¦¦¦'¦'¦¦' . ' THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OS" THE PERSON OF CHRIST. FREELY TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF W. F. GESS, WITH MANY ADDITIONS, BY J. A. REUBELT, D.D., PBOFESSOB IN INDIANA UNIVERSITY, BLOOMINGTON, IND. ANDOVER: WARREN F. DRAPER, MAIN STSEE1. 1870. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by WA BEEN F. DEAPEE, In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. AUTHOR'S PREFACE, The truth concerning the person of Christ is happily not now first to be discovered, being already presented in its leading features in the symbolical books of the church. Still, the more thoroughly the 'Study of the person of the Son of God is engaged in, the more cer tainly does it lead to the humble confession that here are depths which we cannot fathom during this life. There is, however, between the. written definitions of ecclesiastical creeds and the limits which our present knowledge can never pass much room for further re search. The abounding riches contained in the Script ures, with respect to divine truth in general, and its central point, the Son of God and the Son of Man, in particular, are such as to yield an abundant harvest to every succeeding generation of the church. Moreover, the statement of the truth by our Lord himself and his inspired apostles is, in its simplicity, so full of life, and so far transcending our human forms of thought, that constantly renewed labor is necessary for its adequate comprehension. It is with this as with the practical knowledge of Christ by an individual Christian. He has given his heart to Christ and has thus learned to know 4 AUTHOR'S PREFACE. him, but still the process has to be repeated day by day. So the church has long held the true doctrine concern ing Christ, but yet continually needs to apprehend it more fully. We have reason to rejoice that the Lord has enabled the science of theology, having been revived within a few decades, to take a few steps which may be regarded as an advance in Christological doctrine. In venturing to lay before the public an Essay on the Person of Christ, I do so in the full assurance of having earnestly endeavored to consult the Scriptures as their own commentary with reference to the mean ing of every single passage, as well as with reference to their general organic tendency. Whatever, without knowing or designing it, I have affirmed contrary to the sense of Scripture, I at once pronounce null and void, and shall be glad to have any such statements pointed out to me. I may, perhaps, also hope that I have succeeded in developing some truth from the Scriptures, which may be of service in promoting a more correct view of our Saviour's person. The Essay is primarily intended for professional theo logians ; but I entertain the hope that it will prove in structive and useful also to thoughtful laymen. There are in our church (God be praised for it!) a large num ber of laymen who long for a profound and systematic •understanding of what they believe-, and theological lectures will suffer no loss by cultivating simplicity. Our Lord uttered the profoundest thoughts in the AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 5 simplest language, and has thus pointed out the path to be pursued by theological science. I assume at the outset that all the books of the New Testament are genuine ; nor is it the province of a Christological Essay to prove this in detail. Yet I think I have shown that on this view a history of New Testament Christology results, which is both simple and in accordance with the laws of spiritual and religious development. How could this be the case, if most of these writings had been the work of entirely different authors, living at remote periods ? On the other hand, can any clear or satisfactory view of the development of Christological doctrine be obtained on the basis of modern criticism ? In the second place, I have, I think, contributed somewhat to establish the three following propositions : that the Christ of the synoptic Gospels and that of John presuppose each other; that the Christ of the fourth Gospel and that of the Apocalypse are in perfect har mony with each other ; and, that the Christology of Paul presents an organic whole throughout the Epistles which are ascribed to this Apostle, in so far as they have any important bearing on the subject. Admit these propositions, especially the first two, and all crit ical questions respecting the New Testament are settled. My substantial agreement, in respect to the self-empty ing act of the Son of God, with such men as Liebner, Thomasius, and Hofmann, is the more gratifying to me, 6 AUTHOR'S PREFACE. as I have obtained the same result in an independent manner. In respect to the main point I have long had settled convictions. In the particular develop ment, however, many points present themselves to these greatly revered authors and to myself in a very differ ent light. My method of procedure differs both from that adopted by Hofmann, and still more from that of Liebner and Thomasius, the latter finding their point of departure in the Christian consciousness, the former proceeding for the most part speculatively. In the last place, I would say that I have not, in this Essay, touched upon some questions the discussion of which might be expected in a Christological Treatise, being of opinion that they would find place more suit ably in a discussion of the Work of Christ. FR. GESS. TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. The translation of this work was made shortly after its publication ; but mindful of the Horatian maxim, " Nonum prematur in annum," I laid the manuscript aside, meanwhile, however, investigating the subject of Christology as closely as possible. On perusing the manuscript after the lapse of some years I found that my views were, on the whole, still the same, having only, perhaps, become riper and more fully developed. The fact that our American Christology needs recon structing can be denied by no one who gives serious thought to the subject, and does not regard the lan guage used in the symbolical books of his denomination as inspired by the Holy Ghost, and therefore precluding any improvement. How the different Christological views of the various sects in this country and the world are ultimately to be reconciled seems to cause no sort of uneasiness to some divines. I have expressed the views presented in this book, both by word of mouth and by writing, and they have met with both opposition and approval, the opposition amounting in some instances to persecution. The ful- 8 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. ler statement here given, will, it is hoped, disarm prejudice, and compel assent at least as to the main points, while the importance of the subject may assur edly challenge general examination. In order to show the general reader that the Chris tological views held by the church at different periods have greatly varied in important points, I have added a history of these different views in Appendix A. Whenever the translator differs from the revered author, he has stated this in a foot-note ; he has some times also modified the text, so that what is now offered, exhibits the translator's Christology. On the subject of the origin of the human soul the translator could not possibly agree with the. author, and in order to do justice to both parties, Appendix B has been added. With the prayer that the great Head of the Church will own and bless this feeble attempt on the most stu pendous subject which can engage the attention of the human mind, this Essay is now laid before a candid public. J. A. REUBELT. Bloomington, October, 1870, CONTENTS, Fibst Section. — The Eternal Son op God. Chap. I. The Testimony of Jesus as to his being the Son of God, pp. 13-62. § 1. The Mediatorial office of Jesus, pp. 13-20. § 2. He calls himself the Son of Man, pp. 21-24. § 3. Also the Son of God, pp. 24-26. § 4. The Old Testament idea of the Son of God, pp. 27-32. § 5. Jesus goes beyond this theocratical idea, pp. 32-34. § 6. He calls himself the Son of God in a sense implying consub- stantiality with God, pp. 34-41. § 7. This consubstantiality is founded upon his having been begotten of the Father before the foundation of the world, pp. 42-51. §'8. This Sonship of Jesus is the key for the understanding of his mediatorial office, pp. 52-57. • § 9. Also the key for the understanding of his relation to the Father and Holy Spirit, pp. 57-59. § 10. The relation of this Sonship to the theocratic Sonship and the Messianic prophecies, pp. 59-62. Chap. II. The Confession of the Jewish-Christian Churches concerning the Divine Nature of Jesus, pp. 63-91. § 11. The accounts of the Acts. The Epistle of James. Deductions from the Epistles to the Romans and the Hebrews, pp. 63-82. § 12. The Epistles of Peter, pp. 82-89. § 13. The result, pp. 89-91. Chap. III. The Testimony of the risen Saviour as to his Divine Son- ship, as given by Paul and John, pp. 92-157. 1. Paul. (§§ 14-22), pp. 92-120. + § 14. The testimony of Paul rests upon the self-testimonies of the exalted Jesus, pp. 92-97. § 15. Christ the second Adam, pp. 98-100. § 16. The heavenly One, pp. 100-101. 10 CONTENTS. § 17. The Mediator of the first creation, pp. 102-104. § 18. The Image of the invisible God, who was in the form of God, and equal with God, pp. 105-109. § 19. The self-revealing God of the Old Testament. The Spirit of Holiness. The fulness of the Godhead dwelleth in him. 5'he quickening Spirit, pp. 109-113. § 20. Christ is God, pp. 113-115. § 21. The Son of God, pp. 116-119. § 22. Summing up, pp. 119, 120. 2. The Epistle to the Hebrews. (§ 23), pp. 120-127. 3. John. (§§ 24-30), pp. 128-157. § 24. The self-testimony of the exalted Jesus as given to John through the apocalyptic visions, pp. 128-133. § 25. With this corresponds the testimony of John concerning Jesus, pp. 133-134. § 26. The testimony of John as to the relation of Jesus to the Father and the Holy Spirit, pp. 134-138. § 27. As to the relation of Jesus to the souls of men, pp. 138-140. -§ 28. As to his relation to the whole creation, pp. 140-143. § 29. The Logology of John, pp. 143-153. § 30. John's idea of the Sonship, pp. 153-157. Chap. IV. The Testimony of the Apostles concerning Jesus compared with the Seff-testimony of Jesus while on Earth. (§31), pp. 158-167. Chap. V. The Historic Character and Evidence of the Self-testimony of Jesus. (§§ 32, 33), pp. 168-187. Chap. VI. The Personality of the Holy Spirit. (§ 34), pp. 188-196. Chap. VII. The Divine Sonship, pp. 197-243. 1. The dependence ofthe Son on the Father. (§35), pp. 197-206. 2. The Son's equality with the Father, pp. 206-234. § 36. The Son the world's source of life, pp. 206-209. § 37. The eternity of the Son, pp. 209-216. § 38. The Son the source of life for the Holy Spirit, pp. 216-225. § 39. The Father's source of life identical with that of the Son, pp. 225-228. § 40. The Son from the substance ofthe Father, pp. 218-230. § 41. The Son's dependence on, and equality with, the Father co existent, pp. 230-234. CONTENTS. 11 3. The begetting of the Son an eternal act, pp. 234-243. § 42. Idea and transcendental character of this act of begetting, pp. 234-241. § 43. The Son begotten and the Spirit breathed, pp. 241-243. Second Section. — The Son upon Earth. § 44. Prefatory remarks, p. 244. Chap. I. The Real Humanity of Jesus while on Earth, pp. 245-255. § 45. The- self-testimony of Jesus, pp. 245-249. § 46. The testimony of the apostles, pp. 249-255. Chap. II. The Sinlessness of Jesus, pp. 255-265. § 47. His sinlessness, pp. 255-260. § 48. His conception by the Holy Ghost, pp. 260-265. Chap. III. The Divine Glory of the earthly Jesus. (§49), pp. 266-288. Third Section. — The Glorified Son op God. § 50. Prefatory remarks, pp. 289-291, Chap. I. TheHeavenly Glory of the exalted Jesus. (§ 51), pp. 292-304. Chap. II. The Humanity of the exalted Jesus real, pp. 305-316. § 52. The Son of God is still man, pp. 305-307. § 53. The fulness of the Godhead dwells in him bodily, pp. 307-313. § 54. His inner life is still strictly human, pp. 313-316. Fourth Section. — The Historical Development op the Son of God. § 55. Prefatory remarks, p. 317. Chap. I. The Incarnation of the Logos, pp. 318-358. § 56. The problem, pp. 318-320. §§ 57, 58. Can this problem be solved without admitting the self- emptying act of the Logos ? pp. 320-328. §§ 59, 60. The self-emptying act of the Logos, pp. 329-345. §§ 61-63. This act of the Logos both comprehensible and incompre hensible, pp. 345-357. 6 64. Must a human soul be assumed in Jesus in addition to the self-emptied Logos, pp. 357, 358. 12 CONTENTS. Chap. II The Development of the Son's Life from his Incarnation to his Glorification, pp. 359-400. § 65. Prefatory remarks, pp. 359-361. § 66. The natural endowments of Jesus, pp. 361-363. § 67. The holiness of Jesus finite and developing, pp. 363-378. § 68. Jesus pervaded by the fulness of the Father in keeping with his self-development, pp. 378-380. § 69. The development of Jesus's knowledge of himself as* the Son of God, pp. 380-388. § 70. The development of Jesus's knowledge of the Father, pp. 388-398. § 71. The baptism of Jesus; its position in this process of develop ment, pp. 398-403. Chap. in. The Glorification of the Son. (§ 72), pp. 404-412. Fifth Section. — The Incarnation op the Son, and the Trinity. § 73. The problems resulting from the self-emptying act of the Son concerning the Trinity, pp. 413-418. § 74. Necessity and freedom within the Trinity, pp. 418-421. § 75. Attempt at a solution of these problems, pp. 421-425. § 76. God's disinterested love, pp. 425-427. § 77. The Father's love and aseity the grounds of the Son's self- emptying act, pp. 427-430. Appendix A. History of the Dogma of the Incarnation, pp. 431-442. Appendix B. The Origin of the Human Soul, pp. 443-456. FIRST SECTION. THE ETERNAL SON OF GOD. CHAPTER I. THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF AS BEING THE SON OF GOD. §1- Our Lord commenced his public ministry in Galilee with the same words as his forerunner John : " Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand " (Matt. iii. 2 ; iv. 17). We afterwards also meet with discourses of Jesus, in which he discusses the way of man's coming to God more fully, but without mentioning his own person as being indispensable for this purpose ; and one who should be acquainted with these and similar declarations of the Saviour alone, might indeed per ceive in him a divine prophet or messenger, but not the Mediator between God and men. This is especially the case in the Lord's prayer, in which he first teaches the disciples and the multitude (Matt. vi. 9, etc.), after wards the disciples alone (Luke xi. 1, etc.), to pray. So also in the parable of the prodigal son, wherein he points out, especially to his enemies, the manner in which a sinner is pardoned by God (Luke xv. 2). These, however, are isolated cases. The circumstance that Jesus does not speak of himself, nor of his import ance for the kingdom of God, when he discusses only 2 13 14 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF preparatory or special points touching that kingdom, may easily be accounted for; any preacher, however zealously he may preach Christ, will act in the same manner, i.e. omit to mention Christ in some of his ser mons. But whenever Jesus discusses the plan of sal vation as a whole, he represents himself as the only way in which man can come to God. This he did even at the first passover of his public ministry, in his con versation with Nicodemus, the earliest of which we have a record, declaring " that whosoever believeth in him, should have eternal life" (John. iii. 15, etc.). In the same way he says of himself: " the light has come into the world" (vs. 19), and that although he had not come for judgment, yet the judgment of condemnation was pronounced by his coming (vs. 17-21). To the Samaritan woman he says (John iv. 14) : " Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him, shall never thirst ; but the water that I shall give him, shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." In the Sermon on the Mount he contrasts himself with the law and the prophets as their fulfilment, saying: " Think not that I am come to destroy the law and the prophets ; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil " (Matt. v. 7). In Matt. xi. 27 he says : " All things are delivered unto me of my Father ; neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him " ; none findeth rest, but those to whom he giveth it. When he healed the impotent man by the pool of Bethesda, he took occasion to speak of the works which the Father showed him (John v. 20) ; adding (vs. 21), that as the Father raised up the dead and quickened them, even so the Son quickened whom he would, because the Father had committed THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 15 unto him all judgment, i.e. the power to sift and sep arate (vs. 22); he further declared (vs. 24), that who- " soever heard his word, and believed on him, had ever lasting life; that the hour was coming, and even had come (the time of Christ's tabernacling on earth), when the dead should hear the voice of the Son of God, and those that heard should live, because the Father had given the Son authority to execute judgment, i.e. to make the separation of believers and unbelievers, (vs. 25, 27) ; and that the hour was coming in which all that wer.e in the graves, both the just and the unjust, should hear his voice, and come forth (vs. 28) . Again, at the lake of Tiberias he announced himself to the car avan on its way to Jerusalem to attend the Passover, as the true bread, that had come down from heaven, even the bread of life (John vi. 32, 33, 35) ; that by believing on him, by eating his flesh and drinking his blood, they might have eternal life, and be raised up at the last day, since they would be convinced by his ascension, that through the operation of the Spirit his flesh also would be spirit and life (vs. 62). At the Feast of Tab ernacles he represented himself as quenching all thirst, causing rivers of living water to flow from the believer (vii. 37, etc.) ; as the light of the world (viii. 12 ; ix. 5) ; as the only deliverer from sin (viii. 36) ; as the door of the sheep, by whom whosoever would enter in might find pasture ; as the good shepherd of all the good sheep of the earth, who hear his voice, to whom he will give eternal life, and whom none shall pluck out of his hands (x. 11-30). At the raising of Lazarus lie called himself the resurrection and the life (xi. 25, etc.). Christ's last days especially are full of testimonies concerning his mediatorial office. After his Messianic 16 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF entry into Jerusalem he said, in view of his approaching death : " Now is the judgment of this world ; now shall the prince of this world be cast out ; and I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me" (John xii. 31, 32). He declared, both before the disciples of John (Matt. ix. 15) and before his enemies (Matt. xxii. 2), that he was the bridegroom of the church of God. Of special importance with respect to his mediatorial office are his declarations concerning his coming to judgment. A whole year before, he had announced himself in his Sermon on the Mount (Matt. vii. 22), and subsequently in the parable of the tares in the field (xiii. 24, etc.), as the Lord of the field, which is the world, consequently as the Lord of the harvest, and the executor of the final judgment ; he further declared to Peter, when the latter attempted to dissuade him from going to Jerusalem, as well as to the other disciples, that he should come in the glory of his Father, with his angels, to reward every man according to his works (xvi. 27), and that of the bystanders some would live to see the first act of his coming — the destruction of Jerusalem (vs. 27). We afterwards see him leaving the temple, with the declar ation, that the presence of God was withdrawn in him, until Israel would receive him at his future coming (xxiii. 38, 39) ; then from the Mount of Olives he directs attention to the three epochs in the future history of the world ; the first of which is ushered in by his com-" ing to destroy Jerusalem, the second by his coming to gather the elect, and the third by his coming to execute the final judgment (Matt. xxiv. 1 ; 14-28 ; 29 ; 25, 31, etc.). Again before the high priest he characterizes the history of mankind from the moment of his death, especially the history of the judgment that is to be THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 17 executed on them, as a coming of the Son of Man (xxvi. 64). But when he parted from his disciples, he spoke of a different kind of coming, telling them that he was going to prepare a place for them, but that he would come again, and take them unto himself (John xiv. 2, 3) ; he further calls himself the way, the truth, and the life, adding that no man cometh to the Father but by him ; that whoever knows and sees him, knows and sees the Father (vs. 5, etc.). During the time of his separation from them they are to pray in his name, and he promises to answer their prayers (vs. 13) ; if they love him and keep bis commandments, he promises to pray his Father for the Spirit of truth (vs. 16) , yea, to send that Spirit himself (xv. 26 ; xvi. 7) ; to come again, and dwell in them with quickening power (vs. 18), giving them joy and light (xvi. 22) ; yea, the Father's coming is promised with that ofthe Son (xiv. 21-23). He gives them his peace (vs. 27), declares that .he is the true vine, that if his disciples will abide in him, they will bear much fruit, but that without him they can do notliing (xv. 1, etc.). He tells them that the Spirit of truth would glorify him; as he would take of what was Christ's, and show it unto them, all things that the Father hath being also his. Of the great intercessory prayer we select the following passages : " Thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give 'eternal life to as many as thou hast given him (xvii. 2) ; all mine are thine, and thine are mine (xvii. 10") ; I am glorified in them (xvii. 10b) ; the glory, which thou gavest me I have given them, that they may be one, even as we are one" (xvii. 22). After his resurrection he breathes upon his disciples, and says unto them : " Receive ye Holy Spirit ; whosoever sins ye remit, they 2* 18 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF are remitted unto them ; whosoever sins ye retain, they are retained " (John xx. 22, 23), a power which he had granted unto them twice before (Matt. xvi. 19 ; xviii. 18). He promises to verify unto them the promise of his Father (Luke xxiv. 49), to be always with them unto the end of the world (Matt, xxviii. 20), which promise he had likewise given them before (xviii. 20). Yea, he says, " All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth" (xxviii. 18), and commands them to baptize in his name, as well as in that of the Father and Holy Spirit (vs. 19). Corresponding to this relation of his person to us which Jesus claims for himself, is the relation to him which he claims from us. Moses also might require the Israelites to believe and trust him (comp. Ex. xiv. 31 : "And they believed the Lord and his servant Moses"), but only on account of his message and pro phetic character, not on account of the inward nature of his person. As soon as the end for which God calls a prophet is realized, the relation between the prophet and the people to whom he is sent ceases, and a second prophet may take the place of the first. Yea, every true prophet must long for the time of his own decrease (John iii. 30), and the elevation of all men to his pro phetic dignity. But Jesus says to his disciples, even at the moment of his parting from them : " Believe in God, believe also in me" (John xiv. 1). And while a prophet demands stronger faith in his person, the less developed those are whom he instructs, but is in duty bound to urge a vital union with God the more ear nestly the more their spiritual life is developed, Jesus, on the other hand, enjoined most urgently on his most advanced followers to found their whole inward life upon a real communion with lus r>erson , THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 19 Christ does not merely insist on a belief in his words and works as proof of his divine mission, but he demands faith in his person, in the fulness of life that is in him (comp. John xi. 25, etc.). Nor are we to believe only in his fulness of life, we are also to appro priate it to ourselves ; we are to eat him as the bread of life, to eat his flesh and to drink his blood as the only food of eternal life (John vi. 53-55) ; we are to be branches of him, and to regard ourselves when out of communion with him as unfit for any good work, and lost (xv. 1). For this reason our whole conduct is to be shaped by our relation to him. To. lose one's life for Christ's sake, is to find it (Matt. xvi. 25), to be per secuted for his sake, is to suffer for righteousness' sake, and leads to eternal happiness (vs. 10). It is that which a man has done, or not done^ unto Christ that decides his everlasting destiny (Matt. xxv. 24). It is true, Christ has nowhere especially said that we should adore him ; but if we are to honor him as the Father (John v. 23), if he hears and answers prayer (xiv. 13, etc.), sends the Holy Ghost (xv. 26 ; xvi. 7 ; Luke xxiv. 49), raises the dead, judges the world (Matt, xxv.) ; if all power is given unto him in heaven and in earth (Matt, xxviii.) ; if we are to be baptized in his name, as in that of the Father and the Holy Ghost, then his adoration is a matter of course, and he sanctioned it, when Thomas said unto him, " My Lord and my God" (John xx. 28). These declarations of Christ render it obligatory on us to put the same confidence in him as in God ; they impose on us the same duties to him as to God. It is true, he calls himself only the way, not the end ; yet communion with him is not merely the means of making us partakers of the Father's fulness of life, but 20 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF is a participation in that life itself; for he is the truth and the life ; whosoever has him, has life (John xiv. 6). There is, indeed, a time yet to come for his disciples, when Jesus will no longer pray for them, because they will themselves know how to pray in his name ; for it is not from a want of love on the part of the Father to those that believe in Jesus, but from their present ina bility to pray in an acceptable manner, that Christ prays for them : hence it is evident that the prayer of Jesus for them ceases only in that degree in which the prayer of Jesus in them approaches maturity, praying in the name of Jesus being, according to the New Testament, an act which proceeds from an enlightened state of the mind, and is wrought by the indwelling Jesus (Matt. xviii. 20), and there can be no higher end of prayer, than that Jesus may be in us, and we may see his glory (John xvii. 20-24). From these and other declarations of Christ con cerning his mediatorial office, it is evident that such discourses of his as make no mention of his person as necessary to mediate between God and man must not be interpreted by themselves, but in connection with his whole doctrine concerning his person, and must be accounted for by particular objects which Christ had in view. This applies also to Christ's answer to the young man : " Why callest thou me good ; there is none good but one, that is God " (Matt. xix. 17). §2. But who does Christ profess to be, when he claims for himself such a relation to God and man, and de mands such a relation from men. The name which he usually applies to himself is " the Son of Man." THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 21 This appellation he applies about fifty times to himself. It is evident, that Christ thus designates himself as a real man, but at the same time as one who is dis tinguished from all others ; for if he were only a man, as all others are, it would have been absurd for him to call himself the " Son of Man." Before we attempt to explain what it is which distinguishes Christ from all other men, it will be well to examine the passages containing this self-designation of Jesus in their con nection. The most remarkable of these passages is Matt. xxvi. 64. When the high priest adjures him by the living God, to tell them whether he is the Christ, the Son of God, Jesus answers, " Thou hast said"; and continues, " I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." Humiliated as he is, he swears that he is the Messiah, and adds, that the truth of this declaration should soon be made manifest by his exal tation to the highest power and dignity. But why does he pass from the appellations " Christ," " Messiah," " Son of God," to that of " Son of Man ? " His only object ean be to declare, that in his person the prophecy of Daniel (vii. 13, 14) will be fulfilled, where after the destruction of the four beasts, i.e. the four empires of this world, by the judgments of God, the prophet sees one like the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven, who is brought near before the Ancient of days, and receives everlasting dominion and glory and a king dom. Christ himself refers us to this passage of the Old Testament, and by referring to himself the appella tion, " Son of Man," intimates that he it is to whom belongs the everlasting and universal dominion of the 22 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF prophecy, consequently that he is the Messiah of Israel and of the whole world. But to intimate that Daniel's prophecy would be fulfilled in his person, cannot possibly have been his only reason for calling himself the " Son of Man," as the context often forbids this application. For it would be strange if he had always designated his Messiahship by this reference to Daniel. Why not call himself also the " servant of God," with reference to Isa. xl.-liii. ? Why not the " zemach " (the branch, either of God or of David), a designation of the Messiah first used by Isaiah (iv. 2), then by Jeremiah (xxiii. 5, and xxxiii. 15) and finally by Zechariah (iii. 3 and vi. 12), as his proper name ? Why not, in order to express his Messiahship, call himself the " Son of David " at once ? We infer from his not doing so, that the term " Son of Man," as used by Jesus, meant more than " Messiah." But what idea would the earnest hearer attach to this appellation, which so often fell from Jesus' lips ? Two meanings would undoubtedly suggest themselves. In the first place the idea that he who called himself " Son of Man," while he was surrounded by men, intended thereby to designate his humanity as something mirac ulous, and the very centre of his being as supernatural ; in the second place, the question, " The son of what man ? " And the only answer to this could be : The son of Adam, or rather the son not of this or that man, but the son of humanity, consequently the ideal man, the realized idea of humanity, he who was the object of universal expectation and longing. To the Israelite, who had learned from the lips of Jesus, and at the same time by his own experience, that he was the source of THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 23 all divine life, the former idea, " that the Son of Man is that wonderful man, who is in his very nature more than man," would naturally present itself; but St. Paul, who views the relation of Jesus not only to the house of Israel, but to the whole human race, sees in " the Son of Man" the son of humanity, — the true man, the object of universal expectation, the second Adam, who has begotten us from the natural unto the heavenly life (1 Cor. xv. '45 ; Rom. v. 12-19). It would seem that both these meanings are also ex pressed in the language used by Daniel. The former, " the Son of Man = the wonderful man," would seem to be implied in the fact that it is not said, " the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven," but " one like the Son of Man came with the clouds "; the second, " the Son of Man = the son of humanity, its flower, the true man," in this, that the kingdoms, on whose ruins the new kingdom is raised, although they are kingdoms of men, are represented by beasts ; the true nobility of human nature comes to light only in the new kingdom ; in the former the flesh ruled ; in this the spirit rules, by which man is the image of God.1 This, then, is the meaning which Jesus attached to the phrase, " Son of Man," — the wonderful man, who realizes the ideal of humanity, and who shall, according to the prophecy, inherit the kingdom. , In some passages the first, in others the second of these two ideas prevails. Only by taking " the Son of Man " in this sense do we find the key to the correct understanding of the term 1 We cannot agree with our author's exegesis of Dan. vii. 13, 14; as it seems to us, from the sequel of the chapter, that Israel, as a nation, and not the Messiah, is to be understood by " the Son of Man; " we must also dissent from his views concerning flesh and spirit and the image of God, as will be seen hereafter. 24 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF • wherever it occurs ; e.g. Matt. viii. 20 ; Although I am the Son of Man, I have not where to lay my head ; (xii. 8) ; Because he is the Son of Man, he is Lord of the Sabbath, — on account of the wonderful element which lies hid in his inmost being (xii. 32). A word against the Son of Man may be forgiven, because he is the Son of Man, because his supernatural being is hid in his human natuue. This accounts also for the frequent use of the phrase. A name only of the deepest significance can be expected of Jesus, especially one which he uses so frequently to designate himself. Moreover, this name was not plain enough to furnish the fanaticism of his enemies with a charge against him, while it was too enigmatical to leave roonT for the supposition that it was understood, and thus challenged reflection and inquiry. It conveyed, at the same time, to the more serious the outlines of the mediatorial relation of Jesus to the whole human family. Whoever understood this name had burst the barriers of particularism, and perceived that the Son of Man belongs to the whole human family not less than to the house of Israel. But wherein consists tjie wonderful character of this man ? Why is he the true, divinely approved man, the flower of humanity ? What constitutes his title to ever lasting dominion ? This question is suggested by the designation " Son of Man," but not answered. Thus this name of Jesus directed his contemporaries to some thing beyond itself, and directs us in the same way. §3. What is enigmatical in this term " Son of Man " is explained by the other self-designation of the Saviour, " Son of God.'* He gave himself this title even in his THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 25 conversation with Nicodemus : " God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son" ( John iii. 16). Again: "God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved " (vs. 17, 18) ; " He that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God." In Galilee he declares : " All things are deliv ered unto me of my Father ; and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father ; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him" (Matt. xi. 27). To the caravan of Galileans going to Jerusalem to celebrate the passover there, the Lord says : " This is the will of him that sent me, that every one that seeth the Son, and believ eth on him, may have everlasting life ; and I will raise him up at the last day" (John vi. 40). Again, at Jerusalem : " The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do ; for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise ; for the Father lovetli the Son, and showeth him all things that himself doeth ; and he will show him greater works than these, that ye may marvel. For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them, even so the Son quickeneth whom he will. For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son ; that all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He that honoreth not the Son, honoreth not the Father which hath sent him The hour is coming in the which all that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and shall come forth" (John v. 19-29). The blind man is asked by Jesus: " Dost thou believe in the Son of God ?" (ix. 35). In 3 26 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF x. 36, he defends himself against the charge of blas phemy for calling himself the Son of God. The sick ness of Lazarus has for its end the glory of the Son of God (xi. 4). In the parable of the malignant husband men, Jesus calls himself (Mark xii. 6) the only well- beloved Son, in contradistinction from the servants that had been sent before, viz. the prophets. In the parable of the marriage-feast, he speaks of the son for whom the feast was made (Matt. xxii. 2), after he had, on a former occasion, called himself the bridegroom (ix. 15). Of the hour of judgment Jesus says, that no man knoweth it ; not the angels, not even the Son, but the Father only (Mark xiii. 32). Whatever his disciples shall ask in his name Jesus promises to do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son (John xiv. 13), and in xvii. 1 he prays: "Glorify thy Son, that thy Son may also glorify thee." Before the high priest he affirms with an oath that he is the Christ, the Son of God (Matt. xxvi. 60). His parting words to his dis ciples are a command to baptize in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost (Matt, xxviii. 19) . These are the passages in which Christ calls him self the Son of God. When Peter made his confession, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God," Jesus answered : " Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona ; for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven" (Matt. xvi. 17). What meaning, then, did Christ attach to this appel lation which he referred to himself ? THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 27 §4. This question is the more necessary since even in the Old Testament " sons of God " are spoken of. It refers this appellation to angels, to the children of Israel, to the magistrates of Israel, to David and his seed, and, finally, to the heir of David, whose kingdom shall embrace all the nations of the earth. Since this name is given to so many, has it any peculiar meaning in the case of Jesus ? In the Book of Job (xxxviii. 7), the angels are called sons of God on account of the transcendent splendor with which the image of God shines forth in them ; comp. Luke xx. 36. In Gen. vi. 2, 4, this name is given to them, even after their fall. Of the children of Israel Moses is to say to Pharaoh (Ex. iv. 22, etc.) : " Israel is my son, even my first born, and if thou refuse to let him go, behold, I will slay thy son, even thy first-born." In Hos. xi. 1, says the Lord : " When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt." How does this degenerate nation, which no 'longer even knows the name of the God of its fathers (Ex. ii. 13), come to be called by the honorable title, " Son of God " ? It is the election of grace, which made it the son of God by calling it to be a kingdom of priests, and a nation holy unto Jehovah (Ex. xix. 5, etc.). Comp. Deut. xiv. 1, etc. : " Ye are the children of the Lord your God ; thou art a holy people unto the Lord thy God, and the Lord has chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the nations that are upon the earth." It was the result of the divine election, that God revealed himself unto them, and made them a 28 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF theocratic people. The divine act of generation mado itself felt by his chosen people. Jehovah became " their Father who begat them," so that Moses sings of him as the Rock that begat Israel, and as the God that formed them (De.ut. xxxii. 18). It is true even this servant of God has to lament the base ingratitude of this people to their God (ibid. 19, etc.). Jehovah had said : " Surely they are my people, children that will not lie ; but they rebelled and vexed his Holy Spirit : therefore he was turned to be their enemy, and he fought against them " (Isa. lxiii. 8, 10). Yet God's election is thus by no means made of none effect; the work of revelation commenced by him need not stand still. As soon as they repent, they may cry : " Thou art our Father ; we are the clay, and thou our potter ; and we all are the work of thy hand " (Isa. lxiv. 8). Yea, Israel is so dear a child unto the Lord, that his bowels are troubled for them, and full of mercy ; he saves them out of their misery, for he is the Father of Israel, and Ephraim is his dear son (Jer. xx. 9). Israel, then, was the Son of God, because the election of grace had begoLten him, in spite of his un worthi ness to be the people to whom the Lord would reveal his name, amongst whom he would dwell, who were to briii g unto the Lord an acceptable service instituted by himself, whose affairs he would direct by a special providence, in such a way that every step was a step toward him, and thus toward universal salvation. Enlightened by the revelation of God, Israel is destined to be the servant who brings the light of Jehovah to the Gentiles. He is the first-born, destined to lead the other nations to the worship of God (comp. Isa. xl., etc.). THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 29 The whole nation being called, for this reason, the " son of God," it is natural that those through whom the Lord desires to mediate the government of his people should be called by that name in a peculiar sense. For this reason the judges of Israel, were called (Ps. lxxxii. 6) sons of the Most High, yea, even gods (comp. vs. 1). He judgeth among the gods; although in the same passage they are severely reprimanded for the in justice with which they execute judgment^ and are, therefore, not really the organs of the divine will. Yet it is their office to judge in the place of God: God is the Judge in Israel ; whoever appears before the judge, appears before God (comp. Ex. xxi. 6 ; xxii. 7, 8). They are called gods, as Jesus says, John x. 35, " because the word of God came unto them," i.e. the command of God to judge his people in his name. Yea, in Ps. lxxxix. 28, it would seem to be implied that the term " sons of God " applies, to a certain extent, even to the kings of Gentiles. But, above all others, David was appointed the shepherd of Israel by the election of grace. And when David wished to build a house for his God, Jehovah rather built one for David. God said to him : " When thy days be fulfilled, and thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, I will set up thy seed after thee, which shall proceed out of thy bowels, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his Father, and he shall be my son. If he commit iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children of men ; but my mercy shall not depart away from him, as I took it from Saul whom I put away before thee. And thine house and thy kingdom shall be established 3* 30 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF forever before thee ; thy throne shall be established for ever." (2 Sam. vii. 12-16). By virtue of that un changeable grace, which David's seed is to enjoy, and by which he has an everlasting kingdom, he is called " the son of God." In view of these promises given unto David, it is said, in Ps. lxxxix: 19, etc. : " Then thou.spakest to thy holy one in vision He shall cry unto me, Thou art my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation. I will make him my first-born, higher than the kings of the earth His seed, also, I will make to endure forever, and his throne as the days of heaven." Yet the psalmist laments (vs. 39) : " Thou hast made void the covenant of thy servant : thou hast profaned his crown by casting it to the ground." David's successors had inherited his call to the throne, but not his anoint ing with the Spirit of God. With greater confidence the second Psalm speaks of an Anointed One and Son of God, whose throne no power of earth shall be able to shake. It is true the inspired psalmist sees (vs. 1-9) a wicked rebellion of the nations against the authority of God and his Anointed ; yet he knows also (vs. 4-6) that the Lord will hold them in derision, and vex them in his sore displeasure. He hears the Anointed of the Lord appeal to the decree of God : " Thou art my Son : this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession " (vs. 7-9). For which reason the author of the Psalms has no other advice for the rebels than to submit, especially to kiss the Son, lest he be angry ; for he against whom his wrath is kindled is lost ; but blessed are those that put THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 3] their trust in him (vs. 10-12). That the psalmist does not, and cannot understand by this Anointed and Son, whose is the power over all nations of the earth, a re bellion against whom is rebellion against God himself, — by this Son whom men are to kiss, and in whom they are to put their trust, either Solomon or Heze- kiah or any other of the Jewish kings, is evident from the character which he ascribes to him. He evidently understands by him the great King to come, who will be the sole Ruler and Governor. But how does he know that the throne of this monarch cannot be shaken ? and that all nations must serve him ? Because he knows that his anointment with the Spirit of God is perfect, without measure. The psalmist beholds, in spirit, the day on which that King is anointed, and, in the light of this anointment, the efforts of the nations to rise in rebellion against him appear to him as vain. By -this very anointing the Son becomes the Son. The king, in appealing to the decree of God : " Thou art my Son ; this day have I begotten thee," refers to that king-like spirit which is the result of his being anointed with the Spirit of God. For this reason the theocratical idea of the " Son of God ' ' reaches its acme in this Psalm ; he is the true, universal, and everlasting Vicegerent of Jehovah upon earth, to whom Jehovah imparts the fulness of his Spirit, while calling him to the government of the nations. The King thus anointed, who rules over the nations in the spirit of Jehovah, is, the Son of God. In this sense Nathaniel used the term, when he said, at his first interview with Jesus : " Thou art the Son of God ; thou art the King of Israel" (John i. 49). In the same sense Caiaphas undoubtedly, used the 32 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF term " Son of God," when he adjured Jesus, by the living God, to tell him whether he was the Anointed One, the Son of God (Matt. xxvi. 63). The question of our Lord, addressed to the Pharisees (Matt. xxii. 42, etc.), how David could call the Messiah his Lord, since he was his son, furnishes the proof that the spiritual leaders of Israel saw likewise in the Messiah, primarily, the Son of David, appointed of God ever lasting King of Israel, and of all nations, by giving him the fulness of his Spirit. §5. Now, the question arises : Has the term " Son of God," as applied by Jesus to himself, no other meaning than that he is the king of Israel and of all nations, qualified by the fulness of the Spirit for this office ? Did Jesus mean to say, then, that he became the Son of God by his baptism, when he was anointed with the « Spirit of God ? And since while on earth, he was not really a king, did he mean to say that he would be the Son of God, in the full sense of the term, only when he would be seated at the right hand of God, when he would be King indeed, and when all his ene mies would be laid at his footstool ? If so, what would there be wonderful, or superhuman, in Jesus, on account of which he calls himself the Son of Man ? And can an anointing with the fulness of the Spirit as universal King be conceived of, if the individ ual anointed is no more than a mere man ? We must now examine the connection of the passages wherein Jesus calls himself the Son of God ; and this will enable us to arrive at the sense in which he applies this term to -himself. THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 33 And here it is evident at once that Jesus goes beyond the theocratic idea of the term. When he says (Mark xiii. 32) that no one knows the day of judgment, not the angels in heaven, nay, not even the Son, he evi dently places the Son above the angels, who would be more likely to know it than men. This language is un intelligible, if the Son is no more than a mere man, endowed with the fulness of the Spirit ; the Spirit being likewise poured out upon the hosts of the angels. And how could a mere man become the bridegroom of the church by being anointed with the Spirit ? But, accord ing to Matt. xxii. 2, etc., the Son is the Bridegroom. It is to be borne in mind that, in the Old Testament, it is God himself who is wedded to Israel. Jesus, distin guishing himself in the parable of the husbandmen (Matt. xxi. ; Luke xx.) from the inspired prophets by calling them " servants," and himself " Son," yea, " the only Son " (in Matt, and Luke implicitly, in Mark di rectly), there must be a difference not in degree, but in kind — a difference of nature — between him and the prophets, which justifies him in calling the prophets servants, himself the Son, the Heir, whose property the \ineyard is of right (Matt. xxi. 38). The question of Jesus, finally, recorded in Matt. xxii. 42, etc., implies a direct protestation against the mere theocratic idea of " Son of God." The Pharisees, who, indeed, did not acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah, but were wait ing for the Messiah, and saw in him nothing but the Son of David (and, since he was the son of a power ful king, they took it for granted that he also would show himself a powerful ruler before all the world) — are asked by Jesus how the Messiah could be at the same time the Son and the Lord of David, since 34 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF David calls him (Ps. ex.) his Lord. Jesus would thug show to these leaders of the people how inadequate their views of the Messiah were over against the proph ecies, how superficial their understanding ofthe prophets, how precarious, therefore, their title to sit in judgment on his claims to the Messiahship. He wished to show them that, according to David himself, the Messiah was to be of a higher nature, to whom David had to bow as his Lord, although he was his son and heir, who was to be specifically exalted above David, God's anointed king over Israel, and, consequently, more than a mere man endowed with the Spirit of God. §6. We have still other expressions of the Lord con cerning himself as the " Son of God," which render it evident, wherein the Son of God is specifically exalted above David, above the prophets, and above the angels, as the bridegroom of the church of God, and the won derful man, who calls himself " the Son of Man," be cause his inner being is superhuman ; so that a deeper insight into his being fills us with wonder that he can be a map at all. 1. In Matt. xi. 25 and Luke x. 21 Jesus thanks his Father that he had hid the knowledge of the kingdom of heaven from the wise, but revealed it unto babes. Then, turning to his disciples, he professes to be the only Mediator of salvation, of the knowledge of God, and of peace to the human mind : " All things are de livered unto me of my Father ; no one knoweth the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." Here every THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 35 word is expressive of the depth of meaning in which Jesus calls himself the Son of God. In the first place, he says : " of my Father," intimating, thereby, that God is his Father, and he his Son in a peculiar sense. In the next place, we have the declaration, that the mediation of salvation is intrusted to him, so that no one comes to the Father except by him (John xiv. 6), and that all power in heaven and in earth will shortly be given unto him (Matt, xxviii). In the third place, that only the Father knoweth the Son (who the Son is, according to Luke). In the fourth place, that only the Son knoweth the Father. In the fifth place, that it becomes the Son to reveal the Father ; a thing which the prophets coiild not do, since revelation involves more than teaching — even an inward opening of the understanding. In the sixth place, that the Son reveals to whomsoever he will, even as the Spirit, of whom Paul says (1 Cor. xii. 11), that he divides to every man severally as he will. In the last place, it is plain that giving rest to souls implies more than human power. From all these considerations, it is evident, that Jesus understands by his sonship an identity of being or nature with the Father. Because the Son is of divine nature, God alone can comprehend it. Man is, indeed, created after the image of God, but is not of the same being with God; therefore he does not know the deep things of God ; knows,' indeed, that God is, but does not comprehend who God is (Luke) ; but the Son, being of the same substance with the Father, knows the deep things of God, as the Spirit, who searches the deep things of God (1 Cor. ii. 10). A further prerogative of the Son is, to will what the Father wills, and, as his will is always that of the 36 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF Father, he can reveal the Father to whomsoever he will. In the last place, the divine nature of Christ alone accounts for his power to open the eye of the natural man towards God, and to give rest unto souls that can find it in God alone, as well as for the fact that the Father can deliver all things unto him ; he that is of divine substance is the Truth and Life, consequently the Way, the Mediator of all salvation (John xiv. 6), and he alone can become the Ruler of heaven and earth. 2. We arrive at the same result concerning the idea of the sonship from John v. 17, etc. Jesus had per formed a cure on the Sabbath, and defends his act in these words : " My Father worketh hitherto, and I work also" (vs. 17). As his Father did not cease work ing on the Sabbath after the six days of creation, so the Son works likewise on the Sabbath. " Therefore the Jews sought to kill him because he said, that God was his own Father ; making himself equal with God " (vs. 18). By the term, "my Father," Christ indeed, declared God to be his Father, in a peculiar, exclusive manner ; and the Jews inferred correctly from his pecu liar sonship, that he claimed equality with God. For a son is of the same substance with his Father. Christ himself recognizes the correctness of this Jewish inter pretation ; but instead of modifying the expression which gave offence, 'he repeats it more emphatically (vs. 19), and develops more fully both that God was in a pecu liar sense his Father, and that his work was like that of his Father. Every word in these verses is pos itive proof that Jesus understands by his sonship an identity of being with the Father. Thus in the very beginning of his discourse : " the Son can do nothing THE PERSON OF CUEIST. 37 of himself, but what he seeth the Father do." From a comparison of vs. 17 and of vs. 30, in which he returns to vs. 19, the meaning of our Lord appears to be that it is morally impossible for him, as the Son, to pursue conduct different from that of his Father ; from his identity of nature with the Father he is necessitated to do whatever the Father does. In the next place his peculiar seeing of what the Father does, or his being loved and shown by the Father whatever he does, (vs. 20) points to an equality of being or substance with the Father ; this must be the cause why the Father loves the Son in a manner in which he loves no one else, and shows unto him what he does not show unto us ; for we have no idea even of this seeing of what the Father does, as Jesus claims it for himself. In the third place, the identity of substance of Jesus with the Father appears from the works which the Father will show unto him; viz. to raise the dead (vs. 21), which is connected with the judgment committed unto the Son, (vs. 22), " that all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father " (vs. 23). _ How can the same honor be shown to the Son as to the Father, if the Son is not of equal nature with the Father ? Or how can the Son judge the world, if he be not omniscient ; and how can he be omniscient, except he be really God ? Whomsoever this judge pardons will come forth unto the resurrection of life (vs. 25, 29), whomsoever he condemns, unto the resurrection of damnation (vs. 29). The resurrection is also by the Son. In the first place Jesus preaches the word, and into whomsoever believeth in him that sent Jesus, life flows from this very word (vs. 24). The work of raising the dead is, however, in the main, still future, since it is said (vs. 20), 38 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF that the Father will show him still greater works. Then it will no longer be the purport of the word of Jesus alone, and the belief in him that sent him, that will exert a quickening influence, but the very voice of the Son of God shall raise the dead. A person's voice is his exclusive property ; his words may be repeated by others, but his voice can be used only by himself. If Jesus, then, raises the dead, it is the exclusive fulness of life in Jesus which produces this result (comp. like wise x. 27). For this reason it is further said in vs. 26 : " for as the Father has life in himself, so he gave the Son to have life in himself." In these words the Son's equality with the Father is plainly declared, since to have life in one's self is an exclusive attribute of the Deity. In the last place, it deserves notice that the expression " whom he will " is repeated in vs. 21 from Matt. xi. 27; the Son acts not like the servant, in obedience to orders, but from his own free-will, wrhich is always identical with the Father's will ; he that is of the same substance with the Father, wills also what the Father wills. 3. At the feast of the dedication Jesus used this lan guage (John x. 28-30) : " None shall pluck my sheep out of my hands ; my Father, which gave them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to pluck them out of my Father's hands ; I and my Father are one." When the Jews are about to treat him as a blasphemer, making himself equal with God (vs. 31-33), our Lord appeals to Psalm lxxxii. wherein those are called gods unto whom the word of God came to judge the people, and asks a fortiori : " Say ye of him whom the Father has sanctified and sent into the world, thou blasphemest " (vs. 34-36) ? These words contain a justification of Jesus' calling God " my Father " (vs. 29), THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 39 but not of the other declaration : " I and my Father are one" (vs. 30) ; and for this reason he adds : " If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not ; but if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works, that ye may know and believe that the Father is in me, and I in him" (vs. 37, 38). These words of the Saviour enable us to form an adequate idea of the phrase: "Son of God." The , Father and the Son are one, because Jesus is the Father's Son. If the connection there enables us to determine what this oneness of the Father and Son means, we can know from this oneness also what the sonship means. The connection of our Lord's sayings in vs. 28-30 is this: None can pluck my sheep. out of my hands (vs. 28), because none can pluck them out of my Father's hand (vs. 29), and I and the Father are one (vs. 30). The power of the Father is also the power of the Son, because both are one. It has, indeed, been urged as an objection : " Father and Son are one in their will ; the Son's will is always the will of the Father, and it is for this reason that the Father's power always seconds the Son, thus saving the Son's sheep for the Son." According to this view the sonship of Jesus is no more than the constant subjection of his own will to that of his Father — he might be called the Son of God as a holy, sinless man. But if Jesus wishes to say this much only in vs. 30, why did he not use more simple language ? Why did he use language which may mean infinitely more, and really does mean more for the unprejudiced hearer ? It is unbecoming the hu mility of Jesus to use unnecessarily lofty expressions concerning his relation to God. If the meaning of vs. 30 is merely : " I always will what the Father wills," 40 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF how ill does it comport with vs. 28 ! how sudden and unmeaning is the descent from this lofty height ! No, in vs. 30 such an indwelling of the Father in the Son and of the Son in the Father is maintained, as is based on an identity of life, in consequence whereof the Father's power is also the Son's, an indwelling that so far exceeds the indwelling of God in good men, that no one, even the most advanced in holiness, can say without blas phemy, I and the Father are one. But why is this indwelling in the case of Jesus so peculiar ? Evidently because he is of the same substance with the Father; and in this way we arrive again at the conclusion that,. the sonship of Jesus means consubstantiality with the Father. Our understanding of vs. 30 of an indwelling of the Father and of the Son in each other, is confirmed by Jesus himself in vs. 38, which is a justification of vs. 30, and reads : " That ye may know and believe that the Father is in me, and I in him." How peculiar this indwelling of the Father in the Son, and of the Son in the Father, is, or how emphatically it teaches the con- substantiality of Jesus with the Father, will appear more fully from John xiv. 7-10. What saint or. angel would dare to say : " If ye had known me, ye would have known my Father also, and henceforth [as soon as your eyes are opened to know me] ye have known and seen him ; he hath seen me that hath seen the Father " ? But Jesus said this of himself (John xiv. 7-9). He declares, in these words, that, in so far as an earthly body or earthly language can be the mirror of the Deity, the nature of God, in its lofty majesty and in its loving condescension, shines forth from his words and his actions, so. that a view of his THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 41 person conveys a correct impression of the nature of God. That this is the case with Jesus, appears from vs. 10, 11, he being in the Father, and the Father in him. Far as the declaration of Jesus, " he that seeth me, seeth the Father," transcends all that can be said of the shining forth of God from a sanctified man (from the latter issue rays of the divine sun of glory, but not the sun itself, the great organ of light), just so far is the indwelling of God and of Jesus in each other superior to the indwelling of God in a sanctified man ; because the indwelling of God in Jesus, and of Jesus in God, is, according to the words of Jesus, "the ground upon which Jesus can affirm : " Whoso seeth me, seeth the Father." - But why is the indwelling of God and of Jesus, in each other so peculiar, so unique ? The indwelling of God in his creatures is of an order which rises higher, the more brightly the divine image shines in them. The Scriptures do not say of the unregenerate, that God dwells in them. They live, move, and have their being, indeed, in God (Acts xvii. 28) ; but they cannot receive the Spirit, being only reproved by him (John xiv. 17 ; xvi. 8). But in the children of God he dwells, because they are born of him, and love him (xiv. 23). Thus this fact, also, that the Father is in a unique manner in the Son, and the Son in the Father, demonstrates that Jesus is in a peculiar manner of the Father's substance. The Son's divine life alone is so broad and deep that the Father's fulness of life can be revealed in it. , 4* 42 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF §7. It is thus the con substantiality of Jesus with the Father, by reason of which he calls himself the Son of God. But this is not the only reason. The very term " Son " points to something more. A son is, indeed, of the -same substance with his father ; but he is also begotten of his father, and on this generative act depends his consubstantiality. Jesus could then call himself the Son of God, only as knowing himself to have been begotten of God in a peculiar manner. His con- substantiality with the Father points, of necessity, to his having been begotten in a unique manner of the Father. The primary object of the divine revelation is not indeed, the knowledge of God's nature, but the opening of a new life in God. Yet we should be alto gether ignorant of the foundation upon which this new life is to rest, without, at least, a partial knowledge of God and his nature. The divine revelation had, of necessity, to give us also the elements of this knowledge. We may expect, therefore, that this revelation will give us some information concerning the Father's genera tion of his consubstantial Son. I. At the very threshold of the New Testament, the angel, wrhile announcing to Mary the birth of Jesus, declares, " The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee ; there fore, also, that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall, be called the Son of God" (Luke i. 35). Because this man is begotten of the Holy Ghost, instead of a human father, he is called, according to the words of the angel, the Son of God. From Jesus himself we have but one expression that THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 43 may possibly be construed as tracing this self-appel lation " Son of God " to his having been conceived by the Holy Ghost. The expression in question is John x. 35, etc. : " If the law calls them gods unto whom the word of God came, will ye say of him whom the Father has sanctified and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest, because I have said, I am the Son of God ? " If the theocratic commission conferred on the judges of Israel the title of " gods," the Father's sancti fying and sending him into the world must needs entitle him to the appellation " Son of God." This sanctifying and sending of Jesus into the world by the Father is unquestionably more than the commission of judges which those Israelites had received. The first question here is, What is to be understood by the " sanctifying " of Jesus ? It precedes, according to the words of Jesus, his being sent into the world. As far as we can understand thereby, i.e. by his " being sent," his being sent from private life" upon the stage of public life; we can understand by " his being sanc tified " his being fitted to be a holy bearer of divine revelation by being conceived by the Holy Ghost. This interpretation does justice to the term " to sanctify," which means not only to set apart, but also to prepare for a sacred office. If this interpretation is correct (it does by no means exhaust the meaning of the term), Jesus bases his divine sonship upon his having been conceived by the Holy Ghost. The meaning of his words would then be : If the theocratic commission entitles unholy men to the title " gods," he is infinitely more entitled to the term " Son of God," whom God has prepared to be a holy organ of his revelation by his conception of the Holy Ghost. 44 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF 2. But the proposition : " Jesus is the Son of God, because God has begotten him by the Holy Ghost," does by no means exhaust the idea of bis divine son- ship. It does not exhaust it, because his conception by the Holy Ghost does not make him consubstantial with God. If Jesus differed from all other men only by his having been conceived by the Holy Ghost, the Father would not so dwell in him that Jesus could say : " He that seeth me, seeth the Father." It is per fectly self-evident that he who says of himself: "I am- the Life"; who subsequently commands men to be bap tized in his name, as well as in that of the Father and the Holy Ghost ; gives to the individual to be baptized the same promises, and imposes the same duties, as the Father and the Holy Ghost ; who, as the Resurrection and the Life, will raise the dead by the power of his voice, in short, he who has life in himself; cannot have come into existence in time. A created fountain and a created prince' of life are self-contradictions. From all this it is certain that, if Jesus said that he was con scious of being the Life, he must also have been conscious that his life did not originate simultaneously with his earthly existence. New that Jesus was conscious of his pre-existence appears from a number of his most positive declarations. In his conversation with Nicodemus, he announces himself as one having come down from heaven (John iii. 13). For this reason, there can be no doubt that he understands (vs. 17) by his having been sent into the world, not his mission from Nazareth on to the stage of public life, but his mission from heaven — an interpretation, by the way, that is suggested by the literal meaning of the words themselves. The same THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 45 testimony of having come down from heaven, Christ repeats before the caravan that was going to Jerusalem to attend the passover (John vi. 38). And in vs. 62 he says : " What and if ye shall see the Son of Man ascend up where he was before ? " (Will not your murmuring at my remarks then cease of itself?) He is, consequently, conscious of having been in heaven before he was born on earth. Thes'e declarations of Jesus lead to the supposition, that in the words (Matt. ii. 19) " But wisdom is justified of her children " he designates himself as the Wisdom personified in Prov. viii. 22, etc. ; ix. 1, etc., which took part with God in the creation and in establishing a divine kingdom for the education of man ; but the Father's wisdom dwell ing in Jesus may also be meant. Worthy of special notice is our Lord's declaration at the Feast of Taber nacles before his adversaries in Jerusalem (John viii. 58) : " Before Abraham was, I am." His assertion (vs. 51), that whoever would keep his saying should never see death, had brought on him the charge of being beside himself, since pious Abraham had died, and no remedy could be found against death, unless Jesus pretended to be more than Abraham. " Whom makest thou thyself? " they added. This charge Jesus rebuts, first, by stating that it was not his object to seek his own honor, but to testify of his Father, who honored him (vs. 54) ; then, that Abraham had rejoiced to see his day, — the promise that through his seed all the nations of the earth would be blessed, — and had really seen it, in his state of existence after death, and had been glad (vs. 56). And as this brings upon him a new charge, viz", of pretending to have seen Abraham, although he was not yet fifty years old, Jesus utters 46 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF the great truth: "Before Abraham was, I am" (vs. 58). It is impossible to give any interpretation to these words other than their literal meaning, to wit, that he had existed before Abraham. But the real force is in the " I am." Why does he not say : " I was " ? Evidently, because he would express the manner of his existence, which is raised above all change, or senescence. With regard to the passage x. 36, it has been remarked already, that in so far as by his mission into the world his mission from Nazareth upon the stage of public life could be understood, in so far, by his " being sanctified " might be understood his conception by the Holy Ghost ; but if from his " having been sent," his coming down from heaven, from a state of pre-existence, i.e. from a state of existence out of time and place, cannot be ex cluded, it necessarily follows that " his being sanctified " must also be referable to his state of pre-existence. In this sense it means his appointment by the Father from all eternity to be the Mediator of all natural revelation — a mediatorship concerning the nature of which the apos tles enlighten us fully. On the eve of his departure the Lord tells his disciples : " 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). As certainly as the second part of this expression was to be understood literally, just so certainly must the first be understood literally also ; or, as certainly as his present being with the Father has followed his leaving the world, just so certainly had his coming into the world been preceded by a former existence with the Father. And this was an existence in glory before the world was ; for in his great intercessory prayer the Saviour asks : " 0 Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 47 glory which I had with thee before the world was" (xvii. 5) ; and vs. 24 : " Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am ; that they may behold my glory which thou hast given me ; for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world." The Lord says : " The glory which thou hast given me," not, which thou wilt give me, nor, which thou hast appointed for me. He speaks, therefore, of a glory which he had, through the love of the Father, before he lived upon earth, and with which the Father will now glorify him again, as is plainly expressed in vs. 5 : " I came down from heaven " ; "I came forth from the Father " ; "I was with him in glory, before the world was ; in the glory which he has given me, because he loved me before the foundation of the world " ; " before Abraham was, I am." In these passages Christ declares, as plainly as language can express it, that he was before this present world, before time itself, with the Father, in the same glory that he has in his state of existence after his ascension, when all power is given unto him in heaven and on earth, and he can send the Holy Ghost. And he ascribes to himself an un changeable life, not a life full of changes, — as being born and dying, yet possessing a life of endless duration. But is not this the very thing that we should expect of him who said : " I am the life " ; " baptize in my name " ; " my voice shall raise the dead" ? It is true, if Matt. xi. 19 does not imply pre-existence, there is, in the first three Gospels no utterance of Christ from which it can be proved ; but it is equally certain, that he who commands to baptize in his name, as well as in that of the Father and the Holy Ghost, is either an unintelligible man, or 48 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF must have been conscious of his pre-existence. For this reason the genuineness of the declaration of Jesus concerning his pre-existent state, as recorded in the fourth Gospel, could not be called in question even if it were not directly taught in the first three Gospels, since it is Matthew who records the institution of baptism.1 The consubstantiality of Jesus with the Father cannot be the result of his being conceived by the Holy Ghost, for two reasons ; viz. (1) because he, who has eternal life in himself, yea is eternal life in such a way that he commands his followers to be baptized in his name, and raises the dead with his own voice, cannot have come into existence after time had commenced ; and (2) be cause Jesus declared repeatedly, that his equality with the Father in substance and life did not begin with his earthly existence, but that a life of glory, exempt from 1 If " Therefore also said the wisdom of God " (Luke xi. 49) were the words of Jesus himself, this passage would contain a declaration of Christ concerning his pre-existence, it being evident that, by " wisdom " in this place, must be understood Jesus, and he is consequently designated as the wisdom spoken of in Prov. viii. 22, as the mediatrix of creation. But as the utterance of Christ, which is quoted (Luke xi. 49-51) with this in troduction: "Therefore, said the wisdom of God," was uttered by Jesus in the last days of his public ministry, when he was about to leave the temple forever, Matt, xxiii. 34; Luke xi. 49-51 must be regarded as a quotation from the discourse of Jesus delivered at an earlier period in the temple, introduced by Luke himself with : " Therefore, said the wisdom of God," and inserted into his report of the discourse delivered in the house of the Pharisee. Thus Luke, at least, calls Jesus the wisdom of God, and it is the more probable, accordingly, that Christ called himself once by that name, and that (Matt. xi. 19) Jesus himself is the wisdom of God. This interpretation is far preferable to a more recently advanced opinion, according to which we have in the passage in question a quotation of Christ from a lost book, " the Wisdom of God." Whoever is satisfied that Jesus claimed pre-existence for himself, cannot doubt that such words as Mark i. 38; Matt v. 17 were uttered from the same consciousness; but these texts cannot be quoted as proofs, because they admit of a different interpretation. THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 49 change and decay, had been his before the foundation of the world. 3. This glory which the Lord had with the Father before the foundation of the world and into which he is re-instated, was given him, as he declares (John xvii. 24), by the Father, who loved him before the foundation of the world. From the literal import of these words, especially when compared with vs. 5, it appears that this giving was antemundane, and this, necessarily, presupposes his having been begotten before time had a beginning. The glory itself cannot have been anything else, as we shall hereafter fully establish, than his holy life in light, his divine life. This ante- mundane giving of glory to the Son by the Father, and the Son's being begotten of the Father before the world was, are therefore identical, — the one may stand for the other. The same peculiar generation of the Son by the Father is also referred to in John v. 26. The words may be translated : " For as the Father has life in him self, so also has he given to the Son to have life even in himself," in se ipso, or, " as the Father has life in him self, so also has he given to the Son to have life in him self," in se, merely reflexive. The passages John vi. 53 ; 1 John iii. 15 favor the second of these translations, because the iv iavrS is here merely reflexive, not em phatic. But in itself considered, it is perfectly imma terial which of these translations is adopted, since it appears plainly from the context, that a manner of having life in himself peculiar to the Father and the Son is here spoken of; our Lord thus establishing the fact that, and the reason why, the voice of the Son of God can raise the dead as well as the Father, vs. 2, 5 50 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF that it is the Son's prerogative to be an independent source of life, just as is the Father. He only that has an independent life in himself, can grant life to others, and such a one alone can be truly said to have life. God, and God only, is life ; he alone has immortality (comp. vi. 57, the living Father, and 1 Tim. vi. 16). This is also the reason why glory belongs to the Son as well as to the Father, because he has, like the Father, independent life in himself. But, according to v. 26, it is the Father who has given to the Son to have life in himself, as according to xvii. 24 it is the same Father, who has given glory to the Son. For this reason this passage also proves a peculiar generation of Jesus by the Father, a generation different from the conception of Jesus by the Holy Ghost, because this conception could not make Jesus an independent source of life. Yea, we shall see hereafter, that during his stay on earth Jesus did not even possess this independent life in its full extent. Another passage in which Jesus speaks of his ante- mundane and peculiar procession from the Father, is John vii. 29 : " But I know him, for I am from him, and he hath sent me." Such passages as John iii. 17 compared with iii. 13, or vi. 57 compared with vi. 62, or xvii. 3, 8, and xxi. 25 compared with xvii. 5, leave no room for any doubt that Jesus means not only his mis sion on the stage of life from Nazareth, but also his mission from heaven, when he speaks of his mission through the Father ; since, moreover, in vii. 29 the affirmation : " I am from the Father " precedes the other, " and he hath sent me." It is clear, that this being from the Father means his antemundane pro cession from the Father. In the next place it is equally THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 51 clear, that this being from the Father cannot mean his having been created by the Father before the world, but points to a peculiar origin from the substance of the Father ; if this were not so, Jesus could not pos sibly design to prove by this being from the Father, that he had a perfect knowledge of the Father. The same is the case with vi. 46 : " Not that any man hath seen the Father, save he who is of God, he hath seen the Father." We are now prepared to sum up in what sense Jestis calls himself the Son of God : the Father's love has given him before the foundation of the world, and con sequently, before all time, glory with the Father, or, to have life in himself as the Father has life in himself, Or has given him an existence and life equal to that of the Father. It is owing to this, his origin and consubstan- tiality with the Father, that having been sent by the Father into the world, he is known only of the Father, and that he knows the Father, who is known by no one else, and that he can do nothing of himself except what he sees the Father do, that the Father shows unto him whatsoever he does himself, that the Father's power is his own, because he is in the Father and the Father in him in such a manner that he can say : He that sees me sees the Father. From this it is apparent, why Jesus calls himself the only-begotten Son of God, with whose sonship no other can be compared (John iii. 16-18), and it is unneces sary to say anything more on this subject, there being, consequently, no valid reason for saying that it is not Jesus, but John who uses the term " Only-begotten " of Jesus. 52 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF §8. We have set out with the mediatorial relation between God and men, which Jesus claims for himself in com manding us to look to him for that salvation which is from God alone, and in requiring us to pay all the duties towards his own person which our consciences re quire towards God. We have looked for the key to this mediatorial relation in the substance and being of Jesus. His self-designation " Son of Man," did not of itself fur nish this key ; on the contrary, this designation started the new question, What is there wonderful in this man, by virtue of which he can call himself the Son of Man ? But his other self-designation, " Sou of God," in the sense just explained, is the key by which we can fully understand his mediatorial office. The declarations of our Saviour concerning his me diatorial office were given in chronological order. If, now, we arrange them according to their import we obtain the following order : With reference to the Old Testament he represents himself as its desire, completion, and heir ; with reference to humanity, as its owner, and the channel of its history; with reference to heaven and earth, as him to whom all power is given over them ; with reference to the angels, as their Lord and Master ; but especially with reference to the souls of men, as their Lord, Saviour, Source of life, and Judge. If Jesus is the consubstantial Son of the Father, he has, as a matter of course, the right to call himself the Son, in distinction from the Old Testament prophets as servants (Mark xii. 1, etc.) Such a Son of David his royal ancestor himself addressed, while in the spirit, as his Lord (Matt. xxii. 43; comp. with Ps. ex.), in the THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 53 firm conviction, that in this case the descendant was not indebted to the ancestor for his throne, but vice versa. But if Jesus did not know himself as the con- substantial Son of the Father, he had no right to rep resent himself as the heir of God's vineyard, the Old Testament ; for a man can be only a laborer, or at most a steward, in God's vineyard, but never its owner. The fulfilment of the law, to effect which Jesus came into the world (Matt. v. 17), was accomplished not merely by developing the spirit of the law from its let ter and from the traditions of men, nor by furnishing the proof, that except our righteousness surpass that of the Scribes and Pharisees, we cannot enter into the king dom of God (vs. 20). This development of the spirit of the law was, indeed, necessary, but alone it would never bring about the result described in vs. 18 : " till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." If Jesus does not realize the law, either in himself or in us, the law is not fulfilled either before or after the passing away of heaven and earth. His meaning must then be this : I have come to realize the law both in myself and in you. The typical part of the law, however, especially that which prefigured a future atonement, could not be realized by a mere man, and how, then, could he speak of the realization of the law through himself and in us, if he were a mere man. Only as the consubstantial Son of the Father could he declare, when about to leave the temple at Jerusalem forever, that henceforth the house of Israel would be bereft of the divine presence, until the people should acknowledge him at his coming again in glory as their Messiah (Matt, xxiii. 38-xxiv. 1). With respect to mankind in general, Jesus does not 5* 54 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF say, that it is his calling to scatter seed upon the whole field of humanity; but that this field is his own, and that he has the right to dispose of the harvest (Matt. xiii. 24-37, etc). The history of mankind is to be a continual testimony that the Son of Man is sitting at the right hand of power, and a continual coming of the Son of Man in the clouds of heaven (Matt. xxvi. 64). The epochs of his coming are the epochs of the world's history ; his final advent is the consummation of all history (Matt. xxiv. 25). He is the Judge of mankind, who fixes the destiny of all by an irrevocable decision. In merely human transactions, the office is often much greater than the officer ; this is also the case in the kingdom of God, in so far as men are its messen gers and bearers, and is for the most part displayed in their administration. This disproportion between the officer and the office would be manifested in Jesus, and in his case in an infinitely higher degree, had he to oc cupy the position in the divine economy with regard to the human family, which he ascribed to himself, with out being the Son of God, of equal substance with the Father, and begotten of the Father before his earthly existence, even before the foundation of the world. Let a mere man, anointed with the Holy Ghost, say, " All power is given unto me, in heaven and in earth," and how strange is the idea thus presented ? What is a ruler of heaven without omniscience, supreme wis dom and omnipotence ? The necessary wisdom and knowledge [not omniscience, as the author states. — Tr.\ might be supplied by a continual inspiration ; but how he could be made omnipotent, who shall explain to us ? THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 55 Jesus also represents himself as the King and Gov ernor of the angelic hosts, when he declares that the Son of Man will send his angels, will come with his angels, and. that all his angels shall come with him, (Matt. xiii. 41 ; xvi. 27 ; xxiv. 31; xxv. 31). How natural and in telligible is this, if Jesus is the Sou of God, begotten of the Father before the foundation of the world, of equal substance with the Father, who has life in himself, as the Father has, and consequently with respect to the angels, who are also sons of God, is the "only" Son of the Father ; but how unintelligible, aside from the sup position that he was conscious of being this Son of God. It must be borne in mind, that all these declarations of Christ are found in the first three, not in the fourth, Gospel, and that to the ' following testimonies also the synoptic Gospels furnish as ample a quota as the Gos pel of St. John. This view of Jesus regarding his own worship opens up a clear perception of his relation to the kingdom of God, as claimed by him, and of his declarations con cerning his relation to the souls of men or to the inward life, which is imparted to believers in him. Whence comes that inward longing of the spirit for communion with him, by virtue of which he is known and his voice is heard by his own, and by those also who are not of Israel, but of any nation, kindred, and tongue (John x. 14 ; xvi. 27) ? Whence comes that love to him, which is stronger than all natural ties ? Whence the power of attraction exercised by him, and the permission, and even duty, to love him supremely, as God alone can and ought to be loved (Matt. x. 37 ; Luke xiv. 26 ; John xiv., xv.) ? Whence his in ward ability to be the bridegroom of God's people, and 56 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF hence the same as Jehovah was in the Old Testament with respect to Israel (Matt. ix. 15 ; xxii. 2) ? Whence his power to enlighten men inwardly con cerning the Father, to give meat and drink unto eternal life (Matt. xi. 27; John iv., vi.), to grant them rest, peace, and the resurrection from the dead (Matt. xi. 28, 30 ; John xiv. 27 ; v. 25, etc.) ? Whence his right to announce himself as the resurrection and the life (John xi. 25; xiv. 6), and to command that baptism should be performed in his name (Matt, xxviii.) ? How can he make his abode with souls, as the Father and the Holy Ghost, and with the same result, enlight- ning, vivifying, and renewing them so as to bear fruit well pleasing to God (John xiv., xv.) ? How can he promise to be in their midst, whenever two or three are gathered together in his name (Matt, xviii. 20) ; or to be with his disciples even to the end of the world ? How can he give the Holy Ghost and the power to for give and retain sins (Luke xxiv. 49; John xx. 23 ; Matt. xvi. 19 ; xviii. 18) ? All these questions receive their only and complete answer in the declaration of Jesus, that he is the Son of God, of equal substance with the Father, to whom the Father has given, before the foun dation of the world, to have life in himself, even as the Father has life in himself. As the mediatorship of Jesus between God and man, so also the term, " Son of Man," becomes clearly intelli gible, if Jesus is also the Son of God, of equal substance with the Father. If the Son, begotten of the Father before the foundation of the world, and of equal sub stance with the Father, was sent into a human form of existence, it is but natural, that this man should be the Wonderful, the True, well pleasing to God, the THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 57 flower of humanity, the man for whom all mankind had unceasingly longed. If the Son of God became man, this fact fully unlocks the secret of human existence. As none of us knows himself before he knows God, and no one knows how to appreciate his own nobility be fore he becomes a child of God ; so no one knows the depth of man's being before he knows the incarnation of God. Each advance in the knowledge of Jesus's divine Sonship is an advance also in the knowledge of man's being, and only when we shall fully know the Son of God, shall we also fully understand the Son of Man. §9- Wo have, moreover, direct utterances of Jesus con cerning his relation to the Father and the Holy Ghost, which can be true only if he is the Son of God, of equal substance with the Father. Of the Spirit of truth he says (John xvi. 13 : etc.) : "He shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak, He shall glorify me ; for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you." Again, in xv. 26 and xvi. 7 : " the Comforter, whom I will send unto you " ; and in Luke xxiv. 49, " I send the promise of my Father upon you." He who sends is more exalted than the sent ; the hearer is dependent on him from whom he hears, and from whose ful-% ness of life and salvation he derives that which he speaks. We thus see that Jesus not only makes him self equal with the Spirit of truth, but even represents the Spirit as dependent upon himself. In Matt. xvi. 27 our Lord says : " The Son of Man shall come in the glory of his Father," but (xxv. 31 ; xix. 28) in his own 58 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF glory. He is therefore able to call his Father's glory his own, and can ascribe glory to himself as to his Father. Compare with this the declaration in John just quoted: "All things that the Father hath are mine " (xvi. 15) ; and again, " I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me ; for they are thine ; and all mine are thine and thine are mine " (John xvii. 9, 10). In the first passage we are, as appears from the context, to understand by all things that the Father hath, the fulness of truth, salvation (and life in God) ; in the second, that the world of intelligences is both the Father's and the Son's. As, therefore, the world of in telligences belongs conjointly to both Father and Son, to the Son also belongs the same fulness of life and truth and glory (Matt. loc. cit.) as to the Father. For the Father hath given unto him to have life in himself, even as the Father hath life in himself. The loftiest claim is, however, put forth by Jesus just prior to his ascension : " In the name ofthe Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." We have already alluded to the fact, that Jesus could command his disciples to baptize in his name, could promise to bestow life from his own fulness, and could exact religious obedience from the person baptized, because he was conscious of being the Son of God, of equal substance with the Fa ther ; but we have now to consider that he places him self on an equal footing with the Father and the Holy Ghost. One only who is blinded by prejudice, could imagine, that the Father is here spoken of as a divine person, and the Son as a human person, and the Spirit as an impersonal power. To co-ordinate God, a man, and a power, — to enjoin bantism in the name of God, THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 59 of his human servant, and of his impersonal power, — this is surely not the inspiration of divine wisdom. If, however, Jesus is placed on an equal footing with the Father and the Holy Ghost, he must be of equal sub stance with them. And yet more ! Why does not our Lord say : " In the name of God, of the Son, and of the Spirit," instead of "in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit." In this institution of baptism every word must have been selected purposely and for special reasons. The only true answer which presents itself at once, is this : because he wished to vindicate the name of God as pertaining not to the Father only, but also to the Son and the Holy Ghost. There is in the whole New Testament no more lofty word concerning the divine nature of Christ than this one recorded by Matthew ; and it is in perfect unison with the nature of things, that the formula of baptism should contain the sub stance of the whole doctrine concerning the inner being of God. It is less obvious, but the close observer will not fail to perceive, that in John xiv. 15-23 Jesus places himself and the Holy Ghost on an equal footing with the Father. In answer to the prayer of Jesus, the Fa ther will give to the disciples the .Spirit of truth, (vs. 15, 17) ; but Jesus himself will also come again (18-21), and with him the Father (vs. 23). §10. We see that Jesus has advanced far beyond the theo cratic idea of" the Son of God," as we find it in the Old" Testament.. There the holy nation is designated as "the Son of God," being called by the election of grace, that God might reveal himself to it, thus converting it 60 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF into an organ of his future revelation ; in a higher sense the man who is chosen by God to be the medi ator of his revelation to the people and government, by becoming the vicegerent of God who is anointed with the Holy Ghost, and to whom Israel is directed by the divinely inspired prophets. This idea of " the Son of God " identical with that of " servant of God " ; by which term Isaiah (chap, xl.) primarily designates the people of Israel, and secondarily that one of the people who is to turn not only the children of Israel to the God of their fathers, but is also to be the light ofthe Gentiles, and to give his spotless life as a ransom for all. Jesus •on the contrary designates himself as the Son of God, not as a man, chosen by the election of grace to the service of God, but as being of equal substance with the Father, being begotten of God in a peculiar man ner before the foundation of the world. But on a closer examination it becomes evident that this advance beyond the Old Testament conception is but a complete understanding of it, a penetration into its profoundest meaning, in which alone the true servant of God, the true mediator of God's full reve lation, can be set forth. The sons of God in the Old Testament are so by adoption, chosen by Jehovah from the best of the race to be his, and to serve him ; but such adopted sons will ever give occasion to the com plaint : " If then I be a father, where is my honor ? " (Mai. i. 6), since those from whose midst God selects his sons are at best but men, born of the will of the flesh. And how imperfect must that revelation of God be which is given not only to, but'also through sinners ! Yea, even if one could be found who knew no sin, a perfect revelation of God through him as a mere man THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 61 would still be impossible. Even supposing that a sin less man could attain in this life to a thorough knowl edge of God, and thus transcend the partial knowledge usually enjoyed (1 Cor. xiii. 9), God's dwelling in a finite man cannot but be finite, and such an one could never truthfully declare, he that seeth me, seeth the Father. Yet such a revelation of God only is perfect as shows him unto men bodily; and how could a sinless man become such a revelator, through whom not only a perfect knowledge of God, but a divine life also is to be imparted ? The theocratic idea of " the Son of God" is, therefore, fully realized only when a son of God appears, who is so by virtue of his consubstantiality with the Father, or his being begotten ofthe Father in a peculiar manner. Or, in other words, he only who is the consubstantial Son of God can be the servant through whom God can make a complete revelation of himself. Glimmerings of this knowledge may be discerned in the Old Testament itself. The second Psalm closes with these words : " Kiss the son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him." Its author could not possibly have made use of this language, if he had not had some faint idea, at least, that the Son, the anointed, was of superhuman origin ; otherwise he could not possibly have pro nounced those blessed who put their trust in him. The -author of Psalm ex. also doubtless regards the Messiah as superhuman, since he, a sovereign king, styles him his Lord. • God himself addresses him in these words: " Sit thou at my right hand" ; and his people will gather around him in the days of his power in 62 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF countless numbers, because he will be for ever both king and priest. David is fully aware, that tho sitting at the right hand of God and the everlasting kingdom and priesthood are not become the prerogatives of a mere man. The prophecy of Micah, uttered about three cen turies later, declaring, that out of Bethlehem should come forth a ruler in Israel, " whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting," admits, to say the least, of the translation given, although we must ac knowledge " his goings forth " may also mean the steps through every century of the world, preparatory to the advent ofthe Messiah (Micah v. 2). Isaiah, the contemporary of Micah, speaks of the ful ness of the Spirit of the Lord, which would rest upon the root of Jesse, qualifying him fully for the discharge of the duties of judge (xi. 1-4), but adds (vs. 4-10) : " And he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked, and his rest shall be glorious " ; which views also tran scend the idea of a ruler who is distinguished from other men merely by the measure of the Spirit resting upon him, since no mere man could possibly establish that universal peace in nature spoken of in vs. 6-8. 1 i Mr. Gess is fully satisfied that the prophets both knew and foretold the pre-existence and the full equality ofthe promised Messiah with God. In this light he views all the Old Testament passages which would seem to distinguish between a Jehovah sending and a Jehovah sent, or to ascribe divine attributes to the theocratic Messenger, Servant, or Son of God. In this view he quotes Isa. ix. 6 : " Unto us a Child is born ; unto us a Son is given; his name shall be Wonderful, ' the mighty God." He quotes, also, Isa. xlviii. 16, representing the servant whom Jehovah will send to raise up the tribes of Israel, and to be a Light to the Gentiles (xlix. 6) as declaring of himself: " Come ye near unto me, and hear ye this: I have not spoken in secret from the beginning; from the time that it was, there am I; and now the Lord God and his SDirit hath sent me" (xlviii. 16). THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 63 CHAPTER II. THE CONFESSION OF THE JEWISH-CHRISTIAN CHURCH CON CERNING THE DIVINE SONSHIP OF JESUS. §11. The instructive words of a father are not at once fully comprehended by his son, but are, for the time be ing, treasured up in his memory. There they may be thrown into the background, until they are called forth again by subsequent events, which both throw light on them and receive light from them. And the deeper and the more comprehensive these words are, the more gradual and slow will be the full comprehension of them. If this holds good in the case of an ordinary father, how much more may we expect it to do so in the case of Jesus, who introduced his disciples into a sphere of thought which was perfectly new to them. No one, who has even a slight knowledge of the history of man's inner life will expect that the divine truths which Christ taught his disciples while he was with them, un- Thus our author has no doubt that the Servant spoken of in vs. 16 is Je hovah himself. He sees, likewise, in the Angel of Jehovah, who appeared to the patriarchs, and led the children of Israel through the wilderness, a divine personality, as well as in the Wisdom (chokhmah) of Solomon. The prophets Malachi and Zechariah also teach, according to him, the divine nature of the Son of David, and the divine pre-existence of the Messiah (Zech. xii. 8; ii. 15; Mai. iii. 1). And, accordingly, the first chapter of the original closes with these words : " The real state of the case is not that the prophecies of the Old Testament foretold only a man anointed with the Spirit of God as the Messiah, while the Messiah claimed equality with God, and styled himself metaphysically the Son of God; but this: The prophets also beheld the Messiah's pre-existence and equality 64 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF der such various forms and images adapted to their capacities, should at once have been fully entered into and understood by them. Such ready knowledge, imparted by magic, as it were, to man is inconsistent both with man's higher nature and the purposes of God. with God; and Jesus would have fallen short of these declarations of the Old Testament, had he not claimed these attributes for himself. " The term 'Son of God,' however, is in the Old Testament the expression of a theocratic idea; it is applied to the nation itself and its rulers, and only once to the King of the future, to wit, in Ps. ii., though in such a way that the theocratic idea seems on the point of transition into that of equality wiih God. This equality of the Messiah with God, is taught, in the Old Testament, by other expressions: He is David's Lord; his goings forth are from everlasting; the mighty God, who has spoken to Israel from the beginning; the Lord, who comes to his temple. This divine nature, by which he is enabled to become the perfect Servant of God, the King and Priest who is able to receive the fulness of the Spirit, Jesus expresses by the term ' Son of God.' His being anointed does not constitute him the Son; but because he is the Son he may become the anointed One." From this exegesis, however, 1 feel constrained to express iny unqualified dissent; being fully persuaded that there is no passage in the entire Old Testament which distinguishes between a God sending and a God sent. The " angel of the Lord " is either a created being or a Hebraism. for the Lord himself. The chokhmah of Solomon no more than the sophia of the Apocrypha is a personification ; and 1 feel constrained to agree with Justin Martyr, where he says: " We Jews all believe that Christ will be a man from men, and that he will be anointed by Elijah " (c. Tryph. chap, xlviii). In order, however, not to leave the reader in doubt as to my views, I sub join a passage from Dorner's Christology, which embodies my own views on the subject : " If the Old Testament ideas had not been transcended by the reality, the idea of the divine revelation, considered from above, would have remained imperfect; the 2oi'u would have found no sure and abiding resting-place ; and, viewed from below, the Old Testament idea itself would not have been completed. The self-revealing God or ATr)po>;, and since it is also most natural to understand vs. 3 in connection with vs. 8 as applying to Jesus, whose divine power supplies us with all things necessary to life, and who has called us in a glorious manner and with great power.1 But however this may be, faith in Jesus Christ is, at all events, according to vs. 1, as much a gift of the justifying Jesus as of the justifying Father, since Peter writes to those " who have obtained like precious faith with us," through the righteousness of Jesus Christ. The justifying Saviour leads all to faith, who are of the truth. The harmony of the first and second epistles of Peter in their Christological teachings is easily recognized. According to the first, it is the risen Saviour, through whom baptism saves us, our regeneration being the 1 The English translation of rov KaKeaavros 7iiia.s 5ia Si^s not apsrtjs, " that hath called us to glory and virtue," is manifestly erroneous, since Bio, with the genitive, means the instrumentality and manner, never the end or object; it should be, "with n-inmr am-i nnwo,- " — Tp THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 89 work of Christ (1 Pet. i. 3 ; iii. 21) ; according to the second, it is Christ's divine power which supplies us with whatsoever ¦ is necessary to life and piety, and Christ's life through which we partake of the divine life (2 Pet. iii. 22, etc.). According to the first epistle, Jesus is on the right hand of God, and all angels and authorities and powers are made subject unto him (1 Pet. iii. 22) ; according to the second, he is the king of the heavenly kingdom (2 Pet. i. 11). Since the first epistle places Jesus on an equal footing with the Father and the Holy Ghost (1 Pet. i. 1, etc.) ; since believers are exhorted to sanctify him in their hearts (iii. 15) ; since it applies to him the terms " Lord " and " Lord God " (iii. 15 ; ii. 3) ; since the Spirit of the proph ets was the Spirit of Christ (i. 11) ; it is but natural, that he should be called in the second epistle our " God " (2 Pet. i. 1), and that divine honor should be ascribed unto him (2 Pet. iii. 18). §13. The following are the principal points, expressed in the Christological creed of the infant church. 1 . The church sets out with the view of Christ as the servant of God,' but connects with this view the conviction, that Jesus is the Prince of life, that the Holy Ghost is given by him, that he will come again as the Judge and restorer of all things ; every baptism in his name is a solemn memorial of all this. To be a Christian is to call upon the name of the Lord, to believe in the risen One, the Lord of glory, and to serve him as the Lord. He is ealled " Lord" (Kup/o? = Jehovah), and is recog nized as the incarnate Jehovah. Paul and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews feel that the exalted 8* 90 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OB titles which they apply to Christ are not offensive to the Hebrew Christians. 2. The inability of some to en ter into correct views of the high-priesthood of Christ before the destruction of Jerusalem, proves ahinderance to the development of the doctrine concerning Christ. 3. On the other hand we see how Peter progresses to a full insight into the nature and all-sufficiency of Christ's vicarious sacrifice (1 Pet. i. 19 ; ii. 24 ; iii. 18), and into the fulness of life and salvation which is found in him, as well as into the divine nature of Christ, so that he unhesitatingly applies to Jesus the same terms as are applied in the Old Testament to Jehovah (1 Pet, iii. 15). All the principal points of Christ's testimony concerning himself we find to be integral parts of Peter's train of thought, as developed in his epistles ; Christ's command, " Baptize them in the name of the Father, and ofthe Son, and ofthe Holy Ghost " (Matt, xxviii. 20), is re-echoed in 1 Pet. ii. 2 and 2 Pet. i. 1, etc. ; his de sire " that all may honor the Son as they honor the Father," in the doxology of the second epistle, and in such passages as 1 Pet. iii. 15, etc. ; Christ's declara tion concerning his pre-existence in 1 Pet. i. 11, 20 ; and his declaration, " all power is given unto me in heaven and in earth," we hear again in 2 Pet. i. 11 and 1 Pet. iii. 22. It is, however, noteworthy that neither the records of the belief of the church of Jerusalem, preserved in the book of Acts, nor the Epistle of James, nor the Petrine Epistles, express the divine nature of Christ by the term which the Lord himself, according to the Synop tical Gospels, made use of to teach his divinity, and which is used by both John and Paul in the same sense, viz. " Son of God." Acts viii. 37 being an interpola- THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 91 tion of later date, and wanting in most manuscripts, and xiii. 13 a quotation from the Old Testament made by Paul, we have left but one passage in this book, which contains the term " Son of God" (ix. 20). Here, . however, it does not teach Christ's sameness of sub stance with the Father, since Saul, but lately converted, is preaching to the Jews of Damascus, that Jesus is the Son of God, i.e. according to the Old Testament view, the Messiah. James does not speak of the " Son of God" at all, and Peter only when he mentions the voice heard at the Transfiguration (2 Pet. i. 17). We can account for this by the fact, that the term " Son of God " was in the Old Testament, and remained in the vocabulary of the church of Jerusalem, identical with the " servant of God " ; the Jewish Christians expressed as we have seen, their belief in Christ's higher nature by different terms. 92 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF CHAPTER III. THE TESTIMONY OF THE RISEN SAVIOUR TO HIS DIVINE SONSHIP, AS GIVEN BY TAUL AND JOHN. I. PAUL. §14. The Apostle Paul, in his Epistle to the Galatians, lays great emphasis on the fact, that he had not received nor been taught the gospel by man, but by the revela tion of Jesus Christ, it having pleased God to reveal his Son in him, who had persecuted the church, that he might preach the same to the Gentiles, — that after this, he had not conferred with flesh or blood, nor gone to those who had been apostles before him, but first into Arabia, then back to Damascus, and only after the lapse of three years had visited Peter at Jerusalem (i. 11-18). How are we now to understand the words, "It pleased God to reveal his Son in me " (vs. 16) ? Did this reve lation consist in the light which appeared unto Paul on his way from Jerusalem to Damascus, and in the voice which said unto him, " Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" and again, "I am Jesus, whom thou perse cutest ; it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks ? " It is this vision to which Paul appeals in 1 Cor. xv. 8 and ix. 1, in the first place, in order to prove by the words, " At last he appeared also unto me," the truth of Christ's resurrection from the dead, and in the second, by the words : " Have I not seen Christ our Lord ? " THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 93 his apostolic authority. But the words of the apostle, " It pleased God to reveal his Son in me," evidently refer to some other event than to the personal appear ance of Jesus Christ ; they refer to a revelation of the true nature of Christ, which took place in the mind of Paul. It is true, we learn from the Epistle to the Gala- tians, that this inward revelation took place about the same time that the Lord appeared to the apostle bodily ; it is also true that the inner revelation was made pos sible and prepared for by that outward bodily manifesta tion, but it was, nevertheless, something different from this. The appearing of the risen Saviour to Paul, where by his resurrection from the dead and his Messiahship were proven, was followed by the revelation of the higher nature of the Messiah in the mind of the apostle. Paul, who had not heard Christ's testimony concern ing himself while on earth, had to receive it, and did receive it, in a miraculous manner. This excites our surprise the less, as the apostle speaks also of other reve lations of divine truth which were granted to him. Thus in Eph. iii. 3, etc. he writes: "By revelation he made known unto me the mystery which in other ages was not known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit ; that the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs and of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ by the gospel." Not by a mere act of reasoning, then, but by a direct revelation had Paul learned, that the heathens were to be partakers of the promise in Christ without submitting to the law of Moses. Nor can this revelation"be found only in the words of Jesus, which he spake at his first appearance, " I have appeared unto thee for this pur pose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these 94 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which 1 will appear unto thee, delivering thee from the people and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee" (Acts xxvi. 16, etc.), nor in those of Ananias: " Thou shalt be his witness unto all men both of what thou hast seen and heard " (Acts xxii. 16) : nor in the words of Jesus which he addressed to him, when he appeared subsequently to him in the temple : " Depart ; for 1 will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles." (Acts xxii. 21). All these revelations do not as yet intimate by a single word, that the law of Moses is not needed as a stepping- stone in order to become a partaker of Christ, but that faith alone is all-sufficient. If, then, Paul's statement in Eph. iii. is true, it follows that he received still other revelations touching this mystery by the Spirit of Christ. These revelations, that Christ belongs equally to Gen tiles and to Jews, must, however, have been attended with revelations as to his inner nature ; since his relation to mankind at large, as well as to the Jews, depended on his nature, who was, after the flesh, a son of Israel. ' We learn further from Paul, that he not only received revelations as to the equality of the Gentiles with the Jews from the gospel point of view, which constituted the basis of his whole apostolic ministry, but also on truths of a special character. To the Thessalonians, who sorrowed that some of their number had died with out having witnessed the second coming of the Lord, he writes (1 Thess. iv. 15) : " in a word of the Lord (iv Xoyqy Kvpiov) " that those, who shall be alive and re main unto it — the Lord's second coming — shall not ourstrip those, who have fallen asleep (ov fir] (jiddacD/iev tcw? KotfivdevTa^ , but that the dead in Christ shall arise first; that after this (eVetra), those that are THE PERSON OF- CHRIST. 95 alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, and so ever be with the Lord. We cannot understand by this " word ofthe Lord " any utterance of our Lord while on earth. The two passages Matt. xxiv. 31 : " The Son of Man shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other," and John v. 25 : " The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live," might indeed have afforded consolation to the Thessalonians ; but what Paul says, is of a much more special character ; Jesus says nothing ofthe change of the living, nothing of the resurrection of the dead to precede this change, nothing of their being caught up in the clouds — while he was still on earth, there was no need of entering into these details. The word of the Lord, then, to which Paul refers, must have been spoken by the risen Saviour to the apostle. This also appears from 1 Cor. xv. 51, etc., where he treats of the same subject, though in another connection : " Behold, I show you a mystery ; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed ; in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump ; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed." This had been a mystery, until the word ofthe Lord revealed it unto Paul. On still another point, closely connected with the second coming of Christ, viz. the conversion of the Jews, the apostle re ceived a revelation : " For I would not, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, that blindness in -part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in, and so all Israel shall be saved " (Rom. xi. 25, 26). 96 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF Even as to the manner of the institution ofthe Lord's supper, it would seem, the apostle had a special revela tion. In 1 Cor. xi. 23 he says: "I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you." If he had not received such a revelation, he could scarcely have made use of this solemn language, but should rather, and undoubtedly would, have said : " I have received it of those who were present." From a com parison of 1 Cor. xi. 25 with 1 John i. 5 it appears, that the view of a revelation having been received on this subject is favored by a strictly grammatical inter pretation, as in the latter of these passages amo is evi dently, used in reference to immediate reception. There are passages in the New Testament, which speak of further revelations granted to the apostle Paul by the risen Saviour. Paul's vision of Christ on his way to Damascus (1 Cor. ix. 1; xv. 8), and the reve lation of the Son of God in his soul rendered possible and prepared for by this vision (Gal. i. 16), was fol lowed three years after by a vision in the temple at Jerusalem, with the injunction to leave the city, and go to the Gentiles (Acts xxii. 17), and again, after fourteen years, by another, directing him to attend the council of the apostles at Jerusalem (Gal. ii. 1, 2 ; comp. Acts xv). Twelve years before the Second Epistle to the Corinthians was written, he was caught up to the third heaven, into Paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which no man can utter (2 Cor. xii. 1, etc.) ; 1 and 1 1 am fully aware that the English rendering of this passage, " words which it is not lawful for a man to utter" — ffiiJ.aTa, & ovk e^bv avdpdnra \a\fi¦ $ irdrres foaprov (Rom. v. 12), since all have sinned ; there being no antecedent to which the relative can possibly refer, it assumes here, with the preposition 1*1, as frequently, the meaning of a causal conjunc tion. — Te. 100 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF to be the Son of God, equal to the Father ; but what reason does Paul now assign for representing Jesus as the second progenitor of mankind, by whom they are begotten into the spiritual nature of both soul and body ? The relation of Jesus to mankind as the " Son of Man " is, properly speaking, the same as that of" the second Adam," since the human race has longed for this Son for no other reason than that he might raise it from the earthy life, which has become a life of death, into spiritual, eternal life. The reason for which Jesus calls himself the Son of Man as to his inner nature, may therefore be assumed to be the same as that for which Paul calls him the second Adam. §16. In 1 Cor. xv. 20-22 Paul does not discuss the inner nature of Jesus, but he does this in vs. 47-49. Let us now, in the first place, suppose that in vs. 47 the shorter reading, " The second man is from heaven," is correct, and that the word " Lord " is to be struck out. For his statement in vs. 44, that our present body is psychical, and therefore corruptible, dishonorable, and weak (vs. 42, 43), but that our resurrection body will be spiritual, and therefore incorruptible, glorious, and powerful, and that the psychical state must precede the spiritual, the apostle in vs. 47-49 assigns the reason, that our first progenitor was from the earth, earthy, and could, as such, have but earthy descendants, whereas the second Adam was from heaven, and therefore could beget only heavenly children. Adam is said (vs. 47) to be of the earth, to designate the origin of his body, which is earthy, and to express the quality of his na ture ; Christ being contrasted with him as being " from THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 101 heaven," it follows that heaven is Christ's birth-place and that his nature is heavenly. It is self-evident, at the same time, that neither Adam nor Christ can be de scribed with reference merely to his body. It is true, indeed, that Adam's body only could be " from the earth," but this being the case and the interior necessa rily corresponding to the exterior, man's whole nature is earthy. The passage (Gen. ii. 7), quoted by the apos tle in vs. 45,- " Adam was made a living soul," evidently has reference to the whole man, it being the result of two divine acts : " And God formed man of the dust of the ground," and " breathed into his nostrils the breath of life." This is still more apparent in Christ's case ; his bodily origin evidently cannot be, and certainly is not designated as, heavenly, since his body was not from heaven, but of the seed of David (Rom. i. 3 ; ix. 5) ; and if even Paul did ascribe a heavenly' origin to Christ's body, this would not justify him in calling the second Adam the quickening Spirit, nor would it ac count for his becoming so. Christ can, consequently, beget men into the heavenly life, because heaven is his birth-place, and his whole nature is heavenly. The last of these expressions is as yet very indefinite ; while the first proves that he was in heaven before he was on earth, consequently his pre-existence. Of the other passages in the writings of Paul teaching the pre-existence of Christ we shall quote only Gal. iv. 4, which reads : " When the fulness of time was come, God sent forth his Son," the same phraseology which is employed in vs. 6 with reference to the Holy Ghost : God has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts. (Comp. Rom. viii. 3.) 9* 102 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF §17. It is, however, apparent that the mere pre-existence in heaven of the Being who afterwards became incar nate does not furnish a complete answer to the question, how the man Jesus Christ became the spiritual pro genitor and quickening spirit of humanity. Had he been an angel, he would also have had a heavenly pre- existence ? but an incarnate angel, evidently, could not be the spiritual progenitor, nor the quickening spirit of humanity. The angels themselves are creatures, that live, and move, and have their being in God, who alone has immortality (1 Tim. vi. 16). The case is different if we adopt the fuller reading in 1 Cor. xv. 47 : 6 Sevrepos; avOpanros 6 Kvpios e£ ovpavov, " The second man is the Lord from heaven." Then it is not an inhabitant of heaven, but the Lord of or from heaven, who has begotten humanity into a heavenly life, having become as man the quickening spirit of human ity. But if he was the Lord from heaven before he assumed the nature of man, then the fulness of the Spirit and heavenly powers in him became incarnate, and nothing is more natural than his power to beget humanity to a heavenly life. The context, therefore, partly favors this fuller reading. Yet it is wanting in many important documents, and its addition is more easily accounted for than its omission. But whatever may be the correct reading of this passage, its idea is developed even more fully by the apostle in other passages. " To us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for him ; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we by him " THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 103 therefore, is both the Mediator of the spiritual regenera tion of humanity (" we by him ; " comp. xv. 45, " He became the quickening Spirit ") and the Mediator of the original creation of all things, while the Father is its last cause and teleological object. But as Jesus Christ is the Mediator of the creation of all things, he is necessarily also the Lord of all things — "the Lord from heaven " (xv. 47). And if the creative fiat of the Father, which called all things into being, was ex ecuted by Jesus Christ, so that the rivers of life, giving existence to all things, flow through him from the Father ; it follows that there is in Christ a source of life, from which proceeds the renewal of fallen human ity unto eternal life. He who was the Mediator of the life of all tilings at the creation ¦ can also become the quickening Spirit of fallen humanity. The celebrated passage Col. i. 15b-17 is simply a fuller development of the Christological idea of this passage (1 Cor. viii. 6), adapted to the particular wants of the Colossians. The apostle's object from vs. 14-22 is to show to the Colossians, that whoever is translated of God into the kingdom of his dear Son has in this Son all in all. He has in him redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins (vs. 14), the image of the invisible God (vs. 15°), his King, whose be is and who is his, the first-born of every creature, because all things are created by him and he is before all things (vs. 16, 17"), all things consist by him (vs. 17b), his King is the Head of the body, the church (vs. 18°). And as he is the first-born of the first creation, that which was called into being from nothing, so is he like wise the first-born of the second creation, which came into life through death, that he might have in all things 104 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF v pre-eminence (vs. 18b-22.) Vs. 18b and 15b are to be construed as parallel with vs. 19 and 16. As vs. 16° depends on the ots of vs. 16 and helps to explain the first 7t/3&)t6toko?, first-born, so vs. 19-21° depen'd on the on of vs. 19, and serve to explain the second 7t/3ojt6toa:o? (vs. 18). Let us examine, in the first place vs. 15b-17. "First-born of every creature " is the name which is here given to the dear Son of God, for this reason (on, vs. 16), that all things were created by him, that he is before all things, and by him all things consist Qn-avra iv avrtp avviarnKe). " In him " (iv avrai) all things are created, he is the Mediator in the creation of all things, and this in two ways. The " in him " is discriminated into, or ex plained by, "by him^ and "for him." "By him," because he is the causative medium in the creation of all things, there being in him the power of life, which gave existence to the world. " For him, "et? airov, be cause he is the teleological medium in creation, the image of the prototype, being the object of creation. The universe was so created, that a consistent devel opment of all its vital germs will at the close of this development exhibit in the system of its comprehensive organism the image of the fulness of life and thought realized in the Son. The consistence of all things, moreover, their pre servation, organization, and vitality, are the work of the Son, through his mediation, presence, and the vi tal power which is transmitted to all things from him (vs. 17b). In vs. 17° Christ's pre-existence is emphasized in order to explain how he could be the Mediator of ere- THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 105 ation, and likewise in order to give prominence to his exalted position arising from his pre-existence. Among the "all things" created by the Son, the highest spheres of personal being, the most exalted ranks of the angels, are expressly mentioned. §18. To our query how Paul could set forth the man Christ Jesus as the progenitor of humanity to eternal life, we found the following answer : Because he sees in the person of Jesus a being from heaven, yea, the mediator of the first creation. That this mediator of the first creation is able to be the regenerator of fallen humanity to newness of life is self-evident. But how could this person have been the author of the first creation, if his power had not been divine — if his life and being had not been that of the true God ? Can any but God give life ? This leads us into a still more thorough examination of St. Paul's statement in this passage. In the words " first-born of the creation " he at once enters upon the question. Some critics have, indeed, given to this term an interpretation by which the pre- existent one, by whom and for whom all things are created, is declared the first in point of time, but nevertheless a creature, just as the first son of a human father is of the same nature and substance as his younger brethren. But there is no good ground for this interpretation. This view charges the profound and independent thinker Paul with an absurd idea, since every reflecting mind must see at once that the never failing source of life for all things cannot possibly be shut up in a creature. The opposite assertion would 106 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF be much more natural, — that the Son of God, by being called the first-born, is exempted from and' placed above all created beings ; yet even this emphasis of the toko?, born, is not justified either by the context or by the biblical phraseology, the two constituent parts of " first-born " being equally emphasized, and forming an organic whole Yet it is plain that this appellation places the Son in a peculiar relation, not only to crea tion, but also to God ; since this peculiar relation to creation can be founded only in his peculiar relation to God. The first of these relations is expressed in vs. 16, 17, the latter in 15° by the apostle. The first born is, with reference to those who are born after him, the one who opens for them the source of life, but with reference to the Father he in whom abides the fulness of the Father's power, and in whom, there fore, the Father's image is fully exhibited (comp. Gen. xlix. 3 ; Ex. xiii. 2). This ideal view of the ancient relation of the first-born (to his brethren) induced the apostle to represent Christ as the first-born. The words " in him all things are created " explain the first-born's relation to the world, and " who is the image of the invisible God " that to his heavenly Father. God's dear Son, into whose kingdom we have been translated, is first represented as the efficient cause of the forgiveness of our sins (vs. 14) , then as the image of the invisible God. This teaches that whoever is translated into the kingdom of God's dear Son sees in the Son the invisible Father. But this is possible only because the Son is the image of the Father's being. Hence the propriety of calling the Son of God the " first-born," if we turn from the postanundane evi dence of the exalted Saviour back to his Dre-existence. THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 107 As a human father's being is exhibited in his first-born, so God's being is reflected in this Son. And as the Son is the image of the invisible Father, the world can be created for the Son (vs. 16), while it is also created for the Father (1 Cor. viii. 6; Rom. ii. 36). And since there is in the first-born, who is the image of the Father, the fulness of the Father's powers, he has, as a matter of course, the power in himself to create the world. And this dependence of all creatures on Christ is expressed by the genitive -rrdan^ KTiaeax; (vs. 15), i.e. he is the author of life and the prototype of all crea tures, or of all spheres of created existence. This declaration of Paul, that the Son is the image of God and the first-born, fully corresponds to that in Phil. ii. 6 : " Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God." The apostle has in the preceding verses been exhort ing his readers not to seek their-own things, especially not their own glory, but to rejoice in the things of others, especially their glory, and presents Christ as a pattern for imitation, " who being in the form of God has not thought it robbery to be equal with God, but has made himself of no reputation, and taken upon himself the form of a servant, being made in the like ness of men, and found in fashion as a man." According to vs. 16, Christ did not think it robbery to be equal with God when he was in the form of God, consequently this was not during his life upon earth. For when was Mary's poor sto in the form of God ? And when, during his earthly pilgrimage, did such an act of self-divestiture take place, that he exchanged the form of God for that of a servant ? His being in the form of God was, therefore, in his pre-existent state, and his self-divesti- 108 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF ture and taking upon himself the form of a servant, was his voluntary passing from his state of heavenly pre-existence into that of earthly existence. This is confirmed by vs. 7, which, according to the original, reads: " having become in the likeness of man " (comp. Gal. iv. 4). The servant's form of existence is to wait upon his master and for his goodness, as all men must before God ; the form of God is his self-existence in light. From this Christ passed over into the first, for the reason that he did not 'consider his being equal with God as something that must be retained at all hazards, as a robber retains what he has got by robbery. To be equal with God is the same as being in the form of God, only including also the sameness of substance with God.1 1 1 have here given -the author's views in full, only omitting page 82 of the German original, which contains, however, simply a critique of the passage in question. I have in this instance deviated from my usual plan, which is to substitute my own views in the text, when they happen to differ from the author's ; but in the present instance I could scarcely have done this without injustice to Mr. Gess, and by giving his views in full, my own may be more fully understood by the general reader. We differ in several essential points from each other. His translation is open to exception ; and I shall therefore give as correct a translation as possible of the original, by which some of our author's statements, especially the distinction drawn by him between in the form of God and to be equal with God, wifl of themselves fall to the ground. "Who being in the form of God, considered it not robbery (apira.yfi.6s =r res rapta, not rapienda) to exist in a manner equal to that of God " (vs. 6). (All the translations that I have met with, render as if the original were rb thai Xtrov ©ew, whereas it is laa, ace, pi. n., which has the force ofthe adverb lri 0. ehai, I do not, as our author, understand primarily, God's self-existence, but his ex istence apart from and beyond all time and space, and by fiop^ SoiKov not man's dependence on God, but his existence in time and space, regarding things as they exist side by side and succeed each other. Into THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 109 Of similar import is also 2 Cor. viii. 9, where Paul exhorts the Christians to liberality, because Christ became poor, having been rich, that through his poverty we might become rich. We were poor, and became rich through him. Even so he was rich, but for our sake became poor. What riches did he abandon for our sake ? His existence in the form of God, his being equal with God. §19. This view of the Messiah Jesus, according to which the /, which became the Messiah in the earthly devel opment of his life, in his former mode of existence in heaven was the agent in the creation and preservation of the world, being consubstantial with and in the form of God, is also reflected in the manner in which Paul declares Jesus to be the revealing God of the Old Testament and in which he speaks of Jesus as a man. According to this apostle the pre-existent Jesus was the spiritual Rock, out of which streams of water gushed for the Israelites in Rephidim and Kadesh; and tliis implies that he was, according to the same apostle, equal with God. Paul calls him the " following Rock," because this follower or attendant was the Rock of Is rael, by whose power the earthly rocks yielded water, and the " spiritual Rock," because his very being was spirit. Add to this, that according to the Old Testa ment, it was Jehovah himself, who stood above the rock near Rephidim, and whose command at Kadesh this form of existence Christ entered by becoming man ; yea, into this he had to enter, in order to become the self-revealing God. As to the bearing of the passage in question on Christology, there is no difference between our author and myself. — Tb. 10 110 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF performed the miracle. But if Paul looked upon the pre-existent Jesus as the self-revealing and covenanting God of the people of Israel during their march through the desert, it is easy to understand how he came to attribute the entire old dispensation to him. In the man Jesus the apostle Paul sees two factors, constituting his very being : according to the flesh he is born of the seed of David ; according to the Spirit of holiness, he is the Son of God, and powerfully shown as such by his resurrection from the dead (Rom. i. 3, 4).1 The Spirit of holiness, i.e. tho Logos, who from all eternity was with God, as God, and equal with God, we see in him united with flesh and blood. The Spirit of holiness is tho inward, the flesh from the seed of David the outward, constituent part of this person. In breaking through the bonds of death to a glorious resurrection the Spirit of holiness is shown to be his inward element — this life of holiness could not remain in the embrace of death. In the next place, Paul says of the man Jesus, that it was God's good pleasure that the whole divine ful ness should dwell in him (Col. i. 19). In vs. 15° it is declared what the Son of love is in relation to God, in vs. 15b-17 what he is in relation to the world, in vs. 18° what he is in his relation to the church; in vs. 18" 1 Kcrra a dpica — Ka-rh wvsvfta ayiwavvris is the same contrast as in ix. 5 : bpiaeivros is taken, even by Chrysostom, as identical with Setx8&Tos, airo- <$>a.v8ivTos, KpiBivros, i.e. shown, proved, judged. Vs. 4 may, indeed, be translated, '' Appointed to be the Son of God, who is so in power, according to the Spirit of holiness from the resurrection," in which case vs. 4 would describe the state Of exaltation, and vs. 3 that of the humiliation, of Christ. But this interpretation of vs. 3, at least, is not natural, nor is it in keeping with vs. 5. THE PERSON OF CHRIST. Ill is shown how he is not only the first-born of the first creation (vs. 15b-17) but also of the second, which passes from death unto life, and in vs. 19-20 is detailed how he became the first-born of the second creation, in this way, viz. that it pleased God that all fulness should dwell in him (vs. 19), and that he (God) should recon cile the universe to himself by making peace through the blood of the cross (vs. 20). From ii. 9 it is plain, that by the fulness which was to dwell in Jesus, the fulness of God is meant. But is this indwelling of the divine fulness the principle of personality, consequently that I which was before his self-emptying act in the divine form of existence, and when he did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but was by the will of God (comp. Heb. x. 7) born in the likeness of men ? Or is this fulness, perhaps, the fulness of the Father, who with his Spirit and all his gifts made his abode in the first-born of creation after he had become a man, so that whoever saw Jesus saw the Father, because the Father was in Jesus? (John xiv. 9, 10). As " bodily " is wanting, which is added in ii. 9, and as the sub ject of the verse is the Father, and not the Son, the second view seems to be the correct one, viz. that the indwelling of the Father in Jesus is meant. But it is plain that the Father's fulness could not dwell in a mere man. How could the finite soul of a man become the abiding-place of the divine fulness ? Only on the supposition, that the inward being of Jesus was that 2, which had been before in the form of God and was equal with God, or that the Spirit of holiness constituted the personal centre in this Son of David, does it become intelligible how the Father's fulness could dwell in him. Again, because it is the Spirit of holiness, which was 112 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF united in Jesus with flesh and blood, we can under stand how this man became the " quickening Spirit," which begets humanity anew to everlasting life, and can understand how it may be said, after the completion of the process of development, after the resurrection and ascension : " The Lord is the Spirit," and " while we reflect the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, as from the Lord, the Spirit " ; we can also understand how Paul can see in unbelief simply the blinding influence of Satan towards the glory of Christ, who is the image of God (1 Cor. xv. 45 ; 2 Cor. iii. 17 ; iv. 1-4). That Jesus, in whom the God-like Spirit of holiness has now fully pervaded the flesh and blood assumed by him, can of necessity be nothing else than spirit, the Spirit of glory, begetting glory in whomsoever he operates, i.e. the image of God. But he could not possibly be the quickening Spirit of humanity, he could not possibly change us as the Spirit from glory to glory, he could not possibly be said in the full sense of the word to be the image of God, or of God's holy spiritual life, if he was not in himself the Spirit of holiness. In Col. ii. 9 the fulness of the Godhead is, unques tionably, regarded as the principle of personality in Jesus. If it were not so, if by this fulness of the God head the fulness of the Father or of the Spirit were meant, the indwelling could not be designated as a bodily one, since the body of Jesus can in no sense be called the body of the Father or of the Spirit. The fulness of the Godhead, i.e. the Spirit of holiness who was in the beginning in the form of God, and equal with God, has to such an extent pervaded and appropriated to himself the flesh taken from the seed of David, that THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 113 in the exalted Jesus the Godhead has a fit body, which is quickened by the Godhead, and which is the adequate organ of the Spirit of God for every divine act. For it appears from the context that the exalted Jesus is spoken of. The Godhead cannot, however, be the principle of personality in him, unless it was so from his very birth ; if a merely human personality had been the nature of Jesus from his birth, the divine person ality would have had to suppress this in order to take its place. §20. Whether Jesus is directly called God by Paul or not, can in these circumstances be a subject of only sub ordinate importance. If he calls him God, it is quite natural, since he describes his being and substance as such ; if ha does not call him God, no inference can be drawn from this prejudicial to his equality with God, since the apostle teaches this too unmistakably. The three terms by which the Scriptures describe and characterize the very being and nature of God, are in the Old Testament Jehovah, more correctly Jahveh, and the Holy One ; in the New Testament, Spirit. Jahveh, or rather Yahveh asher Tahveh, i.e. He is who he is, designates God as the Independent Being, who is by virtue of this independence eternal (Ex. iii. 14, 15). " The Holy One" signifies the life that is exalted and perfect in itself; " Spirit " the life that penetrates and produces itself. Now, we have seen that Paul describes the inward life of Jesus as the " Spirit of holiness," and that he calls the exalted Saviour emphatically " Spirit." In this way he has applied the second and third of these scrip- 10* 114 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF tural terms to Jesus, and indirectly, also, the first. For it is only another modification of the same funda mental idea of God to speak of him as Yahveh, i.e. as the independent personality, or as the Holy One, i.e. the perfect life, or as Spirit, the life that penetrates and produces itself. In "Yahveh" God's independence is emphasized, in "the Holy One" his inward per fection, in " Spirit," the personality of his divine life ; but only the personal can be independent, only the independent can be fully personal, and it is a matter of course that the life of an independent personality is perfect in itself, and that there is no really perfect life except that of independent personality. Even Yahveh is not the original self-designation of God ; but God says to Moses: "I am who I am," or, emphatically, "lam" (Ex. iii. 14). An indirect proof that Paul looks upon Jesus as Jehovah, or rather as embraced in the life of Jehovah, is furnished by 1 .Cor. viii. 6 : " We have one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things., and we through him." It was remarked before that the Septua- gint translates Jehovah by Kvpios = Lord, and that the term " Lord," as applied to Jesus, was for the Greek-speaking Jews a designation of the Supreme God. How could Paul, then, place Jesus as the only Lord, through whom are all things, on an equal footing with God the Father, if he was not fully satisfied that Jesus in his inward being partakes of the nature of Jehovah ? But a direct proof is deducible from Rom. x. 13, where Paul applies the words of Joel, " Every one that calls upon the name of Jehovah shall be saved," to Christ ; since it is evident, from the whole context, that Paul is spf»alrino- nf Dhi-ist. in vs. 10-14. THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 115 There are also passages in which Paul directly calls Jesus God, as Rom. ix. 5 ; Tit. ii. 10. Attempts, in deed, have been made to break the force of the first passage, by placing a period either after Xpurros to Kara adpKa, or after 6 a>v iirl ttuvtcov, so that the ren dering would be: " whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came " ; or, " who is over all. God be blessed forever," in both cases refer ring the words after the period to the Father. But the reasons assigned for the common reading, viz. that an ascription of praise to the Father here could be ac counted for only with great difficulty, and that, at variance with the context, it would set aside Christ, are too strong to allow either of these proposed punctua tions ; whereas the application of the highest term to Christ is in perfect keeping with the whole context. The best and most natural punctuation and translation are : " Of whom Christ is after the flesh, who is over all, God, blessed forever." In Titus ii. 13, not only the grammatical construction demands that both " Sa viour" and " God " be referred to Christ, the article being wanting before o-corfjpos, but it is in every respect more natural to speak of the appearance of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ, than to speak of the appearance of the great God and the appearance of our Saviour ; since Christ, and not the Father, is in reality to appear. In 2 Thess. i. 12 and Eph. v. 5, on the contrary, the interpretation is uncertain, and in 1 Tim. iii. 16 the correct reading seems to be 6'?, instead of 0eo? (" who," instead of " God "), and in Acts xx. 28, Kvpiov, instead of Oeov (i.e. " Lord," instead of "God"). 116 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF §21. It only remains for us to define the idea which Paul expresses by the term " Son of God," which he uses very frequently. As Christ himself expresses by this term his equality with the Father, which is involved in his peculiar and ante-mundane generation by the Father, we must take it for granted that Paul, who has a fully developed idea of Christ, would not content himself with the Old Testament conception, according to which " the Son of God " is the God-anointed ser vant of God, nor with the meaning which the angel attaches to the term, when he calls Jesus the " Son of God," on account of his conception by the Holy Ghost. The Apostle of the Gentiles was not trammelled by the modes of thought current in Palestine. According to Rom. viii. 3, 32, Christ is God's only Son. In Gal. iv. 4, 6 he is called the Son sent down from heaven, and the Holy Spirit is called the Son's Spirit. According to 1 Cor. i. 9 communion with the Son of God is the sum total of all the blessings of heaven. In Gal. ii. 20 the apostle speaks of faith in the Son of God, who has loved him, and given himself for him, as the very centre of his inner life. According to i. 16 it was by a special revelation that the nature of the Son of God was unveiled to him. Unity of faith and knowledge of the Son of God constitute, according to Eph. iv. 13, the sublime object of the development of the Christian church. In these passages let " ser vant of God," or " conceived by the Holy Ghost, and born of the Virgin Mary," be substituted for " Son of God," and it will be at once apparent that this is for bidden by the context. In Col. i. 13, however, these THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 117 low views of the Son of God are far surpassed. A man conceived by the Holy Ghost, and born of the Virgin Mary, and then anointed with the Holy Spirit, could never be called the " King of heaven " (vs. 13), " the image of the invisible God, the first-born of creation, by whom and for whom all things are created" (vs. 15, 16). This very passage proves, at the same time, that, in Paul's view, the equality of the Son' with the Father depends on his having been begotten of the Father before the world — a proposition, even without a direct proof, which would be beyond the possibility of a rea sonable doubt, since the divinity of the Son cannot possibly be based on his conception by, or his unction with, the Holy Ghost. The King of the kingdom of God is the Son of God's love (6 uio? ttj? dya-Trf}?') , as the exalted Jesus (vs. 13). Our deliverance (a7roXvT/3wo-t?),.the pardon of our sins, was accomplished by this Son of God's love while he was on earth, and is now distributed amongst men by the exalted Jesus (vs. 14). This Son of the Father's love was the image of God on earth, and is so still in heaven ; for whoever saw Jesus on earth saw the Father, and in heaven this is the case in a still higher degree ; but the Son of his love was God's image, also, in his pre-existent state (vs. 15). The pre-existing One is the first-born of creation, by whom as the all- powerful Son of God, and for whom as the image of the Father, all things were created (vs. 16). Hence it is evideilt that by the term " Son of love " Paul under stands equally the ante-mundane, the earthly, and the exalted Jesus. He is the Son of God's love because he is the first-born, and the first-born because he is the Son of love. 118 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF The term " Son of his love " is the Pauline echo of what Christ says (John xvii. 24) of the glory which tho Father gave to the Son before the foundation of the world because he loved him ; the Father's whole love rests upon the Son, and it is this love which has given him the relation of Son. It is true Paul has not applied the term " Son of love " exclusively to the pre-existing Son, so as with logical consistency to apply the official title " Christ," " Messiah," and the proper name " Jesus " to the in carnate and exalted Saviour. He speaks, on the con trary, of " Christ " as the leader of the children of Israel through the wilderness (1 Cor. x.), and of " Jesus Christ " as him by whom all things were created (1 Cor. viii.). Had Paul been lecturing to students of theology, he would undoubtedly have used these appellations with philosophical precision ; but speaking or writing to the church at large he was less restricted in the use of terms. It was, indeed, the most natural, and at the same time the most effectual, way to apply the proper name and the title to the pre- existent Son of God, that the church might know with the greater certainty that the Saviour is also the self- revealing Jehovah of the Old Testament and the first born of every creature.1 In the next place, we find that Paul applies the term " Son of God " to the Saviour almost exclusively in his state of humiliation or exaltation (exceptions to this rule are Gal. iv. 4 and Rom. viii. 3). And this is per- 1 However widely diffused these views of our author may be, they do not to the translator seem well-founded. As a prince who has voluntarily, for a certain length of time, become a prisoner may, with the greatest pro priety, be called both a prisoner and a prince, so may these terms bo applied to the Saviour in any stage of his existence. — Tr. THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 119 fectly in order ; for the incarnate and exalted Son is our Saviour and quickening Spirit, and it is for this reason that he is proclaimed to the world. Paul speaks of him in this stage, however, as he could never have done if had not been Sou before his incarnation, and thus leads us back to the pre-existeut sonship. So in Col. i. 13-16, where a candid and unsophisticated mind will always understand the term " sonship " as implying not only the second and the third, but also the first, stage of existence of him into whose kingdom the Father has translated us. Gal. iv. 4 and Rom. viii. 3, also, are best understood in this sense. §22. Paul's Christology may, then, be stated in the following propositions : 1. Christ is the second Adam, the author of life by opposing to Adam's disobedience his own obedience, so that as in Adam all Adamites have died, all who are in Christ are quickened in him ; 2. The power, or faculty, of becoming the author (progenitor) of life is in Christ, because it is he by whom and for whom all things were created ; being the first-born of creation he can become the first-born of the new crea tion, or the church ; 3. He is the Mediator of the first creation, because he is the Son of the Father's love, the image of God, and was, before his self-divestiture, in the bosom of the Father, and in the same form of existence ; 4. He was in his pre-existing state the Mediator of God's revelations to the children of Israel ; after his incarnation the Spirit of holiness was the inward or central life of this God-man, and the fulness of the Godhead dwelt in him, but in the exalted Saviour the fulness of the Godhead dwells -bodily, and he is the 120 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF Spirit, transforming those who are his by faith into his own image, from glory to glory ; 5. Since the in ward being of Jesus is equal with God, he is properly called " God " ; 6. But the most appropriate appellation is "Son of God," 'which includes both his equality with God and, at the same time, his generation by and dependence on the Father. H. THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. §23. This epistle is not, indeed, according to the almost unanimous verdict of antiquity and the result of modern criticism, the work of the Apostle Paul, but was com posed by some member of the Pauline school, and par takes, therefore, no less of the illumination, which the exalted Saviour granted to the Apostle of the Gentiles. The author's views of the inward being of Jesus are consecutively stated in the first three verses of the first chapter. In the first place, Jesus is the Son, as com pared with the prophets of the Old Testament, who were servants. " God, who at sundry times and in divers manners, spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken unto us by one, who is Son" (i. 1). Of this Son it is said in the second place, that God has appointed him heir of all things (vs. 2°). In the third place, that the appoint ment of the Son as heir of all things, was owing to the relation which he, the Son, previously sustained to the world, God having made the aeons, and whatever occurs therein, through the Son (vs. 2b). In the fourth place, that he being the brightness of his Father's glory and THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 121 the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high, when he by himself had purged our sins. The third verse admits of a double interpretation; the participles a>v diravyacr/j,a ttj? 86^779, etc., (pepcov re, etc. may describe the manner in which the Son sits at the right hand on high, or they may be taken as con taining the ground, by virtue of which he was permitted, after he had purged our sins, to occupy so lofty a posi tion ; viz. because he had, long before he purged our sins, been the brightness of the divine glory, and upheld all things by the word of his power. According to the latter construction the sense would be as follows, — to sit down on the right hand of the Majesty on high is : 1. To enter upon a state of equal glory with the Father ; and how could he do so, unless he were in his inmost being the reflection of the glory of God ? 2. To share the government of the world with the Father ; and none could do this but he who had been upholding all things by the word of his power before he engaged in purging our sins. The former of these constructions is the easier, because it takes the two participles as in the present tense, while by the second, epcov at least, must be taken for a past participle, since it cannot be said that Jesus upheld all things by the power of his word during the state of humiliation. But supposing that it is the exalted Jesus who is called the reflection of God's glory and the upholder of all things, it is self-evident that he could not become either, unless the i", which in its state of incarnation was and is called Jesus, was before this- incarnation God's image and the upholder of all things. If God 11 122 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF created the world by the Son, the Son is also, as a matter of course, its upholder. The first three verses, then, having stated that Jesus with respect to the prophets is Son ; with respect to the world, the Mediator of its creation, by the power of his word its upholder and its heir ; with respect to God, the brightness of his glory and the reflection of his person ; in i. 4— ii. 18 his higher than angelic nature; in iii. 1-iv. 13 his higher rank than Moses, and in iv. 14-x. the perfection of his priesthood are set forth for the purpose of inducing the Hebrew Christians to cling unflinchingly to him as the only and all-sufficient centre of New Testament piety. Each of these sections continues and develops more fully the statements of the first three verses concerning the nature of Christ. Chapter iii. 1, etc., comparing him with Moses, enables us to examine more thoroughly his relation to the prophets of the Old Testament, and still further back, the idea of his sonship. We are told in this chapter, that Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, was faithful to God in his whole house, as Moses also had been (vs. 1, 2) ; but while Moses was faithful in the house of God as a servant, Christ was so as a Son over his own house (vs. 5, 6), Christ himself having built the house, while Moses was but a member of it (vs. 3). And this house are we, the church (vs. 6). The church of Christ, then, is Christ's own house ; his relation to it is that of the proprietor of the house, who can call his father's house his own. This implies a real sonship, a sonship founded in identity of nature with God, not the theocratic sonship of a servant, ac cording to the Old Testament idea. He is expressly distinguished as the Son from Moses, the servant. THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 123 The Father's house is the Son's, because the Father has begotten the Son. The passage teaches also the true divinity of Jesus, by declaring that Jesus himself has built the house, since he alone can build a living house of God who has within him the source of truly divine powers. It is worthy of note that Moses is represented as only a member of the house of which he is steward (vs. 3). That the all-sufficiency of Christ's priesthood is most intimately connected with his sonship, is declared in the very first words which treat of his priesthood : " Seeing then that we have a great Hign Priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession" (iv.14). The nature of this connec tion is stated in vii. 16 : the Jewish priests were made such after the law of a carnal commandment, but Jesus has become the priest of an endless, indestructible life by virtue of the divine power dwelling in him. Of what effect this indwelling power is, appears from vii. 24 and ix. 14. As he continues forever, his priesthood also continues forever, and " he is able to save to the uttermost those who come to God by him, seeing that he ever liveth to make intercession for them" (vii. 24, etc.), and because it was through the Eternal Spirit dwelling in him, that he offered himself unto God, and obtained eternal redemption for us (ix. 12, 14). We thus see that the life of Jesus is indestructible, his Spirit is an eternal Spirit, and for this very reason he is called the Son of God. Compare vii. 3, where Mel- chisedec, said to be without father and mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, is made like unto the Son of God. How everlasting life and an eternal Spirit can be 124 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF ascribed to the man Jesus, appears from i. 2, 3 ; he being the same, through whom God created the aeons, his Spirit must have had an existence long before he became incarnate. His humanity is based, according to ii. 14 on his taking part in our own flesh and blood, out of compassion for us, and, according to x. 5, etc. on his having voluntarily come into our world, in order to do the will of God, who desired not sacrifice of animals, but the self-sacrifice of Jesus. It is, then, the teaching of i. 2, 3 compared with ix. 14 and vii. 16, that God could create the worlds through Jesus, because his Spirit is th*e Eternal Spirit, and he who has the power of endless life in himself, can uphold all things by the word of his power, i.e. by the omnipotent will of his Spirit. In comparing him with the angels, this Epistle applies the loftiest predicates to Jesus. He is distinguished from the angels: 1. By being the Son (vs. 5). It is not, indeed, here expressly stated, in what sense he is called Son. but in other passages he is so called as being equal with the Father, as we have just seen. This renders it altogether improbable that he should be called Son (i. 5) merely as having been conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the virgin Mary, though this sonship may also be included in this ; but by itself it could not constitute him so much superior to angels, since they also were created by the hand of God (immediately), and are in a peculiar manner the image of God, on which account they are also in the Old Testament called sons of God. His designation" in the following verse as " first-begotten " would also seem to lead to his eternal sonship, by virtue of which he is the first-born not only before all men, but also before all angels THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 125 (comp. Col. i. 15, etc.). 2. This first-begotten is to be worshipped by all the angels of God, when God shall again bring him into the world, i.e. at his coming to judgment (vs. 6). Not as though they were not worshipping him now, but then this will take place before our eyes (compare Matt. xvi. 27 ; xxv. 31). 3. The angels are only servants (vs. 7), the Son is not only Lord and Ruler, but expressly God (vs. 8, 9), the Lord, who in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth, whose works are the heavens (vs. 10), the Un changeable One, while heaven and earth shall perish (vs. 11, 12). It is true, in vs. 8, 9 6 0eo? might be taken as the nominative, and then the transla tion would be : " Thy throne is God " and " therefore God, thy God, has anointed thee," which interpretation would also contrast Christ as Lord and Ruler with the angels as ministering spirits ; but from vs. 10-12 it is evident, that not only the power of Christ, but his eternal sonship is spoken of. In vs. 13, 14 Christ is contrasted as the ruler of the world, with the angels as ministering spirits, and this forms the fourth point of comparison. Being appointed heir of the world before it had any existence, the Son, as the Mediator of its creation, became also its real owner ; but after he took part in our flesh and blood, i.e. became Jesus, and was made perfect by suffering and obedience^ although he was the Son (v. 8, etc), §od exalted him to his right hand (i. 13) and put all things under his feet (ii. 5-9). Summing up the declarations of this Epistle con cerning the higher nature of Christ, we attain the fol lowing conclusions : He whose name, after his having assumed flesh and blood, or voluntarily come into this n* 126 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF world (ii. 14 ; x. 5, etc.), is Jesus, was before the world. He is, according to his inner, eternal substance (i. 11, etc. ; vii. 3) the image of the inward nature of God, and for this reason also the refulgence of his glory (i. 3). Having his life -from God and being in substance equal to God, he is called the Son. By virtue of his equality with the Father he is entitled to the appellation God and Lord (i. 8-10). Being of equal substance, and therefore, of equal glory with the Father, and having in himself the power of uttering creative fiats, he has called the world into being and upholds it by the same power ; being highly exalted above this trans itory world, which is developed in certain aeons, and being subject to no change (i. 11, etc.). Because he is only the impress (¦xapatcrrfp') of the Divine Being, only the reflection (diravyaapa) of the glory of God, or because this divine central life issues from the Father, he is, correctly speaking, not the Cre ator of the world, but only the Mediator of its creation. From the Son's fulness of life the world has been called into being by the word of the Son, but the Son him self has this source of life from the Father. Being the Son of God before the world, he is also the Son of God after his incarnation ; his life veiled by his humanity is indestructible, his Spirit eternal and everlasting. And having been made perfect by learning obedience, and having purged our sins by offering up himself, he sat down as the man Jesus — although in this capacity not less than before the impress of God's being and the reflection of his glory, as the- upholder, ruler, and heir of all things — on the right hand of the' Majesty on high (i. 3), being the same yesterday, to-day, aud from THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 127 aeon to aeon (xiii. 8). It could not, accordingly, be surprising if Christ were designated in iii. 4 as God, and in iv. 12 as the personal Word. For the second half of iii. 4 is understood by some thus : he that built all things — Christ — is God, (must be God because he could not have built them without being God, thus making 0eo? the predicate nominative). This inter pretation is not, however, favored by the context. For it would be hard to say why Christ should be called in vs. 2b the builder of all things, and for what purpose his divinity would be introduced, since, if introduced at all, it must be mentioned not incidentally and in passing, but for a definite object ; moreover, the con trast with- vs. 2° would be too great, and the two follow ing verses would be meaningless, if in vs. 4b the high est predicate was applied to Christ. It is, therefore, better to refer " God " of vs. 4b to the Father. The house of which Christ shows himself God's faithful stew ard (vs. 2), is built by Christ himself (while Moses was but a member of the house which he administered, vs. 3), since it needed a builder (vs. 4°), who owes obedience to God, the founder of all things (vs. 4b, 4°, and 2). As to the other passage (iv. 12, -etc.), it is vs. 13° which suggests the question, whether the word of God (vs. 11) is not a personality. But it is possible, that by him, whose eyes discern all things, it is not the word of God, but God himself who is meant, or that the word of God as enlightening all things is poetically said to have eyes. 128 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF III. JOHN. §24. Paul received revelations from the exalted Jesus, because he had not heard the word of the God-man, while on earth, yet was to be the apostle to the Gen- liles, as joint-heirs with the children of the law ; but the beloved disciple, who had leaned on the breast of Jesus, received similar revelations, ." which God gave to show unto his servants things, which must shortly come to pass," (Apoc. i. 1). And as we saw in the case of Paul, that the revelations which he received were to instruct him concerning the person of Christ ; so John heard and saw things in the revelations granted to him, which-were both to instruct him as to the future history of the church, and to give him a full insight into the true being and nature of Christ. The first of these revelations we find in Apoc. i. 10 ; iii. 22. It has reference to the mystery of the seven stars and the seven candlesticks, i.e. the angels and churches, for whom the seven epistles of the second and third chapters are intended, (i. 19, 20). In this vision Christ says to the apostle : " I am the first and the last, the living one ; and I was dead and behold, I live to the aeons of aeons, and have the keys of hades and of death" (i. 17, 18). In ii. 8 we have the same words : " the first and the last," viz. in the epistle addressed to the church of Smyrna. In the epistle to the church of Sardis Christ speaks of himself as hav ing the seven spirits of God (iii. 1). The concluding words of each epistle, in which Christ is throughout the speaker, " He that has an ear, let liim hear what the THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 129 Spirit saith unto the churches," point out Jesus as him from whom the Spirit proceeds, Jesus speaking through the Spirit. In the epistle to the Laodiceans he calls himself the beginning (the cause) of the creation of God (iii. 14). In all the epistles he is represented as knowing all things, searching into all hearts (kpevv&v, ii. 23), and as him on whom the churches are uncon ditionally dependent. If any opens to him, he will enter in and sup with him (iii. 20), to the faithful he gives power over the Gentiles (ii. 26, etc.), and to everyone according to his works (ii. 23), dispenses paradise and the crown of life (ii. 7, 17), but spews the lukewarm out of his mouth. Having the seven spirits of God, it is but natural that he should hold the seven stars, i.e. the seven angels (and their churches) as it were by his hand (iii. 1 ; ii. 1 ; i. 16, 20). But throughout he acknowledges the Father as his God ; it is his Father's throne, in which he is set down (iii. 21), h*is Father has given him power over the Gentiles (ii. 27), he tries the works of men, whether they are per fect before God (iii. 2), he inscribes the name of his God on the foreheads of the victors, the temple and the new Jerusalem are his God's, and come down out of heaven from his God (iii. 12). In the next vision to which Christ's voice invites the apostle, in order to show him things which must come to pass (yevecrdaL) hereafter (iv. 1 ; comp. i. 10, 13), John first beholds the Father upon his thronein heaven, before which the seven lamps of fire are burning, which are the seven spirits of God, and he hears the four living beings (&a) praising the Father as the thrice Holy One,' the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come (vs. 8), and in the next place, the 130 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF seventy-four elders joining in the praise of him who lives to the aeons of aeons (vs. 9, 10), saying: "Thou art worthy, 0 Lord, to receive glory and honor and power ; for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created " (vs. 11). He was deeply grieved in his heart that no one, neither in heaven nor on earth nor under the earth, is able to open the book which lies on the right hand of the Father, is comforted by one of the twenty-four elders, who says : " Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has prevailed to open the book "(v. 1-5). As soon as the Lamb has taken the book from the hand of God, the four living beings and the four and twenty elders fall down before him, singing a new song, and saying : " Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof; for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood, and hast made us unto our God priests and kings " (vs. 9, 10). Then many thousand angels joined in the chorus, saying: " Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessings " (vs. 11, 12), substantially the same words which the twenty-four elders had shortly before sung to him who sat upon the throne (iv. 11), omitting only the words : " for thou hast created all things." Hereupon John heard every creature, which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, saying : " Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power be unto him that sitteth upon the throne and unto the Lamb (vs. 13). At last one seal after another is opened by the Lamb, and the opening of each is followed by a sentence of judgment executed on the world ; a testimony, that it is the Crucified, and the THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 131 Crucified alone, to whom is referred the divine dis position of history, to whom victory is given by the omnipotent government of God, and in whose hand are the destinies of mankind (chap. vi. ; vii. ; viii. 1 ; see also Matt. xxvi. 64). Between the opening of the sixth and seventh seals John sees an innumerable multitude standing before the throne and the Lamb, who give praise to their God, who sitteth upon the throne, and especially to the Lamb (vii. 9, 10). In the following hymn of adoration sung by men and angels, God alone is mentioned as the object of their adoration (vs. 12, 13). But this hymn is in substance the same as that sung by the angels to the Lamb (v. 12). Moreover, the Lamb being in the midst of the throne (vii. 17), the adoration offered to him who was on the throne was also offered to Christ. This inseparability was, undoubtedly, also impressed upon the holy seer, when at the seventh trumpet the twenty-four elders fell upon their faces and worshipped God saying : " We give thee thanks, 0 Lord God Al mighty, which art and wast and art to come ; because thou hast taken to thee thy great power and the reins of government " (xi. 16, 17), whereas immediately before many voices had been heard in heaven, saying : " The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ ; and he shall reign to the aeons of the aeons " (vs. 15 ; who is to reign, the Lord or his Christ, is not stated). But as to those who sing the song of Moses and of the Lamb (xv. 3, etc.) and their adoration (chap, xix.), there can be no doubt, that by God the Lord, who alone ruleth and alone is holy, must be understood the Father. In connection with the appearance of Christ for the 132 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF destruction of the beast, it is worthy of special note that neither John, nor any one but Christ himself, could read the name which he had written (xix. 11, 12). This incomprehensibility of the name of Jesus has reference to the incomprehensibility of his nature. " No one knoweth the Son, but the Father " (Matt. xi. 27). It is not expressly stated who it is whom the seer sees on the throne at the general judgment (xx. 11) and from whose face heaven and earth flee away ; but as Jesus cannot possibly be absent from the final judgment, and as John's account here is no more than what Jesus himself said of his coming and sitting upon the throne (Matt. xxv. 31, etc.), the sole question is whether Christ alone is spoken of or the Father with him. This is also the case with xxi. 5-7, where 'he whom the seer beholds sitting upon the throne says to him : " Behold, I make all things new. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end ; I will give unto him that is athirst, of the fountain of the water of life freely. He that overcome th, shall inherit all things ; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son." These words reminded the seer, undoubtedly, of John iv. and vii. 37 and he, accordingly, as we learn from xxii. .17, took the speaker to be Christ. The Father never speaks to John, and in xxii. 16 Christ expressly is men tioned as the speaker. On comparing xxii. 1, where a stream of life is spoken of as proceeding from the throne of God and ofthe Lamb, with xxii. 3, where the throne of the new Jerusalem is called the throne of God and of the Lamb, and with xxi. 22 where the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of the new THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 133 city, there can be no doubt that in xxi. 5 God and Jesus were seen by the seer as being in each other, and that xxii. 3, etc., " His servants shall serve him, and they shall see his face and his name shall be in their foreheads," is to be referred to the Father and Jesus conjointly. For in iii. 12 Jesus says that he would write the Father's and his own name on the foreheads of the victors. In xxii. 12, etc. Jesus says : " I come quickly, and my reward is with me, to give every one according as his work shall be. I am Alpha and Omega, the begin ning and the end, the first and the last." §25. Whoever has been convinced by the contents of the seven epistles to the angels of the different churches of Asia Minor, speaking in trumpet tones to his own conscience, and by the apocalyptical descriptions of the world to come, harmonizing fully with the deepest desires of his own»heart, that the book as a whole is the production of a divinely inspired mind and- a fitting close to the whole organism of divine revelation to man; whoever has this conviction, we say, will most readily believe, as the wriffer says, that the whole is not the beautiful production of his fancy, but the genuine work of divine inspiration. If the human mind is able of it self to produce a work of the kind, the natural question arises : why has there been for the last two thousand years no other to be compared with the Apocalypse? For the Christian pulpit orator these seven epistles are an inexhaustible source of textual material ; whatever our poets sing of the world to come, that is worthy of the subject, has been borrowed from this book, and is, at 12 134 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF best, but a faint echo of the original. Such books, which are sources of vitality for the human life, are either inspired or riddles that baffle solution. If John received a revelation from the exalted Saviour contain ing such testimonies concerning the person of Jesus Christ, it may fairly be presumed that his own test imonies #n the same subject are but the echo of this revelation. If, then, in the Apocalypse we find the most explicit teaching as to Christ's inner being or sub stance ; if in John's Gospel we find the declarations of Jesus concerning his very nature faithfully repro duced ; if finally, John's whole historiography is, as it were, supported and arranged by this view of Christ as its central idea, — all this may be naturally accounted for by the fact that John, was reminded by the revela tion of the exalted Saviour, by everything he was per mitted to see and hear, of the significant words which Christ'had uttered while on earth, and at the same time obtained a full comprehension of them. §26. In the very introduction to the Apocalypse we meet with a testimony of John concerning Jesus (i. 1-8). This revelation itself is called (v*. 1) the revelation which God gave unto Jesus Christ, so that its origin is ascribed to the Father. He it is who has given it to Jesus ; the Father is called God. In vs. 4, 5 peace and grace are invoked, not only from him who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven Spirits which are before his throne, but also from Jesus, and (vs. 6) glory and dominion for ever and ever are ascribed to him. To this we can add at once what (xxii. 17) the Spirit and the bride' sav: Come ! In i. 1, THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 135 then, Jesus appears as without qualification subordinate to the Father, but in i. 4, 5 as co-ordinate with the Father and the Spirit, and in xxii. 7 both the Spirit and the bride call upon him to come. This position of unqualified subordination which John assigns to Jesus, corresponds fully with the words of Christ (iii. 2, 12), in which he acknowledges the Father as his God, and with the whole tenor of John's vision, setting forth the majesty of the Father, the Most High. Thus it is the Father (chap, v.) who sits on the throne ; he is God, Jesus is the Lamb (comp. vii. 10, etc.). He is the Lord God Omnipotent, who alone is holy, to whom the song (xv. and xix.) is sung, and to whom the souls of the martyrs unite their prayers (vi. 10). It is the Father's throne in which Jesus is set down (iii. 21, etc.). On the other hand, in the doxology, which John (i. 6) sings to Christ, we perceive an echo of all the hymns and praises heard during his ecstasy. The Spirit's praying (xxii. 17) Jesus to come speedily, and thus appearing as subordinate to Christ, is in per fect keeping with the words of Jesus (iii. 1), and with his appearing (v. 7) with seven eyes, i.e. with the seven spirits of God sent forth into all the lands. Of the. utmost importance, as the testimony of John concerning Jesus, is i. 8. Although the speaker des ignates himself here as the Lord God Almighty, who was, is, and is to come, he cannot be the Father alone. It is not the Father who speaks through the whole book, but often Christ. Thus in i. 17 and ii. 8 he calls him self the first and the last, in xxii. 13, the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end, in xxii. 7 and xii. 20, the coming One. And John concludes with the prayer, " Even so come Lord 136 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF Jesus" (xxii. 20), just as in i. 7, immediately before i. 8, he designates the coming of Jesus as the substance of the whole revelation. For this very reason it is quite in place for Jesus to assure (i. 8) John of his eternity, of his coming, and of his supreme power. But, on the other hand, the predicate "who is and was and is to come," is applied in vs. 4 to the Father, as also in iv. 8 and xvi. 5. We are therefore obliged to say, that (i. 8) the highest predicates of the Father are also applied to the Son ; or rather, that it is Jesus in union with the Father, of whom John speaks in i. 8. And John's thus both repesenting Jesus as altogether inferior to the Father (i. 1) and placing him on an equal footing with him (i. 8) is in agreement with the manner in which Jesus's relation to the Father .is developed in John's visions. The predicate, the first and the last, which Jesus applies to himself in the hearing of John (i. 17 ; ii. 8 ; xxii. 13), is in Isaiah (xii. 4 and xliv. 6) a self-designation of Jehovah. Compare, especially, xliv. 6 : " Thus saith the Lord, the King of Israel : I am the first, and I am the last, and besides me there is no [other] God." Again, " John sees (v. 8) the heav enly hosts fall down also before the Lamb, and ascribe the same honor and glory to him as (iv. 11) to the Father, and (v. 13) he hears all creatures adore him who sits on the throne and the Lamb. And not only this ; he also applies, or rather extends, to Jesus xi. 17 and xj. 15 : " We give thee thanks, Lord God Almighty, which art and wast and art to come ; because thou hast taken to thee thy great power, and hast taken the reins into thy hand," and " the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever " ; because Christ THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 137 is expressly called the co-regent (vs. 15), and it is for this reason that the song of triumph is sung (vs. 17). As to xxi. 5-7, we have already observed, that it is the Father and Jesus in union with each other whom John beholds as occupants of the throne. We pass on now to the examination of John's other writings. Are we not reminded in the most forcible manner by what has just been said, of Jesus's declaration concerning himself in the Gospel of John, while he was still dwelling among men ? He represented himself then as so much inferior to the Father, as to say: " But this is eternal life, to know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent"; and, again, "I ascend unto my Father, and your Father ; unto your God, and my God " (Jojm xvii. 3 ; xx. 17), exclaim ing on another occasion, "I and the Father are one; he that hath seen me hath seen the Father, for the Father is in me and I in him" (x. 30; xiv. 9). In John's case, peculiarly, was fulfilled the promise of Jesus in John xiv. 20 : " At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father." From the prologue of the Gospel and the Epistles we shall quote first the passages i. 1 and i. 14 : " the Logos was toward (tt/do?, c. ace.) God, and the Logos was God," " and the Word was made flesh." This life was, therefore, before his incarnation (i. 14), or before his manifestation (1 John i. 2), a life hidden with God and in glory, because the Father (God) is in glory. Corresponding to this is the inti mate union of the exalted Jesus with the Father. The proposition " the Logos was God" — God being, as a matter of course, predicate — evidently implies Christ's identity of nature with the Father. But Christ's de pendence on the Father is likewise taught in two ways, 12* 138 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF viz., he toward whom the Logos is, is called God emphatically, with the article, while he who is with God, although he has the same nature with the Father, is called by another name — Logos ; then he with whom the Logos is (according to John i. 1, the Father), appears as the true home of the Logos, he, the Logos, being hid in God. Christ appears in the first Epistle as the dispenser of the Holy Ghost : " Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things " (ii. 20) ; and again, " the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you " (vs. 27). For that Jesus is to be understood by the "Holy One" is evident from a comparison of vs. 27 with vs. 28. This inferiority of Christ to the Father, according to John, woi§id be materially modified, if 1 John v. 20, " this is the true God and life eternal," should be referred to Jesus. But this can scarcely be the case. The term " the true " is used three times in the same sense ; in the, first two cases it evidently refers to the Father, and it is hence more than probable that in the third place, also, it is to be referred to the Father. John concludes his Epistle by affirming that it is the true God and life eternal, in whom we are, while we are in his Son. Thus he confirms the first half of the verse by the second. We have thus an echo of the words of Jesus in John xvii. 3. §27. With Jesus's relation to the Father must correspond his relation to the souls of men. If he is the consub- stantial Son of the Father, our souls must be his. Sup posing John's views of Christianity had still been strictly legal when he received the revelation, it is self-evident THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 139 that from that day a great change would have taken place in his views, and reverential love for Jesus as the sov ereign Lord, Redeemer, omniscient and just Judge, and the inexhaustible Source of life for the souls of men, would have been henceforth the very centre of his religious life. In the epistles dictated by Jesus to John, declarations are made respecting their first love (ii. 4), the holding fast of the name of Jesus and faith in him (vs. 13, 19), and to the angel of tho Church of Sardis, that having a name to live he is dead (iii. 1). The enjoyment of the love of Jesus (iii. 9, comp. 19), the spiritual supping with him (iii. 20), the sitting upon his throne (vs. 21), the title to the tree of life, to the crown of life, to the book of life, received from the hands of Jesus (ii. 7, 10; iii. 5), these are the bless ings offered to Christians. The seer sees Jesus as the slain lamb. To be fed by the Lamb in the midst of the throne, to be led to living fountains of life (vii. 17), to be a priest of God and of Christ (xx. 6), to dwell in the city whose very temple are God and the Lamb (xxi. 22), in which is the throne of God and the Lamb (xxii. 3), to serve God and the Lamb, to see their faces, to have their names inscribed on the forehead (xxii. 3, 4), to have God and the Lamb for a father (xxi. 6, 7), to drink of the water of life freely (xxi. 6) — all these enjoyments and privileges Constitute the Christian's happiness, which John sees in his vision ; and if such Christianity is Ebionitic, what kind of Christianity is Christian ? " Accordingly John commences his book of Revela tion by invoking the grace of Jesus on his readers (i. 5), and confessing Jesus as the Alpha and the Omega (i. 8), and concludes it with the invitation, " Let him that is athirst, come. And whosoever will, let him take the 140 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF water of life freely " (xxii. 17) ; and the benediction : " The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with all the saints " (xxii. 21). We find almost the same language in the Gospel : " as many as received him, to them gave he power to be come the sons of God " (i. 12)," and of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace" (i. 16). And the disposition evinced in the Gospel to represent Jesus as the fountain of life, and the spring of living water, is in perfect keeping with the whole tenor of the Apocalypse. In the first Epistle we read : " Our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ (i. 3). To be a Christian is to know Jesus Christ (ii. 3, 4), to be in Christ (v. 6), to be born of Christ (ii. 29), to con tinue in the Son and in the Father (ii. 24). To have the Son is to have life (v. 12) ; he that is in the Son is in the Father (v. 12) ; he that denies the Son, denies the Father also (ii. 22, etc.). The representation of Christian life is based through out on the assumed divinity of Jesus Christ. Faith in the divinity of Jesus Christ, vitalized, becomes life in Jesus ; life in Jesus, theologically apprehended, leads to, or rather becomes, the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus Christ. §28. It is, however, by no means human souls alone, as the source of whose life Jesus revealed himself to John in the Apocalypse. " These things saith the beginning of the creation of God," is the declaration of Jesus in the Epistle to Laodicea (iii. 14). " I am the first and the last, and the living one," he declares in his THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 141 opening speech to John (i. 17, 18). " I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end," he repeats in the vision of the new Jerusalem (xxi. 6). "I come quickly, and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be " ; "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last," says Jesus at the close of the Apocalypse (xxii. 12, etc.). It is self-evident that these self-designations of Jesus have practically great force. They contain the proof that Jesus can accomplish what he promises or threatens, and that the kingdom of this world must certainly become his. The import of the words," I am the beginning of the creation of God" is, therefore, not " I am the first of God's creatures." If the words meant this, they would be entirely out of place, and in strange contrast with the " Amen, the faithful and true witness " (iii. 14), and being without any force for the Laodiceans, would consequently be mere bombast. " I am the beginning of the creation of God " is equivalent to " I am he from whom the life of every creature has flowed." If Jesus is such, it is indeed a dreadful thing for any to be spewed out of his mouth (vs. 16), gold and white raiment may be bought of him (vs. 18), it is happiness to sup with him (vs. 20), he can grant to him that overcometh to sit with him on one throne " (vs. 21). The words "I am the first and the last," with which Jesus opens and concludes the visions granted to John, may be regarded as the dogmatical key, and the vision as the practical embodiment of the declaration "I am the first and the last." This is particularly the case with " I am the last," i.e. I am the end of devel opment, the final conqueror of all enemies, who stands on the battle-field as the victor, after having directed 142 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF the whole course of development according to his own pleasure ; the final rest of all conquerors. He only can be such who is at the same time the first, the source of all life, on whom everything remains in a state of continued dependence. The beginning only has the end in its power. No one can rise successfully against him, for he it is in whom every living thing lives, moves, and has its being. " I am the first and the last," therefore means, I am the source of every creature, the end of every creature, the power which moves forward its own history of development, and while this progresses from its beginning toward its end, I am the same who, without any change, stand above it. The same words applied by Jehovah to himself in Isaiah, " I am the first and the last," have likewise a practical tendency. Thus in Isa. xii., where the in vincibility of the hero who is to overcome the enemies of Israel is guaranteed by the fact, that he who calls him is " the first, and with the last," i.e. the same (xii. 1-4). So also in Isa. xliv. 6 ; xlviii. 12, where the declaration " I am the first and the last " is intended to strengthen the down-trodden people in their hope of a final victory. In perfect agreement with the fact that Jesus is not only the Redeemer of human souls, but the first and the last, the source of life to every creature is the cir cumstance, that hymns of praise and adoration are sung to him, not only by the elders and redeemed souls, but also by the four living beings and the host of angels, in short, by all the inhabitants of both heaven and earth (Apoc. v. 13). Where, now, do we find this designation by Jesus of himself as the beginning of the creation of God, and THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 143 as the first and the last, reflected in John ? Even in the words of greeting to his readers (Apoc. i. 5), calling Jesus the first-begotten of the dead, the Prince of the kings of this world. By comparing the other epithets applied to Jesus, all of which have an active or caus ative meaning, it is evinced that " first-begotten " must likewise have an active or causative meaning; the first-begotten is the Prince of life for all who are lying in death. Of the same import is the term in Col. i. 18 ; 1 Cor. xv. 23 ; Rom. viii. 29, as is clearly seen from the connection. In the prologue of the fourth Gospel we read : " All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made " (John i. 3), and " in him was life "(vs. 4°). Again, " the life was the light of men " (vs. 4b). By the first of these terms he who in his incarnation was called Jesus is designated as the Mediator of creation, by the second, as he in whom is all life, and by the third, this fountain of life is characterized as being also the foun tain of spiritual light to men. In the first Epistle of John, lastly, he who was from the beginning is called the Logos of life (1 John i. 1). §29. John's Logology is no more than a brief exhibition of the inner being of Jesus, such as John had con ceived it, both from the teachings of Christ while on earth, and from the Apocalypse of the ascended Lord, comprising the relation of Jesus both to the world and to the Father. In the prologue to his Gospel John calls him who became (not, was made) flesh the Logos (John i. 14). In his first Epistle he calls that which was from the 144 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF beginning, which had been seen, heard, and handled by the apostles, the word of life (1 John i. 1). In the Apocalypse he applies the term " Logos " to the ascended Jesus, riding on a white horse, to conquer the beast, the false prophet, and the hostile kings (Apoc. xix. 13; comp. xi. 21). He who comes riding on a white horse, having eyes as a flame of fire, and on his head many crowns, had a name written that none knew but himself (vs. 12), and on his vesture and his thigh the name was written, "King of kings and Lord of lords" (Apoc. xix. 16). This latter name signifies his sov ereignty over all the world ; it implies the inevitable fate of his enemies ; whereas the name which none knows but himself expresses Christ's inner being. His nature being infinite, he alone knows his name. John sees it, indeed, but cannot read it. John now, by adding to the description of this personage the words, " And his name is called the Logos of God " (xix. 13b), teaches that the substance of the (incarnate) per sonage in question is expressed by men in this name, " Logos of God," as far as it can be comprehended and expressed by men. It is, at the same time, plain that this was not the name seen by John written on the person in question, but that John in recording his visions expresses by this name the substance of him who had appeared to him, and the manner of this appearance. How many ways and means have been devised by learned ingenuity in order to misapprehend the sense in which John calls him who afterward became flesh, and likewise the exalted Jesus, the Logos ! And yet the true sense is easily discovered, provided the bib lical scholar desires to be taught from the Bible, and THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 145 not to transfuse his own ideas into it. This term " Logos " is used several hundred times in the New Testament, and has nearly always the meaning " Word." In Matt. v. 32 it is said : " Whosoever shall put away his wife except for the logos of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery." Here " logos " means cause, consideration. Thus, also, or similarly, in Acts x. 29 ; xviii. 14 ; xx. 24 ; Phil. iv. 15, 17. In Matt. xii. 36 we read that every idle word that men shall speak they shall give a logos, i.e. an account thereof in the day of judgment. The term has the same meaning in Matt. xxv. 19; Luke xvi. 2 ; Acts xix. 14 ; Rom. xiv.'12; Heb. iv. 13 ; xiii. 17 ; 1 Pet. iii. 15 ; iv. 5. Paul says (1 Cor. i. 5) that the Corinthians were rich in all "logos" (ut terance) and in all knowledge. Here " logos " means doctrine (not utterance). Thus, also, in 2 Cor. viii. 7. That these and similar meanings are inapplicable to Apoc. xix., John i., and 1 John i. is self-evident. In many other passages it may be translated by word or speech; this being the fundamental idea, even where we translate it doctrine, or account, or cause. In the writings of John, especially, the term " logos " always means word. For this reason the translation of (the incar nate) logos as speaker = Xeycov, or the promised one = 6 Xeydfievos, or as reason or wisdom, must be at once rejected. John calls him who afterward became flesh, as well as the exalted Jesus, the Logos. Whose Word it is, or by whom this Word was spoken, John himself informs us, when he says "the Word of God" (Apoc. xix. 13).1 1 It is one of Schilling's ideas, transferred to the New Testament, to un derstand by the Incarnate the particular purport of the apostle's teaching, thus making Word equivalent to the import of our words, According to 18 146 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF According to a view recently advanced he is so called for the simple reason that in Jesus God revealed himself fully and finally to mankind. After isolated truths had been revealed to the prophets, and through the prophets to mankind, in the Old Testament, a perfect revelation of God was given to the whole race through Jesus Christ. Not the pre-existent, but the incarnate and exalted, Jesus is accordingly called the Logos. It may, however, be easily shown that this definition, which is open to suspicion even on account of its novelty, does not suit those passages of John which treat of the Logos. Let us substitute the definition, e.g. in Apoc. xix. 13, which would then read : " And his name is called, he through whom God revealed himself to mankind " ; and no one can fail to perceive that this view of Jesus is altogether inadequate in this connection. A divine revelation for the purpose of instructing mankind is here altogether out of question ; the main, or rather the only, point being the coming of the Al mighty Jesus, followed by the heavenly hosts, before whose judicial word the hostile powers which had sorely oppressed the church of God are destroyed, as it were, in a moment. If John had not designed to express more than this concerning the being of Jesus this, the Gospel of John would commence : " In the beginning was he whom we preach, and he whom we preach was with God, and he whom we.preach was God." 1 John i. 1 would read : " Concerning the subject- matter of the preaching of life we preach unto you " ! In xix. 13 Jesus is said to be called the Word of God, because God's promises are fulfilled through his coming. But this is certainly no natural reason for calling him the Word, And how unnatural that the Logos should in one place mean " the Word of God," and in another, the subject-matter of the apos tolic teaching. Tho only question is, therefore, in which sense the incar nate, as well as the exalted, Jesus is called the Logos. THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 147 by the term " Logos," he would scarcely have ventured to place it side by side with that mysterious, inex pressible name which he perceived in the coming Jesus, in order that the church might endeavor to express his being, in so far as it can be apprehended and expressed by finite capacities. Not less inadequate is his concep tion of the " Logos " in the prologue of the Gospel. If he who was with God became incarnate for no other purpose than to reveal to mankind the invisible Father (John i. 18), then the idea might be entertained that the Incarnate was called the " Logos " as he through whom the word of God came to man. But he became incarnate that grace and truth might come through him (vs. 17) ; that from his fulness men might receive grace for grace (vs. 16) ; that in his name men might have everlasting life (vs. 20, 31). These principal ends of his incarnation would be lost sight of in the name " Logos," as applied only to the incarnate. More over, is it not surprising in the extreme that in vs. 14 the Logos is said to have become flesh, if the term "Logos" means only the Incarnate ? And further, the word of God came to men long before the incarnation, and through him who was afterwards incarnate ; and how can he be called Logos merely because he revealed God to man ? Can it be supposed that John overlooked this fact, when he taught at the same time, in the plainest language, that all things were made by the Logos, that he is the life and light of men ? Since John says : " In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was toward (with) God, and the Logos was God " ; and again : " All things were made by him ; in him was life, and the life was the light of men " ; and finally : " And the Logos became flesh," the most 148 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF natural presumption evidently is, that he applied the term " Logos " to him in his pre-existence, before he became incarnate. The same impression is also created by John's first Epistle, where he says: "That which was in the beginning, and was afterward seen in its earthly existence by the apostles, the Logos of life — the eternal life which was before the Father; this we declare unto you." If, indeed, it were difficult or impossible to conceive why he should be called the Logos of God in his pre- existent state, there might be room for the supposition that the Son of God was so called only after his incar nation. But, so far from this being the case, we can best understand the term " Logos " as applied to the Son of God, if it refers to what is in an eminent degree true of him as pre-existent. John had learned from the lips of his Master, during his state of humiliation, that he had possessed glory with the Father before the world was ; the Father having given to the Son to have life in himself; and in the apocalyptic visions Jesus had revealed himself as the fountain of life for all creatures — the Alpha and the Omega. He knew, consequently, that he who became incarnate existed before his incarnation, was from the beginning, was with (toward) God, was God, and that all things were made by him, and that in him there was life ; or he knew that Jesus was before, his incarnation with God, having life eternal in himself, as the Mediator of the life of the world. What, then, more natural than to comprise these truths concerning the being of the Lord and his position in the world in one brief term ? If John had confined himself to the phrase " Son of God," the Son's position with respect THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 149 to the divine revelation, especially as creating, pre serving, and enlightening the world, would have re mained unexpressed. But the term " Word of God," or " Word" alone, fully expresses all these truths, and thus sets forth the inner substance of the pre-existent or exalted Saviour ; the word being the expression of the thought, and he who is emphatically called the Word of God being the character of his person and the reflection of his glory. It is also exceedingly appropriate to express his relation to the Father, it being the speaker who gives life to the Son ; and not less so to designate the Son as the Mediator of God's revelations made to the world, it being the speaking on the part -of God, his spoken word, by which everything that exists has its being. This is the testimony of the Old Testament from the very first chapter of Genesis. According to Gen. i. the earth was framed by the word of God. According to Ps. xxxiii. 6, the heavens were made by the same word ; and even in 2 Pet. iii. 5, etc., we read that the earth subsists by the word of God, and that the heavens and the earth are reserved by the same word. Whether the word of God is represented in the apocryphal and canonical books of the Old Testament as an hypostasis does not enter into consideration ; since the question is not whence John obtained the idea that an eternal hypostasis has ever existed with God, and that through this hypostasis was mediated the life of the world, These ideas John did not need to learn from the Old Testament Scriptures, much less from the Apocrypha. The pre-existing equality of Jesus with the Father he knew from the lips of Jesus himself, and that the Son was the beginning of the creation of God, and the first 18* 150 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF and the last in his pre-existent state, he had learned in his apocalyptic visions. All that he needed was an appropriate term to express all these truths at once, and as such the term " Word of God " very naturally presented itself. As there is a specific difference be tween the Logology of John and that of Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria, it is needless to remark that John did not borrow his from the Alexandrian Philo-Platonic philosophy. There exists no proof whatever that John was even acquainted with the writings of Philo. This Alexandrian Philosophy was not intended by Divine Providence to assist the apostles in the development of Christian doctrine, but to prepare the way for its com prehension.1 That he who after his incarnation is called Jesus, and from whose fulness his disciples receive grace for grace, was before the foundation of the world spoken by the Father from the depth of his spirit into a hypos tasis equal with himself, and that this God-Logos is the medium of all divine revelation to the world ; that he has been from the beginning, and always will be, the fountain of all life, both physical and spiritual — these are the fundamental ideas of John's Logology. As the Word of the Father, who is the true God and eternal Life (1 John v. 20), the Word himself must be God, and equal with him who spoke it (him) into existence, 1 In an Article in the Methodist Quarterly Review for January, 1858, entitled, "The Logology of St. John and that of Philo-Judeaus," I have, as I firmly believe, established beyond the possibility of successful con tradiction, that there is no resemblance between the two types of Logol ogy, excepting the accidental use of a few terms. Philo's Logos is either no hypostasis, or when he is so, he is a creature or an angel; in most places, however," it is the ideal world (k6(t/i.os vot\t6s), which existed in the mind of God before it was actually created. I refer the kind reader to the Article in question. — Tk. THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 151 as the word partakes of the nature of the speaker. For this reason this word is called the word of life (John i. 4 ; 1 John i. 1), life itself, and eternal life (1 John i. 2); and it is added: "In him was life,"' and, again, " the life " (i.e. the Logos himself as the personal life) "was the light of men " (John i. 4). If the Logos is the medium of all divine revelation, he must, of course, be also the medium of the Old Tes tament revelation to the children of Israel. Here, especially, in the midst of this people, the light shone, yet was not comprehended by the darkness (John i. 11 ; comp. v.). According to John xii. 51 it was the glory of the Logos which Isaiah saw in the temple when he was called to the prophetic office, and saw the Lord sitting upon his throne, while the seraphim cried : " Holy, holy, holy is Jehovah Zebaoth ! " This com ment of John proves that he regarded the Logos as embraced in the substance of Jehovah in such a manner that whoever sees the Logos sees also the Father. This is in perfect harmony with Apoc. i. 8, where, by the Lord God Almighty, who was, is, and is to come, the Supreme Lord Jesus is meant in his intimate union with the Father. The Logos being the image of the Father, spoken forth by the Father from his inmost spirit into equality with himself, and the fountain of life to the world, it is but natural that from the fulness of the incarnate Logos man can receive grace for grace (i. 16). "In the beginning was the Word" (John-i. 1) — " which was from the beginning " (1 John i. 1) : this declaration the apostle explains more fully by designat ing the Logos as " eternal life," which was with the Father (1 John i. 2), rendering the expressions " in the 152 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF beginning" and "from the beginning" equivalent to " without a beginning, from eternity." For in this sense John had to understand the words of his risen Master, " I- am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last," since he knew that Jehovah had often described his own eternity in the same words in the Old Testament. This appears, also, from the fact that he includes Jesus in the words " who is, who was, and is coming" (Apoc. i. 8) ; these words being the interpre tation of the name Jehovah, the expression of God's eternity. How fully this idea of the Logos harmonizes with Apoc. xix. 2, etc. is self-evident. Jesus comes in order to annihilate the beast, the false prophets and their legions, whereupon Satan is bound for a thousand years, and the saints who had been beheaded for the witness of Jesus are raised, in order to reign with the Lord a thousand years (xx. 1, etc.), and this is the beginning ofthe marriage supper of the Lamb (xx. 1, etc., comp.. with xix. 6-9). The guarantee of the successful issue of Jesus's expedition was in the name which John saw in him ; not, indeed, the name on his vesture and on his thigh : " King of kings and Lord of lords " (xix. 16), but in that mysterious name, which no one know eth but himself (xix. 12). For the very fact that John cannot read this name, but Jesus alone, points to the really divine glory of him who bears it. Yet that the readers of the Apocalypse may have some faint notion of the substance and being of him whom John saw, and for whose actual appearance they must wait in faith and patience, as the beginning of their deliverance and happiness, the apostle adds : " and his name is called the Logos of God" (vs. 13). If this Logos, THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 153 whom the Father has spoken out of himself into an hypostasis, and by whom the world was created and exists, is equal with God, then, indeed, the name Logos is a full guarantee that with Jesus come also victory and happiness. It is likewise worthy of special remark that in the name Logos we have that by which Jesus is called ; i.e. by which his being is expressed in human language, as far as this can be done, but by no means that which expresses the whole depth of his being, this requiring the name which no one knoweth but himself. It is thus clearly indicated that even the profoundest revela tions granted to the apostles, and through them to the church, were intended as but faint expressions of the substance of the Deity, which will be better understood only in heaven. John thus confirms the declaration of Paul, that the prophesying of even the divinely inspired apostles was but in part (1 Cor. xiii. 9). §30. John's view of Jesus as the Son of God corresponds with his view of Jesus as the incarnate Logos. We read in the prologue (vs. 14) : " And the Logos became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father." In vs. 1-4 the evangelist sets forth the inner being of the Logos, his relation to the Father, and his. pre-existent mediatorship between God and the world. This is the fact of which he has to bear witness concerning the Logos. In vs. 5, he says, that this light, which shines in darkness, was not comprehended by the darkness, notwithstanding the testimony of the Baptist (vs. 6-8), .notwithstanding his coming into the world (vs. 9, 10°), notwithstanding his 154 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF original relation to the world — the world being made through him (vs. 10b), notwithstanding his peculiar rela tion to his covenant people (vs. 11), and, finally, not withstanding the fact that he gave to those who received him, power to become the children of God (vs. 12, 13). This rejection of the Logos by darkness is the second leading idea which the evangelist has to premise in the prologue of his Gospel. This is plainly indicated in vs. 5 : " and the darkness comprehended not the light shining therein " ; " the world knew him not " (vs. 10b) ; and " his own received him not" (vs. llb). In vs. 14° the apostle says, in the third place, that the Logos became flesh, and dwelt among men as the incarnate Logos, thus assuming the nearest possible relation to mankind. And this is the grand fact of which his Gospel must bear witness. For the purpose of proving this incarnation, as well as that it was the Logos who became incarnate, he adverts (vs. 14") to the impression made on those who had enjoyed the privilege of seeing him. He then proceeds to speak of this impression in detail ; first, that of the Baptist (vs. 15), which he expressed in his testi mony to the higher dignity of him who should come after him, founded on his pre-existence (he is preferred before me, placed before me, because he was before me) ; in the next place, that of the disciples, who re ceived of his fulness grace for grace, because grace and truth came by him (vs. 16, 17) ; and unto whom he had declared that God whom no man ever saw (vs. 18). This manifest connection of ideas shows that John, when he affirms : " And we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father " (v. 14b), means thereby the glory of the Logos, and consequently uses the terms " Logos " and " only-be*gotten of the Father " THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 155 as synonymous. As the word spoken by the Father from the depth of his being into an hypostasis equal with the Father, he is the only-begotten of the Father. It is thus manifest that sonship is predicated of him, not only after his incarnation, but in his pre-existent state, or in other words, that John knows of an ante- mundane sonship. It is true, it was the Incarnate one in whom the glory was seen ; but this glory, beheld in him, was so for the very reason that he was the only-begotten of the Father — the Logos ; the glory being his as pre-exist ent. This fact, that the apostle uses the terms " Logos " and "only-begotten of the Father" as convertible, fur nishes at the same time sufficient proof that he applies the term "Logos" to Jesus as pre-existent, not only because the Father spoke through him alone, but also because he himself was spoken from the being of the Father In vs. 18 the incarnate Jesus is called the only-begot ten, but simply for the reason that the sonship had been his before his incarnation. This verse concludes the testimony that it was the Logos who was beheld in Jesus. He evinced himself to be the incarnate Logos by becoming the exponent of the invisible God to his disciples. In the words " the only-begotten Son who was1 in the bosom of the Father," John states the 1 The original, i &>v els rbv koKttov tou Trarpis, may, indeed, be translated who is in the Father's bosom, bnt the context evidently requires the render ing: who was in the bosom. What no human being had obtained, in fact, what no finite being can obtain, viz. to know the Father perfectly, was the privilege of the only-begotten, who was in the Father's bosom. " He who was in the Father's bosom," corresponds to "the Logos was toward God;" "the only-begotten Son" is equivalent to the incarnate Logos. By translating: who is in the Father's bosom, referring the words to the ex alted Saviour, the plain connection between his being in the Father's bosom and his declaring the Father, is destroyed; for Jesus' being now in the Father's bosom cannot Dossibly have made him the interpreter of God. 156 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF reason why Jesus could be the interpreter of that God whom no man has ever seen. Because Jesus's being the Son of God is the same to John as his being equal with God, he can write in his first Epistle : " Our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ" (1 John i. 3), " The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin " (i. 7), " Ye shall continue in the Son, and in the Father " (ii. 24), and " We are in the true one, even in his Son Jesus Christ" (v. 20). He only who is equal with God can sanctify and procure fellowship with the Father. When the apostle says, "he who has the Son, has life, he who has not the Son, has not life " (1 John v. 12), " eternal life is in the Son of God " (v. 11), wherefore "he who believes on the Son of God, has the witness (of the truth of his faith) in himself" (v. 10), the meaning evidently is, that the Son, as the Son, is the life, and the only life, of mankind. But how can " is the Son " and " is the life " be synonymous expressions, if a sonship is meant which does not involve equality with the Father ? And if it does involve this equality, how can it be otherwise than eternal ? How could a sonship having its origin in time involve equality with God ? Expressions like the following : " God has sent his only-begotten Son into the world" (iv. 9 ; x. 14), " the Son of God was manifested" (iii. 8), " the Son of God is come" (v. 20), need not, therefore, be ex plained, nor can they be explained, as though he whom God had sent down from heaven, had by this mission and by his human birth become the Son, even the only- begotten Son, of God. He who was sent was the Son long before he was sent. The expressions of the Bible must be taken in their literal meaning, viz. that God THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 157 sent his Son. In the last place, only by taking the term " Son" in the highest sense, as involving equality with God, do such passages as the following become intelligible : " Whosover denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father" (1 John ii. 23, etc.). 14 158 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF CHAPTER IV. THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES CONCERNING CHRIST COM PARED WITH THAT OF JESUS HIMSELF WHILE ON EARTH. §31. In comparing the testimony of the apostles concern ing the person of Jesus Christ with the declarations of himself while on earth, we find in reality but one point in which the apostolic teaching goes beyond what Jesus had said, viz. that Peter, Paul, and John ascribe the revelations of God in the Old Testament, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews (probably Apollos) and John the (mediate) creation and preservation of the world, to the pre-existent Son. This the Lord himself had not done. Some may feel inclined to add that the apostles designated Jesus directly as God, which also the Lord himself had not done. But this is in reality more an apparent than a real difference. The risen Saviour's suffering himself to be addressed by Thomas as " my Lord and my God" amounts, in reality, to the same as if he had called himself God. So, likewise, his command to baptize in his name, as in that of the Father and of the Holy Ghost, and his claiming for himself all power in heaven and on earth, amounts to his calling himself God. In fine, no unprejudiced per son can read the declarations of Jesus concerning him- self, of which a list has been given in a former part of this book, — concerning his mediatorial position between THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 159 God and mankind, and the relation which the angels sustain to him, and into which every human being must enter in order to be saved, without being constrained to admit that he who applied such language to himself called himself, though not in direct terms, yet none the less really, God. The reasons why he did not speak of himself in direct terms as God must be sought in the same wisdom as a teacher which led him to claim the dignity of the Messiahship so sparingly, and at times actually to forbid its being noised abroad that he was the Messiah. He desired that belief and. pro fession of his divinity by his followers should be de veloped in their hearts from their knowledge of his mediatorial position and their personal experience, especially after his ascension. This was the natural, living, and free way leading to the knowledge that the Son is God, even as the Father ; and thus the knowledge of his divinity would be developed in a natural, organic manner. And here we cannot fail to admire the pa tience of our Lord in waiting for the manifestation of his divine glory. The premises which, logically de veloped, lead to a belief in his divinity, he laid down in his declarations while on earth ; while the sight of the risen Saviour, his ascension, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit according to his promise, and the divine life manifested in his church enabled the apostles to draw the legitimate inference from the given premises. For conclusions or inferences from premises given are not always matters of course. How many such premises are given, and yet the logical conclusions are never drawn. " At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you" (John xiv. 20). On the other hand, it remained a profound secret 160 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF during the earthly career of our Saviour that both the revelation of God in the Old Testament and the creation and preservation of the world were the mediate works of the pre-existent Son. It is an interesting and important question, in what manner the apostles pro gressed in their knowledge of divine things beyond what the Lord himself had affirmed while on earth. It is true the assertion has recently been made that the two apostolic declarations, that Jesus was God before he was man, and that all things were made by him, were but different modes of expressing our Lord's own declaration, that he had been with God before the world was. It has been argued, that if the man Jesus was with God when the world and time commenced he must necessarily have been God before he became man, and must have mediated the creation of the world. But are these really matters of course ? The fact that Arianism admits the pre-existence of Jesus without admitting his true divinity, and without being involved thereby in self-contradiction, would prove the contrary. It is not the declarations of Jesus concerning his pre- existence by themselves, but in this close connection with what he says of his relation to God and to the world, which establish the fact that he is God. Not even is it self-evident that if the pre-existent one was God, he was also the Mediator of the creation of the world, or he by whom, in whom, and for whom all things were made that were made. Our Lord in his conversation with his disciples on the night of his betrayal used lauguage concerning the Holy Ghost which left no doubt as to his (the Spirit's) personality. Passages in the writings of Peter, Paul, and John prove that these apostles really knew the Holy Spirit as a THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 161 personality ; and that they knew him also as pre-exist ent like the Son, is self-evident. Why, then, do not the apostles say. of the Spirit that the world was made through and for him ? Why is the Son alone called the Logos, the Mediator of all revelation ? Why is it the Son only who led the Israelites through the wilder ness, and whose glory they saw in the temple ? From all this it follows that pre-existence with God, and even equality with God, do by no means necessarily imply that " by him and for him all things were made." It is true the Holy Spirit is also set forth in the Scriptures as being closely connected with the creation of the world and of mankind — from the first chapter of Genesis, where the Spirit is said to have brooded over the face of the waters, to the last chapter of the Apocalypse, where he unites with the bride in entreating the Lord Jesus to come quickly — but "by him and through him " is predicated of the Son alone. We deem it probable, that Jesus while on earth called himself the Wisdom of God. The passage Matt. xi. 19 may naturally be applied to Jesus, and in Luke xi. 49 Jesus is evidently called the wisdom of God, not, indeed, by himself but by the commenting evan gelist. If Jesus had used this appellation of himself in a manner admitting no doubt, this would, indeed, plainly point to his pre-existence, and his mediation of the creation of the world and of divine revelation in the Old Testament. For although the Chokhmah of Solomon as well as the Sophia of Sirach (Wisdom) is, according to the results of a sound and philosophical exegesis, either no hypostasis, or where this is the case, only a creature, so that in the entire Old Testament there appears no plurality of hypostases in the Deity, u* 162 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF and although the idea of the God-man has its origin in the consciousness of the God-man — yet such passages as Prov. viii. 22 ; ix. 1, etc. offered a very convenient point of connection for New Testament ideas. But if we bear in mind, that even such declarations of Christ as are recorded in John x. 36, and perhaps also Matt. xi. 19, were understood by his disciples only when the truths referred to were rendered so plain by other facts that they could not be mistaken ; we are driven to the conclusion that the apostles needed, claimed, and ob tained infallible and unmistakable instruction for the establishment of so important a dogma, as the one under consideration. We, therefore, again ask, how did the apostles attain this infallible knowledge ? Our Lord declared before the high priest : " Here after shall ye see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven " (Matt. xxvi. 64), to which correspond the words of David which, a few days before, Jesus had applied to himself: "Sit thou on my right hand" (Matt. xxii. 44). Before his ascension he tells his disciples plainly: " All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth " (Matt, xxviii. 18). In the words spoken before the high priest he declares that he would ascend to take part in the government of the world, especially that the judgments about to descend on mankind were his work. The clouds of heaven are the thunder-clouds, the symbols of divine judgment (Isa. xix. 1 ; compare Hengstenberg on Apoc. i. 7). In the words addressed to his disciples before his final departure, he claims for himself power both in heaven and on earth ; indeed from the very commence ment of his public ministry he speaks of the angels as THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 163 his angels. According to his intercessory prayer the whole personal world is his, as it is the Father's (John xvii. 10); in short, all fulness and glory of the Father are his property (John xvi. 15 ; Matt. xvi. 27 ; comp. xxv. 31). Whoever ponders well these declarations of Christ will be readily satisfied that the apostles express their meaning fully, when they say " in him by him, and for him all things were made." If the pre-existent Son was the Mediator of creation, if all things subsist by him, and he was the life and light of the world, the government of the world by the ascended Saviour offers no difficulties whatever. In the same manner his declarations concerning himself as the Judge of mankind explain the apostolic statement, that " for him all things were made." He who, when looking for ward, knew himself to be the Lord and Judge of heaven and earth, knew himself, when looking backward, to be the Logos, the Word spoken by the Father, the Medi ator of all divine relations. Let it be borne in mind that John calls him who comes to judgment the Logos of God (Apoc. xix. 13). Being the Logos of God from the beginning, as the Mediator of all life to the world, the (causative) beginning of every creature, he is also called to be the universal Judge, and his coming is irre sistible when he comes to judgment. The words of our Lord concerning his ascension to the right hand of God sank deeply into the hearts of bis disciples. As early as the day of Pentecost the Apostle Peter speaks of his having been exalted by the right hand of God (Acts ii. 33) ; and when Stephen saw him standing on the right hand of God, (Acts vii. 55, etc.), this dying testimony of the first martyr was calculated to impress still more deeply upon their hearts 164 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF the truth that their Master had been exalted to share the government of the world. Mark (xvi. 19) adds to the narrative of the ascension, that Jesus sat on the right hand of God. If anywhere, it is in these declarations of our Lord that we find the points of connection between his teach ings and those of the apostles concerning the Son's original position as Mediator between the Father and the world, " in whom, by whom, and for whom all things were made." Add to this, that the Son of God be came incarnate, made a full satisfaction for the human family, and that the apostles knew the exalted Saviour as still the Son of Man, as the vine and themselves as the branches, as the Head of the body, and the Bride groom of the church. Being the first-fruits of them that slept, in whom all are made alive (1 Cor. xv. 20, etc. ; Col. i. 18 ; Rom. viii. 29), must he not also be the author of the new life, having already been the author of natural life and the beginning of the creation of God ? (Col. i. 15.) The relation of the Holy Spirit to mankind may seem in some respects to be more intimate than that of the Son, it being the Spirit who glorifies Christ in the be liever's heart (John xvi. 14), interceding for us, not as the Son in heaven, but in the inmost recesses of our own hearts and before God (Rom. viii. 26, 27, 34), and uniting with the bride in beseeching the Bridegroom to come (Apoc. xxii.17) ; but this is so only in appearance, the fioly Ghost being, as it were, only the messenger and paranymph of the Son, the Son himself being the Bridegroom. All these are, however, points of connection, by which the Holy Spirit could lead the apostles on to know THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 165 that the pre-existent Son is the beginning of the creation of God, the first-born of every creature, in whom, by whom, and for whom all things were created. As we see our own inner life developed by the Holy Ghost, enlightening our conscience and our intellectual powers in connection with our own experience and meditations, especially on the word of God — our own experience and ideas having by no means in themselves power to ad vance our growth in spirituality — so with the inspira tion of the prophets ofthe Old, and the apostles of the New Testament. In order properly to understand each new progress in the revelation of God, it is' indispen sably necessary to ponder God's former declarations and his old and new acts and dealings with his people, and the individual believer in particular. It is from the midst of memories, experiences, sorrows and prayers, that men of God are able to utter communica tions of the Spirit. Still all these human factors, how ever necessary they may be, are but conditions, the preparation of the soul for receiving the light of the Spirit, not this light itself. And he only who exam ines the human and divine factors in their connection will understand life in general, especially the inner life, and the gradual development of the divine revelation. It is, therefore, the more worthy of note that the two apostles, whose writings teach the mediation of all nature, life, and of the Old Testament revelation by the pre-existent Son, received special revelations from the exalted Saviour. We have learned from a number of declarations made by the Apostle Paul that the revelations which were granted to him must also have referred to the person of the Redeemer. The knowledge that it was 166 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF the Spirit of Christ who spoke through the prophets (1 Pet. i. 11) Peter may possibly have received through the Apostle Paul. This apostle's teaching concerning Christ's descent to the spirits in prison (iii. 18, etc.) shows that he also was possessed of knowledge which transcended what the Lord had. said before his death. In John's case we have found that his teachings concerning Jesus are in perfect harmony with the declarations of the risen Saviour contained in the visions granted to this apostle. There is no doubt that John was powerfully affected by the light which the Lord granted to Paul ; indeed, the substance of John's whole Logology is germinally contained in Paul's writ ings, the comprehensive term only being originated by John, although this was, and in fact could be, the product of such a mind only as had a full and thorough knowledge of all the truths touching the real nature of Jesus. In the Apocalyptic visions, however, John received express declarations from the lips of the risen and exalted Saviour concerning his person. " These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the beginning of the creation of God," — this utterance of the exalted Saviour, on which the hallelujahs of the heavenly hosts formed so grand a comment (Apoc. iii. 14, comp. v. 13) in connection with Jesus's designation of himself as the Alpha and the Omega, gave John all necessary light on the Son's relation to the creation, in which he instructs the church in his Gospel (i. 3, etc.). If it could be established, that the Apocalypse was written before the destruction of Jerusalem, and the Gospels and two of John's Epistles about three decades later, the supposition that John's Logology was the reflection of his visions would be very natural. THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 167 Even if we accept the positive testimony of Irenaeus (Lib. v. cap. 30), that John had these visions toward the close of Domitian's reign, it does not follow that the Gospel must be of earlier date than the Apocalypse. Domitian died in a.d. 96, John, according to the fathers in the third year of the reign of Trojan, con sequently a.d. 100. If we consider what certainty John's visions necessarily gave him, portraying vividly to his soul not only the afflictions of the church, and the victory over every enemy, but also the new heaven and earth, and the everlasting glory of the church through him who is the first and the last — we cannot fail to understand that blessed confidence and imper turbable peace, with which the fact of the incarnation and the presence of eternal life are set forth in the Gospel and Epistles. As the task of historiography was in the old dispensation assigned to prophets (for which reason the Hebrew Bible calls the historical books the first prophets), so in the new dispensation John succeeded in writing the history of Christ in the light of his Logos-nature, because the risen and exalted Saviour granted him prophetic visions. The greatest prophet of the Old Testament wrote the history of the beginnings of the earth, of mankind, and the kingdom of God ; the greatest prophet of the New Testament became the profound historiographer of him, in whom the new creation has been accomplished. 168 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF CHAPTER V. AUTHENTICITY AND FORCE OF THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS CON CERNING HIMSELF. §32. From what has been said, it is incontrovertible that Jesus during his life on earth claimed to be the Son of God in a manner peculiar to himself, viz. to be equal with the Father, to have been with God before his incarnation, and to have been begotten of God in a peculiar manner. Sound criticism would oblige us to recognize this as an historical fact, even if critics should succeed in bringing more powerful arguments to bear against the credibility of our Gospels than they have so far done. Great as the license of modern criticism on the writings of the New Testament has been, yet the boldest and most reckless of critics have found themselves obliged to admit both the authenticity and genuineness of some of the books of the New Testament, Paul's Epis tle to the Romans, to the Galatians, and the two to the Corinthians, and in acknowledging these writings they admit that Jesus must have been, on the whole, the same personage as the Gospels represent him, especially that he was believed to have risen from the dead, and that he claimed to be the Son of God in the sense stated above. For in the first Epistle to the Corinthians, Paul, to prove the genuineness of his apostleship, appeals to the fact that he saw Christ (1 Cor. ix. 1"). and then to THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 169 confute those of the Corinthians who denied the pos sibility of the resurrection of the body, names the witnesses of Christ's resurrection, viz. Peter first, then the twelve, after that the five hundred brethren, most of whom were still alive when the apostle wrote, then James, then all the apostles, and in the last place him self (1 Cor. xv. 12, etc., 5, etc.). It is in the Epistle to the Romans and the first to the Corinthians, that he represents Christ as the author of the new life of men, and Adam as the author of death (Rom. v. 12, etc. ; 1 Cor. xv. 21), Christ as the author of spiritual, heavenly life, and the quickening Spirit, while the first Adam was made into a living psyche (animal life) (1 Cor. xv. 45, etc.). It is in this first letter to the Corinthians that Paul says : " But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him" (viii. 6), it is in his second Epistle to the Corinthians that the apostle speaks of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, who became poor for our sakes, that through his poverty we might become rich (viii. 9). In the Epistle to the Romans the inner being of Christ is described as the Spirit of holiness, consequently as the divine Spirit, and it is added, that Jesus is proved to be the Son of God according to the Spirit of holiness, by his resurrection from the dead (i. 4), and is called God's own Son (6 rov ©eoii wo? 6 eavrov), whom he sent into the world in the likeness of sinful flesh (viii. 3). In the Epistle to the Galatians occur the words : " God sent forth his Son," and again, " It pleased God to reveal his Son in me" (Gal. iv. 4; i. 16). The second Epistle to the Corinthians says of the exalted Saviour: "The Lord is the Spirit, and we are all 15 170 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF changed into the image of the Lord, from glory to glory, as by the Spirit, the Lord " (iii. 18), and calls Christ the image of God (iv. 4). The life which Paul still lived he lived by faith in the Son of God, who (be says) " has loved me, and given himself for me " (Gal. ii. 20). In consequence of his being one life with Christ, the apostle knows that he is dead unto sin, and, as having entered into a new life (Rom. vi. 3, etc.), the Spirit of Christ is to the apostle the Spirit of God, according to Rom. viii. 9 and Gal. iv. 6. All faith and hope, all that Christians do, is according to these Epistles to centre in Jesus, who died for us, and now lives in the believer ; and the passages inculcating these truths are so numerous that it is scarcely possible to quote any isolated ones. In fine, it is in the two Epistles to the Corinthians, that the apostle places Christ on an equal footing with the Father and the Holy Spirit ; affirming : " Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit ; and there are differences of administration, but the same Lord ; and there are diversities of opera tions, but it is the same God who worketh all in all " (1 Cor. xii. 4, etc.), and " The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost be with you all" (2 Cor. xiii. 13). Now what sort of a man was this Paul, the acknowledged author of these four epistles ? All unite in admiring the fervor of his spirit, the fulness and depth of his thoughts, his indomitable courage and energy, the soberness of his life of faith, his readiness to sacrifice everything for him in whom he believed ; but not only this, all admire also his powerful intellect, which shows itself in all his letters, the clearness of his knowledge of the human heart, the circumspection and practical THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 171 talent which he displays in governing the new societies, the liberal spirit with which he conceives and rep resents Christ as the end of the law, and the law of his fathers as a past economy, sparing, at the same time, the weak, and doing ample justice to the sanctity of the law, and to all privileges, granted to Israel hitherto and to be granted hereafter. And it is these four letters, again, in which the image of this extraordinary man stands forth in marked features ; as his knowledge of the human heart in Rom. vii., his practical wisdom in 1 Cor. xii. 14, his liberal spirit throughout the epistles to the Romans and Galatians, and his entire freedom from all fanaticism apparent in such passages as Rom. vii. 12, etc.; ix. 1, etc.; xi. 12-32; xiv. 1; 1 Cor. viii. Can any unbiased inquirer after truth for a moment suppose that such a man believed in Jesus as the Son of God, equal with the Father, the author of our re generation, and even of the creation of the world, unless Jesus had spoken of himself in a manner involving either directly or indirectly these very points ? Paul was personally acquainted with the disciples of Christ, and had several discussions with them respecting their common faith (Gal. i. 18 ; ii. 1-10) ; in 1 Cor. 15 he appeals to them expressly as eye-witnesses of Christ's resurrection, consequently heard the story of Christ from their lips, and in 1 Cor. vii. 10 ho quotes a com mand of Christ on a special point, which he had evi dently learned from the lips of the other apostles. And must he not also have inquired from them as to what Jesus had stated concerning himself? Or, if Jesus had made no declarations concerning himself, which involved his being the Son of God in the sense in which the apostle used the term, are we to suppose that he 172 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF portrayed an imaginary person ? Can he have proposed dogmas concerning Jesus in perfect indifference as to whether they could be proved from his own teachings or not ? If any man of sound mind could be capable of such conduct, it could only be some speculative dreamer, whose object was simply to palm off his own thoughts on the world by the aid of some great name. But a man, whose aspirations after holiness find their only aliment in the name of Jesus, a man who submits to all the privations, trials, difficulties, and dangers of a missionary life for the space of almost thirty years, a man whose field of labor is the consciences of men, a man who is asked searching questions by those for whom he labors ; such a man improves every oppor tunity within his reach to ascertain the foundation on which his faith rests. Supposing that, although about three years after he had an interview with Peter, during the first seventeen years after his conversion the apostle preached an imaginary Jesus, is it not probable that the great sufferings he had to endure in this period would have so far cooled his fanaticism as to induce him, on his next meeting with the eye-witnesses, to make inquiries concerning the real Jesus ? (Comp. Gal. i. 18 ; ii. 1-10). His own views with regard to the preaching of an imaginary Jesus he expresses plainly enough in 1 Cor. xv. 14-19. Paul is thus an irrefutable witness to the credibility of the record in the Gospels of the declarations made by Jesus concerning himself. And Paul does not stand alone ; another of the New Testament writers — one, indeed, who is admitted by the boldest critics to have been both an eye and ear witness of Jesus — John the revelator takes his stand by Paul, and corroborates his THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 173 statement. For the very critics, who deny the authen ticity of the four Gospels, of the Acts, and of all the New Testament Epistles (except the four above men tioned), pronounce the Apocalypse to be tho authentic production of John the apostle, and as far as this book is concerned, the results of their investigation harmonize fully with the voice of history, the fathers of even the second century declaring the Apocalypse to be the pro duction of the Apostle John. But while the Apocalypse is allowed to have been composed by an eye-witness, it is affirmed, at the same time, to be the only book of the New Testament of this kind, and to furnish conclusive evidence that the fourth Gospel, in particular,' cannot have been penned by the same writer. It is affirmed, on the contrary, apparently without fear of successful contradiction, that at least one hundred years must have elapsed between the composition of these two books, since, it is said, the Apocalypse is written from a narrow, strictly Jewish-legal stand-point, while the incarnate Logos of the fourth Gospel is represented as the fountain of new life for the whole human family. But as far as the person of Jesus, at least, is concerned, we have already shown that this supposed chasm between the fourth Gospel and the Apocalypse exists only in the heated brains of some of these hyper-critics. Who ever with an unbiased mind will weigh the reasons stated, will scarcely fail to admit that the Jesus of the Apocalypse and that of the fourth Gospel are identical ; so much so, that the Logology of the fourth Gospel can not be satisfactorily accounted for without the Apoca lypse ; also that an eye and ear witness can speak, of Jesus as John does in the Apocalypse, only if Jesus actually spoke of himself as the Gospels represent him 15* 174 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF to have done. It is, indeed, making a psychological enigma of John, to admit that he penned the Apocalypse and, at the same time, to deny that the Jesus, whose ear-witness John is allowed to have been, spoke of himself as a divine being, just as the Gospels represent him to have done ; on this supposition the declarations of the Apocalypse concerning Jesus are, indeed, the outgrowth of the wildest fanaticism. Again, much has been said of the difference between the Christ of the first three Gospels and that of the fourth. It is true that we are differently impressed by Christ as represented in these different writings, but not as though the Christ of the one set of documents claimed for himself higher dignity than that of the other. This difference is merely that of the inward and outward presentations of the same Son of God. Our former statements abundantly establish this position. In the first three Gospels Jesus defines his relation to mankind by claiming to be their Owner, Lawgiver and Bridegroom, and after his ascension, also the determiner of their history and their Judge. He is their Owner ; the field of the Son of Man is the world, in it he sows his seed, his is the harvest (Matt. xiii. 24, etc., 27, etc.) ; their Lawgiver : it is said to those of old, but I tell you (Matt. v. 22-44), go and make disciples of all nations, teaching them whatsoever I have commanded you (Matt. xxviii. 19, 20); men are to look upon tbemselves- as his servants, stewards, subjects, etc. (Matt. xxv. 14, etc. ; Luke xiii. 27, etc.). How vastly important is Jesus's designation of himself as the spouse ofthe church is well known to every student of the Old Testament prophets, one of their leading ideas being God's marriage- contract with his people ; Paul knows of no higher by THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 175 which to express Christ's relation to the church than this, and the Apocalypse represents the full development of the church, the realization of all her wishes as the consummation of the marriage-feast of the Lamb. Let us further look at Christ's judgeship, as claimed by himself. Could he consistently say : " Hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven;" or, " The Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, sitting upon the throne of his glory," if he did not know that he was possessed ofthe necessary qualifications for passing an omniscient and final de cision ? How contracted, abrupt, and fanatical does Christ's self-consciousness appear on the supposition that he' claimed to be the Judge of the world, but not that Son of God whose divinity alone would qualify him for the discharge of the duties of this office ? Of every hero, who has made great achievements in the world of mind, science is fully satisfied that he knew what he was about, and that his inner life was a self-con scious unity ; and must not this be true of one, from whom, humanly speaking, has proceeded the universal and central regeneration of the spiritual life of the whole human race ? Now the declarations of Jesus concerning himself as the fountain of life, recorded by John, complete and account for the synoptical sayings of Jesus as to his being the Judge of the world. What more suitable than that he who is the resurrection and the life, whose voice will raise all who are in the graves, because the Father has given him to have life in him self, should judge all mankind ? Being the life, he is the Judge of all who reject him ; being the light, whose coming into the world is necessarily followed by a 176 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE 01 decision on the part of men in favor of or against the light, and a separation of those who love darkness from those who love light, consequently by a present, irre sistible progressing judgment, he is also the Judge who outwardly judges those who have inwardly judged themselves. Jesus's declaration of himself as the Judge of mankind, if properly digested, leads naturally to the supposition that he is the author of life, and this thought must have been in the mind of Jesus, though the Christ of John shows expressly that his giving life is, in turn, based on his exercising judgment : " As the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth them, even so the Son quickeneth whom he will. For the Father judgeth no man, but has committed all judgment unto the Son" (John v. 21, 22). "The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live. For as the Father has life in himself, so has he also given to the Son to have life in himself, and has given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of Man " (John v. 25-27). It is his power to raise from the dead, from which Jesus proceeds to speak of the hour in which all who are in their graves shall come forth unto the resurrection of life or death (vs. 21-29). And how frequent in the Apocalypse, the book of Jesus's judgments, are the allusions to the fountain of life as contained in Jesus ! In the entire fourth Gospel there is not a solitary expression which implies more than the words of Christ recorded by Matthew : " All power is given unto me, in heaven and on earth," or more than the numerous passages occurring in the synoptical Gospels, wherein Jesus styles himself the Lord of the angels. But in the fourth Gospel we find those words THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 177 of the Lord which show the foundation on which rests his universal power in heaven and on earth, his do minion over the angels, etc., viz. " The Father has given to the Son to have life in himself" ; " All that is thine is mine " ; " And now, 0 Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory" which I had with thee before the world was ; for thou hast loved me before the foundation of the world " (John. v. 26 ; xvi. 15; xvii. 5). The sayings of Jesus, as recorded in the synoptical Gospels, have for their basis those recorded by John. To separate them is to 'disjoin body and soul. These remarks, however, we do not wish to be under stood as implying that Christ's declarations in the first Gospel afford no insight into his inner being, as so fully developed in John's Gospel. The injunction of Jesus recorded in Matt, xxviii. 19 : " Baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," expresses his dignity from three points of view, which are transcended by no other declaration by himself or any of the apostles. In the first place, it expresses our obligation to Jesus, which is the same as to the Father and the Holy Ghost. In the second, his relation to the salvation and everlasting life of our souls, which is the same as that of the Father and the Holy Ghost. In the third, it places him on a perfectly equal footing with the Father and the Holy Ghost. With the first of these points of view corresponds Jesus's declaration : " That all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father " (John v. 23) ; with the second, all which our Lord says of himself as the fountain of life, according to John ; with the third, all the expressions of the apostles styling Jesus directly 178 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF God and Jehovah, and the vision of John the revelator in which ho sees Jesus in an indissoluble union with the Father (Apoc. xxi. 22 ; xxii. 3, etc. ; xxi. 5, etc. ; i. 8). In this command to baptize, the Father is not styled God, but Father, and thereby the title " God " secured also to the Son and the Holy Ghost. To what Jesus says, according to John, of the Holy Ghost to be sent by himself, corresponds what he says, according to Luke : " Behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you " (xxiv. 49) ; while to what he says, accord ing to John, concerniug his coming again, correspond the synoptical declarations : " Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them " ; and, " I am with you always, even unto the end ofthe world" (Matt, xviii. 20; xxviii. 20). What Christ says, according to John, of himself as the Son of God, we have found to imply that Jesus, as the Sou of God, is co-equal with the Father. The same, however, is taught in the synoptical Gospels, especially Matt. xi. 27 ; Luke x. 22. The declarations of Jesus concerning his sonship, as recorded in the fourth Gospel, go beyond the synoptical teachings on the same subject only in so far as they teach us to deduce the equality of the Son of Man with God from the pre-existence and the eternal generation of him who became man. How important an ingredient of the synoptical Gos pels are these declarations of Jesus concerning his divine nature, corresponding to similar ones in John's Gospel, would at once appear if they should be omitted. Without them we should no longer have the same documents. In Matthew's Gospel not only xxviii. 20 and xi. 27-31 would have to be erased, hut also ix. 14, THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 179 etc. ; xxii. 1, etc. Again, xxi. 33-46 ; xxii. 41-46 ; xiii. 24-30, 36-43 ; xvi. 27, 28 ; xxiii. 38-xxv. 46, and the whole Sermon on the Mount, would have to be radically changed. §33. It being, then, a well-established fact that Jesus taught his own equality with the Father, and that he declared himself the fountain of life for mankind, whence arises the obligation for all to obey, love, and worship him as the Father ; the only remaining question is : What importance is to be attached to this testimony of Jesus concerning himself ? In the view of a superficial observer it may appear weak presumption to infer the divinity of an individual from his declarations concerning himself; but the true scholar will invariably arrive at the conclusion that Jesus is really of the same substance with the Father, if he has declared himself so ; and this for two reasons, viz. 1. Because it is a self-contradiction to charge him who is, according to the unanimous voice of history, the light of mankind, with a gross self-delusion con cerning his own nature ; 2. Because the resurrection of Jesus from the dead impresses the divine seal on his declarations concerning himself. None can deny that our conscience must involun tarily assent to all that Jesus uttered concerning the nature of goodness and the condition of the human heart. And this he did among a people who had ob scured the light of conscience by a number of human traditions. This he also did so as to bring the moral ideal to perfection, notwithstanding that the religious documents of his nation had yielded in a number of 180 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF important points to the hardness of their hearts. Though he had grown up under a law, the moral precepts of which were intimately interwoven with symbolical and pedagogical regulations, he knew how to distinguish with infallible certainty between the spirit and the letter. Highly civilized nations of antiquity have pro duced men of eminent abilities, who with sincerity of purpose and indefatigable perseverance have investi gated the nature of the Good ; but, while both Plato and the Stoic have blended lofty ideas on morality with equally great errors, none can charge Jesus with any error of judgment as to the nature and essence of the Good. In Christian nations, also, eminent men have devoted their time and talents to the investigation of the Good, its principle and system ; but not one can be found who, in his independent investigations, has not gone astray, in one direction or another, so as to be an unsafe guide. But to the words of Jesus on this topic every conscience assents. It is equally evident to every close observer that Jesus has in himself realized this moral ideal. No one can deny that the image of Jesus, as drawn by the evangelists, answers to the moral ideal of his conscience. Yea, so perfectly is this moral ideal realized in the image of Jesus, that, instead of discovering any defect in it, its contemplation -but raises the ideal itself. And this image was neither invented nor could be invented, but is the copy of a living reality, so that the very existence of the image places its original beyond every reasonable doubt. For if those (unknown) individuals who, under the (fic titious) names of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, have drawn this picture, have done so without having an original before their eyes, they are not only the THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 181 most eminent prophets of the moral ideal, but absolutely mysterious personages. If it is, therefore, an historical fact that Jesus has awakened the moral ideal in the consciences of men, and realized it in himself; if it is self-evident that whoever desires -to contemplate, know, and realize this moral ideal must constantly have re course to the words and life of Jesus, how can it be imagined that this Jesus claimed to be the spouse, fountain of life, and Judge of mankind, the Lord of angels, the Ruler of heaven and earth, the Son ofrGod, of equal substance with the Father, — to have been with him before the foundation of the world, that he commanded his disciples to baptize as well in his own as in the Father's and Spirit's name, while all his pre tensions were unfounded ? To entertain such a mon strous idea is an insult to sound reason and every sound moral principle ; since it would be blending the clearest knowledge and the perfect realization of the moral ideal in the same individual with intolerable fanaticism or the most abominable deception. To the testimony concerning the resurrection of Jesus by the Apostle Paul in his first Epistle to the Corinthians we have already called the reader's atten tion. This is not, however, an isolated passage. This man's whole mode of thought, his whole life and activity are based on the grand fact of the resurrection, as appears from every chapter of his epistles. He himself declares most emphatically that if Jesus did not rise, his preaching is an idle and false testimony, and the Christian's faith an empty self-deception (1 Cor. xv. 14, etc.). Thus the very existence of the Christian church proves the truth and reality of the resurrection. Neither the heroic courage with which the Galilean 18 182 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF fishermen preach the Crucified as the Christ, nor the faith of the Jew in a Messiah who had been executed as a criminal, nor that of the Greeks in a crucified Galilean as the Son of God, nor the fulness of the Spirit, that breathes from all the apostolic writings, can be accounted for without the resurrection. And our modern infidels admit that, without a full and implicit faith in the reality of the resurrection on the part of the apostle, the founding of the church was impossible. They- cannot, however, account for the origin of this implicit faith in a manner to command their own respect ; it is rather passed by as something altogether inexplicable. But that a sober investigation of the truth cannot be satisfied with such a process, is self- evident. It is therefore more than probable that our modern rationalism will return into the bosom of its much-abused parent, the rationalismus vulgaris, and pretend that Jesus was not really dead, but awoke from a swoon. This hypothesis will not any better account for the faith in question. If the risen Saviour had evinced all the marks of a sick, weak, and wounded man, he could not possibly have raised the drooping spirits of the apostles, and fanned the almost extin guished sparks of hope into a blazing flame ; and, if he had died a natural death or disappeared in a manner unknown to them, the last particles of their faith would have given way to entire despondency or everlasting doubts. Add to this, that the hypothesis charges Jesus with foul imposition. But for the sake of consistency, it is feared even this sacrifice will be made, while in genious and subtle writers will endeavor to render even this absurdity plausible. , On the whole, it is with the divinity of Christ as with THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 183 the existence of a personal God ; these two truths are within every one's reach, so that he can and must find them, if his eyes are open ; but both can, at the same time, be found only by him whose eyes are opened by the demands of conscience. That unconscious wisaom, wherever it is, cannot be by itself, but must be the work of a self-conscious spirit, is a truth which we take for granted in all our acts of judgment and conduct. The mechanic who examines an ingenious mechanism, the artist who admires a spirited work of art, the states man who rejoices in the wisdom of organization in some ancient republic, does not hesitates for a moment to trace the reason exhibited in these works to a rea soning personality. And why should it be different with the wisdom which we find in the great mechanism of the universe ? Why should the astronomers regard the sublime laws which govern the motion of the heav enly bodies as the work of chance ? Why should we look upon the infinite beauty of nature as the uncon scious self-development of matter ? The historian who discovers a wise organization of natural life will inquire for the lawgiver whose mind has established this order ; and shall not we, who cannot but behold the most con summate wisdom in the history of the whole human family, the structure of the earth, the course of history, the infinite connection of the most minute parts, the ap pearance of world-renowned men, all these things being evidently designed to realize the spiritual objects of our race, — shall we not inquire for the lawgiver who has instituted all these arrangements ? A wisdom working unconsciously is a contradiction of terms. And is it not folly for the self-conscious spirit of man, delighting to investigate the objective reason which 184 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF dwells in the organism of the world and in the course of history, to be satisfied with the conclusion that this reason is void of consciousness ? Can reason void of self-consciousness be the object of admiration to reason having self-consciousness ? Can unconscious reason be the creating cause, and for conscious reason nothing be left but to meditate on what unconscious reason pro duces ? This self-contradiction reaches the height of absurdity when applied to man's moral nature. Man finds in his conscience the laws of morality ; his moral worth depends on his satisfying these laws temporarily ; if he violates or neglects them, they are there notwith standing, and judge and condemn him. Who, now, has written these ineradicable laws on the self-conscious and free spirit of man ? Is it the unconscious world-soul, which dreaming on the threshold of organic life, brings about at last the origin of man ? And is this world- soul the lawgiver for the free and self-conscious spirit ? Alas ! there are many, in other respects, intelligent men, to whom this quintessence of absurdity appears the loftiest wisdom ! In practical life they look upon a person as insane who should imagine a wisdom working without self-consciousness, and yet their whole system of thought is founded upon such an idea. The small degree of wisdom seen in a production of art they ascribe to the intellect of the artificer, but that infinite wisdom which appears in the organism of the universe, and is diffused from the heart through all the arteries and veins of the whole, does not prove to them the existence of a self-conscious spirit ! They would fain have us believe, that only on the idea of the world being a mechanism do we require an intelligent spirit, who has constructed it, whereas the wisdom which permeates this whole or- THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 185 ganism would explain itself; and yet this very wisdom points with the greatest force to something beyond itself, the deeper, the more tender and inward are its operations. This folly of men, who are in other re spects correct reasoners, furnishes the proof that con sistent application of the laws of thought to the sphere of the Invisible is conditioned by a moral act. For if it is in the sphere of practical life a fundametal law of the human mind to pre-suppose an intelligent spirit as the author of any substantial wisdom, wherever it is found, it is but consistent to refer that wisdom which permeates the whole universe to an intelligent spirit. The intelligent, self-conscious spirit of man finds his rest only in an intelligent, self-conscious Spirit, and philosophy has its psychological origin in this very tend ency of the human mind to trace all phenomena to their first cause, the great Mind of the universe. Now, if the mind stops in its labor at the very point where this decisive step is to be taken by which alone the end can be reached — if it looks upon the unconscious wis dom which it discovers in the organism of the world as the first cause, and bows to it as its own creator and law giver — this apostasy of the mind from itself can be but the consequence of a clipping of its mental pinions, which lack the moral power necessary to reach the Di vine Mind. For it requires a moral act, amid the din of the visible, to hold fast the invisible God, whose life and presence are shrouded in deep silence, as the only real One ; it is a moral act to bow to his holy Majesty and laws ; and this obedience is the necessary conse quence of the act of the mind cleaving to a personal God. The error which puts the visible for the real robs, imperceptibly, but infallibly, the spirit of its power to 16* 186 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF rise to the invisible God. Add to this the hope of the highly extolled autonomy of the human spirit, which is said to begin as soon as the heteronomy of a personal God is shaken off; this sweet delusion leads the philo sophers to stop in the very midst of their investigations, and to mistake a universal soul without personality, which, as they dream, becomes personal in man, for the first cause of all things. The fact is, as a matter of course, entirely overlooked, that by this very act the human spirit submits to the evil heteronomy spoken of above, viz. that the free, self-conscious spirit of man has now no higher calling than to investigate the ope rations of that dark, impersonal world-soul, and so endeavor to realize in his moral conduct those laws which this dark world-soul has implanted in his inmost recesses. As with the existence of a personal God, so with the divinity of Jesus Christ. Human thought which does not consistently stop in the very midst of its flight, must arrive at the existence of a personal God ; but it is only man's moral force which enables thought to finish its flight. The testimony of Jesus concerning his divinity, couched in his declarations concerning the substance of his person as well as concerning his me diatorial position, is so definite, and, as the testimony of the Risen One, and of him who is the conscience of humanity, of such irresistible force, that it logically conducts to the firm belief in his divinity, but only those arrive at the conclusion who investigate the per son of Jesus with that moral strength which alone imparts the power of knowledge. Whoever with con scientious seriousness studies the writings of the Apostle Paul, and allows the language therein addressed to THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 187 conscience to reach his own, will know to a certainty that Paul was no dreamer, believing in the divinity of Jesus when he had not even himself claimed to be God, and basing his whole spiritual life and activity on the resurrection of a man who remained, like others, in the grave. And he who in the same frame of mind examines the words of Jesus on all things touching conscience, and allows himself to be affected by the history of Jesus's life, will at once become satisfied that the man who testified to and realized truth in such a manner was neither a fanatic #nor a liar, claiming equality with God while he was a mere mortal. If our conviction of the existence of God or of the divinity of Jesus were the unavoidable result of our reasoning, as is the case with a mathematical prop osition, it would not be faith, nor have any moral value ; but if, on the other hand, our religious convictions did not admit some positive proofs, if they could not be grasped by the human mind with some degree of certainty (like problematical subjects), faith could neither be obligatory nor of moral value, nor could man be judged by his faith. We have seen that both the divinity of Jesus and the existence of a pergonal God may be apprehended with certainty by one whose reason is assisted by the force of an awakened con science. To believe is to take firm hold of the Invisible through love or the force of conscience. 188 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF CHAPTER VI. THE PERSONALITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. § 34. It is not our object here to discuss the Scripture doctrine of the Holy Ghost minutely ; hence so much only will be said on this subject as is absolutely nec essary for a proper understanding of the declarations of Scripture concerning the Son in connection with the Holy Ghost. The first point is the personality of the Spirit. We found on a former occasion that there is nothing in the Old Testament Scriptures which, fairly interpreted, involves the incarnation of Jehovah or of a divine hypostasis, although the description of the Messiah therein is such that no mere man or creature could fully realize it. To this we may now add, that the idea of any plurality in the Deity is foreign to the Old Testament, and all the numerous passages con cerning the Spirit must, therefore, be referred to the one Jehovah. The Trinity, therefore, — the divinity of both the Son and the Spirit, — is learned for the first time from the lips of Jesus. The passages which speak of the breath of Jehovah are very numerous in the Old Testament Scriptures. Thus it is said in Gen. i. 1 : And the breath of God moved upon (or brooded over) the face of the waters." Again, in Ps. xxxiii. 6 it is said: "The host of the heavens is made by the breath of his mouth." In Ps. THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 189 civ. 30, the breath of the Lord is said to be the source of all life. This breath of the Lord is eminently active in man, producing in him wisdom, power, holiness, prophecy. But in none of these or of the many other passages does this breath appear as an I, separate and distinct from the breathing God ; in each and every passage this breath may be understood as the act of breathing on the part of God, or a divine power and fulness of life issuing forth from God. Even such passages as Num. xi. 17 : "I will take of the Spirit which is upon thee, and will put it on them," and Isaiah xlviii. 16 : " And now the Lord God and his Spirit has sent me," require no other interpretation. Isolated passages never introduce a new and important doctrine, such doctrines being given to man in a progressive way, so that the exegesis which finds the personality of the Spirit in such passages mistakes the whole plan of God's revelation. Christ, too, often spoke of the Spirit in a manner which does not necessarily imply personal ity. The first mention of the Spirit, that we are aware of, is in John iii. 8, where the operations of the Spirit are compared to those of the wind. The Spirit here might mean a distinct personality, but the assertion of our Saviour is equally true when applied to the Father's own Spirit. Nor do Jesus's words, addressed to his disciples, " It is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you " (Matt. x. 20), or as Luke relates them (xii. 12), " The Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour what ye shall say," involve the personality of the Spirit. This personality, moreover, is not implied in the teachings of Jesus con cerning the " casting out of demons by the Spirit 190 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF of God " (Matt. xii. 28 ; according to Luke xi. 20 it is by the finger of God)", or in those concerning blas phemy against the Holy Ghost. This blasphemy is unpardonable, because it involves the rejection of the witness of God, which he bears with our spirit, that it is God in communication with our soul, while man may honestly be mistaken in the Son of Man ; but it by no means follows from this that the Spirit is a distinct hypostasis. It is evident that all these declarations fully harmonize with the personality of the Spirit, but they do not establish it. It is otherwise, however, with the farewell address of Jesus to his disciples on the night in which he was betrayed. This remarkable address has afforded man kind, besides other glorious truths, with infallible certainty, the personality of the Holy Ghost. The subject of our Saviour's remarks in John xiv. 16 is the glorious results of his death. He sets out with the declaration, that he goes to prepare a place for his disciples, and that he will come again to receive them unto himself (xiv. 3). After having disposed of the interruption made by Thomas and Philip, he recurs to the glorious effects of his death : " 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 ; and whatsoever ye shall ask in my name that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask anything in my name I will do it " (John xiv. 12-14). " And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever ; he dwelleth in you, and shall be in you "(vs. 16, 17). " I myself will come to you " (vs. 18). " Whosoever keepeth my com- THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 191 mandments, my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our abode with him " (vs. 23). " The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you" (vs. 26). "My peace I give unto you" (vs. 27). "If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father ; and now I have told you before it come to pass, that when it is come to pass, ye may believe " (vs. 28, 29). The condition of realizing the blessed effects of Christ's going away (death and ascension), frequently touched upon in former chapters, viz. love ofthe Saviour, forms the grand theme of the fifteenth chapter, and is strongly inculcated. As the branch is part of the vine, and must remain in a vital connection with it in order to bear fruit, and not to be thrown into the fire ; so his disciples must remain in him, the true vine (vs. 1-8) ; they are to abide and labor in love, having been chosen by Jesus (vs. 9-17), undismayed by the hatred of the world, which will be their lot, as it has been their Master's (vs. 18-25). But in vs. 26 Jesus turns from the- condition indis pensably necessary to secure to us the glorious effects of his death, to the effects themselves. However bitterly, he tells his disciples, the world might hate them, when the Comforter should come, whom he (Jesus) would send from the Father, the Spirit of truth that proceeds from the Father, and should testify of Jesus, the disciples would feel themselves constrained to testily what they had seen and heard from Jesus, the Spirit of testimony prevailing upon them so to do ; and Jesus's prediction would prevent them from being offended, by the suffer- 192 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF ings which he would undergo (xv. 26-xvi. 5). Seeing the disciples filled with sorrow on account of his going away, he repeats what he had said before : " It is expe dient for you (for me) to go away " (xvi. 6, 7). Having gone to the Father, he sends the Spirit (vs. 7) to reprove the world (8-11), but, as the Spirit of truth, to lead the disciples unto all truth (vs. 12-15). The disciples are also to see Jesus again (vs. 16), because he goes to the Father ; when the hour of sorrow is over, they shall see him in such a manner as will put an end to their questions and his speaking to them in proverbs, and prayer in his name will then commence (vs. 19-27). The peculiar manner in which the going away and coming of Jesus are blended in this discourse with the coming of the Spirit, may give rise to the question, whether the coming of Jesus and that of the Spirit are not identical ; whether the glorified Jesus himself is not the Spirit that is to come. Because Jesus goes away he will come again (xiv. 3), the Spirit will come (vs. 15-17), Jesus will come (vs. 18), the Spirit will interpret the words of Jesus (vs. 25, 26). And in chapter xvi. it is again said to be, " because Jesus goes away the Spirit shall come" (vs. 7-15), Jesus will come again (vs. 16-27). A thorough examination of these passages shows that the identity of Jesus and of the Spirit is only apparent ; that, on the contrary, the hypostasis of the Spirit, as distinct from the Father and the Son, is most positively taught in this discourse of Jesus. In the first place, let it be noticed that in xiv. 15-23 those who love Jesus receive the promise, that not only Jesus and the Spirit, but also the Father, will come unto them, thus speaking of a threefold coming, viz. of the Father and of the Son, and of the Spirit as distinct from both. THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 193 In the next place, is it not evident from Jesus's call ing the Spirit another Comforter (xiv. 16), whom the Father shall send in his name, and who will bring all his words to the remembrance ofthe disciples (vs. 26), from his sending the Holy Ghost (xv. 26 ; xvi. 7), who shall glorify Jesus, not speaking of himself, but taking of the fulness of Jesus and showing it to the disciples (xvi. 13-15) ; is it not evident, we r.epeat, that some of these expressions are hardly, and others not at all, reconcilable with the hypothesis that the glorified Jesus and the Holy Spirit are identical ? In the last place, the expressions, that Jesus will send the Spirit from the Father (xv. 26), and that the Spirit thus sent will not speak of himself, but whatsoever he shall hear (xvi. 13, etc.), are equally inconsistent with the notion that the Spirit is a power of the Father. For these reasons the personal distinction of the Spirit from both the Father and the Son must be presupposed in the declaration of the risen Saviour (Luke xxiv. 49) : " behold I send you the promise of my Father." That the same is the case with the formula of bap tism (Matt, xxviii. 19) has been shown above. The apostles also teach distinctly the personality of the Spirit, as distinct from the Father and the glorified Jesus. Thus Peter, when he greets the Christians as elect according to the foreknowledge of God, through sanctificatiou of the Spirit, unto obedience 'and sprink ling of the blood of Jesus Christ (1 Pet. i. 2). And John, in writing to the seven churches : " Grace be unto you and peace from him who is, and who was, and who is to come ; aud from the seven, spirits, which are before his throne (i.e. from the Spirit bestowing sevenfold gifts), and from Jesus Christ, who is the 17 194 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF faithful witness and the first-begotten of the dead " (Apoc. i. 4, 5). Or Paul, concluding his second Epistle to the Corinthians with the blessing : " May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Spirit be with you all" (xiii. 13) ; and in 1 Cor. xii. 4-6: "Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are differences of administration, but the same Lord ; and there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God who worketh all in all." John places the personality of the Spirit beyond doubt, when he writes : " And the Spirit and the bride say, Come " (Apoc. xxii. 17). The Spirit could not possibly say to Jesus : Come, if he were Jesus himself, and if it were the spirit of the Father, this language would not be proper. Again, Paul says (Rom. viii. 26) that the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings (in our own hearts), while the glo rified Jesus intercedeth for us at the right hand of God (vs. 34), thus showing that the Spirit is not the glorified Jesus. The same Spirit, interceding for us with the Father, who knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, cannot be the spirit of the Father himself. The Spirit who searches all things, even the deep things of God (1 Cor. ii. 10), cannot be the Father's spirit, as in this case the action ascribed to him by the apostle would be a matter of course, and the apostle's word without meaning.1 1 These passages in Paul's Epistles to the Romans and Corinthians are of particular force over against a certain kind of criticism, which rejects the fourth Gospel as spurious, and likewise all the passages in the synop tical Gospels which contain a testimony-of Jesus concerning his divinity. But whence docs the Apostle Paul obtain his knowledge that the Holy Ghost is a distinct personality? Sober criticism will be constrained to admit, that the declarations of Jesus concerning himself and the personality of the Spirit are the necessary basis for the Pauline doctrine concerning the Spirit. THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 195 The passage John vii. 39 : "The Holy Spirit was not yet [given is an interpolation] , because Jesus was not yet glorified," has with some plausibility been referred to the glorified Jesus. But as the discourse of Jesus in John xiv. 16 establishes the distinct personality of the Spirit beyond any doubt, it may fairly be presumed that in vii. 39, also, the Holy Ghost as a distinct per sonality is spoken of. What is, then, the apostle's meaning ? It cannot be that till the exaltation of Jesus the Holy Ghost had no existence, as is self-evident, and appears also from such passages as John i. 32-34 ; iii. 8. His meaning, then, must be, that with the ex altation of the Spirit a new and infinitely glorious dis pensation commences, thus verifying the words of Jesus (vs. 37, 38). And this interpretation fully har monizes with what the Lord says in John xiv.-xvi. of his going to the Father as the indispensable condition of the coming of the Holy Ghost. The holy humanity of Jesus spiritualized forms a new epoch in the admin istration of the Spirit. Jesus is now, indeed, himself spirit, both in his inner life and as to his body, which has become a spiritual body ; for which reason Jesus is spoken of as a holy spirit, who vivifies us, and changes us into his image, from glory to glory (1 Cor. xv. 45; 2 Cor. iii. 17, etc.) ; and the third hypostasis in the Deity, generally called the " Holy Spirit," has entered, in consequence of the exaltation of Jesus, upon a new and more perfect method of operation. In common with the glorified Redeemer, who operates upon the psychical-bodily man in a spiritual-bodily manner, the Holy Spirit is now able to take hold of the whole being of man by its very roots. The full meaning of John vii. 39 is, therefore, this: With 196 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF Jesus's entering upon a state of glory a new epoch commenced in the administration of the Spirit, both Jesus himself being included in the "Holy Spirit" (the risen Saviour actually breathing out the " Holy Spirit" shortly after his resurrection — John xx. 22) and the third personality in the Trinity. We have thus three great epochs -of God's self- revelation to mankind through Jesus and his apostles. The first of them is, the man Jesus claims equality with God, calling himself the Mediator between God and man, such as he only can be who is equal with God, and the Son of God, begotten of the Father before the world. These claims he made from the very be ginning of his ministry. The second epoch is, Jesus introduces to his disciples the Holy Ghost as a divine personality, distinct both from the Father and the Son. This the Saviour did in the last night preceding his death, and after his resurrection. It wa's in this period that, in consequence of the glorification of Jesus, the outpouring of the Spirit began ; it was but now that the Holy Ghost could take hold of the whole being of mau, and create it anew. This accounts, at the same time, for the fact that the distinct personality was now exhibited. The third stage, in the last place, is, the apostles Peter, Paul, and John recognizing Jesus as the fountain of the Old Testament revelations, and John and Paul, as also the Mediator of the creation and preservation of the world. The premises of these conclusions were, indeed, laid down in the discourses of the Saviour ; but the logical inferences could be drawn, and actually were drawn, only in consequence of revelations from the exalted Saviour. THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 197 CHAPTER VII. THE ETERNAL SONSHIP. 1. Dependence op the Son on the Father. §35. The Son's consubstantiality with the Father, and his peculiar ante-mundane origin in the Father, are the two constituent elements of the divine sonship. The latter implies the Son's dependence on the Father. As the term " Son of God," so also the other scrip tural terms, " Image of the invisible God," " Reflection of his glory," " Word of God," imply the Son's de pendence on the Father ; an image being derived from its original, the word proceeding from the speaker, etc. This relation of dependence lies also at the basis of the other scriptural expressions relating to Father and Son. In many passages of the New Testament the term " God " is used, meaning, as appears from the connec tion, the Father, excluding both Son and Spirit, and calling the Father emphatically " God." Thus in the words of our Saviour himself, e.g. " God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son " (John iii. 16) ; again, in vs. 17, 18 ; while in v. 36 and vi. 36 it is said: " The Father has sent"; "The Father, God, has sealed him" (John vi. 27) ; " Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God be glori fied in him, God shall also glorify him in himself" (John xiii. 31, etc.). While it is said, in xvii. 1, etc. : 17* 198 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF " Father, glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee. I have glorified thee, and now, 0 Father, glorify thou me." " Believe in God, and believe in me " (xiv. 1, 2). Thus, in the words of Paul : "• We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ " (Rom. v. 1) ; " God has sent his Son " (viii. 3) ; " God has not spared his own Son" (viii. 31, 32) : " Christ is at the right hand of God, and maketh intercession for us " (viii. 34). So, also, John: "In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only-begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him" (1 John iv. 9) ; " No man has seen God at any time ; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him " (John i. 18) ; " The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him" (Apoc. i. 1). It is equally clear that in Heb. i. 1-3, by " God " must be understood the Father. Some passages of Paul's writings have been quoted as using the term " God " for the totality of the Deity, Father, Son, and Spirit, especially Eph. iv. 6 and Rom. xi. 36 ; but a more thorough examination of even these. passages shows that " God " means the Father. For in the former of these passages it is expressly said : " One God and Father," both the Lord (Jesus) and the Holy Spirit being mentioned in vs. 4, 5. So, also, in Rom. xi. 36, since the expression " of him, and through him, and to him " is nawiiere used in the Scriptures with reference to the Son, but several times with reference to the Father, as in 1 Cor. viii. 6 and Heb. ii. 10. As to 1 Cor. xv. 28, the words " then shall the Son also be subject unto him " place it beyond a doubt that the following, " that God may be all in all," refers to the Father alone. THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 199 Another proof that the apostles look upon the Father as God, in the highest sense of the term, is gathered from the fact, that when they use the three highest names together, they never say " Father, Son, and Spirit," but " God, Son, and Spirit," thus applying the term " God " to the Father emphatically. Thus in 1 Pet. i. 2 : " According to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ." Also in 2 Cor. xiii. 13 : " The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all." Also in 1 Cor. xii. 4- 6 : " Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit ; and there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord ; and there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all." Thus John in Apoc. i. 4-6 : " Grace be unto you, and peace from him who is, who was, and who is to come ; and from the seven spirits, which are before his throne ; and from Jesus Christ, who has made us kings and priests unto God and his Father." " The Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost" (1 John 5, 7) would, indeed, make an exception to this rule ; but it is more than probable that the passage in question is an interpolation. The dependence of Jesus on the Father is expressly taught by the Apostle Paul in such passages as 1 Cor. iii. 23 and xi. 3 : " Ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's " ; " The head of Christ is God " ; the Christ here spoken of being the exalted Saviour. Of the pre-existent One John writes : " The Logos was toward God." It is true he subsequently calls the Logos also God, but him toward whom the Logos is he 200 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF calls " the God" (John i. 1). But not only this, the Father is even called "the God of Christ." Christ himself applies this term to the Father, not only while he was hanging on the cross, but also after his resur rection and exaltation : " I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God" (John xx. 17) ; " I have not found thy works perfect before God " (Apoc. iii. 2) ; " Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out ; and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God ; and I will write upon him my new name " (vs. 12). Also in ii. 7, the correct reading appears to be : " To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of my God." Whether in Rom. xv. 6 ; 2 Cor. xi. 31 ; Eph. i. 3 ; Col. i. 3, it ought to be translated " the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ," or " God and the Father of our Lord," etc., may be doubtful ; but in Eph. i. 17, Paul calls the Father expressly " the God " of our Lord Jesus Christ. To say that God is the God of the human, and the Father that of the divine, nature of Christ, and that the God-man has the Father, in common with us, for his God, will scarcely satisfy the demands of a sound exegesis. It is true there is no passage in the New Testament calling the Father the God of the Logos. But, as the exalted Son returned to the same glory which he had (had) with the Father before the world was (John xvii. 5), and as the God- man is no less God than the Logos before his incarna tion, the expression " the God of the Logos " is as correct as " the God of the exalted or glorified Saviour." THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 201 Since the pre-existent Son of God is " Son," " Word," " image," " reflection," and since he is " toward God," there is no reason why " the God" should not also be called " his God." Let it also be borne in mind that the passages in the Apocalypse do not refer to Jesus in the state of his humiliation, but in the state of his glory, and yet the Father is called " his God." But these passages, which point to the dependence of the Son on the Father, must never make us lose sight of the great command of our Saviour himself: " Baptize them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost." In this the name of God is applied or reserved for the three hypostases of the Deity. This is for the church a fundamental declara tion, containing the institution of baptism, and to be repeated at every baptism. Add to this that John, in his Apocalyptic visions (xxi. 5-7), beholds Jesus in unity with the Father upon the throne, and in i. 8 by the " Lord God " understands Jesus in unity with the Father. But as it would be opposed to the central idea of Christian doctrine to maintain a dependence of the Son on the Father inconsistent with his true divinity, so would it likewise be iu conflict with the deference due the Scriptures to ignore its testimonies concerning the Son's dependence on the Father. Whoever denies the dependence of the Son charges the apostles with ex hibiting an imperfect knowledge of Christ, by putting together " God, Jesus Christ, and the Spirit." That the Father should be the " God of Christ," and that Christ himself, as well as his disciples, should fre quently speak of the Father as God, without any quali fication, would be altogether unintelligible on such a 202 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF supposition. Only by maintaining both the divinity of the Son and his dependence on the Father at the same time, is the true scriptural basis adhered to. The position of the Son in the divine economy, too, constantly reflects his dependence on the Father ; for the Son, during his earthly pilgrimage, not only prayed to the Father, did his work, obeyed his commands, drank his cup, but his very coming into the world de pended on the Father's sanctifying and sending the Son, whom the latter obeyed (John xi. 41, etc. ; xvii. 3, 16 ; x. 36 ; Heb. x. 5-9). Again, not only the exaltation of the Son, and his receiving all power in heaven and on earth, depended on the Father's will and purpose, but even after his exaltation the Son con tinues to profess his dependence on the Father, by ap pearing before him, and interceding for sinners. The longing of Jesus, while on earth, to return to his Father (John xiv. 28) likewise proves that the Father is greater. He longs to be again perfectly toward the Father (John i. 1, 18), from whom he has proceeded (xvi. 28). The end ofthe world's development is, that after all things have become subject to the Son, the Son himself becomes subject to him who has subjected all things unto him, that God may be all in all (1 Cor. xv. 28). And this end of the world corresponds to its beginning. Everything, it is true, is through the Son, but of the Father, who has made the world through him. Everything is also to the Son ; but even this "to the Son " is modified by the declaration that all things are from, through, and unto the Father (1 Cor. viii. 6 ; .Heb. i. 2 ; Col. i. 16 ; John i. 3 ; Rom. ii. 36). The declaration of Jesus in John xvii. 3 cannot pos sibly be understood as implying that the Father alone, THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 203 to the exclusion of himself, is the only true God, thus denying his own divinity, since, in this case, it would be in conflict with his whole testimony concerning himself, and would even be suicidal, as only the knowledge of a divine messenger who had a divine nature can be a source of eternal life. The antithesis to the only true God is the false gods deified by man's superstition. It further appears, from this passage, that the Father is also " God," in the highest sense of the term, not only because Jesus praises him as the One who sent him, but because it is the Father, whom Jesus opposes, as the only true God, to the false gods of the world. It is true this prayer was uttered by Jesus in his state of humiliation ; but we have seen that the Scriptures use similar terms when they speak of the ante-mundane and exalted Jesus. For this very reason the name " Son of God," by which Christ himself, Paul, John, and the Epistle to the Hebrews express the peculiar substance of Christ, is a most appropriate term, as expressing both Jesus's dependence on and equality with the Father. However explicitly the apostles teach the true divinity of Jesus, there is in none of their writings the slightest attempt to reconcile it with monotheism ; it is not even intimated that the manner in which Christ's divinity can be reconciled with the unity of God, is an unfathomable mystery. It is, on the contrary, taken for granted, that Christ's divinity is perfectly consistent with monotheism, requiring no explanation or proof. We find that the first churches established by the apostles raised many difficulties with regard to the preaching of the apostles, but they nowhere ask the question, whether the divinity of Jesus is compatible with the unity of God. And yet 204 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF this question was natural both for the Jewish Christians, who were conscientious believers in monotheism, and for the converted Gentile, to whom the unity of God was a new article of faith. How is this remarkable fact to be accounted for? Paul's language (1 Cor. viii.) is worthy of special note. To heathen polytheism he opposes Christian monotheism in these words : " We know there is none other God but one ; for though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth (as there be gods many and lords many), there is to us but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we by him" (vs. 4-6). But is not this very con fession of Jesus Christ as the Lord, by whom are all things, in connection with the Father, from whom are all things, sufficient cause for suspecting a polytheistic way of thinking? Instead of entertaining any appre hension of this kind, we find the apostle confirming the monotheism of the Christians by this very truth, that they have but one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and only one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, while the heathens have many lords and many gods. From this it is evident with what definiteness the Christians viewed the Lord as dependent on the Father. The Father is called God, Christ, the Lord. Of the one God, the Father, the apostle says : " of whom are all things, and we in (towards) him " ; and of the one Lord, " by whom are all things, by whom we are." " Christ is the Lord, the Mediator of the first and the second creation, the Father is God, who is the first and final cause of all things ; again, Christ is God, but the Father is not only our God, but also Christ's ; the divinity of the Sou is not incompatible with monotheism, because he is the THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 205 Son, who has his origin from the Father " ; these were the apostle's views, and they excluded in his mind the very possibility of a conflict between the Son's divine nature and the unity of God. They contain, both for the most fully developed religious feeling and for philosophical criticism, the amplest proofs that bowing the knee before Jesus is no offence against the first command ment. " The unconditioned can be conceived of only as a unit ; a plurality of absolutes would destroy the idea of the unconditioned, since we should necessarily regard these several absolutes as sustaining a certain re lationship to each other." They must limit each other. But if he, to whom we bow the knee as to the Father, and whom we honor as we honor the Father, is the Son of the Father, begotten of the Father, in substance and will one with the Father, it is out of the question that the Father should be limited by the Son. The Holy Ghost also is represented in the Scriptures as dependent on the Father. This is likewise implied by his name : " the breathing of God," irvevfia @eov, is the term which the language of Scripture applies to him. This indicates his origin in the Father. He is the breathing, i.e. the thing breathed of God. Whether the words of Jesus in John xv. 26, " When the Com forter shall come, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me," have reference only to the Spirit's coming upon the apostles, or also to his coming from the Father, cannot be determined. The object of the whole verse is to delare, that, after the out pouring of the Spirit, who testifies of Jesus, no earthly power would be able to prevent the apostles from testi fying of Jesus ; and as the words " who proceedeth from 18 206 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF the Father" subserve this object best if the Spirit's origin in the Father is included, this interpretation is the better one. Again : as the Son's dependence on the Father appears from the fact, that it is the highest happiness of the Son to be merged in the Father, so the dependence of the Spirit appears from this, that it constitutes his happiness to search the deep things of God (1 Cor. ii. 10). The dependence of the Spirit on the Father is indirectly taught by Christ addressing his prayers always to the Father, never to the Spirit, as well as by the apostles, who likewise never pray to the Spirit, but ask him of the Father, e.g. Eph. i. 17 ; iii. 16. On the contrary, the Holy Spirit prays in our hearts to the Father, as Christ intercedes for us with him ; the Son and the Spirit thus praying constantly to the Father evince their dependence on him. In the last place, as the Son leads our souls to the Father, so is the Spirit also the Father's messenger to man, and the conductor of man to God. The Father sends us the Spirit ; it is the adoption- by the Father which the Holy Ghost effects in us by begetting us into the divine life ; it is the adoption by the Father of which the Spirit testifies to the believer, enabling him to say, " Abba, Father" (Rom. viii. 14-16). 2. CONSUBSTANTIALITY OP THE SON WITH THE FATHER. §36. One purpose in this paragraph is to develop the other factor of Christ's sonship, the consubstantiability of the Son with the Father, according to the Scriptures. Here we set out with the words of Christ (John v. 26) : " As the Father has life in himself, so has he THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 207 given to the Son to have life in himself." In these words Christ confirms his assertion, that " the hour will come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those that hear shall live." From this and the whole context it is evident that the Son has life in himself in a sense essentially different from that in which (according to John vi. 53 ; 1 John iii. 15) every believer is said to have life in himself. Believers raceive life from Christ, so that in virtue of their life- union with him they rise superior to death, while Christ has life in himself quickening with his voice whomso ever he will. No believer can say with Christ : "I am the resurrection and the life "; " I am the life ; he that believeth in me shall live, although he were dead," and " Whoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die " (John xiv. 6 ; xi. 25 ; xiv. 19). He alone is the fountain of life for all, while a believer never becomes a fountain of life ; John iv. 14 speaking not of an overflowing o'f the life received upon others, but of a continued increase of the same life in the believer. The correct translation of John vii. 37, 38 is: " If any one thirst let him come unto me, and let every one drink that believeth in me, as the Scripture says : Rivers of living water will flow from his (Jesus's) belly" ; but however it may be translated, nothing more can be inferred from it than the service which one man renders to another by preaching the Gospel to him, the apostles even having claimed nothing more. Yea, the believer cannot even have life in himself in such a manner as to possess it independently ; only as a branch of the vine can he bear fruit, according to John xv. 6 ; if there did not flow from the throne of God and of the Lamb a stream of the water of life, if there 208 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF was no tree of life in the city of the new earth, death would still be there (Apoc. xxii. 1, etc.). It is the adoption by which we have life (Rom. viii. 13, 14). Christ is the fountain of life not only for those who believe in him, he has ascended above all heavens in order to fill the universe with his gifts, and with his life (Eph. iv. 10) ; part of the universe being the angels (comp. Col. i. 16). " Upholding all things by. the word of his power, he sat down on the right hand ofthe Majesty on high " (Heb, i. 3). He thus merely returned to his original relation to the world, it being he by whom God made the worlds, by whom and for whom all things are created, that are in heaven and upon earth, both visible and invisible ; whether thrones, or powers, or principalities, or dominions, all things are made by him, and without him nothing is made that is made. All things are also upheld by him, and both physical and spiritual life is from him (Heb. i. 2 ; Col. i. 16, 17 ; John i. 3, 4). This is the construction which Christ himself and his apostles put on his words : " The Father has given to the Son to have life in him self, even as the Father has life in himself." " Even as the Father has life in himself"; as the Father is the source of all life, of all living beings, so also is the Son. For this reason Paul can place by the side of the one God the Father, Jesus Christ as the one Lord, since all things are by the Son, as they are of the Father (1 Cor. viii. 6). As the fountain of life, as the independent dispenser of life, the Son is entitled to the appellation of Lord in conjunction with the Father. The world has its existence only in him, who upholds and fills it with his gifts ; in God only man lives, moves, and has his being (Acts xvii. 28) ; only by THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 209 virtue of the condescending love of that God, who is a God not of the dead, but of the living, who enters into a covenant with us, and desires that we should live in him, do we survive death (Matt. xxii. 32 ; Luke xx. 37). But he in whom the world has its being is the Son. He is not only living, but the fountain of life. Because he calls all things into being and upholds •them by the power which the Father gives him accord ing to his will, the apostle says that all things are of and by the Father. But in so far as the Son creates and upholds all things by a delegated power, the Scriptures affirm that all things are created 'and upheld by him. §37. The second element in which the substance of the Son is radically different from that of the world and equal to that of the Father, is expressed in Christ's declaration of the glory which he had with the Father before the world was (John xvii. 5) and in the words : " Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was I am" (John viii. 58). What we call " time," is the world's form of existence, its existence in a constant change, in a state of constant appearing and disappear ing, or a constant flow. The world is temporal ; apart from the world there is no time, no subjection to change, no necessity of a change, no need of growth or of growing old. There may be changes in God, but they are voluntary, not rising to perfection or sinking to imperfection ; since in him there is no want, for him there exists no necessity. Christ, now, by saying of himself that he had glory with the Father before the world was, places himself beyond the reach of time 18* 210 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF and the confines of the world. Or is not this declara tion of Christ to be taken in its strictly literal sense ? Did Christ, perhaps, only mean to say that he was before what is commonly termed the world, before men and angels, but not that he did not belong to the category of the world or of time ? This interpretation is not only arbitrary and without regard to the depth of Jesus's prayer, but is altogether inconsistent with the glory which he claims for himself before the world was, with which he now prays that he may be clothed again, and which exhibited itself in his supreme power in heaven and on earth (Matt, xxviii. 18). This declaration-of Jesus that he had glory with the Father before the world was, means, therefore, that he was conscious of having a life that had no beginning, not being preceded by a state of non-existence. The other word : " Before Abraham was, I am," places his superiority over time beyond all misconception. The use of the present tense is evidently to emphasize the fact, that he is above time. Since the more immediate object of this remark, viz. the defense of his declara tion : " Your father Abraham was glad to see my day," might have been fully realized by the affirmation " before Abraham was, I was" the use of the present tense, " I am," deserves the more attention, and is evidently chosen to teach the eternity of his being. In John xvii. 5 the present tense could not be used, because he had not then the glory which he had of his own accord tempo rarily laid aside, wherefore he prays to be glorified again, but in viii. 58 the present tense was in place, because not his state of glory, but his mere existence is spoken of. The self-designation of Jesus in the Apocalypse, " The first and the last, the Alpha and the THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 211 Omega, the beginning and the end," teaches the same truth. As to the apostles, all passages in which they ascribe to Jesus the mediation of the world's creation, teach necessarily his existence not only before men and angels, before heaven and earth, but before everything that is temporal, consequently before time itself. He who mediates the creation of the world cannot be a part of the. world, his existence before all things (Col. i. 17) cannot mean his merely being older than all things ; all things that have an existence (6 yiyovev~) having come into being (iyevero') by him, he himself cannot have come into being (John i. 3). But as Christ himself teaches his eternity, which may be inferred from John xvii. 5, in express terms (viii. 58), so the apostles also teach it directly. The affirmation, " He is before all things " (Col. i. 17) is analogous to " before Abraham was, I am." The Epistle to the Hebrews (i. 10-12) applies to Christ not only the words : " Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of thy hands," but also what follows in Ps. cii. 26, 27 : " They shall perish but thou remainest ; and they all shall wax old as does a garment ; and as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed ; but thou art the same and thy years shall not fail." The Spirit of Christ is an eternal Spirit (Heb. ix. 14). The world which God made by the Son (i. 2) being called aeons = ages, it follows that he by whom God made it is beyond and above what takes place in time. And how could John speak of him before he was manifested (1 John i. 2) directly as eternal life, if he regarded him as having come into existence (yev6[ievo<;~), or as sub- 212 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF ject to change ? This very term proves, to those who still look for proof, that the expressions " from the beginning" and "in the beginning" (1 John i. 1 ; John i. 1) are but the popular name for eternity, for a state without beginning. The Son, as superior to time, is distinct from the world in a threefold sense : (a) he is above the necessity of change, while the world is in a constant change ; (&) he knows no end, while the world will come to an end ; (c) his existence has not been preceded by a state of non-existence, as has been the case with the world. For that the world — as a whole, and not only in its parts — was not before a certain number of years, nor will be after a certain period of time, is to the Christian philosopher an article of faith ; although many ingenious and pious men of an cient and modern time, have denied the beginning and the end of the world. Whoever denies that creation is a beginning can only with difficulty interpret passages like the following : " The glory which I had with the Father before the foundation of the world " (John xvii. 5) ; " He [the Son of God] is before all things " (Col. i. 17) ; " Christ was fore-ordained before the foun dation of the world to be the Lamb of God *' (1 Pet- i. 20); "Believers are chosen before the foundation of the world" (Eph. i. 4), so as to bring them into har mony with his system, changing the temporal into an ontological priority. Moreover, the contradiction be tween a world without beginning and without end, and the leading ideas of the Scriptures is by no means thus removed. In Gal. iv. 4, speaking of the fulness of time, Paul has the history of mankind in view, which to the believer, though in an endless succession of worlds, has beginning and end, and can, therefore. THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 213 attain its fulness. But in Eph. i. 10 a fulness of time is spoken of with reference to the entire universe, and the apostle says that the mystery of the divine will proposes to itself to unite all things both in heaven and on earth unto himself in Christ. But how can aeons whose succession is without beginning and end have a fulness, or how can an endless line be compre hended in Christ ? The infinite from its very infinitude cannot have a central point, nor be divided into units. A body with an endless number of members is a self- contradiction. Only what God has numbered can be thought of by him at the same time. For this reason the doctrine of a succession of worlds, without begin ning and without end, contradicts the apostle's dec laration that all things are created for God's beloved Son, as the first-born of every creature, the image of the invisible God ; or, that all things are of, by, and for God (Col. i. 16 ; Rom. xi. 36). An endless succession of aeons can never reflect the substance of the Son of God, for if innumerable worlds are needed in order to reveal the divine fulness of thought expressed in the Son, each aeon, however long, is in comparison with the whole too insignificant to claim any attention, and God's self-revelation in and by his creation becomes a mere sport without result. Hence, not only every scriptural, but every theistic view of God and the world must reject a creation with out beginning or end ; a numberless succession of aeons is consistent only with pantheism, which alone can prop erly speak of a development leading to no result, and reduce the interests of individual life, as well as those of the history of the world, to a conflict without victory. It is true, indeed, that the Scriptures promise to per- 214 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF sonal creatures a life without end ; but this life is not destined to pursue forever an unattainable object, and is, consequently, unlike the painful task imposed by the doctrine of an endless creation ; viz. that the ideal of the world should struggle in vain after realization through a numberless succession of aeons. The life of the blessed is, on the contrary, endless, because it is perfect in itself. It still undergoes changes, but is no longer in servitude to time ; having nothing more to desire or to renounce, each moment is a realization of its ideal, perfect in its way, and therefore blessed. Although continual changes are still going on, time is in the service of life, and not life in the service of time ; God has become all in all. Hence the aeons of the perfect and blessed are neither numbered nor numera ble ; but the aeons of individual life, being in a state of development, and the aeons of the organism of the world, must be numbered ; the time between beginning and end must be measured, lest its development toward its end and object prove futile. Man, indeed, does not know the number of centuries that have elapsed since the creation- of the world, or will elapse to its end ; but they are not numberless ; God knows, aud has counted them. Looking from the present there must be a moment which was the first, as well as another which will be the last ; prior to the first moment there was no world, and beyond the last there will be no further development ; but the external form of the world will be destroyed, and whatever life is left will not consist in the pursuit of an end, but will be a blessed display of vital powers perfect at every moment. It has been argued, with no good reason however, that an endless exertion of God's creative power is a THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 215 necessary conseqeuce of his unchangeableness, since transition from a non-creating to a creating state and vice versa would be a change in God. But might not the same be said, with equal force, of God's passing from creating one thing to another, or from the creation of a world to its government ? or of his hearing our prayers whenever they are offered to him, or of his coming to a converted sinner, or of his leaving the backslider ? This unchangeableness of God would do away with all faith in God's living relation to his world. The scrip tural doctrine of the incarnation of the Logos, an incar nation in which he lays aside the glory which he has with the Father before the foundation of the world, is still less compatible with this view of God's unchange ableness. It cannot therefore be that the successive ingredients of the world's life are a form of existence foreign to God. He is- the Designer and Creator of the temporal world, and makes his eternal thoughts tempo ral in it. He has an adequate knowledge of the tem poral world, knowing the future as future, the present as present, and the past as past. He is the Ruler of the temporal world, who develops by his breath all the " germs of life deposited in the creations of every sphere of the universe ; when he turns away from any process of life, it dies ; but when he furnishes with new vital powers what is about to die, it revives. His own life is,- doubtless, beyond any relation to time, but not his life in connection with the world. While he creates the temporal world, lives in it, and changes it, he is himself subject to no change. He is the King of the aeons, living in them. He was no poorer when there was no world, nor is he richer when there is ; his life was not one of inactivity before he created the world, 216 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF but one of infinitely abounding activity ; nor has his life become laborious by the creation and government of the world, since the government of this temporal world cannot fatigue him whose own divine life is a blessed rest. Not even thus much can be maintained, that the idea of God excludes every change or succession in the divine life, neither change nor succession being in it self imperfection, but subjection to, or the necessity of, change, i.e. the need of another state, because the present does not answer to its ideal, or the necessity of descending from an exalted position to a lower sphere. The world is temporal, and thus subject to change. However reluctantly we may part with the present moment of our lives, we cannot retain it ; but this sub jection to change has absolutely no place in the inde pendent God, since he, and he alone, produces the fluctuations in his existence. He is whatever he chooses to be. Any change in his existence which he may desire is not therefore in servitude to time, nor can it be said that a desired change proves an imperfect state, since various states may be equally perfect. §38. With regard to the third I, in whose name we are baptized, as well as in that of the Father and the Son, we have no direct statement by Jesus which compares, in all points, with the declaration, " As the Father has life in himself, so has he given to the Son to have life in himself," or with that concerning the glory which the Son had with the Father, before the world was, or " Before Abraham was, I am." We have no positive testimony of either the Spirit's consubstantiality with THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 217 the Father or the eternity of his personal existence. If any one should venture, the assertion that the Father has caused the Spirit to proceed from out of himself as a personality in the course of time, to subserve the divine economy, we could uot refute him with the letter of any declaration either by Jesus or his apostles. The Spirit's consubstantiality with the Father is, how ever, logically inferred from a number of passages of the New Testament. Whatever is therein stated con cerning his relation to the Father, to Jesus, and to the believer, is of such a nature as to warrant this infer ence. As neither the mediatorship of Jesus, nor the fact that he who has Jesus has life, would be possible without Jesus's consubstantiality with the Father, so the Holy Spirit could not accomplish the regeneration of man, whereby he enters the kingdom of God and becomes a child of God, — this being a birth from God himself, — if his substance were not of that of the Father (John iii. 5 ; comp. i. 13; Rom. viii. 14). Again, how could the saints be called temples of the Holy Ghost, if the Spirit were not God ? (1 Cor. iii. 16 ; vi. 19.) Blasphemy of the Spirit is, for this reason, the unpardonable sin, because in the Spirit God reveals himself as God in his full majesty to man. We infer the consubstantiality of Jesus with the Father from his declaration, that " no one knoweth the Father but the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son would reveal him " (Matt. xi. 27). To this declaration corresponds Jesus's statement concerning the Spirit, that he should lead the disciples into all truth, and what Paul says of the Spirit's searching the deep things of God, and imparting his gifts to every man as he will (John xvi. 13 ; 1 Cor. ii. 10 ; xii. 11) . To Paul the Spirit's consubstan- 19 218 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF tiality with the Father is a matter of course, so much so, that he compares the relation of the Spirit to God with that of the human spirit to man (1 Cor. ii. 11). We infer the Son's consubstantiality likewise from the words of Jesus, that no one knoweth the Son but the Father (Matt. ii. 27) ; and to this declaration corres ponds that of Jesus, that the world cannot receive the Spirit, because it neither sees nor knows him ; as well as that of Paul, that the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit (John xiv. 17 ; 1 Cor. ii. 14). Again, as Jesus says of himself, not only that he knows and testifies of the truth, but that he is the truth, since all things that are the Father's are also his, all the thoughts of God being his, and being realized in his manifestation ; so John designates the Holy Spirit as the last, highest, and decisive witness of the divine sonship of Jesus, because the Spirit is the truth, i.e. because the counsels, thoughts, and deep things of God are likewise those of the Spirit (John xiv. 6 ; xvi. 15 ; 1 John v. 6). The Son's consubstantiality with the Father is implied in the very term " Son " ; so the Spirit is called " the breath " (ruacli) of God ; and one's breath is not less his substance than his seed. It is, indeed, true that there are many breaths of God ; the soul of man also being a breath of God (Gen. ii. 7 ; Isa. lvii. 16), even ¦ as there are many sons of God (Luke xx. 37), angels and regenerate men being so called (Gen. vi. 24 ; Job xxxviii. 7 ; Luke xx. 36 ; Rom. viii. 14 ; Gal. iv. 6) ; but in antithesis to the many sons of God is the only- begotten, the Son emphatically, as con substantial with the Father ; so also is the Holy Ghost opposed to the many breaths of God and the many spirits, as the breath THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 219 of God and the Spirit of God, because he is consubstan- tial with God. In the last place, is not the silence of divine revelation concerning the personal difference between the Spirit of God and God himself during so many centuries, the most eloquent testimony to his consubstantiality with God ? It is only because the Spirit is also God that he could appear during the whole economy of the Old Tes tament as identical with God, who breathes him, till Jesus reveals him at last, on the eve of his passion, as a distinct personality. In the case of the man Jesus,- his consubtantiality with the Father was to be distinctly set forth, while his distinction from the Father, who had sent him, to whom he prayed and led mankind, was a matter of course ; but in the case of the Spirit, his personal distinction from the Father had to be testi fied, while his consubstantiality with the Father was, for the wise at least, a matter of course. The Spirit's consubstantiality with God implies also his superiority to time, for which reason his personal distinction from God must necessarily be eternal ; the idea that he be came personal so many ages or aeons ago being exclu ded by the very conception of his nature. Had he been personal only from an epoch; he could not be said to be equal with God, who is eternal. As the Son's equality and co-eternity with the Father do not co-exist inde pendently, but are necessarily conditioned by each other, so it cannot be said ofthe Holy Ghost that he is, indeed, according to the Scriptures, equal with God, but that the Scriptures leave the question as to his eternal personality undecided. It would also be erro neous to suppose that the Spirit became personal in order to subserve the purposes of the divine economy. 220 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF It is impossible that the Son, being consubstantial with the Father, should have been begotten, or the Holy Ghost have been breathed, by God on account of the finite world ; this would be making the divine life sub servient to worldly purposes. He who does not view the begetting of the Son and the breathing of the Spirit into separate personalities as an everlasting act, cannot consistently retain their consubstantiality ; Son and Spirit must for him become mere creatures. The Spirit, then, is also consubstantial with the 'Father. He searches the deep things of God, which are beyond the comprehension of the natural man. His mode of operation is that of God ; his habitation, or rather the place inhabited by him, is a temple of God; and being consubstantial with God, he is also, like God, superior to time. Moreover, these very teachings of the Scriptures con cerning the Spirit enable us to penetrate somewhat more deeply into the Son's consubstantiality with the Father. We have seen that the Son is the life of the world — the fountain of life for the first and second creations this being the import of his declaration, that the Father has given him to have life in himself, even as the Father has life. As the Father is the fountain of life, so like wise is the Son. Here it may indeed be objected, that if the Father is the Son's fountain of life, and the Son only the world's, both equality and inferiority to the Father are taught. For as the Son is superior to the world, so the Son's fountain of life (the Father) is superior to the world's fountain of life (the Son). From the Father proceeds infinite, creative life, while from the Son proceeds only temporal life. Man, it THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 221 may be contended, calls the power which gave exist ence to the world " Omnipotence," but the Father's power, which begets the eternal Son, is " Omnipotence " in a still higher sense than the power of the Son. Add to this, that the Scriptures do not even declare that the Son created the world, but that the Father created it through him. A profounder insight into the declarations of Jesus concerning his relation to the Holy Spirit shows that his words, "As the Father has life in himself, so has he given to the Son to have life in himself," have a higher meaning than that the Son is the fountain of life of the world, although this is the sense in which our Lord primarily uses the words in John v. In John xiv. Jesus says of the " other Paraclete," who is to come to his disciples after his departure in his name, in the first place ; " I will pray the Father, and he will send him unto you " (vs. 16) ; " the Father will send him " (vs. 26). But he does not stop here, but goes on to a higher mode of expression : " But when the Comforter shall come, whom I will send unto you from the Father " (xv. 26) ; and again : " If I depart, I will send him unto you." (xvi. 7). The climax is reached in vs. 13-15: " When he, the Spirit of truth, is come he will guide you into all truth ; for he shall not speak of himself, but whatsoever he shall hear, that he shall speak. He shall glorify me ; for he shall receive of mine and show it unto you. All things that the Father hath are mine ; therefore said I, he shall take of mine, and shall show it unto you." The last words, especially, claim our attention. If it were not for vs. 15, vs. 10 might be understood as affirming that it was the Father alone from whom the Spirit heard what he showed unto the 19* 222 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF disciples, or it might be supposed to teach that the Holy Spirit would draw exclusively on the Incarnation and the earthly life of the Saviour, or that he would inculcate, above all others, the truth that there is salva tion in the name of the Crucified alone. But the Lord says that, because all things which are the Father's are the Son's, the Holy Ghost will take of the Son's, and show it to the disciples. If the Spirit, then, reveals to the disciples the thoughts and decrees of God, they are no more the Father's than the Son's, for which reason the Spirit takes as well from the Son's as from the Father's. For this reason it is Jesus as much as the Father from whom the Spirit hears what he declares. The Spirit occupies here the same relation to the Son which the Son occupies with regard to the Father in Apoc. i. 1 : " The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to show unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass." The mission of the Spirit by the Son, of which Jesus speaks in his farewell address, is adverted to again by the risen Saviour in Luke xxiv. 49. These declarations of the Scriptures warrant the conclusion, that as the mission of the Son by the Father and his hearing from the Father (Apoc. i. 1) are based upon the Son's hav ing his life from the Father, so the mission of the Spirit by the Son and his hearing from the Son point to the Spirit's origin in the Son. For this reason the Occi dental Church is right in teaching that the Spirit is breathed by both Father and Son. For why should the Spirit hear from the Son, if his life and being are not conditioned by the Son ? The words of Jesus, " All things that the Father has are mine," are of such universal import, that not only THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 223 the thoughts and decrees, but also the fulness of life of the Father, yea, whatever the Father has, are therein declared to be also the Son's ; just as in xvii. 10 the same words imply that the world of personal beings also is both the Father's and the Son's. In John xvi. 15 it is the context which leads us to think mainly of the thoughts and decrees of God, since it is the method of the Spirit's teaching which is hero under consideration. Since, however, acccording to other passages, the Holy Spirit enlightens the believer, and fills him with new life, we are authorized to interpret the words of Jesus, " all that the Father has, is mine ; therefore I say, that the Spirit takes of mine," as implying that the life communicated by the Spirit is from the fulness of both Father and Son. And this also leads to the inference, that as the Son is our life, because the Father has given him to have life in himself, so the Spirit fills us with newness of life, because Father and Son give him to have life in himself. If in John xv. 26 the words, " the Spirit of truth that proceeds from the Father," do not teach, besides his bestowal on the apostles, his own vital proceeding from the Father, there is no passage in holy writ which treats of the Spirit's proceeding from the Father, except that his very name, breath of God, points to this. But he is called both the Father's and the Son's Spirit (irvevpa, ruacli). Paul writes (Rom. viii. 9), " you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his" ; again (viii. 14), " As many as are led by the Spirit of God,. they are the sons of God ; for we have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but ye have received the spirit 224 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father"; but in Gal. iv. 6, " Because ye are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father."' This interchange of the expressions, " Spirit of the Father" and "Spirit of the Son" as identical, can be accounted for only on the supposition, that as the Spirit is poured out on the apostles by Father and Son, so he also proceeds, as to his own personal life, from both Father and Son. If the phrase, " breath of God," implies his proceeding from the Father, the phrase, " breath of Christ," implies his proceeding from Christ. The idea that Christ sends his Spirit, whom he does not at the same time breathe, lowers the divine life too much to the standard of human affairs. John (in Apoc. iv. 5) beholds seven lamps of fire before the throne of God, " which are the seven spirits of God," but (in vs. 5, 6) in the midst of the throne the Lamb having seven eyes " which are the seven spirits of God." Again, it is said (iii. 1) of Christ : " Thus saith he who has the seven spirits of God." The Father's Spirit is therefore also the Son's Spirit. Add to this, that (xxii. 17) the Spirit prays from the heart of the church to Jesus, sending groanings (Rom. viii. 26) from the hearts of believers up to God. This prayer of the Spirit to the Son is inconsistent with the Spirit's independence of the Son. Thus the Scriptures enable us to see that the Son is not only the fountain of life, preservation, and ren ovation of this temporal and finite world, but also of the Spirit of God, wherein the Son's consubstantiality with the Father is revealed in its highest degree. And yet it is but the consistent development of the term " Son." As a human son would be unlike his THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 225 father if he could not beget a son, so it would prove the Son's inferiority to the Father, if he could be only the fountain of life to a world that is unlike himself. Here it may be objected by the superficial observer, that since the Holy Ghost is not a fountain of life equal to himself, he is not equal to either Father or Son. But the fact that no fourth personality proceeds from the Holy Spirit does not prove that the nature of the Spirit precludes this, but only that, according to the will of God, the whole divine life is to be included in a Trinity. In a similar manner it might be denied that God is Omnipotent because he cannot undo what has been done. As it can form no part of divine Omnip otence to do what is irrational, so it cannot be expected that the third divine I should show forth his infinite power by begetting a fourth 7, if the existence of this I is irrational. §39. The Son is the world's fountain of life ; his life is exalted above time, without beginning, exempt from subjection to change and from decay ; the Son is, con jointly with the Father, the fountain of life to the Holy Ghost : these are the points of the Son's consubstan tiality with the Father that we have traced thus far. From this point, how does the inquiring mind long to look into the inner sanctuary of this consubstantiality, the sanctuary of the substance of the Son, and thereby into that of the Father also ! For the interior of this sanctuary has not yet been disclosed to our view by the ascertained fact that he is the fountain of life to the world. The world being created toward the Son, he had a full insight into the organism of the worlds, 226 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF both personal and impersonal, so that he who could : prehend the philosophy of the universe would there have approximately explored the Son's fulness life and thought. But we scarcely know the fi elements even of the philosophy of human histo Thus our knowledge of the world as created by the S and toward the Son gives us a view of the energy his power, and a faint idea of the ocean of his thougl and life, the imperfect image of which is the ri organism of the world ; but the idea of this is not f sight of it. Nor are we introduced into the inter of his -life by our knowledge that he is exalted abo time, the eternity of his life being only its form existence, but by no means its totality, even as o existence in time is only its form, not its substani The Son's breathing of the Spirit conjointly with t Father is the highest manifestation of his consubsta tiality with the Father. But although this breathi of the Spirit is not, like the creation of the world, external act, but an act of the inner life of the Sc yet even this knowledge leads us only to the thresho' not into the sanctuary of the Son's life, because t inner life of the Spirit breathed by the Son is also cc cealed from our comprehension. As the life of a man is not fully described by cc ing him a spiritual-psychical creature, but whate^ ascends and descends in his inmost being, issuing foi from the fountain of his peculiarities, constitutes I being, so the life of God is not comprehended in o knowledge of him as the independent, self-constitut personality. Even our knowledge of God as infin love, which we have by revelation, does not embrace t depth of his life. He is infinite love i.e., he comrr THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 227 nicates the infinite fulness of his life to the Son and the Spirit in begetting and breathing ; but what is the nature of this life which he pours into the Son ? who can describe its riches? who can reveal to us its ful ness ? No one is able to do this in this life : " For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in hhn?" (1 Cor. ii. 11".) Yea, whoever closely studies himself is obliged to confess that he is far from knowing everything that is in himself. The contents of our own hearts are but imperfectly known to us, but with our spiritual nature, from which the contents of our hearts flow, we are still less acquainted. It is, therefore, conclusive evidence of superficiality and shallowness of mind to ignore haugh tily what the apostle says (1 Cor. ii. llb) : " The things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God." It is, indeed, true that this Spirit who searches the deep things of God, has revealed to us some of them, viz. the depth of God's love for sinners (vs. 10") ; but of the judgments and ways of God toward sinners much remained mysterious even to Paul (Rom. xi. 33) ; and how much more of the depths of God's innermost life ! The inner depths of Father and .Son, then, those depths of life through which they are blessed, remain a mystery for us while in this life, and accordingly, the sanctuary of the Son's consubstantiality with the Father. But it is, for the present, of the utmost importance for us to know that there are depths as well in the Son as in the Father, and that the Son's are the same as the Father's'. Arianism, by contenting itself with the abstractions of God's being unbegotten and of his aseity (self-exis tence), but ignoring the innermost depths of God, found 228 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF in the begotten Son only a creature. But the Lord himself says : " All that is thine is mine," for which reason the Spirit of God, searching the deep things of God, searches those of the Son as well as those of the Father. This very unity of the depths of life of Father and Son is the inner cause of their conjointly breath ing the Spirit. §40. The Scriptures call God's world-creating act a speak ing of God. The heavens are made by the word of Jehovah ; he speaks, and it is done ; his call has established the heavens (Ps. xxxiii. 6, 9 ; Isa. xlviii. 13). The creation of the world is thus designated as an act of God's will, a spiritual act. On the other hand, John calls the pre-existent Son the Logos (Word) of God. There must then, be some similarity between the manner of God's creating the world and that of his producing his Son ; the production is in either case an act of the will, or an act of the spirit. This similarity, however, presents but one side. If the world and the Son had been produced in a maimer altogether similar, there would be no room for that infinite distance between the Son and the world, in con sequence of which the Son is unchangeable, like God; while the world is under subjection to time, the Son has life in himself, so that he is the Mediator of the origin and preservation of the world, while the world is without life in itself, having its life in the Son. This difference, therefore, between the producing of the Son and of the world is expressed by the very term " Son." A son is of the seed of his father ; it is the father's substance which reappears in the son. Th« THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 229 expression " reflection of the Father's glory," made use of in the Epistle to the Hebrews, also presupposes the sameness of the Son's nature with that of the Father. The two views of the Son, which are exhibited in his designation as " Word " and " Son," must be com pared in order to convey a correct idea of the begetting of the Son by the Father. This is both a speaking and a producing, or it is a spiritual producing, a productive act of that God who is spirit. In man, too, these two kinds of producing are found. Man imitates the creative act of God. God utters his thoughts, and the world is made, and man strives to express his mind by words, deeds, works of art, etc. And as it is in the case of the world's creation by God, God, indeed, realizing his fulness of thoughts in the world, so that it exhibits to the thoughtful observer the invisible being of God, although the world is only a meagre image of God, while the Father's real self appears in the Son : so is it with man ; the production of the artist's work, or whatever man may bring forth from his very inmost soul, is but the shadow of man, while his full and real image re-appears in his son. With man, begetting is a physico-psychical act, while the production of a work of art by the artist is a spe cifically mental act ; so God's act of creating the world is mental, while that of begetting the Son is both mental and physical. God creates the world by the act of his will, calling into being what is not, in order to represent the fulness of his thoughts materially ; but God begets his Son while his will causes his own substance to be developed into a second I or personality, that is, God of God, 20 230 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF because of the same substance with God. If we com pare God with fire or light, it is light of God's light, fire of God's fire, which is developed into a second /in the Son. §41. We have seen above, that it is the Son's dependence on the Father which, in apostolic times, left no room even for the question, whether or not Christianity was opposed to monotheism. But in the Son's consubstan tiality with the Father we have the reason, for which Christ commands his followers to honor him as they honor the Father. The Apostle Paul desires for the newly-established churches peace and grace, both from the Father aud the Lord Jesus Christ, and represents Christians as men who call upon the name of the Lord; for which reason also the apostles trace to Christ's presence in the believer, and his glorious coming, the origin, growth, and completion of the divine life ; and, according to the Apocalypse, the inhabitants of heaven praise the Lamb as they do the Father ; and finally, the apostles call him directly God ; and the risen Saviour himself approves of this title, when applied to him by Thomas. It is, indeed, true that the Father's life proceeds from himself, while that of the Son flows from the Father ; this being implied in the term " Son," to whom the Father gives to have life in himself. Aseity (a se ipso) is the Father's exclusive prerogative. For this reason the New Testament so often calls the Father God, instead of reserving this term for the whole Trinity ; for this reason John calls the Father " the God " (o 0eo9), while- he calls the Son " God " fftcAc\ ¦ THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 231 for this reason the New Testament represents the Father as the God of Jesus Christ. The divine attributes, too, have a somewhat modified meaning when predicated of the Son. In so far as the Son is without beginning or end, unchangeably exalted above time, he is eternal, like the Father ; but this, his eternal life, he has re ceived from the Father, while the Father's eternity is based upon his aseity ; the Son's is the gift of the Father. In so far as the Son is unchangeable in his will, and exalted above apostatizing from himself, he is holy, like the Father ; but the Father's will is holy be cause it is unchangeably one with the law given by the Father to himself, while the will of the Son is holy because it is unchangeably one with the law given by the Father to the Son. The perfection of the Son's will is, that it is unchangeable " toward the Father," " in the bosom of the Father," or that it is unchange ably obedient to the Father, or that it is unchangeable in the direction ; " I thank thee Father for so it seemed good in thy sight " (Matt. ii. 25, 26 ; Heb. x. 5-9). Thus also those attributes are modified which we ascribe to God with regard to his relation to the world. We ascribe omnipotence to the Son, because the world has been created by him, but distinguish it from that of the Father, because the Scriptures declare that the world, though made by the Son, is from the Father, or because the source of life, by virtue of which the Son created the world, was given him by the Father. With respect to the omniscience of the Son, the title of the Apocalypse is very remarkable : " The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him " (i. 1). The acknowledgment of the Son in his state of humili ation, that he did not know the day or hour of his 232 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF second advent (Mark xiii. 32) cannot possibly be true of him in his state of exaltation, for as he is the Ruler of the universe, he must be omniscient ; but he derives his knowledge from the Father ; and the laws, ways, and times of the Father form the object of his knowl edge, while the Father's omniscience is the knowledge of things ordained by the Father himself. But notwithstanding all this, the Son's consubstan tiality with the Father is real. Its basis or foundation is this : that it is God's own substance, or nature, which, by the will of God, is organized as a second I; the fact that the Father's fire of life flows from himself, whilst that of the Son flows from the Father, does not affect it. If we compare the nature of God with fire or light, we find that the Son is fire of this fire, light of this light ; add to this, that it is this stream of fire or light in its fulness which constitutes the Son, and not mere particles of it. The soul of man is, according to the Scriptures, also of divine nature ; for " tho Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ; and man became a living soul" (Gen. ii. 7) ; and, " we are also his offspring" (Acts xvii. 28). As this stream of life issuing from the Father and constituting the second 7, the Son is exalted above time, and has life in himself, as the Father has life in himself; the Son being thus life of life is God of God. The Father is God in an tithesis both to the world and the Son, while the Son is God of God in antithesis to the world. The world has been created through him, is preserved by him, and the world of sinners lying in death receives new life from him. Hence it appears thatthis Mediator between God and man cannot be an intermediate being between God THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 233 and man. An intermediate being between the God of life and the world created by him, which has no life in itself, but only in God, — an intermediate being between both, and equally distant from both, is an absurdity. The distance between God and the world is infinite, a halfway between them is, consequently, out of the ques tion. The Son does, indeed, resemble the world in being, like the world, the Word of God, and owing his .subsistence to the word of God, also in not being of himself, but, like the world, by the will of the Father. And it may be owing* to this resemblance of the Son to the world that he could become its Mediator, yea, even enter into time and become incarnate. But as the Son has his existence in such wise from the Father, that he is the stream of life itself, flowing from the Father as a second I, and thus has life in himself, while he is, at the same time, the life of the world, both as to its crea- ation and renovation, it is manifest that the distance between the Son and the world is also infinite. The Son has his origin in God, but his origin is so entirely different from that of the world, that even by virtue of this origin the Son is God in antithesis to the world. But the highest proof of the real divinity of the Son is, that he is the source, not only of the finite life of this world, but also of the infinite life of the Holy Ghost. Thus we see how fully these two great truths har monize : 1. The unity of God ; for the Father is also the God ofthe Son and the fountaih of the Deity ; 2. The divinity of the Son ; for the Father gives to the Son to have life in himself, as the Father has life. in himself; again, What is the Father's is also the Son's. For us creatures the most practically important 20* 234 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF point in the Son's divinity is, that he is the fountain of the world's life, as the Father has given him to have life in himself. He being our life, we bow to him in thanksgiving, praise, and adoration. If we are asked, why Jesus commands (John v. 23) that the Son be honored as the Father, the context gives the answer : because the Son, like the Father, quickeneth whom he will, and the Father has committed all judgment to the Son. If the question is asked, why the Apostle Paul ¦ (1 Cor. viii. 6) places side by side with the Christian confession of the Father as the only God the confession of Christ as the only Lord, the context answers: we, believe in Christ as the only Lord, because all things were made by him, including ourselves, but we believe in the Father as the only God, because all things are of , him, and we toward him. The Father is the fountain (fons Deitatis), but the Son is included in the being of Jehovah ; otherwise he could not be called the only Lord, nor could all things be created by him. 3. The Act of the Son's Generation an Eternal Act. §42. The ancients expressed the substance of the Son by saying, that he was being begotten by the Father eter nally. This term does not, indeed, occur in the New Testament, but is fully sustained by its teachings, being the suitable expression of what Jesus and his apostles teach concerning the nature of the Redeemer. Both the Son's dependence on the Father and his consub stantiality with the Father are expressed therein ; for the begotten is dependent on him who begets, but par takes of his father's nature or substance. An eternal THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 235 begetting being claimed for the Son, he differs from the world by being exalted above time, above having a beginning, and above decay ; yet in this sense, that the Son's eternity is not like that of the Father, based upon his aseity, but upon an eternal giving by the Father. A misconception of the eternal generation must, however, be guarded against. For an unscientific view conceives of this act as if the Son had been begotten of the Father before all ages, but still fixes upon a point anterior to these ages, in which the act of begetting took place, and prior to which the Son existed in inde pendent glory with the Father. That according to this view the Son is not eternal, but only older than the world (by how many ages is of no account) is self- evident. When this view is closely examined, and its incon sistencies pointed out, its advocates say that this gen erative act of the Father is a mystery, involving a kind of contradiction, as a son must be younger than his father, and Jesus is said to have been begotten of the Father without beginning. Of this answer only thus much, however, is true, that to our present mode of thinking, or to the sensual shape of our thoughts necessary for our spiritual-physical nature in its present stage of development, generation seems to be identical with calling into existence what did not exist before, whence the opinion has arisen that the cause must in every instance necessarily be older than its effect, or the effect younger than the cause. And so long as our thinking is done by means of the brain, a physical substance, our thoughts cannot divest themselves of this idea, and we must, accord ingly, look upon every effect as the coming into exist- 236 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF ence from a state of nonentity, consequently as some thing that has a beginning. But how is it with the thoughts and the self-consciousness of God ? Are they not called forth by God ? No one will deny this. But was there ever a time when God was without self-con sciousness and without thoughts? Certainly not. Hence it is evident that there must be in God a producing not subject to time, and productions which have no beginning. And if so, the eternal generation of the Son offers no insurmountable difficulties. Yet we are compelled to admit that the idea of an eternal genera tion, when closely analyzed, presents a difficulty which we may hardly be able to solve in our present stage of existence, a difficulty which is not presented to our thought only in so far as this passes through a physical medium. The truth of an eternal generation is not of course affected thereby ; for it follows logically from the testimony of Jesus concerning himself, that he knew himself as the eternal Son of God. The eternal generation is an eternal truth, even if it transcends our present ability of comprehension. We have here, then, an illustration of the truth uttered by Paul, that our knowledge is imperfect. And where should the frag mentary, inorganic character of our temporal knowledge bo exhibited rather than in connection with the inner life of the Deity ? John says (Apoc. xix. 12, etc.) that the name " Logos of God " is only that by which he is called, but his real name knoweth no one but himself; and in vs. 12 the Lord himself styles the name which he will write upon the conquerors a new one. Yea, even the new name that will be given to the conqueror, i.e. the glory that is granted to him, is known only to him who receives it (ii. 17). There would be no bar- THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 237 mony between our temporal existence and our knowl edge, if we were able to attain a perfect knowledge of the inner life of God while in this life, and before we become like God (1 John iii. 2). The eternal generation is not only without beginning, but also without end. Had his begetting an end, it would expose the Son to a change ; the relation of his life would from the moment of this end be different from what it was before ; his life would comprise two sections, that of being begotten and that of being no longer begotten ; nor would this change be based upon a free act of his love, like his incarnation, but it would affect the very life of the Son. If thus brought under the law of time by the Father's act of begetting him ceasing, it would be of no more interest to maintain his being begotten without beginning. His exemption from the limitations of time, claimed by the Son for himself, when he says " before Abraham was, I am," would thus at once fall to the ground. We should thus be unavoidably forced to conclude that Christ is only the first of all creatures, a doctrine which saps the very foundation of his mediatorship, and of our redemption and faith in him. He is being begotten, therefore, not only without a beginning, but altogether beyond and above time. Or, as we are unable to designate things beyond time by their proper terms, — as our thought is inseparably connected with images expressing thought in the form of time and space, and all our expressions being taken from time and space — eternal generation is as much a present as a past or future act. But this very fact creates new difficulties. For if the life of the Son is a continual flow of life into him from the Father, how can it be said of the Son, as he 238 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF himself says, that he has life in himself, and wherein consists his difference from the world ? And if it is the Father who, in an everlasting now, organizes the stream of life from himself into a second life and a separate personality, how can this be reconciled with our idea of spirit, spirit determining itself by its own will and calling forth its self-consciousness by its own act? And the Son is spirit, like the Father. The world is supported by the word of God's power. It is God in whom we live, move, and have our con tinual being. But the relation of the created world to God is evidently different from that which existed between God and the world during the act of creating the latter ; otherwise how could that be understood which the Scriptures declare concerning the sabbatical rest of God ? This very change of the world's relation to God from the moment of its completed creation, or its partial independence from that moment, enables us to understand how man can have the power of free self-determination. And this self-determination is the highest prerogative of man, the characteristic difference between him and the brute, including, as it does, the power to love God. We can love him only whom we might also hate. In the next place, how can we account for our consciousness of guilt, for our longing for the pardon of our sins, if the existence of the world were an uninterrupted act of creation ? The doctrine that the preservation of the world is a continued cre ation of it makes God the author of sin, destroying all real difference between virtue and vice ; yea, by this doctrine not even man's self-consciousness can be ac counted for, since it destroys his liberty ; for every thorough examination of self-consciousness teaches that THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 239 to know ourselves is an act of free self-determination. In the last place, the doctrine that the preservation of the world is a continued creation destroys the very idea of creation, since God's creating activity would thus always fail of its result. These propositions are unquestionably calculated to place the difficulties of the notion of an everlasting generation in a clearer light. Of the world which has its life not in itself, but in the Son, it must be said, that it has, after it is created, a relative independence, since otherwise the liberty of both men and angels were incomprehensible ; but of the Son who has life in him self, and hence, is the life of the world ; of the Son, who is nothing but liberty, personality, and spirit ; of the Son, whose holiness consists in his voluntary and un changeable submission to the will of his. Father, of this Son how can we say, that he is being begotten forever, his life proceeding, without time and change, from the Father ? Where is the solution of the conflict between the passivity of being begotten and the activity of being personal, spiritual and holy ? Where is the har mony between an everlasting receiving from the Father and the eternal possession of life in himself ? We know, indeed, from our own experience, that the more we give up our own will in order to make the will of God the ruling principle within us, and the more fully we receive the life of God into ourselves, the nearer we approach true liberty, the clearer is our self-consciousness. But this very giving up of the natural will implies that we are comparatively free, that the act of our creation is complete and cannot be continually repeating itself, and this our experience does not, therefore, help us to understand the liberty 240 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF of the Son, whose begetting by the Father is at no time complete, but is an everlasting act. The result of our investigation is, therefore, this, that the generation of the Son by the Father is an act in which the passivity of being begotten does not ex clude, but include, independence of life for the Son, or his self-determination and liberty. This is the deepest mystery, though often overlooked, in the relation be tween the Son and the Father. The Scriptures tell us why we must honor him who has no aseity, even as the .Father, or as God, viz. because he has life in himself, so that the life of the world, yea, even that of the Spirit, depends on him. The Scriptures also teach us how the Son can be God even as the Father, without injury to monotheism. If the Son is begotten in an eternal now by the Father, -and the Holy Spirit is breathed in the same eternal now by the Father and the Son, if, more over, the Son and the Spirit are forever in their fountain " toward the Father," or " in the bosom of the Father," so that a relation, not only of the warmest love, but of a real life-union subsists between them (John xvii. 21 ; Apoc. i. 8 ; xxii. 3, etc.), their relation to each other cannot be measured by the existence, side by side, of a human father and son ; the unity of the original foun tain is safe, and the possibility of mutual limitation excluded, while the demands of monotheism are thus fully accorded. But how the Son's independence of life, his personality and liberty, can be reconciled with his receiving his life eternally from the Father will remain, in all probability, an unsolved mystery until our fragmentary knowledge shall have ceased, and we shall have passed from faith to sight ; for our earthly sphere of knowledge, which is the mirror of our knowl- THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 241 edge of divipe things, affords no analogy to a similar kind of generation. This is a mystery similar to that of the eternal unity of liberty and necessity in the being of God. The unity of liberty and necessity presents itself to us in our present state as the result of time. That sanctified souls cannot at last do otherwise than live in God, and that this necessity is only their true and perfect liberty, we can adequately comprehend ; but how he who exists of necessity, and cannot be other than he really is, or possibly will anything but what he really wills, can be eternally free in his will and state of existence, no one can understand, although every thoughtful mind clearly perceives that God is, and must be, as free as he is under necessity. §43. One of the two I's, which the Scriptures represent as being equal with God, being called "the Son of God" and " the Word of God," while the other is called " the breath of God," implies, that though both are co-equal with God, God of God, light of light, issuing forth in an eternal present from the original fountain of life, yet they differ from each other in their substance and con sequently, also in their origin. The same difference appears also from their respec tive positions in the divine economy. All things are created in the Son, i.e. by him and for him ; all things owe their existence to him ; he upholds all things by the power of his word; in him is the life of all things. And this universal fountain of life was the light of the per sonal creature, and especially of Israel. Then the Son of God becomes incarnate, as the Son of Man, and sub- 21 242 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF mits to death. And after his glorification, with the glory which he had with the Father before his incarna tion, he still remains the Son of Man, in whom the fulness of God dwells bodily. He is now the vine, out of which the faithful grow as branches, the Head of the church, the Judge of mankind, and, finally, the Bride groom of the church ; but he is also the head of all spheres of personal existence. Whatever there is in heaven and on earth God unites in him, as all things from their first start look toward him, that they may represent in their total organism all the fulness of God's thoughts as centred in him. Of the Holy Spirit we nowhere read, that in or by him all things were created, or that they have their life in him, but that he employs himself in developing and shaping the creature (Gen. i. 2 ; Ps. civ. 29). It is Christ who leads the Israelites through the wilderness, and appears to Isaiah in the temple, but it is the Spirit of Christ who enlightens the prophets; it is the Spirit of God who sanctifies the heart (1 Cor. x. 4 ; John xii. 41 ; 1 Pet. i. 11; Ps. Ii. 13). The Logos becomes incarnate, but the Holy Spirit is em ployed in preparing him a habitation in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and anoints the Incarnate for his public ministry. After the glorification of Jesus, the Holy Spirit identifies himself so much with the believer that God, by searching our hearts, knows what is the will of the Spirit ruling within us, although he unites with the bride in praying to Jesus that he may come (Rom. viii. 27 ; Apoc. xxii. 17) ; at the same time, it is only Christ who is called the vine with the branches, the Head and Bridegroom of the church. The New Testa ment, in speaking of the various gifts imparted to believers, calls the Holy Ghost the giver ; but regenera tion or the new life i" ~~ "~— -v---' '-- ¦ ¦" -1 THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 243 appears as the fountain, and the Holy Spirit as the agent or dispenser. However difficult it may be to draw an exact line of demarcation between the agency of the Son and that of the Spirit, as represented in the New Testament, the following propositions seem to follow logically from what has been said: 1. The Logos is the fountain of life of the universe ; all things are created by him and con tinue to exist in him, while the development and shaping of individual life is the Spirit's prerogative ; 2. As the Logos is the world's fountain of life, so likewise it is he who has such an inward affinity with the world that, at first, he can appear in theophanies to man, then become incarnate, and after his glorification be the fulness of God in a bodily organization ; 3. For the same reason is the glorified Son, in an especial manner, the fountain of life for the psychico-physical man ; for being really and truly human, new life flows from him into psy chico-physical humanity. That after his glorification a fountain of spiritual and bodily life flows over into humanity, is also based on the fact, that with this glo rification a new epoch commences for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, human nature being now penetrated in a psychico-bodily manner by Jesus, and therefore accessible in its very roots to the purely spiritual agency of the Holy Ghost. This difference in their position in the divine economy points to a difference in their inward natures, and also in their procession from the Father. But these inward peculiarities are left unexplained in the Scriptures. And thus the transcendental nature of the idea of an eternal generation presents itself in a new light, since he alone could thoroughly comprehend it, who could point out the respective peculiarities of the Son and the Spirit. SECOND SECTION. THE SON OF GOD ON EARTH. §44. In the first section the testimony of Jesus and of his apostles concerning Jesus's divine sonship has been ex amined. He is the Father's only Son, of the same substance with the Father, who was in glory with the Father before his incarnation, yea before the foundation of the world ; he is being begotten by the Father in love from his (the Father's) substance in an everlasting now. But he who affirmed these things concerning himself stood as man among men when be gave utter ance to these truths ; he called himself not only the Son of God, but also the Son of Man. After he had finished his work, the Son of God, who was at the same time the Son of Man, returned to his former glory, remaining, however, a true man. For these reasons we must, in the second section, make the Son of God, as man, the subject of our inquiry; in the third, the Son of God after his return to his original glory, in which state he remained the Son of Man. And after having thus viewed our Prince of life in his three stations of life, we shall ask the questions, how he descended from his glory to earthly humility, hoio his humanity developed itself and, finally, how be re turned from this state of humiliation to his original glory. 244 THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 245 CHAPTER I. THE TRUE HUMANITY OF JESUS ON EARTH. §45. The very term " Son of Man," by which Jesus usually designates himself, implies that he was really and truly man. The same truth is confirmed by his whole history, and in a number of positive declarations of the Lord presented in marked features to our view. It is of great importance to examine these features closely, since it is one thing to believe in Jesus's real humanity in general, and quite another to understand it properly as to its contents and substance. Born of a woman, in all the helplessness of a child, " the child grew and waxed strong in spirit ; and the grace of God was upon him"' (Luke ii. 40). When twelve years of age he is, like a child, of opinion that the theologians of Jerusalem can answer his questions, he entertains the childlike opinion that in Jerusalem, more than at Nazareth, he is about his Father's business (compare with this the view which he expressed as man in John iv. 21-24), and therefore thinks that his parents should not have sought him at all (ii. 46, 49). When thirty years of age, he is baptized by John the Baptist, and thus sol emnly inducted into office by the God-appointed herald ; a ceremony which has no meaning unless he was really and truly man.1 1 Mr. Gess expresses views on the baptism of Jesus different from these; lie says : " Jesus, by submitting to John's baptism declares, that as a man, a real soul having its own will, a soul clothed in flesh and blood, feeling 21* 246 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF This testimony of Jesus concerning his true humanit given by his submitting to John's baptism, is direct confirmed by God himself, the Holy Ghost descendii and abiding upon him (Matt. iii. 16 ; John i. 32). . the incarnate Logos had not been really and truly ma he would not have been in need of this unction wi the Spirit and power of God (comp. Acts x. 38). was this Spirit poured out upon him after his baptis which showed him the ways and times of his Messian ministry and sufferings, which led him after his baptis into the wilderness (Matt.'iv. 1; Luke iv. 1), and whose power he went from the wilderness to Galil (iv. 14). By his forty days' fast in the wilderness al he confesses the reality of his humanity ; for only as real man did he need to count the cost of the tower be built by him, preparation for victory over such enemy proceeding only from fasting and prayer (Ma xvii. 21). Again, the temptation of Jesus by the de' rests on the (abstract) possibility. of his sinning; if had been absolutely impossible for him to fall li other men, Satan's temptation would have been an ( of folly, not worth recordingby-the evangelists. A how could Matthew represent this temptation as keeping with the designs of the Divine Spirit (iv. 1) Jesus absolutely could not "sin ? For one who cam fall, it is mere play to be tempted. Yea, even t miracles of Jesus are confessions of his dependence, : pleasure and pain, and shrinking; by an inward necessity from pain, he be fully sanctified only through a series of divine trials, renunciations, self-denials, through continued sufferings and, at last, through submit! to the king of terrors." This view of Christ's baptism Mr. Gess der: from, or bases on, Luke xii. 50. But disapproving of some of his ic in toto as unscriptural, and leading to serious errors if consistently car out, we have given in the text Dr. Neander's views of Christ's bapti which are also our own. — Tr. THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 247 before he healed the deaf-mute, he looked up to heaven and sighed (Mark vii. 34), and at the grave of his friend Lazarus he ascribed his miracles positively to the efficacy of his prayer (John xi. 41, etc.). With this fully agrees his declaration : " The Father lovetli the Son, and showeth him all things that himself doeth " (John v. 20) ; and again, " Neither has this man sinned, nor his parents, but that the works of God should be made manifest in him " (ix. 3) ; " Believe the works, that ye may know and believe that the Father is in me, and I in him " (x. 38) ; " The Father, that dwelleth in me, does the works" (xiv. 10). Jesus was, then, not himself the source from which his mirac ulous powers flowed, but he obtained them from the Father in answer to his always accepted prayer (comp. what Peter says in Acts x. 38 : " God was with him, whereby he was able to do good and heal all that were oppressed of the devil "). A pre-eminently noteworthy proof of Jesus's real humanity is his susceptibility of joy and sadness. Beholding the profanation of the temple, ho is seized with holy anger (John ii. 17), the Pharisees, by seeking signs, cause him to groan inwardly (Mark viii. 12), seeing the tears of Lazarus's sisters and ap proaching his grave, he is twice overcome with grief (John xi. 33-38) ; the sight of Jerusalem also causes him to weep (Luke xix. 41). The accomplishment of his baptism filled him with fear (Luke xii. 50), which was so vividly depicted on his countenance during his journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, that his disciples trembled (Mark x. 32). This inward struggle being as severe as he could sustain, he called Peter a Satan for endeavoring to persuade him to swerve from his duty (Matt. xvi. 13). At the approach of the last 248 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF struggle we find his mind, now in, a state of the loftiest serenity, and now almost bordering on hopelessness. Scarcely has he openly declared himself before all the people as the Messiah, by his public entry into Jerusalem (John xii. 12-14), when he is forcibly reminded by the presence of the first Greeks, that his activity as a teacher has reached its close, and that the time has arrived for him to work by his death ; a thought which affects his soul so powerfully that he has to stand still and ponder whether he should not pray to his Father to save him from this hour (John xii. 20-27). He learns now to its fullest extent, what it is to be our predecessor in hating one's own life (vs. 25). His dis courses on the last evening all, indeed, breathe a spirit of melancholy, but yet what a contrast is there between the lofty solemnity with which he institutes the last supper in place of the pascha, thus presenting himself as the centre of the ages, and the deep sorrow caused by the infamous act of Judas, which is to bring about his death (xiii. 21) ; the sublimity with which he dwells on the blessings of his death and pronounces the inter cessory prayer, and his trembling in the garden of Gethsemane. Having already told his disciples, " The hour is come that ye shall leave me alone, but I am not alone, for the Father is with me," and having before his Father acknowledged the necessity of his sufferings, and his willingness to undergo them, in these words : " For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified through the truth" (xvii. 19), he now entreats his disciples in these words.: " Watch with me, for my soul is exceeding sorrowful, eveii unto death," and prays to his Father to remove the cup from him, if it be possible (Matt. xxvi. 38, etc). In THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 249 the very agony of death he desires to quench his thirst ; gives utterance to the complaint of being forsaken by his Father, commends his spirit into the hands of his Father, and confesses thereby that he really sinks in death, into night and helpnessness, so that another must keep his spirit. We conclude with two declara tions of Jesus, which form, as it were, the doctrinal key to what has been said, and also receive therein a lively commentary ; they are recorded in John xvii. 5 ; vi. 57. From the first it is evident that Jesus, during his pilgrimage on earth, no longer possessed that glory which he had with the Father before the world was, and that his restoration to his former state was not his own, but the Father's act, since he prays the Father to do it. In the second, " As I live by the Father, so he that eateth me shall live by me," Jesus asigns to him self the same relation of dependence on his Father, as to believers on himself, whose indispensable food is his own flesh and blood ; as we have nothing and can do notliing without Jesus (John xv. 5), so Jesus is nothing without the Father. But how much does this declara tion differ from what Jesus says in John v. 26 : " The Father has given to the Son to have life in himself, just as the Father has life in himself." The former of these passages speaks of the earthly Jesus, the second refers to the Son's eternal relation to the Father. §46. No thorough stddent of the Bible can fail to recognize as a special proof of its divine origin the manner in which it emphasizes, in its instructions on human and divine affairs, the most opposite truths equally, while a merely human contemplation of truth is apt to over- 250 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF rate one side of it at the expense of the other. God' exalted majesty and deep condescension, the zeal of hi holiness and the affability of his grace, man's hjg dignity and nothingness, his dependence and liberty God's absolute sovereignty and entire freedom froi man's sin, the depth and salvability of our lost cot dition, all these opposites, which human wisdom is i the habit of tearing asunder, the Bible, even the 01 Testament, enforces with equal earnestness and rigoi It is especially worthy of note, that the scriptural rule for practical life insist with the utmost emphasis o man's turning from his natural worldliness to a stat of heavenly-mindedness, while they teach him, at th same time, to look upon all the good things of thi world as gifts of God, to be received with thanksgiving No other morality than that of the Bible has discovere the narrow path which leads safely through worldlines and ascetism, without turning to one side or the othe Let it be borne in mind, e.g. with what rigor the scrip ures insist upon the purity of the matrimonial relation: and how highly they extol them, by making them th type of the church's relation to Christ. But the manne in which a system of morality treats matrimonial n lations is without any doubt the safest criterion of b intrinsic worth. After what has been said in the preceding sectioi it__is no longer a matter of surprise that the aposth viewed the development of their Master's life as real! human ; his whole life furnished them daily proofs c the reality of his humanity (comp. 1 John i. 1). Tl consciousness that Jesus is the world's Redeemer, tl author of a new life and pattern of holiness directei accordingly, the minds of the apostles with intrins: THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 251 necessity to the great fact, that this Son of God was also really and truly man, since his humanity was the basis of his whole redemptive work. Yet it is worthy of our highest admiration that the apostles, while they make the divinity of Jesus the foundation of our salva tion, equally emphasize his real humanity. It is well known, that Christology, as it has been developed by the church, has indeed never been guilty of encroaching upon the humanity of Christ, but has yet apprehended but slowly what is included in his humanity. Yea, notwithstanding the development of many centuries, modern (orthodox) Christology is so constructed, that docetic inferences can scarcely be avoided. And have not many Christians to confess from their own ex perience, that in the time of their first love they em phasized the divinity of their Master, while they under rated his humanity ? Earnest thought and reflection will correct this error ; but the first love of the apostles was never guilty of such one-sidedness. Peter, while he declares it an impossibility that the Prince of life should have been held of death, speaks of the Father as having loosed the pains of death (Acts ii. 24; iii. 15). Paul knows that Jesus, before he entered upon the form of existence of a servant, was in the shape of, and equal with, God, and that all things were made by him (Phil. ii. ; 1 Cor. viii. ; Col. i.). Even during his pilgrimage on earth his inward being is the " Spirit of holiness," i.e. the Spirit of God (Rom. i. 4). Notwith standing this, however, the apostle speaks distinctly of him as a " man." " There is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus " (1 Tim. ii. 5) ; " By one man came death, by one man the resurrection 252 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF of the dead " (1 Cor. xv. 21) ; " If through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, has abounded unto many" (Rom. v. 15). In the same passage in which the apostle speaks of Jesus passing from his divine form of existence into that of a servant he represents his (Christ's) restoration to glory as the reward of his human moral obedience (Phil. ii. 5-11). The same apostle uniformly ascribes the resurrection of Jesus to the Father. This unvarying type of Pauline doctrine, as well as of that of the other apostles, is of the utmost importance in the true construction of Chris tology, which the church has not yet fully appreciated. From Eph. i. 19, etc. especially, it appears how much stress the apostle lays on the fact that it is the Father who raised Jesus from the dead. The apostle here presents the resurrection of Christ as a proof of the superabundant power of God, and compares with it the quickening of humanity from a state of death in sin ; he desires Christians to learn from the resurrection of Jesus what God's power can do for them. Christ's death was, accordingly, real, involving all the conse quences of death, a real prostration in impotence and helplessness.1 This is the most important, but not the only, truth that we gather from this statement. The Epistle to the Hebrews also represents Christ as him by whom, in his antemundane existence, God crea ted the world, and in chap. i. calls him directly, God. The inward being of Jesus is also, during his earthly existence, " eternal Spirit." And yet it is especially 1 The reality of Christ's death must, however, not be construed as ex cluding the possibility of his rising of himself, according to John x. 18.— Te. THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 253 this epistle which stamps both his outward and inward life as wholly human. The author showing, in the first part of his epistle (from i. 4 to ii. 18), to the Hebrew Christians with what reverence they ought to listen to the gospel of Christ, since he was higher than all angels, takes, at the same time, occasion to warn them (ii. 9-18) not to he offended at the Son of God humbling himself unto death, since it became God to make the Captain of salvation perfect through suffering (vs. 10). The writer continues, he that sanctifieth, as well as those who are sanctified, is of the seed of Abraham (v. 2) and therefore, like them, partook of flesh and blood, in order to destroy by his death the prince of death, and to set free the slaves of death (vs. 14, 15), not the holy angels, but the seed of Abraham which was subject to death, being the object of his pity and commiseration (iTri\afj./3dveTat). Thus the author ascribes to him flesh and blood or humanity, as being necessary to him, in order that he might die our death, and destroy the prince of death. To this the apostle immediately adds : without having been made like unto his brethren in all things he could not have that feeling of compassion, which is indispensable in a successful High Priest' in atoning for sin ; but as he suffered himself in being tempted, he can now, by his atonement, succor those who are tempted (vs. 17, 18). In like manner it is urged in the demonstration of the perfect priesthood of Christ, that he is touched with the feeling of our infirmities, because he was tempted in all points like as we are (iv. 15) ; for, argues the apostle, every Levitical high priest must be a man who can have compassion on the ignorant and on them that are out of the way being himself encompassed with infirmity (v. 1-3). 22 254 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF The apostle, in the following verses, attempting to show (vs. 4-10) the spotless character of the priesthood of Christ, and that he had not arrogated it to himself, but had been called by God to it, says, that Christ, " in the days of his flesh, offered up prayer and supplication, with strong crying and tears, unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard on account of his piety (dirb tj}? evXa/3eta?) . Though he were the Son, yet he learned obedience by the things which he suffered, and having been made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him; called, for this reason, of God, a high priest of the order of Melchisedec." In these passages the emphasis lies on the close connection between the humanity of Christ and his mediatorial office. But in setting Christ before us as our pattern and example, the author has likewise taken occasion to emphasize his full and real humanity. Thus in iii. 1, 2 : "Consider the High Priest of our profession, Jesus Christ, who was faithful unto him that appointed him, as also Moses was " ; again in xii. 2 : " Let us look unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who, in place of the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." Christ, in doing what was necessary for him to do, not for his own sake, but in order to fulfil the work of our redemption, which he had assumed, has become for all his followers an example of patience and obedience. What, now, does John teach concerning the true humanity of Christ, who affirms of the pre-existent Logos, that he was toward God, that he was God, and that all tilings were made by him ? He lays so much stress on the humanity of Jesus, that some of his inter THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 255 prefers have come to the conclusion that the apostle's object in writing his Gospel and Epistles was to refute docetism. That the Logos became flesh is, in John's view, just as important as that he who dwelt among us was the Logos (John i. 14). The phrase " he be came flesh," implies also that the assumption of flesh and blood affected the inward being of the Logos. As early as in the time of John, the doctrine arose in Asia Minor, that Jesus was a mere man, with whom at his baptism the aeon Christ united himself, yet in such wise that they remained two distinct personalities. To refute this error, which viewed Jesus as the Ebionites did, and Christ after the manner of the Gnostics doceti- cally, the apostle teaches in his first epistle, that the denial of Jesus as the Christ constituted the centre of falsehood and anti-Christianity, but that the confession that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh was the evidence of divine doctrine (John ii. 22; iv. 2). It must also be borne in mind that many of Jesus's own declarations concerning his real humanity have been preserved to us by John ; declarations which imply, not only that Jesus had a real human body, but also that his physical life was really human and dependent on God. 256 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF CHAPTER II. THE SINLESSNESS OF JESUS. §47. Jesus's designation of himself as " Son of Man " implies both that he is really arid truly man, and that he differs, as such, from all other men. In the first place, by being sinless. Sin is, according to the Bible, so en tirely foreign to the true nature and idea of humanity, that Christ, by calling himself " Son of Man," — the ideal man, the realization of the idea of humanity, — is either at variance with the whole tenor of the Bible, or expresses his conviction that he is without sin. Indeed, even if we had no other declaration of Jesus concerning his sinlessness, this designation would be sufficient his torically to establish that he was conscious of being without sin. Thus much, however, is evident from what has been developed in the preceding chapter, that the man Jesus was sinless in a manner different from that in which the pre-existent Logos was so. The life of Jesus oil earth was a life of moral struggle and development. The in carnate Logos had flesh and blood, both capable of, and shrinking from, suffering. Again, the soul of Jesus, as a really human, individual soul, capable of develop ment, and hence at first imperfect, had all the (origi nally) innate inclinations and desires of the human soul, as the desire of independence, honor, etc. This he says himself: " I do not seek my own will " ; again, THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 257 " I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent me " (John v. 30 ; vi. 38) ; " not my, but thy will be done " he had thus ; a will of his own. And as the will of God and the in justice of men opposed his innate inclinations in num berless instances, frequent conflicts between duty or the divine commission (eWoA.??) and the natural will of Jesus were the necessary consequence. " Not my, but thy will be done " ; how severe was the struggle which occasioned this prayer ! It is by no means derogatory to the dignity of Jesus to suppose that when he said, " the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak," he inclu ded his own flesh. The new convert dreams of a Saviour who is superior to conflict ; but the experienced Christian learns by his own struggles, that a Jesus who passed through no struggles was no real man, no Saviour. The grander the natural powers and faculties of Jesus were the severer was the denial of his natural will ; for the more powerful the nature the stronger is its will, and the more powerful the will the severer the struggle. And this struggle was by no means merely a struggle be tween soul and body, but also between the will of God revealing itself in conscience and the natural will of the soul itself. To submit to ignominy, to suffer wrong, to live to his thirtieth year in retired Nazareth, while the immense work that was to be accomplished was before his mind — these things were infinitely more difficult than the mere denial of bodily convenience ; for it is not the natural propensities of the body, but those of the soul, which even in the noblest specimens of man kind are the strongest. Man's original destiny was not a development without moral struggle, without self- 22* 258 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF denial, without a surrender of the natural will to that of God, since the love of God, as well as giving the heart to God and uniting the finite will with that of God, is learned only by denying the natural will. The divine command was given even in paradise, before sin existed, for the purpose of bringing man's finite will into harmony with the holy will of God. Not hav ing, but clinging to the natural will, as differing from that of God, is the beginning of sin. If Adam's trial had included no struggles or self-denial, it is difficult to conceive how he could ever have become a sinner ; but man's natural repugnance to self-denial involved the possibility of sin, and when Adam's free-will, in the conflict between the divine command and the natural inclination, sided with the latter, instead of denying it, sin was committed. Christ's struggle in Gethsemane and the witness of our own conscience teach that to have a will of our own is a natural necessity, and there fore not sinful ; yea, that even the struggle with this natural will is not yet sin ; but as soon as the inner will of man submits to the natural will, even if only in the least point, or is captivated and enslaved by the natural will, sin and sinfulness become realities, yea, even the least yielding leads to a state of captivity. But we know from the lips of Jesus himself that during his earthly career of thirty-three years he always subjected his own (individual) will to that of his Heavenly Father, so that his will became in this way perfectly identified with that of God, and thus perfect. From the answer which Jesus gave to the Baptist, who hesitated to baptize him, because he stood in need of being baptized by him, it plainly appears that Jesus submitted to this ceremony not as a sinner, like the THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 259 others who were baptized (Matt. iii. 15). In his Ser mon on the Mount he says of himself: " I am come to fulfil the law" (v. 17). In John v. 19 he says that it would be a moral impossibility for him to do anything except what he sees the Father do. His challenge to the Jews : " Who can convince me of sin" (John viii. 16) is the more important on account of the inference drawn from it by Jesus himself : " but if I tell you the truth, why do you not believe me?" for from his moral blainelessness the authority of his testimony on divine things can be inferred only if he is conscious of a perfect agreement between his inward life and the will of God. It is to be borne in mind that he had but shortly before declared: "He that committeth sin is the servant of sin " (vs. 34), thus declaring it to be impossible that he should be free from sin who has ever sinned. How could he, in the next place, call himself the light of the world, if there was even but a shadow of darkness in him (comp. viii. 12 ; ix. 5 ; xii. 35). Finally, he expresses the substance of his whole life in his great intercessory prayer (John xvii.) : " I have glorified thee on earth, and finished the work which thou hast given me " ; and founds thereon the petition that the Father may glorify him, yea, his desire that his disciples also may be where he is ; and this he does before the righteous Father. In short, the whole tenor of Jesus's statement concerning his relation to mankind: "I am the way, the truth, and the life " ; the living vine ; without me ye can do nothing ; the sanctified offering (John xvii. 19) ; " I give my life a ransom for many" (Matt. xx. 28) ; as well as what he says of his relation to God : " No one know eth the Son except the Father, and no one the Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son reveals him ; I 260 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF and the Father are one ; whoever sees me sees the Father." This whole manner of speaking would have been continued blasphemy, if Jesus had not had the fullest conviction that the entire development of his life was an uninterrupted and perfect glorification of God. Of the same import is the thrice repeated testimony of the Father (at his baptism, transfiguration, and men tal struggle in tho presence of tho Greeks), that Jesus is the Father's well-beloved Son, in whom he is always pleased, as well as his raising him up from the dead. To repeat the apostolical teaching concerning Jesus's sinlessness is not necessary ; comp. e.g. 1 John iii. 3 ; v. 7 ; 2 Cor. v. 21 ; Pleb. iv. 15. Thus much only may be said, that the Spirit of holiness which the apostolical writings breathe, and the perfect exhibition of the moral ideal in the Gospels, would be unintelligible mysteries, if Jesus, who is the subject of the history, and whose disciples wrote it, had not been perfect and sinless. §48. The Word of God teaches, uniformly from Genesis to Revelation, that sinful parents can only have sinful children. Thus Moses very significantly records (Gen. v. 3) : " Adam begat a son in his own likeness, after his image." In this way the divine image was, indeed, inherited by the children, but also the parents' corrupt nature. Both the rite of circumcision and the manifold acts of purification, enjoined in the law on women after parturition, have reference to this great fact, teaching original sin, not only by words, but by signs. From painful experience David cries, " Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me " THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 261 (Ps. Ii. 5) ; and Job asks, " Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean ? " (Job xiv. 4.) In the first part of his declaration, David has reference to his own sinful nature, in the second, to that of his mother, which passed on to her offspring. In the New Testament we hear Christ himself declare, " Except a man be born again of water and spirit, he can by no means enter into the kingdom of God; for what is born of the flesh is flesh" (John iii. 5, etc.). And on this declaration of Christ is based that of the Apostle John (John i. 12, 13), in which he characterizes the children of God by contrast ing them with those who are born of blood, the will of the flesh, and the will of man. The import of this con trast evidently is, that as the births differ, so also the children ; what results from the blood, what is born by the desires of the flesh, has a mind governed by flesh and blood, while the children of God are partakers of the divine nature. In 1 Cor. xv. 48, etc. the Mosaic declaration, " Adam begat in his own likeness, after his image," is confirmed by the authority of Paul, teaching, though not, indeed, directly, that sinfulness is trans mitted, and that children must be like their parents. And since sin entered, as a power, into the world by Adam, and by sin, death (both of body and soul) ; bodily and spiritual death passed in this way (out&j?), by virtue of death being a power in the world, upon all men, and on this account again (erf)' &>) that all sinned (Rom. v. 12), it having come to pass that by the dis obedience of one many became sinners (v. 19). For this reason it is, according to Paul (Rom. vii. 8-10), that when we become, after the joyous and innocent days of youth, fully conscious of the divine law, sin revives in us, which was in us, indeed, in childhood, 262 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF although in a dormant state. But man having bee created good by his Maker, how does sin come to be i man, unless inherited from sinful parents ? If th question is asked, how sin is inherited by children fror their parents, we are authorized in replying, according t the passages quoted, that it is by means of the blood o which we are born, and the seed from which we spring which are of a corrupt nature.1 Now, as Jesus affirms that whatever is born of th flesh is flesh, and can attain to the kingdom of God onl by means of the new birth, how can he pronounce hiu self sinless, and call himself the King of this kingdom And how can his apostles teach his sinlessness, an base the new birth upon faith in him, while they charg sin upon all Adamites, i.e. all who are born of blooc of the will of the flesh, or will of man, as such ? 1 we are not willing to commit the folly of charging th apostles, and Christ himself, with palpable self-contr; diction, we must take it for granted that they claime a miraculous conception for Jesus, in which he remaine pure from the pollution of sin. This miracle is relate by Matthew and Luke and was as follows ; the Hoi Ghost formed a body for the Saviour in the womb of tli Virgin Mary. Whatever moral impurity, — for Mar was not without original sin, — adhered to those particle in the Virgin's womb which were fructified into the bod of Jesus, was not only not increased, but fully remove by the agency of the Holy Spirit, so that the angel pr< nounces her offspring holy (Luke i. 35). As both bod 1 Mr. Gess assigns a second reason, viz. " because the act of generatic is not performed according to the original order, but in a sensual mai ner"; from which view we must dissent, because the first reason assignt accounts for the existence of sin in the world, and because the seeor reason does not always exist. — Tb. THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 263 and soul are begotten at the same time and in the same mauner, they both partake of the universal corruption of human nature ; and as soon as self-consciousness bursts upon the soul, our moral condition becomes an object of our personal knowledge. In our natural state, the (self-conscious) soul can either implicitly and unhesi tatingly follow the promptings of its natural corruption, or it can, in obedience to the awaking voice of con science, struggle against them, when we realize what Paul has described with a master's hand in Rom. vii. 14, etc. Experience teaches that most men engage in this struggle either but slightly or not at all ; ou the contrary, they abuse the power of liberty, or self-deter mination, by heightening the desires of the flesh, and arousing all the still slumbering inclinations of the soul and body. If man pursues the first course, his state becomes that of conscious, if the second, that of uncon scious slavery ; and while he cannot set himself free from the first, neither does he desire to be disturbed in the second. From this whole process, by which every human being comes into existence, Jesus had necessa rily to be kept free and uncontaminated, if a sinless development was to be within his reach. A soul which lives not only in a sin-polluted body, but has the seed of sinfulness in itself, can neither remain sinless nor guiltless. But as Jesus was preserved by the miracu lous intervention of the Divine Spirit from every con taminating influence of human depravity, a sinless life was placed within his reach. That Jesus could, in the days of his flesh, indeed, hint at, but not plainly assert, his miraculous concep tion (see John x. 36) is self-evident ; but why is it not more frequently spoken of in the writings of the apos- 264 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF ties ? We reply, because it merely implies the possibili of a sinless development, not the sinlessness itself, a: still less the divinity of Jesus. As for us, the effica of what he has done is based on his being the incarm Logos. For this reason his immaculate conception even in our day, not much emphasized in preachir although the preacher is fully satisfied that a son Joseph could neither be sinless, nor the Saviour of t world. If Jesus were not the incarnate Logos, but c ferent from other men only in having been conceiv by the Holy Spirit, his birth, death, and resurrecti would be useless for mankind. That in the so-cal] Apostles' Creed his supernatural conception is so stronj marked is owing to the fact, that in the times of origin the church had not become fully conscious Jesus being the incarnate Logos ; in that of Nice it less emphasized, while the incarnation, and especia the eternal sonship, are made prominent. Those ^ affirm that in the writings of the apostles there is allusion whatever to Jesus's supernatural concept] are evidently in the wrong. It is true, it is not direc taught by them, but if Paul had looked upon Jesus the son of Joseph, how could he have written as he i in Gal. iv. 4, since it would have been far more keeping with the context to write, "begotten of a ma; yevvndrpiai il~ dv§pody. We may commence with Col. ii. 9 : " In him dwell- h the whole fulness of the Godhead bodily." It ap- sars, indeed, from the connection, that it is not the jostle's object to teach that the glorified Redeemer is a body. His object is not to refute a proposition k.e this : The glorified Redeemer no longer dwells in body. The apostle's object in the whole chapter is tther to warn the Colossians against the heretical jctrine, that the salvation of the soul must be sought i circumcision, in abstaining from meats and drinks, l the scrupulous observance of days and Sabbaths, t the worship of angels, and speculations about angels. 11 these things the apostle teaches lead away from le simplicity of Christ. Dealing with the shadows ? the law affords no food for the inner man (vs. 17). o be built and rooted in Christ is the only thing jedful (vs. 6, 7), for in him is the whole fulness * the Godhead (vs. 9) ; in him, therefore, believers re filled with divine life (vs. 10"). He is also the head f all angels (vs. 10b). In him is the true circumcision vs. 11, 12"), and in him the resurrection unto newness f life (vs. 12\ 13a). This newness of life is based on le remission of sins (vs. 13"), and this, in its turn, on re blotting out of the hand-writing that was against us vs. 14). The apostle's object, then is, by vs. 9 to estab- sh vs. 10", viz. the proposition, that in Christ alone in the Colossians be filled with divine life. For if re whole fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily in Ihrist, his person is the fulness of divine life. If the 310 • THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF Father's fulness only dwelt in him, so that the fulm of the Godhead was hot his own, it could not be s; that this fulness dwells in him bodily ; for then it woi be only in his soul. Believers being in Christ woi not then be filled with divine life, as the fulness divine power could not then be Christ's. From this it appears that the passage in questi really teaches that the body of Christ contains the f ness of the Deity, or that the fulness of the Godhead contained bodily in Christ. The glorified Redeemer has again the glory wh: he had before the foundation of the world, viz. life himself, the personal fulness of all divine powers ; k this his divine life is bodily. This appears no less fix Phil. iii. 21 : " He will fashion our vile bodies li unto his glorious body." The glorified Jesus is of psychico-pneumatical nature, such as we are and sh continue to be. The body, however, is not for the soul what t house is for its occupant. For the body is for the se not a, but the, place of residence. The occupant leai his house when he pleases, but the body encloses t indwelling soul. Where the body is not, there t soul is not. There may be moments in which the sc is out of the body (2 Cor. xii. 2, 3), but this absen is only momentary, and is a sign of an abnormal sta The absence of the soul for a longer period of tii would be followed by the death of the body. Yea, tl absence of the soul from the body is at the same time absence from itself, for only in the body is the soul its natural state, and therefore by itself. Again, the body is not only the dwelling-place of ( soul, but the organ of the soul, and that not only in THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 311 outward activity, nor merely in conveying to it im pressions from the natural world, but also in its own inward life. There is not one act of the soul which is not performed through the medium of the bodily or ganization. Not even in its intercourse with God does the soul dispense with its bodily organization. The meditation of the worshipper, the inward longings of him who is merged in God, and loves God — all are per formed through the medium of the body. The Spirit of God, it is true, on his part affects the soul imme diately. But when divine influences call forth in the soul thoughts or resolves of the will, the bodily organi zation at once co-operates ; and when the Spirit of God breathes through the soul, all the nerves and the very life of the heart feel it. It was as a heavy hand pressed upon the prophets whenever the spirit of proph ecy came upon them (e.g. Isa. viii. 11). The anger of God shakes the very bones of men, while the manifesta tion of his love refreshes them. Both experience and the Scriptures teach the constant indwelling of soul and body in each other, and the inter-dependence of their natural life. For the Scriptures are far from looking upon this relation as being of a mechanical nature, as some philosophers and even Christians do, who regard the human body as either a prison of the soul or its cage. Nor do they, on the other hand, make the life of the soul the mere echo of the bodily life, as another kind of philosophy does. As we remarked before, that the morality of the Bible proves its divine origin by keeping at an equal distance both from worldliness and asceticism, while human systems of philosophy fall either into Charybdis or on Scylla, so we assert here, that the Scriptures have their divine origin stamped on 312 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF their brows by their teachings on the subject in question. While our ancestors, with Plato as their authority, made the body the prison of the soul, and our modern pan theistic and atheistic philosophers insipidly merge all the life of the soul into that of the body, the Scriptures have for eighteen hundred years pointed out that the truth is equally distant from both these errors. Even the first page of Genesis presents the soul as the breath of God in a life-like union with the frame of dust. Sin destroys soul and body equally, and the final restoration will be complete only with the resurrection of the glorified body. Although these are but a few features of the scriptural teachings on this subject, they furnish abundant evidence that the folly of God is infinitely superior to all human wisdom. This intimate relation of soul and body to each other, which we have found to be established by Scripture and experience, we must apply in our contemplation of the glorified Redeemer, of whom the Scriptures declare that all the fulness of the Godhead dwells in him bodily, and that he will fashion our body like unto his glorious body. In the temple of Jerusalem the Godhead dwelt as in its house ; in the body of Jesus all the fulness of his Godhead dwells as the soul in its body. The temple was one place of the divine Presence, but it did not contain God ; for all the heavens cannot contain him. The body of the glorified Redeemer is the habitation of the present fulness of the personal Godhead of the Sou ; his body contains the fulness of his Godhead. Again, the temple of Jerusalem had only an outward relation to the presence of God within it. God had promised" that he would be found there, and for this THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 313 reason he was found there ; it was thus only the promise which connected God's presence with the tem ple. Because God did in mercy regard the need of the Israelites during their spiritual minority to find God in a certain locality, he promised to be in the temple, and was there. But the walls of the temple remained what they had been before — lifeless walls of stone and mortar ; whereas the body of the glorified Jesus is the organization which serves his divine ful ness as the medium of its life. The earthly body of Jesus served as the medium of the Son who had laid aside his divine glory, while the heavenly body of Jesus is the medium of the life of the Son since he returned to his original divine glory. §54. This however is not all. The corporeity of the ex alted Jesus cannot be the only factor constituting him man, and distinguishing the exalted from the ante- mundane Son of God. Theology, it is true, speaks almost always only of corporeity when it discusses the humanity of the exalted Saviour. But as the Saviour, even on earth, led not only a human-bodily life, but also a human-psychical one, there must also be in the ex alted Saviour a human side to his inner life. It is in conformity with this, that the passages of Scripture which speak of the high-priestly intercession of the exalted Saviour for us in heaven pre-suppose for him not only an outward bodily side, but also an inward really human side (John v. 27 ; Heb. iv. 15, etc.). A detailed description of the theanthropic nature of the exalted Saviour according to its inward human side is undoubtedly one of the most neglected and most 27 314 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF difficult tasks of theology, the greatest antithesis hav ing here to be reconciled, viz. the truly human form of existence of the Son after his glorification with his ante-mundane glory. The meagre outlines here given do not claim to be a solution of this task, but are rather to call attention to this most important subject. The single fact that the life of the exalted Saviour is a bodily mediated life must distinguish it from that of the ante-mundane Son, which was a purely spirit-life A bodily mediated life cannot be conceived of as being altogether independent of space and time. In the next place, the exalted Saviour has completed his process of human sanctification ; his heavenly glorification is the fruit of this his perfect holiness. The holiness ofthe exalted Jesus, like that of perfected believers, is one morally acquired. The ante-mundane Son was also holy, but his holiness was, like that of the Holy Ghost, eternal. As the Father has life in himself, so has be given to the Son to have life in himself, but the Son has desired from all eternity to have life only in the Father. This his will is, indeed, free, but it is impossible to think that he could have desired other wise, his freedom being identical with necessity, just as in the Father freedom and necessity are eternally one. The how of this identity is for us in our present state of existence a mystery, but the fact itself underlies our faith in God and all our thoughts concerning divine things. Now, as in the glorification of Jesus, the rela tion which existed between Father and Son before the incarnation is re-established, necessity and freedom in the Son are again one, so that the holiness of the exalted Saviour is the same as that of the Holy Ghost. The exalted Saviour has, at the same time, his holiness, THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 315 or the unqualified and unchangeable submission of his own will to that of his Father, as a moral acquisition, just as the holiness of men made perfect is a moral acquisition. The Saviour during his whole life, but especially during the hours of his final suffering and death, united his own will so indissolubly with that of his Heavenly Father, that he must of necessity leave the grave as one immutably holy, for whom there exists no further possibility of aberration from tho divine will, owing to the victorious struggle of liberty. Then his glorification itself, or the act of the Father giving him to have life again in himself, so that he has again the divine life, and with it the divine holiness, has been earned by him through his perfect moral obedience. It is thus especially in the holiness of the exalted Jesus that it plainly appears, how he is both God and man : He is holy as the Holy Ghost is holy, and as sanctified men are holy, both at once. Not only the holiness of the exalted Jesus, but his love of mankind, also, is of a twofold character, a divine and a human love. The specific nature of the divine love is, that God, although and because he is the fulness of life in himself, and needs nothing beyond himself, communicates himself to his creatures from mere love, while it is the character of human love for our fellow- creatures, that the brother loves his brethren as being with him members of the same body, the poor and tempted having pity on the poor and tempted, because his experience moves him to pity at the sight of their misery. The loving compassion of the exalted Saviour bears this twofold character. He loves us as God, i.e. because and although he is supremely blessed in the fulness of his life he communicates his fulness to us, 316 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF and he loves us as a man, i.e. because he is an Adamite like ourselves ; he loves his blood-relations, and has compassion on us, because he knows by experience the bitterness of poverty and the sore conflict of the willing spirit with the weak flesh. The exalted Saviour's love of mankind is, thus, both like the brotherly love of the saints for their brethren, and like the condescending love of the Father and Holy Ghost. The human side of the holiness of the exalted Saviour is referred to in Heb. v. 9, 10, and the human side of his compassion in iv. 15. It is the human side of both the holiness and the compassion of the exalted Saviour that qualifies him to be the intercessor for us in heaven ; if he were not holy as a man must be holy, his intercession for us could not vicariously avail, since only a holy man can represent unholy ones ; and if he were not merciful like men are, he could not be our priest, because a priest must bring the necessities of the people as his own before the throne of God (comp. Heb. v. 2, 1). It is likewise owing to the human side of his holiness and mercy that God has committed all judgment to him (John v. 27). The Son of Man being the judge, all who are condemned are obliged to confess that their condemnation is just, since the sight of a holy man removes all excuse for their unholiness, and the sight of their compassionate brother testifies with what fidelity divine grace sought them out. But for those who are pardoned and the witnesses of their par don, the fact that it is by and through a son of man is the highest proof that it is due to his vicarious inter cession, and evinces at once both its justice and mercy. FOURTH SECTION. THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE SON OF GOD. §55. The essential difference between the ante-mundane state of the Son as the Logos of the Father, in which he had glory with him, and the state of the incarnate Son, in which he was like us in all things except sin, and, again, that of the glorification, in which the Son lias his former glory again, but still as Jesus the God- man, leads us to the question : What conception must we form of these changes in the life of the Son ? The question itself is a threefold one, viz. 1. How did the Logos, who had life in himself like the Father, and was therefore in the form of God, become the man Jesus ? 2. How did the infant Jesus become such a man that he could pray the Father that he might glo rify him again with his former glory, because he had glorified the Father on earth, — a man who could say : :; He that seeth me seeth the Father"? 3. How did this glorification take place, by which Jesus became the universal governor of the world, filling the entire universe ? 27* 317 318 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF CHAPTER I. THE INCARNATION OF THE LOGOS. §56. The Jesus who lived, suffered, and died as a real man on earth is the same personality who was before, as the Logos of God, with the Father, and was God, and by whom all things are made. This is the mar vellous problem which has for eighteen centuries exer cised the minds of believers. The Logos of God, to whom the Father gives to have life in himself even as he has, is, as such, eternal; his self-consciousness is therefore eternally clear, his knowledge eternally perfect, his will eternally fixed and holy, and his life eternal bliss. The man Jesus on earth, however, so certainly as his development was really human, was as an embryo and newly-born infant without self-consciousness. By degrees his self-consciousness is awakened. When he sleeps it is suspended, or, at all events, reduced to a state of obscurity. And when he dies, commending his spirit into the hands of his Heavenly Father, he again loses his self-consciousness, till the moment when the Father quickens him as to the spirit who was dead as to the flesh (1 Pet. iii. 18). Again, as Jesus was a real child, he was child-like in every respect. He acquired his knowledge gradually (Luke ii. 52, 40). Whenever he fell asleep his knowledge of God and the world was veiled. Nor was his knowledge of the affairs THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 319 if the kingdom unlimited, as he himself testifies during he very last days of his life (Mark xiii. 32). In fine, t is a matter of course that in the hour of death he ost his knowledge together with his self-consciousness. The development of his will was likewise gradual. 3is purposes were developed gradually ; his will be soming by degrees subject to, or rather identified with, hat of his Heavenly Father. He learned obedience ^Heb. v. 8). He was, indeed, never disobedient, even n his sorest trials, but on every new trial and suffering le resigned his natural will afresh. This he did even n the final struggle of Gethsemane. At the close of sach period of his life he had attained a higher degree >f holiness, but not till the close of his earthly career lid he attain that perfection of holiness which admits )f no further progress. The life of Jesus alternated between feelings of joy md grief; his soul was sometimes shaken even to its rery profoundest depths. Thus, after his entrance nto Jerusalem, it required a struggle for him to regain lis equanimity (John xii. 17). His anguish in the garden caused him to sweat blood ; and on the cross le gave vent to his feelings in a loud complaint. Now his is the same person, the omniscient, eternally loly and blessed Logos or Jesus, who thus alternates >etween self-consciousness and unconsciousness, who earns by degrees, who now rejoices in spirit (Luke x. !1), and anon is exceedingly troubled. Again, the Logos, having life in himself even as the father, is omnipotent, and has shown his omnipotence iy creating and governing the world ; but Jesus, as a eal man on earth, is not omnipotent, but a helpless iabe in his mother's womb and on her breast ; when a 320 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF full-grown man requires food and those things t< sustain life which are furnished by the air, the earthh elements, the light of the sun, etc. ; in the hour of hi sorest trial requests his disciples to pray with him works even his miracles in his Father's power ; live: by the Father, as the disciples live by the glorified Sou and is, finally, laid in the grave as a helpless corpse And yet this omnipotent Logos and this humanly de pendent Jesus are one and the same person. In the last place, the Logos, by whom all things sub sist, is at all times everywhere present ; but Jesus wa at first circumscribed in his mother's womb, then wen from place to place. How, then, can this Jesus be thi Logos ? §57. The theology of the orthodox churches takes it fo granted that the Logos, even after his incarnation remained in every respect as he was before. To admi any change whatever in the Logos is said to be incon sistent with the very idea of Deity. It is true, Luthe once said that Jesus would be an insufficient Saviou if he suffered only in his human nature ; but Luthe himself did not consistently carry out this idea, no has it prevailed in the church which more especiall adopted his views. In like manner with the so-calle- Reformed churches. Some of their divines, it is true held a correct view of the incarnation, which, if cot sistently developed, would have led to a scripture doctrine on the subject ; but this was not done. Th human nature of Christ was converted into a man - the man Jesus, in whom, as well as without whon dwelt the Logos, according to the Heidelberg Cati THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 321 chism, the symbol of the German Reformed churches. We shall, however, state the doctrine of these churches of the Reformation on this point more at length. (a) The Lutheran church has, from the first, found in the real union of the divine and the human in the Saviour the quintessence of Christianity. Since Christ was God and man in one person, his divine nature had to communicate to the human nature its attributes (this is the Lutheran view, though asserted only by the boldest writers) ; aud thus the human drew the divine nature into participation in its sufferings (communicatio idiomatum). They teach that the omniscient, omnipo tent, holy, and omnipresent Logos- communicates his omniscience, omnipresence, holiness, and omnipotence to the human nature which he has assumed. Here the questions naturally arise : Was this done during the earthly life of Jesus ? As early as in his mother's womb ? For the sake of consistency these questions were answered in the affirmative. For the Logos is unchangeable in his nature ; and if it follows from his assuming human nature of the flesh and blood of the virgin Mary that the attributes of either of his natures must be communicated to the other, this communication must necessarily have taken place at his conception. But if Jesus was born as an omniscient, holy, omni present, and world-governing child, what becomes of his true humanity, and of the redemption of the human race by him ? In order to avoid the irresistible con clusions from such premises, the Lutheran divines dis tinguished between the possession and the use of the divine attributes ; contending that the possession of omnipotence, etc., must be ascribed to Christ from the moment of his conception, not only as the Logos, but 322 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF also as a man, but that he voluntarily abstained from making any use of these divine powers. So long, however, as this distinction between posses sion and use is restricted to the Saviour's human nature, and the notion is entertained that the Logos after his incarnation remained as before, it evidently helps nothing to render intelligible the personal one ness of God and man in Jesus. Some of their divines, therefore, perceiving the untenableness of this position, applied the notion to the Logos himself, i.e. they taught that the Logos abstained from putting forth his divine power during the earthly life of Jesus. But, as we shall presently see; they did not thus improve the case. For the meaning of this proposition, viz. that Jesus possessed divine attributes and powers, but refrained from making any use thereof, evidently is, that they were in him potentially, and that he could call them into action whenever he saw fit to do so, but of his own accord refrained from doing this. Now the ques tion forces itself upon us : How with the ever clear self-consciousness of the Logos ? Was this, also, only potentially in Jesus ? If this question is answered affirmatively, the possibility of his calling his powers into action at any time is abandoned. If Jesus in his mother's womb possessed eternal consciousness, not actually, but only potentially, then omniscience was not only suspended, but lost. For what power could awaken the dormant powers, if not the self-conscious will ? And what power is to call forth the conscious ness itself ? To this question there is no reply. If it is urged that Christ's human self-consciousness might call forth his divine, we answer that neither in his mother's womb, nor as an infant, nor in sleep, nor in THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 323 death, had he any human consciousness. In short, when it is admitted that the eternal consciousness of the Logos existed in Jesus only potentially, the propo sition that the Deity underwent no change is abandoned. On the other hand, if it is alleged that this self-con sciousness was active in Jesus, then his true humanity is lost ; for eternal self-consciousness is necessarily attended by omniscience, etc. There is, then, no alter native but to discriminate the life of Jesus into two lives, a divine and a human, which has also been done by the German Reformed church and the reigning orthodoxy of this country. (6) The Reformed divines labored hard to develop equally the divine life and activity of Christ as the Logos and the human life of Jesus. They taught that as Logos Jesus was on earth omniscient, holy, blessed, and the governor of the universe, but as a man he progressed from ignorance to knowledge, was confined to this or that place, needed food, etc. They separated the functions of Christ's life into two kinds — those of his divine nature and those of his human development. It is contended that these two lives, however different, constituted, and do constitute, but one person, and that it is this identity which renders the Saviour's a theantbropic life. It cannot, however, be denied that two lives so fun damentally different could not possibly proceed from the same I or flow back into it. The self-consciousness of the Logos is forever clear and undisturbed, while a child gradually attains to self-consciousness, which is often interrupted by sleep and other causes. How, then, can the consciousness of the Logos be that of the infant Jesus ? And consciousness being the 7", how 324 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF can the I of the omniscient Logos be the I of Jesus acquiring knowledge ? Or how can the /of the Logos be the I of Jesus agonizing in the garden ? If it be insisted upon to claim for Christ a divine life as the Logos, and a really human life as a man, two I's must be admitted to be in Christ, and we have thus not one, but two Christs ; not a God-man, but a God and a man, which is thorough Nestorianism. §58. (c) May not this dualism be admitted, at least during the first stages of the life of Jesus ? Is it venturing too much to suppose that the incarnation of the Logos was not the work of a moment, taking place at the conception, but was completed by degrees ? Does not the personal union of the Logos and the humanity in Christ become intelligible by being viewed as a gradual merging of the Logos and the man Jesus into one life ? Was not Jesus at first a mere man, con ceived by the Holy Ghost, in whom the Logos dwelt, indeed, from the beginning, but as in a foreign, different centre of life ? and was it not the sinlessness of Jesus which enabled the Logos to impart to him measure by measure of his divine life, and to become at last the principle of his humanity ? Might not Col. i. 19 be understood in this sense ? The truly human develop ment of Jesus would be thus rendered intelligible, and Jesus would, nevertheless, be the Logos, at least from the moment at which the Logos became personally one with him. This view is, however, no more tenable than the two which we have just examined, and found inadequate. For at what period did this personal union take place, THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 325 and what are we to understand by it ? Did it involve the loss of human self-consciousness, which is the crown of humanity ? It evidently cannot have been consum mated at the time when the child Jesus passed, accord ing to the natural order of things, from the state of unconsciousness into that of self-consciousness. In this way we should gain but little if anything, since Jesus as an infant only would thus have time for natural development, while from the moment of the consum mation of the personal union the eternal self-conscious ness of the Logos would be his 7, and further develop ment in learning obedience and suffering would be out of the question. For the same reasons neither the time of his baptism nor of his entry upon his Messianic duties, nor any epoch in his public ministry, can be singled out as that of the consummation of this personal union. For even at the close of his life Jesus declares thai he does not know the hour of judgment, and it costs him a severe struggle to resign his own will to that of his Father, which would have been impossible, if his self-consciousness had been that of the eternal Logos. Above all, what would become in this case of the reality of Christ's death ? The view of death as a mere separation of soul from body not at all affecting the soul, common, yea, almost universal, as it is in our days, is unscriptural and unwarranted even by a single result of science. What, indeed, becomes of Christ's falling asleep every night, if his consciousness were that of the Logos ? This union cannot have been consummated at the resurrection, since the hypothesis, that the life of Jesus was merely human, differing with respect to the indwel ling of the Logos from that of the prophets of old in 38 326 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF degree only, and not in kind, is altogether inconsist with the express declaration of Jesus concerning h self, and the acknowledged views of the apostles. Je calls himself the Son of Man, and if the incarnation the Logos took place at the conception, the man Jcs being the Logos, and developing after the manner men ; we can easily understand this self-designation Jesus, since he is then, indeed, the realized ideal humanity, the sinless development of all human gen the universal man, all mankind being created in Logos. But if Jesus was not the incarnate Logos, 1 a mere man conceived by the Holy Ghost, he was oj one of the race of man. There is, at least, no scriptu proof that his conception by the Holy Ghost could c stitute him the Son of Man. Indeed, if Jesus wa: mere man, we also lose all solid basis for the grad indwelling of the divine fulness in him, and for declaration : " He that seeth me, seeth the Fathe The angel tells Mary that the Holy Ghost would co upon her, and therefore the holy one born of her woi be called the Son of God (Luke i. 35). The sa evangelist also calls Adam the Son of God, because proceeded immediately from the hands of God (iii. 3 And yet the Scriptures do by no means represent Ad as capable of receiving gradually the whole fulness the Deity ; on the contrary, Paul writes that Acl was made a living soul, while the second Adam i made a quickening spirit. That Jesus, in conseque of having been conceived by the Holy Ghost and s lessly developed was qualified to become gradually < personality with the Logos is, therefore, at best, a ph sophical expedient, and cannot be shown to have b an ingredient in the self-consciousness of Jesus or THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 327 well-established views of the apostles. Wherein, in the next place, consisted the value of Christ's death, if he was at that time, indeed, on the point of becoming personally one with the Logos, but was not yet com pletely so ? In this case it cannot be said that he offered himself to God through the Eterual Spirit, or became priest by virtue of his indestructible life (Heb. ix. 14 ; vii. 16) : at all'events, he did not offer to God the infinite, but his finite spirit, prompted by the in dwelling Logos, in direct opposition to Heb. ix. 14. The Logos himself, according to this theory, took no part in Christ's sufferings, and of what avail is such a human Saviour ? In the last place, if the final personal oneness of Jesus with the Logos was the great object of his life, why is it that we do not hear the least inti mation to this effect from Jesus himself? He speaks daily of his relation to the Father, and of the Father as, having sent him ; as being with him whom he was serv ing, to whom he would go, and in whose glory he would come again ; but of the Logos, who is gradually taking possession of him, and with whom he is to become identical in the full sense of the term, he makes no mention, not even by a single word. To say that this truth could not have been presented intelligibly to the Jews, is to be wise above what is written, and is with out the shadow of a sanction in either the Old or the New Testament. The apostles know of no such a rela tion of Jesus to the Logos ; even when they record his resurrection and ascension, at either of which moments the consummation of the personal oneness must, ac cording to the hypothesis, have taken place, they are perfectly silent as to the operation of the Logos. But this hypothesis is not only not supported by the word 328 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF of God, but is in diametrical opposition to it. "Glorify me with the glory which I had with thee before the world was"; " I came forth from the Father and am come into the world " : again, " I leave the world, and go to the Father" ; " If ye shall see the Son of Man ascend where he was before " ; " God has sent forth his Son, born of a woman " ; " He divested himself, taking upon him the form of a servant, and being made in the likeness of men " ; these declarations of Jesus himself and of his apostles, leave no room for doubts that the same I, or personality, which tabernacled among men, which taught and was in the form of a servant, had previously had glory in heaven ; and that it was this very J which afterwards became a man, taught and suf fered and lived among men. The Logos first becomes flesh, and then dwells among us (John i. 14). It was the very same personality that was from the beginning which the disciples afterwards beheld with their eyes and touched with their hands* (1 John i. 1). An in carnation of the Logos, progressing through the whole life of Jesus, and finally consummated at his resurrec tion, would be contrary to the entire connection of John i. 14, yea, in so for as the whole Gospel is intended to verify this passage, contrary to the scope of the whole Gospel. There is no clearer or more certain result of exegesis than the proposition that the / of Jesus on earth was identical with the /that had previously had glory with the Father. There is not the least counte nance in the word of God for any separation of the Son while on earth into two I's or self-consciousnesses, of which the one was the eternal Logos, the other the humble Jesus, no matter how closely these two I's are suppo'sed to be united. THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 329 §59. All possibility being thus precluded of understanding the personal oneness of the Logos and humanity in Jesus as long as the notion is retained that the Logos underwent no change in his incarnation, our only remedy is to examine whether this notion has any foundation in the word of God. Both in ancient and in our own times some have conceived of the Deity in a purely human manner, and then, taken it for granted that their views _ are scriptural The God of many Christians, e.g. has more in common with the to "Ov of Plato than with tho God of the New Testament. This much is certain, that if the Scriptures anywhere express their views of the Deity, it must be the case where they speak of the incarnation of the Logos, who is God. We shall therefore examine, with a mind as unbiased as possible, all those passages which speak of the incar nation of the Logos, and the result may, indeed, be opposed to some philosophical ideas of the Godhead, but cannot possibly be anti-scriptural. Christ himself expresses his transition from the state of glory, which he had with the Father before the foundation of the world, into this earthly life, in these words : " The Father has sanctified (set apart and con secrated to reveal the divine life) and sent me into the world " (John x. 36 ; comp. iii. 16, etc.) ; and again thus : " I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world " (xvi. 28) ; "I have come down from heaven" (vi. 38; iii. 16). The apostles also give prominence now to the one and now to the other of these points of view. Thus John : " God has sent his only-begotten Son into the world " (1 John iv. 9), but 28* 330 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF in another place : " The eternal life, which was with [toward] the Father has appeared unto us " (1 John i. 1, etc.), " The Logos became flesh " (i, 14), " Christ has come in the flesh" (1 John iv. 2), and thus Paul: " God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, in the simil itude of sinful flesh" (Gal. iv. 4 ; Rom. viii. 3), but also : " God (who) was made manifest in the flesh " (1 Tim. iii. 16), " Jesus Christ became poor for our sakes " (2 Cor. viii. 9), " He has divested himself, and taken upon him the form of a servant " (Phil. ii. 7). His incarnation is thus both his own act, and in com pliance with the will of his Father. The two points of view are connected in Heb. x. 5-10 where the Son is represented as saying at his advent, " Lo ! I come to do thy will, 0 God ! " The Scriptures moreover inform us what took place in the Logos while doing the will of his Father. When Christ says : " I came forth from my Father, and am come into the world" ; again "I leave the world, and go unto the Father ; and if ye loved me, ye would rejoice because I said, I go1 unto the Father " (John xvi. 28 ; xiv. 28), he declares that he has abandoned his intimate intercourse with his Father, and his relation to the Father has undergone a change. And when he .says : " I am come down from heaven" (John vi. 38 ; iii. 13), he expresses thereby the fact of his having made him self lower. This is both confirmed and more fully developed by Christ's prayer: "And now, 0 Father, glorify me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was " (John xvii. 5) ; here Christ declares as pointedly and plainly as lan guage can do it, that at that time he no longer had his ante-mundane glory, and on comparing his declarations THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 331 in Mark xiii. 32 and John xi. 41 with Mark vii. 34, there is no longer any doubt, that the glory with the Father which the Son laid aside at his incarnation, means, not only his divine form of existence, or his blessed life in light, but also his omnipotence and omniscience. Of the passage's from the apostolic writings let us consider in the first place John i. 14 : " The Logos •became flesh." If every kind of becoming is excluded in the Logos, John certainly chose a very awkward ex pression. Why did he not rather say ; he took upon himself flesh and blood ? John certainly knew what he was about when he expressed this central point of his faith, and thought he made no blunder in the se lection of his terms. He wished to say that the Logos in his incarnation did not remain as he had been before, but that with his assumption of human nature there was a change, introducing " days of the flesh " i.e. days of need, weakness, and the possibility of suffering (comp. Heb. v. 7 ; 2 Cor. xiii. 4). This agrees with Christ's own words, that his coming from heaven was a coming down, a going forth from the Father, or from that intimate life-union with him which he had sustained from all eternity. The declaration of Jesus, that he did not while on earth retain his ante-mundane glory, is more fully explained by the Apostle Paul. From Phil. ii. 6, etc. we learn that Christ passed from the form of God, which he possessed in his pre-existent state into that of a servant, by divesting or emptying himself. Jesus was never, while on earth, in the form of God, his self-divest ing act must not, consequently, be looked for during his life on earth, but it is the act of the incarnation, which is thus characterized by St. Paul. This view is 332 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF corroborated by the words in vs. 7 : becoming, i.e. being born, in the likeness of man (comp. Gal. iv. 4). This much is therefore certain, that according to this passage the incarnation ofthe Logos was an act of self-divestiture. The next question is : Of what did he divest him self? The first answer is: Of the form of God, for we read, " Who being in the form of God divested, emptied, himself, taking upon him the form of a servant." The form of a servant is existence in human form, the state of dependence on and waiting for another's good ness, while the form of God is the divine form of existence, a life of independence and all-sufficiency. If Paul, then, had merely made the above statement he would have taught that the Son laid aside his indepen dent and all-sufficient life. But he adds that he did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, i.e. he did not think that he ought to cling to his God-like form of existence as a robber to his prey, but divested him self, etc. He entered into a form of existence unlike that of God, which involves not only a laying aside of his independence and all-sufficiency of life, but also of his other divine attributes — omnipotence, omniscience, etc. We meet with the same idea in 2 Cor. viii. 9, which the English version gives correctly : " Though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor." Here it is evidently taught that a change took place in the Son. His riches are his ante-mundane glory, the form of God in which he existed, and his poverty is his in carnation, or rather his laying aside his divine attributes and taking upon him the form of a servant. If the Scriptures, then, teach anything, they teach that the eternal Logos underwent a change in his incarnation, divesting himself of his divine form of existence and of THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 333 his divine attributes, and the proposition : " that the Logos as certainly as he' is God cannot undergo a change," is thus proved to be not only unscriptural but contrary to Scripture. It is also important to consider the glorification of Christ, as illustrating the act of his incarnation. Why does the Saviour pray in John xvii. 5, " Glorify thou me, 0 Father, with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was"? If while on earth Jesus had actually possessed his divine life as the Logos, and had lacked it only as to his human nature, this prayer would be altogether unintelligible. The only thing to be desired would then have been, that his human nature might be fully pervaded by the indwelling Logos, and he would have prayed to the Father simply that he might receive permission so to do. This re mark applies with equal force also to the other proposi tion, that Jesus was while on earth in possession of his divine life, but voluntarily abstained from using it. Instead of addressing this prayer to the Father, he could and would have made use of his, as it were, dor mant divinity. Moreover, how can this theory be rec onciled with the language of the apostles : " That ye may know, what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in heavenly places, far above all principality and power and put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church " (Eph. i. 19-22) ? How can the exaltatiou of Christ be an act of the Father's omnipotence, by which believers are to learn what this will do for them, if Christ had 334 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF omnipotence in himself and only needed to call it into action ? It is true, other passages represent Christ's resurrection, his sitting at the right hand of God and his dominion over all things, as Christ's own work ; but this is easily understood, since the Father first glorified the Son with his ante-mundane glory, whereas Paul's ascribing the raising of Christ to the Father's omnipo tence is altogether unintelligible while we assume that Jesus was, as Logos, in possession of his divine life, even if he made no use of it. In perfect harmony with this is the declaration in John vi. 57 : " As the living Father has sent me, and I live, by the Father, so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me." It is only by participation in the exalted Saviour (vs. 62) that life is imparted to be lievers (vs. 53) ; and in like manner the Son, sent by the Father into the world, lives by the Father. It is the Father, whom Jesus calls the living ; he is the fountain of life for the Son, sent by him into this world, even as the glorified Jesus is the bread or food of believers. Could the relation of the ante-mundane Logos to the Father possibly be compared to the relation of believers to the exalted Saviour ? For the relation of the ante-mundane Son to the Father is such, that the Son is the fountain of life not only for all creatures, but even for the Holy Ghost ; while the believer's re lation to his Saviour never renders him the source of life to others. This much, therefore, must be admitted, that our Saviour's declaration is most easily understood from this point of view. Was it not also " life by the Father " which presented itself when we compared the passages of Scripture which teach the real humanity of Christ ? Life by the THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 335 Father, such as believers live by Christ — life by the goodness of the Father ? How, now, shall we explain John v. 26 ? In this pas sage Jesus says of himself during bis life on earth, "As the Father has life in himself, so has he given to the Son to have life in himself." This is the characteristic criterion by which we know the Son to be God. Had not, then, the earthly Son divine life in himself as much as the ante-mundane Logos? If this declaration ap plied with equal power to Jesus while on earth, the ante-mundane Logos, and the glorified Son, we should have to answer affirmatively. But we should unsay what we have said on the self-divestiture of the Logos in his incarnation. Hence it is the more necessary to examine carefully whether Jesus really says that the Father gives him to have life in himself, even as the Father, during his earthly life. The various passages of Scripture would, in this case, be in conflict with each other. For whoever believes that Jesus on earth had life in himself even as the Father, will find it impossible to bring his view into harmony with John vi. 57 ; xvii. 5 ; or Eph. i. 19 ; Phil. ii. 6-9 ; or John xi. 41, etc. Jesus did not, then, while on earth live by the Father, as believers live by the glorified Saviour. There was then no need of his praying the Father to glorify him, or of his being heard by the Father. He had exchanged his divine form of existence for the form of servant only in appearance, and had no need whatever to pray to the Father for help before performing his miracles. He sustained then, even on earth, the same relation to the Father by virtue of which he became the Mediator of creation. In John v. 17 Jesus defends his cure performed on 336 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF the Sabbath by stating, that his Father likewise had not ceased to work during the rest of the Sabbath. From these words his hearers infer that he makes him self equal with God, calling God his own Father (vs. 18). He affirms, thereupon, that it is a moral impossibility for the Son to do anything that he does not see the Father do ; saying : " Whatsoever things the Father doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. For the Father loveth the Son and showeth him all things that himself doeth ; and he will show him greater works than these, that ye may marvel" (vs. 19). By these greater works, as appears from vs. 21, Jesus means the raising of the dead, to be performed by the Son as well as by the Father. The raising of the dead being neces sarily connected with the judgment, since not to raise unto life, as well as to raise to condemnation, is an act of judgment, he adds, in vs. 22, that the Father has likewise committed all judgment to the Son. In vs. 24-29 the general proposition of vs. 21 is more fully developed, and three successive stages of resurrection are mentioned. The first of these occurs in the present: " He that heareth my word and believeth on him that sent me has everlasting life, and is passed from death unto life " (vs. 24); the second pertains for the most part to the future: " The hour is coming when the dead shall hear and shall live " (vs. 25) ; the third pertains to the future exclusively " The hour is coming in which all shall hear shall come forth " (vs. 28). In vs. 20 these works of raising the dead are represented as future (the Father will show him). In vs. 21 the present tense (the Son quickeneth) is, indeed, used, because the first act of raising the dead is really taking place in the present time (vs. 24), and instances THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 337 even of the second kind of resurrection occur in the present (the hour is coming and now is, vs. 25). Yet the quotations from vs. 20, 25, 28, and 29, evince that the main work of Christ's raising the dead is future. These three stages of resurrection each have their characteristic peculiarities. The first is thus stated: " He that heareth my voice and believeth on him that sent me." Here Christ leads to victory over death by the injunction, to believe on him [the Father] that sent him. In the second and third stages the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and this voice will quicken them — the voice being a man's most personal property. The second and third stages differ in this : at the second not all will hear, but all who do hear will rise to life, while at the third, all will hear, but some will rise to life, others to judgment. If the first of these events refers to those who believed during the ministry of Jesus on earth, the third refers to the gen eral resurrection of the dead at the close of this aeon ; but what does Jesus refer to in the second ? Evidently to the time intervening between his ascension and his coming to judgment. Paul and the Apocalypse also testify to the coming of an hour in which Christ's true disciples shall rise, between which hour and the end there is to be an interval. The third event referred to by Christ is identical with that spoken of in 1 Cor. xv. 26 and Apoc. xx. 12, etc., and the second with that in 1 Cor. xv. 23 and Apoc. xx. 4, 5. Yet Christ's words in John v. 25 are so general, that they refer not only to the bodily resurrection preceding the millennium, but also to the spiritual resurrection of all who open their hearts in faith from the time of Christ's ascension to his second coming. 29 338 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF This is the connection in which Christ declares : " For as the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son to have life in himself" (vs. 26). He thus establishes what he had said in vs. 25 ; for only because the Son has life in himself like the Father, is he able to raise the dead. Are we then compelled by the con nection of vs. 25 to refer Christ's words in vs. 26 to the earthly career of Jesus ? No ; for he treats in vs. 25 mainly of his works which he would do after his exalta tion. It is evident from the whole context, from the words "He will show" in vs. 20, " The hour is coming " in vs. 25, and the same words in vs. 28, that it is mainly the future in which Christ will raise the dead by his voice. Hence, vs. 26 must be understood as referring to the eternal influx of life from the Father into the Son, by which he is the Son. This took place from all eternity with the ante-mundane Logos, and is forever taking place with the glorified Jesus, but was suspended during the earthly life of Jesus, the Son not having life in himself as the Father, but rather living by the Father, in a manner similar to that in which the believer lives by the exalted Saviour. This also is the reason why Jesus, while on earth, had not his ante- mundane glory. The glory for which he prays in John xvii. 5 is that the Father will again grant him to have life in himself ; and so soon as the Son recovers this, he is able to raise the dead with his voice. The Saviour in speaking of the Father's giving life to the Son uses the past tense, eScoKev, because it was really past, not indeed absolutely, but relatively, i.e. suspended, in order to be resumed as soon as the Son's peculiar work was accom plished (I have finished the work and now glorify me, etc. xvii. 4) ; yea, the attentive reader will find in THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 339 this giving, which was past during the earthly life, of Jesus the very essence of our Lord's sonship. To this it may be objected that in vs. 25 Jesus says : " The hour now is, " from which it may be inferred that Jesus raised the dead as well during his earthly existence as after wards, and consequently had life in himself as much as the ante-mundane Logos or the now exalted Saviour. But this view is fully refuted by the conduct of Jesus at the grave of Lazarus ; his prayer there offered proves conclusively, that it was not the Son's, but the Father's, omnipotence by which Lazarus was raised. The glori fied Son, however, to whom all power is given in heaven and on earth, and who upholding all things by the word of his power, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high, raices the dead by his own power, even as the creation and preservation of the universe was the work of his omnipotence. Thus it appears that to have life in himself, as the Father has, is Christ's prerogative in his ante-mundane and exalted state, but not during his life on earth. Add to this, that as according to the connection, the whole discourse in John v. points to the future, the raising of Lazarus by the Father's omnipo tence in answer to Christ's prayer is merely the pledge and symbolical representation of what the glorified Redeemer will do. This, however, must not be under stood as if Jesus raising the dead stands on an equal footing with that of Elijah or others. While the deeds of Elijah were to be a testimony not to himself, but to Jehovah, those whom Jesus raises by his Father's power are a testimony to Jesus himself, that in him is our life, and that after his resurrection he will raise all who hear his voice. Again, God raised the dead by the prophets, because he had called them to the prophetic 340 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF office, while the help which the Father granted to Jesus was based on his own nature, by virtue of which the Father's fulness rested on him, the identity of his nature with that of God, or his being the incarnate Logos- God raised the dead by Elijah because he was with him, but by Jesus because the Father was in the Son and the Son in the Father : " Believe the works that I do that you may know and believe that the Father is in me, and I in the Father" (John x. 38). "I am the resurrection and the life," said Jesus to Martha, that she might believe that he could and would raise her brother Lazarus ; but at the grave he gave thanks to his Father for having answered his prayer. " I am the life" (John xiv. 6), said Jesus to his twelve disciples- but it is only the risen Saviour whose life quickens theirs (vs. 19) ; the corn of wheat brings forth no fruit until it dies (xii. 24) ; only after Jesus's glorification is there the Holy Ghost ; only then commences the eating of his flesh and drinking of his blood, without which no one cometh unto life (vi. 62, etc.). From all these considerations, it is evident that it is fully true only of the glorified Redeemer that he is the resurrection and the life. By the development of his earthly life he becomes the Prince of life, and is as such to the carnal Adamites what he had before his incarnation been to the universe. The carnal Adamites could receive the fulness of his life only after he had assumed flesh and blood, and pervaded them with his divine power. §60. We next in order examine the Son's transition from his ante-mundane to his earthly state. Though he THE PERSON OF CHRIST 341 preserved his identity, the ante-mundane Son was God ; the earthly Son, man. Whatever, according to the Creator's design, pertains to humanity, pertained also to him. Sin being something foreign to humanity, and a mere accident, Jesus is free from it. The personal unity of the Logos with human nature, or the assumption of human nature by the divine Son, is designated in the Scriptures partly as a humiliation or self-divestiture of the Son, partly as a going out from the Father, consequently as a double act. It is impor tant to keep these two ideas, which differ as the terms indicate, distinctly separate from each other in our conception, and to consider them in their co-operation. The result of their union is the " incarnation of the Logos." No man is omniscient from his birth, perfect in holi ness, omnipotent, omnipresent, nor was Jesus while on earth. Man is not even at first self-conscious. In his embryonic state he has no self-consciousness, nor even for some time after his birth, but attains, by degrees, to perception, then to consciousness, and finally to self-consciousness. The Scriptures do not, indeed, de clare, in so many words, that the Logos, when he became incarnate, laid aside his self-consciousness ; but, consist ently developing the scriptural doctrine of the incarna tion we cannot but admit that he then divested himself also of his divine self-consciousness, in order to regain it by the gradual development of a human soul. This is, indeed, the only key to explain the real humanity of Christ. And when he thus regained it, it was only iu the form of human self-consciousness, and subject to the alternation between clearness and obscurity which is produced by the organism of the body — alternating 29* 342 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF between wakefulness and sleep. And as his natural sleep, so also his sleep in death involved a temporary obscuration of his self-consciousness. As, by divine appointment, the self consciousness of the human soul, in its development and greater or less clearness, is conditioned by the development of the bodily organiza tion and its conditions changing, so was it also with the incarnate Logos. The human soul must be distinguished as substance and self-determination. It was, for example, the same substance which in a.d. 1517, setting all its powers mightily to work, commenced, as a praying, searching, struggling, laboring soul, the work of the reformation of the church, and which thirty-four years before lay in unconscious slumber. At the time of this sleep all those gigantic powers which the Reformation impera tively demanded were there ; but the soul of little Martin knew nothing either of them or of itself. Thus the same substance slumbered in the womb of the virgin, without self-consciousness, which thirty-four years after yielded itself a sacrifice, without blemish and spot, to the Father, having previously revealed to mankind the truth, which it bad perfectly comprehended. At the time of this slumber there already existed in this substance that indestructible life by virtue of which it has accomplished our redemption (Heb. vii. 16), as well as the power to know the Father as no other knows him (Matt. xi. 27) ; but it was unconscious life. Moreover, the same substance which now slumbered in unconsciousness had before existed with the Father as the Logos, by whom the Father had created, governed, and preserved the world ; but it was no longer aware of this. THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 343 It was the soul of Luther, and no other, which had strength to accomplish the work of the Reformation. But this embryonic strength had to be evoked by the self-conscious act of the will in which it lay. It is the self-conscious will which develops and calls these powers into action. When this sinks into slumber, all the powers of the soul fall asleep. It was the substance of the Logos which in itself had the power to call the world into existence, to uphold and enlighten it ; but when the Logos sank into the slumber of unconscious ness, his eternal holiness, his omniscience, his omni presence, and all his really divine attributes were gone ; it being the self-conscious will of the Logos through which all the divine powers abiding in him had been called into action. They were gone, i.e. suspended — existing still, but only potentially. Further, a man when he awakes from sleep is at once in full possession of all his powers and faculties ; but when consciousness burst upon Jesus it was not that of the eternal Logos, but a really human self-consciousness, which develops by degrees, and preserves its identity only through constant changes. Human consciousness becomes only gradually and by toil and effort the shining focus of knowledge and the source of acts of volition. The self-conscious soul can preserve its knowledge only by reviewing it from time to time, and its resolutions by constantly willing them anew. It was this human form of self-conscious existence which the Logos chose in his act of self-divestiture. Hence it plainly appears that omniscience, which sees and knows all things at once and from one central point, and the unchangeable merging of the will into the Father's, or divine holi ness, are not to be attributed to Jesus while on earth ; 344 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF and the same with the unchangeable bliss of the divine life. Nor was it only eternal self-consciousness which the Son laid aside, but he also " went out from the Father." We are not to understand that the indwelling of the Father, Son, and Spirit in each other had been dissolved, but that the Father's giving the Son to have life in himself, as the Father has, was suspended. Hav ing laid aside his self-consciousness and activity, he lost with this the capacity of receiving into himself the stream of life from the Father, and sending it forth again ; in other words, he was no longer omnipotent. Equally lost, or laid aside, was his omnipresence, which must not, at all events, be considered as universally diffused, but as dependent on the self-conscious will. When Luther says that Christ would, in his view, be an inadequate Saviour if he suffered only as to his human nature, the truth of which every true Christian recognizes (Heb. ix. 14), we see how the way has "been opened for us to understand that the Logos really suf fered and died as well as the flesh and blood which he assumed. Faith necessarily precedes theology, but theo logical science cannot rest until it has embraced within it the entire domain of Christian faith, a desideratum, however, that will be fully realized only in the church triumphant. If we can with a good conscience' affirm that the Logos laid aside his eternal self-consciousness, and therewith his omniscience and the eternal merging of his will in the Father's, his receiving also from the Father to have life in himself, even as the Father, con sequently his omnipotence aud omnipresence ; then and then only can we take the apostle's words, " and the Logos became flesh," in their natural and literal import. For then only can we understand and admit that the THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 345 flesh and blood which he took upon himself became a determining power, just as the bodily organism is, ac cording to the will of God — sin not pertaining to the essence of humanity — a determining power of the soul. The development of the soul's life is conditioned by the development of the life of the body ; the bodily organism must to a certain extent be developed before the soul can awake to self-conscious and volitional life, and then, as a personal being, subject its bodily organism to the laws written by divine holiness upon the God-like soul. This law holds good with respect to humanity in gen eral, and every individual in particular, that life begins as natural, the life of the soul being determined by that of the body. The condition striven after is that in which the personal soul governs its own life and that of the body according to its own laws, and when this is attained the body has become a spiritual body. Thus the life of the Son of Man commenced when the Logos became incarnate, and reached its full development when the body of his flesh was transformed into a body of glory, or an organism under the unqualified control of the divine life given again by the Father to the Son. §61. In an age when the terms incomprehensible and in credible have come to be almost synonymous, it is of the utmost importance for every sincere lover of truth to have correct views of what is meant by human comprehension. This subject cannot, of course, be fully discussed here, and we intend, therefore, simply to point out, in a few words, what men generally under stand by comprehending a thing, or when they think they comprehend it. 346 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF When a grain of wheat falls to the ground, the moisture and heat of the earth, the rain and light of the sun exert an influence upon it, so that a process of development begins, it receives the food which earth and air offer, and assimilates them according to its pe culiar type of life. In this way the grain becomes a stalk, reproducing itself thirty or forty times, and thus in time completes its course of development. This process is fully comprehensible and comprehended in so far as we can enumerate the factors which co-operate, but do we also comprehend the internal force of its life ? In an animal its material life constitutes a central point in which both its normal and abnormal condition and its wants are felt, impressions stored up, and im pulses given to flee or to combat danger and to satisfy its wants. We even see some animals put forth exer tions in order to satisfy their wants, without having been taught, and these are so well adapted to their end, so complicated and so provident, that they resemble the wisdom of the wisest, most experienced, and skil ful men. Is, then, animal life comprehensible or not? Because an animal has brains and instinct, all seems to be easily intelligible. But do we really understand how sensation, memory, and appetite proceed from the brain, which crumbles to dust ? And what is instinct ? A name for a thing which we do not understand. The life of the child for some time resembles that of a mere animal, but afterward personality, conscious and self- determining, awakes in this life of bodily sensations and desires, which feels itself called upon to control its animal life. For this very reason, then, personality cannot be the flower of animal life, but the actualization of another substance which is united with the animal THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 347 life, and has thus far lain dormant. Now follow innu merable actions and re-actions of personal and animal life. Personal life is conditioned in all its bearings by the animal life, and is yet always conscious of dominion over it. Is this psychico-bodily life of man comprehen sible? To many nothing can be plainer than that the soul receives impressions from the world without, and re-acts thereon, through the agency and mediation of the nervous system. But who, can say after all that he comprehends the personal union of soul and body, the soul's intercourse with the body, its sufferings and activity, its attainment and loss of self-consciousness. The assertion then seems to be warranted ; that with every progress to a higher stage the life of the surround ing world becomes more and more mysterious, and that what we call comprehending a thing is no more than our ranking the individual phenomenon in a class of similar phenomena, and tracing it to those powers the operation of which we daily witness, without, however, understanding their mystery. The proposition, then, that what is incomprehensible is incredible, is false, unless it be proved that what does not often happen can never happen, and that there can be no process of life which is altogether unique. The creation of the world by God, his calling into being what was not, is a fact that neither has been nor ever can be repeated. It is, therefore, to us incompre hensible. Innumerable new formations take place daily before our eyes, but they are not creations de novo, but transformations of what already exists. Equally incomprehensible to us is the life of God : how he eternally produces and comprehends himself, the one process being based on the other, or how he is depend- 348 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF ent only -on himself. Our own experience presents to us only such objects as are based both on themselves and on foreign objects, and only such self-conscious beings as exist before they know themselves. Shall we, then, say that the exis'tence of God and the creation of the world are incredible, and that a per sonal God is an absurdity, and the world eternal. We must renounce the prerogative of thought altogether, if we are unwilling to believe that the wise and beautiful organism of the world has its origin in the self-conscious act of the Spirit, to which the highest aim of thought is to trace all things which exist. But no true thinker would renounce his faith in the creation of the world out of nothing, by an eternal self-producing Spirit, for the reason that he cannot with his own eyes behold such creations de novo. Of a similar nature is the self-divesting act of the Logos, suffering his eternal consciousness to be suspended in order to regain it many months afterwards as a human, gradually de veloping self-consciousness, at the same time laying aside his omniscience and eternal holiness, foregoing also to receive from the Father life in himself as the Father has life in himself in order to diffuse it again, i.e. om nipotence, this self-emptying act on the part of the Logos is to us incomprehensible, because it is, from the nature of the case, unique. But is it, therefore, incred ible ? By no means. It is, on the contrary, the principal basis, on which rest all scriptural conceptions of the historical appearance of Jesus Christ and of his church, in the same manner as the creative act of the personal God is the basis of all speculation about the world and of the language of the natural conscience. THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 349 §62. If, however, both the existence of God and the creation of the world out of nothing are, from the nature of the case, without a parallel, it by no means follows that they have no remote analogies. The image of God, in which man was created, must, on the contrary, afford a certain analogy to the divine life. This analogy is clearly apparent if we contemplate man when at the height of his personal life. How does man become self-eonscious ? By his will. And by what is the will of man conditioned ? By his self-conscious ness. This reciprocal relation of our will and conscious ness is a faint image of God's eternal spirit-life. Proceeding from himself, and being conditioned only by himself, God is eternal. But these culminating points of personal life are, even in the most powerful mind, only transient moments; night comes, when the volition and self-consciousness evoked by the will are gone, and in the morning self-consciousness awakes without the action of the will. During the day, however, it is al together due to the will whether a man rises to the full energy of self-consciousness or lives in an intermediate state between waking and dreaming. So wonderfully has God interwoven the shadow of his own free, eternal life into our own sinful, natural life. We learn also, from nature, the Scriptures, and the church, that the original creative fiat of the Almighty is, faintly at least, repeated in the course of the develop ment of the world's life. The budding forth of organic life from the surface of the earth -cannot be the result of inorganic processes, any more than animal life can be the result of the development of vegetable life. In- 30 350 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF organic matter, indeed, affords material to vegetable and animal life, but the beginning of organic life points to the creative agency of God. Still more absurd would it be to trace the existence of man, with his self- consciousness and self-determining power, to the action of inorganic matter, or to the power of animals to propagate their species. Such theories can be con structed only by one who is deaf to the voice of his own conscience and of humanity, and to the voice which speaks of personal guilt and liberty, and adjudges punishment to crime as to a free act. To deny that man came into being by the creative act of God is to put him on an equal footing with the brutes. In the last place, all are created anew in Christ Jesus who believe in him. Not that a new ego or a psychico- bodily basis for it is created, but a divine life is im parted to nature, by virtue of which the person is able to submit to God in love, and to govern his life accord ing to the will of God, instead of yielding it to the desires of the flesh and the cravings of selfishness. These things bear some, though but a faint, resemblance to the original creative act of the Deity ; being not so much creations de novo as the implanting of higher principles into existing bases of nature. The only act that perhaps bears some resemblance to the self-empty ing act of the Logos is the utterance of Jesus on the cross : " Father, into thy hands I shall deposit (irapa- 6rjaop,ab [Tischendorf, TrapaTtOepiai]) my spirit" (Luke xxiii. 46). With these words the Saviour descends from the summit of strength, in which his spirit endures the severest pain of body and soul with perfect resigna tion, into a state of helplessness and impotency. While hanging on the cross he has achieved the highest moral THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 351 act, in sanctifiying the name of God amidst the severest sufferings of soul and body, submitting to his judgments, and declaring them just ; but now, no longer able to keep his spirit, he deposits it in the hands of his Father. To this exclamation on the cross, doubtless, corresponded the declaration of his resolution to empty himself. The state of the soul immediately after death may be compared with the embryonic state, as, in reality, falling asleep is a kind, of returning into the embryonic state ; and as the Saviour fell asleep, as all other men do, his soul experienced the same transition from full consciousness into the embryonic state. Being of his kind, — roil yap ical ykvos icrp,ev, — the human soul, or rather its history, is a not altogether inadequate par allel to the history of the Logos. We ourselves are conclusive evidence that the substance of the soul can exist not only as a self-conscious and self-determining, but also as an unconscious and limited being, and can pass over from one form of existence into another. Our souls emerge at birth from the night of uncon sciousness, and return into this night whenever they fall asleep. Even in the highest state of self-conscious ness only a small portion of our spiritual life is reached by its light ; we still remain unconscious of the greater part of what is within us. And this transition from a state of self-conscious and self-determining life into the unconsciousness of sleep is, to some extent, an act of our free will and determination. §63. These analogies, however, involve also specific dif ferences. We simply mention that Jesus, at his death, fell only for a short time into unconsciousness and 352 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF helplessness. To the penitent thief he declares: "To day thou shalt be with me in paradise." And if his descent into the lower regions, spoken of by Peter, is to be understood literally, it must have taken place between his death and his entering paradise. Of more importance is the fact, that the death of Jesus did not involve a loss of the treasure of spiritual life which he had acquired during the process of his human develop ment. At his awaking from bis death, his remembrance of his human life, of his mercy toward the brethren he had acquired, and of his human holiness, is full and unimpaired ; he has as a man regained the possession of his ante-mundane glory. So, also, will it be with us. When we awake from the unconsciousness and helplessness of death, the remembrance of our past lives, whether good or bad, will also awake. The self- emptying act of the Logos was of a different kind. When the substance of the Logos awoke to conscious ness in the infant Jesus, there awoke neither the re membrance of his eternal life with the Father, nor of the ocean of divine life, nor of his ante-mundane glory. With this remembrance a process of really human development would have been inconsistent. If he had known himself from the first moments of his self-con sciousness as the eternal Son of God, if he had had a clear remembrance of his eternal glory, how could the Scriptures represent his spiritual state as that of a child, and his life as a life of faith, and not of sight (Luke ii. 52). Or, if the ocean of his eternal life had commenced to flow, how was it that he did not know the hour of judgment (Mark xiii. 32), and that he learned obedience (Heb. v. 8) ? This leads us to another point. Whenever Jesus awoke from sleep he THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 353 resumed the same thread of self-consciousness which he had dropped in falling asleep, viz. that of the human form of self-consciousness. Human self-con sciousness is even by day in a process of production, as we have to produce it constantly anew, and can bring but a limited amount of our ideas within its reach. But when the incarnate Logos awoke into self- consciousness, it was in a form different from that in which he had had it in his ante-mundane state, and which he had laid aside at his incarnation. He laid aside his eternal, divine self-consciousness, in order to awake one really human. This involved the suspension of omnipotence and eternal holiness. In the eternal perfection of its self-consciousness in his ante-mundane state, the substance of the Logos searched the depth of the Deity aud the life of the universe, i.e. it was omniscient, and in eternal perfection merged its own substance and will in that of the Father, i.e. was eter nally holy ; but when it had determined to have its self-consciousness no longer as eternal, but as existing and developing in time, it had necessarily, also, its knowledge of God and of the world in the form of a gradual development, or it had to enter into the state of learning obedience and acquiring knowledge. This laying aside of omniscience and eternal holiness may seem to involve an impossibility ; but on tracing the subject to its root in self-consciousness, this seeming impossibility disappears. With omniscience, the om nipotent government of the universe and omnipresence were laid aside. Not, indeed, that these attributes were irretrievably lost ; for the substance of the Logos on earth was the same as that of the ante-mundane Logos, and we may therefore say that these powers 80* 354 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF simply entered into a state of rest, which, however, they themselves could not terminate so long as the eternal self-consciousness was wanting, which alone could set them again in motion. Add to this, that the laying aside of self-consciousness involved also the suspen sion of the communication of the Father's life to the Son, by which the Son has life in himself even as the Father ; for the divine life of the Son is, according to the Scriptures, the result of an eternal bestowal by the Father. The Father, gives to the Son to have life in himself as he has. Corresponding to this bestowal on the part of the Father is a reception on the part of the Son, which must be a conscious reception, consequently dependent on the self-consciousness and will of the Son ; but when the self-consciousness of the Son passed from the divine into the human form, the reception of the fulness of divine life from the Father necessarily underwent some modification. This determination of the Logos that his eternal self-consciousness should be now extinguished, in order that he might resume it during his earthly life as human, not as divine, in volving, as it does, the very roots of the incarnation, is, from the nature of the case, without any analogy in our experience. If, therefore, we mean by compre hending a thing our ability to assign it a place among other similar phenomena, this determination of the Logos is incomprehensible. Is this, moreover, the case when viewed from the stand-point of the Divine Being ? We answer : By no means. The wonder that the Logos determined to have his self-consciousness extinguished, and by this very act to lay aside his omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, and eternal holiness, becomes comprehensible by the fact that the THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 355 Logos is not a creature, but God himself. The de pendence of man shows itself not only in this, that he cannot reach a pinnacle which God has not granted him to reach, but also in this, that he cannot set arbitrary limits to either his life or self-consciousness. How gladly would the damned spirits sink into a state of annihilation, or at least of unconsciousness ! How eagerly would they drink of the waters of Lethe ! but they cannot. The same may be said of the voice of conscience in this life. He who does not produce his life cannot set limits to it ; and he who produces his self-consciousness only to a very limited extent can cause it to cease only to the same extent. We can, indeed, increase the clearness of our self-consciousness and the energy of our higher life by the power of our will, and accordingly depress it; we can reduce the life of our souls to a mere dreaming ; but this elevation and depression of our energy have their divinely ap pointed limits. But the Logos is God ; he has life in himself even as the Father ; his volition to receive life from the Father is the source of his life ; his self-con sciousness is his own act. Hence it follows that he can suspend his self-consciousness. The Logos would not be omnipotent if he had no power over himself. God's omnipotence must not, indeed, be regarded as altogether without limits ; God's liberty is not arbitrari ness. The limit of God's power is his holiness. He cannot do what is not holy, and consequently necessary and rational ; for he cannot will it. But his holiness is the only limit of his power. If, then, God's love wills that men should be saved, if the only means to effect this is the incarnation of the Logos, and if the incarnation involves the temporary suspension of his self-conscious- 356 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF ness, in order to resume it as really human, it must be possible to the power of the Logos to suspend it, and to resume it in the form of a human, developing self- consciousness. For is not God's power able to reach as far as his holy love ? It is the act of love to become poor in order to make others rich ; by which, also, it becomes a theme of eternal praise. Whoever would prove that this self-emptying act of the Logos is incon sistent with the idea of Deity must prove first that this deed was not one of holy love. But this cannot be shown to be the case. If, indeed, the Logos in becom ing poor would remain so forever, so as to be unable at any time to enrich others, then this self-emptying act would not be one of holy love. But he recovers his riches and ante-mundane glory. Jesus is glorified with the same glory which the ante-mundane Son had. He recovers it, moreover, after having revealed the name of God to men, having stood as their propitiation be fore God, and himself become the Author of life and a quickening spirit for them, and having thus rendered it possible to fill them with his recovered life of glory. Let none, then, say that this wonder of the incarnation — the self-determining act of the Logos to become a helpless, unconscious child in a mother's womb — is impossible. Its possibility is based on the being of God as omnipotent love. Equally possible is the transition of the eternal and omnipotent into a form of existence subject to time and space. As time is made up of the realization of the ideas of the eternal mind, it is certainly possible for the eternal to follow this realization in its parts, and thus become temporal ; and, on the other hand, the finite spirit of man thus becomes a partaker of THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 357 eternal life. It must, moreover, be borne in mind that the omnipresent God would not be omnipresent if be could not be in all places, which shows at once that he has the power of becoming local, if he thus sees fit. Our soul, also, though of divine origin, and therefore not subject to space, is indissolubly connected with its organ the body, and is, in this respect, local. §64. Apollinaris, Bishop of Laodicea, about a.d. 360, taught that the Logos took the place of the human soul in Jesus. He supported this doctrine on the two fol lowing grounds : 1. If there had been a rational soul in Jesus, in addition to the Logos, the man Jesus would have been a personality distinct from the Logos, but not the incarnate Logos himself; 2. As the human soul is, by nature mutable, Jesus would not have been preserved from sin, and would therefore have been dis qualified from being our Redeemer, if he had had a human soul. It is evident, however, that if the immutable Logos occupied the place of a mutable human soul in Jesus, and there was no real human soul in him, he was not a real man. Besides this, there are several passages of Scripture which directly refute the doctrine of Apol linaris. John records that Jesus was vehemently moved (ivefSpifuja-aro) in spirit at the grave of Lazarus (John xi. 33). The Saviour himself exclaims that his soul is agitated (reTdpa/cTai) , or terrified (xii. 27). Again : " My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death " (Matt. xxvi. 38) ; and on the cross : " Father, into thy hands I shall deposit my spirit " (Luke xxiii. 46). What do these passages mean, if there was no 358 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF human, changeable soul in Jesus ? And how is the position of Apolliuaris reconcilable with the descrip tion of the true humanity of Christ (which we have given in § 45 of this work) according to the Scriptures? The Apollinarian heresy had the effect of producing in the ancient church a clearer conception of the fact that Christ had a human soul. For in opposition to the heresy the church taught that the Logos took upon himself a rational soul, together with flesh and blood from the flesh and blood of the virgin Mary, but agreed with Apollinaris that the Logos underwent no change in the incarnation. THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 359 CHAPTER II. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SON'S LIFE, FROM HIS INCAKNA- TION TO HIS GLORIFICATION. §65. The Father eternally gives the Son to have life in himself, even as he has ; and for this reason the Son is God, and the fountain of life to the world. On the same basis rest his omniscience, his omnipotent govern ment of the world, and his omnipresence. The Son, on his part, receives the fulness of life which the Father gives him, and sends it forth again from the centre of his own life. He has it and wishes to have it only from and through the Father ; he merges it eternally in the Father, and this constitutes his eternal holiness. But the Logos became flesh. It was his good pleas ure to suspend his eternal self-consciousness and will, in order to take them again, not iii the divine, but human form, and consequently subject to gradual de velopment, and conditioned by the maturity aud strength of the bodily organism into which he entered. It follows, that the Father's eternal bestowal of life on the Son was suspended during the earthly existence of Jesus. Where there is no reception, there is no bestowal, and the Son existing in human form and having a human (limited) self-consciousness was, as 6uch, unable to receive the infinite life-stream of the Father. At this time the Son lived through the Father as 360 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF the believer lives through the exalted Saviour. The Father was in the Son, even while on earth, but the Son could not at every moment receive the Father's fulness, but only parts of it, just as the believer can receive the life-stream of the exalted Saviour, as it were, only by drops. Though the Logos after his incarnation had no* longer either his eternal self-consciousness or will, yet his substance still remained the same. In like manner it is the same soul-substance in us that is now so narrowly confined and that will yet live in heaven in the liberty of eternal life. It is this identity of substance before and after the incarnation which renders Jesus superior to all other men and angels, while the change of his eternal self- consciousness and will into the human form constitutes the basis of his true humanity, or equality with all other men. These two points must be kept in mind if we would understand the development of the earthly life of the incarnate Logos. Our object in the present chapter is to show how the earthly life of our Saviour, which we have described, in accordance with the Scriptures, in the second section of this book, budded and developed from its root, viz. the substance of Jesus as the incar nate Logos. Before we proceed, however, we deem it not improper to premise that the distinction between the substance of the spirit, and its activity in feeling, knowing, determin ing itself, and in knowing and working upon outward objects is the fundamental condition of a correct knowl edge of the spirit. It has, indeed, been said, that to speak of a substance of the spirit is incorrect, the spirit being no more than self-determination and self-con- THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 361 sciousness. If this were so, it would be folly to speak of a substance of the Logos, that has laid aside self- consciousness and will. This wild and idealistic hypothesis is, however, at once refuted by the fact, that the soul of man exists prior to self-consciousness and will, and that there are diseases of the body, in which the soul is no longer active, but recovers itself as soon as the body is restored to health. From the fact, that the soul had no knowledge of the disease, it follows that self-consciousness was suspended, but now its life breaks forth again. Again, no man is at all times, or even at any time, conscious of all that is in .him, be it good or bad. To be brief, self-determination and self- consciousness without a self-determining and self-con scious substance are impossible. There can, therefore, be no less fitting advocates of the reality of spirit as opposed to materialism, than the idealists who admit only the natural life as the source to which the life of the soul can be traced. The idealists of modern philosophy should, therefore, either renounce their ideal ism and own a spiritual substance, or become avowed materialists. §66. The souls of men are, as observation shows, differently constituted. In some predominates a tendency to thorough and comprehensive knowledge, in others an active and administrative capacity, in others again love of a retired, contemplative life, and in others an aptitude for the artistic representation of the inner life, while others are naturally superficial, contracted, of little energy, etc. What now, were the natural talents and indications 81 362 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF of the soul of the Logos when he had entered a human form and taken upon him flesh and blood ? If it is the substance, by which and for which all things exist, and the light of all personal beings, which rests in Mary's bosom ; there must be in this embryonic soul the elements of a universal genius. There are persons, who understand the spirit of times and men the most various, and are able to reproduce manifold views of life and disposition, and represent them naturally and truthfully. These various talents of ordinary men may help us to a true conception of the soul of Jesus as possessing, all the elements of a universal genius. As the incarnate Logos was the source from which all the natural talents of man proceed and all human souls derive their existence, nothing really human could be wanting in him. Even in this respect, the incarnate Logos could not be like other men, but was necessarily " the Son of Man." It is, indeed, self-evident, that Jesus did not develop all the faculties and talents with which he was endowed. He recognized it as his calling, to become the moral- religious renovator of humanity, or rather the revealer of the Father, the High-priest, and Author of a new life for humanity. Hence any other occupation but. intercourse with his Heavenly Father, and the hearts of men, and study of the divine revelation laid down in. the Old Testament, would for him have been trifling. Many a man of world-wide renown has not had time to develop all his natural talents, yet the labors of such a man, compared with those of Jesus, were as nothing. Christ's talents for worldly knowledge and activity remained thus undeveloped, while his moral and relig ious nature, beiug most important, were naturally THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 363 developed by the process of personal sanctification and intercourse with the hearts of men. Every human soul has a peculiar life, which never recurs in exactly the same form, although sin and its effects greatly check the development of individuality. Jesus, however, judged every one he met correctly, i.e. according to his idiosyncrasies. The Baptist in the wilderness, and the joyous children of the bride-chamber ; Peter, the man of faith, and the fiery spirit of John ; the souls of children and the woman who expressed her love by anointing him — all lay open to his view ; he even saw through the self-righteous young man (Mark x. 21), and loved him. On the other hand, every human soul meeting with Jesus could not but love him, and feel attracted toward him, as iron by the magnet, provided that the inner eyes were open, and the Holy One had not become an object of hatred through prevailing worldliness and love of sin. He who understands all, can impart something to all, and all must, necessarily, feel attracted by him. §67. Experience likewise teaches, that souls are also dif ferently constituted in a religious point of view. While some are really home-sick for heaven, in others the elements of worldliness predominate. Not, indeed, that any soul created in the image of God has no long ing for heaven, nor that any man born of flesh has no innate love of this world, but the longing for God and communion with him is in some stronger, in others weaker. The same difference also exists with respect to morality. There is an innate nobility of soul, by virtue of which the good appears to some men-, as it 364 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF were instinctively, beautiful, and the bad, ugly. Many temptations find no point of assault in them, they do not even notice opportunities to do evil, which prove dangerous to others, and they pass by pits into which others fall, without even an evil thought presenting it self. (This is the case not only with individuals but with families, nations, and centuries). Not that these noble souls have no weak points, or that no temptations assail them ; what is born of the flesh, is flesh, whether the intrinsic power of the flesh hold the soul bound with fine or thick cords ; if the struggle with the power of sin is commenced by the natural man, it remains a conflict without a victory, as Paul has truly and beau tifully described it in Rom. vii. That this whole chapter refers not to the regenerate, but in part to nobler souls in their natural state, appears from its whole tenor. Those souls that are of the truth commence the struggle and listen to the voice of God, while those that are not of the truth become the willing and unconscious slaves of sin. This natural nobility of soul and longing after his Heavenly Father could not but be all-powerful in Jesus as the incarnate Logos. Born after the flesh, not by the will of man, but by the operation of the Holy Spirit in the womb of a noble virgin, also inwardly sanctified during her pregnancy by special divine inter position, Jesus was born without the contamination of the flesh. To this negative side of his freedom from original sin was added the positive element of the highest innate nobility of soul, as the incarnate Logos. These elements in the soul of Jesus, this tenderness, purity, and beauty, with this longing after his Heavenly Father, account for the fact that he remained sinless, though his education by pious but fallible parents THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 365 cannot be supposed to have been entirely faultless. In him as an infant there was no point of connection with anything sinful or wrong, during his education and when he had arrived at clear self-consciousness his na ture delighted only in what was innocent, and pleasing in the sight of God. Was, then, the sinlessness of Jesus during his whole life — his boyhood, youth, and manhood — only the natural result of his innate nobility? By no means. Such a view is incompatible with his being our pattern. Had it been natural and necessary for him to realize the good in all his thoughts, words, and actions, as it is natural and necessary for a highly-gifted person to produce works of art and genius, the task of Jesus would have been much easier than ours. This innate nobility alone, however comprehensive, does not enable one to yield perfect obedience to the divine law. The good is, indeed, always beautiful (Comp. Rom. vii. 16, 18: avp.cjivp't Tb> vopa> on /eaAo?) ; but self-denial, hating and losing one's own life are (i.e. appear) by no means beautiful. A merely aesthetic virtue touches only upon those points of the law that are easy, but passes by what is difficult. When it becomes our duty to hate our own lives we should not desire Jesus for our pattern, if his righteousness were no more than the natural development of the nobility of soul peculiar to the incarnate Logos ; or, in other and plainer words, such a view of Jesus would change his sinless perfection from an ethical into a physical process. Righteousness would then be out of the question. The honesty of a simple peasant is more pleasing in the sight of God than the beautiful development of the most gifted nature ; the first being an act of liberty, the second 81* 366 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF of nature. He who can say no more of the sinlessness of Jesus than that it was the development of his highly gifted moral nature places it lower than the honesty of the simplest peasant. The moral beauty which is the necessary result of natural disposition cannot be re deeming grace. This is evidently no offering up of himself to God on the part of Jesus, nor an act of obedience in satisfaction for Adam's disobedience (Rom, v. 19). Only a moral act can make satisfaction for a moral offence. Jesus the righteous is the propitiation for our sin (1 John ii. 1, etc. ; comp. iii. 7). What an altogether different description of his sinlessness is given by our Lord himself : " I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be ac complished" (Luke xii. 50) ; A corn of wheat must fall into the ground and die ; " He that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal " (John xii. 24, etc.) ; " Not my will, but thine, be done " ; " My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" This was not the royal way of development of a moral- religious genius, but the process of sanctification of the servant of God, who could resign his natural will to death only by the utmost concentration of his higher will. The development of a genius, it is true, is not ac complished without the activity of the will. Close application, enduring poverty and privations, rejecting alluring prospects which another sphere may offer — these are acts of the will. Nor are temptations wanting, which beset a. genius in his process of development, as, for example, the bad taste of his teachers, or of the works of art which furnish his models, or of the friends of art, whose approbation is of the first importance to THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 367 him. But the part which the will plays in the process of development of an artistic genius,. etc., is essentially different from the efforts of the will to lead a holy life. The development of his natural talents is a matter of necessity to a youthful genius ; and, if he suffer himself to be bid off from the road which is indicated by his nature, he thus incurs no moral censure ; but men will say that his natural talent was not, after all, so strong as it seemed to be at first. The determination of the true artist, then, to submit to all privations on the road of his art sustains to his natural talents and inclinations a relation different from that which the determination to lead a holy life sustains to the will and law of God. The will of the artist is overpowered by the bent of his nature ; or, to speak more correctly, it is the natural will itself which the artist implicitly follows in order that his natural talents may be fully developed ; his natural inclination to art being stronger, and over coming his natural love of ease. The case of the man is different who is anxious to lead a holy life. Was Luther, for example, led by natural inclination when he prepared with struggling and prayer for the decisive session of the Diet of Worms, that he might conquer his apprehensions, and be obedient to the word of Christ : " He that confesses me before men, him will I confess before my heavenly Father"? Was it ambition to become a reformer that gave him this strength ? No ; but his higher determination to confess Jesus overcame his natural dread of being treated as a heretic. Again, while the temptations which would lead an artist from the true to a false development of his natural talents are to be overcome not so much by the will as by the force of his genius, the temptations that would turn 368 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF us away from the path of rectitude must be overcome by the concentration of the higher will of our spirits. The sinless development of the child Jesus, then, was effected by the strength of his innate religious nobility of soul. For in a child not having attained to clear self-consciousness, to accurate distinction between good and evil, and to liberty of self-determination, uniformity with the divine will cannot be produced by the moral act of self-conscious determination. But the more the growing child entered on possession of liberty, the more did his perfect obedience to his Father's will become the act of his choice, in harmony, of course, with the inclinations of his divine nature. John writes : " Whosoever is born of God does not commit sin ; for his seed remaineth in him ; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God " (1 John iii. 9). What does the evangelist teach in these words? Certainly not an absolute impossibility of sinning on the part of the children of God ; for both the Scriptures and experience plainly refute this notion. His meaning is evidently this — that from the new man, who reigns in the regenerate, sin cannotproceed ; but it does from the old man, which is, indeed, dethroned, but not yet wholly dead ; and that the regenerate, as certainly as he is so, does not foster sin when overtaken by it, but renews his struggle against it, until, by the grace of God, he utterly eradicates it from his being. If any thing in the line of our own experience is calculated to throw light upon the rationale of Christ's sinless de velopment, it is in John's words, just quoted, concerning the regenerate. As the apostle says : " Whosoever is born of God cannot sin," so must we say of Jesus : " Jesus, the THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 369 Logos, being in the form of human existence, could not sin." As, however, the regenerate show that they can really sin, so there was in Jesus a possibility of sinning, in a manner, however, different from that of the re generate. In the regenerate there is still the old cor rupt nature, inherited from the parents, and strengthened by actual sin up to the time of conversion, and in this corrupt nature there are still the roots of sinful desires and slothfulness in doing good, so that sins are inev itable, at least sins of omission, so long as human nature is not fully penetrated by the new life of the spirit. But in the holy nature of Jesus there was neither sloth nor the roots of sinful desires. He had, however, human flesh and blood, which is capable of, and pain fully affected by, suffering. And how much of not mere privation, but even pain, had his nature to endure! If his hungering in the desert, or the want of a place where to lay his head, or the crown of thorns had made him impatient, he would no longer have been sinless. Yet more ; Jesus stood as a man among men. As a man he necessarily had the natural wish to main tain his individual right, the dignity of his person. But what an amount of ignominy was heaped upon his head ! Was not his resigned and ever-patient sub mission to ignominy all the more difficult because he knew who he was ? The devil very artfully contrasts his hunger and his being the Son of God with each other. But his severest conflict was that he, being sinless, should taste death, which is the wages of sin, and therefore a disgrace to the sinless, and that the Son, who had always confessed and glorified the Father, was forsaken of the Father at the very moment of his 370 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF utmost ignominy. These conflicts rendered it possible for Jesus, sinless as he was in his inner nature, to sin as the regenerate do ; they sinning, not according to their new nature, but being overtaken by their old propensities, and the new spirit, which has become the ruling principle, not always opposing the ebullitions of the old man with proper energy. Jesus was tempted as we are. Not, indeed, by his own lusts, as we are, but by the severest sufferings, in which his natural will could be sacrificed to God only by the utmost concen tration of his spiritual will, just as in the hour of trial it requires from us the hardest struggle for the sacrifice of the natural will to succeed. It was by freely choosing, then, to obey the divine will as revealed in his inner man, and by freely following the earnest longings of his eternal spirit after God (Heb. ix. 14), by freely denying, hating, and putting to death those inclinations of his outward nature which conflicted with the will of God, that he should finish his course in privation, in ignominy, yea, in the feeling of being inwardly forsaken of God, that the sinless develop ment of Jesus as a boy, as a youth, and especially as a man, was accomplished. God has implanted in the breast of every man, consequently in that of Jesus, a love of life, of honor, etc., and he requires of us to sac rifice these inclinations to bis will, since only such a sacrifice or offering evinces real love ; from Jesus also God required such a sacrifice during the whole period of his self-conscious life, which became more severe and difficult at every step, that by his infinite sacrifice our sins might be atoned for, and Christ become the second Adam, quickening the whole race. Jesus, becoming by his own free will obedient to the THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 371 will of his Heavenly Father, thus confirmed the strong natural bent of his mind. His natural disposition, as the Logos existing in human form, to live in perfect conformity to his Father's will, acquired by daily prac tice more and more a free, sanctified character. When the boy Jesus, at the age of twelve years, said to his mother : " Must I not be in what is my Father's ? " we see in this "must" (Set) the resultant of the natural bent of his mind and his free self-determination. About two decades later he said to his disciples : " My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work," afterwards to the Jews : " The Son can do nothing of himself;" and again, " I can of mine own self do nothing " (John iv. 34 ; v. 19, 30). What growth in holiness lies between the boy's " must " and the moral impossibility of the man's doing anything that is not the Father's will. Although in John v. 17 the Son testifies that by virtue of his sonship, which was his by nature, it is morally impossible for him to do aught but the Father's will, yet about a year afterwards, in his great intercessory prayer, we hear him say, " for their sakes I sanctify myself." From what immediately follows : " that they also may be sanctified through the truth," and the previous context: " Sanctify them through thy truth," we learn that the sanctification of Jesus must be understood not merely as a setting apart of himself for his vicarious death, but also as submission and conformity of his whole being to the will of God. For it is immediately on the conclusion of this prayer that his struggle in the garden com mences, and we hear him exclaim : " 0 my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me ; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt;" with especial reference 372 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF to which it is written in the Epistle to the Hebrews : " who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears, unto him that was able to save him from death, and was delivered from his fear ; though he was a son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered ; and being made perfect, he became the author of eter nal salvation unto all of them that obey him." Thus we see that to the very last there was a struggle, a sanctifying of himself, a learning of obedience, a be coming perfect. It was only when he bowed his head, that he said : " It is finished." The words " the Son can do nothing of himself" are absolutely valid only when his last struggle is over and his self-sanctification is complete. Not till then is all possibility of sinning removed. So long as the temptation has not reached its acme, the question, whether Jesus will finish the work of offering up himself to God, is not absolutely settled, but this point is reached when he is delivered into the hands of sinners," when his holy life is to be given up to death, and when he feels himself forsaken of the Father. If when the Saviour's sufferings began the possibility of refusing obedience had no longer ex isted, Good Friday would not have been a day of sacrifice and atonement, since sacrifice is the offering up of one's own will to that of God. Now the great question, whether Jesus would submit to the demands of divine justice, and thereby become a satisfaction for our sins, was forever settled. His whole life was a constant rising from his strong natural ten dencies toward the Father — which, however, included the possibility of refusing obedience, — to a state of perfect conformity to the Father's will, and this being THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 373 attained, the very possibility of having another will than that of God ceased ; every day of his life there was an advance towards this end, but only on the day of his death was it fully realized. In such colors do the Scriptures portray the sinless development of Jesus. The attempt has, indeed, been made to show that Jesus was freely obedient to the Father and remained undefiled by any sin ; but that, at the same time, the possibility of sinning was from the beginning excluded. It is claimed by Thomasius, Liebner, and Hoffmann that Christ's own selfcdeterminatiou rendered it impos sible from the very first for him to sin, since he could not deny himself. This assertion, however, implies a contradiction or impossibility. It is true that the holy inhabitants of heaven cannot sin, and yet are perfectly free. They have united their individual wills with that of God by oft-repeated acts of self-determination. If we suppose that the will of Jesus, when it awoke in him as a child, was indissolubly united with that of God, and thus exempt from the very possibility of fall ing, this union of wills must have been affected by the ante-mundane Logos, and based on the eternal merg ing of the will of the Logos in that of the Father; and consequently no change can have taken place in the relation of the will of the Logos to the Father at the incarnation. If this be so, it is evident that Jesus can neither be our pattern nor our Redeemer. If his will was decided beforehand by the eternal merging of the Logos in the Father, and his earthly self-determinations were but the necessary result of those in his ante-mundane state, how can he be a pattern for us, who are to decide for 82 374 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF God in the midst of the temptations of our earthly pilgrimage ? And if the Son's will were offered to the Father not by a human self-determination in the midst of tempta tions, but during his state of heavenly pre-existence, so that his earthly obedience is but the natural develop ment of the ante-mundane merging of his will in the Father's, how can this act of Jesus be a sacrifice and propitiation for our sins ? For it is not suffering in itself, but the inward self-determination and voluntary submission to suffering which constitutes a sacrifice. Whoever thus transfers this self-determination to suffer on the part of Jesus from his earthly to his ante- mundane existence severs the very nerve of the great act of atonement. The act of obedience of «the Logos cannot possibly make satisfaction for works of disobe dience. The merging of the Logos in his Father's will cannot with any propriety be called a sacrifice, since offering implies self-denial, while this state is one of supreme bliss. Again, Jesus would not be a real man if there were no possibility whatever of his swerving from the path of duty, or if his will were one with the Father's from the very first moment of the incarnation. For where is that man whose will has from the very beginning been im mutably fixed on God ? The power of deciding for or against God is an essential ingredient of human nature. Whatever is born of the flesh, it is true, no longer pos sesses this power in its original strength ; sin is in us from the very first ; when the divine law makes its demands, or when conscience commences to act, this corrupt nature is also alive, and has a power stronger than ourselves. Human nature no longer exists in us THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 375 in its original purity and liberty. This servitude of the will is not, however, complete, as the will can still enter upon the struggle with the depraved propensities of our nature, and when Adam came from the bands of God his liberty to decide and choose between good and evil was perfect and in its natural freshness. If this power of determination for or against God's law constitutes an essential ingredient in human nature, then Jesus must have had it. As certainly as the Logos became in the incarnation a man of an incomparably exalted religious disposition, he acquired the possibility of sin ning. His incomparably exalted moral-religious dis position he owed to the fact that he was the incarnate Logos, the possibility of sinning to the fact that he was a real man. The incarnation involves his transition from eternal holiness (i.e. the eternal, unchanged merg ing of his will in that of the Father) into the temporal, struggling and developing form of will. Such a will necessarily chooses and resolves. As the Logos in his incarnation entered into the process of development and acquisition with respect to self-consciousness and knowledge, so also with respect to his will. To contend, then, that Jesus had from the very first an unchangeable will is a - repetition of the error of Apollinaris, who taught that something exempt from change occupied the place of the rational soul in Jesus, and is exposed to the objection which the Fathers then urged against this error, that if Jesus had not a really human soul, able to decide for or against God, our souls cannot have been redeemed by him, since that which he took not upon himself was not redeemed by him. Adam's free act of disobedience has brought us all into the condition of sinners, and only the free act of obedience of the 376 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF second Adam can undo the first Adam's act, and restore us to the condition of the righteous (comp. Rom. v. 19). The first Adam denied his innate religious nature, under the light trial imposed upon him, whether out of love to God and respect for his command he would deny his natural appetite the pleasant and mysterious fruit of one out of many trees ; the second Adam as the Son of God possessed an infinitely higher religious in clination, a greater longing after the Father, than the first Adam, who was simply created in the divine image of personality and ardent love to God ; but the work of the second Adam, a trial of thirty-three years in a sinful world and amid the severest sufferings, was also infi nitely heavier than the trial of the first ; yet the second Adam denied not his innate longing after the Father, but his own natural will, in all the trials to which his Father saw fit to expose him, even in death and when forsaken of God. The first Adam, though but a man, refused to learn obedience ; but the second Adam, although he was the Son of God, was willing to learn obedience even unto death. In the discussion of this most solemn question, viz. whether Jesus during his development could possibly have sinned, which we have found to be answered most positively, both by the Scriptures and the analogy of faith, in the affirmative, we must not suffer our judgment to be forestalled by the question, What would have become of Jesus if he had actually sinned ? We meet this question with the answer, that God foresaw his victory over every trial. How God can infallibly foreknow the free self-determi nation of a being not yet perfect in holiness is, indeed, a mystery for us in our present stage of knowledge. To say, that God merely foreknows them without or- THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 377 Gaining them himself, does by no means solve, but only reil the question, the 'mystery being, how God can oresee, or eternally see, what he has not foreordained. That notwithstanding God does foresee what he does not foreordain, but what is determined freely or ac cidentally by us, is a truth which biblical theology cannot call in question. No one will deny, that God calls such individuals only to be his prophets, as from free self-determination rejoice in his name, and yet he ieclares to Jeremiah (i. 5) : " Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee ; and before thou earnest forth from the womb I set thee apart ; I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations," consequently God must have known, that Jeremiah would not be a vain worldling, but a lover of the truth. Christ himself twice testifies that the betrayal of Judas was foretold (Jno. xiii. 18 ; xvii. 12) and in the latter passage he refers to this pre diction in order to show that Judas was not lost because of anything left undone by the Master ; yet who would deny, that it required a number of free determinations on the part of Judas, before he could sink so low, as to betray his Master ? And could the denial of Peter be inferred from given premises ? Was he not a free agent ? Might, he not have repented before the second or third denial ? How, again, can we account for Paul's proph- 3cy concerning the conduct ofthe man of sin (2 Thess. ii.), for the prophecies of Scripture concerning Gog and Magog, and the final rejection of a part of mankind, if the Spirit of God foresees only what he has fore- ardained, but not what depends on man's free-agency, since this largely modifies the course of events and is sspecially the condition of faith in Jesus Christ ? Taking Dur stand on the Scriptures, then, we can say without 82* 378 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE" OF any fear of successful contradiction, that God foresaw the sinless development of Jesus, although his will was not indissolubly united with that of God from the very first, but this final union was the result of his free self-determination, which at first included the possibility of sinning. §68. The more attentively one listens to the voice of God, and the more faithfully and energetically one does his will, 'the more certainly is the pure and perfect devel opment of his peculiar nature accomplished. For every soul is created for and with a certain bias toward God, and the dealings of Providence with every man have the full realization of the peculiar ideas underlying his creation for their object. The sinless development of Jesus, at no time swerving in the least from the path of duty, was, accordingly, necessarily followed by a perfect development of his peculiar nature, which is not like that of other men, a soul created by and for God, but the Logos in the form of human existence. If, then, it is consonant to the nature of every human soul as being a breath of God, of divine origin, and spiritual, that God the Spirit can take possession of it, and this indwelling of the Spirit is the soul's highest, or rather only true, object, it is also consonant to the nature of Christ's soul, as being the Logos existing in human form, that God should take possession of it in a peculiar manner. The whole complex of personal beings was created by and for the Logos, to be his express image ; each soul is accord ingly but a drop of the ocean of ideas realized in the Logos, and compared with him an extremely limited, THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 379 ne-sided substance. It is further self-evident, that bile in each created being there can be but a limited ldwelling of the Deity, in the soul of Jesus, as the ogos in the form of human existence, the divine in- welling can. be such as will take place in the combined rganism of all personal beings throughout eternity. loreover, if the substance of the Logos, which at the icarnation entered into the form of human existence, : equal with God, the Son being consubstantial with le Father, the whole fulness of the Father can dwell 1 Jesus. The sinless development of Jesus has thus le necessary consequence, that as a full-grown man he an affirm : " Whoso seeth me, seeth the Father ; for le Father is in me." The children of God may be lied with the' fulness of God (Eph. iii. 19) in this cnse that God is all in all to them, the whole, although ery limited, organism of their powers being taken pos- ession of, penetrated, and enlightened by the Spirit of Joel ; but in Jesus the indwelling of God takes place n such wise thaf not only is his whole organism of owers taken possession of by God, but the whole ilness of the divine attributes finds a resting-place in im. God desired to have a temple in the world, and )r this end he built the church, which will be a per- jct organism when all holy angels and sanctified souls ave been gathered together in one body in Christ Eph. i. 10) ; each individual angel or man can be but stone in this temple (1 Pet. ii. 5), while Jesus is the smple of God, in whom dwells all the glory of God John ii. 19 ; xiv. 9-11). A Christian has attained lie measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ dien his nature is, like that of Christ, fully penetrated y the fulness of God (Eph. iv. 13), but Christ is taken 380 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF possession of by the whole fulness of the Deity (Col. i. 19). The whole body, in the most extensive sense of the term, i.e'. men and angels gathered together in his body, attains the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ when the indwelling is not only complete, i.e. every part of this organism being penetrated and filled by the Deity, but when all the fulness of God dwells in it. This indwelling of the divine fulness was gradual also in Jesus, though that of the Father's fulness in the Logos has been complete from all eternity. To himself in his state of exaltation only does Christ's declaration apply : " He that seeth me, seeth the Father." For only in his state of exaltation are all the bodily and spiritual powers contained in his nature, forming the organism to be penetrated by the Father, perfectly de veloped. Only in this state is his body, taken from the flesh and blood of the virgin Mary, glorified to such a degree that it can serve as the transparent medium of all divine energies. So long as the body of Christ had not been completely transformed frd*m an earthly into a spiritual body, the Father's glory could not absolutely shine forth from it. During his period of development this could take place only approximately. The nature of Jesus had such symmetry and universality of mental and moral powers and temperaments that it became the (express) image, not only of some, but of all, divine attributes, both intellectual and moral, and not only of God's majesty and bliss, but also of his merciful condescension. §69. The more full and certain, the development of a soul's natural powers, the more does this soul under- THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 381 and of its peculiar being and vocation. If it is, then, ^possible that one of profound originality should not itain a correct acquaintance with .his nature and tiling, since real genius overcomes all opposition, the ml of Jesus could not possibly remain ignorant of its ogos-nature. To become fully acquainted with his ivine origin and his calling as the Saviour of the orld, and to have his being fully pervaded by the ilness of the Father, so that as a man he could say : Whoso seeth me seeth the Father," formed the central m of his life while he dwelt in retirement at Nazareth. But how did Jesus come to know that he was the on of God ? Our present means of information do ot enable us to settle the question, a priori, whether r not the incarnate Logos necessarily had a distinct jmembrance of his pre-existent life. We lack all the remises requisite to enable us to construe philosoph- ially the laws of development of this unique life. We re therefore dependent on the Scriptures alone, and ley with the analogy of faith do furnish materials for n answer to the question under consideration. Jesus as to all intents and purposes a man, a real man, nd the development of his life was really human. [is life was, accordingly, pre-eminently a life of faith, ot of sight (Heb. xii. 2, etc.) ; and, though this in- olves the acquisition of his knowledge in a really uman manner, it does not exclude other sources of iformation. The Father's peculiar indwelling in tho on must have been a fruitful source of this kind (John . 20) ; while such passages as John iii. 11, 13 : " We jstify what we have seen," and "No man has ascended p to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, ven the Son of Man, who was in heaven," evidently 382 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF refer to a remembrance of his ante-mundane life on the part of Jesus. This remembrance must not, however, be so con ceived of as to destroy the nature of faith in the life of Jesus, and make it a life of sight. We say, then, that his sources of information were principally three, viz. 1. Really human exertion, such as searching the Old Testament Scriptures, meditations thereon, etc. ; 2. The indwelling of the Father's fulness in him ; and 3. The remembrance of his ante-mundane state. Jesus's development was sinless, while all those about him were sinners ; a difference which he could not but notice, even as a child. He found, moreover, in himself, a longing after the Father such as he saw nowhere else. What deep impressions must this daily repeated experience have made upon him ! In this frame of mind he searched the Old Testament. How well versed he was in the Scriptures appears from every chapter of the Gospels. In the law he read of the seed of the woman that should bruise the serpent's head ; of the seed of Abraham, in whom all the nations of the earth shall be blessed ; of the blood of the paschal lamb, on account of which God spared the Israelites ; of the bloody sacrifices, for which purpose only clean animals could be used, which the prophets, however, declared to be ineffectual, God taking no pleasure in the blood of goats or bulls. In the Psalms he read of the everlasting kingdom in the house of David, which had sunk so low in his times ; of the Anointed of Jehovah, against whom all the world re belled in vain, God having appointed him his Son (Ps. ii.) ; of the Lord of David, whom Jehovah would seat at his right hand, and who was a king-priest for- THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 383 ever (Ps. ex.) ; of the Prince of peace, ruling the world in righteousness (Ps. lxxii.) ; of the righteous king, addressed in Ps. xiv. as God, and having the promise of Israel and all the nations of the earth for an inher itance. In Micah (v. 2) of the ruler in Israel that would come out of Bethlehem, whose goings forth were from of old, from everlasting ; in Isaiah (viii. 8 ; ix. 6) of Immanuel, the mighty God, the Counsellor, the everlasting Father, who would reign on the throne of David ; of the Branch of the root of Jesse, whom the Spirit of the Lord would make a righteous, merciful, and powerful Governor (xi.) ; of the servant of Je hovah who would give sight to the blind and liberty to the captives, whose voice would not be heard in the streets (xiii., xlix.)", whose ear the Lord would waken every morning, and who would not be rebellious (1. 4, etc.), but, although greatly despised, would give his life as a ransom for the sins of the people (liii.). The very last of the prophets continue to prophesy of this promised personage. Who, now, was this Holy One ? Jesus knew from daily experience that he alone was sinless, and that the Spirit of God rested on him without measure ; and he had ample (human) means of learning his miraculous conception and birth at Bethlehem and his descent from David. He then also knew that other men could not be like himself, his conception differing so widely from theirs. Yet this was not the main, much less the only, source of his information. For purely human knowledge is not the result of reflection alone. A youth, for example, who is willing to submit to all hardships in achieving what he has recognized as his appointed career, is sup ported by that mysterious feeling which we may call 384 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF spiritual instinct. The believer knows still less from his own reflections alone that he is a child of God ; it being the Spirit of God that bears witness with our spirit (Rom. viii. 16). And we might ask, in this connection, Whence did the prophets know that they were prophets of the Most High, and that they were not mistaken as to their calling ? Their calling was verified to them in a manner which excluded all doubt; for there is an intercourse between God and the human soul, the laws whereof we cannot trace, and can learn even by experience but imperfectly, but the possibility of which is self-evident to every one who believes in a personal God and the spirituality of his soul, the reality of which may be tested by every one who is anxious to try it, and of which every one is perfectly satisfied who has experienced it, although he knows that thousands have mistaken their own voice for the voice of God. If such an intercourse, then, takes place between God and the human soul, throwing light on subjects which no depth of intellect can fathom, what results must the indwelling of the Father in Jesus have produced ? Passages like Matt. xi. 2, John vii. 29 (where 8e8op,ivov is evidently an interpolation) conclusively prove that the stand-point of the Old Testament was in every respect inferior to that of the New, that the meaning of the above-quoted passages was not only not under stood by the contemporaries of Jesus, but had not been understood even by the prophets themselves. Jesus owed his correct understanding of the Old Testament to the indwelling of the Father, while this and occasional flashes of remembrance from his ante-mundane state imparted information concerning himself, his church, and those treasures handed down to us in the New Testament. THE PERSON OF CHRIST.- 385 At what time Jesus attained to complete knowledge of his person and office, we have no data to determine with accuracy. As a boy of twelve years he had already some idea that God was in a peculiar manner his Father. And it is clear that he had full knowledge of this when he entered upon his office. This appears from his bap tism by John, which warrants the assertion that he entered upon his public career in the certainty that he would die a violent death by the hands of sinners. His remarkable conversation with Nicodemus, in which he makes the loftiest statement respecting his own person, viz. " that he was the only-begotten Son of God, who had come down from heaven," took place during the first months of his public ministry. This much, then, we may affirm ; that he obtained this perfect knowledge in the interval from his twelfth to his thirtieth year, which was in perfect keeping with the laws of truly human development. As the development of Jesus's knowledge was perfectly and really human, so also was the continuance of this knowledge. It is by faith that the children of God know that they are children, not by the continual witness of the Spirit. By faith we retain the testimonies of God granted to us, even in the hours of spiritual darkness. God has ever been wont aow to reveal himself, anon to hide or withdraw him self, and this is one of the first principles in his method )f education. Without the witness ofthe Spirit faith ivould be without its foundation ; but if it were enjoyed vfthout interruption the Christian's life would be no onger a life of faith, but a life of sight. Also it is an ngredient of the Christian's walk by faith, that his )utward circumstances often seem to contradict his idoptiou. This was eminently the case with Jesus; and 83 386 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF he doubtless also sometimes lacked the internal divine voice witnessing that he was the Son of God, so that this was, then, an object of faith. This was especially the case when he hung on the cross, when he felt him self forsaken of his Father; then it was faith alone which sustained him. This also is in keeping with God's method in his dealings with mankind, that extraordi nary assistance was granted to Jesus in several of his sorest trials. On three occasions voices were heard from heaven, viz. first, at the baptism of Jesus ; his Messianic duties with their end — his ignominious death on Calvary — then stood prominently before his soul, and, lest their weight might crush him, the voice came from heaven. The second voice was heard at his trans figuration, when Moses and Elias appeared to him, and spake of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem (Luke ix. 31) ; this event took place a few days after he had for the first time foretold his suffer ings (from that time forth Jesus began, etc., Math. xvi. 21 ; xvii. 1, etc.). The third voice was heard after his final entrance into Jerusalem (John xii. 28) ; but came not for the sake of Jes'us, but of the people. In studying the New Testament we learn that the training of John the Baptist was independent to an extent of which we can scarcely form an adequate idea. He both knew that the public appearance of the Messiah was close at hand, and he had reasons for believing that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah ; for the relationship between the mothers of Jesus and the Baptist warrants the -supposition that John was well acquainted with the miraculous circumstances which had preceded and attended the birth of Jesus ; and yet after Jesus's baptism John testifies twice in plain words: I knew THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 387 him not (John i. 31, 33). John's addressing Jesus in the words, " I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me" (Matt. iii. 14), does not conflict with the idea here advanced. The Baptist would have cer tainly been a poor prophet and discerner of spirits, if he had not perceived the holiness of the candidate for baptism, nor had any suspicion that this personified holiness was the Messiah ; but he obtained divine cer tainty when he saw the Holy Ghost descend upon Jesus (vs. 33). This independence the Baptist maintains throughout ; although separated by but a small dis tance from Jesus, whose forerunner he knew himself to be, he did not travel that distance in order to become personally acquainted with him ; and after he had become acquainted with him and borne ample testi mony to his Messianic dignity, he did not become one of his disciples. Why ? The prophet of the Old Tes tament, greater than his predecessors because he saw the Messiah with his own eyes, whereas they had seen him with the eyes of faith only in their more exalted mo ments (Matt. xi. 14), who was to introduce the Mediator of the new dispensation, had to run his independent course in order to discharge the duties of his office ; had he gone to see Jesus without divine direction, or had he afterwards become a follower of Jesus, the object of his mission would have been frustrated. It was in the desert that he was to wax strong in spirit (Luke i. 80). From the originality of the development of our Lord's forerunner may be inferred the same with respect to Jesus. The Old Testament was his spiritual milk, and intercourse with the Father himself was the book in which Jesus read the revelations of God. We set out with the sinlessness of Christ's devel- 388 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF opment, by virtue of which he developed his Logos- substance to such an extent, that the fulness of the Father could dwell in him, and he could say : " He that seeth me, seeth the Father." By virtue of this sinless ness he apprehended the full meaning of the Old Tes tament, and the consciousness that God had become man, and that he was the incarnate God, burst forth in his soul. It is also evident that this indwelling of, and being taught by, the Father, and his consciousness of being the Son of God, necessarily led to a deeper merging of his own will into that of his Father. Just as with the children of God, of whom Christ declares : " If a man love me, he will keep my words, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him " (John xiv. 25), but who on the other hand can love God the more fervently, the more he condescends to them and the more certain they are of their adoption. The words of the Saviour : " The Son can do nothing of himself," were more absolutely verified year by year, since both his peculiar love of the Father, and the peculiar indwelling of the Father in him became every year deeper and fuller. §70. Having examined the method in which Jesus attained to complete knowledge of himself, we now proceed to treat in few words of the manner in which he attained to complete knowledge of the Father. The knowledge of God by the ante-mundane Logos was eternal and perfect ; eternal, i.e. not acquired in the course of time or by degrees, and perfect, embracing the universe and God in one view. It was perfect in him, i.e. organic, central knowledge, comprising a knowledge of the inward organism and the necessity THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 389 of every individual part. It was perfect in extent ; nothing of God's being, thoughts, decrees, was hidden from the Logos, but from the centre of the Father's life and thoughts he apprehended every individual wave of the ocean of the divine life, the depth, fulness, and riches of God. The knowledge of God by the incarnate Logos being really human could not at once be perfect, but was ac quired by degrees. Jesus in his mother's womb or as an infant had no knowledge of God at all ; but this awoke with his self-consciousness. As in our souls the slumbering sense of individuality is aroused by causes from without, as the name by which our mother ad dresses us, and we then hear the voice of God in our hearts and are drawn Godward by the mysterious longings of our God-born souls, so also in the case of Jesus, as is evident from Luke ii. 52. Besides its gradual development, Christ's knowledge of God differed also from that of the ante-mundane Logos in being inferior to it in point of extent and perfection. An earthly-human self-consciousness can be the brilliant centre of only a limited amount of knowledge. To grasp the boundless ocean of the divine life and thought in one moment may safely be said to be impossible for it, if for no other reason, because our earthly self-consciousness is modified by our bodily organism, which during our life on earth is not yet spiritual, but earthly, and not yet the appropriate organ of the soul. It is the divine order that knowledge goes hand in hand with experience. The life of the ante- mundane Logos is that of the boundless stream of the Father's life rushing into and gushing forth from him, so that he knows the secret recesses of the Father. 88* 390 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF But the incarnate Logos lives a human life, in which this fulness of power and bliss is no longer present, and hence the knowledge of Jesus while on earth was at no time omniscience. That this was really the case, our Lord himself testifies, when he says, that he does not know the hour of his coming to judgment ; this dec laration showing that the whole circle of the Father's thoughts and purposes was not at once grasped by him. In a former part of this book attention was called to the privilege of beholding God, the divine realities and economy, which was granted to Jesus while on earth by his Father's love. As he saw God face. to face, his knowledge of God was organic, grasping the connection of divine truths ; not abstract knowledge, but a com prehension of the fulness of the divine life itself. For thus seeing God face to face, and in a manner in which no finite being can see him, Jesus was qualified by being his Son 'or of the same substance, and because the Father was in him and he in the Father in such wise that he could say : " He that seeth me, seeth the Father." Here we may perceive how intimately connected with Jesus's peculiar knowledge of God was the sin lessness of his development. Being the Son of God the Father's fulness can dwell in him, but it did actually dwell in him because he had fully consecrated himself to God. Our Lord himself refers to this connection when he says (John viii. 46) : " Which of you convinc ed me of sin, and if I tell you the truth why do you not believe me ? " Add to this vs. 28, 29 : "I do nothing of myself ; but as my Father has taught me, I speak these things. And he that sent me is with me, the Father has not left me alone ; for I do always those THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 391 things that please him." In these verses Jesus bases the truth of his doctrine on the Father's indwelling, and the Father's indwelling on his willing and perfect obedience. John x. 17 is also to the point : " Therefore does my Father love me, because I lay down my life." Jesus's obedience unto death is the reason why the Father loves the Son, but the Father's love shows the Son whatsoever the Father doeth (v. 20). For the Father's love to the Son is, indeed, partly based on his sonship and consubstantiality with the Father, even as a human father loves his son, because he is begotten of him and of his own substance ; but it is also the fruit of Christ's obedience, just as a dutiful son is dou'^y the object of his Father's love- There is also another point of view from which the intimate connection be tween the Son's perfect obedience and. his seeing God face to face may be shown. We also have the promise to see God, and it has ever been the keenest desire of the noblest minds to see the Lord. Even Moses ventured to pray : " Show me thy glory " (Exod. xxxiii. 18). He and the elders of Israel had been already favored with a vision of God, when there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness (Exod. xxiv. 10), after which the sight of God was in the eyes of Moses and the children of Israel like devouring fire on the top of the mount (vs. 17). As Moses, now, (chap, xxxiii.) beseeches God to show him his glory, he evidently means that what he had seen was not God himself, but only the mirror in which the divine glory was reflected ; and accordingly he prays that he may now be permitted to see the face of God itself. His venturing to offer this prayer was 392 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF based on the promise, that notwithstanding the grievous sin of the people with the golden calf, the presence of the Lord would go with them, and not merely an angel (vs. 14; comp. xxxii. 34). By this presence or coun tenance of the Lord Moses understood the Lord him self, whom he, accordingly, desires to behold. God answers, that he (Moses) could not see the face of God, because no man could see God and live, but that he would cause all his goodness and glory to pass before him, while he covered him with his hand, and Moses could thus see his back parts (vs. 19-23). This very answer proves that God is not invisible, even to man, but that no man can see God and live. In perfect keeping with this are the declarations of the New Tes tament. Christ says : " Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God " (Matt. v. 8). John testifies in his vision of the New Jerusalem that the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be therein, and that his servants shall serve him and see his and the Lamb's face (Apoc. xxii. 3, 4) ; and in perfect keeping with this he exclaims in his first epistle (iii. 2) : " It has not yet appeared what we shall be ; but we know thai, when he [it] shall appear, we shall be like him : for we shall see him as he is." Paul writes (1 Cor. xiii. 12) : " For now we see through a glass darkly ; but then face to face ; now I know in part, but then I shall know even as I am known." These promises must not be under stood to mean that we shall only see the divine glory in a perfect manner as reflected in the restored world, in which God will dwell as in a perfect medium of his revelations of himself. This world by no means sat isfies our longings. Not merely from the darkness of the glass, but from the glass itself, must we be set free. THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 393" We shall, uadoubtedly, also largely increase our stock of knowledge by contemplating the heavenly works of God, since at present we see but few of them. The description which John gives of the new Jerusa lem shows that the restored world is fully illumined by the glory of God, who dwells therein. But the glory of God will appear brightest in the kingdom of the redeemed, as he will be all in all to each individual spirit, and the spirit itself will shine through its spirit ualized humanity. The fulness of the glory of God will appear in the congregation of the redeemed, but only in all redeemed spirits as an organic whole, so that if this were the only medium through which we could see God, we could never obtain an organic knowledge of him, since nothing short of omniscience could behold this whole organism at one and the same moment. The view, that the restored universe will be the only medium of our seeing God, appears false, not only from its not securing the end proposed, but also from its contradict ing several passages of Scripture. For John's Apoca lypse not only teaches that the city of God is illumined by his glory, but especially adds that the throne of God and the Lamb is therein, and that its inhabitants shall see his (God's) face. So Paul ; for he does not say that we shall hereafter see through a bright, clear glass, but face to face. It is this vision of God face to face on which our knowledge of God, which is at present but imperfect, will be founded; not, indeed, that we shall know God as he knows himself, or as the Logos knows him, but our knowledge will resemble that of the angels, who learn through the church the manifold wisdom of God, to an extent far exceeding their former knowledge (Eph. iii. 10) ; for this, organic as it was, 394 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF did not include the plan of redemption (1 Pet. i. 12). When we behold God face to face we shall have a central knowledge of the divine life and being, but not, however, of its entire fulness, or to its whole extent. We are qualified for such knowledge by our divine origin, our soul being a divine breath. And there is nothing in the idea of God which contradicts this hope of a knowledge of him superior to the abstractions of thought, and presenting to our spiritual vision the fulness of tho divine glory, even as our earthly eyes now behold the abounding life of the material world. Our terrestrial theology, which represents God only by obscure phrases, sustains to the theology of those who see God, the same relation which the natural philosophy of a blind man, who can but touch natural objects or hear them spoken of, bears to that of a seeing philosopher. The Lord promises us, also, that we shall see God ; but this promise is given to those only who are pure in heart. A material vision of the spiritual nature of God is an absurdity ; the soul must be first purified, set free from all subjection to the flesh, and the mate rial body transformed into a spiritual body through the religio-ethical efforts of the soul, before it can see God. As long as the soul has only the material body for its organ it can see God only in the dark glass of the material world. Nor when this body sleeps in the grave can its carnal soul truly behold him. This is the reason why our Lord promises only to the pure in heart that they shall see God. From this point let us again regard our Saviour. He could and did see God face to face during his earthly life. How could this have been possible, if the spiritual- ization of his material body had not been accomplished THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 395 by his holy development with such energy that his organ of spiritual vision was developed even durino- his earthly life ? This is another link of connection be tween his peculiar knowledge of God and his sinless development. The transfiguration of our Lord on the mount is a proof that such a spiritualization of his material body was in progress during his earthly life. " He went up into a mountain to pray. And'as he prayed the fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment was white and glistering" (Matt. xvii. ; Mark ix. ; Luke ix.). This occurrence, which was connected with the appear ance of Moses and Elias in glory, who spoke with him of the decease which he should accomplish at Jerusa lem, and with a heavenly voice, saying, " this is my beloved Son, hear him," strengthened our Lord himself in view of his approaching death, but proves to us that a deathless transition from this earthly life to heaven would have been conformable to his nature. His trans figuration is an historical commentary on his words : " No one taketh my life from me, but I lay it down of myself" (John x. 18). Jesus's bodily organism was not like ours, begotten by sinners, corrupted by sin, and a prey to death, but the development of his life was an ever closer union with the living Father, so that the Father's life pervaded him more and more, and was consequently a continued, holy spiritualization of his body. As a full grown man Jesus was ready to pass at once without death into the life of glory. He might, doubtless, have entered heaven at once after his trans figuration ; for this occurrence proves that a spiritual body had been developed in him, and whatever matter was left was capable of being pervaded by and changed 396 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF into light. Not for his, but for our sakes, then, he re turned from the mount to the world, in order to accom plish our redemption by his voluntary death. If now the Saviour was capable during his earthly life of enter ing the light of eternity, we can better understand how while on earth he could be so exalted by the Father as to see God. From what has been said it appears that the develop ment of Jesus's peculiar knowledge of God was pre ceded by the full indwelling of the Father in him, and the spiritualization of his material nature by the relig ious and moral process of sanctification. This being so, we may suppose that Jesus was called by the Father to see him face to face after he had reached the years of manhood. Even as a youth he, doubtless, had a knowledge of God far supassirig ours, both because he was sinless and because, as the incarnate Logos, he had a special unction of the Spirit and indwelling ofthe Father ; but his immediate and organic knowledge certainly did not commence before the age of full man hood, perhaps at the time of his entering upon the Messianic office. At all events, his discourse to Nicode mus, which was delivered in the very beginning of his ministry, shows that he had even then become a man of sight (John iii. 2) : " We testify what we have seen." It must not, indeed, be understood that from that time Christ's life was one of uninterrupted vision. On the contrary, we must regard these hours of sight as only transient culminating points in his life. Our Lord says : " The Father lovetli the Son, and showeth him all things that himself doeth " ; " As I hear, I judge " ; "I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me" (John v. 20, 30 ; xvii. 8). All these THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 397 expressions go to show that his act of seeing God was not independent, but proceeded from the Father through the relation which they sustained to each other. The sinless development of his being as the Son involved the possibility on his part of seeing God ; but the act of vision was effected by the agency of the Father. Hence it was not uninterrupted, but took place whenever it seemed good to the Father to grant it. If from any moment of his life our Lord had enjoyed continued sight, he could not, of course, have walked by faith, nor could he have been our pattern of faith, nor have atoned for our unbelief. In Geth- semane, for a moment, where he was not divinely cer tain of the indispensable necessity of bis death (" If it be possible, remove this cup from me"), and on the cross, when he exclaimed : " My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? " his state was certainly that of faith, not of sight. As we said above, Christ's knowledge of himself as the Son of God was not always based on the voice of the Father within, clearly testify ing the fact, but was often a matter of faith and trust on the divine voice as it bad been heard before, so his vision of God was at times when the Father called him to this privilege ; but times succeeded, again, when what had been seen was to be appropriated by an in ternal process, and to be kept by faith. The Lord was raised to heights which no mortal can attain, but he had also to descend into depths which we know not. At times when vision was not granted he had a dis cursive knowledge of God of quite a human character, although far superior to ours, because of his previous vision. His disciples had to be instructed in what he had seen in a manner adapted to their capacities, and 81 398 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF in language taken from real life, such as they could understand. The blessed spirits in heaven will not need to descend to an inorganic knowledge of God and faith. When the eternal Sabbath has once begun, there will be no more change from Sabbath to work-days. Everything earthly will then be forever laid aside. The imperfect eye by which we now see, while the life and knowledge of the god-like soul is conditioned by the material organism of the body, and is in a state of development, will then have become a clear and perfect eye ; because the soul's divine image will then have reached its full stature. God himself having become the all-pervading light of our soul, the soul is the all- pervading light of the body, and the body has thus become a spiritual body. The dark mirror of the material world will then also be broken, when the earth no longer exists, and the imperfect views of the Deity which we now have will also be no more remem bered. The 'vision of God by the spirits of light will, accordingly, not be interrupted, being granted at par ticular times, as was the case with Jesus on earth, but will be the natural, self-developing act of the blessed. §71. The four evangelists record that when Jesus was baptized by John the Holy Ghost descended upon him. Mark i. 9 : " And it came to pass, in those days, that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized of John in Jordan ; and straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit, like a dove, descending upon him"; Matt. iii. 16 : " And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water, and, lo, the heavens were THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 399 opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God de scending like a dove, and lighting upon him " ; Luke iii. 21 : " Jesus also being baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape, like a dove, upon him." The evangelist John, whose main object' is to show the glory of the incarnate Logos, and to prove to his readers that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, that by believing in him they may have everlasting life (i. 14 ; xx. 31), and who therefore concludes even his prologue with the impressions of the Baptist and the disciples concerning this glory (i. 15-18), — John also opens his historical record with the testimonies of the Baptist concerning Jesus (i. 19-37), and then passes on to what the dis ciples themselves had experienced in their intercourse with him i. 38-xx. 31). Accordingly, in i. 30, etc., we find the Baptist's testimony, his recognition of the Messiah by the divinely appointed sign : " Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost" (vs. 33), adding that this took place in his sight : " I saw the Spirit descending from heaven, like a dove" (vs. 32). Whoever believes that during his earthly existence Jesus had at command his ante- mundane divine fulness, will find it not merely difficult, but impossible, to appreciate the great importance which this descent of the Holy Ghost has, according to the New Testament, in the development of Christ's life. For what purpose did he need to be baptized with the Spirit, if he had the fulness of divine life in himself? The usual answer, that the Holy Ghost was given to Christ's human nature, is not sufficient, since it is evident that the fulness of the Logos might have 400 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF been communicated to his human nature, and, indeed, if the incarnation was something real, this communication must actually have taken place. For what end, then, was his baptism and the descent of the Holy Ghost? If we believe, as the Scriptures teach, that the Logos at his incarnation emptied himself of his divine fulness, we can at once appreciate the importance of this act on the course of our Lord's development. It is evident that this outpouring of the Spirit upon Jesus at his baptism was not the first instance of bis receiving the Spirit. During his secluded life at Nazareth he entered daily into a closer union with his Father, and after every period of his life he could say more unqualifiedly : " He that seeth me seeth the Father." There was thus an increasing indwelling of the Spirit iii him through whom the Father dwells in the believer. The opera tions of the Spirit in a man, having his sanctification for their object, are different from those which are to qualify him for the discharge of his office. Jesus, as a matter of course, had before his baptism learned to know himself as the Son of God and the Messiah ; he had also correct views, on the whole, of the nature of his Messianic office ; he knew, especially, that his Mes siahship would lead him to a violent death. This is signified by his baptism. But from the first moment of his public career he needed a special qualification for every single duty of his office, such illumination by the Spirit of God as would cause him to take the right step at every moment, and discharge his office with such wisdom that there was not a word to repent of, and with such wisdom that he always accomplished what he undertook. It is this spirit of official wisdom and of working miracles with which Jesus was ordained THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 401 at his baptism. Matthew thus represents the case when, in iv. 1, after his record of the Spirit's descent, he proceeds to say : " Then was Jesus led nip of the spirit be to tempted by the devil." Mark and Luke make use of almost the same words (Mark i. 12 ; Luke iv. 1), and Luke (vs. 14) says also, with respect to the journey which the Lord afterwards took into Galilee : " And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee." To the same effect are Peter's words : "God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power, who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil " (Acts x. 38). So Jesus himself says : " I cast out devils by the Spirit of God" (Matt. xii. 28). And his forty days' fast was for the same end — that his thirty years' preparation for his office might be followed by a particular prepara tion by the power of the Spirit. Moreover, the solemn visible outpouring of the Holy Ghost, accompanied by the voice from heaven, was not only for the Baptist, but a heavenly seal for Jesus himself of his being really the Messiah. As we have before remarked, Jesus received such heavenly voices at two of the more important turning-points of his life ; and, as we believe in the reality of his humanity, we cannot look upon such pledges as unworthy of the in carnate Logos. The Holy Ghost was active in the apostles while Jesus was still with them. It was not flesh and blood, but the Father in heaven, who revealed to Peter his knowledge of Christ (Matt. xvi. 17). After his resur rection Jesus breathes upon them, saying: "Receive ye the Holy Ghost ; whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye 84* 402 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF retain, they are retained" (John xx. 22, etc.). This gift of the Spirit was not only for their spiritual life, but qualified them also for the discharge of their official duties. And yet it was only on the day of Pentecost that they received the Father's promise, and were de cisively endowed with power from on high (comp. Luke xxiv. 19, etc.). Yea, even after this glorious outpouring they still stood in need of receiving light for light and strength for strength for the discharge of the almost daily fresh duties of their office. Again, if Paul had not perceived in Timothy the operations of the Holy Ghost, he would not have se lected him for his assistant ; but when the apostle and the presbytery laid their hands on him, he received the gift of the Spirit, qualifying him for his official duties ; and in his second Epistle the apostle exhorts him (Timothy), pressed down by the weight of his duties, to stir up again the gift within him (1 Tim. iv. 14 ; 2 Tim. i. 6, etc.). And every child of God knows that he is dependent on the Holy Ghost, not only for his own spiritual life, but when he enters into the service of Christ in the church for special gifts in order to the successful discharge of his official duties, and for which he ought to pray (1 Cor. xii. 4). The notion that the Holy Spirit qualifies for such a faithful dis charge those who banish him from their hearts is one of the most fatal errors of the church of Rome, and is diametrically opposed to 2 Tim. i. 6 ; but that the Spirit is willing to operate in a special manner in those who love him, when they assume the duties of a new office, is a well-known doctrine of the Bible. We know -that Jesus enjoyed perpetual intercourse with his Father. On some occasions his inward prayer THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 403 became audible to those about him ; he often went into solitude to pray, but the inward intercourse of his soul with God never ceased. For this reason his whole life, both before and after his baptism, was a continued recep tion of the Holy Ghost. Before his baptism the Holy Ghost wrought his personal sanctification, his knowledge of God and of himself as the Son of God, and prepared him for his Messianic duties in general ; after his baptism he effected, at the same time, both his personal sancti fication and qualification for the varied and difficult duties of his office. His official life derived its strength from his personal life, while his personal life was ex ercised by his official duties. The difficulties, conflicts, and trials of his official life increased with the progress of sanctification, but by the sinless discharge of every, even the most painful duty, this was brought to perfec tion. In Gethsemane and on the cross we see both at their culminating points. Shortly before he went to Gethsemane, the Saviour prayed : " I sanctify myself for them," understanding thereby both his personal sanctification and the sacrifice of himself to the Father for our sins;" before his death he exclaims: "It is finished," and by this we must understand that both his personal sanctification and his work as the Redeemer of mankind were accomplished. 404 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF CHAPTER III. THE GLORIFICATION OF THE SON. §72. The glorification of the Son with the glory which he had before the world was, according to John xvii. 5, the Father's act (comp. Phil. ii. 9). Paul includes in " the working of God's mighty power, which he wrought in Jesus," (1) that he raised him from the dead ; (2) that he set him on his own right hand in heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named ; (3) that he put all things under his feet, and gave him as head over all things unto the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all (Eph. i. 19-23). The resurrection of Jesus Christ is represented by the apostles as the work of the Father.- See Eph. i ; Rom. vi. 4 ; iv. 25 ; x. 9 ; 1 Cor. xv. 15 ; Col. ii. 12; Acts ii. 24, 32; iii. 15 ; 1 Pet. i. 21, etc. In the following passages not only his resurrection, but also his sitting on the right hand of the Father is stated to be tho Father's work (Eph. i. 19-23 ; Acts ii. 33; v. 31.) In the following passages his power over the universe is represented as the Father's gift : "All power is given unto me in heaven and on earth" (Eph. i. 23; Matt. xxviii. 18) ; and " he has put all things under his feet" (1 Cor. xv. 27). But when he says, that " all things THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 405 are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted which did put all things under him. And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all." Other passages of the Bible, however, designate these acts : Christ's resurrection, his sitting on God's right hand, and his victory over all enemies, as not less dis tinctly acts of the Son himself. Thus the resurrection is ascrirjsd to Christ by Jesus himself, when he says : " Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up," and John says expressly, that Jesus said this with reference to his body (John ii. 19, 20). Again Jesus says : " No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of myself; I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again ; this command have I received of my Father" (John x. 18). His exaltation to the right hand of the Father : " I ascend to my Father and to your Father ; to my God and to your God " (John xx. 17) ; " I have overcome and sat down with my Father upon his throne " (Apoc. iii. 21) ; " He sat down on the right hand of God " (Matt. xvi. 19) ; " He sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high" (Heb. i. 3, 8, etc.). His victory over all his enemies : " Who [Christ] shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able to subdue all things unto himself" (Phil. iii. 21) ; " Then the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God the Father ; when he shall have put down all rule, and all authority and power ; for he must reign till he has put all enemies under his feet " (1 Cor. xv. 24, etc.). 406 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF How are these apostolic declarations concerning the resurrection of Christ to be reconciled with the words of Jesus in John ii. and x. ? They evidently imply activity on his own part, and the resurrection of believers could never be spoken of in this way. The key to this recon ciliation is given in 1 Pet. iii. 18: (6avaT APPENDIX. 451 creative fiat. A continual creation, in the true sense of the word, the Bible does not teach. Such participles as bore are either real adjectives, excluding the idea of time-creating, or they must be translated as relative sentences — " who created." And when it is said that God made our souls (Jer. xxxviii. 16; Isa. lvii. 16), that the Spirit of God makes us, and the breath of the Almighty gives us life (Job xxxiii. 4), that God forms the spirit of man within him (Zech. xii. 1 ; comp. Isa. Ii. 13), this proves nothing for creationism ; since these expressions, which moreover do not distinguish acts properly and improperly called creative, trace {he origin of our spirits to God as their ultimate cause, and because the same or similar lan guage is used with regard to the origin of the foetus (Ps. xxii. 10; cxxxix. 13-16 ; Job x. 8-12 ; xxxi. 15 ; Isa. xliv. 2). This phraseology is based on the supposition that whatever comes into being in obe dience to existing laws is a repetition of the first creative fiat of the Almighty (Ps. cxxxix. 15 ; Job xxxiii. 6). Compare, also, the lan guage of our Lord concerning the lilies (Matt. vi. 30), and that of the apostle Paul (1 Cor. xv. 36-38) concerning the seed of a plant. " Another fact opposed to creationism is (3) original sin. If there exists, as the Scriptures teach, and as a thorough self-knowledge proves, between every man and the first pair of the human family so close a connection that each considers the origin of the human race his own, so that not only the sin of the race is his own sin, but Adam's transgression and guilt are likewise his own, it neces sarily follows that the spirituo-bodily beginning of mankind propa gates itself from out of itself by virtue of God's original creative act and the continual display of his power in governing and pre serving the works of his hands, and that, therefore, the spirit of the individual man is no more the product of God's creation than his body. It has, indeed, been asserted, especially by divines of the Roman Catholic church, that creationism alone was consistent with original (hereditary) sin, the God-created spirit entering the Adam- descended body, and inheriting with the body the sin clinging to it. But this view of original sin is certainly unscriptural and contradicted by experience; for, as soon as man arrives at self- consciousness, and knows himself as 7, he finds the whole of his 452 APPENDIX. - spirituo-bodily being corrupted and pervaded by sin. It is not only the body of man, but the totality of his being, that has fallen into the sphere of the flesh, in and with which sin is inherited, so that the sinful condition of the whole being of the individual is anterior to his self-consciousness and self-determining life, or, in other words, anterior to the beginning of his personal life. But the supposition that the spirit of every individual man is, in the strict sense of the term, created by God, leads to the anti-scriptural and absolutely false conclusions that the human spirit in itself sustains no relation whatever to original sin ; that it is God himself who brings the human spirit under the effects of original sin ; that there is but a corrupting, sinful predisposition in human nature, but no original sin that affects his whole nature, and, at all events, no original guilt ; that, in fact, every act of generation is a new begin ning of human history ; for, as liberty is a constituent part of the human spirit, and as God cannot create the human spirit without this liberty without becoming himself the author of sin, there can be no absolute necessity that it — the spirit — should servilely sub mit to the sinful Adamitic flesh, and the imputability of original sinfulness would be out of the question, as long, at least, as the spirit had not actually submitted to this state, and destroyed its original image of God. To these anti-christian and absolutely false conclusions about original sin creationism consistently leads. " But (4) the incarnation is likewise against creationism. Wher ever the Scriptures speak of the human side of Christ's personality, they speak of it as having been begotten, conceived, and born, no where as having been created by God immediately. Christ is, according to his human side also, the Son of God, but, at the same time, in the full sense of the term, the Son of Man too ; he has all the constituent parts of humanity, from the Holy Ghost on the one hand, and from Mary on the other. Thus only is he fully our brother, and only as a perfect man (physically, as well as ethically) could he become the Redeemer of the whole race. ' What was not assumed by the Redeemer is not redeemed' (Gregory of Nazianzen). " The stronghold of creationism is in the proposition : ' The idea APPENDIX. 453 that the spirit can propagate itself like the body, which has parts, is materialistic' But this proposition, positive as it is, is a philosoph ical prejudice which has no foundation in the word of God. For the Scriptures, while emphatically declaring that God is a Spirit, speak also of an eternal act of begetting on the part of God, and of the eternal emanation of the Holy Ghost from the begetting Father and the begotten Son. Wisdom says : ' When there were no depths I was brought forth ' (Prov. viii. 24). The Scriptures do not hesitate to call God's creative acts holidh ( issuing forth from the womb, Job xxxviii. 28), and cholel (to bring forth, Ps. xc. 2 : Deut. xxxii. 18), and the acts of regenerating grace avayevvaat (to beget again, 1 Pet. i. 3) ; yea, we read, even, of a divine