Person of Christ – Person of Christ

Person of Christ

I. Christology of the Synoptic Gospels.— -In so brief an article as the present no attempt can be made to detail the stages in the self-revelation of Jesus, or to assign each partial disclosure to a lixed period. Nor is it possible to inquire critically how far the picture of Jesus in the Gospels has been coloured by later experiences of the Church. Accepting the substantial authenticity of the narrative, and of the view of Jesus’ Person and teaching it embodies, we are led to examine chiefly the various significant titles in which His religious claim was expressed. But we must glance first of all at the human portrait drawn by the Evangelists.

1. Humanity of Jesus. — Everywhere in the Synoptics the true humanity of our Lord is taken seriously. His bodily and mental life are both represented as having undergone a natural development. He is hungry and athirst, capable of the keenest suffering, possessed of a soul and spirit which He yields up to God in death. Joy, sorrow, distress, peace, love, anger — every wholesome human emotion is felt by Him. Hebrews 9 to God the Father, looking up to heaven habitually in lowly trust, for strength and guidance to do His appointed work. Out of the sinless impulse to use His powers in furthering and defending His own lite there rose temptations, not merely at the outset but repeatedly later, which involved Him in a real conflict. He is pictured as sharing in the common secular beliefs of His age and country. Certainly He exhibits at times an extraordinary degree of penetration into the thoughts of men; but to speak of Him as omniscient, whether in regard to the past or the future, is simply to desert our sources (Mark 13:32). He asks questions to elicit information; He feels and expresses surprise; He looks to find fruit upon the fig-tree, and there is none. So far from being manifestations of omnipotence. His miracles are done through faith in the power of God, the gift of which is sought in prayer and acknowledged with thankfulness (Mark 7:34. Matthew 14:19). Finally, it is impossible not to feel that most theological attempts to vindicate for the Jesus of the Gospels a ‘double consciousness’ or ‘double will’ — the one human and limited, the other infinite and Divine — not merely destroy the unity of the impression He makes on us, but are really due to a tendency, devout but mistaken, to cast back upon those earthly years the glory of the risen Lord. This totally ignores the difference in Jesus’ status which the uniform teaching of the NT considers to have been made by the Resurrection, while it also obscures the fact — indicative of the vast redeeming sacrifice of God — that the life of Jesus, the Son Incarnate, was a life in the flesh, a distinctly human phenomenon which moved within the normal lines of a human mind and will.

2. Messiah. — The first article in the creed of the Apostles is the Messiahship of the crucified and risen Jesus of Nazareth. Certain scholars have recently denied that our Lord claimed this title for Himself; but we may fairly say that on such terms the Gospel narrative becomes a chaos. The title Messiah (‘Christ ‘), familiar to Jewish religion from Psalms 2, denotes in general the anointed Head of the Kingdom of God, the new King of a redeemed people; and Jesus, retaining the outline of the traditional idea, infused into it a new spiritual meaning, which, as applied to Himself, signified that He was not a new Teacher or Lawgiver or even the Founder of a new faith, but the Bearer and Finisher of divinely wrought salvation. Full consciousness of His Messianic function must have come to Him not later than His baptism — the manner of its coming is for us inexplicable — and at that crisis a wonderful bestowal of the Spirit equipped Him with the knowledge and power demanded by this vocation. His self-avowal as Messiah was, however, marked by a singular reserve. It followed from His novel view of the Kingdom of God, as the spiritual reign of a Father over His children (no doubt in eschatological perspective) , that His conception of His own Kingship also moved on novel lines. Hence the almost insurmountable difBculty of revealing Himself as the expected Deliverer without fanning into flame such political passions as would have made men deaf to His gospel. It is noticeable, therefore, that at Nazareth He announced Himself not as Messiah, but as a prophet (Luke 4:18).

We are probably right in saying that St. Peter’s confession at Csesarea Philippi (Matthew 16:16) was the earliest point at which the Messianic dignity of Jesus became the explicit subject of conversation between the Master and the Twelve; this may be inferred with certainty from the wording of His question and the joy He evinced at the reply. He greets St. Peter’s answer with extraordinary emotion, as seeing in it a proof that the men nearest to Him had gained a clear religious view of the meaning of His life; while He is able to check any secular anticipations they might also form by at once adding the prediction of His death. To the world at large, however. He first declared His Messiahship when arraigned before Caiaphas.

Our Lord’s reply- to the Baptist’s message from prison (Matthew 11:2 ff.) ^ves us, perhaps, our clearest look at His own conception of the Messianic oflSce. But it is to be observed that He did much more than modify the ancient idea ethically; He superseded it by unheard-of personal claims. ‘Jesus was condemned by His heathen judge as a usurper of the throne, by the Jewish tribunal as One who pretended to such a dignity as had never been conceded even to the Messiah’ (Dalman). He was all that the prophets had spoken, and much more. But although He put into the title an immensity of meaning which burst its real limits, and in a sense antiquated it, yet the historic name remains to teach that the hopes of men towards God have not been vain, and that it is through a personal Deliverer that God’s redemption comes. Furthermore, while the idea of a suffering Messiah may not have been altogether unknown to Rabbinical theology, it was Jesus who first made it current spiritual coin. Brooding meditation on the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 may well have revealed Him to Himself. It was in this mode — ■ through the felt need and reality of saving vicarious sorrow — that the conception of Israel’s Messiah was so glorified as to pass into that of the Redeemer of the world. But, even apart from this, a straight line can be drawn from the Messianic claim of Jesus to the later Christology of the Apostles. ‘With the recognition of Jesus as the Messiah the closest possible connexion was established, for every devout Jew, between Jesus’ message and His person, for it is in the Messiah’s activity that God Himself comes to His people, and the Messiah who does God’s work and sits at His right hand has a right to be worshipped’ (Harnack).

3. Son of Man. — This title is used only by Jesus, and applied to Himself alone; the earliest mention of it in the Synoptic narrative being Mark 2:10, 28. It is scarcely probable, as Dalman inclines to think, that Jesus employed it for the first time after St. Peter’s confession; yet at least that crisis does mark an incipient understanding of its significance on the disciples’ part. But it was only at His trial (Mark 14:62) that its meaning dawned on the general mind. Its absence from NT writings other than the Gospels (except Acts 7:56) is intelligible if we consider that ho huios tou anthrSpou is a phrase which, to any one but a Jew, would require too much explanation for convenience. The virtual disappearance of the title, however, proves conclusively that it was no invention of the primitive Christian Society.

In the Synoptics the name is found on Jesus’ lips about 40 times. Various writers have noted that the passages where it occurs naturally divide into two groups, as they refer (o) to Jesus’ work on earth, and particularly His passion, or (6) to the final glory of His Parousia. It is observable that the ratio of apocalyptic passages is greater in the closing than in the earlier sections of the narrative.

The ultimate source of the title is not a question of first-rate importance, and anyhow it is insoluolej but we are justified in regarding Daniel 7:13 as at all events its proximate source, since Jesus obviously refers to this passage in His self-avowal before the Sanhedrin. We must also be prepared to allow for the influence of Psalms 8 and perhaps Ezekiel 2:1 ff. Whether in Daniel 7:13 ‘one like unto a son of man’ denotes the ideal Israel or an idealized person, it is hard to say, but the exegetical probabilities are decidedly in favour of the former explanation. Later Jewish thought, however, read the passage in a Messianic sense; and m the Similitudes of the Book of Enoch (probably B.C. 96-64) the Son of Man is a supernatural person, pre-existeot, and(perhaps)identified with the Isaianic Servant of the Lord. Nothing can be more likely than that Jesus was familiar with this circle of ideas; and in practically every case His use of the title is intelligil^le only if it denotes an mdividual. Recently the argument has been used that the distinction existing in Greek between ‘man’ and ‘son of man’ could not have been expressed in Aramaic, and that we are consequently debarred from supposing that by the expression Jesus meant more than simply ‘man’ as such; _ but Dalman, followed by Driver, has put forward convincing reasons for denying this . Hence we may reasonably assume both that Jesus called Himself ‘the Son of Man,’ and that He did so frequently.

In asking what Jesus meant by this self-designation, we ought to remember that a given expression may have one meaning for the spealser and another for his audience. Still, one or two things are clear. It is quite un-Biblical to interpret the title as equivalent to ‘the Idea of man’ or ‘the ideal man’; this conception Is Hellenic rather than Jewish, and though it is embodied in the character of the Son of Man as realized in Jesus, it is not strictly present in the name. Again, the term was certainly not meant by Jesus as a dogmatic assertion of His true humanity; for of that no one was in doubt. What we judge to have really happened is this: taking the title freely as given in Daniel 7, and possibly influenced by the Similitudes of Enoch or kindred ideas, Jesus began by using it to mean special or representative humanity as appointed to transcendent glory and dominion; but later He defined and enriched this meaning in a singular way by introducing the idea of suffering. On His lips, indeed, the name always had an educative aim. It was, as it were, a suggestive mystery, as much a problem as a disclosure. The title was traditional, yet it awaited final interpretation; and this Jesus gave by stamping on it the impress of Himself. Its educative value lay in this, that while in no sense can it be called a popular or transparent designation of the Messiah — otherwise Jesus’ question in Matthew 16:13 is meaningless— it yet hinted Messiahship to those who cared to search deeper. Thus, breaking the bounds of the past, Jesus poured into the name a significance of His own, outstripping all previous Messianic ideals, as, e.g., when He claimed that the Son of Man had power on earth to forgive sins (Matthew 9:6))). It is a title which denotes the vocation rather than the nature of Him who bears it; and we are led to think that Jesus chose it deliberately in order to veil, for a time. His personal claim to Messiahship.

As used by our Lord, then, the name ‘Son of Man’ is intrinsically a paradox. It binds Jesus to humanity, yet singles Him out from other men. It predicates of Him alike supramundane glory and earthly humiliation. It unites in itself the contrast of anticipation and reality, of the future and the present. Yet this seeming contradiction, far from being fatal to the internal coherence of the idea, is really constitutive of it. It is just through present suffering and indignity that He who is to be Saviour and Judge passes to His Kingdom. ‘The " Son of Man," in the mature mind of Jesus, is the Person who unites a career of utmost service and suffering with a sure prospect of transcendent glory. And herein we touch at once the depth and height of His originality’ (Muirhead). He trained the disciples to grasp this novel view of what it meant to be Messiah; and when they at last understood Him, what their minds dwelt on, and held fast, as indicated by the title so interpreted, was not the Divine origin of Jesus; it was rather His Divine calling and the Divine destiny that awaited Him. For them ‘Son of Man’ pointed to the future more than to the past.

4. Son of God. — There are several occasions in the Synoptic narrative on which this title is addressed to Jesus — e.g. by the possessed (Mark 3:11). by unbelieving Jews (Matthew 27:40), by the centurion (Mark 16), and constructively by Caiaphas (Matthew 26:63) — where it cannot have anything like its full significance for a Christian mind. It is at most only a synonym of Messiah. Even when at the Baptism a Divine voice hails Him as God’s beloved Son, the words denote simply His definitive consecration to the Messianic oflice, as is shown by the clear echo of Psalms 2:7. In the OT, we should note, the title ‘Son of God’ is applied to the chosen people, to the theocratic king who rules and represents it, and to the perfect King who is to come. The outer side of this relation to God consisted in the possession of His power and glory; the inner side was the enjoyment of His love as its chosen object.

It was on the inner side of this relation that the mind of Jesus dwelt. In the Synoptic records He does not Himself use the full title ‘Son of God’; probably because It was too familiar as a designation of the Messiah. But there are indications that the name which He chose to express His own view of His Person is simply ‘the Son.’ Not only does this form occur in three important passages (Matthew 11:27, Mark 13:32, and possibly Matthew 28:19), certain pieces of indirect evidence also bear on the point, such as His veiled reference to His Sonship in the parable of the Vineyard, His question to St. Peter as to the taxing of kings’ sons, and His conversation with the scribes about David’s Son and David’s Lord. Much more significant, however, is His habit of naming God ‘my Father’ (Matthew 7:21 lO^^ 12:50 etc. and a phrase which, beyond all serious doubt, puts His relation to God in a place distinctly by itself. St. Luke represents the dawning consciousness of this unique Sonship as already present at the age of twelve (2).

The classical passage bearing on this point is Matthew 11:27: ‘All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, but the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him.’ Here we ought to note distinctly the unqualified assertion that the mutual relation existing between Father and Son is a perfect one. Not only is the Father’s nature open to Jesus, without that sense of mystery of which prophets and saints have always been conscious, not only is the knowledge which Jesus has of God complete, final, and unattainable by others except as mediated through Him; but in like manner Jesus’ nature is open to the Father, and to Him alone. He stands to God in a relation of intimacy such as no other can share, since even those who become the sons of God through Him are sons only in a secondary and derivative sense. God and Jesus belong together in a fashion transcending man’s intelligence; their personal life is one; and it is constituted by a reciprocal fellowship in which Fatherhood and Sonship are uniquely perfect. This is not merely a new idea; the new idea is the expression of a new fact.

What has been said is enough to cast some doubt on the correctness of Harnack’s finding. ‘The consciousness,’ he writes, ‘which Jesus possessed of being the Son of God is, therefore, nothing but the practical consequence of knowing God as the Father and as His Father. Rightly understood, the name of Son means nothing but the knowledge of God’ (What is Christianityf p. 131). But we are not justified in confining the relation of Sonship to the sphere of special knowledge; a unity which is nothing if not personal is not thus to be lowered to the plane of mere cognition. We are aware that there was a time when our knowledge began to be; but Jesus’ filial relation to God, so far at least as His own words suggest, had no beginning, none at all events of which He was conscious. In Dalman’s words, it seems ‘to be naturally bound up with His person; for, in distinction from every one else, just as it is by birth that a son becomes heir, so the prospect of universal rule and the possession of immediate knowledge of God were His.’ For Jesus’ mind, as we can study it in the Synoptics, the secret and origin of His own Person lay hid in God’s creative love. So far, alike in His self-disclosure and in the estimate of disciples, we have no sign of a strict doctrine of incarnation or of two natures united in one person; what we do have is the subduing delineation of One who, in virtue of a career of patient service and of suffering unto death, is the perfect Revealer of God and the destined Ruler of the world. But it is made undeniably plain that His Sonship lifts Him out of the context of sinful humanity, and puts Him in a relation to God which cannot be fully interpreted by any of the general categories of human life. By calling Himself ‘Son’ He describes what He is for God; but He does so without giving any explanation of it, or explicitly following it backwards or forwards in its eternal relations. Not that these relations are thereby denied, or made of no account in the interpretation of the name. All that the Apostles say of the pre-existing glory of Christ with God, or of creation as mediated through His agency, takes a place quite naturally as part of its implicit content. But at first Jesus used thenameto convey simply His perfectly filial human consciousness, as filled, or rather constituted, by personal fellowship and ethical solidarity with God.

This conscious Sonship is for Jesus the supreme reality ; and in the light of It He recognized from the first with perfect clearness the work God had given Him to do. It was not that He knew Himself to be Messiah, and rose from this to the certainty that God was His Father; the connexion of the two facts is just the reverse. He is Son of Man, and Head of the Kingdom of God, because of the still deeper consciousness that He is Son of God. The roots of His vocation are in the uniqueness of His Person. Yet in the last resort we cannot separate these two aspects. The loftier in the scale of being a human character stands, the more entirely personality and vocation coincide; and in the case of Jesus Christ the coincidence was absolute.

5. Self-assertion of Jesus. — Apart from specific and, as it were, technical modes of self-designation, the Synoptics picture Jesus as in many ways assuming an attitude to God and men which is scarcely intelligible except upon a positive view of His higher being. A whole series of features point in the direction of the more developed Christology of the Apostles. He who could speak of Himself as meek and lowly of heart exhibits also an unparalleled loftiness and majesty of bearing. His disciples, the crowd at Nazareth, and the possessed are alike conscious of this singular elevation. The personal trust and allegiance which He never scrupled to ask from men, putting even natural affection in the second place, is yielded almost instinctively. Nor does the source of the impression thus produced lie in His miracles; it lies in the feeling of His supreme authority. He spoke uniformly in the tones of One who had the keys of the Kingdom of heaven, and with whom it rested to declare the conditions of entrance. He put aside the ancient ordinances of the Law. He called all the weary to Himself for rest; most amazing of all. He claimed the power to forgive sin, and actually bestowed forgiveness on the sick of the palsy and the dying malefactor. His entire demeanour makes the impression of perfect acquaintance with the mind of God — His thoughts towards men. His hearing of prayer, the grounds of His condemnation and His pardon. With apparently not a single interval of doubt. He knew Himself to be the chosen One of God, by whose presence the powers of evil were already vanquished, who should redeem many by His death, who should rise from the dead and come hereafter with Divine power as the Judge of the world. It gradually became clear to the disciples that no comparison was really possible between Jesus and the great figures of the OT. No prophet had ever called upon men to confess his name; no prophet had declared that the relation of men to him would decide their final destiny; no prophet had ever said: ‘All things are delivered unto me of my Father.’ But Jesus repeatedly puts Himself forward as the object of saving faith, and gives to those who trust Him the sovereign promise that, as they gather in His name. He will be present in their midst. These are features of the Synoptic portraiture of Jesus which it is impossible to eliminate; and while they do not amount to a doctrine of HisPerson, they insist on doctrinal interpretation. In view of such things it is futile to say blankly, with Bousset, that Jesus simply places Himself at the side of ordinary humanity, and reserves for Himself only the distinction of a unique vocation. On the contrary, even in the first three Gospels the Person of Jesus has factors of mystery in it which lead the mind towards the Apostolic doctrine of His transcendent relation to God.

6. Sinlessness of Jesus .—The NT belief in the sinlessness of Jesus, which we may suitably consider at this point, is not really an a priori dogma — though as Lamb of God He was viewed as being necessarily without spot or blemish ; it is a conclusion drawn from convincing facts at which we have a clear look in the Synoptics. Nor, on the other hand, is it quite accurate to say that the NT bids us regard the sinlessness of Jesus as something which only a believer can grasp or assent to, and which, from the nature of the case, cannot be established historically. As against this, there is great force in Dr. Forrest’s argument (.Authority of Christ, p. 22fl.), that even as historians, and irrespectively of any judgment of faith, we are bound to accept the Apostolic interpretation of the facts, since ‘the facts concerning Him must have been such as to sanction and necessitate the interpretation.’

The Synoptic Gospels, it is true, contain no express claim on Jesus’ part to be sinless; certainly nothing so strong as John 8:46. Yet we find traits in His demeanour which reveal His self-consciousness more plainly than even words could do. He called men to repentance; He condemned the ‘righteous’ unsparingly; He predicted that He should one day judge the world; He urged confession upon His disciples, and put the Lord’s Prayer upon their lips: yet He Himself never uttered the cry of the burdened conscience, never spoke one word of contrition. We do not need to defend Him against the charge of harsh judgment (Matthew 12:34), or a lack of family affection (v. 48), or an excess of passion (21:12) these, surely, are intelligible manifestations of fidelity to His Messianic task, and it has been fitly said that their final justification is that such a one as He should have done such things without any subsequent regret. The really decisive fact is that in the mature mind of Jesus there is no trace of old defeats, no memories of weakness overcome, no healed scars. It may be said, indeed, that one may be sinful without being conscious of it, but the familiar distinction is inapposite; for the moral pain of Jesus’ answer to Peter’s suggestion (Matthew 16:23) proves with what infinite sensitiveness He felt the movings of sin in another, so that He could not have been unconscious of its presence in Himself. Besides, in view of His duty to remove a mistaken impression on such a point. His silence, were He aware of the slightest imperfection in His own nature, would have been an added hypocrisy. Finally, on every page of the Evangelists we read demands for perfect obedience, as well as promises of grace and help, which it would have been an enormity for a sinful man to utter. From these facts the only permissible conclusion is that Jesus had no experimental, interior knowledge of moral evil. Nor may His participation in the baptism of John be urged against this; for that was ‘a great act of loving communion with our misery,’ in which He identified Himself with sinful men, and took all their burdens and responsibilities as His own (cf. Denney, Death of Christ, p. 21). His repudiation of the epithet ‘good’ (Mark 10:18) has perplexed many, and must certainly not be explained away; but, in the first place, it is surely obvious that Jesus meant very much what the writer to the Hebrews means by the words (5:8) ‘He learned obedience by the things that he suffered.’ He was being made perfect from the outset to the end; and we see now that to attribute to Him the eternal, changeless perfection of God Himself would be to forget the ethical conditions of incarnation. And, in the second place, should we have thought more highly of one who calmly accepted the facile word of praise? Are not even we pained by careless eulogy?

Many recent writers, in view of the apparently negative character of the term ‘sinlessness,’ have preferred to predicate of Jesus absolute fidelity to His vocation. And it is true not merely that this conception brings out a fact of the utmost significance, but that several NT passages which are commonly adduced as proofs of our Lord’s sinlessness (.e.g. 1 Peter 2:21, Philippians 2:7, 8, 1 John 3:5) may more suitably be referred to the other category. Yet the idea of sinlessness is not one with which we can dispense. We need some term which will include, not merely Jesus’ actual fulfilment of His Divine commission, but the ebb and flow of His inner, spiritual lite and the sinless development of the early years. It is true that such a sinless development is incomprehensible to us. To ethical psychology it remains an undecipherable mystery. All we can say is that it is because no one ever so felt His utter dependence upon God, and hence knew how much in God He had to depend upon, that, from first to last, Jesus kept His holiness pure (cf . Du Bose, Gospel in the Gospels, ch. 13). When we think out the idea of sinlessness, however, and consider how adult manhood rises with organic continuity out of childhood and infancy, we can hardly escape the inference that Jesus’ stainless life had from the first a different personal content from ours. The theological expression for this would then be, that in His case Divinity was the basis and condition of perfect humanity.

7. Virgin-birth. — In the Gospels of Matthew and Luke the Divine Sonship of Jesus is viewed as being mediated in part by the bestowal of the Spirit at His baptism, in part by the supernatural character of His conception. Weight may justly be laid on the fact that both Evangelists, divergent as their narratives of the conception are in certain points, agree in affirming the special action of the Holy Ghost. On the other hand, no reference to the Virgin-birth is to be found elsewhere in the NT. It is not present in Gal # or Romans 1:3; and few would say with Westcott that the fact of the miraculous conception, though not stated, is necessarily implied in John 1:14. This silence might, indeed, have led men to ask whether any statement on the subject ought in wisdom to form part of the Creed; and yet again, it would be a mistake to overstrain the argumentum e sUenlio. The very fact that the eternal Divinity of Christ could thus be held and interpreted without recourse to the idea of virgin-birth proves that that idea did not arise as a psychologically inevitable religious postulate, and may therefore claim to have genuine tradition behind it. The present writer can only say that to him supernatural conception appears a really befitting and credible preface to a life which was crowned by resurrection from the dead. That an abnormal fact in the sphere of nature should answer to the transcendent spiritual element in the Person of Christ is both a Scriptural and a profoundly philosophical thought. Nevertheless, the Christian faith of many will always shrink from the assertion that virgin-birth is a sine qua non of real incarnation, or that, in any ultimate sense, it explains the wonder and glory of Jesus’ Person.

II. Primitive Apostolic Doctrine. — As representing this stage of thought, we may take, with some caution, the discourses of St. Peter in Acts, checking our results later by comparison with his First Epistle.

1. St. Peter’s discourses in Acts. — The Christology of these discourses is, on the whole, extremely simple. It would have been strange, indeed, had the Apostolic mind come to understand the Person of Christ otherwise than gradually. The words ‘Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs’ (Acts 2). are the earliest Petrine description of Jesus, and the rudimentary nature of the suggested doctrine is characteristic. A parallel to this is the later verse, from the sermon in Cornelius’ house: ‘God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power: who went about doing good, ... for God was with hira’ (Id’s). The gist of St. Peter’s gospel is that this Jesus is the promised Messiah, attested as such by wonderful works, resurrection, and ascension to glory (2). Hence the name ‘Jesus Christ’ now appears; ‘Christ,’ when it occurs by itself, being an official, not yet a personal title. The ministry of Jesus as teacher is scarcely referred to, except in 10:36. But His death, as Divinely ordained and foreknown, and above all His deliverance from death, with the exaltation which followed, are the themes to which the speaker perpetually recurs.

A tendency has been shown, in view of the fact that Jesus is thus described as ‘anointed with the Holy Spirit,’ as ‘the holy one and the just’ (3:14). and as a great prophet (3:22), to infer that the primitive Church held a merely humanitarian view of His Person. We have already conceded, or rather asserted, that the doctrine is rudimentary. Specially deserving of note is the eschatological light in which the whole is viewed — Jesus being represented as gone meanwhile into heaven, thds affording the Jews time for repentance, upon which will ensue His return to a restored creation (3:19–21). All is as yet within the limits of nationalistic Messianism. Yet when we look more closely there are clear indications of another kind. Jesus has been exalted to the right hand of God, and made Lord of all things; He is the giver of the Holy Spirit (2:33) He knows the hearts of all men (1:24) He is the Judge of quick and dead (10:42). He is set forth quite definitely as the theme of the gospel and the object of faith, from whom repentance and forgiveness come. Prayer is freely offered to Him (IM 7:59). Again and again His name, i.e. He Himself as revealed and known, is proclaimed as the only medium of salvation (2:38 3:16 4:12 10:43). Hence, while no attempt has yet been made to define His Person, the attitude of believers to Him is quite clearly one of faith and worship. We can scarcely overestimate the significance for Jews of this ascription of universal Lordship to One with whom they had eaten and drunk, and of whose death they had been witnesses.

2. The First Epistle of St. Peter. — The interest of this Epistle lies rather in soteriology than in the doctrine of Christ’s Person. The sufferings of the Cross are viewed as having been predestined by God and foretold by prophets, and, in connexion with the atonement accomplished thereby, the sinlessness of Jesus as sacrificial victim is insisted on (1 Peter 1:19). One significant fact indicating the writer’s favourite view of the Saviour’s Person, is that, whereas the name ‘Jesus’ is nowhere used by itself, ‘Christ’ has become a proper name; and it is natural to interpret this change as ‘due to the fact that the person of Jesus is contemplated by the Christian exclusively in His specific quality as Mediator of salvation’(Weiss). It is a disputed point whether 1:11 in which the Spirit of Christ is said to have been present in the prophets, and 1:20 which represents Him as foreknown before the foundation of the world, do or do not imply His real pre-existence. The arguments on either side are given in the commentaries; the present writer can only say briefly that the language of 1:11 appears to him to be satisfied if we take it to mean that the Divine Spirit, now so entirely bound up with Christ that it can be called His Spirit, was previously active in the prophets ; while the words’ foreknown before the foundation of the world’ no more necessarily involve the personal pre-existence of Christ than the words ‘He chose us in him before the foundation of the world’ (Ephesians 1:4) demand a similar conclusion as to believers. Thus foreknown and predicted, then, Christ has been manifested at the end of the times for our sakes. In His incarnate Person ‘flesh’ and ‘spirit’ are to be distinguished(31*); and a careful investigation proves that by ‘spirit’ is meant the Divine principle in a potency higher than that in which it dwells in man, and possessed, for that reason, of an inherent and indestructible energy of life. In Acts 2:24 the ground of Jesus’ resurrection is determined by prophecy ; here the further step is taken of referring it to the power of life that was in Him through the unction of the Spirit which constituted Him Messiah. We need not pause at present on the enigma of the descent to Hades (S" i’; is it connected with Ephesians 4:9 and 1 Timothy 3:16), the clue to which has been lost; but at all events the writer means it as an illustration of the victorious and unparalleled powers of life that dwelt in Christ even prior to His resurrection, as well as of the wonderful redemptive efficacy of His death.

The Christology of 1 Peter is thus seen to be slightly more full and elaborate than that of the early chapters of Acts; but its primitive character cannot be mistaken. Still, there are distinct tokens of the specifically Christian estimate of Jesus’ Person. Thus, the Spirit of God is named ‘the Spirit of Christ’ (!"); and although the title ‘Son of God’ is not employed, we find in 1:3 the full-toned phrase ‘the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,’ with a clear implication of His special Sonship. The statement (.3^) that angels and authorities and powers are subject to Him is a declaration not merely of His exalted state, but of His participation in the Divine power, whose instruments angels are. The doxology in 4:11 — equivalent to that applied to God in 5:11 — is most naturally interpreted of Christ; and in 3:15 a phrase which in Isaiah 8:13 refers to Jehovah is used of our Lord expressly.

III. Chbistology of St. Paui,. — The field of inquiry for the purposes of this article will include not only the four great Epistles of the earlier period (Rom., 1 and 2 Cor., and Gal.), but also the Epistles of the Imprisonment. We shall use them with equal confidence, although now and then it may be necessary to mark a difference of accent in the later Epistles. But if, as appears to be the case, Romans 9:5 contains a definite affirmation of the Godhead of Christ, we should have to treat with suspicion theories which imply that the Christology of Phil, and Col. is conspicuously higher than what preceded.

Much interest attaches to the question of the genesis of St. Paul’s view of Christ. Holsten, following the lead of F. C. Baur, argued for many years that the Apostle’s Christology took shape purely as the result of a logical process in his mind. Faced by the death upon the cross, as an event in which he felt the will of God for man’s salvation to be revealed, St. Paul yielded to what was really an intellectual compulsion to abandon the Jewish theology which he had been taught, and to substitute for it the conception of Jesus Christ we are famihar with in his writings. Others have held more recently that Saul the Pharisee was already in possession of a complex of ideas as to a superhuman Messiah — conceived as revealer of God and heavenly King — which owed much to mythical elements drawn from Oriental faiths; and that the subjective experiences of his conversion led him simply to identify the Jesus whom he seemed to behold in Divine’glory with this antecedent notion of Messiah, and in consequence to assert such things of Him as that He existed before the world and shared in its creation. Hence we may infer the Christ of St. Paul has nothing particular to do with the Jesus of history (Bruckner). To make but one criticism, both these related theories manifestly presup-

gose that St. Paul’s vision of Christ on the way to Damascus ad no objective reality. But if we find it an incredible supposition that a mere illusory process in the Apostle’s fancy should have instantly revolutionized his life, or that he could have persuaded the primitive Christian society to accept, or even tolerate, a view of Christ so engendered, we shall naturally seek for some more solid basis and justification of his beliefs. And this, with the utmost certainty, we find in his actual relations to the glorified Lord, not merely at his conversion, though most memorably then, but also in bis personal hfe as believer and Apostle. ‘It is this feature, its being borrowed from his own r«hgious experience, that distinguishes Paul’s idea of Christ from a philosophical conception’ (Somerville).

The system of St. Paul’s thought is entirely Christo-centric; not only so, his conception of Christ is entirely soteriological. From the saving efficacy of the death of Christ, as the fundamental certainty, he moves on to an interpretation of the Divine-human personality. He who died for all must stand in a unique relation to mankind. The work and the Person always go together in his mind. His creed in its simplest form is that ‘Jesus is Lord’ (1 Corinthians 12:3. Romans 10:9; cf. Ph 2:11) and although starting, like the other writers of the NT, from the belief that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, he at once transcends the current Messianic idea, and grasps the significance of Jesus, not for the Jews only, but for the whole world. Nowhere does he employ the title ‘Son of Man,’ and for him the ‘Kingdom of God’ is virtually merged in the Person of Jesus Christ.