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DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

T. and T. Clark's Publications.

Just published, in demy 4<o, Third Edition, price 25s.,
BIBLICO-THEOLOGICAL LEXICON OF NEW
TESTAMENT GREEK.
By HERMANN C RE MER, D.D.,'
PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GRKIFSWALD.
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF THE SECOND EDITION
(WITH ADDITIONAL MATTER AND CORRECTIONS BY THE AUTHOR)
By WILLIAM URWICK, M.A.
' Dr. Cromer's work Is highly and deservedly esteemed in Germany. It gives with
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that it deals with. ... Dr. Cremer's explanations are most lucidly set out.'— Guardian.
' It is hardly possible to exaggerate the value of this work to the student of the Greek
Testament. . . . The translation is accurate and idiomatic, aud the additions to the
later edition are considerable and important.' — Church Bells.
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to be, a Lexicon, both biblical and theological, aud treats not only of words, but of the
doctrines inculcated by those words.' — John, Bull.
'We very heartily commend this goodly volume to students of biblical literature.'—
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' We cannot find an important word in our Greek New Testament which is not
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' A work of immense erudition.' — Freeman.
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on the admirable manner in which he has executed his task, revealing ou his part
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T. and T. Clark's Publications.

Just published, in One Volume, 8vo, price 12s.,
FINAL CAUSES.
Br PAUL JANET, Member of the Institute, Paris.
CraitUlatrtf from tl)t dfrencf) iv ¦Wtlttam -affletfe, 33JB.
CONTENTS.— Preliminary Chapter— The Problem. Book I.— The law of
Finality. Book II.— The First Cause of Finality. Appendix.
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T. and T. Clark's Publications.

Just published, in demy 8vo, price 8s. 6d.,
SYNTAX OF THE HEBREW LANGUAGE
OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
By HEINRICH EWALD.
Crartslatrb from tTje ^istitTj ffietman ffibitton
By JAMES KENNEDY, B.D.
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a work of almost unique value.' — Baptist Magazine.
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recognised. . . . There can be but one opinion upon the value of Ewald's contribution
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literature.' — Daily Review.
Recently published, in demy 8vo, Third Edition, price 7s. 6d.,
AN INTRODUCTORY HEBREW GRAMMAR;
WLitl) ©rogrrsaibe <&ytxti&t$ in ""Eratoing anH Writing.
Bt A. B. DAYIDSON, M.A., LL.D.,
Professor of Hebrew, etc., in the New College, Edinburgh.
In One large 8vo Volume, Eighth English Edition, price 15s.,
A TREATISE ON THE
GRAMMAR OF NEW TESTAMENT GREEK,
lleprMr as % §asb oi |Ufo ^tnhmmt tixtgitii*.
Translated from the German of Dr. G. B. WINER.
With large additions and full Indices. Second Edition. Edited by Rev. ~W.
F. Moulton, D.D., one of the New Testament Translation Revisers.

T. and T. Clark's Publications.

Recently published, in demy 8vo, price Is. Gd.,
THE MIRACLES OF OUR LORD
|it xzhttan ta potont Cniirism.
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF
F. L. STEINMEYER, D.D.,
ORDINARY PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF BERLIN.

Contents : First Group. — Miracles considered as Signs of the Kingdom of
Heaven. Second Group. — Miracles considered as Symbols. Third Group. —
Miracles as Witnesses of the Power of the Kingdom of Heaven. Fourth Group.
— Miracles as Prophecies.

' This work vindicates in a vigorous and scholarly style the sound view of miracles
against the sceptical assaults of the time.' — Princeton Review.
'We commend the study of this work to thoughtful and intelligent readers, and
especially to students of divinity, whose position requires a competent knowledge of
modern theological controversy.' — Wesleyan Methodist Magazine.
! Will be welcomed by orthodox theologians as a valuable addition to the apologetic
literature of Christianity.' — Scotsman.
'As a profound scholar, an expert exegete, and powerful reasoner, Dr. Steinmeyer
shows himself to be thoroughly competent and trustworthy as a guide in such a field.' —
Scottish Congregational Magazine.
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Nonconformist. 'Any one who is making a study of the miracles, will find in this volume many new
hnes of thought opened, and some material he is not likely to get elsewhere.' — Daily

' We have read this excellent translation of Professor Steinmeyer's famous work on
Miracles with great satisfaction. It is a, careful and masterly reply to Strauss. . . .
We most cordially recommend the volume to young theological students.' — Watchman.
' The whole argument is bold, masterly, and convincing ; and the essay will take its
place among the best recent volumes of Christian evidence.' — Standard.
' To those who care to see how the infidel observations of Strauss and others of that
school can be met by a man of equal thought and learning, this work will be of full
value.' — Sword and Trowel.
'The book is an eminently thoughtful and suggestive one, and, judging from the
impression it has produced on our mind, one of the most effective defences of miracles
ever written.' — Freeman.
'Dr. Steinmeyer's work contains much judicious and able thinking on this subject, and
throws fresh light on various aspects of it.' — Evangelical Magazine.

NOTICE TO SUBSCRIBERS.

TV /TESSRS. CLARK have much pleasure in publishing the
IVI Second Issue of the Foreign Theological Library for
1879, viz- : —
STEINMEYER'S HISTORY OF THE PASSION AND
Resurrection of our Lord.
Haupt's Commentary on the First Epistle
of John.

NEW SERIES OF THE
jForetgn &f)eologtcal Ilifcrarg.
The Foreign Theological Library was commenced in 1846, and
from that time to this Four Volumes yearly (or 136 in all) have appeared
with the utmost regularity. The Publisher is not aware that there is
any other instance of a series of works having been continued for such
a length of time under the care of the same individual, and issued with
undeviating punctuality.
He trusts that this long-continued publication has not been without
influence for good upon theology and biblical criticism in English^,
speaking countries; and he has been grateful indeed for the recognition
of his services both by the press and by individuals whose opinions he
most values.
It is proposed to begin a New Series with 1880, and so give an
opportunity to many to subscribe who are possibly deterred by the
extent of the former Series.
With this view Messrs. Clark beg to announce as in preparation a
New and Enlarged Edition of
HAGENBACH'S HISTORY OF DOCTRINES. Translated from the last
Edition, and Edited, with large additions from various sources,
by the Rev. Prebendary Clark.
PROFESSOR GODET'S COMMENTARY ON THE EPISTLE OF ST. PAUL
TO THE ROMANS.
PROFESSOR DORNER'S SYSTEM OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE.
BISHOP MARTENSEN'S CHRISTIAN ETHICS. (Special Ethics.)
KRIEBEG'S DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT ON THE FOUNDATION OF
CHRISTIAN CONSCIOUSNESS.
DR. KEIL'S HANDBOOK OF BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGY.
From time to time other works will be added to this list; but the
Publishers are sanguine enough to believe that a Series containing the
works of writers so eminent, upon the most important subjects, cannot
fail to secure support.
The Binding of* the Series will be modernized so as to distinguish it
from the former Series.
The Subscription Price will remain as formerly, 21s. annually for
Four Volumes, payable in advance.
Edinburgh, 38 George Street,
November 1879.

CLARK'S

FOKEIGN

THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY.

NEW SERIES.
VOL. LXIII.

$tctnmtvet' s fei&torv of the passion antf Jftejiurrettton of our Eoto.

EDINBURGH:
T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET.
187 9.

FEINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB,
FOR
"T. & T. CLAEE, EDINBURGH.
LONDON  HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO.
DUBLIN,  KOBERTSON AND CO.
NEW YORK, .... SCRIBNER, AND WELFORD.

THE HISTORY

OF THE

PASSION AND RESURRECTION
OF OUR LORD
CONSLDEEED IN THE LIGHT OF MODEEN OEITICISM.

BY
DR. F. L. STEINMEYER,
PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN BERLIN.

NEW EDITION, SPECIALLY REVISED FOR ENGLISH READERS.
TRANSLATED BY
EEV. THOMAS CRERAE, M.A.,
AND
EEV. ALEXANDEE CUSIN, M.A.

EDINBUEGH:
T. & T. CLAEK, 38 GEOEGE STREET.
1879.

CONTENTS.

I. THE PASSION HISTOEY.
INTRODUCTION.
PAGE
1. The Tendency of Criticism, ...... 1
2. Dogmatic Reflection, ....... 6
3. The Testimony of the History, ..... 21
PART FIRST.
JESUS IN GETHSEMANE.
1. The Problem, ........ 34
2. The Solution, ........ 45
3. The Apostolic Word applied as a Test, . . . .63
PART SECOND.
THE SUFFERINGS OF JESUS.
1. The Aruest of Jesus, . . . . . .79
2. The Trial of Jesus, .... ... 90
3. The Surrender of Jesus to the Gentiles, .... 106
PART THIRD.
THE DEATH OF JESUS.
1. The Crucified Christ, ....... 140

2. The Dying Christ,
3. The Dead Christ,

152182

viii CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.

1. The Act of God,

PAGB

228

1. The Interest Involved, ^13
2. The Point of Departure, *19
3. The Method, FIRST SECTION.
THE RAISING OF JESUS.

236

2. The Aim of the Raising of Jesus in the Plan of Salvation, 247
3. The History of the Raising of our Lord, 257
SECOND SECTION.
THE RISING OF CHRIST FROM THE DEAD.
1. The Act of Christ, 270
2. The Aim of Christ's Rising in the Plan of Salvation, 281
3. The History of the Rising, 294
THIRD SECTION.
THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE.
1. The Reality of our Lord's Appearances, 315
2. The Object of the Manifestations of the Living One in the Plan
of Salvation, 327
3. The Gospel Narratives, 340
The Lord's Appearance to Mary Magdalene, 342
The Travellers to Emmaus, 346
The Christophany on Easter Evening, 352
The History of Thomas, 358
The Manifestation by the Lake, 364
The Lord's Appearing on the Day of His Ascension, 376

AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO ENGLISH TRANSLATION.

OlNCE the first edition of the present work appeared in
*^J Germany, the author against whose destructive tendencies
it was primarily directed has been removed from this life. A
few years ago, David Strauss closed his earthly career. The seed
which he scattered by a long, restless, and uninterrupted activity,
extending over a generation, has not been prevented by his death
from developing and flourishing. It is true this thinker, having
never filled an official position, neither founded a school, nor
was able to collect and form a circle of disciples, properly so
called; but as the widespread impression which he produced on
the educated classes still continues, so the impulse which he gave
to theological research remains as a fermenting leaven, and, going
even beyond the master, threatens to complete the process of
dissolution. Strauss had made the facts of the life of Jesus
Christ the object of his attack ; it is only a necessary consequence
if those who follow in his steps call in question also more remote
facts. " Whosoever hath not the Sou, the same hath not the
Father who hath sent Him ; " if the second article is overturned,
the first is deprived of its basis. The Old Testament also is
turned into a conglomerate of myths, and the living God, the
almighty Creator of heaven and earth, loses His right to existence.
No doubt the admiring approval which Strauss long enjoyed
from ecclesiastical and theological liberalism was sensibly abated
toward the end of his life. This was the consequence of the last
work of his hand, with which he closed his literary activity :
The Old and the New Faith : a Confession. Such was the title
with which it appeared in the year 1872. In and of themselves,

X THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
the views and positions of this book did not offend the majority of
his followers. At bottom, indeed, they were quite at one with
them ; but the openness with which the confession was uttered was
vexatious — it did not suit them. Liberalism in Germany chiefly,
and in the present day in particular, with all its hatred to
hierarchism and orthodoxy, would fain have the appearance of
knowing how to honour religion, and to value religiousness. And
so it declined to identify itself with a man who in so undisguised
and pronounced a way did homage to religious Nihilism. Strauss
ceased to be the hero of the day ; already dying, he was killed
with silence. The reproach raised against him redounds, in our
opinion, rather to his honour. This is the merit which he has
won in connection with the church of Christ, and for which
he has a right to the thanks of the church, that he made an
end of all half-way positions, and gave all concealment the
coup-de-grdce ; that he showed by word and, work the goal which
every one who follows in his steps reaches, and tnust inevitably
reach. Without hesitation and without compunction, without
phrasing and without scruple, without moving a muscle of his
face, he draws the last consequence clearly and surely ; he
cannot do otherwise, and he will not. It is well to have such
an antagonist; it rewards the labour to take the lists against
him — there is a prospect of some good result.
We do not think that Strauss meets with a right estimate
when he is primarily regarded as a critic. No doubt he passes,
not only in Germany, but wherever his name and works have
spread, as the most distinguished, acute, and thoroughgoing
critic that has ever arisen within the Christian church. And
this description he has well deserved. For at every point he
meets the narratives of- Holy Scripture with the most determined
distrust, and is at pains to sow the seeds of this distrust in the
hearts of his readers. Nothing is so well attested that it escapes
his critical knife; nothing is so firmly established that he has not
overwhelming grounds to advance against it. But the question is
as to the motive, of these critical operations. The case does not

THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE. xi
stand thus : that immediately and in the first place a historical
doubt arose in him in respect to the biblical narratives, and that
only after he had become convinced of the untrustworthiness of
the narratives, he had drawn his consequence from the failing basis.
On the contrary, he started from a philosophical presupposition.
For him it was a confirmed truth from the outset ; and to procure
its prevalence and acknowledgment was the origin of his tendency.
But he came on a powerful hindrance. So long as the facts related
in Scripture held their stand unshaken, so long every effort was
vain. The task, accordingly, was to get these obstructive elements
out of the way. For this end he called in the powerful services
of criticism. Criticism was not an end with him, but a means
to the end, a means, no doubt, which seemed indispensable and
unavoidable. This state of the case points out the line to be followed in
contending against the adversary. It would be to httle purpose
if one should be content to meet the objections of criticism with
remarks exposing their weakness. This course has been repeatedly
tried, but wholly without success. The adversary did not yield
to such weapons, for they did not hit ; they did not reach him ;
they delivered their strokes into the air. But even the observant
onlooker did not follow such a fight with the interest which
expects a decisive issue. In the present work, accordingly,
another method is followed. We have nowhere, indeed, neglected,
and that by historical arguments, to establish the reality of the
facts related ; only our attention has never been limited to this
point. But as Strauss advanced from a presupposition to the
critical process, so we, too, have approached the biblical narra
tives from a presupposition, — that, namely, of a faith that has
subsisted for thousands of years ; and the investigation has put
the reader in a position to judge which presupposition proves
itself true on the narratives of Scripture, and puts it in the
light of a self-evidencing certainty, whether that of Strauss, or
not rather, on the other hand, that which the church, from the
beginning downwards, has proclaimed as her confession.

xii THE AUTHOR S PREFACE.
We have no doubt that the measure of interest this work has
excited in Germany is due to our following this method. And
so the publisher has been induced to spread it also on the other
side of the Channel. No doubt ecclesiastical and religious
liberalism is far from having the importance and power in
England which it has attained in Germany. It is very certain
that the attitude of the English nation to Christianity and to the
facts of divine revelation has also had its times of trial, not only
during the period of deism, but also in later times. It has, how
ever, stood the proof, and, taken on the whole, the country is
still at the present day not disposed to deny the true foundations
on which the welfare of nations rests. Meanwhile, it is not
impossible that there, too, many individual minds, affected by the
dash of waves from a distance, are led astray as to that which
alone can give support, comfort, and confidence to man. Un
happily there is only too much zeal shown in securing that the
products of unbelief may scatter their seeds in all lands. Hence
it appears opportune, or rather it seems a bounden duty, that
there, too, voices from Germany should find a hearing which
uphold the reality of the facts of Christian revelation, and which
lead the proof that these facts stand the severity of scientific
criticism, and go forth proved and attested from its fires. With
this view the present work is offered to that circle of English
•readers for which it is adapted. And may God's blessing
attend it !

THE PASSION HISTORY.

INTRODUCTION.
1. THE TENDENCY OF CRITICISM.
\17"HEN Sebastian Schmidt, the Strasburg theologian, opened
^ " his treatise, De Passione Christi Satisfactoria, by expressing
his sorrow that, while the doctrine of the atoning sufferings and
death of Jesus Christ had the strongest claim to be acknowledged
and embraced, it was yet impugned in so many ways, he had no
presentiment that the future assailants of this citadel of the
Christian faith would be totally different from those with whom
he had to contend in his day. " I would," he says, " that disputa
tion concerning so grave a doctrine of the faith were unnecessary.
For it were better that the weightiest article of the faith should
be simply believed than that doubts and questions should be
raised regarding it. But alas that matters have gone so far that
the satisfaction made by the Passion and death of Christ is made
a subject of controversy, audaciously denied, and attacked in every
possible way by bold and perverse minds." And yet he had only
to complain of representations which distorted and weakened a
doctrine which modern criticism is attempting to destroy, root and
branch. When Strauss raises the question of getting rid of the
existing office of the Christian ministry, and thus of delivering the
German people from an oppressive yoke of beliefs, he gives it as
his opinion, that this result is to be accomplished by uprooting
from the human mind all belief in the miraculous. " He who
would banish priests from the church, must first banish miracles from
religion." Now this of itself would not secure the object aimed
at. The man whom he repeatedly calls his forerunner and leader
likewise rejected the idea of the miraculous. Yet Schleiermacher
not only discharged the duties of the pastoral office with zeal and

2 THE PASSION HISTORY.
cheerfulness, but also gave fruitful hints as to the method of doing
so. The undeniable fact that he contributed materially to the
revival ofthe religious life of his time, shows how little he widened
the gap which existed between his contemporaries and Christianity,
notwithstanding this defect in his creed. Even were criticism
successful in casting serious suspicion on the reality of the
miraculous, it would still be far from the attainment of its object.
The presupposition on which the ministry of the New Testament
rests is an entirely different one, and the charm which Christianity
exercises on the human heart springs from something else. The
Apostle Paul characterizes the office which Christianity is called
to exercise in the world as the " ministry of reconciliation." He
indicates thereby, not a particular side of its function, but its
sum and substance. Its whole work is comprehended in the
words : " We are ambassadors for Christ — be ye reconciled to
God." When the same apostle says (1 Cor. xv. 14) : " If Christ
be not risen, then is our preaching vain," he does not mean that
preaching would in that case be deprived of its proper subject,
but only that it would lose its divine warrant, and that the
fiaprvpla which was destitute of this warrant could afford a
foundation for no more than a vain faith. Its proper subject-
matter is not really touched thereby. The apostle defined its
subject-matter for all times when he said : " We preach Christ
crucified" (1 Cor. i. 23) ; "I determined not to know anything
among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified " (1 Cor. ii 2).
But what is the relation between the two statements which are
combined in that great utterance: " God was in Christ reconciling
the world unto Himself, and hath committed unto us the word
of reconciliation " ? It is obvious that the one follows from the
other. The latter becomes illusory as soon as there is any
hesitation in regard to the former. When preaching can no
longer speak of the sacrificial death of Christ, it becomes not
merely vain, — it becomes altogether null and void ; and the
office which is concerned with this as its central theme loses not
only its raison d'Stre, but all and every possibility of continuing
in operation. There is one feeling, and only one, in the human
heart to which the preaching of Christ may appeal with the
assurance that its voice will find a response. The morality of
Christianity may excite profound admiration, the light which
Christianity casts on unsolved problems may awaken a sincere

INTRODUCTION. 3
interest in it, but that euduring bond which binds the heart of
man to the gospel of Christ is connected with neither of these
feelings.. It is by means of the oppressive consciousness of sin
that the Father draws heavy-laden souls to His Son. " The
greatest evil is guilt." Notwithstanding the warning of Strauss,
we quote this common saying, for we have to do not with the
" flowers of modern poetry," but with the testimonium animae
natur alitcr Christianae. No doubt even the "consciousness of sin
will not prevent the preaching of the Cross becoming foolishness
to one person, a stumbling-block to another, and to many a
savour of death unto death. Those who prefer to remove the
burden wliich they feel by some atonement of their own making,
or who resign themselves to bear it with indolent murmuring,
pass over very easily to a position of pronounced hostility to the
gracious symbol which brings persecution on those who adhere to
it (Gal. vi. 12). But up to this hour there have not been
wanting those who, under a consciousness of the needs of their
conscience, have recognised and embraced the gift of God, and in
the possession of it have found their rest. They became the
reward of the Son ; they were the field white unto the harvest.
And as long as criticism does not succeed in undermining the
authority of the message concerning the atoning sacrifice of
Christ, so long shall the ministry of reconciliation and the com
munity of the faithful endure. Strauss, therefore, has in point of
fact undertaken to uproot a doctrine which has been the comfort
of pious hearts for thousands of years. It required no considera
tion on the part of the critical author of The Life of Jesus to see
what course was the proper one for him to adopt for this purpose.
It was not incumbent on him to controvert the dogma directly, nor
yet to deal with the apostle who is its especial expounder ; — he
might have been content, therefore, without joining in the charge
which Festus makes against this witness to the truth (Leben Jesu,
p. 277). But it was necessary for him to consider how the incon
venient and disagreeable doctrine could be deprived of its historical
basis. No doubt the historical fact of the crucifixion of Jesus
was beyond dispute. But perhaps it was practicable to rest
with admitting that simple fact, and to set aside, as myths and
fables, all those details of the gospel narrative which pointed to
dogmatic conclusions. And this attempt has actually been made
by criticism.

4 THE PASSION HISTORY.
We have every reason to wonder at the courage which ventures
to enter upon this path, and to pursue it towards its goal Even
if we lay aside all religious presuppositions, and assume the
attitude of mere historians, we are not in a condition to prophesy
for the undertaking a successful issue, and can at the best predict
for it such success as was achieved by the man who began to
build a tower without counting the cost, and was unable to finish
it, and so made himself the mockery of the people. The means
which criticism has employed, with more or less apparent success,
in regard to other parts of the life of Jesus, are altogether un
available in regard to the Passion history. Here the harmonistic
difficulties are so unimportant that no serious objections can be
founded on them, for in all essential points the four Evangelical
narratives agree with each other. No doubt it is asserted that
there are 'psychological impossibilities here and there ; but deeper
experience of itself explains some of them, and others are found
in passages where the psychological mode of view is altogether
inappropriate. Inconsistencies with assured historical facts, like
those which may seem to exist in the narratives connected with
the childhood of Jesus, cannot be pointed out by the most deeply-
read historian in the region of the Passion history. With what
weapons, then, does Strauss propose to carry on his conflict ? Any
one who expected him to introduce new arguments which were
previously unheard of finds his expectation disappointed. Indica
tions are not wanting that Strauss himself felt that he had under
taken to cleave a rock with a frail staff. The peculiarly rough
style in which he treats this particular part of his subject, his
use of analogies whieh are calculated to wound very deeply the
religious sensibilities, and his habit of drawing parallels from the
region of profane history, — all these things are intended to throw
discredit on a cause which he was unable to assail on solid
grounds. The task of the apologist would therefore seem to be a
light one. And it would be light, if nothing more were necessary
than to invalidate assertions, to expose fallacies, and, in short,
to pull to pieces the separate arguments of criticism one after
another. But that is not the task which we set before our
selves. Such a proceeding seems to us to be equally unjust and
unprofitable. We call it unjust. When we look into the grounds
on which Strauss rests his opposition to particular portions of the
Passion histoiy, — the conflict in the garden, the last seven sayino-s

INTRODUCTION. 5
of our Lord, or the representation of the character of Pilate which
is given by the fourth Gospel, — we cannot but ask with surprise,
how it was possible that difficulties of such a character should
have been able to excite in the mind of a clear thinker any
doubt of the credibility of these narratives ? In the course of
our investigations we shall come upon passages where mere
astonishment will be changed into the warmer feeling of indigna
tion. But, nevertheless, Strauss is not so far wrong when he
turns sharply against those who isolate his objections from their
place and connection in his system in order to pillory them
individually. These objections are nowhere expressed as his real
and ultimate motive for setting aside the Evangelical narratives.
They are stated in the interest of a principle, and in such a way
that they are not made to establish and justify, but merely to
recommend and confirm it. And it cannot be denied that, so
regarded, they acquire a more imposing appearance and a greater
importance than they would be entitled to if considered separately
and by themselves. Criticism does not turn to its readers asking
whether the arguments which it has adduced do not shatter their
faith in the facts which are narrated, but whether the narratives
in question do not appear in the most satisfactory light — are not
intelligible down to the smallest detail — when the assumption is
made that they are myths which were the offspring of interested
feeling, and which were invented with the view of supplying a
historical foundation for the doctrine of the atoning death of
Jesus. No doubt it is incumbent on the apologist to refute the
individual arguments of Strauss, but real justice will be done to
his demands only when the question wliich he puts is met by a
corresponding counter-question, viz. : Whether the mind which
reflects on our narratives will really rest satisfied when it adopts
the assumptions of criticism, or whether this will not rather be
the case only when it adopts the view that the recorded facts
actually occurred, and gave rise to the doctrine of the sacrificial
death of our Lord ? Unless this question is not only considered,
 whether by an appeal to the conscience or to the historical
sense, — out at the same time decided to some extent, criticism
will be deprived of the right to exhibit the disparaging spirit
wliich is peculiar to it, and will have no ground for complaining
that it is the object of unjust depreciation at the hands of its
opponents. But in proposing to carry out our task from this

6 THE PASSION HISTOEY.
point of view, we are not exclusively influenced by a wish to
satisfy the just demands of criticism. The course wliich we have
indicated seems to us to be the only fruitful one, and fruitful in
a sense which is not immediately apparent. In no conflict is
the gain a material one if we succeed merely in maintaining our
ground and repelling the assaults of our adversary. We prove
ourselves victorious only by moving onwards ; and a defence of
the Passion history may be made a basis from which to press on
so as to secure a further success.
2. DOGMATIC REFLECTION.
The doctrine of the atoning sufferings and death of Jesus is
one of those which have as yet been imperfectly opened up to
the theological understanding. The church has no doubt always
acknowledged what Dorner says {Ueber die Bechtfertigung , p. 9) :
" that Christ placed Himself under the curse which rested upon
us ; that as our Substitute in intention and act He took upon
Himself our sins and covered our unrighteousness with His
righteousness; that He purchased us in His offering up of
Himself and suffering vicariously through His high - priestly
and God - satisfying love, so that atonement has now been
made." It is only necessary to glance at the liturgical formularies of
the church to see how deep and firm this conviction has been in
all ages. And it rests upon a thoroughly sure foundation. It
can appeal to apostolical preaching in its defence. Its right
to make this appeal is acknowledged by every unprejudiced
interpreter of Scripture, and no exegesis except that which has a
Socinian tendency can call it in question. We note an admission
made by a modern theologian in a work bearing upon this subject.
Dr. Holsten (see the treatise zum Evangelium des Paulus und
Petrus, p. 136) does not conceal, but states in the frankest terms,
that he has wholly broken with the traditional and apostolic view.
But at the same time he unhesitatingly admits that Paul regarded
the death of Jesus as a sin-offering for the sins of men, as a
sacrifice presented with the view of securing for them righteous
ness and life. But because the apostles invariably state this
doctrine only in an assertive way, without disclosing its deeper
grounds, it has come to pass that dogmatic history can show' no

INTRODUCTION. 7
palpable advance in the understanding of it. Theological thought
turned its attention to the subject only at a comparatively late
period. There was no definite occasion for its doing so earlier.
And besides, it belonged to the proper order of things that an
agreement should be arrived at upon the question of our Lord's
person, before the work which He accomplished as Bedeemer was
made the subject of consideration. Tlie investigation of this
topic was therefore carried on all the more strenuously after
it had once been entered upon. It was pursued with ever-
deepening interest, and gave rise to the most violent contro
versies, which slackened only for short intervals, and which
even at the present hour, when opinion still stands confronting
opinion, are not finally adjusted. The history of these proceedings
has been written by Ritschl1 in a work of pre-eminent ability.
By the comprehensiveness, thoroughness, and completeness of
his review the author has done a service even to those who do
not wholly agree with his conclusions, and who are not quite
able to acquit him of the charge of partiality. Even the first
beginnings of the theological investigation of this subject in the
twelfth century were marked by the same contrast which appears,
although with many modifications, in its subsequent history.
Anselm invariably laid the emphasis upon the effect which the
work of Christ produced upon God. According to him, the
voluntary suffering and death of the God-man, possessing a valor
infinitus owing to the dignity of His person, satisfied the justice
of God, which was offended by the sin of the world, and placed
God in a position to forgive the sins of those who accepted
offered grace and to open for them the gate of salvation. This
is the theory of satisfaction. Abelard, on the other hand, laid
exclusive emphasis upon the effect which the Son of God was
called to produce upon men. According to him, Jesus appeared
in order to exhibit to them the love of God ; His death was the
highest mamfestation of this divine love, awakens in them a
corresponding love, and thus reconciles them to God, and sets
them free from the slavery of sin.2 These two theories were
1 Die Christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versohnung, 3 vols., Bonn
1870-74. The first volume, which has been translated into English and published by
Edmonston & Douglas, Edinburgh 1872, is occupied with the history of the doctrine.
2 Abelard undoubtedly speaks of a certain effect which the Redeemer produced
upon God also. He refers to the intercessions which Christ presents to God in

8 THE PASSION HISTOEY.
propounded almost contemporaneously, and were both in a like
degree the openers up of new paths. The question, — Which of
them adhered most closely to the view which had previously
obtained in the church, though in a somewhat latent and tacit way,
is as easily answered as the further question, — For which of these
views have later doctrinal developments shown preponderating
sympathy ? A retrospective glance will undoubtedly fail to dis
cover anywhere in the past a doctrinal representation similar to
that of Anselm ; but the fundamental idea which he laid hold of
and developed is by no means foreign to patristic literature.
Even the church Fathers know of a ransom price for the guilty
world, which was paid by means of the suffering and death
of Jesus Christ. And although they have for the most part
represented this Xvrpov as due to Satan, still the general idea
that a satisfaction was rendered remains all the more intact, since
there were some even then who regarded the divine hand as the
Receiver of the ransom price.1 But it is also undoubted that a
prospective glance will scarcely find anywhere a bare reproduction
of the idea of Anselm. It was always felt to be necessary to
explain, to modify, or to supplement it. But, nevertheless,
theology in its further development moved always in the direction
which Anselm had indicated, while the path on which Abelard
led the way was pursued only by such sects as the Socinians,
and, among the Illuminationists, by Tollner and Tieftrunk.
Ritschl seems therefore to have entered upon a bold undertaking
— an undertaking which ignores the indications of history, and
has no prospect of success — when he states it as one of the
objects of his work to deprive the doctrine of Anselm of a con
tinuance of support, to destroy the partiality felt for it by that
modern pietistic theology which is reacting against rationalism,
and to procure for the view of Abelard the respect to which it is
entitled (see I. p. 24).
behalf of men. He may have been influenced by plain Bible facts, and also by a
feeling of incongruity between his theory and Scripture. It is questionable whether
this addition to his representation does not tend to confusion rather than fill up
the gap which is evident in it.
1 To these belong not only Gregory Nazianzen, and afterwards John of Damas
cus, but others beside. Ambrose certainly emphasizes in the strongest way the
reference to Satan, and employs the analogy of a usurer ; yet this does not prevent
him also acknowledging that satisfaction was given to the divine justice by the death
of Christ,

INTRODUCTION. 9
No one will propose to stand up for the doctrinal system of
Anselm in every respect. The opinion of Ebrard (Kirchengesch. II.
p. 214), that the whole outcome of scholastic thought may be
found in it, is as inaccurate as the absolute contentment with
which others adhere to it is unjustifiable. It has its weaknesses
and defects, and is far from exhibiting the whole doctrine of the
Scripture. But, on the one hand, it is to be observed that the
later forms of representation, adopted by evangelical writers who
moved in other respects wholly in Anselm's direction, have in
great measure removed these weaknesses and defects ; and, on the
other hand, it is doubtful if the objection which is usually raised
against Anselm's fundamental thought is as well grounded as is
commonly supposed. Ritschl, in harmony with the views of
many others, specially charges Anselm with attempting to solve
the problem by means of conceptions which belong to the sphere
of law; and especially to that of private right. He says that
Abelard is here very much iu advance of him, inasmuch as he •
developes the idea of reconciliation with reference to the moral
disposition of the parties towards each other, and that Luther
far surpassed all previous theologians, Melanchthon in particular,
in placing emphasis on love as summing up in itself the whole of
the Christian idea of God. And he attributes to the theologians
of the Illumination the great merit of giving due weight to
the idea of "fatherly kindness" as belonging to the repre
sentation of God which is conformable to nature.1 The charge
made against Anselm, however, reaches beyond himself. It
also touches the great Teacher who spoke the parable of the
wicked servant, and who expressed Himself, in the house of
Simon the Pharisee, in those words which are so familiar to all.
1 What we owe here to the Illumination theologians is of no real value. "We
were not aware that any motive for the sending of Christ, except the divine com
passion, had ever been asserted in the past. Passages like John iii. 16, Rom.
v. 8, made this impossible. Anselm expressed himself explicitly on this point :
" Misericordiam Dei, quae tibi perire videbatur tam magnam invenimus, ut major
cogitari non posset." The incredibly superficial sense in which the Illumina-
tionists understood the idea of "fatherly benevolence" was certainly unknown
before their time. The honour, attributed to Luther by Ritschl, of having sur
passed all previous theologians, and Melanchthon in particular, in his firm hold
of the idea of the divine love, is one which he would certainly have declined. If
there was a single point in which there was a -perfect understanding between
Luther and Melanchthon, it was in regard to the doctrine of justification and
reconciliation.

10 THE PASSION HISTORY.
It will not do, therefore, to place judicial and ethical ideas in
opposition, as if the employment of the former took one out of
the ethical region. For how can legal terms be avoided when
one is dealing with a problem in which the conception, " right
eousness of God," occupies a prominent place, and whose central
difficulty lies in the ideas Xvrpov, Xvrpovo-dai, on which so strong
an emphasis is put by our Lord Himself and by His apostles ?
In order to avoid them, it would be necessary to deprive these
expressions of their plain and natural signification, and to under
stand them in a sense with which the Scriptures are totally
unacquainted. In relation to Xvrpov, for example, Ritschl has
attempted to do so. He brings forward conjectures as to what
Aramaic expression our Lord may have employed. And by the
help of these conjectures he succeeds in degrading the " ransom "
to a mere means of protection (Schutzmiltel). Now this expres
sion is indefinite enough ; it will accommodate itself to any
method of representation, and is consistent with any theory
whatsoever. Such a mode of treating the subject will produce
only an uncertain and deceptive result. It will explain nothing
clearly, but will simply lead the mind into error. The laws of
language admit of no doubt being entertained iu regard to the
meaning of the terms Xvrpov and Xvrpovo-dai.
The thought to which Anselm, in harmony with Christian
antiquity, gave expression, and which Luther, Melanchthon, and
later Evangelical theologians share with him, namely, that God
could not directly forgive the' sins of men, notwithstanding His
love to them, but that His holiness and righteousness required that
an objective atonement should first be made, — and that this atone
ment, whether it be called satisfactio or tXao-fios, solutio rov
Xvrpov (Hollaz),was made by Christ, — this thought has a firm scrip
tural foundation which nothing can destroy. Gerhard is entirely
supported by the authority of Scripture in the deductions which
he draws in regard to this subject, in opposition to Socinianism.
Comp. loc. xvi. § 47: "Non sunt per se et in se contrariae
proprietates misericordiae et justitiae, verum ratione objecti
requirebatur mirabile illud justitiae ac misericordiae tempera-
mentum per Christi satisfactionem impetrandum. Misericordia
voluit homini parcere, quoniam erat creatura Dei Vicissim vero
justitia hominem propter peccatum ad poenam promeritam
deposcendum statuit, cui Veritas divina suum addidit suffraoium.

INTRODUCTION. 1 1
Intercessit igitur Christi meritum et satisfactio, ut salva justitia
sua Deus in gratiam nos reciperet." But the theological develop
ment of this thought is encompassed by the most serious diffi
culties, and not only Rothe and Ritschl, but even men like
Hofmann and Nitzsch have presented the most decided opposition
to it. When the definite question is asked, How does the love
of God harmonize with His holiness ? the answer given to it is that
our Lord suffered the penalty of our sins in our stead ; that He
was, as our Substitute, the object of the divine wrath. Gerhard,
Hollaz, Quenstedt, Seb. Schmidt, and others express themselves
unanimously thus : " Poenas a nobis promeritas perpessus est et
patiendo persolvit ; " " legis maledictionem, quam nostra in
obedientia commerueramus sustinuit;" "poenas peccatis totius
mundi debitas ultro luit ; " " expositus fuit irae divinae eamque
sensit." And after there had been established by the suffering
and death of the Mediator an " accuratum equilibrium," or an
" aequivalentia offensae et • satisfactionis juxta regulum rigidae
Dei justitiae " (Quenstedt), or a " proportio justitiae vindicativae
et satisfactionis" (J. A. Osiander), then God was able to give
effect to His mercy, " ut peccatoribus conversis peccata in poenam
ne imputarentur " (Hollaz). We are by no means perfectly
satisfied with these definitions. That the Passion of Jesus
should be represented as penal suffering with extreme caution is
partially admitted, even by those who are fully persuaded that
the representation is correct. There is need, however, of our
guarding ourselves against more than the error of those who liken
the sufferings of Jesus to a definite sum-total, and establish an
arithmetical proportion between them and the reatus poenae on
the part of the sinful world, thus withdrawing the subject from
the pneumatic region and relegating it to the material. Stahl
has enlarged on this topic with peculiar discretion, and has shown
in an admirable way that the atonement which the Son of God
was called to make was opposed to rather than identical with the
endurance of penalty. And, to our mind, it seems very question
able whether the expression penalty in relation to the Passion of
Jesus can claim scriptural support.
If the Lutheran translation of Isa. liii. 5 were correct, " the
penalty (Strafe) lay upon Him that we might have peace," then
the passage might be cited in favour of the idea (Gerhard also
renders it: ipse castigatus est, ut esset nobis pax). It is not

1 2 THE PASSION HISTOEY.
absolutely clear that the Hebrew word "idio is to be understood
in the sense of vengeful retribution. We usually meet it in the
sense of fatherly chastisement, that iraiSela which is said, Heb.
xii. 11, to yield the peaceable fruit of righteousness; and assuredly
Delitzsch makes a bold and arbitrary assertion when he says
(Commentary on the Hebrews) that there is not a more appropriate
term than this for vicarious punishment in the whole treasures of
the Hebrew language. But it seems to us to be entirely imprac
ticable to make the words V?*tf uni*?*?*" "idid mean that the Servant
of God suffered chastisement for our sins, and thereby procured
salvation and peace for us. No doubt Vtfbf IDIO may bear the
meaning, " the chastisement which has as its object, which is the
condition of, or works out our peace " (in the sense of Heb. xii.
11); but when it is connected with thv, it does not yield the
idea that the chastisement endured by the Servant of God is the
cause of our peace. At all events, it is by no means proper that
an expression which is not employed anywhere else in Scripture,
in regard to this subject, should be adopted on the ground of a
passage whose exegesis is doubtful, and which, besides, is never
quoted in the New Testament, although the Apostle Peter (1 Pet.
ii. 24) had every inducement to do so. Church dogmatics has
brought nothing forward to justify the use of the expression,
except the conflict of Jesus in the garden, and the fourth of His
last seven sayings. Whether the idea of punishment has been
really evolved from these narratives, or imported into them, is
a question which we reserve for subsequent consideration. We
raise a similar objection to the statement that the suffering
Saviour was the object (according to Delitzsch, loc. cit. p. 1,
the mark or target) of the divine wrath: "expositus fuit irae
divinae " (Quenstedt). As much violence is done to the letter of
the Scripture by this form of expression, as is done to its spirit
by the formula : " the suffering of Jesus was a divine arrange
ment whereby satisfaction was exacted from Him by the wrathful
justice of God." Now we may decline to make use of such
expressions without thereby exposing ourselves to the charge of
doubting the reality of the divine wrath in general, or even its
manifestation in the work of atonement. It is only in regard
to the representation that the wrath of the Father was directed
against the Son, that the suffering Saviour endured the wrath of
God externally, felt it inwardly, and therein tasted the pain of

INTEODUCTION. 1 3
hell,1 that we miss the attestation of Scripture, and we are firmly
persuaded that it is not faith's feebleness, but faith itself which
shrinks from the representation. We may unhesitatingly accept
the statement of Hollaz: "satisfecit Christus Deo unitrino in-
finito, justo et irato, veraci, sapienti et misericordi," and yet
reject the idea that He " was the mark of the divine wrath," or
that " God satisfied His wrath on Him." Consequences which
follow logically from an attempted explanation of the doctrine
of atonement cannot be correct when they are unable to abide
the test of Scripture, and when they bear upon their front the
character of monstrosities. The attempt to divest them of this
character is made in vain by means of experiments upon the
idea of wrath. The representation that wrath is the correlate
of love, — that it is an aspect of love, and" must therefore be
sharply distinguished from hate, may be very useful as a means
of maintaining the idea of a divine wrath, and of explaining its
genesis, but it does not tend in the least to relieve the difficulty
with which we have been dealing. For although wrath may
have its origin in love,2 yet when it is perfected it always
includes a certain element of displeasure which can scarcely
be distinguished from hate. Church dogmatics, however, had no
interest whatever in establishing any such distinction. It not
only admitted, without hesitation, that the hatred of God rested
upon the suffering Saviour, but stated the idea in the most
emphatic way and in the strongest terms. It was on account
of the justitia vindicatrix of God that it was impossible for Him
to take up any other attitude towards His Son. "Non potuit
non extreme eum odisse " (Quenstedt). But in so doing it has
laid itself open to attack, and the weakness of its position cannot
be covered by the qualifying explanation, that the Son did not
fall under the odium of God absolutely, that the Father was not
angry with Him ratione personae suae, but only in a relative
sense.3 We shall find an opportunity to establish our objections
to these definitions afterwards.
Notwithstanding the defects which we have pointed out, the
majority of modern writers have turned again to the traditional
1 "Wrath is the essence of hell, and of this essence of hell the Crucified Ono
tasted."— Delitzsch On the Hebrews.
2 Aquinas says the same thing cf hate : "Odium omne ex amore causatur."
3 Quenstedt, Theol. did. pol. III. pp. 355-358.

14 THE PASSION HISTORY.
view, and profess to find in it the only possible solution of the
problem. Rothe (Dogm. II. § 46) has given a large and yet
incomplete list of those to whom this statement applies. In
regard to the well-known Erlangen controversy, Dorner (Gesch.
der Prot. Theol. p. 876) gives it as his opinion that it agitated
the doctrine to some extent, but led to no important results. It
had as one result, however, the relative victory secured by the
champions of the orthodox opinions. Hofmann himself was
unable to maintain his original position, and was obliged to
retire from it. This fact admits of but one explanation, and
that is, that the dogmatic theory of the church, when compared
with all other attempted theological adjustments, was still found
to harmonize best with the statements of Scripture. It is true
that discrepancies between it and these statements might be
pointed out here and there, but there was found to be an
absence of that degree of disharmony which characterized all
other theories. It is quite evident that the theology of recent
years has approximated to the traditional view of the doctrine
now under discussion in the same measure as it has returned
to the Scriptures. This return has caused a reaction against that
rationalism which limited the merit of Christ to His sealing
His doctrine (Wegscheider : " doctfinam ipsius morte hominibus
sancitam ") with His blood, and regarded the atonement accom
plished by Him merely as a revelation of the goodness of God,
and has deflected that retrograde movement into the stream of
true progress. Schleiermacher evinced a strong dislike to the
" theology of wounds," of which he said much that was severe
(Glaubensl. II. p. 152). But at the same time he could not help
availing himself of the ideas of representation and satisfaction,
and recognising the formula, that Christ, by the free surrender of
Himself to suffering and death, satisfied the justice of God, and
thus set us free from the penalty of sin. Even the mode of
teaching which concentrates the whole virtue of Christ's redemp
tive work in His suffering is not wholly repudiated by him
(he. cit. p. 151). Certainly he gives to these ideas and formulas
a signification of which the doctrine of the church is ignorant ;
but if it was his intention to put an arrest in this way upon the
process of assimilation to that doctrine which was goino- on the
course which things have taken shows that the purpose' has
failed of success. No doubt all do not express themselves on

s>

INTRODUCTION. 1 5
the matter as frankly as Delitzsch has done. Many a one claims
to have gone beyond the developments even of a Quenstedt and
a Hollaz. But if Dorner (loc. cit. p. 877) has correctly charac
terized the present position and direction of thought upon the
question, assuredly there is presented to our view a conglomera
tion of elements, derived partly from Schleiermacher, partly from
the circle of orthodox doctrinal ideas, and contributed to by
mysticism as well as speculation, which cannot be regarded as
a proof of any real progress on the foundation of the doctrine
of the church. So much, at least, may be confidently affirmed,
that essentially new views of the subject are nowhere stated and
developed. If the contrary be maintained, we ask wherein con
sists the alleged ncio feature, which we are said to owe to modern
theological activity in this domain. We find, on the one hand,
that that which was regarded by church dogmatics merely as a
presupposition of Christ's atonement, is elevated to the rank of
an element in it ; and, on the other hand, that what church
dogmatics held to be a result of the atonement, is represented as
pertaining to its real substance. But it is very questionable if
these modifications give us any deeper insight into the doctrine, and
when we come to examine them more closely, we shall probably
be compelled to express an adverse opinion. In support of the
former of these modifications, Rothe in particular put forth the
most strenuous exertions (comp. his Theol. Ethik, first ed. vol. II.
p. 303 sqq. In the second edition the author left out most of
the dogmatic contents of the first, including the part before us).
He held that the sin of humanity, considered generally, was
atoned for by the second Adam in His qualifying Himself to be
the Redeemer ; that this qualification was directly dependent on
His absolute oneness with God on the one side, and with mankind
in their totality on the other, — on a oneness for which He trained
Himself in a strictly normal way, partly by means of His uncon
ditional self-surrender to God, partly by means of His unreserved
surrender of Himself to the human race; that this expiatory
offering up of Himself, both to God and for men, was undoubtedly
the work of His whole life, but inasmuch as the act of perfect
surrender on the part of Jesus was completed only in His
physical death, that He became absolutely qualified to be the
Redeemer only when He stood the supreme test of His love
by suffering martyrdom, and hence that it was essentially

16' THE PASSION HISTOEY.
by His death that the whole life of Jesus became an atonement
for our sin. The extent to which this new attempt takes the
edge from the church's representation Of the doctrine, is a ques
tion which we do not raise ; we are at present concerned only
with showing that its leading features are by no means foreign
to the traditional doctrine, and evince no advance beyond it.
Church dogmatics has never been chargeable with isolating the
death of Jesus, so as to make it appear as if the Father had been
appeased by it in a mere pathological way, and as if the Son had
made atonement in a magico-mechanical manner. Any such
charge is at once disposed of by the circumstance, that church
dogmatics has claimed the obedientia activa in the most unmis-
takeable terms as an element in its conception of the complete
satisfaction of Christ.1 And still less can it be charged with
emphasizing the shedding of blood considered in and by itself,
for it has laid the entire emphasis on the question whose blood
was shed, — the " precious blood " of Him who was alone able to
atone for sin. (Quenstedt, Theol. did. pol. III. p. 275: " Solius
naturae humanae passio et mors ne minimum quidem robur habet
adversus iram Dei et aeternam mortem." Hollaz, Exam. II. p.
171 : "A majestate Christi deavdpa>irov divina et infinita vim et
pondus accipit mors et passio mediatoris, ut sit pretium aequi-
valens pro peccatis totius mundi. Nam non humana natura
passa est, sed Deus in humana natura Christi passus est, quippe
qui passionem et mortem carnis sibi appropriavit ejusque passioni
vim, valorem et pondus addidit !") But that which Rothe elevates
to the position of the essential medium of the atonement is by
the dogmatics of the church regarded only as its presupposition,
and accordingly it places the death of our Lord in the fore
ground, in the same degree that Rothe puts it in the background.
Schleiermacher, as is well known, reduced to a minimum the
significance of the death of Christ for our salvation. The whole
concession which he makes is, that "it befitted the Finisher of
faith to die a death which was not a mere incident, but an act
in the highest sense of the word, so that He might proclaim, in
His death also, the complete supremacy of the Spirit over the
1 Comp. Gerhard, be. iv. c. 15, de Christi officio: "In satisfaction occurrit
obedientia tam activa quam passiva . . . arctissime connexae ;" loc. xvi. de Justific.
p. fid. : "Statuimus, Christum non solum passiva, sed etiam activa sua obedientia
esse causam meritoriam nostrae justificationis."

INTRODUCTION. 1 7
flesh " (Glaubensl. II. p. 157). The admission made by Rothe
does not go much further. For a supreme or highest " test," in
spite of all assertions (I.e. p. 309), can never amount to an
actual specific power or energy. The honour of having gone
beyond the standpoint of church dogmatics cannot therefore be
claimed for a theory which is unable to vindicate itself by Scrip
ture, and especially by the preaching of the Apostle Paul. For
Holsten (I.e. p. 309) is entirely correct when he says that
the apostle regarded the sufferings and death of Jesus as the
absolutely essential element in the redemptive work of the
Messiah, — not its mere culmination, but its very substance.
But perhaps a more favourable opinion should be passed upon
the results at which those have arrived who wish to gain a
deeper understanding of the merit of Christ, by investigating it
from the point of view of the pathway of salvation which His
suffering and death have opened up for men. Niedner (Gesch.
der Theol. und Philos. p. 127) mentions as a distinguishing
feature of the old church teachers, that, instead of giving a one
sided prominence to the objective aspect of the work of the
Redeemer, they tried rather to apprehend it on its dynamical
side as the one source of salvation. Among modern theologians
Nitzsch is pre-eminent in defending this method of representation.
In his System der christi. Lehre (§ 136), he says: "Only in the
twofold, mutual, active and passive fellowship between the world
and. the Redeemer can He be truly said to suffer death in its
stead, and to offer Himself up to God : only as the power and
possibility of our actual deliverance from sin is His obedience to
death a ransom for many." And therefore he reasons (Glaubensl.
p. 153): " No one dare, can, or ought to take comfort in the
atonement who does not associate with it a dying of his own
in the form of repentance (Busstod) ; for this must remain
unaltered, that in. the death of Jesus the divine-human principle
of change of mind and the making of atonement co-exist." Now
the practical point in which this view culminates has certainly
obtained equal prominence at the hands of church dogmatics.
It also speaks of the necessity of a " Busstod" whether there be
understood by this " mortificaiio," contritio, or cessatio ab impietate
et malitia. We only require to bear in mind what motive Ger
hard makes the incentive to repentance,1 or his definition of it,2
1 Loc. xv. depoen. § 141. 2 § 145.
B

13 THE PASSION HISTORY.
and also to observe the close connection which he establishes
between " repentance," faith, and new obedience,1 in order to be
convinced how well he knew how to turn the twelfth article of
the Augsburg Confession to account, and how sincerely he held
the opinion : " ut Deo reconciliemur ac remissionem peccatorum
consequamur omnino necessaria est contritio " (1. 1. § 82). But
how very far he was from assuming that which Nitzsch inferred
in reasoning from this practical point of view ! It was impossible
for him to accept any such inference, because he was conspicuous
for his energy in rejecting every form of synergism on the part of
man in regard to the forgiveness of sins. He permits himself to
employ the words : " Contritionem esse causam sine qua non
remissionis peccatorum" (1. 1. § 85), but at the same time he
asserts in the most solemn tone : " Contritio non est meritum
remissionis peccatorum." He invariably denies that the forgive
ness of sin is in any way dependent on the dignitas or auan-
titas contritionis, feeling that to admit this would in some measure
detract from the merit of Christ. Christ, he says, would have
died in vain if the vis and virtus of His merit depended on the
performances of men ; and he calls the notion a vanum effugium.
He also applies to this aspect of the question the old saying
which he was fond of quoting : " Non dimidiat veniam Dei pietas,
aut nihil aut totum dat." It follows necessarily from this funda
mental proposition that a doctrinal representation which says:
"only as the power and possibility of our actual deliverance from
sin is the death of Jesus a ransom for many," cannot maintain
its ground at the bar of church dogmatics. Gerhard would have
condemned it as a confused mixture of things that differed from
each other, and he would have considered it an error to make
that to be of the substance of the merit of Christ which, in a
greater or less number of instances, is a result following from it.
He says (loc. xvi. de Justific. p. fid. § 53): " distinguendum
inter beneficii acquisitionem et ejusdem applicationem : ilia
generalis est, siquidem Christus sua morte omnibus promeruit
peccatorum remissionem; haec vero specialis est, quia soli cre-
dentes per fidem beneficii illius participes* fiunt. Apostolus,
postquam pronunciaverat, Deum in Christo nos sibi ipsi recon-
> L. 1 § 140 : " Vera ac salvifica fides cum vera contritione et novae obedientiae
studio A^„n»s ac nexu indivulso est conjuncta ; " ibid. § 54 : "Sunt accidentia
inseparabilia, vxpurl/ttm rr, yitu."

INTRODUCTION. 19
ciliasse, subjungit, quod Deus dederit sibi et reliquis apostolis
ministerium reconciliationis, per quod nimirum homines Deo
reconcilentur et beneficiorum Christi participes fiant." (Similarly
in Loc. vii. de Elect, et rcprob. § 119.) And he has the testi
mony of Scripture on his side in drawing this distinction so
sharply and decidedly. The Scriptures unambiguously proclaim
that the obedience of Christ exercised a direct influence upon
God, in consequence of which the race was received into favour,
and that it was only after, and because this had taken place, that
individuals received power to draw nigh to the now accessible
throne of grace. Nothing can harmonize better with the state
ments of Scripture than Gerhard's words : " ad impetrandarn
peccatorum remissionem coram Dei judicio omnino satisfactio
quaedam necessaria est, per quam justitiae ejus satisfiat; hanc
satisfactionem pro peccatis totius generis humani Christus prae-
stitit," and his exclamation in regard to this work of our
Lord : " en reconciliationem factum,'' as well as that which follows
in relation to the words of the apostle, Be ye reconciled to God :
" en reconciliationem adhuc faciendam." No doubt Nitzsch is
right when he remarks (Christi. Glaubenslehre, p. 153) that both
are found conjoined in more than one utterance of Scripture, and
he appeals especially to the passage which is so frequently quoted
in this interest : " If one died for all, then all died" (2 Cor. v.
14). But church exegetes have been equally right in protesting
against the conjunction wliich appears here being regarded as
implying identity. The energy with which they have made this
protest has undoubtedly led them to take up an untenable view
of the passage in question. (Adam Osiander, IV. pp. 163—167,
explains it thus : " Christo mortuo perinde est, ac si omnes mortui
essent, scil. ea morte quam erant meriti." Similarly Quenstedt,
III. p. 240, is an unjustifiable polemic against Calvin.) But
even this exegetical slip reveals a correct apprehension of truth,
and the general view underlying it is in complete agreement with
Scripture. But certainly we do not move along the path of true
progress by debating the relative merits of the prepositions vrrkp
and avri, loading the former with meaning and depriving the
latter of its just force, or recognising the latter only so far as its
meaning is determined by the former.
Among recent attempts made to solve the problem with which
we have been dealing is that of Ritschl, contained in the work to

20 THE PASSION HISTOEY.
which reference has already been made. The first, or historical
part of his treatise, owing especially to the confident tone which
it breathed, excited the greatest expectations, and new and fresh
elucidations of the subject were confidently awaited. We confess
that we did not share in these anticipations. The depreciating
terms in which his allusions to Anselm were made, and the
laudatory terms applied to Abelard on the other hand, his state
ments that " the theory of the former does not harmonize with
Christian reason," and that religiosity cannot find in it, but only
in the theory of Anselm, a " serviceable vehicle," left us in no
doubt as to the path on which Ritschl had entered, nor as to
the conclusions at which he would arrive. But had we cherished
any expectations like those alluded to, they would have been dis
pelled by the short treatise, Ueber die christliche Vollkommenheit,
which the author sent forth in 1874 as the forerunner of the
third part of his work. Ritschl certainly does not refuse to
admit that the redemptive action and suffering of Christ exerted
some kind of influence upon God also, but he regards it as merely
secondary and indirect. To us, indeed, it seems so " indirect "
as almost to escape our observation. The author states his view
of the atonement wrought by Christ in the following proposition :
" Our Lord, as the Revealer of God, from love to men, made
known to them the grace and faithfulness of God for their admis
sion into His fellowship, and, with the view of calling out a com
munity of the children of God, exhibited His religious fidelity
towards God by an uninterrupted discharge of the work to which
He was called, and by manifesting patience amid the sufferings
connected with His vocation," etc. (III. p. 536).1 The only new
element in this statement is the greater emphasis which it gives
to the idea of the Christian community. Its remaining elements
have already been appropriated by the Socinians and the theo
logians of the Illumination. Accordingly, "patience amid the
sufferings connected with His vocation " is the substance of the
Passion. It is not an atonement in the ecclesiastical, nor, we
1 The author has entirely failed to bring his theory into harmony with Rom. iii.
The expression "in His blood" stood in the way. How does he adjust matters?
He says (II. p. 173) the pouring forth of the blood of the Crucified was the legal
condition under which God evinced to the church, in this His representative, His
righteousness for the forgiveness of sin. Does Ritschl really rest content with this
expedient? Can he really suppose that he thus expresses the sense of the apostle ?
This is more than we can imagine.

INTRODUCTION. 21
may confidently add, in the biblical sense. This theory har
monizes with the Scripture just as little as it does justice to the
craving of the pious heart, which can rest content only with the
confession — "All our sins, Lord, Thou didst bear,
Else had we sunk into despair."

S. THE TESTIMONY OF THE HISTORY.
A glance at the history of theological reflection may well
justify the saying of Sebastian Schmidt : " Satius foret punctum
fidei gravissimum simpliciter credi, quam de eo quaeri." Yea, a
still greater authority appears to uphold such a " satius foret."
Even the apostles have denied us an insight into this mystery,
and in vain has exegesis wearied itself in the attempt to acquire
a clear understanding of it from their utterances. Paul even
refers this circumstance to a deliberate purpose. He writes to
the Corinthians (1 Cor. i. 21): " It hath pleased God, through
the foolishness of preaching, to save them that believe." And
as he immediately afterwards mentions that Christ crucified is
the sum and substance of his preaching, this " foolishness of
preaching " can refer only to the doctrine of the cross. It is the
business of wisdom to investigate the hidden, to demonstrate the
connection between cause and effect. The preaching, therefore,
which is characterized by its contrast to " wisdom " will disdain
to take such things into account ; it will limit itself to demand
ing a believing acceptance of the facts which it proclaims. At
the same time there is a gnosis in this domain whose validity
cannot be impeached, and which is not liable to the charge either
of ignoring the limits of knowledge or of engaging in a pursuit
which must be resultless. It fully realizes what the apostle has
said in regard to knowing in part and seeing through a glass
darkly (ev alvljfiari,). It shrinks from attempting to find out
what transpired between the Father and the Son during the
Passion quite as much as from trying to discover what took
place between them before the Incarnation. Both subjects are,
from the nature of the case, withdrawn from mortal view. But
in regard to what Christ suffered, and how He suffered, we are in
possession of a historical record. The evangelists have told the
story with the utmost detail. And if so, is it possible that these

22 THE PASSION HISTORY.
narratives can be altogether fruitless in results bearing on the
gnosis in question ? Strauss professes, it is true, to dispute the
authenticity of the Passion history of our Lord on purely his
torical grounds, but his real and actual grounds are different.
The history of the suffering Saviour, as told by the evangelists,
is unintelligible on any supposition except that it describes the
carrying out of an arrangement made by God for the expiation
of sin. The polemic of the older Socinianism, in spite of all its
acuteness, was broken on this history, just as it baffles the placid
superficiality of the modern upholders of that system. By means
of this history the doctrinal view of Anselm re-vindicates itself,
rebounds from the pressure put upon it, and the conviction that it
is substantially accurate gains ground. But should not that which
seems to support the doctrine also assist us in gaining a deeper
insight into it ? May not an examination of historical details be of
more assistance to us than dogmatic reflection as a means of under
standing it ? This is a question which involves a charge against
exegetics as well as dogmatics. Neither of them has fulfilled its
obligations in regard to the subject in question. Has exegetics
done so ? At first sight one would suppose that this question
should be answered in the affirmative, for there is scarcely a
portion of Scripture to which it has devoted so much attention
as the Passion history. This is clear from the numerous mono
graphs on its details, the list of which is not complete even in
the copious catalogue of Hase. But investigation has always
busied itself, for the most part, with mere externals which were
of secondary importance, while theological exegesis, properly so
called, has been neglected. This holds of the extensive, older
works, no less than of the more recent manuals. Wichelhaus is
not the only one who has devoted his Versuch eines ausfilhrlichen
Commentars zu der Zeidengeschichte to the investigation of a
question whose importance is overrated, and which is erroneously
considered to be a crucial one, namely, whether our Lord insti
tuted the Supper on the thirteenth or the fourteenth Nisan.
And, besides, it has sometimes happened that an author's energies
have been exhausted in the clearing up of this, and a number of
similar questions of an almost exclusively archaeological nature,
so that the real and essential question at stake was left undis
posed of. This holds, for instance, of the most recent commentary
on the Passion history, namely, that by Hengstenberg, which has

INTRODUCTION. 23
been compiled from the materials left in his academic lectures. —
But dogmatics has also given similar cause for complaint, — the
older as well as the newer dogmatic, but especially the latter.
It has never realized the importance of the history of our Lord's
Passion and Death, and has scarcely once dealt with it. If the
comparatively fruitless attempt of Quenstedt be excepted, the
dogmatists of the church have turned their attention only to the
conflict in the garden, and the fourth of our Lord's utterances
from the cross. Whether or not they have done it in the proper
way, whether they have correctly apprehended the incidents so
as to make them the basis of their deductions, or have not rather
included them in categories already prepared, we do not at
present inquire ; in the meantime we content ourselves with
stating the fact that, speaking generally, all the remaining
historical materials have been left unused. In recent times the
celebrated work of Hofmann has no doubt broken new ground in
this respect. But in so far as he really avails himself of the
Passion history of Jesus in this work, he does so with the sole
view of showing that the sin of the world exhausted itself upon
the suffering Saviour. No one can deny that this mode of view
is both a correct and a justifiable one. This is admitted even by
Nitzsch (see Syst. der christi. Lehre, § 134) : " Sin must complete
itself, must exhaust itself for all upon the Redeemer." But the
attempt to make it a means of gaining a deeper understanding of
the nature of the atonement accomplished by Christ is a mistake.
It has its value, its power to build up and to shake, but it cannot
be pressed into a higher service. The apostolic doctrinal repre
sentations do not give the slightest encouragement to any one to
attempt the solution of the problem by this method. Accord
ingly, the course which we propose to pursue in availing ourselves
of the history of our Lord's sufferings, with the view of gaining
an insight into the dogma mentioned, is entirely different. We
regard these sufferings not in the light of a lot that befell Him,
but under the aspect of a work ; — not, however, in the feeble,
delusive sense contemplated by Hofmann, when he says that
" the obedience which the God-appointed Mediator was called to
render was perfected in His not refusing to endure the uttermost
which hatred was able to do to Him" (Schrifibew. II. p. 318),
but in the strictest sense of the word. If a work was to be
accomplished during our Lord's Passion, or rather by means of

24 THE PASSION HISTORY.
it, this presupposed that there was nothing which He would
refuse to endure ; but, for all that, this presupposition was not the
work itself, and the question still remains, what was done by the
suffering Christ in order to the accomplishment of the work of
atonement ? Now, it is with this very question in view that we
betake ourselves to the history of His Passion. We shall con
sider this history in the light of the doctrinal statements of the
apostles, this being the only course which we can take, for it is
impossible for us to abandon all presupposition. But, on the
other hand, we shall try to make the light of the history fall on
the doctrinal utterances of the apostles, in order to gain a better
understanding of them. To meet in this way the assaults of
negative criticism, and so to make them subservient to the
interests of true rehgion, — this is the task which we set before
ourselves. In the foregoing pages we have been at pains to show on
what grounds we have adopted the method indicated rather than
any other ; but if we were in want of any additional confirmation
of its tightness, we should find it in a work which has excited
our interest owing to its bearing on this subject. We refer to
Holsten's sum Evangelium des Paulus und des Petrus, a book
which is worthy of note, not simply from its scientific ability,
nor yet from the circumstance that its author has combined his
influence with that of others in order to carry out the impulse
imparted by Baur, and to move in a direction considerably
divergent from that taken by Strauss, but much more because it
reveals a gap in the domain of Soteriology which conservative
theology has failed to fill up. Holsten is at pains to answer the
question, In what way did the apostles, in particular Paul and
Peter (also extending his investigation, however, to the authors
of the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Apocalypse), base on the
accomplished historical fact their views of the significance of the
death of Jesus Christ ? When we look at the results to which
his deliberations have led him, we may well entertain very serious
doubts if it was altogether prudent to raise that question. For
these results do not, in any substantial sense, go beyond the
admissions which are made by Strauss. We have no ground
to dispute the author's claim to the merit of having laboured
with the " earnestness of a moral and logical conscience ; " but, on
the other hand, we feel that the expectations which were excited

INTRODUCTION. 25
by this assurance have not been realized. For we confess that
we do not see how we can continue to speak of a Christian piety,
or even of a churchly exercise of Christianity, if these views be
carried out. Nor are we able to imagine how a thinker can
abide by this standpoint, or avoid deciding at last, whether with
or without Strauss, for the conclusions of a Reimarus. When
Holsten undertook to explain and to trace the genesis of the
alleged divergent opinions of the apostles in regard to the death
of Jesus, he felt himself compelled to deal, in the first place, with
our Lord's own views of His approaching departure from the
world. But here his investigations have led him to make state
ments which are shattered against another rock besides the express
declarations which fell from the lips of Christ, and for the
setting aside of wliich he has employed his exegetical skill in vain.
He tries to persuade us that our Lord was uncertain of the
ultimate issue of His career up to the last moment. No doubt
the ever-increasing fanaticism of His opponents made it evident
that His death was certain so far as it depended on the will of
men ; but so long as the possibility of divine interposition still
remained, hope continued to assert itself in the pious soul of
Jesus, and faded away only with the cry : " My God, why hast
Thou forsaken me ! " If it occurred to Him to ask amid His
dying thoughts what divine purpose was to be accomplished by
this termination of His career, the presuppositions of the Jewish
mind could have supplied the answer, that His suffering might be
substitutionary, in order to the expiation of the sins of others.
But this thought was no more than a momentary presentiment or
a passing reflection ; amid the rush of events He was unable to
retain it in His consciousness. " It was hidden like a germ in
its depths ; for the present it lay as if buried in death, in order
to rise to new life in the future." Paul was the first to express
in a clear and decided way that which had hovered only vaguely
and indefinitely before the mind of Jesus Himself. How the
author, with his eye on the Gospels, could have erred so far
as to make assertions which have not even the semblance of a
foundation, is not hard to comprehend when we remember the
attitude which he has taken up towards the Holy Scriptures.
This attitude is so peculiarly free that no one has ever before
maintained it in the same way ; it is so absolutely unfettered,
not being defined even by arbitrarily chosen limitations, that the

26 THE PASSION HISTORY.
same narrative is at one time rejected as inadmissible, and at
another recognised as worthy of credit, just as it happens to suit
the interests of the moment. It must therefore appear all the
more mysterious that he should beheve it to be possible to
reconcile with his assumptions the idea of the redemptive signifi
cance of the death of Jesus ¦ in any shape or form whatsoever.
We do not here speak from the standpoint of Christian dogmatics,
although it also has shown the impracticability of such an
attempt. Either Christ was the only-begotten Son of God, in
which case He knew from the beginning, as is represented in the
fourth Gospel, the time and the hour, the meaning and value, the
end and object of His departure from the world ; or He was not,
in which case His death, as bearing on the salvation of the world,
had no significance whatever. " Nam mors nudi hominis, passio
solius carnis, ne minimum quidem robur habet ad nos liberandos;"
so teach Quenstedt, Hollaz, Osiander, and others, with perfect
unanimity. But we leave this point, for we are aware that
we cannot treat with the author in this domain. But there is
an alternative which cannot be rejected, even from his own
standpoint, and it is this. Our Lord, by His suffering and dying,
fulfilled a task which was appointed Him by the Father, in which
case He must have clearly known what it was ; or He was
destitute of such knowledge, in which case, however, He could
neither have discharged, nor even have been entrusted with, any
task. Dr. Holsten is in great need of the broad basis which he
has laid in order to account for the very dissimilar views of the
death of Jesus which the apostles are alleged to have entertained.
" Because the processes of thought which were awakened by the
anticipation of death were retained in the deeps of the spiritual
life of Jesus, and were unable to grow to clear vision, and because
the disciples, for that reason, were not possessed of a consistent,
fixed deliverance on the point conveyed to them by their Master,
they must have felt at a loss among different possible explana
tions, and have proceeded in partially divergent directions." The
author therefore discovers, even in the New Testament, all the
possible and impossible opinions in regard to the purpose and
virtue of our Lord's Passion which are known to dogmatic history.
He is even persuaded that the Socinian view is perfectly apparent
in the Apocalypse, and maintains that when our Lord is called
" the faithful witness," the expression is designed to convey

INTRODUCTION. 27
nothing else than this, that our Lord triumphantly sealed the
truth of His prophetic testimony by His death, and by the moral
worth of such a death earned divine dignity and glory. How
ever, it is only to the views of Peter and Paul that he devotes
special consideration. So far as Peter was concerned, he says
that the death of Jesus was to him inappropriate in the highest
degree. He regarded it as a purposeless act, a useless addition
to our Lord's Messianic activity, a superfluous act, altogether
unimportant as bearing on redemption, so that it might as well
not have happened. The Pauline Xoyo? rov aravpov, especially
the conclusions deduced from it by Paul, were to him, quite
naturally, a stumbling-block. He was, unfortunately, unable to
deny the fact itself, consequently he was compelled to endure
this superfluity, to admit it into his consciousness and his
preaching, but he never saw in it more than an element inci
dental to the Messianic work, and it always remained to him
something merely external which was destitute of formative
vital power. Ultimately, indeed, he recognised the death of
Jesus as the accomplishment of a divine volition ; only he did
not see in it a fulfilment of a redemptive decree of the Father, but
merely of that general will of Providence without which a sparrow
does not fall to the ground. Our astonishment at a representation
of the " Petrine conception of doctrine " which is so diametrically
opposed to the real statements of the apostle as rightly inter
preted, is surpassed only by the astonishment we feel on perceiving
that the author could develope this caricature of the truth from
the reproving words spoken by Paul at Antioch. The exegesis
by means of which this was possible to him is sufficiently
characterized when we mention as an instance of it, that he does
not hesitate to base his melancholy remark that the death oi Jesus
was a divine work of supererogation (Luxusthat), on the word
Sapedv in Gal. ii. 21. A singular contrast to this complete
travesty of the Petrine representation of doctrine in regard to our
Lord's Passion, is Holsten's altogether correct and admirable
delineation of the doctrinal position of Paul. But it requires us
to acknowledge an unprecedented exception to the saying : " The
disciple is not above his master." According to the view in
question, Paul was, in this domain, far above his Master, and
the apostle understood and saw distinctly that which existed in
the consciousness of Jesus Himself only in the germ form of a

28 THE PASSION HISTORY.
transient and vague presentiment. If these be the findings to which
the author was led by his endeavour to understand from history
the doctrinal declarations of the apostles, the result is one which is
more fitted to act as a deterrent than to encourage us to enter upon
a similar undertaking. But it may be asked with good reason if
the first steps which were taken on this path were not already
vitiated by a mistake, which made success impossible, from the
very outset. According to Dr. Holsten, after the death of their
Lord had taken place, the disciples made the fact of the cruci
fixion the subject of their reflections. These led them to take
up a two-sided view of His death, one of which bore a historico-
religious and the other a dogmatico-religious impress. Peter
and the original apostles, holding the former view, saw in the
fate of Christ the sinful act of men, the realization of a universal
world-historical law which had obtained from the beginning in
religious history, a circumstance which was a mere concomitant of
the earthly life of the Messiah, a simple accident of His redemp
tive work. The latter view was worked out by Paul, and those
who held it saw in the death of Jesus on the cross the gracious
act of God, the revelation of a new redemptive principle, the
essential purpose of the Messiah's coming to the world, the essence
of His work. Of course the author can find room for these
views only by denying the resurrection of our Lord. But even
after he has proved by means of this violent expedient that there
was scope for the reflections which he attributes to the disciples,
there is one thing which he has failed, and which he will always
fail to show, and that is, how the assumed inferences were
possible to them. Either all experience deludes and all psycho
logical laws mislead, or the circumstances of the disciples, after
the death of Jesus, were such as had been predicted in the
farewell discourse recorded by John (xvi. 20) ; their real reflec
tions, if we may use the expression, were no other than those
implied in the words spoken on the way to Emmaus : " we
trusted that it had been He which should have redeemed Israel :
and beside all this," etc. (Luke xxiv. 21) ; and, had they been left
to themselves, they would never have reached a higher stand
point. But we know they were not so left. When they had
been abandoned as a prey to sorrowful thoughts for a httle while
" scattered every man to his own," they were gathered together
once more. The Risen One explained to them the ground and

INTRODUCTION. 29
purpose of His death. It behoved Christ to suffer these things
and to enter into His glory : His Spirit brought to their remem
brance all things that had been formerly spoken to them on the
subject, and led them into all truth. Paul also is fully conscious
of this, and says plainly that he was made a partaker of this
knowledge by means of a revelation from the Lord, — a revelation
which not only excluded the idea of human instruction, but which
strictly excluded all his own reflections as well. Thus it has
come to pass that all the apostles — Paul, Peter, John — maintain
one and the same view of the Passion of Christ, that the Scrip
tures proclaim throughout their whole extent the same doctrine
of the atoning death of Christ, and that the church, resting on
the foundation of the apostles and prophets, has professed it in all
ages. Consequently we are not only ready to admit, but even
to emphasize the fact, that the apostles, after being put in
possession of this key for opening up the meaning oi the history
— though certainly not till then — gave utterance to their reflec
tions regarding it to the churches, and did so with the intention
of imparting profounder knowledge of the great mystery. This
was the design of Paul when he reminded the Galatians that he
had evidently set forth Christ before them, just as if His death
had taken place before their eyes, and also when he asked the
Corinthians to remember how he had dehvered to them that which
he had himself received, namely, that Christ died for their sins, and
that He was buried. Now all this is very suggestive for theology.
The doctrine of the apostles regarding the death of Jesus, as stated
unambiguously in their writings, demands acceptance and recog
nition on the ground of their sufficient authority, and after being
received on their testimony, it is to be compared with the history.
The result of this comparison is not merely that the doctrine is
authenticated, but that additional hght is shed upon it, so that
we attain to such clear knowledge regarding it as is possible in
this domain of thought. This is the course which we intend to
pursue, and we cherish the hope of being able in this way to
repel the attacks of negative criticism much more effectively
than would be possible by employing mere historical counter
criticism. The Passion history of our Lord has a well-marked beginning
and an equally definite close. Between these limits, therefore,
lies our field of investigation. In refraining from extending the

30 THE PASSION HISTORY.
field on the former side, we have been influenced, not so much
by historical considerations, as by a regard to the purpose we have
in view. Hofmann has alluded to the necessity of bringing into
greater prominence, as a means of rightly understanding our
Lord's Passion, the contrast between it and the previous part of
His life. Now, while not entirely agreeing with all that he says
upon this topic, and feeling constrained to differ most decidedly
from him as to one point, we admit that his remark, considered
generally, is an entirely just one. It will come out in the
course of our investigations that we are very far from wishing to
separate the active and the passive obedience of Christ in the
manner of a Piscator ; we wish only to distinguish them from
each other more precisely and decidedly than modern dogmatics
is in the habit of doing, so that the passive obedience of Christ
may obtain its full and undiminished value, and its real import
be recognised. Now, with the view of carrying out this purpose,
it is necessary to assume that the narrative itself has drawn a
perceptible line of separation between the night which had come
for our Lord and the working hours of life which went before.
But this dividing line is very clearly marked in our Gospels ; it is
marked with sufficient distinctness even in the narrative of that
evangelist who seems most of all to obliterate the boundary.
Among all the attempts which have been made to subdivide or
group the contents of the Gospel of John, not one seems to us to
be quite satisfactory. There can be no doubt that ch. xiii. makes
a fresh start ; but we feel that there are objections to regarding
it as the beginning of a second part of the book, and the opinion
that the Passion history is to be held as beginning with it we
regard as decidedly erroneous. The characterizing words with which
ch. xiii. opens: "He loved to the end," obviously class the suc
ceeding incidents under the heading of the active life of Jesus
Christ ; but it is equally undeniable that the words which describe
the objects of the love : " His own who were in the world," point
back to the two first chapters of the Gospel. The beginning of
the manifestation of the love of Jesus to His own is described in
ch. i. 35— iL 11 ; and we read the result in the words : " and His
disciples believed on Him." The "end" corresponds to this
beginning ; and the description of the love which endured to the
end, concludes very characteristically with the confession of the
disciples : "Now we believe that Thou earnest forth from God," and

INTRODUCTION. 31
with the parallel testimony of our Lord : " they have known surely
that I came out from Thee, and they have believed that Thou
didst send Me " (John xvii. 8). Between these two there is con
tained the record of our Lord's manifestations to the world, the
final result of which is thus expressed : " yet they believed not on
Him " (John xii 3 7). Ch. xiii-xvii are therefore parts of the
still unbroken threads of the narrative going before. A new
element is first introduced only with the words of ch. xviii. :
" When Jesus had spoken these words, He went forth with His
disciples over the brook Cedron." People speak of a gap between
the high-priestly prayer of Jesus and the synoptic account of the
transactions in the garden. It will appear, however, that there
is no gap, except such as arises necessarily from the circumstances
of the case, as correctly understood, and that the narrative of John
contrasts with itself in the same sharp way as it is said to con
trast with the synoptic Gospels. The crossing of the Cedron,
then, indicates the beginning of the Passion history, and the
burial of Jesus marks its close. The church dogmatists have
been wont to regard this fact as belonging to the Exinanitio
Christo (J. Gerhard, loc. iv. § 304: "status exinanitionis durat
usque ad tempus sepulturae inclusive "). They placed its signi
ficance not merely in the circumstance that it was a proof of the
reality of Christ's death (Calov, Syst. VII. p. 672), but they
also looked on it as an essential element of the expiatory suffer
ings themselves. Quenstedt says : " Christ being buried, all our
sins were buried with Him, and cast into the depths of the sea ;
and, as Christ's sepulchre was sealed, so also by the death of
Christ have our sins been sealed up." And Calovius adds :
" Our sins, therefore, cannot appear before God's face and accuse
us." Hence also the practical application so admirably worked
out by Quenstedt, on the basis of the passages in the Epistles to
the Romans and the Ephesians, that our old man ought to be
crucified and buried with Christ. The apostle's reason for placing
between the two declarations in 1 Cor. xv. 3, 4, that Christ died,
and that He rose again, the third declaration, that He was buried,
has never yet been adequately explained. Nor is this done by
the remark of Hofmann, that " the dead Christ by His burial
was removed entirely from the upper world." Comp. die heil.
Schrift, III. p. 349. So much, however, may be inferred from a
comparison with the statements of Peter, Acts ii. 29 sq, that the

32 THE PASSION HISTORY.
mention of the grave was intended to serve as a foil to the glory
of the resurrection. The sepultura of Christ has therefore been
rightly included by dogmatics in His state of humiliation. And
when the matter is looked at from the purely historical stand
point, a similar conclusion is arrived at, and it is felt that the
burial of our Lord cannot be excluded from the history of His
sufferings, for even in the grave He was still the object of Jewish
persecution. Now, if we examine that which lies between these two land
marks, the crossing of the Cedron on the one hand, and the
entombment on the other, we shall find that the history so
defined may be divided into three clearly marked and outstanding
phases. We mean the Conflict in the garden, the Passion, the
Death. Each of these three demands separate and independent
investigation, and only when they have received this will it be
possible to acquire a satisfactory view of the whole. This demand
holds in the highest degree of the scene in Gethsemane. It is
not enough to make a strict separation between it and what goes
before, — a course which Hofmann regards as the preliminary con
dition to understanding it, — but it must • be separated no less
carefully from that which comes after. If this latter be neglected
we shall be exposed to one of two dangers, — we shall either be
tempted, with the expositors of the church, to over-estimate the
significance of the event, and to add to its proper contents, or we
shall be in danger of committing the more serious mistake of
ignoring its redemptive value. This and nothing else is the real
reason why so many theologians have found it impossible to make
their theories conform with the narrative, and this is the spot
at which negative criticism has collected its weapons of attack.
We shall find it difficult to wrest them from its hands, so long
as the conflict in the garden is combined with the succeeding
sufferings of our Lord ; but when once we have decided to draw
a sufficiently clear dividing line between them, these weapons
are already rendered harmless. When our Lord said : " Arise, let
us be going ; behold, he is at hand that betrayeth me," not only
had He taken up the resolution to do what the Father had com
manded, — He had already accomplished an essential part of the
work entrusted to Him, and accordingly He proceeded to perform
a further part of it. On the new page of His life-work which was
then opened, the story of His sufferings was written. To them

INTRODUCTION. 33
also we must give special consideration. It has sometimes hap
pened that the sufferings of Jesus have been regarded simply as
preliminary steps to His death. No further significance was attached
to them, and the death became the absorbing object of attention.
Nor have there been wanting those who looked at the death ex
clusively from the view-point of the sufferings, and regarded it
merely as the last Unk in the chain. (This is not the view of the
Apostle Peter, though Holsten would have us believe that it is ;
in the history of modern dogmatics, however, the view is common
enough.) In regard to the question of the relative seriousness of
these two errors, there can be but one opinion; but in the interests
of our controversy with negative criticism we must carefully avoid
even the one which is less grave. It is notorious that the doc
trinal representations of the apostles attributed to the sufferings, as
well as to the death of Jesus, an independent significance. When
Peter speaks of Christ's mode of enduring as an example for us
to follow, he is thinking only of His sufferings ; the same thought
is present to the mind of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews,
when he speaks of Christ having power to succour those that are
tempted, owing to the fact that He Himself suffered from temp
tation ; and those nraOrjiMara Xpicrrov, which all the apostles
assume to be an element present in Christian life, are the reflex of
these sufferings of Christ. Paul, again, has exclusively in view
the death of Christ when he speaks of the effects which have
been produced by " Christ crucified," or the " cross of Christ."
The attacks made by criticism on the evangelical narratives of the
sufferings of Jesus, will make an impression only on those by
whom their independent value is overlooked. In any other case
they will be felt to be a mere beating of the air. Accordingly,
we divide the history which succeeds the conflict in the garden
into two separate portions. In the meantime, we are content
merely to indicate our reasons for pursuing this plan ; and we
refer our readers to the pages in which it is worked out for its
full and proper vindication.

PART FIRST.

JESUS IN GETHSEMANE.
1. THE PROBLEM.
TT7'HEN we regard the conflict of Jesus in the garden as an
* * element of so essential a character in the Passion history
that we co-ordinate it with the actual Passion of our Lord, and with
His death as an independent third constituent, we feel that it is
unnecessary to vindicate this procedure to those who recognise
in relation to such subjects the authority of Holy Scripture. We
have been led to adopt this course, not by glancing at the method
which has been pursued by the theologians of the church, but
owing to a plain intimation contained in the apostolic doctrinal
representation. J. Gerhard calls the narrative before us the
principal part of the Passion history ; others describe it as a
picture of the passio magna of our Lord, in doing which they
have but attached its proper importance to the well-known
passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews, — a passage whose bearing
on the transactions in Gethsemane is admitted by all expositors,
and not denied even by Strauss. Although the apostles knew
nothing else but " Christ crucified," yet they were not in the
habit of fixing attention for doctrinal purposes 1 on individual
links in the chain of His Passion, or single drops of the cup that
was put into His hands. When it happens, therefore, that this
one element of the Passion history of Jesus is so peculiarly
emphasized, and even employed as a proof of a principal article
in the Christian creed, as well as a medium for understandino- it,
1 The references to the good confession which our Lord witnessed before Pontius
Pilate (1 Tim. vi. 13), or to the meekness which He displayed amid suffering
(1 Pet. ii. 23), or to His being led without the gate to die there (Heb. xiii. 12)°
belong wholly to the region of mere application, and are made solely for the en
couragement of Christians. 34

JESUS IN GETHSEMANE. 35
it cannot have appeared to the author of the Epistle a mere
fragment of a whole ; he must have regarded it as a whole in
itself, to which there belonged an independent significance. And
in the main the historical representation of the event- by the
evangelists harmonizes entirely with this mode of viewing it.
It has been said that there is no room for the Gethsemane scene
in the fourth Gospel. Even Origen attributed to deliberate
intention the silence of John in regard to this incident. Strauss
goes so far as to maintain that every attempt to introduce it into
the text seems an outrage upon the moral elevation and the
manly earnestness of the Christ who is portrayed by this evan
gelist. Others have at least acknowledged their perplexity at
the state of the matter, and have found an irreconcilable con
tradiction between the triumphant confidence which is breathed
by the high-priestly prayer and this deadly agony. But it seems
to us strange that a narrative which is supposed to be so
irreconcilable with the Johannine representations can be accepted
so readily from the Synoptists themselves. Has Matthew never
submitted to his readers a similar representation of Jesus ? Does
not he too, and that in the immediately preceding context, ch.
xxvi. 29-34, place Jesus on the very same pedestal as do the
valedictory discourses in the fourth Gospel ?
Quite apart from the Gospel of John, it is impossible to come
to any conclusion except that the incident is introduced altogether
unexpectedly; and far from ranking itself as a member of the
historical development, or as one of its stages, it appears, even in
the synoptic narrative, as occupying an independent place. The
word r\p%aro, with which the account of Matthew as well as that
of Mark begins, betokens more than merely the " entrance of the
situation " (Meyer). Bengel's comment, " repente," is as apt as
the remark of J. Gerhard, who, appealing to what is said of the
Saviour in Johnxi.: " He groaned in the spirit, and was troubled,"
draws therefrom the inference that " Christ spontaneously and
voluntarily became sad in spirit." The fip^aro really receives justice
only when the assumption is made that our Lord entered the garden
in order to engage in a special conflict which He had to wage
and carry out to a triumphant issue in one and the same hour.1
1 " Precisely as, at the beginning of His ministry, He was tempted by Satan, not
incidentally, but because He was led out into the wilderness by the Spirit for the
very purpose." Hengst. Comment, on John.

3G THE PASSION HISTOEY
And thus the evangelical representation also elevates the event
to the same dignity as is attributed to it by the author of the
Epistle to the Hebrews.
The true and proper ground on which criticism has regarded
this narrative as one which must be entirely swept aside, is to be
found in the fact that so marked a significance is attributed to
it by the Scriptures themselves. We should otherwise be sur
prised at the pertinacious efforts which are made to destroy its
historicity. For, on the one hand, it might be supposed that
the negative tendency which is at present struggling for influence
and supremacy would welcome this incident rather than the
reverse. For if it is firmly resolved to be in thorough earnest
about the " humanity " of Jesus, might it not see in our Lord as
He appeared in Gethsemane one who was not only truly human,
but who was also compassed about with human infirmity ? And,
on the other hand, the attempt to set the narrative aside pro
duces difficulties of so grave a character that nothing except the
most urgent necessity could lead to the selection of so perilous
a battle-field. In the present case, then, criticism has not
ventured to employ its usual weapons. Strauss would not have
searched the Old Testament in vain for elements whereby to
explain the origin of this additional " legend." Had he availed
himself of such parallels1 as had been referred to by the older
thoughtful theologians, although in a very different sense, no
greater * exception would have been taken to this proceeding
than to much else which he had done in the same line. On
this occasion he has not adopted that course, nor yet has
he made any effort to explain the origin of the " legend." In
his larger work he tacitly declines to adopt the conjecture ¦ of
Schleiermacher (L. J. p. 424), that the narrative may be the drapery
of an admonition which is made more impressive through the
example of Christ ; and in his critique of the views of that
theologian, he rejects it in express terms. His whole material
of attack is reduced to the light phrase : " it has an appearance
1 As this, — that the command of Jesus to His disciples : "Sit ye here while I go
and pray yonder," vividly recalls the words which Abraham addressed to his
attendants before he presented his intended sacrifice of obedience : " Abide ye here,
aud I . . . will go yonder and worship ; " or this, that the selecting of the small
company of three meu agrees not less strikingly with the direction given by Jehovah
to Moses, to bring up to the mountain with him Nadab and Abihu, and to request
them to worship afar off (Ex. xxiv. 1).

JESUS IN GETHSEMANE. 37
of poetry rather than of history," and the arbitrary assertion that
the narrative is to be traced, not to a historical, but to a dogmatic
source, — an assertion which is entirely destitute of proof, and for
which he has no reason to give except that Christ is said to have
retired for prayer three times.1 Why, it may be asked, did he
not prefer in these circumstances to accept the incident as his
torical, since he would then have been at liberty to explain it in
his own fashion ? Why did he turn aside from the path on
which he had entered by virtue of his involuntary confession ;
" Jesus might still have had to undergo a severe inward struggle
when His terrible fate presented itself to His mind as unavoid
able " ? The reason is obvious. The Gethsemane history submits
this alternative, namely, either to decide for the results of a Celsus
and a Julian, or to accept the conclusions which have been drawn
by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Any middle
way vanishes before the gaze of a clear thinker like a dissolving
view. But if the latter alternative was naturally viewed as
inadmissible by negative criticism, it was not less indisposed to
accept the standpoint of pagan polemics. Mocking and despising
Christ do not fit in with its system. We can easily understand
how Schleiermacher would be unable to speak of the Redeemer, as
he conceived of Him, being uuder the " power of gloomy imagina
tions and vague feelings," all the more that this state of things
must then have immediately succeeded, a " condition so resolved,
stedfast, and harmonious with the divine will." But it was of
importance for Strauss also to preserve a picture of Jesus which
represented Him as the possessor of a lofty moral character, and
as submissive to everything which the task imposed upon Him
might entail. What other course, then, was left open for him
but to sweep everything away, and to declare that there was not
a single word of truth in the whole story ?
Negative criticism being thus firmly resolved to set the narrative
aside, apologetics has equally strong reasons for vindicating its
historical authenticity. For it, the question of interest is not
simply the defence of a given portion of the gospel history,
but it cannot, and dare not, abandon a part of it to which
1 In opposition to arguments of this nature it is very properly asked if we are to
doubt the historical accuracy of the statement attributed to Paul in 2 Cor. xii. 8 :
"For this thing I besought the Lord thrice that it might depart from me," on
account of the presence of the number three.

38 THE PASSION HISTORY.
Scripture itself has attributed an independent significance . so
peculiarly great. And if this be its special interest, it must take
its view-point from the position in question in order to discharge
its task. Should any other standpoint be adopted, Apologetics
may, no doubt, meet the questions which are raised ; it may
succeed in weakening the force of objections, but it will wring
from opponents no more than concessive admissions, or constrain
them to a more or less contented acquiescence, while that satis
faction, at which it must aim as its true goal, will not be produced.
At the very outset we repudiate all connection with the
attempt which has been made in many ways, and certainly with
the best intentions, to account for the conflict of our Lord on
psychological grounds ; and we do so because such a course does not
seem to us to have any reasonable prospect of success. By those
who have adopted this method, our Lord's manifestations in the
garden are explained on the ground of a presentiment of that
which awaited Him in the immediate future, and they apply to
the case the distinction drawn by Peter Lombardus between
passio and propassio. They say that He foresaw, clearly and
distinctly, the chain of His sufferings, and how link would be
joined on to link, till the whole terminated in an agonizing
death. They find it, on the one hand, perfectly natural that
this catastrophe, with all its terrors, should have cast dark
shadows upon the soul of Jesus, filling it with grief and fear,
seeing He was like to other men, and was formed in fashion as
a man. On the other hand, they say that the ground of His
manifesting the reverse of stoical apathy may be discovered in the
very fact of His moral elevation, in the purity, depth, and truth of
His sensibiHties, and they add that there is also a divine aaQeveia,
differing essentially from ordinary human weakness, and that it
is expressly predicated of Jesus by the Apostle Paul.1 Now, if
the question were the explanation of such passing moods of
sorrow or longing as undoubtedly came upon our Lord at various
times (comp. Luke xii. 50 ; John xii. 27), possibly this key might
be suitable. But how little it does towards accounting for the
peculiar depth of His sorrow here in Gethsemane ! The narra
tive is in every respect adapted to bring out the unprecedented
character of this sorrow, and to mark it as one for which there
1 Hengstenberg, in pursuing this lino, has endeavoured to avail himself of the
manifestations ol* a Socrates and a Seneca.

JESUS IN GETHSEMANE. 39
was no parallel in the whole circle of human experience, nor
even in the rest of Christ's own experience. The characteristic
description by the evangelists leads to this conclusion. A similar
impression is conveyed by our Lord's own confession; and the
course which we see Him adopting points in the same direction.
All the three narrators appear to search for expressions by which
to describe the superabundance of the sorrow, its superlative,
absolute degree. With this view they select the unusual and
peculiar terms, a&ijfioveiv, iicBafifieicrdat,, dycovla,— terms which
find their explanation in the incident before us, and not by means
of etymological investigations. The impression which the nar
rators wish to convey is that the witnesses of our Lord's self-
revelation had never seen Him wear the same appearance before.
'' He was transfigured before them, and the fashion of His
countenance was altered" — so we read in the history of the
transfiguration (Matt. xvii. 2 ; Luke ix. 2 9) , a similar transfor
mation, but in a very different sense, is now exhibited before
their eyes. They had often seen Him deeply troubled, yea, even
to tears, but the superabundance of this present sorrow was new
to them, and far surpassed anything they had ever noticed in Him
previously. He appeared to them as if on the verge of despair
(aSrjfiovSiv), as if beside Himself (e/efla/x./Sos), as if He were in the
agonies of death (iv aymvla).1 And the confession which fell
from Christ's own lips shows that the impression made upon the
minds of the disciples was a correct one. " My soul is exceeding
sorrowful (irepiXxnro<i), even unto death." The older Lutheran
interpreters rightly protested against the opinion that this might
mean that the "tyvyji of Jesus was alone abandoned to sorrow,
while peace continued to reign in the depths of His rrvevp.a.
Now the term rrepLXv'iro<; of itself breaks through this arbitrary
limitation, and excludes the distinction alluded to as one which
is here wholly irrelevant. It neither points to " encompassing "
sufferings in some such sense as the irepucvicXovv of Ps. xviii. 6
(this apparent parallelism may be disposed of for far stronger
reasons than the fact of its not being justifiable on grammatical
grounds), nor yet is its meaning exhausted by the weaker idea
of an "exceeding sorrow'' (taken from Matt. xxvi. 22); but it
1 Comp. the description ofthe high priest Onias, 2 Mace. iii. 16, 17 : "his coun
tenance declared the anguish (xymixv) of his soul . . . the sorrow he had in his
heart. "

40 THE PASSION HISTORY;
denotes that complete mastery of the whole consciousness 1 which
Jesus formerly perceived and called attention to in His disciples :
" Sorrow hath filled your hearts " (John xvi. 6). The qualitative
side is brought out in the next place by the concluding words,
"unto death." Here referenoe has justly been made to the
saying of one of the Old Testament prophets. SoboSpa XeXvTrrjptat,
eV» eo>? 6avdrov, said Jonah, the son of Amittai, ch. iv. 9.
It is by no means " unworthy of the Lord " to adduce this
parallel. Echoes of the Book of Jonah, and allusions to the
person of this prophet, are found, as is well known, on several
occasions in the discourses of Christ ; and the expression, " a
greater than Jonah," is entirely verified even here, in so far as
the feelings of the prophet feebly typified the experience of our
Lord, just as the experience of the Apostle Paul (" we are pressed
above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life ") was a
faint ejho of it. The expression " unto death," as occurring in
the passage with which we are now dealing, has its authentic ,
explanation in the " agony " of Luka This harmony between
our Lord's own confession and the description of Him. given
by the evangelists, becomes a full chord by means of that part
of the narrative which tells us of the course which was taken
by the sorrowing Saviour. He turns to the disciples with the
words, " Tarry ye here and watch with me." It may perhaps be
conceded to Bengel, Hengstenberg, and other interpreters, that
this request was made partly with the design of making them
witnesses of the impending conflict, but we do so with hesitation.
In any case, our Lord's own need of the comfort which their
society might give was the principal motive. The more' we study
the parallel in John xvi. 32, the more does the fierd compel us
to acknowledge this : " If there be any comfort of love, if any
fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies " (Phil. ii. 1),
— tarry here and watch with Me. He could present such a
request to those whose weakness and helplessness He had so
often proved, only when He Himself, " being sore amazed and
very heavy," was plunged in the depths of sorrow. When we
see this request, therefore, coming forth from the depths of His
"exceeding sorrowful soul" (Matt. xxvi. 38), we may use it as
a means of estimating the degree of His depression. Now, if
1 Quenstedt, Theol. did. pol. III. p. 76 : " mplwm non tantam secundum
rationem inferiorem, sed etiam secundum superiorem mentis facultatem."

JESUS IN GETHSEMANE. 4 1
all these things be put together, we shall certainly regard any one
as bold who asks us to account for a sorrow of this nature on
the ground of a presentiment of the cross. How very strangely
this fearful foreboding would contrast with the calmness and
patience, the courage and confidence, which our Lord exhibited
amid His actual sufferings ! To this it is answered, no doubt,
that since He had already tasted their bitterness by anticipation,
they were unable in their actuality to pierce Him with the full
sharpness of their sting. But those who fall back on this expe
dient have unconsciously abandoned the idea of mere presentiment,
and without intending it have forsaken the purely psychological
method of interpretation. Others proceed more cautiously, and
while somewhat withdrawing the suffering of our Lord from the
field of vision, and concentrating attention on the other hand on
His dying, suggest this question, Must not death have been a far
more foreign thing to Christ than it could be to us ? must it not
have affected the pure and sinless One far more violently than
was possible in the case of those who bore the germ of it within
them from their birth, owing to innate sin ? Just as there
broke from the lips of Jesus when He was dying His bitter and
grievous cry of lamentation, so it is said even the thought of the
near and inevitable approach of death must have filled the soul
of Jesus with a sense of horror which the heart of a mere child
of Adam could never experience- It cannot be denied that this
mode of representation has been repeatedly carried out with
considerable ingenuity; and, although its materials are drawn
rather from the imagination than from Scripture, it has succeeded
in gaining some acceptance. Of course its defenders can only
disguise, but cannot get over the difficulty arising from the fact
that Jesus Himself never expressed Himself in this manner.
If our Lord invariably described His death as a going to the
Father, if He was anxious that His disciples should regard it as
a ground for rejoicing (John xiv. 28), it is difficult to maintain
the view that the thought of His approaching end could so
profoundly agitate and afflict His soul. But even assuming that
this were made out, — endeavours to do so have never been lack
ing, — in the end every attempt at a psychological explanation
strikes upon a rock, which must shatter the laborious structure
beyond all hope of recovery. We refer to the circumstance that
our Lord went so far as to long and pray that He might be

42 THE PASSION HISTORY.
spared the cup of suffering. The words of the text are clear.
They leave no room for misunderstanding, nor can they be put
aside. Jesus evidently considered with Himself the possibility
of the offered cup passing from Him. He was certainly not
thinking of fortuitous earthly circumstances,1 but rather of some
definite interposition from; above. " 0 my Father, if it be possible,
let this cup pass from Me!" So we read in Matthew; and such,
we believe, were the words used by the Suppliant. Mark and
Luke give the words less precisely, but they are all the more
careful to give their meaning. The former, for example, has
taken care to prevent our understanding the " if " as implying
any doubt upon the question. " All things are possible unto Thee "
(Mark xiv. 36). Jesus finds the possibility of His being "saved
from this hour " in that same divine omnipotence to which He
had formerly referred the disciples, in relation to the salvation of
their souls. Comp. Mark x. 27. And on the ground of a possi
bility so conceived of, He presents His petition. That the
petition is not to be understood as unconditional, but that the
spirit of it is correctly described by Luke's " if Thou wilt," so
much we admit, on the understanding that the limitation is not
to be employed for the purpose of making an excuse for the
Suppliant, which is here uncalled for, and entirely out of place.
But this does not in the slightest degree detract from the absolute
earnestness of the supplication, which is attested, moreover, by
the peculiarly importunate invocation, " 0 my Father ! " 2 The
attempt made 'by Gerhard to condition this earnestness to some
extent, and to transform the qualified petition into mere inward
submission to the Father,3 was no doubt occasioned by the wish
to explain the contrasted manifestation with which he was
immediately afterwards to deal ; but it cannot be vindicated, and
least of all by the unhappily chosen parallel which this theo
logian has drawn.4 Now, however, there arises the serious
"'Schleiermacher, Leben Jesu, p. 424 : " There was a possibility actually existing
that the matter would take another turn ; something might have interposed to
cause this." The further development of this thought, together with an enumera
tion of conceivable hindrances, is contained in p. 438 sq.
2 It is found in this single passage only, as a substitute for the simple riru
used elsewhere.
3 See J." Gerhard, Harm. Evangel. III. 1 : " Orat ut verus homo, ideoque
desiderium suum, quo aestuabat, in sinum patris codestis deponit. " So also Calvin"
i His parallel is as follows: "Sic pii in adversis non speculantur arcana Dei

JESUS IN GETHSEMANE. 43
difficulty, how could so earnest a request consist with our Lord's
usual manner of referring to His sufferings and death? The
knowledge He had of His Father's decree was as clear as the
testimony He bore to it was explicit ; and He declared it to be
His fixed resolution to submit to this decree.1 How does the
present petition for deliverance from tlie bitter cup accord with this ?
At present we content ourselves with asking this one question,
if it is proposed that the " dread foreboding " idea should be used
here also as a means of explanation ? So long as the question
dealt with is the sorrow alone, one may feel satisfied, or at least
be persuaded into satisfaction, with the expedient that the "tyvyr),
" which conceives desire and aversion " (Meyer, Comm. z. Matt),
was dismayed at the prospect of painful suffering ; in the region
where the reflection of the rrvevpM. comes in, and must come in,
this psychological method of procedure is necessarily 2 forbidden.
Or the knot must be cut, as has been done by many of the Fathers
decreta, cogitantes, omnia ab aeterno praevisa et decreta esse, ideoque frustra preces
fandi ; sed calamitates suas vel auferri vel mitigari vera fide petentes voluntati
divinae suam voluntatem reverenter submittunt." It is doubtless perfectly justi
fiable to point to the Saviour praying in Gethsemane as a pattern for believers.
But to attempt to explain the original from a kind of imitation, is altogether
inadmissible. ¦The single passage, Matt. xvi. 21 sq., is quite sufficient to place this beyond
doubt. . . . "From that time forth began Jesus to show unto His disciples how
that He must go . . . and suffer . . . and be killed," etc. The word " began"
shows that from a very definite period onwards ("from that time forth" — from
the time of the confession made by the disciples) our Lord did not cease to place
His suffering and dying in the clearest light. The word "must," again, excludes
the erroneous opinion that the state of matters which had come about, and which
was to be further evolved, justified Him in assuming or fearing that He would
suffer and die ; it points rather to a high decree of God, which had ordained such
a destiny for Him. The word "show," in the next place, testifies no less to our
Lord's own understanding of this divine necessity (comp. John v. 20), than to His
desire to help His disciples to the same knowledge. Finally, the reproof addressed
to Peter evinces the submission of the Son to this "good pleasure" of the
Father, as the proof of that divine disposition, which is not swayed by human
determining motives, and whose course nothing would obstruct but a Satanic will.
8 With justice Sebastian Schmidt (in the Diss, de passione sen sacrificio Jesu
voluntario) energetically opposes those who venture to avail themselves in this
region also of the distinction drawn by Thomas Aquinas between a voluntas sen-
sualitatis and the voluntas rationalis in Christ. He asks with conclusive force, if
the prayer of Jesus — "let this cup pass from me" — as such can be called a
manifestation of the voluntas sensuatitatie. "Qui oravit, num sine voluntate rationis
oravit ? aut num voluntas per modum naturae vel voluntas sensualitatis orare
potest? Orare sane praestantissimus inter actus rationis est. " Comp. S. Schmidt,
Mysterium gratiae divinae in lncarnat. et Passione Filii Dei, p. 207.

44 THE PASSION HISTORY.
of the church, who said that the prayer of Jesus did not refer
to His own person at all.1 J. Gerhard virtually undertakes the
same thing by a remark not quite worthy of his usual style
of speaking: " paululum avertit Jesus animum a consideratione
decreti divini."
It is usually said of the exegesis which is dominated by
churchly dogmatics, that it is fettered in such a way that all
confidence in the accuracy of its conclusions is necessarily
destroyed at the very outset. In general, and in many individual
instances, this charge may not be altogether groundless ; in the
present instance, however, the impression which we receive is
that this is the very exegesis which bursts through restraining
bonds. When, rejecting all assistance from the teachings of
spiritual experience, it explains the manifestation of Jesus in the
garden, not from personal feelings occasioned by the course of
events, but on the ground of a burden which was hanging over
Him, and which was laid upon His soul some time during this
hour, it does real justice to the narrative in respect of its right to
claim independent significance. As is well known, this exegesis
arrived at the conclusion that our Lord bore in Gethsemane the
wrath and sentence of God, the curse of the law, — that He endured
there " dolores et angores vere infernales." 2 But in truth the
1 They mostly regard the prayer of Jesus as an intercession, although they are
not unanimous as to the object of it, thinking now of the disciples, now of the
Jews, and now of the traitor. Even Basilius, who regards the word from the cross,
" Father, forgive them," as a striking parallel, commits himself to the same error.
This is of a piece with the exegesis which believes that the message sent by the
imprisoned Baptist to Jesus was accounted for by the necessities of those disciples
to whom he entrusted it.
2 Abr. Calov, Bibl. N. T. illustrata (Frankfurt 1676), p. 442 : " Tristitia
animam Jesu obsidet vere letalis, non modo quantam mors temporalis, sed quantam
mors infernalis importat; cum hac enim hie colluctatus est, imo hanc sensit Christus
in hoc agone gravissimo. " Compare also his examination of the question, in oppo
sition to the Socinians and Romanists, " An filius Dei senserit dolores infernales "
in the Systema locorum theologic. (Wittenberg 1677), VII. p. 657 sq. Similarly
Dav. Hollaz, Exam, theol. acroam. (Leipzig 1725), III. p. 199 : " Quam acerba
fuerit interna animae Christi passio, colligitur e nominibus, quibus ejus gravitas
exprimitur ; vocatur enim kym'tu., vnpi\vria., ixSiii^ntris, uSriptmlx . . . Sensit Christus
iram Dei . . . Sustinnit infernales dolores, aeternis damnatorum doloribus aequi-
pollentes ; sustinuit eos non in «¦«¦** damnatorum, sed in monte Oliveti." Quenst.
Theol. did. pol. p. 247 - " Sensit infernales poenas, licet non in Inferno et in
aeternum." Luther also had already spoken in the same line. "When Jesus
prayed in the garden He was truly in Gehenna and in hell ; He really experienced
in His own person death aud hell ; we ought to realize that He was then oblicred to

JESUS IN GETHSEMANE. 43
orthodox explanation can be considered satisfactory only as stated
in the general form which has just been indicated. In going
beyond this, good ground is given for manifold objections. On
the one hand, we take exception to expressions which are only
applicable to the strictly juridical conception of the satisfaction
made by Christ in its rigid onesidedness and obliviousness of the
consequences which follow from it. 1 And, on the other hand,
we find fault with its tone of mere assertion, which is not only
unsupported by an exegetical and historical vindication, but
winch actually despises it. The upholders of this view may
have thought themselves entitled to maintain such a tone on the
ground that the authoritative explanation in the Epistle to the
Hebrews seems to attest its accuracy. But although it is
impossible to rest satisfied with any conception of the transaction
in Gethsemane unless it can bear to be tested by this apostolic
utterance, still that which may be of priceless value as a test is
not to be made the point of departure in attempting to solve the
problem. 2. THE SOLUTION.
It has been frequently said, and in recent times by Hofmann
in particular (see the discussion of the section with which we
are dealing in his Schriftbew. II. p. 306 sq.), that, as a funda
mental condition of understanding the conflict of Jesus, the period
of His life which now opens is to be apprehended in the full
force of its contrast to the period which preceded.2 The manner
suffer the pain of hell. " Many similar utterances of the Reformer are collected in
the carefully edited work of Held, De opere Jesu Christi salutari quid Lutherus
senserit, Gbttingen 1860, p. 150 sqq.
1 Even orthodox interpreters themselves had difficulty in maintaining these
expressions against various objections. "When it was objected to them that the
suffering Saviour had never been reduced to despair, which, nevertheless, was clearly
an element in the dolores infernales, Hollaz could help himself only by means of the
assertion, "desperatio non est pars cruciatuum infernalium" (I.e. p. 171), or he
attempts to do so by means of a distinction which it is quite impossible to maintain
" qui dolores infernales patitur iis succumbendo, ille desperat ; qui patitur eos
superando, non desperat" (p. 201). Buddeus, therefore, preferred to give the
modifying explanation : "quando a nonnullis dicitur, Christum dolores infernales
sensisse, non ita hoc capiendum est, acsi eos ipsos dolores, quos damnati experiuntur
senserit ; sed potius ita mtelligendum, quod dolores adeo graves, ut cum infernalibus
comparari possint, revera in anima sua senserit." Comp. Instil. Theol. Dogm, p. 784.
2 This form of statement, which was certainly not unknown to the theolcy of the
church, and which reaches back to the time of St. Bernard, was never employed by

46 THE PASSION HISTORY.
in which the theologian just referred to draws the dividing line,
— " hitherto Jesus has wrought, and from this time onwards He-
is to suffer," — is one to which the facts lying before us present
serious objections. And they are not removed by the admission
that, just as Christ's acting was never dissociated from suffering,
so also His whole suffering was undoubtedly a sacred, voluntary
act. The evangelical history has much more to say of Jesus
after He had crossed the Kidron than merely this, " a suffering
never involuntary." It bears testimony to an acting properly
so called, which continued unbroken up to the moment of His
death. Nothing whatever was awanting of all that which dog
matics is accustomed to reckon among the functions of the
prophetic office ; even His miraculous activity projects itself into
the Passion period. Our Lord acted upon His disciples not only
in Gethsemane, but even thereafter, as often as His eye fell on
any one of their number ; He acted upon enemies and persecutors,
upon the indifferent and upon sympathisers ; He laboured in
words of doctrine, correction, and prophecy ; and that which He
announced to Pilate as the work of His vocation — " for this ,
cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the
truth'' — reached its termination, like the service of His love
generally, only in the final rereXearai. But supposing that the
contrast between the two periods of our Lord's life admitted of
being apprehended in the rigorous way referred to, what advantage
would it give us for the understanding of the. Gethsemane history ?•"¦
it in a sense like this. It could not do so, since it held the opinion, " omnes actus
Christi a primo conceptionis momento usque ad triduum mortis fuisse satisfactorios "
(Quenstedt, Theol. did. pol. III. p. 253) ; still less could it do so when it held the
doctrine that Christ ' ' agendo culpam, quam homo in juste commiserat, expiaverit "
(l.c. p. 244). The controversy which was carried on by the Giessen theologians, with
Wenzer at their head, against J. Piscator, in which Gerhard (loc. xvi. 57 sq.') also
took part, and which was vigorously continued by Quenstedt (l.c. p. 283), shows
how little people were disposed to draw so sharp a distinction between the acting and
suffering of our Lord, or to be satisfied with so frail a bridge between the two.
1 M. Baumgarten, who makes the same presupposition, finds its explanatory
element in the circumstance that the world's complete insensibility to the word and
work of Jesus was actually demonstrated. " The beginning of His Passion synchro
nizes with the impossibility of a further activity, and is intelligible from this very
arrest of its progress" (Geschichte Jesu, p. 357). But how far this view is from
harmonizing with the utterance of our Lord,— I have finished the work which Thou
gavost rae to do ! He whom we behold praying is not One who feels His activity
hindered by an unfeeling and non-receptive world, but One who looks back with
satisfaction upon work successfully accomplished.

JESUS IN GETHSEMANE. 47
It is answered, that at this turning-point the Father gave up
His Son to the power of His enemies, so that they were now able
to proceed against Him according to their desire (to do unto Him
whatsoever they listed, Matt. xvii. 12), and that our Lord in the
garden shrank back from this abandonment to the power of God-
opposed will, and from the loss of all manifestations of the
Father's love wliich it involved. It may be admitted that indi
vidual expressions of Jesus supply a foundation for this reply ; a
it may also be acknowledged that it aims at going farther than
the expedient commonly resorted to, and which we have already
rejected ;2 however, it is just as far from agreeing with the history
as the theory for which it is designed to act as a foundation is
dogmatically unsatisfactory. That our Lord during His Passion
enjoyed the full sense of fellowship with the Father is obvious,
not only from the facts of the case, bat from His own express
testimony. When His Passion was full in view, He said : " I
am not alone, because the Father is with Me " (John xvi. 32), in
the very same sense as He had said in the days of His active
ministry (John viii. 29): M He that sent Me is with Me ; the
Father hath not left Me alone." But this also cannot be denied,
that throughout the whole of the way leading to the cross, He
enjoyed an undiminished sense of His Father's love, just as He
had fully experienced it in His relation to the world. For the
state of the case is not this, that the traees of this experience
are withdrawn from our view,8 nor yet does our Lord Himself
complain of an unsatisfied longing, or express Himself as if He
1 The first announcement of His sufferings, Matt. xvii. 22 : "The Son of man
shall be betrayed into the hands of men " (the delivery into the hands of men seems
to presuppose His being withdrawn from the protection of the hand of God), is
specially relevant here, particularly when viewed in the light of the words addressed
by our Lord to His disciples after His prayer-conflict : ' ' Behold, the hour is at hand,
and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners, " Matt. xxvi. 45.
2 In the fourth edition of his commentary (p. 562) Meyer introduces a similar
remark, for which he is apparently indebted to Hofmann, and which, as interwoven
with his representation, sinks to the level of empty phraseology. He «ays, that
Jesus having been "up to this point ever victorious over alien powers, because His
hour was not yet come, now felt, when it had come, the full weight of His unavoid
able abandonment by God to these powers, and to the terrible death which was
impending." This is simply a new piece on an old garment.
3 Strauss consequently presupposes that the evangelists represented the Passion
history of Jesus in such a way as to make it appear that God bore testimony to the
Sufferer at each successive stage, and that all apparent marks of infamy were in
reality His symbols of honour and supports for faith.

43 THE PASSION HISTORY,
were at all in want of the sense of His Father's love.1 Thus,
according to this new endeavour also, the mere anticipation of
the hostile acts of which the world's will was to make Him the
object is the ground of the sorrow of Jesus in Gethsemane. We
are to accept that as the explanation of the anguish, the agony
of Him who laid it upon His friends as a duty, not to fear those
who can kill the body, but have power to do nothing more !
Or is the case helped by calling in the aid of the representation,
that it was not to man, but to Satan, that God gave authority to
execute his hostile wishes against Jesus ? So long as nothing
else is shown by which the prince of this world burdened the
foreboding heart of Jesus, except His approaching sufferings, so
long the case remains substantially the same. He who said,
" The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me . . .
arise, let us go hence," confronts the real secret author of His
sufferings no less fearlessly than his agents. But, finally, if
these assumptions be made, what meaning would the words of
the Suppliant, " let this cup pass from me," receive, except one
which our Lord Himself shows to be a decided misunderstanding
of them. Even in Gethsemane He says to Peter, " Thinkest
thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and He shall presently
give me more than twelve legions of angels ! " What is involved
in this reproving question ? Simply this, that no such desire
could spring up in His heart. But it is quite impossible to
evade the application of this declaration to our Lord's immediately
preceding prayer-conflict. We at least fail to understand by
what devices the inference can be resisted, that our Lord could
not possibly have prayed to His God in the garden in any such
tone or sense.
The Suppliant in Gethsemane does not at all make upon our
minds the impression that He is fleeing from the cunning and
power of His enemies to the omnipotence of God, who is able
to stretch protecting hands over Him. The immediate impression
produced by the narrative is not of this character, nor is it pro
duced as the result of reflection. No doubt Jesus cries to His
1 That which our Lord said, John xii. 30, of the voice which sounded from
heaven, and bore testimony to Him : " This voice came not because of Me, but for
your sakes,'' has a wide application which cannot be called in question. The
single cry of lament on the cross is to be judged by its own proper rule, and will be
dealt with in its own place.

JESUS IN GETHSEMANE. 49
Father, — but not in the sense of the Psalm, — " Judge me, 0 God,
and plead mj cause against an ungodly nation : 0 deliver me from
the deceitful and unjust man ! " He turns towards the divine
power, — "all things are possible unto Thee," — but He neither
desires nor thinks of a manifestation of it which would " set them
in slippery places," and bring their counsel to nought. He
shrinks back from the fate which is hanging over Him, but He
does not regard it as a fate which can be brought about by the
machinations of men, by an unhallowed concatenation of circum
stances merely subject to the divine permission. He speaks of
this cap. Modern interpreters are accustomed to view the ex
pression in the light of the figurative speech of the Old Testament
(the Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup,
Ps. xvi 5), and to regard it as denoting the lot which is appor
tioned to any one. But even the fact that, apart from the
Apocalypse, the figure of the cup is not employed in the whole
New Testament except for the Passion of Christ, makes this
generally accepted interpretation doubtful. " My cup . . . that I
shall drink of" (Matt. xx. 22, 23), says our Lord with evident
emphasis ; and with still more perceptible emphasis He appends
(John xviii. 11) the explanation, "which my Father hath given
me." x We do not import anything into the words, but recognise
their true value, when we understand them, on the one hand, of
a very definite purpose, which the Father had formed in relation
to His Son, — He Himself had mingled this very cup for Him
(tjroi/iacrev),2 — and when we think, on the other hand, of a re
quest preferred by the Giver of the cup to Him for whom He
had prepared it, that He should accept and willingly drink it
after overcoming His reluctance to do so.3 But this is a totally
1 The expression tiii-ixi is usually employed in the Gospel of John, where the
immediateness of the relation between the Father and the Son is in question. So
especially in the high-priestly prayer, where it is used no fewer than seven times.
2 Quenstedt : " Non fatalis quaedam necessitas, sed voluntas patris libere ab
aeterno decreta et in scripturis praedicta. "
3 If we were required to find an Old Testament basis for the figurative expression,
it would be sufficient to point to the paragraph, Jer. xxv. 15 sq. But we refer
to it not with the view of vindicating the representation of a "cup of wrath"
(Gerhard: "Calix irae et furoris divinae;" also Delitzsch, Commentary on the
Hebrews), but because it contains a demand addressed by God to those who might
possibly resist their fate. Comp. ver. 28: "And it shall be, if they refuse to
take the cup at thine hand to drink, then shalt thou say unto them, Thus saith tho
Lord of Hosts, Ye shall certainly drink. " D

50 THE PASSION HISTORY.
different representation from that of a lot happening to a man,
even though it be subject to the overruling of divine Providence,
or of a fate overtaking Him without His being asked whether He
is willing to endure it or not. When, therefore, our Lord prays,
" Let this cup pass from Me," it is not the aim of this petition to
influence the divine will to frustrate a wicked human counsel,
but to induce the Almighty to withdraw from the execution of
His own decree, and to desist from a demand which oppresses the
suppliant " out of measure, above strength." And when Jesus
falls prostrate, to offer up " strong crying," He does not beseech
God to fight for Him against the persecutors whose feet are upon
the threshold, but He sets Himself to wrestle with the Father in
regard to His determinate counsel; it is with the fiovXr) wpiafievn
rov Qeov that He takes to do at this moment.
This distinction may be characterized as an illusory one,
because not capable of being actually carried out. It may be
alleged that this very thing was the purpose of God, namely,
that our Lord should be overcome by His enemies, and suffer
death at their hands, as is expressly declared by the apostle :
"Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and fore
knowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have
slain" (Acts ii. 23). The appalling element of the transaction
has not unfrequently been placed in the very circumstance,
that in the present case the will of God harmonized with the
will of the world, that- the counsel of a Caiaphas corresponded
to a divine counsel. But even the older Lutheran theologians
showed that this was a mistaken and delusive mode of viewing
the subject. When Seb. Schmidt, among others, maintained
emphatically that God, who willed the Passion of Jesus, was not
by any means to be held as thereby willing the acts of the Jews,
he was undoubtedly influenced in a secondary degree by a con
fessional interest : he was concerned with avoiding all appearance
of admitting that God iii any sense willed a sin ; 1 but his
especial motive was to procure in this way a deeper view of the
Passion of our Lord. We may recognise the idea of a divine
permission as perfectly justifiable ; we may admit that God
'Comp. his "de pass. Christ, necess." in Myst. Grat. p. 217: "Voluit et
decrevit pater, ut filius pateretur et moreretur ; non voluit, ut Judaei, Herodes
Pilatus, passionem et mortem ei inferrent. Non voluit Deus actionem Judaeorum
quae mala erat. sed voluit passionem bonam."

JESUS IN GETHSEMANE. 51
refrains from "hindering evil deeds, in order to employ them in
the service of His own purpose ; but a ruling limited to per
mitting could never be a " determinate counsel," a rrpoOeo-it drrb
ra>v aldovcov. It is unnecessary to refute the idea that it was the
divine command that the Son should suffer at the hands of the
world, and that it was not the will of His Father to present any
hindrance to His suffering, because this acquiescence never could
amount to that free act of which it is said, " Therefore doth My
Father love Me, because I lay down My life;" nor to that volun
tariness (a,TT ifiavrov) concerning which the uniform teaching of
theology is " non est meritorium quod non est voluntarium."
This was the will of men : " Away with him, away with him,
we have no king." And, on the other hand, this was the counsel
of God, — to place Him in the midst, before the eyes of all, as a
"propitiation in His blood." In a word, the cup which the
Father gave to His Son in Gethsemane was bound up with the
task of making atonement for the sin of the world, which was
imposed upon Him.
It is very usual, especially in reference to the repeated with
drawals of the Suppliant, to speak of a resolution to which Jesus
won His way in Gethsemane. In possession of it, He left off pray
ing, and He maintained it resolutely throughout the whole of the
via dolorosa, until He carried it out victoriously in His death.
If this mean that He now, for the first time, attained to this
resoluteness of will, the representation is opposed to the plain
facts of the history. Our Lord intimated, long before, that it
was His mission to make atonement for the sin of the world by
suffering death, and frequent testimony is borne tO the fact that
it was for the very purpose of fulfilling it that He had come to
the world. No one can point to a moment in His life when He
first embraced the resolution which, according to His own
declarations, was necessarily bound up with His coming in the
flesh. " I am the living bread which came down from heaven, . . .
and the bread which I will give is My flesh, which I will give
for the life of the world" (John vi. 51). "The Son of man
came ... to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many "
(Matt. xx. 28). But if all that is meant is, that now, when the
hour had come, His will wavered for a little, but immediately
afterwards regained complete fixity, still we feel compelled to
reject the expression as inadequate and misleading. A resolution

52 THE PASSION HISTORY.
implies a future in which it is to be carried into effect. But
we can here speak of a resolution being taken up by Jesus
to perform an atoning work only in this sense, that an actual
beginning is made in the way of accomplishing it, which, how
ever, disposes of the idea of mere resolution. When our Lord
says, Thy will be done, He does not simply announce His sub-
missiveness to that which the Father had determined regarding
Him, but by virtue of this saying the will indicated already
enters on the path of fulfilment. And how far did this take
place in deed and in truth even here in Gethsemane ? Thus
far, that Jesus takes upon Himself at this moment the sin of
the world, which He was to atone for by His sufferings ! No
doubt the way in which John the Baptist describes the Messiah
when He appeared — t'Se 6 dp,vh<; rov Qeov 6 a'lpoiv rr;v dfiapnav
rod Koo-fiov — was entirely true for the whole period of the
manifestation of Jesus. The genitive rov Qeov and the present
atpcov attest the inseparability of the predicate from the subject 1
as emphatically as it is attested by the history of our Lord at
each stage of its progress. On this very account Christ was
able, from the beginning, to give remission bi sins, and to invite
sinners to Himself with the promise that He would give rest to
their souls. And therefore the evangelist already saw in Him
who " healed all that were sick," the fulfilment of the prophecy :
" Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses " (Matt.
viii. 17). The atpetv, as the old dogmatic writers teach, points
" et retrorsum et antrorsum." But if one wishes to fix upon
something definite in which it was realized in the strictest and
most literal sense, it is found only in the transaction in Geth
semane. For what is the meaning of this alpew ?2 The question
here is not whether it is to be understood in the sense of
taking away, or of bearing. The matter cannot be put in this
1 The words of Peter : "Ye were redeemed . , . with the precious blood of Christ,
as of a lamb without blemish," etc. (1 Pet. i. 19, 20), explain in the most satis
factory way the intimation of the Baptist, and bear out this idea exactly. The
purport of the expression " Lamb of God " in the lips of John is nothing else than
that which Peter has in view when he says : ' ' "Who verily was foreordained before
the foundation ofthe world" (comp. Gen. xxii. 8: "God will provide Himself
a lamb ") ; and the corresponding explanation of the present a'lpuv is given by the
apostle when he writes : " but was manifest in these last times for you."
2 Ritschl has forced his own theory of the atoning suffering of Christ even on
this utterance ofthe Baptist. He explains it as follows (I.e. II. p. 68): "As
innocent, Jesus enters upon a state of suftering which should properly be borne by

JESUS IN GETHSEMANE. 53
alternative form. The parallel, 1 John iii. 5, has provided
against the idea of " taking away " being excluded, and it has
already been shown in a most convincing manner by Grotius
that sin can be taken away only by an atoning bearing of it :
the KB**) is accomplished by means of the *?3D. But the question
is, what is the immediate primal signification of the term — that
which presupposes not merely the taking away, but also the
bearing ? Now, this is found only in the idea ot lifting up.
Atpeiv means to tpthe upon oneself, suscipere, sursumferre (Ps. xci. 12 :
to bear up in the hands). True, indeed, that which one assumes
or takes up, he proposes to bear, and so the two ideas may be
regarded as coalescing, thus vindicating the remark of Quenstedt,
" interdum sursum ferre, et portare se includunt." But for all
that, the distinction still remains. " Take up (apa?) the cross
and follow Me," said Jesus to the rich young man (Mark x. 21).
The dpa<i asked of him nothing more than the taking up of the
burden, without including the further idea of carrying it, which
received its special form of expression in the following to which
Jesus called him. We lay great stress on this distinction in
the present case. Nor are we without predecessors who have
done so. Church dogmatics itself has very definitely separated
the susceptio from the gestatio or oneroso portatio. On its part
the distinction has been drawn out only ideally, without being
referred to different historical facts.1 But this latter appears
to us to beabsolutely necessary. And our contention is, that
here in Gethsemane our Lord accomplished the susceptio of the
sin of the world, which He thereafter bore during His Passion,
and expiated by dying on the cross. In this, and in nothing
else, consists the independent significance of the momentous
transaction. We should probably have avoided an objection which may
sinful humanity, which, however, in consequence of the impression made by His
undeserved suffering, is brought back to God." We confess that it is long since we
lighted upon so strange an interpretation of this exclamation. Besides, he questions
whether the words were used by the Baptist, and states that the Christian church
probably attributed them to him in a liturgical form. Any one who has actually
engaged in liturgical studies will certainly not subscribe to this "probably."
1 The application it makes of this distinction in further developing it, namely,
that the susceptio peccati is to be taken ratione culpae, and the portatio, on the
other hand, ratione poenae quam Christus pro nobis et nostri loco luerit, is one
which is entirely intelligible considering the premises, and there is a sense too in
which we can also accept it.

54 THE PASSION HISTORY.
possibly be made against this view, namely, that it separates in
an external-mechanical manner that which is essentially insepar
able, had we fallen back on the formula that Gethsemane shows
the consecration of the High Priest in the sense in which the
baptism of Jesus shows what has been called the consecration of
the Messiah. We have nothing to say against the expression
answered in itself; we even believe that the words of the
Suppliant (John xvii. 19) — "for (virep) their sakes I sanctify
(consecrate) Myself"1 — may justify it. We have nevertheless
intentionally refrained from using it, and that not on account of
an indefiniteness attaching to it which is favourable to misunder
standings, but with the view of exhibiting its concrete import.
One may continue with the older dogmatists to call the whole
life of Jesus an unbroken Passion. But the same Calovius, who
(Syst. VII. p. 640) firmly maintains that " the Passion of the Son
of God did not begin with the closing period of His life, nor even
with the temptation in the desert," has equally demanded for the
last (extrema) Passion (in contradistinction to the passio inchoata),
the passio tear i^o^v, a well-defined temporal boundary. But
if this had its beginning at some definite point, how can one
avoid recognising an act by virtue of which the sin of the world,
which it was our Lord's vocation to expiate, was assumed by Him
for this very purpose ? Or what do the words of the apostle
imply : " God hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin "
(2 Cor. v. 21) ? They cannot be understood of the incarnation
of the Son, when the Father sent Him " in the likeness of sinful
flesh," for the words " who knew no sin '' necessarily presuppose
a past in the life of Him who appeared, in which the knowing
it was possible. But it is no less impracticable to limit them
to something that befell our Lord through which He " became a
sinner according to outward appearance, or appeared as a sinner." 2
1 Hengst., in his Comm. on John, explains it of the assumption of the office of
Redeemer by Jesus. But the !i*ip requires to be taken in a less general sense. The
preposition points here as certainly to the atoning sufferings of Christ as the ex
pression " He that sanctifieth," in Heb. ii. 11, designates Him who tasted death for
every man. But, on the other hand, the expression assumption, which Hengst.
chooses, is all the more appropriate. This prayer-word of our Lord is the passage
in the Gospel of John which comes into the closest connection with the scene in
Gethsemane ; at all events, it is much more nearly related to it than the parallels
usually adduced from ch. xii.
2 This interpretation, upheld by Hofmann (Schriftbew. II. p. 329, and recently also
in the Heil. Schr. 2V". T. IV. p. 165) and also by Ritschl (see his already cited work,

JESUS IN GETHSEMANE. 55
It is quite impossible to be content with this "appearance" as such.
Immediately the question of its explanation arises. They were in
error who esteemed Him that appeared as a sinner, " stricken,
smitten of God, and afflicted," the truth being that " the Lord laid
on Him the iniquity of us all." The view to which we must
adhere, therefore, is, that He who knew no sin, " ratione culpae
et reatus," was made sin for us, — that the sin of the world was
laid upon Him, and that He took it upon Himself.1 But if so,
there must have been a moment in which this " making " on
God's side, and this being made sin on the Son's side took place.
And what moment can that have been ? The passage before us
has been very usually compared with the similar one in the
Epistle to the Galatians : " Christ hath redeemed us . . . being
made a curse for us." And, in point of fact, the two utterances
are closely related ; for the Son of God was made a curse for us
precisely in the way in which the Father made Him to be sin
for us. But we should err were we to refer both to the same
historical foundation. When and how He became this latter
has been expressly declared by the apostle in the parenthetical
addition to the passage in Galatians. Not of the suffering, nor of
the dying, but of the crucified Saviour, does he use the expression ;
and it was verified at the moment of our Lord's being lifted up
upon the cross. When and how, on the other hand, He became
the former, is a question to which we have no answer to give,
except to point to Gethsemane. When the Father presented the
cup to Him, He intended Him to become sin for behoof of men ;
and when the Son said, Thy will be done, He had taken the sin
of the world upon Himself in order to bear it, and by making
expiation, to bear it away.
It was an easy task to prove that the sorrow of Jesus in the
garden, as expressed by Himself and described by the evangelists,
II. p. 174), was previously presented by Socinus (De Servat. Chr. i. 8: "Deus
eum qui innoeens erat, nostri causa tanquam peccatorem tractavit"). We quote
only the closing words of Quenstedt's admirable refutation : " eo modo Christus
factus est peccatum pro nobis, uti nos reddimur justitia in illo. Nos vero reddimur
in illo justitia non solum ut justi habeamur (that we should ' become righteous
according to outward appearance,' — 'appear' as righteous) sed ut vere justitia
ejus nobis imputetur. "
1 That the apostle, when he wished to say this, did not by any means make use
of indefinite expressions (as Hofmann suggests), but spoke correctly and precisely,
has been most satisfactorily shown by Quenstedt (Theol. did. pol. III. p. 252) in
relation to the word rrtnh, the abstract term apaprix and the word ytytutm.

56 THE PASSION HISTORY.
is not explicable on the theory of a presentiment of His sufferings
and death. But the mode in which we have explained the
incident supplies another motive, which makes the anguish of
the Suppliant intelligible. Doubtless our Lord, in His earthly
past, came into the closest contact with the sin of men. He had
to suffer from it more than the " contradiction of sinners against
Himself." He had directly touched and assailed it, in order to
remove it from the men whom the Father had given Him. And
thus, from the very beginning, it had given Him toil, brought
grief upon Him, and drawn sighs from His heart (Mark iii. 5,
" being grieved for the hardness of their hearts "). But, notwith
standing this close and constant contact with darkness, He
Himself remained still in the sphere of light, just as He continued
to be ceremonially pure although He touched those who were
leprous; for He was light, and in Him was no darkness at all.
The sayings, " He is pure," and " who knew no sin," remain
permanently and unchangeably true.1 Has this been at all
altered in Gethsemane ? Assuredly in the sense in which Paul,
Bom. vii. 7, speaks of the subject, a knowledge of sin could never
find place in our Lord's experience ; for. this knowledge presup
poses sin in its subject, even though it may be dead. But might
it not find place in another sense ? If this be denied, the words
of the apostle, " who knew no sin," would be very surprising to
us. If his object had been merely to emphasize the innocence
and holiness of Jesus (Osiander, Comm. z. 2 Cor. p. 228 ;
Hofmann, Schriftbew. II. p. 36), why did he not simply use the
expression which is familiar to the Scripture, not only in general
(Acts iii. 14, etc.), but especially where it is representing the
Holy One of God as an atoning sufferer, — the expression 81/cai o? ?
(Comp. 1 John ii. 1, 2 ; 1 Pet. iii. 18, etc.) When, therefore,
instead of doing so, he chooses this peculiar periphrasis, he can
only mean by the clause which is contrasted with it — " He hath
made Him to be sin " — that our Lord was then led or constrained
to acquire a knowledge of sin which He never would have
acquired of Himself.2 The law (as Paul had experienced it)
1 Just like His being rich, notwithstanding His becoming poor for us, 2 Cor.
viii. 9.
2 The negative statement is justly interpreted by the positive, but it is quite as
justifiable to draw an inference as to the meaning of the latter from the contents of
the former.

JESUS IN GETHSEMANE. 67
could never have been to Him the instrument of such a know
ledge, because an eiridvp,ia had never slumbered in His soul.
But from the circumstance of His having experienced, on
account of a divine decree, that wliich He would never have
experienced as a development of His own life, and having
learned, through the pressure of a burden laid upon Him, that
which He would never have known in the form of personal
iiriOvptta, there follows the idea of a sovereign act which sheds
light upon His "amazement" and "sorrow unto death,"1 and
which makes the sincere and profound shrinking of the Suppliant
intelligible. An old expositor has been induced by the figure of the cup to
apply to our Lord, when He entered into the presence of the Father
to pray, the later words, "and when He had tasted, He would not
drink" (Matt, xxvii. 34). And, indeed, the demand made upon Him
at this time was such that it could not but fill His heart with
trembling, and excite even in His will a tendency to reaction.
The fear within became a fighting without. That this reluc-
tance of will is not sufficiently explained by the presentiment of
approaching suffering, has been already shown. At present we
return to the subject only with the view of showing that that
part of our narrative which appears to favour this view is not
in reality sufficient to give it valid support. We read (Matt.
xxvi. 41) : " The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak."
The majority of expositors indeed have declined, more or less
decidedly, to see any reference here to the Person of our Lord.
Others, again, have maintained the contrary. Stier, with the
warmth peculiar to him, declares that this is the only view which
is justifiable ; and even Hofmann finds in the " weakness " of the
flesh the true ground of the earnest supplications of Jesus in
the garden (Schriftbew. II. p. 74). The generality of the expres
sion makes it include the Person of Christ just as little as the
similar sentence, " It is the spirit that quickeneth ; the flesh
profiteth nothing" (John vi. 63), admits of being applied to His
flesh, — the flesh which was expressly designated the " meat that
endureth unto everlasting life.'' If it were seriously held that
1 This it is which Luther thought of or felt when he broke out with the remnrkable
expression: "What do they mean; what kind of words are these, 'My soul is
exceeding sorrowful, even unto death'? I hold them for the greatest words in tho
whole Bible." See Colloq. Conv. IV p. 260.

58 THE PASSION HISTORY.
our Lord spoke the words " out of His own state and feeling "
(Stier), where would we drift to ? Even farther than Hofmann
has gone, when he ventured on the highly perilous step of apply
ing to the Person of Christ the statement made in Heb. v. 2 as
to the high priest of the Old Testament being compassed with
infirmity. That which the apostle teaches regarding the law
(Eom. viii. 3), that it was weak through the flesh, would in the
next place be asserted also of the irvev/jLa of our Lord. Yea, in
reference to the " not as I will," one would be forced to maintain
that there was in Christ, in some sense or other, a " will of the
flesh," a " carnal mind." And however much we might wish to
maintain that the crdpf; of Jesus was entirely free from sin, we
would then be also obliged to admit that there was even in Him,
in some sense or other, that antagonism between the spirit and
the flesh which the apostle has shown in the case of sinful
man.1 Ver. 41 speaks of temptation with emphasis. And though
we readily admit that our Lord Himself experienced a temptation
in Gethsemane, this did not arise from His flesh, nor even did it
find there its ground or point of attachment.2 The Scripture
throughout speaks of a '' weakness of the flesh " only under the
presupposition of sin. (Comp. Eom. vi. 19 ; 1 Cor. iii. 1 sq.)
The expression regarding the spirit and the flesh is therefore to
be referred exclusively to the disciples, a conclusion to which the
connection also leads. Our Lord finds them sleeping. They have
not kept His command, "Watch with Me." And if, after express
ing His surprise that their strength had not been sufficient for
this, He adds the admonition, Watch and pray, the emphasis
cannot rest on the watching already asked of them, and in
which they had proved defective, but on the praying as a factor
in the watchfulness. This praying, as the essential activity of
the spirit, and that whereby it acquires higher strength, is a
protection against the temptation into which men are led by the
flesh, and in which, on account of its weakness, they succumb to
hostile powers. The words, therefore, are not intended to excuse
the sleeping disciples, for that would ill accord with the ante-
¦ ! It is therefore noteworthy that Bengel, who maintains the view which we have
rejected, that the words refer to Jesus Himself, adds the remark : "inde frequens
apostolis mentio carnis et spiritus."
2 The assertion of Stier (I.e. p. 291) is erroneous: "The temptation, came to
Him not from the flesh, as in our case, but it touched Him in the flesh, which
He had in common with us, even in respect to its weakness."

JESUS IN GETHSEMANE. 0 9
cedent reproof, or even to explain their indolent repose,1 but
to impart to them reproof, instruction, and counsel. The deep-
rooted misunderstanding of them which is so common, rests upon
the erroneous assumption, that the expression willing (rrpodvixos)
indicates mere inclination and readiness. If the willing spirit
stands in contrast to the weak flesh, certainly the former is not to
be understood of a feeble, inoperative inclination. However, this is
not by any means the correct signification of the term. It denotes
rather burning zeal, the thoroughgoing energy which overcomes all
hindrances.2 As the Scripture is wont to contrast do~6evri<; with
SwaTo? or la-^ypo<i, so rrp6QvptO<; coincides substantially with these
latter terms. The " willing spirit " is the spirit of power. And
as the apostle admonishes Christians to mortify the deeds of the
flesh in the power of the spirit, or to renounce its works, so in
an entirely similar way the disciples are here directed to be
fervent in sphit, and to crush the weakness of the flesh in its
pernicious workings. But the expression bore upon them alone,
and to them only was it appropriate. It contributes absolutely
nothing toward explaining the conflict of Jesus Himself. If we wish
to do this, the interpretative element must be drawn from another
quarter. But whence? This is the question we must consider.
There was apparent, then, on the part of Jesus, a direction oi will
which at first was not in accord with the direction in which the will
of God pointed. That the well-known scholastic distinctions are of
no avail for solving the problem, Gerhard has already perceived
and clearly stated. And we have ourselves said at an earlier stage,
that a reference to the fact that the prayer is only conditional
in its form, avails just as little. It is true that church dogmatics
'The explanation has been given by the evangelist Luke by the remark : i*i
•riis \i-xns. And it is a sufficient one. But the sorrow of the disciples must be
properly understood. It was a sorrow according to the flesh, differing not merely
in degree, but in kind, from that of our Lord. It was that sorrow which Christ
combated in His farewell discourse with His disciple, and sought to dispel with the
Hght of truth. Comp. John xvi. 7.
2 When, in Hab. i. 8, the rushing hosts of the Chaldeans are viewed "as an
eagle that hasteth (trpilu/ms) to eat," there is implied in the expression irpiluinn
more than mere willingness. In the passage 2 Cor. ix. 2, Paul explains the term
Tpoiu/tiia by Pam. And in the parallel 1 Pet. v. 2, p-k a.\a^pmipius i-XKa, ^poev/tai,
the idea of "willingness " disappears before that of zeal for the work ofthe Lord,
all the more certainly since that idea was already expressed by the preceding term
Inn fi*t. From the parallel usually adduced, Rom. i. 15, nothing but the slightest
and most superficial examination would deduce the idea of mere readiness.

GO THE PASSION HISTORY.
has in general been content with this.1 But it could not escape
the acute intellect of a Calovius that the difference between the
" as I will " and " as Thou " still remains, although the Suppliant
does not insist on the former, but ultimately yields to the latter.
This theologian accordingly felt himself compelled to make a very
essential modification of the current interpretation, a modification
which he was able to maintain and justify only by means of an
extremely violent exegesis.2 The difficulty would be insurmount
able if we had here to do with the will of God in the same sense
in which the apostle refers to it when he calls it " that good and
acceptable and perfect will of God " (Eom. xii. 2 ; Eph. v. 10, 17).
The faintest element of opposition to this divine will would be abso
lutely inconsistent with the character of Him who could ask, "which
of you convinceth me of sin ? " who said, " I always do the things
that please the Father ; " and who, even in His boyhood, made the
avowal, " I must be about my Father's business." s The idea in the
section with which we are dealing does not belong to the ethical
region of the xaXov Kal dyadov. But here, as in all cases where
the reference is to the will of the Son as distinguished from that
of the Father, or to the relation of the former to the latter, we
have to do exclusively with a gracious purpose of God for the
1 Comp. Hollaz, Exam. II. p. 165 : " Christus calici exhauriendo non repugnavit
absolute, sed cum conditione alterius cnjusdam modi redimendi genus humanum
per divinam et infinitam potentiam suppositi." Similarly Quenstedt: "Sub con
ditione, si per decreti rationem fieri posset." Theol. did. pol. III. pp. 348, 358.
2 He transforms the SiKu in the mouth of Jesus into a Hkm/xi, HhXav, and inter
prets : " vellem quidem quam maxime declinare hoc malum, si velles, pater ;
veruntamen volo, fiat, non quod alioqui ego vellem, sed quod tu vis. BiXn/ix Jesu
est *«™ ti, nam airbus Christus idem voluit, quod pater volebat. "
3 The position laid down by Hollaz (Exam. II. p. 165) is extremely hazardous :
"neque deprecatio ealicis utpote conditionata et voluntati patris attemperata
potentiam peccandi arguil. " If sin were implied in an absolute refusal of the cup,
then even the "deprecatio conditionata" (if such a thing can be at all imagined)
would imply a germ of sin. We are entitled to speak of Jesus "being subjected
to temptation in the garden; but let us adhere firmly to the truth — "tempted,
yet viithout sin " (Heb. iv. 15). It is not enough to say that in His case the temp
tation did not result in sin ; nor is it even enough to say that it found no sin
in Him. His temptation had nothing to do with the question of sin. Jesus
could not be tempted to sin, because " in Him is no sin." He could be tempted
only to opposition to decisions which the Father had formed in regard to Him.
Consequently Paul could institute the comparison which he draws out in Rom. v.
12 sq. between the liirxK'4 of Christ and the irxpaxnti of Adam. In this case also
when temptation came, there was as yet no question of sin, for up to that time
there was no sin in the world ; only through the trapiUctris to which he was
successfully enticed did it find entrance.

JESUS IN GETHSEMANE. CI
accomplishment of which the Eedeemer had been sent into the
world.1 And thereby the difficulty is materially lessened. But
it does not entirely disappear. For if there was presented to
our Lord's mind the possibility of avoiding the cup which was
offered to Him, how did He not exclude it in the exercise of
that same instantaneous decision with which He met the solici
tations of one of His disciples, or with the same readiness with
which He repelled the insinuations of the tempter in the wilder
ness ? The definition given of the eTrofievov dvOpdiirivov OeXrjfia '
of Jesus by the sixth Ecumenical Council was certainly not
intended to convey the idea that His separate human will was
obliged always to labour and strive in order to bring itself into
harmony with the purpose of God. The affirmation in the
symbol of this Council, that the two modes of willing and
working in Christ were united without schism, without confusion,
and without change, demands rather the representation of an
immediateness in this "following" so absolute as even to exclude
the device of a temporary intellectual indecision.3 How happened
it, then, that in Gethsemane there was an absence of this imme
diateness, — that the very reverse of it appears ? We repeat
there would be no satisfactory answer whatever to this question,
if there was nothing else to take into account but the impending
violence of His enemies. But, on the other hand, how satis
factorily it is answered in the light of the thought that our Lord
in this hour assumed the sin of the world ! The request that He
should take this upon Him as His burden, would not only excite
the profoundest sorrow of heart, but even His will — the will of
the sinless One — could not but recoil from it. Had there been
1 Thus John v. 30 : "I seek not Mine own will, but the will of the Father which
hath sent Me." Also ch. vi. 38 : "I came down from heaven not to do Mine own
will, but the will of Him that sent Me." And also Heb. x. 9 : " Lo, I come to do
Thy will."
Ka) duo fiiv Quo-ixa QlXriftwru. 011% urTEvavTia, ftij yivoiTO, u\X' ixofiivov to avQpuiirtvov
avTov tilXvif&a xai f/.n avrimwroi 'a uvnwaXov, f&aXXov fiiv ovv xat veroTatrffofisvov t!Z hint
avrov xa.) irxtffHvu 6lXnpta.Ti.
3 Seb. Schmidt has availed himself of this expedient. He substitutes for a
difference of will a waiting on Jesus' part for a "novum indicium paternae volun
tatis." " Si tu volneris, lubens faciam, et promtus sum ad faciendum quod vis ; si
modo te velle denuo et tandem confirmaveris. " Comp. "Diss, de Pass. Christ.
innocentiseima " in the Myst. Grat. p. 267. Hofmann also makes the following
strange remark in the same direction : "Jesus prayed for the removal of the evil
only till He became assured that it was the will of God that He should endure it,"
Schrifibeto. II. p. 37.

62 THE PASSION HISTORY.
no such reaction, Christ had not accomplished His task, — He
should have quite failed to realize what it was. An act of
simple acquiescence on the part of Christ, unaccompanied by a
supplicatory protestation, is the one thing which we should have
failed to comprehend. No representation of the intensity with
which He recoiled, no account of the conflict which preceded His
submission, no description of the burden which was laid upon
Him, can be too highly coloured ; no picture can be drawn which
will come up to the reality. Strauss says that the intention of
Luke is to introduce into his Gethsemane narrative exaggerating
and intensifying elements. Others have at least been of opinion
that their mythical origin is undoubted. Nothing has as yet been
canonically decided as to the character of the third Gospel. Each
expositor gives forth his own view of the matter. But the
charge is not true that its representations are in general less
precise than those of the other Gospels. Least of all can this
be maintained in the present instance. If Matthew and Mark
show a perceptible lessening of the feeling of repugnance to the
cup during the progress of the praying, Luke seems, no doubt, to
give an opposite view. But this is merely in appearance. For
the expression in Luke xxii. 44, " He prayed more earnestly "
(itcreveo-repov), does not indicate an increased urgency in His
appeal to the Father, any more than the expression, " His sweat
was, as it were, great drops of blood " (whether the words be
understood in a literal, or, with Theophylact, in a parabolic
sense),1 betokens the putting forth of exertion on the part of Him
who found His own will in conflict with another opposing will.
As to the former expression, it succeeds the statement that He
was strengthened by an angel. But surely one would not date
from this point an increased longing to be delivered from the
cup which was presented to Him. The word iicrevearepov
denotes in general not the intensity (Suid. : ivepjTirtKairepov),
but rather the continuousness of the activity in question.2 While
the Lord had intermitted His previous praying more than once
in order to speak to His disciples, from this time forth there was
1 The former is unquestionably the more correct view. The parallel in 4 Mace. vii. 8
is at least worthy of being compared, although, of course, it cannot decide the inter
pretation : "robs Upoupyovvrag rov voptov lilsp alftan, xeit yivvaiu ihpuri rols pixpt Savuroo
ncLe-tClv iivipxtrViXorra;." Comp. Hengst. loc. cit. p. 134.
2 The expression bears this signification at least in the N. T. It appears there as
a predicate sometimes of love, sometimes of prayer. As it describes (1 Pet. i. 22,

JESUS IN GETHSEMANE. 63
no such intermission. He continued in prayer till the close of
His conflict. He continued in prayer, with this difference, that
after the appearance of the angel He prayed no longer in a
supplicatory and petitionary sense, but in the sense of Thy ivill
bc%donc. No doubt the agony and the bloody sweat accompanied
this prayer. As to this latter, we cannot regard it as the accom
paniment of an active calling forth of strength for the purpose of
subduing His own will, but only as resulting from the burden
which He took upon Himself at that moment. For the object of
the strengthening from above was not to sustain a sinking moral
power in Jesus, or to revive a failing energy ; but its purpose
was to strengthen Him to assume the burden which wrung from
Him the bloody sweat of His agony.1 " And when He rose
from prayer " (Luke xxii. 45), He stood up as the Lamb of God
who had taken upon Himself the sins of the world. He proceeds
to bear them, and, finally, to atone for them.

3. THE APOSTOLIC WORD APPLIED AS A TEST.
The views that have been propounded are the results not of
dogmatic assumptions, but solely of an investigation of the history
lying before us. But, as we remarked at an earlier stage, no
interpretation of the narrative can produce full confidence unless
it is confirmed by the doctrinal passage in the Epistle to the
Hebrews (ch. v. 7 sq.) ; consequently the views which we have
adduced must now be subjected to this test. It has already been
said that all interpreters of consequence admit a reference in the
statement of the apostle to the incident in Gethsemane. But we
claim much more, and maintain that it has that incident alone in
view. The somewhat general definition of time with which the
statement opens— "in the days of His flesh" — does not militate
against this view. Nothing more than this is intended, that the
Person to whom the writer refers, at a certain period (not more
particularly defined) of His earthly manifestation, accomplished
something which bore on His entrance upon His everlasting
iv. 8) Christian brotherly love as a stedfast, enduring love, so in the same way it
designates continuous, uninterrupted praying (Acts xii. 5 : irpoinvxM 'txnns iyiuro ;
the church prayed for Peter without ceasing).
1 Hollaz, Exam. II. p. 165 : " Confortatio angelica non facta fuit ad praecavendam
labilitatem Christi moralem, sed ad infirmitatem naturae ipsius in summo exinani-
tionis gradu suffulciendam."

64 THE PASSION HISTORY.
Priesthood (" a priest for ever," ver. 6). And the exact mutual
correspondence of the prominent expressions in the two passages
harmonizes well with this assumption. For the words " prayers
and supplications" point as obviously to those others, "He
kneeled down and prayed," Luke xxii. 41 (the bowing of the
knees, the usual attitude of a suppliant), as the clause " unto
Him that was able to save " recalls the utterance, " all things are
possible unto Thee." And the " strong crying " corresponds as
unmistakeably to the " Abba, Father, 0 my Father" (comp. Eom.
viii. 15: "we cry, Abba, Father;" and also Gal. iv. 6), as the
" obedience " corresponds to " Thy will be done." The statement
of the apostle then is, that Christ learned obedience. Both ideas
are emphasized. The one, " our Lord learned," is an element in
the proof that the high-priesthood of Jesus resembled that of
Aaron in His being taken from among men ; the other, " He
learned obedience" was the basis of the demand for obedience
made upon the members of the church, without the fulfilment of
which He could not become unto them " the author of eternal
salvation." But the statement, like that earlier one (ch. ii. 17),
that experience was a prerequisite to His becoming a merciful
High Priest, has a strange sound. It required to be prepared for
and justified. For this end His " learning" is proved by a refer
ence to a historical fact ; and His " obedience," on the other hand,
is placed under a particular view-point. The former is done in
ver. 7, and the latter in ver. 8. Ver. 7 contains a participial
sentence. It must not be decomposed by a " while " (Camerar.
Quenst. Delitz.), nor yet can it be understood in a pluperfect
sense (Hofmann). It merely affirms a historical fact, — a fact
which secures for the idea of " learning " in relation to Jesus
its just place. It gives the objective ground for the statement
of the apostle. If it was the case that our Lord, " in the days
of His flesh," went so far in opposition to a divine decree as
to request with earnest supplication that it might be altered,
His submission was not immediate ; and if He subsequently
yielded to the will of the Father, evidently He had first learned
" obedience." Now, undoubtedly, this historical fact, considered
in itself, might well be regarded as a mysterious one, for the
subject is the Son, who is in everlasting fellowship with the
Father. But (and this is what ver. 8 tells us) we require to
recognise the true character of the obedience which is here in

JESUS IN GETHSEMANE. 65
question ; it was an obedience of suffering. And this obedience
our Lord had to learn although He were a Son, yea, just because
He was a Son.
The passage appeal's to us to elucidate the Gethsemane incident
in two respects. In the first place, by means of a remark which
is undoubtedly introduced by the apostle into the course of his
argument solely as a parenthesis. We refer to the words, " and was
heard dirb tt)? euAa/Jej'a?:" While placing them in a parenthesis,
because it is absolutely impossible for us to discover any reason
for their being included in the apostle's statement proper, we do
so not as holding the opinion that the author gave expression in
passing to an incidental and comparatively unimportant thought.
We assume, on the contrary, a very definite and pressing motive
for this declaration. It is the invariable habit of Scripture to
refrain from asserting that a prayer has been answered unless there
be some good reason for doing so. It regards this throughout as a
thing undoubted. It assumes as a matter of course that the petition
of the Son is granted by the Father. The express assurance
that He had been heard was therefore appropriate only where,
to judge by appearances, the reverse had been the case. The
Suppliant presented His petition " to Him that was able to save
Him from death" and yet He had to suffer death. Was His
petition, then, rejected ? No, says the apostle, He was heard
notwithstanding, and that drrb ri)<; evXa/3e£a<;. This definitive
addition, as is well known, has received two very different inter
pretations from the time of the oldest translations, and throughout
the whole history of exegesis. The authorities in favour of the
interpretation, " on account of His piety the Suppliant received
an answer," are just as- weighty as those who favour the opposite
view, that He was heard " against fear," i.e. that, through being
heard, He was delivered from the feeling of dread. The question,
which of these two views is the more correct, has been discussed
in recent times, especially between Hofmann and Delitzsch, and
yet one does not receive the impression that the arguments of
these investigators have brought the matter to a final issue. An
ultimate decision cannot be attained either on grammatical or
lexical grounds. That the preposition diro may be employed as
giving the ground of an assertion, we are not exactly prepared
(with Lommatzsch, ad locum Ep. ad Heb. ch. v. 1-8, Com-
mentatio Grammatica) to deny (although the parallels adduced by

G 6 THE PASSION HISTORY.
Delitzsch (p. 192) are not demonstrative of the fact). But we
do not require to appeal to the expression |» FOP in order to prove
that it can certainly be understood in the sense of setting one free
from something that is present; if the examples collected by
Hofmann (II. p. 69) are not felt to be sufficient, the passage in
2 Cor. xi. 3, to which we draw the reader's attention (" so your
minds should be corrupted from the simplicity," etc., diro ttj?
d-n-Xorvros), may avail to remove any remaining hesitation. In
the same way, it must be granted that the expression evXafjeia,
which we shall examine more closely at a later, time, can be
taken generally as a designation of piety no less than as a
designation of fear and dread ; the idiom of the Epistle to the
Hebrews excludes neither the one nor the other. There is need,
therefore, of other grounds of decision than those found in
language. The circumstance that the defenders of the former
view feel themselves constrained to adopt the singular and im
practicable expedient1 of maintaining that our Lord was heard
in respect of being raised from the dead, certainly tends very
materially to prejudice one against it. In the meantime, however,
we shall not pursue this thought farther. More cogent arguments
are within our reach. If we are right in our opinion that it is
the object of the parenthesis in ver. 7 to prevent its being sup
posed that the Petitioner had not been heard, the supplementary
definition cannot by any possibility declare why, but only in how
far He had been heard. Not the ground on which, but the sense
in which the Father heard Him was appropriate here.2 God
heard Him in so far as He delivered Him drrb rij? euXa/3e('a?.3
1 We do not retract this judgment, although the church dogmatists (Calov. :
"festina resurrectione ;" Gerhard, Quenstedt) all start from the assumption which
we have rejected. If the Suppliant appeals to "Him that was able to save Him
from death" that the "hour might pass from Him," then nothing but helpless
perplexity can foist upon the words of the petition a meaning equally foreign to its
letter and to its spirit : "Leave Me not to dwell in the state of the dead, loose Me
from its pains, make death to Me the gate of paradise ! "
2 It is even in itself doubtful whether the Scripture lays down any statement
of the specific ground on which a prayer is heard. When the question is asked
why any one has been heard, according to the scriptural view, the substance of
the answer is simply this, He was heard just because He prayed. Comp. Jas. v.
17, 18.
3 Here we also make our appeal to language for the justification of the view we
have adduced, by calling attention to a peculiar and anomalous mode of expression
on the part of the apostle. The word urcuuuthis is used, indeed, here and there in
the "N". T. in relation to the person who had presented an answered prayer _(Matt.

JESUS IN GETHSEMANE. 6 7
We have already admitted that the expression, considered gene
rally, can bear either of the significations claimed for it by the
upholders of the rival views. But in this passage neither the
one nor the other can be the correct one, except with modi
fications. It is a remarkable thing that the expositors on
both sides maintain that the author could not have expressed
himself more inappropriately if he had had in his mind that
which their opponents assert. And, in truth, both parties are so
far correct. If the meek submission of the Suppliant, " Not
My will, but Thine be done," be the substance of the evXdfieia,
there is no room in it for the beseeching petition so strongly
and even exclusively emphasized by our apostle. On the other
hand, he who understands the eiXd(3eia as meaning dread of
something about to happen, loses the idea of religious reverence
or of godly fear, which is absolutely inseparable from the expres
sion (ch. xi. 7, xii. 28). We go back upon the results at which
we have already arrived. If our Lord experienced a shrinking
dread of the cup which was presented to Him, in other words, of
the demand made by God that He should take upon Himself, as
His burden, the sin of the world, then, indeed, no expression
could more appropriately represent this fear than eiXdfieta. It
sheds upon the history a light as clear as the history, in turn,
reflects upon it. The intense shrinking from the cup which the
Father asked Him to drink, impelled the Son to supplicate for
deliverance from it. And the Suppliant was also heard, — not
that His request was granted, but He Himself was heard, inas
much as He was set free from fear of the cup, — inasmuch as
He became strong to take up the burden which was appointed
for Him. The apostle writes elaa>covo-0ei<;. Does he give this
as an inference which he drew from the later manifestation of
Jesus ? That we regard as in itself highly improbable ; and,
moreover, ver. 7 moves throughout on historical ground. But we
are in possession of a historical fact in which the elaaKovaOek
finds a firm basis. The third evangelist says : " And there
vi. 7). But for the most part, when the passive form is employed, the subject of
the verb is the prayer itself, not the person who offered it. Thus Luke i. 13 : "thy
prayer is heard," and Acts x. 31 : "Cornelius, thy prayer is heard." It is on
account of the clause a-ri ns iliXa/iiUs that the person heard is here substituted for
the prayers that were heard. For the Person, by virtue of the answer which His
prayer received, was delivered from the fear which up to that time had enveloped
Him.

68 THE PASSION HISTORY.
appeared an angel unto Him from heaven, strengthening Him."
Then it was that He was freed from the evXdfieta, and accordingly
He bowed Himself and took up the burden of sin without fear.
Without fear, but not, indeed, without feeling its full weight.
But there is still another respect in which we propose to
vindicate our view of the incident in Gethsemane by the doctrinal
passage under our notice. We read in ver. 8 that " He learned
obedience by the things which He suffered" (e/iadev dej) &v
eiradev ri)v Lira/corjv). The author himself shares in the feeling
of surprise which this sentence is fitted to occasion. It is of the
Son that this statement is made. But did not obedience belong
necessarily to the Son ? If He was entitled to the credit of
having walked unswervingly on the path of obedience ; if the
Apostle Paul points to His obedience as one that continued from
the time He became man till He died on the cross, how then
could He be said to learn it ? " Though He was a Son, yet
learned He obedience." But it is rrjv vrraKorjv, consequently
not obedience generally ; not " the virtue of obedience," but that
particular obedience which is here treated of, and which is here
in question. What obedience was it ? The answer is given by the
clause, " by the things which He suffered." We beheve it is a
misunderstanding of the words to regard them as describing the
manner in which the Son learned obedience. There are con
siderable grammatical difficulties in the way of this view. The
analogies adduced for such a use of the preposition diro, namely,
the expression in Matt. xxiv. 3 2 (learn a parable diro t^? crvierjs),
or Matt. xi. 29 (learn drr" e/tov), are exceedingly peculiar. The
very slightest reflection will show that the cases are entirely
different. But, besides, how strange a thought this would yield
— a thought which is absolutely inapplicable to our Lord ! It
were sad if, in order to explain an apostolic utterance, one were
compelled to fall back upon the banal phrases of a heathen
philosophy of life (rrdOei, p,ddo<; quae nocent docent). One may
develope the idea of a proud soul being crushed by suffering,
and learning thereby to submit to the mighty hand of God. But
who would venture to employ this analogy in any sense whatever
in reference to our Lord ! No, it is not the intention of the
apostle to show how the Son learned obedience, but to show
what kind of an obedience that was which He learned, and which
alone He could learn. The sentence with which we are dealinu

JESUS IN GETHSEMANE. 69
— d<f &v erradev epaOev — is exactly analogous to another in ch.
ii. 18 : ev m rreirovOev iret,pao-del,<;, As the supplementary clause
in the latter passage denotes the sphere of the temptation in
question, so the corresponding clause in the former indicates the
sense in which Christ could learn obedience. The explanation of
Hofmann (Schriftbew. II. p. 72) : "Although He were a Son, yet
a time began for Him in which He had to submit to that which
befell Him, in which He learned obedience in a new way, for He
now proved His filial obedience by suffering," brings out the mean
ing of the apostle on the whole much better than the explanation
of Delitzsch. Only, the idea of learning is not to be transformed
into that of proving or verifying, nor is the obedience to be
referred to the coming of suffering upon Him. If the latter be
assumed, then the expression " learning " will not receive strict
justice, for no one will say that the previous life of Jesus was
free from all experience of suffering. The only obedience which
the Son could learn was one required of Him by virtue of an
essentially new demand on the part of the Father ; and He had to
learn it, " though He were a Son," when He was requested to do
that from which His holy nature could not but recoil. Ver. 8 in
itself, as well as in its relation to ver. 7, becomes perfectly clear
when we understand by the " obedience " the fulfilment of a
divine purpose, according to which the Son was obligated to
bear the sin of the world ; and we rely on it therefore with
perfect confidence for confirmation of the views which we have
propounded in regard to our Lord's conflict in the garden.
We cannot leave this passage without pointing, in the last
place, to the connection between it and ver. 5, evidenced by the
relative pronoun with which it begins. If we read in ver. 5
that He "glorified not Himself to be made an High Priest,"
then the statement in ver. 7 unquestionably implies that some
thing took place in Gethsemane on God's side, and that Christ
Himself accomplished something there which bore upon His
attaining the glory of a High Priest. He there took a step
towards this dignity. But what step ? What act in the process
of becoming a High Priest was accomplished there ? The activity
of the High Priest in the "true tabernacle" consists in this,
that He maintains before His Father. the validity of the atone
ment for sin which He made upon the earth. If, then, His
manifestation in the garden was a factor co-operating to make

70 THE PASSION HISTOEY.
Him capable of doing so, this factor cannot have been merely
a more or less remote prerequisite to the atonement ; nor
yet can it have consisted in the prayer in which we find our
Lord engaged, considered as such, — whether or not it be desig
nated by the name of an offering well pleasing unto God, — but
it must have been a fruit or result of His praying, of such
a character that it can quite properly be regarded as constituting
an element of the atonement which was to be accomplished.
And nothing offers itself to our view which meets this require
ment except the assumption, by the High Priest Eedeemer, of the
sin which He was to bear.
In concluding our examination of the incident in Gethsemane,
we claim for the view of it, which has now been confirmed on all
sides, the merit of having done justice to the problem which the
evangelical representation, no less than the doctrinal passage in
the Epistle to the Hebrews, submits to the interpreter, — the
problem of exhibiting the independent significance of the narrative
as a part of the history of the suffering Christ. We believe also
that we have thus avoided the two dangers to which the history
of the exposition of the portion of Scripture with which we have
been dealing bears witness. It has been treated, on the one
hand, in a purely historical manner, and writers have spoken, in
a tone more or less rationalistic, of the outpourings of a pious
soul in a dark night of sorrow. But thereby it is made soterio-
logically meaningless ; and those who, like Schleiermacher, are
unable to understand such an outpouring on psychological
grounds, have no interest in maintaining the historical reahty of
the incident. The whole question is thus thoroughly betrayed
into the hands of negative criticism, for nothing is left wherewith
to resist its attacks, except the mere authority of the writers who
made known the fact ; apologetics has no available weapon re
maining. But, on the other hand, the conflict in the garden has
been called the passio magna, and in it the essential Passion
of Jesus has been made to consist, with the addition, at most,
of the cry of lament from the cross : " Why hast Thou forsaken
me ? " Several church dogmatists take this view ; Delitzsch
also seems to incline towards it ; he even goes beyond it when
he makes' the very doubtful, or at least insufficiently considered
assertion, that in Gethsemane the sacrifice of Jesus was already
as good as accomplished, being only carried out afterwards upon

JESUS IN GETHSEMANE. / 1
the cross as an external reality.1 The cross, then, is a purely
external reality, without any essentially new internal contents !
The result of this mode of viewing the subject was that the
sufferings of our Lord, from the time of His betrayal to His
death, were almost wholly withdrawn from view, and relegated
to the category of things more or less indifferent. By our view
both of these errors are equally avoided. But, finally, we plead
in its favour the additional circumstance that from our stand
point the absence of the narrative from the fourth Gospel can be
best explained. Historical investigation will always feel it
strange that John, who was not only present in Gethsemane, but
who was certainly the most sympathetic and the acutest observer
among the three favoured disciples, is silent as to the awful
scene. But if our interpretation of it is correct, we can easily
understand how that evangelist who points on the very first page
of his Gospel to the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world,
the same Lamb of whom he says at its close, " A bone of Him
shall not be broken," might feel that no interest would be served
by his narrating an incident which was rooted in the traditions
of Christendom no less firmly than was that other incident of
which he is equally silent, the institution of the Lord's Supper.
Our Lord rises up laden with the burden of the world's sin.
As is expressly said of Him at a later time, " And He, bearing
His cross, went forth " (John xix. 1 7), so He now applies Him
self to the task of bearing the burden which He had assumed, —
a burden seen by no human eye, — seen only by Him who had
imposed it, and who was looking down upon His Son, well
pleased : " Behold, my servant shall deal prudently." From the
time that He spoke the dismissal word, " let us go," the aspect
wliich Jesus wore was not that of One who was sinking beneath
His burden, yet His bearing was not of a purely passive
character ; it was a bearing so as to make atonement, it was a
performing, an acting. Accordingly, with the manifestations of
the suffering Lamb (d/j,vo<;), the unfolding of the might of the
Lamb (dpviov) who overcomes went hand in hand. Into these
lists the " Captain of our salvation " now enters.
1 Hengstenberg has also erred in the same direction when he says, I.e. p. 141 :
" Jesus may be said to have died in Gethsemane ; His death struggle on the cross
was only a feeble after- tremor."

PART SECOND.

THE SUFFERINGS OF JESUS.
IT is only to the most general outline of the Passion history of
Jesus 1 that negative criticism awards historical credibility.
That our Lord was put to death by the authority of the Eoman
procurator is admitted by Strauss, on the authority of Tacitus,
to be an undoubted fact. He also thinks it not improbable that
the Jewish authorities, in some such way as is described in the
Gospels, may have induced the governor to confirm and carry
out the sentence of death. And he gives as a reason for their
desiring to bring about this result, the fact that Jesus had so
unsparingly attacked the Pharisees and priests who formed the
ruling party in the nation. By exposing their hypocrisy, pride,
and covetousness, and expressly urging the people to dissociate
themselves from their influence, our Lord impelled the class so
attacked to come to a determination to rid themselves of sO
dangerous an opponent. On the other hand, he holds that the
majority of the details in the story of the development of the
catastrophe, not only those which the eager search for myths
might regard as an easy prey, such as the dream of Pilate's wife,
the " fate of the traitor, etc., but even the most essential and
important features of the narrative, originated in a " tendency "
which coloured the compositions of the Christian church. We
might ask those who have read the Acta Pilati if, after comparing
it with the evangelical records, they have not been impressed
with the complete historical credibility of these latter. But we
do not pursue this line of thought, just as, when dealing.with a
cognate subject, we did not press the argument which is based
1 The well-known book written by the Scotch theologian, William Hanna, on this
part of the life of Jesus Christ, is chiefly practical in its aim, but it also contains
valuable exegetical material, to which regard has been had in the following investi
gations. 72

THE SUFFERINGS OF JESUS. 73
on a comparison of the miracles of the Gospel with the mon
strosities recorded in the Evangelia lafantiae, and which draws
from the difference of their character conclusions which no
unprejudiced mind can reject. We refrain from doing so,
although we cannot but note the circumstance that no part of
the hfe of Jesus is more conspicuously confirmed by facts that
are otherwise attested than this very history of His Passion.
We at once admit that the historical investigation which is
" accompanied by the fundamental law of causality, by virtue of
which it demands for every effect which appears a cause included
in the series of natural powers," may find occasion to take
exception to the Gospel narrative here and there, and to describe
this aud that as in the highest degree improbable. Now, the
assumptions on which one can fall back are these two. It
may be said that the facts narrated did not really take place,
but that the narrators had an obvious interest to serve by
inventing them, clothing them with the colours which they wear,
and placing them in the light in which they appear. Or it may
be said that the history in question must not be viewed from the
ordinary historical standpoint, that it is concerned not merely
with the play of finite forces, but with a divine Sel, as the true and
ultimate cause — Sel ovr<»<; yevecrOai,. These assumptions them
selves, in so far as their own more general and deeper grounds
are concerned, he outside the sphere of apologetics. It has only
to decide the question, which of the two can plead in its own
favour, that it gives the more satisfactory explanation of these
narratives. In this way apologetics will make it possible for us
to give a solid judgment on the question, Did the evangelists
narrate facts or invent fables, and were the doctrines which the
apostles built on this foundation mere phantoms or eternal truths ?
We proceed, then, to open up the Passion history on the basis,
of course, of a particular assumption, just as Strauss does in his
treatment of it, — with an assumption, but not with an assertion.
We only make trial of this explanatory key, and wait to see
whether it will prove itself to be really suitable. What our
assumption is, appears clearly from the findings at which we
arrived in our consideration of the incident in Gethsemane.
Our Lord there took upon Himself the sin of the world; the
burden is to be borne by Him along the path of His Passion.
That which was then the object of the a'lpeiv is now the object

74 THE PASSION HISTOEY.
of the (3aard£eitV. The bearing as such does not amount to an
atonement. The suffering One bears, the dying One atones.
The death of Jesus was the sacrifice for the sin of the world.
He therefore calls His surrendered life a ransom for many ; and
the shed blood — " His own blood, the precious blood of ... a
lamb without blemish" — is called by the apostles the price of
"eternal redemption" (Heb. ix. 12; 1 Pet. i. 18, 19). The
" shedding of blood " was the condition of the " remission " of
sins, and " in His blood " was the Son " set forth to be a pro
pitiation." Death is the proper wages of sin; and just as it
was a favourite habit with the church dogmatists to prove the
necessity of the death of Christ from the threatening of death,
which was suspended over our first parents by God (Gen. ii. 6 7),1
so they taught that " by pouring forth His most precious blood,
and submitting to an ignominious death, Christ endured the penalty
due to sin " (Hollaz, Exam. II. p. 1 6 7). However, it would not
at all harmonize with the Scriptures to bring down the sufferings
of Christ to the level of more or less obscure factors, so that
they should appear historically only as the preliminary to His
death, and be placed dogmatically under the obedientia passiva
in such a manner as to be deprived of their independent signi
ficance and their essential connection with the idea of atonement.
That is not the meaning of the announcements of the prophets,
nor of our Lord's own utterances, nor of the preaching of the
apostles. The well-known prophecy in Isaiah gives much more
prominence to the sufferings than to the dying of the Servant of
the Lord. Jesus not only places clearly before the minds of His
disciples, and with all emphasis, the fact of His death, but He
prepares them for the many and bitter sufferings which were to
come upon Him (Matt. xvi. 21, "He must suffer many things,
. . . and be killed;" ch. xx. 18, 19, etc.), and which He would
require to endure before going hence. Among the apostles, it is
Peter especially who holds up before believers the iraOr/fiara
Christi, and pictures to them the suffering Saviour. For he can
refer to Him only in this character when he speaks of the ex
ample which He has left for our imitation, and by which we are
admonished to arm ourselves with the same long-suffering mind.
1 Quenstedt, III. p. 236 : " Mors homini denunciata est ante peccatum, illata
propter peccatum, ablata per eum qui non novit peccatum. Mortem ergo subiit
Salvator, ut mortis reus a morte per ejus mortem liberaretur."

THE SUFFERINGS OF JESUS. 75
However, he was very far from intending to point to Him solely
as the meek Sufferer ; it was much more his intention to place
the sufferings of Jesus under the view-point of the atonement.
This is evidenced not only by the expression " for us" (ch.ii. 21,
iii. 18, iv. 1), which is constantly added, but especially by the
announcement which is interwoven with this very chain of
thought : " who . . . bare our sins ... on the tree," 1 Pet. ii. 24.
The bearing of our sins on the cross presupposes a bearing of
them to the cross. If atonement for sin was completed by means
of the former, namely, the death of Jesus, then the latter also,
His Passion, just because it looked towards atonement as its
goal, is to be included in the domain of this idea.
Before testing by the details of the Passion history the assump
tion that the suffering Christ bore the sin of the world in order
to atone for them thereafter by dying, the question as to the
concrete import of the assumption requires to be first disposed
of. We shall at the same time discover what are the chief
respects in which the test indicated has to be carried out. It
has been very generally admitted in some sense or other, that
our Lord went from Gethsemane to Golgotha bearing the burden
of sin. Even those who ignore the profound connection between
sin and calamity, and who regard the well-known expression of
the disciples (John ix. 9), in its whole bearings, as the utterance
of narrow Jewish prejudice, are obliged in the present instance
to admit the propriety of the question : Has this man sinned, or
who has sinned, that such things have happened unto him ? For
the " man of sorrows " who here appears before us is not like a
Job, upon whose head the so-called blows of fate accumulated ;
but everything which befalls Him has been desired, decided upon,
and carried out by men. On one side, therefore, there must neces
sarily be sin as the occasion of these sufferings. They call Him
a " malefactor," who ought to suffer what His deeds deserve.
But He says : " they hated Me without a cause ; " He makes the
sin, therefore, to rest on them. But the most convincing proof
of the cleanness of His hands, considered in itself, does not suffice
to confirm the accuracy of our assumption. Admitting that the
statement which is proclaimed by both Testaments : " who did
no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth," is thoroughly
illustrated by the history of our Lord,— the picture of an inno
cent sufferer is not an adequate representation of Him who bore

76 THE PASSION HISTORY.
the sin of the world. Nor yet is He truly represented as a sin-
bearer by the recently propounded view, that malignant hatred to
the divine exhausted its full strength upon the Bedeemer. We
repeat our admission, that no exception can be taken to this idea
in itself. So it happened, and so it was bound to happen ; for
how could the Paraclete, whose office it is to take of the things
of Christ and make them the subject-matter of His announce
ments, accomplish His work of reproving the world of sin,
unless this sin in its length and breadth, its height and depth,
had been manifested and carried out against the suffering Saviour ?
But if our view must be limited to this, we shall see nothing
more in Christ than a sufferer whom we may extol, saying with
the apostle, " when He was reviled He reviled not again, when
He suffered He threatened not," or with the upholder of the
theory referred to, " He maintained to the uttermost His loyalty
to His vocation and His holiness ; " but we shall not see in
this calm, patient, stedfast, and pure sufferer, one who is
bearing the sin of the world. What condition is necessary to
vindicate this latter representation ? It has been said, and said
emphatically, that God permitted His Son to be the object of
the world's enmity. This is not adequate, and it is misleading.
That which is appropriate here is not what dogmatics calls
permissio Dei, but the voluntas divina itself. The doctrine
which it teaches : " Deus quidem permittit, sed non vult ro
permissum ; permissio non est actio, sed actionis negatio," does
not fit in with the state of the cas° in this history. That which
befell Jesus befell Him through His Father ; and if He suffered at
the hands of the world, the will of God was therein accomplished
in so far as these sufferings constituted the pathway to the goal
which God had ordained in His eternal counsel. In this case,
however, we see in Him who endured the hatred of the world,
in the whole fulness of its manifestations, the Bearer of its sin in
the strictest sense. If this, then, is implied in the history — we
say in the history, not in an assertion, whether on the part of our
Lord or of the evangelists, that it must so be, or that the Scriptures
could not otherwise be fulfilled, — if it is implied in the facts
of the history itself, and that in such a way as to make them
intelligible only when so regarded, then we can claim for the
assumption which we have made that it is confirmed by the
Gospel history. But it is implied. We do not wish to anticipate

THE SUFFERINGS OF JESUS. 7 7
the consideration of the individual steps of our Lord's progress
upon the via dolorosa, but only to touch in a preliminary way
the general features of the development of the tragedy. Had
our Lord, hke the prophets of an earlier time, and the proto-
martyr at a later time, fallen a victim to an outburst of zealotism,
— and more than once this nearly took place, comp. Luke iv. 29,
John viii: 59, x. 31, — then, indeed, the idea of a bare permissio
Dei would be entirely relevant, and it might be said that the
Sufferer, by divine permission, suffered at the hands of the world's
sin. But a crushed and broken martyr is an inadequate representa
tion of Him who bore that sin. We see Jesus, therefore, avoiding
mere martyrdom no less carefully than He avoided unwelcome
homage ; as often as He was threatened by it He deliberately
eluded it (He conveyed Himself away, — did hide Himself, — passing
through the midst of them, went His way, — escaped out of their
hand), and He often allowed this motive to determine the external
movements of His life.1 In what way, then, did our Lord's death
come about ? Instead of a turbulent mode of procedure, such as
that to which Stephen fell a victim, we discover throughout not
merely a strict observance of legal forms, but the Sufferer was
even put to death in connection with the administration of
ordinances which were appointed by God. The expression quoted
and attested by Jesus Himself : " I said, ye are gods " (John
x. 34), was applicable to all those to whose agency the death of
Christ was essentially due. The Sanhedrim had authority from
God to decide judicially such questions as were submitted to
them in this instance. It was not the utterance of Caiaphas in
itself which was of such deep significance to the evangelist John,
but the circumstance that He had given it forth " being hio-h
priest " (John xi. 51); so the prominent point is not the con
demnation of Jesus considered in itself, but the fact that it was
pronounced by a tribunal which was still possessed of divine
authority, although it was on the eve of " vanishing away." 2
1 The peculiar hesitation which He displayed before going up to the feast of
Tabernacles, John vii., and which cannot be removed by any exegetical device is
satisfactorily explained from this point of view.
2 It ended in that year in the Umuros Ixuvoi. When the Apostle Peter soon after
said to the Council : " whether it be right to hearken unto you more than unto God
judge ye " (Acts iv. 19), and laid down the fundamental proposition : " we ought to
obey God rather than men " (ch. v. 29), the declaration implied that the Sanhedrim
was no longer invested with authority " from above."

78 THE PASSION HISTORY.
Pilate had power from God to pronounce a sentence of death ;
and our Lord says expressly of this power belonging to the
governor, that it was given him " from above " (John xix. 1 1).
It is very easy to attribute the fate of Jesus, as Strauss does, to
the combined agency of the lowest passions, and to say that
wounded vanity and the lust of power allied themselves with
cowardly fear. And it is still easier to give expression to amaze
ment at the unparalleled wickedness of those who had a hand
in bringing about the sufferings of our Lord. But the fact is
very remarkable, that the readiest to use such warm expressions
are just those who, like Eenan,1 have no idea of the real mean
ing of the Passion of Christ, and who reduce Him to the level
of a mere martyr suffering for His convictions. The suffering
Saviour never spoke as if He were the sport of human caprice
and the victim of the passions of men ; it is always under a higher
hand that He humbles Himself (" committed Himself to Him
that judgeth righteously"). The history nowhere exhibits the
triumph of the God-opposed human will, but shows it restrained
at each successive step by a higher counsel. And the opponents
of Jesus by no means appear in the character of pronounced and
conscious enemies of God ; the history and our Lord Himself
characterize them in an entirely different way. He invariably
condemns the sin which they commit against Him; He even
emphasizes the fact that they are inexcusable (John xv. 22 :
" they have no cloak for their sin ") ; but by the words which
He speaks to the disciples : " The time cometh, that whosoever
killeth you will think that he doeth God service : and these
things will they do unto you because they have not known the
Father nor Me," — by these words He undoubtedly passes a judg
ment on His own persecutors also. He prays for them on the
cross. We know indeed that the source of this supernatural love
and patience was the divine fulness which dwelt in Him, but the
appended reason still remains, for He uses it in His prayer
to His Father as a plea, just as Peter at a later time employed
it as a bridge to lead sinners themselves to repentance (Acts
* The French scholar in this goes much too far for the feeling of his admirers.
His usually enthusiastic critic, E. Havet, cannot forgive his branding the act of the
Jews as an absolutely inexpiable crime. He has nothing else to say in vindication
of the author except that his imagination had hurried him to a view which his
philosophy certainly rejected. For his part, he must ask pardon for the Jews, and
even more than pardon.

THE ARREST OF JESUS. 79
iii. 17): "for they know not what they do." This, then, is not
merely an exemplification of the workings of that love which
mercifully " hides a multitude of sins," but much rather of that
" compassion towards the ignorant and on them that are out of the
way," which characterized (Heb. v. 2), although in another sense,
the sacrificing High Priest of the first Testament. An apostle at
a later time designated it as the calling of Christians to " suffer
according to the will of God." He uses the expression in a
double sense. He looks, on the one hand, backwards to the
source from which suffering comes. God sends it, even although
one should discover in the unrighteous hand of man its secondary
cause. On the other hand, he points forward to the results in
which God intends suffering to issue. But in both respects he
puts us in mind of Him who suffered in the highest measure
according to the will of God. What He suffered through sinners
came upon Him from God ; and on this pathway of suffering He
reached the goal which the Father had appointed for Him at
Golgotha. And if so, then we may conclude that in suffering
He bore the sin of the world.

1. THE ARREST OF JESUS,
The history of the arrest of Jesus is narrated by the four
evangelists in terms which are harmonious throughout, although
each of them contributes something special to make the picture
complete. " So much," says Strauss, " is without doubt historical,
that Jesus was taken by the officers of the Sanhedrim, under the
leadership of a faithless disciple, without any serious attempt at
resistance being made." On the other hand, criticism regards the
characteristic features of the narrative as in the highest degree open
to suspicion. It sees in the first three narrators evident traces of
the growing myth, and in the fourth the tendency to preserve
the representation of the Logos Christ. The question we ask is,
whether the " improbable " does not appear as the probable as soon
as the narrative is considered from the view-point from which
we have assumed that the Passion history may be understood ?
The arrest of Jesus is itself an essential element of the Passion,
the history of which begins with it. So it is to be characterized
in itself, and by reason of the circumstances which attended it.
He was deprived of liberty, who alone was free, and whose it

80 THE PASSION HISTORY.
was to free through the truth those who were in bondage (John
viii. 32-36). They bound the hands of Him (John xviii. 12)
of whom the apostle afterwards says, not in a tone of asser
tion, but on the ground of notorious facts, "who went about
doing good and healing" (Acts x. 38). Men came to the con
clusion that they dared not continue to be the placid spectators
of such an activity ("if we let him thus alone," John xi. 48),
and that it was on no account to be borne with any longer. He
was treated as a robber and murderer (" as against a thief," Matt.
xxvi. 55), who was able to say, "All that ever came before Me
are thieves and robbers. ... I am the good Shepherd." Two
of His disciples intensified the pain and shame of His suffering.
One of them was Judas Iscariot. At the head of the band as
their guide ("guide to them that took Jesus," Acts i. 16), he
was first seen by our Lord (" Behold, he is at hand that doth
betray me," Matt. xxvi. 46) ; and John, by his remark (ch. xviii.
5), " And Judas stood with them," is careful to show that Judas
remained there during the whole scene, and thus contributed in a
most essential degree to heighten the suffering of Jesus. The
Sanhedrim had given a command, that if any one knew where He
were, He should show it (John xi. 5 7) ; the only one who felt
himself impelled to give heed to the command was " one of the
twelve " — a " friend." It was with a troubled spirit that Jesus
foretold this to His disciples (John xiii. 21); and how much
deeper His pain must have been when the prediction was fulfilled !
Peter, too, tended to increase the suffering of Jesus on the occasion
of His arrest; not only because his act appeared to justify the
measures which the adversaries had carefully taken, and for which
Jesus reproached them, but also because it was undoubtedly
the signal for a ruder and more violent attack on His person.
They were no match for the words of His mouth. Before their
might they fell helpless on the ground, but the sword-stroke of
Peter restored their confidence and courage. With such weapons
they were at home and in their element, and Jesus suffered from
the manifestations of their reawakened consciousness of power.
Both by direct expressions and also by the history itself is this
suffering of Jesus Christ represented as a fruit of sin. His arrest
was a work of darkness. " This is your hour," He says, with
as obvious a reference to the night hour as is contained in
words spoken at an earlier time, which are equally applicable to

THE ARREST OF JESUS. 8 1
the present case : " Every one that doeth evil hateth the light,
neither cometh to the hght." " Not on the feast,"— that wastiie
advice of prudence ; " not by day,"— that was a matter of course,
considering the character of their deed. " I sat daily with you!
teaching in the temple" Of this Jesus reminds the chief priests
and captains of the temple. Directly under their eyes, — coming
and going among them (iieO" vpoov), He had done His work during
those previous days. They had then the opportunity of stretching
forth their hands against Him (Luke xxii. 53) ; and even the
Eoman airelpa, had they been in want of extraneous assistance,
was at their immediate disposal. But the time which they
chose, and which they were compelled to choose, was that which
corresponded to the character of their light-shunning work. The
same holds of the act of the traitor, but in a higher degree.
It tuas night, says John (ch. xiii. 30), when Judas communicated
his now matured purpose to the high priests. It is not the
fourth evangelist alone who ascribes the conduct of the faithless
disciple to Satanic influences. The third makes a like assumption
in express terms (Luke xxii. 3), and the accounts of the two first
evangelists are certainly not such as to exclude it. But not one
of them neglects to point to the threads out of which the awful
crime was woven in Judas' own heart. There the thorns were
already growing when the enemy scattered the evil seed. It has
been often said that covetousness is not an adequate explanation of
an act hke that of Judas. Such an objection is destitute of any
foundation. The registers of crime show numerous cases in which
motives, apparently the most trifling, have led to the commission
of the most dreadful deeds. Murder has been done, for the sake
of insignificant gains, by those who were neither starving nor poor;
shght affronts have instigated those who were not of exception
ally passionate temperament to inflict a death-blow. In the case
before us, the argument based on the apparent disproportion
between motive and act would acquire consistency, if it were
assumed, on the one hand, that the disciple-relation was still to
continue ; and, on the other, that the lust of gain had but recently
arisen. No doubt the traitor was one of the Twelve till the end.
Our Lord chose him to this position, and treated him accordingly
up to the last hour of fellowship. It is only after Judas' death
that even Peter (Acts i. 16 sq.) appears to regard the lot of the
ministry which he had obtained as vacant. But in his heart
j?

82 THE PASSION HISTORY.
he had abandoned the position of a disciple long before. His
alienation from his Master, and his coldness towards Him, had
already grown into that complete indifference which once marked
the relations of the covenant people to Jehovah's Shepherd, whom
they valued at the ransom price of a slave (Zech. xi. 1 3). Nor
does his covetousness here burst forth all of a sudden, and for
the first time. Even already he had abused his position in the
disciple circle for the purpose of gratifying it. " He was a thief,"
says John. A thief ! Covetousness had thus gained dominion
over his heart, and could consequently show itself in him as the
" root of all evil." Nothing can be imagined to wliich it might
not have impelled him. Under these circumstances, we may
confidently accept as the real and true motive of the betrayal
the feeling to which it is always traced by the evangelists.
It is just when the matter is so regarded, however, that SIN,
in that naked, undisguised form which excites a feeling of
revulsion in human nature itself, appears as the cause of the
suffering of Him who was arrested.1 The employment of the
usual love - token, instead of disguising the character of his
deed, brings out its utter hideousness. The bold kiss (icare-
tf>lXr)crev) which the traitor in the exercise of his disciple-
privilege imprinted on the lips of his Master (" Master, Master,"
Mark xiv. 45) was not designed to throw a veil over his act,
1 Judas Iscariot is the only one among the authors of the sufferings of Jesus, the
circumstances of whose death are narrated by the Scriptures. It was no " postulate
of the Christian consciousness " (Strauss) that the vengeance of God must have over
taken him in some such way. In its depths there is in reality no feeling that an
evil deed must needs be followed by conspicuous retribution in the present world ;
but if the traitor came speedily to a bad end, the evangelist had a purpose to serve
in recording the fact ; and not merely that general purpose contemplated by Luke
when he records (Acts xii. 21 sq. ) the singular and sudden death of Herod Agrippa,
the persecutor of the apostles and the infant church, but the more special purpose
of making the traitor's fate a mirror in which to show the enormity of the crime he
committed (as the apocryphal tradition says regarding it, not inappropriately : piyx
xffi{hua.s vir'o&uyfioi h rourcp r£j xitspt-tu vripnru.rv)tnv 'lov'Sas). For the act, which left open
to its author no resource but to terminate the pangs of an unavailing repentance by
self-murder, must have involved an inconceivable degree of guilt. Strauss does not
admit that there is a single word of truth in the whole story of the traitor's fate.
The way in which he attempts to show that it is a fiction, constructed of materials
borrowed from the Old Testament, makes such monstrous demands upon his readers,
that they cannot but feel bewildered in the presence of his ingenious combinations.
The reward said to have been given to the traitor he traces to the familiar passage in
Zechariah (but certainly not without perceptible hesitation), although the reason for
the amount of this award, so far as the high priests were concerned (on account of

THE ARREST OF JESUS. 83
nor was he in circumstances to deceive another's eye. Not
with deceitful lips, under which was the poison of asps, does he
proffer the friendly token, but in unexampled unnaturalness he
makes no secret of his vileness and falsity. This is the crying
sin, which the last question addressed by Jesus to the lost
disciple (comp. Luke xxii. 48 : " Judas, betrayest thou the Son of
man with a kiss ? ") rebukes with peculiarly outspoken severity.
The apparently opposite conduct of Peter is in many respects
open to a like judgment. According to- the narrative of Luke
(ch. xxii. 49), other disciples also felt the impulse to which Peter
yielded. But while these — at least the sons of thunder, comp.
Luke ix. 54 — were raising the question, just as they did formerly,
if this were not the time to take to the sword, Peter had already
completed his act of violence. We do not need to assume that
it was his intention thereby to repel the doubt expressed by our
Lord as to his courage and fidelity ; the sin of the disciple is
evident even without assuming that any such calculation took
place in his mind. He now translates into act that which he
had formerly expressed in word : " Lord, this- shall not be unto
Thee," Matt. xvi. 22. Then his word received the severe rebuke,
" Get thee behind me, Satan ; thou art an offence unto Me ; " his
act, in which he was as far from understanding the mind of God,
is met by a like rebuke (Matt xxvi. 53, 54). But his act
Ex. xxi. 32), was self-evident. Of the points on which criticism has thrown sus
picion, only one requires closer consideration — we mean the discrepancy between the
narrative in Matthew and that in the Acts of the Apostles, owing to which some
interpreters have assumed a double tradition in regard to- the incident, — an assump
tion which has been especially due to the influence of the well-known story of the
uncritical Papias. But the difficulty disappears so soon as we fix. our attention on the
difference of the objects contemplated by the evangelical narrative and the discourse
in the Acts respectively. The historical writer narrates the principal fact — the self-
murder — as to its genesis and its execution. As for Peter, again, it would have been
strange if, in an address to' his fellow-apostles,. he had proclaimed a fact which was
well known to them all. Instead of doing so, he points to the circumstances by
which the death of the traitor was attended, and draws a conclusion from his death
which had an important bearing upon his purpose. He required to find a reason
for the proposal which he was about to submit to the company of disciples. His
mode of narrating the story corresponds to the motive by which he was influenced,
but yet it by no means excludes the representation given by Matthew. The pas
sages of the Old Testament quoted by him, and the way in which he applies them,
place the accuracy of this view of the case beyond all doubt. (Of course we
could not agree with the statement made by Hengstenberg, I.e. p. 195, that Peter
"had touched a single and especially characteristic circumstance in a rhetorical
manner. ")

84 THE PASSION HISTORY.
involves a more serious opposition than his word. For it includes
an additional wrong in employing carnal weapons where nothing
was appropriate but the sword of the Spirit (Matt. xxvi. 52) — the
sword which he was in vain exhorted to wield in Gethsemane.
We are unable to adopt the view which has been recently sug
gested, and which implies that the attempt of Peter was desired,
and even intended, by Jesus.1 An act which He severely rebuked
cannot have been wished by Him ; and the necessity imposed upon
Him of resuming an activity which did not belong to the idea of
the suffering Christ, must certainly have been most unwelcome
to Him. It may be pleasing to observe that our Lord even in
His latter hours employs His unbound hands in "doing well ; "
that at the beginning of His Passion — which in the highest sense
and degree undid the evil which men had done — He arrests an
individual wanton act, asking a (respite from His enemies in order
to do so ; 2 but notwithstanding this He still appears before our
eyes as One suffering. at the hands of sin.
But however .obvious the sin may be which prepared for our
Lord the suffering of the arrestment, it was not in reality by the
" hands of sinners " that the victory over Him was gained. But
in the exercise of a voluntary obedience He submits to the
decree of His Father, by whieh things were so appointed and
ordained. This aspect x>t the question, namely, that bonds and
imprisonment were allotted to Him by God, is brought into
prominence by the fourth Gospel especially. Strauss has rightly
1 Hengst. {Ix. p. 151) errs .entirely in making the impossible, and in every
respect inadmissible assertion, that the procedure of Peter "was included in tho
plan of Jesus," just as if our Lord had intended it.
2 We regard the words of Jesus, iHn iu; roirou (Luke xxii. 51), as an address not
to the disciples, but to those who .arreated Him. The interpretation which the
former assumption yields, "let them go so far as .even to arrest Me," is prevented
by the 'lots, which would thus lose its proper sense as designating a limit. For the
rendering "even" (Meyer) or "this uttermost" (Hofmann) is forced. The difficulty
raised by Bleek and others as to applying the words to the officers, namely, that
in this case iiroxpihis would be inappropriate, is removed when one remembers in
how many ways this formula is used by tlie evangelists. The sword-stroke of Peter
occasioned an immediate crowding upon Jesus, with the view of overpowering Him.
Thereupon (xnoxpihls) He asks : "leave Me at liberty until I shall have accomplished
this," namely, what the immediately succeeding words indicate : "and He touched
his ear, and healed him." The remark made by Meyer, that Jesus first addresses
Himself to the officers in ver. 52, overlooks the circumstance that a solemn declara
tion to the whole band is very different from a .warding off of those in His immediate
neighbourhood, who were on the very point of stepping forward to lay hands on
Him.

THE ARREST OF JESUS. 85
apprehended the Johannine representation when he says that it
shows us the voluntariness of the surrender of Jesus, both in the
light of His words and on the ground of the facts that occurred.
There was no need of the traitor's " token : " the Lord neither, can
nor will deny Himself. Nor was the arrest due to military
power. It was beaten back before the sword which proceeded
from the mouth of the Son of God. Men were obliged to permit
Him to extend to His own an effectual protection, and to defend
them as long as He was with them (" while I was with them in
the world," John xvii. 12) in the fullest sense of the word. They
were allowed to escape unmolested ; and as for Himself, unless
He had been complying with His Father's command (John x. 1 8),
the result would have been the same as on a former occasion
when the officers who had been sent to take Him confessed their
powerlessness, comp. John vii 45 sq. But Strauss is wrong
when he says that in John's stating that Jesus makes Himself
known and surrenders Himself to His enemies, while the other
accounts make Him to be pointed out by another, is involved
" the whole of the distinction between the fourth Gospel and the
older ones." John enriches the narrative with details ; he makes
the scene distinct and animated, but adds no new feature to the
portraiture of Jesus. The other narrators depict Jesus as wearing
the same aspect of grandeur and nobility ; it shines forth, for
example, in its wondrously intimate connection with His obedience,
in the declaration to which Matthew gives especially frequent
utterance, " This was done, that the Scriptures might be fulfilled."
The greater the importance attached to the betrayal of Judas, in
connection with the arrest of Jesus, and that not merely on
account of its being the means by which it was accomplished,
but because this act made the suffering which the arrest involved
peculiarly bitter, the more important it was to show that this
drop of His cup had also been apportioned for the Sufferer by God.
In a certain sense this was already intimated by the circumstance
that Jesus chose this disciple also, like all the others, by direction
from above, and that He had to leave him in his place in the
circle, even when He recognised in him the future traitor (John
vi. 70, 71). But still more convincing evidence may be adduced,
and that chiefly from the narrative itself. Judas erroneously
imagined that the thought which he bore in his mind was pro
foundly concealed from all. And, in truth, it was hidden from

86 THE PASSION HISTORY.
the eyes df "his fellow-disciples up to the last ; but the Lord
Himself saw his plan gradually ripening, and never disguised from
Judas the fact .that his heart was read. Judas was of opinion that
he was «executing, by a free determination, a well- conceived scheme
which promised him earthly gain, but after he had once turned
away from the Saviour — undoubtedly of bis own free will — then
necessity was laid upon him 1 "to become the .traitor ; his act was at
the same time his fate. He hears the imperative : " That thou
doest, do quickly" (John xiii. 27) ; he hears it in the very moment
of betrayal 'Eralpe, -kj> % -rrdpei, said Jesus, when Judas kissed
Him. As it is grammatically impossible to "take o in an inter
rogative sense, nothing remains but to assume an aposiopesis.
But this assumption, and the words by which alone the sentence
can be completed, — "carry out'that for which thou art come," — find
decided support in the expression quoted above from John. Jesus
sought to prevent the act of Judas by warnings only. And why
was it only thus, to the exclusion of all other ways and means ?
Because herein also He was submitting to the divine counsel, for
this too was ordained of God in regard to the suffering Messiah ;
the word of prophecy bore testimony to it. Not less expressly
than He said of His Passion as a whole, that the prophets
had announced it beforehand, did He designate the act of the
traitor in particular as a fulfilment of Scripture. In order to
justify the circumstance that He had mot kept this particular
member of the Twelve, He says, in His prayer to the Father
(John xvii. 12), "that the Scripture might be fulfilled." With
these same terms also He introduces to the disciples His predic-
1 The ground of the repentance of Judas is to be found in this circumstance.
That it included any moral element must be doubted, considering all that preceded,
even although the son of perdition himself appears to acknowledge his crime. But
neither does it resemble that "sorrow of the world " of which Paul speaks (2 Cor.
vii. 10) ; it bears no relation to it whatsoever. Strauss is right when he says that it
is difficult to understand how the traitor could be surprised that the condemnation
of Jesus followed as the result of his act. The peculiar explanation of it, suggested
by Meyer and others, evidences this. It was on something else that his eye was fixed
when he saw that Jesus was condemned. It now becomes clear to him how he was
chosen to bring this fate on the Messiah. It was not the guilt which he had
incurred, considered in itself, which oppressed him so heavily, but it was the fact of
its having been interwoven with the divine purpose, which drove him to despair,
and the refuge of the despairing. The remorse of Judas and his self-murder, like
his act generally, have no analogy in history. The judgment uttered by our Lord,
therefore, in Matt. xxvi. 24, scarcely admits of an application to any other indi
vidual.

THE ARREST OF JESUS. 87
tion of the Judas-sin (John xiii. 18). In both passages the
expression used is " the Scripture," and not, as elsewhere, " the
Scriptures of the prophets," and this of itself suggests something
different from a direct Messianic prediction. The passage which
we find quoted from the Psalms is not in reality a direct predic
tion. Yet, while Christ had to leave out a part of the passage
since it was not appropriate to His circumstances, the remainder
certainly corresponds, with remarkable precision, to the state of
the case before us. " He that eateth bread with Me hath lifted
up his heel against Me." The foot which had just been washed
by the Master is lifted up against Him by the false-hearted
disciple, and that in an hour wherein he had taken of the bread
placed by that Master upon His table. But if the Psalm was a
description of the suffering of the righteous, — a suffering which
was literally exemplified in the case of Him who was in the
highest sense a righteous Man, — there was in this very circum
stance a reason not only for enduring with patience, but also for
accepting what was sent as appointed by God Himself.1
1 No direct prediction as to the history of Judas is adduced, except the one quoted
by the first Gospel (Matt, xxvii. 9, 10), from Zech. xi. 12 sq. While Strauss makes
this passage the source of the entire "myth" as to the fate of the traitor, it has
occasioned abundant difficulties to many interpreters, and opinions regarding it are
very diverse. The initial difficulty, that the evangelist cites a prophecy which
belongs to Zechariah, as spoken by Jeremiah, may possibly be got over in either of the
following ways. We may hold, with one party, that Zechariah had borrowed an
earlier prophecy (by Jeremiah), because a second fulfilment of it was impending
(Bleek also supposes the prophecy in question to belong, as to its substance, to a
much earlier period, probably to the time of the Jewish king Uzziah ; he absolutely
denies that it belongs to the time of the Zechariah. who flourished after the exile), —
so that Matthew quotes it in the same fashion as Mark makes his quotation, ch. i.
2, 3. Or we may hold, with another party : "Jeremiam inter prophetas primum
habuisse locum, ac propterea Matthaeum Sacharjae textum sub Jeremiae titulo pro-
tulisse, quod is primus in volumine prophetarum esset," — a view which receives a
certain amount of support in the circumstance that, although the prophet Zechariah
is often quoted in the Gospels, his name is never mentioned, while in no case are
any names prefixed to the quotations of Matthew, except those of Isaiah and
Jeremiah, no other prophet whatsoever being mentioned. But more serious
difficulties are occasioned by the discrepancies between the words, as quoted by
Matthew, and the original text as well as the Septuagint version, and in addition,
by the rather obscure and apparently violent application which the evangelist makes
of the prophetical passage. Strauss, with his usual ingenuity, puts his finger on all
that is perplexing in the ease. But the perplexity which we feel on first looking at
the circumstances will be supplanted by a totally different feeling as soon as we
abandon the preconceived opinion that Matthew wished to narrate the whole
history of Judas, at least all that he says of him in ch. xxvii. 3 sq., in the light of
prophecy, and fix our gaze on the point on which alone his eye rests. As to what

88 THE PASSION HISTORY.
From God, therefore, came upon Jesus the suffering which was
involved in the arrest, with all its attendant and aggravating
circumstances. But why and for. what purpose did the Father
decree this in regard to His Son ? This question may be evaded,
or it may even be put aside as unprofitable and irrelevant, on the
plea that it isolates and compels us to view by itself an individual
feature of the subject which acquires importance simply from its
connection with the whole. But the Gospel narrative itself
compels us to examine it. The history of the arrest of Jesus
concludes, in the narrative of Matthew, with these words : " All
this was done that the Scriptures of the prophets might be
fulfilled." But to whom are these words to be attributed ? A
reference to the analogous statement in ch. i. 22 might dispose
this is, no doubt can exist. Had it been the intention of the evangelist to call
attention, by means of a prophetic passage, to the reward which the traitor
earned, it would have been the natural course for him, after recording in eh. xxvi. 15 :
oi (Si! 'itrrvio-av auru rpiaxovra, apyvpiu, to quote the words in Zech. xi. 12, xa.) sa-rtitrav
to piio-Sis ftou rpixxorrx upyupous ; but he has not done so. Or had it been of consequence
to him to make a quotation bearing on the repentance of the traitor, then, after
relating in ver. 5, xa.) pi-Jtxs ra, apyvpia iv rai vaat, the words in Zechariah, xa) hifZaXo*
aliTovs ils oTxov xvpiov, would certainly not have escaped him ; but these are just the
words which he has scrupulously overlooked. Throughout he gives a mere summary
of the general contents of the prophecy (Bengel : "Evangelista summam rei respicit
et paraphrasin addit ") ; the words, " the price of Him that was valued, whom they of
the children of Israel did value, " suggest the idea of a summarizing and explanatory
parenthesis, — "to wit, the price for Him that was valued, at whieh they valued
Him in the name of the sons of Israel, the nation as such." On the other hand,
one thing is emphasized. The expression "then was fulfilled" refers exclusively
to vers. 6-8. "And they took " (ver. 9) refers to the word "took" in ver. 6 ; " and
gave them for the potter's field " (ver. 10) refers to " and bought with them the
potter's field" (ver. 7) ; and the words, "as the Lord appointed me," which bring
into prominence a higher will, a divine decree, point back to ver. 8, to the fact
that the potter's field thereafter bore the name of the field of blood, and remained
until that day as a monument of the ingratitude of the Jewish people to testify
against them. Matthew relates that the chief priests took the blood money, the
reward of the traitor, and purchased with it the potter's field, from which it was
named the field of blood. He was perfectly entitled to say that by this act was
fulfilled the saying of the prophet, according to which the price at which Israel
valued its Shepherd was to receive at God's command the destination "^.ii) ,H.
Notwithstanding the xuviurnpiov of the Septuagint, and the "treasury" of the
Syriac, Matthew has rightly rendered the Hebrew word. Grammatical reasons, as
well as the passages in Jeremiah, entirely justify the translation of the evangelist,
which undoubtedly possesses the proper seal of its accuracy in the fulfilment of the
prophecy which followed. It behoves the theologian who believes the Scriptures to
see in a case where the mere natural eye must recognise a remarkable coincidence, a
confirmation of the saying, " This is the finger of God. "

THE ARREST OF JESUS. 89
one to attribute them to the evangelist. But the authority of
Mark (ch. xiv. 29) inclines us to the conclusion that they are to
be included in the statement made by Christ Himself. If this
assumption be correct, we may perhaps regard them as part of
the announcement made by Jesus (Luke xxii. 52, 53) to the
spiritual leaders of the people. But, however this may be, so
much is clear, that the fulfilment of Scripture, to which Jesus here
bears testimony, is to be referred to the arrest alone. The expres
sion, "all this was done" cannot possibly be understood of anything
but that which had already been accomplished. (The " all " is
used in relation to the whole of the circumstances with which
the arrest was attended, just as the word " all " in ch. i. 2 2
embraces the whole of the circumstances which, according to
prophecy, had to co-operate, so that the Virgin should conceive,
and, as a virgin, bring forth the Son who was to bear the name
Immanuel.) We are not put in any perplexity, then, by the
question, Was the arrest of Jesus the subject of any special
prediction ? When our Lord, according to Luke (ch. xxii. 3 7),
says to His disciples on the way to Gethsemane, that this Scrip
ture, " And He was reckoned among the transgressors," must be
fulfilled in Him, we might feel ourselves impelled on various
grounds to think specially of His bonds. But the fact that Mark
(ch. xv. 28) sees this Scripture fulfilled only at the moment when
Jesus hung upon the cross between the two thieves, at once forbids
the supposition. But, on the other hand, we feel that we are
entitled to assume that what is said in Matt, xxvi, 31:" All ye
shall be offended because of Me this night : for it is written, I
will smite the Shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be
scattered abroad," is to be referred to the arrest of Jesus. We
pass by the fact that the " sword " which was to awake (Zech.
xiii. 7) shows itself on the same occasion ("with swords," Matt.
xxvi. 47, 55) ; but it was just by it that the fellowship between
the Shepherd and the sheep was dissolved, and the little flock
scattered. (" All the disciples . . . fled," Matt. xxvi. 56;" scat
tered, every man to his own," John xvi. 32.) Peter also appears
to have understood the words of His Lord in that sense, when he
said to Him, " I am ready to go with Thee, both into prison and
to death" (Luke xxii. 33). But if the arrest of Jesus was a
subject of prophecy, — of the prophecy which, in its sum and
substance, was concerned with the atoning death of Jesus, — then

90 THE PASSION HISTORY.
just as it was historically a preliminary step to the death of Jesus
on the cross, so also it must have stood in an inward relation to the
divine purpose which was accomplished in this death. What is
this relation ? Those who resolved on and carried out the arrest
of Jesus — of Him who -alone was truly free — did so because they
themselves were fettered and- bound, because they themselves were
the servants of sin.1 The Father gave His Son into their hands,
because it was a step towards the accomplishment of the end con
templated in His eternal counsel, viz. that Jesus by dying should
break the bonds of human sin. The command to "preach deliver
ance to the -captives," was to be issued from the cross. What
shall we say of the picture presented to us, when the hands of
sinners bound our Lord, and -thus fulfilled prophecy ? This we
may venture to say, nay, must say, while comprehending in one
view the act of sin and the purpose of God, — by virtue of this
part of His Passion, the Saviour bore ihe sin of the world.
2. THE TRIAL OF JESUS.
The attitude which Strauss takes -up in regard to this part of
the Passion history of Jesus is not altogether clear. While in
the first or positive part of his work he does not appear to
discover anything historically improbable in the essential contents
of the narrative, and even in the later or critical part, which he
calls the "mythical history of Jesus," declares the differences in
the evangelical accounts to be insignificant and non-essential;
yet he appears again to withdraw his admissions for the greater
part. For he attributes to the writers a tendency influencing them
to give a turn to the facts which they were setting forth, so that
they might not include anything which could prove a stumbling-
block to faith. And he maintains that the author of the fourth
Gospel, who, moreover, was very ill informed as to the persons
concerned with trying out Lord, and makes entirely erroneous
historical assumptions in (regard to them, undoubtedly invented
1 Our Lord's own statement (John viii. 34 sq.) points in this very direction :
"Ye seek to kill Me." With these words He turns to those whom He had
described as the "servants of sin," as persons who required to be set free by the
power of the free Son of God. "Ye seek to kill Me," He says, with evident
allusion to the order for His arrest which had been issued by the chief priests
and Pharisees (ch. vii. 32), an order which the officers were at that time unable to
execute (ch. vii. 46).

THE TRIAL OF JESUS. 91
the trial before Annas, for the special purpose " of representing
Jesus as having been repudiated and maltreated by two Jewish
high priests ; " while he has nothing left to say of the trial
before Caiaphas, which is reported by the Synoptists, from having
already used up its materials. By means of these assertions,
Strauss has gone far beyond all previous criticism. Even
Schleiermacher shares the conviction, which is immediately forced
upon one's mind, and which is confirmed on all sides, that John
assumes the trial before Caiaphas as already known ; and almost all
interpreters have received from this very part of his narrative the
impression that the author is recording what he had witnessed
with his own eyes. No doubt the evangelists had a particular
purpose in view when describing the trial of Jesus, but only one,
namely, to tell what had occurred.; Christendom had to be made
acquainted with it, and it is the office of exegesis to apply itself
to the understanding of that which they relate as faet.
The suffering which our Lord endured on account of His
trial is the feature which immediately and chiefly comes under
our notioe. His trial, considered even in itself, was an especial
cause of suffering. At least those must so judge who believe in
His divinity. He was subjected to man's judgment (dvQpwrrlvr)
¦qp-tpa). An apostle, a servant aad steward, declares that it was
a small thing for him to be judged by man's judgment (1 Cor.
iv. 3), and in various ways he gave very decided expression to
his feeling that it was a small thing (comp. Acts xxiii. 3), but
now He who is Lord over all must needs submit willingly and
meekly to such a judgment He is accused of sin who never
committed sin. He is called to answer for Himself who is
answerable to no one save to His heavenly Father. Sentence is
passed upon Him, and yet it is He to whom God has given
" authority to execute judgment because He is the Son of man "
(John v. 27), and by whom God has determined one day to judge
the world in righteousness. Again, it is a spiritual court before
which He is called to stand, a court whose judgments must rest
on the basis of divine truth, and He is this truth itself ; through
Him it existed upon earth, He bore testimony to it, and His lips
never spoke anything save ft alone. It is, finally, a court com
posed of ue shepherds and guides oi the people of Israel before
which He is to answer : He who is the true Shepherd, whom the
Father sent into the world to take charge of His sheep, is called

92 THE PASSION HISTORY.
to account for entering the sheepfold. They whose duty it was to
open the door for Him, make it a ground of accusation that He
had come to His own. But there are accessory circumstances
which add to the already heavy burden of suffering. There is a
common tendency to regard the pain and shame of bodily mal
treatment to which our Lord was subjected on two several
occasions during the course of His trial (John xviii. 22 ; Matt.
xxvi. 67, 68), as a feature of His experience to which no par
ticular significance is to be attached, especially as none of the
evangelists, in relating these circumstances, mentions the prophecy
(Isa. 1. 6) which refers to them. It has been left chiefly to
Christian hymnology to commemorate the facies sputis illita.
Just as an apostle, when giving a comprehensive description of
the sufferings of his condition (" we are made as the filth of the
world, the offscouring of all things "), gives prominence to the
experience of " buffeting " as one which was peculiarly felt ; so,
doubtless, the first experience of bodily maltreatment which our
Lord endured would heavily oppress His consciousness. If His
whole bearing hitherto has been such that He seemed to say, "Touch
me not," He has now to say, but in a very different sense from
that in whieh He once used the words, " Who touched me ? "
Now they do violence to the countenance which was the express
image of the Father's person, and the brightness of His glory.
What we see is not a swift, impulsive emotion, issuing in a hasty
and inconsiderate act, but an inveterate and long-cherished hatred
obtaining the gratification it had longed for. No one takes His
part as He stands there before the judgment-seat of Israel. " At
my first answer (defence) no man stood with me," says Paul
(2 Tim. iv." 1 6) at a later time, " but all forsook me ; " and . he
addresses to Timothy the admonition, " Be not thou, therefore,
ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me His prisoner."
Our Lord Himself had no need of human assistance, nor did He
desire it : " Ye shall leave me alone ; and yet I am not alone,
because the Father is with me," John xvi. 32. The disciple
whom we see appearing upon the scene does not aim at accom
plishing anything. Peter forces his way into the court of the
high priest's palace, with the view, as is expressly stated, of
watching the issue of the matter (Matt. xxvi. 58). This was an
interest which, considering his relation to Jesus, he was not able
to repress. Consequently, he can neither be praised for courao--

THE TRIAL OF JESUS. 93
eously facing the peril which the step he took seemed to involve,
nor be blamed because, instead of availing himself of the op
portunity of retiring from observation, secured for the disciples
by Jesus at the time of His arrest, he forgot the express warning
which he had received, and entered into a situation which was
full of temptation, — a situation which was too much for his
strength. Christ had foreseen and predicted Peter's fall, and had
also warded off the consequenoes which might have followed
from it by His intercession. Yet the error of His disciple gave
Jesus a severe pang. As the suffering caused by the arrest
was intensified by the circumstance that Judas was the agent of
it, so the suffering which Jesus endured on the occasion of His
trial was intensified by Peter's denial. In both eases the con
nection is not merely historical, it is inward. While Christ
witnesses His " good confession " before the rulers of the people,
the chief of His disciples does the very reverse before the crowd
of servants.1 The Lord bears solemn testimony to the truth, and
maintains its claims with unshaken mind ; Peter cuts himself
adrift from the honourable position of a disciple in consequence
of his thrice-repeated protestations, and absolutely denies, con
firming his denial with an oath, that he stood in any kind of
relation to Jesus, or that he was even acquainted with Him, as if
it were a matter of which one could not but be ashamed. But
such a denial comes dangerously near being a direct confession to
him who asked Jesus regarding His disciples (John xviii. 17-21).
This it was, and nothing else than this, which gave its sting to
the glance which Jesus cast upon His disciple, and it was the
source of the bitterness which marked his repentance.
1 This view still remains valid, even if the denials of Peter should all have taken
place, as some expositors think, previous to the procedure before Caiaphas. For all
that is required is to refer them to that phase of the Passion of Jesus which is con
cerned with His trial before the rulers of the people. In other respects the diversities
which appear in the evangelical accounts of the fall of Peter are of no importance.
The real order of events was probably this, that the first denial took place before the
maid-servant who kept the door ; the second, before the servants beside the fire of
coals, who, on their attention being called to Peter by the portress, or on their
suspicions being aroused by the disciple's own behaviour, recognise him by the
shibboleth of his Galilean accent ; while the third took place in consequence of the
charge made against him by the relative of Malchus. If Matthew speaks of an &xxn
-raiS'io-xn, and Luke of a 'inpo; ns, who occasioned the second act of denial, the
inconsistency disappears in presence of the obvious intention to emphasize the
quality of the persons before whom and for whom the disciple of truth cast away his
honour — they were ignoble servants or female slaves.

94 THE PASSION HISTORY,
The suffering involved in the very fact of being tried appears
in a still clearer light when we look at the sin which was its
procuring cause. The object of a trial is to bring out the truth
in regard to the subject under investigation ; any such judicial
proceeding must be conducted with this single aim. In the
present case, however, the narrative shows us nothing but the
action and tendency of falsehood. The persons who here appear
before us propose to keep their Passover with the " malice and
wickedness " which stand in direct contrast to " sincerity and
truth " (1 Cor. v. 8). We recognise once more the persons who
on many occasions and in many ways laid snares for our Lord's
feet. It is true that devices of the same kind are no longer
required, but whatever is needed the ingenuity of deceit will be
able to provide. The falsity of the Sanhedrim considered in
general consisted in this, that its decision was arrived at before
hand, so that legal forms were observed simply with the view of
justifying and carrying it out. This is evidenced. by the allusion
which John makes to the opinion of Caiaphas, and which he
prefixes to his narrative of the Passion, namely, that the removal
of Jesus was a matter of necessity, — an opinion which influenced
the Council to adopt a resolution in accordance with it (John xi.
49 sqq.). And the same fact is emphasized in the statement
made by our Lord Himself, and which Luke has preserved (ch.
xxii. 68), that, notwithstanding anything He might say or any
thing that might arise, He could not expect to escape out of their
hands. Consequently, all the subsequent proceedings at each
successive step of their progress were characterized by deception
and falsehood. This holds, in the first place, even of the trial
before Annas, for we speak of a trial conducted before and by
Annas. The chiliarch had brought Jesus as a prisoner to the
palace of the high priest. The conjecture of Euthymius
Zigabenus, that Annas and Caiaphas may have occupied this
palace in common, will always have probability in its favour,
although it does not admit of being absolutely proved. But why
was Jesus not brought at once into the presence of the reigning
high priest, in whose name the order for His arrest had been
issued, and with whom rested the further conduct of the matter ?
The hypothesis that Annas was invested with an official authority,
whether as the ]\o of the high priest, or as the WKO of the
Sanhedrim, or as the head of the judicial faculty, — however

THE TRIAL OF JESUS. 9 5
satisfactorily the last of these suppositions would explain the
circumstances of the case, — is not possessed of sufficient archaeo
logical support, nor does it harmonize with the- narrative of John.
But the representation given by the evangelist also excludes the
view that Caiaphas, out of a feeling of respect towards his father-
in-law, caused Jesus to be conducted, in the first place, into the
apartments of Annas, and there, in his presence and hearing,
subjected the Prisoner to a preliminary investigation. When we
read in John xviii. 13, that they " led Him away to Annas first,"
the high priest mentioned in ver. 19 can be no other than
Annas himself,1 and, in the light of the statement in ver. 24, —
" Annas had sent Him bound unto Caiaphas," — the presence of
Caiaphas during the previous proceedings becomes almost un
imaginable. (Had Caiaphas been on the spot during this first
investigation, or had it been conducted by himself, Annas merely
standing by as a passive spectator, the evangelist could not have
expressed himself as he has done in ver. 24. The words "Annas
had sent Him " presuppose that Annas had been the really acting
person up to that time ; in the opposite case, it would not be
possible to speak of a " sending " at his instance. And un
doubtedly the only meaning that can be attached to the words,
" unto Caiaphas the high priest," is that, after his dialogue with
Jesus, Annas dismissed Him to the reigning high priest, who
had up to that time taken no share in the proceedings.) It is
even in itself probable, and it becomes quite clear from vv. 13, 14,
that in the bosom of the high-priestly family — undoubtedly,
however, from motives altogether different from those which influ
enced the party of the Pharisees — the destruction of Jesus had

1 The objection, that l apxnpiis with the article is inappropriate, as applied to
Annas, is not a vaHd one. No doubt, in the cases where this designation is found
in the Gospels, we naturally think of no one else but Caiaphas, unless there be some
intimation to the contrary. But in the present instance the argument loses its
plausibility, from the circumstance that ver. 19 points back to the statement in
ver. 13, that Jesus was brought to Annas first, and, further, that Annas, the ex-high
priest, as the head of the yivos apx^panxov and the soul of the Sanhedrim, had a
higher right to the title than had the prominent members of the Council, such as
the chiefs of the priestly class, whom the fourth evangelist is also in the habit of
designating &p%iipi7s (ch. vii. 32, 45, xii. 10). Luke consequently (Acts iv. 6)
expressly calls Annas i apxiiptis, and in his Gospel (iii. 2), as well as in the Acts,
always places him before Caiaphas. This usage of the third evangelist sweeps the
foundation from under the confident assertion of Hengstenberg (I.e. p. 165), that
we must undoubtedly think of Caiaphas as the person referred to,

9 0 THE PASSION HISTORY.
been a subject of consideration. The resolution which was
adopted is unquestionably to be traced back to the influence of
Annas, whom age, reputation, and experience placed at the head
of the priestly class. The judgment expressed by Caiaphas, to
which reference is made in ver. 14, was probably " not of him
self " in an additional sense to that in which the evangelist so
described it in an eariier passage; the words "not of himself"
(comp. John xviii. 34) are appropriate, inasmuch as the opinion
to which Caiaphas gave expression also embodied the views of
his father-in-law. If some kind of preliminary process was
necessary in order to pave the way for the final disposal of the
case by the assembled Sanhedrim, the only person fitted and
called to conduct this process was Annas (this and nothing more
is implied in the intimation, " for he was father-in-law to
Caiaphas," John xviii. 13); and, in point of fact, such a pre
liminary process was necessary. The different character of the
trial before Annas, as compared with the later one, appears at
once on its being examined. But the opinion that it was " a
result of mere curiosity," as if the high priest resembled a Herod,
does not rightly apprehend its distinctive peculiarity, nor yet is
it correctly described by the statement that its object was " to
procure material for our Lord's impeachment before the supreme
tribunal." By means of a comparison with John vii. 50 sqq.
we succeed in arriving at a more satisfactory view of the matter.
There Nicodemus asks them the damaging question : " Doth our
law judge any man before it hear him, and know what he doeth ? "
The proceeding before the Sanhedrim was, from the very begin
ning, nothing else than a ""judging." That which Annas does,
on the other hand, corresponds exactly to that which was de
siderated by the "-secret -disciple." By his agency is accom
plished that which must take place before judgment is passed.
Undoubtedly the questions asked by the high priest were
mere concessions to the forms of law. As to the doctrine and
the followers of Jesus, the hierarchs were already perfectly
well informed. The Pharisees and Sadducees entered the field
of controversy in opposition to the doctrines promulgated by
our Lord, and they had dealings with His disciples also on
many occasions. The fact that His doctrine was beginning to
work as a leaven in the minds of the people, and that the
crowd of His adherents was increasing, even in Judea, to a

THE TRIAL OF JESUS. 97
threatening extent, was the acknowledged reason for their
interfering with Him (John xii. 19). But in the very circum
stance that Annas asks Him questions merely for the sake of
appearances, without having any true and honest reason for
doing so, — asking only for the sake of asking, — in this consisted
the insincerity which our Lord reproves in His answer, " Why
askest thou Me ? " The " why " is emphatic.1 " Why dost thou
ask Me as to facts which are notorious and well known ? Hast
thou any reason for so doing ? Canst thou be in earnest ? Thy
question is a mere pretence." But the falsity of the enemies of
Jesus becomes much more conspicuous on the occasion of the
trial before Caiaphas. It brings to light that connection between
falsehood and murderous thoughts, between the " liar " and the
" murderer," which has its origin in Satan (John viii. 44). It
is the obvious intention of Matthew's narrative to draw the atten
tion of his readers to this (ch. xxvi 59). They " sought false
witness against Jesus to put Him to death." This was the
result which was to be accomplished at all hazards. The means
were sought. The remark of Euthymius touches the very root of
the matter : &>? pkv skbivok eSotcei, fiaprvpiav, w? Se rfj dXrjOeia,
ifrevSoptaprvplav. It was not testimony which they sought, but
false testimony, for nothing else would have served their purpose.
Consequently Mark speaks of a bearing of false witness, even where
a truth underlay the thing stated (Mark xiv. 5 7) ; and he was
entitled to do so, both in relation to those who instituted the
search, and to those who were found willing, or who were possibly
bribed to testify, and who therefore were " false witnesses " in the
sense of Ps. xxxv. 11. The members of the Sanhedrim vie with
each other in their eagerness to procure such witnesses (" all the
Council sought," Matt, xxvi 59), and they assemble a great
number of them (many, Mark xiv. 56). Our Lord is surrounded
by " bloody and deceitful men." But He is silent, and maintains
His silence unbroken (see Mark's striking way of emphasizing
this circumstance : " But He held His peace, and answered
nothing," ch. xiv. 61), however much the judge urged Him to
1 The word ri in the Gospel of John is used for the most part to introduce a ques
tion of a very grave character addressed to the conscience, — a question which insists
on being considered and disposed of. Comp. ch. vii. 19 : "Why (ri) go ye about
to kill Me ? " What is your real motive — not your pretended one ? what is the
essential ground of your determination to do so ? Similarly ch. xviii. 23, etc.
G

98 THE PASSION HISTORY.
break it. He keeps silence, not in a spirit of " lofty self-con
sciousness," but because the circumstances of the case, to wit, the
discrepancies between the testimonies which were adduced, con
stituted His proper defence. Even in the case of the later testi
monies, which corresponded best with the wishes of the accusers
(" neither so did their witness agree," Mark xiv. 59), the pre
requisites to a sentence of condemnation required by the law were
not supplied. He keeps silence, and that, no doubt, partly with the
view of bringing out in an additional respect the corrupt character
of the tribunal before which He was placed, so that it might be
reproved by the light. But the narrative reveals the malice and
falsity, not only of the persons who were the principal actors in
connection with the trial, but also of those who co-operated to
increase the sufferings of Jesus during its progress. This holds,
in the first place, of those who maltreated the person of the
Accused. The servant of Annas was not simply obeying the
impulses of a rude and cruel nature in his treatment of the
defenceless Prisoner ; nor were the members of the Sanhedrim,
who heaped insult upon Him when He was condemned to death,
influenced merely by a bitterness originating in fanaticism. The
former acted in a spirit of sycophantic eye-service as evidently
as the latter hypocritically pretended to an indignation which
they did not feel. Annas was unable to meet the convincing
reply of our Lord. The slave takes upon himself the shattered
cause of his perplexed master, calculating that such a service
will not remain unacknowledged and unrewarded. " Why smitest.
thou Me ? " What is thy motive for an act for which the circum
stances themselves afford no warrant ? And the priests, accom
panying the utterance of the sentence of condemnation, " He is
guilty of death," with an outburst of indignant and excited
feeling, follow in the steps of him who stood at their head and
gave them the example. Caiaphas made as if he were deeply
surprised, even shocked, at the unexampled claim which he
heard, and yet it was well known to him. His own question
implied that our Lord made such a claim. In the feeling which
he assumes, for the sake of appearances, certain of his associates
profess to share. They exhibit the signs of an emotion which
they did not in reahty feel, and which they succeeded in exciting
in themselves only by their own deed of violence. The circum
stance that, our Lord withholds, in relation to them, that manifes-

THE TRIAL OF JESUS. 99
tation of the meekness of His character which shone forth so
conspicuously in the words He addressed to the servant of Annas,
is explained by the prophecy which " went before." It was left to the
mockers to make that application of it which Bengel has pointed
out : " olim videbitis, quis quern verberaveritis." Had Christ
Himself spoken in the line of this application, a threat would
have proceeded from His lips ; but, " suffering, He threatened
not," says the apostle of Him (1 Pet. ii. 23), and, as we believe,
with special allusion to this particular occurrence.
As to Peter, finally, the soul of this disciple was undoubtedly
a stranger to the falsity and insincerity of the enemies of Jesus.
But he shared their sin, inasmuch as lying was found in his
mouth also. In describing the sin of Peter, the Scripture invari
ably uses the expression dpveTaOai, or drrapvelcrdai,. In that
sense in which the expression is employed in other passages, the
apostle does not appear to have been guilty of denying His Lord.
The "denying " which is spoken of in 2 Tim. ii. 12, 1 John ii.
22, presupposes a shipwreck of faith; but as Peter stood beside
the fire of coals, he was very far from casting out of his heart the
confession which he had once made in the presence of Christ !
To such a residt his act could have led him ; it contained the
germ and involved the possibility of apostasy : but " I have
prayed for thee that thy faith fail not " (Luke xxii. 32). Even
the case contemplated by our Lord's statement in Matt. x. 33 :
" Whosoever shall deny Me before men," when regarded strictly,
was not quite exemplified by the sin of Peter. What he was
guilty of was simply a lie, but a lie streaked with the lurid light
of apostasy, partly on account of its being confirmed by oath, and
partly because of the subject with which it was concerned. The
contrast between the protestation: "I know not the man," and
the earlier utterance : " Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living
God," is one to which interpreters have justly drawn attention.
But this lie is described as a denial of Jesus, for this reason, that
by means of it the disciple was in a certain sense made a parti
cipator in the guilt of those to whom he himself testified at a
subsequent time : " Ye denied (r\pvr)o-acrQe) the Holy One and the
Just" (Acts iii. 14).
The Sanhedrim did not attain its purpose in the manner
contemplated by its cunning scheme. The attempt to bring Jesus
in guilty and to pronounce a sentence of condemnation upon

l-"00 THE PASSION HISTORY.
Him in the name -of the law, -on the ground of testimony borne
against Him, failed. And it was bound to fail. This was
ordained from. above; God did not permit lying and malice to
bear away the ^victory.: ".for it is written, He taketh tlie wise in
their own craftiness " (1 Cor. iii. 19). And with the view of
providing scope for this action on .the 'part of His Father, Jesus
persists in His silence, notwithstanding'the earnestness with which
the high priest endeavoured to induee Him to open His lips.
But the attempt was destined to break down, that it might become
clear that the -claim which Jesus preferred was the solitary ground
of His condemnation, — the builders rejected the' corner-stone, the
husbandmen cast the heir out of the vineyard. Undoubtedly the
tribunal submitted to the necessity, of admitting this as their true
motive with extreme reluctance. Even before Pilate the. accusers
hold it in reserve as long as possible. Matthew, in making the
high priest .ask his solemn question -at -Jesus, immediately after
the failure of the attempt .to -obtain concurrent testimony against
Him, is influenced probably by the wish to bring into immediate
juxtaposition the pretext and the. actual truth (" the truth of God
hath more abounded through their lie ") ; but Luke gives us the
more exact view of .tlie historical order*of events. According to the
narrative of the third evangelist, the question as to the Messiah-
ship of Jesus was put, in the first instance, only in =a general
sense ("if thou art the Christ"). .Our Lord declined the discussion
ofthe question as useless, in the same way as He had done before,
according to John x. 25; but He gave them clearly to understand
in what sense He claimed -for Himself the Messianic dignity (vlls
rov Qeov, Bengel: colligebant ex praedieato,W. 69). And then
only does Caiaphas utter the solemn and comprehensive formula
of adjuration : et -crv &1 6 Jipta-rbi 6 Ails rov Qeov. The out
spoken reply of the accused (Paul calls it a " good confession ")
places the high priest in circumstances todeclare further testimony
unnecessary. But the question was, whether a sentence of con
demnation could be grounded upon it. The Sanhedrim, as a matter
of fact, maintained the affirmative : " they all condemned Him to
be guilty of death," Mark xiv. 64. Thus far, therefore, their plan
had succeeded, and in this manner it was to succeed, " according
tp the counsel and foreknowledge of God ; " from the hands of
God, therefore, Jesus received the suffering involved in His con
demnation. We have already stated that we refer the passage

THE TRIAL OF JESUS. 101
in 1st Peter (ii. 23) to the circumstances of Christ's trial. The
" reviling " which was heaped upon Him consisted in this, that
His " good confession " was characterized as blasphemy (Matt.
xxv. 65), and Jesus refrained from "reviling again," to the extent
of not even replying to His calumniators with such words as He
used in John viii. 55, that He should be a liar Hke unto them,
if He were to refrain from bearing testimony unto Himself. But
as for the words, " committed Himself to Him that judgeth
righteously," they are to be understood, not according to the
analogy of Bom. xii. 19, bnt only of a humbling of Himself
under the hand of God, from whom He accepted what He here
endures.1 When we say, then, that the sentence of condemnation
which was passed upon our Lord eame from God, we do not mean
that it came from Him merely in the sense already pointed out
at an earlier stage. Undoubtedly we adhere to the view then
stated, that a sentence passed by this tribunal cannot possibly
be regarded as the result of mere human arbitrariness. The
Sanhedrim was still invested with a divine authority : " The
scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat" (Matt. xxii. 2) ; and
causes like the present belonged properly to- those which that
body was empowered to deeide. We have referred, it is true, to the
corruptness which characterized the whole- proceedings ; however,
no one can say that they were informal or tumultuary. The
members of the judicial body were all assembled together (Mark's
carefulness to emphasize this fact is to be noted : " all the chief
priests and the- elders and the scribes," ch. xiv. 53), and what
ever else the law prescribed was duly observed. Accordingly, the
high priests, in the presence of Pilate, lay stress on the fact that
their sentence was passed' in- accordance with the law, and
pronounced in the name of God*. However, we do not fall back
exclusively on this somewhat external aspect of the matter, but
will be at pains to look into it more narrowly. That the
associates of the Sanhedrim (individuals like Joseph of Arimathea
and Nicodemus excepted) were filled with a profound hatred of
Jesus — so much is evident. Whether this hatred proceeded from
envy, as Pilate thought (Mark xv. 10), or from some deeper root,
""¦The very remarkable translation of the Vulgate: " tradebat autem judicanti
se injuste," which is also found in Cyprian, can scarcely rest upon a. different
reading, but must have originated in the wish to give a more satisfactory inter
pretation.

102 THE PASSION HISTORY.
it is enough that it undoubtedly existed. But for all that, the
question still remains an open one, whether or not those who
were assembled, or even the majority of them, pronounced the
sentence : " He is guilty of death," in perfect calmness of mind
and under the influence of complete conviction. Caiaphas, Annas,
and other Sadducean members of the Supreme Council seem to
have entirely abandoned the Messianic expectations of Israel, in
so far as these expectations rested on the promise of God and
were animated by a religious spirit. At all events, their concep
tions of the Messiah were of such a character, that the claim
which Jesus put forth, altogether apart from the fact of its
proceeding from His hated lips, seemed even in itself to be
blasphemous. Undoubtedly this was the state of mind of many
Pharisees as well. At least the incidents which are narrated in
the fifth, and especially in the tenth chapter of the fourth Gospel,
can be understood only on this assumption. There the Jews
crowd upon our Lord, with the urgent request that He would put
an end to their painful uncertainties by making an unambiguous
declaration regarding Himself. A simple affirmative answer to
their question (" if thou be the Christ, tell us plainly," John x.
24) could not possibly have occasioned the violent outburst of
wrath which brought them to the point of stoning Him. But
the words which embodied the self-testimony of the omnipotent
Son of God, " I and the Father are one," well account for the
intense degree of their exasperation ; and that which they regard
as a blasphemous assumption is to them sufficient evidence that
Jesus is not the promised Messiah. To others, again, the fact of
His coming from Galilee, and not from Bethlehem, may have
occasioned strong and sincere doubts of His Messiahship (John vii.
41, 52). But still the number of those who were more or less
firmly persuaded that He was the expected Messiah, was always
considerable. Comp. John xii. 42 : " Nevertheless among the
chief rulers also many believed on Him." This conviction was
forced on them by His miracles.1 The remark added by the
1 This explains why the Sanhedrim omitted to adduce at the trial of Jesus a
charge which was immediately available, and which appeared to promise certain
success. It was notorious that our Lord had transgressed the Sabbath law, accord
ing to Jewish conceptions of it. This was the first substantial ground of the
hostility of the Pharisees to Him (John v. 16), and it was believed that it might
be certainly inferred therefrom that He was not sent from God ("This man is
not of God, because he keepeth not the Sabbath day," John ix. 16), and it

THE TRIAL OF JESUS. 103
evangelist sufficiently explains, indeed, why they did not openly
acknowledge then- views ; but neither this nor any other psycho
logical mode of explanation is adequate to resolve the difficulty,
that, nevertheless, they too voted Him " worthy of death." The
fear of man is undoubtedly an important factor, yet by itself it
does not make any one an "unjust judge." The majority, under
the leadership of an Annas and a Caiaphas, may have concussed
and intimidated the minority, or may have influenced them to
abandon their opposition, but they did not compel them to pass
a unanimous sentence of condemnation. When such a sentence
proceeds, nevertheless, out of the mouth even of those who
were believers, in a more or less decided sense, we feel it all the
stranger since the bearing of Jesus in this hour was far more
fitted to fan a glimmering faith into a flame, than to extinguish
its feeble sparks. It is not necessary, nor is there any occasion
to magnify the answer of Jesus to the question of the high
priest, so as to give it the character of a modified oath. By
doing so we lose in substance what we gain in appearance. " Thou
hast said," so Matthew reports His statement ; and thus we
believe He answered in reahty, precisely as He had done to
Judas Iscariot (ch. xxvi. 25). But Mark indicates to us the
sense in which the answer was made, when he translates it into
the simple affirmation, " I am " (xiv. 6 2). The assumption of an
oath is not justified by the circumstances of the case. One may
assert by oath what one has done or suffered, but it is impossible
to affirm by oath what one is. But Caiaphas put the question in
this form : " Tell us whether thou be the Christ ? " (and He was
compelled to put it thus), not in the form, " whether thou hast
made or constituted thyself the Christ ? " Just as a believer
can merely confess that He is a Christian, but cannot swear it,
so also the " good confession " of Jesus Christ excludes the idea
of an oath. But this very testimony, borne by Jesus to Himself
at a decisive moment, plain and simple as it was, contained a
would have been easy to procure harmonious testimonies to support this charge.
Sentence of death might then have been passed, on the ground of it, in accord
ance with Ex. xxxi. 14. However, the Sanhedrim was scrupulously silent as to
this matter. Had the opposite course been pursued, it would have come out
inevitably that our Lord never broke in on the Sabbath stillness, except to work
beneficial miracles. But it was indispensable to avoid all reference to the signs
which He wrought, out of regard to those members of the Council who had been
influenced by them to believe in Him.

104 THE PASSION HISTORY.
force of truth 1 which was capable of banishing even firmly-rooted
doubts, and which must have tended, if we may judge by universal
experience, to advance faith where it existed to a higher stage of
development. How happened it, then, that those in whom the
words of Jesus had fulfilled their mission coincided, on the ground
of these His words, in the sentence, " He is guilty of death " ?
The apostles abandon from the outset all attempts to give a
psychological explanation of the condemnation of Jesus. Paul
has nothing else to say except that the Jewish rulers did not
know the hidden wisdom of God (1 Cor. ii. 8) ; he speaks of their
being blinded, and of their being hardened. Those who here sit in
judgment upon Christ, are themselves the subjects of a divine
judgment; those who see are made blind, and they act under the
influence of their blindness. This is the only key to unfold the
mystery ofthe unanimity of the sentence passed by the Sanhedrim,
on which account we are not only entitled, but even necessitated to
cometothe conclusion that its sentence proceeded from God Himself.
If, then, a higher will was thus accomplished, what end had
God in view in thus determining in His eternal counsel *? In
regard to this point, the least satisfactory of all expedients is the
ordinary one, that a formal condemnation was the indispensable
preliminary to the further procedure before Pilate. It was in
itself quite imaginable that Jesus should be cast out of the city
and put to death by stoning, as was afterwards done to Stephen,
in defiance of the forms of law. True, indeed, this might not
be, nor was it fitting that it should be ; but what special definite
end was served by this arrangement of the Divine Providence ?
The explanation appears to be given by the words spoken by
Jesus immediately before His condemnation. He does not rest
content with answering the question of the high priest, but He
appends to it a prediction (Matt. xxvi. 64). The transition
particle irXrjv (Matt. xxvi. 64) prevents us regarding the pro
phetic announcement simply as the necessary consequence of the
foregoing self-testimony, or even only as its development ; it
introduces a new feature. Our Lord points to the judicial
authority with which the Father was on the point of investing
Him, and which was thenceforth to be recognisable by every one.
1 Even Strauss has not been quite able to deny its force. Donier has therefore
been able to carry out a successful criticism in opposition to Strauss, from the
point of view of this passage. See his Gesch. der prot. Theol. p. 839.

THE TRIAL OF JESUS. 105
The relation between the "sitting" and the "coming"' is as
follows. The former denotes the possession of the authority
received (the " authority to execute judgment," John v. 27), the
latter its manifestation before the eyes of men, which was to
begin from that hour (dirdpri ; dirb rov vvv ; Luke, and precisely
and definitely in John viii. 28 : " when ye have lifted up the
Son of man "). The expression dirdpri Syjreaffe (comp. John i. 5 1),
as well as the position given to the principal ideas, decidedly
excludes the idea of a reference to the second coming of Christ
to judgment, or to those incidents which may be regarded as
types of it.1 The prediction refers entirely to the succeeding
intermediate period, when the Father so- manifestly exalts His
Son to the position of Lord and Christ (icvpiov Kal Xptcrrbv
eiroiTjaev, Acts ii. 36) that every tongue must confess Him, and
every knee bow before Him, — " then shall ye know that I am He,"
John viii. 28. But the words being thus clear in themselves,
we ask what was our Lord's purpose in making the announce
ment, which He introduced by irXr]v ? The contrast between
Him who was here judged and condemned and Him who was
thenceforth to bear the sceptre of dominion in His judging hand,
as the " Lord God Almighty," occurs undoubtedly to the mind of
every observer. Yet the mere establishing of this contrast does
not answer the question which has been raised.2 The conjecture,
on the other hand, that Christ may have uttered the prediction
in the tone of a threat, is entirely inconsistent with the express
declaration of the apostle : " when He suffered, He threatened
not." But the words themselves also, notwithstanding the persons
before whom they were spoken, do not at all produce on our
minds the impression of a threat, when we consider the nature of
the governmental position which our Lord says He is to assume
from that time onwards. Just as the fourth evangelist is not
contemplating a retributive visitation when he quotes the words
of the prophet : " they shall look on Him whom they have
pierced," but is pointing to the fountain opened for sin and un-
1 In such cases 'ipxtrlai stands first and xalwlm follows. Comp. Matt. xxv. 31 :
' ' When the Son of man shall come . . . then He shall sit upon the throne of His glory. "
2 This is the view taken by Baumgarten in his thoughtful investigation of the
trial of Jesus (comp. Gesch. Jesu, p. 372) : " Jesus Himself is oppressed by this con
trast, and He Himself requires to be sustained by glancing into the future which is
worthy of His character and nature. Those who were present also — His judges ---He
wishes to life up to a view of the same contrast."

106 THE PASSION HISTORY.
cleanness, so a like application is to be made of the prediction of a
kingdom whose Buler is at the same time a high priest after the
order of Melchisedec. For the true and proper object of His
rule is not the vanquishing of enemies, but the rescue and salva
tion of the world. Amid all the severity of judgment against sin,
access to the throne of grace is open for sinners. The weight of
the prophecy of Jesus, therefore, rests not on the contrast between
the condemned One and the future Judge, but upon the connec
tion between the condemnation and the sovereignty which was
about to be inaugurated. The death which followed as the
result of Christ's utterance was designed by God to be au atoning
death, and the sentence which preceded it was also intended by
God in a corresponding sense. It became Him, writes the apostle,
who brings many sons to glory, to make the Captain of their
salvation perfect through sufferings, and to crown Him with
glory and honour by the suffering of death. According to the
principle here laid down, we may venture to say that it behoved
Him whose will it was to justify many children, to elevate
the Mediator of their righteousness to judicial dignity through the
indignity of condemnation. The question was to be asked from
the cross, Who shall accuse ? who shall condemn ? Therefore it
was fitting that He who forbids all accusation and condemnation,
as He sits on the right hand of power, should first have been
Himself accused by the lips of sinners and condemned. But if
that which our Lord suffered before the tribunal of Israel was
arranged by God with this view, then the proposition is true,
that by virtue of His trial and condemnation Jesus bore the sin
of the world, — that He carried it to the cross, on which He was
called to atone for it by His death.

3. THE SURRENDER OF JESUS TO THE GENTILES.
The Sanhedrim did not at once proceed to the praetorium of
Pilate after pronouncing Jesus "guilty of death." The assumption
of certain expositors, that in the early morning Jesus was subjected
to a second trial before Caiaphas, is, however, entirely erroneous.
This has been assumed because the unquestionable identity of the
two passages, Luke xxii. 66-71 and Matt. xxvi. 62— 6 5, has been
overlooked, and because the indefinite notification of time given
by the third evangelist : " as soon as it was day " (Luke xxii. 66),

THE SURRENDER OF JESUS. 107
has been taken in too rigid a sense. At the same time, some
kind of further negotiation was necessary on the part of the
Supreme Council even after sentence of death had been pro
nounced. They required to come to an understanding as to the
manner in which they might induce the governor to carry out
their decision. Owing to the strained character of their relations
to him, they were unable to calculate on his willingness to do so.
They knew full well that he was not the man to aid them in
carrying out their resolutions by freely placing the executive arm
at tlieir disposal, and that they could only hope to gain his
consent as the result of a conflict. It was necessary, therefore,
to devise a likely plan for the accomplishment of this result.
Towards daybreak (irpatas yevop.evrj'i, eirl rb irpcot) they
engage in deliberations on the subject. This was the " taking
counsel," the " consultation " alluded to in Matt, xxvii. 1 and
Mark xv. 1. They arrive at a unanimous (iravre?) finding
as to the manner in which the execution of their sentence of
condemnation is to be urged, and they expect to gain by means
of it the wished-for result (ware Savar&aai airov). Now, there
fore, they hesitate no longer; "straightway" (Mark xv. 1) the
whole Council proceeds to the residence of the governor, and
Jesus, who had been placed under guard meanwhile in the court
of the high priest's palace, is led with them in bonds. Strauss
attributes historical probability to the narrative of the proceedings
before Pilate only in its most general features. The attitude
taken up by Pilate, according to the evangelical accounts, he
regards as unhistorical, and he believes that the origin of these
representations may be discovered in the circumstance that Chris
tianity was turning away from Judaism more and more, and
turning towards heathendom with hopa In the state of feeling
which obtained in regard to this question at the time when the
individual Gospels were written in those quarters where they
originated, he seeks for the genesis of the different narratives of
this phase of the Passion history of Jesus. True, indeed, there
are no discrepancies, properly so called, in the four narratives ;
they are mutually complementary, and the various features fit
into each other in such a way that they remove apparent
difficulties instead of creating difficulties which are real. Nothing
remains which can be felt in the slightest degree disturbing by
the reader, or which he could wish removed. But undoubtedly

108 THE PASSION HISTORY.
we do find here and there statements of a peculiar character, and
these have supplied criticism with a pretext for assuming that
the authors were influenced by " tendencies " which coloured
their narratives. Here the author of the fourth Gospel is an
object of peculiar disfavour. In- his time, it is said, the Greek-
Boman world was the appropriate field for the diffusion of Chris
tianity ; consequently the process conducted before the heathen
tribunal was depicted in a manner which harmonized with the
feelings of the Christendom of the period, but scarcely so as to
harmonize with the actual facts of the case. I* is at once apparent
how little this assumption accords with the views of the Apocalypse,
and particularly how far it is from according with the fact that
the Christians were visited with bloody persecutions in the first
and second centuries by the heathen powers.. On the other hand,
the principal objection raised by Strauss against the historical
credibility of the transactions said to have taken place before
Pilate is certainly worth}7 of consideration. He makes the remark
that Pilate could only have acted as he is represented to have
done in the Gospel Harratives, and particularly in that of John,
from motives of profound sympathy with Jesus ; and that while
it is not easy to see how this sympathy should have arisen in the
Eoman, it is easy to understand how- the evangelist might have
been induced to> attribute it to> him out of his- own Christian
consciousness; We hope to be- able to set aside this objection,
while, keeping in view the task which we have undertaken, we
endeavour to solve the- problem in how far our Lord, when
suffering before Pilate, bore the sin of the world.
When we deal with the question of the suffering of Jesus
Christ before Pontius Pilate, we confine our. attention to that
which our Lord endured in connection with His appearance before
Pilate alone, and leave out of account all the manifestations of
enmity with which the Jews still continued to pursue Him.
Unquestionably it occasioned Him the acutest pain that His own
nation had delivered Him up to the Eoman governor. Through
this act Israel became a Judas Iscariot on a large scale — a
betrayer of its Messiah. " Whom ye delivered up " (irapeSmKare),
says Peter, when he preached repentance to the Jews in Solomon's
porch, Acts iii. 13; "of whom ye have been the betrayers ''
(irpoSorai), says Stephen to the exasperation of the zealots, Acts
vii. 52 ; and it is probably not an accidental coincidence that

THE SURRENDER OF JESUS. 109
Matthew, who begins by saying (ch. xxvii. 2), " they delivered
(irapeSa)KQ,v) Him to I'ontius Pilate the governor," immediately
adds (ver. 3), " Then Judas, which betrayed (irapa&iSov?) Him,
when he saw,'' etc. (The expressions in Matt. xx. 18, 19 are
also to be compared : /7FapaSo0i,<rerai . . ..Kal irapaSojcrovcriv.) In
announcing His Passion beforehand, our Lord said, not without
perceptible emphasis.: " The Son of man shall be delivered
(irapaSodrja-erai) into the hands of the Gentiles" (Luke xviii. 32) ;
and if we consider that the Jews had as little hesitation in pro
ceeding to the praetorium as in making the serious admission,
when they were in Pilate's presence, " we have no king but
Caesar," we feel that their conduct in casting .away so con
temptuously the hopes cherished by their fathers, ,and trampling
under foot pearls so precious, could not but cause the Messiah
the profoundest suffering. He characterized the act of Israel in
express terms as the baser act of the two when .compared with
that of Pilate, " He that dehvered (irapaSiSovs) 1 Me unto thee
hath the greater sin," John xix. 11, and consequently it would
occasion Him the greater jain. However, the action which the
high priests took before the procurator was only the continuation
or the consequence -of that which had already been done by them
in their own council chamber. By virtue of thek sentence of
condemnation they had already cast the heir -out of the vineyard,
and Jesus had already borne that which He had been appointed
to endure at their hands. The Jews are instrumental in intro
ducing a new element of suffering into our Lord's experience in
the present phase of His Passion, only by means of the resolution
which the people (oj(\o<;, Xoo?, Mark xv. 8 ; Matt, xxvii. 25)
formed in regard to soliciting the release of Barabbas. It cannot
be doubted that Jesus felt this ingratitude on the part of those
who had always hitherto recognised His beneficent acts, and on
account of them had really adhered to Him, as a peculiarly bitter
drop in His cup. May not this choice have been the reason
why the people smote upon their breast with feelings of bitter
repentance when they were returning from the cross, just as the
1 The singular S -rapdhHois undoubtedly requires us to think of Caiaphas. How
ever, Jesus could scarcely have had in His mind the person and guilt of the high
priest alone. It is to the Jews essentially that reference is made. The previous
words, ch. xviii. 36 : "that I should not be delivered to the Jeios," place this beyond
doubt.

110 THE PASSION HISTORY.
apostle subsequently applies it in his preaching to the people as
a principal reason for repentance, Acts iii. 14: "Ye desired a
murderer to be granted unto you." A very clear light is shed
upon the matter if a conjecture may be made use of which we
here venture to submit, because we are persuaded of its accuracy.
It was a custom among the Jews to postpone the execution of
prominent criminals until the time of one of the feasts (the
Eabbins refer to the passage in Deuteronomy (xvii. 13) for an
explanation of this usage : " and all the people shall hear and
fear, and do no more presumptuously "). It was probable, then
(we believe that this may be inferred also from Matt, xxvii. 16 :
" and they had then a notable prisoner called Barabbas "), that it
was intended that Barabbas should be executed at the time of the
approaching Passover. But it was also a custom that the people
might ask the pardon of a condemned criminal at the Passover
time. Not that the Eomans had introduced this usage, which
had an evident reference to the significance of the paschal feast,
but it was a Jewish custom, — "ye have a custom," John xviii. 39 ;
it was a privilege belonging to the people which the procurator
was bound to respect, — " for of necessity he must release one
unto them at the feast," Luke xxiii. 17. The people accordingly
proceed to exercise their right, by making choice between two
on whom sentence of death has been passed. And they decide
in favour of the man on whom was the mark of Cain, " who for
sedition and murder was cast into prison " (Luke xxiii. 1 9 ;
" now Barabbas was a robber," John xviii. 40), and give up their
King to be crucified in his place ; nay more, they accept without
hesitation the responsibility of this choice. However, the evan
gelists have taken care that the people should be placed somewhat
in the background even in regard to this incident, and that the
preponderating burden should rest on the shoulders of those who,
influenced the easily moved crowd towards the choice which
they made : " the chief priests and elders persuaded the multi
tude," Matt, xxvii. 20;" the chief priests moved the people,"
Mark xv. 11. These chief priests and elders here exhibit them
selves in a character entirely consonant to that which they had
already shown clearly enough in their council chamber. Con
sequently we have henceforth to examine not the circumstance
that they betrayed the Lord, but the question into whose hands
did they surrender Him whom they betrayed. If we were to

THE SURRENDER OF JESUS. 1 1 1
judge by appearances, the actual impression we should receive
would be that our Lord was withdrawn from the fanaticism of
His persecutors, and placed under a juster and more humane
igovcTia, and that the terms in which the apostle afterwards
acknowledged the goodness of God were applicable to His circum
stances also : " I was dehvered out of the mouth of the lion." l
But the question is, how must we describe the situation in which
we see Jesus when He appears before the tribunal of the
governor ? The answer usually given, that He was delivered over
to the Gentiles, is justified generally, no doubt, by the expression
irapaSoOrja-erai -rot? edveaiv, but iu any case it requires to be
stated in a more detailed and definite form. It is not appropriate,
if taken in the sense in which the Apostle Paul contrasts Judaism
and heathenism (1 Cor. i. 22, 23). Our Lord was not handed
over by those who demanded a sign to one who was a seeker
after wisdom, but those who pass sentence of death upon Him in
the bitterness of their hatred apply to him with whom it rested
to execute, or to refuse to execute, their sentence. Jesus stands,
therefore, before the possessor of earthly authority, before the
tribunal of the civil power. The idea of the " Gentiles " in the
prophecies of the Passion is not to be understood from the
religious side, but in the sense of the expression, " the princes
of the Gentiles," Matt. xx. 25. Jesus Himself experiences here,
in the first place, that which He told His disciples to anticipate :
" Ye shall be brought before rulers and kings." Pilate, as we
know, sent Him to King Herod. But the scene before the latter
and the procedure before the former not only belong historically
to the same phase of the Passion of Jesus, but in both cases our
Lord finds Himself in a similar situation, and subjected to the
same kind of suffering. For it was not to the Jewish king, but
to the tetrarch of Galilee, that Pilate sent the accused. That
Herod was a Jew only " outwardly, in the flesh," but in no sense
" inwardly," and that it could not be said to him, as Paul after
wards said to Agrippa, " Believest thou the prophets ? I know
that thou believest," — this is a matter foreign to the subject
' That the expression o-ropta xiovroc (2 Tim. iv. 17) can be understood only of
Jewish fanaticism, has been convincingly shown by Otto in an admirable treatise,
which has not received the attention which it deserves, Die geschichtlichen Verhalt-
nisse der Pastoralbriefe, p. 244 sqq. The different view, recommended by Hofmann
(Ausleg. der Hirtenbr. Pauli, p. 302), we regard as erroneous.

112 THE PASSION HISTORY.
before us. Here the idea of the Jew in the case of Herod, as of
the Gentile in Pilate's case, is subordinate to that of the earthly
Buler. The first congregation of believers at Jerusalem regarded
this portion of the Passion history of Jesus from this point of
view, as is evidenced by the prayer which they offered up, Acts
iv. 24 sqq. They recall the words of the Psalm, " The kings of
the earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together against
the Lord," and recognise their fulfilment in the circumstance that
" Herod and Pontius Pilate were gathered together against Jesus."
The Lord, then, is given up to the custody of earthly authority,
that it may proceed against Him. It is the first time that He
has come in contact with the possessors of worldly power. He
had heard of Pilate. He was informed of a cruel and barbarous
act which he had done (Luke xiii. 1), and He had also made a
statement regarding it. But He spoke of the act exclusively
from a religious point of view, and scrupulously refrained from
passing any judgment upon the actor ; with the procurator He
had no concern whatever. Pilate himself, on the other hand,
could scarcely have known of Jesus up to this time. There is
no evidence whatever that he possessed any such knowledge.
Eeference is made, it is true, to the anxious dream of Pilate's
wife during her morning sleep, and it is thought that it justifies
one in inferring the knowledge which is in question. But the
representation of the evangelist (Matt, xxvii. 19) appears rather
to exclude than to support the opinion that the dream was the
result of an already existing interest in the accused ; at least we
dare not confidently assume the contrary on grounds so pre
carious. It is true that Herod was in a different category. Our
Lord repeatedly spoke of the persecutor of John the Baptist. He
bids His disciples beware of the leaven of Herod (Mark viii. 15).
He calls him the destroyer of the vineyard. To the king, again,
Jesus was an object of interest (Luke ix. 7—9), and he had
expressed a wish to see Him (Luke xxiii. 8). But Jesus avoided
him, — not from fear, for He knew well that it was not from him,
but from a totally different quarter, that danger was to be
apprehended (Luke xiii. 31-34), — but He avoided him because
He had just as little to do with the tetrarch of Galilee as with
the Eoman procurator. It was meet that the King of the
heavenly kingdom should shun contact with the possessors of
earthly power. But now He is brought into this contact perforce,

THE SURRENDER OF JESUS. 113
and it occasions Him deep suffering. Is the ordinance of the
State, then, and the authority at its head, to be regarded as
impure, so that the very circumstance of being brought into any
kind of contact with it must necessarily have been felt as an
injury by Him who was pure ? One may appeal to the fact that
the directions given by the apostles to the members of the
Christian church to be subject to the tyrannical heathen autho
rities who were placed over them, and the confessions of the
later apologists, — of a Theophilus and a Justin, — that they
honoured the emperor, prayed for him, and paid tribute to him,
proceeded from the Spirit of Him who said : " Eender unto
Caesar the things which are Caesar's." If our Lord, then, it
may be argued, assumed the form of a servant, no special and
outstanding humiliation was implied in His appearing before
Pilate, at least it involved no new or deeper indignity than did
the fact of His appearing before the bar of a Caiaphas. And
yet it affects us in one way when we see Him who was born of
a woman and made under the law appearing before the guardians of
the law, and in quite another way when we see Him subjected to
the authority of an " ordinance of man " which was different from
the ordinance of God ; it even shocks us to see this " ordinance,"
whose territory was bounded, from the nature of the case, by definite
limits, performing in a region foreign to it an act of monstrous
usurpation. If there is exhibited anywhere in history the shameful
spectacle of the civil power acting the part of a judge in the
realm of the Spirit, it is exhibited here in the highest degree and
in the most offensive form, — here, where a " heathen man " and a
"publican," to speak in the sense of Matt, xviii. 17, v. 46, 47,
determines, as ultimate arbiter, the fate of the King of truth.
And all who have ever suffered by arbitrary sentences of this
kind have Jesus as their leader on this path of suffering.
All who took part in this scene, as was inevitable, were im
pelled to show in some way or other that they were conscious of
the sacrilegious character of the transaction. The high priests, of
course, felt themselves necessitated, on various grounds, to refrain
from communicating to the procurator the real origin of their
complaint against Jesus. But when they request him to regard
the Prisoner as a " malefactor " on their warrant, and to deliver
Him up to death without further investigation (John xviii.
30), their request was especially influenced by the feeling that
H

114 THE PASSION HISTORY.
this was a cause which did not fall under the cognizance of the
Eoman procurator. As to Pilate himself, his ambiguous question,
" What is truth ? " has been variously explained by interpreters.
If, however, it is connected with the previous question (John
xviii. 35) : " What hast thou done % " then it is, in the first place
and essentially, an acknowledgment on his part that such matters
did not belong to his tribunal, that it was his function to pass judg
ment only on a man's acts. And yet that which was unexampled
and incredible took place — he sat in judgment on the Christ, of
God ; so that we can speak, in the strictest sense, of Jesus suffer
ing under Pontius Pilate. The suffering endured by Jesus at the
hands of the civil power found outward expression in acts which
are sufficient to support our view of it. We refer to the scourging
which was commanded by the procurator, and the mocking to
which our Lord was subjected by Herod and his courtiers. The
former differed in its significance from the maltreatment which
Jesus endured in the hall of the Sanhedrim, just as the latter
differed essentially from the mockery of His prophetic office,
which He endured in the same place. The clause of the Passion
prophecy, " and shall deliver Him to the Gentiles to mock and to
scourge " (Matt. xx. 1 9), which evidently refers to the incidents
narrated here, entitles us and requires us to dwell on them. But
they must be rightly regarded. And it is to be noted, at the
outset, that the emphasis rests not on the pain and ignominy of
the scourging considered in itself, but on the circumstance that
it was inflicted by the civil power. The very reverse was the
case with the similar punishment inflicted upon Paul. He notes
that it was at the hands of the Jews that he had suffered this
punishment on five different occasions (2 Cor. xi. 24). In other
respects, however, the historical position of the scourging of Jesus
is a disputed point. Some regard it as an integral part of the
punishment by crucifixion, and infer from this, that when Pilate
ordered it, he must already have passed the sentence : " ibis ad
crucem," and have given his assent to the demand of the Jews.
Others, again, and among them Strauss, hold the view that this
act of severity is to be considered by itself, and that the pro
curator's design in it was of a directly opposite kind. The latter
opinion is the right one.1 The transactions which took place
1 The words of the Passion prophecy, "to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify,"
require us to separate the scourging very decidedly from the crucifying, and to

THE SURRENDER OF JESUS. 115
between the governor and Jesus on the one hand, and between
him and the high priests on the other, after the scourging, make
the assumption that a decision had already been arrived at which
was favourable to the views of the latter parties exceedingly
improbable, nay, they entirely exclude it. They do not produce
the impression that he was anxious to recall something which
he had already conceded, but rather that he was persisting
in a view which he had cherished and maintained up to that
regard the former as a distinct element of the Passion of Jesus.. The undeniable
Roman custom of scourging those who were condemned to die by crucifixion,
previous to the execution of the sentence, is, however, misunderstood when it is
assumed, as is done by Jerome, that it was based on a direct instruction of the
criminal code ("Sciendum est, Pilatum Romanis legibus ministrasse, quibus
sancitum erat, ut qui crucifigerentur, prius flagellis verberarentur, " Jerome). J.
Gerhard, in his Annotationes posthumae in Evangel. Matthaei, p. 1198, has rightly
protested against this misunderstanding. A careful comparison of the passages in
Christian and heathen authors which bear on the subject, gives a different result.
The scourging which preceded crucifixion was the aet ot an especial exasperation,
such as was felt by a master towards a wicked; disobedient, or rebellious slave (see
the passages in Livy, Lucian,, and Arnobius), or by a conqueror towards a stubborn
enemy, whom he had overcome only after a severe conflict, in which he had suffered
heavy losses. In such cases, death in itself, even though endured under the painful
form of crucifixion, did not seem to be an adequate punishment, and accordingly
the offender was doomed to suffer a double death (comp. Joseph, de bello Jud. v.
11. 1, ed. Bekker, VI. p. 54 : fj.aa-rLyovitt.ivot S« xa) W.po^affavtl^oftLiv'ti. rod Qavarov tratrav
alxiav, aviaraufovvro). But Pilate certainly did not act under the influence of any
such feelings of bitterness against our Lord ; and unless he had had some other
purpose in view in commanding Him to be scourged, undoubtedly he would have
issued no such command. The only persons who. were embittered against Jesus
were the Jews. Had they regarded the scourging of Jesus as a preliminary step to
His crucifixion, implying that it was a matter already decided upon, and which they
might proceed to carry out, they would have accepted it with much satisfaction.
But this was not the feeling which they evinced. On the contrary, scarcely have
they again come in sight of the governor and the Prisoner, when, unsatisfied, they
break out into tumultuous cries, demanding His death : " Crucify him ! crucify
him ! " This can be explained only on the assumption that it was the intention of
Pilate to make the scourging a substitute, for the crucifixion. It is exceedingly im
probable that the two thieves, who were -crucified along with Jesus, were previously
scourged. At all events, the narratives of Matthew and Mark in regard to this
matter, being obviously of a merely summary character, cannot be appealed to in
favour of the view which we are controverting.. Neither evangelist gives any proper
account of the scourging as John does, but they merely note that our Lord, as had
been predicted of Him, really endured this suffering' also. It is true that in Matt.
xxvii. 26, Mark xv. 15, the words "when he had scourged" stand immediately
before the statement " he delivered Him to be crucified ; " but no inferences can be
based on this circumstance which cannot be sustained by the representations of-
Luke and John. The allusion to the scourging is a mere retrospective notifica
tion of the fact, not implying any coincidence in point of time between it and the
crucifixion.

116 THE PASSION HISTORY.
time. The third Gospel throws on the matter the desired light.
Pilate had made to the Jews a proposal to subject their
Prisoner to the punishment of scourging (the word iraiSeveiv,
Luke xxiii. 16, cannot possibly be understood of anything else
than scourging). It is true that they rejected the proposal, but
Pilate repeated it, and in point of fact carried it out. He hoped
that the "envy "which he assumed them to feel (Mark xv. 10)
would be sufficiently satisfied when they saw Jesus subjected to
maltreatment, and that they would abstain from making any
further demands. Augustine : " Non persequendo flagellavit
Dominum Pilatus sed Judaeorum furori satisfacere volens, ut
sic mitescerent et desinerent velle occidere, cum flagellatum
viderent." We may regard it as exceedingly strange that the
procurator should have at all anticipated any such result. For
the experiences which he had gained in his previous intercourse
with the Jews by no means warranted him in cherishing any
expectations of the kind. However, the difficulty can be solved
more simply than by the assumption of Strauss, that the two
later evangelists invented this feature of the narrative with the
view of exhibiting, in a more ilurid light, the obstinacy of the
Jews. It is explained by means of the consideration that the
civil power was required to decide in a region which lay outside
its jurisdiction (comp. Acts xxv. 20:" and because I doubted of
such manner of questions"). The proceeding of Pilate is the
expedient of one who is in perplexity. The question to which
he subsequently gives utterance : " What shall I do then with
Jesus which is called Christ*: " (Matt. xvii. 22 ; it can obviously
be understood also as a meditation spoken aloud), supplies the
explanation of an act which was the result neither of unfeeling
severity nor yet of unskilful calculation. The same holds of the
choice between Jesus and Barabbas, which the governor submitted
to the people.1 He was too well aware of the influence which
1 In any case, we can speak of a proposal made by Pilate, whether the initiative
was taken by himself or whether the people supplied him with the opportunity of
doing so. Hengstenberg appeals to the narrative of Mark (Comm. III. p. 231) for
justification of the view that the initiative was taken by the people. " The demand
for the customary release of a prisoner was au incident altogether unconnected with
the proceedings in hand, of which Pilate merely availed himself in a skilful way."
Similarly also Klostemiann, das Marhisevangelium, GBttingen 1867, p. 290. But
it is in itself an exceedingly improbable thing, that in the midst of negotiations
regarding Christ, which occupied all Jerusalem and set it in commotion, an incident
should have been interposed which had no manner of connection with it. But, besides,

THE SURRENDER OF JESUS. 1 1 7
the Sanhedrim had over the multitude to place any measure of
confidence in an expedient by virtue of which, besides, he per
mitted the determining power to pass out of his own hands. But
he was influenced by a wish to avoid coming to a determination
which he felt himself neither able nor called upon to take up.
We entirely agree with all that Hengstenberg has said regarding
the inconsistencies in the conduct of Pilate, only we do not
account for these inconsistencies on the theory of a sin-laden
conscience, but we see in them the evidences of Pilate's perplexity.
Placed in a region which was strange to him, and in an entirely
unwonted situation, he seeks for some expedient, and feels after
some pretext which may spare him the necessity of personally
pronouncing judgment. This co-operated, at all events, to induce
Pilate to send the prisoner to Herod, — we say co-operated only,
for the principal motive was undoubtedly the wish of the procu
rator to confer an obligation on the tetrarch of Galilee. As to
Herod himself, the mockery which he heaped upon our Lord can be
judged only in the same waj- as the scourging which was ordered
by Pilate. Many an infamous act has been thoughtlessly committed
by unbelief. And yet, when we see the Jewish king descending
to the level of the heathen soldiery, — their acts were not essentially
this is a view which is not permitted by the narratives of the remaining three evan
gelists. For example, the words "therefore when they were gathered together"
(Matt, xxvii. 17) afford a basis for the supposition that the procurator had expressly
summoned the people, and assembled them around his (on/*", for a purpose definitely
formed by him. It was his intention to appeal from the hierarchy, from whom he
could gain nothing further, to the people, who were not dominated, like their eccle
siastical superiors, by "envy." Undoubtedly, however, Pilate's act was an arbitrary
one. The people had the right to request the liberation of any condemned person
whatsoever, in the exercise of an untrammelled power of choice ("whomsoever they
would ") ; and the fact that two thieves were crucified along with Jesus shows that
there was at that time no lack of persons on whom the law had passed sentence of
death. The freedom which belonged to the people is circumscribed by the governor,
inasmuch as he asks them to make their choice as between Jesus and Barabbas. This
is explained, on the one hand, on the supposition that it had long been a fixed matter
that Barabbas was to be executed at this Passover ; and, on the other hand, by the
fact that Pilate calculated that if the people were asked to choose between Jesus and
Barabbas, they would probably decide in favour of the former, as no one could feel
any sympathy for the latter. And if the decision were so made in reality, Pilate
would be placed in circumstances to reject the demands of the hierarchy without
further ado, since they would be entirely helpless against this plebiscite. We read,
therefore, at the close, that the governor did according to the wish of the people
("willing to content the people," Matt. xv. 15; "Pilate gave sentence that it
should be as they required," Luke xxiii. 24) when he finally gave commandment
that Jesus should be crucified.

118 THE PASSION HISTORY.
worse than his (Jdhn xix. 2, 3),— we willingly look around for some
more general ground of explanation. We find it in the position
of the worldly ruler as such. He, as the actual possessor of a
dignity which, according to his opinion, was possessed by Jesus
in imagination only, regards mockery as the only appropriate
weapon to employ against the enthusiast who silently stood before
him. He, a king of this world, does not know how to deal
seriously with the King of truth, and so he seeks refuge in
expressions of scorn, for the situation was eminently embarrassing
to a frivolous mind. Probably the accuracy of this mode of view
would be proved by the character of the numerous questions
which Herod, according to Luke xxiii. 9, addressed to our Saviour.
But the evangelist has not recorded them. We are thankful to
him for it. Criticism would have known how to employ them for
its own purposes.
We have limited ourselves in the present section to the con
sideration of the sufferings which came upon our Lord through
the agency of the civil power, without taking into account the
persecution with which the Jews continued to assail Him. Under
a like limitation we also consider the question, In how far was
sin the cause of His experiencing this suffering ? We are con
cerned, consequently, with the guilt of Pilate exclusively. But
if the question be thus limited, the answer to it does not appear
difficult. One of the evangelists, in addition to supplying us
with a very complete account of the facts themselves, has thrown
many side lights on the character of Pilate. The objection of
Strauss, that it is scarcely possible to imagine how John could
have become acquainted with these details, can scarcely excite any
serious uneasiness. The apostle, who relates throughout nothing
except that which he had heard and seen with his own eyes, was
a personal witness of the proceedings. Just as he found it possible
to be present at the trial before Annas, so would he find means
to push his way into the interior of the praetorium, even although
very special exertions should have been necessary. The further
remark made" by Strauss, in a detractive tone, that the representa
tions of John have a theatrical character, will not avail to shake
any one's faith in their reality. On the contrary, his expression
is one which we willingly adopt, in the sense, to wit, in which
Paul says of himself : " we are made a spectacle (Oearpov) unto
the world, and to angels, and to men " (1 Cor. iv. 9), or in which

THE SURRENDER OF JESUS. 119
another apostle writes : " whilst we are made a gazing-stock
(9earpi%6fievoi) both by reproaches and afflictions" (Heb. x. 33).
There is another objection raised by the critic, however, which
requires, as we have already admitted, the most careful considera
tion. Strauss repeatedly asserts that the steady interest displayed
by the procurator in the rescue of Jesus, which is amply testified
to by all the Gospels and by the apostolic preaching (" when he
(Pilate) was determined to let Him go," Acts iii. 13), is all the
less conceivable from the circumstance that at best Pilate could
have regarded Him only as a Jewish enthusiast. It is easy to
reply by saying : " the description of Pilate's conduct is so true to
psychological principles," or "the representation of John bears
the unmistakeable stamp of originality;" but the force of this
objection cannot be met and overcome by these or any similar
phrases. So far as we can discover, it can be set aside only
by reducing the interest felt by the procurator to its proper
proportions, and by placing it in its true light. In order to do
so, we must, of course, first arrive at a well-grounded judgment
as to the character of Pilate, — a preliminary condition which it
is hard to fulfil. The scanty notices for which we are indebted
to profane writers, even the oft-quoted complaint of Philo (leg. ad
¦Caj.) in regard to the pride and stubbornness of the Eoman,
are wholly irrelevant to the subject in hand. We feel ourselves
limited to such conclusions as may be drawn from the conduct
of Pilate, as recorded in the evangelical history. But the
uncertainty of such conclusions is apparent from the exceedingly
diverse results arrived at even by those interpreters who have not,
like Lavater, employed the psychological plummet alone. While
some (influenced especially by Olshausen) all but idealize the Eoman
governor, and assume that he was profoundly impressed by Jesus,
so that all that was best in his nature was stirred into life, others
describe him as one in whom an evil conscience was allied with
the spirit of scepticism. According to the former writers, he is
not much inferior to a Nicodemus ; according to the latter, he
resembles an Ahab, who sold himself to do evil. Tholuck, who long
persisted in regarding Pilate as a superficial child of this world,
afterwards inclined to the view of the Apostolical Constitutions,
without formally retracting his former opinion. The views that
have been maintained traverse each other in such a manner, and
accusing and excusing thoughts alternate so rapidly in the mind

120 THE PASSION HISTORY.
of one who is studying the question, that the well-known sentence
of Kleuker may well seem entirely appropriate : " As to Pilate's
philosophico -judicial temper of mind, nothing has yet been
canonically decided." But what we have to do is to take up a
fixed standpoint at the outset.1 If isolated statements made by
Pilate are pressed, while others are ignored ; if some are over
loaded with significance, while others are deprived of their
import, then certainly one may succeed in constructing a Pilate
for himself, and fail to behold the Pilate who really existed and
acted. Our proper task is not to bring out the individual
peculiarities of Pilate's character. Even although we were to
succeed in doing so, we should not be one step nearer our object.
Had some other man exercised the supreme power in Judea in
" that same year," — a Felix, a Festus, a Gallio, or even one as
noble in character as Pliny the younger, who was the agent of
Trajan in carrying out the persecution of the Christians in
Bithynia, — each one of them would have pursued substantially
the very same course as Pilate. The procurator must be judged
in this his official position as the servant and representative of
the emperor, and from this point of view his interest in the
rescue of our Lord, in so far as it really existed, is perfectly
intelligible. This interest has its own proper history. In
a certain degree it existed from the very outset, but it was
intensified by additional motives afterwards introduced. As soon
as the Jews placed their Prisoner before Pilate, the judge at once
took the part of the Accused ; not, however, in the first place,
from sympathy for Him, but from antipathy to His accusers.
The relation between the procurator and the Sanhedrim was
throughout that of hostile mistrust, and, under the existing
circumstances, nothing else could well have been expected.
According to the unanimous testimonies of witnesses, Tacitus,
Suetonius, and others, no nation was so unfavourably disposed
towards the Eomans, so prone to disloyalty and revolt, as the
Jewish ; while, on the other hand, no race was so thoroughly
detested by the Eomans. Now and then, it is true, sin might
bring about compromises between the heathen ruler and the rulers
of the Jews, but a sincere mutual understanding, even in a single
1 The Scottish theologian Hanna appears to us (in the popular work formerly
referred to) to have sketched the character of Pilate more successfully than many a
learned treatise which deals with the same subject.

THE SURRENDER OF JESUS. 121
instance, was impossible. Every wish, therefore, every petition,
every complaint presented by the Sanhedrim, awakened sus
picion in the mind of the governor; and he expressed this
suspicion in as marked a manner as possible, because it was a
pleasure to him to make the subject Jews feel their dependence,
and he felt a satisfaction in gratifying his discontentment at
being required to respect their religious sensibilities. All this is
apparent even at the beginning of the negotiations. Pilate was
obliged to come out to the complainants, in order that their
ceremonial purity might not be infringed, and he was obliged to
admit that they had a law of their own by which to judge.
On the other hand, it gratified him that they acknowledged the
limitation of their authority, and that they were obliged to
submit to the regulation of the Eoman law which required them
to lay a formal charge against the prisoner (Acts xxv. 16).
Much of what he did at a later period of the negotiations is
also to be looked at from this point of view, and seems not
so much to testify to a dim presentiment of the dignity of
Jesus, as to a feeling of contempt for the priests.1 But if
Pilate entered on the negotiations under the influence of pre
judice against the accusers, his distrust of them was necessarily
intensified when he listened to the terms of their " accusation "
against Jesus. " We found this (fellow) perverting the nation,
and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, saying that he himself
is Christ a king " (Luke xxiii. 2). As loyal subjects of Caesar,
as zealots for his rights, as upholders of his interests, the pro
curator had not hitherto known the high priests. They to whom
it was questionable whether a Jew could pay tribute without
wounding his conscience, they whose theocratic sensibilities were
touched to the quick by this imposition, appear here as the
denunciators of a member of their own nation on the ground of
His having propagated an opinion to which they themselves
clung fondly and tenaciously ; assuredly, the procurator would
say to himself, there must be something else behind. Up to
this point Pilate had taken the part of Jesus without feeling,
1 We explain the repeated allusions to the Kingship of Jesus in this way : " Behold
your king ! " " Shall I crucify your king ? " So also we explain the inscription on
the cross. This can be recognised without our thereby denying the operation of an
overruling providence in the conduct of Pilate. It is to be judged in the same
way as the prophecy uttered by Caiaphas the high priest.

122 THE PASSION HISTORY.
however, any proper interest in Himself. But, as the result
of his colloquy with the Prisoner, such an interest was really
awakened in him. The only question is, of what nature was
it? The concluding declaration of the governor: "I find no,
fault in him," arrests our attention by the very circumstance
of its frequent repetition (John xviii. 38, xix. 4, 6). The em
phatic I which is placed in front (comp. especially John xix. 6 :
ye — /, "I, from my standpoint; I, in my position") puts the
significance of his statement in its right light. He has become
thoroughly persuaded that the accusation of the Jews is a ground
less one, that this Jesus cherishes no design of grasping the sword
of the Maccabees. True, indeed, our Lord assured him with all
emphasis that the royalty which he claimed was real, " Thou
sayest that I am a king " — with all emphasis, and not in a " dry,"
" monosyllabic " manner, as Strauss is fain to say ; but, neverthe
less, Pilate was confident that ,a claim of this character did not
threaten the supremacy of his Caesar.1 He felt that he would
be guilty of injustice, and that he would show himself an un
righteous judge, if he sacrificed to the hatred of the priesthood
One who was obviously an object of persecution for entirely
different reasons. The Gospel history does not seem to bear us
out in making any further concessions.
It is easy to understand how interpreters should have drawn
certain inferences as to the deeper religious sensibilities of the
man from his various statements and acts. They were unable to
see how words such as those spoken to him by our Lord when
they were face to face could fail to impress him even more pro
foundly than Felix was impressed by the preaching of Paul, when
he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come.
1 According to our view, the kingdom of Christ undoubtedly supplanted the
Roman power, and a solicitude on the part of the procurator would have been as
well founded as the fear which was expressed by Caiaphas. And this view would
not be invalidated, even although Daniel's fourth kingdom were not identified with
the Roman power, and Dr. Kramchfeld (in his treatise, iiber das Buck Daniel,
Berlin 1868) were right in the conclusion which he draws, namely, that this opinion
isa "consuetudo sine veritate, a vetustas erroris." But such considerations were
beyond the statesman's horizon. Like all Romans, he was persuaded that the
Roman empire was imperishable. Comp. Virgil, Aen. i. 278 ("His ego nee
metas rerum nee tempora pono ; imperium sine fine dedi "). Besides, it was just
by the death of Jesus that His kingdom was founded, just as it was His death
which brought that to pass which excited apprehensions in the mind of the high
priest

THE SURRENDER OF JESUS. 123
If we withhold our assent from this view, we do so, not on
account of the picture which history presents of the religiosity or
rather the irreligiosity of the Eoman dignitaries,1 nor yet from the
fear of exposing ourselves unnecessarily to the attacks of the
negative criticism, but on the ground of the Gospel history itself.
The assumption that Pilate's sympathy for Jesus was only that
of the judge who recognises the innocence of an accused person,
is justified not only by numerous particulars in the narrative, but
is consistent with the import of the whole : no residuum of facts
remains unaccounted for. This appears most clearly and dis
tinctly as the real state of the matter on the occasion of the first
interview between Pilate and Jesus. His first anxiety was to
get hold of the facts of the case, so as to be in a position to come
to a well-grounded judgment. He was displeased, therefore, when
our Lord appeared to put an obstacle in the way of his doing so.
Pilate did not repel the preliminary question of Jesus regarding
the origin of his inquiry as to His Kingship, " indignantly " or
" haughtily," but merely with the impatience of one who wished to
reach a definite conclusion with all speed. And yet the question
was indispensable. Its object was not to maintain " the right
of the accused to know the author of the accusation" (Meyer),
and it could scarcely be to fill the judge's mind with mistrust in
regard to the accusation of the Jews (Grotius) ; but Jesus wished
to make sure that His answer to the question : " Art thou a king ? "
would be properly understood. For it could be answered in one
sense in the negative as decidedly as it could be answered in
another sense in the affirmative. True indeed, as men use the
term in the world, " I am not a king (Matt. xx. 2 5), but yet I
have a kingdom, and I am in reality a King." The emphasis
rests undoubtedly on the positive part of the statement. We
hear a confession. Thrice over the words " My kingdom " are
emphatically uttered. And although the first three evangelists
content themselves with merely stating that Jesus answered
"Thou sayest," they do so, because therein consisted the sum
and substance of His reply. But although the negative element
in the reply was merely a foil for the positive claim which was
made : " How can I be an earthly king, I the /3a<nAev? dXrjdivo<;,
who have come from above to this world in order to establish in
it a new, real kingdom, — the kingdom of heaven," — yet it was so
1 Comp. Dollinger, Heidenthum und Judenlhum, p. 584 sqq.

124 THE PASSION HISTORY.
distinct and obvious that even a Pilate could entertain no further
doubt on the matter. An earthly king requires his subjects to
defend his person, but Jesus had interdicted and rejected any
such defence, and, in addition to reproving, undid that which
one of His disciples had done in this direction. (He could
therefore, even in spite of the sword-stroke of Peter, appeal to
the passivity of His attitude ; for, so far as He Himself was con
cerned, the miracle of healing which He had wrought on behalf
of the wounded servant of the high priest made this act as if it
had never been. Any stain still remaining adhered solely to the
person of the disciple, and no one was entitled to go back upon
the incident except in regard to Peter, comp. John xviii. 26.
From this point of view, however, we see in a new light how
displeasing to our Lord the arbitrary conduct of His officious
defender must have been.) But even admitting that a slight
tinge of suspicion may be detected in the procurator's further
question : " Art thou a king, then ? " — a feeling which might
possibly be excited in his< mind by the circumstance that Jesus
had spoken of the servants and of the order of His kingdom, —
the declaration made by our Lord in ver. 37 must have removed'
any lingering remains of suspicion. The words look back to a
question asked by Pilate, and which up to this time has remained
unanswered — the question, " What hast thou done ? " ver. 3 5.
" What have I done ? I have done that which beseemed a King
who came from above ; I have borne testimony to the truth, the
truth which is in heaven, and which is to shed its light upon the
earth through Me and ini Me. And by this testimony I have
enlisted the subjects and servants of My kingdom,1 for he that
is of the truth hears the voice of the truth, follows Me, and
recognises Me." Comp, John x. 26-, 27. A comparison with
the history of Nathanaeh who, as- an "Israelite indeed," was of the
truth, and who, on hearing the voice of Jesus, gave utterance to
the exclamation : " Thom art the King of Israel," entirely confirms
our view of the connection, and satisfactorily answers the question
as to the scope of the concluding words of Jesus (ver. 37). The
1 Accordingly, the ivnpirat, John xviii. 36, cannot be understood of the servants
which our Lord would have had in the case supposed, but to those whom He really
had, only that they did not manifest their attachment to Him as the servants of an
earthly ruler would. Their mode of action is indicated by the Apostle Paul, 2 Cor.
vi. 4 sqq. (the expression in ver. 7 is to be noted : h xiy* iXnfalai). Moreover, this
apostle purposely chooses the expression iiirneirtti Xpio-roZ in 1 Cor. iv. 1.

THE SURRENDER OF JESUS. 125
assertion that our Lord in using these words intended " to appeal
to the Eoman's own religious consciousness," that He " turned
from the judge to the man," will not gain the assent of any one
who considers the facts of the case with a calm and unprejudiced
mind. It is open to the very same objection as the assumption
that the words exerted a corresponding influence on the mind of
Pilate.1 Undoubtedly they made a certain impression upon the
governor's mind, for he immediately breaks off the negotiations.
But what ground have we for believing, or where can we find any
intimation, that he broke the threads for the same reason as a
Felix brought to a termination the conscience-awakening reason
ings of Paul *? Most that is said in regard to the question with
which Pilate turned his back upon Jesus is imported into it.
Sadness, contempt, profound earnestness, shallow sarcasm, — " the
deep disconsolateness of the noble friend of truth," " the godless
jesting of a corrupt conscience," — all this, under numerous modi
fications, has been discovered by interpreters in Pilate's " What is
truth ? " And yet there is only one thing which can be certainly
drawn from the Gospel narrative. The words : " when he had said
this" (John xviii. 38), show a connection between the question
of the governor and the declaration made to the Jews which is
mentioned immediately afterwards ; the former contains a re
flection which supplied the motive for the latter. Pilate neither
expressed a wish that our Lord should explain what truth was,
nor yet did he adopt the language of scepticism and intimate
that this was a problem which could never be solved, but he
merely characterized the discussion :as one which was irrelevant.
In the schools of philosophy it might be appropriate, but not
before the tribunal of the judge. He no longer entertained a
doubt that the controversy pertained entirely to the airy region
of pure speculation, with which civil authority has nothing to do,
and by which its interests are in no way affected. He brought
the interview to an end, because he was sufficiently informed.
He saw quite clearly that the formal accusation of the Jews was
a mere pretext behind which were " certain questions of their
1 The circumstance that our Lord entered into discourse with Pilate, while He
kept silence towards others, is entirely irrelevant to the question in hand. The
speaking or the silence of Jesus does not admit of being judged in every case by the
same rule, any more than His repeated prohibitions of blazing abroad His miracles
admit of one stereotyped explanation. The Holy Scriptures do not admit of being
pressed into exegetical moulds in this way.

126 THE PASSION HISTORY.
own superstition" (Acts xxv. 19). So far as he was concerned,
therefore, there was no ground whatever for proceeding against
this Jesus. The conduct of Gallio, the proconsul of Achaia,
towards the Corinthian Jews, presents an analogous case. " If it
were a matter of wrong or wicked lewdness, 0 ye Jews, reason
would that I should bear with you : but if it be a question of
words and names, and of your law, look ye to it ; for I will be no
judge of such matters," Acts xviii. 14, 15. What Gallio dared,
— "and he drave them from the judgment-seat," — the high
priests, it is true, did not permit the procurator to attempt in
Jerusalem. Nevertheless he was firmly resolved to bring the
matter to a favourable issue, and to devote all his energies to the
protection of the interests of the Accused. Nor do we meet with
anything in the further progress of the history which requires us
to modify the representation of Pilate which has been submitted.
With some show of justice two incidents may be pointed to in
opposition to it, the symbolic washing of hands, and the second
conversation between the judge and the Accused as recorded by
the fourth evangelist. We confess to a feeling of amazement
at the statement of Strauss, that that act of the governor is
exceeded in improbability only by the statement that the
assembled Jewish populace solemnly and expressly took upon
themselves the guilt of the blood of Jesus. The conduct of the
Jews is more than adequately accounted for by their rapidly
culminating fanaticism. It was in itself a natural result of the
decision in favour of Barabbas, and it was by no means ill
adapted to' overcome the hesitation of the unwilling procurator.
But neither was the conduct of the latter inconceivable. It was
not so in regard to its form ; for it has long since been proved
(particularly in Thom. . Steger's de veterum, lotionibus, by means of
numerous quotations from Eoman authors) that this Jewish usage
was not unknown to other nations. And still less was it so in
regard to its meaning. The act would appear strange to us only
if Pilate's object had been to exculpate himself before the gods.1
But in his mind it had no connection whatever with the gods.
1 Such a degree of folly and blindness on the part of any educated heathen would
certainly be unintelligible. Comp. Cicero, de Legib. ii. (ed. Klotz, p. iv. vol. IV.
p. 371): "animi labes nee diuturnitate evanescere, nee amnibus ullis elui potest."
Ovid, Fast. ii. 45, 46 (ed. Merkel, p. 222) : " A ! nimium faciles, qui tristia crimina
caedis fluminea tolli posse putetis aqua ! "

THE SURRENDER OF JESUS. 127
He fixed his attention on the excited multitude crowding around
his judgment-seat. He opposed to their " uproar," and to the
deafening cry, " Crucify him, crucify him," an action which could
not fail to arrest their attention, and induce them to watch the
progress of events more calmly. The proper commentary upon
this act is supplied by the words which have been preserved by
John, and which undoubtedly belong to this precise point of
time : " Take ye him, and crucify him : for I find no fault in
him " (John xix. 6). This, and nothing else than this, is the
meaning of the symbolical action. The judge declares that truth
and righteousness demand that the accused be discharged from
his judgment-seat. We need not try to find anything further in
it. Nor does the last interview between Pilate and Jesus lead
us a single step beyond this result. No doubt it exercised a
determining influence upon him, for from that time (etc rovrov
does not here mean " on this account," but denotes time, as in
ch. vL 66, where it is immediately followed by the explanatory
ovKen) he " sought (e^ijrei) to release Him." 'Etyret is not
equivalent to " he tried still more anxiously than before," as if
a fidXXov accompanied it, and as if the judge — to adopt the
language of Liicke — had hitherto merely trifled with our Lord ;
nor yet does it mean that " he made a fresh attempt " (not further
described).1 The most skilful imagination can suggest nothing
of which Pilate could have still made trial after all that had
already taken place. But now he peremptorily demands the release
of the Prisoner whom he had all but abandoned to the people when
they made choice of the murderer. (Zijreiv is not unfrequently
used in the N. T. in this sense. Thus ainpAiov foreiv, Mark viii.
11, etc., by no means signifies to be desirous of a sign, to be eager
to see one, but to request or demand a sign. In the passage
1 Cor. i. 22, %i,relv in relation to aaxbia has the very same
meaning as alrelv in relation to the <rr;p,eia.) But a point very
much debated is, whether a feeling of the higher dignity of Jesus
had any share in bringing Pilate to this definite determination ;
whether it was in any sense influenced by religious motives.
"When Pilate, therefore, heard that saying, he was the more
1 Meyer infers from the imperfect being used that the assumed new attempt was
not fully carried out. But its use can be explained without the aid of this peculiar
expedient. It characterizes the demand as a decided and persevering one, which
was not abandoned.

128 THE PASSION HISTORY.
afraid," 1 says John, ch. xix. 8. It is usual to limit the reference
of " that saying " to the immediately preceding words : the " Son
of God ;" and accordingly the conclusion is drawn that he was
overcome by a feeling of religious awe, that he dreaded lest he
should be found " fighting against God," that he was afraid of
the avenging Erinnys. But the correct view is a different one.
The Jews perceived that the ground on which they had based
their complaint would not enable them to attain their object.
Just as the attempt to procure false witness to support the
accusation made before Caiaphas miscarried, so here also they
were obliged to produce the true ground of their demand. The
" we " which stands in the forefront of their statement (ver. 7)
corresponds to the " I " which occupies a similar position in ver. 6.
" Thou, according to thy laws, mayest call him innocent, but we
too have a law, and according to its determinations he must die,
for he has been guilty of blasphemy." If Pilate had up to this
time remained unshaken in his .opinion that the political charge
made against Jesus was a mere pretext, his opinion now received
explicit confirmation. And if he had hitherto scrupled to con
demn One who was in all probability guiltless, he would now
feel an increased shrinking from passing sentence of death, in
opposition to all justice, against Jesus, whom he saw to be the
object of calumny. That is the meaning of the statement " he
was the more afraid," and in this mood of mind he returned to
the pretorium for the purpose of interrogating Jesus afresh.
We are of opinion — as we cannot but be, considering the results
at which we have already arrived — that Pilate's purpose in this
new interview was partly to collect materials and partly to
gain confidence for a final repulse of the accusers. Other
expositors, and among them Heumann in particular, maintain the
view that Pilate, like a Nicodemus, being impressed with a sense
of the majesty of Jesus, forsook his profane audience outside in
order to satisfy the religious emotions of his soul. In defence
of this view they appeal to his question. Now it is a bold
thing, to say the least, to take this question in the sense of the
alternative — Dost thou belong to heaven or to earth ? art thou

¦*o

1 It has been rightly remarked that the word " more" indicates merely the inten
sification of an already existing ' ' fear. " But is it allowable to reason backwards from
the view taken of his present shrinking, and infer that the character of his former
timidity was the same ? Is not the opposite process the only one which is justifiable ?

THE SURRENDER OF JESUS. 129
divine, or a mere man ? But it is something more than merely
bold even to compare the " whence art thou " in the lips of
Pilate with the " whence I am " uttered by the lips of Jesus Him
self (John vii. 2 8, viii. 1 4). This has been felt, and accordingly
there has been attributed to the expression of the procurator the
predicate of " timidity," or of " generality." Undoubtedly its
meaning is very general and indefinite ; as general, for example,
as the statement of the Pharisees in John ix. 29 : " We know
that God spake unto Moses : as for this (fellbw), we know not
from whence he is ;." so general that we- can only regard it as
tantamount to : what is the state of the- case regarding that
which the Jews have just spoken concerning thee? " What sayest
thou of thyself?" Had the question of the procurator proceeded
from a deeply-moved heart, he could not possibly have turned
upon the silent Saviour in so- imperious a fashion as the mere
civil ruler. And had the Searcher of hearts detected any religious
anxiety in him, His silence would have been unintelligible ;
none of the strained explanations which abound in commen
taries would suffice to account for, it. Our Lord engaged in
discourse with Pilate throughout only as seeing in him the
possessor of judicial power ; consequently the words by which He
broke his silence in the second interview are also directed to
him in that character. We admit, then, that Strauss is perfectly
right in asserting that it is difficult to understand how a profound
sympathy for Jesus could have arisen in the mind of the Eoman
governor. In reality no such profound sympathy is certified to
by the Gospel history,, which only entitles us to attribute to
Pilate a natural interest in, an innocent prisoner, and a wish to
secure his release: — feelings, which no judge can wholly exclude
from his mind.
From this point we- may-gain' an insight into the sin which
laid a burden of suffering upon our Lord before the judgment-
seat of Pilate. " He that delivered Me unto thee hath the
greater sin," said He who held in His hand a just balance,
" Greater" — therefore He attributes some measure of guilt to the
procurator also. But what was his sin ? Even at a very early
time (Ap. Constitut.) the charge of weakness of character was
made against Pilate, inasmuch as, in spite of his own decided
declaration, he ultimately yielded to the wishes of the importunate
Jews, (saying to himself, perhaps, like the judge in the parable :
I

130 THE PASSION HISTORY.
" because they trouble me . . . lest by their continual coming
they weary me," Luke xviii. 5). Again, he has been accused of
cowardly fear, because he seemed to yield when the high priests
threatened him with the displeasure of the emperor. But Pilate's
sin, properly so called, — that which our Lord laid upon him as his
burden, — cannot consist in either of these. The answer must be
reached by a comparison. Caiaphas urged the condemnation with
the whole energy and regardlessness of hatred (comp. especially
the close of ver. 1 5) ; Pilate merely consented to it, under the
pressure of the overpowering urgency of the high priest. The
procurator plumed himself on his power to ordain the crucifixion
or the liberation of the accused. The form of the alternative is
to be carefully considered. We do not read e^ovcrlav e%a> rj
aravpwaat ae rj diroXvaai ere (the power of life and death), but
i^ovai'av e%p> crravpaxrat ere ical i^ovaiav e%<0 diroXvaai ae.
The first half of ver. 1 1 applies to the former, and the second to
the latter part of this statement : " As regards thy power to
crucify Me (the power against Me), it is given to thee from above,
else thou couldst in no way (ovk . . . oiSefiiav x) assert it. Thy
power to release Me, on the contrary, is as good as taken out of
thy hands by ' him that hath delivered Me unto thee.' On this
very account, however, thy sin is the less." But it is still a sin.
While Caiaphas cherished in his heart the most deadly hatred
to Jesus, Pilate is open to the charge of absolute indifference.
The fact of the judge having taken the part of the Accused does
not conceal the indifference which the earthly ruler felt towards
the Euler of the kingdom of heaven, but it is precisely on account
of the former that the latter is so marked. True, we do not
exactly perceive that Boman pride to which everything foreign
was an object of contempt (comp. Acts xvi. 21:" they teach
customs which are not lawful for us to receive, neither to observe,
being Bomans "). And still less does Pilate create the impres
sion that he regarded the dreaming Idealist in a mocking spirit.
Mockery he reserved for the high priests only. We have no occa
sion whatever to attribute to him in regard to Christ the feelings
1 This settles the question whether the high priest was not also possessed of an
"ilouo-ia from above, whether our Lord did not appear before an Vfrvr'ut when He was
tried by Caiaphas. That is in itself incontrovertible. Only the " power to crucify
Him " was not possessed by the Sanhedrim, a fact which is expressly admitted in
John xviii 31, and which is applied by the evangelist in the succeeding verse.

THE SURRENDER OF JESUS. 131
which made Festus say to the Apostle Paul : " Thou art mad "
(Acts xxvi. 24). But all the more does he seem to us to bear the
stamp of one to whom earthly things, honour, power, reputation,
wealth, are the only real possessions, and to whom the true good
things, the dyia, the dXrjdivd, are mere "names" (Acts xviii. 15),
which are worthy of no more than a transient, passing regard.
He who has no eye to see goodly pearls has no heart for the one
pearl of great price. " The world hath not known Him :" that
saying was verified, and could not but be verified, in the highest
degree in a Pilate. The Apostle Paul writes (Gal. vi. 14) : " God
forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus
Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the
world." We shall find occasion elsewhere to unfold more fully
this profoundly significant utterance. Meantime we deduce from
it this thought only, that the whole world had become an object
of indifference to the apostle through that same cross, to which
the world, in its indifference, had adjudged the Lord of glory.
This is the sin which occasioned the suffering which the Saviour
endured before Pontius Pilate.
Pilate possessed the supreme authority in Judea. Everything
depended ultimately upon his will; and yet in the present
instance the result was entirely contrary to his wishes. He
" delivered Jesus to their will," says the third evangelist (ch.
xxiii 25). It is true that one who is indifferent cannot be
properly said to have a will ; but even when the power is in his
hands, he is the instrument and the executor of a foreign will.
In the present instance this was the will of the Jews. (The
Synoptics emphasize the faot that the governor yielded to the
will of the people, " to content the people," although in reality
it could be said of the Sanhedrim only, that it had a will and
steadily maintained it. But it was necessary to show that the
rejection of the Messiah was a national act.) On the Jews rested,
therefore, the greater and the heavier part of the responsibility,
— a responsibility which they were certainly not afraid of, but
which, on the contrary, they expressed themselves willing to bear
in their own name, and in the name of tlieir children. Never
theless, it was just at this point that our Lord testified in the
most explicit manner that no earthly authority, deciding in a
merely human way under the influence o^ circumstances, was
bringing His career to a termination : " Thou couldest have no

132 THE PASSION HISTORY.
power at all against Me, unless it were given thee from above "
(John xix. 11). Consequently from God came the sentence of
crucifixion, which was pronounced upon Jesus at Pilate's bar.
The sense of the words above quoted is missed when the
statement of the apostle, " The powers that be are ordained of
God " (Eom. xiii. 1), is employed to explain them. The public
official position of Pilate, whereby he was the representative of a
"higher power," or, as a " governor sent by the king " (1 Pet. ii. 14),
possessed undoubted authority to exercise judicial functions, —
this is a matter lying entirely outside the subject here
treated of. Our Lord does not say et fnfj rjv aoi SeSoptivr/, but
et p,rj fjv aoi SeSofikvov, whereby it is stated that this par
ticular, definite act of the governor— the pronouncing of sentence
of death upon Jesus — was one ordained dvco8ev, and was no act
evrmOev. It has been said that the God who accomplished the
work of redemption " in His own times," " when the fulness of
the time was come," chose the hour at which His Son was to die,
just as He had ordained the time of His birth ; that by the
arrangement of an overruling Providence the Eedeemer died at
the time when Eome held the supreme power in Judea, so that
the divine purposes in their whole extent, and in the smallest
detail, were fulfilled. It is not necessary to undervalue this view
of the case, but it is not adequate, as a means of placing in its
true light the " determinate counsel " of God in relation to the
phase of the Passion of Jesus which is now under consideration.
The postulate is this, that the " power to crucify Jesus " must
have been specially and expressly given to Pilate, — an egovaia
not of the same, but yet of a similar character to that referred to
by Jesus, when He said of Himself, " I have power (eijovaiav)
to lay down My life . . . this commandment have I received from
My Father" (John x. 18), — an egovaia which here also justifies
the expression, — it must needs so be, that the Scripture might
be fulfilled. But there is, in truth, no necessity to appeal to
dogmatics in order to meet this demand, for nothing more is
required than a calm consideration of the narrative. We assumed,
on grounds which have been already stated, that the high priests
were the victims of judicial blindness and hardness of heart; but
a like assumption in regard to Pilate we would reject, as one for
which there is no proof, and which, moreover, may be dispensed
with. He did not walk in the footsteps of a Pharaoh. He acted

THE SURRENDER OF JESUS. 133
in a way which was entirely natural in the circumstances, and
any other person in his position would have acted substantially
in the same way. We could conceive of Pilate acting in a
contrary manner only on the supposition of God's having inter
posed to prevent him pursuing the course which was natural
to him, by presenting an actual hindrance, or by sending an
overpoweringly impressive warning. But God withheld His
hand; for that which took place was in accordance with the
counsel of His will. We have been surprised at the remark
which we have met with now and again, that no man could well
be warned more impressively than was Pontius Pilate before he
took the decisive step. This opinion obviously results from the
ground being changed. It certainly finds no support in the
Gospel narrative. It records one fact only which can be regarded
from this point of view. We refer to the message sent to the
procurator by his wife, when he was sitting on the judgment-seat.
Strauss asks, " Who, on reading of this warning dream, does not
remember the pretended dream of Calpurnia, Caesar's wife, on the
night before his murder ?" His fondness for adducing parallels from
profane history on all possible occasions is well known. But the
parallel before us excites our astonishment, just as the compari
son which he introduces elsewhere cannot but arouse a sense of
indignation ; we mean that between the utterance, " I am He," in
the hps of Jesus, and a similar utterance on the part of the
Eoman Marius. Unless the critic had suggested it, a recollection
of the wife of Caesar would scarcely have come into any one's mind.
For when the cases are narrowly looked at, they are found to have
nothing in common except this, that two wives had a painful
dream. Still more do we protest against placing the story in the
same class with the " suggestive dreams of the history of the
infancy." We know from the express declarations of God (Num.
xii. 6), as well as from Scripture history, that the Lord made
Himself known to those who held an official position in His
kingdom by means of dreams ; but we are not aware that He
spoke in a like way to individuals who did not stand in any
relation to His household, otherwise we should require to elevate
" Claudia Procula," on the authority of the Gospel of Nicodemus,
to the rank of a pious Jewish proselyte.1 We entirely agree with
1 If one begins by giving an erroneous representation of Pilate, the next step,
naturally enough, is to place his wife on a correspondingly high platform. Comp.

134 THE PASSION HISTORY.
Meyer in holding that it was not the intention of Matthew to
represent it as the result of a divine influence ; but we go a step
further, and that on the ground of the evangelical record itself,
and maintain that the procurator himself had no such thought,
nor the faintest approach to it, and that he did not take the
slightest notice of the message sent him by his wife. But why
then, it is asked, did the evangelist record the circumstance ?
Had it not some kind of pragmatic value in his view ? Now, the
answer to this question is, that this was all and everything
which Pilate met with in the form of an obstruction or warning.
From God's side he was entirely unrestrained in his freedom
of action ; he possessed " avwQev " complete power (egovaia) to
bring about the crucifixion of Jesus. But if God left him thus
entirely to himself, and permitted him to decide in the way
which was natural in the existing circumstances from his stand
point, then we may conclude that it was the will of God that
matters should so result, consequently the sentence passed on
Jesus by the Eoman came from God.
The question, for what end was it so determined in the counsel
of God, is undoubtedly answered in the Gospel history itself very
definitely and expressly. The Eoman procurator was to pronounce
the sentence of death, so that a cross might be erected for Jesus,
and that the Saviour should taste death in the form of crucifixion.
The fourth evangelist, when reporting the confession of the Jews,
that they were not empowered to put any one to death, adds the
reflection, that thereby the prediction of Jesus as to the manner
of His death was fulfilled, — the prediction, namely, that it was
necessary that the Son of man should be lifted up (ch. iii. 14,
xii. 32, 33). However, this general answer merely indicates the
line of thought which is to be pursued ; it does not go so far as
to indicate the divine intention itself. Why, it is still asked,
was it necessary that out Lord's death should be a death on
the cross ? What interpreters have said as to the " profoundly
instructive meaning of the death on the cross " is unquestionably
correct. Tholuck's statement, that it creates an impression of
" victory in defeat, and of native spiritual power," is still more
correct, and may count on acceptance, like the substantially
similar interpretation of Hengstenberg (Comm. on John, in loc).
Hengst. I.e. p. 227. The result is nothing more than au imaginary picture,
bearing the mark of arbitrariness.

THE SURRENDER OF JESUS. 135
But such expressions deal only with the circumference of the
subject, without touching its centre. Again, the view of the last-
named theologian, namely, that " the heathen also had to take
part in the death of Christ, in order that it might be shown to be
the sin of the human race as a whole," is one which we cannot
adopt, because we can by no means regard Pilate as the repre
sentative of heathendom. He never comes before us in the
character of the heathen as such, but invariably as the Eoman,
the judge, the ruler ; and, accordingly, he is careful to emphasize
his supremacy, his power to crucify and to release. This is a
view also to which the apostle would scarcely have assented ; for
at the very time when he contemplates Christ especially as the
Crucified, he leaves heathendom, in its religious aspect, out of
account, and dwells rather on the relation of the crucifixion to
the law. The Crucified One, he says in Gal. iii. 13, was
" made a curse for us " (" Cursed is every one that hangeth on
a tree "), that we might be redeemed from the curse of the law ;
and he shows in Eph. ii. 14-16 that our Lord had slain the
enmity by His cross, having broken down the middle wall of
partition, the law of commandments contained in ordinances ; and
having nailed it to His cross, as we read in Col. ii. 14, He blotted
out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us. What
then ? Can we discover in these passages, and others of similar
import, the answer to the question with which we are occupied ?
We are not quite able to satisfy ourselves that we can. For
although the expression with which we are concerned is found in
each one of these utterances, yet the apostle makes the emphasis
to rest less upon the circumstance that it was on the- cross that our
Lord died, than upon the fact that He suffered death on His
cross. The. manner of His death is not emphasized at all ; it
scarcely receives a passing notice. Even the expression " nailing "
(Col. ii. 14), however clearly it seems to bring before us the act
of crucifixion, does not alter our opinion ; we believe that it is
employed rather for the purposes of homiletical application than
in a didactic sense. The utterance of this same apostle on
which we fall back for our purpose is an entirely different one,
and one to which we have already made a passing allusion in
another connection. Before proceeding to examine it, however, it
is necessary that we should recall a result formerly arrived at.
We recognised in Pilate the possessor of earthly power. The

136 THE PASSION HISTORY.
power of this world decreed that Jesus should die on the cross.
All who at that time had this power in their hands — Pilate,
Herod, the high priests, for we do not exclude even them here ***
— co-operated to bring about this result. Of course we do not
mean world-power, in the sense of material power merely. But
just as the apostle has in view the " rulers of this world " (1 Cor.
ii. 6), especially in respect of their " wisdom," a wisdom which
knew not God ; so here, also, we think especially of the mind
(cppovripta) which guides the hand which possesses the power. The
kingdom of this world, with its wisdom and its interests, comes
in contact with the kingdom of the true King. Being partially
hostile and partially indifferent, it necessarily assumes a negative
attitude towards it. The mighty ones of the former determine
to crucify the Head of the latter kingdom. And this having been
done, how speaks the apostle of the matter? He says: " I glory
only in the cross of Jesus Christ, by which the world is crucified
unto me, and I unto the world" (Gal. vi. 14). So much he
asserts as a fact, that between him and the world there is no
longer any room for a relationship or for fellowship. And he
states, as a matter of personal experience, that every link which
formerly connected him with the world had been broken by means
of the cross of Christ. The more steadily we keep in view that
it was not the death of Christ considered generally, but His cross
(therefore the word " crucified ") which brought about this result,
the more intelligible will the experience of the apostle appear.
The world which pronounced upon Jesus the sentence, "let1 Him
be crucified," must cease to be anything (/carrfpyrirai) to one who
has entered into fellowship with Him whom it condemned, and who
has learned to bow the knee before the King of truth. The disciple
of Christ regarded himself as condemned by the world along with
Him, while the world again appeared to him, on this very account,
as judged and condemned. They were entirely apart from each
other. All that was in the world — its joy and its sorrow, its wealth
and its resources, its interests and its tendencies — was counted
but " loss " by him who had become a member and an organ of
1 If we regard them also from this point oi view, because they threw the
weight of their authority into the scale before the tribunal of Pilate, we do so
on the ground of an express declaration by the apostle. He undoubtedly compre
hends among the " mlers of this world " (1 Cor. ii. 8) the high priests ; but
thereby he gives it to be understood that as such, as mighty ones in this world,
they crucified the Lord of glory.

THE SURRENDER OF JESUS. 137
the true kingdom. This was Paul's own experience, and he
wished to lead others to share in it. Accordingly, he set forth
Jesus as the Crucified One before the eyes of the Galatians, with
the view of breaking the spell which the world had cast upon
them, and thus freeing them from its unhallowed dominion. But
in pursuing this course, not only with the Galatians, but in all the
places to which he went preaching the gospel, he was carrying
out the intention of God Himself, for this was the object which
God had in view in adjudging Jesus to die on the cross. Here
the kingdom of light was divided from the kingdom of darkness.
All who were of the truth felt themselves called and impelled to
come forth from the " power of darkness," from " this present
world," and to enter in by the gate of the true " kingdom."
The remark has often been made, that it was only while Jesus
was suffering before Pilate that He really asserted His royalty
in explicit terms. But that was, in point of fact, the proper
place for making this claim. Not, however, for this reason'
merely, that the " ibis ad crucem " with which Pilate dismissed
Him was for Jesus the pathway to kingly glory, but much more,
on account of the significance which the sentence of condemna
tion had for the members of the kingdom. It was the signal for
those who were called, to go forth from the " crooked nation "
which had pronounced it, and to enjoy the light of life in the
true kingdom.
Our Lord has suffered before Pontius Pilate, and that which
He has endured has come upon Him from the side of sin. And
yet, on the other hand, it has come upon Him from God in order
that a divine purpose of grace might be fulfilled. That is to
say, in this phase of His Passion also He bore the sin of the
world. In this, as in those that went before. " And He, bearing
His cross, went forth" (John xix. 17) — that is the substance of
the conclusion to be drawn from the whole previous history.
But we have in it a mere symbol of that which took place in
spirit and in truth. Jesus has borne, during the hours of His
Passion, the sin which He took upon Himself in the garden:
He stands at the spot where He is to atone for it by dying.

PART THIRD.

THE DEATH OF JESUS.
WHILE criticism admits the historical credibility of a
number of the scriptural statements which we have
referred to in connection with the Passion of Jesus, it passes the
harshest judgment on the accounts of His death. Under its
treatment scarcely an item of the Gospel narrative survives,
except the bare fact of the crucifixion. All that the narrators
have laid stress on, or at least which they have recorded with
perceptible interest, is on that very account at once regarded
with suspicion. The relative liberality exhibited by criticism in
the region of the sufferings of Jesus is not by any means due
to the promptings of the historic conscience, — that faculty is
deprived of its rights when a subjective feeling as to probability
or improbability is made the ultimate ground of decision, — but
criticism had no purpose to serve in throwing doubt upon
features of the narrative which it could not but acknowledge to
be in themselves possible, provided its main object was not
thereby imperilled. On the contrary, it was by no means
unfitting that criticism, while usually exhibiting an opposite
character, should here and there show itself somewhat conserva
tive. But again, that revolutionary mode of procedure, which
entirely sweeps away all that belongs to the history of the death
of Jesus, does not rest upon any grave historical objections, as,
for example, discrepancies in the different narratives. Scarcely
once is an objection of this nature even mentioned, far less
proved ; but it shows itself throughout as the consequence of
a fixed preconceived opinion. Nothing more is required than a
glance . at the manner in which Strauss explains the " genesis of
this group of myths," in order to comprehend at once the " genesis "
of his critical operations. " By enduring the death of a criminal,
Jesus lost, according to traditional Jewish ideas, all claim to
138

THE DEATH OF JESUS. 139
recognition as the Messiah. If the disciples wished, however, to
maintain and to justify their behef in Him, no other resource
remained to them except to modify their ancient Jewish concep
tions in accordance with that fact, and by the aid of misunder
stood or misapplied passages of the Old Testament, to adopt
into their idea of the Messiah the characteristic of an interces
sory, sacrificial death. Accordingly, the evangelists endeavoured
to point out, feature by feature, that Jesus had experienced
nothing except that which had been foretold in the Scripture
concerning the atoning sufferings of the Messiah." Criticism
could not have betrayed its tendency more clearly. It does not
conceal the fact that it is not concerned, in the present case,
with the bringing out of historical truth. The historian, Strauss
tells us, has also his philosophy. Here, then, the philosopher is
not content to press the historian into his service, and to compel
him, as often before, to pass over many a weary mile for him,
but he thrusts him entirely aside, because on the present occasion
his assistance is not available. The thing required was to deprive
the behef in the atoning death of our Lord of its historical basis.
Consequently, whatever seemed to afford any kind of support to
this behef was without more ado declared to be a mere phantom
of the imagination. It was alleged that there was not a single
word of truth in the accounts of what took place before the
crucifixion and beneath the cross, or of the events said to have
happened after the death of Jesus, but that the narrators invented
the whole in the interests of a preconceived opinion, being im
pelled to do so, partly on the ground of passages of the Old
Testament, and partly by the utterances of Jesus Himself. This
charge, for which no proof is adduced, and which is a mere
dogmatic assertion, returns upon the head of the criticism by
which it is made. Inasmuch as it summarily and decidedly sets
aside as inventions which are the offspring of tendency, historical
communications against which no objection can be raised from a
historical standpoint, it thereby characterizes itself as tendency-
criticism, and abdicates all claim to serious consideration. How
ever, there is one respect in which we have every reason to take
note of this radical mode of procedure. The history of the
death of Jesus, as it lies before us, must present a very solid
foundation for the behef that it has a sacrificial meaning when
Strauss felt Himself compelled to relegate it unreservedly, and

140 THE PASSION HISTORY.
in all its details, to the region of the mythical. It suggests to
the apologist his course and his goal. So much we concede to
the critical editor of the Life of Jesus, that the manner of
treating history will always be modified by the general view
which is held regarding it. With such a "general view" we
proceed to consider the evangelical narrative of the death of
Jesus Christ. We shall take care that this "view" shall not
deal arbitrarily with the history, nor assert itself on any occasion
in opposition to the history, or at its expense. If, however, it
shows itself to be a key opening up the facts to the understand
ing, making them clear and intelligible, resolving difficulties,
unfolding riddles, and removing stumbling-blocks, then we may
venture to say that faith and history have been vindicated
before each other and by each other. There being on the one
side not " cunningly devised fables " (fivOoi), but real facts, and
on the other, not an airy theory, not " enticing words of man's
wisdom," but a well-grounded doctrine, each supports the other,
and together they afford firm footing, by which we may attain to
the calm and rest of assured conviction.
1. THE CRUCIFIED CHRIST.
According to the representations of the evangelical history,
Jesus suffered crucifixion in the same manner as did ordinary
malefactors who were condemned to endure this punishment. He
was subjected not only to the tortures, but also to the ignominy
associated with it, as well in Gentile as in Jewish estimation.
Here, too, the word of the prophet was so far fulfilled in Him :
" He was numbered with the transgressors." Accordingly the
proclamation of Christ Jesus as both Lord and Christ notwith
standing the cross, was to the Gentiles foolishness, and to the
Jews a stumbling-block. Only to those who were called was the
spectacle of His ignominy a fountain of divine wisdom and
divine power. The evangelists have mentioned in their order the
elements of which the punishment consisted in accordance with
the requirements of Eoman custom, and partly also of the Jewish
law. Their narratives differ in being more or less full, and they
emphasize different parts, but the harmony between them is
complete. These elements are expressed in brief by Peter in his
preaching : " Ye men of Israel : Jesus of Nazareth, being delivered,

THE CRUCIFIED CHRIST. 141
ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain "
(Acts ii. 22, 23). Our Lord was led outside the city, " made
as the filth of the world " and " the offscouring of all things "
(1 Cor. iv. 13), in order to die the death of a transgressor at the
ordinary place of execution in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem,1
" outside the camp" (Heb. xiii. 13). Like all others who were
condemned to this punishment, He too was compelled to bear
the cross on which He was to be suspended to the place of
execution.2 There was offered to Him that same bitter draught
which it was customary to present to malefactors before their
1 Golgotha, " the place of a skull," denotes the place of execution, and nothing
more. Thus Vorsius has correctly explained the expression. We are certainly not
to imagine skulls lying about, and still less to suppose that it is the object of the
evangelist to state that the place resembled a skull in its form. It is not a descrip
tive expression adapted to the popular mind. Strabo's KupxXal is no argument
in favour of this view, and is not even a plausible analogy. The narrators in
each case add the Greek translation of the name Golgotha, which dates perhaps
from Jer. xxxi. 39 (the hill Goah or Goatha, a defiled spot on the west side
of the city of Jerusalem). They must have had some object in view in so doing.
Had it been done by John alone, one might appeal to the usual habit of this
evangelist, and put it on the same level with the immediately preceding remark, ' ' a
place that is called the Pavement, but in the Hebrew Gabbatha." But the repre
sentation of Mark, namely, "which is, being interpreted, the place of a skull,"
makes it necessary for us to assume something further. There would have been no
reason for translating the word if nothing more than the configuration of the place
was in question. But, on the other hand, there was an adequate reason for it if the
name was derived from the purposes to which the place was applied (tis ri o-raupuo-ai,
Matt, xxvii. 31). We suggest the conjecture that the evangelist had in his mind
Isa. liii. 9 : "And He made His grave with the wicked." It was the wish and
desire of the Jews that their King, having been cast off by them (John xix. 15),
should terminate His career here at the gallows (John xix. 17, 18), that He should
be buried where the condemned were interred, that the lot of Jezebel (2 Kings ix. 35)
should be His.
2 Comp. Artemidor. Onirocrit. ii. 56 (p. 153, ed. Hercher) : ioixiv S o-ravpls tavarot,
xa,) $ poiXXw atirai ffpoo-vi.ovo-tlxt vrportpov avrov faaffra^ti. Plutarch, de Sera num. Vtnd.
(ed. Hutten, X. p. 235) : rai fttv oaifian ratv xoXa^opcevojv ixaffros rm xaxovpyaiv ixtblpit
rot atirov o-ravpov. The words of Plautus also involve a like assumption: " patibulum
ferat per urbem, deinde affigatur cruei." The statement made by the fourth evan
gelist, that Jesus went forth bearing the burden of the cross Himself, is regarded by
Strauss as a correction of the older synoptical representation, according to which it
was borne by Simon of Cyrene. But he regards even the latter representation with
suspicion, as one that might easily have originated from the demand contained in
Matt. xvi. 24, in which those that would come after Christ are commanded to take
up the cross and follow Him. He would prefer that the question as to the person
who carried the cross should be left altogether undecided, rather than admit that the
evangelists have accurately recorded even the smallest particular. The remark made
by Mark and Luke, that the Cyrenian was coming out of the country, has sufficiently
guarded us against the mistake of supposing that he had been compelled to perform

142 THE PASSION HISTORY.
execution.1 And even His raiment, according to the right of
custom, fell to those by whom the sentence of death was carried
that service from the pretorium onwards. As far as to the outside of the gate Jesus
Himself bore His cross. Only there — ifepxipnu, Matt, xxvii. 32 — does the returning.
stranger meet the procession, aud receive the command to take up the burden of
the exhausted sufferer.
1 The custom which was prevalent at that time of handing to criminals immediately
before their execution a bitter, stupefying draught, by which feeling was deadened,
is abundantly certified to by history. But even supposing that the custom may
have been introduced originally from motives of humanity, the draught, on account
of its connection with the punishment of crucifixion, is to be placed in the category
of suffering. As it was bitter in the extreme to the physical sense of taste (K*{<-|,
the head of bitterness — Wlil used metaphorically, somewhat in the same manner as
t]33, vrtpvytov, a. figurative term for the pinnacle, the outermost part), so it was
essentially a Veritable wormwood potion. Now our Lord must have felt the presen
tation of.such a gift as a despite done to Him. At the moment when He was on the
point of emptying the cup which the Father had prepared for Him, what would a
potion have been to Him by which His consciousness would be clouded ? Nothing
else than a "cup of devils !" (1 Cor. x. 21). He tasted it, — bodily refreshment
would have been grateful to Him, — but no sooner did He perceive its nature and
design than He refused it. Consequently there can be no objection to one's recalling,
in connection with this incident, the description given in Ps. lxix. 21 of the
righteous man's sufferings : " They gave me also gall for my meat ; and in my thirst
they gave me vinegar to drink. " And we can easily understand, to say the least,
how some should have found in Matthew's statement, " they gave Him vinegar to
drink, mingled with gall," a modified and tacit citation of the Psalm passage in
question. The assertion of Strauss, however, that the whole narrative was invented,
on the ground of that poetical complaint, requires closer examination. If we
possessed nothing beyond the account of Mark (" and they gave Him to drink wine
mingled with myrrh," ch. xv. 23), no one would have assumed any allusion to the
words of the Psalm. But how, if it appears that the text of Matthew is absolutely
the same as that of Mark, or, at all events, not really different ? It is true, on the
one hand, that we read in the first Gospel, "they gave Him "?|»»," — not oTvov.
However, this reading is found in the Rec. only ; the reading of the best critical
authorities (also of the Cod. Sin. ) is «7»«», which ought unquestionably to be substi
tuted for the common reading, the origin of which is not hard to account for. On
the other hand, again, we undoubtedly find in Matthew the expression "gall"
(Xs*-*)- But we ask what difference is there between " wine mingled with gall " and
" wine mingled with myrrh " ? There is absolutely none. That the word x"X>i was
employed by the Seventy as an abstract term for bitterness (synonymous with mxplx,
therefore the combination "gall of bitterness") is an opinion that may be main
tained, notwithstanding the strong assertion which Meyer makes to the contrary, as
the result of his comparison of all the passages bearing on the point. Similarly, in
the word tr/iupviZuv the idea of the vegetable product itself is entirely subordinate to
that of its effect ; rpiuptiZm = to make bitter. (The Hebrew is -yQ, myrrh from
"¦"ID, to be bitter, from which mno, gall, is also derived.) The expressions wine
mingled with myrrh (itrftupvit/iiiios) and wine mingled with gall are therefore in no
sense different ; the former, like the latter, denotes a bitter hippocras. There is no
reason and no pretext, then, for connecting this feature of the narrative with the
passage in the Psalm. If there be an element in the Passion history in which there

THE CRUCIFIED CHRIST. 143
out.1 At the same time, the treatment which He received was
not entirely the same as that which every other crucified person
experienced. The intention of men and a combination of circum-
is a possible allusion to it, that can be found only in a later passage, which has no
connection whatever with the one to which we are referring at present, where our
Lord is represented as actually receiving the vinegar draught iu answer to His
saying, I thirst. Whether or not there is such an allusion even there, is a question
which we leave undecided in the meantime.
1 Archaeologists have so conclusively proved that those who executed a sentence
of death in those days had a right to the clothing of the condemned, that the
supposition of Strauss, that the incident was excogitated from Ps. xxii. 18, is deprived
of all foundation. The charge, however, which he has ventured to make against
the fourth evangelist of having misunderstood the complaint of the Psalmist, is one
which requires to be examined. Strauss affirms that in the second half of the verse
neither a different act nor a different subject is spoken of from those in the first, but
that what is said in the first half is only more accurately defined in $ie second. He
adds that the passage was thus understood by the Synoptics, and that their narrative
corresponded with their understanding of it ; while John, misled by a mistaken view
of the prophecy, tells us, in the first place, of a division of the clothes, and then of
a casting of lots for the coat, as two different acts. "We can grant so much, that the
Psalmist may have employed the word "qja as well as t*-*Q? (tptinov and l/nano-ftis) in
a somewhat general sense, as indicating raiment or covering (somewhat like i%nns
0-xsvio-puLra, 1 Tim. vi. 8), without intending to distinguish definite articles of
clothing. (Iu cases where this latter is designed, the customary expressions are
lUhS and iXDB*'.) But unquestionably, in the Psalm no less than in the Synoptics,
the ideas of distribution and of casting lots are sharply distinguished from each
other, and both are equally emphasized. There was a twofold proceeding, a dividing
and a drawing lots. And when John, before whose eyes the whole circumstances
took place, perceived that both things were done in immediate succession, the
thought would very naturally occur to him (he is the only one also who makes an
explicit quotation) how completely and how exactly that was fulfilled in Jesus which
David had seen in spirit. The appropriateness of speaking here of successive
acts, notwithstanding the circumstance that the soldiers had no articles to deal
with except the coat and the upper vestment, may be made apparent without our
requiring to fall back on the impossible expedient of including among the articles of
clothing belonging to Jesus the girdle, the head-covering, and sandals (Tholuck even
suggests in addition a shirt of linen). The matter is simpler. The " ™ 'ipnarta, " of
John xix. 23 (notwithstanding the plural form, comp. ch. xiii. 4, 12) denotes the
upper garment merely. This, which was an ample plaited robe that could bo
employed as a covering for the whole person, was divided by the soldiers into four
parts, so that each of them received one part. And it was with allusion to this rent,
TVCfc/t that they said they would not so divide the x'T"'t but decide by lot which of
them should receive it entire. — By the concluding words, "these things, therefore,
the soldiers did " (ch. xix. 24), John calls the reader to linger at this point. Not
that he may dwell an the prophecy which is quoted, but on the incident which is
related, and on the suffering which it involved for Jesus. Whether Luther has
rightly explained this latter in making it arise from the soldiers making sport ofthe
transaction, or whether we are not rather to think oi* their coarse greed, may remain
an open question.

144 THE PASSION HISTORY.
stances co-operated to set Him forth as pre-eminent above all —
richer in sufferings, and the endurer of more abundant ignominy.
It is not at all necessary to enter upon the region of conjecture
in order to establish this opinion.1 It is entirely justified by the
facts which are expressly recorded, and which, we are firmly
persuaded, were referred to by the narrators for this very end.
It is at the same time true that they allow the idea to suggest
itself that a divine purpose was concealed behind, a witness of
the Father to the Son, but they show in the forefront the Man
of sorrows. The goal which was reached did not entirely satisfy
the hierarchical enemies of Jesus, nor allay their bitterness ; even
as the Crucified He was still the object of their persecution, and
up to His last breath they tried to inflict wounds upon Him. It
is from this point of view that a circumstance is to be considered
which is touched, indeed, by the whole of the evangelists, but
which is especially emphasized by John, viz. that our Lord was
crucified between two other condemned persons (and Jesus in the
midst, John xix. 18). True, interpreters are divided as to the
question who is to be regarded as the acting subject in the
Johannine representation (ch. xix. 16—18, " they took Jesus,"
etc.). Most of them are of opinion that the soldiers are here
1 To this region belongs the entirely groundless assumption that our Lord was put
to death in a more painful manner than were other persons who were condemned to
die by crucifixion. This is an assumption which appears to be favoured even by so
early a writer as Tertullian, for it is only so that his assertion can be understood,
"Christum insigniter crucifixum esse-" (adv. Marc. iiL 19). The conjecture, for
instance, that the church Father may have meant by this statement that the feet of
our Lord were also nailed to the cross, is without foundation. It is true that this
was really the case ; it is put beyond all doubt by Luke xxiv. 40.. But this "was the
customary and ordinary mode of procedure among all nations where crucifixion
obtained, except among the Egyptians. Consequently the fact is not disputed even
by Strauss, although the passage Ps. xxii. 17 (only, indeed, according to the in
accurate translation of the Seventy, which, however, would have been no barrier in
the way of the critic) gave him the opportunity of tracing this feature of the narrative
also to a mythical source. He had no interest in doing so at the time. The treatise of
Dr. Paulus, zwei Nagel weniger in den Sarg des Rationalismus (our critic has quoted
it on two occasions in his Leben Jesu, and again in his critique of Schleiermacher,
p. 153, with evident satisfaction ; he must have had special reasons for rescuing it
from the oblivion which it deserved), was a failure in regard to the means which it
employed no less than in regard to the object at which it aimed. On the'one hand,
it could not get over the results of archaeological investigation ; and, on the other
hand, it saw the light at a time when the feet of those who were commissioned to
bury rationalism were at the door. That Schleiermacher also, as has been asserted
coincided with the results at which Dr. Paulus arrived is by no means apparent from
his Lectures on the Life ofjesus.

THE CRUCIFIED CHRIST. 145
referred to, as in Matt, xxvii. 32 sq., because it is of them alone
that the words " they crucified Him " (ver. 1 8) could be used.
But as this view is one which cannot be maintained on gram
matical grounds, so also it takes from the force of the narrative.
Just as Peter in Acts ii. 36 (also ver. 23) makes the charge,
" ye have crucified Jesus," so it is the intention of John also to
bring the Jews into prominence as essentially the acting persons.
The procurator surrendered the person of Jesus to them (irapi-
8(o icev auTot?, John xix. 16) : they do to their King according to
the desire of then- own heart (to 6eXrjp,ari avr&v, Luke xxiii. 25).
They superintend the act which is of course carried out by the
hands of the soldiers. And thus it was by their arrangement
that Jesus was not crucified, by Himself, but in company with two
others, who were probably, like Barabbas, notorious criminals
(KaKovpyoi, Xrjaral) -,1 and it was by their arrangement that He
was lifted up before the other two (comp. Matt, xxvii 38, Tore),
and that He finally occupied the middle place between them.
Their intention was to single out the fiXdatpriptO? as the offender
who merited the heaviest condemnation of all. But thereby
Jesus was distinguished in an entirely different way. He was
set forth as the King who should one day gather all nations on
His right hand and His left; nay more, He thereby received an
opportunity of exercising His high-priestly functions. So much
we may regard as purposes of God to which the counsel of men
was compelled to be subservient.2
1 There was no difficulty in their so arranging ;• it would not even be necessary
for them to come to a previous understanding with the procurator. The two male
factors were Jews. They were condemned to death by the Jewish tribunal itself,
and Pilate had confirmed its judgment. The Sanhedrim, therefore, held them in
its own custody, and had perfect liberty to execute at any time the sentence of death
passed upon them. Barabbas also was confined in the Jewish prison, for we read in
Matt, xxvii. 16 : ux" *$«-»« 'iio-puov, they, the Jews, had him as a prisoner in their
prison. The singular translation of the Vulgate, "habebat," which Luther also has
followed, "he (Pilate) had," etc., is perfectly explicable as to its motive, but it is
opposed not only to the reading of all mss., but also to the Receptus itself. - Should
we follow Meyer in explaining the ux'" as meaning. " the prisoner was a Jew, thus
they had him, he belonged to them," then certainly the view could be brought out
that Barabbas was kept in custody by Pilate ; but it is rather much to ask us to
render words as clear as ux» «« Vitfun by : One of their people was then a prisoner
of the Romans !
2 That Luke intended to typify by the two thieves, as has been asserted, the oppo
sition between the relation of the Jews and that of the heathen to Christianity, the
unbelief of the one, the faith, combined with repentance, of the other, is a fancy
K

146 THE PASSION HISTORY.
The fanatical hatred of the Jews becomes still more apparent
in its whole intensity in connection with the negotiations carried
on between the high priests and the procurator as to the in
scription on the cross. When the writing attracted their notice,
during the progress of the crucifixion of Jesus,1 the joy they felt
at the success of their efforts was rudely interrupted, and they
had no longer any pleasure in looking up at the victim of their
persecution. We have already, in another connection and in a
passing way, given expression to the (conjecture that Pilate erected
this inscription in mockery of the Sanhedrim. But the revenge
which he took on them is to be sought not so much in the
definite terms of the inscription, which the Jews felt so keenly,
as in the thing itself. Archaeological investigations do not lead
to the conclusion that the practice of displaying a written " accu
sation " on the occasion of an execution was an invariable one,
or that it was required by the law. The passages which are
usually adduced from Suet., Dio CL, and Eusebius only show
that this was done in particular cases, as caprice or inclination
dictated.2 If, then, the thought of 'doing so in the present
instance occurred to Pilate after he left the procession which
was moving on towards Golgotha, and when the impression made
upon his mind by all that had just taken place was still fresh,
the contents of the inscription require no explanation, as they
would be determined by the " accusation " brought against Jesus
by the Jews, and on the ground of wliich sentence of death had
which even Strauss rejected. But, of course, he does not fail to attribute to it the
predicate of "an acute conjecture," from a regard to party solidarity.
1 The narrative of Matthew admits of no other view than that the inscription was
not sent at first, but only at a later time, in order to be placed above the head of the
Crucified. The thought of adhibiting such an inscription occurred to the mind
of the procurator only after Jesus had already been led away from the pretorium.
The narrative of John harmonizes throughout with this view. It is only thus, for
instance, that its true value is given to the word iypa-^iv (ch. xix. 19), which can
neither be taken as a pluperfect, nor be understood in the sense of mere contem
poraneousness with what is stated in the previous verse, the idea of subsequency
being excluded. When the high priests noticed the sudden appearance of the in
scription, which was even in itself so damaging to them, and perceived besides that
all the Jews read it with interest, and that the circumstance of its being written in
the languages of all who were assembled made it intelligible even to the proselytes
who had come from foreign countries to the Passover, they hastened back to Pilate,
and begged him to change its terms.
2 The remark of Hesych. has of course no conclusive force : aav)s Xivxt, Xiixai/tx,
iv oj al ypatpai ' A.Hvno-tv iypatpovro orpos rovs xaxovpyovs' rthrat **"s xa) sari rov gravpov.

THE CRUCIFIED CHRIST. 147
been passed upon Him.1 The actual intention of the procurator
was that the words with which he had concluded his negotiations
with the high priests : " Behold your King ! Shall I crucify
your King ? " in the sense in which he used them, and in the
tone in which he uttered them, should flash upon their gaze from
the summit of the cross. That which they had been most reluc
tantly compelled to hear from Pilate's hps, obtains an enduring-
record in the litem scripta. It is probable that they detected in
it something more than the scorn of the Eoman. Their thought
less words : " We have no king but Caesar," by which they
renounced the hope cf Israel, and abandoned their claim to be a
theocratic covenant-people, were by this inscription proclaimed
to all the world. And not only so. For, while we can never
persuade ourselves that Pilate embodied in the writing which he
prepared an expression of his own bslief, yet as the incident was
accomplished subject to the overruling hand of God, and was a
prediction that every knee would bow to Jesus, and every tongue
confess that He is Lord (Phil. ii. 10), the Jews would feel it in
some degree as a testimony borne against them by God. Our
Lord Himself had announced to them at an earlier time that His
crucifixion would be the moment of " His being lifted up "
(vTJrovaOai), John viii. 28, and He had done so still more
recently when tried before Caiaphas, by the use of the expressive
dirdpri.2 It is exceedingly characteristic that they try to shelter
themselves behind words and phrases. But it availed them
nothing. The refusal of the procurator is also to be explained
without assuming that he was the subject of some wonderful
experience. It was, however, a testimony borne to the fact that
1 This becomes especially evident if — as must be assumed from the account of
Matthew taken in connection with that of John, which completes it: — the inscription
ran thus : ovros io-rtv 'Itiffovs o T$a'£aipaios o fiaffiXivs toiv 'lova'aiaiv. Instead of the
io-riv the Jews asked Pilate to write an slpn. An analogous form of inscription is
found in Euseb. H. E. v. 2 (p. 345, ed. Laemmer), where we read in the account of
the martyrdom of Attalus, drawn up by the churches of Gaul : " and being led about
in the amphitheatre with a tablet before him, on which was written in Latin : This
is Attalus, the Christian."
2 The singular circumstance that the early preaching of Peter, as recorded in the
Acts, makes very frequent use of the designation ' ' Jesus of Nazareth, " a designation
which is elsewhere absent from apostolic preaching, is to be explained on the
assumption of a reference to the inscription upon the cross. This is suggested by
the following passages, for example, Acts ii. 22, iii. 6, and particularly iv. 11 :
" This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is become the
head ofthe corner."

148 THE PASSION HISTORY.
in no circumstances would their protest against the truth be of
any use.
It is possible that the enemies of Jesus, in consequence of the
refusal they received, became more unbridled in their mockery
of the Sufferer. This was a weapon with which they could still
wound Him. " Their tongue is a sharp sword ; the poison of
asps is under their lips ; their mouth is full of cursing and bitter
ness." And their bitterness hailed the mournful victory which it
had gained with all the tokens of satisfaction. They draw the
language of their mockery from the words of the inscription, and
point it by alluding to the contrast between the picture and the
writing. The gestures of those who pass by (the shaking of the
head was the token not of dislike, nor yet of satisfaction with
the Sufferer's misfortunes, but of denial) expressed the thought
that this man could not possibly be a king ; and the high priests,
whose interest it was to weaken the force of the inscription as
far as possible, confirmed this judgment by their official seal, and
by the reflections which they added. Criticism denies the credi
bility of this part of the narrative, on the ground that men who
were skilled in the Scriptures would scarcely have used words
which they knew to be recorded in the Psalms (xxii. 8) as the
language of the ungodly ; while, at the same time, it is easy to
see why the evangelists should have put them in the lips of the
opponents of Jesus. The objection has no weight whatever, for
it overlooks the fact that it was a deeply-rooted tendency of the
Jewish mind to judge of the moral worth of any one from observ
ing what befell him. A recollection of the relations of parties
in the Psalm could not, therefore, restrain the mockers from
making use of an argument against the Crucified, which seemed,
from their point of view, so striking and unanswerable. " We
did esteem him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted." And He
was smitten of God, but in a sense which they did not under
stand. His task was patience, and this task He fulfilled.
There is, in truth, no expression by which we can better
characterize the manifestations of the crucified Saviour than that
of perfected patience. It is justified not only by the persistent
silence maintained by our Lord from the time He left the
pretorium, notwithstanding all that happened to Him (as the
Lamb brought to the slaughter, He opened not His mouth, Isa.
liii. 7), but also by the attitude which He expressly assumed at

THE CRUCIFIED CHRIST. 149
the moment when He entered upon the via dolorosa. We see
this in His address to the daughters of Jerusalem, who were
giving utterance to their sympathy in lamentations and in tears.
We have the strongest reasons for specially noting this utterance,
for it is the only one which proceeded from His lips from the
time when He was condemned until He began to suffer the pains
of death upon the cross. Admitting that the sympathy of the
" daughters of Jerusalem " was sincere and profound, and that, as
being a ray of light in the midst of thick darkness, it had some
claim to be noticed by our Lord, it still remains very doubtful in
what tone His reply was given, and what emotion it reveals to
us. The words sound, on the whole, as if that which was offered
was being rejected or declined. No doubt at this awful moment,
so decisive for world-history, mere effeminate commiseration de
served to be repelled, hke the shallow sensibility which charac
terizes modern observance of the day which commemorates His
death. He who has nothing to offer in presence of this spectacle,
except tears of sympathy, does not yet know what the real
facts of the case are. Our Lord withdraws the gaze of the
mourners from His pain as such ; He puts them in a condition
to enlarge their field of vision, and so to learn something of
the meaning of His fate. The obvious allusion to the destruc
tion of Jerusalem, and the terrible scenes which would accompany
it (Luke xxiii. 30), is to Strauss a sufficient reason for doubting
the historical truth of the whole narrative. " Luke betrays an
especial tendency to represent the destruction of Jerusalem as a
punishment for the guilt of the inhabitants towards Jesus." The
utterance in question, however, does not breathe the spirit of
threatening, a view to which its terms gave no countenance
whatever. The grounding statement which follows ver. 30 says
nothing of retribution for the rejection of the Messiah, — much
rather is it a statement containing the germ of the thought which
Peter subsequently developes, namely, that judgment begins at
the house of God ; so that, if the " beginning " be at the house of
God, what an end that must portend for the world ! But although
our Lord was the occasion of the Bachel-lamentations in which
the wailers poured forth their feelings, we do not propose to infer
from this circumstance that He Himself, when on the way to the
place of execution, indulged afresh in those tears which He had
shed net long before when gazing upon Jerusalem from the brow

150 THE PASSION HISTORY.
of Olivet. We may not attribute to Him in this phase of His
Passion any such exhibitions of sympathy. The conclusion which
we draw is a different one. If Christ did not permit the daughters
of Jerusalem to dwell upon the spectacle of His sufferings, if He
asked them to consider especially what His fate involved for
them, seeing it was a sign of the judgment which was brooding
over their city, then we are entitled to draw an inference with
regard to Himself, and we believe that this inference is supported
by the tendency of His words. He has withdrawn even His own
eyes and His own consciousness from His sufferings as such, and
He dwells on the bearing of His cross and the divine purpose in
it. This and nothing else is the ground of the patience which
we have seen Him display from the time when the sentence of
death was passed, — a patience for which there is not only no
analogous instance in the whole domain of history, but which
also differs specifically from those manifestations of patience
which we have formerly observed in Jesus Himself. No one
will say that, during the sufferings which our Lord endured up
to the time He spoke His last word, He ever abandoned it for
a moment. It did not desert Him when He stood before the
servant who maltreated, or the high priest who interrogated Him.
Even then we see Him " enduring the contradiction of sinners
against Himself" (Heb. xii. 3), a point of view under which the
matter has been expressly placed by the Apostle Peter. And, at
the same time, no one will refuse to admit that it was only after
He began His progress towards Golgotha that He was rightly
recognisable as the subject of the prophecy : " He was oppressed
and He was afflicted ; and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb,
so He openeth not His mouth." Only now is His soul surren
dered to patience, only now does He manifest Himself as patience
incarnate. At the moment when He takes up His cross, and
comes into immediate contact with it, knowing that He is to be
made a "curse" thereon for the world in order that He may
redeem it from the " curse," all other thoughts, even all feelings,
are overpowered by the contemplation of the divine purpose.
We may even venture to say that from this time forth our Lord
was wholly in the spirit, to the exclusion of all psychical
emotions. As He formerly lifted up His eyes upon His Father's
harvest field in Samaria, and replied to the entreaty of the dis
ciples, " Kabbi, eat," by saying, " I have meat to eat which ye

THE CRUCIFIED CHRIST. 151
know not of ; for my meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me,
and to finish His work," so now also every other thought, every
painful feeling, is overmastered by the one supreme thought : " I
come to do Thy will, 0 God." Wc, on our part, may find it
impossible not to dwell on the contrast between His entrance
into the city and His departure out of it. Then the saying of
the prophet was fulfilled : " Bejoice greatly, 0 daughter of Zion ;
' shout, 0 daughter of Jerusalem : behold, thy King cometh unto
thee." Now nothing is to be heard beyond the expressions of a
transient sympathy on the part of the women who bewailed Him,
and cursing on the part of the rulers and the people. But He
Himself was not disturbed by this contrast. He did not accept
the sympathy as a solace, nor yet regard the mockery as a trial.
He has meat to eat of which no one knew. This is the explana
tion of His supernatural patience. It has often been maintained
that the designation of Jesus as the Lamb of God denotes the
patience with which He bore His life-sufferings. We have no
reason whatever for rejecting this view, for it is one to which
prophets and apostles have borne witness. But how is it possible
for us to rest content with it ? Unless we make some other
assumptions, this is a representation which is deprived of all
proper foundation, and even the fact of our Lord's patience leads
to a conclusion which is unavoidable. A patience for which
there was no solid reason would not be worthy of admiration ; it
would be an abnormal phenomenon, a form of stoicism or apathy.
But the apostle tells us what are the inferences which must be
drawn from the patience of Jesus, when, immediately after de
scribing it, he adds : " Who His own self bare our sins in His
own body on the tree" (1 Pet. ii. 24).1 This "enduring," this
" taking it patiently " on the part of Him who was " suffering
wrongfully " (ii. 1 9), to an extent which was wholly unparalleled,
draws our attention to a dying such as was never before witnessed
on earth, — not to the innocent death of a righteous man, an Abel,
or a prophet, but to an atoning death for the sin of the world.
The more we are enabled to fathom the depths of this wondrous
1 "We entirely disagree with the usual interpretation, which refers this third Is
(ver. 24) also to the sufferings of Christ, considered in their exemplary character,
and regards the verse as showing, like the two previous ones, our obligation to
imitate Him. How can we speak of imitation in this region ! Atoning suffering as
such excludes the idea of imitation.

152 THE PASSION HISTORY.
patience, as exhibited in the bearing of Jesus when He was
carrying His cross, and to comprehend the incomparably glorious
expression of it embodied in His address to the daughters of
Jerusalem, the better shall we be prepared to understand the
meaning of the death of the Bedeemer.1

2. THE DYING CHRIST.
The standpoint assumed by Strauss made it entirely unnecessary
for him to cast any doubt on the reahty of the death of Jesus.
On the contrary, as he did not believe in the resurrection, holding
that the risen Christ existed only in the imagination of the
disciples, and in that of a Paul, a man who never saw Him in
His literal historical personality, but beheld Him merely through
the medium of the enthusiasm of His disciples, and then in the
mirror of his own heart's imagination, — the statement which he
makes on the subject is perfectly intelligible, namely : " If he
is to be regarded as really dead, concerning the continuance of
whose life there is an absence of all historical information, then
the death of Jesus on the cross is to be regarded as a literal
death." However, he has not closed the door altogether, but has
left it ajar. He refers with suggestive frequency to the circum
stance that Pilate expressed surprise at the speedy death of Jesus,2
and notwithstanding the bitter tone which he uses towards
Schleiermacher (comp. der Christus des Glaubens, p. 151 sq.) —
unfortunately not without reason — in discussing this part of the
narrative, he is not quite able to refuse his assent to the finding
arrived at by this theologian, namely, that the necessity for the
death of Jesus does not admit of being proved dogmatically, nor
its reality exegetico-physiologically. He is most earnest, however,
in his attempts to evacuate our Lord's departure out of the world
1 "We confess that we are absolutely unable to discover how Ritschl can rest
satisfied with the idea of mere patience in regard to the suffering and dying Christ.
On this one ground alone we should feel his theory of the reconciliation accomplished
by Christ to be entirely inadmissible.
2 The clearing up of the fact that our Lord died on the cross much sooner than
was expected, does not depend on the peculiar reflections which have been adduced
by Schleiermacher (L. J. pp. 446, 447). The Sinless One, in whom there was not the
germ of death, who consequently could not die avro/ttirus, was bound to succumb
to a violent death all the sooner on that very account. The assertion of Schleier
macher (Glaubenslehre, II. p. 90): "he who cannot die naturally can neither be
put to death violently," is entirely erroneous, and rests upon a fallacy.

THE DYING CHRIST. 153
of all that appeared to differentiate it from the death of an ordi
nary man. In applying the destructive criticism, with this object
in view, to the seven last sayings of our Lord, he is by no means
influenced by a perception of weak points which expose these
sayings, so to speak, to its assaults;1 but by perceiving that these
utterances of the dying Saviour shed light upon the character and
meaning of His death in such a way as to afford a strong support
to Christian faith, while at the same time involving unbelief in
helpless perplexity. For it is not as if these sayings were mere
accompaniments of the death of our Lord, bearing testimony
simply to the mood of mind in which He gave up His life ;
notwithstanding their verbal similarity, they do not admit of
being compared with the expressions of the dying martyr (Acts
vii. 59, 60); but in these words, — by virtue of these words
themselves, Jesus gave Himself up to death. If we wish to
justify the statement of the apostle (Gal. iii. 1) : " before whose
eyes Jesus Christ hath been depicted, crucified among you," we
might liken the words spoken from the cross to the pencil of the
painter. They hear, that is to say, they see Jesus die.
Our Lord's dying begins with His being fastened to the cross.
1 That which Strauss asserts on the side of their internal improbability is
entirely destitute of weight ; and his way of accounting for their origin is
highly peculiar. The objection which he raises on harmonistie grounds winds
up with the very characteristic reflection: "If we could now ask each of the
evangelists separately, we do not know what th'e two first might say to the
words from the cross, reported by the two others. " No doubt if we were to assume
that the four evangelists were inventors, each one of whom wrote » tendency-
romance on one and the same subject, the question is one which we could not
answer. But such a question would never occur to the minds of those who do not
accept this assumption as a foregone conclusion. Many a centuiy has passed by
without any reader of the Passion history stumbling on the inquiry whether or not
these seven dying sayings proceeded from the lips of one and the same Person.
They have always been regarded as combining to form a harmony, in which the
slightest discord cannot be detected. And as regards their being unequally
divided among the four evangelists, it has been rightly held as a sufficient expla
nation, that Matthew and Mark record the principal utterance of the dying
Saviour, the one which stands in the closest relation to His death, and which
specifically characterizes it ; while the two later evangelists pursue the course
which they follow elsewhere, and fill up or complete the narrative. Moreover,
Strauss proceeds quite peculiarly in this region. While always standing up at
other times for Matthew especially, he here assumes an opposite attitude, and
says that if he could admit as historical any of the words attributed to the
Crucified, they could only be those recorded by Luke and John. But, of course,
even these would fall under the ban, owing to the fixed opinion maintained by
him in regard to the fourth Gospel.

154 THE PASSION HISTORY.
When this act of violence was completed, the threads of His life
began to loosen. Consequently we regard even the first of the
seven sayings as an utterance of the dying Saviour. It is pre
served for us by Luke (xxiii. 34) as follows : Father, forgive
them, for they knoio not what they do. The difficulties which
stand in the way of the interpretation of this passage are not so
much admitted in express terms, as suggested by the assumptions
made by expositors, whereby they betray their perplexity of
mind. But there is a standpoint from which they substantially
disappear. The words have been explained as meaning that our
Lord desired that His enemies should obtain forgiveness for the
great wrong which they had done to> Him ; and, accordingly,
admiration is expressed at the spectacle of that perfect love
which not only fulfils the new commandment, " Pray for them
which despitefully use you, and persecute you," but which also
searches out grounds of forgiveness, thus " hiding a multitude
of sins." ' Only it is questionable whether this standpoint
can be maintained, and whether this- view may not be charged
with weakening the force of the words to an unjustifiable extent.
Undoubtedly the glory of the love of Jesus, as it shines forth in
this utterance, is fitted to rivet, our gaze, and no one can deny
that it stimulates us to imitation -r but to elevate to the rank of
an interpretation a thought which is merely a deduction from the
passage, and which belongs entirely to the region of application,
is of a piece with exhibiting the death of Jesus under the aspect
of a typical martyrdom by a misapplication of the Johannine
statement : " Hereby perceive we the love (of God), because He
laid down His life for us ; and we ought to lay down our lives
for the brethren." It is at once apparent how decidedly the
words of the Suppliant are opposed to this superficial view. We
do not wish to lay stress on the circumstance that it makes
the emphasis rest almost exclusively on the procedure of Jesus
as exhibited before the eyes of the world, and as good as
overlooks the idea of the Son's speaking to the Father. For,
however difficult it may be to see how it should have been the
design of the one literal prayer which our Lord offered from the
1 So Meyer : " There breathes forth from the depths of the heart of Jesus that
profoundest love which sees transgression in the mildest light." This is said after
Grotius, who remarks : " Omissio quod solet aggravare delictum, id affert, quod
ad minuendam aliquomodo culpam pertinet."

THE DYING CHRIST. 155
cross, to commemorate His love to His enemies rather than to
exert an influence upon God, — this difficulty is relieved by
appealing to analogous cases (John xvii.; xi. 42; Luke x. 21,
22). However, there are other and weightier objections still
remaining. Christ never could have characterized the violent
act committed against Him by His opponents simply as a wrong
done to His own Person. And He has not done so. But He
enlarges the circle of their offence, and on the ground of the
axiom, " He that hateth Me hateth My Father also," draws the
condemning inference, " They hated both Me and My Father,"
and finds therein a vindication of the saying, " They hated Me
without a cause" (John xv. 23-25). If, then, the matter in
question was the forgiving of the sinful act which had been
committed, the point was not whether He who was persecuted
and maltreated had love enough to forgive the wrong (to forgive
from the heart, in the sense of Matt, xviii. 35), but whether the
nature of the wrong was such as to admit of its being forgiven.
And should any one maintain that this dying One, who had so
often said in other days, to the exasperation of the Pharisees,
"thy sins be forgiven thee," must still have been in possession of
like power, we reply, that what the words before us bear testimony
to is neither His forgiving them from His loving heart, nor yet
His imparting to them remission of sin by virtue of His divine
authority, but His turning towards His Father with the petition,
" Father, forgive them." But even this requires to be explained,
and the explanation of it is as follows. Our Lord felt that He
was about to enter upon His high-priestly glory, and acted under
the influence of that feehng. At the moment when He was
laying the foundations for it, He permitted the first prophetic
beam of the glory which was afterwards to be exhibited in its
fulness to burst forth. While He was pressing into the holy
place by His own blood ... to appear in the presence of God
for us (Heb. ix. 12, 24), He assumed by anticipation, through
this prayer, that which He was to execute in the future as His
perpetual office, when, having been perfected as the Author Of
eternal salvation, He was to intercede for us as our Advocate with
the Father, in the true tabernacle, seated on the right hand of
the throne of the Majesty in the heavens. Had He not been
fully aware that He was enduring a sacrificial death for the sin
of the world, and that its merit could be made good before His

156 THE PASSION HISTORY.
Father, He might still have declared that He would not accuse
them to the Father (John v. 45), or have expressed a wish that
God would not requite them according to their deed, nor impute
it to them; but we could not understand the presentation of
an explicit prayer such as this, which requests an answer,
and even asks it in the sense of the " Father, I will " of John
xvii. 24. This prayer becomes conceivable and intelligible
only on the assumption that our Lord was at this very time
pouring forth His blood for many for the remission of sins — the
blood which speaketh better things than that of Abel. The
interpreters of Isaiah have for the most part objected to the idea
that the prophetic statement : " He made intercession for the
transgressors," refers to the prayer of the dying Saviour. And, in
truth, this cannot be its proper fulfilment. The prophecy of the
intercession undoubtedly points to the whole high-priestly office
which the servant of the Lord was to assume on the ground of His
sufferings. But in so far as the prayer of our Lord anticipated
the authority of this office and made the first application of the
power vested in it, the exegesis of Strauss is correct when he
asserts that the evangelist here regards as already accomplished
in Christ that which the prophet has there stated of the suffering
Messiah. We now proceed to examine particularly the bearing of the
grounding statement appended to our Lord's saying, with the
object of vindicating the view we have just expressed. Altogether
apart from its contents, it demands, for its own sake, careful
consideration. It was not the way of the Suppliant on other
occasions — a circumstance which we have already dwelt on
more than once— to give a reason for the petitions which He
presented to the omniscient God. In the so-called high-priestly
prayer we find, indeed, that reflections of this nature are inter
woven with the petitions. They are to be explained, however,
by the circumstance that this prayer aimed at the edification of
the disciples as one of its objects. A ground, properly so called,
is not stated, except in the present instance, in any prayer
presented by our Lord, nor yet in the prayer which He taught'
His disciples. Now, the peculiar manner in which it is motived
corresponds to this anomaly. Even the task of showino- the
actual meaning of the statement has occasioned commentators
much difficulty. The attempt, which has been repeatedly made,

THE DYING CHRIST. 157
to limit the application of the petition of Jesus to those who
were the immediate agents in the crucifixion, could not long pro
duce any impression, except that it was a failure.1 The force of
the declaration of Peter, " I wot that through ignorance ye did
it, as did also your rulers," is all the harder to evade, the more
apparent it becomes that he is referring to the utterance from
the cross. And even in the event of its being doubted whether
there is such an allusion in the analogous expressions of Paul
(they kneiv Him not . . . they desired Pilate that He should be
slain, Acts xiii. 27, 28 ; "had they known, they would not have
crucified," 1 Cor. ii. 8), yet we have the direct authority of this
apostle for the statement that the " princes of this world " who
took part in the crucifixion of Jesus did not know, in point of
fact, what they were doing. Any one who examines the account
of what took place between Pilate and Jesus, or who considers
the details of the trial of our Lord before Caiaphas, may well
ask with surprise how this " ignorance " can hold in regard to
them. But this feeling does not justify us in resorting to the
view of Calvin, that Christ did not pray for all promiscuously,
but only pro misera plebe ; nor yet to the expedient of a more
recent interpreter, who maintains that there were exceptions, and
who insists, in any case, on excluding Caiaphas. Still more
inadmissible is it to cut the knot by means of the maxim which
is here introduced into the most inappropriate of all places, —
that sin can never become clearly conscious of itself, that there
is only one (sinful) will which knows quite clearly what it is
doing, — the will of him who was a liar and a murderer from the
beginning. At the same time, even for him who accepts the
saying of our Lord simply and without any reservation, there
springs up the new question, in how far could the presupposed
ignorance (djvoia) supply a ground for the petition : " forgive
them"? The words of Paul to Timothy, "I obtained mercy
because I did it ignorantly in unbelief" (1 Tim. i. 13), un
doubtedly present a very appropriate parallel, but they do not
supply us with any explanatory element. It is usual to regard
1 Still more erroneous is it to withdraw the soldiers altogether from the field of
vision ; particularly on the ground stated so rashly by v. Gerlach in his familiar
BihelwerTc, that they had fulfilled the duty of obedience, and, in this sense, had done
a good work. Those who appear as the immediate "doers " were also the immediate
objects of the prayer ; the beam of grace fell especially on them.

158 THE PASSION HISTORY.
our Lord's statement in the light of an exculpation. But even
were we to grant that the presence of extenuating features
qualifies a sin for forgiveness, while their absence excludes it
(both of which positions we are disposed to dispute rather
than to admit), it would still remain a very doubtful question
whether ignorance, this ignorance, was really sufficient to excuse
the enemies of Jesus. J. Gerhard distinguishes between an
ignorantia which lessens sin, and an ignorantia which aggravates
it, and adds that the sin of which the Jewish opponents of our
Lord were guilty belonged to the latter category. And in this
he is right. It is a view to which the declarations of Jesus
Himself directly point. In the course of His farewell addresses
to His disciples, He says of the Jews the very same thing which
He has interwoven with His prayer on the cross : " they know
not Him that sent Me" (John xv. 21); "they have not known
the Father nor Me " (xvi. 3). And what does He add notwith
standing this, yea, on this very account ? " Now they have no
cloak for their sin " (xv. 22). So far was their " ignorance" from
excusing them, that the saying of the apostle was exactly appli
cable to their case: "they are without excuse " (Eom. i. 20). If
we wish, then, to understand the grounding yap in the prayer of
Jesus, we must not seek the " ground " in elements which would
place the sin of the individuals concerned in a milder light, making
them, as it were, deserving of forgiveness, — worthy of it (worthy
in the sense of the well-known parables), — but it must consist
in a circumstance which leaves the moral merit or demerit of the
persons referred to wholly out of account, and which excludes
every thought of the relative guilt of the separate individuals.
Now the circumstance is this, — the words "they know not"
expressly point to it, — that the sin of the murderers belonged to
the period which is denominated by the apostle " the times of
this ignorance," 1 at which, he says, " God winked, but now com-
mandeth all men everywhere to repent" (Acts xvii. 30). This
period was then "ready to vanish away," and in a very short
time it belonged to the past ; and it was by the guilty act of the
1 An explanatory analogy from the individual life may be found in those trans
gressions committed in the period of early youth, and which are frequently in a literal
sense ayvot/txra, without the idea of guilt being thereby excluded. " Lord," says
the Psalmist, making an instructive and well-grounded distinction, — ' ' Lord, remem
ber not the sius of my youth, nor my transgressions. "

THE DYING CHRIST. 159
Jews, whereby they filled up the measure of their fathers, that
it was brought to a close. However, this supreme transgression
belonged also to the " times of ignorance," and therefore to all
who shared in it the saying of Matthew was applicable (Matt.
xii. 31), that all manner of sin and blasphemy, even sin against
the Son of man, would be forgiven unto men. And this result
was certain, subject to the presupposition which is emphasized by
Paul in various passages, and by Peter in Acts iii. 17 sq. :
" Bepent ye therefore and be converted, that your sins may be
blotted out when the times of refreshing shall come from the
presence of the Lord." And on account of the sacrificial death
of Jesus, a place for this repentance existed, — he who sought it
found it. The opposite of this " ignorance " was " knowledge."
And the doctrine laid down by the apostle is, " If we sin wilfully
after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth
no more sacrifice for sins." When our Lord makes intercession
for sinners from the cross, a scene is presented to our view which
was typified in the Old Testament. The type is made use of by
the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews when he says (ix. 7)
that the high priest entered into the tabernacle, not without blood,
which he offered for the errors (dyvvyfidrcov) of the people. The
dyvorj/uira1 were entirely covered by the terms used by Jesus
in His prayer, " they know not what they do." But it was
for the very purpose <of atoning for these " errors " that the
high priest entered into the Holy Place with blood. And so
if our Lord, when He was about to shed His blood, presented
a petition which was thus grounded, nothing is left for us but
to admit that the first utterance spoken from the cross shuts us
up to the conclusion that the death of Jesus was an atoning
death. The second of the seven last sayings is also reported by Luke,
and it leads to a similar conclusion. It is true that the two are
1 In the fundamental passage, Num. xv. 25, a distinction is drawn between sins
committed n*U*S'3 and those committed HDT T'3 laxovo-ias and U x"(l vvipnQxvias
api.apra.vuv). The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, however, does not avail
himself of this distinction. To him all sins are iyvo»ptara, and rightly so, inas
much as they had been committed in tbe times of ayvoix. Yet he is also familiar
with the idea of sinning wilfully ; but, according to him, it is applicable only after
the knowledge of the truth has been received, and he understands by it apostasy
from Christ,— trampling the Son of God under foot, and counting the blood of the
covenant an unholy thing.

160 THE PASSION HISTORY.
separated from each other by a greater or less interval of time.
The mocking speeches of the Jews come between. It was by
these that one of the malefactors was incited to speak blasphemous
words against Jesus, and these again induced his companion in
suffering to make his contrasted confession. Yet this interval
must not make us overlook the close connection which obtains
between the first saying and the second. When Strauss says that
it is inconceivable that a criminal, who undoubtedly came now for
the first time into contact with Jesus, should have understood,
without any preliminary instruction, the doctrine of a suffering
and dying Messiah ; and again, that he should have accepted the
answer of our Lord in the sense which corresponded exactly with
what he (the critic) regards as the fundamental feeling of Jesus,
he misses the point at which an objector might raise a question.
For no one can regard it as an improbable thing that a criminal,
especially amid his dying necessities, should have been led to a
believing repentance — (this is the only thing which is here in
question, and not at all the " comprehending of a doctrine," as,
for instance, in Acts viii. 31) — through an immediate vision of
the crucified Christ, save he to whom the analogous cases in the
Passion history itself (comp. Luke xxiii. 47, 48), and the in
numerable later testimonies of a similar character belonging to
every century of the Christian era, are non-existent. But, for all
that, the answer given by our Lord to the appeal of the suppliant
undoubtedly presents many difficulties. It has been characterized
as a kingly manifestation on the- part of Jesus discovering to us
the acting of Him to whom the Father gave "power Over all
flesh," and into whose hands He gave all things. In the con
sciousness of this, it is said (" Jesus knowing," John xiii. 3), our
Lord already justifies the saying, " All power is given unto Me
in heaven and in earth." No doubt this mode of view is so far
correct. We have already laid emphasis on the fact that the
spectacle of the Crucified, the inscription over His head, the two
malefactors on His right hand and His left, set Him forth
prophetically as the King who was one day to appear and to
accomplish what was parabolically represented in Matt. xxv. 31 sq.
Eut yet the explanation in question cannot be regarded as
adequate. True, indeed, the thief betook himself to the future
King. As Joseph said to Pharaoh's butler, " Think on me
when it shall be well with thee, and show kindness, I pray thee,

THE DYING CHRIST. 161
unto me" (Gen. xl. 14), so he asks our Lord to remember him
when He attains to His royal glory. But this petition of his
receives a promise just as little as the analogous one presented
by the sons of Zebedee, that they might be permitted to sit on
His right hand and His left in His kingdom. " It is not Mine to
give," was the answer, " but (it shall be given to them) for whom
it is prepared." (Comp. the similar expression in the parabolic
delineation, Matt. xxv. 34 : " Come, ye blessed of my Father,
inherit the kingdom prepiared for you.") The remark is usually
made, that our Lord accorded to the malefactor more than he
asked, since He substituted for the indefinite future " when
Thou comest " the day then present, and for the no less indefinite
" remember," a promise of most gracious import, confirmed by
the attesting dp.i,v. It is unnecessary to dispute over the question
of more or less. But so much is certain, that the solemn promise
of Jesus was not entirely covered by the petition which the
malefactor addressed to Him. The relation between them is
similar to that which obtains between what Jesus said to the
Jews: "If a man keep My saying, he shall never see death"
(John viii. 51), and the words He addressed to His disciples:
" I appoint unto you a kingdom," etc. (Luke xxii. 29, 30) ; or,
still more appropriately, to the relation between the apocalyptic
beatitude : " Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from
henceforth" (xiv. 13), and the later one: "Blessed are they
which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb " (xix. 9).
For what is the true and proper import of the promise made to
the thief? Many interpreters, for reasons which are entirely
intelligible, dwell principally on the expression "in Paradise."
It seems to lift the veil from a mysterious region into which the
eye desires to look. But not less intelligible is the course pursued
by others, who turn away their attention from the local designa
tion, and make the emphasis rest on the words, "thou shalt be
with Me." In taking this course they have Christ's own authority
on their side. For, when our Lord prays, saying : " I will that
they also whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am "
(John xvii. 24), or when He makes the announcement, " where
I am there shall also My servant be" (xii. 26), the idea of
locality is in both cases entirely absorbed in the prominent idea
of fellowship. No doubt it is the business of exegesis to see
that the expression " thou shalt be with Me,'* no less than " thou
L

162 THE PASSION HISTORY.
shalt be in Paradise," obtains its due force ; only this duty is
certainly not fulfilled in regard to the latter expression when we
avail ourselves as much as possible of material conceptions. Meyer
accuses Hofmann of rationalizing the representation of Paradise.
Others, again, have charged this investigator with seeming to deny
the descent of Jesus into Hades. They have been those to whom
this descent meant something more than the reality of His death,
and who thought of an activity exercised by the Saviour after
His decease, in the death world. But it is only in the apocryphal
writings that we read of any such activity ; the canonical Scrip
tures neither speak of nor yet presuppose it. The exegesis
which imposes this doctrine on them is both arbitrary and
erroneous.1 If, then, we know nothing else, and have nothing
further to say of the condition into which Jesus entered after
His death, than that which may be drawn from His own words
when dying : " Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit,"
assuredly no one is liable to the charge of rationalizing who tries
to understand the words " thou shalt be in paradise " by means
of the words "thou shalt be with Me." On the contrary, the
charge is one which falls back with redoubled weight upon those
by whom it is made. Since Meyer understands by Paradise the
part of Hades in which the souls of the righteous remain after
death until the resurrection, he cannot evade the consequences
which Schleiermacher frankly acknowledges to be involved in this
view, when he says (L. J. p. 453), that this was not the time,
nor yet the place, for removing false conceptions of the future
state, but that Christ acquiesced in an erroneous view of it.
Consequently, there was an accommodation on the part of our
Lord ! The remembrance of the mischief which has been done
by this theory is still sufficiently fresh to warn us against having
anything to do with it. Eisenmenger's Entdecktes Judenthum is
therefore not the proper source from which to draw materials for
explaining the utterance of Jesus which we are considering. It is a
pity that so much learning has been expended in attempting to gain
insight into its meaning by this path. When our Lord speaks of
Paradise, it is not His wish to excite any other thoughts regarding
it than those which the Scriptures of the Old Testament would
1 The interpretation given by Calvin of the passage in the first Epistle of Peter
(iii. 19) is one which we may reasonably hesitate to adopt, but the method pursued
by this expositor in dealing with the passage is entirely sound and just.

THE DYING CHRIST. 163
suggest.1 Every Jew knew of Paradise from the Scriptures, and he
knew from them also what was the meaning of " being in Paradise,"
just as every child knows it in our own day. It means, on the
one hand, a condition of innocence ; and, on the other, a condition
in which immediate fellowship with God is enjoyed. Into this
condition our Lord's promise to the thief said that he should
enter, that same day, through the gate of death which was then
opening to receive him. It meant that, when he should have
died, sin and guilt would he behind him, forgiven and forgotten
(just as the state of innocence lay behind our first parents when
they were driven forth from Paradise), and that on this account
his departure from the world would be a transition to the vision
of God (comp. Bom. vi. 7, 1 1 : " He that is dead is freed from
sin . . . dead unto sin, but alive unto God"). But on what
does the promise rest ? We can fall back on the common ex
pedient, and say that this malefactor died in the Lord, and that
those who die in the Lord, or, as it is elsewhere put, those who
sleep in Jesus, are blessed in the full sense of the word, includ
ing all that it presupposes and involves. However, the expression
of Jesus makes a more definite answer possible for us. " Thou
shalt be with Me" — that also Jesus said in His reply to the
suppliant. It is certainly quite inadmissible to take the words
" with Me," and then simply to declare, with a recent interpreter,
that they are equivalent to " through Me." But we are just as
little entitled to understand the preposition in the sense of mere
co-existence.2 The reason for choosing it is not difficult to dis
cover. Thou shalt be with Me, said our Lord, in relation to the
future. But there was a sense in which a " with " applied even to
the present. The circumstance that the thief himself made the
sharpest distinction between himself, a criminal, and the Innocent
One, who had done nothing amiss, suggests to our minds all the
more forcibly the saying of the prophet : " He was numbered with
the transgressors," especially as the evangelist Mark saw a fulfil-
1 The same holds of the two other passages in the New Testament in which the
expression occurs, 2 Cor. xii. 14 ; Rev. ii. 7.
2 "Whether or not the assertion of Kriiger (Synt. p. 287), that o-iv nvi denotes
coherence and piird nvos co-existence, is a well-founded one in regard to ' classical
Greek, we leave others to decide. As regards the New Testament, however, it
breaks against numerous instances of a contrary description. Between the saying
before us, "thou shalt be with Me," and the Pauline statement, "and so shall we
ever be with the Lord " (1 Thess. iv. 17), undoubtedly no difference can be affirmed.

164 THE PASSION HISTORY.
ment of this prediction in this very association of Christ with male
factors when He was dying on the cross (Mark xv. 27, 28).1 Jesus
suffered the death of a malefactor, dying with them in order that
He might make the lawless partakers of His own innocence and
blessedness. " Father, forgive them," said the first utterance from
the cross ; forgiveness is the burden of the second also. Here the
Saviour presents no petition ; the appropriate prayer was offered
already : " Father, I will that they also whom Thou hast given
Me be with Me where I am," for even this thief was given to
Jesus, and drawn to Him by the Father. Accordingly, instead of
intercession we have announcement. And not mere announce
ment, but a solemn asseveration, a sure promise : " Verily, I
say unto thee." For the presupposition necessarily implied in
the prayer " forgive them," which was presented for the Jews, was
most manifestly complied with in the present case, by virtue of
the malefactor's believing repentance. We see, therefore, in the
answer which Jesus gave to the thief, not a manifestation of His
power as the Son of God, but an application of the benefits of
His sacrificial death to a repentant soul ; consequently, the second
saying from the cross also leads us to the conclusion to which we
were conducted by the first.
The line of thought which we have pursued in examining the
first two of our Lord's dying sayings is one from which the third
seems to withdraw us. We regard as such the exhortation
addressed by Jesus to His mother and to the disciple whom He
loved. It has always been accounted the third, and it is only
by some modern exegetes .that a different opinion has been
advanced. Not to speak of the arbitrariness of individual writers
who, without any reason, make it the .second saying, the conjecture
that it is rather to be reckoned the fourth has found upholders
since the time of Neander. In such matters we must not decide-
on grounds of feeling ; but were we disposed to appeal to such
considerations, the usual method of reckoning would be found to
1 We must certainly admit that this quotation in Mark is open to grave suspicion
on critical grounds. But yet if it be a fact that our Lord (Luke xxii. 37) applied
the passage of Isaiah to His death on the cross, then there is no feature con
nected with the crucifixion in which the prediction was so certainly fulfilled as in
His being crucified between two malefactors. Ritschl felt the passage in Luke so
burdensome that he laconically declares himself of the opinion (I.e. II. p. 26) that
it cannot be regarded as authentic. This is convenient, but it is unwarrantable and
arbitrary.

THE DYING CHRIST. 165
commend itself to the greater number of minds. As regards the
historical relations, on the other hand, the words " after this," John
xix. 28, give to the new view a support as slender as the support
given by another circumstance to the traditional view is strong. The
cry, Eh, Eli, either from being actually misunderstood or wilfully
twisted, occasioned the Jews to say : " He calleth for Elias." But
this stands in so immediate connection with the presenting of the
vinegar-potion, that there is no room between them for the word
spoken to Mary. Accordingly, it must be placed before the plaint
of the dying Saviour. From the fact that it is peculiar to the
fourth Gospel, we might conclude beforehand that Strauss will
dispute its historical credibility. And, in reality, he characterizes
the narrative as a fiction, invented with the view of elevating
John above all the other apostles, and constructed from materials
supplied by an earlier incident which is recorded by Matthew
(ch. xii. 49). Now, to construct a story like the one which lies
before us from the passage of Matthew just mentioned, is more
than the most distorted imagination could have accomplished.
And as to the preference of which John is said to have been the
subject on this occasion, its nature was not such as to enable
it to elevate him to a position superior to that of a Peter. It
entirely vanishes in presence of the words addressed to the latter
disciple : " Thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build
My church." However, the charge of Strauss is not to be dis
posed of with the easy sentence: "This narrative, so lofty and
so penetrating in its substance, so simple and delicate in form, is
unjustly relegated to the category of myths." There is a feature
in it which deserves examination. It is impossible that the
intention of our Lord in this testimonium domesticum (the expres
sion used by Jerome) should have been to provide for the earthly
future of His mother. For whatever view may be taken of the
family relations of Mary, in neither of the two possible cases was
she lonely and desolate as to her outward life. The bond which
was established between her and John is to be regarded, therefore,
from another point of view. Men are wont to speak in terms of
admiration, because our Lord still paid regard to the relation in
which He stood to His mother at the moment when He was
accomplishing the supreme task that had been appointed Him
by the Father. But mere admiration does not advance us a
single step unless it rests on a perception of the real meaning of

166 THE PASSION HISTORY.
our Lord's act. Is the real import of this act apprehended, or
is it not rather missed by the representation that the dying One
turned away His eye for a fleeting moment from His essential
work, and permitted it to rest upon an earthly relationship, and
still more by the extraordinary assumption that He wished to
impress upon the future church the duty of watchful filial affec
tion ? And, on the other hand, is the true import of this third
saying from the cross lost sight of, or is it not rather apprehended,
when it is viewed as standing in a most definite relation to the
atoning death of the Saviour ? Our Lord says : " Behold thy son,
behold thy mother." By these words he assuredly formed a bond
between the two. But there was room for this new bond only
in so far as a pre-existing one was dissolved. It is unnecessary
to appeal to the word " woman," on which too much emphasis is
usually placed ; the scene itself is a sufficient testimony to the fact
that Christ here brings to an end His filial relation to Mary: " That
is thy son, for henceforth I am so no more." It did not cease of
its own accord, so to speak, in consequence of His departure from
the world, but He Himself dissolved it, — He who was then dying
an atoning death. During the course of His active ministry He
reminded Mary more than once of the limitations of her authority.
As often as she interfered unwarrantably with His procedure,
His rebuke followed unhesitatingly. But for all that/the relation
of the Son to the mother continued unbroken. And even death,
considered in itself, would not have prevented its further con
tinuance. For the surviving mother can still speak of her de
parted child, and call him her son. However, the death of the
Bedeemer entirely severed the bond which had existed till then.
He who died for all, withdrew by this death from every natural
or earthly relationship to individuals. Ascending up to the
High-priesthood, which is " after the order of Melchisedec," He
must needs resemble him in appearing also as " without mother."
And when He reassumed His life after this death, He intentionally
kept Himself from the view of her towards whom He had occupied
that special relationship. His making this express declaration
to His mother, and that immediately before His death-agonies,
and still more, His according to her the greatest possible compen
sation for the bereavement which pierced her soul hke a sword,
we willingly recognise as manifestations of filial piety ; but this
must not make us overlook the special truth taught by the

THE DYING CHRIST. 167
incident. It may be clearly discovered in the other part of the
arrangement which Jesus made. " Behold thy mother," He said
to His disciple. The fact of the command being given to this
particular disciple is probably to be explained on the same ground
as His presence in the palace of the high priest, in the pretorium
of Pilate, and here at the cross.1 But how does it come to pass
that He can lay such a command on John with full reliance on
his obedience ? Now, generally speaking, it rests undoubtedly
on the saying that His own would receive now in this time, and
in an increased measure, brothers and sisters, mothers and children,
for His sake and the gospel's, comp. Mark x. 30. The same
Christ who introduces into family circles the sword of division,
so that parents rise up against their children, and children against
their parents, institutes among those who believe in Him new
associations of a better or of a glorified character. But we ask
more definitely, what is the proper foundation upon which these
new associations are based ? Not Christ regarded personally,
nor His word, but His death, or, more precisely, His atoning
death. That which the evangelist John points out (xi. 52) as
the real groundwork of the comprehensive Christian society,
namely, that Jesus " died for that nation . . . that He should
gather together in one the children of God," is also the basis of
the special fellowships which obtain among individuals. He who
was dying " for that nation " forms a relationship between Mary
and John from His cross which could not otherwise have been
fully established, either by a command issued by the highest
authority, or by the willingness of the receiver of the command.
And thus, in point of fact, the idea of the atoning death is one
which the third saying from the cross does not remove from the
field of vision.
In the fourth of the seven last sayings, however, this idea is
presented with the utmost distinctness and directness. This was
clearly perceived by Strauss. It is true that he professes to
reason here also from an exclusively human point of view. But
1 According to the evangelical narratives, John was the only one of the Twelve
who was present during the crucifixion of Jesus. No doubt it has been inferred
from the statement of Luke, ch. xxiii. 49 : " and all His acquaintance . . . stood
afar off," that the whole of the disciples were present ; but in the idiom of the New
Testament, ol yvaaroi ("acquaintance") always means those who are only distantly
related, and therefore seems designed to exclude the disciples who were in a different
category.

168 THE PASSION HISTORY.
the course which he adopts is scarcely intelligible unless it is
explained on a different ground. His assumption that the
evangelists only put the opening words of the twenty-second
Psalm (" which forms, as it were, the programme according to
which they drew up the history of the crucifixion") into the
mouth of the dying Christ, is one which he is not in circum
stances to defend against the obvious objection that mere legend
would certainly not have attributed to our Lord an utterance of
so doubtful a character. Schleiermacher admits that Jesus must
have actually used the words in question ; but just because he
cannot reconcile himself to the idea of Jesus having been the
subject of such an " agitation of soul," and of His relations to the
Father undergoing such an " alteration," he falls back on the ex
pedient that when our Lord exclaimed : " My God, My God, why
hast Thou forsaken Me ? " He had the whole Psalm in view, and
in particular the joyful strain with which it concludes.1 It is
exceedingly strange that those who are elsewhere the foremost to
deny even the slightest relation to Schleiermacher, are the very
persons who here walk substantially in his footsteps. Schleier
macher intended nothing further by the view to which he had
recourse than to make the words of complaint that proceeded
from the lips of Jesus psychologically conceivable. But what
else is aimed at, or what else is gained, by giving to the cry of
our Lord the same sense which the words had for the Psalmist,
1 Strauss is not accurate when he says (Der Christus des Glaubens, p. 159) that
Schleiermacher here followed the older rationalistic theology (even Meyer calls Dr.
Paulus the first upholder of this view). The remark had already been made by
Caspar Sagittarius (in 1684) : "Sunt qui putant, Christum quidem initium hujus
Psalmi clare pronuntiasse, sed eundem integrum una cum sequentibus in silentio
recitasse," etc. He does not, for his own part, assent to the supposition (on
historical grounds); however, he goes so far as to denominate it a pia conjectura.
Whether or not the conjectura is entitled to the predicate of pia is a question which
we leave unanswered. But we decidedly dispute its accuracy or its consistency with
the facts of the case. The representation that our Lord, when He saw death drawing
near, broke out in the plaintive words with which Ps. xxii. opens, that He then
repeated the succeeding portion ol the Psalm in silence in His own mind, and that
when He reached the nK'J? at its close He uttered His nrixto-rai, — this is a repre
sentation which does not harmonize with the supreme significance of the moment.
In Koch's Geschichte des Kirchenlieds, many instances are adduced in which
Christians awaiting death, with a, song upon their lips and in their heart, breathed
out their life with its last strophe. We are. entitled to call such a death beautiful
and edifying. But the death of Jesus was something more than the beautiful end
of a pious man's career, and unquestionably the word "edifying" or instructive is
not the one by which its true nature can be characterized.

THE DYING CHRIST. 169
and then showing, as may very easily be done, that it is just by
a pious man assailed by despair (a despair to which he can be
tempted by the thoughts and feelings excited in his mind through
reasoning on the circumstances in which he is placed) that such
a complaint and question would naturally be uttered *? If our
Lord made use of the words of the Psalm at the time of His
death in order to describe His sorrow, this is very far from im
plying that they had the same signification for Him as they
had for the original subject of the Psalm. And an interpretation
which may admirably set forth the inner situation of the latter,
may at the same time be very far astray, if its findings are forth
with applied to the dying Saviour. A pious Israelite brooding
over Zion's lament in a time of conflict : " The Lord hath for
saken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me," might certainly feel
the first risings of despair within him, and that just because of
his uncertainty as to the " why." But how can the representation
be carried out, that it was necessary for our Lord to undergo a
conflict of this nature even although it immediately issued in
victory ! Buddaeus opposes those who understand the words of
Christ as evidences of His conflict with despair, just as decidedly
as those who regard them as the utterance of despair itself (comp.
Instit. Th. Dogm. p. 785). Of the latter, he says that their view
borders on blasphemy ; and of the former, that they impugn the
sanetitas Christi. But they cast doubt on even more than the
sanctitas of our Lord; they lower Him to the level of a piety
wliich finds it necessary to defend itself against mistaken con
clusions and deceptive feelings. We formerly tried to show that
psychology does not supply us with the proper key for under
standing the scene in Gethsemane, but how much less is it able
to do so in the present instance ! We cannot but regret that it
has been the usual method to place both manifestations of our
Lord under the same view-point, as if they were necessarily and
inseparably connected.1 It is evident that the two cases are
1 This assumption is shared by theologians who are in other respects exceedingly
opposed to each other in regard to the subject before us. On the one hand, Hof
mann thus writes (Schriftbew. II. p. 308) : " The forsakenness of God, of which Jesus
complains on the eross, is not different from His abandonment to the power of the
God-opposed will." And, on the other hand, Delitzsch says (Comm. on the Heb.) :
"In Gethsemane that was in spirit already as good as accomplished which was
brought to pass on the cross in external reality " (thus the external realization was
here everything). We only require to listen to these utterances to feel that such a

170 THE PASSION HISTPRY.
very different. It is admitted by every one, that when our Lord
rose up from His conflict in Gethsemane it was as a victor ; how
then could He sink back into the mood of mind which He had
overcome ? That which is scarcely imaginable on the part of a
Christian man — a mere man — is surely not to be regarded as
imaginable on the part of our Lord. In any case, it is advisable to
withdraw the cry of our Lord from all contact with psychological
experiments. A modern interpreter warns us against the danger
of losing ourselves in " dismal dogmatizing," but there is much
greater danger of our losing ourselves in sentimental fancies.
Luther conspicuously displayed his admirable tact in dealing with
this passage, when he said that the conflict in the garden was by
no means to be regarded as an analogous experience, because God
was here against Him ; 1 " the words admit of no other gloss or
explanation." He means by this that our Lord's plaint over His
abandonment by God could not have proceeded from a mistaken
subjective feeling or opinion, but that it must have been grounded
on an actual objective fact. But this can be really acknowledged
without our acquiescing in the conclusions which have been drawn
from it by church dogmatics. These conclusions, as developed
and stated by Quenstedt, for example,2 offend the Christian con
sciousness as much as they disagree with the real import of the
words spoken by our Lord. For what is implied by the term
" forsake " (iyKaraXelireiv) ? It is obviously evacuated of a great
part of its meaning when there is attributed to it the merely
negative signification that God, to whom " all things are possible,"
had merely withdrawn His sustaining hand. No doubt Paul
used the word in this sense, " persecuted, but not forsaken "
(eyKaraXeiirop,evoi, 2 Cor. iv. 9), but it is not appropriate in the
present connection. If Hofmann has succeeded in placing his theory
of " abandonment to the God-hostile will of the world " in a more
or less favourable light in respect of the scene in Gethsemane, it
blending of things that differ is an arbitrary and unjustifiable proceeding, and a,
token of perplexity.
1 Comp. "Walch, XII. p. 1976. For analogous statements of Luther, see Held.
l.c. p. 160.
2 Comp. his lengthy " Excursus de Derelictione Christi " in the Theol. did. pol.
III. p. 358: "Non quidem Deus pater filio suo ratione personae suae irascebatur,
sed quia peccata totius mundi in se susceperat, non potuit non vi justitiae suae
vindicatricis eum extreme odisse, tanquam peccatorem omnium, quos sol unquam
vidit. maximum."

THE DYING CHRIST. 171
is here — not to speak of the former case — irrecoverably shattered
against a circumstance which is in itself undoubted, and which
has been admirably expressed by Bengel in the words : " Non
solum ait, se a Deo traditum voluntate hominum, sed etiam a
Deo ipso quiddam esse passum nobis ineffabile." On the other
hand, the idea is weighted with a meaning foreign to it when
there is introduced into it a motive which is presupposed or
inferred to exist on the part of God, and when, accordingly, the
iyKaraXeiireiv is accounted for on the ground of an " extreme odisse,"
or even of an " irasci." No doubt the question of motive is one
wliich we must inquire into, for it was raised by our Lord Him
self when He used the word " why." But the supposition that
the Father was moved by any such ground of action is one which
could never have been admitted by Him who said (John xii. 2 7) :
" For this cause came I unto this hour." Our Lord gives a general
explanation of the interrogative expression in an earlier connec
tion. To " forsake " means to be "left alone," comp. John viii. 29,
xvi. 32. The view to which Christ gives utterance in the latter
passage : " And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with
Me," is one which He cannot continue to maintain, apparently
at least, in the present instance. However, the precise moment
of the complaint must be observed. It was the moment of
His dying. When He says : " Why hast Thou forsaken Me ? "
He suffers death. If dying be contemplated as a departing from
the phenomenal world, or as an enveloping of the spirit in night,
then indeed we cannot yet use this language, for we know that
our Lord spoke " in the world " (John xvii 1 3) in full possession
of His consciousness, even after the fourth saying from the cross.
But if we are thinking of the death-stroke properly so called^
the death-struggle, the death-agony, the atSives Bavdrov, then
we maintain that He emptied His death-cup (" tasting death for
every man") when He uttered His mournful cry. Is not this
seen to be implied in the words themselves as soon as they are
carefully considered ? How could the Son die otherwise than
when the Father (of whom He said : " The living Father hath
sent Me, and I live by the Father," John vi. 57) forsook Him
and gave Him up to death ? And in what else could the tasting.
of death essentially consist, except in this very abandonment by
the Father Himself? The apostle's description (Heb. ii. 9) of
the "suffering of death" by Jesus points also in the same

172 THE PASSION HISTORY.
direction: ottoj? x&i/h? Qeov virep iravrb<; yevatjrat Oavdrov.
/Undoubtedly the sting of death is sin, — that is, sin in so far as it
[receives its strength from the law (1 Cor. xv. 56). And as our
Lord in Gethsemane took upon Himself the sin of the world
(" made sin for us "), and bore it upon the cross (" being made a
i curse for us "), He unquestionably felt this " sting of death " when
He was dying. But because sin was ever a foreign thing to His
[person (" without sin "), because it was never excited in Him by
[the law, which therefore had nothing at all in Him (in the sense
,of John xiv. 30), only an express divine volition accomplishing
itself in the eyKaraXelireiv could make Jesus feel the power
|vhich death had gained through the medium of sin. God
jiad decreed that He should feel this power, and carried His
decree into effect. But it was the "just," the "becoming"
"course, that which " behoved " to be. The essence of sin consists
in this, that men have forsaken God, the fountain of life ; and,
on the other hand, the inevitable curse of sin is, that God must
needs forsake men, and abandon them to death and destruction.
The Saviour took upon Himself the sin of the world. He steps
into the world's place. So death comes upon Him, a death which
is accomplished in Him by virtue of a " forsaking " on the part
of God. This is the " ineffabile," to quote Bengel's expression,
which Jesus suffered at the hand of His Father, and it explains
the " why " of amazement with which His plaint begins. We
have been induced to dwell so long on the fourth utterance from

1 We have no doubt of the accuracy of the reading xu('s &i"''- The circumstance
that all the mss. which are now accessible contain x*(>r' ®u" is counterbalanced by
the fact that Origen found xuP's in the majority of the mss. existing in his time.
The critical remarks of Bengel are entirely just. For the way in which it is
customary to account for the origin of the variation, namely, that it is an addition
suggested by 1 Cor. xv. 27, is destitute of all probability. Such an addition in the
middle of the eighth verse would have been quite intelligible, but how it could have
pushed out the x*P,T> in ver- 9 is more than we can discover. We have no occasion
to go into the passage further at present ; we merely assert that the statement that
Jesus tasted death for all x"-P,TI e'-""> appears to us foreign to the apostle's line of
thought. Delitzsch has alleged, it is true, that x*P'TI is the emphatic word in the
object clause ; but he has only alleged, not proved it. The following, "for it be
came Him," is explanatory not of a x*Pm &t°", but well explains a foregoino- x"P>s
®iou. The intention was to bring into prominence the extent of the Son's being
made lower than the angels, the essence of His " suffering of death ; " but there was
no occasion to emphasize the "grace " which was manifested in it. Even the choice
of the word "taste" appears to be rightly explained only on the assumption that
the original reading was xA's-

THE DYING CHRIST. 173
the cross by a desire to avoid the danger of importing into it more
than it contains (an error into which church dogmatics has
undoubtedly fallen here), and also by a wish not to weaken its
force, as those do who explain this weighty cry on the ground
of a subjective feeling on the part of Jesus. But if our"!
interpretation be the accurate one, then the conclusion cannot
be evaded, that at this moment the dying Saviour must have
made atonement for the sin of the world ; that He here accom
plished what the counsel of God had decreed for human salvation ;
yea, that this was the essential and proper point looked forward
to by the words with which He brought to a close the feast He
celebrated with His disciples : " that the world may know that
I love the Father; and as the Father gave Me commandment,
even so I do. Arise, let us go hence." 1
The understanding of the fifth of our Lord's last sayings de
pends in reahty on the way in which we connect the clauses in the
narrative of John (xix. 28). Two courses are open to us. The
one makes the apodosis begin with the word " saith," and regards
the words : " that the Scripture might be fulfilled," as belonging
to the previous part of the verse. The other, again (which is
adopted for obvious reasons by Strauss), makes the apodosis begin
with the word " that," and thus the sense yielded by the verse
would be, that when Jesus knew that all things were now
accomplished, He uttered the words " I thirst " with the object
of fulfilling the Scripture. We have no doubt that the former is
the accurate view. We are driven to this conclusion even on
grammatical grounds. In the other case we should be obliged
to assume an arrangement of words which is quite unusual in
John, and which is entirely opposed to the genius of his literary
style.2 But even if this objection were set aside, it would be
'"We have noted with regret the interpretation of this "fourth saying" given
by Ritschl (I.e. II. p. 156). He says that he wishes to give an intelligible
' ' answer " to the question, What is its meaning ? Starting from the idea that the
Psalmist is only expressing a hypothetical judgment, he finds also in the cry which
proceeded from the lips of Jesus no more than a " conjecture " that He was forsaken
of God, a conjecture wliich did not correspond to the objective fact. This answer is
certainly "intelligible," — it is only too intelligible, — but in such matters mere
intelligibility is not the first quality. We fear that the whole of theology may in
this way be turned into a theology of mere " conjectures."
2 A comparison of all the passages in which "»« is used in the fourth Gospel shows
clearly that it is not the habit of John to begin an apodosis with this particle, and
that he very seldom puts it at the beginning of a sentence at all. In the few cases

174 THE PASSION HISTORY.
something more than hazardous to meet the explicit declaration :
" Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished," with
the assertion that one thing was excepted, and that our Lord, by
acknowledging His thirst, brought upon Himself the remainder,
the varepr]p,a of His Passion in order that the Scripture might
be " completely " 1 fulfilled. This view, which is not reconcilable
with the phraseology employed, and which is excluded by the
expression " all things," and especially by the word " now "
(already), would certainly not have occurred to the- mind of any
one unless he had been proceeding on the assumption that the
partaking of the vinegar was also a fulfilment of Scripture, and
that it was related by the evangelist for that very reason. We
reject the assumption in question not with the view of avoiding
all contact with the Straussian " Passion programme," but because
we consider it to be in itself destitute of foundation. It was
not necessary that all the features which are supplied by the two
Psalms in order to make up the picture of a suffering righteous
man should have realized themselves in Jesus (if so, then some
thing more than the drinking of the vinegar would have still
remained), nor yet that every single experience of suffering through
which He actually passed, , according to the narrative of the
evangelist, should have recalled predictions of the Old Testament.2
The likeness between the passage : " they gave Me vinegar for My
drink " (Ps. lxix. 22), and the passage before us, is too much of a
where it seems to go before the finite verb (ch. xix. 31), the sentence which it intro
duces is a parenthetical one. We should regard a proposal to begin the apodosis in
the text before us with 'iva in the same light as we should view a like proposal in
reference to a passage which is precisely similar in its construction, ch. xiii. 1 (iHais
. . . on . . . 'iva).
1 The assumption that nXuovv is a stronger word than nxiiv, and that it designates
a complete fulfilment, is unquestionably one which cannot be justified from New
Testament usage. The remark of Bengel, that rsXuv is appropriate to "things," '
and nXuoZv to the Holy Scripture, is entirely correct. The fact that the evangelist
uses reXuovv in the latter part of the verse instead of the usual vXypovv, is to be
explained by the connection between the nXsioitris of the Scripture and the accom
plishment of the work of Jesus Christ. But His not repeating the word nXih in
the second case is accounted for, not by a wish to vary the expressions employed,
but because, while one can speak of a nXuv in relation to ra yiypapoptivx, there is
no instance of the formula rtXurai « ypntpri being employed.
2 When the undoubted truth that the work of Jesus was completely prefigured as
to its fundamental features in the Old Testament is so treated that the whole details
are tacitly substituted for the fundamental features, then there is a risk of the
emphasis ceasing to rest on what took place, and being put on the circumstance that
prophecy has not proved delusive.

THE DYING CHRIST. 175
surface character to strike us as being prophecy and fulfilment.
The subject of the Psalm complains of His thirst, and of the
mockery of His enemies in presenting Him with vinegar for its
alleviation. Our Lord also says : " I thirst ! " But the suffering
which He now endures, and which He is said to bring deliberately
upon Himself by means of the cry " I thirst," is not placed in
the thirst itself, but in the fact of His being given vinegar to
drink. Now the representation that our Lord intentionally brought
about a part of His own sufferings we cannot quite comprehend.
But still less are we able to perceive how the dying Saviour
must have regarded the potion which He received as an afflic
tion. He longs for something to allay His thirst, and there is
offered to Him that which was at hand (eKeiro). No serious
objection can be made to the reasonable assumption that it was
the drink of the Boman soldiers. Yet we must not change this
" vinegar " into the " wine mingled with myrrh " which our Lord
rejected previous to His crucifixion. If we place the two passages,
Mark xv. 23 and 36, side by side (" and they gave Him to drink
wine mingled with myrrh : but He received it not ; " " and one ran
and filled a sponge full of vinegar . . . and gave Him to drink "),
we see that everything is different ; the potion, the design of
those giving it,1 and the procedure of Him to whom it was given.2
And so far are we from discovering in the action any intention to
wound Jesus, that we feel constrained rather to apply to the indi
viduals concerned the gracious saying : " I was thirsty, and ye gave
me drink." (The reader may compare together the passage first
cited, Matt. xxv. 35, and Mark xv. 36 : " one ran and . . . gave Him
to drink." 3) But in parting from the view which has just been
1 It is quite true that the vinegar was given to our Lord amid the mockings of the
soldiers. But the mockery was merely an accompaniment ; the giving of the vinegar
was not itself an act of mockery. John is entirely silent as to these expressions of
mockery ; for this evangelist, after telling us of the division of our Lord's garments,
does not relate one single item of the circumstances whereby suffering came upon
Him through the agency of the world.
2 The circumstance that this difference is so prominently marked in the narrative
of Mark in particular is all the more important the more we recognise tbat it was
just by this evangelist that details of that character were recorded with peculiar
exactness. 3 It is characteristic that those who regard the giving of the vinegar as an act of
great despite done to our Lord, feel themselves constrained to assume that it had a
symbolical meaning, and say that Jesus intended thereby to foreshadow the attitude
which the world would take up in the course of the centuries towards Him and His
adherents, — its gratitude for the benefits of the gospel, a vessel full of vinegar!

176 THE PASSION HISTORY.
stated, and which we decidedly reject, we are met by two questions,
namely, why did our Lord give expression to the cry, "* I thirst ; "
and further, on what ground and in what interest has the evangelist
described the scene ? The answer generally given to the former
question is very simple. Christ said : I thirst, in the same sense
as He said to the woman of Samaria (John iv. 7) : " Give Me to
drink." He asked for something to drink, in order that the
agonies of physical thirst might be allayed. Hofmann's conjec
ture, that He wished to ward off fainting by means of a restorative,
so as not to die in a state of unconsciousness, has not succeeded
in gaining much assent. But there is no necessity for having
recourse to any such expedient. It was in our Lord's power,
after the suffering appointed for Him by the Father was accom
plished, to remove any painful sensation which admitted of being
overcome ; yea, it belonged to the glorification of His patience
and obedience that He should accept the precise cup which was
appointed for Him from above without wishing to endure more
than just what this cup contained. The words : " Jesus knowing
after this," etc., deserve consideration. It has already been
remarked that they are not intended to convey the impression
that the new feature which is about to be narrated belongs to
the time immediately succeeding that at which our Lord took
leave of His mother ; they are to be • taken generally as desig
nating a later time (as frequently in John, e.g. ch. v. 14). The
saying in which our Lord confessed His thirst is intimately
connected with the saying of which John is silent, the cry : " Eli,
Eh," which the Bedeemer uttered on receiving His death-stroke.
But therewith everything was accomplished,1 that the Scripture
might be fulfilled, and consequently our Lord was now at liberty
to bring about the satisfaction of His painful thirst.
Apart from numerous other obvious objections, we confess that we are unable to
maintain the view that our Lord could have intended to close His career with a,
symbolical action, especially with one which would imply an accusation against the
world for which He laid down His life.
1 We are surprised to find Hofmann saying that everything was not then com
pleted; that "the last thing that had to take place was that Jesus should die"
(Schriflbew. II. p. 314). Naturally we do not appeal to our interpretation of the fourth
saying from the cross, inasmuch as it may be disputed, but to ver. 30 iu the repre
sentation of John. The explicit declaration rtrixso-rai, which is in the perfect tense,
was made before our Lord bowed His head and gave up the ghost. The death, then,
is to be regarded from another point of view than that from which Hofmann has
looked at it.

THE DYING CHRIST. 177
It is much more difficult, however, to answer the question :
In what interest did the evangelist record the incident ? Un
questionably not in a purely historical interest ; the event itself
was of deeper significance for him. But to what extent was his
purpose a historical one ? Men have always felt the difficulty
which has been prominently brought forward by Hengstenberg
in his Commentary on the Gospel of John (of course, with the
object of vindicating his own view of the scene) : " Jesus would
certainly not have asked simply for something to drink when He
was in the immediate neighbourhood of death; He could not
possibly then devote one of His seven sacred sayings to the
relief of a merely physical want." And it was with the object of
satisfying this feeling that a view was put forward which was
formerly a very common one, namely, that our Lord was not so
much expressing a physical feeling, as the thirst of His soul for God,
or for the salvation of men. Now-a-days this view has been tacitly
abandoned almost on all hands ; it is shattered against ver. 2 9, on
which the. evangelist immediately makes the whole emphasis rest.
But there is no need of resorting to these allegorical and arbitrary
devices in order to understand the wonder with which the course
of events was watched by the eye-witness who records them.
The " I thirst " involves the same presuppositions as the first
saying which proceeded from the lips of the crucified Saviour.
It is a mirror, by means of which John gazes into the same great
heart of love which the petition contained in the first saying
presented to his view. For to whom did the thirsting One turn,
and what was implied in His stating His need to them 1 Even
ordinary experience teaches us that it is much easier to heap coals
of fire on the heads of one's enemies, or even to pray to God on
their behalf, than to present a request to them, or accept a favour
at their hands. He who can do this manifests, in truth, a love
which is not native to this world. And yet we must not point
generally to the inexhaustible store of the divine love with
the view of explaining this act. The mere idea of forgiving love
was not found sufficient to explain the prayer of Him who was
lifted up on the cross ; there was required the further idea that
only the dying Beconciler was able to say : " Forgive them ; " and
a like thought underlies the saying": " I thirst ; " the Scyjrco also
reflects the love which has accomplished the work of reconciliation
or atonement. M

178 THE PASSION HISTORY.
The sixth saying states in express terms that this atonement
is accomplished. It can have no other meaning. It must
have the very same signification as the rereXearai of ver. 28, so
that we now hear from the lips of Jesus that wliich was already
present in His consciousness, before He partook of the vinegar.
The expression (" It is finished ") points neither to the Passion,
now over and gone, nor yet to the accomplished fulfilment of
Scripture. The parallel usually adduced, Luke xii. 50 ("I have
a baptism . . . how am I straitened till it be accomplished!"),
justifies the former view just as little as the declaration of Jesus,
Luke xxii. 3 7 (" This that is written must yet be accomplished
(reXeaOrjvai) in Me ... for the things concerning Me have an
end " (reX,o?)), suffices as a foundation for the latter. It is a work
which is described as having been accomplished. But again, any
reference to the Pauline expression : " I have finished (rereXeica)
My course," would be introduced here quite irrelevantly. Our word
rereXearai cannot claim to be so comprehensive, because at an
earlier time our Lord had already said to His Father, in reference
to His active work : " I have finished the work which Thou gavest
Me to do." His eye cannot be resting afresh upon that which
is there represented by Him as already finished. There is no
avoiding the conclusion that the work to which He refers is
nothing else than the suffering of death, the fulfilment of the
divine commandment, which pointed to the laying down of His
life, the giving of Himself a ransom for many. And He now
proclaims this work to be finished, just as it was already virtually
finished before the vinegar touched His lips, inasmuch as He
received His death-stroke and accomplished the expiation of sin at
the time of the cry: Eli, Eli. The rereXearai points to the entrance
of the High Priest into the Holy Place by His own blood, after
He had obtained eternal redemption, and by virtue of it He
Himself appears as reXeiwOel<;, as perfected Mediator, and as the
Author of eternal salvation to all those who believe in Him. It
may be asked, To whom did our Lord address the saying, " It
is finished," and for what reason was it spoken aloud ? The
answer to the former question cannot be doubtful. True, the
saying is not exactly in the form of a prayer ; but yet it is
addressed, in the first place; to the Father, just as were the
words : " I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do "
(ch. xvii. 4). Our Lord tells the Father, who had sent Him into

THE DYING CHRIST. 179
the world to do a special work, that He has finished that for
which He " came unto this hour." And we may maintain further,
that in the cry by which Jesus announced the completion of His
obedience there was also involved the desire : " and now, 0
Father, glorify Thou Me " (John xvii. 5) ; and especially that this
was the moment in which the saying was completely realized :
" Called of God, an High Priest after the order of Melchisedec "
(Heb. v. 10). But an additional object was served by the cry
being uttered aloud. (Whether the " loud voice " mentioned by
Matthew and Mark refers to this sixth saying, or rather, as we
might suppose from the narrative of Luke, to the seventh, cannot
well be decided.) Just as it was designed that the disciples
should hear the high-priestly prayer, so also this rereXearai was
intended to sound in the ears of the world — earth hear ! To
that world on whose behalf the atonement was made, its accom
plishment is announced. The preaching of that gospel of
reconciliation, which fills the centuries with its echoes, hangs on
the rereXearai, which proceeded from the mouth of Jesus ; on it
rests that great apostolic utterance : " God was in Christ recon
ciling the world unto Himself . . . and hath committed unto us
the word of reconciliation. . . . We pray you in Christ's stead, be
ye reconciled unto God" (2 Cor. v. 19, 20).
The remark has often been made, that the seventh utterance
from the cross resumes the customary word " Father," after the
more frigid and distant word Eli. But this remark has no point,
except on the assumption that the fourth saying bears testimony
to a conflict on the part of Jesus. Had it seemed good to our Lord
to utter His rereXearai in the form of an address to God, He would
no doubt have added to it the word " Father." Now, as to this
last saying of the dying Saviour, one could not go further astray
in explaining its meaning than Bengel has done, when he said :
" hoc momento, pretiosissimo sane, expiatio facta est." On the other
hand, it cannot be better characterized than in the words of Lampe:
" The Father could not keep back from His bosom One who had
so completely fulfilled His will." The words : " Father, into Thy
hands I commend My Spirit," are not those of One who is making,
but of One who has made atonement ; His work being accomplished,
He fares forward towards His Sabbath rest. The circumstance
that His departing words are derived from one of the Psalms
(xxxi. 5), must not be allowed to determine their interpretation

180 THE PASSION HISTORY.
any more than a like circumstance in the case of the fourth
saying. If the Psalmist, after giving expression to his hope of
being rescued out of the hands of his enemy, and to his confi
dence in the God of truth, proceeds to comply with the exhortation
which he elsewhere (Ps. xxxvii. 5, xliii. 5) addresses to his own
soul, it by no means follows from this that our Lord also bears
testimony simply to His assurance that He shall escape from the
violent hands of men to the sheltering hands of the God of truth.
We are obliged to take a deeper view of the meaning of our
Lord's departing words, even by the expressions employed by
the evangelist to describe His departure, — expressions which shed
as much light on His exclamation as it in turn sheds on them.
IlapeSmKev rb irvevfia, says John ; 'AQrj/cev rb irvevpu, says
Matthew. The word used by Mark and Luke is igeirvevaev. All
the terms which the Scripture is in the habit of using elsewhere
for departing this life (e%tyvl~ev, diredavev,1 eKoipt-rjdrj) are thus
scrupulously avoided. Of course we must not draw from this
conclusions such as those which Olshausen has erroneously
deduced — conclusions against which even Augustine protested
(comp. De Spiritu et anima, c. xxxiv. : " quid est aliud emittere
spiritum, nisi quod animam ponere?") ; but still we may infer
from the choice of expressions made by the evangelists, that in
their view this was a different departing from any with which
ordinary experience made them acquainted. Again, older and
more recent interpreters (especially Gerhard, and also Stier)
have supposed that they touched the real point when they
found the element of voluntariness indicated in this characteristic
description of Jesus' departure from the world. Now, they say,
our Lord verifies His own saying : " My life no man taketh
from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay
it down, and I have power to take it again;" so that the
dying which we perceive in the case of Jesus is not a passive,
but an active dying, a surrender of His life proceeding from a
free determination. Now we cannot but regard a contrast of this
nature, in the sense in which it is here understood, as an altogether
peculiar one. As if the suffering of death and willingness to
die were mutually exclusive, as if both did not coalesce in our
1 The circumstance that ix-^vxuv, as often as it occurs in the New Testament, is
employed only in relation to the death of wicked men, is probably to be regarded
as accidental.

THE DYING CHRIST. 181
Lord's obedience when He drank His cup ! Even when He suffered
His death-stroke, at the time of the cry, Eli, Eh ! the voluntariness
with which He endured it does not escape observation. But the
contrast in question is introduced most unfortunately in connec
tion with the last saying from the cross. Here, where the pains
of death already pertain to the past, the question of an enduring
of death, or of an active willingness to die, is entirely out of place;
the yielding up of the spirit was a something which explained
itself; rightly understood, it was altogether natural. The Son
of God " ascended up where He was before." " I came forth from
the Father, and am come into the world : again, I leave the world,
and go to the Father," John xvi. 28; " If ye loved Me, ye would
rejoice, because ... I go unto the Father," John xiv. 28 ; " Holy
Father . . . now come I to Thee," John xvii. 11—13. As is
well known, our Lord regards His death almost exclusively from
the point of view of " a going to the Father," in His closing
discourses as preserved by John ; and this was natural, consider
ing the purpose of His parting words to His disciples. So we
expect that the aspect of the matter which was then made so
peculiarly prominent shall also be made apparent in the history
of His dying; and this is done by means of the last saying
from the cross. As He was able to make the claims which
are stated in the high-priestly prayer only because He was fully
conscious that He had acted faithfully as a Son in the house of
God, so He was now able to return "to Him that appointed
Him " (Heb. iii 2) with the words : " Father, into Thy hands I
commend My Spirit," only because He was conscious of having
emptied the cup which the Father had given Him. The cry of
the departing One is the utterance of the Atoner as He returns
to Him that sent Him,1 after completing His sacrifice.
1 In describing the departure of Jesus with the seventh saying from the cross
upon His lips as a "going to the Father," of course we do not wish to convey
the idea that it was to a completely conscious fellowship with the Father. Bengel,
it is true, remarks justly: "Nunquam de morte Salvatoris adhibetur verbum
xoi/iao-tou ; '" but he did not mean by this that the condition of the Departed was
not in reality that of a xoi/iapntos. This latter is necessarily implied in the
reality of His death. By the assumption of a "going to the Father," nothing
more is said than this, that just as it is stated of Lazarus (Luke xvi. 22): "And
it came to pass that . . .' he was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom,"
so the Son, after His departure into rest, went to "the bosom of the Father,''
until He reassumed His life, "being raised up from the dead by the glory of the
Father."

182 THE PASSION HISTORY.

3. THE DEAD CHRIST.

To him who regards the death of Jesus Christ as an ordinary
death, the circumstances with which this event was accompanied,
according to the accounts of the Gospel writers, will be ante
cedently suspicious ; while all those who regard it with the eye
of faith will almost feel that circumstances of this kind must have
attended it. They expect to learn that an event which has exercised
the profoundest and the most remarkable influence on the historical
developments of succeeding generations has been accompanied
by manifestations which, being themselves miraculous, fore
shadowed the miraculous results. And they are satisfied to find
that this expectation is justified. Strauss was compelled to
move in a very precarious region when criticizing the sayings
from the cross, but he here breathes freely, and feels that
he is once more in his element. Although he unhesitatingly
classes in the category of fables everything which the evangelists
have reported as to the utterances of Jesus from the cross, his
remarks are so meagre and prejudiced, and so devoid of weight,
that he must have felt in his own mind that they were unsatis
factory, and that they were not likely to secure for him the
assent of his readers. Here, however, he enters upon an in
vestigation in which he hopes to exhibit his superiority afresh,
and his revived confidence is apparent at the outset. Here he
can again found an argument on the natural craving for the
miraculous on the part of readers, and bring his customary
weapons to the place of conflict, — weapons which proved entirely
inappropriate in regard to the words spoken from the cross.
The critic turns with peculiar confidence to the examination
of the- natural phenomena which, according to the evangelical
narrative, already accompanied the dying of Jesus, but which
were manifested principally after His death had taken place.
The Synoptics tell us of a darkness which rested on the whole
land from the sixth to the ninth hour, while the death agonies of
Jesus still lasted. Strauss tells the German people a circum
stance (which Schleiermacher had also remarked on, speaking to
theologians), namely, that an eclipse of the sun was an impossi
bility at that time ; and he likewise tells them that, according
to the then existing Eoman legend, the sun had acted on the
occasion of the murder of Caesar and before the death of

THE DEAD CHRIST. 183
Augustus as it is said to have done when Jesus was being
crucified. The mockery which underlies this comparison will
certainly be repellent to most minds ; but it is probable that
the comparison itself will also be regarded generally as an
irrational one, and be judged in the same way as would a parallel
instituted between the value which Caesar and Augustus had for
their contemporaries, and the delight which the Father had in
His chosen Lamb, — the elect, precious stone laid in Zion.1 But
it is at the same time very questionable whether the usual view
given by the so-called believing theology can really satisfy those
who turn away with dissatisfaction from the mode of view recom
mended by criticism. The statement : " even Nature seemed to
join in celebrating the sublimity of the moment ; creation itself
suffered along with the Lord of nature, and spread the veil of
night, ' so to speak,' over the transaction at Golgotha, in order to
cover up the crime " (Olshausen), is open to the most serious
objections, and that even when it is stated in the usual pleasing
manner of Baumgarten.2 Poetico-romantic views of this descrip
tion find no support whatever in the Scripture ; and the attempt
to justify them by such passages as Gen. iv. 11, 12, etc., is vain.
Nor yet is the matter helped by appealing for aid to the prologue
of the fourth Gospel ; the ingenious combinations which are
made up in this way are misleading, and their apparent pro
fundity exists in phraseology merely. The darkness which
prevailed during the crucifixion is to be judged from the very
same point of view as the manifestations which took place after our
1 The critic has, moreover, laid himself open here to the just charge of having
read the Gospel history very superficially. In making the remark, for example, that
"the sun, according to the Roman legend, had done the same before the death of
Augustus," he overlooks the fact that according to the Gospel narrative the sun
' ' did " nothing whatever on the occasion of our Lord's crucifixion, but suffered
something. The sun is referred to only by Luke, and not at all by Matthew or
Mark. But even the third evangelist speaks, in the first place, of the darkness
which was spread over the earth, and only then does he add (ch. xxiii. 45), ' ' and
the sun was darkened. " Thereby it is stated as clearly as possible that the darkness
did not proceed from an obscuration of the sun, but rather that the latter was
occasioned by the former.
2 Comp. his Geschichte Jesu, p. 401 : " When we are profoundly agitated at the
spectacle of a glaring disharmony in the world, we wonder, nay, we are startled, that
Nature should show herself indifferent, and move calmly on her way while everything
is going a-wrack. In the present case this feeling receives complete satisfaction ;
Nature herself gives to these gloomy scenes in the world of man's life their appro
priate hue by obscuring the mid-day sunlight."

184 THE PASSION HISTORY.
Lord's death. They were immediate works of God of a miraculous
character, which were designed to speak to the world in symbolical
language. All that we have to do is to interpret this language
rightly. And the difficulty of interpreting it lessens just in the
degree in which we determine to abandon our own suppositions,
and to submit to the explicit teaching of Holy Scripture. Now,
what the evangelists place the emphasis upon is this, that a
darkness (aKoro<; . . . aKid Oavdrov, Matt. iv. 16) spread itself,
i<p" oXr)v (irdaav) rr)v yrjv. (The assertion that we are to
understand by yrj the whole earth, goes too far ; we have scrip
tural usage on our side in preferring to understand by it the
Jewish territory, and, in particular, the neighbourhood of
Jerusalem.) The singing seer hailed the advent of Jesus as " the
dayspring from on high," and he describes its purpose as being
" to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of
death." We know that Israel loved the darkness rather than the
light ; the welcoming, alluring light was persistently despised by
Jerusalem especially. When Jesus took His farewell of the
people (John xii. 3 5), He uttered this warning to them : " Yet a
httle while is the light with you. Walk while ye have the hght,
lest darkness come upon you : for he that walketh in darkness
knoweth not whither he goeth." They despised the warning.
When Jesus died, according to their wish, and by their agency,
the light of the world was extinguished for them, and the shadow
of death became their dwelling-place. And this was expressed
symbolically by the darkness which diffused itself over the land
during the hours of their mournful triumph, — a triumph which
soon experienced the check foreshadowed in the words : " Ye
shall seek Me and shall not find Me, and where I am thither
ye cannot come." But they were able to exclude themselves
alone from salvation ; the purpose of God was fulfilled, and the
gateway of light was unfolded for the world ; for the vail of the
temple was rent, the earth quaked, the rocks rent, and the graves
were opened.
It can only be in consequence of a fixed predetermination that
the divine acts recorded here are declared to be fictions invented
to feed a devouring craving for prodigies, and placed on the same
level with the superstitious narratives incorporated by a Suetonius
in the history of the Eoman emperors. This fixed and arbitrary
procedure is intelligible only on the ground of a denial of the

THE DEAD CHRIST. 185
principle of the miraculous. For that which the evangelist nar
rates, when viewed on its symbolical side, corresponds with such
exactness to that which actually took place, that we require
nothing more than a general belief in a living God who rules in
the realm of nature no less than in the kingdom of the Spirit, in
order to feel ourselves constrained to make the confession : " This
is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes." Strauss
himself is obliged to admit a correspondence between the doctrinal
representation of the Epistle to the Hebrews and the first of the
signs mentioned, namely, the rending of the temple vail.1 But
he takes while he gives. He denies, on the one hand, that the
apostle assumes the existence of the Gospel narrative ; he says
that he " manifestly " does not. But he adds, on the other
hand : " we could not, indeed, maintain conversely that the evan
gelical narrative was derived from the description in the Epistle
to the Hebrews." How then did it originate ? " If we take
this last," he says, " in conjunction with the expression of the
Apostle Paul (2 Cor. iii. 13—18), we see a group of thoughts and
images current in that most ancient Christianity which arose out
of Judaism, and which, after this had been used long enough as
mere comparison, must at last have settled down naturally into
a narrative like that which we have before us." Naturally !
And this is to be accepted as historical criticism ! Assuredly
the author must have had but a poor opinion of the intelligence
of the German people when he promised himself any success
from the use of devices which it is unnecessary to characterize,
and which can be rightly described in but one way. They will
shake no one's faith in a truth which was embodied with equal
clearness in the act of God and the word of the apostle. But
what is this truth ? If we possessed nothing more than the
Gospel narrative, there would be room for uncertainty in answer
ing this question from the circumstance of our not being able to
decide a preliminary one which has an important bearing upon
it, namely, whether the vail referred to was the outer or inner
temple-curtain.2 But the passage in the Hebrews sheds the
1 He here relies entirely on Schleiermacher's treatise, Uber die Schriften des Lucas,
p. 292 ; only he has left out what this theologian says as to the improbability of a
fact which the priests alone could know pushing itself into public notice. Probably
he thought that an objection which belonged to the polemics of commonplace
rationalism was not now a weapon suitable for his purpose.
2 Philo (De vit. Mos.), indeed, denominates the external vail (ri xpinpo-i) xixv^a,

186 THE PASSION HISTORY.
necessary light upon the matter. " Having, therefore, boldness
to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and
living way which He hath consecrated for us through the vail,
—that is to say, His flesh" (x. 19, 20). The expression does
not admit of the explanation given by the majority of the older,
and also by some modern interpreters. Those who make the
symbolical divine act refer to the abolition of the Old Testament
institutions (August. : " velum templi scinditur, quia synagoga
honore nudatur, observatio antiqua dissolvitur ; " Theophyl. :
earjp,ave rb Karaireraap,a ajfi^ofievov rrjv rov ypa/Mfiaro'; vo/jlikov
irepiatpeatv), overlook the circumstance that the question here
raised cannot be that of destroying, for no one can imagine that
the " flesh " of Jesus, of which the vail is explained, was " done
away " or became the prey of " corruption." We must also
regard the view of Hofmann as erroneous, namely, that the flesh
of Jesus denotes that which separated Him from the super
mundane God ; that He had to put it off by dying, and to pass
" through this flesh " in order to reach the Father. But the
" flesh " was no obstruction to His fellowship with God ; even
during the days of His flesh He was in heaven, and in the bosom
of the Father, consequently in every respect in the enjoyment of
" unlimited " fellowship with Him. We have nothing whatever
to do here with the going of the Son to the Father, but
exclusively with the going of the High Priest to the right hand
of God. And He went thither not by pressing " through the
flesh," but by means of it, — that is to say, by giving His flesh for
the life of the world. The vail of His flesh was no obstructive
element, but, on the contrary, an instrumental element. The rent
vail in the temple pointed, therefore, to a way opened for all
through the atoning death of Jesus, a way which is called a
" hving way," in the sense in which He who opened it called
Himself " the way and the life."
The further statement of Matthew, " the earth did quake and
and the interior one (ro iiinpn) xara-rirao-/tt,a. But this circumstance is deprived of
its weight from the fact that Scripture uses the latter expression alone for both vails.
Jerome (following Origen), in a letter to Hedibia, declares it as his firm conviction
that we are to think of the exterior vail. Modern interpreters decide, for the most
part (certainly without convincing arguments), for the opposite assumption.
Casaubon says rightly : " utrum e duobus velis Matthaeus et Marcus intellexerint
statui hodie pro certo non potest ;" nor is his assertion shaken by tbe thorough
investigation of the matter by G. Olearius, Observat. Sacr. in Matth. p. 739.

TnE DEAD CHRIST. 187
the rocks rent," has also been explained by the author of the
Epistle to the Hebrews. The comparison drawn by Strauss
between this feature of the narrative and an incident in the
history of Elijah (1 Kings xix. 11) is as groundless as his
assumption, that it was designed to prepare for the next feature,
namely, the opening of the graves, is unsupported. It has an
independent value. "Yet once more," says Heb. xii. 26, "I
shake not the earth only, but also heaven." Not the earth only,
but also heaven. The agitation of the earth, so that those things
which are most stable — the very rocks — were moved, was a
symbolical representation of the p,erd6eai<; which took effect in
heaven after the Lamb of God ascended the high-priestly throne,
and obtained the Headship of the " kingdom which cannot be
moved," in order to carry out judgment to victory. Nothing else
was to be expected but that criticism would reserve the full
measure of its scorn for the concluding statement of the evangelist,
that the graves were opened, and that sleeping saints arose from
the dead. In point of fact, Strauss has here done his uttermost :
" Inasmuch as Jesus raised from the dead but few people during
His life on earth, and these few had returned only to earthly life
to die a second time, a case was desirable in which a larger
number of dead, and these not men liable to die a second time,
but as risen saints, should have come forth out of their graves ;
and as the choice of the moment at which it was most appro
priate to place this case might waver between the moment of His
death and that of His resurrection, Matthew divides the occurrence,
as it were, between the two." Now, this masterpiece of satirical
criticism would perhaps have been successful had the evangelist
spoken, in the style of the Gospel of Nicodemus, of those being
released who were in Sheol, or of Christ's returning thence.
But to the critic's regret, as may be supposed, all that is recorded
is that after the death of our Lord many sleeping saints arose from
their graves, and after His resurrection returned to the holy city,
and appeared unto many. Consequently what we have to think
of is not a manifestation of power on the part of Jesus, but only
an act on the part of God, which accompanied the sacrificial
death of His Son, and was designed to set forth its significance
symbolically. The explanation of the sign is a matter of no
difficulty. Its meaning is made abundantly clear by the words
in the Epistle to the Hebrews (ch. xii. 23) : " Ye are come ... to

188 THE PASSION HISTORY.
the spirits of just men made perfect,"— a passage to which we refer
•with all the more confidence, inasmuch as the " holy city " in the
passage in Matthew suggests to our minds what is there called
" the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem." As
regards the actual facts underlying this sigh, a difficulty has been
felt which has constrained even interpreters, who admit the
opening of the graves as a divine symbolical act, to adopt
the notion that the further details communicated by Matthew
are to be regarded as the mythical dress of an idea which is
in itself entirely correct. This dangerous concession, to which
even Olshausen was not wholly indisposed to assent, is one
for which we see no ground. The opening of the graves,
considered in itself, would have been an unintelligible symbol ;
only by the succeeding feature does its meaning become apparent.
The difficulties raised by the explicit mention of " bodies," and
of their " appearing," and by the temporal definition " after His
resurrection," disappear for all those who recognise the historical
character of the transactions which took place upon the mount of
transfiguration, in which we discover much that is analogous to
the incident before us. The expression " body" would be entirely
appropriate as descriptive of Moses and Elias ; the words, " there
appeared unto them Moses and Elias " (Matt. xvii. 3), correspond
exactly to the phrase before us, " and appeared unto many ; " and
the words, " after His resurrection," are to be regarded from the
very same point of view as the command formerly imposed by our
Lord upon the disciples to be silent as to the vision they had
beheld until the Son of man was risen from the dead. To him
who admits the application of this parallel, all those questions,
of which Hofmann says, to Meyer's astonishment, that we need
give ourselves no concern about them, will at once appear irrele
vant. There is one thing, however, regarding this whole symbolic
utterance on which we wish to place all emphasis, and it is this,
that the Father was not giving testimony to His Son in general
by these signs, but to the work which He had just accomplished ;
He was declaring the full sufficiency of the sacrifice made by
Him for the expiation of man's sin. For it was through the
sacrificial death of our Lord that men obtained liberty of access
to God ; His sacrificial death was the preliminary to the shaking
of the heavens, yea, it was through this death that the power was
wrested from him who had the power of death ; the ban was

THE DEAD CHRIST. 189
removed, and life and immortality were brought to light. By
the words proclaimed in symbol, God set His seal to the atone
ment which had been made, and, being accepted of Him, it
forthwith began to evince its power.
We shall arrive at a similar conclusion by considering the
manifestations connected with the body of the dead Christ.
The evangelist John alone speaks of these, — the evangelist who
was in circumstances to observe them from being in the immediate
vicinity of the cross, and who, besides, had an eye to note such
things. The solemn asseveration of the apostle, that he was
narrating true things which he had personally witnessed (ch. xix.
35; comp. 2 Pet. i. 16: "We have not followed cunningly
devised fables (pvOoie;), but were eye - witnesses "), stands in
striking contrast to the assertion of Strauss, that there is no foun
dation of fact whatsoever for the representation. But still more
startling is the contrast between the apostle's statement, that he
communicated these things with the view of arousing or strength
ening the faith of his readers, and the statement of the critic, that
the fourth evangelist not merely presents to us fables, but that
he has elaborated fantastic conceits which wear to the reader the
character of absurdities. Now it is true that Strauss refers to
one circumstance which at first sight may occasion a doubt of the
historical credibility of the incident recorded by John. He calls
attention to its inconsistency with the narrative of Mark, and
believes that the manner in which the author of the fourth Gospel
adheres to the narrative of the Synoptics in his account of the
burial of Jesus proves that the foregoing scene, which is peculiar
to him, is an interpolation invented by himself. When Pilate,
according to Mark xv. 44, on being asked by Joseph for the body
of Jesus, expressed surprise at His being already dead, this feeling
on the part of the procurator does not square, says the critic, with
the command that the legs of the crucified persons should be
broken, which is presupposed in John xix. 31. And when the
fourth evangelist says (xix. 38) that the object of the visit of the
Jewish councillor was to beseech Pilate " that he might take away
the body of Jesus," this conflicts, it is said, with his own previous
statement that the removal of the bodies had already been ordered
by the procurator (ch. xix. 31:" that He might, be taken away ").
But the real and the apparent state of the case are different. At
the request of the Jews, Pilate, it is true, had issued a command

190 THE PASSION HISTORY.
" that their legs should be broken, and that they should be taken
away ; " but for all that, it had only been partially carried out.
The soldiers executed the crurifragium, in the first place, on the
two thieves, either because it was easier to reach them, or because
they gave more decided signs of life. When they turned their
attention thereafter to Jesus, they observed that death had already
taken place. Even to these rough spirits their task would be a
painful, or, at all events, a troublesome one. They believe that
they may here be exempted from unnecessary toil, and — no doubt
with the consent of the centurion — they content themselves with
a spear- stab, which would certainly be sufficient to extinguish
any glimmering spark of life which might still have survived.
The command of the procurator was twofold, but the two parts of
it were related to each other. If the crurifragium was omitted,
then it was necessary to omit the " taking away " also. Con
sequently the body of Jesus still remained in its place, while the
bodies of the thieves were in the meantime taken down and
buried. Is it a violent fancy, then, or is it not rather reasonable
to assume that Joseph may have made his intentions known to
the centurion (who was himself deeply moved by the death of
Jesus), and commended the sacred body to his care ? When he
thereafter appeared before Pilate with the request that he might
be allowed to take away the body of Jesus (John xix. 3 8), he had
only to avow, as a reason for his request, that the taking away
which had been already ordered (ver. 31) was not yet carried
out in regard to Jesus, but was still left undone, because the
crurifragium had been rendered unnecessary, — His death having
occurred some time before (irdXai). The procurator expresses sur
prise on learning that death had ensued so much sooner than was
usual in the case of those who were crucified, and only after receiv
ing confirmation of the report from the centurion does he accede to
Joseph's wish. So far, then, from being mutually exclusive, the
narratives of Mark and John fit exactly into each other. This
would not have escaped the sharp eye of Strauss had he not been
searching for a historical justification of his opposition to the
narrative, — an opposition influenced by entirely different motives.
The evangelist says at the close of his narrative that he wrote all
these " signs " with the view of making his readers believe in
Jesus as the Christ ; and the one before us is the only sign in
connection with which he mentions and emphasizes this as his

THE DEAD CHRIST. 191
special purpose. The astonishment experienced by himself when
he observed it breaks out perceptibly in his words ; he hopes that
the account of it will make a like impression upon the minds of
his readers. And he was entitled to cherish this expectation.
The divine voice could not be misunderstood, nor could its con
vincing power be denied. The apostle draws the interpretation
of the " signs " from the Scripture, and his ability to derive it from
this quarter is made (ydp, ver. 36) an additional reason for faith.
Strauss says that in the fact of the soldiers' finding Christ appa
rently dead, the evangelist saw a " plausible reason " for sparing
Him ihe crurifragium, and introducing what was dogmatically
desirable instead, namely, the spear-stab. Now, if we agreed with
him in regarding the fourth Gospel as an interested romance,
it is exceedingly doubtful whether we could acknowledge the
" plausibility " of the reason. But the apostle is conscious of
this, that he is relating a matter of fact, and this fact he traces
back to immediate divine interposition. The hand of Providence
took care that the body of Jesus should be laid in the grave un
manned. The saying, " He was numbered with the transgressors,"
obtained its complete vindication ; but now the word is, " Thus
far, and no farther ! " From this time forth it was to become
clear that things were not with this Dead One as with trans
gressors in their death. The soldiers were obliged to pass Him
by when they were carrying out the command which they had
received, for the Lord of all had said to them, " A bone of Him
ye shall not break." 1 He was the Lamb of God, the Passover
sacrificed for us, and He was recognisable as such when the law
which was ordained for the type was wondrously fulfilled in
Him also. Men have inquired as to the meaning of the
Mosaic ordinance. Now if, instead of starting from the type,
they had started rather from the antitype, they would scarcely
have been content with the unsatisfactory and thoroughly ground
less expedient of Bahr. The mere thought of the body of Jesus
being maimed is immediately felt to be unnatural and impossible.
Our feelings are not at all shocked at the crurifragium in the
case of the thieves, but they revolt at the bare idea of its being
1 The incident becomes still more strikingly forcible if we accept the view of the
ancient church, expressed by Tertullian in the writing, Adv. Jud. ch. viii. : "passio
perfecta est die azymorum, quo agnum ut occiderent ad vesperam a Moyse fueiat
praeceptum. "

192 THE PASSION HISTORY.
carried out in the case of our Lord. Starting from this point,
we can also understand why the Mosaic ordinance shielded
the typical Paschal Lamb from mutilation. Its object was to
make a distinction between the victim which was the central point
of a religious festival, and the victims which were destined only
for a sacrificial meal,1 and to teach that same " discerning " which
the apostle imposed as a duty on the communicants of the Corin
thian church (1 Cor. xi. 29). If, then, the evangelist justly
regards even this first circumstance as God's seal to the sacrificial
death of the true Paschal Lamb, he lays still more stress upon
the second, namely, the spear-thrust and the flowing of blood and
water from the side of Jesus. The passage which he cites from
Zechariah is neither misread nor misapplied, as the critic asserts.
The objection raised by Strauss, in a peculiar strain, that the
prophet understood by Him who was pierced no other than
Jehovah Himself, has been completely refuted by Hengstenberg
in his Christology. But when he goes on to say that the word
"ip-| in the original text was understood merely figuratively of a
mental wound, not only is this view untenable on grammatical
grounds, but an objection founded upon it would not touch the
evangelist in the least. The translation of the Seventy (dvd' u>v
Kar<opj(fjaavro) can be of no weight as against the fact that ipT is
used neither in Zechariah nor anywhere else in the Old Testament
in a figurative sense, and we can well understand how John should
have been profoundly struck at the wondrous exactness with which
the prophecy was fulfilled when he witnessed the spear-thrust.2
But the literality of the piercing need not prevent us admitting,
and, in a certain sense, even emphasizing the fact that the word
ipT may be enlarged in its signification so as to include the idea
of a mental wound, — an idea which will at once occur to the
mind of any one who is not content to take a mere surface view
of the act done by the soldiers. The time is past for regarding
the spear-stab as a test of death, and the flowing of the blood
and water as a proof that death had taken place. Its undoubted
purpose was to kill our Lord, and, in the event of any spark of
1 Comp. Hengstenberg, Commentary on the Gospel of John.
2 The assertion of Strauss, that the author of the Apocalypse ( ' ' they which pierced
(llixivrno-iv) Him," ch. i. 7) did not know of a spear-stab in the side of Jesus, but
only of the piercing of His hands (and feet), has no foundation whatever. For the,
piercing of the hands and feet (the Ipicrm of the Sept., Ps. xxii. 17), the expression
ixxmuv, considering the usage of Scripture, would have been quite inappropriate.

THE DEAD CHRIST. 193
life still remaining in Him, to make its extinction certain. But
was this purpose not virtually traceable to those who were the
prime movers in His death, and to whom He had said long before,
"Ye seek to kill Me" (John viii 37, 40) 1 And was there not
concentrated in this spear -thrust (of which Bengel justly and
profoundly remarks that it was the last and most conspicuous act
of hostility done to the body of the Saviour by His enemies)
all the hate and persecution which had carried the " murderers
of the Just One" (Acts vii. 52), by closely-connected steps, to
their goal ? The more we 'look into the inner substance of the
incident before us, the more do the soldiers pass out of sight ;
and, instead of them, we see the covenant people rejecting their
Shepherd, piercing Him and casting Him out of His vineyard.
There follows this human act, like an answer to it (" forthwith"
ver. 34), a divine " sign." Thus John regarded the flowing of the
blood and water ; it was in his eyes a miraculous phenomenon.
He foresees that many of his readers will receive his narrative
with feelings of surprise and incredulity. And on this account
he asserts, on his authority as an eye-witness, that the things
which he relates are true, and vigorously combats any suspicion
that might be entertained of the reahty of a fact which was to be
a vehicle of faith. He affirms that he had distinctly seen it,
and knows for certain that he was not deceived. The pecuhar
accumulation of asseverating terms — for which there is no analogy
throughout the whole Gospel — will be better understood by us if
we assume, on the one hand, that the flow from our Lord's pierced
side was considerable in extent (irorap-oi) ; and, on the other, that
blood and water flowed separately from each other (" blood and
water "), whether the " and " be explained as meaning that blood
flowed first and water afterwards (Lampe), or that a definite blood
streak was apparent within the water (Tholuck).1 No deep insight
into physiological laws is required in order to see the opposition
between the phenomenon and the course of nature. Strauss is
] The reverse arrangement of words in the passage (1 John v. 6) gives to the latter
view a high degree of probability. Moreover, every attempt to explain the pheno
menon by natural causes is shattered against the assumptions indicated, and which,
it seems to us, are unavoidable. The utterance of Calvin can scarcely claim con
sideration : "hallucinati sunt quidam miraculum hie fingentes ; naturale enim est,
dum coagulatur sanguis, amisso rubore fieri aquae similem ; notum etiam est, in
membrana praecordiis vicina aquam contineri," etc. Nor will the learned and
profound treatise of Thomas Bartholinus (whom Tholuck follows), De Latere Christi
N

194 THE PASSION HISTORY.
perfectly entitled to maintain, from his standpoint, that " every
expert will tell us that bipod and water can in no case have flowed
from the side of Jesus ; for if the blood was still flowing in His
body, then nothing but blood would have come ; if it had ceased
flowing, nothing whatever would have come." Consequently, he
who believed the fact reported by the evangelist, on the ground
of his solemn testimony, could not avoid drawing a conclusion
which the apostle hoped would tend to the furtherance of faith.
The conclusion is no other than this, that the power of God must
have exercised a miraculous influence on the body of Jesus.
But what advantage accrues to faith from this ? The answer of
Euthymius Zigabenus, that " it clearly showed that the Pierced One
was more than man," is obviously much too general and indefinite.
However, it is to be decidedly preferred to the view put forth by
Hofmann (Schriftbew. II. p. 490): "The complete ebbing of the
blood of the dead Christ betokened to the apostle that the body
of Jesus was delivered from corruption, and thus from the destroy
ing power of death." We do not know whether this view was
suggested by a well-known objection of Schleiermacher, and put
forth with the view of rendering it invalid, but undoubtedly both
views belong to the same category. Schleiermacher, founding on
the assumption that corruption begins at the moment of death,
and relying on the saying which is frequently emphasized in the
Acts of the Apostles, that the Holy One of God saw no corrup
tion, adopted the view, that while our Lord undoubtedly accom
plished the act of dying in a spiritual sense (inasmuch as His
consciousness was reduced to the point of nullity, and inasmuch
as He passed through the agonies of death), His life could not
have been entirely extinguished in its physical aspect. Now,
this conclusion would no doubt be deprived of its foundation by
the. reply that the body of Jesus was delivered from corruption
by being entirely emptied of its blood. But the assumptions of
Schleiermacher are so erroneous, considered in themselves, that
his conclusion does not require to be met in this peculiar manner.
Aperto, which proceeds on the same line, convince any one who has laboured
through it. On the other hand, however, we are unable to share Hengstenberg's
fear that in this case the authority of the apostle would suffer. The remark
of Bartholinus : " Non ideo existimandum divinae potentiae et gloriae ulla parte
nos ire detractum, quando ad secundas causas restringimus ea, quae sensu nostra
capiuntur et ratione," not only guards his own view, but has also its objective
right.

THE DEAD CHRIST. 195
The apostles make it perfectly clear in what sense they saw that
Scripture, " Thou wilt not give Thy Holy One to see corruption "
(Ps. xvi. 10), fulfilled in the Saviour. Peter does so in his
Pentecostal address (Acts ii. 31 sqq.), and Paul in his preaching
at Antioch (Acts xiii. 35 sqq), by the explanation, "He whom
God raised again saw no corruption." And as regards the ques
tion of the beginning of corruption, the anxiety displayed by
Martha of Bethany teaches us more than precise natural science.
When her brother had lain four days in the grave, she said,
ijSrj o£ei, — she feared that the process of corruption had already
begun ; she would scarcely have spoken thus on the day of His
death. If the divine power willed that the sacred body should
be defended from corruption, certainly it did not require to
employ physical preventive measures for that end. The mistake
of Hofmann1 appears to us to lie in this, that he regards in the
light of a token that which the evangelist views entirely as a
divine symbol requiring to be interpreted from an exclusively
symbolical standpoint. But even among those exegetes who
recognise this principle of interpretation as the correct one, the
symbolical meaning of the recorded fact is still in dispute. We
pass by the view maintained by ancient and modern theologians,
that it points to the two sacraments. Not only is it non-
Johannine, considered in itself, but it is at the same time unable
to vindicate itself in presence of the quotation from Zechariah ;
and, instead of being in any way recommended (as Tholuck
thinks) by the parallels in the first Epistle of John, it is rather
excluded. But a more serious question now arises, namely,
whether Strauss has not hit on the correct view when he says
that the pouring out of the Spirit, of which the death of Jesus
was the preliminary condition, was that which the evangelist
spiritually beheld in the flowing blood and water. He could
have appealed in favour of this view to many other expressions
in the fourth Gospel besides those cbntained in ch. vii. 38 sqq. ; at
all events, the promise which immediately precedes John's citation
from Zechariah, " I will pour upon the house of David, and upon
the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of sup
plications," tells very considerably in its favour. And yet not
absolutely and conclusively. The very quotation, whose context
1 In his later writings the view objected to has become doubtful to Hofmaun
himself, and he seems to have abandoned it.

196 THE PASSION HISTORY.
seems to be adequate to support the view, is, on the other hand,
the rock on which it is broken. We assume as indisputable
that the words of ver. 37, " and again another Scripture
saith," are to be supplemented by a iva irXripwdf} from the pre
ceding verse. But what was to be fulfilled ? and what was
fulfilled ? It has been said that the evangelist is thinking only
of the " piercing," and that the further contents of the passage, to
wit, the " looking," which belonged to a different period, is here left
wholly out of account (Bengel and others). Of course we reject
the traditional translation as ungrammatical : " they shall behold
(namely, in the flowing of the blood and water) Him whom
they pierced." The undoubted meaning of the words is rather
this : they shall look (in repentance, faith, and longing) unto Him
whom they pierced. But this believing look requires a ground,
and this ground must be found in the circumstance so markedly
emphasized by the apostle, that blood and water flowed from the
side of Jesus, or, more exactly, in that which the symbolical
divine act meant. Let us consider the passage in Zechariah
more fully. After describing the depth and extent of the mourn
ing of Jerusalem, the prophet appends a prediction, whose fulfil
ment, he says explicitly ("in that day," ch. xiii. 1), is to take
place at the same time : " In that day there shall be a fountain
opened to the house of David, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem,
for sin and uncleanness." The opened fountain corresponds to
the opened side of Jesus. As the former points to the removal
of sin and unrighteousness, so the stream which accompanied the
spear -thrust pointed to the purifying virtue which resides in
Jesus the Crucified, and which goes forth from Him to all who
look to Him with the yearning of faith. The emphasis rests on
the blood ; the water merely places it under the view-point of
its definite function. The blood therefore occupies the first
place, not only here, but in 1 John v. 6 as well, where We read
with still stronger emphasis": "not with water only, but with
water and blood." No water can wash away the stain of sin ;
this can be done only by blood (Heb. ix. 22), or rather, only by
the blood of Jesus Christ the Son of God. The apostolic utterance
(1 John i. 7) : "The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us
from all sin," d/iaprla? (ver. 9, dSwa'a? — the new expression con
taining an undoubted allusion to the n*^*i*?!| n*xtsr6 of Zech. xiii. 1)
gives the true interpretation of the sign which God exhibited in

THE DEAD CHRIST. 197
the case before us. It was a symbohcal attestation of the death
of Jesus as a sacrifice for the sin of the world and for the sin of
the individual. We have already said that it was an answer, so
to speak, to the act of men. They meant it for evil ; God meant
it for good. The blood which they shed is set before them by
Him as the medium of atonement for their guilt. And it is on
this ground that all those who hear His voice look in faith to
Him who was pierced. "They shall look," said the prophet.
Even at the moment fixed on by John the future form was still
appropriate, for the manifest fulfilment of the prediction took
place only on the day of Pentecost. Still, even at the time when
the " sign " was exhibited, first-fruits of the harvest which Peter
afterwards reaped were not wholly awanting.
From this point of view, then, we examine the manifestations
which appeared immediately after the death of Jesus in the
human sphere. The first three evangelists are unanimous in the
account they give of the impression made upon the mind of the
centurion (Matthew includes the men under his charge) who
presided at the crucifixion. Luke, however, speaks at the same
time of a still more intense emotion experienced by the people
who were assembled under the cross. The meagre statements
which Strauss makes on the ground of harmonistic difficulties,
are quite insufficient to cast any doubt on the credibility of the
narratives. The insignificant variations in the different accounts,
partly in regard to the words employed by the centurion, partly
in relation to the genesis of the judgment he expressed, tend to
vouch for their historical truth rather than the opposite. More
over, the variations relate to the opinion of the narrators as to
the motive impelling the heathen soldier to speak as he did,
more than to the fact itself. The centurion would not himself
distinctly know what special circumstance had brought this fruit
of his lips to maturity ; the profound impression made upon him
was due to the influence of the whole spectacle. According to
Mark xv. 39, he stood over against Jesus, steadily and sympa
thetically watching Him. And besides, it is according to the
natural order of things that, while the mere executioner gives utter
ance to a simple confession, the people, on whom the responsibility
lay, should be seized, like a reXwvrj? on a large scale, with a sense
of the great crime which they had committed, and express their
feelings in the same way as did the publican in the parable, Luke

198 THE PASSION HISTORY.
xviii. 13. However, we cannot so easily dismiss the objection
raised by criticism against these narrations on the ground of their
internal improbability, and which charges them with merely
embodying the fancies of early Christianity. We are unable to
adopt the line of thought pursued by those to whom the facts
recorded are entirely intelligible on psychological grounds, and
who point, on the one hand, to the receptivity of the unprejudiced
heathen, and; on the other, to the vacillating mood of the mobile
vulgus. The centurion does not impress us with the idea that he
is saying in a merely reflective manner : " This Dying One cannot
have been a malefactor worthy of death ; " nor do the people re
semble a Judas in their revelation of themselves as if they were
saying in the exercise of a worthless repentance : " We have sinned,
in that we have shed innocent blood." As to the centurion's con
fession, the form in which it is reported by Luke will not readily
be taken as the literal one ; but even should it be so regarded, the
words " Son of God" contained in Matthew's version would explain
the sense which he attached to the terms, " a righteous man."
And, as regards the people, the account given of their deportment
harmonizes so strikingly with the subsequent description in the
Acts (ch. ii. 37), "they were pricked in their hearts," that we
must not impute to them a " sorrow of the world." But such
profound impressions cannot be accounted for on any psycho
logical ground ; they are conceivable only as fulfilments of the
prophecy : " They shall look unto Him whom they pierced." The
meaning of the death of Jesus flashed upon their minds ; they
saw in the Dying One — not indeed with clear vision, but dimly,
as by a presentiment of the heart — the antitype of the serpent
lifted up in the wilderness.
We make this claim with still greater confidence on behalf of
the two persons who presently appear on the stage to take charge
of the entombment of Jesus. In connection with this part of
the Passion history, criticism has carried its arbitrariness to the
highest possible pitch. The assumption made by the church, that
the well-known prediction of Isaiah (ch. liii. 9) was fulfilled in
the burial of Jesus, is met by Strauss with the assertion that this
prophecy (which is, besides, misinterpreted) was rather the source
from which the " myth " of the honourable burial of our Lord was
evolved. Undoubtedly this conclusion considered in itself can
surprise no one, for it follows naturally from his fixed and con-

THE DEAD CHRIST. 199
stantly applied principle. But, at the same time, as it is not based
on historical considerations, or on any proof that the incident is
internally improbable, it bears on its front a character of arbitrari
ness which at once condemns it. Such is the position occupied
by criticism in regard to the passage before us. It has never
attempted to assail a single detail of the narrative, just as if it
foresaw that this would be useless ; and, while admitting that
the Eomans were certainly accustomed to surrender the bodies of
persons who had been executed to their relatives in order to
interment,1 it still continues to maintain, in singular contrast to
this admission, that the account of our Lord's entombment is
unhistorical The passage in Isaiah, to which the alleged myth
is traced back, tends much more to vindicate the historical reality
of the narrative than the reverse. We need not dwell on the
circumstance that none of the evangelists, not even Matthew,
quotes the words of the prophecy. But we ask, What is its
meaning ? How is it to be explained ? No material objection
can be made in point of grammar to the rendering: "A grave
was designed for Him among transgressors, but He found it with
one who was rich." We frankly admit that but for the history
of the burial of Jesus this rendering would hardly have occurred
to any one ; here, as often, the fulfilment throws light on the
prophecy. Only when the wish of the Jews that the body of
Jesus, like the bodies of the thieves, should be laid in an un-
honoured grave was frustrated by the intervention of the rich
man, only when Joseph had laid the body in his own2 hitherto
unused tomb, — burying it, with the aid of Nicodemus, with
1 "We add that the authorities, according to the Roman law, were not entitled to
refuse this permission. Ulpian: " Corpora eorum, qui capitis damnantur, cognatis
eorum neganda non sunt, et id se observasse etiam Divus Augustus libro X., de vita
sua scribit." The only exception was in the case of those who had been guilty of
high treason.
2 The difficulty raised on the ground of Matthew's being the only one who ex
pressly calls the tomb the property of Joseph, is entirely unnecessary. Meyer has
even alleged that this detail is added from a later tradition, and that, if it had been
historical, Mark would not have been silent regarding it, while it would certainly
have been engraved ineffaceably on the memory of John. This is a mistaken judg
ment. By their description of the sepulchre, which is in perfect harmony with the
description given by the first Gospel, Mark and Luke show their complete agreement
with Matthew ; and Strauss rightly remarks that it was undoubtedly their opinion
that the tomb was the property of Joseph. As to John, again, the article i 'luir>i<p
(ch. xix. 38) shows that the author presupposed the synoptical account, and that it
was his purpose merely to add new and complementary features. When he says in

200 THE PASSION HISTORY.
almost lavish munificence,1 — was the prediction of the Old
Testament seer understood. But any one who declines to accept
this fulfilment of the prophecy as his lamp, will either not under
stand the prediction at all, or feel himself driven to an interpre
tation which will not bear the slightest examination. We appeal
to the perplexity of those interpreters of Isaiah who despise the
key just pointed out. The explanation to which Strauss adheres
(although not without obvious hesitation), that " the rich " are to
be taken as synonymous with " the wicked," is absolutely incon
sistent with the views which the Old Testament is wont to put
forth in regard to worldly prosperity. The wealth of an Abra
ham, a David, and a Solomon, is invariably exhibited under the
aspect of a divine blessing; it is the accompaniment of piety,
and an evidence of the goodwill of God. (As an honourable
counsellor, a pious and upright man waiting for the kingdom of
God, so also in respect of his external worldly circumstances
and prosperity, Joseph was a veritable child and picture of
Abraham.) If, then, the fact be that the prophetic passage re
ceives its true and satisfactory explanation in the circumstances
connected with the burial of Jesus, we are entitled to assert that
the former is an indirect testimony to the historical truth of the
latter. Strauss states in the positive part of his book, that no one of
the evangelists says that Jesus' own disciples asked Pilate for
His body, but that all of them represent a man who stood only
in a distant relation to Jesus as doing so. This remark, which
he merely throws out by the way, was probably made in a
polemical interest, and it deserves careful consideration. The
ver. 42 that the body was laid there because the place was near, and because the
Sabbath was at hand, this is only an additional second motive for the selection of
the tomb, which certainly does not exclude any other motive implied in the synop
tical narrative.
1 This expenditure was an element in the fulfilment of the prediction in Isaiah—
an expenditure which was certain to obtain the same approval as our Lord gave (in
John xii. 7, 8) to the woman who anointed Him. Here there neither was nor could
be any murmuring. A new tomb, a newly bought mli,, abundance of myrrh and
aloes are called into requisition, and it was the intention of the friends of Jesus to
honour His body still more when the Sabbath was past. If the expressions ik,itpu,,
Mark xvi. 1, and y.6pa, Luke xxiii. 56, are taken exactly, a difference appeare
between what the women designed to do on the morning of the first day of the week,
and what Joseph and Nicodemus did when our Lord was buried, which deprives the
objection which Strauss has raised in regard to this part of the narrative of any
semblance of a foundation.

THE DEAD CHRIST. 201
Jews regarded the burying of their dead as an office of affection
to be discharged by those who were most nearly related to the
deceased, by sons especially, and in default of sons, by other
relations or friends. The disciples were our Lord's nearest
relations. "These," He says in Matt. xii. 50, "are My brother,
and sister, and mother." When John the Baptist was put to
death by Herod, his disciples came (Matt. xiv. 12) to carry away
the headless body of their honoured master in order to lay it in
the grave. At the burial of Jesus we miss those who were called
on natural grounds to perform this task. Those who openly con
fessed their adherence to our Lord during His life, and who were
constantly seen by all men in His society and following His
steps, have here vanished entirely from the scene ; while those
who had hitherto cherished their faith in secret perform the
last services of love for the Crucified, and thus show without
hesitation their inner feelings towards Him. One may attempt
to explain both of these circumstances psychologically. The
consternation and deadly sorrow of the disciples may be viewed
as an explanation of their otherwise so strange neglect ; and it
may be said, on the other hand, that the advent of death has
often caused a long unavowed affection to break out into a clear
flame. But we ask whether any one can rest satisfied with these or
similar considerations. They do not at all satisfy us. The question
raised here is not that of a relation of love or reverence towards
Jesus, but of a behef in Him as the Messiah. Both Joseph and
Nicodemus cherished this behef; but fear of the Jews, a regard
to their position in the Sanhedrim, restrained them from openly
avowing it ; they were " secret disciples." Comp. John xii. 42 :
" Nevertheless, among the chief rulers also many believed on
Him; but because of the Pharisees they did not confess Him,
lest they should be put out of the synagogue." How happened
it that after the death of Jesus these scruples were set aside,
— that Joseph, for example, prevailed upon himself to break x so
1 Thus we understand the words which are peculiar to Mark, roX/twas uo-vXdv orpos
IliXdrot (ch. xv. 43). The usual explanation, that Joseph, on the ground of his
honourable position, undertook the bold task of approaching the hard and severe
procurator with a petition, is one which we are unable to adopt. It is quite im
possible to understand in what the boldness of Joseph consisted, SO far as the
procurator was concerned; he could scarcely have feared the rejection of a request
which was quite in accordance with the Roman law. (Bengel has pushed the view
in question 'to an absurd extreme when he says: "laudabilis ausus non carens

202 THE PASSION HISTORY.
completely with the Council by the step which he took, and to
pass over into the ranks of the open disciples of the Crucified ?
Strauss says that Jesus had forfeited all claim to be regarded
as the Messiah, according to Jewish ideas, when His life was
brought to an end upon the cross. Assuming the correctness of
this view, Joseph had acted wisely in occupying an attitude of
prudent reserve up to the time of Christ's death, notwithstanding
his interest in Him. But after the catastrophe, the natural and
advisable course for him to pursue would have been to forget the
beautiful dream which he had cherished, and to induce the people
to forget that he too had for a time stood in some slight relation
to the Crucified. But the course he adopted was the very reverse
of this. He chooses at this very time to forsake the position of
secret discipleship, and to confess in a frank and pronounced, way
his adherence to Him who had just died. How does this come
about 1 " Historical investigation counts it the noblest part of
its task," says its critical representative, " to discover not merely
what has really taken place, but also the mode in which one
thing has been caused by another." But in the present instance
he is unable to discharge this task in respect of its " noblest
part:" here the means which he recognises as alone legitimate
are not available. As he refuses to admit that anything " has
really taken place " unless he is able to account for it on his own
principles, he unhesitatingly draws the conclusion that the evan
gelical narrative of the burial of Jesus is a fable. But there is an
elucidating factor of which this criticism knows nothing. We go
back upon the saying quoted from prophecy: "They shall look unto
Him whom they have pierced " — a saying with which John im
mediately connects our narrative by means of the expression " after
this." Were Joseph and Nicodemus also included in the charge

'tr-

capitis periculo.") ToXptSv means here (as often in the N. T., comp. Rom. v. 7 :
"Yet, peradventure, fora goodman some would even dare (roXpt.^) to die") to prevail
upon oneself, to bring oneself to resolve on something without regard to consequences.
The step taken by Joseph must have aroused a storm of ill-will on the part of his
associates in office. ToXpimas tlo-rixhv we read. The "daring" is to be referred
specially to the going into the pretorium. We know how carefully the members of
the Sanhedrim had avoided doing so on this particular day (John xviii. 28). If our
conviction that our Lord was crucified on the 14th of Nisan be correct (we have
intentionally refrained from discussing this point in the present treatise, because its
objects did not require us to do so), then the journey of the Jewish councillor was,
in point of fact, so open to objection that nothing but an overpowerino-ly strong
counter-motive could have constrained him to undertake it.

THE DEAD CHRIST. 203
implied in the words " they have pierced," or were they not ? It
seems indeed as if the remark made by the fourth evangelist, that
Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but only secretly, for fear of the
Jews, and his allusion to the fact that Nicodemus had only ventured
to visit Jesus by stealth and under cover of night, were intended
to cast a shadow upon these men and to include them among those
who were accused of loving the praise of men more than the praise
of God (ch. xii. 43). But this is apparent merely ; these references
are in reahty but the foil to the pronounced attitude which they
now assume. Again, it looks as if the evangelists expressly
excluded both men from all participation in the crime of passing
sentence of death on Jesus, — Nicodemus, by means of the state
ment in John vii 5 1 ; and Joseph, by the notice in Luke (xxii.
51), "the same had not consented to the counsel and deed of
them " (in his heart 1 he consented neither to the purpose nor
proceedings of the Council). But here also appearances are
deceptive. It was a well-known fact that the sentence of the
Sanhedrim was unanimous, and that it was passed without any
opposition. Consequently all its members, even those who were
silent, were inevitably burdened with a share of the responsibility,3
and Joseph and Nicodemus themselves had every reason to join
with the people in smiting on their breast. Only their sorrow
was less hopeless than that of the people. " They shall look to
Him whom they have pierced : " this saying was fulfilled in them
in its comforting sense. The dim presentiment which was
awakened in the mind of Nicodemus during his midnight inter
view with the Master of Israel now becomes clear ; he begins to
understand the figure of the lifted-up serpent, and, understanding
it, is blessed in the deed which he performs, by virtue of his
coming to the hght (John iii 21). In the attitude taken up by
the two " pious Jews," in their faith and confession, we see, as
in a mirror, the true meaning of the death of Jesus as a sacrifice
for the sin of the world. This is the solution of the problem.
The view which we take of the last passage in the Passion
1 ov o-vyxaranho-iai, of inward disagreement in contradistinction to a dissentient
vote, exactly as the avyxaraho-is is related to the o-upupuvla in 2 Cor. vi. 16.
2 "We draw the reader's attention to the remarkable passage in Paul's address in
the synagogue of the Pisidian Antioch (Acts xiii. 29) : " When they had lulfilled all
. . . they took (Him) down from the tree, and laid (Him) in a sepulchre." There
those who buried Him are put in the same category with those who compelled Pilate
to carry out the sentence of condemnation.

204 THE PASSION HISTORY.
history is similar, and we introduce our examination of it by quoting
the admirable remark of Hengstenberg : " Besides the saving
repentance of which Zechariah speaks, there is another repentance;
besides the voluntary looking to the Pierced One, there is an
involuntary looking to which even unbelief is compelled." Even
those who were directly concerned in slaying Jesus were not
debarred from a saving look to the Atoner ; on the contrary, they
were expressly and urgently exhorted to such a look (Acts xvii.
20). But here also the saying was verified: "ye would not."
And thus theirs was a " looking" of the character to which allusion
is made by our Lord Himself in Matt. xxiv. 30, and by the
apostle in Eev. i. 7. Immediately after the entombment of the
Crucified, the words spoken before Caiaphas (Matt. xxvi. 64)
began to be accomplished ; the Nemesis was afoot. Matthew
relates an incident (xxvii. 62 sqq.), namely, the embassy of the
chief priests and Pharisees to Pilate in reference to the watching
of the grave, of which all the other evangelists are silent, and to
which, moreover, there is no allusion in any other part of the
New Testament. It was to be expected, therefore, that it would
not escape the assaults of criticism. On this occasion, however,
Strauss is not alone in relegating it to the domain of unhistorical
legends, for even interpreters like Meyer and Bleek are in entire
accord with him. The objection, that doubt would thus be cast
upon Matthew's whole account of the resurrection (with which
the narrative before us is closely interwoven), naturally makes
no impression on those who are unable to abandon their precon
ceived opinion of the first Gospel. However, the task which
destructive criticism sets before, itself in dealing with this
passage is not an easy one. It pretends, indeed, that this is
the case, but the pretence cannot be kept up ; at all events it
contrasts very strangely with the peculiar arguments by which the
attack is conducted. No doubt criticism here assumes to an unusual
degree an air of triumph ; but it is very easy to discover behind
it a consciousness of embarrassment and insecurity. Possibly
it was not able to repress the feeling that its own portraiture
was accurately delineated in the narrative of Matthew. On
the strictly historical side there is only one solitary objection
which can be raised against the credibility of the incident. How
is it possible, it is asked, that the women who proposed to embalm
the body of Jesus in the early morning of the first day of the

THE DEAD CHRIST. 205
week should have limited their anxiety to the rolling away of tlie
stone from the door of the sepulchre, when they knew that the
watch and the seal made their access to it impossible ? But we
may well put the counter question, On what ground is it assumed
that the adherents of our Lord were aware of the steps taken
by the Sanhedrim ? Of Joseph we read that " he closed the
sepulchre and departed " (Matt, xxvii. 6 0) ; the women, it is true,
tarried a while longer (Matt, xxvii. 61 ; Mark xv. 47; Luke xxiii.
55); but it is explicitly stated by the third evangelist that they
also returned " and rested the Sabbath day, according to the
commandment." And it was not till the Sabbath (Matt, xxvii.
62 : "the next day, that followed the day of the preparation ")
that the Council submitted their proposal to the procurator, and
adopted measures for carrying it out. The authorities had
far stronger reasons for concealing the step which they had
taken than for pursuing an opposite course ; and, besides, the
adherents of the Crucified were as yet scarcely in a mood to listen
to rumours, or to collect information, so that the proceedings of
the Jewish rulers would no doubt become known to them for the
first time through the circumstances whieh accompanied our
Lord's resurrection. But it has been further maintained that there
is great internal improbability in the story, and an attempt has
been made to show that the alleged action of the Sanhedrim is
entirely unimaginable. If the disciples themselves, it is asked,
did not understand the prediction of the resurrection of Jesus
(which was proclaimed, besides, only in their own private circle.),
if they regarded even the Easter message at first as an " idle
tale," how did it happen that the hierarchs were differently
affected ? how did they seriously think . of that of which the
disciples had no presentiment, and which they ventured neither
to beheve nor hope ? But there is nothing really inconceivable
in this. In regard to the future lot of their Master, His
humiliation, and His subsequent glorification, the disciples were
the most uninstructed of men. Notwithstanding our Lord's
definite and unambiguous announcements of His approaching
Passion, the result was, " they understood not this saying, and it
was hid from them that they perceived it not" (Luke ix. 45).
The mood of mind revealed by the disciples who were proceeding
to Emmaus (Luke xxiv. 20-24), shows in a very striking way
how unable they were in their deep heart-sorrow to remember

206 THE PASSION HISTORY.
the comforting words of Jesus, or to draw from them any
encouragement to contemplate the future with hope. The circum
stances of the enemies of Jesus were altogether different. It is
to be specially noted that Matthew (ch. xxvii. 62) expressly
names the " chief priests and Pharisees " as the persons by whom
the visit to Pilate was made. From this we may infer that this
step was taken at the instigation of the Pharisees,1 and that the
high priests fell in with the proposal, without waiting for any
formal authorization on the part of the Council.2 According to
Matthew as- well as John, the Pharisees were the watchful
enemies of Jesus from the very beginning. They tried to take
Him in His talk, took note of His sayings, stooped to play the
part of informers, and were slow to forget what He had spoken
to them in a tone of reproof and threatening. Could they fail
to remember what He had said of the " wicked and adul
terous generation," which was to receive no sign except that of
the prophet Jonas ? If Matt. xxii. 39, 40 be compared with ch.
xxvii. 63, certainly nothing but utter perverseness can make any
one maintain that there was no sufficient historical basis for the
statement : " We remember that that deceiver said while he was
yet alive, After three days I will rise again." But, continues
criticism, assuming that there were, the measures which the Sanhe^
drim is said to have adopted are not only highly peculiar, but utterly
incredible. Strauss gives a very drastic picture of the absurd
shortsightedness which Matthew here attributes to the supreme
Council (Meyer unhappily adopts most of its features). As his
1 The combination, "the chief priests and Pharisees, "*" not found elsewhere in
Matthew, cannot be regarded as an abbreviated designation of the supreme Council.
The arrangement always followed by the first Gospel in describing this body is :
' ' the chief priests and scribes ; " and the second and third Gospels give also the
simple designation, "the chief priests." However, we sometimes find that com
bination in John, and once the Pharisees are even mentioned^r-st in order. But
as often as it occurs in the fourth Gospel (ch. vii. 32, 45 ; xi. 45, 47, 57), the
Pharisees appear as the active parties, the spokesmen (ch. vii. 47, 52), the devisers
of the measures which were agreed upon. In the passage before us, therefore, we
are not required to think of a step taken in obedience to the impulses of the
Sanhedrim itself, but of a step which was taken at the instigation of a sect and
its individual chiefs.
¦ Things were quite different on the day of our Lord's resurrection. Matters had
then become very serious, and it was necessary that the whole Council should be
gathered together, and come to some resolution. Consequently we read in Matt.
xxviii. 12 : "And when the chief priests were assembled with the elders, and had
taken counsel," etc.

THE DEAD CHRIST. 207
representation is entirely interwoven with his attempt to trace
the genesis of the "legend," we shall consult the interests of
brevity if we carry out our apologetic purpose by a direct
elucidation of the passage in Matthew. His narrative falls into
two parts. We read, in the first place, of a precautionary measure
being taken by the Pharisees in view of a possible event, and
then of a resolution adopted and carried out by the Sanhedrim
after hearing the Easter tidings. Let us look preliminarily at
the former of these. At the moment when they said, " we
remember," the Pharisees were certainly as far from entertaining
the idea that our Lord could really arise from His grave, as were
those members of the Sanhedrim who had embraced the doctrines
of Sadduceism.1 And criticism has no ground whatever for ridi
culing the idea of their indulging a hope that they might succeed
somehow or other in sealing the conqueror of death in His
grave. They cherished no such imagination ; they were merely
afraid, as they said to Pilate, that the body of Jesus might be
stolen away by His disciples. They could not act as if the
adherents of Jesus were wholly paralyzed. Had they not just
heard of a distinguished member of their own Council openly
ranging himself on the side of the Crucified ? This made them
anticipate further attempts on the part of the " Galileans."
Cunning and false themselves, they expected to be confronted with
weapons like their own. After a long and painful conflict they
had been so fortunate as to rid themselves of the originator of
a dangerous popular movement; but if His disciples should
succeed in spreading among the multitude the rumour of His
resurrection,2 their efforts would turn out to have been in vain,
and their victory would be rendered valueless. The last error
would be worse than the first ; for they were able to meet the
first by putting Jesus to death, but streams of blood would not
be sufficient to arrest the second. Consequently, if the design of
the Pharisees was to anticipate an "error," to which the removal
"•They contemptuously express their unbelief by the words: "that deceiver,"
using the same pronoun Ixuvos (Bengel : " numquam principes populi suo nomine
Jesum appellasse reperias ") which the Apostle John is in the habit of employing
in his first Epistle when expressing the firmness of his faith in Christ and the
depth of his reverence.
2 Ta Xaf, ver. 64, the easily led, unthinking multitude, which gives heed to
rumours, and is moved by them as by the wind. Comp. John vii. 49: "this
people who knoweth not the law."

208 THE PASSION HISTORY.
of the body of Jesus was the preliminary, the measures which
they adopted were entirely appropriate to the circumstances of the
case. They relied not on the authority of the official seal of the
Sanhedrim, but on the power of a watch appointed by Pilate, to
prevent the execution of the rash and violent enterprise which
the disciples of Jesus were supposed to be meditating. This, then,
was the purpose of the last request which they presented to Pilate
in connection with the crucifixion of Jesus, and they found no
difficulty in securing his compliance with it (Bengel : " Pilatus
quasi cum indignatione calumniatores cito expedit "). In no part
of the story can we discover anything which is improbable. But
perhaps it may be different with the second part of Matthew's
account of the transaction (ch. xxviii. 11—15). He tells us that
certain of the guards came to the high priests ' and communicated
to them what they had seen and experienced. Their bringing
the communication, not to the procurator, but to the Jewish
authorities, is to be explained (assuming that the report was
an official one) by the circumstance that Pilate placed the
watch under the authority of the Sanhedrim (" ye have a
watch "), leaving them to give all necessary instructions (" make
it as sure as ye can," Matt, xxviii. 65). We regard it
as an entirely indifferent question whether the Jews accepted
the account of the soldiers as true or the reverse. The remark
of Strauss, that the high priests and elders would have con
sidered such a report to be false, and have insisted upon an in
vestigation, is just as destitute of substantial foundation as his
further remark, that the priests of the " Christian legend " accepted
it as true. The former is a purely arbitrary supposition, and the
latter does not find the slightest support in the text of Matthew.
It is exceedingly probable that there was a difference of opinion
on the point in the bosom of the Sanhedrim, similar to that which
showed itself subsequently (Acts xxiii. 7-9) between the Pharisee
and Sadducee members of that body. But the matter was not
discussed. Even supposing that a greater or less number —
remembering, perhaps, the Lazarus - miracle — may have been
struck, as by a lightning flash, with a conviction of the truth,
the story of the soldiers led not one of them to true faith. " If
1 It is quite in order that the enemies of Jesus should receive the Easter message
from these quaking guardians of His tomb. It was conveyed by our Lord Himself,
or by His angels, to His own.

THE DEAD CHRIST. 209
they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be
persuaded though one rose from the dead." As to the main
point, they entirely agreed with those who regarded the story as
a fable. The former had no time to indulge their feelings of
perplexity, and the latter were unable to treat the empty tale
with silent contempt. All were seized with a like consternation,
and equally felt the necessity of action. For whatever the
facts of the case were as regarded the matters asserted by
the soldiers, it was at least clear that the rumour of the resurrec
tion of Jesus being already afoot, and threatening to acquire
consistency, their immediate business was to arrest its progress.
The course which at once recommended itself, was to declare that
to be an actual fact which they had previously mentioned to Pilate
as a matter of solicitude. No doubt there were difficulties in
the way of their so doing, but we are told (ch. xxviii. 12-14) in
what way they expected to overcome them. Criticism finds it
easy to show that such a proceeding on the part of the ecclesi
astical authorities can hardly be imagined, and that the immorality
of the course they resolved on would be surpassed only by the folly
which could anticipate success from such a " counsel and deed."
Undoubtedly the eye here gazes into an abyss of sin whose lowest
depths it can scarcely reach. The Sanhedrim tempts the soldiers
to utter falsehood, instructs them in its language, and promises
to uphold the he, if necessary, with the full weight of its
authority. And as the watchmen were doubtless averse to follow
the course pointed out to them (they were appointed to watch,
and yet they are to confess, " we slept ; " they abandoned them
selves to sleep, and nevertheless observed that the disciples stole
away the body of Jesus), the supreme authorities did not scruple
to resort to corruption, and, to their own condemnation, paid the
soldiers the dishonourable wages of deceit. But the alleged im
probability disappears when we perceive the harmony between
this transaction and the character evinced by the Pharisees in
particular throughout the whole of their relations to Jesus. " Ye
are of your father the devil. When he speaketh a lie, he
speaketh of his own ; for he is a liar, and the father of it." If
they were still determined to maintain their conflict with the
truth, their only available weapon was lying ; they had no other,
therefore, to put into the hands of those whom they needed as their
helpers and instruments. If we find it impossible to understand
o

210 THE PASSION HISTORY.
or to imagine how they could expect to attain their object by
such methods, or to extinguish the already kindled fire by such
arts, it must be remembered that this is a case in which we must
not measure by our rule. The counsel which Gamaliel gave
them at a later time was a new gleam of thought to them. But,
after all, were they so entirely- wrong in their calculations ?
Were the results such as to put their scheme altogether to shame?
The words of the evangelist convey no such impression. He
writes : " and this saying is commonly reported among the Jews
until this day." The lie must have succeeded in gaining access
to the minds of the Jews, and asserting itself for a time in a more
or less extensive circle. At the date when Matthew wrote his
Gospel the report was still current. How long it continued to be
accepted thereafter we do not know. The information contained
in Eisenmenger's Entdecktes Judenthum does not enable us to
come to any certain conclusion on the point. Meyer points to
the circumstance that there is no allusion to the assertion that
our Lord's body was stolen in any of the proceedings of the
apostolic church, as a weighty testimony against the historical
reality of the narrative. But from this circumstance (which is,
besides, sufficiently explained by the fact that apostolic apolo
getics was wont to move on a higher level, and scarcely ever
descended to this lower region) we might rather draw the con
clusion that the Jews soon began to be ashamed of this expedient,
— an expedient which could not withstand the overwhelming
force of events any more than chaff can resist the rushing wind.
It is true that Paul still says of them : " even unto this day the
vail is upon their heart" (2 Cor. ih. 15), but the arguments on
which they relied in opposing Christianity were of another
character, and were pitched in a different key. Even the criticism
of Strauss scorns to accept the " Jewish legend," preferring to
reject the whole stoiy as a " Christian legend." However, we
may seriously inquire whether the character of this criticism
is not correctly portrayed in that very proceeding of the high
priests which it is pleased to call inconceivable. Do not its
fallacious reasonings and conclusions justify us in accusing it
of something more than of being merely objectively incorrect or
subjectively astray ? With this question we bring our investi
gations to a close. The foregoing pages contain our contribution
to its answer.

THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.

£11

THE
HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.

INTEODUCTION.
1. THE INTEREST INVOLVED.
THE rising again of Jesus Christ from the dead is that fact
in the Gospel history to the overthrow of which negative
criticism - has set itself with all its powers tasked to their
utmost energy. On this arena there was more to be done
than merely to set aside a miracle, however pre-eminent.
" Whether miracles in themselves are to be held as possible,"
such is the express declaration of Strauss, "cannot be the
question when we are face to face with such an unheard-of
and unexampled event." But for that very reason also the task
of criticism was not to deprive one single troublesome and
inconvenient doctrine of its historical basis. But " the resurrec
tion of Jesus forms the central point of the centre, the very
heart of Christianity as it has hitherto existed, and therefore it
has ever been above all things else the mark for the sharpest
arrows of her adversaries " (Strauss, die, Halben und die Ganzen,
p. 125). Those adversaries have never advanced to this battle
field with a spirit confident of victory, and they never could. It
is true the Easter - accounts of the Gospels manifestly present
important difficulties, and when these are skilfully advanced
they may be used to support a doubt as to the reahty of the
facts related. Yet that critic who ventures his attack, armed
with this weapon only, enters on a very unequal strife. The
difficulties which are raised by the denial of Christ's resurrection
are certainly far greater than those which stand opposed to its
acknowledgment; these may all be more or less satisfactorily
213

214 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
solved, while those are found to be simply insurmountable.
When, therefore, a premature triumph is proclaimed, the explana
tion is not to be found in the feeling of superiority. The out
burst is due either to the confounding of a subjective conviction
settled beforehand, with a result which should be the fruit of
earnest scientific investigation, or it is intended to cover the
helplessness which always arises when the available means are
out of all proportion to the end which is to be reached, no
matter how. The latter alternative is probably the right one.
For on this head criticism could not be deceived, namely, that
every advantage — whether real or apparent — which it had won,
became insecure the instant it declined the task of destroying
this last and most important stronghold. It was vain to over
throw the faith of men in the miracles of Jesus, so long as
the highest miracle of His resurrection from the dead still
remained untouched. It was lost labour to explain the death of
Jesus, which faith calls an atoning sacrifice, as the mere suc
cumbing of a champion for truth and right, so long as it did not
get rid of a fact which asserts itself as the divine declaration of
His death in the church sense of it. " Here we stand " — so has
fhe most distinguished representative of criticism boldly declared
— " at the decisive point where we must either retract all that
has gone before, and give up our whole enterprise, or we must
pledge ourselves to explain the origin of faith in the resurrection
of Jesus without a corresponding miraculous fact," that is to say,
must clear this fact out of the way (Strauss, Leben Jesu, p. 288).
And the latter is his decision. He does his utmost to prove the
Easter tidings to be a fable, to be that for which those disciples
took it at the first moment, a Xfjpo*; yvvaiK&v.
Of course the apologist, unless his work is to be a failure,
must have an interest of equal strength in upholding the dis
puted fact; certainly that interest must go far beyond the
simple wish to maintain a part of the Gospel history. But it is
a very important question whether his interest in the matter
should be controlled by a motive equal (though pointing in the
opposite direction) to that from which the interest of criticism
proceeds. As to the latter, it must cease to be, unless it take
pains to get rid of a fact on which, in the end, its whole structure
would come to ruin. But is the apologist correspondingly con
cerned to have in the Easter miracle a proof which will secure

INTRODUCTION. 215
the truth of Christianity against all assaults, and carry every
hostile argument in its victorious march ? The attempt has
more than once been made by establishing the history of the
resurrection to gain an apology for the whole Christian revela
tion, and it has been hoped in this way to win for it the full
conclusiveness of an irrefragable demonstration. We need not
here consider the question whether this attempt rests on a just
calculation; only we may state the fact in passing, that the
apostles never followed such a procedure; even the relative
places of the Petrine discourses to the Jews are undoubtedly to
be judged from an altogether different point of view. So much
the more decidedly do we advance the conviction that a defence
of the Easter history, which is undertaken, not for the sake of
the history itself, but in the service of that wider aim, is doomed
to certain failure. In the region of dogmatics the principle may
hold good which church theologians have maintained, "resurrectio
Christi est basis ac fundamentum omnium fidei articulorum"
(Quenstedt, Theol. did. pol. II. p. 376; Gerhard, Harm. c. 212);
for apologetics it cannot be admitted as a regulative principle.
Otherwise the apologist would set himself the mistaken task of
raising the resurrection of Jesus to the rank of a mathematical
certainty, and in his mistaken zeal overshoot his true aim.1
When Strauss lays it down as the condition of acknowledging
the Easter history, that proofs of an altogether irresistible
character should be given for it, we can understand the demand
from his point of view ; but as it is unjustifiable, so it is also
impossible to satisfy it. The hfe and work, the suffering and
dying of Jesus Christ come under the category of a notoriety,
under which His resurrection does not fall ; it cannot therefore
be demonstrated to those in whom the organ of faith is wanting.
" Mortuum esse Christum," so Augustine rightly says, " et pagani
atque inimici ejus credunt ; resurrexisse autem Christum, propria
fides est Christianorum." 2
' Caspari's view (chronolog. - geograph. Einleitung in das Leben Jesu Christi,
Hamburg 1869, p. 214), that the apostles, before everything else, laid down
certainty as to the resurrection of our Lord, that first on this certainty they built
up faith and repentance, and that without such a certainty the fact even for
apologetics, as much as for the mission of Christianity, would sink to indifference,
we hold to be a mistake.
2 Comp. August, de Trinit. 2. In Ts. ci. cone. 2. When, therefore, the Apostle
Paul designates the death of Christ equally with His resurrection as an object of

216 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
But even if the interest which criticism on the one side and
apologetics on the other follow in relation to the Easter history
does not rest on equal motives, yet in another respect that of
the latter rises to the full intensity of the former. For on the
resurrection of Jesus Christ there depends a consequence which
has an importance for the Christian consciousness as decisive as
it is comprehensive, nay, without which that consciousness could
not exist. What is this consequence? It was, no doubt, from
regard to the well-known declarations of Paul (1 Cor. xv. 19:
" If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men
most miserable;" ver. 30 et seq.: "Why stand we in jeopardy
every hour ? What advantageth it me if the dead rise not ? let
us eat and drink; for to-morrow we die;" 2 Tim. ii. 8: "Kemember
that Jesus Christ was raised from the de,ad, wherein I suffer troubles
even to bonds, enduring all things," and such like) that the Fathers
of the church from the earliest times down to the latter part of
the Middle Ages 1 laid emphasis almost exclusively on the proof
which the future resurrection of the dead has received from the
Easter tidings. Still easier is it to understand why, in the
present day, men prefer to advance the same aspect. In
Jerusalem the Sadducees were grieved that the apostles preached
through Jesus the resurrection from the dead (Acts iv. 2) ; at
Athens the heathen made it the butt of their ridicule (Acts
xvii. 32); at the present day one may well feel himself called
still more urgently to stand fast for a truth on which the religion
of naturalism and the denial of everlasting judgment are con
founded. Notwithstanding all this, it cannot be gainsaid that
if the apologist enters with this fact alone on his contest, his
strength is not adequate to his task.
The consequence at stake must be weightier and more far-
reaching. Is there yet another ? And does the Scripture know
faith (so 1 Thess. iv. 14 : si •Xitrrtuopt.iv, on 'Ivjtrevs avriffaviv xa) avitrrri), he has in
view not the fact of His death, but its meaning in the histoiy of salvation, not
the otvUaviv in itself, but the otoridaviv V7r\p raiv apcapriuv, 1 Cor. XV. 3.
1 Full proofs of this are to be found in Reich, die Auferstehung des Herrn als
Heilsthatsaclie mit besonderer Rucksiclvt auf Schleiermacher, Darmstadt 1845
pp. 100-111. But it is far from correct to say that this mode of view fell into the
background in the following centuries ; it is familiar also to the church theologians
of the seventeenth century. Gerhard has taken pains to show that the hope of our
resurrection has its anchor in the Easter miracle ; not less than "undecini vincula
hujus conncxionis " are pointed out by him.

INTRODUCTION. 217
of one such ? In the same context to which the passages just
quoted belong, the apostle speaks as follows : " If Christ be not
risen, then is your faith vain, Kevrj — your faith is vain, fiaraia ;
ye are yet in your sins" (1 Cor. xv. 14, 17). Krauss (in his
theologische Commcntar zu 1 Cor. xv., Frauenfeld 1864, p. 69 ff.)
misses the sense of the passage when he understands the iriari'i
Kevt] of a faith which is devoid of contents ; the p,arala, on the
other hand, of such a faith as wants the joy of hope in the
perfecting of the divine life in its subject. But we also doubt
whether Hofmann himself has hit the right sense in placing the
ideas under the relation of reality to truth, and specially finding
the iriari<; Kevrj in the case of any one believing what never had
any existence at all.1 The Kevov receives its explanation from
the preceding and similar description of the xrjpvyfia, while the
fidraiov is explained in the following clause. Kevov, in this
light, is not that Kr\pvyp.a which includes no contents whatever,
but a proclamation which lacks divine strength ; and, conse
quently, the hke holds true of the faith which rests on such a
Kr\pvyp.a? It is not this more objective, but the subjective
side which is indicated by the second epithet. Illaris is fiaraia,
in so far as it — and that just in consequence of the want of divine
power — is destitute of the confidence which belongs to its idea,
that confidence without which it cannot do that whereto God
has appointed it ; it does not raise man above his consciousness
of sin, and he himself feels that he is not freed from its power.
1 If this were the apostle's meaning, he would certainly have used a much sharper
expression. The •^ivhopi.i.prvpis of ver. 15 leaves no doubt on this head.
2 Comp. 1 Cor. iL 4 : obx iv iru6o7s trotplas Xoyois ro xripvyptta ptou lysvero, aXX1 iv
aurotu^ii vrviupLaros xa) ovvapttius, 'Iva -/, tt'io-tis vpttbiv u.r. 'h iv o-otpla avQpaivfatv, aXX' iv o'vvdpcei
esou. This is the meaning in which the apostle is accustomed to use the expressions
xivis, xivoio-lai. Hofmann's explanation (die heil. Sehr. N. T. III. p. 24),
" xivouo-lai means to be deprived of that which in its essential being is something,"
is abstractly considered quite right ; only the question is to make out the relation
which Paul in the given case has in view, and to point out the specific contents
which he regards as endangered. Ksw with him always denotes that from which
the divine element, whether in the matter of contents, or proof, or destination, has
been withdrawn. So he writes (Phil. ii. 7) of Christ Jesus ixnmm \avriv, that is to
say, in so far as the Son gave up the Civai lo-a @i£i. So he teaches, Rom. iv. 14 :
»' ol ix v'oilov xXnpoviptt.01, xixivoirai « irltrns, namely, in so far as the promise which
God hasjriven would in the supposed case have been rendered null. And in 1 Cor.
i. 17 we read : "va pn xivuty l rravpis tsU Xpitrrov, the divine power of the preaching
of the cross would be called in question, would be denied, if it were held to be
necessary to secure its proper impression to that preaching by words of human
wisdom.

218 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
Thus, then, faith, . according to the apostle's view, is subject
to both that Kevovadai and this fiaraiort,^, apart from the pro
clamation of our Lord's resurrection. It is first through this
fact that it reaches its being and operation ; it is only through
it that it gains the certainty which can equally defy contradiction
from without and doubt from within ; otherwise the consciousness
of salvation is illusory. It is not always that theology has found
itself in accord with this Pauline view. Schleiermacher lays
down the position, " that it is impossible to prove an immediate
connection between the fact of the resurrection and the in-being
of God in Christ and His redeeming work. It is quite supposable
that the Lord might have been- raised to glory without this
intermediate step, and it serves to secure neither the spiritual
presence which He promised, nor the abiding influence upon
those left behind of which He spoke. Every one familiar with
dogmatic propositions may be expected to admit that he regards
that historical fact as a matter of indifference for the right im
pression of Christ." He has not on this account denied the fact ;
on the contrary, on a ground to be afterwards explained, he claims
its acknowledgment very decidedly ; he even goes out of his way
to defend it against the assaults of criticism. Only it was easy
work for Strauss to prove the failure of this attempt, and even
to show ground for the suspicion that the apologist's own con
viction respecting the reality of the fact which he championed
could be none of the firmest. In any case, Schleiermacher's
interest in respect of our Lord's resurrection was a very lukewarm
one ; neither could it be urgent, because it did not flow from the
right source. Quite another importance attaches to the subject
on the supposition expressed by the Apostle Paul." The " im
pression of the redeeming work of Christ " is not enough for him
to establish the reality of the consciousness of salvation. For
this object, he regards the fact of His resurrection as absolutely
indispensable. Without it he would pass the judgment on His
whole work, and very specially on His suffering and dying :
apa Xpiarb<s Swpehv diredavev. If, then, the gospel is really a
power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth, only if
our Lord rose from the dead, then the apologetic interest in the
Easter event rises to such a degree of intensity as can never
be surpassed by the critical interest in the opposite direction.
Exactly as Strauss utters the confession that he finds himself

INTRODUCTION. 219
here at the deciding point where he must either give up his
undertaldng or remove the last stone out of the way ; so also
the apologist stands here at the point on which depends the
decision as to the existence or non-existence of justifying and
saving faith. An interest thus awakened is strong enough to call
forth the full energy demanded by the conflict.
2. THE POINT OF DEPARTURE.
If we have spoken of the intensity of the apologetic interest
as essentially demanded for the discharge of the task proposed,
we have not meant this in the general sense, that an urgent and
lively interest of any kind whatever serves to sharpen the eye
for the discovery of the requisite ways and means. For it is not
on its strength taken in itself that the supposed assistance rests,
but much more completely on the way and manner in which it
is awakened and raised to its specific height. In the hght of this
genesis it is that we think above all to find the place from which
to begin the consideration of our subject.
It seems, indeed, as if there could be no doubt about the right
point of departure. It is Scripture which has recorded our
Lord's resurrection. The apostles call themselves its witnesses ;
they assure us that they saw, and heard, and touched the Eisen
One — nay, even that He ate before their eyes. And what Luke
sums up in the beginning of his second work thus : " Jesus
showed Himself alive to them by many proofs, being seen of them
forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom
of God," lies before us in detailed accounts in the Gospel history,
their leading outlines being arranged later by Paul also. There
fore it is from the Scriptures that the Lutheran divines have
drawn their main arguments for the certainty of Jesus' resurrec
tion. To the teaching of Scripture Schleiermacher ascribes faith
in this fact which it attests ; because it is written, therefore and
only therefore has he claimed for it a ready acknowledgment.
And most recently also the opinion has been expressed that
this faith rests solely on the accounts which Scripture contains
regarding the appearances of the Eisen One. If, therefore,
criticism made an attack upon the Easter message, it would seem
that in order to ward it off, we must go back wholly on the
credibility of Scripture, and from this point prove the authen-

220 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
ticity of those special narratives, and the truth which results from
them. And yet it is a noteworthy and significant fact, that at the
very time when the course described was the one peculiarly
obvious, an extraordinary inclination is unmistakeable to get at
the same conclusion in another way parallel to this from a
different point of departure. We have not in view those
theologians who were already obliged to defend themselves
against Spinoza. Against his objections it was impossible for
men like Olearius (comp. the treatise to be found at the close
of his Observat. sacr. ad evgl. Matthaei, p. 741 et seq., entitled
" Demonstratio apostolica resurrectionis Jesu Christi"), Jac.
Carpovius (comp. Theologia revelata dogmatica, II. p. 619 et seq.),
Bud deus (comp. Institutt. p. 794), to rest on the mere Scripture
proof. But when J. Gerhard composed his thorough and learned
" SidaKetyis de gloriosa salvatoris Jesu Christi resurrectione," 1
on the one hand, no doubt had been raised on scientific grounds
as to the reality of our Lord's resurrection ; and, on the other
hand, the orthodox doctrine of the inspiration of the Holy
Scriptures remained full-blown and undisputed. If the author,
notwithstanding the absence of provocation on the side of
polemics, was led to place at the beginning of his work a chapter,
De certitudine facti, i.e. an Christus resurrexerit, it was with him
a matter of course to set the testimony of Scripture in the fore
most rank, as he has done under five different heads. But what
moved him to admit in the second rank yet another mode of
proof entirely different, and there to adduce considerations which,
from his standpoint, appear to be really superfluous ? We have
but one answer to this question. Here there is a feeling betrayed
that the Gospel accounts taken by themselves do not suffice to
establish faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ on its solid
basis ; that is to say, even the consciousness which was under
the full control of dogmatics could not escape from the a'tadr/ais,
that the character of those narratives, apart altogether from their
divergencies, might give rise to a doubt as to whether their
contents were strictly historical. The utterance of Spinoza :
" Narrationes evangelicas de Christi resurrectione stylum poeticum
fabulasque Ovidianas sapere," justly called forth at the time the
1 It is to be found printed in the second part of his disputationes theologicae,
p. 1395 et seq., which appeared at Jena 1655.

INTRODUCTION. 221
lively indignation of theologians, and brought upon the philoso
pher the deserved reproach of lacking the requisite verecundia.
And yet there is a grain of truth concealed under the frivolous
assertion. The descriptions of the life and sufferings of our Lord
of themselves attest the firm historical ground on which they
transpire ; the Easter accounts appear much more akin to the
way and manner in which the first, and very specially the third
evangelist have described the entrance of the Son into the world.
No man can be expected, simply on the ground of the Bible
Christmas history, to acknowledge the supernatural birth of Jesus.
Even in the case of those who hold themselves to be inwardly
convinced of the genuineness of these narratives, it is not the
narratives alone, but other grounds as well which have brought
them to the conclusions that He was conceived of the Spirit
and born of the Virgin. In relation to the resurrection histpry,
the same want is strongly felt. It is true Gerhard has
not acknowledged this, and it may never have come to perfect
clearness in his mind; but we have no doubt it was under
its influence, that side by side with the Scripture ground, he
entered upon another sort of demonstration for the " certitudo
facti." From what point has he drawn his proof? "Adde," so he
writes, " Spiritus sancti effusionem, evangelii praedicationem,
multorum ad Christum per eam conversionem, miracula Aposto-
lorum, ecclesiae perpetuam conservationem." Thus he alleges
the fact already indicated by Athanasius (in the treatise, de
incarn. verbi) quoted by him, and which, as is well known, has
been employed by modern apologetics as an irresistible and
triumphant proof of the immovable certainty of the fact. It
cannot in the remotest degree be our object to throw suspicion
on the convincing power of this view. Criticism has laboured in
vain to break the point of it. Strauss, indeed, bids us remember
Baur's " genuinely historical " assertion, that it is not the matter
of fact in the resurrection of Jesus, but only faith in it, which
forms the indispensable supposition to our understanding the
appearance and work of the apostles. But the tone of superiority
with which he hurls at us this memento (L. J. p. 289) cannot
impose on us, simply because he fails to prove how possibly the
faith of the disciples could have arisen without the actual fact.
Or is that meant for a proof, when he explains that a reaction

222 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
from terror at the unheard-of event to the mood from which
visions could proceed, passed in the dark depths of the soul, — a
violent transition, a lightning flash, in which the close atmosphere
of the compressed inner life discharged itself ? Or is it a proof,
when Holsten thus explains the case of Paul : the image of the
glorified and raised Christ which appeared to him proceeding from
the persecuted church, was the goad (the pricks) upon which his
soul, still burning with zeal for the divine truth of Judaism,
received its bloody wound, and the rock on which the passion of
this zeal seethed and broke for ever ? When men who claim the
reputation of clear, sober thought lose themselves in such fanciful
phrases, they of all men can least by such means conceal the
want of arguments ; they become the betrayers of their own
helplessness, and thereby strengthen the force of the proof
which they have assailed in vain. But it is still another
question whether it is well for apologetics to start from this
position, however secure. Gerhard has chosen the appropriate
expression when he allows for it the worth of a "confirmatio
certitudinis." Faith may in this way find itself strengthened.
That it finds also its foundation here, he would never have
admitted ; and neither can we. In Gerhard's view, the foun
dation rests exclusively in the Scripture history of the resur
rection. If, then, this basis taken by itself appears to us insufficient,
what is needed for its consolidation ? We cannot answer this
question without going back on those in whom faith in the
Eisen One first came into being. How came they to this faith ?
and what course did they follow to plant it in the minds of
strangers ? Nothing seems to be more obvious than that the
disciples were led by their Easter experiences to the conviction
of the resurrection of Jesus. They received the first message
not without distrust ; but their doubts died away and passed to
the very opposite when the Lord appeared in their circle, and
when they, by every means of sensible perception, became aware
of His bodily presence. We may acknowledge all this, and yet
raise the doubt whether in this, taken by itself, the factor of the
certainty of their faith is to be sought. Baur has rightly pointed
out, as to the scene with Thomas, that all this seeing and touch
ing, this materialism and tangible corporeity, makes out nothing
for faith in the resurrection of Jesus, so long as the fact taken by

INTRODUCTION. 223
itself is not established as a thing certain and necessary.1 For
it is erroneous to suppose that our Lord's censure was directed
against the unbelief with which the disciple had met the testi
mony he had received ; and the position is untenable, that it was
the humiliating gratification of his demand which overcame the
doubter. The censure is aimed at a more comprehensive want,
of which this unbelief was only a sign. And he was overcome
by the same power which set up its first trophy in the history of
Nathanael. Bepeatedly, now to individuals, and again to the
whole circle, did the Eisen One open up the Scriptures, according
to wliich Christ must so have suffered to enter into His glory.
For what object did He do so ? No other interest is discoverable
than that of laying a foundation for their faith in the fact which
their eyes have presently before them, and of bringing about the
result of which the fourth evangelist has thus written : " When
He was risen from the dead, His disciples believed the Scriptures.
For as yet they knew not the Scripture, that He must rise again
from the dead" (comp. John ii. 22, xx. 9).
The view of Strauss, that the revelations of the Eisen One
appear as mere hallucinations of the disciples, begotten by their
remembrance of the personahty of Jesus, and supported by their
faith in His Messiahship, has met with approval and assent from
many ; in the case of others, it has proved misleading and un
settling. One is tempted to regard this result as a veritable
riddle ; for the laws of human nature make it an absolute
psychological impossibility that men who had buried their hopes
by the cross should so soon as the third day thereafter,3 "from
their inner being outwards, by the way of the mind, of the imagi
nation, and of the excited nervous frame," have been able to
1 In Gerhard also we find the same feeling coming out strongly. Decisively as he
elsewhere insists upon the fact that the Easter faith of the disciples flowed from their
avro\]tia, this does not prevent him, in view of these sensible means of proof, from
making the remark, "in rebus humanis judicium sensuum et experientia, a'lo-ho-is
xa) -riipa, praecedunt fidem ; sed in rebus divinis fidem sequitur intellectus et
experientia. "
2 The Christian herygma of our Lord's resurrection on the third day could not but
be peculiarly a stone of offence to Strauss. He himself cannot help admitting that
his view of the origin of faith in the resurrection of Jesus seems to fail utterly,
because of the impossibility of making its origin conceivable so early as the third
day (L. J. p. 311). And not only does it seem to fail here, but it is shipwrecked
really and inevitably on this rock. In vain he seeks to rescue it from certain
destruction by disputing the historical ground for the determination of the time
(though Paul mentions it as an element of the apostolic preaching), and explains it

224 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
restore their shattered faith. Assuredly not one of the whole
" German people " would have given in to this assumption had
there not been a germ of truth contained in the- phantom of the
brain. This, namely : the earlier conviction of the disciples that
Jesus was the Christ, was in reality a co-operating factor going
to produce their faith in His resurrection. As, on the one hand,
it was impossible for them to talk themselves into this fact, or
imagine it, unless it had actually happened — as under no cir
cumstances, and by no brilliant or morbid qualities, could they
have breathed so much truth and life into a vision of their own
creation, that it was more real to them than their own existence ;
so, on the other hand, when He actually rose, when He appeared
bodily, they could not have given Him their faith had not the
knowledge ripened in them during their earlier fellowship with
Him, that He was the Christ, the. Son of the living God. Despite
the testimony of their senses, they would have persisted in the
delusion, irvevp,d lariv, (bdvraaptd eariv, ayyeXo? airov iariv, —
they, as undoubtedly as the high priests or Pilate would have
done, had the Eisen One chosen to present Himself before their
eyes.1 Thus, then, their faith in the Easter miracle certainly
broke forth in virtue of the revelations by which the Lord showed
Himself to them as the living One ; but it broke forth on the
ground of the full assurance with which they had once pro
tested their ireiriarevKafiev Kal eyvd>Kaptev, on the ground of that
which their Lord recognised in them in His last farewell utter
ance : " Now ye believe " (John xvi. 31) ; nay, what He testified
of them before His Father : " They have believed that Thou
didst send Me."
as the result merely of inferences from Hos. vi. 2 ; Luke xiii. 32 ; Matt. xxvi. 61.
It is hard to believe that this desperate evasion of utter helplessness can satisfy
himself. That he does not hope it will meet with favour seems to be betrayed by
the less pretentious tone with which he sets the matter before his readers.
1 The circumstance that our Lord did not do this was, it is well known, used by
Spinoza as a main objection to the credibility of the resurrection history. " Si Christus
actu resurrexisset, sine dubio se Pilato Judaeorumque proceribus conspiciendum
praebuisset, si quidem ita eos ad fidem flectere potuisset. " He deserved no better
answer than that of Carpovius, that he would draw his inference thus : " quicunque
redivivus esse dicitur, nee tamen bostibus suis se praebuit conspiciendum, ille actu
ex mortuis non resurrexit." One can scarcely trust his eyes when he finds Holsten
recently designating the objection of the philosopher as one which has not been met
down to the present hour. How little can the man have known the mind of the
Lord, and the nature of the kingdom of heaven, who can form the idea that tlie
Eisen One must have revealed Himself to the world !

INTRODUCTION. 225
Now the way and manner in which they propagated faith in
the Eisen One is a true copy of the genesis of their own. No
doubt it would seem here also as if they had simply appealed to
their experience and observation. And this they did and must
have done : " This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are
witnesses" (Acts ii. 32, etc.). But they do not confine them
selves to such appeals. Peter manifestly did more ; and that
not only in his Pentecostal sermon to the Jews, but likewise in
addressing Gentiles in the house of Cornelius. Especially worthy
of remark and emphasis is the circumstance that in both cases
he prefaced his testimony of the Eisen One by stating how Jesus
had been proved by His life and work on the earth to be the
Christ. Comp. Acts ii. 22, x. 38. But it is the same also with
Paul. True, if we consider how he deals with the doubters at
Corinth, does he not seem to lay emphasis entirely on the cloud
of witnesses who beheld the Eisen One with their eyes ? Cer
tainly, and yet only if the common understanding of the passage
is the right one. The endeavour to make out its real object we
must reserve for a later point in the discussion, and meanwhile
describe it as a deceptive appearance when the apostle's object
is supposed to be to stamp out the scruples of the church by
" the brilhant array of witnesses," or by " their imposing number."
Of higher importance for our present purpose is an expression
which precedes this enumeration. It fully discloses the way and
manner in which Paul proclaimed to the world our Lord's
resurrection : " I delivered unto you how that Christ rose again
the third day, according to the Scriptures " (1 Cor. xv. 4). The
details which immediately follow, and which are closely con
nected by the " and that He was seen," prove, indeed, that he
constantly appealed to its witnesses for the reality of the fact ;
but the " according to the Scriptures " makes it equally certain
that he would not have faith founded on this ground only. The
question is how to explain this determining clause. Undoubtedly
the older commentators were mistaken when they collected every
text whatever bearing on the subject, nay, every available type
of the Old Testament, and then drew the conclusion that the
apostle had used them more or less fully in the work of his
kerygma. Nor can we quite agree with the explanation given.
by Hofmann (die h. Schr. d. N. T. III. p. 349) ; it seems to us
to separate the " according to the Scriptures " too widely from
p

226 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
the fact of the "was raised" as such. Assuredly, Paul ever
appealed to distinct Old Testament sayings ; but certainly also in
such a way that, following the rule of the great Isaiah prophecy,
he set forth the inner necessity of pur Lord's resurrection, — a
necessity which was founded in the person and merit and mis
sion of the Christ ; a necessity which, in regard to the sufferings
and glories that should follow, finds its expression in the solemn
formula, Sei ovrw; yeviaOai, Iva irX-qptoOmaiv ai ypa<f>ai ; a neces
sity such as he himself finally indicated by the Sio in the passage
of his Epistle to the Philippians.2
We maintain, indeed, with indisputable right, that the way
and manner in which the disciples themselves gained the con
viction of the resurrection of Jesus, in which they afterwards
propagated it in the world, is important, not to say authoritative,
for him who undertakes to strengthen faith which has been
shipwrecked, and vindicate the fact which has been brought into
suspicion. Especially do we thus come to know the standpoint
which serves as a guiding star to one attempting an apology.
According to this view, it is no other than the assumption that
Jesus is the Christ. It may be that this standpoint will be
regarded by many as a strange or as an impossible one. But the
remarks with which we sought above to indicate our interest in
the conflict before us had for their aim to anticipate this strange
ness, and take off its edge. If the object is to find a proof of
Christianity in the Easter tidings, and so to draw the conclusion,
" the Lord is risen, therefore He is the Christ," then, indeed, that
cannot be assumed which must be the result of the demonstra
tion. For us the case is wholly different. For our interest lies
in maintaining that the resurrection of our Lord affords a sure
ground, not for faith in general, not for faith in the sense of
holding-for-true, for a irlans, which Paul would call Kevtf and
1 In this formula we have the true explanation of the <«-i ras ypatpas in the pas
sage in Corinthians.
2 A bright historical example illustrating the course followed by the apostle in
regard to our Lord's resurrection lies before us in the discourse which he delivered
at Antioch in Pisidia, comp. Acts xiii. 30 et seq., '0 Ssos Hyupsv aiirov ix vtxpiiv,
so he begins. Next he dwells with emphasis on the experiences of the eye-wit
nesses : "£l$8n ior) viptipas vrXtiovs rots truvavafiuo-iv auru avro tSjs VaXiXatas Bis 'Upovo-aXr,pt,
o'lrtvts vvv sto-iv ptaprvpts avrov orpos rov Xa'ov. But immediately thereafter he goes back
upon the ypatpui, upon the iirayytxla orpos rovs naripas yivoptivrt, and finally rejects a
definite prophecy, that by its light and validity he may furnish faith with a solid
basis.

INTRODUCTION. 227
fiaraia, but for evangelical faith, for justifying and saving faith ;
and the attempt to produce an apology with such a view deter
mines our programme thus : Jesus is the Christ, and therefore
He must rise again.1 In our day we hear theologians, as well as
laymen, when hard pressed with critical objections, and at a loss
to meet them, making their escape with the words, that personal
experience of the living One is after all the surest and the
sufficient pledge for the reality of the resurrection. So far as
this judgment rests on pious feeling, it is a matter of indifference
to science. There is a sense, however, in which even science can
appropriate it. Paul has more in view than the immediate reli
gious feeling when he speaks (Phil. iii. 10) of a yvcbvai (accord
ing to Eph. iii. 18, 19, equivalent to KaraXafieadai) rrjv Svvap,iv
t^? dvaardaeax; avrov. He means that eirlyvcoai';, no mere
aiadrjais, that iiriyvcDais which makes one capable of a SoKifid^eiv.
And the SiW/u? rrjs dvaardaeco? avrov, although it shows itself
chiefly in the practical life, is in so far also a matter of reflection,
as the necessity of the fact is comprehended on the ground of a
previous assumption, and with a view to an end.2
There is only one thing more which might be remarked as to
our view. Does any peculiar worth belong to an apology for the
Easter history, which proceeds on the assumption that Jesus is
the Christ ? Does it perform any important, any useful service
1 We do not at all mean that the state of the case is wholly otherwise with the
man whose object is simply to prove the Easter history, than with the apologist of
Christianity in general. He too who undertakes- this comprehensive task dare not,
in our judgment, use our Lord's resurrection as a means of proof. Otherwise he sets
himself an impossible task, and beats the air. He too must first prove the position
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, without any regard to the Easter fact.
Or must that be thought impossible ? We will not cite Schleiermacher. It might
be replied that the sense in which this theologian regarded Jesus as the Christ was
an extremely attenuated one. But this much is certain : the disciples before the
resurrection of our Lord, ay, even without the most distant imagination of it,
delivered a confession to this effect. This is the pattern for apologists. In the
treatise of Krauss (die Lehre von der Offenbarung, Gotha 1868) that part seems to
us a failure, a stone out of place in the edifice, in which the author uses the appear
ances of our Lord — bringing them as he does under the category of miracles — as
proofs for the reality of divine revelation.
2 This course has been touched on by Gerhard also somewhere in his liao-xi-^tis.
He speaks of the "necessitas" resurrectionis Christi. But apart from all else, the
circumstance that he shows this necessity in not less than eight respects, arouses
anything but a good impression in favour of his view. In fact he holds everywhere
merely to single texts, drawing inferences from them without giving a real insight
into the subject.

228 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
for those who acknowledge the latter truth without hesitation ?
This is a question which we can only answer by at the same time
explaining the method which we intend to follow.
3. THE METHOD.
The assumption that Jesus is the Christ, leads certainly by
the way of reflection to the conclusion that the Christ must have
risen from the dead. But no one will in reahty follow this way
to the end, unless he knows first of the fact as an accomplished
one. Our presupposition was immovably fixed in the minds of
the disciples, but of itself it did not avail to bring one of them
to the triumph of the conclusion ; and never, not even in a
momentary flash, did such a hope enter their souls during the
days of their bereavement. It is really idle to ask what form
their consciousness would have taken had the Lord not presented
Himself before their eyes as the living One. Speaking generally,
the words may be taken as decisive in which the disciples of
Emmaus expressed themselves : " We hoped He would have
redeemed Israel." Still even these admit various possibihties.
One, however, is unconditionally excluded. When Peter, James,
and John, on the day of the transfiguration, received the warning
to say nothing of what they had seen " till the Son of man were
risen from the dead," they dwelt with amazement on the unusual
words (eKpdrrjaav rov Xoyov, Mark ix. 10); the thought appeared
to them strange, and they exchanged their wonder with one
another, asking what the rising from the dead should mean. And
so they certainly never would have conceived the thought of a
risen Christ.1 In the first place, they must see the living One
bodily before them, and gain a sensible assurance of the reality
of His appearance ; only thus was the way paved for the reflec-
1 That part of Dr. Holsten's work in which he seeks to set aside this inconvenient
point appears to us one of its weakest. Even in respect to Paul his procedure is
violent. He will have us believe that the apostle's idea of the resurrection is radi
cally a very slight modification of the view which, according to Josephus, was alreadv
held firmly by the Pharisees. We shall return to this point hereafter. And as
regards Peter, he tries to help himself with his theory of the " transforming of reality
by a constructio a posteriori" to which the biblical authors were constrained. And
we content ourselves simply with remarking this. For we confess that we are not
equipped to meet the author's resolute determination to set aside all and every passage
which imperils his views. *"*'

INTRODUCTION. 229
tion that the Christ could not have remained under death, that
the Holy One of God could not have seen corruption ; — as it was
on this ground, again, that they could give entire trust to the
perception of their senses. At the present day the state of the
case is still the same. Some measure of historical certainty must
first precede reflection, and the full measure of certainty must be
the final result. The only question is, Is there such a preliminary
measure ? Is this fulness attainable ? And criticism answers
with a decided No !
The historical difficulties which Jesus' resurrection offers have
been at all times remarked and considered. This was the case
so early as Augustine, for he has given them a thoroughgoing
illustration in his treatise, de consensu evangelistarum. One may
pass considerably beyond the boundary to which Schleiermacher's
concession goes ; l one may concede that no other part of the
Gospel records presents equally numerous and equally important
difficulties ; but this admitted, there remains still that measure
of historical certainty which is the condition of dogmatical reflec
tion. But now that modern criticism has done its work, does
this basis remain intact ? The first attacks of the f ragmen tist,
whatever attention they excited, especially when Lessing appeared
as their eloquent advocate, did not succeed in overturning it. This
was prevented by rationalism. For the view of the fragmentist,
so intimately related on the one side, and yet on the other so
strange to rationahsm, and which was decisively opposed by
Semler, was swept aside by its current. It found no room to
establish itself and to draw its consequences. What remained
undone then, our age has lived to see. It is not Baur alone who
has appreciated the ability with which Strauss has carried forward
those beginnings to their conclusion. We have not to do here
with the honour of brilliant dialectics, of comprehensive learning,
of classical mastery of language, which the author of the Church
1 Schleiermacher's inclination to put the difficulties of the resurrection history on
exactly the same footing as those which appear in the earlier parts of the Gospel
narratives, seems at first sight surprising, and contrasts strangely with the zeal with
which he seeks to invalidate the historical character of the narratives relating to the
fatherless conception of Jesus. Why in the one case so conservative, and in this so
radical ? The explanation is obvious. The resurrection of Jesus was to Schleier
macher a matter dogmatically indifferent. On the other hand, this theologian lay
under a very pressing necessity to remove from the dogma of our Lord's supernatural
birth its historical basis.

230 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
History of the Nineteenth Century has heaped on the head of his
scholar ; but with the fact that certainly the negative side of the
criticism of the Gospels has been in all essential points completed
by Strauss. We separate this negative side of his undertaking
very decisively from the accompanying essay, to explain the origin
of the Easter accounts. The two are in our opinion of very
unequal worth. The vision theory is destitute of all and every
misleading plausibility ; nay, in consequence of the monstrosities
which it would have us to admit, it produces a thoroughly repel
ling impression. Justly has Hofmann (die heil. Schr. I. p. 113)
dismissed it with a simple protest ; to an elaborate refutation it
has no claim. No doubt this part too has found numerous friends
and adherents ; but only in the circle of those who take their
stand on the " self - assurance of the modern consciousness "
(" Selbstgewissheit des gegenwartigen Bewusstseyns "), and who
therefore have no other means of evasion. Characteristically
enough, one of its representatives has set himself the very modest
task of proving only the possibility of an explanation of the kind ;
to raise this possibility to actual fact, this he expects his readers
to do out of complaisance to him, from love to that consciousness
which allows no interposition of a transcendental power into the
individual spiritual hfe.
It is wholly different, on the other hand, with the critical
proof of the negative judgment. Here we confess that we cannot
adopt the standpoint of those who simply pass from' the subject
to the order of the day. If it is really as Strauss maintains, and
as under his handling seems plausible, that in the history of the
resurrection " each evangelist contradicts all the others, nay, each
of them contradicts himself" (der Christus des Glaubens, p. 166),
then there is room for the supposition that the Gospel testimony
is " the mere product of the wish to provide a dogmatical view
with its historical support" (Strauss, L. J. p. 295); and the
Pauline Gospel, the doctrine of the evangelical church, the apos
tolic exclamation, "Therefore being justified by faith, we have
peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ," lose their his
torical foundation. And yet to this extremity the fullest appre
ciation of the critical difficulties cannot drive the impartial
student. The immediate impression which, on the one hand, the
work of the apostles, on the other, the resurrection history itself
produce on him, will -always prove sufficient to balance the

INTRODUCTION. 231
suspicion that the former might rest on a deception, and that the
latter might have arisen from a more or less deliberate intention
to deceive ; it will always be strong enough to secure that measure
of historical certainty which we need to begin with.1 Only thus
much we must grant — criticism has certainly made a number
of details in this history uncertain, and the sum of them is so
important and musters so threateningly, that the full assurance of
conviction is no longer a factor to be assumed beforehand, but
must first be gained. In what way do we reach this goal ?
It is still usual to give the preference to the harmonistic
method. That this path is one so well trodden, need not of
itself prevent us also from following it. A sure way is never out
of date. True it is, that Harmonistic was grievously compromised
by Osiander ; but the zeal and penetration which Gerhard dis
covers in his Harmonia, brought the discredited method again into
honour. Lessing undoubtedly knew this work. Many remarks,
and these not the worst, in his Duplik, are evidently borrowed
from the work of the theologian. But Lessing was not the man
who could appreciate such efforts ; he regarded them only as
material for the exercise of his wit. And in that region he has
done all that was possible ; only Strauss perhaps surpasses him
with his clever description of the master key of Harmonistic
which forces locks (" dem Hauptschiissel der Harmonistik, der die
Schlosser verdrehe "). The severe judgment also which E. Eothe
(z. Dogm. p. 28) passes on " the arbitrary play of the older Gospel
harmonies, which was truly shameful in its absurdity," is, so far
as Gerhard is concerned, undeserved. Nothing will be found in
the .Harmonia of which one need be ashamed, judged from the
standpoint of the theology of our day. The excellent work only
requires to be read more diligently, and not merely the few
fragments extracted (and mostly without naming their source) by
modern commentators. We charge ourselves peculiarly with the
duty of again calling attention to it, and urging our younger
• theologians especially to make use of it.
Notwithstanding all this, we have more than one reason for
avoiding the Harmonistic plan. On the one hand, the position
1 We here take note of an admission which Baur, greatly to the annoyance of
Strauss (comp. L. J. p. 288), did not hesitate to make. For thus much he allows,
that the historical .investigation can never prove with certainty that the resurrection
of Jesus was not an external, whether a miraculous or natural event.

232 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
of the exegete, who could not help betraying the church divine,
was a wholly different one from that of the apologist who sets
himself to combat the attacks of criticism. A method, which in
the former case offered itself as a matter of course, would here, be
unsuitable and opposed to our aim. Gerhard's Harmonistic was
not intended to meet a polemical attack ; its motive lay simply
in the dogma of inspiration. In consequence of this dogma,
every contradiction in the resurrection history must be exhibited
as merely apparent (an enantiophany), and to the exegete there
fell the task of solving it. But the highest ability brought to
bear on this work would be labour lost, when the discussion can
no longer be conducted on the ground of the acknowledged dogma.
Moreover, on the other side we have a goal before us which
Harmonistic, even in the most favourable circumstances, can
never reach. For it is absolutely beyond its power to achieve a
real and complete conviction. At the present day it cannot in
fact avoid making concessions to criticism again and' again, which
with other results are very hazardous for its objects ; and so it
must not unfrequently be content with extremely precarious
hypotheses, and go back on possibilities for which it can desire
acknowledgment only in abstracto, and the probability of which
it cannot itself accept. Very peculiarly in respect of the resur
rection history does it too often justify Lessing's trenchant sen
tence (Duplik, p. 3), " Some answer may be given to everything;"
but to give some answer and therewith to silence a doubt (" Etwas
antworten und ein Bedenken beantworten ") are two different
things. We need not on this account dispute its worth. The
standpoint of Ebrard's wissenschaftlicJie Critik der evangelischen
Geschichte is throughout the Harmonistic one ; only once or twice
has the author, especially in his last edition, made an excursus
which takes him beyond it, and yet the book has made an impres
sion and been a success. The peculiarly irritable tone in which
Strauss expresses his impatience of it, is not less significant than
the circumstance that the work of Theology and Christendom has
reached a third edition (Frankfort 1868). That it has not suc
ceeded in giving full satisfaction to any one, arises not from any
defect in the execution of the task, but in the weakness of the
Harmonistic method. But what other gives a better hope ?
The resurrection accounts of the evangelists secure, to begin
with, only a limited measure of historical certainty, and it is

INTRODUCTION. 233
impossible, in view of the present position of criticism, either by
exegetical art or historical reflection, to carry this measure to the
requisite degree. And yet it suffices to enable the apologist to
attempt a defence of the challenged fact from another side. We
have already described the way. He who starts from the firm
conviction that Jesus is the Christ, is infallibly led to the his
torically given result. Had the Lord not risen, He would not
have been the Christ, He would not have been perfected as the
Christ. " This Jesus God hath made both Lord and Christ," such
is the preaching of Peter (Acts ii. 36) after the accomplishment
of the fact : it must then be possible to understand the necessity
of the fact from the simple premiss. This is the proof which we
have to lead. But supposing we had succeeded in our task, would
our work thus be finished ? Should we be in a position from
this secure height to ignore the critical difficulties, — whatever
may be the truth about them, they now affect us no more, they
may be left to themselves ? No, this is far from being in our
mind ! For our concern is not to secure certainty in itself, but
full historical certainty : the aim before us is not merely to rebut,
but to conquer criticism. From the conviction gained that the
Christ could not remain under death, that He must by means of
resurrection resume His life, our plan absolutely requires us to
return again to the history. But then, we hope, this very history
will appear to us in another light. Then will its extraordinary
character, with which the mere historian cannot find himself at
home, be transparent to us ; then will also the diversity of the
records, " in which each is said to contradict the other — nay, each
to contradict himself," lose the pith of its strangeness ; and thus
the truly vindicated history results in the Sabbath rest of convic
tion. Only when this has been accomplished, but then assuredly,
will that " reason for the hope that is in us " be concluded which
the apostle (1 Pet. iii. 15) demands from the confessors of the
Eisen One.
The attempt to carry out the task, thus understood, leads to a
different arrangement of the matter than would otherwise com
mend itself. Apart altogether from the fact that our aim is not
limited to the object of coming to an understanding with criticism,
we are prevented at the very outset from following it step by
step in its course. To Strauss, who comes to the subject with the
firm conviction that the resurrection of Jesus is a fable, the course

234 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
of representation could not be doubtful. His first business was
the trial of the witnesses. He begins with Paul as the earliest
in the series of the more detailed narrators. " But Paul, accord
ing to him, merely appealed to a tradition ; what he relates is
simply repeated from others. He who altogether had no special
gift for the historical investigation of an objective fact, was the
less disposed to examine the ground or groundlessness of the
tradition, inasmuch as he held himself sufficiently convinced of
its trustworthiness, by the Christophany which fell to his own lot.
His own experience, however, was only visionary ; and since he
puts the experiences of the other witnesses, by means of the
unchanged co<f>drj, into one and the same category with his own,
they too fall under the same judgment." And so, from this point,
criticism advances to illustrate the figure which the evangelists
have drawn of the Eisen One as He appeared. Here it finds
characteristics which can co-exist in no real being, but which
form only a creation of the fancy. And so it finally reaches the
conclusion that so unheard-of a miracle, which, as it asserts, could
claim acceptance only in virtue of irresistible proofs, cannot be
regarded as having really happened, and that the reports of it
throughout must rest on error. For us, since we too approach
the subject not without presupposition, but with those presupposi
tions which have been more than once indicated, the order must
be a different, or rather the opposite one. The appearances of
the Eisen One before the eyes of His disciples are certainly of
high worth in our estimation ; we shall explain ourselves on the
point at the proper time. Only in regard to them we lay the
stress not solely on the tendency to convince the disciples of the
reality of the resurrection as an accomplished fact ; J their real
importance seems to us to be a wholly different one. However
that may be, before these appearances are taken into considera
tion, the person of the appearing One Himself demands to be
contemplated. We know well that only within the region of
those manifestations did that person become recognisable ; but to
1 This, too, is a point where we cannot altogether agree with Krauss (as above,
p. 265). We mean that we cannot join him in the emphasis with which he seeks to
limit consideration to the appearances of the Risen One, and to exclude all that lies
behind. And yet he allows that we get back to this conclusion on the testimony of
Scripture and in virtue of our own reflection. Is that not a sufficient basis for the
consideration of the subject ? Or do we really know anything more of the appear
ances of the Glorified One from other quarters than from the testimony of Scripture ?

INTRODUCTION. 235
let the standpoint of His intercourse with His disciples hold the
foreground in our discussion, and to leave it in the background,
are two very different things. Only, even behind the person of
the Eisen One, there lies, finally, yet a third matter, namely, the
exercise of power which forms the ground of the miraculous
appearance, and it is with this third that we shall have to begin.
Accordingly, we treat first of the raising of Jesus, the divine act
which wrought the miracle ; next, of the rising of Jesus, of the
person of Him who showed Himself as the Living One ; and,
finally, of the appearances of the Eisen One in the circle of
His own.

FIRST SECTION.

THE EAISING OF JESUS.
1. THE ACT OF GOD.
IT could never escape observation that the Easter miracle is
described in Holy Scripture in a twofold way. Now it is a
raising of Jesus which is spoken of, and, again, His rising ; eyr)-
yeprai is used of the one aspect, and dvearrj of the other. While
in the Gospels both forms of expression are used about equally,
the former is the common one in the writings of the apostles,
although the latter is by no means foreign to them.1 The history
of theology is as familiar with the endeavour to set aside the view
of the risen Christ as it is with the lively interest to avoid the
expression of a raising of our Lord. " Quid magis," asks Socinus,
" vel risu dignum vel a veritate alienum, quam eum, qui mortuus
sit, se ipsum in vitam revocare ? quid absurdius et scripturae
magis dissentaneum ?" and not without exegetical ability and
dialectical cleverness has he sought to prove the harmony of his
view with Scripture and sound doctrine. All the more zealous
were church divines to secure exclusive prevalence for the opposite
view, — a view already familiar to the Fathers,2 already formulated
1 Schleiermacher's assertion to this effect, Dogm. II. p. 94, is erroneous. It is
true that, owing to the doubtfulness of the reading, we cannot appeal to the well-
known passage in the Epistle to the Romans (xiv. 9) ; but we have sufficient proof
remaining in the declaration of the apostle to the Thessalonians (i. 4, 14), nto-nvoutv
'in 'iwrovs avrilaviv xa) avitmi. How little mere enumeration avails in such questions
is obvious from the circumstance that, though with regard to the verbal form
the case undoubtedly stands, as we have admitted, it is rather the opposite which
holds good of the substantive form. Only once in the whole of Scripture have we
the expression of an 'iytpo-is Xpitrrov (see Matt, xxvii. 53) ; everywhere else we read ol
His avao-raffis.
2 So in Ignatius, ep. ad Smyrn. 2 (ed. Dressel, p. 186) : aXnlZ; avio-rwnv iaunv.
Nevertheless, afterwards, in the seventh chapter, the other view is represented : rm
oapxa 'Itio-ov Xpig-rov rvi xpwo-rortirt o orarhp viyupiv,
236

THE RAISING OF JESUS. 237
by Thomas Aquinas, but one necessarily founded on their own
dogmatic views of the person of Christ with which they approached
the subject. " Christus,'* so they teach, " ut Deus vel quoad
divinam naturam se ipsum ut hominem in mortem traditum ex
mortuis suscitavit per virtutem vivificatricem sibi essentialem."
Nay, they carry the thesis to the extremest point, and add the
assertion : " Christus ut homo vel secundum humanam naturam
se ipsum suscitavit per virtutem vivificatricem personaliter sibi
communicatam."1 As to the fact that the apostles testify to a
raising from the dead wrought by the glory of the Father, they
were only able to meet it with the evasion that thereby nothing
else was meant than the power belonging to the Trinity as a
whole. It were to be wished that the zeal which one and another
bestowed on the disputed point had rather been devoted to shed
light on the question how the two aspects of the subject are
related to one another, and for what reason Scripture presents
the one not less than the other. It is impossible to evade the
question by referring to analogous cases, and so reducing it to a
matter of indifference. Undoubtedly the appearing of our Lord
in the world is also placed in the twofold point of view : it appears
as the result of His spontaneous coming as well as the conse
quence of a sending which He received. And yet no one feels
himself thereby obliged to ask whether the incarnation is to be
referred to a self-determination of the Son, or whether it is not
rather to be traced back to a decree of the Father ; indeed, no
one can put this alternative, for the Lord comprehends both in
one, and says : " I proceeded forth and came from God ; neither
came I of myself, but He sent Me," John viii. 42.2 Only the
state of the question respecting the Easter miracle is this, that in
different passages- sometimes the passive, sometimes the active
" moment " meets us with a strength of emphasis which almost
displaces the other aspect from our horizon. The way in which
Peter expresses himself in the Pentecostal discourses (Acts ii. 3 2
1 Comp. Quenstedt's elaborate discussion, "an Christus propria virtute divina
resurrexerit, " in his Theol. did. polem. II. p. 435 et seq.
2 Church divines get over this passage, too, with the remark that the point in
question here is a consilium et beneplacitum commune, ss. Triados. " Missio non
est imperiosa, sed liberrimi consensus ; non coacta, sed spontanea ; adeoque nullam
arguit mittentis et missi inaequalitatem. Missio in divinis non tollit aequalitatem
personarum, sed tantum supponit originis ordinem. " Comp. Quenstedt, ubi supra,
II. pp. 81 and 214.

238 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
iii. 15, iv. 10), the manner in which Paul writes in his Epistle
to the Eomans (iv. 24, vi. 4, viii. 11), admits only the view that
the Crucified One received His resuscitation from the Father. On
the contrary, from the saying of our Lord that He will raise the
temple of His body in three days, the entire spontaneity of the
self-determination and self-power of the Son come out so pro
minently that the passive " moment " is hardly compatible with
it. The question, why the Scriptures present the one view as
well as the other with such energy, may be answered generally
without difficulty. The interest is undoubtedly a practical one ;
the matter involved is the consequences which arise from both
sides for the consciousness of salvation belonging to the Christian
church. But even these consequences would lack their sure
basis were the expressions, the Lord is raised, and the Lord is
risen, nothing else than different representations of one and the
same fact. To the difference of view there must also be a corre
sponding distinction in reality. If it is unquestionably the same
new life upon which the Eaised or the Eisen One has entered,
yet it does not follow that the idea of raising is absolutely
coincident with that of rising. At least both demand to be
considered separately.
Never did the Lord foretell His future Passion without at the
same time announcing its final and glorious issue. Of the latter
He was certain, on the same ground on which He was aware of
the former. It is from a divine necessity that He explains His
cross ; and under the viewpoint of this Sel He as expressly puts
His consequent glorification, Matt. xvi. 21 ; Luke xxiv. 26. But
the nearer the hour came, the more clearly is He concerned to
exhibit the greatness of His Father, and the love with which He
embraces Him as the ground of His hope. As during His entire
earthly career He acknowledges and emphasizes His dependence
on the Father, — the Father the giver, and ever ready to give ; the
Son the receiver, and fully empowered to receive, — so He expects
from these same hands the Soga which is due to Him after the
completion of the work committed to Him. Therefore He prays,
immediately before His Passion : " I have finished the work which
Thou gavest Me to do ; and now, 0 Father, glorify Thou Me ;" and
He dies with the word full of hope : " Father, into Thy hands I
commend My spirit." His disciples also were directed by Him
to find their comfort and trust in the living God, who sent His

THE RAISING OF JESUS. 239
Son into the world and keeps open eye over Him ; believe in
God : thus He turns to them when He sees their trouble and fear
come. When, then, the Easter miracle was completed, they could
not immediately and in the first place judge it otherwise than as
an unfolding of God's power, and as a proof of love which the
Father gave, nay, rather which it was impossible for Him to deny
the Son. " It was not possible," so says Peter on the subject,
" that He should be holden of death," Acts ii. 24. It was not
possible, that is to say, on the part of God, — God could not allow
it, or He would not have been God nor the Father of this Son.
And Paul writes : " Wherefore also God hath highly exalted
Him," PhiL ii. 9 ; Sio, that is, on this ground, because of this
obedience, which had established a claim for corresponding action
on the side of God.1 But the justness of this view will appear
in a convincing light only when we concentrate our attention on
the one point in question. It is of the rising of Jesus that we
are speaking, not of His glorification in general. If we allow
ourselves to take both ideas as one and the same, of course there
remains scarce any room for a .specific act of God. Eothe, who
absolutely identifies the resurrection and exaltation of the " second
Adam," correspondingly regards (by giving one-sided emphasis to
the going to the Father in the farewell discourses in John) Christ
ceasing to live as so immediate and regular a transition into the
divine condition of cosmical being, that the concurrence of an
operation on the part of the Father seems as good as excluded ;
indeed, he lets go the resurrection itself, for what he describes
under this name is not the real idea of resurrection (comp. Theol.
Ethik, II. § 560 of the 1st edition). If, on the contrary, we
1 Church divines have the context not less than the meaning of the word against
them, when they contend that the apostle's words have no relation to a reward
which fell to the lot of Christ. From the untenable ground that it was impossible
for the Lord to receive anything which He did not already possess (Gerhard : "in
exaltatione non est Christo data nova quaedam potestas, quam per unionem per-
sonalem non acceperit;" Quenstedt : " Christus sibi ipsi nihil meruit, quia erat et
est omnisumciens et nullius rei indigus "), they allow themselves to be driven to
the view directly opposed to the word that the particle S;o is to be translated by
" proinde, accordingly;" and so they maintain : "innuit Paulus non antegressam
causam meritoriam, sed certum ordinem et consequentiam, quod nimirum humili-
tatem Christi insecuta sit sublimitas." Comp. Gerhard, IV. § 329. Quenstedt, I.e.
p. 326. Notwithstanding, it will afterwards appear that it was not merely dog
matical prepossession which led them to this exegesis, but that in one respect they
showed very sound judgment.

240 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
confine our view to the Easter event in itself, and comprehend it
in its true idea, we shall be forced to the same supposition as is
expressed by Paul: "Christ was raised from the dead by the
glory of the Father;"1 we must, on the one hand, admit that
only an immediate miraculous creative interposition of God's hand
makes this effect intelligible ; and, on the other hand, acknowledge
that in the historical situation the Father of Jesus Christ must
have interposed thus and not otherwise.
For what is it that the Easter morning proclaims ? The dead
One has again become alive, — " Christ died and revived," Eom.
xiv. 9. " He died." So writes the apostle. The theology of the
church has always shown the deepest interest in maintaining the
reality of this death. The interest does not date first from the
conflict with rationalism ; neither was it at all inspired merely by
the memory of older Docetic errors ; but it rested on the percep
tion that only on this understanding has the atonement been really
accomplished and its saving efficacy assured. " Si imaginarie
tantum Christus mortem sustinuisset, imaginarie quoque tantum
redempti" essemus." When the Tubingen divines, especially
Thummius and Luc. Osiander, sought to advance the view of
Christ's decease, that no doubt a dissolution of soul and body
took place, but not a separation, — a Siaaraata roiriKr], — it was
on this ground that they were met with so lively an opposition,
because they did not seem to give full force to the idea of death ;
for it is not exhausted by the solutio animae a corpore, but by the
necessary consequence of this, the avulsio localis. " Extra dubium
omne est," thus especially the Saxon theologians expressed them
selves, " sicut nostra mors se habet, ita cum morte etiam Christi
comparatum fuisse ; atqui in morte nostra non corporis tantum
et animae fit dvdXvai<; et diroXvais, sed et ^wpiafio^ vel diroyco-
pnais; ergo in morte etiam Domini verum recessum animae a
1 Both words demand to be equally emphasized. It is not of the t'o\a rov ®iov,
but of the Saga rou irarpis, that the apostle speaks. He will represent the Father of
Jesus Christ as the agent who wrought this work on His Son ; and he describes His
toi,a as the medium. Hofmann rightly rejects the common explanation, that by
this is to be understood God's omnipotence ; and he would scarcely reckon it an
essential improvement which Meyer makes when he substitutes the idea of majesty.
Neither, indeed, can we agree with his own proposal (die h. Schr. N. T. V. p. 227),
if for no other reason, on account of the ita. The Vola rather denotes here, as in
John xi. 40 (o-^u t*j» Vo\av rov esov), the immediate, miraculous, creative interposi
tion of God.

THE RAISING OF JESUS. 211
corpore factum esse arbitramur," " qui si nullus factus est, ne
mors quidem ulla fieri potuit " (Athan.).1 And yet it is a ques-.
tion whether the position which they thus sought to establish
with the one hand was not dangerously overturned with the other.
It is of no avail that they put the proposition in the forefront,
that the whole Christ, the Christ the dedvdpcoiro';, was the sub-
jectum mortis obitae, when, notwithstanding, ever afterwards the
one thing spoken of is the corpus mortuum,2 and that withal in, so
exclusive a way that the person of the dead God-man itself is
well-nigh lost to view. The idea that the death of Jesus con
sisted in a free dismission of the soul from the body (" ultronea et
spontanea libertate animam suam ex corpore voluntarie emisit"),
that this soul thereafter dwelt in triumph in the blessedness of
the heavenly regions (" triumphavit in coelis," " non tantum statu
beato et gaudio, sed et coelesti sede et habitaculo "), and by a free
determination (" quando sibi visum sit ") accomplished its return
to the body (" remigravit in corpus "), — this idea neither consists
with the conception of a death truly suffered, nor is it compatible
with the thought of a real state of death beginning with the
expiry of breath ; and neither does it harmonize with the real
meaning of the last words of the Crucified One ; for more cannot
be found in them than the expression of His confidence that He
will receive again His departing life through the glory of His
Father. We may not indeed speak as if the Lord, at the moment
of His death, wholly lost His consciousness, or as if His spirit
had sunk into a faint (so Gess, Christi Person und Werk, Basel
1870, p. 196); still less dare we countenance the Socinian error,
that in the moment of death His existence had ceased (" Christus
in mortuorum statum constitutus plane esse desiit, sive existere
cessavit, quum mori et non esse idem sint ") : only no expression
of life on the part of the Deceased during the triduum mortis,
whether active or merely receptive, is reconcilable with the
reahty of His death. He would not, in this case, have died " vere
et proprie ;" His death would have been, not indeed a counterfeit
(Scheintod) in the rationalistic sense, but yet a merely apparent
1 Comp. the judgment of the Saxon theologians on the points in dispute between
the Wurtemberg and Marburg divines in Quenstedt, II. p. 427.
2 Comp. *W. Lyser, disp. de resurr. Jesu Christi: " Quatenus resurreetio praecise
consideratur, convenit huic personae secundum illam naturam, quae crucifigi et
mori potuit. Proxime corpus lesurrexit. Illud enim resurrexit, inquit Hieronyni.,
quod moriendo cecidit." Q

242 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
death (scheinbarer Tod),— a death " Kara SoKijaiv ;" and then He
would in like manner have risen only apparently, and not ovrm.
It has always been felt that the Petrine phrase, Oavarmdeh
ptev aapKi, ^aovoirjOeU Se irvevfian (1 Pet. iii. 18), was of great
importance for the question before us ; and the more is it to be
lamented that the interpretation of it is so doubtful and disputed.
Only the point about which a difference can arise is merely the
relation of the two datives, and the meaning in which the apostle
uses the word irvevpa in this connection ; 1 as to the sense of the
participles, there could hardly be a difference of opinion. In the
former there lies the thought, that from the subject the life was
taken away which till then it had possessed, that it suffered death
by external violence,2 hence immediately before this, as also
ch. iv. 1, the irda^eiv required independently by the practical
aim of the passage ; in the latter, on the contrary, we have it
expressed that on the same subject by means of a raising from
the dead its life was anew bestowed. For neither may the word
ZcooiroirjOek be understood of anything else than the Easter
miracle, nor could the state of death into which the Lord was
brought, and which He Himself attests in the words eyevopriv
veKpb<; Kal %obv el A (Eev. i. 18), be otherwise removed than by
means of His subsequent resurrection. Every divergent inter
pretation either falls through by comprising the entire reahty of
His death, or it leads to the utterly erroneous and unscriptural
1 Nbsgen, in his noteworthy treatise, Christus der Menschen- und Gottessohn, Gotha
1869, has revived Selnecker's explanation, whieh in turn was borrowed from church
dogmatics, that the -rvsiipia denotes the spiritual and divine nature itself. Certainly he
does not go back upon the impossible explanation that the first dative is to be taken
iXixats, the second ivtp ynnxais, but what are meant are ' ' the states of subsistence,
according to which a being put to death and a being made alive again were possible for
Christ, and in accordance with which the one and the other took place. " But we con
fess we are utterly unable to understand how far the divine nature of Christ rendered
the %uioiromSivai possible, or how this Z,oioaoiwis took place " in accordance with the
divine nature. " The author's polemic has not for a moment caused us any mis
giving as to the correctness of Hofmann's explanation, that the datives must denote
the end of an existence which lay behind, and the beginning of a new life. This
explanation is not at variance with the apostle's train of thought, but is the only
one which thoroughly corresponds with it.
2 It has been prejudicial to church theology, both exegetically and dogmatically,
that it asserts the " voluntary death " of our Lord in a sense which entirely does
away with the passivity of the dying Christ. Proceeding on the declaration, " No
man taketh my life from Me, but I lay it down of Myself," it thoroughly confounds
the free determination of Jesus to go to death, with a free act of dying itself. His
death is regarded everywhere as an " ultronea emissio animae."

THE RAISING OF JESUS. 243
view, that the ^cooiroirjaK of our Lord was accomplished imme
diately on His departure to the other world, and so had preceded
the dvdaraais} We call the view unscriptural. For wherever
in the N. T. we read of life from the dead, the dvdaraai<s appears
as the turning-point. Nowhere is there a ^moiroirjai<i asserted
except with this presupposition. We read (John v. 21): "The
Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them." And again
(John xi. 25): "I am the resurrection and the life " (comp. Eom.
viii. 11). Till the hour of His rising our Lord also remained in
the state of death into which He passed when He commended
His spirit into the hands of God. And on Easter morning the
same thing happened in His case which was accomplished
three times by Himself in the days of His flesh : eirearpetyev rb
irvevp,a avrov (comp. Luke viii. 55). And further, the change
was brought about on Him by His Father. " The Father raiseth
up the dead," John v. 21 ; " God who quickeneth the dead."
Only He who has life in Himself, who only hath immortality,
could bring back the hfe which was extinguished. Church
divines wrongly appeal to the declaration of Christ that He also
possesses hfe in Himself £wr) iv eavrm, and to the fact that pre
cisely in reference to the divine quickening He sets in sure
prospect a doing likewise of His own (comp. Quenstedt, ubi supra,
p. 436). For what is perfectly true of the time of His working,
does not hold of the night when no man can work. He cannot
be at once the object and the subject of the same act. The
complaint, which Calovius especially has made, that the dedvdpw-
7to? is not distinguished sharply enough from fyiXdvdpairos, is,
as respects the region before us, only so far well founded that
1 Unfortunately Nosgen too has lent himself to this opinion. He has the per
fectly right view that %mortntus can mean nothing else than iyiphU, but then he
adds immediately that the resurrection itself cannot be meant by it. But why not
then ? Surely not for the empty reason which he has borrowed from another theo
logian ! And what else then could be meant by it ? Our author answers, " that it
refers to the awaking which preceded the resurrection (ubi supra, p. 195). Dying
as to His humanity, Jesus as to His Godhead was immediately made alive ; though,
on the other hand, His body remained yet for a time separated from His soul, and
sank into the state of death with its consequences, namely, dissolution into its
elementary parts " (p. 348). The weakness of this utterly unsuccessful explanation
does not require our pointing out ; its variance with Scripture is manifest. A thesis
which requires such forced distinctions and presents such views cannot be the right
one. In his exposition of the Petrine Epistles published in 1875, Hofmann has
anew presented the right view of the matter, without, however, entering into a critical
examination of Nbsgen's statements.

244 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
undoubtedly history knows of no second case in which the
awakening operation of God was, as it is here, a strict and proper
postulate. Therefore the apostle testifies in the words of prophecy
that it was impossible for the Father to allow His Holy One to
see corruption ; " it was not possible." But in immediate con
nection therewith, He has laid emphasis on the fact that only
the divine power could have loosened the bands of this death.
What God alone could do, that He must accomplish here.
For what was the resurrection of Jesus Christ in the historical
course of events ? It was God's answer to the deed which the
world had perpetrated on His messenger. So Peter under
stood it, and so he explained it as often as he spoke of it to
the Jews. " Whom ye slew, Him hath God raised from the
dead." Comp. Acts iL 23, 24, iii. 15, iv. 10, v. 30. And so
also it was understood by the early church in the first days
of her persecution. For on the ground of this divine interposi
tion she founds the confident expectation that the Lord of
heaven and earth will reveal His mighty arm in every case in
which the world rises against His anointed, Acts iv. 24-30.
Undoubtedly it had been determined in the counsel of God that
the Christ should suffer death at the hands of sinners ; therefore
the pleading of the Son, " let this cup pass from me," remained
unheard by the Father. But as Israel eould never ask the ques
tion in this relation : " Why am I yet judged as a sinner ? " so
neither could this circumstance restrain the retributive action of
the holy and righteous God. It was precisely in the case before
us that this action was provoked in the very highest degree.
Partly on account of the nobihty of the blood shed — it was the
" precious blood " in the absolute sense of the word ; partly
because of the diabolical spirit which had been the motive of the
murder. The Jews falsified the calculation, " they will reverence
my son," so they must themselves proclaim the anticipation of
their future in answering the question, " What will the lord of
the vineyard do unto those husbandmen ? " (Matt. xxi. 40). The
voice of Abel's blood cried to God from the earth ; but much
louder did the blood of Jesus call ; for by this murder the measure
of all the blood-guiltiness hitherto contracted was filled up, and
on the heads of these murderers must all the righteous blood come,
which from Abel downwards had been shed on the earth. But
now what demonstration of God's righteousness could correspond

THE RAISING OF JESUS. 245
to the circumstances of the case ? Would it be enough if He
brought the murderers to account : " Where is thy brother Abel ?"
or if He entered into judgment with them, and let such a retri
bution follow that an Annas or a Caiaphas would tremble under
it, crying : " Mountains, fall on us ; hills, cover us " ? Neither is
that excluded; but it would appear sufficient only in one case,
that is, if Israel by its doings had crossed the ways of God, if
Israel had hindered the realization of His thoughts. God, who
Himself had willed and determined the sacrifice of His Son, could
avenge His blood on His murderers only in such a way as, on the
one hand, would bring their deed to nought, turn their calculation
to shame, nay, give themselves over to the annihilating feeling
of their defeat ; while, on the other hand, He conducted His own
purpose to its full realization. How was all this to be reached ?
Only by the resurrection of the Crucified One ! The Jews took
the life of the Messiah ; their counsel was, " Let us kill Him, and
so the inheritance will be ours ; " they imagine that the triumph
is theirs of having broken His bands and cast away His cords ;
accordingly this is their righteous judgment, Kpip,a cvSikov, that
this destroyed hfe should be restored, that the rejected One by a
resurrection from the dead should be raised to be Lord and
Christ over all, and so over themselves. Strauss calls the resur
rection of our Lord an " unheard-of " miracle, one which can be
received only on irresistible historical grounds. But it really
needs only an impartial regard to history, and simple faith in a
living God who sent His Son into the world, to exclaim with the
apostle in a tone of wonder : How should it be thought a thing
incredible with you ? Only one thing would be historically
incomprehensible, if, namely, this answer of God to the deed of
men had not been given ! How deeply, besides, Israel felt it as
the Nemesis breaking in upon it, we have a telling proof in an
utterance of the Sanhedrim. When the authorities sought in
vain by threatenings and punishment to prevent the apostles
preaching the Eisen One, — in vain, because the fact of the Lord's
resurrection could not be undone, — then the betraying cry broke
forth from them : " Ye intend to bring this man's blood upon us **'
(Acts v. 28).
Thus, then, this answer of God to the world could not fail of
accomplishment. But we dare not understand it as a mere
reaction of His righteousness against the sin committed,— as a

246 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
purely penal retribution ; for this reason in the very outset, that the
deed perpetrated was at the same time the decree of God Himself.
Thus there is an absolute need of a more exact determination.
This completion, however, is not reached by taking further into
account the relation to Him who bears the stripes of sinners, and
who entered willingly into His Father's counsel. No doubt He,
if any one, could take up the appeal of the Psalm : " Judge me,
0 God, and plead my cause against this ungodly nation ; " no
doubt much more confidently than His apostle waited afterwards
on the " righteous judge " (2 Tim. iv. 8), could He be assured of
the " righteous Father " who would appear on His behalf. And
so, indeed, it is expressly taught that God bestowed on Him, as
the reward of His obedient suffering, the highest and most com
prehensive dominion. Only httle as we can agree with church
divines in disputing the one possible meaning of the Sio, Phil.
ii. 9, on the other hand we are bound to acknowledge without
reserve the sound perception with which they repudiate the sibi
promeruit on the part of Christ. Neither is the answer of God
to the world in the sense of vengeance, nor the reward of the
Son in the sense of compensation, the result achieved. If we
have in the one case as well as in the other a " declaration of
God's righteousness," in both cases there meets us the close con
nection which the apostle has established for the epoch of Christ
(eV to) vvv Katpai) between " the just God " and " the justifying
God." Commentators have rightly applied the Kpeirrov XaXeiv
(speaking better things), which Scripture predicates of the blood
of Jesus, to the circumstance that it implores from God grace and
forgiveness for sinners. This, indeed, is not contained in the
word as such ; for Kpeirrov means " more strongly " or " power
fully," and nothing else ; it denotes the greater intensity of the
effect. But because the voice proceeds from the blood of the
Saviour, not only must its tone be a stronger, but its sound also
must be a different one.1 Accordingly, if the resurrection of Jesus
is the divine answer to the deed of man, it must have corre
sponded, while maintaining conclusively its reaction against the
1 In exactly the same way Paul, in tracing the parallel between the uoraxoi
of Christ and the vapaxoi of Adam, describes the effect of the former as not
only stronger quantitatively (*oXXw poaXXov), but just because it proceeds from
Christ it is also different qualitatively ; it issues not in xaraxptpta, but in
itxatuffis Xttttr.s.

THE RAISING OF JESUS. 247
latter, to the nature and destination of the blood shed, and it
must have issued in the full realization of this determination.
By it the intention of the world must have been defeated ; by it
God's own purpose must have been accomplished. It, too, must
have co-operated to that salvation, to procure which the Father
had given His Son to the world, — a salvation so comprehensively
and unconditionally fitted for all, that even His murderers might
share it; wherefore we find that Peter, on the ground of the
raising of Jesus now accomplished, directs the invitation to them
also to accept the blessing which has been opened up (Acts
ih. 26).
2. THE AIM OF THE RAISING OF JESUS IN THE PLAN OF SALVATION.
Our discussion thus far has indicated the region in which the
end of the raising of Jesus in the work of salvation is to be found.
The divine answer to the deed of the world was a negative given
to the murderers, and an acknowledgment of the Son. " The
Bedeemer Himself needs,'* so says Nitzsch (System der christi.
Lehre, § 138), "a certain justification, — that, namely, which falls
to Him in His resurrection from the dead ; but in fact it is our
own justification." Others before him taught the same doctrine ;
especially did Olearius, in the treatise which we have so often
quoted, elaborately discuss the thesis, " quod Christus, ipse justi-
ficatus, nos quoque justificet." Even in Gerhard there is a similar
declaration, not to speak of the Eeformed theologians. It has
always been readily acknowledged that there is a more or less
close connection in general between the raising of Jesus and
man's justification before God ; and how could this have been
gainsaid when the apostle has written : " To whom it shall be
imputed if we beheve on Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from
the dead . . . who was raised again for our- justification ! " The
doctrine could not be more decidedly expressed, that the divine
act in the raising of our Lord had our justification for its object.
But everything depends on our gaining the right view of this
connection ; especially must we avoid the danger of establishing
too loose a bond between them. It would be difficult to defend
Lutheran divines from the charge that they have fallen into this
danger in one way or another. For as to what they teach on the
one hand, that the Easter event appears as the indispensable con-

248 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
dition of the applicatio salutus acquisitae,1 it gives a connection
between the raising of Jesus as such and our justification only
mediately through the wider and far from evident 2 assumption
that the former was the prerequisite of our Lord's " munus sacer-
dotale." And though, on the other hand, they fall back on the
explanation that the open grave was a " manifestatio, declaratio,
confirmatio," an " evidens testimonium '' of the completion of the
redemption,3 " ut fides nostra quam certissima reddatur," yet they
do not thereby prove any link of connection between the divine
deed and our justification in itself, but only with faith which
they describe as the " organum applicandi meriti per Christum
parti." But this connection, thus circuitously obtained, is not
that close and immediate one which Scripture apparently estab
lishes. The Eeformed theology evidently strove in earnest to give
1 Comp. Melanchthon in his Com. on the Ep. to the Romans : " est autem non
solum mors Christi apprehendenda, sed etiam quod resuscitatus sit noster pontifex
apud patrem." Chemnitz, exam. cone. Trid. loc. viii. art. vii. ; "Christus salvator
noster est non tantum merito, verum etiam efficacia, ut qui tanquam advocatus noster
intercedit et apparet vultui Dei pro nobis, ut per vitam ejus servemur ab ira ; prop
ter hane etiam causam Paulus morti Christi jungit resurrectionem ejus." Especially
Egid. Hunnius, in his work, Articulus de justifications hominis peccatoris gratuita,
Frankfort 1590. He puts the question : "pertinetne resurrectio Christi ad nostrae
justidcationis negotium? " aud after affirming it with a quidni, supporting his answer
by corresponding passages of Scripture, and formulating the thesis, " ad liberationem
a peccatis atque sic ad justificationem requisita fuit Christi a morte resurrectio," he
writes, by way of explanation, p. 57 ff. : "necesse enim erat, ut esset sacerdos in
perpetuum secundum ordinem Melchisedek, atque sic integrae nostrae salutis auctor
existeret, nimirum administrator bonorum acquisitorum."
2 For we can find no evidence in the assertion of Hunnius, ibid. : " Christi exaltatio
ad pontificatum resurrectionem ejus necessario praesupponit, praesertim quia non
tantum qua Deus sed etiam qui homo sedere debuit aeternus pontifex. " It is not
easy to see why it needed the resurrection that He might sit ' ' qua, homo " at the right
hand of God. For it was most strenuously maintained by the Lutheran theologians
that Christ in His state of death by no means ceased to be, " verus, essentialiter
perfectus et eminenti modo dictus homo." Comp. Quenstedt's discussion: "an
Christus in triduo mortis verus homo permanserit, " ibid. p. 414.
3 Comp. Gerhard in the Viao-xs^is quoted above : " si Christus in morte mansisset,
de meriti sufficientia adhuc dubitari potuisset. " Similarly Egid. Hunnius, ubi supra .-
" quando Christus ex mortuis excitatur, resurrectione hac sua toti orbi testatum
facit evacuatam esse omnem vim peccati." No doubt they occasionally make an
attempt to present also the objective side of the matter ; only they sink back imme
diately into the region of the subjective, on which they everywhere lay the main
stress. Galovius especially would never have been brought to consider the resurrec
tion of Jesus otherwise than as that " documentum infallibile plenissimae satisfac
tionis per mortem Christi praestitae," which makes our faith in the merit of our Lord
apo-tratrrotrais certain.

THE RAISING OF JESUS. 249
fuller justice to the postulate of Scripture. Only in the liveli
ness of its interest it allowed itself to be carried beyond the right
goal. For by finding the act of justification, in so far as it falls
in time, as really executed in the resurrection of Jesus (" Christ's
resurrection is the divine acquittal of believers," Heidegger,
Lampe, etc.), it establishes a complete identity instead of a con
nection. In refusing to go beyond the acknowledgment of so loose and
general a relation between the resurrection of Jesus and our justi
fication, the Lutheran theologians were influenced by the fear
that if the}' admitted a closer and firmer bond between them
they would imperil the full sufficiency of Christ's meritorious
obedience. " Hoc certum esto, solam obedientiam Christi activam
et passivam esse meritoriam causam nostrae justificationis." 1
And so Gerhard expresses himself, without the least qualification,
to the effect that the resurrection of our Lord can have nothing
to do with our justification, " specialiter quia in obedientia Christi
plene erat satisfactum, nee ulla ad pretii illius complementum neces-
saria erat accessio." 2 It was difficult to get rid of the feeling that
after all Scripture spoke differently on the subject, but they met
this feeling partly by more or less able distinctions (as when
Gerhard, in his disputation with Pererius, teaches that we must
distinguish whether the merit of Christ is spoken of "generaliter"
or " specialiter," or when Quenstedt holds that the " meritum
Christi" is to be understood sometimes elSiKa><;, sometimes yeviKw),
partly they sought to overcome it by strong assertions.3 Only
they now came upon expressions, in regard to which the deepest
1 They would have got beyond their standpoint, only had they been willing to
appropriate the view of Victorinus Strigel (loc. theol., ed. Pezel, II. p. 334), which
regarded the resurrection of Jesus as pertaining to His obedience. But no later
author has ever taken notice of this peculiar view. How far it contains an indubit
able truth will appear in a later connection.
2 Similarly Quenstedt (ut supra, p. 379) : " Christus resurrectione sua nobis justi-
tiam non promeruit, utpote cujus meritum morte consummatum fuisse exclamatio
ejus in cruce rtrixarrai confirmavit." And further: " fructus resurrectionis
non sunt meritorii, sed confirmatorii, collatorii, applicatorii. "
3 Calovius especially cannot be freed from this charge. He maintains the false
position that Scripture never teaches that our Lord rose for us, but only that He rose
on our account ("Christum non pro nobis, sed tantum propter nos resurrexisse ").
As if Paul had not (2 Cor. v. 15) expressly written : rZ Imp atiratv airolavivn xa)
iytpSivn, and as if it were at all possible in the enumeration (Rom. viii. 34) to leave
out the v-rlp bpoZv, which is added in the fourth clause, in any of the former, and so
in the preceding iy.pPiis !

250 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
thinkers of their number at least were incapable of satisfying
themselves with such a subterfuge. This holds in the highest
degree of the classical passage on the question before us, where
the apostle (Eom. iv. 25) has written of the Saviour: "Who was
delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justifica
tion." In the case of any impartial reader, the words could not
fail to produce the immediate impression that, according to this
view, our Lord's resurrection appears as the condition of man's
justification in exactly the same way as His sacrificial death ; that
justification is rendered objectively possible, not by one of them,
but really by both. No doubt there was a time in the historical
development of theology which was unfavourable to the exposi
tion of the true contents of the passage. Catholic theologians,
and among them especially Andradius, had laid hold of it to
prove that the forgiveness of sins and justification are two entirely
different things, since the former is traced to the death of Christ,
while the latter is ascribed to His resurrection. And so it was
easy to understand the Lutheran position when their polemic
explained the passage solely from this viewpoint. But when
the proposition was clearly proved and recognised, " gratuitam
peccatorum remissionem et justitiae per Christum partae imputa-
tionem vel realiter a se invicem non differre, vel certe a se invi-
cem separari non posse" (Gerhard, I. dejustif. § 199), then free
space was gained, apart from the confessional dispute, to examine
the full contents of the Pauline declaration. And then it was
granted, not by expositors only (witness the excellent Balduinus),
that the apostle regards our Lord's resurrection as a " comple-
nientum justitiae a Christo nobis acquisitae," but Gerhard himself,
with an inconsequence worthy of praise, and in contradiction to
his declarations elsewhere, did not hesitate to allow that, accord
ing to this authority, the resurrection of Christ appears as " causa,
pignus et complementum nostrae justificationis." We meet with
expressions like the following : " Christus sua morte et resurrec
tione pro peccatis satisfecit, patri coelesti nos reconciliavit et nobis
hoc promeruit, ut fide in ipsum coram Dei judicio justi reputare-
mur." He vindicates his dogmatical consistency by remarking :
" excitando Christum a mortuis Deus eum ipso facto absolvit a
peccatis nostris ipsi imputatis, ac proinde etiam nos in eo absolvit."
On the value of this explanation we do not enter, but turn to
consider the passage itself, — a passage which, as the close of a com-

THE RAISING OF JESUS. 251
plete development, has all the appearance of affording an essential
view, et? ryv oiKOvop,iav Qeov rrjv ev irlarei.
The exposition which Calvin has given of the passage has
rightly found warm recognition from many. The precision, con
scientiousness, and impartiality which so highly distinguish this
exegete come out here most brilliantly ; only few, however, have
given it their real assent. For Calvin explains, "sacrificio, quo
expiata sunt peccata, inchoatam fuisse salutem nostram, resurrec
tione vero demum fuisse perfectam ; " and again (in commenting
on 1 Cor. xv. 4) defines more closely, " quemadmodum morte
Christi abolitum fuit peccatum, ita resurrectione parta justitia ;
haec partitio diligenter notanda est, ut sciamus, quid ex morte,
quid ex resurrectione illius petendum sit nobis " (nearly to the
same effect in the Institt. II. 16 : " Sic salutis nostrae materiam
inter Christi mortem et resurrectionem partimur"). And the
Lutheran system of thought could not on general grounds sympa
thize with a division which so violently severed from one another
the remissio peccatorum and the justificatio — which were related
merely as the arepr/riKov or privativum to the deriKov or posi-
tivum, and therefore formed an inseparable unity. But even
from the purely exegetical standpoint such a partition appears
absolutely impossible.1 Even Chemnitz pointedly remarks that the
apostle did not write (as he must have done in the supposed case)
" mortuus est propter remissionem peccatorum ; " but his words
were these : " mortuus est propter peccata nostra." And, in fact,
this circumstance must ever prove fatal 2 to every attempt, how
ever able, to establish a difference of effect in meeting human
wants for the two saving facts, so that one was gained by the
death of Christ, the other by His resurrection. But we are far
from mistaking on that account the fine perception which has
1 There are passages in the letters of Paul, and they belong to the very region in
question, which are specially fitted to warn us against such handling. The apostle
writes, Rom. xiv. 9 : sis rovro Xpiffros airiSaviv xa) i^ntrtv, 'iva xa) vlxpojv xa) Z,ojvroiv
xtipnvo-ri. But no one has proposed to explain this by saying that Christ won by His
death the right of lordship over the duad ; by His reviving, that over the living.
This never occurred even to Calvin. And yet the words would warrant a partition
here, as much as at iv. 25.
2 This holds also of the theory which Reich (ubi supra, p. 290) has developed. He
maintains that the forgiveness of sin rests on the death of Christ ; our adoption by
God, on the other hand, on His resurrection. What Gerhard would have said to
this confounding of the nature of justification with its consequences, may bo seen
from his discussion (I. dejustijic. § 149).

252 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
guided Calvin in his explanation of the passage. He has most
justly recognised that in some sense or other the two declarations
of the apostle stand contrasted with one another, though he mis
takes the region in which this contrast appears. On this point
we cannot be misled by the unimportant objection of Eg. Hunnius,
that Paul uses not an adversative particle, but the copulative ;
for as to the conclusion drawn by this theologian from the Kai,
" mortem ergo et resurrectionem Christi in unius beneficii societate
conjunctas esse, non disgregatas," we readily acknowledge its
truth. Our task, however, is rightly to apprehend the mutual
relation of the apostle's twofold sentence.
The more prominent of our modern commentators (apart from
solitary instances like Olshausen, who has totally misunderstood
the passage) have generally decided for the explanation that
Christ was given over to death for our sins, that is, that they
might be expiated ; on the other hand, His resurrection served
the purpose of working faith in men, on the ground of which
their justification becomes possible. So Knapp, Fritzsche,
Meyer; and so even Hofmann, not only in the Schriftbeweis
(II. p. 530), but also in his later exegetical work (V. p. 161).
There are several grounds which prevent us from acquiescing in
this explanation. The thought that the Easter miracle is
intended to produce faith, or the assurance of faith, may be
imported indeed into ver. 2 5 ; but not only is it foreign to the
letter of it, but it seems expressly excluded by the preceding
ver. 24. How? The resurrection of Jesus having just been
designated as the object of faith, would it be immediately there
after mentioned as its efficient factor .*** That is really difficult
to believe ! With this objective condition, on which man can
obtain justification, ver. 2 5 has absolutely nothing whatever to
do ; it can only describe the objective presuppositions by which
the act of justification (SiKaicoaa l) has been made possible for
God. God must give Jesus over to death, but not less must
He raise the dead One again ; both must precede if He is to
bestow SiKaioavvrj on believers. As the one was necessary to
1 In the explanation referred to, regard has not been had to the circumstance that
tbe apostle speaks of hxaiaio-is, not of "bixaioo-mn, and accordingly has in view not
the effect on man, but the aet which pertains to God. For nothing else can be
meant by tixaioio-ts than the divine act which restores tixauo-ivn. Its opposite
ch. v. 18, is xaraxptpoa, the act of God which dooms to death.

THE RAISING OF JESUS. 253
this end, so was the other also indispensable. It should not be
overlooked that the statement of the apostle brings to a close the
whole course of thought from ch. iii. 21. In ch. iii. Christ was
set forth as the " propitiation in His blood ; " in ch. iv., following
the analogy to Abraham's history, His resurrection had been
exhibited; in our final word, so weighty and comprehensive,
Paul combines both and each with equally strong emphasis, as
the twofold condition whereby God has made it possible for
Himself to pronounce the justification of men.
Thus there was needed, according to the teaching of the
apostle, not merely the offering of Jesus, but also His resurrec
tion, to secure the divine act of our SiKauoais. To the question,
how far the latter was a prerequisite to this end, he has not, it
would seem, given an answer.1 But the way at least to its
settlement is indicated by the declaration when more exactly
examined. It has been already remarked that its two members
are in some sense or other contrasted with one another. No one
who surrenders himself to the immediate impression of the words
will call this in question. Since we cannot establish a p,epia/j,6$
in respect of the effect, we find ourselves led to fix our attention
more closely on the double Sid. Eeich speaks inconsiderately
when he remarks (ubi supra, p. 96) that the twofold Sid is to be
taken as denoting the same relation. But the hke objection
applies to those commentators who without more ado explain the
first member to the effect that Christ was offered up in order to
atone for our sins. Had this been the apostle's meaning, he
would certainly have used the corresponding expression ; but he
has avoided it, and undoubtedly of set purpose. Most certainly
the irapeS60T) contemplates no other end than that the offered
One should be the propitiation for our sins (1 John iv. 10); but
this is the very question, whether Paul in the first half of the
sentence has a final relation in view. To point to the " offences"
(irapairr<opM.ra) will certainly not harmonize with this supposi
tion, but will always remain awkward. The case is rather this :
the first Sid denotes the ground ; the second, on the other hand,
indicates the end. Our offences were the ground on account of
1 Ritschl takes refuge in the view (ubi supra, II. p. 159) that the apostle is merely
using a "rhetorical exaggeration of expression." It seems to us a somewhat pre
carious course in such cases, to which hard and fast dogmatical assumptions will not
apply, to bring in rhetoric to the rescue.

254 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
which Jesus was offered ; our justification was the end for which
God raised Him from the dead. Was God minded to offer to the
entire human race the grace shown to Abraham, and so to fulfil
His promise made to the patriarch, there came in the way of the
fulfilment of this purpose a mighty hindrance. For his children
according to the flesh had not remained like the first father of the
justified. The "law entering" had occasioned many offences,1 and
therewith brought about a state which in iii. 10—18 is described
as notorious. This state was altogether fitted to awaken the
divine wrath (comp. iv. 15), and to restrain that grace which
bestows the gift of justification (iii. 24). And because the
undoing of this condition rested on the giving up of Jesus, the
apostle could write that our offences were the ground on account
of which Jesus was delivered up.2 Undoubtedly the object con
templated in this "delivering" was nothing else than the
justification of sinful men ; only for the real completion of this
act for the full attainment of the divine end Paul teaches there
was an absolute need of yet another thing. To understand his
thought we follow the way expressly pointed out to us, if here
also we keep in view the analogy which dominates the whole of
ch. iv. What is the God who justified Abraham called ? " He
that quickeneth the dead, and calleth things which be not as
though they were : " so He is described in ver. 1 7. Abraham
beheved on Him as such, and this faith was reckoned (ver. 22) to
the father of the future church for righteousness; but, on the
other hand, it was only He as such, only the God who quickens
the dead, and calls what is not as though it were, who could
bestow righteousness on the believer. And so likewise the God
who justifies us is called "He that raised up Jesus our Lord
from the dead" (ver. 24). On Him as such we believe, and this
faith is counted to us for righteousness (to whom it shall be
imputed if we believe, etc., ver. 24) ; 3 but, again, it is only He as
1 Commentators must be blamed for disregarding the choice of- this expression,
and so interpreting our passage as if the apostle had written **"/« ras apuaprias fipooZv.
2 We assume, indeed, tbat the idea of the divine opyf, is not to be understood as
Ritschl holds (comp. ibid. II. p. 138 et seq.), in a purely eschatological sense as
an attribute of the final judgment. The utterances of Paul can be thus summed
up only on the supposition made by Ritschl, that the apostle sometimes adopts the
Pharisaical view of the world, and in dealing with his readers of Jewish education
argues ex concessis. But we are not at all disposed to admit such a view.
3 It is only from this point of view that this description of the object of faith,

THE RAISING OF JESUS. 255
such, only the God who raised Jesus from the dead, who can
bestow on us the gift of righteousness. And hence it is that we
hear the declaration : Jesus was raised for our justification.
" He calleth things which be not as though they were," so
writes the apostle of the God before whom Abraham stood when
he beHeved. But the words tell with like exactness in all cases
wherein the act of a man's divine justification is carried out.
For in every such case the non-righteous (6 dcre/877?, iv. 5) is
described as righteous. How can this be ? Church divines
have been far from cutting this knot by appealing to God's
absolute power and freedom. They have readily acknowledged
the consequences which flow from passages like Prov. xvii. 15
(" he that justifieth the wicked is an abomination to the Lord ")
in relation to the conduct of the supreme Judge Himself. On
the contrary, they point to the fact that a "fundamentum firmum,
solidum, omnibusque numeris absolutum" is certainly not wanting
to the divine SiKaiayav;. In his classical treatise, de vocabulo
imputationis — and on it are based all the expositions of the
later divines — Chemnitz thus speaks (comp. loc. theol., Frank
furt 1594, II. p. 326 et seq.): "relatio mentis et voluntatis
divinae ex gratuita misericordia propter Christum credentibus
peccata non imputat, sed imputat illis Christi justitiam; id est,
habentur coram Deo in judicio ejus, acsi perfectam haberent
justitiam inhaerentem." Only he has not hereby removed the
question, so hard to suppress, how God can impute to the sinner,
even when the latter approaches Him in faith, the righteousness
of Christ. So much the less has he done so, the more expressly
he puts emphasis on the fact that faith is not a virtus insita, but
only the medium et organum, " quo relatio Dei fundamentum
applicat ad terminum." In so far as the theology of the church
in relation to this question stops short at God's gratia gratiosa,
His misericordia or favour, it has manifestly left an essential
blank which urgently needs to be filled up. Scripture supplies
the want ; it supplies it in the apostolic word : Jesus was raised
for our justification. God could call the unrighteous man
righteous only if a pledge were provided that the actual con
dition would more and more correspond to this name. And the
pledge was provided. It was not found in the believing man, as
which otherwise might seem strange, becomes quite transparent. Chemnitz has
rightly laid a stronger emphasis on this than modern commentators are wont to do.

256 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
if his faith made sure of a following holiness; but it was given
in Christ. Not, however, in the Christ whom God delivered over
to death, but in Him whom He raised from the dead. It was a
thing to be reckoned on, that the Eisen One would advance those
who believe to such a stage as is described in the words, " We
shall be like Him " (1 John iii 2). That is expected by Paul
from Him of whom he says, that from the resurrection from the
dead He came to the power assigned Him by the Father. That
he expects for those who belong to Him who has been raised
from the dead (Eom. vii. 4) ; they will bring forth fruit unto
God, they will serve in newness of spirit, walk in newness of
life, — dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus
Christ (vi. 4, 10). Immovable as the truth remains, that God
can justify men only for the merit of Jesus Christ, the proposi
tion remains as firm, that the imputation of this justitia per
Christum aequisita to the unrighteous was made possible for
Him by the fact that He possessed in the Eisen One the pledge
for believers actually becoming righteous. It is therefore with
literal correctness that Peter proclaims that God made Jesus the
Christ by resurrection from the dead — Christ in the full sense of
the word. " This Jesus has God raised up," so he says in Acts
ii. 32; and taking up the thought again, ver. 36 : "That same
Jesus God hath made Christ." Now, at length, the act of justi
fying the unrighteous had been made practicable ; and hence
the proposition : Jesus was raised for our justification.
We have explained in the proper place that we have not
entered upon our subject free from all presuppositions, but on
the assumption that Jesus is the Christ. He who has no doubt
of this will himself draw an obvious inference. Did God assign
to His Son the place, and to men the gift of a Christ, then after
sending Him into the world and giving Him over into the hands
of sinners, He must raise Him again from the dead. For this
was the condition if the merit of His life and death were to
accrue to the needy as an "abounding of grace" and a "justifica
tion of life." And from this point of view the reader will find,
in the accounts given by the evangelists of our Lord's resurrec
tion, only such facts related as were to be expected. At least
their reality could only be made matter of doubt on the sup
position of their containing in themselves weighty historical
difficulties. This, in fact, is the judgment which negative

THE RAISING OF JESUS. 257
criticism has passed on them. The question is, with what
right ?

3. THE HISTORY OF THE RAISING OF OUR LORD.
It is of the raising of our Lord from the dead that we come
to speak. The designation is certainly far from being exact.
The deed of God, whose contents and saving aim we have been
considering, cannot, taken in and by itself, be a subject of
historical representation. Only the evangelists have com
municated to us the various events which preceded the appear
ance made by the Eisen One Himself. Those, undoubtedly,
should introduce and make, way for the latter. Yet they
followed so immediately in the train of the divine deed that
they belong to it essentially, and make it possible to infer back
wards to it.
Though negative criticism has directed its main attacks
against the accounts given us of the manifestations of the
living One, yet it has never hesitated to arraign also this
history of the Easter morning. Only in more modern times it
has been at pains, by a careful sifting of the material, to escape
from an obvious reproach. Much of that which the fragmentist
emphatically alleges, Strauss leaves either expressly or silently
aside. No man in the future will handle the subject in the way
of a Celsus. Even Lessing gave the denial to his great Anony
mous when he found serious contradictions in the circumstances,
that the women, according to Luke, bought the spices before the
beginning of the Sabbath, while, according to Mark, they bought
them after its close ; or that, according to the first and second
evangelists, they saw only one angel ; according to the third, two,
and that in different places. True, we do not believe that
Lessing's own attempts to solve these difficulties did anything to
prevent criticism from reviving such questions. If only some
other than he had expressed the supposition that the jjroifiaaav
dpcoptara (Luke xxiv. 1) does not necessarily imply any actual
labour, but may be equally well understood of mere intentions
and inquiries, " destinabant aromata, providebant aromatibus," —
ridicule of the " master key " of Harmonistic would certainly not
have been wanting. Or had some other advanced the perfectly
appropriate remark (borrowed, besides, from Gerhard's Harmony),
R

258 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORDS RESURRECTION.
that one may not count the angels in presence of Him "at whose
service they stood ready in legions, — " the entire grave, the whole
wide region around, was invisibly full of angels ; now the one
appeared, again the other ; now in this place, again in that ;
now alone, again in company," — we can form a lively imagina
tion of what Strauss would have judged of the justification
appended to this view, " that it may be always thought more a
poetical than a true one ; only in such cases it is the worthiest
that is the truest " (comp. the close of the fourth piece in the
Duplik). So much the stronger impression, on the other hand,
has undoubtedly been made upon him by the judgment of his
great predecessor, that the evangehsts should not be put on the
rack about petty details, such as the stream of language throws
off quite involuntarily from the pen of the historian ; for, in the
whole course of history, there is not a single example to be
found of an event being related by several who wrote inde
pendently of one another, and who used no common source,
without the most obvious contradictions in matters of detail.
But, indeed, it is merely on the ground of the disharmony of
these secondary matters that the latest criticism is ready to pass
simply to the order of the day. Further concessions it will not
admit. Strauss has complained with lively indignation that
Schleiermacher's criticism is ever right in laying down the
premises, and puts the dilemma almost always with precision, but
that its conclusions are seldom pronounced according to the real
materials, but usually according to a preconceived judgment. This
theologian, Strauss holds, is wrong in putting the contradictions
which occur iu that part of the Gospel accounts before us, on the
same footing with those which meet us in the earlier parts. The
1 The visible complacency with which Lessing indulges in this view does not rest
on any zeal to justify the evangelists ; it is explained by the circumstance that here
he found the weapon with whieh he could deal the keenest strokes at the bitterly
hated theory of inspiration, and at the "squint-eyed Thersitic " Harmonistic. But,
in fact, he is right, and he might have adduced a striking example from New
Testament history. Paul's conversion is related several times in one and the same
book, but not without obvious differences in the details. According to the one
account, all his companions heard the heavenly voice ; in the other this is expressly
denied. In the one we are told the travellers all fell to the ground ; according to
the other, Paul only sank to the earth, while his attendants remained standing.
Comp. Acts ix. 7, xxii. 9, xxvi. 14. Does it occur to any one, on account of these
contradictions, to question the credibility of the history! Not on their account
certainly. At least where it happens it is a mere pretext.

THE RAISING OF JESUS. 259
true state of the case, he contends, is rather this, that the credi
bility of the resurrection history is irretrievably ruined because
of the quahty of its contradictions. Here, says he, circumstances
come to light which undoubtedly fall with all this weight into
the scales.
The difficulty of forming from the Gospel records a clear
image of the course of events is acknowledged. While the three
first evangelists tell of several women who went out in the early
Easter morning either to visit merely, or with the view of
anointing Jesus, the fourth knows only of the visit of the one
Magdalene to the grave. According to the synoptical account,
the group of women not only see the stone rolled away, but they
enjoy immediately the appearance of the angel, and receive from
his mouth at the same time with the gladsome message the
command to make it known to the apostles. According to John,
Mary sees nothing except the open grave, and immediately hastes
at her own impulse to the city, to confide what she had observed
to the two most distinguished of the Twelve. In Matthew and
Mark, the heavenly messenger directs the women to appoint the
disciples a meeting-place in Galilee, for there they would see
the Eisen One ; but of such a direction, Luke and John know
nothing. According to Matthew, they rose hastily and with joy
to carry out the commission they had received ; on the contrary,
Mark relates that from fear they said nothing of it to any man.
The beginning of Matthew's account expressly reserves the
appearing of Jesus for a later tune and at a more remote place ;
while, according to the course of this account, the Eisen One met
the women as they were hasting away that same hour.1 In
point of fact, these are conflicting and diverse elements, which
can with difficulty be harmonized so as to give a satisfactory view.
Nevertheless, the older Harmonistic set itself to the task. In
deed, men were not then in a position to decline giving a solution.
A dogmatical presupposition occasioned the inevitable necessity ;
but it lent also the determined courage. Only that the laboriously
1 On this last point Strauss has needlessly heightened and exaggerated the diffi
culty. Understanding as he does the words of the angel, Matt, xxviii. 7, as a
direction addressed to the women to repair forthwith to Galilee and there behold the
appearance of the Risen One, the revelation immediately afforded to them could not
fail in his view to be doubly surprising. But the passage quoted contains only the
commission which they were to carry out ; here, as in the parallel passage, Mark
xvi. 7, which strongly proves our point, the v/nis are merely the disciples.

260 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
raised edifice totters the instant that the supporting dogma is
shaken, was proved beyond all dispute by Lessing. It has been
attempted in more recent times to support the positions of Har
monistic in another way. Pains have been taken by a pragmatical
delineation of scenes and situations, and by psychological anato
mizing of the frames belonging to the various persons who appear
in the narratives, to conjure up a harmony which the plain
historical understanding does not acknowledge (so, above all,
Hengstenberg, comp. Comment, on John, III. p. 226 et seq).
The charge which criticism has raised against this procedure,
" that it twists the plain evangelic narrative into the unnatural-
ness of the most fashionable sensationalism," sounds harsh, but
one can hardly call it undeserved ; one cannot at least help sub
scribing out and out to the adverse criticisms which Strauss
brings together in the second part of his polemic, die Halben und
die Ganzen, p. 101 et seq. It is far from being a necessary
consequence that we must also grant the inferences to which he
has advanced. Even from the purely historical standpoint their
soundness is only apparent.
First, criticism is met by the grave charge that it is in the
habit of advancing the contradictions in the evangelic narratives
with all pointedness, while it maintains a resolute silence about
that in which the representations agree. It sets the discords in
the harshest light possible, so as to blind the eye of the reader to
the existing harmony, and so deceive it on this head. And yet
the amount of this latter material is very considerable. All the
evangelists tell of a going to the grave on the part of female
disciples of Jesus in the early morning ; they all report that the
women found the stone rolled away and the grave empty ; and
none of them knows anything other than that they had an
appearance of angels ; and that, further, through their instru
mentality the first obscure hints of the Easter miracle reached
the ears of the apostles. Or are these trivial matters of detail ?
It will be shown that in them is to be found the pith of the whole !
Criticism is further open to the charge that it exaggerates
every mere enantiophany into an insoluble contradiction ; that it
despises every attempt at harmony, even in cases where it could
be attained with ease, by adopting the perfectly honest assumption
that the one or other of the evangelists was the more exact. We
cannot call it a contradiction when the fourth evangelist tells

THE RAISING OF JESUS. 261
only of one female disciple having gone to the grave of Jesus on
Easter morning, not, like the others, of several. Mary of Magdala,
to all appearance, took a similar place among the female atten
dants of our Lord, to that of Peter and John in the circle of the
apostles. Matthew, as well as Mark and Luke, name her in the
first place (Matt, xxviii. 1 ; Mark xvi. 1 ; Luke xxiv. 1 0) ; nay,
even in an earlier passage of the third Gospel, she stands at the
head of those who minister to the Lord on His journeys (Luke
viii. 3). Strauss has said that the singling out of this woman in
the evangelic Easter accounts suggests much for thought. The
fruits of his own meditations he does not withhold from his
Teaders (Leben Jesu, p. 309). Others may well reach a simpler
result. If Mary, from the time of her deliverance from a severe
suffering, followed the Lord with the whole-heartedness of faith
and devotion, we can as easily understand the higher degree of
her sorrow as her taking the lead on the way to the grave, and
her vehement excitement caused by what she discovered in its
neighbourhood. Again, it thus becomes perfectly intelligible, not
only why the evangelist limits his account to her person and
leaves her companions aside, but why also the Saviour, showing
Himself, turned especially to her.1 Neither can we admit a
contradiction in the fact that the women, according to Mark's
account, delay carrying out the commission which the angel gives
them, and which, according to Matthew, they executed with
joyous haste. The proof that the second Gospel terminates with
ver. 8 of ch. xvi., and that all that follows is a spurious addition,
we must reserve for a later connection. But if it is true that we
have in Mark merely the fragment of an Easter narrative, not
only is the history generally imperfect, but ver. 8 itself particu
larly needs completing ; and this it would undoubtedly have found
had the recital been continued. And so it is inadmissible oil the
ground of a statement left unfinished to make out a manifest
contradiction. 1 We decline the more readily to solve the enantiophany by urging the plural
form, John xx. 2, as Mary in ver. 13 speaks in the singular. Elsewhere, too, in the
fourth Gospel we find otiapnv, without our requiring to suppose a plurality of distinct
persons ; and again, an oTSa, without its denoting merely individual knowledge.
" oTSapiiv," so says Nicodemus, iii. 2, and yet we can hardly think that he has men
in view who shaied the opinion with him; again, " oTSa" is the word of the
Samaritan woman, iv. 25, and evidently she does not mean by it any purely personal
conviction.

262 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
Neither, finally, can we find an absolutely irreconcilable
contradiction in the divergency which is said to exist between
Matthew's account of our Lord's first manifestation and the
Johannine narrative. Undoubtedly, if Mary of Magdala — as the
first evangelist relates — in common with the other Mary not only
heard the angel's words, but also saw the Eisen One Himself, and
received the %aipere from His lips, she cannot have stood soon
thereafter at the open grave mourning bitterly that her Lord was
taken away. No pragmatic psychological discussion could pos
sibly undo this knot, and all attempts of Harmonistic have been
baffled by the matter-of-fact letter of the accounts. But what if
Matthew and John are not thinking of different facts, but if it is
one and the same manifestation of Jesus which both have related ?
Calvin, so early, had this possibility very definitely before him.
It was a light task for Gerhard to establish his different view, by
means of a detailed comparison between the two texts (Harmon.
209). But he has been unfair to the accordance which is so
obvious, and that precisely in the most prominent points of the
narratives. Matthew writes of the women, " and they came and
held Him by the feet, and worshipped Him ; " and this very
intimation we have to presuppose in the case of the Magdalene,
according to John's account. In both narratives the Lord cuts
short this act of homage with the command rather to carry out
the commission which He is on the point of giving. Finally, in
both accounts He uses an expression by which He is not wont
otherwise to designate His disciples — He calls them His brethren.
These are facts which, in our view, tell with considerable, not to
say with decisive weight for the identity of the narratives.
But we do not deny that there are difficulties remaining which
have the undoubted aspect of being insuperable. More particu
larly, there are two circumstances to which both the fragmentist
and the latest criticism point with triumphant assurance. When
in Matthew and Mark, on the one hand, the appearing of Jesus
is expressly fixed for a later time, what shall we say to the fact
that, according to accounts elsewhere, the Eisen One not only
shows Himself immediately at the open grave, but on the very
same day in the midst of His disciples ? And when, on the
other hand, in the two first Gospels, Galilee is designated as the
place where the Lord will show Himself to His own, how will it
square with this, that, according to Luke, He appeared only in

THE RAISING OF JESUS. 263
Jerusalem and the region round about, and that, in the same way,
John also transfers at least the most prominent manifestations of
the living One to the capital ?
As to the first-named fact, it would really establish a grave
difficulty l if there were not one circumstance intervening which
essentially alters the state of the case. Lessing overlooked this
circumstance, at least he writes as if he were wholly unaware of
it. Strauss knew it well ; and what a stone of offence it was to
him, appears from the incredibly violent attempt which he has
made to set it aside. Had the first evangelist really left it un-
mentioned that the Lord was seen in Jerusalem, and that on the
day of His resurrection, by human eyes, we at least would certainly
not have taken refuge in the precarious evasion that this remains
unjustified by the critical conclusions. Were we obliged to
acknowledge the truth of the premises, we should rather adopt
Meyer's view, that there was a twofold tradition respecting the
appearances of the Eisen One, a Galilean and a Judean ; only we
could not do so with so unconcerned and light a heart as that
with which this theologian has recommended it ; the consequences
might be very dangerous. But fortunately we do not need it.
We ask : Has not Matthew in express terms told of a manifesta
tion of Jesus on Easter morning ? Has he not (xxviii. 9), though
quite shortly and by the way, witnessed to the fact that the
Eisen One met the women in His own person after they had had
the vision of angels ? It is true he speaks only of this one
appearance (and that because it was the first 2), while he passes
over the remaining history of the great day with definite intention ;
but is not the mention of the one sufficient to rebut the asser
tion, that of the manifestations of the Lord which took place
in Jerusalem he knew absolutely nothing ? Strauss has devoted
1 Lessing declares this contradiction to be the most important of all ; he confesses
that it is the one which he would like best to be able to answer. Cornp. Stuck 8
in the Duplilc. As is well known, the Emperor Julian treated the subject; not,
however, in the interest of contesting the credibility of the Easter history, but to
make out a moral charge against the person of our Lord. In repelling this polemic,
Euthymins had easy work.
2 True, we do not hold the close of Mark's Gospel to be genuine ; but undoubtedly
it goes back to a very high antiquity, for it is quoted so early as by Irenaeus, conse
quently it expresses the tradition universally received in the oldest church regarding
the manifestations of our Lord ; and, according to ver. 9, there had never been any
other belief than that the first appearance of the living One was made to the
Magdalene.

.264 THE HISTORr OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
an elaborate discussion to the passage of Matthew in question.
He describes (L. J. p. 314) its contents as "in the highest degree
peculiar; anything so purely superfluous could not only not
happen, but could not even have been related originally in this
connection ; were we to think the passage away, then the descrip
tion of the evangelist would best be brought into harmony with
itself." In point of fact, nothing could be more desirable for
criticism, and nothing more serviceable to its aim, than if this
passage did not occur in the text of Matthew. Then, happily, a
glaring contradiction would be proved in the accounts of the
evangelists. But the words stand there. Even the various
reading which is found in some MSS. is not of such a kind as to
justify a doubt of its genuineness.1 So far, Strauss is not wrong in
holding that the reader, after what precedes, is not expecting the
information contained in vv. 9 and 10. So much the more
important must they have been to the evangelist himself, and to
us they are of incalculable value. They tear asunder the meshes
of criticism. They make it obvious that, between Matthew on
the one side, and Luke and John on the other, there exists no
discordance respecting the manifestations of Jesus on the resur
rection day itself.
No doubt, however, the question still remains, Why Matthew
confines himself to narrating the first appearance of the Eisen
One, why he has kept silence about the manifestations which
were enjoyed by the disciples in the course of the day ? This
question has frequently been set aside as incompetent ; but at
least it is not so difficult that it requires to be cut short in this
summary way. The views developed by Hofmann (in the
Schriftbew. II. p. 520, III. p. 6) certainly claim recognition and
approval. It is a perfectly just remark, that " there in Galilee,
in the land of His believing followers, it was fitting that the
Lord should again gather together His own." This, too, may be
1 And yet it is in such a way that Strauss has sought to get rid of the obnoxious
passage : "It is a later interpolation, not into our text of Matthew, but into the
description which the first evangelist took as the basis of his resurrection history,
but into which he imported a feature absolutely incompatible with it." Comp.
L. J. p. 314. The author pronounces the censure on a modern apologist, that he
makes up for the want of weighty grounds by obstinacy of assertion. In respect of
the case before us, he has pronounced this judgment on himself. If the eyes of
any one are not opened by this passage to the character of the newest criticism
(neuesle Crilik), either he will not see, or he is beyond help.

THE RAISING OF JESUS. 265
granted, that the third evangelist, who makes his Gospel terminate
in the investiture ot the disciples with the office of witnesses,
had for this very reason no occasion to mention the Galilean
manifestations, because the call to that office had its beginning
in Jerusalem, the holy city. Only these considerations are far
from being sufficient to explain the strange silence of Matthew
respecting the manifestations of the Eisen One made to the
apostohc circle at Jerusalem. For though this silence does not
of itself force us to the conclusion that the author had no know
ledge of the fact passed over,1 yet his whole narrative seems to
leave far less room for intercourse between Jesus and His dis
ciples at Jerusalem than that of Luke for the same in Galilee.2
The angel charges the women with the direction to the Eleven
to repair to Galilee — " there shall ye see Him ; " the Lord Himself
sends the message to His brethren, " that they go into Galilee,
and there shall they see Me ; " this supposes His intention, His
determination to show Himself first to them there, and not on
that very day and in Jerusalem,3 — a determination which, judg
ing from Matt. xxvi. 32, He seems to have formed even before
the catastrophe. And yet the case may be quite otherwise. If
the sum of the Gospel declaration is to the effect that the Eisen
One revealed Himself both in Jerusalem and in Galilee, this
corresponds to a fully warranted expectation ; for in both places
the Lord had worked; here as well as there He had won
adherents, — and " he that loveth Me," so He had said, " I will
1 How unjustifiable such a conclusion would be, is convincingly proved by the
close of the fourth Gospel. Within the strict limits of his Gospel, which in a sense
certainly ends with ch. xx., John does not once give the slightest hint of our Lord's
Galilean manifestations. But he knew of them, nay, by way of appendix he has
spoken of them ; for whatever judgment may be formed of ch. xxi., its contents are
certainly to be referred to the authority of the evangelist. But in that case it
appears clearly that an evangelist might see himself called upon to pass over, in the
substance of his narrative, events which were perfectly well known to him.
' 2 In fact, the case is otherwise with Luke than with Matthew. Neither Lessing
nor Strauss have succeeded in proving an irreconcilable contradiction between the
narrative of the third evangelist and the acceptance of Galilean manifestations. The
pitiable jest, that the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles is an improved second
edition of the closing chapter of the Gospel, is highly characteristic. A cause which
needs such means of defence does not awaken any prejudice in its favour. But as
to the matter itself, we must reserve our view to a later stage.
3 The view given by Liicke, that the Lord undoubtedly had this intention, but
that He afterwards changed His purpose, is inadmissible. Nor does it commend
itself to us in the modified form in which it has been revived by Hofmann. The

266 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
manifest Myself to him." And if He verified this saying accord
ing to the third and fourth evangelists, even on Easter day to the
very followers to whom it had been immediately given, we find
herein a divine fitness (irpeirov), not to mention a fulfilling of
the word, " A little while and ye shall not see Me, and again a
little while and ye shall see Me." Nevertheless, it was possible
for an author who did not intend to publish a chronicle, but who
was guided in all his statements by a very definite aim, to lay
stress so exclusively upon the one class of these manifestations
that he not only passed over the other, but was led to leave it
wholly out of account.1 And such was actually the case with
Matthew. The first Gospel, in delineating the Messianic work of
Jesus, moves throughout on Galilean ground. Not till the history
of the Passion has to be given is the scene changed to Jerusalem.
The author had decided on this limitation of his materials on
account of the prophecy, which he has put, ch. iv. 14 et seq., at
the head of his narrative, and made the guiding star of his course.
And so it was hardly possible to expect anything else, at least it
is intelligible, if, in respect also of the manifestations of the
Eisen One, he remains on that ground, which had formerly experi
enced the " great light " in its light-giving rays. The evangelist
had every reason to choose the prophetic word referred to as
his guide iri depicting the working of Christ; for it was there in
" Galilee of the Gentiles, the land of Zabulon and the land of
Nephthalim, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan," that the
view of this theologian, that the message of the women remained strange and
incredible to the disciples, may have a tolerable foundation in passages like Mark
xvi. 14. But the wider assertion, that the unbelief of the Eleven hindered their
departure for Galilee, and that this delay constrained the Lord to reveal Himself so
early, falls to the ground — not to speak of other obvious difficulties — before the his
torical situation itself. Unbelief would have much rather led them to return as soon
as possible to their native Galilee, there to indulge their grief in quiet, and to be
less exposed to the possible plots which might be formed by the hierarchy. It was
budding faith which detained some (comp. John xx. 8: " WUnvo-iv "), and an
instinctive expectation which detained others in Jerusalem. And corresponding to
this was the will of the Lord, who was minded to reveal Himself to them here first,
and afterwards in Galilee.
1 When Strauss argues from the present •rpoayu, Matt, xxviii. 7 (compared with
the future orpoa^ai, ch. xxvi. 32), that the angel represents Jesus as already on the
way to Galilee, this wonderful minuteness misses its aim. It commits the same
error as Kinkel, and recently Greve, when from the present avajlalvat, John xx. 17,
they have concluded that our Lord, immediately after His meeting with the Mag
dalene, ascended to the Father.

THE RAISING OF JESUS. 267
most and the most striking works of the Lord had happened.
But how, now, if it was in the same place that precisely those
manifestations of the living One were made, which to Matthew
were of peculiar importance, — not the first nor the most over
powering, but perhaps those in which there was experienced an
altogether peculiar communion between the Eisen One and His
own, — so that Matthew, when he bethought him of our Lord's
appearances, found himself immediately transported to Galilean
ground ? We will not press the " there shall they see Me "
(p-^ovrai), xxviii. 10 ; we know that the expression applies also
to a quickly passing appearance ; but it can quite as well denote
a visit for longer intercourse (comp. Heb. xiii. 23), it is perfectly
suited to describe scenes such as the one which is disclosed to
us in John xxi.
On the ground of these considerations, we deny that real con
tradictions are to be found in the history of our Lord's resurrec
tion ; at least we refuse to admit that any which may occur
appear weighty enough to establish a doubt of the credibility of
the fact. And, in truth, it is not these alleged contradictions only,
but still more the peculiar character of the narration, which — at
least with modern criticism — has supplied the desired pretext.
It compares the accounts which the evangelists have given of the
reviving of Jesus with the preceding descriptions of His Passion.
" In the same measure as the latter are clear, harmonious, and
coherent, the former are fragmentary and obscure ; throughout
they lack objectivity, they produce the impression of purely
subjective ideas." It is especially the history of the Easter morn
itself on which criticism has passed its sentence of severest repro
bation. " Solitary visions," so says Strauss, " may at first have
really occurred ; " but the starting-point he holds which was
wanted for these alleged appearances, the going of the women to
the grave, with all they observed there, is in its whole range the
invention of a later time. That the narrative bears on it a
poetical impress, will hardly be granted by the impartial reader.
For surely it did not need a poet's fancy to represent the fact
that the female friends of our Lord, as soon as it was practicable,
proceeded to His grave to do the last duties to the dead. Only
the striking peculiarity of the description, as compared with the
preceding narrative, cannot certainly be mistaken. The proof
which Strauss draws from this, of " how the reports had worked

268 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
themselves more and more from the visionary to the palpable,
from the subjective to the objective," belongs in our opinion to
the most successful parts of his work. It is sure of its impres
sion on unestablished, " unprejudiced " minds. But only on them.
Others will first ask the question, whether the strange character
of the narrative is not the necessary result of its subject, whether
it does not thoroughly correspond with its theme. Criticism
would be at a dead loss had it to formulate the conditions under
which it would be disposed to credit the resurrection history
with objectivity. Suppose the scene at Bethany had been
repeated on Easter morning. Suppose the evangelists had related
that a circle of witnesses stood round the grave ; that there had
been an audible voice from heaven, " Sevpo etjco ; " and that the
dead had come forth like a bridegroom from His chamber, — there
could be no doubt how it would be judged by him, who esteems
the narrative of the raising of Lazarus to be a pure fiction. We
have supposed an impossible case. The history of our Lord's
raising could not be other than it meets us in the accounts of
the evangelists. For what is the theme of these descriptions ?
It is an act, an immediate act of the living God Himself. Such
a divine act does not pass before the view of men. What comes
under our senses is partly the circumstances which accompany it,
and partly its result. So, on the one side, we have the appearing
of the angels, the servants of God who do His will, their speak
ing and acting ; and, on the other, the manifesting of Him who
bears witness to Himself as the living One from the dead. One
other case is related in the N. T. of an act of God due to His
immediate interposition. The return of our Lord to the world
of appearances naturally compares with His advent in the flesh.
And how obviously in both cases are the Gospel records mutually
related ! The angel of the Lord appeared on the plain of
Bethlehem. And there were shepherds in that country who
watched their flocks by night. The glory of the Lord shone
round about them, and they feared greatly. But " Fear not : I
bring you good tidings of great joy." They are sent to the city
of David ; they see the child, and spread the word as it was
spoken to them. So also does the angel of the Lord appear at
the grave of the Eisen One. And women had come from Jeru
salem to view the place and anoint the dead. " Fear not : ye
seek Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here : He is risen." They

THE RAISING OF JESUS. 269
are dismissed with a commission ; and as they go they see the
Lord, and spread the word as it was spoken to them.
We allowed before that the narrative of our Lord's resurrection,
taken by itself, is not sufficient to afford a sure basis for faith in
the Easter fact. But if one has in Jesus recognised the Christ,
if he has grasped the truth that the Father could not but raise
Him up after the suffering of death, he will rest in the Gospel
description exactly as it lies before us, not only without repugnance,
but with real satisfaction. And he will do so, not as if he looked
down from a proud eminence on the critical difficulties, but
because he does not share that absence of preconception (Voraus-
setzungslosigkeit) which alone gives them their weight, and
secures their existence.

SECOND SECTION.

THE EISING OF CHEIST FEOM THE DEAD.
1. THE ACT OF CHRIST.
AS an act of Christ we describe His rising from the dead. If
neither the one-sided assertion, " Christum propria virtute
resurrexisse," nor the answer understood in its Socinian sense,
that God called Him back to life, fully corresponds to the con
tents of Scripture, but if both must alike have their full weight,
then the question arises, how far side by side with the glory of
the Father, which loosed the bands of death, there is yet to
be allowed an act of the rising Christ Himself. Distinctions
such as those made by the older theology will not solve the
difficulty. There has been set up a difference between %woiroii)-
aif and dvdaraai<s, and under the former has been understood
the restitutio vitae, under the latter the vitae recuperatae coram
hominibus manifestatio. Only to limit the act of Jesus to His
mere " egressio e sepulchro et egressi ad alios praesentatio "
would allow no other spontaneity than that which we must allow
on the part of a Lazarus ; — not to mention the fact that church
dogmatic contends with great emphasis that our Lord's rising
(dvdaraais) was already completed clauso adhuc sepulchro, lapide
nondum devoluto.
No mechanical distinction - drawing whatever between the
effects of raising and of rising meets the solution of the problem.
In the abstract, one may understand the Petrine word, " having
loosed the pains of death," of the restitution of life taken simply
in itself ; but concretely we cannot conceive it otherwise than as
Carpovius has explained it : " commercium inter corpus animam-
que seu vis agendi harmonica corporis animaeque restituta fuit."
The subject demands to be considered from an entirely different
standpoint. 270

THE RISING OF CHRIST FROM THE DEAD. 271
It has been said that our Lord's resurrection appears in fact
as the effect of a twofold factor, the one of which rests in Himself,
the other in God ; but that in the Son there was merely the
causa apprehendens, while the causa effwiens remains exclusively
the Father's. Unless this formula receive at least a more definite
meaning, it can afford no satisfaction ; for what it says of Christ
applies in some sense or other, in all cases in which the word of
power, " Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead,"
reaches its end. The terms in which the Lord Himself has
spoken of the question before us certainly assume more than
that mere apprehensio. He says (John x. 18) : "I have power
(igovalav) to lay down my life, and I have power to take it
again : this commandment have I received of My Father." The
word e^ovaia undoubtedly never denotes a self-originated, but
always a bestowed, especially God - bestowed power (in this
respect, too, the word of the apostle holds : there is no power,
igovaia, but of God, Eom. xiii. 1) ; in the fourth Gospel it never
occurs otherwise than in connection with the dvwOev SoBrjvai.1
But we are not therefore entitled to lower its meaning to a mere
" competency," or worse still, to an " endowing with privilege."
The idea of plenipotentiary power demands in all circumstances
to be maintained. And in the connection before us this may be
done. All depends on our finding the exact point on which the
stress lies in the saying of Jesus Christ. If we take into view
the historical relations, and especially observe the circumstance
that the " laying down of the life " in the very same way as the
" taking of it again " appears as the expression of His iijovala,
then the force of the latter will be found not so much in a super
human power contrasted with helplessness, but much more in a
freedom of self-determination, which knows itself to be inde
pendent of any external will and of any constraint. Our Lord
points this word immediately against the Jews. It is not their
counsel which robs Him of hfe, He Himself of His own free
1 And hence we seldom or never read in Scripture of an i^ovola of God. The
passage which one might be tempted to cite would be Luke xii. 5 : i\ovtriav 'ixovra
ipjZaXiiv ils rhv yUwav. But suppose we are not led to decide that the text of
Matthew (rn imtifum) is the more genuine, the expression in Luke would tell with
considerable weight in favour of those commentators who, as the object of the
fcPurfcu, understand the power of Satan. Comp. Stier, Reden Jesu, V. p. 400
et seq. The only other place where the expression occurs is Acts i. 7 : «. tis o xarhp
thro iv t» thia i^ovo-la.

272 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
motion presents His soul as an offering ; and if they are minded
to banish Him to the grave of annihilation, His victory will
defeat their hostile purpose, — " Destroy this temple, and in three
days I will raise it up again." Yet it is not against them only
that He alleges so determinedly the freedom of His will, but even
in respect of the Father He is fully conscious of it ; neither on
this side does He experience any compulsion.
True, He speaks of a commandment which He has received
from above, but this does not at all prejudice His egovaia; on the
contrary, the latter proved itself gloriously in the fact that He
gave Himself up to the command of the Father in virtue of the
freest determination. But here now is the question to what that
divine command relates. To limit its reference to the laying down
of His life is exegetically unjustifiable. This commandment,
such is the Lord's word. The this as certainly embraces the
entire contents of ver. 18, as in the preceding ver. 17 the love
of the Father received the similarly comprehensive explanation.
It was the will of God that Christ should resign His life, but it
was also His will that He should take it again. And in both
respects the Son complied with the will of the Father. We say
in both respects. The previously mentioned assertion of Victorinus
Strigel, that Christ's resurrection was an act of His obedience,
has been denied only on account of its paradoxical sound. And,
indeed, the self-denial which constitutes the essence of obedience
does not seem to harmonize either with the glory of the Eisen
One taken in itself, or with the idea of a reward thereby accruing
to Him. The matter, however, receives another light as soon as we
consider the work to which the exalted One was called. The
rereXearai of the dying One only proclaimed that service to be
finished which the Son had to perform to the Father in the
Servant form ; His ministry as a whole did not yet come to an
end with this exclamation, but in the hour of His glorification
a new phase of the same began. At the very moment of His
rising again He expressly designates Him whom He had been
accustomed hitherto always to call His Father, as His God, and
that in the same strict sense in which He is the God of the
disciples. (Eightly Aug.: sub quo et ego sum.) This new
ministry is dissimilar from that which had reached its height
and found its close in the laying down of His life ; but it never
theless corresponds to the idea iri its full strictness. For just as

THE RISING OF CHRIST FROM THE DEAD. 27o
the Lord during His days on the earth had constantly considered
His Father's interest, working in His name, labouring for His
honour, so He pursues the same aim on the throne of His glory.
And as He testified in this world that He came not to do His
own will, but the will of Him who sent Him, such is also His
testimony in His estate of exaltation. This is the thought which
the apostle has expressed in the profound passage, 1 Cor. xv. 25
et seq. He describes the working of the glorified Christ as a
reigning, and this reign he represents — exactly as in the related
passage in Philippians, and in full agreement with our Lord's
own declaration, that the Father has given all things into His
hand — as an unlimited one, as one which would set aside all
opposition. Instead of the former suffering and struggling, a
ruling and conquering. In sure prospect he beholds the final
triumph wliich this King will gain over all opposing powers, till
the last enemy is overcome, and no one remains either in heaven
or on earth, or under the earth, who refuses Him homage. But
we find it declared with the same emphasis, that the reigning of
the exalted One is in the service of the Father. Ver. 27 itself
only becomes clear when considered from this point of view.
Paul explains it as a matter of course, that when all things were
given over to the Son, He must be excepted who willed and
ordered this subjection. But if this is obvious of itself, why
then the remark at all ? It would in fact be superfluous, were
it not his intention to describe the reigning of Christ as a
ministry in relation to the Father.1 This intention appears still
more evident from the description of the end which that kingly
work pursues. When the apostle describes it as having this
object, that God may be all in all, and when he teaches at the
same time, that the Son, as soon as this end has been reached,
will Himself become subject to the Father, and deliver to Him
the kingdom, — the idea of a service which the anointed King is
1 We cannot adopt that understanding of the words which Hofmann proposed in
the Schrifibeweis, and which he has preserved in his later Commentary, that they
are meant to indicate the absence of all exception from the travra trroriraxrai. That
would indeed be an extraordinary proof of the universality of this dominion. From
the fact that the Father is not subject to the Son, it surely does not follow that
everything else is put under Him. Had the apostle had this in view (one, besides,
which is not at all founded in the general context), he would have expressed himself
otherwise, in some such way as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, who (ii. 8)
Writes .* olViv afniiiv airy avutroruxrov.

274 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
called to perform to His God and Father appears as the un
doubted essence of the whole section. It had its beginning,
this service, and that at a very definite time ; it has its progress,
and that to a very definite limit ; precisely at this limit it will
at last reach its glorious end (elra rb reXo<;, 1 Cor. xv. 24). The
Easter morn was the hour of its beginning ; x its progress tran
spires in the history of the kingdom (it is still in progress, for
what is written Heb. ii. 8 still holds true to-day : " we do not
yet see all things put under Him ") ; and it will be finished
when He who uttered the rereXearai on the cross will give
forth the cry, " irdvra xiiroreraKrai " (comp. Hofmann, Schriftbew.
III. p. 660; die h. Schr. N. T. III. p. 369).2 We say that it
was on Easter morning that it began.3 When God addressed to
1 The definition of the church, that the exaltatio Christi began with His resur
rection from the dead, and that His rising is the terminus a quo of His munus
regium, remains undisturbed. Hofmann (die heil. Schr. N. T. III. p. 363) is of
opinion that the Qtao-tXivuv, whieh Paul predicates of the Lord, dates from His
appearing again. As to the claim whieh the Saviour raised even before Pilate's
judgment-seat, that He was a King, we can fully acknowledge it without granting
that His work on the earth can be called a ftao-iXtvuv. So it may be admitted that
when Christ appears He will show a kingly glory, without regarding any other
expression than that of fixo-tXtusiv as the appropriate one for His ruling at the right
hand of God.
2 Anything different from this explanation, and the conclusion immediately
following from it, are not to be sought in the airis i vlis vtrorayrto-t-rai. Paul could
use the expression without any fear that his readers would understand the vvroraywirai
in the same sense as the preceding uvrorayti. If the object of that dominion which
the Son exercised in the service of the Father is reached, then, of course, the
dominion as such is at an end ; but yet ouly to make way for another, a dominion
which He exercises, not for the Father, but with Him, and which He maintains for
ever : (bao-iXlvo-u its rovs aluvas rav aluvatv, Rev. xi. 15.
8 It is a mistaken view, at least an inexact forni of expression, when, as is
commonly the case, the dominion of the Risen One during the forty days is regarded
only as a type of His kingly work as exercised from heaven. The former is not the
type of the latter, but its actual beginning. Thus we understand the first words which
fell from the mouth of the Risen One. He says to Mary of Magdala : pii ptov atrrov'
ovirai yap avaf&iflnxa trpos rov oraripa pt.ov' oroptuov 0% wpos revs ahlXtyovs pttou xa) £iVe avrols'
'Avafiatv&i vrpos tov oraripa piov. The prohibition of Christ has been very variously
understood, and the present avaflalvai has led to the most fantastical explanations.
*We have shown in an earlier connection that the meeting of the Lord with Mary,
both in time and as a fact, coincides with His manifestation to the women, Matt.
xxviii. We must therefore take the material to explain our SLimo-lai from the
attitude taken by these latter. Now we read : ixparno-av avrov rovs -xohas xa) orpoo-ixiv/i-
o-av a'vro}. So a twofold declaration. Strauss has kept to the second, and finds in
the prohibition the refusal of a divine homage which did not yet belong to Him
(L. J. p. 606). But we have more right surely to attaGh weight to the preceding
IxpiTnaav, partly because of the word used, partly from the known peculiarity of

THE RISING OF CHRIST FROM THE DEAD. 275
the dead the resurrection call, He summoned Him to kingly
sovereignty, and to the ministry connected with it. And the Son
obeyed the summons of His free determination ; He entered on
the dignity, He also undertook the service. So for the second
time He fulfilled the word, " I come to do Thy will." And so
our confession is not only to the effect that Jesus was raised by
the glory of the Father, but it finds its complement in the decla
ration, that He Himself rose from the dead ; in this sense we
speak of an act which the Lord executed on Easter morning.
It will become still clearer, as soon as from the more compre
hensive idea of the exaltation we concentrate our view on that
of the resurrection. The resurrection from the dead is the return
the Magdalene. "Atmo-Pai means "to touch sensibly," and nothing else ; not "to
touch " in the sense of touching in order to prove (that would be ^»x«0n*v), but to
grasp and hold fast its object. Gerhard exactly explains it, remarking: "ideo tam
arete eum complecti conabatur, ne iterum elaberetur. " Mary was cured of demoniacal
possession. Luke, and also — though indeed it is not genuine — the close of Mark,
expressly record that the Lord freed her from this calamity. Now it was precisely
such persons (we earnestly beg onr readers to compare Luke viii. 38, 39) who had
the HveHest interest in keeping up uninterruptedly immediate communion with the
physician in whom their help lay. Christ rejects the boldness of His disciple. And
He gives a reason for His prohibition. But strange that we should think to find its
ground everywhere Tather than in the immediately following words 1 What has led
to this mistake is the fact that the Lord afterwards not only tolerated, but even
called for the touch of His disciples, and especially of Thomas, without considering
that the ifniXaopSv of the called apostles has nothing akin to the avno-lat of Mary.
The main stress of the reason is rather to be found in the second hemistich.
"Touch Me not : for I am not yet ascended to my Father ; but I ascend, tell my
brethren, I ascend to Him." So the present kvafialva. We reject as earnestly as
any of the modern commentators the anti-scriptural hypothesis based on the word,
that the Lord ascended to heaven in the course of Easter day. Only we cannot
pass so lightly as most of them have done over the peculiar tense. The inevitable
postulate is this, that what in one sense had not yet happened (oinrai avafiifaxa),
was in another sense an already present (not a future yet to be realized) fact (iva-
,/Ww). And this postulate is also justified. When the Father raises the Son, He
says to Him : "Sit Thou at My right hand ; " and when the Son rises from the dead
He enters immediately into this kingly dignity, His ftao-iXiinv begins. Thenceforth
His acts are purely those of a sovereign. As a sovereign Pie meets the Magdalene ;
as a sovereign He rules in the midst of the Eleven — as a sovereign, in the same strict
sense in which He fills His kingly office after His ascension. Negative criticism
has reasoned backwards from the utpfa xa.pt.oi of the Apostle Paul, 1 Cor. xv. 8, in its
well-known way to the narratives given of all earlier manifestations of the Risen
One. We shall have to prove later that its conclusions are false. Meantime we
cannot overlook the germ of truth which is contained in the error. So far, we mean,
the appearances of our Lord to the Eleven are in fact on the same footing with His
manifestation to Paul ; as in the one not less than the other, it was the King whom
God anointed who showed HimselL

276 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
to a bodily life. This is the point which is rightly emphasized
by church divines as the true and essential force of the idea.
" Consistit resurrectio," so says Gerhard, " in animae Christi ad
corpus reductione, ita ut illae duae partes per mortem separatae
in eandem rursus naturam coalescerent." Similarly in Hollaz
(in his exam, theol. acroam. III. p. 301) the " actus Christi,
quo corpus suum animae redunitum e sepulchro eduxit." And
Quenstedt defines it (I.e. p. 379) as that "gradus exaltationis,
quo Christus idem illud corpus, quod in cruce mortuum et in
sepulchrum fuerat collocatum, per iteratam animae cum ipso cor
pore uniouem vivificatum e tumulo reduxit" (comp. the full and
successful vindication of this definition given by Buddeus, Institt.
p. 794).1 In this view they have the Scriptures as manifestly
on their side as Eothe has them against him when he describes
the resurrection of our Lord as merely the delimitation of His
being, following on His decease as His reaching the perfection
of " pure spirit." This view is in harmony neither with the
Easter history, nor with Paul's doctrine, nor with Christ's own
explanations. It is obviously a bodily life in which the Eisen
One holds intercourse with His disciples. " They thought they
saw a spirit," such were indeed their first thoughts (according to
Luke xxiv. 3 7) ; but with the words " it is I myself," and still more
completely with the accompanying signs, this delusion immedi
ately disappeared.2 The account given by Paul, 1 Cor. xv., rests
throughout on the assumption that the Lord arose to a bodily
life ; without this assumption it would lose its significance and
miss its aim. When the apostle writes in the outset : " I received
. . . that Christ died, and that He was buried, and that He was
raised again the third day," he understands it (and that in full
harmony with the angel's word at the open grave : " He is not
here ; He is risen : see the place where He lay ") in no other
sense than that the body from which the soul had gone, the body
which had been buried, had become again the organ of His action.3
1 How decidedly the church Fathers maintained this view, has been proved by
numerous quotations from them made by C. L. Muller in his painstaking and trust
worthy treatise, de resurrectione Jesu Christi . sententiae; quae in ecclesia Christiana
adfinem usque seculi sexti viguerunt, Havniae 1836, p. 63 et seq.
2 Rothe, who fully recognises the reality of the appearances of the Risen One,
helps himself here by means of a view, the discussion of which we must reserve till
a later stage.
3 And so even Rothe cannot avoid speaking in some sense or other of a corporeity

THE RISING OF CHRIST FROM THE DEAD. 277
And finally, the same is the effect of our Lord's own declaration
about laying down His life and taking it again. For if it is the
bodily life which Christ gave over to death, the same life must
be that which He takes again ; otherwise neither would the it
nor the again have their just force.
The shrinking from ascribing to the glorified Christ a body in
the sense of church divines, certainly does not arise merely from
the difficulty of forming a satisfactory view of its properties.
At least in the case of Eothe, it has an altogether different
ground. In his case it arises from the fear that the idea of the
exaltation might be prejudiced by it. And, in reality, however
we may have the view that the "glorious body'* (aa>p,a -rijs
Soifrs;) is raised above common wants as well as above earthly
limitations, it cannot wholly banish the misgiving, whether for
the Son, as He is seated " at the right hand of the majesty on
high," a body is really suitable. This scruple is generally
sought to be allayed by reckoning up all the glorious qualities of
a corpus glorificatum} This treatment, however, must always do
violence to the subject ; we prefer to abstain from it, and instead
to consider the question how far the feeling indicated is after, all
to be justified. For it has a justification. Undoubtedly the
body of humiliation (aa>[ia tjj? raireivdoaems), such as the Lord
wore it during His earthly career, experienced a change to its
direct opposite. But what was the object for which the Father
bestowed on His Son the glorious body (aa>p.a -n?? SoSji)'}) ? No
other than this, that He should finish His kingly rule in this
body, the rule to which He was called ; more precisely, that He,
in virtue of this body, should execute the service which He who
put all things under Him expected from Him ; for in order to
this service the glorified body was the absolutely indispensable
organ. The glorious body completely displaces from the eye the
belonging to the Risen One. But he leaves merely the word while he denies the
thing. For in stopping short at the point, that Christ after His decease became
" pure spirit " (reiner Geist), he could only allow a corporeity, or — as he is wont to
express himself — a soul-animated body, in so far as this body itself is again regarded
as real holy spirit, nay, as the Holy Spirit *«•' sl^nv (comp. theol. Ethih, erste
Aufl. II. p. 292). But that means saying, and at the same time unsaying. For a
" pure spirit " is bodiless, nvtvpca and o-aipia are contracts in Scripture. A body
to be thought of as real holy spirit is simply unthinkable.
1 J. Gerhard counts up not less than eleven. They are mostly abstractions from
the manifestations of the risen Christ, without any attempt to view them as a unity.
The section is by far the weakest part of the itatxt^is.

278 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
servant form (floppy SovXov) : the sight (ctyt?), the appearance
(ISea), is that of a Lord ; but only the more brightly and clearly
does it mirror that place of ministration into which the glorified
one had entered anew to His Father and His God. And what
results therefrom ? That the Lord, by returning again to a bodily
Hfe, carried out a commandment which He had received, and that
so His resurrection from the dead may be regarded as His own
free act !
By the one outstanding passage in which Scripture presents
this formula, the view indicated must be established, and by the
same must it seek to gain its further development. The Lord
says (John ii. 19) : " Destroy this temple, and in three days I will
raise it up." 'Eyepa, I shall do it, I Myself. The exposition of
the words is matter of controversy. Those who question the
rightness of John's own declaration are at present in a decided
minority ; nevertheless, it is far from being generally acknow
ledged that the Lord simply prophesied the fact of His resur
rection. The tendency is rather to settle down into the view
that there is a double meaning contained in the enigmatical
utterance. There is only one case in which this view would
prejudice the authority of the apostle, and that is if it supposed
a relation to the stone building of the temple and to the destruc
tion of the Jewish theocracy ; for this is the very thing which is
censured by the evangelist as a mistaken Jewish delusion. Apart
from this, the view finds no obstacle, but rather support, in the
words of ver. 21:" But He spoke of the temple of His body."
For the question is forced on us, For what reason did the Lord
describe His body as a temple ? The occasion may be to be
sought in the previous purifying of the house of God ; but the
occasion is not the reason. We are the less at liberty to set
aside the reminder that the church of Jesus Christ is called in
Scripture the temple of God, as this church not less frequently
bears the name of Christ's body, and as both descriptions — espe
cially in Paul — so melt into one another that the apostle must
have thought of the body as a temple, and of the temple as a
body.1 So the church is a temple of God ; but it is at the same
1 The fact meets us with special clearness in the language of the Epistle to the
Ephesians. To be compared are ch. ii. 20-22 with ch. iv. 15, 16. In the words
oik.ob~oftt.7i rov o-ojptaros, av%viffts rov o-tvpoaros, on the One side, and au\u b oixooopcii ds
van dytov on the other, the unity of both thoughts is perfectly obvious.

THE RISING OF CHRIST FROM THE DEAD. 279
time the Lord's body. If in these expressions nothing else is
found than ways of representing the communion of believers in
one (Eothe, die Anfange der christi. Kirche, p. 292; Eitschl,
Entstehung der altcath. Kirche, p. 9 8), then, indeed, no cause need
be sought either to explain their mutual relation, or even their
origin. But if one regards them as more than mere images and
similitudes, he cannot avoid this task.
First, so much is manifest, that the former designation has its
root in the Old Testament. It is rooted in the promise that the
Lord will dwell among His people as in His holy place on the
earth. Attaching itself to the divine promise, Lev. xxvi. 11, 12,
the thread passes through the predictions of the prophets, so as
to become more and more interwoven with the expectation of the
Messias who was to appear (Zech. vi. 12). The church of Christ
arose, and with it began the fulfilment of the promise (comp.
2 Cor. vi 16). By what name then should the New Testa
ment language rather describe the church now in her bloom,
than by that which the ancient promise had hallowed ! It is
extremely common, not only with Paul, but also with Peter and
the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. And yet it could no
longer be felt to be fully adequate as soon as the idea of the
church became developed from the specifically Christian view
point. Then a new name was inevitably demanded, a name
corresponding to the time of fulfilment, as pointedly as did the
Old Testament name from the standpoint of prophecy. And that
apostle brought it into use, in whom the idea of the church
taken generally prevailed with peculiar vividness and power.
Baul calls the church the body of Christ. No doubt the close
ness of the bond which unites believers to Christ, and again as
members to one another, lies not far from the meaning of the
designation. Only this practical service must not be confounded
with the essential force of the idea. This is above all the
question, In what sense and with what right can the apostle so
designate the church ? If we are right in thinking that the Old
Testament term only, receives a Christian determinateness in the
New, the two must be so related to one another, that the former
must be understood from the standpoint of the aim ; the latter, on
the other hand, from the viewpoint of the realization. Through
Christ the dwelling-place (KaroiKrjrrjpiov) was formed which God
sought to have with men. By the offering up of His hfe, by the

280 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
" giving of His flesh," by the " offering of His body," the Lord
won a holy church ; and by His rising from the dead, by His
" taking His life again," this church found the beginning of its
actual existence. It is the fruit which the grain of corn brought
forth by dying in the earth, and springing up into new life. The
church which grew immediately from the person of the Eisen
One (from His flesh and from His bones, Eph. v. 30 — with
which we beg our readers to compare the remarkable harmony
of the " flesh and bones " which the Eisen One, Luke xxiv. 3 9,
predicates of Himself) ; the church in which He has His being
and manifestation on the earth ; the church within which He
rules as Lord and acknowledged head, nay, by which He more
and more overcomes the world, — is in reahty, in the strictest, or
rather the literal sense, His body. But for that very reason it is
in an equally strict sense the dwelling-place of God, the " taber
nacle of God with men ;" for wherever the Son has become
sovereign, there, at the same time, the Father " makes His abode"
(comp. John xiv. 23).
From the point we have gained, we return to the words by
which the Lord in the passage of John meets the objection of
the Jews. He says : Destroy this temple. Certainly, He might
thus, as always, have designated His body by this sublime name ;
for in Him, not in the gorgeous building at Jerusalem, had the
living God His dwelling — one greater than the temple is here,
Matt. xii. 6. But the temple of this body was broken, and, built
anew, it rose from the grave ; and so the idea must widen in
such measure as the object of the destroying and the fruit of the
raising demand. The avrov at the close cannot be quite covered
by the rovrov at the beginning ; it embraces also the church,
which, growing from the resurrection of the Lord, became His
body, and as such the temple of God. And this exactly is the ¦
double sense contained in the enigma. If we have explained it
rightly, a bright light is shed over the word, in which the full
spontaneous action of the speaker is revealed, iyepco, I will do it,
I Myself. If His return to a bodily life was so indispensable a
condition to the growth, progress, and perfection of the church, it
was for that reason the prerequisite if the Father was to have a
dwelling-place on the earth, in order to be in the end all in all.
The event which happened on Easter morning appears not as one
merely which happened to the Lord ; it is at the same time His

THE RISING OF CHRIST FROM THE DEAD. 281
act, an act in which He again declares, " A body hast Thou pre
pared Me. Lo, I come to do Thy will."
The interest involved in our discussion thus far has required
us to touch on the task which the Eisen One is to accomplish in
His Father's service. We have, however, intentionally confined
ourselves to the most general hints, that we may now attempt
the closer investigation of the subject.
2. THE ABI OF CHRIST'S RISING IN THE PLAN OF SALVATION.
We saw in an earlier connection that church divines, because
of their acknowledging the Easter event only in a very general
sense as the act of God, give no satisfactory explanation of the
object of the raising of our Lord effected by the glory of the
Father. Scarcely one of them has risen above the definition of
Chemnitz (exam. cone. Trid. VIII. art. vii.), " quod pater satisfac-
tionem et obedientiam filii acceptavit pro reconciliatione et
propitiatione nostra: id resuscitatione ejus ostendit." The more
decidedly they insisted on the proposition, "Christum propria
virtute resurrexisse," the more surely could it be foreseen that
they would correspondingly lay emphasis on the value of His
rising ; but it was also to be feared that in consequence of their
one-sided position they would go beyond the limits of biblical
truth. And in both respects the expectation has been realized.
Above all, Egid. Hunnius has carried out the view that the Lord,
in rising from the grave, triumphed over the hostile power of
death, and made all who believe on Him partakers of His triumph.1
The majority of later divines have followed this teaching;2 only
Calovius passes over it in silence.3 It is in the highest degree
common in the language of Christianity, and from the earliest
1 Comp. his formerly cited treatise, de just'ific. p. 57 : " Necessarium erat ad
nostram salutem, ut non tantum moreretur Dominus, verum etiam mortem debellaret
adeoque omnes hostes nostros vinceret. Si enim mansisset in morte, nee resurrexisset:
turn clare patuisset, non ipsum vicisse mortem, sed ab eadem esse victum. Quando
autem ex mortuis excitatur . . . absumto hoste . . .jam partae victoriae insignibus
illustris procedit, tanquam vitae princeps nostraeque salutis consummator. "
2 Quenstedt, I.e. p. 379: "Finis resurrectionis est gloriae Christi et victoriae
plenarie reportatae demonstratio. " Hollaz: "Resurrexit Christus ad manifestan-
dam gloriam de morte impetratam." Carpovius : "Resurrexit, ut victorem se et
triumphatorem ostenderet."
3 In his dogmatic treatise Gerhard also leaves it aside. And yet the Harmonia
shows that the view was neither strange nor unpractical in his estimation. Ho

282 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
times the church of the Lord in its Easter festival unites in the
sense of it. Nevertheless, the question arises whether it can be
proved by the teaching of the Bible ; and we are convinced that
it cannot stand the test except with important modifications.
Only by a series of Old Testament passages, which are, besides,
extremely doubtful, has J. Gerhard been able to make good the
assertion that the Holy Ghost describes the rising of Christ
throughout the whole of Scripture as an actus triumphalis ac
victoriosus in this sense (Harm. III. p. 2104 of the Frankf.-Hamb.
edition) ; the New Testament refused Him this service. No one
will hold that the sayings of our Lord : "Iam the resurrection
and the hfe; I live, and ye shall live also," gained truth in
reality in virtue of His rising from the dead. Nor can we believe
that the Pauline declaration, 2 Tim. i. 10, will be alleged against
us. Undoubtedly, the apostle there describes our Lord as having
abolished death. But it is only imagination that sees in the
words the image of the conqueror of death, who at the open
grave has waved the flag of victory over the enemy trampled
Under foot ; sober exegesis reaches another result. It seeks the
explanation in the illustrative passage of the Epistle to the
Hebrews (ii. 14). And there it finds the death of Jesus repre
sented as the power which successfully encountered the enemy,
but the abolishing itself limited to the one fact that the reconciled
(ol diraXXayevre^, ver. 15, for the term can mean nothing else)
have been delivered from servile bondage to the fear of death.
As to the real conquest, the destruction of death, the abolishing
in its full sense, Scripture bids us expect it only at that point
which Paul has designated as the end. Then, and not till then
(rore, 1 Cor. xv. 54), will the prophecy be fulfilled, "Death is
swallowed up in victory ; " then, and not till then, will it be
realized, " There shall be no more death," Eev. xxi. 4 ; " the last
enemy that shall be destroyed," so we read 1 Cor. xv. 26, "is
death." Instead, then, of teaching, with church divines, that the
Lord overcame death by His resurrection, it is only allowable to
say that when He rose from the grave He entered on that
dominion whose final aim was the destruction of death, and which
cannot stop short of such an issue. But that is not the saving
speaks of it (in the 207th chapter of the writing referred to) as follows : " Resurrexit
Christus tanquam victor et triumphator ; uti vita ejus, sic quoque victoria ejus nobis
bono est ; mortem in victoria absorpsit, arcem infemalem destruxit."

THE RISING OF CHRIST FROM THE DEAD. 283
end of the resurrection of which we are in search ; as soon as the
fact was completed it must have gained an immediate realization,
as in the moment of Christ's sacrificial death the propitiation for
sin was immediately accomplished.
" The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." This last
presupposes that the destruction of death will be preceded by the
removal of other enemies. What others has the apostle in view ?
He has named principalities, powers, and dominions. Whatever
may be the explanation of these terms and of their relation to
one another, thus much is clear, that only by means of sin can
the powers spoken of develope their disastrous action. Suppose,
then, we substitute for them this simple idea. We are entitled
to do so ; in the very context we have the most definite occasion.
For if sin is that by which death came into the world, and that
by which it obtained dominion in it, death the wages, sin the
sting, then the overthrow of the one must be completed ere the
destruction of the other can be effected. Well, then, is it the
overcoming of sin that we have to regard as the saving end of
Christ's rising ? Undoubtedly this answer comes considerably
nearer the truth. The death of Jesus atoned for the sin of the
world and made the remission of guilt possible. But only in so
far — that we have already come to know — could God forgive it
and proclaim the justification of the sinner, as He possessed in
Him whom He raised from the dead the pledge that the forgive
ness of sin should be followed by its actual removal. If this was
the indispensable condition of the Father's act of grace, then the
Son also must have risen, to the end that He might actually do
away with the sin which He expiated by His death in the con
dition of His new hfe.
What Holy Scripture teaches of the life-work of the Eisen One,
both in relation to God and man, is in entirest harmony with this
view. In relation to God, it usually designates Him as our advo
cate. But what is meant by the interceding, in which His office
of advocate is carried out ? Certainly not that He makes good
the merit of His sacrifice before the Father ; but neither does it
denote an " interpellatio patris ad impetrandum nobis quaecunque
corpori atque animae praecipue salutaria sunt " (Quenstedt. I.e. p.
259). But it means His appearing in the presence of God
(ifi(paviadrjvai rm irpoaa,ira> rov Qeov vrrep fjfiwv, Heb. ix. 24),
guaranteeing the annihilation of sin (the ddirrjai'; tjj? dp,apria<;,

284 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
ver. 26), and thereby securing those in a state of grace whose
guilt has been atoned for by His sacrifice once for all. And in
relation to men, what does Scripture represent as the working and
governing of the Eisen One ? That He produces a new life in
them, a life in righteousness and holiness which are well-pleasing
to God. Such is the power, such the working of His resurrection.
Gerhard rightly guards himself against being supposed to believe
that Scripture considers the resurrection as the figura, as a
nudum exemplum of our renewal; it appears much more com
pletely as its cause : " Christi resurrectio re ipsa nos suscitat ex
morte peccatorum et novum hominem vivificat ; immediato enim
et indivulso nexu cum nostra renovatione conjuncta est."
But is, then, the restoration of this new life which the Lord
implants in us in virtue of His resurrection from the dead, any
thing else than the actual abolition of sin ?
Nevertheless, even thus the question before us is not yet
satisfactorily answered. We did not recognise the overcoming
of death as the saving end of Christ's resurrection, because it is
rather the end of the dominion of Christ glorified ; and for a
similar reason we cannot allow that it is the doing away with
sin ; for, though this will precede the last aim, yet it too will
come as a result of His kingly working. Here, however, we have
to do with an aim which is immediately realized on the completion
of the fact. By the resurrection of our Lord a saving blessing
must have been gained, must have flowed forth and become
active, whieh was bound up with His return to a bodily life as
inseparably as from that date it remained infallibly open.
The contribution furnished by the views we have set aside to
wards the discovery of the true one, we shall not let slip. Accord
ingly, the resurrection of Christ had in view the doing away with
sin and the abolition of death, that God might be all in all. But
in no other way shall we be able to represent to ourselves in the
concrete the goal arrived at, than by considering that the Spirit
of God will then have become the fulness of all things (irXr\pmp,a
•jrdvrcov). For only in spirit is a dwelling of God thinkable (Eph.
ii. 22) ; and the Spirit is life, and that life through righteousness ;
His sovereignty, in consequence, the death of death and the end
of sin (Eom. viii. 10). So it is with the final goal. The in
ference backwards to the process of its realization is self-evident.
For if the Spirit is the end to fill all, He must have entered into

THE RISING OF CHRIST FROM THE DEAD. 285
the world there to develope His working; He must keep His
ground when He is quenched, grieved, nay, blasphemed ; and by
His witnessing and rebuking, He must overcome the contradiction
of sin till His victory is complete. On the other hand, we have
something else to emphasize with all force and to keep unchange
ably in view, namely, that it is the Eisen One who controls the
process indicated, nay, that He Himself by His resurrection has
opened and set it agoing. This, it seems to us, is the true mean
ing of the much-disputed passage iu the beginning of Eomans.
There the Lord is called " the declared Son of God with power,
according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the
dead." To this end God had destined Him to be what He was
(namely, Son of God) with poioer. With this power there are
immediately connected the words, according to the Spirit of holi
ness, and they express something about the power. But it is not
the proof of its cause, or of its prerequisite (so Hofmann, die heil.
Schr. V. p. 7), that we have to seek in the closer definition, but
the description of the standard according to which it is to be
measured. For this is the very glory which the Father decreed
to His Son, that from Him should come the Spirit, who creates a
state of holiness.1 But He entered into this glory, the divine
declaring was realized in Him by (from) His resurrection from
the dead. In virtue of His resurrection He has entered into the
condition of the " Son of God with power ; " in virtue of it, and
certainly from the date of it, He exercises His power, the " power
according to the Spirit of holiness." And what follows, hence, for
• It has been prejudicial to the exposition of this passage that men have come to
it almost uniformly presupposing a relation of contrast between vv. 3 and 4, and
have explained the words as if the apostle had provided the two clauses with the
particles put and Vs. Consequently some (so especially Hofmann, die heil. Schr. V.
p. 5) have come to the conclusion that Paul is contrasting with that form of the
human life of Christ, in which He was the Son of God in weakness, the other,
wherein He became so in power ; while others (so recently Nosgen, Christus der
Menschen- und Gottessohn, p. 198 ff.) have found in the passage the designation of
the Lord's two conditions of being, His human and divine nature ("the first clause
contains the admission of the human origin of Jesus, the second the proof for the
assertion that He is nevertheless the Son of God "). "We do not share the scruple
which the last-named commentator has raised against the view of the former, " that
the apostle would not know a Son of God in weakness, who has now become so in
power ;" the well-known passage at the close of 2 Cor. (tl iaravpath it- aahvtias, i.xxk
£h ix "imipotus »:ov) would suffice to dissipate it ; while we have no doubt that
Nosgen's own explanation will have to contend with still graver objections than
that he assigns to the terms iymritn and ip'fati meanings which the language

286 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
the solution of our question ? What appears as the saving end
of Christ's rising ? Nothing else than the bestowal of the Holy
Spirit !
Thus much we assume as granted, that it was first through
Christ that the gift of the Holy Spirit was effected. This it is
which the apostle has described as the glory of the new covenant,
of which Christ is Mediator, that the divine promise, " I will put
My laws into tlieir mind, and write them in their hearts," was
reahzed by the ministry of this High Priest (Heb. viii. 10). It
has indeed been maintained that this promise found its fulfil
ment under the first covenant. Hengstenberg alleges the fact
that a circumcision of the heart was not only then demanded,
but also effected. And even then prayer for the Holy Spirit
was not only offered, but also answered (Ps. li. 11, 12). "As
throughout the New Testament, in relation to the Old, there is
nowhere to be found a new beginning, but ever fulfilment only ;
so, in respect of the communication of the Spirit, only a difference
of degree can be established ; in place of parsimony there are
riches, instead of the few come the many ; and Calvin has with
perfect right declared the opinion, that under the Old Testament
no regeneration yet took place, to be an absurdity" (comp.
Christol. II. p. 484 et seq.). But Hengstenberg has unwarrant
ably identified two distinct ideas. An inworking of the Spirit
is not that indwelling of His which creates a new life. The
inworking, viewed morally as well as charismatically, may be
strong and rich in results; notwithstanding, it still differs
specifically from the Lord's promise, " the Spirit abides with you,
refuses to bear. Meanwhile, neither of them, weighing the matter more closely, will
escape from the acknowledgment that the supposition which they equally share
rests on a deceptive appearance. The xara o-dpxa (to whieh, besides, a xara mtvpia
ayiaio-ivt,; cannot well correspond) does not bear that emphasis which apprizes the
reader of a contrast. Paul might have left it out entirely (as indeed it is actually
wanting in the parallel, 2 Tim. ii. 8) ; at least he has meant it here in the same
casual sense in which it is clearly distinguished, ix. 5 (si*; uv o Xpto-ros, scil. to xara
o-dpxa), as a merely parenthetical element. Did he find himself (probably by ver. 2)
led to mention the Davidic descent of Jesus Christ, so much was self-evident, that
God's Son (for so He was named at the beginning of the verse) was sprung from the
seed of David only xara o-apxa ; and there was no need whatever for any determina
tion by way of contrast. If, then, in ver. 4 he lays stress wholly on the iv iuvauu,
his interest was to define the way in which this ivvapt-ts comes to be known. And
the Lord exercises it by His Spirit, by the Spirit who creates the state of holiness.
Exactly in the same way is the glory of His power fully described in contrast with
the ahvvarov rov voptov in ch. viii.

THE RISING OF CHRIST FROM THE DEAD. 287
and shall be in you." The former was not wanting even under
the Old Testament dispensation; the latter belongs exclusively
to the grace which came by Jesus Christ.1 Through Jesus
Christ, but not through His appearing taken generally. The
Lord did not bring the Spirit into the world as His gift for it.
Neither did He leave Him behind for it as His legacy. He who
said to the disciples, " Peace I leave with you," would never
have said : My Spirit I leave with you. And had one of them,
hke Elisha, addressed Him with such a request, He would have
vouchsafed him no other answer than that which the sons of
Zebedee received, "Ye know not what ye ask." Ovirto ?jv
irvevftia dyiov (the Holy Spirit was not yet), so writes the
evangelist, John vii. 39 ; and under the not yet he includes the
entire course of the earthly appearance of Jesus Christ. If at
that time the Spirit was not yet, then the Lord could not then
bestow Him; and neither could He, when it had closed, leave
Him behind to the world which He left. And, in fact, it was
true in the strictest and most proper sense, the Holy Spirit was
not yet. Let us take the words exactly ; let us not break their
point. If the text ran, as the- cod. Vat. has it, ovirco r\v
SeSofievov, the whole declaration must, on closer investigation,
have produced the most lively astonishment. For, since the
gift of the Spirit had been immediately before this expressly
described as one yet future, "they should receive," the
explanatory declaration, that hitherto He had not been dis
pensed, appears at least very superfluous. And therefore we
must differ from those expositors who, indeed, reject the addition
on critical grounds, but otherwise regard it as a thoroughly
pertinent gloss. The gloss could only obscure the apostle's
true meaning. Of the Spirit who should make His dwelhng in
the hearts of believers, to estabhsh in them a new life, a life of
holiness,2 — of this Spirit as such he denies not only its having
1 The expression -rvtvpia Xpio-roZ is not very common with the Apostle Paul. But
when we meet it, it is generally in connection with the indwelling of the Spirit in
our hearts, — an indwelling which produces the state of regeneration and adoption,
comp. Rom. viii. 9 ; Gal. iv. 6. "We have therefore a right to explain it from his
desire to set forth this renewal by the orvtvpoa as a process made possible and actual
through Christ. First must Christ come to make His abode in the world ere the
Spirit could abide in the hearts of believers.
2 This is the simple purport of the Lord's word in ver. 38, and the prophetic
passage, Isa. xliv. 3, on which it rests. Expositors have often imported the thought

288 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
been given, but also its being. "Came," iyevero, so he said,
i. 17, of the grace and truth brought by Christ as Mediator, —
came, and not ivas given (iS66r)) ; so he would have pronounced
the judgment over the past, not yet was there grace, not yet was
there truth. As it required the Son to become man if grace and
truth were to be found, so must the event take place, that the
Spirit, whom believers were to receive, should, from not yet
being, come into existence.1 And how has this come about ?
The evangelist gives the answer in the final clause, " Jesus was
not yet glorified," and the Lord Himself has furnished the
explanation : " If 1 go not away, the Comforter will not come
unto you ; but if I depart, I will send Him unto you," John
xvi. 7. The terms being glorified and going away are both
indefinite. Some have explained them of the death of Jesus.
They then fall back partly on the wholly external circumstance,
which sheds no light on the subject, that by His propitiatory
sufferings the Lord merited and won the Spirit for His own
(so Hengstenberg, Comm. zum Joh. III. p. Ill); partly they
give the deeper reaching explanation, that so long as the Saviour
remained in earthly life, so long the Spirit was present in Him
only; that first He must die, that the Spirit, loosed from the
person to whom He was bound, might develope His powers as
the principle of life. Others, again, think of Christ's return to
heaven, to enter upon His government ; not till He had become
that an efficacious communication will go forth from the believer upon others ; even
Hofmann speaks of a fountain of the Spirit, whose life-giving streams should flow
out upon the Christian's surroundings. Only this reference is entirely alien from
the context, and does not find the least support in its whole compass. Both in the
declaration of Christ Himself and in the Johannine reference, believers appear only
as receiving, not as giving. If a complement must be sought for the ororauo) piovrts,
it is surely much more natural to seek it in the parallel, ch. iv. 14 (my* Slaros
aXXopoivov sis ?*&ot aloiviov), than in the groundless interpolation of a thought which is
foreign to the genius of the passage.
1 We decline to commend our view by appealing to the exact phraseology of the
second clause. Were the Received reading " iSru yap h orvivpta dyiov, in I 'incovs
oiiioroi thoiXatrfa " the undoubtedly genuine one, we should raise a double question ;
first, for what reason did the evangelist substitute for the simple mtupia in the first
half a trvwp&a dytov in the second ; and then this, why did he follow the preceding
ovirai with an ovl'iirai 1 And the result of the investigation of these questions might
fall into the scale with considerable, not to say decisive weight. Only we decline
this help. For the reading of the Rec. is by no means sure. The dyiov may be a
spurious addition transferred from ch. xx. 22, and the ovoi-roi a mistake of the
copyist which became naturalized. The cod. Sin. leaves out the former, and instead
of the latter reads a simple »»«¦«.

THE RISING OF CHRIST FROM THE DEAD. 289
Lord over all, even over the Spirit, had He the power to send
forth the Comforter. Undoubtedly all these views are relatively
true, but none of them seems to us entirely satisfactory.
Supposing the being glorified may (like the being lifted up)
denote our Lord's death, or supposing we might complete the
going by the right hand of God as its goal, then the thought of
an " emancipation " of the hitherto fettered Spirit does as little
justice to the was not yet of John as the reference to the power
of the exalted One, which merely cuts the knot without loosing
it. If we refer the expressions in question solely to our Lord's
resurrection, this understanding, so far as the being glorified in
the evangelist's explanation is concerned, approves itself as true.
For by His resurrection Christ entered into His glory (Luke
xxiv. 26) ; it was the beginning of His glorification, and its
beginning is (on account of the not yet) that with which we
have now to do. But the prophecy also, direXOetv, iropevOrjvai,
virdyeiv (going away), we can understand only in this sense.
Intended for the comforting of the disciples, it is always con
nected with the promise of a speedy return. " I go away, and
come unto you," John xiv. 28. Hofmann has justly protested
against the indefinite references which are generally assigned to
the words ; but it will be hard for any one to convince himself
that the critic has equal right on his side when he explains the
come of Christ's Parousia. In that case it would have been
impossible for our Lord to subjoin the words (ver. 29): "and
now I have told you before it come to pass, that when it is come
1 There is only one view to which we must deny the least particle of truth. It has
been said that the dispensing of the Spirit by Christ, and His redeeming influence
upon individuals in general, are the fruit and consequence of His own ethico-religions
perfecting. Thus Rothe explains (theol. Ethik, II. p. 292 ff.) that, at the moment
when the moral development of Jesus was perfected, the organism of His nature
(Naturorganisnius) became real Holy Spirit, nay, the Holy Spirit xar ifyx>iv ; and
that thereby He is now in a position to appropriate to Himself the individual beings
of our natural humanity, and to enter into an organic and vital bond with them.
Mau, too (vom Tode und von der Aufhebung desselben durch die Avferstehung
Christi, Kiel 1841), considers the result of the earthly development of our Lord's
spiritual life to be, that risen from the dead He carries out His redeeming office on
humanity. And even Reich indicates the view in many places, that our Lord's
spiritual life in itself must be developed and perfected ere it could become the
instrument of a saving outpouring. This view, in whatever form it may come up,
is the one from which we wholly dissent. It may be put into the Scriptures ; but
to take it from either an expression of or.r Lord or the utterance of any apostle, is
impossible. T

290 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
to pass ye might beheve." How the evangelist himself under
stood the promise is clear from the observation, John xx. 8, 9.
This being now established, we have the answer to the
question how it happened that the period described in the words,
"the Holy Spirit was not yet," gave place to one of which it
could be said He " now is." It came about by the rising of
Christ from the dead ! To this event Peter points the over
whelmed witnesses of the Pentecostal miracle, as they ask one
another, " What meaneth this ? " to it Paul points in his profound
words (Eom. viii. 11) : "The Spirit of Him that 'raised up Jesus
from the dead dwelleth in you." But the connection between
the rising of Christ and the indwelling of the Spirit in the
hearts of believers is set before us with all directness in the
Easter evening incident, which is communicated to us in the
fourth Gospel. The Lord stands in the midst of His disciples ;
He breathes on them, saying, " Eeceive ye the Holy Ghost." The
question to which the words usually give occasion does not affect
us at this point. True, we are convinced that the disciples were
here made as certainly partakers of the gift of the Holy Spirit as
they were of the peace which the Lord held out to them before.1
And if it is asked how this narrative stands related to the
history of Pentecost, there is no need of the precarious assump
tion that the dispensation which followed in the two cases
differed in quality or even in quantity. No doubt a gift which
is yet latent differs from one which has come to clear conscious
ness and full operation ; the bestowal of the Spirit on the Eleven
is one thing, and His outpouring on the new-born church is
another. But for the present we do not touch this side of the
subject. We do not even care to dispute with those who regard
our Lord's action as symbolical, — in some sense or other they are
quite right. We mean that it is much rather the act than the
effect with which we have to do. The main question is not what
the breathing of Jesus effected on the disciples, but what follows
from the fact that on occasion of His first manifestation before
the eyes of His own, He so acted on them. And this is the
1 We have been astonished at the judgment of Hofmann (Schriftbew. II. p. 522);
that we dare not think of a communication, because a breathing on is not a breathing
into. The evangelist makes use ofthe term \vapio-no-iv, the same therefore which we
meet in the history of creation (xa! hitpuo-no-tv ils ri vp'oooiirov alirov wvom £"»***;, xa)
iyivtro i avlpotiros ils -Jtvx«v ?a**<r*v, Gen. ii. 7), and undoubtedly he meant it also in
the sense of the primitive record.

THE RISING OF CHRIST FROM THE DEAD. 291
answer : by His rising from the dead the bestowal of the Spirit
must have been rendered possible ; — and thus we have to regard
the gift of the Holy Spirit as the saving end of that rising.
Now after the Lord's rising from the grave, and through the
very fact that He had received His life again from the dead, there
was Holy Spirit ; with the Easter morning the " not yet " was at
an end. But what is the connection between these two ? The
solution of the question is made difficult if one deals with the
comprehensive thought of the exaltation of Christ. No doubt an
answer may be given from this standpoint, but only such a one
as fails to give the satisfactory view. We shall gain a better
explanation if here, again, we take account of the strict idea of
the rising from the dead. Perhaps we have been thought to be
on dangerous ground when we have taken the Johannine explana
tion of the Spirit's not yet being until the Lord was glorified, in all
its strictness, and especially when we have not even regarded the
critically doubtful " given " as a correct gloss. And we are met,
perhaps, with the undeniable fact, that at least the Holy Spirit
was in Christ Himself, even during the time of His humiliation.
Only there is a sense in which we must really take exception to
this apparently indisputable truth. So far, namely, as His own
possession was concerned, the Lord certainly had the Spirit in
His entire fulness. He was conceived by the Spirit ; He was
anointed with the Spirit. The saying of the Baptist held good
of Him : " God giveth not the Spirit by measure." This was
attested by His words, for they were Spirit and life; it was
proved by His works, for He , performed them by the Spirit of
God. And so striking was the evidence, that the opposition which
sinners offered to the Son of man amounted to a blasphemy of
the Spirit Himself. But in the context of our passage the
evangelist leaves this side of the matter entirely out of view.
Here he is speaking of the Spirit, in so far as He was a gift of
Christ to His own, an object for human reception, — " they should
receive." And is he wrong in asserting that this gift was not at
all in existence, — not even as yet in Christ Himself ? A gift, —
when is it really and truly existent ? Surely only when it can
pass over from the fulness of the possessor into the bosom of its
receivers !
But here, indeed, the right viewpoint must not be displaced.
The matter in question is not the capacity of the receivers to take

292 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
the offered gift ; nor is it the power of the giver to refer them to
the foreign possession ; but purely and simply the possibility of
communication at all; — this and .nothing else is the point in ques
tion. This possibihty was wanting so long as the Lord stood in
sensible intercourse with men; then His flesh (adpg) was the pre
venting and restraining cause. On Easter morning the hindrance
passed away, or, more correctly, it became converted into the
direct opposite, — the flesh of the glorified One became the organ
of the communication of the Spirit. With the utmost emphasis
did the Lord declare, in the synagogue of Capernaum, that His
flesh, His corporeally human appearance, was the mediator of
salvation and life for all ; and the stranger the assertion was to
the Jews, the more decisively does He point it against their
objections. But He could not possibly have expressed the truth
more directly than He does in the context of the same discourse,
that this flesh in its present condition can secure for men neither
Spirit nor even life, which the Spirit alone can establish. It did
not hinder Him prosecuting that healing activity of which Peter
testifies in the house of Cornelius (Acts x. 38); on the contrary,
it fitted Him for this blessed work. His presence, the irapovaia
rov ac!>p,aro<; avrov, made the sick whole and put suffering to
flight. " Lord, if Thou hadst been here," say the sisters of Bethany,
" our brother had not died." And He Himself says when He will
help, " Let us go to him." But no laying on of His hands, no
breathing of His mouth, could have communicated the Holy Spirit
even to the most receptive and believing soul ; His sayin°- would
have proved true : " the flesh profiteth nothing." It must pass,
this flesh, through the baptism of which He said, that He must
suffer it ere His fire should burn on the earth. Only from the
new flesh of Him who gave His life for the hfe of the world
(Johnvi. 51), who returned thither where He was before (John
vi. 62), — only from it could the streams of the Spirit descend
upon men. It was His resurrection from the dead by which He
took it to Himself ; His rising was essentially His entrance into
this new corporeal form of life. Before it, then, the gift of the
Holy Spirit was not yet in existence (ovirm fjv) ; through it, it
first came into being (iyevero) in the strictest sense. If this is
held fast, it may be granted that the disciples also required to be
fitted for the inward receiving of this gift. As the world could
not receive the Spirit of truth at all, for it saw Him not and

THE RISING OF CHRIST FROM THE DEAD. 293
knew Him not (John xiv. 1 7), so He could only be received by
the friends of Jesus when they had gone through the time of
fasting, — when they had suffered the loss of the bridegroom ;
privation was the way which brought them to this privilege. So
may it be conceded that the Lord indeed must first have been
exalted to the right hand of God before He, " as having power
over all flesh," could pour out His Spirit upon all flesh, in like
manner as His own person had been the gift of the Father to the
entire world.1 Only these are always merely secondary references;
the matter of decisive importance is, that the body of glory, the
spiritual body which the Lord took to Him by His rising again,
was the absolutely indispensable organ which He needed for the
dispensation of the gift of the Holy Spirit. It is, in this respect,
of incomparable and conclusive importance that the Eisen One,
on occasion of His first manifestation to His own, makes the
spring of living water flow over them. At the moment when
they recognise the reality of His bodily life, they experience its
immediate efficacy. From it they receive the Spirit, and so trace
the "power of His resurrection." In this fact the words have
their explanation : " I go away, and come again unto you ;" and:
" It is expedient for you that I go away ; for if I go not away,
the Comforter will not come unto you ; but if I depart, I will
send Him unto you."
From the standpoint to which the discussion has brought us,
let us now consider the historical communications. When Peter
gave testimony to the assembled Jews regarding the event of
Pentecost, he began by explaining to them the miraculous fact ;
afterwards he excites in them the desire to draw from it the right
conclusion. The explanation he takes from the circumstance that
the Lord is risen from the dead; but the inference which he
desires, is the acknowledgment of Jesus as the Christ (" let all
the house of Israel know," etc., Acts ii. 56). To the latter he
then subjoins the corresponding exhortation, and the promise that
they also, in case of their obedience, would receive the gift of the
Spirit. And under the overpowering impression of the miracle
before their eyes (" which ye now see and hear" Acts ii. 23), they
followed the direction given them. We cannot have the slightest
1 The observations made by Reich, ubi supra, on both relations, — on the former,
p. 245 ff. ; on the latter, p. 255 ff., — we may therefore allow to be true iu general,
although we might desire many important modifications in details.

294 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
thought of questioning the entire right with which the apostle
drew his conclusion. He who bestows the Spirit is the Christ ;
this is the very gift which proves Him to be such. As the Holy
God, in order to justify the unrighteous man, requires not only
the atonement of his guilt, but also a surety who can guarantee
his becoming righteous, so sinful man himself desires not, only
forgiveness, but also power (e%ovala) to be born anew, to become
a child of God, — in one word, a pure heart, a new spirit ; not till
he has received this gift does he know and prove the Christ, —
" by this we know Him, because He hath given us of His Spirit,"
1 John iv. And yet we must persist in our former declaration,
that the apologist does not gain his end in this way. That Jesus
is the Christ, must rather be the assumption with which he enters
on his task. But the greater in that case is the gain which will
accrue to him for the certainty of Christ's resurrection. If, that
is to say, it is firmly established that only the Eisen One was
qualified to bestow the Spirit, then must the Christ, from whose
hands this gift required to come, and really did come, have issued
from the grave. No objection to this is possible. The meshes
of this proof could only be broken by maintaining that the Gospel
representations of our Lord's resurrection are in themselves im
possible, — that they contain contradictions, the reconciliation of
which can neither be accomplished by thought nor expected of
faith. As a matter of fact, such is the judgment of modern
criticism. It declares the contradictions in the history of Christ's
rising to be much more weighty than those which occur in the
history of His raising. While in the latter it is only the different
accounts which disagree with one another, in the former every
single historian is at variance with himself, and that so conspicu
ously, that the representation of each of them shows itself to be
absolutely incredible. Were it so, then indeed we should have
a rock before us on which all proofs, however otherwise unassail
able, would infallibly suffer shipwreck. But the question is,
whether this is the true state of the case.

3. THE HISTORY OF THE RISING.
Criticism has undoubtedly fastened on the right point in makino-
the description of the person of the Eisen One, as drawn by the
evangelist, the main point of its attack. This description may

THE RISING OF CHRIST FROM THE DEAD. 295
certainly appear as obscure, contradictory, and generally of such
a kind as to throw suspicion on the reality of the historical fact.
The accounts we have present, as Schleiermacher expresses him
self, " two opposite indications," — the one of which gives rise to
the idea that the Eisen One returned to the same bodily life
which His death on the cross had taken from Him ; while the
other forces us to the conclusion that He passed into another new
and higher life, out of which He became visible to His own only
in passing manifestations. (A full view of the state of the case
is to be found in Eeich, ubi supra, pp. 27-49, and in the relative
section of Strauss' Critical Becension of the Life of Jesios.) It has
been sought in two ways to prove that these " opposite indications"
cannot overthrow the credibility of the fact of the resurrection.
On the one hand, Schleiermacher maintains the position that those
evidences which point to something supernatural in the new con
dition of Jesus belonged exclusively to the disciples and their
previously formed opinion ; while the Lord Himself everywhere
follows the tendency to prove His appearance natural, identical
with the former one, and, generally, as such that it nowise diverged
from ordinary human life (Leben Jesu, p. 476). On the other
hand, the more recent theology has taken its stand on the explana
tion that the Eisen One was in a transition state — on the borders
of two worlds — during the forty days, and so bore in Himself at
one and the same time the stamp of this world and that of the
future. (So Martensen, die christliche Dogmatik, p. 364 ; similarly
also Hasse, in his unsuccessful treatise which appeared in 1854,
das Leben des verklarten Erlosers im Himmel, p. 84 ff.) We should
be hardly put to it if we had to choose between these alternatives.
Schleiermacher's view manifestly contradicts the Gospel narratives.
If neither Mary of Magdala nor the travellers to Emmaus know
the Christ "who appears" (e^dvq, etyavepcoQw1) ; if He vanishes
from the eyes of the latter, and again, despite the closed doors,
suddenly stands in the midst of His disciples, — it is impossible
to escape the consequences of these details except by evasions
which inevitably fall under the charge of violence and arbitrari-
1 Schleiermacher has not been moved from his view by the circumstance that
Scripture usually employs these and similar expressions in describing the appear
ances of Christ. He has found a defender on this side of his view in J. T. Dbdes,
in the treatise which is so important in connection with our subject, de Jesu in vitam
reditu, Trajecti ad Rhenum, 1841, p. 148.

296 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
ness.1 But supposing a course of that kind were endurable, there
would immediately arise a new and graver difficulty, which makes
the view so laboriously defended alike untenable by faith and
unbelief. Thus much Strauss has proved (der Christus des Glaubens,
p. 182 ff), having convincingly shown on what assumption it rests
and to what consequence it would lead. If the Eisen One was
invested with an ordinary human life, He cannot really have died,
but merely passed through the state of apparent death ; and then
He must, later, have departed from this " ordinary human life "
also in the ordinary human way, that is to say, by real death.
But neither, indeed, does the theory which recent theology is
accustomed to develope help us out of the dilemma. If the repre
sentation that the Eisen One, during the forty days, was in a state
of transition on the borders of two worlds, is to be more than an
empty phrase, it expects us to accept the idea that His bodily
frame, during the period referred to, was undergoing a process of
gradual glorification or transformation, — a process whieh began
on Easter morning and terminated on the day of the ascension.
This idea, however, is met by the grave difficulty that there is
not a single indication of it to be found in the whole compass of
the resurrection history ; 2 and it is completely exploded by the
fact that Scripture everywhere teaches us to regard the resurrec
tion itself as the completion of the new body. " It is raised in
incorruption, in glory, in power ; it is raised a spiritual body."
So writes the apostle ; and thereby forces us to the conclusion
that Christ, from the moment of His passing from the grave, was
1 It is extraordinary to see the strong feeling with which Calvin rejects the
undoubtedly right and only possible explanation of the words to-rti tis "J piitrov, John
xx. 19, 26. He insists that the door was previously opened (in a miraculous way,
of course). The opposite view he declares to be a papistical error, nay, he pro
nounces the judgment : " facessant pueriles istae argutiae, quae nihil prorsus habent
solidi et secum trahunt multa deliria. " The later Reformed expositors have followed
his authority, and contended against the right explanation in the same tone.
Nieolaus Arnoldus, professor at Franecker, in a work once greatly valued, now
almost forgotten, lux in tenebris, 4 Aufl., Frankfurt 1698, thus expresses himself:
"per corpus solidum penetrare, id est solido mendacio." This is connected with
his contention against the Lutheran doctrine of the ubiquity, which he is in the
habit of characterizing as a "majestatice ineptire." In what respect the polemic is
not wholly without justification, will appear in the sequel.
2 Now and again, in support of the view, the fact has been appealed to, that the
Lord forbade the touching of His body on Easter morning, whereas He afterwards
suffered it. We have already remarked that the forbidden ciirrio-lai in the one case,
and the allowed -$*Xafipv in this, are wholly dissimilar.

THE RISING OF CHRIST FROM THE DEAD. 297
clothed with the body in which He ascended to heaven and sat
at the right hand of God.1
Criticism has adopted a very easy way of getting rid of a knot
which the attempts described have certainly left unloosed. " To
eat and to vanish, tangible limbs and coming through closed
doors, — these are traits which only fancy can conjoin, but which
no one can conceive together in a real state of being " (Strauss,
ubi supra, p. 182) ; " and so the Gospel testimony, in seeking to
present the most cogent proofs for the resurrection of Christ, is
shattered, and collapses in- empty nothingness" (L. J. p. 295).
But it has not proved that this easy way is in reality the only
one open to sober and impartial thought. We hold it to be an
extremely dangerous admission which Krauss makes (die Lehre
von der Offenbarung, p. 315), that it is impossible to comprehend
the Christophanies of the Crucified and Eisen One in a way which
will be at once unassailable scientifically and religiously. We
take it to be an earnest question, very closely affecting faith, or
rather forming an essential condition of it, whether our Lord's
state during the forty days, with its " opposite indications," is
really inconceivable.2
Thus the Gospel accounts offer particulars which betray a
body belonging to the Eisen One of a wholly different organiza
tion from that which it was found formerly to have. " Found in
fashion as a man," — this held true of our Lord during His earthly
hfe, even in relation to the " house of His tabernacle." He was
hungry, and ate ; He was thirsty, and drank ; He was weary, and
slept ; He was tired, and rested : all these characteristics1 indicate
that material body which the apostle has described as " our
earthly house." The forty days present another picture. Men
did not see Him come, but appear ; they did not see Him go, but
1 When Paul, 1 Cor. xv. 51 et seq. , describes the change of those whom the Lord
finds alive at His coming again as the matter of a moment (i» aTopto,, iv ptorrj itplaXpoov),
the same necessarily holds good of those who are awaked from the state of death at
the Parousia. And if they go forth from their graves with the corresponding new
organ, how can any one allege a gradual process in the glorifying of Christ's body ?
2 We should agree with Krauss if no other explanation could be given than that
which Hasse has faUen on (das Leben des verklarten ErlOsers im Himmel, p. 122 ff.),
— namely, that the resurrection-body is to be thought of as a commingling of spirit
and body ; or than that adopted by F. Kiihn (in a treatise published at Stralsund,
1838, wie ging Christus durch des Grabes Thwr ?), that we have to suppose a sort
of communicatio idiomatum between spirit and body. Before such representations,
indeed, the mind of the reader is brought to a standstill

298 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORDS RESURRECTION.
vanish ; from what they observed, it was obvious that His present
body was nowise subjected to physical laws and limits.1 Ger
hard : " certum quidem est, Christum in resurrectione sua verum
et naturale corpus, adeoque illud ipsum, in quo mortem susti-
nuerat, e sepulchro retulisse; interim tamen corpus ejus non
amplius dvqrafc Sva%epeiai<; obnoxium sed proprietatibus cor
poris spiritualis praeditum fuisse (Amphiloch. : rovro, aXX' ovk
roiovro). Dicitur autem corpus spirituale, non quia came et
ossibus destitutum in spiritum plane mutatur, sed quia manente
corporis substantia proprietatibus spiritus exornatur. Invisibile
est, non movetur de loco in locum successive juxta rationem
hujus saeculi, non indiget cibo ac potu, pertransit corpora solida
nullo impedimento" (Harm. c. 212). Against the conceivable-
ness of such a body in and for itself, no well-grounded objection
can be raised. If any one cannot form this idea, Paul must have
written the instructive passage, 1 Cor. xv. 36 et seq., in vain for
him ; and the more certainly would he fall under the censure
which the apostle has prefixed to it upon the Christians in
Corinth. The reproach of foolishness applies not only to the
inability or indisposition to draw a simple inference from existing
analogies ; but it embraces also the narrowness which cannot
separate the idea of body from that of matter. As if both stood
and fell with one another ; as if the body were to be conceived
only as the bearer of the living soul, and not also as the organ of
the life of the spirit ! " As certainly (ver. 44) as there is a
natural body (awp,a -^v^ikov), so certainly there is also a body
which has nothing to do with matter."
This positive assertion cannot rest on the preceding context,
for to prove a thing conceivable is by no means to demonstrate
its actual existence. The " is " finds its solid basis in what
follows. There is in truth an immaterial body ; for with such a
body did the last Adam, the first-fruits of them that slept, go forth
from His grave. This is not a prerequisite of faith ; but if one
acknowledges the resurrection at all, it is impossible for him to
avoid this postulate of reflective thought. For when the Eisen
One became alive, it was not to take up again and continue a
1 The only parallel from our Lord's past life, His walking on the waves of the sea,
does not wholly coincide with these observations. The analogy demands to be
carefully drawn. In applying it, the distinction must be observed between natura
and voluntas. We shall return to the subject in a later connection.

THE RISING OF CHRIST FROM THE DEAD. 299
life which had merely been interrupted by death ; but, after the
close of His life in the flesh (fierd ra? yp,ipa^ tjjs aapKo<;), He
entered into newness of life (Kaiv6r<r)<; t?}? fojj)?). In that He
died, He died unto sin once ; but in that He liveth, He liveth
unto God, Eom. vi. 10.1 Lazarus was awaked from the state of
death (not from the dead in the sense of Eom. i. 4, Heb. xiii. 2 0<,
but from the sleep of death ; comp. John xi. 11: " that I may
awake him out of sleep ") to finish the same life which by the
issue of his sickness had come to a stand ; the Lord rose from
the dead after His twelfth hour had struck, after He had brought
His earthly hfe to a close. We find it therefore in perfect
keeping, if the appearance and manifestations of Lazarus after
his resuscitation differed in nothing from what they were before
(comp. John xii. 2) ; for his awakening was nothing more than
the restoration or repristination of his former state of hfe. On
the other hand, it would be cause of astonishment if we found a
similar identity in the case of the Eisen Christ. The apostle
distinguishes (Heb. xi. 35) a twofold resurrection. He writes:
" Women received their dead by a resurrection " (ef dvaard-
aea><;) ; there he has the cases in view in which the dead were
brought back to this earthly life. But immediately after he
testifies of a better resurrection, and this is the hope with which
faith looks forward to eternity But in what sense does he
1 Such is the true meaning of the contrast which the apostle has in view in this
passage. He contrasts the life which Jesus spent and closed in the r£p%, with the
newness of the 2>>i upon which He entered through His resurrection. Commenta
tors have overlooked a saying of our Lord which provides the key to the under
standing of the apostle's words. In Luke xx. 38 it is said of the children of the
resurrection : ordvn; rS 6t» t,o~io-iv ; and we leam from vv. 34-36 how this clause is to
be understood. In the very same sense Paul says of Christ : on 2**j ™ Ssf. It denotes
the direct opposite of the life which He passed iv opooiaipnari o-zpxos api.ot.pria; ; the
latter is once for all closed, and lies for ever in the past. Only when thus under
stood do the words really yield that conclusion for the readers which the apostle was
concerned they should draw. Hofmann rightly rejects the explanation, that the
Lord died i-*** dpcapria, to atone for or put it away, as wholly foreign to the text. Only
we protest still more decidedly against the assumption, that the Son of God was
raised by His death above a connection with sin, in which He had stood till then.
However circuitously and cautiously one may express himself, as Reich does (ubi
supra, p. 38), " Christ had no part, indeed, in the original sin, but yet in the ori
ginal evil of human nature; " or, like Gericke (" Abh. fiber die Auferstehung," in den
ilveol. Stud. u. Krit., Jahrg. 1843, H. 2), "in the death of Jesus there took place
the innermost interpenetration of the divine and human nature," — he cannot help
making suppositions which are unscriptural and untenable, and giving to the
apostle's words a meaning which is foreign to them.

300 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
understand the predicate which he appends ? Is he thinking
merely of the new sphere of life, the better country, ver. 16, to
which this resurrection brings them ? Since he calls the resur
rection itself a better one, he must rather have in view the organ
in which the raised ones appear, the " house from heaven," the
"house not made with hands,"1 of which Paul (2 Cor. v. 1, 2)
has spoken. Their bodily constitution will be another and a
better, because it must correspond to the new life in which it has
to move. The Lord meets the want of understanding on the
part of the Sadducees, with the explanation that those who should
one day attain to the resurrection from the dead are to be con
ceived as then equal to the angels (ladyyeXoi). This involves
more than the mere fact that their bodily organism will no longer
be distinguished sexually; but it is altogether differently con
stituted from the earthly. It does not come from the womb of
woman, but " they are the children of the resurrection ; " it does
not mature towards an eventual cessation of life, but " they cannot
die any more " (Luke xx. 3 6) ; and on that very account it cannot
possibly be material. Only of whom could this hold in a higher
measure than of the " Lord from heaven," of the " first-begotten
from the dead " Himself ! His image (the image of the heavenly,
1 Cor. xv. 49) will be borne by those who are partakers of the
future resurrection ; to His body, the " body of His glory," they
are, indeed, to be conformed (avp,p.op$oi), Phil. iii. 21. On Him
first, therefore, as having in all things the pre-eminence (irpoo-
revcov), must that change pass of which Paul testifies : " this
corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put
on immortality ; " and so transformed, He passed from the
resurrection to His glory. If, then, the accounts of the resur
rection present indications which suppose another new and higher
bodily constitution than that which the Lord possessed during
the days of His flesh, they perfectly fulfil the expectations wliich
reflection raises from its own standpoint.
But now it is not these indications in themselves which
criticism has turned to its advantage, but it appeals to the
contradiction which they are said to manifest to entirely opposite
indications. The Eisen One is seen ; His voice is heard ; His
body is touched ; He Himself calls the attention of His disciples
1 We have not been able to convince ourselves that the common explanation of
this expression, which Hofmann questions, is really to be given up.

THE RISING OF CHRIST FROM THE DEAD. 301
to it, and bids them convince themselves that He has flesh and
bones ; He points them to the marks of His wounds, as if they
had closed in the rapid process of natural healing; He walks
with them, and takes food before their eyes : all these signs seem
to force us to infer an ordinary material body. Eothe's hypothesis
(theol. Ethik, I. § 560), that the Lord, after laying down His
body, reassumed it for a definite object in a merely transitory
way for particular short intervals, to put it off immediately again
after reaching His object, should have found more appreciation
than it has ; for it contains in fact an element of truth. As it is
here expressed, indeed, it is exploded — not to speak of other
difficulties 1 — by the narratives of the evangelists themselves.
For their accounts are not to the effect that His bodily organism
bore upon it, now the marks of materialism and again the opposite,
but simultaneously the one as well as the other were observed in
it. He sits with the disciples at table, and vanishes before their
eyes ; He penetrates through closed doors, and lets His flesh and
bone be touched. Hence we are forced to infer, in the words of
Hofmann, at once " the newness and the identity of His bodily
life ; " it was necessary for Him " to have a bodily life, which
was the continuation of His former one, but He required also to
return to another form of it than that which He had previously
borne among His own" (comp. Schriftbew. II. p. 521). But it is
this very conjunction of the two, so now says criticism, which is
impossible in a real being. It should not have been attempted
to refute this " impossibility " on grounds which are derived from
an arbitrary conception of the spiritual body. The indefinite
character and manifold contents of the idea open up indeed ample
room for speculation ; but it dare not be abused as a free pass
for monstrous representations. However it may be defined, the
proposition can never be questioned, that it is at least impossible
for the spiritual body at once to want and possess the qualities of
a material body. And therefore the attempt which Eeich (ubi
supra, p. 43 et seq.) has made in this direction could not but
prove a failure.
The course followed by the Fathers and later divines un
doubtedly inspires incomparably greater confidence. They grant
1 Rothe has not said what finally became of this " erewhile material body " of
the Lord. He has hesitated to state the view, that it was consigned at last to the
earth, though most probably this was his opinion.

302 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
what cannot be denied on any pretext. Instead of constructing
a bodily constitution which shall unite in itself contradictory
properties, visible and yet invisible, palpable and yet ethereal,
they make no scruple of claiming for the body of the Eisen One,
as its true characteristics, those qualities which they are wont to
regard as the essential attributes of the spiritual hoAy—invisi-
bililas, illocalitas, inpalpabilitas ; such is its true and actual
character. And here we find in fact not only a firm starting-
point, but the right one for our study. But how now do they
proceed ? How do they adjust the opposite indications of the
Gospel accounts ? " Discernendum est," so Gerhard explains in
the frequently quoted SidaKe^is, " inter id, quod est avarariKov
et essentiale corporis ISia/jta, et inter id, quod Christus ex libera
oiKovo/ilq, certo aliquo fine suscepit. Prius est ovalai necessariae,
posterius olKovop,la<; arbitrariae."1 It is no doubt the assumption
of such an olKovop.la or avyKardfiaais on the part of the Eisen
One which prevents modern theology from regarding favourably
the older view. The idea in question has come into disrepute,
certainly not without cause ; and it would require first to be
disentangled from many inconsistent elements, especially from
connection with anything like a pious fraud, ere it could be used
with confidence. But it is not such as to deserve reprobation in
all circumstances. Church divines have rightly remarked that
those very manifestations of the Eisen One which are now in
question were not only calculated to re-establish faith in the
consciousness of the disciples, but that they actually produced
this fruit in them.2 The Lord appears in their midst, offers them
1 A more exhaustive treatment of the subject by this theologian is to be found in
the Harm, evang. (Hamb. Ausg. p. 2144 ff.). He seeks to show that essentially
the Risen One was not visible, lor " inter corpus spirituale et inter oculum terrestrem
nulla est analogia, proportio et affectio ; " that essentiaUy (ex proprietate corporis
glorificati) He was inaccessible to the touch of human hands ; and if He took meat,
this dare not be regarded as a matter of 'iv&na, necessitas ac indigentia. But what
appears as impossible "actu," demands to be judged "potentia sive "iwdpon," and is
to be understood ex o-vyxaraftdo-a from the object in view. Even the wound-marks, of
which it had been already maintained by Egidius Hunnius (in his work, de persona
Christi, Frankfurt 1590, p. 97) that they are out of keeping with the "natura,
proprietas et perfectio plena corporis glorificati," are explained by Gerhard (I.e. p.
2193), " ex libera oeconomia et dispensatione."
2 Gerhard : " Apparet Christus discipulis in propria specie, alloquitur voce nota,
palpandum sese exhibet et in eonspectu eorum manducat, ut veritatem resurree-
tionis suae iis confirmet." He quotes with approbation the following statement of
Lyranus : ' ' per cicatrices clavorum ostendit, quod habeat ideum numero corpus.

THE RISING OF CHRIST FROM THE DEAD. 303
His greeting, and gives them a proof of His life. But they think
they see a spirit. Then He bids them touch His body, to assure
themselves that He has truly risen from the dead. Still they
doubt ; and He asks food at their hands, and takes it before their
eyes ; then at length " the disciples were glad when they saw
the Lord." And this is the fact to which the witnesses of His
resurrection appealed in their after career, to justify their
preaching. For John has it in view when he writes : " what we
have seen and our hands have handled " (comp. Erich Haupt, der
erste Brief des Johannes, Colberg 1869, p. 10); and this it is
which Peter alleges when he says in the house of Cornelius :
" we did eat and drink with Him after He rose from the dead "
(Acts x. 41). Against such condescension to human necessities,
taken in itself, no objection can be raised. But does not a doubt
arise when the question comes to be, How was such a condescen
sion possible ? How could the Lord show wound-marks which
He did not in reality bear on His person ? How could He pre
sent a body to be touched which did not possess the impenetra
bility of matter ? And how could He take food when this
absolutely presupposes a sensible organism ? Gerhard stoutly
withstands the thought, that the oiKovop,ia of the Eisen One
was carried out by a deception practised on the senses of the
disciples. " Quamvis Christus non ex necessitate, sed libera
voluntate comederit, vere tamen ipsum comedisse statuendum est.
Non apparens tantum et phantastica erat manducatio " (Harm. p.
2172). But what avails the protest if no other thought is shown
to be possible ? Here our church divines manifestly leave a blank.
True, they fill it up as well as they can. Only in how violent a
way ! They call to their aid the idea of the divine omnipotence,
and fall back on the allegation of the miraculous. " Post resur
rectionem Christus de corpore suo fecit quod voluit ; " x so
Augustine had disposed of the query ; and even before him
Per factum et visum ostendit, se habere corpus verum et non phantasticum. Per
comestionem ostendit, se habere corpus vivum anima vegetativa animatum. Per
hoc quod loquebatur sensibiliter et rationabiliter, reducens eis ad memoriam quae
dixerat ante mortem suam, ostendit, se habere corpus animatum anima sensitiva et
intellectiva et eadem qua prius. "
1 This often quoted saying of Augustine, which is still cited with approbation by
Hengstenberg (Comm. zum Joh. III. p. 310), would be far more tenable if the judg
ment which it contains were in regard to the status ante resurrectionem. The very
thing which stands emphatically on the front of it makes the assertion precarious.

304 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
Tertullian, in the words : " Christus est potentior omni lege
corporum ;" and Jerome : " nihil valet natura contra naturae
dominium." But Gerhard, too, is of opinion that this answer
suffices to set aside the scoffings, "(f>Xvapiai," of doubters : " Quod
ex Physicorum scholis afferunt, ad id facile responderi potest ex
ipsa philosophia : on oi Sel pxrafiaiveiv et? aXXo yevo<s. Ex
regulis physicis non sunt aestimanda, multo minus oppugnanda
divina miracula." In itself this is quite right. But, first, the
previous question meets us, whether the idea of the miraculous
is at all applicable to the region before us. And this we must
deny. When the Lord fasted forty days in the wilderness, or
when He walked on the waves of the sea, these were miraculous
events ; for both transcended the course and law of nature : but
of the manifestations of the Eisen One which are in question, no
one will maintain the same. It is not a collision with the law of
nature, but an internal contradiction with wliich they confront us ;
and over a contradictoriness in conception the assertion of a miracle
does not help us. So the appeal to almightiness does not avail
for a moment to cut this knot, not to speak of loosing it. This
is so evident that the representatives of this view could not help
proving unfaithful to their own principle. When they gave the
explanation : " aliter absorbet terra aquam sitiens, aliter solis radius
candens ; ilia indigentia, iste potentia," they again set the idea of
the miraculous aside, and argue from the nature of the Juavenly
body. But, of course, they in this way stultify their own procedure.
There was no need of this unsuitable means to reach the end
in view. It was unnecessary to insist on the element of omni
potence, and so to land in a miraculous action, which, besides, in
spite of every precaution and assurance to the contrary, can
hardly be preserved from a suspicious connection with Docetism.
Instead of this course, it should have been unreservedly acknow
ledged that the Lord appeared in the midst of His disciples in a
sensible-material body. " They thought they saw a spirit," so it
is said of the Eleven (Luke xxiv. 3 7) ; and it is this reasoning
of their heart which is met with the challenge : " Handle Me
and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see Me have."
Surely the Lord could not use more express terms to affirm the
materiality of His body.1 But does this acknowledgment, then,
1 Very curious are the words of Reich (ubi supra, p. 39) : " iclolly without o-dol
Christ was not, even as the Risen One, for He expressly claims for Himself o-dfx*

THE RISING OF CHRIST FROM THE DEAD. 305
— for we will follow our view fearlessly to its consequences — does
it exclude the idea, that the first-begotten from the dead entered
into His glory from His grave, clothed with a new body ? Bather
are not both perfectly compatible ? Let us look this question
fairly in the face. We make bold to maintain the affirmative.
The solution of the problem lies in that idea of which the
Scripture makes use throughout on this field (etpdvq, ej>avepd>6r},
ip,(pavr]<i eyevero) — the idea of His appearing! The promise
which our Lord bequeathed to His own in the parting hour, " I
will see you again," and " yet a httle while, and ye shall see Me
again," is usually understood of a spiritual seeing in the power
of the Paraclete. But supposing this were the meaning of the
promise, it could not have been fulfilled in the experience of the
disciples, except on the condition of their previously seeing the
Eisen One Himself. They must first be sure that He lives;
then only were they in circumstances to await in hope the
manifestation of the hving One in the Spirit, or to experience
it in reality. We do not in the least retract what we said in an
earlier connection. The beatitude : " Blessed are they who do
not see, and yet believe," preserves its rights unabridged, and the
censure which it contains remains untouched. Only the matter
in question here is not the faith of the disciples in general, but
their faith in the Lord's resurrection in particular. Had the
former remained wholly intact, there would still have been needed
a specific factor to secure the latter. The case of Thomas requires
to be weighed with care. The Lord once said previously, with
His eye upon the Twelve : " There are some of you who believe
not." Even in respect of the Eleven this judgment still held
good. Formerly, it was the traitor who was meant ; here, it is
Thomas on whom the rebuke falls. " Be not (jii) yivov) faith
less," is a cry of warning to one who has strayed far and come
into peril, that he make not shipwreck of his faith.- Only, does
it follow that what in his case was the demand of unbelief, was
therefore a thing with which the others could dispense ? No,
seeing was also required by them, and all of them, not even
excepting the one for whom the look into the grave was enough
to awaken the dawn of faith (he saw and believed, John xx. 8).
xx) oo-ria.'' So not "wholly" without trdp\ ; but surely, then, neither "wholly"
without oo-ria ? In fact, a suspicious adverb is this "wholly ".' If one can express
himself thus, he has not so much as a view on the subject, far less a conviction.
U

306 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
We have already acknowledged the truth which church divines
have on their side, in regarding the manifestations of the Eisen
One from the viewpoint of a condescension, avyKard/3aaK.
" Christus totus in eo est," so Gerhard appropriately remarks,
" ut per sensuum ministerium discipulos ad resurrectionis fidem
perducat" (Harm. p. 2170). But they were mistaken in limit
ing this condescension to solitary instances, while in truth it
belongs to the appearing of the glorified One in itself. The
event which happened economically was not particularly that the
Lord showed the marks of His sufferings, or that He took food
before the eyes of His own ; the gist of the matter is, that He
gave Himself to be known by the senses at all. Such being His
object, the mode of carrying it out was self-evident. No doubt
other possibilities may be imagined, — such as might find their
occasion and material in the experience of Paul, or the history
of the glorification ; but it is fancy which strays into such dreams,
dreams which pass beyond the region of the conceivable. Only
a sensible being can present itself to the senses of men ; for the
organs of perception must have an object corresponding to them.
And only when we assume a sensible organism, can we form the
thought of the Eisen One appearing in the circle of His own.
A phantom is a thing of nought ; and visions belong only to the
inward eye. And thus, by simply fixing our view on the idea of
appearance, the question : " with what body did He come ? " at
once finds its decision. But it was not such (roiovro) a body in
general that the Lord showed to His disciples, not a body merely
which enabled Him to rise and walk, to sit down and eat j1 but
He shows them the same body in which they had seen Him
before,2 the same which at last endured the piercing of its
So much may be allowed to church divines, that this taking of food was not a
matter of tvlna. But it is a mistake to suppose that this is to be explained by
a miraculous power belonging to Christ, and it is at least one-sided to assume that
He had nothing else to establish than the reality of His bodily constitution (Ger
hard : "edere est maximum vitae argumentum "). But, on the one hand, this
eating was a natural consequence of His appearing ; and, on the other, it was the
means of carrying out to the full their communion. "Come and dine." Comp.
Luke xiii. 26 : "we have eaten and drunk in Thy presence, and Thou hast taught in
our streets. "
2 This is not in opposition to the facts, that neither Mary of Magdala nor the
travellers to Emmaus know the Lord. These facts partly yield to the psychological
key without difficulty, partly become intelligible by supposing an intention on the
part of the Risen One.

THE RISING OF CHRIST FROM THE DEAD. 307
members and the spear-wound. " It is I Myself," — so He testi
fied, so they found it. For neither did this body see corruption,
nor did it disappear, no one knew whither ; " He is not here,
but He is risen," — this word of the angel applies also to the
crucified body, for it was this body which the women came to
anoint; the resurrection preserved it ! One may not indeed express
himself as Eothe has done in the hypothesis we have quoted.
We cannot at all speak of a putting on and a putting off; and
still less of a twofold body, a material and an immaterial The
body of the risen Lord is one. As to its essence it is a spiritual
body, — the organ of that hfe to which the Eisen One is called.
But this body corresponds to the law of phenomena so soon as
the Lord resolves to make Himself known sensibly to His own ;
and it can correspond to this law, because Christ by His rising
entered into His glory.
In vindicating our view, we do not intend to go beyond the
limits of the Gospel narratives. Otherwise we should be met
with the question, whether the doctrine of our Lord's second
coming must not lead to the same supposition. For the church
has always rightly taught that the future Judge will appear with
a visible body (Quenstedt : " visibiliter in came redibit "), and
will be revealed even to the eyes of the world.1 But with equal
right does the church hold fast the proposition, " de corpore
Christi glorioso et in thronum dextrae divinae evecto visibilitatem
praedicari non posse." How is the one to be reconciled with the
other ? But we leave the subject. Much more important is it
for us to prove, that the view we have advanced stands the test
of the narratives of the resurrection given by the evangelists,
and that it in turn makes them clearer and more intelligible.
This holds good especially of the two prominent cases in which
the opposite indications meet one another in all their sharpness.
We say in all their sharpness. For no enantiophany can be
more striking than when Luke, in speaking of the travellers to
Emmaus, follows up the terms, drew near, go with them, went in,
1 Not all church divines have cherished the view, that the Lord at His second
coming will bear on His person the marks of His sufferings ; but the majority of
them certainly lean to this opinion. Comp. Quenstedt's discussion in the theol.
did. pol. III. p. 622: "an vulnerum in passione acceptorum praecipuas cicatrices
ostensurus sit in die pantocritico judex vivorum et mortuorum Jesus Christus."
Calvin calls the view a "delirium stultum et anile." Gerhard wavers in his
expressions.

308 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
sat at meat, broke bread, with the wholly disparate phrase, He
vanished (eyevero afyavros) ; or when, in John's description, there
follows on the He stood in the midst of them (earr) ek rb peaov),
the statement that the disciples saw and touched the body of
their Lord. Every attempt at reconciliation is here vain ; it is
impossible to estabhsh a continuity. It is the idea of appearing
which explains the enigma. We beg our readers to mark the
relation in which the cases described stand to one another. In
Luke we find the miraculous element at the close; in John it
meets us at the beginning. So the first and last points testify
immateriality, while all that lies between these sharply defined
points bears on it every mark of a material body. At the
moment of His appearing the latter prevails ; apart from it the
former abides. " He stood in the midst," so John relates. But
the meaning is not that the Lord penetrated through closed doors,
and the disciples saw Him coming. It is not the came which is
the object of this seeing, but their eyes first saw Him who ap
peared in their midst. "A(f>avro<s eyevero air airatv, He vanished
out of their sight, so we read in Luke. But the evangelist
would not have us to understand him as if the Lord had moved
away beyond their sight. So, indeed, Gerhard has explained the
expression ("factus est inconspicuus, desiit esse conspicuus"); but
in vain has he contested the undoubtedly correct translation of
the Vulgate : " evanuit ex oculis eorum." The object of His
appearing was reached ; the appearing itself took end ; the Eisen
One returned to His invisibility.
We cannot break off without considering another question,
which not only receives its own answer from the point we have
reached, but which thereby reflects a confirmatory light upon the
result which we have developed. The question which we have
in view becomes a source of hopeless embarrassment whenever
the anti-scriptural view is rejected, that the Lord during the
forty days was in an intermediate state, that He gradually
matured in a process of rising glorification for His ascension on
high. Where did He dwell during the interval ? And what
work had He meanwhile to do ? It has been repeatedly
attempted, as is well known, to find an answer in the assertion
that the Eisen One even on Easter morning, immediately after
the scene with the Magdalene, ascended to His God and Father.
Most recently this hypothesis has once more found a warm

THE RISING OF CHRIST FROM THE DEAD. 309
defender (comp. Greve, die Himmelfahrt unseres Herrn Jesu
Christi, Hannover 1868). The arguments which the author
has brought to its support are not exactly new ; but so much
the more vehemently has he urged its claim to undoubted truth.
" Without it, the whole state of the Prince of Life during the
forty days is mystified or darkened, and from this mystification
the church has suffered till now ; " " the traditional ecclesiastical
view must give way wholly to the apostolico-biblical, — hitherto
it has not been so." When one can speak of a doctrine which
the church has persistently proclaimed from the beginning1
down to the present hour, branding it as "a vain and anti-
scriptural view," he virtually pronounces his own condemnation.
It is needless labour to convict such a testimony of error.
Discipline calls on us to crush such eccentricities in the bud.
Unfortunately, these extravagances have discredited the whole
question which has given occasion to them. It has been called
idle and irrelevant. But the real merit of Greve's work lies in
this, that it has energetically asserted its right. Not only has it
a place, but it is absolutely inevitable. The full materials needed
for its solution we shall have before us together, though not till
a later stage. But even now we can in this interest use the key
which has opened to us the right view of the resurrection history.
We return to the idea of appearing. Eeich has denied its conse
quences when he passes the judgment : " It would be hard to say
where else than in heaven the Eisen One could have been in the
interval" (ubi supra, p. 317). For the Lord could indeed reveal
Himself also from heaven; and He did so even sensibly; but
His appearing was out and out conditioned by His being on the
earth. Luke has named the day when He was taken up as the
limit to which these proofs of His life extended. Henceforth the
being seen (oirrdveaOai) ceased, no earthly eye saw Him more.
He will appear yet once more ; but only once more. " This
Jesus shall so come again in like manner as ye have seen Him
1 The author indeed maintains that the traditional view is of later origin, while
the older apostolic church represented the view defended by himself. But he has
been unable to adduce any other than the well-known passage in the Epistle of
Barnabas (c. 15, Ausgabe von Dressel, p. 36). The interpretation of the words he
has borrowed from Meyer (Comm. zum Luc. p. 588). But, supposing this explana
tion to be the right one, what follows from it of importance ? The conclusion of
Mark may perhaps have misled the writer of the Epistle to this erroneous impression ;
as to the view of the church of his time, it argues nothing.

310 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
go into heaven " — so in like manner ; — till then He is absolutely
invisible. Christ, then, was on the earth during the forty days; that will
be the general answer. But a more definite form is given to the
question. Not, indeed, in a coarse external sense is it put by
any one. No disciple during the Easter days allowed the words
to escape his lips : " Lord, where dwellest Thou ? " " None of
the disciples durst ask Him." And so still it is only ignorance
that could imagine that the glorified One needed a place where
to lay His head, or required to be waited on by human hands.
But the point on which explanation is desired is this : In what
circles did the Eisen One move, and what detained Him so long
on the earth ? How can we meet the difficulty of Eeich, that,
after all, He spent only a few hours in intercourse with His
own ? We cannot accept the answer given by Hengstenberg,
that the Lord dwelt during the interval on the mountains in
prayer to the Father, occupied as the representative of the infant
church; for, apart from other obvious difficulties, it is utterly
destitute of historical support. We must take to do with what
we know and what is confided to us. And it is enough if we
use it faithfully. Let us only take possession of what is actually
before us. The Eisen One appeared to His own; to the disciples
alone, to the exclusion of the world,1 did He manifest HimseK
sensibly. Undoubtedly, to appearance, these manifestations
have their narrow limits; and so far it may be said that
the remaining history of the forty days is hidden by a thick veil.
And yet the idea of them gives forth a light which reveals
the apparently closed region. In His appearing there becomes
manifest what otherwise indeed is veiled, but what is as certainly
present. The momentary appearance is the pledge of the
constant presence. It is foolish to say that the Lord passed
only a few hours with His own; that where else He dwelt,
what else He did, remains unknown. For it was only His
sensible intercourse which was confined to the space of those
hours ; He was always near them, and personally near, and He
remained so to the end ; the place where His disciples were was
also His abode, for it was only on their account that He still
1 Comp. Acts x. 41 : "Not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen, even
to us." John xiv. 22 : "Lord, how is it that Thou wilt manifest Tbyseli unto us
and not unto the world ? "

THE RISING OF CHRIST FROM THE DEAD. 311
remained on the earth.1 Only when He left the 'earth on the
fortieth day did He take leave of them.3 We recall an occurrence
of an earlier time. The Lord had fed the people in the desert.
He constrains the disciples to enter the ship to return to
Capernaum; He Himself remains on the land to dismiss the
multitude, and He ascends a mountain. Hours pass ; then
suddenly He appeal's before them walking on the sea. They are
terrified, and cry out that it is a spirit; but He answers: "Be of
good cheer, it is I, be not afraid." The likeness to the resurrec
tion history is evident. Then, too, the disciples imagine they
see a spirit ; then, too, the Lord meets them with His " it is I
Myself." But this is not quite the part on which we fasten ;
our interest rests on another point. While the disciples fought
with the stormy waves, where in the meantime was Jesus ?
We are told, indeed, by the evangelist that " He was alone on
the land, but the ship was in the midst of the sea ; " but he does
not leave it unnoticed that the Lord accompanied them in thought
and followed them with His eye (elSev, Mark vi. 48) ; and when
He stands bodily before their view in the midst of the lake,
they discover that He had been always present with them.
How much more so was it during the days of the resurrection !
Christ appears. But He comes not, and no one knows whence !
Only the veil falls, and He who is constantly in the midst of
His own is sensibly beheld by them.
The interest of our last discussion goes only to prove a result
already gained. Therefore we discontinue it, though still incom
plete, to take it up again at an after stage. For the present we
return to its starting-point. We have proved that the " contra
dictory indications," on which criticism has rested its destructive
process, find a satisfactory solution. They become intelligible,
1 As to the disciples, it is readily granted that their Lord's appearances formed
the real matter of their life during the forty days. What they lived in this interval,
they lived in the thought of the Risen One. If any one scruples to make the same
supposition with reference to the Lord, he is not doing justice to the circumstance
that His kingdom on the earth depended on the service of the disciples.
2 We do not forget the words of the Risen One: in av ovv vpuv rovs Xoyovs rovrovs
ixdxno-a trpos vpiZs (Luke xxiv. 44), but they are not to be so rigidly taken as if
this Civat c-vv abrols held in no sense true during the forty days (so Reich, Hengsten
berg, Greve). The words deny only the constancy of the intercourse, without
excluding personal communion. The latter was not closed till the day of the
ascension ; just as then only the saying of the Lord, vvv wdnp ayn orp'os o-i ifxoptai
(John xvii. 13), became fully true.

312 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
on the one hand, from the essence (ovaia) of the body in which
the Lord rose from the dead, and on the other, from the element
of His appearing. So far are they from overturning the credibility
of the Easter history, that they become the seal of its confirmation.
The narratives force us to infer a higher glorified bodily organism ;
but such an organ was needed by the Eisen One in order to dis
pense the gift of the Spirit. Again they force us to infer a
material body ; but only in such a one could the Lord appear to
the disciples. Finally, they conjoin both kinds of characteristics
with one another so naively, intertwine them so firmly, and
interweave them so closely, that their apparent contradictoriness
did not occur to the narrators ; but, in fact, there is no contra
diction here ; for it is the same body which appears, and the
same which retires into the invisible world. For proof of this
identity we return once more to the incident, which we rightly
judge the most prominent point in the whole resurrection history.
The Lord breathes on His disciples, and says to them : " Eeceive
ye the Holy Ghost." The breath which their senses discerned
obviously touched them as the breathing of a living soul, as the
exhalation of a material organism. But so considered it could
not possibly be the conductor of the Spirit; for this gift can
only pass over to the hearts of men from the quickening spirit
by means of the spiritual body. Where, then, except in the
presupposed identity, is to be found the solution of the enigma 1
But there is yet another interest which leads us to refer to
this occurrence. The terms are decidedly against those who
regard the act of our Lord only as symbolico-prophetical. On
the contrary, "He speaks, and it is done;" He gives, and the
disciples receive. But then, indeed, the whole way and manner
in which the appearances of the Eisen One are commonly judged
will undergo important modifications. They are on other grounds
advisable, these modifications, unless we are to lay ourselves
dangerously open to the attacks of criticism. If we limit the
object of the Christophanies merely to the end of convincing the
disciples that the Lord was risen indeed, we have no answer to
the question why He tarried on the earth for forty days more.
For in this case it would have been in perfect order if He,
according to the apparent reading of the third Gospel, had left
this earthly scene on Easter evening. But now the Lord says:
" Eeceive the Holy Ghost." So He performed an action such as

THE RISING OF CURIST FROM THE DEAD. 313
we have already seen to be the essential occupation of His
kingly office. For the dominion to which the Lord is called in
His state of exaltation is exercised in nothing else than the
dispensation of the Holy Spirit. This was the end which the
Father had in view in the mission of the Son generally (comp.
Eom. viii. 3 : sending His Son), and especially in His resurrec
tion from the dead. Undoubtedly, church divines have Scripture
on their side when they define the object of the sessio Christi ad
dextram patris in several ways ; but as certainly do all these
definitions run up into that one comprehensive object. He
represents us at the Father's right hand ; but we have received
His own authentic declaration about this interceding, — " I will
ask the Father, and He will give you another Comforter to abide
with you for ever." He is called the Minister of the Sanctuary,
where He has sat down at the right hand of the throne of the
Majesty (Heb. viii. 2) ; but ver. 1 0 leaves no doubt wherein the
apostle places this ministry of the exalted Saviour. If, then, the
Lord even in the days of His resurrection, when He appeared in
the circle of the disciples, bestowed the gift of the Spirit, these
appearances rise of themselves above the level of the common
view. Far from corresponding merely economically to the
wants of the weak, they are the kingly acts of Him who has
already entered into His glory ; they are similar to that which
He does for ever on the throne of God. Similar; but yet not
the same. For what He executes on the earth cannot be wholly
identical with His ruling in heaven. Beginning and progress do
not stand in the relation of pure continuity; but on account of
their place, if for no other reason, we assume a more preparatory
object for the beginning. From this point the interval of forty
days receives its explanation. This interval was needed, and
was needed of this duration. It was to be expected that criticism,
to explain the genesis of the " legend," would apply the Jewish
symbolism of numbers. It found no lack of instances in the
0. T. history. True, it is not always days, but sometimes years
that are spoken of. But that is a small matter. The forty is
there (is it not?) in plain figures. The candid expositor can
only refer to one precedent ; but on this he will certainly insist.
For forty days the Lord Hved in the wilderness; there the
tempter showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their
glory, — " rrjv igovaiav ravri\v diraadv aoi Scoato ; " and at the

314 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
end of the struggle the conqueror entered on the career of
Messiah. Forty days again did the Eisen One tarry on the
earth. All power in heaven and on earth was already bestowed
on Him (" eS66n fioi "), and He actually proved His possession
of it; and yet in some sense or other the time specified was
only the preparation for His kingly working from heaven,
as the interval in the wilderness paved the way for His
Messianic career. In some sense or other. But how is this
to be more exactly defined ? With this question we enter on
new investigations.

THIRD SECTION".

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE EISEN ONE.
1. THE REALITY OF OUR LORD'S APPEARANCES.
WE have explained in the proper place on what ground we
treat the appearances of the Eisen One third in order.
They are not of the same importance to us as to historical
criticism. The absence of presupposition, with which the latter
approaches the Easter history, implies that the message, which
for centuries one day has proclaimed to another, is in itself of no
account ; that it lays the entire stress on the question whether
eye-witnesses saw the living One, and whether those eye-wit
nesses have given us their own account of what they saw. It
imagines itself constrained to answer this question in the negative,
and consequently the fact itself collapses before its tribunal.
The case is quite different with him who starts from the certainty
that Jesus is the Christ. Far from advancing the claim on
which criticism declares it must insist, he accepts the message
of the church, because its contents are the sure consequence of
his own presupposition; nay, far from resting his faith in the
living One on these proofs, he does not even need them to
strengthen or justify his faith. And we think this is the true
order. Hofmann has rightly maintained that the disciples should
have believed the resurrection of Christ, even without having
seen Him appear. For only thus can we understand the rebuke
which our Lord administered to the travellers to Emmaus. They
allow that they have heard the news, but they own at the same
time that it has only gone to confound their minds (e%earr\aav
fifta,?, Luke xxiv. 22) ; and for this unbelief they are called
" fools and slow of heart." We are not, however, on this account
at all cold or indifferent towards the narratives of the manifestations
of the Eisen One. We, too, hold them to be of high account.
"",15

316 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
But the viewpoint from which we estimate their value is wholly
different from what it would be if they were the foundation of
our faith in the Easter event.1 As the essential foundation of
this faith, with which it must stand or fall, we do not regard
them. Our attitude towards them is thus a much freer one than
that of historical criticism. We have not an equal, at least not
an analogous interest in maintaining these accounts of the evan
gelists, as criticism has in dissolving them. We are in a position
to weigh without prepossession the scruples as to their credibihty;
while criticism, inspired by its tendency, cannot do justice to the
numerous, nay, conclusive marks of their historical reality.
And, indeed, there is no domain of the Gospel history where
the full bias and prejudice of criticism betray themselves more
clearly than on this. The objections which it raises do not apply
in the least to the existing narratives as such. When Strauss
remarks, " These accounts assume a resurrection of Jesus,- but I
cannot admit so monstrous an event ; they testify to a mongrel
being to which I cannot concede a real existence ; and conse-
sequently they belong to the mythical/' these are really not the
arguments of historical criticism; they are taken from another
region than that of history. He has made a confession of which
we have cause to take note ; he has seen himself constrained to
it by the character of the Gospel narratives. " Taken in themselves"
so he expresses himself (L. J. p. 308), "some of the histories of
Christ's appearing admit of being reduced to events of a purely
natural kind. With respect to the descriptions of the travellers
to Emmaus, or of the draught of fishes in the early morning, it
may be easily supposed that the excited disciples imagined they
saw their lost Master in some unknown stranger who made a
peculiar impression on them, or met them in perplexing circum
stances. In Herzog Ulrich's times, things of a perfectly similar
kind happened in Suabia." When one cannot help conceding to
the narratives, " taken in themselves," a historical character, and
so some measure at least of credibihty, he must, unless he is
1 We regard Gerhard as mistaken when, ubi supra, he reckons the appearances of
our Lord among the proofs of the reality of His resurrection. He adduces them
only in the last place ; but then he thinks that they put an end to doubt : " Tixptjpm
est certum et indubium signum, quod facit ri rixptap, h.e. rixos dubitationi ¦ cui
opponitur to ilxis, signum verisimile et probabile, ab Utxiv." The element of truth *
which underlies this view, and which we shall point out in its proper place is
wrongly applied here.

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 317
enslaved by some prejudice, be necessarily led by historical in
vestigation to the question whether the disciples were really
deceived in their perceptions, or whether the error does not
rather lie on his own side. But instead of fixing its eye on this
possibility searchingly, criticism expects us to admit another.
We are expected, namely, to assume that the appearances of
which the witnesses have given account " are to be regarded as
jpurely subjective, as facts of their inner life." Both Strauss,
who was the author of this yiew, and Holsten, who, in his
frequently mentioned treatise, zum Evangelium des Paidus und
Petrus, undertook to establish it more firmly, take their departure
from the Apostle Paul as " the earhest author who has given us
more minute information respecting the genesis of faith in the
Eisen One." Alleging his " nervous character and his disposition
to fanatical states of soul," appealing, further, to his passionate
restlessness and the zealot-like impatience of his action, they seek
to make it probable that he was so impressed with the inner
certainty and calm peace enjoyed by the early church as to doubt
the righteousness of the cause which he had hitherto served.
" From this inner discord," so they maintain, " there easily arose
an ecstasy in which he imagined that he saw the Christ, whom he
had so violently persecuted, in all His glory, and heard His voice
calling bim. From this point they next reason backwards to the
Christophanies which happened to the earlier witnesses. These,
too, they derive from such a subjective source. Has not the
Apostle Paul by bis icd/xoi, 1 Cor. xv. 8, expressly classed them
in the same category with his own experience ? Undoubtedly
the adherents of Jesus, immediately after the catastrophe, were
in a condition of unusual nervous excitement. Several of them,
such as Peter and the Magdalene, were notoriously disposed to
hallucinations. If, now, recalling the personahty of their Master,
and firmly believing His Messiahship, they understood His death,
not as a sinking into the reahn of shades, but as an exaltation to
God, an entrance into glory, it is not hard to conceive that what
is to be taken by us as mere vision, may have presented itself to
those interested ones as an external and sensible perception."
In a former connection we have said that we are entirely at
one with Hofmann in the course which he has followed in
relation to this monstrous supposition. He simply discards it as
absolutely untenable. The short protest is, in fact, fully justified

318 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
when the vision theory seeks to rob the reality of the Lord's
resurrection of its sure support. For when one finds the latter
firmly established altogether apart from the manifestations of the
Eisen One, he has no interest in putting himself right with a
hypothesis which betrays itself as a pure evasion. Only on
another side this interest may be awakened in a way all the
stronger. For when the object is, as in our case, to view the
Christophanies, not from the standpoint of proofs for the Easter
miracle, but to claim for them a more comprehensive and inde
pendent meaning, the rejection of the critical view must neces
sarily rest on a preceding refutation. And this refutation has
been attempted. We are far from undervaluing the labours
which have been thus expended; but they have not had the
wished-for success. The vision theory continues to find approval
among theologians and laymen in a far wider range than is
commonly believed. Leaving the question aside, whether this
approval is really to be explained from the circumstance that the
critical view " gets rid of the miraculous in a way corresponding
to the spirit of the age," it could not have come about had there
not been some elements of truth in the statements of our adver
saries. The apologetic which refuses this acknowledgment, acts
against its own interest. It is a wholly groundless fear when it
is said that we make advances to criticism by such concessions ;
in this way, rather, we enter into the lists in which a successful
struggle against it lies before us. It is a twofold object which
we have in view.
The word vision, in the domain of which we are treating, has
gradually gained such a character that it is regarded as a matter
of valour to yield not a hairbreadth to criticism. But the latter
is indisputably right when it appeals to the testimony of Scripture
itself to prove that not only did ecstatic conditions in general,
but a visionary beholding of the glorified Christ in particular,
repeatedly take place in the first Christian church. It was a
vision which is reported of the dying martyr : " he looked up to
heaven, and said, Behold, I see the Son of man standing at the
right hand of God." It was also a vision which is related by
the author of the Apocalypse : " I was in the spirit on the Lord's
day, and I heard behind me a loud voice ; and when I was turned,
I saw one like unto the Son of man." In view of such facts,
the possibility cannot be denied that the first witnesses also

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 319
spread the news of the living One on the ground of inward per
ceptions, and that the often quoted cbcf>6r) (was seen), which Paul
predicates of them, may be taken in the sense of a subjective
vision. No effort, indeed, will succeed in raising this view to the
level of probability. The depression into which the disciples
undoubtedly sank on the death of their Lord, was certainly the
most unfavourable soil for ecstatic states ; and who can believe
that their spirit, purely of itself, without the co-operation of any
factor from without, could have sprung so sOon from this depth
to the vision of a Stephen ? But as to the abstract possibility,
we are certainly constrained to concede it to criticism. There
with it declares itself satisfied. This concession seems to it to
be basis enough for further operations. Has it, then, really a
sufficient foundation, a sure point of support ? Let us look more
closely at the admitted possibihty. Specially let us consider its
true and sharply-defined field. How widely does it extend ?
Certainly not further than that the disciples, partly in conse
quence of impressions previously received, partly on the ground
of Old Testament prophecies, or of the Lord's own utterances,
attained by reflection to the certainty that the crucified One had
passed through the gates of death, not to death, but into the
glory of God; and that they, incessantly occupied with this
thought, gradually rose through a heightening of their inner life
to a visionary contemplation of the glorified One. This would
be the utmost Emit.
But how is the faith of the church related to the contents of
this concession ? And how is the origin of the Gospel narratives
to be explained thereby ? In the latter, in the first instance and
immediately, there is not a word of a glorified Christ ; it is only
the Eisen One as such who meets the astonished witnesses. It
is not in the halo of glorification that they recognise Him, but in
the restoration of His earlier form. What reflection could have
led them to this idea ? and how could their imagination have
produced such a phantasm ? According to the accounts given
by Luke and John, it cost pains to convince them that the Lord
had really returned to bodily life ; they could not grasp it, they
could not shape their thoughts according to it. Criticism, indeed,
explains those reports as unauthentic legends ; only the elements
at least must have existed out of which to form them. And
these elements, where were they to be found ? Not in prophecy.

320 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
The scattered declarations of the Lord Himself passed fruitlessly
over His hearers. " What means the rising from the dead ? " so
they asked one another in common amazement (Mark ix. 10).
Whence then the cry, or even the thought, — nay, the mere legend
itself, — that the risen Christ had been seen ? The way and
manner in which criticism seeks to set aside this difficulty has
certainly not raised its credit with any impartial judge. Strauss
appeals to the fact that a resurrection from the dead was by no
means strange to the Jewish consciousness. But even he must
confess that it was not expected till the end of the world. (" I
know," so says Martha, John xi. 24, of her departed brother,
" that he shall rise in the resurrection at the last day.") And
how does he help himself over this difficulty ? " That the re
surrection might take place earlier," such is his explanation,
" in a single case, that of an exceptionally holy man, made no
difficulty from the standpoint of the Jewish thought of the time."
We might have wished that he had produced suitable proofs of
the " Jewish thought of the time " to justify his view. Destitute
of proof, even as it is given here, it testifies to the utter helpless
ness of the author and his recklessness of assertion. Such hardi
hood in clearing the chasm is too much for Dr. Holsten. This
" exceptionally " is a leap which he does not trust himself to take
after the master. He endeavours to make out the opinion of the
Pharisaic school regarding the resurrection from the dead, and he
assumes that the disciples of Jesus shared the view of this sect.
For the convenience of his readers, he has given the relative
passages of Josephus word for word. Only these passages prove,
according to his own admission, the reverse of the supposition on
which the representations of the evangelists rest. For the passing
into another body (jierafiaiveiv ets erepov a&p,a), to which the
Pharisaic creed looks forward for the souls of the just (comp.
Joseph. Bell. Jud. ii. 8. 14), excludes the thought of a revivifica
tion of the body left inanimate on the cross, as conclusively as it
leaves no room for the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of
the flesh in general.1 The author says, with perfect right (ubi
1 In maintaining the position that the Apostle Paul had his doctrine of the resur
rection, as he is wont to present it, when he was yet a Jewish Pharisee (the change
at the utmost being the substitution of the idea of the wiv/na for that of the ^vx-h),
Dr. Holsten is without answer in view of 1 Cor. xv. If Paul formerly shared the
opinion of the Pharisaic school, he must afterwards have given it up and forgotten
it ; for a piTafraimv of the dead ils inpov cupa is incompatible with his view, that

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 321
supra, p. 128), that it cannot be maintained on historical grounds
that Peter and James could have regarded the resurrection of
Jesus as a raising of the body which had been laid in the grave.
But does not this indisputably prove that narratives which
obviously assume this view could not possibly have arisen had
not ocular demonstration forced the conception of it on the
witnesses ? Criticism should have acknowledged this ; indeed, it
has virtually done so by laying the whole stress on the Christo-
phany experienced by Paul. Here it had to do only with the
glorified Christ, without encountering the Eisen One as such to
hinder its procedure ; here it could, with an appearance of right
and with hope of success, put the question whether this heavenly
vision, as Paul himself called it, did not spring from a purely
subjective root. And, further, by raising the fact that the
apostle (1 Cor. xv.) simply appends his own experience to that of
the former witnesses to a proof of their mutual homogeneousness,
it might succeed with the difficulty which it finds in the Gospel
narratives, not indeed to the extent of removing it, but in evading
it. Only the abuse which it has made of the Pauline " was seen
of me also " (m<f>dr/ Kapioi) is obvious. How it may be with the
vision of Saul, we leave for the present undetermined ; in any
case, this conjunctive Kap.01 does not establish the inference of
criticism. L"ndoubtedly the apostle means thereby to raise the
manifestation made to him to the level of the same importance
with those which precede ; he means to emphasize the truth that
he too " saw the glorified Lord in person as really as any other
before him" (comp. E. Eothe, zur Dogmatik, p. 325) j1 but
the dead body is the o-mpd from which the new one arises. Speaking generally, the
passage in Corinthians leaves ns in no doubt that the fact of the resurrection of Jesus
is the hinge on which exclusively the apostle hangs his proclamation of the future
resurrection. Christ the ««^j rZv xixoipivptlvaiv, — there is revealed in this description
the source from which he drew it, and from which he received it as one specifically new.
1 This fact sheds light also on the peculiar name which the apostle has given
himself in the context of the passage in Corinthians. The word ixrpctipua has received
very various, sometimes extraordinary (Bretschneider), and even romantic explana
tions (comp. Kienlen, Jahrb. fur deutsclie Theol. 13, 2, p. 316). Sober exposition
oscillates between the idea of a "weakly" and a "premature incomplete" birth.
Neither the passages in which the LXX. have used the term, nor Lobeck's quotations
(Phryn. p. 209), contribute anything towards a decision ; but the text itself does.
The article before ixrpapcan has justly been reckoned strange. We can understand
it only on the supposition that the apostle has taken this name from the mouth of
his Judaizing adversaries at Corinth. In what sense they meant the derisive appel
lation is abundantly clear from the polemic of Paul against their suspicions ; so
X

322 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
equality of dignity is not dependent on entire homogeneity ; on
the contrary, in that case the ascended One must have appeared
as one, and the Eisen One as another. His manifestation on the
earth and His appearing from heaven must have been distinguished
from one another by a necessity of nature.
But now the question needs to be treated, and herewith we
enter upon a second consideration, whether criticism can rightly
use the history of Paul's conversion in the service of the vision
theory. We have already remarked and explained why our
opponents find here a much more favourable position than when
they are confronted with the Gospel narratives. Nor are we
able to deny all success to the efforts which they have made.
That the apostle, with his known peculiarities and in the given
historical circumstances, might have fallen into an ecstasy, and in
this condition have beheld in the way of vision, in the halo of
His glory, the object of his persecution, — this they have, in fact,
proved to be possible and conceivable. When Holsten enters
into the details of the theory, he undoubtedly exposes himself to
frequent contradictions ; but as to the proof of the possibility of
such a vision on the part of Paul, we cannot help conceding it to
him. But what gain is there to criticism in this concession ?
What advantage has it from the confession of the abstract pos
sibihty, when in the concrete case in question it is decidedly
denied, nay, when it is proved that what the apostle experienced
on his way to Damascus cannot be understood as an immanent
psychological act of his own spirit, but only as a transcendent
deed of the glorified Christ ? We apply ourselves to the proof.
It is not our intention again to take up investigations which
have already been closed. Very recently anew it has been
sought to point out the essential difference between Paul's ecstasy,
2 Cor. xii., and his experience on his way to Damascus. Krauss
Specially the passage, 2 Cor. X. 10 : « orapovtrta rov tratptaros, Qytriv, do-hvMs xa) a Xoyos
i%ovhvnp>.ivos. But in one view the apostle himself is not dissatisfied with the name ;
lie accepts it : "they are right, I am an ixrpatpia ; the term applies to me." And
how far does it apply to him? Since he has immediately before laid stress on the
fact that the risen Christ appeared to all apostles, and since immediately after he
speaks of his own apostleship, he obviously puts the 'ixrpo>p>.a in relation to his call
to the apostolic office effected by the manifestation of the Lord. And that he was
turned so suddenly and unexpectedly from the career of a persecutor to that of an
evangelist by the miraculous might of that undeserved grace which presented itself
to him in the heavenly revelation- (Grot. : "vi subita"), — such is the meaning in
which he himself owns the name and willingly lets it stand.

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 323
has given the attempt his warmest approbation (ubi supra, p. 2 6 7),
and we on our part have no desire to depreciate its merit. Dr.
Holsten, against whom it is particularly directed, has, indeed,
defended himself in a special answer. But it is vain for this
theologian to attempt to prove that Paul himself was not in cir
cumstances to distinguish between vision and supernatural reality.
Pity for the laborious but fruitless diligence which he has
expended on this argument. His subtle and bewildering dis
tinctions, which make, and again take back concessions, and which
seem to be almost intended to confound his readers, may impose
on them for a moment, but they cannot alter the simple state of
the case. If one listens impartially to the apostle relating the
decisive experience with the calm clearness of a conscious recol
lection, he is at once furnished with the answer to the question
whether the narrator — both in reference to the matter itself and
his own conviction — is speaking of a merely subjective vision, or
of an objective event falling under the senses ; he has come to
the conclusion, that it was impossible for the narrator to confound
an occurrence only imagined by the receiving subject with the
reahty of a bodily appearance of the glorified One (comp. Niedner,
christi. Kirchengeschichte, p. 109). Otherwise we should be
obliged to share the standpoint of a Festus, who took refuge in
the explanation : " Paul, thou art beside thyself ; much learning
doth make thee mad." We should be obliged to give the apostle
the lie direct, when he answers the governor with the protesta
tion : "Iam not mad, most noble Festus, but speak forth the
words of truth and soberness" (Acts xxvi. 24, 25). Paul can
confess to a folly (d<f>poavvrf), in so far as he has taken up the
tone of boastfulness from necessity ; but of the want of sober-
mindedness (acocbpoavvT)), the want of the diacritic power to prove
things that differ (SoKip,d£eiv rd Sia<f>epovra), he never would
have acknowledged himself guilty.1 But this side of the subject
has been sufficiently illustrated, and we wish to touch it merely
by the way.
1 We have in the Pauline letters a section in which the apostle himself has in a prac
tical way rebutted the supposition that the manifestation which he had was a merely
subjective one. In the passage 1 Cor. xv. 5 et seq. his intention certainly is not
to adduce solitary instances in which the Risen One was seen by human eyes ; but
his undoubted intention is to reckon up aU the cases of this kind which had ever
come to his knowledge, in their entirety as well as in their chronological order.
But has he not then omitted one of them ? Why does he not add : iorura oiipl*

324 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
There is another rock on which the vision theory, so far as
Paul is concerned, must be irretrievably wrecked. Let us leave
aside the event itself which brought about the revolution ; let us
ask instead about the effect with which it was accompanied.
From the latter there will then arise of itself an argument
backwards to the event. The effect in question is usually-
summed up in the idea of conversion. Wrong, the expression is
not ; but it certainly requires to be more closely defined. If by
it is meant the transformation of the fanatical Jew into a decided
Christian, we hold the declaration to be not only insufficient, but
dangerous, or rather ruinous. The circumstance that it has been,
whether expressly or tacitly, adopted is, we are firmly persuaded,
the reason why criticism has succeeded in using the history of
Paul with such success for its ends. It is, indeed, as plain as
day that a purely internal change can only be explained by
internal factors, and that psychological art has free scope on this
field. And so Holsten has at once cleverly and successfully
replied to the unfortunate deductions of Beyschlag. " That the
merciless fanatic was transformed into a patient sufferer full of
world - subduing, self - consuming love," — this fact he readily
grants ; but he is right in disputing the consequences which his
opponent has drawn from it ; and with equal right he puts to
him the question, in what place Paul designates this moral
transformation as the fruit of his " conversion-hour." As to the
true and essential effect of the Christophany on the way to
Damascus, there can on the historical ground be no doubt. Not
only did it break the unbelief of the persecutor, not only did it
revolutionize his view of the world (" Weltanschauung "), not
only did it make his heart a new creation (Kaivr) Kriaisi), — all
these were only secondary elements ; but above all, it made of
him an apostle of Jesus Christ. On this point alone did Paul
himself uniformly lay the supreme weight. Whenever he speaks
of his apostleship, whether in the tone of defence or of simple
Zrttpdvoj ? Of this case he had an immediate knowledge, not a merely traditional one •
and he himself had been so intimately associated with it that the remembrance of it
was constantly present to his mind (comp. Acts xxii. 20). Now the reason of the
blank is obvious. The martyr's vision stood apart of itself from a section which in
accordance with its aim, had to state the sensible objective manifestations of the Risen
One. But what inference follows therefrom for the explanation of the words : UXnm
ordvrm £<ph xa/*.oi1 The conclusion is inevitable, and to our thinking there is no
possible objection to its evidence.

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 325
testimony, he constantly traces it back to the Christophany which
happened to him (comp. 1 Cor. ix. 1, xv. 8, 9 ; Gal. i. 16). On
the other hand, whenever he relates this latter, he always repre
sents as its object and effect his investiture with the office.1 Well,
then, if this was its effect, to what presupposition are we thereby
led ? Does this result, too, admit of being understood as the
product of a mere vision, or are we not absolutely constrained
to assume an objective cause ? As is well known, Baur, at the
close of his life-work, and to the annoyance of many, expressed
the opinion that no analysis, either psychological or dialectical,
explains the conversion of Paul, and that the enigma does not
admit of a solution unless we acknowledge a miracle. His
scholars have set themselves the task of rectifying this " error "
of the master. For this purpose they have left out of view the
fact which moved Baur to his final judgment. They are silent
about the apostle's official appointment and work, and instead of
this they lay stress exclusively on the new world-view (" neue
Weltanschauung ") which he gained. But by merely ignoring it,
they do not get rid of a fact on which their structure falls to the
ground. No one could, by his own resolution, destine himself to
the apostolic office. The condition was an express and immediate
call from the Lord. An apostle is not a teacher, not a pastor,
not an evangelist ; a specific difference raises him above all these
offices. One might think himself called to ministerial service in
the kingdom of God by pronounced inclination and by manifest
gifts, and the vocatio mediata was enough to warrant him in
entering on it; but as to the apostleship, Paul himself has
summed up the prerequisite in the words, " not of men, neither
by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised
Him from the dead." And we are to suppose that he believed
himself to have received such an office in a vision ? That on
this subjective basis he entered upon it with the confidence which
we know, and in the way not less known to us finished his
course in it ? We will not insist on the element of improbability,
strongly as it presents itself. Were this all, that the apostle felt
himself subjectively called to this position without having the
superabundance (irepiaaela) of certainty given him by an objec-
1 Even the church of that day was not amazed that its former persecutor had sud
denly become a believing Christian ; but this was the cause of its astonishment, SVi i
otaixaiv wp&as, vvv ivayyiXi^trat rnv trionv nv -xori liropSa, Gal. 1. 23 J Acts IX. 20, 21.

326 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
tive testimony from the Lord, we should know of moments
when a wavering, an uncertainty, a doubt crept over him, when
the question pressed on him, " lest by any means he should run,
or had run, in vain." For mere faith in a call does not shut out,
but rather necessarily includes, assaults of doubt. But in the
most critical situations and under the most searching trials, —
when a flood of suffering poured over him more than sufficient
to produce sobriety, when his office was challenged in a quarter
which itself was fitted to shake even a firm consciousness, — we
find nowhere the very slightest trace left by such assaults.
Meanwhile we pass from this count of probability. Criticism takes
the edge from it by explaining that Paul himself was convinced
of the objectivity of his call to office as an external fact. But is
it also ready with an answer to another question which we must
put to it ? It is allowed, or rather expressly conceded by it, that
visions only objectivize subjective processes, that they are only
reproductions of already existent psychical images. Let it then
be granted that Paul in his inmost soul believed already on the
Eisen One before the Christophany, and that he, on the point of
journeying to Damascus, was at the last weak struggle against
the goad of truth; be it granted that this latent faith only
required the vision to enable it to burst triumphantly through.
Can criticism satisfy itself with this concession thus limited ?
Does it suffice for its need when confronted with the contents of
the history ? No, it must perforce go further ; it must advance
to the assumption that the persecutor, even in the midst of his
fanaticism, had raised the thought within himself of exercising
the apostohc office in the service of the Eisen One. In a vision
which admittedly only objectivizes images already formed, he
could not without this presupposition have understood the voice
1 It has been remarked that there was independently an element in the case which
counterbalanced any possible and perhaps actual temptation of the apostle, namely,
the success of his official work. Did not Paul himself repeatedly appeal to it ? Yes,
he did so. But against whom, and with what view ? He writes to the Corinthians :
If I be not an apostle to others, yet am I an apostle to you ; ye are the seal of my
apostleship ; ye are our epistle ministered through our office, and the signs of an
apostle were wrought among you. And similarly he must have met the older
apostles in Jerusalem, comp. Gal. ii. 7-9. His interest was thus a purely apologetic
one. As to himself, he ever judged his official successes only as gifts of grace, as
matter for his thanksgiving. They are not to him a proof of his apostleship. This
he seeks exclusively in the Christophany which was granted to him ; any other he
neither required nor desired.

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 327
calling him, he could not have imagined himself receiving the
charge and the mission. Does criticism nevertheless expect of
us such a self-contradictory assumption ? If it does so, it passes
beyond the domain on which it is possible to have dealings with
it. Does it, on the contrary, itself recoil before this monstrosity ?
Then it dare no longer appeal in support of the vision theory to
the history of Paul.1
Without our intending it, the last consideration has landed us
on the threshold of another task ; it has even presented us with
the viewpoint wliich must control the attempt to find its solu
tion. If one is judging the appearances of the Lord only as
proofs for the certainty of His resurrection, only as evidences of
His hfe, he has sufficiently satisfied the demands of apologetics
when he has led proof that there is no objection to the historical
character of the narratives which is less groundless than the
positive representation given by criticism. But the demand
rises higher ; it takes an altogether different form when one raises
the manifestations of the living One above the level of mere
reKfiripia, and claims for them an independent significance. There
arises the question : Why, then, was it necessary for the Eisen
One to appear before the eyes of men ? And the answer will
not be really satisfactory unless it discloses a very definite con
nection between these appearances and the securing of the world's
salvation. The proof is wanted, that as the Lord rose from the dead
for our redemption, the same interest also demanded the revelations
of the hving One. Not till an answer is given to this inquiry
will the Gospel accounts be raised beyond the assaults of criticism,
and the conviction of their historical truth become perfect.
2. THE OBJECT OF THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE LIVING ONE
IN THE PLAN OF SALVATION.
It cannot surprise us that the common view of the object
of the Christophanies has gained almost undisputed preva-
1 Highly significant is the way and manner in which Strauss has got over this
subject (L. J. p. 304) : " So there resulted an ecstasy in Paul, in which Christ
appeared to him in all His glory, discovered to him the perverse and pernicious
character of his course, and summoned him to pass over into His service. " " And
summoned him to pass over into His service ; " that is all, absolutely all that he says
to remove the difficulty ! If there is a clause in the work of Strauss which bears
on its front the stamp of hopeless perplexity as well as emptiness, it is this.

328 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
lence. On the one hand, it corresponds to the immediate feeling,
that the conqueror over death must have shown HimseK alive
to those who, in consequence of His departure, were plunged
in the night of mourning and dismay. On the other hand, it
harmonizes with the communication repeatedly made, that the
Lord sought above all to convince His disciples of the reality of
His resurrection. Even Hofmann acquiesces in the view, that
" the assuring of His own was the object of the forty days'
interval" (Schriftbew. III. p. 4). But on closer consideration,
serious doubts arise about this traditional view. For example, if
it rightly assigned the aim of Christ's appearing, the relatively
considerable number of them (the iroXXd reKfirjpia, Acts i. 3), to
begin with, would be without a satisfactory explanation. So early
as Easter evening, the fourth evangelist declares the result :
" Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord ; " and
therefore, even then, the proposed aim was reached in the circle of
the disciples. It has been said that the absence and the obstinate
unbelief of Thomas forced the Lord to a new manifestation before
the eyes of His own ; nay, it has even been maintained that this
very episode delayed their departure to Galilee. But supposing
we grant this, at least on that eighth day, the last doubt and the
last doubter would have been overcome, and the need of further
manifestations disappeared. Besides, we call attention to the fact
that the Lord, in every case in which He secured the certainty
for His disciples that He was truly risen, combines with this
proof a more or less severe censure. Already they should have
trusted the news which He had sent them, and never should the
delusion that they had seen a spirit have come into their hearts
(Luke xxiv. 38). True, He immediately removes their doubts,
He helps them to reach a restful conviction ; but this act of mere
condescension to weakness cannot possibly be regarded as the
real final aim ; it can only be judged as the preparation for
reaching a more comprehensive, that is to say, the true object.
Especially instructive in this relation is the close of Mark's Gospel.
True, this section is not only suspicious, but we are firmly per
suaded of its spuriousness.1 Nevertheless, we are far from
1 The genuineness of this section has now but few defenders ; and those who have
more recently attempted its vindication, have only brought the cause they serve into
greater discredit (Caspari, ubi supra, p. 202 ; Evang. K. Z. 1868, Nr. 67). The
commonplace argument, that it is scarcely conceivable how a later appendix could

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 329
ignoring it as a meaningless addition by an incompetent hand ;
it is not without importance for us. With the view of giving
a conclusion to the apparently unfinished treatise, the author has
employed materials already contained in the three other Gospels,
and so far his description is destitute of all historical worth.
But all the more deserving of attention is the way and manner
in which he has given his resume". The passage is nothing else
than a reflection on the history of our Lord's manifestations, a
judgment respecting their object. And this judgment may be
regarded as the true one. It is first declared that the disciples
gave no faith to the rumour, not even to the authentic report of
the resurrection ; only their view of the Lord succeeded in over
coming their doubts. And so it is acknowledged, that in the
have found its way into almost all the Codd. and versions, should be finally dis
missed, for it is certainly much more difficult to understand how the narrative of the
woman taken in adultery came into the text of John. In like manner, the question
should be set aside where the genuine conclusion of Mark is to be found, or why the
evangelist did not finish his work. The difficulty which the question creates is
only an apparent gain to those who urge it. — In how great a degree the external
evidences throw suspicion on the passage, has been convincingly proved by the
thoroughgoing investigations of Klostermann (das Marcusevangelium, p. 298 et
seq. ). But we admit that in the case before us internal criticism must decide. It
has been said, "that from ver. 9 onwards a sudden change becomes noticeable in
the style. The peculiar stamp of narration belonging to Mark disappears, and a
compiling indistinct brevity takes its place. Besides, it is evident that the second
half of the chapter cannot possibly proceed from the author of the former. There the
angel pointed to an appearance of the Risen One in Galilee, while such an appear
ance is neither related nor even mentioned in the after course of the narrative. '
Comp. Hofmann, Schri/tbew. II. p. 519, III. p. 4. These are certainly circum
stances which must fall with important weight into the scale. Yet we cannot
regard them either singly or in their totality as conclusive. "We have a wholly
different reason for disputing the genuineness of the passage. Let us test ver. 19.
The opening words ("a piv ovv xvpios pitra ro XaXno-at avroTs") certainly sound quite
historical, and prepare us for a historical communication. But in truth it is not
so followed up. Beginning and continuation form the strangest contrast. The
declarations: " dviXvitpfa iis tov olpavov xa) ixdQttnv ix o=%i'ttv rov &10Z" in no case
belong to a Gospel history ; an evangelist could not possibly write thus. It is the
language ofthe confessor, not the tone of the narrator ; they form articles of faith, not
historical facts ; fruits of reflection, not reminiscences. This judgment applies even
fatally to the first of the two propositions. 'AvtXxtph ils rov olpavov, He was taken
up into heaven, is a wholly different description from that of Luke when he relates
(xxiv. 51): xa) iyivlro iv ral lliXoyuv avrov aitrovs, 'htio-rv} aor auraiv xa) dvttpipiro lis rov
ovpaviv ; on the contrary, it sounds quite like Paul's word when he writes : dviXrQln
iv iil>p (1 Tim. iii. 16). But beyond all contradiction this holds true with the second
declaration. "Exdho-iv ix 'j-i.Zv rov Osa?, so the apostles could and must preach ; but
not so could an evangelist narrate, not with such an unhistorical delineation could
Mark close his Gospel history.

330 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
first place certainly His manifestation was calculated to restore
the faith of the disciples. But how far this was from forming
the final aim, appears from the report of the rebuke with which
the Eisen One appeared in the midst of their assembly. Thus
it was only a preliminary result, a step towards the object pro
perly so called. And wherein did the author of the section find
this last full aim ? In nothing else than in the sending out of
the Eleven, and the founding of their office ! This appears not
only from the circumstantial narrative of their commission, but
specially from the concluding remark, that the disciples went out
preaching everywhere in the strength and under the blessing of
their Lord. But it is not from this almost apocryphal passage
that we would take the answer to the question before us ; we
rather seek it in a place which is invested with the highest
authority. Nothing could well be more desirable for us than to
find ourselves in possession of a section in which an apostolic
hand had summed up the manifestations of the Lord. The
kernel of their contents would also reveal their object. And in
fact we have such a passage !
The narrative given by Matthew of the appearance of the
Eisen One in Galilee is very commonly and rightly regarded as
enigmatical. In saying so we have not in view those difficulties
which have already been disposed of in a former connection ; there
remain many other dark points besides. The most prominent
of them is the following. The manifestation of the Lord, which
the evangelist undertakes to describe, took place, of course, during
a later portion of the forty days' interval ; all the Jerusalem
scenes recorded by John belong to a more or less distant past.
When, then, the disciples left Jerusalem and went to meet the
Eisen One in Galilee, they must all of them have possessed
certainty of faith. And yet we read (Matt, xxviii. 17): " And
when they saw Him they worshipped Him, but some doubted "
(eSlaraaav) ! How is it possible to understand this ? Some
have taken the idea of the Siard^eiv in a weaker sense (" they
were uncertain whether they should pay the Lord divine
adoration ") ; some have thought to find the doubters in a wider
circle. The apostle, say they, speaks of more than five hundred
brethren who saw the Eisen One ; and presumably this latter
appearance is identical with that related by Matthew. Even
now Ebrard (ubi supra, p. 767 et seq) has anew declared for

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 331
this view, though the text of the evangelist is conclusive against
it. " Then the eleven disciples," — so the narrative begins. Were
others besides them present ? We know not : the author himself
gives us neither occasion nor right to say so. Certainly by the
those who " saw Him " of ver. 1 7, he meant none else than the
Eleven ; and consequently he includes them among those of
whom he remarks that they doubted. So the difficulty remains
unsolved. And a second arises. However far this manifestation
may be brought down into the last days of the interval, it
certainly does not form the close of the appearances. For it was
not from a mountain in Galilee, but from the Mount of Olives,
near Bethany, in Judea, that the Lord returned to heaven. And
yet Matthew's account produces out and out the impression of a
farewell ; it is hard to see how, after this opening, further inter
course or another manifestation could have followed. Augustine
has here again shown his fine feeling, his correct tact. To the
annoyance of the later harmonists,1 he maintains the proposition,
" testimonium Christi de omnipotentia sibi data et praeceptum de
evangelio in toto orbe praedicando ad diem ascensionis referenda
esse" (de cons. Evang. III. p. 25). The question which was thus
raised, he has not indeed satisfactorily answered. But we are
also convinced that the enigmas which the narrative of the first
evangelist presents are absolutely inexplicable so long as we
proceed on the supposition that he has given the history of a
single, independent, and sharply defined manifestation. Quite
another light is shed on the subject when we adopt the view,
that he has rather described the sum of Christ's manifestations,
that he has comprehended their history, not in the form of
epitome like the spurious conclusion of Mark, but in their
essential contents. In this case the difficulties are resolved. If
Matthew's account is taken as the report of a later independent
appearance, then a doubt in the circle of the apostles at this stage
would be incomprehensible. If, on the contrary, the evangelist
had the entire sum of Christophanies in his eye, he could not
leave the fact unmentioned, that the Lord was not met, on the part
of His own, with unanimous faith. Here he has Thomas in view.2
1 Gerhard exhibits this dislike all the more strongly that he finds himself far from
being in a position to meet the church Father with sound arguments.
2 The plural ol 5s li'mrao-xv does not stand in the way of our view. It is found
elsewhere in the N. T., where only a single individual of a definite circle is meant.

332 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
For this disciple only proved himself a doubter strictly so
called. As to the others, their conduct (Luke xxiv. 37:" they
supposed that they had seen a spirit;" ver. 41: "they believed
not and wondered") does not justify the expression of an actual
Siardgeiv. And again, if Matthew's text is held to be the
account of a single appearance, it is scarcely distinguishable from
the history of the ascension ; the one seems to melt into the other.
If, on the contrary, our view of the passage is the right one, it is
plain why it bears so unmistakably the stamp of a farewell scene.
For the entire manifestations of the living One, — what else are
they, what else can they be than leave-takings ? In them all
there is reflected, and must be reflected, the message which Mary
of Magdala is charged to carry to the disciples : Go, tell My
brethren, I ascend to My God and your God.
If, then, we may take Matthew's account as indicating the
kernel and true contents of the Christophanies, we shall find no
more favourable place for raising the question, what end they
served. Here will the answer be found, or rather it lies before our
very eyes. It harmonizes thoroughly with the result reached by
the author of the conclusion of Mark, in the way of reflection. For
all that the first evangelist relates — the revelation on the Lord's
part, the charge which He delivers, the direction with which He
follows it, the promise with which He closes — are summed up in
no other fact than in the founding of the apostolate, and the
investiture of the Eleven with this office.1 With this view, then,
did the Eisen One appear in the circle of His own. And we get
this answer not only from the summary of Matthew, but the
narratives of the third and fourth evangelists go to establish its
truth. The sum and substance of the rich and varied materials
communicated by Luke is the declaration of the Eisen One, that
"When John vi. 64 expresses the assurance that Jesus knew well r'ms ilo-lv ol pev)
morivovns, he has in view the one Judas Iscariot, the same of whom the Lord
immediately declares, si; vptaiv iis fid/ioXos io-riv.
1 Therewith we also include especially the institution of baptism. The doubts
raised against the historical character of the fact are in themselves of little account •
but they are positively excluded, for the reason that without an express institution
it is impossible to explain the church's practice of baptism. For no one will satisfy
himself that this practice spread in connection with the baptism of John, and
following up the baptism of the disciples in Judea (John iv. 2). On the other hand
it may appear suspicious to give that command of the Lord the special relation to
the apostolic office and its institution. Does not Paul explain to the Corinthians
that he baptized only a few of them, for he was sent by Christ not to baptize but to

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 333
He will cause repentance and remission of sins to be preached
in His name among all nations, and that by the mouth of the
disciples shall this testimony go forth to the world. And the
culminating point in John's account is the Lord's saying on
Easter evening : " As the Father hath sent Me, so send I you."
Nay, even beyond the domain of the Gospel history, the answer
we have given finds its confirmation. Of the appearances of the
living One, Peter spoke thus in the house of Cornelius (Acts x.
40 etseq.): "God showed Him openly, not to all the people,
but unto witnesses chosen before of God, even to us, who did eat
and drink with Him after He rose from the dead." And how
does he continue ? " He commanded us to preach unto the
people /" That the Christophany which fell to the lot of Paul
was intended to call him to the apostolate, we have already
sought to show. Now we add the proof, that the long section
in which the apostle has spoken both of this and of all the earlier
appearances of Christ (1 Cor. xv. 5—8) rests on the same thought.
Only when thus viewed does this otherwise extraordinary passage
stand in its true hght. In itself it cannot but be thought in the
highest degree strange that a more or less considerable number
of the Corinthian Christians, hke Thomas, should have denied
out and out the Lord's resurrection, and in consequence of this
heresy have virtually broken with the church. The text of the
chapter, apart from anything else, nowhere entitles us to make
this supposition. The apostle everywhere speaks only of those
who doubted the future resurrection of the dead (ver. 12). He
reproaches them with being slow to draw the true inference from
the Easter miracle. Besides, he expressly acknowledges that
they have accepted, and continued to believe, the fundamental
facts of the Gospel.1 No doubt Hofmann (Schriftbew. II. p. 529)
preach the gospel (1 Cor. i. 17)? Notwithstanding, neither is there in these words
a depreciation of baptism, nor do they warrant the conclusion that it did not belong
to the office of the apostle to carry it out. Paul is describing his special call,
founded on his peculiar gifts, which he must follow above everything else. And so
he must have taken care universally, when he had preached the gospel with success,
that believers were baptized ; as at Ephesus he induced the disciples of John to have
the lidvrio-pta ils ri Svopia rov xvpiov "ino-ov. And even as an apostle he must have in
sisted upon it on the ground of the command delivered to the apostles: ptahrtitrun
/Zaorn^ovrts. 1 Since the apostle gives this testimony to the Corinthians : iraptXdPtiri ri ivay-
yixiov, io-rixari iv alirtf (ver. 1), iirinrivo-ari (ver. 11), it is purely arbitrary to
maintain that faith in the Lord's resurrection was not general in that church. What

334 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
has good, right to think that that fraction of the church might
possibly, on its dangerous incline, have come even to deny the
Lord's resurrection. But if the apostle really felt this fear, it
seems to us very improbable that he would have met the danger
with a catalogue of the Christophanies. Thereby he could hardly
have averted the evil successfully. There must be another
interest in which he marshals these witnesses. And he himself
has indicated it in ver. 11:" Whether it were I or they, so we
preach, and so ye believe." He speaks, therefore, on the one
hand, of the apostohcal kerygma; on the other, of the state of
faith in the church. But, so we preach ; what means this so ?
We do not think that exegesis has dealt fairly with the particle.
It is generally taken as designating the contents of the kerygma,
— " that we teach, and that ye have believed." But the Christo
phanies enumerated immediately before can no more be regarded
as a subject of preaching than as an object of faith. That Christ
died, and that He rose again, according to the Scriptures ; that
the apostles taught; that the churches believed : but not this, that
the Eisen One was seen by various persons, and at various times
and places. This latter fact neither formed the contents of the
preaching, nor was it a matter of faith ; certainly, however, it
formed the condition of the apostolical kerygma. Because the
disciples saw the living One, therefore did they preach what they
proclaim, and this their preaching found faith. Thus, and not
otherwise, according to our inmost conviction, does the so demand
to be understood. And what follows therefrom ? The same that
has aheady met us in various ways, — that the founding of the
office, the investiture of the disciples with its rights and duties,
was the object of Christ's manifestations !
This is the end, then, for which the Lord manifested, and
required to manifest, Himself to His own. For it was only —
it lacked was not the confession of the fact as such, but that lively conviction
wliich measures its bearing and draws the conclusions which follow from it, despite
the objections at once of the contracted understanding and of the sinful heart. And
so Paul asks his readers whether they have not received the message ilxH, that is as
a dead treasure of mere orthodoxy, or whether they have taken it in actual possession,
xa.ri.xitv, that is, ry xapSia owiivai. (Hofmann's explanation of the passage, H. S.
III. p. 347, is decidedly erroneous. A thought like this would certainly be extra
ordinary : ye shall be saved by the gospel, unless ye have believed it in vain, that
is, without its turning finally to your salvation !) And therefore he stirs them out
of their slothful and sleepy condition (Heb. xii. 1) with the penetrating and
awakening Call : ixvv^ari "htxalais xa) ptn dpbapruviri (ver. 34).

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 335
and here we touch a new side of the subject, — it was only by
appearing bodily before their eyes that He could gain the end in
question. That He had risen, in a general way, to newness of
hfe, the disciples might have believed even without seeing Him ;
nay, it would have been quite natural had they trusted the
simple message. But to preach the faith, to open their mouths
for the apostolical kerygma, this they could not, dared not even
have done had the express charge not been given them by the
Eisen One in real, sensible manifestations. It is to misapply a
psychological commonplace, to say that every hving conviction
awakens the impulse to communicate and propagate it. He
who can content himself with this phrase has yet to learn the
real nature of the apostleship ; he has never yet felt a breath of
Paul's saying : " Woe is me if I preach not the gospel ; the office
is committed unto me." In the declaration of Peter and John
(Acts iv. 2 0), " We cannot but speak the things which we have
seen and heard," there is something else than that which is
commonly found in it. As to what the disciples have "heard
and seen," that has as Httle to do with their earlier fellowship
with Christ as the power (Svvap,i<;), which they deny of them
selves, can be understood of a reaction against an irresistible
inward impulse. On the contrary, the former, relates to the
manifestations of the hving One, and the latter rests on the
divine command received by them. We have an authentic
explanation of the passage when we read, Acts xiii. 31:" He
was seen many days of them which came up with Him, who are
now His witnesses."
Dr. Julius Miiller, in his excellent essay, " von der gottlichen
Einsetzung des geistlichen Amtes " (comp. dogmatische Abhand-
lungen, Bremen 1870, p. 468 et seq.), has done important
service in pointing out the specific dignity of the apostolate. If
we concur with the views of this theologian, we shall not merely
acknowledge that such an office could have been founded only
by the Eisen One, to whom all power was given in heaven and
on earth, but we shall also admit that it needed the personal
appearing of the glorified One to commit it to those who had
been called to exercise it. It is a mistaken, though a very
widespread view, that the Spirit raised the disciples to the
apostolate. Luke calls them apostles, and they were such before
the day of Pentecost broke. Dr. Muller (ubi supra, p. 628) is

336 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
certainly right in saying that the Spirit wrought in the apostles
as in no other member of the church; this power from above
was undoubtedly the essential condition of the work of their
hands. But the quahfying for office differs from the appoint
ment to it. To the elders of Ephesus Paul says at Miletus
(Acts xx. 28) : "the Holy Ghost made you overseers" over the
flock ; he would never have said the like of himself.1 We have
already seen — it meets us in almost every one of his letters —
with what tenacity he holds to the fact that he received his
office from Christ, who appeared to him personally. All know
ledge may have been communicated to him by the Spirit, every
step of his course may have been thus indicated to him ; but as
to his office, he is conscious of the fact that it was given him by
the Eisen Christ when he saw Him face to face, when he stood
opposite to Him eye to eye. Nor can it be said that the Lord
completed the ordination of His servants in a bygone past. If
He sent them out formerly, not to all the world, but to the lost
sheep of the house of Israel ; not furnished with the power from
on high, but only with the ability to save the sick and possessed;
not with the commission to forgive sins and dispense the goods
of the kingdom, but merely with the message, The kingdom of
heaven is come nigh, — we have in this nothing else than a
prophetical outline of that office which bears within it a super-
abounding light, the office in which there is mirrored the full
glory of Him who is called Apostle in the highest degree, and
whose apostolate combines with the royal priesthood (Heb. iii. 1).
As at the first the glorified One could raise the disciples to this
level, so they could only maintain themselves on their giddy
height by having received the heavenly calling from His mouth
and His hands, with an immediateness which excluded all doubt.
We may go still farther. Not only was there needed an express
appointment to the office, " I send you, go ye into all the world,"
but an introduction of some kind or other. We know from the
Lord's own explanation that He reserved much on this field for
the guidance of the Spirit. But there was something else which
1 Once we read (Acts xiii. 2) : uortv ri vrvivpia ri dyuv' afopttran S« piot rov Tft.pvd{iav
xa.) laiixov ils ritpyov S irpotTxixXvtpt.ai abravs. Only there was no separation here to
the office in general, but merely to a single work in the office. And this single work
was, besides, of such a kind that Paul was to do it in company -with Barnabas. But
Barnabas, near as he stood to the Twelve (hence once, but only this once the name
even passes over to him, comp. Acts xiv. 14), was not an apostle.

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 337
He had to order personally and orally. As He not only
revealed to Paul his call to office, but gave him the command
to go to the heathen, and generally all the directions of
which Acts xxvi. 16 et seq. gives account, so it was also in
respect of the Eleven. Therefore He showed Himself to them
many times and ways — to the whole circle and to individuals
separately. Therefore did He speak to them, as Luke tells us, in
all these appearances, of the kingdom of God (Acts i. 3). There
fore, in a word, was there need of the longer, or forty days'
interval. We refer back to a former discussion. There we
compared the forty days with the exactly equal time of the
sojourn in the wilderness; and the comparison led us to the
view, that as the period in the wilderness prepared the way for
the course of the Messiah, so the time before the ascension was
the prelude to His kingly working. In these forty days He took
possession of the power which the Father had given Him over
all flesh. And this He did by calling, consecrating, and instruct
ing instruments by whom His name was to be made glorious
from sea to sea, till every knee should bow to Him, and every
tongue confess that He was Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
We have sought to make out the end of Christ's appearings,
and proved at the same time that it could only be attained by
means of these manifestations. But one thing yet remains. We
have called the end in question expressly a saving end. And
this claim requires to be justified. What we assume, then, is
this, that the manifestations of the hving One also appear as the
consequence of the fact that Jesus is the Christ ; that they
too were needed for the salvation of the world, for the redemp
tion of men. Now this supposition is admitted ; nay, even as to
the ground and connection of the matter, there exists a well-nigh
complete harmony. We mean that the restoration of faith is
very generally regarded to be the object in view. And because
the faith of the world depended on these appearances, they
might, in fact, be spoken of as having a saving end. The correct
ness of the answer in general we admit. But everything depends
on the sense in which it is understood. There is a view, and it
is by far the most common, which we decidedly reject. The
protest which we enter against it is not only prepared for, but is
even already established by our statements up to this point ; it
remains for us only to sum them up. It is said that the Lord's
Y

338 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
appearances made His resurrection certain ; they overcame the
doubt of the disciples, or rather converted this doubt into an
assurance of faith, which, as it has continued to burn and work
on, has resulted in the fact, " He was believed on in the world."
So most of the church Fathers have judged, and, following them,
church divines. With special clearness has J. Gerhard expressed
his judgment, comp. Harm. c. 212: "Debebant discipuli testes
esse resurrectionis in omnes gentes. Ideo Christus voluit ipsis
eam esse maxime certam et confirmatam, ut testimonio eorum
etiam nos fidem haberemus. Sic enim debemus colligere.
Apostoli, qui de resurrectione Christi testantur, non solum
audiverunt Christum resuscitatum esse, sed ipsi etiam eum
viderunt. Ergo eorum testimonium de Christo resuscitato est
verissimum ac certissimum. Ex quo apparet, non solum propter
Apostolos, sed etiam propter nos de confirmanda resurrectionis
suae certitudine Christum tantopere fuisse sollicitum, ne scilicet
tergiversaremur ac recusaremus fidem tam evidentibus funda-
mentis innixam. Magni vero refert Christi resurrectionem
immota fide amplecti ; est enim hie articulus reliquorum omnium
fundamentum." We put out of account the historical difficulty,
that this view makes the disciples appear in a false light, — as if
they had made shipwreck of faith; that it places the entire
manifestations of the Lord in the category of His revelation to
Thomas,1 — as if the Eisen Christ had showed Himself only on
account of doubters. There is another thing which has yet
more weight with us. On this view, faith in Christ, taken
generally, is interchanged with the conviction of the fact of the
resurrection ; or, faith in the resurrection is identified with faith
in the Eisen One. But we know well that, despite the undeniable
connection between the two, the one is neither a sure guarantee
for the other, nor does it always produce it ; at least we know
that the apostles did not proceed on this assumption nor 'act
according to it. The matter thus demands to be otherwise
judged. We, too, do homage to the view that Christ's appear
ances had for their object the establishment of faith, and that
the faith of the world depended on them. But we do not seek
the evidence and justification of the assertion in the fact that
1 We shall see in a later connection that in this way even the Christophany to
Thomas is robbed of its force and meaning ; its peculiar character in that case falls
quite into the background.

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 339
these manifestations prove the certainty of the Easter message.
The explanation which satisfies us is this : by means of His
manifestations the Eisen Christ appointed the office which
preaches faith and produces faith.1 Without this office and its
exercise, faith would not have found being in the world. " How
shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard *? and
how shall they hear without a preacher ? So then faith cometh
by hearing" (Eom. x. 14, 17). "He was preached among the
Gentiles," — this is the cause ; " He was believed on in the
world," — such is the effect. If this relation between cause and
effect presents itself as a matter of fact, if it forms part of the
"confessedly great mystery of godliness," then we can truly
speak of a saving object in the Lord's appearings. For from
them arises the office through which faith comes, and only in
virtue of faith does the world partake of the life of the Son of
God, and of the salvation which the Lord has won for it by His
dying and rising again.
- Is it so, then, that Jesus, because He is the Christ, required
not only to rise again, but also to manifest Himself before His
own ? Is there thus evidently an inner necessity for these
manifestations ? Then criticism must have the weightiest
difficulties to press on us ere we can admit a doubt as to their
credibility. The question is, whether criticism finds a provoca
tion, or at least a pretext, for this procedure in the words of
the Gospel narratives. We put ourselves undoubtedly under
the guidance of the right star when we keep firmly in view the
standpoint described. The thought, that the Lord appeared to
the eyes of the disciples with the view of setting up the
apostolic office, will spread a satisfactory light over all details
of the narratives ; and so they will themselves be advanced to
1 Here is the place where we must again take up an earlier discussion. We pro
tested at the proper time against the view that the saving object of the Lord's
resurrection lay in the awakening of faith ; we rejected the interpretation of the
passage, Rom. iv. 25, to that effect. Now it is clear whereon the error of this view
rests. The Lord's resurrection has been confounded with His manifestations when
risen, and what is only true of the latter has been asserted of the former. The
saving end of the resurrection itself is to be found entirely on the same objective
domain as that of the atoning death ; Christ rose that the redemption of the world
might be objectively finished. On the contrary, the Risen One manifested Himself
to render possible the subjective condition on which the redeemed can attain to
righteousness. By His appearances and their immediate effect He founded a
believing church.

340 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
that measure of historical certainty with which apologetics may
rest content. 3. THE GOSPEL NARRATIVES.
It is a just remark of Strauss, that the evangelists give us
always merely solitary appearances of the Eisen One. "He
shows Himself now here, now there, now in this way, again in
that; one knows not whence He comes nor whither He goes,
nor where He dwells." But it is unjust when criticism on this
ground maintains " that the whole produces the impression not
of an objective self - coherent hfe, but of subjective ideas and
separate visions." In an earlier connection we have advanced
a better explanation of this certainly undeniable fact. The
glorified One could only from the very nature of the case
manifest Himself temporarily. Continuous communion with the
disciples lay now beyond the region of possibility ; intercourse
with them in the strict sense belonged to the past. It is there
fore as a thing of the past that the Lord describes it when He
says (Luke xxiv. 44) : " These are the words which I spake unto
you while I was yet with you." Similarly John xvi. 4, 5 :
"I was with you, but now I go." Comp. Egid. Hunnius, de
persona Christi, p. 99.
This fact should have been more regarded even on the con
servative side, and restrained men from the adventurous attempt
to weave the Lord's manifestations into a progressive and
connected history. Since St. Bernard described the ascension
as the " felix clausula itinerarii Christi," exegesis has not only
preserved the expression, but also expended unbounded labour in
filling up the forty days, calculating the intervals, and explaining
the divine economy accordingly. The fruitlessness of the
enormous labour which Gerhard and others bestowed on these
questions has yet failed to deter more modern theologians from
applying themselves to the task. Once again Gess (Christi
Person und Werk, p. 197 et seq, and also in a separately
published treatise) has made the attempt. Assertions are to be
found in it in abundance ; for proofs we have searched in vain.
But others, too, have sought at least to make out the number and
chronological order of the Lord's appearances. Scripture gives no
help to their endeavours. True, the fourth evangehst once reckons,

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 341
— " this was now the third time that Jesus showed Himself to
His disciples" (xxi. 14); but it is here as with the similar phrase,
" this second miracle again did Jesus " (iv. 54) ; both the descrip
tions refer to what the author meant to relate, but not in general
to what had taken place. True, the Apostle Paul seems to
enumerate the manifestations of Christ not only completely, but
also in their order ; the elra, eireira, ea^arov lead to this con
clusion. But he is reporting what had been delivered to him,
and as it was retained in his memory. His report does not even
tally completely with the Gospel accounts ; and rather than allow
ourselves to subscribe the violent dicta of the older and more
recent Harmonistic, we should prefer to lean to Strauss's judgment,
that the apostle having had vouchsafed to himself a convincing
Christophany, could not have felt any lively interest in sub
jecting the earlier appearances to a thorough investigation. All
these, aimless and fruitless inquiries we therefore set aside.
Neither do we allow place to the further question, whether
Scripture really gives account of all the cases in which the living
One was seen by human eyes. "Many other signs did Jesus in
the presence of His disciples," so writes John (xx. 30), with
evident reference to His appearances ; and of many proofs of His
hfe during the forty days, we find Luke telling (Acts i. 3). Are
these many exhausted by the narratives which we have? We
do not know ; we should rather, for our part, avoid the affirmative
answer. But essentially the question is one of indifference ; our
only concern is to use conscientiously what we have (John xx. 31).
Finally, we pass over in silence those appearances of the Lord,
of which indeed authentic accounts have reached us, though
without their appearing in the form of strict narration. It is
possible on the ground of these to make suppositions, to enter
into calculations of probability, and even to advance to bold con
clusions, — we find ourselves under no temptation to anything of
the kind. Paul names more than five hundred brethren by whom
the Lord was seen at one time ; some of them already fallen
asleep, but the greater part still living. The statement is sur
prising in more than one respect ; but we must be so much the
more careful to avoid daring hypotheses, and take the fact as
it stands.1 The same apostle tells of a Christophany which
1 It has been argued from this fact, that in Galilee — for here it is customary to
seek the five hundred brethren — faith in Christ must already have prevailed very

342 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
happened separately to Peter; and the third evangelist, too,
mentions one such, though only incidentally (Luke xxiv. 34);
but there is a want of all historical material to guide us to an
explanation of it of any certainty. The length to which men go
when they give fancy full scope in this domain, is shown by the
way and manner in which they have expounded the appearance
of the Lord to James. In the Pauline catalogue we read the
short notice : " After that He was seen of James." The legend
which Jerome is said to have found in the Gospel of the
Nazarenes is very generally and justly repudiated. Only this
legend is not nearly so insipid as the assertion of recent theo
logians, that James was charged to induce the disciples to return
from Galilee to Jerusalem (among others, Greve, ubi supra,
p. 57).1 All this, then, we leave aside, and limit ourselves to
the consideration of the actual narratives.
THE LORD'S APPEARANCE TO MARY MAGDALENE.
In the proper place we have indicated the standpoint from
which we have to consider the accounts given of the manifesta
tions of the Eisen One, in order to reach the full conviction of
their historical truth. Let us at once consider the first narrative
before us from this viewpoint. The pith of it lies in its preparing
the Eleven for their Christophany, in its paving the way for their
appointment to office. Thus viewed, the details of the history
widely. And it has been sought to support this inference by the "remarkable"
circumstance that, in our Lord's charge, Acts i. 8, "ye shall be my witnesses in
Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the
earth, " Galilee is purposely left out. But the support is weak, and the circumstance
not so "remarkable." The field of His mission is surveyed by Christ. But as the
disciples were themselves Galileans (dvtipts TaXiXaToi, so they are addressed by the
angel. Are not these all of Galilee ? so the amazed Jews and proselytes ask on the
day of Pentecost), they could not properly be sent forth to Galilee.
1 There is one question which we cannot wholly repress, and one supposition whieh
we will allow ourselves, without, however, claiming for it the least importance. The
history of exegesis shows that expositors with rare unanimity have regarded James,
the Lord's brother, as the receiver of this manifestation. Gerhard remarks (Harm.
c. 213): "Scriptores ecclesiastici uno ore testantur, Christum apparuisse Jacobo
Alphaei filio, quern Paulus vocat fratrem Domini." He himself agrees with this
view, and it is the prevailing one at the present day. But we have in vain sought
for tenable grounds by which it might be justified. It is nothing to the purpose
when Hofmann says (die h. Schr. III. p. 351) that in James' position as president
of the mother church, in consequence of which he was also especially well known,

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 343
will gather clearness, and the last scruples of their credibility
disappear. A question which gave very lively occupation to the
older and far-searching commentators, has been almost entirely
discarded by modern exegesis. We mean the question why the
Lord showed ¦ Himself first of all to the women, and to the
Magdalene in particular ; why He did not appear before all in
the circle of the disciples. One may wonder at this, and more
gravely than did the Twelve once when they found the Master
engaged in conversation with the Samaritan woman. Gerhard
has collected numerous grounds of explanation, — they are one
and all useless (Harm. c. 206 f). True, it may appear quite
appropriate that the Christ risen from the dead should im
mediately become visible at the open grave ; and so it may be
admitted, that those whom grief and love impelled to the tomb
in the grey morning had the first claim to the joy of seeing Him.
But this explanation is only satisfactory on condition that the
Lord appeared to them not for their own sakes, but that they were
merely employed to carry the news to the disciples — apostolae
apostolorum, as the old divines are wont to call them. And is
this condition established by the Gospel description ? We think,
perfectly ! No one will take it amiss if practical exposition, in
the interest of edification, uses the scene with Mary in the manner
familiar to us. It lays the main stress on the dialogue, Map la,
'Pafifiowi. But the real significance of the meeting does not lie
here, but in the Lord's words in ver. 17. We have already
the reason appears why the apostle chooses to mention this appearance. For Paul
does not really make any selection among the Christophanies ; he names all he knows
of. Were it admissible to speak of a persuasion on this field, we should state ours, to
the effect that we are shut up to think of James the elder. It would be surprising, to
begin with, if this disciple during the forty days had lacked the distinction, which he
had enjoyed during the former time, of communion with the Master in equal measure
with Peter and John. But we have a still more definite reason for expecting in his
case peculiarly to hear of a special manifestation of Christ. The Lord made revela
tions both to Peter and John as to their personal lot on the earth. Before the former
He set his death on the cross ; and as to the latter, He expressed Himself somehow
or other about his future, however dark and indefinite the expression is held to be.
"We return to the subject later. And are we to suppose that to the third in the
circle of His closer companions He said nothing of this kind ? Precisely to him He
had certainly something peculiar to say, for his lot stood out above the fate of the
others. He was the first apostle who suffered the martyr death, and drank the cup
of His Master. If he was predestined thereto, if the divine wisdom had this in store
for him, there was certainly a very definite reason for a renewal of the question,
Matt. xx. 22, on the part of the glorified One.

344 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
expounded the dark utterance in an earlier place, and in order to
further explanations we found on the result then gained. It will
be granted us that Mary accompanied her Eabboni with that
" laying hold of His feet and worshipping Him " which Matthew
has expressly asserted of the women on Easter morning. The
prohibition to touch will thus refer to this language of signs, and
more especially to the laying hold, not to the worshipping as such.
The latter would not likely have been forbidden by the Lord ;
Mary's place had no doubt always been at His feet ; and in this
case, too, the prohibition must have been worded otherwise. So
we keep to the Kpareiv alone. In what sense did the disciple
allow herself this action ? Thinking of later scenes, many have
been led to suppose that she too believed she saw only a
glorified spirit from the other world, and therefore was concerned
to reach certainty on the subject by touching with her hands.
That such an imagination passed through her mind we will not
characterize as inconceivable ; only we think it to be improbable,
First, she took the Lord for the gardener, and the next moment
we are to suppose He appeared to her as a sainted spirit. That
is hard to believe. But it is not only improbable, but wholly
impossible to suppose an inference which, on the ground pf that
reflection, she attempted to make. She would thus be put in
the position of Thomas, and the same psychical experiences
asserted of her as passed in that disciple. She must have thought
within herself what Thomas expressed, she must have taken that
which he demanded. There is surely another and a simpler way
of dealing with her " laying hold " or " touching." She has lost
the Lord. She sees Him again. Eabboni, my Master ! such
is the cry which breaks from her; and it is easily intelligible
how she accompanied the exclamation with the symbolical act
of taking possession. She clasps His knees, as the father em
braces the lost son,1 and as men in general appropriate with an
1 It is an appropriate description in which the servants in the parable sum up the
father's demonstrations toward the lost son (Luke xv. 27) : vyialvovra avriv dorixafiiv,
he has him sound again. Of Mary, too, it might have been said : dorixafitv ZSvra
riv xiptov. The corresponding Latin expression would be potiri. So Ulysses says at
the beginning of the dispute over the arms of Achilles (Ovid. Metamorph. xiii. 128
et seq. ) : " Si mea eum vestris valuissent vota, Pelasgi,
Non foret ambiguus tanti certaminis heres,
Tuque tuis armis, nos te poleremur, Achille. "

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 345
inward embrace some good which has been torn from them and
which has been restored. But Christ checks her, and says :
" Touch Me not." He has come, but not, however, to revive the
former intercourse, but to close it. He has returned, not, however,
to remain, but to depart. He has appeared to Mary, not, how
ever, on her own account, but only on account of those to whom
He immediately sends her : " but go to My brethren." He grants
her nothing, and to herself He discovers nothing ; she saw Him,
but only to be the bearer of His message to the Eleven. It is
unmistakeable, in the measure in which the Lord widens the gulf
between Himself and Mary, He fills it up in relation to His
disciples. He describes them as His brethren. Once before
they received the name from His hps (Matt. xii. 49), but not in
the strict, proper, full sense which is demanded here by the
closing words of the verse. In fact, then are they truly His
brethren, if His God is also their God, and His Father is also
theirs. But how did He mean that ? Augustine's explanation,
wliich is commonly taken as satisfactory, and still quoted with
approbation, " natura meus pater, gratia vester," is far too general,
and has no justification in the text ; it overlooks the close con
nection in which the words stand with the verb, I ascend. The
Lord Himself has given an explanation of it in the discourses of
the night of His Passion. " Ye would rejoice because I said, I
go to the Father, for the Father is greater than I ; he that be
lieveth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also, and greater
works than these shall he do, because I go unto My Father."
Brethren, then, is the name He gives to the disciples, because
they are entering into fellowship with Him in His working ;
because, as the Father sent Him into the world, so they too are
to receive the same mission in His name. " Mary comes and
tells the disciples, I have seen the Lord, and He hath spoken
these things unto me." They are thus led to expect to see the
glorified One, and to hear what He has to deliver to them. In
this sense we have said that the manifestation to Mary had not
its end within itself, but paved the way for the appearance of the
Lord among the Eleven, and their appointment to office. The
question may nevertheless be repeated, why such a preparation
was needed, why the Lord did not at once appear in the midst
of " His brethren." We hope our answer will not be unsatis
factory if we recall a divine rule which prevails throughout the

346 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
entire history of the New Testament with extraordinary regularity.
We mean that the joy which is to come to all people is made
known to those who take part in it uniformly by an announce
ment from human lips. This is the way which God has ordained.
And even those have had to come in this way to the joy of Easter,
by whose preaching the whole world has received the message of
salvation. Undoubtedly the apostolic saying is dark, and still
needs to be cleared up : " He was seen of angels, preached among
the Gentiles " (1 Tim. iii. 1 6). But one ray of its dazzling contents
may be discerned with confidence. As far back as we can go, human
preaching was ever the instrument of salvation ; and if we seek to
press further into its very earhest beginnings, they are lost in the
mysterious region wherein the angel world are summoned to behold.
But if, then, the disciples have received Mary's message, we
may surely now expect that the Lord will appear in their midst
without any further intervening incident. And yet we have
such an incident related. We proceed to the weighty task of
explaining this enigmatical circumstance.
THE TRAVELLERS TO EMMAUS.
The faithful zeal which exegesis, both in older and more recent
times, has bestowed on the investigation of this section has cer
tainly had results even in an apologetic point of view. Not only
have many difficulties in detail been removed, but the illustration
of the particulars has also brought out clearly the truly historical
character of the narrative. There is not a single suspicious
feature which lends itself to the idea of the poetical conception
of a legend. We have already mentioned that even Strauss was
not able to escape from this impression. And yet all this labour
has not solved the real task. It will be impossible to contemplate
the incident with entire satisfaction, until the Lord's motive for
this appearance is understood, and therewith the proof furnished
that it filled an important place in the object of the forty days.
It cannot be denied that several noteworthy attempts have been
made also in this direction.1 Some have thought to find the
reason of the appearance in the personality of the travellers.
1 Among these we do not reckon explanations whieh fall under the charge of an
unwarranted type finding. When Stier states the meaning of the event thus : "that
He who has hitherto been visible will henceforth draw near to His own invisibly,

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 347
Gerhard considers these disciples as of a class who, abandoning
hope and with faith disappearing, leave the circle of the disciples ;
to them peculiarly he thinks the Lord must have appeared, who
quenches not the smoking flax (Harm. c. 211, 3). Others, on
the contrary, lay stress on their prominent standing among the
adherents of the Lord. Evidently, say they, they stood specially
near the apostles (eiriaripkoi ev Tot? diroaroXoi^, Eom. xvi. 7 ; Acts
i. 21); from them they went out (two of them, Luke xxiv. 13),
to them they returned (ver. 33); they too, therefore, had a right
to see the glorified One with their own eyes. But all these views
misplace the true point of the case. For the question is not why
the Lord showed Himself to them in particular, but why He mani
fested Himself at all to any others before He appeared in the
midst of the disciples.1 The author of the section, at the close of
the second Gospel, has provided us in one respect with a view
bearing on the matter. He is evidently at pains to discover the
pragmatical connection between the first three Christophanies ;
and he thinks he finds it in the fact that the disciples, after
refusing faith to the message of Mary and the report of the
travellers, first gained their conviction of the resurrection by the
personal appearing of Christ. We cannot indeed adopt this
pragmatism, for the facts do not wholly justify it. But the more
do we acknowledge the correctness of the supposition that both
events must be brought under the same theological viewpoint.
The manifestation at Emmaus also served the end intended by
the experience of Mary. Both are nothing else than preludes to
the Lord's appearing among the Eleven. We do not indeed read
of an express charge received by Cleopas and his companion ; but
it lay evidently in the intention of Christ that they, as Luke tells
us, should immediately hasten back to Jerusalem to communicate
what had happened to them. And there was need of these com
munications, though Mary had already completed her mission;
there was need of them to secure the fulness of blessing for the
manifestation to the disciples. The narrative itself must furnish
the needed explanation.
He will be their fellow-pilgrim on the earth, nay, will turn in and abide with them,"
this may perhaps be an allowable application, but as to the understanding of the
history it does not advance it in the least.
1 "We are supposing, of course, that neither of the two travellers belonged to the
Eleven. If we held, with Carpovius, that the anonymous one was Peter, the whole
question in relation to the narrative would take another form.

348 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
If we compare the charge given to the Magdalene with the
message of the Emmaus disciples to the Eleven, there appears
undoubtedly, so far as the contents are concerned, a striking
similarity between the two; essentially the latter does not go
beyond the former. For the Lord's ascension to the Father, of
which we hear in the first narrative, is identical with the entering
into His glory of the second ; and the raising of the disciples to
the rank of brethren, coincides with that later declaration of
Christ's glory, that He will cause repentance and forgiveness
of sins to be preached in His name among all nations. But
side by side with this similarity of contents there is a striking
difference of form (in describing it the author of the conclusion
of Mark makes use of the expression, another form), which neces
sarily produced also a very different effect. Only on the threshold
of the two accounts there is another likeness to be remarked. In
the later as in the former one, there is a sympathetic inquiring
into the cause of the unconcealed sadness. " Woman, why
weepest thou ? Whom seekest thou ? " And so afterwards :
" What manner of communications are these that ye have one to
another, as ye walk and are sad ? " But from that point the
Lord changes His manner wholly. It was due to His will that
Mary recognised Him at once, if she immediately reached a con
viction which was never touched with a breath of doubt. Again
it lay in His intention that no ray of light flashed on the eye of
the travellers, startling them to ask if He Himself were not the
third man beside them. "Their eyes were holden, that they
should not know Him," ver. 16. And not only at the beginning
of their meeting does He leave the disciples under their mistaken
impression (ver. 18), but during the whole course of the con
versation He keeps back the express discovery that He is the
Lord, whose death they are lamenting. This circumstance renders
the appearance of the Lord now before us different from all1
other cases occurring during the forty days. Indeed, we might
scruple to call it, in the strict sense of the word, a manifestation
of the risen Christ. , Did He not much rather conceal Himself
1 The appearance by the lake of Galilee has sometimes been regarded as an
analogous case. There, too, no doubt the Lord does not expressly make known
who He is ; but how wholly different is it with the disciples on the scene ! " It is
the Lord," so says John at the very first moment ; and of the others, all of them,
we are told : ovbiis Se \-oXpx.oc, ruv ptaSviraiv i\ir do- ai avrov ev ris it', lio'orls on o xvpt'os
io-nv (John xxi. 12).

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 349
from the witnesses than make Himself known to them ; did He
not rather put a covering over His face than raise the veil !
This peculiarity in His procedure could not escape the observa
tion of commentators ; only they have either ignored the question
which arises from it, or, wandering from the main subject, have
limited their attention to secondary points. From Augustine
down to Gerhard,1 commentators have striven to defend the
Lord against a suspicion of simulation (the question in vv. 17
and 19, and still more the expressions in ver. 28, appeared to
give ground for this suspicion). Of course the setting aside of
such difficulties in detail is worthless, so long as the general
difficulty is not removed. Above all, the appearance of contradic
tion, which prevails throughout the whole, demands to be satis
factorily explained. Undoubtedly the Lord puts Himself in the
way of the disciples with the intention of revealing Himself to
them ; but as undoubtedly He wilfully made their recognition of
Him difficult. How are we to harmonize these contradictories ?
For the solution which we offer, we claim the merit of correctness,
because it stands approved when tested by the description of the
evangehst. We proceed on the view that the Emmaus disciples
were intended to reach the joy of Easter by no sort of sensible
perception, but exclusively by the way of faith. Neither eye nor
ear nor hand have a helpful side held out to them. The Lord
does not address them in His wonted tones ; neither does He
allow them a view of the well-known features of His face ; still
less, finally, may they touch the marks of His wounds. This
whole region of ocular appearance is completely removed from
their senses. What do we see passing instead? First, they
receive a rebuke, and the rebuke advances to instruction. What
the former misses, the latter proposes to supply. The message
of the women only produced in their hearts a feeling of pain,
without availing in the least to awaken faith ; so far they may
be compared, as Gerhard rightly remarks, to the smoking flax.
Now the Lord places them where faith when sinking gathers
strength, and when oppressed, finds freedom. They have told
1 Gerhard spares no pains to prove the delusion to be one which was due ex
clusively to the disciples. The iripa ptopipri of Mark is, according to him, to be
understood not i'vrais, but oiopiivus ; and so also the irpotnoroiiiro, ver. 28, and the
determination of the object : iltrxXSiv rov ptuvai, ver. 29, are to be taken thus, quod
discipulis ita videbatur, quod id futurum colligebant.

350 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
Him what it was on which their hope made shipwreck ; He bids
them consider the reason of their lamentation in the light of
Scripture. And He does not leave the lofty task to their own
thinking, but He Himself becomes interpreter, and points out the
harmony between fulfilment and prophecy.
We dare not measure the result of the conversation by what
meets the eye. The disciples continue still to think that the
Lord is a pilgrim from a foreign land ; but while held fast by
this delusion, a strong feeling pervades and glows within them.
" Did not our heart burn within us, while He talked with us by
the way, and while He opened to us the Scriptures ? " The
words are obscure. It is to decline explaining them to say quite
generally that they mean some lively emotion. The question at
once arises, of what kind the emotion was, and, in fact, a more
exact explanation presents itself spontaneously. The burning
heart corresponds to the holden eye. It fares with the disciples
as with the bride in the song : " I sleep, but my heart waketh."
It is the stirring of reawakening faith to which their confession
gives testimony. The smoking flax has become the strong flame,
and despondency has again given way to hope. Without this
hope having found a sure form, without this faith having laid
hold of its object with clear consciousness, they have come, back
to the earlier fixedness of their hearts. They are no more as those
who have no hope ; they are no longer liable to the rebuke,
" How is it that ye have no faith ? " They have again learned to
believe and hope ! This was the Lord's aim, and He gained it —
according to the disciples' own testimony (ver. 32) — by word and
interpretation of Scripture. Only now, when they are raised to
this platform, have they the same privilege as Mary enjoyed at
the very first moment of her meeting. Their eyes are opened,
and they know the Lord. It has been sought to answer the
question whether the breaking of bread merely coincided in time
with the opening of their eyes, 'or whether it is to be judged
rather as the cause of this result. But there ceases to be any
ground of question as soon as it is acknowledged that what
secured the look of recognition for the disciples was the forth-
putting of the Lord's power. His will kept their eyes holden
as long as they lacked faith ; His will opened them after the fire
of faith was kindled in their hearts. Thus it was, in fact, by the
way of faith that the}'- came to the joy of Easter.

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 351
We have sought to point out the difference which the Lord
observed in His conduct toward Mary and the Emmaus dis
ciples. For the moment it may surprise us if, at the close of
the accounts, we find again, instead of difference, a remarkable
similarity. The instant Mary has recognised her Master, He
gravely denies her the enjoyment of His presence ; and the
moment the eyes of the two disciples were opened, He disappeared
from theh- view.1 To Mary He gives the charge to carry the
message to His brethren ; He leaves the disciples to their own
impulse to report to the apostles. But nothing else than likeness
in the close was in reahty to be expected. It is the consequence
of the same aim which the Lord follows in both cases, — the aim,
namely, to make the way clear for His manifestation to the
Eleven. For as He appeared to Mary not on her own account,
so His manifestation at Emmaus had not its object in the per
sons of the receivers. These, like her, were to be His heralds to
the apostles. But they were not to be so in the same way. It
is now clear why the Emmaus message was still necessary after
Mary had already discharged her commission. Of the effect of
the latter, indeed, we have no proper account. However prob
able the supposition that it awoke the Eleven from their state
of lethargic sorrow to a more or less certain expectation, it
appears equally certain that their faith yet laboured under an
oppressive bondage. For it is not a merely individual confession
which comes from the lips of the Emmaus disciples in ver. 22,
but their words reflect the mood which in one degree or another
pervaded the whole circle. And was such a circle a place for
the Eisen One to appear? We do not appeal to the decision of
nice perception. Feeling rejects the thought that the Lord could
have opened the scene of His reappearance with a rebuke of
faithlessness. " 0 fools and slow of heart," — He could not thus
meet those for whom He intended a better greeting. But we do
not press this point, it is not needed. If it was the object of the
1 So far as this trait affects the bodily organism of the Risen One, it has been
fully treated at an earlier stage. But it demands to be again considered from another
point of view. It belongs peculiarly to the present case ; no later appearance pre
sents an analogy. Never did the Lord disappear so suddenly from the eyes of the
apostles, never did He withdraw from them so unexpectedly. They were permitted
to be joyful in His light, to hold Easter in His presence. But to them only did He
allow what He denied to all others. His sudden disappearing at Emmaus is a strong
proof that His manifestation there was chiefly in the interest of the apostles.

352 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
manifestations of the living One to invest the disciples with the
apostolic office, the condition is clear on which He was able for
this end to reveal Himself to them, — the restitution of their faith
was indispensably presupposed. And the instruments were
already there, by whose ministry the end could be reached.
By the way of faith the Lord has guided the Emmaus disciples
to the joy of Easter. They go to tell the Eleven what had hap
pened to them in the interval, and the effect of their account
cannot be doubted. They prepared a place of faith in the chosen
disciples for the appearance of the Eisen One.1
To sum up : The Lord wished to be expected when He
appeared in the midst of His own with the salutation of peace;
He wished to find them in the attitude He had once described
in parabolic words: "Be ye like unto men, who wait for the
coming of their Lord ; " and He brought them by Mary's message
to this state of expectation. He wished to be received in faith,
when He came to commit to them their high office ; and this
end He gained by the ministry of the Emmaus disciples. But
thus all the conditions were fulfilled needful for His showing
Himself in the midst of them, to use the words of Paul, " in ful
ness of blessing ; " and lo, He appears !
THE CHRISTOPHANY ON EASTER EVENING.
The manifestation on Easter evening forms the climax in the
history of the forty days. In this light it becomes known to us
chiefly from the description of the fourth evangelist. Its glory
is barely seen through the narrative of Luke. The identity of
the occurrence related by John xx. 19 et seq. and Luke xxiv.
36 et seq., has never yet been disputed; beginning, course, and
end coincide so thoroughly that there is no place left for doubt.
But as httle can we conceal from ourselves that the two evan
gelists have laid the main stress on very different places. Luke
dwells on the Lord's assurance, " It is I myself," and on the proof
he gives of the reahty of His body ; for the rest, he lets the
further course of the Christophany melt away into a general
1 We may be told that the Lord Himself, when He appeared among His disciples,
nevertheless took pains to restore their faith. Only it was not unbelief which met
Him in their circle, but more the misgiving whether He was among them o-aipoarixSis.
And such a doubt can co-exist with the full joy of faith.

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 353
history of the forty days.1 John, indeed, does not entirely pass
over the point emphasized by the third evangelist, but his main
interest has obviously taken a wholly different direction. We
ask attention to a circumstance which has either not been suf
ficiently appreciated at all, or at least has not received a satis
factory explanation. " Peace be unto you," — with this salutation
the Lord steps into the midst of His disciples. The Lutheran
theologians have rightly rejected Calvin's explanation : " Vulgaris
est salutandi forma apud Hebraeos ; " but they themselves are
equally mistaken when by peace they understand the whole
blessings won by Christ.2 For the purpose of explanation we
have not to go back on the assurance which the Lord gave on
the night of His Passion, John xiv. 27, but on an instruction
which He delivered to His own at an earlier time when sending
them out as evangehsts. " Into whatsoever house ye enter, first
say : Peace be to this house," Luke x. 5 et seq. ; Matt. x. 1 2
et seq. The salutation of the risen Christ, therefore, is directed
to the future preachers of salvation. It is the introduction of
1 "We hold the firmest conviction that Luke closed his account of the history
of Easter evening as such with ver. 43. "Ver. 44 begins a compendium of what
the Lord spoke during the forty days, and especially before His ascension. As the
section, John xii. 44-50, introduced by the words, '"Ititrovs 2s ixpal-iv xa) s7*s»,"
presents a summary of the testimonies which the Lord delivered respecting His
person and preaching, so, too, it is here. If any one takes up the impression that
the whole of Luke xxiv. is to be regarded as contained within the course of one day,
with him there can be no dispute. We for our part confess to the very opposite,
and we justify our impression by the Ciiriv 2s aliroTs, ver. 44, but still more by the
evrot oi xiyoi piov at the beginning, which sounds almost like a title. The charge that
this is a violent and arbitrary shift of Harmonistic, we repudiate as wholly ground
less. We should be unable to say how otherwise Luke ought to have written than
he has done, if he had at all, comp. ix. 51, in view to carry the Gospel history down
to the ipiipa avaXn^nus Xpitrrov. It is a further corroboration, that by our view the
apparent discrepancy between the conclusion of the third Gospel and the beginning
of the Acts receives an easy and natural explanation. Dr. Wieseler (comp. his
Beitrage zur richtigen Wurdigung der Evangelien und der evangelisehen Geschichte,
Gotha 1869, p. 285 ff.) has adduced an extremely exact analogy from the archaeology
of Josephus. There is another exemplification, which brings the matter perhaps into
yet clearer light. Suppose that Luke, after completing his second work, had seen
himself in a position to give additional information to Christendom respecting the
later fortunes of Paul, his details of the Roman onrla would stand related to the
end of the Acts as the beginning of the Acts is related to the close of the Gospel.
"We return again to the subject hereafter.
2 Yet more decidedly are the special references to be rejected which more recent
commentators allege. Tholuck refers to the " peace of reconciliation " which the
Risen One gained ; Hengstenberg, to the pledge of victory over all hostile powers ;
but tlpmn a victorious struggle, — that is purely impossible,
Z

354 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
the act whereby He will deliver to them their office, with all
the powers and duties which it contains. Expositors could
scarcely have missed this the only possible view, had not a scene
followed immediately after the " Peace be unto you," which seems
to point attention to a quite different direction. But those are
greatly mistaken who trace back this scene to a deliberate pur
pose, or judge it even as the real aim of Christ's appearing.
When He saw the disciples trembling because they imagined-
they saw a spirit, it was certainly natural that He should remove
the delusion from their hearts; but we cannot say on this
account that the interest of His manifestation lay in setting aside
this delusion, nor had His peace greeting anything to do with it.
What, then, do we see happening after this interlude ? The
Lord renews the same salutation : " Again He said unto them,
Peace be unto you " (John xx. 21),1 and follows it with the act
which their conduct has for the moment delayed, the act of their
appointment to office. "As the Father sent (direaraXKev) Me,
even so send (irep,irco) I you." In the variation of terms there is
nothing to be sought, — least of all (as Hengstenberg thinks) the'
view of avoiding too great an equalization between Christ and
the apostles.2 But the emphasis lies, on the one hand, on the as,
Ka0<os; on the other, on the present, I send. Ka6d><s we read,
not w? or wairep. The two particles, as is well known, are dis
tinguished in this way. The latter (sicut) is used to introduce
merely a formal correspondence ; the former, on the contrary
(quemadmodum), a material, matter-of-fact correspondence. And
so the point of comparison is not that in both cases a sending
takes place, but the mission of the disciples is carried out in a
way analogous to that in which, formerly, the sending of the Son
was carried out by the Father. The Father never sent another
1 This point of view is the only one which explains satisfactorily the repetition of
the greeting. By the second sip rm ipt,7v the Lord begins anew ; He proceeds to the
act to which this formula was the introduction, — to the act which He had been
prevented from carrying out immediately by the attitude of the disciples. Meyer's
remark, that the repetition is to be understood in the way of emphasis and im
pressiveness, remains unmeaning so long as the reason of the repetition is not
indicated. And Hengstenberg's explanation, that the first greeting was for the
disciples and the second for the apostles, can hardly be defended from the charge of
arbitrariness. 2 The term which the Lord here applies to Himself, He claims also, ch. xvii. 18,
for the disciples; on the other hand, that which He here uses in regard to the
apostles, He elsewhere frequently employs of Himself.

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 355
into the world as He sent His Son ; and the mission which the
Lord gave to His disciples He never entrusted to any except
them. It is the incomparable dignity of the apostolic call which
has received its expression and meaning in the Kadms. An office
whose co-efficient rests in the sending of the Son, must for this
very reason possess the unequalled brightness which Paxil has
described 2 Cor. iii ; and this high calling the Lord gives His
assembled ones at the present moment. In attaching weight to
the present ire/iira, we are guided not only by the foregoing per
fect, but also by the parallels in the high-priestly prayer (ch.
xvii. 18), where botn the protasis and the apodosis have the aorist.
The aorists denote the fact ; the change from the preterite to the
present brings the time relations into prominence. The mission
of the Son is completed, that of the apostles is beginning. And
it begins, though still deferred in its exercise, when the Lord puts
the office into their hands. " I send you," — by this word they have
received the apostleship for the world. From this time forward
they are that to which grace destined them from the beginning.
From this viewpoint let us consider the act to which the Eisen
One immediately proceeded. By the phrase, " and when He had
said this," it is put into immediate connection with the words just
uttered. And, in point of fact, it casts as clear a light upon them -
as it receives in return. Already, at an earlier stage, we have
devoted a thoroughgoing investigation to this highly important
fact. It had to do only, however, with the problem, how the
glorification of the Lord stood connected with the sending of the
Spirit. The question as to the effect of the act was not then
before us. " Eeceive the Holy Spirit." So says the Lord. It is
as foolish to refuse the imperative its strict meaning, as it is
impossible to understand its object in a weakened sense. " Take
ye," and they took; here not less certainly than in the nearly
related case, Matt. xxvi. 26. And what they took was the Holy
Spirit, beside whom there is no other ; whom, therefore, we are
always to understand where the term, with or without the article,
meets us. But an apparent contradiction which, in that case,
stares us in the face, demands to be set aside. " Eeceive the
Holy Spirit." So sounds the command on Easter evening ; and
on the day of the ascension the promise is given : " Ye shall
receive power when the Holy Ghost is come upon you," Acts i. 8.
Against the explanation that the one is related to the other, as

356 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
the beginning to the full enjoyment, we should be warned by the
saying of the Baptist, " God giveth the Spirit not by measure "
(John iii. 34). The approved remark of Bengel, " arrha pente-
costes," the view of a "first-fruits of the Spirit" in a partitive
sense, does not stand biblical testing ; for it is the Spirit Himself,
and not a preliminary measure of the Spirit, which is meant by
the 'apostle, Eom. viii. 23, by the gift of the first-fruits. The
difficulty is removed in a less violent way as soon as the Lord's
act is viewed in its proper relation to His previous words. He
names the disciples to be His apostles. His naming is their real
exaltation to the dignity of this office. But they would not have
truly received the office, which is aptly described by Paul as the
" ministry of the Spirit," had not the gift of the Spirit been at
that moment bestowed on them. (Gerhard, rightly : " acceperunt
Spiritum ratione ministerii evangelici.") The word calling them
to office needed the accompanying act, — not in order to its con
firmation, but certainly in the interest of its actual realization.
Let us look at this connection. In the light of it, it is easy to
understand why the Easter gift manifested itself neither inwardly
in their experience, nor even outwardly. Belonging strictly to the
office, and the co-efficient of its idea, it could not but be hid and
remain still, so long as the exercise of the office was yet delayed ;
and therefore we can understand why the subject of possession
remained still a matter of promise. The tone of promise, Acts
i. 8, was the more justified, as the assurance which is heard on
the day of ascension relates not to the gift, but the power of the
Spirit, — a power which, besides, is put in the close of the verse
in the most express relation to the fulfilment of their duty as
witnesses.1 We have sought to show, in the proper place, how significant
it is that the Lord gave forth the streams of the Spirit from His
1 This view removes the objections which Jul. Muller (ubi supra, p. 527) has
raised against the only possible explanation of ver. 22. No ; the church is not mis
taken in celebrating the feast of Pentecost on the fiftieth day after Easter. Her right
remains untouched, though the disciples received the gift of the Spirit on Easter
evening. The Lord's own history presents an analogy. He was conceived by the
Holy Spirit ; and yet the spirit of power for the work of His office came upon Him
at His baptism in Jordan. In the case of the apostles there was the same necessity.
It was not till the moment when the exercise of their calling began that they could
and must be filled with the "ivvapus of the same Holy Spirit who had been already
imparted to them as the iupid of their Lord.

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 357
body on occasion of His first manifestation in the midst of His
own. Yet the stress of our narrative lies not so much on this
point as on the entrusting of their office to the assembled ten.
Herein lay the true and essential object for which the Eisen One
appeared in the midst of them on this Easter evening. To this
object the salutation at the beginning was intended ; the same
object is reflected by the mighty utterance at the close : " Whose
soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them." Undoubtedly
this concluding word of the Lord stands also in connection with
the bestowal of the Spirit. For neither the remission nor the
forgiveness of sins can be autocratic, but both alike stand wholly
under the power of the Holy Spirit. But the condition is one
thing, the actual power another. Therefore the power (egovaia)
to remit or to retain sins belongs to no one simply because he has
received the gift of the Spirit ; it must above all be given him
from the right place. We, too, like Hofmann (comp. Schriftbew.
II. p. 523), refuse to speak of an "empowering," and reject the
view of a " special power " resting on a specific endowment ; but
how, then, could the Lord have guaranteed success to the apostles,
— how could He give them assurances had not an express com
mission, nay, in some sense even plenipotentiary powers, been
previously bestowed! Only the Son of man had the power on
earth to forgive sins (Matt. ix. 6) ; now He commits it also to
those to whom He says : " As My Father hath sent Me, so send
I you." The words of this sending, and the utterance to which
we have come at the close, are most intimately connected, and
mutually complete one another. In the former case, a purely
formal destination; here, the mere tone of assurance; but this
very assurance gives substance to the formal destination, while the
certification again has its basis in the commission of the apostles :
" I send you." And for what purpose ? Well, for the purpose
of forgiving and retaining sins. The message which they are
called to proclaim to the world is an offer of salvation. Eeceived,
it produces life and blessedness ; rejected, it is a savour of death
unto death. And " ye shall remit sins and retain sins ; " for it is
i" who send you, and I send you in the same way as the Father
sent Me Myself into the world.1 Thus our closing word, too, like
1 Thus, in ver. 23, there is not a word of a disciplinary function on the part of the
apostles — of the power of the keys, in the ecclesiastico-political sense, of absolution,
and excommunication. Comp. Hofmann, Schriftbew. Ill, p. 271. Also Jul. Muller,

358 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
every other syllable which came this evening from the mouth of
the risen Christ, was subservient to the installation of the apostles
in their office. Thereby the aim of His present manifestation is
exhausted. And the Lord gained His object. Only, indeed, not
on the whole group of His own. One of them He must miss on
His appearing. Thomas has frequently been reproached for this
absence. In point of fact, the evangehst seems, by subjoining to
the name ofthe disciple the phrase, one ofthe Twelve (comp. vi. 71),
— for more is evidently meant thereby than the simple av/j,/ia-
8rjrrj<i, xi. 16, — desirous to mark the fact that he was not with
them as a matter of surprise.1 Nor certainly dare we judge the
circumstance as accidental, in the same sense as accident may
have formed the company in ch. xxi. Only the reason of it
should have been investigated before proceeding to frame a charge.
Meanwhile, be that as it may, the Lord would not and could not
let the disciple go. No other save the one lost child should fall
under the doom of the prophecy : " his bishopric let another
take" (Acts i. 20). We are therefore prepared to find the Chief
Shepherd dealing with the missed one. Whether the ten cherished
such an expectation we know not. Certainly we are much more
inclined to suppose that the case of Thomas detained them in
Jerusalem, than to the conclusion that their desire to complete
the eight days of the Passover feast hindered them from starting
for Galilee as they were commanded. So soon as the excom
munication is removed, they go their appointed way.
THE HISTORY OF THOMAS.
The fourth evangelist has so prepared us, by more than one
statement, for the conduct of Thomas, that it can neither surprise
us nor appear at all mysterious. The " morositas," which Gerhard
ascribes to the disciple, no more characterizes him than the self-
sufficiency (avroaocbta) with which this theologian charges him.
John teaches us to know him better. He has revealed a side of
ubi supra, p. 525. Augustine's beautiful remark, " haec verba certiora sunt, quam
omnia regum edicta et diplomata," we should not admit in this relation.
1 On the contrary, we decidedly reject the view that the phrase i Xiyipiivos Atiuptos is
meant to describe the character of the disciple— his h^vx'ia. This appellation is also
found in places where the disciple, as in xxi. 2, is mentioned in a purely historical
connection. The search after secret tendencies in John's designations of persons has
not furthered the understanding of the fourth Gospel, but the reverse.

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 359
his character which separated him more or less sharply from the
rest, and which explains his present absence from their society.
True, none of them understood the words in which the Lord, on
the night of His Passion, testified to them of His departure to the
Father, and His coming again ; but how external was the sense
in which Thomas particularly understood the saying (John xiv. 5),
and how alarmingly near does he border on the fleshly misunder
standing of the Jews (vii. 35, viii. 22) ! True, all the disciples
tried to dissuade the Master when He was resolved to go to Judea
(xi. 8), — they are afraid of His possible death ; but it is only
Thomas who persists in his protest, and indulges in an expression
on the subject which breathed everything else rather than the
courage of love and obedience which commentators have found in
it. Undoubtedly this disciple also was firmly and inwardly per
suaded of the Messiahship of Jesus ; but we have more than mere
imagination to guide us as to the way which led him to this con
viction, and as to the view which he formed of its meaning. If
there was any one of the Eleven to whom the sentence applied,
" thou savourest not the things which be of God, but the things
which be of men," Thomas is decidedly the man most exactly
described by the words. He believed from the beginning only
because he saw, — because he observed a superhuman power in the
appearing of Jesus ; in this power he hoped, — from it he expected
the redemption of Israel. He, more than any of the others, lacked
the faith which needs not this medium of proof, and holds its
ground independently of it, — the faith which opens up in the
soul a source of blessedness (comp. the beatitude, ver. 29). Hardly
did he, from the heart, unite in the confession which the disciples
made at the end of the conversations of Passion night, and which
the Lord sealed with the acknowledgment, " ye believe " (John
xvi. 30, 31). It is characteristic when he meets the stirring call,
" Believe in God, believe also in Me " (John xiv. 1), with an
objection which stood diametrically opposed to the exhortation
still sounding in his ear. When, now, he saw the Lord succumb
in the struggle, — when he saw the end of the Christ on the cross,
— then the crutch which had supported his faith feh away, and
his hope lost its support. It is true the disciples all went to their
own when the Shepherd of the flock was smitten ; but in the case
of Thomas, his return to his own was accompanied with shipwreck
of faith. " Be (become) not faithless, but believing ; " the Lord

360 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
sends this arrow deep into His disciple's soul in the hour of His
appearing. Commentators rightly insist on the strict meaning of
the become (ylvov). Thus they hold it is not being (seyn), but coming
into being (werden) which is spoken of*. And they are not likely
to let their right be disputed, either by "fine experts in the
Greek," nor by the phrase of Gess (ubi supra, p. 345), that in
this way men land in groundless refinements. Only it is im
possible to draw the line with perfect sharpness between the two.
The disciple is pointed to the threatening end just because he is
already treading the way of danger — because with him the process
of progressive unbelief is already begun. The history testifies to
the justice of this supposition. Thomas, too, received the message
of Mary. The impression it made on the Eleven was certainly
not the same in the case of all ; important shades of difference
are a matter of course. But on one of them it produced no effect
whatever, not even that measure to which the Emmaus travellers
confess. If persistent faith again united the rest, he whom we
miss from their circle did not share their hope in the least. It
is not "heaviness and melancholy misgiving," or anything else
which commentators have arrived at in the way of psychology, but
simply the want of faith which explains his separation. Now
there is brought to him news of the event of Easter evening.
And what is revealed by his manner of meeting it ? He is not
astonished ; he expresses no wish, no other interest whatever, save
that of contradicting the report of the witnesses. The negative
form in which he expresses himself has not escaped the penetra
tion of Bengel. This excellent commentator rightly remarks :
" non dicit, si videro credam ; sed solummodo, nisi videro non
credam." And with equal right he infers the conclusion : " pro-
fessa incredulitas !" For the man who can assert this decisive
" I will not believe," has denied the faith, and seems determined
to follow to the end the way of unbelief. Only a higher power
is able to put an arrest on the motion, and work a complete
revolution. And, in fact, this higher power interposed decisively.
The Lord would not have again appeared to His own in Jeru
salem, had not the case of Thomas altered His original intention.
It was for this disciple's sake that He manifested Himself once
more on the same spot. It is only His salutation that He offers
to the whole circle; in all His further dealings He addresses
Himself entirely to the one. But the aim of His manifestation

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 361
was not confined to the person of this one. Otherwise He
would have showed Himself to him apart, as He had already
done to Peter, and as He did afterwards to James. That the
dialogue with Thomas passed in the presence of all so publicly
and solemnly, betrays a purpose which, reaching far beyond
the disciple's individual want, contemplated a far-reaching
blessing. To understand this purpose, let us once more consider the
phenomenon presented by him who was the first to enjoy the
blessing. From the earhest times it has been customary to call
Thomas a doubter. We think the designation apt. Nay, we
hold that this is the first case in Christian history in which the
idea of doubt found a concrete realization. The popular under
standing of it requires considerable modifications. It is con
founded with the modern phenomenon of scepticism, when its
essence is sought in an undecided oscillation between opposite
poles. Doubt arises from unbelief; in the latter is to be found
its absolutely necessary condition. Thomas had forsaken faith,
even before the thought of doubt entered his heart, or the word
doubt went out of his mouth. There is a like anachronism in
applying modern categories, when doubt is taken to rest in the
region of the understanding only. The distinction between head
and heart in general finds small support in Scripture, least of all
has it biblical confirmation in the domain before us. There we
find the thoughts (SiaXoyiap,oi) put in too close a relation to the
heart1 to admit of our supposing that the heart is at bottom
disposed to faith, and only the understanding refuses to follow its
drawing. It is still the fashion to credit Thomas with a " critical
turn of mind ;" but this cheap phrase, this arbitrary abstraction,
does not help the understanding of the case. Let us look closely
at the Gospel account. The demand of the disciple is related to
us with remarkable fulness and particularity. The gist of the
matter must be contained in this demand. So it was the Lord's
resurrection wliich the doubter questioned. He argues a fact
away which, the instant it is stated and accepted, deprives un
belief of its basis and of every pretext for its justification. Thus,
then, doubt would seem to be the weapon of which unbelief
1 And that no less in relation to the ixoropivmiai (comp. Matt. xv. 19 : ix ris xapilas
i%ip%ovrai ftaXoyio-pio) orovnpol), as in respect ofthe ilsoropivmiai (comp. Luke xxiv. 38:
har! a'laXoyio-fto) dvafixlvouo-tv iv raTg xapolais iiptwv ;).

362 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
makes use for its self-preservation; it is the means employed
by it to maintain its standing.1 This weapon was to be wrested,
this instrument to be taken from it ; such is the end for which
the Captain of faith appears. He judged the doubt and destroyed
its power. He constrains the disciple to make the good con
fession ; and by the rebuke which He adds, He has paved the
return to faith throughout the entire future of His church for
all like-minded spirits.2 The twofold question which arises is
sufficiently answered in the text. As for Thomas himself, it was
the Lord's appearing indeed which removed the disciple's doubt.
But wherein lay the effectual power ? The picture which
Gerhard draws, " non pudore ac rubore suffusus, sed audacter et
intrepide digitos suos in vestigia clavorum ingerit, donee resipi-
sceret et exclamaret, dominus meus et Deus meus," is probably
the exact opposite of the truth. No one receives the impression
from this confession that it was the fruit of a testing by the
senses ; it is even hard to persuade oneself that the disciple
actually put his test in practice.3 The words which break from
him remind us vividly of an earlier case. It was exactly so that
Nathanael once confessed : Eabbi, Thou art the Son of God, Thou
art the king of Israel. And when did he confess this ? When
he felt the look of the heart-knower. So Thomas also feels him
self read by the eye of one who sees what is hidden, and has
1 It is not at all peculiar to the ease before us that doubt appears specially
directed against the Easter tidings. The same will happen in every case in which
it is resolved to consolidate and maintain itself. It must always in the end dispute
that fact whieh, if it is admitted, renders every other misgiving utterly insignificant.
Doubt in Christianity taken concretely is ever a doubt of the Lord's resurrection.
This is attested by history. In a, former connection we expressed our agreement
with Hofmann's observation, that those Christians in Corinth certainly did not
question the resurrection of Christ directly. But the apostle fears that they have
slid from the path of faith (1 Cor. xv. 33, 34) ; he fears the infection of doubt from
which they suffer, and foresees with certainty that they will proceed in this, way
at last to the denial of the Easter message. By way of precaution, therefore, he
turns attention to the possible danger. It is further notorious that the later
scientific assault upon Christianity, from the Fragmentist down to the present
hour, has uniformly found its climax in contesting the Lord's resurrection.
2 The oft-repeated saying, that doubt is a bridge of faith, is only so far relatively
true, that of course weakened faith may again be healed by the overcoming of the
doubt. With this exception, the proposition remains true, that doubt born of un
belief follows the interest of the latter.
3 We agree with Stier in inferring from the Lord's words, oti iipaxds pn morltr-
nvxas, that Thomas did not go the length of touching. Comp. Reden Jesu, VI.
p. 778.

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 363
found out the counsel of his heart. We must compare tbe Lord's
words with the claim which the disciple had set up. The grace
of Christ offers him precisely what he had described as the price
of his faith — almost letter for letter ; and to his asseveration, " I
will not believe," there is returned the echo, " Become not faith
less, but believing." It was this that overcame him,1 and carried
him far beyond the merely negative result of the removal of his
doubt. He has seen the Lord, and holds himself to be persuaded
of His resurrection; however, we do not find him resting here, but
by this means he is raised to the height of faith, and appears as
Eke the others as a true apostle of the Lord.
There is good reason for speaking of a permanent gain which
has accrued to Christendom from the history of Thomas. Older
commentators especially have sought to indicate its worth. They
rate it far too high. Never should they have gone the length of
saying that the doubt of the one has been a greater blessing to
the church than all the faith of the rest. " Dubitavit ille, ne
nos dubitaremus ;" in this saying of Gregory's the limit is rightly
drawn. " Ne nos dubitaremus," for here the Lord has in fact
deprived doubt of its right and ground for all ages. Thomas is
evidently conscious of something wrong ; he is ashamed because
he has doubted. But every later doubter brings himself under
a bitterer reproach. For he disregards what the Lord did here
in giving the fullest satisfaction to the demand of the disciple.
Henceforth doubt is a mere pretext. The Lord's parting word :
" Blessed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed,"
is in form a universal proposition similar to the beatitudes of
the Sermon on the Mount ; in substance it is intended for the
future of the church. It by no means questions the blessedness
of Thomas ; this appears as plainly from the words of his con
fession, as it shone forth in the report of Mary that she had seen
the Lord (ver. 18), and in the exclamation of the disciples:
We have seen the Lord (ver. 25). But certainly those make
shipwreck of faith and faith's blessedness who are not satisfied
with the message of the apostles, now that the Lord has gone
beyond the domain of the senses. And so Peter writes to the
1 The circumstance that the fourth evangelist more than the others is in the
habit of judging the look of the heart-knower both as a prominent sign of His
divinity and also as the most effectual instrument of His power over the souls of
men, goes certainly to commend this view.

364 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
churches of the Diaspora : " whom not seeing, but believing, ye
rejoice with joy unspeakable." And in beautiful harmony with
the history of Thomas and with the beatitude in which it
terminated, the fourth evangelist puts the copestone on his narra
tive with the words : " These things are written that ye might
believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that
believing, ye might have hfe through His name."
We have described the installation of the disciples of Jesus in
the apostolic office as the comprehensive and exhaustive object
of the manifestations of the risen Christ, and the last considered
narrative by no means forms an exception. It, too, may be
regarded without violence from the same teleological viewpoint.
On the one hand, so far as concerns Thomas, the effect of his
experience was not only the reviving of his faith, but at the same
moment he also entered into office. It was not necessary for
this end that the Lord should repeat what He did on Easter
evening. For it was not on the disciples individually, but on
the whole assembly, that He bestowed the breath of His mouth,
the gift of His Spirit. Whoever received a sure place in this
privileged circle became thereby possessed of its blessings. And
on the other hand, the disciples, through what passed before them
in the case of the one, gained a mighty weapon for the carrying-
out of their office. They learned to stand the fight against
doubt, and to know that all-important side of their calling, which
Paul has described as a " pulling down of strongholds and imagi
nations and every high thing," as a " bringing into captivity
every thought to the obedience of Christ." Nevertheless, it
remains true that this second manifestation in Judea did not lie in
the Lord's original intention. He has sent His own to Galilee,
and for Galilee they start. There they await His renewed appear
ing, and their expectation is not disappointed.
THE MANIFESTATION BY THE LAKE.
It may seem that the critical question to which the last
chapter of the fourth Gospel gives rise, and which still continues
to excite a hvely interest, is a matter of indifference for apolo
getic purposes. Even those on whom the section produces the
impression first proclaimed by Grotius, yet refer the substance
of the history to the authority of the evangelist ; whether they

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 365
hold that the apostle added the appendix with his own hand at a
later time, or that we owe the written form to the church of
Ephesus transmitting his oral communication. So in any case
there would remain a sufficiently sure basis for considering the
subject. And yet it is with deliberate purpose we put the confes
sion at the outset, that for our part we are convinced of the
continuity of the Johannine authorship. The grounds on which
Carpovius was led to his well-known judgment may not be accepted;
the judgment itself — "nova est haec sententia et nullo nitens
fundanunto " (Bibl. illustr. ad Joh. xx. 3 0) — is perfectly right.
For it is no argument to say that the end of ch. xx. bears the
stamp of a formal conclusion, and prepares us for no further
statements. Those who take up this impression from the words
can surely only have read them in a very hasty way. Un
doubtedly the evangelist terminates that narrative which was
intended to establish the faith of his readers ; hut he has by no
means precluded himself from relating facts which, if less signi
ficant for the flock, are the more so for the shepherds. And this
is precisely the character of the section before us.
" After these things," so it begins. The phrase is well known
to us from the fourth GospeL It is not used to introduce an
" appendix " (so Meyer), but an aceount of events separated from
the preceding by a longer or shorter interval, though otherwise
linked to them (vi. 1, et al.). " This is now the third time that
Jesus showed Himself to His disciples," so we read in ver. 1 4 ;
but this notice does not seem to us to be reconcilable either
with the appendix - theory or with the supposition of another
author. Accordingly we should require more conclusive argu
ments than the ordinary ones before giving up a view which
passed undisputed in the church down to the time of Grotius.
But, indeed, the more persistently we hold it, the more urgent
does the question become, what was the Lord's object in this
manifestation. He who holds our chapter to be an addition of
later date will be easily won to the opinion which Credner, among
others (comp. Einl. in das N. T. I. p. 233), represents. "The
error spread through the churches that the Apostle John would
live on till Christ's second coming. The view of removing this
delusion, or at least making it harmless, led the author to commit
to writing the exact words in which the Lord indicated the fate
of this disciple. The proper aim of the narrative is therefore to

366 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
be sought in the contents of the last verses, while all that pre
cedes is to be regarded as a mere historical framework."
On the contrary, the man who insists on the continuity of
the Johannine record will undoubtedly find the main point of
the history in its first half, the final verses being least of all
emphasized.1 His entire position as an inquirer will be a
different one. His question will not take the form : for what
reason has the author communicated the narrative ? but its tenor
will be this : for what purpose did the Lord manifest Himself
in the way described ?
The natural consequence of the peculiar charm of the narrative
before us and its mysterious character has been, that no other
portion of John's Gospel has been so thoroughly treated (comp.
Stier, Beden Jesu, VI. pp. 795— 876 ; Hengstenberg, Comm. III.
pp. 322—359). Every detail has been explored by the zeal of
investigators, and there is hardly an imaginable question which
has not been raised and attempted to be answered. It has been
sought to ascertain the relation between the <piXeiv and the
dyairdv, between the Simon son of Jonas and the Peter ; the
question has been weighed whether the Lord partook of the
meal, or whether He acted merely as the host; whether the
meal hour passed in solemn silence, or seasoned with conversa
tion. That most of these inquiries have led to views full of
arbitrariness, and assertions full of error, will be confessed by
those who have glanced over the literature referred to. But yet
much more have we to lament the circumstance that this style
of microscopic observation has led away from the question which
we regard as the weightiest and most essential. It is true,
commentators have touched it in passing ;¦ but it claims a more
satisfactory solution than Gerhard gives when he says : "Christus
eo venerat, ut discipulis resurrectionis suae.veritatem et majestatem
denuo manifestaret ; " or Stier, when he supposes that the Lord,
pointing to the future while pledging these blessings, meant to
represent as in a figure His continued spiritual presence and
operation. There can be no doubt in our case as to the point from which
we have to start if we take the object of all the manifestations
1 And this will appear as inevitable in any circumstances whenever the Lord's
question to Peter, ri orpis o-i -, is duly estimated. A statement which is introduced
by this question can certainly not be the gist of the whole narrative.

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 367
of the risen Christ to be the raising of the disciples to the
apostolate ; we stand, of course, by the presupposition that the
present manifestation also took place in the same interest. And
this view is justified on all sides in the most obvious way. No
one reads the narrative without being reminded of an earlier
occurrence which accompanied the calling of the first disciples.
At least John himself was deeply moved by this reminiscence ;
for it was in consequence of it that he recognised the man on
the shore. That earlier draught of fishes made by Peter was
interpreted by the Lord as expressly teaching the Halieutics of
His disciples ; and so we think here also of their calling as
fishers of men. But why is this symbolical deed repeated before
the eyes of the disciples ? In what interest are they so anxiously
reminded of its meaning ? And on what point are they called to
lay stress ? Do they receive a renewed pledge of the success of
their work ? x Or the proof over again that all blessing comes
from the Lord only ? They needed neither the one nor the
other. But one thing at least we understand. When the Lord
raised them on Easter evening to the dignity of His apostles, it
was the exalted character of the office, its power and right, on
1 The evangelist has transcribed the number of the fishes caught. Hence the
conclusion has been often drawn, that the gist of the narrative is to be found in the
largeness of the draught. But the success in this case does not at all exceed the
amount of the take at the beginning. Here the net remains unbroken, whereas ih
the former case it gives way, and two boats are not sufficient to receive the fulness
of the blessing. As to the rest, it is true that the hundred and fifty and three large
fishes are meant to indicate the abundance of the result, exactly as the six waterpots
indicate the large quantity of wine which Jesus provided at Cana, and the baskets
full of fragments the overflowing remains of the desert meal. On the number as
such we lay no stress, and repudiate the allegorical game which has frequently been
played with it. If Peter counted the fishes at all, the result must have been, of
course, an exact number, and the only wonder on the subject could be that the man
who was so deeply overpowered on occasion of the first draught, found in the present
case composure for counting. Strauss has set it down to the praise of Dr. Hengsten
berg that here for once he has made a genuine discovery. By the number there is
really symbolized, he tells us, the irxfipupoa ihSv ; for Solomon rightly counted a
hundred and fifty-three thousand strangers in the land of Israel (2 Chron. ii. 17),
and for every thousand there is a fish. Dr. Hengstenberg is by no means altogether
unmoved by this praise. For our part, we should have repudiated such a Danaean
gift. Meanwhile the " discovery " is of no higher value than the supposition made
by Jerome. We have every reason to reject the former still more decidedly than
the latter. The man who regards our narrative as a myth will, of course, welcome
the vaunted interpretation. On the opposite supposition, along with the interest,
there disappears every argument in its support. Comp. Strauss, die Halben und
die Ganzen, p. 126 f.

368 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
which He Himself laid stress. He reflected on their countenances
the fulness of that majesty wherein He appeared before their eyes.
The hour had struck when His assurance came to its fulfilment :
" Ye are they which have continued with Me in My temptations ;
and I appoint unto you a kingdom, as My Father hath appointed
unto Me, that ye may sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes
of Israel" As He Himself at the bidding of His Father, " Sit
Thou on My right hand," has taken the sceptre of His kingdom,
so on His side He installs the disciples in their place of power
in this kingdom. That in this solemn hour He leaves the
reverse side of the case untouched, and chooses so to do, requires
no explanation or justification. But it must have caused us
astonishment if He had not afterwards impressively exhibited it.
The power of the apostles was conditional on the humihty of
their service ; their success depended on their restless, unwearied,
self-denying activity. In great patience, in pains and labour, in
watching and fasting, they were to approve themselves as the
servants of Christ. They sat on their thrones ; but their judging
and ruling was to go hand in hand with their gospel ministry,
and to be founded on it wholly. And that is precisely what the
history of the draught of fishes has represented symbolically.
Viewed from this standpoint, it cannot appear in the general
as a mere repetition of a former occurrence ; it cannot be so
regarded at all, when we consider how closely it is interwoven
with the immediately succeeding narrative. From the beginning
the Lord had in view the meal which followed ; the draught of
fishes must needs terminate in a meal. Therefore He asks
when He appears on the shore : " Children, have ye any meat ? "
And when they answer no, He gives them direction and counsel
how to find the food which He desired. Eightly has a recent
commentator remarked, that the concern of the disciples was
with the take as such ; the Lord's, on the other hand, with the
take in relation to the meal.1 Such, indeed, is the purport of
His command : " Bring hither of the fish which ye have caught; "
and such the purport of His invitation to the assembled company :
" Come and dine." Food is what He desires from their hands ;
1 Meyer is wrong in saying that not the meal, but only the preceding draught,
was the aim of Christ's appearance. This view tears asunder what is coherent, and
deprives the narrative of its peculiar characteristic, that in which it differs from the
event related by Luke.

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 369
and food again which His hand dispenses to them. The saying
of the parable finds its fulfilment wherein the Lord commands
His servant : " Make ready wherewith I may sup, and gird
thyself, and serve me, till I have eaten and drunken " (Luke
xvii. 8) ; but the other side of the parable is also verified,
wherein the Master gives to His true servants the promise:
" Verily I say unto you, That He shall gird Himself, and make
them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them "
(Luke xii. 37). What, then, is the food which the head of the
kingdom can desire from His chosen servants? No other than
this, that they bring Him souls for His own, whom they win
with pains and labour. And what sort of meal is it which He
prepares for His faithful servants ? None other than this, that
He recompenses them for what they have accomplished in His
service. It is perfectly intelligible why the text mentions
different food, one for the Master and the other for the disciples.
They do not eat of the proceeds of their draught ; it does not
belong to them. But they find the table ready on the shore —
their host has provided it out of His stores; so it is one joy
which the Master and another which the servant tastes. And
yet they are gathered with one mind to the common meal, and
they share its enjoyment. We see the Lord and His servants
partaking together of that joy which had been predicted in an
earlier place under another figure: "One soweth and another
reapeth ; he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathers fruit unto
life eternal, that he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice
together" We hope that the view advanced will receive confirmation
from the further course of the narrative. The further course we
say deliberately. The section beginning with ver. 15 has been
so sharply divided from the preceding, that it has been almost
judged as the account of a new and independent appearance of
the Lord. This is not so indifferent a matter as might at first
sight appear. That the words of the evangelist in ver. 14, "This
is now the third time that Jesus showed Himself," make the
impression of a conclusion we will not deny ; but it will also be
granted to us that the words, " so when they had dined," prove
the unbroken continuity of the narrative. We do not allow the
decision to be a matter of feeling, we appeal to a higher tribunal.
The misleading interpretations, to which the new phase of the
2 a

370 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
narrative has been subjected, arise mostly from the circumstance
that its connection with the whole has been overlooked. Hence
some speak of what the Lord does in this hour as a reinstating
of Peter in his former place; they assume that the whole
position of the disciple was so shaken by the sin of his denial
that its restoration was an absolute necessity. But there is only
a solitary feature in the text which forms an apparent argument
for this view. Admitting that the question which the Lord puts
three times to the disciple really points back to the thrice-given
denial, the ground is too weak to support an opinion which every
where else in Scripture is met only with difficulties. "Jesus
turned and looked on Peter ; and Peter went out and wept
bitterly" (Luke xxii. 61, 62); with this look of the Lord, with
this penitence on the part of the disciple, the matter was at an
end. Of any posterior effect of the misdeed there is nowhere to
be found a single word. His conduct on Easter morning, or
whensoever we meet him during these festal days, is not in
keeping with the supposition that a. special burden lay on his
heart, that a secret sentence of outlawry troubled his inner
freedom and openness. At least, to put it in the mildest way,
it is awkward to speak of a reinstallation of that disciple to
whom, as well as to the others, the word had been spoken : " As
My Father hath sent Me, so send I you,- — receive ye the Holy
Ghost!" Others who do not adopt this view in its entirety have
attempted to modify the common opinion. "The apostle did
not recover a place he had forfeited, but he was raised at this
very moment to the place to which the Lord had destined him
from the first. The primacy of the apostles, the chief guidance
of the church, was now made over to him by the Shepherd of the
flock" (comp. Hengstenberg, Comm. zum Joh. III. p. 343). But
however it may be with the primacy of Peter, it is impossible in
all the circumstances to conceive of this as the introduction of
the disciple to it. Neither did he need anything of the kind,
nor would it, either by means of the searching question or of the
commission which followed upon it, have found its realization.
Certainly love to Jesus is the requisite of a true apostle ; but a
higher degree of it does not qualify for the primacy. Certainly
it is the servant's duty to feed the Shepherd's flock, but for that
very reason it cannot well have been a prerogative of the first of

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 371
them. We shall arrive at a more satisfactory view of the sec
tion if we regard it as a real continuation of the preceding
narrative. The draught of fishes completed, the meal just taken formed
the basis on which the Lord proceeded to His conversation with
Peter. The continuous thread presents itself spontaneously to
view. The direction " Feed My sheep " evidently rests on the
command to cast the net into the sea; nay, the new call is
essentially a simple taking up of the first. The difference is
only in the figure, the matter symbolized is the same in both
cases. Here, as before, the Lord has in view the services which
the apostles are to render to His kingdom by indefatigable
labour.1 With the same directness does the question, " Lovest
thou Me ? " arise from the meal which has been provided. He
who rewards so graciously the services rendered to Him may
surely expect a self - sacrificing, patient, laborious love. But
where now is the progress, the new element in the further
course ? The answer is to be found in the light of Christ's
prophecy. We have interpreted the fishing of the disciples as
signifying the labour of their career as evangelists. But they
have more to pass through than watching and fasting, work
and conflict. " We are reproached, we are blasphemed ; we suffer
persecution, and have sorrow always ; we are killed all the day
long, and are accounted as sheep for the slaughter." And for
some of them a peculiarly tragical lot was in store. In the
highest measure for Peter. " Simon Jona, lovest thou Me more
than these ? " So the Lord begins His conversation with him.
Only in the first of the dialogue did He put the question in this
way ; the second and third time the element of comparison dis
appears. It thus becomes clear what is the purport of the more
than these. It leads the disciple not to a bitter retrospect of his
1 The Lord's twofold direction has been explained of the double side of the
apostles' calling ; in the former their Halieutics, in the latter their Poimenics (so
especially, Stier, Beden des Herrn, VI. p. 834). If any one chooses merely to find
a support for these modern categories in our narrative, we would not dispute with
him ; but we recognise no such intention on the part of the Lord. Many a one has
given too much weight to the thought that Peter's commission seems restricted to
those who have already become members of the kingdom. But it is surely enough
to point to the words of the parable : xa) dxxa orpofiara %xa> . . ¦ xdnilvi pi lit
ayaytiv. From these it is plain that the Lord can designate even those who have
not yet entered into the net of the kingdom of heaven as His sheep.

372 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
former bold protestations (Matt. xxvi. 33), and still less to a
dangerous comparison with the love of other souls ; but it pre
pares him for the severer tests which he more than all others is
to endure. Actually above all the others. The prophetical words
of ver. 1 8 have been almost universally referred to the martyr
death of the apostle. Their spiritual interpretation, on which
voices here and there are still heard insisting, is disproved by
ver. 19. The one point at which commentators diverge is
whether this prophecy is meant to foretell some violent death in
general for the disciple, or his crucifixion in particular. If we
decide without hesitation for the latter alternative, it is not from
a desire to prove the singularity of Peter's fate, but altogether on
exegetical grounds.1 For the peculiar bitterness of the lot which
befell this apostle is not the death of the cross in itself, but the
circumstance that he had to endure it at the end of his course.
Hence the Lord prefixes the point of time, " when thou art old,"
with obvious emphasis. The disciple has borne the burden and
heat of the whole day, and now when it is evening he is
recompensed with this cup. James, too, endured the martyr
death ; but when it was yet early, somewhere about the third
hour, his Lord called him home; Peter gathered the marks of
1 If we compare the evangelist's explanation in ver. 19 with the explanations
whieh he has given, ch. xii. 33 and xviii. 32, in exactly similar terms, we shall
scarcely be able to resist the conviction that he had the same image in both cases
before him. In the parallels quoted he meant indisputably the death of Jesus on
the cross ; here, too, he uses the voiai iavdrai in the same sense. And it was not the
event which first led him to this explanation of the prophetic words ; he understood
them so and not otherwise immediately. The ixnviis ras %i7pds o-ov is sp definite a
description, that the idea of impotence yielding itself to external violence does not
seem sufficient to explain the phrase. According to Artemidorus, the ixratris xs't°"*
was characteristic of crucifixion ; it was that which peculiarly struck the eye. As
the injiiii was the right word for the death of Jesus on the cross, so the ixrtvtTv ras
xiipas offered itself as an appropriate description of the crucifixion of the disciple.
Meyer has met this with a strange objection. He says that in this case the arrange
ment of the phrases would be astonishing, nay, that the tt'cu ct at the end would
appear simply absurd. The difficulty disappears without any need of Casaubon's
precarious explanation. Both halves of ver. 18 correspond exactly with one
another. "Ots « viatripos . . . wh ynpacips ; i^divvvis ciavriv . . . aXXos ct Xt^ctt ;
vripnordrtis otrov iihXis . . . oicu ct '0*011 ou Sixus. There is only one element in the
second hemistich that does not find its parallel ; the ixnviis ras x^P's *"> is over
and above. But it thus appears clearly that it is not meant to be added as a third
member to the following phrases, but that it contains the viewpoint from which the
contrast between past and future is to be regarded. And so far it must stand, of
course, in the first place.

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 373
Jesus on his body till he suffered the baptism of his death.
Hence, in view of this future, the heart-knower puts to him the
question : " Lovest thou Me more than these ? " The depth of
his love, the enjoyment of a food of which the world knows not,
the certainty of the eternal retribution, — this is to strengthen
him to gird up his loins and enter these lists.
It has been rightly remarked by a recent commentator, that
the prophecy of this exodus was an important element in fitting
the disciple for his office. The Lord testified to Paul also imme
diately after his call, how much he must suffer for His name's
sake. It may appear a blessing to the children of the world
that the sad future is veiled from their view ; the apostle of the
risen Christ is of another mould. He does not doubt that he is
following the Captain of the faith through suffering and death to
glory. The Lord knows His own ; He knows what they endure.
And that He was not deceived in them is plain from the Epistles
of Feter and Paul. The very fact that they saw the cup of
their decease from afar, made them fervent in spirit, and their
step elastic in their course. So tragical an end was not destined
for all the apostles, and especially not for all whom we find
gathered here on the lake. There was one in the group for
whom a peculiarly gentle lot was in store. The Lord would
have had no occasion to give any hint of his future had not
Peter's question forced Him to speak of it. The disciple's ques
tion is dictated by the well-known peculiarity of his temperament ;
and the reason of the Lord's declinature is doubtless to be found
in the same fact which was its origin. We say, its declinature.
Commentators are at variance, in so far as some hold that Jesus
parried the disciple's wish in form, but in fact acceded to his
request ; while others warn us against extracting a categorical
judgment from a conditional sentence. And the latter are in the
right. When the evangelist exhorts his readers to hold by the
ipsissima verba of the Lord's answer, he disputes their right to
draw an inference from them, or to make them the subject of
their interpretation at all. At least he gives them to understand
that every attempt at explanation will be fruitless. His direction
has not been followed ; but men have set themselves zealously
to make out the sense in which John was to remain till the
Lord's coming. It has been said that the apostle, as the .author
of the Apocalypse, did in fact see the coming Christ ; that the

374 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
Lord fulfilled this enigmatical saying in this herald of His judg
ment upon the world (Bengel : " Petro crux, Joanni apocalypsis
ilia magna per aenigma hoc loco promissa est "). Others find
the solution in a Johannine type of the church which is to
supervene at the close of the Petrine period (so first Joachim von
Floris, Introd. in Apoc. p. 84; comp. Engelhardt, Kirchengesch.
Abhandl. uber den Abt Joachim und das ewige Evangelium,
p. 32 ff). Others have called attention to the contrast between
the till I come and the follow Me. Not the violent death of
martyrdom, but a departure resembling the most immediate home-
taking by His gracious hand, was the end which the Lord set
before the disciple whom He loved. Had we to decide at all
between these views, the actual result would fall weightily into
the scales for the last. But there is no need of deciding. The
author wishes to meet the delusion of the brethren by the very
fact of emphasizing the hypothetical form of Christ's declaration.
The Lord's words are not to the effect, " I will that he remain,
and he shall remain ; " but merely supposing the case, " if I will."
If we lay emphasis on this conditional if, then the come preserves
its natural meaning. It denotes the same return of Christ as the
angels announce on the day of His ascension (eXevaerai, Acts
i. ll).1 Thus understood, the saying loses the enigmatical
mysterious sound which is wont to be heard in it ; but the loss
is compensated by a gain. The whole emphasis rests on the
declinature which Peter receives. " What is that to thee ? " so
the Lord answers him. To the evangelist also this question must
have been of the highest value ; for he has again quoted it in
ver. 23, though it appears there to be unnecessary. Its worth
is seen in the light of the exhortation by which it is immediately
succeeded, " Follow thou me." It was not as a confidential com
munication, but with a very definite aim, that the Lord had
foretold his future fate to His disciple. The prophetical word
was intended to season and stimulate his following of his Master.
1 That the emphasis does in reality rest exclusively on the conditional particle
appears clearly, especially when it is considered that the ideas expressed by ' ' not
dying " and " remaining till the coming of the Lord " are identical. The former
only the negative, the latter the positive side of the same thing. He who dies not
lives till the Lord's coming again ; and he who remains till the Lord comes, is the
man who dies not, 1 Cor. xv. 51 ! The real purport of the correction made by the
evangelist is nothing else than this : " Jesus said not to him, he shall not die ; but,
If 1 will that he die not, what is that to thee ? "

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 37S
He can destroy this blessing, but he can also heighten it. He
will destroy it if in the way of comparison he looks to others,
but he will heighten it in proportion as he lays to heart his
Lord's last rebuke.
We were concerned to prove that the manifestation by the
lake was, as a whole and in all its details, subservient to the
fitting of the disciples for their office. In its entire compass, it
follows the same aim as all the manifestations of the Eisen One.
In the history of every one of them, the supposition which we
made in the outset has been evidently verified. Eegarded from
this point of view, the narratives have become transparent and
comprehensible. The final proof of our view will be found in
the history of the last appearing of the living One.1
1 This would be the place where we should have to consider the history given us
in the first Gospel of a manifestation of Christ on the mountain of Galilee, if we
could regard the passage as describing a single appearance of the Risen One. We
have already explained the grounds which lead us to the conclusion, that the account
of Matthew is rather a summary of all the manifestations in which the Lord showed
Himself alive to the apostles. If we now add the assurance that the impression,
which we continue to receive from the entire character of the narrative, confirms us
in this conviction, we are well aware that an impression so subjective, especially on
a field like the present, can lay no claim to any value. Yet we cherish the quiet
hope that others will share it with us, if only they add a circumstance which after
all gives an objective basis to the feeling described. The lapidary-style in which
the Lord's commands appear, vv. 18-20, embracing three powerful declarations
hardly joined with one another by a connecting particle, would' be perfectly appro
priate, or rather the only suitable one, if the entire intercourse between the risen
Christ and the disciples had in reality been confined to this one meeting. But we
know He manifested Himself to them often and variously, He spoke much to them
of the kingdom of God. And can we suppose that in any single case of these
numerous appearances, especially in one which certainly could neither have been
the first nor the last in the series, He addressed them in such words as are here
before us ? We cannot admit this conviction. But just because we should under
stand this speech in the mouth of the Lord only on the supposition that He had not
appeared more than once in the midst of His disciples, — just because of this does it
become clear to us even in the Gospel narrative, only if we suppose that the apostle
means to sum up in his account the entire manifestations of the living One. And
with a master hand he has done this. It needs no proot that it embraces everything
which the Gospels of Luke and John give us from the forty days, without leaving
out one essential particular. Matthew provides us in the highest measure with — to
use a happy expression of Augustine — a narratio plena of the Lord's manifestations j
a narratio, such as only the pencil of an apostle could have drawn so faithful and
majestic, so comprehensive and exhaustive, and which certainly differs specifically
from the apocryphal description at the close of Mark. And yet we know what a
difficulty still arises. The evangelist begins : vrpoctxOatv o 'lnoous ixdxtiav aurols xiym
x.r.x. And this preface certainly does not seem to raise the expectation that a
composition framed by the author himself is about to follow, but rather the view

376 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.

THE LORD S APPEARING ON THE DAY OF HIS ASCENSION.
When the object of our Lord's last appearance is asserted to
be, as it usually is, His leave-taking from His own, this is not
merely intelligible, but in some respects well founded. In point
of fact, He gathered the Eleven round Him with this view ;
they were to be witnesses of His ascent to the Father. They
were to know where He was : they were to know it through the
same sensible experience which had convinced them that He was
truly risen from the dead. " While they beheld, He was taken
up," — so accordingly runs the narrative ; " and a cloud received
Him out of their sight." After every time that He appeared
among them, He vanished, afyavros eyevero air avrwv ; but here
they saw Him vanish, " they beheld Him ascend up where He
was before." Gerhard : " non d<f>aviap,6<s quidam vel nuda
dopaaia, sed roiriKrj p,erdaraai<;, locahs translatio, visibilis
elevatio." But it lies in the nature of His leave-taking, that the
beholding by itself could not exhaust the purpose of the appear
ance. It was a parting which, notwithstanding its full and
earnest reality (John xvii. 11: " I am no more in the world, but
that the Lord did really speak in these terms and in this very order. Only there is
a perfectly analogous case in the fourth Gospel, which may help us entirely over
this difficulty. "We mean the passage in John xii. , to which we formerly referred
in passing. The apostle has closed the history of the public testimony of Jesus
to Israel. He writes (in ver. 36) : raura iXaXviclv o 'lncovs xa) dvrtXDatv ixpufitl aor'
alrZv ; and the reflection on its result, which he subjoins, vv. 37-43, evidently sup
poses a definitive conclusion. And yet there follows, vv. 44-50, a series of solemn
utterances made by the Lord regarding His person and mission. By far the greater
number of commentators, and among them men so thoroughly conservative as Stier
(comp. Beden Jesu, V. p. 103 ff.), have recognised the impossibility of taking the
passage as containing an actually delivered address either to the people or to the
disciples (Calvin) ; and they rightly hold that the evangelist comprehends in it the
testimonies which the Lord bore to Himself during the entire course of His preach
ing. Perhaps Christ nowhere spoke in these very terms, and certainly never in this
order. But undoubtedly the true sense and the full contents of His poaprvpia are
comprehended in the powerful passage. And yet how does the apostle introduce
it ? He writes : 'iwovs 2s 'ixpa\iv xa) iiortv (ch. xii. 44). To this corresponds in
our passage of Matthew the ixdxtictv avroTs xiyaiv. The relation in which the
Johannine section stands to the entire previous declarations of the Lord regarding
Himself, His dignity and work, is the very same as that in which Matthew's
account stands to the history of all the manifestations of the Risen One. "Whoever
accepts our view will find himself freed from the last difficulties to which the
Enantiophany between Matthew's account of the resurrection on the one side, and
the descriptions of the third and fourth evangelists on the other, can give rise.

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 377
these are in the world, and I come to Thee "), on the one hand
left them still in possession of His fellowship in the Spirit, and
on the other left them to await their reunion in glory. " I am
with you always, even to the end of the world," and " where
I am, there shall also My servant be." Such a leave-taking could
not pass in silence. If, therefore, the closing description of the
third evangelist seems to imply that its significance ended in the
mere symbolism of the hands outstretched to bless, we regard it
as a desirable complement, and one answering to our expectation,
when, in the Acts of the Apostles, we have a conversation related
which the Lord held with the assembled group immediately
before His ascension. Thus we shall have to express ourselves
to this effect : " Not to take leave in itself, but to take leave
after tliese words, did the Eisen One reveal Himself for the last
time." This conversation could have no other subject than the
office which the apostles had undertaken. For the Lord desires
to accompany the exercise of this office with His blessing ; and
on the day of His coming again, He will receive from the hands
of His commissioned servants the result of their work. Only
one question requires to be answered. After all that had been
spoken and done during the forty days, what need could there be
for anything more in this connection ? And how far was it met
by the utterances of Christ ? Our answer is not doubtful ; it lies
clearly before us in the words of the text. It is the time and
place for beginning their work about which the Lord gives com
mand to the apostles. They were not to raise their voices as
witnesses until they had received the definite impulse from above ;
and they were to begin their evangelistic career nowhere else
than in the city of Jerusalem.1
1 If we lay the emphasis in the present manifestation upon these apparently
secondary directions, a difficulty is removed, which the entire history ofthe Lord's
appearances may offer to the superficial observer. Characteristic is the remark to
which Bengel was led in this relation (on Matt, xxviii. 19) ; comp. Gnom. I. p. 194 :
," Munus apostolicum saepius Apostolis suis injunxit Salvator a mortuis redux ;
Evangelistae igitur praeceptorum istorum summam hac illave occasione data potue-
runt exhibere. " He wishes evidently to satisfy his readers about the astonishing
circumstance that an act, which from its very nature excludes repetition, does yet
appear from the Gospel records as performed several times, according to his own
reckoning not less than four times. The note, however, leaves the difficulty
unsolved. The " saepius injunxit Salvator Apostolis suis munus " is to be decidedly
rejected. "We can easily understand why it is that the Lord, as often as He
becomes visible to the eyes of His disciples during these forty days, always puts the

378 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
Those who refuse to acknowledge that the Lord bestowed on His
disciples the gift of the Spirit on Easter evening, are certainly
in a position to insist on the common view of the aim of
His last appearance. " Jamjam in coelum ascensurus promisit
Christus discipulis suis Spiritum sanctum, per quern donis ad
evangelii praedicationem et miraculorum operationem necessariis
instruerentur ; ac de hac Spiritus promissione in praesente pericope
apostolic office in the foreground ; for His whole appearing before them is in the
interest of this office. But the investing of the receivers with it, strictly speaking,
could of course only happen once, — and in the Christophany on Easter evening we
have seen it carried out as in its right place. This installation into office was after
wards succeeded by various instructions. For those, indeed, who persistently regard
the relative passage in the first Gospel as the description of a single appearance of
the Risen One, there is no possibility of getting over a painful perplexity in refer
ence to this matter ; and as against them criticism possesses an indisputable advan
tage. But this is a circumstance which will form a new recommendation of the
view proposed by us of the passage in Matthew. We remark, besides, a phrase used
by Bengel in the note we have quoted, a phrase which proves the recognised gift of
insight possessed by this commentator in all its penetration and delicacy. " Potue-
runt summam exhibere Evangelistae praeceptorum illorum hac illave occasione data. "
Summam exhibere ; in these terms, in fact, the narrative of Matthew is precisely'
described. We have only to regret that Bengel has not followed his correct feeling
more impartially, that he has not drawn its natural consequence. Probably he was
hindered from doing so by the fear that in this case he would lose a definite and
sure place for Christ's command of baptism. But this fear would have been
ungrounded. For our part, we have no doubt to what hour the institution of the
sacrament in question is to be referred. The close of Mark, which, notwithstanding
its spuriousness, has already rendered us many important services, puts us here
again on the right track. Its author subjoins to the direction borrowed from
Matthew, " oropivHivris xnpv^ari," the declaration, o oticrivcas xa) (Zaorncfo); caiMctrat,
o 2s aoncrricas xaraxpitrictrat. This dictuni does not merely remind us of John's
" av rtvojv dtpvirt ras apoaprtas, dtpnvrat avroTs, av rivoiv xparYirt, xtxpdrvivrai," but
undoubtedly coincides with it. But in that ease the interpolated fiaornciils (Mark
xvi. 16) leads us to the otherwise very natural supposition, that the command of
baptism could have been delivered nowhere else than on occasion of the Christophany
of Easter evening. The fact that John is silent as to this command falls to be
judged in the same way as the analogous circumstance that the same evangelist
likewise passes over the institution of the Eucharist. But as to the fact that Luke,
too, does not expressly relate the Lord's command (we only catch a slight though
discernible glimpse of it in his narrative ; it is noticeable in the words, " xnpvxifivai
tor) rop ovoptoart avrov ptlrdvotav xa) aQtciv apoapnatv," xxiv. 47, as soon as it is com
pared with the passage, Acts ii. 38, " polravowart xa) fta-nnclnroi txacros v/ttSv lis
dtpio-iv apoapnoiv "), those will not be surprised who, on the one hand, take into
, account what we have already said as to the character of Luke's Gospel, and on the
other, have regard to the fact that no biblical author proceeds so decidedly as he
does on the silent' assumption that baptism is a PouXn nu Qtov ils cojrqpiav. To
repent and be baptized, to be baptized and receive salvation, that is, forgiveness of
sins, — these he has uniformly conceived as inseparable from one another, nay, both
in his view fall into one.

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 379
agitur" Gerhard, Harm. c. 217. For our part, understanding as
we do the " receive ye the Holy Spirit," John xx. 22, this view
becomes impossible. But apart from this altogether, we should
be obliged to reject it on purely exegetical grounds. No one
can have carefully weighed the text before us, who takes from it
the impression that it is meant to be in the tone of promise.
The observation which produces this impression goes no deeper
than the surface. " He commanded them," — this we read as the
heading of the whole; and the progress of the discourse con
tinues to be regulated by this description to its close. The Lord
speaks throughout in the sense of command. Strictly speaking,
He does not appear at all at the present hour as one promising ;
He merely reminds the disciples of the assurance which they had
formerly heard from His mouth (" which ye heard of Me "). And
founding on this reminder, He makes His will known to them.
Both phases of the passage begin with prohibitions ; not to depart
from Jerusalem, ver. 4 ; it is not for you to know, ver. 7. And
in both cases the progress is marked by means of the particle
but (dXXd). But on a prohibition the particle of contrast,
d\Xd, cannot introduce a promise, but only a demand. Instead
of what the apostles are to avoid, there is another thing which
they are directed to do. And what is this positive command ?
It is, as is expressly mentioned in ver. 4, as is tacitly involved
in ver. 8, contained in the wait. " Let your loins be girded
about, and your lights burning" (Luke xii. 35); in this earlier
word of the Lord we have obviously the principle of exposi
tion for the present discourse. Their attitude is to be that of
readiness, of the " preparation of the Gospel of peace " (Eph.
vi 15); already their foot is to be lifted for the prescribed
course, for the beginning of it is immediately before them (" not
many days hence "). But ere they tread the lists, a sign from
above will be given, and they are to await the heavenly guidance
with their torch burning. They are not to depart from Jerusalem
to praise the great things QxeyaXeia) of God somewhere or other,
according to their own judgment, but to remain there until the
Spirit shall open their mouth to bear witness to Israel. They
are not to question and search after times and seasons, but
simply wait the moment which the Father has fixed iv rfj ISia
egovaia. We have proved in a former place that it is not the
bestowal of the Spirit, but their anointing with it, which is

380 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
meant in ver. 5. The apostles had already received the gift ;
but the hour was yet in the future when this gift was to pene
trate their consciousness inwardly, and tell in power and work
outwardly. It is only when thus understood that the particle
dXXd in ver. 4 receives its full meaning ; only then does it intro
duce a contrast to the preceding prohibition. The disciples them
selves understood the Lord in this sense. They put a question to
Him. Modern exegesis defends them against the charge of having
cherished even till then the thoughts of a carnal Judaism.
Hofmann (Schriftbew. III. p. 647) has rightly contradicted the
view that their words were the expression of a worldly hope. It
rested wholly on the foundation of the 0. T. promise, and that a
promise which, in reality, was near its fulfilment. But what
moved them at this hour to put such a question, and why does
the Lord set it so decisively aside ? It occurred to the disciples
as a consequence of ver. 4. If they were not to leave Jerusalem,
but there await power from on high to carry out their office as
witnesses in this very city, it appeared quite as if the kingdom
were to arise in Israel, that Israel which had rejected the Lord
of the kingdom. And was it a deceitful appearance or a delusion ?
Peter certainly did not so explain it, when, in his Pentecostal
sermon, he proclaimed : " The promise is to you and to your chil
dren ; to you first God, having raised up His Son Jesus, sent
Him to bless you ; " and when, in case of their repentance, He sets
before them in sure prospect the seasons of refreshing, the times
of restitution (Acts iii. 20, 21). On the material side, therefore,
the question of the disciples cannot have been the subject of
rebuke. We do not even grant, with Hofmann, that " in so far
at least they were mistaken, as they conceived of their own equip
ment with the Spirit and His outpouring on Israel as so close
to one another" (ubi supra, p. 547). Of a mistake of the apostles
there is not a word here. It is not a false view which the Lord
meets with His answer, but a displeasing mode of conduct. The
words of ver. 7, " it is not for you to know," must be rightly
understood. They have as little to do with the limits which
are fixed to the knowledge of the finite mind, as with future
epochs in the history of the kingdom of heaven.1 The yvoovai in
1 The right understanding of the words has been hindered by regarding tho Lord's
saying, Matt. xxiv. 36, as an explanatory parallel. The two passages have nothing
in common. Olshaustn's explanation (Com. II. p. 587) is an entire mistake. On

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 381
this connection does not denote any knowing, seeing through, or
comprehending, but is meant in the sense of searching (ipewdv),
i^erd^eiv, inquiring into. Instead of prying into the time or hour
of the promise of the Father, they are to await its fulfilment, a
fulfilment which will take place first in themselves, and then
through their ministry in ever-widening circles. In this wait
the question about time finds a sure grave. We claimed for the
particle but in ver. 4 its strict rights ; we raise the same claim
for the but at the beginning of ver. 8. And we secure a direct
contrast the moment we cease to understand the words which
follow in the sense of a promise, and put the emphasis on
their hortatory character. Waiting is the duty of the apostles,
waiting for the power which shall fill them from above; this
power wiU form the watchword to begin their work of testi
mony, and in Jerusalem they are to begin it! In fact, the
longer we meditate on the passage, the more firmly are we
persuaded that this, and nothing else, was the purpose of the
last Christophany.
Yet the question may be raised, whether the Lord, in giving
the direction described, meets a real want; and perhaps a still
graver scruple may be felt as to whether the conversation so
understood is in keeping with a parting hour. Let us see whether
the objection is well founded. As to those who dispute the need,
we meet them with a counter question. Suppose the apostles
had begun to bear witness of Christ before the Spirit consecrated
their tongues ; suppose they had broken the bond of connection
which the Lord established in His declaration, " The Spirit shall
testify of Me, and ye also shall bear witness " (John xv. 26, 27;
comp. also Acts v. 32 : "We are witnesses, and so is also the
Holy Ghost"), — and so had attempted the first steps of their
apostohc career without an express impulse from above, and con
sequently without the corresponding fruit. Or suppose they had
left Jerusalem, and had chosen for their field of labour the same
Galilee in which they had witnessed the brilliant successes of
their Master. These are not monstrous, inconceivable cases ; we
might without scruple designate them as perfectly possible ; nay,
the contrary, our passage is related to what Peter says of the prophets, ipiwSvns,
tis rlva H oroTov xaiph 'tiitXov ri orviv/tca. What the apostle remarks there to the
honour of the prophets is here interdicted by the Lord to His disciples, because the
fulfilment lay most immediately near.

382 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
who knows but it may be found probable that the disciples would
have determined so and not otherwise if the Lord had left them
to the freedom of their own impulses. It needed His express
direction to guard them against this mistake ; His direction to
protect the rising kingdom from such a threatening danger.1 But
if, then, such a command met the want of the disciples, nay, if it
was indispensable to them, at what other hour should it have
been given than at the very hour of parting ? It did not in any
way lessen the solemnity of the scene ; and it will not be felt as
a discord that it deals only with secondary points. In general,
time and place may be of less consequence ; in the case before us,
they had the highest importance. The conduct of the apostles
on the day of Pentecost is very commonly regarded as an event
in the history of the world ; and to this day it has preserved
its overwhelming impression. But it appears as one con
dition essential to this impression, that the disciples followed
the direction which the Lord left them in the hour of His
departure. " Ye shall be My witnesses to the uttermost part of the earth/'
such are the last words which the earth heard from the mouth of
the Lord. After these words He stretched out His hands to bless,
and before the gaze of His disciples He ascended into heaven.
He leaves the apostles behind as His witnesses. Into this office
He has inaugurated and introduced them during.the forty days'
intercourse. All the manifestations of the Eisen One of which
the history tells are calculated to realize the purpose : " Ye shall
be My witnesses to the uttermost part of the earth." The study
of the narratives one by one has led us to this result ; but we
hope that their historical character will thus at the same time be
vindicated against the attack of criticism. For all scruples about
their credibility lose their point when there is demonstrated to be
a- purpose, a saving purpose, to which they were directed. With-
1 Strauss, as is well known, has called it strange that the apostles should have
waited till the fiftieth day before proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus, supposing
they had really been witnesses of it. And herein he finds a reason for denying the
reality of the Easter miracle. On the other hand, it corresponds to his expectation
that they betook themselves soon to Galilee, and he can show how their visions of
Christ arose on this home soil. For the possibility that the conduct of the disciples
depended on another factor than their reflection and resolution, that they in their
going or staying, acting or waiting, were carrying out commands which they had
received, — for such a possibility historical criticism leaves no room.

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 383
out these manifestations of the Eisen One, the office which has
overcome the world would neither have been founded nor executed.
'" I send you," and they went out into all lands. They delivered
to the world their testimony, and they found faith on the earth.
They will continue to find this faith, for though dead they yet
speak. The Lord directed them to spread the witness of Him
" to the uttermost part of the earth ; " but He also assured them
that His blessing would accompany it "even to the end of the
world." And it will neither be silenced nor in vain, because the
power as well as the promise comes from Him who is risen from
the dead, and who will reign till all enemies, the hostility of
criticism included, are made His footstool. This is not yet the
case. As the apostle acknowledged in his day, " now we see not
yet all things put under Him" (Heb. ii. 8), so we see at the
present hour how criticism, for example, continues- hostilities
against Him whom God has exalted with the full energy of logical
consequence, and, as it seems, with rising bitterness, and unhappily
also with growing success. Hostilities against Him ! so we ex
press ourselves. True, it puts on the appearance of simply pur
suing the object of enlightening the world as to the true state
of matters by dispassionate, scientific investigation. But its
fanaticism breaks out everywhere all too keenly against the person
of Him who has set before it, as before every other source and
centre of hostility, the prospect : " Henceforth ye shall see the Son
of man sit on the right hand of the power of God, and come in
the clouds of heaven." With this hatred it seeks to gain fresh
recruits and adherents, and justifies the complaint of Jul. Muller
(Dogmat. Abhandl. p. vi.), that the Spirit of the world unveils
its hostile attitude to Christianity ever more clearly, and that
compromise with it is impossible.
We should accordingly expect that the attack of the adversary
would be directed with very peculiar intensity against that fact
in the Gospel history which gives the most immediate testimony
to the exaltation of our Lord to the throne of dominion, we mean
against the ascension to heaven related at the close of His last
earthly appearance. This was to be expected all the more,
because the attempt to set aside this doctrine appears as a neces
sary complement to the endeavour to overthrow the certainty
of the Easter tidings ; for, let men say what they will, the account
of the ascension is and remains a powerful support of the resur-

384 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
rection history itself.1 But in this expectation we find ourselves
deceived. It is true, Strauss has devoted a section of his work
to this subject. But instead of producing a single argument
against the reality of the fact, he confines himself to showing how
the myth could have been formed and maintained in Christian
tradition. And the proof is so involved and artificial, so obscure
and self-contradictory, and even the otherwise thoroughly wel
come analogy from the history of Elijah furnishes so weak an
auxiliary,2 that the author has not found any following among
his own friends ; if on the ground of this performance he were to
look round on the circle of his adherents, he might meet in many
an eye the augur's look. The view that the disciples could have
dreamed an occurrence such as that before us in Acts i. 9, the
men of whom Hofmann (Schriftbew. III. p. 2), founding on Acts
i. 6, rightly maintains, that even after the resurrection took place
it did not enter into their thoughts that the Lord was leaving the
world and going to the Father, — this view criticism, on grounds
of prudence, should not have proposed to thinking men.
But whence this lack of energy in the region before us ? Have
its powers failed here, or has it accounted special efforts at this
particular place superfluous ? The latter alternative is no doubt
the true one. It could not see any occasion to put forth its
powers to wrest a doctrine from theologians which they themselves
did not seem at all to hold with a firm hand. In truth, it is a
wonderfully indifferent attitude which many of them take up
towards the fact of Christ's ascension. They do not expressly
surrender it, but it is of no great importance to them either
dogmatically or historically ; on this point they think they may
make a concession to " science " or to the current of the age,
without sacrificing anything essential to the good cause. The
close of Hase's Leben Jesu continues to pass in a large circle as
1 Faith in the Lord's ascension may be weak in proportion as doubt gathers
strength as to His resurrection. Bnt the account of the former is not affected in the
least, though the history of the latter falls under suspicion. So much the less is
this the case, because the ascension, when strictly taken as we shall show, is not a
subject at all of the Gospel history.
2 Strauss himself has been obliged to grant that from the type of the Elijah
narrative only one of the particulars advanced by Luke can be derived. On closer
consideration it would not have escaped him further, that two occurrences, the one
of which has for its subject a taking home by external power, the other a going home
in the power of self, scarcely stand to one another in the relation of analogy.

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 385
one of extraordinary "beauty." Even Stier confesses that the
last passage in Neander's Leben Jesu Christi may atone for many
suspicious elements in that composition. And yet in the former
work, in the " beautiful conclusion," the fact vanishes in a phrase ;
and in the latter we can discover nothing of a very conciliating
character, when it is merely admitted that the apostles " pre
supposed" a supernatural removal of Christ from the earthly
phenomenal world "under some form or other." Meyer seems to
have expressed the thought of a considerable majority when
stating that, in general, the actual fact is immovably established
by the declarations of the N T., but that a visible, striking occur
rence meeting the senses belongs to later tradition, and is to be re
garded as a reflection of the idea of the Lord's Parousia.1 It was
one of the last matters which engaged the late Dr. Hengstenberg,
to contend for the full reality of the occurrence, as Luke has
related it. Comp. Evangel. K. Z., Jahrgang 1868, Nr. 67-72.
The weaknesses of the apologetic course adopted by this theo
logian are apparent also in this essay. And if the author states in
the outset that a novice may easily become bewildered when face
to face with the objections to the ascension, we do not think that
his vindication of the narrative has broken the spell of this
bewilderment. But as he has the imperishable merit of having,
during a long scientific career, defended the main facts of sacred
history against unbelief and half- belief with unswerving per
sistency, it seems to us like an initial erowning of this merit
i *We cannot succeed in harmonizing this decided acknowledgment of the actuality
of the ascension with the not less decided refusal to admit a striking, sensible occur
rence. And we cannot altogether rid ourselves of the suspicion, that at the founda
tion of this explanation there lies an analogous attitude towards the resurrection.
When one denies the "striking, sensible occurrence" in the case of the ascension,
he may lose himself in spiritualism in respect of the resurrection also, and secretly
question the Svrais iyipfa (ovrais in the biblical sense, not in the sense of a false
philosophy), just as he sets aside the Situs iorripln. If any one maintains that Jesus
died and was buried, that by His death He went to God, and in His very dying His
resurrection and ascension were completed, we regard the view, it is true, as anti-
bibHcal and unchristian ; but yet there is in it sense, thought, and conceivableness.
But if one teaches, on the other hand, that the Lord truly rose from the dead, and
had intercourse as such with His own, that He then also really went to heaven, only
not in a visible, sensibly striking manner, we cannot by any possibility enter into his
thought. The Lord confessedly described His ascension, whenever He predicted it,
as a visible occurrence, as an object of human hupiiv. To what forced and impossible
explanation of the words, " i&v hoipmrl rov vlov rou avlpdiirov dva^aivovra oorou riv ri
Tponpov," Meyer is driven, may be seen in his Comm. zum Joh., 4 Aufl. p. 237.
2 B

386 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
when, near his own departure, he gives his scientific testimony to
the Scripture record of the home-going of his Lord and Saviour.1
The lukewarm attitude of many theologians to the history of
the ascension rests partly on external, partly on internal grounds.
Hengstenberg, in accordance with his habit, has devoted a search
ing investigation only to the former. His proof that those bibhcal
authors also who do not relate the fact yet knew of it and
assumed it, was really superfluous. So much indeed is acknow
ledged even lay Meyer ; nay, even Strauss has not called it in
question. On the other hand, he seems unsuccessful in his way
of seeking to explain the "enigmatical" silence both of Matthew
and John as to the historical course of the event. It rests
throughout on an erroneous judgment respecting the aim pursued
by the two authors in their works. No one will concede to him
" that for Matthew matter of fact as such had only a subordinate
significance," that this evangehst therefore passes over those facts
in silence which wanted definite interest from the viewpoints
which guided him. But still less can his assertion .be admitted,
that John intends merely to complete the three first evangelists,
that he holds specially close by Luke, and so passes over what
was already known both from him and from tradition. By these
suppositions many inconvenient facts in the narratives of the
evangelists may be got rid of; but the door is at the same time
thrown wide open to the play of caprice, and it is impossible to
have any confidence in the ground on which we must then
move. Thus the " strange " silence of the two apostles respecting the
history of the ascension is in want of a more satisfactory explana
tion. But is such an explanation to be found ? We have before
this (in Part I. of these contributions, p. 168 et seq.) laid down
and justified the principle, that the want of single narratives in
oue or the other Gospel, nay, even the circumstance that only
one author gives them while the others pass them over, is not
in itself to be judged as a proof against their credibility. And
we do not in the least scruple to apply this principle in the case
before us. Only we cannot conceal from ourselves that the
1 We have no doubt that the judgment of history on this theologian will one day
differ from that which Dr. Ritschl, in his often quoted work, has been led to pass.
This we call unjust and inept, especially because it mistakes the region in which lay
the true and essential tendency of the much abused author.

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 387
difficulties are not thereby removed which criticism, for the
reason assigned, has raised against the history of the ascension.
If any one maintains that the narrative of the raising of Lazarus
is an unhistorical myth, because the Synoptists know nothing of
it, this is an arbitrary assertion. But if, on the contrary, any one
desires to have the silence of Matthew and John respecting
Christ's ascension explained, his demand is well founded. An
answer which would be perfectly sufficient in respect of any
single deed of the Lord, cannot give full satisfaction in view of
an event like this. But to the end of reaching a better, we must
put a preliminary question. Which is the circumstance needing
explanation ? Is it the fact that Matthew and John pass over
what Luke relates ? Or is it not rather the other circumstance
that this evangelist relates what those withhold ? In our opinion,
this latter is really the only point in question. If the two
apostles have passed over the fact before us in silence, they have
done so in perfect consistency ; it was self-understood, it was
necessarily so. The truth is, the Lord's ascension lies beyond
the Gospel history in its true and rightly defined compass. We
have already in an earlier connection and in another interest
protested against St. Bernard's expression in describing the
ascension as the "clausula fehx itinerarii Christi."1 Here we
intensify our protest. Meyer's remark, that if the event really
transpired in the way described,- then Matthew and John could
neither morally nor historically have passed over "this most
glorious and worthy copestone," is the very reverse of the truth.
It is not the ascension, but the manifestations of the risen Christ
which form the close of the completed history (r&v ireirXi}po<popij-
p,evtav iv r)p,iv irpayfidroav) ; that is rather the point of departure
for a new history beginning. Its right place is not at the end of
the Gospels, but at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles.
And there, accordingly, we find it, strictly speaking, related. The
strange circumstance that Luke has given an account of it in his
Gospel, is partly explained by this author's striving after the
greatest possible completeness (Luke i. 3: irdaiv aKpifim), a
striving to which he elsewhere pays extraordinary regard (witness
the preface to the history of John the Baptist in the Gospel, or
the account of the end of Herod in the Acts ; no other evangelist
1 The phrase has been most seriously used in the work of Jac. Carpovius,
Uinerarium Christi redivivl, Jena 1763.

388 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
has an element of the kind) ; but it finds its solution partly
in the peculiar character of the notice itself which is given by
the third evangelist. Its shortness and obscurity, its summary
character and the evident haste which it makes to the con
clusion, betray the author's feeling that he is passing beyond
the true boundary of the task before him ; while, on the contrary,
in the fulness and transparency of the passage in the Acts, the
conviction is reflected, that he is putting it in its right place and
laying the true foundation ofthe history of the Acts ofthe Apostles.1
Thus we cannot fully trust the assurances of those who say
they must reject the history of the ascension because it is not
sufficiently accredited by the eye-witnesses. That must surely
be a pretext, rather than the real motive. It is true Schleier
macher has also contested the purity of the source which is
opened in the Acts. " We cannot know how much of these state
ments rests on definite reports, and how much is taken up as
fact from explanations and views which were not meant to be
strictly matter of fact. And so in the history of the ascension,
we have perhaps a less widely- spread composition of really
historical and other elements carried over from other delineations
into the historical field" (L. J. p. 507 ff). But if we read
rightly between the hnes, we can see that he has been honestly
pained thus to deal with a writing whose truly historical
character forces recognition from him. Only under the pressure
of necessity did he seek this assistance from criticism, after the
fact had become to him untenable for quite different reasons.
He makes no secret of the real motive which determines him,
apart from the narrative of Luke. The view which it presents
is in his estimation too external and material ; he discovers in it
an inner contradiction. An event, the end of which does not
correspond to its beginning, is one which he cannot construe to
1 From this point of view the last scruples raised by the apparent contradiction
between the close of the third Gospel and the opening verses of the Acts are com
pletely set at rest. We beg our readers at this point to go back to our earlier
remarks on the same subject. Here we add the wish that they would compare the
views which Schleiermacher has made regarding the closing part of the third Gospel
(comp. p. 299 ff.), in his work on Luke (Berlin 1817),— a work in many respects
classical, now unfortunately almost neglected. The delicate observation and sound
tact of this theologian appear here most brilliantly. One may appropriate the
undoubtedly true elements in these remarks, without acknowledging the general
result to which the author has been carried.

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 389
himself as an actual occurrence. "The motion begins with a
bodily one, its goal on the contrary is sitting at the right hand
of God ; but this can never be regarded as the end of a bodily
motion in space." Undoubtedly Schleiermacher is quite right
in the explanation of his text. His exegesis does justice to the
opening words : " He was taken up as they beheld," as well as
to the description of the disciples which follows : " they looked
stedfastly toward heaven as He went up." For in fact there
is expressed here, to use the words of J. Gerhard, by no means
a mere " dtf>avia/ji6'i quidam, disparitio aut evanescentia, vel nuda
quaedam dopaaia," but a real " roiriK-q per dar aa is, localis et
visibilis elevatio" (comp. Harm. c. 218).1 Only the first question
continues to be, whether between this terminus a quo (as it is
called in church dogmatics, comp. Quenstedt, I.e. p. 382) on the
one side, and the terminus ad quern on the other, — whether the
latter be designated as the irov beatorum, or specifically as the
dextra Dei, — there exists so striking a contradiction. Only on one
condition would there be such a cleft between them, namely, if
the visible motion were alleged to be continuous. But this is the
very condition which the doctrine of the church has repudiated
most expressly as erroneous and absurd.2 "The exaltation in
space continued only so long as the eyes of the disciples
followed the Lord, thereafter another process of motion began."
" Quid post subductionem ex oculis discipulorum factum sit et
qua motus specie porro in sublime iverit, non memorant Evange-
listae. Quod nubes texit, nobis retegendum non est " (Quenstedt,
I.e. p. 382). Undoubtedly Schleiermacher knew these definitions
and explanations. But as undoubtedly they were not able to
disarm his misgiving. And, indeed, they could hardly do so
in the form in which they come before us.3 Nevertheless, they
1 Hence, also, the strongly emphasized proposition of church dogmatics : "forma
ascensionis consistit non in disparitione, sed in vera realique loci mutatione atque in
sublime elevatione." Comp. Quenstedt, I.e. p. 382.
2Quenstedt, I.e. p. 382: "Certe, si ut ante motu locali, successivo et physico
ascendit, ne nunc quidem Christus in coelum venit."
3 The weakness of the theological doctrine consists chiefly in the fact that it
assumes one kind of motion at the beginning, and again another in the progress of
the elevatio- Christi. From the initial motus localis, successivus, physicus, it dis
tinguishes another species of exaltation which succeeds, and of which it says that it
lies beyond the power of human conception. But such a distinction between a
definite and an indefinable meaning of the same idea is inadmissible in the domain
of science. The recourse had to the allegation of incomprehensibility produces the

390 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
not merely present one element of the truth, but the way which
they take to solve the enigma is in fact, taken generally, the right
one. All that is needed is a modification of the view. We point
back to the section in which we have treated the corporeity of
the Eisen One. We said then that the Lord revealed Himself
to the eyes of the disciples in a material body ; and it was pointed
out at the same time how this materiality is demanded by the
idea of manifestation. Now, then, it was in this way and no
otherwise that He met the circle of His own in this last mani
festation. And if He ascended on high "as they beheld," to
convince them by their senses that He was going to the Father,
and that they need not expect any further earthly intercourse
with Him, His elevation must have been unconditionally a motio
localis, successiva et physica. The Lord effected this motion by
the miraculous power of His will. Exactly as He once walked
on the sea, He now rises into the air.1 But the instant He was
removed from the view of the disciples, — that is, the instant the
impression of a mere evasion of the difficulty which can satisfy nobody. No doubt
Schleiermacher had more than merely this to object to in the doctrine of the church.
When he explains "the sitting at the right hand of God is a purely spiritual con
ception," the theologians of the church agree with him in guarding themselves
against the view that the dextra Dei is the locus felicitatis. Comp. Egid. Hunnius, I.e.
p. 103 : "ut locus non est, ita nulli loco includitur, quia est extra et supra omnem
locum. " Only they have given another meaning to the idea than that it simply
denotes "the peculiar and incomparable dignity of Christ lifted above all conflict "
(comp. Schleiermacher, Glaubensl. II. § 99). And consequently they have assumed
a real withdrawing of the Lord from the earth, as real as His ascent to supra-
mundane glory. This was the necessary consequence of their definition, " sessionem
ad dextram Dei esse universale, omnipotens et omnipraesens in coelo ac terra
dominium" (Gerhard, I.e. p. 2271). But whether in this they are not in perfect
harmony with the declaration, " d^it7ipn,i rov xocpoov xa) oropivopiai vrpos rov oraripa," John
xvi. 28, we confidently leave to the decision of the reader.
1 The teaching of Quenstedt, therefore, is far from being quite correct when he
says: "fuit autem haec motio localis non secundum modum corporis naturalis, 
quod natura sua deorsum fertur, — sed secundum modum corporis spiritualis seu
spiritualibus dotibus ornati." It is not at all so ; for it was not the natura of the
corpus spirituale, but the voluntas of the person, which produced the elevation (in
space) of the (material) body. It was not " the peculiarity of His bodily organism "
(as Olshausen holds, comp. Comment. I. p. 491) which formerly enabled the Lord
to walk on the water of the sea, but only His miraculous power (had not Peter been
guilty of the want which was rebuked, his faith would have accomplished the same).
And as little did an "ethereal " organism, freed from the law of gravity, enable the
Risen One to mount into the air ; but this too was purely the effect of His voluntas.
If Calvin in his already mentioned sharp polemic against pueriles argutiae had this
point in view, his impatience— nay, even the ridicule of Nic. Arnoldus— was not
wholly unjustified.

THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE RISEN ONE. 391
element of manifestation passed away, — that idea also ceased
which necessarily assumes the material body, and is incongruous
with the spiritual body. It was not another species of motion
wliich came into force, but no motion at all of whatever kind
could any more have place ; the spiritual body is immediately at
its goal1 " This same Jesus who is taken up into heaven," such
are the words of the angels (Acts i. 11); taken up, He is there
fore already in heaven. And so from that hour onwards we find
the disciples occupied in adoring Him of whom they believe and
know that He sits on the throne of glory at the right hand of
the Father.2 In this last contemplation we have not been
trespassing beyond the bounds of our theme. It too has been
meant merely in the interest of a vindication of the resurrection
history. If, we mean, the account of the Lord's ascension cannot
be set aside either on external or internal grounds, then it tells
with important weight in favour of that history which is its
necessary condition. The ascension is wont to be regarded as a
consequence of the resurrection, and in fact the Eisen One could
have left the world only by way of the ascension. He who was
born of woman could die from the violence of sin and according
to the counsel of His Father; but having recovered His life
from the grave, He could only complete His going to the Father
1 Gerhard rightly asserts (Harm. c. 212) : "corpus spirituale non movetur de loco
in locum," and his remark is equally to the point, that terms like iordyuv, iropiiiclai
¦xpis rh otaripa, are to be understood solely from the viewpoint of the goal. Comp.
Harm. c. 179, p. 1591 of the Frankf. Hamb. ed. : "Non terminus a quo, nee via
per quam, sed terminus ad quem illius abitus per has phrases denotatur. " Those
who from these expressions have inferred a continuity of motion from the Mount of
Olives to the throne of glory may mean well, but they only injure the good cause.
2 And so we leave every one to judge of the remark in which Strauss (comp. der
Christus des Glaubens, p. 205) has declared his assent to the explanation of Schleier
macher: "Even if we did find the exaltation of Jesus to a superhuman condition
admissible, we should yet not be able with our present idea of the world to think
that the way to it was a lifting up into the clouds. " No doubt the history of
theology may have some incautious and incorrect expressions to point to in this
connection. For example, the Rostock theologian J. Fr. Ebnig (theolog. posit.
acroamat. § 387 ff.) taught a terminus per quem of the ascensio Christi, and described
it as coelum cum ae'reum turn siderium. But these extravagances have always been
conclusively disavowed by the real leaders of the development of dogma. When
criticism holds up such vagaries as expressing the view of church theology or even of
the Holy Scriptures ; when it thereupon expends assaults which apply only to views
as unchurchly, as unbiblical, to throw suspicion on the fact itself, — such conduct is
no doubt right skilfully calculated to tell on the ignorant, but as to the ethical
description and the scientific worth which belong to it, there can be no doubt.

39 2 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION.
as Luke relates it to us. With pointed and crushing effect
Strauss has described the hopeless perplexity in which Schleier
macher found himself when he laboured to save the resurrection
while setting aside the ascension ; and with equal truth he has
laid bare the dilemma in which this theologian consequently
leaves his readers at the close of his Leben Jesu. But we have
good right notwithstanding to use the same ascension, which is
the consequence of the resurrection, for the purpose of inferring
backwards to the latter. Even Strauss dare not refuse to acknow
ledge this right after conceding that the " myth of the ascension "
could not be explained from the wish or necessity to have a full
period for the new state of the Eisen One. If, then, Luke's
narrative is vindicated from the special difficulties raised against
it, there is thereby gained an independent factor in support of
the Lord's resurrection. But, in truth, as we have never cared to
string argument on argument in isolated and fragmentary con
templation, we advance this point, too, only in connection with
the main proposition from which we started at the first. Jesus
is the Christ, such was the fact we assumed. If He is so, then
He must go to heaven after He rose from the dead. "The
heavens must receive Him whom God raised up, of which we
are all witnesses." Jesus is the Christ, such was the truth we
assumed ; and as many as hold fast this premiss — we think we
have proved — may gain such a position, that not in the mere
defiance which faith breathes, but with that conviction which
rests on impartial scientific investigation, they shall be able to
meet the triumph of criticism with the answer : and yet is the
Lord truly risen from the dead !

INDEX OF NAMES AND SUBJECTS.

Abelakd, his view of the atonement, 7 ;
not accepted, 8.
Agony in the garden. See Conflict.
Annas, his high-priesthood, at trial of
Christ, 94, 95 ; examination before
him preliminary, 96 ; had no Messianic
hopes, 102.
Anselm, his view of the atonement, 7,
10 ; partiaUy adopted by the Church,
8 ; unimportant nature of its defects,
9 ; supported by passion history, 22.
Apostolate, founded during the forty
days, 332, 334 ; the manifestations of
Christ necessary to, 335, 383 ; the
former ordination a type of, 336 ; the
manifestation on Easter evening the
crisis of, 354, 355 ; its powers, 357 ;
place of the fifth manifestation in con
firming, 367, 368, 373-375 ; completed
by the sixth, 377; directions for,
given, 379, 380 ; necessity for these
directions, 381, 382.
Arrest of Christ, its superhuman origin,
50, 76, 85 ; which does not make it
non-criminal, 51 ; its place in the
passion, 79 ; circumstances of, 80,
81 ; its place in the Divine pur
pose, 88-90 ; prophecies referring to,
89.
Ascension of Christ, does not immedi
ately follow the resurrection, 308, 309 ;
takes place, 382 ; criticism on, 384 ;
not insisted on by theologians, 384,
385 ; grounds of this, 386 ; its true
dogmatic place, 386, 387 ; its history,
388 ; and difficulties, 389 ; its his
torical necessity, 391, 392.
Atonement, doctrine of, its place in the
Church, 6 ; reasons for its late develop
ment, 7 ; viewed from the human side,
7, 17 ; rival theories of Anselm and
Abelard on, 8, 9 ; both judicial and
ethical, 10; was it penal? 11-13; its
later history, 14; "culmination" view
of, not essentially new, 15; never
isolated from Christ's life by the
Church, 16; place of repentance in,

17, 18 ; in how far it maybe studied,
21 ; based on passion history, 29.
Barabbas, his position, 109 ; time of
his execution probably near, 110 ;
offered to the Jews by Pilate as alter
native to Christ, 116, note.
Body of Christ, manifestations connected
with, after His death, 189-191 ; har
mony of accounts of, 190; significance
of His bones not beiDg broken, 190-
192 ; the water and blood, 193-195 ;
symbolism of this, 196 ; as riseD, 277 ;
meaning of this, 278 ; and as type of
Church, 279 ; why called temple, 280 ;
its existence a barrier to outpouring
of Spirit, 292 ; vagueness of descrip
tions of, 294, 295 ; theories of, 295,
296 ; importance of this question, 297
-300; immaterial, 299, 300; diffi
culties of this theory, 301-303 ; appeal
to miracle useless, 304 ; its sensibility,
304-306 ; this view in accordance
with the narratives, 307 ; key of, in
idea of appearing, 308, 309 ; its
presence perpetual, 310 ; necessity of
both elements in, 312 ; its double
character shown in the ascension, 390.
Caiaphas, determined on Christ's death,
50, 94 ; his high-priesthood, 96 ; in
fluence of Annas over, 96 ; his con
duct at trial of Christ, 98 ; had no
Messianic hopes, 102; blindness of
his hatred to Christ, 130.
Cedron, crossing of the, marks begin
ning of passion history, 31.
Centurion at Christ's crucifixion, his
confession of Him, 197.
Christianity, its weight subjective, 8.
Conflict in the garden, its doctrinal
position, 32, 33, 44, 45 ; its historical
character, 34, 35 ; impregnability of,
36 ; non-psychological, 38, 41 ; unique
in character, 39 ; disciples' presence
at, 40 ; petitions in, 42 ; difficulties
of rightly estimating, 43, 44, 48 ; did

394

INDEX OF NAMES AND SUBJECTS.

not suspend the union with the Father,
47, 48 ; originates no new departure,
51; completes the "susceptio," 52, 55,
70 ; transfers to Christ the agony of
sin, 55, 56 ; effects of this transfer on
Him, 57 ; did not arise from weakness
of the flesh, 58 ; how far it includes
opposition of will, 59, 60; cause of
this, 61, 62 ; miraculous accompani
ments of, their significance, 63 ; eluci
dated by Heb. v. 7, 8, 64, 65 ; eluci
dates prayer generally, 65, 66 ; dog
matic adjustment of, 67 ; how Christ
' ' learned, " 68, 69; neglect of narrative
of, 70, 71 ; important as leading to
cross, 71, 73.
Crucifixion of Christ, its dogmatic signi
ficance, 134 ; and purpose, 135, 136 ;
legality of details of, 140-142 ; dis
cussed, 142, 143, and notes ; distinc
tive peculiarities of, 144 ; subservient
to God's purpose, 145 ; patience of
Jesus under, 148, 149 ; unique dog
matic character of, 150 ; infers sacri
ficial atonement, 151.
Death op Chbist, its place in His
passion, 33 ; its attendant circum
stances, 182 ; their meaning, 183 ;
darkness, 184 ; rending of veil, 186 ;
earthquake and partial resurrection,
187, 188 ; its dogmatic necessity, 240 ;
its true nature, 241.
Delitzsch, his exegesis, 12.
Disciples, sleep of, in garden, 57, 58 ; its
cause, 59 ; neglect burial of Christ,
200 ; their disbelief in possibility of
His resurrection, 205, 228 ; receive it
gradually, 222 ; their previous belief
in His person an assistance, 224 ; in
troduce this element in their preach
ing, 225 ; their discernment of the
risen body, 303-305 ; their unbelief
culpable, 315 ; gathering of, in Galilee,
330 ; first manifestation to, 352 ; its
important character, 354 ; dignity of
apostles conferred on, 355 ; their idea
of restoring the kingdom, 380; and
Christ's answer to, 380, 381.
Dorner, his definition of the atonement,
6 ; and views on, 14, 15.
Emmaus, the journey to, 346 ; mani
festation of Christ at, 348.
Gerhard, his "satisfaction" theory,
11 ; views on connection between
atonement and repentance, 17, 18 ;
importance assigned by him to the
conflict, 34 ; his views of the resurrec
tion in its relation to justification, 250.
Golgotha, p. 141, note.

Herod, Christ before, 111, 117; his
previous relations with Christ, 112 ;
his manner of dealing with Him, 118.
Hofmann, his view of the atonement,
11 ; his work on the passion, 23.
Hollaz, his views on the atonement, 10,
11, 13; holds the "essentiality" of
the passion, 16, 17.
Holsten, his anti-Pauline views on the
atonement, 6 ; his correct apprehen
sion of these views, 6, 17 ; his work
on these views, and on the passion,
24, 25 ; its extraordinary character,
25, 26 ; his erroneous impression of
Peter's views on the atonement, 27 ;
his loose exegesis, 25, 28, 29 ; his
theories of manifestation of Christ to
Paul, 321-323.
Illtjminationists, their valueless
theories of the atonement, 9.
Jews, their conduct at Jesus' trial before
Pilate, 109 ; induced thereto by the
priests, 110 ; ultimate appeal to, by
Pilate, 116; relations between them
and Romans, 120, 121 ; responsible
for Christ's death, 116, 126, 131; at
His crucifixion, 145 ; revile Him, 148 ;
their ignorance culpable, 158 ; their
remorse on Christ's death, 197 ; due
to presentiment of its true meaning,
198 ; wish to bury Jesus dishonour
ably, 199 ; the resurrection their
punishment, 245.
John the Apostle, his fate not foretold,
373.
John, Gospel of, its omission of the
conflict, 35 ; this partially explained,
71 ; its account of Christ's trial, 118 ;
last chapter of, 365 ; omits the ascen
sion, 387.
Jonah, parallelism between him and
Christ, 40.
Joseph,of Arimathea, procures the body
of Christ, 190 ; lays it in his tomb,
199 ; variety in accounts of this event,
199, note ; his character, 200 ; his
belief secret, 201 ; boldness of his
confession, 202 ; his concern in
Christ's sentence, 203.
Judas, his share in arrest of Christ, 80 ;
his motives, 81 ; his sin, 82, 83 ; his
character, 89, note ; his ignorance of
true nature of his crime, 86, note ;
his crime made subservient to the
Divine will, 86, 87.
Justification, dogma of, its connection
with Christ's resurrection, 248-250 ;
secured by it, 254 ; manner of its im
putation, 255, 256.

INDEX OF NAMES AND SUBJECTS.

395

Kingship of Christ, Pilate's curiosity
concerning, 123 ; Christ's answers
defining, 123, 124.
Lazarus, his resurrection contrasted
with that of Christ, 299.
Luke, his narratives of the conflict'
compared with those of the other
synoptists, 62 ; completeness of his
narratives, 387.
Luther, his views on the atonement, 9,
and note.
Manifestations op Christ when
risen, dogmatic importance of, 315,
316 ; theory of visions applied to,
318 ; its untenability, 319 ; do not
come under the same criticism as that
to Paul, 322; object of, 327; not
primarily to persuade, 328 ; their
object the apostolic commission, 330,
334, 383 ; this also reason of their
frequency, 337 ; ultimate object to
produce faith, 339 ; narratives of,
339, 340 ; details of, 341 ; and legends
of, 342 ; the first, 343 ; its preparatory
character, 345 ; the second, its diffi
culties, 347 ; also preparatory, 347,
351 ; its unique character, 348 ; its
purpose to produce faith, 349 ; its
effect, 350 ; the third, 352 ; its im
portant character, 354 ; the fourth,
361 ; its importance, 363 ; the fifth,
365 ; questions connected with, 366 ;
its symbolic meaning, 368, 369 ; its
continuity, 369 ; the sixth, 376 ; its
farewell character, 377 ; contains the
command to wait, 379.
Mark, Gospel of, its conclusion spurious,
328, note; its dogmatic importance,
329.
Mary Magdalene, her position among
the other women disciples, 261 ; ap
pearance of Christ to, 343 ; her action
on this, 344, 345.
Mary, the Virgin, her relations with
Christ on earth ended by His third
saying from the cross, 166.
Matthew, Gospel of, alone has account
of guard over Christ's grave, 204 ; its
account of the resurrection, 263-265 ;
its object, 266 ; its narrative of the
manifestations, 330 ; this really an
epitome, 332 ; omits the ascension,
387.
Melanchthon, his views on the atone
ment, 9, 10.
Nicodemus, contributes to Christ's
funeral, 200 ; his belief secret, 201 ;
nature of his confession, 203.

Nitzsoh, presses the objective Bide of
the atonement, 17 ; gives equal im
portance to man's repentance and
Christ's sacrifice, 18, 19.
Osiander, J. A., his view of the atone
ment, 11.
Passion op Christ, variety in attacks
on, 1 ; superior in importance to the
resurrection, 2 ; harmony of evan
gelists in describing, 4 ; its non-penal
character, 11, 12; "culmination" and
"essential" views of, 16, 17; the
former untenable, 17 ; doctrinal im
portance of its history, 22, 29 ; largely
uninvestigated dogmatically, 22, 23 ;
its work not passive, 23, 24 ; unity of
apostolic view of result of resurrec
tion, 29 ; limits of its history, 29, 30,
54 ; divisions of, 32, 33 ; mode of
Christ's references to it, 43, note ; its
contrast with His previous life, 45 ;
and connection with His previous life,
46, 51.
Paul, his definition of Christianity, 2 ;
¦ his view of the atonement, 6, 17, 27,
28 ; repudiates investigation into its
mysteries, 21 ; importance assigned
by, to the cross, 136, 137 ; preaches
the resurrection, 225, 226 ; manifes
tation of Christ to, 317, 321 ; con
trasted with those of the forty days,
322 ; the origin of his apostolate, 324 ;
any other view of, impossible, 325-
327 ; vindicates his apostolate by it,
333 ; his own view of, 336 ; his sum
mary of the manifestations, its pur
pose, 340 ; his martyrdom foretold,
373.
Peter, his view of the atonement mis
apprehended, 27 ; gives prominence
to Christ's sufferings, 74 ; his conduct
at arrest of Christ, 80, 83 ; his speech
on death of Judas, 82, note ; denies
Christ, 92, 93 ; theological status of
this act, 99 ; proves the resurrection
by the Messiahship, 225 ; his Pente
costal sermon, 293 ; his denial for
given, 370 ; Christ's address to, at
fifth manifestation, 370, 371 ; emin
ence of his sufferings, 372 ; their effect
on him, 373.
Pharisees, desire to guard Christ's tomb,
205, 207 ; their hostility to Him, 206 ;
deny His resurrection, 209, 210 ; their
theory of resurrection, 320.
Pilate, his relations with the Sanhedrim,
107, 121 ; trial of Jesus before, 108 ;
sends Him to Herod, 111, 117; his
previous relations with Christ, 112 ;

396

INDEX OF NAMES AND SUBJECTS.

his conduct at the trial, 114; reluc
tant to condemn Christ, 116, 117 ;
guilt of his conduct, 118, 129 ; his
enmity to the priests, 121 ; his con
duct impartial, 123 ; rejects the
accusation as irrelevant, 125 ; denies
responsibility in Christ's condemna
tion, 126 ; desires to save Him, 127 ;
his motives not probably religious,
128, 129 ; but worldly, 131 ; his con
duct natural, his wife's dream, 133 ;
its unimportance dogmatically, 134 ;
sends inscription for the cross, 146 ;
motives in so doing, 147 ; sets watch
over Christ's tomb, 208.
Quenstedt, holds the atonement penal,
11, 12, 13; supports "essential"
theory of the passion, 16, 17 ; his
doctrinal deductions from passion
history, 31.
Raising op Jesus, 243 ; its meaning as
a Divine act, 244 ; its place in the
work of salvation, 246, 247 ; and im
mediate connection with it, 248 ; dis
putes as to this, 249 ; its connection
in efficacy with His death, 252 ; its
necessity in this connection, 254, 255 ;
harmony of this idea with the narra
tives, 256 ; criticism upon, 257 ; diffi
culties of reconciling them, 259 ; give
little real ground for hostile criticism,
260 ; real harmonies of, 262 ; carried
into details, 263-265 ; dates of the
various appearances, 265 ; judgment
on, summed up, 267, 268 ; its simi
larity with accounts of Christ's birth,
268, 269. See also Resurrection and

Repentance, its relations with atone
ment, 17, 18 ; and subordination to
it, 18, 19.
Resurrection, source of apostolic doctrine
of passion, 29 ; its central position
dogmatically, 213 ; comparative un
importance of, in apologetics, 215 ;
dogmatic position of faith in, 216,
217 ; the critical point for both apolo
gist and hostile critic, 218, 219 ; the
evangelical accounts of, insufficient to
establish it scientifically, 220, 221 ;
the faith of the disciples a proof of its
reality, 221 ; intimate connection of,
with Scriptures, 223 ; and with the
Messiahship, in proof, 226, 233 ; only
to be apprehended by faith, 227 ;
historical difficulties connected with,
229 ; and criticism thereon, 230, 231 ;
harmonies of, attempted, 231 ; their
inherent weakness, 232 ; divides itself

into raising and rising (see them
separately), 236; their apparent clash
ing, 237 ; its immediate connection
with the passion, 238 ; and with the
exaltation, 239.
Rising of Christ, how far compatible
with the raising, 270, 271 ; freedom
of Christ's action in, 272 ; indicates
beginning of ministry of exaltation,
272-274 ; character of this ministry,
273 ; in what it consisted, 276 ; the
risen body, 277 (see Body) ; its dog
matic character, 281 ; how . far a
triumph over death, 282 ; more truly
one over sin, 283 ; its connection with
descent of the Spirit, 284; and so
administers Him to us, 285 ; this a
necessary step, 289 ; consequence of
Christ's divinity, 294; its purpose,
313, 314 ; faith in, not identical with
saving faith, 337, 338. See also
Raising and Resurrection.
Ritschl, his work on the Divine Sonship,
7 ; vindicates Abelard, 8, 9 ; feeble
ness of his argument, 10 ; adopts
and developes "culmination" view
of atonement, 20, 21.
Rothe, his views on the atonement, 14,
15 ; not really novel, 15 ; inclines to
the "culmination" theory, 16; his
doctrine of the risen body, 301.
Sanhedrim, their Divine authority, its
expiry, 77, and note ; their conduct
at Jesus' trial, 94 ; and eagerness to
convict Him, 97 ; their observance of
legal form, 101 ; their Messianic ideas,
102 ; their judicial blindness, 104 ;
convey Jesus to Pilate, 107 ; dog
matic bearing of this act, 108, 109 ;
stir up the people to demand the
crucifixion, 110 ; their conduct on the
resurrection, 208, 209.
Satisfaction of the atonement, promul
gated by Anselm, 8 ; general accept
ance of the dogma, 10 ; objections to,
11.
Sayings, the seven, from the cross — the
first, 154; its prayerful character, 155;
whom it embraced, 156, 157 ; points
to the atonement, 159 ; the second,
160 ; its true import, 161-163 ; the
third, 164 ; its dogmatic significance,
166, 167 ; the fourth, 167 ; different
interpretations of, 168-170; its true
meaning, 171 ; contains the essence
of the atonement, 172, 173 ; the fifth, .
its grammatical construction, 173 ;
circumstances in which it was uttered,
174, 175 ; infers completion of atone
ment, 176 ; and indicates forgiveness,

INDEX OF NAMES AND SUBJECTS.

397

177 ; the sixth, 178 ; proclaims com
pletion of atonement, 178, 179 ; the
seventh, 179 ; its unique character,
180 ; signifies re-union to God in oon-
sequence of completion of the atone
ment, 181.
Schleiermacher, his pastoral zeal, 2 ;
inconsistencies of his views of the
atonement, 14 ; inclines to " culmina
tion " view, 16, 17 ; his theory of the
conflict, 36, 37.
Schmidt, his treatise on the passion, 1.
Scourging of Christ, its theological sig
nificance, accounts of, investigated,
114, note.
Simon the Cyrenian, questions connected
with, 141, note.
Spirit, the Holy, how far Pentecostal
descent of, indicated a new dispensa
tion, 286 ; its connection with rising
of Christ, 287, 288 ; results from it,
290 ; its pre-existence not contrary to
this, 291 ; could not fully descend
before, 292; corollary of Christ's
kingly office, 313 ; did not bestow the
apostolic commission, 335 ; given to
the disciples by Christ, 356 ; how
connected with apostolic powers, 357.
Stahl, his view of the atonement, 11.
Strauss, bis anti-miracle theory, 1 ; his
"myth" theory, 3, 5; superficiality
of his criticism, 4, 5 ; his theory not
founded on details, 5, 6, 22 ; shirks
history of the conflict, 36, 37 ; his
theory of the sufferings, 72 ; of the
trial, 90, 91 ; of that before Pilate,
107, 108 ; his criticism of the cruci
fixion self-refuting, 138, 139 ; his

view of Christ's death, 152, 153, 182 ;
and of its attendant circumstances,
185 ; his criticism, of the resurrection,
233, 234 ; of Christ's risen body, 295-
297 ; of His manifestations, 316 ; of
the ascension, 384.
Sufferings of Christ, credibility of our
accounts of them, 72, 73 ; their place
in the atonement, 74, 75 ; connec
tion with sin, 75, 76 ; caused rather
than permitted by God, 76, 77 ;
not primarily the result of human
cruelty, 78 ; element of bodily pain
in, 92.
Synoptists, agreement of their accounts
of the passion, 2, 79.
Thomas, bis absence from Easter Chris
tophany, 358 ; character of his belief,
359 ; dangers of his position, 360 ;
his character predisposed to doubt,
361 ; his doubts dispelled, 362, 363.
Trial of Christ, an essential part of His
sufferings, 91 ; its humiliatory cha
racter, 91, 92; Peter's presence at, 93 ;
its details characterized by sin and
falsehood, 94, 97 ; personal violence
used at, 98 ; ostensible grounds of
Christ's conviction, 100 ; Divine in
fluence in, 101, 104, 130; deport
ment of Christ at, 103, 123 ; Divine
purpose in, 104-106 ; continued be
fore Pilate, 107-109 ; significance of
this, 111, 118-120 ; special indignity
in, 113.
Wichelhaus, his work on the passion,
its triviality, 22, 23.

398

INDEX OF SCEIPTUEE PASSAGES.

INDEX OF SCRIPTURE PASSAGES.

PAGE

PAGE
Psalm xvi. 10, . i 95
John xviii. 22, . 92
Isaiah liii. 5, .
11
xviii. 38,
125
liii. 9, .
195
xix. 8, .
127, 128
Zechariah xii. 10,
192, 193
xix. 9, .
129
Matthew xvii. 22, .
note, 47
xix. 10, 11, .
130
xx. 22, 23, .
49
six. 12,
127
xxii. 2, .
101
xix. 26,
164
xxii. 30,
300
xix. 28,
173
xxvi. 38,
39
xix. 30,
178
xxvi. 39,
57
xix. 34,
194
xxvi. 41,
57
xx. 17, .
344
xxvi. 53,
48
xx. 22, .
290,"
312, 313, 355
xxvi. 56,
88
xxi. 22, 23,
313, 314
xxvi. 64,
104, 105
Acts i. 8, .
356
xxvi. 67, 68,
92
ii. 23, 24, .
239
xxvii. 9, 10, .
note, 87
Romans i. 4,
285
xxvii. 19,
112
iv. 25, .
250, 251
xxvii. 40,
167
1 Corinthians i.
21,
21
xxvii. 52, 53,
187
xv. 3, 4,
31
Mark vi. 48-51,
311
xv. 4, .
225
xiv. 36,
42
xv. 14, .
. 21, 217
xv. 27, 28,
164
xv. 17, .
217
xv. 34, .
167
xv. 26, .
282, 283
Luke xxii. 45,
59
xv. 44, .
298
xxii. 51,
note, 84
2 Corinthians ii
.14,
19
xxii. 53,
81
v. 21, .
. 54,56
xxiii. 34,
79, 154-159
xiii. 8, .
note, 37
xxiii. 43,
160-164
Galatians iii. 13,
55
xxiii. 46,
179
vi. 14, .
136
xxiii. 49,
note, 167
2 Timothy iv. 17,
111
John ix. 10,
note, 102
Hebrews ii. 14,
282
x. 17, .
51
v. 5, .
269
xi. 16, .
359
v. 7, 10, .
. 63-69
xi. 33, .
35
viii. 1, .
313
xii. 42, .
102
x. 19, 20,
186
xiii.,
30
x. 27, .
159
xiii. 27,
86
xii. 11, .
12
xvi. 2, 3,
78
1 Peter ii. 24,
151
xvi. 32,
47
iii. 18, .
242
xviii. 11,
49
1 John v. 6,
196
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meditation they are most excellent. The whole tone of the work is thoroughly practical,
and never becomes controversial.' — Church Bells.
' The very best religious exposition for everyday use that has ever fallen in our way.' —
Be Is Weekly Messenger.
'This charming and practical book of household devotion will be welcomed, on account
of its rare intrinsic value, as one of the most practical devotional books ever published.'
— Standard. ' Massive of thought, persuasive, earnest, and e\oqaeni:+-Literary Churchman.
'As might have been expected from so clear and vigorous a thinker, every passage is
valuable either as an exposition or a suggestion.'— Henry Ward Beecher in Christian
Union. BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
Just published, in crown 800, price Gs.,
MOSES:
A BIBLICAL STUDY.
<¦ Our Author has seized, as with the instinctof a master, the great salient points iu the
life and work of Moses, and portrayed the various elements of his character with vivid
ness arid skill . . The work will at once take its place among our ablest and most
valuable expository and practical discoui-ses.'-Bop^ Magazine.
'A volume full of valuable and suggestive thought, which well deserves and will
umply repay careful perusal. We have read it with real V^snvef-ChrtZn Obse,-ver

T. and T. Clark's Publications.

In Three Volumes, 800, price 81s. 6d.,
A COMMENTARY ON
THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN.
By F. GODET, D.D.,
PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY, NEUC1IATEL.
' This work forms one of the battle-fields of modern inquiry, and is itself so rich in
spiritual truth that it is impossible to examine it too closely j and we welcome this treatise
from the peu of Dr. Godet "We have no more competent exegete, and this new volume
phows all the learning and vivacity for wliich the Author is distinguished.'- -Freeman.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
Just published, in Two Volumes, 8vo, price 21s.,
A COMMENTARY ON
THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE.
Cranslatcli from the Jteoni) Jfrmri) CESittnn.
' We are indebted to the Publishers for an English translation of the admirable work
which stands at the head of this review. ... It is a work of great ability, learning, aud
research.' — Christian Observer.
' Marked by clearness and good sense, it will be found to possess value and interest as
on) of the most recent and copious works specially designed to illustrate this Gospel,' —
Guardian. 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
In preparation,
A COMMENTARY ON
ST. PAUL'S EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS.
Just published, in demy 8vo, TJiird Edition, price 10s. Gd.,
MODERN DOUBT AND CHRISTIAN BELIEF.
A Series of Apologetic Lectures addressed to Earnest
Seekers after Truth.
By THEODORE CHRISTLIEB, D.D.,
UNIVERSITY PREACHER AND PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY AT BONN.
Translated, with tbe Author's sanction, chiefly by the Eev. H. IT. Weitbrecht,
Ph.D., and Edited by the Eev. T. L. Kingsbury, M.A., Vicar of Easton
Royal, and Rural Dean.
'We recommend the volume as one of the most valuable and important among recent
contributions to our apologetic literature. . . . We are heartily thankful both to the
learned Author and to his translators.' — Guardian.
'All the fundamental questions connected with revealed religion are handled more
or less fully. The volume shows throughout intellectual force and earnestness.' —
At'ienseum. 'We express our unfeigned admiration of the ability displayed in this work, and of
t"_i3 spirit of deep piety which pervades it ; and whilst we commend it to the careful
p3rusal of our readers, we heartily rejoice that in those days of reproach and blasphemy,
so able a champion has come forward to contend earnestly for the faith which was once
dslivered to the saints.' — Christian Observer.

10 T. and T. Clark's Publications.
Recently published, in demy 8vo, price 9s.,
A CHRONOLOGICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION TO
THE LIFE OF CHRIST.
By C. E. CASPARI.
TRANSLATED FEOM THB GERMAN*, WITH ADDITIONAL NOTES, BY
M. J. EVANS, B.A.
•Eebiseti 6*g tfje &utfjoi\
'The work is handy, and well suited for the use of the student. It gives him, in very
reasonable compass and in well-digested forms, a great deal of information respecting
the dates and outward circumstances of our Lord's life, and materials for forming a
judgment upon the various disputed points arising out of them.' — Gum-diom.
'An excellent and devout work. We can strongly recommend it.' — Church Quarterly
Review. Recently published, in demy 8vo, price 7s. Gd.,
THE MIRACLES OF OUR LORD
IN RELATION TO MODERN CRITICISM.
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF
F. L. STEIN MEYER, D.D.,
Ordinary Professor of Theology in the University of Berlin.
' This work vindicates in a vigorous and scholarly style the sound view of miracles
against the sceptical assaults of the time.'— Princeton Review.
'We commend the study of this work to thoughtful and intelligent readers, and
especially to students of divinity, whose position requires a competent knowledge of
modern theological controversy.' — Wesleyan Methodist Magazine.
Just published, price os.,
MESSIANIC PROPHECY:
Ita ©rij-jin, historical ffifjatacter, anti delation to
Nerrj "Xeatament tfttieiment.
By Dr. EDWARD RIEHM,
PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY, HALLE.
Translated from the German, with the Approbation ofthe Author,
By the Rev. JOHN JEFFERSON.
' "Undoubtedly original and suggestive, and deserving careful consideration.' — Literary
Churchman. 'Its intrinsic excellence makes it a valuable contribution to our biblical literature.' 
British and Foreign Evangelical Review.
In demy 8vo, price 6s.,
THE SERVANT OF JEHOVAH.
& CContmentatg, ffirammattcat anti flTttttcal, upon
laaiafj lit. 13-Ittt. 12.
WITH DISSERTATIONS UPON THE AUTHORSHIP OF ISAIAH XL -LXVI
AND UPON THE MEANING OP EBED JEHOVAH.
By WILLIAM URWICK, M.A.,
Of Trinity College, Dublin; Tutor in Hebrew, New College, London.
'This is a very able and seasonable contribution to biblical literature.'— Watchman
Ihe commentary evinces the great ability, accurate and extensive scholarship, and
admirable judgment of the Author.'— Weekly Review. v ' '

T. and T. Clark's Publications. 1 1

In 21 Volumes, demy 8vo, Subscription Price £4, Is.,
WORKS OF DR. JOHN OWEN.
Edited by Eev. "W. H, GOOLD, D.D., Edinburgh.
The Commentary on the EriSTLE to the Hebrews, in Sci:cn Volumes, may be
had separately, price 12s.
Several years have now elapsed since the first publication of this edition of
the Works of the greatest of Puritan Divines. Time has tested its merits, arid
it is now admitted on all hands to be the only correct and complete edition.
As there are above Fourteen Thousand Pages in all, each Volume therefore
averages Five Hundred and Ninety Pages.
1 You will find that in John Owen the learning of Lightfoot, the strength of Charnock,
the analysis of Howe, the savour of Leighton, the raeiness of Heywood, the glow of
Baxter, the copiousness of Barrow, the splendour of Bates, are all combined. We should
quickly restore the race of great divines if our candidates were disciplined in such lore.'
— The late Dr. Hamilton of Leeds.
WORKS OF JOHN CALVIrL
The Contents of the Series are as follow : —
Commentary on Zechariah and Malachi, 1
vol.
Harmony of the Synoptical Evangelists, 3
vols.
Commentary on John's Gospel, 2 vols.
// on Acts of the Apostles, 2 vols.
n on Romans, 1 vol.
n on Corinthians, 2 vols.
a on Galatians and Ephesians, 1 vol.
n on Philippians, Colossians, and Thes
salonians, 1 vol.
« on Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, 1
vol.
« on Hebrews, 1 vol.
on Peter, John, James, and Jude, 1

Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 vols.
Tracts on the Reformation, 3 vols.
Commentary on Genesis, 2 volf.
Harmony of the last four Books of the
Pentateuch, 4 vols.
Commentary on Joshua, 1 vol.
a on the Psalms, 5 vols.
n on Isaiah, 4 vols.
// on Jeremiah and Lamentations, 5 vols.
;/ on Ezekiel, 2 vols.
a on Daniel, 2 vols.
u on Hosea, 1 voL
n on Joel, Amos, and Obadiah, 1 vol.
a on Jonah, Micah, and Nahum, 1 vol.
a on Habakkuk, Zephaniab, andHaggai,

1 voL vol.
A Selection of Six Volumes (or more at the same proportion) for 21s., with the excep
tion of the iHSTrrnTES, 2 vols. ; Psalms, vols. 1 and 5 ; and Habakiiuk.
The Letters, edited by Dr. Bonnet, 2 vols., 10s. 6d.
Any Separate Volume (with the above exceptions), 6s.
The Institutes, 2 vols., translated, 14s.
„ in Latin, Tholuck's edition, 2 vols., {subscription price') 14s.
RITTER'S GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE.
In Foue "Volumes, 8vo, Price 32s.
THE COMPARATIVE GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE AND
THE SINAITIC PENINSULA. By Professor Carl Eitter of Berlin.
Translated and adapted for the use of Biblical Students by William L.
Gage.
'I have always looked on Bitter's Comparative Geography of Palestine, comprised in his
famous " Erdkunde," as the great classical work on the subject — a clear and full resume of
all that was known of Bible lands up to the time he wrote, and as such indispensable
to the student of Bible Geography and History. This translation will open up a flood
of knowledge to the English reader, especially as the editor is a man thoroughly imbued
with the spirit of this noble-minded and truly Christian Author.'— Keith Johnston, Esq.,
Geographer in Ordinary to Mer Majesty for Scotland.
' One of the most valuable works on Palestine ever published.'— Rev. H. B. Tkistkam,
Author of' The Land of Israel.'

12

T. and T. Clark's Publications. j

THE

Just published,
HIPPOLYTUS
CHURCH OF ROME THIRD
By J. J. Ign.

in demy 8vo, price 9s.,
AND CALLISTUS;
OR,
IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE
CENTURY.
von DOLLINGER.

Translated, with Introduction, Notes, and Appendices,
By ALFRED PLUMMER, M.A.,
MASTER OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, DURHAM.
' That this learned and laborious work is a valuable contribution to ecclesiastical
history, is a fact of which we need hardly assure our readers. The name of the writer is
a sufficient guarantee of this. It bears in all its pages the mark of that acuteness which,
even more than the unwearied industry of its venerated Author, is a distinguishing
feature of whatever proceeds from the pen of Dr. DBUinger.'— John Bull.
Just published, in Two Volumes, demy 8vo, price 12s. each,
A HISTORY of the COUNCILS OF the CHURCH
TO A.D. 429.
tfrotrt tfje ©dgt'nal So car-tents.
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF
C. J. HEFELE, D.D., Bishop of Rottenburg.
' This careful translation of Hefele's Councils.' — Dr. Puset.
' A thorough and fair compendium, put in the most accessible and intelligent form.' 
Guardian. ' A work of profound erudition, and written in a most candid spirit. The book will be
a standard work on the subject.' — Spectator.
' The most learned historian of the Councils.' — Pere Gratrt.
'*We cordially commend Hefele's Councils to the English student.'— John Bull.

In demy 8vo, 700 pages, price 12s.,
A CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL COMMENTARY
ON THE
BOOK OF PSALMS.
WITH A NEW TRANSLATION.
By JAMES G. MURPHY, LL.D., T.C:D.,
AUTHOR OP COMMENTARIES ON THE BOOKS OF OENESIS, EXODUS, ETC.
' This work aims, and not unsuccessfully, at bringing out the sense and elucidating
the principle of each psalm. The notes are plain and to the purpose. It has nlentv of
matter, and is not diffuse.' — Guardian. *
' D£rM»IPl*'y's contribution to the literature of the Psalms is a most welcome addition
. . . We have no hesitation in predicting for it a cordial reception from all who can appre
ciate a sound and scholarly exegesis, and who are anxious to discover the full and exact
meaning of the inspired word.'— Baptist Magazine.

T. and T. Clark's Publications. 13

jfotetcpx Uebotional Etfctari).

Just published, in Two Vob., large crown 8vo, price 15s.,
THE YEAR OF SALVATION.
WORDS OF LIFE FOR EVERY DAY.
A BOOK OF HOUSEHOLD DEVOTION.
Br J. J. van OOSTERZEE, D.D.

'A work of great value and interest. To the clergy these readings will be found full
of suggestive hints for sermons and lectures; while for family reading or for private
meditation they are most excellent. The whole tone of the work is thoroughly*practical,
and never becomes controversial.' — Church Bells.
' The text is illustrated by apposite and thoughtful remarks, which will be found both
convenient and profitable, not only in the family circle, but also for private meditation.'
— Christian Observer.
' The very best religions exposition for every-day use that has ever fallen in our way.' —
BeUs Weekly Messenger.
' The author's mind is deeply imbued with Scripture principles, and overflows with
words, rich, warm, and devotional in theii; character.' — Ecclesiastical Gazette.
' This charming and practical book of household devotion will be welcomed on account
of its rare intrinsic value, as one of the most practical devotional books ever published.'
— Standard. ' Massive of thought, persuasive, earnest, and eloquent.' — Literary Churchman.
'Simple, terse, and practical; and will, we are sure, be read with profit and pleasure
by many.' — Leeds Mercury.
'Characterized by evangelical fervour, and by a beautiful spirit of peacefulness.' —
Nonconformist. ' This is a book for all sections of the Christian Church. ... It is sure to be prized
both for its eloquence and the freshness with whieh it meditates upon familiar and
precious truths.' — Reformed Presbyterian Magazine.
'It is one of the best books of its class, that we know of, for devotional reading. The
meditations are brief and devout, thoroughly evangelical, and frequently suggestive.' —
Evangelical Magazine.
'As might have been expected from so clear and vigorous a thinker, every passage
in this bouk is valuable either as an exposition or a suggestion.'— Christian Union.
' The conceptions are rich, full, and free, and beautifully expressed.'— Primitive
Methodist Magazine.
1 Every page breathes a spirit of deep piety and earnest faith.' — Scotsman.

14 T. and T. Clark's Publications.

Just published, in demy 8vo, price Gs. ,
A TREATISE ON THE
INSPIRATION OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES.
Br CHARLES ELLIOTT, D.D.,
PROFESSOR OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE AND EXEGESIS IN THE PRESBYTERIAN THEOLOGICAL
SEMINARY OF THE NORTH-WEST, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS.
' It will be seen from this abbreviated account of the contents that scarcely anything
is omitted to make the volume complete as a book of reference on the general subject.'
• — Rock. 1 The style is clear, direct, vigorous ; and the whole treatise is all that ordinary readers
can need, either for the establishment of their own faith or defence against attacks from
without.' — Watchman.
1 A book of true worth, on a topic which is the real battle-ground of controversy,
furnishing to readers clear arguments, magnificent facts, and a weight, of authority for
an intelligent faith in the sacred Scriptures.' — Momiletic Quarterly.
In Two Vols., demy 8vo, price 21s.,
HISTORY OF PROTESTANT THEOLOGY,
PARTICULARLY IN GERMANY,
Viewed according to its Fundamental Movement, and in connection with the
¦Religious, Moral, and Intellectual Life.
TRANSLATED FEOM THE GERMAN OF
De. J. A. DORNER, Professor of Theology, Berlin.
With a Preface to the Translation by the Author.
' Dr. Dorner is distinguished by massive breadth of thought, ... by scholarly research,
genial appreciation of all forms of culture, and a well-balanced judgment, swayed by a
spirit of fah'ness to those who differ from him. . . . The work is in every way deserving
of careful examination now, as it is likely to be afterwards valued as one deserving the
highest confidence as a book of reference, on account of its ample research amongst
materials on which competent judgment must r,est. . . . We regard with satisfaction the
appearance of such a work. The highest interests are promoted by a treatise at onee
scholarly and eminently suggestive, which deals with theology at once scientifically and
historically.' — Contemporary Review.
' This masterly work of Dr. Dorner, so successfully rendered into English by the pre
sent translators, will more than sustain the reputation he has already achieved by his
exhaustive, and, as it seems to us, conclusive History of the Development of Doctrine
respecting the Person of Christ.' — Spectator.
In demy 8vo, price 12s.,
INTRODUCTION TO
THE PAU.LIN'E EPISTLES.
By PATON J. GLOAO, D.D.,
Author of a ' Critical and Exegetical Ccjpameutary on the Acts of the
Apostles.'
' Those acquainted with the Author's previous works will be prepared for something
valuable in his present work ; and it will not disappoint expectation, but rather exceed
it. The most recent literature of his subject is before him, and he handles it with ease
and skill. ... It will be found a trustworthy guide, and raise its Author's reputation in
this important branch of biblical study.' — Bi-itish and Foreign Evangelical Review.
' A work of uncommon merit. He must be a singularly accomplished divine to whose
library this book is not a welcome and valuable addition.' — Watchman.

T. and T. Clark's Publications. 15

In Eleven Volumes, demy Seo, 12s. each,
THE COLLECTED WORKS
OF
DUGALD STEWART, Esq., F.R.S.S.,
PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH.
Edited by Sir WILLIAM HAMILTON, Bart.
CONTENTS.
Vol. I. — Dissertation. Vols. II., III., and IV. — Elements of the Philosophy of the
Human Mind. Vol. V. — Philosophical Essays. Vols. VI. and VII. — Philosophy
of the Active and Moral Powers of Man. Vols. VIII. and IX. — Lectures on
Political Economy. Vol. X. — Biographical Memoirs of Adam Smith, LL.D.,
"William Robertson, D.D., and Thomas Eeid, D.D. ; to which is prefixed a Memoir
of Dugald Stewart, with Selections from his Correspondence, by John Veitch,
M.A., Professor of Logic and Rhetoric, Glasgow University. Vol. XI. — Trans
lations of the Passages in Foreign Languages contained in the Collected "Works ;
with General Indes.
' This edition is one of great and permanent, value. It has the incalculable advantage
of being superintended by a man of greater genius than the Author, and hence it possesses
a double interest to the philosophical reader.' — Church of England Quarterly Review.
' Altogether the style of this edition leaves nothing to be desired. A more illustrious
monument to the memory of a great man could not be raised ; and the admirers of Mr.
Stewart's genius, and indeed all the disciples of mental philosophy, must feel greatly
indebted to Sir William Hamilton for the worthy service he is performing.' — Eclectic
Review. 1 This edition, with notes by Sir William Hamilton, is incomparably the best that has
been published, and ought to find its way into every good library.' — Christian Observer .
Recently published, in demy Svo, price 10s. Qd.,
DELIVERY AND DEVELOPMENT
OF
CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE.
W\)t Jrtftfj Series of the (Etmumgham JLcctutes.
By ROBERT RAINY, D.D.,
PRINCIPAL OF AST! PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY AND CHURCH HISTORY IN THE NEW COLLE GE,
EDINBURGH.
' We gladly acknowledge their high excellence and the extensive learning which they
all display. They are able to the last degree ; and the Author has in an unusual measure
the power of acute and brilliant generalization. He handles his array of multifarious
facts with ease and elegance ; and we must needs acknowledge (and we do it willingly)
that the Lectures are a real contribution to the settlement of the vast and obscure question
with which they are occupied.' — Literary Churchman.
Just published, in demy 8vo, price 12s.,
THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIANITY,
"Mttfj a Utefo of the State of the ftoman iOTorfo at the 33'tth of ffiftrtst.
Br G. B. FISHER, D.D.
' The work throughout indicates extensive and impartial research. Dr. Eisher is a
fresh and vigorous thinker — a man of ripe scholarship and fine spiritual intuition.' —
Baptist Magazine. Just published, m demy 8vo, price 12s.,
FAITH AND PHILOSOPHY:
DISCOURSES AND ESSAYS.
By H. B. SMITH, D.D.
' There is not one of these Essays but is at once able and interesting.' — Church
Quarterly Review.

1 6 T. and T. Clark's Publications.

yust published, Second Edition, demy'&uo, iar. 6d.,
The Training of the Twelve ;
OR,
EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES IN THE GOSPELS
EXHIBITING THE TWELVE DISCIPLES OF JESUS UNDER
DISCIPLINE FOR THE APOSTLESHIP.

A. B. BRUCE, D.D.,
PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY, FREE CHURCH COLLEOE, GLASGOW.

' Here we have a really great book on an important, large, and attractive subject — a
book full of loving, wholesome, profound thoughts about the fundamentals of Christian
faith and practice.' — British and Foreign Evangelical Review. >
1 It is some five or six years since this work first made its appearance, and now that a
second edition has been called for, the Author has taken the opportunity to make some
alterations which are likely to render it still more acceptable. Substantially, however,
the book remains the same, and the hearty commendation with wliich we noted its first
issue applies to it at least as much now.' — Rock. s
' The value, the beauty of this volume is that it is a unique contribution to, because a
loving and cultured study of, the life of Christ, in the relation of the Master of the
Twelve.' — Edinburgh Daily Review.
'The volume is of permanent value, and we trust that its Author may favour as with
others of like character.' — Freeman.
' It is of no mean order as a profoundly devout piece of practical divinity.' — Wesleyan
Methodist Magazine.
'It was by the first edition of this invaluable book that Dr. Bruce became known to
English students as a theological writer. A more scholarly, more helpful book has not
been published for many years past.' — Baptist Magazine.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
In One Volume, 8vo, price \ls.,
The Humiliation of Christ
IN ITS PHYSICAL, ETHICAL, AND OFFICIAL ASPECTS.
(Sixth Series of Cunningham Lectures.)
_ ' These lectures are able and deep-reaching to a degree not often found in the religious
literature of the day; withal, they are fresh and suggestive. . . . The learning and the
deep and sweet spirituality of this discussion will commend it to many faithful students
of the truth as it is in Jesus.' — Congregationalist.
' We have not for a long time met with a work so fresh and suggestive as this of
Professor Bruce. . . . We do not know where to look at our English Universities for
a treatise so calm, logical, and scholarly.'— English Independent.
' The title of the book gives but a faint conception of the value aud wealth of its con
tents. . . . Dr. Bruce's work is really one of exceptional value; and no one can read it
without perceptible gain in theological knowledge.'— English Churchman.
' The writer gives evidence of extensive and accurate theological learning in the topics
Ch IB U tr6atS' h6 Sh°WS that h6 haS theoloSieal eraBP as wel1 as learning.'—

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