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 Gospel and Its earliest interpretations; 
 
 otin 
 
 3 1924 029 300 246 
 
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BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 Gospel-Criticism and Historical Christianity — A 
 
 Study of the Gospels and of the History of the Gospel-Canon 
 during the Second Century ; with a Consideration of the 
 Results of Modern Criticism. Second Edition, 8vo, cloth, 
 gilt top, pp. xii. -1-365 $1.75 
 
THE GOSPEL 
 
 AND ITS 
 
 EARLIEST INTERPRETATIONS 
 
 A STUDY OF THE TEACHING OF JESUS AND 
 
 ITS DOCTRINAL TRANSFORMATIONS 
 
 IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 
 
 ORELLO CONE, D.D. 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 NEW YORK LONDON 
 
 27 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 24 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND 
 
 S;^£ ^nitkerbocktr JP^sa 
 i8q3 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1893 
 BY 
 
 ORELLO CONE 
 
 Electrotyped, Printed and Bound by 
 
 ■Cbc ■ftnicfeerbocfter ipicgs, mew l[?otR 
 
 G. P. Putnam's Sons 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 ATHANASE COQUEREL'S little book on The 
 First Historical Transformations of Christianity- 
 furnished the suggestion of this work. More than a 
 suggestion, however, it cannot be said to have supplied. 
 For while it is conceived in accordance with a generally 
 correct insight into the relations of the different writings 
 composing the New-Testament literature, its critical 
 point of view may be regarded as now in many respects 
 antiquated. 
 
 The object of this woi-k is to elucidate the teaching of 
 Jesus and to present both in their relation to it and to 
 one another the principal types of religious doctrine con- 
 tained in the New Testament. The pursuit of this object 
 has led to a consideration of the resemblances and differ- 
 ences which exist between the word of the Master and the 
 interpretations of it by his followers who composed the 
 several writings of that book. While the classification of 
 the New-Testament literature results from critical pro- 
 cesses, it was not consistent with the limits proposed to 
 enter upon a detailed discussion of them, and no more 
 has been attempted in this direction than to present those 
 grounds of the classification adopted which are apparent 
 from an analysis of the writings. 
 
 Instead of undertaking to make a complete exposition 
 
iv PREFACE. 
 
 of the theology of the New Testament I have endeavored 
 to discuss only its more important features in such a 
 manner as to present in outHne the principal teachings of 
 Jesus and the interpretations and transformations which 
 they underwent in the books composing the Christian 
 canon. If the result has been to show in these a greater 
 or less departure from the simplicity and the practical, 
 humanitarian, and religious interest of the original gospel of 
 the great Teacher in the direction of a theological specula- 
 tion conducted through a combination with it of the ideas 
 of the age with which the several writers were in touch, 
 there have also been made apparent, it is hoped, the worth 
 and preeminence of that gospel in contrast with the phil- 
 osophical interpretations of it by his earliest followers, and 
 its importance as the basis of character, an inspiration to 
 right living, and the only ground of permanent Christian 
 union. 
 
 The work has necessarily been grounded upon a critical 
 and exegetical study of the New Testament, and in its 
 prosecution assistance has been derived from the com- 
 mentators. I am also under obligations to the scholars 
 to whose works reference has been made in detail in the 
 notes, particularly to Pfleiderer, whose classification of 
 the New-Testament literature has been in the main 
 adopted, Wendt, Weizsacker, Immer, and Baur. 
 
 I desire to express my obligations to Dr. C. H. Toy of 
 Harvard University, who kindly read the work in manu- 
 script, for important suggestions which have aided me in 
 its revision. 
 
 Dr. C. C. Everett's work on The Gospel of Paul did not, 
 I regret, come to hand in time for reference. 
 
 As I do not pretend that my interpretation of the course 
 of the development of rehgious thought in the New Testa- 
 
PREFACE. V 
 
 ment or of individual passages is faultless, I shall be 
 thankful for any criticisms which are calculated to lead to 
 a nnore complete understanding of the subject than I may 
 have been able to attain. 
 
 Orello Cone. 
 
 BUCHTEL COX^LEGE, 
 
 March, 1893. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL TREATMENT OF THE NEW 
 
 TESTAMENT . . I 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE TEACHING OF JESUS ... ■ • • • 35 
 
 I. — Doctrinal Antecedents and Environment • • - 35 
 
 2. — The Kingdom of God . . . . .46 
 
 3. — The Righteousness of the Kingdom of God . 62 
 
 4. — Conditions of Entering the Kingdom of Ciod . . 71 
 
 5. — God as the Father . 78 
 
 6. — Jesus' Attitude toward the Old Testament . . 84 
 
 7- — Jesus' Teaching Regarding Himself . . 90 
 
 8. — The Sayings of Jesus Concerning His Dealh . . . 109 
 
 9. — The Teaching of Jesus Regarding the Life to Come . 118 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE JEWISH-CHRISTIAN INTERPRETATION . . . . I38 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION .... 151 
 
 I. — Out of Judaism into Christianity ..... 153 
 
 2. — The Point of Departure . . 164 
 
 3. — Sin and the Flesh. .... 171 
 
VUl 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 4. — Christology . 
 
 5. — Justification by Faith 
 
 6. — The Future . 
 
 PAGE 
 
 181 
 
 203 
 216 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE DEUTERO-PAULINE INTERPRETATIONS 
 I. — The Epistle to the Hebrews. 
 2. — The Epistle to the Colossians 
 3. — The Epistle to the Ephesians 
 4. — The First Epistle of Peter 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 THE JOHANNINE TRANSFORMATION . 
 
 232 
 233 
 249 
 255 
 260 
 
 267 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 ANTI-GNOSTIC INTERPRETATIONS 
 I. — The First Epistle of John 
 2. — The Pastoral Epistles . 
 3. — The Epistle of Jude 
 4. — The Second Epistle of Peter 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 JEWISH-CHRISTIAN APOCALYPTIC 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 THE GOSPEL AND THEOLOGY 
 
 318 
 320 
 327 
 338 
 342 
 
 346 
 
 362 
 
 INDEX OF QUOTATIONS FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT 
 INDEX OF SUBJECTS . 
 
 395 
 407 
 
THE GOSPEL 
 
 AND ITS 
 
 EARLIEST INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 THE HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL TREATMENT OF THE 
 NEW TESTAMENT. 
 
 RELIGION is a product in the origin and develop- 
 ment of which human nature is so largely 
 participant that, like all other human products, it has a 
 history. Its history is the record of its formation and its 
 transformations. To designate religion as a product is, 
 indeed, to speak quite indefinitely of it and, perhaps, to 
 provoke inquiry as to its factors. But to enter upon this 
 inquiry would divert us from our present purpose, which 
 is historical. We may, then, well leave the investigation 
 of the nature of religion to anthropology and theology, 
 while we proceed to study in its phenomena- that par- 
 ticular form of it which appears in the New Testament, 
 and is known as Christianity. The historical view of the 
 formation of religion and of the modifications which it 
 undergoes in the course of time concerns only its mani- 
 festations in Hfe and in literature. The antecedent 
 influences which affect the form or the development of 
 
2 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 any particular religion this view may, indeed, take into 
 account if they lie in the domain of history, regarding 
 the message which a religious teacher dehvers in its rela- 
 tion to his environment and to his predecessors. But 
 these human aspects of religion mark the limitations of 
 history. Foreign to its occupation are all speculations 
 and presumptions regarding the superhuman influences 
 which may be supposed to have determined or affected 
 the message of a teacher or the lives of believers. Inspira- 
 tion may be a fact, but it is not a fact for the historian, 
 and is not, indeed, historically demonstrable. 
 
 The historical study of religion has been greatly 
 impeded by the dogmatic interest in which it has been 
 maintained that this or that form of religion, the form of 
 it which each advocate regards as the true religion, is final 
 and unchangeable or absolute. Yet this position finds no 
 support either in history or in philosophy. For nothing 
 is historically more evident than that religion, like science, 
 art, institutions of society, government, and all other 
 things finite and human, is constantly undergoing modifi- 
 cations in accordance with the changing knowledge, 
 needs, and civilization which the development of human 
 nature and the general progress of man bring about. 
 Again, it is clear that religion cannot in its nature be fixed, 
 and that absoluteness cannot be predicated of it. Setting 
 aside as confusing and inadequate all definitions of reli- 
 gion which deprive it of its " theologic crown,"* it is 
 manifest that whether we regard it with Schleiermacher, as 
 consisting in " a feeling of absolute dependence" upon God 
 or in sentiments of love and worship toward Him, it has 
 the qualities of relativeness and limitation which belong 
 to all conditions and expressions of human nature. The 
 
 * See Martineau, A Study of Religion, etc., 1888, vol. i., p. 4. 
 
INTROD UCTION. 3 
 
 case is not changed if we view it upon its reverse side as 
 **a mode of thought," and take account of the knowledge 
 real or supposed which is implied in it as the matter of 
 feeling. For whether we assume man to acquire his 
 knowledge of God by the use of his natural faculties, or 
 to become possessed of it as a revelation through inspired 
 teachers, this knowledge is conditioned by the limitations 
 of his nature. If, then, religion as a mode of thought 
 consists of a knowledge which is relative, and as a mode 
 of feeling is the feeling of a relation, it is evident that 
 nothing can be more irrational than to affirm absoluteness 
 of it. One might, perhaps, assert without fear of con- 
 tradiction that no greater truth has been attained by man 
 or revealed to him than, for example, that fundamental 
 doctrine of Christianity, the Fatherhood of God ; but to 
 affirm this truth to be final would be to set limits either 
 to human attainment or to the revealing divine grace. 
 Such an affirmation would be purely speculative and with- 
 out any ground either in experience or reason. More- 
 over, the relativity of our apprehension of this truth is 
 manifest from the fact that we know it only according to 
 the analogy of a finite human relation, that of parentage. 
 Its indefinite transformability appears when in its com-' 
 munication it is found to be variously apprehended 
 according to the point of view and the degree of the 
 affectional and intellectual development of the recipient. 
 Accordingly, every thought concerning the Deity which 
 man thinks, in whatever way he may come to think it, 
 assumes in the first place the complexion of his own 
 nature and limitations, and is in the second place subject 
 to unlimited modifications as it is apprehended by differ- 
 ent individuals. This is not a presumption, but an in- 
 duction from the nature of man, from human experience. 
 
4 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 and from a scientific study of the records and history of 
 religions. It is also the point of view from which the 
 purely historical treatment of the Christian religion and 
 its documents must proceed. 
 
 A prepossession which has seriously hindered the prog- 
 ress of an historical and critical study of the New Testa- 
 ment, is that of the unity of doctrine in all its books. 
 The writers of the various Gospels, Epistles, the Acts, 
 and the Apocalypse have been assumed to have been in- 
 spired in the sense that they were capable of producing 
 works which are free from error. This inerrancy has been 
 supposed by some to extend to all the minutiae of words 
 and minor details, and by others to include only a sort of 
 general accuracy in matters of fact, a correct reproduction 
 of the words of Jesus, and infallibility in all statements 
 and expositions of Christian doctrine. From this point of 
 view the writers of the Gospels, who are supposed to have 
 been precisely the persons whose names are attached to 
 them, are believed to have composed biographies of 
 Jesus which can not only be brought into a substantial 
 harmony in all matters of chronology and arrangement 
 of material, but also shown to present no important 
 divergences in their apprehension of his teachings. 
 Individual peculiarities in the use of words and in style 
 are, indeed, conceded ; but here the line is rigidly drawn, 
 and it is regarded as but little short of blasphemy to teach 
 that the evangelists have contradicted one another in 
 matters of fact on the one hand, or on the other have 
 presented widely divergent apprehensions of the nature, 
 mission, and doctrine of Jesus. The teaching that the 
 Gospels contain legendary or mythical accounts is de- 
 nounced as destructive of the historical credibility of 
 every other part of them, and the student is asked to 
 
INTROD UCTION, 5 
 
 reconcile with his reason and historical sense the proposi- 
 tions that two such representations of the character and 
 teaching of Jesus as those of the first and fourth Gospels 
 can have proceeded from two men who were his original ) 
 disciples, and that they are in substantial accord with 
 each other. According to this theory there are no 
 strongly marked divergences of opinion, no oppositions, 
 irreconcilable tendencies, and conflicting interpretations 
 of Christianity in the several writers of the Epistles, the 
 Acts, and the Apocalypse, but all their teachings are cast 
 in the same mould, and constitute in perfect harmony 
 one substance of doctrine. Substantially the same view 
 of the teaching of Jesus and of the mission of Christianity 
 is held to be represented in Romans and the Epistle to 
 the Hebrews, and Galatians and the Epistle of James are 
 accordant in the sense of presenting " different sides" of 
 one and the same doctrine. These conclusions follow 
 legitimately from the premises which assume the infalli- 
 bility of the New-Testament writers in matters of fact 
 and doctrine, and they have been defended with a degree 
 of assumption and dogmatism than which the history of 
 theology presents no more deplorable example. 
 
 That the theology of the New Testament constitutes a 
 distinct department of theological science in general, and 
 that its object is to ascertain and set forth the doctrines 
 of the several writers and the teachings of Jesus, is a 
 proposition which better describes the point of vi&yM from 
 which most of the treatises on the subject have proceeded 
 than the character and results which they have generally 
 exhibited. In accordance with the fundamental principle 
 of Protestantism that the doctrines of the Protestant 
 Church should be nothing else than the exposition of the 
 teachings of Scripture, the early reformers consistently 
 
6 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 founded their dogmatics upon a rigid exegesis of biblical 
 texts. This is especially true of Melanchthon and Calvin, 
 the former founding on the Epistle to the Romans in his 
 Loci Theologici^ and the latter proceeding in his histitutio 
 Christians Religionis upon the assumption of the imme- 
 diate relation of Scripture and dogmatics. But it was 
 not long until the dogmatic system gained the supremacy, 
 and Scripture was subordinated to it, until texts from the 
 Bible were chiefly sought and prized for the use to which 
 they could be put in fortifying the traditional theology 
 and refuting its opponents, until exegesis was pressed 
 altogether into the service of dogma, and only that inter- 
 pretation of biblical passages was recognized as valid 
 which squared with the accepted theological tenets. The 
 attempts which were made toward the end of the seven- 
 teenth century to effect a real separation of Scripture 
 from dogmatics and to consider the proof-texts or dicta 
 probantia by themselves, particularly in the works of 
 Sebastian Schmidt, Hiilsemann, Baier, and Weissmann, 
 appear to have been undertaken in accordance with a 
 right apprehension of the true nature of biblical theology 
 and of its scientific requirements, but the dogmatic view 
 so far prevailed as to effect an unhistorical arrangement 
 of the proof-texts and to vitiate the treatment of the 
 subject. 
 
 The opposition to the theological system of the Church 
 in which the spirit of the age found expression toward 
 the end of the eighteenth century contributed in a one- 
 sided and superficial way to the placing of biblical 
 theology upon a basis independent of dogma, when 
 Bahrdt, Teller, and others opposed the popular orthodoxy 
 by weapons drawn from the Scriptures themselves. The 
 criticism of Semler and the biblical theology of Zacharia 
 
2N TROD UCTION. J 
 
 also contributed to the establishment of the scientific 
 study of the Bible in independence of the dogmatics of 
 the Church. The point of view of Zacharia's very im- 
 portant work may well be commended to many modern 
 theologians. He would have the student forget tempor- 
 arily the system of the Church and seek to determine by 
 an independent, careful investigation of the entire Scrip- 
 tures the theological doctrines which they contain. The 
 theology thus derived, he remarks, one may rightly call 
 the real biblical theology, and one may compare it with 
 the doctrines of the Church which are declared to be 
 grounded in Scripture, in order to convince oneself of their 
 correctness, and, if they are not so grounded, to have an 
 insight into the actual biblical teaching. One must, as it 
 were, forget all the truth that one has learned, in order to 
 be unpartisan enough to recognize and express what the 
 holy Scriptures teach without regard to whatever this or 
 that party, this or that divine, holds to be true and right. 
 But with all the fair promise of these words the author 
 was not able to cut loose from dogmatics, and his work 
 loses greatly in scientific value from the attempt to insti- 
 tute a criticism of the doctrines of the Church which, he 
 assures his readers, far from suffering by his fresh investi- 
 gation, will rather appear to be set forth in a new light. 
 There are found intimations only of the true historical 
 method of treating biblical theology in the other writers 
 at the close of the eighteenth century, among whom 
 Ammon and Storr are deserving of particular mention. 
 The former, for instance, rejects the ordinary method of 
 throwing the several writers of the Bible together, and 
 recommends a regard for the peculiarities of each and for 
 the people for whom and the age for which they wrote. But 
 this idea appears to have exerted little influence upon the 
 
8 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 execution of his work, and the hmitations of a dogmatic 
 bias are evident in the apphcation of his method for the 
 purpose of ihustrating the progressiveness of divine rev- 
 elation. The distinction between dogmatic and bibhcal 
 theology was clearly expressed by Gabler to the effect 
 that the former, so far as it rests upon the Bible, has as 
 its task to gather from the biblical teachings what is uni- 
 versally true, with the help of philosophy to discover 
 this out of what is merely local, temporal, and individual, 
 and scientifically to establish and combine it. Biblical 
 theology, on the other hand, deals solely with the actual 
 ascertaining of the ideas of religion which are contained 
 in the biblical writings, and must therefore take up the 
 merely local, temporal, and individual, because these are 
 most characteristic of the mode of thought of a time and 
 of particular persons. 
 
 In reviewing the historical course of the early treatment 
 of the New Testament, it is difficult to classify every 
 writer whose works are of sufficient importance to come 
 under consideration as representing one distinctive ten- 
 dency only. We have already seen how a writer sets out 
 with a promise which he does not keep ; and since a promi- 
 nent theologian of the first years of the nineteenth century, 
 G. Lorenz Bauer, begins as a genuine historical critic and 
 ends as a rationalist, occasion may be taken at this point 
 to define and illustrate the latter of these tendencies in 
 contrast with the former. Bauer in his work in four vol- 
 umes on the bibhcal theology of the New Testament 
 defines this science as a development of the theory of 
 religion held by the Jews before Christ and by Jesus and 
 his apostles, kept free from all foreign ideas, and derived 
 from their writings according to the different ages and the 
 varying views and knowledge of the sacred writers. This 
 
IN TROD UCTION. 9 
 
 is a tolerably clear and accurate definition of biblical theol- 
 ogy regarded from the point of view of historical criticism. 
 For the historical and critical treatment of the biblical 
 writings proceeds upon the presumption that they are 
 literature, and applies to them the canons of literary and 
 historical criticism. It is so far regardless of results that 
 it does not permit them to influence its procedure or 
 determine its conclusions. It is indifferent to the relation 
 which its results may hold to any doctrines or traditions 
 however cherished and venerable. Its sole aim is to 
 ascertain the facts. These it leaves to the dogmatic theo- 
 logian who may make of them whatever he can. 
 
 Now, in attempting to carry out these principles, Bauer 
 furnishes an illustration of a tendency which is as much 
 opposed to them, in fact, as is the dogmatism in opposition 
 to which they have been laid down and maintained. In- 
 deed, it is only to another sort of dogmatism that he 
 commits himself in adopting the method of rationalism, 
 when he turns aside from the pursuit of a purely historical 
 purpose to investigate and determine what is a universally 
 valid truth and a universally valid Christianity, and when 
 he lays down the principle that whatever in the teaching 
 of Jesus and his apostles contradicts the results of experi- 
 ence and the conclusions of sound reason is to be regfarded 
 as an accommodation to erroneous popular ideas. Of a like 
 dogmatic character was his procedure when he sought by 
 means of biblical theology to decide the great question 
 whether Christianity is a rational and divine religion. For 
 this is not an historical question, and in attempting to 
 answer it one brings into the domain of history one's own 
 subjective opinion of what is rational and divine, and 
 sets up the purely dogmatic presumption that wherever 
 the biblical writers do not agree with that opinion they 
 
lO THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 accommodate themselves to the ideas of their time. This 
 principle is of essentially the same dogmatic character as 
 that in opposition to which it was laid down, for there is no 
 essential difference in the two affirmations, that the bibli- 
 cal writers were infallibly and verbally inspired, and that 
 whatever they thought and intended to express was in 
 conformity with truth and reason. Both are a priori^ both 
 imply a presumption which has a tendency to determine 
 the results of the historical and critical process, and both 
 are accordingly incompatible with this process. When 
 theologians, then, flee from the old orthodoxy or the new, 
 indeed, to rationalism, they only escape from the servitude 
 of one sort of dogmatism to put themselves under that of 
 another. 
 
 As to its basis of rationalism, it may be characterized as 
 philosophical in contradistinction to the principle and 
 method of history and criticism apphed to the New-Testa- 
 ment writings. Kant's doctrine of moral interpretation 
 expresses its essential idea in the argument that, because 
 the moral betterment of man is the object of religion, it 
 must contain the supreme principle of biblical interpre- 
 tation. Obviously no more thoroughly dogmatic pre- 
 sumption than this can be conceived, and Kant had the 
 frankness to admit that the sense arrived at by this method 
 is not, indeed, to be given out as that had in mind by the 
 author interpreted ! This remarkable candor of the great 
 philosopher is, in fact, an admission that the so-called 
 moral interpretation is decidedly no interpretation at all, 
 but consists simply in reading a writer in the light of what 
 one thinks he ought to say for the moral improvement of 
 mankind, that is, in reading into his writing one's own 
 preconceived ideas of what the moral betterment of man- 
 kind is, and what teaching will contribute to it. Now, the 
 
IN TROD UC TION. 1 1 
 
 rationalistic method of treating the New Testament, which 
 has played a very important part in the history of theology, 
 and still thrives vigorously in some quarters, has always 
 proceeded upon essentially this Kantian principle, that 
 the biblical writers actually do teach or must at all events 
 be made to appear to teach what is preconceived to be 
 true and rational. Since, then, according to the presump- 
 tion of rationalism, the supernatural is not acceptable to 
 reason, it cannot from this point of view be supposed 
 that the New-Testament writers intended to record ac- 
 counts of miracles, and hence in recording what appear to 
 be such they must really have meant to record something 
 else. Likewise, since such beings as Satan and demons 
 cannot rationally be supposed to exist, and to influence or 
 to possess men, the evangelists did not actually intend to 
 represent them as existing and taking a part in affairs, but 
 quite another meaning may and must be put upon the 
 words in the Gospels which appear literally to convey such 
 a teaching. 
 
 Much of the older and the more recent theology 
 abounds in examples of the application of this rational- 
 istic principle. Since the serpent cannot be supposed to 
 have talked with Eve or Balaam's ass with his master, the 
 narratives of such conversations are assumed to convey 
 what passed in the minds of the persons concerned. In 
 like manner the appearance of Satan and the words 
 which he is said, in the first and third Gospels, to have 
 spoken to Jesus in the temptation are intended to express 
 in a figure the struggle which the latter underwent with 
 certain tendencies in himself before entering upon his 
 ministry and the considerations which prevailed in the 
 issue. From this point of view the author of the Acts 
 in recording the Pentecostal phenomena really intended 
 
12 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 to relate nothing which may not be explained by the 
 supposition of unusual religious excitement and the 
 appearance of electric sparks. It is our error if we take 
 literally what was meant to be understood as figurative. 
 Assuming the unbroken and universal prevalence of 
 natural law, rationalism declared that the biblical writers 
 did not intend that their accounts of phenomena which 
 appear to imply the suspension of the usual order of 
 things should be understood as teaching a direct divine 
 intervention, but that these narratives took the form 
 which they have from the oriental religious view of the 
 world that traced all natural events to the immediate 
 agency of Deity. Accordingly, the story of the descent 
 of Jahveh in flames upon Mount Sinai is really only an 
 account of a thunder-storm ; it was a stroke of lightning 
 under which Saul fell on the road to Damascus ; and the 
 wonderful deliverance of Paul and Silas from the prison at 
 Philippi was in fact nothing but the result of an opportune 
 earthquake. It is even supposed that in those accounts 
 which contain no intimation of a natural cause this has 
 been overlooked by the narrators, or they have through 
 ignorance taken for an immediate intervention of God 
 what has in fact a sufficient explanation in accordance 
 with the regular order of events. Thus the accounts of 
 resurrections of the dead m the New Testament, includ- 
 ing that of the resurrection of Jesus, are to be interpreted 
 as actually relating awakenings from a state of suspended 
 animation, and the miracle of Cana becomes a mere wed- 
 ding-jest, since Jesus really caused the jars to be secretly 
 filled with wine. Refinements of explanation are resorted 
 to in dealing with words by this method, so that, for 
 example, Jesus* walking on the sea is made to be a walk- 
 ing on the shore of the lake, and the piece of money 
 
IN TROD UCTION, 1 3 
 
 which was to be found in the mouth of a fish becomes 
 the money which was to be received from the sale of the 
 fish. Thus was the real meaning of words distorted, and 
 whole passages and sections were made to "convey the 
 opposite of the sense intended by the writers to such a 
 degree that Zeller's judgment is not too severe when he 
 says that no account of miracles was so evidently such 
 that the rationalistic interpreters would not transform it 
 into a natural occurrence, and no difficulty so great that 
 their acuteness could not overcome it. * For violent 
 exegesis, sophisms, and unlimited torture of texts, the 
 rationalistic dogmatism may well dispute the palm with 
 its opponent, the orthodox supernaturalism. Rationalism 
 has, indeed, rendered an important service to theology as 
 a method of transition. More than a method of transi- 
 tion, however, it cannot be regarded ; and as a theological 
 point of view it may be characterized as a halting-place 
 in the progress from the old orthodoxy to the historical 
 and critical treatment of the Bible. 
 
 Rationalism appears to have laid a spell upon the 
 human mind, and its influence has been overcome with 
 difficulty. The historical method has, however, made 
 slow but sure progress. The important works on biblical 
 theology, by Kaiser and De Wette, both published in the 
 same year, 1 81 3, contributed not a little to this progress, 
 although neither of them furnishes an example of the 
 purely historical and critical treatment of the Bible. The 
 former, in attempting to consider the extra-biblical 
 religions in connection with the biblical and to discover 
 the principle of the ideally true religion, vitiated the 
 historical procedure by introducing a subjective standard 
 
 * Die Tiibinger historische Schule, Vortage und Abhandlungen 
 geschichtlichen Inhalts, 1865, p. 272. 
 
14 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 of the universally true and valid. To the latter belongs 
 the merit of treating biblical theology not according to 
 the different writers, but according to the characteris- 
 tically different periods. But in attempting philosophi- 
 cally to distinguish the essential from the unessential in 
 religion, he subordinated the purely historical to the 
 religious and dogmatic interest, and placed himself upon 
 rationalistic ground. The works on biblical theology by 
 Baumgarten-Crusius and Von Colin, issued in 1828 and 
 1836 respectively, mark no important departure from the 
 methods and points of view already considered. The 
 former occupies essentially the ground of traditional 
 orthodoxy in the attempt to set forth the rehgion of the 
 Bible as a connected whole without distinction of the two 
 Testaments, and in ignoring all differences of doctrine 
 among the apostles and between them and the original 
 teaching of Jesus. The latter undertook to furnish a 
 treatment of biblical theology from the purely historical 
 point of view, and to carry it out in all its strictness and 
 purity in distinction from the false endeavor after a prac- 
 tical and popular method of treatment and the incorrect 
 idea of the relation of biblical theology to the theological 
 system, to the universal history of religion, and to the 
 philosophy of religion. But in the execution of the work 
 the attempt to distinguish between the symbolical and 
 the unsymbolical in the teaching of Jesus and the apostles 
 introduced an arbitrary and indeterminable principle 
 whose appHcation could not but be unfavorable to the 
 purely historical method. 
 
 At this point the criticism and the theology of the New 
 Testament received from Strauss' Life of Jesus and the 
 discussions which it called forth an impulse which exerted 
 a most important influence upon their development. Two 
 
IN TROD UCTION. 1 5 
 
 vital questions received such a treatment in the criticism 
 of Strauss that they became and have remained for half a 
 century central points of theological controversy. These 
 are the question of the miraculous in the Gospel-history 
 and that of the credibility of this history in view of the 
 relation of the various narratives to one another. Strauss 
 took his position, in the first place, upon the ground that 
 the criticism of the New Testament must proceed, like 
 that of all other writings, in entire freedom from presump- 
 tions. Its task being to ascertain the historical facts from 
 the reports before it, it must treat these reports according 
 to the general canons of historical and critical investiga- 
 tion. It was his opinion that, since the indissoluble con- 
 nection of natural causes and effects is found to exist in 
 every other department of human history and affairs, it is 
 an unallowable presumption that it did not hold in the 
 domain of biblical history. He maintained that those 
 traits which in all other ancient documents we recognize 
 as certain signs of an unhistorical character cannot be 
 assumed to give a superior historical quality to various 
 narratives in the Gospels. The question, then, regarding 
 the credibility of a narrative of a miracle resolves itself, 
 from the historical as opposed to the dogmatic point of 
 view, into the question : Which is the more probable, 
 that something really happened here which contradicts the 
 analogy of our whole experience, or that the tradition 
 which has handed down the report of such an event is 
 false ? Now, in our experience there are numberless 
 examples of inaccurate observation, untrustworthy tradi- 
 tion, intentional or unintentional fabrication, and in 
 general of incorrect reporting, while there is not a single 
 example of an authenticated miracle, that is, of a result 
 which did not demonstrably follow from the natural con- 
 
l6 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 nection of things. Accordingly, from Strauss' historical 
 point of view, the foregoing question contains its own 
 answer. 
 
 As to the question of the credibility of the Gospel- 
 narratives in view of the relation which they hold to one 
 another in the matters of agreement, chronological arrange- 
 ment, apprehension of the person and work of Jesus, etc., 
 it cannot be denied that results of the greatest importance 
 for the theology of the New Testament have come from 
 Strauss' work and the numerous writings which it called 
 forth. It was believed by all who at first engaged in the 
 contest that the criticism of Strauss could only be over- 
 come by establishing the apostolical origin, and accord- 
 ingly, as was supposed, the entire credibility of the four 
 Gospels. This task proved to be much more difficult than 
 was supposed. Neither the traces of a later origin which 
 they show in themselves, nor the striking differences which 
 appear in them when they are compared with one another, 
 particularly in regard to the person of Jesus and the 
 relation of Judaism and Christianity, could with all the 
 exegetical art which was applied be removed from the 
 Gospels ; and that school of criticism is now regarded as 
 conservative which constructs the Gospel-history upon the 
 priority of Mark, and derives Luke and our Greek first 
 Gospel from this and a collection of sayings or logia sup- 
 posed to have been written in Aramaic by Matthew, while 
 •the fourth Gospel has been so much disputed as an apos- 
 tolical writing that its legitimate use as an original source 
 for the teaching of Jesus is open to the gravest question.^" 
 
 * A good illustration of the influence which the discussion of the origin of 
 the fourth Gospel has had upon conservative scholars is shown in Wendt's 
 ingenious but artificial eclectic treatment of the discourses contained in it 
 for a construction of ihe teaching of Jesus. Die Lehre Jesu, ii., 1890. 
 
IN TROD UCTION, I / 
 
 Whoever, then, would at the present time write a Hfe of 
 Jesus or an account of his teachings must give heed to the 
 fact that the existence of any immediately apostolical 
 source is in a high degree questionable. 
 
 This condition to which criticism has brought the study 
 of the Gospels has a most important bearing upon any 
 treatment of the life and teachings of Jesus. Since we 
 can know his doctrine only mediately, that is, through the 
 statements of the writers of the New Testament, and par- 
 ticularly of the Gospels, it is evidently of no slight import- 
 ance whether the authors of the writings which must be 
 depended upon for information were eye-witnesses, that 
 is, whether their relation to the events and the sayings of 
 Jesus was such that they were able in writing of them to 
 produce histories in the proper sense of the word, or 
 whether they were so far separated from the time of which 
 they wrote that a considerable modification of their material 
 must be supposed on its way to them through the channels 
 of tradition. This consideration is of great importance, not 
 because if the latter alternative be taken there remains no 
 trustworthy source of information as to the general charac- 
 ter of the teachings of Jesus and even as to the principal 
 and essential particulars of it. But it is evident that the 
 acceptance of one or the other of these alternatives must 
 greatly affect the method of treating the subject and the 
 nature of many of the results arrived at. If, for example, 
 one does not regard the evangelists as simple reporters of 
 the words of Jesus one will avoid the violent exegesis of 
 the old harmonists in treating passages which, while seem- 
 ing to be parallel, differ widely in the relation of time and 
 the connection of thought. From this point of view also 
 the treatment of the Gospels cannot but become less dog- 
 matic and mechanical, and give more room to what is 
 
l8 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 called critical divination, or the insight of historical criti- 
 cism, than is possible by the old method of studying them. 
 This critical insight or divination, which in the first place 
 is a faculty, and in the second place is cultivated by trans- 
 porting oneself into the environment of an ancient writer 
 and making it in a sense one's own, has produced the most 
 satisfactory results in the study of the Greek and Latin 
 classics, and in view of the conclusions of criticism is the 
 means which must now be chiefly resorted to for the eluci- 
 dation of those Christian classics which the Gospels are, 
 since, indeed, they have now come to be regarded as 
 literature. 
 
 If, then, with all the reactions since the time of Strauss 
 the tendency of the critical study of the Gospels has stead- 
 ily set against the method of treating even the synoptics 
 as writings cast in the same mould and in most respects 
 accordant, in a much greater degree has the difference be- 
 tween these and the fourth Gospel been accentuated. The 
 latter has, in fact, come to be very widely regarded as 
 containing a unique type of the conceptions of Jesus and 
 his mission which were formed during the first century 
 after his death. The necessity has been forced upon stu- 
 dents of the Gospels of deciding between the first three and 
 the last in seeking for the historical source of the life and 
 teachings of Jesus. The decision which has so often been 
 made to the prejudice of the synoptics seems now likely 
 to turn against the fourth Gospel as a writing of a marked 
 theological and ideal tendency. The more this is done, 
 however, the more is stress laid upon the historical char- 
 acter of the synoptics as writings in whose common tra- 
 dition has been preserved the kernel of the most that can 
 be really known of the life and teachings of the Nazarene. 
 
 It was from this point of view that the relation of the 
 
IN TROD UCTION. 1 9 
 
 synoptics and the fourth Gospel was regraded by F. C. 
 Baur, the founder of the Tubingen historical school, 
 whose thorough and acute criticism of the latter Gos- 
 pel marks an era in the study of the New Testament. 
 While the publication of Baur's principal writings was 
 subsequent to that of Strauss' Life of Jesus, the former 
 was in no sense a follower of the latter. The underlying 
 principles and aims of the two men were fundamentally 
 different. The criticism of Strauss was both negative and 
 inadequate. It was negative in tending to overthrow the 
 historical credibility of the Gospels, and inadequate in 
 that, while it sought to establish the mythical theory as an 
 explanation of certain portions of the Gospels, it left other 
 very important parts of them unexplained ; since the 
 myth, as legend unintentionally formed, does not account 
 for those features of these narratives which are marked by 
 a decided intention and dogmatic interest, and, far from 
 being, like the myth, common to all, are in various forms 
 peculiar to one and another. The criticism of Strauss 
 proceeded from a philosophical point of view, and was 
 rather a criticism of the Gospels than of their history. 
 In his zeal to remove from the Gospels all unhistorical 
 constituents he failed to construct, or to indicate how 
 there might be constructed, a positive historical portrait 
 of Jesus. Baur's procedure was essentially different from 
 this, and perhaps might be said to have been opposed to 
 it. He did not begin his investigations with a criticism of 
 the Gospels, but with a study of their history, that is, of 
 the conditions out of which they sprang. His point of 
 view was that, if our Gospels are not simple historical nar- 
 ratives, if rather religious interest and dogmatic reflexion 
 had an important part in their origin, they are, neverthe- 
 less, documents which show the spirit of the ancient Church 
 
20 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 and the views and interests which existed in it. Important 
 information in regard to these various views and interests 
 may be obtained from other witnesses in part older and 
 more immediate than the Gospels themselves, that is, 
 in the other New-Testament writings, in the statements 
 of early writers of the Church, and in the extra-canonical 
 remains of the ancient Christian literature. Now, if with 
 these aids we attempt to form the most accurate possible 
 view of the Christian Church of the first centuries, of the 
 oppositions and parties contained in it, and of the entire 
 internal development of original Christianity, we shall not 
 only have gone far beyond the Gospel-criticism of Strauss 
 with reference to its extent, but we shall have supple- 
 mented its negative results by results which are historical 
 and positive. Besides, we may hope in this way to obtain 
 a clearer insight into the Hfe and teachings of the Founder 
 of Christianity. 
 
 Baur, accordingly, in seeking for a tenable ground of 
 further historical combinations, began with a study of 
 those writings of the New Testament which appeared to 
 him as the oldest documents of original Christianity to be 
 best adapted to this purpose, the genuine Pauline Epistles, 
 that to the Romans, the two to the Corinthians, and that 
 to the Galatians. He drew from these the conclusion that 
 the ordinary view of the apostolic age was incorrect, which 
 regarded it as a period of harmony and unbroken peace. 
 In expressions of Paul himself and by means of inferences 
 from historical notices of the later Ebionites and from the 
 pseudo-Clementine literature he found evidences of the 
 oppositions and strifes in which the apostle to the Gentiles 
 was engaged with the Jewish-Christian party and even 
 with the original apostles themselves. It was from this 
 point of view that Baur's study of the Gospels proceeded. 
 
IN TROD UCTION, 2 1 
 
 These he regarded as historical products of their age, 
 based upon tradition and antecedent writings, and com- 
 posed in the interest to a greater or less degree of one or 
 the other side of the contest over the Pauline apprehen-- 
 sion of Christianity, or, in general, in the interest of a 
 theory of Jesus and his mission which chanced to be the 
 favorite one of the author or editor of each. This predi- 
 lection of the writers he called a " tendency," and hence 
 *' tendency-writings " became in the Tubingen school of 
 criticism a standard term descriptive of the Gospels. A 
 single exception was made in this respect of the Gospel of 
 Mark which was regarded as a neutral, colorless writing 
 composed from" the first and third Gospels. The relation 
 of the synoptic Gospels, then, to the facts of the Gospel- 
 history being mediate, these cannot have, in Baur's opinion, 
 the full importance of an authentic source of the teach- 
 ing of Jesus. Its actual contents can, in fact, be deter- 
 mined through them only approximately, since the sub- 
 jectivity of the writers is a factor always to be taken into 
 the account. Yet, notwithstanding the fact that the writers 
 of the four Gospels are not to be regarded as mere re- 
 porters, their writings have no little importance as sources 
 of the teachings of Jesus. For in each of the Gospels the 
 consciousness of the time to which it belongs is represented 
 in a new and peculiar form, and the farther we must sep- 
 arate them according to the difference of the time of their 
 origin and the individuality of their authors, the more 
 important documents do they become for the history of 
 the development of New-Testament theology.^ 
 
 The historical method of studying the New Testament 
 reaches its culmination in the principles and processes of 
 the Tubingen school. The requirement that the various 
 
 *Baur, Vorlesungen iiber neutestamentliche Theologie 1S64, p. 24. 
 
22 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 writings which compose it shall be investigated with 
 reference to the conditions and influences in the midst of 
 which they originated, and studied independently of all 
 dogmatic prepossessions, is rigidly observed. The con- 
 tention that in sacred history laws and principles should 
 be accepted as valid which are not recognized in other 
 history is not admitted. " Christianity," says Baur, " is 
 an historical phenomenon, and as such it must submit to 
 be historically considered and investigated."'* When he 
 is charged with the design of placing Christianity in an 
 historical connection in which all that is supernatural and 
 miraculous in it would become a vanishing moment, he 
 answers: *' This is certainly the tendency of the historical 
 method of treatment, and in the nature of the case it 
 can have no other. Its task is to investigate whatever 
 happens under the relation of cause and effect ; but the 
 miracle in its absolute sense dissolves this natural con- 
 nection ; it sets a point at which it is impossible, not for 
 want of satisfactory information, but altogether and ab- 
 solutely impossible, to regard the one thing as the natural 
 consequence of the other. But how were such a point 
 demonstrable? Only by means of history. Yet from 
 the historical point of view it were a mere begging of the 
 question to assume events to have happened in a way 
 contrary to all the analogy of history. We should no 
 longer be dealing with an historical question, as that 
 concerning the origin of Christianity incontestably is, but 
 with a purely dogmatic one, that of the conception of a 
 miracle, [that is] whether contrary to all historical analogy 
 it is an absolute requirement of the religious conscious- 
 ness to regard particular facts as miracles in the absolute 
 sense." It were certainly an error to regard this attitude 
 
 *Die Tiihinger Schule, 1859, p. 13. 
 
INTRODUCTION, 23 
 
 of the founder of the Tubingen school as identical with 
 that of the rationaUsts who rejected the miraculous '' in 
 the absolute sense " on purely a-priori grounds, and then 
 proceeded to apply a violent and artificial exegesis to the_ 
 Gospels. On the contrary, it is not from a philosophical 
 but from an historical point of view that he approaches 
 the subject. It is not, indeed, unusual from the apolo- 
 getic side to urge that those who thus deal with the 
 miraculous are equally Avith the dogmatist and the ration- 
 alist under the influence of a presumption, that is, of a 
 presumption against the supernatural. This view is, how- 
 ever, in the highest degree illogical. For it is not at all a 
 presumption from which the historical critic takes his 
 departure, but precisely and only an induction. From 
 historical phenomena in general, from human affairs and 
 experience, the induction is derived that events happen 
 under the relation of natural causes and effects. The 
 historian proceeds, and must proceed, to judge them 
 accordingly, so long as the phenomena before him admit 
 of an explanation by this principle. That myths and 
 legends grounded upon the supernatural which are found 
 in the prehistorical records of ancient peoples are to be 
 regarded as history, and that it is to be taken for a fact 
 that Jove or Jahveh at any time interfered to turn the 
 scale of battle, he would hold to be most illogical and 
 unscientific presumptions. To enter upon a philosophi- 
 cal discussion of the supernatural would be foreign to his 
 purpose, and there remains nothing for him to do but to 
 proceed upon the accepted scientific inductions which lie 
 at the basis of the science of history. 
 
 The keen and thorough discussion to which the theories 
 and conclusions of the Tiibingen critics have been sub- 
 jected for more than half a century has no doubt shown 
 
24 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 that they were in many respects one-sided and over- 
 wrought. The historical view of the schism in the early 
 Church which they maintained has not been supported 
 in its full extent, their doctrine of *' tendency " in the 
 Gospels has been considerably modified, and their 
 opinions regarding the date of the Gospels and some 
 matters touching the history of the canon have not, indeed, 
 altogether been sustained. But it cannot be disputed 
 that Baur's general historical view of primitive Christianity 
 has exerted a far-reaching and permanent influence. The 
 different and even conflicting points of view of the New- 
 Testament writers can no longer be denied, and *' ten- 
 dency " is a term which is likely to be always recognized 
 in Gospel-criticism. The opinions of scholars regarding 
 the fourth Gospel have been so much modified that it can 
 no longer be looked upon by the learned as the favorite 
 and most trustworthy source for the life and teachings of 
 Jesus. By those who feel the influence and appreciate 
 the spirit of the higher criticism it is not now regarded 
 with the enthusiastic, sentimental devotion which was 
 rendered to it by Schleiermacher and Neander. As to 
 the strictly historical method of treating the New Testa- 
 ment which Baur contributed more than any one else to 
 establish and make prevail, there can be no doubt that it 
 has taken a permanent place in biblical criticism, and has 
 practically driven from the field both the traditional and 
 the rationalistic dogmatism. The ghost of the old har- 
 monizing method still, indeed, haunts the domain of 
 theology, but wherever criticism prevails there prevails 
 the principle that each biblical writer is to be studied with 
 reference to his age, his environment, and the questions 
 which can be historically shown to have been mooted in 
 his time. That the New-Testament writings are to be 
 
INTRODUCTION, 2$ 
 
 regarded as literature ; that they have an historical set- 
 ting; that they are amenable to the principles of literary 
 criticism ; that whatever spiritual truths they may con- 
 tain, they are human productions, and must be judged as 
 such ; and that they are to be studied in accordance with 
 methods established by inductions from history and 
 experience — this is the incontestable point of view from 
 which scholarship now proceeds in the investigation of 
 all the literary remains of the primitive Christian Church, 
 whether they are canonical or uncanonical. 
 
 The opposition to the Tubingen school has been 
 directed more against some of the results of its criti- 
 cism than against the method itself. The denial of the 
 genuineness of all but four of the Epistles ascribed to 
 Paul and the relegation to the post-apostolic age of 
 the greater part of the New-Testament writings could not 
 but be vehemently contested. But the method is of 
 greater importance than particular results of its applica- 
 tion ; and, as might have been expected, after the smoke 
 of the first contests cleared away it became apparent that 
 just this method and no other was prevalent and likely to 
 be permanent. Although opposing conclusions have been 
 reached by those who have employed it, and bias and 
 prejudice have not been absent in its application, it has 
 come to pass that no work on biblical theology of great 
 importance and influence has recently been written in 
 which it has not been followed with more or less rigidity 
 and consistency. It is only necessary for confirmation of 
 this statement to glance at the divisions of such works as 
 those of Reuss '^ and Weiss. f The former is composed of 
 
 * La Theologie chretienne au Siecle apostolique, third edition, 1864. 
 f Lehrbucli der biblischen Theologie des Neueii Testaments, 3te Ausg., 
 1879. 
 
26 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 the following books: i. Judaism; 2. The Gospel; 3. 
 The Apostolic Church; 4. The Jewish-Christian The- 
 ology; 5. The Pauline Theology; 6. The Theology of 
 Transition; 7. The Johannine Theology. The latter, fol- 
 lowing not less strictly the historical method, divides his 
 material into : The teaching of Jesus ; The Original Apos- 
 tolic Type of Doctrine ; Paulinism ; The ApostoHc Doc- 
 trine of the post-Pauline Age ; and finally, The Johannine 
 Theology. These books, while written by men who by 
 no means accept the conclusions of the Tubingen school, 
 mark a decided advance upon the old apologetic method of 
 treating the theology of the New Testament. Though 
 pursuing a different aim and governed by a different ten- 
 dency from these, Hausrath ^ and Pfleiderer f furnish fine 
 exemplifications of the same method, and the New-Testa- 
 ment Theology of Immer X is deserving of especial men- 
 tion in this connection. 
 
 Instead of entering upon a further consideration of the 
 works on the New Testament which illustrate the histori- 
 cal method, it may, perhaps, be best to give a little space 
 to the answering of objections to it which many readers 
 may be supposed to entertain. If it be objected that 
 this method has a tendency to subvert the traditional 
 faith in the Scriptures as the inspired and infallible word 
 of God, it should be borne in mind that if criticism is 
 once admitted as a legitimate means of ascertaining the 
 nature, date, authorship, and true interpretation of the 
 books of the Bible, it must be allowed to take its natural 
 course. If the conclusions which it reaches are unfavor- 
 able to the doctrine of the infallibility of Scripture, then 
 
 * Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschiclite (in three volumes), 1868-1873. 
 \ Das Urchristenthiim, .'-eine Schriften luid Lehre, etc., 1887. 
 X Theologie des Neueii Tebtaments, 1877. 
 
INTRODUCTION, 2/ 
 
 the objector may well ask himself on what grounds that 
 doctrine rests, and whether it can be logically and securely 
 established by any other process than this same critical 
 and historical one to which he is opposed. It would 
 result that his objection was not so much to the method 
 as to its conclusions, and he would be in the position of 
 an advocate of the Ptolemaic system who should have 
 objected to astronomy because the study of it resulted 
 in establishing the Copernican system. 
 
 No little prejudice exists against the historical and 
 critical method as applied especially to the New Testa- 
 ment because it often results in the conclusion that some 
 of the Gospels and Epistles were not written by the men to 
 whom they have been traditionally ascribed. This result 
 is, however, shocking rather to the sentiments of men 
 than to their intelligence. For if one will fairly consider 
 the facts in the case one cannot but see that there is very 
 little evidence of any sort, and none that can be called 
 immediate, for the authorship of many of these writings. 
 Of traditional evidence there is, indeed, abundance, of 
 contemporary evidence there is none for the authorship 
 of the Gospels. But experience in historical investigation 
 soon teaches us to receive the testimony of tradition with 
 great caution. Precisely what, then, in brief, are the facts ? 
 The earliest traditional testimony to the authorship of 
 our first Gospel, for example, dates from a period about 
 seventy years after its supposed composition, does not 
 relate to the existing Greek recension of it at all, and 
 runs to the effect that Matthew wrote the sayings {\oyia') 
 of Jesus in Hebrew. Traditionally, then, Matthew is 
 connected with the composition of a writing which prob- 
 ably furnished the basis of our first Gospel. When the 
 Greek first Gospel was composed, by whom, how it stands 
 
28 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 related to this original Hebrew work ascribed to the apos- 
 tle, how much of the latter was included in it, how much 
 other material and from what sources derived was em- 
 ployed by the Greek writer of it — of these things our 
 informant, Papias, tells us nothing, perhaps knew nothing. 
 He does not even mention the Greek Matthew, and the 
 first knowledge that we have of its existence dates from 
 Justin Martyr, about the middle of the second century, 
 and he gives no information as to its authorship. As to 
 the other supposed apostolical Gospel, the fourth, there is 
 a trace, much disputed, however, of its existence in Justin 
 Martyr, but not until near the end of the second century 
 do we find any one ascribing it to John. Papias, who is 
 said to have been a disciple of John, does not appear to 
 have known of its existence. It must be conceded by 
 every unbiassed mind that such data are altogether 
 inadequate to establish the genuineness of the writings in 
 question, which are here taken as examples in this respect 
 of a considerable number of the New-Testament books. 
 There are certain things very necessary to be known 
 about this testimony before we can put much reliance 
 upon it, which we cannot find out, for example, what the 
 nature of the information was which those early writers 
 had who ascribe a book to a particular author, whether 
 they had trustworthy evidence, or followed a current 
 tradition without examination. In all that they say on 
 this subject there is no indication that they made a criti- 
 cal examination of the genuineness of any of the books 
 in question. They either accept tradition or give fantastic 
 reasons for their belief. It is, accordingly, a significant 
 fact that the most trustworthy information that we have 
 regarding the origin of the greater part of the New-Testa- 
 ment books is not to be credited to the Christian writers 
 
INTRODUCTION, 29 
 
 who lived from sixty to one hundred years after they were 
 written, but to the historical criticism, so much suspected 
 in some quarters, which took its rise some seventeen 
 hundred years later. 
 
 That no earnest attention was given in the early Church, 
 that is, for about a century after the composition of the 
 oldest of our synoptic Gospels, to what we now call the 
 canonicity of a New-Testament writing, is a fact incon- 
 testably established by history. The writers of this 
 period do not appear to have concerned themselves greatly 
 about the authorship of a book, provided only that the 
 book served their purpose. Along with our Gospels or 
 instead of them were used others which often deviated 
 from them. The Jewish Christians and the Gnostic 
 Christians used different Gospels, and neither party 
 recognized those of the other. Justin Martyr along 
 with our first and third Gospels used another containing 
 matter different from anything which is found in our ca- 
 nonical Gospels ; and as late as the end of the second and 
 the beginning of the third century writings of trifling 
 importance, more distinguished for their weakness and 
 puerility than for any qualities of worth, were treated 
 with great consideration, and even thought to be inspired, 
 by eminent leaders in the Church. These facts show very 
 clearly how much importance is to be attached to the 
 opinions of the so-called witnesses of the early Church 
 as to the genuineness of New-Testament books, and 
 furnish a complete justification, if, indeed, any justifica- 
 tion were required, of the rigid application of historical 
 criticism in order to ascertain whatever can be known 
 regarding their origin. 
 
 Again, if it be objected to the historical and critical 
 method of studying the New Testament and its times 
 
30 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 that its conclusions show some writings to have been 
 falsely ascribed to men who had no part in their com- 
 position, it should be considered that this result of the 
 inquiry is not to be charged to the method but to the 
 character of the age in question. Nothing is easier than 
 for pseudonymous writings to pass unquestioned in an 
 uncritical age, particularly when they are favorable to a 
 prevalent religious interest. That the critical spirit was 
 not abroad during the first two centuries of the Christian 
 Church scarcely needs proof to an intelHgent reader. 
 Men, certainly, were not critical who could with the 
 utmost confidence and naweti quote the Sibylline Books 
 in which Messianic prophecies are put into the mouth of 
 the ancient Sibyl, and that was not a critical age in which 
 even an Origen could defend these writings, and Clement 
 of Alexandria quote from Aristobulus shameless falsifica- 
 tions of the Greek poets, in which Orpheus is made to 
 speak of Abraham and Moses and the ten command- 
 ments, and Homer to discourse of the sacredness of the 
 Sabbath. No one will regard it as improbable that 
 pseudonymous writings should circulate undisputed in 
 such an age who reflects upon similar cases in more recent 
 times, and recalls that Fichte's Criticism of Revelation 
 was in its first anonymous edition almost universally 
 ascribed to Kant; that in the collection of Hegel's works 
 were included a treatise by Schelling and one by F. von 
 Meyer ; that the authorship of many of Shakespeare's plays 
 is doubtful ; that the Memoirs of the Duchess von Brieg 
 were long regarded and quoted as genuine ; and that the 
 Eikon Basihke was, in spite of the objections of Milton 
 and fifty years later of Toland, devoutly believed to be a 
 genuine writing of the "martyr," Charles I. of England. 
 Besides, no one acquainted with the history of literary 
 
INTRODUCTION. 3 1 
 
 deceptions of the kind in question will be surprised to 
 find them in the early Christian centuries. Frauds of this 
 kind were committed in perfect iiaivet^ and even 'good 
 faith in ancient times. Of about sixty complete treatises 
 and fragments from the Pythagorean school attributed to 
 the master the greater part are demonstrably spurious, 
 says Zeller, and were written by new-Pythagoreans about 
 a century B.C., in order to give authority to certain inno- 
 vations. If this could happen, as it did in great part in 
 Alexandria, it is not to be wondered at that pseudonymous 
 writings should easily gain currency and acceptance 
 among the fathers of the Church, who were credulous 
 enough to accept the most fabulous and absurd traditions, 
 and even to believe and circulate the marvellous and 
 extravagant promise of the Messianic vineyards as a 
 genuine word of Jesus. 
 
 Should any devout person be shocked at this conclusion, 
 and be inclined to repudiate the critical method by which 
 it is reached, let him reflect that it is not so sweeping as 
 it may at the first glance appear to be. There is, indeed, 
 no good reason why criticism should offer an apology for 
 itself; but in the interest of clear views of this matter it 
 should be said that the conclusion in question affects only 
 certain New-Testament books, and that most of these are 
 of subordinate importance. A distinction should also be 
 made between the conclusion that a writing is not gen- 
 uine, and that which declares it to be an intentional coun- 
 terfeit. A writing would come under the latter classifica- 
 tion if its author expressly ascribed it to another person. 
 But this is not the case with the writer of any one of our 
 canonical Gospels, '''' which may have been designated as 
 
 * The last chapter of the fourth Gospel was probably not written by the 
 author of the rest of the book, and even verse 24 does not ascribe the 
 
32 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 "according to" Matthew, John, etc., without any inten- 
 tion of an ascription of authorship. But, in fact, we do 
 not know by whom these titles were prefixed. Even the 
 Tubingen criticism does not dispute the genuineness of 
 the four great Pauhne Epistles, and finds in the synoptic 
 record an historical basis for the teachings of Jesus. As 
 to the charge that the conclusion in question makes 
 Christianity and the Christian Church a product of fraud 
 and deception, it is almost too superficial to merit con- 
 sideration. It originates in the erroneous identification 
 of Christianity and its literature, and proceeds upon the 
 assumption that there was not a Christianity long before 
 there were any books written about it, and that the author- 
 ship of a book is, indeed, a matter of vital importance. 
 Besides, even if some of the books of the New Testa- 
 ment were by later writers intentionally ascribed to 
 apostles, it by no means follows that this was done with 
 conscious deception. For how such an act is to be 
 morally judged depends upon the way in which such a 
 procedure was regarded at the time when the forgery was 
 committed. In a time when the personality of an author 
 counted for little or nothing, when critical investigation of 
 the authorship of writings was not undertaken in order to 
 establish their credibility or importance, and when the 
 principal consideration was whether or no a given book 
 favored the good cause, it cannot be surprising that it 
 was not thought to be morally reprehensible to credit a 
 work written with good intentions in the interest of the 
 common faith to some man of renown whose name 
 would give it currency. The wide prevalence of this 
 practice in ancient times and even in the early years of 
 
 work to John, but to " the disciple whom Jesus loved," who is not in the 
 Gospel said to have been John. 
 
IN TROD UCTION. 33 
 
 the Christian Church should make one cautious about 
 denying the possibility of its existence in the time im- 
 mediately succeeding that of the apostles. * 
 
 It remains to be said that the historical method can be 
 logically applied only to materials of history, that is, to 
 facts and phenomena which have had an historical course 
 and development. Here lies the distinction between it 
 and the dogmatic method of dealing with the New- 
 Testament writings. The latter sets out from the pre- 
 sumptions that all these writings contain one and the 
 same type of revealed truth, and that they present an 
 unbroken unity of doctrine which excludes all conflicting 
 tendencies and all important variations of thought and 
 opinion. These tendencies and variations this method 
 cannot allow, and accordingly from its point of view all 
 oppositions of teaching are only apparent, and may be 
 resolved by an accommodating exegesis into a unity 
 acceptable to the believing mind. The former method, 
 on the contrary, permits no presumption to govern its 
 processes, but goes straight forward in the application of 
 the principles of historical investigation intent only on 
 reaching a scientific conclusion. From the latter point of 
 view the last book in the New-Testament canon marks 
 the limit beyond which extends the wide domain of the 
 history of doctrines, the history of conflicts, errors, 
 triumphs of faith, and tragedies of unbelief. The appli- 
 cation of the former method shows that, far from being a 
 unity, the New Testament presents varieties of teaching, 
 conflicting tendencies, oppositions, a progress of thought, 
 and an evolution of dogma — reveals in itself the fermenta- 
 tion of elements, processes of growth, and the real 
 beginning of the history of Christian doctrines. 
 
 *See Zeller, Vortrage, etc, ut supra. 
 
34 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 In treating of the gospel of Jesus and its earliest inter- 
 pretations, the discussion in this work proceeds upon the 
 judgment that the synoptic Gospels are the sole historical 
 records of his teaching ; that the fourth Gospel contains 
 a transformation of it effected under the influence of 
 Hellenistic thought ; that the doctrine of Paul must be 
 derived from Romans, i and 2 Corinthians, i Thessa- 
 lonians, Galatians, and Philippians ; that Hebrews, Colos- 
 sians, Ephesians, and i Peter are to be classified as deutero- 
 Pauline writings composed toward the end of the first 
 century ; and that 2 Peter, Jude, the Pastoral Epistles, 
 and the so-called Epistles of John are to be regarded as 
 anti-Gnostic writings of the early years of the second 
 century. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 
 I. DOCTRINAL ANTECEDENTS AND ENVIRONMENT, 
 
 ALTHOUGH the religion of Jesus, regarded as his 
 personal feeling and experience of relation to 
 God, and regarded again as to certain fundamental 
 moral and spiritual principles, was essentially new, yet 
 the right study of it must proceed from a consideration 
 of its historical connection with the religious doctrines of 
 the Jewish people. A clear distinction must, indeed, be 
 made between it and the so-called theological system, yet 
 it would be manifestly as erroneous to say that it was 
 not grounded upon certain theological conceptions, as to 
 maintain that all of these or even the greater part of them 
 were new and original. If Judaism could not have pro- 
 duced Christianity without Jesus, neither could Jesus, 
 historically regarded, have become what he was without 
 the great teachers of his people who preceded him. As 
 something absolutely new, then, the teaching of Jesus is 
 no more to be regarded than as a mere continuation of 
 the law and the prophets. Genius, indeed, creates, but 
 it does not create out of nothing. Accordingly, in the 
 mind of the wonderful religious Genius who was the 
 Founder of Christianity, the religion of his ancestors 
 underwent one of those great transformations to which 
 every product of human thought, or, if one like the 
 
 35 
 
36 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 phrase better, every divine truth that takes on a human 
 expression, is subject, and to which, in fact, his own 
 teaching did not long wait to be subjected. 
 
 Fundamental in the Jewish religion antecedent to and 
 at the time of Jesus was the monotheistic conception 
 which, though perhaps not held in absolute purity, that is, 
 to the exclusion of the existence of other beings of a 
 superhuman nature, practically included the unity and 
 aloneness of the Supreme Being. Not only was He the 
 omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent Ruler of the 
 world, having, however, an especial care for Israel, but 
 He possessed, as a most prominent attribute, holiness, and 
 was in particular regarded as the Holy One of Israel, to 
 whom all impurities whether physical or moral are an 
 abomination, and in whose eyes even the heavens are not 
 clean. This quality is not conceived as isolated and in- 
 operative, but as having effective spiritual relations with 
 the chosen people, upon whom holiness is enjoined be- 
 cause God is holy. According to a very beautiful passage 
 in the second Isaiah,* the divine holiness is also brought 
 into immediate connection with grace and mercy : *' For 
 thus saith the high and lofty One who inhabiteth eternity, 
 whose name is Holy, I dwell in the high and holy place, 
 with him also who is of a contrite and humble spirit, to 
 revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of 
 the contrite ones." As just, truthful, and faithful is the 
 divine Being also represented in the Old Testament. He 
 holds with equal hand the scales of award, and not to the 
 theocratic nation of His choice alone, but to all men dis- 
 tributes impartial justice and wreaks vengeance on His 
 enemies. According to the Deuteronomist, *' He is the 
 Rock, His work is perfect ; for all His ways are judgment ; 
 
 * Isa. Ivii. 15. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 37 
 
 a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is 
 He." * " All His works are done in truth," and *' He is 
 not a man that He should lie, nor the son of man that 
 He should repent." f 
 
 The doctrine that Israel was the chosen people of God 
 and the ideas which are connected with and follow from 
 it held a prominent place in Jewish thought. The theo- 
 cratic conception in general is not, indeed, peculiar to the 
 Jews, but no other nation has held it with such intensity 
 of conviction and tenacity of purpose and with so vast an 
 influence upon the religious thought of mankind. In their 
 thought the choice of the nation by Jahveh was purely 
 arbitrary, grounded upon no merit of theirs, and an act of 
 pure condescension on His part to the least among the 
 peoples. J The continued protection of Jahveh was, how- 
 ever, dependent upon the fidelity of the nation to Him, on 
 condition of which they should be a ** peculiar treasure " 
 to Him '* above all people," or His private property more 
 than all, § and attain extensive dominion in the earth. 
 This indomitable passion for temporal power which finds 
 expression in nearly all the literature of the Jews', far from 
 being regarded as incompatible with their religious striv- 
 ings and aspirations, appears to have been entertained in 
 so close a connection with the latter that the cause of the 
 nation as a political power was identified with that of 
 Jahveh as the national Diety. A striking warmth and 
 enthusiasm appear in the poetic fervor with which the 
 relation of Jahveh and the people of His choice is 
 expressed under the conception of a "covenant," which 
 was symbolized by the marriage-tie, and the breaking of 
 
 * Deut. xxxii. 4. 
 
 f Ps. xxxiii. iv. Numb, xxiii. ig. 
 
 X Deut. vii. 7. § Ex. xix. 5. 
 
38 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 which was represented as conjugal infidelity."^ Along 
 with this particularism one could not expect to find, as, 
 indeed, one does not find, any well-developed conception 
 of a general divine providence. But entirely consistent 
 with it was the persistent Messianic expectation which 
 outlived through ages a multitude of misfortunes in 
 internal dissensions, defeats, captivities, and political an- 
 nihilation. This was in general a direction of the hope of 
 the people towards an ideal future in which the political 
 and religious aspirations entertained by the noblest 
 minds of the nation and nurtured by the prophets 
 and psalmists should be gloriously realized. The 
 Messianic time is sometimes represented as a restora- 
 tion of the splendors of the Davidic age ; sometimes its 
 fulfilment is to be accomplished through a King or Mes- 
 siah ; and again it is depicted without mention of this 
 personality as a time when misfortune and sorrow shall 
 have ceased, when the restoration of the people and the 
 state shall have been consummated along with the return of 
 the captives out of bondage and the reunion of the twelve 
 tribes. A prominent feature of this time, according to 
 some of the prophetic delineations, will be the forgiveness 
 of the sins of the people and their spiritual purification, 
 when the law of God shall be in their inward parts and 
 written in their hearts, and all shall know Him from the 
 least unto the greatest, for He shall forgive their iniquity 
 and remember their sin no more. Finally, the prophetic 
 optimism reaches its culmination in the extravagant vision 
 of recognition by foreign nations of Israel and Jahveh, 
 when " the mountain of the Lord's house shall be estab- 
 lished in the top of the mountains '^' * * and all 
 nations shall flow to it ; * *^' "^ for out of Zion shall 
 
 * Hos. ii. 2, ig f ; iv. 12, 15 ; Jer. iii. 9. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 39 
 
 go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusa- 
 lem." * It is by the intervention of Jahveh that this 
 great spiritual transformation of His people is to be 
 effected — of Him who " retained not His anger forever, 
 because He delighteth in mercy." He will " subdue the 
 iniquities " of the people and " cast all their sins into the 
 depths of the sea." f Again, the thought is expressed, 
 which has been called the profoundest in the Old Testa- 
 ment, that the suffering of the innocent servant of Jahveh, 
 probably the pious remnant of the nation in the captivity 
 in Babylon, will have as its result the repentance of the 
 people and their return to God.:J: 
 
 The Jewish conception of the relation of the Deity to 
 human affairs is that of an immediate divine direction. 
 This is a corollary of the theocratic idea, and governs the 
 pragmatism of the biblical writers who paid little regard 
 to secondary causes. Historical events are not conceived 
 as following a natural course, but as brought about by the 
 power of God who is a worker of wonders, getting the 
 victory by His " right hand " and His " holy arm." § The 
 all-sufficient divine efficiency is made even more striking 
 by belittling the human agencies through which it operates, 
 which are sometimes chosen with great arbitrariness and, 
 indeed, by means of very trivial tests.|| All this appears 
 to have the twofold object of glorifying Jahveh and taking 
 from man all occasion for boasting.^f The subject of the 
 theocracy was, however, by no means held to be free from 
 responsibihty in the midst of this vigorous and obtrusive 
 
 * Isa. ii. 2, 3 ; see also Micah iv. 1-4, vii. 11-13 ; Zech. viii. 20-23. 
 
 f Micah vii. 18, 19 ; see also Ezek. xxxvi. 25-27. 
 
 \ Isa. Hi. r3-liii. 12. 
 
 § Ps. Ixxvii. 15, xcviii. i ; Ex. xiii. 3, xiv. 31. 
 
 II Judges vii. 2-7. 
 
 T[ Ezek. XX. 14, 22, 44, xxii. 22, xxxvi. 21-23. 
 
40 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 divine regency. It is for him to obey, and strict account 
 is taken of his transgressions. The divine righteousness 
 demands the righteousness of man, and is offended at the 
 sight of sin, which may indeed be forgiven to the penitent, 
 but must be atoned for, that is, '* covered " by sacrifice, an 
 elaborate system of which appears in the Pentateuch, and 
 is recognized in the post-exiHan books. The sin may be 
 atoned for by punishment, by sacrifices, or according to 
 one great writer by the sufferings of an innocent person. 
 The prophets and some of the psalmists attained a higher 
 conception of God*s dealing with sin, and declared that 
 the sacrifice of a broken spirit was the one acceptable to 
 Him, who would have no more the offerings of victims 
 and took no pleasure in bloody altars. 
 
 Although the governmental conception of God was 
 fundamental in the theocracy, and was so held in the 
 earlier development of the Jewish religion as almost to 
 exclude from thought all other divine attributes, the pro- 
 gress of the people could not but eventually bring about 
 the recognition of the humane sentiments and the conse- 
 quent ascription to God of qualities which were regarded 
 as noble in man. The mercy of God as the Ruler of the 
 chosen people is a theme on which the writers of the Pen- 
 tateuch and the prophets and psalmists frequently dwell 
 with great fulness and fervor of expression.* It is, how- 
 ever, generally under the particularistic, national limitation 
 that the divine attributes of love and mercy are conceived, 
 although special personal applications of them are not 
 wanting, notably in the Psalms. The idea of God as a 
 Father is not, indeed, foreign to the Old Testament, but it 
 generally appears only in an especial application to Israel. 
 
 * Ex. xxxiv. 7 ; Num. xiv, i8 ; Deut. vii. 9 ; Neh. xiii. 22 ; Ps. xxv. 10, 
 ixxxvi. 5, 15, etc. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS, 4 1 
 
 Jahveh Is represented now as the father, now as the husband 
 of His people. ■* A more general conception of the divine 
 fatherhood appears to be expressed in the beautiful words 
 of a psalmist: "A father of the fatherless and a judge 
 of the widows is God," and again: ''Like as a father 
 pitieth his children, so Jahveh pitieth them that fear 
 Him."f In one of the later Psalms the limits of nation- 
 alism are broken over and the goodness of God is sung as 
 including foreign peoples. The divine mercy is invoked 
 that the way of God "may be known upon the earth,** 
 His " saving health among all nations." % In some of the 
 Old-Testament apocryphal books are found conceptions 
 of the universal divine providence and love which remind 
 us of the teachings of Jesus. Here we read that the mercy 
 of the Lord is upon all flesh, chastening, disciplining, 
 teaching ; § that he pities all, loves all things that are, and 
 abhors nothing that He has made, for if he had hated 
 anything He would not have created it.|| It is probable, 
 however, that these doctrines must be regarded as greatly 
 in advance of the prevailing opinions, since under the 
 influence of the dominant nationalism they rarely come to 
 expression in the literature of the people. They appear 
 to be the views of a few advanced thinkers who in part 
 anticipated by two or three hundred years the great 
 Teacher of his nation and of the world. 
 
 From the time of Ezra to that of Jesus, the legaHstic 
 conception of the relation of the people to Jahveh held 
 undisputed sway, and was especially upheld by the Phari- 
 saic party. The misfortunes under which the nation had 
 
 * Jer. xxxi. g, ii. i ; Hos. xi. i ; Mai. ii. lo. 
 
 f Ps. Ixviii. 5, ciii. 13. \ Ps. Ixvii. 
 
 § €/l£o? 8h Kvpiov 67ti 7ta6av ddpxa, htX, Sir. xviii. 13. 
 
 1 Wisdom xi. 24 f, dyaTta^ ydp rd ovra Ttdvra, ht\. 
 
42 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 suffered in the destruction of their city and in the Baby- 
 lonian exile being regarded as divine punishments for their 
 infidelity to Jahveh, they thought to secure His favor and 
 the fulfilment of His promises by a strict observance of all 
 the requirements of the law. Accordingly, while they 
 still suffered from wars and oppression, and bore the 
 burden of ritual and ceremonial, they were ever eagerly 
 inquiring when the kingdom of God was coming. Such 
 a period of unrest, suffering, revolt, and expectation was 
 well calculated to produce an abundant apocalyptic lit- 
 erature which undertook by means of a prophetic repre- 
 sentation of divine interventions, cataclysms, and violent 
 subversions of the historical course of affairs, to solve such 
 problems as the reconciliation of the accumulating'misfor- 
 tunes of the people with God's choice of them as His own, 
 as the true interpretation of His ancient promises, as their 
 own national inferiority to the great and victorious world- 
 powers about them, and as the relation which the true 
 religion of Israel ought to assume towards the foreign 
 culture, beliefs, and worship. * With regard to this last 
 problem, three tendencies existed, that which favored a 
 toleration of foreign beliefs, that which vehemently 
 opposed such an attitude, and the syncretism of the Jews 
 of the Dispersion who had felt the influence of Hellenic 
 culture, and of whose views and aims the Alexandrian 
 philosophy as developed by Philo may be regarded as the 
 most finished expression. 
 
 In several matters of importance, however, a general 
 agreement existed among both Palestinian and Alexan- 
 drian Jews. I. The writings Avhich had been handed 
 down from ancient times, and regarded as clothed with 
 canonical authority, were looked upon as given by the 
 
 * See the Apocalypses of Daniel, Enoch, Bariich, Esra, etc. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 43 
 
 inspiration of God, and held in superstitious reverence. 
 Nothing could be farther from the thought of a Jew of 
 the time of Jesus, or, indeed, of some centuries before 
 and after, than to question the infallibility of the sacred 
 books of the nation. These were the centre of all 
 religious interest, the subject of learned inquiry, and the 
 basis of instruction in the schools and of edifying dis- 
 course in the synagogue. It is almost needless to remark 
 that it did not accord with this point of view to apply 
 critical inquiry to these books m. order to ascertain the 
 facts regarding their authorship, date of composition, and 
 authenticity. The traditional ascription of authorship 
 was sufficient, and that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, and 
 that the entire book ascribed in the canon to Isaiah was 
 the work of that prophet, were propositions which no one 
 thought of questioning. But with all this literalism and 
 worship of the Book post-exilian Judaism was degenerate 
 and spiritually dead. The priest had succeeded to the 
 prophet ; the teachers were occupied with artificial and 
 refined interpretations of the sacred books ; and in the 
 endless course of an obtrusive ceremonial were unheeded 
 the admonitions of the great prophets of Israel's golden 
 age of religious life, enjoining righteousness, fidelity, 
 truthfulness, mercy, and justice, with consideration for the 
 poor, the feeble, the widows and orphans. If this literal- 
 ism and spiritual degeneracy may be placed in the relation 
 of cause and effect, no better illustration could be furnished 
 of Paul's great saying that " the letter killeth,'* 2. The 
 conception of the Deity tended to assume a more spiritual 
 character towards the Christian era and to become more 
 puristic and transcendent. The name of God was 
 removed from common use, regarded as unspeakable, * 
 
 "^ aQfir}Tov. 
 
44 I^H^ GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 and avoided as much as possible in the oath and in 
 ordinary speech by means of other terms. The Alex- 
 drian translators rendered it throughout by the Greek 
 word for Lord, Kvpio'^y and Sirach forbids the naming of 
 the Holy One."^ Philo also expressly designates the divine 
 name as an apptfrov. The attempt was made to trace 
 back this concealment of the name of Jahveh to ancient 
 times, and to support it by the authority of Moses.f In 
 accordance with this puristic idea, and perhaps in conse- 
 quence of more refined conceptions of the divine Being, 
 appears to be the endeavor to alleviate or remove the 
 anthropomorphism which in the Old Testament ascribed 
 to Him a human form, members, senses, etc., and the 
 anthropopathism according to which He was represented 
 with human passions. The Septuagint, the Samaritan 
 Pentateuch, and the writings of Philo and the other 
 Alexandrian philosophers show this tendency in differing 
 degrees. 3. In immediate connection with, and perhaps 
 dependent on, these views of the nature of God was 
 developed a more complete angelology than appears in 
 the early Hterature of the Jews. Not unknown, indeed, to 
 the earlier Hebraism was the conception of angelic beings 
 who served as messengers of Jahveh, shared in His coun- 
 sels, and formed His court. But towards the time of 
 Jesus this originally naive and poetic idea assumes a more 
 dogmatic expression under the influence of Persian 
 doctrines, and we find angels named and classified. The 
 divine manifestations and interventions are supposed to 
 be effected through the agency of these intermediate 
 beings or by the hypostasized glory of God (Shechinah) or 
 by the Word (Memra). Thus the Deity is thought of as 
 withdrawn from direct participation in the affairs of men 
 
 '^ovo}xa6ia rov (\y{m\ xxiii. <). -f- Levit. xxiv. 11-16. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 45 
 
 in accordance with the extreme conception of His 
 hoHness. 4. To Persian influence must without doubt 
 be ascribed the doctrine of evil angels which does not 
 appear in any of the pre-exiHan books. The most strik- 
 ing appearances of Satan, i. e.. Adversary, are in the 
 books of Zechariahand Job. In Job he appears among 
 " the sons of God," and is not represented as an enemy of 
 the Deity or an outcast from His presence, but as a mem- 
 ber of His court. In the former book his opposition to 
 God is more distinctly set forth, and in i Chronicles he 
 appears as a tempter of the king to an act of disobedience 
 which in 2 Samuel is represented as done at the instiga- 
 tion of Jahveh himself. In 2 Chronicles xviii. 20 f, a 
 " lying spirit " is spoken of as coming forth apparently 
 out of the group of angels surrounding the throne of God 
 and offering to entice Ahab to destruction. Here the 
 Satan of the book of Job appears as a demon who 
 enters into and speaks through false prophets, if any con- 
 nection may be supposed to exist between the two con- 
 ceptions. At any rate this appearance of the Jewish 
 belief in demons is not without importance for the later 
 doctrine of " possession.** Starting from the legendary 
 account in Genesis of the " sons of Elohim " who had 
 intercourse with the daughters of men, there was devel- 
 oped a doctrine of fallen angels, which in the apocryphal 
 book of Enoch is worked out in great detail. In the 
 books of Tobit and Baruch evil spirits play an important 
 part as crafty and powerful enemies of mankind, and in 
 Josephus appears a well-developed demonology which 
 deviates from that of the book of Enoch in representing 
 the demons as the spirits of bad men. The exorcism of 
 evil spirits by means of the fumes of the heart, liver, and 
 gall of a fish is mentioned in Tobit vi. 6, 7, viii. 2, 3. 
 
4-6 THE GOSPEL AND ITS IMTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 The intense Messianic expectations of the time shortly 
 before and after Jesus appear in the Palestinian apoca- 
 lypses and the frequent revolts. The pre-Messianic and 
 the Messianic periods were designated respectively as 
 " this age," or " the present age," and " the age to come." ^ 
 The signs of the coming of the Messiah were thought 
 to be tribulation, natural convulsions, and political up- 
 heavals,t and Elias was expected as a forerunner4 In 
 connection with this Messianic expectation was held the 
 doctrine of a bodily resurrection, which the Sadducees 
 denied, while the Essenes and the Alexandrians contented 
 themselves with a behef in a purely spiritual immortality. 
 The allegorical method of interpreting Scripture should 
 also be mentioned as a striking phenomenon of this age. 
 It was practised by Philo and the Palestinian scribes, 
 though strangely combined by the latter with a most 
 rigid literalism. § 
 
 2. — THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 The consideration of the teaching of Jesus respecting 
 the kingdom of God naturally comes first in order, be- 
 cause it is with the proclamation of this kingdom that the 
 
 * aic^v ovTo%) aloov ^xeXXgov, 
 
 \ Dan. xii. i ; 4 Esr. xv. 5, xvi. 22, 23 ; Matt. xxiv. 7, 8. 
 
 X Mai. iii. i ; iv, 5. 
 
 § On the subjects treated of in this section see especially Holtzmann, 
 Judenthum u. Christenthum, 1867 ; Toy, Judaism and Christianity, 1890; 
 Weber, System der altsynag.-palast. Theol., etc., iSSo ; Langen, Das Ju- 
 denthum in Palast. zur Zeit Christi, 1866; Keim, Gesch. Jesu, i. 1S67 ; 
 Wendt, Die Lehre Jesu, ii. i8go ; Nicholas, Des Doct. rel. des Juifs, 
 i860 ; Noack, Urspr. des Christenthums, i. 1S57 ; Gfrorer, Das Jahrh. des 
 HeJls, i. 1B38 ; Havet, Les Orig. du Christianism, iii. 1884; Hausrath, 
 Neutest. Zeitgesch, i. 1868 ; Immer Neutest, Theol., 1S87 ; Kuenen, The 
 Religion of Israel, iii. 1875. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS, 4/ 
 
 Story of the Gospels opens. The oldest Gospel connects 
 the New Testament with the Old by applying to John 
 the Baptizer the theocratic words of the second Isaiah 
 which announce the coming of Jahveh in His kingdom : 
 ** The voice of one crying in the wilderness, ' Prepare the 
 way of the Lord, make straight His paths.' " ^ Our first 
 canonical Gospel places before this announcement the 
 statement that the preaching of John was summed up in 
 the terse and comprehensive words : *' Repent, for the 
 kingdom of heaven is at hand." f In like manner the 
 first Gospel represents Jesus as beginning his ministry 
 after the baptism with precisely the same proclamation, 
 and the second Gospel puts into his mouth the words : 
 " The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand ; 
 repent, and believe the glad tidings." % This term, king- 
 dom of God, or of heaven, was not original either with 
 John the Baptizer or with Jesus, and in opening his min- 
 istry with its announcement, as we must believe he did, 
 since the oldest Gospels so represent, Jesus connected his 
 mission with the history and the theocratic-political hopes 
 of his nation. The kingdom of God was an expression 
 well known to the Jews of his time, and was understood 
 by them in the genuine national theocratic sense as the 
 ideal realization of that kingship of God over His people 
 which through the entire canonical and apocryphal litera- 
 ture is regarded as the normal relation which would subsist 
 when the promises of the prophets and the theocratic- 
 
 * Mark i. 3 ; cf. Isa. xl., 3. 
 
 f Matt. iii. 2. In the first Gospel "kingdom of heaven," ftadiXsia 
 rSv ovpav(^y, is always used, with four exceptions. Mark and Luke em- 
 ploy "kingdom of God," fia6iktia. rov Oeov. 
 
 :|: Mark i. 15. The third Gospel omits this announcement, and describes 
 the beginning of Jesus! ministry vaguely thus: "And he taught in their 
 synagogues, honored by all," iv. 15. 
 
48 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 religious hopes of the people should be fulfilled and 
 realized. 
 
 That the traditional Jewish conception of the kingdom 
 of God was in important respects modified in the teach- 
 ing of Jesus there is no doubt, and these modifications 
 will be considered further on ; but in respect to the tem- 
 poral character and theatre of this kingdom his teaching 
 was a continuation of that of the prophecies and apoca- 
 lypses which preceded him. We have seen that at the 
 beginning of his ministry he took up the announcement 
 of the Baptizer that the kingdom of God was at hand. 
 That it was not only near, but had already come, is im- 
 plied in the saying that *' from the time of John the 
 Baptizer until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth vio- 
 lence and the violent seize upon it." * As a proof that it 
 has " already come," he adduces his casting out of demons 
 " by the finger of God," f When asked by the Pharisees 
 as to the time of the coming of the kingdom, he answered 
 that it was not to come in such a manner as to be watched 
 foi*, but that it was there already in the midst of them. :j: 
 In the explanation of the parable of the tares, which is 
 announced as a parable of the kingdom of heaven, the 
 field is said to be the world, and the sower of the good 
 seed the Son of Man, while the distinction is clearly 
 -drawn between the existing kingdom and the future 
 " consummation of the age," § in which the perfection of 
 the former is to be effected by a process of purification. 
 In the series of parables to which this one belongs that 
 of the leaven which should effect a universal transforma- 
 
 * Matt. xi. 12 ; Luke xvi. i6. 
 
 f Matt. xii. 2S ; Luke xi. 20. 
 
 \. Luke xvii. 20, 21. 
 
 § dwreXsia rov atSvoS tovtov. Matt. xiii. 39. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 49 
 
 tion, and that of the grain of mustard which grows to a 
 great tree " so that the birds of the air come and lodge 
 in its branches," both prophesy the development of a 
 spiritual world-kingdom. The temporal point of view also 
 obtains in the injunction not to be anxious about food 
 and raiment, but to seek first the kingdom of God and 
 His righteousness in the assurance that He whose provi- 
 dence clothes the lilies will care also for men. The bless- 
 ing pronounced upon the poor in spirit and upon those 
 persecuted for righteousness* sake implies the present 
 existence and possession of the kingdom of heaven.* It 
 already is, and its privileges are enjoyed by the poor in 
 spirit and the persecuted. As an existing economy the 
 publicans and harlots are said to be entering into it before 
 the chief priests and the elders.f As introduced into the 
 world, it is not necessarily hmited by national boundaries, 
 but may be taken from one people and given to another. \ 
 It is evident, then, that the kingdom of God in the 
 thought of Jesus was the realization in human society of 
 the highest moral and spiritual ideals. Its perfection 
 would be attained when the will of God should be done 
 by men on the earth as it was conceived to be done in 
 heaven by the angels. Jesus was no dreamer, brooding 
 over nebulous philosophizings as to the solution in a 
 celestial future of the problems of life and destiny, but 
 a practical reformer, God-inspired and filled with a divine 
 enthusiasm of righteousness, who would overcome wrong, 
 selfishness, and sin upon the earth by the heavenly powers 
 of truth, love, and holiness. He was a new preacher of 
 the old, sound, strong religion of conduct by which 
 
 * Matt. V. 3, 10. 
 f Matt. xxi. 31. 
 X Matt, xxi., 41, 
 
50 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 his nation had attained all its greatness, and in which 
 alone it had then, broken and disheartened, any hold 
 'upon the future. He was a disciple and continuator of 
 the great prophets of Israel who, in the midst of a flood of 
 adverse fortunes and overwhelming defeats, never ceased 
 to proclaim their faith that God could and would estab- 
 hsh upon the earth a kingdom wherein should dwell right- 
 eousness. Not less than theirs was his confidence in 
 God, and with all the ardor and earnestness of a great 
 nature he devoted himself to the fulfilment upon the 
 earth of the promises of the prophets and of his own 
 prophetic hopes. The first historic departure from this 
 great purpose occurred through the weakness and super- 
 stition of his followers when, after the tragedy which 
 ended his earthly career, they began, " gazing up into 
 heaven," to revel in visions and apocalypses of his second 
 coming; and the latest infidelity to this heroic faith is 
 presented in the absorbing occupation of modern Chris- 
 tendom with refinements of theological speculation and 
 problems of future salvation. 
 
 If, however, Jesus regarded the kingdom of God as 
 introduced among men by his teaching, it was not yet 
 completed and consummated. He and a few followers 
 who did not half comprehend him were alone its repre- 
 sentatives against an unfriendly world. Out of these 
 feeble beginnings his indomitable faith beheld a future 
 growth of the kingdom to greatness and power. Through 
 all his teaching there runs the apparent paradox that the 
 kingdom is here, and that it is yet to come. He asserts 
 that a greater than any of the old prophets had announced 
 it, and that with himself it had come into the world, yet 
 he teaches his disciples to pray that it may come, and 
 that in its coming God's will may be done upon the earth. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS, SI 
 
 He compares it to a grain of mustard which is yet to 
 grow to a great tree, and to leaven whose vast process of 
 transformation is yet to be accomphshed. It is evident, 
 then, that to his prophetic insight the kingdom of God, 
 his kingdom, was destined to have an historical develop- 
 ment and to be a victorious transforming force among the 
 earthly powers of the future. But heavenly Patience and 
 Faith must watch over its processes, and withhold the 
 rash hand which would pluck up the tares to the destruc- 
 tion of the wheat.* In the consummation whatever the 
 enemy has wrought will be condemned and rejected, 
 and the good will be garnered and preserved. Not 
 according to the idea of the Baptizer did Jesus bear in 
 his hand the winnowing-shovel. He had the patience 
 which was wanting to the fierce prophet of the desert, 
 and with more comprehensive mind and farther sight 
 saw in the processes of the ages the consummation of 
 his kingdom. 
 
 Here we might leave Jesus' conception of the future of 
 his kingdom in the world, with nothing to mar it as a 
 product of a noble and sound intelligence, of moral earn- 
 estness and a great faith in the truth and in God, were it 
 not that some words are ascribed to him in the Gospels 
 which appear to represent an altogether different view of 
 the matter. For nothing can be more opposed to this 
 sane and rational conception of the development of his 
 kingdom, which we have seen to be expressed in the par- 
 ables of the grain of mustard and the leaven, than is the 
 idea of a sudden crisis and a hasty consummation within 
 the generation then living, which appears to be conveyed 
 in the words : " Truly do I say to you, there are some of 
 those standing here who will not taste of death till they 
 
 * Matt. xiii. 24-30. 
 
52 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 have seen the Son of Man coming in his kingdom."'^ A^ 
 violent interference with the order of natural development' 
 and a catastrophic descent and establishment of the king- 
 dom with the aid of celestial powers are indicated in the 
 explanation of the parable of the tares. At the " consum- 
 mation of the age," f or, as the words are commonly ren- 
 dered, at "the end of the world," "the Son of Man will 
 send forth his angels, and they will gather out of his 
 kingdom all the stumbling-blocks and those who do 
 iniquity, and will cast them into the furnace of fire ; there 
 will be wailing and gnashing of teeth." The parable of 
 the net is made to close with the introduction of similar 
 mythological features : ** So it will be at the consum- 
 mation of the age. The angels will come forth, and 
 separate the wicked from among the righteous, and will 
 cast them into the furnace of fire ; there will be wailing 
 and gnashing of teeth." :J: This also is said to be a par- 
 able of the kingdom of heaven. We meet here with an 
 expression which appears strange in the mouth of Jesus, 
 ** the consummation of the age." A related expression is 
 also found in other sayings ascribed to him in the Gospels, 
 as in that with reference to the sin against the Holy Ghost, 
 which he is made to say would ** not be forgiven in this 
 age or in the age to come."§ These latter terms also 
 appear in the very materialistic promise to the disciples 
 put into the mouth of Jesus in answer to the implied 
 question of Peter as to what they were to get who had 
 left all to follow him : " There is no one who hath left 
 
 *Mntt. xvi. 28. Mark reports the saying differently: " Till they have 
 seen that the kingdom of God hath come with power," ix. i, and Luke 
 softens it into : " Till they have seen the kingdom of God," ix. 27. 
 
 ^6vyTiXFia rov ai(2vo'^. 
 
 X Matt. xiii. 41-43, 49, 50- 
 
 § Matt. xii. 32. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 53 
 
 house, or brothers, or sisters, or mother, or father, or chil- 
 dren, or lands, for the sake of me and of the glad tidings, 
 -who will not receive a hundred-fold in the time that now 
 is, houses, and brothers and sisters, and mothers, and 
 children, and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to 
 come [fV rcy aiwvi tco epxop.evcf\ everlasting life," * 
 According to the first Gospel these material rewards are 
 to be enjoyed '* in the renovation f when the Son of Man 
 sltteth on the throne of his glory," and to the apostles 
 the promise is added that they shall "sit on twelve thrones, 
 judging the twelve tribes of Israel." X 
 
 There can be no doubt that these passages present 
 grave difficulties to those who regard them from the 
 point of view of the unity of doctrine in the Gospels, and 
 also to those who suppose that the views of Jesus regard- 
 ing the nature of his kingdom and the manner of its con- 
 summation underwent a gradual change from the begin- 
 ning to the end of his career. The former theory puts 
 too great a strain upon exegesis, and requires in short 
 nothing less than the reconciliation of irreconcilable op- 
 positions, of a process by evolution with a swift comple- 
 tion by convulsions effected through celestial agencies, of 
 sober practical judgment and faith in the divine order 
 with dreams and visions of Jewish Apocalypses. As to 
 the latter hypothesis, it does not, indeed, require us to 
 
 * Mark x. 29, 30. 
 
 ^TtaXiyyEVEtSia, "that restoration of the primal and perfect condi- 
 tion of things which existed [as was supposed] before the fall of our first 
 parents which the Jews looked for in connection with the advent of the 
 Messiah, and which the primitive Christians expected hi connection with the 
 visible return of Jesus from heaven:^ Grimm-Wilke's Clavis N. T. sub 
 voce; Gfrorer, Das Jahrh. des Heils, ii. p. loi ; Weber, System der Altsyn.- 
 paliist. Theol. p, 380 f ; Cremer, Bibl.-Theol. Lexicon of N. T. Greek, 
 p. 150. 
 
 X Matt. xix. 28-30. 
 
54 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 attempt impossibilities, but so radical a change in Jesus' 
 conception of the kingdom of God as it supposes should 
 not be assumed unless an adequate cause for it can be 
 found in his environment. It is not at all improbable that 
 the attitude which the Jewish authorities assumed towards 
 him near the end of his ministry may have cooled the 
 ardor of his early hopes in the success of his cause, but 
 the theory that this circumstance could entirely change 
 his conception of the nature of his mission and of the 
 agencies by which its good fortune was to be secured, and 
 lead him to believe that he must invoke the aid of the 
 celestial powers, and come on the clouds of heaven in 
 order to establish it, is too bold and violent by far. It 
 imphes in the first place the assumption that he must 
 have regarded the fortunes of his cause as dependent on 
 a merely local and temporary condition, and, indeed, in 
 general, upon the reception which it might have among 
 the Jews of his time. This is to suppose an almost total 
 collapse of that heroic faith which we have seen that he 
 had in the historic fortune of the kingdom of God and a 
 resort to superstition, the refuge of little minds and the 
 last stage of the degeneracy of a feeble faith. Besides, 
 great difficulties attend the attempt to show that Jesus 
 held different views at different periods of his ministry, 
 and especially that there was a marked development in 
 his opinions as to the nature of his mission and the charac- 
 ter of the kingdom of God, for the reason that the chro- 
 nology of the Gospels is sometimes uncertain and again 
 altogether indeterminable. But apart from these diffi- 
 culties, it cannot but appear strange to the historical 
 judgment that Jesus, who had repeatedly declared that 
 the kingdom of God was already among men, and that 
 his public ministry had introduced it, should speak of it. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 55 
 
 as in the passages previously quoted, as if it were yet to 
 come, and should employ the expressions, ''the age to 
 come/' and "the renovation," which could only be under- 
 stood according to the usage of the time as referring to,' 
 the Messianic age, or the age of the kingdom of God, still 
 in the future. Did he at one time think that he had ac- 
 tually introduced the kingdom of God, and that it was to 
 have an historical development, and did he afterwards 
 waver and doubt ? Did he teach both that its coming 
 was not as of something to be " watched for," that it was 
 already " in the midst " of men, and also that it was yet 
 to come with Mat, with the Son of Man riding on the 
 clouds attended by a troop of angels? Did he at one 
 time plainly teach by implication that the judgment of 
 his kingdom was moral, silently executing itself in the 
 lives of men and discriminating between honesty and 
 hypocrisy, between penitent harlots and self-righteous 
 Pharisees, and at another time declare that this judgment 
 was to be dramatic and apocalyptic, executed by "angels" 
 who should "come forth" and cast the wicked into a 
 furnace of fire? Did he at one time teach his disciples 
 that it is the law of the kingdom of God that he who 
 would be first among them should be their servant, and 
 at another that in the " renovation," or the apocalyptic 
 kingdom, they should sit on twelve thrones judging the 
 twelve tribes of Israel ? Did he give them at one time 
 the sane and sober assurance that they should drink of 
 his cup and be baptized with his baptism — a promise 
 which was indeed not only fulfilled in their experience, 
 but has been fulfilled in that of all his true followers 
 since — and did he at another time expressly implant in 
 their minds insane hopes of dominion and thrones to 
 be enjoyed within that generation — hopes which were 
 
56 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 never realized, and never could be — dreams of Jewish 
 Apocalypses ? 
 
 In attempting to answer these questions and to deter- 
 mine what was Jesus' real conception of the consumma- 
 tion of the kingdom of God, whether it was an historical 
 or an apocalyptical conception, we must first of all 
 renounce those exegetical subtilties by which it is sought 
 to reconcile things which are irreconcilable, and for which 
 all difficulties disappear by a reference to figures of speech. 
 The question to be answered is, " Is it more probable that 
 Jesus used this apocalyptic language than that it expresses 
 the hopes and expectations of a later time? " It should 
 be borne in mind that no grounds exist for a definite set- 
 tlement of this question, and that the greater probability 
 must be the end of the inquiry. If Jesus conceived of the 
 Messianic mission in accordance with the ideas of his 
 time, there is nothing improbable in the supposition that 
 he may have used such language as that quoted from -the 
 Gospels in the preceding pages. But it is certainly diffi- 
 cult not to think that his ethical conception of the king- 
 dom of God should exclude, should render impossible to 
 him, such apocalyptical ideas and such unrealized and un- 
 realizable hopes. We may say, indeed, that *' his ethical 
 purity and greatness are independent of all such local 
 opinions," * but it is not easy to reconcile his holding of 
 them with the intellectual greatness, sobriety, and strength, 
 with which we see that he elsewhere conceives and un- 
 folds the idea of the kingdom. The question has often 
 been asked : How can we account for the expectations of 
 such an apocalyptical consummation of the kingdom of 
 God which are found in the Gospels and Epistles if Jesus 
 did not speak substantially as he is reported? This diffi- 
 
 * Toy, Judaism and Christianity, p. 358. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 57 
 
 culty may not be capable of an entirely satisfactory 
 explanation, but it appears much less formidable than 
 before, after one has read the passages relating to the 
 second coming in connection with the apocalyptical 
 writings which influenced Jewish thought in the first cen- 
 tury after Christ, and when one also considers that the 
 belief of the early Christians in the Messianic mission of 
 Jesus could not be satisfied without a second manifesta- 
 tion which should efface the ignominy of Calvary, institute 
 a judgment upon the enemies of the good cause, and reveal 
 the defeated and humiliated Jesus of history as the real 
 and victorious Messiah of the " age to come." The Jewish 
 Messianism which finds expression in the half-despairing 
 half-hopeful words ascribed by tradition to two disciples 
 on the road to Emmaus, '* But we are hoping that it is he 
 who is to redeem Israel," '- considered in connection with 
 the demonstrable tendency to exalt and glorify the person 
 of Jesus which set in soon after his death, furnishes fruit- 
 ful suggestions as to the origin of apocalyptical passages 
 in the Gospels and Epistles, f A careful and candid con- 
 sideration of the facts in the case, then, appears to show a 
 preponderating probability for the opinion that the 
 apocalyptic passages in question are not accurately reported 
 words of Jesus. Out of his strong faith in his cause he 
 may very likely have prophesied the future glory and 
 triumph of the kingdom of God upon the earth, and may 
 
 * Luke xxiv. 21. 
 
 f Georgii, Eschatolog. Vorstellungen der neutest. Schriftsteller, Tlieol. 
 Jahrbiicher, iv. 1-25 ; Baur, Vorles. llberneutest. Theol. pp. 105-112 ; Keim, 
 Gesch, Jesu, iii. pp. 219, 335; Weiffenbadi, Wiederkunftsgedanke Jesu, 1873; 
 Immer, Neutest. Theol. p. 142 f ; Weiss, Bibl. Theol. des N. T. 3te Ausg. 
 ^^1% §§ 32-34 ; Toy, Judaism, etc. p. 358 f ; Wittichen, Art. "Zukunft" 
 in Schenkel's Bibel-Lexicon, v., p. 725; Von Colin, Bibl. Theol., 1836, ii. 
 p. 153. 
 
58 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 have connected with his foresight of its fortunes some 
 conception of the judgment which would attend its his- 
 torical course. But that in the tradition of the early- 
 Christians, to whose feverish Messianic hopes the real 
 advent of the Christ was a coming " in power" which was 
 still in the future, his prophetic words should have assumed 
 the highly-colored and extravagant expression of Jewish 
 Apocalypses is very probable, and to the historic sense, to 
 say nothing of the sentiment of reverence for Jesus, is more 
 probable than that he should himself have employed such 
 terms. Since nearly half a century elapsed from the time 
 when the words of Jesus were spoken before our synop- 
 tical Gospels were written, and since no one of these is 
 the immediate record of a personal disciple, the conditions 
 are not wanting for such a transformation of his sayings 
 regarding the future as this theory requires. 
 
 The exclusion of these sensuous and apocalyptic features 
 from the teaching of Jesus finds support in the manifest 
 fact of his spiritual apprehension of the kingdom of God, 
 not, indeed, at a particular period of his ministry, but 
 throughout its whole extent. It was not the Jewish king- 
 dom of God with its theocratic-national and political 
 features which he preached. He surpassed the greatest of 
 the prophets and the noblest minds of his own time not 
 only in having the courage and faith to declare that this 
 kingdom had already come, but also in conceiving of it 
 not as a condition in which external prosperity and free- 
 dom were inseparably connected with an ethical-religious 
 transformation, but in which the former were to be 
 absolutely subordinated to the latter. In fact, one may 
 say that in his thought the kingdom was not a thing to be 
 so much wished and sought for as moral and spiritual fit- 
 ness for it. The stress is laid in all his teaching upon the 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 59 
 
 ethical and religious renewal of the people, and while it 
 cannot be denied that he occasionally referred to matters 
 of temporal interest, and showed himself, as has been 
 maintained, a patriot ^' ; that he called Jerusalem in the 
 words of a patriotic Psalm '' the city of the great king " ; 
 that he wept over the obduracy of its inhabitants; and 
 that he warned his fellow-countrymen that unless they 
 repented they would all perish after the manner of the 
 victims of Pilate's wrath, f yet the opinion maintained by 
 Hase and Keim that he conceived the kingdom of God as 
 a theocratic-political institution, or at least that he did not 
 exclude from it earthly and sensuous features ; that " he 
 never transformed the sensuous Messiah-idea into a purely 
 spiritual one":];; and that " on the way to his death he lifted 
 the banner of the theocratic Messiah aloft even into the 
 heavenly regions," § has against it almost the entire testi- 
 mony of the synoptic Gospels on which these scholars 
 rely, and finds, of course, not the least support in the 
 fourth Gospel. It results from an examination of the 
 evidence adduced in support of this opinion that it rests to 
 a great extent on those passages which should rather be 
 regarded as expressing the Messianic expectations of the 
 early Christians than included in the genuine teaching of 
 Jesus. The theory that he secretly cherished hopes of a 
 worldly dominion, but refrained from declaring himself as 
 a temporal Messiah from fear of the Roman power, rests on 
 nothing but a conjecture, and is hardly reconcilable with his 
 integrity in view of his open and repeated assertions of his 
 spiritual purpose. The general tendency of his teaching 
 
 * Hausrath, Neutest. Zeitgesch., p. 367 ; Keim, Gesch. Jesu, ii. pp, 42 f. 
 
 f Luke xiii. 3. 
 
 ^ Keim, Gesch. Jesu, ii. p. 49. 
 
 § Hase, Gesch. Jesu, 1876, p. 418. 
 
60 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRERA TIONS, 
 
 and his whole demeanor are opposed to this theory. The 
 subjects of his kingdom were to have the gentleness of 
 the little child rather than the spirit of the warrior, and the 
 disposition of the helper and minister rather than that of 
 the ruler. His ministry was to the humble and poor, and he 
 made no overtures to the rich and powerful, but rather 
 declared that those who had great possessions would with 
 difficulty enter the kingdom. He forbade the use of the 
 sword, and though on one occasion he spoke of the con- 
 flicts which the entrance of his teaching into the world 
 would bring about, there is no reason for supposing that he 
 had in mind a contest for political supremacy. His trium- 
 phant entrance into Jerusalem and his authoritative purifi- 
 cation of the temple can hardly be interpreted as an attempt 
 to assume temporal dominion, in the absence of an appeal 
 to arms and of a single threat, even by a hint, against the 
 Roman power. " To Caesar the things that are Caesar's, 
 and to God the things that are God's," is not the motto of 
 a revolutionist. 
 
 If the foregoing conclusions are valid, there can be 
 but little room for a difference of opinion on the question 
 whether Jesus' conception of the kingdom of God was par- 
 ticularistic or universal, that is, whether he conceived it as 
 a Jewish kingdom or a world-kingdom. The chief difficul- 
 ties which this question presents arise from the pecuhar 
 character of the records, or from what may be called the 
 "tendency" of the writers, by reason of which they ap- 
 pear consciously or unconsciously to favor in their repre- 
 sentations of the teachings of Jesus the Jewish-Christian 
 or the Pauline view of the Gospel."^'" Our first and third 
 Gospels in which the tendencies are more marked than in 
 
 * See the author's Gospel-Criticism and Hislorical Christianity, i8gl, pp. 
 291-305. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 6 1 
 
 the second must, accordingly, be used with discrimination 
 in the study of this question. Mark as well as Luke 
 represents Jesus as not confining his ministry to the Jews, 
 but as visiting the contiguous territory on occasion,"^' and 
 the first Gospel mentions the journey into Tyre and 
 Sidon.f On the contrary Mark and Luke omit the in- 
 junction to the disciples, which the first Gospel records, 
 not to go to gentiles or Samaritans.:]: On the critical 
 theory that Mark is the oldest Gospel, there would appear 
 to be good reason for supposing that this prohibition did 
 not belong to the original tradition of Jesus, but was 
 added to the first Gospel by its author or editor in its 
 present form, since this record contains other Judaizing 
 traits, and appears on the whole to have been written in 
 the interest of the Jewish-Christian party. There is an 
 apparent conflict of tendencies in this Gospel, which com- 
 plicates the question of the actual attitude of Jesus tow- 
 ards Jews and gentiles, but the difficulty is somewhat 
 relieved when one discriminates between the actual words 
 of Jesus and the general drift of the record. It is not 
 improbable, too, that Jesus expressed himself differently 
 at different times, and that a sentiment of fidelity to the 
 tradition may have determined the editor of the first Gos- 
 pel, as well as the author of the third, to retain sayings 
 which appear to conflict with one another. Jesus appears 
 suddenly to have changed his attitude towards the gen- 
 tiles in the case of the Syrophoenician woman § to whom 
 he at first refused aid with the harsh words, " It is not 
 allowable to take the children's bread and throw it to the 
 
 * Mark vii. 24, 31 ; Luke ix. 52. 
 f Chap. XV. 21. 
 X Matt. X 5, 6. 
 § Matt. XV. 21 f. 
 
62 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 little dogs," afterwards granting her request because of 
 her " great faith." In the case of the centurion's servant, 
 however, no hesitation is recorded, and Jesus is said to 
 have commended the heathen officer's faith in a manner 
 far from favorable to the Jews. If we exclude the com- 
 mission to preach to and baptize all nations and the sen- 
 suously-colored saying that many should come from the 
 east and the west and recline at table with Abraham * 
 from the genuine teachings of Jesus, it does not seem to be 
 an improbable conclusion even from the first Gospel that, 
 while Jesus occupied originally the particularistic point 
 of view of the Old Testament, f his experience of the sus- 
 ceptibility to his doctrine on the part of the heathen and 
 of the obduracy and hostility of most of the Jews had a 
 tendency not merely to produce in him a sudden impulse, 
 as in the case of the Syrophoenician woman, but to con- 
 firm the conviction of the universal destination of the 
 kingdom of God which he would naturally hold by reason 
 of his doctrine of the fatherhood of God and the brother- 
 hood of man.:]: 
 
 3- — THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 In Jesus' doctrine of righteousness as compared with 
 that of the Old Testament is presented an example of 
 \ those great transformations of ethical-religious ideas which 
 are inevitable in the course of the spiritual progress of 
 mankind. The impulse to which these transformations 
 are due often proceeds, as in this case, from a great reli- 
 
 * Matt, xxviii. i8, viii. ii, 12. 
 
 f His respect for and observance of the law, Matt. viii. 4 ; Luke xvii. 
 14; Mark xiv. 12 ; Matt, xxvii. 17 ; Luke xxii. 7-9. 
 
 % See Matt. v. 43-48, and compare Paul's teaching that the Israelites are 
 first called, the gentiles afterwards, Rom. ix. 30-33. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 63 
 
 gious genius. At bottom the idea of righteousness* is a 
 moral one, but it followed the usual course of moral con- 
 ceptions in assuming a religious application in reference to 
 man's relation to God. Accordingly there appear in the 
 Old Testament two sorts of righteousness, a righteousness 
 of the law and a righteousness of the heart. According 
 to the former conception he was righteous who observed 
 all the statutes of Jahveh, the ceremonies, purifications, 
 festivals, etc., and kept himself from the foreign cults. 
 This legal righteousness is celebrated in many of the 
 Psalms. He is pronounced blessed whose delight is in 
 the law of Jahveh, and whose meditations are on it day 
 and night. The author of the 51st Psalm is unable to 
 free himself from it in the last verse notwithstanding the 
 spirituality of the rest of the composition. The 119th 
 Psalm is conceived throughout in the spirit of this formal 
 righteousness, and some of the great prophets often reveal 
 their limitation by this point of view. The later scrip- 
 turalism of the scribes tended to develop still further the 
 legalistic conception of human righteousness until it re- 
 sulted in Phariseeism with its statutory rigor and casu- 
 istry. Many passages in the book of Sirach express the 
 profound respect which was felt for this legal righteous- 
 ness. But together with' this artificial righteousness was 
 taught and enforced another which was more profound, 
 and struck its. roots deeper into the past. This was a 
 noble moral earnestness touched with the religious emo- 
 tions of love and trust towards God. It was a righteous- 
 ness which sprang out of a sense of immediate relation to 
 God, and its law does not fail of expression even in the 
 midst of the mass of legalism which composes the book 
 
 * diHazo6vv7^. On the relation of the biblical to the Classical Greek 
 sense see Cremer, Bib.-Theol. 'Lexicon, etc., sze/> voce dixaio^. 
 
64 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 of Deuteronomy: ^* Thou shalt love Jahveh thy God with 
 all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might." 
 Accordingly it is said that Abraham's trust in God was 
 accounted as righteousness, and there are sung in many of 
 the Psalms the praises of inward righteousness, as purity 
 of heart, innocence, humility, trust in God, benevolence 
 to the poor and destitute. Side by side with the legal 
 conception of righteousness are found in the canonical 
 and apochryphal books of the Jews impassioned expres- 
 sions of the higher righteousness which is born of the 
 human sense of dependence in which the spirit " cries out 
 for the living God," and the soul pants for Him in its 
 hunger and thirst " as the hart panteth for the water- 
 brooks/'* Even when, shortly before the appearance of 
 Jesus, the statutory righteousness predominated and the 
 schools of the scribes were flourishing, the book of Wis- 
 dom represents the truly righteous man as one whose un- 
 derstanding is not perverted to evil, and describes him as 
 a friend of mankind. f Righteousness consists, according 
 to this writer, in a knowledge of God.;}: Hillel, an imme- 
 diate predecessor of Jesus who ** embodied in himself 
 all the devotion and all the gentleness of Phariseeism," 
 gave expression to some conceptions of ethical right- 
 eousness which for the times were broad and liberal, 
 perhaps even lax, especially in respect to divorce. 
 Words very similar to the Golden Rule of Jesus are 
 attributed to him : " What thou wouldst not have 
 another do to thee do not thou to another." But his 
 teaching was moral rather than religious, and one is 
 
 * Ps. xlii. I, 2. 
 f Wisdom iv. ii, xii. ig. 
 
 \ TO yap hiti6ra6^ai 6e oXoH'Krfpo'^ dixato6vy?f, xv. 3. Compare 
 John xvii. 3, "This is the everlasting life, to know Thee," etc. 
 
THE TEACHING OE JESUS. 65 
 
 hardly justified ir. calling him with Renan ''the true 
 teacher of Jesus.'' "^ 
 
 The fundamental opposition of Jesus' ethical concep- 
 tion of righteousness to that of the teachers and the 
 official orthodoxy of his time appears in his declaration to 
 his disciples that unless their righteousness should exceed 
 that of the scribes and Pharisees they should not en- 
 ter the kingdom of heaven. f This saying appears to 
 be directed against the hollow externality and legalism 
 which then prevailed, and probably implies that the true 
 righteousness of the kingdom consists in an inward, 
 upright relation to the law spiritually apprehended. 
 That its possession by men is conditioned on moral 
 earnestness and effort is plainly expressed in the injunc- 
 tion: "Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness.":!: 
 Here righteousness is placed foremost among the ob- 
 jects to which the will should be directed, just as in 
 the beatitude, " Blessed are they who hunger and thirst 
 after righteousness," it is made the supreme object of 
 desire. Wherein the righteousness of Jesus differed from 
 that of the Pharisees, and was in some respects opposed 
 to the Old-Testament legislation is shown in detail in the 
 Sermon on the Mount in the passages which emphasize 
 the contrast between the external works and the internal 
 disposition.§ The false prophets are such because '* in- 
 wardly they are ravening wolves." Not alone the out- 
 ward act of homicide is murder, but the inward fractricidal 
 
 * On Hillel see Geiger, Das Judenthum, etc., i Abth., 1865, pp. 104 f ; 
 Jost, Gesch., iii. pp. ui f ; Keim, Gesch. Jesu, i. pp. 268 f ; Toy, Judaism, 
 etc., pp. 264 f. 
 
 f Matt V. 20. 
 
 X 8iKmo6vvy] avrov [Beov'\, i.e. the righteousness required by God and 
 acceptable 10 Him, not that given by Him. 
 
 §Matt. V. 21-48, vii. 15. 
 
t6 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 hatred. The lustful desire is adulterous.^ Profanity is 
 rather the levity with which the name of God is employed 
 than the solemn oath. The marriage-tie is sacred, and 
 should not be violated by taking advantage of the legal 
 permission of divorce. Not an eye for an eye and a tooth 
 for a tooth, but rather the endurance of wrong than the 
 returning of evil for evil. What was " said to those of old 
 time," is surpassed by the great commandment : " Love 
 your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."f It 
 is not enough to bring the gift to the altar, but it must be 
 brought in a spirit of reconciUation with the '* brother " who 
 has " aught against " the worshipper. There is no recon- 
 cihation with God to him who loves not his fellow-man.:[: 
 Indeed, the prominence given to men's duties to one 
 another in Jesus' exposition of righteousness both in the 
 Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere may be regarded as 
 a distinguishing and original feature of his teaching. In 
 answering the scribe who asked him which was the great- 
 est commandment, he mentions not one commandment 
 but two, and does not appear to subordinate that of love 
 to man to the former, but to place the two upon an equal 
 footing as ^' like " to each other. § In this answer he not 
 
 * Nam scelus intra se taciizim cogiiat ulium, 
 Facti crimen habei — 
 
 For he who meditates any secret wickedness within himself incurs ihe guilt 
 of the deed, Juv. Sat. xiii. 209. 
 
 f The commandment to hate one's enemies is not contained in Lev xix. 
 18, and seems rather to be foisted upon the law by an inference from its spi:it 
 than anywhere found in it. That the law commanded hatred of an ( nemy 
 is said by Meyer to be " a false imputation." Accords with this great in- 
 junction have been observed in Pindar, Pyth. ix. 95; Sophocle-, Antig. 523; 
 M. Antonin. vii. 70. 
 
 :j: See I John iv. 20: " For he that loveth not his brother whom he hath 
 seen," etc. 
 
 § Mark xii. 28-31; Matt. xxii. 34-40. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 6j 
 
 only goes beyond the question, but beyond the law itself 
 which did not place the two commandments in such a 
 relation. Besides there is implied in his answer that these 
 two commandments are not first and greatest in the sense 
 of standing at the head of a series, but that in them 
 are included the whole law and all the admonitions of 
 the prophets. But the most striking, the profoundest, 
 and most original feature of Jesus' teaching of righteous- 
 ness towards man appears in the point of view from 
 which he regards and presents it. The reason why men 
 should practise love and helpfulness toward one another, 
 the motive which should prompt a benevolent disposition 
 and activity, is the paternal love of God for men. Because 
 God loves men. He takes pleasure in their love of one 
 another, which must be cherished by them if they would 
 be true children of the heavenly Father. Helpfulness, 
 mercy, and forgiveness are not to be extended merely to 
 those who practise them, but to those who may not render 
 like services in return, and even to strangers, foreigners, 
 and enemies.* That he who expects the divine clemency 
 must show mercy toward his fellow-man is taught in the 
 parable of the servant who having been forgiven a debt 
 proceeded to exact payment of an obligation due him from 
 a fellow-servant. The condemnation of the master falls 
 upon him. Gratitude towards the forgiving master should 
 have prompted in him like sentiments and deeds of 
 mercy. Likeness to God is the supreme requirement 
 that is made of man. It were certainly an error to seek 
 to establish the originality of Jesus and his progress be- 
 yond the teaching of the Old Testament by appealing to 
 his extension of the doctrine of kindness beyond the 
 national limits and the giving to it of a universal applica- 
 
 * Matt. V. 43-48. 
 
68 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 tion. For the duty of kindness to strangers and even 
 enemies is by no means foreign to Old-Testament morals*; 
 and the principles of general benevolence had been en- 
 forced by heathen philosophers before his time, so that 
 the doctrine of love toward all men was previous to his 
 promulgation of it the common property of the noblest 
 thinkers. The peculiar, the original contribution which 
 Jesus made to this department of ethics consists in the 
 setting in which he placed the duty of universal love, or 
 perhaps better, in the foundation on which he established 
 it, when he gave it a religious significance and sanction 
 by enjoining it as a duty for men on the ground of 
 the divine love toward them, a duty the discharge of 
 which makes them the spiritual children of their Father 
 in heaven. In this apprehension of man's relation to his 
 fellow-man there is neither any place for a prayer to God 
 for revenge on one's enemies, like that of the imprecatory 
 Psalms, nor for bitter feelings of vengeance in the heart. 
 The vast difference between the desire to heap coals of 
 fire on the head of an enemy, that is, to bring the blush 
 of shame to his face, and the consciousness that if we fail 
 in love and kindness toward him we have ourselves been 
 unfaithful to a great obligation, and have not the spirit 
 of our Father in us, indicates the immense advance which 
 Jesus made in the conception and founding of the duty 
 of man's love to his fellow-man. 
 
 The fact of this religious grounding of righteousness 
 toward men naturally leads to the consideration of the reli- 
 gious aspect of Jesus* conception of righteousness in gen- 
 eral, or to his doctrine of righteousness toward God. For if 
 
 * See Ex. xxiii. 4 f, 19 f ; Lev. xix. 9 f, 18, 33 f ; Dent. x. 18, xv. 7-II. 
 xxiv. 17 f ; Ps. vii. 5, xli. 2 ; Job xxxi. 1-22, 29-32 ; Prov. xx. 22, xxiv. 
 29, XXV. 21 f ; Isa. Iviii. 6 f ; Zech. vii. 9 f. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS, 69 
 
 histeachingregardingmen'sduty tooneanotherdidnotend 
 with the Golden Rule and with moral precepts in general, 
 neither did he limit righteousness to human relations con- 
 sidered under a moral-religious aspect. In a word, he did 
 not teach and exemplify morals only, but religion also. 
 He nowhere formulates the principle that morality cannot 
 attain the greatest strength, permanence, and fruitfulness 
 without religious sanction, conviction, and fervor; but 
 this principle is implied in his teaching and illustrated in 
 his life. His own trust in God was unconditioned, and 
 sometimes assumed paradoxical and extravagant expres- 
 sions. His spiritual life was lived in an atmosphere of 
 prayer. To the storm-tossed disciples he puts the reprov- 
 ing questions : " Why are ye so fearful ? How is it that 
 ye have not faith ? '* To the anxious ruler of the synagogue 
 he exclaims: " Fear not, only believe." He assures his 
 disciples with subhme confidence in God that " all things 
 whatever ye pray for and ask, beheve that ye have ob- 
 tained, and ye shall have them." '* He does not transcend, 
 but he interprets, the law when he declares that its 
 '* weightier matters" are "justice, mercy, and faith. "f 
 The right attitude toward the "glad tidings" of the 
 kingdom is to " repent and believe." % The trust in God 
 which he enjoins is, indeed, in the spirit of the Old Tes- 
 tament, which abounds, particularly in the Psalms, in 
 similar expressions, but it receives through him a new 
 interpretation by reason of his conception of the Deity. 
 In his truly original apprehension of religion the old, 
 haunting "spirit of bondage" is banished, and no longer 
 does a tone of anxious legalism and of a hesitating, un- 
 quiet fear color the communion of the soul with God. 
 
 * Mark iv. 40, vi. 36, xi. 23. f Matt, xxiii. 23. 
 
 \ Mark i. 15. 
 
70 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 The Father is no remote and awful Majesty, and the wor- 
 shipper is not tortured with the fear that He will "turn 
 from " him. Rather He is the all-pervading, benignant 
 Presence who clothes the lilies, notes the fall of the spar- 
 row, and numbers the hairs of His children's heads. The 
 child's trust in Him may include in its simple petition the 
 material gift of needful bread and the spiritual consum- 
 mation of His kingdom on the earth. Between the Father 
 who is so near and the child who is so dependent and 
 needy there exists in the religion of Jesus the most inti- 
 mate relation. There is no place for a mediator. The son 
 who returns penitent from prodigality and riot falls into 
 the open arms of the Father who goes forth to meet him. 
 This great idea of God as Father involved a new concep- 
 tion of righteousness and religion to which the interven- 
 tion of priest and sacrificial atonement is unknown — a 
 conception to which Hebraism did not quite attain, and 
 which Paul unhappily missed. Here is no righteousness 
 *'by faith," nor through saying " Lord, Lord," but he 
 alone is ''accounted " righteous who does the will of the 
 Father in heaven.* The demand is great, and is nothing 
 short of imitating the divine perfections, becoming per- 
 fect as the Father is perfect, but nothing is said of the 
 impossibility of such an achievement. Man is to cast 
 himself upon God in trust and love, to hear the words of 
 Jesus and do them, to pray for forgiveness of his tres- 
 passes, and to follow the Master bearing his yoke and 
 burden. Little account appears to be made of a righteous- 
 ness without flaws, and nothing is intimated of " imputing 
 righteousness without works," f but great stress is laid 
 upon the disposition, the direction of the will to right 
 doing, great sympathy is shown for the weak, the fallen, 
 
 * Matt. vii. 21-27. \ Rom. iv. 6. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 71 
 
 the lost,'^ great joy is expressed over the return of a sin- 
 ner to righteousness,t he who holds the creed of love to 
 God and man is declared to be " not far from the king- 
 dom of God,";!: and the penitent publican who with down- 
 cast eyes smites his breast and confesses his sins is held 
 up as the type of man for whom there is hope. No beati- 
 tude is pronounced upon those who may have become 
 righteous by a perfect fulfilment of the law, nor upon any 
 who by a divine decree may have been " declared " right- 
 eous on account of '^ faith," for such a righteousness is 
 unknown to the original gospel, but they are called bless- 
 ed who are conscious of their spiritual poverty, and they 
 who hunger and thirst after righteousness are promised 
 fulness of spiritual life. 
 
 4. — CONDITIONS OF ENTERING THE KINGDOM OF GOD, 
 
 From the times of the prophets the idea of a moral- 
 religious renewal had been connected with the appearance 
 of the Messianic kingdom, and John the Baptizer took up 
 the refrain of his predecessors so far at least as the moral 
 aspect of the renewal was concerned. § A continuation 
 of the prophetic message it was, too, when both John and 
 Jesus announced repentance as a condition of enjoying 
 the privileges of the kingdom of God. In the teaching 
 of Jesus this word || implies a radical change of mind, 
 disposition, purpose, the abandonment of a sinful hfe 
 and obedience to the will of God. Besides this moral 
 transformation he sought also to bring about a change of 
 mind, of understanding, respecting the nature of the 
 
 * Matt, xviii., 11 ; Mark xiv., 38. % ^Tark xii. 34. 
 
 f Luke XV. 32. § Matt. iii. 2 ; Luke iii. 11-14. 
 
 I fj-erdvoia. Matt. ix. 13. 
 
72 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATION'S. 
 
 kingdom as not temporal, but spiritual ; in respect to 
 worship, as not outward, but of the heart ; and in respect 
 to the place which material possessions and worldly rank 
 ^and power should hold in the thought and life of men. 
 In connection with repentance he placed the forgiveness 
 or remission of sins,"^ but affixed to this the condition 
 that the subjects of it must cherish a forgiving disposition 
 toward their fellow-men. f Faith is commended % and 
 enjoined § as an attitude of mind favorable to a right 
 life, and it is mentioned as a condition of receiving certain 
 benefits from the healing power of Jesus and of perform- 
 ing great works, | but no doctrine concerning it is formu- 
 lated. Faith in God occupies the foremost place, and 
 faith in Jesus, or belief in his healing powers, and in the 
 "glad tidings" is also required. Closely related to this 
 appears to be the requirement of a child-like disposition, 
 without which it is expressly declared that no one shall 
 enter into the kingdom of God.^f Little children, who 
 could give nothing, but were in need of much, who set up 
 no claims and pretensions, but were impressible and recep- 
 tive, not only called forth the love and the blessing of 
 Jesus, but were regarded by him as having the disposi- 
 tion which in men was required for entering the kingdom 
 of God. Not self-sufficiency, consciousness of merit, and 
 pride of knowledge, but receptivity, and the sense of need 
 and dependence, constitute the disposition of the true 
 disciple. Nothing appears to be more characteristic of 
 the spirit of Jesus than his sympathy with the weak, the 
 dependent, the needy, — those to whom much might be 
 
 * a(p£<jt^ T(Sv diiaftTiwv. \ Matt. vi. 12, 14, 15. 
 
 :|: Matt. viii. 10. § Mark i. 15, xi. 22. 
 
 II Matt. ix. 22 ; Mark v. 34; Luke vii. 50, viii. 48, xvii. 6. 
 ^ Mark x. 14. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 73 
 
 and forgiven. Hence the blessing upon " the 
 poor," or as one of the evangehsts has it, "the poor va 
 spirit," upon those whose sense of spiritual need is ex- 
 pressed by the words " hunger and thirst after righteous- 
 ness," and upon those who weep, and those who are 
 hated/'^' Had not the kingdom of heaven come that the 
 hungry might be fed, the poor have the Gospel preached 
 to them, those who longed for righteousness satisfied 
 with the bread of life, the weeping be made to rejoice, 
 and the mourners be comforted? Not, indeed, as one of 
 the old prophets risen from the dead, but in the spirit of 
 the great writer of the second Isaiah did the Prophet of 
 this new kingdom of God associate with publicans and 
 sinners, and proclaim himself the Saviour of those who 
 needed a physician, come to seek and reclaim the lost.f 
 But while the kingdom of God is not to be earned by a 
 perfect righteousness ; while the poor and the weak are 
 received into it with a divine welcome ; and while sinners 
 are sought out to partake of its abundant hospitalities ; 
 there is still no abatement of the requirement not only of 
 repentance but also of earnest striving. The kingdom 
 is, indeed, a free gift, but it must be sought with strong 
 desire and resolute will. It is not to be passively 
 accepted, but rather '* suffers violence," and "the violent 
 seize upon it,":l; ^^ those who will not accept its invita- 
 
 * Luke vi. 20-22 ; Matt. v. 3-6. It was "the poor'' who according to 
 the Old-Testament promise were to be blessed in the happy future time, 
 and the third evangelist gives the beatitude accordingly (vi. 20, cf, iv. 18, 
 vii. 22). Did he derive it from a text antecedent to that of the first Gospel? 
 (See Feine, Eine vorkan. Ueberlieferung des Lukas, 1891, p. 113.) The 
 first evangelist adds " in spirit," referring to those who as to their inner life 
 {itvtv fiarx) are in a condition of poverty. This is also an Old-Testament 
 conception. See Ps. cxxxi. i ; Is. Ixvi. 2. 
 
 f Luke iv. 16-18 ; Mark ii. 16, 17. % Matt. xi. 12. 
 
74 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 tion are excluded,* no less is he shut out in the darkness 
 who by leaving off the wedding-garment fails to fulfil its 
 conditions.f 
 
 These conditions appear in the culmination of their 
 absoluteness and severity in the teaching regarding 
 renunciation for the sake of the kingdom of God. The 
 great requirement of righteousness, the service of God 
 and man, takes unconditional precedence, and whatever 
 is inconsistent with it must be renounced. The less must 
 be sacrificed to the greater, the material to the spiritual 
 interests. Whoever tries to save and serve both will lose 
 all. But he who will lose his life for Jesus' sake and the 
 gospel's will save \t.\ The entrance to life is through a 
 "narrow door"§ which is found only by the few who 
 are willing to abandon the broad and easy way of self- 
 indulgence and submit to the hardship and renunciation 
 required by the law of unselfish service. A man cannot 
 serve two masters, || and the righteousness which claims 
 the whole man for the will of God excludes devotion to 
 earthly goods for their own sake. He who will attain it 
 must be ready to stake all lesser values on the one 
 supreme achievement, as the merchant in the parable 
 " sold all that he had " in order to buy the " one pearl of 
 great price." Tf The principle of renunciation receives its 
 most uncompromising and harshest expression in the pas- 
 sage in the third Gospel which represents Jesus as turning 
 to a multitude who were going with him and declaring 
 the condition of discipleship to be that one must hate 
 one's father and mother and wife and children and 
 brothers and sisters, yea, and one's own life also, and 
 
 * Luke xiv. 16-24. f Matt. xxii. 11. 
 
 X Mark viii. 35. § Matt. vii. 13 f. 
 
 I Luke xvi. 13, T[ Matt. xiii. 44-46. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS, 75 
 
 that all that one hath must be forsaken. '^^ He who would 
 be his disciple must be willing to bear his " cross " and 
 come after him. The terrible significance of this word 
 " cross " in that time, when it was used as an instrument 
 of the most cruel death, indicates the extreme act of 
 renunciation which is here impHed. Milder than this 
 demand, yet conceived in the same spirit, is the require- 
 ment contained in the other two synoptics to pluck out 
 an eye or cut off a hand or a foot if either prevent one 
 from entering into life, rather than having all one's 
 members to be cast into gehenna.f Of the rich young 
 man who would " inherit everlasting life/' and had kept 
 all the commandments, the requirement is made to sell 
 all that he had and give to the poor, in order to supply 
 the one thing lacking. :|: To one who offered to follow 
 him, Jesus intimated in most pathetic terms that his 
 followers might envy the foxes and the birds, which had 
 their lodging-places, while he " had not where to lay his 
 head." To another, summoned to discipleship, who would 
 first bury his father, the harsh answer is made : *' Let the 
 dead bury their own dead, but go thou and carry the 
 tidings of the kingdom of God." Not even a farewell to 
 the loved ones is permitted, but *' no one that looketh 
 back after putting his hand to the plow is fit for the 
 kingdom of God."§ 
 
 The difficulties which some of these passages present are 
 evident at a glance, and the efforts which commentators 
 have made to soften their harshness show the necessity 
 which is felt of reconciling them in some way with modern 
 sentiments and with other teachings of Jesus. The 
 
 * Luke xiv. 25, 33. f Matt. v. 29, 30 ; Mark ix. 43-48. 
 
 X Matt. xix. 16-23 ; Mark x. 17-23 ; Luke xix. 18-23. 
 § Matt. viii. 19-22 ; Luke ix. 57-62. 
 
"J^ THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 requirement to hate one's nearest kindred in order to 
 become a disciple is revolting to the most sacred feelings 
 of the human heart, and the judgment rejects it in the 
 teaching of one in whose instructions love of all men, the 
 honoring of parents, and the sacredness of the ties of 
 family held a conspicuous place. '^* The asceticism implied 
 in contempt of one's own life is incompatible with a 
 teaching which demands all the powers of man for the 
 service of God in a kingdom of righteousness whose course 
 and development were to be in human society. f The 
 attempts which have been made to break the natural 
 force of these demands are for the most part unwarrant- 
 able exegetical expedients. It is maintained, for example, 
 that *'hate" is not used in its ordinary sense, but means 
 *' the direction of the will to the separation from others 
 as the opposite of natural love " ; that these words were 
 not spoken with reference to a time like ours when the 
 doctrines of Jesus have won a wide recognition and 
 dominion in tlie world, but at a time when it was neces- 
 sary to stake all that a man had for the sake of the 
 Gospel; and that it was the method of Jesus to state his 
 requirements with the utmost clearness and brevity.:}: 
 The fact is not without importance that Luke alone has 
 the harsh demand to hate one's dearest kindred. In the 
 first Gospel words bearing a resemblance to these demand 
 that one should not love father or mother '* more " than 
 Jesus, § and in themselves they present no difficulty, since 
 they are in accordance with the general teaching of Jesus 
 
 * Mark vii. lo f, x. 1-12 ; Matt. v. 31 f. 
 
 f Matt. xi. 19 ; Mark ii. 18 f. 
 
 X Wendt, Die Lehre Jesu, ii. pp. 383-386. Meyer, however, does not 
 approve of the softening of fj.i6EX in the passage in question. Commentar, 
 5te, Ausg. i. 2, p. 464. So also Grimm-Wilke, Clavis N. T. sub voce, 
 
 § Matt. X. 37. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS, yy 
 
 that spiritual aims and interests should be regarded as 
 supreme whenever a choice is to be made between them 
 and any temporal concerns whatever. They express, then, 
 a universal truth which is applicable to an age of peace as 
 well as to an age of conflict. The words in Luke, how- 
 ever, appear to be rather an intensified expression of this 
 thought than a genuine saying of Jesus, who never required 
 of his immediate disciples the breaking of sacred ties of 
 kindred, and to whose whole teaching hatred in any form 
 is opposed. Wendt's remark that they have especially a 
 temporal application suggests the thought that they may 
 be the vehement and extravagant expression of the feel- 
 ings prevalent in a later period of storm and stress. 
 
 The requirement of the rich young man to sell all that 
 he had and give to the poor as a condition of inheriting 
 everlasting life has the peculiarity that in some cases more 
 is needful than to keep the commandments. Similar 
 instances of special requirements in particular cases appear 
 to be those of the man who was not permitted to return 
 to bury his father and of him who was forbidden to take 
 leave of his family. Assuming that these are words of 
 Jesus (and there appears to be no good reason for doubt- 
 ing their genuineness), we are not warranted in conclud- 
 ing from them that the general conditions of discipleship 
 were equally severe and harsh. We do not find that 
 Peter was required to give up his house, although he was 
 an immediate follower of the Master who had not where 
 to lay his head. In the case of the rich young man there 
 may have been especial reasons for requiring the sacrifice 
 of his possessions, for according to one of the accounts it 
 appears that, whether from a consciousness of moral defi- 
 ciency, or from what he saw in the searching look of the 
 Master, he asked: "What lack I yet?" The demand of 
 
78 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 Jesus was doubtless better fitted to his need than to his 
 inclination. The rich enter with difficulty the kingdom 
 of the spiritual life. That it were better for one not to 
 turn back among the spiritually dead mourners to assist 
 in burying the dead, and for another not to take the risk 
 of a farewell to those whom he loved, may fairly be pre- 
 sumed, just as in some it might have been commendable 
 to follow the example of Jesus and not marry, "for the 
 kingdom of heaven's sake/* ^ 
 
 5, — GOD AS THE FATHER. 
 
 That the Jewish literature antecedent to Jesus furnished 
 substantially the basis of his teaching concerning God has 
 already been pointed out. But as his conception of 
 righteousness was a new creation of an old idea, so it is 
 with his doctrine of God. The Old-Testament idea is 
 retained, and the manner of expressing it is not new. God 
 is Creator, King, Lord of heaven and earth. He has His 
 throne in the heavens, where the angels behold His face, 
 and the earth is His footstool, f The God of Jesus is no 
 impersonal abstraction, but a personality possessing quali- 
 ties similar to those of men. He has a spirit, acts accord- 
 ing to what seems good to Him, that is, thinks, has a will, 
 and is good. % His providence is over all, even to the birds 
 and the grass and the lilies, but particularly over man, the 
 crown of His creation, the immortal, capable of evil and 
 good, and having light within himself, § To him God is 
 merciful and kind, shows His goodness even to the sinner to 
 
 *Matt. xix. 12. 
 
 f Matt. xi. 25, V. 34-35, xxiii. 22, xviii. 10. 
 J Matt. X. 20, xvi. 23, xix. 17, xxvi. 39. 
 § Matt. vi. 22, 26, 28, X. 28. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS, 79 
 
 whom He gives the sun and the rain, hears prayer, observes 
 the servant, forgives, and like a good shepherd will not let 
 His lost sheep go, but rejoices more over one astray found 
 than over ninety and nine in the fold. * The crown of 
 all His attributes, or rather the essence of His nature, as 
 Jesus represents Him is His Fatherhood. The repetition, 
 the fond dwelling upon the word Father, shows its impor- 
 tance, its preciousness, in the thought and the heart of 
 Jesus. To him it is not a figure, but represents a divine 
 reality. It does not stand for a shadow of a human rela- 
 tion, but for a fact above and before all. God is the 
 Father who is in heaven, f Father absolutely. , The advance 
 of the thought of Jesus beyond the average Jewish con- 
 ception is apparent in the extension of his idea of God as 
 Father so as to include all men in the divine family as 
 subjects of the paternal interest and love. Not only did 
 he teach his disciples to pray to God as their Fafher, but 
 he calls Him "your Father" in addressing the people, % 
 and teaches that as such He cares for all and even gives 
 His holy Spirit to all who ask Him. § With a wonderful 
 tenderness he includes "the little ones" within the scope 
 of the Father's sohcitude, whose will it is that not one of 
 them should perish. A general fatherhood is imphed in 
 a passage which defines a special sonship, as when he 
 enjoins upon his hearers to love their enemies, that they 
 
 *Matt. V. 45, vi. 14, vii. 7, xviii. 12. 
 
 \ b Ttarrfp v^mv 6 ev roK oupavoi<;, i. e., distinguished from and 
 above earthly fathers. It is remarkable that except Mark xi. 25, Matthew 
 alone has this full expression and the two other synoptists appear purposely 
 to avoid it, using sometimes simply itarr^p, as is the case with Luke even in 
 the Lord's Prayer. This fact presents a strange problem. See Holsten in 
 Zeitschr. fur wissenschaftl. Theologie, 1890, pp. 129 f. 
 
 X Matt. V. 45, 48, vi. 1, 4, 6, 18, 32. 
 
 § Matt. vi. 31 f ; Luke xi. 13. 
 
8o THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 may " become" sons, that is, moral-spiritual imitators of 
 their Father, whose sons they of course already are as 
 objects of His interest and love,"^ That Jesus' universal 
 conception of the Fatherhood of God made an inefface- 
 able impression upon the tradition of his teachings is 
 shown in the fact that in the Jewish first Gospel the col- 
 lection of scattered sayings of his composing the Sermon 
 on the Mount represents not the relation of Jahveh to 
 Israel, but of the Father in heaven to mankind. This 
 denationalizing transformation of the Jahveh-idea, like 
 that of the Jewish conception of righteousness, of the 
 kingdom of Qpd, and of the Messiah, is a striking evidence 
 of the greatness and originality of Jesus, in whose thought 
 the national gave place to the universally human. 
 
 The conception of the Fatherhood of God as it was 
 held in the thought of Jesus resulted in the removal of 
 the contradictions which inhered in the Jewish idea of 
 Jahveh, and hence in its transformation into a purer and 
 nobler type. Jahveh was on the one hand a consuming 
 fire, a jealous God, who " consumed " men by His " anger," 
 and ** troubled " them by His '* wrath," and who "set 
 their iniquities before Him," their "• secret sins in the light 
 of His countenance," so that *' all their days were passed 
 away in His wrath," f On the other hand He is repre- 
 sented as " merciful and gracious, long-suffering and 
 abundant in goodness," and it is said that He " does not 
 deal -with us according to our sins, nor reward us accord- 
 ing to our iniquities.":}: His anger was for the heathen 
 and the wicked Jews, and his mercy for the theocratic and 
 faithful of the chosen people. Only a few of the loftier 
 
 *Matt. V. 44, 45. 
 
 \ Ex. xxxiv. 14 ; Deut. iv. 24 ; Ps. xc. 7-9. 
 
 X Ex. xxxiv. 6 ; Ps. ciii. 10. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 8 1 
 
 spirits among the prophets and psalmists saw and declared 
 this merciful and paternal aspect of the divine nature, 
 while the average religious consciousness of the people was 
 darkened and troubled with " a fearful looking-for of judg- 
 ment.'* In the teaching of Jesus the contradiction in 
 question is resolved by a bold stroke of religious genius. 
 Banished from the heavens is the jealous God {Qeo^ 
 C,rikQorr}i)^ and in His place is enthroned the Saviour-God 
 (^fos* (yoorrjp), the Father of love and mercy. This endear- 
 ing paternal appellation is constantly on the lips of Jesus 
 instead of the stately " Lord," and words expressive of 
 servitude, fear, and wrath, he rarely or never uses,* Not 
 alone does the Father's love dispense pity and forgiveness 
 to the children, but surpassing the conception of a psalm- 
 ist who sang of its paternal bestowal upon those that " fear 
 Him," it is in the thought of Jesus a seeking love, poured 
 out upon the wandering and lost, and satisfied only with 
 their recovery, f Well does the originality of this 
 beautiful conception justify the saying of Jesus: "No 
 one knoweth the Father but the Son, and he to whom it is, 
 the will of the Son to reveal Him." % 
 
 The teaching of Jesus concerning the Father is, more- 
 over, by no means a speculative abstraction, but a fruitful 
 practical principle which is brought by him into the most 
 important relations to human conduct. As authoritative 
 requirement on the one hand and devoted obedience on 
 the other express the normal relation of father and chil- 
 
 * He uses Kvpio?, " Lord," several times in quotations from the Old Tes- 
 tament, SovXo^, "servant," in reference to the relation of man to God 
 rarely (see Matt, xviii. 23-34, xxi. 33-43), and dovXeveiv, " to serve,'' only 
 once (Matt. vi. 24), while qjofSo?, " fear," and opyTj, "wrath," he never 
 employs. Quite in the spirit of Jesus Paul says : "Ye did not receive the 
 spirit of bondage so as tc be again in fear," Rom. viii. 15. 
 
 •(■ Matt, xviii. 12 f. | Matt, xi. 27. 
 
 6 
 
82 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 dren, so in the thought of Jesus the divine will is the law 
 which man is required to observe. While the relation of 
 man to God in respect to obligation is sometimes repre- 
 sented as analogous to that of servant to master, and the 
 idea of reward is recognized, the highest, the one unique 
 conception of this relation, is that of imitation of the spirit 
 of the Father by men without consideration of reward, 
 but only that they may become true children of God. 
 This method of spiritual training by aspiration and inspi- 
 ration is the practical outcome of Jesus' doctrine of the 
 Fatherhood of God, and may be regarded as one of the 
 most distinctive and important of his contributions to 
 morality and religion. How he conceived the efforts of 
 man for union and harmony with the Father to be met 
 and responded to on the divine side is most beautifully 
 and effectively set forth in the parable of the Prodigal 
 Son * The main thought, the real purpose, of this para- 
 ble is evidently to represent the paternal disposition of 
 God toward man as a sinner, when penitent he desires to 
 return to Him. In opposition to the legalistic idea, ac- 
 cording to which righteousness alone would win the divine 
 favor and reward, and all sin must be treated with exact 
 penalty and without forgiving grace, he shows by a beau- 
 tiful touch of nature how the paternal love breaks through 
 all the barriers which thechild's transgression had erected, 
 and rushes toward the returning wretched penitent with 
 abundant gifts and overflowing joy. For the father it is 
 a sufficient answer to the unsympathetic complaints of 
 the elder son, who in the parable represents the legahstic 
 point of view, to say : " It is meet that we should make 
 merry and be glad ; for this thy brother was dead, and is 
 alive again ; he was lost, and is found." Of this parable 
 
 * Luke XV, 11-32. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 83 
 
 from the point of view of its ethical value it should be 
 said that it is encouraging to sinners, but not to sin. The 
 young man, who had consumed his substance in riotous 
 living, stranded at length upon a land smitten with fam- 
 ine, and reduced to the degraded position of a swineherd, 
 presents a terrible picture of the natural consequences of 
 transgression which follow with remorseless certainty un- 
 checked by any pitying hand. But that this inevitable 
 condition is not final, that it is not without hope, that out 
 of the lowest depths the penitent sinner may retrace his 
 shameful way, is shown by the teaching that he still has a 
 longing for his lost estate and the power to will the good, 
 and that at the end of the homeward journey is the father, 
 who will see him afar off, and go forth with open arms to 
 meet him. The religious aspect of Jesus' doctrine of the 
 Fatherhood of God finds its highest expression in this 
 picture of a father yearning for his long-lost son, and 
 joyfully preparing royal hospitalities on his return ; be- 
 cause of the love, hope, aspiration, and devotion which 
 are implied in the heart of the absent prodigal in the 
 supreme moment when he sets his face homeward. It is 
 characteristic of the religion of Jesus that by its teaching 
 of the Father it encourages the wayward and fallen in 
 the hour of shame and weakness with the assurance of 
 waiting love and forgiveness. Not less important, more- 
 over, is the moral aspect of this paternal idea in the cor- 
 ollary of the brotherhood of man. As children of God 
 men are all brothers, and the relation of mutual love and 
 kindness is plainly expressed as a duty even to enemies, 
 on the ground that God is " kind to the unthankful and 
 the evil." It is, accordingly, characteristic of this moral 
 teaching that the practice of brotherhood is not coldly 
 enjoined as a duty, and enforced by the authority of God, 
 
84 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 but is presented to men as a principle which has not alone 
 the divine sanction but also the divine example for its 
 support. Thus by Fatherhood in heaven and Brother- 
 hood on the earth the celestial and terrestial realms, 
 which in the common apprehension are widely separated, 
 are united in one great economy in which love is the uni- 
 versal principle. Morality, therefore, becomes a religion, 
 not as an " enthusiasm of humanity," but as an aspiration 
 after godlikeness. In view of these facts it is not too 
 much to say that under the idea of God as Father Jesus 
 has presented morality and religion in a completeness and 
 elevation never before attained, in a beauty and spiritual 
 power than which it seems impossible for the human mind 
 to conceive a greater and more effective. 
 
 6. — JESUS' ATTITUDE TOWARD THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 How Jesus in his teaching of righteousness, of the 
 kingdom of God, and of morals and religion in general, 
 proceeded upon the recognition of the sacred Scriptures 
 of his nation, but transformed and exalted them, has 
 already been shown in several instances. There remain, 
 however, to be considered a few passages in which his rela- 
 tion to the Old Testament is particularly indicated. The 
 importance of the subject to an understanding of the 
 spirit and method of the teaching of Jesus warrants a 
 separate treatment in a small space at least. It is to be 
 noted in the first place that in many cases he speaks like 
 a Jew of his time in appealing to the Old Testament as 
 an authority. He recognizes the validity of " the com- 
 mandments of God " when he charges the Pharisees with 
 laying them aside in order to keep their tradition, by 
 which they ** make void the word of God.* He recog- 
 
 * Mark vii. 7-17. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 85 
 
 nizes *' the weightier matters of the law " as binding in 
 reproving the scribes and Pharisees for omitting them.* 
 In answering certain Sadducees regarding the resurrection 
 he appeals somewhat vaguely to "the book of Moses," 
 employing, indeed, a very pecuUar method of argumenta- 
 tion.! To the important question, '* Which is the great 
 commandment of the law?" he repHes by quotations 
 from the Pentateuch, and when asked by the rich young 
 man the way to everlasting life, he refers him to the 
 Decalogue.:): In the parable of the Rich Man and 
 Lazarus, it is implied that hearing Moses and the 
 prophets would save the brothers of the former from 
 his fate in Hades. § He defends himself against the 
 charge of violating the sabbath by an appeal to David's 
 example and '* the law," and strengthens his argument by 
 a quotation from Hosea. || There are several other pas- 
 sages of similar import which might be quoted. 
 
 On the other hand, Jesus often employs words which 
 indicate a direct or indirect deviation of his teaching 
 from that of the Old Testament, and in some instances 
 he places himself in pointed opposition to the teachings 
 which had been given to those ** of old time." Although 
 in the matter of violating the sabbath he appeals, as 
 already remarked, to the Scriptures, he yet lays down a 
 general rule regarding the purpose of this day which goes 
 far beyond the question of disregarding the letter of the 
 sabbath-law in exceptional cases, and maintains the right 
 of private judgment as to how the day shall be observed 
 in the interest of man. With the bold declaration that 
 "The Son of Man is lord also of the sabbath," he 
 
 * Matt, xxiii. 23. f Mark xii. 24-27. 
 
 X Matt. xii. 28-31 ; Mark x. 19. § Luke xvi. 29. 
 
 II Matt. xii. 3-8. 
 
86 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 declines for himself and his disciples subjection to the 
 requiremients for the observance of the day sanctioned 
 by the Old-Testament legislation.* He invalidates in 
 principle that part of the ancient code which relates to 
 defilement from external contact by the declaration that 
 " Nothing that entereth into a man from without can de- 
 file him." f With regard to divorce he says that the 
 Mosaic permission of it was given on account of the 
 hardness of men's hearts, and thus accords to the law 
 only a transient and temporary value, as not consistent 
 with the real will of God in respect to marriage. J He 
 gives a new reading to the law against adultery, and puts 
 into it a meaning which was not contemplated in the 
 original, or rather supplements it by a new injunction ;§ 
 and as to the law of retaliation, he unqualifiedly abro- 
 gates it, and sets over against it a rule of non-resistance 
 which is expressed in the most extreme terms. || Besides, 
 it is evident that he conceived the prophetic promises of 
 the future and of the kingdom of God in an entirely 
 different way from that of the Old-Testament writers, 
 and that he completely transformed the Messiah-idea of 
 the prophets. 
 
 The recognition of and appeal to the law and the de- 
 preciation and rejection of it, which appear in the passages 
 just quoted, present a difficulty similar to that contained 
 in the celebrated section of the first Gospel, in which Jesus 
 appears to speak from a point of view of extreme legalism 
 in immediate connection with sayings expressing great 
 freedom and boldness in dealing with the law.^f The 
 words are : " Think not that I came to destroy the law 
 
 * Mark ii. 23-28. f Mark vii. 15. 
 
 X Mark x. 2-10. § Matt. v. 27, 28. 
 
 II Matt. V. 38-43. 1 Matt. v. 17-20. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 8/ 
 
 or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil. For 
 truly do I say to you, Not till heaven and earth pass away 
 shall one jot or one tittle pass from the law, till all be ful- 
 filled. Whoever shall break one of these least command- ^ 
 ments, and shall teach men so, will be called the least in 
 the kingdom of heaven ; but whoever shall do and teach 
 them, he will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 
 For I say to you, Unless your righteousness shall exceed 
 that of the scribes and Pharisees, ye will not enter the 
 kingdom of heaven." The proper interpretation of this 
 passage in its connection will perhaps solve the difficulty 
 presented by the apparently contradictory passages in ques- 
 tion. The question on which the exegesis of the passage 
 depends is, What did Jesus mean by saying that he came to 
 "fulfil"* the law and the prophets? This word may 
 mean in reference to a promise or a prophecy the accom- 
 plishment of it by the actual production of the thing 
 promised. But that this cannot be the meaning here is 
 evident from the connection, in which the discourse is of 
 righteousness and not at all of Jesus' fulfilment of 
 prophecy. There are two strong objections to giving to 
 "fulfil" the sense "to cause God's will as made known in 
 the law to be obeyed as it should be " : f first, tliat since 
 "law" in the passage must mean the whole law, that is, 
 the ceremonial as well as the moral, Jesus is made by this 
 interpretation to declare in flagrant contradiction to the 
 spirit of his teachings that he came to further the observ- 
 ance of the former; and second, that the antithesis of the 
 two clauses is not preserved, for the word translated " to 
 destroy":]: must mean not "to violate," the opposite of 
 
 * 7tX7]f)Go<3ai. 
 
 f Grimm-Wilke's, Clavis N. T. sub voce itXTjpooo. 
 
 X KaraXvdai. 
 
88 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 ** obey," but **to abrogate," declare or make void. This 
 is the function of one who has legislative authority. If, 
 then, we understand "fulfil" in a sense which makes it a 
 proper antithesis to " abrogate," the interpretation results 
 which gives to the passage the meaning: " I came not to 
 invalidate, but to establish and complete the law and the 
 prophets as teachers of righteousness." * Such may very 
 well have been the words of one who impressed the people 
 as speaking with authority, and they are consistent with 
 Jesus' general attitude toward the law in the apparently 
 contradictory passages previously referred to. In fact, 
 the contradiction which they seem to present disappears 
 in the light of this attitude of freedom and authority 
 toward the Old Testament, assumed by one who was 
 great enough to recognize and accept what was of perma- 
 nent value in this record and to complete its teachings by 
 adding new precepts and transforming old ideas by fresh 
 interpretations. His fulfilment of the law and the prophets, 
 then, was their completion by establishing and supple- 
 menting their fundamental principles — the perfect devel- 
 opment of their ideal reality out of the positive form in 
 which it was historically contained and limited, f With 
 the intellectual greatness and spiritual freedom which are 
 capable of assuming such an attitude of independence and 
 supremacy toward the law are entirely incompatible the 
 sayings that " not one jot [the smallest Hebrew letter] or 
 tittle [the hook by which nearly similar Hebrew letters are 
 distinguished from one another] shall pass from the law 
 until all be fulfilled," and that rank in the kingdom of 
 
 * For other New-Testament nsage of TtXrjpoi^v in the sense of " fill out," 
 " complete," see Luke vii. i ; John xv. ii ; Acts xii, 25, xiv. 26 ; 2 Cor, 
 X. 6 ; I Thess. ii. 16 ; 2 Thess. i. 11 ; Phil. ii. 2. 
 
 f Meyer, Commentar, i. 2, p. 149. So substantially Wendt, Immer, 
 Reuss, Baur, Keim, and many others. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS, 89 
 
 heaven is to be determined by the observance or non- 
 observance of "the least" of the commandments of the 
 law. For these words cannot be otherwise fairly interpreted 
 than as including the ceremonial prescripts ; and since it is 
 altogether contrary to the spirit and aim of Jesus to con- 
 firm and give permanence to these, it is highly probable 
 that the sayings in question received in the tradition a 
 more Jewish-legalistic expression than he himself could 
 have intended. 
 
 This view of Jesus' relation to the Old Testament ap- 
 pears to be confirmed by his answer to a question regard- 
 ing the fasting of his disciples put to him according to the 
 first Gospel by John's disciples and according to the third 
 by the Pharisees. After giving a qualified recognition of 
 fasting as an expression of sadness, he says: '* No one 
 putteth a patch of undressed cloth on an old garment ; for 
 the piece that fitteth in teareth away from the garment, 
 and a worse rent is made. Nor do men put new wine into 
 old skins, else the skins burst, and the wine runneth out, 
 and the skins are spoilt. But they put new wine into new 
 skins, and both are preserved together." "^ This is a most 
 decided expression in parabolic form of the incompatibility 
 of the spirit of the new doctrine with that of the old, or 
 at least with the old forms. He who attempts to fit the 
 Christian idea of life and duty with the observance of the 
 requirements of the law as to fasting, etc., will come into 
 discord with himself ; " there will be an ever enlarging rent 
 in his religious consciousness; he cannot retain the old, 
 because the new rejects it." If the spirit of the new teach- 
 ing be put into a vessel of the old, it will break the vessel, 
 and go to waste. Hence it must create a new form for 
 itself. Let this last statement be duly emphasized. There 
 
 * Matt. ix. 16-18 ;■ Mark ii. 14-22 ; Luke v. 27-29. 
 
90 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 was to be no harsh rupture with the old ideas and forms, 
 no violent separation from the venerated historical faith. 
 The new spirit has eternal youth, and can await the pro- 
 cesses of evolution to get itself a new tabernacle. Accord- 
 ingly, Jesus himself with the sublime patience of genius 
 continued to put the new wine into the old skins, inas- 
 much as he did not radically break with traditional and 
 legalistic Judaism. Wishing to preserve the substantial 
 contents of the law, whatever was permanent and valid in 
 it, he was great enough to know that he could not do this 
 without respecting to some extent the ancient forms. Yet 
 he clearly perceived the fundamental opposition of the 
 new and the old, and foresaw that the vigorous spirit of 
 the one would soon shatter the frail form of the other, 
 and make for itself '* nobler mansions " for the new ages 
 to come. 
 
 7. JESUS' TEACHING REGARDING HIMSELF. 
 
 That Jesus did not regard a doctrine of his person as a 
 matter of paramount importance is evident from the fact 
 that the historical sources of his teaching, the synoptical 
 Gospels, do not contain any explicit formulation of it by 
 himself. According to their story of his life he is so 
 much occupied with the preaching of righteousness and 
 the kingdom of God and with his mission of helpfulness 
 to men, that an express teaching as to his nature and 
 origin would have the appearance of turning aside from a 
 direct course, and give the impression of incongruity. It 
 is, accordingly, no easy task to determine from scattered 
 intimations and from the various epithets which he ap- 
 plies to himself precisely what teaching respecting his 
 person he intended to convey. The problem is connected 
 with the question whether at different periods of his 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 9 1 
 
 ministry he held different views of his nature and mis- 
 sion ; and this is again rendered difficult by uncertainty 
 as to the correct chronological arrangement of the 
 materials of the history in the synoptical Gospels. If we 
 regard Mark's Gospel as containing the most correct 
 chronology, and relegate some of the sayings and events 
 recorded in the first Gospel to a later time than is there 
 given to them, it will appear that it was not until near 
 the end of his ministry that Jesus made any express 
 declaration to his disciples of the nature of his mission. 
 It is, of course, an entirely different question how early he 
 became conscious of the real character of his work ; and 
 still another question, on which everything depends with 
 which this discussion is concerned, whether he regarded 
 himself at any time as anything more than a teacher of 
 righteousness and a herald of the kingdom of God. 
 The absence of assumptions of superiority and excep- 
 tional rank certainly characterizes one phase of his teach- 
 ing regarding himself. He lays no claim to a divine 
 origin or nature, or to an extraordinary birth. He ap- 
 plies to himself an adage respecting prophets, '^ calls 
 himself expressly a teacher, f and rejects the epithet 
 '* good " as belonging only to God. % The popular opin- 
 ions respecting his person prior to the scene at Caesarea 
 Philippi indicate that he had neither claimed to be more 
 than a man nor made upon the people the impression of 
 
 * Luke iv. 24. \ Matt, xxiii. 8. 
 
 % Mark x. 18, " Why callest thou me good?" In the first Gospel Jesus 
 is represented as saying : " Why askest thou me concerning that which is 
 good? " But here the question of the young man is also different : " What 
 good thing shall I do?" Yet why the fact that God alone is good should 
 be alleged as a reason why this question should not be asked Jesus is not 
 apparent. Mark's account appears to be the more correct, and Luke's 
 agrees with it. 
 
92 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 a superhuman being. For it appears that he was regarded 
 as John the Baptizer, Ehjah, Jeremiah, or some other one 
 of the prophets,"^ or in other words, as a forerunner of 
 the Messiah. Another aspect of his teaching concerning 
 himself, however, which is different from this, though not 
 incompatible with it, appears in the titles which he 
 assumed, "Christ," "Son of God," and "Son of Man." 
 With regard to the title " Son of God," it would ap- 
 pear that Jesus did not think that a doctrine of his divine 
 sonship was of sufficient importance to require at his 
 hands a precise definition of it. We can accordingly- 
 only infer the meaning which he intended to convey by 
 the words which he employed to express his relation to 
 the Father. For the most part when he addresses God 
 as the Father, or as his Father, or speaks of Him in this 
 relation, there is nothing in the form of words or in the 
 connection which appears to indicate that he thought of 
 his sonship as different in principle from that of other 
 men.f He teaches his disciples to call upon God in 
 prayer by the name of Father, as he himself was accus- 
 tomed to address Him, blesses the peace-makers as "sons 
 of God," and exhorts men to love their enemies that they 
 may become sons of their Father who is in heaven.;!: It 
 is doubtful, however, whether this view of the matter con- 
 tains a complete account of Jesus' consciousness of his 
 
 * Matt. xvi. 13. 
 
 f Matt. vii. 21, A. 32, 33, xi. 25, xii. 50, xvi. 17 ; Mark xiv. 36 ; Luke 
 xxiii. 46, etc. The expression, " My Father who is in heaven," b itarrfp 
 ^ov b hv Toi'5 ovpavoi<^, is peculiar to Matthew, and is generally used by 
 Jesus when he is speaking of God to others, while in addressing Him he 
 usually employs the simple term, "Father." Holsten has made an elabo- 
 rate study of the phrase, b itarrfp /40v, etc., in Zeitschr. fur wissenschaftl. 
 Theol , 1890, pp. 129-180. 
 
 X Matt. V. 9, 44. 45. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 93 
 
 relation to God as Son. For he sometimes speaks of 
 himself as ''the Son," as if he were conscious of a som 
 ship in a peculiar and eminent sense. In the parable of 
 the husbandmen he evidently intends to represent his 
 mission to the Jewish people as that of the " one beloved 
 Son," who was rejected and slain.* A consciousness of 
 preeminence appears also to find expression in the declara- 
 tion that "no one knoweth the Son but the Father, nor 
 doth anyone know the Father but the Son, and he to 
 whom it is the will of the Son to reveal Him.f An 
 exceptional relation of Jesus to God, at least in the 
 degree of knowledge and communion, appears to be ex- 
 pressed in these words, and the conviction that he had a 
 special mission to men could alone inspire the invitation 
 which follows to those who labor and are heavy laden. 
 This view appears to be the only conclusion of a fair inter- 
 pretation of these words and others of similar import. 
 Precisely what Jesus meant by this preeminent sonship 
 it may be impossible to determine; but from his teach- 
 ing respecting the spiritual sonship of those who love 
 their fellow-men the inference appears to be legitimate 
 that he regarded himself as " the Son " by preemi- 
 nence, as knowing the Father and especially qualified to 
 reveal Him to men, because, having fulfilled in the high- 
 est degree the conditions of this sonship, he was con- 
 scious of a spiritual affinity and communion with God 
 
 * Mark xii. 1-12. 
 
 \ Matt., xi. 27. Cf. Luke x. 17-20. It is doubtful whether the original 
 text is preserved in the Gospels, since Justin Martyr and Iren<eus were 
 acquainted with a reading which makes Jesus say ; ** No one knoweth the 
 Father but the Son, nor the Son but the Father, and they to whom the Son 
 ' may reveal him." Justin, Apol. i. 63, Dial. 100 ; Iran. Hteres. ii, 6, i. 
 See Hilgenfild, Theol. Jahrb, 1853, p. 215, Zeitschr. fur wissenschaftl. 
 Theol., 1867, p. 406 ; Keim. Gesch. Jesu, ii. p. 379. 
 
94 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 which could belong to none who had not attained to his 
 religious experience. His eminence above other ** sons 
 of God " would thus appear to be determined by degrees 
 of spiritual endowment or development. This conclusion 
 is supported by his own teaching regarding sonship, while 
 the opinion that he had in mind a metaphysical sonship, 
 that is, a divine nature, or a superhuman generation, is 
 wholly without support either in the passages in question 
 or in other teachings recorded by the synoptists. His 
 consciousness of illumination and endowment from on 
 high and of complete spiritual fellowship with the Father 
 could find no more appropriate expression than the term 
 ** Son of God." 
 
 The title '* Son of God " was, however, a Messianic 
 designation both before and at the time of Jesus, and a 
 consideration of his relation to it in this sense is necessary 
 to a full and fair discussion of the subject. The term in 
 its Old-Testament usage originated in the idea of the 
 theocracy. Both the people and their king were called 
 the son and first-born of God. Nathan is represented as 
 speaking the word of Jahveh in reference to the seed of 
 David : *' I will be his father and he shall be my son. If 
 he commit iniquity I will chasten him with the rod of 
 men," etc.'^' In the second Psalm Jahveh is made to say 
 to the anointed king : " Thou art my son, this day have I 
 \begotten thee." f As the Messiah-idea was developed 
 out of the theocratic conception, it was natural that the 
 term " Son of God " should become a Messianic title and 
 acquire a signification synonymous with " Son of David," 
 *' Christ," (anointed, or king,) and " Messiah." There are 
 several passages in the Gospels which show that it had 
 
 * 2 Sam. vii. 14. 
 
 f Verses 7, 12. See also Ps. Ixxxix. 27. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 95 
 
 this meaning at the time of Jesus.^*' That this was not, 
 however, the direct designation of the Messiah at that 
 time, giving prominence to those characteristics of him 
 on which the Jews laid the chief stress, and that the pop- 
 ular titles were " Anointed " (Xpzcrro^), " King of Israel," 
 and "Son of David," appears evident from the frequent 
 recurrence of these terms in the Gospels and contempo- 
 raneous writings, f But however the Jews of his time may 
 have regarded this appellation, there can be no doubt that 
 Jesus attached to it primarily the idea of spiritual like- 
 ness to and fellowship with God, the Father. If he 
 accepted it as a Messianic designation at all, it was in the 
 sense of a transformed Messiahship, according to which the 
 Messiah was not the Son of David and a temporal ruler, 
 but the Son of God and a religious teacher and Saviour. 
 He must have thought himself not to be the Son of God 
 because he was the Messiah, but to be the Messiah be- 
 cause he was the Son of God. This complete reversal of 
 the ideas of his time is a striking evidence of his origi- 
 naUty and his religious genius. Whether or no he believed 
 himself to be a descendant of David " according to the 
 flesh," he never appealed to such a descent as evidence 
 of Messiahship. On the contrary, after the multitude had 
 hailed him as the son of David on occasion of his entry 
 into Jerusalem he repudiated this relationship as belong- 
 ing to the Messiah by an argument which, though it may 
 seem strange to one who holds the modern ideas of inter- 
 pretation, was doubtless convincing to the Jews. How, 
 
 * Mark xiv. 6i ; Matt. xvi. i6 ; John xi. 27, xx. 31. 
 
 t Mark x. 47, xi. 10, xv. 2, 18, 26, 32 ; Matt. \\. 2 ; John i. 49. Ps. Sol. 
 xvii. 5, 23. 4 Ksdras xii. 32. For the designation of the Messiah as Son 
 of Gori there are to be quoted, Enoch cv. 2 ; 4 Esdras vii. 28, xiii. 32, 37 
 52, xiv. g. See Schurer, Gesch. des jud. Volkes, ii. p. 443. 
 
96 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 he asks, can the Christ be David's son, since David calls 
 him lord ? * 
 
 That Jesus believed himself to have a Messianic mission 
 to his nation in this transformed meaning of the Messiah, 
 ship appears to be the only legitimate conclusion from 
 the scene at Csesarea Philippi, where he accepted Peter's 
 declaration that he was " the Christ, the Son of the living 
 God."t If we accept the chronology according to which 
 he does not appear before this time to have declared him^ 
 self explicitly in a Messianic character, there would seem 
 to be in his proclamation of the kingdom of God, the Mes. 
 sianic kingdom, as already come, and in his assumptions of 
 spiritual authority, the expression of a consciousness oi 
 leadership and. preeminence which may be supposed to 
 have ripened even early in his ministry into a conviction 
 that his mission was Messianic in the sense in which in 
 accordance with his religious genius he interpreted this 
 conception. The scene at Caesarea Philippi is so well 
 authenticated, so firmly planted in the tradition of Jesus 
 that its rejection seems to be in the highest degree arbi- 
 trary. \ Whether the record of the first or of the second 
 Gospel be taken as the more correct, it is difficult to deny 
 that something of the nature of a Messianic declaration 
 to his disciples happened there without adopting a 
 .method of interpreting the Gospels which would tend to 
 invalidate them altogether. § Other serious objections 
 lie against the theory of Havet and Martineau that not 
 only this scene but the application of the Messianic titlq 
 
 * Mark xii. 36, 37. f Matt. xvi. 16. 
 
 \ On the contrary, see Martineau, The Seat of Authority in Religion, 1890. 
 Sbok iv. chap, ii 
 
 § Mark's account is the simpler of the two, and probably the older. Chap, 
 viii. 27 f. Cf. Matt. xvi. 13-21. Luke does not locate the scene at Cfesare; 
 Philippi, but " in a private place " where Jesus was praying, chap. ix. 18 f. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 97 
 
 to Jesus was an afterthought of his followers. For if 
 Jesus set up no claim to the Messiahship in any sense, it 
 is a difficult problem to account for the Messianic features 
 of his tradition as it has taken form in the Gospels. It 
 were surely a surprising and audacious invention which 
 should by an afterthought transform the Galilean carpen- 
 ter^s son, the preacher of righteousness and the healer of 
 the sick, who had been ignominiously put to death at the 
 instigation of the Jewish authorities, into the son of David, 
 the Messianic king of Israel. If he was, like John the 
 Baptizer, only a preacher of repentance and a prophet of 
 the coming kingdom, if in fact he \wdLsnot '* greater " than 
 this one, from what materials could an afterthought have 
 created the glorious figure of the Messiah ? The Messi- 
 anic traits of the Gospels require for their explanation 
 the hypothesis of the consciousness on the part of Jesus 
 of a Messianic mission, even though in a transformed 
 sense, and of the expression of this consciousness at Cse- 
 sarea Philippi or elsewhere, even though the expression 
 were misunderstood and interpreted in the sense of the 
 popular Messianism. The evangelists bear unconscious 
 testimony to his Messianic character when they record 
 his proclamation of the kingdom as already come, and 
 there is a consistency in their narratives when they report 
 his acceptance of Peter's confession as an open expression 
 of veiled implications which the disciples themselves had 
 not understood, because they were unable to comprehend 
 the Messiahship in the spiritual sense in which he appre- 
 hended it. Against this " slowness of heart " on the part 
 of his disciples his entire sincerity and lucidity of expres- 
 sion were ineffectual. One can readily sympathize with 
 those who think that in clearing Jesus of all Messianic 
 claims they set him free from the charge of insincerity. 
 
98 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 But insincerity, double-dealing, and *' accommodation " 
 there are not in the case as a possible charge against him. 
 He repeatedly declared and taught his disciples to preach 
 that the kingdom had already come, and there had been 
 no pomp and show of temporal power; and immediately 
 after the great scene at Csesarea Philippi he began to 
 speak of his humiliation, and rebuked Peter for his in- 
 ability to comprehend a suffering Messiah. In fact, there 
 is reason for believing that in the consciousness of Jesus 
 the Messiahship was associated with the lowly *' Servant 
 of Jahveh" of the second Isaiah, the teacher who should 
 *' bring forth judgment to the nations," and to whom 
 belonged no temporal dominion. One has only to recall 
 the scene in the synagogue at Nazareth * and the total 
 impression of his life and work of service and ministra- 
 tion to find a confirmation of this view.f 
 
 But by whatever title he called himself or wished to be 
 called of men, whether Servant of Jahveh, Servant of Man, 
 or Son of God, Jesus never claimed divine rank, and did 
 not fail to recognize his lowliness and dependence. While 
 in his spiritual fellowship with God, in his sonship, he 
 doubtless recognized the source of his power and the true 
 ground of his Messianic calling, he did not regard this 
 moral preeminence as annulling the difference of nature 
 which distinguished him as a finite creature from the 
 Creator, his Father. In the consciousness of sonship was 
 implied subordination to the Father, In his worship, in 
 his cry for deliverance in Gethsemane, in his religious ex- 
 perience and example which cannot be removed from the 
 story of his life without defacing it beyond recognition, 
 are implied dependence, insufficiency in himself, faith, 
 reverence, and love toward God — traitsofhumanness which 
 
 * Luke iv. 16-28. f ^ee Matt. xx. 28. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 99 
 
 constitute the beauty of his character. In claiming to be 
 Messiah, too, even in his exalted conception of Messiah- 
 ship, he could not have thought of himself as other than a 
 human personahty, since according to the prophets the 
 Christ was to be a man. His modification of the traditional 
 Messianic idea consisted only in transforming the human 
 king and Son of David into a human teacher and Saviour, 
 the Son of God. In his spiritual endowments and his 
 power over demoniacs he saw no occasion for self-exal- 
 tation, but rather for giving glory to God, by whom all 
 things had been delivered to him, and through whom he 
 was able to master the evil spirits. * He declared, indeed, 
 that the achievement of such mighty works as he performed 
 lay within the power of other men through faith and 
 prayer, f Though conscious that he was led by the divine 
 love, and supported by the divine power which might 
 through prayer be brought to his rescue with more than 
 twelve legions of angels, % he submitted his will to that of 
 his Father in a subUme renunciation in which the strength 
 of a great soul is seen to overcome through faith the infir- 
 mities of human weakness and doubt. § 
 
 If, then, while conscious that as the greatest of the sons 
 of God he had a Messianic ofifice, Jesus recognized his 
 dependence and limitation as a man, and accepted as the 
 type of his mission and his fortune the Servant of Jahveh 
 who in a lowly estate rendered his service of love to man, 
 he may well be supposed to have found in the designation 
 "Son of Man " a most appropriate title for himself. He 
 alone employs it to designate himself, and he uses it with 
 such frequency that it may be regarded a favorite term 
 with him. He did not, however, originate it, for it is 
 
 * Luke X. 21 f, xi. 20. f Matt. xxi. 21 ; Mark ix. 23. 29. 
 
 X Matt, xxvi. 53. g Mark xiv. 36. 
 
lOO THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 found in the Old Testament, where it is employed some- 
 times, in the poetic parallelism, of man as a member of the 
 human species, particularly when human lowliness and 
 weakness are emphasized,* and once when the people of 
 the Most High to whom God will accord an eternal king- 
 dom are seen by the writer in the form of a Son of Man in 
 distinction from the world-kingdoms which had appeared 
 in the forms of beasts, f The writer of this passage does 
 not appear to have had a personal Messiah in mind whom 
 he designated as the Son of man, and the words have a 
 Messianic significance only in the general sense that they 
 relate to the national political prosperity and dominion. 
 But it cannot be denied that they are suggestive of a 
 personal Messiah under the name Son of Man, and it is 
 not improbable that in some circles of Jewish thought this 
 term may have come to have a Messianic meaning prior 
 to the time of Jesus, although this opinion cannot be 
 unquestionably established by the use of the term in the 
 book of Enoch, since the section in which it is employed 
 may be of Christian origin. J There can be little doubt, 
 however, that the term in question is not represented in 
 the synoptical Gospels as a current and popular designa- 
 tion of the Messiah, and that Jesus in his use of it did not 
 give to his hearers generally the impression that he was 
 that expected person. His use of it prior to the scene at 
 Caesarea Philippi does not appear to have given this im- 
 pression even to his disciples. His celebrated question on 
 
 * Num. xxiii. 19 ; Ps. viii. 3 ; Job xxv. 6 ; Isa. li. 12 ; Ez. ii. 13, and 
 frequently elsewhere ; Dan. viii. 17. 
 
 f Dan. vii. 13. 
 
 :j: See Dillmann, Das Buch Henoch, etc., 1853 ; Hilgenfeld, Die jlidische 
 Apokalyptik, 1857 ; Weisse, Die Kvangelienfrage, 1856 ; Holsten, in Zeit- 
 sch. fiir wissenschaftl. Theol. , 1891, pp. 46-55. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. lOI 
 
 this occasion cannot be understood as meaning : " Who do 
 men say that I, the Messiah, am?" but rather: '' Who do 
 men say that I, who call myself the Son of Man, am ? " 
 Besides he could not have declared Peter's confession that 
 he was the Messiah to be given by divine illumination, if 
 he had supposed that in the mind of this disciple the Son 
 of Man and the Messiah were synonymous terms. It is, 
 indeed, not obvious how the expression could have come 
 among the Jews to have a Messianic signification. The 
 passage in Daniel does not directly convey it, and its use 
 elsewhere in the Old Testament is rather suggestive of 
 human dependence and weakness in contrast with the 
 greatness and power of God than of such qualities as the 
 Jews were accustomed to associate with their Messiah, 
 even though they conceived of him as a man descended 
 from David. The conjecture is not wholly without prob- 
 ability for its support that if Jesus did not introduce the 
 Messianic signification of the term, his use of it caused 
 this sense to be popularly attached to it when in the 
 tradition of his life his Messianic character was made dis- 
 tinctively prominent. The term belongs to the Gospel- 
 tradition, and does not appear in the Epistles. 
 
 At what time in the course of his ministry Jesus came 
 to regard himself as the Messiah is altogether a matter of 
 conjecture. But there are indications in the manner of 
 his teaching regarding the kingdom of God and in his 
 assumptions of authority and preeminence that he was 
 clearly conscious of such a mission before the open 
 acknowledgment of it at Ca^sarea Philippi. His unwill- 
 ingness to be openly proclaimed as the Christ must not 
 be regarded as indicating either that he rejected the title 
 or thought that it was one to be held as " a private preroga- 
 tive." In Yi^v^ of the fact that in his own thought the 
 
I02 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 Messiahship was transformed into a spiritual office, the 
 conjecture is not improbable that he wished to prepare the 
 people for the reception of the new kingdom of God, the 
 kingdom as he conceived it, before announcing himself as 
 its king. It is not altogether clear, besides, that he at first 
 attached to the term Son of Man, a distinctively Mes- 
 sianic signification. But the difficulty of this problem is 
 apparent on account of its complication with the question 
 of the chronology of the Gospels. While in the accounts 
 of the second coming, which doubtless give an apocalyptic 
 coloring to Jesus' actual sayings regarding the future, 
 there is evidently to be seen the influence of the passage 
 in Daniel upon the representations of the writers, there is 
 great probability that, from the manner in which he 
 speaks of himself as the Son of Man in words which are 
 undoubtedly genuine, his conception of the appellation 
 was rather derived from that frequent Old-Testament 
 usage m which this term represents human nature in its 
 dependence and limitation.* In the answer to the scribe 
 who wished to follow him, the saying that " the foxes 
 have holes, and the birds of the air have lodging-places, 
 but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head," f 
 there is no intimation that the appellation in question had 
 in the mind of Jesus the exalted signification of Son of 
 God or Messiah, or even of the " Archetypal Man," but 
 it rather appears to designate him as the man, who wishes 
 only to be man in the most genuine and widest sense of 
 the conception, as one who thinks nothing to be remote 
 from himself which belongs to a human existence, to the 
 fortune of a human life, and who therefore regards it as 
 
 * The passages referred to on a preceding page are especially suggestive 
 of this relation in contrast with the divine nature. 
 f Matt. viii. 20. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. IO3 
 
 his peculiar calling to submit to all the sufferings and 
 sacrifices incident to his position among men for the ser- 
 vice of mankind.*^ In view of the fact that Jesus em- 
 ploys this term without any indication of its origin and , 
 with no explanation of its meaning to himself, it would 
 appear that a higher and more emphatic sense could only 
 be read into it in this passage with its connection. A 
 similar conception of the Son of Man appears to be 
 expressed in the passage which follows the admonition to 
 his disciples not to aspire after positions of authority, but 
 to regard the place of a servant as the highest : *' As the 
 Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to 
 give his life a ransom for many." f A fortune in which 
 service rendered to the benighted and wandering and 
 suffering undergone at the hands of unfeeling and unap- 
 preciative men, predominate, is described in the words : 
 *'The Son of Man came to seek and to save that which 
 was lost"; ''So also is the Son of Man to suffer by 
 them.":t^ In such a use of this designation no reference 
 to a Messianic dignity is necessarily contained, and none 
 could be conveyed to the disciples or to other hearers. A 
 participation in the ordinary conditions of human life is 
 indicated in the saying: " The Son of Man came eating 
 and drinking," etc., and a subordination to God is implied 
 in the declaration regarding forgiveness for words spoken 
 against the Son of Man as opposed to the unpardonable 
 blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. § 
 
 *Baur, Zeitschr. fiir wissenschaftl. Theol., i860, p. 280. 
 
 \ Matt. XX. 28. \ Luke xix. ro ; Matt. xvii. 12. 
 
 § Matt. xii. 32. To charge that the cure of demoniacs, which Jesus 
 claimed to effect " by the finger of God," was effected through Beelzebub, 
 was unpardonable "in this age or in the age to come," that is, in the pre- 
 Messianic or in the Messianic age. It is doubtful that Jesus spoke these 
 words; for all reference by him tea Messianic age still to come is irreconcil- 
 
I04 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 On the other hand there are several passages besides 
 the apocalyptic sayings in which Jesus appears as the 
 Son of Man to assume an exceptional rank and dignity, 
 and to employ expressions regarding himself which could 
 not but lead his disciples to think of him as occupying a 
 peculiar and eminent position in the kingdom of God. 
 In the explanation of the parable of the sower, the sower 
 of the good seed is said to be the Son of Man.* As 
 this is a parable of the kingdom, the position which 
 Jesus assigns to himself as the representative of the 
 celestial powers of good against the arch enemy, the 
 Devil, in a great contest of the ages, is clearly one of 
 high rank. When the Pharisees charged his disciples with 
 breaking the sabbath by plucking and eating the ears of 
 grain as they passed through the fields, he replied that in 
 the temple the priests profane the sabbath and are blame- 
 less, and declared that something greater than the temple 
 was there among them, closing with the announcement 
 that the Son of Man is lord of the sabbath, f To cer- 
 tain scribes who denounced him as a blasphemer because 
 he had declared forgiveness of sins to a paralytic he 
 answered that the Son of Man had power on earth to 
 forgive sins. :j: In reporting this event the first evangelist 
 remarks that the people glorified God who had given 
 such power to men, that is, had raised up one man 
 furnished with such a divine power. 
 
 The meaning of the term in question in the mind of 
 Jesus has been regarded as involving one of the most 
 difficult problems in New-Testament theology, and the 
 
 able with his belief in his Messiahship, in the spiritual kingdom and its 
 spiritual king as already come. 
 
 * Matt. xiii. 37. f Matt. xii. l-g. 
 
 ifMatt. ix. 1-8; Mark ii. 1-13. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. IO5 
 
 paradoxical use of it in the passages just quoted to ex- 
 press now lowliness, now exaltation, is not an unimport- 
 ant factor in the difficulty. The apparent disincHnation 
 of Jesus to define his nature and rank is, of course, an- 
 other, and this might seem to enjoin the student of his 
 teachings not to inquire too curiously into a matter to 
 which he evidently attached little importance. One 
 might well heed this implied injunction, were not the in- 
 quiry necessary in order to correct many tenacious and 
 widespread errors. It is evident, then, in view of the 
 foregoing considerations, that Jesus' employment of the 
 term Son of Man as a designation of himself can only be 
 understood in connection with his peculiar apprehension 
 of the Messiahship, that is, with the transformed sense in 
 which he appropriated this ancient Jewish title. Had he 
 wished to declare himself as the Jewish Messiah, there 
 was no lack of terms at his disposal which could not have 
 been of doubtful import to his disciples and to the peo- 
 ple. Instead of employing any of these he chose as his 
 favorite and almost exclusive self-designation a term 
 which had at the best a veiled and obscure signification, 
 and which was by no means a current and popular ex_ 
 pression for the Messiah. This he evidently did not use 
 as an equivalent for the first personal pronoun, as if he 
 could have said without incongruity : " If the Son of Man 
 send them away fasting to their houses, they will faint on 
 the road," etc., but only when he attached a special sig- 
 nificance to it as a designation of himself. Precisely what 
 this special significance was is the problem to be solved. 
 The opinion that he intended by the expression to desig- 
 nate only his lowly position and fortune as a man is hardly 
 tenable in view of his use of it in connection with the 
 assumption of exceptional dignity and authority, as in 
 
I06 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 some of the passages already quoted. Out of a combina- 
 tion of the two sets of passages, however, appears to come 
 a sohition of the apparent paradox which they contain 
 and of the problem itself. For while to Jesus himself the 
 popular designation of Messiah was not the Son of Man, 
 but the Son of God, he employs the former expression in 
 several passages in which it appears to have a Messianic 
 import. But this Messianic import was not a traditional 
 one, according to which the Messiah was to be a tem- 
 poral ruler, but the ancient idea transformed, spiritual- 
 ized, and raised to its world-historical significance. As 
 the Messiah in this sense, then, Jesus regarded himself as 
 a man sharing the common fortunes of his kind ; and as a 
 man of exceptional spiritual endowments, charged with a 
 great spiritual mission, and living in intimate communion 
 with God, he did not hesitate to accept the appellation. 
 Son of God. As Son of Man and Son of God he ac- 
 cepted the Messianic office, and in the former term he 
 included the spiritual elevation which the latter ex- 
 pressed together with the human lowliness which was 
 the obvious implication of the former. 
 
 The use by Jesus of a Messianic designation, which did 
 not reveal him as Messiah, evidently presents a difficulty. 
 How could he employ a term which he understood as a 
 Messianic appellation, but which no one besides so under- 
 stood, prior to the proclamation of himself as Christ at 
 Caesarea Philippi? This difficulty has led Bruckner and 
 Baldensperger to assume that the chronology of Matthew 
 and Mark is incorrect, and that Jesus really prior to the 
 event at Caesarea Philippi preached a Messiahless king- 
 dom of God, representing himself as only the herald of 
 the kingdom and not its king. This conclusion appears 
 unnecessarily to discredit the records, although it has 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. IQJ 
 
 been reached after the publication of learned treatises 
 on the subject by several of the ablest masters.* Per- 
 haps a solution of this problem may be found in the ex- 
 alted spiritual sense in which Jesus regarded himself as 
 Messiah. Not wishing to declare himself openly as the 
 Christ in the Jewish sense of the term which was con- 
 trary to his conception of his mission, he employed as 
 fitting to this conception the expression Son of Man, and 
 used it as a veiling and problematical designation which 
 was to serve until his spiritual idea of the kingdom of 
 God and of himself as the Messiah should be in a measure 
 prepared for and established. Whether the designation 
 was original with him, or was suggested by the passage in 
 Daniel or by other passages in the Old Testament, must 
 remain a matter of conjecture. It should be observed, 
 however, that in the passage in Daniel the representative 
 of the kingdom of God was designated by a term which 
 emphasized human qualities, and suggested both the de- 
 pendence and the weakness of human nature and the 
 victory with which it should ultimately be crowned. It 
 is evident that this idea has an affinity with Jesus' con- 
 ception of the Messianic kingdom as a spiritual and tem- 
 poral economy which was to engage upon the earth in a 
 successful conflict with the powers of evil. In the term 
 Son of Man as employed in the Old Testament Jesus 
 appears, then, to have found an idea to which he could 
 attach his teaching regarding the Messiah and his king- 
 dom, but in taking his departure from it he gave it, by a 
 spiritual and original interpretation, a meaning which was 
 strange and surprising to his countrymen. In the term 
 Son of Man as applied to himself he included the idea 
 of his participation in human nature, and indicated the 
 
 * Notably by Baur, Hilgenfeld, and Holtzmann. 
 
I08 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 lowliness of the external appearance and earthly fortune 
 of one who also bore the dignity and glory of the Mes- 
 sianic rank. This idea appears to lie at the basis of his 
 declaration regarding the sabbath. For if the sabbath 
 was made for man, then man may assume the right to de- 
 termine how it shall be used for his purposes and his well- 
 being, and the Son of Man may well assert that he is lord 
 of the sabbath, and, as the Messianic representative of 
 God and of mankind, has the authority to decide how it 
 shall be appropriated to divine and human uses. It is, 
 indeed, just this assumption of authority as the Son of 
 Man for the sake of mankind which distinguishes this 
 new-born Messiahship. Precisely the qualities it is which 
 have constituted for ages the strength and greatness of 
 Christian character that Jesus unites in this transfigured 
 and spiritualized Messiah, lowliness and spiritual eleva- 
 tion, the love which extends a hand for the service of man 
 and the faith which reaches up to the Eternal, the Son of 
 Man and the Son of God united and constituting a per- 
 sonality which spends itself in helpfulness and renews 
 itself by worship — such is the new Messiah of world-his- 
 torical significance and world-transforming power."^ 
 
 * Among the most important discussions of the title " Son of Man " the 
 student may consult Reuss, La Theologie chretienne au Siecle apostolique, 
 i. pp. 227 ff ; Baur, Neutestamentl. Theol. pp. 75 ff, and Zeitsch. fiir wis- 
 senschaftl. Theol. i860, pp. 274 ff ; Immer, Neutestamentl. Theol. 1877, 
 pp. 105 ff ; Weizsacker, Untersuch. iiber die evangel. Gesch. pp. 426 ff ; 
 Keim, Gesch. Jesu, ii. pp. 64 ff, and Der geschichtliche Christus, pp. 100 ff ; 
 Schenkel, Bibel-Lexicon, iv. , article " Menschensohn''; Colani, Jesus-Christ 
 et les Croyances messianiques, etc., 2 ed. pp. 74 ff ; Beyschlag, Neutesta- 
 mentl. Christol. pp. 9 ff ; Wittichen, Die Idee des Menschen, pp. 96 ff ; 
 Hilgenfeld, in Zeitschr. fiir wiss. Theol. 1863, pp. 327 ff ; Holtzmann, ib., 
 1865, pp. 212 ff ; Hausrath, Neutestamentl. Zeitgesch., i. pp 420 ff ; Mar- 
 tineau, Seat of Authority, etc., Book iv. chap, ii ; Wendt, Die Lehre Jesu, 
 ii. pp. 44 ff ; Weisse, Die Evangelienfrage, pp. 196 ff ; Holsten, Zeitschr. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS, IO9 
 
 8. — THE SAYINGS OF JESUS CONCERNING HIS DEATH. 
 
 The questions whether Jesus foresaw and foretold his 
 death by violence, and whether he attached any doctrinal 
 significance to his passion, present grave difficulties to the 
 Student of the Gospels. The sayings which relate to the 
 former of these questions naturally fall into two classes : 
 those which contain only intimations of his suffering or 
 death, and those in which his passion is announced ex- 
 plicitly and in detail. Intimations only are contained in 
 the sayings that the disciples would fast when the bride- 
 groom should be taken away from them ; that the Son of 
 Man must suffer at the hands of those who had *' done 
 what they would " with John the Baptizer ; that the sons 
 of Zebedee knew not what they asked, but would, indeed, 
 drink of his cup ; that the woman who poured the oint- 
 ment upon his body did it to prepare him for burial ; that 
 he had a baptism to be baptized with, and that his soul 
 was troubled until it be accomplished ; and that he must 
 go on day by day, for it could not be that a prophet 
 should perish out of Jerusalem.* On the other hand 
 there are several sayings in which Jesus is represented as 
 explicitly foretelling his passion and giving details of it 
 to the effect that he would be delivered up to the chief 
 priests and scribes, who would condemn him to death, 
 and hand him over to the gentiles to mock and scourge 
 and crucify, and that on the third day he would rise from 
 the dead.f If, now, it be assumed that the writers of 
 the Gospels have correctly reported the sayings of Jesus 
 
 fur wiss. Theol. 1891, pp. 1-80 ; Bruckner, Jahrb. fur Prot. Theol. 1886, 
 pp. 254 ff ; Baldensperger, Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu, etc., 2te Ausg. pp. 
 169 ff ; Stap, Etudes sur les Ongines du Christianisme, 3 ed. pp. 322 ff. 
 
 *Matt. ix. is.xvii. 12, xx. 22. xxvi. 12 ; Luke xii. 49, xiii. 33. 
 
 ■(• Matt. xvi. 21, xvii. 22, xx. 17. 
 
no THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 in which he foretells his passion and resurrection with 
 such detail and particularity, it is necessary to assume also 
 a supernatural foreknowledge of these events on his part, 
 since by no natural combination could the place and the 
 special features of the proceedings be foreknown. But 
 this assumption of a supernatural prescience encounters a 
 very grave difficulty in the circumstance that the narra- 
 tives represent Jesus as appealing to the prophecies of 
 the Old Testament in confirmation of his predictions re- 
 garding his passion. Since, now, these predictions and 
 this appeal to prophecy are in immediate connection, it 
 would be altogether arbitrary and unwarrantable to main- 
 tain that the former were upon the basis of superhuman 
 insight, and that the- latter was upon the basis of ordinary 
 human knowledge^ that is, that in predicting the details 
 of his passion he was divinely illuminated,while in interpret- 
 ing the prophecies he proceeded as a Jew of his time would 
 proceed. But it has been shown by a process of the most 
 thorough and learned grammatical and historical inter- 
 pretation of the Old-Testament passages in question that 
 in none of them is there any reference to the passion of 
 Jesus or to his resurrection. The application which Jesus 
 is reported to have made of them cannot, then, have been 
 made by superhuman knowledge, and there remains no 
 support for the hypothesis of a miraculous foreknowledge 
 of the particulars of his passion, since both operations 
 must stand or fall together. Again, the supposition that 
 Jesus foretold the circumstances of his passion with such 
 detail as the evangelists represent encounters a still 
 greater difificulty in the repeated statements in the Gos- 
 pels that the disciples knew nothing of his approaching 
 death, and in their conduct after his crucifixion. If he 
 made such explicit statements regarding his death as he 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. Ill 
 
 is reported to have made, it is incredible that they should 
 not have understood him, and that his fate upon Calvary- 
 should have fallen upon them as a blow for which they 
 were entirely unprepared, destroying their hopes in him 
 as the one who *' was to redeem Israel," that is, as the 
 Messiah. They could neither have become familiar by 
 unmistakable teachings'* with the idea of a suffering 
 Messiah, nor have been instructed, as the Gospels indicate 
 that they were, that a violent death of the Christ was 
 predetermined in the divine counsels and foreshadowed 
 in the Old-Testament prophecies. 
 
 The conclusion to which these considerations appear, 
 then, to point is that the explicit and detailed announce- 
 ments of his death and resurrection which Jesus is repre- 
 sented in the Gopels as having made received their 
 present form in the tradition of his life in the light of the 
 events in question. The intimations of his passion, how- 
 ever, which are contained in the passages previously 
 quoted, are not subject to the difficulties which render 
 those particular predictions improbable, and are, indeed, 
 explicable in accordance with the idea of the Messiahship 
 which he entertained, and with the actual situation in 
 which he was placed. Since in Jesus' conception of the 
 kingdom of God renunciation and service, self-sacrifice 
 and the depreciation of earthly goods and honors were 
 required of its members, and since he as its head declared 
 himself to have come not to be served, but to serve, he 
 may very well be supposed to have anticipated from the 
 beginning that his work could be completed only through 
 trial and suffering. The fate of some of the prophets 
 and of John the Baptizer may have occasioned the pre- 
 sentiments which are expressed in the intimations in 
 
 * " And he told them \}C)Ss, plainly" {7tapf}a6icC)^ Mark viii. 32. 
 
112 THE GOSPEL AND ITS IN2ERPRETATI0NS. 
 
 question. From the time when he began to entertain the 
 new idea of his Messiahship there could have been no 
 necessity of an adjustment in his mind between the office 
 of the Christ and his own sacrifice of himself for his 
 cause. As no kingly Son of David, but as the humble 
 Son of Man, he saw in his life of homeless wandering, of 
 kindly services of healing and helpfulness, in the en- 
 durance of the espionage and suspicion, the scorn and 
 rejection of those in authority, not a fortune which was 
 incompatible with his Messiahship, but its essential and 
 glorious fulfilment. 
 
 The general character and tendency of Jesus' sayings 
 regarding his sufferings and sacrifices indicate that he 
 looked upon them as incidental to the service which 
 belonged to his mission to mankind, and as necessary 
 under the existing conditions to the establishment of his 
 cause. It does not appear from the general scope of his 
 teaching that he attached to them any doctrinal signifi- 
 cance. Accordingly, those passages appear surprising 
 and incongruous, in which he is represented as speaking of 
 his death as a *' ransom," and of his blood as shed " for 
 the remission of sins." After having said to the sons of 
 Zebedee that they should, indeed, drink of his cup, he 
 indicates to the disciples that among them rank should be 
 -determined by the degree of service, even as the Son of 
 Man came not to be served, but to serve. So far his 
 words appear to be in entire accord with the occasion and 
 with all his teaching, but the evangelist makes him add 
 the surprising words : " And to give his life a ransom for 
 many."* It should be observed in the first place that 
 the saying of Jesus as called forth by the occasion appears 
 to be complete without these words, and that they as a 
 
 *Matt. XX. 28, Xvrpov avtl itoWwv. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 113 
 
 doctrinal statement implying a somewhat developed 
 theory of an atonement are unfitting to the CQnnection in 
 which he is discoursing of humility and of the high rank 
 which should be given to those who best served others. 
 But they appear most incongruous when regarded in rela- 
 tion to his general teaching concerning the consequences 
 of sin and the attainment of righteousness. In no other 
 place is there even an intimation of a substitution of the 
 sufferings and death of Jesus by which men should be 
 relieved as by a '* ransom." Rather the burden of his 
 teaching is that men should repent and put themselves 
 into right relations to God by obedience and by seeking 
 His kingdom and His righteousness. In the Sermon on 
 the Mount blessings are pronounced on those who hunger 
 and thirst after righteousness, who make peace, who are 
 persecuted for righteousness' sake, who are pure in heart; 
 and there is nowhere in it an intimation that the divine 
 favor is to be obtained in any other way than by love to 
 God and man, that is, by the practice of morality and re- 
 ligion. Man is represented in the teaching of Jesus as 
 in immediate relations with the Father. The latter needs 
 no propitiation, and for the former no sacrifice is required 
 but that of his selfish passions. The man who would 
 save his life must lose it. No other Hfe is offered up as a 
 substitute for his. They who labor and are heavy laden 
 are, indeed, invited to come to Jesus, but not that he 
 may bear their burdens for them. If anyone will come 
 after him, let him take up his own cross and follow. In 
 Golgotha there is no substitution. Each soul must pass 
 through it following the great Leader. This is the teach- 
 ing fitted to produce the heroic character of which Jesus 
 himself was the noblest type, and capable of nurturing 
 a church which through conflict and martyrdom should 
 
114 ^-^^ GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 conquer the world. It was quite in accordance with all 
 his teaching, with his conception of his mission and of 
 himself as the Son of Man, that Jesus gave up his life 
 as the supreme act of renunciation for the sake of 
 fidelity to himself and his cause ; and the power of 
 his death, of his cross, is manifested, not in those who 
 would fain- grasp a crown on the '* merits " of his sacrifice, 
 but in the heroes who, nurtured in his spirit, have dared 
 or died for conscience and the truth — in a Luther, a Huss, 
 a Savonarola, and the great army of martyrs. 
 
 The saying, then, in which Jesus is made to speak of his 
 life as a ransom must either be an addition to the dis- 
 course in which it occurs, reflecting the ideas of a later 
 time, or it does not give in the Greek rendering an accu- 
 rate reproduction of his words. The idea conveyed in the 
 Greek Gospel is so incongruous with the teaching of Jesus 
 regarding God and man, sin and the recovery from it, that 
 to establish it as his would require evidence that no mis- 
 takes occurred in transmitting the tradition of his sayings, 
 that the compiler of the first Gospel was incapable of 
 error, and that the text of his writing was preserved un- 
 corrupted down to the time when express witnesses for 
 this passage can be found. A similar difificulty is presented 
 in the passage in which Jesus is represented as saying on 
 the occasion of his last meal with his disciples that the 
 cup was his blood of the covenant shed for many for the 
 remission of sins.'^ The variations of the three synopti- 
 cal narratives and the new reading, to be considered 
 further on, in the first and second, furnish indications 
 of a solution of the difificulty. In the first place, it is 
 worthy of note that the second and third Gospels do not 
 
 * Matt. xxvi. 28, £/5 aepsdiv ajxapziSv. Cf. Mark xiv. 24; Luke 
 xxii. 20. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. II5 
 
 contain the words of the first : "For the remission of 
 sins." They are also wanting in two quotations in Justin 
 Martyr.* They are, besides, altogether incongruous with 
 the teachings of Jesus, according to which the righteous- 
 ness which consists in the fulfilment of the law is declared 
 to be the condition of entering the kingdom of heaven. 
 In the parable of the Prodigal Son reconciliation with the 
 Father is represented as immediate, and hence without 
 the intervention of an atonement. It is conditioned 
 solely on repentance and return. In view of these con- 
 siderations the words in question must be regarded as a 
 later addition to the first Gospel, and as representing a 
 theological conception of the significance of the death of 
 Jesus which he could not have entertained. The omission 
 of *'new" before ''covenant," according to the latest 
 reading in the first and second Gospels, makes it appear 
 questionable whether Jesus taught that by his blood a 
 *' new covenant," was confirmed, by which the relation of 
 the sinner to God elsewhere defined in his teachings was 
 altered. The idea of a covenant of *' grace" is that of 
 Paul and Luke, but is incongruous with the point 
 of view of the first two evangelists. It is not improb- 
 able that the words "new covenant" found their way 
 into Luke's Gospel under the influence of Paul, and 
 that the conception of the establishment of a cove- 
 nant of blood which is indicated in the first two Gos- 
 pels without the word "new" may have had the 
 same source. The incompatibility of the idea of a sac- 
 rificial atonement with the general scope and intention 
 of the teaching of Jesus respecting the relation of man 
 to God is so manifest that these words cannot but 
 be regarded with suspicion. To what extent the Pauline 
 
 * Apol, i. 66, Dial. 70. 
 
Il6 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 conception affected the representation of the first two 
 Gospels is a matter of conjecture, but there is no doubt 
 that the idea of the intention of the last supper which 
 has prevailed in Christendom is that of Paul and Luke, 
 and not that of the writers of Matthew and Mark. 
 For, according to these latter, it does not appear that 
 Jesus on the occasion of the supper thought of establish- 
 ing a permanent rite or sacrament. It is only in the third 
 Gospel that the words, " This do in remembrance of me,'* 
 appear, Paul, indeed, writes that he had *' received of 
 the Lord," that is, Jesus, the account which he gives of 
 the last supper ; '^ but this expression doubtless means 
 that he had derived the information from the current 
 tradition of the life of Jesus, and PauFs understanding of 
 the intention of the last supper was that it was to be 
 observed in remembrance of Jesus until his glorious 
 appearance or the Parousia. f But this tradition appears 
 to have been unknown to the writers of the first two 
 Gospels. At least they give it no recognition, and since 
 they wrote earlier than Luke, his account may show the 
 natural traditional accretions of which the criticism of the 
 Gospels detects many examples. The conjecture appears 
 probable that the words, " Do this in remembrance of 
 me," were not originally spoken by Jesus, but that in the 
 celebration of the supper in the primitive church the 
 presiding member of the community in distributing the 
 elements may have exhorted the communicants to con- 
 tinue the repetition of the meal in remembrance of Jesus, 
 and that from this primitive Christian ritual the words 
 were added in the tradition to those actually spoken by 
 Jesus. The doxology of the Lord's Prayer, '' For thine 
 
 *i Cor. xi. 23 ff. 
 
 f axfi'i'^ ov av eXQi;}, *' until he come." 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS, II "J 
 
 is the kingdom," etc., undoubtedly had a similar origin. 
 In the latter case textual criticism is able to detect the 
 origin of the added words, or at least to show that they 
 are an addition. The fact that it cannot do this in the 
 former case renders the addition of the doubtful words 
 conjectural, but not improbable. 
 
 If, now, what has here been conjectured, and perhaps 
 shown to be probable, corresponds with the facts in the 
 case, it will result that at the last supper Jesus did not 
 intend to establish a rite for the observance of future 
 generations, did not attach the importance to the meal 
 which has been accorded to it in the Church, and did not 
 teach that a new covenant was established in his blood. 
 On the occasion of the supper, when according to all the 
 indications his life was in imminent peril, he may have 
 spoken of the broken bread and the wine poured out as 
 symbols of his body which was to be broken and of his 
 blood which was to be shed, without attaching any doc- 
 trinal significance to them. If, moreover, he did not at 
 the supper say that his blood was shed " for the remission 
 of sins," and did not on another occasion speak of his 
 death as a " ransom," then it will result that his sayings 
 regarding his death were in entire agreement with the 
 rest of his teachings, and that the doctrine of an atone- 
 ment for sin, as it has commonly been taught in the 
 Church, cannot be supported by his authority. It will 
 not, however, result that the doctrine of the forgiveness 
 of sin does not rest upon his teaching. For it is clearly 
 implied in the Lord's Prayer, and the parable of the 
 Prodigal Son presents a striking illustration of it. Ac- 
 cording to this parable, it does not appear, as has already 
 been remarked, that any other atonement is required as 
 the condition of forgiveness than the sinner may himself 
 
Il8 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 make by his remorse and repentance. Furthermore, it 
 does not appear that forgiveness removes any of the 
 natural consequences of transgression, except perhaps 
 such as might result from an unforgiving rejection of the 
 returning penitent. The parable leaves us in uncertainty 
 as to the moral condition of the prodigal after his return, 
 does not tell us whether he was happy or unhappy at the 
 feast, and reveals nothing as to his future spiritual fortune. 
 
 9. THE TEACHING OF JESUS REGARDING THE LIFE TO COME. 
 
 In entering upon the consideration of the subject of 
 this section it is of the greatest importance to discrimi- 
 nate between explicit teachings of Jesus and his allusion 
 to or acceptance of certain current beliefs of his time with- 
 out developing them or giving importance to them by 
 special sanction and enforcement. One attains this point 
 of view only when one has arrived at a clear understand- 
 ing of the scope of Jesus' actual teachings, and so far 
 realized his position as to comprehend his idea of the 
 work which he wished to accomplish. It is manifest at 
 the outset that Jesus did not regard himself as possessing 
 universal knowledge and as having the mission to instruct 
 mankind on all matters of human interest and inquiry. 
 He put forth no claims to so vast a mission, and modestly 
 confined himself in his teaching within limits of which he 
 appeared to have a very clear conception. Had his in- 
 terpreters understood him in this respect the volume of 
 so-called Christian theology would have been far smaller 
 and its quality much better. Yet the difficulty of placing 
 oneself at his point of view and perceiving the scope and 
 intention of his mission is by no means insurmountable. 
 One has only to observe the general trend of his sayings 
 and to discriminate between those of them which are 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. II9 
 
 didactic and concern the main purpose clearly in view, 
 and those which are incidental or contain only allusions 
 to current opinions, to see that he was chiefly concerned 
 with teaching men the nature of the kingdom of God and 
 inducing them to become possessed of righteousness, in 
 which he included all the great moral and religious virtues 
 and achievements. While his aim was pre-eminently 
 practical, it cannot be said that he had no theology, for 
 his teaching concerning God was well-defined and promi- 
 nent. His theology was not, however, speculatively held, 
 but was definitely and persistently applied to the present 
 life, as when he enjoined upon men the practice of kind- 
 ness and forgiveness that they might be like their Father 
 in heaven, and declared that love to God and men was 
 the essential thing in the law and the prophets. 
 
 The distinction between the actually didactic sayings 
 of Jesus and his acceptance and appropriation of current 
 opinions may be seen by contrasting the former with his 
 attitude and procedure with regard to the popular angel- 
 ology and demonology of his time. With respect to the 
 existence and nature of angels and demons he teaches 
 nothing, but accepts what was currently believed. Leav- 
 ing out of consideration the apocalyptic passages in which 
 angels are spoken of as executing the Messianic judgment 
 at the coming of the Son of Man in glory, we find in un- 
 doubtedly genuine sayings of Jesus these celestial beings 
 of the Jewish mythology distinctly recognized as residents 
 of heaven who surround the Deity. "^ They are mentioned 
 on occasion of the argument with Sadducees concerning 
 the resurrection with an intimation that they are not sen- 
 suously constituted like human beings, f and in another 
 
 * Luke xii, 9. In the parallel, Matt. x. 33, reference to angels is omitted. 
 \ Matt. xxii. 30 ; Luke xx. 36. 
 
I20 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 place guardian angels are recognized,* whether in accord- 
 ance with the Jewish doctrine that every man has a guard- 
 ian angel from birth, or with the belief which has inci- 
 dental expression in the Old Testament that such spirits 
 watch over the pious, is not certain. f As in the current 
 Jewish mythology there was a realm of evil spirits with 
 Satan at their head over against the realm of good spirits 
 or angels, so Jesus recognizes the kingdom of Satan and 
 the subordinate demons as powers hostile to the welfare 
 of man.:j: Accordingly he says to Peter, " Get thee be- 
 hind me, Satan! thou art my stumbling-block," § thus 
 declaring that in that disciple's spirit of opposition to his 
 mission he recognized a likeness to the great Adversary 
 of men. At the last supper he is said to have remarked 
 to Peter that Satan had asked for him that he might sift 
 him as wheat. || In accordance with the current idea that 
 diseases were caused by the evil powers, which is ex- 
 pressed in the remark of the third evangelist that a cer- 
 tain woman " had had a spirit of infirmity eighteen 
 years," T we find that Jesus proceeds with entire naivetd 
 upon the theory of demoniacal possession, and frequently 
 speaks of the cure of a class of ailments, of whose exact na- 
 ture we have not a precise knowledge, as the casting out of 
 demons.** He declares that the woman who was "bent 
 together, and wholly unable to Hft herself up," had been 
 
 *Matt. xviii. lo. 
 
 f See Von Colin, Biblische Theologie, ii. p. 67, and Meyer, Commentar 
 in loc, 
 
 X Mark iii. 23 ff. 
 
 § Matt. xvi. 23 ; Mark viii. 33. Luke omits Peter's protest and the re- 
 buke administered to him, chap, ix. 18 ff. 
 
 II Luke xxii. 31. Tf Luke xiii. 11. 
 
 ** Mark i. 23 ff, 34, iii. li f, 15, 22 ff, v. 2-5, vi. 7, ix. 17 f, 22 ff ; Luke 
 X. 17-20, xi. 14 f, xiii. 32. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS, 121 
 
 "bound by Satan eighteen years," and he speaks of and 
 treats persons known as demoniacs precisely from the 
 point of view of his age and of the exorcists who, it 
 appears, cured or professed to cure them. The attempt 
 to remove the difficulty which appears to some people to 
 lie in Jesus' acceptance of the demonology of his time by 
 assuming him to have spoken of it figuratively is opposed 
 to a sound interpretation of words which are so precise 
 and direct as those in question. It is impossible to con- 
 ceive that any one should speak otherwise than he did 
 who without a didactic purpose should adopt the popular 
 opinion. The interpretation which seeks to remove the 
 difficulty by the supposition that in using the language in 
 question Jesus adapted himself to the current opinions, 
 knowing them to be erroneous and not wishing to correct 
 them, is altogether unsound and baseless. For to say 
 nothing of the tacit deception on the part of Jesus which 
 is implied in it, the doctrine that Jesus was better in- 
 formed than his contemporaries of the nature of the 
 diseases in question is entirely h priori^ since it rests upon 
 a theory of his knowledge which we have no means of 
 establishing. Both these expedients are rationalistic and 
 altogether opposed to the critical point of view. They 
 can be adopted only by one who at the cost of the perver- 
 sion of the plain meaning of words is determined to make 
 the records accord with a preconceived theory of the 
 person of Jesus. 
 
 Now the sayings of Jesus regarding the condition and 
 fortune of men after death can only be correctly inter- 
 preted when the current opinions in his time on the 
 subject are taken into account, and a discrimination is 
 made between what is didactic in his words and what is a 
 mere reference to or appropriation of these opinions with- 
 
122 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATION'S. 
 
 out a didactic purpose. That the Jews of the time of 
 
 Jesus, with the possible exception of the Sadducees,* 
 believed in the immortality of the soul is established by- 
 contemporary testimony as well as by the writings of 
 the New Testament. According to the doctrine of the 
 Pharisees the souls of men pass immediately after death 
 into sheol or hades which is divided into two parts, para- 
 dise and gehenna, a place of reward and a place of pun- 
 ishment. Yet it is no real, vigorous life which is lived in 
 this subterranean paradise, and a return to the upper 
 world, or the resurrection, is the sole condition of entering 
 upon the full enjoyment of existence. It is difficult to 
 determine precisely how the doctine of the resurrection 
 was conceived by the Pharisaic party at the time of Jesus. 
 If the Sadducees who interrogated Jesus regarding it 
 represented it correctly, it would appear that the Pharisees 
 believed in a resurrection of the physical body with its 
 original organs and passions. Yet in an address of Jose- 
 phus to an imprisoned companion to restrain him from 
 suicide the belief is expressed that the souls of those 
 who ** depart out of this life according to the law of 
 nature "^ ^ '^' are again sent in the revolution of the 
 ages into pure bodies." f The question, who according 
 to the belief of the Pharisees were to have a part in the 
 resurrection, is involved in obscurity. Were the pious 
 Israelites only to be raised, or the good and the bad 
 Israelities, or all men? According to Josephus, this for- 
 tune was to be that of the good alone, presumably of the 
 
 * The Sadducees denied the resurrection, but it is not certain that they did 
 not believe in the continued existence of the soul in slieol, in accordance 
 with the old Hebrew doctrine. See Hase, Dogmatik, 2te Ausg., p. U7, 
 and Zeller, in Theol. Jahrb., 1847, p. 391. 
 
 f dyvoiS 6oDf.ia6iv. B. J. iii., 8, 5. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 1 23 
 
 Jewish people. The Pharisees, he says, believe that souls 
 have an immortal vigor, and that under the earth, (i. e., 
 in sheol) there will be rewards and punishments accord- 
 ing as they have lived virtuously or viciously ; that the 
 latter are assigned to an everlasting prison,* but that for 
 the former there is power to revive and live again, f On 
 the contrary the doctrine of the resurrection of both the 
 righteous and the unrighteous is said in Acts to have 
 been the doctrine, or at least the " hope," of the " sect " 
 to which Paul had belonged, that is, the Pharisees ; \ and 
 in the fourth Gospel a tw^ofold resurrection is declared, 
 that of those who have done good, and that of those 
 who have done evil, the one to **life," the other to "con- 
 demnation." § But in our first three Gospels there is no 
 intimation that the doctrine of a resurrection of the 
 unrighteous was held by the Pharisees. Rather if Jesus be 
 allowed to have represented the Pharisaic belief, and is 
 correctly reported by Luke, the resurrection would appear 
 to be only for those who should have been accounted 
 worthy to obtain it.|| Although the Jewish literature of 
 the two centuries before the time of Jesus contains inti- 
 mations of a resurrection of good and bad men, ^f 
 evidence that this belief was entertained by the Pharisees 
 in the first century of our era appears to be wanting. In 
 fact there were two doctrines held on this subject, for the 
 second book of Maccabees, written about a century be- 
 fore Christ, appears to teach that it was believed that 
 
 * EipYjxdv didiov. 
 
 f ^adroovr/v rov dva/3iovv, " a facility of return to life,'' Ant. xviii. 
 I. 3. 
 if Acts xxiv. 15. 
 § John V. 28, 29. 
 
 II Luke XX. 35. The first two Gospels do not report these words. 
 IT See the Enoch-Parables, li. 
 
124 ^-^-^ GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 Jews alone would be raised. * The book of Daniel repre- 
 sents that *' many " would be raised, " some to everlasting 
 life and some to shame and everlasting contempt." f But 
 this resurrection was doubtless regarded as confined to 
 the Jewish people, and does not necessarily include all 
 of them. The doctrines of the resurrection and the 
 judgment appear to have been gradually developed, and 
 it is difficult to determine precisely in what form they were 
 generally entertained at a particular historic period. On 
 the whole there seems to be no good reason for rejecting 
 the very direct and definite testimony of Josephus previ- 
 ously quoted, to the effect that the Pharisees believed 
 that the righteous only could hope for deliverance from 
 the gloomy realm of sheol, while the wicked would be 
 detained there in an "everlasting prison." The opinion 
 appears to be well grounded that the doctrine of a general 
 resurrection "did not establish itself till toward the end 
 of the first century, when Christianity had with some 
 definiteness separated from Judaism," and that "the 
 restoration to bodily life is generally treated in the New 
 Testament as a reward of Christian faith," while " for 
 unbeHevers there was no risen Redeemer, no definite 
 centre of activity in the coming Hfe." X 
 
 The student of the Jewish doctrine of the resurrection 
 must be on his guard against imposing upon it the modern 
 Christian conceptions of the present life and the life to 
 come. In other words, the Jewish doctrine must be re- 
 garded as connected with the national Messianic expecta- 
 tions. While the Messiah was originally conceived as 
 merely a temporal ruler descended from David and hav- 
 ing no connection with a judgment and resurrection, we 
 
 * Chap. vi. 9, 14, 23. t Chap. xii. 2. 
 
 X Toy, Judaism and Christianity, p. 394. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 12$ 
 
 find that shortly before or after the time of Jesus the 
 author of the Enoch-Parables represents him as clothed 
 with the functions of a judge. To what extent this idea 
 prevailed among the Pharisees in Jesus' time it is impos- 
 sible to determine ; but its presence is plainly indicated 
 in the apocalyptic accounts of the second coming in the 
 synoptic Gospels, and in PauFs conception of this event. 
 Here we find that the resurrection and judgment did not 
 in the Jewish thought involve a change of worlds, as the 
 doctrine is held by Christians at the present time. Rather 
 in accordance with ideas expressed in the apocryphal 
 literature of the century or two preceding the time of 
 Jesus, the resurrection and judgment are connected with 
 a change of earthly relations only. Although in the 
 accounts of the coming of the Son of Man in the first 
 three Gospels there is no mention of a resurrection, yet 
 the scene is earthly. Paul conceived this coming as 
 attended with a resurrection of "the dead in Christ," a 
 " change " of the physical organism of the Christians then 
 living, and an ascent to " meet the Lord in the air," after 
 which they were to be *' forever " with him.* His 
 thought of a renovated earth at the coming of Christ 
 appears to be a reproduction of an idea expressed in 
 earher Jewish literature, t In this conception of a Mes- 
 sianic crisis as it existed in pre-Christian and early Chris- 
 tian thought is seen the significance of the terms, " this 
 age," and " the age to come," the former of which was 
 employed to designate the pre-Messianic, and the latter 
 the Messianic time, or " the kingdom of God." The 
 translation of the Greek word for "age" {aioov) by 
 " world " has contributed to a misunderstanding of the 
 
 * I Cor. XV, 51 ff, I Thess. iv. 13-18. 
 
 f Rom. viii. 20-23 ; ^/- Is. Ixvi. 17 ; 2 Pet. iii. 13. 
 
126 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 Jewish conception of the two great world-periods which 
 were conceived to be separated by the advent of the 
 Messiah, and strengthened the tendency to read modern 
 Christian ideas of the life to come into many New-Testa- 
 ment passages. When after the crucifixion it appeared 
 that Jesus had not realized the Messianic expectations, 
 the truly Messianic age, *' the age to come," was regarded 
 as still in the future to be ushered in by his second ad- 
 vent. Attention to this fact will remove obscurity from 
 many texts in the Gospels and Epistles. It was, however, 
 natural and inevitable that these national Messianic limita- 
 tions should in the course of time fall away, and that with 
 a more developed conception of the life to come its scene 
 should be transferred from the earth to the heavenly 
 regions. This idea would naturally be connected with 
 the earlier one of a resurrection of the saints to share in 
 the joys of the earthly reign of the Messiah by the notion 
 of a second resurrection, that of the wicked, and perhaps 
 a general judgment, by which the scene of earthly life 
 would be brought to a close. Hence there is an intima- 
 tion of a second resurrection in the words of Paul, *'The 
 dead in Christ shall rise first," and in the Apocalypse a 
 judgment is mentioned as occurring after the millennial 
 reign of the saints.* It is not probable, however, that 
 this more developed view of the future was entertained 
 by the Pharisees of the time of Jesus. 
 
 There remains now to be considered what relation 
 Jesus held to the beliefs of his time concerning the life to 
 come, and to what extent he may be regarded as teaching 
 a doctrine respecting it. From the foregoing review of 
 contemporary Jewish opinion it is evident that he found 
 already existing a definite doctrine of the immortality of 
 
 * Chap. XX. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS, 12/ 
 
 the soul and of the resurrection of the body, which was 
 doubtless held subject to certain limitations imposed by 
 the national Messianic expectations. That he surpassed 
 these limitations so far as the locality of the hfe to come 
 is concerned, and did not conceive of it as an earthly 
 state under the Messianic reign, appears probable from 
 such sayings as : ** Lay up for yourselves treasures in 
 heaven"; "Great is your reward in heaven " ; "Rejoice 
 that your names are written in heaven." ^ This point of 
 view is the only one that was consistent with his con- 
 ception of his Messiahship and the kingdom of God as 
 spiritual and already existing. If he employed the 
 language which is attributed to him by the synoptists 
 respecting the coming of the Messiah with the clouds of 
 heaven to sit on an earthly throne of judgment, he must 
 have entertained the popular Jewish belief that the 
 Messianic future was a temporal condition. For these 
 apocalyptical passages unquestionably indicate a descent 
 of the Son of Man to the earth within the life-time of the 
 then existing generation to " sit upon the throne of his 
 glory" as a judge of the nations. They are in accord 
 with the Jewish idea of the Messiah's earthly reign, and 
 give expression to such hopes as his followers may very 
 likely have cherished, who as Jews conceived of the life 
 to come only in connection with the national Messianism. 
 His spiritual conception of the future existence of the 
 soul in a heavenly state renders it very probable that he 
 did not employ the language in question. 
 
 The sayings of Jesus regarding the resurrection are so 
 fragmentary and obscure that no complete doctrine can 
 be derived from them. In answering the question of 
 certain Sadducees concerning, as is probable, the Phari- 
 
 * Matt. V. 12, vi, 20 ; Luke x. 20. 
 
128 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 saic teaching on the subject he expresses himself very 
 positively and didactically with reference to two points, 
 the imnnortality of the soul and the nature of the body in 
 the resurrection-state. In the third Gospel he is repre- 
 sented as implying that the resurrection is a reward of 
 merit which only those shall obtain who " have been 
 accounted worthy" of it. These '* will be sons of God, 
 for they are sons of the resurrection," and '* cannot die 
 any more." The first two Gospels omit these words and 
 report him to have said only that those who are raised do 
 not marry, but '* are as the angels in heaven." * In an- 
 other passage in the third Gospel two resurrections are 
 implied, in accordance with the view which is expressed 
 in Paul's words, ** The dead in Christ shall rise first," 
 where Jesus is reported to have spoken of a recompense 
 to be had "at the resurrection of the righteous." One 
 can hardly refrain from raising the question whether there 
 be not grounds for a critical doubt of the genuineness of 
 the words: " They who have been accounted worthy to 
 obtain that world and the resurrection from the dead," 
 and, " Thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of 
 the righteous." They are akin to the Pauline view in 
 implying two resurrections ; they are not found in the 
 other two Gospels ; and there is a hint of the resurrection 
 as belonging to the Messianic time conceived as in the 
 future (also a Pauline idea) in the words, *'to obtain that 
 world," which in the original mean *' to obtain that age," f 
 that is, the age to come, or that of the Messiah. If 
 Jesus regarded the Messianic age as that in which he 
 lived, and the kingdom of God as already come with him, 
 he cannot consistently have spoken in this way of the 
 
 * Matt. xxii. 30-33 ; Mark. xii. 24-27 ; Luke xx. 34-39. 
 \ Tov ai(^voi ixeivov zvxBiv. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. I2g 
 
 resurrection, and his teaching of a reward in heaven is in- 
 compatible with the teaching of a recompense in the 
 Messianic age which was temporal and earthly. If, now, 
 this critical doubt should be found to be tenable, and if 
 Jesus' only words concerning the resurrection were to the 
 effect that they who are raised will not marry, but will be 
 as the angels in heaven, and that they cannot die any 
 more, then we have as positive teachings on the subject : 
 I. That there is a resurrection ; 2. That in the resurrection- 
 state the earthly bodily conditions are absent, and the 
 raised are as the angels in heaven ; 3. That the resurrected 
 cannot die any more. It is evident that much is wanting 
 here to a complete doctrine of the resurrection. For it is 
 not stated who are to be raised, whether all men or a 
 part of mankind, and there is no indication of the time 
 when the resurrection is to take place, and whether it 
 means an immediate entrance of the soul upon spiritual 
 conditions at death, or its union with an angelic body 
 after an indefinite tarrying in hades. To one who should 
 wish to found a complete doctrine of the resurrection on 
 the sayings of Jesus respecting it these omissions would 
 be embarrassing, as would also the vague reference to the 
 Jewish mythology in the saying that the resurrected are 
 "as the angels," since we know nothing of the angelic 
 nature and modes of existence. It is evident, then, that 
 Jesus did not intend in the sayings in question to formu- 
 late a complete and explicit doctrine of the resurrection, 
 but that his purpose was in the main to correct the crude 
 and materialistic ideas of the Jews regarding the life to 
 come. If the incompleteness of his teaching on this 
 subject was intentional, as we may very well believe that 
 it was without deciding whether it resulted from reserve 
 or a want of knowledge, the conclusion does not appear 
 
130 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 improbable that he did not think that his great cause of 
 righteousness and the kingdom of God would be promoted 
 among men by such definite information as might furnish 
 a basis for a dogmatic thesis on the resurrection. 
 
 With regard to a state of existence intermediate between 
 death and the resurrection Jesus appears to have adopted 
 the popular Jewish conception of sheol, hades, or the 
 underworld, as a place of reward and punishment prior 
 to the resurrection. In the parable of the rich man and 
 Lazarus which appears to be intended to teach that the 
 judgment of God upon men does not always accord with 
 that of their fellow-men upon the earth, "^ it is represented 
 that Lazarus was at his death carried by angels to Abra- 
 ham's bosom, that is, to a place of honor in the under- 
 world, while the rich man after he had died was in 
 torment there. These two places in hades, which it 
 appears were separated by a great gulf, are evidently the 
 paradise and the gehenna of the Jewish mythology. It is 
 not known, however, that according to the Jewish con- 
 ception of the underworld the inhabitants of the two 
 regions could see and converse with one another; and we 
 may regard this episode in the parable as introduced by 
 poetic license, so to speak, in order to carry out the pur- 
 pose of the teaching, which was not to formulate a doctrine 
 in regard to the underworld. The popular mythology 
 appears to have been adopted and adapted to the didactic 
 end in view. Luke also reports that on the cross Jesus 
 said to the "penitent" malefactor, so-called: " This day 
 shalt thou be with me in paradise." In view of these facts 
 it is certainly unwarrantable to say that Jesus did not 
 accept the current Jewish idea of the underworld as the 
 abode of souls immediately after death. If he spoke these 
 
 ^ Luke xvi. ig-31 ; cf, verse 15. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 13I 
 
 words to the malefactor, he must have believed that he 
 would himself descend into that region. Yet one may 
 accept this conclusion while holding that definite dis- 
 closures as to an intermediate state constituted no part of 
 his real teaching. The traditional conceptions of the 
 people among whom he was reared were a part of his 
 mental furnishing, and he could not but employ them in 
 adapting his teaching to the comprehension of his hearers. 
 But not to deny, even apparently to accept as realities, 
 Satan, demons, angels, paradise, hades, gehenna, and a 
 resurrection out of the underworld, does not constitute 
 these things a part of his teaching, does not make them 
 real, does not warrant us in constructing dogmas upon 
 them. Had he taught among the Greeks, and used their 
 hades as a vehicle of his ideas or an illustration of his 
 teaching, it would not follow thence that the Greek hades 
 was anything but a mythological conception. Somewhere 
 the line must be drawn between the things which he knew 
 and was inspired to teach and the things of which he was 
 not informed and felt no call to teach. The dogmatist 
 and the rationalist, twin brothers, will each draw this line 
 where it suits his prepossession or his caprice. The critic 
 must draw it according to the facts, that is, as he is taught 
 by the record to draw it. Now the record clearly teaches 
 him that there are certain great ideas which constituted 
 the substance of the teaching of Jesus, on which he laid 
 the stress of his ministry, on which he heroically staked 
 its fortune and his life — the fatherhood of God and the 
 brotherhood of men ; the spiritual kingdom of heaven and 
 himself its king; immortality, righteousness, justice, mercy, 
 love to God and man — principles fundamental in the moral 
 and spiritual orders of human existence and essential to 
 human salvation. The record also teaches with equal 
 
132 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 clearness that on certain other matters he placed no 
 emphasis, that in fact he thought them to be unessential, 
 such as the mythological ideas of his times, good and evil 
 spirits, details of the resurrection, arcana of the under- 
 world, particulars of the life to come, and that he employed 
 them as subordinate and subsidiary to his great aim to 
 bring men into accord with one another and with God. 
 How to make a right discrimination between these two 
 groups of ideas is a great lesson ; and although the dog- 
 matic theologian does not look into it, it is the first lesson 
 that the interpreter of the great Teacher should learn. 
 
 That Jesus had a vivid conception of the enormity of 
 sin and of the terrible punishment which it entails is evi- 
 dent from the language whether literal or figurative in 
 which he speaks of it. To derive from his words, how- 
 ever, an explicit and detailed doctrine concerning the 
 fate of the wicked after death is very difficult if not 
 impossible. His sayings in regard to the judgment, for 
 example, are involved in great obscurity. The words 
 ascribed to him respecting the coming of the Son of Man 
 to a judgment on the earth within the life-time of the 
 generation then living, including the celebrated discourse 
 in the twenty-fifth chapter of the first Gospel, cannot even 
 if they are genuine, concern the final destiny of mankind 
 at large. But apart from the fact that they have never 
 been fulfilled, they are, as has already been pointed out, 
 so entirely incompatible with his idea of the kingdom of 
 God and his Messiahship, that their spuriousness may be 
 regarded as scarcely questionable. Other sayings respect- 
 ing "the judgment" and " the day of judgment"* are 
 too vague to serve as the basis of any other doctrine than 
 that a judgment of some kind awaits all unrighteousness. 
 
 * Matt. V. 22, X. 15, xi. 24, xii. 36, 41, 42. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 133 
 
 It is evident that his conception of the divine judgment 
 transcended the popular Jewish belief which connected it 
 with the reign of the Messiah, but his precise view of it is 
 indeterminable. His very definite reference to gehenna, 
 the Jewish place of punishment in the underworld, in 
 connection with the penalty of sin presents no little diffi- 
 culty. In the first place it is not clear, as has already 
 been shown, whether or no he held the popular Jewish 
 behef that the wicked would have no resurrection, but 
 would remain in the "everlasting prison" in sheol. One 
 passage appears to indicate the contrary in which he 
 speaks of fearing God who has power to destroy both 
 soul and body in gehenna.'^ Since the soul was not sup- 
 posed to be connected with the body after death until the 
 resurrection, the possible punishment here referred to 
 could not be inflicted upon the unresurrected occupant 
 of gehenna. The futility,- however, of attempting to 
 found a doctrine upon this vague and isolated passage is 
 manifest. More precise are other references to gehenna, 
 such as : " Whoever shall say, Fool ! shall be in danger of 
 the gehenna of fire" ; " It is better for thee that one of 
 thy members should perish than that thy whole body 
 should go away into gehenna." f This appears to be a 
 distinctive adoption by Jesus of the Jewish belief in the 
 underworld-punishment of the wicked, since he cannot 
 be supposed to have declared that there was "danger" 
 of something which he did not believe to exist. The 
 question, however, arises whether he adopted the belief 
 
 * Matt. X. 28. 
 
 f Matt. V. 22, 29, 30; Mark ix. 43-48. Mark intensifies the saying by 
 adding: "Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched," in 
 imitation of Isa. Ixvi. 24. What Jesus actually said is of course in- 
 determinable. 
 
134 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 in whole or only in part. No means exist for answering 
 this question categorically, but important results must 
 follow from any conjectural answer to it. If we suppose 
 him to have adopted it in whole and to have intended his 
 adoption of it as a doctrine regarding destiny, then it 
 follows that he actually taught that there is a realm called 
 sheol under the surface of the earth to which the souls of 
 the dead descend; that this is divided into two parts, 
 paradise and gehenna; and that in the latter is an " ever- 
 lasting prison " in which the spirits of the wicked are 
 confined, and from which there is no release, while from 
 paradise the good will be resurrected at the coming of 
 the Messiah, Whoever is not willing to accept this my- 
 thology as the Christian doctrine of destiny must assume 
 that Jesus adopted the Jewish belief on the subject only 
 in part, or not at all in reality, but only employed the 
 current terms in order to impress upon the popular under- 
 standing certain important spiritual principles. What he 
 was intent on teaching is that sin entails punishment, and 
 he is not to be quoted as an authority on the topography 
 of the underworld and the Jewish mythology in general. 
 From the spiritual character of his teachings in general 
 the conclusion appears to be warranted that Jesus did not 
 adopt and teach the Jewish belief as to the underworld in 
 its literal import. No doubt he regarded the danger which 
 he typified by ^' the fire of gehenna " as a very grave and 
 very real danger; but it does not follow from this that 
 the reality of the fire, or that of gehenna as an under- 
 world-locality, was a capital point in his teaching. How 
 long he conceived that the punishment which he referred 
 to under the popular symbol of gehenna-fire would con- 
 tinue there are no data for determining. His adoption of 
 the terms for the didactic purpose in view does not imply 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 135 
 
 his adoption of all that they signified to the popular im- 
 agination. It would appear, accordingly, that a resort to 
 the analogy of his teaching is the only means of deter- 
 mining his views of the nature and duration of punish- _^. 
 ment. If, then, we accept Mark's report of his words in 
 reference to the sin against the Holy Spirit* instead of the 
 account in the first Gospel, he appears to have taught 
 that there was one offence which might expose the 
 offender to an indefinite continuance in sinning [aioDViov 
 a}xapxY}}Aaxo€). But even if it were established that this 
 aeonian duration was conceived as endless, nothing but 
 the possibility of such a state is here implied. In fact 
 Jesus nowhere expressly affirms the endlessness of pun- 
 ishment. On the other hand he does not expressly 
 declare that it is not endless, and that at some time all 
 the consequences of sin will cease to exist. In fact, on 
 the subject of destiny he maintained a remarkable reserve 
 and reticence, as if he did not regard an explicit teaching 
 on this subject as an essential part of his work. His great 
 doctrine of the fatherhood of God does not appear to 
 have been promulgated primarily with its relation to 
 human destiny in view, but rather as an ethical-religious 
 principle. The optimistic inference respecting the destiny 
 of man which may legitimately be derived from it is,. 
 however, of great moral and religious importance. In the 
 teaching of the father who goes out to meet the returning 
 prodigal, placing no arbitrary limits of " probation " on his 
 repentance, is conveyed a deathless hope for the fallen 
 soul. More than a hope is expressed in the teaching of 
 the good shepherd who goes forth and seeks for the be- 
 
 * Mark iii. 2g. Here again the precise words of Jesus are indeter- 
 minable — a fact which should moderate the zeal of the theologian and the 
 maker of systems. 
 
136 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 nighted estray until the lost is found. An assurance is 
 here given that the unwearied divine love can never 
 abandon its own. While, then, the teaching of Jesus 
 distinctly emphasizes the enormity of sin and the dire 
 consequences of a wicked life, it does not furnish explicit 
 dogmatic statements on which a complete doctrine of 
 human destiny can be established.* One who delights in 
 
 * Whether Jesus' view of the life to come was substantially that of the 
 Pharisees of his time, and if it differed from theirs, how and to what extent, 
 are problems difficult of solution. If the synoptic apocalyptic sayings as to 
 his second coming are rightly attributed to him, he must have held with the 
 Jews that the Messiah's advent denoted " the end," and his reign the future, 
 "eternal" condition of men, although from this point of view the omission 
 of the resurrection is remarkable. In the Enoch-Parables (li. i, 2,) a general 
 resurrection is mentioned at the coming of Messiah, at which the righteous 
 are to be "selected " for salvation. If, however, the synoptic apocalypseis 
 not to be ascribed to Jesus, the question arises whether or no he transcended 
 in his conception of the future the Jewish Messianism, and thought of the 
 life to come in accordance with the modern Christian idea. While from the 
 exegetical point of view such a rupture with the prevalent ideas of his time 
 may appear improbable, and is in fact generally so regarded, his spiritual 
 conception of his Messiahship, which did not admit at all of the materialistic 
 apocalypse, may well be urged in favor of it. One can hardly think of him 
 in view of his evident conception of the kingdom of God as believing with 
 the writer or writers of the Book of Enoch that the abode of the blessed in 
 the future was to be Jerusalem, while the wicked would be consigned to an 
 "accursed valley " (probably that of Hinnom) to enhance by the spectacle 
 of their eternal misery the bliss of the saved. (See Enoch xxvii. 3 ; Ixii. 12 ; 
 cviii. 14, 15.) 
 
 The Jewish literature of the time immediately antecedent and subsequent 
 to Christ contains no intimation of a deliverance of the wicked from their 
 penal doom. In the synoptic apocalyptic eschatology the " Depart from 
 me " appears in itself to be final. To the foolish virgins the definitive 
 answer is, "I know you not." In the fourth Gospel those who have done 
 evil come forth to " a resurrection of condemnation." Yet the later Jewish 
 theology taught a release of some from the torments of gehenna (Weber, § 74), 
 and the Christian tradition of the preaching of Christ in the underworld is 
 not without significance in this connection. While Jesus gave no direct and 
 definite expression to the "eternal hope," it is certainly unwarrantable to 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 137 
 
 constructing an eschatology will find scanty encourage- 
 ment and meagre material in his words. He appeared to 
 think it of vastly greater moment that men should con- 
 cern themselves with what is required for righteousness in 
 this world than with what the next world may have to 
 disclose — with justice, mercy, and love, rather than with 
 celestial or infernal arcana. Yet his knowledge of man 
 and his faith in God gave him a cheerful view of human 
 destiny. Preeminent among those sons of hope who 
 have been the immortal teachers of men, he was the divine 
 optimist. 
 
 maintain that he did not cherish it on the ground that it was not generally 
 entertained by the Jews of his time. The genius of the great Teacher cannot 
 be thus limited who so far transcended his age in spiritual insight and 
 humanity. In view of his great doctrine of the fatherhood of God, with 
 which the definitive exclusion of any repentant soul from the higher life by 
 divine decree is totally irreconcilable, and in he light of the passages 
 referred to in the text, there appears o be reason for believing that Jesus 
 could not have entertained the thought of the rejection of any returning 
 prodigal or of the final abandonment of any benighted estray. With his 
 faith in God, in man, and in his own cause, he could not have held any view 
 of human destiny which is incompatible with the consummation of everlasting 
 "joy in the presence of the angels of God." On the views of the Jews 
 as to the life to come the student may consult Schwally, Das Leben nach 
 dem Tode nach den Vorstellungen des alten Israel und des Judentums, ein- 
 shliesslich des Volksglaubeus im Zeitalter Christi, 1892, and Schiirer, A 
 History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ, New York, i8gi, ii. 
 2, pp. 179-184. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE JEWISH-CHRISTIAN INTERPRETATION. 
 
 AMONG the interpretations of the gospel which 
 criticism discerns in the New Testament that of 
 the Jewish-Christian followers of Jesus naturally presents 
 itself first for consideration, since it is that of the original 
 Christian community, and may be regarded as represent- 
 ing more nearly than any other the impressions of the 
 immediate disciples of the Master. Impressions, indeed, 
 it is, rather than a definite system of belief, which we 
 shall here have to deal with. For the Jewish-Christian 
 tendency had no great champion in the character of a 
 religious genius and literary master, like Paul and the 
 author of the fourth Gospel, who was able to give it an 
 intellectual expression and embodiment in a work of 
 renown. Champions it must be conceded, however, to 
 have had in the persons of those men whom Paul has im- 
 mortalized under the title of Pillar-Apostles, Peter, James 
 the brother of Jesus, "^ and John. These stood at the head 
 of the Jewish-Christian Church in Jerusalem, and regarded 
 themselves as charged with the ministry " to the circum- 
 cised." f The interpretation of Christianity which pre- 
 vailed there was strictly Judaistic. The Jewish believer 
 in Jesus stood forth, indeed, from his fellow-countrymen 
 distinguished by his acceptance of the Nazarene as the 
 
 *Mark. vi. 3 ; Gal. i. ig, ii. g, 12. | Gal. ii. g. 
 
 138 
 
THE JE WISH-CHRIS TIAN INTERPRE TA TION, 1 39 
 
 Messiah, but it was not in his thought to separate himself 
 in any other respect from his people and their law and 
 customs. He was still a worshipper in the temple and 
 a zealot for the law.* As a believer in the ancient cove- 
 nant of Jahveh and His people he looked for the fulfilment 
 of the promises made through the prophets that from 
 Zion should the law of God go forth and the word of God 
 from Jerusalem. But to him the acceptance of the Mes- 
 siah by men of other nationalities and their admission 
 into the Christian community implied their submission to 
 the Jewish rite of circumcision. The account in the tenth 
 chapter of Acts of a vision of Peter and his baptism of 
 gentiles without circumcision cannot be regarded as 
 historical in the light of subsequent events. That the 
 "pillars" of the Church in Jerusalem adhered to the 
 strictly Jewish-Christian view in reference to the admission 
 of gentiles is evident from the facts that Paul thought 
 that the matter at issue between himself and the Jewish 
 party must be adjusted with them "privately," else he 
 *' should run, or had run in vain," f and that the emis- 
 saries who at Antioch prevailed upon Peter no longer to 
 eat with the gentile converts " came from James," and 
 were undoubtedly carrying out the wishes of their 
 superior.:^ It may be regarded as a fairly well-established 
 
 * Acts ii. 46, iii. i, xxi. 20 f. \ Gal. ii, 2. 
 
 X Gal. ii. 12. Lechler's ingenious attempt to show that the Jewish apos- 
 tles were not a party to the conflict with Paul cannot be regarded as success- 
 ful. Das apostol. u. nachapostol. Zeitalter, 3te Ausg. 1885, pp, 160 £f. 
 See also; Zeller, Vortrage, etc., pp. 202 ff ; Pfleiderer, Das Urchristenthum. 
 1887, pp. 43 ff ; Immer, Neutest, TheoL, pp. 177 ff ; Baur. Paulus, etc., 2te 
 Ausg. i. pp. lig ff ; Lipsius, Art. " Apostelconvent " in Schenkel's Bibel- 
 Lexicon, i. p. 144 ; Holtzmann, Hand-Commentar, 1889, i. p. 367 ; Havet, 
 Les Origines du Christianisme, iv. pp. 138 ff ; Hilgenfeld, Einleit. in das 
 N. T.,1875, pp. 593 ff. 
 
140 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 conclusion of criticism that a correct view of the attitude 
 of the Jewish-Christian apostles toward the admission of 
 the gentiles to the Church and toward the mission of Paul 
 must be derived from the Pauline Epistles, and not from 
 the book of Acts, the "tendency" of which to represent 
 the original apostles as occupied with the gentile mission 
 cannot well be denied.* 
 
 The beliefs of the Jewish Christians respecting the per- 
 son of Christ, their Christology, may be substantially 
 gathered from the first Gospel and the discourses ascribed 
 to Peter in the Acts. While the latter are probably by 
 no means verbatim reports, but rather compositions of the 
 author of the book, they appear to rest upon an historical 
 basis and to be in the main free from Pauline influence 
 and dogmatic reflection. Peter, then, is reported to have 
 said of Jesus that he was " a man approved of God to you 
 by miracles and wonders and signs which God wrought 
 by him " ; that " by the hand of godless men " he had 
 been crucified and slain ; but that " God raised him up, 
 having loosed the pains of death, because it was not pos- 
 sible that he should be held by it," and *' exalted him by 
 His right hand as a leader and Saviour to give repentance 
 to Israel and forgiveness of sins." \ Noteworthy here are 
 the limitation of the office of Jesus as Saviour to " Israel," 
 in accordance with the Jewish-Christian point of view, and 
 the absence of all traces of the dogma of the expiatory or 
 atoning effect of his death. As to this latter doctrine, 
 
 * See Schneckenburger, Zweck der Apostelgesch. , T841, pp. 61-15 1 ; 
 Zeller, Apostelgesch., 1854, pp. 216 ff ; Martineau, Seat of Authority, etc., 
 pp. 280 ff ; Weizsiicker, Das apostol. Zeitalter, 2te Ausg. 1890, pp. 42 ff ; 
 Toy, Judaism and Christianity, pp. 366 ff ; Holtzmann, Hand-Commentar, 
 i. PP- 317-322. 
 
 f Acts ii. 22-25, V. 31. 
 
THE JEWISH-CHRISTIAN INTERPRETA TION. \\\ 
 
 however, it should be said that while the distinctive 
 foundation of it as a part of a dognnatic system was first 
 made by Paul, it is probable that it was not long 
 strange to Jewish-Christian thought. The attempt to 
 reconcile the death of Jesus with his Messianic office 
 would naturally lead men of Jewish race, to whom the 
 idea of a sacrifice for sin was familiar, to the conclusion 
 that he did not simply die as a malefactor, but, as the Son 
 of God, gave his life for men. The occurrence of a con- 
 nection of his death with the idea of a *' ransom " and of 
 his blood with " the remission of sins " in the synoptic 
 tradition, which was essentially Jewish-Christian, appears 
 to confirm this conclusion.* That Jesus was the Jewish 
 Messiah, that is, the one foretold by the prophets, was a 
 cardinal principle in the circle of ideas under considera- 
 tion. This was not held as a self-evident article of faith 
 but as a doctrine which required proof, since, in fact, 
 nothing could be more incongruous with the Jewish con- ; 
 ception of the Messiah than was the entire earthly fortune 
 of Jesus. Accordingly, since no proof could- be more 
 effective for a Jew than that derived from his sacred 
 books, passages were found in the Old Testament which, 
 when treated by the methods of interpretation then in 
 vogue, could easily be made to yield the desired confirma- 
 tion. The predominant tendency to establish this doc- 
 trine distinguishes the first Gospel which shows an 
 extensive perversion of Old-Testament texts in this in- 
 terest, f and in the discourse of Peter in the Acts already 
 referred to passages from Psalms xvi. and ex. are very 
 arbitrarily forced into the service of the demonstration in 
 
 * See page 112. 
 
 f This subject is fully treated in the author's Gospel-Criticism and His- 
 torical Christianity, Chapters IX. and X. 
 
142 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 question by a method which if admitted to be vaHd would 
 put an end to the rational interpretation of ancient 
 writings.* 
 
 The interest which was felt among the primitive 
 Christians in the Messiahship of Jesus is apparent in the 
 accounts of his wonderful birth of a virgin whose concep- 
 tion was from the Holy Ghost. From the Jewish point 
 of view a genealogical table which should show his natural 
 descent from David would appear to tend to establish his 
 Messiahship. But such a table would be manifestly 
 worthless from the Jewish genealogical point of view, if 
 Joseph were not his father. The attempt to hold in 
 thought and unite the two conceptions of a natural 
 descent and a supernatural generation shows the naweti 
 andTTllogicalness of the primitive Christian intelligence. 
 If, as is very probable, the former was the original idea, 
 the fact that it was neutralized by the latter appears to 
 indicate the strength of a tendency to idealize the 
 Messiahship of Jesus. For a supernatural generation 
 formed no part of the original idea of the Messiah who 
 was to be a lineal descendant of David, and the gene- 
 alogies show that this notion was probably not the primi- 
 tive one among the Christians. But, as the anointed 
 {XpWTo^), he was doubtless conceived as in intimate 
 relations with the divine Spirit which was supposed to 
 have inspired the prophets, and which according to one 
 tradition was given to him " without measure." That 
 even from the Jewish-Christian point of view, however, 
 the supernatural' generation of Jesus was not thought to 
 be essential to his Messiahship is evident from the later 
 
 * The original intention of the writers of these passage*? to apply them to 
 the circumstances of their times is so obvious as not to require elucidation. 
 To interpret a writing is to ascertain the intention of the writer. 
 
THE JE WISH-CHRISTIAN INTERPRE TA TION. I43 
 
 history of the two sects into which the Jews who believed 
 in him were divided on this question,* and from the 
 oldest Gospel, that of Mark, which contains no account of 
 the mysterious virgin-birth. It is also significant that 
 there is no allusion to this event in the discourses of 
 Peter, as reported in the Acts, and in the writings of Paul. 
 The communication of the Spirit at the baptism appears 
 to have satisfied the tradition as known to Mark, and 
 from this point of view the supernatural generation would 
 appear to be superfluous. It is probable, then, that the 
 legend of the miraculous conception took its rise in 
 the interest of intensifying the idea of Jesus' relation to 
 the Spirit, and of giving it an expression which should 
 be more radical and inward than that of the story of 
 the baptism. That the two should be entertained and 
 recorded together, although one of them renders the 
 other superfluous, is not surprising when we consider the 
 small part which reflection plays in the formation of tra- 
 ditions. It is probable that out of this tendency to exalt 
 and legitimatize the Messianic ofifice of Jesus proceeded 
 the story of the temptation, which in the first and third 
 Gospels has received a highly legendary form and color- 
 ing. As Messiah it was necessary that he should be 
 shown at the outset to be superior in conflict to the great 
 enemy Satan. Accordingly, he is no sooner furnished at 
 the baptism with the Spirit than he is led into the wilder- 
 ness to win over the power of evil the great victory 
 which should be symbolical of the issue of his entire 
 mission. That his whole career was conceived as a 
 
 * The Ebionites held that Jesus was the son of Joseph, and was endowed 
 with the Spirit at the baptism, while the Nazarenes maintained the super- 
 natural generation. See Baur, Vorlesungen uber die christl. Dogmen- 
 gesch., 1865, i. I, p. 145. 
 
144 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 struggle with Satan appears to be indicated in the re- 
 mark with which the third evangelist concludes his 
 account of the temptation, that the Devil departed from 
 him " for a season." 
 
 Another doctrine which could be developed only in the 
 Jewish-Christian consciousness was that of the second 
 coming or Parousia of Jesus as the Messiah. As his 
 death and burial without a resurrection would have been 
 to Jewish believers the death and burial of his Messiah- 
 ship, so without a second coming in glory and power he 
 would be a Messiah without a kingdom. A Messiah who 
 should be a great spiritual teacher and die for his convic- 
 tions remained unintelligible to the Jewish mind, although 
 the tradition clearly presents such a view as that of Jesus 
 himself. A suffering and crucified Messiah could only be 
 accepted after it had been shown by a rabbinical exegesis 
 that what had happened to him had been intended in the 
 divine counsel, and foretold by the prophets. Hence 
 Peter declares in Acts that it was " by the settled purpose 
 and foreknowledge of God " that Jesus had met his fate 
 *' at the hands of godless men," and Luke represents that 
 after the resurrection, when Jesus met two disciples on 
 the way to Emmaus, he made apparent to them that **the 
 Christ should suffer these things, and enter into his glory" 
 -by an elucidation *' beginning with Moses and all the 
 prophets."* In this tradition is manifest the interest 
 which was felt in establishing by the authority of Jesus 
 himself the sort of exegesis which could make the Old 
 Testament yield proofs of his Messiahship, just as in the 
 fourth Gospel he is made to quote a passage from a Psalm 
 to make it appear that the treachery of Judas was fore- 
 told, if not predetermined.! The strength of this ten- 
 
 * Acts ii. 23 ; Luke xxiv. 26 f. f John xiii. 18 f. 
 
THE JEWISH-CHRISTIAN INTERPRETATION, I45 
 
 dency is shown by the fact that in the discourse ascribed 
 to Peter in the second chapter of Acts he does not appear 
 to be willing to leave the resurrection and ascension of 
 Jesus to rest upon the testimony of witnesses, but seeks 
 to support them by an unwarrantable exegesis of words 
 supposed to have been written by the "patriarch" and 
 "prophet" David. The significance of this procedure is 
 manifest when we consider that the appeal to the Old 
 Testament shows the conviction that the resurrection and 
 ascension were a necessity from the Messiahship of Jesus, 
 and the fulfilment of a divine decree and foreordination. 
 Whatever may have been the relation of this apprehension 
 of these events to the production of a belief in them, it 
 was evidently thought to be necessary to a confirmation 
 of them to the minds of those at least who had no 
 other proof.* A further advance in the idealization of 
 the Messiahship is indicated in the conception of an 
 exalted position held by Jesus after his ascension, all 
 power being given to him in heaven and on earth, f Ac- 
 cordingly he is represented as standing on the right hand 
 of God, or sitting on the right hand of power.:j: These 
 conceptions were preliminary to that of a great conclud- 
 ing event which was to be a world-catastrophe. 
 
 * A discussion of the resurrection with the hypotheses of bodily resusci- 
 tation, spiritual manifestation, vision, etc., cannot be undertaken here. 
 Regarding the ascension, however, it may be remarked, that no definite 
 statement of it as a fact is given in the Gospels. There is no intima- 
 tion of it in the first two Gospels if we except the probably spurious 
 appendix to the second. The first Gospel locates the last interview of Jesus 
 with his disciples in Galilee, while the third reports that he "parted" 
 from them at Bethany directly after the resurrection. Only in Acts do we 
 find the story developed and a definite account given of an ascension in a 
 *' cloud " after a forty days' sojourn on the earth. Acts i. 3, 9. 
 
 f Matt, xxviii. 18. :|: Acts vii. 55 ; Matt. xxvi. 64. 
 
146 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 In conceiving of a world-catastrophe, Jewish-Christian 
 thought was consistent with itself. For that the Mes- 
 sianic kingdom was to be a world-kingdom was a Jewish 
 conception which all the spiritual teaching of Jesus had 
 not been able to overcome in the minds of his followers. 
 Unless, then, all the Messianic hopes of his disciples were 
 to perish forever at his death, unless they themselves 
 were to have no part in the glorious kingdom, and were 
 doomed to go down into sheol without seeing its advent, 
 they must believe that he was presently to descend to 
 the earth in person, and accomplish that work to which 
 his former career was only a prelude closing with a tra- 
 gedy. If the *' age to come" were not a phantom or 
 a dream ; if all things were not to remain as they had 
 been ; if the bonds of oppression were ever to be loosed, 
 and the righteous vindicated and avenged, — then must he 
 whom they believed to be the Messiah really manifest 
 himself as such, and establish his kingdom with becoming 
 pomp and power. Only by this thought of the Parousia, 
 the belief in which was universal and dominant among 
 the early Christians, could the Messiahship of Jesus be 
 reconciled in the minds of Jewish Christians with the 
 termination of his earthly career, which they were able to 
 regard only as an ignominy and a failure. No better illus- 
 tration is furnished in early Christian literature of the 
 transformation of the gospel effected by Jewish-Christian 
 thought under the dominant influence of the Messianic 
 idea than is presented in one of the discourses of Peter in 
 Acts in which he exclaims : " Repent, therefore, and turn 
 from your ways, that your sins may be blotted out, in 
 order that the times of refreshing may come from the 
 presence of the Lord, and that He may send forth Christ 
 Jesus who was before appointed for you ; whom heaven, 
 
THE JEWISH-CHRISTJAN INTERPRETATION, 14/ 
 
 indeed, must receive until the times of a restoration of 
 all things, of which God spake by the mouth of His holy 
 prophets from the days of old." * Jesus had indeed 
 preached repentance, but he declared at the same time 
 that the kingdom of God had already come. To him 
 there was^no other palingenesis than that spiritual one 
 which his teaching should effect, and he did not imagine 
 that heaven must '* receive '* him until the time of an 
 apocalyptic *' restoration of all things." But to Jewish- 
 Christian thought the past was stale and flat, a sad round 
 of weariness and oppression ; and nothing short of apoca- 
 lypses and a world-catastrophe, a descent of the Son of 
 Man with the clouds, as he had been seen to go up, and 
 a dramatic judgment of all nations before his ''throne," 
 could realize its Messianic dream. 
 
 The doctrine of the Holy Spirit as an active principle 
 of the Christian life appears to have originated in the 
 Jewish-Christian circle of thought. As it was by the Holy 
 Spirit t that Jesus as Messiah was endowed or anointed, 
 so this influence or charism was supposed to be effective 
 in the disciples and early behevers for the carrying on of 
 his work. Accordingly, the promise of Jesus to his dis- 
 ciples is recorded that the Spirit of their Father will speak 
 in them,:}: and they are commanded to tarry in Jerusalem 
 after the resurrection until they are endowed with power 
 from on high.g This promise is represented in the second 
 chapter of Acts as having been fulfilled by a great out- 
 pouring of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, in accord- 
 ance, as was supposed, with a prophecy of Joel. The 
 opinion hardly needs defence that the narrative in ques- 
 tion is not to be regarded as historical in detail. The 
 
 *Actsiii. 19-22. \Ttvev}.ia ayiov. 
 
 X Matt. X. 20. § Luke xxiv. 49 ; cf. Acts i. 5. 
 
148 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 speaking with tongues* which is represented as one of the 
 expressions of the Spirit, and evidently means according 
 to the intention of the author the employment by the 
 disciples of a large number of foreign languages without 
 having learned them, has no subsequent confirmation, 
 and was without doubt differently apprehended by Paul, 
 as a phenomenon which came under his observation.f If, 
 then, abstraction be made of all that is legendary in the 
 narrative, the historical fact which is its basis will appear 
 to be that the disciples believed themselves to be pos- 
 sessed of the same Spirit that qualified Jesus for his 
 work. They believed that the Christian community, or 
 Church, began to exist with the communication of this 
 Spirit, and that this gift or charisni did not concern them 
 alone, but was bestowed upon all who became associated 
 with them. It was supposed to be communicated at bap- 
 tism into the name of Jesus upon repentance, and Peter 
 is said to have declared to the " men of Judea and all who 
 dwell at Jerusalem" that the promise was to them and to 
 their children *' and to all who dwell afar off.":!: Again it 
 is related that although certain Samaritans had been bap- 
 tized into the name of the Lord Jesus, the Holy Spirit 
 had not yet fallen upon any of them, and that they 
 received it only when Peter and John laid their hands 
 upon them.§ On the contrary, it is recorded that in the 
 case of Cornelius and the gentiles who with him were con- 
 verted by the preaching of Peter the Spirit was poured 
 out on them, and they spake with tongues, and that 
 because of this they were directly baptized. || In the case 
 of certain disciples of John who " did not even hear 
 
 "^ yXG666ai% XaXeiv. f i Cor. xiv. 2 ; Rom. viii. 26, 
 
 J Acts ii. 39. § Acts viii. 17. 
 
 1 Acts X. 44-48. 
 
THE JEWISH-CHRISTIAN INTERPRETATION. I49 
 
 whether there was a Holy Spirit," both baptism into the 
 name of Jesus and the laying on of hands preceded the 
 descent of the Spirit and the speaking with tongues.* 
 While the external phenomena which are reported to 
 have accompanied the endowment with the Spirit are 
 involved in some obscurity which it would be foreign to 
 the present purpose to attempt to clear up,f it should be 
 observed that the conception of the Holy Spirit in the 
 Jewish-Christian community does not appear to have 
 involved the doctrine of the Trinity, which was of later 
 origin. :{: In accordance with the thought of Jesus they 
 regarded the Spirit as an expression of the activity of the , 
 one God, or as the Spirit of the Father.§ It may not be 
 possible to determine precisely what powers the gift of 
 the Spirit was conceived to bestow upon those who 
 received it, but that it was regarded as a special charism 
 qualifying the recipient to give infallible teaching either 
 by the pen or by the spoken word, is nowhere imphed. 
 In fact, it does not appear to have been conceived as a 
 gift bestowed exclusively on those who were appointed 
 to teach, since all converts are represented to have 
 received it. One can only speculate about the precise 
 psychological fact which the accounts in Acts regarding 
 
 * Acts xix. 1-6. 
 
 f The student may consult Hilgenfeld, Die Glossolalie, etc., 1850- 
 Zeller, Apostelgesch., pp. no £f ; Meyer, Commentar, iii. pp. 51-60; 
 Schenkel, Art. "Zungenreden" in Bibel-Lexicon, v. p. 732 ; Lechler, Das 
 apostol. u. nach apostol. Zeitalter, pp. 23 ff ; Weizsacker, Das apostol. 
 Zeitalter, 2te Ausg. pp. 589 ff. 
 
 X Lamson, The Church of the First Three Centuries, i860. Of later 
 origin also is probably the commandment (Matt, xxviii. 19) to baptize into 
 the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, since the baptism of the 
 apostolic age was into the name of Jesus. See Wittichen, Jahrb. fur 
 deutsche Theologie, vii. p. 336. 
 
 § Matt. X. 20. 
 
150 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 the bestowal of the Spirit endeavor to represent. Some 
 other matters are also involved in obscurity. It is clear, 
 however, that the early Christians experienced a spiritual 
 quickening which they believed to come directly from 
 God, that they held Jesus to be the Messiah, and 
 preached repentance and baptism into his name together 
 with brotherly love. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION. 
 
 JEWISH-CHRISTIAN interpretations and apocalyp- 
 tic were fortunately a transient phase of the his- 
 torical development of the gospel of Jesus. Within 
 the circle of the original apostles the word of the great 
 Teacher, which was essentially a message to mankind^ 
 could not have had an apprehension and exposition 
 adapted to the requirements of a universal religion. 
 Among them was no man of a religious genius and spirit- 
 ual greatness equal to the emergency which was produced 
 by the question whether Christianity should become a 
 world-religion or remain the tenet of a Jewish sect. They 
 were essentially Messianists (if the word may be allowed), 
 and would have stood " gazing up into heaven " to discern 
 the signs of the Messiah's coming, until weary of the 
 fruitless waiting they would have abandoned the cause of 
 him whose kingdom did not come, and have left the 
 teachings of Jesus to the fortunes of the flood of rabbini- 
 cal maxims. Their propaganda, which was nothing if 
 not Messianic, would soon have come to an end, when 
 men who asked for the signs of the Messiah's advent 
 should receive the despairing answer that a day of the 
 Lord was as a thousand years, ^ and the propagandists 
 unable to endure the reproach of a king so tardy would 
 have been absorbed by the powerful Judaism about them 
 
 * 2 Peter iii. 8. 
 151 
 
152 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 or scattered by reason of its calamities to the four quar- 
 ters of the globe. The critical alternative, then, with 
 which the gospel was confronted shortly after the death 
 of Jesus, was to remain in the custody of the Jewish apos- 
 tles and perish, or to be set free and exposed to the perils 
 of liberty. In its liberation it must run the risk of trans- 
 formation. For it could be set free only by being appre- 
 hended afresh and embodied in a new system of thought. 
 That this system of thought could under the circumstances 
 only be Jewish, and the result of the transformation a 
 more or less modified Judaism, is evident. For no gen- 
 tile thinker was likely to be interested in a religion which 
 was based upon Jewish Messianism, and required cir- 
 cumcision as a condition of admission to its communion. 
 It was only a Jew, then, of intellectual greatness, breadth, 
 and culture enough to enable him to overcome the preju- 
 dices of his race, and of spiritual insight, feeling, and 
 personal power adequate to the great emergency, who 
 could set the gospel free from the fetters in which it 
 had been bound by a provincial Jewish Christianity, and 
 give it a philosophical interpretation and dogmatic ex- 
 pression, which should make it in his exposition of it 
 for many ages the religion of the most enlightened 
 nations of the world. This procedure would appear, 
 indeed, to be only the substitution of one Jewish inter- 
 pretation for another ; but it would mark no little advance, 
 for it would be the substitution of a cosmopolitan Jewish 
 interpretation for a provincial Jewish one. It would be 
 too much to expect that the new creation should have 
 in it nothing of the old system. Just as the transformed 
 Christianity of the Reformation was not free from some 
 deposit of Romanism, so it might well be expected that 
 the new Christianity of the gentile period would not be 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION, 153 
 
 without traits which would betray its origin. Neither 
 was final. Both were transformations waiting to be them- 
 selves transformed in the course of the endless develop- 
 ment of the eternal principles of the gospel of Jesus. 
 
 I — OUT OF JUDAISM INTO CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 Details of the early years of Paul's life, of his education, 
 and of the formative influences under which he grew up 
 are almost entirely wanting. The authority of Acts 
 should doubtless be accepted for Tarsus in Cilicia as his 
 birthplace notwithstanding Jerome's opinion to the con- 
 trary.* That he was born of Hebrew parents and edu- 
 cated as a Jew we know from his own testimony.! This 
 training in a Jewish home may be regarded as excluding 
 any considerable influence from the Grecian literature and 
 philosophy which were cultivated in no small degree in 
 Tarsus.:}; The opinion that he was especially quahfied to 
 be the apostle to the gentiles by familiarity with Greek 
 thought is not as well sustained by indications in his 
 writings as has been supposed. The address at Athens 
 can hardly be cited for the quotation from Aratus, since 
 it can by no means be regarded as an accurate report ; 
 and the quotation from Epimenides in the Epistle to 
 Titus cannot be taken into account in view of the probable 
 spuriousness of that writing. The maxim which appears 
 to be quoted from the Thais of Menander : § " Evil com- 
 munications corrupt good manners," is quoted without 
 regard to the metre, and does not necessarily imply ac- 
 quaintance with the works of this poet, since it was very 
 likely a current proverb. If Paul had had any acquaint- 
 
 * Acts ix. II, xxi. 39, xxii. 3 ; Jerome, Vir. illust., i. 172. 
 
 f 2 Cor. xi. 22 ; Phil. iii. 5. t Strabo, xiv. 4. 
 
 § I Cor. XV. 33. 
 
154 ^^^ GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 ance with Greek literature and philosophy, it is very im- 
 probable that, so much given to quoting as he was, he 
 would not have betrayed it by occasional reference and 
 illustration. His testimony already referred to proves him 
 to have been no Hellenist, but a Hebrew of the Hebrews. 
 He wrote Greek with difficulty,* and his tolerable ac- 
 quaintance with the language appears rather to have been 
 derived from intercourse with Greeks than from literature 
 or the grammarians, since his style shows some striking 
 Hebraisms apart from many minor offences of the kind. 
 
 Since acquaintance with the Old-Testament Scriptures 
 was an important part of a Jewish education, we are not 
 surprised to find in the Epistles of Paul evidences of great 
 familiarity with these writings. As the Jews of the New- 
 Testament times, however, spoke the Aramaic dialect, 
 and could not readily use the Old Testament in the origi- 
 nal text, we find that Paul in common with the writers of 
 the Gospels and Josephus made the greater part of his 
 citations from the Septuagint translation, which he some- 
 times followed where it was incorrect, and again improved 
 by an independent rendering.f His citations show a 
 wide acquaintance with the historical, prophetic, and 
 poetic books of the Old Testament and with known and 
 unknown apocryphal writings. J In particular does he 
 appear to have made a liberal use of the book of Wisdom, 
 in which occur the teachings that death came into the 
 world on account of sin, and that the righteous Israelites 
 shall judge the heathen in the day of the Messiah, § to- 
 
 *Gal. vi. II. 
 
 f 2 Cor. iv. 13 ; i Cor. xiv. 21 ; Gal. iii. li ; Rom. ix. 17. 
 X See Meyer on i Cor. ii. g (Commentar, v. p, 63) and Riickert and 
 Ewald on i Cor. ix. 10. 
 
 § Wisdom, ii. 24, iii. 8, v. 17, xv. 7. 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION. 1 55 
 
 gether with other doctrines and some illustrations which 
 appear in his writings. The student who passes from the 
 study of the rabbinical Hterature to that of the Epistles 
 of Paul not only finds sayings which remind him of the 
 apothegms in which that literature abounds, but often 
 recognizes in the apostle's treatment of the Old-Testa- 
 ment Scriptures the rabbinical point of view and exegeti- 
 cal artifices. These traits do not appear in his pages as if 
 sought with labor, but rather as the result of early im- 
 pressions and fixed modes of .thought, as the natural 
 expression, in fact, of one '* to the manner born." The 
 strange notion that the women ought to have their heads 
 covered in the Christian assemblies " on account of the 
 angels"* must be referred to a Jewish origin, whether we 
 regard it as a reminiscence of the Jewish idea that angels 
 were present in the worshipping assemblies,'!* ^^ trace it 
 to the narrative in the book of Enoch concerning the 
 sin of the angels with the daughters of men. if In saying 
 that Isaac was *' persecuted " by Ishmael he does not fol- 
 low the account in Genesis but a tradition recorded in 
 the book of Jubilees. The idea that "Satan transforms 
 himself into an angel of light " § does not appear to have 
 any other source than the rabbinical doctrine that tempta- 
 tions of the Devil came to men in the forms of angels. 
 Accordingly, the " angel " who is reported to have wrestled 
 with Jacob was supposed to be Satan in disguise. This 
 
 =^1 Cor. xi. 10, 5za rouS ayyeXov^; cf. Targum on Gen. vi. 2. 
 
 f See the Septuagint version of Ps. cxxxviii. i and Tobit xii. 12. 
 
 X Enoch v.f.; cf. Hilgenfeld, Zeitschr. fur wissenschaftl. Theol., 1864, 
 p. 183. Meyer adopts the former view, and designates the latter as the 
 reading of a fleshly meaning into the passage (fleischerne Eindeutung), askifig 
 with amusing na'ivelS whether there were not matrons and old women among 
 those who were warned ! Commentar, v. p. 305. 
 
 § 2 Cor. xi. 14. 
 
156 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 thought doubtless lay in the apostle*s mind, and was as- 
 sumed to be familiar to his Jewish-Christian readers. The 
 fancy that the rock from which Moses is reputed miracu- 
 lously to have obtained water was no natural rock, but the 
 Messiah who in this disguise followed the children of Israel 
 in their wanderings was a current rabbinical tradition.* 
 
 Not only was Paul's doctrine that the Old-Testament 
 jScripture is the infallibly inspired word of God that of the 
 /Jews of his time, but his interpretation of it was conformed 
 to the current rabbinical method, which applied to the 
 text violent exegetical pressure and unlimited allegorizing. 
 Accordingly he finds a prophecy of Christ in the promise 
 to Abraham, because it was made to the "offspring" of 
 the latter, and not to his "offsprings." f The injunction 
 in tjie law not to muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn 
 he allegorizes and applies as if the intention of the writer 
 had been to teach that the apostles should have the sup- 
 port of the congregations to which they ministered. It 
 was written, he maintains, on the missionaries* account, 
 since God does not care for oxen.:J; The story of the two 
 wives of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar, was " written alle- 
 gorically " of the heavenly Jerusalem which is free and the 
 mother of the Christians and of the earthly Jerusalem 
 which is in bondage with her children ; and he establishes 
 I this interpretation by a quotation from Isaiah. § Akin to 
 the allegorical interpretation is the typological which finds 
 in an historical event or a word a type or an example 
 
 * I Cor. X. 4 ; Onkelos in Num. xxi. 18-20. To hold with Meyer (Com- 
 mentar, v. p. 265) that Paul did not adopt this idea from the rabbinicallore, 
 but originated it, is to concede at least the influence upon his mind of the 
 rabbinical method of treating Scripture. ' 
 
 \ Gal. iii. 16 ; cf. Gen. xiii. 15. 
 
 \ I Cor. ix. 9. A more humane view is expressed even in Jonah iv. 11. 
 
 % Gal. iv. 21. 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION. 15/ 
 
 which was written as an " ensample " for a situation or a 
 person in some future time. In the use of this method 
 Paul almost equals Philo in ingenuity and invention. The 
 patriarchs, Moses, the children of Israel in the desert, are 
 regarded as types of the Christian community. As, if the 
 type be once allowed, the caprice of the interpreter may 
 apply it indefinitely, so Paul finds in the veil upon the 
 face of Moses two types, one of the vanishing glory of the 
 old Covenant, and one of the cover which was upon the 
 hearts of the Jews in the reading of the Old Testament, 
 and which prevented them from finding in it the Chris- 
 tology which he read into it. * A theory of the Scriptures 
 which makes them lend themselves so readily to the ends 
 of argumentation has its perils, not the least of which is 
 that of a too frequent resort to it. Accordingly, every 
 admirer of the genius of Paul must regret to find him so 
 often prejudicing his cause by inept appeals to passages 
 in the Old Testament, as if such an authority were alone 
 adequate, and reason futile. 
 
 Paul first appears in Christian story in Jerusalem on 
 the occasion of the stoning of Stephen. f The open con- 
 fession of Jesus and the bold denunciation of the Jews as 
 murderers by this Hellenistic Jewish Christian seem tohave 
 excited the indignation of Paul, then " a young man," and 
 full of zeal for the law and the traditions of his nation, and 
 he appears to have been thought to be a suitable agent of 
 further persecution of the hated sect. Having set out for 
 Damascus on his cruel mission, he reached that city a 
 changed man by reason of an experience which was second 
 only to the mission of Jesus himself in importance for the 
 cause of Christianity. There is no record of the details 
 of this event which can lay claim to strictly historical 
 
 * 2 Cor. iii. 13 ff. \ Acts vii. 58. 
 
158 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 credibility, since the accounts of it in Acts do not agree 
 among themselves, and are not at first hand.* From 
 Paul's references to it in his Epistles f it does not appear 
 that he attached great importance to any external circum- 
 stances which may have accompanied it. He declares here 
 that he had seen Jesus the Lord, and that it had pleased 
 God to reveal His Son in him-. % It is upon this experience, 
 in whatever way referred to, that he grounds his claims to 
 apostolical rank and dignity. Had he not seen Jesus as 
 well as the other apostles ? If the Lord appeared to them 
 after his resurrection, did he not also finally appear to 
 him as " to one born out of our time " ? God, indeed, re- 
 vealed His Son in him that he "might publish the glad 
 tidings of him among the gentiles." Believing himself 
 called to the Master's work, he appears to connect this 
 call with a mysterious experience which he does not defi- 
 nitely locate or define. We can only conjecture what he 
 means by the declaration that he had seen Jesus. That a 
 bodily manifestation to the physical vision is intended is 
 by no means certain, and can scarcely be said to be prob- 
 able. Even in the accounts in Acts it is not recorded 
 that any form was visible, but only a bright light. How- 
 ever real, objectively real, the manifestation may have 
 been thought by him to be, he cannot have regarded the 
 experience as the seeing of a bodily personality, for every 
 materialistic construction of the event is excluded by the 
 words : " to reveal His Son in me," which may be cited as 
 his own interpretation of it. Of similar import are the 
 words concerning the light which God had commanded to 
 shine in his heart to give the light of the knowledge of the 
 
 * Chapp. ix. xxii. xxvi. f i Cor. ix. i, xv. 8 ; Gal. i. 13-16. 
 
 \ ovx^ ^lr}6oZv Tov xvpior eopaxa ; m(p^rf udfioi; aTtoHcxXvipai 
 viov avTOV ev e/ioi. 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION, 1 59 
 
 glory of God in the face of Christ.'^ In accord with this 
 view is his doctrine of the spiritual resurrection-body 
 made in the likeness of the glorious body of Christ, 
 since flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.f 
 That he conceived of such a heavenly body as visible to 
 eyes of flesh is in the highest degree improbable. 
 
 Other experiences of Paul recorded by himself throw 
 light upon the one in question, and tend to confirm the 
 opinion that this " heavenly vision " was an inward experi- _ 
 ence. With an apology for an apparent boasting he 
 writes m. detail of " visions and revelations of the Lord " 
 which he had had, and which appear to relate to realities 
 conceived by him to be no less vivid and objective than 
 that experienced at his conversion. " Whether in the 
 body or out of the body," he knows not, he was ** caught 
 up into the third heaven, into paradise," and ** heard 
 unspeakable words.'' :j: Likewise the journey to Jerusalem 
 undertaken in order to confer with the original apostles 
 was made in accordance with a " revelation," § and it is 
 recorded in Acts that he had a vision which determined 
 him to go to Macedonia, " concluding that the Lord had 
 called him to pubHsh the glad tidings to them." || These 
 facts appear to indicate that Paul had a constitutional 
 tendency to visions, or at least that they were the form 
 which the apprehension of certain truths and the resolv- ; 
 ing of certain perplexities assumed in his consciousness. 
 One can scarcely suppose that a man of his intellectual 
 character could have taken so important a step as the 
 going to Jerusalem to confer with the Jewish-Christian 
 apostles or the mission to Macedonia without careful 
 
 * 2 Cor. iv. 6. -j- I Cor. xv. 44, 48 ; Phil. iii. 21. 
 
 \ 2 Cor. xii. 1-6. § xar^ aTtoHCxXvipiv, Gal. ii. 2. 
 
 I Chap. xvi. 9. 
 
l6o THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 deliberation, or even that paradise and the " unspeakable 
 words" heard in the vision of the third heaven had not 
 occupied his thoughts. However strongly dogmatic con- 
 siderations may predispose the student to seek an explana- 
 tion of these visions by the hypothesis of supernatural 
 intervention, he must concede that the presumption is 
 in favor of their production by natural causes, and that 
 unless these can be shown to be inadequate, resort to that 
 hypothesis is unwarrantable. Now it is evident that our 
 knowledge of the matter is so meagre that a dogmatic 
 conclusion regarding it must be altogether preposterous 
 and irrational. We can do nothing, then, but inquire into 
 the psychological antecedents of these phenomena, and in 
 particular of the event usually called the conversion of 
 Paul, but designated by himself as the revelation of Christ 
 in him. The intimate connection of the subject with 
 Paul's relation to Christianity requires its consideration 
 before we proceed to a study of his explicit teachings. 
 
 Psychological antecedents of this conversion of Paul 
 from Judaism to Christianity there must be supposed to 
 have been, unless in a manner most unscientific and most 
 unpauline his faith in Jesus be regarded as produced 
 without antecedent reflection, reason, and consideration 
 of its grounds, but by the subjection of his mind to an 
 external power. It is true that Paul says it pleased God 
 to reveal His Son in him. But this omission to mention 
 secondary causes, which was so natural to a Jew, should 
 not influence our analysis. Among the most obvious 
 antecedents of the change in question must certainly have 
 been some knowledge of the point of view, opinions, and 
 grounds of belief in Jesus, which were current among the 
 Christians whom he was persecuting, since he can hardly 
 be supposed not to have heard their defence. He must 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION. l6l 
 
 have known that they believed that Jesus was the expected 
 Messiah, and that although he had been ignominiously 
 put to death, he had been raised from the dead, and was 
 expected to come in glory and establish his kingdom. 
 Doubtless rumors of manifestations of the resurrected 
 Jesus to Peter, to James, to the five hundred, had reached 
 his ears; and although as a Jew he may very Hkely have 
 scoffed at the idea of a crucified Messiah and at the 
 attempts to prove from the Old Testament that the 
 prophets had foretold such a Messiah, and have rejected 
 as a dream or a fraud the story of the resurrection, yet he 
 could not escape from these ideas, could not but reflect 
 upon them, could not but recognize their power when he 
 saw men ready to die for them. It is very probable also that 
 in his zeal for the law and the traditions of Judaism, the 
 impetuous spirit of Paul had undertaken more than he 
 could w'ell carry out, and that although in his fury he may 
 have "breathed out threatenings and slaughter," his sen- 
 sitive nature revolted at the distress and agony which his 
 cruelty produced. Nothing is more natural than that a 
 man of his conscientiousness and his tenderness of heart 
 should have been tormented with doubts as to the rig-ht- 
 ness of his dreadful work, doubts as to whether he might 
 not be contending against God. To such a man doubts 
 of this kind could not but give rise to the most earnest 
 and most torturing reflections. To reflect, to hesitate in 
 the midst of his abominable inquisitions, or perhaps when 
 they were about to be renewed, was to give place in his 
 mind to all that he had learned of Jesus from the lips of 
 his victims, to recollections of their heroism and faith, to 
 all that they had adduced as reasons for their belief from 
 the Scriptures, to relate these things with his convictions, 
 his Messianic hopes, his doctrine of the divine foresight 
 
l62 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 and the sovereignty of the law, of righteousness, of atone- 
 ment, and by means of his great logical power, insight, 
 and religious feeling, to struggle with the mighty prob- 
 lem until it should be solved. 
 
 The cross and the resurrection were the central difficul- 
 ties of the problem as it lay in the mind of Paul. To him, 
 as a Jew, the cross was a ** stumbling-block." How could 
 that one be the Messiah who instead of winning a crown 
 had in the judgment of his nation earned the cross? We 
 may conceive this difficulty to have been overcome in his 
 thought by reminiscences of passages from the Old Tes- 
 tament, particularly from the fifty-third of Isaiah, which 
 he had perhaps heard adduced by the Christians, and by 
 the presence of another problem in his mind, that of the 
 salvation of his nation, or their attainment of a righteous- 
 ness worthy of the Messianic time. How far they were 
 from this achievement ! Could the law be in fact fulfilled ? 
 How should the warfare of the forces of good and evil in 
 himself and others ever be decided in the interest of right- 
 eousness? Whence should come deliverance from " the 
 body of this death " ? How should this dread dualism be 
 solved ? To conceive of the mission of the Messiah as 
 the bringing in of righteousness, which was an idea by no 
 means strange to Jewish thought, and of his death as the 
 abolition of that dualism by removing the curse of the 
 law — an idea which was also contained in the Jewish doc- 
 trine of atonement — this was to solve the chief problem, 
 that of a suffering Messiah, and to take away the offence 
 of the cross. But if Jesus had died in accordance with 
 the divine decree to accomplish this great work for his 
 nation, if in this sense he were indeed the Messiah, then 
 to the logic of Paul there could be no objection urged 
 against the declaration of the Christians that the crucified 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION. 1 63 
 
 had risen from the dead. For though God might suffer / 
 him to be sacrificed and to ''die for the nation," He could 
 not abandon him to sheol. Raised he must be, and exalted 
 to heaven, a being of light clothed with a "glorious 
 body."'^ Might not the testimony of the Christian 
 martyrs and the dying vision of Stephen then represent a 
 divine reality, since they confirmed so well the logical 
 solution of the great problem of righteousness and the 
 Messiahship? That Paul may have reasoned in some 
 such way as this is more than probable from what we 
 know of his intellectual character; and that such reason- 
 ing reenforced. by the testimony, the devotion, and the 
 heroism of the persecuted disciples of Jesus should result 
 in his conviction that their cause was right, and that in, 
 opposing it he was contending against God, may be re- 
 garded as scarcely open to question. If, then, we are not 
 warranted by the analogy of experience in believing that 
 Paul's transition from Judaism to Christianity was by a 
 leap or by an external propulsion ; if we are to suppose 
 that his conversion was a product of which the factors 
 were his antecedent beliefs as a Jew, a process of reason- 
 ing upon certain data, and the obtrusive fact of the life 
 of Jesus, together with the testimony of his disciples; if 
 we cannot, without disregarding the presumptions fur- 
 nished by history and the nature of the human mind, 
 assume that such an intelligence as his could devote itself 
 with enthusiastic ardor to a cause without rational con- 
 viction of its truth ; if in a word this great transformation 
 was not effected by magic — then must we maintain that 
 the revelation of the Son of God in him and his seeing 
 of Jesus were a spiritual manifestation and vision which 
 had definite and necessary psychological antecedents. 
 
 *6w/^a r77? 56^7?, Phil, iii., 21. 
 
164 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 His own statements regarding the event rather imply than 
 exclude these antecedents ; while the unhistorical accounts 
 of it in Acts would naturally find no place for them.'* 
 
 2. — THE POINT OF DEPARTURE. f 
 
 The Pauline gospel can be understood only when it is 
 regarded as an independent system of thought, and not as 
 a product of reflection on the teachings of Jesus. Records 
 of the life of Jesus Paul did not possess, and although he 
 occasionally shows points of contact with the tradition of 
 his teaching, only two events of his earthly career appear 
 to have impressed him deeply — the crucifixion and the 
 resurrection. To the original apostles, who cherished the 
 
 * The conversion of Paul does not appear inexplicable from >< psycho- 
 logical point of view, when it is considered that Judaism contains theological 
 ideas which to a logical mind facilitated the transition to Christianity. From 
 Isaiah liii. the doctrine had been derived that the sufferings of the righteous 
 have an atoning efficacy to compensate for the sins of the people, and 
 that Paul combined this doctrine with the death of Jesus there can be little 
 doubt. The righteousness of the nation which was postulated by Pharisee- 
 ism as a condition of the Messianic time, conceived to be near at hand, might 
 well be supposed to be effected by a great atonement, if in view of the spir- 
 itual condition of the people there was any hope of its realization. Again, 
 by means of the popular allegorical exegesis, with which Paul shows famili- 
 arity, it was easy to interpret many passages of the prophets and psalms as 
 fulfilled in the passion of Jesus ; a resurrection from the dead could not be 
 obnoxious to a Pharisee, and the idea of a crucified and resurrected Messiah 
 who should bring to the world a new righteousness might not only be easily 
 reached by Paul from Jewish premises, but was actually held by him on 
 scriptural grounds (I Cor. xv. 3), as he interpreted Scripture. 
 
 \ The following study of the Pauline apprehension of the gospel is based 
 upon Romans, Galatians, r and 2 Corinthians, I Thessalonians, and Philip- 
 pians. The genuineness of no one of these is open to serious doubt, 
 although Baur contested that of i Thessalonians and Philippians. The 
 subject cannot be discussed here, and no attempt is made to present a com- 
 plete view of the Pauline theology. 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORM A TION. 165 
 
 tradition of the historical Christ, and expected him to 
 come again in person to complete that Messianic work 
 which had been interrupted by his death, ^' Jesus was the 
 Jewish Messiah. A crucified Messiah was, indeed, to 
 them a stumbling-block, but they got over it by connecting 
 the Messiahship in a modified form with the more glorious 
 second manifestation or Parousia. But Paul construed 
 the Messiahship in an entirely different way, if, indeed^Jie. 
 may not be said to have abandoned it altogether. To him 
 as a Jew the cross had, indeed, been a stumbling-block, as 
 it remained to other Jews, but to him as a Christian it 
 was no longer so, for he looked upon it as a symbol of 
 the vanishing of the old dispensation and of the introduc- 
 tion of a new order of religious administration. In the 
 death of Jesus he saw the abolition of the law and the 
 dethroning of Judaism from its seat of spiritual empire. 
 He who on the cross appeared to his panic-stricken follow- 
 ers as the perishing Jewish Messiah was to Paul a universal 
 Messiah dying to Judaism that he might live to mankind. 
 To him Jesus had " died for all, that they who live should 
 no longer live to themselves but to him who died fortheir 
 sakes and rose again." f No longer now does he know 
 Christ " according to the flesh," that is, as the Jewish 
 Messiah, for in his thought Jesus on the cross died to all 
 the national, fleshly, sensuous limitations which in Judaism 
 attached to the Messiah, and became the representative 
 of a world-principle of life and "a quickening spirit." 
 
 Paul sets forth the pointof view from which he regarded 
 the gospel and the significance of the mission of Jesus, 
 and gives undoubtedly at the same time a section of his 
 spiritual biography, in the following words : " Forthe lawof 
 the Spirit of life set me free in Christ Jesus from the law 
 
 ♦Actsiii. 19 ff. I 2 Cor. V. 15, 16. 
 
l66 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that 
 it was weak through the flesh, God had done who on ac- 
 count of sin sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful 
 flesh, and passed sentence of condemnation on sin in the 
 flesh ; so that what is required by the law might be ac- 
 complished in us who walk not according to the flesh, but 
 according to the Spirit." * Thus in Jesus Christ he sees 
 a governing principle of the Spirit of God which leads to 
 everlasting life. Christ himself is the Spirit, f and the 
 consciousness of the Christian is in its essential nature the 
 consciousness of possessing the Spirit of God or of Christ. 
 The Christian believer has " received the Spirit." \ His 
 consciousness is essentially spiritual, and is not one of 
 bondage, but of liberty, is in fact one of sonship ; being 
 led by the Spirit of God " he is a son of God. § The 
 Spirit even *' beareth witness " with his spirit that h^is a 
 child of God. | The relation of this idea that in the mis- 
 sion of Jesus there came into the world a new and absolute 
 principle of spiritual life to Paul's general view of the world 
 and his philosophy of salvation is apparent. It accords 
 with the doctrine that the first man, Adam, in contradis- 
 tinction to the second man, Christ, and to the Christian 
 believer, was merely ** a living soul " ; that in the order of 
 things that is first which is natural or animal, and after- 
 wards the spiritual ; that sin reigned from Adam to 
 Christ ; and that the natural man cannot possibly fulfil 
 the spiritual law for want of the power to break the force 
 of the flesh. 
 
 That this point of view was essentially Jewish is evident 
 from the fact that it is dominated by the idea of the law 
 
 * Rom. viii. 2-5. \ 2 Cor. iii. 17. 
 
 \ Gal. iii. 2, TtvEv/ua. § Rom. viii. 14. 
 
 II Rom. viii. 16. 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION. 1 6/ 
 
 and finds its illustrations only in Jewish mythology or 
 history. It was, as we have seen, entertained in a rudi- 
 mentary form and without philosophical development in 
 the Jewish-Christian apostolical circles, so far as the com- 
 munication of the Spirit to men upon belief and baptism 
 is concerned. Here its Old-Testament source is indicated 
 by an appeal to a prophecy of Joel. Paul may very likely 
 have worked out the doctrine of the Spirit independently, 
 influenced perhaps by the book of Wisdom, with which, 
 as has been previously remarked, he appears to have been 
 acquainted. Here the doctrine is taught that Wisdom 
 or the Holy Spirit descends into the souls of men commun- 
 icating knowledge and virtue and making them friends 
 of God and prophets.'^' In receiving this doctrine into 
 his system Paul identifies Jesus with the idea of Wisdom 
 and the Spirit from above, and makes him the source of 
 the divine power which he believed to be communicated 
 to the Christians. We should, however, omit a very im- 
 portant factor in this conception if we did not take into- 
 account Paul's great religious nature, his sense of sin and | 
 of its power in human life, his high ideal of righteousness, 
 and that revelation of the Son of God in him by which he 
 saw at the moment of his transformation a way of escape 
 from his bondage by faith and a dying to the law. How 
 fundamental and important was the office of the Spirit in 
 Paul's philosophy of the gospel appears in his repeated 
 reference to its operations. Not only does he recognize 
 this power in such subordinate manifestations as the 
 speaking with tongues, or the ecstatic expression of 
 feehng, and call those who were so affected among the 
 Corinthians, spiritual men or ** pneumatics," f but to him 
 
 * Wisdom, Chapp. vii. viii. ix. 
 f TtvBVfxariKo^, i Cor. xiv. 37. 
 
l68 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 the Spirit is the supernatural divine power of life which, 
 transcendent before Christ, has through him become im- 
 manent in the souls of believers, and produces in them 
 illumination, knowledge of spiritual things, and ability to 
 overcome the weakness of the flesh.* " The things which 
 eye hath not seen, and ear hath not heard," etc., *'God 
 has revealed to us by His Spirit.'* All knowledge of di- 
 vine things is attained by this instrumentality. ** We did 
 not receive the spirit of the world, but the Spirit of God, 
 that we might know the things that have been given us 
 by the grace of God." f This spirit is represented as tak- 
 ing up its abode in believers, for to the Corinthians Paul 
 says : " Know ye not that ye are God's, temple, and that 
 the Spirit of God dwelleth in you ? " ;(: Without this 
 divine power no one is even able to make a confession of 
 Jesus, for ** No one can say, Jesus is Lord, but by the 
 Holy Spirit." § It is " with the Holy Spirit " that the 
 second Epistle to the Corinthians is written, || The Spirit 
 is not conceived by Paul as a third personality different 
 from God and Christ, but rather as one with both, so that 
 ithe distinction appears to vanish in his thought, and God's 
 Spirit, Christ's Spirit, and Christ are different terms for 
 the same conception,!^ In one passage " the Lord," that 
 is, Christ, is distinctly declared to be *'the Spirit." "^'^ 
 
 These are only a few of the many passages in Paul's 
 writings in which his doctrine of the Spirit finds expres- 
 
 * So prominent a part does Paul assign to this divine power in believers 
 that it has been contended that he did not recognize a itvev^a as naturally 
 belonging to man. See Holsten, Zum Evangeliuni des Paulus und des 
 Petrus, i86S, pp. 384 ff, a.nd per contra Pfleiderer, Zeitsch. fur wissenschaftl. 
 Theol. 1871, pp. 161 ff. 
 
 f 2 Cor. ii. 10, II, X I Cor. iii. 16. 
 
 § I Cor. xii. 3. II 2 Cor. iii. 3. 
 
 1[ Rom. viii. 9-11. ** 2 Cor. iii. 17. 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION, 1 69 
 
 sion. As an absolute principle of the Christian life it was 
 conceived as not only opposed to the flesh in the indi- 
 vidual and an immanent source of spiritual quickening, 
 but as marking the fundamental distinction between the 
 temporal and fleshly " elements " of Judaism and the new, 
 eternal Christian dispensation. The vanishing of Juda- 
 ism, the death of Jesus to the law and to its fleshly 
 Messiahship, the abolition of the law forever on the cross, 
 the necessity that all men should also die to it, be bap- 
 tized into the Spirit, and rise into newness of life — this was 
 Paul's point of departure. The veil upon the face of 
 Moses was a symbol that the Israelites did not behold 
 ''the end of that which was to be done away."*^ But 
 whenever their heart turneth to the Lord, or Christ, the 
 veil is taken away ; and as the Lord is the Spirit, and 
 where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty, the un- 
 veiled beholders of his glory "are changed into the same 
 image from glory to glory, as by the Lord, the Spirit." f 
 For them whatever was limiting and encumbering in Jewish 
 legalism, whatever was severe and difficult in the attain- 
 ment of Jewish righteousness, whatever was fleshly and 
 transient in Jewish Messianism — all this was done away in 
 the presence of the Spirit, the absolute principle of hfe and 
 liberty. It does not belong to an historical study to 
 investigate the validity of this PauHne doctrine of the 
 Spirit, and determine whether it represents an objective 
 reality, or is the expression of a subjective experience 
 which is capable of a psychological explanation. It should 
 be remarked, however, that it indicates a wide departure 
 from the point of view of the original Church of the < 
 Jewish-Christian apostles. As to Judaism the Spirit was 
 transcendent, and came into relation with men only occa- 
 
 * 2 Cor. iii. 13. | 2 Cor. iii. 17, 13. 
 
I/O THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 sionally, when it inspired the prophets, so to the Jewish- 
 Christian believers it was manifested in certain signs on 
 occasion of baptism or the laying on of hands by the 
 apostle's. They knew nothing of the speculative doctrine 
 of the Spirit as an absolute principle of the Christian Hfe 
 in which was dissolved into types and *' ensamples" all 
 that they reverenced in their history and traditions, before 
 which the majesty of the old law must bow, and by whose 
 authority the good old way of the righteousness of the 
 fathers and the prophets was declared impossible. More 
 than a departure from the original gospel of Jesus is this 
 Pauline speculative doctrine ; it is a radical transforma- 
 tion of it. Jesus declared that he came not to destroy 
 the law, but to fulfil it ; and while he doubtless expected 
 that it would be outgrown so far as it was narrow and un- 
 spiritual, he said nothing of a metaphysical abolition of it 
 by his death. In his teaching the religious life was not 
 represented as being the result of a mystical indweUing 
 or communication of the Spirit, but as being attained by 
 repentance and obedience. His great precepts were to 
 love God and men and to strive for righteousness and the 
 kingdom of heaven. The Spirit as a supernatural influ- 
 ence in the religious life was foreign to his thought. On 
 the contrary, he made his appeal to the natural intuitions 
 and sentiments of men, and on these as capable and 
 efficient he depended for the accomplishment of the 
 spiritual ends which he had in view. To his great and 
 lucid intelligence this Pauline speculative point of view 
 would have been impossible, and to his feelings the Pauline 
 " ecstatic speaking with tongues " and the idea of the 
 Spirit making " intercession with groanings that cannot be 
 uttered," would have been only less offensive than fre- 
 quent scenes of the modern revival, where the cross is 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION. I?! 
 
 represented as a symbol of a vicarious sacrifice, and multi- 
 tudes gather shaken with emotion and driven to the place 
 by the instinct of personal safety. 
 
 3. — SIN AND THE FLESH. 
 
 In the teaching of Jesus there is only infrequent men- 
 tion of sin in the concrete, and no doctrine of it in the 
 abstract. But in the doctrinal system of Paul it occupies 
 a very prominent position, and casts an ominous shadow 
 upon human nature and human life as regarded from his 
 point of view. His doctrine of sin shows the influence 
 upon his thought of the Jewish theology in which he was 
 reared, and may be regarded, since Jesus taught nothing 
 respecting the origin and nature of sin, as a modification 
 of the gospel through rabbinical speculation. The Jewish 
 theology furnished both a natural and an historical ex- 
 planation of the entrance of sin into the world. The 
 former, which may be regarded as inclusive of the latter, 
 proceeded upon the assumption of an impulse to evil 
 (yeser ha-ra) residing in the human body and constantly 
 striving against the inclination to good (yeser ha-tob) 
 which existed in the soul. The evil impulse was so strong 
 as generally to prevail, and its first historical success was 
 gained in Eve and Adam through their temptation by 
 Satan or "the old serpent."^ There resulted from the 
 fall of Adam a troop of natural evils, particularly physical 
 death, which was ordained as a punishment, and such a 
 moral deterioration that the will of man became subject 
 to the control of the fleshly impulses, and was bent to the 
 commission not only of sins of a sensuous nature, but also 
 
 * The Jewish theology must of course trace the origin of sin to God, since 
 He created man with fleshly impulses — an act of which He repented. See 
 Weber, System der altsynag. Theol., p. 214. 
 
172 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 of Spiritual transgressions. The inclination to good was 
 so weakened that it was unable in general to offer a 
 successful resistance to the lower nature, and the attain- 
 ment of righteousness was rendered extremely difficult if 
 not impossible, although by the observance of the law 
 (Thora) the good impulses might be so strengthened as 
 to make their victory possible. But such cases are excep- 
 tional, and the great majority of men are subject to the 
 sway of their lower nature. Only actual transgressions 
 were, however, regarded as sins, and no guilt attached to 
 a man because of the natural impulse to wrong-doing. 
 Accordingly, in the Jewish theology there was no doctrine 
 of inherited or transmitted sinfulness, and all punishments 
 were thought to be the results of individual offences. 
 The penalty was inflicted rigorously " measure for meas- 
 ure," and ** No death without sin" was an established 
 maxim. The death of children was charged to the sins 
 of their parents, while that of the righteous was a means 
 of salvation, a deliverance out of the present evil world. 
 
 It accords with the philosophical point of view of Paul 
 /that he deals very largely with sin in the abstract. He 
 conceives of it as a condition and a power. Jews and 
 Greeks are subject to it ; it has come into the world 
 and dwells in man, working all manner of evil, deceiving, 
 slaying, as if possessed of personality.* He draws a ter- 
 rible picture of the condition of the heathen world under 
 the power of sin, whom " God has given over in the lust 
 of their hearts to impurity," and sees his own nation sub- 
 ject to the same malign influence. f Experience reveals 
 the deplorable condition of the individual in whose mem- 
 bers this fatal power works, mastering the inclination to 
 good and the will which would obey the law, and bring- 
 
 * Rom. iii. 9, v. 12, vii. 9, 11, 17. f Rom. i. ii. 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION. 1/3 
 
 ing him into a bondage against which he vainly strug- 
 gles.* As if Scripture could make more certain what 
 observation and experience have established, Paul com- 
 bines several passages from the Psalms to prove the 
 universality of sin,t which he regards as a **law" of the 
 members, a recognized principle in the economy of God, 
 who " delivered up all to disobedience," and whose re- 
 vealed word "shut up all under sin." :t^ Paul's explana- 
 tion of this power of sin is essentially that of the Jewish 
 theologians. He finds two principal causes for it — the 
 transgression of Adam, and the nature of man as " flesh." 
 With regard to the former his fundamental proposition 
 is that " through one man sin entered into the world, 
 and through sin death, and thus death came through unto 
 all men, because all sinned." § The doctrine of this 
 passage and its connection appears to be that through 
 the transgression of Adam sin came into the world as a 
 universal power to which all men were to such a degree 
 subjected that they became personally sinners; and that 
 physical death came into the world through sin, and that 
 all were subjected to it on account of the judgment 
 pronounced upon Adam, but only because all personally 
 sinned. Thus the dominion of death extended over all 
 men not only because of Adam's sin, but also because of 
 individual transgressions whereby the universal judgment 
 of death was made effective for each. The mediate 
 cause of death is the sin of Adam, its immediate cause 
 the sin of each individual. That this was actually the 
 state of things before the Mosaic law was given is shown 
 
 * Rom. vii. 7-25, vi. 17. \ Rom. iii. lO-ig. 
 
 \ Rom. vii. 23, xi. 32 ; Gal. iii. 22. 
 
 g (5za r^S dfj.a.pria'i Bdvazoi i<p cp Ttavre? Tj/xaprov, 
 
 Rom. V. 12. 
 
1/4 T^^^^ GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 by the words : " For all the time before the law sin was 
 in the world ; but sin is not set to one*s account when 
 there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to 
 Moses even over those who had not sinned in the manner 
 in which Adam transgressed " (2. ^., by violating a posi- 
 tive commandment).* In other words, in the case of 
 those who had not sinned as Adam did, the actually 
 existing sin was punished by death in accordance with 
 the maxim that they who sin without a law will also 
 perish without a law — a doctrine which was fundamental 
 in the Jewish theology.f The death of innocent children 
 was doubtless not in Paul's mind, but the Jewish idea of 
 the solidarity of the family, according to which the sin 
 of the parents is visited upon the children, would have 
 furnished him with a solution of the problem. It should 
 be observed that according to the teaching of Paul it is 
 not sin which has *' come through" to all men, but death, 
 which came with sin. Hence he cannot be said to have 
 taught the doctrine that the death of all, even of httle 
 children, is a penalty of hereditary sin born in all, or im- 
 mediately of Adam's sin. The dogma of original sin as 
 taught in the Church cannot legitimately be derived from 
 Paul's writings. He regarded sin and death, indeed, as 
 having become great powers in the world through Adam ; 
 but he knew of no guilt which was not through individ- 
 ual sinning, and his proposition concerning death as a 
 judgment upon sin is that it "came through unto all men 
 because all sinned," that is, that it is directly due to per- 
 sonal transgression, indirectly to Adam's.;]: 
 
 "^ eiti r(^ 6^oi(jO}.iaTi riji 7tapa/3(X(SeGoS^Ada/iy Rom. v. 13, 14. 
 j- See Rom. ii. 12. 
 
 j^ That Paul regarded Adam as naturally mortal appears to be implied in 
 I Cor. XV. 47. The introduction of death by sin can then only be ex- 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION. 1/5 
 
 We should expect, then, that Paul would have a doc- 
 trine of the origin, seat, and development of sin in the 
 individual. Such a doctrine which is implied in his teach- 
 ing respecting the relation of Adam's transgression to the 
 human race, and is to be expected from him by reason of 
 his education in the Jewish theology, is actually contained 
 in his conception of the flesh.* The exact determination j 
 of the meaning of this term in his thought is involved in ' 
 difficulty. In accord with the Jewish theology it is evi- 
 dent that he recognized in human nature two impulses 
 corresponding to its two sides, body and soul. He sees a 
 schism in man arising from a twofold " law " or impulse, 
 the one good, the other bad. The good impulse, which 
 dwells in the " inner man," or the " mind," f is in sympathy 
 with the law of God, but on account of the opposition of 
 the ** other law in the members" % has not the power to 
 fulfil it. This fleshly impulse is represented as natural to 
 man, but as not resulting in sin until " the commandment 
 came," for ** without the law sin is dead." When the 
 commandment is known the latent tendency to sin springs 
 into activity with its train of lusts and passions, the rent 
 in human nature is disclosed, the conflict of opposing im- 
 
 plained from Paul's point of view by supposing that Adam might have 
 become immortal had he not sinned and hence been expelled from the 
 garden and so prevented from eating of the tree of life. See Gen. iii. 22. 
 The dependence of the whole discussion upon Jewish legend and speculation 
 is instructive. The Jewish theologians also held that Adam was mortal in 
 the sense that he could sin, but that he brought death upon himself and his 
 posterity by sinning. Had he not sinned he might, like Elijah, have 
 escaped death. Jewish theology also attempted to solve the antinomy which 
 is contained in the two propositions, that sin and guilt are not hereditary, 
 but death, their penalty, is, since the whole race is mortal regardless of 
 moral desert. See Weber, System der altsynagog. Theol., pp. 238-240. 
 
 * ddfj^. f etfoo arBpG07to<^y vovi. 
 
 J erepoi v6ixo<i iv roii /isXedzv. 
 
176 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 pulses begins, the peace of innocence in which the subject 
 had ** lived " is broken, and he has the bitter foretaste of 
 death. Sin comes to life and he dies. Thence his better 
 self is in bondage to the tyrannous power of sin ; he is 
 " fleshly, a slave sold to sin,'* yet at the same time he dis- 
 tinguishes between his real, true self and this foreign and 
 hostile power which rules in him, that is, in his flesh, so 
 that it is no longer he that transgresses but sin which 
 dwells in him. The "inward man " takes delight in the 
 law of God, but the other law which wars against the law 
 of the mind (vov^^ brings the man " into captivity " to the 
 law of sin which is in his ''members.'** These expres- 
 sions throw some light upon the Pauline conception of 
 the flesh, and appear to show that he saw in the natural 
 man something more than he thought this term to cover. 
 Since there is the " inward man," the vov^y which contends 
 against the outward man, or the flesh, the mind striving in 
 opposition to the sarkical or fleshly impulses, there would 
 hardly appear to be grounds for affirming that Paul con- 
 ceived of the flesh as the body, and of the latter as " com- 
 posing the real, substantial essence of man." \ As the 
 seat of sin and the cause of the infirmity by reason of 
 which man is brought into bondage to it, he doubtless 
 regarded it, but he distinguished it from the self, and 
 'represented it as the external, earthly side of man, the 
 " members/* whereby he is alHed to the lower animals, and 
 distinguished from God and heavenly creatures. In this 
 sense Paul frequently employs the term of the material of 
 the earthly body, designating events, conditions, and rela- 
 
 * See Rom. vii. 7-25. 
 
 f So Baur, Neutestamentl. Theol., p. 143. Holsten's view is essentially 
 the same, who regards 6ap^ and av%fiooico'=> as substantially synonymous in 
 the Pauline teaching. Zum Evangel. Paulus, etc., p. 393. 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION, 1 77 
 
 tions which refer to the body as *' fleshly," " in the flesh," 
 and "according to the flesh," "^ without regard to moral 
 relations. The term is generally employed in the Old Tes- 
 tament to designate man as mortal, frail, and weak ; and 
 as it is but a step from this idea to that of moral weakness 
 as residing in his physical organism, we find in a single 
 passage in the Psalms sin connected with the impure 
 origin of the body in the natural act of generation, f But 
 in general the Old Testament writers do not recognize the 
 body as the seat of sin. In the later Jewish theology 
 however, it was regarded not only as the ground of intel- 
 lectual and moral weakness, but as the seat of sin, par- 
 ticularly in the sexual instinct. Paul shows points of 
 contact with the Old-Testament conception and with that 
 of the teaching in which he had been reared in such ex- 
 pressions as: "I conferred not with flesh and blood," 
 " fleshly wisdom," " fleshly weapons," etc., % ^'^^ when he 
 calls the Corinthians *' fleshly " or " unspiritual" because 
 of their party-strifes, indicating that they were merely 
 natural men, or as he had just before called them, " psychi- 
 cal " men who were destitute of understanding for spiritual 
 things,§ though not necessarily without that power of 
 mind or reason (vovi) which is indeed capable of perceiv- 
 ing and even taking delight in the law of God, but unable 
 alone to fulfil it. 
 
 Paul's conception of the flesh was, then, substantially that 
 of the Jewish theology and speculation, according to which 
 there resides in the body an impulse to evil-doing (yeser 
 ha-ra). The flesh was to him the seat of a power of sin^ 
 of a bad impulse opposed to the Spirit and to " the in- 
 
 * Rom. i. 3, ii. 28, ix. 3 ; 2 Cor. a. 3 ; Gal. ii. 20 ; Phil. i. 22, 24. 
 t Ps. Ii. 7. \ Gal. i, 16 ; 2 Cor. i. 12, a. 3 f. 
 
 § I Cor. ii. 14, iii. 1-4. 
 
178 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 ward man," whose better knowledge and will it contin- 
 ually resisted and dominated. "" The mind of the flesh 
 is enmity against God ; for it doth not submit itself to 
 the law of God, neither, indeed, can it." It has desires 
 against the Spirit, and renders its subjects unable to do 
 the things which they would.* In spite of the intimate 
 relation to the body which the flesh is represented as 
 holding it does not appear that Paul identified it with the 
 body t nor, indeed, with the natural man as a personality, 
 although ''according to the flesh" and "according to the 
 [natural] man " are synonymous expressions.:}; The flesh 
 produces not alone sins which may be regarded as origi- 
 nating in the body, for although offenses against chastity 
 hold a prominent place in the catalogue of " the works of 
 the flesh," there are mentioned also, idolatry, sorcery, 
 hatreds, strife, rivalry, outbursts of wrath, cabals, divi- 
 sions, factions, envyings, etc.§ It is but a step from the 
 conception of the flesh as the seat of sin to an identifica- 
 tion of it with sin itself, so that the expression '* to walk 
 in or according to the flesh " should be equivelant to, " to 
 live in sin or according to the principle of sin." Paul 
 appears, then, to have employed the term in three signi- 
 fications to denote : I, simply the body without reference 
 to moral relations ; 2, the natural man in his sensuous 
 nature and moral-religious weakness ; 3, the natural man 
 
 * Rom. viii. 7 ; Gal. v. 16. 
 
 fin Rom. vi. 6 the destruction of "the body of sin "is mentioned. 
 This G^jia rrf^ afxapria'i is probably not identi'^l with 6dp%, but may be 
 the body as the "organ" of sin, according to Tholuck, or as subject to, 
 governed by, sin, according to Meyer. 
 
 \ Baur appears to go too far in maintaining that the 6dft%, is conceived of 
 as so dominating the vov^ that the latter was in Paul's thought only an 
 "accident" of the former. Neutestamentl. Theol., p. 146. 
 
 § Gal. V. 19 f. 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION, 1 79 
 
 as positively sinful. The words *' to live in the flesh," 
 and " to walk in the flesh," and '* to walk according to the 
 flesh," appear to have now one and now another of these 
 meanings according to the connection.* 
 
 The preponderance of the idea of sin as a power and a 
 principle in human nature in the thought of Paul throws 
 somewhat into the background the conception of sin as 
 an act and its relation as such to man's self-determination 
 or freedom. In the gospel of Jesus, from which specula- 
 tion was quite remote, the reverse is the case. We find, 
 however, in Paul's writings no explanation of the origin 
 of this power of evil which has its seat in the flesh. To 
 say that it was inherited only removes the source farther 
 back, for Paul evidently regarded the fleshly impulse as 
 latent in Adam until the positive commandment awoke 
 it. The impulses to wrong-doing, the lusts of the flesh, 
 the passions, which bring forth the horrid brood of evil 
 works, he must have thought to be natural to man and 
 not the result of his free choice. The power of sin in 
 the flesh did not spring from man's free personal acts of 
 sin. Rather man as a fleshly creature is powerless under 
 the might of sin in his members, sold to it, like a slave. 
 He is unable to do the good, however much he may 
 approve it with his "mind," and feel himself under 
 obhgations to obey the divine law. The flesh does not 
 strive against the law, and bring about disobedience be- 
 cause man has decided by an act of free choice against 
 the commandment of God, but because the impulse of the 
 flesh is in itself toward evil and against God, and he who 
 is under its power is not able to decide for the good and 
 perform it. His sole hope of deliverance is in somewhat 
 
 * See 2 Cor. x. 3 ; Gal. ii. 20 ; Phil. i. 22 for the first sense ; Rom. viii. 
 4 for the last ; and 2 Cor. x. 2 f for a double sense. 
 
l8o THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 which he has not in himself. Only the " law of the Spirit 
 of life " can set him free in Christ Jesus from this tyran- 
 nous law of sin and death/^ If, then, sin as a principle or 
 a power is original and latent in human nature, only 
 awaiting the emergence of the law to "seize the opportu- 
 nity" and work all manner of sinful desiref ; if it thus 
 existed in our first parents, and the " first man " was 
 " of the earth, earthy," a "natural" man of flesh and 
 blood which " cannot inherit the kingdom of God/' so that 
 it cannot be said that sin as an act of transgression 
 wrought a change in human flesh in Adam or effects one 
 in that of the individual sinner; if the body is in its 
 nature a ''body of sin" and a "body of death" to 
 which the power of sin clings so persistently that even in 
 those who as Christians have received the counteracting 
 power of the Spirit it cannot be fully overcome — how 
 can sin and death be said to have come into the world 
 through Adam's transgression ? To the first man, who 
 in contrast with the second man, Christ, the life-giving 
 spirit :(: was not spiritual, but "animal" and of the " cor- 
 ruption " which does not " inherit incorruption," death 
 cannot be regarded as incidental and dependent on an 
 inward act, but must be natural and necessary. In direct 
 opposition to this Paul teaches that death in the race and 
 the individual is the result of a decree of God in punish- 
 ment of sin, and hence is not a natural necessity, but a 
 judicial dispensation called forth by the act of man. The 
 Hellenistic doctrine that death is natural and necessary 
 in the constitution of man and that of the Jewish the- 
 ology that it is the consequence of sin appear to be united 
 in the Pauline teaching without definite reconciliation. 
 Again, Paul's teaching furnishes no answer to the ques- 
 
 * Rom. viii. 8. f Rom. vii. 8, J i Cor. xv. 45. 46. 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION. l8l 
 
 tion how sin can be said to have come into the world 
 through Adam, since it resides as a principle in all men as 
 naturally " fleshly," and in each only awaits the occasion 
 furnished by the law '* to come to life." If it is not trans- 
 mitted, and all men are subject to death only *' inasmuch 
 as all have sinned," the significance of Adam*s causal 
 relation to it as a world-power and a universal principle is 
 not apparent. Furthermore, if man was originally con- 
 stituted by his Creator with a dominant power of sin in 
 his members, if he is naturally so subject and enslaved 
 to the flesh that in spite of all his knowledge and good- 
 will he does what he would not,* the consistency of the 
 judgment which pronounces a universal condemnation of 
 death upon the race on account of sin is not obvious. 
 Yet with all this teaching of the fatality of the flesh Paul 
 appears to recognize a power of choice in man which may 
 be appealed to, and censures the heathen because they 
 *'did not choose to retain God in their knowledge." f 
 But this appears to have been written when he was not 
 influenced by the exigencies of his theory that man can- 
 not be saved without the righteousness of Christ. 
 
 4. — CHRISTOLOGY. 
 
 The Christology of Paul proceeds from the point of view 
 from which his entire theology was developed, that Chris- 
 tianity was not a fulfilled Judaism, but a new and inde- 
 pendent principle of Hfe, a " new creation," :]: related to 
 Judaism as freedom to bondage, as the Spirit to the flesh. 
 It is a transformation of the Christology of the original 
 apostles and of the tradition of Jesus on which the synop- 
 tical Gospels are founded in that it throws into the back- 
 
 * Rom. vii. 19. f Rom. i. 28. \ xaivj) Htzdi?, 
 
1 82 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 ground the teaching and Messiahship of Jesus, and brings 
 into the foreground his atoning sacrifice and a metaphysi- 
 cal conception of " the second Adam " and " the man from 
 heaven," by which the ordinary Jewish Messianism was 
 altogether transcended. Accordingly, Paul never applies 
 to Christ the appellation, Son of Man, which was Jesus* 
 favorite designation of himself. He does not appear to 
 use the term Son of God in the Jewish-Messianic sense, 
 but rather in order to indicate that Christ was of the 
 essence of God in that he was" Spirit," " Spirit of holiness," 
 and ** life-giving Spirit," even "image of God." "^ His 
 conception of the nature of Christ was determined by his 
 theory of the work of Christ. As the Saviour of men 
 from sin he must have been without sin. f Since he com- 
 municated the Spirit to men, he must have been of a 
 
 * Rom. i. 4 ; I Cor. xv. 45 ; 2 Cor. iii. 17 ; Einmv rov Bsov, 2 Cor. iv. 
 4. In the thought of Paul, Christ was not simply an exalted man, but 
 rather a heavenly being subordinate to God. He was not God, but the Son, 
 " the image of God," the divine glory shone in his face ; and he must at last 
 become subject to Him who put all things under him. (2 Cor. iv. 4, 6 ; i 
 Cor. XV. 28). The first man, Adam, became a living soul, but the last Adam 
 became (was created) a life-giving spirit ; the first man is from the earth, the 
 second man is from heaven (i Cor, xv. 45, 46). From this point of view 
 should probably be interpreted the difficult passage, Rom. i. 4, "appointed 
 with power to be the Son of God according to the spirit of holiness by the 
 resurrection of the dead." "According to the flesh," z. l\, in his earthly 
 manifestation, he was of the seed of David, but according to the spirit of 
 holiness, the spiritual side of his nature, the Spirit which he was (" the Lord 
 is the Spirit ") he was set forth by the resurrection in his true nature as the 
 Son of God, that is, assigned to his proper rank as " the second man from 
 heaven," the originator and archetype of a new spiritual mankind. This 
 Pauline conception appears to be closely related to the idea of the Jewish 
 theology, doubtless familiar to the apostle, according to which the Messiah 
 as Son of Man was kept in heaven until the time of his manifestation. C/, 
 Weizsacker, Das apostol. Zeitalter, p. 124. 
 
 ] 2 Cor. V. 21, rov jxr} yvovta dpiapriar. 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION. 1 83 
 
 Spiritual nature. If whatever Adam as the fleshly head 
 of the race represented of corruption and sin, if whatever 
 was thought to have come into the world through him, 
 was counteracted in Christ, then must Christ have been a 
 man of an essentially different kind. Over against the 
 earthly man was " the man from heaven." If through the 
 one came death through the other came the resurrection of 
 the dead."^* Since man, as the descendant of Adam who 
 was only a " living soul/' f a merely psychical man, could 
 not by nature have the Spirit, he must be transformed 
 according to the image of the spiritual Adam, and become 
 a "new creation." Christ is revealed as the life-giving 
 Spirit, which he was by creation, through his resurrection 
 from the dead.:j: A new power of life is disclosed in him 
 which man may appropriate by faith, and through it over- 
 come the flesh which holds him in bondage, and from him 
 begins a process of renewal which the Holy Spirit effects, 
 transforming the sinful children of Adam into children of 
 God, the fleshly men into spiritual men. In this Chris- 
 tology there is a transformation not only of the Old-Testa- 
 ment Jewish Messianism but of Jesus' teaching regarding 
 himself. For the conception of Christ which it contains 
 is equally remote from the second David, the victorious 
 prince, the Hon of the house of Judah, and from the suffer- 
 ing Son of Man, the spiritual teacher and prophet of 
 
 "^ I Cor. XV. 21, 47, 
 
 f i^'^XV ^^^Oi' In the Pauline anthropology a spiritual or pneumatic 
 principle is accorded to man ; but in Adam and his natural descendants the 
 psychical or sensuous is regarded as dominant, while in Christ, the second 
 Adam, the spiritual predominates, so that it may be said of him that he is 
 essentially itvevixa, and not merely itvevfia, but to itvEvixa. "The 
 Spirit " which through him is communicated to men should not be confounded 
 with spirit as an element of human nature, the rational power, etc. 
 
 X I Cor. XV. 45 ; Rom. i. 4. 
 
184 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 righteousness. The metaphysical second Adam, the man 
 from heaven, neither ushers in an earthly kingdom at the 
 head of armies nor brings a message of the kingdom of 
 God, teaching men how to enter it by the attainment of a 
 human righteousness. 
 
 While this conception of Christ as the man from heaven 
 is unique in relation to the New-Testament circle of ideas, 
 and was first introduced by Paul into Christian literature, 
 it is doubtful that he originated it. The, notion of an 
 ideal man was entertained by Philo, and Plato is suggested 
 where we read in this Alexandrian philosopher of a dif- 
 ference between man as created in time and man as found 
 in the image of God before time was, the former, of body 
 and soul, mortal, the latter, idea, pure form, incorporeal. 
 Again he speaks explicitly of a "heavenly man," and an 
 " earthly man." The Messianism of the Septuagint trans- 
 lators of the Bible shows itself in the connection of the 
 idea of preexistence with the person of Christ,^ who is 
 arbitrarily assumed by them to have been in the thought 
 of the original writers. In the Enoch-Parables the Messiah 
 is represented as being in the image of an ideal man and 
 as preexistent: "His appearance was that of a man, 
 and full of grace was his countenance like a holy angel " ; 
 " Before the stars of heaven were made was his name 
 named in the presence of the Lord of spirits"; "And 
 therefore was he chosen and hidden before Him before 
 
 * In Ps. Ixxii. 5 it is said of the king : " They shall fear thee as long as 
 the sun and the moon endure,'' etc. The Septuagint reads here as of a pre- 
 existent Messiah : " He will live as long as the sun, and M'as before the 
 moon." In Ps. ex. it is said of the king : " Thy people shall be willing in 
 the day of thy power, in the beauty of holiness from the womb of the morn- 
 ing.'' The Septuagint reads, " I brought thee [the Messiah] forth from the 
 womb before the morning star." 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION. 1 85 
 
 the world was created," etc/'^ That Paul thought Christ 
 as the man from heaven to have been a created being is 
 evident from the connection in which he places his origin 
 with that of the first man, Adam. The one as well as the 
 other *' became." f There is great probability that he also 
 believed Christ to have existed as a celestial being prior 
 to his appearance upon the earth and even to have taken 
 part in the creation of the world. In connection with 
 instructions regarding things offered in sacrifice to idols 
 he says : '* To us there is but one God, the Father, from 
 whom are all things, and we to Him ; and one Lord Jesus 
 Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him.":^ 
 Here it is certainly probable that the words *' from whom 
 are all things " and " through whom are all things " should 
 be understood as conveying essentially the same idea both 
 as to the extent of "all things" and as to the production 
 of them, in the former case by a first cause and in the 
 latter by an agent. It is extremely arbitrary to interpret 
 *'all things" as referring in the former clause to the uni- 
 verse, and in the latter to the economy of salvation, or to 
 assume the idea of creation in the former, and that of 
 government in the latter. Preexistence is very clearly 
 implied in the declarations that " God sent His Son in the 
 likeness of sinful flesh," and that "When the fulness of 
 time came God sent forth His Son, born of a woman." § 
 For although the idea of a sending of Jesus and of prophets 
 is expressed in the synoptic Gospels, to which the concep- 
 
 * Enoch xlvi. i, xlviii. 3, 6. See Dillmann, Das Buch Henoch, p. 160. 
 Toy's opinion that an ideal preexistence may here be intended (Judaism 
 and Christianity, p. 326) is not supported by Dillmann with whom Hausrath 
 agrees. 
 
 f I Cor. XV. 45, lyevETO. 
 
 X I Cor. viii. 6. § Rom. viii. 3 ; Gal. iv. 4. 
 
1 86 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 tion of preexistence is foreign,* yet the case is quite dif- 
 ferent here where the words " in the likeness of sinful 
 flesh" and " born of a woman " evidently denote special 
 and peculiar conditions, and imply that the writer thought 
 of Christ as not originally connected with a body of flesh 
 and as not necessarily existing only through a human 
 birth. In like manner the declaration that Christ in con- 
 trast with Adam, who was "of the earth, earthy," was 
 the man "from heaven," f must mean either that his 
 origin was from heaven in the sense that he was generated 
 by the Spirit, or that he preexisted in the celestial regions. 
 But since the former idea is totally foreign to the Pauline 
 Christology, the latter is probably conveyed in the ex- 
 pression. The words : " For ye know the grace of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich yet for your 
 sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might 
 be rich," % can only mean that for the sake of saving men 
 he renounced the glory, dominion, and blessedness which 
 in his preexistent state he had with the Father, in order 
 to enter upon the humiliation of his incarnation. The 
 interpretations, " although he might have been rich," and 
 " although he is rich," are not only ungrammatical, but 
 contrary to the connection, in which the apostle urges 
 upon the Corinthians the practice of liberality in giving 
 for the needs of others, and cites the example of Christ 
 
 * Mat. X. 40, xxiii. 54 ; Luke xx. 13. The absence of the idea of the 
 preexistence of Christ from the Jewish-Christian tradition and from the 
 synoptic Gospels which are based upon it may perhaps be explained by the 
 fact that the early tradition was the naive historical account of the life and 
 teachings of Jesus colored chiefly by earthly Messianic expectations. It was 
 reserved for the speculative mind of Paul to introduce this idea from the Jew- 
 ish thelogy and perhaps from Philo as a presumption necessary to his theory of 
 redemption which required no less a personage than *'the man from heaven.'* 
 
 f I Cor. XV. 47. X 2 Cor. viii. 9. 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION. 1 8/ 
 
 who, though he was rich, became poor. A similar thought 
 of the renunciation of Christ is conveyed in the passage : 
 ** Let this mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus who, 
 being in the form of God, did not regard it as a thing to 
 be grasped at to be on an equality with God, but made 
 himself of no consideration, taking the form of a servant, 
 and becoming like men," etc., * where the Philippians 
 are exhorted to humility in imitation of Christ who, when 
 he was in his preexistent state in the form of God, that 
 is, as a heavenly being, spirit, '*the image of God," f did 
 not grasp at an equality with God, but humbled himself 
 to the lowly position of a servant and to the death of the 
 cross. 
 
 It is not clear how Paul conceived of the entrance of 
 this supersensible, heavenly being into human conditions 
 through generation. He says that Christ " was born of 
 the seed of David according to the flesh.":]; So much 
 may be regarded as conceded to Jewish Messianism. 
 But he was only " appointed " to be the Son of God in 
 the higher, transformed Pauline sense of Messiahship 
 through his resurrection, whereby it was manifested that 
 he was not subjected to death, but had in him the principle 
 of life, the "life-giving Spirit" which could not be 
 dominated as in the case of other men by the principle of 
 sin in the flesh. The PauHne Christology appears to 
 proceed from an idea of a twofold creation of man, 
 suggested perhaps by the double account in Genesis, that 
 of an "earthy" man, Adam, and that of a "heavenly" 
 man, Christ, who remained in heaven, essentially Spirit 
 and so God-allied, a being of light, reflecting the glory 
 
 * Phil. ii. 5-8. \ 2 Cor. iv. 4. 
 
 I These words evidently exclude the supernatural generation as recorded 
 by the first and third evangelisls. 
 
1 88 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 of God, until "the fulness of the time came," when 
 he was *' sent forth/' " that we might be adopted as 
 sons."'^' Christ was accordingly the spiritual or pneumatic 
 man, the typical man, who represented in himself the 
 perfection of human nature. In his earthly condition, 
 united with the flesh, his original, preexistent splendor 
 as " Lord of glory" was not fully manifested, but he was 
 *' appointed with power," that is, manifested in his true 
 nature by the resurrection, after which he returned to the 
 heavenly regions in a " body of glory " to resume his 
 former estate. The teaching that Christ was " sent " in 
 the " likeness of sinful flesh " f appears to indicate that 
 his earthly body was not his original corporeity corre- 
 sponding to his original, heavenly manifestation, but one 
 assumed for his entrance upon human conditions. 
 Whether this " likeness " % ^^s conceived by Paul as in- 
 dicating that the flesh of Christ was tainted with sin like 
 that of other men, or that, while like these in respect to 
 material and form, he was unlike them in being free from 
 sin, is a difficult and much-contested exegetical question. 
 Since the word "likeness " may mean either similarity or 
 equahty, it is evident that by itself it can furnish no 
 explanation of the thought of the apostle, for it is inde- 
 terminable whether likeness in all respects or only in some 
 is intended. In the PauHne anthropology the flesh is by 
 nature sinful, that is, it is the seat of impulses to sin. If, 
 then, to be ** in the likeness of sinful flesh " is to have the 
 natural tendencies and impulses to sin, it can hardly be 
 said that Christ " did not know sin." § With a flesh in 
 all respects like that of other men he must have known 
 sin as impulse and temptation to wrong-doing, for not 
 
 * Gal. iv. 4. t Rom. viii. 3. 
 
 % 6)xoioDf.ia, § 2 Cor. v. 21. 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION. 1 09 
 
 actually to have transgressed can hardly be the meaning 
 of the words, " did not know sin." But if Paul intended 
 to teach that Christ was as to his flesh in all respects like 
 other men, it is difficult to see why he did not say simply 
 " in sinful flesh " instead of " in the likeness of sinful flesh." 
 On the other hand, if he meant that Christ was in some 
 respects like other men as to his flesh, he used the word 
 *Mikeness " in accordance with his usage of it elsewhere,'^ 
 and taught here in accord with his Christology in general 
 which recognizes in Christ no temptation to sin, no 
 struggle with the flesh. From the interpretation that the 
 flesh of Christ was not thought to be like that of other 
 men in all respects there is, however, the possible infer- 
 ence that his flesh was not conceived as real, but only as 
 an "accident" of the Spirit which he essentially was.f 
 But to this view is decidedly opposed the teaching that 
 Christ was born of the seed of David according to the 
 flesh. The complete manhood implied in this expression 
 is also with difficulty reconcilable with the idea that he 
 did not possess the " sinful flesh " common to all men. 
 The problem perhaps presents difficulties which cannot 
 be entirely overcome by exegetical skill. The preponder- 
 
 * Rom. i. 23, V. 14 ; Phil. ii. 7. 
 
 f This Docetic view has been maintained by Baur and Hilgenfeld as the 
 Pauline idea of the flesh of Christ. See Baur, Neutestamentl. Theol., pp. 
 189 f, and Hilgenfeld, Zeitschr. fur wissenschaftl. Theol., 1871, pp. 182 ff. 
 Although the extraordinary nature of the flesh of Jesus appears to imply the 
 supernatural conception, there is no intimation of this idea in Paul's writings. 
 It is in fact excluded by the teaching that Jesus was "born of the seed of 
 David according to the flesh " — an expression which can only mean accord- 
 ing to Jewish usage that his generation was through a male descendant 
 of David. Cf. Pfleiderer, Der Paulinismus, 2te Ausg., p. 133; Stevens, 
 Pauline Theology, 1892, p. 212. Paul does notsolve the problem of sinless- 
 ness in a man naturally generated. The sinlessness of some men was, how- 
 ever, maintained in the Jewish theology. See Weber, System, etc., p. 224. 
 
190 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 ance of probability appears, however, to be in favor of the 
 conclusion that, if Paul was not writing carelessly, and 
 chose the word " likeness " with intention, he meant to 
 teach that the flesh of Christ was only partly similar to 
 " sinful flesh," similar in that it was flesh, dissimilar in that 
 it was not touched with sin."" 
 
 It is consistent with the importance which Paul assigns 
 to Christ as the " man from heaven " and with the rank 
 which he conceives him to have held in the scale of being, 
 that in the Pauline Christology great significance should 
 be attached to the work of Christ, or in other words, that 
 salvation and the nature of Christ should be closely con- 
 nected with each other. Since Paul practically dis- 
 regarded the teaching and example of Christ, and 
 constructed an original doctrine of his relation to men as 
 Saviour as well as of his person, there remained as points 
 of attachment for his system of thought only the two 
 closing events of Jesus' earthly career, his death and 
 resurrection. The significance which he attached to the 
 former of these is shown by words which appear to 
 identify Christianity with the cross, so that the teaching 
 of it is the teaching of the cross, f and by his declaration 
 that he was determined not to know anything save Jesus 
 
 * See Zeller, Zeitschr. fiir wissenschaftl. TheoL, 1870, pp. 301 fif. A 
 psychological problem is presented in the doctrine that Christ, the heavenly 
 preexistent man with a developed spirituality, became Jesus, the carpenter's 
 son, and passed through the stages of human growth and education. Vet 
 the fact undoubtedly is that Paul thought of Jesus as an earthly man and as 
 identical with the man from heaven. He gives no intimation of the 
 presence in his mind of the problem how the two personalities might be 
 reconciled with each other, and if it ever occurred to him we do not know 
 how he solved it or whether he attempted its solution at all. But he 
 acknowledged that he knew only '* in part " (i Cor. xiii. 9), and raised many 
 problems which he did not resolve. 
 
 f Ao/oS rov dravpOTJ, i Cor. i. 17. 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION. IQI 
 
 Christ and him crucified."^ The significance which he 
 attached to the death of Christ can only be understood in 
 connection with his idea of the law. The cross and the 
 law are antitheses in the doctrinal system of Paul. On 
 the one hand, the law demands fulfilment, and on the 
 other, man by reason of his weakness through the flesh is 
 unable to render obedience, so that it is a fundamental 
 principle in the Pauline theology that by the works of the 
 law no man shall be justified. f *' What the law could not 
 do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God did, who 
 on account of sin sent His own Son in the likeness of 
 sinful flesh, and passed sentence of condemnation on sin 
 in the flesh, so that what was required by the law might 
 be accomplished in us.'' X Reliance upon the works of 
 the law is futile, and all who put their trust in their own 
 obedience are self-deceived, for instead of a blessing they 
 will reap a curse. The only way of deliverance is through 
 a new order of things by which the old is done away. At 
 the head of this new order is "the second Adam," "the 
 man from heaven," who accomplishes for men what they 
 could not do of themselves. He takes their place in 
 relation to the law and the righteousness which it 
 requires. He redeems them (buys them off) from the 
 curse of the law by becoming a curse for them. § It is 
 evident that this is the only logical conclusion from the 
 Pauline conception of the law and of righteousness. The 
 
 * 2 Cor. ii. 2. The reference by Paul of the fact of the crucifixion to the 
 tradition of Jesus in i Cor. xv. 3 (' ' that which I received ") should not be con- 
 founded, as it is by Weizsacker (Das apostol. Zeitalter, p. 137), with a deriva- 
 tion of his doctrine of the death of Christ from the same source. The words 
 ** for oursins " {vTtkp rcSv djuaprimv rfpK^v) are doubtless a Pauline inter- 
 pretation added to the tradition. 
 
 •f Rom. iii. 20. I Rom. viii. 3 f. 
 
 § Gal. iii. 13, k^j]y6pa6Ev rifj.d'^ eh r?/? Hatdpa<i tov v6/iov. 
 
192 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 more the law and the ideal of righteousness are exalted 
 in contrast with man's futile efforts to accomplish a per- 
 fect obedience, the greater is the necessity for a super- 
 natural intervention. God maybe merciful and forgiving, 
 but the law stands in the way of the dispensation of His 
 grace, for its requirements must be satisfied. Hence Paul 
 does not conceive of the divine love as shown directly to 
 men, but through Christ. It is commended to them in 
 that while they were yet sinners Christ was sent to furnish 
 a means of deliverance from the curse of the law, by 
 receiving that curse in his own person. In the words, 
 "Having become a curse for us" "for" is not to be 
 understood in the sense of " for our benefit," or " for our 
 sake," but " in our stead." * As the representative of the 
 human race Christ is conceived by Paul to have taken 
 upon himself the penalty which the guilt of men had 
 incurred, and to have " bought them off" from the curse 
 of the law, which was death, by himself dying for them.f 
 
 * vitEp, "for," does not necessarily contain the idea of representation, 
 neither does it exclude it. The idea of one acting in the place of another is 
 more accurately expressed by avri. Since vTtep is used by Paul of sins 
 (vTtep d/xapTimv) as well as of persons, it is perhaps correct to say with 
 Meyer that it does not in itself convey the idea of substitution. But " since 
 what is done for one's advantage frequently cannot be done without acting 
 in one's stead, we easily understand how vitep, like the Latin /?'<? and our /or, 
 ■f comes to signify ' in the place of.* " Grimm-Wilke's Clavis N. T., su^ voce. 
 Accordingly the baptism *'for" the dead (vTtEp tcSv vEKpmv) probably 
 conveys the idea of baptism in their stead (i Cor. xv. 29), and "that he 
 may minister to me in your place " [vitep 6ov) is evidently the sense in 
 Philem. 13. Meyer, it should, however, be remarked, regards Paul's concep- 
 tion of Christ's sufferings as that of a satisfactio vicaria, since the latter's 
 bloody death was thought by the former to be an atoning sacrifice, according 
 to Rom. iii. 25. Commentar, 4te Aufl. iv. p. 190. 
 
 f Cf. Rom. iv. 25, V. 6, viii. 3 ; Gal. i. iv., iii. 13 ; Cor. xv. 3. 
 
 The question very naturally arises, how Paul conceived of the effect of 
 Christ's death, how he thought Christ coiild ^\& to the obligation of tlie law 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION. 1 93 
 
 This idea is clearly expressed in the words : " We thus 
 judged, that if one died for all, then all died ; and he died 
 for all, that they who live should no longer live to them- 
 selves," etc.*^' If the words, "one died for all," mean that 
 one died for the benefit of all, then it would not follow 
 
 for mankind. It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to penetrate into the 
 apostle's thought so as to find a solution of this problem which may, indeed, 
 not have lain in his mind at all. His conception of the personality of Christ 
 together wilh the Jewish doctrine of sacrifice may throw some light upon it. 
 The resurrection proved to Paul that Jesus was the Messiah, and he con- 
 ceived the Messiah to be the head and representative of the human race, and 
 his death to be the fulfilment of a divine design of redemption. Now since 
 death is the wages of sin, the sinless Messiah could not have died except to 
 pay the penalty of the sins of others, to satisfy the law for them, to "buy 
 them off," so as to free them from its curse. In the Jewish economy the 
 sacrificial victim died in the place of the sinner, and averted his death. So 
 righteousness and life are possible to sinners according to the Pauline- 
 Christian idea only through the representative death of Christ as a sin- 
 offering. This objective revelation of grace is made subjectively available 
 through faith. (See Holsten, Zum Evangel, d. Paulus u. d. Petrus, p. 251.) 
 
 The law had reference to sin, "came that the trespass might abound" 
 (Rom. V. 20), and its chief significance related to the penalty. When this 
 was paid he for whom it was paid was set free from the law, since it no 
 longer had any claim upon him. Christ, as the representative of mankind, 
 paid the penalty for all, satisfied the law, died to it, since it demanded 
 death. He thus became "the end of the law" (Rom. x. 4), for in his death 
 it was done away (2 Cor. iii. 13, 14). Men were "bought off" from its 
 curse by his becoming "a curse" for them. The law did not excommuni- 
 cate him, but he did it away by satisfying its claims "one for all." Ac- 
 cordingly, men through faith are "delivered" from it, " having died [in 
 Christ's death] to that by which they were bound " (Rom. vii. 6). In Paul's 
 thought the law had no saving efficacy. In the atonement of the saving 
 person, Christ, the law is supplanted, and gives place for believers to a 
 "new covenant," "the law of the spirit of life" being introduced by which 
 men are "set free [through faith] from the law of sin and death " (Rom. 
 viii. 2). Christ "was made a curse" because he received the penalty of the 
 law. It was Xho. payment by him, not the particular manner of his suffering, 
 that sets free all who accept him by faith. 
 
 * 2 Cor. V. 14, 15, vitlp TtdvTGDv aTtefjavev. 
 
194 I^HE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 that therefore all died, but that on account of the death 
 of the one for them they would not need to die. But 
 Paul's conclusion from the premise that one died for all is 
 that therefore all died, and to him, "one for all," signified, 
 one as the representative of all in the sense that his act or 
 suffering is regarded as that of those whom he represents. 
 Evidently the idea is not that all really died, but that in 
 Christ as their representativeare regarded as having died. 
 The penalty of the law, death, having been paid by him. 
 who, as the second Adam, the spiritual head and repre- 
 sentative of the race, suffered it on the cross, men may be 
 regarded as in him dead to the law, set free from its curse. 
 They " have been crucified with Christ."^ They are identi- 
 fied with him in his death. He is " the end of the law " f 
 to them, as he is the beginning of life to them. The 
 relation of Christ to mankind, then, is better expressed 
 by representation or identification than by substitution. 
 Because he was crucified for men, they are crucified with 
 him ; because he lives they live, he in them, they in 
 him. 
 
 j The relation of Christ and men, though reciprocal, is 
 not in Paul's thought that of equals, so that any man 
 might be conceived as taking Christ's place in the plan 
 of redemption. The expression *' The man Christ 
 Jesus " .evidently meant to him more than the mere 
 humanity of Jesus. Christ was without sin, and was 
 therefore qualified as the spotless head of the race to bear 
 in his death the curse of the law for all, having none to 
 bear on his own account. Therefore the apostle says: 
 '* Him who knew not sin God made to be sin for us, that 
 we might become God's righteousness in him.":^ ^^ his 
 earthly existence this "second Adam," "the man from 
 
 * Gal. ii. 20. -j- Rom. a. 4. % Gal. -v. 21. 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION, 1 95 
 
 heaven," is conceived as so representing mankind under 
 the conception of the soHdarity of the race that in his 
 death aU died, just as by his obedience all may be made 
 righteous. While the doctrine of the Jewish theology, 
 that on account of the idea of the solidarity of the family 
 and of the nation punishment and righteousness might 
 be vicarious within the limits of either, doubtless lay at 
 the bottom of this Pauline theory of atonement, Paul 
 added to it a subjective element in making a personal 
 solidarity with Christ the condition of appropriating the 
 benefits accruing from his death. The divine love mani- 
 fested in Christ must be responded to by a personal love 
 and faith. Both the objective and the subjective aspects 
 of the death of Christ, the fact and its appropriation by 
 men in the interest of salvation, are expressed in the 
 words : *' For all have sinned and fail of obtaining the 
 glory which cometh from God ; being accepted as right- 
 eous freely by His grace, through the redemption which 
 is in Christ Jesus, whom, in his blood, through faith, God 
 hath set forth as a propitiatory sacrifice in order to mani- 
 fest His righteousness on account of His passing by in 
 His forbearance the sins committed in former times ; in 
 order to manifest His righteousness at the present time, 
 so that He may be righteous and accept as righteous him 
 who hath faith." * Here the death of Christ, his bearing 
 
 * Rom. iii. 23-27. One can hardly refrain from asking why, if the right- 
 eousness of God had been prejudiced by "forbearance" toward "the sins 
 committed in former times," justice did not require that the omitted punish- 
 ment for these sins be now inflicted upon the persons who committed them 
 (supposing these offenders to be still in existence), since a former deficiency 
 in the manifestation of the divine righteousness must, it appears, be some- 
 how made up for?! This question Paul does not answer. A scheme of 
 atonement was evidently more prominent in his thought than the require- 
 ments of justice. 
 
196 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 the curse of the law, is represented on the one hand as a 
 means of manifesting the righteousness of God, which 
 might appear to have been invalidated by His failure to 
 administer due punishment for the sins of the pre-Christian 
 times, and on the other as a means of redemption for all 
 who through faith will appropriate it. The use of the 
 term *' propitiatory sacrifice " or " means of propitiation " ^ 
 as some choose to call it, raises a question of some diffi- 
 culty. Who or what was to be propitiated ? What was 
 the obstacle to be removed ? If we say that the law was 
 satisfied and the righteousness of God vindicated by the 
 sacrifice of Christ, whereby a penalty was paid which had 
 not been inflicted on those who had deserved it, we ap- 
 pear to lay too much stress upon abstractions. What is 
 this law which can be satisfied, and this righteousness 
 which can be vindicated, apart from God ? It would 
 appear to be necessary to clear ideas on the subject to say 
 that a satisfaction of the law and of the divine righteous- 
 ness must be a satisfaction rendered to God, and that if 
 Christ was "set forth as a means of propitiation," a 
 change is implied in the attitude of God. This view ap- 
 pears to be supported by the words : " Much more, then, 
 being now accepted as righteous through his blood, we 
 shall be saved through him from the wrath [of God]. 
 For if while enemies we were reconciled to God by the 
 death of His Son, much more having been reconciled 
 shall we be saved by his life." f The deliverance of 
 "enemies" from the peril of the wrath of God, which 
 must be supposed to be directed against them, can scarcely 
 
 * i\a6rr}fiiov. The meaning "propitiatory sacrifice'' or "means of 
 propitiation" may be regarded as a fairly well established conclusion of 
 exegesis. 
 
 t Rom. V. 9-11. 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION, 19/ 
 
 be conceived as effected merely by a change of disposition 
 on their part. The attitude of the subject of the wrath 
 must be supposed to be changed in order that its objects 
 may be secure. This change Paul conceived to have been 
 brought about by the death of Christ which was propitia- 
 tory in the sense that it satisfied God in respect to His 
 law and His righteousness. The penalty of the law, in 
 paying which themselves men would have perished, having 
 been paid by the great head of the race, those who were 
 formerly enemies may be *' accepted as righteous through 
 his blood." They are thus brought into a condition of 
 reconciliation with God, and since the still living Christ is 
 conceived as active in the interest of salvation in his state 
 of exaltation, they may "be saved by his life." The 
 reconciliation is effected by the removal of the human 
 guilt, which occasions the judgment of the divine wrath, 
 through Christ's satisfaction of the law. That this was 
 the apostle's point of view is evident from his declaration 
 that in Christ God was reconciling the world to Himself 
 in that He did not reckon to them their trespasses.* Paul 
 did not attempt a formal reconciliation of the love and 
 wrath of God. He laid, however, the chief stress upon 
 
 * 2 Cor. V. ig. How Christ couM efiect man's redemption by standing 
 in his place as the representative of the race, and suffering the consequences 
 of human guilt ; how the righteousness of God could be vindicated by the 
 pains of a guiltless sufferer ; how in accordance with natural law any one 
 can atone for an offender's sin except the offender himself ; and how the 
 procedure in question is reconcilable with divine justice and with the his- 
 torical method of man's education and discipline through suffering for his 
 errors and transgressions — these problems are not solved by Paul. It is 
 doubtful that they admit of solution upon his premises. They indicate the 
 weak points in his theology, and perhaps account in part for its early and 
 late decline. It contains many " stumbling-blocks " to every one who can- 
 not think the thoughts of a Jew, and has been made acceptable to modern 
 thought only by a rationalizing of its distinctive tenets. 
 
igS THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 the former, and appeared to conceive of it as original in 
 the divine nature and not as resulting from the atone- 
 ment. But that nothing might be done to the prejudice 
 of God's righteousness or His law, the divine love was 
 supposed to reach man only on condition that his guilt 
 had been removed through a representative propitiation. 
 Man is the object of the love of God, not directly as in 
 the teaching of Jesus, but indirectly through the great 
 atonement which, indeed, was instituted by love as a 
 means through which love itself might become effective. 
 Hence Paul says that God commendeth His love to us 
 in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us."^ 
 
 Paul, however, regarded the death of Christ under 
 another aspect than the one just considered, and saw in it a 
 means of the moral-religious renewal of believers through 
 their mystical union with the head of the race in his cruci- 
 fixion and resurrection, f The death of Christ was an 
 "act of righteousness " through which "all obtain the 
 gift of righteousness unto life." :j: Jesus Christ was made 
 to us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and 
 redemption." § He "gave himself for our sins, that he 
 might deliver us from the present evil world." || Paul 
 reminds the Romans that in having been baptized into 
 Christ they were baptized into his death. Thus were 
 
 * Rom. V. 8. 
 
 f This is regarded by some interpreters of Paul as the chief if not the 
 sole point of view from which he contemplated the death of Christ. Weiz- 
 sacker appears to hold the former view (Das apostal. Zeitalter) and Matthew 
 Arnold the latter (St. Paul and Protestantism). Neither of these opinions 
 can, however, be sustained without more or less rationalizing in the inter- 
 pretation of Paul's words. Rightly regarded this second aspect under which 
 Paul views the death of Christ is the logical sequence of the former. The 
 apostle was not a nineteenth century liberal Christian, that he should have 
 found the idea of propitiation offensive. 
 
 X Rom. V. i8. § I Cor. i. 30. 1 Gal. i. 4. 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION. T99 
 
 they " buried " with him, that as he was raised from the 
 dead, they might also "walk in newness of life." Having 
 been made completely like him in his death, they will be 
 made like him in his resurrection also. As he died to sin,> 
 but lives to God, so they should regard themselves as 
 dead to sin, but alive to God through him. * The sig- 
 nificance of this dying of Christ and of men in him as the 
 representative of the race is set forth in the general prop- 
 osition that '' He that has died has been set free from 
 sin," t that is, legally he is released from all its claims 
 and consequences. " Sin reigned in death,":}: and he who 
 with death has received " the wages of sin " is henceforth 
 set free from its dominion. This doctrine of the Jewish 
 theology is applied by Paul to Christ and the believers in 
 him, in order to show that the former by his death as 
 the representative of the race had borne the curse of sin, 
 and once for all satisfied its claims and broken its power, 
 and that the latter dying with him, their head, were with 
 him free from sin, victorious, subject no longer to its 
 dominion, no longer *' debtors to the flesh." § The bond- 
 age to sin in which mankind had been held since Adam,- 
 and in which they were not only a prey to death, but 
 subjects of the fleshly impulses and of a will powerless for 
 good, having been broken by the great sacrifice, those 
 who through baptism had entered into the fellowship of 
 Christ's death, and been *' buried with him," were free 
 now both from the guilt of sin and its penalty which is 
 death,! and from slavery to it, which is moral and spirit- 
 
 * Rom. vi. 5-11. 
 
 f Rom. vi. 7. 
 
 \ Rom. V. 21. § Rom. viii. 12. 
 
 II Not that they would never die, but that death could have no power 
 over them, since if the spirit of Christ dwelt in them, He who raised up 
 Christ from the dead would give life to their mortal bodies. Rom. viii. ii. 
 
200 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 ual incapability. In the atonement believers were morally 
 quickened and invigorated. Through Christ's death and 
 their appropriation of it in baptism there has been effected 
 a transformation of their life, and they are now able to 
 comply with the moral requirements, they are *' alive from 
 the dead," and having been made free from sin they may 
 be the bondmen of righteousness."^ The bondage of the 
 law is also broken ; for '' the law has dominion over a man 
 only as long as he lives." Christ was ** under" it while 
 he lived in the flesh, but its claim was extinguished in his 
 death. Now since in the death of one for all, all died, 
 Paul says to his brethren that they were also ^* slain to 
 the law through the body of Christ/' that they *' might 
 be connected with another, even with him who was raised 
 from the dead," that they ''might bear fruit to God." f 
 The resurrection is inseparably connected with the 
 death of Christ in the doctrinal system of Paul, and is a 
 factor of the greatest importance in his conception of sal- 
 vation. The revelation of the resurrected Son of God in 
 him was the great fact of his experience from an appre- 
 hension of which his conversion proceeded. This view 
 denotes one of the distinctive differences between his 
 apprehension of Christianity and that of the original 
 apostles, and shows one of the aspects of the transforma- 
 tion of the gospel which his original genius effected. 
 They proceeded from what they had known of Jesus as 
 a teacher. He took his departure from the dead and 
 resurrected Lord of glory, and refused to know anything 
 of a Christ ** according to the flesh." Not as a Jewish 
 teacher or a Jewish Messiah did he conceive of Christ, 
 but as the archetypal spiritual man who in dying and ris- 
 ing from the dead died and rose for Gentiles as well as 
 
 * Rom. viii. 13, 18. f Rom. vii, 4. 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION, 20I 
 
 for Jews. If to Paul the whole earthly mission of Christ 
 finds its significance and its culmination in the death on 
 the cross, an act of " obedience" through which ''many- 
 will be made righteous " and by which " sentence of con- 
 demnation was pronounced on sin in the flesh," ^ it is 
 through his resurrection that his work receives its authen- 
 tication and the divine seal. Without the resurrection and 
 the life of exaltation which followed it, all that preceded 
 it would have been without power and significance. He 
 " was delivered up on account of our trespasses, and raised 
 from the dead that we might be accepted as righteous." f 
 If in his death we are regarded as having died with him, 
 in his life we are to live with him, \ since believers have 
 in his resurrection not only an assurance of their own, § 
 but also the earnest of a life in the Spirit in this present 
 time effected through his new life, so that they live not 
 of themselves, but by reason of the glorified Christ's liv- 
 ing in them, 1 and by the reception of the Holy Spirit 1" 
 which he has and communicates to them. Through his 
 resurrection he is appointed ** with power" to be the Son 
 of God, and exalted to be the " Lord both of the dead and 
 the living" that to him " every knee should bow of those 
 who are in heaven and those on the earth and those under 
 the earth. ""^"^ He has become the Lord who is the Spirit, 
 *' the Lord of glory " whose body is a heavenly effulgence, 
 a '* body of glory."ff Death has no longer dominion over 
 him, having died to sin he lives henceforth to God and for 
 His glory, and shall reign until he has put all enemies 
 
 * Rom. V. 19, viii. 3. -|- Rom. iv. 25. 
 
 :|: Rom. vi. 4-7 ; Gal. ii. 20. g i Cor. xv. 12 fT. 
 
 II Gal. ii. 20. 1[ Rom. viii. 19 ; i Cor. xii. 3. 
 
 ** Rom. i. 4, xiv. 9 ; Phil. ii. 9 ff. 
 
 \\ I Cor. ii. 8 ; 2 Cor. iii. 17 ; Phil. iii. 21. 
 
202 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 under his feet, death last of all.* To Paul the resurrec- 
 tion of Christ was the ground of men's faith in his saving 
 work. Hence he says: *' If Christ hath not risen your 
 faith is vain ; ye are yet in your sins," f that is, without 
 his resurrection his death were unavaihng for atonement 
 and justification, and those who have believed in him have 
 cherished a faith which is to no purpose. :[: If he were 
 abandoned of God in his death, then was his death no 
 atoning sacrifice for sin. They did not in fact die to sin 
 and the flesh in him, if he were not raised and they with 
 him to *' newness of life." Thus the resurrection of 
 Christ is conceived as supplementing, completing, and 
 rendering effective his death to sin. It was for the sake 
 of man's justification on condition of man's faith in the 
 atoning significance of his death, and this faith is possible 
 only on the ground of his resurrection. But Paul sees a 
 further efficiency in the resurrection, for he conceives the 
 hope of salvation to rest not alone in what Christ wrought 
 for men in his death and resurrection as isolated and tem- 
 porary facts, but also in the assurance that the resurrected 
 one still lives in his heavenly state, and, as the Lord who 
 
 * Rom. vi. 10 ; i Cor. xv. 25 ; Phil ii. 11. With all the exaltation of 
 Christ to a position of dominion and glory Paul clearly denotes the distinction 
 between him and the Deity. An agent of God, a subordinate, he will finally, 
 when all things have been put under him, become subject to Him who sub- 
 dued all things to him, " that God may be all in all," i Cor. xv. 28. The 
 words : 6 ^v ^Ttl Ttdvroov Osdi ^vXoyrjro'i (Rom. ix.5) may in themselves 
 be referred to God or to Christ, and may if separated from the preceding 
 words, be read, " Pie who is over all, God, be blessed," etc., or if taken in 
 immediate connection with the preceding words (Was the Christ), "who 
 is over all, God, blessed," etc. The analogy of the Pauline doctrine must 
 furnish the decision. But Paul nowhere calls Christ God in any sense. 
 Tischendorf places a period between these words and the foregoing, and thus 
 makes them an ascription of praise to God. 
 
 f I Cor. XV. 17. :|: iti6ri^ /.larala. 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION, 203 
 
 is the Spirit, " life-giving Spirit/' dwells in the believers 
 as an animating principle, so that as a community they 
 may be regarded as the " body " of Christ, and as indi- 
 vidual *' members " of Christ. In their life in him they are 
 connected with the Father whose love is assured to them 
 in and through him who is at the right hand of God 
 making ** intercession " for them.* Accordingly, believers 
 may hope that, as Christ was the " first-fruits of them that 
 have fallen asleep," those of them who had died will be 
 raised at his coming again, those of them who remain 
 alive will be changed, and all, bearing the image of his 
 glorious body, will in fellowship with him enter into a 
 state of final blessedness, f 
 
 5. JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 
 
 The justification of man or his acceptance as righteous 
 according to the divine standard, that is, by a judgment 
 of God, is the practical end of the Pauline theology. In 
 this result the work of Christ through his death and resur- \ 
 rection finds its temporal culmination. The question how ( 
 that union of man with God which is expressed by the 
 term sonship, or adoption as son, and a mark of which is 
 the indwelling in him of the Spirit of God, is brought 
 
 * Rom. viii. 34-39 ; i Cor. vi. 15, xii. 27. " Who also intercedeth for 
 us" (o5 nal kvrvyxdvei -vithp ijixmv), Rom. viii. 34. In the idea of in- 
 tercession appear to be implied the necessity and the possibility of favorably 
 influencing the Deity in the interest of men. Intercession is ascribed to 
 "the Spirit "also in verses 26 and 27. See besides Heb. vii. 25, "Who 
 ever liveth to make intercession for them," and i John ii. i, " W^e have an 
 advocate with the Father " [TtapdxXrjTov 7tpu<^ rdv itavEpa). The doc- 
 trine of propitiation is doubtless related to this idea. Yet no attempt is 
 made by Paul or by the two other writers to reconcile the fatherhood of God 
 with the doctrine that He should need to be interceded with for His children, 
 
 f I Cor. XV. 22, 51 ; i Thess. iv. 13-18. 
 
204 ^-^^ GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 about, is answered negatively by Paul in the fundamental 
 proposition of his system, that " by the works of the law 
 no man is justified," or ** accepted as righteous."* His 
 theological doctrine has its roots in the conception of 
 righteousness which he derived from the Jewish religion ; 
 but in the function assigned to faith it stands in funda- 
 mental opposition to that conception as it was understood 
 by the Jewish teachers in general and by. Jesus himself, so 
 that, he may be said to have transformed the religion of 
 his nation and the gospel of his Master by a bold and 
 radical innovation. This innovation did not consist, in- 
 deed, so much in giving a new meaning to righteousness 
 considered with reference to the divine judgment as in a 
 new conception of the way in which it may be acquired. 
 By righteousness f the apostle means the right, the ade- 
 quate relation of man to God. While it is a subjective 
 condition, that is, a state of the man who holds this rela- 
 tion, it is regarded as proceeding from God, and hence is 
 defined as the righteousness of God. % The Jewish concep- 
 tion of the righteousness acceptable to God, that is, attain- 
 able by the works of the law,§ was declared by Paul to be 
 impossible, not, indeed, by reason of any imperfection in the 
 
 * o a.v%poito% ov diuaiovrai i^ epyoov v6p.ov. 
 
 I dixaiodhVTj. 
 
 J diHaiodvvy Qeov, i] rov Oeov diKaio6-uvrf, Rom. i. 17, iii. 21, x. 3. 
 See Meyer on Rom. i. 17, Commentar, 4te Aufl. iv. p. 56 f. Baur -who 
 in his Paulus and his Neutestamentl. Theol. held the genitive Bsov to be ob- 
 jective and the phrase to have the sense, "righteousness determined with 
 reference to God," appears to have abandoned this opinion in Theol. Jahrb., 
 1857, p. 64, under the influence of Holsten's interpretation. See Holsten, 
 Zum Evangel, des Paulus, etc., p. 408. 
 
 § By the law (ro'/ios) Paul evidently meant the Mosaic law. This was 
 identical in his thought with the moral law, and he accordingly does not 
 regard the heathen as dvo/xoi, or without a law, but as a law to themselves, 
 having what the law required written in their hearts. Rom. ii. 14, 15. 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION. 205 
 
 law itself, which he pronounces ^' holy, right, and good," * 
 but, as has already been shown, because of the weakness 
 of the flesh. Paul accordingly knows no righteousness 
 but that through faith. For him the gospel is to every 
 believer, Jew and Greek, the power of God unto salvation ; 
 for therein is revealed the righteousness which is of God 
 from faith to faith, f that is, a righteousness whose essential 
 principle, whose beginning and end are faith. The pri- 
 mary meaning of this word faith,:!^ which holds so import- 
 ant a place in the Pauline system of salvation, is confidence 
 in the revelations, the message, and the promises of God, 
 like that of Abraham. It is a confidence in Him who 
 raised Christ from the dead in order that believers might 
 be accepted as righteous. § If sometimes Paul speaks of 
 it as a merely intellectual conviction of a fact, as, for ex- 
 ample, that God raised Christ from the dead, he does not 
 stop at this point, but introduces a religious element of 
 trust and an affection of the heart. It is not enough to 
 acknowledge with the mouth that Jesus is Lord, but one 
 must believe in the heart or with the entire devotion of 
 the inmost being; and he expressly says that *' with the 
 heart man believeth so as to obtain righteousness." || While 
 the believer is conceived as in part passive, as acted upon 
 by the word of gospel-truth, " a demonstration of the Spirit 
 and of power," and illuminated by a light from God which 
 shines in the heart, and " laid hold of by Christ," ^f yet 
 faith is essentially an act implying freedom, " obedience 
 from the heart," subjection to the divine plan of justifica- 
 tion, a laying hold of Christ, and an appropriation of the 
 benefits which accrue from his sacrifice.* This act is not 
 
 *Rom. vii. 12. § Rom. iv. 24. 
 
 f Rom. i. 16, 17. II Rom. a. 9, 10. 
 
 X 7ti6Ti<;. ^ 2 Cor. iv. 6 , Phil. iii. 12. 
 
 ** Rom. i. 5, vi. 7, a. 3 ; Phil. iii. 12. 
 
206 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 regarded, however, as belonging to the class of good works 
 by which righteousness could be earned. It is not a per- 
 formance by which righteousness could be acquired, and 
 to which merit attached as to " works of the law," but 
 rather a condition of being accepted as righteous without 
 boasting, a humble, trusting self-surrender to the divine 
 will as revealing itself in grace through the gospel of recon- 
 ciliation,* Man is powerless to achieve righteousness 
 under the law by his own act, and can only with profound 
 humility cast himself upon the grace of God, and accept 
 His free gift, thankful with an answering love for the 
 sacrifice which has purchased it for him on the cross. f 
 
 Since, then, there is no ground for a man's boasting in 
 any achievement of his own in respect to righteousness, 
 and all his *' glory" should be in the cross of Christ,:]: 
 faith in Christ has in the system of Paul a distinctive 
 and prominent place. Hence if righteousness is from 
 God it is " through faith in Jesus Christ " ; the life of the 
 believer is lived through faith in Christ ; if a blessing was 
 promised, it was through faith in Jesus ; if believers are 
 sons of God, they are such through faith in His great Son ; 
 and if a man have righteousness, it is not his own, no 
 impossible righteousness of the law, but that which " is 
 through faith in Christ, " that *' which is from God upon 
 faith," § While Jesus generally spoke of faith in himself 
 as a belief in his healing powers, || and the original apos- 
 tles cherished a faith in him which was connected with an 
 eschatological hope of his second coming, the faith of 
 Paul in Christ was a new conception of his original genius 
 
 *Rom. iii. 27, iv. 4, x. 4-10 ; Phil. iii. 4. 
 
 f Gal. ii. 20 f, iii. 22 ff ; Phil. iii. 18 ff. J Gal. vi. 14. 
 
 § Rom. iii. 22 ; Gal. ii. 16, 20. 26 ; Phil. iii. 9. 
 
 II See, however, a Pauline trait in Luke vii. 50. 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION, 20/ 
 
 which had the power to transform all that it touched. 
 His faith in Christ was not a belief in him as a teacher 
 and an exemplar, for of these aspects of his life Paul took 
 no account, but a feeling of grateful and loving identifica- 
 tion, of mystical union and fellowship with him in his 
 death and resurrection. Having died with Christ, the 
 believer is regarded as belonging in this union with Christ 
 to him alone. Dead to sin in this union, he no longer 
 belongs to the law ; the old relation of bondage is dis- 
 solved, and a new one of liberty is formed in the death 
 of Christ. He was slain to the law through the body of 
 Christ that he might be connected with another, even 
 with him who was raised from the dead.^ There is no 
 more for him the fruitless struggle for an impossible 
 righteousness with its alternations of hope and despair, 
 but in the consciousness of freedom and the joy of recon- 
 ciliation with God he feels himself to be a " new creation." 
 Having " put on the Lord Jesus Christ," he has taken into 
 his heart with love the ideal, and realizes the power, of the 
 hfe of the sonship of God. This beautiful mysticism is ex- 
 pressed in the fine words : " I have been crucified with Christ, 
 and no longer do I live, but Christ liveth in me, and the life 
 which I now live in the flesh I live in faith in the Son of 
 God who loved me, and gave himself for me."f His life 
 in faith in Christ and Christ's living in him are doubtless 
 to Paul two expressions for the same idea, his idea of 
 what faith in Christ was in his experience — a mystical fel- 
 lowship with him, a loving devotion in a unity of life with 
 him. To have faith in Christ is to be in him. He is a 
 Christian who is *' in Christ," or who has Christ Hving in 
 him. Hence the injunction: '* Try yourselves, whether 
 ye are in the faith," and the question: ''Know ye not 
 
 * Rom. vii. 4. f Gal. ii. 20. 
 
208 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 your own selves that Christ Jesus is in you ? " * Faith in 
 Christ is union with him, membership : " He that is con- 
 nected with the Lord is one spirit with him."f 
 
 This union and fellowship with Christ through faith are 
 regarded by Paul as bringing the believer into the rela- 
 tion of sonship with God — the hignest relation that man 
 can attain. Accordingly the apostle says : *' Ye are all sons 
 of God through faith in Jesus Christ, for as many of you 
 as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ." % Hav- 
 ing the spirit of Christ, he is conscious of the spirit of 
 adoption as a son of God.§ Set free from the curse of 
 the law, he is no longer a " bond-servant," but a son, and 
 if a son, then an heir.f But the theological genius of 
 Paul required a formula for this spiritual condition, and 
 he found it in the Jewish theology and the terminology 
 of the Septuagint. A divine declaration or act of judg- 
 ment is assumed to be pronounced in order to set the 
 seal of God upon this new creation and give it recognition 
 and validity before the court of heaven. The condition 
 is said accordingly to be one of "justification," and the 
 subject is supposed to be "accepted as righteous" or 
 " justified," T^ that is, acquitted or declared to be just. 
 That the meaning is not " to make or render righteous" 
 is evident from the fact that the term is applied to God 
 in the words : " That Thou mayst be justified in Thy 
 words," etc.,**^ that is, be acknowledged as just in Thy 
 judgments. This is also the sense in the passage in 
 which the term is used of those who by reason of obedi- 
 ence are already righteous: "The doers of the law will 
 be accounted righteous." ff The application of the term 
 
 * 2 Cor. xiii. 5. f i Cor. vi. 17. \ Gal. iii. 26. 
 
 g TtvEvfia vloOedia^, Rom. viii. rs. || Gal. iv. 7. 
 
 T[ diJcaiGD^ii, dixaiovdOat. ** Rom. iii. 4. 
 
 ff 5tHaLoo07J6ovr(Xi, Rom. ii. 13. 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION. 209 
 
 to believers is shown by the formulas, " accept as right- 
 eous," " faith is accounted as righteousness," and, *' not 
 to charge with sin." * It is evident that the ground on 
 which the judgment of justification rests is not contained 
 in the word itself, since it is applied to the case of one 
 who has fulfilled the law and to that of one who has only 
 faith to plead. To Paul the former sort of righteousness, 
 though an abstract possibility, had no existence in fact on 
 account of the fleshly nature of man which held him in 
 bondage to sin. Accordingly, he recognized no justifica- 
 tion on the ground of merit acquired by keeping the law, 
 but laid the whole stress upon that which by the grace of 
 God was a free gift.f The basis of his doctrine of justi- 
 fication was, then, in his doctrine of salvation, as is evi- 
 dent from the words : I do not set aside the grace of 
 God ; for if righteousness come through the law then did 
 Christ die for naught." % To him the death of Christ 
 were futile if it was not an act of divine grace which 
 opened to man a new way of righteousness without refer- 
 ence to the works of the law. The divine act or decree 
 of justification rests primarily upon the free mercy of God, 
 since the promised salvation is bestowed not for merit, 
 but despite the guilt of man, as a gift of grace.§ Sec- 
 ondarily, justification is grounded " objectively in the aton- 
 ing death of Christ and subjectively in the faith of man." || 
 Because the curse of the law was borne in the great sacri- 
 fice on the cross, God may declare the sinner free of 
 guilt without prejudice to His own righteousness. Since 
 he that has died is freed from sin, the sin of the world 
 was atoned for in the death of the representative of man- 
 
 * SiHaiovvra, Xoye^erai 7ti<5Ti<^ £/? §tKaio6vv7fy , Rom. iv. 4, 5. 
 f Rom. iii. 24, iv. 4. X Gal. ii. 21. 
 
 § Gal. iii.; Rom. iv., v. 15-21, xi. 30 ff. 
 II Rom. V. I, 9. 
 
2IO THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 kind, the man from heaven, and the justification of the 
 individual is nothing else than the appropriation by each 
 'of that universal judgment of justification which was con- 
 ditionally declared for every one. The condition is the 
 acceptance through faith of that general atonement for 
 himself, being *' made completely like him [Christ] in his 
 death" and "in his resurrection also/* "^ 
 
 In this doctrine there is manifestly not merely a bare 
 'imputation" of the "merits " of Christ or of his right- 
 eousness to the sinner. It is only by a perversion of Paul's 
 teaching that this idea has been derived from it. The 
 believer is not '* accepted as righteous " only on account 
 of the merits or the righteousness of Christ, but also by 
 reason of the faith with which he has personally accepted 
 the atonement. This faith is not, however, conceived, as 
 has already been remarked, to be of the nature of an act of 
 obedience to the law to which merit attaches in the sense 
 in which it is applied to '* works," else justification through 
 faith would not be an act of grace, " a free gift," but a 
 judgment pronounced in accordance with desert, which 
 would have no connection with the atoning work of 
 Christ. It might, indeed, appear on a superficial view 
 that if " faith is accounted as righteousness " a man would 
 be regarded as having something which he does not really 
 have, and that there would be an incongruity between the 
 subject of whom righteousness is affirmed and the predi- 
 cate, righteous^ as if one should say, " James, a wicked 
 man, is accounted righteous because of his faith." The 
 moral-religious consciousness could not but take offence 
 at this as a fictitious sort of righteousness. But in his 
 conception of justification by faith Paul did not abandon 
 the moral idea that lay at the basis of the righteousness 
 
 * 2 Cor, V. 15 ; Rom. vi. 5 ; Phil. iii. 10. 
 
THE PA ULINE TRANSFORMA TION. 2 1 1 
 
 which is *' accounted as a matter of debt." " On the con- 
 trary he was much in earnest about the moral factor in 
 his theory of justification by faith, and having abandoned 
 the law of works, he introduced as an essential factor 
 another " law," that of " the Spirit of life." f "The law 
 of the Spirit of hfe set me free," he says, " in Christ Jesus 
 from the law of sin and death." :t^ The Spirit is the deter- 
 mining principle of life for the believer in Christ, since as 
 such he can have in him alone his spiritual life. The 
 Spirit is, indeed, received by the preaching of faith, § but 
 faith becomes for the behever a living reality in the posses- 
 sion of the Spirit by which the process of justification is 
 alone completed. God who is *' the justifier of him who 
 had faith " does not then, according to Paul, " account " 
 as an imaginary righteousness the faith of the " ungodly " 
 man, and arbitrarily " declare " him to be righteous while 
 in fact he remains what he was before, but the justifica- 
 tion is a real one, because in "the law of the spirit of 
 life," in the Spirit as a principle actually working in him, 
 he is in truth put into a relation with God which corre- 
 sponds with the moral ideal. He has been " clothed with 
 the Lord Jesus Christ." Unable to attain a righteousness 
 of his own, that is, to earn it by the w^orks of the moral 
 law, he has had bestowed upon him " the righteousness 
 which is from God " || as a gracious gift from the Source 
 of life. 
 
 It cannot but be conceded that Paul's statement of his 
 doctrine of justification by faith is in a high degree extreme 
 and abstract. It appears to proceed from the point of view 
 
 * Hard ocptiXr^fxa^ Rom. iv. 4. 
 
 \ vifxoz rov Ttvev/iaro'i Zgo^'5. 
 
 X Rom. viii. 2. § Gal. iii. 2. 
 
 II diHaio6i)vrf Osotj as opposed to one's own {iSid) righteousness. 
 
21J THE GOSPEL AXD ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 of the opposition of Judaism and his apprehension of Chris- 
 tianiU", and it is not surprising that his successors in the 
 ^Muislian Church during the first two centuries do not 
 appear to liave sympathized warmly with his radical ap- 
 prehension of the matter. That a mediating tendency 
 early manifested itself only shows the natural reaction of 
 the human mind against extreme positions vehemently 
 maintained. The Epistle of James is manifestly an 
 attempt to soften the harshness of the Pauline doctrine 
 if not to substitute another in its place, and it is worthy 
 of note that even those early writings which show a favor- 
 able disposition towards Paul's views, as the first Epistle 
 of Peter and Hebrews, seek to avoid the contested word 
 "• justify," and emphasize the virtuous life and moral per- 
 fection. The Pauline doctrine of justification does not 
 besides appear to be recognized in the Johannine 
 writings.* It may be questioned whether Paul is just to 
 Judaism on the one hand and to Christianity on the other 
 when he distinguishes them so sharply as representing ex- 
 clusively the former righteousness by the works of the law 
 and the latter righteousness by faith, and whether he cor- 
 rectly sets forth the religion of the Old Testament and the 
 religion of Jesus, or presents a one-sided apprehension of 
 both. Since he does not profess to have had a knowledge 
 of the teachings of Jesus in detail, it is not to be wondered 
 at if he has not correctly represented them. But it cannot 
 but be surprising that he represents the law as having for 
 its sole function to punish and condemn. Reading PauFs 
 arraignment of the law, one would think that under the 
 Old-Testament economy the attainment of righteousness 
 
 * In I John ii. 29 and iii. 10 the doing of righteousness is expressly 
 emphasized: itcc'^ 6 itott^v Tr}v 8inaio6{)yt]v eq avrov yEyewr^zai ; 
 and Ttdi 6 lit} itOK^v 8iKaio6vvrjy ovk edriv ek tov Oeov. 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION. 213 
 
 was not possible, that man was doomed to a fruitless 
 struggle with the flesh, and that he was helpless under 
 the condemnation of the law, groping in the darkness of 
 despair without a gleam of grace. Yet it may very well 
 be questioned whether in fact there have been two great 
 world-periods, in one of which under the "first-man" all 
 men were hopelessly under the curse of the law, despite 
 their good will and good works, and in the other are *' ac- 
 cepted as righteous " through faith by reason of the obedi- 
 ence of *' the man from heaven. " Who would undertake 
 to maintain with the Old Testament before him that its 
 moral law was given on the presumption that obedience 
 to it was impossible and righteousness a fiction, that its 
 religion was a bare legalism which took no account of 
 man's incomplete obedience, did not recognize the virtue 
 of a good will and a right disposition, and had no place 
 for mercy and forgiveness ? On the contrary, according 
 to its teaching, the divine requirements are satisfied if a 
 man '* do justly and love mercy and walk humbly with 
 his God, " and the divine helpfulness stoops to *' create " 
 in men a " new heart" and a "right spirit." The idea 
 that the divine forgiveness and grace and the communica- 
 tion of the divine Spirit to men are conditioned on "the 
 obedience of one man" appears to be an addition made 
 by Paul to the Old-Testament religion — an addition which 
 became a logical necessity from his too abstract concep- 
 tion of the law. On the other hand, his conception of 
 faith has a certain hardness and inflexibility, which are 
 apparent when an application of it is made to actual life. 
 He appears himself sometimes to have lost sight of it, 
 and thus to have left a problem which is not easily solved. 
 We seem to hear words conceived in the spirit of the 
 ancient lawgivers and prophets in the declaration that 
 
214 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 God " will render to every man according to his works"; 
 that '* tribulation and distress will be upon every soul of 
 man whose works are evil, " but " glory, honor, and peace 
 upon every man whose works are good " ; that " the doers 
 of the law will be accounted righteous" ; and that "we 
 must all be made manifest before the judgment-seat of 
 Christ, that each one may receive the things done in his 
 body. "■'■^* These words appear to have been written by 
 Paul in entire unconsciousness of any conflict between 
 them and his doctrine of faith. But if the possession or 
 the absence of faith determines a man's righteousness or 
 unrighteousness in the divine judgment, and men are to 
 be judged according to their " works, " how can faith 
 be regarded otherwise than as a "work." If only the 
 "doers " of the law are to be accounted righteous, then 
 must not the act of faith be a doing of the law, and does 
 not the law stand after all? Again, it has been said that 
 the Pauline doctrine of faith does not meet all the require- 
 ments of practical life, since it fails to answer the question 
 how the believer's transgressions subsequent to his accep- 
 tance as righteous through faith are to be disposed of. 
 It is evident that Paul in elaborating his doctrine of 
 righteousness by faith did not have these questions in 
 mind, but was thinking only of the opposition of Judaism 
 and a conception of Christianity founded on the death 
 and resurrection of Christ. He had no occasion to at- 
 tempt the reconciliation of positions which did not per- 
 haps appear incongruous to him in whom " the two souls, 
 that of a Pharisee and that of an apostle, struggled with 
 each other. " 
 
 It fares no better so far as logical consistency is con- 
 cerned with the relation of faith and predestination. The 
 
 *Rom. ii. 5-11; 2 Cor. v. 10. See also i Cor. iii. 13, 14, ix. 17 ; Gal. vi. 7. 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION. 21$ 
 
 whole doctrine of faith rests upon the presumption of 
 man's fre'e choice and self-determination, so that whoever 
 will may appropriate the free gift offered in the atone- 
 ment of Christ. Yet in the ninth chapter of Romans Paul 
 lays down the doctrine that God without regard to man's 
 act and by a pure purpose of election chose Jacob and 
 rejected Esau '* before the children were born or had done 
 anything good or evil, to the end that His purpose, ac- 
 cording to election, might stand, not depending on works, 
 but on the will of Him who calleth " ; and then he pro- 
 ceeds to prove from the Old Testament that God's com- 
 passion depends on His own will, man's act being of no 
 importance in the case, since " it dependeth not on him 
 who willeth nor on him who runneth, but on God who 
 showeth mercy. " * Accordingly, Pharaoh was raised up 
 for the "very purpose " that God might " show forth His 
 power in him " ; and the apostle draws thence the con- 
 clusion that God '* hath mercy on whom He will, and 
 hardeneth whom He will, " and has " the right, " like the 
 potter, " to make of the same lump of clay one vessel for 
 an honorable use and another for a dishonorable, "f The 
 question, however, how God can require a man to be other 
 than he is, since it is impossible that he should be other 
 than God has predetermined him to be, is excluded by 
 Paul as an impertinence of human reason. If God has 
 made of the Jew a "vessel of wrath," to make known 
 His power, let the Jew not question the Almighty, but be 
 thankful that, a vessel "fitted for destruction," he has 
 been "endured with patience" so long. Yet with the 
 most illogical naivete he declares in the same chapter that 
 
 * Rom. ix. 11-17. 
 
 f This comparison was perhaps suggested by a passage in the book of 
 Wisdom, XV. 7. 
 
2l6 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 Israel did not attain to a law of righteousness *' because 
 they did not strive for it by faith, " and in the following 
 chapter he lays down in absolute terms the law of liberty 
 to the effect that '* every one that believeth may obtain 
 righteousness. " It is evident, however, that Paul did not 
 intend to establish an argument for predestination in refer- 
 ence to men in general, but that in the exigency of his 
 polemic against the claims of the Jews to be the chosen 
 people of God he gave excessive prominence to the doc- 
 trine of the divine sovereignty only to return immediately 
 to his great principle of faith, leaving the two propositions 
 over against each other without metaphysical reconcilia- 
 tion.* 
 
 6. THE FUTURE. 
 
 Paul did not conceive the work of Christ to be con- 
 summated in the temporal deliverance of believers from 
 the bondage of sin and the bestowal upon them of the 
 divine righteousness through faith. The economy of 
 Christian redemption, whose head was the man from 
 heaven triumphant over the grave, included a victory 
 won from the powers of the underworld, the subjection 
 of the *' enemies" of the Christ, and an unbroken union 
 of believers with him. It was a cardinal principle in the 
 Pauline theology that they who had received the Spirit 
 had in this endowment an earnest of the "redemption" 
 of their "bodies," since, "if Jesus died and rose again, 
 then will God through Jesus bring again with him those 
 
 * Philo also held that men's virtues are a gift of God, forbade them to 
 ascribe goodness to themselves, and wrote of a '* grace " which chose its in- 
 struments from birth ; yet it seems not to have occurred to him to renounce 
 the doctrine of moral accountability. See Zeller, Phil, der Griechen, iii. p. 
 651, Theol. Jahrb., 1854, pp. 259 ff. 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION. 2\J 
 
 who have fallen asleep."* The beginning of the great 
 consummation was the second coming of Christ from 
 heaven in person for the establishment of his kingdom. 
 When he should " descend " " with a loud summons, with 
 the voice of an archangel, and with the trump of God," 
 "the dead in Christ" would rise first. Then those who 
 should be living, among whom Paul evidently expected 
 to be himself when he wrote I Corinthians and i Thessa- 
 lonians, would be " changed," that is, their earthly, ma- 
 terial bodies would be transformed into a higher order of 
 corporeity corresponding to the resurrection body, which 
 would be conformed to the glorious body of Christ.f Of 
 
 * Rom. viii. ii, 23 ; i Thess. iv. 14. 
 
 •j- I Cor. XV. 51 ff ; I Thess. iv. 13 ff ; Phil. iii. 21. It is not entirely 
 clear what relation Paul conceived the new spiritual body to hold to the 
 body of flesh, and how and when believers were to be clothed with this 
 garment of "glory." The indispensable condition of its bestowal appears 
 to be the possession of the Spirit, or the indwelling of Christ, according to 
 Rom. viii. 10 f. Here he tells the believers that if Christ be in them, their 
 bodies though dead (subject to death), will receive life through Him who 
 raised Jesus from the dead, on account of the indwelling of His Spirit, or, 
 according to another reading, through His Spirit dwelling in them. Al- 
 though a special exercise of the divine power as in the resurrection of Jesus 
 appears to be implied here, this passage may perhaps be interpreted with- 
 out violence so as to bring it into accord with i Cor. xv. 35 ff, where the 
 new body is represented as being formed from the old, as the stalk grows 
 from the grain which, sown in the ground, " dies " as a condition of being 
 " brought to life." In the latter passage the indwelling of Christ is evi- 
 dently implied as the condition on which the personality survives the death 
 of the body. But elsewhere Paul speaks of the new body as a "building 
 provided by God, a house not made with hands, everlasting in the heavens," 
 and of "longing to be clothed upon with our habitation which is from 
 heaven " (2 Cor. v. 1-3). He who should be thus '* clothed upon" would 
 not be found " naked," i. e., would not be a bodiless spirit in the under- 
 world. When Paul wrote this passage he was probably thinking of a 
 transformation of the earthly body into "the body of glory" without the 
 intervention of death, like that which the believers who should survive the 
 
2l8 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 an intermediate state Paul formulated no doctrine, al- 
 though such a state is evidently implied, in accordance 
 with the current Jewish belief, in the resurrection at the 
 Parousia of those who had " fallen asleep." Those would 
 not, of course, descend to the underworld who survived 
 the coming of Christ in glory. There are, however, indi- 
 cations in later Epistles that he held the doctrine of an 
 immediate entrance at death upon the heavenly Hfe, and 
 perhaps thought that he would not live until the time of 
 the Parousia. He speaks of the celestial body as a "house 
 not made with hands, everlasting, in the heavens," of 
 longing "to be clothed upon with our habitation which is 
 from heaven," and of being well "pleased rather to be 
 absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord." * 
 Again he writes to the Philippians of his " desire to de- 
 part and to be with Christ." f This idea of "being at 
 home with the Lord," or Christ, immediately after death 
 evidently excludes a tarrying of the spirit in the under- 
 world and a resurrection. Hence the agreement of this 
 phase of the apostle's eschatology with the earlier one is 
 hardly to be maintained, unless with Meyer we assume 
 that he had in mind in the passages in question only him- 
 self and his possible death by martyrdom, in which case 
 he might have believed, in accordance with a notion of 
 his age in reference to martyrs, that he would pass im- 
 
 Parousia would experience (i Cor. xv. 52). The thought is in accord with a 
 spiritual Hellenism rather than with Jewish apocalyptic, and in expressing 
 it Paul laid the foundation for a hope of believers in the future which was 
 independent of the second advent and a resurrection. He separated Chris- 
 tianity from Judaism and gave it to the world. ?Ie attempted no reconcilia- 
 tion of the two points of view, and thus set an example which his interpreters 
 will do well to follow. 
 
 * 2 Cor. V, i-g. 
 
 f Phil. i. 23. 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION, 219 
 
 mediately into the heavenly state. This assumption is, 
 however, entirely gratuitous. It is evident in any case 
 that the resurrection out of an intermediate state has 
 scarcely standing in the Pauline system, and may be re-' 
 garded as hardly more than an empty term. Since the 
 dead are raised ** incorruptible," it is not the old body 
 which comes up, and the uniting of souls which are called 
 from hades with a spiritual body is a resurrection only in 
 the sense that the immortal part is supposed to rise out 
 of the underworld. The supposition does not seem im- 
 probable, then, that Paul, having abandoned the materi- 
 alistic Jewish doctrine of the resurrection of the body, 
 was led at length by the force of his logic to abandon the 
 idea of the underworld in connection with a resurrection 
 and to hold that immediately after death the believer's 
 soul is "clothed upon " with the new habitation which is 
 " everlasting, in the heavens," although at one time he 
 evidently believed in a rising of the " dead in Christ " at 
 the Parousia, in the sense probably that they would then 
 first be united with the spiritual heavenly body. 
 
 This spiritual view of the resurrection,* which stands in 
 such striking contrast with the popular Jewish materialism, 
 has important consequences in relation to the extent of 
 the great transformation of the dead and the hving at the 
 Parousia. If the question, who of the dead and the living 
 were believed by Paul to be destined to receive the spirit- 
 
 *It has been said, however, that Paul does not always maintain the 
 purely spiritual view, but sometimes approaches a lower, venal apprehension 
 of the relation of the resurrection to conduct. Why should we expose our- 
 selves to perils, why fight with beasts at Ephesus, if there is no resurrection ? 
 he asks. If the dead rise not, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die, i 
 Cor. XV. 30-33. But see Rom. xii. i ; 2 Cor. v. 14, 15 ; Gal. ii. 20. The 
 Jewish and Christian points of view thus sometimes appear in an opposition 
 which he did not take the trouble to reconcile. 
 
220 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 ual heavenly body at the second coming of Christ, that is, 
 to be endowed with the incorruptible or immortal life, be 
 answered in logical accordance with one of the fundamental 
 principles of his teaching, the answer must unquestionably 
 be that this boon was conceived to be reserved for believers 
 only. For it is incontestable that Paul regarded the Spirit 
 as the principle not alone of the ethical-religious life, but 
 also of the life from the dead. Even if Christ be in you, 
 he says to the Romans, the body is dead, that is subject 
 to death, because of sin ; but if the Spirit of Him who 
 raised up Christ from the dead dwell in you. He who 
 raised up Christ from the dead Avill also give life to your 
 mortal bodies. '^'" Accordingly, the assurance that believers 
 will be ''clothed upon " with the spiritual heavenly body, 
 and that for them mortality will be " swallowed up by 
 life " is found in their possession of the Spirit which is 
 given them as a pledge f of this consummation. Paul's 
 application to Christ of the Hellenistic idea of the arche- 
 typal spiritual man or the man from heaven is of import- 
 ance in this relation. As through the first or earthy man 
 came death, so through the second or spiritual man came 
 the resurrection of the dead ; and " if by one trespass 
 death reigned through one man, much more will they who 
 receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteous- 
 ness reign in life through the one man, Christ Jesus." J 
 Here the reception of grace and righteousness, that is, the 
 entrance into the condition of behef in Christ, is repre- 
 sented as the condition of sharing in the Messianic reign, 
 of becoming " heirs " with Christ ; and since flesh and 
 blood could not *' inherit " this kingdom, the transforma- 
 
 *Rom. viii. 10 f. 
 
 \ afjpaftoov, 2 Cor. v. 4, 5. 
 
 X I Cor. XV. 20 ; Rom. v. 17. 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION, 221 
 
 tion or clothing upon with spiritual bodies at the Parousia 
 is to be the happy fortune of those who hvingor dead had 
 previously become " members " of the resurrected spiritual 
 head of mankind. For Paul Christ was '* the first fruits " 
 of the resurrection, the first in "order" in this great 
 spiritual transformation and victory over death. Next in 
 order were to be those who should be Christ's at his 
 coming, that is, the Christians.* It is evident that Paul's 
 argument does not proceed from the resurrection of Christ 
 as a man like other men to the conclusion that because he, 
 one merely human being, was raised from the dead, there- 
 fore all men will be raised, or that all are naturally im- 
 mortal. A conception so tame could have found no place 
 in his mystical thought. Rather since through their con- 
 nection with the first or earthy man death came upon all 
 men only in that all sinned, so thx'ough the second or 
 spiritual man life comes through to all only in that they 
 believe, and those alone have the " pledge " of the resur- 
 rection who are '* in Christ," that is, are joined with him by 
 faith in a mystical union. 
 
 That such was Paul's thought regarding the extent of 
 the transformation of the living and dead at the Parousia 
 cannot be successfully disputed. The dead " in Christ," 
 those who are "Christ's," will at his coming be called 
 forth from the realms of death and clothed upon with 
 spiritual incorruptible bodies. As to the living there is no 
 general statement, but he evidently intended to include 
 only believers in the number of those who should be trans- 
 formed. "We who are living, we who are left, shall be 
 changed " can only refer to the hving Christians. Nothing 
 could be more incongruous with Paul's whole system of 
 thought than the supposition that the dead believers would 
 
 * I Cor. XV. 23 ; cf. Gal. v. 24 ; r Thess. iv. 16. 
 
222 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATION'S. 
 
 be raised at the Parousia, and all living men, good, bad, 
 and indifferent, be *' changed " suddenly, arbitrarily, into 
 the spiritual and bodily likeness of Christ. This would 
 have been unthinkable to Paul, because to him the in- 
 dwelling of the Spirit was the pledge of the bodily trans- 
 formation into an incorruptible state, and the Spirit was 
 given only to those who had accepted Christ by faith. 
 The question, what he thought was to become of the in- 
 numerable dead who had not believed in Christ and of the 
 millions of living unbelievers, is not easily answered. The 
 declaration that, '* As in Adam all die, so also in Christ 
 will all be made alive," * does not assert a universal resur- 
 rection ; for it is made in connection with the Parousia at 
 which, as has been shown, only all who were " in Christ '' 
 were to be raised. The second '' all '* is accordingly limited 
 to believers, just as in the words : " As, then, through 
 one trespass all men have come under condemnation, so 
 through one act of righteousness all obtain the gift of 
 righteousness unto life,'* the " all " in the second clause 
 includes only those who should believe, f That Paul had 
 taught the Corinthians in accordance with this interpreta- 
 tion appears to be evident from the custom of baptizing for 
 the dead, which he mentions if not with approval at least 
 without disapproval.:}: It is evident that dead relatives 
 or friends who had departed without faith in Christ would 
 not be baptized through the baptism and confession of the 
 living unless it was believed that their resurrection could 
 thereby be secured. "If the dead rise not," asks Paul, 
 *' what are they doing who are baptized for the dead?" 
 
 * I Cor. XV, 22. 
 
 f This conclusion is supported by most of the great exegetes. See, how- 
 ever, Meyer in loc. 
 \ I Cor. XV. 29. 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION, 223 
 
 This certainly does not mean, '* if all the dead rise not," 
 but "if the dead in Christ rise not," for if all were 
 expected to rise, baptism for the dead would be super- 
 fluous. It appears to be in accord with a fundamental 
 idea of Paul's that the life in the flesh, the life without the 
 Spirit that quickeneth even the mortal body, excludes 
 from the resurrection, and has as its end " destruction," 
 or " perishing." The opposite of '* perish " is to be raised, 
 as is evident from the saying that if there be no resurrec- 
 tion then they who have fallen asleep in Christ are 
 " perished," " and that ** we are the odor of death to those 
 who are perishing."*)- They that " live according to the 
 flesh are sure to die," yet since believers also die there 
 must be something more than the natural death of the 
 body implied in the dying of unbelievers, namely, that 
 that they will not " live " again, as will those who " by the 
 Spirit make an end of the deeds of the body." The 
 '*end" of the "enemies of the cross of Christ" is 
 "destruction." \ The day of the Lord, or the Parousia, 
 cometh as a thief in the night, and upon those who are 
 saying, Peace and safety, " doth sudden destruction come, 
 and they shall not escape."§ Throughout the PauHne 
 theology there is manifest the dualism of flesh, sin, death 
 or destruction, and the Spirit, justification, Hfe or resur- 
 rection. The antithesis of hfe, everlasting life,|| in which 
 is included the clothing upon with the incorruptible body, 
 is death, or hopeless tarrying in the realm of the dead. 
 It is manifest that a resurrection of those who were not 
 "in Christ " to a judgment of condemnation or to ever- 
 
 * I Cor. XV. r8, aitookovro. 
 • f 2 Cor. ii. 15. 
 
 l Phil. iii. 19, aTtadXeia, § i Thess. v, 2, 3. 
 
224 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 lasting punishment is entirely incongruous with this point 
 of view, since for these Paul knows of no resurrection 
 at all.* 
 
 While this view appears to be consistent with itself 
 throughout and with the general trend of Paul's teaching, 
 indications have been pointed out in his Epistles of 
 eschatological ideas more akin to Judaism. He does 
 not, indeed, expressly say that those not " in Christ " will 
 be raised, but a resurrection of unbehevers appears to be 
 implied in the words : '' The dead in Christ will rise first," 
 and "the last enemy, death, shall be destroyed." There 
 are clear declarations of a judgment, of '' the day of the 
 Lord," of " the judgment-seat of Christ " and of God, and 
 of a '* day when God shall judge the secrets of men by 
 
 * The outcome of the work of Christ at the Parousia would, however, by 
 no means be meagre according to this conception, for Paul believed in the 
 coming in of " the fulness of the gentiles " and the saving of "all Israel " 
 before that event. See Rom. xi. 25 f. 
 
 While a resurrection of unbelievers is nowhere explicitly affirmed by Paul, 
 and is excluded by his fundamental principle that the possession of the Spirit 
 is the pledge of life from the dead, it appears to be implied in the declara- 
 tion concerning the day of wrath when God ' ' will render to every one 
 according to his works/' and of the day when *' God will judge the secrets 
 of men by Jesus Christ *' (Rom. ii. 5, 6, 16). The reference in these pas- 
 sages to the Parousia can hardly be denied. A universal judgment is also 
 the natural inference from the remark that " the holy will judge the world '* 
 (i Cor. vi. 2). Cut it is evident that this language of Jewish apocalypse is 
 no more reconcilable with the teaching that Paul had most at heart than the 
 doctrine of a renovated creation and a reign of Christ till all enemies should 
 be put under his feet, is reconcilable with the ascent of the resurrected and 
 living saints at the Parousia with bodies of glory to meet the descending 
 Lord in the air, and be "forever" with him. The harmonists who think 
 they can reconcile Paul with himself and find in his teaching a *' system" of 
 theology have no difficulty, of course, in showing that to " render to every 
 man according to his works " is compatible with the doctrines of grace and 
 justification by faith. 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION, 22$ 
 
 Jesus Christ." * He also speaks of a " reign '* of Christ 
 until all enemies are put under his feet, and of the 
 " creation " as promised a deliverance *' from the bondage 
 of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children 
 of God." t To the believers in Corinth he promises the 
 exalted function of judges of the world and even of 
 angels4 " The holy " will sit with Christ at the Parousia 
 on the judgment-seat. All this has an apocalyptic- 
 millenarian aspect which is hardly reconcilable with the 
 spiritual-mystic conception of eschatology previously con- 
 sidered. It has well been asked why a judgment should 
 be thought necessary for the resurrected " dead in Christ " 
 who had already been " accepted as righteous," or for the 
 believers living at the Parousia, who were to be " changed 
 in the twinkling of an eye " into the likeness of Christ *s 
 body of glory, why, in fact, these should have to " appear 
 before the judgment-seat of Christ " who were deemed 
 qualified to sit with him in judgment upon the world and 
 even the angels. The deliverance of the groaning creation 
 appears to imply a reign of Christ upon the earth and 
 perhaps a subjection there of his " enemies," in which 
 case some light might be thrown upon the question pre- 
 viously raised regarding the destiny of the unbelievers 
 who should be living at the Parousia, if we knew what 
 was meant by the putting under the feet of Christ. 
 But in the graphic apocalyptic account of the Parousia 
 in I Thessalonians the resurrected are represented as 
 ascending to meet the coming Lord " in the air " — a state- 
 ment which certainly does not imply either a reign upon 
 the earth or a judgment. The incompatibility of ideas 
 is still further apparent when we attempt to reconcile 
 
 * I Cor. viii. 13 ; 2 Cor, i. 14, v. 10 ; Rom. ii. 16, xiv. lo, etc. 
 f I Cor. XV. 25 ; Rom. viii. 21. J i Cor. vi. 2, 3. 
 
226 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 either a judgment of the believers or their ascent to meet 
 Christ in the air with the doctrine that immediately at 
 'death they were *' at home with the Lord/* and already 
 clothed with the spiritual body " from heaven." Finally 
 " the end " is not defined with a dogmatic clearness. 
 Christ, having reigned until all his enemies are under 
 his feet, will deliver up his kingdom to the Father, that 
 God may be all in all, that is, all " in Christ and in what- 
 ever his kingdom may contain." If this kingdom is 
 supposed to be a transformed humanity, we have here 
 a doctrine of the restoration of mankind, which we might 
 beheve to be taught if it were not for the repeated 
 declaration that destruction and perishing are the fate of 
 those who have lived according to the flesh, and if there 
 were an intimation that Christ during his "reign," the 
 duration of which is undetermined, were to be engaged 
 in the conversion of the living unbelievers. But we are 
 told only of his enemies being put under his feet, an ex- 
 pression which implies Messianic conquest rather than 
 evangelization, and in the Pauline teaching there is no 
 resurrection to life for unbehevers. Paul's teaching 
 regarding " the end " can, however, have no importance 
 for us apart from the interest which attaches to it as a 
 phase of the history of doctrines ; for to him the final 
 consummation was near at hand.* The voice of an arch- 
 angel and the trump of God which he conceived to be 
 about to sound were not for the millions who have 
 since " fallen asleep," and the horoscope of destiny 
 was not cast by him for the ages yet to be. His 
 eschatology contains different and irreconcilable ideas, 
 some of which appear to have been held in successive 
 periods of his life, and others at the same time, without 
 
 * Rom. xiv. 12 ; Phil. iv. 5 ; i Cor. vii. 29. 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION. 22/ 
 
 any attempt to bring them into the unity of 
 a system of thought. If that phase of it which has 
 exerted the greatest influence was that which he was 
 most in earnest about, there can be no doubt that he 
 expressed his deepest conviction not when he wrote 
 after the manner of a Jewish apocalyptist concerning a 
 descent of Christ to the earth with '' the trump of God," 
 of the rising of the dead, of a renovated creation, of a 
 judgment-seat, of a Messianic reign, and of a subjection 
 of the Messiah's enemies, but when as a spiritual Hellenist 
 he wrote of the mystic union with Christ by which the 
 soul was inwardly transfigured and clothed upon at death 
 with the habitation from heaven, emerging from the 
 bondage to the clogging flesh to be in joyous freedom 
 "at home with the Lord."* It is evident that, destitute 
 of this spiritual conception and employing only the 
 weapons of Jewish materialism, he could not have 
 advanced his cause with those at Corinth who doubted 
 that there is a resurrection, and that had he not been in 
 touch with Hellenistic ideas he could never have con- 
 ceived and carried out the great apostleship to the 
 gentiles. The doctrine that the deliverance of the souls 
 of believers from the dreary realm of the underworld and 
 their real entrance upon the immortal life began only with 
 the second coming of Christ furnished a doubtful consola- 
 tion at the best, which would have been neutralized by 
 the despair of an indefinite waiting for the ever-postponed 
 Parousia. The advance, then, of Paul's thought beyond 
 this Jewish conception not only shows the greatness of 
 his mind, but denotes the ascendancy of his influence in 
 the gentile world, and reveals him as the cosmopolitan 
 
 * The idea that the fleshly body is a burden to the soul is expressed in the 
 Hellenistic book of Wisdom, ix. 15, See 2 Cor. v. 2. 
 
228 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPREl^ATIONS. 
 
 teacher who delivered the gospel of Jesus from the peril 
 of asphyxiation in the atmosphere of provincial narrow- 
 ness, and established it as a universal historical power. 
 
 It is evident from the foregoing considerations that 
 what is called Paulinism is not so much a system as a 
 combination of theological and rehgious ideas without 
 strictly logical connection, which may be regarded as a 
 transformation of Christianity rather than an interpreta- 
 tion of it, since they are not concerned with an exposition 
 of the teachings of Jesus, but with a metaphysical and 
 mystical construction of his death and resurrection with 
 relation to the problem of salvation. In the exigencies 
 of controversy the apostle appears to have assumed ex- 
 treme positions which are not easily reconcilable with one 
 another, as when he emphasizes human responsibility and 
 declares men *' inexcusable " for not living righteously, 
 and again represents the inward man as powerless for 
 good under the dominion of the flesh, and in bondage to 
 sin ; and when he makes justification by faith depend on 
 the sacrifice of Christ, and yet presents Abraham as an 
 example of the attainment of righteousness by faith with- 
 out the intervention of Christ, thus apparently making 
 the essential superfluous. His great merit was that he 
 delivered Christianity from the shackles of Judaism, and 
 rendered it possible that the gospel of Jesus should be- 
 come a world-religion. His thought, then, marks a transi- 
 tion, and perhaps necessarily had two sides, the one 
 turning toward the Judaism from which it was seeking 
 to free itself, and the other toward the Hellenism which 
 it was striving to win. The latter aspect of his thought 
 together with the great Jewish monotheistic doctrine sur- 
 vived, and accomplished the work for which it was fitted. 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION, 229 
 
 His idealism, spirituality, and mysticism commended 
 themselves to gentile thought, and transformed Hellen- 
 istic philosophy into religion. His Jewish apocalyptics, 
 the Parousia, the trumpet which should call up the dead, 
 also had their day, and still perform a ministry to those 
 who will have no religion which is not a poorly-disguised 
 materialism. The Christology which he placed in the 
 foreground of his teaching, a conception of " the second 
 Adam " and the ** man from heaven," is so metaphysical 
 and so foreign to the simplicity of Jesus that it is not 
 likely to hold a permanent place in religious thought. 
 The acceptance of men as righteous by faith is too ex- 
 treme and abstract a doctrine to find general favor with- 
 out important modifications; but the spiritual principle 
 of dying to sin and living again in union with God and 
 Christ embodies a universal truth which is confirmed by 
 the deepest human experience, and it is likely to be per- 
 manent with or without the mystical application which 
 his Christology gives to it."^ 
 
 That the attempt of Paul to give to Christianity at 
 the same time a Jewish and a Hellenistic interpretation 
 resulted in a transformation of it has already been pointed 
 out. This transformation appears especially in his Chris- 
 tology and his doctrine of redemption. Jesus did not 
 represent himself as the preexistent second Adam and 
 the man from heaven, nor did he teach that he came to 
 
 * Matthew Arnold appears to accept this doctrine in its mystical aspect. 
 Yet Goethe, whom he quotes as a " witness " to it, omits the mysticism : 
 " Stirb und werde ! 
 
 Denn so lang dii das nicht hast, 
 Bist du nur ein triiber Gast 
 
 Auf der dunkeln Erde 
 
 " Die and re-exist ! for so long as this is not accomplished, thou art but a 
 troubled guest upon an earth of gloom." 
 
230 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 bear the curse of the law in his death. He knew of no 
 righteousness which was reckoned to men on account of 
 faith, but only of one which, like that taught by the 
 prophets, v/as gained by an obedience sanctified by Ic^ve 
 to God. He would bring men into that immediate co;:n- 
 munion with the Father in which he found strength and 
 peace, and whereby they in subjection to the divine will 
 should be transformed and quickened ; but he knew of 
 no mediator and intercessor and no magical new creation. 
 But however much the great apostle may have contributed 
 to a doctrinal transformation of Christianity, it should 
 not be overlooked that his life and character were a noble 
 exemplification of its spirit, and will survive as a helpful 
 influence and an inspiration to mankind, whatever may 
 be the fortune of his doctrinal teachings. With all his 
 reliance upon faith he was a man of action, and displayed 
 unwearied zeal in the cause of the gospel, a missionary of 
 the noblest type. He was a vigorous champion of reason 
 and intellectual liberty and of the freedom of the spirit, 
 despite his bondage as a Jew to the letter of the sacred 
 books of his race. A man of the deepest piety, he was 
 conscious of his dependence upon God, of his inabiUty 
 apart from the Spirit and the indwelHng Christ, and 
 though self-reliant and bold, even vehement and intolerant 
 toward the narrowness which would defeat his ends, he 
 was of all men the most affected with a sense of his un- 
 worthiness. His gratitude to God was as abundant as 
 his aspiration for perfect fellowship with Him was earnest 
 and ardent. In nothing did he more eminently manifest 
 the spirit of his Master than in his self-sacrificing devotion 
 to the welfare of mankind, which is especially touching 
 in his affectionate interest in his "brethren according to 
 the flesh," for whose conversion he toiled, and hoped 
 
THE PAULINE TRANSFORMATION. 23 1 
 
 against hope. In his immortal hymn to Love * the poetic 
 genius of his nation found its latest inspired and classical 
 expression, f 
 
 * I Cor. xiii. 
 
 \ On the Pauline teaching the student may consult : Immer, Theol. des 
 N. T., pp. 205-356 ; Weiss, Bibl. Theol. des N. T., 3te Ausg., §g 58-87 
 (Eng. Trans., i. pp. 292 to end); Pfleiderer, Das Urchristenthum, pp. 
 153-280; Der Paulinismus, 2te Aufl. ; Baur, Paulus, 2te Ausg. ii. pp. 123- 
 315, and Neutestamentl. Theol., pp. 128-207 ; Weizsacker, Das apostol. 
 Zeitalter, pp. 106-139 J Lechler, Das apostol. u. nachapostol. Zeitalter, 3te 
 Ausg., pp. 269-387 ; Von Colin, Bibl. Theol., ii. pp. 167-338 ; Hausrath, 
 Neutestamentl. Zeitgesch., ii. pp. 439-499 ; Holsten, Zum Evangelium des 
 Paulus u. des V^\.xws,, passim ; Holtzmann, Judenthum u. Christenthum, 
 pp. 553 ff ; Pfleiderer, The Influence of the Apostle Paul on the Develop- 
 ment of Christianity (The Hibbert Lectures, 1885) ; Matthew Arnold, St. 
 Paul and Protestantism; Toy, Judaism and Christianity (see " Paul " in 
 Index of Subjects) ; Reuss, La Theologie Chretienne an Siecle Apostolique, 
 ii. pp. 14-242 ; Martineau, The Seat of Authority in Religion, Book iv. 
 chap. ii. §§ 2, 3, chap. iii. §§ 2, 3 ; Stevens, The Pauline Theology, 1892 ; 
 Beyschlag, Neutestamentliche Theologie, 1892, ii. pp. 1-252 ; Coquerel, 
 First Historical Transformations of Christianity, 1867, pp. iii f ; Crooker, 
 Different New Testament Views of Jesus, 1890, pp. 32 f. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE DEUTERO-PAULINE INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 PAULINISM does not appear to have met immedi- 
 ately with a general acceptance in the Church in the 
 form in which it was conceived and presented by its great 
 and original author. With other times came new exigencies 
 and the necessity of new adjustments of Christianity to 
 them, and this bold transformation of the gospel of Jesus 
 was destined itself to be transformed by its friends, and 
 adapted to the changing needs of the believers in an age 
 teeming with novel ideas and daring speculations. It 
 might be expected that the result would show a softening 
 of some of the harder lines of PauHnism and the promi- 
 nence in Christian thought of conceptions whose descent 
 could not be traced directly from the great apostle. If 
 Paul *' planted'* in Hellenistic soil, and the Alexandrian 
 Apollos "watered," it may very well have turned out 
 that " the increase " was a crop of ideas and speculations 
 related both to the Synagogue and to the philosophy of 
 Philo. By reason of its origin, its birth out of the throes 
 of a Hebrew soul struggling for freedom from Jewish 
 legalism, Paulinism contained ideas which could be appre- 
 ciated only by minds familiar with the school of thought 
 in which the apostle had been trained. Adapted to the 
 reconciling of Jews with Christianity by removing the 
 "offence" of the cross, these ideas of the opposition of 
 the law and the gospel, of a representative propitia- 
 
 232 
 
THE DEUTERO-PAULINE INTERPRETATIONS. 233 
 
 tion, of the abolition of the curse of the law, and of a 
 righteousness which was ** accounted " to men through 
 faith, could not be understood by gentiles, and very soon 
 fell into disuse, among those who had no interest in and 
 no comprehension of the original Pauline contest against 
 Judaism. On the contrary, certain of Paul's ideas which 
 had an affinity for gentile thought were appropriated by 
 thinkers who were favorable to Paulinism in general, and 
 adapted in connection with current speculations to the 
 exigencies of post-apostolic times. The New-Testament 
 literature which represents this modified Paulinism has 
 received from criticism the designation Deutero-Pauline, 
 and may be regarded as embracing the Epistles to the 
 Hebrews, Colossians, and Ephesians, and the first Epistle 
 of Peter. 
 
 I. — THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 The first of these Epistles, which is evidently the work 
 of a Pauline Christian favorably disposed to the Alex- 
 andrian thought, was probably written in the last quarter 
 of the first century for the purpose of strengthening the 
 wavering faith of certain Jewish Christians.^* In order to 
 counteract an assumed tendency on the part of the per- 
 
 * The date, authorship, and address of the Epistle to the Hebrews are 
 indeterminable. It was probably written between a.d. 80 and go, and 
 addressed to Roman Christians. That Paul was not its author has long been 
 held by the critical school, and is now generally conceded. The limits of 
 this work require the acceptance of the conclusions of criticism with regard 
 to the various New Testament writings without a discussion of their grounds. 
 The critical school is, however, divided on the question of the date of the 
 Epistle. But the date is not a matter of great importance. Hilgenfeld, 
 followed by Davidson, places the composition shortly before A. D, 70. See 
 however, Holtzmann in Schenkel's Bibel Lexicon, ii. p. 623. Volkmar 
 dates it at 116-118. 
 
234 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 sons addressed to go back to their former Jewish belief, 
 the writer makes it his chief object to show the superiority 
 of Christianity to Judaism. Over against the changing, 
 sinful priesthood of Judaism, and its frequent sacrifices in 
 an earthly sanctuary, which serve only for outward puri- 
 fication, he places Christ conceived as a great high priest 
 whose one sacrifice has effected salvation forever, he 
 having entered '* into a sanctuary not made with hands, '* 
 " into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God 
 in our behalf. " * The contact of the writer with the 
 idealism of the Alexandrian philosophy is indicated in his 
 conception of archetype and copy, reality and shadow, 
 applied to the heavenly and earthly sanctuaries. As a 
 high priest ^' who sat down on the right hand of the throne 
 of the Majesty in the heavens, " Christ is a minister of 
 " the true tabernacle, " while those priests " who offer the 
 gifts according to the law" *' serve the mere delineation 
 and shadow of the heavenly things. " f The Christology 
 of Paul denotes, as has been shown, a wide depar- 
 ture from the teaching of Jesus regarding his person, and 
 that of this writer is a marked deviation from Paulinism 
 in this regard. As Paul knew nothing of Jesus as "the 
 apostle and high-priest of our confession, " % so the author 
 of Hebrews appears not to know anything of him as "the 
 second Adam" and "the man from heaven." In the 
 Pauline doctrine of the work of Christ the stress is laid 
 upon his death and resurrection, while in Hebrews the 
 chief prominence is given to his heavenly function as 
 
 * Heb. ix. 24. 
 
 fHeb. viii. <^,v7io^Eiyfxanal6HidTmyh'itovfiavimv;\y., 23,avriTV- 
 Tta TGjv dXt/BiJ^cov. See book of Wisdom ix. 8, where the temple is spoken of 
 as a j^ijUTjjua 6Hrjvrji ayia<^ tfv 7tftor}toipia6(X'^ dit dpxv^, " ^ copy of the 
 holy tent which Thou didst prepare from the beginning." 
 
 :|: Heb. iii. i. 
 
THE DEUTERO-PA ULINE INTERPRE TA TIONS. 235 
 
 high-priest and intercessor. Although the writer does not 
 designate Christ as the Logos, he ascribes to him some of 
 the functions which Philo attributes to this agent, and 
 there can be Httle doubt that the form in which his Chris- 
 tology is presented shows the influence of the Alexandrian 
 speculator. While he does not appear to have advanced 
 so far in the understanding and development of the 
 Alexandrian gnosis as the author of the fourth Gospel 
 he shows more points of contact with it than Paul, and 
 may be regarded as in this respect holding an inter- 
 mediate position between these two great writers. 
 
 The importance which the writer of this Epistle at- 
 tached to his doctrine of the person of Christ is apparent 
 in the Christological propositions which he lays down at 
 the outset as the basis of his argument. There are to 
 be observed here as in Paul's writings the absence of a 
 distinctive treatment of the teachings of Jesus and a ten- 
 dency to an idealizing exaltation of his person and office, 
 in which the historical Jesus, the teacher, the preacher of 
 righteousness, the Son of Man, and the prophet of the 
 kingdom of God, disappears from view to give place to 
 the Son of God, the high-priest, and the heavenly inter- 
 cessor in behalf of the faithful. When the writer calls 
 Christ the Son of God, it is evident that he neither em- 
 ploys the term in the Jewish-Messianic sense, nor in the 
 PauHne sense, but to designate him as the appointed 
 '' heir of all things," the agent of the creation, a '' bright- 
 ness " from the "glory" of God, and "an image of His 
 being," who "upholds all things by the word of his 
 power."* The ideas of the preexistence of Christ and of 
 his agency in the creation are Pauline, but other attributes 
 and functions ascribed to him transcend Paulinism and 
 
 * Heb, i. 2, 'X. 
 
236 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 betray an Alexandrian origin. The word employed to 
 express the idea of a brightness or reflection of the divine 
 glory is an Alexandrian term * which is found in the 
 book of Wisdom and in Philo, and only here occurs in 
 the New Testament. In the expression *' the image of 
 His being/' f that is, His person, is contained the idea 
 that the nature of the Father is impressed upon the Son 
 so that the latter is, so to speak, a copy of the former. 
 Finally, as the writer had conceived of Jesus as an agent 
 in the creation of the worlds, he continues the sketch of 
 his greatness by representing him as seated at the right 
 hand of the Majesty on high and upholding all things by 
 the word of his power, thus ascribing to him the func- 
 tions of a universal Providence, just as Philo regarded the 
 Logos as " the bond of all things," who "holds together 
 and administers the universe." X Having shown the superi- 
 ority of Christ over the prophets as mediators of the Old- 
 Testament revelation, the writer proceeds to demonstrate 
 his preeminence over the angels who were regarded by the 
 Jews as also agents in the communication of the divine 
 word to men. If this argument is directed, as some sup- 
 pose, against a tendency in his readers to put Christ, 
 angels, and the spiritual powers on an equal footing and 
 so to degrade Christianity to a level with Essenene and 
 
 * a7tavya6fJ.<x. Meyer finds in this term the three ideas of independent 
 existence, of origin, and of similarity, /'. e., existence apart from God, origin 
 from Him, and a nature similar to His. Commentar in loc. So in the book 
 of Wisdom the personified wisdom of God is called " the brightness of the 
 everlasting light," aiiavy ad/ia ^(»rde aiSiov, vii. 26. 
 
 f x<^P^^'^Vf^- ^^ P^^^^ ^^^ Logos is said to be the image of God, and 
 the rational soul is compared to a coin stamped with the seal of God, the 
 impress {xapaHtrjp) of which is the everlasting Logos. C/. Col. i. 15, 
 eiHGOV rov Osov dopdrov, " image of the invisible God." 
 
 X Quis rer. div. hcer. 44 ; Vita Mas. iii.14. 
 
THE DEUTERO-PAULINE INTERPRETATIONS. 237 
 
 Other mystic spirit-cults, it would appear to be made con- 
 clusive by the citation from a Psalm in which the writer 
 makes God himself address the Son as " God." * So Philo 
 designates the Logos as ''the second God," although 
 regarding him [it] as subordinate to and dependent on the 
 Supreme Being, f 
 
 Philo's speculative idea that the Logos dwelt in the 
 great Jewish teachers, and was represented by the high- 
 priest, is, however, surpassed by the thought of the Chris- 
 tian Alexandrian who wrote this Epistle that, *' we see 
 him who was made a little lower than the angels, Jesus, 
 on account of the suffering of death crowned with glory 
 and honor, that by the grace of God he might taste death 
 for every one.'' % The advance of Christianity beyond 
 Alexandrian speculation is here indicated in the religious 
 aspect which the incarnation is made to assume. The 
 Son of God becoming human and making a sacrifice once 
 for all in behalf of mankind, brings man to God, and so 
 unites the upper and nether worlds, the world of ideas 
 and the world of sense, between which philosophy had 
 been able to effect only a metaphysical reconciliation.. It 
 is not clear how the writer conceived the entrance of 
 this exalted preexistent being, the image of the divine 
 personality,upon a human hfe to have been effected. In 
 one place he says : " It is well known that our Lord sprang 
 out of Judah,"§ an expression which clearly implies a 
 natural birth of human parents. On the other hand he 
 represents Christ's prototype as Melchisedek who was 
 
 * Heb. i. 8. But of the Son [He said] thy throne, O God, is for ever and 
 ever, Ps. xlv. 6. The application of the passage from the Psalm to Christ is 
 a perversion of its original sense. 
 
 f See Dnimmond, Philo Judseus, 1888, ii. pp. 195 ff. 
 
 % Heb. ii. 9. § Heb. vii. 14. 
 
238 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 ''without father, without mother, without record of de- 
 scent, having neither beginning of days nor end of hfe."* 
 It is difificult to draw another conclusion from this than 
 that he intended to attribute a similar origin to Christ, 
 for there does not appear to be any other reason for his 
 going out of his way to say that of Melchisedek which is 
 not contained in the mention of him in Genesis, f He 
 appears also to imply a supernatural intervention in bring- 
 mg Christ into the world when he misinterprets a passage 
 from a Psalm so as to make Christ say in it : *' A body 
 didst thou prepare for me." J He could hardly have had 
 recourse to this passage if he had had in mind only the 
 natural human body. Pfleiderer calls attention to the 
 denial in the nearly contemporaneous Epistle of Barnabas 
 of the doctrine that Jesus was the son of man, and con- 
 cludes that the Docetic Christology of Gnosticism, which 
 maintained that Christ's body was not a real one of flesh 
 and blood, was then well under way, but not yet accounted 
 a heresy. In any case there appear to be in the Epistle 
 two hypotheses of Christ's entrance into human life which 
 the writer has left without formal reconciliation. The 
 Christology of the Epistle appears to contain other incon- 
 gruities in that it represents Christ who was the " image'* 
 
 * Heb. vii. 3. 
 
 ■j- Meyer's opinion that the writer meant simply to say that no genealogy 
 of Melchisedek is given in the Bible flattens the whole passage, and makes 
 this reference to the descent of the prince of Salem unmeaning. 
 
 X Ps. xl. 6. The reference of the passage to Christ is easily explained by 
 the writer's allegorizing tendency in accordance with his Alexandrian edu- 
 cation ; but his rendering of the original : *' Thou hast opened my ears " by > 
 "A body didst Thou prepare for me," can be explained only by supposing 
 him to have followed blindly the incorrect Septuagint version. For an ex- 
 planation of the error in the Peptuagint see De Wette, Commentar uber die 
 Psalmen, p. 249, and Meyer on Heb. x. 5. 
 
THE DEUTERO-PAULINE INTERPRETATIONS. 239 
 
 of God as being tempted '* in all points as we are," as being 
 *' perfected through suffering," and as " learning obedience 
 by what he suffered." He by whom the worlds were 
 made, the sustainer of all things, second apparently only 
 to the Deity in glory, is said to be " crowned with glory 
 and honor on accomit of ike suffering of death," * To the 
 thought of this writer as well as to Paul's two currents- 
 appear to have contributed, the one bearing Hellenistic 
 idealism and speculation, and the other the materials 0/ 
 history and tradition. Neither writer attempted an ad- 
 justment of the two deposits to each other. 
 
 The Epistle has not the appearance of having been 
 written with especial reference to the Pauline apprehen- 
 sion of Christianity, and many of the ideas which were 
 prominent in the apostle's thought do not seem to have 
 been in the writer's mind. The principal points of contact 
 with Paulinism are the teachings that all things are from 
 God and to Him;t that Christ was the image of God, 
 and that all things were made by him ; :j: that Christ 
 humbled himself and was exalted ; § that death was over- 
 come by Christ ; || that Christ suffered for sinners ; ^ and 
 that Christ acts as an intercessor before the Father.** 
 
 * Heb. ii. 9 f, iv. 15, v. 8 f. The idea that Christ's temptation and suf- 
 ferings were a means of his moral development does not appear elsewhere 
 in the New Testainent. The writer doubtless wishes to present Christ to 
 his readers as an example of constancy under persecution. The doctrine is 
 manifestly unpauline, and the writer does not appear to have thought of the 
 difficulty of reconciling the conception of a preexistent Christ crowned with 
 the glory of a divine nature with that of an afflicted human being attaining 
 peifection and honor through obedience and pain. 
 
 f Heb. ii. 10 ; Rom. xi. 36 ; i Cor. viii. 6. 
 
 X Heb. i. 1-3 ; 2 Cor. iv. 4 ; i Cor. viii. 6. 
 
 § Heb. i. 4 ; Phil. ii. 8. 9. [ Heb. ii. 14 ; i Cor. xv. 54-57. 
 
 TT Heb. ix. 26-28, X. 12 ; Rom. vi. 9, 10. 
 
 ** Heb. vii. 25 ; Rom. viii. 34. 
 
240 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 These Pauline ideas cannot, indeed, be said to be inci- 
 dental to the controlling purpose of the author, but his 
 controlling purpose is so different from that of Paul that 
 his enriployment of them cannot be regarded as unquali- 
 fiedly Pauline. The fundamental distinction between this 
 and the Pauline Epistles lies in the apprehension of the 
 relation of Judaism and Christianity. To Paul Judaism 
 was preeminently a law which was to be fulfilled, while 
 tp the writer of Hebrews it is a body of ritual ar- 
 rangements intended to effect communication between 
 Israel and God and culminating in the priesthood. In 
 the priesthood and not in the law consist its import- 
 ance and whatever permanence it had. In the priesthood 
 too is the point of contact and union of Judaism and 
 Christianity. For the work of Christ is viewed under the 
 conception of a priesthood, and the new religion which 
 he brought is a new institution of atonement surpassing 
 that of Judaism and put into effect by a high-priest infi- 
 nitely superior to his predecessors under the old dispen- 
 sation. These represented a transient institution, an 
 economy which was only a shadow of that which was to 
 come. He has his prototype in Melchisedek, is '' a priest 
 forever," and having entered into the heavenly sanctuary, 
 has effected an everlasting atonement. The means by 
 which he becomes the chief of redemption are his suffer- 
 ing and death. He assumed flesh and blood " that through 
 death he might bring to naught him who had the power 
 of death, that is, the Devil, and might deliver those who, 
 through fear of death, were all their Hfe-time subject to 
 bondage."* Accordingly God "prepared a body" for 
 him, that by the sacrifice of it he might do away with the 
 ancient offerings of beasts, and effect our sanctification. f 
 
 * Heb. ii. 14, 15. f ^eb. x. 5-10. 
 
THE DEUTERO-PAULTNE INTERPRETATIONS. 24 1 
 
 The difference between this point of view and that of 
 Paul is manifest. He, indeed, conceived the death of 
 Christ to be the great factor in redemption, but to him 
 Christ was the " man from heaven " who as a representa- 
 tive of the human race passively received the curse of the 
 law in his death, and so fulfilled the law for all. Of this 
 doctrine there is no trace in our Epistle. The writer of it 
 regards Christ not as the passive representative sufferer, 
 but as the active high-priest who brings his holy life to 
 God in obedience and patience as a precious offering, and 
 by this ethical act of sacrifice operates upon our hearts 
 for their purification and perfection, and opens to us 
 admittance to the heavenly sanctuary, to complete com- 
 munion with God. The high-priest of the old dispensa- 
 tion was required to enter ''once every year " into the 
 holy of holies with the blood of beasts, in order by the 
 sprinkling of blood to remove the guilt of the people and 
 restore the broken covenant with God. But the fact that 
 this act of atonement must be forever repeated proved 
 that the means was inadequate and ineffective for the 
 purifying of the worshipper. Hence there was need of a 
 better sacrifice and a greater high-priest. This high-priest 
 is Christ, the heavenly Son of God, whom in the type 
 Melchisedek God appointed before the institution of the 
 Levitical priesthood as the everlasting high-priest of the 
 new dispensation.* It was not necessary for him, like 
 the human high-priests, to offer a sacrifice for his own 
 sins, for although he shared in our weaknesses and liabil- 
 ity to temptation, yet as the superhuman Son of God he 
 
 * Heb. ix. 7, 9, 13 ; a. i, 4. '* Once every year," Philo is charged with 
 this technical error. Did the writer of the Epistle derive it from him ? The 
 high-priest entered the holy of holies on one day in the year twice according 
 to Levit. xvi. 12-16, according to the Talmud several times. 
 
242 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 was unstained by sin, and hence could offer a better sac- 
 rifice than the Levitical priests. '' For if the blood of 
 goats and bulls, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those 
 who have been defiled, sanctify to the purifying of the 
 flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who by 
 his everlasting spirit offered himself without spot to God, 
 purify your conscience from dead works for the worship 
 of the living God ! " '^' Thus while Paul's point of depart- 
 ure for his doctrine of atonement was the theory of 
 propitiation and satisfaction which was held by the Jew- 
 ish theologians, the author of Hebrews proceeds from the 
 Old-Testament sacrificial ritual regarded as a symbolical 
 prototype of the higher ethical-religious sacrifice of Christ. 
 Paul's arraignment of Judaism was from his point of view 
 directed against the law as "weak through the flesh," and 
 ineffectual for righteousness. The author of this Epistle 
 also has his charge against Judaism, but from his point 
 of view the charge rests against the sacrificial system, and 
 he declares that " it is impossible that the blood of bulls 
 and goats should take away sins." f Remaining then, in 
 a closer contact with Judaism than Paul's sharp antago- 
 nism to the law permitted him to maintain, he conceives 
 of a better purification than the Levitical annual cleansing 
 in which "there is a remembrance of sins every year." X 
 Christ with his own blood has entered once for all into 
 the tn!ie sanctuary of heaven, and effected an everlasting 
 salvation, the real putting away of sins, " perfecting by 
 one offering forever those who are sanctified," so that the 
 ancient word of prophecy is fulfilled : " I will put my laws 
 into their hearts, and in their minds I will write them, 
 and their sins and iniquities I will remember no more." 
 For "where there is remission of sins there is no longer 
 
 * Heb. X. 14. t Heb. ^. A. X Heb. x. 3. 
 
THE DEUTERO-PAULINE INTERPRETATIONS. 243 
 
 offering for sin." ^ The great sacrifice on the cross is 
 regarded as removing the consciousness of guilt in men 
 which separates them from God and putting them into 
 that condition of hoHness which corresponds to Christ's 
 own perfection. This work of the great high-priest, 
 begun on earth, is continued in heaven, where he has 
 entered into the celestial sanctuary and still makes inter- 
 cession. Thus in this Epistle the death of Christ is 
 conceived as effecting essentially the same result as in the 
 teaching of Paul. But while Paul saw in the sacrifice on 
 the cross the satisfaction of the law or of the divine right- 
 eousness, this writer entirely ignores that fundamental 
 idea of the apostle's and regards the great offering from 
 an ethical point of view as immediately related to the 
 consciousness of men and bringing about purification 
 from sin as a moral-religious result, f We find here too 
 the unpauline idea of a completion of the work of Christ 
 in the upper, heavenly sanctuary, and miss the great 
 Pauline doctrines of the agency of the Spirit, and of the 
 
 * Heb. X. 17, 18. 
 
 \ The doctrine that we are reconciled to God by the death of Christ is, 
 indeed, expressed in the Epistle, and the writer approaches very near the 
 Pauline thought of ^ representative suffering of the legal penalty when he 
 applies as types to the death of Christ the Old-Testament sacrifices of atone- 
 ment which probably rest upon the idea of substitutional offering. Hence, 
 Christ is called a merciful and faithful high-priest to make atonement for 
 the sins of the people (ii. 17) and the mediator of a new covenant by whose 
 death is secured "redemption from the transgressions under the first cove- 
 nant" (ix. 15), since " without the shedding of blood there is no remission " 
 (ix. 22). Jesus indeed " tasted death for every one " (ii. 9) ; but instead of 
 the Pauline ideas expressed in Rom. iii. 25 and Gal. iii. 13 concerning his 
 suffering to manifest the righteousness of God and bear the cause of the law, 
 it is said that the object of his death was to *' take away sin,'' and to be 
 himself made perfect through suffering, together with the quite incongruous 
 remark that the testator must die in order to put the covenant in force. 
 
244 T^^E GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 dying with Christ and the rising with him to newness 
 of life. 
 
 Instead of accepting the Pauhne doctrine that the 
 death of Christ removed the curse of the law, the writer 
 of Hebrews conceives of the effect of the sacrifice on the 
 cross as a " bringing to naught of him who had the power 
 of death, that is, the Devil." * To Paul death came into 
 the world through sin, and in his theology the Devil has 
 no conspicuous place. The introduction of Satan as the 
 personal representative of the power of death in this Epis- 
 tle appears to indicate the beginning of the development 
 of the Christian mythology in which the Prince of the 
 realm of evil was supposed to have certain rights over the 
 souls of men by reason of Adam's transgressions. For 
 the Pauline teaching that death as the penalty of sin was 
 overcome by the sacrifice of Christ, who in his person as 
 a representative of the human race suffered it for all men, 
 this writer substitutes the mythological conception of the 
 overthrow of the Devil, who as the original author of sin 
 is regarded as the King of death, f The writer does not 
 appear to have been favorably inclined towards the Pau- 
 line metaphysical abstractions, among which was the idea 
 of the law as a power whose demands God must recognize 
 and satisfy. Accordingly we may suppose that the sim- 
 ple, concrete personality of Satan commended itself to 
 him as the representative of death who was " set at 
 ■nought " by the great sacrifice of Christ which was con- 
 ceived as breaking his power, since it was a means of 
 snatching men from the grasp of death by freeing them 
 
 * Heb. ii. 14, didpoXo'^. 
 
 f There is perhaps here a trace of the influence of the book of "Wisdom 
 upon the writer. See Wisdom ii. 24 : "By the envy of the Devil [Sia- 
 fioXov] came death into the world, and those experience it who belong to 
 him." 
 
THE DEUTERO-PAULINE INTERPRETATIONS, 245 
 
 from sin. This naive popular mythology, whose origin 
 is easily traced, may very well have satisfied an age which 
 was not capable of comprehending, much less of attain- 
 ing to, the " monstrous moral enormity" of the mediaeval 
 theology which regarded the justice of God as requiring 
 satisfaction and finding it in the sacrifice of Christ — a 
 doctrine which " mingles its fierce lights of expiation and 
 its massive shadows of despair with the whole theology 
 of Christendom." 
 
 Another important deviation of the doctrine of this 
 Epistle from the Pauline thought appears in its teaching 
 regarding faith. Faith is assigned, indeed, no unimpor- 
 tant part in the Christian life ; it is necessary for those 
 who hear the word in order to " profit " ; it is a profession 
 to be '' held fast " ; it is a " foundation " to be laid."* But 
 we find nothing here of Paul's apprehension of it as a 
 mystic union with Christ whereby his death and resurrec- 
 tion are inwardly appropriated. The great Pauline oppo- 
 sition of faith and works is here retired into the back- 
 ground, and instead of justification by faith without 
 works, we read of Christ as an example who "learned 
 obedience by what he suffered, and, being perfected, 
 became the author of everlasting salvation to all who 
 obey him:' f Unlike Paul the author does not emphasize 
 faith in Christ, but his conception of it is vague and gen- 
 eral, and corresponds with the conception of Philo as an 
 ideal disposition of the emotions in opposition to the 
 sensuous, fleshly tendency, in particular as confidence in 
 God's promises and support. Christ is rather the proto- 
 type than the object of faith, and as he *' for the joy that 
 was set before him endured the cross, despising the 
 shame," so we ought to **run with perseverance the race 
 
 * Heb. iv. 2, vi. i, a. 23. \ Heb v. 9, 
 
246 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 that is set before us, looking to him as the author and 
 perfecter of our faith," * that is, as Jesus by his example 
 has given us a demonstration of faith even to his death 
 on the cross, so we ought to make that virtue ours "with 
 perseverance." This is quite unpauline ; but the writer 
 indicates another departure from his great predecessor in 
 teaching that faith is to be directed to the possessions of 
 the unseen future world. It is sententiously declared to 
 be " the assurance of things hoped for, a conviction of 
 things not seen/'f It is the conviction of the reahty of 
 the upper world, the assurance that what is hoped for in 
 respect to the promised reconciliation with God and par- 
 ticipation in the glory of Christ will surely be realized. 
 As it was remarked in the foregoing chapter, the Pauline 
 terminology regarding justification by faith is avoided, 
 and instead of the Pauline *' to be justified," and "to be 
 accounted righteous through faith," we have here " to 
 have the testimony that he pleased God," " to obtain a 
 good report through faith," J and even the expression, 
 " wrought righteousness through faith." § Evidently 
 righteousness is not conceived by this writer as by Paul 
 to be a gift of God received by faith, whereby the be- 
 liever is liberated from the curse of the law by reason of 
 the atoning, propitiatory death of Christ, but as a pious 
 disposition which is confirmed by obedience in action 
 and suffering, and constitutes the essence of faith itself. 
 The tendency of the writer is indicated by the use which 
 he makes of a catchword of Paul's taken from Habakkuk 
 ii. 4: "The just shall hve by his faith." Paul renders 
 
 * Heb. xii. 2. t ^'^^b. xi. i. 
 
 ± Heb. xi. 4, 5, 39, /xaprvpeI60ai diHaiov eivai, j^aprvpeSiBca did 
 
 § Heb. xi. 33, Epydt,E60ai Sid Ttidrsaoi diHaiodvvr^v. 
 
THE DEUTERO-PAULINE INTERPRETATIONS. '^Al 
 
 this: **The just by faith shall live," that is, he who is 
 righteous through faith shall have part in the Messianic 
 life at the Parousia. But our writer understands the 
 words in their original import : " The righteous man will 
 preserve his life as a result of his faith," his trusting 
 endurance, which is the opposite of "drawing back.""^ 
 There could be no place, then, in our writer^s thought 
 for the Pauline opposites, faith and works, faith and the 
 law ; for a faith which, like that conceived by him, is the 
 direction of the human will in conformity with the will 
 of God, includes in itself works, or the fulfilment of the 
 moral law. While for Paul the essence of faith was a 
 religious receptivity, a devotion of the life to Christ, 
 and a mystic union with him, for the writer of Hebrews 
 it is, in part, a hope in the promised possessions of the 
 future world, and in part a moral power of obedience, 
 patience, and endurance, which constitute the disposition 
 acceptable to God. 
 
 The Epistle is poor in eschatological features. The 
 writer does not employ apocalyptical imagery, and says 
 nothing of a scenic general judgment and a millennial 
 reign of Christ. "The resurrection of the dead" and 
 *' everlasting judgment" are mentioned among those 
 " first principles " which he admonishes his readers to 
 leave, as apparently unimportant, that they may " press 
 on to perfection." f That Christ is to come again ap- 
 pears to be a doctrine accepted by his readers. He ex- 
 horts them that they excite to love and good works, not 
 forsaking the assembhng of themselves together; "and 
 so much the more, as ye see the day [of the Parousia] 
 approaching.":}: Mention of the judgment and the sec- 
 
 * Gal. iii. ii. ; Heb. a. 3S. See Meyer on the passages. 
 
 \ Heb. vi. 2. X Heb. a. 24, 25. 
 
248 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 ond appearance of Christ is vague and evidently inci- 
 dental, as in the words: *' As it is appointed unto men 
 once to die, but after this the judgment; so also Christ 
 'having been once offered up to bear the sins of many will 
 appear the second time without sin for the salvation of 
 those who are waiting for him."*'^ Since " those who are 
 waiting for him " can only be the believers, the fortune 
 of unbelievers at the Parousia is left undetermined. This 
 is, however, in accordance with the vagueness of the 
 author's eschatology in general. It is evident that he 
 attached small importance to such matters as " baptism " 
 ** resurrection," and *' judgment," which to him were ele- 
 mentary f in comparison with his doctrine of the perfect, 
 heavenly priesthood of Christ. With respect to the lapse 
 of believers the doctrine of Paul receives a very emphatic 
 supplement. For those who ''willingly sin " after they 
 have *' received the knowledge of the truth, there no 
 longer remaineth a sacrifice for sin, but a certain fearful 
 looking-for of judgment," etc. % These may abandon 
 hope, " For it is impossible that those who have once 
 been enlightened and have tasted the heavenly gift, etc., 
 and have fallen away should be again renewed to repent- 
 ance, since they crucify to themselves the Son of God 
 afresh and put him to open shame." § While the saying 
 regarding the sin against the Holy Ghost has some an- 
 alogy with this, nowhere else in the New Testament is 
 the hopelessness of the condition of behevers who may 
 have fallen from their allegiance so definitely and un- 
 qualifiedly set forth. That this dogmatic assertion is not 
 in accord with the case of Peter, with the spirit of Jesus, 
 with any known psychological principles, and with the 
 
 * Heb. ix. 27, 28. t ^ ^75 «PI75 'h.oyo^. 
 
 X Heb. A. 26, 27. § Heb. vi. 4-6. 
 
THE DEUTERO-PAULINE INTERPRETATIONS. 249 
 
 facts of experience, could not have affected the tone of 
 this writer, who perhaps thought that severity and an 
 awful warning were the only means of obviating an im- 
 pending lapse of his readers. 
 
 2. — THE EPISTLE TO THE COLOSSIANS. 
 
 The Epistle to the Colossians is an important docu- 
 ment of the deutero-PauHne literature, and may be dis- 
 cussed as to its doctrinal contents independently of 
 the question whether it contains a genuine Pauline nu- 
 cleus. It was occasioned apparently by the appearance 
 among the believers in Colossae of certain phases of 
 belief which were a departure from the true Christian 
 doctrine, but the exact nature of which it is not easy to 
 determine. Perhaps the tendencies which the Epistle 
 combats denoted the beginnings of the Gnosticism which 
 later played so important a part in Christian history. 
 That the persons addressed were gentile Christians ap- 
 pears probable from several allusions, particularly from 
 the words : " And to you who were dead in your tres- 
 passes and the uncircumcision of your flesh hath He 
 given life together with him [Christ], having forgiven us 
 all our trespasses."* Over against the erroneous doc- 
 trines of his readers the writer of the Epistle sets the, to 
 him, true idea of Christ's person and the Christian knowl- 
 edge which is better than the false gnosis to which they 
 were inclined. As in the Epistle to the Hebrews so here 
 this Christological doctrine is laid down at the outset and 
 made fundamental to the main purpose which is to com- 
 bat the erroneous views held by the persons addressed. 
 The Christology is also a further development of that of 
 Hebrews, whose writer the author follows in the appre- 
 
 *Col. ii. 13. Cf. i. 13, 2r. 
 
250 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 hension of the relation of Judaism and Christianity not, 
 indeed, precisely as type and antitype, but as unreal and 
 unessential and real and essential, as shadow and sub- 
 stance. From the point of view of the absoluteness of 
 Christianity he proceeds to the establishment of the ab- 
 soluteness of the person of Christ. Like the author of 
 the former Epistle he avoids the appHcation of the term 
 Logos to Christ, and although his Christology shows re- 
 semblances to that of Paul in some points, yet on the 
 whole it goes beyond the apostle's, and applies to Christ 
 predicates which in Philo are appHed to the Logos. It 
 is a step nearer than the Christology of Hebrews to the 
 more developed Logos-idea of the fourth Gospel, yet it 
 keeps close to Paul in representing Christ as m intimate 
 connection with the world. When the author calls Christ 
 "the image of the invisible God," and " the first-born of 
 the whole creation,"* we are reminded of the Pauline 
 expressions, "the image of God," and "the first-born 
 among many brethren " ; f but the epithet " invisible " 
 suggests Philo's idea of the Logos as the revelator or visi- 
 ble cop}^ of the hidden God, and the term " first-born of 
 the whole creation " reminds us of his doctrine that the 
 Logos was in distinction from the world the first-born 
 Son of God. But the writer carries still further his exal- 
 tation and idealization of Christ in the words: "For in 
 him were created all things, those in the heavens and those 
 on the earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones 
 or dominions or principalities or powers, all things have 
 been created through him and for him ; and he is beyond 
 all things, and in him all things subsist." % This surpasses 
 
 * Col. i. 15. t 2 Cor. iv. 4 ; Rom. viii. 2g. 
 
 t Col. i. 16, 17. " In him,'' v. 16 ; hv a.i}r^ is equivalent to ^i avrov 
 ■with the additional shade of meaning that the things created by him have 
 their ground in him — that is, "in him all things subsist," v. 17. 
 
THE DEUTERO-PA ULINE INTERPRETATIONS. 2$l 
 
 the Pauline teaching that Christ was the agent of creation 
 through whom all things were made, since he here becomes 
 the end of creation " for " whom all things were made and 
 the indwelhng cosmic principle in whom ah things subsist, 
 the bond and supporter of the universe. This doctrine is 
 as remote from the Pauline conception of Christ as ** the 
 man from heaven," as it is akin to Philo's teaching that 
 the cosmos was " founded in the divine Logos," that the 
 Logos is "the bond of all things" and "holds and binds 
 all the parts together and prevents their dissolution," and 
 that it is the principle sustaining and directing the totality 
 of existence.* 
 
 Thence the author proceeds to set forth the office of 
 Christ with reference to the work of redemption in terms 
 corresponding to the exalted rank already assigned him. 
 He is the head of the church, since he is the beginning, 
 that he may be in all things preeminent ; " for God was 
 pleased that in him all the fulness should dwell, and by 
 him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace 
 through the blood of his cross, by him, I say, whether the 
 things on earth or those in the heavens." f This denotes 
 an advance in the exaltation of Christ beyond Paul and 
 the author of Hebrews, neither of whom conceived that 
 in him " dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." if 
 The heavenly or archetypal " man " of Paul might, indeed, 
 be conceived to be " the image of God," but not the 
 embodiment of " all the fulness of the Godhead." We are 
 rather here again reminded of Philo, who conceived the 
 Logos as the "place" or essence of the divine energies, 
 whom " God himself has Ji/Ied entirely with immaterial 
 
 * Ho^Mo^ . . . iSpvfj£i<; £v r(^ 6Eia)X6x(p; A.6ro<5 . ■ ■ • ^sdjuoS <^v 
 r(Sv (XTtdvTGov ; 6vy£X£i \X6yo<\ rd {.liprf itavza, etc., Pfleiderer. 
 f Col. i. 18-20. 
 % Col. ii. 9, Ttdv TO nXrjpooiia Gfdr7;ro? 6oojiarin^%. 
 
252 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPKETATIONS, 
 
 powers." * It may be left undecided whether '* the ful- 
 ness of the Godhead " is conceived to have dwelt in 
 Christ necessarily and from the beginning, or from the time 
 of his resurrection and exaltation, but there can be little 
 doubt from the abrupt way in which the writer introduces 
 the word pleroma,\ fulness, in the declaration in question 
 that the term was known by him to be current among his 
 readers, and accordingly that he knew them to be influ- 
 enced by Gnostic speculations, and wished to counteract 
 these by teaching that all the primal powers which the 
 Gnostics assumed in the pleroma dwelt bodily in Christ, 
 since in him was the pleroma of the Godhead. Since the 
 use of this term cannot be shown among the Jewish 
 Theosophists, the Gnosticism which the writer had in 
 view must have been later than the time of Paul. Whether 
 the Qno's>\\c pleroma was supposed to be in discord and to 
 need reconciliation or no may not be clear, but it is evident 
 that a new and unpauline idea of the extent of Christ's 
 reconciling function is here advanced by this writer when 
 he includes in it " the things in the heavens." According 
 to Paul the work of Christ was limited to the human race, 
 of which as '* the man from heaven " he was conceived to 
 be the head and atoning representative. There appears 
 furthermore to be an allusion to the Gnostic idea of the 
 distinction of the world of spirit and the world of matter, 
 in the declaration that in Christ were created *'the things 
 visible and invisible " ; and the '* dominions, principalities, 
 and powers" which are said to have been created in him 
 were according to Irenaeus and Epiphanius current Gnos- 
 tic terms.:]; To declare that all these things were created 
 
 * See Drummond, Philo Judseus, ii. p. 162. 
 
 j TtXrjfioOf.ta^ a Gnostic term employed to express the totality of the 
 primal powers or ceons included in the divine Being. 
 
 \ Iren., Adv. HEcres.. i. 24, i ; Epiph., Hseres., xxiii. i. 
 
THE DEUTERO-PAULINE INTERPRETATIONS. 253 
 
 in Christ, that he is "before " them all, and that they all 
 "subsist" in him is the author's way of overcoming the 
 Gnostic tendencies of his readers. Especially effective in 
 this regard must have appeared to him the declaration 
 that on the cross Christ "having disarmed principahties 
 and powers [orders of spiritual beings according to the 
 Gnostics] made a public show of them, and led them 
 captive in triumph." * This conception taken in connec- 
 tion with the declaration that in the death of Christ " the 
 hand-writing in ordinances which was against us He hath 
 taken out of the way, nailing it to the cross," is significant 
 as well for what it expresses as for what it omits. We do 
 not find here the genuinely Pauline idea of the death of 
 Christ as a representative satisfaction of the law rendered 
 to the divine justice; but rather as in Hebrews it is 
 taught that in his death Christ "brought to naught him 
 who had the power of death, that is, the Devil," so here 
 he is represented as robbing the spirits of evil of their 
 power, supposed to be represented by a bond of the law 
 which they held against sinful men and leading them 
 captive in triumph, having "nailed to the cross," that is, 
 annulled in his death, their claim to the souls of men. 
 Evidently the abstract "curse of the law" was not easily 
 understood by the gentile Christians, and so in place of 
 the original Pauhne doctrine of atonement there may 
 very likely have been developed the conception of a con- 
 flict of Christ with demonic powers, and their overthrow 
 by virtue of his great sacrifice. All this is evidently far 
 removed from Paul's great mystic doctrine of an appro- 
 priation of the sacrifice of Christ by faith. There appears 
 also to be an attempt on the part of the writer of this 
 
 * Col. ii. 15. Paul has, indeed, in Rom. viii, 38, apxai ^nA dvvdjLiei^, 
 but nowhere such a Christology as appears in this Epistle. 
 
254 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 Epistle to apply the Gospel to the exigencies of the 
 Church at Colossae, by exalting Christianity to the chief 
 place among '* mysteries." "^ A secret mystery-worship 
 may have been one of the erroneous tendencies which he 
 wished to counteract, as well as the inclination to worship 
 angels and put Christ on an equality with celestial spirit- 
 ual beings. We find here also another doctrine which is 
 hardly reconcilable with the genuine Pauline teaching. 
 To Paul the sacrifice of Christ was an all-sufficient act of 
 atonement, and he could not without the greatest incon- 
 gruity have spoken of filling up in his sufferings in the 
 flesh that which is wanting of the afflictions of Christ on 
 behalf of the Church. f In combating the false gnosis of 
 his readers, the author appears to have made their ideas 
 to some extent his own without a conscious acceptance of 
 their errors. His teaching concerning the reconciliation 
 of "the things in heaven" through Christ shows the im- 
 pression which Gnostic ideas had made upon him. In his 
 doctrine of redemption there are other traits which do 
 not belong to the Pauline interpretation of Christianity, 
 especially in the passage: "Who rescued us from the 
 empire of darkness, and transferred us into the kingdom 
 of His beloved Son, in whom we have our redemption, 
 the forgiveness of our sins." % " The empire of darkness" 
 doubtless refers to the non-Christian world as supposed to 
 ' be ruled by demons § from whose sway Gnosticism would 
 deliver men by means of ascetic practices. This is quite 
 remote from the Pauline redemption from the curse of the 
 
 i 
 
 * Col. i. 27 ; ii. 2 ; iv. 3. Paul, indeed, speaks tv fivdvr^pii^ to the 
 " perfect," but to this writer the Gospel is altogether a " mystery." 
 
 fCol. i. 24. X Col. i. 13. 
 
 4 See Eph. ii. 2, " According to the course of this world, according to the 
 prince of the powers of the air," etc. 
 
THE DEUTERO-PAULINE INTERPRETATIONS. 255 
 
 law, from death, and from the wrath of God. As in the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews, so here redemption is regarded 
 as consisting in the forgiveness of sins, while the Pauline 
 representative atonement and the righteousness " ac- 
 counted " by reason of faith disappear from view. But 
 the forgiveness of sins is an idea which has no distinct 
 expression in Paul's Epistles. There is, however, in this 
 Epistle a point of contact with Paul which is wanting 
 in Hebrews in the doctrine of being buried with Christ in 
 baptism and rising with him from the dead.* 
 
 3. THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. 
 
 The Epistle to the Ephesians shows so marked a depend- 
 ence on that to the Colossians that the opinion that it is 
 a working over of the latter appears to be well supported. 
 It was evidently written to counteract certain tendencies 
 which indicate the beginnings of Gnostic errors which were 
 probably different in detail from those combated in the 
 former Epistle. There appears to be indicated a tendency 
 to heathen libertinism, to a depreciation of Judaism, and to 
 mystery-worship, to counteract which the writer lays stress 
 upon the moral requirements of Christianity not without 
 a predilection for certain Jewish points of view. Judaism 
 appears to be brought into closer relations with Chris- 
 tianity than is consistent with the original Pauline view 
 of the matter, when the gentiles addressed are said to have 
 been formerly "without Christ," since they were "aliens 
 from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the 
 covenants of the promise." Unpauline too is the idea 
 that Christ in his death "broke down the middle Vail of 
 partition between " Jews and gentiles, f not less than the 
 
 * Col. ii. 12. \ Eph. ii. 12-15. 
 
256 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 expression, "God of our Lord Jesus Christ." In the 
 Christology of the Epistle is observable a tendency toward 
 the monotheistic point of view in the avoidance of the 
 doctrine of Colossians that Christ had a part in the crea- 
 tion of the world, although expression is given to the idea 
 that in him all things subsist. The mediation of Christ 
 has relation to the Christian economy, but antedates his 
 earthly manifestation, so that we have our " inheritance " 
 in him " the Beloved," " being predestinated according 
 to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the 
 counsel of His own will."* While Christ is here as in 
 Colossians regarded as the reconciler of "things in heaven/' 
 but not as disarming principalities and powers and leading 
 them captive in triumph, he is said to have been exalted 
 after his resurrection, and " seated at the right hand of 
 God in the heavenly regions far above all rule and author- 
 ity and power and dominion and every name that is named 
 not only in this world but also in that which is to come." f 
 After the manner of Paul the author indeed regards 
 salvation as "by grace" and as "the gift of God," but 
 the PauHne conceptions of justification by faith and of the 
 opposition of faith and works are foreign to him. As a 
 Hellenistic thinker he could not entertain these Jewish 
 ideas and that of a representative atonement. He accord- 
 ingly says nothing of Christ's death as a bearing of the 
 curse of the law, but rather sees in it an offering accept- 
 -able to God for the sake of the Church. The effect of 
 Christ's ethical act of sacrifice is the purifying dedication 
 of the Church to a nuptial union with him through the 
 forgiveness of sins. Having been dead in trespasses, 
 believers are made alive with him. The expressions em- 
 ployed in describing this result, " dead in trespasses," 
 
 * Eph. i. 6, II. t Eph. i. 20 f. 
 
THE DEUTERO-PAULINE INTERPRETATIONS. 257 
 
 "made alive in Christ," "forgiveness of sins," "to be 
 brought near," belong to the later Paulinism of Hebrews 
 and Colossians and not to the genuine Epistles of the 
 apostle (Heb. vi. i, vii. 19, ix. 22, x. 18 ; Col. i. 14, ii. 13). 
 Here as in Colossians are wanting the specifically Pauline 
 expressions "to declare righteous," and "righteousness of 
 God." The disappearance of some of the phases of the 
 Pauline thought, among which may be noted that of 
 " accounting " one righteous through faith, is as striking as 
 is the prominence given to others which were naturally 
 more akin to Hellenistic modes of thinking, such as being 
 "raised up with him," " Hfe with Christ," etc., as well as 
 to the unpauline idea of the forgiveness of sins. 
 
 In the Christology of Colossians the emphasis is laid 
 upon Christ as the "fulness of the Godhead" and the 
 reconciler of the things in heaven and the things on the 
 earth. But in Ephesians the mission of Christ is conceived 
 with especial reference to the establishment of a united 
 Church by a reconciliation of Jews and Gentiles, the par- 
 tition wall between which two parties he is said to have 
 removed by his death."^ In the former Epistle Christo- 
 
 * Eph. ii. 14. The opinion appears to be well grounded which regards 
 the Christology of this writer as a development of that of Paul. The idea of 
 preexistence is common to both, but Paul had no conception of a preexis- 
 tent Christ in whom were included by a divine predestination all who should 
 belong to him, so that he becomes an ideal representative of the Church, the 
 personified idea of Christendom in whom believers were chosen ** before the 
 foundation of the world" (i. 4-14). The Christology of the Epistle indi- 
 cates a tendency toward the more developed Johannine conceptions, particu- 
 larly in the teaching that Christ " descended" to the earth, and that '*he 
 who descended is the same as he who ascended" (iv. g f, cf. John iii. 13). 
 The ascending of Christ " in order that he may fill all things " reminds us 
 of Colossians. In fact, the Christology of the two Epistles is substantially 
 the same, but while in Colossians the prevailing interest in the exaltation of 
 Christ is directed against an unchristian worship of angels, in Ephesians the 
 
258 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 logical speculation reached its height in the conception of 
 Christ as the pleroma of Deity, while in the latter the 
 Church as the body of Christ is his " fulness," " the pleroma 
 of him [Christ] who filled all with alh" ^ The idea of the 
 Church as the mystical "body of Christ," which is con- 
 tained in the two Epistles,f is not Pauhne, but was prob- 
 ably suggested by the words of Paul that " Christ is the 
 head of the man," and that "we though many form one 
 body in Christ." \ But Christ is not here conceived as 
 one member of the body, or the head, but the Spirit 
 which animates the body, for Paul evidently did not 
 think of the man, as the body of Christ, of the w\i& as the 
 body of the man, and of Christ as the body of God. But 
 the writer of Ephesians appears to draw such a conclusion 
 from the conception of Christ as the head of the Church, 
 or Christ and the Church as constituting an organic unity, 
 when he enjoins upon husbands the love of their wives 
 as their own bodies. § The Church as the "fulness" of 
 Christ or the realization of his nature in a human expres- 
 sion is regarded in its growth as " the building up of his 
 body." All the members animated by the " head," " well 
 put together and compacted," " grow up in all things 
 unto him." II There appears thus to be attached to the 
 
 motive is to bring him as a cosmic principle into the closest possible relation 
 to the Church. He gave himself up for the Church, and in his preexistent 
 state forsook his Father for its sake (v. 31, 32). 
 
 * Eph. i. 23, iv. 13. This was evidently written with reference to the 
 Gnostic idea of the itXrfpoaiia, " the filled," a term employed for the super- 
 sensible world as opposed to the material world or the xsvGOna, "the 
 empty." It is probable that the writer thought that he was refuting Gnos- 
 ticism on its own grounds and with its own terminology when he declared 
 Christ to be the one who *' filleih all with all." 
 
 f Col. i. 18, 24 ; Eph. i. 23, iv. 12, 16, v. 23. 
 
 X I Cor. xi. 3 ; Rom. xii. 5. Cf. i Cor. xii. 27. 
 
 § Eph. V. 28, II Eph. iv. 12, 15, 16. Cf. Col. ii. 19, 
 
THE DE UTERO-PA ULINE INTERPRE TA TIONS. 259 
 
 pleroma the idea of an increase whose result is that " we 
 all attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge 
 \epignosis\ of the Son of God, to a full-grown man, to the 
 measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." * " The 
 building up of the body of Christ " is said to be effected 
 by the agency of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, 
 and teachers, to each one of whom is given grace accord- 
 ing to the measure of the gift of Christ who when he 
 ascended on high "gave gifts to men."f In this 
 teaching of the gift of " the Spirit of wisdom and 
 revelation" by which "the eyes of the mind are 
 enlightened " there is evidently an approximation to the 
 later doctrine of the fourth Gospel regarding the Holy 
 Spirit, which is there conceived as sent by Christ for the 
 further illumination of his followers. \ 
 
 The Epistle has a mythology well developed in the 
 direction of demonology. The readers are admonished 
 to put on the whole armor of God that they may be able 
 to stand against the wiles of the Devil ; for the conflict 
 which is to be waged is not against flesh and blood, but 
 against the Evil One who shoots " fiery darts " and against 
 a whole hierarchy of demons who are named according to 
 their supposed classes as *' principaHties, powers, and 
 world-rulers of this darkness," " spiritual hosts of evil in 
 the heavenly regions." § On the contrary the absence 
 
 * Eph. iv. 13, Cf. Col. ii. 19, av^TjdiS rov Bsov, "increase wrought 
 by God." 
 
 f Eph. iv, 7, II. 
 
 X Eph. i. 17, 18, iii. 5, iv. 11. Cf. John xiv. 16, xv. 26, xvi. 7. 
 
 § Eph. vi. 10, 14. Here not only the phraseology but the whole concep- 
 tion of the Christian conflict is different from Paul's. He wrote, indeed, of 
 " the God of this world" who darkens the understandings of believers (2 
 Cor. iv. 4) but conceived that the conflict of the Christian was against the 
 flesh, not against " principalities and powers " and *' the spiritual hosts of 
 
26o THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 from the Epistle of all eschatological features is remarkable. 
 There is no mention of the great Pauline doctrine of the 
 second appearance of Christ and no intimation as to the 
 conclusion of the work of the Saviour, which appears to 
 be conceived by the writer with almost exclusive reference 
 to the exigencies of his time, which were " the building 
 up" of a united Church of Jewish and gentile Christians 
 and the reconcihation of opposing parties in Christ the 
 Head. 
 
 4. THE FIRST EPISTLE OF PETER. 
 
 The writing traditionally designated as the First Epis- 
 tle of Peter and addressed " to the strangers scattered 
 through Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, 
 chosen according to the foreknowledge of God," etc., is 
 an exhortation to patience under suffering and to a life 
 worthy the Christian name, which probably dates from 
 the end of the first century or the beginning of the 
 second. It shows approximations to the Johannine teach- 
 ing and an acquaintance with and dependence on the 
 Pauline Epistles, and on Hebrews, the Epistle of James, 
 
 evil in the heavenly regions." Such a conflict is not even mentioned in 
 Colossians, the writer of which regards the hostile powers of the invisible 
 world as overcome in Christ's death on the cross, and led away in triumph. 
 A further development in this direction appears in the fourth Gospel, where 
 together with the higher significance of the person of Christ a more concrete 
 and distinctive expression is given to that of his great adversary, the Devil, 
 the opponent of God and of Christ. There tlie large number of evil spirits, 
 which the writer of Ephesians employed to enhance the supernatural power 
 of the Evil One, disappears, the wickedness and hatred of the great Archon 
 of this world are emphasized, and bad men are represented as composing his 
 host (Joliii xii. 31, xiv. 30, xvi. 11). With relation to the development of 
 doctrine on this subject the Epistle occupies a middle position between the 
 Pauline and the Johannine vicw^. Cf. Kostlin, Lehbegriff des Evan. u. der 
 Brifejohann., p. 375, and Pfleiderer, Der Paulinismus, 2te Aufl. p. 460. 
 
THE DEUTERO-PAULINE INTERPRETATIONS. 26 1 
 
 and perhaps Ephesians. It reveals nothing of any peculi- 
 arities which may be supposed to have belonged to Peter^ 
 but rather agrees so much with the teaching and diction 
 of Paul that it can only be regarded as one of the develop- 
 ments to which the great impulse which proceeded from 
 him gave rise. It is not, however, a thorough-going rep- 
 resentative of Paulinism, and is not distinctively con- 
 cerned with the great controversies which Paul started. 
 Rather it shows how half a century after the time of the 
 great apostle his ideas were modified and adapted to later 
 exigencies and modes of thinking. The accords which 
 the Epistle shows with the Pauline writings accordingly 
 indicate a contact with his general religious and ethical 
 ideas rather than with his distinctive doctrines. "^^ The 
 writer says, indeed, to his gentile readers that they have 
 been saved from their former mode of life " by the pre- 
 cious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and 
 without spot." f Christ suffered for us, leaving us an ex 
 ample that we should follow his steps.:!; The purpose of 
 his sacrifice was to bring us to God.§ It is evident that 
 
 * Compare i Peter i. 5 with Gal. iii. 23 ; i Peter ii, 6, 7 with Rom. ix. 
 33 ; I Peter ii. 13, 14 with Rom. xiii. 1-4 ; i Peter iv. 10, 11 with Rom. 
 xii. 6, 7 ; I Peter v. i with Rom. viii. 18 ; i Peter iii. 8 with Rom. vi. 10. 
 
 f See John i. 29 ; Heb. ix, 14. 
 
 ii Peter ii. 2r. The words: "Who himself bore our sins in his own 
 body upon the cross " [kiti to ^vXov, ' ' carried them up to the cross ") rather 
 implies a taking away of our sins than the Pauline representative atonement, 
 the bearing of the curse of the law. This idea of purification through the 
 death of Christ is clearly expressed in the words which follow : *' In order 
 that having become alienated from our sins {a7torev6jJ.Evoi, having died 
 to them] we may live to righteousness." A similar ethical-practical result 
 of the death of Christ is expressed in i. 18 : "Not with perishable things, 
 silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, were ye redeemed 
 from your vain manner of life received by tradition from your fathers." 
 
 § I Peter iii. r8. 
 
262 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 the moral influence of the death of Christ is the predomi- 
 nant thought of the writer, and that the PauUne idea of 
 a representative atonement for sin, of Christ*s bearing the 
 curse of the law, and of justification by faith were ab- 
 sent from his mind. Faith, indeed, has no subordinate 
 place in the Epistle, but it serves a practical and horta- 
 tory rather than a dogmatic end, and the readers are ex- 
 horted to remain firm in it, opposing the adversary, the 
 Devil. The conception of faith, as Pfleiderer remarks, is 
 not the genuine PauHne one, but that of Hebrews and the 
 I Epistle of Clement. Its object is not Christ as the his- 
 torical Saviour from sin, but Christ as the glorified one, 
 now indeed invisible, but soon to be revealed in order 
 then to bring dehverance. The Pauline idea that he that 
 hath died has been justified (set free) from sin assumes 
 here the expression: " He that hath suffered in the flesh 
 hath ceased from sin,"* thus receiving the moral applica- 
 tion that the desire for sin ceases in the sufferings of the 
 flesh. Salvation is apprehended as an appropriation of 
 the disposition of Christ and a following of him in pa- 
 tience under suffering and persecution. His death serves 
 us as an " example," and by his resurrection and exalta- 
 tion to " glory " we learn that our " faith and hope are in 
 God." Baptism is the antitype of the Noachian deluge, 
 and is regarded as saving the behevers, not after the mys- 
 tic conception of Paul as a symbol of dying with Christ 
 and being raised with him to a new life, but as having the 
 moral significance of the earnest seeking for a good con- 
 science, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ which is con- 
 ceived apart from all mysticism as the motive for this 
 moral covenant with God. f 
 
 The writer of this Epistle shows a tendency to find in 
 
 * I Peter iv. i. t i Peter iii. 21, 22. 
 
THE DEUTERO-PAULINE INTERPRETATIONS. 263 
 
 the Old Testament, like the author of Hebrews, models 
 and types for Christians and Christian institutions,* and 
 surpasses Paul and the latter writer in his view o^ 
 prophecy, assuming that not merel}^ the Holy Spirit but 
 the spirit of Christ dwelt in and spoke through the 
 prophets, declaring *' beforehand the sufferings to come 
 upon Christ and the glories which were to follow." f An 
 exaltation of Christianity consistent with itself throughout 
 is apparent in various parts of the Epistle. To believers 
 '* is the honor," and their joy is *' full of glory " ; they are 
 called out of darkness into . a " wonderful light"; they 
 are born of imperishable seed " through the word of God 
 which liveth and abideth " ; on them " resteth the spirit 
 of glory and of God." % Whether on account of the 
 writer's purpose to adjust differences and estabhsh har- 
 mony in the churchesor for some other reason the Epistle 
 contains no definite Christology. The spirit of Christ in 
 the prophets " testified of the glories which were to follow," 
 that is, perhaps, his resurrection and exaltation " on the 
 right hand of God, having gone into heaven, angels and 
 authorities and powers being made subject to him." § 
 The Epistle has no distinctive eschatology, and contains 
 only incidental recognition of the popular expectation of 
 the early second coming of Christ. The readers are ad- 
 monished to see to it that " the proof of their faith may 
 be found unto praise and glory and honor at the manifes- 
 tation of Jesus Christ," and to be sober and hope for 
 the grace that is to be brought to them at that time. 
 
 * I Peter iii. 5, 6, 20 f. 
 
 f I Peter i. 10, 11. Cf. John xii. 37-41 ; Heb. viii. 8-12. 
 X I Peter ii. 7, i. 8, ii. 9, i. 23, iv. 14. Cf. John xvii. 22, i. 5. 
 § I Peter iii. 22 ; cf. Col. ii. 10 ; Eph. i. 20 f, i Peter iv. 11 ; cf. Heb. 
 xiii. 2T. 
 
264 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 " When the chief Shepherd shall appear " they " will re- 
 ceive the crown of glory that fadeth not away." '^' The 
 writer appears to express more definitely than Paul 
 the doctrine of a general resurrection and judgment 
 at the Parousia in the words : " Who shall give ac- 
 count to him who is ready to judge the living and 
 the dead." f The bold innovation upon Pauline and 
 all other antecedent Christian teaching is ventured in 
 giving place to the tradition that Christ went in the 
 spirit "and preached to the spirits in prison who were 
 disobedient in times past when the long-suffering of God 
 waited in the days of Noah," \ and in the more general 
 teaching that '* the Gospel was preached to the dead that 
 they might indeed be judged according to men in the 
 flesh, but might live according to God in the spirit." § 
 The doctrine of the descent of Christ to the underworld, 
 probably between his death and resurrection, and of his 
 ministry to sinful spirits there, is no doubt unequivocally 
 expressed here, and all attempts to give another meaning 
 than this to the words in question are grounded upon a 
 faulty exegesis. Other mythological features are less de- 
 veloped in the Epistles than in Ephesians. The " adver- 
 sary, the Devil," is, however, distinctly recognized, and 
 compared to *' a roaring lion " who *' walketh about seek- 
 ing whom he may devour." || 
 
 It is characteristic of the deutero-Pauline literature of 
 
 * I Peter i. 7, 13, v. 4. f i Peter iv. 5. 
 
 \ I Peter iii. 19 f. Baur's interpretation of this passage by referring '* the 
 spirits in prison " to the angels who were supposed to have sinned (2 Peter 
 ii. i|) does not appear to be well sustained. Theol. Jahrb. 1856, p. 254 f. 
 and Neutest. Theol., p. 291. See also Spitta, Christi Predigt an die Geister, 
 and von Soden on the passage in question in Holtzmann's Hand-Commentar. 
 
 § I Peter iv. 6. 1 i Peter v. 8. 
 
THE DEUTERO-PAULINE INTERPRETATIONS. 265 
 
 the New Testament that it shows a more decided influence 
 of the Alexandrian speculations than appears in the 
 Epistles of Paul and the effects of contact with Gnostic 
 ideas in their origin. Greek thought here manifests itself 
 in the beginning of the conquest which it was destined to 
 win. The exaltation of the person of Christ is carried to 
 the extent that a cosmic position is assigned to him. He 
 is regarded not only as the medium of the creation of the 
 world, but as a cosmic world-spirit in whom all things 
 subsist, and his work as Saviour includes not mankind 
 alone but the universe of spiritual existences. His victory- 
 is over principalities and powers whom he leads captive 
 in triumph, and through him is revealed to the spiritual 
 entities " in the heavenly regions " " the manifold wisdom 
 of God according to His purpose for ages." He was not 
 one of the Gnostic aeons, but th^ pleroma of the Godhead 
 dwelt in him bodily. It corresponds with his exalted 
 position that he should have been not merely the preacher 
 of the Gospel to men, but to the dead in the underworld, 
 that his conquest of the powers of evil might include the 
 gloomy realm of hades, when he should have " ascended 
 on high, and led captivity captive." The duaHstic an- 
 tithesis of heaven and earth, the Son's kingdom of light 
 and Satan's kingdom of darkness, appears in these writings 
 prior to its more definite expression in the fourth Gospel. 
 The Gnostic conception of God as absolutely removed 
 from the world is avoided, and the Father is the Creator 
 through the medium of the Son, below whom, however, 
 are powers akin to the Alexandrian orders of demons 
 and the angels of the early Syrian Gnosticism, who have 
 apparently some claim upon mankind which is annulled 
 through Christ, being ** nailed to the cross." The death 
 of Christ has its significance rather with reference to the 
 
266 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 claims of these world-powers than, as with Paul, with re- 
 gard to God and the demands of His righteousness, and in 
 relation to men directly is conceived as a moral influence 
 and example.* 
 
 * On the subjects treated of in this chapter the student may consult : 
 Hilgenfeld, Einleit. in das N. T., 1875, pp. 352-390, 618-641, 659-680; 
 Holtzmann, Einleit. in das N. T., 2te Ausg, 1886, pp. 276-296, 326-345, 
 514-524; Davidson, Introduction, 1868, i. pp. 168-194, 216-279, 372~44o; 
 Bleek, Der Brief an die Hebraer, etc., 1828-1840; Riehm, Der Lehrbegr. 
 des Hebraerbr., etc., 1858-9; "Wieseler.Untersuch liber den Hebraerbr., etc., 
 1861 ; Baur, Neutest. Theol., pp. 230-265, 287-297 ; and Paulus 2te Ausg. 
 ii. pp. 3-49 ; Pfleiderer, Der Paulinismus, 2te Ausg., ll. Th. chap. 2» 
 Urchristenthum, pp. 620-684 ; Kostlin, Lehrbegr. des Evangel, u. der 
 Briefe Johannis, 1843, pp, 352-365, 472-481; Weizsacker, Apostol. Zeitalter, 
 2te Ausg. pp. 488 ff, 560 ff ; Holtzmann, Ephes. u. Kol. Briefe, 1872, pp, 
 206-241; Meyer's Comm. on Col. and Eph., and Meyer-Huther on r Peter ; 
 Salmon, Introd. to N. T., 5th ed., on the Epistles in question ; Lightfoot on 
 Col. and Ellicott on Col. and Eph. ; Weiss, Bibl. Theol. of N. T., Eng. 
 Trans!., i. pp. 204-221, ii. pp. 75-118, 166-229 J Toy, Judaism and Chris- 
 tianity, pp. 118, 119, 430; Schw^egler, Das nachapostol. Zeitalter, 1846, 
 ii. pp. 1-28, 304-344. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE JOHANNINE TRANSFORMATION. 
 
 ALEXANDRIAN speculation had already about one 
 hundred years before the composition of the 
 fourth Gospel by its doctrine of the Logos prepared 
 the way for the Christology which constitutes a dis- 
 tinctive feature of the apprehension of Christianity 
 which is called Johannine. Johannine is, however, a 
 conventional designation, and is used as such by those 
 who do not believe that the great writing which con- 
 tains this interpretation of the gospel of Jesus pro- 
 ceeded from the apostle John, the son of Zebedee.* 
 The internal character of the fourth Gospel shows that it 
 was written with a doctrinal rather than an historical pur- 
 pose, and reveals an author whose point of view and culture 
 were fundamentally different from those of the original 
 apostles of Jesus. The influence of Alexandrian thought 
 is much more distinctively apparent here than in the Pau- 
 line and deutero-Pauhne writings, not only in the applica- 
 tion of the Logos-idea, but also in the conception of the 
 relation of God to the world ; so that there appears to be 
 ground for affirming that this Gospel could not have been 
 written independently of the works of Philo, and good 
 reasons for believing moreover that its author was well 
 
 * For a discussion of the authorship and date of the fourth Gospel the reader 
 is referred to the author's Gospel-Criticism and Historical Christianity, 
 Chapter vii. and the literature of the subject therein mentioned. 
 
 267 
 
268 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 in touch with the characteristic ideas of this Jewish-Greek 
 speculator. It will not be possible within the hmits pro- 
 posed for this work to enter into a detailed discussion of 
 the opinions of Philo which are related to the doctrines of 
 the fourth Gospel. Reference can only be made to them 
 as occasion may require.-^ Suffice it to remark here that 
 fundamental characteristics common both to Philo and 
 this Gospel are a dualistic conception which places God 
 and the world in distinctive contrast, and the theory of a 
 mediation of the two opposites through a divine messenger 
 and interpreter, the heavenly Logos. The Johannine 
 doctrine of the Logos requires explanation, since it cannot 
 be supposed to have sprung into existence without a 
 cause. Indeed, the form in which it is presented in the 
 prologue to the Gospel presupposes that the author as- 
 sumed it to be already known to his readers. The theory 
 that it was an esoteric teaching of Jesus first made known 
 by the disciple John, the assumed author of the Gospel, 
 can only be maintained by cutting off the synoptic tradi- 
 tion, to which it is unknown, from all connection with an 
 apostolical source. The doctrine of the Logos who in the 
 beginning was God and with God, through whom the 
 world was made, who as the only-begotten Son is a being 
 partaking of the divine essence, and who as a mediator 
 between God and the troubled cosmos comes to his own, 
 and flashes as a light upon the insensate darkness, finds a 
 natural and historical connection only with the philosophy 
 
 * The student who is interested in studying the speculations of Philo in 
 detail will naturally consult his complete works either in the original or in 
 the English translation (Bohn's Library) and the expositions of his opinions 
 by Gfrorer, Philo und die Alexandrinische Theosophie, etc., 1S31, Uahne, 
 Geschichtliche Darstellung der judisch-alexandr. Religions-Philosophic, 
 1834, Reville, La doctrine du Logos dans Philon., etc., and Drummond, 
 Philo Judasus and the Alexand. Philosophy, 1888. 
 
THE JOHANNINE TRANSFORMATION. 26g 
 
 of Philo. With the Word of God in the Old Testament 
 these ideas can have only a forced and artificial connection ; 
 and if the sources of much that is contained in Paulinism 
 and deutero-Paulinism must be sought elsewhere than in 
 its pages, one will certainly search them in vain for the 
 historical antecedents of the Johannine conception of the 
 Logos. Philo did not, indeed, connect the Logos with 
 the Messiah, if he ascribed to this agent in fact any real per- 
 sonahty at all (a question which we must leave to be set- 
 tled by his commentators), and it may be doubted whether 
 he could have united the functions of the two consistently 
 with the Jewish Messiah-idea. The fourth evangelist, 
 however, in combining the ideal principle of the Logos 
 with the historical personahty of Jesus of Nazareth gave 
 to the Philonic mediating agent, the Logos, a definite 
 form and a religious character which the Alexandrian spec- 
 ulation was in the nature of the case unable to compass. 
 
 The tendency of the Christology of the New Testament 
 to exalt and idealize the person of Christ reaches its 
 highest point in the fourth Gospel. The synoptic evange- 
 lists contented themselves with a supernatural birth, a 
 descent of the Holy Spirit at the baptism, and an apoca- 
 lyptic coming with the clouds to judgment. Paul conceived 
 of him as the preexistent ''man from heaven," the arche- 
 typal '' second Adam, " the Spirit. In the deutero-Pauline 
 Epistles he becomes the agent of creation, the great high- 
 priest, the brightness of the divine glory, the image of the 
 person of God, the sustainer of all things, and the victor 
 who leads captive the principalities and powers of evil in 
 triumph in his train. The doctrine of the fourth Gospel 
 is an advance beyond the antecedent views, and may be 
 regarded as a development of them. Here the historical 
 Jesus is represented as the divine Logos who was in the 
 
270 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 beginning with God, and was God, by whom the world 
 was made, who became flesh and took up a temporary 
 abode among men to reveal the Father and return to His 
 bosom whence he came forth. The writer's doctrine of 
 the person of Christ and his purpose to exalt him to the 
 highest eminence short of an equality with the Deity are 
 evident in the declaration that *' the Logos was God. " * 
 In this expression God is evidently the predicate, and the 
 meaning can only be that the Logos was a being who, 
 though not identical with the Supreme Being, yet partook 
 of His nature and essence. In the conception of the 
 Logos and in the terms employed of him there appear to 
 be implied on the one hand his separate personal exist- 
 ence, and on the other a most intimate connection with the 
 Deity and even a movement toward unity with Him. f 
 The genesis of the Logos-idea is undoubtedly to be found 
 in the thought, which is not, indeed, foreign to the Old 
 Testament, that God does not immediately reveal Himself, 
 but is in His essence invisible and incapable of direct 
 manifestation. Under the influence of Platonic and Stoic 
 
 * &£65 ffv 6X6yo<^, John i. i. Philo also called the Logos God, a second 
 God, and distinguished him from the Supreme Being by omitting the article 
 before GeoS as applied to him (9£ci5, instead of 6 QeoS). 
 
 + The expression of the relation of the Logos to God which is contained 
 in the original cannot well be rendered in an English translation. The 
 words "with God "and "in the bosom of the Father " (John \. i, 18) are ex- 
 pressed in the Greek in a manner intended to convey "ideal annexation, " 
 "always turning toward," " moving toward the heart of God and seeking 
 to remove in unity with Him all that separates and distinguishes from God. " 
 The structure is that of prepositions with verbs of rest which are more fre 
 quently employed with verbs of motion, 7tpd<i rov Osdv, sii rov xoXitov, 
 etc. " Difference in unity and unity in difference " appears to be a happy 
 expression of the relation implied in the terms employed. See Winer, 
 Gram, of N. T.; Grimm- Wilke's Clavis N. T.; and Baur, N. T. Theol. on 
 the passages. 
 
THE JOHANNINE TRANSFORMATION. 2/1 
 
 Speculations, this idea became prominent in the Jewish- 
 Alexandrian philosophy of Philo, in which the Logos is 
 the epitome of all the divine powers. Proceeding forth 
 from his immanence in God, "^ in which condition he is 
 conceived as containing the archetypal world in himself, 
 the Platonic real world, the world-ideal, he becomes the 
 sum-total of the relations of God to the world, f to whom 
 are ascribed creation, the communication of power and 
 endowment, light, life, and wisdom, so that he is not 
 essentially different from the divine Spirit in qualities and 
 the effects which he produces, though in fact only the 
 manifestation of Deity. Accordingly, he is the image of 
 God, the oldest and first-born son of God, the possessor 
 of all the fulness of Deity, the mediator between God and 
 the world. If it be conceded, as it probably must be, that 
 unless in the Christian consciousness of his time Christ 
 had already been exalted to the eminence of a divine 
 being, it would not have occurred to the author of the 
 fourth Gospel to apply to him the current Logos-idea 
 of the age, it is evident that he could not have given more 
 effective expression to the estimation in which he was 
 held than by applying to him this Philonic designation, 
 which may have been suggested by the fact that the 
 Christian doctrine was called the word (logos) of God. In 
 the meaning of Logos the idea of "word" or organ of 
 revelation is fundamental, since logos is reason only so far 
 as '* thought is conceived as also a speaking or expression." 
 It has been shown that in the conceptions which we find 
 in the prologue to the Gospel, Logos, life, light, fulness, 
 grace, truth,;}: there are analogies with Gnostic ideas and 
 
 * As the "inward Logos," Xoyo'i ^vSidBsro'S. 
 f As the " uttered Logos, " Xoyo^ TtpocpopiKoi. 
 X Xoyoiy t,oorf, (p(Si, TtAr/pcoj^a, japz?, dXr;BEia. 
 
272 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 in particular with the doctrine of the ^ons, and that there 
 is some ground for the theory that the exalted and purely 
 spiritual apprehension of Christianity, and the dualism of 
 God and the world, light and darkness, etc., which finds 
 frequent expression in the Gospel, indicate the influence 
 upon the writer of Gnosticism in its earlier stages at least. 
 But it should be noted that the author is silent regarding 
 a proceeding of the Logos from God, his emanation or 
 generation with which Gnosticism and Christian theology 
 zealously occupied themselves. Apart from calling him 
 the only-begotten Son he appears intentionally to avoid 
 all speculations of this sort, and to assume a dependence 
 of the Logos upon the Father without entering into 
 metaphysical inquiries regarding its nature. 
 
 The Johannine doctrine of the nature of God and of 
 His relation to the world constitutes an important feature 
 of the fourth Gospel. The basis of this theology is mono- 
 theism, and God is recognized, as in Philo and the Old 
 Testament, as the highest Being, God in the absolute 
 sense, '* the only true God." "^ The fundamental and 
 most distinctive doctrine concerning God is contained in 
 the words ascribed to Jesus in his conversation with the 
 Samaritan woman : '* God is Spirit, and they who worship 
 must worship in spirit and in truth." Related to this doc- 
 trine is the teaching of the prologue that " No one hath 
 ever seen God ; the only-begotten Son who is in the 
 bosom of the Father, he hath made Him known." f So 
 clear and definite an expression of the spirituality of God 
 is found in no antecedent writing of the New Testament. 
 Not only are all corporeal predicates of Deity excluded, 
 
 * John xvii. 3. V. 44 ; cf. 1 John v. 20. and Philo's to yEViHGDraTOVy 
 " the most generic thing." 
 \ John iv. 24, i. 18. 
 
THE JOHANNINE TRANSFORMATION. 2/3 
 
 but it is implied in the emphatic declaration of the spir- 
 ituality of His nature that all spatial limitations of His 
 worship, as Jerusalem and Gerizim, are incompatible with 
 it. From this point of view it is held that spirit cannot 
 be regarded as one of the predicates of the Deity, as 
 if one should speak of the spirit of God, but that Spirit 
 and God are identical terms, and that in His absolute 
 essence He is Spirit. As Spirit, God is the antithesis of 
 " the flesh " ; * He is the truth by preeminence, and noth- 
 ing has validity and permanence which does not come 
 from him. His word is truth, and they who do the truth 
 perform works which are wrought in Him. f He is also the 
 living One who has life in Himself and communicates it 
 to the Son ; % as such he is not, however, the eternal 
 repose of the Gnostics but rather the Philonic ever-active, 
 absolute source of energy. As He " worketh hitherto," 
 and no Sabbath-rest is known to Him, so the Son may 
 work on all days. § He is the original source of all crea- 
 tive, sustaining, saving activity, and the Son who, like the 
 Philonic Logos, is His manifestation and agent, does 
 nothing but what he sees the Father do and is commis- 
 sioned by Him to execute. || While the attributes 
 ascribed to God in the fourth Gospel are also ascribed to 
 Him in the Alexandrian philosophy, the doctrine that He 
 is Spirit was unknown to the latter. 
 
 In the Johannine doctrine of the relation of God to 
 men His love is assigned a prominent place, as in the 
 synoptic record. Philo had previously dwelt with con- 
 siderable fulness upon this quality of the divine nature. 
 
 * John i. 13, vi. 63. 
 
 t John xvii. 17, iii. 21, 33, viii. 26 ; r/, i John i. 5, " God is light," etc. 
 
 \ John V. 26, vi. 57. 
 
 § John V. 17. II John v. ig, 30. 
 
 18 
 
274 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 He even includes external nature among the recipients of 
 the prodigal goodness of God which is manifested in the 
 rain poured into the sea and in the fountains which are 
 made to gush forth in desert places. In His munificence 
 God bestows good things upon all, even upon the imper- 
 fect, that He may provoke them to the pursuit of virtue, 
 and shows pity toward the unworthy. " He not only 
 pities after He has judged, but judges after He has pitied ; 
 for with Him pity is older than judgment.'' He made 
 the world not for Himself, for before the creation He was 
 sufficient unto Himself, but because He was " good and 
 bountiful." * Without stint there are awarded to those 
 who are worthy *' the abundant riches of the graces f of 
 God " which " issue from ever-flowing fountains, peren- 
 nial, unceasing, and without intermission." The fondness 
 with which Philo dwells upon this quality of the divine 
 nature is indicated by the numerous predicates which he 
 applies to it. God is munificent, giver of wealth, kind, 
 and lover of man, benevolent, propitious. :|: Were it not 
 for the love of God all men would perish. All the good 
 things which they possess, virtue, piety, good-will, right- 
 eousness, faith, etc., are His gifts, and it is the greatest 
 sin for man to attribute any good to himself. So great, 
 indeed, is the prodigality of the divine beneficence that 
 it is necessary that it be restricted by the limited capacity 
 of its recipients ; for the created, being too weak to re- 
 ceive its vastness, would faint unless the lot of each were 
 measured out in due proportion. As in Philo, so in the 
 Johannine thought, love is the predominant motive of 
 the divine activity. It is eternal in the divine nature, and 
 
 * aya^d'-> noci cpiXddcopoS. 
 t X^P^^^'^t graces or favors. 
 X XPV^'^o^) (piXdrQpoTto^, ev/.ievtj'^, etc. 
 
THE JOHANNINE TRANSFORMATION. 2/5 
 
 God loved the Son before the foundation of the world. "^ 
 The direct declaration that " God is love " is not, indeed, 
 contained in the Gospel, but this teaching of the first 
 Epistle of John is perhaps implied in it, if it be compatible 
 v^ith this doctrine that a class of men should be desig- 
 nated as the special objects of His love. We do not find 
 in this Gospel such expressions of the impartial goodness 
 and love of God as that " He maketh His sun to rise on 
 the evil and on the good," and the teaching that men 
 ought to love their enemies that they " may become sons 
 of their Father who is in heaven," the '* merciful " One 
 who *' is kind to the unthankful and the evii."f The 
 writer shows no predilection for dwelling on the goodness 
 and mercy of God, and in this respect he is not to be 
 compared with some of the prophets and psalmists and 
 even with Philo. God's love of the world and His good- 
 will and beneficent purpose toward all men in the mission 
 of Christ are declared in the words : *' God so loved the 
 world that He gave the only-begotten Son, that every one 
 who beheveth on him may not perish, but may have ever- 
 lasting life. For God sent not the Son into the world to 
 condemn the world, but that through him the world 
 might be saved." % Yet notwithstanding this declaration 
 of the universal divine good-will it must be conceded 
 that the author of the Gospel did not escape the influence 
 of the Gnostic dualism of his age, that he never loses 
 sight of the two realms of light and darkness which 
 stand in eternal opposition to each other, and that he 
 frequently represents the children of light as the special 
 if not the sole objects of God's love, while he conceives 
 
 * John xvii. 24 ; yet a special reason for the Father's love of him is given 
 in another place, a. i 7. 
 
 f Matt. V. 45 ; Luke vi. 35. \ John iii. 16, 17, 
 
276 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 the unbelieving children of darkness to be in a condition 
 which is little short of hopeless. Love of Christ and be- 
 lief in him on the part of men are represented as the con- 
 dition of the bestowal of God's love upon them. " He 
 that loveth me will be loved of my Father " ; " If any- 
 one love me he will keep my word ; and my Father will 
 love him.'** These fortunate ones *' were " God's, and 
 He '* gave " them to Christ. They are not of the hostile 
 and darkened '* world/' but "beheved," and are made the 
 sole subjects of the prayer of the departing Christ, who 
 is " glorified in them." f 
 
 In the terms of this prayer it appears to be indicated 
 that there is a class of men who are the especial objects 
 of the divine interest and of the regard of Jesus, those 
 whom God has " given " to him and those who " may 
 believe through their word." The petition for these is 
 that they may be kept from the Evil One, and that they 
 may be made perfect in one, so that *' the world " may 
 know that Christ is the sent of God who loves them as 
 him.:]: On these falls the Hght of hope and of celestial 
 favor. The unbelievers appear, however, to be left in the 
 shadow of seclusion and disfavor. Jesus is made to say 
 expressly that he does not pray for " the world," presum- 
 ably because they who are represented by this term, the 
 children of darkness and unbelief, are not objects of the 
 Father's love, since it definitively declared that he who 
 does " not beheve in the Son shall not see life, but the 
 wrath of God abideth on him." § This must be regarded 
 as one of the hard sayings of this " spiritual " Gospel, and 
 it reminds one much rather of the vehement Baptizer, the 
 
 * John xiv. 21, 23, cf. xvii. 23, 26. 
 
 ■I" John xvii. 6, 9, 10, 16. 
 
 % John xvii. 20, 21. § John iii. 36. 
 
THE JOHANNINE TRANSFORMATION. 2/7 
 
 fiery Revelator, and the impetuous Paul, than of the 
 Jesus of the synoptists, even when pronouncing the 
 seven woes. This pecuHarly Johannine idea that those 
 who " were " God's, from what antecedent time-hmit does 
 not appear, the behevers in Jesus and those who should be 
 their followers, are the especial objects of the divine love, 
 stands in immediate connection with the doctrine of judg- 
 ment which is set forth in this Gospel. One has only to 
 read it superficially to see that the predominant principle 
 of discrimination between men is not character, but belief 
 or unbelief in Christ. He that believeth shall not perish, 
 but hath eternal life, shall never thirst, shall not die, 
 though dead shall live, shall do greater works than Christ 
 himself performed ; while he that believeth not abideth 
 in darkness, and is the object of the divine *' wrath." '^ 
 The chief object of the mission of Christ is that men may 
 believe, and the Gospel is declared to have been written 
 expressly for this purpose, f We miss here the emphasis 
 upon conduct which we find in the Sermon on the Mount 
 and in such words as : " He that heareth my words and 
 doeth them, I will tell you to whom he is like," etc. 
 Again, we find in this Gospel no trace of the deutero- 
 Pauline doctrine that all men are "by nature children of 
 wrath," X and the Pauline teaching that '' the law worketh 
 wrath " § upon the whole race as fleshly and unable to 
 fulfil it does not appear to have been accepted by the 
 writer. Rather does he seem inclined toward the Pauline 
 doctrine of predestination which, as has been shown, the 
 Apostle did not reconcile with his fundamental proposi- 
 tions, for those who in this Gospel are said to be " of 
 
 * John vi. 35, 47, v, 24, xi, 25, 26, xii. 46, xiv. 12. 
 
 f John vi. 29, xi. 15, xiv. 29, xvii. 21, xx. 31. 
 
 X Eph. ii. 3. g Ro^^ iy^ jg^ 
 
278 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 God," " of the truth," who by a natural impulse inborn in 
 the children of light or by a divine determination 
 (*' drawn " by the Father) come in faith to Christ, suggest 
 Paul's " vessels of mercy which God had prepared before 
 for His glory." "^ Accordingly, judgment in the Old- 
 Testament sense, one may even say in the sense of the 
 apocalyptical eschatology of the synoptists, is unknown 
 to the Johannine theology. It is expressly declared that 
 *' the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all 
 judgment unto the Son," f and yet he ** came not to judge 
 the world," % for he that believes is not condemned, and 
 the unbeHever " is condemned already." § The believers 
 "were" God's, and as to them there is required only 
 " the reahzation of the relation in which they always stood 
 to God," which is effected by the revelation of the truth 
 in Christ for which they who love the light have a natural 
 afifinity. Hence Christ is made to say that he judges no 
 man, and that he was not sent into the world in order to 
 judge it ; || and the conception of judgment which the 
 writer evidently represents is that of a process inwardly 
 effected, a " crisis " determined by the attitude of men 
 toward Christ and the " light," without an external decree 
 or an apocalyptic assize. This " crisis " or separation 
 between those who love the ** light" and those who love 
 " darkness," the children of God and the children of " the 
 world," which is hostile to Him according to the dualistic 
 conception of the writer of the Gospel, is, so to speak, 
 automatically carried on by the natural gravitation of the 
 two classes without the interference of God or Christ. 
 The " word " which Christ has " spoken " will judge at the 
 last day.TT 
 
 * John xviii. 37, vi. 44 ; Rom. ix. 23. \ John v. 22. 
 
 X John xii. 47. § J°^" "^- ^^■ 
 
 II John viii. 15. "i- H- 1 J^^n xii 48. 
 
THE JOHANNINE TRANSFORMATION, 2'jg 
 
 The dualism of the author of the fourth Gospel culmi- 
 nates in the conception of a personal power of evil. This 
 conception was not, however, original with him. As the 
 intensity of his idea of the hostility of the children of 
 darkness was due to the opposition which in his time the 
 non-Christian world manifested toward Christianity, and 
 as Hellenism furnished him with a philosophical basis for 
 dualism, so Judaism, Hellenism, and antecedent Christian 
 thought, supplied a well-developed doctrine of Satan, In 
 the book of Wisdom it is taught that by the envy of the 
 Devil sin came into the world ; in the synoptic Gospels 
 Jesus begins his career by a victory over him, and through- 
 out his ministry contends with and subjugates demonic 
 powers; Paul represents Satan as an adversary whose 
 "devices" he knew ; ^' and in the deutero-Pauline litera- 
 ture is developed, as we have seen, a hierarchy of evil 
 powers. In the Johannine thought Satan plays a con- 
 spicuous part as a power at the head of all the forces of 
 evil and directly opposed to God, Christ, and all that is 
 good. He is ''the prince of this world " (Paul had already 
 named him ** the God of this world '*), the Devil,-}* "the 
 Evil One." % He was " a murderer from the beginning " ; 
 " he abideth not in the truth, because there is no truth in 
 him " ; *' when he speaketh a lie, hespeaketh from his own 
 nature, for he is a liar and the father of it."§ The hatred 
 of and opposition to Christ manifested by the Jews are 
 chargeable to him as their source, for these enemies of 
 Jesus who are filled with animosity toward him, and are 
 ready to slay him, are declared to be '* the children of the 
 Devil." But his opposition is destined to failure. He 
 fights a losing battle. He is doomed to be " cast out," to 
 
 * 2 Cor. ii. II, iv. 4, xi. 3, 14, xii. 7. 
 
 f 6 didfioloi, J ^ 7tovr/po<;. 
 
 § John viii. 44 ; cf. Wisdom ii. 24. 
 
28o THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 be "judged," and to be overthrown."^ The sphere of his 
 activity is different in the fourth Gospel from that which 
 is assigned to him in the synoptics. In the latter, as in 
 Paul, he exercises a malign influence upon the bodies of 
 men ; but in the former his realm is conceived as spiritual 
 and ethical. Hence in the Johannine record no demoniacs 
 appear, and Satan rules not over orders of demons and the 
 powers of the air, as in the deutero-Pauline literature, but 
 in the souls of the children of darkness. From this teaching 
 of the overthrow of Satan it is evident that the Johannine 
 duahsm is not carried to the point of conceiving him to 
 be the peer of God. But although a subordinate being 
 who is unable to stand against the powers of good repre- 
 sented by the Logos, he is not regarded as created. At 
 least no explicit declaration is made concerning his origin. 
 Was he perhaps conceived as uncreated, eternal, like the 
 darkness to which He is allied, that in the Hebrew cos- 
 mogony was present before the foundation of the world ? 
 That he was not thought to have been originally good, 
 an archangel who fell from a high estate to become the 
 prince of darkness, appears to be implied in the remark 
 that he was a murderer " from the beginning." It can 
 hardly be reconciled with the point of view of the writer 
 of the Gospel that he should have regarded the personifi- 
 cation of evil as a creation of God, a part of the " world " 
 which was made through the agency of the good Logos. 
 Did he adopt the Gnostic view according to which the 
 Demiurge (the inferior God, the Jaldabaoth, the creator 
 of the world, the God of the Jews) was the father of the 
 serpent ? f Words in viii. 44 may with great plausibility 
 be interpreted as favorable to this view, for they are capa- 
 
 * Johnxii. 31, xvi. 11 ; cf, i John iii. S. 
 
 f Iren. Adv. Haer., i. 30, 8 ; Epiph. Haer., xxxvii. 4. 
 
THE JOHANNINE TRANSFORM A TIO!':. 28 1 
 
 ble of being rendered : "A liar is also his father." * But 
 the words do not require this rendering, and the connec- 
 tion favors the ordinary interpretation : " He is a har 
 and the father of it," though Meyer renders them : " He 
 is a Har and the father of him [the liar]." It is very im- 
 probable, besides, that the author of the Gospel could have 
 conceived of a Demiurge, or a creative god, subordinate 
 to the Deity, since to him the Logos is the former of the 
 world. Avoiding all metaphysical inquiries as to the 
 origin of evil, he seems to have contented himself with 
 referring its manifestations in the darkened world to an 
 uncreated power. 
 
 The more sharply the transcendent God and the world 
 under its " prince," the personified power of evil, were 
 contrasted, the greater was the need of a mediator between 
 them, an organ of revelation, through whom those who 
 were to be saved might be rescued from the dominion of 
 Satan and the realm of darkness. As in Philo, so in the 
 Johannine thought, this mediator is the God-allied Logos 
 who by nature stands in immediate connection with the 
 supreme Being, is in fact divine, and as such called God. 
 He condescends, however, from his high estate to come 
 into relations with men in order to give to as many as 
 would receive him power to become children of God. f 
 Without entering into metaphysical speculations as to the 
 mode of his origin, the writer of the Gospel contents him- 
 
 * Wtv6T-n% k6rlv xai 6 liaTr/fi avrov. It is noteworthy that Hilgen- 
 feld so interpreted these words in Das Evangel, imd die Briefe Johannis, 
 1849, in Die Evangelien, etc, 1854, and in Einleit. in das. N. T., 1875! 
 But it has not fallen under the notice of the writer that this scholar his been 
 followed in his interpretation of the passage by any authorities. He also 
 reads, ix tov Ttarpo^ rov 8ia/3dlov k6r£ in the same verse, " Ye are of 
 the father of the Devil." 
 
 f John i. 12. 
 
282 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 self, and we may suppose satisfied his contemporary read- 
 ers, with the teaching that the Logos was " the only-be- 
 gotten Son,"* and that his manifested " glory '* was as 
 that of ** an only-begotten of a father." f In this sonship 
 is impHed a community of essence with the Father, and 
 it is evident that " the Son of God '* in the fourth Gospel 
 represents a conception essentially different from that 
 contained in the term in the synoptics. The Christian 
 consciousness of the age in which the Gospel was written 
 required an exaltation of Christ not inferior certainly to 
 that which had been accomplished in the deutero-Pauline 
 literature, and could apparently be satisfied with nothing 
 short of conferring upon him all the glory and divinity 
 that could be bestowed in consistency with the mono- 
 theistic doctrine, which must of course be kept intact. 
 The declaration that the Logos was** in the beginning 
 with God " indicates an intention of the writer to avoid 
 all perplexing questions regarding the time and the man- 
 ner of the generation implied in sonship, and in the idea 
 of Son as well as in the teaching that he "was God " he 
 conveys the doctrine of an essential identity of essence 
 with God, unity and likeness with Him, which are emphati- 
 cally expressed in the declaration that he who has seen the 
 Son has seen the Father. % That the unity of the Father 
 and the Logos is conceived as one which is not incom- 
 patible with difference of personality and independence 
 of the individual self-consciousness is evident from the 
 words said to be spoken of the disciples: **That they all 
 may be one, as Thou Father art in me and I in thee."§ 
 As one with the Father, the Son is not only called God, 
 but is represented as receiving adoration as " Lord and 
 
 * fXOtfoyEvri'i vio^, John i. i8. t John i. 14. 
 
 X John xii. 45, xiv. 9, f/. x. 30, 38. § John xvii. 21. 
 
THE JOHANNINE TRANSFORMATION. 283 
 
 God."* It is evident, however, that this dignity is con- 
 ceived to belong to him only as Son, since absolute exist- 
 ence is plainly ascribed to the "only true God" alone. 
 The Son is, indeed, " the truth and the life," but not ab- 
 solutely such. He is " the way " by which men may come 
 to the Father, and only through him can they come, f 
 As God, though not " the only true God," divine qualities 
 are ascribed to him, and he is ranked with the Deity as 
 an object of faith. " Everything that the Father hath is 
 mine," he is made to say. " As the Father hath life in 
 Himself, so did He give to the Son also to have life in 
 himself." % He is represented as having supernatural 
 knowledge, as knowing all things, heavenly as well as 
 earthly, the human heart, and God Himself, as annihilat- 
 ing space with his far-seeing vision, and penetrating into 
 the distant future with prophetic foresight. § He is able 
 to disclose the hidden things of God and of the celestial 
 realm, for he speaks as one knowing from what he has seen 
 and heard, II Not only does the Father show him all 
 things that He does, but whatever the Father does that 
 does the Son in like manner. T[ As the organ of almighty 
 energy, he is endowed with the most marvellous miraculous 
 powers, and easily performs works which surpass all the won- 
 ders of the earlier evangelic tradition. Yet with all this 
 godlikeness of endowment he is in all things dependent on 
 and subordinate to the P'ather, unable to do anything 
 of himself, and speaking only the words which are given 
 to him from above. The Father is " greater " than he. "^^ 
 
 * John XX. 28. I John xiv. 6. 
 
 \ John xiv. I, xvi. 15, v. 21, 26. 
 
 § John vi. 64. xvi. 4, 30, xvii. 25, i. 18, 48, ii. 25, iii. 12, 31, x. 15, vii, 29. 
 
 II John iii. ii. 32, vi. 46, viii. 40. «[ John v. 19, 20. 
 
 ** John V. 19, xiv. 16, 28. 
 
284 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 His oneness with God is manifested in the complete sub- 
 ordination of his will to that of his Father, which with 
 unselfish devotion he seeks to do for the divine glory. To 
 do the will of Him who sent him, this is the food which 
 his disciples knew not of. ■* 
 
 While the Johannine Logos-idea was probably derived 
 from Philo, as has already been remarked, the relation of 
 the two conceptions is not by any means such that the 
 one covers the other. Rather they differ in that the 
 Alexandrian is metaphysical and vague, and the Johannine 
 is religious and concrete. The fact is significant that the 
 author of the fourth Gospel applies the term Logos to 
 Christ only twice, once in speaking of his preexistence, 
 and again in mentioning his incarnation. This is done, 
 too, in the prologue, where he was writing independently 
 of the evangelic tradition, and could express without 
 restraint his individual views. Throughout the rest of 
 the Gospel, however, other than metaphysical and specu- 
 lative interests become dominant, and with all the in- 
 fluence of a dualistic conception approaching Gnosticism, 
 he comes under the sway of the personal Jesus as reve- 
 lator, teacher. Saviour, and Son of Man.f In Philo the 
 Logos has a place in a highly speculative system, if, in- 
 deed, the thought of the Alexandrian may properly be 
 said to constitute a system, while in the fourth Gospel the 
 metaphysical Logos appears only in the prologue to an 
 ideal hfe of Jesus at the basis of which lies the conception 
 of the oneness of the Son with the Father. Accordingly, 
 despite the abstract terms "Hfe" and ''light" which are 
 applied to him, the Logos of the Gospel becomes a con- 
 crete personality who, though not at all conceived as 
 having an earthly, temporal development like the Jesus 
 
 * John iv. 34, xiv. 13. f John i. 51, iii. 13, v. 27. 
 
THE JOHANNINE TRANSFORMATION. 285 
 
 of the synoptists, is yet a human type of piety and filial 
 submission to the divine will. Apart from the idea of the 
 Logos as participating in the creation, as God, and in the 
 beginning with God, the metaphysical coloring of the 
 Philonic thought is here wanting, and the Logos appears 
 as a representative of personal religion, of a divine-human 
 sonship, and of a mystical-ethical relationship to the 
 Father. He has a personal mission to men, that as many 
 as believe on him may become children of light. He is 
 " the way, the truth, and the life," the source of divine 
 illumination and truth to men among whom he appears, 
 heaven-descended, for a brief time as a teacher and guide. 
 But remote as the Christ of the fourth Gospel is on the 
 metaphysical side from the Logos of Philo, he is not less 
 far removed on the historical side from the Jesus of the 
 synoptists. These writers, who based their works upon 
 the recollections of eye-witnesses and the Palestinian 
 tradition, could have found no suggestion of the super- 
 human heavenly Logos in their materials or in their 
 environment. For the genesis of this Johannine concep- 
 tion there was needed the whole antecedent develop- 
 ment of the idealizing of the person of Christ — the ideal 
 man from heaven conceived by Paul, who did not 
 proceed upon a personal knowledge of the historical 
 Jesus and the deutero-Pauline enhancement of this 
 doctrine, together with the Logos-speculations of the 
 Alexandrian philosophy. The Johannine idea of Jesus is 
 a riddle in relation to the synoptic conception of him only 
 to those who refuse to regard both doctrines historically. 
 That the preexistence of the Logos is fundamental in 
 the Johannine Christology has already been intimated. 
 Not only is this doctrine laid down in the speculative 
 prologue to the Gospel in the propositions that he was 
 
286 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 " in the beginning with God/' and was God, and that the 
 world had its becoming through him, but the writer puts 
 into the mouth of Jesus himself the most unequivocal 
 declarations of a celestial existence prior to his appearance 
 in the flesh. He is made to say that he '' came down 
 from heaven," and to speak of ascending "where he was 
 before/' He who came from heaven speaks not of earthly- 
 things, but of what "he hath seen and heard."* Is he 
 charged with making himself greater than Abraham? His 
 answer is: "Before Abraham was I am."f That he 
 should have been conceived as inactive in his preexistent 
 state and without interest in the work which in the flesh he 
 was to accomplish is a priori improbable. He is, indeed, 
 expressly said to have had a part in the formation of the 
 world. While it is not implied that, according to the 
 doctrine of Hebrews, he upheld all things by the word of 
 his power, it is more than implied that before entering 
 upon his work in the world as the incarnate Son he was 
 active in reference to the foreordained economy of salva- 
 tion. The idea that the Christian economy was foreseen 
 and prepared before the creation of the world was already 
 current long before the composition of the fourth Gospel. 
 The kingdom was prepared "before the foundation of the 
 world"; the "mystery" of the Gospel was hidden for 
 generations, and " for eternal ages unrevealed " ; the 
 Christian believers were "chosen" in Christ before the 
 creation ; and the proclamation of the gospel was a mak- 
 ing known to " the principalities and powers in the heavenly 
 
 * John iii. 13. 32. vi. 02. 
 
 + John viii. 58. The use of the verbs of existence here is striking : " Be- 
 fore Abraham became or was born [yeredOai] I am [ei/^i]." In Eijui is 
 expressed being in itself, and the idea of becoming is perhaps excluded. 
 That is, Jesus according to his divine essence was before time and without a 
 becoming such as may be predicated of men. 
 
THE JOHANNINE TRANSFORMATION. 287 
 
 regions the manifold wisdom of God according to His 
 purpose for ages." * Accordingly, the author of the 
 fourth Gospel regards the preexistent activity of the 
 Logos as dating from the very beginning of the creation. 
 It would be arbitrary to suppose that man was not in- 
 cluded in the world (cosmos) which ''became" through 
 the agency of the Logos, and to assume that the human 
 race was thought to be for ages without his influence. 
 Lideed, the evangelist expressly asserts that ** life " was 
 in the Logos, and that *' the life was the light of men." 
 Furthermore, this " light" which he was from the begin- 
 ning " hath been shining in the darkness, and the darkness 
 received it not.''f The ethical-religious illumination 
 which proceeds from him is conceived to have shone in 
 pre-Christian times, for he is the true light which lighteth 
 every man that cometh into the world, % so that every one 
 may if he will become a child of the Hght. Since the 
 Logos is the organ of divine revelation, he is conceived to 
 have been active in this capacity in pre-Christian times, 
 as Philo and the Alexandrian translators of the Old 
 Testament regarded the Theophanies of Hebrew story as 
 manifestations of Deity through him or simply as Logo- 
 phanies. From the same point of view the author of 
 Hebrews represents the preexistent Christ as speaking 
 through the prophets and psalmists with reference to his 
 
 * Matt. XXV. 34 ; Rom. xvi. 25 ; Eph. i. 4, iii. 9 ; Col. i. 26 ; i Peter 
 i. 20. 
 
 f John i. 4, 5. The present tense, (paivei, signifies "shines from the 
 beginning until now without interruption." See Meyer. The conception is 
 that of a supernatural, heavenly .^gj? which manifested itself through revela- 
 tion and prophecy. 
 
 X This is the interpretation favored by most exegetes, and there does not 
 appear to be sufficient reason for following with Noyes the rendering of 
 Hilgenfeld, Ewald, and others : " The true light which lighteth every man 
 was coming into the world." See Meyer in he. 
 
288 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 earthly mission, and reveals the Alexandrian influence not 
 only in this conception but also in the allegorizing of the 
 Old Testament with which he seeks to establish it.* 
 
 There can be no doubt that at the time of the composi- 
 tion of the fourth Gospel the tendency to Christianize the 
 Old Testament by an allegorical interpretation which read 
 into it prophecies of the circumstances attending the mis- 
 sion of Christ was in full force. In adopting this idea and 
 method the evangelist followed the example of preceding 
 writers, as may be seen in the first Gospel, the Epistles of 
 Paul, Hebrews, Barnabas, and other writings. This ap- 
 propriation and Christianizing of the Old Testament as 
 the revealed word of God answered an urgent need of the 
 Church in the second century, and we accordingly find 
 that the writer of this Gospel in common with his con- 
 temporaries saw its chief significance in the supposed 
 testimony which it could be made by the current methods 
 of interpretation to bear to Christ. Consistently with this 
 point of view it is declared that Moses wrote of Christ, f 
 while in apparent inconsistency with it an unconcealed 
 hostility to the Jews leads the writer to depreciate the 
 law and the entire Old Testament and to put into the 
 mouth of Jesus the harsh declaration that all the teachers 
 who had preceded him were thieves and robbers.:]: Not 
 only is Moses expressly contrasted to his disadvantage 
 with Christ, but the events at Cana and the pool of Beth- 
 esda are perhaps allegorical representations of the inade- 
 quacy of the ancient economy. When he makes Jesus 
 denounce the Jews as the children of the Devil, the author 
 is thought to follow the writer of Barnabas who attributed 
 their fleshliness to the influence of demons, although he 
 
 * Heb. ii. 12, 13. x. 5-9. t John v. 46. 
 
 X John viii. 44, i. 17. v. 39, x. 8. 
 
THE JOHANNINE TRANSFORMATION. 289 
 
 avoids the Gnostic dualism which the latter approached, 
 and maintains the connection of the Jewish and Christian 
 economies. Perhaps the inconsistency which appears in 
 the appeal to Old-Testament prophecy and the deprecia- 
 tion of Judaism and its great law-giver may be explained 
 by the theory that " the prophets, so far as they correctly 
 foretold the Christian economy, were thought to be the 
 organs of revelation through whom thepreexistent Logos 
 expressed himself," while the Jewish religion in general as 
 mere " law " and rite was regarded as of little worth. At 
 any rate the idea of the preexisterit activity of the Logos 
 was not unknown to the writer, and doubtless finds ex- 
 pression in the words : " I have other sheep which are not 
 of this fold," * in which Jesus is made to assume that the 
 light which had from the beginning shone from the Logos 
 upon the darkness of the world had been effectual among 
 the heathen, so that there were some of them who were 
 children of light, who belonged already inwardly to the 
 fold of the good Shepherd, and needed only to be 
 "gathered together." f The revelation of the Logos 
 through the prophets is distinctively expressed in con- 
 nection with a quotation from Isaiah concerning the 
 hardening of the people's hearts toward Jesus in the 
 words : " These things said Isaiah because he saw his 
 glory, and spake of him.":|: This conception is in accord- 
 ance with the fundamental idea of the fourth Gospel, 
 with that which constitutes its distinctive doctrinal char- 
 acter, viz., that the Logos was preexistent and immanent 
 in God, that he hypostatically proceeded forth from Him 
 for the act of creation, and then was active as a creative, 
 life-giving, illuminating personal power, effecting in essen- 
 
 * John X. 16. \ John i. 5-9 ; xi. 52. 
 
 % John xii. 41. 
 
 19 
 
290 TBE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 tial godlikeness God's revelation of Himself in the spiritual 
 realm, and finally completing that revelation in the man 
 Jesus Christ. All the revelations preceding his earthly 
 manifestation are, however, conceived as only the twilight 
 in contrast with the dawn. ** The sombre nocturnal 
 heavens of the old covenant are sown with lights which 
 shine only as reflections of the dawning daylight of the 
 New Testament. Moses and the prophets are only moon 
 and stars whose borrowed light testifies of the existence 
 of the still invisible Sun, before whose effulgence they 
 must finally pale and be extinguished. The last witness 
 is the briefly-shining morning-star which announces the 
 approaching sunrise, and which must decrease as the 
 splendors of the Sun increase." * 
 
 If, then, the revelation of the Logos in his earthly mani- 
 festation was thought to be more glorious than that 
 effected by his preexistent activity, we should expect to 
 find that his entrance upon human relations was not re- 
 garded as a descent from his heavenly dignity. In fact 
 the author of the fourth Gospel does not, like Paul, speak 
 of Christ's mission in the flesh as an humiliation. The 
 declaration that the Logos became flesh, which is a capital 
 proposition of the Johannine doctrine, does not at all 
 imply the assumption by him of a complete human nature. 
 Although the word flesh is sometimes employed in the 
 New Testament by synecdoche for the entire man, and 
 again to designate the natural in man as opposed to the 
 spiritual, it is usually applied to human nature to distin- 
 guish it as essentially a bodily organism. To become 
 flesh, then, can neither mean to become carnal, nor to be- 
 come wholly man, but only to assume a fleshly body. It 
 is true that in the fourth Gospel Jesus is made to speak' 
 
 * John iii. 30, 31, v. 35. 
 
THE JOHANNINE TRANSFORMATION. 2gi 
 
 of laying down his life for men, * but that the animal life- 
 principle is here intended is evident from the use of the 
 same term in Peter's declaration : *' I will lay down my 
 life for thee." f The ascription to Jesus of affections of 
 the soul or spirit does not necessarily imply the conception 
 by the evangelist of a human soul as the subject of the 
 trouble or emotion. On the contrary, the divine Logos 
 as the organ of revelation may very well have been sup- 
 posed to be so related to human nature as a mediator as to 
 be capable of such affections of the soul as are attributed to 
 him. :[: The manner in which the evangelist speaks in the 
 prologue of the two manifestations of the Logos, the pre- 
 existent and the earthly, implies rather a continuity of 
 the activities of an identical personality than a becoming 
 man in the sense of assuming a human soul. The incar- 
 nation can hardly be said to be conceived as denoting a 
 division of the work of the Logos into two distinct periods. 
 It is the same subject that was the light of the world 
 shining upon its darkness from the beginning, and in the 
 flesh continuing his revealing and life-giving activity. 
 The Logos became flesh, and took up a temporary abode 
 as in a tent § among men. The incarnation of the Logos 
 appears, then, to have been conceived not as an assump- 
 tion by him of a human nature in its entirety, but as an 
 accident of the personality of the preexistent divine Son 
 who in the flesh remained essentially the same being as 
 before. There are traits of the fourth Gospel which ap- 
 pear to be traceable to this point of view. In the original 
 tradition on which the synoptic Gospels are founded Jesus 
 is represented as a man, and his endowment for his mission 
 
 * John X. II, 15, 17, The word here employed for life is "^vxtf. 
 
 f John xiii. 37. % John xi. 33, xii. 27, xiii. 21. 
 
292 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 is consummated in the descent of the Holy Spirit at the 
 baptism. A later tradition added a supernatural genera- 
 tion. In this Gospel, however, the account of the baptism 
 is omitted, although a descent of the Spirit is mentioned^ 
 not as an endowment of the divine Logos, but as a sign 
 to John that he might be able to recognize him as the 
 Son of God."^ A supernatural generation could find no 
 place in a narrative which proceeds upon the assumption 
 that the Christ whose earthly history is recorded was the 
 preexistent divine being who was with God in the begin- 
 ning, and was God. As the Logos he was regarded as 
 already abundantly endowed, and the process in question 
 would naturally be thought to be superfluous. In ac- 
 cordance with this idea of the divine nature of Christ the 
 story of the temptation is omitted. The prince of this 
 world has nothing in him, and it would be incongruous 
 to suppose that the great Logos could be tempted, as 
 well as that a forty-days' fasting and struggle in the 
 wilderness could be a fitting preparation for his ministry. 
 The Johannine Christ has no awful agony in Gethsemane, 
 and to forebodings of suffering and death he gives no 
 expression. On the cross he utters no heart-broken cry of 
 a human soul which feels itself abandoned of heaven, but 
 majestically exclaims, *' It is finished," and dies like a god. 
 The employment of the term "Son of Man" in this 
 Gospel is not opposed to but rather illustrative of the 
 point of view in question. The use of the term in several 
 instances by the writer is probably due to the influence 
 of the synoptic tradition of which he could not have been 
 independent, f But the expression is not used as in the 
 
 * John i. 33. 
 
 f The principal passages are : i. 52, iii. 14, v. 27, vi. 27, 53. xii. 23, 34. 
 and xiii. 31. 
 
THE JOHAMNINE TRANSFORMA TION. 293 
 
 synoptics in frequent connection with the lowly estate of 
 a wandering teacher who '* has not where to lay his head." 
 The idea of a participation in human nature of the one 
 who bears the name is not conveyed by the relations in 
 which it stands ; for although the writer undertook to 
 construct a history of Jesus, he never loses sight of the 
 dominant dogmatic purpose of his work which is definitely 
 set forth in the prologue. The Son of Man is represented 
 to Nathaniel as one on whom he shall see angels descend- 
 ing from the opened heavens, that is as the organ of 
 revelation, the Logos, who effects as a mediator communi- 
 cation between the upper and nether realms. To Nico- 
 demus the Son of Man is represented as the one who 
 ^'carne down from heaven." As the celestial preexistent 
 being he "is in heaven,"* that is, ''he maintains even in 
 his earthly estate as the incarnate Logos the continuity 
 of his consciousness of God," and is able as no one else to 
 give report of "heavenly things." Whatever may be the 
 meaning of the much-disputed passage : " And He gave 
 him authority to execute judgment because he is a son 
 of man," f the entire connection in which the words stand 
 indicates a purpose to exalt Jesus in accordance with the 
 dogmatic aim of the Gospel. He is the Son, the Son of 
 God, to whom belongs the honor which men give to the 
 Father, and at the sound of whose voice the dead will 
 come forth from their graves. % The most that can be 
 said of the term in this connection is that it designates 
 the Logos, a human phenomenon in the capacity of judge, 
 as the representative of the hidden God who "judges no 
 man," or in other words, the relative humanity of him 
 
 * John iii. 13. 
 
 f John V. 27, "a son of a man," the usual article is omitted. 
 
 X John V. 23, 28, 29. 
 
294 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 who is the Son of God — a conception whose Philonic 
 origin is evident. The words : *' Truly, truly do I say to 
 you, unless ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink 
 his blood ye have no life in you,"* stand in connection 
 with the declaration that Christ is '* the living bread 
 which came down from heaven," and the term Son of 
 Man is employed with a doctrinal significance similar to 
 that conveyed in the latter words which accord with the 
 point of view of the prologue. The heaven-descended 
 one gives the true bread and they who appropriate him 
 in faith will have eternal life, f 
 
 The words already quoted from the Gospel in the dis- 
 cussion of its doctrine of the preexistence of the Logos 
 confirm the view here presented of the continuity of his 
 existence and nature in the heavenly and earthly abodes. 
 He who was upon the earth as Jesus is conceived as the 
 one who was before in heaven, and '* came down " thence. 
 There is no intimation, either in the words which express 
 the individual reflections of the evangelist, or in those put 
 into the mouth of Christ, that the writer thought of the 
 doctrine that the Jesus of history was the preexistent 
 Logos united with a human spirit. The expression, "the 
 Logos became flesh," simply means that he who was *' with 
 God " and '* was God " assumed a human body. It is 
 evident that in the study of the doctrines of this Gospel 
 one cannot without great arbitrariness distinguish between 
 the reflections of the evangelist and the words which he 
 puts into the mouth of Christ. The latter have the 
 appearance of being free compositions of the writer, since 
 the extended and involved discourses which are attributed 
 
 * John vi. 53, 
 
 f Meyei regards the words " of the Son of Man," as equivalent to l/aovy 
 
 tie *' 
 
 of me. 
 
THE JOHANNINE TRANSFORMATION. 295 
 
 to Jesus cannot have been transmitted by tradition like 
 the pithy, aphoristic sayings recorded by the synoptists. 
 The entire work bears the impress of one mind, and the 
 discourses have been happily characterized as variations 
 on the theme contained in the prologue. The problem 
 how the divine, preexistent Logos assumed a human 
 body is not solved by the fourth evangelist. It does not 
 even appear to have been thought of by him. Two rep- 
 resentations of Jesus, that of the prologue and that of 
 the synoptic tradition, stand side by side throughout the 
 Gospel without an attempt to reconcile them, one may 
 even say without a conceivable reconciliation. With the 
 utmost nawetd Jesus is said to have been in " glory " with 
 the Father " before the world was," to have " come down 
 from heaven," * and yet to have had a mother and 
 brothers, even Joseph as father, f The Logos become 
 flesh is identified with the historical Jesus of Nazareth, :[: 
 and made to appear as a human personality after the 
 manner of the synoptic tradition with respect at least to 
 his descent from earthly parents, without, however, any 
 intimation of a supernatural generation. While this in- 
 congruity does not admit of solution, it may perhaps be 
 explained in its genesis as the inevitable result of an 
 attempt to unite in one representation the historical 
 Jesus with the Philonic conception of the heavenly Logos 
 from a point of view which borders very closely on the 
 Gnostic doctrine of Christ as actual personality composed 
 of the man Jesus of Nazareth and the heavenly aeon 
 united with him at the baptism. Yet the predominance 
 of the idea that he was the Logos in the flesh is apparent 
 
 * John xvii. 5, vi. 38. 
 
 \ John ii. I f., 12, vi. 42, vii. 3, 5, xix. 25, 26, 
 
 X John i. 46. 
 
296 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 even when the writer approaches most nearly to the 
 representation of hini as a human personality. For in 
 connection with the passages in which the writer makes 
 him speak of his dependence upon the Father appears 
 the declaration that the Father is greater than he, ■^" from 
 which it is evident that his dependence upon God is not 
 that of a man. The writer could not have made him say 
 that God is greater than a man, but the intention is obvi- 
 ous to teach that Christ notwithstanding his oneness with 
 God stood in a relation of subordination to Him.f 
 
 The Johannine doctrine of salvation constitutes a 
 striking feature of this type of New-Testament teaching. 
 In its fundamental characteristics it is related to the dual- 
 istic conception of the opposition of light and darkness, 
 and consists in the overcoming of the latter through the 
 self-revelation of the Logos. The Logos is the light 
 which from the beginning illuminates every man that 
 comes into the world, and on his part the manifestation 
 of himself is a saving efficacy. On the part of men it is 
 faith in him who has come as a light into the world which 
 saves them from the realm of darkness, for whoever be- 
 lieves does not *' remain in the darkness/' % As many as 
 believe in him become sons of God, have eternal life, and 
 do not come into judgment. § Now, since the degree of 
 faith depends upon the intensity with which its object is 
 presented, a vivid manifestation and a persistent " glorify- 
 
 * John xiv. 28 ; cf. iv. 34, v. 30, viii. 29, xv, 10, xvii. 4. 
 
 f The doctrine maintained by Baur that the writer of the fourth Gospel 
 intended to represent the flesh of Christ as not that of a human body "in its 
 true and full sense," in other words, that he held the Docetic conception of 
 the body of Christ as apparent only but not real, is hardly defensible. It 
 rests upon such passages as vii. 10, viii. 59, \. 39, vi. 16, all of which admit 
 of satisfactory explanation without this hypothesis. 
 
 % John vii. 46. g John v. 24, vi. 47, 
 
THE JOHANNINE TRANSFORMA TION. 2gj 
 
 ing " of Christ might be expected to form a prominent 
 feature of this soteriology. In fact we find that the exal- 
 tation of his person is a leading object of the Gospel, that 
 all that relates to salvation is intimately connected with 
 him whose word is a fountain of '* living water,'' and that 
 the greatest emphasis is laid upon the necessity of " re- 
 ceiving" him into the consciousness of the believer, the 
 appropriation of him as " the bread of life." They who 
 will be saved must, however, carry on a continuous con- 
 flict with the unbelieving world which will hate them as 
 it hated the Son of God. Corresponding to the great 
 antithesis of light and darkness is the antithesis of belief 
 and unbelief, and only in so far as the light flashing upon 
 the darkness illuminates the souls which are susceptible 
 to it, and causes them to " come to " it, is the dominion 
 of unbelief and of the prince of this world overcome. 
 
 So far as the teachings of Jesus are regarded as one of the 
 principal means of accomplishing his saving work, they have 
 according to the point of view of this Gospel a distinctive 
 reference to his person, the absolute significance of which is 
 the prominent theme of his discourses. This significance 
 does not, however, lie as with Paul chiefly in the closing 
 acts of his career, but in his revelation of the truth, es- 
 pecially as to the Father's will and love. The doctrine 
 laid down in the discourse addressed to Nicodemus that 
 unless a man be ''born from above " he cannot enter the 
 kingdom of heaven serves to introduce and emphasize 
 the teaching that such " heavenly things " are to be known 
 through the testimony of the Son of Man "who came 
 down from heaven," and testifies that which he has seen."^ 
 The teaching communicated to the woman of Samaria 
 reaches its culmination in the exaltation of the person of 
 
 * John iii. Ii, 13. 
 
298 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 Jesus as the one able to supply the " living water " which 
 will be to him who drinks of it " a well of water spring- 
 ing up into everlasting life." * In the extended discourse 
 in the fifth chapter Jesus is not only charged by the Jews 
 with making himself equal with God, but proceeds to fur- 
 nish at least the appearance of a justification of the 
 charge by identifying his '* raising up the dead " and "giv- 
 ing life " with the divine activities, and by claiming such 
 honpr as men accord to the Father. Hearing him and 
 believing in God are declared to be the two apparently 
 equally important conditions of attaining everlasting life.f 
 The spiritually dead will hear in the hour that is coming 
 and now is the voice of the Son of God, and they who 
 hear, that is, shall have given attention, will live. The 
 qualification for this mighty work is declared to reside in 
 the life which the Son has in himself, as God has life in 
 Himself. Yet the hearers are told not to marvel at this, 
 for the marvellous performance is to be the calling forth 
 into Hfe of all the bodily dead ; " The hour is coming in 
 which all that are in the tombs will hear his voice, and 
 will come forth, they who have done good to a resurrec- 
 tion of life, and they who have done evil to a resurrection 
 of condemnation.:}: This general conception is further 
 elaborated in what follows, and Jesus is shown to be not 
 only the life-giving principle, but the nourishment and 
 support of all spiritual life under the figure of " the true 
 bread from heaven " which Moses did not give. To come 
 to him is never to hunger and to believe in him is never 
 to thirst. In his personality as the Logos become 
 flesh there are for those who will feed upon him spiritual 
 health, nourishment, and life. The bread which he will 
 give for the life of the world is his flesh ; for he is not 
 
 * John iv. 14. f John v. 23 f. % John v. 28, 29. 
 
THE JOHANNINE TRANSFORMATION, 299 
 
 merely the Logos but, as the Saviour of men, the Logos 
 in the flesh, so that what he is to them as the bread of 
 life is designated as flesh, and even as flesh and blood. 
 He who eats his flesh and drinks his blood has everlasting 
 life, and he will raise him up at the last day. In his 
 manifestation in human flesh he is solely and absolutely 
 the life of the world. He who will receive him as such 
 by faith, that is, will eat his flesh and drink his blood, will 
 dwell in Christ, and Christ will dwell in him. His one- 
 ness with God, that absolute glorification of his person 
 which is a distinguishing feature of this Gospel, is indi- 
 cated in the bold saying: "As I live by reason of the 
 Father, so he that eateth me shall live by reason of me." 
 The divine life-principle is identical in both, " and this is 
 the will of the Father that every one that looketh on the 
 Son and believeth in him shall have everlasting life." * 
 In the development and application of the conception of 
 '* light * which the evangelist makes fundamental in his 
 doctrine of the nature and mission of Christ the em- 
 phasis is not laid so much upon the teachings us upon the 
 personality of the Logos. While in the synoptic Gospels 
 the doctrines and the example of Jesus are placed in the 
 foreground, we find here the obtrusive purpose to ^\m^ 
 prominence to his personality. He himself is the light 
 of the world, and he who follows him will not walk in 
 darkness, but will have the light of life. As long as he 
 is in the world he is the light of the world. f Even the 
 so-called "new " commandment that the disciples should 
 love one another is brought into relation to his person. 
 They are commanded to love one another as he had loved 
 them, he who gave them an example of self-devotion in 
 the act of washing their feet, — an act whose significance 
 
 *John vi. 34-58 t J°'^" "^i"- ^2, ix. 4. 
 
300 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 was immeasurably great by reason of the greatness of 
 the condescension of the doer, — he who gave his fiesh as 
 the bread of life for the world in a love than which no man 
 has a greater.'^ The authority with which he commands 
 rests upon the importance of his person. Well may his 
 followers do what he bids and does who is in such a rela- 
 tion to God that his love for them is comparable to that 
 of the Father for him. f 
 
 In accordance with the doctrine that beHef in Christ is 
 essential to salvation, his works as well as his teachings 
 are exhibited for the purpose of glorifying his person. As 
 proofs of what he is his works are called ''signs,":}; or 
 revelations of his divine nature and glory ; and since he can 
 do nothing but what he sees the Father do, all his works 
 have a supernatural character. They are the expression 
 of his divine nature, are such as no one has ever done, are 
 works in fact which the Father accomplishes through him, 
 and are evidences of his supernatural mission, for the sake 
 of which those must believe who will not believe on 
 account of his words. § The unbelief of the Jews is declared 
 to be especially censurable because of the signs which he 
 had shown them,| and the miracles are said to be done 
 for the manifestation of his glory and that of the Father. \ 
 In the case of a healing performed on the Sabbath he is 
 not only made to say that he is on an equal footing with 
 God, in that like Him he works regardless of days, but 
 the explicit declaration is put into his mouth that he has 
 a better testimony than that of John, for : *' The works 
 which the Father hath given me to perform, the works 
 
 * John xiii. 34, 4-16, xv. 13. 
 
 \ John XV. 9. X 6r}fX£la, 
 
 § John V. 17 f., xiv. 10, xv. 24, x. 38. 
 
 I John X. 32, xii. 37. TJohn ii. 11, xi. 4, 40. 
 
THE JOHANNINE TRANSFORMATION. 301 
 
 themselves which I do, bear witness of me that the Father 
 hath sent me." '^' In the account of the feeding of the five 
 thousand nothing is said of Jesus' "compassion " for the 
 multitudes, f for the Logos of this Gospel is not repre- 
 sented, like the Jesus of the synoptics, as having the senti- 
 ment of pity, but the sign is brought into connection with 
 a doctrine of the person of Christ as " the bread of God," 
 " coming down from heaven and giving life to the world." % 
 The account of the marvellous cure of a man born blind is 
 introduced with the announcement of the remarkable 
 teleological declaration that he was so born in order that 
 ** the works of God might be made manifest in him," and 
 the performance of this " sign " is made the occasion of 
 repeating the statement of the favorite doctrine of the 
 writer that Jesus is " the light of the world." § The greatest 
 of all the signs that Jesus is reported in this record to have 
 wrought, the raising of Lazarus, is said to have been done 
 for the purpose of causing the disciples and " the multi- 
 tude standing around " to *' believe," and is recorded in 
 order to introduce a new doctrine of his person. He was 
 glad that he was not present with Lazarus during his ill- 
 ness, that the disciples may believe, and at the grave he 
 prays in order that the multitude may believe, when they 
 shall see the prayer answered, that he was sent of God ; 
 and the doctrine that the Logos is life and by his power 
 is able to overcome death is expressed in the words : " I 
 am the resurrection and the life ; he that believeth in me, 
 though he have died will live, and whoever liveth and 
 believeth in me will never die." Thus the principal signs 
 reported in this Gospel serve to glorify Christ and to set 
 forth from different points of view the greatness and 
 
 * John V. 36. f Matt. xiv. 14 ; Mark vi. 34. 
 
 J John vii. 32. § John ix. 5, cf, i. 4, viii. 12. 
 
302 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 divine significance of his person in such a manner as to 
 produce in men that faith in him which is the indispensable 
 condition of their salvation. It is a total misapprehension 
 of the point of view of the writer of this Gospel to sup- 
 pose that he records the wonderful works of Christ either 
 as deeds of benevolence or simply as historical facts. They 
 are intended as evidences of his divine mission and 
 authority, proofs that the Father sent him, and reasons 
 why men should beheve in him and be saved. 
 
 As the death of Jesus was the culmination of his earthly 
 career, so the exaltation of his person and the manifesta- 
 tion of his power and saving efficacy are represented in 
 this Gospel as reaching in this event their highest point. 
 In view of the approaching tragedy Jesus is made to ex- 
 claim : " Father, the hour is come ; glorify Thy Son, that 
 Thy Son may also glorify Thee.'"^ In being " lifted up " \ 
 Jesus is represented as not merely raised upon the cross, 
 but as attaining the acme of his spiritual elevation and 
 attractive power. He is accordingly made to say that " as 
 Moses lifted up the serpent m the wilderness, so must the 
 Son of Man be Hfted up, that every one who believeth in 
 him may have everlasting life." Exalted as a spectacle to 
 mankind in this supreme glorification, he will draw all men 
 unto him. % Instead of being an hour of humiliation and 
 ignominy the hour of his death is that in which the Son 
 of Man is to be ''glorified." From this event dates the 
 highest fruitfulness of his mission, for "unless a grain of 
 wheat fall into the ground and die, itself abideth alone; 
 but if it die it beareth much fruit." § The powers of dark- 
 ness which had arrayed themselves against him during his 
 life, and opposed him as " the light of men," gather in the 
 
 * John xvii. i, .^/xii. 28. jvipovoOai. 
 
 t John iii. 14, xii. 32. § John xii. 23, 24. 
 
THE JOHANNINE TRANSFORMATION. 303 
 
 last hours to effect his defeat. The Devil enters into 
 Judas,*^" and the Jews who are ** the children of the Devil '* 
 plot his downfall. But in the approaching tragedy which 
 his terrestrial and infernal enemies think will be the con- 
 summation of his overthrow he sees the discomfiture of 
 the former and the dethronement of the latter. " Now," 
 he exclaims, *' is the judgment of this world ; now will the 
 prince of this world be cast out."f As the more he be- 
 comes an object of faith to men, the more does the power 
 of the Evil One diminish, so in this act of spiritual exalta- 
 tion in which he gives his flesh as "the bread of life" for 
 the world he sees the beginning of the downfall of Satan 
 and of an ever-widening sway of the dominion of his own 
 truth and spirit, which will be consummated only when 
 *' all men " shall have been " drawn " to him. 
 
 As the Johannine Christ, the Logos who was with God 
 "in the beginning," and *' was God," is essentially a dif- 
 ferent conception from that of the Pauline second Adam 
 and the man from heaven, so his work in the world and 
 his relation to men as Saviour stand in fundamental con- 
 trast to the doctrine of salvation elaborated by Paul. Not 
 inconsistent with this is, however, the fact that the fourth 
 Gospel shows the influence of the Pauline thought. But 
 Paulinism, as a whole, does not constitute its point of 
 view. To one who had left Judaism and the law so far 
 behind him as this writer had it is evident that a doctrine 
 which was so much occupied with and determined by 
 them as was Paul's could have only a slight importance. 
 That he accepted, however, the Pauline teaching of the 
 universal destination and mission of Christianity is as 
 plain as that he did not regard it as a matter to be argued 
 about in the manner of Paul. To him Christ is the light 
 
 *Johnxiii. 27. fjohnxii. 31. 
 
304 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 of the world, who lights every man that comes into it- 
 He regards Jesus as dying not for the Jews only, but that 
 he may also " gather together in one body the children of 
 God who are scattered abroad." * Even in Samaria he 
 sees the fields already *' white for the harvest." t It is 
 true that in apparent inconsistency with this universalism 
 he distinctively declares Jesus to be the Messiah, and em- 
 ploys the Jewish designation of his person, % which is not 
 elsewhere used in the New Testament. But his Christ 
 has no national characteristics or limitations, and the 
 mention of him as of the seed of David occurs only as 
 the expression of a Jewish opinion. § It is evident that 
 the writer occupied the point of view of a time when the 
 Pauline doctrine of the relation of man to God, and of 
 the office and work of Christ in salvation, held no promi- 
 nent place in Christian thought. We have already seen 
 that this teaching in the extreme and abstract form in 
 which it was presented by the apostle appeared to be 
 losing ground in the deutero-Pauline literature, and it is 
 not surprising that a writer who held such an attitude 
 toward the law as did the writer of the fourth Gospel 
 should not have regarded the deliverance of men from 
 obligations to it as constituting an important feature of 
 the saving work of Christ. Nothing could be more incon- 
 gruous with the Johannine conception of the work of 
 Christ than the Pauline idea that in his death he removed 
 /the curse of the law, and representatively satisfied its 
 claims upon the human race. The death and resurrection 
 of Christ occupy, indeed, both historically and doctrinally, 
 a prominent place in this Gospel, but they have not the 
 almost exclusive prominence which Paul accords to them- 
 
 * John xi. 52. t Johniv. 35- 
 
 X Mf'.ddia^, i. 44, iv. 25. § John vii. 42. 
 
THE JOHANNINE TRANSFORMATION. 305 
 
 Here the chief thing is the whole personality of Christ 
 who, as the organ of revelation and the manifestation of 
 God, communicates life and light to those who are recep- 
 tive of them. He is the bread of God which those who 
 eat will never die, the vine whose life-giving sap is com- 
 municated to those who abide in him, and apart from 
 vital union with whom men can bear no fruit.'* In the 
 discourse of the Baptizer it is, indeed said, that Jesus is 
 " the lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world," f 
 but this expression has not the sense of the Pauline repre- 
 sentative death. Rather it is to be interpreted in accord- 
 ance with the dominant idea of the Gospel as referring to 
 the moral-spiritual influence of his whole personality and 
 work by which sin was overcome and removed in those 
 who received him. The Gospel has, indeed, a doctrine of 
 faith, but no doctrine of the acceptance of men as right- 
 eous through faith in the specific Pauline sense of the 
 words. The personal relation of men to the living Christ 
 is vividly presented in the words " receive," "hear," and 
 " come," which may be regarded as standing for " be- 
 lieve." X Hence the Pauline opposition of faith and 
 works finds no place in the thought of the writer of this 
 Gospel. In adapting the gospel of Jesus to Hellenistic 
 thinking he had no use for the great apostle's polemic 
 against Judaism. He had advanced far beyond this 
 point of view, which, indeed, although adapted to its 
 time, was too one-sided and ideal in its disregard of the 
 living personality of Jesus to answer the practical needs 
 amid which the fourth Gospel was written. It comports 
 with this practical point of view, indeed, that the writer 
 
 * John XV. I, 4. f John i. 19. 
 
 X John i. II, 12, iii. 11, 32, v. 43, xii. 48, xiii. 20, viii. 43, 47, x. 3, 16, 
 xviii. 37, vi. 35, 37, vii. 37. 
 
306 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 disposes of the conflict between faith and works by 
 making faith itself a work. When Jesus is asked by cer- 
 tain of the multitude : " What are we to do that we may 
 work the works of God?" he is made to answer: ''This 
 is the work of God that ye believe in him whom He 
 sent," * 
 
 It would appear, then, to be one of the characteristics 
 of this wonderful Gospel that while it surpasses PauHnism 
 in exalting the person of Christ, it furnishes a much- 
 needed supplement, one may even say a correction, of 
 the great apostle*s doctrine of salvation by bringing 
 Christian soteriology down out of the region of abstract 
 speculation in which he had placed it, and establishing it 
 upon a practical, rational basis. In giving prominence to 
 the personality of Christ on the divine side of salvation 
 it is consistent wath its characteristic Logos-idea, while in 
 putting emphasis upon works on the human side it de- 
 notes a tendency to a return to the primitive historical 
 Christian conception of the relation of man to God which 
 is set forth in the synoptical account of the teachings of 
 Jesus. It introduces, however, a new principle which, 
 since there is slight trace of it in the synoptic tradition, 
 can hardly have received from the lips of Jesus the em- 
 phasis which is here laid upon it. This principle is that 
 of personal attachment, love, and devotion to Jesus as an 
 impulse to the moral and spiritual life. Accordingly, 
 Jesus is made to say to his disciples : '* If ye love me, ye 
 will keep my commandments " ; " He who hath my com- 
 mandments and keepeth them, he it is who loveth me; 
 and he who loveth me will be loved of my Father, and I 
 will love him, and will manifest myself to him." f Like- 
 wise obedience to him confirms the abiding in his love : 
 
 * John vi. 28, 29. f John xiv. 15, 21. 
 
THE JOHANNINE TRANSFORMATION. 307 
 
 " As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you ; 
 abide in my love. If ye keep my commandments ye will 
 abide in my love, even as I have kept my Father's com- 
 mandments and abide in his love." "^ Keeping the com- 
 mandments or doing that which accords with the will of 
 God and of Christ is thus made a matter of paramount 
 importance with respect to the relation of man to God. 
 While Paul places faith foremost, and regards love as the 
 expression of it,t here love is first, and is the spring of the 
 activity by which the commandments are kept. The 
 Pauline doctrine of the impossibility of obedience finds 
 no expression, but rather it is taught that the highest 
 spiritual attainments are within the reach of him in whom 
 abides the life-giving principle of love. Fie who loves 
 Jesus is able to do all that Jesus requires, and among the 
 requirements which he makes of his disciples is this, that 
 they love one another. In accordance with the general 
 principles of this Gospel the sphere of human activity is 
 here connected with the divine Source of all good through 
 the mediation of the Logos, and human love receives Its 
 supreme authentication in the love of Christ for the 
 Father and the Father's love for him. Source and high- 
 est type of love is that love which the Father had for the 
 Son before the foundation of the world. Because God 
 loved the world the Son was sent forth from His bosom, 
 and those who are drawn to him as the light of men he 
 loves as the Father loves him. As the Son out of his 
 love for the Father does all that the Father requires,:]: so 
 out of their love for him should and can his followers 
 fulfil his requirements. As he is one with God, so he 
 prays that all believers " may be one ; as Thou Father 
 art in me and I in Thee, that they may also be in us, that 
 * John XV, 9, 10. f Gal. v. 6. \ John xiv. 31. 
 
308 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 the world may believe that Thou didst send me * " Thus 
 will be given them the " glory " which God has given to 
 him, because they are "perfect in one."f As the Son's 
 performance of his work is conditional upon his one- 
 ness with God, so his followers must in order to 
 " bear fruit " remain in oneness with him, " the 
 true vine. " The love of beHevers for Christ has 
 its fruition in a state of supreme blessedness which 
 is nothing less than the enjoyment of a special ex- 
 pression of the divine love and a dwelling of God and 
 Christ with them : '* If any man love me he will keep my 
 word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to 
 him, and make our abode with him.";!: This conception 
 is a transformation of the Old-Testament theocratic idea 
 of the dwelling of Jahveh with His people on condition 
 of their keeping His commandments ; § but here the 
 divine manifestation is that of the Logos in the flesh, 
 and the abiding of God is not in the temple and in Zion, 
 but a personal indwelling in the individual soul who keeps 
 the commandments, not by reason of an external decree, 
 but through a loving union with the Son. But the cul- 
 mination of man's blessedness through Christ is reached 
 in a relation to God analogous to that which the Son him- 
 self holds. Through the mediation of Christ those who 
 are united with him in faith and love are given " power to 
 become children of God." They are born not of blood, 
 nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of 
 God. II This new generation by which the moral and 
 spiritual character is transformed is probably the same 
 
 * John xvii. 21. f John xvii, 23, 24. 
 
 \ John xiv. 23. 
 
 § Lev. xxvii. 3, n ; Ps. cxxxii. 13, 14 ; Ezek. xxxvii. 27. 
 
 I John i. 12, 13. 
 
THE JOHANNINE TRANSFORMATION. 309 
 
 as the being born from above, without which a man can- 
 not see the kingdom of God.* 
 
 In this highest conception of the Johannine thought, 
 the doctrine of love, is apparent its contrast with the Pau- 
 hne theory of salvation. In the former man is conceived 
 to be brought by love into immediate union with Christ, 
 and through him into harmony with God and divine son- 
 ship. Through love he is able to keep the command- 
 ments of Christ and do the will of God. But to Paul 
 there stood in the way of the consummation of this sim- 
 ple and natural relation the obstacle of the law and the 
 doctrine that righteousness is unattainable by works. The 
 law has its claims which must be satisfied, its ransom 
 which must be paid. Since this condition is conceived to 
 be met by the death of Christ, this event becomes the 
 factor in salvation which is of central importance. Hence 
 the faith directed to the cross and the problem of the re- 
 lation of faith and works in reference to the acceptance 
 of men as righteous, or the doctrine of justification. In 
 the Johannine doctrine, however, such a conception of the 
 importance of the death of Christ could find no place. 
 For although the author maintains, as has previously 
 been remarked, a connection of Christianity with the Old 
 Testament, declares Moses to have written of Christ, and 
 believes that the preexistent Logos was manifested to 
 the prophets, yet his attitude toward the law as an in- 
 stitution was one of such lofty disregard that its claims 
 appeared to him of slight importance. To him Christ 
 exerts a saving activity, not especially in his death, as to 
 Paul, but in his whole earthly mission and in the total in- 
 fluence of his personality. He is " the bread of God," the 
 
 * yEvvrjBrjvai civcoBEr, in. 3. 
 
3IO THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 light of the world, to those who " receive *' him he gives 
 power to become the children of God, and the water 
 which he supplies quenches forever the thirst of the soul. 
 As living and self-communicating, as the source of spirit- 
 ual illumination and quickening, as the divine Logos who 
 brings God into relation with men, and men through love 
 for him into oneness with the Father, and not as a repre- 
 sentative of mankind dying to abrogate an out-grown 
 ** law/* is he the Saviour of men according to this new 
 Hellenistic system of thought. It must be regarded as 
 the good fortune of Christianity that the author of this 
 Gospel, following and surpassing the deutero-Pauline 
 writers, presented a view of Christ as a Saviour by which 
 a direct personal relation was established between men 
 and the living Jesus conceived as a light and a spiritual 
 power. It was the weakness of PauHnism that its founder, 
 knowing nothing of a Christ *' according to the flesh" and 
 apparently indifferent to such a knowledge, lost sight of 
 the supreme greatness and splendor of the personal life 
 and example of Jesus, and fixed the attention of men 
 upon his death and resurrection as the chief if not the 
 sole events in his career significant for the work of salva- 
 tion. If it must be conceded that this conception of the 
 mission of Christ regarded literally and abstractly has ex- 
 erted a far-reaching deleterious influence upon Christian 
 thought and life, the importance of the Johannine teach- 
 ing of the vast significance and exalted grandeur of the 
 personaUty of the living Christ as the supreme and imme- 
 diate object of faith and adoring love becomes apparent. 
 With all its mysticism and its metaphysical Logos-spec- 
 ulation, it presents a view of the personality of Christ and 
 of his direct relation to men which meets the needs of 
 practical life, and corrects the Pauline interpretation in 
 
THE JOHANNINE TRANSFORMATION, 3II 
 
 the interest of establishing the empire of Christianity as 
 a world-religion. 
 
 A marked peculiarity of the Johannine teaching is thej 
 doctrine of the continuation of the work of Christ after 
 his departure by the Holy Spirit. The almost complete 
 identification of Christ with God is indicated in the man- 
 ner in which he is made to speak of the bestowal of the 
 Spirit. Now it is the Father who will give the Paraclete 
 that is, the Advocate, or Helper, by reason of the prayer 
 of Christ, or who will send him in Christ's name, and 
 again it is Christ himself who will send him.* The coming 
 of the Paraclete is said to be conditioned on Christ's go- 
 ing away : " It is expedient for you that I depart ; for if I 
 do not depart the Paraclete will not come to you." Again 
 it is said: " For the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus was 
 not yet glorified."! The presence in believers, and not 
 the existence of the Spirit, is evidently referred to in this 
 last passage. The existence of the Spirit is implied in 
 the existence of God, since it is said to "proceed from the 
 Father," and already to have been given to Christ " with- 
 out measure," wherefore the latter " speaks the words of 
 God." X The Spirit appears to be regarded by the writer 
 as shut up in God and Christ previously to the latter's 
 departure from the earth, and to be conceived as thence- 
 forward a personality in the character of the Paraclete. 
 Personality is unequivocally predicated of him in several 
 passages. He is placed beside Christ as '-^another Para- 
 clete " — words by which it appears to be implied that by 
 reason of the indwelling in him of the Spirit, Christ while 
 on earth performs for his disciples in some sense the 
 functions of the Paraclete, since he is not in the Gospel 
 
 * John xiv., 6, 26, xv, 26, xvi, 7. 
 
 f John vii. 39, xvi. 7. t John iii. 34. 
 
312 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 distinctively called the Paraclete. Again it is said of him 
 that he " will bear witness" of Christ ; that he will "come" 
 to the disciples, will be sent, and will be not merely in 
 but with them ; he will not speak from himself, but what- 
 ever he hears, that he will speak — words which imply his 
 dependence on and subordination to God, just as Jesus 
 was not able to do anything of himself. His subordina- 
 tion to Christ is implied in the words : " He will glorify 
 me, for he will receive of what is mine, and will tell it to 
 you."* He will bring to the remembrance of the disciples 
 what Christ has already taught them. It must be con- 
 ceded, however, that there are other sayings concerning 
 the Spirit in which his personality as distinct from the 
 Father and the Son is not implied. Christ is made to 
 speak of his own personal coming and that of the Spirit 
 in the same breath, as if the two manifestations were iden- 
 tical! ; and after his resurrection he is said to have im- 
 parted the Holy Spirit to the disciples by breathing upon 
 them.:]: But it is evident that if there are three personal- 
 ities in the Johannine divine triad, they are not conceived 
 as equal and together constituting the divine Being, 
 " three in one and one in three." Rather there is a three- 
 fold gradation. Under the Father is the Son, and sub- 
 ordinate to the Son and representing him upon the earth 
 as the '' Spirit of truth " is the Paraclete. The Johannine 
 thought is strictly monotheistic, and recognizes the Father 
 as *' the only true God." If the Logos is God, it is in the 
 sense of absolute dependence on the Father, of subordi- 
 nation to His will, and of inability to do anything of him- 
 self. If the Paraclete is a personality, it is in a sense 
 rather related to Montanism and the beginnings of the 
 
 * John xvi. 14. 
 
 f Johnxiv. 16-19, xvi. 13-16. :f John xvi. 14. 
 
THE JOHA NNINE TEA NSFORMA TION, 3 1 3 
 
 development of Trinitananism than to the later doctrine 
 of the '* triune God.'* 
 
 In its eschatology the Johannine transformation of the 
 gospel of Jesus maintains the *' spiritual " character which 
 has been from an early time attributed to its record. In 
 accordance with its doctrine of the exalted rank of Christ, 
 he is made to speak of his kingdom,'^ while the kingdom 
 of God is retired into the background. This kingdom of 
 Christ is also said not to be " of this world," and there is 
 no trace of the Pauline idea of a renovated earth, the groan- 
 ing creation liberated from its bondage in the Messianic 
 age to come, or of the terrestrial glorious throne of the Son 
 of Man spoken of in the first Gospel.f In this conception 
 of the future the Jewish-Messianic features of the early 
 tradition and the synoptic apocalyptic find no place. 
 "Travail-pains" announcing the approaching birth of a 
 new age, wars, natural convulsions, and Palestinian " tribu- 
 lations," have no part in the great Johannine economy of 
 an inward spiritual development. Here there is no 
 *' abomination of desolation," no " sign of the Son of Man 
 in heaven," no shaking of the celestial " powers," no com- 
 ing of the awful Judge in the clouds *' with great power 
 and glory,'' and no gathering of the affrighted "nations" 
 before his earthly throne. The future is, indeed, full of 
 promise, but the theatre of its blessedness is not to be a 
 " new earth " arched with " new heavens." The divine 
 spiritual order of the Christian life is to continue with the 
 inspiring Paraclete present forever. Christ will come, 
 not with " the sound of a trump" or "the voice of an 
 archangel," but in the silent power of his spirit, and even 
 the Father too will with him make His abode in the souls 
 of the believers. Accordingly, the sharp distinction 
 
 * John xviii. 36. f Matt. xxv. 30. 
 
314 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTEBPRETATIONS. 
 
 between " the present age " and " the age to come " fades 
 away in the conception of a continuous spiritual economy. 
 Here, then, there is no scenic judgment at "the end of 
 the age." Those who believe do not come into judgment, 
 and Christ came not as a judge. The word which he has 
 spoken carries on perpetually the inevitable separation 
 between the children of darkness and the children of light. 
 Satan is not bound with chains and flung into apocalyptic 
 flames, but irresistible spiritual forces begin with the 
 earthly mission of the all-powerful Logos to work his 
 overthrow as prince of this world and to conquer his king- 
 dom of darkness. 
 
 That such is the predominant idea of the Johannine 
 doctrine of the future is manifest to the careful reader of 
 the fourth Gospel. In accordance with it is the fact of the 
 absence of details regarding the second coming of Christ 
 and of a definite statement of its time. The synoptists 
 represent Jesus to have announced it as impending, as to 
 take place indeed, in, his own generation before the 
 apostles should have preached in all " the cities of Israel.'* 
 Paul expected that he himself and those to whom he wrote 
 Avould survive it. But in the Johannine thought the time- 
 determination appears to be lost sight of in the conception 
 of an indefinite, endless spiritual presence of Christ and 
 the Paraclete in the souls of believers. Yet the careful 
 reader will find difficulty in reconciling with this vagueness 
 about the second coming, with this evident design to 
 spiritualize it, and with the teaching which reduces the 
 judgment to the attitude which men may take, by a sort 
 of gravitation according to their natures, toward the 
 "word" of Christ, certain expressions bordering on the 
 synoptic and Pauline apocalyptic. Such are the words 
 concerning th^ raising up of believers " at the last day" 
 
THE JOHA NNINE TRA NSFORMA TION, 3 1 5 
 
 and the solemn announcement that the hour is coming in 
 which all who are in the tombs will hear the voice of 
 Christ, and will come forth, " they who have done good 
 to a resurrection of life, and they who have done evil to 
 a resurrection of condemnation."'^' So deep-rooted, how- 
 ever, in the Christian thought of the second century was 
 the idea of an apocalyptic second coming of Christ to 
 judgment, that it is not surprising that it should find inci- 
 dental expression in a writing whose author appears in 
 general to have left all such conceptions far behind him, 
 and to have subordinated all externality in his apprehen- 
 sion of Christianity to a predominant spirituality and 
 immanence. According to the prevailing point of view of 
 the fourth Gospel the " condemnation " of the unbeliever 
 is not pronounced by an external act of judgment. He 
 " is judged already " because of his unbelief. No last-day 
 assize, no arraignment " in the left hand," no formal con- 
 signment to " everlasting punishment " finds a place in the 
 Hellenistic thought of this writer. In accordance with 
 this '* spiritual " conception he makes no mention, even 
 gives no intimation of a hades, a gehenna, an intermediate 
 state. Rather he appears to think with Philo that " the 
 place of the impious is not that which is fabled to be in 
 hades, for the true hades is the life of the wicked man, 
 exposed to vengeance,with uncleansed guilt, obnoxious to 
 every curse." On the unbeliever, in fact, abides the wrath 
 of God. Tormented by an evil conscience, he remains in 
 darkness, and comes not to the reproving light. He who 
 abides not in Christ *'is cast forth as a branch and is 
 withered ; and men gather it and cast it into the fire, and 
 it is burned." f If no intermediate state finds a place in 
 
 * John vi. 39, 40, 44, 54, v. 28, 29. 
 \ John XV. 6. 
 
3l6 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 this system of thought ; if there is no activity in the 
 grave ; if death is the night *' wherein no man can work "; 
 what is conceived to be the fortune of those who " die in 
 their sins"? This problem appears to be left without 
 definite solution. It is repeatedly said that believers will 
 be raised up " at the last day," /. e., at the second coming 
 of Christ, as if there were no resurrection for any others, 
 and unbelievers perished at death, in accordance with the 
 doctrine which finds frequent expression that belief and 
 life, unbelief and death, are inseparably connected. In 
 the absence of a doctrine of the underworld the dead ap- 
 pear to be conceived of as unconscious *' in the graves," 
 and when once only there is mention of a resurrection of 
 " those who have done evil" it is to *' a resurrection of 
 condemnation " that they come forth. On the whole, the 
 writer appears to see little hope for those who remain in 
 the darkness of unbelief until they '' die in their sins," and 
 there is a remarkable absence in the Gospel of interest in 
 the destiny of those obstinate persons who remained 
 insensible to the light of the great Logos, and whose 
 opposition to him culminated in the detested children of 
 the Devil, the Jews. Whether the overthrow of the prince 
 of this world is conceived as the entire abolition of sin 
 from the universe, and whether the optimistic declaration 
 that Christ will draw all men unto him is intended in the 
 absolute sense of a saving influence upon unbelievers in 
 the hfe to come, there are no data for determining. Ques- 
 tions of destiny were evidently not the chief concern of 
 the writer of this Gospel. Only as to the destiny of the 
 apostles does he speak with precision. They were not to 
 sleep the sleep of death, but Christ having prepared a 
 place for them would come and receive them to himself 
 in the Father's house of many mansions— a saying which 
 
THE JO HA NNINE TRA NSFORMA TION. 3 1 7 
 
 reminds us of Paul's personal longing to be absent from 
 the body and present with the Lord without passing 
 through the gloomy realm of hades.* 
 
 * On the Johannine doctrine see : the Commentaries of Meyer, De Wette, 
 Tholuck, Ewald, Lange, and Holtzmann's Hand-Commentar ; the Introduc- 
 tions of Davidson, Weiss, Holtzmann, Hilgenfeld, Westcott, and Salmon ; 
 the works on Biblical Theology by Immer, Weiss, Baur, and Von Colin ; 
 Keim, Gesch. Jesu, i. pp. 103-172 ; Thoma, Die Genesis des Johannes- 
 Evangel, pp. 177-302 ; Weizsiicker, Apostol. Zeitalter 2te Ausg. pp. 
 531-558 J ^^^srath, Neutest. Zeitgesch., iii. pp. 559 ff. ; Pfleiderer, Das 
 Urchristenthum, pp. 695-786; Tayler, The Fourth Gospel, etc.; Wendt, 
 Die Lehre Jesu, ii. passim ; Lechler, Apostol. u. nachapostol. Zeitalter, 
 2te Ausg. pp. 455-475 ; Martineau, Seat of Authority, Bk. iii. Chap. ii. § 
 4, Chap. iii. § 3 ; Matthew Arnold, God and the Bible, pp. 196-244 ; 
 Hilgenfeld, Das Evangel, u. die Briefe Johannis ; Beyschlag, Neutest, 
 Theol., ii, pp. 462 ff ; Oscar Holtzmann, Das Johannesevangelium, pp. 
 48-92. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 ANTI-GNOSTIC INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 HELLENISTIC speculation exerted, as everybody 
 concedes, a very considerable influence upon the 
 early development of Christian theology. The historical 
 critic of the New Testament, who takes account of facts 
 without regard to their bearing upon dogma, cannot, how- 
 ever, accept the conclusion of Harnack's construction of 
 the history of doctrines, that Hellenism " suddenly " 
 invaded the Church, and attempted to take possession of 
 its theology. Rather he finds that its ideas gradually 
 entered into the Christian consciousness, exerted a growing 
 influence, and were subject to a varied development accord- 
 ing to the different points of view from which they were 
 regarded ; that Paul, the real founder of Christian theology, 
 did not write without reference to them ; that they are 
 distinctively prominent in the deutero-Pauline Epistles; 
 that the Johannine teaching holds them in a solution of 
 its own — in a word, that the real beginnings of the history 
 of doctrines are not to be found altogether in the unca- 
 nonical early literature of the Church, but in its canonical 
 writings as well. The view of the development of primi- 
 tive Christianity of which Pfleiderer has made a masterly 
 elucidation '^ finds that Hellenism was not suddenly 
 
 * It is gratifying to note that this scholar is supported to a considerable 
 degree in this view by so able and cautious a thinker as Weizsacker. See the 
 latter's Apostolisches Zeitalter, 2te Ausg, i8go. 
 
 318 
 
ANTI-GNOSTIC INTERPRETATIONS, 319 
 
 bestowed by the Gnostics upon a Christianity hitherto 
 innocent of it, but rather that gnosticism was itself a natural 
 product of the preceding evolution of Christianity. The 
 Pauline and deutero-Pauline Epistles and the fourth Gos- 
 pel are not, indeed, Gnostic writings ; but the idealization 
 of Christ, the speculative tendencies, the spiritualization 
 of Christianity, and the mysticism contained severally in 
 one and the other of them, are so related to Gnosticism as 
 to furnish an impulse toward it, to say the least. Far 
 from seeking to belittle or overthrow Christianity, the 
 Gnostics in endeavoring to exalt the religion of Jesus above 
 Judaism sought the same end that the orthodox Christians 
 were striving to achieve. Their method was peculiar, and 
 their speculations were more comprehensive and daring 
 than those of the Christian writers with whom they had 
 the closest affinity. The heterogeneous and fantastic 
 ideas which were distinctive features of their systems 
 would no doubt, had they prevailed, have been more harm- 
 ful to Christianity than the Christian mythology and 
 apocalyptic have been. But their purpose was noble, 
 and their mistake was the mistake of most theolo- 
 gians of the Church since their time, that they were too 
 much given to speculation concerning matters which they 
 knew and could know nothing about. Gathering their 
 materials from the oriental cults, the Grecian philosophy, 
 the Old Testament, and the Christian Gospels, founding 
 upon an original opposition of matter and spirit, and 
 imagining that the supreme God, the most spiritual 
 essence, could not come into immediate relation with 
 material things and with evil, they assumed a Demiurge 
 or world-builder whom they identified with the God of the 
 Jews and the Author of the Jewish religion, and subordi- 
 nated to the God of Christianity. As the Demiurge was 
 
320 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 the mediating agent in creation, so Christ, a cosmic prin- 
 ciple, an aeon or emanation, was conceived as the mediat- 
 ing agent in the estabHs'hment in the world-order of the 
 supremacy of the spiritual forces over the sensuous. The 
 heavenly Christ was supposed by some to have descended 
 into the earthly Jesus, while others held the Docetic view 
 that the incarnation was only apparent, and that as a 
 spiritual Saviour Christ could not have inhabited a real 
 material body. It accorded with this speculative tendency 
 that salvation was thought to consist chiefly in right 
 knowledge, while the most contradictory practical results 
 of the system appeared in ascetic practices on the one 
 hand for the suppression of the sensuous nature, and on 
 the other in libertinism and indifference to the distinction 
 of right and wrong. The orthodox Christians were quick 
 to see that these tendencies would, if left to take their 
 course, result in the dissolution of the Church into numer- 
 ous sects of philosophers and mystics, and they set them- 
 selves energetically to oppose them. The New-Testament 
 writings which contain in a greater or less degree the 
 anti-Gnostic interpretation of Christianity are the Epistles 
 written in the name of John, the pastoral Epistles ascribed 
 to Paul, Jude, and 2 Peter. That these were written at a 
 time in the second century when Gnostic ideas were cur- 
 rent is a conclusion of criticism which a careful study of 
 them tends to confirm. 
 
 I. THE FIRST EPISTLE OF JOHN. 
 
 The so-called first Epistle of John, which is rather a 
 homily than an Epistle, is pervaded by a warning against 
 certain false teachers and their doctrines, and its distinc- 
 tive purpose is declared in the words : "These things I 
 
ANTI-GNOSTIC INTERPRETATIONS, 32 1 
 
 have written to you concerning those who seduce you."* 
 These false teachers appear to have gone out of the 
 Church into the world where they found favor with 
 those who were " of the world," and claimed to have a 
 knowledge of God and to dwell in Him and in the "light" 
 as illuminatioi a high order. In their pride of knowledge 
 they appear to have been deficient in " brotherly love," 
 and to have assumed a moral perfection which made 
 them indifferent to the doctrine of redemption and atone- 
 ment. " Antichrists " and " liars," they denied that 
 Jesus was the Christ, and that Jesus Christ came in 
 the flesh — doctrines in which have been recognized the 
 Ebionite heresy and the Docetic Gnosis.'}' The heretical 
 teaching that light and darkness were originally mingled 
 in the divine Being appears to be combated in the dec- 
 laration that " God is light, and in Him is no darkness 
 at all"; and against the Gnostic assertion that the higher, 
 spiritual Christ was incapable of suffering, the atoning 
 significance of his blood is emphatically maintained.;]: 
 In opposition to the Gnostic doctrine that Christ the Son 
 of God descended into Jesus at the baptism, but aban- 
 doned him before the passion, it is asserted that Christ 
 came '* not in the water only, but in the water and in 
 the blood," so that the witnesses agreeing in one are the 
 water of baptism, the blood of the Lord's Supper, and 
 the Spirit, § The moral qualities which are ascribed to 
 the false teachers make them recognizable as the Gnos- 
 tics whose theories of life and conduct are described in 
 the writings of the fathers of the Church who combated 
 
 * I John ii. 26. 
 
 t I John i. 6, ii. 4, 6, 9, 22, iv, 2 f., 15, v. i, 5 ; 2 John 7. 
 
 X I John i. 5, 7,ii. 2, iii. 5, iv. 10. 
 
 § I John V. 6-8. 
 
322 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 them ;* and these in connection with their teachings 
 render it extremely doubtful that Wittichen, Keim, and 
 Haupt are correct in the opinion that the heresies in 
 question were those of the Ebionites, or of Corinth. On 
 the contrary, antinomistic or libertine Gnostics are evi- 
 dently the objects of the writer's denunciations. 
 
 In his opposition to the Gnostic point of view the 
 writer himself does not, however, wholly depart from 
 it in his terminology at least. The highest knowledge 
 of God belongs to the true Christians who have the 
 " anointing from the Holy One, and know all things." This 
 " anointing " is " a truth, and is not a he," as is the teach- 
 ing of the antichrists. They *' know the Spirit of God," 
 because they acknowledge that Jesus Christ came ''in 
 the flesh."! This is the true " Gnosis." An expression 
 borrowed from the Gnostic schools is employed to desig- 
 nate the spirit from which proceeds this true knowledge. 
 This is the divine " seed ":{: which dwells in him who has 
 been born of God. He cannot sin, because His (God's) 
 seed remaineth in him, that- is the divine Spirit abides 
 germinally in his soul in order to come to development, 
 according to the Valentinian Gnosis as explained by Ire- 
 naeus.§ The writer, then, does not appear to reject Gnosis 
 in itself, but only the current heretical apprehensions of 
 it. He lays stress on the knowledge of God, Christ, and 
 the truth, in accordance with the Johannine theology. 
 But the true Gnosis is not regarded by him, as it was by 
 the Gnostics proper, as opposed to Christian faith ; rather 
 it is identical with it. If they claimed to be men of the 
 
 * Clem. Alex. Strom, iii. 4, 31 ; Iren. Adv. haer. i. 6, 2 ; Ign, Ad. Smyr. 
 vi. ; cf. Clem. Recog. ii. 22 ; Epiph. Haer. xxxviii. i. 
 
 f I John ii. 20, 27, iv. 2. % ^"^^pucc, 
 
 § Adv. haer. i. 6, 4 ; cf. TertiU. De anima, xi. 
 
ANTI-GNOSTIC INTERPRETATIONS. 323 
 
 Spirit who were born of God, and to have left behind 
 them as " pneumatics " the merely " psychical " believers 
 of the Church, he claims that the believers in Christ are 
 they who are truly born of God, who have received the 
 anointing of the Spirit, possess the true knowledge, or 
 Gnosis, and have no need that any one should teach 
 them. The dualism of the Epistle, which has an affinity 
 with Gnosticism, recalls the views expressed in the fourth 
 Gospel. Here as there we have on the one hand the 
 children of God, and on the other the Devil and his 
 children. In opposition to the antinomistic libertinism 
 of the antichrists and their followers, the writer empha- 
 sizes with great force and frequent repetition the impor- 
 tance of right conduct and fraternal love. In him who 
 keeps the word of Christ is the love of God perfected, 
 and he who abides in him ought to walk as he walked.* 
 The true fellowship with God does not, however, as the 
 Gnostics taught, consist in knowledge, but in a loving 
 disposition toward God and the brethren, together with 
 faith in Christ. Love is the evidence that we have 
 passed out of death into life, but the love which is em- 
 phasized is not that of mankind in general. The evidence 
 that one has passed out of death into life is that one 
 loves '* the brethren, " and for these one ought even to 
 lay down one's life. *' Every one that loveth Him that 
 begot, loveth also him that hath been begotten of Him," 
 that is, the Christian. " By this we know that we love 
 the children of God, when we love God, and do His com- 
 mandments."')' Faith is rather subordinated to love than 
 accorded the first place as a factor in the Christian life, 
 and is regarded as the result and manifestation of the 
 
 * I John ii. 5, 6, 29, iii. 9, 10. 11. 
 f I John iii. 14, 16, 17, v. i, 2. 
 
324 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 birth from God rather than as the cause of this spiritual 
 state. He who has faith that Jesus is the Christ has 
 been born of God. This emphasizing of the practical side 
 of the Christian life in the exaltation of love for one an- 
 other, in which evidence is given of the indwelling of 
 God and the perfecting of His love in the heart,* to- 
 gether with a mysticism similar to that of the fourth 
 Gospel, furnished a supplementing of the Pauline doctrine 
 of justification by faith, which was required by the moral 
 consciousness. The difficulties which the ethical judg- 
 ment could not but find in the extreme statement of the 
 Pauline doctrine are removed by this fine mysticism, 
 which finds expression in words which have been called 
 the greatest and most beautiful that have ever been 
 spoken concerning religion : " God is love, and he who 
 abideth in love abideth in God and God in him ; Love is 
 of God, and every one who hath love is born of God and 
 knoweth Him ; Whatever is born of God overcometh the 
 world, and this is the victory that overcometh the world, 
 even our faith. This is love to God, that we keep His com- 
 mandments and His commandments are not burdensome ; 
 Hereby we know that we dwell in Him and He in us, 
 because He hath given us of His Spirit." 
 
 That the expression of the noblest religious truths and 
 sentiments is not, however, incompatible in a New-Testa- 
 ment writer with susceptibility regarding doctrinal tenets 
 to the influences of his environment, is evident in the 
 modifications which this author made of the principles of 
 the Johannine school to which he doubtless belonged. 
 In opposition to the Gnostic view that the Jesus of his- 
 tory consisted of the man Jesus and the divine, heavenly 
 Christ he sets up the doctrine that the divine life mani- 
 
 * I John iv. 12, 13. 
 
ANTI-GNOSTIC INTERPRETATIONS. 325 
 
 fested itself in Jesus who as man was at the same time 
 the Son of God, and avoids the original Johannine teach- 
 ing of the fourth Gospel that Christ was the personal 
 Logos distinct from God. Instead of " the Logos who 
 was with God, and was God," he speaks of " the everlast- 
 ing life which was with the Father," "^ Holtzmann, 
 approved by Pfleiderer, remarks that by an elimination 
 of the intervening Logos-conception of the fourth Gospel 
 such a degree of unity between God and Christ is posited 
 that in a large number of cases it is impossible to decide 
 whether God or Christ is the subject. The point of view 
 of the writer is evidently that of the Monarchianism of 
 the second century rather than Trinitarianism. It would 
 appear to be in the interest of a strict monotheism that 
 he also avoids the Johannine doctrine of the personality 
 of the Holy Spirit, and employs instead of formulas 
 which recognize it the expressions : " An anointing from 
 the Holy One " and " Spirit of God," as in the passage : 
 ^' Hereby we know that we dwell in Him and He in us, 
 because He hath given us of His Spirit." f The Paraclete 
 as distinct from the Father and the Son is not recognized. 
 '* The reason why the writer adheres to the Monarchi- 
 anistic thought of the Church of the second century 
 was doubtless the fear that by making the Logos and 
 the Spirit distinct personalities he might come too near 
 the Gnostic-mythological doctrine of the divine mediate 
 beings or ^ons, and slip from the solid ground of mono- 
 theism." ^ This modification of the original Johannine 
 thought is evidently due to the exigencies of the Gnostic 
 controversy, but it is not prejudicial to the interests of 
 religion. In fact, whether intentionally or no may be 
 
 * John i. 2. 
 
 f I John ii. 20, iv. 13. :|: Pfleiderer, 
 
326 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 left undecided, the writer establishes an immediate rela- 
 tion of the soul to God, which Christian theologians since 
 Paul have unhappily disregarded, apparently solicitous 
 lest the person of Christ should not be sufficiently exalted, 
 and his mediatorial office magnified. A distinctive feature 
 of the Epistle, which is not found in the fourth Gospel, 
 is the doctrine that Christ is " the propitiation for our 
 sins."* This conception is rather akin to the idea of the 
 office of Christ as high-priest which is represented in 
 Hebrews than, as Pfleiderer thinks, to the doctrine in the 
 Gospel of the moral purification which Christ effects in 
 the '* taking away " of sin. Another deviation from the 
 Johannine teaching of the Gospel is presented in the 
 eschatology of the Epistle. In opposition to the pre- 
 dominantly spiritual apprehension of the second coming 
 of Christ, which we have seen to be represented in the 
 Gospel, the Epistle speaks of the time " when he shall 
 appear " as near at hand, especially on account of "anti- 
 christ " who appears to have been expected by the readers 
 of the author before the Parousia. The certainty that 
 " the last time is come " appears to be intensified by the 
 fact that already " there are even now many antichrists." f 
 It is difficult to see reasons for regarding this with Pflei- 
 derer as denoting only a "relative difference" in the 
 point of view of the Epistle from that of the Gospel. 
 Again, the doctrine that the believers had in Christ an 
 *' advocate [Paraclete] with the Father," % is entirely 
 foreign to the Gospel. There is, indeed, in the Gospel an 
 implication that Christ is a Paraclete in the words, " I 
 will send you another Paraclete," but the Paraclete of 
 the Gospel is conceived as present with the believers and 
 
 * i'\.a6fi6z, I John ii. 2, iv. lo, and not elsewhere in the New Testament. 
 1 1 John ii. i8, 28. % I John ii. i. 
 
ANTI-GNOSTIC INTERPRETATIONS. 32/ 
 
 not as "with the Father" in the character of an inter- 
 cessor, " if any one have sinned." The thought of the 
 passage in question is evidently analogous to that con- 
 veyed in the mention of the intercession of Christ in 
 earlier writings of the New Testament.* 
 
 2. THE PASTORAL EPISTLES. 
 
 The Pastoral Epistles, i and 2 Timothy and Titus, do 
 not contain an independent and original type of doctrine. 
 Their general point of view is Pauline, f but the writer in 
 applying the teachings of his master to the conditions of 
 the second century has modified them in many particulars, 
 and furnished a weakened Paulinism in which some of the 
 great distinctive features of the apostle's thought are want- 
 ing. That he had the heresies of the Gnostics before him 
 was recognized by Irenaeus and Tertullian, and is hardly 
 mistakable from many passages in the Epistles. The 
 condemnation of " the oppositions of the falsely-called 
 knowledge,":}: or the antithesis of the Gnosis falsely so- 
 called, finds its most probable explanation in a reference 
 to the celebrated Gnostic Antitheses of Marcion. A 
 Gnostic asceticism appears to be combated in the reference 
 to the " speakers of lies " who forbid to marry, and com- 
 mand to abstain from food. § The teaching which is here 
 opposed seems to have proceeded from the duallstic point 
 of view of Gnosticism according to which the Demiurge, 
 and not the good God, was the creator of matter. Gnostic 
 "vain babbling" and allegorizing interpretations of the 
 law put forth by those who desire to be teachers of the 
 law, but who understand neither what they say nor 
 
 * See Rom. viii. 34 ; Heb. vii. 25, ix. 24. 
 
 f I Tim. ii. 7 ; 2 Tim. i. 9, 11, 15, iv. 17 ; Tit. iil. 4. 
 
 X I Tim, vi. 20. § I Tim, iv. 2, 3. 
 
328 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 whereof they affirm, appear to be referred to in the decla- 
 ration that *' the law is good if a man use it lawfully/' in 
 which the practical moral fulfilment of the law is placed 
 'in opposition to Gnostic theories and speculations about 
 it, or perhaps to the denial by certain false teachers of all 
 moral value to it. But the absence of the characteristic 
 Pauline doctrine regarding the law and justification is re- 
 markable as showing the writer's attitude toward the burn- 
 ing questions of the time of the apostle.* The attitude 
 of the Epistles toward the Old Testament favors the ex- 
 treme doctrine of its inspiration, and is doubtless due to 
 the Gnostic depreciation of it and to the exigencies of a 
 time when the Church felt the need of the Scriptures as 
 an objective rule of faith and hfe in the conflict with 
 heresy. Accordingly, the writer admonishes Timothy to 
 continue in the things which he had learned, knowing from 
 what teachers he had learned them, and that from a child 
 he had known the Holy Scriptures which are able to make 
 him wise unto salvation, and then adds the declaration 
 which, on the presumption of its divine authority, has been 
 made the basis of the extreme doctrine of inspiration : 
 *' Every Scripture is inspired by God, and is profitable for 
 teaching, for reproof, for correction, for discipHne in 
 righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect," etc. f 
 The passage presents no difficulty to the student whose 
 point of view enables him to see in it the beginning of a 
 
 * Schleiermacher, who may be regarded as the real founder of the criti- 
 cism of the first Epistle to Timothy, misses here with clear insight the mas- 
 ter's hand. Werke zur Theologie, ii. p. 286. 
 
 f 2 Tim. iii. 15-17. The translation given in the text is that of Noyes 
 with the exception of his probably incorrect rendering of ita^a ypaqyi} by 
 *' all Scripture/' and is supported by the highest authorities. The render- 
 ing : "All Scripture inspired by God is profitable," etc. is incorrect— 
 bB6'itvEv6roZ as an attribute of all Scripture being tautological. See Dc 
 
ANTI-GNOSTIC INTERPRETATIONS. 329 
 
 definite foundation of the dogma of inspiration, or an 
 early phase of the history of doctrines. It is noteworthy 
 in this connection that the writer quotes a passage from 
 the third Gospel with the formula : " The Scripture 
 saith.** * This could not have been done by Paul, for the 
 third Gospel was not in existence in his time, much less 
 regarded as *' Scripture," and quoted in the same breath 
 with the Old Testament as an authority. 
 
 Characteristic of these Epistles, as of the deutero- 
 Pauline theology, is the emphasis which is laid upon the 
 monotheistic doctrine. In apparent opposition to the 
 Gnostic dualism the unity of God is made especially 
 prominent, and predicates of the divine Being are multi- 
 plied to a degree not reached in the Pauline writings, f 
 Some of these predicates border very closely on Gnostic 
 ideas, although they are doubtless not to be taken in the 
 Gnostic sense, % and appear to be directed against the 
 Jewish anthropomorphism at which the Gnostics took 
 offence. Against the Gnostic teaching that the creator of 
 the world was not the supreme God, the writer emphasizes 
 the absoluteness of Deity and His unlimited sway overall 
 things natural and spiritual. The one *' living God " giveth 
 life to all things, is immortal, blessed, the source of all 
 blessedness and truth. § The application to God of the 
 
 Wette, Commentar, ii. 5, p. 49, Holtzmann, Pastoralbriefe, p. 440, and Pflei- 
 derer, p. 805. %E6TtvEv6T0% here only in New Testament. 
 
 * " The laborer is worthy of his wages," i Tim. v. 18, cf, Luke x. 7. 
 These words are not found in the Old Testament. 
 
 f I Tim. i. I, 17, ii. 5, vi. 15, 16. 
 
 X See BadiXevi rmv aiooroov, i Tim. i. 17, king of the aeons, which 
 together give the idea of eternity, according to Wiesinger. This expression 
 is not elsewhere found in the New Testament. See also, "inhabiting light 
 unapproachable, vi. 16, also here only in the New Testament, as is oixwv 
 with the accusative. 
 
 §1 Tim. i. II, iii. 15, iv. lo, vi. 13, 15 ; 2 Tim. ii. 13 ; Tit. i. 2, ii. 13. 
 
330 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATION S. 
 
 designation "Saviour" which elsewhere is almost exclu- 
 sively applied to Christ is a peculiarity of these Epistles. 
 In Titus it is often applied to Him and in i Timothy to 
 Him alone.* The most obvious explanation of this 
 peculiarity is found in an intentional opposition to Gnos- 
 ticism which assumed a creator-God as distinct from God 
 as a Saviour. In the same interest is the emphasis placed 
 upon the " mercy " of God which in two of the Epistles, 
 is added to the " grace and peace " of the genuine Pauline 
 greeting. 
 
 The formulas in which the doctrine of the person of 
 Christ represented in the Epistles is expressed are essen- 
 tially Pauline. Christ is emphatically called " man " in 
 accordance with Paul's teaching, f although the distinctive 
 terms employed by the apostle, "second Adam" and 
 "man from heaven" are wanting. As the Pauline Christ 
 was "born of the seed of David according to the flesh,'* 
 so here we read of " Jesus Christ of the seed of David." % 
 His preexistence is plainly implied in the expressions: 
 " Christ Jesus came into the world," and "was manifested 
 in the flesh." § In the words following this latter citation, 
 "justified in the Spirit," is expressed an idea wholly 
 foreign to Paul, who does not apply justification to Christ. 
 The afifirmation of a manifestation in the flesh reminds us 
 of the Johannine expressions, "became flesh," "to come 
 in the flesh," " to be manifested," || and is evidently di- 
 rected against the Docetic Gnosticism, which denied that 
 
 * I Tim. i. I, ii. 3. ^v. lo ; Tit. i. 3, ii. 10, iii. 4. 
 f I Tim. ii. 5 ; cf. Rom. v. 15 ; i Cor. xv. 21. 
 X 2 Tim. ii. 8 ; cf. Rom. i. 3. 
 
 S I Tim. i. 15, iii. 16. Tischendorf's reading of the latter passage is 
 adopted. 
 
 II John i. 14 ; I John i. 2, iii. 5, 8, iv. 2 ; 2 John 7. 
 
ANTI-GNOSTIC INTERPRE TA TIONS. 33 1 
 
 Jesus had a real human body. The justification of Christ 
 in the Spirit can mean, according to Hoffmann, nothing 
 else than that " he who gave himself out for something 
 which, according to his earthly human nature he did not 
 appear to be, was so far justified as he proved himself to 
 be what he really was," that is by virtue of the spiritual 
 principle which was in him he was shown by his exaltation 
 through the resurrection to be in fact a heavenly being. 
 The writer does not, however, reach the Johannine point 
 of view from which Christ was regarded as the Logos who 
 was God. The interpretation of the words : '* The ap- 
 pearing of the glory of the great God and our Saviour 
 Jesus Christ," ■^' is too doubtful to afford support for a 
 doctrine of the Deity of Christ. 
 
 The Pauline point of view is essentially represented by 
 the writer of these Epistles in the teaching that "Christ 
 Jesus gave himself a ransom for all."f But in the dec- 
 laration that "Christ gave himself for us that he might 
 redeem us from all iniquity, and purify to himself a people 
 to be his own, zealous in good works,":}: we miss the dis- 
 tinctive Pauline thought that Christ redeemed men from 
 "the curse of the law," and find in the conception of re- 
 demption from iniquity the moral and educational influ- 
 
 * Tit. ii. 13. The correct interpretation probably requires that '* of " be 
 inserted before *' our Saviour." Grammatically daorrjpo^ t^jucdv can be at- 
 tached as a second attribute to the article rov, says Meyer. Yet he decides 
 against this interpretation for the reasons that 0£o5 never appears as an at- 
 tribute, while the conjunction of God and Christ as two subjects is common. 
 The Parousia of Christ is evidently the subject of the writer's thought, and 
 the coming of Christ in the " glory of the great God " is probably the idea 
 expressed. 
 
 \ I Tim. ii. 6, dvriXvzfioy, *' price of redemption." This is not, how- 
 ever, a Pauline word. 
 
 X Tit. ii. 14. 
 
332 . THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 ence of Christ substituted for the metaphysical thought 
 of Paul, in accordance with the post-Pauline tendency 
 already pointed out. The difference is marked both in 
 terminology and in conception between the abrogation of 
 the law, and the purification of the individual from iniquity 
 as the result of the death of Christ. Likewise the purifi- 
 cation of " a people to be his own " * is to be understood 
 of a moral renewal ; and Schenkel remarks that the writer's 
 ** mystery of godliness" is a mystery without mysticism. 
 In fact the Pauline mysticism is wanting in the doctrine 
 that Christ " abolished death, and brought life and incor- 
 ruption to light through the Gospel^'' f that is, by means of 
 his teaching. The two great, fundamental facts of the 
 Pauline theology, death and the resurrection, find in these 
 Epistles, indeed, only incidental mention. Certain false 
 teachers, among whose "vain babblings " was the affirma- 
 tion that the resurrection had '* already taken place," are 
 censured, and charged with overthrowing the faith of 
 some. :j: This is evidently not the error combated by 
 Paul of those who denied that there is a resurrection, but 
 rather that of the Gnostics who, according to Irenseus 
 and TertuUian, allegorized and spiritualized that doctrine. 
 It is characteristic of the Pastoral Epistles that they do 
 not give to faith as a factor in salvation the prominence 
 which it receives in the Pauline theology. .Rather it is 
 put in the background or ranked along with the practical- 
 moral virtues. Only in two passages is it mentioned as 
 a means of salvation, § while its association with love, 
 peace, etc., is very frequent, as: ''The end of the com- 
 mandment is love out of a pure heart and a good con- 
 
 * Ttepiovdioi, a word peculiar to this Epistle. 
 
 ■f- 2 Tim. i. 10. t 2 Tim. ii. l8. 
 
 § I Tim. i. l6 ; 2 Tim. iii. 15. 
 
ANTI-GNOSTIC INTERPRETATIONS. 333 
 
 science and faith unfeigned " ; " With faith and love which 
 is in Jesus Christ " ; " If they continue in faith and love 
 and holiness with sobriety " ; '' In word, in behavior, in 
 love, in faith, in purity " ; " Follow after righteousness, 
 godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness."* The espe- 
 cial emphasis laid upon works in many passages may be 
 regarded as at least relatively unpauline in the absence of 
 the central significance of faith, -f* Faith, indeed, is some- 
 times regarded as the trustful appropriation of the truth, 
 sometimes as a body of doctrine, and again as the virtue 
 of fidelity, while the Pauline conception of faith is so far 
 lost sight of that the general notion of godliness usurps 
 its place. :j: Along with all this the Pauline point of view 
 is distinctively maintained on occasion, as when Timothy 
 is admonished to be "strong in the grace that is in Christ 
 Jesus," and when it is declared that God "called us with 
 a holy calling, not according to our works, but according 
 to His own purpose and the grace which was given us in 
 Christ Jesus," and that He " saved us not by works of 
 righteousness which we did, but according to His mercy." § 
 Yet the writer appears to lay an emphasis upon works 
 which has been regarded as a " denial of Pauline princi- 
 ples," when, for example, he says that they who " have 
 served well as deacons gain for themselves a good stand- 
 ing," || and when he enjoins that the rich be charged to 
 do good, be rich in good works, liberal in imparting, etc., 
 
 * I Tim. I. 5, 14, ii. 15, iv. 12, vi. 11 ; cf. 2 Tim. i. 13, ii. 22, iii. 10 ; 
 Tit. ii. 2. 
 
 f I Tim. ii. 10, v. 10, 25, vi. 18 ; 2 Tim. ii. 21, iii. 17. 
 
 X I Tim. ii. 2, iii. 16, iv. 7, 8, vi. 3, 5, 6, 11 ; 2 Tim. iii. 5, 12, 16 ; Tit. 
 i. I, ii. 12. 
 
 § 2 Tim. ii. i, i. 9 ; Tit. iii. 5. 
 
 II I Tim. iii. 13, ''standing" ySaQ/icf?, probably a high degree of blessed- 
 ness in heaven. 
 
334 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 " laying up in store for themselves a good foundation 
 against the time to come."'* This ascription of merit to 
 good works in such a manner as to make salvation depend 
 upon them is so unpauhne that it is regarded even by 
 Weiss as "surprising." "Surprising" from the Pauline 
 point of view certainly is the declaration that although 
 the woman " being deceived fell into transgression," " she 
 will be saved through child-bearing." f One can hardly 
 think of the apostle as striking this note. For although 
 it is doubtless a *' sound thought " that woman best ac- 
 comphshes her -destiny morally by fulfilling her domestic 
 duties, he could not have recognized a " saving " efficacy 
 in their performance, since in his soteriology faith is 
 paramount, and besides, he regarded family cares as a hin- 
 derance to the spiritual life, thinking the unmarried condi- 
 tion preferable *' on account of the impending distress " 
 and because " the time that remaineth is short." % Ii^ this 
 connection Pfieiderer remarks that " it must be conceded 
 in general that the Christianity recommended in the Pas- 
 toral Epistles, that of a simple, practical piety, so far as 
 it abandoned the empty strifes of the theorists about 
 words and the over-strained excesses of the ascetics, de- 
 serves really to be called a sound doctrine, and is alto- 
 gether practicable for the Church, more immediately 
 practicable than the original Paulinism which, though 
 profounder and more spiritual, abounded more for that 
 very reason in theoretical and practical difficulties." 
 
 The manner already referred to in which faith is 
 spoken of, not from the Pauline point of view as an atti- 
 tude of the individual believer, but in the objective sense 
 
 * I Tim. vi. 18, 19. 
 
 f I Tim. ii. 15. Adam, however, was not "deceived" ! 
 
 X I Cor. viii. 25, 26, 29. 34, 38. 
 
ANTI-GNOSTIC INTERPRETATIONS. 335 
 
 jL% a body of doctrine, is an indication of the ecclesiastical 
 interest of the Epistles. The strict, speculative doctrines 
 of the apostle are thrust into the background in the 
 struggle of the Church for existence, and in its place a 
 lax Paulinism and an absorbing practical interest pre- 
 dominate. The conditions are those of an organized 
 rehgious community, '* the beginnings of the Catholic 
 Church." It is charged against the false teachers that 
 they have '* made shipwreck concerning the faith," '* have 
 strayed away from the faith," and " have erred concern- 
 ing the truth."* There is thus an opposition of ortho- 
 doxy and heterodoxy from the genuinely ecclesiastical 
 point of view. The heterodox are they who " teach other 
 doctrine," f and over against this is set with commenda- 
 tion the "sound teaching.":]: The idea of an ecclesiasti- 
 cal standard of belief is so far developed as to lead to the 
 requirement of conformity on the part of individuals. 
 The opinion appears to be correct that in these Epistles 
 is expressed a definite ecclesiastical consciousness, and 
 the idea of the Church receives its dogmatic significance, 
 as in the words, *' House of God, which is the Church of 
 the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth." § 
 
 * I Tim. i. 19, vi. 10 ; 2 Tim, ii. 18 ; cf. iii. 8, " reprobate concerning 
 the faith." 
 
 \ etepodtdadxaXEiv, i Tim. i. 3, vi. 3. The writer of i Timothy, 
 while opposing the extreme Gnostic asceticism, appears not have been with- 
 out some inclination toward this tendency of the time, as is evident from the 
 requirement of the single marriage of deacons and bishops as well as of 
 widows who should be assigned to positions of trust (v. g). " Bodily exer- 
 cise" [6goij.ixtij{7J ■yviJ.va6icx)Qx " the exercise of conscientiousness relative 
 to the body, such as is characteristic of ascetics, and consists in abstinence 
 from matrimony and certain kinds of food " (Grimm-Wilke Lex.), is ac- 
 knowledged to be " profitable a little," or a short time (iv. 8). 
 
 X I Tim. i. 10; Tit. i. 9, ii. i ; cf. " sound words," 2 Tim. i. 13. 
 
 § I Tim. iii. 15, 
 
33^ THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 For the encouragement of believers in view of the false 
 teachings introduced by heretics who denied a future 
 resurrection, etc., it is said of the Church or the tradi- 
 tional belief, that " God's firm foundation standeth, hav- 
 ing this seal, * God knoweth those who are His.' " As "in 
 a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of sil- 
 ver, but also wooden and earthen ones, and some for honor 
 and some for dishonor," so in the Church are true believ- 
 ers and also false teachers with their " profane babblings," 
 whose word, spreading its infection ever wider, '^ will eat 
 as doth a canker."* The conception of a well-developed 
 ecclesiastical institution finds expression in the reference 
 to "the office of a bishop," in the provision for the sup- 
 port of the heads of the Church, in the distinction of the 
 office of teacher, in the ceremony of ordination, in special 
 requirements as to the single marriage of bishops, where- 
 by they are distinguished from " the rest," and in the 
 minute directions regarding "widows." f 
 
 In opposition to the aristocratic soteriology of the 
 Gnostics, who distinguished a class of " pneumatic " or 
 spiritual men as by nature blessed in contradistinction 
 from the "hylic" and "psychical" men, great stress is 
 laid in these Epistles upon the universality of the divine 
 grace. Hence prayer for " all men" is recommended ; it 
 is declared to be the "will of God our Saviour that all 
 men should be saved " ; Christ is said to have given him- 
 self " a ransom for all " ; and God is represented as the 
 Saviour of all men, especially of believers," that is, not 
 especially of those who pride themselves on their Gnosis. 
 "The kindness and love for men of God our Saviour" 
 are emphasized, whose " grace bringeth salvation to all 
 
 * 2 Tim. ii. i6, 17, 19, 20. 
 
 t I Tim. iii. i, 2. v. 17, 18 ; 2 Tim. ii. 2 ; Tit. i. 6. 
 
ANTI-GNOSTIC INTERPRETATIONS, 337 
 
 men." "* In an apparent inconsistency with this point of 
 view, which the author does not attempt to reconcile, is 
 the teaching that those who are Christians are '* called 
 with a holy calling, not according to our works, but ac- 
 cording to His own purpose and the grace which was 
 given us in Christ Jesus before the world began." f Not 
 easily reconcilable, however, with this predestination are 
 the doctrine that in order to be " a vessel of honor" one 
 must ^' purge " oneself, and the saying which the author 
 puts into the mouth of the apostle that he " endures all 
 things for the sake of the elect, that they may also obtain 
 the salvation which is in Christ Jesus." :j: A predestina- 
 tion which is "not according to works " is thus apparently 
 regarded as conditioned not only upon what "the elect" 
 may do for themselves, but also upon what another may 
 do for them. 
 
 No well-defined eschatology appears in these Epistles. 
 From the way, however, in which "the last days" are 
 mentioned the Parousia seems to be a settled article of 
 faith which is assumed as well understood and requiring 
 no definite exposition. This point of view accords with 
 the late date of the Epistles. The " impending distress " 
 which Paul vaguely refers to § is here regarded as at 
 hand, and is specifically indicated as the time when 
 "some [the Gnostics] will depart from the faith, giving 
 heed to seducing spirits and teachings of demons." Ac- 
 cordingly, Timothy is admonished to " keep the com- 
 mandments without spot, without reproach, until the 
 appearing! ^^ ^^^ Lord Jesus Christ, which in His [God's] 
 
 '^ I Tim. ii. i, 4, 6, iv. 10 ; Tit. ii. 11, iii. 4. 
 
 t 2 Tim. i. 9 ; cf. Rom. viii. 28 f ; Eph. i. 11 ; Tit. iii. 5. 
 
 % 2 Tim. ii. 10, 21. § i Cor. vii. 26. 
 
 II kitiq)(x.veta, not used by Paul. Cf, Tit. ii. 13 ; 2 Tim. iv. 8. 
 
33^ THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 own times He shall show." The vagueness of the expec- 
 tation of the Parousia is, indeed, indicated in the words 
 *'in His own times," but there appears to be no good 
 reason for holding with Holtzmann that Timothy is con- 
 ceived to survive the Parousia only as " the representative 
 of future generations of officials." * Since it is uncertain 
 that Paul taught that unbelievers would be raised at the 
 Parousia, the declaration that Christ will *' judge the liv- 
 ing and the dead" is doubtfully Pauhne.f Nearly all 
 the distinctive features of the Pauline eschatology are 
 wanting. There is no mention of the apocalyptic descent 
 of Christ with the sound of a trump and the voice of an 
 archangel, of the resurrection of the believers who had 
 " fallen asleep " and of the "change " of the living Chris- 
 tians, of the deliverance of the groaning creation, of the 
 reign of Christ until his enemies should be put under his 
 feet, and of the saints as judges of the world. The writer 
 does not make Paul express the hope that he may survive 
 the Parousia, but rather the conviction that he is about 
 to die a martyr's death, the time of his departure being 
 at hand 4 
 
 3, THE EPISTLE OF JUDE. 
 
 The so-called Epistle of Jude is not addressed to any 
 particular church or as a circular letter to a collection of 
 churches, but vaguely *' to the called, loved in God the 
 Father and kept by Jesus Christ." It bears no marks of 
 the apostoHc age, and no traces of the Pauline-Jewish 
 controversy appear in it. " The common salvation " is 
 represented as in peril, and the readers are summoned 
 " to contend earnestly for the faith which was once 
 
 * I Tim. iv. I, vi. 14, I5 ; 2 Tim. iii. 1-6. 
 
 t 2 Tim. iv. I. X 2 Tim. iv. 6. 
 
ANTI-GNOSTIC INTERPRETATIONS. 339 
 
 delivered to the saints/' on account of " certain men " 
 who " have stealthily crept in," men " appointed before- 
 hand for this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the 
 grace of our God into wantonness and denying the only 
 Sovereign and our Lord Jesus Christ." * As " an 
 example " of the destruction which awaits these men the 
 writer refers to the faith of unbelieving Israelites, to the 
 apocryphal story of ** the angels who kept not their prin- 
 cipality," and have been ** kept in everlasting chains under 
 darkness unto the judgment of the great day,"f and to 
 the calamity which befell " Sodom and Gomorrah and 
 the cities about them." Not only was the appearance of 
 these unbelievers and libertines foretold by " the apostles," 
 but Enoch " the seventh from Adam " prophesied against 
 them.;}; In view of these perils and evils the writer ad- 
 monishes his readers to build themselves up on their most 
 holy faith, looking for the manifestation of the mercy of 
 the Lord Jesus Christ, which would be shown to them at 
 his coming, " unto eternal life." The theoretical errors 
 about which the writer is filled with anxiety and against 
 which he raises a timely warning are the denial of God as 
 "the only Sovereign" and of the Lord Jesus Christ." 
 Besides this denial of the fundamental Christian principles 
 of doctrine the charge is brought against these heretics 
 and enemies of the truth that they are morally corrupt 
 "turning the grace of our God into wantonness." As 
 
 * Jude 1-5. 
 
 f Jude 6 ; cf. the story in the book of Enoch of the angels who " cor- 
 rupted themselves" with the daughters of men, a. 12, xv. 3. The writer 
 appears to regard the apocryphal book of Enoch as good Scripture. This 
 myth is also recorded in Gen. vi. 2, but the reference to the punishment of 
 the angels shows the quotations in the Epistle to have been made from Enoch. 
 
 \ The word " apostles" is not determinable. Perhaps the writer had in 
 mind i Tim. iv. i ; 2 Tim. iii. i, iv. 3. See Enoch i. 9. 
 
340 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 libertines given over to unbridled lust, they are called 
 " sensual, not having the Spirit." * Not only do they 
 " defile the flesh," but they also " despise dominion, and 
 rail at dignities," i. e., good and evil angels, whereby they 
 show a presumption greater than that of Michael who, 
 when contending with the Devil about the body of Moses, 
 dared not bring against him a railing accusation, f They 
 " rail at the things which they know not," and at the feasts 
 of love are " cliffs " on which others are wrecked, " feeding 
 only themselves " in the satisfaction of their fleshly lusts. 
 The reference to " the faith once deHvered to the saints," 
 as a given and accepted form of doctrine and to the 
 apostles as having delivered their prophecy concerning 
 the scoffers who would appear " at the last time," indicates 
 the post-apostolic age as the time of the writer. A more 
 precise date is furnished with great probability, and a 
 setting of the Epistle is given by which its distinguishing 
 features are explained, in the historical fact of the appearance 
 in Alexandria towards the middle of the second century of 
 Karpokrates and his son Epiphanes, whose teachings and 
 moral principles are so definitely referred to in it, that 
 Clement of Alexandria thought the author of the Epistle 
 prophetically announced them. % In the duahsm of the 
 Gnostics which made a sharp distinction between the 
 spirit and the flesh there lay the peril of moral indifference 
 as to the relations of men to matter, and of a tendency to 
 
 * Jude 4, 9. 
 
 f Jude 8 ; cf. Eph. i. 21 ; 2 Peter ii. 10. The source of this legend 
 of the strife about the body of Moses is unknown. Origen refers it to an 
 apocryphal writing, avdpa6i% rov Moo^eGO^. To the author of the 
 Epistle the story appears to be good Scripture. His conception of canon- 
 icity was evidently not more definite than that of other Christian writers of 
 the middle of the second century. 
 
 i Clem. Alex. Strom., iii. 2, ir. 
 
ANTI-GNOSTIC INTERPRETATIONS. 34I 
 
 regard it as a mark of true spiritual freedom to give free 
 rein to the sensuous impulses and passions. In fact, it is 
 reported of the Karpokratians that their doctrines threat- 
 ened the overthrow of the domestic and social order. 
 Epiphanes in a book on '* Righteousness " appears to 
 have attempted with unequalled effrontery to exalt licen- 
 tiousness into a cult by advocating a community of 
 goods and women and a disregard of the traditional 
 rights of the marriage relation as hostile to the more 
 sacred rights of nature. The righteousness of God, he 
 taught, is community under the condition of equality. 
 The natural order of absolute community and equality 
 has been violated by the evil angels who have limited the 
 community of goods by the institution of property and 
 that of women by establishing marriage. The god of the 
 Jews, the subordinate of the Supreme One, commanding 
 that a man should not covet his neighbor's goods or 
 wife was the cause of theft and adultery, according to 
 Paul's doctrine that sin is known through the law. Re- 
 garding Christ he taught that he was a man like other 
 men, the son of Joseph, and had only this advantage over 
 others, that his remarkably strong and pure soul remem- 
 bered what in his preexistence he had seen near to God. 
 Therefore he was loved of God, and endowed with power 
 from on high at the baptism that he might escape the 
 world-creator. One cannot but recognize in the Epistle 
 the condemnation of the immorality, of the denial of the 
 sovereignty of God, and of the current ideas of Christ, 
 which characterized this Gnostic sect. There appear, 
 accordingly, to be very good grounds for Mayerhoff's con- 
 jecture that the writing originated in Alexandria where 
 the book of Enoch and the Assumption of Moses were 
 held in high esteem. 
 
342 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 4. THE SECOND EPISTLE OF PETER. 
 
 The second Epistle written in the name of Peter is 
 vaguely addressed to " those who have obtained like 
 precious faith with us," and like that of Jude is directed 
 against the " false teachers " who threatened to overthrow 
 the Christian doctrine and corrupt the Church. In fact, 
 almost the entire substance of Jude has been incorporated 
 into it, and it may be regarded as a variation on the theme 
 of the other without the force, directness, and clearness of 
 the original.* The writer avoids the quotation of apoc- 
 ryphal books at which the author of Jude did not scruple, 
 although ii. 1 1 shows an acquaintance with Jude 9 and 
 doubtless a use of its idea in a way to avoid the recogni- 
 tion of an apocryphal writing. The point of view of the 
 writer is practical and hortative rather than doctrinal. He 
 writes in apparent ignorance of the Pauline and Johannine 
 theologies and of the controversies of the apostolic age. 
 " The knowledge of Jesus Christ " \ is made more promi- 
 nent than faith which is mentioned in connection with 
 virtue, knowledge, etc., % and nothing is said of the atone- 
 ment and of the death and resurrection of Christ. A doc- 
 trine which is not apostolic, and does not find elsewhere 
 a post-apostolic expression, is that through the promises 
 of God believers may "become partakers of the divine 
 nature.*' § Against the " cunningly devised fables " of 
 the false teachers the writer proposes to make known to 
 his readers '* the power and coming (the Parousia) of our 
 
 * 2 Peter ii. n compared with Jude g is vague and flat, ii. 12 is a misin- 
 terpretation of the image in Jude 10, and ii. 17 contains a confusing of the 
 figures in Jude 12 f. Compare further iii. 2 with Jude 17, and iii. 3-5 with 
 Jude 18, where the original is expanded so as to change the theme entirely. 
 
 f 2 Peter i. 2, 8, ii. 20, iii. 18. 
 
 X 2 Peter i. 5-8. § 2 Peteri. 4, 0£z'a5 (pvdeGo<;. 
 
ANTI-GNOSTIC INTERPRETA TIONS. 343 
 
 Lord Jesus Christ" through the personal testimony of the 
 reputed author, Peter, in the voice from heaven at the 
 transfiguration. Something more sure than even this is, 
 however, " the prophetic word," or this word is made more 
 sure by the voice heard '* in the holy mount." ^ At any 
 rate '* the power and coming " of Christ are established 
 by prophecy, although the place where these prophetic 
 words may be found is not indicated, and the writer takes 
 occasion to express the dogma of the Church in his time 
 that the Old Testament was given by divine inspiration. 
 ** For prophecy never came by the will of man, but moved 
 by the Holy Spirit, men spoke from God." f 
 
 The writer apparently turns aside to answer a class of 
 " scoffers " not mentioned in Jude, those who *' in the last 
 days " ask : " Where is the promise of his [Christ's] com- 
 ing? for from the time when the fathers fell asleep all 
 things continue as then, and as they have continued from 
 the beginning of the creation." Hereupon he takes 
 occasion to set forth at some length his views of the sec- 
 ond coming of Christ beginning with a peculiar cosmogony 
 which runs to the effect that the heavens were made by 
 the word of God, but an earth was *' formed out of water 
 and by the water," by means of which came the deluge ; 
 but the present heavens and earth are " reserved for fire 
 against the day of judgment and the perdition of ungodly 
 men.":]: He then proceeds to set aside the taunt of the 
 " scoffers " by reminding the " beloved " that " one day is 
 with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years 
 as one day." The delay of the Parousia is on account 
 of God's long-suffering toward them, since He is " not 
 willing that any should perish but that all should come to 
 
 * The meaning of the words is doubtful. 
 
 f 2 Peter i. 16-21 ; cf. iii. 2. % ^ Peter iii. 4-8. 
 
344 '^^^ GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 repentance." '' But the day of the Lord will come as a 
 thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a great 
 noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat, and 
 , the earth and the works which are therein will be burned 
 up."* Then follows a practical application of the teaching 
 in an exhortation to the " beloved " to be godly, looking 
 for and hastening [i, e., by their repentance obviating the 
 further long-suffering of God) the day, after the terrors of 
 which are looked for according to His promise new heavens 
 and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness, f This 
 latter feature suggests the Pauline idea of the deliverance 
 of the groaning and travailling creation from the bondage 
 of corruption. But as the crash of the heavens and the 
 world-conflagration are wanting in Paul's conception of the 
 end, so here we miss the apostle's humane interest in the 
 believers who had " fallen asleep," the resurrection, the 
 "change" of the faithful living, the ascent to meet the 
 longed-for Christ in the air, and the blessed " forever with 
 the Lord ! " For the false teachers and their followers 
 and apparently for unbelievers generally the writer of this 
 Epistle has no words of hope. '' The judgment long ago 
 ordained lingereth not, and their destruction slumbereth 
 not." " Children of a curse," their last state is worse than 
 their first, if they have turned from the holy command- 
 ment delivered to them. With '' the day of judgment " 
 is connected " the perdition of ungodly men." The un- 
 
 * 2 Peter iii. 8-10. 
 
 f This " promise" (iii. 13) is not, however, pointed out. Did the writer 
 perhaps think that by the current method of interpretation it could be derived 
 from the Old Testament, or had he in mind certain passages in the book of 
 Enoch, " The former heaven will pass away, and a new heaven will ap- 
 pear" ? Enoch xc. 17 ; cf. liv. 4. 5, x. 27, 1. 6. The idea of a conflagra- 
 tion of the earth was probably borrowed from the ancient Greek natural 
 philosophy. 
 
ANTJ-GNOSTIC INTERPRETATION S, 345 
 
 righteous the Lord " knoweth how to reserve under pun- 
 ishment to the day of judgment," so that they are sup- 
 posed to enter immediately at death upon their torment. 
 This doom is ''chiefly" reserved for those who "walk 
 after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness, and despise 
 dominion." '^ The prominence of eschatological teaching 
 in the Epistle furnishes support to the opinion that its real 
 object was not so much to refute the false teachers of the 
 Epistle of Jude as those who in the time of the writer ad- 
 vocated the unchangeability and permanence of the world 
 and spiritualized the second coming of Christ or denied it 
 altogether,! Spiritualistic views of this sort prevailed 
 under gentile-Christian influence in the latter half of the 
 second century, and no dealing with them could have 
 been deemed more effective than to combat them under 
 the name of an apostle. :J: 
 
 * 2 Peter ii. 3, g, 15, 20, iii. 7. 
 
 f Irenaeus perhaps refers to these teachers, Adv. haer., v, 19, 2 : substan- 
 tiam a semetipsa floruisse et essa se natam , . . alii adventum Domiiie 
 contemnunt, etc. 
 
 \ Besides the general works referred to at the end of the preceding chap- 
 ter the student may consult: Holtzmann, Die Pastoralbriefe, etc., 1880; 
 Kostlin, Lehrbegr. des Evangel, und der Briefe Johannes ; the articles on 
 "Johannes" and *'Petrus" in Herzog's Real Encyclop., and those on 
 " Johannes, Briefe des," " Pastoralbriefe," and " Petrus der zweite Brief 
 des," in Schenkel's Bibel-Lexicon ; Hilgenfeld, Das Evangel, und die Briefe 
 Johannes ; Baur, Die Pastoralbriefe, etc. ; Lipsius, Der Gnosticismus, sein 
 Wesen, Ursprung, und Entwickelungsgang, 1S60, and article "Gnosis" in 
 Schenkel's Bibel-Lexicon ; Hilgenfeld, Die Johanneischen Briefe, Theol. 
 Jahrb. 1855, pp. 471 £E. ; the De Wette-Briickner and Meyer-Huther Com- 
 mentaries on the Epistle in question. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 JEWISH-CHRISTIAN APOCALYPTIC. 
 
 JEWISH-CHRISTIAN apocalyptic exhibits the dis- 
 tinctive traits of its Jewish predecessor together with 
 certain modifications of the latter determined by 
 a beHef in Jesus as the Messiah. Common to both are 
 fantastic ideas of God's relation to the world and a naive 
 disregard of the historical continuity of affairs. The 
 Jewish apocalyptic literature has been described by one 
 scholar as *' an imitation of prophecy called forth by the 
 longing of a time destitute of prophets," * and by another 
 as "that species of Scripture dating from the Maccabean 
 age, in which the prophetic spirit put forth an after-bloom 
 which in originality and religious worth is far inferior to 
 the writings of the old prophets." \ A study of it with 
 reference to the later Jewish idea of God has resulted in 
 the definition: "A detachment of the Messianic expec- 
 tations from the earthly political ideal and an enhance- 
 ment of them into the supernatural." % To whatever 
 cause may be due this enhancement of the original 
 Messianic ideal into the supernatural, it is manifestly a 
 distinctive feature of the Jewish apocalypses from Daniel 
 (167 B.C.) to the later productions of this literature which 
 belong to the first century of our era. They are charac- 
 
 * Hilgenfeld, Die JLidisch. Apokalyptik, p. 10. 
 f Pfleiderer, Das Urchristenthum, p. 307. 
 \ Baldensperger, Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu, 2te Aufl. p. 100. 
 
 346 
 
JEWISH-CHRISTIAN APOCALYPTIC. 347 
 
 terized not only by an idealization of the person of the 
 Messiah, but also by a conception of divine judgment 
 which proceeds catastrophically in disregard of the natural 
 relation of cause and effect. An eschatological consum- 
 mation which sets historical development at defiance, a 
 Messianic kingdom descending from heaven, and a Messiah 
 riding on the clouds, are fantastic traits of this strange 
 literature. 
 
 The influence of their apocalyptic national literature 
 upon the Jewish-Christian New Testament writers is evi- 
 dent from a comparison of the portions of their works 
 which belong to this category with the former. An ideal- 
 ization of Jesus, the persistent tendency to which has 
 already been frequently pointed out, corresponding to that 
 of the expected Messiah among the Jews during the 
 century or two preceding our era, and an ardent desire 
 for his re-appearance in a truly glorious Messianic mani- 
 festation, were conditions favorable to the production of 
 Christian apocalypses. The apocalyptic section in the 
 synoptic Gospels has already been referred to, and reasons 
 have been given for thinking that it was the product of 
 the Messianic hopes and expectations of the Jewish- 
 Christian followers of Jesus rather than a report of actual 
 words of his. It is not without significance that criticism 
 has detected a Jewish-apocalyptic kernel in this section, 
 around which the entire apocalypse of the Parousia 
 appears to have been constructed. Whether this critical 
 hypothesis be tenable or no, the imitation of the apoc- 
 alyptic literature of Judaism is unmistakable in the syn- 
 optic apocalypse with its Messiah oh the clouds, its 
 " throne of glory," and its general catastrophic features. 
 
 Besides the apocalyptic features contained in the genu- 
 ine Epistles of Paul, which have been discussed in Chapter 
 
34^ THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 Ill, the little apocalypse in 2 Thessalonians ii. 1-12 which 
 forms the centre of this writing, and for the sake of which 
 the letter was probably composed,* requires consideration 
 here. Apart from other reasons for its spuriousness, 
 which cannot be discussed here, the rest of the Epistle is 
 so manifestly an imitation of the first as to leave little 
 room for doubt of it. The second chapter has been 
 characterized as *' a transference of the apocalyptic escha- 
 tology into the Pauline sphere of thought." \ Here 
 traits appear which are unpauline and irreconcilable with 
 the point of view of the first Epistle. In the latter " the 
 day of the Lord " is represented as coming without any 
 sign, like " a thief in the night," and this the Thessalonians 
 are said to '* know full well," and '' as sons of the light " 
 not to be " in darkness " that it should " overtake " them4 
 Paul himself expects to be among the '* living " who shall 
 witness the descent of Jesus from the heavens *' with a 
 loud summons, with the voice of an archangel, and with 
 the trump of God." § But in the little apocalypse of 
 the second Epistle not only are the readers cautioned 
 against thinking the great day *' near at hand," but defi- 
 nite indications of its approach are mentioned. It will 
 not come, the writer declares, " until the apostasy shall 
 have come first, and the man of rin have been revealed, 
 the son of perdition ; he that opposeth and exalteth him- 
 self above every one that is called God, or worthy of 
 worship, so that he sitteth in the temple of God showing 
 himself to be God." || The readers, are asked, moreover, 
 
 * Weizsacker, Das apostol. Zeitalter, 2te Aufl. pp. 238 f. 
 f Holtzmann, Einleit., 2te Aufl. p. 240. 
 X I Thess. V. 2, 5. 
 § I Thess. iv. 15. 16. 
 II 2 Thess, ii. 2-4. 
 
JE WISH-CHRISTIAN APOCAL YP TIC. 349 
 
 if they do not remember that Paul himself had told them 
 all these things when he was with them. The prominent 
 features of the section in question show more affinity 
 with the so called Johannine Apocalypse than with the 
 genuine Pauline eschatology which is distinguished by a 
 soteriological interest, whose absence is characteristic of 
 this spurious construction of " the last things." Opposing 
 the indolence which arose from the expectation of the 
 Parousia near at hand and intent on introducing his 
 peculiar eschatology, the writer deals in terms which are 
 obscure and inexplicable. Who is intended by " the man 
 of sin, the son of perdition," and what is "that which re- 
 straineth " (ro narkxov) or '* the one that restraineth " 
 (o Karkxoov\ cannot be certainly determined. This only 
 is certain, that the writer had in mind conditions of his 
 own time, whether the Roman power as it was toward 
 the end of the first century, or the heresy and heretics 
 of the beginning of the second. The adversary, " the 
 Satanic counterpart of the Parousia," he declares, in true 
 apocalyptic style, " the Lord Jesus will consume with 
 the breath of his mouth, and destroy with the mani- 
 festation of his coming." * 
 
 The canonical Christian apocalypse /^r /^/;2^«^^ is that 
 traditionally ascribed to the apostle John, and known in 
 our English Bible as the Revelation. That it was not 
 written by John, however, is a conclusion scarcely contest- 
 able in view of the recent critical investigations of its 
 character and composition, among which are deserving of 
 especial mention the contributions of Volter, Vischer, 
 Weizsacker, Pfleiderer, and Weyland. These scholars all 
 agree that the work is the composition of different writers, 
 whose contributions were made at different times more or 
 
 =^ 2 Thess. ii. 8. 
 
350 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 less remote,* It would be foreign to the present purpose 
 to enter into a discussion of the origin of this writing, 
 since we are concerned with it only as an interpretation 
 of the gospel. The question whether the groundwork of 
 the book is Jewish or Jewish-Christian is of course impor- 
 tant for the end in view, but as the reasons for the former 
 hypothesis are by no means conclusive f or generally 
 accepted, our discussion may well proceed upon the latter. 
 The work is as to its greater part distinctively an apoca- 
 lypse {anoxaXvipi^ or a revelation concerning the last 
 things, according to the eschatological apphcation of the 
 term established by Paul,:): and is occupied with dis- 
 closures of the future fortune and consummation to which 
 the kingdom of God on earth was supposed to be hasten- 
 ing. Like its Jewish prototype it presupposes a time of 
 storm and stress, when men felt that the existing tribula- 
 tion was no longer endurable, and looked with eager 
 expectation for the intervention of the celestial powers to 
 bring relief and effect the triumph of their cause by a 
 violent rupture of the course of events. Since it is evi- 
 dent from the declarations in the first chapter that the 
 disclosures are of " what must shortly come to pass,*' and 
 that " the time is at hand," § the only hermeneutical 
 
 * Volter's division is as follows : I. The original Apocalypse of the apostle 
 John of the year 65 or 66 ; 2. An addition by the same hand of the year 68 
 or 69 ; 3. The first revision in the time of Trajan ; 4. The second revision 
 of the year 129 or 130 ; 5. The third revision of the year 140. — Die Entste- 
 hung der Apokalypse, 1885. Vischer regards the work as an original Jewish 
 apocalypse with additions by the hand of a Christian, Die Offenbarung 
 Johannis, etc., 1866. 
 
 f This hypothesis is, however, supported by Harnack and Martineau. See 
 the former's "Nachwort" to Vischer's treatise and the latter's Seat of 
 Authority in Religion, pp. 225 f. 
 
 \ Rom. ii. 5, viii. IQ- 
 
 §Rev. i. I, 3. 
 
JEWISH-CHRISTIAN APOCALYPTIC, 35 I 
 
 method by which the problems of the book can be solved 
 is the one that seeks the key to them in the circumstances 
 of the time of the writer or writers. Its interpretation 
 has been greatly impeded by the presumption that all its 
 allusions to men and events must be explained with 
 reference to the time of the apostle John, and by the 
 allegorizing which has applied them throughout the whole 
 extent of the history of Christendom. 
 
 With regard to Vischer*s contention that the Revelation 
 presents no unity of doctrine, Judaism and Christianity 
 lying in it side by side without reconciliation, Holtz- 
 mann's discrimination is important, that a distinction 
 must be made between a Jewish basis of the apocalyptic 
 sphere of thought and a Jewish groundwork of the book 
 as a literary product.'^ Evidences of the former abound 
 in the prevailing Old-Testament modes of thought and 
 images and the reverence and affection shown for Jeru- 
 salem, the " holy " and the " beloved " city. The earth 
 is the theatre of the eschatological drama, and when " the 
 first earth " has " passed away " a new heaven and a new 
 earth are created — " an evident proof of the genuinely 
 Jewish materiality of this contemplation of the world." 
 But this may be also Jewish-Christian ; for, as Baur 
 remarks, the Revelation passes here only by degrees 
 beyond the synoptic Gospels and the Pauhne sphere of 
 thought. The idea of God is Judaeo-theocratic rather 
 than Christian. He sits on his throne in heaven — that 
 "archetypal sanctuary," for in the Jewish theology as 
 well as in Hebrews heaven is " the idealized archetype 
 of the earth." He is the Almighty, King, Lord {pEan6rr}<^^ 
 and out of His throne proceed thunders and lightnings, f 
 
 * Hand-Commentar, iv. p. 266. 
 
 I Rev. i. 8, iv. 5, 8, xi. 17, xv. 3, xvi. 7, 14, xxi. 22. 
 
352 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 He is the " only holy," the one '' who is, and was, and is 
 to come," "the Alpha and the Omega."* He reigns in 
 magnificent state, "in appearance" on his throne " like 
 a jasper-stone and a sardius." Twenty-four "elders," 
 probably representing the martyrs, golden-crowned and 
 white-robed, sit on twenty-four thrones around Him. 
 There are seven lamps of fire, "which are the seven 
 spirits of God," and "a sea of glass," and four "living 
 creatures " representing perhaps the totality of created 
 beings, t His prominent attribute is justice which ex- 
 presses itself in penalty. Vengeance and retribution 
 proceed from Him and His wrath issues in terror and 
 blood. X His paternal relation to men is scarcely recog- 
 nized. 
 
 The doctrine of the person of Christ in the Revelation 
 is unique among the Christologies of the New Testament 
 in having as its basis the Messianism of the Old Testa- 
 ment and the later Judaism — a fact which has influenced 
 opinion adversely to the unity of the book. He is " King 
 of kings " and " Lord of lords," the " Hon that is of the 
 tribe of Judah " and "the shoot from David." § He is 
 the ruler of the nations and governs them " with a rod of 
 iron," a sharp sword issues from his mouth, that with it 
 he may smite them, and " he treadeth the wine-press of 
 tthe fierceness of the wrath of God Almighty."! The 
 child of the theocracy, he escapes at his birth the pursuit 
 of the Devil, "the great red dragon" and is "caught up 
 to God and His throne." Along with these Jewish or 
 Jewish-Christian traits appear various distinctively Chris- 
 
 * Rev. i. 8. Cf. Isa. xliv. 6. See also iv. g, xv. 3, xviii. 8. 
 
 f Rev. iv. 3-11. X Rev. xiv. 20, xvi. i, xix. 15, 17-21. 
 
 § Rev. V. 5, xvii. 14, xix. l6. 
 
 I Rev. xii. 5, xix. 15. See Ps. ii. g, Isa. xi. 4 ; Ps. Salom. xvii. 26. 
 
JEWJSH-CHRISTIAN APOCALYPTIC. 353 
 
 tian designations of Christ. He is called "the first-born 
 of the dead," the one who "overcame and sat down with 
 my father on his throne." * The conquering of the Devil 
 in a "war" and the casting of him out of heaven, his 
 abode down to the time of this conflict, apparently, is 
 celebrated as a vindication of the " authority " of Christ. 
 This transfer of Christ's conflict with Satan from the 
 earth, where it takes place according to the Gospel-story, 
 to heaven, is peculiar, and accords with the indifference 
 manifested throughout the book to the earthly life of 
 Jesus — a trait of apocalypse, which is nothing if not un- 
 historical. It comports with the extravagant idealization 
 of Christ which pervades this work that various predicates 
 of the Deity are here applied to him. He is called " the 
 first and the last, the beginning and the end, the Alpha 
 and the Omega." As the exalted Lamb he receives 
 divine worship from the angels and the entire creation, 
 and in one place traits of "the Ancient of Days" in 
 Daniel are ascribed to him. f An ascription to him of 
 a divine nature does not, however, appear to be implied 
 in these designations. He is not called Lord God, and 
 the term Almighty is reserved for the Deity alone. In 
 fact, he is said to have been " the beginning of the 
 creation of God," or the first creature— an exaltation 
 inferior to that in Hebrews i. 10, " Lord, who in the 
 beginning didst found the earth." It is probable also 
 that deification is not intended in the application to Jesus 
 of the term, "the Logos of God,":}: which is used in 
 connection with the comparison of this agency to a sharp 
 sword proceeding out of his mouth — a figure of his execu- 
 
 * Rev. i. 5, ii. 8, iii. 2l, vii. 17. See xxii. i, 3, "throne of God and the 
 Lamb. '' 
 t Rev. i. 13, 17, xxi. 6, xxii. 13. % Rev. xix. i3. 
 
354 ^^-^ GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 tion of the penal judgments of God. The designation 
 probably signifies that it is he who discloses and fulfils 
 the word of God. While there is an implication here of 
 the preexistence of Christ, the doctrinal point of view 
 is evidently remote from that of the fourth Gospel in 
 which Christ is conceived not as " the Logos of God," 
 but as '* the Logos " (o Xoyo^) absolutely. We have here 
 perhaps the beginning of the later developed Logos 
 doctrine, the contribution of Jewish Christianity to the 
 conception which it required the Alexandrian philosophy 
 to complete. The ideal character of the Christology of 
 the book comports with the apocalyptic point of view. 
 All the exalted qualities ascribed to the Messiah are 
 purely nominal, and have no connection with him as a 
 concrete personality. The extravagant eschatological 
 expectations in which the book is rooted appear to have 
 been the motive of the Christology, and the Messiah who 
 was to come is conceived to be endowed with qualities 
 and powers corresponding to the imagined splendors of 
 his advent. 
 
 With reference to the work of Christ the emphasis is 
 laid as in Paul upon his death, and the Johannine idea 
 of his love for the believers finds distinct expression. 
 An ascription of praise is made to " him who loveth us, 
 and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and made 
 us a kingdom, priests to God his Father." * The Pauline 
 terminology is employed in the use of dyopdZ^iv, " to 
 buy off," to redeem: '* Thou wast slain, and hast 
 redeemed us (bought us off) to God by thy blood." f 
 The redeemed are clothed in garments made white by 
 "the blood of the Lamb." Through the blood of Christ 
 is founded the kingdom of God, and believers are made 
 
 * Rev. i. 5. t T^y6f>ada<^ rc?0£(^, v. g. 
 
JE WISH-CBRISTIAN APOCAL YP TIC, 355 
 
 subjects and priests therein. The designation of Christ 
 as "the Lamb" (ro apviov^^ occurring twenty-nine times 
 in the course of the book, was probably derived from 
 Isaiah liii. 7, where the pious remnant of the people are 
 represented as suffering for the nation, and as brought 
 like a "lamb to the slaughter.'' For Christ himself his 
 death is represented as the means through which he 
 gained glory and distinction. He is accounted worthy 
 to open the seals of the book because he was " slain/'* 
 This denotes a distinct opposition to the later Johannine 
 doctrine according to which the glory of Christ belonged 
 to him originally, was had with the Father before the 
 world was, and hence was not acquired by his earthly suf- 
 fering. In his exaltation he shares the divine power, sits 
 with the Father on His Throne, is Lord of lords and 
 King of kings, Lord of the kings of the earth, and has the 
 keys of death and the underworld. f The emphasis 
 placed on the resurrection of Christ is Pauline, but here 
 as in the matter of his death there is no definite appro- 
 priation of the fact for the founding of a soteriological 
 doctrine. The book was not written by a Christian philo- 
 sopher like Paul. Its prominent theme is the exaltation 
 of Christ and the victory which he was to win. After the 
 war in heaven which resulted in the overthrow of Satan, 
 the conflict carried on with him by "the brethren" on 
 the earth terminates in their victory " because of the 
 blood of the Lamb." 
 
 With respect to man's part in salvation the Revelation 
 represents the Old-Testament point of view. On the 
 human side the essence of religion is the keeping of the 
 commandments of God. Everything depends upon 
 " works " {Jpyoi) : " Blessed are the dead who die in the 
 
 * Rev. V. g, 12. f Rev. i. 18, iii. 21, xvii. 14, xix. 16. 
 
356 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 Lord, and their works follow them," i. ^., determine their 
 future condition. The dead are judged according to their 
 works, and a judgment book is kept in which these are 
 recorded. The Church in Sardis is censured because its 
 "works have not been found perfect before God."* 
 There is no trace in the book of the Pauline doctrine of 
 justification by faith. In accordance with the stress of 
 the time the practical rather than the dogmatic aspect of 
 faith is made prominent. The faith in Jesus (;; niiSti^ 
 ""Itjgov) which is commended and enjoined is fidelity to 
 the confession of him so important amid the trials of the 
 hour. Hence faith is associated with love, ministry, and 
 patience, and even included among the i'pya, f The chief 
 requirements which are made of Christians are not to deny 
 Jesus, to keep his testimony, hold fast his word, to hold 
 fast that which they have, not to love their lives, even to 
 death, and not to suffer their crown to be taken from 
 them. X The Christian's life is a conflict, and especially 
 honored are the martyrs, who shall be clothed in white, 
 " as an evidence of the justice of their cause and of the 
 divine approval." 
 
 The Revelation represents in general rather the Jewish- 
 Christian than the Pauline apprehension of the mission of 
 Christianity. In the enumeration of the host of those 
 who had been "redeemed" by the blood of Christ are 
 included " men out of every tribe and tongue and 
 people," § but gentiles are not recognized as having equal 
 privileges and rights with Jews as denizens of the new 
 Jerusalem. The preeminence of Israel is expressed in 
 
 * Rev. iii. 2. 
 
 f Rev. ii. 19, xiv. 12. 
 
 X Rev. ii. 13, 25, iii. 8, vi. 9, xii. 11, 17. 
 
 § Rev. v. 9, vii. 9. 
 
JEWISH-CHRISTIAN APOCALYPTIC. 357 
 
 the declaration that the one hundred and forty-four 
 thousand who are "sealed" are from the twelve tribes, 
 and on the twelve gates of the new Jerusalem are in- 
 scribed the names of these tribes. Censure is, indeed, 
 not spared for those "who say they are Jews and are not, 
 but are a synagogue of Satan/' "^ and the crucifixion of 
 Christ is represented as avenged upon Jerusalem, which 
 for this crime is called spiritually Sodom and Egypt ; f 
 yet only a tenth part of the city is destroyed, and only 
 seven thousand of the inhabitants perish, while " the rest 
 become afraid, and give glory to the God of heaven.":]: 
 It is significant that the temple is spared, and that the 
 thousand years' reign has its central point in the beloved 
 city. " The faith of the book may be called Jewish- 
 Christian ; but it is neither the Jewish Christianity of 
 the primitive Church nor its later Ebionitism. It distin- 
 guishes itself from the former by the wider recognition of 
 gentile Christianity as well as by the developed doctrine 
 of the atoning death of Jesus and the acknowledgment of 
 the same in its total significance for salvation. It is still 
 farther removed from that later legal and exclusive Juda- 
 ism. The requirement of circumcision is throughout 
 foreign to and irreconcilable with its spirit." § 
 
 The book contains a mythology whose fantastic features 
 find ample room for expression in its apocalyptic purpose. 
 Angels play a prominent part in the drama whose theatre 
 is the celestial and terrestial regions and the underworld. 
 An angel stands in the sun ; there is an angel of the waters ; 
 one ascends from the East ; one stands on the sea ; there 
 
 * Rev. ii. 9, iii. 9. 
 
 •|- Rev. xi. 8. 
 
 % Rev. xi. 13. 
 
 § Weizsacker, Das apostol. Zeitalter, 2te Aufl. p. 525. 
 
358 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 is an angel of the bottomless pit ; hosts of them stand 
 around the throne of God ; four angels stand on the four 
 corners of the earth ; and there are seven angels with 
 trumpets who announce the seven plagues.* Angels rule 
 over the elements and execute the divine penal judg- 
 ments. Michael and his angelic hosts fight against the 
 dragon and his angels, and cast them out of heaven. The 
 great mythologic adversary of the Church, Satan, the 
 Devil, the dragon, the serpent, the great red dragon, plays 
 an important role in this vivid apocalypse. A spiritual 
 opponent of goodness, he bears a resemblance to " the 
 prince of this world " in the fourth Gospel, and there is 
 presented the Old-Testament idea of him as the " accuser " 
 of the saints before God. After being cast out of heaven 
 by the celestial generalissimo, Michael, he begins his 
 ravages upon the earth with bitter ferocity, knowing that 
 "he hath but a short time." The opposition and the 
 persecutions to which the Christians are exposed are 
 instigated by him whose function it is to "deceive the 
 whole world." The false teachers are they who " know 
 the depths of Satan." After being bound and sealed in 
 "the abyss" for a thousand years, he is released to 
 deceive the nations, but is overcome in a great cosmic 
 conflict and with the beast and the false prophet is cast 
 into the lake of fire and brimstone to be " tormented day 
 and night for ever and ever." f 
 
 As in I John ii, i8 the coming of Antichrist immediately 
 precedes the near Parousia or the last days, so in the 
 Revelation the appearance of the great antagonist Satan 
 announces the close of the apocalyptic drama. After a 
 series of plagues, heaven opens, and the " Logos of God " 
 
 * Rev. vii. 2, viii. 2, ix. ii, x. 5, xvi. 5, xix. 17. 
 
 t Rev. ii. 10, 13, 24, xii, 3, 9, 10, 12, 17, xiii. 2, 4, li, xvi. 3, xx. 3, lo. 
 
JEWISH-CHRISTIAN APOCALYPTIC. 359 
 
 descends, his eyes a flame of fire, on his head many- 
 diadems, and in his mouth a sharp sword, and makes war 
 with Antichrist and his prophet. Both are " cast alive 
 into the lake of fire and brimstone/' Satan is bound for a 
 thousand years, and the host of allied enemies are slain, 
 " and all the birds are glutted with their flesh." Then 
 are raised at *' the first resurrection" those beheaded on 
 account of the testimony to Jesus," the martyrs, the mar- 
 riage-supper of the Lamb and his bride begins, and they 
 reign with Christ in Jerusalem a thousand years,* At 
 the end of this millennial period Satan, who has been 
 released, gathers his hosts and " encompasses the camp of 
 the saints and the beloved city;" but ** fire comes down 
 out of heaven and devours them." The Devil, the great 
 deceiver, is cast into the burning lake for endless torment. 
 Now, seated on '* a great white throne," God begins the 
 final judgment. The dead great and small appear, those 
 who had '*part in the first resurrection " apparently ex- 
 cepted, and they are judged *' according to their works" 
 out of the things written in the books. The sea and 
 hades give up their dead, so that the judgment is 
 general. Death and hades are cast into the lake of fire, 
 which receives also all whose names are " not written in 
 the book of life." f Then are created " a new heaven and 
 a new earth," and the new Jerusalem comes down "out 
 of heaven from God." The new earth becomes the 
 theatre of the kingdom of God, whose " tabernacle is with 
 men, and He will dwell with them. Tears shall be wiped 
 from the eyes of the blessed, and '* death shall be no 
 more." % 
 
 * Rev. xix. 7, g, 11, 12, ig, 20, 21, xx. 4, 5, 9. 
 f Rev. XX. II, 15. Cf. Enoch xc. 26. 
 X Rev. xxi. 1-5. 
 
360 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 This book considered in relation to the gospel of Jesus 
 must be regarded as such a transformation of it as would 
 be effected in an age of hardship and violence by men 
 who did not comprehend its precepts of loving-kindness 
 and forgiveness. The vindictive passions of men whose 
 patience is exhausted amid the tribulations of the time 
 are ascribed to the Deity. The souls of martyrs in the 
 cause of him who prayed on the cross for the forgiveness 
 of his executioners cry out in heaven for vengeance on 
 "those who dwell on the earth."* The terrible drama 
 of the last things unfolds its apocalyptic horrors in relent- 
 less judgment executed in destruction, flames, and blood- 
 shed. With respect to the consummation of the kingdom 
 of God no stronger contrast can be conceived than that 
 between the catastrophes herein delineated and Jesus' 
 parables of the leaven and the grain of mustard. It is 
 the contrast between the fretful impatience of the narrow 
 theocratic intelligence and the calm patience of the far- 
 seeing religious genius. It were a great mistake to 
 suppose that the writer of these visions was not in earnest 
 but was merely amusing himself with figures of speech. 
 What he depicted he and his contemporaries expected to 
 see realized — Rome annihilated, Jerusalem saved, the 
 Messiah coming in his "wrath" so that all should see 
 him, even "they who had pierced him." The enemies of 
 the good cause had shed the blood of saints and prophets, 
 and God would give them blood to drink, f One may, 
 indeed, with Hausrath find in the book " religious ground- 
 thoughts " of importance, such as that '' worldly power, 
 though stronger than Rome, can at the most only reach 
 the outer fore-court, never the holy kernel of religion 
 itself, and that the good, though crucified and buried, 
 
 * Rev. vi. 10. t I^ev. xvi. 6. 
 
JEWISH-CHRISriAN APOCALYYTIC. 361 
 
 must finally alone possess the kingdom," * but one is 
 hardly rewarded by finding these for a search through 
 this lurid apocalypse, since one must come upon many 
 ideas in it which are revolting to a humane sensibility and 
 opposed to the spirit of the Christian gospel. 
 
 * Art. '* Apokalypse" in Schenkel's Bible-Lexicon, i. p. 164. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE GOSPEL AND THEO.LOGY. 
 
 THE foregoing study of the gospel of Jesus and of 
 the principal interpretations which it underwent 
 in the New Testament discloses facts of great significance 
 to all who are interested in the Christian religion and 
 Christian theology. The several writings which have 
 been passed under review are seen to constitute a theo- 
 logical and religious literature having in the personality 
 and teaching of Jesus a bond of unity and in the person- 
 alities and environments of their writers the conditions of 
 marked diversities. Precisely such phenomena are pre- 
 sented as the student of history would expect to see 
 emerge from the promulgation of great truths by a com- 
 manding genius and their advocacy by men of different 
 capacities, temperaments, and interests. The conclusion 
 which this study compels is that the different phases of 
 doctrine in the New Testament furnish an example of 
 development out of simple into complex and intensified 
 forms and not merely a relation of the juxtaposition of 
 diverse apprehensions or interpretations. The develop- 
 ment was determined partly by varying exigencies, 
 circumstances, and points of view, and partly by the 
 antecedents, presuppositions, and tendencies of the men 
 who occupied themselves with the great central theme. 
 We have seen that the synoptic Gospels contain fragmen- 
 tary reports of the teachings of Jesus as they had been 
 
 362 
 
THE GOSPEL AND THEOLOGY, 363 
 
 preserved in antecedent writings and in the oral tradition 
 of his followers and their successors. From these records 
 it is doubtless possible to construct a tolerably correct 
 portrait of the personality of the great Teacher and an 
 account of his principal teachings which is in the main 
 true. In them we find that the doctrines which may 
 without doubt be attributed to him are few and simple. 
 He accepted from the religion in which he had been 
 reared the doctrine of one God, the paternal attributes of 
 whose nature he so exalted and illustrated out of his own 
 religious intuitions and experience that the divine father- 
 hood may be regarded as one of his original contributions 
 to theology by means of which an impulse and inspiration 
 of inappreciable moment have been given to the spiritual 
 life of men. From the current Jewish doctrines he 
 adopted that of the existence of the human soul after 
 death, though he taught nothing definite as to the details 
 and conditions of that existence. The chief stress of his 
 teaching was placed upon the proclamation of the king- 
 dom of God, or the new order of ethical-spiritual life, 
 and the conditions of entering it, and upon righteousness, 
 which he represented in the manner of the ancient 
 prophets as attainable by men through obedience to God. 
 Though "he spoke as one having authority," he claimed 
 no divine rank, and thrust aside the dangerous crown of 
 Jewish Messiahship. He did not appeal to mighty works 
 for an authentication of his teachings, but left these to 
 verify themselves in the experience of believers and in 
 the transformation of mankind which as a " leaven " they 
 were destined to effect. All that is highest in human 
 ethical achievement, in love, purity, and compassion ; all 
 that is greatest in human character, in courage, fidelity, 
 and consecration ; and all that is most blessed In religious 
 
364 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 experience, found exemplification in his life. A spotless 
 Rabbi, it was not without good reason that his followers 
 called him Master, and it has been with a just recognition 
 of his preeminence that the purest souls in the highest 
 civihzations since his time have reverenced him as spiritual 
 Lord. 
 
 However desirable it may be thought to be that a 
 faultless record of the life and teachings of the great 
 Master should have been made and handed down uncor- 
 rupted, it is evident that such an achievement would have 
 been impossible without a miraculous intervention. In 
 the case of such an intervention we should not have had 
 an historical Christianity, but a Christianity in which the 
 laws of historical development would be set aside. Now, 
 not only do all the presumptions in the case rest against 
 an hypothesis of this kind, but the oldest Gospels, the 
 synoptics, present precisely the sort of phenomena which 
 would be expected in an historical course of affairs in 
 writings composed from forty to seventy years after the 
 events recorded. With all the conditions present of a 
 transformation of the facts of the life and teachings of 
 Jesus it were a marvel if such a transformation should 
 not be made. Accordingly, the aureole of wonder 
 is suspended over the cradle of the infant Saviour. 
 A supernatural messenger announces to the trembling 
 virgin the mystery of a conception by the Holy Spirit, 
 and the sympathy of heaven with the beginnings of the 
 great earthly drama of redemption finds a voice in a shout 
 of a choir of angels, who appear to frightened shepherds 
 amidst the shining '* glory of the Lord." Inward spiritual 
 facts and experiences are expressed in terms of external 
 phenomena and personal powers. The illumination of 
 the soul of Jesus by the spirit of truth is recorded as the 
 
THE GOSPEL AND THEOLOGY, 365 
 
 descent of a visible dove and an audible voice from the 
 upper air, and the moral conflict of opposing motives in 
 his mind becomes a personal conflict with Satan in the 
 desert, on the pinnacle of the temple, and on a moun- 
 tain-top before a magical panorama of " all the kingdoms 
 of the world and their glory." Material wonders attest the 
 spiritual supremacy of the great Rabbi throughout his 
 life, and at his death the earth is shaken, the veil of the 
 temple is rent in twain, and darkness envelops the 
 affrighted land. The victory of his spirit over death finds 
 a material expression in the open grave, the abandoned 
 burial-vestments, and a bodily manifestation, while the 
 saints who burst their cerements and come forth into the 
 holy city herald him as the first fruits of the resurrection 
 of "the bodies of the holy men who slept." Having 
 incorporated into itself the ascension of Jesus into heaven, 
 it is not surprising that the tradition of his life and 
 teachings which took form among Jewish Christians, who 
 believed that in declaring himself to be a spiritual Mes- 
 siah he accepted the crown of the son of David, did not 
 leave him in the celestial regions, but developed the 
 doctrine of his early return to the earth. A Jewish-Mes- 
 sianic mission could find no fulfilment in the life of a 
 homeless teacher ending in an ignominious death. Hence 
 the tradition of the Messiah must not only give expres- 
 sion to the feverish hope of an advent in glory which 
 should realize the Messianic dream, but must also contain 
 a glowing prophecy of it in the very words of the Master. 
 Accordingly, he is made to declare that before his gener- 
 ation should pass away he would come on the clouds of 
 heaven attended by " his holy angels," and summon the 
 nations to judgment before an earthly '' throne of glory," 
 awarding to men eternal life or eternal punishment ac- 
 
366 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 cording to the treatment which they should have accorded 
 to his " brethren." It is not surprising that biographies 
 of Jesus written from the Messianic point of view of the 
 Jewish-Christian tradition should present a mingling of 
 incongruous elements ; that sayings whose profound spirit- 
 uality mark them as genuine words of the great Teacher 
 should be found not far removed from impracticable 
 apocalyptic visions ; that declarations of the spiritual 
 character of the kingdom of God should stand in con- 
 nection with an allegorical interpretation of passages from 
 the Old Testament quoted and distorted to serve as evi- 
 dences of the unspiritual and temporal mission of Christ ; 
 and that along with the lofty morality which rebuked the 
 worldly ambition of the sons of Zebedee for places of 
 honor in the *' kingdom " for which they were hoping with 
 the words : "'Ye will indeed drink the cup that I drink 
 and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized 
 with/* should be found the illusive promise to the twelve 
 apostles that, " in the renovation when the Son of Man 
 sitteth on the throne of his glory, ye who have followed 
 me shall also yourselves sit on twelve thrones judging the 
 twelve tribes of Israel." It is evident that the interest 
 and expectation which set over against each other in the 
 evangelical tradition the teaching that the kingdom of 
 God had already come in the mission of its spiritual Mes- 
 siah, and the apocalyptic advent and the " throne of 
 glory/' might very well place side by side the pure 
 morality which taught the doing of good without hope of 
 return, and the promise to calculating self-interest of a 
 hundred-fold in the time that now is, houses, lands, etc., 
 and in the age to come everlasting life. 
 
 The religion of Jesus, which does not admit of a pre* 
 cise formulation, but the leading features of which were a 
 
THE GOSPEL AND THEOLOGY, 367 
 
 sense of men's relation of dependence upon and responsi- 
 bility to God as a righteous Father, a recognition of their 
 capacity to hold communion with Him through their 
 spiritual nature over which death has no power, and a 
 practical principle of brotherhood which binds men to 
 mutual helpfulness and love, received from his Jewish- 
 Christian followers the Messianic-apocalyptic appendage 
 which occupies a conspicuous place in the synoptic Gos- 
 pels, determining to a considerable degree their coloring 
 of his biography. The predominant Messianic interest of 
 Jewish Christianity directed attention chiefly to the future 
 as the theatre of the exaltation of Christ, and determined 
 the apocalyptic features of its interpretation. But Paul, 
 in whom the speculative tendency was stronger than hope 
 and anticipation, looked backward as well as forward in 
 his idealization of Christ, and conceived a Christology 
 whose celestial point of departure required a meta- 
 physical construction. To him "the man Christ Jesus," 
 who was ''born of the seed of David according to the 
 flesh," was not simply the man of the Jewish-Christian 
 synoptic tradition, but "the man from heaven," the "sec- 
 ond Adam," the spiritual head and representative of the 
 human race. The Messiahship which he conceived was a 
 spiritualized and transfigured Messiahship, to which were 
 wanting the original national features of the Jewish-Chris- 
 tian conception of Messiah. The Christ, who was not 
 in his thought to be the restorer of the political order of 
 Israel, but the restorer of the spiritual order of mankind, 
 was only " according to the flesh "of the seed of David. 
 As the "anointed" not of a people, but of the human 
 race, he was the preexistent heavenly man, the " image 
 of God," and the agent of the creation. The Pauline 
 Christology is accordingly symmetrically conceived under 
 
3^8 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 the relation of means to end. Jesus, regarding himself as 
 the teacher of men and their Saviour through his teachings 
 and example, consistently committed the fortune of his 
 cause to the power of his word and his life, and prophesied 
 with sublime confidence that the kingdom of God would 
 become from a little " leaven " a world-transforming 
 agency. Taking his place in the current of human affairs 
 as an historical force, he trusted in himself as such, and 
 did not connect the result of his mission with a meta- 
 physical celestial origin of his person. But Paul, the 
 centre of whose " gospel " was not the life and teachings 
 of Jesus, but his death and resurrection, conceiving the 
 end of the Saviour's mission to be the abolition by his sac- 
 rifice of the *' curse of the law " for all men, a great act of 
 atonement which should liberate the world from bondage, 
 also consistently took his departure in constructing his 
 Christology from no mere historical personality, but from 
 the representative spiritual Adam, the man from heaven. 
 This transformation of the gospel of Jesus did not, 
 however, stop with the construction of a new Christology, 
 but reached its height in a doctrine of salvation which was 
 as different from that of Jesus as its theory of his person 
 was from his teaching regarding himself. Jesus, who knew 
 of no other foundation for a character than that which is 
 laid in hearing and doing his words, who taught nothing 
 of bearing " the curse of the law " in his death, of his own 
 satisfaction of the divine righteousness for the world, of 
 a representative atonement, and of a justification of men 
 which should be " accounted " to them through their faith 
 in him, did not have in view the abolition of the law, but 
 expressly declared that he came to fulfil it. He would 
 have men attain righteousness, as he attained it, by a 
 trusting, worshipful obedience, by spiritual communion 
 
7'HE GOSPEL AND THEOLOGY. 369 
 
 with the Father, and by nurturing the sentiment of 
 brotherly love. This easy yoke and light burden he in- 
 vited men to assume, and believed in their spiritual 
 capacity to achieve the task through the quickening of 
 his word and his life. On the contrary, Paul's theory of 
 salvation was grounded upon a distrust of man's ability, 
 took no account of the teachings and hfe of Jesus, and 
 was constructed with reference to a theoretical, absolute 
 consummation, a complete satisfaction of the law, a clear- 
 ing off once for all of its claims by a final settlement of 
 its account, which partake more of magic than of rational 
 practicability. The idea of a righteousness which is im- 
 puted to men through faith by reason of the satisfaction 
 of the requirements of the law by one who has " redeemed 
 them from its curse," and been " made a curse " for them, 
 is foreign to the. thought of Jesus, and altogether incom- 
 patible with his conception of the establishment of 
 right relations between man and God. The teaching 
 that the Father demands of the wayward son only repent- 
 ance and return, that to enter the kingdom one must do 
 the will of God and renounce the worldly possessions 
 which encumber the spirit, that the great invitation must 
 be accepted with joyful alacrity though the loved ones are 
 left without adieu, and that the coming after him or the 
 attainment of his spiritual altitude is simply to take up 
 the cross of sacrifice and service and follow him, could 
 not be more radically transformed than it was in the con- 
 struction of this metaphysical scheme of salvation. 
 
 Paul with all his greatness was not, however, quite 
 superior to the apocalpytic expectations of his age and 
 race, and his conception of the consummation of the king- 
 dom of God included a manifestation of the Messiah 
 from heaven, and a "judgment-seat of Christ." But in 
 
370 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 his doctrine of the last things the original Jewish-Christian 
 Messianism underwent a transformation by the addition 
 of new and strange features. In the synoptic account of 
 the second coming of Christ there is no mention or inti- 
 mation of a resurrection, and the '* throne " of the Son 
 of Man is established on the earth for the judgment of 
 *'all nations." On the contrary, the Pauhne Christian 
 apocalypse is intimately connected with the apostle's 
 theory of salvation. To be saved was in his thought to 
 become a sharer in the glory and hfe of the Messianic 
 kingdom, and to reign with Christ at his coming. This 
 good fortune was to be that of the behevers in Christ, 
 both those who had '* fallen asleep/' and those who should 
 be "alive " and "remain " at the Parousia. The former 
 would be " raised incorruptible," and the latter would be 
 *' changed." By reason of the Spirit dwelling in them of 
 Him who raised up Christ from the dead, their mortal 
 bodies would be quickened, and, clothed upon with 
 bodies in the likeness of Christ's "body of glory," they 
 would all enter upon the blessedness of being " forever 
 with the Lord." This Pauline transformation of the 
 Jewish-Christian eschatology, although including the ex- 
 pectation of an immediate and catastrophic consumma- 
 tion and such materialistic features as the deliverance of 
 the groaning creation from " the bondage of corruption," 
 to which it was supposed to have been subjected by the 
 sin of Adam, and the subjection of the Messiah's "ene- 
 mies," v/as on the whole a more spiritual apprehension of 
 the apocalyptic end than the latter. Among its charac- 
 teristic traits were a spiritualizing of the Jewish doctrine 
 of the resurrection of the body, a relating of the inward, 
 spiritual transformation through faith to the resurrection 
 apprehended as a clothing upon of the soul with an in- 
 
THE GOSPEL AND THEOLOGY. 3/1 
 
 corruptible corporeity by reason of the indwelling Spirit, 
 an ingathering of " the fulness of the gentiles," and a 
 hope of the salvation of the beloved and much yearned- 
 for "brethren according to the flesh." The apostle's 
 grounds for believing in the consummation of so hopeful 
 a soteriology within the brief time which remained before 
 the hastening Parousia are not apparent, and there are 
 many things besides in his eschatology which do not well 
 accord with one another; but his doctrine of the last 
 days agrees with his exalted conception of Christ as the 
 divine man from heaven and the universal spiritual Mes- 
 siah, and with his idea of the transforming Spirit which 
 touches even the mortal body with its life-giving efficacy- 
 It is distinguished by a profundity and a noble human- 
 ness and optimism which are in striking contrast with the 
 externality and harshness of the synoptic apocalypse. 
 
 How profoundly the person of Christ impressed the 
 early believers in him is apparent in the writings belong- 
 ing to the school of Paul which have been designated as 
 deutero-Pauline. The transformation of Paulinism by its 
 friends took two general directions: a further exaltation 
 of the person of Christ, and a departure from the distinc- 
 tive teachings of the apostle regarding salvation. In the 
 matter of Christology conceptions were introduced from 
 different points of view which were not so much in oppo- 
 sition to those of Paul as in some degree foreign to his 
 thought ; while the succeeding soteriology was character- 
 ized by a quiet dropping out of his fundamental doctrines 
 and a tendency to return to the original Christian idea of 
 the establishment of right relations between man and 
 God. The influence of Alexandrian ideas becomes un- 
 mistakably apparent, and the Christology is so far re- 
 moved from that of the synoptic Gospels that the two 
 
372 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 different types of conceptions of Jesus originating at 
 nearly the same time furnish a problem which admits of no 
 solution from the dogmatic point of view, and can be histo- 
 rically explained only by the assumption of widely diverg- 
 ing interests, influences, and environments. The influence 
 of the original tradition of Jesus on the one hand and a 
 speculative tendency and interest on the other may be 
 regarded as the most important factors in the two series 
 of Christological conceptions and as determining the 
 value of the one in relation to the other. Accordingly, he 
 who conceived of himself as a teacher of righteousness, 
 the spiritual Messiah of the ethical-religious kingdom of 
 God, the Son of Man by reason of his preeminent and 
 ideal humanity, and who was thought by his Jewish-Chris- 
 tian followers to be their national Messiah, becomes in 
 this speculative Christology the metaphysical Son of God, 
 " the high-priest " of redemption, " the brightness " of the 
 divine glory, "the express image" of the being of God, 
 and the universal providence who " upholds all things by 
 the word of his power." The agency of Jesus in cre- 
 ation, somewhat vaguely expressed by Paul, is expanded 
 into the declarations that in him were created all things 
 in heaven and earth, visible and invisible, thrones, domin- 
 ions, principalities, and powers, that he is before all things, 
 the end of all creation, and that " in him all things sub- 
 sist." As the Philonic Logos was supposed to be "filled 
 entirely with the immaterial powers," so Christ is conceived 
 to have contained in himself " all the fulness of the God- 
 head." With the disappearance of the Pauline doctrine 
 of the representative office of Christ, prominence is given 
 to the ethical significance of his passion, and this idea is 
 developed in connection with mythological features, 
 among which appear the " bringing to naught of him who 
 
THE GOSPEL AND THEOLOGY. 373 
 
 hath the power of death, that is, the Devil," and the 
 disarming of the orders of 'spiritual beings, ''principalities 
 and powers,'* which are made "a public show," and ''led 
 captive in triumph," The bond of the law which they 
 are supposed to hold against sinful men is *' nailed to the 
 cross," so that by means of the great sacrifice the demonic 
 powers are put to confusion and overthrown. The prince 
 of the mythologic " powers of the air " no longer holds 
 the souls of the faithful in his relentless grasp, for the 
 great Champion has gained the victory in the cosmic con- 
 test which was waged between the representatives of the 
 two mighty cosmic forces of good and evil. 
 
 The great transformations of the gospel of Jesus which 
 appear in the New Testament are completed in a dogmatic- 
 mystical writing with an ostensible biographical purpose 
 which is subordinated to a distinctive theological tendency. 
 The fourth Gospel is a Gospel of subjective reflection upon 
 an idealized object. It is a Christianized Alexandrianism 
 in which the original Christology of Jesus now disappears 
 among metaphysical abstractions, and now vaguely emer- 
 ges in the shadowy outlines of a speculative biography. 
 The author has put himself into his work to such a degree ' 
 as to render its subjectivity its distinguishing characteristic 
 among the Gospel-records. The person of Christ is the 
 prominent theme which is accentuated in the prologue, in 
 the discourses, and in the narratives, and his exaltation is 
 carried to the verge of deification. The lowly Jesus of 
 Nazareth of the synoptic tradition here becomes the 
 heaven-descended Logos who was in the beginning with 
 God, and was God, by whom the world was made, and 
 through whom in the word of ancient seers a dimly-appre- 
 hended light had shone upon the abyss of spiritual dark- 
 ness. Assuming the functions of a mediator in the dualism 
 
374 ^^^ GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 whose antitheses are God and the world, light and dark- 
 ness, the divine Logos becomes flesh, and takes up his 
 abode among men to reveal the Father, to be glorified in 
 his death and resurrection, and to return and assume the 
 glory which he had with God " before the world was.'* 
 The position assigned to Jesus in this Gospel is one of 
 cosmic significance, and his functions transcend the limits 
 of Jewish Messianism. As the Logos from heaven, come 
 forth from the bosom of the Father, as a world-mediator, 
 descended to draw to himself the children of light and of 
 God from all nations, as the light of the world, and the 
 beloved divine Son of God, he surpasses in rank and glory 
 all that was dreamed or foretold of the splendor and do- 
 minion of the scion of the royal house of David. Greater 
 than the Pauline "second Adam," he is no representative 
 of the human race appointed to bear the curse of the law 
 and to be made in his passion a curse for men. He offers 
 no atoning sacrifice, and his death is not an humiliation, 
 but a gateway through which he passes out of the dark- 
 ened world into his glory. He does not suffer to satisfy 
 the divine righteousness, and does not buy off sinful men 
 by the payment of the precious ransom of his blood, but 
 he draws them to himself by the attraction of his person- 
 ality, and to those who receive him he gives " power to 
 become the children of God." The Johannine interpreta- 
 tion of the gospel in discarding or ignoring the leading 
 features of the Pauline doctrine of salvation preserves the 
 spirit of the original teaching of Jesus along with manifold 
 variations of form and content. Discharging all such ex- 
 ternalities as the bearing of "the curse of the law" and 
 the effecting of a representative satisfaction by Christ in 
 his death, it emphasizes a mystical, inward relation of men 
 to Jesus which is consummated through a faith and love 
 
THE GOSPEL AND THEOLOGY. 3/5 
 
 by which the receptive soul is immediately connected with 
 the life-giving personality of the Son of God. There is 
 no roundabout justification or accounting righteous 
 through faith by reason of the abrogation of a burdensome 
 " law," but he who believes has everlasting life, is passed 
 from death to life, and though dead lives again. The life- 
 giving Christ directly communicates to the believer a 
 spiritual principle which is in him " a well of water spring- 
 ing up to everlasting life." Obedience, far from being an 
 impossible achievement, is the prompt and glad expression 
 of the life of him who is in living union with Christ. He 
 who loves him will keep his commandments. " Clean 
 already by reason of the word " which Jesus has spoken, 
 the believer has only to abide in the life-giving vine to 
 "bear much fruit." Yet this is not all. The behever and 
 Christ are merged in a blessed unity of everlasting life. 
 " I in you, and ye in me " is the formula of the mystic 
 beatitude. The spiritual blessedness of the happy children 
 of light is finally consummated in the practical realization 
 of their filial relation to God. They become related to the 
 Father as the divine Son is in a higher degree related to 
 Him. The love with which the Father loved him before 
 the world was is now bestowed also upon those who have 
 received him, and not only the Son, but the Father too, 
 comes and abides with them. For the believer the future 
 is full of promise. The blessed Paraclete will come. 
 Receiving that which is Christ's he will communicate it to 
 the faithful, leading them *'into all truth." Death has 
 no power over those who have been united with Christ. 
 He will " raise them up at the last day," and they will 
 "come forth to a resurrection of life." 
 
 The various types of teaching which are contained in 
 the New Testament — the essential gospel of Jesus, and the 
 
376 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 Jewish-Christian, the Pauline, the deutero-Pauline, the 
 Johannine, and the anti-Gnostic apprehensions of Christian- 
 ity — have thus far been considered only as formal differ- 
 ences of doctrine. It is nnanifest that the teaching of Jesus 
 hes at the basis of all the others, and that it stood in a causal 
 relation to them, furnishing partly the material and almost 
 entirely the impulse which made them possible. It cannot 
 but occur, however, to one who reflects upon the subject, 
 that between the two great classes into which the New Tes- 
 tament may be divided — the Gospel and its interpretations 
 and transformations — there exists a profounder distinc- 
 tion than that of merely formal variations. There is in 
 fact between the two classes a distinction according to 
 which, while the several members of the second class 
 present coordinate differences, the two classes are dis- 
 tinguished by a fundamental difference of nature, an un- 
 likeness which separates them *' by the whole diameter of 
 being." It is the distinction between religion as experi- 
 enced and talked about by one who was spiritually in 
 touch with divine realities and in communion with God, 
 and the accretions which become attached to his message 
 and his story when these are committed to the flood of 
 oral tradition ; between the teacher in his aloneness and 
 simple greatness, and the portraits of him drawn by his 
 own and the immediately succeeding generations ; between 
 a God-aUied life illustrating a divine message, and human 
 conceptions and opinions of both determined by varying 
 interests, tendencies, and prejudices, and by tribal or pro- 
 vincial points of view ; between a word of universal 
 import spoken from a commanding outlook of spiritual 
 experience, and the commentaries of the schools upon it; 
 between a spiritual Messiah already come with neither 
 strife nor cry in an inward kingdom of righteousness and 
 
THE GOSPEL AND THEOLOGY. 377 
 
 love, and a temporal Messiah about to come on the 
 clouds in pomp and splendor with apocalyptic *' thrones " 
 and judgment ; between the proclamation of the king- 
 dom of God as an ethical and religious practical principle, 
 and interpretations of it determined by the feverish Mes- 
 sianic hopes of an age of political ferment and fanaticism ; 
 between the intuitions of an inspired Master who in his 
 purity of heart beholds God, and the speculations of lesser 
 men who grope if haply they may find Him; between 
 realities and dreams ; religion and theology ; revelation 
 and apocalypse ; truth and half-truths ; between the clear- 
 sighted vision which sees what is real in man and God, 
 and the turbid reasoning which grasps at phantoms ; be- 
 tween the self-consciousness of the Son of Man, and meta- 
 physical Christologies ; between the straight way to God 
 through sacrifice and obedience, and abstract and mechani- 
 cal schemes of redemption ; between seeking the present 
 kingdom of God and His righteousness, and "gazing up 
 into heaven " to discern the coming kingdom — the part 
 of one neglecting to take up the Master's yoke and burden 
 while dreaming dreams or " the last things." 
 
 The importance and transcendent worth of the gospel 
 of Jesus in contrast with the *' undivine elements " with 
 which it is ordinarily confused are evident as soon as it is 
 separated from these, and regarded by itself. What is 
 regarded as Christianity in the average thought of men is 
 a collection of theological opinions which preponderate 
 over the few moral and religious ideas associated with 
 them. Accordingly, Christianity and the religion of Jesus 
 are two things which it is necessary to clear thinking 
 about either to keep distinct. The gospel of Jesus is a 
 teaching which may be described as the expression of his 
 thought and experience of man's relation to God and to 
 
378 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 his fellow-men, or of conduct in the widest sense of the 
 word. The importance of this gospel for thought is 
 apparent when we set it over against the accretions which, 
 beginning in the New Testament, as we have seen, have 
 accumulated during its history. It has the stimulus and 
 nurture for the mind which always accrue to it from deal- 
 ing with great realities. As in art, so in morals and 
 religion, the artificial degrades and enfeebles, the real en- 
 nobles and strengthens the soul. It is a striking evidence 
 of the unequalled greatness of Jesus that his legacy to 
 mankind contains nothing that is factitious. He has left 
 us not his dreams, but his experiences ; not his specula- 
 tions, but his intuitive judgments; not processes, but 
 verities ; not a theology, but a religion. The great verities 
 composing the gospel of Jesus have an inappreciable 
 worth to the mind for the ends of spiritual culture. They 
 are fruitful of thought, quicken the higher emotions, and 
 furnish great moral impulses. They establish man's faith 
 in himself, in the moral and spiritual order, and in God. 
 A purifying flame of aspiration and love burns in the 
 soul which receives them. Trust in them produces death- 
 less hope and indomitable courage. They enter into the 
 structure of all true character, and constitute the vital 
 principle of righteousness. For the ends of spiritual 
 development one truth of Jesus exceeds in worth all the 
 apocalypses that have been dreamed. His gospel, con- 
 trasted with the commentaries and speculations upon it 
 which are contained in the New Testament, is as the per- 
 manent to the transient, as the divine word to varying 
 human interpretations of it. In what striking contrast 
 does the fruitfulness of the one stand to the dreary barren- 
 ness of the other! There is the difference between them 
 that the one is chiefly a religion, and the other chiefly a 
 
THE GOSPEL AND THEOLOGY. 379 
 
 variety of theologies. The spiritual teacher in communion 
 with God and in fellowship with men, how near is he to 
 us, how apprehensible to thought, how inspiring as an 
 example ! But the Messiah on the clouds, the great high- 
 priest, the second Adam, the preexistent Logos, what 
 remoteness, what inacessibility, what suggestions of spirit- 
 ual sterility, do these terms convey ! The real Jesus who 
 goes before us in the way of sacrifice and obedience in- 
 spires our reverence and devotion, and as we follow him 
 we become aware of the divine presence. But the apoca- 
 lyptic and metaphysical Christs stir in us no sentiment of 
 love and consecration, no fervor of discipleship, and only 
 excite wonder, and provoke speculation. Had only these 
 latter been given, there would have been no disciples, no 
 martyrs, and no Christian Church. Did the New Testa- 
 ment portray only these Christs, and not also the living 
 Jesus, it were a dead book. 
 
 As a religion, then, the gospel of Jesus is distinguished 
 from its interpretations and transformations in the New 
 Testament by the quality of verifiability. The only veri- 
 fication to man of which a spiritual truth is capable lies 
 in its appeal to his intuitions and in the tests which his 
 experience gives to it. It can be confirmed by no outward 
 sign which may herald it, and by no miracle which may 
 accompany its proclamation. A teacher can only verify 
 his mission from God by the divineness which, filling 
 himself and his message, awakens an immediate response 
 to the divine truth which he delivers, in those to whom he 
 ministers, and leads them into his communion with the 
 Highest. An outward miracle, if wrought and historically 
 confirmed, has no significance for us apart from the teacher 
 and his message. These must be verified by the response 
 which our nature makes to them before the other can have 
 
380 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 aught to say to us, except to tell us that a scene of wonder 
 or of magic has been enacted, the hidden springs of which 
 we do not know. Thus the shaken mountain and the 
 voice from heaven become belated and superfluous wit- 
 nesses to a divine fact already authenticated. Now, the 
 life and word of Jesus have in themselves precisely this 
 supreme verification, that they command at once the 
 reverent assent of every human being who is sufificiently 
 developed in his moral and religious faculties to be im- 
 pressible by them. One less developed a voice from heaven 
 might, indeed, arrest, but could not awaken to love and 
 worship. The difference is manifest as to verification 
 between a teaching which reveals to us the depths and 
 heights of our being, stirs all noble impulses, shames every 
 debasing passion, and elicits a glad response from the 
 affections and the will, and the teaching which offers 
 chiefly imaginary apocalypses, speculative Christologies, 
 and dreams and dramas of "the last things." As to the 
 former, we know that it is true because its power and 
 truth are revealed in our experience, and by it we are led 
 upward from strength to strength. As to the latter, 
 it awakens no response in us except one of wonder or 
 curiosity, and, since it leads us into no divine experience, 
 we do not know whether he who brings it has been in 
 touch with reality or has dreamed a dream. 
 
 The distinction here indicated, while it does not imply 
 that the interpretations of the gospel in the New Testa- 
 ment are throughout worthless for religion, and does not 
 carry a denial of the religious fervor and devotion of Paul, 
 the religious mysticism of the fourth Gospel, and the 
 love-breathing spirit of the first Epistle of John, does 
 necessarily lead to the conclusion that the word of Jesus 
 is preeminently the one revelation contained in the New 
 
THE GOSPEL AND THEOLOGY. 381 
 
 Testament. While it might be hazardous to attempt to 
 draw a Hne between the teaching of Jesus and all else in 
 the New Testament which should definitely and rigidly- 
 separate what is revealed from what is not revealed, yet if to 
 the gospel apart from all its accretions are applied the tests 
 of revelation, it will be found distinctively to possess the 
 unique character of a disclosure of spiritual verities. Now, 
 it is manifest that a revelation to man can be of such 
 things alone as he in his nature and environment is capable 
 of receiving. In no proper sense of the word can he 
 receive other truths than such as are verifiable to him. 
 Accordingly, the test of a revelation is its receptibility, 
 or its verifiability, or simply that it can be received, that 
 is, appropriated, and authenticated by man. Revealed 
 truths, then, are the truths which are intuitively appre- 
 hended and made known by an intelligence more highly en- 
 dowed, that is, developed, than those intelligences to which 
 he communicates them, but truths which the latter would 
 have been able eventually to discern of themselves. To 
 the revelation of religious truth there is necessary a higher 
 religiousness in the revealer than those possess to whom 
 he communicates his revelation. He sees spiritual real- 
 ities and relations which others have not yet seen. By reason 
 of nature, genius, or inspiration — terms which may not be 
 so fundamentally different in meaning as is commonly sup- 
 posed — he stands in an exceptional relation to the divine 
 Spirit, and is a master in the ethical-rehgious realm. What 
 he declares is what he knows and has experienced, not 
 what he imagines or dreams ; and his declaration becomes 
 a revelation to men only so far as they are capable of 
 knowing it as he knows it. The indispensable relation 
 between the organ of a revelation and those who receive 
 his communication is that of likeness of faculty, com- 
 
382 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 munity of nature. No revelation of visual objects can be 
 made by a man who sees to a man born blind. We may, 
 then, believe that there exists such a community of 
 nature between the divine Spirit and His human children 
 that to a pure and spiritual soul God can make His 
 presence felt in blessed experiences and in an illumination 
 which fills the being of the seer; but "the fulness of the 
 Godhead " could be revealed only to another Godhead. 
 Between having a spiritual sense of God as Father — a 
 manifestly relative term — and fathoming the mystery of 
 the absolute divine being the difference is immeasurable. 
 If it has pleased God to place within the reach of men a 
 knowledge of Xh^ fact of their future existence, it is only 
 in a very vague and general way that they have appre- 
 hended it. Jesus appears rather to have accepted the 
 current belief on the subject than to have made it a capital 
 point in his teaching. His bodily revival, appearance to 
 the eye of flesh, and mysterious disappearance would, 
 granting the phenomena, throw little if any light upon the 
 problem. The modes and conditions of a future existence 
 are not, however, capable of revelation to us for the 
 reason that we are incapable of apprehending them. It 
 is conceivable, indeed, that a human soul might occupy a 
 plane of spiritual vision and experience from which it 
 could make the declaration with a certainty axiomatic to 
 its intuitions that " God is not a God of the dead, but of 
 the living, for all live to Him " ; and this declaration would 
 be a revelation to those whose spiritual development 
 rendered them capable of receiving it. But if one should 
 say that they who " obtain that world and the resurrection 
 from the dead are Hke the angels, " no revelation would 
 be made to men, for angelic natures and modes of existence 
 are entirely unknowable to them. 
 
THE GOSPEL AND THEOLOGY. 383 
 
 These examples showing what is revealable and what 
 is not may serve to illustrate the distinction between the 
 gospel of Jesus as a revelation by preeminence and the 
 interpretations and transformations of it contained in 
 the New Testament. It is a distinguishing quality of the 
 word of Jesus that it is essentially a declaration of facts 
 which can be apprehended and verified by the intuitions 
 and experience of men. So far as it makes known to 
 men what before they did not know, so far as it leads 
 them to new spiritual experiences, discloses hitherto 
 hidden springs of action, and opens to them new possibil- 
 ities of divine communion, it has the character of a revela- 
 tion of moral and religious truth. If we may regard the 
 whole gospel of Jesus as comprising not alone his teach- 
 ing, but also his personality, the latter cannot but be seen 
 to be a very fruitful and inspiring revelation, since it dis- 
 closes an intelligible experience far above the usual order 
 of human experience. In it are disclosed the possibilities 
 of a life lived in communion with God, the divine intui- 
 tions of one who remains pure in heart, the repose and 
 peacp of the trusting soul, and the strength and victory 
 to be attained through sacrifice and obedience. These 
 phenomena have the quality of verifiability which belongs 
 in general to the teachings of Jesus and distinguishes 
 them as revelations and as religious verities from the 
 speculations of the New-Testament writers. The teach- 
 ing which makes love to God and man fundamental and 
 essential in religion and morals commands at once the 
 assent of all men whose ethical and religious develop- 
 ment brings them within reach of his influence. It is 
 axiomatic just as it is axiomatic that his life was good. 
 Both propositions may be verified in the experience of 
 men. There is one revealed religion in the New Tes- 
 
384 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 tament, and that is the religion of Jesus. There are also 
 many theologies in the New Testament, but they are not 
 revealed theologies. To become aware of the distinction 
 between the two things, between any and every truth 
 which in its nature is a revelation and any and every 
 declaration which in its content is essentially a specula- 
 tion, one has only to contrast Jesus* sound and fruitful 
 teaching about the righteousness which is shown in works 
 of obedience and love, and the Pauline theory of a right- 
 eousness which is "accounted" to men by reason of faith. 
 There is all the difference here that exists between a real- 
 ity grounded in the facts of human nature and in the 
 moral order, and a factitious scheme produced by specula- 
 tion. One has also only to contrast the real character of 
 Jesus which has left its impress upon the synoptic tradi- 
 tion with the Pauline *' second Adam," the deutero-Pau- 
 line "■ high-priest, forever after the order of Melchizedek," 
 and the one in whom dwelt " all the fulness of the God- 
 head bodily," or with the Johannine Logos who was God 
 and with God in the beginning, to see the difference be- 
 tween a living and inspiring revelation which quickens, 
 transforms, rebukes, and uplifts the soul, and barren 
 abstractions bearing no intelligible message, no word of 
 courage, of comfort, or of strength. 
 
 That the New Testament is not, however, merely a 
 collection of diverse theologies, not simply a gospel and 
 varying interpretations of it, is obvious even to the casual 
 reader of its several writings. It is plain that one of its 
 most striking characteristics consists in its pervasive 
 unities. Worthy of especial consideration is it also that 
 these unities, regarded as dominant points of view, lead- 
 ing presumptions, and fundamental doctrines, are found 
 essentially in the gospel of Jesus as a centre from which 
 
THE GOSPEL AND THEOLOGY, 385 
 
 they proceeded, receiving various determinations from the 
 media through which they passed. The fundamental 
 presumption of the reUgion and theology of the New- 
 Testament is the Old-Testament monotheism, the doc- 
 trine of one God, the Creator and Moral Governor of the 
 world, to whom the historical course of affairs, particularly 
 the saving mission of Christ, holds the relation of the ful- 
 filment of a divine design. This theological view of the 
 world receives in the teaching of Jesus a distinctively 
 religious coloring through the doctrine of the Fatherhood 
 of God, which is also, as has been pointed out,* brought 
 into important relations with conduct. An essential 
 unity of teaching regarding man also pervades the New 
 Testament. He is the child or creature of God, the 
 especial object of the divine interest, the subject of God's 
 moral government owing allegiance, service, obedience, 
 and honor, and finding his supreme spiritual blessedness 
 in love and worship of his Creator. On His part God 
 reveals Himself to man, judges, chastens, and rewards 
 him, to the end that He may establish on the earth His 
 kingdom of righteousness, through which man may be 
 saved from sin. The Christological unity is apparent in 
 the doctrine that Jesus was the Messiah — though not the 
 national Jewish Messiah-King — the Son of God, and the 
 Saviour of men ; that his mission is a manifestation of 
 the divine grace ; that he died for the sake of mankind, 
 and was thereafter manifested as victorious over death ; 
 and that through faith men may come into that fellowship 
 with him which is life eternal. The practical unity is 
 expressed in the teaching that love to God and m^n, the 
 sum of the law and the prophets, and the great command- 
 ment of Jesus, is the supreme principle of the religious 
 
 * See page 81. 
 25 
 
386 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 and moral life. The eschatological unity is indicated in 
 a dominant note of optimism regarding destiny, with 
 which are blended, indeed, the sombre shadings of an 
 ominous warning of judgment upon wilful transgression. 
 Setting aside the pervasive expectation of the second 
 coming of Christ and its various apocalyptic expressions 
 as of only transient importance, there are intimations of 
 very hopeful significance in the divine interest in man 
 manifested in the economy of salvation, in the delineation 
 of the good shepherd and of the forgiving father of the 
 prodigal's story, in the triumphant anticipations, expressed, 
 indeed, in mythologic terms, of the overthrow of the 
 powers of evil in the consummation of Christ's cosmic 
 victory, and above all in that fundamental doctrine of 
 Jesus, the Fatherhood of God. The reserve both of Jesus 
 and the New-Testament writers as to dogmatic expres- 
 sions regarding destiny is not perhaps remarkable when 
 it is considered with what absorbing interest they ad- 
 dressed themselves to themes of more immediate concern 
 and importance. 
 
 It must be regarded as the misfortune of Christianity 
 that its expounders, instead of proceeding from the 
 actual unities of the New Testament, have attempted to 
 combine its diversities into a factitious unity. Through 
 a radical misapprehension of the facts in the case, due to 
 the want of the historical sense and the absence of criti- 
 cal discrimination, it has been sought to combine into a 
 homogeneous dogmatic system elements which, if not 
 antagonistic, have at least no affinity for one another. 
 The presupposition from which this procedure sets out is 
 the totally gratuitous one that the writers of the New 
 Testament were inspired to formulate theologies. It 
 was an inference from a groundless assumption that their 
 
THE GOSPEL AND THEOLOGY, 387 
 
 theologies must be in accord with one another, and from 
 this point of view have been constructed the uncritical 
 systems of dogmatic Christian theology. The New 
 Testament contains many theologies which, studied 
 apart and with respect to their origin and development, 
 are instructive to the student of the beginnings of Chris- 
 tian doctrine and speculation. But the attempt to unite 
 them in the structure of a "systematic theology'* can 
 only result in a most unsystematic product. The several 
 Christologies of the New Testament and its differing con- 
 ceptions of salvation and of the means of attaining it do 
 not admit of combination into a homogeneous system. 
 Jesus* teaching regarding himself and the Johannine 
 Logos-speculation as to his nature and rank are mutually 
 exclusive, to say nothing of the relation to both of the 
 intermediate Christologies, and the union of his doctrine 
 about righteousness and the conditions of entering the 
 kingdom of God with the Pauline theories of redemption 
 and justification is unachievable by the boldest dogma- 
 tism and the most violent harmonizing. The hermeneuti- 
 cal principles or assumptions on which such attempts 
 proceed are radically wrong. If the New-Testament 
 writings are literature — that is, productions of men, they 
 must be interpreted by the canons which are applicable 
 to literature in general. If they are not of this character, 
 then it is obviously necessary before proceeding to inter- 
 pret them, to assign them to some other class of products, 
 and adopt rules of interpretation which would apply to 
 them. If they are superhuman productions, it is not 
 only requisite to account for the human qualities which 
 they manifest, but also to seek for a revealed hermeneu- 
 tics by which they may be interpreted. The inconse- 
 quences and absurdities into which we are led the 
 
388 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 moment that we abandon the historical point of view 
 regarding these writings make it plain that the onlylogi- 
 cal theory of dealing with them is that which recognizes 
 them as containing theologies which are to be examined 
 genetically and apart, and that those who have endea- 
 vored with intentions, however good, to construct out of 
 them a " systematic theology '* have rendered a great dis- 
 service to the truth and to the Church. One may quite 
 harmlessly construct a systematic theology, if one has a 
 talent for it, which shall represent one's philosophy of 
 salvation and one's view of the world, but the endeavor 
 to substantiate such a system by attempting to force into 
 agreement the differing speculations of the New-Testa- 
 ment writers on the presumption that they were inspired 
 to produce authoritative theologies is, to say the least, 
 grossly misleading. 
 
 The character and extent of the disservice which 
 Christian theology has done to the gospel of Jesus may 
 be seen in its persistence in emphasizing things non-essen- 
 tial and unknowable to the comparative neglect of mat- 
 ters on which Jesus himself laid the chief stress of his 
 ministry. The primal error of the theologian is over- 
 confidence. He thinks that he is able to elucidate the 
 ultimate mysteries of the universe. Believing that the 
 most recondite things are capable of revelation to man, 
 and holding as a cardinal principle that the whole of the 
 New Testament is a revelation, he has seized upon the 
 speculations of Paul and the post-Pauline writers, and 
 elevated them as precious disclosures of heaven to the 
 rank of essentials of faith and salvation. In the pride of 
 certainty and the zeal of orthodoxy he has even gone so 
 far as to deny to all men who could not accept them as 
 divine truth the Christian name and fellowship, and to 
 
THE GOSPEL AND THEOLOGY. 389 
 
 cast doubt upon their chances of attaining eternal life. 
 Thus to his theoretical error, that occult theologies and 
 Christologies are capable of revelation to the human intel- 
 ligence, he has added the practical error, that these things, 
 even if they could be revealed to men, have any value for 
 character, any fruitfulness for life, any " saving " efficacy. 
 Setting up as a standard of sound faith a body of specu- 
 lative doctrines, he has regarded as heretics all who 
 could not adjust their thinking to it, and by a strange 
 transformation has converted the term '* evangelical," 
 which originally meant relating to *' the good news,'* ^ 
 into a synonym of a popular theological metaphysics. A 
 popular metaphysics, indeed ! For Christian theology 
 has succeeded in popularizing a metaphysics. There has 
 always been a class of persons — a class now happily 
 diminishing very rapidly — for whom speculations about 
 the origin of things, the nature and purposes of God, 
 occult schemes of redemption, and human destiny, have 
 a strong fascination. They are attracted by any one 
 who claims to have disclosures to make of the divine 
 counsels, or who has an apocalypse to preach. They 
 prefer mythologies to morals, and would rather listen to 
 prophecies of a kingdom to come than to an exposition 
 of Jesus' kingdom of God, to an account of the topography 
 of the celestial and nether realms than to " the words of 
 eternal life." The discussion of a " plan of salvation" 
 which includes inscrutable mysteries has more interest for 
 them than a discourse upon the Sermon on the Mount. 
 It may appear upon a superficial view to be the misfortune 
 of Christianity that the leadership of its exposition has so 
 far fallen into the hands of speculative men and makers 
 of theological systems that its spiritual and ethical aspects 
 
 * BvayyiXiov. 
 
390 THE GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 have been obscured by the mists of metaphysics, and its 
 divine verities buried under a mass of crude dogma. But 
 a profounder apprehension of the matter discloses a divine 
 progressive order, and makes it apparent that these bHnd 
 guides and their followers represent but a stage in the 
 spiritual evolution of mankind, in the evolution of men's 
 understanding of the great gospel of Jesus. It was the 
 fortune of this gospel to be borne in its infancy upon an 
 apocalypse, and to be nurtured in the souls of men who, 
 had they not been "gazing up into heaven " to discern 
 the signs of the coming of their Lord, might have turned 
 away from' him altogether in sickness of heart. Perhaps 
 it is a necessity of the nature of things that before the 
 spiritual stage of the evolution of Christianity is reached 
 the divine spirit of the gospel should be passed on from 
 age to age in apocalypses, systems of speculation, and 
 metaphysics, waiting for its liberation. For liberated it 
 is destined to be. " Spirit cannot be captured by mechan- 
 ism. Life outlives the theories that would tear out the 
 heart of its secret." 
 
 " Grau, theuer Freund, ist alle Theorie, 
 Und griin des Lebens gold'ner Baum."* 
 
 The distinction between Christianity and the religion of 
 Jesus, which has already been pointed out, becomes ap- 
 parent in the light of the foregoing considerations. 
 Christianity, which properly means the religion and doc- 
 trines taught by Christ, has come to signify in the popular 
 apprehension and usage the generally accepted theological 
 
 * " AH theory, dear friend, is gray, 
 And green the golden tree of life." 
 See The Future of Liberal Religion in America, by Dr. J. G. Schurman, 
 in The New World, i8g2, pp. 29 ff. 
 
THE GOSPEL AND THEOLOGY, 39I 
 
 tenets of Christendom as well as certain principles of con- 
 duct. The transformation of the original gospel of Jesus, 
 beginning in the New Testament itself, has been so gradual 
 and complete, and has proceeded to such a degree for 
 many centuries upon the assumption of the unity and in- 
 fallibility of that book, that it is scarcely recognized by 
 Christians generally ; and to point it out is for one; who 
 does it to run the risk of being denounced by them as a 
 traitor to the cause of the Master himself. Its transfor- 
 mation, however, almost to the point of irrecognizability 
 is a most obvious fact of history. The great Teacher of 
 the synoptic tradition could certainly not have recognized 
 himself in *' the second Adam," " the high-priest forever 
 after the order of Melchizedek," the one containing " all 
 the fulness of the Godhead bodily," or the Logos who 
 "was with God in the beginning, and was God." Still 
 less could he recognize himself in the rank of " very God " 
 assigned to him in the dogma of the Trinity ; or his gos- 
 pel, his good news of the kingdom of God, of love, and of 
 righteousness, in the doctrines of vicarious atonement, 
 imputed righteousness, probation, the exclusion of men 
 from eternal life by divine decree, and the materialistic 
 topography of the unseen world ; or his spirit in the pride 
 and pomp of ecclesiasticism, the splendor of worship which 
 has no beatitude for "the poor," the persecution of here- 
 tics, and the bitter proscription of honest and pure men 
 who cannot accept as the word of God the Christian my- 
 thologies and speculations. It has come about as the 
 result of this transformation that Christianity as generally 
 understood and promulgated in the Church has more 
 affinity with Paulinism than with the gospel of Jesus. 
 There is nothing more lamentable, more inexplicable, in 
 the whole course of Christian history than this abandon- 
 
392 THE GOSPEL AND ITS IN7ERPRETATI0NS. 
 
 ment of the great Master by his professed followers. " Of 
 the outward and inward, of the earthly and the heavenly 
 part of his thought and teaching, the one has been taken, 
 and the other left. On this small and mistaken base there 
 has been heaped up an immense and widening mass of 
 Christian mythology, from the first unstable and now at 
 last apparently swerving to its fall. And let it fall. For 
 it has corrupted the religion of Christ into an apocalyptic 
 fiction ; and tJiat, so monstrous in its account of man, in 
 its theory of God, in its picture of the universe, in its dis- 
 torted reflections of life and death, that, if the belief in it 
 were as real as the profession of it is loud, society would 
 relapse into a moral and intellectual darkness it has long 
 left, and the lowest element of modern civilization would 
 be Its faithy^ 
 
 Amid all these aberrations, however, there is one hope- 
 ful indication; amid all the darkened speculations, the 
 barren creeds, the dreary dogmas, which denote the well- 
 meant infidelity of men to the teaching and the spirit of 
 Jesus, there is discernible a ray of light, now hidden in the 
 gloom, now flashing out in the luminousness of some 
 great soul or the fervid consecration of some loving heart. 
 This constant amid the variable, this inextinguishable light 
 in the darkness, is the sentiment of loyalty to Jesus along 
 with whatever misconceptions of his person and his word, 
 acknowledgment of him as Master, right appreciation of 
 his Spirit, and devotion to his cause. It is a strange para- 
 dox that among those who have most radically miscon- 
 ceived Christianity have been found many who have most 
 truly lived it. In this fact is indicated the legitimacy of 
 drawing a distinction between its permanent and transient, 
 its divine and undivine elements. For the distinction is 
 
 * Martineau. 
 
THE GOSPEL AND THEOLOGY. 393 
 
 practically drawn in the application of Christianity to the 
 life of men, since it is the divine part of it, the gospel of 
 Jesus, his religion practically realized, which constitutes 
 its vitality and its power. In his teaching of righteous- 
 ness, love, purity, and unselfishness, and in his example of 
 obedience, self-sacrifice, and helpfulness, are contained the 
 highest motives and inspirations of which man is suscep- 
 tible. Whether this gospel be the absolute religion or no 
 is a speculative question which it is fruitless to discuss. 
 One day of earnest endeavor to live this religion is worth 
 more than a cycle of discussion of its absoluteness or 
 relativity. Let us have done with speculation and its 
 labyrinthian aberrations. So much is certain, that no 
 higher interpretation of life, no nobler ideal of duty than 
 this gospel presents has ever been set before mankind as a 
 spring of action and a goal of endeavor. No teacher has 
 appeared among men so worthy to be reverenced by them 
 as spiritual Master as Jesus of Nazareth. Christian union 
 — that divine dream of the noblest spirits of Christendom — 
 is potentially contained in his gospel. The tendencies 
 toward it in the Church, already becoming marked in an 
 unspoken consensus of many of the most enlightened and 
 spiritual believers, denote the practical realization of this 
 gospel conceived as a doctrine and a principle of life. They 
 are manifested in the greater emphasis which is placed 
 upon the word of Jesus, in the growing indifference to the 
 speculations of his followers early and late, in the increas- 
 ing appreciation of the reverent criticism which separates 
 between the divine word and human traditions and specu- 
 lations concerning it ; and in the prevalent sentiment of 
 fraternity and toleration in which the spirit of the gospel 
 is expressed. There will then be Christian union, and not 
 before, when men shall have come to estimate the gospel 
 
394 ^^^ GOSPEL AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS, 
 
 and theology, each at its true value according to its origin 
 and its fruitfulness ; when they shall reverence and cherish 
 the teaching of Jesus as the word of life, and discard the 
 speculative Christologies and metaphysical systems which 
 have divided Christendom into opposing camps, and 
 exalted doctrine instead of love to the rank of " the 
 greatest thing in the world " ; when theologians shall place 
 the emphasis of the gospel where Jesus placed it, upon 
 conduct rather than upon dogma, practising his reserve 
 regarding destiny and things unknowable ; and when 
 preachers shall discourse more of righteousness and the 
 kingdom of God and less of theologies and the kingdom to 
 come. Then character, and not speculative opinions, v/ill 
 be the test of Christian fellowship, and the only heretic 
 will be he whose life is false because not grounded upon 
 the word of the Master. This consummation will denote 
 the RETURN TO JESUS. When the Church, having come 
 to herself, shall gather her scattered children from their 
 fruitless quest in the mazes of theology into a union upon 
 the common ground of the divine gospel, she will begin 
 to see the realization of the dream of the spiritual 
 supremacy, which her prophets have dreamed for ages, in 
 the quickening of her heart and in the enlistment under 
 her banner of the totality of the most enlightened con- 
 science and intelligence of mankind. 
 
INDEX OF QUOTATIONS FROM THE 
 NEW TESTAMENT. 
 
 MATTHEW. 
 
 iii. 2 47, 71 
 
 V. 3-6 73 
 
 V. 3, 10 49 
 
 V. g 92 
 
 V. 12 127 
 
 V. 17-20 86 
 
 V. 21-48 65 
 
 V. 22 132 
 
 V. 24-30 51 
 
 V. 27, 28 c 86 
 
 V. 29, 30 133 
 
 V. 34. 35 78 
 
 V. 43-48 67, 86 
 
 V. 44, 45 80, 92, 287 
 
 V. 45 65, 287 
 
 vi. 1, 4, 6, 14 79 
 
 vi. 12, 14, 15 72 
 
 vi. 18 81 
 
 vi. 20 127 
 
 vi. 22, 26, 28 78 
 
 vi. 24 81 
 
 vi. 31, 32 79 
 
 vii. 13 74 
 
 vii. 15 65 
 
 vii. 17 79 
 
 vii. 21-27 70 
 
 vii. 21 92 
 
 viii. 4, II, 12 62 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 viii. 10 72 
 
 viii. 19-22 75 
 
 viii. 20 102 
 
 ix. 1-8 104 
 
 ix. 13 71 
 
 ix. 15 109 
 
 ix. 16-18 89 
 
 ix. 22 72 
 
 A. 5, 6 61 
 
 A. 20, 28 78, 147 
 
 ^. 32, 33 92 
 
 A. 37 76 
 
 A. 40 186 
 
 xi. 12 48, 73 
 
 xi. 19 86 
 
 xi. 24 132 
 
 xi. 25 88, 92 
 
 xi. 27 81, 93 
 
 xii. 1-9 ■ 104 
 
 xii. 28 48 
 
 xii. 32 52, 103 
 
 xii. 36, 41, 42 132 
 
 xii. 50 92 
 
 xiii. 2g 48 
 
 xiii. 37 104 
 
 xiii. 41-43 52 
 
 xiii. 44-46 74 
 
 xiii. 49, 50 52 
 
 xiv. 14 301 
 
 395 
 
39^ 
 
 INDEX OF QUOTATIONS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 MATTHEW (Confd). 
 
 xiv. 6i 75 
 
 XV. 21 6i 
 
 xvi.13 91 
 
 xvi. 13-21 96 
 
 xvi. 16 95, 96 
 
 xvi. 17 92 
 
 xvi. 23 78, 120 
 
 xvii, 12 103 
 
 xvii. 22 109 
 
 xviii. 10 78, 120 
 
 xviii. II 71 
 
 xviii. 12 79, 81 
 
 xviii. 23, 24 80 
 
 xix. 12 78 
 
 xix. 16-23 75 
 
 xix. 17 98 
 
 xix. 28-30 53 
 
 XX. 17, 22 109 
 
 XX. 28 98, 103, III 
 
 xxi. II 74 
 
 xxi, 21 99 
 
 xxi. 31, 41 119 
 
 xxi. 33-43 81 
 
 xxii, 30 119 
 
 xxii. 30-33 128 
 
 xxii. 34-40 66 
 
 xxiii. 8 91 
 
 xxiii. 22 78 
 
 xxiii. 23 88 
 
 xxiii. 34 186 
 
 xxiv. 7, 8 46 
 
 XXV. 30 313 
 
 XXV. 34 287 
 
 xxvi. 12 109 
 
 xxvi. 28 114 
 
 xxvi. 39 78 
 
 xxvi. 53 90 
 
 xxvi. 64 145 
 
 CHAP, PAGE 
 
 xxvii. 17 62 
 
 xxviii, 18 62, 145 
 
 MARK. 
 
 i- 3 47 
 
 i- 15 69, 72 
 
 i- 23 47 
 
 i. 23f. 34 120 
 
 ii. 1-13 104 
 
 ii. 14-22 89 
 
 ii. 16, 17 73 
 
 ii. 18 76 
 
 ii. 23 86 
 
 iii. II, 15, 22 f 120 
 
 iii- 29 135 
 
 iv. 40 ,69 
 
 V. 2-5 120 
 
 V. 34 72 
 
 vi. 3 138 
 
 vi. 7 120 
 
 vi. 34 301 
 
 vi. 36 69 
 
 vii. 7-17 84 
 
 vii. 10 76 
 
 vii. 15 , 86 
 
 vii. 24-31 61 
 
 viii. 27 96 
 
 viii. 32 Ill 
 
 viii. 33 120 
 
 viii. 35 74 
 
 ix. 17, 23 120 
 
 ix. 23, 29 99 
 
 ix. 43-48 133 
 
 X. 1-12 76 
 
 A. 2-10 86 
 
 A. 14 72 
 
 A. 17-23 75 
 
 A. 19 85 
 
 X. 28 91 
 
FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT. 
 
 397 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 MARK (Confd), 
 
 X. 47 95 
 
 xi. 10 95 
 
 xi. 13 79 
 
 xi. 22 72 
 
 xi. 23 69 
 
 xi. 25 79 
 
 xii. 1-12 93 
 
 xii. 24-27 85, 128 
 
 xii. 28-31 66, 85 
 
 xii. 34 71 
 
 xiv. 12 62 
 
 xiv, 24 1 14 
 
 xiv. 36 92, 99 
 
 xiv. 38 71 
 
 XV. 2, 18, 26, 32 95 
 
 LUKE. 
 
 iii. 11-14 71 
 
 iv. 16-18 73 
 
 iv. 16-28 98 
 
 iv. 24 91 
 
 V. 27-29 89 
 
 vi. 20-27 73 
 
 vi. 35 275 
 
 vii. 1 88 
 
 vii. 50 72, 206 
 
 viii. 48 72 
 
 ix. 18 £ 96, 120 
 
 ix. 52 6i 
 
 ix. 57-62 75 
 
 X. 17-20 93, 120 
 
 x. 20 127 
 
 X. 21 .'.99 
 
 xi. 14 120 
 
 xi. 20 48, 99 
 
 xii. 9 119 
 
 xii. 49 109 
 
 xiii. 3 59 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 xiii. II 120 
 
 xiii. 32 120 
 
 xiii. 33 109 
 
 xiv. 16-24 ■ 74 
 
 xiv. 25, 33 75 
 
 XV. 11-32. 82 
 
 xvi. 13 74 
 
 xvi. 16 48 
 
 xvi. 19, 31 130 
 
 xvi. 29 85 
 
 xvii. 6 72 
 
 xvii. 14 62 
 
 xvii. 20, 21 48 
 
 xix. 10 103 
 
 xix. 18-23 75 
 
 XX. 34-39 128 
 
 XX. 35 123 
 
 XX. 36 119 
 
 xxii. 7~9 62 
 
 xxii. 20 114 
 
 xxii. 34 120 
 
 xxiii. 46 92 
 
 xxiv. 21 57 
 
 xxiv. 26 144 
 
 xxiv. 49 147 
 
 JOHN. 
 
 I 
 
 5 
 
 5-9- •• 
 10-12. 
 12. . . . 
 12, 13. 
 
 270 
 
 -.. 263 
 
 289 
 
 305 
 
 281 
 
 308 
 
 273 
 
 14, 18 287 
 
 17 288 
 
 18 270, 272 
 
 18, 48 283 
 
 29 261 
 
 13- 
 
398 
 
 INDEX OF QUOTATIONS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 JOHN (ConfdJ. 
 
 i. 33 292 
 
 i- 44 304 
 
 ii. I, 12 295 
 
 ii. II 300 
 
 ii. 25, 32 283 
 
 iii. II, 13 297 
 
 iii. II, 32 305 
 
 iii. 12, 31 283 
 
 iii. 13 284, 293, 309 
 
 iii. 13. 32 386 
 
 iii. 14 2g2, 302 
 
 iii. 16, 17 275 
 
 iii. 17, 18 278 
 
 iii. 21, 33 273 
 
 iii. 30, 31 290 
 
 iii. 34 311 
 
 iii. 36 276 
 
 iv. 14 '. 297 
 
 iv. 24 272 
 
 iv. 25, 35 304 
 
 iv. 34 284, 296 
 
 V. 17 300 
 
 V. 17, 26 273 
 
 V. 19 20 283 
 
 V. 21, 26 283 
 
 V. 22 278 
 
 V. 23, 24, 30 296 
 
 V. 24 277 
 
 V. 27 284, 292, 293 
 
 V. 28,29 123, 297, 315 
 
 V. 23, 28, 29 293 
 
 V. 35 290 
 
 V. 36 301 
 
 V. 39, 46 288 
 
 V. 43 305 
 
 V. 44 272 
 
 vi. 16 296 
 
 vi. 27, 53 292 
 
 vi. 28, 29 306 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 vi. 29, 35, 47 277 
 
 vi. 34-58 299 
 
 vi. 35. 37 305 
 
 vi. 38. 42 295 
 
 vi. 39, 40, 44, 54 315 
 
 vi. 46 283 
 
 vi. 53 294 
 
 vi. 57t 63 273 
 
 vi. 62 286 
 
 vi. 64 283 
 
 vii. 3, 5 295 
 
 vii. 29 283 
 
 vii. 32 301 
 
 vii. 37 305 
 
 vii. 39 311 
 
 vii. 42 304 
 
 vii. 46 296 
 
 viii. 12 299 
 
 viii. 15 278 
 
 viii. 26 273 
 
 viii. 29 296 
 
 viii. 40 283 
 
 viii. 43, 47 305 
 
 viii. 44 288 
 
 viii. 58 286 
 
 viii. 59 299 
 
 ix. 4 290 
 
 ix. 5 301 
 
 X. 3, 16 305 
 
 X. 8 288 
 
 X. II, 15, 17 291 
 
 X. 15 283 
 
 X, 16 289 
 
 ^. 17 275 
 
 A. 30, 38 282 
 
 A. 32, 38 300 
 
 X. 39 296 
 
 xi. 4, 40 300 
 
 xi. 15, 25, 26 277 
 
 xi. 27 95 
 
FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT, 
 
 399 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 JOHN (Confd), 
 
 xi. 33 291 
 
 xi. 52 289, 304 
 
 xii. 23, 24, 28 302 
 
 xii. 23, 34 292 
 
 xii. 27 291 
 
 xii. 31 260, 280, 303 
 
 xii. 37-41 263 
 
 xii. 37 300 
 
 xii. 41 289 
 
 xii. 46 277 
 
 xiii. 4-16, 34 300 
 
 xiii. 18 144 
 
 xiii. 20 ..305 
 
 xiii. 21, 37 ,.2gi 
 
 xiii. 27 303 
 
 xiii. 31 292 
 
 xiv. I, 6, 16, 28 283 
 
 xiv, 9 282 
 
 xiv. 10 259 
 
 xiv. 12, 29 277 
 
 xiv. 13 284 
 
 xiv. 15, 21 306 
 
 xiv, 16 259 
 
 xiv. 16, 19 312 
 
 xiv. 23 308 
 
 xiv. 30 260 
 
 xiv. 31 307 
 
 XV. I, 4 305 
 
 XV. 6 315 
 
 XV. 9, 10 307 
 
 XV. 9, 13, 24 300 
 
 XV. 10 296 
 
 XV. II 88 
 
 XV. 26 259, 311 
 
 xvi. 4, 15, 30 283 
 
 xvi. 7 259, 311 
 
 xvi. II 260, 280 
 
 xvi. 13-16 312 
 
 xvi. 14 312 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 xvii. I 302 
 
 xvii. 3 64, 272 
 
 xvii. 4 296 
 
 xvii. 5 295 
 
 xvii. 6, 9, 10, 17, 20 276 
 
 xvii. 21 277, 282, 308 
 
 xvii. 22 263 
 
 xvii. 23, 24 30S 
 
 xvii. 24 275 
 
 xvii, 25 283 
 
 xviii. 36 313 
 
 xviii. 37 278, 305 
 
 xix. 25, 26 295 
 
 XX. 28 283 
 
 XX. 31 95, 277 
 
 ACTS, 
 
 i- 3, 9 145 
 
 i. 5 147 
 
 ii. 23 y -144 
 
 ii. 23- 25 140 
 
 ii. 39 148 
 
 ii. 46 1 39 
 
 iii. i 139 
 
 iii. 19 f 165 
 
 iii. 19-22 147 
 
 V. 31 140 
 
 vii. 55 145 
 
 vii. 58 157 
 
 viii. 17 T48 
 
 ix. II r53 
 
 A. 44-48 148 
 
 xii. 25 88 
 
 xiv. 1-6 149 
 
 xiv. 26 88 
 
 xvi. 9 159 
 
 xxi .20 1 39 
 
 xxi. 39 153 
 
 xxii. 3 153 
 
 xxiv. 15 123 
 
400 
 
 INDEX OF QUOTATIONS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 ROMANS. 
 
 i. ii 172 
 
 i- 3 177 
 
 i. 4 182, 183, 201 
 
 i. 5. 16 205 
 
 i. 17 204 
 
 i. 23 189 
 
 i. 28 181 
 
 ii- 5 204, 350 
 
 ii. 5, 6, 16 224 
 
 ii. 5-1 1 214 
 
 ii. 12 174 
 
 ii. 13 208 
 
 iii. 4 208 
 
 iii. 9 172 
 
 iii. 10-19 173 
 
 iii. 20 igi 
 
 iii. 21 204 
 
 iii. 23-27 195 
 
 iii- 25 195, 243 
 
 iii. 27 206 
 
 iv 209 
 
 iv. 4 206, 209, 211 
 
 iv. 6 70 
 
 iv. 15 277 
 
 iv, 24 205 
 
 iv. 25 192, 201 
 
 v. I, 9 209 
 
 V. 8, 18 198 
 
 -v. 9-1 1 196 
 
 V. 12 172, 173 
 
 V. 13, 14 I74r 189 
 
 V. 15 350 
 
 V. 15-21 209 
 
 V. 19 201 
 
 V. 20 93 
 
 vi. 4-7 201 
 
 vi. 5 199. 210 
 
 vi. 6 177 
 
 vi. 7 203 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 vi. 7-11 199 
 
 vi. 9, 10 239 
 
 vi. 10 202, 261 
 
 vi. 17 173 
 
 vii. 4 200, 207 
 
 vii. 6 193 
 
 vii. 7-25 173, 176 
 
 vii. 8 180 
 
 vii. 9, 12, 17 172 
 
 viii. 2 211, 293 
 
 viii. 2-5 166 
 
 viii. 3 201 
 
 viii. 3, 10, II 185, 188, 192, 199 
 
 viii. 4 179 
 
 viii. 7 178 
 
 viii. 8 180 
 
 viii. 9-11 168 
 
 viii. 10 220 
 
 viii. II, 23 217 
 
 viii. 13, 18 200 
 
 viii. 15 81 
 
 viii. 18 261 
 
 viii. 19 201 
 
 viii. 19 350 
 
 viii. 20-23 125 
 
 viii. 21 235 
 
 viii. 26 148 
 
 viii. 28 , 337 
 
 viii. 29, 34 259 
 
 viii. 34 327 
 
 viii. 38 253 
 
 ix. 3 177 
 
 ix. 17 154 
 
 ix. 23 278 
 
 ix. 33 261 
 
 -^.3 204 
 
 A. 3, 9. 10 205 
 
 '^■4 193, 194 
 
 A. 4-10 206 
 
 xi. 25 234 
 
J^J?OM THE NEW TESTAMENT, 
 ROMANS (Cont'dJ. 
 
 401 
 
 .261 
 .225 
 .201 
 
 .287 
 
 XI. 30 f 209 
 
 xJ- 32 173 
 
 xi. 36 239 
 
 xii. 1 219 
 
 xii. 5 258 
 
 xii. 6, 7 261 
 
 xiii. 1-4 
 
 xiv. 2, 10 
 
 xiv. 9 
 
 xvi. 25 
 
 I. CORINTHIANS. 
 
 i. 17, 30 190. 198 
 
 ii. 14 177 
 
 iii. 1-4 n? 
 
 iii. 13, U 214 
 
 V. 1-9 218 
 
 vi. 2 224 
 
 vi. 15 223 
 
 vi. 17 208 
 
 vi. 2g 226 
 
 vi. 30-33 219 
 
 vii. 26 337 
 
 vii. 29 226 
 
 viii. 6 185, 239 
 
 viii. 13. 
 viii. 25, 
 ix. I . . . 
 ix. 9. . . 
 ix. 17- • 
 A. 4-- 
 xi. 3. . . 
 xi. 16. . 
 xi. 23 f. 
 xii. 3 . . 
 xii. 27 . 
 xiii. . . . 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 xiv. 2. 
 xiv. 2r 
 xiv. 37 
 XV. 3. . 
 
 225 
 
 26, 29, 34, 38 334 
 
 158 
 
 156 
 
 214 
 
 V 156 
 
 258 
 
 155 
 
 116 
 
 168, 201 
 
 203 
 
 231 
 
 154 
 
 167 
 
 191, 192 
 
 ^v- 8 158 
 
 XV. I2f 201 
 
 XV. 17 202 
 
 XV. 18 223 
 
 XV. 18, 19 222 
 
 XV. 20 220 
 
 XV. 21 330 
 
 XV. 21, 45, 47 183 
 
 XV. 23 221 
 
 XV. 25 , 224 
 
 XV. 28 202 
 
 XV. 29 191, 192 
 
 XV. 35 217 
 
 XV. 44-48 159 
 
 XV. 45, 46. 180, 182 
 
 XV. 45 185 
 
 XV. 47 174, 186 
 
 XV. 52 21S 
 
 XV. 54-57 239 
 
 II. CORINTHIANS. 
 
 i- 4 198 
 
 ^■^2 177 
 
 1. 14 .. 
 
 ii. 2 
 
 ii. 10, II 
 
 ii. II 
 
 ii- 15 .'.. 
 
 iii- 3, 17 
 
 ^^^- ^3 157 
 
 iii- ^3. 14 193 
 
 iii- 13. 17 169,182, 201 
 
 "i- ^7 166 
 
 .225 
 
 .191 
 .168 
 .279 
 .223 
 .168 
 
 IV. 4. . . 
 iv. 4, 6. 
 
 -250, 259, 279 
 182, 187 
 
402 
 
 INDEX OF QUOTATIONS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 II. CORINTHIANS ^C^K^a'.^ 
 
 iv. 6 159. 205 
 
 iv. 13 134 
 
 V. 1-3 217 
 
 V. 2 227 
 
 V. 4, 5 220 
 
 V. 10 214, 225 
 
 V. 14, 15 193. 219 
 
 V. 15 210 
 
 V. 15, 16 165 
 
 V. 19 197 
 
 V. 21 182, 188 
 
 viii. 9 186 
 
 X. 2, 3f 177. 179 
 
 X. 6 88 
 
 xi. 3, 14 279 
 
 xi. 14 155 
 
 XI. 22 153 
 
 xii. 1-6 159 
 
 xii. 7 279 
 
 xiii. 5 208 
 
 GALATIANS. 
 
 i. 4 192 
 
 i. 15. 16 158, 177 
 
 ii. 2 139, 159 
 
 ii. 9 138 
 
 ii. ^o 201, 206, 207 
 
 ii. 21 209 
 
 iii. I 209 
 
 iii. 2 x66, 208, 211 
 
 iii. II 154. 247 
 
 iii. 13 191. 193. 243 
 
 iii. 16 156 
 
 iii. 22 173, 206 
 
 iii. 23 26 f 
 
 iv. 1 208 
 
 iv. 4 187, 188 
 
 V. 6 307 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 V. 16, igf 178 
 
 V. 21 194 
 
 V. 24 221 
 
 vi. 7 214 
 
 vi. II 154 
 
 vi. 14 206 
 
 ix. 21 156 
 
 EPHESIANS. 
 
 4 257, 287 
 
 6-11, 20 256 
 
 II 337 
 
 17, 18 259 
 
 21. 
 
 23- 
 . 2. , 
 
 .263 
 ■340 
 .258 
 ■254 
 
 3 277 
 
 12-15 255 
 
 1. 14. 
 ii. 5. 
 ii. 9. 
 
 257 
 
 259 
 
 287 
 
 • 9 257 
 
 . II 259 
 
 . 12 258 
 
 . 12, 15 258 
 
 . 12, 16 258 
 
 23, 28 258 
 
 31. 32 258 
 
 . 10, 14 259 
 
 PHILIPPIANS. 
 
 22. . . 
 
 23... 
 
 24... 
 . 2. . . 
 . 5-8. 
 . 7 ■- 
 
 .177, 179 
 
 218 
 
 179 
 
 .187 
 .189 
 
FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT. 
 
 403 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 PHILIPPIANS (Confd). 
 
 ii. 8, 9 239 
 
 ii. 9 f 201 
 
 ii. II 202 
 
 iii. 4, 9, 18 f 206 
 
 iii. 5 153 
 
 iii. 10 210 
 
 iii. 12 205 
 
 iii. 19 223 
 
 iii. 21 159 163, 201, 217 
 
 iv. 5 226 
 
 COLOSSIANS. 
 
 i. 13, 24 254 
 
 i. 15 250, 256 
 
 i. 16, 17 250 
 
 i. 18-20 251 
 
 i. 18, 24 258 
 
 i. 26 
 
 9.. 
 12. 
 .13. 
 15. 
 19. 
 17. 
 
 .2B7 
 .251 
 
 ■ 255 
 
 ■ 249 
 .253 
 •259 
 .250 
 
 I. THESSALONIANS. 
 
 iv. 13-18 125,203 
 
 IV. 14 217 
 
 iv. 15, 16 348 
 
 iv 16 321 
 
 V. 2, 3 223 
 
 V. 2, 5 348 
 
 II, THESSALONIANS. 
 
 1. ir 
 
 ii. 1-12 
 ii. 2-4. . 
 ii. 8.... 
 
 .348 
 ■348 
 •349 
 
 I. TIMOTHY. 
 
 •I 329* 330 
 
 . 3, 10, 19 335 
 
 . 5, 14 333 
 
 ■ 15 330 
 
 . 16 332 
 
 i- I, 4, 6 337 
 
 i. 2, 10, 15 333 
 
 1. 3. 5. 
 
 •330 
 
 6 331 
 
 7 327 
 
 . I, 2 336 
 
 . 15 329, 333. 334. 335 
 
 . 16 330, 333 
 
 - 1 338, 339 
 
 . 2, 3 327 
 
 . 7. 9. 12 333 
 
 . 10 330, 337 
 
 ■ 10, 13, 15 329 
 
 . II 339 
 
 10, 25 
 17, 18. 
 18 
 
 VI. 3. 
 
 3. 5, 6, II, 18 
 3, 15, 16 
 
 14. 15. 
 20. . . . 
 
 •333 
 •336 
 ■329 
 ■335 
 ■333 
 .329 
 -335 
 ■ 338 
 • 327 
 
 II. TIMOTHY. 
 
 i- I, 9 333 
 
 i. 9 337 
 
 i^ 9. II. 15 327 
 
 i. 10 332 
 
 i- 13 333, 335 
 
 ". I, 12 333 
 
 ii. 2 
 
 n. 10, 21 . 
 ii. 13. . . . 
 
 .336 
 ■337 
 .329 
 
404 
 
 INDEX OF QUOTATIONS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 II. TIMOTHY (Cont'd). 
 
 ii. i6, 17, 19, 20 336 
 
 "• 18 332, 335 
 
 ii. 21, 22 333 
 
 iii- 1 339 
 
 iii- 1-6 337 
 
 iii. 5, 10, 12, 16, 17 333 
 
 iii. 8 335 
 
 iii- 15 332 
 
 iv. I, 6 338 
 
 iv. 3 339 
 
 iv. 8 337 
 
 iv. 17 327 
 
 TITUS. 
 
 i- 1 333 
 
 i- 2 329 
 
 i- 3 330 
 
 i- 6 336 
 
 i- 9 335 
 
 i, 10 332 
 
 ii. 1 335 
 
 ii- 2, 12 333 
 
 ii. 10 330 
 
 ii- II, 13 337 
 
 ii. 13 329 
 
 ii- 14. 23 331 
 
 iii- 4 327. 330, 337 
 
 iii. 5 333, 337 
 
 PHILEMON. 
 13 192 
 
 HEBREWS. 
 
 i. 2, 3 235 
 
 i- 8 237 
 
 ii. 9 237 
 
 ii. 9. 17 243 
 
 ii. 10 239 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 ii 12, 13 288 
 
 ii. 14 239, 248 
 
 ii. 14, 15 240 
 
 iii. 1 234 
 
 iv. 2 245 
 
 iv. 15 239 
 
 V. 8 239 
 
 V. 9 245 
 
 vi. 1 245 
 
 vi. 2 247 
 
 vi. 4-6 248 
 
 vii, 3 238 
 
 vii. 14 237 
 
 vii. 25 203, 239, 327 
 
 vii. 26 236 
 
 viii. 8-12 263 
 
 ix. 7-9. 13 241 
 
 ix. 14 261 
 
 ix. 15, 22 243 
 
 ix. 16-28 239 
 
 ix. 24 234, 273 
 
 ix. 27, 29 248 
 
 A. I, 4 241, 242 
 
 A. 3 242 
 
 A. 5-9 288 
 
 A. 5-10 240 
 
 A. 14 242 
 
 A. 17, 18 243 
 
 X. 23 245 
 
 A. 24, 25, 38 247 
 
 X. 26, 27 248 
 
 xi. I. 4, 5, 33. 39 246 
 
 xi. 36 239 
 
 xii. 2 246 
 
 xiii. 21 263 
 
 I. PETER. 
 
 i. 5. 18 261 
 
 i. 7, 13 264 
 
 i. 8, 10, II, 23 263 
 
FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT. 
 
 40s 
 
 I. PETER (Cont'd). 
 
 i. 20 287 
 
 ii. 6, 7, 13, 14, 21 261 
 
 ii. 7, 9 263 
 
 iii. 5, 6, 20, 22 263 
 
 iii. S, 18 261 
 
 iii. 19 264 
 
 iii. 21, 23 262 
 
 iv. 1 262 
 
 iv. 5, 6 264 
 
 iv. 10, II 261 
 
 iv. 14 263 
 
 V. 1 261 
 
 .263 
 .264 
 
 II. PETER. 
 
 1. 2, 8, 5-8.... 
 
 i. 16-21 
 
 ii. 3, 9, 15, 20 
 
 ii- 4 
 
 ii. 10 
 
 11. II, I 
 ii. 2, 4- 
 
 iii- 3-5. 
 iii. 7. . 
 
 17. 20. 
 
 111. 
 
 342 
 
 343 
 
 345 
 
 264 
 
 340 
 
 342 
 
 343 
 
 342 
 
 345 
 
 151 
 
 8-10, 13 344 
 
 13 125 
 
 I. JOHN. 
 
 . 2 330 
 
 . 5. 6, 7 321 
 
 i. I 203 
 
 i. I, 2, 18, 20 326 
 
 i. 2, 4, 6, 9, 22, 26. . , 321 
 
 i. 5, 6, 29 323 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 ii. 20, 27 322 
 
 iii. 5 321 
 
 iii. 5-8 330 
 
 iii. 9, 10, II, 14, 16, 17 323 
 
 iii. 10 212 
 
 iv. 2 322, 330 
 
 iv. 2, 10, 15 321 
 
 iv. 10 326 
 
 iv. 12, 13 324, 325 
 
 iv. 20 66 
 
 V. I, 2 323 
 
 V. I, 5, 6, 8 321 
 
 II. JOHN. 
 7 321, 330 
 
 JUDE. 
 
 1-5,6... 
 4. 8, 9... 
 9, 10, 12, 
 
 17. 
 
 ■339 
 .340 
 ■ 342 
 
 REVELATION. 
 
 ■ I, 3 350 
 
 ■ 5 353. 354 
 
 • 8 351,352 
 
 ■ 13. 17 353 
 
 • 18 355 
 
 i- 8 353 
 
 i- 9 350 
 
 i- 10, 13 261, 358 
 
 i- 19 356 
 
 ii- 2 356 
 
 ii- 8, 9 357 
 
 ii- 21 355 
 
 V. 3-xi. 9 352 
 
4o6 
 
 INDEX OF QUOTATIONS, 
 
 CHAP. I'AGE 
 
 REVELATION fConfdJ. 
 
 iv. 5 351 
 
 V. 9 356 
 
 V. 9, 12 354 
 
 vi. 9 356 
 
 vi. 10 360 
 
 vii. 2 358 
 
 vii. 9 356 
 
 vii. II 351 
 
 vii. 17 353 
 
 viii. 2 358 
 
 ix. II 350 
 
 X. 5 358 
 
 xi. 8, 13 357 
 
 xi. 17 351 
 
 xii. 3, 9, 10, 12, 17 358 
 
 xii. 5 352 
 
 xii. II, 17 356 
 
 xiii. 2, 4, II 358 
 
 CHAi'. PAGE 
 
 xiv. 12 356 
 
 xiv. 20 352 
 
 XV. 3 351, 352 
 
 xvi. 1 352 
 
 xvi. 3, 5 358 
 
 xvi. 6 360 
 
 xvi. 7, 14 351 
 
 xviii. 8 352 
 
 xix. 13 353 
 
 xix. 15, 17-21 352 
 
 xix. 16 355 
 
 xix. 7, 9-12, 19-21 359 
 
 xix. 17 358 
 
 XX. 3, 10 358 
 
 XX. 4, 5, 9, II, 15 359 
 
 xxi. 1-5 359 
 
 xxi. 6 353 
 
 xxi. 22 351 
 
 xxii. I, 3, 13 353 
 
INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 
 
 Accommodation, not practised by 
 
 Jesus, 121 
 Adam, his relation to sin and death 
 
 in Paulinism, 173; Christ as the 
 
 "second," 182, 367 
 Alexandrianism, in Hebrews, 234 ; 
 
 in deutero-Pauline literature, 265 ; 
 
 in fourth Gospel, 267 
 Allegorical interpretation employed 
 
 by Paul, 156 
 Angels, the, of the Jewish mythology 
 
 recognized by Jesus, 119; guardian, 
 
 120; in Revelation, 357 
 Antichrists in i John, 321 
 Anti-Gnostic interpretations of the 
 
 gospel, 318-345 
 Apocalypse, the little, in 2 Thessa- 
 
 ionians, 348 f. 
 Apocalyptic passages in the synop- 
 tics, 127 ; literature of Judaism, 
 
 character of, 42 
 Apocalyptic, the Jewish, 346-361 
 Apocryphal literature, Paul's use of, 
 
 154 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, on Paul's mysti- 
 cism, igS, 229 
 
 Atonement, for sin in the Old Testa- 
 ment, 40 ; a sacrificial, not taught 
 by Jesus, 115 
 
 Atoning death of Christ in Paulin- 
 ism, 191-203 
 
 B 
 
 Baldensperger, on the Son of Man, 
 106 ; on the characteristics of 
 apocalypse, 346 
 
 Baptism, the, for the dead, in Paul's 
 teaching, 222 
 
 Bauer, Bruno, as an historical critic, 
 8 
 
 Baur, F. C, his view of the Gospel- 
 history, 19 ; on the Pauline Epis- 
 tles, 20 ; on the synoptic Gospels, 
 21 ; on the supernatural, 22 ; on 
 the Son of Man, 103 ; on Paul's 
 Docetic view of the flesh of 
 Christ, i8g ; on "the righteous- 
 ness of God" in Paul's teaching, 
 204 
 
 Believers, the in the fourth Gospel, 
 276 ; as judges of the world in 
 Paul's teaching, 225 
 
 Blasphemy, the, against the lioly 
 Spirit, 103 
 
 Blood of Christ, a new covenant in, 
 115 
 
 Body, the spiritual, in Paul's teach- 
 ing, 220 
 
 Bruckner on the Son of Man, 106 
 
 Csesarea Philippi, the scene at, 96 
 Canonicity in the early Church, 29 
 Change, the, of the living Christians 
 at the Parousia in Paul's teaching, 
 221 
 Christ as the " second Adam," 182 f, 
 367 ; as " the man from heaven," 
 184- ; his preexistence in the 
 teaching of Paul, 185 f; death of, 
 in the teaching of Paul, igi f,, 
 igS f, 209 ; union with, in Paul's 
 doctrine, 208 ; his second coming, 
 216 f 
 Christianitv, and its literature errone- 
 
 407 
 
4o8 
 
 Index of Subjects, 
 
 ously identified, 32 ; contrasted 
 with the religion of Jesus, 390 
 Christology, the, of Paul, 181-203 I 
 of Hebrews, 235 ; of Colossians, 
 
 250 ; of Ephesians, 256 ; of the 
 / New Testament culminates in the 
 
 fourth Gospel, 269 ; of the Pas- 
 toral Epistles, 350 ; of Revelation, 
 352 ; the deutero-Pauline, 371 
 
 Church, the, in the Pastoral Epis- 
 tles, 335 
 
 Colossians, Epistles to the, 249-255 ; 
 combats Gnostic tendencies, 249 ; 
 Christology of, 250 ; salvation in, 
 
 251 ; " pleroma " in, 252 
 Conversion, the, of Paul, 157-164 
 Covenant, a new, in the blood of 
 
 Christ, 115 
 
 Criticism, and theory of unity of 
 doctrine in the New Testament, 
 4 ; point of view of, 24 
 
 Critical and dogmatic methods con- 
 trasted, 33 
 
 Cross, the, and the law in Paul's 
 teaching, 191 ; a stumbling-block 
 to Paul, 162 
 
 D 
 
 Daniel, term Son of Man in, 100, 
 107 ; resurrection in, 124 
 
 Death, Paul's view of entrance of, 
 into the world, 173 ; of unbe- 
 lievers, 223 ; of Christ in the 
 teaching of Paul, 190 f ; of 
 Christ in the fourth Gospel, 309 ; 
 in Revelation, 358 
 
 Demoniacal possession, Jesus' atti- 
 tude toward, 120 
 
 Destiny, Jesus'reserve regarding, 135 
 
 Devil, the, in the teaching of Jesus, 
 120 ; in the fourth Gospel, 279 
 
 De Wette, his biblical theology, 13 
 
 Divination, critical, 18 
 
 Docetic view of flesh of Christ in 
 Paul's teaching, 189 
 
 Doctrine, exaltation of, 394 
 
 Dogmatic and critical methods con- 
 trasted, 33 
 
 Doxology, the, of the Lord's Prayer, 
 116 
 
 Dualism in the fourth Gospel, 279 
 E 
 
 Ebionites, the, their Christology, 
 
 143 
 
 Elohim, the sons of, and the daugh- 
 ters of men, 45 
 
 Enoch-Parables, the, and the Son of 
 Man, icx), 184 ; represent the 
 Messiah as judge, 125 ; resurrec- 
 tion and award in, 136 
 
 Ephesians, Epistle to the, 254-260 ; 
 Christology of, 256 ; the Church 
 in, 258 ; mythology of, 259 ; sal- 
 vation in, 256' 
 
 Epimenides, citation of, in Titus, 
 
 153 
 
 Epiphanes, 341 
 
 Eschatology, ideas of, akin to Juda- 
 ism in Paul's teaching, 224 ; of 
 Hebrews, 246 ; not defined in 
 Ephesians, 260 ; of i Peter, 263 ; 
 in the fourth Gospel, 313 ; in the 
 Pastoral Epistles, 337 ; in 2 Peter, 
 343 ; the Pauline, 369 
 
 Evangelists, the, their unconscious 
 testimony to the Messiahship of 
 Jesus, 97 
 
 Everlasting punishment, resurrec- 
 tion to, not taught by Paul, 223 
 
 Exaltation of Christ in the fourth 
 Gospel, 282 
 
 Faith, no dogmatic formula of, from 
 Jesus, 72 ; in Christ in Paul's 
 teaching, 206, 210 ; justification 
 by, according to Paul, 205, 229 ; 
 and works, Pauline and Johannine 
 view of, contrasted, 304 ; in fourth 
 Gospel, 305 ; in i John, 323 ; in 
 Pastoral Epistles, 333 
 
 Family, the solidarity of the, in 
 Judaism, 174 
 
 Fatherhood of God, Jesus' teaching 
 of the, 78-84 
 
 Flesh, meaning of, in Paul's writ- 
 ings, 175-178 ; and sin in Paul's 
 
Index of Subjects. 
 
 409 
 
 teaching, 171-181 ; in the Old 
 Testament, 177 ; identified with 
 sin, 178 ; and blood of Christ in 
 the fourth Gospel, 299, 313 
 
 Forgiveness of sins, taught by Jesus, 
 117 ; has no distinct expression in 
 Paul's teaching, 254 ; in Epistle 
 to the Colossians, 254 
 
 Fourth Gospel, and the synoptics, 
 18 ; general character of, 373 
 
 Future life, the, in teaching of Jesus, 
 118-137 ; in teaching of Paul, 
 216-231 ; in fourth Gospel, 313 ; 
 how far, revealed to man, 382 
 
 Gabler, his idea of biblical theology, 
 8 ^^ 
 
 Gehenna, in the teaching of Jesus, 
 133 ; not mentioned in the fourth 
 Gospel, 
 
 Genealogy, the, of Jesus from a 
 Jewish point of view, 142 
 
 Genuineness of the Gospels, char- 
 acter of testimony to, 27 
 
 Gnostic ideas in the Church, 319 ; 
 contested in Pastoral Epistles, 
 327, 332 
 
 God, as Father in the Old Testa- 
 ment, 40 ; fatherhood of, in teach- 
 ing of Jesus, 78-84 ; doctrine of 
 nature of, in the fourth Gospel, 
 272 ; as Saviour in Pastoral 
 Epistles, 330 
 
 Gospels, title of, and authorship, 32 
 
 Gospel-criticism, bearing of, on life 
 of Jesus, 17 
 
 Gospel, the, and theology, 362-394 ; 
 the, of Jesus contrasted with its 
 accretions, 377 
 
 Governmental conception of God 
 among the Jews, 40 
 
 H 
 
 Hades, Jewish doctrine of, 122 ; 
 Jesus' sayings regarding, 130 
 
 Harnack, on Hellenism in the 
 Church, 328 ; on Vischer's hypoth- 
 esis regarding Revelation, 350 
 
 Hase on Jesus' idea of the kingdom 
 of God, 59 
 
 Hausrath, his History of the New 
 Testament Times, 26 
 
 Hebrews, the Epistle to the, 233- 
 249 ; relation of, to Alexandrian- 
 ism, 234 ; Christology of, 235 ; 
 points of contact with Paulinism, 
 239; doctrineof salvation in, 241; 
 on Satan, 244; on faith, 245; 
 eschatology of, 247 ; on the lapse 
 of believers, 248 
 
 Hellenistic ideas, Paul's contact 
 with, 227 
 
 Hellenism, came gradually into the 
 Church, 318 
 
 Hilgenfeld on Jewish apocalypses, 
 346 
 
 Hillel, his idea of righteousness, 64 
 
 Historical, interpretation, its estab- 
 lished position, 24 ; criticism, ob- 
 jections to, answered, 26 
 
 History, interpretation of, by the 
 Jews, 39 
 
 Holsten, his study of 6 Ttctrrfp fxov, 
 92 ; on *' the righteousness of 
 God " in Paul's teaching, 204 
 
 Holtzmann. on the Son of Man, 117 ; 
 on I John, 325 
 
 Holy Spirit, blasphemy against, 43 ; 
 doctrine of, among Jewish Chris- 
 tians, 147 ; in fourth Gospel, 311 
 
 I 
 
 Idealism of Alexandrian philosophy 
 
 in Hebrews, 234 
 Idealization of Christ in the fourth 
 
 Gospel, 269, 282 
 Immer, his New-Testament the- 
 ology, 26 
 Imputation in Paul's soteriology, 210 
 Incarnation, the, of the Logos, 291 
 Incongruities in the Gospels, 366 
 Inerrancy of the Scriptures, doctrine 
 
 of, 4 
 Inspiration not historically demon- 
 strable, 2 ; doctrine of. in 2 
 Timothy, 328 
 Intermediate state, in teaching of 
 
4IO 
 
 Index of Subjects, 
 
 Jesus, 130, 133 ; in Paul's teach- 
 ing, 2l8 
 Israel, the chosen people, 37 
 
 J 
 
 Jahveh, concealment of name of, 44 
 
 James, the Epistle of, and Faulinism, 
 212 
 
 Jesus, relation of, to Judaism, 35 ; 
 a patriot, 59 ; on the kingdom of 
 God, 46-71 ; relation of, to apoca- 
 lyptic passages in the synoptics, 
 51 ; his originality, 67, 68 ; spirit 
 of, characterized, 72 ; teaching as 
 to God, 78-84 ; attitude toward 
 the Old Testament, 84-go ; his 
 teaching regarding his person, go- 
 108 ; did not claim a divine na- 
 ture, 91, 98 ; as Son of God, 92 ; 
 as the Son of Man, 99, 104 ; his 
 sayings concerning his death, 109- 
 118 ; his teaching regarding the 
 life to come, 118-137 ; relation to 
 the demonology of his time, 119 ; 
 his teaching regarding the punish- 
 ment of sin, 132 ; his teaching not 
 limited by the opinions of his age, 
 136 ; general character of his re- 
 ligion, 366 
 
 Jews, Palestinian and Alexandrian, 
 doctrines common to, 42 
 
 Jewish Christians, their Christology, 
 140 i 
 
 Jewish doctrine of relation of God | 
 to human affairs, 39 I 
 
 Jewish Christianity, weaknessof, 151 j 
 
 Jewish-Messianic expectations, 38 
 
 Johannine, transformation of the 
 Gospel, 267-317 ; doctrine of 
 Logos, 268 ; doctrine of God, 
 274 ; of the divine love, 275 ; 
 doctrine of the devil, 279; exalta- 
 tion of Christ, 282 ; doctrine of 
 salvation, 297 ; eschatology, 313 
 
 Josephus on the life to come, 122 
 
 Judaism, monotheism of, 36 
 
 Jude, Epistle of, 338-341 
 
 Judgment, obscurity of Jesus' teach- 
 ing on, 132 ; in the fourth Gospel, 
 278 
 
 Justification by faith, in Paul's 
 teaching, 205 ; moral factor in, 
 210 ; extreme and abstract state- 
 ment of, 211 
 Justin Martyr, his Gospels, 29 
 Juvenal on sinfulness of evil thoughts, 
 122 
 
 K 
 
 Kaiser, his biblical theology, 13 
 
 Kant, his doctrine of the moral in- 
 terpretation, 10 
 
 Keim on Jesus' idea of the kingdom 
 of God, 59 
 
 Kingdom of God, Jesus* teaching 
 regarding, 46-62 ; traditional idea 
 of, modified by Jesus, 48 ; the 
 realization upon the earth of the 
 highest spiritual ideals, 49 ; Jesus' 
 doctrine of consummation of, 51 ; 
 apocalyptic view of, not adopted 
 by Jesus, 54 ; particularistic or 
 universal? 60; conditions of enter- 
 ing, according to Jesus, 71-84 
 
 Last Supper, the, not an institution, 
 of Jesus', 115, 
 
 Law, Jesus' relation to the, 86 ; the, 
 "in the members" in Paul's 
 teaching, 175 ; works of, do not 
 justify, according to Paul, 204 ; 
 of the spirit of life in Paul's 
 teaching, 211 
 
 Lechler on conflict between Paul 
 and the original apostles, 139 
 
 Legalistic conception of divine gov- 
 ernment among the Jews, 41 
 
 Life, everlasting, as antitheses of 
 death in Paul's teaching, 223 ; to 
 come, Jesus' teaching regarding, 
 IT8-137 ; locality of, in Jesus' 
 teaching, 127 ; law of the spirit 
 of, 211 
 
 Logos, in the fourth Gospel, 267 ; 
 as mediator, 281 
 
 Love \xi the fourth Gospel, 309 
 
Index of Subjects. 
 
 411 
 
 M 
 
 Man, duties toward, in the teaching 
 of Jesus, 66 
 
 Mark's report of Jesus' words on the 
 sin against the Holy Spirit, 135 
 
 Martineau, on Jesus' Messiahship, 
 96 ; on Vischer's hypothesis as to 
 Revelation, 350 
 
 Matthew, Gospel of, historical testi- 
 mony regarding, 27 ; perversion 
 of Old Testament passages in, 141 
 
 Mediator, no place for, in Jesus' 
 teaching, 70 ; in the fourth Gos- 
 pel, 281 
 
 Melanchthon, his point of view in 
 his Loci Theologici, 6 
 
 Mercy of God in the Old Testament, 
 40 
 
 Messiah-idea of the prophets trans- 
 formed by Jesus, 86 ; the tradi- 
 tional one modified by Jesus, 99 
 
 Messiahship of Jesus, proof of, from 
 the Old Testament, 141 ; as con- 
 ceived by Paul, 367 
 
 Messianic expectations, 38, 46 
 
 Messianism, the, of the Septuagint, 
 184 
 
 Meyer, on Jesus' fulfilment of the 
 law, 88 ; on Paul's injunction as 
 to the veiling of women in the 
 churches, 155 ; on Paul and the 
 rabbinical lore, 156 
 
 Miracles of Jesus in the fourth Gos- 
 pel, 300 
 
 Miraculous conception, legend of, 
 
 143 
 Monotheism, in the fourth Gospel, 
 
 312 ; in the Pastoral Epistles, 329 
 Morals and religion in the teaching 
 
 of Jesus, 84 
 Mythology in Ephesians, 239 ; in 
 
 Revelation, 357 
 
 N 
 
 National Messianism, the, and the 
 Jewish conception of the life to 
 come, 127 
 
 Nations, the, in the Messianic judg- 
 ment, 127 
 
 Nature, the human, of Jesus, 99 ; 
 
 external, the object of the divine 
 
 goodness in Philo, 274 
 Nazarenes, the, Christology of , 143 
 New commandment, the, in the 
 
 fourth Gospel, 299 
 New covenant, a, in the blood of 
 
 Christ, 115 
 Nod's \\\ Paul's teaching, 177 
 
 O 
 
 Old Testament, legislation of, op- 
 posed by Jesus, 65 ; idea of, God in, 
 substantially retained by Jesus, 78 ; 
 Jesus' attitude toward, 84-90 ; use 
 of term Son of Man in, 100 ; texts 
 from, misapplied in the New Tes- 
 tament, 141 ; Paul's idea of inspi- 
 ration of, 156 
 
 Oneness of believers wiih Christ in 
 the fourth Gospel, 308 
 
 Organ of revelation, relation of, to 
 other men, 381 
 
 Origen quotes Aristobulus, 30 
 
 Original sin, doctrine of, not taught 
 by Paul, 174 
 
 Originality of Jesus, 67, 68, 80, 95 
 
 Papias on the fourth Gospel, 28 
 Paraclete, the, in the fourth Gospel, 
 
 311 ; in I John, 326 
 Parousia, the, as held by the Jewish 
 Christians, 144-146, 165 ; in Paul's 
 teaching, 216-231 ; in i Peter, 
 263; in the fourth Gospel, 313; 
 in the Pastoral Epistles, 337 ; in 
 2 Peter, 343 
 Passion of Jesus, to what extent 
 foretold by himself, no; Peter's 
 discourse on, in Acts, 140 
 Pastoral Epistles, the, 327-338 
 Paul, on the resurrection, 125 ; his 
 early life, 153; his familiarity with 
 the Old Testament and apocryphal 
 literature, 154 ; rabbinical traits, 
 155 ; his allegorical and typological 
 interpretation, 156; his conversion, 
 157-164 ; his idea of the Messiah, 
 
412 
 
 Index of Subjects. 
 
 165 ; his doctrine of sin and the 
 flesh, 17T-181 ; his Christology, 
 182-203 ! l^is teaching regarding 
 justification, 205 ; his teaching 
 regarding the future life, 216-228 ; 
 his mysticism, 229 
 
 Paulinism, not a system, 228 ; rela- 
 tion of the immediate successors 
 of the apostle to, 232 
 
 Person of Jesus, the, in his own teach- 
 ing, 90-108 ; prominence accorded 
 to, in the fourth Gospel, 299 
 
 Peter, Epistle of, 260-266 ; shows 
 an approximation to the Johannine 
 teaching, 260 ; relation of, to 
 Paul, 261 ; faith in, 262 ; baptism 
 in, 262 ; salvation in, 262 ; the 2d 
 Epistle of, 342-345 
 
 Pfleiderer, his Urchristenthum, 26 ; 
 on the entrance of Hellenism into 
 the Church, 318 ; on the Christi- 
 anity of the Pastoral Epistles, 334 
 
 Philo, his doctrine of the earthly and 
 the heavenly man, 184 ; on the 
 Logos, 237, 271 ; on the love of 
 God, 273 
 
 Pleroma, 252 
 
 Pragmatism, the, of the biblical 
 writers, 39 
 
 Predestination in Paul's teaching, 214 
 
 Preexistence of Christ in Paul's 
 teaching, 185 ; in Hebrews, 237 ; 
 in the fourth Gospel, 285 
 
 Prodigal son, parable of the, 82, 117 
 
 Propitiation in the teaching of Paul, 
 ig6 
 
 Protestantism and the Scriptures, 5 
 
 Punishment of sin, in Jesus' teaching, 
 132 ; endlessness of, not explicitly 
 affirmed or denied by Jesus, 135 ; 
 resurrection to endless, not taught 
 by Paul, 223 
 
 R 
 
 Ransom, Jesus' saying regarding his 
 death as a, 114; in Paul's teach- 
 ing, 191 f ; not in fourth Gospel, 
 
 374 
 Rationalism, as opposed to historical 
 
 criticism, 10 ; application of, to 
 
 interpretation, 11 
 Reconciliation with God in Paul's 
 
 teaching, 197 
 Redemption, in Paul's teaching, 
 
 191 f ; in Colossians, 251 ; in 
 
 Ephesians, 256 ; in the Pastoral 
 
 Epistles, 331 
 Religion, historical study of, how 
 
 impeded, 2 ; as relative, 3 
 Renovation (jtaXiy y Ev E6ia), 53 
 Renunciation in the teaching of 
 
 Jesus, 74 
 Repentance and the kingdom of 
 
 God, 71 
 Resurrection, Paul on the, 125 ; in 
 
 Jesus' teaching, 127 ; of Christ in 
 
 Paul's teaching, 200 f ; of men in 
 
 Paul's teaching, 219 
 Reuss, his New-Testament theology, 
 
 25 
 Righteousness, the, of the kingdom 
 of God in Jesus' teaching, 62-71 ; 
 in the Old Testament, 63 ; Jesus' 
 conception of, in relation to that 
 of Judaism, 65 ; Jesus' inclusion 
 of duties to man in, 66 ; Jesus' 
 view of, in relation to Paul's, 70 ; 
 by "faith" not taught by Jesus, 
 71 ; "of God," in Paul's teach- 
 ing, 204 
 
 S 
 
 Sabbath, Jesus' attitude toward, 85, 
 
 108 
 Salvation, Jesus teaching regarding, 
 
 71 f ; in Paul's teaching, 190 f ; 
 
 in the fourth Gospel, 296, 306 
 Satan, in the Old Testament, 45 ; 
 
 in the teaching of Jesus, 120 ; in 
 
 the fourth Gospel, 281 
 Schleiermacher on religion, 2 
 Semler, his critical work, 6 
 Sheol, Jewish doctrine of, 122 
 Sin and the flesh in Paul's teaching, 
 
 171-181 
 Son of God, Jesus' teaching regard- 
 ing himself as the, 92 
 Son of Man, as a self-designation of 
 
 Jesus, 99, 104 ; in Daniel, 99, 
 
Index of Subjects. 
 
 413 
 
 107 ; as lord of the Sabbath, 
 
 108 ; in the fourth Gospel, 292 
 Stevens, the Paulii;e Theology, 189 
 Strauss, his Life of Jesus, 14 ; on 
 
 miracles, 15 
 
 Supper, the last, not an institution 
 established by Jesus, 116 
 
 Synoptics, the, and the fourth Gos- 
 pel, 18 
 
 Temptation, the, of Jesus, 143 
 
 Theology, its disservice to religion, 
 388 ; has popularized a meta- 
 physics, 389 
 
 Theologian, the, his radical error, 
 388 
 
 Tongues, the speaking with, 148 
 
 Toy, on Jesus and the apocalyptic 
 sayings ascribed to him, 56 ; on 
 the early Christian doctrine of the 
 resurrection, 124 
 
 Transformation, of Hebraism by 
 Jesus, 35; of the gospel by Paul, 
 152, 170, 229; the Johannine, of 
 the gospel, 267-317 ; of the re- 
 ligion of Jesus in and subsequent 
 to the New Testament, 391 
 
 Trinity, doctrine of, not held by 
 Jewish Christians, 149 
 
 Tubingen school, the, and historical 
 criticism, 21 ; modifications of, 24 
 
 Types of New-Testament teaching 
 contrasted, 376 
 
 U 
 
 Unbelievers, the, in the fourth Gos- 
 pel, 276 
 
 Underworld, the, in teaching of 
 Jesus, 130, 133; in Paul's the- 
 ology, 217 ; legend of descent 
 of Christ to, 264 
 
 Union, with Christ, in Paul's teach- 
 ing, 208 ; in the Johannine 
 thought, 309 ; Christian, poten- 
 
 tially contained in the gospel of 
 Jesus, 393 
 Unities of the New Testament, 384 
 Unity of doctrine in the New Testa- 
 ment, theory of, a hindrance to 
 critical study of that book, 4 
 
 Verifiability of gospel of Jesus, 379, 
 
 384 
 Virgin-birth, the, of Jesus, 142 
 Vischer on Revelation, 350 
 Visions, Paul's tendency to, 159 
 Volter's division of Revelation, 350 
 Von Colin, his New-Testament 
 
 Theology, 14 
 
 W 
 
 ^Veiss, his Nevv-Testament The- 
 ology, 26 
 Wendt on f.n6EL in Luke xiv. 25, 
 
 Wisdom, book of, idea of righteous- 
 ness in, 64 ; probably used by 
 Paul, 154 
 
 Woman as ' ' deceived " and ' ' saved " 
 in I Timothy, 334 
 
 Women, Paul's requirement as to 
 their heads being covered in 
 church, 155 
 
 Work of Christ continued by the 
 Holy Spirit in the fourth Gospel, 
 
 311 
 Works, in the fourth Gospel, 306 : 
 
 in the pastoral Epistles, 334 
 Wrath of God in the fourth Gospel, 
 
 276 
 
 Zacharia, his biblical theology, 7 
 Zeller, his judgment of the rational- 
 istic interpretation, 13 ; on spurious 
 Pythagorean writings, 31 
 
GOSPEL-CRITICISM 
 AND HISTORICAL CHRISTIANITY 
 
 A Study of the Gospels and of the History of the Gospel- 
 Canon during the Second Century ; together 'vrith a con- 
 sideration of the Results of Modern Criticism. By Orello 
 Cone. D.D. Second Edition, 8vo, gilt top, $1.75. 
 
 CHIEF CONTENTS.— I. The Text— II. The Canon— III. The 
 Synoptic Problem — IV. The Gospkl According to Mark — V. The 
 Gospel According TO Matthew — VI. The Gospel According to Luke 
 — VII. The Gospel According to John — VIII. The Eschatology 
 of the Gospels — IX. Dogmatic ** Tendencies" in the Gospels — X. 
 The Old Testament in the Gospels ; or, The Hermeneutics of 
 THE Evangelists — XI. The Gospels as Histories — XII. Criticism 
 and Historical Christianity. 
 
 "A strong book, and well worth reading by any one who 
 knows or does not know the recent results of the higher 
 criticism. " — Christia7i Union. 
 
 "The work of a scholar who has made himself familiar with 
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 the nature and bearing of the questions at issue. . . Re- 
 plete with information for those who have not made the 
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 rational inquiry." — Geo. B. Stevens, Professor of New-Testa- 
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 been written on the subject." — Prof. C H. Toy. 
 
 " A book of rare strength and poise. . . Places its author 
 in the front rank of American biblical scholars."^ T"-^*? 
 Unitarian, 
 
 " Scholarly from cover to cover, and a decided addition to 
 New-Testament literature." — Boston Advertiser. 
 
 " I admire its careful learning and thorough mastery of the 
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 throughout our close attention and frequent admiration." — The 
 London Literary World. 
 
 " I feel very great admiration for the scholarship and 
 wisdom shown in the treatment of the whole subject. 
 The book is admirable and cannot fail to do great good 
 among thinking men." — Andrew D. White. 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York and London.