Christ, Christology

Christ, Christology

In studying Christology the object is to ascertain what were the opinions, convictions, or dogmas regarding the Person of Christ which were held by particular authorities or by the Christian Church as a whole at any particular time. In the period now under review dogmas do not enter into consideration, seeing that the Apostolic Age does not furnish any instance of common opinion enforced by authority, which is what dogma consists in. On the other hand, the limits of our period are set not by the Age of the Apostles strictly understood, but by the documents which form our NT, even though some of them may be held to proceed from a generation subsequent to that of the apostles.

It has been usual to divide the subject into pre-Pauline and Pauline (with post-Pauline) Christology; and the division only does justice to the great place occupied by St. Paul in the interpretation of Christian experience and the correlation of Christian thought. But the classification is open to a two-fold objection. In the first place, it tends unduly to depreciate the importance, indeed the normative value, of Christian experience and reflexion anterior to St. Paul; and, in the second place, by grouping the other forms of Christology as post-Pauline or sub-Pauline, it assumes or alleges a relation of dependence between them and the Christology of the Apostle; whereas the fact of this relation and the measure of it are parts of the whole problem, and call for careful investigation. It is preferable, therefore, to consider first primitive Christology, and then sub-primitive Christology, without assuming any continuous line of development.

I. The Christology of the primitive community

1. Sources.-The material for the study of this period is far from copious, and its value has been much disputed. Yet its importance is so great that it demands careful examination. The possible sources may be classified under three heads: (1) the Acts of the Apostles, especially the earlier half; (2) certain statements and allusions in St. Pauls Epistles as to views held in common by himself and the primitive Christian community; and (3) certain elements in the Synoptic Gospels, in which, it has been suggested, we find reflected the Christological idea of a later generation. We shall take these in the reverse order.

(1) The Synoptic Gospels.-Here it is not proposed to make any use of what some claim to recognize as secondary material in the Synoptic Gospels. Firstly, even if the presence of such material be admitted as a possibility, there is the greatest uncertainty as to its amount and its distribution. While there has undoubtedly been a tendency in some critical writers to exaggerate the influence of later theology on the Synoptic record, it is also quite possible that the criteria to which they appeal may need to be revised. Neither the absolute nor the relative dates of the NT documents have been ascertained with sufficient certainty, nor yet has the inner history of the period been realized with sufficient precision, to make the discrimination of such material anything but very precarious. But, secondly, even if there were much more certainty than there is as to the Synoptic material which is really secondary in character, it would be of little use for our purpose, seeing that the criterion by which it is distinguished is precisely its harmony with the views of a later period; and on that account it cannot be expected to yield any new and positive information as to the opinion held in the period to which ex hypothesi it belongs.

(2) The Epistles of St. Paul.-These provide at least valuable confirmation of what may be otherwise ascertained as to the opinion held by the primitive community, portly through direct statement by the Apostle as to what was the gospel he had received, and partly through inference which may be made from his own views, as to that out of which they had developed. But beyond this we cannot go. The Epistle of James, even if its date be early, would add nothing to our knowledge of the primitive Christology. The First Epistle of Peter, the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Apocalypse all represent a stage in some degree in advance of the common basis from which they started; and the Johannine Gospel and Epistles embody the results of still longer experience and deeper analysis.

(3) The Acts of the Apostles.-There remains, as the chief source of material for constructing the pre-Pauline Christology, the Book of Acts, more especially the first eleven chapters. Not many years ago it would have been difficult to justify at the bar of scholarly opinion the use of this document as a trustworthy source. No book was so seriously discredited as a historical source by the representatives of the Tbingen theory. Now, however, that the governing historical principle of that theory has been shown to be untenable, and the conclusions based upon it have been either abandoned or seriously modified, the way has been opened for a reconsideration of the Acts as to both its date and its historical value. In the opinion of most competent scholars, the authorship may now be restored to St. Luke and the date placed within the first century, some assigning it to the nineties, some to the eighties. Quite recently a strong case has been made out by Harnack for the still older view that it was written in the sixties before the death of St. Paul.

But what is more important for our purpose than the possible revision of the date is the abandonment of the charge of history-making for party (or eirenical) purposes, and the recognition that St. Luke was not simply an echo of St. Paul (see Jlicher, Introd. to NT, Eng. translation , 1904, p. 437; J. Moffatt, Introd. to Literature of the New Testament (Moffatt)., 1911, p. 301). In particular there is an increasing disposition to acknowledge that in the speeches of the earlier chapters we have the thought of the primitive community preserved and reproduced with singular fidelity. The admission of Schmiedel in his article on the Acts (Encyclopaedia Biblica i. 48) is significant:

A representation of Jesus so simple, and in such exact agreement with the impression left by the most genuine passages of the first three gospels, is nowhere else to be found to the whole NT. It is hardly possible not to believe that this Christology of the speeches of Peter must have come from a primitive source.

In the Acts of the Apostles moat of the material is contained in the five speeches of Peter and the speech of Stephen, those of Peter being (a) on the day of Pentecost (Act 2:14 ff.); (b) in Solomons portico (Act 3:12 ff.); (c) the first before the Sanhedrin (Act 4:8 ff.); (d) the second before the Sanhedrin (Act 5:29 ff.); and (e) the short speech at Joppa (Act 10:34 ff.). When we proceed to collect and classify the relevant statements in this part of the Acts, we find that they point to the following conclusions (i.) The Christians of the early days identified Jesus with the Messiah. (ii.) They appealed for confirmation of this conviction to the fact that God had raised him from the dead; and also that He had been exalted by, and to, the right hand of God, the Resurrection and Exaltation marking a decisive moment in the Messiahship. (iii.) At the same time they referred back behind the Resurrection to facts and characteristics of His earthly ministry. (iv.) In spite of the dignity and authority to which they believed Him raised, they consistently referred to Him in terms of humanity, as to one who had been, while upon earth, a man among men. (v.) They promptly began to attach to Him certain OT titles and types, some of which had already been recognized as Messianic, others possibly not; e.g. Son of Man, Servant of God, Leader of Salvation, Saviour, Judge, and Lord. (vi.) They connected the death of Jesus, on the one hand, very definitely with the determined purpose of God; and, on the other, with the blotting out of sin. And for these reasons this Jeans was the subject of the good news (Act 5:42), the object of faith (Act 9:42; Act 11:17), and the cause of faith in men (Act 3:16).

(i.) The first point hardly requires to be illustrated. Not only the speeches but the narrative as a whole bear witness to the fact that the disciples, to use St. Lukes word, identified Jesus who had died but risen again with the Messiah of Jewish expectation. This was indeed the one point which at the outset distinguished them from the other Jews in Jerusalem. Other grounds of distinction, ultimately leading to separation, were doubtless latent in their minds-recollections of the Masters teaching, of His attitude to the Law and the ritual of the Temple. But in the meantime the disciples are found haunting the Temple and observing the formal hours of prayer; St. Peter proudly claims that no unclean or forbidden food has passed his lips (Act 10:14), and, thirty years later, St. James can assure St. Paul that all the thousands of Jewish Christians in Jerusalem are zealous of the law (Act 21:20). But with an enthusiasm which no scorn could quench, a determination which neither threats nor imprisonment could weaken, they proclaimed to high and low their conviction that the Jesus they had known was the Messiah. It is one of the water-marks of the primitive character of St. Lukes narrative that he everywhere shows his consciousness that this is the meaning of . He never employs it as a proper name. His name for our Saviour is either Jesus or the Lord; and when it stands alone always means Messiah. This is specially significant in passages where Christ and Jesus occur together, in apposition; e.g. Act 3:20, that he may send the Messiah who has been before appointed-Jesus; Act 5:42; Act 17:3; Act 18:5; Act 18:28, shewing by the scriptures that Jesus was the Messiah. The completeness with which this fact is attested must not blind us, however, to two uncertainties, which immediately arise. The first may be stated thus: What did the disciples understand by the Messiah? What character, rle, or function did they assign to Him? And the second thus: At what point did they understand Him to have entered on His Messiah-ship? They identified Jesus with the Messiah of Jewish expectation; but did that mean that He had been (and was still, and was to return as) Messiah, or that the Messiahship was a dignity conferred on Him after death and at the Resurrection? The answer to these questions follows on the examination of the other elements in the primitive conviction.

(ii.) That conviction rested upon, and appealed to, the Resurrection as the conclusive proof of the Messiahship of Jesus. But the Resurrection was uniformly connected with the Exaltation to the right hand of God, or with its equivalent-the participation of Jesus in the Divine glory. In each of St. Peters recorded speeches these two factors are significantly combined (Act 2:32-33; Act 3:13; Act 7:55; Act 10:40; Act 10:42). The Resurrection is thus regarded as the externally visible side of a great transaction which has its true significance in the Exaltation of Jesus to Messianic rank and honour in heaven; it was a public declaration of His station; the man whom they had seen crucified now occupied the place of dignity and authority which prophecy and apocalyptic had assigned to the Messiah. God had now made him both Lord and Christ (Act 2:36). The word Lord (), like Christ, is probably used as an official title; but in any case the phrase witnesses to the belief that the Resurrection and Exaltation had marked a decisive moment in the Messiahship of Jesus.

(iii.) At the same time, St. Peter is careful to emphasize on more than one occasion the ministry which had preceded the Crucifixion and Resurrection. He marks the limits of that ministry (Act 1:21-22) in accordance with those set by the Gospels. In his first speech (Act 2:22 ff.) he describes its character-Jesus the Nazaraean (cf. Act 3:6; Act 4:10; Act 6:14; Act 22:8; Act 24:5 and Act 26:9), a man approved of God unto you by mighty works and signs and wonders, which God did by him in the midst of you, even as ye yourselves know. And specially in the address preceding the baptism of Cornelius (Act 10:36 ff.), St. Peter, having begun with words which make echoes of Messianic passages in Isaiah (Isa 52:7; cf. Nah 1:15), proceeds to remind his hearers of something already familiar to them-the ministry of Jesus the one from Nazareth, which began from Galilee after the baptism proclaimed by John. Him God had anointed with the Holy Spirit, and He had gone about doing deeds of kindness and healing all who were tyrannized by the devil. Of all that He had done also in Judaea and Jerusalem (as well as of the Resurrection) St. Peter and his comrades were appointed to bear witness. The only epithets applied to Jesus which might throw light on the impression He had made are holy and righteous (Act 3:14; Act 4:27; [cf. Act 4:30] Act 7:52; [cf. Act 22:14]). The ascription of the characteristic righteous is probably due to a reminiscence of a description already traditional for the Messiah (cf. En, 38.2, 46.3, 53.6), and the collocation of holy and servant may have a similar origin; but inacts Act 3:14, where both epithets are applied to the historical Jesus, the contrast drawn in the following paragraph with the murderer for whom the Jews had asked suggests that the words at the same time connote the consciousness that they fitly describe the character of Jesus.

(iv.) This Jesus, whether He be referred to in the days of His flesh or in His present Exaltation at the right hand of God, is consistently represented in terms of humanity. It cannot be said that any special stress is laid on His human nature. The time had not yet come when it was necessary to emphasize His true manhood over against Docetic or Gnostic tendencies. If some slight emphasis is to be detected, it is due rather to wonder that One to whom so much honour is assigned, through whom so much is expected, was One with whom the disciples had been on familiar terms. This is suggested by the frequency with which the simple name Jesus is used (three times as often as the title Christ), by the reiterated designation Jesus the Nazaraean, and by the emphatic demonstration which occurs more than once-This Jesus did God raise up (Act 2:32; cf. Act 2:36). It is Jesus whom Stephen sees standing at the right hand of God (Act 7:55), and Jesus who speaks to Saul from heaven. It was in the fact that St. Peter and St. John had been companions of Jesus that the members of the Sanhedrin found some explanation of their boldness and powers of speech (Act 4:13). It was in the name of Jesus that they taught (Act 4:18), and in the same name that they wrought miracles. The miracles of Jesus Himself were not ascribed to His independent initiative; they were wonders which God did by him (Act 2:22); and the explanation of His power which is given elsewhere (Act 10:38) is that God had anointed Him with the Holy Ghost, and that God was with him (Act 10:38). For God had raised him up in the sense in which He raised up prophets of old, and sent him to bless His people in turning away every one of them from their iniquities (Act 3:26). In all this we see the tokens of a very early form of Christology; one, moreover, which would be very difficult to account for either as the invention or as the recollection of a later generation.

(v.) But this is not a complete account of the Christological phenomena of these chapters. There are numerous indications that from the very outset the minds of some at least of the disciples were at work on the material provided for them by (a) their recollection of what Jesus had been, said, and done; (b) the facts of His Crucifixion and Resurrection; and (c) the promises and predictions of the OT, together possibly with some of the language of the apocalypses. The result of this reflexion is seen in the ascription to Jesus as Messiah of certain important titles and functions which indicate more precisely the relation in which He stands towards God or the function He discharges towards men. In his speech on the day of Pentecost St. Peter was ready with a quotation from Psalms 16, and an exegetical interpretation of it which was sufficiently in accord with contemporary methods of exegesis to commend it to his hearers. Not long after, we find him making the definite general statement that God had fulfilled the things which He foreshowed by the mouth of all his prophets that his Christ should suffer (Act 3:18; cf. also Act 3:24; Act 10:43). We are justified, therefore, in looking to the writings of the prophets for the sources of phrases and ideas now connected with Jesus as the risen Messiah.

() The Servant of God.-That is undoubtedly the source of the striking description, (sc. ), which occurs twice in St. Peters second speech (Act 3:13; Act 3:26) and twice ( ) in the prayer of thanksgiving (Act 4:27; Act 4:30). The rendering familiar to English ears through the Authorized Version translates by Son in the first two passages, by child in the last two. But according to the view now generally held it is the alternative meaning of which is here intended, viz. servant; and we have in the phrase a deliberate echo of the language of Deutero-Isaiah concerning the Servant of the Lord. Such a usage, in the first place, is a further indication of the primitive character of St. Lukes material. It is found elsewhere only in Clement, the Didache, and the Martyrdom of Polycarp. It is an early Messianic title for our Lord which is not repeated in the later books of the NT (see further A. Harnack, Date of Acts and Synoptic Gospels, Eng. translation , 1911, p. 106; History of Dogma, Eng. translation , i. [1894] 185, note 4).

Further, the application of this title to Jesus is very significant, whether it is traced to independent reflexion on the part of the apostles, or whether it be due to appreciation on their part of the same factor in the consciousness and in the utterances of Jesus. Its effect was to link on to the traditional conception of the Messiah a series of ideas of quite a different character, including humility, submission, vicarious suffering and death. The importance of this identification is illustrated by the exposition of Isa 53:7 given by Philip to the Ethiopian eunuch (Act 8:35 beginning from this scripture he preached unto him Jesus); and the same interpretation probably underlies St. Pauls statement, Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures.

() Prince and Saviour.-The same OT context is probably the source of another striking designation, . Him did God exalt unto his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour (Act 5:31; cf. Act 3:15 ye slew the Prince of life; and Heb 2:10 the author (prince, or captain) of their salvation; also 12 author and finisher [Westcott, leader and consammator]). The variety in the renderings reflects an ambiguity in the word . It describes one who both inaugurates and controls; and the at once inaugurates and controls the Messianic experience of salvation here described as . There is thus a close parallelism between the two phrases Prince of life and Prince and Saviour; and when they are taken together, and weighed with the context in which the first is found, their connexion with the language of Isaiah becomes plain, e.g. Isa 60:16 , and Isa 55:4 , . The sufferings of the Christ had been foretold by the mouth of all the prophets; and the same prophecies, to the study of which the apostles had been led by His death, supplied forms for the expression of their faith in Him.

() Son of Man.-This title for Jesus occurs once only-in the account of the martyrdom of Stephen (Act 7:55). Stephen looked up stedfastly to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God; and he said. Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God. Two things are clear: the name Jesus and the title Son of Man are already felt to be interchangeable, and the title belongs to Jesus as the Messiah. There is no other instance of the phrase in the NT outside the Gospels, Rev 1:13 being no exception. It provides, as Bartlett says (ad loc.), a water-mark of the originality of this utterance, and even the most cautious critics admit that this speech of Stephen reached St. Luke from a very early source. These two facts-the early date to which the phrase must be assigned and its uniqueness outside the Gospels-point to its being a reminiscence of what is attested by the Gospels-our Lords custom of describing Himself by this title, and describing Himself with a veiled allusion to His Messiahship. But even if the primitive community was itself responsible for this identification, and did not take it over from our Lord Himself, that would not diminish the significance of the phrase for the primitive Christology. This identification of the historical Jesus with the Son of Man of Daniel and Enoch is very significant, because directly it is accomplished, the further thought can no longer be resisted, that Jesus of Nazareth is not simply a man, who in the future is to be exalted to heavenly glory, but an original heavenly being, who came down to accomplish this work of his on earth (J. Weiss, Christ, Eng. translation , 1911, p. 59f.). The community, for which this was a just and intelligible description of Jesus, was preparing and prepared for any interpretation of His being which is contained in the NT.

() The phrase Son of God is also used, but only once-in Act 9:20. St. Paul preached Jesus, that he is the Son of God. but the title is used in its Messianic and official sense, founded on Psa 2:7 (cf. Mat 16:16, Joh 1:49); and the sentence implies no more than the dosing words of Act 9:22 proving that this is the Christ. A later generation failed to recognize this, and the consequence is seen in the TR [Note: Textus Receptus, Received Text.] of Act 9:20, where Christ has been substituted for Jesus-a useful illustration of the way in which the copyists felt the lack of the word Christ as a name, and therefore introduced or substituted it (some nine times in all in Acts).

() The Lord.-, , , , -these are elements out of which a rich Christology might rapidly develop. And there is still one to add, which is probably the most pregnant of all-the title . The Synoptic Gospels witness to the habit of addressing the Master, or speaking of Him, as ; and there it is simply an expression of profound respect. As such the word was also in common use among the Hellenists of the Empire applied alike to gods and to Emperors. St. Paul snows himself conscious of this when he says (1Co 8:5) that there are in fact many gods and lords so-called. But when he asserts the claim of Jesus to the title in a unique sense, he is only doing what the infant Church had done before him. Indubitably therefore let the whole house of Israel know that God has made him Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified (Act 2:36). He is Lord of all (Act 10:36). This became in fact the chosen and prevailing appellation of Jesus Christ, especially among the Gentile Christians, where the historical significance of Christ was unfamiliar. But how far the usage was from originating in Gentile circles we learn from its familiarity there in the Aramaic form of Maran atha, i.e. Our Lord comes or Our Lord, come. That St. Paul could count on this being understood by the Christians at Corinth betokens antecedent and wide-spread usage of the formula in Palestinian circles.

The special and unique significance of the title as now applied to Christ arises out of its use in the Septuagint as the usual euphemistic equivalent of Jahweh. For those familiar with the OT in the Greek version, was a synonym for God; the outstanding fact in connexion with the Christology of the Acts and Epistles is that the same word has become the common, the preponderating designation of Jesus Christ. And the connotation which is involved in its application to Him is the same. This follows from the transference to Christ not merely of the title but also of phrases from the OT, the original reference of which was to Jahweh. When the believers on Christ are described as , those who call upon this name, sc. the name of Jesus our Lord (Act 9:21; cf. Act 9:14; Act 2:21; Act 22:16 and Rom 10:12, 1Co 1:2), language is appropriated to Christ which in the OT had been used to describe the worshipper of the true God (cf. Gen 4:26; Gen 12:8, 2Ki 5:11). Stephen dies calling upon (the Lord) and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit; and Peter postulates universal dominion of the same Person-He is Lord of all (Act 10:36).

There cannot be the least doubt, says J. Weiss (Christ, p. 46f.), that the name has now a religious significance. To make clear the religious import of the use of the name Lord by the early Christians, one would have to cite the whole of the NT. For in the expression Our Lord Jesus Christ the whole primitive Christian religion is contained in germ. Dutiful obeisance, reverence, and sacred fear lest he should be offended, the feeling or complete dependence in all things, thankfulness and love and trust-in short, everything that a man can feel towards God, comes in this name to utterance. That which is expected from God, the Lord can also impart.

Corresponding with these significant titles there are certain functions ascribed to the risen Christ, which throw valuable light on the conception of Him which prevailed in the primitive community. He is represented (a) as One whom it is natural to approach in prayer, (b) as One who can forgive and save, and (c) as One who is destined to be the Judge of quick and dead.

(a) The practice of addressing prayer to Christ is established in the case of St. Paul (see below), and his references to the practice give no ground for the supposition that it was a novelty which originated with him. Rather do they suggest a practice which was already familiar, and requiring no defence, and so serve to confirm the evidence of the Acts to the effect that from the beginning the disciples addressed the Risen Lord in prayer. It is in this sense that the Christians in Damascus are described by Ananias as those who call upon thy name (Act 9:14), with this significance that the dying Stephen cries, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit, and Lord, lay not this sin to their charge, and it is at least possible that the same idea underlies St. Peters quotation from Joel (Act 2:21), for the speech to which it is prefixed leads up to the conclusion that Jesus has been made Lord and Christ (see Zahn, Die Anbetung Jesu5, 1910).

(b) The words of Stephen are addressed to One who has the power to forgive; and the title of Saviour is no empty form. That salvation, which, whatever be the precise contents of the term, always stands for the highest good, can be obtained through Him, and through no other. In Act 4:12 (there is no other name, etc.) St. Peter is probably contemplating Jews only, and salvation as conceived by them, i.e. as the Messianic deliverance of the future. This Jesus, who is the Christ, is to return, after seasons of refreshing from the presence of the Lord at the time of the restoration of all things (Act 3:21). That return will prove the culminating and final fulfilment of predictions made by Moses and the prophets who followed him, concerning both the glories and the judgment of the Messianic times.

For, (c) when He comes, Christ will fulfil the function for which He has been destined by God; He will act as Judge of quick and dead (Act 10:42).

These last are the only references in the early chapters of Acts to the Parousia of Christ and its attendant circumstances. We have to observe therefore the sobriety and the reticence of the expectation, especially when compared with the exuberance of earlier and contemporary writing on the subject. There is no reference to the restoration of the Kingdom to Israel, or to the humiliation and destruction of Israels foes-features of the future which were part of the common form of Messianic expectation. In fact, the tone of these speeches is strangely different from what we should have expected from a Jew speaking under the conviction that the Messiah had been manifested in Jesus, and would shortly return to fulfil the Divine programme. We miss even the eschatological scenery connected with the Return, with which the apocalyptic sections of the Synoptic Gospels have made us familiar, and also that emphasis on the imminence of the Return which appears in the early Epistles of St. Paul. And yet, in the announcement that Christ comes to judge the quick and the dead, St. Peter ascribes to Him a function which sets Him on the plane of God (see Scheel in RGG [Note: GG Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart.] i. 1743, foot). The exalted Jeans, despite the clearness with which He is defined as a man, is yet One to whom men pray, One who exercises the Divine functions of forgiving, saving, and judging. And what is honoured in worship stands wholly and without qualification on the side of God (Bousset, Kyrios Christos, p. 185).

(vi.) Further light is shed upon the conception of Christ held by the primitive community by the significance assigned to His death. It is true that the references to this subject are unexpectedly few, brief, and general. The early chapters of Acts present a very exact reproduction of the natural situation in which the death of Jesus was a fact known to all, one which called for explanation, and, in the absence of explanation, was without religious value; but one for which an explanation was emerging under the guidance partly of the OT, partly of reminiscences of the Masters teaching, and partly of the spiritual experience of the disciples. The following points are to be noted.

() The death of Jesus was very definitely referred to the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God (Act 2:23). Herod and Pontius Pilate with the Gentiles and the Jews as a people had only carried out what had been ordained to happen by the hand and will of God (Act 4:28). In this there is nothing that goes beyond the Jewish doctrine of the Divine foreknowledge; but the statement of it involved a problem which was calling for solution. To what end had God ordained the death of the Messiah?

() This death, though the fact had hitherto been ignored, had actually been predicted by the prophets of the OT. Those things which God before showed by the mouth of all the prophets that his Christ should suffer, did he thus fulfil (Act 3:18; cf. Act 10:43, 1Pe 1:10, Luk 24:25 ff., Luk 24:44 ff.). The repeated emphasis on all the prophets (cf. Act 3:24) is not to be explained as due merely to hyperbole. It arises from, and illustrates, the conviction that Christ was the goal and the fulfilment of the whole prophetic anticipation of redemption; though St. Peter might have found difficulty in quoting many prophetic words directly bearing on the death of Christ, the conviction he expresses is that that death must now be recognized as an essential element in the working out of the redemptive purpose.

() The disciples commemorated the death of Jesus by a frequently repeated eucharistic meal in which they showed forth the Lords death. That this practice began so promptly after the birth of the community (Act 2:46) is a fact which must be due to recollection of the Last Supper, and so involves conscious remembrance of the significance which the Master had attached to the breaking of the bread, at least according to the shortest form in which the words are reported: This is my body which is on your behalf, (1Co 11:24). Behind that would lie recollections of other things He had said bearing upon His death which had been vague and cryptic at the time.

In those factors-the correlation of the death of Jesus with the whole redeeming purpose or God, the foreshadowing by prophecy of the vicarious value attaching to the death of the innocent servant of God, and the remembered attitude of Jesus towards His own death-we have the conditions for a rapid evolution of a doctrine of reconciliation through the Cross. The doctrine itself is not here; but distinct approximation to it can be traced in the collocation of Jesus as suffering Messiah with an appeal for repentance unto remission of sins (Act 3:18-19). In Act 2:38 when the people have heard the declaration that God has made Jesus Lord and Christ, and ask, What are we to do? the answer is Repent, and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ unto remission of your sins. There is a superficial similarity to the summons issued by John the Baptist. but a fundamental distinction in that the ground of the apostolic appeal is the fact of Christ, a fact as yet unanalyzed; and the baptism is to be in the name of Jesus Christ. i.e. it involves and symbolizes the confession of Jesus as the Christ, and heart-felt submission to His Personality. In Act 5:31 (Him did God exalt to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance and remission of sins), if, as is probable, God is to be understood as the subject of the infinitive clause (cf. Act 11:8 and Rom 2:4), the Exaltation and indirectly the death have remission of sins in part for their object and result.

More cannot be said. The nature of the connexion between the death of Jesus and the Divine plan remains obscure. To explain it was the work of a longer Christian experience, a deeper comprehension of sin, and a higher conception of the ethical demands of God. But when the explanation came, it was an unfolding of the primitive conviction that there was a profound connexion between the death of Jesus and the removal of sin. On this point, as on others, investigation of the primitive consciousness entirely confirms, as it is confirmed by, St. Pauls statement of the gospel as it had been communicated to him, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures (1Co 15:3).

() The summary of the gospel here given by St. Paul, while it is notably lacking in certain elements which are commonly supposed to be essential to Paulinism, corresponds very closely with the impression concerning the missionary preaching which is made by the later chapters of Acts. It is of course maintained by many scholars, and by some regarded as axiomatic, that the similarity between the speeches of St. Peter and those of St. Paul is due to the fact that they were all the work of one man, neither St. Peter nor St. Paul, but either an unknown writer in the second cent. or St. Luke working up old material at the end of the first. The alleged similarity calls for careful examination. The result will probably be the recognition that it arises from an inward harmony between the two apostles as to the essentials of their message, and especially as to their conception of Christ. combined with a diversity of tone and emphasis which is specially marked when the speeches of St. Paul are compared with one another, and extends to his speeches as a whole when compared with St. Peters. And whatever explanation be given of the composition of the speeches of St. Paul, the primitive character of the Christology they present remains a fact, and one which is more easily accounted for if they reproduce the essentials of the Apostles mission preaching, than if we have to suppose St. Luke, with the knowledge of St. Pauls later preaching which he must have possessed, deliberately excluding what was characteristically Pauline. The discrepancy between the Christology reflected in St. Pauls speeches in Acts and that of his Epistles may actually he reflective of the true facts of the case.

In regard to their Christology the speeches of St. Paul witness to practically the same elements as those of St. Peter, and to no other, or at most to one. Just as in the speech of Stephen, and (less conspicuously but not less really) in the speeches of St. Peter, so in the speech of St. Paul at Pisidian Antioch, Jesus of Nazareth is set forth as the goal of Israels history and the crowning fulfilment of Jewish prophecy. The good news of the gospel which its messengers proclaim is the promise to the fathers now fulfilled (Act 13:32; cf. Act 26:8, Rom 15:8). From Thessalonica we have a specimen of St. Pauls missionary preaching, according to which for three Sabbath days or weeks (Revised Version margin) he reasoned with the Jews from the scriptures, to the effect that the Christ was bound to suffer, and the same appeal to Scripture is repeated in Act 26:22; Act 28:23; cf. Act 13:27. The object of the appeal is to show both that this is the Messiah, and that His death is part of the redemptive process. He refers to Christ in the same striking way as (Act 22:14; cf. Act 7:52), and describes Him as the One appointed by God to judge the world (Act 17:31). St. Paul further presents Christ as an object of faith (Act 22:19 cf. Act 9:42; Act 11:17, and possibly Act 3:16), and claims that the consistent burden of his preaching has been repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ (Act 20:21; cf. Act 26:20). In Act 13:38 he declares through this man is proclaimed unto you remission of sins. If in the following verse (and from all the things from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses, by him is justified every one that believeth) St. Paul seems to cress the line into Paulinism, he does not go very far. Justified has the same significance here as it has in the Parable of the Pharisee and Publican (Luk 18:14); and involves the saint: conception as the words of St. Peter in Act 15:11 , or in Act 4:12 . There is one phrase, however, in which St. Paul, as reported in the Acts, states in dogmatic form a conviction to which we find no verbal parallel in the speeches of St. Peter, In Act 20:28 he refers to . (The probability is strong that has been accidentally omitted from the text at a very early stage; otherwise must be construed as a substantive = .) Here we have undoubtedly a seed-thought of much that we recognize as specifically Pauline. But it is still in the form of a seed. Psa 74:2 in the Septuagint runs | . St. Paul, echoing the thought rather than quoting the words, takes the two words and , combines them, then breaks up the compound into two new elements-purchase and price; and, guided further by such phrases as I have given Egypt for thy (Isa 43:3), He smote all the first born of Egypt (Psa 78:51), he sets the fact that Christ died for our sins in this pregnant form: that the new holy community like the old one has been redeemed at the cost of blood, the blood of Gods own beloved Son.

2. Primitive conception of Christ

(1) Jesus as the Messiah.-We have now examined the material available for answering the question with which we started-What significance did the primitive community attach to the Messiahship of Jesus, and what led them to recognize Him as Messiah and as a Messiah with this significance? It would not further our inquiry to enter on an examination of antecedent or contemporary Jewish conceptions of the Messiah and the functions He was to discharge. These conceptions were at once so various and so fluid, and the extent to which any one of them prevailed at any particular time is so difficult to estimate, that even when we know all there is to know on the subject, we have only a bewildering variety of possibilities. We must and can find what we want within the NT. We begin by marking the two extremes between which the conception of the Messiah moved. The one is presented quite clearly at the opening of Acts, before the experience of Pentecost. The disciples put the question to the Risen Christ: Lord, dost thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? (Act 1:6)-a question reflecting the same conception as the words of the disciples on the way to Emmaus (Luk 24:21), viz. that of a Messiah whose function was primarily and mainly the political enfranchisement of the nation. The other extreme is found in such a saying as Christ also suffered for sins once that he might bring us unto God (1Pe 3:18), or in 2Co 5:19 God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself.

The way to test any conception of the Messiah is to observe from what He is expected to deliver-from the tyranny of the earthly oppressor or from the tyranny of moral and spiritual evil. Now, when we apply this test to the conception which lies behind the language of the primitive community, we find that, while it has very definitely moved away from the political, it has not yet reached a developed consciousness of the ethical deliverance. We find the reiterated and triumphant assertion that Jesus is the Messiah, but no trace subsequent to Pentecost of any idea that He is to restore the kingdom to Israel. On the other hand, the record of the early days, furnishes no clear exposition of the character of the deliverance He brings. We learn that in no other than Christ is ; but the nature of the remains undefined. This is true in spite of allusions to remission of sins in connexion with this manifestation of His death. According to contemporary Jewish thought, remission or blotting out of sin was a condition antecedent to, not part of, the Messianic salvation. There is, therefore, something really new in the presentation of the Christian Messiah as instrumental in the remission of sins. It was to antedate His traditional activity. Unto you first, says St. Peter (Act 3:26), God, having raised up his Servant, sent him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from your iniquities. That had been a function of Jesus in the days of His flesh; and the saying indirectly testifies to one of the felt consequences of His fellowship. But now, says St. Peter, repent ye, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ unto the remission of your sins; and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost (Act 2:38). So in Act 10:43 (Through his name every one that believeth on him shall receive remission of sins) the declaration is followed, and so confirmed, by the bestowal of the Holy Ghost. This gift of the Holy Spirit is recognized as the first-fruits of the Messianic salvation and a pledge of its ultimate completion. The condition of receiving it is the remission of sins; and that follows on believing on him, or, what is synonymous, repenting and being baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. which again signifies the solemn confession of belief in Jesus as the Christ. Christ is not described as the One who bestows forgiveness (though the prayer of Stephen shows the near emergence of the idea) or as One for whose sake forgiveness is bestowed; but He is set in such relation to forgiveness that all is ready for the next step. When His disciples begin to have a deeper conception of sin, and to emphasize the idea of salvation as deliverance from it, a profounder explanation of the Messiahs relation to sin and its removal will be demanded. Meanwhile, the conception of His function is plainly transitional, cut loose from the Judaic but only approximating to the Pauline.

The burden of the testimony borne by the primitive community was to the effect that Jesus is the Christ; He is also to return as the Christ; had He been the Christ while yet on earth? No conclusion to the contrary can be drawn from Act 2:36, seeing that there is no indication of the point of time at which the making took place; and even though it appears most natural to connect it with the Resurrection (cf. Rom 1:4), the making probably implies the further recognition and promulgation of a status, rather than the bestowal of it. On the other hand, there are not wanting indications which seem to carry back the Messianic status into the earthly ministry. He had been raised up by God (Act 3:26; cf. Act 7:37; Act 13:33) as it had been predicted by Moses that God would raise up a prophet (Act 3:22). He had been sent by God as one blessing His people, and by God anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power (Act 10:38). This last expression probably means appointed as Messiah, the occasion referred to being the Baptism of Jesus. Since Isa 11:2 the conception of the Messiah in Jewish theology had been indissolubly linked with that of the Spirit. The Messiah is the bearer of the Spirit (Brckner, in RGG [Note: GG Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart.] ii. 1208), so that the anointing with the Spirit is equivalent to installation as Messiah.

(2) The Resurrection and the Messiahship.-To what was the conviction that Jesus was the Messiah due? It is sometimes easily assumed that it was produced by the Resurrection. But taken by itself the Resurrection was not sufficient to create belief that Jesus was the Messiah. It is not as if there had been any antecedent expectation that the Messiah would rise from the dead; such an expectation was indeed excluded by the absence of any idea that death was an element in the Messiahs experience. There is no reason to suppose that when St. Peter appealed to the versos in Psalms 16, he was guided in the interpretation he gave of v. 10 by any tradition concerning the Messiah. Nor was there in the fact of resurrection itself any demonstration that such a rank belonged to the subject of it. It had been reported concerning John the Baptist that he was risen from the dead (Mar 6:14), but the only inference drawn was that therefore do these powers work in him.

The Resurrection did not create faith in Jesus as Messiah; it revived it. He had died as One who claimed to be, and by some was believed to be, the Christ. We trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel (Luk 24:21); and the effect of the Resurrection was to vindicate this claim made by Jesus and for Him on behalf of His followers.

The form and contents of that belief began to undergo a rapid change, as we have seen; but beyond this, the disciples are found taking up a religious attitude to the Risen Master which is not accounted for by their belief that He was the Messiah. They behold Him as set by the right hand of God; and the vision is the ideal expression of the devotion, allegiance, and hope which move in their hearts towards Christ. To what again is this profoundly significant attitude due-for which there is no sufficient explanation in traditional ideas of the Messiah? The explanation may be sought in two directions.

(3) The historic Jesus.-The attitude is due, firstly, to the impression made on the disciples by the historic Jesus. He had never attempted to demonstrate the claim which He made. Rut they had tacitly admitted its validity. He had claimed to stand in a universal and at the same time unique relation to men; He had postulated that their attitude to Himself was the determining factor in life both present and future. He had demanded for Himself and for His cause an allegiance which outweighed the claims of any other relationship. And He made known to them in Himself such a character, such a personality, that these claims, stupendous as they were, seemed reasonable, and were, indeed, admitted and acted upon-Lord, we have left all and followed thee. And the very failure on the part of these same men to grasp the inmost significance of His message and His life enhances their witness to the moral pressure they experienced, leading them to submit even where they imperfectly understood. When St. Peter made what is called the great confession, Thou art the Christ. he was doubtless socking to crystallize the total impression into a categorical form. But the form itself was not adequate. To acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah was to assign to Him the highest rank and dignity within the intellectual range of the apostles. But the motives which led to the confession, the attitude and personal relation which lay behind it, found only incomplete expression in the recognition of Him as the Messiah. Jesus had done what no one had ever conceived of the Messiah doing. He had touched the inner springs of their life. he had deepened indefinitely their apprehension of essential things, the joy of life as lived by those who have a Father in God, the sorrow that springs from the fact of human alienation from that Father. According to the measure of their capacity He revealed to them the Father, and it was by leading them to know Himself. And so, for those who attached themselves to Him, Jesus became Messiah and more. And as the conviction that He was Messiah was revived by the Resurrection from the death-blow which it received through the Crucifixion, so the experience of the more was also latent in the consciousness of the disciples, waiting to be quickened by a corresponding event, and developed by a future experience.

(4) Pentecost.-That event which corresponded to the Resurrection, and displays itself as the second moving cause of the attitude to Christ which we find taken up by the infant Church, was the experience of Pentecost. described as the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Fundamental as the Resurrection was, it did not stand alone as a basal fact on which the faith and life of the young Church were built; nor is it possible to explain what followed in the development of life or thought from the Resurrection by itself. That was succeeded after a short interval by Pentecost and the induement with spiritual power of those who believed in Jesus as the glorified Messiah. To the fact of the Resurrection was added the experience of a Spirit-filled life; and quite apart from any questions as to the form in which this experience manifested itself, it is to this highly intensified and concentrated perception of Gods activity in the lives and wills of those who submit themselves to Him in Jesus Christ, working on the complex of facts illuminated by the Resurrection, that the unfolding of systematic Christian thinking is due. As to the narrative of Pentecost itself, it was only natural, in view of the character of the phenomena, that tradition should seize on the externally marvellous and enhance it, to the obscuring of the really significant. And in particular the tradition as it reached St. Luke was so shaped cither before him or by him that the central feature in the account (Act 2:6-11), the declaration by men of many different nationalities, we do hear them speaking in our tongues the mighty works of God, differs from every other item of evidence as to the meaning of the glossolalia or speaking with tongues. That this phenomenon, the speaking with new or strange tongues, was a familiar one in the first generation of Christians, we know from St. Pauls Epistles; that the first manifestation of it is what St. Luke is describing we may be sure; but inasmuch as a marked characteristic of glossolalia in all other contexts is incomprehensibility and the necessity for interpretation, we may take it that on the first occasion also the phenomenon was that of ecstatic speech, not comprehended by the hearers except in the sense that, being infected by the like enthusiasm, they felt themselves in mental communication with the speakers, though they did not understand their words. The essential thing is that something occurred of a public and striking description which not only called for explanation, but justified St. Peter in seeing in the experience shared by him and so many others the fulfilment of Christ swords about the promise of the Father (Act 1:4; cf. Luk 24:49, Gal 3:14).

The fulfilment of this promise became the second moment in the development of a deeper and richer Christology. On the one hand, it involved, and be revealed, a relation between God and His Christ of a different quality from what had hitherto been recognized. That relation had been conceived as something due to positive choice, as external, official; and the Spirit was bestowed on Jesus as part of His Messianic equipment. The Christian experience of Christ seta up a process at the end of which we find St. Paul boldly identifying Christ and the Spirit, and the writer of the Fourth Gospel interpreting the parting words of Jesus in terms of that identification. And the effect of this identification on the Christology is to provide an explanation of the attitude of believers to the Risen Lord in their recognizing Him as united to God in a relation which was not official but inherent, not mediated in time but eternal and unchangeable. And once more the stage in this process which we find reflected in the Acts is the intermediate one. The glorified Messiah is no longer the subject of the Spirits influence (as in the Synoptic Gospels), nor is He as yet identified with it; but he is the instrument and channel of the Spirits bestowal. That bestowal is conditioned by faith in Him (Act 2:38), by obedience to Him (Act 5:32). On the other hand, the bestowal of the Spirit, which was afterwards recognized and described as the Spirit of unity and brotherly love, involved and revealed a new relationship between all those who received the gift from Christ. That is the real meaning of Pentecost so far as it has been identified with the birth of the Church. We are told of the 3000 souls that were added to the infant community that they were steadfastly adhering to the teaching of the apostles, and to the fellowship (), the breaking of bread, and the prayer (Act 2:42). We have here a new word for a new thing, the new consciousness of sacred union connecting the believers, knitting them together in what St. Paul afterwards called the Body of Christ. Hort (Christian Ecclesia, 1897, p. 44) understands by here conduct expressive of and resulting from the strong sense of fellowship with the other members of the brotherhood, Pentecost had for its most striking result the creation of the sense of brotherhood within a body of men and women whose common bond was not only a common allegiance to Christ. but common participation in His Spirit. No doubt the extreme form which the principle at first assumed-community of goods-proved unworkable, and was of temporary duration; but underlying it we see a whole series of new ethical ideals in operation-mutual service, mutual self-sacrifice, the merging of the individual in the corporate whole, love of the brethren as a governing motive of the new life.

And with the consciousness of a new binding fellowship created, by Christ. there came a new conscience. The new relations involved new responsibilities, the possibility of new offences, new sins. The earliest case of sin which is recorded within the new community was in fact sin against the community itself and the principle of brotherhood; and it was recognized and dealt with as sin against the Holy Ghost.

These ethical consequences of the bestowal of the Spirit which was traced to the action of the Risen Christ had far-reaching results not only in the life but in the thought of the Church. Participation in the Spirit was the privilege, as it was the mark, of every true Christian. The act of believing on Jesus, the surrender to Him which found symbolic expression in baptism, was followed by a great religious experience, the effect of which was manifold. Incorporated in a community which had died to earthly ambition, whether personal or national, and which wag permeated with a holy enthusiasm towards Him who was felt to be the source of its life, and with genuine love to all the brethren, the individual became conscious of a new life, ethical and religions; and he saw in Jesus the Christ. the Founder and Pioneer of that life. Conscious that it was as moved by the proclamation of that Messiah crucified but risen that he, repenting and turning to God, had found peace of conscience, deliverance from fear of the wrath, he hailed in Christ a , and connected Him with the great experience of . The connexions and implications of these experiences and convictions were still undeveloped. But the motive power and the material for the development were there. The influence of the Spirit realized from day to day alike in the individual and in the corporate life, and in the inter-action of the two, meant that not only were the disciples secure of salvation in the future; they had it now. The Kingdom was theirs in both senses. It belonged to them as an inheritance; it was already in their possession. They were on the way to St. Pauls great discovery, The kingdom of heaven consists in righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost (Rom 14:17). And to Him, to whom they traced the bestowal of the best they had ever been led to hope for from God, and also the revelation and bestowal of gifts such as had not entered into the heart of man to conceive, they lifted their hearts as hitherto they had done only to God Himself.

II. The Christology of the sub-primitive community.-The records, scanty though they are, thus provide sufficient evidence to show that most, if not all, of the chief elements in later Christology were already present, at least in germ, within the consciousness of the primitive community. From the year a.d. 50 or thereabouts we are able to trace the development of these elements in Epistles from various hands. But the lines of development are not continuous. Although there are doubtless lines of cross-connexion, e.g. between St. Paul and St. Peter, between St. Paul and the Epistle to the Hebrews, it is more in accordance with the historical situation to regard them as radiating from the common centre of primitive thought. Arranging these lines in the order of James, the Apocalypse, Peter, Paul, Hebrews, John, we find an increasing in asure, not of divergence from the primitive type, but of originality and penetration in the analysis of the convictions which were common to them all. Some at least of these lines appear to be focused again in the Fourth Gospel, along with some which turn back independently to the original base.

A broad comparison between these various types of Christian thought which may be described as sub-primitive shows that the characteristic which distinguishes the Pauline from all the other types is not primarily a distinction in respect of doctrine in general or of Christology in particular. It is a distinction in the aspects of religious experience which are respectively emphasized. In neither case is the emphasis an exclusive one; that is to say, it must not be taken as excluding the aspect which is not emphasized. But, while for St. Paul the dominating interest in C histological reflexion lies in the explanation of, and preparation for, the ethical union between believers and their Lord, for St. Peter and the others Christological reflexion runs on more concrete lines, developing the thought of Christ as external to men, as Preacher of Righteousness, as Example, as Priest, as Authority. Ultimately the distinction depends upon the place assigned by St. Paul to the and to the category of . This subtle but indubitable difference of atmosphere has to be steadily borne in mind. To it may be due not a few apparent divergences of expression, while on the other hand apparent correspondences of language may represent real distinction of thought.

1. The Epistle of James.-It is hardly possible to speak of the Christology of an Epistle in which the word occurs only twice (Jam 1:1; Jam 2:1). But it is to be noted that in both places the writer gives the full title , that, in Jam 1:1 he presents himself as in the same sense of God and of Christ, and that in Jam 2:1 he adds to the title the striking appellation (so Mayor, ad loc., following Bengel). To this there may be a parallel in 2Pe 1:17 (cf. also Col 1:27, Rom 9:4, Joh 1:14); and in view of the prevailingly Judaic tone of the Epistle there may be an allusion to Christ as the Shekinah (cf. 1Sa 4:22, Psa 78:61). In Jam 2:7 ( ) there is probably a reference to the name of Christ as used in baptism (cf. Act 2:38), and in Jam 5:4, whether should stand in the text or not, a reference to the same name as the secret of prevailing prayer. If we add Jam 5:8, The Parousia of the Lord is at hand, and couple with it the phrase in the following verse, Behold, the Judge is at the door, we have probably exhausted the references to Christ. But the fact that the writer in the same context and frequently elsewhere puts = must be allowed due weight, and similarly it is to be noted how in Jam 5:8 the Second Coming is equated with the old object of expectation, the Kingdom of God.

The Christology which is suggested rather than defined in the Epistle is lacking in several of the details which appear even in that of the primitive community, most notably perhaps in all reference to the Holy Spirit; but it is wholly consistent with it, and the inadequacy of its expression is probably due rather to the character of the document than to any defect in the writers views as compared with those, e.g., of St. Peter.

2. The Apocalypse of John.-It is best to consider the Apocalypse of John at this point, because its Christology also represents the Christology of the primitive community, not developed by intellectual analysis, or even through the interpretation of Christian experience, but expanded through the emotional magnification of the heavenly Christ. In no book in the NT do devotion to, and adoration of, Christ. and recognition of His participation in the glory and authority of the Father, find such copious, such exalted, expression. Yet the forms in which this expression is cast are for the most part not original. On a much larger scale than by the primitive community, so far as our records show, the OT has been laid under contribution; so also has the literature of the Interval. Attributes and functions, descriptions and imagery which had played their part in setting forth the majesty and the Almighty power of God, are gathered from all available sources and attached to the Person of the heavenly Christ.

Characteristic of the whole book is the representation of Christ in the opening vision (Rev 1:13 ff.), where He appears as the one like unto a son of man of the Danielic vision, but the details of His appearance are some of those which in that earlier scene are attributed to the Ancient of Days. Divine titles are ascribed to Him, as Lord of lords, and King of kings (Rev 17:14; Rev 19:16), and Divine functions, in the searching of heart and reins (Rev 2:23; cf. Psa 7:9), and a share both in the throne of God (Rev 22:1 the throne of God and of the Lamb) and in the worship paid to God, even the worship paid by angels (Rev 5:11). He holds the keys of Hades and of death (Rev 1:18), which according to Jewish tradition was one of the prerogatives of the Almighty. It is before His wrath that men are to tremble in the Day of Judgment (Rev 6:16-17), and He is to come again in power and glory to judge the world and to save His people (Rev 1:7; Rev 14:14 ff.; Rev 22:20). The throne on which He has taken His place is His Fathers throne (Rev 3:21), and to Him He stands in a relation of unique son-ship (Rev 1:6), while at the same time it is from His Father that He receives His power (Rev 2:27), and He is made to speak of Him as my God (Rev 3:2; Rev 3:12).

This antithetical emphasis upon the Divine honour and dignity assigned to Christ and the ideas of humility, submission, and suffering which are also connected with Him are vividly brought out by the fact that it is under the title of the Lamb that many of the highest prerogatives are assigned to Him. This is indeed the most characteristic appellation in the book, and occurs some 28 times. He is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (Rev 13:8), and even now appears as one that has been slain (Rev 5:6; Rev 5:12); but it is also as Lamb that He receives the worship of Heaven (Rev 5:11; Rev 5:14), that He takes His place by the side of God, and opens the seals of the Book of Destiny. It is in the blood of the Lamb that the saints have washed their robes and made them clean (Rev 7:14; Rev 22:14), or, by another figure, it is with His blood that He has purchased unto God (; cf. Gal 3:13) men of every tribe and nation (Rev 5:9; cf. Rev 14:3-4). On the other hand, the name which no one knoweth but he himself, Word of God ( , Rev 19:12), is not further applied or expanded, and, though it may mark a line of connexion between the Apocalypse and the Fourth Gospel, it cannot be said to throw any clear light on the Christology of this book.

There is a class of passages which appears to claim for Christ a life co-eternal with that of God. I am the first and the last and the living One- (Rev 1:17-18); I am the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end (Rev 22:13; cf. Rev 21:6); with which must be compared Isa 44:6, where Jahweh says, I am the first and the last, and beside me there is no God, and Rev 1:8, where the same majestic self-description is ascribed to the Almighty. Such language may well seem to imply the pre-existence of Christ; yet the predicate in that form is probably to be regarded rather as a necessary inference from the language of the writer, why carries the equating of Christ with God to the furthest point short of making Them eternally equal. Christ is still the beginning of the creation of God ( , Rev 3:14), by which is probably to be understood (cf. Col 1:18 , ; also Col 1:15) that He Himself was part of the .

The Apocalypse of John as a whole leaves the impression of a conception of Christ so exalted, so majestical in the history of mankind, that it could not be carried further without either impinging on the writers monotheism or demanding the employment of metaphysical categories which were beyond his range of thought. It has been maintained by some (e.g. Bousset) that in the description of Christ as Alpha and Omega the writer goes beyond St. Paul, and actually represents the furthest point in the development of Christology within the NT. B. Weiss says that the fact that the Messiah is an originally divine Being (gttliches Wesen) is taken for granted (Bib. Theol. of NT, Eng. translation , 1882-83, vol. ii. p. 172). But it may be doubted whether this outgoing of St. Paul by the Apocalypse is not more apparent than real. The impression is duo partly to the continuous occupation of the authors mind with the same theme. Christ is the Hero of every scene in the drama of the end. There is none of that wide sweep of interest in things both human and Divine which, marks the letters of St Paul. It is due also in part to the natural tendency of the modern reader to accept as evidence of a theory or conception of Christs Person what for the author was only concrete imagery gathered from many sources to set forth and enhance the glory of his Lord. It may indeed be doubted whether he held any proposition regarding Christ which was not included in the convictions of the primitive community. All that he has to say was involved in the tacit assertion that Christ is an object of worship and a hearer of prayer. And with all the Divine honours and attributes which he lavishes on the Glorified Messiah he never loses sight of His identity with the man Jesus. After the title the Lamb he uses with most frequency the simple name Jesus (nine times). The phenomenon was so noticeable that in several passages inferior Manuscripts have inserted the word Christ, which copyists felt to be missing. It was for the testimony of Jesus that John was in Patmos (Rev 1:9; cf. Rev 12:17; Rev 19:10); it was with the blood of the martyrs (or witnesses) of Jesus that Rome was intoxicated; and in Rev 22:16 the heavenly Christ speaks of Himself by this human name-I Jesus have sent my messenger, while the response to the message with which the book closes addresses the Risen Christ in the same form, reminiscent of the days of his flesh-Even so, come, Lord Jesus. The Apocalypse, therefore, is no exception to the rule that, so far from being accompanied by a loosening of the tie between Christ and the historical Jesus, the increasing emphasis on His Divine significance for the world goes along with the same or even clearer assertion of the oneness of Jesus and the Christ. The Christ they worshipped was the Jesus whom they had known.

3. The Christology of St. Paul.-The material for Christology which was already present in the consciousness of the primitive community, or within its grasp, received its fullest and richest development at the hands of St. Paul. The task of the student is to do equal justice to what he received from, and shared with, those who were before him in Christ, and to those elements which were original with him. This will supply the right answer to a question which has become a living issue for modern Christology-Is the Pauline Christology a legitimate and necessary development of the relevant material provided by the contents of the Gospels and the experience of the Church, or does it represent a new departure, a conception of Christ so distinct from, and disparate to, what had gone before, that it must be held to rest not on the revelation of Jesus, but on the speculation of the Apostle? There has been for some time a tendency in one school of NT criticism to exaggerate beyond all reason the distinction between Christianity according to the Gospels and Christianity according to St. Paul, and to do so by minimizing or eliminating what is Pauline in the Gospels and by overemphasizing the Pauline elements in St. Paul. Whatever is distinctive in St. Paul-his calvinism, his sacramentarianism, his mysticism, his eschatology-is apt to be isolated and exaggerated, with the result, if not the intention, of differentiating him more emphatically from his Master. It needs to be borne in mind that we are working here in a highly charged electric field, where men of all schools of thought are in danger of being swayed even unconsciously by a general praeiudicium.

In examining the evidence as to St. Pauls conception of Christ, certain general considerations have to be kept in view. It is now commonly agreed that it is a mistake to regard St. Paul as one who was constructing or had constructed a system of dogmatic theology. We are probably nearer the truth if we think of him as a man supremely interested in the practical conduct of life, whose mind was speculative in the sense that he was not content to register phenomena, but must seek for their relations and their causes, and that he constantly referred details to their correlative principles. That he was moved to this by the impulse of a practical demand rather than of an intellectual necessity is plainly suggested by what we can gather concerning his missionary preaching. The Epistles to the Thessalonians furnish evidence as to its comparatively elementary character up till a.d. 52. And it is within the last ten years of his life that we are to place those Epistles in which his distinctive theological ideas are developed and exposed, within six of these last ten years that we place the great group of Epistles in which they find their classical and all but final expression. Everything points to the fact that the specifically Pauline combinations or inferences were due to the stimulus of specific situations or to the demands created by definite opposition. St. Pauls mind is logical enough when his spiritual experience demands it, but a large part or his affirmations regarding the religious life and destiny of men is thrown off, as occasion prompts, in vague hints, in outbursts of intense spiritual emotion, in pictures set within the framework of his inherited training, in arguments devised to meet the needs of a particular church or a particular group of converts (H. A. A. Kennedy, St. Pauls Conceptions of the Last Things, 1904, p. 22). It is impossible to separate the practical and ethical from the doctrinal, in the interests of the Apostle; and only imperfect success can attend any attempt to study Pauline conceptions by isolating their intellectual expression.

(1) Sources for Paulinism.-For our information regarding the thought and teaching of the Apostle we are almost wholly dependent on his own letters. From the Acts we learn the details of his conversion, the course and method of his missionary activity, but concerning his teaching only what may be gathered with caution from, his speeches reported there. The Letters are conveniently divided into four groups.

(a) The Epistles to the Thessalonians, written from Corinth some twenty years after his conversion, in which we have an echo and some record of that mission-preaching which had been the task of St. Pauls life since that event. (b) The Epistle to the Galatians may possibly be earlier still, though by most authorities it is grouped with those to the Romans and the Corinthians, written some five years later, in which we find the Apostle at the height of his intellectual energy, stimulated to the discovery and enunciation alike of the relations and of the foundations of those truths which had formed the centre of his gospel. (c) A third group, commonly known as the Epistles of the Imprisonment-those to the Ephesians, the Colossians, and the Philippians-belongs probably to a.d. 62-63, and shows the Apostle responding to hostile stimulus of a different kind, and carrying yet further certain of the lines of thought laid down in earlier Epistles. (d) There is a fourth group of Epistles, that known as the Pastorals, addressed to Timothy and Titus, written, if they were written by St. Paul, after he had been released from his imprisonment. The much-disputed question of their authenticity is hardly material to our present purpose, seeing that the Pastorals have little additional to contribute to Pauline Christology. When Christ is referred to as the one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus (1Ti 2:5), He is presented under an aspect which does not appear in St. Paul, though it does in the Epistle to the Hebrews; but in general the Christology of the Pastorals is important rather as a criterion of their authorship than as adding material for the Pauline Christology.

The convictions of St. Paul regarding Christ began at the same point as those of the primitive community. Through a like experience of Jesus as Living, Risen, and Glorified, he was seized by the conviction that He was the Messiah. In his case, however, the personal recollection of what Jeans had been and taught, of the Messianic claim made by Him and for Him, was replaced by the testimony of those disciples who had already believed on Him, and had sealed their belief by steadfastness under persecution. That doubtless gave the content of St. Pauls belief; what created it was the vision of Christ as risen: last of all he was seen of me also (1Co 15:8). To St. Paul also, as to the earlier disciples, came the gift of the Spirit (Act 9:17). And straightway in the synagogues he proclaimed Jesus, that he is the Son of God (Act 9:20), i.e. that He is the Messiah, the phrase having still its Messianic significance (cf. Joh 1:49), and finding its equivalent in v. 22 proving that this is the Christ. It was in the Scriptures of the OT that he too sought for the proof (Act 18:28), as also for proof of the further affirmation that it behoved the Christ to suffer (Act 17:3). Like Peter and like Stephen, but by a different series of steps, he traces the history of Israel down to the manifestation of Jesus (Act 13:17 ff.). He preached to Jews and Greeks alike that they should repent and turn to God, doing works worthy of repentance (Act 26:20); moreover, he also connected the promise of forgiveness with the revelation of Christ (Act 13:38), and recognized in Jesus One whom God had appointed to judge the world in righteousness (Act 17:31). And to this Exalted Christ St. Paul also in the Acts gives the pregnant title . This is specially significant in his speech to the Elders at Miletus, in which there is a note of personal attachment and devotion to the One he there describes (Act 20:19; Act 20:21; Act 20:24; Act 20:32; Act 20:35) which is not struck elsewhere in the Acts, common as the title itself is throughout. This prepares us for the evidence of the Thessalonian Epistles, and for the subsequent development of the implication of the name. There is thus scattered up and down the later chapters of Acts evidence as to the character of St. Pauls preaching, which suggests that it included the same elements as are found in that of the Jerusalem Church; and there is so far no reason to suppose that it contained any elements peculiar to himself, with the one important exception that he claimed for the Gentile as Gentile, and not as Gentile become Jew, the full privileges of Christian salvation. And again this corresponds with what may be gathered from the Thessalonian Epistles.

(2) Christology of Epistles to the Thessalonians.-These Epistles are too commonly studied almost exclusively for the light they throw on Pauline eschatology; but it is to be observed that the directly eschatological passage occupies only one-seventh of the First Letter, while before it is reached the letter has passed what looks like an intended close (1Th 3:11-13), and in the earlier portion the references to the Parousia are brief and wanting in, elaboration. Nor are the proportion and emphasis very different in the Second Epistle.

The really striking feature of these Epistles is the equal emphasis on Christ the Lord and God the Father as severally and jointly the source of all Christian experience, and the ground of all Christian hope. In the opening verse of each Epistle, Christ and the Father are combined as the sphere in which the Church at Thessalonica has its being. In 1Th 3:11 the words our God and Father and our Lord Jesus Christ appear as the subject of a verb in the singular number, expressing a prayer that the Apostle may be guided on his way (cf. 2Th 2:16). It is from Christ no less than from God that the Apostle claims to have received his commission (1Th 2:6), and it is through the Lord Jesus that he utters his precepts (1Th 4:1 [cf. 1Th 5:27], 2Th 3:6; 2Th 3:12). And though Christ is not in these Epistles directly referred to as Judge, it is implied that in the work of Judgment the Son will also have a part (1Th 3:13; 1Th 4:6; 1Th 5:2, 2Th 1:7; 2Th 2:8).

It will be already plain that is the constantly recurring description of Christ; but, more than that, it is used only of Him. For the phrase consecrated by OT usage, the Lord God, St. Paul has in fact substituted God the Father and the Lord. The usage of various names for Christ in these Epistles has been examined by G. Milligan (St. Pauls Epp. to Thess., 1908, p. 135) with the following results. The human name Jesus by itself is found only twice (1Th 1:10; 1Th 4:14). The name Christ standing alone is also comparatively rare, occurring four times (apostles of Christ. gospel of Christ, dead in Christ, patience in Christ). The combination Christ Jesus denoting the Saviour alike in His official and in His personal character, the use of which in the NT is confined to St. Paul, occurs twice. On the other hand, occurs twenty-two times in all, eight times with, and fourteen times without, the article. The fact that nearly two-thirds of these instances are anarthrous shows how completely the word was already accepted as a proper name, and appropriated to Christ.

It is consistent with the significance we have assigned to this use of that the phrase , which in the OT means the Day of Jahweh, is employed here without hesitation and without explanation to describe the day of Christs return in judgment (1Th 5:2; cf. 2Th 2:2). Of like significance are the parallel use and the interchange of God and Lord, e.g. 1Th 5:23 the God of peace himself, and 2Th 3:16 the Lord of peace himself; 1Th 1:4 brethren beloved of God, and 2Th 2:13 brethren beloved of the Lord. These phenomena are the more remarkable inasmuch as they occur in Epistles which otherwise are distinguished for an unusually persistent expression of what may be called God-consciousness. It is not so much a doctrine concerning God that forces itself on the attention, as a habit of referring everything to God. It is God who has called the Thessalonians (1Th 2:12), the gospel of God that they have received (1Th 2:2), to God that they have turned from idols (1Th 1:9), faith toward God that they show (1Th 1:8). It is God whose love they experience (1Th 1:4), whose rule is their supreme authority (1Th 4:3; 1Th 5:18), who gives them the Holy Spirit (1Th 4:8), who is to sanctify them wholly (1Th 5:23), who is to bring again the dead (1Th 4:14). All these references (and they are not exhaustive) are in the First Epistle; and further illustration of the same characteristic is furnished by the Second.

It is, therefore, in letters which at the same time testify so continuously and so emphatically to the unchallenged monotheism of the Apostle that we find equally striking evidence that even at this stage he assigned to Christ rank, dignity, authority, and sovereign importance for religion, such as are surpassed in none of his later writings. And yet it cannot be said that in any essential particular these Epistles carry us beyond the Christology of the pre-Pauline Church. The fact is that all, or nearly all, that St. Paul ever taught concerning the Person of Christ is involved in His Lordship.

The confession of Christs Lordship is the confession of His Divinity. There is no doubt that to Paul and the mass of believers the Man Christ Jesus, Risen and Exalted, was the object of worship. In Him they earn God manifested In a human form. In His influence Upon them they perceived the influence of the Spirit of God. Of His Divine power they had the most convincing evidence in the consciousness of the new life, with the moral strength it imparted, which He had quickened within them. The ease Hid naturalness with which Paul passes from the thought of God to that or Christ shows that he knew of no other God save the God who was one with Christ and Christ with Him, that in turning in faith and prayer to Christ he was conscious he was drawing near to God in the truest way, and that in calling on God he was calling on Christ, in whom alone God was accessible to men (D. Somerville, St. Pauls Conception of Christ. 1897, p. 145 and 144 n. [Note: . note.] ).

This is possibly to anticipate the results of the examination of the other Epistles, but only in details. The central fact of Pauline Christology is already evident in the Epistles to the Thessalonians, viz. that while betraying no sign that his monotheism is in danger, or that his way of interpreting it is either singular or calling for defence, he gives to the Exalted Man, Christ Jeans, the value and many of the attributes of God.

A Messiah who is Messiah and more, One whose function it is to save from the wrath that is impending, but One to be in relation with whom is to have found already the basis of new life in an ethical sense, the condition of a new relation to God, and One who therefore draws to Himself faith, obedience, worship-that is in briefest form St. Pauls conception of Christ as set forth in these Epistles. In subsequent letters St. Paul analyzes the relation of Christ to God and of Christ to mankind, which this conception involves; but nothing can justify the suggestion that this central conception was built up, as it were, out of the elements into which it could subsequently be resolved. It was one which reached St. Paul whole and complete at the crisis of his conversion. That there was some preparation, psychological and even intellectual, for that transforming experience is quite possible, though St. Paul himself would probably have denied it. But that it can be accounted for merely as the result of any subjective process is a suggestion quite irreconcilable with the evidence. We have the concurrent testimony of St. Paul himself (Gal 1:13 ff.; cf. 2Co 4:6) that at the moment of his conversion he was aflame with persecuting zeal against those who believed in Jesus as Messiah, and of Acts (Act 8:3; Act 9:1 ff.), that the martyrdom of Stephen was followed by an outburst of calculated fury against the Christian heretics. And the revelation of the Risen Christ resulted in something more than the mere reversal of Sauls opinion regarding Jesus, and the confession that He was indeed the Messiah; it resulted in a conversion of the whole man so complete that the change of opinion which was its intellectual expression was of secondary importance. There was an ethical change which demands for its explanation a religions as well as an intellectual revolution; and the explanation is that from the time of his conversion St. Paul found in Jesus not only but .

The proof of this ethical change lies in his subsequent life and in all his Epistles. It is seen alike in the ideals which he inculcates and in the degree in which he himself approximates to these ideals. And he asserts the closest causal connexion between the qualities of this new life, life of this quality, and Christ. so that the ethical experience of himself and his fellow-believers has contributed largely to his Christology. Already in 1 Thess. (1Th 1:3) we find the triad of Christian virtues-faith, love, and hope-recognized as being the natural fruit of being in Christ; and Christ as the active source of increase in that love wherewith they have been taught of God to love one another (1Th 3:12; 1Th 4:9). In 1 Thessalonians 5 we have the picture of a Christian community wherein this love was to be operative in curbing the unruly, in comforting those of little spirit, in supporting the weak, in showing longsuffering towards all; where men were to abstain from every form of evil, and to hold fast . These and other ethical ideals for the common life receive their sanction in the conviction that, as Christians, men belong not to the night but to the day (1Th 5:5; 1Th 5:8), i.e. in a certain sense they are already living in the light of the world to come. And within this series of precepts lies one which more than anything else reveals the power over human nature which St. Paul assigns to faith in Christ. At all times be joyful; pray without ceasing; in every circumstance give thanks. For this is what God makes known to you in Jesus Christ as his will. A trust in God which would enable men to accept everything which came to them as part of a Fathers will, and so enable thorn in every circumstance to be thankful, to be free from care-however this reached St. Paul as part of the new ideal, it testifies to an ethical harmony between him and Jesus. St. Pauls explanation of it would be, It pleased God to reveal His Son in me; and again the ethical experience must be taken into account in the development of his Christology.

(3) The developed Christology of St. Paul.-This may conveniently be studied under three aspects, according as it bears upon the conception of Christ: (a) as He now is, in glory; (b) as He was upon earth; (c) as He had been before coming to earth.

A. The glorified Christ.-St. Pauls faith was in a living Christ, a Being who was continuously active in and on behalf of those who had been redeemed to God through Him, whether they were regarded as individuals or as a corporate whole. Accordingly, it is only natural that his thought dwells preponderatingly on various aspects and activities of Christ as He is now, in glory and in the Church; but along with this there goes always the recollection, whether tacit or expressed, of what had preceded the glory, viz. the death, and the manifestation in earthly life.

The four Epistles of the second group (Gal. Romans , 1 and 2 Cor.) in the first place give greater definiteness to the Lordship of Christ as the central fact to be grasped and acknowledged by men. The necessary but sufficient condition for being reckoned a Christian was the sincere acknowledgment of the religious relation to Christ involved in confessing Him as Lord. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved had been St. Pauls word to the jailer of Philippi; and in Rom 10:8 ff. the same principle is laid down and expanded. The word, which in the month of Moses (Deu 30:14) stood for the Mosaic Law, is now represented by the gospel, the word of faith proclaimed by the apostles. And as accepted and openly acknowledged by those who believe that God raised Jesus from the dead, it takes this form, Jesus is Lord; and this acknowledgment is the external condition of salvation. In the same context St. Paul shows why this is so all-important. He appeals to two passages of the OT, in each of which the original reference is to Jahweh (whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed, from Isa 28:16, and whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved, from Joe 2:32); but he predicates them of the Lord Jesus. Nothing could show more simply or more completely the place which the Risen Jesus had taken in the religious consciousness of the Church. The homage, the prayer, the dependence which were due to God were due to Him; and the protection, the security, the salvation which were to be looked for from God might be claimed at His hand. In like manner, according to 1Co 12:3 (no one is able to say that Jesus is Lord but by the Holy Spirit), this acknowledgment is traced to the Spirits inspiration and is offered as a test whereby the inspiration of a speaker maybe ascertained. And in Php 2:9; Php 2:11 in all probability it is this name of Lord which the Apostle describes as the name above every name, the bestowal of which upon Jesus at His Exaltation involved His right to the homage of all created beings. St. Paul here expresses his consciousness of the wonder of what he believes to be the fact-that God has bestowed on Jesus His own glorious name, that whereby He had so long been known and addressed by the Jews, who shrank from pronouncing Jahweh (cf. Act 2:36; and W. Lueken ad loc. in Schriften des NT, ii. [1908] 379).

() Son of God.-If St. Paul thus connects our Lords entry on the title and dignity of with His Resurrection and Exaltation, does he do the same in reference to His status as Son of God? The governing passage is in Rom 1:4 -declared (or installed) Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness in virtue of resurrection from the dead, The emphasis is probably on the words with power. As , Jesus had been and in the Messianic sense, and was crucified (2Co 13:4). But after and in consequence of the Resurrection, He has entered on the status of Son of God in an exalted form, set free from the likeness of (weak and) sinful flesh, He has been promulgated as in power. This open acknowledgment of His true character was in accordance with his spirit of holiness.

The Resurrection was to Paul the disclosure of the nature of Christ. It was not only the crowning stage in the development of the Life that had been lived on earth, its natural consummation, but as such it was also the revelation of the inner nature of Christ and of the forces of His personal life that were concealed, as well as hindered in their proper exercise on others, as long as He was in the flesh (Somerville, op. cit. p. 17; see, further, below).

In three other passages St. Paul refers to Christ as the Son of God (Gal 2:20, 2Co 1:19, Eph 4:13). In others again he speaks of Christ as the Son (1Co 15:28) or his Son (Rom 1:3; Rom 1:9; Rom 5:10, 1Co 1:9, Gal 4:4). Some of these passages may still refer to the Messianic Sonship; but others more probably belong to another class, of which Rom 8:3; Rom 8:32 ( – ) and Col 1:13 ( ) furnish the clearest examples. In these passages the conception of Christs Sonship has passed over into a conception other and deeper than the official Messianic one; and it seems to involve a community of nature between the Father and the Son (Sanday-Headlam, ad loc.), and a relationship independent of any historical experience. At this points therefore, St. Paul does advance beyond any position which is attested for the primitive community. It is useless as well as needless to raise any question as to whether he conceived the relation metaphysically or otherwise. St. Paul is content to recognize it as intimate, personal, unique. It is clear that in the scale of being the son is the one who in origin and nature is nearest to God (J. Weiss, Christ, p. 66).

This deeper conception of the Sonship is borne out by the frequent and spontaneous use of the name Father for God. The full name for God in the Church of the NT is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (e.g. Rom 15:6, 2Co 11:31, Eph 1:3; Eph 3:14, Col 1:3, 1Pe 1:3). And as such He is described absolutely us , and known experimentally by those who have in their hearts the Spirit whereby we cry Abba, Father (Rom 8:15). All this circle of ideas testifies to the recognition of a Sonship not only in the sense in which it was equivalent to Messiahship, but in the sense of a relationship which is intrinsic and unique.

It is quite unnecessary to go far afield to find the source from which St. Paul derived this conception of Christs Sonship. It is attested by the Synoptic Gospels as an element in the self-consciousness of Jesus. There is nothing to suggest that it was a discovery or a conclusion due to St. Paul. As J. Weiss says:

Paul shows no trace of uneasiness nor gives any hint at a tradition as to how the relation or sonship arose or what its actual significance was. When in Col 1:15 he speaks at Christ as the first-born of all creatures, we must not by any means conclude that Paul had in mind a begetting or birth, or any special creative act. But neither is there in a single syllable any suggestion of an emanation in the sense of the later Gnosticism, or an election. It is significant that Paul does not feel the least need to account for the existence of this Son of God by any story of creation or birth, i.e. by what the Science of Religion calls Myth (Christ, p. 69f.).

This means that neither intellectual construction nor speculation gave rise to the conception. It came from Jesus. And as the Resurrection put the seal of Divine authentication on His Messianic consciousness, so did it put the seal of Divine acknowledgment upon that filial consciousness which had been the deepest thing in His personality.

Conversely, of course, this prompt and spontaneous recognition of the filial relationship between Jesus and God provides confirmation of the gospel record so far as it reflects this element in His consciousness. On the broad foundation of the Lordship of Christ and the Sonship of Christ-the one a fact of religious experience, the other a factor in the consciousness of Jesus-St. Paul builds his specific Christology. And he postulates for Christ three different relationships: he sets Him in a relationship amounting to identity with the Spirit of God; he presents Him as Head of a new race of men, the second Adam; and he claims for Him a creative relation to the world of intelligent being.

() The Lord the Spirit.-The evidence for this identification is partly direct and partly indirect. In 2Co 3:17 the Apostle makes the categorical statement, The Lord is the Spirit, and the same idea is probably echoed in the following verse, even as from the Lord the Spirit (the genitive being probably in apposition to -so Schmiedel, Lietzmann). But the same idea also underlies the Apostles habit of using [], and as practically interchangeable. Christ is a life-giving Spirit (1Co 15:45), but the Spirit also gives life (2Co 3:6; cf. Gal 5:25). And in Rom 8:9-11 St. Paul passes indifferently from the one to the other, referring to the Divine Spirit in one verse the effect which in the next he refers to Christ. For him Christ and the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus are practically synonymous.

The basis for the identification which St. Paul asserts is not any idea of metaphysical unity, but an observed harmony of ethical and spiritual influence. St. Paul had no doctrine of the Trinity. The Spirit of God, or Holy Spirit, was for him (apart from the identification with the Risen Christ) the energy of the Divine nature, universal in its operation, influencing the will and the intelligence of men, the source of the sevenfold gifts described in Isa 11:2, and specially the creator of life in the new sense in which it was a prerogative of the Messianic age, and practically synonymous with salvation. The identification of this Spirit with the Risen Christ followed on the combination of the experience of Easter with that of Pentecost. Together they formed the source and the basis of new life for the believers. This was for them the meaning of salvation, and the proof that they were being saved. The subjective certainty was given in new moral power to follow new ideals. Both the power and the ideals were traced to the Spirit (Gal 5:22); but they came to each individual after and in consequence of his faith in Christ as Risen Lord. So this life-giving energy of God which by the primitive community had been explained as shed abroad by the Exalted Christ, is by St. Paul identified with Him. What would further contribute to this conclusion would be the necessity of attributing to Christ existence in a super-physical or spiritual form, and the further necessity of accounting for the universality of His presence, with each and with all of the believers everywhere.

There is a further indication here of the way in which the conception of salvation as the highest good belonging to the life to come was giving place to the conception of it as a present experience. With all its antecedent conditions-e.g. justification (= acquittal), cleansing, redemption from the dominion of evil-and with all its expected contents-peace with God, tranquil confidence, hope and joy-salvation was within mens grasp. Men who had received the Spirit had received it as or , at once the first-fruits and the guarantee of eternal life; they knew that they had received the Spirit because the fruits of the Spirit were produced in them and among them (cf. 1Jn 3:14); and that these were fruits or the Spirit of Christ, or the Spirit that was Christ, they knew, because they corresponded with what they know of His character and teaching.

The recognition of this element in St. Pauls Christology has certain consequences.-(i.) It throws light on the use so freely made by the Apostle of the phrase . (ii.) It leads to a change in the way of conceiving the Spirit which has recently been described as die Christificierung des Geistes. The Spirit being recognized as entering into personal relations with man, of the same character as those of Christ with man, there is formed a conception of the Spirit which can only be described in terms of personality. (iii.) If as Christ exercises the authority of God, and as at once enspheres men (cf. Act 17:28) and dwells in them, producing the fruits of the Spirit, the true grounds are provided for regarding Him as Divine.

It is because He works in us with an energy of love and holiness that is identified with the Spirit of God, and commands our obedience with an absoluteness that is identical with the authority of God, that we are to recognise Christ as truly Divine and to acknowledge the presence in Him of powers of Godhead that constitute Him the object of our faith and worship (Somerville, op. cit. p. 112).

() The Second Adam.-Another line of advance was opened for the Apostle partly through the universalism of his gospel, leading him to find in Adam, the head and founder of humanity which fell, a type of Christ as founder and head of the humanity which He had redeemed. Redeemed humanity was indeed a (2Co 5:17, Gal 6:15; cf. Col 3:10, where the parallel with the creation-narrative in Genesis is distinctly suggested). The new creature is a citizen of a new world (Php 3:20), belongs no longer to the kingdom of darkness but to the kingdom of Gods Son (Col 1:13), and lives under a new covenant, or basis of relationship, between God and man (2Co 3:6). In all these particulars, he is seen to be a member of a new race; and Adam, the founder of the original race, was (Rom 5:14): i.e. Christ as bore the same relation to the new race as Adam to the old.

In two passages St. Paul makes use of this analogy, in both cases assuming its validity, not proving it. According to the first, Adam is typical of Christ in the way in which his fall involves consequences affecting the relation to God of his whole posterity. That is to say, in Christ, as Second Adam and Representative Man, humanity makes a new beginning; it recovers its pristine relation to God, the Divine likeness in which it was first created. And as Adam by his disobedience had entailed on all who followed the heritage of sin and death, so Christ by His perfect fulfilment of the Divine will had secured for all participation in righteousness and life (Rom 5:12-21).

In the second passage (1Co 15:45-47) St. Paul applies the same relation and contrast between Adam and Christ to support his statement that there is not only a natural (= psychical) body but also a spiritual (=pneumatic) one. It is quite in accordance with his method of using Scripture that the verse of Genesis which he quotes has no reference to ; and yet we can see its relevancy. [] [] , where the bracketed words are added to the test of the Septuagint and emphasize the direction of the Apostles thought; Adam, the first man, was made a psychic person, or a natural man. Then he proceeds (without indicating what is the case, viz. that he is no longer quoting): the last Adam (was made) a spirit, a life-giving soul. He states, in fact, the same view of Christ as that just considered-the Lord is the Spirit-but leaves unexpressed the inference he would have men draw, viz. that as Adam and all who derive from him had a psychic body, so Christ and all who owe life to Him have a pneumatic body.

It is only then (if at all) that St. Paul recalls the famous interpretation put by Philo upon the double narrative of the creation of man (Gen 1:27; Gen 2:7)- , . , (Legum allegor. [ed. Mangey, vol. i. p. 49]; cf. de Opif. Mundi [vol. i. p. 32]). Not a few modern writers are disposed to find the root of St. Pauls higher Christology in this doctrine of Philo concerning the heavenly man. But this is probably a mistaken view. Along with obviously close correspondence in phrasing the passage shows fundamental divergence from the Philonic conception. Pfleiderer and B. Weiss agree that the passage contains no reference to Philos doctrine of the ideal man. J. Weiss (Christ, p. 74), after positing that there is no evidence of literary dependence, i.e. borrowing from any work of Philos, makes a careful comparison of the two conceptions, and concludes that Philos doctrine shows no trace of what is most characteristic in St. Paul.

The Alexandrine does not attribute the least eschatological significance to the heavenly man. He shows no trace of the belief that he who came into being in the image of God, at the end of all thing shall appear as Messiah. But with Paul it is just this which is the essential thing. His doctrine of the heavenly and earthly man, or of the first and last Adam, or of Adam and Christ, is most pointedly apocalyptic in character (ib. p. 77f.).

If there is any allusion to Philos view, it is referred to only to be contradicted: the pneumatic was not first, but the psychic; then came the pneumatic. At this point (v. 48) the Apostles mind reverts to his original subject-the constitution respectively of the psychic and of the pneumatic man. The first man was sprung from earth, earthy in his constitution; the second man was, is, or shall be from heaven, and is the heavenly man. And the same law whereby members of Adams race reproduce his earthy, psychic constitution secures that those who derive their life from the heavenly man shall receive a pneumatic frame or constitution. But the frame or is now described as , the image or concrete expression of personality which produces an impression on the beholder. The image of the heavenly in v. 49 is the same as the image of his glory, or his glorious likeness of Php 3:21, into which the Lord is to change the body of our humiliation. And the image of his glory, the image of the heavenly man alike describe the pneumatic , frame or form, which the Risen Christ had taken to Himself.

When we examine these verses, freed from the obligation of reading into them Philos theory of creation, the OT figure which is suggested by is not the supposed Urmensch of Genesis 1, nor yet a Pauline complement of the earthly Adam of Genesis 2, but the figure in Dan 7:13, . It is true that there is not elsewhere in St. Pauls writings any certain allusion to the Son of Man; but this may well be due to the incomprehensibility of the phrase in Gentile ears. And there is no reason to suppose that St. Paul was either ignorant of, or indifferent to, the Messianic significance of the Danielic figure. The view which these verses postulate is therefore this: that the Messiah, the heavenly man of Daniel, is at the same time the head of the new race, the second Adam, and is known to be such because He has been made a life-giving Spirit; those who believe on Him are by Him made alive.

At what point did this take place, in the opinion of St. Paul? Was it at the creation, or at His coming to earth, or at His Exaltation? Probably the first of these possibilities is the one which corresponds with the first impression the words make; the description is in both cases that of the original condition of the first and the second Adam respectively. And that is the interpretation insisted upon by those who find the source of St. Pauls Christology in the conception of a preexistent ideal man. On the other hand, it is at least not necessary to look for the source of both parts of the statement in the Genesis-narrative. It is quite in accordance with St. Pauls manner of handling Scripture that he should add to a direct quotation a proposition which rests on quite other ground (cf. Rom 3:20, Gal 2:16). Nor, in the second place, is it necessary that the verb (granting that it is to be supplied in the second clause of v. 45) should refer in both cases to the same point of time, or to synonymous moments in the experience of the first and second Adam. All that is necessary is that in both cases this experience must be one capable of being described by the word , and the illuminating parallel is that in Act 2:36 : God made him Lord and Christ.

Once more, the whole passage must be viewed and interpreted in its bearing on the solution of the question, With what body do they come? What is really contrasted with the which clothed the of the first Adam is the through which the of the Second Adam is manifested. And as the is the glorified body of the Risen Lord, so it was at His Resurrection that He was made a life-giving Spirit. It would not follow that St. Paul did not regard Him as having been or even in some sense anterior to the Resurrection, any more than it is necessary to put a similar interpretation on Act 2:36. As the first-born from the dead, He was also the first-born among many brethren, inasmuch as they were destined in advance to be conformed to His image, i.e. to the form of His existence in glory (Rom 8:29; see Denney, ad loc.). He was the Second Adam because He was at once the Source, the Type, and the Head of the new race; and as surely as filiation from the first Adam had show itself in the physico-psychic constitution, so surely would vital relation to Christ show itself in the bearing of a spiritual-heavenly body, the habitation not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

It appears, therefore, that in 1Co 15:45 St. Paul has nothing to tell about the pre-existent Christ; and the same is probably the case in regard to the other factors in St. Pauls description of Christ-the recognition of Him as and the declaration that in Him dwells the whole fulness of the Godhead. In both passages (2Co 4:4 and Col 1:15) where he refers to Christ as the image of God, the context suggests that the idea is more than that of simple likeness, reflexion, or even representation. Christ as is and has all that Adam had in consequence of being made without suffering any of the subsequent diminution or cancelling of powers or privileges which in Adams case followed upon transgression. This phrase, therefore, like the Second Adam, sets Him forth as the archetypal man. But the phrase has had a history since its origin in Hebrew literature, and St. Paul may have had that also in mind. It appears in a modified form in Wis. (Wis 7:26) in a description of the Divine Wisdom personified: . From an Egyptian inscription of 196 b.c. Wendland quotes the description of an apotheosized prince as (Hellen.-rm, Kultur, 1907, p. 75). But there is no need to go beyond the passage in Wis., which indeed seems also to have influenced the language of 2Co 4:4 and Heb 1:3, and possibly Col 1:17. The evidently connotes light, glory, radiant effulgence; and when St. Paul applies the description to Christ, he means that the otherwise invisible God is manifested and revealed through Him (cf. Joh 14:21 ). Its true significance is in fact explained by 2Co 4:6 : Seeing it is God who shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. St. Paul neither denies nor asserts that Christ had been the image of God from the beginning; but what he does say on the subject is properly referred to Christ as Exalted.

() The fullness of the Godhead.-It pleased God that in him the whole fulness of the Godhead should make its abode (Col 1:19; cf. Col 2:9 , ). It has now been made clear that as the foregoing description has its roots in the Hebrew record of creation, so this one is not unrelated to contemporary theosophic speculation. St. Paul makes this assertion regarding Christ in response to a challenge, which had been delivered, tacitly at least, by the false teachers at Colossae against the sole and sufficient supremacy of the Lord. On the lips of those whom he was controverting, as well as on his own, the phrase stood for the totality of the Divine powers or agencies. But for the false teachers the totality was distributed among a plurality, a countless host, of mediators-thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, . St. Paul had found in Christ another view of the universe, according to which all this imagined hierarchy of intermediaries became irrelevant. Thus it is probable that in both sentences in which the phrase occurs a strong emphasis should be placed on the words . Not in that cloud of unknown spiritual forces but in Christ resides that whole fullness of which they speak; and it resides , i.e. not in bodily form, but in completeness and abiding reality (so Klpper, Dibelius).

The term, in its origin, or as used by the theosophists of Colossae, may be metaphysical or not; in the mouth of the apostle expresses a religious truth, a truth of reflection based on religions experience, the truth learnt in communion with the Risen Lord, that in Him there is a full endowment of life by the Spirit of God that answers to all the religious needs of human nature (Somerville, op. cit. p. 158).

It is to be noted in connexion with each of these later aspects of Christ recognized by St. Paul, that it is held or revealed by Him in order to be imparted or conveyed to men. If He is the Son and the Image of the Invisible God, it is in order that men who believe on Him may become sons of the same Father and conformed to the same Image. If the fullness of God has taken up its abode in Him, that has had for a result ye have been fulfilled in him, and then we find the Apostle in Eph 3:19 praying that the brethren may by the indwelling of Christ be fulfilled till they attain to the pleroma of God. At the same time, this participation of believers in the highest attributes of Christ is (i.) mediated through Him, is theirs only through their organic union with Him; and (ii.) only partial and fragmentary at any time in the individual believer. No individual believer, however closely he may resemble his Master, can ever reproduce all that Christ is. It is the body of believers, believers as a body, who are destined to attain to the perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ (Eph 4:13). All the attributes of the heavenly Christ have reference to, and are applied to, the salvation of man; but they are conveyed by Him; apart from Him they are not within the reach of men.

B. The historical Jesus.-St. Paul traced the origin of his faith, and ascribed the life he now lived, to the Risen and Exalted Christ, Lord and Spirit. But it is not true to say that he was either ignorant of, or indifferent to, the manifestation of Jesus in the days of his flesh. The references which he makes to the historical Jesus may be few in number, but they are emphatic and essential to his total conception of Christs Person and Work. In the first place, he admits and relies on the authority of Jesus as the rule of life. In Act 20:35 he is heard definitely recalling the words of the Lord Jesus, as in 1Co 11:23 ff. he quotes as authoritative the terms in which Jesus instituted the Last Supper. The discussion on marriage and divorce in 1 Corinthians 7 illustrates his attitude. On the one hand, in regard to the marriage of virgins, he says frankly that he has no commandment of the Lord, just as in reference to married life he has disclaimed any Divine authority (1Co 7:6); but in regard to divorce he takes a very different tone, because for that question he has the authority of the historical Jesus, whose deliverance on the subject be quotes. In like manner be claims to follow Christ, meaning the historical Jesus, as the supreme example (1Co 11:1), and urges his converts to do the like (Php 2:4 ff., 1Th 2:14, Eph 5:1).

It is on the human manifestation of Christ that St. Pauls whole gospel is based-Christ died for our sins; and it was as Jesus of Nazareth that He died; it was in the flesh that He condemned sin, in the body of the flesh that God reconciled men to himself (Col 1:22). And the fact of His humanity is absolutely essential to the Apostles theory of salvation. It provides the identification of the Redeemer with the race He would redeem, in all human experience save the consciousness of having sinned. It is wholly a mistake to represent the emphasis which St. Paul puts upon the Risen Christ as excluding interest in, or knowledge of, the historical Jesus; the heavenly man had no meaning for him except for His being the same as the man Christ Jesus.

And he leaves no room for doubt that the Christ of faith was one with the Jesus of the Gospels. He was born of a woman (Gal 4:4; cf. Job 14:1). The phrase neither includes nor yet does it exclude a supernatural factor in the birth of Jesus; it asserts His true participation in our common humanity. He was born under law (Gal 4:4). Whether significance is to be attached to the absence of the article (Lightfoot) or not (Lietzmann), the context shows that it is His identification with the Jewish race that St. Paul is emphasizing. He is represented as a lineal descendant of David (Rom 1:3), and an argument is founded upon His descent from Abraham (Gal 3:16). This descent had special significance, inasmuch as by becoming a minister of circumcision (or of the circumcision; cf. 2Co 3:6) He confirmed the promises made to the forefathers of Israel (Rom 15:8; cf. 2Co 1:20). So that it is one of the distinguishing privileges of Israel that the Messiah belongs to them as far as the flesh is concerned (Rom 9:5). In 2Co 5:16, where St. Paul repudiates, for the period subsequent to his conversion, any knowledge of Christ after the flesh, he postulates at least the hypothetical possibility of his having known Him so, and probably refers to a claim which others founded upon their personal acquaintance with the historical Jesus.

There remain two passages of special importance for the light they shed on the Apostles view of the constitution of our Lords human personality. The first is in Rom 8:3 – . The allusion to a pre-existent state from which God sent His own Son (see below) is followed by the carefully chosen phrase in the likeness of sins flesh (cf. Php 2:7 was made in the likeness of men). It is possible, but it would be mistaken, to read these words as though their purpose was to assert that Christ was like but only like to men. What the phrase does convey is that the likeness is true and complete as far as it can be, sin being excepted. By the introduction of St. Paul wishes to indicate not that Christ was not really man, or that His flesh was not really what in us is , but that what for ordinary men is their natural condition is for this Person only an assumed condition (Denney, ad loc.). The rendering of Authorized Version (also Revised Version ) of sinful flesh gives a wrong impression and creates unnecessary difficulty. Of sins flesh refers to the physical constitution of man not as originally or inherently sinful-which was never St. Pauls view-but as it had come to be, historically and experimentally, an appanage of sin. Christ entered into humanity as it was conditioned by sin, tyrannized and enslaved by it-sin being regarded as an almost personal conqueror and tyrant.

But He who, according to Rom 8:3, was thus made in the likeness of sins flesh, according to the second passage (Rom 1:4) manifested, in contradistinction to all others who appeared in human form, a spirit of holiness; and it was in harmony with that ethical uniqueness that a unique glory was assigned to Him, inasmuch as His death was followed by a Resurrection whereby He was declared (or installed) by God as Son of God with power. Thenceforward His Messiahship was indubitable; it was demonstrated by the power which was wielded by the Risen Lord. This passage, like the former one, starts with a possible allusion to the pre-existent Sonship ( ), and at least suggests a state of humiliation as antecedent to the state of glory and power. There is at the same time no suggestion of a time at which Jesus became possessed of the spirit of holiness, such as meets us in the Synoptic Gospels. Rather is the spirit referred to as the principle of personality in Jesus. It is the spirit of holiness which binds the earthly existence alike to what went before and to what came after (cf. Feine, Theol. des NT, 1910, p. 260). And the same thought may underlie the phrase in Rom 8:3 : the law (= principle) of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. here means authority (so Sanday-Headlam), or in modern speech, the governing principle. Sin and death are contrasted as governing principles with the living (and life-giving) spirit that was in Christ Jesus-the same spirit of holiness.

The passage in Philippians (Php 2:5-11) which is chiefly valued for the light it throws on St. Pauls view of the pre-existent Christ has importance also for his view of the historical Jesus. He was found, , i.e. in outward appearance, in all that presented itself to the senses, as a man; and that because He was made in the likeness of men ( ). But the description of the human manifestation opens with the phrase , by which the Apostle indicates something which, while going deeper than the or the , yet does not touch the essential personality. Christ, that is to say, entered upon a real, but not a permanent, servitude. In what sense? It will not suffice to say, with Lightfoot (ad loc.), For the stronger word substituted. He who is Master of all becomes the slave of all. For this gives insufficient distinctness to the two clauses, and inadequate force to the former one. It is more probable that the two clauses, and are parallel in reverse order to the two clauses in Gal 4:4, and ; and the power to which St. Paul declares that Jesus submitted Himself as is the Law and the whole dispensation of which it was the symbol. Ho voluntarily placed Himself under its yoke, made Himself a debtor to keep the whole law. It was in virtue of this submission that He could undergo its curse, be made a curse for us, and redeem us (Jews) from the curse of the law. This subjection to the Law was thus a special case of Christs submission to the disabilities of the flesh, through which He could be made sin for us (2Co 5:21). The which He assumed was truly human flesh; it was, for such it had come to be historically, sins flesh-flesh that was in the grasp of sin. He know no sin (2Co 5:21), and yet in His case the was the medium of sins assault upon Him. It brought Him into relation, a relation always hostile, with the whole series of forces which were opposed to God, the forces which were in control of this present world, the principalities and powers (Col 2:15), the world rulers of this darkness (Eph 6:12). And it was in, by means of, this that He condemned sin, that He triumphed over the hostile powers, stripping them off from Himself along with the , when en the Cross He died from under the control of the spiritual forces of the world (Col 2:15; Col 2:20).

Thus life historical man, Jesus of Nazareth, was a fact of cardinal importance for St. Paul, not only as an authority supreme in the realm of conduct, but as embodying the conditions by which alone redemption could be accomplished.

C. The pre-existent Christ.-The material for ascertaining St. Pauls conception of Christ is now nearly complete. By far the larger part of it refers to the post-existent Christ, the Lord in glory. Another element, smaller in extent, but not for that reason unimportant, has to do with the historic Jesus. There remains a third element consisting of allusions to Christ as having been existent and active before He appeared on earth. That element is certainly present both in the mind and in the language of St. Paul. The difficult and delicate task is to weigh its importance, and to account for its presence in his thinking.

The evidence is unevenly distributed. In the four chief Epistles we have a number of allusions; in each of two of the captivity Epistles, Philippians and Colossians, we find an explicit statement. The allusions in the earlier Epistles are, if anything, more important than the statements in the later ones; for they suggest that St. Paul was dealing with a conception regarding Christ which was already familiar, which, so far from requiring to be proved, was widely accepted as a necessary inference from other facts. Further, the references are so incidental as to suggest the inference that, while intimately related to his own deepest convictions about Christ, this doctrine formed no part of his formal teaching, until, at least, the necessity for it arose in the special circumstances of the Church at Colosse (Somerville, op. cit. p. 185; cf. Beyschlag, NT Theol., Eng. translation , 1895, ii. 78). The language of Gal 4:4 (God sent forth his Son) and Rom 8:3 (God, sending his Son in the likeness of sins flesh) implies this previous existence for the Son, an existence under different conditions, with which subjection to the Law and participation of flesh ate contrasted. Consistently with this suggestion the Apostle in 2Co 8:9 alludes to the fact that he who was rich, for our sakes became poor, a phrase which links up with the statement in Philippians, inasmuch as it traces the impoverishment to the action of Christ Himself. In 1Co 8:6 there is a suggestion of the idea which is developed in Colossians, where St. Paul speaks of one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things and we by him; and in 1Co 15:47-48, though it is in His Exaltation that He is recognized as the Second Adam, yet as contrasted with the first Adam, who belongs to earth, He is represented as belonging to heaven, and being the heavenly one. Indirectly, the language of 1Co 10:4 involves the same idea (They drank of that spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ); but the immediate significance of the saying is that the Apostle puts Christ where Jewish legend had put Jahweh.

We come now to the two passages in which St. Paul appears to make detailed allusion to the pre-existent Christ. The first is in Php 2:4-11. The first point to notice is the context. Not only is the example of Christ appealed to as a ground and norm for Christian humility, and the duty of each one looking not on his own things but on the thing of others, but the conclusion also of the whole passage is relevant, inasmuch as it displays the Exaltation of Christ as a supreme illustration of Gods recognition of this spirit of self-effacement: . To illustrate the true character of Christian humility St. Paul refers to the action of Christ, which took place before His appearance upon earth. And again the description is calculated to remind rather than to inform; it is penned for them who already know (Dibelius, ad loc.). Christ had been originally () . What sense are we to attach to this phrase? Lightfoot (Philippians4, 1878, p. 127ff.), after an exhaustive examination of the use of the words and in philosophic literature, comes to the conclusion that must apply to the attributes of the Godhead, that it implies not the external accidents but the essential attributes, so that the possession of involves participation in the also.

Thus in the passage wider consideration the is contrasted with the , as that which is intrinsic and essential with that which is accidental and outward. And the three clauses imply respectively the true divine nature of our Lord ( ), the true human nature ( ), and the externals of human nature ( ).

With the interpretation of goes the explanation of , equality with God, as something which was already Christs possession but which He refused to regard as a prize to be tenaciously held ( ); but so far from this, He divested Himself ( ) not of His Divine nature, for this was impossible, but of the glories, the prerogatives of Deity. This He did by taking upon Him the form of a servant.

This interpretation is open to several objections.-(i.) In effect it reads into St. Pauls language the conclusions of a later Christology, inasmuch as the meaning which it gives to (as involving essential participation in the or substance) must be carried through in both clause, and we get consequently a personality which has taken the substance of humanity with out laying aside that of Deity. (ii.) It gives a forced meaning to , and at the same time an inadequate one; for if the word means no more than man, we have an inexplicable tautology-three, or at least two, clauses in succession which make no advance in the thought. (iii.) It gives an unsatisfactory rendering to , which is rather a thing to be clutched at than a thing to be held.

For these and other reasons the other interpretation is to be preferred, according to which St. Paul is using the terms , , etc., in a popular sense rather than as philosophic terms, and means form, which is separable from essence, though inure truly characteristic than ; in the case of Christ the stands for the glory which he had with the Father. Having this glorious form as a Spirit-Being, the Image of God, He might have grasped at the yet higher prize to be equal unto God. But (here comes in the parallel with what is expected of Christians) He refused to look on His own things, and for the sake of others (men) emptied Himself of the heavenly spiritual form, took the form of one who was subject to inferior powers, including possibly the Law, and humbled Himself to the last stage of humiliation, the death on the Cross. And therefore (here comes in the parallel with what the self-effacing Christian may expect) God has highly exalted Him, has conferred upon Him the very equality which He refused to grasp, bestowing upon Him the name that is above every name, that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

The Christological passage in Philippians assumes the pre-existence of Christ; the second passage, in Colossians (Col 1:15-18), states it ( ), and founds on it a doctrine of the relation between Christ and all created beings. He is the firstborn of every creature (Authorized Version , not Revised Version ), antecedent to them all. It is not necessary to extend the scope of St. Pauls language here so as to include what we call Nature, inanimate creation. The meaning of all things is not wider than every creature, and, so far as the unseen among the all things are concerned, they are here described as living intelligences-thrones, principalities, powers, dominions, i.e. angelic powers in the heavenlies. It is only such living intelligences that are capable of being reconciled to him (Col 1:20). And it is of them that St. Paul says that they all, whether on earth or in heaven, whether seen or unseen, were created in Christ, through Christ, and unto Christ, that in Him they have still the basis of their existence ( ). They were created in Christ (not by) as the sphere within which the Divine will operates for salvation; through Him as the agent for the effecting of the same purpose; and unto Him as the end or goal of their history, which provides the norm of their experience.

What we have here is in fact the half-defined working of the idea which found definite expression in the Logos-Christology of the Fourth Gospel. Here, if anywhere, St. Paul betrays the influence of speculations which are best known to us through the works of Philo. The words , , , are all employed by Philo for the exposition of the relation of the Logos to the origin and maintenance of created things. How this conception and the nomenclature reached St. Paul, it is impossible to say. There was enough in the OT doctrine of Wisdom as cooperative with God in the work of creation to furnish a foundation for the conception. Details and the terms he employs may have reached him through the cosmological speculations of the false teachers. They interposed between God and His world, as agents of creation and intermediaries of Divine working, the hierarchy of unseen spirit-forces. St. Paul may have been dealing a blow to right and to left when he said in effect, to one school of thought, your Logos is our Christ, to another, your spirit-forces were called into being by Him and have their very existence conditioned by Him.

It remains to call attention to two general facts of a character apparently opposite to those we have been considering, () St. Paul never gives to Christ the name or description of God. Two passages have been appealed to as proving that he does: (i.) 2Th 1:12 , according to the grace of our God and (the) Lord Jesus Christ. It seems natural at first sight to take this phrase as describing one Person, Jesus Christ, as both God and Lord. But according to the practically unanimous opinion of modern commentators (B. Weiss, Dibelius, ad loc. in Handbuch zum NT, 1911), the phrase must be treated as a double one referring to God and Christ (so Authorized Version and Revised Version ). (ii.) Rom 9:5 , . Both Authorized Version and Revised Version render Christ who is over all, God blessed for ever. Westcott-Horts Greek Testament in the margin of their Gr. text put a colon after , Hort remarking that this alone seems adequate to account for the whole of the language employed, more especially when it is considered relation to the context. Westcott adds that the juxtaposition of and . seems to make a change of subject improbable, indicating his opinion that it is Christ who is described as God over all; Sanday-Headlam also, after a full discussion of the passage, take the doxology as ascribed to Christ; so also B. Weiss, but in the sense that not Godhead but Divine Exaltation is postulated for Him.

Not so the later commentators, who for the most part find here a doxology addressed to God, God who is over all be blessed for evermore. Evidence of a grammatical or linguistic character is evenly balanced in favour of the two renderings; but in favour of the latter there is the strong general reason that on the other interpretation we should have a phrase which would inevitably infringe St. Pauls monotheism and challenge the monotheism of his readers. And, reviewing the whole of his utterances regarding Christ, the total impression is that of a monotheistic conviction consistently resisting the impulse to do this very thing-to call Jesus God. On the other hand, nothing, not even the Cross, could have offered a greater stumbling-block to the people whom St. Paul was seeking to influence than the proclamation of a second God. And the entire absence from the NT of any indication of opposition to such teaching, or of necessity to explain teaching which would be so distasteful, points conclusively in the same direction.

() This conclusion is borne out by the second general consideration, viz. the frequent and emphatic references in St. Paul to the subordination of the Son. In 1Co 3:22 f. we have the striking climax, All things are yours, for ye are Christs, and Christ is Gods; cf. 1Co 11:3 the head of every man is Christ; the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God. The very name of Son implies a measure of subordination, and even the supreme Exaltation of the Son when every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (Php 2:11) is to the glory of God the Father. The same idea underlies the representation of Christ as the organ of Gods revelation, of creation, of reconciliation. And it is brought out with almost startling force in 1Co 15:28 When all things shall have been subjected unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subjected to him that did subject all things unto him, that God may be all in all.

Whether St. Paul was ever conscious of the problem which his Christology thus presents, it is impossible to say. He held with equal conviction and emphasis two propositions which seem contradictory: There is one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all, and in you all, and Christ is God for me; and perhaps they find their synthesis in that saying which is at once the simplest and the profoundest account of the whole matter; God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself (2Co 5:19).

4. The First Epistle of Peter.-This Epistle opens with a phrase (the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 1Pe 1:3; cf. 2Co 1:3, Eph 1:3) which puts its Christology on the same plane with what was central in the Christology of St. Paul, but at the same time common to the primitive community (see Horts notes ad loc.). But its predominantly practical character does not offer the opportunity for developing the Christological conception in detail. There is no reference to Christ as Son of God (except indirectly in the phrase quoted above), as Son of Man, or as Spirit. The word Christ in frequently used as a proper name, sometimes in combination with Jesus, sometimes by itself. The starting-point of Christian hope and of Christian experience is the Resurrection of Christ (1Pe 1:3); but that experience is described in terms of re-birth, recalling the language of the Fourth Gospel (cf. 1Pe 1:3; 1Pe 1:23 with Joh 3:3; Joh 1:12-13). The goal of Christian hope is the revelation of Jesus Christ (1Pe 1:7; 1Pe 1:13; 1Pe 4:13; cf. 1Pe 1:5; 1Pe 5:1). In the interval the supreme religious duty of Christians is to sanctify in their hearts Christ as Lord (1Pe 3:15 Revised Version ). St. Peter is here quoting (and adapting) the language of Isa 8:12-13 in the Septuagint version, which concludes with . Whatever be the precise way in which his words should be rendered, the significant thing is that he substitutes the word for the by which the prophet meant Jahweh. He demands for Christ the same reverence, submission, and dependence as the prophet claimed for God, and he makes the rendering of these the central thing in religion. In 1Pe 2:3 we find a similar application to Christ of the language of Psa 34:9.

Christ is at the right hand of God, having gone into heaven (cf. Act 3:21), angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him (Act 3:22). For God has raised him from the dead, and given him glory (1Pe 1:21; cf. Act 3:13 and Isa 52:13 Septuagint ). This glorified Christ is the chief shepherd (1Pe 5:4), the shepherd and overseer of your souls (1Pe 2:25), by a figure which, though familiar in the OT (e.g. Psalms 23, Zec 13:7, Isa 40:11) and also in the Gospels (e.g. Mat 9:36, John 10) and in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Heb 13:10), is never applied to Christ by St. Paul. It is possible that St. Peter also represents Him as ready to judge the quick and the dead (1Pe 4:5), though in 1Pe 1:17 it is God who is the Judge.

The Epistle is distinguished from all other documents of the NT in that it appears to assign to Christ a redeeming activity in the interval between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. Being put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the Spirit, in which also he went and preached to the spirits in prison (1Pe 3:18-19); cf. 1Pe 4:6 the gospel was preached to the dead also. The idea of our Lords descent into Sheol and temporary abode there underlies the interpretation put by St. Peter upon Psa 16:10 in Act 2:31 and is possibly reflected in Eph 4:9 (cf. Luk 23:43). But the exposition which is given to it in the Epistle is probably due to the influence of speculation, traces of which are found in apocalyptic writings, concerning the ultimate fate of fallen spirits in the under world. The Book of Enoch in particular, acquaintance with which is traceable elsewhere in this Epistle (cf. 1:12 with En. 1:2), deals with this subject in several passages (60:5, 25; 64; 69:26, ed. Charles) and hints at an opportunity of repentance allowed to sinners of the antediluvian period between the first judgment of the Deluge and the final one. En. 69:26, referring apparently, after a long interpolation, to the fallen angels of ch. 64, says, There was great joy among them, and they blessed and glorified because the name of the Son of Man was revealed unto them. The reference to Noah in both contexts makes it highly probable that the Enoch literature is the source of the special idea behind the passages in 1 Peter. Christ was understood to have preached to the Spirits in prison in fulfilment of the expectation that the name of the Son of Man would be revealed to them.

Concerning the historic Christ the Epistle declares, quoting Isa 53:9, that he did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth (1Pe 2:22); it refers to Him as a lamb without spot and blameless (1Pe 1:19), as rejected of men but chosen of God (1Pe 2:4), as the righteous who died for the unrighteous (1Pe 3:18). Special emphasis is laid upon His patient endurance of suffering as an example to be followed by all Christians (1Pe 2:21; 1Pe 4:1; 1Pe 4:13); and of these sufferings the writer claims to be a witness, possibly meaning an eye-witness (1Pe 5:1 ). In fact, the Epistle testifies to the thorough working out of that analogy between the suffering servant in Isaiah and the crucified Messiah, the pregnant use of which has been noted in St. Peters speeches in Acts.

The Christological figure which belongs to the Petrine speeches of Acts and the First Epistle of Peter distinctively, being traceable elsewhere only in a few primitive liturgical passages, is the Isaiah figure of the suffering Servant of Yahweh (B. W. Bacon, Jesus the Son of God, 1911, p. 100).

Those who find in this Epistle the doctrine of the pre-existent Christ rely on two passages-1:11 and 1Pe 1:20. In the first of these the prophets are said to have searched what time, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ which was in them ( ) did signify; and it is inferred that the writer ascribes their inspiration to the Spirit of the (pre-existent) Christ. But both in this clause and in the following one Christ probably stands for Messiah; and the meaning is, what time the Messiah-spirit in them did signify when it testified beforehand the sufferings leading up to (or destined for) Messiah. This is the view of Hort (First Ep. of Peter, 1898, p. 53), who adduces as parallels Isa 61:1, Psa 105:15, 2Sa 23:1 Septuagint , and remarks:

It must be remembered that the sharp distinction which we are accustomed to make between the prophet on the one side and the Messiah of whom he speaks on the other does not exist in the OT itself. The prophet, the people to whom he belongs and to whom he speaks, and the dimly seen Head and King of the people, all pass insensibly one into the other in the language of prophecy; they all are partakers of the Divine anointing, and the Messiahship which is conferred by it.,

In the second passage (1Pe 1:20) Christ is described as foreknown before the foundation of the world, but manifested at the end of the times ( ), from which it is argued that both the implication of the word manifested and its correlation with foreknown strongly favour the idea of personal pre-existence. But this argument probably lays an unjustifiable stress on the etymology of , and overlooks the significance suggested by its usage. The meaning to have prescience of does not well suit either this passage or Rom 8:29 ( ) or Rom 11:2 ( ). So Hort points out (ad loc.), and adds: a comparison of these passages suggests that in them means virtually pre-recognition, designation to a function or position (cf. Jer 1:5, Isa 49:1). The idea of the designation of the Messiah in the counsel of God before all worlds is expressed more or less distinctly in other language in Eph 1:9-10, Col 1:26, and does not necessarily imply pre-existence for the Messiah. The same idea is illustrated in this Epistle in 1Pe 1:2, according to which the recipients of the letter are saints according to the foreknowledge of God ( ). It is probable therefore that the Epistle does not contain, any reference to the pre-existent Christ.

As a whole it displays this perplexing combination-the presence of linguistic echoes of Pauline phraseology, and the absence of everything that is specifically Pauline in thought. We look in vain for any reference to justification or reconciliation, to the mystical participation in Christs death and resurrection or the union between Christ and the believer, to Christ as the Son of God or as sent into the world from a pre-existent state. There are lines of connexion with the Epistle to the Hebrews, e.g. the superiority of Christ to angels (1Pe 3:22; cf. Bacon, op. cit. p. 91), the conception of faith approximating to hope, the reference to sprinkling (1Pe 1:2), and the description of Christ as Shepherd (1Pe 2:25). But the Epistle, especially in its Christology, stands distinctly nearer to the common primitive basis than to Paulinism in its present form.

The writer is by no means a Paulinist. His attitude is rather that of the common practical consciousness pervading the churches-a consciousness which was prior to Paul, and in which Paulinism, for the most part, operated merely as a ferment. The proper appreciation of this central popular Christianity in the apostolic age is vital to the proper focus for viewing the early Christian literature (Moffatt, Introd. to Literature of the New Testament (Moffatt)., 1911, p. 330f.).

5. The Epistle to the Hebrews.-This Epistle contributes a very original development of the primitive conception of Christ in closest connexion with a special view of the character of His redeeming work. The address of the Epistle to Hebrews is probably as misleading as its traditional ascription to St. Paul as its author was mistaken. And it is a great gain to NT theology that it is now examined apart from any of the former pre-suppositions as to either authorship or address. The phenomena of the Epistle converge on the conclusion that Paul had nothing to do with it; the style and religious characteristics put his direct authorship out of the question, and even the mediating hypotheses which associate Apollos or Philip or Luke with him are shattered upon the non-Pauline cast of speculation which determines the theology (Moffatt, Introd. to Literature of the New Testament (Moffatt)., p. 428). Compared with the letters of St. Paul it runs far more on the lines of a rhetorical address, and may have been intended in the first place for a quite small and homogeneous community of Christians, not specially distinguished by either Jewish or Gentile origin and proclivities. In its fundamental purpose it is a word of exhortation (Heb 13:22), and its key-note is struck in Heb 2:1-4, especially Heb 2:3, how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? The Christian salvation is seen to be so great, because after an exhaustive comparison between it and the salvation offered under the OT covenant, it is seen to be superior at every point, and this most conspicuously in the Person of Him through, whom it has been mediated (Heb 9:15; cf. Heb 7:22; Heb 12:24).

What is most characteristic in the Christology of Hebrews is that each of the two normative elements in the primitive conception of Christ-the reality of His human nature and experiences, and the glorious efficacy of His Divine Sonship-is reiterated and developed with a new emphasis and with new detail. This is specially true of the Divine Sonship, which, even more than the High-Priesthood, expresses for the writer the highest claim for Christ. This is the subject into which he bursts without any preface, in the opening sentences of his letter. God, the same who spoke to the fathers by the prophets, has spoken to us by the Son, whom He has made the heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds. The description which follows, of the Son as the effulgence of his glory, the expression of his essence, makes clear at once that the Sonship is conceived in the absolute sense, and this is the case throughout (Heb 1:8; Heb 2:5; Heb 5:5; Heb 5:8; Heb 7:28), probably even where the full phrase ( ) is employed (Heb 4:14; Heb 6:6; Heb 7:3; Heb 10:29). As Son He is already (Heb 1:4), and as Son, who through the Resurrection has become , i.e. Representative and Head of the whole family of God, He is to be again brought into the world (Heb 1:6), when His eternal glory and sovereignty will be yet more conspicuously displayed. It would not be safe to infer, however, that the author intended all the language of the OT passages which he proceeds to quote to apply literally and specifically to Christ; and in particular the quotation from Psalms 45 (Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever, Heb 1:8 Revised Version ; see marg. [Note: margin.] ) is of such uncertain interpretation, both in the Septuagint and here, that it cannot be claimed as proof that the writer addressed Christ as (see Westcott, ad loc.). Nevertheless, the successive clauses of the opening paragraph point to One who belongs to the eternal order, and holds at once a unique and a universal relation to all created things. The timeless character of the Sons existence is indirectly brought out by the analogy of Melchizedek, who having neither beginning nor end of days, is therein made like unto the Son of God (Heb 7:3).

In all this there is both likeness and unlikeness to the Christology of St. Paul-likeness in the conception of Sonship as involving radiant revelation (cf. ) of Christ as connected with the creation and sustaining of all created being (1Co 8:6, Col 1:16); unlikeness, if not in substance, yet in the greater sweep and definiteness of the conception and in the probable extension of meaning here given to . While in both cases the passage in Wis. (Wis 7:25 ff.) has unmistakably left its mark on the language, in the case of Heb. we must probably allow also for the influence of Philos elaboration of the same nexus of ideas.

But there is a deeper distinction in the use of the Sonship-conception as between St. Paul and Hebrews. There is nothing in the latter corresponding to the note of tenderness and intimate affection which St. Paul seems to have recognized in the relationship (e.g. Rom 8:3; Rom 8:32, Col 1:13). The Sonship in Hebrews shows not so much a change of quality from the official Messianic conception as an extension of it into a timeless past. And this is confirmed by the absence from the Epistle of any reference to God as the Father whether of Christ or of men in Christ. St. Pauls pregnant phrase, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, makes no appearance; nor do we find our Lord Jesus Christ at all, but in its stead the very rare (Heb 7:14; Heb 13:20; otherwise only in 1Ti 1:14, 2Ti 1:8, 2Pe 3:15).

This Son has now entered into heaven itself (Heb 9:24; cf. Heb 4:14; Heb 12:25, 1Pe 3:22, Act 3:21, 1Th 1:10), and taken His seat at the right hand of the majesty on high (Heb 1:3; cf. Heb 8:1; Heb 10:12; Heb 12:2). But He has entered not only as the glorified Messiah, the Lord, who exercises kingly rule, but also as the great High Priest, in whom the high priests (and priests) of the old dispensation, with the whole system of sacrifices and purifications which they represent, find their antitype and consummation.

(1) The High-Priesthood.-Just as in the Synoptic Gospels the Messiahship, so here the High-Priesthood, is a function of the Sonship. It is presented in two aspects: first, as typified in the Levitical High-Priesthood; and second, as typified in the Priest-King Melchizedek. The title (), which in this Epistle alone of the books of the NT is applied to Christ, appears quite abruptly at Heb 2:17 and again at Heb 3:1, but its contents are developed from Heb 4:14 onwards. Christ corresponds with the type, the Levitical High-Priesthood, in that He too is able to bear gently with the ignorant and errant (Heb 5:2; cf. Heb 4:15), in that He too holds the office by Divine appointment (Heb 5:5-6), and in that He provides an effective offering and purification for sins (Heb 7:21; cf. Isa 1:3; Isa 2:17). But to this Priesthood He is superior in that He requires not to make any offering for His own sins (Heb 7:27); arid by a single offering, the offering of His body once for all (Heb 10:10), He has perfected for ever them that are sanctified (Heb 10:14). But, argues the writer, it would be a mistake to stop short at the analogy of the Levitical priesthood, when there is another equally applicable, and itself belonging to a higher category. Leaving the story of the beginning of the Christ (the first stage), let us be borne on to His culmination (Heb 6:1); though it be a long story we have to tell, and one difficult of interpretation (Heb 5:11). The culmination of the Priesthood of Christ followed on His Exaltation, when He became a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek (Heb 6:20; cf. Heb 5:9 ff.; Heb 7:28). That is to say, the writer agrees with St. Paul in ascribing a great accession of power and dignity to Christ consequent upon the [Resurrection and] Exaltation, but he applies to Christ as Priest the enhancement of significance, which St. Paul applies to Him as Son of God (Rom 1:4).

This Priesthood after a new order, corresponding to the better covenant of which Christ was the Mediator and the Pledge (Heb 7:22; Heb 9:15; Heb 12:24), transcended every other form of priesthood in that (a) it was after the power of an endless life (Heb 7:16); (b) it was confirmed by an oath of God (Heb 7:22; Heb 7:28); (c) the type to which it conformed included kingly as well as priestly functions and prerogatives, and moreover could be shown by a historical illustration to be superior to the Levitical priesthood (Heb 7:1; Heb 7:10); and (d) it was unchallengeable, unique, absolute (Heb 7:24 ; see Westcott ad loc.). Such a High Priest, holy, harmless, undefined in personal character, separated from sinners and higher than the heavens in regard to the conditions of His existence, is One who answers to human need (Heb 7:26). There he ever liveth to make intercession (Heb 7:25; cf. Heb 7:27; Heb 9:24); through Him men offer the sacrifice of praise to God (Heb 13:15); and for them He secures access to the holy place (Heb 4:16; cf. Heb 10:19-22). These priestly functions He continues to exercise; but

the modern conception of Christ pleading in heaven His Passion, offering His blood, on behalf of men has no foundation in the Epistle. His glorified humanity is the eternal pledge the absolute efficacy of His accomplished work. He pleads, as older writers truly expressed the thought, by His Presence on the Fathers Throne (Westcott, Hebrews, 1889, p. 230).

(2) The historical Jesus.-This conception of the eternal representation of humanity in the presence of God as an essential part of Christs redeeming function is related to the emphasis on the reality of His human nature, which runs through the Epistle, concurrent with the emphasis on His Divine glory and dignity. The human name Jesus appears with marked frequency and emphasis, nine times in all, and in nearly every case is placed emphatically at the end of a clause. Though there is no reference to the birth of Jesus, and only one to His Resurrection (Heb 13:20), stress is laid upon His death as a death of suffering (Heb 2:9-10), and the scene in Gethsemane as well as the locality of the Crucifixion are indicated with unexampled detail (Heb 5:7 ff.; Heb 12:3). In character He is described as holy, harmless, undefiled (Heb 7:26), and faithful to him that appointed him (Heb 3:2). He Himself was made for a season lower than the angels (Heb 2:9), and is specifically described as a sharer in the blood and flesh of men (Heb 2:14), seeing that it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren (Heb 2:17). In particular, the likeness in experience extended to temptation, and the temptation was such as arose from His likeness to men, though there was no sin either as its cause or as its result (Heb 2:18; Heb 4:15). The writer does not shrink from ascribing to His human nature progress and also weakness and shrinking from death: in the days of his flesh though he was Son yet learned he obedience through the things which he suffered; he offered prayers and supplications to him that was able to save him from death with strong crying and tears (Heb 5:7-10).

The author does not, however, even in this passage ( ) teach that Christ was delivered from moral infirmity, and so made morally perfect. A study of the word and its cognates, as used in the Epistle, shows that it connotes complete development, arriving at the destined end, consummation. To make perfect does not mean to endow with all excellent qualities, but to bring to the end, that is, the appropriate or appointed end, the end corresponding to the idea (A. B. Davidson, ad loc.). Here the idea is adequacy to be the Author of Salvation (Heb 2:10; Heb 5:9), or Sanctifier (Heb 2:11), or High Priest (Heb 7:28; cf. Heb 6:1). It is in this sense that Christ was made perfect, and that through suffering; and in this sense that He is the Author [or Pioneer] and Perfecter of faith (Heb 12:2).

6. The Johannine literature.-It is now commonly understood that the Fourth Gospel contains two elements, combined in proportions which are still uncertain-history and its religious interpretation. And these so interpenetrate one another that not only is it difficult to separate them, but the form given to the history is in a lesser or greater degree affected by the interpretation. What we are concerned with here is the conception of Christ which gave rise to the interpretation, and left its mark on the historical material. At least the first of the Johannine Epistles, proceeding from the same source, adds its witness to the same conception.

The Christology of the Johannine literature is remarkable, in the first place, for the combination and reproduction of practically all the elements which had emerged in the earlier documents of the NT. Christ is presented as Messiah (Son of God, Son of Man), Son, Priest, Judge, and Creator, and also as adequately replaced by the Spirit. The combination is the more remarkable when justice is done to the large measure of independence among the documents in which these aspects of Christ are severally emphasized. The various lines which radiate from the common centre of primitive conceptions are brought together again in the Johannine Christology. Only the title practically disappears (except in Joh 20:28) from the Gospel and the Epistles alike, a fact in which Bousset (op. cit. p. 187) sees the effect of the same deep mysticism which claims for the disciples the position of friends.

But though these elements are present in the same form, their connotation is modified in comparison with the earlier writings. Each of them has undergone a subtle change, partly in consequence of their being subsumed under one general conception, and partly because of the character of that over-ruling principle, which is commonly but inadequately described as the Logos-idea. One general rule applies to, and partly explains, these subtle changes. The Johannine conception of Christ differs from those that had gone before in that it is static, not dynamic. All that Christ has since become to the Church or been discovered to be, He must have been from the beginning. That eternal and intrinsic relation to God towards the expression of which other writers had been moving, has now become the central and governing idea, in the light of which all His other relations, all His functions, are beheld and set. And there is no need, because there is no room, for the recognition of crises in His experience, such as the Baptism and the Transfiguration, or being declared the Son of God with power, or being made a priest for ever at the Exaltation. The only change allowed for is a change of form, at the beginning from the Logos to the Logos made flesh, and again at the end from the human manifestation to the spiritual condition of being.

The writer distinctly states the purpose he had in view when composing his Gospel (Joh 20:31): these [signs] are written that ye may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God; and that believing ye may have life in his name. But the two titles have interchanged their relative importance. In the Synoptic Gospels Jeans is Son of God because He is Messiah, in accordance with the interpretation of Psa 2:7. Here He is Messiah because He is Son of God. And the Sonship is uniformly conceived as a relation, intrinsic, unique, and eternal, involving and resting upon essential unity with the Father (Joh 1:1; Joh 10:33; Joh 14:10 etc.).

The idea of Sonship, which in Paul is carefully subordinated to a strict monotheism, is accepted in its full extent. In the generation succeeding Paul the name Son of God had gradually assumed the more definite meaning which the Greek language and forms of thought attached to it. The Fourth Evangelist employs it deliberately in the sense which it would convey to the ordinary Greek mind. Jesus as the Son was Himself of the same nature as the Father. All the divine powers and attributes devolved on Him in virtue of His inherent birthright as Son of God (E. F. Scott, The Fourth Gospel, 1906, p. 194).

As Son, Christ is now in heaven, whither He has ascended (Joh 3:13); He is in the bosom of the Father (Joh 1:18). But He is also with and in the Church on earth. He has returned, in a very real sense, though not with the clouds of heaven. And the story of His life on earth is written from the point of view of those who know Him to be, and to have been all along, the Son of God from heaven (Joh 3:17; Joh 3:31 etc.). He has been recognized as Divine, and Divine in such a sense that even in His human manifestation He retained attributes of Godhead. Omniscience is not obscurely claimed for Him (Joh 1:48; Joh 2:25; Joh 4:17; Joh 4:39); and His miracles are not so much works of mercy as signs () of supernatural power.

The miracles are specially represented as attesting His claim to be Messiah (Joh 10:38). And that claim is made for Him (Joh 1:41; Joh 1:45) from the very outset of His Ministry, and by Himself (Joh 4:26; Joh 10:37), in the plainest terms; while belief that He is the Messiah is represented as the condition of salvation (Joh 8:24; cf. Joh 10:35). From the beginning also He exercises His Messianic authority (e.g. in the cleansing of the Temple, Joh 2:13-17), and reveals his [divine] glory (Joh 2:11). The Baptist points to the descent of the Spirit as a dove from heaven (Joh 1:32; Joh 1:34) as the proof of His Messiahship, not as the occasion of its inauguration.

The title Son of Man also reappears in the Fourth Gospel (12 times), and still as the self-designation of Jesus. It retains what is probably the most significant feature of its use in the Synoptic Gospels, viz. the suggestion of contrast; but whereas in the Synoptic Gospels the contrast may be either between the real glory of the Messiah and the lowliness of His appearance or between the real lowliness of Jesus and the glory of His future, here it is uniformly the latter (Joh 1:51 Hereafter ye shall see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of man; Joh 12:23; Joh 13:31 Now is the Son of man glorified). This is still the case in the three instances which refer to the lifting up of Christ (Joh 3:14; Joh 8:28; Joh 12:32), where the lifting up involves not the Crucifixion alone but the Crucifixion as the preliminary to power and glory. Viewed as one factor in the Johannine conception of Christ, the title lays stress on the weakness, humility, and obscurity of His earthly manifestation.

But the Messiahship itself is looked at through the experience of intervening years. The transmutation of eschatology has already been accomplished. The Kingdom of God is such that it can be seen, and entered, only by those who have been born again, those who are spirit (Joh 3:3; Joh 3:5). It follows that the function of the Messiah in relation to that Kingdom is differently conceived. It is to declare the Father (Joh 1:18), to give that knowledge of God which itself is life eternal (Joh 17:3).

To Christ is assigned here also the function of Judge; but it is no longer that of iudex futurus. His presence in the world acts already as a (Joh 3:17-19; Joh 5:22; Joh 9:39); even when He waives the function, it is because the words He has spoken have judgment-force (Joh 12:47). It is to save the world that He has come, the Life, the Light, the Truth, or, in one chosen name, the Word of God.

This Logos-conception is neither the dominating conception which has given shape to the contents of the Gospel, nor is it an after-thought. The Evangelist comes to that conception with his belief in Christ as the Divine Son of God already complete, with the various aspects of His nature and function already correlated and harmonized under that idea; and adopts as a means of relating his central conception to contemporary Hellenistic thought the description of Logos for the Son of God.

The Johannine Logos shows nothing of the fluctuating ambiguity which forms the characteristic quality of the Philonic. He is Personality through and through, and (what for Philo is an impossible thought) has entered on the closest union with the , the anti-Divine principle (Bauer, ad Joh 1:1, in Handbuch zum NT, 1912, p. 7; cf. also Bousset, Kyrios Christos, 1913, p. 187 note).

It would be the direct converse of that method, to begin with the conception of the Logos as current in Hellenistic speculation, and, having analyzed its contents, proceed to fit into harmony with its several elements the records of the life of Jesus which were relevant to his purpose. He introduces the Logos as a term already familiar to his readers; he reminds them of the nature, the prerogatives, the activity of the Logos, His sharing in the nature of God, His timeless being, His part in the work of creation; and then says in effect, This Logos is our Christ; He became flesh; and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father. And throughout the subsequent relation of His acts and words, that glory is allowed to shine.

But not to the obliteration of His humanity, or to the obscuring of His dependence upon God. The glory was visible to those who believed on Him; but they were fully persuaded of the reality of His human nature too (1Jn 1:1-3). To others He appeared as a man (Joh 4:29; Joh 5:12; Joh 7:46; Joh 9:11; Joh 10:33), with a human father and mother (Joh 6:42). They relied on the evidence of their senses when they accused Him of blasphemy, because thou being a man makest thyself God (Joh 10:33). The Evangelist does not shrink from reporting the words of Philip when he described Him as Jesus the son of Joseph (Joh 1:45), or those of the Baptist referring to Him as (Joh 3:27); he even reports Jesus as referring to Himself in the same terms- (Joh 8:40).

His humanity is emphasized with a detail unknown in the Synoptic Gospels-He could be wearied (Joh 4:6), thirsty (Joh 19:28), troubled in spirit (Joh 13:21). He Himself says, Now is my soul troubled (Joh 12:27), and prays that He may be saved from this hour (cf. Heb 5:7). He formed ties of intimate personal friendship and affection (Joh 11:5), and at the tomb of Lazarus He wept (Joh 11:35). The attempt to explain such instances of emphasis on the human nature of Jesus as due to the schematism of the writer is an attempt to get rid of the problem left by the Johannine Christology by evading one of the factors, and it is wrecked on the simplicity and naturalness of each of the instances. A schematism which so successfully concealed the inner meaning of the language would defeat its own object.

Nor is it possible to explain away the repeated witness to the sense of dependence upon God acknowledged by Jesus, and the derivation of His power from Him. The Father who is greater than all things (Joh 10:29) is greater than the Son (Joh 14:28). From the Father the Son derives the things which He speaks to the world (Joh 8:26; cf. Joh 8:40; Joh 12:49; Joh 15:15), and also the power to do His works. He can do nothing of himself (Joh 5:19; cf. Joh 5:30; Joh 8:28). He submits Himself continuously to the Fathers commands (Joh 15:10; cf. Joh 8:29), and finds His spiritual nourishment in obedience (Joh 4:34). It is in this document where the human nature of the Son and His dependence on the Father are asserted with the strongest emphasis that His Divinity is for the first time expressly acknowledged (Joh 1:1; Joh 20:28). If John thus leaves an unsolved problem for posterity to attack it is better to recognize that it is so.

How it was possible that this essential divine possession, the exclusive endowment of a heavenly, spiritual being, could be manifested in a being of flesh, is not a subject on which he seems to have pondered-it is to him simply a marvel for reverent contemplation! One thing only is clear, that with equal energy he defends both positions: truly become flesh, and yet in complete possession of those qualities which constitute the nature of the Deity (J. Weiss, op. cit. p. 151).

Literature.-In addition to the authorities cited above, see W. Lock, Christology of the Earlier Chapters of the Acts, in Expositor, 4th ser., iv. (1891) 178; W. Sanday, Christologies Ancient and Modern, Oxford, 1910; G. H. Box, The Christian Messiah in the Light of Judaism, in Journal of Theological Studies xiii. [1912] 321; B. W. Bacon, Jesus the Son of God, London, 1911: J. Granbery, Outline of NT Christology, Chicago, 1909; A. E. Garvie, Studies of Paul and his Gospel, London, 1911; A. Deissmann, St. Paul, Eng translation , London, 1912; M. Brckner, Die Entstehung der paulinischen Christologie, Strassburg, 1903; W. Olschewski, Die Wurzeln der paulinischen Christologie, Knigsberg, 1909; S. Monteil, La Christologie do Saint-Paul, Paris, 1906; A. Jlicher, Paulus und Jesus, Tbingen, 1907; J. Weiss, Jesus im Glauben des Urchristentums, do. 1910, and Christologie des Urchristentums, in RGG [Note: GG Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart.] i. [1909] 1712ff.; A. S. Peake, The Person of Christ in the Revelation of St. John, in Mansfield College Essays, London, 1909, p. 89: F. Loofs, What is the Truth about Jesus Christ?, Eng. translation , Edinburgh, 1913; H. R. Mackintosh, The Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ, Edinburgh, 1912; W. Bousset, Kyrios Christos, Gttingen, 1913.

C. Anderson Scott.

Fuente: Dictionary of the Apostolic Church