with more predilection as the 'Son of Man'; and under this self-designation He asserts for Himself power over the religious ordinances of Israel (2:28), and even the divine prerogative of forgiving sins (2:10), although He anticipates for Himself only a career of suffering, predicting that He will be betrayed (14:20) into the hands of men (9:31) who shall mock and scourge and kill Him (10:33). Afterwards, however, He shall rise again (10:34) and ascend to the right hand of power (14:62), whence He shall return in clouds with great power and glory (13:26), the glory of the Father and the angels (8:38). It is clear that the designation 'Son of Man' is derived from Daniel 7:13, 14; (13:20, 8:28, 14:62) and the portrait presented under it is that of a being of more than human powers and attributes. In complete harmony with this portrait He is represented as calling Himself also 'the Bridegroom' (2:19, 20), charged as that term was with Old Testament associations with Jehovah (cf. 'Lord' of 1:3); and in immediate connection with this high designation, too, He speaks of His death, thus instituting a close parallel between this designation and that of the 'Son of Man.' In both alike, indeed, He evidently is regarded as presenting Himself as a personage of superhuman, or rather of divine quality, who has come to earth (12:17) only on a mission and who suffers and dies here only to fulfill that mission.

Other Possible Elements in the Primitive Mark

No doubt there are some striking phrases occurring in our present Mark which are lacking from this series of broken extracts from it. But the same figure is here outlined. And most of even these striking phrases are restored if we will attend also to passages common to Mark and one of the other evangelists, of which it would be hard to deny that they may therefore have had a place in the primitive document underlying all three. Thus, for example, in the fragments peculiar to Matthew and Mark, while Jesus is not addressed as 'Lord' except by the Syro-Phœnician woman (Mk 7:28, Mt 15:27), and is not spoken of at all by the general Messianic designation, 'the Christ,' He yet does call Himself both the 'Son of Man,' and undefinedly, 'the Son.' As 'Son of Man,' he asserts, He "came" to execute a great mission, not to be ministered unto but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many (Mk 10:45, Mt 20:28), and therefore has a prospect of suffering before Him (Mk 9:12, Mt 17:12, Mk 14:41, Mt 26:45), but dies only to rise again (Mk 9:9, Mt 17:9). As 'Son' He represents Himself as of superangelic dignity, and therefore above all creatures, standing next to God Himself (Mk 13:32, Mt 24:36). In the passages peculiar to Mark and Luke, we find Him testified to as the Messiah by the demons, who, although they know His earthly origin ('Jesus of Nazareth'), profess to know Him also to be the 'Holy One of God' (Mk 1:24, Lk 4:34) and the 'Son of the Most High God' (Mk 5:7, Lk 8:28). Not only does He not repel these ascriptions, but He speaks of Himself as the 'Son of Man,' teaching that He is to suffer many things and be killed, but after three days to rise again (Mk 8:31, Lk 9:22). A primitive gospel containing all this falls short in nothing of the testimony borne by our present Mark to our Lord's higher nature.

Christology of the 'Primitive Sayings'

It is not neccessary for our purpose to expend effort in endeavoring to ascertain the compass most commonly attributed to the second hypothetical document supposed to underlie our Synoptics, the so-called, and let us add, very much miscalled, "Logia." We may as well at once direct our eyes to its minimum contents,—the passages peculiar to Matthew and Luke,—even in the meager compass of which we shall find evidence enough that this document, whatever its extent, presented Jesus as a Divine Being. That He was the Messiah He is represented as Himself indicating by pointing to His works (Mt 11:3, Lk 7:19), which, He intimates, evidently on the basis of Isaiah 61:1, accredit Him as the 'One who was to Come.' It is apparently as Messiah that He is addressed as 'Lord' (Mt 8:8, Lk 7:6), and He is represented as adverting to this customary mode of addressing Him in order to declare that it is not merely verbal recognition of His authority but actual obedience to His words alone which will constitute a claim upon His mercy (Mt 7:21, Lk 6:46)—where, it is to be noted, He presents Himself as 'Lord' of the destinies of men, by their relations to whom men stand or fall. He is accordingly appropriately spoken to by Satan as 'Son of God' (Mt 4:3, 6, Lk 4:3, 9); and currently calls Himself by the great Danielic title of 'Son of Man.' He explains that this 'Son of Man' has come in the fashion of men, "eating and drinking" (Mt 11:19, Lk 7:34), and living a hard life (Mt 8:20, Lk 9:58)—ending in betrayal and death (Mt 26:48, Lk 22:47); but after death is to rise again (Mt 12:40, Lk 11:30). But even while on earth He asserts for Himself an unbroken communion with God, or rather a continuous intercommunion of Himself as 'Son' with the 'Father' (Mt 11:27, Lk 10:22); knowing the Father as perfectly as He is known by the Father, and therefore able to make known the Father as His sole adequate revelation to men. In this great passage we have what must be considered the culminating assertion on our Lord's part of His essential deity.

Resort to 'Historical Criticism'

It is clear, then, that the documents which, even in the view of the most unreasonable criticism, are supposed to underlie the structure of our present Synoptics are freighted with the same teaching which these Gospels themselves embody as to the person of our Lord. Literary criticism cannot penetrate to any stratum of belief more primitive than this. We may sink our trial shafts down through the soil of the Gospel tradition at any point we please; it is only conformable strata that we pierce. So far as the tradition goes, it gives consentient testimony to an aboriginal faith in the deity of the founder of the religion of Christianity. In these circumstances it is not strange that another mode of analysis is attempted. Literary criticism is abandoned for historical criticism: and we are invited to distinguish in our Gospels not between later and older documentary strata, but between narrative and reportorial elements. We do not wish to know, it is said, what Matthew, Mark or Luke thought, or what was thought by those represented by them or by any predecessor of theirs—the Christian community to wit, even the primitive Christian community. What we wish to know is what Jesus Himself thought. We appeal from the representation of Jesus given by His followers to the self-testimony of Jesus. Let us have Jesus' own conception of Himself.

The Reportorial Element in the Gospels

It is not necessary to spend much time upon this demand in its simplest form, that, namely, which would merely separate out from the Synoptic Gospels as they stand the words attributed to Jesus, and seek to ascertain from them Jesus' witness to the nature of His person and the quality of His dignity. It must have been observed as we ran over the designations applied to our Lord in the Gospels and sought to estimate their significance, that the most remarkable of them are drawn from the words of Jesus. The fact is too patent and striking to have failed to attract attention: the higher teaching of the Gospels as to our Lord's person is embodied very especially in His own words. It is on His lips, for example, that the term 'Lord' appears when employed in its loftiest connections. It is He alone who applies to Himself the significant title of 'Son of Man,' the vehicle of the most constant claim for Him of a superhuman nature. It is He alone who, speaking out of His own consciousness, proclaims Himself superior to those highest of God's creatures, the angels (Mk 13:32, Mt 24:35): represents Himself as living in continuous and perfect intercommunion with the Father, knowing Him even as He is known by Him and acting as the sole adequate mediator alike of the knowledge of God and of the grace of God to men (Mt 11:27, Lk 10:22): and in His great closing utterance places Himself, along with the Father and Holy Spirit and equally with them, even in the awful precincts of the Divine Name itself (Mt 28:19). To separate between the narrative and reportorial elements of the Gospels, therefore, only brings home to us with peculiar poignancy the testimony they bear to the deity of our Lord, resting this testimony, as they do, on the firm basis of our Lord's own self-testimony—a self-testimony in which He at times lays bare to us the innermost depths of His divine self-consciousness.

Trustworthiness of the Evangelical Report

There can be no question of the deity of our Lord, therefore, if we can trust the report which the evangelists give of His words. It is at this point, however, that the assault on the validity of their representation is made. We are not asked to distinguish between what the evangelists say in their own person and what they say in the person of Jesus. We are asked to distinguish between what is really theirs in their account of the life and teaching of Jesus and what is really Jesus' own transcribed into their narratives. It is suggested that they may have, or rather that they must have, and actually have, attributed much to Jesus which He never said; that they have read back their own ideas into His teaching, and unconsciously—or more or less consciously—placed on His lips what was in point of fact the dogmatic elaborations of the later Christian community. And it is demanded that we, therefore, subject the whole body of the evangelic representation of Jesus' teaching to the most searchingly critical scrutiny with a view to sifting out from it what may really be depended upon as Jesus' own. Thus only, we are told, will it be possible to find firm footing. Faith is the foe of fact: and in the enthusiasm of their devotion to Jesus it was inevitable that His followers should clothe Him in their thought of Him with attributes which He did not possess and never dreamed of claiming: and it was equally inevitable that they should imagine that He must have claimed them and have ended by representing Him as claiming them. We shall never know the truth about Jesus, therefore, we are told, until we penetrate behind the Jesus of the evangelists to the Jesus that really was.

Faith the Foe of Fact

The situation might not have been so bad, we are told, if the evangelists had been merely transmitters of a tradition, like, say, the rabbinical schools. But there is an essential difference between the two cases, a difference which casts us with respect to the evangelic tradition into grave doubt. This difference is due to the unfortunate fact that the evangelists themselves believed in Jesus and loved Him. "In our case," therefore, we are told, "we have not merely pupils transmitting the teaching of their master, but a believing community speaking of one they honor as the exalted Lord. Even the oldest Gospel is written from the standpoint of faith; already for Mark Jesus is not only the Messiah of the Jewish people, but the miraculous eternal Son of God whose glory shone in the world."6 "And it has been rightly emphasized that in this regard our three first Gospels are distinguished from the fourth only in degree. Must there not, then, have taken place here a complete repainting from the standpoint of faith? For there is a certain propriety in saying that faith is the enemy of history. Where we believe and honor, we no longer see objectively." Accordingly we are told that the deepest longing of men's hearts to-day is to rediscover the real Jesus. "There is a great desire to know Him at first hand," it is said, "not merely through the loving vision of His earliest interpreters, but as He looked and spoke and worked and thought." Which is as much as to say that the vision the evangelists give us of Jesus is not conformable to the reality, but has been distorted by their love. If we wish the bald truth about Him and His claims we must go behind them.

Primary Cannon of Criticism

This point of view, it will be observed, is definite enough. The evangelists are not to be trusted in the report they give of the teaching of Jesus about Himself. But embarrassing questions remain. Above all, these embarrassing questions: Why should we not trust the evangelists' report of Jesus' teaching as to His own nature? And, distrusting them, how are we to get behind their report? That the evangelists believed in Jesus and loved Him does not seem in itself an absolutely compelling reason why we should distrust their report of His teaching concerning His own nature. Suppose we assume for the moment that Jesus did assert for Himself superhuman dignity. How does it throw doubt upon that fact that those who report it to us were led—possibly by overwhelming evidence of its truth—to believe that in so asserting He spoke truly? Are we to lay it down as the primary canon of criticism that no sympathetic report of a master's teaching is trustworthy; that only inimical reporters are credible reporters?

Absurd as it seems, this is the actual canon of critical reconstruction upon which our would-be guides, in recovering from the obscuring hands of the evangelists the real Jesus, would have us proceed. It has found somewhat notorious enunciation in Professor Schmiedel's article "Gospels" in the Encyclopædia Biblica. But it is so far from being peculiar to Professor Schmiedel that it is the common foundation stone upon which the whole school of criticism with which we are now concerned builds its attempt to penetrate behind the evangelical narratives and to recover from these an earlier and therefore presumably truer picture of Jesus and His claims.9 Under its guidance we are set to searching diligently through the evangelical narratives (as if for hid treasures) for sentences or fragments of sentences in the reported words of Jesus, which appear, or may be made to appear, out of harmony with the high claims He is consentiently and constantly reported by all the evangelists to have made for Himself: and on these few broken passages, torn from their context and shredded in their own contents, is erected, as on its foundation stone, a totally new portrait of Jesus, expressing a totally new self-consciousness,—which stands related to the Jesus of the evangelists and the self-consciousness which is ascribed to Him in their account, of course, as its precise contradictory,—seeing that it is precisely on the principle of contradiction that it has been concocted.

Surely we do not need to pause to point out that the procedure we are here invited to adopt is a prescription for historical investigation which must always issue in reversing the portraiture of the historical characters to the records of whose lives it is applied. The result of its universal application would be, so to speak, the writing of all history backwards and the adornment of its annals with a series of portraits which would have this only to recommend them, that they represent every historical character as the exact contrast to what each was thought to be by all who knew and esteemed him. The absurdity and wrong of invoking such a canon in the case of our Synoptic Gospels are peculiarly flagrant, inasmuch as these Gospels, as we have seen, and as these very critics are frank to allow, are themselves of very early date and rest on a documentary basis, quite at one with them in the portrait they draw of Jesus, which is naturally earlier than themselves; and therefore reflect the universal conviction of the first generation of Christians. It is really impossible to doubt that they bring to us the aboriginal testimony of the primitive Church—a Church which included in its membership a considerable number of actual eye-witnesses of Jesus and ear-witnesses of His teaching,—as to His claims and personality.

Futility of This Canon

The absolute unanimity of that Church in its view of Jesus is very strikingly illustrated by the difficulty of discovering passages imbedded in our Gospels which can be used as a foundation for the opposing portraiture of Jesus which the critics would fain draw. Professor Schmiedel can by the utmost sharpness of inquisition find only five, which by applying more exegetical pressure he can increase only to nine. The groundlessness of this assault on the trustworthiness of the portrait of Jesus presented in our Synoptics may fairly be said, therefore, to be matched by its resultlessness. Material cannot be gathered from our Gospels out of which a naturalistic Christ can be created. The method of criticism adopted being purely subjective, moreover, the assumed results naturally vary endlessly. We feel a certain sympathy, therefore, with the position assumed by those writers who frankly admit that, the evangelical portraiture of Jesus being distrusted, the real Jesus is hopelessly lost to our sight. Strive as we may, we are told, we cannot penetrate behind the Jesus of our first informants—the writers of the New Testament, upon whose palette had already been mingled, nevertheless, colors derived from Jewish prophecy, Rabbinic teaching, Oriental gnosis and Christian philosophy. "All that can be determined with certainty from these writings," it is declared, "is that conception of Christ which was the object of faith of the early Christian communities and their teachers": the real Jesus is hopelessly hidden under the incrustations with which faith has enveloped it. Nor does there seem to be lacking a certain logical force in the reasoning of bolder souls who drive the inference one step further and ask what need there is of assuming a real Jesus at all. The "real Jesus" whom the critics invent certainly was not the author of the Christianity that exists. If the Christianity that actually exists in the world can get along without the Jesus which alone would account for it, why, they argue, must there be assumed behind it a Jesus which will not account for it; of whom this only may be said,—that He is a useless figure, the assumption of whom is so far from accounting for that great religious movement which we call Christianity, that it is certain that the movement did not arise in Him and did not derive its fundamental convictions from Him? Let us, then, assume, they say, that there never was any such person as Jesus at all, and the picture drawn of Him in the evangelists is pure myth.

Can We Save Any Jesus at All?

It is interesting—almost amusing—to observe our disintegrating critics over against this more radical employment of their own methods, suddenly taking up the rôle of "apologists" and writing so in the spirit and with the adoption of so many of the exact arguments of the "apologists," whom they have been wont to despise, as to lead the reader to exclaim, "Are these, too, among the prophets?" It is all, however, in vain. The fatal subjectivity which underlies their own view reasserts itself in the end and leaves them without adequate defense against extremists, simply because whether one stops with them or goes on with the others is not a matter of principle, but only of temperament. It is just as impossible that Christianity can have sprung from the Jesus which these critics give us, as that it should have sprung up without any Jesus behind it at all, as the radicals assert. There is just as little reason in a sound historical criticism to discover the Jesus of Bousset behind the Jesus of the evangelists, as there is for discovering with Kalthoff that there was no real Jesus at all behind the Jesus of the evangelists. The plain fact is that the evangelists give us the primitive Jesus, behind which there is none other; and the attempt to set the Jesus they give us aside in favor of an assumed more primitive Jesus can mean nothing but the confounding of all historical sequences. The real impulse for the whole assault upon the trustworthiness of the portrait of Jesus drawn in the Gospels lies not in the region of historical investigation but in that of dogmatic prejudice,—or to be more specific, of naturalistic preconception. The moving spring of the critical reconstruction is the determination to have a "natural" as over against the "supernatural" Jesus of the evangelists. There must be a more primitive Jesus than the evangelists'—this is the actual movement of thought—because their Jesus is already a supernatural Jesus,—"a miraculous Son of God, in whom men believe, whom men elevate to a place by the side of God." The plain fact, however, is that this supernatural Jesus is the only Jesus historically witnessed to us; the only Jesus historically discoverable by us; the only Jesus historically tolerable. We can rid ourselves of Him only by doing violence to the whole historical testimony and to the whole historical development as well. Not only is there no other Jesus witnessed in the documents, but no other Jesus can have formed the starting point of the great movement which, springing from Him, has conquered to itself the civilized world.

What must absorb our attention immediately, however, is the difficulty that is found even on these naturalistic presuppositions in eliminating from the portrait of Jesus drawn in the Gospels all supernatural traits and all claims on His own part to a supernatural personality. To be successful here, there is required such a policy of thoroughgoing rejection as Kalthoff's and W. B. Smith's, who sweep away the whole figure of Jesus itself as a myth, or at least as Wrede's, who would have us believe that Jesus made no claim to even Messianic dignity, so that the entire picture drawn of His career in our Gospels is false; or else such a policy of "ignoramus" as Pfleiderer's who declines to form any picture of the real Jesus at all. The majority of naturalistic critics recoil, however, from these extremes with an energy which seems to betray at least a semi-consciousness that there may haply be found in them the reductio ad absurdum of their whole method. Their position is certainly a hard one between these extremes from which they recoil and the portrait of the evangelists toward which their recoil brings them back. In endeavoring to avoid conclusions recognized by them as intolerable they are compelled to give recognition to facts as to the claims of the real Jesus which are fatal to their whole elaborately argued position.

Jesus Certainly Claimed to be Messiah and 'Son of Man'

They are forced, for example, to allow that Jesus did announce Himself as the Messiah. And they are forced to admit that, in developing His Messianic conception, He was wont to call Himself 'the Son of Man.' It makes very entertaining reading to observe Bousset, for example, grudgingly conceding the fact, and then nervously endeavoring to save himself from the consequences of the damaging acknowledgment. He cannot deny that this title "represents a perfectly definite conception of the Messiah," a conception which sees in the Messiah a supernatural figure who comes down from heaven for a mission, and who is clothed with no less a function than that of the Judge of the world: and he cannot deny that Jesus represents Himself as 'the Son of Man.' But he wishes us to believe that Jesus did this only under great pressure, as the close of His life drew near and evil fate closed about Him,—seizing and clinging to the Danielic prophecy to comfort Himself in the face of the fast-coming disaster. And He assures us that Jesus did not adopt the title even then in its full content "including the idea of preëxistence and His own judgeship of the world." "To Him," he tells us, "the idea of the Son of Man meant only one thing,—His return in glory." "He did not thereby place Himself on a level with God. Above all, He did not lay claim to the judgeship of the world, although that conception was, strictly speaking, included in that of the Son of Man." "It is true," he adds, "in the narrative of our Gospels, the opposite seems to be the case. But it is inconceivable … that Jesus … should have arrogated to Himself the judgeship of the world in place of God. This is an instance of the faith of the community working upon the tradition.… As the tradition was handed down by the community, Jesus was gradually removed from the position of a simple witness for His followers before God's tribunal to that of the actual judgeship of the world."17 That is to say, in brief, Bousset does not like the consequences of allowing that Jesus applied to Himself the title of 'Son of Man,' and, finding Himself unable nevertheless to deny that He did apply this title to Himself, contents himself simply with denying the consequences,—Jesus could not have meant it. Those who prefer to determine historical facts by the testimony of credible witnesses, rather than by the witness of Bousset's consciousness as to what were fitting, will probably think otherwise.

Jesus Certainly Claimed to be Superangelic

Similarly it cannot be even plausibly denied that Jesus spoke the remarkable words attributed to Him in which He acknowledges His ignorance of the time of His promised second coming. The critics are indeed in a great quandary as to this passage. It is not the kind of a passage they can assume the evangelists to have invented. On their fundamental canon that statements which are, or seem to be, in conflict with the evangelists' hero-worship of Jesus, bear the ineradicable stamp of genuineness, they are bound to attribute these words of Jesus. For was not Jesus to the evangelists the omniscient Son of God? And how could they put on His lips a confession of ignorance of so simple a matter as the time of His return? In point of fact, accordingly, this passage is found among the nine "absolutely credible" passages which Schmiedel declares "the foundation pillars for a truly scientific life of Jesus," and is pronounced by him to have been "most certainly" spoken by Jesus. Yet in this passage Jesus proclaims Himself a being superior to angels, separated, that is, from the entire category of creaturely existences, and assimilated to the divine: "No one, not even the angels in heaven, nor yet the Son, but God only."

And God

And if it must be allowed that the "real Jesus" currently called Himself 'the Son of Man,' no doubt with full consciousness of its implications, and asserted for Himself super-angelic dignity, it would seem mere hypercriticism which would deny to Him the great assertion of intercommunion with the Father made in Mt 11:27, Lk 10:22. On the general critical canon that sayings reported by both Matthew and Luke "are to be used with confidence as representing the thought of Jesus," this passage must be accepted as an authoritative utterance of His.21 But, in that case, the "real Jesus" must be credited with conceiving His relation to the Father less as that of a servant than as that of a fellow: as the 'Son' He moves in the sphere of the divine life. And, this once allowed, what reason remains for denying to Him the culminating expression of His divine self-consciousness, the sublime utterance in which He gives the Son a share in the Divine Name itself (Mt 28:19)? Of course it is denied to Him by the critics of the school we have been considering. But the denial is in the circumstances purely arbitrary and creates a situation which leaves an important historical sequence unaccounted for. It is undeniable, for example, that the trinitarian mode of speech here illustrated was current in the Church from its earliest origin: it already appears in Paul's Epistles, for example,—especially, as a familiar and well-understood form of speech, in 2 Cor 13:14, which was written not more than twenty-five years after our Lord's death and antedates all our Gospels. This current form of speech among Christians of the first age finds its complete account if the usage were rooted in utterances of our Lord, but it hangs inexplicably in the air without some such supposition. The occurrence of the passage in Mt 28:19 in the records of our Lord's teaching is thus too closely linked to a historical situation to permit its displacement on the purely subjective grounds on which alone its genuineness can be assailed.

The Synoptic Jesus the Real Jesus

It would seem to be reasonably clear, therefore, that the attempt to penetrate behind the Synoptic tradition with a view to discovering a "real Jesus," differing from the Synoptic Jesus as the natural differs from the supernatural, has failed. The purely subjective grounds on which such an attempt must proceed in order to reach its goal, lays it open to the exaggeration which would eliminate the figure of Jesus from history altogether. From this exaggeration, it can save itself only by imposing arbitrary limitations upon the application of its subjective principle, which render it nugatory for the end for which it is invoked. In any event no reasonable grounds can be assigned for discarding the portrait of Jesus drawn by the Synoptists, or for depriving Him of the great sayings by which He is represented by them as testifying to His essential deity. It is impossible to deny on any reasonable grounds that Jesus called Himself the 'Son of Man' by predilection, and it is purely arbitrary to suppose that in doing so He did not mean what the term implies. It is equally impossible to deny that He represented Himself under the denomination of 'Son' as of super-angelic dignity, and as standing in a relation of intimate continuous intercourse with God the Father. This prepares the way for allowing farther that He represented Himself as sharer with the Father in the divine Name itself, and makes nugatory all subjective objection to it. The strictest scrutiny of the Synoptic record of Jesus' teaching, in other words, renders an appeal from their representation to Jesus' own teaching meaningless. It is not only the Synoptists who testify that Jesus is a divine person, but the Jesus they report: it is not only the Jesus as reported by them who bears this witness to Himself, but the only Jesus of history. On the basis of the Synoptic record, in other words, we can be fully assured that Jesus not only was believed to have taught that He was a divine person, but actually did so teach.

THE DESIGNATIONS OF OUR LORD IN JOHN AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE

Same Christology in Synoptics and John

It may certainly be said that, on this showing, little is left by the Synoptists to John, in the way of ascribing essential deity to Jesus. This is true enough. Those who are familiar with the recent literature of the subject will not need to be told that the contradiction which used to be instituted between the Synoptists and John in this matter tends of late to be abandoned. Not only does Dr. Sanday, for example, speak of the teaching of John as only "a series of variations upon the one theme which has its classical expression" in the culminating christological passage of the Synoptists, and remark that it is in Matthew rather than in John that the "only approach to a formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity" occurs in the Gospels;2 but, as we have already seen, purely naturalistic critics like Bousset are emphatic in asserting that between the Synoptists and John, in the matter of the ascription of deity to our Lord, there exists only a difference of degree, not of kind. Whatever else we must say of Wilhelm Wrede's work on the Gospel of Mark, he has certainly rendered it impossible hereafter to appeal from the christology of John to that of the Synoptists. Those who will not have a divine Christ must henceforth seek their human Jesus outside the entire evangelical literature. It is not merely his own individual opinion, then, which Professor Shailer Mathews is giving when he declares that "generally speaking, outside the references to the early Messianic career of Jesus, the Fourth Gospel contains nothing from Jesus that is new": and that, after all, the differences between the Synoptists and John are "a question of degree rather than of sort of treatment."5 He might have omitted, indeed, the qualification with respect to the references to the early Messianic career of Jesus. We have already seen that to the Synoptists also Jesus was consciously the Messiah from the very inception of His work; or rather, in their case, let us say, from the very beginning of His life. After all, it is the Synoptists, not John, who tell us of the proclamation of the Messianic character of this Child before His birth: and it is Luke, not John, who tells us that He was conscious of His unique relation to God as in a very special sense His Father from His earliest childhood.

Differences in Method

The Synoptists and John certainly stand on the same level in their estimate of the person of Jesus, and differ in their presentation of it only in the relative emphasis they throw on this or the other aspect of it. In the Synoptists it is the Messiahship of Jesus which receives the primary emphasis, while His proper deity is introduced incidentally in the course of making clear the greatness of His Messianic dignity. In John, on the contrary, it is the deity of our Lord which takes the first place, and His Messiahship is treated subsidiarily as the appropriate instrumentality through which this divine Being works in bringing life to the dead world. The differences in point of view between them receive a fair illustration in the introductions which the evangelists have severally prefixed to their narratives. Luke begins his Gospel with a short paragraph designed to establish confidence in the trustworthiness of his account of the life and work of the world's Redeemer. Mark opens his with a few words which connect Jesus' career with the subsequent expansion of the religion He founded. Matthew's commences with a reference to the previous development of the people of God, and presents the apparition of Jesus as the culminating act of the God of Israel in establishing His Kingdom in the world. All these take their starting-point in the phenomenal, and busy themselves with exhibiting the superhuman majesty of this man of God's appointment, the Christ of God. John, on the other hand, takes his readers back at once into the noumenal; and invites them to observe how this divine Being came into the world to save the world, and how His saving work was wrought in the capacity of the Messiah of Israel. It is in his prologue, therefore, that John sets forth the platform of his Gospel, which is written with the distinct purpose that its readers may be led to believe that Jesus is not merely the 'Christ,' but the 'Son of God' (20:31); for, that the term 'Son of God' here has a metaphysical significance is scarcely open to question. In this sense John's Gospel is the Gospel of the deity of Christ; although it is clear that we can call it such in contrast with the Synoptists only relatively, not absolutely. In a sense not so fully true of them, however, it was written to manifest the deity of Christ.

The Prologue of John

In his prologue, then, John tells us with clear and even crisp distinctness what in His essential Being he conceives the Jesus to be whose life and teaching in the world he is to give an account of in his Gospel. And what he tells us is, in one word, that this Jesus is God. In telling this he makes use of a phraseology not only not found in the other evangelists, but absolutely peculiar to himself. The person of whom he is speaking he identifies at the close of the prologue (1:17) by the solemn compound name of 'Jesus Christ,' as Mark and Matthew also at the opening of their Gospels had made use of the same great name to identify the subject of their discourse; and, like them, John also makes no further use of this full name in his Gospel (cf., however, 17:3). The particular designation he applies to this person in order to describe His essential nature is 'the Word' (ὁ λόγος). Of this 'Word' he declares that He was in the beginning, that is, that He is of eternal subsistence; that He was eternally "with God," that is, that He is in some high sense distinct from God; and yet that He was eternally Himself God, that is, that He is in some deep sense identical with God (1:1, 1, 1); and nevertheless that in due time He became flesh, that is, that He took upon Himself a human nature (1:14), and so came under the observation of men and was pointed out by John the Baptist as the 'Coming One,' that is, the Messiah. In further elucidation of His essential nature, He is described as the 'only begotten from the Father' (1:14) or even more poignantly as 'God only-begotten' (1:18).
All this phraseology is unique in the New Testament. Nowhere else except Rev 19:13 is Jesus Christ called the 'Word' (1:1, 1, 1, 14 only, with the possible exceptions of 1 Jno 1:1, Heb 4:12). Nowhere else, except Jno 3:16, 18, 1 Jno 4:9, is He called the 'Only Begotten.' Yet the general sense intended to be conveyed is perfectly clear. John wishes to declare Jesus Christ God; but not God in such a sense that there is no other God but He. Therefore he calls Him 'the Word,'—'the Word' who is indeed God but also alongside of God, that is to say, God as Revealer: and he adds that He is 'God only begotten,' the idea conveyed by which is not derivation of essence, but uniqueness of relation, so that what is declared is that beside Jesus Christ there is no other,—He is the sole complete representation of God on earth. In harmony with these designations he calls Him also in this prologue the 'Light' (1:[4, 5], 7, 8, 9)—a designation more fully developed by our Lord Himself in His discourses. The effect of the whole is to emphasize in the strongest manner at the inception of the Gospel the divine nature of the 'Jesus Christ' who is to be the subject of its narrative: and thus to set forth the aspect in which His life and work are here to be depicted.

Jesus' Narrative Name in John

The key-note of the Gospel having been thus set, however, John, so soon as the prologue is over and he takes up the narrative proper, leaves these high designations behind him and prosecutes his narrative, like the other evangelists, by means of the simple designation 'Jesus.' As truly to John as to the Synoptists, thus, the narrative name of our Lord is the simple 'Jesus,' which occurs nearly 250 times. It is varied in the narrative only by a very occasional use of 'the Lord' in its stead (4:1, 6:23, 11:2, 20:20, 21:[7], 12). No other designation is employed by John himself outside the prologue, except in the closing verse of the narrative proper (20:31), where he declares that he has written to the end that it might be believed that 'Jesus'—the 'Jesus' of whom he had so currently spoken—is 'the Christ, the Son of God.' It is possible, no doubt, to take the 'Jesus Christ' of 17:3 as a parenthetical insertion from his hand, and to assign to him the paragraph 3:16–21, in which Jesus is spoken of as 'the Son,' God's 'only begotten Son,' 'the only begotten Son of God.' But these exceptions, even if they be all allowed, only slightly break in upon the habitual usage by which John speaks of our Lord simply as 'Jesus,' varied occasionally to 'the Lord.' They would merely bear witness to the fact that the high reverence to the person of our Lord manifested in the designations of the prologue continues to condition the thought of the writer throughout, and occasionally manifests itself in the appearance of similarly lofty designations in the narrative.

Jesus' Popular Designations

As in the other evangelists, further, the simple 'Jesus' is reserved for the narrative name, and is placed on the lips of no one of the speakers who appear in its course. It is made clear, however, that it was by this name that our Lord was known to His contemporaries, and He is accordingly distinguished by those who speak of Him as "the man that is called Jesus" (9:11), "Jesus, the Son of Joseph" (6:42), "Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Joseph" (1:45), or the simple "Jesus of Nazareth" (18:5, 7, 19:19). In the reports of remarks about Him the simple demonstrative pronoun indeed is sometimes made to do duty as the only designation needed, occasionally, possibly, with an accent of contempt (6:42, 42, 52, 7:15, 35, 9:16, [24]; 18:30), but ordinarily merely designatorily (1:2, 30, 33, 34, 3:26, 4:29, 42, 6:14, 46, [50, 58]; 7:25, 26, 31, 40, 41, 46, 9:33, 11:37, 37, 47). And sometimes He is represented as spoken of merely as "this man" (ἄνθρωπος, 9:16, 24, 11:47, 18:17, 29), or indeed simply as a man (ἀνήρ, 1:30 only; ἄνθρωπος, 4:29, 5:12, 7:46, [51]; [8:40, 9:11, 16, 16, 24, 10:33]; 11:47, 50, 18:14, 17, 29, 19:5).

Formulas of Address

In the narrative of John our Lord is represented as customarily addressed by His followers, as He Himself informs us (13:13, 14), as 'Teacher' (διδάσχαλε) and 'Lord' (χύριε), the correlatives of which are 'disciples' (μαθηταί passim) and 'servants,' that is 'slaves' (δούλοι, 13:16, 15:15, 20). The actual formula 'Teacher,' however, occurs very rarely (1:38, 20:16, in 11:28 it is an appellative, implying its use in address; cf. 3:2, 13:13, 14), although its place is in part supplied by the comparatively frequent Aramaic form 'Rabbi' (1:38, 49, 3:2, 4:31, 6:25, 9:2, 11:8; used of John the Baptist, 3:26), varied on one occasion to 'Rabboni' (20:16). The most common honorific form of address is 'Lord' (4:11, 15, 19, 49, 5:7, 6:34, 68, 9:36, 38, 11:3, 12, 21, 27, 32, 34, 39, 13:6, 9, 25, 36, 37, 14:5, 8, 22; [20:15]; 21:15, 20, 21; of Philip, 12:21). Of course, seeing that He was currently addressed as 'Teacher,' 'Lord,' He could not but be spoken of by these titles, used appellatively: 'the Teacher' (11:28, cf. 13:13, 14, 3:2) rarely, and comparatively frequently 'the Lord' (20:2, 13, 18, 25, 21:7). The latter usage the evangelist himself adopts in his own person (4:1, 6:23, 11:2, 20:20, 21:7, 12). It is noteworthy that the title 'the Lord' is in this Gospel confined to Jesus, never occuring of God the Father except in a very few citations from the Old Testament (12:13, 38, cf. 1:23). It is an odd circumstance that the appellative use of 'Lord' of Jesus occurs, however, only after His resurrection. We say this is an odd circumstance, because our Lord is represented as Himself telling us that it was applied to Him during His life (13:13, 14), as indeed it could not fail to be from the currency of the corresponding formula of address with respect to Him. This circumstance must be set down, therefore, as merely an accident of the record.

'Lord'

From the substance of the passages in which it is employed, we get very little guidance to the significance of 'the Lord' as thus applied to Jesus. It is only obvious that it is used with reverential recognition of His authority. Only in the great passage (20:28) where Thomas' doubt breaks down at the sight of his risen Master and he cries to Him, "My Lord and my God," do we catch an unmistakable suggestion of its highest meaning. That this exclamation was addressed to Christ is expressly stated: "Thomas answered and said to Him." The strong emotion with which it was spoken is obvious. It is not so clear, however, what precise connotation is to be ascribed to the term 'my Lord' in it. There may be a climax in the progress from 'my Lord' to 'my God.' But it seems impossible to doubt that in this collocation 'Lord' can fall little short of 'God' in significance; else the conjunction of the two would be incongruous. Possibly both terms should be taken as asserting deity, the former with the emphasis upon the subjection, and the latter with the emphasis on the awe, due to deity. In any event in combination the two terms express as strongly as could be expressed the deity of Jesus; and the conjoint ascription is expressly accepted and commended by Jesus. It must rank, therefore, as an item of self-testimony on our Lord's part to His Godhead.

Jesus, the 'Christ'

The ascription to our Lord of prophetic character is, as in the other evangelists, cursorily noted (4:19, 6:14, 7:40, [52]; 9:17), as is also our Lord's own acceptance of the rôle (4:44). But in John, too, it is particularly the specifically Messianic titles which attract attention. The simple designation 'the Christ' is not, indeed, frequently applied directly to our Lord, although it is made clear that He announced Himself as 'the Christ,' and was accepted as such by His followers, and therefore raised continual questionings in the minds of outsiders whether He were indeed 'the Christ.' John the Baptist is represented as frankly confessing that he was not himself 'the Christ,' but His forerunner (1:20, 25, 3:28), pointing not obscurely to Jesus as the Messiah. And accordingly John's disciples following their master's suggestion find in Jesus 'the Messiah' (1:41), which the evangelist interprets to us as 'the Christ.' When the woman of Samaria confesses her knowledge that 'Messiah' (who, adds the evangelist again, is called 'Christ') is to come, our Lord majestically declares Himself to be Him (4:25, 26). The speculation of the people over His Messianic character finds repeated mention (4:29, 7:26, 27, 31, 41, 41, 42, 9:22, 10:24, 12:34). Jesus Himself is represented as calling out from Martha the full confession, in which the current Messianic titles are accumulated with unwonted richness: "Yea, Lord: I have believed that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God, He that cometh into the world" (11:27). And the evangelist himself, with some similar repetition of titles, explains that the purpose he had in view in writing his Gospel was that it might be believed that "Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God" (20:31), and announces as the full name of the subject of his narrative, at its inception and possibly at one point in its course where explicit identification seemed to him useful, 'Jesus Christ' (1:17, cf. 17:3). We must not pass over this list of passages without noting that on two occasions the Aramaic term 'Messiah' occurs (1:41, 4:25), the only instances of its occurrence in the New Testament.

Jesus' own Use of 'Jesus Christ'

Nor should we leave unnoticed the somewhat difficult question whether 'Jesus Christ' in 17:3 is intended as a word of our Lord's or is to be understood as a parenthetical explanation of the evangelist's. No doubt it is easiest to take it as an insertion of the evangelist's. The term 'Jesus Christ' occurs elsewhere in the Gospels only as a form of the evangelists' own, employed in the rarest manner as the most ceremonious and solemn of all direct designations of Jesus (Mt 1:18 [16:21], Mk 1:1, Jno 1:17); and there seems something incongruous in placing this full name on the lips of Jesus Himself, implying as it does that 'Christ' had already for Him acquired the quality of a proper name, and indeed that the compound 'Jesus Christ' had become, though of course not with the loss of its Messianic implications, yet very much itself a proper name. Nevertheless the structure of the sentence is not favorable to its assignment to the evangelist. Our Lord, speaking in these opening verses of His great prayer in the third person ("Thy Son," "Thy Son," "to Him," "to Him," verses 1 and 2), declares that eternal life consists in knowing the Father and Him whom the Father has sent (verse 3). To each of these persons, thus formally mentioned, then, a fuller designation is descriptively added: the words run: "That they may know Thee, 'the only true God,' and Him whom Thou didst send, 'Jesus Christ.' " The balance of the clauses seem to imply that they stand together, and that accordingly if 'Jesus Christ' is to be taken as an explanatory addition, so must also 'the only true God.' Dr. Westcott accordingly makes this supposition, and urges in its support that 'the only true God' is in John's manner (cf. 1 Jno 5:20) and not in our Lord's: and that it is in no way derogatory to John's truthfulness as a reporter that he should thus insert brief explanations, no doubt the compressed representation of much of our Lord's teaching. On the other hand, it may be urged that it is very easy to exaggerate the difficulty of supposing our Lord to have used the phrase in question. He is certainly speaking of Himself: He has just designated Himself the 'Son' (verse 2); and now designates Himself by the phrase, "Whom Thou didst send." Why, continuing the use of the third person, should He not solemnly designate Himself by name, and, doing so, why should He not employ the full ceremonious name of 'Jesus Christ'? This, of course, would imply that 'Christ,' in its constant application to Him, had already become, in our Lord's life-time, at least a quasi-proper name. We have seen already, however, that this was very much the case (Mk 9:41, Mt 24:5, 27:17, 22); and if Jesus could speak of Himself as 'Christ,' there seems no compelling reason why He should not speak of Himself as 'Jesus Christ.' No doubt even this difficulty might be avoided by taking 'Christ' here predicatively: "That they may know Thee the only true God and Him whom Thou didst send, Jesus, as the Christ." The structure of the sentence again, however, is not favorable to this construction, which would break the parallelism of the clauses. It seems more natural on the whole, therefore, to take 'Jesus Christ' together as Jesus' own self-designation of Himself; though if any feel a difficulty in assuming that He already used 'Christ' in this combination completely as a proper name, there seems no reason why it should not be understood as appellative: "Him whom Thou didst send, even Jesus the Messiah." It must be recognized, indeed, that this appellative connotation is in any event not entirely lost, but throughout the whole use of the name 'Jesus Christ' in the Apostolic Church retains its force. In this passage we have only the earliest instance of the combination of the two names 'Jesus,' as the personal, and 'Christ,' as the official designation, into one quasi-proper name: and the solemn employment of it thus by Jesus gives us the point of departure for its Apostolic use from Pentecost on (Acts 2:38, 3:6, 4:10, 8:12, 37, etc.) whenever great solemnity demanded the employment of this ceremonious name. This fixed Apostolic usage from the first days of the infant Church finds its best explanation in such a solemn employment of it by our Lord as we have here recorded for us by John.

Jesus' Relation to God

We ought not to pass finally from this passage without fairly facing the apparent contrast which is drawn in it between Jesus Christ as the Sent of God and the God who sent Him, described here as "the only true God," that is to say, Him to whom alone belongs the reality of the idea of God. From this contrast it has often been rashly inferred that Jesus Christ is here by implication affirmed not to be God; at least not in the highest and truest sense. This, however, it is obvious, would throw the declarations in this Gospel of the relation of Christ to the Father into the greatest confusion. He who has explained that He and the Father are One (10:30, cf. 5:18), and that to have seen Him is to have seen the Father (14:9, cf. 8:19, 10:15, 14:7), and who commended the confession of Him by His follower as "his Lord and his God" (20:28), can scarcely be supposed here so pointedly to deny Himself incidentally to be the God He so frequently affirms Himself to be. It is quite clear, indeed, that the relation of our Lord to the Father is not represented by John, whether in his own person or in the words he reports from the lips of Jesus, as a perfectly simple one. Its complexity is already apparent in the puzzling opening words of the Gospel, where the evangelist is not content to declare Him merely to have been from eternity with God, or merely to have been from eternity God, but unites the two statements as if only by their union could the whole truth be enunciated. We may legitimately say that this double way of speaking of Christ confuses us; and that we cannot fully understand it. We are not entitled to say that it is the index of confusion in the mind of the evangelist—or in the mind of the greater Speaker whose words the evangelist reports,—unless it is perfectly clear that there is no conception of the relation to the Father of Him whom the evangelist calls by predilection the 'Son of God,' even the 'Only begotten Son' or indeed 'God only begotten,' on the supposition of which as lying in his mind the double mode of speaking of Him which we find confusing may be reduced to a real harmony. And it is undeniable that on the supposition of that conception which has come in the Church to be called the doctrine of the Trinity,—especially as supplemented by those other two conceptions known as the doctrines of the Two Natures of Christ and of the Eternal Covenant of Redemption,—as forming the background of the evangelist's varied modes of speaking of Christ, and of our Lord's own varied mode of speaking of Himself as reported by John, all appearance of disharmony between these declarations disappears. To say this, however, is to say that these great doctrines are taught by John and by our Lord as reported by Him: for surely there is no more effective way of teaching doctrines than always to speak on their presupposition, and in a manner which is confusing and apparently self-contradictory except they be presupposed. Whatever we may ourselves find of mystery in these doctrines, it is only fair to recognize that they express part of the fundamental basis of the religious thought of the Gospel of John and of the great Teacher whose words that Gospel so richly reports to us.

'King'

It is only another way of calling Jesus the 'Christ' to call Him the 'King of Israel.' This Nathanael does when Jesus manifested to him His super-human knowledge of his heart, exclaiming: "Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God, Thou art the King of Israel" (1:49)—where the order of the titles used is perhaps due to the primary impression being that of the possession of supernatural powers, from which the Messianic office is inferred. It is as 'King,' too, that Jesus was acclaimed as He made His triumphal entrance into Jerusalem: "Hosanna: Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel" (12:13, cf. 6:15)—in which acclamation the evangelist sees the fulfillment of the prophecy of Zech 9:9 of the coming of the King of Zion riding on the ass (12:15). At His trial, again, Pilate demanded of Him whether He was the 'King of the Jews,' using the natural heathen phraseology (18:33), and received a reply which, while accepting the ascription, was directed to undeceive Pilate with respect to the character of His Kingship: it is not of this world (18:37). In that understanding of it (18:37) Jesus has no hesitation in claiming the title (18:37). The subsequent ascription of this title to Him was mockery and part of His humiliation (18:39, 19:3, [12], 14, 15, 15, 19, 21.) but at the same time part of the testimony that He lived and died as the Messianic King.

Accumulation of Titles, Jesus' Mission

We should not pass finally away from the passages in which Jesus is called 'Christ' and 'King' without noting somewhat more particularly the accumulation or Messianic designations in such passages as 20:31, where the evangelist says he has written in order to create faith in Jesus as "the Christ, the Son of God," and 1:49, where Nathanael declares Him "the Son of God, the King of Israel," and especially at 11:27, where Martha declares her faith in Him as "the Christ, the Son of God, Him that cometh into the world." The use of the term 'Son of God' in these passages as a general synonym of 'Christ,' but yet not necessarily a synonym of no higher suggestion, we reserve for later discussion. The designation 'He that cometh,' more fully defined here by the addition of "into the world," we have already met with in Matthew (11:3) and Luke (7:19, 20). A clause in Jno 6:14, "This is of a truth the prophet that cometh into the world," may suggest that the epithet was associated in the popular mind with the Messianic interpretation of Deuteronomy 18:15–18: and we have seen that our Lord associated it with the great passage in Isa 61:1 seq. In itself, however, it appears to conceive the Messiah fundamentally simply as the promised one (cf. 4:25), and to emphasize with reference to Him chiefly that He is to come into the world upon a mission. As such it is supported even more copiously in John than in the other evangelists by a pervasive self-testimony of Jesus laying stress on His 'coming' or His 'having been sent,' which keeps His work sharply before us as the performance of a task which had been committed to Him and constitutes John's Gospel above all the rest the Gospel of the Mission. In the repeated assertions made by our Lord that He "came" into the world, obviously with implications of voluntariness of action (cf. 1:[9], 11, [15], [27], [30], 3:[19], 4:[25, 25], 5:43, 6:14, 7:[27], [31], 9:39, 10:10, 12:[13], [15], 15:22, 18:37), some are explicit as to the point whence He came, which is defined as heaven (3:31, 31), or the Person from whom He came, who is named as God (7:28 seq. 8:14–16, 42, 16:28, 17:8); while others declare plainly the object of His coming, which is not to judge but to save the world (12:46, 47). The correlation of the coming from the Father and being sent by the Father is express in passages like 17:8, and the sending is most copiously testified to, sometimes in the use of the simple verb πέμπω (4:34, 5:23, 24, 30, 37, 6:38, 39, 44, 7:16, 18, 28, 33, 8:16, 18, 26, 29, 9:4, 12:44, 45, 49, 13:20, 14:24, 15:21, 16:5, 20:21) and sometimes rather in the use of the more specific ἀποστέλλω, which emphasizes the specialness of the mission, and is most commonly cast in the aorist tense with a reference to the actual fact of the mission (3:17, 34, 5:38, 6:29, 57, 7:29, 8:42, 10:36, 11:42, 17:3, 8, 18, 21, 23, 25), though sometimes in the perfect tense with a reference to the abiding effect of it (5:36, 20:21). The effect of this whole body of passages is to throw over the whole of our Lord's self-testimony in this Gospel the most intense sense of His engagement upon a definite mission, for the performance of which He, sent by the Father in His love, has come forth from God, or, more locally expressed, from heaven, into the world. They supply a most compelling mass of evidence, therefore, taken in the large, to His preëxistence, and to His superhuman dignity to which His earthly career stands related as a humiliation to be accounted for only by its being also a mission of love (12:46, 47).

The 'Lamb of God'

The fact of this mission is also, no doubt, implicated in the designation 'the Holy One of God' (6:69), which is elicited on one occasion as a confession from His followers; that is to say, no doubt, the One whom the Father has set apart for a given work and consecrated to its performance (6:27, 10:36). It would also be the implication of the designation 'the Chosen One of God,' if that were the correct reading in 1:34, where the Baptist bears his witness really, however, to His divine Sonship. Another designation given to Him exclusively by the Baptist throws, however, a most illuminating light on the nature of His mission. "Behold," John is reported as crying, as he saw Jesus coming towards him after His baptism, "Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world": and again on the next day, as he saw Him walking by, "Behold the Lamb of God" (1:29, 36). That this was in intention and effect a Messianic title is made clear from the sequel. Disciples of John, following Jesus on this suggestion, report to their friends that they have "found the Messiah (which is being interpreted, Christ)" (1:41). The source of the phrase is, of course, the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, through which, however, a further reference is made to the whole sacrificial system, culminating in the Passover. By it the mission of Jesus is described as including an expiatory sacrifice of Himself for the salvation of the world: it, therefore, only gives point to and explains the modus of what is more generally declared by our Lord Himself in such a passage as 12:47: "I came … to save the world." The Messianic character of this saving work is thrown up in a clear light by the confession of the Samaritans who, having been invited to come and see whether Jesus were not the 'Christ' (4:29), when they heard Jesus concluded for themselves that He was "indeed the Saviour of the world" (4:42).

Figurative Designations

Quite a series of designations, mostly figurative in character, expressive of the same general conception, are applied by our Lord to Himself. Thus He calls Himself the 'Light of the world' (8:12, 9:5, 12:35, 36, 46, cf. 3:19, 20, 21, 11:9, 10), which is explained as the "light of life" (8:12), even as the evangelist himself had with the same reference to "life" called Him 'the Light of Men' (1:4, 5, 7, 8, 9). The ultimate source of this designation is no doubt to be found in such passages in the Old Testament as Is 9:1, 2, which is quoted and applied to Jesus by both Matthew (4:16) and Luke (2:32). Similarly He calls Himself 'the Door' by entering through which alone can salvation be had (10:7, 9); the 'Bread of God' or 'of Life,' by eating which alone can life be obtained (6:33, 6:35, 41, 49, 7:41); 'the Good Shepherd' who gives His life for the sheep (10:11, 14, cf. 10:2, 16); and without figure definitely 'the Resurrection and the Life,' believing in whom the dead shall live and the living never die (11:25). Perhaps to the same general circle of ideas belongs the title 'Paraclete' (14:16) or 'Advocate,' which seems to imply that our Lord conceives Himself under this designation as coming to the help of the needy. And we should probably think of the designation 'Bridegroom' (3:29) in the same light: but in this Gospel our Lord's application to Himself of this designation with a reference to His death, familiar to us from the Synoptics, is not recorded: there is only an employment of it of our Lord by the Baptist with no reference to the days to come when the 'Bridegroom' should be taken away.

'Son of Man'

In this Gospel, however, as in the Synoptists, the title 'Son of Man' comes forward as one of our Lord's favorite self-designations; and it is charged here, too, with the implication of a mission, involving suffering and death but issuing in triumph. If we seek the guidance here, as we did in the case of the Synoptist use of the title, of the substance of the passages in which it occurs, we shall learn that the 'Son of Man' is no earthly being. He came down from heaven whither He shall ultimately return (6:62). His sojourn on earth is due to a task which He has undertaken, and to which He is "sealed" (6:27). This task is to give eternal life to men (6:27); and He accomplishes this by giving them His flesh to eat and His blood to drink, whence they obtain life in themselves (6:53, cf. 6:27). Of course this is symbolical language for dying for men. Accordingly our Lord declares that it is necessary that the 'Son of Man' be "lifted up," that whosoever believes in Him may have eternal life (3:15), and He announces it as His precise mission, received of the Father, to be thus "lifted up" (8:28, 12:34). Nevertheless, it is only that He may enter His glory that He dies (12:23, 13:31), and it is given to Him to exercise judgment also (5:27). Here there is open proclamation of His preëxistence, of His humiliation for an end, and of His passage through this humiliation to His primitive glory.

'Son of God'

The culminating Messianic designation in John, however, is 'the Son of God,' which comes fully to its rights in this Gospel. This designation occurs not only, as in the other evangelists, in the more technical form of 'the Son of God' (1:34, 1:49, 5:25, 9:35, 10:36, 11:4, 27, 19:7, 20:31), and the simple absolute 'the Son' (3:17, 35, 36, 36, 5:19, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 23, 26, 6:40, 8:36, 14:13, 17:1), but also in a form peculiar to John, 'the only begotten Son,' or simply (3:16, 17) 'the only begotten' (1:14, cf. 1:18, 'God only begotten'). That the title 'Son of God' is a Messianic title is clear from such passages as 1:49, 11:27, 20:31, in which it is used side by side with 'the Christ,' 'the King of Israel,' 'the Coming One,' as their synonym, although not necessarily as a synonym of no higher connotation. There is no reason to doubt that here, too, as in the other evangelists, 'Son of God' carries with it the implication of supernatural origin and thus designates the Messiah from a point of view which recognized that He was more than man. What is noteworthy is that in John 'the Son of God' becomes very distinctly a self-designation of Jesus' own (5:25, 9:35, 10:36, 11:4): and it is noteworthy that in connection with this designation He claims for Himself not only miraculous powers (9:35, 11:4), but the divine prerogative of judgment (5:25, cf. 27); and that He was understood, in employing it of Himself, to "make Himself equal with God," and therefore to blaspheme (10:33, 36).

'Son'

It is, however, in the use of the simple 'the Son' (3:17, 36, 36, 5:19, 22, 6:40, 8:36), often set in direct correlation with 'the Father' (3:35, 5:19, 20, 21, 23, 23, 26, 14:13, 17:1), that the deepest suggestion of the filial relation in which our Lord felt Himself to stand to the Father comes out. And these passages must be considered in conjunction with the very numerous passages in which He who never speaks of God as "our Father," putting Himself in the same category with others who would then share with Him the filial relation, speaks of God either as 'the Father,' or appropriatingly as 'My Father.' There are over eighty passages of the former kind,16 and nearly thirty of the latter. The uniqueness of the relation indicated is brought out by the connection of the simple 'the Son' with the emphatically unique 'only begotten Son of God' (3:16, 17). Although, of course, the passage in which this is most pointedly done may be the evangelist's and not our Lord's, the phrase 'Only begotten Son' or even the term 'Only begotten' applied to Christ, occurs nowhere else, except in John's own words (1:14, 18, 1 Jno 4:9, cf. Heb 11:17), and that affords a reason for assigning the paragraph 3:16–21 to him. Such a passage as 5:18, however, makes perfectly clear the high connotation which was attached to the constant claim of Jesus to be in a peculiar sense God's 'Son,' entitled to speak of Him in an appropriating way as His 'Father.' The Jews sought to kill Him, remarks the evangelist, because of this mode of speech: "He called God His own Father (πατέρα ἴδιον), making Himself equal (ἴσον) with God." And indeed He leaves no prerogative to the Father which He does not claim as 'Son' to share. There has been given Him authority over all flesh (17:2), and the destinies of men are determined by Him (3:17, 6:40); He quickens whom He will (5:21) and executes judgment on whom He will (5:22). Whatever the Father does He knows, and indeed all that the Father does He does (5:19). He even has received of the Father to have life in Himself (5:26). Though He declares indeed that the Father is greater than He (14:28), this must be consistent with an essential oneness with the Father, because He explicitly asserts that He and the Father are one (10:30), that He is in the Father and the Father in Him (10:38), and that to have seen Him was to have seen the Father (14:9). It may be that some mysterious subordination of God the Son to God the Father is suggested in the declaration that the Father is greater than He (14:28), and many certainly have so interpreted it, constructing their doctrine of God upon that view. But it seems more likely that our Lord is speaking on this occasion of His earthly state in which He is not only acting as the Delegate of the Father and hence as His subordinate—the "sent" of the Father; but also in His dual nature as the God-man, is of Himself in His humanity, of a lower grade of being than God, without derogation to His equality with the Father in His higher, truly divine nature. If this be what He means, there is no contradiction between the strong affirmations of His not merely equality (5:18) with God, but His oneness with Him (10:30), His interpenetration with Him (10:38) as sharer in all His knowledge and deeds (14:9), and His equally strong affirmation of His inferiority to Him (14:28), illustrated as it is by numerous assertions of dependence on Him and of an attitude of obedience to Him.

Eternal Sonship

Thus, so clear and pervasive is the assertion of deity through the medium of His designation of Himself as 'Son' and the use of this term of Him by the evangelist, that the chief point of interest in the term rises above this assertion and concerns a deeper matter. Does the Sonship asserted belong to our Lord in His earthly manifestation merely; or does it set forth a relation existing between Him as a preëxistent person and God conceived even in eternity as His Father? In other words, is the term 'Son' a term of economical or of ontological relation? The question is not an easy one to determine. But, on the whole, it seems that it should be answered in the latter sense. The force of a passage like 3:16‚ (cf. 3:35, 5:20)—"God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son"—seems to turn on the intimacy of the relation expressed by the term "only begotten Son" having been already existent before the giving: otherwise how is the greatness of the love expressed in the giving to be measured? Similarly in a passage like 3:17 there seems an implication of the Sonship as underlying the mission: He was sent on this mission because He was Son,—He did not become Son by being sent. In like manner the remarkable phrase "God only begotten" in Jno 1:18 appears to be most readily explained by supposing that it was as God that He was the unique Son: and, if so, it seems easiest to understand "the glory of an Only Begotten of the Father," which men saw in the incarnate Christ (1:14) as the glory brought with Him from heaven. In this case, it is obvious, John goes far toward outlining the foundations of the doctrine of the Trinity for us: and it is a mistake not to see in his doctrine of the Logos and of the Only Begotten God and of the Divine Son, the elements of that doctrine.

'God'

With this high doctrine of the divine Sonship in connection with Jesus the way is prepared for the express assertion that He is God. This, as has already been incidentally pointed out, is done in express words in this Gospel. The evangelist declares that that 'Word' which, on becoming flesh, is identified with 'Jesus Christ,' was in the beginning with God and was 'God' (1:1), and calls Him in distinction from the Father, 'God only begotten' (1:18). And Thomas, his doubts of the resurrection removed, greets Him with the great cry, "My Lord and my God" (20:28): and more to the point, our Lord Himself, who had elsewhere declared Himself one with God (10:30), and had asserted that He and the Father interpenetrated one another (10:38), and that to have seen Him was to have seen the Father (14:9), expressly commended Thomas for this great confession and thereby bore His own testimony to His proper deity (20:29). The deity of Jesus which in the Synoptists is in every way implied is, therefore, in John expressly asserted, and that in the use of the most direct terminology the Greek language afforded. To this extent, it is to be allowed that John's Gospel is in advance of the Synoptists.

'God' no New Title

This advance is commonly represented as the index of the development that had taken place between the time when the Synoptics were written and the much later time when John was written. John, coming from a period almost a generation later than the Synoptics, it is said, naturally reflects a later point of view. Of course John's Gospel was written thirty or thirty-five years after the Synoptics. But it is an illusion to suppose that it therefore sets forth a later or more developed point of view than that embedded in the Synoptics. The Synoptics present a divine Christ, as we have seen, and are written out of a point of view which is simply saturated with reverence for Christ as divine. John is written from no higher point of view, and records nothing from the life of Jesus which more profoundly reveals His consciousness of oneness with the Father than the great utterance of Mt 11:27, or which more clearly announces the fundamental idea of what we call the Trinity than the great utterance of Mt 28:19. There is no advance in conception in John over the Synoptics: there is only a difference in the phraseology employed to express the same conception. The Synoptics present Jesus Christ as God; only they do not happen to say 'God' when speaking of Him: they say 'Son of Man,' 'Son of God,' Sharer in 'the Name.' It did not, however, require thirty years for men who thoroughly believed Jesus to be divine to learn to express it by calling Him 'God.' In a word, it is in the mere accident of literary expression, not in the substance of doctrine, that the Synoptics and John differ in their assertion of the deity of Christ. Accidents of literary expression are not products of time, and differences in modes of expression do not argue intervals of time.

THE DESIGNATIONS OF OUR LORD

IN ACTS AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE

Value of Acts' Testimony

How great an illusion it is to look upon John as reflecting a new phase of teaching, which had grown up only in the course of years, in speaking of Jesus plainly as God, may be illustrated by attending to the designations employed of our Lord in the Book of Acts and in the letters of Paul. The Book of Acts and the Epistles of Paul both bring us testimony to how Jesus was thought and spoken of in Christian circles at the time, and indeed before the time, when the Synoptics were composed. The Book of Acts was not only written by the author of one of the Synoptic Gospels, but purports to record conversations and discourses by the actors in the great drama of the founding of the Christian Church; and indeed could not have seriously misrepresented them,—seeing that it was published in their lifetime,—without having been at once corrected. We may learn from it, therefore, how Jesus was esteemed by His first followers, including those who had enjoyed His daily companionship throughout His ministry. The Epistles of Paul are none of them of later date, and many of them are of earlier date, than the Synoptic Gospels, and bring us, therefore, testimony to the estimation in which Christ was held in the Christian community at about the time when the Synoptic Gospels, or the sources on which they depend, were written. The conception of Jesus given expression alike in the Synoptics, in Acts and in Paul's Epistles, it cannot be doubted, was aboriginal in the Church. But this conception is distinctly that expressed in its own way in the Gospel of John.

'Jesus' in Acts

The narrative of Acts does not concern the acts of Jesus during the period of His earthly life, but those of the exalted Jesus through His servants the Apostles (1:1 "began"). It is natural, therefore, that the simple designation 'Jesus' should occur less frequently in its pages than in the Gospel narrative; and that even when Jesus is spoken of, which is of course comparatively infrequently, He should be spoken of by a designation more expressive of the relation existing between Him and His followers, whose acts it is proximately the business of this book to describe. Accordingly in Acts the reverential 'the Lord' becomes the ruling designation of Jesus, and the simple 'Jesus' takes a subordinate place, both as the narrative designation and in the reports of the remarks of our Lord's followers incorporated in the narrative. Nevertheless it is employed by Luke himself with sufficient frequency to show that it suggested itself on all natural occasions. Thus, for example, Luke uses it in the first chapter where he is himself narrating what Jesus did before His ascension (1:1, 14), and elsewhere currently in such phrases as "preaching Jesus" (5:42, 8:35, 9:27, 17:18), "proving that Jesus is the Christ" (9:20, 18:5, 28, 28:23), and the like (4:2, 13, 18, 5:40, 7:55, 9:27, 18:25). And he records it as employed in a natural way by the two chief spokesmen in Acts, Peter in the earlier portion (1:16, 2:32, 36; [3:13, 20]; 5:30, cf. 4:27, 30), and Paul in the later portion ([9:5, 20]; 13:23, 33, 17:3, 19:4, [13]), as well as occasionally by other actors in the historical drama (4:18, 27, 30, 5:40, 9:17, [20]; 17:7, 19:[13], 15, 25:19), including the angel explaining the ascension (1:11) and Jesus Himself revealing Himself to Paul (9:5, 26:15).

'Jesus of Nazareth'

The fuller form, 'Jesus of Nazareth' (10:38), or more frequently, 'Jesus the Nazarene' (2:22, 6:14, 22:8, 26:9) also occurs, not as a locution of Luke's own, indeed, but upon the lips of Peter (2:22, 10:38), and Paul (22:8, 26:9), and in one case as a description of Jesus by Himself (22:8); and also on the lips of the inimical Jews describing with some contempt the great claims made by His followers for "this Jesus the Nazarene" (6:14). Twice, indeed, the full name 'Jesus Christ the Nazarene' is employed, as a solemn designation throwing up for observation His entire personality in all its grandeur (3:6, 4:10).

'Jesus Christ'

From these two last-named instances we may learn, what otherwise is sufficiently illustrated, that the full sacred name 'Jesus Christ' was in easy use by our Lord's first followers, whenever they wished to speak of Him with special solemnity. Luke himself so employs it in his narrative (8:12), and he quotes it from Peter (2:38, 9:34, 10:36, 48) and Paul (16:18)—in each instance as employed in circumstances of great ceremoniousness, in demanding faith or in working cures by this great Name. It is in similar conditions that the even more complete designation 'Jesus Christ the Nazarene' (3:6, 4:10) occurs; and that a designation which occurs very frequently in the Epistles, 'the Lord Jesus Christ' (11:17, 28:31) or 'our Lord Jesus Christ' (15:26, 20:21), appears as in use by the Apostles,—Peter (11:17), Paul (20:21), and the whole Apostolic body (15:26),—as well as by Luke himself (28:31). In all these instances it seems clear that the compound name 'Jesus Christ' is treated as a proper name, but of course not with any loss of the high significance of the element 'Christ.' Perhaps it would not be too much to say that the compound name is dealt with as the 'royal name' of our Lord, the name which is given Him when He is to be designated with special ceremony and solemnity.

'Christ Jesus'

In 3:20, 5:42, 24:24, on the other hand, it is questionable whether we are to read the names together so as to yield the compound 'Christ Jesus,' which in that case meets us here for the first time in the New Testament, or are to take 'Christ' as the predicate,—'Jesus as the Christ.' The commentators seem inclined to follow the latter course. But in 24:24, where the question is about Paul, who, we know from his Epistles (1 Thess 2:14, 5:18 Rom passim), was accustomed, at an earlier date than this, to use the compound 'Christ Jesus' freely, it seems difficult not to read that compound. And this increases our hesitancy with reference to the two earlier passages. Paul's familiar use of 'Christ Jesus' must have had a history back of it: and it seems, therefore, natural that its employment in the primitive community should emerge into light in such passages as we now have before us.6

'The Lord Jesus'

Another compound designation of Jesus, which does not occur in the Gospels, meets us with some frequency in Acts—'the Lord Jesus.' This is employed by Luke himself in the course of the narrative (4:33, 8:16, 11:20, 19:5, 13, 17), and is also attributed to speakers whose words are reported,—or to be more specific, to both Peter (1:21, 15:11) and Paul (16:31, 20:24, 35, 21:13). It is even used as an address by Stephen (7:59). Indeed the fuller designation, 'the' or 'our' 'Lord Jesus Christ,' is employed by Luke himself (28:31) and attributed alike to Peter (11:17), the whole body of the Apostles (15:26), and Paul (20:21). In this last formula we have combined the three most usual designations of Christ, and it seems charged with the deepest reverence and affection for His person.

'Lord'

Of course these phrases, 'the Lord Jesus,' 'the [our] Lord Jesus Christ,' witness to the prevalence in the Christian community of the simpler designation 'Lord' of Jesus, and this prevalence is otherwise copiously illustrated in Acts. As the narrative does not concern what Jesus began to do and teach while in His own person on earth, but what "after He was received up" He did through His servants, His own person is not a figure in the narrative, subsequent to the few opening verses which tell of the period before the ascension. Accordingly outside of these verses (1:6) there is no occasion to record words directly addressed to Jesus, except in visions (9:5, 10, 13, 22:8, 10, 19, 26:15), or in prayers (1:24, 7:59, 60). On all these occasions, however, He is addressed by the supreme honorific 'Lord,' except in 7:59, where He is addressed more fully as 'Lord Jesus.' It is clear that this formula is employed in all cases with the profoundest reverence, and is meant to be the vehicle of the highest possible ascription. Perhaps it will be well to focus our attention upon the two or three instances in which it is employed in direct prayer to Jesus (1:24, 7:59, 60). In these He is not merely treated as divine—for to whom but God is prayer to be addressed?—but also directly characterized as the possessor of divine powers and the exerciser of divine functions. It is as He "that knoweth the hearts of all men" that He is appealed to at 1:24; as the forgiver of sin at 7:60; and as the receiver of the spirits of the dying saints at 7:59. All these traits are assigned to Jesus in the Gospel narratives, where Jesus claimed authority even on earth to forgive sins (Mk 2:10 ||) and represents Himself as the judge before whom all were at length to stand and receive according to the deeds done in the body (Mt 25:32): where He is represented as knowing what was in men and needing not that anyone should teach Him what were the thoughts of their hearts (Mk 2:8): and where His promise to the thief was that he should be that day with Him in Paradise (Lk 23:43). It can occasion no surprise, therefore, that He should be appealed to after His return to His glory as at once the searcher of hearts, the forgiver of sins, and the receiver of the spirits of the saints. What we learn in the meanwhile is that to the infant community the ascended Jesus was their God, whom they addressed in prayer and from whom they sought in prayer the activities which specifically belong to God.

'Lord' as Narrative Name

Quite naturally in these circumstances the chief narrative name for Jesus in Acts becomes the honorific 'the Lord,' which is employed about twice as frequently as the simple Name 'Jesus,' and which is occasionally given more precision by taking the form of 'the Lord Jesus' (4:33, 8:16, 11:20, 19:5, 13, 17) and even 'the Lord Jesus Christ' (28:31). All of these designations are placed also on the lips of actors in the history recounted. Thus Peter speaks of Jesus as 'the Lord' in [2:34]; 2:36, 11:16, 12:11, as 'the Lord Jesus' in 1:21, 15:11, and as 'the Lord Jesus Christ' in 11:17; Paul as 'the Lord' in 13:10, 11, 12, 20:19, 26:15, as 'the Lord Jesus' in 16:31, 20:24, 35, 21:13, and as 'the Lord Jesus Christ' in 20:21; and others speak of Him as 'the Lord' in 8:22, 24, 9:17, 16:15, as 'the Lord Jesus' in 7:59, and as 'the Lord Jesus Christ' in 15:26. It is quite clear that 'the Lord' is a favorite designation of Jesus in this book, and was such also in the community whose usage it reflects. And it is equally clear that in the use of this term what is primarily expressed is the profoundest reverence on the part of the community and the highest conceivable exaltation and authority on the part of Jesus Himself. It belongs to the situation that it is often extremely difficult to determine whether by 'Lord' Jesus or God is meant. That is to say, so clearly is Jesus 'God' to this writer and those whose speech he reports that the common term 'Lord' vibrates between the two and leaves the reader often uncertain which is intended. The assimilation of Jesus to God thus witnessed is illustrated also in other ways. Thus, for example, in Peter's Pentecostal sermon Jesus is conceived as sitting at the right hand of God (2:34) and as having been constituted "both Lord and Christ," where the conjunction is significant (2:36): and more explicitly still He is designated in a later discourse of the same Peter, "Lord of all" (10:36), that is to say, universal sovereign, a phrase which recalls the great declaration of Rom 9:5 to the effect that He is "God over all," as indeed He who sits on the throne of God must be.

'Son of Man'

That in this rich development of the conception of the Lordship of Jesus, His Messianic dignity is not out of mind is already apparent from the phraseology of 2:36. The emphasis of Peter's preaching turns, indeed, precisely on the fact that God has made the Jesus whom the Jews crucified "both Lord and Christ." It is thus with Acts as truly as with the Gospels the Messianic office of Jesus on which the greatest stress is laid. Naturally as Jesus is not a speaker in the narrative of Acts, His own favorite self-designation of 'Son of Man' is here conspicuous by its absence. It occurs only a single time, when the dying Stephen declared that he saw the heavens opened and the 'Son of Man' standing at the right hand of God (7:56). This is the only instance in the whole New Testament where this designation is employed by anyone except our Lord Himself: Stephen's use of it seems a reflection of our Lord's declaration, "Henceforth ye shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power" (Mt 26:64 ||), and is at once Stephen's testimony to the greatness of his Lord in His divine Majesty, and a witness to the genuineness of the whole series of declarations attributed to our Lord in which He saw Himself in the Danielic vision and developed on that basis His conception of His Messiahship in its earthy humiliation and subsequent elevation to participation in the divine glory.

'Son of God'

The great companion designation 'Son of God' is almost as rare in Acts as the 'Son of Man.' This precise designation, indeed, occurs but once, where we are told that Paul immediately after his conversion began to proclaim in the synagogues of Damascus Jesus as the 'Son of God' (9:20), which is explained as meaning that he proved Jesus to be 'the Christ' (9:22). In his speech in the synagogue of Pisidian Antioch, Paul indeed declared that by raising up Jesus God fulfilled the announcement of the second Psalm, "Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten Thee" (13:33); and the risen Jesus is quoted as twice speaking of God as "the Father" (1:4, 7), and Peter is cited as repeating one of these declarations in his Pentecostal sermon (2:33). Occasion has been taken from the circumstance that in all these three cases of allusion to the 'Father' the term employed is 'the Father' to suggest that it is not specifically Jesus' Father but the general Father of spirits that is intended. To this is added the suggestion that in Paul's allusion to the second Psalm it is of the incarnation or even perhaps of the resurrection that he is thinking as the point when the Son was begotten. The conclusion is then drawn that in Acts there is no allusion to a metaphysical Sonship of Christ. It must be frankly admitted that had we these passages alone to consider, we might hesitate to ascribe to Acts the doctrine of a divine Messiah. But this is by no means the case, and we need only note in passing that the title of 'Son of God' is very little in evidence in Acts either in its precise form or in its cognate modes of expression. Nevertheless, the locution 'the Father' does not appear in the usage of it here to be without suggestion of its correlative 'the Son'; and Paul's citation of the second Psalm does not seem to be without implication of a Sonship for Jesus lying deeper than either His resurrection or His incarnation.

Prevalence of 'Christ'

The prevailing Messianic designation in Acts is the simple 'Christ,' and Luke tells us that the staple of the Apostolic teaching was that Jesus is 'the Christ' (5:42, 8:5, 9:22, 18:5, 28), and illustrates this fact by instances recorded both from Peter (2:31, 36, 3:18, 20) and from Paul (17:3, 26:23). The general employment of the compound names, 'Jesus Christ,' 'the Lord Jesus Christ' (or 'our Lord Jesus Christ') and even 'Christ Jesus,' testifies to the fixedness of the conviction that Jesus was 'the Christ' and the close attachment of the title to His person as at least a quasi-proper name. Luke does not himself make use of any other Messianic title, except in the one instance when he tells us that Paul on his conversion began at once "to proclaim Jesus that He is the Son of God" (9:20). But he quotes quite a rich variety of such titles as employed by others. To Peter there is ascribed, for example, a considerable series, which, moreover, he is represented as weaving together in a most striking way, as all alike designations of the same Jesus, which bring out the several aspects of the unitary conception fulfilled in Him. Prominent among them are those which apply to Jesus the prophecies concerning 'the Righteous Servant of Jehovah' (3:13, 14, 26, cf. 4:27, 30) and 'the Prophet like unto Moses' (3:22, 26), which are inextricably combined with those which speak of Him as 'the Anointed King.'

Accumulation of Titles

In Peter's early discourses 'the Servant (παῖς) of God' is one of the most notable of the designations of Jesus (3:23, 26‚ cf. 4:27, 30); and along with it occurs 'the Holy and Righteous One' (3:14) which belongs to the same series of designations; and in the same context appeal is made likewise to Moses' prophecy of a Prophet like unto himself (3:22, 23); while to these is added further the striking title of the 'Prince' or 'Author' 'of life' (3:15). In other discourses Peter calls Jesus a 'Prince and Saviour' (5:31) and indeed even 'Judge of the quick and the dead' (10:42). The composite portrait which he presents of Jesus the Messiah as he passes freely from one of these designations to another is a complex and very lofty one: what is most apparent is that he conceives Him as the focus upon which all the rays of Old Testament prophecy converge, and as exalted above all earthly limitations. A somewhat similar list of designations is placed on the lips of Paul. To him the 'Lord Jesus' (16:31, 20:21, 24, 35, 21:13) is 'the Christ' (17:3, 26:23), 'the Holy One' (13:35) 'the Righteous One' (22:14, cf. 7:52, Stephen) who has come as a 'Saviour' (13:23) to Israel, and who though a 'Man' (ἀνήρ, 17:31) is 'God's own Son' (13:33), nay, in some high sense 'God' Himself (20:28),—for it was by nothing else than "the blood of God" that the Church was purchased.

A rapid enumeration of the mere titles applied to Christ, such as we have made, fails utterly to reproduce the impression which they make on the reader as he meets them in the course of the narrative. That impression is to the effect that although the true humanity of our Lord is thoroughly appreciated (ἄνθρωπος, 5:28, cf. 7:56: ἀνήρ, 2:22, 17:31, cf. Lk 24:19), yet it is the majesty of this man which really fills the minds of these first Christians, as they perceive in Him not merely a man of God's appointment, representing God on earth, in whom all that they can conceive to be the source of dignity in Old Testament prophecy meets and finds its fulfillment (10:42, 43), but also something far above humanity, which can be expressed only in terms of precise deity (20:28).

'The Name'

A side-light is thrown upon the high estimate which was placed among these early Christians on Jesus' person by the usurpation by it of the Old Testament pregnant use of the term "Name." As in the Old Testament we read continually of "the Name of Jehovah" as the designation of His manifested majesty, and even of simply "the Name" used absolutely with the same high connotation, so in Acts we read of the Name of Jesus Christ, to the exclusion of the old phrase, and again of simply "the Name" (5:41, cf. 3 Jno 7) used absolutely of Jesus. Those who were persecuted for His sake we are told rejoiced "that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the Name" (5:41, cf. 3 Jno 7). In the Old Testament this would have meant the Name of Jehovah: here it means the Name of Jesus.25 "The Name," as it has been truly remarked, "had become a watchword of the faith, and is consequently used alone to express the name of Jesus, as it stood in former days for the Name of Jehovah (Lev 24:11)." Nothing could more convincingly bear in upon us the position to which Jesus had been exalted in men's thoughts than this constant tendency to substitute Him in their religious outlook for Jehovah.

THE CORROBORATION OF THE EPISTLES OF PAUL

Relative Early Date of Paul's Letters

In passing from the book of Acts to Paul's Epistles, we are not advancing to a new period, in order that we may observe how Jesus had come to be thought of at a somewhat later date, in the developing thought of Christians. In point of fact, none of Paul's letters are of a later date than the Acts, and the earlier of them come from a time which antedates the composition of that book by ten or fifteen years. What we are passing to is merely a new form of literature,—didactic literature as distinguished from narrative. And what we are to observe is not a later development of the Christian conception of Jesus, but only more directly and precisely how the Christians of the first age thought of Jesus.

The Value of their Testimony

The book of Acts does indeed tell us not only how Paul and his companions thought and spoke of Jesus as they presented Him to the faith of men; but also how Peter and his fellow-evangelists of the first days of the Gospel proclamation thought and spoke of Him: and to this extent the information derived from it reflects an earlier usage. But neither in Acts nor in Paul's Epistles is there any hint that Peter and Paul stand related to one another in their thought of Christ as representatives of a less and a more developed conception. On the contrary in Acts the conception of the two, though clothed in different forms of speech, is notably the same: and in Paul's Epistles, though differences are noted between the other Apostles and himself in other matters, there is none signalized on this central point. And it is distinctly to be borne in mind that these Epistles were written not merely in the lifetime of the original apostles of Christ, but also in full view of their teaching, and with an express claim to harmony with it. Their testimony is accordingly not to Paul's distinctive doctrine with regard to the person of Jesus, but to the common doctrine of the Churches of the first age, when the Churches included in their membership the original followers of Jesus. They, therefore, do not present us a different usage from that reflected in Acts and the Synoptic Gospels, but the same usage from a different point of sight. As didactic writings addressed by a Christian leader to Christian readers they enable us to observe, as the historical books do not, how Christians of the sixth and seventh decades of the first century were accustomed to speak of the Lord to one another; and accordingly what their thought of Jesus was as they sought to quicken in themselves Christian faith and hope and to bring their lives into conformity with their professions. Not merely in point of date, therefore, but also in point of intimacy of revelation, the Epistles of Paul present to us the most direct and determining evidence of the conception of Jesus prevalent in the primitive Church.

Constant Use of 'Lord'

It belongs to their character as didactic rather than narrative writings, for example, that in Paul's Epistles the designation of our Lord by the simple 'Jesus' falls strikingly into the background, while the designation of Him as 'Lord' comes strikingly forward. This phenomenon we already observed in Acts: it is much more marked in Paul. The simple 'Jesus' occurs in all these Epistles only some seventeen times, while the simple 'Lord' occurs some 144 or 146 times, to which may be added 95 to 97 more instances of the use of 'Lord' in conjunction with the proper name.6 And this constant application of the term 'Lord' to Jesus must not be imagined merely a formal mark of respect. It is the definite ascription to Him of universal absolute dominion not only over men, but over the whole universe of created beings (Phil 2:11, Rom 10:12).

Ground of Jesus' Lordship

It is, of course, true that Paul has the exalted Jesus in mind in thus speaking of Him. It was only on His exaltation that Jesus entered upon His dominion. But it by no means follows that he conceived Jesus to have acquired His 'Lordship,' in the sense of His inherent right to reign, by His exaltation. On the contrary, to Paul it was the 'Lord of Glory' who was crucified (1 Cor 2:8). That is to say, even in the days of His flesh, Jesus was to him intrinsically "the Lord to whom glory belongs as His native right." That Paul usually has the exalted Christ in mind when speaking of Him as Lord is only thus a portion of the broader fact that, writing when he wrote, and as he wrote, he necessarily had the exalted Christ in mind in the generality of his speech of Him. He was not engaged in writing a historical retrospect of the life of the man Jesus on earth, but in proclaiming Jesus as the all-sufficient Saviour of men. That he recognized that this Jesus had entered upon the actual exercise of His universal dominion only on His resurrection and ascension, and in this sense had received it as a reward for His work on earth (Phil 2:9, Rom 14:9) merely means that, no less than to our Lord Himself, the earthly manifestation of Jesus was to Paul an estate of humiliation upon which the glory followed. But the glory which thus followed the humiliation was to Paul, too, a glory which belonged of right to Jesus, to whom His lowly life on earth, not His subsequent exaltation, was a strange experience. It was one who was rich, he tells us, who in Jesus became poor that we might through His poverty become rich (2 Cor 8:9); it was one who was in the form of God who abjured clinging to His essential equality with God and made Himself of no reputation by taking the form of a servant, and stooping even to the death of the cross (Phil 2:6 seq.). When Paul speaks of Jesus, therefore, as 'Lord' it is not especially of His exaltation that he is thinking, but rather "the whole majesty of Christ lies in this predicate" for him, and the recognition that Jesus is 'Lord' expresses for him accordingly the essence of Christianity (Rom 10:9, 2 Cor 4:5, 1 Cor 12:3, Phil 2:11). The proclamation of the Gospel is summed up for him therefore in this formula (2 Cor 4:5); the confession of Jesus as Lord is salvation (Rom 10:9), and it is the mark of a Christian that he serves the Lord Christ (Col 3:24); for no one can say that Jesus is Lord except in the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 12:3).

'Lord' a Proper Name of Jesus

Obviously the significance of the title 'Lord' as applied to Jesus by Paul is not uninfluenced by its constant employment of God in the Greek Old Testament, and especially in those Old Testament passages which Paul applies to Jesus, in which 'Lord' is the divine name (e. g., 2 Thess 1:9, 1 Cor 1:31, 10:9, 26, 2 Cor 3:16, 10:17, Rom 10:13, Eph 6:4, 2 Tim 2:19, 4:14: Isaiah 45:23 is cited with reference to God in Rom 14:11, and with reference to Jesus in Phil 2:10). Under the influence of these passages the title 'Lord' becomes in Paul's hands almost a proper name, the specific designation for Jesus conceived as a divine person in distinction from God the Father. It is therefore employed of Jesus not merely constantly but almost exclusively. It is doubtful whether it is ever once employed of God the Father, outside of a few citations from the Old Testament: and in any case such employment of it is very exceptional. It is accordingly in point of fact the determinate title for Jesus as distinguished from God the Father. As such 'the Lord Jesus Christ' is coupled with 'God our Father' (or 'the Father') as the co-source of that grace and peace which Paul is accustomed to invoke on his readers in the addresses to his Epistles (1 Thess 1:1, 2 Thess 1:1, 2, 1 Cor 1:3, 2 Cor 1:2, Gal 1:3, Rom 1:7, Eph 1:2, Phil 1:2, 1 Tim 1:2, 2 Tim 1:2, Titus 1:4, cf. Eph 6:23, 1 Thess 3:11, 2 Thess 1:12). And throughout the Epistles Jesus as 'the Lord' and the Father as 'God' are set over against each other as distinct and yet conjoined objects of the reverence of Christians, and distinct and yet conjoined sources of the blessings of which Christians are the recipients.

Jesus Embraced in the One Godhead

No doubt by this elevation of Jesus as 'Lord' to the side of God certain peculiarities of expression are produced which are on a surface view sufficiently puzzling. Thus, for example, in declaring the nonentity of the objects of heathen worship, Paul asserts roundly that "none is God except One," and proceeds to explicate this assertion by remarking that, although there may exist so-called gods whether in heaven or earth, as there are—obviously among the heathen—many gods and many lords, "yet to us there is one God, namely, the Father, from whom are all things and we unto Him" (1 Cor 8:4–6). But he does not stop there, but adds at once, "And one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and we through Him" (1 Cor 8:6). This addition might seem to a superficial reading to stultify his whole monotheistic argument: "There is no God but one; … for to us there is one God … and one Lord." There is but one possible solution. Obviously the one God whom Christians worship is conceived as, in some way not fully explained, without prejudice to His unity subsistent in both the 'one God,' viz., the Father and the 'one Lord,' viz., Jesus Christ. Otherwise there would be a flat contradiction between the emphatic assertion that "none is God but one" and the proof of this assertion offered in the explanation that to Christians there is but "one God, viz., the Father" and "one Lord, viz., Jesus Christ." And it is clear that Paul can count upon his readers understanding that the "one Lord, Jesus Christ" bears such a relation to the "one God, the Father" that these two may together be subsumed under the category of the one God who alone exists. We shall not say that there are the beginnings of the doctrine of the Trinity here. It seems truer to say that there is the clear presupposition of some such doctrine as that of the Trinity here.

Trinitarian Background

There is lacking, indeed, only the conjunction of "the Spirit" with "God the Father" and "Jesus the Lord" to compel us to perceive that underlying Paul's mode of speech concerning God there is a clearly conceived and firmly held conviction that these three together constitute the one God of Christian worship. And other passages enough supply this lack. For example, later on in this same Epistle the Apostle, speaking of those gifts of the Spirit with which the Apostolic Church was blessed, remarks in the most natural way in the world: "Now there are diversities of gifts but the same Spirit. And there are diversities of ministrations, and the same Lord. And there are diversities of workings, but the same God" (1 Cor 12:4–6). "Now I beseech you, brethren," he says again towards the end of the Epistle to the Romans, "by our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with me in your prayers to God for me" (Rom 15:30). "There is one body and one Spirit, even as also ye were called in one hope of your calling," says he again, in a later Epistle (Eph 4:4 seq.), "one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all." Or, perhaps, most explicitly of all, in those closing words of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians which have become the established form of benediction in the Churches: "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all" (2 Cor 13:14). From passages like these it is perfectly clear that the Christian doctrine of God as apprehended by Paul, and as currently implied in his natural modes of speech concerning Him, as he wrote in simplicity of heart and with no misgivings as to the understanding of his language by the Christian readers whom he addressed, embraced, in conjunction with the utmost stress upon the unity of God, the recognition at the same time of distinctions in the Divine Being by virtue of which the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit were esteemed God along with the Father.

'Lord' the Trinitarian Name of Jesus

But what we require to note particularly at this point is that to Paul, the divine name—perhaps we may even be permitted to say, "the Trinitarian name"—of Jesus is apparently 'the Lord.' God, the Lord, the Spirit,—this is his triad, and when he speaks of Jesus as 'Lord' it must be supposed that this triad is in his mind. In other words, 'Lord' to him is not a general term of respect which he naturally applies to Jesus because he recognized Jesus as supreme, and was glad to acknowledge Him as his Master (Eph 6:9, Col 4:1), or even in the great words of Col 2:19 as the 'Head' of the body which is His Church (cf. Eph 4:15). It is to him the specific title of divinity by which he indicates to himself the relation in which Jesus stands to Deity. Jesus is not 'Lord' to him because He has been given dominion over all creation; He has been given this universal dominion because he is 'Lord,' who with the Father and the Spirit is to be served and worshipped, and from whom all that the Christian longs for is to be expected. In His own nature the 'Lord of glory' (1 Cor 2:8), He has died and lived again that He might enter upon His dominion as 'Lord' of both the dead and the living (Rom 14:9), and being thus 'Lord of all' (Rom 10:12) might be rich unto all that call upon Him and so fulfill the saying that whosoever "shall call upon the name of the Lord" shall be saved (Rom 10:13). He does not become 'Lord,' but only comes to His rights as 'Lord,' by and through His resurrection and ascension, which are the culminating and completing acts of His saving work. He is 'Lord' because He is in His own person the Jehovah who was to visit His people and save them from their sins.

Appearance of Subordination

No doubt a different representation is sometimes given. We are even told that there is in these very passages a distinction drawn between 'God' and 'the Lord,' by which the status of 'the Lord' is made definitely inferior to that of 'God,' to whom He is subject and whose will He executes. It is God the Father who is the source and end of all things; the 'Lord Jesus Christ' is the mediator through whom He works (I Cor 8:6‚ cf. 1 Tim 2:5 and such passages—διά with the genitive—as the following, Rom 2:16, 3:22, 5:1‚ 11, 17, 21, Eph 1:5, 1 Th 5:9, Tit 3:6). The term 'Lord' as applied to Jesus, therefore, although ascribing a certain divinity to Him, appears to fall short of attributing deity to Him in its full sense. It is the appropriate designation of a sort of secondary divinity, a middle being standing in some sense between man and God. Accordingly we read that while "the head of every man is Christ," "the head of Christ is God" (1 Cor 11:3), and that "if we are Christ's," so "Christ is God's" (1 Cor 3:23). The whole redemptive work of Christ is represented as the working of God through Christ, as terminating ultimately on God, and as redounding specifically to His glory (Rom 3:25, 5:10, 8:3, 2 Cor 5:18, Eph 1:6, 12, 14, 19, 3:19, Col 1:19, etc.). When, then, the redemptive work is completed the 'Lordship' which has been conferred upon Christ ceases also, so that His very sovereignty appears as a derived sovereignty delegated for a purpose (1 Cor 15:27, 28). God is appropriately spoken of therefore distinctly as the "God of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Eph 1:17, cf. Rom 15:6, 2 Cor 1:3, 11:31, Eph 1:3), a locution which, while intimating that the relation subsisting between Him and Jesus is peculiarly close, yet equally clearly intimates that it is not a relation of equality but of the nature of divine master and subject servant.

Its Impossibility with Paul

That a problem is raised by the passages of this class is obvious enough. But it is equally obvious that this problem cannot be solved by the attribution of a certain secondary divinity to Christ, and much less by supposing that He has merely a sort of divinity communicated to Him quoad nos, while in His essential nature only a creature. The strict and strongly asseverated monotheism of Paul forbids the former assumption: his definite ascription to Jesus of an eternal divine form of existence antecedent to His earthly career excludes the latter. Nothing could exceed the clearness and emphasis of Paul's monotheism. "None is God," says he, "but one" (1 Cor 8:4); and he says it, as we have seen, in immediate connection with his recognition of "one God, the Father" and "one Lord, Jesus Christ" (cf. Rom 3:30, 16:27, Gal 3:20, Eph 4:6, 1 Tim 2:5). How, then, could he mean to set by the side of this "one God the Father" the "one Lord Jesus Christ" as a second, although somewhat inferior, God? And nothing could exceed the clearness and emphasis with which Paul represents Jesus' divine majesty not as an attainment but as an aboriginal possession. He does not say that Jesus Christ became rich that by His riches we might be enriched, as he must have said if he had conceived of Jesus as a man to whom divine powers and dignity were communicated that He might save us. What he says is that our Lord Jesus Christ was rich, and became poor only for our sakes, that "through His poverty we might become rich" (2 Cor 8:9). That is to say, that, as he expresses it in another place, it was to make no account of Himself for Him to take the "form of a servant" (Phil 2:7). Nor does he leave us in doubt as to the quality of the riches He left when He thus made Himself of no reputation by taking "the form of a servant." No heavenly humanity suffices here: not even angelic grandeur: it was "in the form of God" that He was by nature (ὑπάρχων): it was "equality with God" which He did not graspingly cling to. And to be "in the form of God" means nothing less than to have and hold in possession all those characterizing attributes which make God God: having which He could not but be equal with God, because He was just God. No wonder then that Paul tells us that though He was crucified by man yet was He 'the Lord of glory' (1 Cor 2:8), that in Him dwelt "all the fulness of the Godhead bodily" (Col 2:9), that Israelite as He was "according to the flesh" He was something much more than what He was according to the flesh—nothing less indeed than "God over all, blessed forever" (Rom 9:5).

Implication of Term 'Lord'

He certainly does not mean then to contrast Jesus as 'Lord' with God the Father as an inferior God or as possessing a merely delegated divinity. Nor, indeed, does the term 'Lord' lend itself readily to such a contrast. On the pages of Paul's Bible—the Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures—it stood side by side with 'God' as the most personal and intimate name of Deity: and thence he took it as we have seen and applied it to Jesus. And if it thus could not have been lower in its connotation to him than 'Jehovah' itself, it was charged likewise to the apprehension of his Gentile readers with suggestions in no way inferior to those of 'God' itself. For him to say 'Lord' of Jesus as His most appropriate title was therefore to say and to be understood as saying all that he could say by the designation of 'God' itself. And if nevertheless there was to him and to his readers but one God, then there is nothing for it but that we should recognize that for Paul and his readers two might be God and yet there be but one God; and that is as much as to say that their thinking of God was already ruled by a Trinitarian consciousness.

Subordination is Humiliation

As for the expressions in which, despite his clear intimation of the proper deity of Jesus, he yet speaks of Him as in some sense inferior or, to be more precise, subordinate, to God the Father, it is quite clear that they must find their explanation in Paul's intimation of the humiliation to which this divine Person subjected Himself for the purposes of redemption. When He who was rich became poor; when He who was and ever remains "in the form of God" made Himself of no reputation "by taking the form of a servant": then and thus He became so far inferior to and subject to that God the Father on an equality with whom He might have remained in His riches had He so chosen. In and for the purposes of this redemptive work He is the Mediator of God the Father, whose He is, and who is His Head and His God; whose will He performs and whose purposes of grace He executes; and to whom, when the redemptive work is fully accomplished and its fruits garnered, He shall restore the Kingdom, that God may be all in all. In a word, there underlies Paul's statements not merely the conceptions which have found expression in the doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation, but those also which have found expression in the doctrine of the Covenant of Redemption in accordance with which the Persons of the Godhead carry on each His own part of the work of redemption: and he who will not recognize these conceptions in the Pauline statements must ever find those statements a confused puzzle of contradictions, which can be reduced to apparent harmony only by doing manifest violence to one or another series of them. Only on the presupposition of these conceptions can it be understood how the Apostle can speak of our Lord now as "in the form of God," "on an equality with God," nay, as "God over all," and now as subject to God as His Head and His God with reference to whom He performs all His work: and how He can speak of "God the Father" and "Jesus Christ our Lord" as each "God over all," and yet declare that there is but one Being who is God.

Designations Compounded with 'Lord'

With this high meaning of 'Lord' as attributed to Jesus in our mind it is interesting to observe the various forms of designation into which this epithet enters. These run through nearly all the possible combinations with the names of Jesus. 'The (or our) Lord Jesus,' which, were the title 'Lord' a mere honorific, would be the simplest of them all, but which, since that title is an express declaration of deity, is now the most paradoxical, occurs some twenty-four to twenty-six times, chiefly in the earlier Epistles; and its duplicate, 'Jesus our Lord,' twice more. 'The (or our) Lord Christ' is less frequent, occurring only twice (Rom 16:18, Col 3:24). But the full formula, 'the (or our) Lord Jesus Christ,' is the most common of all, occurring some forty-nine times, pretty evenly scattered through all the Epistles. 'The (or our) Lord Christ Jesus' does not occur: but in the reverse order of the titles, 'Christ Jesus, the (or our, or my) Lord,' this combination occurs ten times and by its side, "Jesus Christ, our Lord" four times. In all these combinations the names, whether the simple 'Jesus,' the simple 'Christ,' or the combinations 'Jesus Christ' or 'Christ Jesus,' appear to be used as proper names, though, no doubt, the appellative 'Christ' does not in any of them become a mere proper name. Certainly in the phrase, "Ye serve the Lord Christ," the term 'Christ' is a title of dignity which is still further enhanced by the adjunction of the term 'Lord': and something of the same intention to enhance an already lofty ascription appears traceable in the instances where the fuller phrase 'Christ Jesus, our Lord' occurs (1 Cor 15:31, [2 Cor 4:5], Rom 6:23, 8:39, [Col 2:6], Eph 3:11, [Phil 3:8]). But this obvious use of 'Christ' as a name of dignity by no means implies that it is not employed practically as a proper name. Its implications of Messiahship remain present and suggestive, but it has become the peculiar property of Jesus who is thought of as so indisputably the Messiah that the title 'Messiah' has become His proper name.

'Christ' Paul's Favorite Designation

It is worthy of remark moreover that not only is 'Christ' a proper name of our Lord with Paul, but it is his favorite designation for Him. For, full and rich as Paul's employment of the term 'Lord' is, it is not nearly so frequently employed by him as 'Christ.' This designation (more commonly with than without the article)25 occurs in his Epistles no fewer than 210 or 211 times in its simplicity, and many more times in combination with other designations. It is most dominantly Paul's favorite name for our Lord in the great central Epistles—Romans, Corinthians and Galatians,—in which it occurs some 138 to 140 times; but it is also very frequent in the Epistles of the first imprisonment (67 times in Eph., Col., Phil., Philemon), and is unusual only in the Thessalonian letters (4 times only) and in the Pastorals (once only). It surprises us somewhat to observe that next to the simple 'Christ' (and 'Lord'), Paul's favorite designation for our Lord is the compound 'Christ Jesus.'

'Christ Jesus'

This form, as we have seen, seems to occur occasionally in Acts, not only as a Pauline (24:24) but also as a primitive Christian (3:20) and a Lucan formula (5:42). But in Paul's Epistles it occurs not less than 82 (84) times, regularly anarthrously (except Eph 3:1, cf. 3:11, Col 2:6), and pretty evenly distributed, though with a tendency to increased frequency in the progress of time (Thess. only 2; Gal., Cor., Rom. 29; first imprisonment, 29; Pastorals 24). It is possible that the prepositing of the 'Christ' may throw greater emphasis upon the Messianic dignity of Jesus than was currently felt in the opposite compound 'Jesus Christ,' which is much less frequent in Paul (only 23 times; and not at all in Thess., Col., Philemon). But in any case, both formulas are employed as practically proper names of our Lord, and it is difficult to trace any difference in the implications of their use. Along with these simple compounds Paul also employs the more elaborate formulas, 'the (or our) Lord Jesus Christ,' 'Jesus Christ our Lord,' 'Christ Jesus, the (or our, or my) Lord.' The first of these meets us most frequently, occurring indeed no fewer than 49 times, pretty evenly distributed through the Epistles. The second occurs only four times (Romans 3 and 1 Cor 1): and the last only ten times (two central groups of Epistles only). In these sonorous formulas the Apostle expresses his deep sense of reverence to the person of Jesus, and he tends to fall into one or the other of them whenever he is speaking of his Master with solemnity and exalted feeling. It is noticeable that they are apt to be employed in the formal solemn opening and closing sections of his Epistles, and whenever Jesus is named in direct connection with God.

Jesus the 'Saviour'

'The Great God'

In the Pastoral Epistles the compound names 'Jesus Christ' and 'Christ Jesus' occur also in composition with the epithet 'Saviour': 'Christ Jesus our Saviour' (Titus 1:4), 'Jesus Christ our Saviour' (Titus 3:6), 'our Saviour Christ Jesus' (2 Tim 1:10), 'our Saviour Jesus Christ' (Titus 2:13). In the earlier Epistles, Jesus is indeed not only treated as our 'Saviour,' but the epithet is given Him as a title of honor, it being a mark of Christians that they look for a 'Saviour' from heaven, even 'the Lord Jesus Christ' (Phil 3:20, cf. Eph 5:20). But the precise forms of expression occurring in the Pastorals are not found in these. The significance of the epithet 'Saviour' thus applied to Jesus may perhaps be suggested by the circumstance that it is in the same Epistles a standing epithet of God. Paul describes himself as an apostle of Jesus Christ "according to the command of God our Saviour and Christ Jesus our hope" (1 Tim 1:1, cf. Titus 1:3), and wishes Timothy to live so as to be acceptable "in the sight of God our Saviour" (2:3, cf. Titus 2:10) whose glory it is to be 'the Saviour' of man (4:10), in accordance with His love to men as our 'Saviour' (Titus 3:4). The ascription of this epithet thus interchangeably to God and to Jesus assimilates Jesus to God and leaves us in less doubt how we are to take the passage in Titus 2:13 which in contrast with Christ's first coming in grace speaks of the impending "appearing of the glory of"—shall we say "the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ"?—or shall we not rather say "our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ"? If the latter construction is followed, as it seems it should be, it provides us with one of the most solemn ascriptions of proper deity to Jesus Christ discoverable in the whole compass of the New Testament.

'The Beloved'

Perhaps something similar is implied in the designation of Him in Eph 1:6 as the 'Beloved,' the epithet appearing in its simple majesty without qualification: "His grace which He"—that is God—"freely bestowed on us in the Beloved." We have already had occasion to point out the significance of this phrase on its appearing in the Gospels as a designation of Jesus (Mt 3:17, 12:18, 17:5, Mk 1:11, 9:7, Lk 3:22). Here the same epithet meets us without the defining accompaniments: Jesus Christ is in full simplicity set forth as by way of eminence 'the Beloved,' in and through whom God has communicated His grace to men. This designation of Christ "makes us feel," we are told, "the greatness of the divine grace." But it does this only by making us feel the greatness of the Mediator of this grace. It is only at the cost of the blood of the 'Beloved' that God has redeemed us. The epithet of 'Saviour' is a designation of our Lord from the point of view of men: this epithet of 'Beloved' tells us what He is from the point of view of God—He is God's own unique One, the object of His supreme choice, who stands related to Him in the intimacy of appropriating love. In the parallel passage in the sister Epistle (Col 1:13), Paul calls our Lord "the Son of God's love." This seems a combination of the two titles, the 'Son of God,' and the 'Beloved'; and bears witness to their close affinity,—which indeed is inherent in their significance. We will recall that in the evangelical use of 'the Beloved' it stands in the closest relation with 'Son': "This is my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased." It is only in connection with the idea of 'Son,' thus, that 'Beloved' comes to its rights.

Jesus the 'Man'

On the other side, the compound names, 'Jesus Christ' and 'Christ Jesus,' appear in Paul's Epistles also in combination with designations which emphasize rather the human aspect of our Lord's person. We read of "the man Jesus Christ" (Rom 5:15), of "the man Christ Jesus" (1 Tim 2:5), and somewhat more frequently we are, apart from such a combination with His personal name, directed to contemplate our Lord as a "Man" (ἄνθρωπος). In very few of these instances, it is true, is the emphasis primarily upon the fact of humanity. Most commonly it is thrown upon some point of likeness or contrast between Jesus and that other man, Adam (Rom 5:15, [19], 1 Cor 15:21, 47, [48, 49], cf. 15:45, "last Adam"), and it is the singleness or the superiority of this 'Man' which is in question. But in a passage like 1 Tim 2:5, "There is one God, one mediator also between God and man, Himself man, Christ Jesus," it is clear that the humanity of Christ itself is insisted upon: and there is a necessary if somewhat unemphasized suggestion of humanity underlying all these passages. The lesson we must first of all draw from this series of passages seems, then, to be that neither 'Jesus Christ' nor 'Christ Jesus' is a designation of such supreme dignity that it could not suggest itself as an appropriate name for Jesus when the mind of the writer was intent on precisely His humanity, as indeed no designation could be in the case of a being who was not purely divine, not even 'the Lord of Glory' (1 Cor 2:8) or 'God' itself (Acts 20:28). Beyond that, we learn, therefore, that clear and strong as was Paul's conception of the proper deity of Christ, it in no wise precluded him from also recognizing with equal clarity and expounding with equal force His essential humanity.

But not Merely Man

When He who was in the form of God took the form of a servant He was made in the likeness of men and was formed in fashion as a man (Phil 2:7, 8); and Paul found no difficulty in so understanding, even though he also understood that the "taking the form of a servant" was not a supercession of "the form of God" but an addition to it: and that therefore though now made in the likeness of men and formed in fashion as a man, Jesus remained nevertheless unbrokenly "in the form of God" (ὑπάρχων, verse 6, observe the tense) and able at will to lay hold again of His essential equality with God. Accordingly, therefore, the Apostle, if he represented Jesus as of the seed of David, represented Him as this only on one side of His being,—that side which he calls "according to the flesh" (Rom 1:3, 4): if he saw in Him, to the glory of the covenant people, an Israelite, he saw this also in Him only "according to the flesh" (Rom 9:5). It cannot be denied that there underlies this whole mode of conception the idea of "the two natures" of Christ, on the basis of which alone can this duplex method of speaking of Him be defended or even comprehended.

The Two Sides of Christ's Being

In the opening verses of the greatest of his Epistles the Apostle brings the two sides of our Lord's being sharply to our apprehension. Reduced to its lowest terms, what he tells us here is that on one side of His being our Lord was the 'Son of David' and on the other side the 'Son of God.' These two sides of being he speaks of respectively as "according to the flesh" and "according to the Spirit of holiness," which may be briefly paraphrased respectively as the human and the divine sides. But he does not leave us to infer that these two sides of our Lord's being were equally original to Him. On the contrary, he tells us that the human side had a historical beginning, while the divine side knew only an historical establishment: our Lord was made—came to be (γενόμενος)—of the seed of David according to the flesh; He was 'designated'—marked out as (ὁρισθέντος)—the 'Son of God' by the resurrection of the dead. Becoming man, He brought life and immortality to light, and thus showed Himself more than man,—nothing less than 'the Son of God.' The highest human exaltation is the Messiahship: but His Messiahship was the lower side of His majesty. That He might be the Messiah He stooped from His prior estate of divine glory. Thus clearly the Apostle presents our Lord as essentially the 'Son of God,' and this Sonship to God as essentially consubstantiality with God.34 After precisely the same fashion, at a later point of the same Epistle, having occasion to mention Christ as sprung from the seed of Israel, he at once pauses as if to guard himself from the imputation of insufficient reverence, to add the limitation, "according to the flesh." He was not wishing to speak of Christ even incidentally as merely man. And so greatly did his reverence for His person swell in his heart, that, in adjoining a designation of His higher nature, he is content with nothing lower than the highest conceivable. "From whom is Christ, as according to the flesh,"—that Christ "who is in His essential being (ὁ ὢν) none other than God over all blessed for ever" (9:5). On the side in which He was not "according to the flesh," He was the Supreme God ruling over all things.

'Son of God'

It is, however, significant rather than copious use which the Apostle makes of the category of the 'Son of God' in his presentation of the personality of Jesus to his readers. It is doubtless at least in part due to his predilection for the term 'Lord' as the Trinitarian name of Jesus that Paul speaks of Him only some seventeen times as 'the Son.'36 In a number of these instances there is naturally little indication of the particular implication of deity which it nevertheless always carries with it in Paul's usage.38 In others, however, the whole point of the employment of the term hangs on the uniqueness of the relation to God which it intimates. This is the case, for instance, when this uniqueness of relation is emphasized by the added term "own": God, we are told for example (Rom 8:3), sent "His own Son" (τὸν ἑαυτοῦ υἱόν) "in the likeness of sinful flesh" "to condemn sin in the flesh": and again God spared not "His own Son" (τοῦ ἰδίου υἱοῦ) but "delivered Him up for us all" (Rom 8:32). Obviously we are expected to estimate the greatness of the gift by the closeness of the relation indicated: it is because it was His own Son whom He gave that the love of God to us was so splendidly manifested in the gift of Jesus, who, we are further told, was for this gift "sent forth from" Himself (Gal 4:4, ἐξαπέστειλεν). This closeness of relation, amounting really to identity, is somewhat oddly suggested by the argument in Rom 5:8–10. Here we are told that scarcely for a righteous man would one die: but God commends His love to us—or as it is strengtheningly put, His own love to us—by dying for us while we were yet sinners? No,—by Christ's dying for us while we were sinners! But how does God commend His own love for us—by someone else's dying for us? Obviously the relation between Christ and God is thought of as so intimate that Christ's dying is equivalent to God Himself dying. And so, we read further that this Christ is God's Son (v. 10) and His dying for us is to such an extent the pledge of God's love that it carries with it the promise and potency of all good things (vv. 10, 11).

God 'the Father'

With this emphasis on the Sonship of Christ and its high significance it is a little strange that the correlative Fatherhood of God is brought so little into immediate connection with it. The explanation is doubtless again that Paul prefers the title 'Lord' to express our Lord's Trinitarian relations. The Fatherhood of God is in any event not very frequently adverted to by Paul, and is very seldom brought into immediate relation with Jesus. Indeed God is expressly called the Father of Jesus Christ only in those few passages in which He is spoken of as "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom 15:6, 2 Cor 1:3, 11:31, Eph 1:3 [Col 1:3]). In a number of other passages in which God is called 'the Father' the Trinitarian relation seems in mind (Rom 6:4, 1 Cor 8:6, 15:24, Gal 1:3, Eph 2:18, 6:23, 1 Thess 1:1, 2 Thess 1:2, 1 Tim 1:2, 2 Tim 1:2, Titus 1:4). In the other instances of the application of the name of Father to God the reference is rather to His relation to us (Rom 1:7; [8:15], 1 Cor 1:3, Gal 1:4 [4:6], Eph 1:2, Eph 4:6, Phil 1:2, 2:11, 4:20, Col 1:2, 1 Thess 1:3, 3:11, 13, 2 Thess 1:1; [2 var. lec.] 2:16, Philem 3, cf. 2 Cor 1:3, Eph 1:17, 3:14, 5:20, Col 1:12, 3:17). In only three passages are the correlatives 'Son' and 'Father' brought together (1 Cor 15:28, Gal 4:4–6, Col 1:13), and in no one of these instances is it clear that the term 'Father' is employed in sole reference to Jesus, the unique 'Son.' In one of them we are told that the Father has delivered us out of the power of darkness and translated us into the Kingdom of 'the Son of His love' (Col 1:13), where there seems certainly a reference to God's Fatherly relation not only to Jesus 'the Son of His love' but also to us who are by His grace introduced into a similar relation to God with Christ's own. So, in another, we are told that because we are sons God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father (Gal 4:6)—where it is quite clear that 'Father' has relation to us, too, as the brethren of Christ. Even in the remaining instance, where we are told that at the end Christ shall deliver up the Kingdom to God even the Father, and even 'the Son' Himself shall be subjected to Him, that God may be all in all (1 Cor 15:28), it is by no means obvious that the term Father may not again embrace with Christ all those who have been brought by Christ into the Kingdom. We may see in all three instances that the peculiar relation of the 'Father' and 'Son' lies at the basis of the thought: but this peculiar relation does not in any of them absorb the whole thought. It seems to be treated by Paul as a matter too well understood to require particular insistence upon. He could count on his readers, when he spoke of Jesus as 'the Son of God,' understanding without further elucidation that he was thereby attributing to Him a unique relation, including proper deity along with the Father, while our co-sonship was to be realized only in and through Him.

Christ All that God Is

Another method employed by Paul to indicate the relation of Jesus to God is the presentation of Him as the 'image of God' (2 Cor 4:4, Col 1:15). He is the image of God, we are told, and the light of the knowledge of the glory of God shines in His face (2 Cor 4:4). And, again, He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation (Col 1:15). The meaning is that we may see in Christ what God is: all God's glory is reflected in Him; and when we see Him we see the Father also. Perhaps the mere term falls short of expressly asserting proper deity, though it would certainly gain force and significance if proper deity were understood to be asserted. In that case it would suggest that Jesus Christ is just the invisible God made visible. And that this is its actual significance with Paul can scarcely be doubted when we recall that he does not hesitate to ascribe proper deity to Jesus, not only by means of the designations 'Lord' and 'Son of God,' but by the direct application to Him of the name 'God' itself and that in its most enhanced form—'God over all' (Rom 9:5), the 'Great God' (Titus 2:13). That Jesus Christ is intended in both instances by these great designations, seems, despite sustained efforts to deny them to Him, beyond legitimate question. The natural interpretation of the passages themselves compels it: and no surprise can be felt that Paul, who everywhere thinks and speaks of Christ as very God, should occasionally call Him by the appropriate designation. These passages in effect supply only the to-be-expected expression in plain language of Paul's most intimate thought of Jesus. He is always and everywhere to his thought just 'our Great God and Saviour,' 'God over all, blessed for ever.'

Paul's Jesus the Primitive Jesus

It was thus, then, that Jesus was thought of, and familiarly spoken of, in the Christian communities throughout the epoch in which the Synoptic Gospels were composed or, if we choose to use such misleading language, were compounded. The testimony of Paul's letters comes from the sixth and seventh decades of the century; and assures us that at that time Jesus was to His followers a man indeed and the chosen Messiah who had come to redeem God's people, but in His essential Being just the great God Himself. In the light of this testimony it is impossible to believe there ever was a different conception of Jesus prevalent in the Church: the mark of Christians from the beginning was obviously that they looked to Jesus as their 'Lord' and 'called on His name' in their worship.
The general significance of the testimony of Paul, we may say, is universally recognized. Bousset, for example, when engaged in repelling the crudities of Kalthoff points it out with great distinctness. In Paul, he tells us, we have "a witness of indubitable value from the bosom of the Christian community for the existence and the significance of the Person of Jesus." "His conversion, according to the tradition, goes back very nearly to the death of Jesus. His chief activity falls in any case in the forties and fifties. From his letters the historical existence of Jesus stands out before us in all clearness. And not merely does Paul presuppose this, as we perceive from these letters: he had intercourse with the first generation of Christians, who had themselves seen the Lord Jesus." "Whoever would question the existence of Jesus must erase also the existence of Paul, as he meets us in his letters." "With the person of Paul the person of Jesus, too, stands established." Nor is it merely the existence of a Jesus which Paul thus substantiates for us: he ratifies also the fact that the person of Jesus had for the faith of the first Christian community "no indeterminate but a perfectly determinate significance." In the presence of Paul's letters, therefore, it is impossible to deny that there underlies the whole Christian movement the great personality of Jesus, or that the primitive Christian community looked to Him as its founder and Lord. Is it not equally impossible to deny in the presence of these letters that the primitive Christian community looked upon this Jesus as their divine founder and divine Lord?
Strange to say, Bousset draws back at this point. Paul's testimony to the existence of the historical Jesus and to His significance to the primitive Church is decisive. But Paul's testimony to the estimate placed upon the personality of this historical Jesus is not trustworthy. It is, indeed, impossible to doubt in the light of his testimony, that "the earthly Jesus worked in the souls of His disciples with inexpressible power" (p. 26): and that they had come to believe that He had risen from the dead. But it does not follow that they who had companied with Him in His life shared Paul's idea that He was "essentially a heavenly being" (p. 26). The inconsequence here is flagrant. Paul is not writing a generation or two later, when the faith of the first disciples was a matter only of memory, perhaps of fading memory; and when it was possible for him to represent it as other than it was. He is writing out of the very bosom of this primitive community and under its very eye. His witness to the kind of Jesus this community believed in is just as valid and just as compelling, therefore, as his testimony that it believed in Jesus at all. In and through him the voice of the primitive community itself speaks, proclaiming its assured faith in its divine Lord. This would be true quite apart from the consentient witness of the Acts and the Gospels. In the presence of this consentient witness it is impossible to contend that Paul has misrepresented or misconceived the faith of Christians. The same divine Jesus which Paul presents as the universal and aboriginal object of Christian faith, Luke sets before us in Acts from the mouth of the primitive disciples—Peter and John and James and the rest—as from the beginning believed on in the Church; and the same Luke with his companion evangelists represents as Himself asserting His divine dignity. The testimony of Paul merely adds to this witness a new and thoroughly trustworthy voice; and renders it so much the more impossible to doubt that from the very beginning the entire Christian community was firmly convinced of the deity of its Lord.

Inaccessibility to Critical Doubts

Nor can the force of this testimony be broken or even weakened by suggesting doubts as to the genuineness of more or fewer of Paul's letters, or raising question of a development of the doctrine of the person of our Lord through their course. We have treated them all as genuine products of Paul's mind and pen and as all of a piece: because, shortly, the facts warrant such a treatment of them. But the conclusion to be drawn from them in the matter in hand does not depend on so taking them. The conception of Jesus embedded in these letters is the same in them all: if they are not all Paul's they are all Pauline. You may discard any number of them you choose, therefore, as not Paul's personal product: the conception of Jesus in those that remain is not altered thereby. Take the extremest hypothesis which has ever even temporarily commanded the assent of any considerable number of scholars,—the old Tübingen theory which allowed to Paul only the four great Epistles, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians and Galatians. In these Epistles may be found Paul's entire witness to the deity of Christ. It is from them that we learn that Jesus Christ, while on the side of His flesh of the seed of David, had another side to His being, on which He was the Son of God (Rom 1:3, 4); that as God's own Son He was rich before He became poor by becoming of the seed of David (2 Cor 8:9); and that in His real nature He is not merely God's Son but Himself God over all, blessed for ever (Rom 9:5). When we add to these four great Epistles one after another of the others—such as Philippians, and 1 Thessalonians and Colossians, as practically all living critics do—and even Ephesians and Second Timothy, as many are willing to do—we merely add to the mass of the testimony, and in no respect alter its character or effect. These letters one and all only repeat, and in repeating more or less clarify, the teaching of the four chief Epistles as to the dignity of our Lord's person.

No Substantial Development

For this same reason nothing is gained for our present purpose by treating the Epistles not all together, but in small chronologically arranged groups. Slight differences may be observed, it is true, from group to group in modes of expression and relatively favorite forms of statement. But no differences can be traced in the conceptions which are brought to expression in these varying forms of statements. For example, the ruling designation of Christ in the Thessalonians is 'the Lord' (22), with 'the Lord Jesus Christ' (14) a somewhat close second, and 'the Lord Jesus' (10) third, while the simple 'Christ' occurs only four times. In Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, on the other hand, it is the simple 'Christ' which becomes the favorite designation, with 'Lord' a good second: and the same is true of the Epistles of the first imprisonment. In the Pastorals, on the other hand, while 'Lord' is still common, 'Christ,' as in Thessalonians, falls into the background, and 'Christ Jesus' becomes the favorite designation. Variations like these, it is obvious, are rather interesting to those who are engaged in studying the literary form of the Epistles than important in estimating their witness to the deity of our Lord. Through all such variations, the product of circumstance, the essential teaching of all these Epistles upon the person of Christ remains the same. In them all alike He is the divine 'Lord,' whose right it is to rule: the 'Son of God,' consubstantial with the Father: the 'great God and Saviour' of sinners: 'God over all, blessed forever.' And in their consentient testimony to the deity of Christ they make it clear to us that upon this point, at least, the whole primitive Church was of one unvarying mind.

THE WITNESS OF THE CATHOLIC EPISTLES

Catholic Epistles Corroborative

There yet remains a certain amount of corroborative evidence for the conclusions which we have reached, borne by a series of letters which have been preserved to us, purporting to be the compositions of primitive followers of our Lord. We use the term "purporting" not because we have any doubt that they are all that they profess to be, but because their descriptions of themselves have not been accepted as valid in all critical circles, and because we do not consider it necessary to pause to vindicate their authenticity here. If their testimony were substantially different from that of the more extended documents which we have already passed in review, it might be required of us to validate their claim to give testimony to the primitive conception of Christ, before admitting their witness. As, however, they yield only corroborative testimony, we may be content to present it for what it seems to each individual to be worth. In any event it helps to make clear to us the absolute harmony of early Christianity taken in a wide sense in its lofty conception of its Lord's person, and thus adds weight to what we have learned, from the more important documents, of the conception current in the first age. And just in proportion as we recognize these letters, too, as a legacy of the first age, reflecting the belief of the first generation of Christians, their corroborative evidence will become more and more significant to us. If, as in our own judgment they ought to be, they are accepted at their face value, their testimony becomes of primary importance, and would suffice of itself to assure us of the attitude of mind our Lord's followers cherished towards Him from the beginning. We shall present their testimony then frankly from this our own point of view, without stopping to argue our right to do so. It will thus at least be made apparent that the whole body of writings gathered into what we call the New Testament unite in commending to us one lofty view of Christ's person. For in all these letters, too, as in those which have already claimed our attention, Jesus appears fundamentally as the divine object of the reverential service of Christians.

James' and Jude's Christology High

Among these letters a special interest attaches to the Epistles of James and Jude, because of their authorship by kinsmen of our Lord according to the flesh, who moreover did not believe in Him during His earthly manifestation (Jno 7:5): to which is added in the case of the Epistle of James, its exceedingly early date (A. D. 45),—a date antecedent to that of any other of the canonical books. Not only does not the simple 'Jesus' occur in either of these Epistles or even the simple 'Christ,' but our Lord is uniformly spoken of by designations expressive of marked reverence. Both writers describe themselves simply as "servants"—that is, "bond-servants," "slaves,"—James "of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ" (1:1), and Jude with striking directness simply "of Jesus Christ" (1). The acknowledgment of Jesus as their 'Lord' implied in this self-designation is emphasized in both Epistles by the constant employment of this title in speaking of Jesus.

Christ 'the Glory'

James speaks of our Lord by name only twice, and on both occasions he gives Him the full title of reverence: 'the (or our) Lord Jesus Christ' (1:1, 2:1)—coupling Him in the one case on equal terms with God, and in the other adding further epithets of divine dignity. Elsewhere he speaks of Him simply as 'the Lord' (5:7, 8 [14], 15) in contexts which greatly enhance the significance of the term. The pregnant use of 'the Name,' absolutely, which we found current among the early Christians as reported in the Acts, recurs here; and James advises in the case of sick people that they be prayed over, while they are anointed with oil "in the Name" (5:14). The "Name" intended is clearly that of Jesus, which is thus in Christian usage substituted for that of Jehovah. A unique epithet, equally implying the deity of the Lord, is applied to Him in the exhortation, "My brethren, hold not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Glory, with respect of persons" (2:1). 'The Glory' seems to stand here in apposition to the name, "our Lord Jesus Christ," further defining Him in His majesty. There is here something more than merely the association of our Lord with glory, as when we are told that He had glory with God before the world was (Jno 17:5), and after His humiliation on earth (though even on earth He manifested His glory to seeing eyes, Jno 1:14, 2:11, 17:22) entered again into His glory (Lk 24:26, Jno 17:24, 1 Tim 3:16, Heb 2:9, cf. Mt 19:28, 25:31, [Mk 10:37]), and is to come again in this glory (Mt 16:27, 24:30, 25:31, Mk 8:38, 13:26, Lk 9:26, 21:27, Titus 2:13, 1 P 4:13). We come nearer to what is implied when we read of Jesus being 'the Lord of Glory' (1 Cor 2:8), that is He to whom glory belongs as His characterizing quality; or when He is described to us as "the effulgence of the glory of God" (Heb 1:3). The thought of the writer seems to be fixed on those Old Testament passages in which Jehovah is described as the "Glory": e. g., "For I, saith Jehovah, will be unto her a wall of fire round about, and I will be the Glory in the midst of her" (Zech 2:5). In the Lord Jesus Christ, James sees the fulfillment of these promises: He is Jehovah come to be with His people; and, as He has tabernacled among them, they have seen His glory. He is, in a word, the Glory of God, the Shekinah: God manifest to men. It is thus that James thought and spoke of his own brother who died a violent and shameful death while still in His first youth! Surely there is a phenomenon here which may well waken inquiry.

Christ 'the Despot'

The attitude of Jude is precisely the same. He does indeed speak of Christ in the address of his Epistle by the simpler formal title of 'Jesus Christ,' but in accordance with his description of himself at that point as the "slave" of this 'Jesus Christ,' he tends to multiply reverential titles in speaking of Him elsewhere. To Him our Lord is always 'our Lord Jesus Christ' (17, 21), 'Jesus Christ our Lord' (25), 'our only Master (δεσπότης) and Lord, Jesus Christ' (4)—a phrase, this last one, so strong that many commentators balk at it and wish to render it 'the only Master, viz., God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.' But we cannot feel surprised that one who pointedly calls himself in the first verse of his Epistle "slave" of Jesus Christ, should apply the correlative of that term, "Despotic Master and Lord" to Jesus Christ, three verses later. No doubt "no Jew could use" such a phrase "without thinking of the one Master in heaven";5 but that is only evidence that this Jew thought of Jesus who was his 'Lord' and whose "slave" he recognized himself as being, as, in this eminent sense, his "Master in heaven" (cf. 2 P 2:1). Obviously it is the testimony of these two Epistles that Jesus was conceived by His first disciples as their divine Lord and Master.

Christology of 1 Peter

The designations of our Lord in 1 Peter are notably simple, but none the less significant. Peter's favorite designation for Him (as it is Paul's) is the simple 'Christ', used, ordinarily at least, as a proper name, though of course not without its appellative significance still clinging to it and in one or two instances (1:11, 11) becoming prominent (1:11, 11, 19, 2:21, 3:15, 16, 18, 4:1, 13, 14, 5:1, 10, 14). Next to the simple 'Christ' Peter uses by predilection the simplest of the solemn compound names, 'Jesus Christ' (1:1, 2, 3, 7, 13, 2:5, 3:21, 4:11). In the address to the Epistle he sets this designation in its place in the trine formula of Father, Spirit and Jesus Christ, with the effect of suggesting the Threefold Name, that is to say, with underlying implication of the Trinity. Similarly in 1:11 where "the Spirit of Christ," that is, most naturally, the Spirit which proceeds from and represents Christ, is spoken of as having resided in the ancient prophets, the preëxistence of Christ is assumed. Besides these proper names, Peter speaks of our Lord by the designation 'Lord' (2:3, 13, 3:15, cf. 2:25 and Bigg in loc. and p. 109) and in doing so applies an Old Testament text to Him in which 'Lord' stands for 'Jehovah,' and thus assimilates Him to the divine Being. By a combination of this great title and the solemn Messianic name of 'Jesus Christ,' he calls Jesus 'our Lord Jesus Christ' (1:3); and it is noticeable that it is by this significant title that he designates Jesus when he is speaking of God as not only His Father but His God—having reference doubtless to "the days of His flesh" (Heb 5:7), that is to say, to His humiliation. No other titles are applied to our Lord in this Epistle, except that in 2:25 He is spoken of as 'the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls,' and at 5:3, 4 as 'Chief Shepherd,' modes of description in which the soteriological rather than the ontological element is prominent.

2 Peter and the Deity of Our Lord

In comparison with 1 Peter, 2 Peter makes use of more elaborate designations in speaking of Christ. Not only does the simple 'Jesus' not occur in this Epistle, but not even the simple 'Christ': and the less complex compound 'Jesus Christ' occurs in its simplicity only once—in the formality of the address. The simple 'Lord,' on the other hand, seems to be used of Christ in a few cases (3:8, 9, 10, 15), and a number of more or less sonorous combinations of it occur: 'Jesus our Lord' (1:2), 'our Lord Jesus Christ' (1:8, 14, 16), 'the Lord and Saviour' (3:2), 'our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ' (1:11, 2:20, 3:18), with the last of which may be connected the great phrase 'our God and Saviour, Jesus Christ' (1:1). Two things that are notable in this list of designations are the repeated use of 'Saviour' of our Lord, and the clear note of deity which is struck in their ascriptions. 'Saviour' itself is a divine appellation transferred to Christ: to whom it is applied fifteen times out of the twenty-three in which it occurs in the New Testament. In 2 Peter it occurs five times, always of Christ, and never alone, but always coupled under a single article with another designation, and so forming a solemn formula. In this respect the two phrases, 'our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ' (1:11, 2:20, 3:18) and 'our God and Saviour Jesus Christ' (1:1) are perfectly similar and must stand or fall together. Not only, however, is the deity of our Lord openly asserted in the direct naming of Him here 'our God and Saviour.' It is almost equally clearly asserted in the parallel phrase, 'our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.' And it is implied in the conjunction of 'God' and 'Jesus our Lord' in 1:2 as co-objects of saving knowledge (cf. 1:8, 2:20, 3:18), and in the ascription to 'our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ' of an eternal Kingdom (1:11). Besides these designations, our Lord is called by Peter, as by Jude (4), our 'Master' (δεσπότης) with the same high implications (2:1); and the declaration of God the Father at the transfiguration that He is 'God's Son,' 'God's Beloved,' is cited (1:17) with profound and reverential satisfaction.

John's Epistles and 'the Son of God.'

Perhaps nothing is more notable in the designations of our Lord in these Epistles—James, Jude, 1 Peter, 2 Peter,—than the dropping out of sight of the title 'Son of God.' Only in the single passage in 2 Peter in which the testimony of the Father in the transfiguration scene is appealed to, is the term 'Son' applied to Jesus at all. The case is very different in the Johannine Epistles. Of them the application to Jesus of the title 'Son of God,' in one form or another, is preëminently characteristic. He is called, indeed, simply 'Jesus' (1 Jno 2:22, 4:3, 4:15, 5:1), and 'Christ' without adjunct (1 Jno [2:22, 5:1],; 2 Jno 9); and also 'Jesus Christ' (1 Jno 4:2; [4:15]; 5:6, 2 Jno 7); and even 'Jesus Christ the Righteous' (1 Jno 2:1); and He is described in the great phrases 'Word of Life' (1 Jno 1:1), 'Advocate with the Father' (2:1), 'Saviour of the World' (4:14). But the favorite designations applied to Him in these Epistles emphasize His divine Sonship. The most common formula employed is the simple 'Son' standing in correlation with God or the Father (1 Jno 2:22, 23, 23, 24, 4:10, 14, 5:9, 10, 11, 12, 2 Jno 9); but the full form 'Son of God' occurs also with some frequency (1 Jno 3:8, 4:15, 5:5, 12, 13, 20) and quite a variety of expanded phrases appear by its side, such as 'God's only begotten Son' (1 Jno 4:9, cf. 5:18), 'Jesus, God's Son' (1 Jno 1:7), 'God's Son, Jesus Christ' (1 Jno 1:3, 3:23, 5:20), 'Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father' (2 Jno 3). By means of this constant designation of Jesus as 'the Son of God,' John keeps before his readers His divine dignity. He is not of the world, but has come into the world (5:20) upon a mission, to destroy all that is evil (5:8) and to save the world (1:7, 4:10–14, 5:5), whereunto He was sent (4:9, 10, 14), that all might have life in Him (5:5, 12, 15); for God has given unto us eternal life and this life is in 'the Son,' so that He who hath 'the Son' hath the life (3:11, 12). So closely is He associated with God the Father (1:3, 3:23) that to deny Him is to deny the Father (2:23) and to confess Him is to confess the Father (2:23, 4:15) and to abide in Him is to abide in the Father (2:24, cf. 1:3). Obviously to John the 'Son of God' is Himself God; and what is thus implied in the current use of this title is openly declared at the close of the Epistle, where of 'the Son of God, Jesus Christ' it is solemnly affirmed, "This is the True God and Eternal Life" (5:20).

Jesus the 'True God'

In this remarkable concluding paragraph the Apostle is encouraging his readers in view of the sin which is in the world and which they feel to be working in themselves. "We know," says he, "that every one who has been begotten of God"—that is to say, every truly Christian man, who has been born of the Spirit—"sinneth not": not because he has of himself power to preserve himself pure, but because "He that was begotten of God"—that is to say, God's own Son, Jesus Christ—"keepeth him and the evil one toucheth him not." This is but the Johannine way of saying what Peter says in his way when he assures his readers that Christians "are guarded by the power of God through faith unto a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time" (1 P 1:5). But John proceeds with his encouraging message. "We know," he adds, "that we are of God and the whole world lieth in the evil one. And we know that the Son of God is come and hath given us an understanding, that we know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true, in His Son Jesus Christ." God is He that is true; and what is said is that if we are in His Son Jesus Christ, we are in God. Why? Because Jesus Christ Himself, being His Son, is Himself just this God that is true; and therefore it is just this that the Apostle adds: "This is," he says with the emphatic demonstrative,—"this is the True God and Life Eternal" (5:20). The upshot of the whole matter, then, is that those who are in Jesus Christ need have no fear in the midst of the temptations of earth: for to be in Jesus Christ is to be in the only real God, since Jesus Himself is this 'Real God,' and as such 'Eternal Life.'

Here, then, are two new descriptive epithets applied to Jesus, as the 'Son of God.' He is 'Eternal Life,'—which recalls the figurative designation of Him as 'the Life' in the Gospel of John (14:6, 11:25, cf. 1:5, 9, 1 Jno 1:2, cf. 1 Jno 2:8). And He is 'the True,' 'the Real, God,' the God who corresponds in every respect to the idea of God, who is what God ought to be and is. There is "only one true God," John quotes his Master as declaring (Jno 17:3), to know whom is eternal life: and now he tells us that Jesus Christ, because the 'Son' of this only true God, is Himself this 'True God' and this 'Eternal Life.' He then who is in Him is in 'the True God' and has 'the Eternal Life,—'the Eternal Life' that was in the Father and has been manifested in His 'Son Jesus Christ,' and is now declared by the Apostle in order that his readers, too, may enter into that fellowship which he was himself enjoying "with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ" (1:3). The Epistles of John, also, thus culminate not only in calling Christ 'God,' but in so calling Him 'God' as to throw out into emphasis that He is all that God is. James calls Him 'the Glory': Peter 'the great God': Paul 'God over all': John 'the Real God.' It was because he so conceived Jesus as God's unique Son (1 Jno 4:9) that John is able to speak of the forgiveness of sins "through His Name" (1 Jno 2:12), and of faith "in His Name" securing eternal life (5:13, cf. 3:23), and even (3 Jno 7) of the whole Christian course turning on loyalty to 'the Name,'—that is, obviously, Jesus' Name,—without further definition. Clearly, to him, 'the Name of Jesus' was the Name that is above every name.

How Our Companions Thought of Him

Even a rapid glance like this over the designations applied to Christ in the Epistles written by Christ's immediate companions will suffice to show that the estimate put upon His personality by Paul has nothing in it peculiar to that writer. There may meet us, as we pass from Epistle to Epistle, varying methods of giving expression to the faith common to all: but it is common to all to look upon Jesus Christ as a divine person. So far as appears it did not occur to anyone in the primitive Christian community to put a lower estimate upon His personality than that; and writer vies with writer only in his attempts to give his faith in his divine Redeemer clear and emphatic expression. If there was a more primitive conception than this of Jesus' dignity it had died away and left no trace behind it before the Christian community found a voice for itself. Whether that can be conceived to have happened in the course of the few years which intervened between the public career and death of Jesus and the rise of a Christian literature,—say, in James,—or, say, in Paul,—or, say, in the evangelic documents,—each one must judge for himself. But in seeking to form an opinion on this matter, it should be borne in mind that there intervened only a very brief period indeed between the death of Christ and the beginnings of Christian literature: that much of this literature credibly represents itself as the product of actual companions of our Lord: and that it was all written in the presence of such companions, reflects their opinions, and was published under their eye. That absolutely no trace of a lower view of the person of Christ is discernible in any portion of this literature seems in these circumstances not only a valid suggestion but a convincing proof that no such lower view had been prevalent in the Christian community: that, in a word, the followers of Jesus must be supposed to have been heartily convinced of His deity from the very beginning.

THE WITNESS OF THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS

The Epistle to the Hebrews enters no claim to be the composition of one of our Lord's immediate followers. Neither does it represent the thought of a period antedating the composition of the Epistles of Paul. It synchronizes in its date rather with that of the later half of these Epistles (c. A. D. 64). It comes to us like its own Melchizedek, "without father, without mother, without genealogy," bearing its own independent witness to how Jesus was thought and spoken of by the Christian community in the seventh decade of the first Christian century; or, at least, by a special and very interesting group of Christians living at that time, made up of those Jews who had seen in Jesus the promised Messiah and accepted Him as their longed-for Redeemer.

Prevalence of 'Christ'

In the designations it applies to our Lord in general, this Epistle reflects, of course, the usage of the first age of the Church, which has already been observed in the other Epistles: but equally of course not without its own peculiarities. As in the Epistles of Paul, the most frequently occurring of the simple designations is 'Christ' (3:6, 14, 5:5, 6:1, 9:11, 14, 24, 28, 11:26). The simple 'Jesus,' however, is employed relatively much more frequently than in Paul's letters (2:9, 3:1, 6:20, 7:22, 10:19, 12:2, 24, 13:12): it occurs almost as frequently, indeed, as 'Christ.' Neither is, however, a common title in Hebrews (nine and eight times respectively), nor is the compound title 'Jesus Christ,' which occurs three times (10:10, 13:8, 21), while 'Lord Jesus' (13:20) and 'Jesus the Son of God' (4:14) each occurs once. The simple 'Lord' also is only occasionally applied to our Lord (1:10, 2:3, 7:14; [12:14]); and no combinations of it with other designations occur at all, except, as we have already intimated, the phrase 'our Lord Jesus' is once met with (13:20). It is noticeable that in two of the three instances in which the term 'Lord' is employed of Christ (1:10, 2:3) it is used in order to throw into prominence His superangelic dignity. The peculiarity of Hebrews is manifested in the free use it makes of the two designations, 'the Son' (1:2, 5, 5, 8, 3:6, 5:5, 8, 7:28), or more fully the 'Son of God' (4:14, 6:6, 7:3, 10:29), and 'the (or our) High Priest' (2:17, 3:1, 4:14, 15, 5:10, 6:20, 7:26, 8:1, 9:11) or simply 'priest' (5:6, 7:3, 11, [15], 17, 21; [8:4]; 10:21), which form respectively the favorite ontological and the favorite soteriological designations of Christ in this Epistle.

Recognition of Jesus' Humanity

It is chiefly by means of and in connection with the title 'Son' that this Epistle (in this, like the Epistles of John) gives expression to its conception of our Lord's person. There is no lack of recognition of the humanity of our Lord. Indeed, nowhere else in the New Testament do we find the reality and the completeness of His humanity so fully expounded and so strongly insisted upon. But it is the transcendent conception of Christ, which looks upon Him as 'the Son of God,' clothed with all the attributes of God, that gives its whole tone to the Epistle.4 The keynote is struck in the very opening verses, where our Lord is set as 'Son' in contrast not merely with the prophets, the greatest representatives of God on earth, but also with the angels, the highest of creatures. All these are servants of God: He is His 'Son,' through whom no doubt God works (1:2), but as one works through a fellow in whom He is reduplicated; and whom He addresses by the great names peculiar to Himself, 'God' (1:8) and—its equivalent here—'Lord' (1:10, 2:2).

What 'the Son' is

That it is what is called the metaphysical Sonship, which is here attributed to our Lord is obvious in itself and is put beyond all doubt by the description which is given of Him as 'Son.' In this description there are assigned to Him divine works, in eternity and in time: the creation of the world and the upholding of the universe. But the most striking element of it tells us rather what the 'Son' is than what He had done or is yet to do. He is, we are told, "the effulgence of God's glory and the very image of His substance"—which seems to be only a rich and suggestive way of saying, to put it briefly, that the 'Son,' as 'Son,' is just God's fellow. He is the repetition of God's glory: the reiteration of His substance. By the "glory of God" is meant here just the divine nature itself, apprehended in its splendor: and by its "effulgence" is meant not a reflection, but, so to speak, a reduplication of it. The 'Son' is just God over again in the glory of His majesty. Similarly by the "substance" of God is meant, not His bare essence, but His whole nature, with all its attributes; and by "the very image" is meant a correspondence as close as that which an impression gives back to a seal: the 'Son' of God in no single trait in the least differs from God.7 In a word, what is given to us in the 'Son' is here declared to be God as 'Son' standing over against God as 'Father.'

His Deity

It can cause no surprise, therefore, when the author declares that it was of the 'Son' that God was speaking in the Psalm (45:6), when He said, "Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever." This is only to apply directly to the 'Son' the name which is in the whole discussion implied to be His: for undoubtedly the very point of the whole argument is to the effect that Jesus Christ as the 'Son of God' stands infinitely above every creature just because He is 'God' Himself. We may leave undecided the question whether or no the doxology at the close of the Epistle is to be referred to Christ, treated here as the God He is recognized throughout the Epistle as being. Certainly there is no reason why this author should not have ascribed "eternal glory" to the Being he had described as in His very nature "the effulgence of the divine glory," and for that very reason it may be a matter of indifference to us whether he has done so or not. Nor is much added to this picture of the divine Christ by his designation of Him, without qualification, as 'the Firstborn' (1:6), or by his noticing that God has "appointed Him Heir of all things" (1:2). 'Firstborn' and 'Heir' are little more than specially honorific ways of saying 'Son.' God's 'Firstborn' as such takes rank above all other existing beings: even all of the angels shall do Him reverence. God's 'Firstborn' is also naturally God's 'Heir,' an heir whose inheritance embraces the universe, and whose tenure stretches to eternity. All these declarations are bound very closely together in their common relation to the fundamental conception of our Lord's divine Sonship; and constitute items by the mention of which the contents of the idea of Sonship are developed. The statements of the opening verses of the Epistle seem to be arranged in a sort of climax by means of which the glory of the New Covenant, revealed in the 'Son,' is more and more enhanced. The glory of the New Covenant is that it has been introduced by God the 'Son'—that 'Son' who, despite His lowly manifestation on earth, has been appointed heir of all things,—that is, Lord of all: by whom, indeed, the worlds were made in the depths of eternity,—that is, who is the eternal Creator of all that is: who, in fact, is in Himself the effulgence of God's glory and the impress of His substance—that is to say, all that God is: and by whom, because He is all that God is, the universe is held in being.

Soteriological Titles

It is particularly noticeable that at this precise point a mention of Christ's propitiatory work is introduced. This 'Son of God,' whose dignity has been thus expounded, "made purification of sins." The soteriological interest is present, therefore, even in this ontological passage, and it is the soteriological interest, indeed, which gives its importance to this ontological discussion in the eyes of the writer. The soteriological titles by which he designates our Lord are therefore naturally as rich as the ontological ones. He is 'the Mediator of the New Covenant' (8:6, 9:15, 12:24): He is the Ground of eternal Salvation (5:9): He is 'the Author of Salvation' (2:10, cf. Acts 3:15, 5:31): He is 'the Author and Perfecter of our Faith' (12:2): He is our Forerunner into that which is within the veil (6:20): He is 'the Apostle and High Priest of our Confession' (3:1): He is 'the Great Shepherd of the Sheep' (13:20): and, above all (for this is a favorite conception of this Epistle), He is our 'Priest' (5:6, 7:3, 11, [15], 17, 21; [8:4]; 10:21) or more specifically our 'High Priest' ([2:17]; 3:1, 4:14, 15, 5:10, 6:20, 7:26, 8:1, 9:11). All these are great designations: and we see at a glance that they reflect in their substance the high estimate put upon our Lord's person as the 'Son of God.' It is only because He is the 'Son of God' that He may be fitly described in His saving work by these high designations. It is also at once observable that the Messanic conception underlies and gives form to them all. If Jesus is conceived by the writer of this Epistle in His person fundamentally as the eternal 'Son of God'; He is equally conceived in His work as fundamentally the Messiah appointed of God to inaugurate the new order of things and to bring His people safely into the experience of the promised salvation. As 'Mediator of the New Covenant' He gives His life for the redemption of His people, establishing new relations between them and God by means of His blood. As the 'Originator of Salvation,' He tasted death for every man, receiving in Himself the penalties due to them, not to Him. As 'Author and Perfecter of our faith' He endured the cross, despising the shame that He might be not merely our example, but our Saviour. As 'the Great Shepherd' He laid down His life for His sheep. As 'the Apostle and High Priest' He is the One appointed by God to make sacrifice of Himself for the sins of the people,—for every High Priest must needs have somewhat to offer, and this 'our High Priest' has through His own blood obtained eternal redemption for us.

Christ our 'Priest'

We see that the red thread of redemption in blood is woven into all the allusions to the saving work of the 'Son of God.' And we see that the chief vehicle in this Epistle for the expression of this high teaching is the representation of our Lord's work as priestly in its nature, and the proclamation of Him as 'the great High Priest.' The interest of this grows out of the circumstance that here at last in the New Testament the conception of Messiah as Priest comes to its rights. In their absorption in the conception of Messiah as King the Jews gave scanty hospitality to the rich suggestions of the Old Testament of other aspects in which His office and work might be contemplated. It was characteristic of Christianity, under the illumination thrown back upon the promise by its fulfillment, to gather these neglected aspects together and note their fulfillment in Christ. Among them was the conception of Messiah as a priest performing the priestly work of propitiation. There seems to be little trace of the currency of such a conception among the Jews. There is also little use made of it in other books of the New Testament. But in the Epistle to the Hebrews it is given its full exposition; strikingly illustrated from the same Psalm which declares the Messiah David's Lord not less than David's son,—"Thou art a Priest forever after the order of Melchizedek"; and made the vehicle for the inculcation of the fundamental doctrine of Christianity—the propitiatory death of Jesus, the reconciliation of God by His sacrifice of Himself, and His eternal intercession for His people. This is the great contribution of the Epistle to the Hebrews to the apprehension of the nature of our Lord's work.

THE WITNESS OF THE APOCALYPSE

A Summary View of Early Conceptions

The peculiarity of the Book of Revelation, as an Apocalypse, gives it the superficial appearance of standing apart from the other books of the New Testament in a class by itself. It requires little scrutiny of its contents, however, to assure us that this is true only of its form. In the matter of the designations it applies to our Lord, for example, the cursory reader is impressed by their novelty and astonished by the richness of their suggestion; but on analyzing their content he soon discovers that they embody in their splendid phraseology no other conceptions than those he has been made familiar with in the other books of the New Testament. Indeed, there is a sense in which it would not be untrue to say that the Book of Revelation, written as it was at the close of the first Christian century (c. A. D. 96), gathers up into an epitome and gives vivid, and we may say even emotional, expression to the whole century's thought of Jesus. A certain comprehensiveness is thus imparted to its christological allusions which has puzzled the critical student and been made by him the reproach of the book and even the occasion of denial to it of unity of composition. It is in truth merely a witness to the unity of the conception of Jesus which characterized the whole Apostolic Church, finding, indeed, varied expression according to the idiosyncrasy of each writer, but remaining through all variety of expression essentially the same.

Two Classes of Designations

The long list of designations in which this conception of Jesus is at least in part embodied in the Book of Revelation may be perhaps somewhat roughly divided into two classes. We say roughly divided because the separating line is an uncertain one and the two classes melt insensibly into one another. These two classes may perhaps equally roughly be discriminated as simple and descriptive designations: simple designations, that is to say, names merely designating our Lord, though, of course, no one of these names merely designates our Lord, but all have more or less of a descriptive element; and descriptive designations, that is to say, designations which are more or less elaborate descriptions of His nature and functions.

Simple Designations

The simple designations are, in accordance with the general character of the book as a symbolical Apocalypse, both few and infrequently employed. In the formal opening of the book we have—as in the formal opening of several others of the New Testament books (Mt 1:1, 18, Mk 1:1, Jno 1:17, Rom 1:1, 1 Cor 1:1, Gal 1:1, 1 P 1:1, 2 P 1:1, [Jno 1:3, 2 Jno 3], Jude 1)—the full ceremonious name, 'Jesus Christ' (1:1, 1, 5). In the formal closing verses of the book the place of this solemn designation is taken by the somewhat more descriptive designation 'the Lord Jesus' (22:20, 21, cf. however, v. r. 'Jesus Christ' in verse 21). The simple 'Jesus' occurs more frequently (1:9, 9, 12:17, 14:12, 17:6, 19:10, 10, 20:4, 22:16), and, if we may be allowed the expression, appears to be the more emotional, as distinguished from the more formal, simple designation of our Lord in this book. The simple 'Christ' occurs only twice (20:4, 6), although in what we may call its more descriptive form—that is in its appellative use—'the Lord's Christ (Anointed),' 'God's Christ (Anointed),'—it occurs twice more (at 11:15, 12:10). The term 'Lord' seems to be a designation of Christ at 14:13: and His Lordship is of course copiously recognized elsewhere, not merely by implication as in the designation of a day as "the Lord's day" (1:10), but in a series of elaborately descriptive designations the simplest of which is perhaps 'the King of Kings and Lord of Lords' (19:16), varied to 'the Lord of Lords and King of Kings' (17:14, cf. 1:5, 2:1, 12, 3:7, 5:5). Of the more common Messianic designations, besides the fundamental 'the Christ' (11:15, 12:10; and in compounds 1:1, 2, 5) and 'Christ' (20:4, 6), only 'the Son of God' occurs, and that but once (2:18, cf. 'my Father,' 2:27, 3:5, 21; 'His God and Father,' 1:6; 'my God,' 3:2, 12), and accompanied by descriptive adjuncts which give it its very highest connotation. Our Lord's own 'Son of Man,' however, has its echo in the description of Jesus in two visions as "one like unto a Son of Man" (1:13, 14:14): and by the preservation in this designation of the "like unto" of the Danielic vision (7:13)—strengthened from the simple ὡς to the emphatic ὅμοιον,—the seer manages to assert with great strength the essential deity of our Lord. He was not a son of man but only "like unto a son of man." He even enhances this implication by interweaving into the description traits drawn not only from Daniel's "Son of Man," but also from his "Ancient of Days."5 The Johannine designation of 'the Word of God' (19:13) also occurs as the name of the conquering Christ, apparently with the implication that in Jesus is manifested the definitive revelation of God in which He addresses Himself to man with irresistible power. Probably the "man child" (or "son") of 12:5 (cf. 12:13, "the man") ultimately refers to our Lord: and if so it also is doubtless Messianic, taking hold at once of Is 66:7 and Psalm 2:9, possibly even of Gen 4:1: in any event the allusion is to the conquest of evil by this Son of the woman.

Descriptive Designations

'The Lamb'

The more elaborate descriptive titles which are applied to our Lord embody the same circle of ideas as are more briefly suggested by the simpler designations; and only more vividly and richly express their contents. Some of these have for their burden the saving activities of our Lord and may therefore fitly be called soteriological. A good example of these is provided by the direct description of Him as "Him that loved us and loosed us from our sins by His blood" (1:5). But the most striking and at the same time the most frequently employed descriptive designation of this class is that which calls Him "the Lamb that hath been slain" (5:12, 13:8, cf. 5:6, 9, 7:14), or more commonly simply "the Lamb" without express but always with implied reference to the actual sacrifice (5:8, 13, 6:1‚ 16, 7:9, 10, 14, 17, 12:11, 14:1, 4, 10, 15:3, 17:14, 19:7, 9, 21:9, 14, 22, 27, 22:1, 3). Indeed, we understate the matter when we say this is the most frequently employed descriptive designation of Christ of its class. It is in fact the most frequently employed designation of Jesus of any kind, and must be looked upon as embodying the seer's favorite mode of conceiving of Jesus and His work. He even uses it in such a manner as to suggest that it had acquired for him much the status of a proper name, and suggested itself as a designation of Jesus even when the mind of the writer was dwelling on other aspects of His work than that most closely symbolized by this title. There could be no more striking indication of the high significance the writer attached to the sacrificial death of Christ, and to the dominance of the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah in the framing of his Messianic conceptions; matters which are otherwise copiously illustrated by his language.9 Other prevailingly soteriological designations advert especially to our Lord's resurrection,—such as that by which He is spoken of as 'the First born of the Dead' (1:5); and others still to His trustworthiness, such as when He is called 'the Faithful and True' (19:11), or 'the Faithful Witness' (1:5), and more elaborately 'the Amen, the Faithful and True Witness, the beginning of the creation of God' (3:14); or again, 'He that is holy, He that is true, He that hath the keys of David, He that openeth and none shall shut and that shutteth and none shall open' (3:7).

Accumulative Designations

The transition from these soteriological designations to those which are more purely honorific, or perhaps we might better say, ontological, is very gradual, or indeed insensible: and nothing is more characteristic of the book than the sharp contrast into which designations of the two classes are brought by their immediate conjunction. Thus, for example, we read: "And I wept much, because no one was found to open the book, … and one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not, behold the Lion that is of the tribe of Judah … hath overcome to open the book.… And I saw in the midst of the throne, and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, a Lamb standing as though it had been slain, … and he came and taketh the book …" (5:4 seq.). There is no question of mixed metaphors here: there is only question of bringing together in Jesus by the most varied of symbols all the aspects of the Messianic prediction, and the exhibition of these all as finding their fulfillment in Him. All these designations are distinctly Messianic in their ground tone, and the Messianic ground tone is taken from all forms of the Messianic expectation, but perhaps prevailingly from that associated in the Gospels with the title of 'Son of Man,' to which there is manifest allusion even in passages in which there is not only no adduction of that title, but no direct designation of our Lord from that point of view (1:7). The great opening description of our Lord as 'Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth' (1:5) unites already nearly all forms of designating Him employed in the book. Here is the simple name, the recognition of His dependableness, and the ascription to Him of the inauguration of life and of universal sovereignty. The Messianic ground tone is especially prominent in such designations as those which call Him 'the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David' (5:5), or 'the Root and the Offspring of David, the bright, the morning Star' (22:16), but passes more into the background in such as those which speak of Him as 'the Son of God who hath eyes like a flame of fire and His feet are like unto burnished brass' (2:18), or 'He that holdeth the seven stars in His right hand, He that walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks' (2:1), or 'He that hath the seven spirits of God and the seven stars' (3:1). It is His Messianic function of judgment which is thrown forward in the description of Him as 'He that hath the sharp two-edged sword' (2:12); 'He that is the ruler of the kings of the earth' (1:5), 'whose eyes are like a flame of fire' (2:18), and who, since His dominion is universal, is 'the Lord of Lords and King of Kings' (17:14, 19:16)—although a greater than a Messiah is obviously here. The climax is attained in the description of Him as 'the First and the Last, which was dead and lived again' (2:8), 'the First and the Last, and the Living One' (1:18), 'the Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End' (22:13), in whose hands are the destinies of men (1:18, 3:7).

The Deity of Our Lord

Trinitarian Background

It seems scarcely necessary to draw out in detail the wealth of implication of deity which these designations contain. The Apocalypse does not apply to our Lord directly the simple designation 'God.' But everything short of that is done to emphasize the seer's estimate of Him as a divine Being clothed with all the divine attributes. This is generally allowed; and those who are set upon having the Apocalypse witness to a lower christology commonly content themselves with the remark that its language must not be taken at its face value. Baur, for example, contends that although the highest predicates are ascribed to Jesus, they are "only names borne outwardly by Him, and are not associated with His person in any inner unity of nature"; that "inner connection between the divine predicates and the historical individual who bears them" is lacking. In point of fact these divine predicates are there; and whether the seer means anything by them may be safely left to the reader to decide. Jesus is represented as emphatically as God Himself, as the living one (1:18), eternal (1:18), omniscient (1:14, 2:18, 19:12), the searcher of the reins and hearts (2:23), in whose hands are the keys of death and hell (1:18). If in reminiscence of Is 44:6 where the Lord, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts, declares of Himself: "I am the first and the last: and beside me there is no God,"—God is represented as announcing: "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end" (21:6, cf. 1:8), Jesus equally (despite the strong monotheistic assertion of the original passage) is represented as announcing: "I am the first and the last, and the living one" (1:17, 18, cf. 2:8), "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end" (22:13). Indeed, in the opening address we have one of those Trinitarian arrangements which betray the real underlying conception of deity in others, too, of the New Testament writers: "Grace to you and peace from Him which is and which was and which is to come"—that is Jehovah, of which this is an analysis,—"and from the seven Spirits"—that is the Holy Spirit set forth in His divine completeness,—"and from Jesus Christ who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead and the ruler of the kings of the earth" (1:4 seq.). In the presence of such pervasive and universally recognized ascriptions of deity to our Lord we need not stop to expound the significance of such designations as that by which He is called not merely the 'Amen and the faithful and true witness,' but 'the principle of the creation of God' (3:14)—that is to say, the active agent in creating all that God creates. It is abundantly clear that the Christ of the Apocalypse is a divine person.16

THE ISSUE OF THE INVESTIGATION

Fundamental Conviction of the Christian Community

We have now passed in review the whole body of designations which are applied to our Lord in the pages of the New Testament. We cannot fail to be impressed with the variety of these designations and the richness of their suggestion. It would be a pleasant task to develop all their implications. This would, however, take us too far afield for our present purpose. Let it suffice to observe that at bottom they seem to be charged with three specific convictions on the part of the Christian community, to which they give endlessly repeated and endlessly varied expression. Christ is the Messiah; Christ is our Redeemer; Christ is God: these are the great asseverations which are especially embodied in them. All three are already summed up in the angelic announcement which was made to the shepherds at His birth: "I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all the people: for there is born to you this day in the city of David the Saviour, who is Christ the Lord" (Lk 2:11). The whole New Testament may be said to be an exposition and enforcement of that announcement: and in the course of this exposition and enforcement it teaches us many things. Above all, it places beyond dispute the main fact with which we have now to deal, this fact, to wit, that the whole Christian community, and that from the very beginning, was firmly convinced that Jesus Christ was God manifest in the flesh.

Presupposes Our Lord's Teaching

There really can be found no place for doubt of this fact. But upon its emergence as an indubitable fact it becomes plain that it is freighted with great significance. The fact that the whole Christian community from the very beginning held, as to its fundamental principle, to the deity of its founder, is a very remarkable fact, and surely needs accounting for. And it will be found difficult to impossibility adequately to account for it except upon the assumption that the founder of Christianity really was a divine person. This universal and uniform conviction of the deity of Christ in the primitive Christian body in a word implies the actual deity of Christ, as its presupposition. It cannot be supposed that the whole body of the first Christians firmly believed in the deity of their Master without evidence—without much evidence—without convincing evidence. The primary item of this evidence was no doubt our Lord's own self-assertion: and this is a fact of the first importance which is immediately given in the fact of the universal and uniform belief in our Lord's deity which characterized the first age of the Church. That belief cannot possibly be accounted for except on the supposition that it was founded in our Lord's teaching. As certain as it is then that the primitive Christians were firmly and without exception convinced of our Lord's deity, so certain is it that our Lord—as indeed He is represented to have done in the uniform tradition—asserted Himself to be a divine person. And now we must go further. As certain as it is that these two things are true, that the whole Christian community believed their Lord to be divine and that Jesus taught that He was divine, so certain it is that neither of them could be true if it were not true that our Lord was divine.

And Something More than His Teaching

We have already remarked that the Christian community cannot be supposed to have formed and immovably fixed in their hearts the conviction that their Lord was divine without evidence—much evidence—convincing evidence. We have also pointed out that the primary item of this evidence was our Lord's own assertion. But there certainly must have been more evidence than our Lord's bare assertion. Men do not without ado believe everyone who announces himself to be God, upon the bald announcement alone. There must have been attendant circumstances which supported the announcement and gave it verisimilitude,—nay, cogency—or it would not have had such power over men. Our Lord's life, His teachings, His character, must have been consonant with it. His deeds as well as His words must have borne Him witness. The credit accorded to His assertion is the best possible evidence that such was the case. We can understand how His followers could believe Him divine, if in point of fact He not only asserted Himself to be divine but lived as became a God, taught as befitted a divine Instructor, in all His conversation in the world manifested a perfection such as obviously was not human: and if dying, He rose again from the dead. If He did none of these things can their firm and passionate faith in His deity be explained?

Including Something Very Conclusive

Possibly we do not always fully realize the nature of the issue here brought before us. Here is a young man scarcely thirty-three years of age, emerged from obscurity only for the brief space of three years, living during those years under the scorn of the world, which grew steadily in intensity and finally passed into hatred, and dying at the end the death of a malefactor: but leaving behind Him the germs of a world-wide community, the spring of whose vitality is the firm conviction that He was God manifest in the flesh. If anything human is obvious it is obvious that this conviction was not formed and fixed without evidence for it of the most convincing kind. The account His followers themselves gave of the matter is that their faith was grounded not merely in His assertions, nor merely in the impression His personality made upon them in conjunction with His claims,—but specifically in a series of divine deeds, culminating in His rising from the dead, setting its seal upon His claims and the impression made by His personality. This is the account of the great place the Resurrection of Christ takes in the Apostolic propaganda. It is the seal set by heaven upon the truth of His deity as proclaimed in His teaching. It is safe to say that apart from evidence so convincing the high claims of Jesus could not have been met with such firm and unquestioning faith by His followers. This very faith becomes thus a proof of the truth of His claims.

Not Supposable that Jesus made False Claims

And so, in fact, is the mere fact that He made these claims. We have seen that the fact that He made these claims is not only asserted by all His followers, but is safeguarded by their faith in His deity, which were inexplicable without it. But it is evident that He could not have made such a claim unless what He claimed was true. We are not absurdly arguing that the claim to be God is one which cannot be made by a human being untruly. What is it that the folly or wickedness of men will not compass? But why should we absurdly argue that Jesus may be supposed to have done whatever we think within the compass of human folly or human wickedness? Was Jesus the silliest of men; or the most wicked? The point is not that no man could make such a claim untruly, but that Jesus could not make it untruly! Many men there have been, and are, who might do so; some have done so—men who were vilely impostors or wildly insane. Is Jesus to be classed with these men? Are we to ask with Renan how far Jesus may be supposed to have gone in assuming a rôle He knew He had no claim upon? Are we to ask, with Oscar Holtzmann, was Jesus a fanatic? These are the alternatives: grossly deceiving; grossly deceived; or else neither deceiving nor deceived, but speaking the words of soberness and truth. He, the flower of human sanity; He, the ripe fruit of human perfection; can He be supposed to have announced to His followers that He was above all angels, abode continually in equal intercourse with the Father, shared with Him in the ineffable Name—and it not be true? As Dr. Gwatkin crisply puts it, "There is a tremendous dilemma here which must be faced: assuming that the tremendous claim ascribed to Him is false, one would think it must have disordered His life with insanity if He made it Himself, and the accounts of His life if others invented it." This witness is true. Neither Jesus nor His followers could have invented the claims to deity which Jesus is reported to have made for Himself: for the truth of these claims is needed to account both for Jesus and for His followers.

The Issue the Sufficient Evidence of the Source

We have no intention of stopping here to argue these points; if indeed to establish them they need more argument than their mere statement. It was necessary, however, to suggest them in order to indicate the gain we register upon ascertaining, as we have ascertained, that the entire Christian community from the very first was firmly convinced of the deity of its Lord. That fact established, it carries with it the truth of the conviction. For the conviction, in the circumstances in which it was formed and held, cannot be accounted for save on the assumption of the existence of compelling evidence for it, and this compelling evidence must include in it the claims of Jesus, which in turn cannot be accounted for save on the assumption of their truth. Grant that Jesus was really God, in a word, and everything falls orderly into its place. Deny it, and you have a Jesus and a Christianity on your hands both equally unaccountable. And that is as much as to say that the ultimate proof of the deity of Christ is just—Jesus and Christianity. If Christ were not God, we should have a very different Jesus and a very different Christianity. And that is the reason that modern unbelief bends all its energies in a vain effort to abolish the historical Jesus and to destroy historical Christianity. Its instinct is right: but its task is hopeless. We need the Jesus of history to account for the Christianity of history. And we need both the Jesus of history and the Christianity of history to account for the history of the world. The history of the world is the product of the precise Christianity which has actually existed, and this Christianity is the product of the precise Jesus which actually was. To be rid of this Jesus we must be rid of this Christianity, and to be rid of this Christianity we must be rid of the world-history which has grown out of it. We must have the Christianity of history and the Jesus of history, or we leave the world that exists, and as it exists, unaccounted for. But so long as we have either the Jesus of history or the Christianity of history we shall have a divine Jesus.

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MONERGISM BOOKS

The Lord of Glory by B. B. Warfield, Copyright © 2019

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTORY

THE DESIGNATIONS OF OUR LORD IN MARK

MARK'S CONCEPTION OF OUR LORD

THE DESIGNATIONS OF OUR LORD IN MATTHEW

MATTHEW'S CONCEPTION OF OUR LORD

THE DESIGNATIONS OF OUR LORD IN LUKE AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS

THE JESUS OF THE SYNOPTISTS

THE JESUS OF THE SYNOPTISTS THE PRIMITIVE JESUS

THE DESIGNATIONS OF OUR LORD IN JOHN AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE

THE DESIGNATIONS OF OUR LORD IN ACTS AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE

THE CORROBORATION OF THE EPISTLES OF PAUL

THE WITNESS OF THE CATHOLIC EPISTLES

THE WITNESS OF THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS

THE WITNESS OF THE APOCALYPSE

THE ISSUE OF THE INVESTIGATION