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CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 3 1924 092 355 225 
 

MW TESTAMEFT THEOLOGY 
 
PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBE, 
 FOR 
 
 T, & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH. 
 
 LONDON : SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT, AND CO. LIMITED. 
 
 NEW YOBK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. 
 
 TORONTO : THE WILLAUD TRACT DEPOSITORY. 
 
^eto Cesftament C|^eolojg:g 
 
 HISTOBIGAL ACCOUNT OF THE TEACHING OF JESUS 
 
 AND OF PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY ACCORDING 
 
 TO THE NEW TESTAMENT SOURCES 
 
 BY 
 
 Dr. WILLIBALD BEYSCHLAG 
 
 PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY AT HALLE 
 
 ©ranalateir b^ 
 Eev. NEIL BUCHANAN 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES 
 VOL. I 
 
 EDINBURGH 
 T. & T. CLAEK, 38 GEOEGE STEEET 
 
A-^0^7C| 
 
 [The Translation is Copyright by arrangement with the Aitthor] 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Author's Preface to the English Edition . . . siii 
 
 Preface ". xix 
 
 Introduction . 1 
 
 § 1. Subject and Problem 1 
 
 § 2. Standpoint ... 4 
 
 § 3. Sketch of the Treatment of our Subject up to the Present 11 
 
 § 4. Questions of Method 16 
 
 § 5. The Question as to an Old Testament Judaistic Previous 
 
 History 23 
 
 BOOK I 
 
 THE TEACHING OF JESUS ACCORDING TO THE 
 SYNOPTISTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 Introductory .... .... 
 
 § 1. Teaching and Life . . . . 
 
 § 2. Sources 
 
 § 3. Peculiarity of Jesus' Teaching . . . . 
 
 § 4. Origin of Jesus' Teaching . . . . 
 
 § 5. Revealed Character of Christ's Teaching . 
 § 6. Relation of the Teaching of Jesus to the Old Testament 
 
 27 
 
 28 
 29 
 31 
 34 
 36 
 38 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 The Kingdom op Heaven ok Kingdom of God . . 41 
 
 § 1. Meaning of the Word . . ■ • 41 
 
 §2. Its Historical Root .... 43 
 
VI 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 § 3. Jesus' Idea of the Kingdom 
 §4. The Present and Future Kingdom . 
 § 5. Inner Relation of the two Aspects . 
 § 6. The Kingdom as a Power of Salvation 
 
 PAGE 
 
 45 
 49 
 52 
 54 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 The Son of Man and Son op God . 
 
 § 9. 
 §10. 
 §11- 
 §12. 
 
 Personal Relation of Jesus to the Idea of the Kingdom 
 
 The Idea of the Messiah 
 
 Attitude of Jesus to this Idea of Messiah 
 The Name Son of Man : Interpretations to be Rejected 
 Investigation . . . . ' 
 Conclusion of the Investigation 
 The Name Son of God . 
 Old Testament Usage 
 The Meaning of Jesus 
 The Question of Divine Descent . 
 Purely Human Consciousness of Christ 
 Sinlessness of Jesus 
 His Oneness with God . 
 
 56 
 
 56 
 57 
 58 
 60 
 62 
 64 
 67 
 68 
 69 
 71 
 73 
 75 
 77 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 The Heavenly Father and the "World . 
 
 § 1. The New Idea of God . 
 
 § 2. The Name Father . 
 
 § 3. The ih ayaiis and rihuoi 
 
 § 4. Heaven and Earth . 
 
 § 5. Angels .... 
 
 § 6. Man .... 
 
 § 7. Sin .... 
 
 § 8. Satan 
 
 § 9. The Inner Relation of God to the World 
 
 § 10. The Divine Righteousness 
 
 § 11. The Grace and Mercy of God 
 
 79 
 
 79 
 80 
 82 
 84 
 86 
 88 
 90 
 93 
 95 
 97 
 99 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 The Wat op Righteousness 102 
 
 §1. The Concept of Righteousness 102 
 
 § 2. Position towards the current Teaching and Practice of 
 
 Righteousness 105 
 
 § 3. Relation to the Ritual Law 107 
 
CONTENTS Vll 
 
 § 4. The fundamental Commandments as Starting-point of 
 
 the Fulfilment Ill 
 
 § 5. The Love of our Neighbour ... . . 115 
 §6. Love towards God . . ... ,118 
 § 7. Love of God and appraising of the World . . 121 
 § 8. Love for God and Self-Perfection 125 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 The Messianic Salvation ... 
 
 § 1. The Fact of a Doctrine of Salvation 
 
 § 2. The Kingdom of Heaven as Salvation . 
 
 § 3. The Way of Salvation. Calling and Election 
 
 § 4. The Way of Salvation. Conversion and Forgiveness 
 
 § 5. The Way of Salvation. Sonship and Sanctification 
 
 § 6. Means of Salvation, Word and Miracle . 
 
 § 7. The personal Mediator of Salvation 
 
 § 8. The saving Significance of His Death 
 
 § 9. Doctrinal Significance of the Institution of the Lord'i 
 
 Supper 
 
 § 10. Concluding Remarks 
 
 130 
 
 130 
 133 
 137 
 
 140 
 144 
 146 
 148 
 150 
 
 154 
 158 
 
 160 
 
 160 
 162 
 
 165 
 168 
 171 
 
 176 
 179 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 The Church .... .... 
 
 § 1. Discipleship 
 
 § 2. The Church .... ... 
 
 § 3. Church Order : (a) Government of the Spirit, Faith and 
 
 Prayer, Binding and Loosing .... 
 § 4. Church Order : (5) Love, Discipline, Infallibility . 
 § 5. The Authority of Peter, Matt. xvi. 18, 19 
 § 6. Objective Points of Support for the Church Life (Baptism 
 
 and the Lord's Supper) 
 
 § 7. Historical Task of the Church .... 
 
 § 8. Prophetic Outlook 183 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 The Judgment ok the World ... ■ • 187 
 
 § 1. Authenticity and Difficulties 188 
 
 § 2. The Idea of the Judgment of the World and of the Office 
 
 of Judge of the World 189 
 
 § 3. The Idea of the Return in Glorj- 192 
 
 § 4. The final Picture of the Judgment of the World . . 193 
 
 § 5. The Destruction of Jerusaleni 195 
 
 § 6. The Parousia as a Historical Process . . • .198 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 201 
 204 
 205 
 
 § ■?. The Original State of things and the Traditional Form 
 
 § 8. The Future Judgment • 
 
 § 9. Impossiblity of maintaining the usual Conception 
 § 10. Proof of continuous Development in the World to come 207 
 § 11. The Eesurrection of the Dead . • . . 210 
 § 12. Retrospect and Conclusion 
 
 BOOK II 
 
 THE TEACHING OF JESUS ACCORDING TO 
 THE GOSPEL OF JOHN 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Inteoductory ... . • • 216 
 
 § 1. The Johannine Question . . • 216 
 
 § 2. Genuineness of the Gospel ... • • 217 
 
 § 3. Difficulty of the Discourses of Jesus . • • 219 
 
 § 4. Suggested Solution ... .221 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 God and the World • 224 
 
 § 1. The Idea of God . . . • 224 
 
 § 2. The Idea of the World . . . .225 
 
 § 3. Evil ... ... .228 
 
 § 4. The universal Revelation of God in the World 231 
 
 § 5. Estimation of the Old Testament 234 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 The Testimony of Jesus to Himself . . . 236 
 
 § 1. The Problem ... 236 
 
 237 
 240 
 244 
 247 
 249 
 250 
 252 
 256 
 
 260 
 
 § 2. Jesus the Messenger of God . 
 § 3. The Son of Man and Son of God . 
 § 4. Purely Human Form of Consciousness 
 § 5. Sinlessness and Oneness with God 
 § 6. The Idea of Pre-existence 
 § 7. Historical and Psychological Explanation of it 
 § 8. The several Utterances concerning Pre-existence 
 § 9. Heavenly Mission and Descent 
 
 § 10. The Source from which He derives His Knowledge of 
 Heavenly Things 
 
 § 11. Conclusion 264 
 
CONTENTS IX 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Founding of Salvation ... . . 266 
 
 § 1. The Kingdom of Heaven and Eternal Life . . . 266 
 
 § 2. Other Designjition^ of the Blessing of Salvation 268 
 
 § 3. The Means of Salvation 270 
 
 § 4. Saving Significance of the Death of Jesus . . 273 
 
 § 5. Glorification of Jesus and sending of the Spirit 276 
 
 § 6. The Glorified Christ and the Holy Spirit . 279 
 
 CHAPTEE V 
 
 The Development of Eternal Life . . 282 
 
 § 1. Way of Salvation .... 282 
 
 § 2. The Gospel Community ... .287 
 
 § 3. Relation of the Disciples to the World . 290 
 
 § 4. The Judgment of the World . . .293 
 
 § 5. Thje Ressureotion and Eternal Life . 297 
 
 BOOK III 
 
 VIEWS OF THE FIEST APOSTLES 
 
 I. TEE FIRST APOSTLES AND THE FIMST COMMUNITY, 
 ACCORDING TO THE ACTS OF TEE APOSTLES 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The Standpoint of the First Apostles . . 300 
 
 § 1. Credibility of the Acts of the Apostles . . . 300 
 
 § 2. Standpoint of the Disciples during the Lifetime of Jesus 301 
 
 § 3. Impression of the Death and the Resurrection of Jesus . 303 
 
 § 4. Tlie Outpouring of the Spirit . . 305 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 ThB Preaching of the Original Apostles 
 
 § 1. The Witnesses .... 
 
 § 2. Jesus the Christ ... 
 
 § 3. The Preaching of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus 
 
 § 4. The Future and the Present Salvation 
 
 308 
 
 308 
 308 
 311 
 315 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 The Life of the Primitive Church 
 
 § 1. Biblico - Theological Significance of 
 
 Church 
 
 § 2. Its Position in Judaism . 
 § 3. Brotherly Love and Earthly Possessions 
 § 4. The Eegulations of the Community 
 § 5. Legal or Evangelical Standpoint 
 
 the Primitive 
 
 PAGE 
 
 317 
 
 317 
 318 
 321 
 322 
 324 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 Further Developments 
 
 § 1. Stephen 
 
 § 2. The Speech of Stephen 
 
 § 3. The Question regarding the Conversion of the Gentiles 
 § 4. The Convention of Apostles 
 
 327 
 
 327 
 329 
 331 
 333 
 
 II. TEE EPISTLE OF JAMES 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Introductory 337 
 
 § 1. Opinions regarding the Epistle of James . . 337 
 
 § 2. The Circle of Readers 338 
 
 § 3. The Author . . 341 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 God and Man . 343 
 
 § 2. Man ... 345 
 
 § 3. Sin 346 
 
 § 4. The Position of God towards sinful Men . . . 348 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 The Salvation that is in Christ 
 
 § 1. The Second Birth . 
 
 § 2. The Election and Promise 
 
 § 3. The Law of Liberty 
 
 § 4. Jesua the Christ and Lord 
 
 350 
 
 350 
 351 
 352 
 355 
 
CONTENTS XI 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Faith and Works - . . . . . 357 
 
 § 1. Concept of Works ... . . 357 
 
 § 2. Concept of Faith 358- 
 
 § 3. Relation between Faith, and Works .... 359 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Justification 362 
 
 § 1. The Concept Justification in general . . . 362 
 
 § 2. James' Doctrine of Justification ... . 364 
 
 § 3. James and Paul 366 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 The Christian Life 369 
 
 § 1. Love of God and Contempt for the World . 369 
 
 § 2. Sanctification and its Means .... . 370 
 
 § 3. Warning against Sins of the Tongue ... 372 
 
 § 4. The Christian Community .... . 374 
 
 § 5. The Christian Hope 375 
 
 III. THE FIRST EPISTLE OF PETER 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Introductory 377 
 
 § 1. Difference between the two Epistles of Peter . . . 377 
 
 § 2. Marks of Genuineness in the First Epistle . 377 
 
 § 3. Answer to certain Objections 380 
 
 § 4. The Doctrinal Peculiarity of the Epistle . . .382 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 God the Father and the People op His Inheritance . . 385 
 
 § 1. Idea of God 385 
 
 § 2. The Inheritance and its Transference to the Christians . 386 
 
 § 3. The Way of Salvation 388 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 The Person and Sufferings of Christ 391 
 
 § 1. The Person of Christ .391 
 
 § 2. Saving Significance of the Sufferings and Death of Christ 394 
 
 § 3. Old Testament Types .... . . 398 
 
XU CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Pilgrim State and Walk of the Christian . . • 402 
 § 1. The Eesurrection of Christ as the Foundation of Christian 
 
 Life . 
 
 § 2. Life in the Word, in the Spirit, in the Lord, in God 
 § 3. The Life in Faith, Hope, Ohedience, and Sanctiflcation 
 § 4. The Life in Christian and in Natural Fellowship . 
 § 5. The Christian in Suffering . ... 
 
 402 
 404 
 406 
 408 
 411 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 The Peeaching to the Dead and the Judgment of the 
 
 World . .413 
 
 § 1. The Sphere of Hope . . 413 
 
 § 2. The Preaching to the Dead . . .413 
 
 § 3. The Judgment of the World . . . .417 
 
 ERRATA 
 
 Page 68, line 7 from top, read Mark xiii. 32 instead of Mark xiii. 14. 
 
 „ „ 12 from bottom, read Ex. iv. 22 instead of Ex. xxii. 4. 
 
 74, ,, 13 from bottom, read Matt. xi. 25 instead of Matt. xxii. 23. 
 
 94, ,, 17 from top, read Luke xiii. 16 instead of Luke xvi. 16. 
 
 97, „ 8 from top, read Matt. x. 8 instead of Mark x. 8. 
 105, note 1, read Matt. xxii. 40 instead of Mark xxiii. 40. 
 116, line 2 from bottom, read Luke xvii. 3, 4 instead of Luke 
 
 xvi. 3, 4. 
 141, top line, read iTnsTpitpeii/ instead of evtaT/iicpiaSai. 
 
 „ line 9 from bottom, read Matt. iv. 17 instead o/Matt. iv. 12. 
 173, „ 15 from top, read Matt. xvi. 21 S. instead of Matt. xxi. 21. 
 191, „ 8 from top, read Luke xii. 8 I'miead o/ Luke xviii. 8. 
 199, „ 2 from top, read Matt. xxvi. 64 instead of Matt. xxiv. 64. 
 215, „ 6 from bottom, read Mark xii. 24, 25 instead of Matt. 
 xii. 24, 25. 
 
PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION 
 
 The following work, which has now the honour of being 
 translated into English, and which contains the main pro- 
 duct of many years of theological occupation with the New 
 Testament, has met with a more favourable reception in 
 Germany than I could have expected. Not that my anti- 
 cipations that it would displease the extreme parties on right 
 and left have been falsified ; for even the moderate party now 
 dominant in Germany, whilst regarding it with more respect, 
 has treated it as alien to itself. All the more encouraging is 
 that practical criticism, which consists in the eager purchase, 
 diligent reading, and warm praise of a book by susceptible 
 readers. This experience pleases me the more that I view 
 New Testament theology as the source destined to rejuvenate 
 our traditional Church and doctrinal systems, concerning the 
 insufficiency of which our age, with all its other differences, is 
 pretty unanimous. There are undoubtedly needs and feelings 
 in England like our own, though, perhaps, the power of 
 orthodox scholasticism may not be so great, and the inclina- 
 tion to abandon tradition and go back to the Holy Scriptures 
 much stronger ; and therefore I hail it as a new sign of the 
 spiritual fellowship of German and English Protestantism, that 
 my effort to promote a deeper and freer conception of the 
 New Testament religion has met with sympathy on the other 
 side of the Channel, and is to gain a wider sphere of influence 
 through a careful and intelligent translation. 
 
 Biblical theology, as a science still in its infancy, is liable 
 to more uncertainty as to what exactly are its idea and the 
 limits of its task than any other branch of theological science. 
 And therefore, I am not surprised that the criticisms of my 
 
xiv PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION 
 
 book, which have hitherto appeared, have been directed mainly 
 against that enlargement of its idea and sphere which is 
 peculiar to my work. It is said that I have modernised to 
 some extent the biblical views, and treated them in a manner 
 too subjective, and in this way have made biblical theology 
 approximate too closely to a biblical dogmatic. This impres- 
 sion is no doubt connected with the fact that to me the doc- 
 trinal views of the New Testament are not mere thoughts of 
 past times, but words of eternal truth addressed to us likewise. 
 But I should regret if this religious attitude of mine, 
 which in itself is surely permissible, were found not only to 
 have shown itself in certain incidental allusions to the pre- 
 valent systems of doctrine which have no essential bearing on 
 my task, but also to have disturbed the scientific impartiality 
 and objectivity of my historical account. I have as yet 
 waited in vain for a proof of the latter, for the fact that others 
 expound contested points of the Scriptures in another way 
 than I do is no such proof. 
 
 The only English criticism of my book that I have seen is 
 that of Professor Dickson in the Critical Review. He has 
 satisfied himself with calling in question the scheme of pro- 
 cedure laid down as necessary for a proper treatment of my 
 task. In spite of his great sympathy with my general 
 theological position and his hearty recognition of my work, 
 this critic decidedly prefers the principles on which the well- 
 known work of Dr. Weiss is constructed, and views the points 
 in which my treatment departs from those principles as 
 peculiarities which lessen the value of my treatise. We, in 
 Germany, prize Weiss' book as the most thorough and com- 
 plete collection of materials for a historical account of the 
 New Testament religion, but no one can call it a historical 
 account in the proper sense. Not only is the book very hard 
 reading, but one may go through it carefully, and at the end 
 be just as wise as he was before about the religion of the New 
 Testament as a whole. It is undoubtedly used much more as 
 a book of reference than as a book for reading, and there was 
 absolute need of its being supplemented by an entirely 
 different treatment of the subject. 
 
 In undertaking this task I have kept well in view the 
 conditions and limitations of a historical presentation. I am 
 
PKEFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION XV 
 
 conscious of the wide difference between such a work as C. I. 
 Nitzsch's System of Christian Doctrine and a biblical theology 
 which is to treat especially of the New Testament. The work 
 of Nitzsch is a doctrinal system of biblical dogmatic and 
 ethics, drawn indiscriminately from the various Scripture 
 writers ; while my task is to examine the several historical 
 accounts of the religion revealed in the New Testament, and 
 exhibit in accordance with this, not what we have to believe, 
 but what Jesus and His apostles believed. 
 
 But although there is no dispute about the historical 
 character of biblical theology, yet the idea one has of the way 
 in which history should be written, the high or low conception 
 one forms of historical writing, is matter of importance. Even 
 chronicles are a kind of history, but an imperfect kind, which 
 has ceased to satisfy anyone. At the present day we demand 
 more from history than a mere compilation of notes, carefully 
 selected from the original sources and put in a convenient 
 form. For this would yield no true picture, or at best only a 
 Chinese painting without spirit or life : the actions and 
 thoughts of old times and other nations would remain to us 
 strange and unintelligible. We demand of history a living 
 picture of the unfamiliar life of men in the remote past, not 
 the digging out and exhibition of imperfect mummies, but the 
 mental reproduction of living forms with whom we can think 
 and feel. But to this end a certain translation into our own 
 modes of thought and expression of that which is past and 
 unfamiliar is absolutely indispensable. . We must, of course, 
 in the first place transfer ourselves into the past and steep 
 ourselves in it, as my critic demands ; yet we must not con- 
 tent ourselves with this, but must seek to revive the past and 
 bring it into the present. 
 
 This higher idea of history lies at the basis of all the 
 really important contributions to profane history which our 
 century has made ; they may all, from an antiquated stand- 
 point, be reproached with a " modernising " of antiquity. Am 
 I to be blamed for venturing to apply this higher idea of 
 history to the bibKcal history of religion ? Where could it 
 be more applicable than in the case of the Bible, which is 
 meant to present us, not with a record of antiquities, but with 
 imperishable words of eternal life ? 
 
xvi PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION 
 
 These considerations, I believe, completely justify those 
 peculiar principles of procedure which my English critic 
 rejects as unjustifiable and suspicious. The primitive Christian 
 religion as mirrored in the New Testament writings is un- 
 questionably a historical phenomenon, a historical fact and 
 form of life, and the business of biblical theology is to repre- 
 sent it as such. Now this religion lies , before us in a small 
 number of popular sketches of the life of Jesus and of some 
 occasional writings of His apostles or companions of His 
 apostles. A procedure such as is demanded by my reviewer, 
 of simply ascertaining and arranging the doctrines that are 
 expressly stated, would be quite insufficient, because that 
 which these sources present, in the shape of formal doctrine, 
 is far from exhausting their religious doctrinal content. How 
 much of what belongs to the religion of the new covenant have 
 we to gather from mere hints, or presuppositions of Jesus and 
 His apostles ! If we were to leave these out of account we 
 would, for example, have, in the case of Paul, no doctrine of 
 God ; in the case of Jesus, no doctrine of man, that is, in 
 either case we would be deprived of one of the two poles 
 between which religion altogether moves. When my critic 
 again and again maintains that biblical theology has to do 
 simply with that which the Bible presents of religious teaching, 
 he overlooks the fact that a great part of that teaching is pre- 
 sented, not in the form of doctrine, but as mere doctrinal 
 material, and that for that very reason we cannot be satisfied 
 with a procedure of merely ascertaining and combining, such 
 as he will alone admit. 
 
 But even that which he regards as so suspicious, " the 
 translation " of what we find in the Bible into our own modes 
 of thought and speech, is indispensable. For we are to 
 endeavour to understand what we find in the Bible • and as 
 we are neither Jews nor Greeks of the first Eoman Empire, 
 but Germans or Englishmen of the nineteenth century, how 
 are we to understand without a translation in the widest and 
 deepest sense of the word? A translation of the biblical 
 speech, in the ordinary sense, into German or English of the 
 present day, is itself a kind of modernising process. But a 
 mere dictionary translation would help us very little, would aive 
 us only words without intelligible meaning. There must'' be 
 
PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION XVll 
 
 added a mental translation, a transference not merely into our 
 vocabulary, but also into our mode of thought, as speech and 
 thought cannot at all be separated. No doubt this procedure 
 may be abused, and lead to a voluntary or involuntary 
 importation of one's own ideas, but " abusus non tollit usum." 
 
 Finally, in asserting that the work of biblical theology 
 can dispense with criticism and divination just as little as 
 any other writing of history, I have no doubt made a state- 
 ment that is also capable of being greatly misunderstood and 
 abused, but rightly understood it is quite self - evident. 
 Without criticism, that is, without judgment, not merely 
 about the actuality, but also about the importance of the 
 facts recorded, no one can write a history of the New Testa- 
 ment religion, or, in fact, any rational history whatever. Just 
 as little can he do so without divination, that is, without that 
 process of mental creation which out of dissimilar fragments 
 produces a harmonious whole. I understand here by criti- 
 cism, not indeed a judgment as to what worth particular 
 views in the Bible may have for us, but what they signified 
 for Jesus and for Paul themselves ; and by " reading between 
 the lines,'' I mean not a conjectural reading into, but a 
 reading out by divination of what is not expressed but 
 implied. Thus Paul has nowhere given us an exposition of 
 the way in which he conceives it possible to reconcile the 
 existence of the divine government of the world with human 
 freedom, but in a whole series of utterances he forces on us 
 the conviction, that in his opinion such a harmony existed. 
 Have I then done anything superfluous or arbitrary in attempt- 
 ing to divine his solution of the problem from these various 
 references to it ? 
 
 This extension and deepening of the historical task which 
 is demanded by our age, is, I believe, quite indispensable, 
 though it adds immensely to the difBculties and dangers of 
 the historian's work. Everything, however, depends on these 
 principles being legitimately applied and not abused. In this 
 respect my English critic testifies that I have only made a 
 moderate use of those principles which he regards as suspicious ; 
 yet he is of opinion that my book is to be used with care. 
 In this he is certainly right. No historian can rise above a 
 certain subjectivism, for he has only two eyes, and these his 
 
 BEVSCHLAG. — I. ^ 
 
xviii PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION 
 
 own two eyes, wherewith to see. However, one is just as 
 little protected from this subjectivism by proceeding according 
 to the principles of Weiss' book ; but for that, for example, 
 Weiss would not have propounded that entirely onesided 
 conception of the Pauline doctrine of the death of Jesus, 
 which views this death as sufficient only for the taking away 
 of guilt, not for the actual overcoming of sin. Nor would he 
 have ascribed to the apostle that abstruse scheme of salvation, 
 in which there is for man not one means of salvation but two, 
 faith for justification, and baptism for the communication of 
 the Spirit. 
 
 It may be that I have not succeeded everywhere in 
 discovering the sense of the original, but have now and 
 again read in my own ideas, and I can only say that I 
 should be truly thankful for any real proof in such cases, in 
 order that it may assist me to improve my judgment and my 
 presentation. In my work I have striven throughout to obtain 
 results not from preconceived ideas, but from authorities 
 honestly expounded, and I claim no more trust on the part 
 of the reader than may be justified by an earnest and strict 
 examination of these authorities. And therefore, with cordial 
 greetings to the English readers who are interested in such 
 work, I would say in the language of the apostle, " Prove all 
 things, and hold fast that which is good." 
 
 DE. WILLIBALD BEYSOHLAG. 
 Halle, December 1893. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 In publishing the first half of a work which has been the 
 favourite task of my life, it may be well to present the reader 
 with some preliminary account of the motives and points of 
 view by which I have been guided. 
 
 The immediate cause of my preparing a history of New 
 Testament theology was the fact that my Cliristology of the 
 Nevj Testament, published in 1865, had been for some years 
 out of print, and I could not make up my mind to publish a 
 new edition of this fragment of a larger organic whole. That 
 book was my answer to the attacks which Hengstenberg had 
 made upon me, on account of my discourse at the Altenburg 
 Church Conference, with the aim of destroying my theological 
 and ecclesiastical effectiveness. Hurriedly written within 
 nine months, it bore the stamp of its first purpose, and in a 
 new edition I should have had to recast, not indeed the main 
 thought, but a great part of the manner of proof, with the 
 view of getting rid of its strongly defensive and dogmatic 
 character. But a new treatment of the Christological theme, 
 especially after the publication of my Life of Jesus, had no 
 attraction for me. On the other hand, the long expressed 
 wish of attached students, as well as the peculiarity of my 
 whole theological training and development, urged me to 
 undertake a complete presentation of New Testament 
 theology. If there is any peculiar gift which I might claim 
 in the sphere of theoretic theology, it is sympathy with the 
 currents of thought in the Bible, especially in the New 
 Testament. This sympathy with the lines of thought in the 
 Bible has kept me free from lifeless scholasticism in theology 
 on the one hand, and from merely destructive criticism on 
 
XX PKEFACB 
 
 the other. It has enabled me to find such a unity of faith 
 and knowledge as I was capable of and required, and, at the 
 same time, it has rendered possible that combination of 
 scientific and practical labour in the service of the Protestant 
 Church which has been the soul of my active life. 
 
 As in this book I follow in the footsteps of my great 
 teacher, 0. J. Nitzsch, who is already almost forgotten, though 
 undeservedly so, I recognise that in view of the present 
 theological and ecclesiastical tendencies my course will be 
 attended with no particular favour. Nay, as my temperament 
 does not allow me to treat matters, which have a far closer 
 interest for me than that of the mere scholar, with the superior 
 coolness which passes with many as the mark of a genuine 
 scientific spirit, my exposition will undoubtedly excite equal 
 displeasure in the opposing wings, both of advanced criticism 
 and traditional dogmatism. I may be allowed here to make 
 some candid acknowledgments to both sides. 
 
 No intelligent reader will fail to recognise that I occupy 
 the standpoint of historical criticism as the only possible one 
 to-day for scientific theology in dealing with the Scriptures, 
 and that I unreservedly renounce the inferences drawn from 
 that antiquated theory of inspiration which has done more to 
 encumber the Bible than to illumine it. But yet I feel 
 myself in fundamental opposition to the modern criticism 
 which has been widely prevalent in theological circles since 
 the days of Baur, without, on that account, admitting that I 
 am behind the times. I have learned from Schleiermacher 
 that criticism is an art, which, above all, seeks by thought to 
 restore life to the writing that is to be judged, and to judge 
 it only from the basis of this living reproduction ; and I have 
 learned from my honoured teacher Bleek that this art is not to 
 be exercised without a corresponding virtue, the virtue of dis- 
 cretion and diffidence, of reverent feeling towards historical 
 tradition, of discrimination between results that carry prob- 
 ability and idle imaginings that simply cumber the path with 
 rubbish, which the next inquirer has to clear away. It seems 
 to me that since the mighty impression produced and the 
 mighty influence exercised by Baur, critical tools have become 
 a common possession, but the art of using them and its corre- 
 sponding virtue have been on the wane. It is held to be the 
 
PEEFACE xxi 
 
 business of criticism to arraign every historical tradition ; it 
 is thought a service to shake conservative positions without 
 putting any better positive understanding of the matter in 
 their place ; people are far more bent on saying something 
 that is new, than on saying something that is tenable. In 
 contrast with this sort of criticism, which brings the art of 
 criticism and whatever is to any degree liberal in the treat- 
 ment of theology into disrepute, I have indicated in the intro- 
 ductory discussions of my chief sections what, in my opinion, 
 after careful consideration, a sober criticism has to say about 
 the New Testament documents, and hope that my presentation 
 of the biblico-theological results will verify these historic and 
 critical assumptions. 
 
 On the other hand, concerning the subject-matter of that 
 presentation, I have to exhibit a great unison in the biblical 
 doctrine of salvation, a substantial agreement even between 
 Paul and the original apostles, and between Paul and Jesus 
 Himself, in all that is important. And I think with this result, 
 if it will stand the test, the good Protestant theologian as 
 well as the simple Bible Christian may rest content. But, 
 except in a very modified way, I have not any scriptural 
 support to proffer for the traditional creed of the Church. I 
 must not only adhere to my christological decisions, advanced 
 five-and-twenty years ago, but must also oppose the traditional 
 juristic doctrine of reconciliation as unbiblical, and maintain a 
 radical distinction between the harmonious biblical doctrines 
 and the current formulae of the Church. If there are people 
 to-day, as there were people at the time of the Altenburg 
 Church Conference, who should find a want of faith in these 
 results, I must leave them to their standpoint of faith in 
 tradition, perhaps reminding them of the words of an old and 
 very orthodox Church Father: "Christ has said, I am the truth; 
 He has not said, I am the custom." My conviction, which is 
 shared by not a few of the most faithful members and 
 servants of the Church, is, that a renovated expression of our 
 Church doctrine is one of the most urgent duties of the time. 
 No stress laid on practical Christianity, however well meant 
 and warranted it may be, will be of any use unless, with the 
 conscientious earnestness which should be inherent in us as 
 Protestants, we seek to ascertain whether the convictions on 
 
XXll PKEFACE 
 
 which it rests are really grounded on the truth. I regard it 
 as the most fatal defect of the so-called " mediating theology" 
 to which I rejoice in other points to belong, that, with few 
 exceptions, instead of exercising a courageous and scriptural 
 criticism on the doctrinal tradition of the Church, it now 
 excuses and now conceals its deviations from that tradition. 
 It has also confounded the historical estimate of the Church's 
 dogmatic with an approximate restoration of it, helping 
 thereby to foster the would-be orthodoxy of our day, which, 
 hke a somnambulist, goes with its eyes closed on the house- 
 tops of the century. If, indeed, our deviations from the 
 traditional were abatements or diminutions of original 
 Christianity, we would have no right to speak or to exist. 
 But the opposite of this is the case. The biblical mode of 
 teaching is far richer, deeper, more satisfying to the intellect, 
 and the religious and moral life, than the scholastic, and we 
 are only exercising our right as good Protestants, we are only 
 doing our evangelic duty, received from the Eeformation, when 
 we go back from scholasticism to the Holy Scriptures of the 
 New Testament, which, during the last century, have been 
 interpreted in accordance with new methods. In this sense, 
 as a modest contribution to the reconstruction of our Church 
 theology, I here submit the results of many years familiarity 
 with the writings of the New Testament, in the hope that 
 though, in the well-known words of the poet, " Nothing will 
 please him who is perfect," there may be some in process of 
 growth who will be grateful for help here as everywhere. 
 
 And now a few more remarks about the formal arrange- 
 ment of my book, as it follows from the scientific and practical 
 tendency which is inseparable from my disposition and mode 
 of thought. As a matter of course, my expositions are con- 
 cerned with the scientific discussions of the present ; but, in 
 order to keep my book from swelling out of proportion, I 
 have restricted to special cases express statements of the views 
 of others, and as far as possible referred to them in notes. I 
 have thought that special reference now and then was due to 
 the much-read book of Dr. Weiss, which in some respects 
 sums up the work hitherto done in this field. It may be 
 hoped that the complaints made in one quarter about my Life, 
 of Christ, that I did not go deep enough into the exegetical 
 
PREFACE XXm 
 
 evidence, will not be repeated here. There is nothing easier 
 than to tumble out the contents of exegetical note-books in 
 such a book, as this. But in doing so one mixes up the 
 business of exegesis and history, and makes needlessly large 
 books at a time when already there is of making books no 
 end. I hope that I have given a presentation sufficient for 
 the intelligent reader everywhere of the exegetical basis which 
 alone belongs to a biblical theology, sometimes by express 
 discussions, sometimes by noting the harmony of different 
 facts, sometimes by simple quotation or translation of passages, 
 while the original text is quoted where it is important to 
 have the Greek words. If, on the other hand, many things 
 are introduced which learned experts may find superfluous, I 
 would ask them to remember that I desire to have my book 
 read not merely by such experts, but also by working clergy- 
 men and students, as well as — if it should be so fortunate — 
 by cultured laymen who may wish to inquire about the 
 sources of our Christian faith and doctrine. Nevertheless I 
 do not doubt that numerous defects will adhere to this as to 
 my earlier work, springing partly from my personal peculiarity, 
 partly from my scanty and broken leisure within six years, in 
 which I have been forced to complete the book bit by bit. I 
 can only pray that a kindly reception may be given to what- 
 ever real help I have to proffer, and that the rest may not be 
 too long dwelt upon. May God, who has allowed me to com- 
 plete in soundness and freshness of mind this life-work, grant 
 His blessing for this attempt to clear a broader roadway for 
 
 His truth. 
 
 WILLIBALD BEYSCHLAG. 
 
 Halle, 1891. 
 
NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 INTEODUCTION 
 
 § 1. Subject and Peoblem 
 
 The question as to the original teaching of Jesus and His 
 apostles has never been entirely set at rest in the course of 
 the Christian centuries. How often has Christendom, un- 
 satisfied, nay, repelled by that which the Church as dispenser 
 of. Christian doctrine offered it, raised its eyes to the hills 
 whence help came to the dying world so many centuries 
 before, and gone back from the turbid brooks of a derived 
 tradition to the sources from which the water of life flows 
 forth in its original purity. But the springs rose from wells 
 that were sealed. The Eeformation gave men a deeper 
 draught from these springs, and declared the fountain to be, 
 accessible to every man. Yet no man who knows what he is 
 saying will maintain that Protestant Christendom to-day has 
 the consciousness of being saturated with the original teaching 
 of Christ, without addition or diminution. The present has 
 only one advantage over every former period of Christendom. 
 It has made the satisfaction of that deep legitimate desire the 
 subject of methodical, scientific work, which is just our 
 biblical and especially our New Testament Theology. 
 
 "Biblical Theology," New Testament Theology," has 
 become current as an awkward name for a subject of the very 
 first importance, — a name which is explained by the scientific 
 history of its origin, to be referred to further on. Tor it does 
 not mean a theology which occupies itself with the Bible, — 
 
 BEYSCHLAG. — I. I 
 
2 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 all branches of biblical study would then have to be compre- 
 hended under this name, — but a theology which the Bible 
 itself has and proffers, the theology which lies before us in 
 the Bible. But the Bible contains no " theology " in the 
 strict sense of the word, no scientific doctrine of divine 
 things. It contains religion as distinguished from theology. 
 And that is just its excellence, that it contains pure religion ; 
 that, as we believe, it presents the true and perfect religion 
 as distinguished from all subsequent theological manipulation 
 of the same. Consequently, the current name, " Biblical 
 Theology," can only be maintained by taking theology here in 
 the wider sense of doctrine and doctrinal contents of a 
 religious and moral character, without any scientific form. 
 
 But we are met on the threshold by a modern objection 
 to this provisional conception of the matter. Is doctrine, 
 even in this sense, really the essential content of the Bible ? 
 Is not its content above all fact and history ? As for Christ- 
 ianity in particular, is it not a life in God mediated through 
 Jesus Christ, rather than a doctrine of divine things ? The 
 friends of biblical theology have no wish to deny the truth 
 which underlies these statements ; but it is a half truth, 
 and therefore liable to be misunderstood. To say nothing of 
 the apostles, who, at anyrate, taught something concerning 
 Christ, or of Paul who was certainly one of the greatest 
 teachers in the world's history, the statement that "Jesus 
 Christ brought no new doctrine, but presented in His person 
 a holy life with God and before God, and in the strength 
 which He drew from that spiritual life He devoted Himself 
 to the service of His brethren in order to win them for the 
 kingdom of God," i is, with all the truth which it contains, 
 one of those misleading statements that oppose things which 
 are not mutually exclusive. No one can deny that Jesus was 
 known by His contemporaries as a " Master," that is, as a 
 Teacher. His preaching was hailed as a new doctrine (Mark 
 i. 27), and He Himself was conscious that its was His special 
 mission to convey a knowledge of God which was unheard of 
 before Him, and which could not be obtained without Him 
 (Matt. xi. 27). Certainly this knowledge is only the abstract 
 side of the life in God which He unfolds in order to com- 
 1 Harnack, History of Dogma, vol. i. p. 36. 
 
INTEODUCTION 3 
 
 municate ; but this new life is anything but an unconscious 
 one ; nor is it imparted by magic, but clothes itself in idea, 
 word, and preaching, and thus becomes essentially and, neces- 
 sarily a new doctrine of divine things. Nor is it otherwise 
 with the content of Holy Scripture as a whole. No doubt 
 that content is above all things testimony, the attestation of 
 facts of divine revelation; but in the testimony there is 
 thought, in the fact there is idea. What God reveals of 
 Himself is truth to be thought about and to be proclaimed ; 
 that is, of course, doctrine, or doctrinal content. 
 
 This doctrinal content of the Bible must, according to our 
 Protestant principle of Scripture, be the basis of our system- 
 atic theology, as well as of our practical preaching. But 
 before we can turn it into the scientific forms of thought of 
 the present day, or bring it to bear in our preaching on the 
 immediate requirements of the Church, it is necessary to 
 realise what was its original shape as it appeared in history. 
 And this is just the task of our biblical theology. 
 
 It is therefore the crowning result of our directly biblical 
 studies. Our first duty in coming to the biblical writings, as 
 the historical documents of our religion, is to make ourselves 
 acquainted with their origin, the place and character of their 
 connection with the progress of a historical revelation. This 
 introductory critical task being performed, we search through 
 the several writings once more, word for word, in order to 
 understand them in detail from the general point of view we 
 have gained, and in order to turn their contents to account ; 
 this is the work of exposition. But the multifarious results 
 of this work are, at first, but stones which obtain their full 
 and proper value only when they are joined together in a 
 great structure ; they are elements which have to be restored 
 to that organic connection to which they once belonged, 
 before that more or less fragmentary and incidental literary 
 verification. Now, according as this mental reproduction 
 takes place from the point of view of the fact, or that of the 
 idea, it yields the theological departments of the history of 
 the old covenant, of the life of Jesus, the history of the 
 apostolic age, or again that of biblical theology of the Old 
 and New Testament. Not, indeed, as if the several parts of 
 the Bible apportioned themselves in a purely external way to 
 
4 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 the one scientific division or the other, the formally historical 
 parts coming to this, and the formally doctrinal parts belong- 
 ing to that. That would yield an equally meagre biblical 
 history and biblical theology, as the formal history, quite as 
 much as the intentional teaching in the biblical documents, 
 comes far short of what was really to be narrated and taught. 
 No ; to take an example from the Old Testament, while the 
 faith of the Psalmist, the wisdom of the Proverbs, and still 
 more the preaching of the prophets belong to the history of 
 Israel, and indeed present its inmost and most pecuhar facts, 
 it is equally certain, conversely, that the religious and moral 
 teaching of the old covenant must be sought not merely in 
 the sayings of Moses and the prophets, but also in the 
 confessions of the Psalms, the sacred institutions, customs, and 
 hopes of the nation. In the same way, it is but a limited 
 part of the New Testament doctrinal content which is 
 purposely developed in the didactic utterances of Jesus and 
 the occasional writings of His apostles ; a greater part, 
 perhaps, comes to us but faintly echoed in the form of pre- 
 supposition or cursory hint, or emerges in the actual conduct 
 of those who teach. But what we have to reproduce is not 
 merely the fragments incidentally worked out in detail, but 
 the whole view of the world as it lived in the hearts of Jesus 
 and His first witnesses. 
 
 Accordingly, the idea and function of New Testament 
 theology may be easily and simply expressed. It is the 
 historical presentation of the New Testament religion from 
 its abstract doctrinal side, the scientific restoration of the 
 moral and religious elements of doctrine which existed in 
 the consciousness of Jesus and His first witnesses, and found 
 expression in their words and writings. It is therefore 
 essentially a historical discipline, a branch of theological 
 science which is related to the sacred history of the Bible, 
 very much as the history of dogma is related to the history 
 of the Church. 
 
 § 2. Standpoint 
 
 , Protestant theology undertakes such a presentation under 
 the twofold conviction of the revealed character of the 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 biblical religion, and the historical character of the biblical 
 revelation. Not that a presentation of the doctrinal contents 
 of the Bible would be impossible without a belief in its 
 origin as higher than that of non-biblical religions. But 
 quite apart from the question whether such a presentation 
 could do justice to the subject, it would therewith sink to 
 the level of a mere chapter in the general history of religion, 
 which could not claim the rank of a special theological 
 department, or any higher value than other chapters of that 
 history. Attempts have been made to treat biblical theology 
 in this way, but that is not the Christian or Protestant 
 standpoint. As Christians we believe that the biblical, and 
 especially the New Testament religion, as distinguished from 
 every other, rests on a divine revelation, and as Protestant 
 Christians we believe that this revelation has found such 
 complete and final expression in the Scriptures, especially those 
 of the New Testament, that their doctrinal contents remain 
 for all time the standard of Christian faith and practice. We 
 therefore regard New Testament theology as not merely a 
 chapter of the general history of religion, in which we may 
 take a human and purely scientific interest, but as an 
 essential means of learning scientifically from the sources the 
 contents of our Christian faith. "We regard it as the touch- 
 stone and source from which our Church doctrine is to be 
 renewed, nay, as the indispensable nursery of our whole 
 Church culture. Yet this revealed character of the biblical 
 religion is not to be proved here as a preliminary. So far 
 as this needs to be established scientifically, it belongs to 
 fundamental theology as apologetics ; for biblical theology it 
 is only a presupposition on which its mode of treatment is 
 not dependent, but without which biblical religion would be 
 for us an insoluble enigma. It may be sufficient here to call 
 attention to the proof to be given further on. To speak 
 briefly, the idea of revelation is the necessary correlate to the 
 idea of religion. If religion, that is, an immediate personal 
 relation of man to God, has any truth at all, then it postu- 
 lates the possibility of an opening up of the heart of the 
 eternal God to the heart of man coming to meet Him. That 
 is a possibility which cannot be realised in heathendom, where 
 the heart of man, seeking God, blunderingly grasps the hem 
 
6 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 of His garment and mistakes nature, His majestic raiment, for 
 Himself. It can only be realised where the heart of man 
 rising above and beyond nature, grasping something super- 
 natural, ethically absolute and holy, presses beyond God's 
 external manifestations into His essence, as is the case in the 
 religion of the Bible, and only. in it. This does not mean 
 that the objective revelation is repeated afresh in the case of 
 everyone who embraces this true religion ; it is broadly 
 human in its references ; it is a communication to one which 
 is meant for others at the same time, — a communication which 
 is effected in a definite historical place and at a crisis in time 
 in such wise that anyone who would take from the fulness 
 of this perfect communication needs only the subjective 
 appropriation, that is, the subjective revelation of its divine 
 truth. The fundamental Christian experience from the 
 beginning to the present day is, that this process of divine 
 revelation, meant for the whole human race, has really taken 
 place within the limits of Scripture, and reached for all time 
 its highest point in Jesus Christ, as well as that the New 
 Testament writings which testify of Him are genuine docu- 
 ments of God's completed revelation. Christendom draws 
 from the person of its founder by means of these writings 
 which testify of Him a supernatural world - overcoming 
 spiritual life, a satisfaction of the deepest needs of the human 
 heart and of the human race such as can be got nowhere 
 else, and by these Scriptures it is led back from all the errors 
 of its historical course to its original and imperishable 
 sources. 
 
 The theology of to-day does not deny what has just been 
 declared about Jesus, but it does partly deny what has been 
 asserted of the New Testament Scriptures. It does not deny 
 the revealed character of Christianity in general, but while 
 recognising it more or less definitely in the personal life of 
 Jesus, does not extend that recognition to the New Testa- 
 ment writings as such. In virtue of a conception of revelation 
 which divests it as far as possible of a doctrinal character, it 
 yet considers that literature with its doctrinal contents as a 
 purely human historical product, as the literary source of a 
 first chapter of the history of dogma, in which as in the 
 later chapters there is a theological treatment of the Christian 
 
INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 facts of revelation, a series of purely human reflections of 
 these facts which are not even consistent with each other. 
 It is manifest that this would completely destroy the signifi- 
 cance of the New Testament teaching as a standard for all 
 time, its significance as a great permanent text for the 
 history of dogma, in a word, the Protestant principle of 
 Scripture. Without falling back on the old dogma of inspira- 
 tion, or wishing to formulate a new one, we must at once 
 declare ourselves opposed to such a view. Although the 
 New Testament writers belong only in part to the original 
 circle of disciples, the apostles who write being, so to speak, 
 in great measure different from those who preached by word 
 of mouth, yet no one will deny that these writings are the 
 oldest documents of Christianity. It has, however, to be 
 proved that they are not genuine accounts of the actual rise 
 of Christianity, and do not stand to the revelation of God in 
 Christ in a relation of descent so immediate and clear, that 
 this revelation may be learned from them pure and undefiled. 
 The impression which Christendom from the first has re- 
 ceived, and still receives, from this early Christian literature, 
 fixes a wide gulf between it and the ecclesiastical literature 
 which followed. These original writings are certainly a 
 subject for free critical examination, which may correct many 
 old church traditions ; and certainly this criticism will bring 
 to light deutero-canonical fragments, approximating to the 
 uncanonical in the collection which was formed gradually and 
 without science. Yet it can only in the end confirm the 
 judgment of the Church, which has drawn the boundary-line 
 thus and not otherwise — as against the modem attempts to 
 place an Epistle of Clement or the Shepherd of Hermas on 
 the same level with these deutero-canonical fragments. With 
 a sure religious tact, which does not fail even in those cases 
 where the historic tradition was in error about the origin of 
 a book, the old Church has fixed the classic literature of early 
 Christianity, the collection of writings in which it felt the 
 pulse-beat of the period of creation as distinguished from 
 that of elaboration, and elaboration by means alien in spirit. 
 We feel this pulse-beat still. As often as we base a sermon 
 on a text of Scripture we become convinced that the words 
 of Scripture are in point of fact related to the preaching of 
 
8 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 the Church at all times, as that of text to commentary. But 
 we may also discern the historical reasons for this abiding 
 distinction and superiority. Christianity at an early period 
 was detached from its Hebrew mother soil and transplanted 
 into the foreign field of Greek culture, where, like a plant in 
 foreign soil, it could not but change its form and be subject 
 to the critical and theologising spirit of the Hellenic schools. 
 But the New Testament embraces that primitive Christian 
 literature which was in existence before that great transition. 
 For these writings are rooted in that mother soil of New 
 Testament revelation, in naive connection with the Old 
 Testament views which were fulfilled and transfigured in 
 Christ, and they are produced by the prophetic spirit which 
 had its home in Palestine, and which Jesus unsealed afresh. 
 They are thus able to mirror the New Testament revelation to 
 which they stand so near in time, with a directness which all 
 later writings of the Church naturally and necessarily lack. 
 
 What is right and legitimate in the view of the New 
 Testament writings which we have just rejected, lies in what 
 we a little while ago designated as the other presupposition of 
 our biblical theology, " the historical character of the biblical 
 revelation." In fact, the biblical religion, together with the 
 sacred writings which attest it, is, in spite of its divine origin, 
 something truly historical, originating according to the laws of 
 human nature. In modern times, in contradistinction to earlier 
 periods, the view has become widely prevalent that develop- 
 ment, that great law which we perceive in all natural and 
 spiritual life, belongs also to the sphere of biblical religion, 
 and that within the Bible there is a great progress from the 
 elementary and imperfect to the richer and more complete. 
 And the Bible itself, which proclaims the greatest progress of 
 humanity and history in passing from the old covenant to the 
 new, is very far from raising any objection to this view. 
 Development can only be predicated of what is in some sense 
 imperfect and human, not of what is eternally perfect and 
 divine; and therefore a human and imperfect side of the 
 biblical religion and its documents is, in principle, conceded 
 with that historical view. The sum total of all those various 
 kinds of imperfections, from the want of religious and moral 
 knowledge of the Old Testament men of God up to the defects 
 
INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 of the New Testament tradition which sets Christ before us, 
 the marks of the human which a close examination of the 
 Bible cannot fail to perceive, no longer disconcerts us. That 
 the genesis of the religion of the Bible itself, as well as of its 
 records, — notwithstanding the divine soul in both, — proceeded 
 just as naturally and humanly as any other historical develop- 
 ment, we freely admit, and therefore in no way limit the right 
 of historical criticism in either case. But how is this com- 
 patible with our belief in a true revelation of God underlying 
 the religion of the Bible, and finding its literary monuments 
 in the Bible ? It would not indeed be compatible with this 
 belief if we were to retain the earlier view of the revealed 
 religion of the Bible as something abstractly divine and not 
 as something divine-human ; or if with an awkward anti- 
 quated conception of religion we were to regard revelation as 
 an aggregate of doctrines which are communicated by God to 
 the human spirit ready made, — which that spirit could not of 
 itself discover, — and Holy Scripture as the infallible rule sent 
 down from heaven which contains these doctrines. A view 
 which requires the first page of the Bible to contain the same 
 pure doctrine as the last, and will not allow any mention of 
 human imperfections, or even of different individual concep- 
 tions of the one doctrine, would justify the reproach that such 
 a revelation does violence to the human spirit, and surprises it 
 with communications which it cannot even truly appropriate. 
 But instead of this, we now understand by revelation, in con- 
 sequence of our better knowledge of the nature of religion, 
 rather an awakening and enlightening of the inmost life of 
 the soul, a divine fertilisation of all in the inner man that 
 has affinity with God, which certainly affects and fully engages 
 his intellect also, but does not overwhelm it by thrusting upon 
 it a doctrine above the reach of reason. We understand by it 
 a self-communication of the Divine Spirit to the human such 
 as is in keeping with the nature of rehgious intercourse with 
 God, and is conditioned of itself by the measure of human, 
 receptivity and capacity. 
 
 Accordingly, the course of the divine revelation, as it 
 completes itself for the whole of humanity and history within 
 definite historical limits, must be a more and more inward 
 union of the Holy Spirit of God with the devout human 
 
10 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 spirit, and the offspring of this union, the religion of revela- 
 tion, will naturally and necessarily bear divine as well as 
 human features. The revelation of God can only be perfected 
 in the climax of this course of history where an ideal humanity 
 presents itself as a vessel for God's eternal fulness, and even 
 here it is at the outset a heavenly glory in an earthly servant 
 form. It must at the beginning come down to the deepest 
 poverty and feebleness of man, and thence, stage by stage, 
 increase the receptivity to which it can more and more fully 
 impart itself in ever richer communications. And that is 
 just how it is in the artlessly composed Bible history. The 
 divine revelation addresses itself to those men pre-eminently 
 religious, who then turn what they have received to account 
 in the founding of a community, and out of this community 
 again issue those who can receive a higher stage of revelation. 
 The smoking flax of true religion is nursed into flame in the 
 hearth of a family and tribe community by the childlike 
 intercourse with the living God which an Abraham cultivates 
 in the midst of a world sinking into heathenism. From this 
 proceeds Moses, to whom the Eternal appears in the fiery 
 flame of His holiness, and he makes his vision of God the 
 basis of a national community, a divine commonwealth in 
 Israel. From this national community again proceed the 
 prophets, the living conscience of the nation, to whom God 
 makes Himself known in an ever clearer light, and whom He, 
 in view of the downfall of the outer commonwealth of God, 
 convinces of His eternal love and faithfulness, with which He 
 will yet crown His work in Israel. From them at length the 
 quiet community of the poor and suffering draw their living 
 hope in the deepest outward ruin of the nation, and thus 
 become the historical environment of Him in whom the 
 gracious fulfilment comes down from heaven, the Son of Man 
 and Son of God, whose perfect humanity filled with divine 
 love became the fit vessel and instrument for a revelation 
 which was to master the world. And even He, the perfect 
 one and the perfecter, could only speak in the forms of His 
 time and people, could only speak from the course of an as 
 yet incomplete life-work, and was forced in a sense to be His 
 own prophet. His life in its completed issue has, so to say, 
 outstripped His teaching, and therefore could only sufficiently 
 
INTRODUCTION 1 1 
 
 be made the subject of expository preaching by His disciples 
 and successors. These also, in the form of their culture, being 
 in diverse ways children of their age, are again differently 
 affected by their disposition and mode of life, in their exposi- 
 tion of the Saviour's life, so as to give a peculiar aspect of 
 the common theme in the preaching of each. All this enables 
 us to describe the divine revelation, not, of course, in its abstract 
 divinity, — in this it remains the indescribable, mysterious 
 source of the historical revelation that is to be exhibited, — 
 but the biblical revelation in its divine human aspect, the 
 religion of revelation bearing the stamp both of the eternal 
 and the temporal. 
 
 § 3. Sketch of the Treatment of our Subject up 
 TO THE Present 
 
 This human and historical nature of the biblical religion 
 has not at all times been prized as it should within the 
 Church ; in fact, the Church for long failed to apprehend it, 
 and therefore biblical theology, in the sense described above, 
 has only of late become possible. The human, historical 
 nature of the Bible came to be completely misapprehended, 
 not only by conceiving the divine revelation in a onesided 
 and exaggerated way as doctrine above reason, but by directly 
 confounding it with its literary productions and documentary 
 attestations, viz. the biblical writings. The Bible, from be- 
 ginning to end, had to be the uniform oracular book of revealed 
 doctrine. That did not promote, but prevented the under- 
 standing of it. The presupposition that the Bible must 
 everywhere teach with the same divine perfection, caused the 
 Church to fall into the most arbitrary allegorical exposition, 
 and in spite of appeals to Holy Scripture made the Church's 
 doctrine more and more unlike the announcement of salvation 
 which Scripture contains. The reformation certainly went 
 back in earnest to the Scriptures, re-established principles of 
 reason for its exposition, and would allow nothing to be 
 regarded as Church doctrine but the biblical gospel. But it 
 suffered so much of that erroneous assumption to remain, as 
 might render a more biblical dogmatic possible, but not a 
 historical knowledge of the doctrinal contents of the Bible. 
 
12 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 And the rigidity of the Protestant system of doctrine soon led 
 back to a new scholasticism which again closed the Bible that 
 had scarcely been opened. If Melanehthon and Calvin de- 
 veloped their dogmatic' text -books immediately from the 
 Scriptures, especially from the Epistles of Paul, their succes- 
 sors did not continue on this path, but rather based their 
 dogmatic on the creeds of the Church, contenting themselves 
 with confirming the doctrines thence deduced with biblical 
 dicta prohantia, proof passages taken without distinction from 
 different parts of Scripture, and torn out of the connection to 
 which they belonged. It was therefore reserved for the time 
 of the decay of this Protestant scholasticism, and the begin- 
 ning of the historical and critical study of the Bible, to 
 advance gradually to the idea of a biblical theology as now 
 understood. Genuine friends of orthodoxy were the first, 
 from a sense of the insufficiency and obsoleteness of its schol- 
 astic form, to endeavour to regenerate it from the utterly 
 neglected Bible, and thus did the name biblical theology — 
 in the sense of a biblical as distinguished from a scholastic 
 dogmatic — first become current in the latter part of the 
 eighteenth century. Biisching of Gbttingen advanced the idea 
 of a theologia e solis Uteris Sanctis concinnata, and wrote "of 
 the advantage of biblical dogmatic theology over scholastic " 
 (1756—1 758); and Zacharia, who likewise taught in Gijttingen, 
 composed (1775 ff.) a" Biblical Theology, or Examination of the 
 Biblical Grounds of the principal Christian Doctrines." That 
 which was here meant to be a new support of the dogmatic of 
 the Church came to undermine it, as rationalism soon suc- 
 ceeded orthodoxy dying of old age. Bahrdt and Ammon 
 started from the same didactic conception of the Scriptures 
 as the orthodox, but applied it in their own rationalistic sense, 
 and therefore the old traditional violence to the meaning of 
 Scripture for the sake of a dogmatic system, seemed as if it 
 were only to be replaced by a new kind of violence. It was 
 in these circumstances that the Altorf theologian J. Ph. Gabler 
 clearly disentangled the matter in his academic lecture " de 
 justo discrimine theologise biblise et dogmatics" (1789), by 
 putting the two entirely different questions : " What in point 
 of fact do the Scriptures teach ? " and "What is dogmatic truth 
 for us ? " This cleared the way for an impartial dogmatic and 
 
INTRODUCTION 1 3 
 
 purely historical examination of Scripture, — a way which about 
 the same time the pioneer labours of Semler had opened from 
 another side. The conception of biblical theology as historical 
 science, as the historical presentation of the doctrinal contents 
 of the Bible, was found. 
 
 In this sense Lorenz Bauer of Altorf first produced a 
 Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments (1796-1800), 
 with the addition of a Biblical Ethic (1804). According to 
 him biblical theology is "a simple representation, purged 
 from all foreign notions, of the religious theories of the Jews 
 before Christ, and of Jesus and His apostles, deduced from 
 their writings according to the different periods and views of 
 the writers." By distinguishing not only Old and Ifew 
 Testament, but also the theology of the different authors, he 
 already in point of form carries out the historical view. 
 This indeed leaves much to be wished as regards the subject- 
 matter, as the author, looking through rationalistic spectacles, 
 makes arbitrary distinctions between doctrinal contents of 
 universal validity and mere ideas of the time, or accommoda- 
 tions. Kaisers' Biblical Theology, or Judaism and Christianity 
 (Erlangen, 1813), does not go much beyond Bauer. The 
 author, from a philosophical standpoint of the time (after- 
 wards abandoned), wished to treat the religion of the Bible as 
 a special chapter of a critical history of comparative religions. 
 On the other hand, de Wette's Biblical Bogmatic of the Old 
 and New Testaments (1813; 2nd ed. 1830), marks a real 
 advance in the impartial estimate of what is properly biblical. 
 By undertaking to represent the Christian religion in its 
 relation to the Jewish culture of the time, just as the dog- 
 matic of the Church represents it in relation to the culture of 
 to-day, de Wette, notwithstanding the title dogmatic, rather 
 gave a history of dogma within the Bible. It treats separ- 
 ately of Old and New Testament, dividing the former into 
 Hebraism and Judaism, and the latter into the teaching of 
 Jesus and .that of His apostles ; the idea of religion which is 
 thereby set up is at least more in harmony with the biblical 
 than the old rationalistic idea. De Wette's successors, Baum- 
 garten-Crusius and v. Colin, start from a similar standpoint. 
 The former, indeed {Outlines of Biblical Theology, 1828), by 
 failing to distinguish any period, not even keeping Old and 
 
14 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 New Testament apart, reverts to the standpoint of biblical 
 dogmatic. The latter {Biblical Theology, edited by D. Schulz, 
 1836) adheres to the division of de Wette, and supports it 
 with a more abundant learning. The influence of Schleier- 
 macher, the great renovator of our theology, which is from 
 this time perceptible, is at first only indirect within our 
 province, as a fresh and biblical dogmatic was sought on the 
 new footing in religion and theology with far better results 
 than in the transition time of the eighteenth century. Among 
 a series of works of that kind stands out the really biblical 
 System of Christian Doctrine, by C. I. Mtzsch. But this 
 greatest of Schleiermacher's successors has also directly fos- 
 tered biblical theology, by introducing it into the circle of his 
 academic lectures. His thoughtful sketch distinguishes in 
 the Old Testament the patriarchal, the Mosaic, the prophetic, 
 and the Judaistic stage ; in the New Testament, the teaching of 
 Jesus and that of His apostles. Each stage has a historical 
 introduction, and is divided into ontology, doctrine of salvation, 
 and ethics. The separate consideration of the several apos- 
 tolic modes of teaching, which is still wanting here, was in 
 the meantime commenced in the treatment in monographs of 
 a Pauline or Johannine system of doctrine (the former by 
 Usteri and Dahne, 1832 and 1838 ; the latter by Frommann, 
 1839), and was advanced by Neander in particular, who in 
 his Apostolic Age attempted to present the teaching of James, 
 Peter, Paul, and John according to psychological differences 
 in their character. From a similar standpoint — besides lesser 
 works of the school of Neander — is the much-used Biblical 
 Theology of the, New Testament, by Chr. F. Schmid, of Tiibingen 
 (edited by Weizsacker, 1853), a work which also treats of the 
 history of Jesus and of the apostles, and methodically treats 
 the doctrinal systems of the latter according to their different 
 position to the law and the prophets. 
 
 Henceforth the development of Few Testament theology 
 is mainly affected by the impulse given by Chr. F. Baur. 
 "Whatever objections may be taken to his constructive concep- 
 tion of the early Christian situation, Baur has opposed to the 
 merely individual distinctions of Neander great historical 
 contrasts and stages of development, and carried out even 
 wrong views with such ability and acuteness, that partly by 
 
INTRODUCTION 1 
 
 the successors whom he inspired, partly by the contradiction 
 he evoked, the investigation of biblical theology has been 
 lifted to a new height, and, in particular, the perception of the 
 actual state of things has been rendered more acute. The 
 separate investigation either of definite systems or special 
 heads of doctrine, has increased beyond all reckoning since 
 Baur's time. The biblico-theological development pf his view 
 of history fell at first to prominent disciples : Schwegler in his 
 post-apostoHc age, Hilgenfeld and K. E. Kbstlin in their 
 writings on the Johannine system of doctrine, Holsten in his 
 Gospel of Peter and Paul, etc. The lectures of the master on 
 New Testament theology, delivered from 1852-1860, only 
 appeared after his death (1864). They will always be 
 memorable as the practical manifesto of a historical and 
 literary criticism which made the picture of Jesus a wavering 
 shadow, the primitive apostles Jewish refiners of the law, and 
 the Apostle Paul the real creator of Christianity. Eduard Eeuss, 
 in his Histoire de la thdologie chrStienne au siicle apostoliqvs, 
 perhaps the ablest discussion of the subject we possess, though 
 it be somewhat sketchy, has shown, on the other hand, how 
 far the opinions advanced by Baur may be modified by an 
 impartial estimate of their elements of truth in favour of a 
 standpoint which is both more religious and more historical. 
 Apart from the healthy development into which Eeuss has 
 guided back our science, there remain the contemporary works 
 of Lutterbeck and von Hofmann. Lutterbeck's New Testament 
 System of Doctrine, 1852, only illustrates how incapable a 
 pupil of Catholic theology is, though scholarly and intel- 
 lectually free, of finding his way in this Protestant problem 
 and discussion. And von Hofmann's Biblical Theology of tJoe 
 Nev} Testament (edited by Volkj 1886), the fragment with 
 which he closed his well-planned but perverse Bihle Studies, 
 suffers from the delusion that it is possible to write a history 
 of the New Testament revelation in its pure divine objectivity, 
 instead of a history of the New Testament religion of revela- 
 tion, an undertaking which could only result in a greater 
 display of the human and subjective. The merit of having 
 freed our science from Baur's scheme of history has been 
 earned by Albrecht Eitschl in the second edition of his book 
 on the Old Catholic Church, 1857. His own positive theology 
 
16 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 was not derived from biblical principles, but only sought to 
 put itself in agreement with the teaching of Scripture, with 
 scholarly though sometimes violent acuteness (in the second 
 volume of his Lehre von der Bechtfertigung und Versohnung). 
 The New Testament Theology, by Immer (1875), and the works 
 of Pfleiderer {Paulinism, 1873, and Das Urchristenthum, seine 
 Schriften und lehren, 1874), move, so far as the intervening 
 change of the scientific situation permits, on the lines of Baur, 
 yet variously modifying Baur's position, and, as is specially the 
 case with Pfleiderer's Paulinism, taking an independent view. 
 H. Cremer, in his painstaking Biblical Theological Lexicon of 
 New Testament Greek [Trans. T. & T. Clark], has furnished a 
 very valuable aid for the examination of details, strongly 
 influenced, of course, by orthodox tradition. But the most 
 important recent appearance in our province is the Biblical 
 Theology of Weiss [Trans. T. & T. Clark], which has run 
 through five editions since 1865. In extensive knowledge of 
 the literature, carefulness, and thoroughness in the preparatory 
 exegetical work, in the completeness and distinctness with 
 which the material is set forth, this meritorious work will be 
 difficult to surpass, and he who undertakes to confront it with 
 a new treatment of the subject will have to give a satisfactory 
 account of the reasons which have moved him to do so. 
 
 § 4. Questions of Method 
 
 The impulse to this undertaking lies for us, not merely 
 in the distinction of a free historical presentation from the 
 rigid form of a manual composed in paragraphs with their 
 elucidations, nor even merely in a considerable number of 
 details in which our judgment about the actual teaching of 
 the New Testament, sometimes in the most important articles 
 of doctrine, differs from that of Weiss, but especially in a 
 somewhat different conception of the task itself, which com- 
 pels us to differ entirely, both as to arrangement and execution, 
 from that manual which at present rules our subject. We 
 may therefore be allowed to begin our preliminary observa- " 
 tions on that task. 
 
 The problem of working out a historical presentation of the 
 Few Testament religion from those definite canonical sources. 
 
INTKODUCTION 17 
 
 requires a union, as far as possible, of the historic and literary 
 treatment. In Weiss' Manual the historical treatment of the 
 material seems to us to be unduly subordinated to the literary. 
 In his paragraphs and elucidations the raw material furnished 
 by exegesis is indeed set forth with great completeness and 
 in good order, but it is not combined into great living forms. 
 And yet it is the highest task of writing history to set forth 
 the results obtained from an investigation of the sources, not 
 merely as a well-arranged collection of raw material, but to 
 restore from that the living image itself, the fragmentary 
 evidence of which lies before us in these results. I know, 
 indeed, that the application of this highest historical duty to 
 New Testament theology creates the danger and temptation 
 of importing something of one's own into the doctrinal system 
 that is to be described. But not only is this danger in no 
 way excluded by that literary treatment — it is a risk that 
 must be incurred in the writing of history. Hence it follows 
 that we have rights and duties which are not recognised in 
 the Manual of Weiss. In the first place, history is, and 
 remains, according to its nature, the subjective reproduction 
 of what is in itself objective and alien to us. But how is 
 this extraneous matter to become intelligible to me, and 
 become my own, unless I somehow translate it into the mode 
 of thought and speech of the present day ? Even the religious 
 doctrines of the New Testament which grew up on the soil 
 of a foreign nationality, and are parted from us by eighteen 
 centuries, must be translated — certainly with the utmost 
 possible care not to subtract or add anything to them — into 
 the thought and speech of the present day, if they are not to 
 remain for us obscure oracles with a strange sound. Further, 
 it seems to me to be closely connected with this, that there 
 must be a part taken in biblical theology by two powers, 
 which, as far as I can see. Dr. Weiss excludes from it, the 
 powers of criticism and divination. Criticism, not, of course, 
 in the sense of asking whether or how far the doctrinal con- 
 tents of the New Testament can hold good, even for us to-day, 
 as dogmatic truth, but in the sense of examining the ques- 
 tion as to what value a definite view has for the biblical 
 preacher himself ; whether it is an outcome of his own spiritual 
 life, or a traditional heritage ; whether it is for him kernel or 
 
 BEYSCHLAG. — I. 2 
 
18 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 husk ; and whether it exhaustively expresses his own thinking 
 on a definite point of doctrine, or is perhaps only one of the 
 ways in which he views it, — a view and an estimate of one side 
 of the matter. And as to divination, without which there 
 can be no such thing as history, because without a certain 
 reading between the lines the sources, always scanty and frag- 
 mentary, never yield a living whole, where could it be more 
 indispensable, used with all possible caution, than just here, — 
 here, where the object is to ehcit a view of the world from 
 the discourses of Jesus handed down to us in a concise selec- 
 tion, or from the fugitive writings of His disciples, consisting 
 at most of but a few pages, and that view of the world in 
 each case assuming an individual form. If beyond dispute 
 Jesus gave His teaching with greater fulness than the repro- 
 duction of it in the Gospels, if the apostles have, from a much 
 more many-sided world of ideas, used particular trains of thought 
 to meet particular circumstances, the task of correspondingly 
 reproducing the primitive Christian doctrine from the New 
 Testament imperatively demands that we should not merely 
 render the trains of thought that lie before us, but also that 
 from bare hints, from what is unspoken but implied in the 
 didactic utterance, we should guess at the world of thought 
 of the biblical teachers. 
 
 Another characteristic feature of that treatment, which is 
 more literary than historical, is the way in which Weiss' 
 Manual sets up almost as many systems of doctrine as there 
 are books in the New Testament, while justice is not done to 
 the teaching of Jesus. The Pauline system is treated in four 
 parts, according to the Thessalonian Epistles, the four great 
 doctrinal and controversial Epistles, the Epistles of the 
 captivity, and, finally, the Pastoral Epistles ; while the teach- 
 ing of Jesus is briefly discussed, not according to the four 
 Gospels, but only according to a supposed oldest source (the 
 Synoptists). That seems to me an excess and a deficiency. 
 We expect from a New Testament theology, above all, an 
 account of the teaching of Jesus, not merely so far as it is 
 the presupposition of the apostolic systems, as Weiss regards 
 it, but a presentation of the teaching of Jesus for its own 
 sake. The teaching of Jesus is to us a main fact of New 
 Testament theology, if not precisely the main fact, which, as 
 
INTKODUCTION 1 9 
 
 a matter of covirse, should be treated according to all the 
 accounts of it that we have, not merely according to an 
 account conjectured by the critic to be the oldest, not even 
 according to the Synoptists merely, if we regard the Gospel 
 of John as an apostolic report — as Dr. Weiss does. As to 
 the Pauline system, on the other hand, we do not want a 
 doctrinal abstract from the several types of the apostle's 
 letters, but a survey as far as possible of the Pauline world 
 of ideas, in their connection, their unity and many-sidedness, 
 and therefore we must, here also, take collectively all, the 
 genuine documents we have. If we get the impression that 
 the doctrinal thoughts of the apostle continued to develop in 
 particular points, we must note that in its place, but we 
 must not on that account build the Pauline system of 
 doctrine three or four times. In that case we would have 
 to extract it directly from each several Epistle, as there may 
 be perceived certain differences between the Epistle to the 
 Eomans and that to the Galatians. But the distinction — 
 and we make this remark not so much against Weiss' book 
 as quite generally — must be kept within limits if the total 
 impression of the subject is not to suffer and become dis- 
 torted. While it is certainly right to keep separate, not only 
 the teaching of Jesus and that of the apostles, but also the 
 teaching of James, Peter, Paul, and John, and to consider 
 each of them, not according to an abstract dogmatic scheme, 
 but from his peculiar point of view, it is as certainly incum- 
 bent on us to throw into bold relief the great amount of 
 unison in all these different doctrinal utterances. Such a 
 unison exists, and in a larger measure than our onesided 
 modern method of hunting after formal differences is willing 
 to admit. The men of the New Testament were conscious of 
 proclaiming a uniform gospel, though in different tongues, 
 and it is the duty of New Testament theology to give a 
 presentation of this unity in its diversity. 
 
 Weiss has undoubtedly adopted his peculiar method in 
 view of the present condition of questions concerning New 
 Testament Introduction. He has very adroitly taken all the 
 views of modern criticism into account in his arrangements. 
 While he contests the whole of these critical judgments, even 
 in the case of the Pastoral Epistles and the Second Epistle of 
 
20 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 Peter, yet he himself gives countenance to doubts about the 
 Gospel of John by excluding it from the sources of our 
 knowledge of the teaching of Jesus, and likewise to attacks 
 on the Pauline Epistles of the captivity, by separating them 
 from the great doctrinal and controversial Epistles. And 
 who could deny that the present state of criticism of the 
 New Testament writings furnishes peculiar difficulties for 
 biblical theology, and that this theology must take fitting 
 account of that condition of the question of sources ? Yet I 
 am of opinion that the historian has not to be guided by 
 foreign judgments about his sources, at least not by those 
 which he regards as decidedly false, but that he must lay at 
 the basis of his structure his own well-considered opinion on 
 the matter. If I regarded the Pastoral Epistles as non- 
 Pauline, or the Second Epistle of Peter as spurious, I should 
 then make no use of them in my presentation of Pauline or 
 Petrine systems of doctrine, but would have to take notice of 
 them in those passages of my history of doctrine where I 
 fancied them to have arisen, and would therewith prove the 
 correctness of my view of history. And if I regarded the 
 Gospel of John as a genuine record of the teaching of Jesus, 
 I would have to make use of it for the knowledge of this 
 teaching, and not merely turn it to account as an expression 
 of its author's ideas. Not that we are, on that account, 
 to take no notice of the important distinction between the 
 synoptic and Johannine account of the teaching of Jesus. I 
 may regard the Gospel of John as decidedly apostolic, and 
 yet recognise that his reports of speeches have passed through 
 a strong medium of subjective reconstruction. I will there- 
 fore give a separate account of the teaching of Jesus according 
 to the Synoptists and John, and so leave the biblico-theological 
 records to be settled by the yet undecided controversy about 
 the Gospel of John. In the same way, I may consider it 
 possible that the Apocalypse and the Gospel of John belong 
 to the same author, and yet guard against treating the 
 doctrinal contents of both as material of the same Johannine 
 system of doctrine. The critical question is too largely an 
 open one, and, on the other hand, the circle of ideas in the 
 two writings is too diverse to warrant us in treating as a 
 harmonious world of ideas that which, at anyrate, could only 
 
INTKODUCTION 21 
 
 belong to very different stages of development of the same 
 author. 
 
 This already decides certain main questions regarding the 
 systematic arrangement of our material. We will not only 
 distinguish the teaching of Jesus from that of His apostles, 
 but also the teaching of Jesus according to the Synoptists and 
 according to John, and not only keep apart a primitive apos- 
 tolic, a Pauline and Johannine system of doctrine, but also 
 treat quite separately the doctrinal system of the Apocalypse 
 and also of James, First Peter, and the Epistles to the Hebrews. 
 We may be in doubt as to the order of succession of the 
 doctrinal systems of the Epistles, especially if we regard 
 them, as a whole, as productions of the same first century. 
 A purely chronological succession cannot be exhibited, as we 
 are anything but certain as to the earlier or later origin of 
 some of the Scripture writings. The comparatively late com- 
 position of one of these writings would not, however, prove 
 that the mode of thought underlying it could not have been 
 matured just as early or earlier than that of a younger con- 
 temporary who happened to write before. A succession 
 according to the lower or higher degree of doctrinal develop- 
 ment seems therefore to be the preferable one. The moving 
 principle of the development of early Christian doctrine is the 
 need of an understanding with Judaism. This characteristic 
 would give us a rising gradation of ever more richly developed 
 modes of teaching. Paul, the strictest arbiter between Judaism 
 and Christianity, and at the same time the most doctrinal of 
 the New Testament writers, would then necessarily close the 
 series, and even the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Johannine 
 system, and, still more, James and Peter, would have their 
 place before him. And this succession, opposed as it would 
 be to the modern critical tendency, would, in point of fact, 
 have the advantage of truly setting forth, in comparison with 
 Paul, the inner affinity between the mode of thought of the 
 primitive apostles on the one hand, and the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews and Johannine writings on the other: an afiinity 
 notwithstanding great differences really exists, though as a 
 rule it is not recognised. Nevertheless, that point of view 
 of an understanding with Judaism does not yet give a satis- 
 factory principle of division, as the need for it, in the case of 
 
22 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 the Christians, falls into the background after the destruction 
 of Jerusalem : even decidedly post- Pauline systems of doctrine, 
 and in comparison with Paul, of a less developed character, 
 may be unaffected by this need. And thus a certain accom- 
 modation between the chronological arrangement, and that 
 according to tenor seems to be necessary. It is best to place 
 the great Pauline system of doctrine in the middle of the 
 apostolic age, to which at anyrate it belongs in time, and to 
 let it be preceded by a primitive apostolic stage, and followed 
 by one more developed. We shall hardly be contradicted if 
 we construct the latter group from the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
 the Apocalypse, and other Johannine remains ; but there will 
 not be the same readiness to allow us to place the discourses 
 of the earlier part of the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles of 
 James, and First Peter before Paulinism. We might, in fact, 
 hesitate about the position of the First Epistle of Peter, not so 
 much on account of the prevalent attacks on its genuineness, 
 as because, even on the assumption of its genuineness, it is 
 probably of post-Pauline date, and not unaffected by Paul in 
 its mode of teaching. However, this mode of teaching still 
 seems predominantly pre-Pauline, related to that of James no 
 less than that of Paul. It stands to the Petrine speeches of 
 the Acts of the Apostles in a relation of the simplest develop- 
 ment of their mode of thought, so that the reasons prepon- 
 derate for placing it — ^just where the historical Peter stood — 
 midway between James and Paul. There still remains in 
 this arrangement of New Testament doctrinal systems a 
 residue which yields no coherent presentation of Christianity, 
 but only elements of such a presentation : Matthew, Mark, 
 and Luke, so far as they are not mere narrators, but disclose 
 some views of their own, the Epistle of Jude, the Second Epistle 
 of Peter, and the Pastoral Epistles. We shall gather up in a 
 closing group the doctrinal elements which appear in these 
 writings as fragmentary witnesses of a common Christian 
 view, partly of the apostolic and partly of the immediately 
 post-apostolic period ; a supplement to the great original 
 doctrinal formation of the apostolic circle, and the natural 
 transition to the doctrinal development of the old Catholic 
 period. 
 
introduction 23 
 
 § 5. The Question as to an Old Testament, Judaistio 
 PREVIOUS History 
 
 There still remains one final preliminary question before 
 we come to our main subject. Every period of history whose 
 presentation we may undertake has a preparatory history in 
 which its roots somehow lie, and therefore every historical 
 undertaking usually begins with a review of that preparatory 
 history. Is it necessary for us to proceed in the same way 
 here in the case of New Testament theology ? There can be 
 no doubt that the teaching of the New Testament, with all 
 the originality of revelation which it claims, has a historical 
 presupposition and preparatory stage — the religious teaching 
 of the Old Testament. The gospel unfolds itself within a 
 national community, which already has a religious history of 
 two thousand years behind it, and it is throughout connected 
 with the religious possessions of this community and with the 
 results of its history. Its views of God and of the world, 
 of sin and law, of the blessing and way of salvation, of the 
 kingdom of God and its Bearer the Messiah, are all rooted in 
 the Old Testament. The apostles look upon the Old Testa- 
 ment as Holy Scripture even for the Christian communities. 
 They verify their teaching by it, and Jesus Himself brings 
 His preaching into the closest relation to the law and the 
 prophets. " Think not that I am come to destroy the law 
 and the prophets : I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil " 
 (Matt. V. 17). This fulfilling does not indeed leave the Old 
 Testament views and doctrines as they were, but distinctly 
 advances and transforms them. There is not an idea in the 
 New Testament which is not somehow rooted in the Old, but 
 there is not an idea in the Old Testament which does not 
 become something essentially new and higher in the New.^ 
 Accordingly, Jesus and His apostles consider the Old Testa- 
 ment in a light in which its own authors did not consider it, 
 in the light of that new and perfect revelation of which also 
 it is truly said : " Old things have passed away, behold 
 all things have become new." It is questionable whether 
 this relation demands a preceding presentation of Old 
 
 1 Of. Oehler, Old Testament Theology, p. 66 ; H. Scliultz, Old Testament 
 Theology [both Trans. T. & T. Clark]. 
 
24 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 Testament theology as an Introduction to New Testament 
 theology. Nothing, of course, but a sketch of the former 
 could be attempted, for a searching and detailed presentation 
 would be no Introduction, but an independent work which 
 would require a special call and training. But a mere sketch 
 would only offer that which the reader of a New Testament 
 theology already has, a general survey of the Old Testament 
 history of religion. It could not offer the very thing that 
 would chiefly make it helpful to New Testameilt theology, 
 viz. the Old Testament roots of the several New Testament 
 concepts and notions. In these circumstances it seems 
 allowable, and even imperative, to represent the New Testa- 
 ment theology in its actual novelty without further preface, 
 and only bring out at each step in its exposition the dis- 
 tinction as well as the connection it has with that of the Old 
 Testament. 
 
 But must we not at last give an introductory presentation 
 of the final stage of the religious history of Israel, that condi- 
 tion of the Jewish religion which the nascent Christianity 
 finds existent and from which it separates ? There can be no 
 question that the religious thought and life of the Jewish 
 people was not stationary from the time of the origin of the 
 latest Old Testament canonic writing. Though the period 
 when this writing originated be much later than Jewish tradi- 
 tion asserts, not in the Persian, but in the Maccabean age, 
 yet the writings of the last half-century before Christ, the 
 biblical Apocrypha and the non-biblical pseudepigrapha, as 
 well as the writings of Philo and Josephus, and above all the 
 New Testament itself, testify to a movement of mind surging 
 round the nascent Christianity, quite different from what the 
 latest psalmists and prophets would lead us to expect. And, 
 assuredly he who undertakes to write a history of the origin of 
 Christianity, and in particular the life of Jesus, will not be at 
 liberty to omit a description of this historical soil, just be- 
 cause the history of the birth of the gospel is completed in 
 the reciprocal action between it and that which was trans- 
 planted into it from above. But it is quite a different matter 
 when our task is to present the original doctrinal ideas of 
 Christianity in their historical development. This doctrinal 
 development has almost no connection at all with the peculiar 
 
INTRODUCTION 25 
 
 teaching of the Judaistic period; at anyrate, the connection 
 is such that the Judaistic world of ideas, in itself meagre and 
 obscure, does not throw any special light upon the under- 
 standing of it. Of course, Jesus is formally a child of His 
 people and time, so far as concerns His world of ideas and His 
 speech. He also makes use of such forms of presentation as 
 became current only in the post-canonic age, such as, above 
 all, the concept of the kingdom of heaven or kingdom of God. 
 And the apostles likewise, especially Paul, are here and there 
 in their Christological views fond of using theologoumena of 
 the Jewish schools, such as " the creative word," " the hypostatic 
 image," " the spiritual Adam," " the man from heaven." Jesus 
 and His apostles may also have made use of a series of prophetic 
 and eschatological views which are reproduced in the Jewish 
 Apocalypses. Yet all these are but forms of thought and 
 presentation, into which they are the first to breathe any 
 spirit at all, and especially the new Christian spirit of 
 which their Jewish predecessors had no idea. Notwith- 
 standing these meagre and purely formal connections, we 
 have, speaking generally, rather a relation of opposition to 
 the Judaistic doctrines and modes of thought. We shall 
 find that Jesus kept Himself completely independent of the 
 different tendencies and modes of thought which prevailed 
 among the Jewish people of His day ; that He was engaged 
 in a war of death and life with that one which was pre- 
 dominant, the Pharisaic and Eabbiuic ; and that He recognised 
 the one contemporary appearance with which He had any 
 affinity, John the Baptist, as His forerunner, but not as His 
 leader and master. It was from the first a main feature 
 of His teaching, which His disciples also received from 
 Him, to pass beyond the ideas of post-canonic development 
 to the canonical, biblical, and specially prophetic, from 
 the Pharisaic precepts of men to the living word of God 
 (cf. Mark vii. 1 f.). 
 
 From all this it may already be seen that a preliminary 
 development of the Judaistic didactic ideas, especially of the 
 Pharisaic and Eabbinic, is in no way indispensable to the 
 understanding of the teaching of Jesus and His apostles, quite 
 apart from the fact that we have not sufficient sources at our 
 command to gain a clear conception of the state of pre- 
 
26 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 Christian ideas of the time.^ We may therefore disregard 
 such a so-called historical preface to New Testament theology 
 with a good conscience, and allow that to speak to us in all 
 its novelty and originality which, at all events, bears in itself 
 the character of novelty and originality in a greater degree 
 than anything else in the whole history of the world. 
 
 ^ The very praiseworthy presentation by Weber of the " Altsynogale 
 Theologie " brings to view only a decidedly post-Christian stage of develop- 
 ment. 
 
BOOK I 
 
 THE TEACHING OE JESUS ACCOEDING 
 TO THE SYKOPTISTS 
 
 CHAPTEE I 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 Fkom an early period Christendom directed its attention 
 more to the significance of Christ's person and work than 
 to the significance of His teaching. The former occupies 
 throughout the foreground even in the apostolic speeches and 
 Epistles, while there is little reference to His words ; and the 
 Church since then, even the Protestant, preaches, indeed, a 
 doctrine about Christ, but only looks, as it were in passing, at 
 Jesus' own teaching, in the doctrine of His prophetic office, 
 which seems as though it were but introductory to His priestly 
 and kingly offices. An opposite current has indeed set in in 
 recent times. An effort has been made to insist upon the 
 teaching of Jesus, as contrasted with the doctrine about 
 Christ, as Christianity proper ; but this procedure has not 
 been able to parry the reproach of explaining Christianity 
 away. What is the right and true attitude here ? As 
 it seems equally questionable to impute to Christendom 
 a thorough misunderstanding of that on which it rests, or, 
 again, to lower to a subordinate place in His life-work that in 
 which Jesus manifestly found the vocation of His life, the 
 question at once is forced upon us as to the relation of His 
 teaching to His person and His work. The investigation 
 
 27 
 
28 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 of this question will give us a preliminary idea of the pecu- 
 liarity of His teaching. 
 
 § 1. Teaching and Life 
 
 That Jesus appeared among His people as a teacher is 
 attested by friend and foe ; they all addressed Him as Eabbi, 
 Master, Teacher, and He always accepted this address as 
 correct. But the people felt at once a profound difference 
 between His teaching and that of the scribes : " What new 
 doctrine is this ? " exclaim His hearers in the synagogue. 
 " He preaches with authority, and not as the scribes " (Mark 
 i. 27; Matt. vii. 29). By the higher authority with which 
 He spoke, by a divinely authoritative character of His teach- 
 ing, the people recognised Him as a prophet equal to the 
 greatest of their old prophets (Mark viii. 28 ; Matt. xvi. 14). 
 His disciples, however, hoped and anticipated still more from 
 Him : " He was a prophet mighty in word and deed before 
 God and all the people ; but we trusted that it had been He 
 which should have redeemed Israel" (Luke xxiv. 19). And 
 He met that hope with His inmost consciousness ; He knew 
 Himself to be the Messiah, the God-sent deliverer of Israel, 
 and had no higher wish than to be recognised as such in the 
 right sense (Mark viii. 29; Matt. xvi. 16). His teaching 
 therefore, from the very first, has for its background a unique 
 self-consciousness, the incomparable significance of His person, 
 and from the beginning was directed towards something that 
 must be more than teaching, that must be work and deed, 
 viz. the founding of God's kingdom. And this founding 
 was finally accomplished, not by His teaching as such, but 
 by His personal devotion to and completion of His life-work, 
 by His death and resurrection. Does His teaching thereby 
 lose its original fundamental significance, and sink down to a 
 mere introduction to New Testament revelation ? It must 
 be said that little as the teaching of Jesus in itself, apart 
 from the conclusion of His life, could have called into exist- 
 ence the kingdom of God, as little could that ending of His 
 life have called it into being without the foregoing doctrinal 
 revelation. This doctrinal revelation first induced that end 
 to His life, and gave it meaning ; and it alone collected that 
 
INTRODUCTORY 29 
 
 community of disciples who were able to grasp and propagate 
 that meaning. And therefore His doctrine is not indeed His 
 life-work itself, but the ideal reflection of it, the evidence of 
 what He wished, what He was conscious of being and doing. 
 His teaching therefore is that in His appearance and active 
 life which is necessary to make that life intelligible to 
 us, and without which the apostolic teaching about Him 
 would only be a sum of dogmatic utterances which we 
 could not comprehend, and whose truth we could not 
 prove — a result not a little awkward for that view which 
 contrasts the " teaching of Jesus " as Christianity proper with 
 the apostolic " teaching about Christ." 
 
 § 2. Sources 
 
 If this be the significance of the teaching of Jesus for 
 the full understanding of Christianity, we must inquire the 
 more urgently about its sources. Jesus did not write any- 
 thing ; He simply trained His disciples in personal intercourse 
 to be the living witnesses of His mission. Even they did not 
 immediately record their reminiscences, but confided them to 
 oral testimony ; and when one of them, at a great age, set 
 about leaving his treasures of memory as a legacy to the 
 community, remembrance and exposition had become to him 
 so inseparable, that he could only bring forth his picture of 
 Jesus, and especially the sayings of Jesus, in an original form 
 resulting from the fusion of his own spiritual life. But 
 although we must, on that account, take no notice of the 
 Johannine source in constructing a picture of Jesus that is 
 to be authentic even in form, we are still in possession of a 
 sufficient and well-attested tradition. The first three Gospels 
 have preserved the reminiscences of the life of Jesus as they 
 existed in the earliest days of Christendom, both within 7ei'ea 
 avTT] and before the extinction of His contemporaries (Matt, 
 xiv. 34 ; Mark xiii. 30 ; Luke xxi. 32) ; they also, on their part, 
 rest on still earlier notes whose reliable origin is certain. Papias 
 has attested the existence of a collection of sayings (of Jesus) 
 which the Apostle Matthew, that is, one of the constant com- 
 panions of Jesus, composed in Hebrew (Aramaic) ; and this 
 earliest, most reliable, and richest source of knowledge of the 
 
30 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 teaching of Jesus, may be recognised in the speeches with 
 which the first and third evangelists break in upon the 
 sequence of their chief source.^ But even this main narrative 
 source which they both have in common with the Gospel of 
 Mark, and which, at any rate, appears in Mark's Gospel with 
 least change, " the primitive Gospel " contains a treasure of 
 doctrinal sayings of Jesus ; and this primitive Gospel, according 
 to the credible testimony of the same Papias, is — at least with 
 respect to its greatest part and most important matter — traced 
 back to Mark, the companion of the Apostle Peter, that is, to 
 Peter's own didactic utterances.^ Finally, whatever is peculiar 
 to Matthew, or in far greater abundance to Luke, either 
 springs likewise from that collection of sayings, or, according 
 to Luke i. 1, presupposes other very old sources, and is authen- 
 ticated by the fact that it resembles the most certainly 
 authentic both in tone and in value. The wording of many 
 sayings, or the connection in which they appear, or the inter- 
 pretation they receive in that connection, do indeed deviate 
 from each other in details, as could not but be expected in a 
 tradition passing through so many hands. Many important 
 words have been introduced in a different setting in Matthew 
 and Luke, partly on account of different Greek translations of 
 those Aramaic sayings, partly on account of the involuntary 
 changes of oral tradition, to which we may also add the dif- 
 ferent conjectures of one or other evangelist about the original 
 occasion of the saying. In such cases, when the use to be 
 made of the saying in biblical theology is affected by this 
 diversity, a critical investigation of the original terms and 
 meaning must, of course, take place. The merely oral charac- 
 ter of the original tradition has affected the meaning and 
 wording much less than one would have supposed from other 
 cases. The method of teaching of antiquity, resting always 
 on oral communications, gave a fidelity to the apostle's memo- 
 ries to a degree unknown to us. The sayings of Jesus 
 especially, by the peculiarity of their contents as well as their 
 form, had an incomparable power of stamping themselves 
 upon the memory. Besides, they would be so frequently and 
 intentionally repeated in the circle of the first believers, as 
 very soon to form a fixed common possession preserved with 
 1 Of. my Leben Jesu, i. p. 86. 2 jj^j^^ p_ g^^ 
 
INTRODUCTORY 3 1 
 
 sacred reverence. And therefore there is really very little 
 against which the irresolute modern criticism raises serious 
 question : some sayings, which from their Judaising or Ebion- 
 itic impress seem to be marked as productions of a Jewish- 
 Christian tradition ; some various readings and expositions of 
 parables, and, in particular, a part of the prophetic discourses 
 in the more restricted sense, which, on account of their inner 
 difficulties, one would fain trace back to a later apocalyptic 
 source, although, from all signs, they seem to spring from 
 the same source as the Sermon on the Mount and the 
 most incontestable parables. These doubtful sayings will, 
 of course, have to be dealt with in detail; the abiding 
 proof of their genuineness is the quite definite and inimit- 
 able impress which distinguishes the essentially permanent 
 character of the synoptic sayings of Jesus, not only from 
 all the wisdom of this world, but also from the other sayings 
 of the New Testament. 
 
 § 3. Peculiarity of Jesus' Teaching 
 
 This very peculiarity of the teaching of Jesus is what we 
 have to explain in form and contents, so far as that is possible 
 by anticipation. The form in which Jesus speaks in the 
 synoptic tradition is the gnomic or parabolic, examples of 
 which we find already in the Old Testament, the short, terse 
 maxim out of which the longer didactic or polemic discourses 
 are constructed, or the concise pictorial narrative, the parable. 
 Both forms of teaching are eminently suited to the require- 
 ments of oral instruction, such as Jesus gave to His disciples 
 in particular, beside His preaching to the people (Mark iv. 
 1 0-3 2) ; they make the ideas to be communicated in the 
 highest degree clear, impressive, and memorable. But the 
 universally pictorial style of Jesus' doctrine is conditioned 
 not merely by a necessity of teaching, but rather springs — 
 and this leads us deeper into the peculiarity of His teaching 
 — chiefly from the nature of the things to be communicated. 
 These are just the eternal truths, the heavenly things in 
 earthly speech, which can only be brought home to the 
 popular understanding by pictorial forms. It is therefore 
 the mother speech of religion which Jesus uses. And He 
 
32 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 uses this speech with a purity and perfection that makes His 
 mode of communication quite incomparable. It is distm- 
 guished not only from all speech of science, but also from 
 that speech of religious contemplation which meets us in the 
 writings of the apostles. It is distinguished from it, as the 
 living source is from the fresh and clear flowing brook ; it is 
 all directness, living perception, pure genius ; everything in it 
 flows, not from any mediated or artificial world of ideas, but 
 from native spiritual wealth, from the fulness of His inner 
 life. We also find, in addition to this, that He rarely, and 
 only out of condescension to the ignorance of His opponents 
 or for their confusion, has recourse to argument or means of 
 proof. As a rule. He disdains these for the reason that He 
 does not need them for His own sake, and that the sincere 
 hearts among His hearers do not need them ; because what 
 He says is self-evident to the reason and conscience of the 
 sincere man. His word is therefore in the highest sense 
 testimony, viz. testimony to the Divine which lives and moves 
 in Him. " Verily I say unto you " is the constant expression 
 of an inward certainty which can count on the willing or 
 unwilling inward assent of His hearers. He does not even in 
 any formal way teach the religion which lives in Him. Its 
 moral deductions are taught as in the Sermon on the Mount, 
 or its conditions and ways of operation as in the parables. 
 The thing itself He merely expresses, nay, still more pre- 
 supposes than expresses. It is to Him as the silent, clear, 
 starry heaven, which, as a matter of course, hangs over the 
 earth though clouds conceal it from the eyes of men. Then 
 consider also the peculiar contents of the new faith which 
 He in this way proclaims. That we may not anticipate and 
 get lost in vagueness, let us note only a few characteristic 
 features which distinguish it from all, and raise it above all 
 that is otherwise called religion in the world. The religion of 
 Jesus is, above all, a religion for the world, for universal man. 
 Although it speaks the language of Israel, and was first 
 offered to the people of Israel, yet even in its Isirth it divests 
 itself inwardly of every national limitation. It makes all 
 men neighbours, makes no distinction between them before 
 God, and meets with heavenly satisfaction the needs of the 
 human heart, which are the same everywhere. It is further 
 
INTEODUCTOEY 33 
 
 a religion of the spirit, a religion of inwardness and freedom. 
 It does not bind to sacred places or times, it knows no sacri- 
 fices or ceremonies, no forms or formulae as in themselves 
 pleasing to God. Nothing is of value in it but the pure 
 heart, the love of God, and what that love calls forth in the 
 heart of man. And yet it is capable of the most vigorous 
 outward expression. It, too, has forms of the religious life, 
 personal as well as social, but they have value only in so far 
 as they call forth or fulfil the free impulse of the heart. 
 Again, it is the perfectly moral and morally perfect religion. 
 Everything in it has its ethical side, its moral fruits, without 
 which it is of no value in the sight of God. And the moral 
 demand which this divine faith makes is the highest, the 
 strictest, the most comprehensive conceivable. Over and 
 above every outward and particular deed of obedience, it 
 claims the whole inward man for God and His command- 
 ments. It recognises nothing but the highest and purest 
 motives, and follows sin into the inmost recesses of the heart, 
 to the uprising of anger and the motion of evil desire. And 
 this religion of inexorable moral strictness is at the same 
 time a religion of salvation, a religion of grace in the most 
 comprehensive sense of the word. From the same idea of 
 God as the absolutely Good One, out of which springs the 
 absolute demand, " Be ye perfect, even as the Father in heaven 
 is perfect," arises, at the same time, the glad message of His 
 unlimited fatherly mercy which goes in search of the lost 
 son and meets him with forgiveness, — out of it there flows the 
 idea of a kingdom of God and a communion with God, which 
 can be given only to the poor in spirit, those who have a real 
 feeling of need, because its desire is to make the poor rich, 
 and satisfy with righteousness those who hunger and thirst 
 for it. Finally, the gospel of Jesus is the religion of eternal 
 life. It restores man to his lost eternal home, makes him at 
 home as no other faith can in the invisible world of perfec- 
 tion which his soul craves, and thereby lifs him above the 
 imperfections of his earthly existence. But it does not do so 
 in such a way as to depreciate this earthly existence and 
 induce men to flee from the world, or long for death. It 
 rather consecrates this earth as a vestibule of heaven, and its 
 sufferings as a school of eternal life. The idea of the kingdom 
 
 BEYSCHLAG. — I. 3 
 
34 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 of heaven, the idea of a kingdom of God, sown in time and 
 ripened in eternity, removes the antithesis of this world and 
 the next — of life and death. 
 
 § 4. Origin of Jesus' Teaching 
 
 If this is the peculiarity of the religious teaching of Jesus, 
 there can hardly be any reasonable doubt about its origin. 
 It bears throughout the impress of the highest originality, of 
 originating immediately in His own inner life ; but it does 
 so, not in the sense of being the outcome of His subjective 
 fancy, — in that case it would be the most insoluble of 
 psychological and historical riddles, — but as an immediate 
 gift to His soul from above, a revelation of God ia Him and 
 through Him. That at least is the consciousness which He 
 Himself had of His doctrine. " All things are delivered unto 
 Me of My Father." " My doctrine is not Mine, but that of 
 Him who sent Me" (Matt. xi. 27 ; John vii. 16). In point 
 of fact it is impossible, often as the attempt has been made, to 
 deduce the consciousness of Jesus and the contents of His 
 teaching from any spiritual power which existed in His day. 
 Even though a contact of Jesus with the Hellenic world had 
 not already been excluded by outer facts of His life — how 
 could He have kindled His inner light and life at this 
 hearth ? The religion of classical antiquity, even in its 
 noblest manifestations, and its then foremost living mysteries, 
 was the worship of deified nature, and therefore the direct 
 opposite of the religion of Jesus. And the philosophy of 
 antiquity, even where its highest presentiments of truth 
 approach to the gospel, was just philosophy and not revela- 
 tion, — a wavering, doubting question addressed to heaven, not a 
 certified answer from heaven such as Jesus gives. But even 
 the Jewish religion in which He was born and trained is. no 
 key to His own. That religion is dominated by pretty much 
 the opposite of all those characteristics of the religion of 
 Jesus on which we have been insisting. The Jewish religion 
 in the days of Jesus, with all its proselytising and dreams of a 
 world dominion, was just as narrow-hearted and national as 
 could be, and notwithstanding a certain spiritualising of its 
 worship in the synagogue, it clung more tenaciously than 
 
INTKODUCTORY 35 
 
 ever to outer forms and postures. It could not indeed deny 
 its inborn ethical character, but it externalised and made it 
 as superficial as possible. And instead of referring its like- 
 wise inborn belief in salvation to the redemption of the inner 
 man, it referred it to redemption from outer natural and 
 political restraints. It certainly developed belief in another 
 world, departing thus from its earlier tradition, but in such a 
 way as to fill that other world with earthly sensuous dreams, 
 instead of making this world spiritual by having aims above 
 earth. In a word, the living religion of the Jewish people of 
 that day is just that which we find expressed more consciously 
 and formally in Pharisaism. And in view of our Gospel records, 
 there is no need for wasting words in seeking to prove the 
 depth of the contrast that existed between Jesus and 
 Pharisaism, a contrast that excludes any original affinity or 
 sympathy. Nor is there any affinity of spirit between Jesus 
 and the other well-known types of current Judaism. 
 Sadduceism, that worn-out aristocratic priestly conservatism 
 which was entirely opposed to the religious development of 
 Judaism, and possessed no positive religious principle at all, 
 could only, with its denial of eternal life, have been an offence 
 to Jesus. Neither has Jesus made any allusion even in word 
 to Essenism with which so many would like to connect Him. 
 Deeper religious needs, it is true, lay at the basis of Essenism, 
 but they were satisfied in a way that was completely foreign 
 and offensive to Jesus, the way of monasticism and mysticism 
 springing out of a view at bottom dualistic and ascetic, of 
 which we can find no trace in the teaching of Jesus. There 
 is just as little trace of Alexandrianism in Him, — that artificial 
 theology of mediation between the Old Testament religion 
 and Greek philosophy, which is related to the teaching of 
 Jesus as cistern water to the living fountain. Now there 
 was, of course, among the Jews of that day, besides these 
 degenerate tendencies, a more genuine succession of the 
 psalmists and prophets, those " poor in spirit " and " quiet in 
 the land," to the circle of whom Jesus and His family 
 undoubtedly belonged. But the purer and deeper that genuine 
 issue of Old Testament religion was, the more must there 
 have been impressed on it a feature which was completely 
 foreign to Jesus personally, which was indeed the very 
 
36 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 opposite of His peculiar consciousness, that fundamental 
 feature of the consciousness of guilt, the deeply felt discord 
 between the holy God and sinful Israel of which we have a 
 directly typical example in John the Baptist. This feeling of 
 estrangement from God, of sin and guilt separating God and 
 man from each other, might indeed be felt by Jesus in com- 
 passionate sympathy, and perhaps His submitting to the 
 baptism of John may be explained by this sympathy. But it 
 is so completely foreign to Him personally that the ground- 
 tone of His whole self -consciousness is rather the undisturbed 
 sense of communion with God, the blessed consciousness of 
 divine Sonship, 
 
 § 5. Eevealed Chaeacter of Cheist's Teaching 
 
 This brings us to the real mystery of the personality of 
 Jesus which forms the salient point of His whole teaching, 
 and which explains and confirms on all sides its peculiarities as 
 described above. He did not preach a union of God with all 
 men which is either inherent in all or reached by way of self- 
 development, but He is immediately and originally certain of 
 that communion only for Himself. But out of it, out of the 
 consciousness of being in a unique sense the Son of God, grew 
 His consciousness of being the Saviour, and His sense of a 
 vocation to help His brethren to a similar communion with 
 God, or^ — what is the same thing — to receive them into the 
 kingdom of heaven that appears in Him ; and from this point 
 His "evangel," His teaching and preaching, unfolds itself on 
 all sides. We are only incidentally reminded here, where the 
 object is merely a sketch, not a justification of the teaching of 
 Jesus, how impossible it is to resolve all that enduring ground- 
 consciousness of His into a fanatical dream, how firmly it must 
 be founded on the truth, on a fact which not merely lets Him 
 have a revelation, but makes Himself a personal revelation of 
 God. For this self-consciousness of Jesus did not grow on the 
 soil of a Hellenic self-deceptive intermixture of the divine and 
 human, but on the basis of the law and prophets, on the basis 
 of the ethico-metaphysical distinction between God and man, ' 
 on which it is not conceivable except as the reflection of an 
 inner life which absolutely does not know that which separates 
 
 Ml 
 
INTKODUCTORY 37 
 
 the holy God and the heart of man, viz. sin.^ The character 
 of His teaching, however, directly furnishes a twofold proof of 
 the truth of that self-consciousness. The first is more of a 
 formal nature. The teaching of Jesus as a teaching of 
 religion resting on revelation may be most readily compared 
 with the teaching of the prophets ; though there obtains here 
 an important difference. The divine inspiration comes upon 
 the prophet by fits and starts, as a power half-foreign, which 
 falls, as it were, upon him in specially elevated moments of 
 his life. But in the case of Jesus everything is equable. He 
 knows no difference between hours of inspiration and ordinary 
 hours. The spring of divine revelation wells up in Him 
 quietly and constantly, not while He is exalted above Himself, 
 but while simply Himself and giving Himself. It is the 
 eternal foundation of His personal life from which His words 
 of eternal life at all times flow. The second proof to which 
 we refer, leads us into the contents and central point of His 
 teaching. He is not merely, like Moses, the prophet of His 
 religion ; He Himself is its living content and basis, as His 
 person supports, guarantees, indeed first makes possible His 
 entire teaching. If communion with God, " the kingdom of 
 God," had not been personally realised in Him, His whole 
 proclamation of it would have been destitute both of truth 
 and meaning ; nay, as a child of His people and its religion He 
 could not have even grasped the idea of a kingdom of God, the 
 dwelling of the holy God with the sinful sons of men, had it 
 not originally been realised in His absolutely pure communion 
 of heart with God. But then we comprehend how all the 
 great characteristics of His teaching, emphasised above, are 
 nothing else than the natural manifestations of His personal 
 consciousness, the simple issues of the fact of His unique and 
 ideally perfect relation to God. Because He has the pure 
 heart of the perfect child of God, He is able to see the Father 
 in heaven as no prophet before Him and no apostle after Him, 
 and all the mists of national limitation and legal externality 
 fall away from the eyes of His spirit. Because the eternal 
 Good, the eh aya66<i (Mark x. 18), with His holy love, lives 
 and moves in Him, He can, on the one hand, clearly unfold 
 the holy demands of that love to the judging even of heart 
 1 Of. my Leben Jesu, i. p. 182. 
 
38 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 and thoughts, and at the same time guarantee and realises 
 the whole saving, forgiving, sanctifying love of the Father. 
 Finally, because He brings the life of a higher world into 
 this and victoriously tests it in the conflict with the earthly, 
 the partition-wall between this world and that to come is 
 for Him inwardly abolished, and the whole earthly life placed 
 in the transfiguring light of eternity. But when we deduce 
 all the characteristics of His teaching from His personal 
 unlimited communion with God, and can deduce them only 
 from that, we have traced them back to that very thing which 
 makes Him the personal bearer of the perfect revelation of 
 God among men, and therewith have furnished the positive 
 proof of the revealed origin and character of His teaching. 
 
 § 6. Eelation of the Teaching of Jesus to the 
 Old Testament 
 
 Nevertheless, the teaching of Jesus has one side from 
 which its complete originality may plausibly be called in 
 question, and that is its connection with the Old Testament. 
 Notwithstanding all that we have said about His elevation 
 above the religious parties of contemporary Judaism, are not 
 the sacred documents of His people, are not the " law and the 
 prophets " to Him divine authorities ? And does not that 
 deprive His gospel of part at least of its character as personal 
 revelation, and make it simply a prophetic development and 
 completion of the Old Testament religion of Jehovah ? 
 
 Certainly the law and the prophets speak to Him the 
 word of God. He not only appeals to them as Holy Scripture 
 against the people and the scribes, but to Himself they are a 
 lamp to His feet and a light to His path. When the story of 
 the temptation shows Him beating back the assaults of Satan 
 with a text of Scripture, and the narrative of the transfigura- 
 tion makes Moses and Elias proclaim the decease which He is 
 to accomplish at Jerusalem (Luke ix. 31), there lies at the 
 basis of these statements the fact, that in the most painful 
 crises of His life He grasped and held by the words of 
 Scripture, by the law and the prophets. And His belief in 
 them appears so absolute as to make Him declare that 
 " heaven and earth will pass away sooner than one jot or tittle 
 
INTEODUCTOKY 39 
 
 of the law should fail " (Matt. v. 18 ; Luke xvi. 17). Accord- 
 ingly, His teaching seems everywhere rooted in the Old 
 Testament ; all its ideas and elements spring out of the Old 
 Testament, and if there are many things of importance in it 
 which He does not directly teach, that may be explained by 
 the fact that, in the case of His disciples, He can presuppose 
 them as elements of the Old Testament with which they were 
 familiar. Yet we do not find Him in a relation of constrained 
 slavish dependence on the Old Testament Scriptures. The 
 words about the writing of divorce which was permitted, the 
 commandment that no work should be done on the Sabbath, 
 were in the law, and He did not pay any heed to them ; He 
 calmly set against the first the creative thought of God, and 
 against the latter the royal rights of the Son of Man. Nay, if 
 we consider the matter more closely, we shall be astonished at 
 the wide tracts of Old Testament Scripture which have, as it 
 were, no existence for Him, though He manifestly knew them. 
 He has scarcely touched the whole wide region of the sacrificial 
 and ceremonial law, He has at most taken notice of the whole 
 politico- theocratic form of the Messianic idea in order to reject 
 it once for all, and every moral imperfection in the Old 
 Testament, especially the theocratic spirit of revenge, with its 
 words and deeds — even when represented by an Elias — does 
 not for a moment mislead Him as to the law of love and 
 meekness which becomes His kingdom. We see that He read 
 the Old Testament with an independent mind, with a sure test 
 in His heart which made Him distinguish the divine kernel 
 from the human husk, the eternal idea from the imperfect and 
 temporary expression of it, even in the most difficult cases ; 
 and this test can only have been the higher and purer religious 
 ideas which He bore in Himself. It is evident therefore that 
 His relation to the Old Testament by no means contradicts or 
 even limits what we have already said about the originality of 
 His doctrinal ideas, as coming from the depth of His own 
 inner life which He lived in God. What then is His relation 
 to the law and the prophets which allows Him to believe in 
 them without binding Him to them ? The best answer is 
 Matt. V. 17: " Think not that I am come to destroy the law 
 and the prophets : I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." 
 The revelation of God did not first begin with Him ; it com- 
 
40 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 pletes itself in Him, and the law and prophets are just steps 
 towards this completion. It is self-evident, therefore, that the 
 preliminary revelation is not destroyed or abolished, but 
 recognised by Him who comes to complete it. But it is 
 equally self-evident that to Him this preparatory revelation is 
 not the perfect one, and that He has to raise its detected 
 imperfections into the perfect, and that is just the fulfilment 
 to which the above saying refers. Not an actual fulfilment, 
 such as might very well have been asserted of Messiah, but, 
 as the further course of the Sermon on the Mount puts beyond 
 all question, a didactic fulfilment, that is, a perfection and 
 completion in virtue of which the inmost meaning of the law 
 and the prophets is to be set forth and made authoritative, as 
 it had not been in its Old Testament form. Jesus Himself 
 never failed to apprehend that this Old Testament form must 
 herewith as such be exploded, just as the covering of the bud 
 must be burst when the blossom opens out. No jot or 
 tittle of the law was to fail, only in the sense of not being 
 thrown away as an empty husk; there is in every one a 
 divine kernel and germ, which must obtain its due, its unfold- 
 ing. But when that is secure, what had been husk inevitably 
 falls away, as is clear from the expositions of the law which 
 follow in Matt. v. 1 7—2 ; in each of them an imperfect 
 divine idea is fulfilled in spirit whilst it is destroyed in the 
 letter. And as with the precepts of the law, so is it with all 
 Old Testament ideas and views which Jesus turns to account ; 
 they are confirmed and transformed in one breath. They are 
 recognised as divine, as surely as they are rooted in the Old 
 Testament, but in such a way that their divine character and 
 vitality for the first time attain their full development ; in the 
 mouth of Jesus they seem at once old and new, they are no 
 longer Old Testament, but New Testament ideas. 
 
 The watchword about fulfilling the law and the prophets 
 goes beyond the immediate meaning of Matt. v. 17; it 
 expresses the entire relation of Jesus to the Old Testament. 
 He fulfils the law and the prophets, by bringing about what 
 they aim at, the kingdom of heaven or kingdom of God. 
 This fundamental conception of Jesus, from which His whole 
 teaching unfolds itself — at least in the first three Gospels — is 
 what we have above all to direct our attention to. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF HEAYEN OK KINGDOM OF GOD 41 
 
 CHAPTEE II 
 
 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN OR KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 Jesus appeared with the announcement, the kingdom of 
 heaven is at hand (Matt. iv. 17), and His whole preaching 
 from beginning to end may be comprised in His gospel of the 
 kingdom of God (Mark i. 1 ; Acts i. 3). The Sermon on the 
 Mount begins with the promise of the kingdom of heaven to 
 the poor in spirit ; the parables revolve around the idea of the 
 kingdom of God ; the prophecies refer to its appearance. The 
 other writings of the New Testament are also acquainted with 
 this fundamental conception (cf. e.g. John iii. 3, 5 ; Acts 
 viii. 1, 2; Jas. ii. 5; Eom. xiv. 17; 1 Cor. iv. 20, xv. 50), 
 and if it does not properly belong to their diction, and there- 
 fore appears only now and then, that only makes it the more 
 evidently a reminiscence of Jesus' own mode of teaching. 
 What then does Jesus mean by this His favourite watchword ? 
 
 § 1. Meaning of the Word 
 
 As to the meaning of the word, ^aaCkela may indicate 
 the abstract kinghood, the royal power and dignity (= Heb. 
 naipp), as well as the concrete realm, the sphere of dominion 
 (nu^D). Luther has translated both senses by kingdom, and 
 they so pass into each other, in idea and usage, that in many 
 passages of the Gospels we cannot be certain which is meant. 
 The abstract conception is, however, by far the rarer — it 
 is certainly contained in Luke xxii. 29, xxiii. 42 : kot^w 
 Siartdefiai v/uv KaOcbi hieOero fwi 6 iraTrip /mov, ^aaCkelav ; 
 and orav e\6y<! iv ry ^aaiXela crov. On the other hand, 
 the concrete is the usual conception ; it alone suits such 
 expressions as " the least in the kingdom of heaven " ; " to 
 enter into the kingdom of God " ; " to inherit the kingdom that 
 is prepared" (cf. Matt. v. 4). This concrete notion of the 
 kingdom is therefore in doubtful cases to be preferred and 
 made the basis of our present investigation. As to the double 
 expression /SacrtXewi t&v ovpavmv and rov deov, the first 
 belongs only to the Gospel of Matthew, in which it is the 
 
42 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 prevailing expression. The rest of the New Testament — 
 apart from the uncertain reading in John iii. 3, 5 — has only 
 the ^aa-tXela tov deov. That both expressions mean the same 
 thing is manifest from the parallels of Matthew on the one 
 hand, and of Mark and Luke on the other ; as well as from 
 the absolute expression 17 ^aaCKeLa, which is frequently used 
 in Matthew. Both are found alongside each other even in 
 Eabbinic writings. The idea that the expression kingdom 
 of heaven is a twist given to the conception by the first 
 evangelist after the destruction of Jerusalem, with the view of 
 transferring to heaven the appearance of the kingdom that 
 was no longer hoped for on earth, is certainly erroneous. For 
 the first Gospel is the earliest, and was composed before the 
 destruction of Jerusalem ; and though in it the appearance of 
 the kingdom is expected from heaven, it is by no means 
 transferred to heaven (iv. 17, xxiv. 30, xxvi. 64). The 
 probability rather is that the expression comes from the 
 oldest source, the Logia of Matthew, and was the one that 
 Jesus Himself preferred to use. Its enigmatic and peculiar 
 Old Testament impress may — as in the case of the expression 
 Son of Man — have hindered its transference to Gentile-Chris- 
 tian usage, and therefore to the second and third Gospels. As 
 to its strict import, we must reject the view which — in 
 accordance with the aversion of the Jews to pronounce the 
 name of God — makes heaven here a mere paraphrase for God. 
 That is never the way of Jesus, who rather disapproves of that 
 speaking of heaven instead of God (Matt. v. 34); even then 
 we would at least expect the singular instead of the plural 
 ovpavwv, which is constantly used.^ The expression rather 
 appears to have come from the passages Dan. ii. 44, vii. 
 13, 14, and to have pointed to heaven as the original home of 
 the kingdom of God, the genitive thus expressing the origin, 
 and therefore the attributes which it possesses. This view 
 best answers to the meaning which heaven has in the teach- 
 ing of Jesus as the kingdom of ideal perfection. When we 
 find in the Lord's Prayer that the petition, " Thy will be done 
 in earth," follows immediately that of " Thy kingdom come," 
 
 1 The singular is used in Luke iv. 18, 21 ; this is the only occasion in 
 the New Testament where the common usage of heaven as equivalent for 
 God is put in the mouth of the prodigal son. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN OE KINGDOM OF GOD 43 
 
 we may take the former as the best exposition of the latter. 
 The kingdom of God is where the will of God is done on 
 earth as it is in heaven, that is, where it is done ideally. 
 According to this, the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of 
 God would be the perfect original order of things which has 
 its home in heaven, in order to come down from thence and 
 realise itself on earth, — that ideal condition which humanity 
 and history are to reach, that God may in His inmost essence, 
 as eternal Spirit and holy love, fill all and condition all that 
 is in the world. 
 
 § 2. Its Histokical Eoot 
 
 But a well-based understanding of the phrase can only be 
 gained by an examination of history. The watchword chosen 
 by Jesus strikes us to-day perhaps as strange, but was at 
 once understood by His countrymen and contemporaries. The 
 kingdom of heaven, or kingdom of God, was manifestly at 
 that time a current expression in Israel, and one that could 
 be used without need of further explanation. That is already 
 presupposed in the terse preaching of the Baptist about the 
 kingdom of heaven as at hand. It is said of Joseph of 
 Arimathea that he waited for the kingdom of God (Mark xv. 
 43). The Pharisees asked Jesus (Luke xvii. 20) when the 
 kingdom of God should come. A scribe who sat at meat 
 with Jesus piously exclaims (Luke xiv. 15): "Blessed is he 
 who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God." In all these 
 passages the kingdom of God is unmistakably the tersest 
 expression for the object of Israel's highest expectation, for 
 that very thing which the people in the loud rejoicings at 
 our Lord's entrance into Jerusalem called the coming king- 
 dom of our father David (Mark xi. 10), that which was in 
 the mind of the disciples when they asked (Acts i. 6) : " Wilt 
 Thou not at this time restore the kingdom unto Israel ? " — in 
 a word, the Messianic kingdom. This Messianic sense is not, 
 indeed, usual in the language of the later Eabbis. They pre- 
 ferred to speak in the abstract religious sense of the Malechut 
 Jahve, and Malechut Schamajim, rather than of the kingship 
 of Jehovah, the heavenly Majesty before which men must 
 bow. But these post-Christian and rabbinical applications 
 
44 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 are best explained as intentional perversions of the original 
 Messianic sense, adaptations by the later Pharisaism which 
 had become unfriendly to the Messianic idea, though they 
 are confronted by other passages in the pre-Christian as well 
 as post-Christian Jewish literature, in which the Messianic 
 sense of both expressions is unquestionable.^ The whole 
 inner history of Israel could not fail to secure to this phrase 
 a Messianic character. For government by God — theocracy, 
 as Josephus expressed the idea in Greek — was the ideal 
 constitution of the nation from the earliest times. It was 
 the fundamental idea of Mosaism that Israel should be God's 
 peculiar people above all nations, a kingdom of priests in 
 which Jehovah should rule (Ex. xix. 5, 6). But this lofty 
 idea was only outwardly and imperfectly realised in the land 
 of promise, and even its shadowy realisation was broken up 
 with the fall of the old Israelitish State. It lived, however, 
 all the more vividly in the view of the prophets as the ideal 
 picture of the future ; for the true God must at length obtain 
 the victory on earth, and celebrate His triumph in the setting 
 up of a commonwealth on which He would pour out all 
 blessings, and from which He would remove all defects, — a 
 commonweath in which would be fully realised the promise, 
 " Ye shall be my people, and I will be your God." This 
 ideal picture of a glorious and blessed kingdom of God in 
 Israel, and extending from Israel over all the world, was 
 really the fundamental idea of the Messianic hope. The 
 so-called Messianic idea in the narrower sense, the hope 
 (picture) of a personal Messiah, was quite subordinate to this 
 fundamental idea — a fact which cannot be too much attended 
 to. That might waver and fade, the ideal form of the 
 servant of God, or the mere Theophany, might take its place 
 and produce a confusion of contradictory Messianic notions 
 in the nation, but the kingdom of God remained the un- 
 changeable expectation of all pious men. And as the hope 
 of realising it on earth sank lower, — as Israel, instead of 
 being politically exalted, was more and more scattered and 
 brought under the oppression of successive worldly powers, — 
 
 1 Cf. Cremer, BibL-theol. Lexicon of N. T. Greek, p. 189, Aufl. 5. In 
 the very old Jewish prayer, Kaddish, e.g., it is said : " May He shortly 
 cause His kingdom to come " 
 
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN OR KINGDOM OF GOD 45 
 
 the more were their eyes raised to heaven in the hope of 
 seeing what they longed for coming down from thence 
 sustained by heavenly strength, an imperishable kingdom 
 of heaven opposed to the kingdoms of the heathen which 
 spring from beneath. That is the standpoint of the Book 
 of Daniel, which arose out of the hardships of the Maccabean 
 age, and in which it is said (ii. 44) : " And in the days of 
 these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which 
 shall never be destroyed : and His kingdom shall not be left 
 to other people, but it shall break in pieces and destroy all 
 those kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever." The special 
 conception of the kingdom of heaven, alongside of the general 
 conception of the kingdom of God, was unquestionably de- 
 veloped out of these visions. But even the latter, which, 
 to judge from the usage of the rest of the New Testament, 
 appears to have been the more current, was understood by 
 every one in the same sense. When, therefore, the Baptist 
 first, and after him One greater than he, appeared with the 
 watchword, " The kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God, is 
 at hand," no one could be in doubt about the meaning of 
 this watchword. It announced in the clearest, tersest, most 
 comprehensive way the final fulfilment of what for ages had 
 been longed and hoped for. 
 
 § 3. Jesus' Idea of the Kingdom 
 
 Still, it is anything but superfluous to ask about Jesus' 
 own idea of the kingdom. Though the way in which He 
 takes that phrase from the lips of His people — at first 
 without further explanation — leaves no doubt that He was 
 conscious of meaning the same thing as His hearers, yet the 
 more definite notions about the kingdom of God differed 
 widely in the nation itself, according as people's thoughts 
 were deep or superficial, spiritual or worldly, and even to 
 the most earnest and spiritual it was only a picture of fancy, 
 which, as all prophecy, and still more all interpretation of 
 prophecy, is imperfect, was far from corresponding to the 
 fulfilment desired by God. But the question with Jesus was 
 this divine fulfilment, first the pure and perfect truth of the 
 idea, and then the way in which it might be realised. And 
 
46 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 SO we cannot wonder that although at the beginning He did 
 not find any need for a closer exposition, He should after- 
 wards enter largely into discussions with His disciples about 
 the kingdom of heaven, and speak to them about its mysteries 
 (Mark iv. 11; Matt. xiii. 11). The supposition is not ex- 
 cluded that the idea of the kingdom developed in His hands. 
 He could scarcely begin otherwise than with that notion of it 
 which was furnished by the Old Testament prophets, and 
 which was cherished even by John the Baptist. But when 
 His idea of the kingdom, which at first seemed to be simply 
 the ordinary idea, became more and more unintelligible to the 
 people, and even to the disciples, the most devout of the 
 people, we must suppose that in the work of fulfilling there 
 were revealed to Him aspects and depths of the idea formerly 
 unsuspected.^ But we would go far astray if we supposed 
 that the development which the idea of the kingdom took in 
 the mind and spirit of Jesus was a development into some- 
 thing abstract, in some such way as we nowadays, divesting 
 the concept of its specific Messianic character, speak of a 
 kingdom of God already in the old covenant. There are two 
 passages in His discourses which may certainly give this an 
 appearance of probability. When we read (Matt. viii. 12, 
 xxi. 43) that the children of the kingdom are to be cast out 
 while strangers are received, or that the kingdom is to be 
 taken from them and given to others, it appears as though 
 the Israelities as such were thought of as in possession of the 
 kingdom — that is, of a kingdom already existing under the 
 old covenant. But both passages permit another interpreta- 
 tion : the Israelites are " children of the kingdom," and their 
 magistrates are pillars of the kingdom in virtue of their 
 hereditary claim upon it ; but the kingdom is not theirs in 
 possession, it is intended and promised to them, and may be 
 lost. We are therefore compelled to expound both passages 
 in the Messianic sense which unmistakably prevails in all the 
 other sayings of Jesus about the kingdom. When, in the 
 Lord's Prayer, He teaches us to pray for the coming of the 
 kingdom, when He makes it replace the law and the prophets 
 on earth (Matt. xi. 11-13 ; Luke xvi. 16), when He regards 
 it as having come near and become accessible only in His 
 1 Cf. my Leben Jesu, i. p. 231. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN OK KINGDOM OF GOD 47 
 
 own day and since the days of John the Baptist, He cannot 
 possibly have extended the concept to the Old Testament 
 preparatory stage, but must have used it to describe the 
 Messianic fulfilment. But even that is a very awkward 
 view of the matter, making it appear as if Jesus had trans- 
 formed the Messianic meaning from the sensuous and secular 
 conception which had come down to His contemporaries from 
 the time of the prophets, into something purely spiritual. 
 There certainly existed between what His contemporaries, in 
 virtue of the prophetic delineations of the kingdom of God, 
 above all expected, and what Jesus offered them as a com- 
 mencement and foundation of its fulfilment, a contrast of 
 such force that Jesus on account of it was not recognised as 
 the promised Deliverer, but was rejected as a false Messiah. 
 The prophets, " seeing in a glass darkly, and not face to face " 
 (1 Cor. xiii. 12), had portrayed the kingdom of God, above all, 
 as a kingdom of power which would outshine and overpower 
 the kingdoms of the heathen, and this side of the prophecy, 
 as is well known, was most powerfully re-echoed among the 
 Jewish people in the days of Jesus. The hopes of the nation 
 were directed to nothing more passionately than the breaking 
 up of the Eoman Empire and the establishment of a Jewish 
 supremacy. Jesus refused on principle to have any hand in 
 realising this side of the Messianic hope, — for that is the 
 meaning and content of the narrative of the temptation, — 
 and this refusal set up between Him and the mass of the 
 people, from the very first, that barrier which proved itself 
 more and more impenetrable as time went on. This does 
 not mean, however, that He could have regarded those 
 national expectations as a mere perishable husk of prophecy, 
 without at the same time conceiving their fulfilment as a 
 blessing to come from heaven with the conversion of Israel. 
 Still less does it follow from this that He had conceived the 
 entire sensuous form in which the idea of the kingdom 
 appeared in the prophets as mere symbol and parable, and 
 had looked for its fulfilment in the setting up of a purely 
 spiritual kingdom of God on earth — with the prospect, 
 perhaps, of a heavenly perfection of it in another world. 
 The nature of the kingdom of God is not conceived by the 
 prophets as altogether sensuous and worldly, but spiritual ; 
 
48 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 its principal gifts are a purifying of the nation, an outpouring 
 of the Spirit of God on all flesh, and a writing of the divine 
 law on the heart. When, however, they are not content with 
 these inward results, but carry the dominion of God into 
 worldly affairs, and make the peace of God penetrate even 
 nature (cf. e.g. Isa. xi.), it is no doubt sacred poetry, not, 
 however, a mere poetic clothing of those spiritual promises, 
 but an independent and essential element of their view of 
 the world. The form and colour in which they clothe them 
 are, of course, taken from their earthly horizon, and are alto- 
 gether of an individual, poetic, and symbolic nature, so that 
 even the succeeding prophet, not to speak of the PulfiUer, 
 does not feel himself bound by them. But under these forms 
 and colours is hidden an unchanging heart of meaning, the 
 idea of an actual world-transfiguring development of the 
 expected kingdom of God. And this idea is anything but 
 an imperfection and limitation of the prophetic view; it 
 marks, on the contrary, the healthy energy of the religious 
 faith of the Bible, not in a half, but in a complete victory of 
 God in the world, — a faith which is not content faintheartedly 
 to claim the inner and secret life of man for God, whilst it 
 allows the great life of history and nature, as the kingdom of 
 sin and evil, to remain for ever divided between God and 
 Satan. Jesus, as the FulfiUer of prophecy, could not possibly 
 fall behind the prophets in this matter. And He manifestly 
 has not fallen behind them. Certainly when the nation fell 
 away from the prophetic spirit, made the visible wonders of 
 the kingdom of God its first and most essential things, and 
 added its spiritual character as matter of course, it was the 
 work of Jesus to rectify the relation of the two sides thus 
 displaced, and to lay the whole weight on the spiritual and 
 conditional nature of the kingdom of God. The promise, 
 therefore, of the kingdom which He makes to precede every 
 other is a glad message for the poor in spirit, mercy for the 
 merciful, satisfaction for those who hunger and thirst after 
 righteousness, a vision of God for the pure in heart (Matt. v. 
 3 ff.). But when, alongside of these. He promises that the 
 meek shall inherit the earth, that is, obtain final dominion 
 of the world, when He sees in His miracles of healing and 
 expulsion of demons — victories over natural evil — the signs 
 
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN OE KINGDOM OF GOD 49 
 
 of the kingdom of God having come (Matt. xi. 2—6, xii. 28), 
 or when, in His prophecies, He announces a final judgment 
 as taking place on earth, and a new birth of the universe 
 (Matt. xix. 28, and 24, 25), it is clear beyond all doubt that 
 He regards the transformation of the historical conditions, as 
 well as the glorifying of the life of nature, the restoration of 
 all that exists to a pure and perfect expression of the eternally 
 good, as belonging essentially to the consummation of the idea 
 of the kingdom. Therefore when He appears among His 
 people with the announcement, " Eepent : for the kingdom of 
 heaven is at hand" (Matt. iv. 17), He means by this king- 
 dom of heaven not merely the immediate fruits of repentance 
 in the heart, but that very kingdom of which He says in His 
 words about the judgment of the world, that the pious are to 
 inherit it at the last day, that it is prepared for them from 
 the foundation of the world (Matt. xxv. 34). He means the 
 approaching realisation of that eternal ideal of the world, when 
 it is to be filled and blessed by the aU-ruling eternal Love. 
 
 § 4. The Present and Future Kingdom 
 
 From what has now been said it is evident that there are 
 two divergent aspects of Jesus' idea of the kingdom — its 
 foundation, which is spiritual, and its embodied completion, 
 which affects all the world ; and a consideration of the relation 
 of these two sides to one another will first lead us into what 
 is really new in His idea, into the actual unfolding of His 
 doctrine of the kingdom of heaven. For Jesus does not 
 suppose that this ideal condition shall or can fall from heaven 
 as by magic ready-made at a stroke. When He says the 
 kingdom of heaven is at hand, He does not mean that it has 
 already come ; and when He goes further, and describes the 
 kingdom as present. He does not, on that account, cease to 
 place it in the future. That is an apparent contradiction 
 which we have first to establish and then to solve. When 
 Jesus (Matt. v. 3 and 10) promises the kingdom to the poor 
 in spirit, and those suffering for righteousness, with an on 
 avT&v iarlv r] ^acrikeia r&v ovpavwv, He does not, of course, 
 mean a real presence of the kingdom, but that it belongs to 
 them in idea, is prepared for them by God. That is confirmed 
 
 BEYSCHLAG. — I. 4 
 
50 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 by the context. All the other manifestly synonymous 
 promises of the beatitudes refer to the future. On the other 
 hand, the words Matt. xii. 28 manifestly speak of an actual 
 present : el Be iv -Trvevfian 6eov iyo) eK^aXXa to, haifiovia apa 
 e<p6a<Tev e(f>" vfj.d? rj ^aaCKela tov 6eov, likewise Matt. xi. 12 
 (of. Luke xvi. 1 6) : diro Se twv fjixep&v 'ladvvov tov 
 BaiTTia-TOV eax; apri rj ^acriXela tmv ovpavcov ^id^eTai (that is, 
 allows itself to be conquered, taken by violence) kuI ^laaral 
 dp-n-d^ovaiv aiirijv. Or Luke xvii. 20, where Jesus to the 
 question of the Pharisee : Trdre ep')(erai ^ /Saa-iXeua tov Oeov ; 
 answers : ovk epxeTai rj ^acrCkeia tov 6eov fieTO, TrapaTrjprjtrea'i 
 . . . ISoii yap 7] ^acriXela tov deov eVro? vfiwv iaTiv, that is 
 (for He cannot have meant to say to the Pharisees that they 
 bore it in themselves), it is in your midst. It is the same 
 with most of the parables of the kingdom, the Parable of the 
 Seed growing secretly (Mark iv. 2 6), of the Grain of Mustard 
 Seed, of the Leaven, of the Treasure in the Pield, of the Pearl of 
 great Price (Matt, xiii.), of the Great Supper (Luke xiv. 1 6). 
 At the basis of them all lies the idea that the kingdom of 
 God is already buried in the bosom of the earth, that its table 
 is already spread — that it is a blessing to be had now present. 
 And that is finally confirmed by the fact that entrance into 
 the kingdom of God is spoken of as something both possible 
 and actual, nay, some are spoken of as already in it. ZrjTelTe 
 irp&Tov TTjv ^aaiXeCav avTov, that is, tov 6eov (Matt. vi. 33) 
 — elaekOeTe <na t^? cTevri<; ■KvK'q<; (Matt. vii. 13; cf. Luke xiii. 
 24) — 01 TeXavai Kal ai iropvai irpodyovaiv vfiai ets TrjV 
 ^aaiXeiav tov Oeov (Matt. xxi. 31) — KXeieTe ttjv ^adCkelav 
 Tcov ovpavcov e/jbTTpoadev twv dvOpwTrcov vfiel'i yap ovk ela'epy(ea'6e 
 ovBe Toil? eicrep-x^ofiivovi (present) a^iere elcre\6eiv (Matt, xxiii. 
 13). Finally, o Se /iiKpoTepo^ iv t^ ^aatXeCa tSsv ovpav&v 
 fiel^av avTov icrTiv, that is, the least of those who — as 
 disciples of Mine — are already citizens of the kingdom of 
 heaven, is greater than John the Baptist, the historical herald 
 of that kingdom (Matt. xi. 11). But entrance is just as 
 often, and as expressly, conceived as something future, some- 
 thing that will take place on "that day." 'Eav nr/ 
 ■jrepia-a-eva-r} vfiwv rj SiKaioavvrj . . . ov fir) elaeXBtjTe et's TrjV 
 ^aaCKeuiv twv ovpav&v, exclaims Jesus to those who have 
 already become His disciples. In Matt. vii. 21 He says: 
 
THE KINGDOM OF HEATEN OR KINGDOM OF GOD 51 
 
 ov Tras 6 Xer^av /jloi, Kvpie, elaeXeva-eTai et? rr/v iSaaiXeiav twv 
 ovpavwv (cf. ver. 22 : iroXkol ipovaiv fioi, ev eKeivy Ty Vl^epa 
 K.T.X.). Tore epei 6 ^acn\ev<s toI<; eK Se^imv airov : kXtj- 
 povo/irjarare rrjv ■^ToifiaariMevTjv v/iiv ^aaiXeiav aTro KaTa^o\ri<i 
 Kocr/jLov, is said of the last day (Matt. xxv. 34). Thus 
 also in Matt. xxvi. 29 the departing Master refers His 
 disciples by way of consolation to that day when He shall 
 drink the cup of communion with them new in His Father's 
 kingdom, as He pictures the signs of His coming again to 
 judge the world (Luke xxi. 31), and adds: orav ihrjre ravra 
 yevofieva, yivdoa-Kere ort, 6771^5 i(TTiv 7) ^aaiXeia tov Oeov. 
 Finally, when in the Lord's Prayer He teaches them to pray, 
 iXOeToi f) ^acriXeia aov, it is manifest that it has yet to come, 
 and is therefore still in the future. It has been supposed, 
 that in order to solve this apparent contradiction in the 
 announcements of Jesus about the kingdom, we must dis- 
 tinguish different stages in His doctrinal development, viz. 
 that Jesus started with the idea that the kingdom of heaven 
 was at hand, then, under the impression of the growing 
 success, advanced to the assertion of its being present, and, 
 finally, in view of His earthly failure comes back again to the 
 idea of the future. But though we do not in any way deny 
 a gradual development of His idea of the kingdom, yet the 
 riddle is not solved in this way, because it is clear that the 
 kingdon:^ had never appeared in the sense in which from the 
 beginning it had been expected and finally predicted as future. 
 Both views of the kingdom, so far as we can see, run side by 
 side through the teaching of Jesus, nay, they are embraced in 
 one and the same expression (Mark x. 1 5 ; Luke xviii. 1 7) : 
 o? av firj he^riTai ttjv iBaaiXeiav rov deov w? iraiSiov ov firj 
 elaeKOr) ek avTr)v: that is a very instructive saying. It 
 shows how both views of the kingdom, as present and as 
 future, coexist in the mind of Jesus, and are mutually 
 dependent on each other. The kingdom is so far present that 
 a man may receive it ; it is still future in so far as we are yet 
 to be received into it, and the former is the condition of the 
 latter. The double idea of the kingdom as present and 
 future, and the mutual relation of the two, give promise of 
 some insight into what Jesus Himself calls the mysteries of 
 the kingdom (Mark iv. 11), 
 
52 new testament theology 
 
 § 5. Inner Eelation of the two Aspects 
 
 Further particulars are given in the parables in which 
 Jesus, according to His own expression, endeavoured to reveal 
 to the disciples the fiva-rijpiop Tri<s ^aa-iXeia^ : especially the 
 Parables of the Sower, of the Seed growing secretly, of the 
 Tares, the Mustard Seed, of the Leaven, and the Net. In all 
 these the future form of the kingdom, its final glorious 
 appearance, is conditioned by its present secret establishment. 
 The Parable of the Sower fwhich, in spite of its lacking the 
 introductory words, " the kingdom of heaven is like," belongs, 
 according to Mark iv. 11, to the parables of the kingdom) 
 teaches how the founding of the kingdom must take place 
 through the sowing of the word in the individual heart. The 
 Parables of the Seed growing secretly, and the Tares, likewise 
 place the historical realisation of the kingdom in the world 
 under the point of view of seedtime and harvest. In the 
 Parable of the Mustard Seed and the Leaven, the kingdom of 
 heaven appears as an invisible but living force, which must 
 unfold itself in a suitable element ere it can accomplish its 
 results. And in the Parable of the Net, the present task of ex- 
 tending the kingdom, its missionary duty, is set forth as a neces- 
 sary pre-condition of its future task of judgment, the time of 
 selection and rejection. Jesus had good reasons for describing 
 these representations to His disciples as an explanation of 
 the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, for the prophets, even 
 the last of them, the Baptist, could not have told them the 
 like about the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God, 
 according to the prophets, was to come all at once. They 
 had the complete picture of it before them in one great view, 
 and accordingly they thought of its coming — as it is said in 
 Luke xvii. — fiera irapaTTjpija-eco^, so that one on the watch 
 might see it coming down from heaven by a great miracle of 
 God. This was so even with the Baptist, in whose prophetic 
 picture of the kingdom, initial form and perfect form, baptism 
 of the spirit and judgment of the world, immediately coincide. 
 He imagines the Messiah coming after him with His fan in 
 His hand, cleansing His threshing-floor, and separating the 
 chaff from the wheat; baptizing the pious with the Holy 
 Spirit with the one hand, and baptizing the godless with 
 
THE KINaDOM OF HEAVEN OR KINGDOM OE GOD 53 
 
 eternal fire with the other (Matt. iii. 11, 12). The recogni- 
 tion comes to the mind of Jesus first of a progressiveness, a 
 development of the kingdom of God, in virtue of which it 
 cannot fall ready-made from heaven, but must develop itself 
 in the bosom of the earth, in the human race and in the 
 history of the world. That perception carried with it the 
 distinction of a present and a future kingdom. All growth 
 is at one and the same time present and future; it is and yet 
 is not ; it is present in germ and yet is future in its complete 
 form. So is it with the kingdom of God. It is a thing in 
 process of becoming — not in the sense of a gradual self- 
 perfecting. The kingdom of God is from the beginning 
 perfect in itself, prepared from the foundation of the world 
 (Matt. XXV. 34), but prepared in heaven, in the ideal world of 
 God. It has now, however, come near to earth, the world of 
 history; it comes down from heaven to earth and already 
 touches it, not, however, to invade it and do it violence, but 
 in order to root itself in it and grow up in natural order to 
 harvest. For that very reason it must begin in that incon- 
 spicuous lowly form which was so unintelligible and offensive 
 to the people, and even to the disciples with their dreams of 
 glory. That is the only possible beginning for a truly ethical 
 and historical process of appropriation. That glorious form 
 which His contemporaries expected to come ready-made from 
 heaven can only be the final product of a true course of 
 history, the result of infinite divine as well as human labour. 
 Jesus endeavoured in many pictures, none of which are more 
 profound and yet more simple than that of the seed and its 
 sowing to which He repeatedly recurs, to make clear this view, 
 which through Him has become familiar to us, but which was 
 essentially strange to His first disciples. The seed is a living 
 power in the most wonderful and, at the same time, most 
 simple form. It is a power of growth. It bears in itself a 
 complete image of God's glory, but in germ, secret, unimpos- 
 ing ; it attains its development only gradually and by stages, 
 and on condition of finding a soil fitted for it. The kingdom 
 of heaven, though it has come near, is in the same way bound 
 to the law of development, and conditioned by the free 
 susceptibility of human nature. But as surely as sowing and 
 growth finally result in harvest and completeness, so surely 
 
54 NKW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 will the kingdom, founded by Jesus in weakness and secrecy, 
 finally develop into the new heavens and the new earth wherein 
 dwelleth righteousness, into that perfect state where God will 
 be aU in all (cf. Mark iv. 26-29 ; 1 Cor. xv. 28). 
 
 § 6. The Kingdom as a Powek of Salvation 
 
 From this point we may now get a complete survey and 
 estimate of Jesus' idea of the kingdom. In the first place, 
 we are now able to settle what is true and what is false in 
 the assertion of recent times, that in the teaching of Jesus, 
 kingdom of God is to be conceived essentially as salvation 
 and not as a commonweal.^ No doubt we do sometimes 
 meet with the idea of the kingdom in a phrase which seems 
 to exclude every idea of a kingdom, that is, of a common- 
 wealth, and to leave simply the idea of the gift of God, the 
 gift of grace. That occurs in the passage already referred to 
 Mark x. 15, which speaks of a receiving of the kingdom, or 
 when the kingdom is compared to a treasure hid in the field, 
 a pearl of great price which a man has to discover and pur- 
 chase (Matt. xiii. 44-46). Yet the kingdom of heaven or 
 "kingdom of God" can never lose its fundamental idea, the idea 
 of a community in which God governs ; nor does it lose it 
 even in that saying of Mark, as is shown by the addition, " he 
 shall not enter therein," and by the constant application of 
 the notion of entrance to the present kingdom. Only, we 
 must not overlook, that of the two elements of the kingdom 
 of God necessarily united in idea, communion with God, and 
 communion in God with one another, the first is throughout 
 the more prominent in the teaching of Jesus and in its nature 
 fundamental, the second is inferior, and rests upon the first. 
 When Jesus declares the kingdom of God thus conceived to 
 have come near, first of all as a power and a possibility, as a 
 heavenly seed for the human soil, His idea is very nearly that 
 of mere power, of heavenly gift, though he does not deny the 
 fundamental idea of the community. Nay, the dominion of God 
 and communion with God coming down from heaven to earth 
 is salvation : for wherever it is established in a heart, there 
 
 ^ Cf. Cremer in the work above referred to, p. 194 ; C. Haupt in the 
 review of my Lebsn Jesu, Studien und Kritihen, 1887. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN OK KINGDOM OF GOD 55 
 
 heaven is on earth. It is God's gift, for it does not originate 
 in a man's turning to God of himself, but in the eternal love 
 conquering him and setting up its throne in him. But in 
 doing that it establishes its kingdom in him, a government of 
 God and a heavenly commonwealth, which, in uniting him 
 with the Father in heaven, unites him also with all God's 
 children. Connected with this is the other point which we 
 have still to consider with a view to a provisional completion 
 of Jesus' teaching about the kingdom of heaven. The teach- 
 ing of Jesus becomes in the full sense of the word a revelation 
 of salvation just through the idea of the kingdom as growing, 
 the idea of the kingdom as a force of divine love creating a 
 community: the very thing which in the eyes of its con- 
 temporaries was its poverty and insufficiency, constitutes its 
 divine riches and all-sufiElciency. If it had only had to pro- 
 claim as near or at a distance that kingdom of glory which 
 the disciples had been led by the prophets to expect, it would 
 indeed have been a blessing in a certain sense, but only as an 
 inheritance of the pious who had made themselves worthy 
 of it, not of poor sinners who needed the gracious hand of 
 God stretched out to meet them, and even drawing them to 
 come. It would not have come as a power to save the lost, 
 but rather as a power of judgment for all who did not possess 
 the wedding garment of righteousness. In point of fact, the 
 Baptist's preaching of the kingdom has a certain peculiarity 
 in this, that it makes the kingdom act immediately in the 
 way of blessing or condemning: as it demands conversion, 
 but only demands it, and therefore drowns the sweet sounds 
 of promise by the thunders of approaching judgment. Here 
 lay the necessity for Jesus to separate Himself more and more 
 from the Baptist's methods, and here for the Baptist lay the 
 danger of a subsequent perplexity regarding Him whom he 
 had recognised as the coming one. Jesus takes another path 
 than the Baptist expected, one apparently much humbler, but 
 in reality much more glorious. He regards it from the first 
 as His mission not to condemn but to save (John iii. 1 7 ; 
 Matt. xL 2-6). But He can only fulfil this true calling of a 
 Saviour in virtue of an idea of the kingdom which represents 
 not only the future glorious inheritance of the just, but, at the 
 same time, and above all, contains a present condescension of 
 
56 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 God's love, in virtue of which the spiritually poor may become 
 divinely rich, and those who hunger and thirst after righteous- 
 ness may be satisfied. 
 
 CHAPTEK III 
 
 THE SON OF MAN AND SON OF GOD 
 
 § 1. Peesonal Eelation of Jesus to the Idea of the 
 Kingdom 
 
 If we now inquire further how and wherein the kingdom 
 of God is at hand, we are referred to the person of Him who 
 announces it. Not that a prophet could not have announced 
 the kingdom as coming independent of his person. John the 
 Baptist did that, but he did so by predicting one mightier 
 than himself, who should come after him and set it up. 
 Jesus, on the other hand, never referred to another and 
 greater than Himself, not even to a continuer and completer of 
 His work, but charged Himself, and Himself only, with the 
 setting up of the kingdom of heaven which He announced, 
 from the sowing which founded it, to the judgment which 
 would be the harvest. And this gives us, as the essential 
 basis of His announcement of the kingdom, a self-conscious- 
 ness quite unique, a consciousness of bearing in Himself 
 personally that very thing which He desired to set up in the 
 world ; and this self-consciousness had to find expression, 
 because, until it was declared, the announcement of the king- 
 dom of heaven would, as it were, have remained floating in the 
 air. There follows, therefore, as the next main part of His 
 teaching. His testimony concerning Himself. Not that He 
 made His person the subject of didactic discussion from the 
 first. According to the Synoptists there prevails rather with 
 regard to this main point a reserve which certainly has a 
 historical basis, and which refers us to immediate and sug- 
 gestive utterances of His self-consciousness, rather than to 
 intentional discussions of it. This is a formal enigma which 
 IS to be solved along with the mystery of those utterances 
 themselves. 
 
THE SON OF MAN AND SON OF GOD 57 
 
 § 2. The Idea of Messiah 
 
 The testimony of Jesus concernmg Himself was not 
 without a point of connection in the national faith. The 
 expectation of a personal instrument of God for the setting 
 up of His kingdom was given in the Old Testament, and, if all 
 signs are not deceptive, filled the minds of the people at the 
 time of Jesus more than ever. The hope of a king of salva- 
 tion springing from the house of David had stamped itself 
 upon the minds of the prophets as early as the days in which 
 the theocratic State was contending with the powers of Western 
 Asia ; with the appearance of a God-sent and inspired deliverer 
 were connected Israel's old hopes of salvation. The deliverer 
 had not appeared, the commonwealth of God had broken 
 down before the heathen ; the expectation connected with 
 the royal house of David fell into the background with that 
 royal house in and after the Exile, and made way for other 
 forms in which salvation was expected. The ideal form of 
 the teaching and sufifering servant of Jehovah (Isa. xl.— Ixvi.), 
 or the idea of a visitation of His people by God Himself 
 (Mal. iii. 1), had taken the place of the king of salvation 
 from the house of David. But in the time immediately 
 before Christ, under the reciprocal action of the scribes going 
 back to the old prophets and the oppression of foreign domin- 
 ion, the old idea seems to have revived, and to have become 
 for the first time really national. By applying to Him the 
 references in the Psalms to the old kings, the name Son of 
 God, which had already been given to the old Israelitish 
 kings, was transferred to this son of David. But the name 
 Jehovah's Anointed, or Messiah, which likewise belonged 
 originally to the kings of Israel as such, was applied, on the 
 basis of Ps. .ii. 2, in a special sense to the coming deliverer. 
 Although there was no formal dogma regarding this Messiah, 
 but only the most various and incompatible opinions about 
 Him (cf. John vii. 26, 27, 40-42), and though beside the 
 expectation of a personal Messiah room was without doubt 
 found for the expectation of God's kingdom without such 
 mediation, yet in this notion of the realisation of the God- 
 given hopes of Israel which was most popular and apparently 
 most in keeping with the time, there was given a watchword 
 
58 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 which Jesus had only to make His own openly in order to 
 kindle in His favour any enthusiasm of which His people 
 were capable. 
 
 § 3. Attitude of Jesus to this Idea of Messiah 
 
 He did not, however, do this, although He was conscious 
 of being Israel's Messiah. There can be no doubt that He 
 recognised Himself in the prophecies about a God-sent deliverer 
 of Israel, and that even the name Messiah resounded in His 
 heart. He was crucified for the confession of His Messiah- 
 ship, and the statement that He, Jesus, is the Christ, that is, 
 the Anointed, the Messiah, has so far become the fundamental 
 Christian confession, that the two names Jesus and Christ 
 have grown together as into one in the usage of His Church 
 from the beginning. And He did not . advance by degrees in 
 the course of His public life from a mere prophetic to the 
 Messianic consciousness ; such an assumption would introduce 
 a division into His teaching of which no trace can be dis- 
 covered. The Messianic consciousness existed in Him from 
 the beginning of His public life, as the presupposition of all 
 His preaching and work. The narrative of His baptism, with 
 which the Gospels begin His public life, is nothing but the 
 birth-history of this consciousness. His awakening at God's 
 touch to the clear sense of it, the anointing of the secret child 
 of God to be the Son of God in the Messianic sense. When 
 He ascribes to Himself power on earth to forgive sins, or in 
 the circle of His disciples declares Himself to be the Bride- 
 groom and them the friends of the Bridegroom, for whom 
 there is no more longing and waiting, but only marriage 
 rejoicings ; when He describes Himself to the doubting Baptist 
 as He who is to come ; when, in the Sermon on the Mount, 
 He contrasts Himself with Moses as the greater, as the ful- 
 filler of the law and the prophets, — all this is possible only 
 from a consciousness which raises Him far above the position 
 of a mere prophet, the consciousness of being the personal 
 founder and bearer of the kingdom of God, that is, the Mes- 
 siah. Yet He did not utter this name, or throw it as an 
 exciting watchword among the multitude. On the contrary, 
 He stopped the mouths of the possessed, the mentally diseased, 
 
THE SON OF MAN AND SON Off GOD 59 
 
 who, thrilled by His mighty personality, met Him with the 
 cry of what others may have secretly thought, " Thou art the 
 Holy One of God," that is, the Messiah. Only at a late 
 period, and on a lonely tour, did He accept from the lips of 
 the Twelve the confession, " Thou art the Christ," and then 
 forbade them to declare it to the people. Only at the very 
 last, on the threshold of death, at His triumphant entrance 
 to Jerusalem, did He cease to suppress the Messianic homage 
 of His adherents, and for the first time freely and openly 
 acknowledged Himself to be the Messiah, therewith signing 
 His death warrant. And it is not difficult to discover the 
 motives which led to this remarkable procedure. The same 
 gulf lay between the popular idea of Messiah and His own 
 Messianic consciousness, as lay between the popular idea of 
 the kingdom of God and His own. In the popular expecta- 
 tion everything was converted into the sensible and worldly, 
 and the name Messiah, in particular, had become the symbol 
 of passionate political ideas of freedom and universal dominion, 
 which lay much nearer the heart of the multitude than the 
 spiritual need and the promised help of God. And therefore, 
 if Jesus from the first had thrown the exciting name Messiah 
 among the people. He would have called forth the most fatal 
 misunderstandings and excitements, and have closed rather 
 than opened a way for the entrance of His infinitely higher idea 
 of the kingdom. He found Himself with regard to His people 
 in the infinitely difficult position of proclaiming the kingdom 
 of God to them without attaching to it its given correlate, 
 the idea of the Messiah. There was set before Him from the 
 first — after the careful consideration and rejection of the 
 popular Messianic expectations attested in the narrative of 
 the temptation — the almost hopeless task of first begetting a 
 purer, higher, more spiritual idea of Messiah, in the mirror 
 of which He might be recognised as the Messiah who had 
 come. He therefore postpones His kingly rights until His 
 work shall be completed, and He shall come in the glory of 
 His Father (Matt. xvi. 27 ; cf. the use of the name King in 
 Matt. XXV. 34). He veils His majesty in the simple, humble 
 mantle of the prophet (Mark vi. 4 ; Luke xxiv. 19), in order 
 to win, in that character, at a later period, and in the closest 
 confidence, from a Peter the confession of belief, revealed not 
 
60 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 by flesh and blood, " Thou art the Christ, the Son of the 
 living God" (Matt. xvi. 13). But He was compelled from 
 the first, as is clear from Matt. xvi. 14, to disappoint the 
 hopes which the multitude had placed on Him, nay, He had 
 to fall a victim to the disappointment of their false Messianic 
 expectations, in order really to bring in the kingdom of God, 
 whose anointed King He in point of fact was. 
 
 § 4. The Name Son of Man : Intekpeetations to be 
 Eejected 
 
 But if Jesus for these reasons avoided the name Messiah, 
 He was under the necessity of giving Himself a name in 
 His preaching which would somehow express His personal 
 relation to the idea of the kingdom. And He did give 
 Himself such a name — the Son of Man, which is the really 
 significant description of Himself used by the Synoptics. It 
 appears more than fifty times without reckoning the parallel 
 passages, and there can be the less doubt of its originality 
 that it is found only in His mouth, and not applied to Him 
 by others. This name — ^just like the expression kingdom of 
 heaven — did not pass over into the usage of the apostolic 
 age.^ But Jesus in describing Himself to His hearers as the 
 Son of Man, has propounded a riddle which has come down 
 to our own day. Theology has only recently occupied itself 
 in earnest with the solution of the riddle, and opinions on it 
 are so divergent, that the way for its examination must be 
 cleared by setting aside a whole series of them.^ We must, 
 above all, reject that view, which is still common, that Jesus 
 meant to describe His human nature by the name Son of Man, 
 just as He meant to describe His divine nature by the name 
 Son of God. There is no biblical ground for that view what- 
 
 1 Once only, Acts vii. 56, the dying Stephen — in manifest allusion to 
 like words of Jesus Himself before the Sanhedrim, Matt. xxvi. 64 — 
 describes Him as the Son of Man ; Rev. i. 13, xiv. 14, are allusions to 
 Dan. vii. 13, and not to Jesus' own words. 
 
 ^ Of. specially Holtzmann's " Kritische Uebersicht der bisherigen Ver- 
 handlungen Tiber den Namen Menschensohn," in Hilgenf eld's Zeitsch. /. 
 Wisaensch. Theol. 1865, and Usteri, Die Selbstbezeichnung Jesu ah des 
 Menschen Sohn, 1886. Two discussions in which the modern literature 
 is adduced. 
 
THE SON OF MAN AND SON OF GOD 61 
 
 ever. The concepts of the divine and human nature in Christ's 
 person belong to the theology of the fifth century, and not to 
 the biblical mode of thinking or speaking, and Jesus could 
 not possibly have felt any need of again and again assuring 
 His contemporaries of His true human nature, which none of 
 them could doubt. The turn which has recently been given to 
 this dogmatic interpretation is no improvement : " He who 
 among mere men again and again calls Himself the Son of 
 Man, means thereby to declare that His human existence 
 is something miraculous, a form of existence which is not 
 original to Him." ^ The logic of this interpretation is odd. 
 He who makes a special claim to an attribute which he has 
 in common with many, may mean to suggest that he is what 
 others are only in a special and higher sense, but never that he 
 is the very opposite, or that he was originally something else. 
 And therefore mere logic would rather justify the interpreta- 
 tion of Schleiermacher, which is also adopted by Weander and 
 Eeuss, that Jesus describes Himself simply as man, as the 
 ideal man, wishing to suggest the very thing which Paul means 
 by the second Adam, the spiritual and heavenly man.^ In 
 support of this interpretation may be adduced Mark ii. 27, 28 ; 
 John V. 27 ; but the great majority of passages do not suggest 
 it, and the idea itself contains an element of abstract theology 
 which seems out of place in the mind of Jesus. The view 
 of Baur, that Jesus, in contrast with the brilliant Messianic 
 expectations of the Jews, wished to describe Himself as one 
 who deemed nothing human foreign to Himself, nay, whose 
 vocation it was to endure everything lowly and human, can 
 with any plausibility appeal to not more than one of all the 
 passages that speak of the Son of Man, Matt. viii. 2 (" The 
 Son of Man hath not where to lay His head "). The fact 
 that majesty and glorification are predicated of the Son of Man 
 just as emphatically as lowliness and suffering, destroys this 
 as well as every explanation which finds in the term, above 
 all, an expression of the lowliness and humiliation of the 
 Messiah.* Finally, when Cremer finds that the name Son of 
 
 1 Thus Meyer in his Gommentary on Matt., and Qess in his Lehre von 
 der Person Gh/risH. 
 
 ^ This was also formerly my view in my Ghristologie des N. T. 
 
 ' This even against the most recent note in its favour in Wendt's Lehre 
 
62 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 Man does not emphasise so much the being a man as the 
 being a son, and, on that account, correlates it with the seed 
 of the woman, the so-called protevangel (Gen. iii. 15), he not 
 only overlooks the fact that the l^ew Testament never refers 
 to that protevangel, but also that Jesus, in order to express 
 that idea, must have called Himself, not the vlb^ rov diidpcovov, 
 but the ufo? Tijs r^vvaiKot;, or the yevvTjro'i 'yvvaiKo^ (Matt. xi. 1 1). 
 
 § 5. Investigation 
 
 All such explanations are attempts to guess a riddle that 
 must be solved in a regular way. Of itself Son of Man in 
 Hebrew and Aramaic simply means child of man, that is, 
 man, — with perhaps a certain poetic tinge, and with a sub- 
 ordinate conception of dependence and weakness. The 
 expression is frequent in the Old Testament in this sense 
 (cf. e.g. Ps. viii. 5 ; Ezek. ii. 1, iii. 1, iv. 1, etc.), and appears 
 in the plural, just as in Mark iii. 28. But though this 
 fundamental meaning could never be lost in any further 
 defining of the conception, it cannot be sufficient in the case 
 of Jesus. As we have already said, Jesus had no need to 
 assure anyone in the days of His flesh that He was a child 
 of man; and the view that He desired — as in the Old 
 Testament phrases, thy servant, thy handmaid (instead of 
 I) — to paraphrase His ego in this way, is destroyed by the 
 twofold consideration that He must then have said this Son 
 of Man, and that Jesus, as the Gospels show, did not avoid 
 the simple I. Por if, in certain cases, He makes use of the 
 name Son of Man instead of the simple I, He manifestly 
 wishes in some way to mark what is peculiar to Himself. 
 And this mark of peculiarity need not be sought only in the 
 predicate, as has often been done, for so far as it lies in the 
 
 Jesw. According to Wendt, Son of Man designates the union of tlie 
 Messianic dignity with the lowliness of hunaan nature. Then we must 
 ask, who at that time needed to be assured of the human nature of the 
 Messiah? Or if the lowliness of this human nature is to consist in its 
 creaturely weakness, whether there is any other kind of man than weak, 
 creaturely? Jesus would in this way have again and again assured men 
 of what was self-evident to every one. The way in which Wendt sets 
 aside a number of passages as unhistorical, which speak of the glory of the 
 Son of Man, I regard as arbitrary criticism. 
 
THE SON OF MAN AND SON OF GOD 63 
 
 predicate it need not lie in the subject. But in those cases, 
 there must indeed be a mutual relation between the predi- 
 cate and the subject, which tells us that He, in virtue of a 
 certain quality, is able to do or suffer this or that. Now, if 
 we look at the different declarations about the Son of Man, — 
 the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head, hath power 
 on earth to forgive sins, is Lord of the Sabbath, can be blas- 
 phemed but in a way that may be pardoned, is come to seek 
 the lost, is come to serve and give His life, will suffer many 
 things and must be rejected, perishes as it is written of Him, 
 will come again in the clouds of heaven, will sit on the throne 
 of His glory, etc., — all these widely-diverging utterances have 
 one thing in common, they all treat of the official sufferings 
 and doings of Jesus ; they all speak of Him in so far as He 
 has the task of setting up the kingdom of heaven upon earth. 
 In a word, they are all in substance related to His Messiah- 
 ship, so much so that in all these passages — with the excep- 
 tion of Matt. xvi. 13, where the riddle of the name Son of 
 Man is really put so as to force them to a Messianic answer 
 — ^Messiah might just as well be substituted for Son of Man. 
 And, therefore, all parties are now at one in regarding the 
 name Son of Man as a veiled indication of His Messianic 
 calling. But as the name Son of Man has nothing to do with 
 the Messiahship so far as language is concerned, it manifestly 
 could only obtain this meaning through an allusion to some- 
 thing which lay within His hearers' knowledge, and which 
 already included this meaning — an allusion to something in 
 the Old Testament. Among all the passages in the Old 
 Testament in which the expression Son of Man appears, 
 there is only one (Dan. vii. 13) in which it has a Messianic 
 sense : " I saw in the night-visions, and, behold, one like the 
 Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the 
 Ancient of Days, and they brought Him near before Him. 
 And there was given Him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, 
 that all people, nations, and languages, should serve Him ; 
 His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not 
 pass away, and His kingdom that which shall not be 
 destroyed." That this passage from Daniel must lie at 
 the basis of Jesus' enigmatic self-designation is now recog- 
 nised, not indeed universally, but by ever-increasing numbers. 
 
64 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 And really — whea the Book of Enoch, that Jewish, and in part 
 Jewish-Christian Apocalypse of the century of Jesus, has, in 
 virtue of this passage of Daniel, directly stamped the name 
 Son of Man as the name of Messiah; when our canonical 
 Apocalypse twice applies Daniel's ofioia vim av6pa>irov (i. 13, 
 xiv. 14) to the glorified Christ, and Jesus Himself on two 
 occasions unmistakably refers to Dan. vii. 13, when He 
 speaks (Matt. xxiv. 30, xxvi. 64) of the Son of Man coming 
 in the clouds of heaven — it is difficult to conceive how any 
 one can object to that origin. The fact lies clearly before us, 
 that the same passage of the Book of Daniel, a book much 
 read and highly honoured in our Lord's day, furnishes the 
 conception of the kingdom of heaven, — the eternal kingdom 
 to be received from God in the clouds of heaven, — and the 
 conception of the Son of Man, as the receiver and bearer of 
 this kingdom. The mutual relation which we perceive, in all 
 the declarations of Jesus, between His character as Son of 
 Man and His calHng as bringer of the kingdom of God, lies 
 before us originally in that passage of Daniel. And there- 
 with the whole riddle is at bottom solved. The Son of Man 
 is the God-invested bearer of the kingdom that descends from 
 above, that is to be founded from heaven ; it is He who 
 brings in the kingdom of God. 
 
 § 6. Conclusion of the Investigation 
 
 There are still a few accessory circumstances to be con- 
 sidered, and first, the difference which certainly exists between 
 the passage of Daniel and the self-designation of Jesus. 
 There we have only " one like a Son of Man," conformable 
 to the wavering and pictorial character of the vision, and 
 this visionary form in the clouds of heaven is not, as one 
 often hears, a symbol of the Nation of Saints of which 
 mention is afterwards made in the brief exposition of the 
 vision, nor is it the appearance of a personal Messiah of 
 which this exposition knows nothing; but just as the four 
 world-kingdoms are symbolised by beasts of prey, this is a 
 symbol of the kingdom of the saints, that kingdom which is 
 to come down from heaven to earth. On the other hand, 
 Jesus has recast that wavering image into a definite per- 
 
THE SON OF MAN AND SON OF GOD 65 
 
 sonal designation, the ox; wto? avOpwirov into uto? tov 
 avdpwvov. We may be in doubt as to whether this change 
 was first made by Him, or had been made before Him through 
 the developing tradition of His people ; — that depends upon 
 the question whether those parts of the Book of Enoch which 
 contain the name Son of Man, as the name of Messiah, are 
 to be regarded as pre-Christian or post-Christian. However 
 that may be, the recasting of m<s vlbi av6pa>irov into o wto? 
 TOV dvdpoiirov^ was quite natural and necessary as soon as 
 the passage in Daniel was referred to the personal Messiah 
 of the prevailing popular expectation, or as soon as an indi- 
 vidual man recognised himself and his personal calling in that 
 image of Daniel. Nevertheless, in the days of Jesus, Son of 
 Man could not have been a current popular designation of 
 Messiah, and the significance of Jesus' choice of the name 
 rests on that very fact. In spite of the Messianic use of 
 the designation in the Book of Enoch, we do not find in the 
 Gospels that Jesus' self-designation as Son of Man would 
 have been without hesitation interpreted in a Messianic 
 sense. Nay, the question of Jesus (Matt. xvi. 13): " Whom 
 do men say, and whom do ye say, that I the Son of Man 
 am ? " would scarcely have been possible if the name itself 
 had already contained a formal confession of Messiah. On 
 the contrary, the choice of the name is manifestly connected 
 with the intention and need of Jesus to conceal His Messi- 
 anic consciousness, lest He should stir up the perverted and 
 passionate expectations of His people. By fixing on this 
 passage of Daniel alone of all the Messianic passages of the 
 Old Testament, a passage which does not originally contain 
 the personal Messiah at all. He makes the whole question 
 of Messiah rest formally on Himself, and not only propounds 
 to His hearers the significance of His person as a riddle 
 exciting to reflection, but at the same time turns their 
 attention from the outwardness of the Messianic expecta- 
 
 ^ Tlie genitive of the article rov dvipiiTrov is nowhere, so far as I see, 
 explained by expositors. Weiss (Bibl. Theol. of the N. T., Trans. T. & T. 
 Clark) thinks the genitive of the article might designate the man according 
 to his genus(?). The late Dr. Hupfeld gave me an explanation of it founded 
 on the Hebrew rule of grammar, that if a concept composed of a nomina- 
 tive and genitive is to have the article, it is placed before the genitive.. 
 BEYSCHLAG. — I. 5 
 
66 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 tion to its kernel. He simply and concisely, with His ever- 
 repeated self-designation as the Son of Man, answers the 
 importunate question of the people, " Who art Thou ? " I am 
 what the prophet saw in that vision, the bringer and bearer 
 of the kingdom of heaven ; hold to that, and it will carry you 
 further.! But Jesus preferred this self-designation to every 
 other, not only from considerations of necessity or formal 
 teaching. It also answered positively better than any other 
 to His self - consciousness, and in its peculiarity and the 
 fulness of its relations it reveals to us an instinctive har- 
 mony with a whole series of tones which blend, as it were, 
 in a perfect melody within this self-consciousness. In the 
 first place, this title, which is no title but the avoidance of 
 every such thing, reveals the purpose of Jesus to allow His 
 person to recede as far as possible behind the divine cause 
 which He represents. It is enough that the kingdom of 
 heaven, the kingdom of God which He brings, is contained 
 in the name Son of Man ; the choice of the most unassuming 
 name is like a confirmation of what is repeatedly expressed 
 in the Fourth Gospel : " I seek not Mine own honour, but that 
 of Him who sent Me." But the essential character and nature 
 of this kingdom and its setting up is also given in that watch- 
 word of Daniel. The human figure appearing in the clouds 
 of heaven is in Dan. vii. contrasted with beast forms, beasts 
 of prey which rise out of the depths of the sea. They 
 represent the mighty world - kingdoms which precede the 
 kingdom of God, and therefore signify human, but brutal, 
 nay bestial human character, while there is kept in reserve 
 for the kingdom of God, in the human figure, the true ideal 
 human character with its heavenly descent. As the beasts 
 of prey are far superior to the child of man in physical 
 power, though he is still more superior to them in his higher 
 origin and God-related character, so the kingdom of God is 
 not to enter into the combat of brutal power and physical 
 strength with the kingdoms of the world, but to overcome 
 them by the ascendency of the spirit and the power of God. 
 
 ^ How far this method of Jesus agrees with the famous saying of 
 Melanchthon, which is worth pondering : " To know Christ is to know 
 His benefits, not to dispute about His nature," is only incidentally noted 
 here. 
 
THE SON OF MAN AND SON OF GOD 67 
 
 Thus Jesus with His ideas of the kingdom of God stood over 
 against the world, outwardly impotent but strong in God, 
 strong in the persuasion of a higher mission and heavenly 
 powers ; and here we may see how the symbol of Daniel could 
 express at once the two sides of His Messiahship, its lowliness 
 and its loftiness, one or other of which is so often onesidedly 
 sought in it. For this does justice also to the thought of the 
 ideal humanity which has been too abstractly and exclusively 
 sought in the " Son of Man." For although the entire ex- 
 pression, and especially the choice of the word " enasch " 
 (Aramaic for the Hebrew " enosch," which describes man in 
 his weakness and frailty), emphasises mainly the weakness 
 and natural impotence of the divine bearer of the kingdom, 
 yet His full loftiness and glory is marked by contrasting Him 
 as appearing in the clouds of heaven with the beast forms 
 springing out of the deep. The Father had been able to 
 intrust Him with the setting up of His kingdom, and He 
 knew Himself to be superior to the world and all its powers, 
 not because He was a man like others, but because He was 
 the man who, borne on the clouds of heaven, stood before the 
 Eternal, at home in heaven, and looking on the face of God — 
 that is, the man after God's heart. These are elements or 
 deductions from the idea of the Son of Man in Daniel, which 
 we can, of course, only conjecture here but cannot prove, but 
 that they lived in the soul of Jesus is certain from other facts 
 of His self-consciousness. The one most essential, but also 
 the most certain, is, that in calling Hiinself the Son of Man, 
 He knew Himself to be that man who bears in Himself the 
 power of the kingdom of heaven, in which the dominion of 
 God and communion with God come down from heaven to 
 earth. 
 
 § 7. The Name Son of God 
 
 Yet it is not the name Son of Man, but His self-designa- 
 tion as the Son of God, which leads us into the heart of 
 the self-consciousness of Jesus. But this likewise needs a 
 thorough investigation, as still deeper misunderstandings have 
 been attached to it. 
 
68 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 OLD TESTAMENT USAGE 
 
 The self-designation of Jesus as Son of God appears much 
 more seldom in the Synoptics than the name Son of Man, 
 while in the Fourth Gospel the converse holds good. In the 
 Synoptics it is throughout more a suggestion, either by calling 
 God His Father, or by plainly designating Himself as the 
 Son, in a connection which leaves no doubt as to the comple- 
 ment "of God," such as Matt. xi. 27; Mark xiii. 14, — it is 
 involved also in the Parables of the Vineyard and the Marriage 
 Supper (Mark xii. 6 ; Matt. xxii. 2).^ The name Son of God 
 — as distinguished from the Son of Man — is more frequently 
 applied to Jesus by others. He is addressed as Son of God 
 by the voice from heaven at the Baptism and the Transfigura- 
 tion, by Satan in the Temptation, by the diseased and the 
 healthy who wished to do Him homage (Matt, viii, 29, 
 xiv. 33), by Peter in his celebrated confession (Matt. xvi. 16)^ 
 by the high priest questioning Him at His trial, by His 
 enemies mocking Him upon the cross. This use of the name 
 by others from the first shows that it was one already current 
 in Israel, and one that had its roots in the Old Testament, 
 and therefore we must go back to the Old Testament for the 
 sense in which Jesus claims it for Himself. The angels are 
 called sons of God, Gen. vi. 1 ; Job i. 6, ii. 1 ; also the magis- 
 trates and judges, Ps. Ixxxii. 6. Israel is called God's son 
 (firstborn), Ex. xxii. 4 ; Hos. ii. 1 ; in Deut. xiv. 1 and Hos. 
 i. 10, individual Israelites are also called sons of God, or are 
 to be called in the future sons of the living God. The 
 theocratic king, in particular, is called God's son (Ps. ii. 7). 
 Jehovah will be to him a Father, and " will make him His 
 firstborn, higher than the kings of the earth " (2 Sam. vii. 14; 
 Ps. Ixxxix. 2 7). What is the meaning of the lofty name in 
 these cases ? It manifestly means in the case of the angels 
 and magistrates, that they are the image and bearers of the 
 divine majesty ; the latter are for that reason directly called 
 in Ps. Ixxxii. 6, Elohim. It means in the case of Israel and 
 the Israelites, that they are the favourites of God, chosen in 
 
 1 The baptismal formula Matt, xxviii. 19, in wMch likewise appears 
 the Son simply, is not, for reasons to be adduced later, to be regarded as 
 the ipsissima verba of Jesus. 
 
THE SON OF MAN AND SON OF GOD 69 
 
 preference to all nations, as the connection in the different 
 passages plainly shows. The theocratic king is a son of God 
 in the same sense, as 2 Sam, vii. 14 speaks of the fatherly 
 correction and pity that is applied to him especially. The 
 idea of a majesty resembling God's is united with this in Ps. 
 Ixxxix. 27, for the words presuppose a divine sonship of all 
 kings on the earth. Ps. ii. 7 adds yet a further moment : 
 " Thou art my son ; this day have I begotten thee " ; that is, I 
 have made thee My son by anointing thee to be king, by 
 anointing thee with My spirit. The divine sonship there is 
 based on a generation, though subsequent and emblematic, 
 that is, a divine communication of life. This very passage 
 has now become of special importance for the New Testament, 
 as in virtue of it the Messiah (ver. 2) received the popular 
 name of the Son of God. Jesus is greeted by the people and 
 by Peter in his confession as Son of God in this sense which 
 makes the names d X/atcrTo? and d utd? rov deov directly 
 synonymous (cf. Matt. xvi. 16 and the parallels in Mark and 
 Luke; also Matt. xxvi. 63 ; John i. 49), and in this sense He 
 is examined on His divine Sonship by the high priest. No 
 one ever thought of it as describing a superhuman. Godlike 
 being, or anything else than a man uniquely loved, chosen and 
 endowed by God. The fact has indeed been appealed to in 
 support of a contrary view, that the confession of Jesus being 
 the Son of God was treated by the Sanhedrim as blasphemy ; 
 but it must not be forgotten that the Jews understood by 
 blasphemy, not merely blasphemous utterances in themselves, 
 but every assumption of a prerogative or privilege which 
 could only be conferred by God, the right of forgiving sins, for 
 example, or, as in the case of Jesus, claiming to be Messiah. 
 Now, if Jesus accepted from the lips of Peter a name which 
 was current among the people, or gave an affirmative answer 
 to the question of the high priest without making any express 
 reservation of a different meaning, it is clear that He can 
 have attached to it no new and unheard of meaning. 
 
 § 8. The Meaning of Jesus 
 
 Still there is a difference between His meaning and use of 
 this phrase and the people's, similar to that which existed 
 
70 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 between His idea of the kingdom and theirs. His meaning is 
 much deeper, more inward and more sublime in its humility. 
 He does not fix upon the kingly Messianic interpretation of 
 the name ; on the contrary, He selected and stamped the name 
 Son of Man as the designation of His office and calling ; the 
 conception which underlies His idea of divine Sonship is that 
 of God's beloved and God's likeness, which is originally found 
 in the Old Testament. For He felt Himself to be a Son of 
 God, and called God in heaven " My Father " long before the 
 awakening of His Messianic consciousness at the baptism 
 (Luke ii. 49) ; and it was not so much an official as a personal 
 consciousness, the consciousness of being personally beloved of 
 God, which at the baptism itself re-echoed in His heart in the 
 voice from heaven : " Thou art My beloved Son, in whom I am 
 well pleased." The " in whom I am well pleased;" indicates 
 therefore the reason of this personal relation of love and com- 
 munion which is expressed by the name Son of God. We 
 reach the same result when we consider His application of the 
 name to others ; what He regards as the fundamental mean- 
 ing and foundation of the divine sonship then plainly emerges., 
 He applies the name in the plural not merely, as in Luke 
 XX. 36, to those made perfect, who in the resurrection are to 
 be transformed into the real image of God, but also (Matt. 
 V. 9, 45) to children of earth so far as they in character bear 
 the image of the heavenly Father. If the peacemakers are to 
 be called sons of God, sons of the God whom Paul repeatedly 
 calls the ^eos t^? elpijvtj'i ; if men are to become sons of God 
 by learning to love their enemies, after the example of God, 
 ever good, who makes His sun to rise upon the evil and the 
 good, it is manifest that He must have regarded the divine 
 sonship as resting above all on inner moral likeness to God. 
 For it is that alone which makes a man beloved of God, one 
 in whom He can be well pleased. That is, as it were, the 
 family likeness to the heavenly Father appearing in a man's 
 spiritual aspect, which brings on him the smile of the 
 Father's good pleasure. Now, if Jesus called those who do 
 the, will of His father. His sisters and brethren (Mark iii. 35), 
 it is clear that He also, and above all, knew Himself to be a 
 Son of God for the same reason which led Him to consider 
 them as children of God, though with a distinction which we 
 
THE SON OF MAN AND SON OF GOD 71 
 
 must not overlook ; this likeness to God and favour of God 
 holds good of others in a comparative sense, but of Him 
 absolutely. And this distinction, which is expressed in the 
 Fourth Gospel by the epithet fiovoyevr}<; added to vi6<s (cf. 
 Mark xii. 6), is observed in the Synoptists, where Jesus 
 designates Himself the Son in contrast to the ut'oi? rov deov in 
 the plural, and never joins with His followers in a common 
 " our Father," but throughout keeps apart the " your Father 
 and My Father" (cf. e.g. Matt. vi. 32, x. 29, with xi. 27, 
 xviii. 35, XX. 23). Here therefore, on the basis of the same 
 idea of a sonship of God possible to man and representing the 
 highest destiny of man, lies a sublimity and uniqueness of 
 His relation to God which raises Him above all other sons of 
 men and gives Him the character of true divinity, not, how- 
 ever, to the exclusion of His true humanity, but rather to its 
 realisation in the highest original sense. In other words, 
 when Jesus calls Himself the Son of God, He does so as the 
 man who is truly one with God, who as perfectly loved by 
 God and like God can alone serve as the instrument of a com- 
 plete revelation of the eternal love, and can bring His brethren 
 into that unrestrained fellowship with God which He Himself 
 possessed, but which they lacked (cf. Matt. xi. 27). And from 
 this may be understood the relation of His consciousness of 
 being a Son to His consciousness of being the Messiah. While 
 the name Son of God was to the people only the outer title 
 of honour which they attached to the Messiah expected from 
 the house of David, the divine Sonship was to Jesus rather the 
 expression of His inward right to Messiahship. He did not re- 
 gard Himself as the Son of God because He knew Himself on 
 other grounds to be the Messiah, but because He knew Himself 
 to be the beloved Son of the heavenly Father ; because in that 
 crisis of His life at the baptism in the Jordan He had become 
 conscious of His own unique personal relation to God, He also, 
 at the same place and for the same reason, became conscious 
 of His unique vocation for the world — His Messianic vocation. 
 
 § 9. The Question of divine Descent 
 
 The question may be raised whether Jesus in this 
 consciousness of being a Son, included also the idea of a 
 
72 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 special descent from God. Phrases such as Matt. xvii. 26, 
 xxii. 42, even without reference to well-known Johannine 
 passages, might lead to that conclusion. In the first passage, 
 which treats of the obligation to pay the temple tax, Jesus, 
 by the question, " Of whom do the kings of the earth levy 
 taxes, of strangers or of their own children ? " places Himself, 
 in contrast with other men, under the conception of a member 
 of a divine family, and thus seems to claim for Himself a 
 special relation of origin to God. And in the other passage, 
 where, on the basis of Ps. ex. 1, He examines- His opponents 
 about their idea of Messiah, and places the divine Sonship 
 of Messiah in opposition to the Davidic sonship which they 
 emphasise, the inference is suggested, that as the Davidic 
 sonship expresses a relation of descent, the divine Sonship 
 comprises such a relation also. Still these inferences are 
 quite uncertain, for in that question about the temple tax, the 
 family relation, as distinguished from the subjection of 
 strangers, is only a picture — a picture of the freedom of 
 God's children from such outward institutions as contrasted 
 with the bondage of the servant of the law, and the plural 
 vioi may not at all refer to Jesus only, but also to Peter along 
 with Him. In the exposition of Ps. ex. 1, again, Jesus is not 
 at all concerned with the descent of Messiah, but with the 
 opposing of that inner title of right on which His Messianic 
 consciousness rests, to the outer genealogical title which is 
 everything to the scribes. He would say to His opponents, 
 You know very little of the Messiah if you only know that 
 He is to be a scion of David's house. What constitutes the 
 Messiah is not family descent, but a unique spiritual relation 
 to God. However probable in itself it may be that Jesus 
 cherished the idea of a special divine descent, we must decline 
 to answer the question whether that idea was included in the 
 Son-consciousness of the Synoptists. But even though that 
 idea could be proved, it would only amount to a conviction of 
 having come forth from God as a human personality in a unique 
 way, that is, of having been originally planned and prepared 
 in a very special way for that unique relation of communion 
 with God, and for His vocation as Saviour, which was rooted 
 in that communion ; it would not imply the consciousness of 
 having, as a divine person, passed from a former heavenly life 
 
THE SON OF MAN AND SON OF GOD 73 
 
 (pre-existence) into an earthly existence. There is no trace 
 of such a consciousness in His testimony about Himself as 
 recorded in the Synoptists, and we may even say that there is 
 no room for it. The very name Son of God witnesses against 
 it. Not only because, in its source in the Old Testament and 
 in its application to groups of men (Matt. v. 9, 45), it always 
 presupposes the human essence of those to whom it is given, 
 but also because, in idea and language, it distinguishes its bearer 
 from God Himself, and therefore marks him out as human. 
 Por " the one God " of whom Jesus speaks is the Father, 
 and the Father is the one God. The Son of God cannot 
 therefore be God Himself, but only a being differ'ent from 
 God, who stands to Him in a special relation of Sonship. 
 We should not in any way confuse the name Son of God 
 with the later name " God the Son," uttered in the doctrine 
 of the Church, — a name which sprang from an entirely 
 different world of ideas, from the conception developed in 
 the intervening period of a threefold personality of the 
 divine nature. 
 
 § 10. Purely Human Consciousness of Cheist 
 
 In view of the meagreness of the immediate testimony of 
 Jesus to Himself in the Synoptists on the one hand, and the 
 importance of the matter on the other, it is the more advisable 
 to pay attention to the indirect utterances of the consciousness 
 of Jesus, and thus once more prove the foregoing result, which 
 is still contested in favour of later dogmatic conclusions. 
 From these it is manifest, that with all the sublimity and 
 uniqueness of His consciousness of Sonship, Jesus felt and 
 confessed throughout that He was a man in God's presence. 
 Immediately after the sealing of His consciousness of Sonship 
 in the baptism. He places Himself unaffectedly and un- 
 reservedly under the generic notion " man " — in the narrative 
 of the temptation, unquestionably related by Himself to His 
 disciples. "Man lives not by bread alone" (Matt. iv. 4). 
 There also he repeatedly calls God His Lord, and acknowledges 
 the universal human obligation of praying to Him (vv. 7, 
 10), expressions which cannot possibly be harmonised with a 
 consciousness of being Himself God. What can be more 
 
74 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 human as distinguished from God than prayer ? A God can- 
 not pray. But according to the testimony of the evangelists, 
 Jesus prays regularly — in Gethsemane, even on the cross. He 
 prays : " My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me ? " 
 words which are quite impossible in the mouth and heart of one 
 who is himself God. Elsewhere also Jesus acknowledges every 
 innocent attribute of human nature, while on the other hand 
 He refuses the divine attributes of omniscience, omnipotence, 
 and a holiness which is raised above temptation. Not only 
 does He hunger in the wilderness and thirst upon the cross, at 
 one hour He rejoices, and at another He is sorrowful even 
 unto death (Luke x. 21 ; Matt. xxii. 38). He can also waver, 
 hesitate, and change His resolutions — as is manifest from the 
 narrative about the Canaanitish woman. Nay, as His soul- 
 etruggle in Gethsemane shows, He apparently knows not what 
 is possible or not possible with God, or what He is to wish 
 and pray for. He acknowledges the opposite' of divine om- 
 niscience, the limited knowledge of the future which holds 
 good of all prophets, when He declares : " Of that day and 
 hour knoweth no man, not even the Son, but only the Father " 
 (Mark xiii. 32). He likewise acknowledges the opposite of 
 divine omnipotence : " To sit on My right hand, and on My 
 left, is not Mine to give ; but for those for whom it is prepared 
 of My Father " (Matt. xx. 23). According to these words, He 
 did not co-operate in that " preparing," that is to say. He had 
 no share in the divine plan, but rather had to learn it Uke 
 any other man, and to praise the Father for it as Lord of 
 heaven and earth (Matt. xxii. 23). Finally, the strange 
 words in which, in presence of the rich young man, He 
 repudiates all claim to the goodness of the holy God, cannot 
 after all this surprise us : " Why callest thou Me good ? there 
 is none good but one, that is, God." That does not mean an 
 acknowledgment of any evil, but neither does it mean what 
 a narrow dogmatic exposition would bring out of it. It does 
 not mean, if thou callest Me good thou must hold Me to 
 be more than a human master, thou must hold Me to be God 
 Himself. For it is manifest that Jesus cannot in one breath 
 speak of God as one, and place Himself as God beside Him. 
 Jesus desires to urge the young man, who is going about so 
 liberally with the word good, to the highest and deepest sense 
 
THE SON OF MAN AND SON OF GOD 75 
 
 of the word, in which it is applicable to God only. God is 
 the absolutely Good, that is, the morally perfect Being (Matt. 
 V. 48); it is His nature to be good; He is, as Jas. i. 13 
 says, aireipaa-To<} KaKmv, absolutely raised above all temptation 
 to evil. The Son of Man, who is still in the midst of moral 
 conflict and growth, and first attains perfection through temp- 
 tation, is not good in this sense, that is, perfectly holy, exalted 
 above all temptation (cf. Heb. v. 8). And we have only to 
 call to mind the narrative of the temptation, the repulse of 
 Peter dissuading Him from the way of suffering, or the soul- 
 conflict in Gethsemane, to see how openly He acknowledges 
 these conflicts and temptations, and how little He denies that 
 even He has to sacrifice His own will in order to live in 
 God's will only. All these facts make it so certain that the 
 consciousness of Jesus was at bottom purely human, that only 
 an unconquerable dogmatic prejudice, springing from scholastic 
 tradition and misunderstanding of what religion requires, can 
 resist the force of this testimony. 
 
 § 11. SiNLESSNESS OF JESUS 
 
 On the other hand, from that field of inquiry we have 
 last alluded to. His relation to the will of God, there starts up 
 a unique majesty of Jesus for which the name " Divinity of 
 Christ," a name which is justifiable though capable of being 
 misunderstood, is not too high.^ In the first place, notwith- 
 standing the separation of His will from the Father's, and all 
 the struggle for submission which even He was not spared, 
 the invariable watchword of His life was, " Not My will, but 
 Thine be done." In other words, in spite of that " no one is 
 good but one, that is, God," He was perfectly sinless. The 
 express evidences of this are the weakest, as when on His 
 way to death He contrasts Himself as the only green 
 branch on the tree of Israel with the dry boughs on that tree 
 (Luke xxiii. 30), or when He designates those who do the 
 
 ^ The justice of the expression, depends on the religious and moral 
 absoluteness of Jesus, in virtue of which He is the perfect revelation of a 
 God in Himself secret. If God is holy love, how could the predicate of 
 divinity be withheld from the man in whom this love has appeared in 
 perfection. 
 
76 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 will of His Father as His brethren and sisters (Mark iii. 35), 
 thus presupposing the doing of the divine will as manifestly 
 His own character. Far more striking and convincing are the 
 indirect testimonies, as they come to us from His silent 
 conduct, or force themselves upon us as the indispensable pre- 
 supposition of the other greatest and most certain facts of 
 His consciousness. He who with incomparable keenness has 
 pursued sin into the inmost recesses of the heart, found no 
 shadow of guilt, even in the most critical hours of His life, 
 arising in His own heart to transform the countenance of 
 His heavenly Father into the countenance of a judge — not in 
 the storm which threatened His life, not in the total wreck of 
 His earthly hopes, not even in Gethsemane or on Golgotha. 
 He has given to the world its sweetest name for God, the 
 name heavenly Father, and He took it from the child-feeling 
 of His own heart, as a right which first of all belonged to 
 Himself. What other man in Israel, on the soil which law 
 and prophets had prepared for the knowledge of God's 
 holiness and man's sin, could have dared in reverence to claim 
 this right as one who knew of no shadow of sin to separate 
 him from the holy God ? It was the thought of His life to 
 set up the kingdom of God among men, the kingdom of God 
 as a heart-communion with the holy God on a true ethical 
 footing. How could this idea of His life have been possible 
 unless the communion with God which He wished to set up 
 in the world had existed in Himself in full possession ! And 
 it was His original possession, not first acquired by over- 
 coming the sin that adhered even to Him. For if that had 
 been the case, as many fancy, that even He had first to over- 
 come an ungodly element in His own nature, and had done 
 so only just before His public ministry, before He was laid 
 hold of and conquered by the Messianic consciousness, then 
 the gospel of the kingdom which He preached would 
 necessarily become a gospel of self-redemption, an inducement 
 to follow Him in the conquering of sin. But His institution 
 of the Supper, the most certain fact we have of Him, attests 
 that He knew all men, even the best and most pious in Israel, 
 to be in need of an atonement and a Mediator, but Himself 
 to be the spotless Lamb who makes atonement for them with 
 His blood (Matt. xxvi. 28). And therefore His life must be 
 
THE SON OF MAN AND SON OF GOD 77 
 
 conceived rather as a development from original innocence to 
 completed holiness, than as the continuous preservation of a 
 disposition originally at one with God through all His inter- 
 course with an evil world, which imposed on Him self-denials 
 ever more painful, but by that very fact became to Him the 
 course to the goal of divine perfection. That is the picture 
 of His life as outlined in our Gospels. At the beginning 
 (Luke ii. 49) it gives evidence of such a state of heart in 
 Him, that what to others is a powerless command of duty, 
 bears for Him rather the character of most free and natural 
 necessity — " Must I not be about my Father's business," — 
 and it closes with a moral conflict and victory beyond which 
 no further can be imagined, because in it the final offering, the 
 perfect sacrifice of self, has been offered to the love of God. 
 
 § 12. His Oneness with God 
 
 In this sinless perfection we have the precondition of that 
 last and highest element in Him which the Church after- 
 wards called His divine nature or Godhead, though original 
 Christianity was content with viewing it as an anointing 
 with the Holy Spirit without measure, an unlimited posses- 
 sion of the Divine Spirit ; this is His relation of complete 
 unity with the Father which made Him the personal bearer 
 of the kingdom of heaven, the procurer of communion with 
 God for all. He Himself, in sublime self- contemplation, 
 describes this relation in a saying which is without parallel 
 in the Synoptics, though it possesses the highest guarantee of 
 genuineness as belonging to the original collection of Logia in 
 its twofold attestation. Matt. xi. 27 ; Luke x. 22 : -iravra 
 jjiOi irapeSodr} viro tov -Trarpo's /mov xal ovSeU iirtjivcocrKet rov 
 vlov, el fir) 6 irarijp' ovSe tov irarepa ti? ivi/yivaia-Ket,, el jjlt] 6 
 vw, Kal w eav ^ovXrjrat 6 vld<; airoKoXir^ai,} All things — 
 
 ^ The different Marcionite reading wMcli is found in the older Fathers 
 — ol/iil; iyua rou ■xaripa., ei fiij 6 via;, xcti toV vion ti fitj 6 irarvip x,a.l m iu.ii o 
 vio; ot^roKseXi/i^jj — contains no real change of doctrinal meaning. More- 
 over, it is very doubtful, as Keim and others assume, that it is the more 
 genuine reproduction of the words of Jesus. The placing first of the 
 Father, and knowledge of the Father, is more probably an inversion of 
 position, as the whole saying was occasioned by the denying of the Son on 
 the part of His contemporaries. See my Leben Jesu, ii. p. 254. 
 
78 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 He is able to say — are delivered to Me of My Father, that is, 
 as the connection shows, not the whole government of the 
 world, but all that is hidden from the wise and prudent and 
 revealed to babes, the whole of God's revelation in the 
 gospel. The words that immediately follow mean the same 
 thing in another form : " No man knoweth the Father but 
 the Son, and He to whomsoever He will reveal Him." All 
 knowledge of God as the heavenly Father, as holy love 
 imparting itself, and along with that, all satisfying and com- 
 forting communion with God, comes through Him and Him 
 only ; as it is said in the Fourth Gospel : " No man cometh to 
 the Father but by Me." This Son, so unique and exalted, is 
 for that very reason a mystery to men : " No man knoweth 
 the Son but the Father," — the Father alone knows all that 
 He has intrusted to the Son, and laid upon Him. Not that 
 that is to remain a mystery, while the mystery of the 
 Father would be revealed through the Son. The Father also 
 reveals the secret of the Son, as, for example, to Peter when 
 He declared of him : " Flesh and blood hath not revealed it 
 unto thee, but My Father in heaven " (Matt. xvi. 1 7), though 
 at that moment no man had recognised the Son as Messiah 
 in the spiritual divine sense. Jesus Himself, therefore, gives 
 us here the explanation of the name Son which He claims in 
 a unique sense with regard to the Father. It is a mutual 
 relation that has no equal, a mutual knowledge of which the 
 world has no conception, a relation of inmost confidence with 
 one another. But it is not, on that account, a metaphysical 
 mystery. Peter did not see any metaphysical relation in 
 Jesus (Matt. xvi. 16), but a mystery of salvation ; and that also 
 is the point in Matt, xi., as testified by the words which 
 follow: " Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, 
 and I will give you rest." It is a very curious error which 
 supposes that the uniqueness and perfection of His relation 
 as a Son must overstep the ideal limits of the human 
 personality. If the pure in heart are to see God (Matt. v. 8), 
 must not the countenance of God in its whole purity be 
 reflected in the absolutely pure human heart ? And if God 
 has indeed prepared the heart of man to be His dwelling- 
 place on earth, must not His whole fulness dwell in the 
 human heart which is fully opened to Him, and offers Him a 
 
THE HEAVENLY FATHEE AND THE WORLD 79 
 
 perfect home, in which there is a sanctuary undefiled. And 
 our conception of the relation of Jesus as Son is conclus- 
 ively established by the -n-apehoOrj of Matt. xi. 27. All 
 things are delivered unto Me of My Father ; but delivered by 
 Him whom He not only extols in true human devotion as 
 His Father, but at the same time as Lord of heaven and 
 earth ; they are the original property of the Father, and not 
 of the Son. That is the synoptic testimony of Jesus about 
 Himself. It contains no trace of that speculative theology 
 with which the Church of later days, applying Greek 
 philosophical conceptions to biblical views, attempted to 
 explain to herself the union of the divine and human which 
 was consummated in Him ; it does not even contain a trace 
 of the pre-existence idea, in which Paul and John gave to the 
 Church a starting-point for that subsequent theology.^ But, 
 it may be asked, what does this christological self-testimony 
 lack to make Jesus known to us as the Saviour of the world 
 — to describe Him as the man who by personally realising in 
 Himself communion with God, needed only to communicate 
 Himself to His brethren in order to communicate to them 
 God and eternal life ? 
 
 CHAPTEE IV 
 
 THE HEAVENLY FATHER AND THE WORLD 
 § 1. The i^EW Idea of God 
 
 It is clear that the restoration of the kingdom of God must 
 begin with a new revelation of God, springing out of the con- 
 ciousness of Jesus. The true and perfect knowledge of God of 
 which Jesus speaks in the words just discussed (Matt. xi. 27), 
 
 1 Tlie attempt has indeed been made, by combining Matt, xxiii. 34 
 witb Luke xi. 49, to make Jesus synonymous with the iro<p/« hm (retained 
 by Luke from the common source), which would to some extent correspond 
 with what started the apostles in their doctrine of pre-existence. But 
 even assuming that Matthew, by putting an lya instead of the mcpla. dioi, 
 desired to identify Jesus with the hypostatic wisdom of God (Prov. viii.), 
 that would still be only an idea of the first evangelist's, not Jesus' own. 
 
80 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 is indeed the immediate precondition of that communion with 
 God which is to be brought about. It is not therefore difficult 
 to resolve the misunderstanding which has led to the recent 
 assertion that Jesus had no new idea of God to announce, as 
 His God was simply the God of the Old Testament.^ All New 
 Testament views are, of course, as already remarked, rooted in 
 the Old Testament. But they only come to flower in the New 
 Testament, and in relation to their Old Testament stage of 
 development they appear as really new. How then should 
 the fundamental idea of all, the idea of God, form an excep- 
 tion to this rule ? Moreover, the consciousness which Jesus 
 expresses is quite unlike that of one who merely preaches the 
 God of the law and the prophets. When He says : " No man 
 knoweth the Father but the Son, and he to whomsoever the 
 Son will reveal Him," He unquestionably asserts an idea of 
 God dwelling in Him and to be communicated by Him, which 
 neither Moses nor Isaiah before Him cherished. Accordingly, 
 His apostles — in direct contradiction to that modern assertion 
 • — were able to make His whole gospel consist in the revela- 
 tion of a new and perfect idea of God : " This is the message 
 we have heard of Him, and declare unto you, that God is 
 light, and in Him is no darkness at all" (1 John i. 5). 
 
 § 2. The Name Father 
 
 Jesus Himself, in the name Father which He put in the 
 place of the Old Testament Jahveh or Jehovah, or Adonai, 
 Lord, which was read and spoken for it, has expressed in a 
 form more simple and yet more vivid than these words of 
 John, the new idea of God which dwelt in Him. The name 
 Father for God was not indeed completely unknown either to 
 heathendom or Judaism. The Homeric Greeks even prayed 
 to Father Zeus, and the Abba, that is, Father, seems to have 
 been not unusual in the Jewish prayers of Jesus' day.^ But 
 
 1 Of. Weiss, N. T. Theology, vol. i. p. 64. 
 
 2 The old Christian cry, Abba (Rom. viii. 15 ; Gal. iv. 6), probably 
 originated with Jesus. Cf. Mark xiv. 36. If it appears at the same time 
 in old Jewish prayers, it may be asked whether its origin in these is not 
 dne— as so many old Rabbinic sayings suggest— solely to the desire not to 
 lag behind Christian ideas and modes of expression. 
 
THE HEAVENLY FATHER AND THE AVOI.LD 81 
 
 the Greeks, in doing so, thought only of the author and pre- 
 server of nature, and the Jews of the covenant God of the 
 Old Testament, who had, as it were, adopted Israel as His son, 
 and made him His firstborn among the nations (Ex. iv. 22 ; 
 Hos. xi. 1). Accordingly, the few passages in which the Old 
 Testament speaks of God as Father, even in such pre-eminently 
 fervent words of prophecy as Isa. Ixiii. 16, Jer. xxxi. 20, 
 refer not so much to a personal relation of God to the 
 individual, as His gracious relation to the nation as such. 
 The name " sons of the living God," is only meant by way of 
 promise for the Israelites (Hos. ii. 1). And if pious men after 
 the Exile speak here and there of God as their Father (Mai. 
 IL 10 ; Sir. xxiii. 1, 4 ; Wisd. ii. 16, 18, xiv. 3), they do so, 
 really, only in the sense of Creator and gracious Preserver. 
 Jesus' use of the name Father is related to these Old Testa- 
 ment applications of it, quite in the same way as His idea of 
 divine sonship is related to the Old Testament examples of 
 that sonship. He first stamped the name Father as one 
 proper to God, and at the same time put into it all the ful- 
 ness of God's revelation dwelling in Himself. In the first place, 
 the name Father on the lips of Jesus is the expression of a 
 purely personal relation that has no equal. "My Father," He 
 says above all (Luke ii. 49 ; Matt. vii. 21, x. 32, xi. 27, xii. 50, 
 XV. 13, xvi. 17, etc.), and therewith declares that He knows 
 Himself beloved by and familiar with the eternal and holy 
 One, to whom Israel looks up in pious fear, or even with awe 
 and dread, as only a son can be beloved by his father and 
 familiar with him. But then He also gives His followers this 
 feeling and the right of expressing it — not, indeed, to the 
 whole nation,^ but to those who gather around Him under the 
 standard of the kingdom of God, those whom He calls His 
 brethren and sisters, because they are willing to do the will 
 of His Father in heaven (Mark iii. 5). He speaks to them 
 of God as " your heavenly Father," in the sense of a personal 
 relation also, in which every one of them may severally find 
 
 1 The sayings of Matt, v.-vii. and xxiii., whioli Cremer, p. 688, adduces 
 in support of the contention that Jesus applied the words " your Father " to 
 the nation also, are, as their tenor proves, addressed rather to the disciples, 
 and only woven up by the evangelist into conjectural or actual popular 
 addresses. 
 
 BEYSCHLAG. — I. 6 
 
82 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 rest in God — "thy Father," it is said to each individual 
 (Matt. vi. 4, 18). And it is, at the same time, manifest that 
 the concept of relation must have as background a concept of 
 nature; God does not become the heavenly Father of the 
 disciples because they have entered into the relation of sons 
 with Him, but it is His fatherliness. His holy love, which 
 draws and places them in the relation of children to Him. 
 "Ottws yevrjcj-ffe viol tov Trarpos v/j,&v tov iv oijpavoi's is 
 significantly said in Matt. v. 45. He is their Father: they 
 have to become correspondingly His sons. And if He has not 
 yet become Father to others, that is due simply to the fact 
 that He has not yet been revealed to them in His fatherliness 
 by the Son (Matt. xi. 27). And so Jesus makes the relation 
 name a character name ; He not only says My Father and 
 your Father, but also simply the Father (Matt. xi. 27; Mark 
 xiii. 32, and still more frequently in the Fourth Gospel). 
 The character of God which this fatherliness implies follows 
 of itself. Fatherhood is love, original and underived, antici- 
 pating and undeserved, forgiving and educating, communicat- 
 ing and drawing to its heart. Jesus felt, conceived, and 
 revealed God as this love which — itself personal — applies to 
 every child of man. That He really desired to characterise 
 the eternal heart of God in this way as the prototype of the 
 human father's heart, is shown by His own express comparison 
 between the two. Matt. vii. 11 : el ovv vixeli, "jrovrjpol ovTe<;, 
 o'lSare hofiaia dyada BiSovai rot? reKvoK vfiSiv, iroartp fiaXKov 
 6 iraTrjp vfiSiv 6 iv rots ovpavoi<;, Baxrei dyaOa rot? alrovciv 
 avTov ! If earthly fathers are good, and givers of good things 
 to their children, how much more is the heavenly Father, who 
 just as the heavenly Father is raised above all the limitations 
 and defects of earth, and is the dja66<; simply, the morally 
 perfect, in contrast with those irovrjpol^ — morally imperfect 
 men! 
 
 § 3. The eh djaOo'; AND reXeto? 
 
 Jesus has also cleared that idea of God which follows 
 from the name Father by two further important declarations. 
 The first is the saying addressed to the rich young man 
 alluded to above : rl (le XiyeK dyaOov ; ovSeh dyaOo'i, el fi'tj 
 
THE HEAVENLY FATHER AND TEE WORLD 83 
 
 eh, 6 6e6<! (Mark x. 18; Luke xviii. 19). The point in 
 question, as already stated, is the concept good, with which 
 the young man is so indiscriminately lavish. Jesus means 
 to say that in the highest absolute sense it applies to God 
 only. Though He also recognises elsewhere a distinction 
 between good and evil men (e.g. Matt. xii. 35), yet in con- 
 trast with God even the good are trovqpol (Matt. vii. 11). 
 He Himself has nothing of the nature of evil to confess, yet 
 even He is subject to a moral development, and is stUl exposed 
 to temptation. But God alone is good, according to His 
 nature. It is His nature to be good, so that He in no sense 
 needs first to become perfectly good by the conquering of any 
 assailing evil. He cannot be tempted of evU, and is, on that 
 account, the source of every good and perfect gift, the Father 
 of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turn- 
 ing (Jas. i. 17). God therefore in the teaching of Jesus is 
 the ethically absolute, ethically perfect Being. It follows, 
 however, not only from the concept dyaOo'i (cf. Matt. xx. 15), 
 but is also expressly taught in the other passage which we 
 have in view, that to Him ethical perfection is perfect love, 
 absolute goodness of heart. It is said in the passage already 
 alluded to. Matt. v. 45, 48 : dya-n-aTe Toiii e')(6pov^ vfimv, 
 OTTa)<; yevrja-de viol tov Trarpo^i vficov tov ev ovpavoi<;' on tov 
 rjXiov avTov dvareWei, iirif Trovripov} Kal dr^aOoii'i, Kai ^pivei 
 eirl SiKaiovi Kol dSiKOV^. "EaeaOe o?)v vfiel<i reKeioi,, a)9 o 
 •jraTTjp v/jk&v 6 oipdvio<! reXeto? ecmv. Jesus means to say 
 that to love our enemies is the crown of reXeioTr]^, moral per- 
 fection, for it is the seal of a goodness of heart which no 
 opposing evil can disconcert. In it, above all, man may 
 become like God, a son, that is, an image of God. For God 
 is the prototype of goodness ; no evil or disobedience of man 
 restrains Him from being good to all, and doing to them all 
 the good they are willing to accept. His natural favours are 
 mentioned just because they, as distinguished from His 
 spiritual gifts of grace, need no special susceptibility, and can 
 be shown equally to the evil and the good. The perfection 
 of God, as the closing words declare, consists in this infinite 
 imperturbable goodness of heart.^ Jesus therefore describes 
 
 1 Luke vi. 35, 36, in putting goodness and mercy instead of perfection, 
 does indeed contract, but lias not incorrectly paraphrased the notion. 
 
84 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 the God whom He calls Father as the simply good, morally 
 perfect Being, as the ethically absolute and absolutely ethical, 
 that is, holy Love. The superiority of this idea of God to 
 that of the Old Testament is manifest. There the ethical idea 
 of God is still in conflict with the idea of mere absolute power, 
 autocratic caprice. Nay, it is not even completely free from 
 the husks of physical representations, so that the moral 
 requirements of God still remain mixed with sensuous ritual 
 requirements, and still less is this ethical idea of God carried 
 beyond the mere negative character of holiness to the positive 
 perfection of simple goodness or love. Among so many 
 shadows of hatred and revenge belonging to God's government, 
 how could it become manifest that God is light, and in Him 
 is no darkness at all ? No doubt the love and goodness, the 
 grace and mercy, of God are praised in the Old Testament, 
 but they are extolled as particular and limited attributes, 
 alongside of others of a different character — not as His inmost 
 and entire being. Jesus from the depths of His own heart, 
 burning with holy love, first brought to light the peculiar 
 Christian idea of God such as is known to no other religion, 
 the unsurpassable idea of holy love, and at the same time 
 He expressed this highest conceivable idea of God in the 
 simplest and sweetest words, in the name heavenly Father, 
 
 § 4. Heaven and Eaeth 
 
 This idea of God already involves the conception of 
 another existence, an existence which can be the object of 
 eternal goodness and love, that is, the world. And therefore 
 this is the place to fix our attention on the manner in which, 
 in the light of His idea of God and on the basis of the Old 
 Testament, Jesus formed His general view of the world. The 
 name Father in heaven, or heavenly Father, immediately 
 reminds us that in the view of Jesus the universe is divided 
 into two kingdoms, heaven and earth. I thank Thee, 
 Father, Lord of heaven and earth," He says (Matt. xi. 25), 
 when solemnly discussing the great purpose of God's love. 
 Eut He does not regard heaven and earth as two localities, in 
 one of which God has His dwelling-place but not in the 
 other. "Heaven is His throne and earth is His footstool." 
 
THE HEAVENLY FATHER AND THE WORLD 85 
 
 He exclaims (Matt. v. 3o), in a sublime metaphor of Isaiah 
 (Ixvi. 1), just in order to express that both heaven and earth 
 belong to His God. Nevertheless, this very saying indicates 
 a different relation of God to heaven and to earth. Heaven 
 is the seat of the divine majesty, the kingdom of the divine 
 glory in all its fulness, and the home of the eternal blessings 
 above sense, from which everything divine on earth springs, 
 and to which it points. From heaven, according to Mark xi. 
 30, was the baptism of John, that is, it was a historical 
 phenomenon whose origin was divine. Against heaven the 
 prodigal son sinned (Luke xv. 18) ; that is, not merely against 
 his earthly father, but also against God and His holy order. 
 In heaven is laid up the treasure or reward which is obtained 
 by a doing or enduring of the will of God on earth (Matt. v. 
 12, xix. 21; Luke xii. 33). From heaven, where it is 
 prepared from the beginning of the world (Matt. xxv. 34), 
 comes down to earth the kingdom of God, as a kingdom of 
 heaven (Matt. iv. 17). In heaven — according to the third 
 petition of the Lord's Prayer — the will of God is done ideally 
 and naturally, for the like doing of which on earth we are to 
 pray. The meaning of Jesus as to the idea and relation of 
 heaven and earth is clear enough from all these sayings. 
 Heaven, as contrasted with earth, is the ideal world throned 
 above the world of human life in which the will of God is self- 
 evident, while on earth it has first to be realised. Of course 
 this ideal world is conceived as in the highest degree real. 
 The world of the spiritual and eternal blessings is no 
 phantom. It is the most real and actual of all, much more 
 so than the world of sense. It is the home and hearth and 
 goal of all true life on earth. But its reality is of a different 
 kind from that of earth. This latter, in contrast with heaven, 
 is the region of a moral growth through history, that is, of 
 imperfection and gradual unfolding, of creaturely freedom 
 and sin. But as the good, outside of God's self -existence, can 
 only realise itself in the way of moral growth, of freedom and 
 history, the rich heaven is indeed the home, but the poor 
 earth is the object of the divine thoughts of love. The king- 
 dom of heaven comes down from heaven to earth, in order to 
 find here its realisation in an element which is free in relation 
 to God, and consequently capable of a free surrender to Him. 
 
86 new testament theology 
 
 § 5. Angels 
 
 We do not mean by the above statements that Jesus gave 
 up, as an idea, the local conception of heaven which was 
 presented to Him from childhood, and consciously treated it 
 as a mere poetic symbol. In all cosmic matters to which 
 His teaching refers, He was content to use the forms of con- 
 ception furnished to Him in the Old Testament and by His 
 people and time, as He did not consider it His calling to be 
 a critic in matters of worldly knowledge, and so become a 
 scientific reformer. But He put life into these forms, with 
 the purest religious ideas, and so spiritualised them to that 
 religious view which even we cannot do without, however 
 much we may feel its figurative character. This is a point 
 from which we have to consider every part of Jesus' view of 
 the world, and first of all, from it we must consider His view 
 of the angels, which belongs directly to His idea and repre- 
 sentation of heaven. The Old Testament conception had 
 imagined heaven, the home of God, as peopled with a host of 
 ministering spirits, who, as pure emanations of the divine glory, 
 as organs of the God who ruled the world, were therefore 
 designated angels, that is, messengers of God. The later 
 Judaism in its efforts to keep God and the world as far 
 apart as possible, and to separate the Eternal from all 
 contact with the finite, had more and more imagined these 
 emanations and messengers of the living God as personal 
 intermediate beings, who had to manage the intercourse of 
 God with the world, and of whose names, ranks, good and 
 evil doings, there were many fables. The immediate relation 
 to the world in which Jesus viewed His heavenly Father 
 had no room for such personal intermediate beings, and so in 
 His lively sense of God He went past these angel tales of His 
 contemporaries to the simple sensuous representations of the 
 Old Testament. The angels of God, in whose presence there 
 is joy over one sinner who repenteth (Luke xv. 10), or before 
 whom the Son of Man will confess those who have confessed 
 Him before men (Luke xii. 8), are a kind of poetic paraphrase 
 for God Himself, to whom in both cases the words properly 
 refer (cf. the parallel passage Matt. x. 32). They are the 
 graphic representation of the higher world, to the citizenship 
 
THE HEAVENLY FATHER AND THE WORLD 87 
 
 of which the penitent returns, and in which the faithful con- 
 fessor receives his crown. The holy angels of the Son of 
 Man, with whom He will come again in His glory (Matt. xvi. 
 27, XXV. 31), are the rays of divine majesty which is then to 
 surround Him with splendour ; they are the divine powers 
 with which He is to awaken the dead, to dissolve the present 
 order of the world, and set up a new and higher order. And 
 the twelve legions of angels for which the oppressed Messiah 
 could pray to His Father (Matt. xxvi. 53), are the expression 
 of the divine miraculous powers — alluding to the weak human 
 powers of the twelve disciples — which He could call up against 
 His enemies. The most remarkable passage is Matt, xviii. 
 10 : opdre jir] Karai^povrjcTrjTe evo<; t&v fiiKpcov tovtcov' \iya) 
 f^ap vfuv, OTi, 01 dyyeKoi avToov iv ovpavol<s Si,d iravTO<s 
 ^eirovatv to irpocrayirov tov ttixt/jo? /mov tov ev ovpavol'i ; and 
 it is the very passage which we can least of all take in 
 prosaic literalness. According to it, every one, even the least 
 of the children of men, — for it is of the least and not of 
 children that the passage speaks, — has his guardian angel, 
 who at all times has access to the heavenly Father, viz. to 
 complain to Him of the offences that are given to His 
 proteg^ on earth (ver. 6). As God, according to Jesus, 
 knows what happens to each of His human children without 
 needing to be told (cf. Matt. vi. 8), in what other way can we 
 conceive this entirely poetical passage, than that in every 
 child of man a peculiar thought of God has to be realised, 
 which stands over his history like a genius, or guardian spirit, 
 and which God at all times remembers, so that everything 
 which opposes its realisation on earth comes before Him as a 
 complaint ? In all these cases it is clear that Jesus repre- 
 sents the angels as persons indeed, but manifestly treats 
 them in a symbolical poetic way ; He did not set up any 
 doctrine about angels, but simply used the conception as a 
 means of presenting ideas of another kind. The notion of 
 angels remains thus hovering between personality and 
 personification ; and that the latter alone is its kernel, is clear 
 from the fact that Jesus treats the angels as powers of God, 
 but nowhere .as aims and ends of God, which alone would 
 force us in earnest to think of their personality. The fatherly 
 relation of God is nowhere applied to the angels, the passage 
 
88 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 last quoted showing rather that the aims of God are confined to 
 the children of men, and the angels (quite in the sense of Heb. 
 i. 14) are only means to the ends of the divine thought of love. 
 
 § 6. Man 
 
 Thus heaven points to earth and angels to men as the 
 proper place for the realising of the thoughts of God. The 
 place of creaturely freedom, on whose soil the good alone can 
 realise itself outside of God, is, as we have said, the earth on 
 which, according to the third petition of the Lord's Prayer, the 
 will of God is not done as in heaven of itself, but men must 
 pray that it be so done. And the possessor of that creaturely 
 freedom is man, the citizen of both worlds, who though he 
 has his roots in the earth, the world of nature, is planned and 
 destined for heaven, the eternal world of spirit. To him and 
 not to the angels, the Lord of heaven and earth desires to be 
 a Father, and desires that man should be His son, the heir of 
 the kingdom of heaven. With the whole of the Scriptures 
 Jesus distinguishes in human nature two factors, one above 
 sense with affinities for God, and one sensuous with affinities 
 for nature. When these two factors are conceived in their 
 differences and contrasts, they are called flesh and spirit — as in 
 the saying (Matt. xxvi. 41), the spirit indeed is willing, but the 
 flesh is weak. When — as is the rule — they are conceived in 
 their mutual relation and sphere of action, they are called soul 
 and body {e.g. Matt. x. 28). In virtue of this soul, which is 
 akin to spirit, and for that reason to God, man is raised above 
 all other creatures and made the special object of the divine 
 love and care. "Fear not, ye are better than many 
 sparrows," cries Jesus to His disciples, in that saying concern- 
 ing the divine care, without which not even a sparrow falls to 
 the ground (Matt. x. 3 1 ■; cf. also Matt. xii. 1 2). Jesus points 
 here to the character of man as personal, to his nature as 
 fashioned by God for His eternal purpose, and destined for a 
 moral and spiritual perfection. Its infinite worth, together 
 with all the responsibility that lies in that, is made prominent 
 in the sublime saying : " What shall it profit a man, if he gain 
 the whole world, and lose his own soul ? or what shall a man 
 give in exchange for his soul ? " (Mark viii. 36 ; Matt. xvi. 26). 
 
THE HEAVENLY FATHER AND THE WORLD 89 
 
 The whole world, the sum total of natural things and finite 
 good, does not outweigh the human soul, the human 
 personality, which is planned for and called to the infinite. 
 And this impress which raises man above all finite creatures, 
 and places him by the side of the eternal Father, is in the 
 teaching of Jesus the property of every child of man, even the 
 least and last. As the true shepherd does not forget the one 
 lost lamb of his whole flock, so the love of God is not directed 
 to humanity as a whole, but to every individual soul, that it 
 may not be deprived of its eternal destiny. " It is not the 
 will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones 
 should perish" (Matt, xviii. 14). To Jesus this spiritual, 
 moral nature of the human soul, its personality, involves, as a 
 matter of course, its capacity for immortality. The body 
 may be killed, and must some day yield to death, but the soul 
 does not die — no human power can kill it (Matt. x. 29). 
 When the body breaks up in death, angels then bear 
 upwards the soul of the pious into another world, the world 
 in which he trusted (Luke xvi. 22). In union with God, who 
 is not a God of the dead but of the living, even those long dead, 
 like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, have immortal life (Mark xii. 
 26, 27 ; Matt. xxii. 32 ; Luke xx. 38). This does not mean, 
 however, that every one capable of such a life is intended for 
 it, is certain of it. The soul may, as the two sayings adduced 
 above remind us, suffer loss, may even be lost, if instead of 
 surrendering itself to the supersensuous and eternal it loses 
 itself in the vain and empty. The same Father in heaven 
 who draws Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to His heart, and 
 willeth not that even the least should be lost, may then be in 
 the position to destroy both soul and body in hell (Matt. x. 
 29). The notion of a Sheol held by His people, a Hades or 
 kingdom of the dead which encloses in regions far apart a 
 Paradise and a Gehenna, a place of comfort and a place of 
 torment (cf. Luke xxiii. 43 ; Matt. v. 22), was recognised by 
 Jesus in His Parable of the Eich Man and Lazarus (Luke xvi. 
 19-31) as essentially true. He thereby taught that behind 
 the death of the body there awaits the soul either a glorious 
 ascent or a sad descent, according as here on earth it has 
 entered into the spirit of a higher dwelling-place, or wasted its 
 earthly life in vanities. 
 
90 new testament theology 
 
 § 7. Sin 
 
 The destination of man for immortality, however, is opposed 
 on earth by sin. Jesus, as the preacher of His gospel should 
 take note, has spoken little of sin in general, and has proposed 
 no doctrine of it, least of all a doctrine of its origin ; He 
 presupposed it as a fact, and showed its evil nature by the 
 penalties He attached to it. In its inmost nature He regards 
 it as an apostasy of the soul from the living God. The heart 
 of man, in which, after the manner of the Bible, He sees the 
 single focus of our inner life, the central seat of feeling, 
 thought, and will (cf. Matt. xii. 34, xv. 19), — the heart is to 
 Him for the moral man what the eye is for the sentient, the 
 organ of light. If it is single, — that is, sincere and stead- 
 fastly directed to the eternal good, to God and His will, the 
 heavenly light, — the revelation of God then streams into it, 
 and the whole moral man, with his powers and gifts, moves 
 in the element of light — that is, of the right, the good, the 
 divine. But if the inner eye is distorted or diseased, then 
 the light cannot stream into it, and then the man is in dark- 
 ness, and lives and moves entirely in the darkness (Matt. vi. 
 22, 23; Luke xi. 34—36). But what can determine the 
 inner eye to become thus evil ? Above all, the so-called 
 earthly goods, in the narrower sense, are the things that blind 
 it. Mammon, that is, wealth, which has become a false god, 
 an idol, has a special power of withdrawing man from a stead- 
 fast surrender of the heart to God. This is the constant 
 difficulty which makes it harder for rich men than for others 
 to enter into the kingdom of God (Mark x. 24, 25; Matt, 
 xix. 23, 24). In spite of mammon, a man probably thinks 
 that he can adhere to God ; he desires to serve two masters, 
 God and mammon. But the latter, like the former, claims 
 the whole heart and mind with all their powers, and the man 
 is unawares brought to despise and neglect the good Master, 
 while holding to and obeying the evil (Matt. vi. 24 ; Luke 
 xvi. 13). But that is only an outstanding example of how a 
 man is drawn away from God. The possibility and tempta- 
 tion thereto lies entirely in his twofold nature, his twofold 
 relation to God and the world. " The spirit is willing," cries 
 Jesus to His disciples (Matt. xxvi. 41), "but the flesh is 
 
THE HEAVENLY FATHER AND THE WOKLD 91 
 
 weak." The spirit is willing to watch and pray and attend 
 to that which keeps us in communion with God, but the 
 flesh, our sensuous nature, is the weak side of the fortress on 
 which the attractions and terrors of the sensuous world make 
 their onset, and easily overwhelm the heart. The possibility 
 of sin is thus explained ; but this possibility has become a 
 universal reality, and Jesus reckons with this fact without 
 venturing on its explanation. Without hesitation He pre- 
 supposes the universality of sin. He says of His hearers 
 (Matt. vii. 11), as something self-evident, "Ye who are evil." 
 The call to repentance, fieravoeire, is addressed without 
 reservation to all, and in the Lord's Prayer the need of 
 forgiveness is in the same way presupposed on the part of 
 all, even of a Peter and a John. Moreover, His observation 
 does not stop at individual errors and faults, though these 
 individual offences are also duly considered in the iifth 
 petition. From evil deeds the penetrating look of Jesus 
 goes back to the evil word and the evil thought (Matt. v. 
 22), and again from all these particular phenomena to the 
 fundamental tendency of the mind, to the tree which bears 
 such fruits, to the treasure of the heart, the inner condition 
 and store which has been formed by the totality of the indi- 
 vidual moral acts, and is now the source of further individual 
 action in word or work (Matt. xii. 32—35). Hence Jesus 
 recognises in man a development of sin. First, the simple 
 movement of the heart to some more venial, or more heinous, 
 outbreak in word and then in deed (Matt. v. 22). And then 
 the further deeper stage of increasing resistance and contra- 
 diction to the divine admonition, the passage from simple 
 transgression to blasphemy, and from the reviling of the Son 
 of Man, who may easily be mistaken, to blaspheming the 
 Holy Spirit, who inwardly attests Himself, and so is not to 
 be mistaken (Mark iii. 28, 29 ; Matt. xii. 31, 32). And in 
 this last and uttermost possibility, as it excludes further 
 knowledge, excludes conversion, and with conversion forgive- 
 ness, He sees the irrevocable ruin of the inner man. In 
 contrast with this deep, penetrating judgment of sin, the 
 moderate way in which this judgment goes to work is the 
 more remarkable. In the most impartial way Jesus recog- 
 nises the moral distinctions among sinful men ; not merely 
 
92 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 the great distinctions in outward civil righteousness, which 
 He does indeed recognise in their full measure of value in 
 His Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican (Luke xv. 1-32, 
 xviii. 10), and in His not merely ironical contrasting of 
 righteous and sinner (Matt. ix. 13). He even attributes 
 truly good, really divine features to the human heart, and 
 finds more of them in one than in another. He sets up a 
 Samaritan, a half-heathen, as a model of love for our neigh- 
 bour (Luke X. 23—37). He perceives in children a simplicity 
 and meekness, a confidingness, which gives them an advan- 
 tage in gaining the kingdom of heaven (Mark x. 14 ; Matt. 
 xviii. 3). He distinguishes — just in reference to the treasure 
 of the heart — evil men and good men (Matt. xii. 35). 
 Amongst His people He knows not only some who are poor 
 in spirit and hungering for righteousness, but some also who 
 are merciful, peacemakers, pure in heart, and suffering for 
 righteousness' sake (Matt. v. 1—10). And the poor Lazarus, 
 the sufferer who trusts in God, goes to the bosom of Abraham 
 without belonging to the New Testament kingdom of God 
 (Luke xvi. 19). Only those who have no need of the 
 fierdvoia, conversion from the bottom of the heart, are un- 
 known to Him, or rather are known only in the ironical sense 
 of Matt. ix. 13 and Luke xv. 7, — as righteous according to 
 human notions, who regard themselves therefore as righteous 
 also according to the divine idea. Even the best and most 
 pious men in Israel, His chosen disciples, have to be converted 
 and become as little children in order to enter into the king- 
 dom of God (Matt, xviii. 3). And it is to them directly, 
 to Peter chiefly, that He addresses the Parable of the Ten 
 Thousand Pounds of arrears, that is, of the infinity of man's 
 obligations to God (Matt, xviii. 23—35). For everything that 
 is not perfect love of God, and does not spring from perfect 
 love of God, is ultimately sin ; and with the knowledge of God 
 and of His holy will, the feeling of guilt, the more pious a 
 man is, grows to overwhelming strength. Finally, we must 
 note that all these distinctions of the sinful condition, and 
 this whole infinity of the awakened sense of guilt, does not 
 call in question the capacity of any sinner to repent — except 
 it be the (hypothetic) sinner against the Holy Ghost. The 
 universal call to repentance, fieravoeiTe, presupposes an unlost 
 
THE HEAVENLY FATHEE AND THE WOKLD 93 
 
 moral freedom in every one. The exhortation, " Strive to 
 enter in at the strait gate" (Matt. vii. 13), is addressed to all, 
 and therefore is regarded as possible for all ; and in Matt, 
 xxiii. 3 7 it is expressly declared , that Jerusalem of her own 
 free will had decided to reject the hand of deliverance 
 stretched out to her. 
 
 § 8. Satan 
 
 But evil exists not only as an ungodly bias of the human 
 heart, and as an aggregate of evidences of that bias — it is a 
 world-ruling principle, which meets us in history as well as 
 in nature. In history, there rules at all times a spirit of 
 seduction and deceit which goes far beyond the perverted 
 self-determination of the individual, and surrounds him as 
 a power of temptation. And in nature there rules, in spite 
 of the beneficent and kindly divine order, a power of disorder 
 and destruction which overwhelms humanity with disease and 
 misery. There can be no doubt that Jesus does not trace 
 back to God natural evil in its manifold forms in the same 
 way as He does with natural beneficence, the rising sun, and 
 fruit-bringing rain (Matt. v. 45). He frankly recognised it 
 as a contradiction of the creative thoughts and arrangements 
 of the good God. He considers it to be the task of the king- 
 dom of God to overcome all the manifold phenomena of 
 misery in nature, as well as those of moral perversity (Matt. 
 xi. 2-6, xii. 28). For both of these God-opposed kingdoms, 
 in human life and in nature, are unmistakably united. Tor 
 natural evil tempts to moral evil, to apostasy from God, and, 
 on the other hand, sin brings disorder and misery into the 
 world. It is a uniform kingdom of evil, which, in the world 
 of nature and of history, opposes itself to the good which God 
 has willed and ordained. And therefore it is only the ex- 
 pression of a profoundly true observation of the world when 
 Jesus comprehends both spiritual and natural evil in the 
 enigmatic name Satan, which was presented to him by the 
 Old Testament Scriptures. The original idea of the Accuser 
 (viz. of man to God, cf. Job ii. 1 ; Zech. iii. 1 ; Eev. xii. 10) 
 was already extended in the Old Testament to that of the 
 Adversary, the Evil One (o iravrjpo^,. Matt. xiii. 38), the 
 
94 l^'EW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 Seducer and Destroyer, and in this form of it Jesus takes up 
 the notion which had sprung from the Old Testament feeling of 
 the contradiction between God's idea and the actual condition 
 of the world. In the narrative of the Temptation (Matt, iv., 
 Luke iv.), which is probably based on some pictorial narrative 
 of Jesus,'- Satan appears as a tempter to evil, a seductive 
 spirit of the world and of the age. He appears in the same 
 sense in the exposition of some of the parables (Matt. xiii. 
 19, 38 ; Luke viii. 12), and in the words of warning to Peter 
 before the denial (Luke xxii. 31 : ISoii 6 Sarava,'; i^rjTija-aTo 
 vfjkaf, rov a-wida-ai vixa<: to? tov ctItov). He appears as Prince 
 of Evil, above all, in the view of the possessed, that is, those 
 disordered in mind and nerves,^ who are designated as his 
 spoil (Mark iii. 27 ; Matt. xii. 29 ; Luke xi. 22). But Jesus 
 also seems to trace back simple bodily sickness to Satan, 
 therein following the representation of the Book of Job. In 
 Luke xvi. 16, He says of the woman who had been bowed 
 together for many years, that Satan had bound her with a 
 fetter which He must loose. Did Jesus think of Satan as a 
 person ? Ifc is with this question very much as in the case 
 of the angels. The form of representation is undoubtedly 
 personifying, but all the passages are poetic in style. The 
 narrative of the Temptation, in its biographical kernel, does 
 not lead us to think of a personal Satan, but rather of 
 seductive expectations of the people and the age which were 
 traced back to Satan — that is, were characterised as opposed 
 to God, and as of the nature of temptation. The expressions, 
 Luke xiii. 16, xxii. 31, go back upon the undeniably poetic 
 representations of the Book of Job, in whose style they 
 remain, and the Satan who snatches from the heart the word 
 sown, or sows tares among the wheat of the Son of Man 
 (Matt. xiii. 19, 38), is also simply the impersonal spirit of 
 the world, which can creep into the human heart and into 
 the community of God. The remarkable words, Luke x. 1 8 : 
 " I saw Satan fall as lightning from heaven," express, in an 
 image reminding us of Isa. xiv. 12, the overthrow which the 
 appearance of the kingdom of God has prepared for the power 
 of evil that has hitherto ruled the world (cf. Eev. xii. 9). It 
 
 1 Cf. my Leben Jesu, Bd. i. p. 228. 
 ' Ibid. p. 300. 
 
THE HEAVENLY FATHER AND THE WORLD 95 
 
 is certain that Jesus did not recognise as personal devils the 
 demons in whom the popular Jewish belief saw personal 
 angels of Satan (cf. Matt. xxv. 41; 2 Cor. xii. 7). For in 
 Mark iiL 26, Matt. xii. 26, He translates the casting out of 
 demons by Beelzebub into Satan is being divided and cast- 
 ing out himself.^ It is further certain that Jesus set up no 
 theory about Satan, and in no way derived or explained him 
 as perhaps a fallen archangel; that He does not touch the 
 riddle which is presented in the notion of a personal and 
 radically evil being, especially within the biblical belief in 
 God. What He means by the name Satan is simply that 
 evil, in the world of nature and of history, is an actual, 
 uniform, and fearful power, and that this power is in no way 
 to be traced back to God, but is the element in the world 
 which apes God, and is opposed to God — a thought which, 
 as it produced the idea of Satan in the Old Testament, must 
 even to-day be recognised by every earnest ethical and 
 religious thinker. 
 
 § 9. The Inner Eelation of God to the World 
 
 What, then, is the relation of God to this world, in which 
 what is opposed to Him, that is, moral evil, thus exists, nay 
 is dominant ? It is just what we would expect from His 
 heavenly fatherliness, from the idea of holy love. He is 
 related to the world so closely, and is as present and operative 
 in it as He can be without denying His absolute goodness, 
 His holy perfection, and without interfering with the funda- 
 mental condition of all development of good in the world,. 
 the freedom of the creature. Though the world in its 
 present condition, as almv ovro? (Luke xvi. 8), is far from 
 being God's kingdom, it yet remains His work and workshop. 
 If the Judaism of that time separated God and the world 
 from each other almost deisticaUy, if Sadduceeism viewed the 
 earth as the mere playground of human caprice, and Pharisa- 
 ism but feebly raised itself above this by the assumption of 
 a divine fate, or law of destiny,^ Jesus, on the other hand, 
 conceives the relation of His Father to the world as one 
 
 1 Cf. my Leben Jesu, i. p. 303. 
 
 2 Cf. Josepius, Antdq. xviii. 3. 1, xiii. 5. 9. 
 
96 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 thoroughly instinct with life ; the Father is to Him really 
 what He calls Him in Matt. xi. 25, Lord of heaven and 
 earth. First, He treats the thought of God as Creator 
 seriously. Everything created by God is in itself innocent 
 and pure. "With absolute consistency He disclaims, in 
 doctrine and example, the ascetic' anxiety and embarrassment 
 in the use of things natural, which dualistic influences at 
 that time were forcing even into Judaism (cf. Matt. xi. 19, 
 XV. 11). And God has by no means withdrawn Himself 
 from the world once created. It is He who makes His sun 
 to rise, and the fertilising rain to fall, who feeds the fowls 
 of the heavens, and clothes the lilies of the field fairer than 
 Solomon in all his glory (Matt. v. 45, vi. 26). Jesus cer- 
 tainly does not, as we have seen, trace back to His heavenly 
 Father the evil and pernicious in nature, as He does the 
 beautiful and salutary ; but even with regard to the evil He 
 thinks of Him as the Almighty Kuler of the world, without 
 whose will nothing, not even the smallest event, can take 
 place. " Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing ? and one 
 of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. 
 But the very hairs of your head are all numbered " (Matt. x. 
 29). That is, not a hair will be injured without the will of 
 your Father in heaven. The temptations also which lie in 
 the path of the children of men do not indeed proceed from 
 God, but yet are somehow in His hand. He can lead into 
 temptation ; He can also lead us not into temptation, as is 
 attested by the sixth petition of the Lord's Prayer. He can 
 also shorten temptations, lest they should overcome His elect 
 (Matt. xxiv. 22). In like manner, God is in no way pre- 
 vented by the permanence of nature from hearing prayer or 
 working miracles. Though prayer, in the sense of Jesus, as 
 the Lord's Prayer shows, is not in the first instance directed 
 to things earthly and finite, yet these are not excluded from 
 it. Of course the common saying : " All things are possible 
 with God" (Mark x. 27), admits of the exception, which is 
 self-evident and expressly recognised by Jesus in Gethsemane, 
 that whatever contradicts His higher aims, the purpose of His 
 eternal wisdom and love, is not possible with God. But that 
 does not hinder God from being at all times able and willing 
 to give good gifts to His praying children, in virtue of the 
 
THE HEAVENLY FATHER AND THE WOELD 97 
 
 mutual relation which exists between fatherly love and 
 childlike trust (Matt. vii. 7-11; Mark xi. 23, 24). In 
 particular, He has given His Son power to remove at times 
 the natural trouble which harasses man, as a sign of the near 
 approach of God's kingdom (Matt. xi. 4, xii. 28), and this 
 power is also to be transferred to those who, as His 
 messengers, are to carry the glad news to all the world 
 (Mark x. 8). But, finally, the heavenly Father is not satis- 
 fied with keeping the world mainly as it is, and cheering it 
 with an abundance of helps and favours. He guides the 
 whole world onwards towards an ideal goal of perfection. 
 Behind the dark night of the alwv o5to?, the present im- 
 perfect and evil condition of the world, shines the dawn of 
 an alwv fieXKasv, in which a new, perfect, and imperishable 
 order of the world will appear, a TraXiryyevea-la of heaven 
 and; earth which will abolish the contrast of the two in 
 a completed kingdom of God (Matt. xix. 28 ; Luke xx. 
 34-36). 
 
 § 10. The Divine Eighteousness 
 
 As to the relation of God to sinful man in particular, it 
 may be said that in the teaching of Jesus it is righteousness 
 and mercy or grace going hand in hand. Without expressing 
 the idea of the divine righteousness in this sense, Jesus prefers 
 to present the divine procedure as a suum cuique, an appoint- 
 ing of fit recompenses. " He who exalteth himself shall be 
 abased ; and he who humbleth himself will be exalted " (Luke 
 xviii 14). "To him that hath shall be given, and he shall 
 have abundance ; but from him that hath not shall be taken 
 away even that which he hath " (Mark iv. 25; Matt. xxv. 
 29). "If ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly 
 Father will also forgive your trespasses ; but if ye forgive not 
 men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your 
 trespasses" (Matt. vi. 14, 15). But that is not the suum 
 cuique of the cold rule of justice ; the rule of justice is never 
 generous, forgiving, loving. It is the righteousness of holy 
 love which is here described, — a righteousness which is merci- 
 ful towards the poor because he is poor, which recognises in 
 every susceptibility and turning towards itself a claim on its 
 
 BEYSCHLAG. — I. 7 
 
98 NKW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 favour, and only denies itself in judgment to the unsuscept- 
 ible and obdurate. This is the point from which alone we 
 can understand Jesus' conception of God's punishments and 
 rewards. The love of God is to Him as an all-surrounding 
 atmosphere, which penetrates wherever it can find an entrance, 
 creating and exalting life wherever it comes. The praying 
 publican has only to open his guilt-burdened heart in a " God 
 be merciful to me a sinner," and grace and forgiveness enter 
 into it. But the human heart in its selfishness and sin stops 
 all openings against this atmosphere, and so keeps life out 
 and death in. And the wrath of God, His penalties and 
 judgments, mean simply His denying Himself to those who 
 deny themselves to Him, and leaving them to the death and 
 self-condemnation which necessarily rule where access to the 
 true eternal life is closed. Accordingly, in the holy order of 
 the world all evil punishes and condemns itself, and yet only 
 the absolute evil, the completed break with eternal love, falls 
 under the irrevocable final judgment. An immeasurable 
 series of relative judgments proceeds throughout this world, 
 in which everything is intended for developing to a final goal, 
 for growing towards a day of harvest, and these are at length 
 summed up just as in the history of Israel the sentences are 
 summed up in the approaching destruction of Jerusalem 
 (Matt, xxiii. 35). And yet through all these judgments 
 again runs an unexhausted goodness, a mercy that never 
 grows weary so long as there is any possibility of deliverance. 
 God is righteous, and in this righteousness just, good, and 
 merciful towards His adversaries. He gives them what they 
 will take from Him, His rain and His sunshine (Matt. v. 45). 
 He also distinguishes between weakness and wickedness, 
 between sins of ignorance and sins of wilfulness. "The 
 servant who knew his lord's will and did it not shall be 
 beaten with many stripes ; but he who knew it not and hath 
 done what is worthy of stripes shall be beaten with few 
 stripes," an idea from which Jesus infers a specially mild 
 judgment of God about the heathen. " If such deeds (of 
 revelation) had been done in Sidon or even in Sodom, they 
 had repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes ; but it will be 
 more tolerable for Sidon and Sodom in the day of judgment 
 than for you" (Matt. xi. 20-24). Most remarkable is that 
 
THE HEAVENLY FATHER AND THE WORLD 99 
 
 passage which speaks of the pardonableness of all sin except 
 the sin against the Holy Ghost (Mark iii. 28 ; Matt. xii. 31 f. ; 
 Luke xii. 10). It not only opens up the possibility of sin 
 being forgiven (and therefore also of conversion) in the world 
 to come, but contains the idea that every sin which admits of 
 fuller knowledge, and so of conversion, is also capable of 
 forgiveness ; and only that obstinacy is excluded which shuts 
 out both learning and conversion, and even the eternal truth 
 and love inwardly felt and experienced. The same idea of the 
 divine righteousness of love lies at the basis of Jesus' doctrine 
 of reward. The reward of which Jesus mostly speaks (cf. 
 Matt. V. 12, vi. 1-16, x. 41, 42, xx. 1-16), has nothing to 
 do with a legal merit. In the teaching of Jesus there is no 
 such thing in the usual sense of the word as merit in the 
 presence of God ; for when we have done all things which God 
 requires, we have only done what was our duty (Luke xvii. 
 7—10).^ On the contrary, when, in Matt. vi. 6, the heavenly 
 Father rewards the prayer which is offered from a sincere 
 heart, — prayer which in no way establishes a claim of 
 right, — it is clear that here again rules the suum cuique 
 of merciful love, to which the prayer of poverty is sufficient 
 claim to the communication of love's riches. We shall have 
 to come back in another later connection to this idea of 
 reward, to which an unreasonable objection has sometimes 
 been taken. In its relation to God, it simply means that in 
 all the good he thinks and does man has to do, not with an 
 impotent abstract idea, but with an almighty living reality 
 of good, in which there is reward for all that is thought and 
 done within its sphere. That is the manifest blessing of the 
 Christian faith in God, that with every act in which we 
 surrender ourselves to the eternal holy love, and for it sacri- 
 fice our temporal welfare and selfish nature, we are enriched 
 by gaining "a treasure in the heavens" (Matt. xix. 21). 
 
 § 11. The Grace and Mercy of God 
 
 If Jesus conceives the righteousness of God as merciful 
 and gracious, so, on the other hand, He regards grace and 
 
 ^ The unprofitable servant is lie who brings to his lord no more than 
 he costs him for his daily bread. 
 
100 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 mercy as righteous, that is, morally conditioned.^ That at 
 once appears in the most obvious expression of God's pitying, 
 fatherly love towards sinful man, the forgiveness of sin. Sin 
 in relation to the eternal rights of God is arrears of payment 
 due. It is debt, and this debt cannot be discharged by any 
 human performance, but can only be cancelled by divine 
 forgiveness. Jesus proclaims this forgiveness richly, portrays 
 it in the most moving pictures, such as the Parable of the 
 Prodigal Son, that no sum, though it were ten thousand talents 
 (Matt, xviii. 24), is too great for it to cancel. But it is 
 throughout morally conditioned, and that not merely by the 
 preceding, but also by the succeeding conduct of the man. 
 Thus, Jesus in the Lord's Prayer teaches His disciples to pray 
 for the forgiveness of their debts, but at the same time, that 
 they must show God's forgiveness to their debtors, for God 
 forgives only on this presupposition ; and where this does not 
 take place, the remission of debt already made is, according 
 to the Parable of the Unfaithful Steward, revoked, and the 
 divine mercy gives place to righteous judicial wrath (Matt, 
 xviii. 23—35). But the connection between mercy and 
 righteousness lies still deeper, and is a more radical one. 
 Mere forgiveness is not the one entire work of grace. The 
 grace of God has a more comprehensive aim, within which 
 forgiveness is only one element, a means to an end — the aim 
 of delivering the lost (Luke xv., xix. 10). That the sinner 
 become a new man, that he be converted and live, is the aim 
 of the divine grace (Matt, xviii. 12— 14) ; and when this aim 
 is attained in a man, when — in the language of the parable — 
 the lost lamb is found, God can righteously forgive, for the lost 
 is now found. The man has been converted, has broken with 
 sin, and therefore the heavenly Father can pass over the sins 
 of the past, just as the father in the parable makes no more 
 mention of his son's way of death, from the moment when he 
 sees that the lost is found, the dead alive. This relation of 
 
 ^ The idea of divine grace is just as little formally present in the 
 synoptic teaching of Jesus as that of the divine righteousness, but both 
 ideas are reaUy all the more richly present. The grace of God is presented 
 by Jesus chiefly under the image of compassionate love, of mercy (cf . Matt. 
 xviii. 27 ; Luke xv. 20), but it lies at the basis of the whole message of the 
 kingdom of heaven coming near to sinners. 
 
THE HEAVENLY FATHER AND THE WORLD 101 
 
 affinity between grace and righteousness, righteousness and 
 mercy, in the view of Jesus, corrects an error into which the 
 doctrinal development of the Church has fallen, and which, 
 up to this moment, throws a painful shadow on the under- 
 standing of the gospel. By detaching both ideas, that of 
 righteousness and that of grace, from their root, the idea of 
 holy love, and by conceiving righteousness in a juristic legal 
 sense and grace in an antinomian sense, a contradiction arose 
 between the two attributes in God, which had to be reconciled 
 by a historical fact, by the sacrifice on Golgotha. The grace 
 and mercy of God should urge to the pardon of the sinner, 
 the forgiveness of sin. Yet these conflict with the righteous- 
 ness of God in itself, and can therefore take place only on 
 condition of an atonement satisfying the claims of righteous- 
 ness. This theory cannot appeal with reason even to the 
 Old Testament, to say nothing of the teaching of Jesus. 
 Though the forgiveness of sin appears in the Mosaic law to 
 be, in certain circumstances, conditioned by a sacrifice, yet 
 the teaching of the psalms and prophets already sets aside 
 the idea that God has not inner freedom to remit debt with- 
 out getting payment of it in some other way. The sacrifices 
 with which God is well pleased are a broken and a contrite 
 spirit, that is, a penitent heart. Wherever that is, there is 
 forgiveness (Ps. cxxx. 4, 7) without any other satisfaction. 
 The teaching of Jesus goes further on this track. He shows 
 His Father's heart not narrower, but still wider than in the 
 Old Testament ; He teaches that God , not only forgives the 
 man who turns to Him without more ado, but that He wishes 
 to convert even the unconverted, in order to be able to for- 
 give them — that He seeks the lost until He finds it. In the 
 Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican, the penitent invokes 
 the grace of God, and without any reservation or reference to 
 a future sacrifice, it is said, " he went down to his house justi- 
 fied" (Luke xviii. 14). In the Parable of the Unfaithful 
 Steward the relation of God to the sinner is compared with 
 the position of a king to whom one of his servants owed ten 
 thousand talents ; the servant prays for mercy, and his lord 
 sets him free, and remits the debt, without any mention of a 
 vicarious payment (Matt. viii. 23). The prodigal son trusts 
 to an unbroken love and goodness of his father, and finds it 
 
102 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 without any innocent brother having to make amends for the 
 guilty. The father, like a true father, receives him to favour, 
 and restores him to all his filial rights. How should he not ? 
 He has the best satisfaction he could desire : " This my son was 
 dead and is alive again, was lost and is found " ; he has begun 
 a new life, and will continue it. Jesus never taught other- 
 wise, when speaking of divine mercy or forgiveness of sin. 
 He never represented His Father's heart as being inwardly 
 hindered in freely forgiving. We shall show in its proper 
 place that even that which He afterwards said of a ransom 
 for many, of a relation of His death to the forgiveness of sins, 
 neither adds nor takes anything from this. The righteous- 
 ness and grace of God appear apart in His teaching, only in 
 so far as from the former are deduced essential holy require- 
 ments of God with which His blessed fellowship is connected, 
 from the latter gracious grants, which make the fulfilment of 
 those requirements possible to man — law and gospel. But 
 both holy requirement and gracious grant flow equally from 
 the idea of the eh dyadoi;, from God's essential goodness, in 
 virtue of which He must be the holy original of all actual 
 goodness, as well as the power, rich in love and help, for all 
 growth in goodness. But for human thought and experience, 
 and therefore in the teaching of Jesus, the two sides necessarily 
 appear apart. And therefore we have now to take a closer 
 view of them in succession. 
 
 CHAPTEE V 
 THE WAY OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 § 1. The Concept of Eighteousness 
 
 Although the teaching of Jesus is essentially gospel and 
 not law, yet His gospel embodies the law of God. If the 
 God and Father of Jesus Christ is reXeto? in the ethical sense 
 (Matt. V. 48), or if the kingdom of heaven is fellowship with 
 Him, then the preaching of the kingdom of heaven must, 
 above all, require the being perfect, as the Father in heaven 
 is perfect, that is, — to use an expression of Jesus Himself, — 
 it is a preaching of the way of righteousness (Matt. xxi. 32). 
 
THE WAY OF EIGHTEOUSNESS 103 
 
 In point of fact this exacting side of His gospel appears to be 
 more fully and studiously developed in the teaching of Jesus 
 than even the announcement of grace. We have it at once 
 in the fj^Tavoeire ; then it forms the essential content of the 
 Sermon on the Mount, vyhich plainly, whatever circumstances 
 led to its complete formation, in its main content belongs to 
 the earlier period of Jesus' ministry and His, formally, most 
 developed teaching. We are strictly [following the Sermon 
 on the Mount when we comprehend the religious and moral 
 demands of the gospel in the idea of righteousness, for that 
 sermon itself repeatedly comprehends in this Old Testament 
 watchword the claims which the kingdom of God makes on 
 all its citizens (Matt. v. 6, 20, vi. 1, and especially vi. 33). 
 Of course, righteousness is not spoken of here as one particular 
 virtue alongside of others, but as a summary of all that is 
 just before God, which is also the fundamental biblical concep- 
 tion of righteousness. What is just, that is, right (originally 
 straight), is that which corresponds to a standard. The 
 standard here spoken of is God's holy nature and will. He 
 who conforms to that is right in God's sight. In this sense 
 Matt. V. 20, vi. 33 set forth righteousness as the essential 
 aim of the efforts of those who wish to belong to the kingdom 
 of God. " Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness 
 of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall not enter into the kingdom 
 of heaven." " Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteous- 
 ness, and all these things shall be added unto you." ^ The 
 consonance of the SiKaioavvf] 6eov, proposed as the goal of 
 the seeking in the latter passage, with the well-known funda- 
 mental conception of the Epistle to the Eomans (Eom. i. 17, 
 iii. 21), should not mislead us into the supposition that Jesus 
 had in His mind a righteousness to be bestowed by God, 
 imputed to faith. The BiKaio(Tvv'r] 6eov has rather the same 
 meaning here as in Jas. i. 2 : bpyr) yap dvSpov BiKaiocrvvr^v 6eov 
 ovK ipyd^erat, that is, does not what is right in God's sight. 
 The idea of a righteousness to be done is not only verbally in 
 the passage Matt. vi. 1, but runs through the whole Sermon on 
 
 ^ This passage, according to the best witnesses, should be read : ^-/irshs 
 Sg irpoTou ritu fixai'Ktliiii z«i r'/in ^ixaiouvnu aiiToi (that is, 6toi). It speaks, 
 therefore, of a righteousness of God, and not, as one often hears, of a 
 righteousness of the kingdom of God. 
 
104 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 the Mount. The righteousness which is required in v. ^0 
 for the kingdom of heaven is, according to the whole further 
 course of the chapter, not one to be laid hold of by faith, hut 
 one to be acquired by a right doing of the divine command- 
 ments, as is abundantly confirmed by the exclusion of the 
 ipya^o/j^voi, rrjv avofjilav in the closing exhortations of the 
 Sermon on the Mount (vii. 16-19, 20, 21, 23, 24). There 
 can be no doubt at all about the fact that Jesus taught a 
 doing of righteousness as the condition of an interest in the 
 future kingdom of God. To the scribe who asked about 
 eternal life He answered : " Do that, and you will live " (Luke 
 X. 28). He referred the rich young man in all earnestness 
 to the ten commandments when he came to Him with the 
 same question (Mark x. 19). He declared those who did the 
 deXriiJbaTa of His Father in heaven to be His brothers and 
 sisters (Mark iii. 35). Consequently, this righteousness is 
 that moral condition of man which corresponds to the divine 
 law. It is indispensable to sharing in the future kingdom ;of 
 heaven, because the full and blessed communion with the holy 
 God cannot be conceived without a character conformed to 
 God. That is pictorially set forth in the Parable of the 
 Marriage of the King's Son. There is a wedding garment, a 
 habitus fit for God's presence, without which a man may 
 indeed force his way into the heavenly palace, but cannot 
 take part in the king's marriage feast, and must expect rather 
 to be cast forth from it.^ 
 
 1 An interpretation, as persistent as it is baseless, imports into this 
 parable the idea tbat it was a custom in Israel to present tbe marriage 
 guests with a festal garment on their entrance to the festal chamber, and 
 that this free gift is to be thought of as despised by that unworthy guest. 
 Thus men arbitrarily introduce Pauline notions into the teaching of Jesus ; 
 but all appeals to Paul cannot subvert the statement of the Saviour : •" Not 
 everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, will enter into the kingdom of 
 heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father in heaven." That alleged 
 custom cannot be proved arohaeologically; and even if it could, the parable 
 would not simply leave a feature on which so much depends to be read 
 between the lines. The teaching of Paul is not contradicted; but the point 
 in question is not how one may obtain possession of the righteousness 
 demanded, but is simply to emphasise the demand for it. 
 
the way of righteousness 1.05 
 
 § 2. Position towards the current Teaching and Practice 
 OF Eighteousness 
 
 The people among whom Jesus appeared had not now for 
 the first time, and as something entirely new, to receive the 
 divine demand ior righteousness. Israel had Moses and the 
 prophets (Luke xvi. 29). Through Moses, God had given 
 them His law, which, as a holy order, comprehended and 
 governed the whole life of the people ; and through the pro- 
 phets He had again and again enjoined it on them, and 
 expounded it to them in its depth and inwardness. The 
 scribes and Pharisees, indeed, now sat in Moses' seat, and 
 explained the law to the people in a way that was opposed 
 to the prophetic mode of thought. They externalised the 
 divine commandments, and led the people away from demands 
 on the heart, into an enormous amount of external observances 
 which they wished to draw as " a hedge around the law," as 
 a second law orally transmitted for the securing and carrying 
 out of the first (Matt, xxiii. 2, 4). Jesus therefore had to 
 develop His idea of righteousness so as to make its relation 
 to the idea current among the people understood. What then 
 is the position He takes up towards the doctrine and practice 
 of righteousness that prevail among the people ? He declares, 
 above all, that they are insufficient to give one an interest in 
 the kingdom of God. "Except your righteousness exceed 
 the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall not 
 enter into the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. v. 20). But He 
 further distinguishes between commandments of God and 
 ordinances of man, between law and prophets on the one 
 hand,^ and the traditions of the elders on the other, that is, 
 the additional commandments of the scribes and Pharisees. 
 The latter He at once rejects, and, indeed, for the sake of the 
 former.^ Commandments of men have in His estimation no 
 right and no place beside the commandments of God in 
 
 1 In this comparison the prophets are always (Matt. v. 17, vii. 12 ; 
 Mark xxiii. 40 ; Luke xvi. 29) taken into consideration only as the God- 
 sent preachers of righteousness, not as predictors of the Messianic future. 
 
 ^ Jesus seems in Matt, xxiii. 3 to recommend the people to observe 
 also the Pharisaic ordinances ; but immediately (ver. 4) contradicts that. 
 Either the saying is inaccurately transmitted, or in it He merely wishes to 
 
106 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 matters pertaining to God's righteousness. They have a 
 parasitic existence at the cost of the commandments of God, 
 as He proves in a thorough Protestant way to the scribes and 
 Pharisees by reference to the harm they have done in the 
 case of the fourth commandment, and therefore the terse 
 sentence applies to them : " Every plant which My heavenly 
 Father hath not planted must be rooted out" (cf. Mark vii. 
 1 ff. ; Matt. XV. 1 £f.). This presupposes the imperishable- 
 ness and full sufficiency of the divine commandments ; and 
 the same is implied in the great fundamental declaration of 
 the Sermon on the Mount : " Think not that I am come to 
 destroy the law and the prophets : I am not come to destroy, 
 but to fulfil" (Matt. V. 17). To annul, that would be to do 
 away with them, to declare them transitory, and not binding ; 
 how could God's perfect messenger do that with what God has 
 revealed respecting His holy will through His former messen- 
 gers ? Yet nothing is more certain than the fact that Jesus was 
 not content with rejecting the Pharisaic and Eabbinic ampli- 
 fications or expositions of the law, but that He also amended 
 the Mosaic law. In the examples of His doctrine of righteous- 
 ness that follow in Matthew, He puts His " but I say unto 
 you" twice against the rules hitherto gathered from Moses 
 and his interpreters, and four times against the very words of 
 Moses. And when He explains the words "thou shalt not 
 kill " to the effect that unbrotherly anger is a violation of the 
 sixth commandment ; when He goes beyond " thou shalt not 
 forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths," 
 and says " swear not at all " ; when He puts in place of " an 
 eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," the rule, reward not 
 like with like, but evil with good, — He has in all these cases 
 undeniably and consciously annulled the Mosaic letter as such. 
 We have a still more remarkable example of how little He 
 felt Himself bound by that letter : the Mosaic permission of 
 divorce by means of a letter of divorce. He opposes with 
 His own verdict, and refutes the appeal to that positive per- 
 mission, not by quoting another Mosaic authority, but by the 
 divine idea of marriage, and so puts the ideal law of nature 
 
 apply the proverb : " Do according to their -words, but not according to 
 their works." There can be no doubt about the protesting attitude of 
 Jesus towards the additions of the elders (Mark vii., Matt. xv.). 
 
THE WAY OF KIGHTEOUSNESS 107 
 
 in the place of the imperfect positive law (Mark x. 2-12 ; 
 Matt. xix. 3, 9). The principle of this notable way of 
 dealing with the Mosaic law must be contained in the 
 irXripwaai (Matt. v. 17). That this word cannot mean here 
 the actual fulfilment of the law nor the fulfilment of the 
 prophets as announcers of future things, follows, as already 
 noted, from the whole connection. For the whole argument 
 that follows does not discuss the actual performance of the 
 law or the realisation of the Messianic predictions, but the 
 development of the Mosaic commandments to the fulness of 
 the divine meaning lying at their basis. But the word cannot 
 signify in one and the same breath an actual and a didactic 
 fulfilling, but only the latter ; and this is what Jesus (from 
 ver. 21) does with a whole series of legal precepts. He frees 
 them from the imperfection of the letter and reveals the 
 fulness of the divine intention, and so fulfils them, that is, 
 makes them complete or perfect.^ Only thus can we explain 
 how Jesus is able to say that He does not annul even the 
 least requirement of the law (Matt. v. 18), though He breaks 
 the letter of the law in so many places. The full develop- 
 ment necessarily bursts open the imperfect forms in which the 
 divine will was still enclosed in the law of Moses, just as the 
 fulfilment which the bud gains as a blossom inevitably bursts 
 the sheath in which it was enclosed. But that is no annul- 
 ment in the sense of ver. 17, no doing away with or rejection 
 of any commandment of God as though it were of no further use. 
 It is to give its right value to the law's deepest meaning. 
 
 § 3. Eelation to the Eitual Law 
 
 If we now endeavour to follow up this principle of Jesus 
 in its applications, we are met by the difficulty of its relation 
 to the ritual part of the law. For although this very aspect 
 of the law was the most prominent in the life of the people, 
 
 1 That Dr. Weiss, in his revision of Meyer's Commentary on Matthew, 
 wishes to replace this exposition of the best expositors by that deduced 
 from Rom. xiii. 8, is certainly no improvement. The intepretation of 
 yry^Yipovu, as making full something incomplete, or imperfect, that is, bring- 
 ing to perfection, is indisputable and frequent. Of. Matt, xxiii. 32 ; Mark 
 i. 15 ; John iii. 29 ; 2 Cor. x. 6, etc. 
 
b 
 
 108 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 Jesus has not expressed Himself in detail about it, nor has 
 He illustrated what He means by fulfilment by any example 
 taken from it. It has been disputed whether Jesus makes 
 any distinction at all between ritual and moral command- 
 ments ; ^ but neither is that altogether correct, nor does it solve 
 the question how He thought of the fulfilment of ritual law. 
 Certainly our formal distinction of moral and ritual law is not 
 to be sought for in His teaching. But He has distinguished 
 great and little, and even least commandments in the law 
 (Matt. xxii. 38, v. 19), and the inward and spiritual character 
 of the greatest commandments allows us to draw a safe 
 inference as to the opposite character of the least. That He 
 regards the ritual commandments as belonging to the latter 
 can scarcely need any proof : " Go and be reconciled to thy 
 brother, and then come and offer thy gift," marks a plain order 
 of rank (Matt. v. 24 ; cf. Luke xi. 42). Though Jesus, as 
 was natural, lived with His people in observance of their 
 venerable customs and usages, and left His disciples, and 
 much more the people, undisturbed in them (Mark v. 24, 
 i. 44, xiv. 12 ; Luke xvii. 14), yet there is no mistaking 
 the fact that these forms had no longer any binding power 
 upon His conscience. He has expressed Himself most exhaust- 
 ively about the Sabbath- — always and everywhere in the sense 
 of freedom of conscience. Though the saying : " The Sabbath 
 was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath " (Mark ii. 27), 
 allowed this chief outward ordinance a value as a benefit to 
 man, yet the inference that it need not, on that account, bind 
 man to his hurt, is the keynote, and the telling words follow: 
 " The Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath " (ver. 28).^ 
 Other evidences of conscious inner freedom with regard to 
 the outward observances are not wanting. Thus Jesus can 
 accompany the rule of love to one's neighbour (Matt. vii. 12) 
 with " this is the law and the prophets." The ritual com- 
 
 1 Cf. Weiss, N. T. Theol. i. p. 110 [Trans. T. & T. Clark]. 
 
 2 That this does not simply mean, as Weiss will have it, that He has 
 the right to explain the Sabbath commandment, a right which the scribes 
 also had, but that He has the right to put Himself above the Sabbath, and 
 release His disciples from its observance, is sufficiently clear from the con- 
 text. Jesus does not justify Himself by an exposition of the law, but, as 
 the argument from David's eating of the shewbread proves, He frankly 
 admits the violation of the letter of the law. 
 
THE WAY OF EIGHTEOUSNESS 109 
 
 mandments are to Him so unessential that He treats them in 
 this expression as though they had no existence. Pasting, 
 which is quietly presupposed in the Sermon on the Mount as 
 a pious exercise of the people (Matt. vi. 16, 18), is expressly 
 left an open question to the disciples to be treated according 
 to their spiritual needs (Mark ii. 18).^ When the temple tax 
 ia demanded of Him, and Peter at once recognises the obligation, 
 Jesus makes clear to him that no king taxes his own son. He 
 bids him pay it, not because He did not know Himself to be 
 inwardly free from such imposts, but only " lest we offend " 
 (give offence to the Jews), (Matt. xvii. 2 7). When He preaches : 
 " Not that which goeth into a man (food and drink) defileth 
 him" (Mark vii. 15 ; Matt. xv. 11), He is certainly in the first 
 place opposing Pharisaic ordinances. But in so doing, how 
 could Jesus possibly avoid disturbing people with reference to 
 all Mosaic distinctions of clean and unclean food ? Finally, as 
 to the value of sacrificial commandments, we have from the 
 lips of Jesus the great prophetic quotation : " I will have mercy, 
 andnot sacrifice" (Hos. vi. 6 ; Matt. ix. 13, xii. 7), a saying which 
 attests not only the clear distinction of the ethical and ritual 
 part of the law in the mind of Jesus, but also that He traced 
 that distinction to the nature of God, and saw that for Him 
 the ethical had importance, but the ritual had none. But 
 how does all this square with the saying (Matt. v. 1 8) in which 
 Jesus seems to put His general declaration, not to destroy but 
 to fulfil, in the strongest way, so as to secure the preservation 
 of the ritual commandments : " Till heaven and earth pass, 
 one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all 
 
 1 Weiss, N. T. Theol. i. p. Ill, says, " that from the historical point 
 of view it is inconceivable and incapable of proof that Jesus considered 
 the legal order of life and ■worship as defective in itself, or ascribed to 
 Himself in principle freedom to deal with it as He pleased." The proof 
 that He really did so has been adduced above. And as to the conceiv- 
 ability, I for my part could not conceive, just from a historical point of 
 view, Jesus as inwardly contented with Mosaic ceremonial, or bound by 
 His own feeling to things which did not follow from the love of God 
 as such. But Weiss appears to me to contradict himself in this matter. 
 For when, as he recognises, Jesus expected the speedy destruction of the 
 temple, and with it of the sacrificial worship, and held the perfected theo- 
 cracy no longer bound to the Old Testament ritual, He must have seen 
 the latter to be defective, and have ascribed to Himself in principle free- 
 dom to deal with it as He pleased. 
 
110 KBW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 be fulfilled " ? ^ The saying which immediately follows, in 
 which the least commandments are manifestly an exposition 
 of the jot and tittle, gives the explanation. If he who " breaks 
 one of these least commandments, and teaches men so, shall be 
 called the least in the kingdom of heaven," then the doing 
 away with the ritual commandments seems at first to be a 
 proceeding which does only a subordinate service to the king- 
 dom of God, and therefore confers only a subordinate rank in 
 that kingdom, but yet is not in itself incompatible with parti- 
 cipation in the kingdom of heaven. Still more significant is 
 the following statement : " But whosoever shall do and teach 
 them, shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven." There 
 it is manifest that the doing and teaching of the least com- 
 mandments which is spoken of, must be altogether of a 
 different nature from that pursued by the Pharisees ; for they 
 with their doing and teaching of the least things in the law 
 are not only not great in the kingdom of heaven, but, as the 
 following verse shows, do not get within the kingdom at all. 
 Not therefore a literal, but only a spiritual doing of the least 
 commandments can be meant here. In other words, Jesus 
 must have acknowledged an inner content even in the most 
 external and least things in the law, — an idea which only is to 
 attain its true value, its fulfilment, in His kingdom. And He 
 can only have done so with regard to the ritual commandments 
 by conceiving them symbolically, by applying circumcision to 
 the circumcision of the heart, sacrifice to the sacrifice of the 
 heart, etc., as He had already done in particular construc- 
 tions of the Old Testament. Thus, for example, in Luke xxii. 
 
 16, He has spoken of a fulfilling of the Passover in the king- 
 dom of God, undoubtedly in the sense of a living communion 
 of His people with Him who was slain for them, which He 
 found foreshadowed in the eating (taking into themselves) 
 of the paschal lamb. And in what other way than this — 
 the opponents of this explanation might be asked — can 
 Jesus have at all conceived the fulfilling promised in Matt. v. 
 
 17, even in the case of the ritual commandments ? Thus the 
 
 ' The first 'ins is to be taken in the sense of " sooner may,'' whicli does 
 not, like the other at the end of the sentence, apply to a temporal aim 
 (of. Bleek, Synoptiker, i. p. 249). The word is paraphrased in this sense 
 in Luke xvi. 17. 
 
THE WAY OF KIGHTEOUSNESS 111 
 
 seemingly so anti-Pauline statement (Matt. v. 18) explains 
 itself in a sense which the Apostle Paul could have uncon- 
 ditionally accepted. The em av TrdvTa yevriTai at the close of 
 the verse is manifestly related in meaning to the " shall do " 
 in ver. 19. It is the spiritual fulfilment, the true perform- 
 ance of the ritual commandments. And only till this doing 
 is in every sense complete (ew?) shall the axiom hold good, 
 that not one jot or tittle shall pass away from the law. 
 Nothing should pass away till it was done, or fulfilled. But 
 when they have found the highest realisation, the jot and 
 tittle may perish, just as the breaking of the least command- 
 ment in ver. 19 is not in itself incompatible with the king- 
 dom of heaven. Accordingly, the positive teaching of Jesus 
 about the ritual law is, that even among these least command- 
 ments there is no mere empty vain husk without a kernel to 
 be thrown away. In each there is a divine thought, an im- 
 perishable idea, which must come to its rights before the husk 
 of the letter be allowed to perish. Again, what other view of 
 the ritual law is consistent with His free inwardness on the 
 one hand, and His belief in the divine origin of the whole 
 Mosaic law on the other ? ^ 
 
 § 4. The fundamental Commandments as Staeting-point 
 OF the Fulfilment 
 
 How, then, does Jesus, in consonance with this principle 
 of fulfilment, develop His doctrine of righteousness from the 
 Old Testament law ? Above all, by setting a view of the law, 
 as a living whole, against the prevailing piecemeal view. The 
 
 1 The hasty judgment whicli conceives the passage (Matt. v. 18) in the 
 extreme Judaic sense, and rejects it from the series of genuine words of 
 Jesus, is indeed regarded in many places as the only scientific judgment. 
 But it can neither answer the above question, nor explain the ius an 
 vi.ina. ■/iiiirrai, nor give us any information as to how such an extreme 
 Judaic saying could find acceptance in the Pauline Gospel of Luke. But 
 even the puzzling explanation of Eitschl, which Wendt {Lehre Jesu, ii. 
 p. 341) has again revived, that in Matt. v. 18 Jesus does not mean the 
 Old Testament written law, but that which He fulfilled in a New Testa- 
 ment way, is quite impossible. N(i>oj cannot mean anything else in ver. 
 18 than what it meant in ver. 17, and we can only speak of jot or tittle 
 in the case of a positive written law, not of an unwritten ideal law. 
 
112 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 scribes and Pharisees conceived the law as consisting of a 
 thousand individual commandments, about whose greater or 
 less importance there might be differences of opinion; and 
 the actual state of the records of the law to some extent 
 justified this. Jesus, on the other hand, finds in the law one 
 principle with two aspects, which unites the whole, two funda- 
 mental commandments, on which the entire thousandfold 
 legislation rests. Questioned as to the greatest command- 
 ment (Mark xii 28; Matt. xxii. 34), He selects from the 
 immense number of individual precepts, and from entirely 
 different parts of' the law-book, two great commandments, and 
 designates them as the poles, the very summary of the law 
 and the prophets : " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all 
 thy heart; and thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."^ 
 These are, in point of fact, the two pillars on which a religious 
 ethic, ideally conceived, rests. The formally unreconciled 
 dualism might seem strange ; but there can be no doubt that 
 this dualism was reduced to unity in the mind of Jesus, that 
 the two commandments were to Him only the religious and 
 the moral sides of one single idea of righteousness. When 
 He teaches the man at the altar who has injured his brother 
 (Matt. V. 23, 24)^ to be first reconciled to his brother, and 
 then offer his gift, He does not wish to rank the brother 
 before the heavenly Father, but to remind us of the fact that 
 the Father above all desires to be loved in His visible image, 
 in man (cf. 1 John iv. 20). Again, when He bases the duty 
 of loving our enemy on the imitation of the divine original 
 (Matt. V. 45-48), He thereby indicates that its motive is to 
 
 1 The novelty in the expression of Jesus lies not only, as Weiss will 
 have it, in the fact that He adds to the recognised first commandment the 
 second, but still more in the fact that He designates these two command- 
 ments as the pivots of the whole law (Matt. xxii. 39 ; cf. vii. 12). A scribe 
 had indeed already (Luke x.) met Jesus with the combination of these two 
 commandments as the sum of the law. But the scribe'either got this from 
 the teaching of Jesus, or the tradition which Luke follows has here mixed 
 up two different events, the first of which is more correctly given in 
 Matt. xii. 28. 
 
 ^ The s}^ii Ti >cara. am does not mean merely (as Wendt, Lehire Jem, p. 
 278, assumes from the German expression to have something against one) 
 that the brother is angry with him who is about to sacrifice, but that he is 
 justly angry, and has a complaint and grievance against him which pre- 
 vents God from being satisfied with his offering. Cf. Kev. ii. 4, 14, 20, etc. 
 
THE WAY OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 113 
 
 be found in filial love to God. And thus His fulfilment of 
 the law consists in the fact that He places the detailed prac- 
 tical commandments in the light of these two inseparable 
 commandments, and so discloses all their height and depth. 
 The six examples of His exposition of the law which the 
 Gospel of Matthew records in succession (v. 21-48), the 
 discussion of murder and adultery, of divorce and swearing, 
 of reward and the treatment of enemies, all concern individual 
 precepts, which, though in themselves moral, become in the 
 theocratic commonwealth more or less legal commandments, 
 and therefore do not contain a full exhibition of those great 
 fundamental commandments ; they simply give a rough indica- 
 tion of their application. But He transforms them from legal 
 back to moral; He leads them back from the sphere of com- 
 mission or omission into what is the original moral sphere, 
 the sphere of disposition, in order thus to make it evident 
 that the gross transgression is the final outcome of a develop- 
 ment in evil, and that the right doing He has required is 
 simply the most elementary inclination to do the will of God. 
 The disposition on which He falls back is everywhere love to 
 God and our neighbour, which excludes malevolent wrath and 
 the unchaste look, which makes marriage indissoluble, and 
 the simple yea or nay as good as an oath, which does not 
 reward like with like, but overcomes evil with good, and 
 includes, in the notion of neighbour, not only friends and 
 brethren, but even enemies. But in reference to the ritual 
 commandments, it was impossible for Jesus to give such 
 examples of His fulfilment of the law as He has given in this 
 series of great moral and judicial precepts, without actually 
 anticipating the abrogation of these commandments. In order 
 to illustrate the fulfilment here He would have been com- 
 pelled to anticipate a process of development which He fore- 
 saw in connection with the entrance of the heathen world 
 into His community, and with the judgment of God on Jeru- 
 salem, the approaching destruction of the temple and its 
 worship, and by so doing He would have prepared for His 
 disciples a situation outwardly and inwardly impossible ; He 
 would have made them strangers among their own people, 
 without being able as yet to communicate to them His own 
 inner freedom (cf. John xvi. 12). He therefore satisfied 
 
 BEYSCHLAG. — I. 8 
 
114 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 Himself with making them feel, both through His teaching 
 and His example, the relative worth of mercy and sacrifice, 
 and thus prepared them for that inner freedom with which 
 He Himself opposed everything that was not worship of God 
 in spirit and in truth. It is abundantly clear, however, from 
 two important sayings, one of which we owe to His friends, 
 the other to His enemies, that He did intend and desire for 
 His future community this very freedom : the saying about 
 the new wine which should not be put into old skins (Mark 
 ti. 22), and the prediction of the new temple not made with 
 hands which He will set up in place of the old, which is to 
 be broken down (Mark xiv. 58). In the first, He has expressed 
 the impossibility of comprehending in the old customary 
 forms of piety the new religious life which He has to com- 
 municate to His own. In the second, He has expressed the 
 certainty that through Him will spring up, in place of the 
 worship of God that has hitherto prevailed, one that is more 
 inward in its nature — a worship in spirit and in truth.^ 
 
 ' When Weiss understands both parables in Mart ii. 18-22, that of the 
 New Cloth on the Old Garment, and that of the New Wine in the Old Skins, 
 as a justification of the disciples of John in their fasting according to the 
 law, the old error is simply reversed by which earlier exegetes explained 
 both parables as a justification of the freedom from fasting of the disciples 
 of Jesus. The first parable justifies the procedure of the Baptist with his 
 disciples, the second that of Jesus with His. One cannot put a patch 
 of New Testament freedom on the garment of a view that is stni essen- 
 tially pre-Messianic, but just as little can one enclose the new wine of the 
 Messianic spirit in the old defective forms of Judaism. Of. my Easter 
 Programme, Die Fastengleichnisse Jesu, 1875. Weiss declares this antithetic 
 interpretation of the two parables to be impossible on account of the con- 
 necting "and," and because the justification of the disciples had already 
 been given — in the image of the children of the bride-chamber. But quite 
 apart from the fact that that " and " might be attributed to a tradition tliat 
 was not clear about the meaning, an antithesis is made by a mere "and" 
 elsewhere (for example. Matt. xii. 35). Certainly Jesus justified His dis- 
 ciples in the image of the children of the bride-chamber, but in the Parable 
 of the Wine and the Skins He justifies Himself. How improbable it is that 
 instead of doing this He should have applied to the Baptist a superfluous 
 double justification, and indeed a most unsuitable second after a fitting 
 first. For the comparison of a ritual freedom with new wine, and the dis- 
 ciples of John with old skins, would have been in the worst possible taste. 
 As to the saying about pulling down and rebuilding the temple, Stephen at 
 least understood it as referring to the break up of the Old Testament forma 
 of worship in favour of the new (Acts vi. 14) ; and certainly this interpre- 
 
the way of righteousness 115 
 
 § 5. The Love of our ISTeighboue 
 
 It is a necessary consequence of the practical character 
 of Jesus' teaching, and His position of conflict with a pro- 
 fessed zeal for God which lacked the simplest moral fruits in 
 life, that in the closer statement of His doctrine of righteous- 
 ness He should give the first place to love of our neighbour. 
 But He has a twofold question to answer with regard to this. 
 First, Who is my neighbour ? and then, What have I to do 
 to him ? The first question was laid before Him by a scribe 
 (Luke X. 29), who considered it a difficult one — probably 
 because he had in his mind all kinds of narrow-hearted 
 limitations for the idea of neighbour. Jesus answers with 
 the story of the Good Samaritan ; that is. He sets a picture 
 of pure human compassion over against the picture of a man 
 in need, — a compassion which does not ask : Who is he ? a 
 countryman, or a stranger and enemy ? but simply sets about 
 relieving his distress. And then, in making the application. 
 He does not ask which of those three, the priest, the Levite, 
 and the Samaritan, was neighbour, but which of them became 
 neighbour to him who fell among murderers ? By so doing 
 He undoubtedly means to say, Do not stand asking who is 
 thy neighbour, but be on the outlook for him to whom thou 
 canst be neighbour, that is, canst show goodness and mercy 
 (Luke X. 23—37). What is here just indicated is directly 
 expressed in Matt. v. 43—48 : that the idea of neighbour 
 includes even enemies, those by whom we are hated and 
 persecuted. If the standpoint of righteousness hitherto has 
 opposed neighbour and enemy to one another, and has there- 
 fore deduced from " thou shalt love thy neighbour " its 
 converse, " and hate thine enemy " (ver. 43), the righteousness 
 of the kingdom of heaven is to love even enemies, and, in 
 case they make all other proofs of love impossible, at least to 
 pray for those who despitefuUy use and persecute us.^ This 
 is demanded by the example of God the ever-merciful, who 
 makes His sun to shine upon the evil and the good, and 
 
 tation has more in its favour than that of the evangelist John (ii. ] 9), who 
 referred the words typologically to the death and resurrection of Jesus. 
 
 ' This is the true reading in Matthew; the fuller form of the saying 
 is in Luke vi. 27, 28. 
 
116 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 sendeth rain upon the just and the unjust. The other 
 question, What have I to do to my neighbour ? Jesus 
 answers most concisely, Matt. vii. 12:" All that ye would 
 that men should do to you, do ye also so to them." The 
 human heart is so conditioned that it knows very well at all 
 times what is due to it from others according to the law of 
 love, while its own charitable duty is obscured by its natural 
 selfishness. It has only therefore to change places, and ask 
 itself what it would desire from others in a like case, in order 
 to know what it should do in any instance. As this practical 
 rule in a sense comprehends everything, so that He can add, 
 " that is the law and the prophets," Jesus enters further into 
 the meaning of the moral action. He does not proceed 
 systematically, and with the intention of including every- 
 thing, but by selection, and as the occasion required ; He 
 presupposes the Ten Commandments as constantly valid, and 
 it is quite enough for Him to illustrate by individual examples 
 what He meant by this continuous authority. Love to one's 
 neighbour displays itself to Him above all in simple goodness, 
 in doing good, and communicating, in giving without second 
 thoughts, without counting on benefit or reward. "Give to 
 him that asketh of thee ; and from him that would borrow of 
 thee turn thou not away" (Matt. v. 42 ; Luke vi. 34, 35). 
 A speech at table, which must be taken as a parable (Luke 
 xiv. 13, 14), exhorts: "When thou makest a feast, invite not 
 thy friends, relations, and rich neighbours ; lest they also bid 
 thee, and a recompense be made thee. But rather invite the 
 poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind, who cannot 
 recompense thee : and thou shalt be blessed." A picture 
 which reminds us of those words of Jesus preserved by Paul, 
 Acts XX. 35: "It is more blessed to give than to receive." 
 To spend our earthly goods on the poor is to Him the best 
 and most faithful management of them, to make to ourselves, 
 as it is said in Luke xvi. 9, friends with the unrighteous 
 Mammon. By the side of giving appears, with special 
 emphasis, the duty of forgiving. The forgiveness of wrong 
 is to be granted not only seven times, as Peter wished, but 
 seventy times seven — that is, without limits (Matt, xviii. 21; 
 Luke xvi. 3, 4). For, as stated in the fifth petition of the 
 Lord's Prayer, and illustrated in the Parable of the Unfaithful 
 
THE WAY OF EIGHTBOUSNESS 117 
 
 Servant (Matt, xviii. 23), the divine forgiveness which we so 
 much need is conditioned by the human forgiveness which 
 we exercise. He only belongs to the kingdom of love as a 
 recipient, who also wishes to belong to it as an agent ; he 
 who proceeds according to cold justice has only strict justice 
 to expect. Ifot that this duty of placability and forgiveness 
 excludes the duty of " rebuke " (e\ery')(^Eiv), that is, of urging 
 to improvement. In fact, it goes hand in hand with forgive- 
 ness, especially when a brother in the narrower sense, a 
 fellow-member in the Church of Christ, is concerned, in 
 whose case such a step has most likelihood of success (Luke 
 xvii. 3ff.; Matt, xviii. 15-21). But the duty of love to 
 forgive sincerely, and to remove every feeling of wrath and 
 revenge, remains, even where there is no apology or change 
 of mind, as is shown by the exhortation to the love of all 
 enemies (Luke vi. 37, 38). On the other hand, there is a 
 zeal for improvement which is not the best, for nothing but 
 true love is able to reform. Jesus therefore, above all, warns 
 men against judging and condemning, that is, against all 
 loveless sentences on the defects of our neighbour, invading 
 the functions of the eternal Judge (Matt. vii. 1 f. ; Luke vi. 
 37). And because to reform, or rather to save a neighbour, 
 to win him for the kingdom of God (Matt, xviii. 15), is 
 certainly the last and highest aim of love, so love begins in 
 personal reformation, in putting away all causes of ofifence ; 
 and love knows no more serious fault against a neighbour 
 than to provoke him, that is, to give him offence, to make 
 him stumble, and go astray on the way to God. " Thou 
 hypocrite," cries our Lord therefore to the loveless and self- 
 righteous man who judges his neighbour, " first cast out the 
 beam (the beam of heartless pride) from thine own eye, and 
 then thou shalt see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy 
 brother's eye" (Matt. vii. 3-5; Luke vi. 41). And in this 
 world full of offences He warns, in the strongest words, 
 against giving offence even to the least, hurting or endanger- 
 ing one soul, whose angel, on that account, carries a complaint 
 before God's presence : " It were better for that man that a 
 millstone were hung about his neck, and he were cast into 
 the depths of the sea" (Matt, xviii. 6, 7, 10). Finally, the 
 means by which love may hope most surely to win a neigh- 
 
118 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 bour for the cause of God are self-denying service on the one 
 hand, and a goodness of heart on the other, which is not ex- 
 tinguished by the evil it meets with, but burns the brighter. 
 It lies in the nature of the case that Jesus has to commend 
 the first chiefly with regard to the intercourse of the members 
 of the kingdom with one another, and the second especially 
 with regard to the world and enemies. His rule for the 
 mutual intercourse of His friends is that none of them should 
 exalt himself above the other, or wish at all to rule, but that 
 their one ambition should be as to who should perform the 
 greatest service of love (Matt. xx. 26, 27). To those, how- 
 ever, who do not know this spirit of love, it is to be made the 
 more apparent, by rewarding evil with good, cursing with 
 blessing, persecution with beneficence and intercession, for in 
 this way the evil is actually to be overcome by the good ; 
 because such conduct is the true divine stamp on a human 
 character which no heart at all susceptible to the divine can 
 in the long run withstand (Matt. v. 38-48 ; Luke vi. 28-31 ; 
 cf. Eom. xii. 19-21). 
 
 § 6. Love towards God 
 
 All these duties of love towards our neighbour must be 
 discharged as a matter of course, in virtue of a love to God, 
 who alone is absolutely worthy of love ; as indeed Jesus 
 Himself completed His life's work of love through the love 
 of the Father. Though His formal teaching about the love 
 of God was not as exhaustive as that about the practical 
 love of our neighbour, yet it is the great unspoken pre- 
 supposition of His whole doctrine of righteousness, and, like 
 it, is treated on many sides in substance if not in form. 
 Although He nowhere gives a general exposition of the love 
 of God, He lets it be seen throughout that He places it not 
 in any special sensibility, but in those features of disposition 
 which correspond to the relation of the child to his heavenly 
 Father. The first of these features is sincerity, truthfulness 
 with respect to God. God sees in secret, looks on the heart, 
 and love is a matter of the heart. All worship of God which 
 does not come from the heart, which is not directed to God 
 from the heart, is vain and hypocritical ; and nothing gave 
 
THE WAY OF EIGHTEOUSNESS 119 
 
 Jesus greater offence in the case of the Pharisees than the 
 want of inward truth in their piety, with all their fancy that 
 it was real (cf. Matt. vi. 1-6, vi. 16-18, xxiii. 13 f.). With 
 this sincerity is further connected humility, in virtue of which 
 the genuine child makes no further claim for himself than the 
 free love and goodness of the Father grants him. It is so 
 important, because on it the full accessibility of the child to 
 the love of the Father wholly depends ; " for God resisteth 
 the proud, but giveth grace to the humble ; " that is, to such 
 as are poor in spirit, who, needing love and susceptible to 
 love, are ever ready to receive it. Jesus delineates this 
 humility as springing from the feeling of deep indebtedness, 
 in contrast with self - complacent righteousness and pride 
 parading before God, in the Parable of the Pharisee and the 
 Publican (Luke xviii. 9—14). But even where there is and 
 can be no such feeling of guilt as that of the publican, 
 humility must spring from the consciousness that we can 
 neither perform anything towards God, nor deserve any- 
 thing from Him, that when our legal relation towards 
 Him is considered, we are only servants obliged to serve 
 Him, and, moreover, unprofitable servants, who, when they 
 have done all, have only done their duty, and have scarcely 
 repaid that which their Lord has laid out on them (Luke xvii. 
 7-10 f.). The fear of God, therefore, which indeed is more 
 an Old Testament idea, but has its place also in the new 
 covenant, as a preparatory stage, at least, of the love of God, 
 borders on humility. The true earnest, pious, filial love can 
 only unfold itself on the basis of a holy awe before Him who 
 is our Father, and at the same time our Lord and eternal 
 Judge. Jesus exhorted men to the fear of God on one occa- 
 sion at least. " Fear not them which kill the body, but are 
 not able to kill the soul : but rather fear Him who is able 
 to destroy both soul and body in hell" (Matt. x. 28). He is 
 there led to this conception by the fear of man and the fear 
 of death, which are to be expelled by the fear of God ; else- 
 where He prefers to set the more pleasing duty of trust, in 
 opposition to the natural anxiety and care of the human heart. 
 Trust, faith (Tr/o-rt? deov, trust in God, Mark xi. 22), is indeed 
 the natural expression, not of the slavish, but of the filial 
 relation to God into which He brings His own people. Con- 
 
120 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 sequently, even in that passage which treats of the fear of 
 God (Matt. X. 29 f.), He at once proceeds to treat of faith, 
 and repeatedly rebukes the little faith of His disciples — as, 
 for instance, in the case in which they feared (Mark iv. 40) 
 that the heavenly Father could permit the little ship which 
 bore them along with Him to be swallowed up by the waves, 
 and cries out to them, Mark xi. 22 : exere iriaTiv deov. In 
 this •n-ia-Ti^ 6eov, anxious care about earthly things, and even 
 necessary things, disappears; the troubled questions. What 
 shall we eat ? What shall we drink ? Wherewith shall we be 
 clothed 1 must be left by the child of God to the heathen, 
 who know not of any heavenly Father. For he has indeed 
 a rich Father, who feeds the fowls of the heaven and clothes 
 the lilies of the field, who knows what His children need 
 before they ask Him (Matt. vi. 25 f.; Luke xii. 22). On the 
 other hand, deeds in the name of God are to spring from this 
 7rto-Ti9, a holy courage which in His service will remove even 
 mountains, for trust or faith draws down miraculous powers 
 from heaven to earth (Mark xi. 23, 24; Matt. xvii. 20). 
 This carries us onward to prayer, that blessed childlike duty 
 of love to which Jesus so urgently exhorts and encourages 
 His own (Matt. vii. 7-21; Luke xi. 5-13). That is to 
 spring from faith or trust in God (Mark xi. 22, 24), and this 
 trust shall not be deceived : " Ask, and it shall be given 
 you ; seek, and ye shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened 
 unto you." But this does not mean that the filial relation 
 and childlike right of prayer should be an encouragement to 
 selfish wishes. If Jesus does not expressly guard His promise 
 of being heard against such a misunderstanding, that is owing 
 to the fact that to Him it is quite a matter of course that 
 filial trust cannot exist without obedience and submission; 
 ■ that it lies in the nature of the childlike converse with the 
 heavenly Father to come to an understanding with Him and 
 meet His thoughts of love ; that true prayer is not at all in 
 the first instance an asking for particular finite blessings, but 
 an opening of the heart to the eternal good. And this is the 
 only sense in which His own prayer in Gethsemane was 
 heard (Heb. v. 7), — and in this sense no true prayer remains 
 unanswered. The best proof of this is the model prayer 
 which He Himself taught His disciples (Matt. vi. 9-1 3 ; 
 
THE WAY OF EIGHTEOUSNESS 121 
 
 Luke xi. 1-4). It, above all, lifts the child of God above 
 the earth and its little cares and needs ; makes the human 
 heart forget itself, and rise to the great cares of the heavenly 
 Father's heart, in which, however, its own truest good is hid ; 
 it seeks that the name of God, His holy and gracious revela- 
 tion to the world, be truly appreciated, received, and sanctified 
 even in this world ; that, in consequence of this, the king- 
 dom of God, the holy and blessed fellowship with God, may 
 come ever more completely, and so the glorious goal of the 
 union of heaven and earth be brought ever nearer ; that the 
 will of God be done on earth as in heaven, done in the pray- 
 ing child of God and through him; Only after the child of 
 God has thus given expression three times to the great eternal 
 concerns, does he come to his own little temporal concerns in 
 a way as truthful as sufficient, and ends with asking for the 
 removal of the hindrances which ever and again seek to 
 thrust themselves between him and his heavenly Father, 
 the indebtedness ever again emerging, the temptation still 
 threatening his weakness, the manifold world-powers of evil. 
 That is everything ; it is a kind of paraphrase and embodi- 
 ment of the great words of the Sermon on the Mount : 
 " Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and 
 all these things (the necessary earthly) will be added unto 
 you." And this brings us to what is probably the tersest 
 practical explanation of love to God in the sense of Jesus. 
 It consists in this : to bring together in one all that has been 
 said ; that to us God is really the highest good and the only 
 absolute good ; that we steadfastly and undividedly resign 
 ourselves to this eternal good, and that in pursuing this aim 
 no finite weal or woe disturbs us. 
 
 § 7. Love of God and appraising of the World 
 
 It is an old objection, which is ever being repeated, that 
 this spiritual standpoint of Jesus, however its sublimity may 
 be recognised, is onesided, and tends to renunciation of the 
 world. However applicable this objection may be to much in 
 the subsequent history of Christianity, there is no ground for 
 bringing it against Jesus' own doctrine of righteousness. The 
 God and Father of Jesus Christ is too great, too magnanimous, 
 
122 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 to rob the earthly things and ordinances of that glory which 
 He Himself, as Creator, has given to them. To Jesus nature 
 is not a thing indifferent or un divine. He lovingly contem- 
 plated it, and drank from its cup of blameless joy in a spirit 
 opposed to monasticism. He pointed His disciples to the rain 
 and sunshine, to the fowls of heaven and the lilies of the field, 
 as imaging the goodness of His heavenly Father's heart. The 
 life of man in all its various details, from the labour of the 
 sower and the housewife at her baking, up to the cares of a 
 king waging war, or the feelings of a father's heart swelling 
 towards a son who had been lost, engaged His thoughts. 
 Human life was sometimes to Him a symbol of the laws of 
 the growth of the kingdom of God, and sometimes a mirror of 
 the good or evil ruling in the human heart. It is true that 
 He did not didactically enlarge upon the whole circle of social 
 duties. That was not His mission. His mission was to put 
 right the highest and most inward relation of human life, the 
 relation to God and eternity, not to interfere in the way of 
 remodelling the several finite relations of earth. He could 
 leave that to the new and abiding spirit which He was certain 
 to establish among men. He knew that His kingdom was a 
 leaven mighty enough to leaven the whole life of the world 
 with new powers of development. And He expressly acknow- 
 ledged the right and honour of the most important relations 
 of the world. Marriage is an arrangement for this earth alone; 
 in that other world they neither marry nor are given in 
 marriage (Mark xii. 25; Matt. xx. 30 ; Luke xx. 35); yet to 
 Him it was holy as it had never been before Him ; He pro- 
 posed the most ideal view of it, the idea of an indissoluble 
 divine institution. Moses allowed the bill of divorcement only 
 because of the hardness of the hearts of Israel ; but from the 
 beginning, that is, from the creation, it was not so, and among 
 those who desire to belong to the kingdom of God it shall not 
 be so henceforth (Matt. v. 32, xix. 1 6 ; Mark x. 9). The civil 
 commonweal, the State, came into contact with Him only in 
 the form of the heathen domination of Eome over His people, 
 yet He gave to it what was its own. In His answer to the 
 question about tribute He ended the confusion of religion and 
 politics in the old covenant, due to the theocratic theories of 
 the Jews, and thereby pronounced the State to be a kingdom 
 
THE WAY OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 123 
 
 of this world. But while His great saying, " Give to Cffisar the 
 things that are Csesar's, and to God the things that are God's," 
 recognises civil and religious duty as two separate things 
 existing peacefully side by side, it preserves to the State its 
 independent sphere of right which is not to be encroached upon 
 even in the name of God (that is, of religion, Mark xii. 13-17; 
 Matt. xxii. 15-22 ; Luke xx. 20-26). A false contempt for 
 the world might be more readily found in His treatment of 
 that which then as now rules the world, viz. mammon. 
 Among all the good things which God has made He regarded 
 as least of all that which we call without disguise earthly 
 good, because it is the material foundation of our whole out- 
 ward condition. He contrasts the " unrighteous mammon," the 
 conscienceless seductive idol of the world, with the dXrjOivov, 
 the true, that is, the spiritual moral good (Luke xvi. 11). 
 And, in order to discourage men from clinging to it, He points 
 out that this unrighteous mammon is in its nature so foreign 
 to and so incommensurate with the God related soul that it 
 cannot be its actual property. Spiritual blessings are bestowed 
 by God on man as a gift ; they become a part of him, an 
 element of his inner life ; money God gives to man only for a 
 time, intrusts him with it only as a steward in order to take 
 it back in the hour of death at latest (Luke xii. 16-20). 
 There always remains — says Jesus to His disciples (Luke xvi. 
 10—12) — an dXKoTpiov, in contrast to the vfj,eTepov which 
 God has bestowed on you. And yet the divine reasonable- 
 ness of the teaching of Jesus is preserved even here. In the 
 same saying (Luke xvi. 10—12) this least and meanest of the 
 blessings God bestows is also morally estimated, and its manage- 
 ment characterised as a school of faithfulness (toward God), 
 without which the true and permanent good would not have 
 been intrusted to us.^ And in the Parable of the Unrighteous 
 Steward which precedes these sayings in Luke, Jesus teaches 
 
 1 We must not, however, in tMs saying bring the fidelity into connec- 
 tion with the unfaithfulness of the unrighteous steward. The grouping 
 of Luke xvi. 1-9 and 10-12 must be attributed to the evangelist, and is 
 accounted for by the one theme, money. But in treating of this theme 
 the. saying and the parable employ entirely different images. Of the 
 latter, in which not the faithfulness or unfaithfulness, but the initial 
 foolishness and (subsequent) wisdom of the steward forms the tertium 
 comparationis,! have spoken in my Leben Jesu, ii. pp. 386-389. 
 
124 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 how even the unrighteous mammon may be placed at the ser- 
 vice of the highest task in life, and employed by us to secure 
 for ourselves a welcome into the eternal habitations. The 
 teaching of Jesus about love towards God does not therefore 
 exclude, but includes the healthy moral estimate of the visible 
 world, the using of all its God-given goods. But it must be 
 a healthy moral estimate, which recognises that every temporal 
 good has its measure, and has only a qualified worth. The 
 whole world as the sum of the finite and conditioned good 
 must be subordinate and subject to the infinite and uncon- 
 ditioned good. The inalienable law and commandment to love 
 God with all the heart, means, that the heart be not divided 
 between God and any of His creatures ; that it love no finite 
 good beside Him, and at the cost of fidelity to Him, but that 
 it be prepared, on the contrary, in case of collision, to sacrifice 
 every such good for Him. And Jesus has taught and urged 
 that with not less inexorable earnestness. When He saw that 
 the heart of the rich young man, with all its noble enthusiasm, 
 was clinging to earthly good. He demanded of him that he 
 give all his riches to the poor and follow Him in apostolic 
 poverty ; and in the same sense He gave a general warning 
 against all mistaken attempts to serve two masters at one and 
 the same time, God and mammon. He uttered these warnings, 
 not against possessing, but against amassing treasure on earth, 
 against the seeking for riches as though there lay in them a 
 real treasure : for where your treasure is, — it may be on earth 
 or it may be in heaven, — there your heart is also (Matt. vi. 21). 
 But the love of God may also require larger sacrifices than 
 wealth. For though Jesus regarded marriage as holy and 
 of divine institution, He yet suggested the idea to His disciples 
 that it might be their duty for the sake of the kingdom of 
 God, that is, for their individual calling in that kingdom, to 
 renounce marriage and pass through this world alone (Matt, 
 xix. 12). In a metaphorical address on offences He tells His 
 disciples : " If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out ; if thy 
 right hand offend thee, cut it off;" that is, if the dearest and 
 best, that which is as precious to thy heart as eye and hand 
 are to the outer man, draw thee away from the love of God 
 and seduce thee to sin, pluck it out of thy heart, cut it off in 
 pain from thy life (Mark ix. 43-48; Matt, xviii. 7-9). In 
 
THE WAY OF EIGHTEOUSNESS 125 
 
 the same connection, too, we have : " He that loveth father or 
 mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me; and he that 
 hateth not children, and brothers, and sisters, yea, and his 
 own life (that is, puts them into the background, and esteems 
 them less than Me),"^ cannot be My disciple " (Matt. x. 37, 38 ; 
 Luke xiv. 26). That which He here demands in His own 
 name, surrender on an emergency of the noblest earthly 
 possessions, or even of life itself. He demands indeed in the 
 name of God whose cause He represented in the world up to 
 the surrender of His own life, that is, as a sacrifice from love 
 to God. 
 
 § 8. Love foe God and Self-Peefection 
 
 It might, however, appear as though in all this a religious 
 demand, carried through with sublime onesidedness, were 
 opposed to the free moral development of the human per- 
 sonality, as if, according to this teaching, God, with the 
 absolute demand to love Him above all, required, as it were, 
 the life of man as a sacrifice for Himself. The very opposite 
 of that is the case. In the God of Jesus Christ whom man 
 is to love above all else, he loves nothing foreign in which he 
 might lose himself, and nothing selfish to which he could fall 
 a sacrifice, but his own eternal prototype, in whose masterful 
 liberality alone he can realise his own idea ; it is the heavenly 
 Father who comes to meet him with arms of love, and in whose 
 heart he first truly finds himself and " gains himself " for ever. 
 And therefore the unqualified love for God which Jesus 
 demands coincides rather with that moral self-love which is 
 already presupposed as legitimate and self-evident in the 
 command : " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." By 
 making the love of God the fundamental law of his life a man 
 procures his own true and lasting good, he helps his own 
 personality to its free development and eternal perfection. 
 That is not a point of view which we obtain from the gospel 
 of Jesus by subtle modern trains of thought, but one which 
 Jesus Himself has offered, and has indeed developed con amore, 
 
 ^ According to the relative meaning of the Greek fiiaih, which the 
 comparison of Luke xiv. 26 with the parallel passage Matt. x. 37 plainly 
 yields, and which also Gen. xxv. 32, Septuagint, and Eom. ix. 13 attest. 
 
126 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 and with the advancement of it we shall therefore most 
 fittingly conclude our study of His doctrine of righteousness, 
 especially as we have here no kind of connection with words 
 of the Old Testament law, but with the most free and 
 independent ethical train of thought. " What is a man 
 advantaged," cries Jesus to His disciples (Matt. xvi. 26), "if 
 he should gain the whole world and lose his own soul"?i 
 To preserve his soul and save it throughout his earthly exist- 
 ence is here recognised to be, as a matter of course, the highest 
 business of man's life, the "one thing needful" (Luke x. 
 38-42). He can only fulfil this one unqualified task by 
 surrender, not to the world, but to God. The human per- 
 sonality, with its capacities for the supersensuous and eternal, 
 can only preserve and perfect itself by growing up into the 
 supersensuous and eternal (by being rich in God, laying up 
 treasure in heaven, as it is expressed, Luke xii. 20 ; Matt, 
 vi. 20). If, on the other hand, it throws itself away on the 
 world, the summary of all that is sensuous and finite, then it 
 loses itself indeed, even though it has gained the whole world. 
 It pines and dies inwardly, and this inward dying becomes 
 — as in the case of the rich man in the parable — manifest in 
 it as soon as death removes it from the world of sense. The 
 foolishness of the natural man, as Jesus depicts it in that 
 rich master (Luke xii. 16 f.), does not, of course, recognise 
 this, it supposes that life consists in the abundance of its 
 goods. It seeks life in the sensible and finite, because these 
 satisfy for the moment the natural selfishness. Because of 
 this natural selfishness, which is just the opposite of moral 
 self-love, the way to the true life for every man passes through 
 a death struggle. The perverted selfish I must die, in order 
 that the true I, the man created for God, may live in the 
 love of God, in the atmosphere of the eternal life. Jesus 
 expresses this in words which have their occasion in the 
 approaching summons to His first disciples to accompany Him, 
 at the risk of their life, on His last journey to Jerusalem, and 
 which turn this very occasion to account for making inward 
 and universal the duty of imitation that is here exemplified. 
 
 1 For the original text does not speak of a mere injury to the soul, as 
 it seems from the Lutheran translation, but a condemnation, a da/mnum 
 acci/pere animce, as is clear especially from the parallels of Mark and Luke. 
 
THE WAY OF EIGHTEOUSNESS 127 
 
 He who loveth his life (egoistically) will lose it (in the eternal 
 sense), but he who loses it for my sake — surrenders it in self- 
 denial — will find it, or, as it is in Mark and Luke, will save 
 it (Mark viii. 34, 35 ; Matt. x. 39 ; Luke ix. 23, 24:)} And 
 because it is difficult for the natural man to yield thus to the 
 death of self-denial, and because it is not finished by one 
 great self-denial, but rather is followed by an infinite series 
 of continuous acts of self-denial for God's sake, the gate is 
 certainly strait, and the way steep, which, from the door of 
 entrance, leadeth up to life, and few there be that find it. 
 On the other hand, wide is the gate and broad the way that 
 leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat 
 (Matt. vii. 13, 14; Luke xiii. 24). For nothing is easier 
 and more comfortable than to remain as we are by nature, 
 and give free course to the sensuous selfish instincts ; but the 
 end of the way here is the abyss, there the clear heights on 
 which the earthly pilgrim surveys the world and breathes 
 the air of heaven. Human life now first gains a worthy 
 content and an actual aim ; it gains — to speak in the language 
 of the labourers in the vineyard, Matt. xx. 1—15 — its labour 
 and its reward. A complete and noble conception of life 
 may be developed from this parable, though it was first 
 applied to the relation of labour and reward in the kingdom 
 of God. The true work of life begins with the call of the 
 heavenly householder, who draws a man into the service of 
 His kingdom. As it is said in the < parable of those whom 
 that call had not reached, " Why stand ye here all the day 
 idle ? " so is it in point of fact with the life of him who has 
 not yet learned to serve the heavenly Father. His life, how- 
 ever full of toil and labour it may be, is in the highest sense 
 of existence a busy idleness, a bestirring of himself for nothing, 
 a toil and trouble without any true abiding fruit. It is quite 
 different when a man places himself in God's service, and 
 labours in love for Him and for his brethren. His labour 
 then, however modest it may be in itself, gains, for the first 
 time, a moral consecration, and procures an actual blessing. 
 And though its results should be outwardly imperceptible to 
 others, its moral fruit, its blessing, ripens in himself, by 
 becoming to him a school of personal confirmation in the love 
 1 Or to preserve it alive, ^myou^au, as it is in Luke xvii. 38. 
 
128 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 of God, a school of self-denial, of sanctification and fidelity. 
 And a view of the world which does not regard the human 
 soul as existing mainly for the purpose of revolving as a useful 
 driving wheel in human society, but in order to develop and 
 perfect itself in the image of God according to its God-given 
 rights, lays the main stress on this very thing. This is the 
 thought in all those parables in which Jesus treats of labour 
 in the service of the kingdom of God — there are a whole 
 series of them for refuting the. illusion that an idle faith 
 satisfied Him — the Parable of the Servants who watch far 
 into the night for the return of their Lord from the Marriage 
 (Luke xii. 36-48) ; or that of their Lord journeying into a far 
 Country, delivering unto them hundredweights or pounds of 
 money (talents or minae of his goods), wherewith in his 
 absence they might increase his wealth (Matt. xxv. 14-30; 
 Luke xix. 1 1—27) ; and not least in that Parable of the Labourers 
 in the Vineyard, where it manifestly makes no difference to 
 the householder to get so much work done, but to occupy idle 
 people, and apply his beneficence, not to beggars, but to 
 workers. Everywhere here the worth of labour is not 
 measured by the amount of work done, — which is dependent 
 on individual gifts (Matt. xxv. 15), or on outer circumstances 
 (Matt. XX. 6), — but by the fidelity displayed in it. " Well 
 done, thou good and faithful servant ; thou hast been faithful 
 over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things : 
 enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." And, lastly, there appears 
 in this connection also the idea of the reward which is pro- 
 mised to such labour. The reward grows, as it were, naturally 
 out of the labour, in order to crown it at its close. We have 
 already alluded to the idea of reward in so far as it springs 
 out of Jesus' idea of God : here it comes into consideration 
 in its significance for the life of man. It is not necessary to 
 confine it everywhere to the future world. Jesus, in His idea 
 of the kingdom, does not so separate this world from that 
 which is to come as to make the divine reward everywhere 
 begin only after death. Once, at any rate. He reckons as 
 part of the reward which He promises to His disciples the 
 compensating brotherly love which is to make good to them 
 an hundredfold, though with persecutions (therefore still on 
 earth in the Christian community), for all sacrifices which 
 
THE WAY OF KIGHTEOUSNESS 129 
 
 they will have to make for God (Mark x. 30 ; Matt. xix. 29). 
 Eternal life is, however, the prevailing idea of the heavenly- 
 reward, and, in this very passage, is characterised as the 
 more essential. The whole gospel of Jesus attests that no 
 Mohammedan paradise is therewith meant, but that perfect 
 communion with God for which the soul is destined, and for 
 which it waits in hope here below, the perfection of the per- 
 sonality in God — not in a blessed idleness, but in an exalted 
 kingly work and activity (Luke xix. 17). How foolish then 
 to take offence at this idea, and prefer a view of the world 
 in which human labour, though done in God, would not be 
 eternally rewarded or have any abiding issue. Is it the 
 standpoint of a lower morality to seek after the perfection of 
 our personality in God, and the standpoint of a higher to 
 fight but not to conquer, to strive but not to reach that for 
 which we were striving ? That even in such a representation 
 as the Parable of the Day Labourers there is no mention of 
 merit with God, is clear from the fact that the same reward 
 is given for unequal work. If, elsewhere, mention is made 
 of special and therefore unequal reward (qf. Luke xix. 
 1 7-1 9), that simply means that the blessed perfection shall 
 be for each the individual crowning of individual work, and 
 yet be for all the equally full satisfaction (the whole penny, 
 Matt. XX. 9). But the contract at the beginning of the 
 parable which gives an appearance of legal desert is only 
 stated in order to be confounded, for the meaning of the parable 
 is that there is indeed a divine reward, but that it is not good 
 to ask, with Peter, " What shall we have therefore ? " but to 
 leave payment, like those hired late in the day, to the free 
 goodness of the householder's heart. The reward is thus a 
 reward of work, and yet a reward of grace ; for if the labour 
 to be crowned in eternity did not stand under the sign-manual 
 of grace, would not the child of God despair of being able 
 to perform such an infinite task as " be ye perfect, even as 
 your Father in heaven is perfect " ? The teaching of Jesus 
 about reward, however, — and that is not its least excellence, 
 — gives the promise, the assurance, that, however infinite the 
 task which His doctrine of righteousness imposes, yet with 
 God's help His own shall not fail to gain the victory and the 
 crown. 
 
 BEYSCHLAG. — I. 9 
 
130 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 THE MESSIANIC SALVATION 
 
 § 1. The Fact of a Doctrine of Salvation 
 
 The closing consideration just offered brings us now to 
 the fact that it was necessary for Jesus to draw from the 
 nature of the eternally Good, whom He calls Father, a further 
 deduction than the demand for holiness ; besides His ideal of 
 righteousness He must present a not less exalted and perfect 
 doctrine of grace or salvation. Certainly, in the not distant 
 past, there was a mode of thought which refused to recognise, 
 alongside of the doctrine of righteousness, any independent 
 doctrine of salvation in the Gospels. Eationalism, in turning 
 back from the doctrine of the Church, which was based essen- 
 tially on Paul, to Jesus' own plainer gospel, received the 
 impression that this gospel is essentially a system of ethics, 
 and so is the highest and purest development of the demand 
 made upon us by the wiU of God ; and that, on the other 
 hand, the awards bestowed by the will of God consist solely 
 in the benefits of creation, the fatherly providence of God, 
 and His recompense in the world to come. Such an impres- 
 sion can be easily understood, inasmuch as there is no such 
 connected development of the doctrine of salvation in the 
 synoptic Gospels as there is of the doctrine of righteousness 
 in the Sermon on the Mount. For all that, the obliquity 
 and defectiveness of that conception is evident. If it were 
 as this onesidedly ethical mode of thought supposed, then 
 the teaching of Jesus would be no gospel at all, but essentially 
 law ; and the higher this law rose above the Old Testament, 
 the more perfect it was in its demands for the purest feelings, 
 and in its penetrating into the inmost depths of the sinful 
 heart, the more cheerless and startling would be a proclama- 
 tion which connected a share in the kingdom of heaven with 
 this better righteousness (Matt. v. 20). The commands of 
 Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, however admirable as 
 commandments they might be, would, in point of fact, repre- 
 sent "no easy yoke and no light burden" (Matt. xi. 30), 
 
THE MESSIANIC SALTATION 131 
 
 but burdens to be borne by sinful men, far heavier than the 
 commandments of Moses and the scribes. But there is 
 nothing more certain than that Jesus had no wish to be 
 another and a stricter Moses, but a consoler of the weary and 
 heavy laden, a saviour of the poor in spirit, a deliverer of the 
 lost. His preaching from beginning to end is a gospel, a 
 glad message, a proclamation of salvation ; and therefore His 
 doctrine of righteousness, however large the space it occupies, 
 can only be conceived as part of a doctrine of grace and 
 salvation, which underlies and pervades it throughout. Even 
 the Sermon on the Mount, this great summary of the doctrine 
 of righteousness, rests on the basis of a preaching of salvation ; 
 for those are called blessed who are poor in spirit, or mourners, 
 or hungering for righteousness, and to them the kingdom 
 of heaven, with its gifts, is promised. Nay, the very first 
 preaching of Jesus presents in living unity the divine demands 
 and offers of salvation. For if the call, " Eepent : for the king- 
 dom of heaven is at hand," might perhaps mean, in the mind 
 of the Baptist, repent : for the day of judgment, the day of 
 separating the chaff from the wheat, is near, it did mean, in 
 the case of Jesus at anyrate, repent : for the Father's arms 
 are open to receive all His lost children, and draw them to 
 His heart. And therefore we can only ascribe it to a one- 
 sided and imperfect understanding of Jesus' thoughts of the 
 kingdom of heaven, if the wood has not been seen here for 
 the trees. The whole of Jesus' preaching of the kingdom of 
 heaven is a proclamation of grace, a doctrine of salvation, and 
 it is united with the doctrine of righteousness in the manner 
 of the Augustinian " Domine, da quod jubes, et jube quod vis." 
 Not as though Jesus had deprived man of moral freedom. 
 On the contrary, — and the ethical conception of His doctrine 
 just rejected is quite right in this, — the presupposition that 
 man is incapable of doing the will of God on account of sin 
 is unknown to Jesus. He demands of men throughout the 
 doing of His commandments, the doing of the divine will. 
 He credits them throughout with the power to repent, that 
 is, to change their mind, and become of that mind, in virtue 
 of which one can only truly do the commandments of God in 
 detail. And He not only credits them with this freedom, on 
 the authority of His word and gospel, but also on the authority 
 
132 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 of the words of the Old Testament, the law and the prophets. 
 It is by no means meant ironically when He directs the scribes 
 to the two great commandments (Luke x. 23 f.), "Do this, 
 and you will live"; or the rich young man (Matt. xix. 17), 
 " If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments." It 
 is said of the brethren of the rich man, Luke xvi. 29 : "They 
 have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them " (viz. in the 
 interest of their own conversion). The poor Lazarus, in the 
 same parable, has heard Moses and the prophets, and in their 
 school has developed an inner life which could bear him at 
 death on angel's wings into paradise ; and Abraham, the 
 patriarchs, the prophets, according to Luke xvi. 22, Matt, 
 viii. 12, have arrived there. But we would completely mis- 
 understand Jesus if, because of this judgment, we put Him 
 in contradiction with the knowledge and experience of the 
 great Apostle to the Gentiles, that no man is justified by the 
 works of the law, that is, if we would credit Him with the 
 idea that any man can convert himself to God, or fulfil His 
 commandments of his own power, in the Judaic-Pharisaic 
 sense, so that he should earn merit in the sight of God. The 
 idea that anyone can come to God except through God, that 
 anyone can love God without first knowing that he was 
 loved by God — this genuinely Pharisaic idea is so repugnant 
 to a true religious standpoint, that Jesus did not even find it 
 necessary to reject it. He could only ascribe to an Old Testa- 
 ment man the power of turning to God and of keeping His 
 commandments, because even in the old covenant there was 
 for him a saving grace which drew men to itself from pure 
 goodness ; ^ because He undoubtedly did not contemplate the 
 law from the point of view of a power which merely exacts 
 and judges, but as the outflow of the divine goodness of the 
 Father (cf. Mark ii. 27), — how much more would He find 
 everywhere in the history of Israel and the predictions of the 
 prophets, the gracious and merciful, the good and faithful 
 One, who, with His prevenient love, knocks for an entrance 
 at the human heart, and leads it from the way of death to 
 that of life. If He found the utterance of this eternal love 
 itself in nature, in God's making the sun to shine, and the 
 
 ' Even Paul has admitted such an Old Testament grace, at least for 
 Abraham (Rom. iv.). 
 
THE MESSIANIC SALVATION 133 
 
 rain to fall on the just and the unjust, how much more would 
 He find it in the features and experiences of the inner life 
 (cf. John vi. 44, 45). The prodigal son could arise and go 
 to his father, only because the memory of his father's house, 
 with its riches and its goodness, revived in him ; and the 
 publican could beat his breast and cry, " God, be merciful to 
 me a sinner," only because he knew of a gracious God, with 
 whom there is forgiveness (Ps. cxxx. 7). There prevails, 
 therefore, even in the Old Testament, the same law of pre- 
 venient grace which in the New Testament speaks to a power 
 of freedom unlost and a susceptibility for God, in order to 
 hasten it heavenwards. Only, this grace is now first revealed 
 in its whole height and depth, and therefore in its full saving 
 power. " All the prophets and the law have prophesied until 
 John : from that time the glad message of the kingdom of God 
 is preached" (Matt. xi. 13; Luke xvi. 16). Those earlier 
 revelations of God were only of a preparatory and predictive 
 nature. They did not help humanity as a whole, they did not 
 entirely help any man ; even the best have still remained bad 
 {irovTJpol, Matt. vii. 11), and the world as a whole has fallen 
 ever deeper into the power of evil. But now has come the 
 day of the great change, when Satan falls like lightning from 
 heaven (Luke x. 18). Now the fulness of the time has come, 
 the time when God is to visit His people (Luke x. 44), the 
 acceptable year of the Lord, when He has anointed and sent 
 His servant with a glad message to the poor, freedom to the 
 captives, forgiveness to the broken-hearted (Luke iv. 18). 
 And though the heavenly Father has at all times received 
 the penitent sinner, and given strength to those who walk 
 aright, yet the idea of salvation is only now truly and com- 
 pletely realised, when the Shepherd Himself, in His eternal 
 love and faithfulness, has gone forth to seek and save the lost 
 (Matt. xviiL 11 f. ; Luke xv. 3 f., xix. 10). 
 
 § 2. The Kingdom of Heaven as Salvation 
 
 We may therefore say, that the kingdom of heaven which 
 Jesus preaches and brings is itself essentially salvation, is 
 salvation in its objective reality, and in the mode of its accom- 
 plishment in time. This perception to which we have been 
 
134 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 led by our former discussion of the idea of the kingdom, would 
 indeed be worthless if the view attached to the introductory 
 sayings of the Sermon on the Mount by a celebrated scholar 
 was correct, viz. that the fundamental thought of Jesus was 
 directed solely to the awakening of a pious frame of mind, 
 which in its humility before God attains of itself the highest 
 satisfaction, and to such extent, that a mind of this nature as 
 being poor in spirit already possesses the kingdom of heaven, 
 the eternal riches.^ This would make the kingdom of heaven 
 solely the subjective product of humility, of being poor in 
 spirit. But this idea is in itself impossible. Poverty does 
 not produce riches ; hunger and thirst, even hunger and thirst 
 for righteousness, do not of themselves suddenly change into 
 satisfaction; there must be presented to them an objective 
 reality which satisfies them. Nor is it difficult to refute that 
 misconception of words of Jesus, which are certainly of the 
 nature of a programme, by a reference to the words themselves, 
 — a misconception which proceeds from the point of view of 
 the pure immanence. We are not justified in taking the second 
 clause in the first beatitude in the sense of a real possession 
 already present, because the promises on which the succeeding 
 beatitudes are based are expressed in the future tense {kXtjpo- 
 vo/j-rjaovcTiv, trapaKh/qOrjaovrat, yopTaaOrjaovTai^, k.t.\.). The 
 kingdom of heaven, it is said, is theirs ; it is destined for them, 
 is even in existence for them ; but that does not mean that 
 being poor in spirit is in itself the eternal riches ; it is the 
 susceptibility for such riches, and therefore they must be com- 
 municated to it by the free goodness of God. Moreover, in 
 many of His parables Jesus puts the nature of the kingdom 
 of heaven beyond all question as a blessing of salvation coming 
 to meet man in objective reality. It is like a hidden treasure 
 which one finds, a pearl of great price which one must pur- 
 chase ; it is a feast which the heavenly householder prepares 
 for the poor, the lame, the beggars from the streets ; it is so 
 much a gift of grace, that he who will not receive it as a 
 child (Mark x. 15) will never obtain it. But the kingdom of 
 
 1 Thus Baur in his Lectures on New Testament Theology, pp. 62-64. It 
 is here said in so many words that being poor in spirit is the pure feeling 
 of the need of redemption, which as such already contains all reality of 
 redemption. 
 
THE MESSIANIC SALVATION 135 
 
 heaven is, as we have found above,^ a gift of salvation in the 
 twofold uniform sense, that it forms at one and the same time 
 the goal of the salvation that is to be sought, and the power 
 of salvation which quickens and qualifies for this seeking. 
 Here stands out in its full significance the development of His 
 first preaching of the kingdom of heaven as at hand, into the 
 double view of a kingdom that has come and one that is still 
 future, such as we have proved it at the beginning. The 
 kingdom of heaven itself must bring us into the kingdom of 
 heaven. The present growing kingdom brings on the future ; 
 it is the means of attaining the perfected kingdom. As Jesus 
 says, in the maxim quoted several times already (Mark x. 1 5), 
 " Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of heaven (take it 
 into himself) as a little child, shall in no wise enter into it," ov 
 fjLr} elaeKdrj. But between the starting-point, in which any 
 one receives the kingdom that has come, and the final point 
 when he is to find acceptance on his part into the future 
 kingdom, lies, as it were, the whole of Jesus' teaching of 
 righteousness, which thus proves itself to be an essential con- 
 stituent of His doctrine of grace and salvation. No attentive 
 reader of the Sermon on the Mount can fail to notice the 
 violent contradiction which apparently prevails between the 
 introduction and the progress of the address. In the intro- 
 duction, in particular, the kingdom is connected solely with a 
 childlike acceptance, with being poor in spirit, hungering and 
 thirsting after righteousness; but later in the sermon it is 
 connected with the highest moral conditions, the possession 
 of a better righteousness than the scribes and Pharisees can 
 show, with a being perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect 
 (Matt. V. 20, 48). The peculiarity of Jesus' idea of the king- 
 dom just alluded to resolves this contradiction. The kingdom 
 in its future perfection naturally presupposes a perfectly 
 righteous people, for how could the eternally Good, the holy 
 God, enter into an uninterrupted blessed communion with any 
 other than such as were perfectly righteous ? But the king- 
 dom now in process of growth, beginning as a grain of mustard 
 seed, can be satisfied with the lowest of all requirements, that 
 of pure susceptibility, for it is a living seed and a productive 
 power ; it will itself abundantly supply the righteousness for 
 1 See above, p. 49 ff. 
 
136 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 which the poor in spirit hunger and thirst. According to the 
 law of grace, that " to him who hath shall be given, and he 
 shall have abundance" (Mark iv. 25; Matt. xxv. 29), the 
 kingdom of heaven, received as a divine seed, a heavenly pro- 
 ductive power, will bring forth in the man the fruit of eternal 
 life, and raise him from one degree of righteousness to another, 
 until he become perfect as his Father in heaven is perfect. 
 Thus Jesus' doctrine of righteousness, with all its strictness, 
 merges into His doctrine of salvation. It is only the negative 
 pole to the positive pole of the doctrine of grace. It is 
 nowhere law in contrast with gospel, but law in the gospel 
 itself. For even that most elementary fundamental demand 
 of the kingdom of heaven, without the fulfilment of which it 
 cannot be bestowed, the condition of being poor in spirit, is 
 not pure demand, but the gospel of the kingdom itself seeks 
 to call forth that longing and susceptibility by holding forth 
 the riches of heavenly love : " Eepent : for the kingdom of 
 heaven is at hand." Wonderful gospel of Jesus, admirable 
 not only in its height and depth, satisfying on all sides human 
 need, but also in its simplicity and perfect transparency ! 
 The kingdom of heaven is simply the opening of communion 
 with the eternal love. No one acquires this love of himself, 
 still less does he beget it within himself through mere need 
 of love ; it is bestowed upon him, it comes to him from 
 heaven, in order to raise him up to its own heaven of love. 
 Of course, it has moral conditions. It does not force itself 
 upon us, but gives itself only to the hearts which open to 
 receive it, and it cannot retain and increase communion with 
 them, unless they let themselves be formed and fashioned by 
 it into its own nature. But these holy conditions are con- 
 ditions of love, nay, are proofs of love. They not only aim 
 at the true best of the beloved, at the beatific perfection of 
 the communion of love, but the eternal love itself helps to 
 fulfil them. It works freely in those into whom it enters 
 both to will and to do. From what has been said it is clear 
 that in this chapter on Jesus' doctrine of salvation we have 
 to do essentially with the kingdom in process of growth, as 
 already present and operative. And in order to estimate His 
 saving activity more precisely we have first to give attention 
 to the manner and results of the saving influences, that is, the 
 
THE MESSIANIC SALVATION 137 
 
 way of salvation, then the several outward means by which 
 the kingdom becomes operative, that is, His doctrine of the 
 means of salvation. 
 
 § 3. The "Way of Salvation, Calling and Election 
 
 If we look beyond the objective fact of the salvation that 
 is embodied in the manifested kingdom of God to the law of 
 its subjective realisation, it is evident that it will begin with 
 a divine offer or invitation, with the " call," as Jesus expressed 
 Himself in a metaphor which has also passed into apostolic 
 usage. It corresponds to the prevenient mercy which is 
 characteristic of the love of God, and not less does it suit the 
 strayed and lost condition of man that the divine salvation 
 does not wait till it is sought. This is the glory of the time 
 of grace that began with the days of John the Baptist, that 
 God comes to meet man as He never did before, and invites 
 him to participate in His saving gifts. In the most beautiful 
 images, now that of a rich, kindly householder who invites 
 to his sumptuous table, first his own distinguished friends, 
 and then the beggars and strangers ; and now that of a faithful 
 shepherd, who goes to the furthest wilderness after the strayed 
 lost lamb, — Jesus represents the call of God's grace, whose 
 instrument in Israel He knows Himself to be (Luke xiv. 
 16-24 ; Matt. xxii. 1-16 ; Luke xv. 1-7 ; Matt, xviii. 12 f.). 
 This call is, indeed, not addressed to all without distinction, " I 
 am come to call sinners, not the righteous" (Mark ii. 17); 
 nor do aU those called reach the blessed goal to which they 
 are called, " Many are called, but few are chosen " (Matt. 
 xxii. 16). This is not, however, a divine narrowness of heart 
 or caprice which grants salvation only to some, not to all, but 
 rests on that mutual relation of human freedom and divine 
 grace which we have just established as the presupposition 
 of Jesus' whole doctrine of salvation. If Jesus does not call 
 the righteous, the reason immediately follows : the whole, 
 that is, those who do not feel themselves sick, need not a 
 physician, they have only to recognise themselves as sick, and 
 He will be at their service also. And as to those in the 
 Parable of the Feast (Matt. xxii. 1 f.), who are called, indeed, 
 but not chosen, the parable itself illustrates most clearly that 
 
138 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 their not being chosen, that is, not admitted to the enjoyment 
 of the marriage feast, is not the fault of the inviting king, who 
 rather does everything to share the goods of his house with 
 as many as possible, but is entirely the fault of the invited, 
 who either do not accept the invitation, or do not observe the 
 necessary conventions of a king's house. The notion of being 
 elected, therefore, does not contain the result of a onesided 
 decree of God, but a mutual working of human and divine 
 conduct. God chooses those who make it possible for Him 
 to choose them. The preliminary conditions of an effectual 
 call and final election are given in the introduction to the 
 Sermon on the Mount, as well as in the Parable of the Sower. 
 While the original introduction to the Sermon on the Mount, 
 with its beatitudes and woes, fixes the attractive and repellent 
 effect which the preaching of the kingdom of heaven has 
 hitherto had, it marks the members of the kingdom in the 
 poor in spirit, the sorrowing, those hungering for righteous- 
 ness and suffering for its sake, the quiet, hidden, true Israel.' 
 These are the real characteristics of need and longing, in one 
 word, of susceptibility, to which the kingdom, with its gifts, 
 is promised. But this susceptibility must be an earnest one, 
 a hungering and thirsting for righteousness, a capacity for 
 suffering for righteousness' sake, that is, a state of heart which 
 really puts the highest value on righteousness, this key to 
 the kingdom of God. The Parable of the Sower, in another 
 form, but in the same sense, describes this fundamental con- 
 dition of susceptibility. Not only must the heart be opened 
 to the divine, but it must be opened to its depths, to the 
 
 ^ The original introduction of the Sermon on the Mount may be seen 
 more pure in Luke than in Matthew, who here also has attempted an 
 enlargement by similar expressions of Jesus from other quarters. Accord- 
 ing to this, the beatiiication of positive virtues, such as mercy, purity of 
 heart, and peace-making, is foreign to the original connection, and there 
 remains only the attribute of susceptibility for salvation. The mourning, 
 meek, hungering and thirsting are only different forms of the idea of 
 " poor in spirit." As to this fundamental idea, the r^ ■jtuivfiori, which, by 
 a true interioretation, answers the 'ura^oi of Luke from the purely secular 
 sphere, is not to be explained as poor in the Divine Spirit, for all men are 
 that by nature, and there is nothing blessed in that. But it means poor in 
 heart, inwardly poor, and is, according to Isa. Ixi. 1, Ixii. 2, synonymous 
 with contrite in spirit, that is, in need of, and longing for salvation. 
 
THE MESSIANIC SALVATION 139 
 
 foundation of will underlying the surface of feeling ; and it 
 must not merely half resign itself to the divine, but entirely, 
 and with singleness of mind. Then God can, not merely 
 begin, but accomplish His work in it; not merely call, but 
 also choose the man, and faithfully keep him as His chosen, 
 so that no power on earth can pluck him out of His hand 
 (cf. Matt. xxiv. 22, 24). All this does not mean that it is 
 a matter of man's own power to set up in himself these pre- 
 conditions of being called and chosen, nor that where they are 
 wanting there is no further hope for the man. When Jesus 
 sorrowfully learns that the rich young man was not yet 
 sufficiently " poor in spirit " to burst the bands of worldly 
 riches, that he was able to receive the seed of the word with 
 joy, but not to pluck the thorns of worldly pleasure from his 
 heart. He startles His disciples with the apparently hopeless 
 statement : " Sooner may a camel go through the eye of a 
 needle, than a rich man enter into the kingdom of God." 
 But He immediately modifies it with the weighty words : 
 "With man it is impossible, but with God all things are 
 possible" (Mark x. 27 ; Matt. xix. 26 ; Luke xviii. 27) ; that 
 is, man cannot break these fetters, but God can — not by an 
 irresistible operation of grace, but by life experiences, which 
 make these iron bands fall from him. The word has undoubt- 
 edly a significance reaching far beyond this particular case ; 
 and even the disciples, in their " Who then can be saved ? " 
 have generalised the individual case. Jesus ascribes to His 
 heavenly Father a moral power overlapping the free human 
 self-determination, — a power of freely establishing in it the 
 conditions on which He can bestow His grace, — a power, as we 
 may see in the case of the rich young man, that is not con- 
 straining, but rather emancipating. Certainly Jesus presup- 
 poses an ascendency of grace, but neither here nor elsewhere a 
 determinism. Even the names of the disciples being written 
 in heaven (Luke x. 20) is no predestination. The expression 
 sprang from the custom of having in the cities a register of 
 citizens, in which the living citizens stood, but the dead were 
 blotted out ; therefore, in Eev. iii. 5, mention is also made of 
 the possible blotting out of a name from the book of life. The 
 expression therefore, no doubt, signifies being entered on the 
 roll of heavenly citizens, that is a personal assurance of salva- 
 
140 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 tion, but not one that may not be lost, and therefore, also, 
 not one that, when gained, is beyond reach of question. 
 Again, when Jesus (Mark iv. 11, 12) passes judgment on the 
 opposite relation of His disciples and the multitude to the 
 word of God, " To you it is given to know the mysteries of 
 the kingdom of God ; but to them all things are communicated 
 in parables : that seeing they may see, and not perceive ; and 
 hearing they may hear, and not understand ; lest they may be 
 converted and forgiven," He certainly establishes a twofold 
 influence of God ; in the one case, an enlightening, in the 
 other a hardening one ; but even the latter is neither unmerited 
 nor irrevocable. The point in both cases here is rather the 
 applicability of the rule, expressed in the same connection, of 
 the mutual working between God and the human heart : 
 " Whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have 
 abundance ; but from him that hath not shall be taken away, 
 even that which he hath." To the disciples it was given to 
 know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, because they had 
 sufficient susceptibility and spiritual sense to inquire about 
 the meaning of the parables (ver. 10). To the people it was 
 denied, because this spiritual mind and inquiry were wanting. 
 But that does not mean that the same might not yet arise in 
 them ; for at that very hour Jesus is training His disciples 
 to send them to this very people, in the assurance that a 
 great harvest of God is to be gathered from among them 
 (Matt. ix. 35-38). 
 
 § 4. The Way of Salvation. Conversion and 
 toegiveness 
 
 In consonance with the same law of the reciprocal action 
 of freedom and grace which we see here, two further results 
 of the call, which condition one another, come into operation 
 in Jesus' scheme of salvation : the change of mind and the 
 forgiveness of sin. The fierdvoia is the first word in the 
 preaching of the kingdom of heaven, and remains, from 
 beginning to end of the gospel, the subjective fundamental 
 condition of sharing in the kingdom (Mark i. 15, vi. 13; 
 Matt, xi. 21 ; Luke xxiv. 47). It is not so much penance 
 in the judicial or old Church sense of the word, but, as the 
 
THE MESSIANIC SALVATION 141 
 
 word says, change of mind, conversion {iiriaTpe^eaOai, Matt. 
 xiii. 15). It is that thorough inward conversion, when the 
 man turns from the world and sin to God and His holy will, 
 a renewal from the bottom of the heart, which iirst creates a 
 right disposition, the root of all particular right actions, and 
 thus, as it were, in germ satisfies the righteous demands of 
 the kingdom of God. To this element of salvation on the 
 human side, corresponds the forgiveness of sins on the side of 
 God. Though in His early preaching, of which we have so 
 few verbal specimens, Jesus does not explicitly give such 
 prominence to the watchword of forgiveness as that of change 
 of mind, yet there can be no doubt that it formed an essential 
 and, as it were, self-evident element of His preaching. The 
 text of His sermon at Nazareth (Luke iv. 1 8) indicates it, and 
 His whole activity among publicans and sinners presupposes 
 it (cf. Luke vii. 47, 48). It is included in the refreshment 
 avdirav<ri<; rfj ■^v^v, which He promises (Matt. xi. 28) to 
 the weary and heavy laden, that is, those vainly striving 
 after righteousness, and sighing under the burden of the law 
 and a sense of guilt. Nay, it is contained, as a matter of 
 course, in the glad message of the kingdom of heaven being at 
 hand. For not only was it a definite and standing promise 
 of the prophets that the Messianic kingdom would begin with 
 a great remission of guilt, granted by God to His people, but 
 this lay in the very nature of the coming kingdom itself. 
 How could the holy God have intercourse with His people 
 without at the same time bringing pardon to them for all that 
 had accumulated to separate between them ? How then are 
 the two introductory conditions of the kingdom related to 
 one another ? That a connection and mutual relation may 
 be looked for here is evident, not only from the first preach- 
 ing of Jesus (Matt. iv. 12), which at bottom comprehends 
 both the demand and the promise, but from the very nature 
 of the case, fierdvoia, the breaking in principle with sin and 
 the divine remission of it must be mutually conditioned. In 
 a certain sense this divine remission will, of course, necessarily 
 precede the human conversion. For, as sin surrounds man 
 not only morally, as a false tendency of the will, but also 
 religiously, as guilt before God, which makes him shun His 
 presence with the fear of an evil conscience, how could a true 
 
142 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 fierdvoia — that is, a turning of the heart to God — take place, 
 unless met by a gracious offer of divine pardon ? Therefore 
 Jesus (Mark i. 15) adds to His fieTavoeire the koX TricrTeveTe 
 iv Tffl evayyeXup. Without the gospel of grace, and the trust 
 in God which it awakens, the people could not possibly be 
 converted to God. And there is confirniation here in the 
 fierdvoia of what we said above of being poor in spirit, that 
 it is no mere legal demand, but is at the same time wrought 
 by the grant of salvation. From the relation of grace and 
 freedom that runs through His doctrine of salvation, Jesus 
 can consider it just as much an action of God on the sinner 
 as a decided act of the man himself. At one time it is set 
 forth as the act of the shepherd going after the sheep that 
 was lost, at another time it is set forth as the act of the lost 
 son who rises up and returns to his father, trusting in his 
 goodness of heart. But then it is well to note that this 
 forgiveness, announced and offered beforehand, is not as yet 
 one personally adjudged. It is offered and assured on the 
 part of God, but not yet received on the part of man, not yet 
 appropriated by him. That only takes place on the ground 
 of fierdvoia. The lost son must first come to himself and 
 return to his Father ere he can be certain of forgiveness, and 
 be a partaker thereof. The publican must first beat peni- 
 tently on his breast, and turn with all his heart from sin to 
 God, before he can go down to his house justified (Luke 
 xviii. 13, 14). And so, in virtue of Jesus' direction, the 
 whole apostolic Church has preached fierdvoiav eh a^eatv 
 d/iapTtcov, repentance and conversion, as a precondition of the 
 actual personal forgiveness of sin (Luke xxiv. 47; Acts ii. 38; 
 of. Mark i. 4). That God forgives the sinner who turns to 
 Him, but only him who turns, this unquestionable doctrine 
 of the prophets and the psalms, was at bottom self-evident to 
 Jesus. But, with the view of setting aside misconceptions, 
 and especially for the understanding of the subsequent Pauline 
 doctrine of justification, it is well to establish it here expressly. 
 The doctrine of the Apostle Paul is different in point of form. 
 He speaks of faith where Jesus speaks of conversion, and 
 instead of forgiveness of sin he speaks rather of justification, 
 — that is, a declaration of righteousness, an acquittal of the 
 sinner, — an idea and expression which Jesus only once applies 
 
THE MESSIANIC SALVATION 143 
 
 in a similar way (Luke xviii. 14). The saving transaction, 
 however, described by both is essentially the same. It may 
 perhaps seem strange to us that the idea of faith, which the 
 apostolic preaching has made so familiar and so important to 
 us, does not stand out in the teaching of Jesus beside that 
 of repentance. Only once or twice in the Synoptics (Mark 
 ix. 42 ; Matt, xviii. 6) do we find the phrase " believe in 
 me " ; and this isolation suggests the conjecture that it has 
 been introduced into the words of Jesus here from the later 
 phraseology of the Church. But yet this putting of the 
 demand for faith in the background, which is connected with 
 a historical circumstance to be alluded to immediately, the 
 circumstance that His person seems only gradually to the 
 Lord Himself to have come to the central place in His 
 doctrine of salvation, is only of a formal nature. Belief in 
 God's grace is self-evidently the other side of repentance. 
 Jesus, as already mentioned, requires faith in the gospel as a 
 matter of course (Mark i. 15), without which the glad message 
 to men could have no effect at all. Jesus has further claimed 
 faith for His heavenly Father and His love (Mark ix. 42, xv. 
 3 2) ; and how would it have been possible to avoid extending 
 this trust to Him who was indeed the revelation of this 
 Father, and the personal surety of His love ? The conduct of 
 those who sought His help, to whom He says so often " thy 
 faith hath saved thee," is at bottom a faith in Christ, though 
 in a most elementary form ; and when Jesus afterwards pre- 
 supposes a combined confession of, and praying in. His name 
 on the part of the disciples (Matt. x. 32, xviii. 20), or when 
 He calls on men to receive Him, or come to Him in order to 
 learn of Him or allow themselves to be guided by Him (Matt. 
 xi. 28-30), it cannot be denied that the only thing wanting 
 here is the formal expression incneveiv et? ■^piaTov, the idea 
 and requirement of a personal trustful attachment to Him 
 being present throughout. We have the clearest evidence of 
 the identity of repentance and faith in the narrative of the 
 woman who was a sinner (Luke vii. 36 f.), the forgiveness of 
 whose sin Jesus establishes and confirms with the words : " Thy 
 faith hath saved thee." ^ 
 
 1 That the forgiveness of sin in this narrative is not based on love, as 
 one constantly hears even from Protestant theologians, is evident. For 
 
144 new testament theology 
 
 § 5. The Way of Salvation. Sonship and Sangtification 
 
 The immediate fruit of forgiveness, received on the ground 
 of repentance and faith, is, according to the teaching of Jesus, 
 sonship with God. It represents, in some respects, a restora- 
 tion to an original but lost condition, such as is exemplified 
 in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Por God is in Him- 
 self Father, and therefore man is meant and fitted to be His 
 child ; but only he who from the heart has turned to God, and 
 received forgiveness, can know and feel himself to be His child. 
 Accordingly, Jesus does not ascribe to all men, or to all 
 Israelites, the divine adoption (or sonship, Matt. v. 45), but 
 only to His disciples. He does so by speaking to them again 
 and again of "your Father," and giving them the right to 
 pray : " Our Father in heaven." In conformity with the two- 
 fold ground of this relation, which rests on change of mind 
 and on forgiveness, Jesus now deduces from it the most 
 blessed rights of children, as well as the most earnest obliga- 
 tions of children. As to the first : it relieves His disciples 
 from all earthly care, which their heavenly Father takes upon 
 Himself (Matt. vi. 25 f.). It places them in the least detail 
 of life under the fatherly providence of God, without whose 
 will not a hair of their head will be injured (Matt. x. 30). 
 It gives them the right to pray for the forgiveness of the 
 debts in which they are being constantly involved, and for 
 defence against the temptations which are ever afresh threaten- 
 ing them. It introduces them into the most cordial relation 
 of confidence and prayer to a Father in heaven, who — much 
 more faithful than an earthly father — will never give them a 
 stone instead of bread (Matt. vii. 9 f.). But as these filial 
 rights, at the same time, pass of themselves into filial duties 
 — into the duty of not losing faith, but of continuing to pray, 
 seek, knock (Mark xi. 22f. ; Matt. vii. 7 f.) — of not praying 
 
 if, according to ver. 4, the mucli or little love is the effect of the rich or 
 meagre forgiveness received, it cannot possibly at the same time be thought 
 of as the cause. According to this, the Xeynj m;, difimTat air^s ai iftapriat 
 »(■ 'iroKhcti, mi iiyu.Trmatii utihv, would have to be thus expounded. Her sins 
 must be forgiven her, for she can show the effects of that forgiveness. She 
 has shown Me much grateful love. The following words, a li i-htym 
 iKpiirai, ohiyov dyetva, confirm this causal relation of forgiveness and 
 love. 
 
THE MESSIANIC SALVATION 145 
 
 for forgiveness from God without promising forgiveness towards 
 our debtors (Matt. vi. 14, 15), of not praying for deliverance 
 from temptation without watching against falling into tempta- 
 tion (Matt. xxvi. 41); so He requires them to evince their 
 divine sonship by the moral imitation of their heavenly Father 
 (Matt. V. 45), and recognises no one as His brother or sister, 
 that is, as a child of God, save those who do the will of His 
 Father in heaven (Mark iii. 35 ; Luke xi. 28). Looked at 
 from this side, the divine sonship, which is on the one hand 
 a blessed possession, presents itself on the other as an ideal 
 which is yet to be realised, as the infinite task of being 
 perfect as the Father in heaven is perfect (ottos '■^evijade viol, 
 «.T.X. Matt. V. 45, 48); and so there is an absolute idea of 
 the divine sonship which is only realised in the completed 
 kingdom, in the resurrection and glorification of the perfected 
 righteous (Luke xx. 36). The work of salvation, therefore, 
 is by no means finished with the fundamental work of con- 
 version and forgiveness done once for all, but behind the 
 narrow gate of entrance lies the steep path of sanctification, 
 which leads to life only at the high goal of perfection (Matt, 
 vii. 14). It is to His disciples, to the children of God, that 
 Jesus unfolds those heights and depths of that new doctrine 
 of righteousness which estimates anger as murder, and the un- 
 chaste look as adultery. And no grace once received defends 
 a man against the constantly possible misuse of freedom, a 
 ruinous unfaithfulness, which by turning grace to licentious- 
 ness necessitates its recall (Matt, xviii. 23 f., xxv. 14—30; 
 Luke xix. 11-27). Yet Jesus could say of His training of His 
 own in righteousness : " My yoke is easy, and My burden is 
 light." Salvation when experienced is a power of God stirring 
 in the man, which makes its ever higher requirements easier 
 of fulfilment. If man, transformed inwardly by the renewing 
 of his mind, is changed from a corrupt into a good tree, he 
 will also naturally bear good fruit (Matt. vii. 18). He who 
 has received forgiveness has experienced a love that wins the 
 heart, and love experienced, kindles grateful love in return, 
 and in this is found the highest incitement to the fulfilling of 
 all divine commandments (Luke vii. 47). So that in keeping 
 with the law which we have observed throughout of the 
 co-operation of freedom and grace, human faithfulness is 
 
 BEYSCHLAG. — I. 10 
 
146 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 indeed claimed at every step towards perfection (Luke xii. 
 42), and yet the divine faithfulness has taken the lost but 
 recovered lamb upon its shoulders, and now bears it homeward 
 by its strength (Luke xv. 5). 
 
 § 6. Means of Salvation, Word and Mieacle 
 
 What then are Jesus' means of salvation, the revealed 
 facts of the kingdom by which these effects are to be brought 
 about ? If all signs are not deceptive, a gradual development 
 of the teaching of Jesus in reference to this matter took place, 
 as He repeatedly brings new points of view to light in the 
 experience thrust upon Him in His public life.^ If we deny 
 this progress, as there is still a prevalent disposition to do, 
 owing to the force of dogmatic custom, and assume that from 
 the very first as at the last, with the same consciousness 
 throughout. He connected salvation with His person and His 
 death of sacrifice, then we make His preaching, as it lies 
 before us in the Synoptists, not only unintelligible but untrue, 
 for He would then have thought and taught differently. Not 
 that Jesus had ever to correct Himself in His doctrine of sal- 
 vation, or to give up a standpoint which He had taken, but 
 He had repeatedly to complete and merge the preceding view 
 in a higher and deeper. First and above all — and this cannot 
 be denied — He considered the word of glad tidings as the 
 essential means of salvation, and thankfully welcomed, in 
 connection with it, the miracles granted by the Father, as 
 supporting and confirming His preaching (Matt. xi. 2—6), yet 
 without regarding them as absolutely necessary. The word, the 
 testimony of what was in Him, flowing from the depth of His 
 consciousness, was indeed the simplest form of the revelation, 
 and the most indispensable — since all revelations of God to 
 man must reckon on being understood ere they can be 
 operative, and cannot be at all believed without being under- 
 stood (Matt. xiii. 11, xix. 51 ; Luke viii. 12). The prophets 
 who appeared before Him had been equipped with the word 
 as the one means of salvation, and He had something mightier 
 to say than Jonah or Solomon (Matt. xii. 41, 42). He 
 appears therefore with the unmistakable assurance of being 
 1 Of. my Lebm Jesu, i. 231 and 351 ff. 
 
THE MESSIANIC SALVATION 147 
 
 able to convert and save His people by the preaching of the 
 gospel. He knows Himself as anointed and sent to preach 
 (Luke iv. 18), and still at a later period of His public life He 
 demands of His contemporaries that they repent at His mere 
 preaching, without signs and wonders, as the people of Nineveh 
 repented at the preaching of Jonah (Matt. xii. 41 f. ; Luke xi. 
 291). And how should He not? His word was the word 
 of the living God, the glad tidings that the kingdom of heaven 
 had come near, the setting forth of the eternal love of the 
 Father in heaven ; and it was confirmed by its agreement with 
 the law and prophets, by the fulfilling of the deepest needs of 
 the human heart, and by the divine fruits which it produced 
 wherever it found a good lodgment. Above all, the Parable 
 of the Sower, the significant firstling of His parables of the 
 kingdom, unfolds to us the ideas of Jesus of the saving power 
 of the word. The word of the kingdom is like a good seed. 
 As there is a wonderful power of life latent in a seed, an 
 entire life development, so in the word of God there is the 
 creative power and development of the new life from God 
 which the human heart needs. It now, of course, depends on 
 the nature of the soU, that is, the heart, whether this seed is to 
 develop its nature and power or not. As the seed which fell 
 by the wayside, or on stony ground, or among thorns, did not 
 from the first, or at least in the end, come to anything, so 
 the productive power of the new life, wherever it is met by 
 stupidity, frivolity, or worldliness, is frustated from the first, 
 or after a transient effect, or even after a partial success. But 
 in some, at least, the divine word germinates, and not only 
 germinates, but throws out roots and forms ears, and so finally 
 brings forth the fruits of a life from God, thirty, sixty, and an 
 hundredfold (Mark iv. 3 f.; Matt. xiii. 3 f., 18 f. ; Luke viii. 4 f.). 
 The disciples were the living evidences of the truth of this 
 parable. In them germinated and grew a new life, which He 
 could compare with new wine which should not be put in old 
 bottles (Mark ii. 22), and so He could see in this disciple 
 community as He does in the further Parable of the Seed field 
 (Mark iv. 26-29), and of the Tares among the Wheat (Matt. 
 xiii. 34 f.), a planting of God from which will at last proceed 
 the great harvest of the completed kingdom of God. And on 
 this sowing of the word there came the miracles granted Him 
 
148 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 by God like the rain which blesses and the sunshine. They 
 certainly could not beget the change of mind and faith in the 
 heart which the word does. But they might awaken and 
 nourish the latent germ of the spiritual life, and so they were 
 vouchsafed to faith however weak, while the unbelief that 
 requires a sign was referred to Moses and the prophets (Luke 
 xvi. 31), or to the signs of the times, or the sign of the 
 prophet Jonas, that is, to the God-sent preacher of repentance 
 and judgment (Mark viii. 1 2). Those miracles of Jesus were 
 works of love for His contemporaries, intended to make His 
 earnest prophetic words more impressive (Matt. xi. 20—24); 
 a condescension to the weakness of men who commonly felt 
 more deeply their sensuous than their spiritual need, but to 
 whom the sense of spiritual need and desire for help might 
 arise in the sensible experience of help and love. Still more 
 in their universally compassionate character, removing, through 
 the power of God, the manifold evil and misery of the world, 
 they were the dawning rays of that day when the kingdom of 
 God will dry up all tears, and glorify even the natural life, 
 and therefore they were a testimony in fact to the truth of 
 the kingdom as come near to those who still took offence at 
 the testimony of the word (Matt. xi. 5, xii. 28). 
 
 § 7. The personal Mediator oe Saltation 
 
 It lay in the nature of the case, however, that these 
 miraculous signs should not only attach men in trust and 
 gratitude to the person of Jesus, but that the effect of the word 
 should prove to depend upon a personal relation to Him. For, 
 as we have repeatedly urged, every guarantee for the truth of 
 the gospel lay in Him, in His personal certainty of God and 
 communion with God, and therefore He Himself as the real 
 mediator of salvation, stood behind the word as a means of 
 grace from the very first, though for a long time undeclared. 
 We get the impression that Jesus, wholly devoted to His 
 divine mission, and seeking only the glory of His heavenly 
 Father, for a long time allowed this saving significance of His 
 personality to prevail without any desire of His and without 
 reasoning about it, and that the full consciousness of the 
 degree in which participation in the kingdom of God depends 
 
THE MESSIANIC SALVATION 149 
 
 upon surrender to Him, first came to Him through experience, 
 through the opposition of the world. If we are not mistaken, 
 this development of His consciousness of being Saviour comes 
 into prominence, above all, in the much-discussed passage, 
 Matt. xi. 25-30. Jesus has gained the new experience that 
 the glad message committed to Him is hidden from the wise 
 and prudent of His people, while it is revealed to the un- 
 educated, the babes. In taking thankfully from His Father's 
 hands this experience, which, according to human ways of 
 thought, is so depressing, it dawns on Him what a mystery of 
 salvation the Father has prepared for the world in Him the 
 Son, and how all knowledge of the Father is bound up in 
 Him, and in His free revealing of it. " All things are 
 delivered unto Me of My Father : and no man knoweth the 
 Son, but the Father ; neither knoweth any man the Father, 
 save the Son, and he to whomsoever He will reveal Him." 
 Why was the new revelation of God hidden from the wise 
 and prudent, the scribes and teachers in Israel, and why was 
 it revealed to His babes of disciples, these Galilean fishermen 
 and peasants 1 Because the former took offence at Him, the 
 meek and lowly Son of Man, and could not place confidence 
 in Him ; while, to the latter, love for Him became daily the 
 leading means of knowledge. From this hour, therefore, com- 
 mences a new tone in the teaching of Jesus, who, in a way 
 till then unusual, places Himself in the central point of His 
 doctrine of salvation : " Come unto Me, all ye that labour and 
 are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke 
 upon you, and learn of Me ; for I am meek and lowly of 
 heart : and ye shall find rest to your souls." That is a tone 
 which is usually called the Johannine, because it certainly is 
 much more strongly emphasised in the Fourth Gospel from the 
 very beginning, but it also makes itself heard in the Synoptists 
 from this point. " He who receiveth you, receiveth Me ; and 
 he who receiveth Me, receiveth Him that sent Me " (Matt. x. 
 40). "Whosoever confesseth Me before men, him will I also 
 confess before My heavenly Father" (Matt. x. 32 ; Luke xii. 
 8). "He that is not for Me is against Me; and he that 
 gathereth not with Me scattereth abroad" (Matt. xii. 30). 
 "Where two or three are gathered together in My name, 
 there am I in the midst of them" (Matt, xviii. 20). In 
 
150 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 these and like words already emerges, as Jesus' own idea, the 
 thought which afterwards ruled the whole apostolic teaching, 
 that the attitude of man to the person of Jesus absolutely 
 decides his relation to God. The decisive significance of His 
 personality, in the setting up of the kingdom of God, forces 
 itself on the Messiah from another side in that same middle 
 period of His public life. His Pharisaic opponents attempted 
 to destroy the impression of His healing the possessed, by 
 tracing it back to a covenant with Beelzebub, the prince of 
 demons. By so doing, they woke in Him the majestic con- 
 sciousness of being rather the personal conqueror of Satan, 
 the destroyer in principle of the kingdom of darkness. " How 
 can one enter into a strong man's house, and spoil his goods, 
 except he first bind the strong man himself ? " (Mark iii. 27 ; 
 Matt. xii. 29 ; Luke xi. 21). His power, therefore, of spoiling 
 the prince of darkness of his prey — the possessed — rests 
 upon His having first overcome him in personal combat, — 
 without doubt an allusion to the conflict of temptation in the 
 wilderness, in which He had preferred the self-denying path 
 of absolute obedience to God to all the allurements of the 
 world-spirit, and so first obtained for Himself the power of 
 breaking the world-dominion of evil. The consciousness of 
 being the Conqueror and Dethroner of Satan comes into 
 prominence also on other occasions. " I saw Satan fall as 
 lightning from heaven." " I have given you power to tread 
 on scorpions and serpents, and all the powers of the enemy : 
 and nothing shall injure you," He declares to His disciples 
 (Luke X. 18, 19) when they had returned with rich results 
 from their mission. The destruction of the kingdom of Satan 
 is the necessary other side of the setting up of the kingdom 
 of God. And it is possible to others only through Him who 
 in a personal life-struggle defeats every onset of the old evil 
 enemy, and has indeed in principle overcome him from the 
 first. 
 
 § 8. The saving Significance of His Death 
 
 These very considerations, which are obscurely indicated 
 in the synoptic tradition, lead to a still more definite unfold- 
 ing of Jesus' ideas of salvation, to the idea of the founding of 
 
THE MESSIANIC SALVATION 151 
 
 salvation by means of His death. The personal Mediator of 
 salvation must crown His work by giving up His life for it. 
 That is an idea with which Jesus did not begin, an idea which 
 must have been hidden from Him so long as the possibility 
 of calling His people to repentance, by the word of the glad 
 tidings, was not actually disproved. It is an idea which He 
 reaches, too, through the experience from which, as in Matt. 
 xi. 25, He learns His Father's will. That conflict and victory 
 at the gate of entrance to His Messiahship had probably been 
 decisive for Himself, but not yet quite decisive for His work. 
 Whatever powers and triumphs for the kingdom of God His 
 official life at its height might secure, the powers of darkness 
 gathered themselves together all the stronger against it, and 
 made it clear that the last, hardest, and decisive combat was 
 yet to come. An ever darker hatred was being developed in 
 the leading circles of the people against Him who brought 
 salvation. World - ruling selfishness with demoniac power 
 appeared against the divine love with its joyful message, 
 resolved in self-preservation to lay murderous hands on the 
 messenger of God. The great mass of Israel, however, held 
 by sensuous Messianic expectations, and not at all compre- 
 hending His spiritual ideas of salvation, wavered back and 
 forwards irresolutely between Him and His deadly enemies. 
 And even the few faithful ones whom He had gained, how 
 weak and dependent, and how bound up in those worldly and 
 selfish expectations they still were. Amid these impressions 
 and experiences, in the death which lay threateningly before 
 Him, in His situation as a man, Jesus prophetically laid hold 
 of, and ever more clearly perceived, a decree of His heavenly 
 Father — a decree that He should accomplish by dying what 
 He had only been permitted to prepare for by living ; and 
 thus towards the end of His life we have declarations about 
 the saving significance of His death. He could not indeed 
 develop in formal teaching to His disciples an idea of God 
 after the understanding of which He had yet himself to strive, 
 and which again became doubtful on the threshold of its 
 realisation in Gethsemane. He could only utter it in hints 
 and presentiments like a prophet, and therefore it need not 
 surprise us that it lies before us only in a few short and 
 obscure sayings. It was written of the servant of Jehovah 
 
152 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 (Isa. liii.): "When he hath made his soul an offering for 
 sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the 
 pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hands." Corre- 
 spondingly, we meet, in the words of Jesus (Luke xii. 49, 50), 
 with the idea that He had to expect the full results of that 
 which He desired on earth only beyond His earthly life, after 
 a baptism of blood that is at hand : " I am come to send fire 
 on the earth (that is, a power of purifying separation ; cf. ver. 
 51 f.) ; and what will I if it be already kindled ? But I have 
 a baptism to be baptized with ; ^ and how am I straitened 
 until it be accomplished ! " That, however, expresses only 
 the fact of the necessity for dying, not the reason for it. 
 This reason is given in Mark x. 45 ; Matt. xx. 28: "The 
 Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, 
 and to give His life a ransom for many " — BoOvai rrjv 4'v^v 
 avTov \vTpov uvtI -TToXKmv. This solitary saying has, of course, 
 tormented many who seek to force upon it all their precon- 
 ceived doctrinal opinions about the death of Jesus. Simplicity 
 of interpretation, the analogy of Scripture, and especially the 
 agreement with Jesus' mode of thought elsewhere, must decide. 
 The idea of ransom presupposes those who are not free, who 
 are captive or enslaved, and who are to be set free by means 
 of it. It may be asked, who or what is to be thought of as 
 the power which holds them captive or in bondage ? On the 
 basis of Old Testament passages such as Ps. xlix. 9, Job 
 xxxiii. 24, redemption from death has been thought of, and 
 this has been brought into connection with Matt. xvi. 27, in 
 which Jesus represents the impossibility for a man who has 
 wasted his soul on the vain and transitory, of buying it back 
 even at the price of the whole world.^ But these passages 
 have nothing to do, either with each other, or with the one in 
 question. Those Old Testament passages speak (poetically) of 
 a ransom to be given to God, in order that a man may not 
 die — in the usual sense of the word die. But whenever the 
 New Testament considers the life or blood of Christ as a 
 
 1 Baptism as an image of dying — as sinking into a watery grave — is a 
 symbol bound up with tbe original form of immersion, which, we have 
 also in Mark x. 38, 39 ; Eom. vi. 3-5. 
 
 2 So Ritschl (Rechtf. u. Versohnung, ii. 84), and after him Weiss (iV. T. 
 Theol. p. 74). 
 
THE MESSIANIC SALVATION 153 
 
 ransom, it does not think of a redemption from temporal 
 death, which has not been removed from us by the death of 
 Jesus, nor of a payment to God, as though we were to be 
 bought off from Him, but of a being purchased for God, that 
 is, of a being set free from the bonds of a power hostile to 
 God (1 Cor. vi. 20, vii. 23 ; 1 Pet. i. 18 ; Eev. i. 5, v. 9). 
 And Jesus (Matt. xvi. 27) speaks of the inability of a man 
 whose life has been given up to the world regaining his freedom 
 at the last day (ver. 28). But for those who have selfishly 
 given themselves up to the world, and therefore appear at the 
 last day as lost, Jesus has not given His life a ransom. Such 
 learned combinations, as usual, overlook the simplest and most 
 natural interpretation. The New Testament, as well as the 
 Old, is familiar with the notion of bondage to sin, of being 
 sold into the slavery of sin (John viii. 34 ; Eom. vii. 14 ; of. 
 1 Kings xxi. 20, 25 ; 1 Mace. i. 15), and also of the loosen- 
 ing of these slave bonds, and deliverance from the inherited 
 power of sinful behaviour, or the service of sin in all sorts 
 of unrighteousness. It repeatedly uses the word \vTpovcr6at 
 when it speaks of the saving operation of the death or blood 
 of Christ, 1 Pet. i. 18 ; Tit. ii. 14 (cf. ayopd^eiv, Eev. i. 5, 
 V. 9). Jesus, when He promised, in order to complete His 
 service of self-denying love for the world, to give His life a 
 ransom for many, must also have thought of the worst and 
 most real misery and bondage in which man finds himself, 
 that is, not of death, nor even of mere guilt, but of the 
 bondage of sin. The context throughout favours this. While 
 the idea of bondage to guilt or to death is remote from the 
 special occasion of the words, the prayer of the sons of 
 Zebedee for the place of honour in His kingdom, Jesus must 
 have thought of the bonds of selfishness and worldly pleasure 
 which, as that desire of His favourites betrayed, still clung to 
 even the best and most pious, and He may have expressed 
 the hope that these bands would at length be broken by His 
 approaching death. The cords which still bound His own 
 to the world which was about to slay Him must be finally 
 broken by His death upon the cross, so that, in the words of 
 Paul, the world from that moment was crucified to them, 
 and they to the world. The traditional doctrine of vicarious 
 satisfaction, as may be readily conceived, is imported into 
 
154 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 these words the more confidently, that it for once finds here 
 the indispensable avrC peculiar to it, which is wanting in 
 almost all the rest of the New Testament. That avrC is best 
 explained by the image of redemption from slavery needs no 
 discussion, as the ransom is surely given in place of those 
 whom the Master and Owner has to emancipate in return for 
 it. On the other hand, Jesus cannot have thought of paying 
 the debt of death due by others by enduring death for them, 
 because by the presupposition that God neither can nor will 
 be gracious or forgive without a Xvrpov, He would have 
 destroyed everything He had up till then taught of the free 
 grace of God, and the forgiveness which depends only on the 
 sinner's return. 
 
 § 9. DocTKiNAL Significance of the Institution of the 
 Lord's Supper 
 
 The richest, most many-sided, and therefore, of course, 
 the most difficult utterance on the saving significance of His 
 death, was given by Jesus on the threshold of the death 
 itself in the institution of the Supper (Matt. xxvi. 26-28; 
 Mark xiv. 22-24; Luke xxii. 19, 20; 1 Cor. xi. 23-35). 
 In speaking here of His body being given or broken,^ and 
 His blood shed for many (or as Paul and Luke have it, " for 
 you "), He at anyrate characterises His death as something 
 for the advantage of His own. For His body, an image and 
 vessel of His life, and His blood, in the biblical view a seal 
 and bearer of His life, are simply the solemn double expres- 
 sion for the personal life which He surrenders to the death 
 of violence, and the virep ttoWmv or vixav is no avri, instead 
 of, but for the advantage, for the good of. Thus eh a^eaiv 
 afiapriav, which is added by Matthew only, is an interpreta- 
 tion not incorrect, — as will be shown, — but to be referred 
 simply to the opinion of the evangelist. Jesus Himself 
 explains the asserted blessing of His death more comprehen- 
 
 "■ I do not believe that the xT^ufuvou after v'n-ip v/iuu in 1 Cor. xi. 24 is 
 not genuine. The mere to aTfia fiou to Cirep v(4.ua would be unnaturally 
 compressed ; and if the participle were a gloss, the copyist would have 
 supplemented from Luke the word t^o^tvm, hut would not have put the 
 original aTiufiiuoi/. 
 
THE MESSIANIC SALVATION 155 
 
 sively by a twofold allusion — first to the Passover meal 
 •whose type appears specially in the breaking of bread and in 
 the words " this is my body," then to the sacrifice of the 
 covenant at Sinai, to which reference is made in the words 
 uttered in handing the cup, " this is My blood of the coven- 
 ant " (or as Paul paraphrases, " this is the new covenant in 
 My blood"). Let us trace both references, not forgetting 
 that as allusions and, at the same time, diverse allusions, for 
 the explanation of one and the same institution, they are not 
 to be pursued beyond the real outstanding points of compari- 
 son. The Passover signified exemption, that is, forgiveness 
 and deliverance for those who, though as worthy of death as 
 the Egyptians, had an atonement in the blood of the lamb of 
 sacrifice, — an atonement because they had eaten the body of 
 this lamb, and so appropriated the sacrifice. Jesus in offering 
 His body, about to be broken in the symbol of the unleavened 
 bread, as food to be appropriated by His disciples, expresses 
 the idea that His life given up to death (but not abiding in 
 death) must be inwardly appropriated and become food for 
 their inner life, and that thus His surrender to death may 
 serve for their reconciliation, their forgiveness and deliver^ 
 ance. This symbolic action certainly ascribes a saving 
 significance to His death in itself as an actual surrender of 
 life. But it does so only because there is saving significance 
 in the life which passes through death, and which can only 
 become the spiritual food of the disciples, the bread of life to 
 be appropriated by them, if it does not perish in death. So 
 that alongside of the idea of death, we are to see here also 
 that of resurrection, the glorification of His life — which , is 
 then to be inwardly communicated to His own. As to the 
 allusion to the sacrifice by which the covenant was ratified at 
 Sinai, we have to consider in it, first, the Mosaic ordinance 
 (Ex. xxiv.), and then also the prophecy of Jeremiah of a new 
 covenant '(Jer. xxxi. 31-34). For it is clear that Jesus in 
 calling His blood, the blood of the covenant, thinks — even if 
 He does not use the words t^? Kaivrj^: — of that predicted new 
 covenant which is to be ratified by the shedding of His blood, 
 just as the old covenant at Sinai by the blood of sacrifice 
 with which Moses sprinkled the people at the solemn close 
 of the act of institution. Now it should be noted that this 
 
156 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 blood sprinkling does not introduce but concludes the whole 
 founding of the covenant. It takes place only when God has 
 completed His revelation, and the people have made the 
 solemn declaration: "All the words which the Lord hath 
 spoken we will do " (Ex. xxiv. 3). It is not, therefore, the 
 foundation or the possibility, but the ratification of' the 
 Sinaitic covenant ; . and if , it signified, as no doubt it did, a 
 purifying of the people as they entered into communion with 
 God,^ this purifying stands in the same relation to the 
 people's vow of obedience as the divine forgiveness in the 
 baptism of John, or the teaching of Jesus stands to the 
 human change of mind. If, then, Jesus compares His offering 
 of Himself with the sacrifice of the covenant, He cannot 
 mean that the new covenant of grace and forgiveness is first 
 founded or rendered possible by His dying, that the grace of 
 the Father in heaven is only now secured. He can only 
 mean that the new covenant is ratified by His dying ; that is, 
 that for those who sincerely enter into the covenant the grace 
 of God the Father, and the forgiveness of sin which that 
 involves, is to be sealed by His death as the pledge. And 
 this certainly justifies Matthew's ek d(pe(nv a/j,apTia)v, but 
 it does not express the full sense of vTrep iroXkcov or v/jlSiv. 
 For as the reference to the Passover in the first saying of 
 Jesus suggests that the sacrificial death of Christ was not 
 
 ^ Wendt, Lehre Jesu, 519, denies, of course, to tlie sacrifice of the 
 covenant any relation to the sin of the people. But that is against all 
 biblical views and all biblical theology. Cf. Heb. ix. 19-22. Eeihm, 
 Lehrhegriff des Hehrcerbriefs, p. 500, and Oehler, 0. T. Theology, pp. 407, 408. 
 Wendt goes still further, and denies to the thought of Jesus about His 
 death, expressed in the institution of the Supper, any relation to purifica- 
 tion (Lehre Jesu, p. 522), — a somewhat daring contradiction to the exposition 
 which the apostolic age and the whole of Christendom to this day have 
 given to the words "for you." What better has Wendt to put in place 
 of this exposition 1 " Jesus in the words at the Supper characterised in 
 so far the saving significance (of His death) by regarding His death as an 
 act noble in the sight of God and moving God, to maintain His promised 
 saving communion, and to confer His salvation on the disciples " (p. 520). 
 Thus the God and Father of Jesus Christ, who is the very eternal love 
 and faithfulness, after He had revealed His kingdom and salvation, 
 must, in the view of Jesus, be moved by a noble act to maintain and 
 confer that salvation. The doctrinal tradition of the Church is surely 
 not improved by such discoveries. 
 
THE MESSIANIC SALVATION 157 
 
 merely for the purpose of reconciling the covenant people of 
 the New Testament, but chiefly for the purpose of helping 
 them to make their own the life which was to be given up 
 for them in order that it might become food of a new life, 
 and so might secure to them reconciliation and deliverance in 
 the day of judgment, so must it be also in the "second words 
 of institution. For the new covenant, according to Jer. 
 xxxi. 31-34, is not merely a covenant of forgiveness, but 
 first and foremost it is a covenant of inward transformation, 
 of regeneration, — I will put my law in their heart, and write 
 it in their mind, — and only in the second place a covenant of 
 forgiveness and justification (ver. 34). And so Jesus also by 
 calling the blood that is to be shed, the blood of a covenant, 
 the sacrificial blood of a new covenant, found the saving 
 result of His dying first of all in the production of a new life 
 in God, and only in connection with that did He relate it to 
 the assurance of the forgiveness of sin. "Whether in both 
 cases He desired to apply to the shedding of His blood, the 
 ideas of atonement that were certainly contained in the Old 
 Testament rites referred to, can hardly be made out, as no 
 express word points to that. But even this element of 
 thought would be altogether compatible with what we have 
 already found. Por if Jesus attributed to His sacrificial 
 death the power of breaking sin in many and begetting in 
 them a new life, and in connection with this the assurance of 
 divine forgiveness, then His offering of Himself was a true 
 atonement, that is, a reparation, an abolition of sin before 
 God in the objective as well as the subjective sense. In the 
 objective, by outweighing and removing the sin of many 
 before God ; not certainly in the legal sense of bearing the 
 punishment they deserved, but in the far better dynamic 
 sense of a power to remove sin in many, and thus efface it in 
 the eyes of God, who no longer imputes the broken and 
 uprooted sin. And in the subjective sense, by giving to the 
 converted man the perfect assurance that God does not 
 impute sin, — an assurance for which the Saviour's life was 
 pledged, and which, as Paul says, filled him with the assur- 
 ance that, " He who spared not His own Son, but gave Him 
 up to death for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely 
 give us all things ?" (Eom. viii. 32), 
 
158 new testament theology 
 
 § 10. Concluding Eemarks 
 
 If, on the basis of all this, we bring together the ideas of 
 salvation which Jesus connects with His offering of Himself, 
 we find that He ascribes saving significance now to His death 
 in itself and now to His dying as a necessary passage to a 
 glorified life. The two are not only not contradictory, but 
 together they give a full, living, and satisfactory view, which 
 again is in harmony with all the former testimonies to His 
 idea of salvation. His death in itself will, according to Mark 
 X. 45, Matt. XX. 28, certainly burst the bands which stUl 
 hold captive in worldliness even the best, but it will only do 
 so for those in whom His life has already taken root, and only 
 after the completed break with the world will it freely unfold 
 itself. His death, according to Matt. xxvi. 28, will be the 
 seal of a divine forgiveness of sin which finally quiets all 
 doubt of the divine grace, arising from a consciousness of 
 guilt. But it will only be this to those who — as the whole 
 institution of the Supper expresses — allow Him who died for 
 them to live in them by their hearty acceptance of His life 
 which was given for them. Thus conceived His declarations 
 about His death harmonise with His whole preceding doctrine 
 of salvation, and are a supplement and completion with which 
 it cannot dispense. For, that the kingdom of heaven, that is, 
 communion with God, has come near, is already guaranteed by 
 the testimony of Jesus, much more so is it by His person, from 
 the inner life of which this testimony springs. And yet this 
 guarantee is incomplete until He has shown and perfected by 
 His obedience to death His unity with God from which He 
 derives that testimony. Again, the redeeming power which is 
 at once a transforming and a justifying power lies in the 
 gospel and its bearer ; that power exists and is operative from 
 the beginning. But it can only become effective and master 
 the world when He who bears it has proved Himself to be 
 absolute victor, even against the full muster of the powers of 
 darkness, and has, at the same time, in this perfecting of 
 victory, laid aside the limitations of space and time, and been 
 transfigured into a universal principle of victory, a spiritual 
 nature which can be communicated to men (1 Cor. xv. 45). 
 If, on the other hand, we were forced to explain the obscure 
 
THE MESSIANIC SALVATION 159 
 
 utterances of Jesus in the traditional sense instead of this, 
 that is, if we said heaven was first opened by the abstract fact 
 of His death and forgiveness rendered possible, and the angry 
 God transformed into a heavenly Father, it would be as great 
 a contradiction of His whole preceding doctrine of salvation as 
 could possibly be conceived. By that doctrine of His death 
 everything would be given up of what He had before taught, 
 ■■ — that the kingdom of heaven had come near, that there is a 
 Father in heaven who forgives all the debts of His children, 
 that there is a new birth from the seed of His word and a 
 peace of soul under an easy yoke in following Him, — and that 
 they are not future possibilities, but present realities. Nay, it 
 would make His whole preceding active life worthless — and 
 at bottom also the succeeding glorified life, which would have 
 nothing further to contribute to salvation. There would then 
 remain to biblical theology no other course than to regard 
 those individual utterances of Jesus about His death as not 
 genuine, and only put in the mouth of Jesus at a later period 
 in opposition to the abundance of the contrary testimony. In 
 doing so, however, we would transform into an inscrutable 
 riddle the institution of the Supper, this most certain of all 
 certain things that have been transmitted to us, and likewise 
 the whole subsequent apostolic teaching about the Saviour's 
 death.i 
 
 1 Weiss, even in the last edition of Ms Nem Testament Theology, vol. 
 1. p. 99, has sought to reconcile the fact that Jesus during His lifetime 
 imparted to His disciples the forgiveness of sins as a present possession, 
 with the doctrine that the redeeming death first procured it. Certainly 
 he says, p. 102 : " The members of the kingdom, from the very fact that 
 they are in the kingdom of God, are sure of the forgiving grace of God. 
 But if the life-work of Jesus was the founding of the kingdom of God, and 
 reached its climax in the surrender of His life, then this surrender was a 
 necessary though extreme means for bringing those who had proved 
 unsusceptible to the highest revelation of God's grace into that new 
 relation to Himself which was to be set up in His kingdom." I confess 
 that this solution of the riddle has remained obscure to me. Does it 
 mean that the death of Jesus was necessary, not for those who already 
 believed on Him in His lifetime, and therewith had already got forgive- 
 ness of sin (Mark ii. 5), but for the unbelieving multitude ? But then 
 Jesus must have said in the institution of the Supper that He would let 
 His body be broken and His blood be shed for the unbelieving multitude, 
 and not vTrip vfiau ! 
 
160 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 CHAPTEE VII 
 THE CHURCH 
 
 § 1. DISOIPLESHIP 
 
 The salvation brought into the world by Jesus does not 
 act only on the individual man as such, but, as the funda- 
 mental watchword of the kingdom of God suggests, im- 
 mediately calls forth a communion of men, a society which 
 grows towards the likeness of the kingdom. For that which 
 unites men with God as their Father, unites them also as 
 brethren with one another, and that very thing which dis- 
 tinguishes them from the unredeemed world makes them also 
 as a community " salt of the earth and light of the world." 
 These natural laws of the kingdom of heaven were during His 
 lifetime and in His hands realised in the simplest and freest 
 form. In imitation of the old schools of the prophets and the 
 schools of the scribes in His own day He gathered about Him 
 a circle of disciples, which as His life grew more unsettled 
 and homeless, assumed the character of a wandering family 
 (Matt. viii. 18-22, x. 25). And He did so in order partly to 
 confirm in their sense of citizenship those who had been won 
 for the kingdom, and partly to make them instruments in 
 spreading it, in order, as is said in Matt. xiii. 52, to make of 
 them " scribes instructed in the kingdom of heaven." He did 
 not impose this wandering life with Himself, and which the 
 disciples shared, as a condition of salvation on all who desired 
 to have part in the kingdom of heaven. Many of His friends, 
 like the family at Bethany and some true adherents in 
 Capernaum, He never called to follow Him, and in certain 
 circumstances He expressly declined men's offers (Mark v. 
 18, 19) ; and in His later period of peril He advised all against 
 following Him (Luke xiv. 25 f. ; of. Matt. viii. 18-20). But 
 because His preaching could only take the form of instruction 
 in daily and, as it were, domestic intercourse, supported by the 
 whole power of personal association and example, it was 
 certainly His desire to draw into His immediate society all 
 whom their duties permitted (cf. Matt. viii. 21, 22 ; Luke ix. 
 
THE CHUKCH 161 
 
 59, 62; Mark x. 21). And just as His experience of the 
 unripeness of the people deepened (Matt. ix. 35, 38), and He 
 was able to look beyond the limits of His own day, this 
 discipleship seemed more and more important to Him for the 
 extension and continuance of His work. In order to have a 
 permanent basis in the ever changing company of followers. 
 He selected twelve to be ever with Him, so that their testi- 
 mony about Him might be complete ; and He appointed them 
 from the very first, as it seems to find their life's mission in 
 preaching the kingdom of heaven (Mark i. 17, iii. 14, 15). 
 The number twelve undoubtedly referred to the twelve tribes 
 of the nation, which they — either within His lifetime or after 
 it — were to call into the kingdom of God (Matt. xix. 28), and 
 accordingly the name apostles or messengers, by which the 
 early Church from the beginning distinguished them, is traced 
 back to Jesus Himself (Luke vi. 13). But in this choice and 
 commission Jesus did not found an office in the sense of a 
 legal institution with special authority. He did not even 
 intend an exclusive or privileged missionary office, much less 
 an office of teaching and guiding that should be authoritative 
 for the Church in all time to come, for according to an 
 undoubtedly trustworthy report He sent out during His life- 
 time seventy disciples (Luke x. 1-17), and charged all His 
 followers with the extension of His kingdom afterwards (Matt. 
 V. 13, 14). "Without denying the distinctions of greater and 
 less among His disciples, and specially recognising, for example, 
 the ripened manhood and superiority and gifts of leadership 
 in Peter (Matt, xviii. 10 ; Mark x. 43 ; Luke xii. 42 ; John 
 xxi. 15 ff.), we must yet allow that He deprived them of every 
 distinction of rank, and placed them solely in a relation of 
 brotherly equality (Matt, xxiii. 8). He excluded any claim to 
 rule as teacher or as patron within the community of His 
 disciples by forbidding them to assume the name Eabbi, and 
 saying to them, " Ye shall call no man Master, and no man 
 father on earth : for one is your Father, who is in heaven, 
 and one is your Master, even Christ" (Matt, xxiii. 8-10); He 
 also interdicted all selfish ■ ambition and all desire for power 
 among them, and only permitted the emulation in self-denying 
 love and service in which, as we see from His comparison 
 with His own redeeming service of love, He saw, above all, the 
 
 BEYSCHLAG. — I. 1 1 
 
162 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 power of helping one another on towards eternal well-being 
 (Matt. XX. 26, 27; Luke xxii. 25, 26y 
 
 § 2. The Church 
 
 This preliminary society of teachers and scholars in which 
 the kingdom took its rise is followed by the community (or 
 Church), eKKXrjo'ia, which appears, from Matt. xvi. 18, still in 
 the future. The term eKK\7jcrla appears seldom, and at a late 
 period in the sayings of Jesus. After the passage just quoted 
 the word appears only in Matt, xviii. 15-20, a paragraph 
 which is indeed important in a variety of ways, and stands 
 out as a Magna Charta of the Church. But there is no real 
 ground for disputing that the word is His, or for referring its 
 origin to a later period in the Church. For not only is 
 eKKKrjo-ia (?nij or niy, assembly or congregation in the original 
 sense in which Luther has used the word (Acts xix. 39) of an 
 assembly of citizens) an idea already found in the Old Testa- 
 ment, but it can easily be seen why Jesus only at a later 
 period, but then of necessity, made it His own. So long as 
 there was any hope of realising His work within the Old 
 Testament national community. He could have no thought of 
 founding a community of His own. But when this hope was 
 at an end, when the decisive breach between His kingdom and 
 the constituted national community of the Jews proved in- 
 evitable, and His rejection and crucifixion came clearly into 
 view, how could Jesus think of His disciples as represent- 
 ing the cause of His kingdom when He was dead except 
 in the form of a community distinct from the Jewish religious 
 community, and worshipping God in His name as Father? 
 But the two passages, Matt. xvi. 18, xviii. 15—20, let us all 
 see how the idea of a community grew in the mind of Jesus. 
 In the first — " On this rock will I build My Church, and the 
 gates of hell shall not prevail against it" — the idea still 
 
 1 The royalty which Jesus (Luke xxii. 28) promises to His disciples, 
 and which Wendt applies to their future working for the setting up of the 
 Messianic kingdom, applies rather to their position in the completed 
 kingdom (Luke xix. 17 f. ; Matt. xx. 28), and is not at all a specific 
 promise to apostles, but a general promise to Christians ; cf. 1 Cor. iv. 8 ; 
 Eev. i. 6, V. 10. 
 
THE CHUECH 163 
 
 appears in an abstract form. The community is here the 
 one beside which there can be no second. At all times, and 
 in all places, the same, it has the guarantee of immortality, 
 the promise of not being mastered by the gates of the king- 
 dom of death, which so master and irrevocably close upon all 
 other appearances in history.^ In the other passage — -"Tell 
 it to the Church ; and if he neglect to hear the Church, let 
 him be to thee as an heathen man and a publican" — it is 
 thought of rather in its outward appearance as the individual 
 Church dwelling in a definite place and assembling at a 
 definite time ; for such only can have a matter laid before 
 it, and only by such can an obstinate sinner be exhorted and 
 excommunicated. But the saying which we find in the same 
 connection : " Where two or three are gathered together in 
 My name I am in the midst of them," harmonises to some 
 extent the visible and invisible nature of the Church. It 
 contains the whole of Jesus' definition of the Church. 
 Wherever men, even in the smallest numbers, are found 
 together believing on Him ; wherever they unite for the 
 worship of God, thinking on Jesus and trusting in Him, — there 
 is the Christian Church — in hundreds of places of the earth's 
 circumference. As in Israel the thousand scattered syna- 
 gogues were embraced in one great community by the name 
 of Jehovah and His presence in the temple, so all these 
 Christian congregations become one through mutual participa- 
 tion in the name of Jesus and His universal presence. This 
 leads us to His personal relation to the community, and there- 
 fore still deeper into its nature and significance. According 
 to Matt. xvi. 18, He himself desires to build His Church in 
 the future {olKoBofi'^a-m), which, from the whole connection, 
 can only lie beyond His death (ver. 21). The words there- 
 fore attest His certainty of a life passing through death, and 
 capable of a continuous influence and creation on earth after 
 death, which death cannot interrupt. In a word, it is in the 
 
 1 For the ^liAai aSou are not, as ignorance sometimes thinks, the gates 
 of the kingdom of the devil, for why its gates should fight is not obvious ; 
 they are the iron gates of the kingdom of the dead, the kingdom of the 
 perishable, which masters, that is, receives and shuts in, all earth-born 
 things. Luther has translated the two very different ideas — Hades and 
 Gehenna — with hell. 
 
164 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 certainty of the resurrection (already contained in His sayings 
 about death) that He spoke. And in spite of the present 
 et'/it, the saying, "Where two or three are gathered together 
 in My name I am in the midst of them," points to the same 
 future life. For that presupposes that it can be in a hundred 
 places at the same time, an existence no longer bound by the 
 limits of space and the conditions of an earthly life, a life 
 exalted like God's own. And so we learn here — more plainly 
 perhaps than anywhere else — the idea which Jesus had of the 
 resurrection, it is closely bound up with His idea of death, 
 as He was convinced that death could not destroy, but must 
 further His work on earth. We learn especially how His 
 resurrection stood related in His thought to the continuance 
 and progress of His kingdom. By the power of His resur- 
 rection He will build His Church and will dwell in the midst 
 of it, just as Jehovah was thought of as dwelling in the temple, 
 in the midst of the Old Testament Church. And in His 
 Church He will continue to live and work on earth after His 
 death. He in the spirit, in a transfigured life, will be its 
 moving soul : and it will be, as the apostle afterwards says, 
 His body, the instrument by which He continues to work 
 among men. According to our usual way of thinking, the 
 middle term of the outpouring of the Spirit seems to be want- 
 ing here. And it is surprising that in the synoptic tradition 
 there is so little said of the Holy Spirit, which was thought 
 of in the Old Testament as the first gift of the Messianic 
 kingdom, and which was promised by the Baptist as the 
 Messianic counterpart to his baptism of water. This form of 
 the promise is only once faintly echoed in the synoptic 
 sayings of Jesus, in that passage in which He assures His 
 disciples that their Father's Spirit will speak in them (Matt. 
 X. 20), so that they may perfectly do their work and defend 
 their cause. The riddle is read when we remember that even 
 in the farewell discourses in John, which supplement the 
 meagre synoptic tradition on this point, the promise of the 
 Paraclete, the Spirit to be sent to take His place, and the 
 promise of His own return to be with His people, are in 
 substance one and the same. Christ's saying about the sin 
 against the Holy Ghost (Matt, xii.) shows that in His lifetime 
 the Son of Man and the Holy Spirit were distinct, the earthly 
 
THE CHURCH 165 
 
 and half-concealed manifestation of the divine on the one 
 hand, and the divine essence living in Him and working 
 through Him on the other ; but this distinction ceased with 
 the glorification of Jesus so far as His earthly presence and 
 activity are concerned. The Lord, just in virtue of His death 
 and resurrection, becomes — in the language of Paul — Trvevfia 
 ^moTToiovv (1 Cor. xv. 45), a quickening spirit. In the 
 synoptic tradition, however, the more personal conception of 
 the future spiritual communion and activity prevails — not 
 only in the two sayings already quoted, but also in the closing 
 words of the Gospel of Matthew, which coincide with the 
 promise of the Spirit at the close of Luke (xxiv. 49): " Lo I 
 am with you always, even to the end of the world " (Matt. 
 xxviii. 20). 
 
 § 3. Chuech Order : (a) Government of the Spirit, Faith 
 AND Prayer, Binding and Loosing 
 
 From this presupposition of the presence of Christ in 
 the Spirit springs what we may call the constitution of the 
 Church as fixed by Jesus, of which the clearest statement is 
 in Matt, xviii 15—20, a constitution of the Spirit and of 
 freedom. N"o statute or visible government is found here, 
 such as the kingdoms of this world have as their indispensable 
 foundation. On the contrary, what was previously said to 
 the disciples in such sayings as Matt. xx. 25—27, xxiii. 8—11, 
 is in Matt, xviii. 15—20 made valid for the whole future 
 Church. "If thy brother sin against thee," begins the 
 remarkable passage. His Church therefore is to be a com- 
 munity of brethren, as was already emphasised in the words, 
 " One is your master, and all ye are brethren." In this com- 
 munity of . brethren all have the office of improving and 
 protecting one another. It rests on the universal right and 
 duty of a mutual cure of souls. " If thy brother sin against 
 thee, rebuke him ; that is, tell him his fault between thee 
 and him alone. If he hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother 
 (won him back to God and His kingdom). But if he will 
 not hear thee, take with thee one or two more!," etc. But 
 further, this, community of brethren, as such, is in its own 
 affairs the highest deciding authority. "If he (the sinner) 
 
166 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 will not hear thee and the two or three more who have 
 exhorted him, tell it to the Church ; and if he neglect to hear 
 the Church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and 
 a publican." And it is to be so, not merely in the exercise 
 of discipline, to which we will shortly return. The "ye" 
 who have the authority to bind and loose, and whose united 
 prayer is heard, are not, as is often said, the apostles ; the 
 whole context requires that we recognise in them all the 
 disciples of Jesus, all the members of the Church. For in 
 ver. 20 the foundation of that authority is thus expressed, 
 " Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there 
 am I in the midst of them." The authority rests in the 
 congregation of believers as such in the Church. Just 
 because He desires unseen to govern in the spirit those who 
 gather in His name, they can and must govern themselves in 
 the public acts of the Church's life. The chief distinction 
 between the Churches of the new covenant and the old is 
 that the Spirit of the Lord is no longer the special endowment 
 of particular persons and officials, but is " poured out on all 
 flesh," and therefore the possession of the Spirit by the whole 
 community will always be more rich and many-sided than its 
 possession by an individual member, however prominent. 
 What makes this rule in the Church of Jesus, the Lord, the 
 Spirit (2 Cor. iii. 17), both possible and perfect, is faith. 
 Though the word is not uttered, faith in Him as the Messiah 
 and as principle of the Church's life is presupposed in the 
 gathering in His name, viz. to worship God as Father in this 
 name. His name (of Saviour) is therefore the proper object 
 of faith (Acts iv. 12), and in faith in this name men are 
 united with Him, the invisible and glorified Lord and Master, 
 as well as with one another. From this is explained, in the 
 first place, the acceptance of the Church's prayers. " If two 
 or three of you will agree on earth as touching anything that 
 ye shall ask, it shall be done for you of My Father who is in 
 heaven" (ver. 19). The idea here, as the following verse 
 with its " in My name " shows, is the same as what John's 
 Gospel designates prayer in the name of Jesus (John xiv. 
 13, 14).' The presupposition is, that He in spirit is the 
 uniting element in virtue of which the two agree. It is He, 
 therefore, who prompts their prayer, and because it has been 
 
THE CHUECH 167 
 
 thus born from His mind and spirit, and has sprung from 
 faith in Him, it will also agree with the eternal thoughts of 
 God, and be heard in heaven. From the same point of view 
 of faith and spiritual communion with Him through faith, we 
 obtain light on the preceding promise regarding binding and 
 loosing. What is meant by this binding and loosing (xvi. 19) 
 which appears in the promises to Peter ? Traditionally it is 
 regarded as meaning the power of retaining or remitting sin 
 (John XX. 23), and thus brought into connection with the 
 foregoing authority to excommunicate. But then, as the 
 kingdom of heaven has to do with emancipating the conscience 
 rather than with fettering it, it is not clear why the binding 
 stands first, and why the object is in the neuter (o, ocra) both 
 times, as the point in question was the inner binding and 
 loosing of man. But if we are to think, in the case of the 
 0, oaa, not of man, but of sin, then the expression is more 
 than ever inconceivable and grammatically impossible, since 
 an idea such as afiaprrjfjiaTa could in no circumstance remain 
 unexpressed, and merely be added in thought. Even the 
 advocates of this exposition must admit that though Xveiv 
 dfjLapTiav might perhaps be intelligible = a remission of sin, 
 yet to explain Beeiv in the sense of retaining sin, or declaring 
 the sinner to be forfeit to the judgment of God, is incredible 
 and inexplicable.^ On the other hand, Eabbinic and Talmudic 
 scholars have taught us that the phrase " binding and loosing " 
 was quite current in the speech of the scribes, in the sense 
 of declaring something to be binding or not binding, forbidden 
 or permitted ; ^ and this is faintly echoed elsewhere in the 
 words of Jesus, in respect of the loosing, plainly in Matt. v. 19, 
 in respect of the binding, at least in the allusion. Matt, xxiii. 4. 
 It is not accurate to say that the context in Matt, xviii. 18 
 decides against this exposition that is commended by language 
 and history, and in favour of the traditional.^ The order of 
 discipline set up in vers. 15-17 cannot possibly coincide 
 
 ' Cf. Cremer, p. 571. 
 
 2 Thus Lightfoot, Schbttclien, Wetstein. Only the accurate sense of 
 the common "Schola Hilleliana solvit, Schammajana ligat" is not, that 
 permits, this forbids ; for the scribes have nothing to permit or forbid, 
 but that is declared to be not binding, this to be binding. 
 
 3 Thus Weiss, p. 106; p. 141, vol. i. Eng. trans. 
 
168 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 with the whole province of the Christian forgiveness of sin. 
 It can only refer to those sins which destroy a man's position 
 as a Christian, and therefore are inconsistent with Church 
 fellowship, as may be seen from that " thou hast gained thy 
 brother " (that is, preserved him from being lost, cf. Jas. v. 
 19, 20). But that destroys the supposed connection between 
 the exercise of discipline and absolution or retention (extending 
 to all defects). It is clear, on the other hand, that that judicial 
 procedure of the Church necessarily presupposes a legislative 
 procedure, defining what is consistent and what is inconsistent 
 with its fellowship ; and if, in the case of Jesus, the whole 
 idea of the Church rested on the anticipation of a religious 
 separation of His own from Judaism, it is easily conceivable 
 why in both of the above passages He should emphasise this 
 legislative right of His future Church. Not everything that 
 He and His disciples still held of the Mosaic and traditional 
 law and commandments was to be binding on His future 
 Church, though everything was by no means to be given up. 
 Here, therefore, was a new moral legislation ; it was necessary 
 to discover what was consistent and what was inconsistent 
 with citizenship in the kingdom of God, and who could dis- 
 cover this but the community of believers ? They must 
 determine what was morally permissible or not permissible 
 by the principle of faith in Him and spiritual communion 
 with Him, and thus they would discover thoughts of God 
 which He Himself could not utter beforehand in detail (John 
 xvi. 1 2) ; that is, they would bind and loose with heavenly 
 approbation, and this right of binding and loosing must be 
 the presupposition of their exercise of discipline and their 
 essential acts of excommunication.^ 
 
 § 4. Church Oedek: (6) Love, Discipline, Infallibility 
 
 Along with faith, however, there prevails in the Church 
 of Jesus the love that springs from it and unites believers 
 with one another as brethren, as children of one Father and 
 
 1 Thus, for example, the apostolic Church loosed, that is, set free the 
 question of circumcision, but bound the m/n/u'oi, that is, the non-nuptial 
 intercourse of the sexes, that is, declared it forbidden, inconsistent with 
 the Christian profession. Cf. Acts xv. 19, 20. 
 
THE CHURCH 169 
 
 disciples of one Master, It begets a mutual interchange of 
 giving and receiving, in which the giving, as being the more 
 unselfish, is more blessed than the receiving (Acts xx. 35), 
 and it works so that " the little ones," the simple and 
 humble, can allow themselves to be ministered to without 
 shame, and the great, the gifted, and the prominent, find 
 their greatness just in serving. Special tasks (offices) could 
 certainly arise here out of the general brotherly task, as, for 
 example, in a household the steward is set over the other 
 servants that he may give to each his portion in due season 
 (Luke xiL 41, 42). But these offices are, as the Greek word 
 SiaKoviac means, services, services of love which do not 
 abolish the essential equality of all, and he who is intrusted 
 with them humbles himself as much as he is exalted (Matt. 
 XX. 26, 27). In like manner forgiveness and brotherly 
 discipline proceed from love. Forgiveness must be rendered 
 so freely that if a brother wound a brother seven times a day, 
 and come seven times to say that he is sorry, he must always 
 be forgiven (Luke xvii. 3, 4). Still, no weak indulgence 
 passes here, no overlooking or sheltering of sin in others ; for 
 a true and sanctified love desires the brother's good, and 
 therefore it holds his sin before him in order to convert him 
 from the error of his ways ; this is a duty especially where 
 the sin is not one of passing thoughtlessness, but clings to 
 him, where it is an error that calls his very position as a 
 child of God in question. And from this spiritual discipline, 
 from this practical care of brother for brother which is 
 exercised in privately winning back to God's way the 
 wanderer, the judicial discipline, the official rebuke, and in 
 extreme cases even excommunication from the Church, may 
 be and is to be developed (Matt, xviii. 15). For the un- 
 doubted and obstinate offence against the holy order of the 
 house of God cannot in the end be endured, because it would 
 overturn that order ; and therefore Jesus commands that the 
 man who hardens himself in obstinate opposition to the 
 commandments of God be excommunicated from brotherly 
 communion, "if he will not hear the Church."^ This has 
 
 ^ " Let him he to thee as an heathen and a puhlican," that is, let him be 
 regarded as the heathen or publican is in the Jewish synagogues from which 
 he is excluded, no doubt means, not merely the repudiation of brotherly 
 
170 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 sometimes been regarded as an element foreign to His teach- 
 ing, a limitation put upon the love that should be unlimited. 
 But this is to overlook the fact that the love of God, though 
 infinite, must, if it is to continue a holy love, set limits to the 
 obstinate and wilful sinner. There must be self-preservation 
 in the Church of God, making it impossible for her to treat 
 the incorrigible as a brother in Christ, or to allow this in- 
 corrigibility to appear as still consistent with the Christian 
 profession. Of course it is as evident to Jesus that the 
 seeking and pitying love for heathen and publicans does not 
 cease when the relation of brother in the faith has been re- 
 pudiated; it now makes a fresh start, for that repudiation 
 meant no unkindness to the sinner, but the only sort of love 
 the circumstances would allow. The truly surprising thing 
 here is the wonderful idealism of that whole Church order of 
 Jesus, in which there breathes not the faintest suspicion that 
 the Church might act from other motives than the inspiration 
 of His holy presence in its midst ; there is no hint that the 
 Church could ever be united in asking for what was ungodly, 
 or for what the heavenly Father could not grant, or that it 
 should desire to bind or loose anything that was not bound 
 or loosed in heaven, or finally, that it could ever abuse that 
 authoritative exercise of discipline against an innocent person, 
 an actual child of God. This idealism assures us, at anyrate, 
 of the authenticity of the sayings in question. For if, as 
 many suppose, they were of later ecclesiastical origin, they 
 would have arisen after experience of the difference between 
 idea and reality, and they would have been framed to meet 
 that difference. That idealism is absolutely true to Jesus, 
 and its reservations are already implied in it. Jesus, of 
 course, speaks throughout from a purely ideal point of view. 
 If the Church is met in His name, and as far as it is met in 
 His name, with His memory inspiring and uniting it, so that 
 He can truly be said to be in its midst, all will be as He 
 promises. Where this presupposition fails, the result will 
 also, as a matter of course, fail. Thus, a king gives his 
 
 communion on the part of tlie man wio lias vainly admonished him, but 
 a repudiation on the part of the Chtirch as such. For Jesus would never 
 have endured, much less enjoined, individual repudiations of brotherhood 
 within the Church whilst that brotherhood continued to exist in public. 
 
THE CHUEOH 171 
 
 officers and courts of justice authority to act in his name to 
 justify or condemn, and assures them of the royal confirma- 
 tion and execution of their decisions. But he does so, of 
 course, on the presupposition that they proceed according to 
 his laws and not in contradiction to them. Jesus gave 
 Himself up to no delusive idealism as to the future of His 
 Church, without any foreboding of error and degeneracy in it. 
 The Parable of the Tares among the Wheat and many other 
 passages attest the contrary. Only, He had the assurance 
 that as His Church should not be mastered by the gates of 
 Hades, so it would never abandon His name ; that His image 
 and memory would ever again revive in it, and thus His 
 spirit, even through striving and conflict, would again and 
 again carry the day in it. And, in any case, He knew no 
 other place of His abiding presence, and activity than the 
 Church. What depends on inward conditions, on His own 
 glorified and spiritual presence, must not be bound up with 
 any external institutions or authorities. The matter must 
 ever stand thus ; the Church of believers as such, the Church 
 which is brought together and held together by His name, is 
 the instrument of His will, the place of His continuous 
 revelation on earth. And though its authority and infalli- 
 bility, depending as they do on what is spiritual, and being, 
 therefore, in a measure invisible, can never have a legal 
 definition, yet this Church in its own affairs remains the 
 only rightful and the highest court of appeal on earth, and 
 any outward judicial authority which would display itself in 
 it, or has done so, in order to rule over it and hold it in 
 tutelage, is false, illegal, and condemned by Him in advance. 
 
 § 5. The Authoeity of Petee, Matt. xvi. 18, 19 
 
 All this would indeed fall to the ground if the well- 
 known Eomish interpretation of Matt. xvi. 18,19 were right. 
 According to it, Jesus must, of course, have given to His 
 Church an outward and perceptible authority, a law and govern- 
 ment of as thorough a nature as could be imagined. Before 
 there was an eicK\r]cria, and consequently before there was 
 any official authority. He had laid the firm foundation of such 
 an authority in Peter. Peter was the rock on which should 
 
172 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 depend the imperishableness of the Church against which the 
 gates of Hades should not prevail ; this official power was to 
 devolve upon the Eomish bishops as the legal successors of 
 the prince apostle. He constituted Peter His alter ego, 
 His vicegerent on earth, and delivered to him the keys of the 
 kingdom of heaven ; and He only gave the power to bind and 
 loose to the other apostles as the predecessors of the other 
 bishops and priests, in such a way that Peter's authority and 
 Peter's legal successors should always remain the firm basis 
 on which they all with their rights and authorities must rest. 
 We can easily understand how the Papacy, honouring itself, 
 should like to write these words on the dome of St. Peter's in 
 gigantic letters. It is easy to see how an unspiritual inter- 
 pretation should find here the legal title of the whole Eomish 
 system. Undoubtedly the expositions of Protestants of this 
 text have not been happy. There can be no controversy 
 among reasonable men in view of the words, Xv el II er pot;, 
 Koi i-Trl TavTT} ry irerpa olKoBofii^cTco fiov ttjv eKKKrjcriav, that 
 Jesus, by the rock on which he will build His Church, did 
 not mean Himself nor the confession of Peter, nor even the 
 faith which Peter has just confessed, but the man himself to 
 whom He has given the name rock, and to whom He now 
 confirms it as deserved. And the words which immedi- 
 ately follow, Koi Saiam aoi ras K\elSa<; t^s ySactXeta? twi' 
 ovpavcav, certainly appear to establish decisively the idea of a 
 representative and vicegerent of Christ on earth. For the 
 image which lies at the basis of these words cannot be that of 
 a doorkeeper, for that would be one of the least services in 
 the house of God, while Jesus manifestly desires to award 
 to Peter a distinguished position. Nor — as we might 
 suppose from Luke xii. 42 — is it a picture of a steward in a 
 private house, an upper servant intrusted with the keys of 
 the storeroom. For Jesus applies the same image at other 
 times, in things of the kingdom, not to the giving out of 
 stores, but to the admission or non-admission of persons (cf. 
 Matt, xxiii. 13 ; Luke xi. 52). It is rather the crown officer 
 of the kingdom of Judah, mentioned in Isa. xxii., to which 
 Jesus here alludes. The office of that mayor of the palace 
 of whom it is said : " I will lay upon his shoulder the keys 
 of the house of David, that he may shut and no man open, 
 
THE CHUECH .173 
 
 and open and no man shut." Though expositors generally 
 interpret the symbol of the key with reference to judicial or 
 governing power, yet it is more natural and more correct to 
 think of entrance to the royal house and the king's person, 
 which the mayor of the palace could grant or deny without 
 any person's being able to question his decisions. Accord- 
 ingly, in the new covenant and in the eternal Father's house 
 this office in relation to God belongs above all to Jesus Him- 
 self. He has the key of David it is said in Eev. iii. 7. He 
 opens and no man shuts, He shuts and no man opens. But 
 if we speak of the earthly existence of the kingdom of God 
 in the Church, and think of Jesus Himself as the King, the 
 anointed One, and both of these ideas are contained in our 
 passages, then Jesus can intrust another with that office. 
 He is about to leave the earth (Matt. xxi. 21 ff.), and will 
 soon cease personally to hold the keys of the kingdom of 
 heaven on earth ; He needs, therefore, a representative and 
 chief officer such as was in Israel, who shall continue in His 
 name to open the kingdom of heaven to men, or close it as 
 the case requires (therefore the plural /cXeiSas), and He 
 appoints Peter to this office of bearer of His keys. Now the 
 succession on the ground of which the Eoman bishops claim 
 Peter's authority is in all respects very doubtful. But if 
 Jesus did appoint a vicegerent on earth with judicial 
 authority, there must always be a legal succession in this 
 office, and it would be difficult for any other bishop or 
 official of the Church to advance better claims than the 
 bishop of Eome. And if we add, that with the power of the 
 keys of the kingdom of heaven is given also the power of 
 binding and loosing, that is, of legislating in the kingdom of 
 God, and declaring what is and what is not permitted in the 
 Church, we seem to have, not merely the Papacy, but an 
 infallible Papacy established by Christ, and for that we have 
 better scriptural proofs than the Vatican Council were able to 
 get hold of. For He whose binding and loosing is always 
 found right in heaven is surely to be called infallible. But 
 this formidable chain of Eomish proofs lacks just the iirst 
 member on which all the rest are to hang, the proof that 
 Jesus there founded an office at all, or conferred a judicial 
 authority and not simply an inward authority depending on 
 
174 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 the personal qualities of the man who was invested with it. 
 The more one considers the passage the more impossible it is 
 to hold that He intended to found an office. First, the occa- 
 sion of the saying is a purely personal one, the confession of 
 Peter. Jesus has disenchanted the Galileans by not fulfilling 
 their sensuous Messianic hopes. They still hold Him to be a 
 great prophet and forerunner, an Elias, but they no longer 
 hold Him to be the Christ, the Messiah, and Son of God, as 
 thousands at first had supposed, for the Baptist had pointed 
 them to a greater who should immediately appear. But He 
 wishes to be recognised as Messiah in a higher and spiritual 
 sense, and His work on His disciples was directed to this end 
 that they, in spite of the want of earthly sensuous glory, 
 might yet recognise Him for what He was. And now that 
 He is about to set out on His last journey to Jerusalem He 
 seeks to discover by conversation with them whether He has 
 reached in them at least that for which He strove, and He has 
 reached it in the most mature among them, viz. Peter. To 
 the question, " Whom say ye that I am ? " Peter can answer 
 from his inmost heart, " Thou art the Christ (Messiah), the Son 
 of the living God." That was a very different confession of 
 faith from that which they had made to each other in the 
 first days at the Jordan — " we have found the Messiah " (John 
 i 45) ; a man, John the Baptist, had taught it to them, and 
 they had with purely sensuous expectations believed him. 
 That expectation had remained unfulfilled, but an inner ex- 
 perience, a divine testimony of the Spirit, had revealed it in 
 Peter's heart and made him certain of it. He was the first 
 believer, in the New Testament sense, whom Jesus won. He 
 was, in a word, the first Christian, as he was able to utter, 
 not from a communication of flesh and blood, but from a 
 revelation of the heavenly Father, the confession, " Thou art 
 the Christ." And that accounts for the great and unique 
 words Jesus speaks to him. Setting, as it were, recognition 
 against recognition. He replies : " I say unto thee thou art 
 Peter, and on this ireTpa will I build my Church " ; that is, 
 you have to-day made good the name rock which I gave thee. 
 You are the rock, the first firm stone on which I can further 
 build. And if on leaving the earth I should leave behmd 
 me no man with true faith and heart knowledge coming from 
 
THE CHURCH 175 
 
 God except thyself, I should have lived long enough ; for I 
 should have laid the foundation on which I could then build 
 my Church from heaven. For the first living believer in 
 Christ is also the born preacher of Christ, who will call into 
 existence a whole community of believers in Christ, as Peter 
 did — not in Eome as its mythical bishop, but in Jerusalem 
 at Pentecost (Acts ii. 14). And that is just what the follow- 
 ing words mean : " I will give thee the keys of the kingdom of 
 heaven." The keys of the kingdom of heaven are the truths 
 of the gospel, the fact of the coming of the kingdom of God ; 
 by these Jesus Himself has hitherto opened the kingdom of 
 heaven to men, or closed it in the case of those who lacked 
 susceptibility. He now desires to bequeath them to' the first, 
 and, as yet, the only one who has truly known Him ; for He 
 only can use them according to His mind. And the same 
 believing knowledge which will enable Peter to preach Christ, 
 and so to found the Church, will also enable him to dis- 
 tinguish what of the old order in Israel will remain binding 
 in the Church and what will not ; that is, it will enable him 
 to bind or loose with heavenly approbation. Thus every- 
 thing which is there awarded to Peter rests on a personal act 
 of faith, on a spiritual character which cannot be transferred 
 in any legal sense. The legal successors of Peter, so far as 
 we can speak of such, are not bishops or popes as such, but 
 believers in Christ like him, simple believers and all believers 
 in Christ. Thus only do we escape the contradiction that 
 Jesus grants the right to bind and loose in Matt, xviii 18 to 
 all the disciples, not to the apostles, but to all believers, 
 which in Matt. xvi. 19 He had granted to Peter alone. 
 That which belongs to the first, and, as yet, only believer in 
 Christ, belongs as a matter of course, as soon as there is a 
 Church of believers, to the Church. If, on the contrary, 
 Jesus, in Matt. xvi. 19, had spoken of the authority of an 
 organised office in or rather over the Church, the same could not 
 possibly be awarded in Matt, xviii. 18 to the Church herself. 
 Thus the passage Matt. xvi. 1 9 rather confirms what we formerly 
 said of the Church, that it is based on no legal or official organ- 
 isation, but only on a spiritual relation to Him who is its 
 glorified head ; and since that relation of faith in Him as the 
 Messiah, which Peter confessed is common to all, the Church 
 
176 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 as such must also be the bearer of all the blessings of grace and 
 powers of the kingdom which Jesus bequeaths to His own. 
 
 § 6. Objective Points of Support foe the Church Life 
 (Baptism and the Lord's Supper) 
 
 The Church certainly needed protection against one danger 
 which lay in her very nature as thus portrayed, viz. the 
 danger of a onesided inwardness into which her free and 
 spiritual character might allure her. Since His presence in 
 the Church was spiritual, the enthusiasm of faith and love in 
 men, still weak, was threatened by the temptation to bring in 
 what was alien and arbitrary, and so to produce in themselves 
 a spirit different from that in which He could dwell. A 
 church life wholly without forms would plainly have helped 
 in this tendency, and would perhaps soon have made the 
 identity of the development with the original seem question- 
 able. Therefore we see Jesus taking care, along with the law 
 of the Spirit which He imparts to His own in faith and love, 
 to impress on them at the same time the historical aspect of 
 His life and work. It was not without a purpose that He 
 constituted the Twelve constant witnesses of this life and 
 work. It was not without a purpose that He imparted 
 formal instruction to His disciples (cf. Mark iv. 10 f., 
 iv. 24 f.) ; and though, with His divine tact. He was 
 careful not to impress on them any enslaving formula, far 
 less to leave behind Him any writing which would forthwith 
 have paralysed the vitality of their faith. He yet reckoned 
 that the image of His person and the memory of His work 
 would continue to live truly in His Church. That is His 
 meaning when He speaks of their gathering in His name, 
 that is, in a living realisation of His personal life and work, 
 and the keys of the kingdom of heaven which He delivers to 
 them speak of the transmission of all that He has taught 
 them (Matt, xxviii. 20); and the intrusted talents and 
 pounds are the capital which He puts in their hands, in 
 order to test their fidelity and increase His possessions on 
 earth through their trading. And His first disciples, in point 
 of fact, did by reflection produce a faithful tradition of Him 
 for all following times. Immediately before IJis death He 
 
THE CHUKCH 177 
 
 saw good — perhaps with an eye to the indefinite time of the 
 outer separation from Him — to give His Church still more 
 definite points of support which the current of tradition could 
 still less sweep away, the Supper and baptism. It has been 
 questioned — without the least reason in our opinion — whether 
 Jesus, in the breaking of bread and the consecration of the 
 cup at the farewell Supper, wished to found a permanent insti- 
 tution for the Church of His disciples. First, the Pauline 
 utterance, 1 Cor. xi. 24, 25, the oldest and most reliable 
 testimony to the event in question, contains the words, tovto 
 ■n-oieire et? ttjv ifirfv dvd/jLvrja-iv, as Jesus' own words, and the 
 want of these words in the Gospels may have the less signifi- 
 cance as in other respects the traces of liturgical abbreviation 
 of the words of institution may be perceived. And again, I 
 do not know for what end Jesus, unless He had the intention 
 of founding a permanent rite, should on that evening have 
 had recourse to such emblematic expression for His thoughts 
 of death, when He could have put these thoughts in words 
 which would have been not only simpler, but also more 
 intelligible for the moment. Light is thrown upon all He 
 did when we see that He was setting up a memorial to recall 
 His image and His work to their minds when He was gone 
 (cf. the expression, until He come, 1 Cor. xL 26). From 
 elements of the Old Testament Passover meal, Jesus con- 
 structed a holy sacrificial meal of the new covenant in the 
 noblest and simplest form, which realises for all time and 
 puts beyond question what He had willed and done for His 
 own, and what, through His death. He desires to be and to 
 do for their souls to the end of time. In that simple festival 
 He makes known for all time the sum and height of His 
 thoughts of His own work as Saviour ; in presence of death, 
 to which He willingly surrendered Himself, He recognised 
 that all His brethren, even those faithful ones who had 
 continued with Him in His temptations, had need both of 
 redemption and forgiveness, whilst He knew that He was the 
 spotless and innocent Lamb of God who gives His life for 
 them to bring in a new covenant, the covenant of grace, for- 
 giveness, and communion with God. He knew that He was 
 giving His life not to destruction, but to be raised higher, so 
 that to the end of the world He might be food and drink for 
 
 BEYSCHLAG. — I. ^2 
 
178 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 the souls He had won. And by this very means He has 
 given the most effective centre for the gatherings and festivals 
 of His future Church that could be conceived. Here is an 
 act which again and again draws the Church into the experi- 
 ence of the great historical hour of salvation, and into the 
 communion of spirit and life with Him who died for her and 
 rose again ; and in bringing them nearer to Him, it must draw 
 closer the bonds of brotherly love which bind all those who 
 partake as children of one Father's house and guest at one 
 table of grace. And just as holy communion is to be sought 
 always as the rallying point of the Church, so baptism is the 
 point which, once for all, distinguishes it from the world. 
 The Gospels trace back its founding to the days of the Eisen 
 One on earth, and therefore, as the entire tradition of those 
 days has in it something wavering and wanting in clearness, 
 the derivation of this ordinance from Jesus is more obscure 
 and disputable. The trinitarian baptismal formula, contained 
 in Matt, xxviii. 19, does not, in this form at any rate, proceed 
 from Jesus, for the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles 
 know only of one baptism in the name of Jesus, which would 
 be inconceivable if He Himself had prescribed that more 
 detailed formula. However, apart from this subsidiary point, 
 no real doubt can exist as to the institution of baptism by 
 Jesus for those who find in the intercourse of the Eisen One 
 with His disciples something more than self-deception. The 
 practice of baptism as a rite of reception, a practice which, so 
 far as we can see, was from the very beginning of the Church 
 quite a matter of course, — ^just as much a matter of course to 
 Paul as to the earlier apostles, — cannot very well be explained 
 without an appointment of Jesus underlying it. And the 
 reasons of such an ordinance can be recognised without 
 difficulty. While the Church was obliged to live within 
 Judaism, and at the same time to distinguish herself from 
 Judaism in order to discharge her missionary calling, she 
 needed a sign of reception, a distinct ordinance, by -whieh 
 the individual was separated from the unbelieving world and 
 incorporated with the Church of believers. And for this 'end 
 Jesus, as may be easily understood, fell back on the emblematic 
 ordinance with which the Baptist had opened the whole move- 
 ment connected with the kingdom of heaven, and sought to 
 
THE CHURCH 179 
 
 form out of the old sinful Israel a new sanctified Israel. 
 Now people were to be baptized, not for a kingdom at hand, 
 but for the kingdom that had come ; not with a view to the 
 coming Messiah, but to the Messiah who had appeared in 
 Jesus, that is, in the name of Jesus. The meaning of the 
 ordinance, the washing away of sin and guilt, repentance and 
 forgiveness, remained, of course, the same, except that what 
 the Baptist had prefigured rather than communicated, was 
 now represented and sealed as a present salvation, as an 
 experience consummating itself through Jesus and faith in 
 Him. And thus this ordinance, like a stone inscription 
 which cannot be corrupted, proclaims the whole meaning of 
 the coming and work of Jesus, that He came to bring 
 forgiveness by means of renewal, and renewal by means of 
 forgiveness, and thus to receive into the kingdom of God. 
 That Jesus attached a special promise to the outer ordinance, 
 whether of baptism or the Supper, and ascribed to it a power 
 working of itself, is an idea of which we find no trace, and 
 it would entirely conflict with His whole teaching and its 
 thorough spirituality. Baptism symbolises and guarantees, to 
 the penitent and believing man, the forgiveness of sin. The 
 Supper symbolises and assures him of communion with the 
 life of the Crucified and Eisen One ; but neither that forgive- 
 ness nor this communion of life is in the teaching of Jesus 
 bound up with the sacrament. And therefore we may speak 
 of it as a comfort and a blessing for the individual, but not as 
 necessary to salvation. The apostles, from all we know, never 
 received the baptism of water in the name of Jesus. These 
 institutions are more indispensable for the life of the Church, 
 as such, than for the individual believer. They place before 
 the eyes of the Church, existing visibly in the world, the 
 thoughts and the work of salvation of Jesus ; they distinguish 
 it from the world, and cause it ever and again to unite in Him. 
 
 § 7. 'HisTOEicAL Task 'of the Church 
 
 It remains for us to consider the tasks and prospects in 
 thfi work which Jesus discloses to the Church thus endowed 
 byJEim. The two tasks of proclaiming to the world the 
 kingdom of God and of keeping one's own place in that 
 
180 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 kingdom coincide, in so far as the one is impossible without 
 the other. This is specially set forth in the saying which 
 Matt. V. 13-16 incorporates in the Sermon on the Mount: 
 " Ye are the salt of the earth ; ye are the light of the world." 
 Not abstract doctrines, however true and good, can so season 
 the world that it may become acceptable to God, and so 
 lighten it that it may know God and walk in His ways. 
 That can only be done by living men in whom the gospel of 
 the kingdom presents itself in its divine power, and whom it 
 has so filled with light that their good works like rays of 
 light go forth from them on all sides (ver. 16). But for that 
 very reason they who have received so high a calling must 
 doubly guard against being themselves evil. As representa- 
 tives of the cause of a divine kingdom they are placed 
 like a city on a hill which draws to itself the look of the 
 wanderer from afar. They of themselves challenge men to 
 compare their confession and their walk. They ought not 
 therefore to put their light under a bushel, that is, they are 
 not to make their knowledge and doctrine inoperative by an 
 unholy walk ; their walk must rather be the candlestick 
 which carries the light of their knowledge. They must not 
 forget that " the salt " in them cannot possibly season and 
 sanctify others (Mark ix. 49, 50), unless at the same time 
 it is seasoning their own lives as they exercise unwearied 
 self - criticism and self - judgment. Salt, which in the 
 symbolism of the Old Testament worship was regarded as of 
 such excellence that it had to be present in every sacrifice 
 (Mark ix. 49), is one of the most worthless things "when it 
 has lost its savour. It is then good for nothing but to be 
 cast out and trodden under foot of men." The world would 
 in justice deal in the same way with any Christian church 
 which should proclaim to it the power of God to salvation, 
 and display nothing of that power in itself.^ That Jesus did 
 
 1 This is tow I understand the difficult passage, Mark ix. 49, 50, 
 which the saying in Matt. v. 13 completes, or according to other sources 
 repeats. As in the old covenant every sacrifice was salted with salt, that 
 is, seasoned as it were for God and made acceptable, so must every one 
 who will enter into the kingdom of God be made fit for it, consecrated or 
 sanctified by the pungent critical power of the gospel. Therefore, have 
 salt in yourselves, and have peace with one another ; that is, be severe 
 towards yourselves, but mild, peaceful towards others. 
 
THE CHURCH 181 
 
 not think of this seasoning and enlightening influence on the 
 world solely as preaching, is shown by the closing words of 
 the saying in Matthew, "that men seeing your good works 
 may glorify your Father in heaven." The testimony of good 
 works, of a life in love and holiness, is, to Him, that without 
 which all preaching of the word is vain. But the word of 
 the gospel must be preached, even as a word, and the com- 
 mission thereto most emphatically runs through the addresses 
 of Jesus to His disciples. There is no doubt that He 
 intended some disciples to make this preaching a special 
 vocation — those whom He seeks to make fishers of men 
 (Mark i. 17), and to whom He also gives the right to their 
 sustenance in the prosecution of their calling (Matt. x. 1 ; 
 1 Cor. is. 14). But assuredly He did not limit His commis- 
 sion of preaching to these professional workers. But, as in 
 the days of His ministry, after sending out the Twelve, He 
 also sent every one at His disposal up to the Seventy, and as 
 He made a preacher of the man whom He healed at Decapolis, 
 and whom He forbade to follow Him, saying, " Go home to 
 thy friends, and tell them what great things the Lord hath done 
 for thee" (Mark v. 19), so He desired His Church to be a 
 preaching Church in which each should testify of Him accord- 
 ing to his gifts and circumstances. Words such as, " What 
 I tell you in the darkness, that speak in the light ; and what 
 ye hear in the ear, that preach ye on the housetops" 
 (Matt. X. 27 ; Luke xii. 3), are not spoken to the apostles, 
 but to all disciples. There can be just as little doubt as to 
 the wide circle of hearers for whom Jesus meant His gospel 
 through the disciples. It is inconceivable that Jesus could 
 ever have thought less liberally with regard to the calling of 
 the Gentiles to the kingdom of God than the prophets, in 
 whose eyes the reUgion of revelation had already become the 
 religion of the world. That He confined His own work to 
 the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt. xv. 24) does not 
 contradict this. Even in His meeting with the Canaanitish 
 woman, when He compares the Jews to the children of the 
 house, and the heathen to the dogs of the house, He only 
 expresses what was actually the case. The Israelites knew 
 the heavenly Father and had claims as children on Him, 
 whilst the heathen to whom God was only a dark power of 
 
182 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 nature, and with whom He had concluded no covenant of 
 promise, were as domestic animals in His Father's house. 
 But they were not to remain so : " Many shall come from the 
 east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac, 
 and Jacob, in the kingdom of God : but the children of the 
 kingdom will be cast out into outer darkness," run His words 
 (Matt. viii. 12; Luke xiii. 28), almost reminding us of Eom. 
 ix. 11, yet indisputable. Only, in His idea of the kingdom 
 we must distinguish between present and future, between 
 what was laid on Him in His life on earth and what He lays 
 upon His Church. He Himself is conscious of being sent 
 only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Where God 
 Himself had prepared the way of His kingdom by law and 
 prophets, there must the kingdom be established before it can 
 open its doors to the heathen outside. Therefore, in all 
 seriousness, He at first denied His miraculous help to the 
 Canaanitish woman, which was only a subordinate task of His 
 Messianic mission, and only when He discovered in her a 
 faith such as He had not found in Israel (Matt. viii. 10), did 
 He make her an exception, who henceforth was no longer an 
 exception (Matt, xv. 21-28; Mark vii. 24-30). In the 
 case of the centurion of Capernaum, who was a citizen and 
 coreligionist of Israel, He had no scruples, and just as little 
 with the Samaritan among the lepers (Matt. viii. 5-1 3 ; 
 Luke vii. 2—10, xvii. 11—19). In proportion as His tragic 
 end in Israel forced itself upon Him, the heathen world drew 
 inwardly nearer and nearer to Him so that He gradually 
 placed His best hopes in it. Even in the middle of His 
 ministry He searched out from the Old Testament all the 
 examples of heathen susceptibility for the divine revelation in 
 order to shame Israel by the contrast of their unsusceptibility 
 with the widow of Zarepthah and the Syrian Naaman (Luke 
 iv. 26, 27), the people of Nineveh and the Queen of Sheba 
 (Matt. xii. 41, 42). He is convinced that if the mighty 
 works which were done in Bethsaida and Capernaum had 
 been done in Tyre and Sidon, these old luxurious and dis- 
 reputable heathen cities would have repented (Matt. xi. 
 20-24; Luke x. 13, 14). Accordingly, there can be no 
 doubt — in spite of any formal inaccuracies or uncertainty in 
 His final commission as reported in the Gospels, Matt, xxviii.. 
 
THE CHURCH 183 
 
 Luke xxiv. — that He expressly pointed His disciples to the 
 heathen world as weU as to Israel, as the sphere of their 
 mission. His own words in sending out the Twelve in the 
 middle of His ministry, " Go not into the way of the Gentiles, 
 nor into any city of the Samaritans," ought not to have been 
 adduced against this. The time for a mission to the Gentiles 
 had not then arrived, the disciples would not have been in 
 any way competent to undertake it, and the attempt to do so 
 would only have hindered their access to their own people. 
 Moreover, the words would have been quite superfluous, if 
 Jesus had not been training His disciples in large-hearted 
 dispositions towards those who were not Jews. But the 
 time came when it was said, " Go into all the world and teach 
 all nations, preach the gospel to every creature " (Matt, 
 xxviii. 1 9 ; Mark xvi. 1 5). We must not infer from the 
 inaccurate and condensed report of these last sayings that 
 Jesus expressly charged the eleven apostles to go to the 
 heathen world ; that is indeed inconceivable in view of the 
 conduct of the first apostles, which, as we know on perfectly 
 good authority, was entirely different. But He did commit 
 to His Church a world-wide mission for the conversion of all 
 nations without marking out how the commission should be 
 discharged, so that the Church could only express His final 
 will, as is done in Matt, xxviii. 18. And there is further 
 testimony than these closing words : there are such sayings 
 as, " the field is the world " (Matt. xiii. 18) ; " ye are the light 
 of the world " (Matt. v. 14); " wheresoever this gospel shall 
 be preached in the whole world (Matt. xxvi. 13) ; " this gospel 
 of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a 
 testimony to all nations " (Matt. xxiv. 14). And besides such 
 individual sayings, it is attested by the whole of Jesus' view of 
 His of&ce of judging the world, which we have soon to discuss. 
 
 § 4. Pkophetic Outloctk 
 
 On the other hand, in order to prepare it for its task, 
 Jesus gives the Church of His disciples a view of the experi- 
 ences awaiting it in the world, which forms the transition to 
 His prophetic declarations in the narrower sense of the word. 
 There are dark and painful experiences before them, for which 
 
184 NEW TESTAMENT 'THEOLOGY 
 
 He prepares them, in order that they may not be perplexed 
 or led astray by them : " Behold, I send you forth as sheep in 
 the midst of wolves" (Matt. x. 16 ; Luke x. 3). Harmless 
 and defenceless, they go forth into a hostile and persecuting 
 world, which will requite with evil their peaceable work of 
 salvation. Especially did He prepare His disciples for the 
 conflicts and rage which His name will kindle in the world : 
 " Think not that I am come to send peace on the earth : I am 
 not come to send peace, but a sword " (Matt. x. 34 ; Luke xii. 
 51). Eeligious dissensions, the violent contrast of the old 
 and the new faith, will sever even the closest natural bonds, 
 the bond between brother and brother, between children and 
 parents. Such experiences will call for courage as well as 
 prudence and calmness. " He that hath a purse, let him take 
 it ; and he that hath none, let him sell his garment and buy 
 a sword," cries Jesus to His disciples in an obscure metaphor 
 on the evening of parting ; and thus He contrasts the career 
 of conflict which is about to begin for them with the life they 
 had lived under His protection, without trouble and without 
 care ; henceforth. He says, they must care for themselves, and 
 bravely make their own way (Luke xxii. 35—37). But they 
 are not to provoke the hostility and persecution of the world : 
 " Give not that which is holy to the dogs ; and cast not your 
 pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, 
 and turn again and rend you" (Matt, vii 6). In the world 
 there is a roughness and commonness, there is something of 
 the beast, which the unwise obtrusion of holy things only 
 provokes to mockery and even to violence. Not for such 
 men are the pearls of truth which the disciples bore. Jesus 
 therefore counsels further : " When they persecute you in one 
 city, flee to another." They are not to seek martyrdom, as 
 fanatic Christians in the second century did. And again: 
 " Be wise as serpents, but harmless as doves " ; that is, learn 
 to wind your way through the evil world, but see that your 
 wisdom does not injure your simplicity and integrity (Matt. 
 X. 16—23). Strong words of encouragement are attached to 
 these dark predictions : " Ye shall be brought before governors 
 and kings for My sake. But take no thought how or what 
 ye shall answer : for it is not ye who speak, but the Spirit of 
 your Father which speaketh in you" (Matt. x. 18-20). "Ye 
 
THE CHURCH 185 
 
 shall be hated of all men for My name's sake ; but fear not 
 them who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul." 
 " Not a sparrow falls to the ground without your heavenly 
 Father : but the very hairs of your head are all numbered " ; 
 that is, not a hair can be injured without the will of God, 
 who at all times has a Father's heart towards you. But the 
 Lord predicted more terrible dangers for His children than 
 outer persecutions. Seduction will vie with persecution, 
 inner enemies will endanger the Church in that which is 
 more essential than the life of the body. False prophets will 
 enter in, like wolves in sheep's clothing, corrupt men in the 
 garments of innocence and piety; and it will be aU the harder 
 for the Church to discern their true character, since it is the 
 prophet's business to bring new knowledge, and prophecy, by 
 which new knowledge is ever being drawn from the divine 
 source of truth, the inexhaustible gospel, is a necessity of the 
 Church's life. Jesus in such circumstances gives His disciples 
 a simple test for the hardest cases : " By their fruits ye shall 
 know them. Can men gather grapes from thorns, or figs from 
 thistles ? " (Matt. vii. 15-20). That is to say, new knowledge 
 and modes of teaching are worthy of confidence when they are 
 able to bring forth the fruits of a Christian life, and when 
 those who teach them are themselves examples of conduct. 
 When that is not so, the Church must distrust them. But 
 even the disciples might be led away by a faith and an 
 enthusiasm which had no moral fruits, and therefore the 
 Parable of the Tree which must be known by its fruits holds 
 good even for themselves. With warning emphasis, Jesus 
 admits no value before God, and no saving power to a faith, 
 however orthodox or even enthusiastic and energetic it may 
 be, if it does not furnish the proof of its genuineness in a 
 simple fulfilling of the divine commandments. " Not every 
 one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the king- 
 dom of heaven : but he that doeth the will of My Father 
 which is in heaven" (Matt. vii. 21; cf. 24-27). "Many 
 will say to Me on that day. Have we not prophesied in Thy 
 name, and in Thy name cast out devils, and in Thy name 
 done many wonderful works ? And then I will profess to 
 them, I never knew you (never had anything in common with 
 you): depart from me, ye that work iniquity" (Matt. vii. 22, 
 
186 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 23). If even those are rejected who, in genuine religious 
 enthusiasm, make a mighty impression on the world, if they 
 do not apply the gospel to their own life, how much more 
 are those to be rejected who have nothing more to boast of 
 than mere outer impressions of Him : " "We have eaten and 
 drunk in Thy presence, and Thou hast taught in our streets " 
 (Luke xiii. 26, 27). Still more rigorously than in these 
 warnings does Jesus mark the distinction between the genuiue 
 and the spurious members of His future Church in the 
 Parable of the Tares among the Wheat (Matt. xiii. 24-30, 
 36-43), in which He uttered a great lesson for His Church. 
 The Son of Man sows good seed in His field ; wherever His 
 wheat comes up, there grow children of the kingdom of 
 heaven. But the old enemy, the spirit of selfishness and 
 deceit, knows also how to scatter his poison in this new 
 divine creation. He sows secretly tares and cockleweed 
 among the wheat. These are the children of the evil one, 
 that is, not merely nominal Christians, but hypocrites and 
 wicked men, who under the guise of godliness do the work of 
 Satan, deceit and hatred. We have at once something like 
 an explanation of the presence of Judas among the disciples, 
 a sort of prophetic protest against certain fearful and anti- 
 christian phenomena in Church history, when the parable 
 asks : " Hast thou not sown good seed in thy field ? whence 
 then hath it tares ? " and answers by the words : " An enemy 
 hath done it." But it would be a fatal error for the disciples 
 of Jesus to yield to the natural temptation, and seek to put 
 outward and arbitrary restraints upon this process, or attempt 
 to expose and separate from each other the children of God 
 and the children of the devil. They cannot succeed in that. 
 The law of the present history of good and evil in the world 
 brings into inseparable relations those born of God and those 
 against God ; even the history of the kingdom of God, the 
 development of the Church of Christ, cannot escape this law. 
 The day of separation comes only at the end of this world, 
 and it will be accomplished by higher powers than the weak 
 and fallible hands of men. To this great day, the (rvvreXeia 
 aldovo'i, Jesus finally points His disciples, even for their own 
 sakes, as the great motive for preserving their fidelity ; and 
 in this duty of faithfulness is summed up their whole task in 
 
THE JUDGMENT OF THE WOELD 187 
 
 the world, their work both without and within themselves. 
 In the picture, varying often in its details, of the servants 
 waiting for their absent lord, and tested by his absence (Luke 
 xii. 35 f., xix. 11 f.; Matt. xxv. 14 f.), Jesus never wearies of 
 urging upon them this one duty, which includes all others. 
 The exhortation becomes an encouragement when the reward 
 of the faithful is described — the harder his life on earth, the 
 higher his place in heaven (Matt. v. 11, 12); and even the 
 very smallest kindness shown to him on earth, even the cup 
 of water given him because he is a disciple of Christ, shall 
 not go unrewarded (Matt. x. 40—42). Here already on earth, 
 in the midst of all persecution, the brotherly communion of 
 love will compensate a hundredfold for all that is given up for 
 Christ's sake (Matt. x. 28-30). On the other hand, it should 
 be difficult to struggle and suffer for a cause whose victory is 
 certain, which shall crown all who fight to the end. Not 
 only will the gates of Hades not prevail against the Church 
 of Jesus, but the Church, however small and feeble it is at 
 present, will go on from victory to victory. As the mustard 
 seed, which is the least of all seeds, grows like a tree, and 
 stands higher than all the herbs of the garden ; as the little 
 leaven leavens the great mass of meal, and turns it to some- 
 thing higher, to precious bread : so the kingdom of God, even 
 in the shape of the Church, will rise above all kingdoms of 
 the world, and it will work in the hearts of men, and lift 
 them to a new and higher level of existence. And as 
 surely as seedtime is followed by harvest, so the day will 
 come, the day of judgment, when the Church will put off 
 all weakness and defects, and be changed into the perfect 
 kingdom of God. 
 
 CHAPTEE VIII 
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF THE WORLD 
 
 The declarations of Jesus about His dying and rising again, 
 and still more, those about His Church and its future, are 
 already of the nature of prophecy ; but the doctrine which 
 completes His teaching. His predictions of the perfected 
 
188 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 kingdom, is entirely prophetic, and therefore it is harder to 
 interpret than any that have gone before. Whoever seeks 
 not merely to reproduce the imagery, but to discover the 
 truths which Jesus meant to teach, must be bold enough to 
 seek his way in the dark. 
 
 § 1. Authenticity and Difficulties 
 
 These very difficulties have recently driven men to the 
 declaration that a great part of these eschatological discourses 
 of Jesus is not genuine. It has become a favourite assump- 
 tion among critical theologians that especially the prophetic 
 discourse in Matt. xxiv. and its parallels did not in large 
 measure originate with Jesus Himself ; it is a short apocalypse, 
 which, arising in the troubles before the Jewish war, was 
 attributed to the divine ao^ia (Luke xi. 49), and so to Jesus 
 Himself, and thus came to find a place in the Gospels which 
 were then taking shape.^ This hypothesis has really nothing 
 to support it ; that short apocalypse is a mere production of 
 the critical imagination ; no evidence of its existence can be 
 found. But even if it had existed it would still be incon- 
 ceivable how in a circle possessed of a first-hand tradition of 
 Jesus' words Jewish predictions of quite recent origin could 
 at once have been accepted for genuine sayings of Jesus, and 
 been incorporated into the Christian Gospels then being formed. 
 The essential contents of the great prophetic discourse. Matt. 
 xxiv., Mark xiii., Luke xxi., belong to the original document 
 common to our Gospels, which must have been composed 
 about the beginning of the Jewish war (cf. Mark xiii. 14 ; 
 Matt. xxiv. 25). Other prophetic sayings, contained in the 
 first and third Gospels, manifestly sprang from the apostolic 
 collection of sayings, and therefore the descent of the synoptic 
 prophetic addresses from Jesus' own lips is certified on as 
 good authority as the Parables of the Kingdom or the Sermon 
 on the Mount. The difficulties which they present to us in 
 their traditional form must be solved in another manner and 
 by other means than by cutting the knot, which, besides, 
 would not remove all difficulties. They must be solved, above 
 
 ^ For example, Keim, LehmJesu,iii. 199; Pfleiderer, Urchristenthum, 
 p. 402 f. 
 
THE JUDGMENT OF THE WOELD 189 
 
 all, by remembering the peculiarity of all prophecy, and by 
 considering how imperfect must be the prophet's own view 
 and expression, and how imperfect also must be the hearers' 
 comprehension and report of it. We must apply to the pre- 
 dictions of Jesus what Paul says of the necessary limits of all 
 prophecy (1 Cor. xiii. 9-12); it is not a seeing face to face, 
 but a seeing in a glass ; from it, therefore, no perfect know- 
 ledge can spring, nothing but a child's thought in comparison 
 with a man's. Even Hewas, in regard to the future, a prophet 
 looking in order to learn, not God who knows all ; and this 
 iSe Himself expressly acknowledged in the words, too little 
 considered, " The day and the hour knoweth no man, not even 
 the Son, but the Father only " (Mark xiii. 32 ; Matt. xxiv. 36). 
 The prophet does not see the shape of the future development, 
 but only its idea and ideal truth ; and even this he does not 
 see as an abstract thinker, but as an inspired poet ; he sees 
 it in emblem and image, or rather, in a changing series of 
 images, always in a riddle, as Paul says. An artist who 
 paints the resurrection of the dead and the last judgment 
 knows that his form is unreal, but takes it as the only form 
 in which he can represent an idea which he believes to be 
 true ; and the prophet is subject to the same law. And if 
 he does not write his visions down, but tells them, as Jesus 
 did, on various occasions, and using different images, to dis- 
 ciples who are children in apprehension, it is evident that, 
 however faithful the disciples are, the repetition will lead to 
 new imperfections and errors. These errors may be corrected 
 to-day, and the ideas contained in the images may be known,, 
 but the actual facts of the future we can no more describe 
 than Jesus Himself could. 
 
 § 2. The Idea of the Judgment of the "World and of 
 THE Office of Judge of the World 
 
 It is evident that Jesus could not be silent about th& 
 future and the completion of His kingdom. If what had 
 happened, or was about to happen, did not exhaust the idea, 
 of the kingdom, or fulfil the word of prophecy, it was only 
 the more necessary that by prophecy the fulness should be 
 disclosed of which the humble fact was only the beginning. 
 
190 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 That fulness is comprehended in the idea of the last judg- 
 ment ; by which Jesus did not mean merely the condemning 
 of the bad, He meant the victory of God's cause throughout 
 the world, and the gathering out of all evil, in order to make 
 way for a glorious and perfect establishment of the kingdom 
 of God (cf. Matt. xiii. 39-43, 49, 50). The idea of a closing 
 day of the world's history, which was already current among 
 the Jews, offered itself as the simplest pictorial view of this 
 thought, a day on which God will disclose the final result of 
 the world's history, and hold before every individual the 
 eternal worth or worthlessness of his life, in order to deter- 
 mine his eternal destiny accordingly. Just as the Old Testa- 
 ment speaks of the day, the day of Jehovah, in the sense of a 
 day of judgment, so Jesus speaks of the rj^epa Kpi(Tew<;, or 
 simply the ■^fj.epa eKeivq, the last day (Matt. vii. 22, x. 15, 
 xi. 22, xii. 36, xxiv. 36, xxv. 13, etc.). Or, in connection 
 with the traditional distinction of two periods of the world 
 (aiSive^), one reaching up to the last day, and one beginning 
 anew with it {alcav oiito'; — alwv iKelvo? or (jueWwv), He speaks 
 of a a-vvreXeia alcSvof, of a completion of the present course 
 of the world (Matt. xiii. 39). Once also He speaks of a 
 TvaXtyiyeveaia (Matt. xix. 28), a regeneration, viz. of the 
 universe ; for, according to Jewish expectations, the present 
 order of the world must end with the alwv ovroi, and must 
 be replaced by a new and more glorious one, a new heaven 
 and a new earth. In all this Jesus said nothing new to His 
 disciples, but only confirmed in them views and expectations 
 which had already grown up in the pious circles of the people 
 on the basis of Old Testament prophecy. On the other hand, 
 it must have been a new and surprising idea to them that in 
 His utterances about the last day He claimed for Himself the 
 office of Judge. The popular expectations did not look for 
 Messiah as Judge of the world. They did, indeed, ascribe 
 to the Messiah that historical judgment on the heathen world 
 for which they longed, that shattering of the world-dominion of 
 the heathen (Ps. ii. 8, 9) by which the way should be opened 
 for the Messianic kingdom upon earth; but this Messianic 
 victory was different from the final judgment upon the living 
 and the dead, which stood apart from the history of the 
 world, and was reserved for the last day. Where that final 
 
THE JUDGMENT OF THE WORLD 191 
 
 judgment was looked for God Himself was Judge.^ Now it 
 certainly was not the intention of Jesus to deny this to God, 
 but He knew that He was called as God's instrument to this 
 office. Sometimes, indeed, God is conceived as the Judge 
 proper, and the Messiah as crown witness or assessor, on 
 whose testimony, as to whether the person to be judged belongs 
 to Him or not, the divine decision depends (Matt. x. 32, 33 ; 
 Luke xviii. 8).^ But, for the most part, He Himself appears, 
 even formally, as the Judge proper of the world. " The Son 
 of Man will come with His holy angels, and reward every 
 man according to his works" (Matt. xvi. 27). "He will say 
 to His angels. Bind for me the tares in bundles to be burned " 
 (Matt. xiii. 30, 41). On that day He will say to those who 
 have falsely called Him Lord, Lord : " I know you not " (Matt. 
 vii. 21). He wiU open to His faithful ones the door to the 
 eternal festival of joy, but will close the door of the heavenly 
 marriage feast on the unfaithful (Matt. vii. 22, 23, xxv. 
 11, 12 ; Luke xiii. 25, etc.). "He will sit on the throne of 
 His glory, and all nations will be gathered before Him ; and He 
 will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth 
 his sheep from the goats" (Matt. xxv. 31). The idea so 
 variously portrayed is only strange at first sight, but is really 
 quite simple and clear ; it seals Christianity as the absolute 
 religion. If Christ were only a finger-post to God along with 
 others who could likewise lead men to the goal of their 
 destiny, or if He were only the beginner and not also the 
 finisher of the kingdom of God, beyond whom there can 
 be no development, then, indeed, the very idea of His office 
 as Judge of the world would be a fanatical presumption.^ 
 But if the Father has delivered all things to Him (Matt. 
 xL 27), and His whole revelation of salvation, then is Christ 
 also the bom Judge of the world. He is Judge, first, as 
 the perfectly holy standard by which the eternal worth or 
 
 ^ Of. Schurer, History of the Jewish People, Div. ii. vol. ii. p. 182. 
 
 " In the latter passage, where the confessing before men is contrasted 
 with the confessing before angels, the angels are conceived as the repre- 
 sentatives of God, as the heavenly tribunal before which the Messiah will 
 appear as a witness. The change of image does not prejudice the identity 
 of the idea that the judgment is executed by Him. 
 
 ' Strauss, in his Life of Jesus for the GerniMn People, p. 242, regards the 
 idea as one that cannot critically be set aside. 
 
192 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 worthlessness of all historical phenomena must finally be 
 measured ; and He is Judge, further, as the gracious Helper 
 and Saviour, through whom God makes the attainment of His 
 eternal destiny possible to every man who is called, so that 
 in the judgment of the world by Christ we have the great 
 thought that God will finally reject no man because he is a 
 sinner, but only because he has rejected Him who could and 
 would help him out of sin. 
 
 § 3. The Idea of the Eetuen in Gloey 
 
 This sense that He was called to be the Judge of the 
 world explains to us, what is perhaps the most peculiar and 
 the most obscure element of Christ's prophecy, the idea of His 
 second coming, or in the common Greek expression (Matt, 
 xxiv. 27), His Parousia. According to Matt. xvi. 27, and 
 several other sayings, Jesus expected to come again in glory 
 in order to judge the world and to render to every man 
 according to his works.^ The idea was strange to the Jewish 
 Messianic expectations, which knew of nothing but a single 
 coming of Messiah ; but to Jesus it came readily with the 
 evidence that He must die before His work was completed. 
 The sower, says a comparatively early parable, after having 
 done his work does not remain standing in his field as though 
 he could wait for the harvest, but goes home and sleeps and 
 wakes many nights and many days till the harvest is ripe, 
 then he comes again to put in the sickle (Mark iv. 26-29). 
 The idea of the second coming appears more distinctly from 
 the time that Jesus has clearly before Him His rejection by 
 Israel and His approaching death of violence. It appears even 
 in connection with His first prophecy of His approachiag death 
 (Mark viii. 38; Matt. xvi. 27 ; Luke ix. 26), and from that time 
 onwards the image of His glorious second coming to judgment, 
 
 ' When Wendt (pp. 553, 554) seeks to limit the office of Jesus as Judge of 
 the world to those who directly or indirectly come into contact with Him 
 and His preaching, while the past generations are judged by God Himself 
 without Christ's mediation, his position is in contradiction with the teach- 
 ing of the whole New Testament. Of. besides the passages quoted above, 
 Matt. xvi. 27 ; John v. 22-27 ; Acts xvii. 30 ; Rom. ii. 16 ; 1 Pet. iv. 
 5, 6, etc. 
 
THE JUDGMENT OF THE WORLD 193 
 
 for which the expression parousia (that is, simply advent) 
 seems to have been coined even in the apostolic circles (Matt. 
 xxiv. 3 ; 2 Thess. ii. 8 ; 1 John ii. 28), appears in more and 
 more detail throughout the prophetic sayings and parables. 
 It is described as an event taking place with accompaniments 
 of great power and glory, the glory of His Father in the 
 midst of His holy angels (Matt. xvi. 27), especially in the 
 clouds of heaven (Matt. xxiv. 30, xxvi. 64; of. Acts i. 11; 
 Eev. i. 7). The latter reminds us of the repeated Old Testa- 
 ment delineations of Jehovah riding on the storm-clouds of 
 judgment (cf. Ps. xviii. 8 f., 1. 3, xcvii. 2), still more of the 
 Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven (Dan. vii. 13). 
 The expressions in Matt. xxiv. 30, xxvi. 64, especially make 
 manifest the supreme importance of that passage in Daniel 
 for producing the whole imagery of Jesus. This picture of 
 victory and triumph must have arisen in the soul of Jesus as 
 soon as the frightful and ignominious issue of His historical 
 mission appeared before Him, while He yet remained certain 
 of His God and God-given commission. He will seem to be 
 overcome, and yet He will, in fact, obtain the victory. He will 
 again enter in triumph into the world which expels Him as 
 an evil-doer ; Him whom it rejected as Saviour, it will once 
 more see as its Judge. In presence of His death upon the 
 cross He declares to His earthly judges : " Hereafter ye shall 
 see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and 
 coming on the clouds of heaven" (Matt. xxvi. 64). 
 
 § 4. The final Pictuke of the 'Judgment of the Wokld 
 
 A gloomy picture of the history of the world in its 
 closing stage forms the foreground to this promise of the 
 parousia. A distress unequalled will immediately precede the 
 second coming of Messiah (Matt. xxiv. 21). The disciples of 
 Jesus will be hated by all the world for His name's sake ; the 
 unrighteousness of the world and the oppression of believers 
 will reach their climax (Matt. xxiv. 9, 12). The love of 
 many disciples will wax cold ; they will go astray, and hate 
 and betray one another (Matt. xxiv. 10, 12). Others will fall 
 into fanatical errors ; false prophets and saviours will appear, 
 seeking to win faith for themselves by signs and wonders, and 
 
 BEVSCHLAG. — I. '3 
 
194 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 will declare the return of Christ the end of time, so that if it 
 were possible even the elect must be deceived. But they are 
 not to believe these fanatical assurances, not even regard as 
 signs of the end of the world the universal convulsions in the 
 history of the world, wars, earthquakes, and pestilence. One 
 sign alone is sure, that the gospel must be preached in the 
 whole world for a witness to all nations, that the message of 
 salvation must do its work in the world of history (Matt, 
 xxiv. 4, 7, 14). In those days will God's attitude towards 
 His Church appear like that of an unrighteous judge who 
 refuses to do justice to a poor, shamefully persecuted widow. 
 But the Church, like that widow, should not desist from 
 importuning the eternal Judge, who will at last be moved to 
 procure her help suddenly (Luke xviii. 1—8). So will the day 
 of the Lord be delayed for the waiting and persecuted ; but at 
 length it will come suddenly, for the days of the great 
 afHiction will suddenly be shortened for the elect's sake (Matt. 
 xxiv. 22). It will come when it is least looked for, as a thief 
 in the night (Matt. xxiv. 29, 43 ; Luke xii. 39, 40). It will 
 break upon the Jewish people while they are in the hottest 
 persecution of the disciples of Jesus (Matt. x. 23). All at 
 once, the abomination of desolation will appear in the holy 
 city, as predicted in the Book of Daniel (Matt. xxiv. 15), and 
 will announce the fall of the desecrated Jerusalem ; for 
 " wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered 
 together," the vultures who tear it to pieces (Matt. xxiv. 
 15, 28).i It will break upon the world at the very moment 
 when it feels most secure, as the Flood came in the days of 
 Noah, and as the rain of fire in the days of Lot. Men will be 
 planting and building, buying and selling, marrying and giving 
 in marriage, when all at once the judgment will fall on them 
 (Matt. xxiv. 37, 39 ; Luke xvii. 26 f.). And so the second 
 coming of the Lord appears as a sudden catastrophe in the 
 world and in history, which redeems those who are ready but 
 devours those who are not ready, even though they belong 
 
 1 We are reminded of the events in Palestine wMcli followed one 
 another in the years between sixty and seventy, the persecution in which 
 James the Just and others fell a sacrifice, the scenes of uproar and party 
 slaughter in Jerusalem and the temple, and the Roman eagles which com- 
 pleted the judgment on the nation which had morally become a corpse. 
 
THE JUDGMENT OF THE WORLD 195 
 
 to the Church (Luke xvii. 32 f. ; Matt. xxiv. 40-42),— a 
 catastrophe in which those only stand who with singleness of 
 heart seek for tlie salvation of their souls, and who do not 
 look back like Lot's wife on the earthly things which they 
 have to leave (Luke xvii. 31, 33 ; of. Matt. xxiv. 16).^ But 
 however sudden this catastrophe may be, it will be quite 
 manifest and unmistakable. The Church should not therefore 
 put any faith in fanatical assurances that Christ is here or 
 there, in the desert or in an inner chamber (that is, in a 
 corner), because His actual coming to judgment will be as 
 powerful and startling as when " the lightning flashes from 
 one end of heaven to the other" (Matt. xxiv. 25-27). The 
 sun and moon will pale before " the sign of the Son of Man " 
 appearing in the heavens ; the stars will fall from heaven, and 
 the powers of the heavens will be shaken (Matt. xxiv. 29, 30) ; 
 the sea and the waves will roar, and an unspeakable suspense 
 will seize men regarding the things that are coming (Luke xxi. 
 25, 26). And tlien will they all see the Son of Man coming 
 in the clouds of heaven, attended by His holy angels, in His 
 power and glory, and will beat their breasts in the conscious- 
 ness of their guilt as they recognise in Him their Judge 
 (Matt. xxiv. 30 ; Mark xiii. 26 ; Luke xxi. 27). But He will 
 send forth His angels with loud sounding trumpets to gather 
 His elect from the four winds, not merely the living, but — 
 as the trumpet with its awakening call signifies — those also 
 who sleep in the bosom of the earth (cf. 1 Thess. iv. 16); for 
 then shall be gathered the whole Church of the elect to share 
 in His kingly glory, and be united with Him in judging the 
 world (cf. Matt. xix. 28 ; Luke xxii. 30 ; 1 Cor. vi. 2, 3). 
 
 § 5. The Destruction or Jerusalem 
 
 The thoroughly poetical character of this picture of the 
 end of the world is clear as day. It is not history such as 
 ever has or will take place in bare fact ; it is ideal history 
 evolved from the idea that the contrasts of good and evil, 
 
 1 The exhortations which Matthew interprets literally, and refers to the 
 flight of the Christians in the siege of Jerusalem, were probably at first 
 meant in the symbolic sense in which Luke xvii. has strikingly repeated 
 them. 
 
196 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 wheat and tares, must ripen in the world, and that when the 
 opposition to God in the world has reached its climax, the 
 judgment of God must break out over it. And yet this con- 
 ception, which alone is true to the nature of all genuine 
 prophecy, gives rise to doubt, for in Christ's discourses the 
 epic of ideal prophecy is mixed up with the Jewish wars and 
 the destruction of Jerusalem. Have we not here the predic- 
 tion of a definite historical event, and must we not regard the 
 whole as a foretelling of actual history. And if we are 
 compelled to take it thus, is not the whole prediction false, as 
 the destruction of Jerusalem took place without involving 
 such a universal disturbance of the history of the world, and 
 especially without bringing with it the judgment of the world ? 
 It cannot honestly be denied that the first evangelist has 
 identified the catastrophe breaking upon Israel in the years 
 between sixty and seventy, with the last affliction and the 
 crisis of the crisis of the history of the world, and has 
 attached the immediate signs of Christ's return to judge the 
 world with a evdem'; fieTo, to the destruction of Jerusalem 
 (Matt. xxiv. 16, 21, 29); and if Mark and Luke strive to 
 relax somewhat this connection, they only show how em- 
 barrassed they were by the picture furnished in their common 
 source. Moreover, Jesus also (Matt. x. 23) incontestably 
 makes the return of the Son of Man coincide with the 
 historical catastrophe of the Jewish nation; in Matt. xvi. 28 
 there is likewise given a saying of Jesus, which in its natural 
 sense directly assures some of the listening disciples that they 
 will live to see His coming again to judgment (ver. 27);^ and, 
 finally, in the three repetitions of that great eschatological dis- 
 course, the words appear : afiriv Xiyo) vfiiv, ov firj irapiXdi] rj 
 yevea avrr), «u? av iravTa ravra •yevqrai (Matt. xxiv. 34 ; Mark 
 xiii. 30 ; Luke xxi. 32). In accordance with this, as we may 
 see from the whole New Testament, the early Church expected 
 the Lord's return within a generation, and even hoped themselves 
 to see it (cf. Jas. v. 3, 9 ; 1 Pet. iv. 7 ; Eom. xiii. 11 ; 1 Cor. 
 vii. 29 f., XV. 51, 52 ; Eev. i. 1, xxii. 12, etc.). At this point, 
 then, the seemingly invincible difficulties of the eschatological 
 
 ' Mark has indeed (ix. 1) changed the words — offence manifestly being 
 given by them ; but even John xxi. 22, 23 must be taken as an echo 
 of them. 
 
THE JUDGMENT OF THE WOELD 197 
 
 discourses of Jesus become acute, and appearances strongly 
 ravour the view that Jesus, seeing the judgment of God coming 
 upon Israel and Jerusalem, and having reason to expect it 
 within a generation, conformed to the Jewish view of the 
 world, and contemplated the catastrophe of Judaism in im- 
 mediate connection with the catastrophe of the world. But 
 though such a view would be conceivable in a national Jewish 
 prophet who considered Israel and Jerusalem the pivot of the 
 histoiy of the world, there are very weighty reasons against 
 it in the case of Jesus, apart from dogmatic considerations. 
 First, that well-attested saying, which as a confession of 
 Messianic ignorance is proof against suspicion of later falsifica- 
 tion : " The day and the hour knoweth no man, not even the 
 Son" (Mark xiii. 32 and parallels). This saying cannot be 
 reconciled with the other which stands naively beside it, " This 
 generation shall not pass away till all these things shall be 
 fulfilled," by making it mean that Jesus disclaimed only the 
 power of fixing the year or the day, but approximately placed 
 it withiu a generation. Though the editor of the prophetic 
 sayings in Matt, xxiv., Mark xiii., may have in this way 
 quieted himself about the contradiction, an interpretation of 
 day and hour so insipid and so alien to the prophetic style is 
 inconceivable in the mind of Jesus. The conjecture rather 
 forces itself upon us that the two declarations, which exclude 
 each other, referred originally to two different objects of 
 prophecy, the words, " day and hour knoweth no man " to the 
 time of the judgment of the world, the words " this generation 
 will not pass away " to the time of the destruction of Jeru- 
 salem. Jesus elsewhere deals very differently with the two 
 future events. He says most decidedly of the judgment of 
 God on Jerusalem, " it will come upon this generation " 
 (Matt, xxiii. 36). It is to Him essential that the generation 
 which will fill up the measure of the sins of the fathers, will 
 also have to taste the full measure of the divine wrath 
 (cf. Matt, xxiii. 34-39; Luke xi. 50, 51, xiii. 1-9, xxiii. 
 28-31). But He Himself speaks quite differently of the 
 end of the world in Matt: xxiv. He warns against hasty 
 expectations ; He insists that wars and rumours of wars, and 
 the rising of one people against another, by no means signify 
 that the end is near, and He only allows one fact to be 
 
198 M.W TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 seriously regarded as a sign of the end, viz. that the gospel 
 has been preached to all nations. Did He confine the accom- 
 plishment of that world-wide task to one generation ? We 
 have express evidence of the contrary. In the Parable of the 
 Vineyard (Mark xii. 1-12; Matt. xxi. 33-46; Luke xx. 
 9-18) it is said in conclusion, "The lord of the vineyard will 
 miserably destroy those wicked men, and commit his vineyard 
 to others who will render him the fruits in their season," that 
 is, to the Gentiles, or the Christian Church detached from the 
 Jewish commonwealth. And in the Parable of the Marriage 
 Supper of the King's Son, which immediately foUows in 
 Matthew, the rejection of the gospel on the part of the Jewish 
 authorities passing into open hostility, and the divine judgment 
 which that calls forth, are described in words which unmis- 
 takably allude to the destruction of Jerusalem (Matt. xxii. 7). 
 But after the punishment of the " city of murderers " the end, 
 the judgment of the world does not follow, but messengers are 
 sent forth anew to call in the people from the streets and 
 lanes, that is, the Gentiles, instead of the unworthy guests ; 
 and only after this has been done, and the house is full, does 
 the king come in to see his guests and expel the unworthy ; 
 that is, only then does the judgment of the world begin. 
 According to this, the spirit of Jesus clearly saw beyond the 
 near judgment of God on Judaism, not the immediate end of 
 the world, but a growing history both of the world and the 
 Church, the greatest fact of which should be the calling of the 
 nations of the world to the kingdom of God. But if that is 
 so, how are we to explain the traditional form of His utter- 
 ances about the parousia as set forth above, which fix His 
 second coming within one generation ? and how are we to 
 explain the view held by the whole apostolic age ? 
 
 § 6. The Parousia as a Histokical Process 
 
 The consideration of this question may perhaps lead us 
 deeper into the understanding of the thoughts of Jesus about 
 His second coming. The synoptic tradition has preserved to 
 us a remarkable saying of Jesus before the Sanhedrim which 
 does not fit into the conception of His second coming as follow- 
 ing close upon the destruction of Jerusalem : aV' dpTi 6-^eade 
 
THE JUDGMENT OF THE WORLD 199 
 
 rov VLOV Tov dvOpdirov KaOrj^kvov iic Be^LMV tjj? Swd/ieco^ icai 
 epxofievov ctti tS)v ve<j)e\mv rov ovpavov (Matt. xxvi. 64 ; cf. 
 Mark xiv. 6 2 ; Luke xxii. 6 9). In the first place, these 
 words put beyond doubt what we might have supposed from 
 their prophetic style and their derivation from Dan. vii. 13, 
 that the second coming of Jesus in the clouds of heaven is 
 not a visible comina; from the visible heavens. The coming 
 in the clouds of heaven would no more be seen with the 
 bodily eye than His sitting at the right hand of power. But 
 as the dir dprt (whose meaning is also confirmed by Luke) 
 refers assuredly to both the participles dependent on o^jreaOe, 
 Jesus here describes His coming in the clouds of heaven as 
 something of which His deadly enemies are to become sensible, 
 " henceforth," that is, immediately after His apparent defeat, 
 as something that from the time of His death is to affect the 
 whole history of the world. When His judges and murderers, 
 the authorities of Israel, are compelled to note a few weeks 
 after His death that their victory was but a seeming one, 
 that He who was ignominiously slain by them lives and rules 
 from heaven, and that He has returned with spiritual power 
 to the world from which they fondly imagined they had 
 expelled Him for ever, then would they see Him coming in 
 the clouds of heaven, and sitting at the right hand of power. 
 This idea of His second coming, so startlingly prominent in 
 this passage, the thought of it as a triumphant return to the 
 world which had expelled Him — a return beginning from His 
 death and advancing from victory to victory — may not, perhaps, 
 have been so clearly and distinctly before the soul of Jesus 
 from the first. The thought of His second coming in glory 
 was called up in His soul by the other thought of His shame- 
 ful death, and so it may have appeared to Him as belonging 
 to an indefinite but not a remote future, and embracing, though 
 under a veil, all that should come after His death to perfect 
 His work on earth ; and many of His prophetic words above 
 alluded to may have been conceived and spoken before this 
 new thought had fully taken shape. But as He revolved this 
 idea in His mind, and the historical fulfilment of it came 
 nearer, it became more fully developed and more distinct, so 
 far as that is possible in a prophetic view; the indefinite 
 point extends into a line in which a beginning and an end 
 
200 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 with something lying between may be distinguished. In 
 other words, Jesus comprehended the realisation of the king- 
 dom of God, which is generally represented by the prophets 
 as momentary, like a flash of lightning, rather as a process of 
 growth, a historical development ; and according to the same 
 law He consciously viewed also the future completion of His 
 work as a course of history, achieved not in a single act, but 
 in an advancing series of acts. Testimonies to this may be 
 found also in addresses to the disciples only inferior in im- 
 portance to those last words before the Sanhedrim. The 
 repeated proverbial statement, " Wheresoever the carcass is, 
 there will the eagles be gathered together," manifestly ex- 
 presses a general law which is fulfilled in the history of the 
 world, not once but again and again ; and the way in which 
 Jesus (Luke xvii. 37) answers the question of the disciples, 
 TTov, Kvpie, that is, where will Thy coming to judgment be ? 
 with this general law, gives the meaning, wherever there 
 is anything ripe for judgment. With that agrees, further, 
 His speaking of the days of the Son of Man in the plural 
 (Luke xvii. 22). The r/fiepai rod viov tov dv6pco7rov, of 
 which the disciples in their future applications would fain 
 see even one, cannot, according to grammar and context, be 
 the past days of the Messiah on earth, but must be the future 
 judicial rjixepa in the plural. And this attests the presenti- 
 ment of Jesus, that more than one judgment day of God and 
 of His anointed is coming ; that the future history of the world 
 will be filled with such epochs, in which the triumphant glory 
 of the Son of Man, and the impotence and nothingness of all 
 world-powers coming into conflict with Him, will be made 
 clear. Certain main elements of that future course of history 
 must now have stood out prominently in the consciousness of 
 Jesus ; the triumphant issuing of His life from death, and its 
 immediate entrance into the life of His Church ; further. His 
 triumph in the world, Judaism breaking down before Him on 
 the one hand, and heathendom opening itself to Him on the 
 other ; lastly, the final overcoming of all powers opposed to God, 
 of evil and death, and the setting up of God's eternal kingdom. 
 All these essential elements of His triumphant progress, in 
 which, stage after stage, the world opposed to God is judged, 
 were wrapped up as in a seed in Jesus' simplest view of His 
 
THE JUDGMENT OF THE WOKLD 201 
 
 coming ; all could be conceived and predicted under this one 
 name. But, under the conditions of all prophecy, each stage 
 was not seen as something apart, they were felt and described 
 as so many phases of the whole according to the suggestion 
 of the moment. And this made the description necessarily 
 imperfect, and even the sense of words was not always the 
 same. 
 
 § 7. The Original State of things and the Teaditional 
 
 TOEM 
 
 The traces of this state of things may probably be made 
 out step by step ; at least this presupposition sets at rest the 
 most pressing difficulties. Those words before the Sanhedrim, 
 dv' dpri oyjreerde, k.t.X, permit the conjecture that Jesus 
 already saw the facts of Easter and Pentecost as belonging to 
 His parousia. They were, in fact, the glorious beginning of 
 His triumphant return ; not merely a revelation of glory to 
 His own, but a virtual judgment of His enemies, who in the 
 manifest indestructibility of this murdered man must feel that 
 their enmity was vain, and was indeed enmity against God. 
 The farewell discourses in John give notable evidence that 
 the predictions of Easter and Pentecost found a place in His 
 thought of the parousia. But even in the Synoptists a say- 
 ing such as Matt. xvi. 28, "There be some standing here who 
 shall not taste death till they see the Son of Man coming in 
 His kingdom," may have been originally intended simply to 
 assure the disciples, whom He had summoned to accompany 
 Him on His way to death, that some of them, at anyrate, 
 should not be entangled in His doom, but should live to see 
 the beginning of His course of victory and triumph.^ The 
 approaching catastrophe of Israel must have been, above all, 
 significant to Jesus as a further element of this victorious and 
 triumphant progress. That the Jewish commonwealth should 
 perish because of the rejection of its Messiah, and that the 
 final judgment of the Old Testament covenant history must 
 follow close upon the outrageous rejection of the last and 
 greatest visitation of God, was a necessity of the moral order 
 of the world which Jesus could not fail to observe, and which 
 1 Cf. the paraphrase of the words in Mark ix. 1. 
 
202 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 for the sake of His growing Church He durst not leave un- 
 expressed ; for His desire was to detach the Church in spirit 
 from the old national communion, and so to preserve it in the 
 decisive moment from being entangled in the nation's fate. 
 But this fate was also a significant revelation of His glory ; 
 the Jewish nation perished because of its rejection of Him as 
 a Saviour, and thus He was its Judge, and His cause came 
 triumphantly out of the flames of that destruction like a 
 phoenix from its ashes. It is not therefore surprising if, in the 
 words of Matt. x. 23, " Ye shall not have gone over the cities 
 of Lsrael till the Son of Man come," He described the catastrophe 
 of Jerusalem, which should put an end to all Jewish persecu- 
 tion, as a coming of the Son of Man. He it was, to speak in 
 the style of the prophets, who rode over the perishing Jeru- 
 salem in the clouds of heaven. But over these ruins He 
 victoriously entered into the nations of the great Gentile world, 
 and that was the other and fairer side of His triumph in the 
 world. The conquest of the heathen world by the gospel is 
 also presented as a judgment of the world by Him. The 
 powers and spirits which hitherto have ruled the world were 
 discovered before Him in their impotence and their opposition 
 to God. And perhaps the magnificent passage which is in 
 Matt. xxiv. 29 brought into close connection by the difficult 
 word eiideax;, with the reference to the destruction of Jeru- 
 salem, is, in its original sense, simply a prophetic description 
 of His judicial triumph over the old world. '' Immediately 
 after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, 
 and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall 
 from heaven, and the powers of the heaven shall be shaken : 
 and then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven : 
 and all tribes of the earth shall mourn, and shall see the Son 
 of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great 
 glory." Has not that already been fulfilled in the history of 
 the world ? It has been fulfilled, as all the lights of heaven 
 which formerly shone on humanity have paled before the rising 
 on them of the sign of the cross, as ideas which seemed to 
 stand firm as the stars, and ordinances which had been main- 
 tained for centuries as laws of the world, lost their authority, 
 and the knowledge of Jesus as the King of Heaven made its 
 way in the self-accusing hearts of men as a higher power of 
 
THE JUDGMENT OF THE WOKLD 203 
 
 renewal. Certainly the narrator who gave the saying the 
 form and the place it has did not think of a new spiritual 
 revolution in the world, but of that final palingenesia (Matt. 
 xix. 28) by which the new heavens and the new earth were to 
 be set up. And perhaps both, the spiritual and the cosmical 
 renewing of the world, originally presented themselves in an 
 emblem which suggested both to the prophetic eye of Jesus, 
 who saw " in a glass and in riddles." But if we have rightly 
 read the predictions of Jesus about His own parousia, the 
 traditional form in which they lie before us in the synoptic 
 Gospels is perfectly explained. The disciples could not 
 possibly understand aright what was still unfulfilled, and the 
 idea of the parousia as a point of time indefinite but near, 
 remained the most comprehensible. The view of it as a 
 process of development which only gradually took shape in 
 Jesus Himself had not clearly risen on them. It was all the 
 harder for them to grasp, as it broke up the pictorial idea of 
 the last day as the end of the world. That second coming of 
 Jesus which took place at Easter and Pentecost, when it was 
 no longer for the disciples a bit of prophecy but a historical 
 event, received other and more definite names,^ and so ceased 
 to belong to the idea of the parousia. On the other hand, 
 the destruction of Jerusalem and the conversion of the Gentile 
 world remained in their eyes the great signals and symbols of 
 the historical triumph of Jesus, and with these was connected 
 the expectation of His speedy and complete victory in the 
 final judgment. Their expectation was all the more im- 
 patient, as Jesus Himself had given no measure of time, and 
 had not kept the future events distinct. The longing to see 
 shortly the last revelation of God naturally carried the 
 thoughts to the furthest points as though they were near, 
 and this soaring beyond the historical development appeared 
 to be the more justified by the fact that the Old Testament 
 prophets had not at all distinguished between the founding 
 and completion of the Messianic kingdom. Thus all the 
 events of the future were crowded into the measure of one 
 generation, and grouped around the central point formed by 
 
 ^ Cf. the repeated synoptic predictions of Jesus as to His death and 
 resurrection, which (ex eventu) sound quite unmistakable, and yet were 
 repeatedly misunderstood by the disciples. 
 
204 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 the catastrophe of the Jewish nation, which was to the 
 disciples from childhood the pivot of the world's history. 
 And yet the tradition even with such misunderstandings and 
 confusions was faithful enough to preserve the traces of the 
 original state of things.^ 
 
 § 8. The Future Judgment 
 
 One part of the ideas contained in the pictorial repre- 
 sentation of the last day thus resolves itself into a historical 
 process in the sense of the poet's words, " The history of the 
 world is the judgment of the world." Certainly only a part. 
 Those words of the poet have, in the case of Jesus, only a 
 relative, not an absolute truth ; for that historical judgment of 
 the world concerns only the generations that continue living 
 on the earth, not the innumerable host of the dead who have 
 withdrawn from the world and its history ; and it does not 
 lead up to the final aim of all prophecy, the completed and 
 eternal kingdom of God. And therefore beyond all days of 
 the Son of Man in the course of history, there still remains 
 the image of a last day which comes at the close of the 
 history of the world, and which includes the dead as well as 
 the living. A new series of prophetic pictures on this point 
 disclose themselves in the discourses of Jesus which naturally 
 pass beyond the limits of history. The Son of Man sits as 
 King on the throne of His glory, and all nations are gathered 
 before Him iu order to be separated by Him into two groups, 
 one on His right hand and the other on His left, as a 
 shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats (Matt. xxv. 31 1). 
 Along with the contemporaries of Jesus appear those of a long 
 past time, the people of Nineveh from the time of Jonah, the 
 Queen of Sheba from the days of Solomom (Matt. xii. 41, 42 ; 
 Luke xi. 31, 32); even the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, 
 
 ^ It is worthy of note that in the prophetic discourse Luke xvii., which 
 undoubtedly sprang from the logia of Matthew, the catastrophe of Jeru- 
 salem is not at all mentioned. The redaction of the great prophetic dis- 
 course as made up from the original sources seems first to have combined 
 these elements of the discourse with the predictions about Jerusalem, and 
 to have referred many things to this latter theme which did not originally 
 belong to it (Matt, xiii., xxiv. ; Luke xxi.). 
 
THE JUDGMENT OF THE WOELD 205 
 
 cities that perished thousands of years ago, receive their 
 sentence along with Chorazin and Bethsaida, the contem- 
 poraries of Jesus (Matt. xi. 20, 24; Luke x. 12). The 
 enemies of the King of Heaven, who would not that this man 
 should reign over them, are judged (Luke xix. 27); but His 
 own servants, too, are judged, according as they have been 
 faithful or unfaithful in His service (Luke xix. 2 2 f. ; Matt. 
 XXV. 14-30). The children of Israel are judged (Matt. xix. 28); 
 the heathen also, who knew Jesus so little on earth that they 
 could ask Him, " Lord, when saw we Thee an hungered or 
 athirst or in prison and have not served Thee ? " (Matt. xxv. 
 37 f.) ; and the confessors of Jesus are judged, who " prophesied 
 in His name, and in His name cast out devils, and in His 
 name had done many wonderful works," but yet had not 
 observed the simple holy will of God (Matt. vii. 22, 23). 
 Nay, believers who, as represented in the Parable of the Ten 
 Virgins, went forth to meet Him with the lamp of faith and 
 love burning, but neglected to nourish the holy flame and so 
 keep it alive, are judged. Beside the manifold pictures of the 
 heavenly reward — " enter thou into the joy of thy Lord ; be 
 thou over ten cities," etc. — appear the symbols of future 
 penal judgments : exclusion from the heavenly festival of joy, 
 casting out into the dark prison in which are weeping and 
 gnashing of teeth. The fire of hell is also spoken of, and the 
 worm that never dies, the fire that is never quenched (cf. 
 Matt. viii. 12, 13, 42, 50, xviii. 8, 9; Mark ix. 47, 48). 
 The traditional conception associates all that with one day of 
 decision, and one act of decision at the close of the world's his- 
 tory, a day and act which will reduce the whole infinite variety 
 of earthly life to the one alternative of eternal blessedness or 
 eternal damnation. This view of the last day, which is not 
 peculiar to Christianity, but was taken over from Judaism, 
 has unquestionably points of support in the sayings of Jesus, 
 but is it really the right key to His views of the coming 
 judgment ? 
 
 § 9. Impossibility of maintaining the usual Conception 
 
 It is strange that when we attempt to apply seriously 
 the idea of an actual final judgment, with absolute decisions. 
 
206 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 to the picture of the future judgment sketched by Jesus, it 
 melts away in our hands. That majestic delineation (Matt. 
 XXV. 31-46), where the whole of humanity is assigned either 
 to eternal salvation or eternal destruction, is, as a rule, taken 
 for a picture of that final judgment ; and even the evangelist, 
 as his introduction and conclusion show, has taken it in that 
 sense. But can that have been the original meaning of 
 Jesus ? How are we to harmonise with all the rest of His 
 teaching the notion that some works of love done or not done 
 to His brethren should decide the eternal destiny of all men 
 and nations ? The paragraph is not a picture of the final 
 judgment as such, but only illustrates one particular aspect 
 of the divine judgment. It is only a peculiarly magnificent 
 expression of the idea more briefly expressed in Matt. x. 42, 
 that no proof of love which is shown or refused to His dis- 
 ciples in their mission to the world shall be unrewarded or 
 unpunished. There are other aspects of the divine judgment 
 which are as little able to lead to eternal blessedness or 
 damnation. Thus Matt. xii. 37 : "By thy words thou shalt 
 be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned." We 
 might ask, is it not, according to Matt, xxv., by the doing or 
 not doing of works of mercy ? is it not, according to Matt, 
 xvi. 27, vii. 21-24, by works, by doing or not doing the will 
 of God in all things ? is it not, according to Matt. x. 32, 33, 
 confessing or denying Christ before men ? Who does not see 
 that it is impossible for Jesus to surrender a man to con- 
 demnation owing to an idle word of which he cannot give 
 account at the last day ? (Matt. xii. 3 6). In this whole say- 
 ing He desires only to insist on the moral responsibility 
 which belongs to a man's words as well as to his works, — 
 words which are often treated so lightly, although they testify 
 to the state of a man's heart quite as much, and often more 
 directly, than his actions do. Our traditional exposition has 
 thus been far too hasty with its monstrous idea of eternal 
 damnation. Who does not feel the harshness which lies in 
 the application of it to those foolish virgins who knock too 
 late at the door of the house where the marriage is, and cry : 
 " Lord, Lord, open unto us " ? Or who could fail to observe 
 the distinction which the Parable of the Intrusted Pounds 
 makes between the punishment of the slothful servant and 
 
THE JUDGMENT OF THE WOELD 207 
 
 the mutinuous dependant ? To interpret that prison where 
 there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, not as a strict judg- 
 ment of God, but as eternal rejection by God, leads to strange 
 conclusions. In Matt. v. 25, 26 it is said, " Agree with thine 
 adversary quickly, whilst thou art in the way with him ; lest 
 he deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to 
 the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily I say unto 
 thee. Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast 
 paid the last farthing." The man, so a crude interpretation 
 concludes here, cannot pay the first, not to speak of the last 
 farthing of his debt before God, and therefore the words here 
 refer to eternal damnation. But it would scatter to the 
 winds the whole gospel of Jesus to ascribe to Him the 
 doctrine that a single offence which was not atoned for in due 
 time on earth hands a man over to eternal destruction. 
 What Jesus in this metaphor desires to make men feel is the 
 great distinction which exists between expiated and unex- 
 piated wrong to our neighbour as regards our own inner life. 
 If the wrong is repented of, apologised for and repaired, then 
 that saying holds good, " Where there is no accuser there is no 
 judge." God then does not enter into judgment with us 
 inwardly. But if it remains unatoned, and offender or 
 offended passes over into eternity, then will God in all strict- 
 ness enter into judgment with the guilty, and he will be made 
 to taste the bitterness of the due feeling of guilt either in this 
 world or the next. But if we are thus to understand the 
 debtor's prison and the judgment upon idle words, and if, 
 on the other hand, we understand in this sense the reward 
 declared on the last day for single acts of kindness, we are 
 surely driven to see that what Jesus calls the judgment of the 
 last day must include a great variety of relative decisions of 
 all degrees before men come face to face with that final and 
 absolute decision — eternal life or eternal torment. 
 
 § 10. Peoof of continuous Development in the Woeld 
 
 TO COME 
 
 It may be said that the whole sense of Jesus' teaching forces 
 us to this perception. If, on the one hand, only the pure in 
 heart can see God (Matt. v. 8) ; and if we must be perfect as 
 
208 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 the Father in heaven is perfect before we are fit to share in 
 the completed kingdom of God (Matt. v. 20, 48); and if, on 
 the other hand, only one sin is unpardonable, blaspheming 
 against the Holy Spirit, mockery of the holy truth which the 
 heart has known, and the power of God, — how could the 
 decision of that future tribunal on those who appear before it 
 in neither state of heart fall on either side of that dread 
 alternative 1 But the positive proof for the contrary is found 
 on all sides in the declarations of Jesus, if only we pay atten- 
 tion to it. How definitely is the rejection of Israel announced 
 more than once, its banishment into the dark prison where 
 there is weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matt. viii. 12), and 
 yet the sharpest of such prophetic words closes with the 
 intimation that even for Israel an hour will come when it 
 will cry believingly to its Messiah, " Blessed is He who cometh 
 in the name of the Lord" (Matt, xxiii. 37-39). Still more 
 plain and comforting run the judicial words about the heathen 
 world : '' If such deeds had been done in Tyre and Sidon, nay, 
 in Sodom and Gomorrah, they had repented long ago in 
 sackcloth and ashes. But I say unto you that it will be 
 more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon, and even for Sodom and 
 Gomorrah, in the day of judgment than for you " (Matt. xi. 
 20-24; Luke x. 13, 14). Here one asks in vain what 
 a more tolerable eternal damnation can be ? The idea only 
 becomes possible when the punishment — ^just as we found it 
 should be taken in Matt. v. 25, 26 — is thought of as a finite 
 one. The same idea of the limited and transitory punishment 
 in the other world lies in principle directly before us in the 
 declaration, Luke xii. 47, 48 :" He that knoweth his master's 
 will and doeth that which is worthy of stripes, shall be beaten 
 with many stripes ; but he who knoweth it not and doeth 
 what is worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes." 
 From the connection in which it stands the saying is 
 thoroughly eschatological. It speaks of the punishment " on 
 that day," but what can one think of an eternal damnation 
 which consists of only a few stripes ? A limited and passing 
 punishment, however, naturally becomes a chastisement or 
 means of improvement, and so there logically springs from 
 the idea of a future judgment which is in a measure relative, 
 the idea that there may be development and conversion in 
 
THE JUDGMENT OF THE WORLD 209 
 
 the world to come. And that may be proved on other 
 grounds. Jesus implies that Tyre and Sidon, Sodom and 
 Gomorrah, would have willingly repented if only they had had 
 in their day such means of grace, such signs of Christ, as 
 Chorazin and Bethsaida enjoyed. Surely it follows from the 
 righteousness of Him who does not seek to reap where He has 
 not sown (Luke xix. 21), from the mercy of God who willeth not 
 that one of the least of these should perish (Matt, xviii. 14), 
 that that full revelation of God in Christ which would have 
 brought about their conversion on earth will yet be offered 
 them in the world to come. And for all who need it, this is 
 already implied in the thought that God judges the world by 
 Christ. That God judges the world by Christ means, that 
 He places the life of everyone in the holy light of His 
 perfect revelation in Christ, and thus He ratifies His judg- 
 ment in each case by the witness of conscience (Eom. ii. 15, 
 16). But how is this possible unless this revelation of God 
 in Christ is brought near to those in the world to come who 
 did not know it on earth ? Finally, our idea is confirmed in 
 the most positive way by the words about the sin against the 
 Holy Ghost which cannot be forgiven, " neither in this world 
 nor that which is to come" (Matt. xii. 32). This addition 
 would not only be idle and meaningless if in that world 
 forgiveness were utterly impossible, but since the only 
 unpardonable sin requires that a man have first experienced 
 the love of God in Christ, before anyone can be finally cast 
 away there must have been the closest approach to his heart 
 of the gospel. If all this is correct, then it follows, according 
 to Jesus, that there is in the silent world of the departed a law 
 similar in every respect to that which rules in the history of 
 the world as it moves forward on the earth. The judgment of 
 God in Christ runs through both as punishment in order to 
 save, and the day of judgment, in the eschatological sayings of 
 Jesus, is a symbol of the idea that all, whether good or evil, 
 that human life contains, must finally come into the full light 
 of divine revelation and be felt in its true worth by the man 
 himself ; that there must come a day in which the man is 
 weighed in God's unerring balance. 
 
 BEYSCHLAG. — I. 14 
 
210 new testament theology 
 
 § 11. The Eesuerection of the Dead 
 
 One special article of eschatological expectation in which 
 the riddle of the last day, so far solved, once more presents 
 itself, is the resurrection of the dead. The views of Judaism 
 about it were very much divided. The Sadducees denied any 
 continued existence after death at all. The Essenes and 
 Alexandrians limited it to a continued existence of the soul. 
 The Pharisaic belief in a bodily resurrection was dominant, 
 but was divided again into two different notions, the one 
 expecting a general resurrection of the dead, some to ever- 
 lasting life and some to everlasting shame and contempt 
 (Dan. xii. 2), the other expecting a resurrection of the 
 righteous only, the wicked abiding in death. Both, however, 
 meant by resurrection that the earthly body should be 
 restored and made immortal, and both placed it in connection 
 with the expected glorification of all nature at the last day 
 (cf. John xi. 24; Eom. viii. 19-23). Until then it was 
 thought that the souls of the departed were in Sheol or 
 Hades, a place of blessedness or woe, a Paradise or a Gehenna, 
 but still awaiting the final decision and consummation of 
 their lot. These notions Jesus adopted, as has already been 
 said ; but in so doing He spiritualised them, and treated them 
 solely as true symbols of religious ideas. It is surprising 
 how little weight He lays on bodily death from the first ; how 
 the idea of the true life in antithesis to the life of the body 
 deprives dying of its significance to His mind. " Fear not 
 him who kills the body, and is not able to kill the soul," He 
 exclaims to His disciples (Matt. x. 28); "but fear Him who 
 is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." For Him the 
 true life of man is connected with the soul and not with the 
 body ; and even the soul has not life in itself, but only in God. 
 If it does not live to Him, if it seeks to live in itself and for 
 itself, it comes under the power of death ; but if it surrenders 
 itself for His sake, then it enters into true life. " Whosoever 
 will save his life shall lose it (aTroXeVet) ; and whosoever will 
 lose his life for My sake shall preserve if' {^woyovija-eL). 
 Luke xvii. 30; cf. Mark viii. 35; Matt. x. 39, xvi. 25. 
 According to this the future condition is regarded by Jesus 
 as proceeding organically and with logical necessity from the 
 
THE JUDGMENT OF THE WORLD 211 
 
 present. This inner connection, represented in contrasts, 
 forms the real kernel of the Parable of the Eich Man and 
 Poor Lazarus. The rich man, whose earthly life is spent in 
 clothing himself in purple and fine linen, and faring sump- 
 tuously every day, in the other world, where sensuous joys 
 are unknown, can only be tormented with vain longings. 
 The poor man was a genuine Lazarus (God is my help), and 
 had learned to seek and find his help in God amid the 
 miseries of earth ; and as the pearl grows within the diseased 
 mussel, so there was formed within him the pearl of a life 
 which must be seen in its spiritual beauty when appearances 
 have ceased and truth appears. As in this passage the dead 
 do not seem to be disembodied or wholly out of relation to the 
 external world, so Jesus does not insist, on the other hand, 
 on the restoration of a body at the resurrection. Not only 
 does He not speak of a restoration of the earthly body such 
 as was expected by the Jews, the point of His answer to the 
 question of the Sadducees lies in His rejection of such a 
 notion. "In the resurrection they neither marry nor are 
 given in marriage" — they are as little fitted for begetting 
 children as for dying again ; they are, it is said in Luke 
 XX. 35, as the angels. Even if this suggests the notion that 
 angels have some sort of spiritual body and are raised above 
 the distinction of sex, it is at anyrate the case that the 
 centre of gravity in Jesus' idea of the resurrection lies else- 
 where than in the question of corporeity. To Him the idea 
 of the resurrection coincides essentially with the idea of life 
 in the full sense of the word, life in God. For this is His 
 proof of the resurrection : God calls Himself in the presence 
 of Moses centuries after the death of the patriarchs, "the 
 God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." " But He is not the 
 God of the dead, but of the living." He whose God He is, 
 and who abides in communion with Him, lives though he were 
 long dead. Still more remarkable, in the same train of 
 thought, is the phrase which precedes it in Luke, though 
 it is also in the mind of the other two pvangelists : ol Be 
 Kara^iw9evTe<; tov alcovo^ eKeivov rv^eiv Kot t^? dvaaTacreax; 
 7fj<; eK veKp&v. Not all the dead, therefore, attain to the 
 resurrection, but only those who are worthy of it, only those 
 who are, as it is further said in the same context, equal to 
 
212 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 the angels, and children of God. Accordingly, of the two 
 notions about the resurrection which were current among His 
 people, Jesus decided in favour of the more profound, which 
 declares that only the righteous are raised, as is attested also 
 in Luke xiv. 14 (iv ry avaaTaaei twv BiKaimv). The 
 resurrection is to Him not a formal concept applicable to all, 
 whether they have cultivated in themselves a higher life or 
 not ; in it the true divine life of a man is brought to the 
 glory for which he is destined ; it is, in a word, the perfection 
 of the personality in God, in which the glorified body can 
 only be thought of as the expression of the perfect inward 
 beauty. That is also formally expressed in the conclud- 
 ing words of Luke, viol elaiv 6eov, Trj<; avaarda-ewi viol 
 ovTe<;, that is, they have attained the end of their eternal 
 destiny just as sons of the resurrection and sons of God, 
 perfect images of the heavenly Father. 
 
 12. Eeteospect and Conclusion 
 
 Let us look back from the height of this result on what 
 has just been proved with regard to the last day. If Jesus 
 considered the resurrection to be the reward and perfection of 
 the righteous, how impossible is it that He should have fixed 
 a term for that consummation uniform for all, and should 
 have consigned the departed to an intermediate state, which 
 would only have a meaning if it were measured out to each 
 according to his individual need ! Even from this side, 
 therefore, the notion of a last day as an actual terminus the 
 same for all, falls to the ground. The distinction of the alav 
 oiiTo<i and alwv sKelvo^, which Jesus has appropriated and 
 applied in His answer to the question of the Sadducees (Luke 
 XX. 34, 35), cannot be adduced against this, for that view is 
 spiritualised in His teaching, and is divested of the character 
 of a purely temporal antithesis. When Jesus speaks in 
 Luke xvi. 8 of the viol rod alwvo<; tovtov, and places over 
 against them the viol tov (pmroii, He describes not merely 
 the men of this period of time, but men whose thoughts and 
 aims are merged in the temporal and finite, while the world 
 of eternity shines into this temporal state and makes some to 
 be children of the light. Thus in the present, in which the 
 
THE JUDGMENT OF THE WORLD 213 
 
 kingdom of God is at hand, there lies already the dawn of 
 the almv fieXkwv ; and especially from the day in which He 
 Himself, as the Eisen One, became a partaker of the almv 
 /leXkav, the new and higher order of the world, in which 
 there is no more death or birth, but an immortal life like the 
 angels, has already begun to dawn and overarches the lower 
 earthly world, open at all times for those who have overcome 
 the world, and have become ripe for the world of perfection. 
 This view we may fancy that Jesus held, at least from the 
 time when first He came to look for His own resurrection, 
 not as an awakening at the last day, but within three days. 
 The charm of the old Jewish view was broken up even for 
 His friends by Christ's resurrection, and they had no point 
 to look forward to except their own perfection. This alone 
 gives a reasonable meaning to the obscure intermediate state ; 
 and the wide kingdom of the other world, in which are 
 gathered those who have departed from the earth, is also 
 found, when approached from this side, to have the same 
 moral interest as we have already found in our examination 
 of the idea of the final judgment. There we may see an in- 
 numerable multitude of human lives rising higher or sinking 
 lower according to the result of their life on earth, as in the 
 Parable of the Eich Man and Lazarus. But over all stands, 
 as the goal of perfection, the heaven of the sons of the resur- 
 rection. And this means not only that many whom the 
 closing judgment of -their life on earth has carried far down, 
 like the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, are able perhaps to 
 raise themselves again and strive to reach that starry heaven, 
 but also that many whom the angels have carried over into 
 a better existence, such as Lazarus, have not yet therewith 
 attained to the eternal house of the Father. The poor 
 Lazarus and the penitent thief have passed into Paradise, but 
 that is not the heaven of the sons of the resurrection of 
 which mention is made in Luke xx. 35 f. The patriarchs 
 and prophets are, according to Matt. viii. 11, Luke xiii. 28, 
 to sit at the festive table of the kingdom of heaven ; how 
 much they must have grown in the other world in order to 
 be capable of that, when in this world the least in the 
 kingdom of heaven is greater than the greatest prophet ! 
 (Matt. xi. 11). These are perhaps strange considerations, in 
 
214 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 view of the conceptions of the world beyond, in which we 
 have been trained. But with this conception of ours we have 
 scarcely got beyond the formal notions of Judaism which 
 Jesus found in existence, while the peculiarity of His teaching 
 on this matter lies in this, that He treats these notions as 
 symbols, and, indeed, as insufficient symbols (all symbols are 
 at bottom insufficient), and breaks through them, just as in- 
 sufficient, with His ideas. If the ideas which we have 
 offered as peculiar to Him cannot be demonstrated fully by 
 way of exegesis, since the form in which they, are presented 
 stands in the way, yet they are attested by their harmony, with 
 Jesus' fundamental view of the kingdom of God and of the 
 human soul. If the kingdom of God in its perfection is 
 nothing else than the fellowship of the perfected righteous 
 with the eternally good and perfect One, and if the life of 
 the soul inviolably follows the great divine law of moral 
 development, how could Jesus have regarded the relation of 
 man to the kingdom of heaven as closed with that earthly 
 death on which He never lays a special weight ? These 
 intimations of a development after death do not exclude the 
 thought of an end, they do not even make it uncertain. As 
 surely as in nature all growth reaches its height and then 
 continues no further, but makes way for another life springing 
 from that which has thus reached maturity, so surely does 
 Jesus expect the moral world some day to reach its maturity. 
 And, indeed. He thinks of a maturity of the two powers of 
 good and evil contending in the moral world, of the wheat 
 and the tares, as it is said in the parable (Matt. xiii. 24-30, 
 37-43). All those ideas of sin being still pardonable in that 
 world do not lead Him to the speculative conclusion of a 
 universal restoration. He speaks rather of a worm that dieth 
 not. He pronounced over a man the sentence, "It were 
 better for him that he had never been born " (Matt. xxvi. 24). 
 He spoke of the sin against the Holy Ghost which cannot be 
 forgiven. Though we take that first saying as proverbial, 
 and, therefore, not to be dogmatically strained ; though we 
 point out in the last utterance that it is only a word of 
 warning which is meant to prevent the sin against the Holy 
 Ghost, but does not suppose it as already committed ; yet He 
 always considered it possible for human freedom and sin to 
 
THE JUDGMENT OF THE WOELD 215 
 
 go SO far that the power of surrendering to grace might be 
 lost. Whether and how far that will become reality He 
 leaves to the omniscient Father, just as He leaves to Him the 
 sitting on His right hand and on His left (Matt. xx. 23), or 
 the day and hour of the world's judgment. When a hearer 
 on one occasion, touched by the earnestness of His teaching, 
 asked Him, " Lord, are there few that be saved ? " He did not 
 answer him with yes or no, but gave the one answer that was 
 of use, " Strive to enter in at the strait gate," for the mere 
 desire does not gain an entrance for us (Luke xiii. 3 3 f .). On 
 the other hand. He was certain that the eternal Father will 
 perfectly accomplish His purpose of love with the children of 
 men ; the completed kingdom of God remains the constant 
 unspoken background of all His predictions. He did not 
 paint with excessive colours ; knowing that here He had to 
 do with what " eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor the 
 heart of man conceived (1 Cor. ii. 9), He represented it 
 quietly in the simplest images. At one time He finds 
 material for His parables in the bright festal room with its 
 hospitable meal, at another time the throne-room in which 
 the king sits judging, surrounded by his friends who share in 
 his government. The ideas of deep satisfaction in loving 
 fellowship with Himself and with one another, and of an 
 exalted kingly activity (Matt. xxv. 21; Luke xix. 17), 
 complement each other. But every attempt to make the 
 unseen conceivable is rendered impossible by the idea that a 
 wholly new world is to be realised ; God the Father is rich 
 enough not to need to copy the present world in the next ; 
 He has creative power to set up in it something really new 
 and infinitely higher (Matt. xii. 24, 25). Yet as from the 
 seed the harvest proceeds by a true development, the com- 
 pleted kingdom of the Father, in which the righteous will 
 shine as the sun (Matt. xiii. 43 ; cf. Dan. xii. 3), will be 
 nothing else than the harvest of that kingdom of God which 
 Jesus, as God's sower, has planted here on earth. 
 
BOOK II 
 
 THE TEACHING OF JESUS ACCOEDING TO 
 THE GOSPEL OF JOHN 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTEODUCTOEY 
 
 § 1. The Johannine Question 
 
 The Fourth Gospel presents itself as a second chief source for 
 the teaching of Jesus. Eecently, however, many voices have, 
 with great self-assurrance, called in question its character as 
 such. The so-called critical school in this matter still 
 follows on the whole the hypothesis of Baur. According 
 to this hypothesis, the Fourth Gospel is not a work of the 
 Apostle John, but a production of the second century, a 
 writing that has no independent historical foundation, nor 
 even a real historical purpose. In the form of a life of Jesus, 
 the theological opinions which are first stated in the prologue 
 are developed ; it is, in fact, to use Hase's appropriate expres- 
 sion, the romance of the Logos. If this view of the Fourth 
 Gospel were established, it would not show us the teaching of 
 Jesus, but only a post-apostolic theology. Certain modifica- 
 tions of the critical hypothesis give a different result. The 
 great difficulties, both of the traditional and of the modern 
 critical conception of this remarkable book, have called forth 
 attempts at mediation, in which many are now inclined to 
 trust. The book is recognised to be of Johannine origin ; it 
 has underlying it a genuine tradition, which has been edited 
 
 216 
 
INTEODUCTOEY 217 
 
 in post-apostolic times. But if we recognise that the author 
 had historical information at his disposal, we have still to ask, 
 Which are the genuine words of Jesus ; and especially if, as 
 in the latest attempt of that kind, the division between the 
 genuinely Johannine elements and later additions were essen- 
 tially a division between the discourses and the historical 
 narratives of the Gospel ? biblical theology would seem to be 
 justified in making confident use of the first.^ But all these 
 mediating hypotheses are in themselves so untenable and 
 weak. The definiteness with which, in our Gospel (xix. 35, 
 xxi. 24), the eye-witness is attested as the composer of the 
 book, excludes in every case the assumption of a pious disciple 
 who had afterwards, in a literary way, worked up oral com- 
 munications of the Apostle John. The enigmas which the 
 discourses of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel present are not less 
 great than those of the historical narratives for him who does 
 not make aversion to miracles his sole principle of criticism ; 
 and, at the same time, the completeness of the literary plan 
 and execution, as well as the symmetry of the style and the 
 religious character, render impossible every attempt to estab- 
 lish here diverse primary elements. And so the more recent 
 critical treatment simply results in this alternative, either the 
 Gospel must be conceived and recognised as the work of an 
 eye-witness and personal disciple of Jesus, or, with its genuine- 
 ness, we must also give up its historical credibility, and regard 
 it as a purely ideal production of the second century. 
 
 § 2. Genuineness of the Gospel 
 
 We, for our part, are firmly convinced of the correctness 
 of the first position, though we do not deny the great and 
 manifold difficulties which the Gospel of John puts in the 
 way of the historical consideration of the life of Jesus. But 
 we hold that these may be solved, and that they are little 
 in comparison with the mountain of difficulties, or rather 
 impossibilities, which stand in the way of a thorough accept- 
 ance of the hypothesis of " The Logos romance," and before 
 which its advocates are wont to close their eyes. The reasons 
 
 1 Cf. Wendt, Die Lehre Jesu, Bd. i. (1886), and my criticism of this book 
 in the Gottinger Gel. Anzeigen of the same year, No. 15. 
 
218 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 which lead us to hold that the critical hypothesis cannot be 
 carried through can, of course, be indicated here only in the 
 briefest way. (1) The standpoint of the fourth evangelist 
 is not, as it ought to be according to that hypothesis, a faith 
 n mere ideas, but a faith in facts ; salvation, in his view, 
 depends upon definite historical facts. The faith of this 
 evangelist was produced by miraculous facts, and its object is 
 not only the facts essential to salvation, but also the most 
 trivial circumstances of the life of Jesus, all of which he 
 regards as ordained by God and predicted in the Old Testa- 
 ment. With such a point of view, it was impossible for him 
 to set about reconstructing the tradition of Jesus at his own 
 will, or to regard the theological ideas as alone essential, and 
 the narrative as a sort of unsubstantial drapery. (2) The 
 fourth evangelist, in spite of any strangeness in form, un- 
 mistakably possesses historical knowledge superior to the 
 Synoptists. This superior knowledge appears in the outline 
 he gives of the public life of Jesus, which, though departing 
 from the tradition of the Synoptists, is unconsciously supported 
 by them, and also in the history of His suffering and resurrec- 
 tion. It is shown also in a whole series of small points on 
 which no stress is laid. Features like these cannot possibly 
 be referred to a purpose to support certain views, but can 
 only be understood as coming from the remembrance of an 
 eye-witness. (3) The external evidence for the existence and 
 use of the Gospel have been gradually completed, so that the 
 late date in which Baur would place its origin has to be given 
 up. It has been found necessary to place it near the age of 
 Trajan, into the beginning of which, according to the testi- 
 mony of Eusebius, the Apostle John lived. And in that 
 period, when Gnosticism was alarming the Church, the recogni- 
 tion of a Gospel deviating so widely from the Synoptics' 
 presentation, and apparently making such advances towards 
 Gnosis, would be inconceivable, unless an undeniable apostolic 
 authority had compelled that recognition. (4) The twenty- 
 first chapter, which presents itself as an appendix added to the 
 completed Gospel in the name of a number of persons (ver. 24), 
 can only be understood from the need of the Christian 
 community to set at rest a scruple attaching to the death of 
 the Apostle John. This scruple, and this method of setting it 
 
INTEODUCTORY 219 
 
 at rest, have meaning only immediately after the death of the 
 apostle, not more than fifty years after; and therefore the 
 genuineness of the Gospel is attested in chap. xxi. 24, at the 
 open grave of the apostle, by his nearest friends. (5) The 
 First Epistle of John, which shows the inimitable Johannine 
 style, and can only be the work of the same author as the 
 Gospel, is a monument whose genuineness there is absolutely 
 neither cause nor reason for calling in question. Neither 
 writing bears any name, and can therefore only proceed from 
 an author who was well known to the first circle of readers, 
 without any mention of his name. To manufacture a book to 
 suit a name and not to name the name, is a thing unheard of 
 and absurd. (6) Finally, the Gospel is unaffected by any of 
 the anxieties and questions which moved the Church in the 
 second century. Neither the question of apostolic tradition, 
 nor that of church order, nor that of asceticism, neither the 
 Gnostic nor the Montanist controversy, has any echo in it, and 
 therefore it cannot have been produced amid the conflicts and 
 developments of the second century ; and we do not need to 
 dwell on the difficulty of discovering in the second century a 
 Christian thinker, so immensely superior to all his con- 
 temporaries, who has yet left no mark of himself in history. 
 These are reasons which the anti-Johannine critics may indeed 
 ignore but cannot invalidate, and which for that reason they 
 do not like to discuss.^ 
 
 § 3. Difficulty of the Discourses of Jesus 
 
 Nevertheless, if we assume the genuineness of the Gospel, 
 the discourses of Jesus which it contains undeniably present 
 great difficulties. It may be asked whether these are really 
 speculative in character, Alexandrian or semi-Gnostic, as has 
 been maintained. But there is no question that between 
 them and the synoptic sayings of Jesus there is an immense 
 difiierence, and that the synoptic reports make a stronger 
 impression of originality and faithfulness to history. The 
 form of Jesus' teaching in the Synoptics is the short pictorial 
 popular saying, of which the few longer doctrinal and con- 
 
 1 Cf. my monograph on the Johannine question, reprinted from the 
 Studien wnd Kritiken, 1876. 
 
220 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 troversial discourses are made up, or the symbolical narrative 
 the parable. In John, such maxims, for the most part, appear 
 only in the longer doctrinal and controversial discourses, 
 which return again and again with a certain mystic monotony 
 to the same enigmatic words, and in their stream images 
 which might have taken form as parables melt away like 
 ripples. Scarcely once do we hear an echo of the old synoptic 
 doctrine of God's kingdom of righteousness. Instead of that 
 we hear the more of the eternal life which is even now to be 
 attained, and of the judgment which is even now being 
 completed. But we hear, above all, of the Son of God to 
 whom is committed the bestowing of life and the dispensing 
 of judgment, and to believe on whom is therefore the most 
 essential work of God. The rich colours of the epic eschat- 
 ology, the fantastic pictures of the coming again to judge the 
 world, vanish also before the monotonously repeated promise 
 of the Spirit, the Paraclete. All these discourses, whether 
 addressed to the people, to His enemies, or to the disciples, 
 show little of the influences of that age which are everywhere 
 manifest in the Synoptics, the influences of law and prophets, 
 of Pharisaic ordinances and popular expectations. They move 
 rather amongst the mysteries of the Christian faith, whose 
 meaning the hearers had not yet discovered. And therefore 
 misunderstanding is the most usual motive for their prolonga- 
 tion ; but that misunderstanding is not generally removed, but 
 increased, and the object of discourse seems not to be the 
 enlightening and winning of opponents so much as the con- 
 fusing and embittering of them. There can be no doubt that 
 Jesus did not deliver these discourses in this form ; the form 
 of them must be attributed to the evangelist. For all that, 
 they may have been constructed from the most genuine 
 material, from real ideas and sayings of Jesus. And several 
 noteworthy indications show that this is the case — quite apart 
 from the general consideration that we can just as little 
 attribute to an apostle a free invention of words of Jesus, as a 
 free invention of a history of Jesus. In the first place, it is 
 perfectly true what de Wette, in balancing the pros and 
 cons of the Johannine question, has declared. "Many of 
 these sayings shine with a more than earthly brilliance " ; out 
 of the mystic monotonous stream of discourse there shine out 
 
INTEODUCTOEY 221 
 
 inimitably strong and sweet words of Jesus which no man of 
 the second century, which no man indeed but one, could have 
 spoken. And, in fact, it is clear that our evangelist has not 
 quite correctly understood many of the words of Jesus which 
 he communicates. He has misread the destroying of the 
 temple (ii. 19—22), the lifting up of the Son of Man (xii. 
 32, 33), and the like, by interpreting them as he does the Old 
 Testament. Such misunderstanding and misconstruction of 
 the simple original sense is impossible in a writer who is 
 inventing what he records. And, finally, it is by no means 
 proved, as hostile critics affirm, that the discourses of Jesus in 
 the Gospel are nothing but the unfolding of the ideas expressed 
 in the prologue. In these discourses we nowhere meet with 
 the claim, eVco elfii 6 X0709, and they do not presuppose, as we 
 shall see, such a relation of God and world, or such a self- 
 consciousness in Jesus, as the Logos idea would lead us to 
 expect ; for example, they do not assume that God is only 
 present in the world through the Logos (ver. 17), or that 
 the Son of God has original rights of possession over men 
 (cf. xvii. 6 with i. 4, ix. 11). But if the views of these 
 discourses are not derived from the theology of the evangelist, 
 but deviate from it, they must have been received by him 
 from some other source, and at most recast in form. And the 
 motives to such a recasting are not far to seek in the case of 
 an apostle, especially such a one as John. 
 
 § 4. Suggested Solution 
 
 First of all, the whole material of the Gospel, and especi- 
 ally of the discourses, has passed through the mind of a man 
 of very definite individuality, strong and onesided, in order 
 to assume the form in which it is presented to us. This 
 ^dividuality is most clearly expressed in the First Epistle of 
 John, and there is nothing to oppose the ascription of it to 
 John, the son of Zebedee, the youngest of the three intimate 
 friends of Jesus. Here we recognise the peculiarity of the 
 mystic among the apostles ; the man, passionate both in his 
 love and his anger, who in his intense spirituality cares only 
 for the things of the inner life, pays little heed to the historical 
 circumstances, and to what is national and temporary in the 
 
222 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 teaching of Jesus. The author repeatedly tells us that this 
 disposition was confirmed in him after the resurrection of 
 Jesus by a mental process in which his recollections of Jesus 
 came to have a new meaning (cf. ii. 22, xii. 16). The life of 
 Jesus in its issue had contradicted their original ideas and 
 expectations, and compelled the apostles, according to their 
 mental characteristics, to reconsider their impressions and 
 recollections, and so, under the guidance of the Spirit (John 
 xiv. 26), they attained a new understanding of what they had 
 experienced, and were able to speak of it in a new and spiritual 
 fashion. Little wonder, then, if, in the apostle's long life, the 
 original text, and the meaning of it which the Spirit had 
 taught him, were involuntarily joined so closely that in old 
 age, when he sought to write down what he had seen and 
 heard, objective and subjective could no longer be separated. 
 Besides, in that century much had been learned ; the great 
 mission to the Gentiles, and contact with Paul, its champion, 
 had widened the horizon of the primitive apostles. The 
 obduracy of Israel and the fall of Jerusalem completely 
 stripped away any merely Jewish reference from the gospel 
 they had to preach. The hoary apostle found himself in 
 Ephesus, in presence of a second and third generation of 
 Hellenic Christians (the veavtaKoi and ■jraiepe'; of his Epistle, 
 all of whom he yet calls TeKvla). It was natural that when 
 he wished to make over to them the treasures of his remin- 
 iscences, he should make Christ speak in the way in which he 
 (John) had come to understand Him, and not as the scribes in 
 those long-vanished days, but as the Christians in his own 
 time could understand Him. Such were the historical con- 
 ditions in which this wonderful Gospel and its discourses 
 arose, in which the text of Jesus and the exposition of John, 
 the genuine material and the subjective construction, have so 
 grown together that one often does not know whether Jesus 
 is speaking or the evangelist has taken up the word about 
 Him (cf. iii. 16 f., xii. 44 f.); sometimes the evangelist makes 
 Jesus speak of Himself by name and in the third person (xvii. 
 3), or makes Him speak in the past tense of events which 
 had happened in the days of John, but were still in the future 
 when Jesus lived (cf. iii. 19, iv. 38). But because the whole 
 of the apostle's individuality and experience mirrored the 
 
INTKODUCTORY 223 
 
 image of Christ, because all he had and all he was had come 
 to him through his perfect inward surrender to Christ, this 
 Gospel, with all its freedom and subjectivity, still remains the 
 most faithful image and memorial of Jesus which any ruan 
 could produce. From this conception of the book follows the 
 standard by which we are to estimate John's contribution to 
 the teaching of Jesus. In general, we can only consider it as 
 a most valuable supplement to the synoptic tradition. The 
 aged apostle, who manifestly knew the synoptic Gospels (cf. 
 iii. 34, vi. 70, xi. 2), had no other reason for telling his story 
 than the sense that the person of Jesus had impressed itself 
 on him in a unique way, and that he possessed stores of 
 reminiscences which had not found a place in the synoptic 
 tradition, and which he did not wish to die with him. On 
 the other hand, in his treatment of his own reminiscences, 
 which is far more subjective than in the Synoptists, there is 
 less attempt at verbal accuracy of reproduction, and it is just 
 possible that the evangelist's own ideas, and the theology 
 which was taking shape in his mind, — using the word theology 
 in the wider sense, — exercised an involuntary influence on the 
 reproduction. Consequently, we have always to consider the 
 teaching of Jesus, as given in John, in its relation to what 
 the Synoptics record. Where it positively agrees with these, 
 we have confirmation of the genuineness of what the Synoptics 
 give us. Where it goes beyond these, but moves in the same 
 direction, we may consider it as a credible extension of lines 
 of teaching which in the synoptic tradition have not, perhaps, 
 got justice. If, on the other hand, trains of thought are found 
 which cannot be naturally inserted into the doctrinal scheme 
 of the Synoptics, but would require us to reinterpret that 
 scheme in some artificial sense, we must then trace back these 
 trains of thought, not to Jesus Himself, but to His exponent. 
 The simplicity which characterises the Johannine world 
 of thought, as compared with the manifoldness of the Synop- 
 tists, permits us here to comprehend the whole doctrinal 
 matter under four points of view — 
 I. God and the world. 
 II. The testimony of Jesus to Himself. 
 
 III. The founding of salvation. 
 
 IV. The setting forth of eternal life. 
 
224 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 CHAPTEE II 
 
 GOD AND THE WOELD 
 
 § 1. The Idea of God 
 
 The relation of God to the world, as conceived in the 
 Johannine discourses of Jesus, has been found to be Hellenic, 
 Philonic, dualistic; but an impartial statement of the real 
 facts of the case will show us that all the views, coming into 
 consideration here, move on the synoptic lines. Even accord- 
 ing to John, Jesus knew that He bore a new idea of God, thp 
 perfect and saving idea. " Kot that any man hath seen the 
 Father," he says (vi. 46), in contrast with the current know- 
 ledge of God which is denied . to ,,n0' one, "save He which is of 
 God, He hath seen God." And this is the eternal life which 
 He desires to .procure for all, " that they may know Thee, the 
 only: true God, and Him whom Thou hast sent " (xvii. 2, 3). 
 This new and saving knowledge of God has here also its 
 simple and great expression in the name Father. "My 
 Father," " your Father," " the Father," occurs in the Synop- 
 tics ; only " My Father " appears more frequently, and " your 
 Father" expressly only in xx. 17, while the plain "the 
 Father '' is the most usual. There is nothing to indicate that 
 the meaning of this name is different from what it is in the 
 Synoptics ; and especially any trinitarian significance is absent 
 here also. The Father is not one divine person beside other 
 divine persons, but He is, as is expressly said in vi. 27, v. 44, 
 xvii. 3 : o 0eos, 6 /awo? 6e6<;, 6 fi6vo<: aXrjdivo^ 6e6v. That this 
 God is also described (iv. 24) as irvevfia, is not a speculative, 
 but a practical religious utterance, made for the purpose of 
 deducing from His nature the true worship of God. It 
 signifies the elevation of God above all limits of space, and at 
 the same time His relationship with our inner life, in virtue 
 of which He is not bound to outer places of worship, but is 
 to be sought in our own souls. Great and new as is this 
 foundation of the true worship in spirit and in truth, yet the 
 same idea lies at the basis of the synoptic predictions of the 
 vaos a^eipoTToirjTO'i which is to be set up (Mark xiv. 58). 
 
GOD AKD THE WORLD 225 
 
 But TTveviia is ^cbj;, the true life is Spirit, and the Spirit alone 
 true life (vi. 63, rb -Trvev/id iariv to ^uottoiovv, k.t.\.), and 
 therefore it is evident that God is conceived simply as the 
 source of life. He is the ^a)v Trar^p in the highest sense, 
 the living God (vi. 57) whose royal right it is to raise the 
 dead and make alive (v. 21). He alone has originally ^(orjv 
 iv eavTw (v. 26). But in the fact that He does not keep 
 this wealth of life to Himself, but communicates it, and that, 
 in particular, He has made His Son to be a source of the 
 true and eternal life for all {koI rm vim eSeoKev ^a-fjv e^x^etv iv 
 eavTw), He first shows His true nature, viz. His love, for love 
 is self-communication. The proclamation of the dydwr] deov, 
 as His true ethical nature, pervades the whole Gospel. God 
 loved His Son before the world was (xvii. 25); but this 
 eternal love for the Son is the same as that with which He 
 enfolds His disciples (xvii. 23, 26); nay, He has so loved the 
 world as to give up to it His dearest, His only-begotten Son 
 (iii. 16). It is thus that, in John, Jesus explains the synoptic 
 idea of the absolutely good One, the eh a'yad6<; (Mark x. 18). 
 The declarations of God's character, a\,7j6r]^, 8Uaio^, cuyio<i, 
 show that the other side of this idea is not wanting ; He is 
 the original pattern of all virtue. His eternal love is most 
 holy. Jesus designates the Father (viii. 26) as Him who is 
 true, because His word can be relied on, because He can only 
 speak truth who is ever the same and faithful. He calls 
 Him righteous Father in the intercessory prayer (xvii. 25), in 
 that part of His nature in which the world knows Him not, 
 but He knows Him ; that is, certainly not in the sense of 
 mere penal righteousness, but of His whole moral perfection. 
 And He calls upon Him as the Holy One (xvii. 11) where He 
 prays Him to keep the disciples in the evil world, and to 
 sanctify them in His truth ; that is. He calls on Him, as one 
 completely separated from the evil that rules in the world, 
 who desires men to be holy, and makes them holy as He 
 is Himself. 
 
 § 2. The Idea of the World 
 
 Jesus conceives the world as the widest object of the 
 eternal love : " God so loved the world" (iii. 16). The world, 
 
 BEYSCHLAG. — I. IS 
 
226 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 in what sense 1 The Johannine discourses of Jesus use the 
 concept KOfffio^ in a threefold sense. Sometimes K6crfj,o<; is 
 simply the world of sense — as when mention is made of " the 
 light of this world," that is, the sun (xi. 9), or of the Kara- 
 /SoXj) Koafiov, that is, the creation of the visible world. But 
 this visible world has meaning for Jesus only in so far as it 
 comprehends and bears humanity. The world in the sense of 
 liistory, the world of men, is to Him the /cocr/io? proper. To 
 this He knows that He was sent, just as He sends His dis- 
 ciples into it (xvii. 18). This Koafio?, the aggregate of beings 
 who are capable of believing and receiving life eternal. He 
 knows to be beloved of God. But — and this brings us to the 
 third sense in which He uses the word — the world as a whole 
 knows nothing, and desires to know nothing, of this love, it 
 finds itself estranged from God and at enmity with Him, 
 ruled by a spirit entirely different from that of the eternal 
 truth and love ; and in this sense Jesus says that He and His 
 are not of the world (xvii. 14), and speaks of Satan as the 
 prince of this world (xii. 31). The world has not, however, 
 ceased to be the object of the divine love on account of this 
 ungodly condition ; on the contrary, in this condition it first 
 becomes the object of the supreme demonstration of love, 
 which aims at saving those who are lost (iii. 16). It is a 
 complete misunderstanding to infer, from the keen emphasising 
 of the actual contrast between God and the world, an original 
 contradiction of the two. It is only the profound contrast of 
 idea and reality which Jesus emphasises. Certainly this idea, 
 even at the beginning, stood high above the reality. The 
 Kara^oXri Koa-jjiov only laid the foundation of what was to 
 grow up from earth until it reached the heaven of the idea. 
 We gather that from the distinction of heaven and earth, 
 which is here repeated in different words, but in no different 
 sense from that of the Synoptics. It has been found surpris- 
 ing that in the Fourth Gospel Jesus should not reckon heaven 
 as part of the world, the Koafioi;,'^ as if that were not His 
 natural way of thinking. He thinks of heaven — ^just as when 
 in the Synoptics He speaks of treasure in heaven, or of the 
 heavenly origin of John's baptism — not as another world of 
 sense above the earth, but as the ideal world, with its eternal 
 ' So Pfleiderer, Urchristenthum, p. 478. 
 
GOD AND THE WORLD 227 
 
 realities, in which alone God has His home, although He is 
 present in the world also. That is specially clear in the 
 passage (vi. 32) where He refuses to ascribe the quality of 
 heavenliness to the manna which, in the Jewish view, had 
 certainly fallen from heaven, and claims that quality solely 
 for the spiritual gifts of God which appeared in Him, and 
 through which eternal life is communicated. There is an 
 eternal Bo^a Oeov, a gleam and splendour of the eternal light, 
 a divine self-revelation which is intended for the world, and 
 to convey which the world itself was created. It is this glory 
 of God's self-revelation that fills heaven ; with it Jesus was 
 invested by God before the world was ; in a veiled form He 
 had it on earth, and gave it to His own (xvii. 22), though He 
 first receives it in fulness as the exalted head of a saved 
 humanity (xvii. 5 ; cf. with vv. 2, 3). And heaven is the 
 kingdom of the eternal glory of God that is displayed without 
 interruption, but which must come down to earth, and realise 
 there the kingdom of heaven. This makes the words of Jesus 
 (i. 51) intelligible: "Henceforth ye shall see heaven open, 
 and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the 
 Son of Man." Heaven, where the eternal blessings and the 
 divine revelations are, stands open, and these blessings are 
 imparted wherever the Son of Man is, who has come to bring 
 the kingdom of heaven near, — there is a blessed tide of 
 benefits from earth to heaven, from heaven to earth, where- 
 ever He is, and in this the disciples will henceforth share. 
 This, by the way, is the one passage in John's Gospel in 
 which Jesus speaks of the angels, and the absolutely symbolic 
 sense of the representation is manifest. The angels are just 
 " the angels of God," the several rays of His glory shining 
 out ; they are not persons, intermediate between Him and a 
 world otherwise God-forsaken. They are not even inhabitants 
 of heaven, in contrast with men dwelling on the earth. 
 Heaven is indeed a Father's house with many mansions 
 (xiv. 2), but the pilgrims who are to find their quarters 
 there are children of men (xvii. 24). The objects of the 
 eternal love lie in the world of men. The children of men 
 are called to find their true home, as children of God, in 
 the world of eternal life, and in communion with God the 
 Father. 
 
228 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 § 3. Evil 
 
 If this is the Johannine Christ's idea of the world, there 
 is no reason for further attributing to Him any other than 
 biblical views as to the first step towards its realisation, viz. 
 the creation of the world. If, indeed, there lay at its basis an 
 Alexandrian, Philonic, or semi-Gnostic view of the world, as 
 has been asserted by critics, then the contrast of good and 
 evil, conceived in some metaphysical sense, would have to be 
 traced back to the contrast of spirit and matter. But this 
 is not the case. In the first place, the o-ap^, the sensuous 
 material part of man, is by no means conceived as in itself 
 the principle of evil, because, springing from the eternal 
 ii'X.T), it is something in itself innocent and created by God. 
 No trace of an ascetic spiritualising can be discovered in our 
 Gospel. Though, according to iii. 6, the a-dp^ can only, of 
 course, produce aapKa, sensuous life, and though it is on that 
 account of no service for eternal life as compared with the 
 quickening Spirit (vi. 63), yet in Christ the flesh, as the 
 vessel of the m-vevfia, becomes a means of eternal life (vi. 
 55—58). How could that be the case if in and of itself it 
 were evil ? Though it is equivalent only to the sensuous and 
 mortal part of human nature, and even of Christ's nature, yet 
 it was in His flesh that Christ was able to offer Himself a 
 sacrifice for the life of the world (vi. 51). Neither natural 
 evil nor moral evil is traced to its origin in the Johannine 
 discourses of Jesus, which is little like the Gnostic's way. 
 The question of the origin of natural evil is brought before 
 Jesus in connection with the man born blind (ix. 1 f.) ; but 
 whilst He denies the Jews' opinion that particular evil follows 
 upon particular sin. He refuses to give any answer to the 
 general question as to the origin of evil. Ask not— that is 
 the meaning of His noble answer — whence misery in its 
 manifold forms has come into the world; ask, rather, for 
 what purpose it is there. It is there that the works of God 
 may be made manifest in it, and that its conquest may serve 
 to glorify the eternal love. Moral evil, as we can easily 
 understand, is more searchingly treated, though entirely in a 
 biblical and synoptic way. The name and concept of sin is 
 the general biblical dfiapria, which expresses the voluntary 
 
GOD AND THE WORLD 229 
 
 departure from the divine will. A distinction is made, in 
 biblical and synoptic fashion, between sins of ignorance which 
 are not imputed, and conscious wilful sins which remain 
 (before the eyes of God the Judge). " If ye were blind ye 
 would have no sin ; but now ye say we see, therefore your sin 
 remains " (iv. 41 ; cf. xv. 22, 24, xviL 25). Again, — ^just as 
 in the synoptic words about the tree and its fruits, — sin is 
 not applied solely to the individual act, but its root is sought 
 in the disposition in the fundamental bias of the heart, 
 "Whosoever committeth sin," it is said (viii. 34), "he is the 
 servant of sin." Whosoever surrenders himself to it cannot, 
 when he pleases, shake himself free from it, but is permanently 
 ruled by it. And all, even the best and most pious, with one 
 exception, bear in some way this yoke, and need not merely 
 reformation, but renewal from the bottom of the heart, ere 
 they can enter into the kingdom of God : " Except a man be 
 born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God" (iii. 3, 5). 
 But the Johannine Christ does not go further than this 
 exhibition of the perverted and corrupt state of man, the 
 moral error which has become a second nature. He does 
 not deduce sin from sensuality, nor from Adam, nor even 
 from the devil. The latter assertion is indeed disputed, and 
 a dualistic and Gnostic element found in the phrase, " a 
 deceiver and murderer from the beginning," who is likewise 
 the " prince of this world." In point of fact, the Johannine 
 discourses of Jesus do contain a declaration about Satan 
 which goes beyond the synoptic utterances, and might be 
 interpreted as an account of the origin of evil In the con- 
 troversy with the Jews (chap, viii.), the devil is made the 
 father of his slandering and murderous opponents. It is 
 said of him that " He was a murderer from the beginning, 
 and abideth not in the truth, for there is no truth in him ; 
 when he speaketh a lie he speaketh of his own, for he is a 
 liar, and the father of it " (viiL 44). This is an unmistakable 
 allusion to the history of the fall in Gen. iii., where the 
 serpent, afterwards interpreted as Satan, deceived the first 
 man, and brought him to death by means of this deception. 
 But that neither confirms the orthodox theory that Satan is a 
 fallen angel, — the oy^ ecrrrjKev does not say he stood not, but 
 simply he stands not, in the truth, — nor does it favour the 
 
230 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 dualistic Gnostic view that he is by nature a false god opposed 
 to the true, an eternal principle of evil. For the avOpa-rroK- 
 rovo<i air' dpxn'i can only be referred to the beginning of man's 
 history, not to the beginning of all things, or of the devil 
 himself — he could only be avdpwTroKTovo'} ever since there 
 V7ere men. Thus, although we had in this passage a deduction 
 of human sin from the devil, the devil's sin itself remains 
 unaccounted for, and therefore the origin of evil is unexplained. 
 But in reality we have not even a derivation of human sin 
 from Satan ; it is not those who have sinned from Adam, but 
 the slandering and murderous opponents of Jesus, who are 
 traced to him as their father. Now as Jesus in no case 
 means to say that His opponents are created by the devil, it 
 is manifest that father here does not mean so much author 
 as prototype (i/revcrTij? Kal 6 iraTrip avTov), and that the whole 
 saying means only that the spirit of deceit and murderous 
 hatred which rules the world estranged from God is specially 
 powerful in them, and that they are his genuine children. 
 Conceived thus, this saying of Jesus about Satan in John's 
 Gospel sums up His judgment on the actual condition of the 
 world. While God is the eternal spirit of truth and love, 
 truth and love do not rule in the world as it is, but the spirit 
 of deceit and of hatred— he is the prince (ruler) of this world. 
 And the idea of Satan which Jesus here makes use of expresses 
 nothing else than the united power of the evil that dominates 
 the world in its perfect hostility to God. The reason why 
 the same attention is not given here to the side of natural 
 evil as in the Synoptics, where Satan is also the principle of 
 all derangements of mind and body, lies in a peculiarity of 
 John's style. Not only are the demoniacs of the synoptic 
 narrative not mentioned by John, but the sensuous side of sin 
 gives way to the spiritual, pride, deceit, malice, in which the 
 ungodly nature reaches its climax. It scarcely needs to be 
 noted that this view of sin which has its parallel in the 
 Synoptics, in the special keenness of Jesus' opposition to 
 Pharisaism, entirely contradicts its derivation from matter. 
 
got) and the world 231 
 
 § 4. The universal Eevelation of God in the World 
 
 Notwithstanding the hostility of the world towards God, 
 which receives its most pointed expression when Satan is 
 called the ruler of this world, God is not remote from or a 
 stranger to this world. On this side also the critical dictum 
 that Philonism is the key to our Gospel, and especially that 
 the sayings of Jesus in it have been fabricated from the 
 Logos idea, refutes itself. In Philo, and according to the very 
 root idea of the Logos doctrine, God is present and active 
 within the world simply through the Logos, who in particular 
 has to draw men to God. In the Johannine sayings of 
 Jesus there is nothing to hinder the direct activity of God on 
 the world, and, in particular, the Father Himself draws the 
 souls of men to His Son. "My Father worketh hitherto," 
 cries Jesus (v. 17) to the Jewish rulers when they sought to 
 reprove Him for healing a man on the Sabbath, by adducing 
 the example of God's rest on the Sabbath after the six days' 
 work of creation. God did not merely create the world long 
 ago, — He has never ceased to be creatively active in it, — but 
 He also governs the moral world, notwithstanding the prince 
 of this world. This government appears chiefly in negative 
 fashion as an avenging moral order of the world. He judges 
 no man (v. 22), but He makes evil or unbelief its own judge 
 (iii. 18). Whoever rejects His light and truth, His holy and 
 good self-revelation, and His word that testifies of it, remains 
 in darkness and deception. Whoever will not take from Him 
 the true eternal life, abideth in death, that is, in the opposite 
 of eternal life. He will die in his sins, as it is said in viii. 
 21, 24, that is, be destroyed in soul and body (cf. Matt. x. 28). 
 But this negative penal government of the world is supple- 
 mented by a positive saving one, and this does not begin with 
 Christ, in whom, of course, it is completed, and it was not 
 confined even to the sphere of the old covenant, it extended 
 to the whole world. " It is written in the prophets," says 
 Jesus, vi. 45, "they shall all be taught of God; every man 
 that hath heard and learned (jiadoav) of the Father cometh to 
 me." He speaks here of men who have still to come to Him, 
 the Saviour, that is, of non-Christians whom also, in x. 16 
 (other sheep have I who are not of this fold). He expressly 
 
232 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 describes as Gentiles. The Father speaks to them and draws 
 them near, as it is said immediately before (vi. 44), without 
 doubt through His revelation in nature and history, through 
 reason and conscience. That applies to all, as it is written, 
 " they shall all be taught of God," though it is not said they 
 shall all hear and learn, take note of and lay to heart. Nor do 
 those who hear and learn attain at once to the perfect and 
 saving knowledge of God, which Jesus has and gives to His 
 own (vi. 46 ; cf. xiv. 9). But they do come to Him who can 
 show them the Father, and lead them to Him. They are 
 prepared for the perfect revelation of God that appears in 
 Him. Nay, they do their works even now in God, that is, 
 they live and act, so far as they can, in the element of the 
 true and good, and so when the eternal light has appeared in 
 Christ, they come joyfully to this light, that their works 
 may be made manifest that they are wrought in God, that is, 
 that their efibrts, directed to the good and true, may here 
 receive their crown (iii. 21). The Johannine Christ thus 
 knows of friends of God in the pre-Christian and non-biblical 
 world, whose inmost bent is towards the eternal light — like 
 the Queen of Sheba, who came from the ends of the earth to 
 hear the wisdom of Solomon (Matt. xii. 42). Such men are 
 of the truth (xviii. 37), of God (viii. 47), although they do 
 not know this God in Christ as their Father. These men are 
 not, therefore, exempt from the rule, " except a man be born 
 again," but they will joyfully go through the narrow gate as 
 soon as it is shown to them. Others, indeed, prefer the dark- 
 ness to the light, because they will not give up their works, 
 which belong to the darkness, and they hate the light when 
 it appears, because it makes manifest their evil works, as the 
 Jewish leaders at the time of Jesus did (iii. 19, 20). It is 
 wonderful what the critical theology has made out of these 
 two classes of men, which the Johannine Christ finds existing 
 in the world and distinguishes. The critical theology has 
 discovered in these two classes the pneumatics and hylics of 
 Gnosticism, instead of rejoicing in the fact that Jesus — in 
 contrast to our traditional Augustinianism, which colours the 
 non-Christian world all black without distinction — sets forth 
 here a clear distinction, which, however we believe in the 
 universal need of salvation, no impartial view can avoid. The 
 
GOD AND THE WORLD 233 
 
 critical theologian will have the friends of God whom Christ 
 recognised to be by birth men of the Spirit, coming to the 
 light and believing in Christ in virtue of a metaphysical 
 necessity ; and they make the reprobates found by Christ to be 
 by birth children of Satan, children of the vXtj and aKOTia, who 
 — as is expressly declared of them (v. 44, viii. 43) — could not 
 by a natural necessity come to Jesus and hear His word. In 
 both of the passages adduced, ov Bvvaade was not spoken in 
 the sense of a reproach, that is, their impotence was conceived 
 as not excluding the freedom of the will ; v. 44 and also iii. 
 19, 20 expressly characterise this moral inability as the result 
 of a morally perverted condition of life, and the oi OeXere 
 iXOeiv TT/od? fie, ha ^(dtjv e^V^e in v. 40 stands guarding moral 
 freedom. Moreover, the advocates of that forced exposition 
 overlook two things. First, that the synoptic Jesus makes a 
 like distinction among men, only in somewhat different terms. 
 He not only distinguishes good and evil, — and indeed good and 
 evil in relation to the treasure of the heart (Matt. xii. 35), — 
 He also opposes, with regard to their capacity or incapacity 
 for the kingdom of heaven, those who are called blessed and 
 those over whom He has to pronounce a woe ; on the one 
 hand are the merciful, the pure in heart, and those who suffer 
 for righteousness, and on the other are the generation of 
 vipers ; He even says that the knowledge of saving truth 
 given to the disciples, and withheld from the ignorant multi- 
 tude, is " hidden from the wise and prudent, and revealed to 
 babes" (Mark iv. 11; Matt. xi. 25, xiii. 11). The other 
 point that should not have been overlooked is the circum- 
 stance that the Johannine Christ in no way excludes from 
 salvation, and the conversion which leads to salvation, even 
 those whom He at present treats as hardened by their own 
 guilt. He tells those same people, to whom He cries (v. 44): 
 " How can ye believe, who receive honour one of another, and 
 seek not the honour that cometh from God ? " that He speaks 
 to them in order that they may be saved (v. 34), and re- 
 peatedly places over against the obstinate contradiction which 
 He meets with in the world the hope of a great and universal 
 conversion of the world, when He will be lifted up (viii. 28 
 xii. 31, 32, xvii. 20, 21). Thus, in the Johannine words of 
 Jesus, the wideness of God's grace and the necessity of a, free 
 
234 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 choice for its realisation are not less firm than in the Synoptics. 
 " God so loved the world, that every one who believes may 
 have eternal life " (iii. 16 ; cf. 1 John ii. 2) ; and " Whosoever 
 is willing to do His will shall know that My doctrine is of 
 God"(vii. 17). But these two things, the universality of 
 grace and the reality of freedom, exclude every distinction of 
 pneumatic and hylic from our Gospel. 
 
 § 5. Estimation of the Old Testament 
 
 On the other hand, it would be a real Gnostic mark if the 
 Johcinnine Christ, whilst recognising a general revelation of 
 God in the pre-Christian period, should pass over or depreciate 
 the particular revelation of the old covenant. This also has 
 been asserted regarding the Johannine sayings of Jesus. 
 Appeal has been made to the expression, " your law," which 
 appears twice (viii. 17, xiii. 34) — an expression which seems 
 to indicate an outside standpoint. The extreme Gnostic 
 rejection of Moses and the prophets has been found in the 
 saying (x. 8) : " All who came before Me were thieves and 
 robbers " ; nay, some have gone so far as to discover in the 
 Johannine sayings a Demiurgus, the God of the old covenant, 
 but not the Father of Jesus Christ. But in fact the recogni- 
 tion of the Old Testament revelation and Scriptures is mani- 
 fest in a quite overwhelming way. Though the evangelist, 
 writing for those who were Gentile Christians by birth, 
 thought it needless to repeat in detail Jesus' attitude towards 
 Moses and the prophets in His discussions with His contem- 
 poraries, which occupies so much space in the Synoptics, yet 
 in every way he makes us see that Jesus did take up this 
 attitude. The Old Testament is to the Johannine Christ also 
 the Holy Scriptures, which must be fulfilled (xvii. 12), and 
 cannot in any phrase be broken, or declared not binding (x. 
 35) ; John and Matthew (v. 17-19) are here at one. In no 
 Gospel does Jesus appeal more frequently and more expressly 
 to the Old Testament Scriptures than in the fourth (for 
 example, iii. 14, vi. 45, vii. 38, xv. 25, xvii. 12). Certainly 
 that dreary study of the letter, without feeling for the living 
 word of God, which was practised by the scribes, as if it 
 could give them eternal life. He rejects in characteristic 
 
GOD AND THE WOELD 235 
 
 words, which our translation unfortunately does not correctly 
 render (v. 39) ;i but in the same breath He certifies that the 
 Holy Scriptures do testify of the Messiah, that in them the 
 Father has beforehand testified of Him (v. 37, 39). And of 
 those to whom the Old Testament revelation was given, He 
 says : Abraham loved the truth, and rejoiced to see the day 
 of the Messiah ; and he saw it (in the other world), and was 
 glad (viii. 56). Moses testified of the Messiah, and will 
 accuse the scribes before God because of their unbelief 
 (v. 45, 47). John the Baptist was a burning and shining 
 light, and bore witness to the truth regarding Jesus (v. 33, 
 35). How is it possible, in presence of this, to apply the 
 words (x. 8) : iravre^, oaoi rj\6ov irpb i/xov, kXeirTai elalv koI 
 \Tj(rTal — whether 7rp6 efjt,ov be genuine or not — to Moses and 
 the prophets ? The reference must be to the scribes and 
 Pharisees who in the lifetime of Jesus attempted to catch 
 away from Him His sheep, that is, the men in Israel who 
 had turned towards Him. And even the striking expression, 
 " your law," — whether it was really used by Jesus, or merely 
 put into His mouth by the evangelist, — stands on both occa- 
 sions, not in the sense of "your law with which I have 
 nothing to do," but "your law to which you attach such 
 absolute value, and which is your highest authority." As in 
 the case of the Synoptics (cf. Matt. xii. 5), He appeals here 
 also (vii. 23) to the law itself against the reproach of break- 
 ing the law. In the law is revealed that will of God, which 
 makes him who earnestly desires to do it sensible that Jesus' 
 teaching is of God (vii. 17). Finally, in the controversy 
 between the Jews and the Samaritans about the right place 
 of worship, Jesus places Himself, so far as the question can 
 be answered historically, on the side of the legitimate tradi- 
 tion : " We know what we worship, you know it not : for 
 salvation is of the Jews" (iv. 22). It may be said that 
 Jesus' whole estimate of the Old Testament in the Fourth 
 Gospel is mirrored in this remarkable passage. Above all, 
 
 1 It is manifest to every reasonable expositor that ipsv!/ecTe here is 
 indicative and not imperative, as Luther has translated ; for how could 
 any one base a summons to Bible reading in the words : " In them ye 
 think ye have eternal life." But our Church tradition never gives up a 
 piistranslation which has got its place in the store of familiar texts. 
 
236 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 He here expressly acknowledges that He worships the same 
 God as His people do in Jerusalem ; and the same is implied 
 in the story of His cleansing the temple (ii. 16), where He 
 calls it "JMy Father's house." That destroys all critical 
 fancies of a Demiurge in the Fourth Gospel to be dis-' 
 tinguished from God the Father, as the God of the Jews. 
 Then He acknowledges that His people were chosen first for 
 salvation by God : " We know what we worship : salvation is 
 of the Jews." That universal revelation of God which even 
 the heathen receive leaves Him still an unknown God. And 
 God desires to be known by man, and to be worshipped with 
 clear understanding (iv. 23), and that was made possible to 
 the Jews in a higher degree. Then that universal revelation 
 made salvation possible for individuals, but not for the world; 
 that required a process in history, which is found in Jewish 
 history — fj aeoTijpla sk tmv 'lovBalav iariv. But these words 
 mark also the limitations of Judaism which the synoptic 
 Christ indicates in the words : " The law and the prophets 
 prophesied until John, but from the days of John the kingdom 
 of heaven suffereth violence." In the God whom they wor- 
 shipped in the temple at Jerusalem, the Jews did not see the 
 Father; he only has seen the Father who is of Him (vi. 46). 
 And therefore, even in the case of the Jews, the worship of 
 the Father in spirit and in truth was not yet possible, although 
 the Father seeks for it as the only worship which sanctifies 
 and makes blessed. In a word, salvation comes historically 
 from the Jewish nation, but the Jewish nation did not pro- 
 duce it ; it is only the earthly cradle in which salvation is 
 laid by heaven. It must be begotten of God, and brought 
 into the world in Him. 
 
 CHAPTEE III 
 THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF 
 
 § 1. The Problem 
 
 At this point we arrive at that which is by far the most 
 important to our evangelist, the self-consciousness of Jesus, 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF 237 
 
 and the words in which He expressed that consciousness. If, 
 in the Synoptics, this stands more in the background, behind 
 the preaching of the kingdom of heaven, John rather brings 
 it into the foreground of his Gospel, in order to make all else 
 fall into the background. But not only is the testimony of 
 Jesus to Himself far more frequent in John than in the 
 Synoptics, it is also far more sublime, as it rises to declara- 
 tions of a former heavenly life, and so there arises for us here 
 one of the most important problems of New Testament theology, 
 which at the same time on the side of biblical theology is really 
 the kernel of the so-called Johannine question. The question 
 is whether what Jesus says of Himself in John is or is not in 
 harmony with what is found in the Synoptics ; is the self- 
 consciousness of Jesus as John reports it, in spite of all the 
 loftier heights which he discloses, not fundamentally a true 
 human consciousness as the Synoptics represent ? or does it 
 move on a quite different level, and is it at bottom the con- 
 sciousness of the personal Logos, that is, of a divine person who 
 only afterwards descended and took upon Himself a human 
 form? The latter is the common conception both of the 
 orthodox and critical theology ; but the orthodox theology 
 starts here in its attempt to establish on scriptural grounds 
 the old Church Christology, or the modern kenotic transforma- 
 tion of it, whilst the critical theology finds in the anti-synoptic 
 and docetic Christology of the Fourth Gospel the most con- 
 vincing proof of its unhistorical character, which at the same 
 time would cut the ground from below the whole orthodox 
 theory. Let us examine, first, the parts of Jesus' testimony to 
 Himself in John which are paralleled in the Synoptics, and 
 then the facts which go further. 
 
 § 2. Jesus the Messenger of God 
 
 To begin with, Jesus appears in the Fourth Gospel quite 
 in the same relation to the Messiah idea as in the Synoptics. 
 He knows that He is the Messiah, but He suppresses this 
 name. When His first disciples, who had been directed to 
 Him by John the Baptist, greet Him as the Promised One, 
 and exclaim one to another, " We have found the Messiah of 
 whom Moses and the prophets have written" (i. 41, 45), He 
 
238 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 calmly accepts the designation. But subsequently He refers 
 to it so little that a long time later the confession of Peter, 
 " Thou art the Holy One of God " (that is, just the Messiah, 
 vi. 69; cf. Matt. xvi. 16), appears as a special act of faith. 
 Only once, among foreigners, at Jacob's well in Samaria, where 
 the situation of the moment compelled the confession, does 
 Jesus avow the name Messiah (iv. 25, 26). Only a few 
 months before His death the Jews in Jerusalem press Him and 
 say : " How long makest Thou us to doubt ? If Thou be the 
 Christ, tell us plainly" (x. 24); and even then His answer does 
 not satisfy them. We have learned above, in our examination 
 of the Synoptics, the reason of this reserve. It is not that 
 the name Messiah, by which the Israelites certainly under- 
 stood simply a man specially favoured and anointed by God 
 (Ps. ii. 2 ; cf. John i. 45), would not have been sufficiently 
 exalted ; for He gladly accepted it from His most familiar 
 Iriends (cf. besides vi. 69, ix. 22, xi. 27). Instead of the 
 name that was encompassed with political passion, and liable 
 to be misunderstood. He prefers the more indefinite and simple 
 " Sent of God," that is but faintly echoed in the Synoptics, 
 perhaps in the repeated and significant rj\.6ov (Matt. v. 17, x. 
 34), or in 6 ttTroo-TetXa? fie (Mark x. 40). In John, Jesus 
 prefers to speak of the Father who sent Him (o 7re/j,\lra<; or 
 -Tri/M^jra^ iraTrip, v. 37, vii. 16, 28, viii. 16, 18, etc.), and 
 designates Himself with a certain solemnity as ov airea-Teikev 
 6 irarrip, o ^eo? (v. 38, vi. 29, vii. 29, x. 36, xvii. 3). In 
 doing so He seems to place Himself in the series of prophets 
 (cf. i. 6), and He can in point of fact apply to Himself a pro- 
 verb that holds good of a prophet (iv. 44), or include Himself 
 with the last of the prophets, the Baptist, as witness of a 
 divine revelation (iii. 11, fiaprvpiav rjijiwv). But He immedi- 
 ately distinguishes Himself again from the Baptist, who could 
 only speak i-Trlyeta, whilst He alone can proclaim to, e-rrovpavLa 
 (iii. 12), corresponding to the synoptic fiva-T?]pia tjj? /3aa-i\ei,a<;. 
 It is simply the character of one sent of God, the perfect 
 revealer of God, that He claims for Himself. But that it is a 
 man who is sent by God, and not God the Son coming into 
 the world, is quite plain from the solemn passage xvii. 3 : o-e 
 Tov ixovov aXrjdivov 6eov, Kol ov aTrecrretXa? 'Irjaovv XpitTTOv, 
 though some have tried to extract the latter meaning from 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF 239 
 
 the use of the word Father as sending Him. He who places 
 Himself beside the only true God, as God's messenger, marks 
 Himself out, according to every law of logic and language, as a 
 being who is not God but man.^ On the other hand, it follows 
 from this idea of the Sent of God, the perfect instrument of 
 the revelation of God to the world, that this man can lack 
 nothing of what is required for the setting up of the perfect 
 knowledge of God and communion with God in the world. 
 This Messenger of God can call Himself the " Light of the 
 world" (viii. 12), as the servant of Jehovah in Isaiah had 
 already been called " the light of the Gentiles," just because 
 He is the bearer of the divine revelation that gives light to the 
 world. He can call Himself the Way, the Truth, and the Life 
 (xiv. 6, xi. 25) ; for He forms the bridge, and the only bridge, 
 by which men may come into communion with the heavenly 
 Father : He is the historical fountain of life out of which all 
 may draw eternal truth and eternal life. He can say, " He 
 that hath seen Me (viz. with the eyes of the spirit) hath seen 
 the Father " (xiv. 9) ; for in Him the eternal Father has indeed 
 made Himself perfectly known to the world, and translated, 
 as it were, His secret divine nature into the human. And in 
 the strength of all this He can demand " that all men should 
 honour the Son even as they honour the Father" (v. 23).^ 
 
 ^ Weiss, who wrongly applies to Jesus the ovto; hnu 6 akn^moi hoi (in 
 1 John V. 22), finds it quite intelligible that one who is Himself ahnSmos 
 ho; should yet call the Father rdi/ fiosov a.'hniivoi/ hov. I confess that I 
 would find it absolutely unintelligible. For we should have to assume, 
 by help of the kenotic theory, that Jesus even in His intercessory prayer 
 did not know that He was not a man but was God. But of what value 
 would His whole testimony to Himself be if He did not know this ? 
 
 2 That leaves the most decided subordination to the Father. " The 
 Father," says Jesus (xiv. 28), " is greater than I" ; and this saying, which in 
 the context is meant to express that it is for Him an elevation of life to 
 go to the Father, is as little offensive on human lips as the saying of the 
 First Epistle of John (iii. 20), that " God is greater than our heart." If, in 
 spite of this, Weiss maintains against me, with regard to the passage v. 23, 
 that it speaks not only of being honoured along with God, but of being 
 honoured as highly as God, I do not know how he can appeal to the con- 
 text in favour of this. The connection shows that Jesus claimed that 
 honour simply in His character as the Sent of God. An ambassador may 
 demand that he be honoured for the sake of the king who sends him, and 
 say that to dishonour him means dishonouring his king. But no reason- 
 
240 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 All these declarations, which are so often adduced in favour 
 of a superhuman glory possessed by Christ, do not carry us 
 beyond the ideal conception of human nature, though they 
 certainly do transcend all our experience of mankind. They 
 find place in that Son of Man who alone realises the idea of 
 humanity, in whom is disclosed the fulness of the eternal 
 love, and who is the perfect image of God among men. But 
 these declarations do not even go beyond what the Synoptics 
 report of the consciousness of Jesus and His testimony to 
 Himself. They are all comprehended in the one synoptic 
 saying (Matt. xi. 27) : "All things are delivered unto Me of My 
 Father : and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father ; neither 
 knoweth any man the Father, but the Son, and he to whom 
 the Son will reveal Him." 
 
 § 3. The Son of Man and Son of God 
 
 But even the two synoptic designations of Jesus as the 
 " Son of Man " and " Son of God " are found again in John, 
 and manifestly in the same sense as there. The former 
 notable name appears twelve times, — for ix. 35 should also be 
 read rbv vlov tov avOpdnrov, — and with the exception of 
 xii. 34 only in the mouth of Jesus Himself. The question of 
 the people (xii. 34), " rt? icmv o£to? 6 uto? tov dvdpanrov," 
 shows that the name was not a designation of Messiah 
 familiar among the Jewish people. They manifestly came to 
 know the expression first as a possible designation of Messiah 
 from the lips of Jesus. That as used by Jesus, however, it 
 rests on Dan. vii. 13, and is meant to designate the bearer of 
 the kingdom of heaven, is confirmed by all the other passages, 
 and especially by the close relation in which the " Son of 
 Man " is placed to heaven. As in Dan. vii. 1 3 He appears 
 " in the clouds of heaven," so in John i. 5 1 the heaven opens 
 above Him that the angels of God may ascend and descend 
 upon Him. According to iii. 13, He has come down from 
 heaven and is (constantly and inwardly) in heaven. Accord- 
 ing to iii. 14, viii. 28, xii. 34, He must be lifted up, and 
 
 able ambassador demands to be honoured just as highly as his king. Such 
 a demand would also be entirely opposed to the humility of the Johannine 
 Christ, who calls the Father His God (xx. 17). 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF 241 
 
 lifted up (vi. 62) to where He was before, that is, to heaven. 
 In vi. 27 He offers the heavenly bread of life; in vi. 53 He 
 makes His flesh and blood the food and drink of eternal life ; 
 in ix. 35 He is the object of faith; and in xii. 23,xiii. 31, He 
 must be glorified through suffering and death, — all of which 
 agree with what the Synoptics report of the fundamental 
 significance of the God-sent Bearer of salvation. The one 
 notable distinction is, that in iii. 13, vi. 62, the Son of Man is 
 thought of as pre-existent, existing in heaven before His life 
 on earth. We shall return to this point in its proper place. 
 Peculiar is the passage, v. 27 : God has given His Son power, 
 Koi Kplaiv TToietv, on vlo^ avOpmTrov ecmv. Some have entirely 
 rejected this passage from the examples of the name Son of 
 Man, and wished to take the vio? dvOpmirov as equal simply to 
 avOpcoTTo^, because it lacks the double article of the others. 
 But this lack of the article is explained by the fact that the 
 expression stands here only as predicate, and it is not else- 
 where John's manner to put the poetic utos avdpcoirov instead 
 of the simple avdpcoiro';. God has given His Son authority to 
 administer judgment because He is a man, would not by any 
 means be so evident as : He hath done so because He is the 
 man from heaven, who forms the divine standard for the 
 worth or worthlessness of all other men, and has subjected all 
 to His righteous judgment through the offer of the kingdom of 
 heaven. If the passage be so understood, like Mark ii. 27, 28, 
 it lays stress on the fact that the Son of Man does belong to 
 humanity. But even if we explain v. 27 differently, the 
 human and not divine personality of the v/o? tov avOpwirov 
 lies in the ineffaceable significance of the expression itself. But 
 the designation of Jesus for Himself, which is of tenest repeated 
 in John, is that which but seldom meets us in the Synoptics, 
 the name " Son of God." Sometimes it is fully expressed ; 
 sometimes it appears in the significant abbreviation, the Son ; 
 and sometimes it is implied in the uncommonly frequent, "My 
 Father," with reference to God, which has chiefly helped to 
 bring the later theological idea, " God the Son," into our Gospel. 
 We have here also to distinguish in John the sense in which 
 the name is used by Jesus Himself, and that in which it is 
 applied to Him by others. On the lips of others it is simply 
 the name of honour, springing from Ps. ii. 7, which is given to 
 
 EEYSCHLAG. — I. l6 
 
242 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 Messiah conceived throughout as a man, in order to describe 
 Him as the special favourite and chosen of God. In this 
 sense the Baptist (i. 34) describes Jesus to his disciples as the 
 Son of God, because he had seen the Messianic anointing of 
 this child of man. Nathanael, overawed, to whom Jesus has 
 just been proclaimed as the Messiah, but also described as 
 Joseph's son from Nazareth, cries to Him, i. 49 : "Thou art 
 the Son of God ; Thou art the King of Israel," — the two names 
 of homage explain each other in the popular Messianic sense. 
 In like manner, Martha (xi. 2 7) makes her confession of faith 
 to the effect that He is the Messiah, " the Son of God, who 
 should come into the world " ; and in ver. 2 2 she conceives Him 
 as a man who is so much the beloved of God as to obtain 
 from Him whatever He may ask. Jesus could not possibly 
 have accepted the name in this human sense from His friends 
 and applied it to Himself in a wholly different sense, uniting 
 with it a metaphysical suggestion of divinity. Certainly even 
 in John, as in the Synoptics, He expresses by the name Son, 
 not so much His Messianic dignity as the personal relation to 
 God which lay at the basis of that dignity, and which both 
 entitled and bound Him to call God His Father in a special 
 unique sense. And this personal usage of His is so strange to 
 the hostile Jews, and in its familiarity with God it strikes 
 them at times as so extravagant, that they repeatedly find it 
 blasphemous, and connect with it the reproach that. Jesus 
 makes Himself a God, or equal to God (v. 18, x. 33). But 
 to make this idea of the Jews an argument for the orthodox 
 or critical conception of the name Son is indeed very strange ; 
 as if the Jews in the Fourth Gospel did not regularly mis- 
 understand Jesus, and as if Jesus in both cases did not 
 expressly repel the reproach of making Himself equal with 
 God. When Jesus says of' Himself as the Son of God, that 
 the Father has sent or given Him to the world (iii. 16, 17), 
 has intrusted Him with this or that great office or work 
 (v. 22, 26); that the Father loves Him, and shows Him all 
 things ; that He leaves Him not alone, but will glorify Him 
 (v. 20, viii. 29, xvii. 1 f.), — all that does not go beyond the 
 idea of the favourite and chosen among the children of men 
 whom God has intrusted with His highest mission — the less 
 so that it is expressly based on the human moral obedience of 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF 24.3 
 
 the Son (viii. 29, x. 17). And the addition of /j.ovoyev-i]'; to 
 vl6<!, which the evangelist, plainly using words of his own 
 (L 18), puts on several occasions in the mouth of Jesus 
 (iii. 16, 18), changes nothing in the only interpretation of 
 the concept Son which is true to Scripture. The word which 
 the evangelist (i. 14) uses apparently of the Logos as such, but 
 really of the historical Christ, who already in ver. 6 is spoken 
 of under the names X070? and <f>m, merely denotes that He 
 was an only child (cf. Luke vii. 12), and has nothing to do 
 with the manner of His origin, or even with the idea of an 
 eternal generation ; it simply expresses the uniqueness of the 
 relation of Sonship in which Jesus stands to God. We have 
 already remarked above, that the concepts God and Father, 
 even in the Fourth Gospel, are entirely coincident, and that 
 therefore there can be no mention in that Gospel of a " God 
 the Son," in the sense of the later ecclesiastical doctrine of the 
 Trinity ; but that, according to all the laws of speech, the Son 
 of God must be conceived as a being different from God, that 
 is, human. But we have still to consider two express proofs 
 for this christological mode of thought of our Gospel. The 
 first is in the eighth chapter, where Jesus contrasts Himself 
 as Son with the Jews as servants. But the Jews, according 
 to ver. 34, are servants not because they are men, but because 
 they are sinners. It follows therefore that Son — a concept 
 which first makes its appearance quite specifically in ver. 35 as 
 a universal human ideal — ^is that man who is in unbroken 
 communion with God. There is only one who is really in 
 such communion, and He alone can procure for the servants 
 the rights of children. And in agreement with this, in what 
 immediately follows the relation of Sonship is determined 
 according to Christ's idea as moral likeness, just as the divine 
 Sonship is in Matt. v. 45. The Jews are no children of 
 Abraham, because they do not the works of Abraham. They 
 are not the children of God but of the devil, because lying 
 and murder is their nature. This makes plain the sense in 
 which Jesus claims God as His Father, in contrast with them. 
 Still more remarkable is the other passage, x. 33—38. As it 
 is the only passage in the Fourth Gospel in which the divine 
 Sonship of Jesus is formally discussed, it is quite decisive as 
 to its meaning. The Jews have interpreted His words, "I 
 
■244 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 and the Father are one," as though He thereby wished to 
 make Himself a God — avdpwtro^ cov ■7roiei<s creavTov deov ; but 
 Jesus decidedly rejects this interpretation. He does not 
 answer the reproach that He being a man makes Himself a 
 God, as He ought to have done according to the orthodox and 
 critical understanding, " I do not make Myself so, but am so." 
 But He appeals to the fact that the Scriptures, which cannot 
 be broken, call those gods to whom a word of God, that is, a 
 divine communication, making them magistrates or judges, 
 came. How then can He be reproached with blasphemy who 
 has received from God a mission so much higher, because He 
 claims (the lesser) name Son of God ? That is a defence which 
 would be meaningless and even false, if to Him the Son of 
 God were not a human being in the same sense as those 
 "gods." Finally, we are led to the same result by the 
 expression which Jesus here uses concerning His mission, on 
 which rests His right to call Himself the Son of God : ov 6 
 irarrip ri<yla<Tev. Apply that as we may to His anointing at 
 the baptism before entering on His public ministry, or to the 
 election before His birth (the following, Kal aTreaTeikev ek top 
 Koa-fiov, in xvii. 18, allows both), it always designates an act 
 of God such as can only affect a man. For the personal 
 Logos, or God the Son, could neither be anointed with the 
 Holy Spirit, which He in and of Himself would have, nor be 
 chosen, that is, selected, because there would be no others His 
 equals from whom He could be chosen. 
 
 § 4. Purely Human Form of Consciousness. 
 
 But the Johannine testimony goes hand in hand with the 
 synoptic, not only in the direct declarations about Himself, 
 such as are contained in the great names, Son of Man and 
 Son of God, but also in the whole description of the conscious- 
 ness, which is perhaps gathered in a more impressive and 
 convincing manner from indirect expressions. If we were 
 able in a host of expressions and features in the synoptic 
 Gospels to find proof that Christ's consciousness was at bottom 
 human, and that every higher element rests simply on that 
 human foundation, we could do so much more fully from the 
 Gospel of John ; the confession of a true human dependence 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF 245 
 
 on His God and Father sounds through the entire Gospel. In 
 chap. viii. 40, Jesus frankly calls Himself "a man " who tells 
 His people the truth which He has heard of God. According 
 to His own definite declarations, everything He has, speaks, or 
 does, is given Him by His Father, the one God : the men 
 whom He wins as His own (vi. 37, 39, 44, 65, x. 29, 
 xvii. 6) ; the works and miracles which He performs in His 
 Father's name (x. 25), and which properly the Father Himself 
 dwelling in Him does (v. 36, xiv. 10); the doctrine which 
 He proclaims and the words which He communicates to His 
 own (vii. 16—18, viii. 28, xiv. 24, xvii. 8); nay, eternal life 
 itself, is given to Him that He may have it to give to men 
 (v. 26, vi. 57).^ Accordingly, He does nothing of His own 
 impulse, has not even come of His own impulse, but has been 
 sent and commanded by the Father (v. 43, vii. 28, viii. 28, 
 viii. 42, X. 36); He can do nothing of Himself, according to 
 His own express declarations (v. 19, 30), but only what the 
 Father shows and directs Him to do. As a child observes his 
 father, so He observes God and what He does, in order to 
 know what the Son has to do (v. 1 9). It is most violent and 
 unnatural to apply such words to the Logos or " eternal Son," 
 and to His dependence on God the Father through an eternal 
 generation. The Gospel nowhere speaks of such an eternal 
 generation, and the subject of all these declarations is not the 
 pre-existent Logos or eternal Son, but the man Jesus as He 
 sojourned among men (cf. especially v. 27). If the Logos or 
 eternal Son were indeed the summary of all God's thoughts, 
 the joint- Author of all God's decrees, and the joint-Creator of 
 men, then how could He say that His words and works were 
 taught and given Him ; that the men belonging to Him on 
 earth are given to Him by God; that He did not Himself 
 conceive the purpose of His coming into the world ? ^ Could 
 
 1 A passage in ■whicl. it may be asked whetlier the ^a lix toV w«t6/j« 
 and ^ivii S/' cfii are not meant in the sense of S/« cum genitivo. 
 
 ^ Pileiderer, Urchristenthum, vii. 54, sees quite correctly that instead of 
 the metaphysical relation between God and the Logos, we have in John 
 an essentially ethical relation between Father and Son. But he does not 
 see that with this the Christ of John ceases to bear the character of the 
 Logos of Philo, at least in His own sayings. If in the Johannine Son of 
 God " the metaphysical mediatorship is limited to His creative activity," 
 of which confessedly there is no mention whatever in the Johannine 
 
246 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 the Logos, or God the Son, in that case express Himself with 
 truthfulness when He says, vii. 16: " My doctrine is not 
 Mine, but His that sent Me " ; " whether my doctrine is of God, 
 or whether I speak of Myself " ? Can anyone speak of him- 
 self more humanly than Jesus has done in vii. 18:" He who 
 speaketh of himself (from his own inspiration) seeketh his 
 own honour ; but he who seeketh the honour of him that sent 
 him is true, and no unrighteousness is in him " ? But the 
 Johannine Christ attests, if possible, still more clearly His true 
 human relation to God the Father. While a personal Logos 
 must have been simply one in will with the Father from 
 eternity. He distinguishes His true human will from the 
 will of the Father, and declares (quite as in the Gethsemane 
 prayer in the Synoptics) that He doeth not His own will in 
 order that He may do the will of the Father (v. 30, vi. 38). 
 He has received commandments from His Father in the 
 fulfilling of which He sees for Himself the way of eternal life 
 (xii. 49, 50). He has to fulfil these commandments as His 
 disciples have to fulfil His commandments (x. 18, xiv. 31, 
 XV. 10), and in His obedience He can hesitate, waver, and 
 apparently not know for what He is to pray (xii. 27). This 
 brings us to the most decisive proof of His humanity. His 
 prayerful relation to God. The Johannine Christ prays to 
 the Father like the synoptic Christ (xi. 41 f., xvii. 1 f.). He 
 worships Him in common with His people (iv. 22 : rifieK 
 "Trpoa-Kwovfiev ; cf. Matt. xi. 25); nay, He will still have to 
 pray to Him in His future glory (xiv. 16), and even as the 
 Eisen One He calls Him, joining with the disciples. My God 
 and your God (xx. 17). These facts destroy even the most 
 daring Kenotic theory with its seeming explanation. For if 
 in His intercessory prayer, in which He recalls the glory He 
 had with the Father before the world was, if even after the 
 resurrection, when He had again entered on possession of this 
 glory. He did not yet fully know His eternal relation to the 
 Father, — a relation in virtue of which He should be worshipped, 
 
 sayings of Jesus, does not the Philonic element in these sayings become 
 that Lichtenberg knife without blade, and which lacks the handle. Only 
 by force and against the connection has Pfleiderer imported into the 
 passage (v. 26) a creative activity of the Son, beside His redeeming 
 activity. 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF 247 
 
 but could not Himself worship, — how should the Kenotic 
 dogmatist know about this relation ? Does he know the Son 
 of God better than He knew Himself ? 
 
 § 5. SiNLESSNESS AND OnENESS WITH GoD 
 
 Now the divine glory of Jesus, even in the Johannine 
 account, rests on that true human relation to God as its 
 foundation. That glory is represented chiefly as a moral 
 uniqueness, as an absolute obedience of the child to the 
 Father, in a word, as sinlessness. It is worthy of note that 
 in the Johannine sayings the sinlessness of Jesus is attested 
 far more frequently and expressly than in the Synoptics. 
 That is also a proof of His true human nature, because, in 
 the case of a divine person, sinlessness would be a self- 
 evident, because a metaphysical quality. But for that very 
 reason it would be superfluous and meaningless to emphasise 
 it. But it is described also in the most human style as 
 unselfishness and absolute surrender to the will and service 
 of the Father. The Johannine Christ, as He declares Himself 
 to be utterly dependent on the Father, has no wish whatever 
 to be anything else than the Father's passive instrument. He 
 declares that He does not do His own will, but that of the 
 Father (v. 30, vi. 38); He does not express judgments of 
 His own, but such as God inspires (v. 3 0) ; He seeketh not 
 His own honour, but the honour of the Father (vii. 18, 
 viii. 50); and, therefore. He is true, and there is no un- 
 righteousness in Him (vii. 1 8). He can say : " I know Him, 
 and keep His word" (viii. 55); "I abide in His love" 
 (xv. 10); " I do always what is pleasing to Him" (viii. 29); 
 " My meat — My daily satisfaction — is to do the will of Him 
 that sent Me, and to finish His work " (iv. 34). In this con- 
 sciousness He can ask His contemporaries: "Which of you 
 convinceth Me of sin ? " (viii. 46). When His earthly life 
 is near its end He can comprehend its collective moral deeds 
 in the great words: " I have overcome the world " (xvi. 33). 
 He can prophesy in view of the last moral test : " The prince 
 of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me" (no part in 
 Me, nothing by which he can lay hold of Me), xiv. 30. That 
 perfect oneness with God, which certainly gives us the right 
 
248 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 to speak of a divinity of Christ, is based by Himself on this 
 moral uniqueness and faultlessness as a man, and not on any 
 metaphysical, trinitarian community of nature with God. In 
 viii. 16 He says: " If I judge. My judgment is true : for I am 
 not alone, but I and He who sent Me." That is to say, He 
 alone would be a weak, fallible man; but the Father, who sent 
 Him, is with Him, and does not allow Him to fail in a single 
 word. In viii. 29 He says : " He who sent Me is with Me : 
 He does not leave me alone because I do always what is 
 pleasing in His sight." Thus in the simplest and most 
 intelligible way — but dogmatic prejudice often makes the 
 simplest the hardest for us to understand — He rests His com- 
 munion with God on what is ethical. But " with Me " is a 
 less perfect expression for this communion, the more perfect 
 and also more frequent expression is " in Me," or the 
 reciprocal in one another. " The Father, who dwelleth in 
 Me," it is said (xiv. 10), with the added word of description, 
 " the Father in Me and I in the Father " (x. 38) ; " I in the 
 Father, and the Father in Me " (xiv. 11); " Thou, Father, art in 
 Me, and I in Thee " (xvii. 21). And from this follows in the 
 same intercessory prayer (xvii. 10) the jubilant : " All Mine 
 are Thine, and Thine are Mine " (cf. Matt. xi. 27). From this 
 follows the great saying already quoted (x. 30): "I and the 
 Father are one (iev ifffiev). " I and the Father are one " 
 does not mean : we form together with the Holy Spirit a 
 triune God ; but, as the context undeniably proves, we are so 
 completely of one heart and one soul, that what is in My 
 hand is at the same time in My Almighty Father's hand, 
 from which no man can pluck it. No Christology can be 
 simpler or more transparent than this of the Johannine 
 sayings of Jesus. Christ's was a human heart, distinguished 
 from all others by the fact that it cherished nothing ungodly, 
 nothing that separated it from God ; He was related to God 
 in pure humility, childlikeness, and obedient love, and in Him, 
 for that very reason, the eternal holy God was able to make 
 His dwelling-place as in no other, — in Him God dwelt, full of 
 grace and truth (i. 14); and so in this human heart God's 
 perfect revelation. His true incarnation, has now taken place : 
 " He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." We asked 
 before, in considering the Synoptics, what need of faith does 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF 249 
 
 this Christology leave unsatisfied ? what is wanting in the 
 Christ so understood in order to His being the perfect 
 Mediator between God and man ? But if people continue to 
 protest so excitedly that a man would not say such things of 
 himself as, " I and the Father are one : he that hath seen Me 
 hath seen the Father," the offence springs solely from the 
 confusion of, the ordinary concept man as known in experi- 
 ence, with the biblical idea of man which posits the image of 
 God as the ideal of humanity, and therefore exhibits the true 
 God-man in the man who is the real ideal, and who realises 
 the idea in. perfect communion with God. 
 
 § 6. The Idea of Pee-existence 
 
 But this simple, sufficient, and purely religious Christology 
 of the Johannine discourses seems to be crowned by another 
 speculative Christology, to which the orthodox dogmatic, as 
 well as the modern critical, standpoint can appeal. It is a 
 fact that the Johannine Christ claims for Himself a previous 
 heavenly life ; and from this pre-existence an entirely different 
 Christology obtrudes itself, which unquestionably transcends 
 the measure of the human anthropocentric Christology which 
 we have hitherto found. Though that were so, as both wings 
 of our present theology agree in accepting, it would not in 
 anyway do away with what we have already proved. That 
 cannot be got rid of by ingenious interpretations. The fact 
 would even then remain that the whole synoptic testimony 
 and the greater part of the Johannine know nothing of a 
 pre-existence, and agree in presenting only the Christology 
 hitherto unfolded ; and this would, according to all principles 
 of historical criticism, settle the historical question about the 
 self-consciousness of Jesus, so far as it could be answered 
 from the Gospels. Whatever in the Fourth Gospel does not 
 agree with the common assumptions of the Synoptics and John, 
 must unquestionably be attributed to the fourth evangelist. 
 As in his preface he offers the Logos idea as the key to the 
 understanding of the person of Christ, it might easily be 
 supposed that this idea affected his recollection of some 
 sayings of Jesus, and that he read into them beginnings of 
 speculation, just as he had done even with obscure words of 
 
250 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 the Baptist (i. 15, 30). However, before we decide on such 
 an assumption, we may ask whether the apparent discordance 
 in the Johannine discourses of Jesus really exists, or whether 
 — which must be regarded from the first as the more 
 probable — what in John's report seems to go beyond the 
 Synoptics' report of Jesus' testimony to Himself cannot be 
 harmonised with what has been already set forth. 
 
 § 7. HiSTOKICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPLANATION OF IT 
 
 We begin with the immediate and express declarations of 
 pre-existence. There are four of them, all belonging to the 
 very agitated moments of the closing days of our Lord's life. 
 In the after discussions on the great mystic discourse on the 
 bread of life, and the eating and drinking of His flesh and 
 blood, Jesus (vi. 62) cries to His hearers, who are offended: 
 " Does this offend you ? what and if ye shall see the Son of 
 Man ascend up where He was before ? " At the close of the 
 very excited controversy about the children of Abraham 
 (viii. 58), the Jews, misunderstanding the words, "Abraham 
 rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it," scornfully cry to Him, 
 "Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast Thou seen Abraham?" 
 and Jesus majestically answers : " Before Abraham was, I am." 
 The other two declarations belong to the intercessory prayer, 
 xvii. 4, 5 : "I have glorified Thee on the earth ; I have finished 
 the work which Thou gavest me to do. And now, Father, 
 glorify Thou Me with Thine own self with the glory I had 
 with Thee before the world was." And ver. 24: "Father, I 
 will that they also whom Thou hast given Me be with Me 
 where I am; that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast 
 given Me : for Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the 
 world." Principally on these passages, taken in connection 
 with the prologue of the Gospel, and with other traits of the 
 Johannine discourses to which we shall yet come, is based the 
 conception that Jesus, according to John, knows Himself to be 
 the person&,l Logos or eternal Son of God, who, before He 
 came incarnate into the world, lived in heavenly glory with 
 the Father, and brought into the world with Him the memory 
 of that pretemporal and superhuman existence. But is not 
 that to use the trinitarian notions of the fourth and fifth 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF 251 
 
 centuries, which are certainly unknown to the New Testament 
 age and writings, as a key to the mysterious elements of the 
 discourses of Jesus ? Another key to these should lie still 
 nearer. In the circles to which Jesus historically belonged, 
 pre-existence was by no means a quite new idea, or one having 
 to do only with the Logos. Everything holy and divine that 
 appeared on earth, or was expected, was traced back to a 
 heavenly original in which it pre-existed before its earthly 
 appearance. Thus the tabernacle (Heb. viii. 5), the city of 
 Jerusalem (Gal. iv. 26; Eev. xxi. 10), the kingdom of God 
 of which Jesus expressly says (Matt. xv. 34) that it was 
 prepared for the pious from the beginning of the world, — how 
 much more then its personal bearer the Messiah. This 
 presented itself, not merely to the biblical writers, but also to 
 Jesus Himself as a form in which to conceive what was a 
 great idea, the idea of the appearance of an eternal Being in 
 time. If Jesus knew the kingdom of heaven to be the Alpha 
 and Omega of the thoughts of God (cf. Matt. xxv. 34), and 
 Himself to be its personal bearer ; if, accordingly. He compre- 
 hended its appearance as a fact in time, as the appearance of 
 an Eternal — nay, of the Eternal — in time, how could He 
 clothe this consciousness in any other form than that of being 
 before Abraham was ? He was sprung 'from that heaven 
 from which all good and perfect gifts came down to earth ; He 
 was with the Father before the world was. Although, 
 therefore, the idea of the pre-existence of the Messiah was one 
 of the favourite thoughts of the fourth evangelist, as is shown 
 by the introduction to his Gospel as well as His Eirst Epistle, 
 yet it is not to be doubted that Jesus Himself, by some ex- 
 pressions which pointed in that direction, gave him ground for 
 that view. Especially in the tense final period of His life, 
 in excited moments and conflicts such as are presented in 
 chaps, vi. and viii., and, above all, in the frame of mind of the 
 intercessory prayer, where He is raised above the world and 
 time, it appears quite credible that such a consciousness of 
 eternal existence should at times flash up in Him like a 
 mental vision. There His understanding of Himself for a 
 moment reached its height, but that was by no means the 
 starting-point or permanent background of His thoughts about 
 Himself. For if that had been the case then — and the fact 
 
252 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 cannot be too carefully noted — His whole testimony to 
 Himself must have taken another plan and character, and the 
 complete silence of the synoptic and early apostolic tradition 
 regarding those fundamental facts of consciousness would be 
 inconceivable. The objection which has been commonly 
 advanced against this historical and psychological explanation 
 of His words about pre-existence is, that it leads only to an 
 ideal pre-existence in the decree of God, while the relevant 
 passages bear upon the real existence of a personality distinct 
 from God. This objection appears to us very unimportant ; 
 not only because it rests upon the literal accuracy of John's 
 reports of the words of Jesus, which cannot be maintained, 
 but still more because it imparts a modern distinction, which 
 is foreign to the concrete biblical thought, into the exposition 
 of biblical words. The heavenly originals of what appeared 
 on earth were realities to the Scripture writers, just as Plato's 
 ideas were to him. The originals in heaven are more and not 
 less real than the phenomena of earth. For all that, it is 
 evident that this existence in God is an existence different 
 from that in the world, that it remains in comparison with 
 the historical realisation a sort of ideal existence. It will not 
 be difficult to apply this scheme of interpretation to all the 
 four utterances of Jesus about His pre-existence, and to show 
 that in each of them the pre-existence is simply the concrete 
 form given to an ideal conception. 
 
 § S. The seveeal Utteeances conceening Pee-existence 
 
 The first of those four passages is very instructive (vi. 
 62): iav oiiv deaprJTe rov vlov tov dvOpdowov ava^aivovra, 
 oTTov rjv TO irpoTepov. No impartial reader will escape the 
 impression that Jesus here conceives Himself as pre-existent 
 just as the Son of Man, for the object of the first proposition 
 is the subject of the second. One may indeed twist and 
 interpret the passage ingeniously in order to harmonise it 
 with the traditional conception : " When you shall see the Son 
 of Man ascend up where He was before " — not, however, as 
 the Son of Man, but as second person of the Trinity .^ But 
 when we remember that the words are clearly related to Dan. 
 
 1 Thus still Weiss, N. T. Theol. p. 604 ; vol. ii. p. 335, Eng. trans. 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF 253 
 
 vii. 13, where the Son of Man as such appears in the clouds 
 of heaven before He descends to earth invested with power 
 and glory, that the original passage therefore directly suggested 
 the notion of a heavenly pre-existence of the Son of Man, we 
 will, unless dominated by an invincible dogmatic prejudice, 
 recognise the worthlessness of that subterfuge. . Add to this 
 (1) that the Jewish Book of Enoch, or one of its Jewish 
 Christian portions, conceives the Messiah as pre-existent, pre- 
 cisely under the name of Son of Man — without doubt in 
 pursuance of the same notion which we have just indicated 
 as suggested in Dan. vii. 13. (2) That Jesus in John iii. 13 
 thinks of Himself directly as the Son of Man come down from 
 heaven, and living and moving in heaven — o e'/c tov ovpavov 
 KaTa^d<;, 6 vio<; tov avOpayirov, o cbv iv Ta> ovpavm. This 
 should remove all doubt from any impartial reader that the 
 pre-existence of the Johannine Christ was His pre-existence as 
 the Son of Man. But that throws clear light upon the whole 
 notion. Jesus thinks of Himself as pre-existent, not because 
 He knew Himself to be a second God, and remembered a 
 former life in heaven, but because He recognised Himself in 
 Daniel's image as the bearer of the kingdom of heaven, and 
 because this Son of Man, as well as the kingdom which He 
 brings to earth, must spring from heaven. That the ideal 
 man existed from eternity in God, is the truth which He 
 grasped, and to which He gave concrete intellectual form. 
 And He did assuredly view the ascension of the Son of Man 
 to where He was before as the return to an eternal home ; 
 but everyone must allow that He knew that the Son of Man 
 in that former existence was no corporeal man such as now 
 was on earth ; and if that is granted, we have the proof that 
 the pre-existence, though presented in a concrete way, is simply 
 an ideal conception. The other declaration (viii. 58), "Be- 
 fore Abraham was, I am," can, of course, in its laconic brevity 
 be interpreted according to any conception of pre-existence 
 which one brings with him; but our conception, as appears to 
 us, gives it the meaning most in keeping with the context. 
 The controversy between Jesus and His opponents has risen 
 high, and the feeling of the distance between Him who is 
 from above and them who are from beneath, becomes ever 
 more keen. Contemptuously they replied to His idea that 
 
254 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 Abraham rejoiced to see His day: "Thou art not yet fifty 
 years old, and hast thou seen Abraham ? " Then the feeling 
 of eternity flashed up in Him and made Him answer them 
 majestically ; " Before Abraham was, I am." He does not say, 
 I was ; His point is not His having been before, but His 
 eternal being. Abraham is only a transient appearance — He 
 is the appearance of the Eternal in time. Before God thought 
 of the birth of Abraham, He stood before Him, through whom 
 He would lead humanity to the goal of its destiny, the Alpha 
 and Omega of His decrees. The necessity of our conception 
 is most clear in that passage in which the traditional inter- 
 pretation confides most : koI vvv Bo^aaov jxe crv, iraTep, irapa 
 creavTO) t^ So^j;, y et'^ov irpo rov top Kocrfiov etvai irapa aol 
 (xvii. 5). If this spoke of a glory not reserved as reward in 
 heaven for the perfected sons of God, but really possessed by 
 Him before His birth, and laid aside for a time to be resumed 
 by Him, how could He ask it back, and ask it as a reward 
 for having glorified the Father on earth ? (ver. 4). That 
 which one possesses by nature, and has voluntarily laid aside 
 for a time, he neither needs to ask, nor can its return be a 
 reward for service rendered in the interval. But there is 
 something more than this here. For wherein does the glory 
 consist which Jesus asks as reward of His work on earth, and 
 of which He says He had it with the Father before the world 
 was ? According to ver. 2 it consists in that exaltation or 
 glorification in which He can glorify the Father by conferring 
 eternal life on all flesh, in which as the sun in the spiritual 
 heaven of humanity He can communicate to all whom the 
 Father has given Him the saving power which He developed in 
 Himself on earth. The possibility of such a position was first 
 won by Jesus through His life and death on earth, so that in 
 point of fact it forms the divine reward of that life and death; 
 how then could He have possessed it realiter before the world 
 was ? It is an absurdity, it is a condemnation of His life-work 
 as an empty phantasmagoria, which the traditional interpreta- 
 tion thrusts upon Him. If, without entertaining this view, we 
 fall back upon the theory that the -irapa aeavro} of the exalta- 
 tion and the irapa. aoioi the pre-existence are absolutely equiva- 
 lent terms, and that thus the passage describes simply a return 
 to the status quo ante, we must renounce any real thought on 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF 255 
 
 the subject^ and be content to hold fast a confused notion 
 which tradition has brought to us. The similarity of irapa 
 &6avTm and Trapd aoi proves simply that the writer — for we 
 cannot speak of them as well authenticated words of Jesus 
 Himself — has marked the parallelism of two acts of God, the 
 eternal decree and the accomplishment of it, for which Jesus 
 now is praying, but he does not dwell on the distinction of 
 the two, or give it prominence in expression.^ Finally, as to 
 the passage xvii. 24, the on, ij'yaTri^o-a? fie irpo KaTaBo\rj<; 
 Koa-fjLov, the favourite modern conclusion, that God could only 
 love a person standing realiter over against Him, would have 
 very much astonished the biblical thinkers. When Jeremiah 
 in the name of God wrote the words, " I knew thee before I 
 formed thee in the womb " (Jer. i. 5), when Paul cried to the 
 readers of his Epistle to the Ephesians, i^eXe^aro 57/40? eV avrou 
 ■n-po KaTa^oXTJi Koafiov (Eph. i. 5), they did not imagine that 
 the human persons in question must have realiter pre-existed 
 in order to be thus known, chosen, and loved by God. This 
 passage (xvii. 24) rather confirms our whole explanation of the 
 pre-existence of Jesus. God loved Jesus before the world was, 
 but according to vv. 23, 26, He loves with the same love those 
 whom He has given to Jesus ; and to this love, not to His 
 eternal nature, Jesus traces back the glory in question. It is 
 not therefore an inner mystery of the divine nature with which 
 these declarations deal, but, as elsewhere in the l^Tew Testa- 
 ment, it is the eternal thoughts of God's love for the world of 
 men. This idea of divine love is first embodied in the idea 
 of the one man who is the perfect image of God and the ideal 
 of all God's children, and from Him it is extended to include 
 all who will through Him fulfil their eternal destiny (xvii. 
 22—24). Or how would that participation in the same love 
 and glory which the eternal Father gives to the Son, be at all 
 conceivable in the case of other men, if this Son were a being 
 toto cmlo different from believers, and had not pre-existed in 
 God from the first as the Son of Man, the firstborn of many 
 brethren ? 
 
 1 The ai/rau larh j} fimiT^zia tuv oipauZa in Matt. v. 3 reads quite as if 
 they already had it, and yet can only mean, it is intended for them, pre- 
 pared for them by God. 
 
256 new testament theology 
 
 § 9. Heavenly Mission and Descent 
 
 But is not the Gospel, apart from those four passages, full 
 of the consciousness of pre-existence, and indeed of such a 
 pre-existence as presupposes a personal passing over from the 
 higher world into the earthly, and with it the remembrance 
 of a personal existence in that higher world ? It may indeed 
 seem so to those who read the Gospel through the spectacles of 
 dogmatic tradition or the critical hypothesis, and it is well to 
 examine the various impressions that tend in that direction. 
 First of all, we have to consider the many phrases in which 
 mention is made of a coming into the world, or of being sent 
 into the world. Do these presuppose a previous personal 
 existence? So little do they, in and of themselves, pre- 
 suppose this, that even the Baptist can speak of one who sent 
 him (o 7re/xi|ra? jie, i. 33), and bears the name of one airea-raX^ 
 fj,6vo^ TTapd 6eov (i. 6). Nothing else is meant by that 
 emphatic " coming " or " being sent," which, indeed, is also 
 found, in the Synoptics (Matt. v. 17, x. 34, 40, xi. 3), than 
 the Messianic appearance, and the divine commission lying 
 at its basis. And as to the et? rov Koa-ftou which John likes 
 to add (cf. e.g. iii. 19, ix. 39), it often means nothing else than 
 the world of public life, as the special application of the ex- 
 pression to the apostles proves — Ka6cb<; e/ie oTreWeiXa? et? 
 Tov Koafiov, Kaycb aTveareCka avToii'i et? rov Kocrfiov (xvii. 18). 
 In other cases, such as x. 3 6 {ov 6 irarrip fjr^iaaev koX aireo-rec- 
 Xev eh tov koct/jlov), where the dytd^eiv, according to Jer. i. 5 
 Sir. xlv. 4, xlix. 7, probably signifies the choice before 
 birth, or xvi. 28, where the eXrjXvda ek tov Koafiov is con- 
 trasted with the a^lrj/jbi Tw Koa/j^ov, that is, the departure by 
 death, it is certainly to be thought of as the entrance into the 
 earthly existence. But, even then, there lies in the expression 
 no allusion to a previous personal life ; every notable man 
 may be described as sent into the world, and of every child 
 that is born it may be said, epxeTut ek tw Koafiov, it comes 
 into the world (cf. xvi. 21, e<yevvrj9r} avdpco-jro'; eU tov icoafiov). 
 The people say (vi. 14) even of the expected Deuteronomic pro- 
 phet (Deut. xviii.), who was certainly not conceived by the 
 nation as pre-existent, o Tr/ao^jfri?? 6 et? tov Koa-fjuov ip'x,6fievo<; ; 
 and in his First Epistle John says, iv. 1 : ttoXXoI 'f-evBo- 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF 257 
 
 irpoifyfJTai, i^eXrjXvOaa-iv et? top k6<7/j,ov. It should be noted 
 that the Johannine Christ nowhere describes His coming into 
 the world as His own resolve. It is somewhat different with 
 the passages which give expression, not merely to the whither, 
 but the whence of His sending, those numerous phrases in 
 which Jesus declares of Himself an e'« t&v avco, e'f ovpavov, 
 6K or irapa rov 6eov or irapa rov iraTpo^, — either elvai or 
 ■^Keiv, e^eKrfKvdevai, KaTa^e^rjKevat (e.g. vi. 38, viii. 23, viii. 42, 
 xvi. 27, etc.); they have a larger meaning. Indeed, the 
 simple " from above " and not " from beneath," " from God and 
 not from this world," does not describe, as it may seem, a 
 descent, much less a unique descent, though — ^just as in the 
 similar expression e« t^s aXij^etas elvai (xviii. 37) — a de- 
 scent does underlie the linguistic image. On the contrary, the 
 eK deov elvai (viii. 47) is spoken of quite generally as some- 
 thing possible to men (o tiv ex rov 6tov to, pijiMara tov 6eov 
 aKovet,' 8iA TOVTO v/xew ovk uKovere, oti e« rov deov ovk eaTe), 
 and in xvii. 14 the ovk e'/c tov Koafiov elvai is expressly 
 asserted of the disciples in the same sense as it holds good of 
 Jesus {eK TOV Koa/iov ovk elalv, Ka6co<; iyob ovk el/Mi eK tov 
 Kocr/jLov). It therefore designates solely the fundamental God-» 
 ward direction of the heart and life, in contrast with the 
 worldly. The " coming from heaven," " being of God," " having 
 proceeded from the Father," have a larger meaning, but the 
 direction is the same ; they trace back the heavenly divine 
 character which Jesus shared with others, but which He knew 
 He possessed before others, to its origin in a special heavenly 
 or divine descent. And at this point we certainly come upon 
 a fact of His consciousness which is not expressed in the 
 synoptic discourses, though it very well agrees with all that 
 we have established from both sources regarding His self- 
 consciousness. Though He could include Himself with others 
 and with His disciples in the idea of the e/c tov 6eov and ovk 
 eK tov Koa-fiov elvai, there yet remained a distinction — the 
 distinction which is expressed by the discriminating "your 
 Father and My Father." That which in their case existed in 
 a measure was in Him absolute ; that which in their case was 
 awakened and nourished by Him had its source in Him. The 
 longer He lived He could the less conceal from Himself the 
 perfect uniqueness in which He stood over against all His 
 
 BEYSCHLAG. — I. l^ 
 
258 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 brethren ; He giving out of a heavenly fulness, they at best 
 receiving ; they transformed by the divine second birth, He 
 acting, thinking, feeling from an original inborn harmony vyith 
 God. The sense of a unique purpose in His life, of proceed- 
 ing from God in a sense which was true of no other, the 
 consciousness of having been born directly out of a higher 
 world into this, could not but grow up in Him. This very 
 consciousness He expresses when He speaks of " coming down 
 from heaven," " having proceeded from God," when He calls 
 Himself the -n-apd tov deov ovra (vi. 46). But He did not 
 mean by this a bodily transference from heaven to earth of 
 which He retained a remembrance. No doubt this conscious- 
 ness of a descent from God, a heavenly descent, went along 
 with that consciousness of pre-existence which we have found 
 above and endeavoured to understand ; the consciousness of 
 having descended from a higher world must have led to 
 the notion of that world as His true and original home; 
 and the consciousness of belonging properly to the eternal 
 and not to the temporal world, must have begotten in 
 Him the notion of having been transplanted from that 
 eternal world into the temporal. But the deepest mysteries 
 of existence belong to the world of spirit, and not to some 
 higher world of sense; when they are expressed in human 
 words it must be in figurative language, and anyone is on 
 wholly wrong lines who in interpreting the Gospel of John, 
 fails to consider this element of metaphor in its thought and 
 language, and like the foolish people of Capernaum insists on 
 the literal sense of what was spiritually conceived, in order to 
 extort the confirmation of confused and impossible dogmatic 
 notions. The analogy of Holy Scripture, according to which it 
 must be expounded, condemns such a mode of exposition. 
 When James says of every good and perfect gift that it comes 
 from above, he does not mean that it exchanges a heavenly 
 locality for an earthly, but simply seeks to express its origin 
 from God. When Jesus asks the high priest whether the 
 baptism of John was ef ovpavov (Mark xi. 30), He does not 
 mean that it formerly took place in heaven, but that it sprang 
 from divine revelation and not from human discovery. In the 
 same way. He did not regard heaven really and literally as the 
 place of His former abode ; it was for Him the kingdom of 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF 259 
 
 eternal blessedness, the sphere of God's personal life from 
 which He was derived, and so He was able to say in one and 
 the same breath — in the passage iii. 13 to be expounded later 
 on — that He came down from heaven and that He is in 
 heaven ; that is, He is in constant intercourse with God even 
 on earth, and lives and moves in the world of eternal blessed- 
 ness.^ His declarations of having come down from heaven or 
 of having proceeded from God, must be understood according 
 to this canon if they are to be understood biblically and 
 rationally. I cannot find that the passage, xvi. 28, urged 
 with special emphasis against this exposition, — i^rjXOov sk tov 
 TraTjOO? Kai i\r]Xvda et? tov Koafiov iraXiv aipirifu rov Koafiov 
 Kal TTopevofxai Trpo? tov iraTepa, — demands, or even permits 
 another interpretation.^ The phrase, " leaving the world and 
 returning to the Father," is certainly only a figurative expres- 
 sion for the glory which Jesus won by passing through death ; 
 
 ' The popular way of looking on. 6 &'j h ru oiipauZ as equivalent to an 
 imperfect, yields — apart from the grammatical obscurity — a very lame 
 meaning and a superfluous idea. For when it has just been said. He came 
 down from heaven, there is no need of saying that He once was in heaven. 
 On the contrary, taken as a present, it yields a significant and coherent 
 idea. No one has risen to the knowledge of the kirovfiamx, save the one 
 who has sprung from heaven, and ever lives and moves in heaven ; cf. i. 51. 
 
 " I regret that I cannot agree with Dr. Weiss about this passage. "With 
 reference to my Ghristology of the New Testament he writes concerning 
 this passage as follows : — N. T. Theol. ii. p. 334 : " Any possibility of 
 referring this to anything else than to a coming forth from a heavenly 
 existence with the Father, is excluded by the fact that it is contrasted 
 with a leaving the world and going home to the Father, which must 
 admittedly be taken as His exaltation to heaven. Without entering into 
 these decisive instances Beyschlag wishes by an appeal to the figurative 
 character of these expressions to find in them indications of the super- 
 natural birth." I do not find the supernatural birth but the supernatural 
 descent of Jesus indicated therein, which is a different thing. But as to 
 the decisive instances, I also understand the passage as referring to a 
 going forth from a heavenly existence with the Father, but to me this 
 existence is an existence in God and not an existing beside God, and in 
 like manner the exaltation is not a transference into another space above 
 the earth, but the passing into a divine unlimited form of existence. The 
 difference between us is, as to whether the original being with the Father 
 is the personal existence of a Sft/Ts/jo? 6e6(, beside God the Father, or the 
 existence of the future Christ in the heart of God. The first I am neither 
 able to think nor to harmonise with the Gospel of John, in which the 
 Father is 6 ho;, and 6 ho; alone is the Father. 
 
260 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 for in reality Jesus does not leave the world, but remains witlii 
 His own, and He does not need to go in quest of the Father who 
 is in Him and in whom He is ; and in the same way the pre- 
 vious phrase, "I came forth from the Father and am come into 
 the world," is not to be understood of an actual leaving of the 
 heavenly Father's house and an exchange of that for an earthly 
 dwelling. Otherwise birth and death, with the deeper meaning 
 which they had in the mind and life of Jesus, as origin from 
 God and perfection in God, would form no true logical contrast. 
 
 § 10. The Source from which He derives His Knowledge 
 OF Heavenly Things 
 
 If, as has been accepted for centuries without investiga- 
 tion, and is still maintained, the Johannine Christ traces back 
 His higher knowledge and revelation of heavenly things to a 
 reminiscence of a pre-existent state, so that when He speaks 
 of having seen the Father, the expression must be placed iu 
 the time before His birth, then we must make up our minds 
 to regard the traditional conception of the pre-existence as a 
 previous personal life which the Logos as eternal Son enjoyed 
 in intercourse with the Father, as at least a part of the 
 Johannine view.^ Certainly, when one reads, vi. 46, oi^ 
 oTi TOP TTUTepa icopuKev tk' et /irj o cov irapa tov 6eov, ovto^ 
 edypuKev tov -rrarepa, it is very tempting to add in thought, 
 " when He was yet with the Father." Or when the Baptist 
 says, iii. 31, 32, "He that cometh from heaven is above all; 
 and what He hath seen and heard, that He testifieth," the 
 exposition is suggested, " what He hath seen and heard in 
 heaven before His coming." And yet the Baptist continues, 
 ver. 34 : "For He whom God hath sent speaketh the word of 
 God ; for God hath not given the Spirit by measure " (to Him 
 He hath sent) : he therefore deduces the speaking of the word 
 of God attributed to the Messiah 'from the Holy Spirit given 
 to Him without measure, — consequently, not from a seeing 
 
 1 Weiss, N. T. Theol. ii. p. 332 : " Pondering the origin of tMs unique 
 knowledge of God, Jesus becomes sensible that it is not to be traced back 
 to any point of His earthly life, or to any analogy in the experience of 
 other God-sent men. It is a completed fact of the past to which He 
 refers, and which continues only in its effects (iiipxxa.)." 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF 261 
 
 and hearing in a previous life. That whole notion, however 
 it may commend itself to a reader entangled in preconceived 
 opinions, appears on closer examination to be unnatural. If 
 we refer phrases such as a iym edopuKa irapa tw irarpi 
 (viii. 38); ttjv aXijOeiav, ^v rjKovaa •jraparov 6eov (viii. 40); 
 Kad(o<} eBiSa^ev fie 6 •jrari^p, ravTa XaXS) (viii. 28), to the pre- 
 existence, there arises a positively meaningless notion of the 
 Logos. Is the Logos the sum of all God's thoughts, the 
 fountain of all eternal wisdom and truth, to be thought of as 
 a child sitting at the Father's feet in order to be taught by 
 Him, in order to see and hear the eternal facts and truths ? 
 That is not an idea of the Logos with which one can credit 
 the evangelist, whoever he may be. Here also we need, 
 instead of expounding Scripture by preconceived dogmatic 
 opinions, to expound it according to the standard of its own 
 usage, in order to find the correct and intelligible view. To 
 see and to hear in the spiritual sense are the simple designa- 
 tions of how the prophets received the revelation, as it came 
 to them not in some heavenly pre-existence, but in their 
 earthly life. In this sense Jesus (v. 37) reproaches the heads 
 of the Jewish people, that they had " neither heard the voice 
 of God, nor seen His face " ; that is, they had in no way received 
 His revelation, nor believed in Him whom God hath sent. 
 In the same sense He says of Himself and the Baptist in 
 common, iii. 11:" We speak what we know, and testify what 
 we have seen." This having seen did not take place in a 
 pre-existent state in His case any more than in that of the 
 Baptist. Jesus no doubt exalts Himself above the Baptist 
 and all the prophets. That which in the Old Testament is 
 declared alone of Moses, that he saw God face to face (Num. 
 xii. 8), is claimed by Jesus for Himself in a higher sense and 
 with greater truth, and is based on His descent from God, on 
 that original endowment which has conferred on Him a 
 spiritual insight into the divine and eternal such as no one 
 had before or after Him. But in doing so He just as little 
 places it in the pre-existent state, as Moses' seeing of God 
 was placed by the Old Testament in a pre-existent state. 
 The meaning of the passage already adduced (vi. 44-46) is 
 explained in accordance with this. " Everyone who hears 
 and learns of the Father cometh to Me : not that any man 
 
262 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 hath seen the Father save He who is of God, He hath seen the 
 Father." That is to say, a certain revelation of God is given 
 to every man in order to put him on the way to Christ ; but 
 the perfect revelation, the open vision of God, is given directly 
 to none; only He who is derived from God knows Him 
 perfectly as the Father, and can reveal Him to others as the 
 Father. The assertion that there was no completed fact in 
 the earthly life of Jesus on which He could have looked back 
 with an ecopuKa rov irarepa, is without foundation. That 
 fundamental revelation in which He felt that He was called 
 to be the Messiah, and in which His divine Sonship first arose 
 on Him in its full meaning, might have been described as 
 " seeing the Father." When the heavens opened to Him at 
 His baptism, and the voice of God sounded to His heart, 
 " Thou art My beloved Son," then He saw the Father face to 
 face, for then He received the decisive impulse to reveal Him 
 to His brethren. Or is it unsuitable and un-Johannine to 
 speak of revelations of God within the earthly life of Jesus ? 
 Jesus Himself acknowledges such, even in the Fourth Gospel. 
 When He says, v. 30, "I can do nothing of Myself: as I hear 
 I judge,'' He means an uKoveiv irapa tov irarp6<; ; and when 
 He says, v. 2 0, " The Father loveth the Son, and showeth Him 
 all things that Himself doeth : and He vi^ill show Him greater 
 works than these," we have then an opav Trapa tS iraTpi in 
 addition to the aKoveiv Trapa tov TraTpo^, and a present seeing 
 as well as a future (Sei^ei), that is, a continuous revelation of 
 God in the life of the Lord.^ How could there fail to be, in 
 virtue of that decisive revelation of God in which He once for 
 all knew the Father and His own mission, and in His con- 
 stant Messianic intercourse with God, a continuous unfolding 
 throughout His life of new details of His purpose, and con- 
 tinuous divine directions and unveilings of what the Son must 
 do and suffer in the course of His life ? The conclusion will 
 now hold good that since Jesus spoke of seeing (or being 
 
 1 This against Weiss, N. T. Theol. ii. 332, who writes the remarkable 
 statement : " He nowhere speaks of divine revelations or visions which 
 were imparted to Him here on earth, as Beyschlag undertakes to prove." 
 I did not know that I had imdertaken to prove visions in the life of Jesus. 
 But were there no revelations ? Not even at the baptism and transfigura- 
 tion ? Was there no answer even to what He sought as a Son in prayer "i 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF 263 
 
 shown) and hearing divine things both in the present and in 
 the yet future, He cannot have brought the knowledge of 
 them with Him ready made from His pre-existent life. For 
 the expedient which regards Him as having brought with 
 Him ready made the treasure of eternal knowledge, but as 
 always having to receive from God directions for its use on 
 earth, is far too marvellous.^ Our evangelist could surely see 
 that He who had the absolute knowledge, would also have 
 "along with it the wisdom to use it. But it may be still more 
 convincingly proved that the deduction of the higher know- 
 ledge of Jesus from His pre-existence is a misconception 
 imported into the Johannine discourses. The proofs are as 
 follows: — (1) Jesus exclaims to the Jews, viii. 38 : "I speak 
 what I have seen with my Father ; and ye do what ye have 
 heard from your father." Here manifestly He contrasts His 
 having seen with God and their having heard from the devil, 
 as formally analogous to one another, in the one case divine 
 revelations, in the other diabolical suggestions. The distinc- 
 tion of opav irapcL Tm irarpi and uKoveiv wapa rov •narpo'i 
 seems to have been chosen to mark the contrast of God, who 
 shows Himself clearly, and the devil, who hides and whispers ; 
 but any insistence on this distinction is forbidden by ver. 40, 
 where Jesus quite in the same way declares the aKoveiv irapa 
 Tov irarpo's of Himself. It was as little in His mind to say 
 that the Jews brought with them to the earth, from a hellish 
 pre-existence, their murderous thoughts, as it was in His mind 
 to say that He brought with Him from His heavenly pre- 
 existence the divine truths which He speaks. (2) In chap. 
 XV. 15, Jesus says to His disciples in the farewell discourse: 
 iravra, a fjKovcra irapa toO Trarpo'i fiov, eyvcopiaa vfitv. It 
 needs no proof that the knowledge of the pre-existent Logos 
 or Son must be an actual omniscience which penetrates all the 
 mysteries in the world ; but it needs little proof that Jesus 
 did not communicate to His disciples a thorough knowledge of 
 all enigmas presented by the world, or all that an omniscient 
 Spirit might contain ; He showed only what needs to be known 
 for the salvation of sinful humanity. Now, if " all things 
 that He has heard of the Father " has the latter meaning, it 
 is evident that the hearing spoken of cannot belong to a 
 1 So Weiss, N. T. Theol. ii.-336. 
 
264 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 divine pre-existence, but only to a limited earthly life. (3) 
 Finally, the remarkable passage already alluded to (iii. 13) is 
 decisive. Here Jesus proves His fitness for speaking of 
 heavenly things, and gives a reason for reproaching them for 
 not believing in Him in the words: "And no man hath 
 ascended into heaven, save He who came down from heaven, 
 even the Son of Man who is in heaven." He therefore 
 declares His threefold relation to heaven ; He has come down 
 from heaven, that is. He has sprung from a higher world ; He 
 is (continuously) in heaven, that is. He lives and moves in 
 that higher world, and rests at all times on God's heart 
 (cf . i. 18: d av eh tov koKttov rov varpo';) ; finally. He has 
 ascended up to heaven, and on this He directly bases His 
 power to speak of heavenly things. There can, of course, be 
 no reference here to the subsequent ascension, which, indeed, 
 cannot be the source of His present knowledge. The reference 
 is to a spiritual ascension in the sense of Deut. xxx. 1 2 ; 
 Prov. xxx. 4, that is, an inner attainment to the vision of 
 God, a living knowledge of heavenly things. The facts that 
 He came down from heaven and was in heaven are sub- 
 ordinate to and account for this ascent to heaven ; that is, 
 because He had come from a higher world, and lived and 
 moved in it, He also possessed the capacity of raising Himself 
 to an understanding of its mysteries and to the knowledge 
 of the divine purpose. The passage is most instructive as 
 regards the whole circle of ideas with which we have hitherto 
 been occupied, and as regards the relation of idea and image 
 in it. It is clear that the passage refers to the same epoch- 
 making experience as the eapaKa rov nrarepa in chap. vi. 46, 
 in so far as ava/SefirjKev describes a particular moment of life. 
 But it is no less clear that it seals the proof of the reception 
 of His heavenly knowledge as taking place within the earthly 
 life of Jesus; for that which is attained by a spiritual 
 ascension from the earth to heaven is certainly not brought 
 with Him to earth in virtue of a personal descent from heaven . 
 
 § 11. Conclusion 
 
 All that in John goes beyond the synoptic account of the 
 testimony of Jesus to Himself is thus explained in a way 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF 265 
 
 which does not compel us to assume any substantial diversity 
 between the original thoughts of Jesus and the report of them, 
 however free, much less any inconsistency of John's account 
 with that of the Synoptics or with itself.^ And that is really 
 a proof of the correctness of our exposition. "While the 
 traditional exposition is scarcely able to conceal the internal 
 contradiction between its idea of pre-existence and the main 
 facts of Jesus' testimony to Himself as John records them, it 
 is wholly unable to explain the complete omission in the 
 Synoptics of what orthodoxy counts supreme ; on the other 
 hand, the critical conception is forced to admit that its Logos 
 idea is not developed in the Johannine discourses, and so that 
 idea does not explain Jesus' discourses in John. Our view is 
 that the Johannine record has enriched the synoptic presenta- 
 tion of the self-consciousness of Jesus in some of its develop- 
 ments which might easily have remained unknown to the 
 popular tradition ; but the main outline and construction of 
 the self-consciousness of Jesus is unchanged by John's con- 
 tribution — it is free from contradiction in itself, and is as 
 unique as simple. The addition to the Synoptics which the 
 Johannine account makes is a pure gain, even for historic 
 knowledge, in view of this result. Not only does the greater 
 wealth of the Johannine narrative confirm the synoptic, 
 which in many respects is scanty, but it supplements it by 
 certain most inward, and, as it were, hidden features of glory, 
 which perhaps none but the beloved disciple could have com- 
 prehended and preserved. In its portrayal of Jesus it shows 
 us how deep a sense He had of being a stranger on the earth, 
 although He took a loving interest in everything human ; it 
 
 1 The profound contradiction that runs through the testimony of Jesus 
 to Himself in John as Weiss views it, the contradiction between the most 
 express utterances of human dependence of the Son on the Father, and 
 the consciousness of an eternal divine personality, cannot have escaped his 
 own notice. Probably he reconciles his own mind to it by the Kenotic 
 theory. But this theory, besides being unthinkable, is not merely foreign 
 to the Gospel of John, but does not accomplish what it should. For 
 heavenly knowledge could scarcely flow from a latent or surrendered con- 
 sciousness of eternal Deity bound to earth ; and in the very moment in 
 which that consciousness awakes and breaks through as a memory, it must 
 vrither up any feeling of merely human dependence, and yet Jesus is able 
 out of that feeling to pray the intercessory prayer. 
 
266 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 shows His feeling that His true home was in a higher world, 
 and at the same time His majestic consciousness of being the 
 realisation in a human life of the idea of God's love, the per- 
 sonal realisation of the Eternal in time. 
 
 CHAPTEE IV 
 
 THE FOUNDING OF SALVATION 
 
 It is one proof of the foregoing view of the self-conscious- 
 ness of Jesus that the doctrine of the work of salvation 
 following upon it is simply that which is found in the 
 Synoptics. The doctrine on this subject is indeed in form 
 peculiar, but it contains no foreign elements. The same 
 facts as in the Synoptics are treated only in a new light, 
 sometimes with greater brevity and sometimes with more 
 detail. 
 
 § 1. The Kingdom of Heaven and Eternal Life 
 
 In the synoptic report Jesus begins with announcing the 
 salvation to be brought by the kingdom of heaven which is 
 now near at hand, and the echo of this announcement is not 
 entirely wanting in John. The kingdom of G-od appears in 
 the introductory conversation, chap. iii. 3 ; and the ^aaiXeia 
 Tcov ovpavwv, according to a well-attested reading, appears 
 also in ver. 5. The fact that henceforward this main idea of 
 Jesus in the Synoptics vanishes from His teaching as given 
 by John, makes its appearance here the more surprising, till 
 we discover that its place is taken by a very common equiva- 
 lent, ^(or) or ^asrj atcovio<i. Even in the Synoptics, (eternal) 
 life is such a complete equivalent for the kingdom of God, 
 that entering into the kingdom of God, and entering into 
 life, are put directly for each other (ef. Mark vii. 14 with 
 ver. 21; Matt, xviii. 8, 9; Mark ix. 45, 47; Luke x. 25, 
 xviii. 18, etc.), and therefore John has only exchanged the 
 Jewish theocratic idea of salvation for a more general and 
 mystic one used by Jesus Himself ; for what else is eternal 
 life than the kingdom of God, communion with God, especially 
 
THE FOUNDING OF SALTATION 267 
 
 when viewed as salvation of the individual, as the possession 
 that fills the individual soul ? Accordingly, in our Gospel, 
 the communication of " eternal life," or simply of " life," 
 which is the same thing, is posited as the aim of Christ's 
 mission and the summary of His work, just as in the 
 Synoptics that aim is the setting up of the kingdom of God'. 
 " As the Father hath life in Himself (that is, is the original 
 source of life), so hath He given to the Son to have life in 
 Himself," that is, to be the historical source of life for all 
 (v. 26). "Thou hast given Him power over all flesh, that 
 He may give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given 
 Him " (xvii. 2). " God so loved the world that He gave His 
 only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should 
 not perish, but have everlasting life." Now as in the 
 Synoptics Jesus at one time thinks of the kingdom of heaven 
 as already present, at another time as still future, — present 
 as a germinating seed, future as a completed development, — 
 so is it with eternal life in John. It is conceived as a goal 
 of future perfection when mention is made of a 77777^ vSaTo<; 
 dWo/iivov et's ^corjv alwviov (iv. 14), or of a ^pa)a-i<; fievovaa 
 eh i^atrjv almviov (vi. 27); when it is said (iv. 36), Oepl^wv 
 KOLpirov (Tvvwyei ei<; ^ar)v alcoviov, or (xii. 25), 6 fiia&v frjv 
 y^xr)(r]v avrov iv rm Koa-fia tovtw et? ^(orjv alwviov (^vka^ei, 
 avTrjv; even in the collocation 17 avdcrraat<; koL r) ^(orj (xi. 
 25), the ^toT? appears to be something brought about only by 
 the resurrection. But still more frequently is life conceived 
 as a present blessing, as the true inner life of the believer, 
 which already delivers him from the power of death : 6 rov 
 Xoyov fiov aKovwv kol inaTeiKov ra ire/Myp-avri fie e'^et ^corjv 
 aiaaviov, Koi eh Kplaiv ovk ep'^erai, aXKci fieTajSe^rjKev eK rov 
 davdrov eh ttjv ^corjv (v. 24), an idea which is often and 
 emphatically I'epeated (cf. vi. 40, 47, 54, viii. 51, x. 28, xi. 
 26). These observations about the concept t,(OT^ already set 
 aside a modern misconception, viz. the assertion made on the 
 basis of xvii. 3, that the ^mrj of the Johannine discourses of 
 Jesus is the knowledge of God.^ Though the statement : 
 
 1 So Weiss, N. T. Theol. vol. ii. p. 350 f. Eng. trans. A blunder 
 that is carried so far that it is said, p. 411, by appealing to v. 26, vi. 57 : 
 " As the Father and the Son are one, because they have in common the 
 life of fuU knowledge of God," etc. The fuU knowledge of God by God ? 
 
268 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 " This is eternal life, to know Thee the only true God, and 
 Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent," sounds like an explana- 
 tion of the concept ; yet it is evident that the intercessory 
 prayer would be the most unsuitable place for giving the 
 definition of a concept, and especially of one that had already 
 been used throughout the whole Gospel without needing such 
 definition. Evidently this statement in the prayer is only 
 meant to express how and by what means Jesus has hitherto 
 fulfilled (ver. 2) His commission to give eternal life to all flesh, 
 viz. by making men know the Father as the only true God, 
 and Himself as His ambassador; and so the tovto eariv 
 stands here manifestly in the sense of rests upon, or is pro- 
 cured by, — it does not make eternal life mean simply the 
 knowledge of God. Undoubtedly the evangelist regards 
 knowledge and life as things that are practically very closely 
 related, though in idea he regards them as distinct, just as 
 life and faith remain distinct, notwithstanding his statement, 
 o TTiaTevcov e%et ^a)r)v alcoviov. If the concept fwj) alcovio's 
 needed explanation, it would be given in the contrasts of fw^ 
 and 6dvaTo<i (v. 24), fw?; and airmXeia (iii. 16), or in the 
 figures of the bread of life and the living water which satisfy the 
 hunger and thirst of man (vi. 35, iv. 13, 14, vii. 37). Bu4i' 
 no explanation is required; ^arj is the true, satisfying, blessed 
 li^e which the human soul derives only from communion with 
 God. 
 
 § 2. Other Designations of the Blessing of Salvation 
 
 Although ^(orj is John's favourite expression for the 
 salvation which Jesus brought to the world, it is not by 
 any means the only designation of it, even apart from the 
 ySao-tXet'a of iii. 3, 5. Another idea which includes an 
 element of knowledge in salvation is " the light," with which 
 the thought of life is united, in order fully to express the 
 blessing of salvation (viii. 12: "he will have the light of 
 life"). That "the light has come into the world" (iii. 19) 
 is also a paraphrase of the rj'^'^iKev, or etpdaa-ev r] ^aa-Ckeia 
 ra)v ovpavwv, except that the kingdom of heaven in it appears 
 as a divine revelation or enlightenment to a world lying in 
 darkness (cf. xii. 46 : ijoo c^w? ek rdv Koa-fiov iXijXvBa, ha Tra? 
 
THE FOUNDING OF SALTATION 269 
 
 d iricnevcov ets e/ie iv ry crKoria firj fieivrf). Light is per- 
 sonified and applied to Jesus ; just as in xiv. 6 He calls 
 Himself the life, so in viii. 12 He calls Himself the light of 
 the world. He is the life, inasmuch as He awakens men 
 who are asleep in spiritual death to a new life of communion 
 with God (v. 25). He is the light, inasmuch as by the 
 revelation of God He enlightens those who are sitting in 
 spiritual darkness. But even here there is no thought of any 
 merely intellectual satisfaction. But, as already in the Old 
 Testament, " darkness and the shadow of death " are parallel 
 concepts, and as in the o-kotm from which men are to be 
 redeemed, intellectual and ethical darkness, error and sin, are 
 inseparably connected, so also in the light which Jesus brings 
 and is, their opposites are inseparably connected. For God, 
 whose revelation is this light, is the eternally true and 
 eternally good at the same time, and therefore in His light 
 the true and the good, that which enlightens the reason and 
 that which sanctifies the will, are inseparably united. The 
 truth, that is, the divine eternal truth, the revelation of God, 
 is only another less figurative expression for the light, and as 
 Jesus can say, " I am the light," He can also say, " I am the 
 truth" (xiv. 6). But this truth, as a holy truth, as the 
 revelation of the eternal Good, is something not merely to be 
 known, but also to be followed. As the evangelist speaks of 
 walking in the light (xii. 35), he also speaks of doing the 
 truth (iii 21), — though knowing the truth as the necessary 
 preliminary to doing it is certainly not neglected (viii. 32). 
 The concept Bo^a, which appears in the intercessory prayer, 
 may be adduced as a third designation of the blessing of 
 salvation. This Bo^a also is both a future and a present 
 blessing. At one time Jesus prays for it as a reward for 
 His life on earth (xvii. 5), and wills that His own may be 
 with Him in His heavenly life to see it (ver. 24) ; but at 
 another time He says He has already given it to them — Kuym 
 rrjv Bo^av, ^v BeBcoKo,^ ftoc, BiBcoKa avTot'i, "va Sxrw ev Ka6coi 
 r)fjLel<i ev. The gift of miracles cannot possibly be meant here, 
 as has been conjectured, for it is not this which makes 
 believers one with each other, as the Father and the Son are 
 one ; still less could Jesus ask for that gift as a reward of 
 His earthly life, and yet the Bo^a which He asks as a reward, 
 
270 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 aud that which He already possesses and has commtmicated 
 to His own, must be fundamentally the same. The Bc^a is 
 simply the glory of God, the splendour of the eternal light, 
 that is, His glorious self-revelation, which had hitherto been 
 contained and half concealed in Jesus, and had been com- 
 municated by Him to His own in His gospel (cf. i. 14); 
 now He prays that it may be revealed fully according to 
 its eternal idea 0]v el^ov ttjoo tov tov Koafiov eivai irapa c7ot), 
 in order that His own may see it in this full manifestation, 
 and enjoy it with Him. The harmony of John with the 
 Synoptics is shown once more in the fact that, along with 
 these descriptions of the blessing of salvation which are 
 peculiar to him, the simple Christian expression acoTrjpua is 
 not wanting (iv. 22 ; the verb aui^eiv, a-co^ea-dai, iii. 17, v. 34, 
 X. 9, xii. 47); it is the opposite of that avcoXeca which would 
 overtake man without the divine salvation. 
 
 § 3. The Means of Salvation 
 
 Now as Jesus is the personal Mediator of salvation to 
 whom the Father has given ^a>-qv e^eiv iv eavru, as He is the 
 way, the truth, and the life, His whole work in salvation will 
 aim at the communication of Himself. But how is that 
 done ? First of all, as the Synoptics also say, by the word 
 which is the universal instrument which God has given for 
 this communication. As in the Synoptics, so also in John, 
 Jesus is the Sower who in His teaching scatters the seeds of 
 eternal life (iv. 36, 37, where we have the same image as in 
 Mark iv., Matt, xiii., Luke viii.). That which above all 
 attracts and holds His disciples is " the words of eternal life," 
 which He has like no other man (vi. 68). It is His gospel 
 that He offers to the Samaritan woman under the figure of a 
 " fountain of living water," which can for ever allay the thirst 
 of the soul, and which can even create in the heart a well of 
 water springing up into everlasting life (iv. 14; cf. vii. 37, 
 38). And this view of the word in His teaching, as an 
 essential means of salvation, runs through the whole Gospel 
 from beginning to end, so that one sees, even more clearly 
 than in the Synoptics, that it was Jesus' own original view. 
 Whosoever " abideth in His words is recognised as His 
 
THE FOUNDING OF SALVATION 271 
 
 disciple indeed," and the truth when known will make him 
 (morally) free, will free him from the bondage of sin (viii. 32), 
 " He that heareth My words, and believeth on Him that sent 
 Me (an expression which in its synoptic simplicity reminds 
 us of Mark i. 14, 15), hath eternal life" (v. 24). Again : 
 " He that receiveth not My words, hath one that judgeth 
 him ; the word that I have spoken will judge him at the last 
 day" (xii. 48). "His disciples are already clean, because of 
 the word which He hath spoken to them " (xv. 3). " If they 
 abide in His words, and His words abide in them, they will 
 be able to ask what they will from the Father" (xv. 7). 
 Thus in the intercessory prayer Jesus can find His whole life- 
 work in having delivered to His own the words which the 
 Father had given Him (xviL 8), and even before Pilate He 
 described it as the essence of His mission to bear witness to 
 the truth (xviii. 37). And is this not reasonable? If His 
 doctrine is not His word but the Father's, that is, God's word 
 (vii. 16, 17, xii. 44-50), if His words are on that account 
 spirit and life, they must be able to beget, save, and sanctify 
 life. But in John also we see how the experience came to 
 Him which called forth the great saying (Matt. xi. 25), that 
 His words remain inoperative where He Himself is not 
 received, and is not allowed to rule the heart and win its 
 love ; and so, both in John and the Synoptics, though John's 
 account is fuller and more distinct. His preaching passes from 
 speaking of the saving power of His words to insisting on the 
 saving power of His person, and of personal fellowship with 
 Him. Both methods of teaching run significantly alongside 
 of each other through the Gospel, testifying that neither of 
 the two excludes the other. Sometimes He says : " Believe 
 Me, believe Him who sent Me," that is, believe in the word ; 
 but at other times He says : " Believe in Me," — ^just as in 
 Luke ix. 26 the words idi/ rt? fiov aKovcrji twv pijfidrcov koi 
 firj <f}vXd^y, and o dOerwv e/xe Kal firj Xa/ij3dvo}v rd py/iard 
 fiov, stand close beside each other (xii. 47, 48). But we 
 may also perceive in John the trace of a gradual development? 
 of the teaching of Jesus, such as we have noticed in the 
 Synoptics, from His early confidence in the might of the 
 Gospel itself, up to His perception that His surrender to 
 death is necessary to salvation. After the fifth chapter has 
 
272 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 set before us how the resistance and attacks of the " wise and 
 prudent " threw the Messiah back more than before on His 
 sublime self-consciousness, the sixth chapter is purposely 
 devoted to showing how that enlightened consciousness of 
 being a Son grew into the consciousness of being a personal 
 Saviour, — a fine parallel to, and exposition of, Matt. xi. 
 25-30. The great discourse about the bread of life, which 
 is, of course, in this form a creation of the evangelist, com- 
 prehends to some extent the three stages of Jesus' doctrine of 
 salvation which we distinguish in the Synoptics. It starts 
 from the idea of the word as an essential means of salvation, 
 for it speaks first only of the bread of life which the Son of 
 Man gives, and which may be interpreted as one and the 
 same with the living water of the fourth chapter (vl. 27). 
 But then it advances to the " I am the bread of life," and in 
 its varying phrases preserves this as its central idea. We 
 have in this the idea that a personal living communion with 
 Christ is necessary to salvation, — the same idea which Jesus 
 afterwards, in different imagery, urges on His disciples in the 
 discourse about the vine and its branches. Jesus is the per- 
 sonal manifestation of the life from God and in God which 
 all men need, and therefore His person is the true means of 
 salvation, the heavenly bread, the living and life-giving bread 
 which has come down from heaven to the world. Only by 
 eating this bread, that is, by receiving into ourselves this 
 personal life, and assimilating it like food and drink, do we 
 become partakers of the true life that overcomes death. But 
 can a man walking among men within the limits of an 
 earthly existence communicate himself to such an extent as 
 to dwell in the hearts of many, possibly of all, or become the 
 food and drink of their inner life ? Jesus did not raise this 
 question in the midtime of His ministry, when He began to 
 preach, " Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy 
 laden, and I will give you rest " ; it was first forced on Him 
 when face to face with His approaching death. But the 
 evangelist, in a free suggestive combination, has here intro- 
 duced an idea which in the actual life of Jesus only appears 
 in the institxition of the Supper. That idea is : " In order to 
 become the bread and drink for all, to be able to communicate 
 Myself inwardly for the eternal life of all, I must sacrifice My 
 
THE FOUNDING OF SALVATION 273 
 
 personal life, and through death pass into another and higher 
 form of existence, I must let My body be broken and My 
 blood be shed for the life of the world." That is the turn 
 which the evangelist gives the discourse on the bread of life 
 (vi. 51), by making Jesus go on to say, not, " I am the bread 
 of life," but, " The bread which I shall give is My flesh, which 
 I shall give for the life of the world." It is the idea that 
 His death is necessary to salvation which here stands out in 
 the development of His doctrine of salvation ; but this idea 
 calls for independent discussion. 
 
 § 4, Saving Significance of the Death of Jesus 
 
 The train of thought hitherto pursued leads us to recog- 
 nise an indirect necessity of the death of Jesus for salvation ; 
 His death was the passage into a state of glory in which He 
 could act effectively, and truly live within His own. And 
 this idea, which we have in the Synoptics in Luke xii. 49, 50, 
 is also contained in the institution of the Supper, and is 
 repeatedly expressed by Jesus in John. " It is expedient for 
 you that I go away : for if I go not away, the Comforter will 
 not come to you ; but if I go away, I will send Him unto you '' 
 (xvi. 7). " Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground, and 
 die, it abideth alone ; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." 
 The idea everywhere, just as in vi. 5 1 f., is that of being set 
 free by death as a spiritual and living power, a irvev/xa 
 ^aoiroiovv, which can really find entrance to the susceptible 
 soul, and so reproduce its own inmost nature in many ; that 
 is. He fixes attention, not so much on the death as the saving 
 fact, as on the resurrection and what follows from it, the 
 exaltation and glorification. But He knew also a direct 
 necessity of His death for salvation. His death, indeed, was 
 not at the first a certainty to Him ; only by a late Johannine 
 interpretation is the thought of His death imported into 
 earlier words, such as ii. 19—21, iii. 14. But as He saw that 
 men love darkness rather than the light (iii. 19), that they hate 
 the light which has come into the world, because it reproves 
 their evil works (vii. 7), God's purpose became clear to Him. 
 Even in that guilty resolve to extinguish the light that has 
 appeared He recognised the purpose of His heavenly Father 
 
 beyschlag. — I. i8 
 
274 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 to glorify Him through apparent defeat, and to make the 
 utmost exertion of the powers of evil which rule the world 
 result in a triumph of holy love which should set the world 
 free. " A hireling who is not the shepherd, whose own the 
 sheep are not," He says (x. 12), in view of His threatened 
 death, — "a hireling seeth the wolf coming,and leaveth the sheep, 
 and fleeth ; and the wolf catcheth, and scattereth the sheep. 
 I am the Good Shepherd, and lay down my life for the sheep." 
 The mortal conflict between the cause of God's kingdom and 
 the self-seeking of the authorities, which was being waged in 
 Israel, must have ended with the defeat of the little flock 
 gathered by Jesus, if He had not made it one with Himself 
 and carried.it onward in apparent defeat to spiritual victory. 
 That situation and its decision, however, were not of temporary, 
 but of permanent and universal interest. The spirit which 
 in Israel resisted Jesus, is the prince of this world, the spirit 
 of selfishness, deceit, and hatred which rules the world, and 
 which has a hold on all men but one (xiv. 30) ; this spirit of 
 the world must be conquered by one for all, in order that his 
 dominion in the world may once for all be broken, and power 
 be won for all to tread him under their feet. It is this view 
 which Jesus in xii. 31 f. sets forth with regard to His 
 approaching death. " Now is the judgment of this world ; 
 now is the prince of this world cast out (dethroned). And I, if 
 I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me." 
 The hour of decision between the spirit of this world and the 
 Prince of eternal love has arrived. The world accomplishes 
 its own judgment by revealing the completeness of its sinful 
 and lost condition, and at the same time the impotence of its 
 hatred and enmity to God. But the spirit of selfishness 
 ceases to be the ruler of the world when the utmost possible 
 sin is outdone by the unswerving obedience of Jesus, even 
 unto death. A stronger than he has morally overcome this 
 spirit, and from the heavenly throne which He obtains, in 
 consequence of that victory. He will draw all men after Him 
 by giving them His own victorious power over selfishness and 
 sin. His death therefore says to His own, "Be of good 
 cheer; I have overcome the world " (xvi. 33), as His victory is 
 to be theirs also. That enables us to understand those utter- 
 ances, in which a purifying and sanctifying significance is 
 
THE FOUNDING OF SALVATION 275 
 
 attributed to His death for His own. The synoptic saying 
 about the Son of Man who came not to be ministered unto, 
 but to minister, and give His life a ransom for many (Matt. 
 XX. 28), is to some extent in John's Gospel, in the symbolical 
 action of the feet washing. That was the last service of love 
 which, as a true servant. He would render for His own upon 
 the cross, and it represented in its " cleansing," whieh-is 
 expressly mentioned, the influence which His surrender to 
 death would have upon His own. For it is worthy of special 
 notice, in the first place, that Jesus expressly repudiates the 
 idea that His death is necessary to begin or to establish the 
 moral purity of His own. " He that is bathed needeth not, 
 save to have his feet washed, but is clean every whit : and ye 
 are clean" (xiii. 10) — clean because of the word which I have 
 spoken unto (xv. 3). His death therefore is not the first 
 thing that purifies and sanctifies His own, for that is already 
 done by the word of His teaching. His death is only to 
 complete the work of cleansing which His whole intercourse 
 with them as a teacher had begun. And it really has the 
 power of completing it ; for the highest act of divine love is 
 to lay down life itself in obedience to God and in love for the 
 brethren (x. 17,. 18, xv. 13); how could such an act fail to 
 cleanse from all remains of sinful self-seeking those who lay 
 it to heart? Again, the words of the intercessory prayer, 
 virep ainSiv dyid^o) efiavrov, "va axjiv Kal avTol rjyi.acr/j.evoi 
 iv d\r]deLa (xvii. 19) are a true parallel to the "for you" in 
 the institution of the Supper, — like the passage (vi. 51) already 
 discussed. There can be no doubt that these words refer to 
 His self-consecration to death, and so the idea of sacrifice 
 contained in the synoptic words of institution in their two- 
 fold allusion to the Passover and the covenant sacrifice come 
 here also into prominence. But here again we find no dvri, 
 instead of, but {nrep, for the advantage of, and the sacrificial 
 death of Jesus is described, not as aiming at an atonement of 
 the guilt of the disciples, but at their sanctification in (the) 
 truth (ver. 17), by which is undeniably meant the ethical 
 sanctification of their hearts and their walk. The image of 
 the brazen serpent in iii. 14, even if Jesus meant it to allude 
 to the death upon the cross, does not point to an atonement, 
 but to recovery, that is, regeneration, and so the idea of 
 
276 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 propitiation (cancelling of guilt) through the death of Jesus, 
 although it is not unknown to the evangelist (1 John ii. 2), 
 nowhere appears in Jesus' own words. That is an indication 
 that if we are to think and teach according to the Scriptures, 
 the idea of propitiation is not to be made the chief element 
 to which the morally redeeming power of the death of Jesus 
 must be subordinated, far less the exclusive element in the 
 saving significance of that death. It is the cleansing and 
 sanctifying aim of Jesus' sacrifice of Himself that appears 
 here so emphatically, and what we have called the indirect 
 saving significance of the death of Jesus is here united with 
 the direct, for in the view of our Gospel the death of Jesus is 
 assuredly to exercise a cleansing, sanctifying influence, not 
 merely by the moral impression of a past event, but by the 
 mighty spiritual influence which the Crucified exercises on 
 His own, as the Eisen and Glorified One. We may therefore 
 say that the Johannine Christ, as we will find again in the 
 teaching of Paul, and have already found in the synoptic 
 institution of the Supper, places salvation not in His death 
 per se, but in His death in connection with His resurrection 
 and glorification. His death upon the cross was an incom- 
 parable act of obedience to the Father (xiv. 31) and of love 
 to the brethren (xv. 13), and so it was the perfecting of His 
 character ; but it was also the reason of His exaltation and 
 glorification. The two aspects are inseparable, and in both 
 the death had a redemptive power upon His own. 
 
 § 5. Glorification of Jesus and sending of the Spieit 
 
 The death of Jesus therefore issues in an exalted life in 
 which He was sure that He would exercise an enhanced 
 activity and — simply in virtue of His life and death — would 
 first attain to a full communication of Himself. " I, if I be 
 lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me " (xii. 32). 
 The evangelist, in accordance with the literal mode of exposi- 
 tion of his time, has applied this v-^codrjvai e/c Tij<! 75}? to the 
 visible lifting up upon the cross ; but Jesus assuredly had a 
 more comprehensive and spiritual intention ; He thought of 
 His return to the Father, of His exaltation to glory which 
 should result from His death, and for which He prayed in the 
 
THE FOUNDING OF SALVATION 277 
 
 intercessory prayer (cf. vi. 62). Of the activity which He 
 intends to exert in His state of exaltation Jesus speaks 
 especially in His farewell discourse ; but His utterances are 
 twofold, and seem to be inconsistent with each other. At one 
 time He comforts His disciples with the promise of His own 
 return to an abiding blessed communion. He will not leave 
 them orphaned, but only goes away that He may prepare a 
 place for them in the eternal Father's house, and will then 
 come again to receive them to Himself (xiv. 3, xviii. 28). A 
 little while, and they should see Him no more : and again a 
 little while, and they should see Him ; and then no man should 
 take their joy from them (xvi. 17-22). But at other times 
 His words imply a continuous absence from them. They 
 work and suffer here on earth, but He is in heaven with the 
 Father, active in their interests, and specially He prays that 
 they may have a substitute for His presence which till then 
 they had enjoyed. He will send to them another Paraclete, 
 that is, an Advocate, a Helper,^ who will take His place and 
 abide with them for ever, the Spirit of truth who proceedeth 
 from the Father, whom the world cannot receive, and who 
 shall lead them, the disciples, into all truth (xiv. 16, xvi. 7). 
 It is natural to think of distinguishing between these two 
 predictions so as to refer the first to the experience of the 
 disciples at Easter, the latter to their experience at Pentecost ; 
 but the most recent attempt thus to distinguish only reveals 
 the impossibility of establishing such an interpretation.^ The 
 promised reunion of Jesus with His disciples comprehends, of 
 course, the facts of Easter, as is most perceptible in the words, 
 " a little while, and ye shall not see Me : and again a little 
 while, and ye shall see Me " (xvi. 16, 19-22) ; it also perhaps 
 — in the passage xiv. 3, " I will come again, and receive you 
 to myself ; that where I am, there ye may be also " — com- 
 prehends the idea of the final parousia. It does not, however, 
 
 ^ Not Comforter, as Luther confusing ■x-apax.'Krrz-o;, advocatus, with 
 irxpctKy^'iTap, ccmsolator, has translated. 
 
 2 So Weiss, N. T. Theol. ii. 407, by assuming at the same time refer- 
 ences to the final parousia {e.g. xiv. 3). When the assertion is there made, 
 in opposition to Reuss, that " communion with Christ is not at all con- 
 ceived as mediated by the Holy Spirit," we may ask, How then is it to be 
 otherwise conceived ? 
 
278 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 exclude, but includes the intervening spiritual communion 
 with the glorified One. The various promises are by nd 
 means exhausted by a visible return for a little, as on Easter 
 Day, or by a far oif reunion in a higher world ; they refer to 
 the establishment of a new and enduring communion of an 
 essentially inward and spiritual kind. " I will not leave you 
 orphaned ; I will come to you. And on that day ye will know 
 that I am in the Father, and ye in Me, and I in you. I will 
 see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no 
 man taketh from you ; on that day ye shall ask me nothing." 
 These are promises which the experience of the disciples at 
 Easter did not exhaust. On the contrary, the relation of 
 Jesus to His disciples, which was to begin after the resurrec- 
 tion, was described by Him repeatedly in words like these. He 
 will reveal Himself to them in a perfect way {ijijiavlaw, 
 xiv. 21). He will speak with them no longer in parables, but 
 will show them plainly of the Father (xvi. 21). He promises 
 them that He and the Father will come to them, and make 
 their abode with them (xiv. 23), in which He manifestly 
 describes the very same relation as the occurrence at Pente- 
 cost made possible. It is plain that Jesus, while seeking to 
 help His disciples over the abyss of separation by His com- 
 forting promises, used two figures in describing the future, 
 which John has mixed, perhaps intentionally, in composing 
 His farewell discourse. These two were as follows : first, 
 that view of His personal return, or parousia, as coming 
 immediately after His death (avr' a'/sTt, Matt. xxvi. 64); an 
 idea the most original and genuine form of which we shall 
 probably discern by noting that resurrection, the mission of 
 the Spirit, the hometaking of His own, were not separate facts 
 in Jesus' view of the future, but composed one picture of 
 victory, one connected future act. And, in the second place, 
 was the Old Testament promise of the Spirit of God which in 
 the Messianic time was to be poured out on all flesh. This 
 promise had been recently revived by the Baptist, and from 
 that Spirit He expected that His own°should receive power 
 from on high for the performance of their tasks in the world, 
 and that what He left behind imprinted on their memories 
 should be quickened and interpreted in their minds, and so 
 He should be glorified in them (xvi. 14). Here then we 
 
THE FOUNDING OF SALVATION 279 
 
 have — though much more abundantly attested — the same 
 twofold mode of teaching as in the Synoptics. As Jesus 
 there promised to His disciples, for their apostolic activity, 
 the " Spirit of their Father," who is to speak through them 
 (Matt. X. 20 ; cf. Luke xxiv. 49), but at the same time 
 reserved to Himself the founding and leading of His Church 
 after His-departure (Matt. xvi. 18, xviii. 20), and promised that 
 He would remain with His own to the end of the world (Matt, 
 xxviii. 2 0) — precisely so is it in the farewell discourse in John. 
 
 § 6. The Glokified Chkist and the Holy Spieit 
 
 But how are these two modes of teaching to be reconciled 
 with one another ? It is evident that the two notions, on the 
 one hand that Jesus is away in heaven and has a representa- 
 tive on earth, the Paraclete, and on the other that He is 
 always present and has communion with His people on earth, 
 mutually exclude each other as forms of representation. But 
 it is just as evident that the ideas underlying these notions 
 must be in unison, as Jesus could not have seriously thought 
 of Himself as at the same time constantly absent from, and 
 yet continuously present on the earth, but must have thought 
 only of the change of form ; His presence in the world was to 
 be no longer visible but invisible, and he looked forward to it, 
 now as a (sensuous) separation from His own, and now as a 
 (spiritual) reunion with them. Even this view will not solve 
 the riddle to anyone who regards the glorified Christ and the 
 Holy Spirit as two different persons. But the notion of the 
 Holy Spirit as a third divine personality — a personality which 
 is miraculously poured out and bestowed — is one of the most 
 disastrous importations into the Holy Scriptures. When the 
 Holy Spirit is spoken of in the Johannine farewell discourse 
 as a person, when, for example, it is said of Him, " He will 
 not speak of Himself; but what He heareth, that will He speak: 
 and He will show you things to come; He will take of Mine, 
 and will show it unto you" (xvi. 13, 14), that is just a pic- 
 torial personification, such as corresponds to the representation 
 of the Spirit as another Advocate (with the Father) in the 
 place of Jesus ; while the same evangelist in his First Epistle 
 treats the same Spirit impersonally as XP^'^'H^ (anointing), 
 
280 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 1 John ii. 26, 27. The Holy Spirit " hears " by means of the 
 spiritual ears of those who have Him. He proclaims by the 
 moiith of the prophet, precisely as He prays and cries " Abba " 
 out of the heart of the believer (Rom. viii. 15, 26). He is 
 the spirit and the life of Christ in the believer ; He is — and 
 this is the solution of the whole riddle — the Christ in us 
 (Eom. viii. 9; cf. with ver. 10). There can be no doubt 
 that that is also the meaning of the Johannine words con- 
 cerning the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was not yet (viz. 
 there was as yet no Holy Spirit in the New Testament sense), 
 writes the evangelist (vii. 39), for Jesus was not yet glorified; 
 by which he explains beforehand that the Holy Spirit as 
 understood in the Christian doctrine of salvation is nothing 
 else than the glorified Christ with us and in us. There was 
 no way in which he and his readers could conceive of the 
 Father and the Son as coming, and making their abode in 
 them, except that the Spirit of the Father and the Son should 
 possess and dwell in them. What distinction could they have 
 imagined between, " I will manifest Myself to you " (invisibly, 
 inwardly, spiritually), and, " The Spirit will glorify Me in you, 
 and will explain to you all things that I have spoken unto 
 you " ? But Jesus Himself reduces both notions to a unity 
 when He says in the farewell discourse : " It is expedient for 
 you that I go away : for if I go not away, the Paraclete will 
 not come to you ; but if I go away, I will send Him unto you " 
 (xvi. 7). If I go not away, the Spirit, the Paraclete, will not 
 come to you : that cannot be understood as meaning that 
 He could not have prayed the Father while on earth to send 
 the Spirit to His disciples. It can only be meant in the 
 sense of that saying of the corn of wheat whose present form 
 must be dissolved in order that it may be reproduced in an- 
 other hidden but exalted form, in much fruit. In accordance 
 with what we have already recognised to be Jesus' meaning 
 and view of His death, the Saviour's life must change its 
 form ; He must no longer be seen as a man on earth when 
 His work as such is done ; as Saviour He must now appear as 
 a spiritual power in order to exercise an effective influence 
 on His own, and through them on the world ; He must, as 
 Paul says (1 Cor. xv. 45 ; cf. John vi. 63), become a irvevna 
 ^woTTotovv, in order to reappear as an eternal principle of life 
 
THE FOUNDING OF SALVATION 281 
 
 in the disciples after the temporary extinction of death. Not- 
 withstanding this relative unity of the glorified Christ and the 
 Holy Spirit, there still remains, according to the Johannine fare- 
 well discourses, a twofold distinction. First, the glorified Christ 
 does not simply become a Holy Spirit present in the world and 
 acting on it, but remains in His perfect personal existence with 
 the Father above the world, as the sun remains in the heavens, 
 and yet at the same time is lightening and warming the earth. 
 Neither is His activity as Saviour exhaiisted in the spiritual 
 effects He produces in His own, but He continues active in 
 their interests, interceding with the Father, as it is said xiv. 
 13, 16 (even the iroirja-oa in the first passage has manifestly 
 the significance of a mediating action; cf. xvi. 23). The 
 meaning is clear: so long as Christ is not fully formed in 
 believers, His mediatorial position between them and the 
 Father, His virepevTvyx^dveiv inrep axnwv, as Paul names it 
 (Eom. viii. 34; cf. 1 John ii. 1), must still continue, in virtue 
 of which the Father grants to them, for love of Him, what 
 He cannot yet do for love to them in the full sense of the 
 word ; but it is indicated that the object of this intercession 
 is to make itself superfluous, and to bring the disciples more 
 and more into an immediate and perfect relation of love to 
 the Father (xiv. 23, xvi. 26, 27). The other distinction con- 
 sists in this, that the activity of the Spirit, even on earth, has 
 to some extent narrower limits than that of the glorified 
 Christ. The Spirit is not independent ; He cannot reveal 
 anything really new, but — says Jesus — He will take of Mine 
 and glorify Me (xvi. 13, 14). And this means that the 
 spiritual life of Christendom, which has a subjective side, 
 and therefore is a free inward development of the Christian 
 consciousness, can never go beyond Christ, but can only more 
 perfectly expound Him : it retains in His historical person 
 the abiding source and perfect standard of its development. 
 Nor is there any need for wishing to get past Him, for " all 
 that the Father hath is Mine," that is, the whole of God's 
 revelation of salvation is treasured up in Christ (ver. 1 5 ; 
 Matt. xi. 25). A third and purely formal distinction may 
 be adduced; in the Johannine farewell discourse the Holy 
 Spirit is described with a certain onesidedness — no doubt from 
 Old Testament influence — as a prophetic, not as an ethical 
 
282 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 principle. He " teaches," " leads into all the truth," declares 
 also things to come, that is, He is the principle of early 
 Christian prophecy (xvi. 13); the activity which is directly 
 indicated in the name Holy Spirit, and which Paul so de- 
 cidedly ascribes to Him in Eom. viii., is not yet declared of 
 Him. On the contrary, Jesus certainly ascribes this activity 
 to Himself in the form of His glorified continuous life in His 
 own; He not only declares and reveals. He communicates 
 holy powers ; He is the vine, and they the branches ; without 
 Him they can do nothing, nothing that would stand before 
 God and in eternity. But His power. His glorified life, works 
 in them, so that they bring forth much fruit under the purify- 
 ing discipline of His heavenly Father, who guides their destiny, 
 and they become inwardly richer and purer to the blessing of 
 the world and the salvation of themselves (xv. 1 f.). And this 
 sanctifying activity is, as the intercessory prayer lets us see, the 
 real goal of His life, death, and continued life in them (xvii. 19). 
 
 CHAPTEE V 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OE ETEKNAL LIFE 
 
 Having now considered the fact of the founding of salva- 
 tion in the teaching, self-sacrifice, and glorification of Jesus, 
 we now pass to the progress of the realising of salvation as it 
 is accomplished in the individual, in the Christian community, 
 and in the predicted issues of the world. We shall bring to- 
 gether under the point of view of the development of eternal 
 life, whatever the Johannine words of Jesus contain concern- 
 ing the way of salvation, the community of salvation, and 
 the completion of salvation. 
 
 § 1. Way of Salvation 
 
 John's account of the way of salvation is in no way 
 opposed to the synoptic, but it bears marks of that process of 
 selection and amplification which has repeatedly been noted. 
 The main points of it are contained in the conversation with 
 Nicodemus, which is a sort of manifesto of Jesusi There is 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF ETERNAL LIFE 283 
 
 no express mention of repentance and forgiveness of sin. 
 The latter, except in the commission given to the disciples 
 (xx. 23), never gets expression in the Fourth Gospel. On the 
 other hand, in that introductory discourse, fierdvoia, just as in 
 the Synoptics, is the fundamental condition of sharing in the 
 kingdom of God, not the word but the thing: iav fit] rt? 
 jevvT)9T] dvcodev, ov Bvvarai IBelv ttjv ^aaCKeiav rod 6eov (iii. 
 3). The idea of the second birth of the new beginning of 
 life required for " seeing," that is, coming to know or obtain 
 the kingdom of God,^ is manifestly nothing else than the pro- 
 foundest idea of the change of mind, guarded against all 
 superficial interpretations. This new beginning of life is 
 more closely described — in connection probably with John's 
 baptism of water, and the baptism of the Spirit which He pre- 
 dicted — as a birth by water and the Spirit (ver. 5) ; that is, 
 as one which rests on a purifying washing (forgiveness of sin), 
 and is to be produced by the Spirit, the divine principle of 
 life; in the verses immediately following (6—8), the Spirit 
 alone is emphasised as the determining agent. But although 
 this idea of the new birth closely corresponds to the funda- 
 mental idea of eternal life dominating Jesus' doctrine of sal- 
 vation, the Gospel does not refer to it again ; perhaps for this 
 reason, that only at His departure does Jesus promise to send 
 the Spirit, whose presence is the presupposition of the birth 
 from the Spirit, and therefore the full realisation of the 
 demands which He makes on Mcodemus appears to be post- 
 poned to the time of His own glorification. In sharp con- 
 trast to the synoptic teaching, in which the preaching calls 
 for the ZiKaioarvvq 6eov, which is the fulfilling of the law, 
 /j,eTdvota as a fundamental requirement is replaced by faith, 
 which is not, indeed, foreign to the Synoptics, but as thus 
 emphasised is evidently a reflex of the mode of thinking 
 peculiar to John. First of all, inaTeveiv is required as belief 
 in the truth and divine origin of the preaching of Jesus (iii. 
 12, V. 24, 47, X. 25, 38, etc.), similarly Mark i. 15; an 
 elementary kind of faith, to which faith because of the works 
 
 ^ We prefer the interpretation of &va6iii = iterum, anew (Gal. iv 9), 
 to the "from above'' which has recently come into favour, because the 
 rejoinder of Nicodemus (ver. 4) is only conceivable in the case of the 
 former. 
 
284 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 (or miracles) of Jesus, such as that, for example, with which 
 Mcodemus came tb Him (iii. 2), is related as one of an easier 
 and inferior type (cf. xiv. 11). But the idea of faith is 
 deepened in the phrases •n-ia-reveiv ets deov, eh Xpicrrov, for 
 which we have also Tria-reveiv iv avraj (iii. 15), or even "Trta- 
 revew ek ro ovo/ia (tov vlov rov deov), that is, on the person 
 and heaven-sent dignity of Jesus (iii. 18; cf. xvii. 11); or, 
 finally, ■n-ia-Tevei.v simply (iii. 18, vi. 47). This inareveiv eh 
 appears with special expressiveness in the passage (xiv. 1) in 
 the sense of the synoptic e^ere ircaTiv deov (Mark xi. 22); 
 ina-TeveTe ek deov, koL ek i/J.e -Tria-TeveTe, where the fundamental 
 significance of confident reliance and hearty trust is prominent. 
 Without doubt the expression •n-Knevetv ets Xpia-rov (or xii. 36, 
 ek TO <f>m), very rare in the Synoptics, but here exceedingly 
 frequent,. is, as regards its form, to be attributed to the evan- 
 gelist himself, though in substance it coincides with certain 
 synoptic expressions of heartfelt belief in Jesus as the 
 Saviour, which are found here and there beside it, such as 
 ep^ea-dai, TT/ao? /le (v. 40, vi. 35, where the synonymity with 
 TTia-Teveiv eh ifie is clear, vi. 37 ; cf. Matt. xi. 28) aKoXovdelv 
 ifioi (viii. 12 ; cf. Matt. xvL 24), or Xafi^dveip e'yue (xiii. 20 ; 
 cf. the Se')(^ea-Oai, Matt. x. 40 ; Luke ix. 48). The fashioning of 
 this idea of faith reaches its climax in the sixth chapter, where 
 faith in Christ is explained by the figure of eating the bread 
 of life : " I am the bread of life : he that cometh to Me shall 
 not hunger ; and he that believeth on Me shall never thirst " 
 (vi. 35). Accordingly, to believe in Christ is to receive Him 
 inwardly, to appropriate Him inwardly, to let Him live and 
 work in one, — a process by which the idea of the new birth is 
 uncLuestionably realised. Of this faith it is clear that it 
 immediately confers eternal life (a/A?)i' afju^v \eyco viuv, 6 
 m-KTzevav exet ^(o^v alcovMv, vi. 47), for it has appropriated 
 Christ who is the life (xiv. 6). A concept related to this of 
 faith, which preserves it from any appearance of blind want 
 of understanding, is that of knowledge; this is the reflection of 
 faith in the thinking mind, the grasping and possession of the 
 light which is again only another side of eternal life. Of 
 course, a merely intellectual knowing is not meant, but a 
 knowing with the heart, which in its biblical usage signifies 
 the undivided unity of the spiritual activities. This knowing, 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF ETERNAL LIFE 285 
 
 therefore, depends on moral conditions : he who willeth to do 
 God's will, yvcoaerai irepX t^? StSa;j^^? (vii. 17). And it is 
 morally operative, " You shall know the truth, and the truth 
 shall make you free" (spiritually and morally, viii. 32). The 
 world, it is said xiv. 17, cannot receive the Spirit of God, 
 because it cannot see Him or know Him, that is, because it 
 has not developed any capacity for the perception and know- 
 ledge of Him, — such a capacity is therefore the precondition of 
 receiving Him. The world knows neither the Son nor the Father 
 (xvi. 3) ; on the other hand, the disciples of Jesus know the 
 Father as the only true God, and Jesus Christ as Him whom 
 He hath sent, and in virtue of this knowledge — whose 
 relationship with faith is very evident here — they have 
 eternal life (xvii. 3). As to the conditions that produce this 
 believing knowledge, this discerning faith, the Johannine 
 assertions entirely agree with the synoptic ; those conditions 
 lie in the gracious leading of God just as much as in the 
 free self-determination of man. Man believes not because he 
 wills to do so : God must teach him, must draw him to His 
 Son, and give him to Him as His own (vi. 37, 44, 45, xvii. 9 
 — quite in the same way as it is said of the disciples. Matt. 
 xiii. 11, "To you it is given to know the mysteries of the 
 kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given "). But that 
 is no arbitrary choice of grace ; they are all to be taught of 
 God, but they do not all hear or learn (vi. 45). In many 
 ways the Father testifies of the Son in order to lead men to 
 Him; thus, in the days of Jesus He testified by the 
 miraculous works which He gave Jesus to perform, and which 
 He Himself performed through Jesus (v. 36, xiv. 10). 
 They were "signs," divine indications in the sphere of nature 
 pointing to His spiritual salvation, and strengthened the 
 weak faith of some (ii. 11, xi. 15), while they will judge the 
 unbelief of those who resisted them (xv. 24). But the belief 
 which rests solely on these signs is hot yet the true faith 
 (iii. 2, iv. 48) ; the true faith can do without sensible signs 
 (xx. 29). The true faith must rest, not on sensible impres- 
 sions, but on moral reasons : " He who willeth to do the will 
 of God, that is, who is in earnest about doing the will of God, 
 will become sensible whether this doctrine is of God " (vii. 
 17). That saying, even in the word OeXetv, shows how "the 
 
286 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 drawing of the Father to the Son is but another name for the 
 impulse of the human heart towards God, which although 
 awakened by God is nevertheless an act of free will. 
 Therefore the hungering and thirsting of the soul (for God's 
 kingdom and righteousness, Matt. v. 6) is made prominent as 
 the true drawing of God (vi. 35, viii. 37); those who bear 
 this longing in their hearts, and do not stifle it, but live 
 according to it, — those who in the introduction to the Sermon 
 on the Mount are called blessed — who e'/c 6eov, i^ aXijdeiat; 
 ovreg (viii. 47, xviii. 37), the irpo^aTa who need the 
 guidance of the Good Shepherd, and therefore listen for His 
 voice and follow Him (x. 26, 27), — they attain to faith. It 
 remains for us to consider how this eternal life, laid hold of 
 by faith, is exhibited and confirmed in men. It is easy to 
 conceive how faith may be represented as the sole condition 
 of salvation, as the one true work of God which embraces in 
 itself all 'ip'^a 6eov, since it unites with Christ, and through 
 Him with the Father. "When the people ask (vi. 28), 
 " What shall we do that we may work the works of God ? " 
 Jesus answers, " This is the work of God, the work that truly 
 pleases God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent." 
 That, however, does not exclude, but includes the idea that 
 the possession of salvation through faith must approve itself 
 morally in the whole range of the demands made by the will 
 of God. The final question of the Son of God in the judg- 
 ment of the world, according to v. 29, amounts to this, who are 
 Ta a<ya6a •KOirjcravTe'i, and who are to, <pav\a 7r/>af aj^re? ? 
 And faith itself includes the to. ajaOa Troielv, and excludes the 
 Ta ipavXa 'Trpdcra-eiv, for one cannot believe in Christ without 
 loving Him, or love Him without keeping His commandments 
 (xv. 10, 14); one cannot appropriate Christ without letting 
 Him work within one ; the sap of the vine which forces its 
 way through the branches brings forth fruit in them according 
 to God's arrangement (xv. 1 f.). But since the question here 
 is not of natural necessity, but of a relation free in its origin 
 and in its continuance, it is conceivable that the inner living 
 connection with Christ may be broken up and the disciples 
 be involved in the fate and judgment of the unfruitful 
 branches (xv. 6). For that very reason it is necessary that 
 the moral will of God, with all the inwardness and freedom 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF ETEENAL LIFE 287 
 
 of our relation to it, should not lose the character of 
 commandment. If Jesus speaks of commandments of 
 the Father given to Himself (x. 18, xv, 10), how should 
 He not also, with reference to His own whom He desires 
 no longer to call servants but friends, speak of command- 
 ments in the keeping of which they must prove their love 
 to Him as friends ? (xv. 9, 1 0, xiv. 1 5). If the evangelist 
 does not more definitely adduce these commandments of 
 JesUs, which are abundantly given by the Synoptics, it is 
 because he knows that his readers are in possession of the 
 Sermon on the Mount and similar records, and he has no wish 
 to repeat to them that with which they are familiar. The 
 Tijpeiv of His evroKai, the rrjpeiv or (fivXdcraeiv tov \cyyov fiov 
 of which he makes Jesus repeatedly speak (viii. 51, xii. 47, 
 xiv. 13), cannot be otherwise understood than as pointing 
 back to all that, according to the Synoptics, He commanded 
 them (Matt, xxviii. 19). The one commandment whose con- 
 tents he quotes, the commandment of brotherly love (xiii. 34), 
 notwithstanding its limitation to the community of disciples, 
 reminds us of how, according to the Synoptics, He traced 
 -back the whole law to the double commandment of love. 
 And here it is love itself that enjoins love ; Jesus can com- 
 prehend His whole doctrine in the terse exhortation : " Abide 
 in My love " (xv. 9), Moreover, the evangelical and not 
 legal character of His injunction stands out in two details. 
 In the first place. His gracious example exciting to imitation 
 is united — as also in the synoptic phrase. Matt. xi. 29- — 
 with the commandment ; " I have given you an example, that 
 ye should do to one another as I have done to you " (xiii. 
 15). In the second place. He promises to them, for the 
 fulfilling of His commandments, the continuous help and 
 discipline of His heavenly Father : " Every branch in Me that 
 bringeth forth fruit, the Father — as the true vinedresser-^ 
 will purge, that it may bring forth more fruit (xv. 1, 2). 
 
 § 2. The Gospel Community 
 
 The most important commandment of the departing Master 
 to His own (xiii. 34) presupposes a peculiar community of 
 them in the world after His departure, which He describes in 
 
288 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 the Synoptics as His sKKX^la ; the expression is unknown to 
 the Johannine sayings, but not the thing. In the prediction 
 of the temple, which the Jews will destroy but which He will 
 restore (ii. 19), we have already the indication of a new com- 
 munity of God on earth, which through Him is to come forth 
 from the ruins of the community of the Old Testament. And 
 the words to the Samaritan woman regarding the worship of 
 God which is about to commence " in spirit and in truth," 
 that is, in inwardness and the perfect revelation of God, serve 
 to explain the hint of the former passage, and lead us to think 
 of a community of "true worshippers" (iv. 21 f.). But it is 
 in keeping with the inwardness and ideality of Jesus as well 
 as of His evangelist that they do not advance from that to a 
 visible order of the community and its worship, but leave all 
 such things to the Spirit, who is to tell the disciples later on 
 all that they would not be able to bear as yet (xvi. 12, 13). 
 Even baptism and the Supper, though John knew that they 
 were already practised in the Church, are not mentioned as 
 external ordinances, but only the ideas of them are expressed 
 (iii. 3-5, vi. 35 ff.). The Johannine Christ in the same way 
 is satisfied with expressing the idea of His undivided Church, 
 without entering into its actual conditions. This idea is con- 
 tained in the image of the flock which Jesus repeatedly uses 
 in the tenth chapter, and has also used in the same sense in 
 Luke xii. 32. This ideal image makes no distinction between 
 discipleship as it is before His death and as it will be after 
 His death. The lamb, the creature entirely ruled by the 
 sense of dependence, yielding in every way to its shepherd, is 
 the fitting symbol of the believer, and therefore the flock of 
 lambs is the emblem of the ideal community. This com- 
 munity of believers, during the lifetime of Jesus, consists only 
 of lambs from the fold of Israel ; but " He has other sheep 
 which are not of this fold," the children of God scattered in 
 the heathen world (xi. 52), them — in His future glorified 
 activity — He must also bring, that there may be one flock and 
 one Shepherd in humanity (x. 16). The nature of this com- 
 munity of God, to be composed of Jews and Gentiles, will 
 consist in their becoming one with Him, and through Him one 
 with the Father, and in the same way one also with each 
 other : " I pray not for them only " (My present disciples), it 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF ETERNAL LIFE 289 
 
 is said in the intercessory prayer, " but for those also who shall 
 believe in Me through their word ; that they all may be one ; 
 as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may 
 be one in us : that the world may believe that Thou hast sent 
 Me." The community of believers is thus characterised, first 
 by the relation which they have to Him and through Him to 
 the Father, and then, resting on this, by their relation to each 
 other. The relation to Him is that of the most inward and 
 indestructible communion : " My sheep hear My voice, and I 
 know them, and they follow Me : and I give unto them eternal 
 life ; they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them 
 out of My hand" (x. 27, 28). At the same time, they are in 
 the Almighty Father's hand (x. 2 9, 30): for "I and the 
 Father are one." The Father Himself loveth them, and with 
 the Son has made His abode in them, through His Holy Spirit 
 (xiv. 23) ; and He rules, at the same time, over them with that 
 fatherly love and faithfulness of which it is said in the 
 synoptic testimony, " The very hairs of your head are all 
 numbered," with the love and faithfulness which the depart- 
 ing Saviour commended them in the words, " I pray not that 
 Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that Thou 
 shouldest keep them from the evil " (xvii. 15 ; cf. Matt. vi. 13). 
 On their side the child relation in which they stand to the 
 Father through Him is expressed above all in " prayer in the 
 name of Jesus," and they are declared children indeed when 
 their prayer is heard (xiv. 14, xvi. 23, 24). What Jesus 
 says of this new mode of prayer in His name, reminds us of 
 the prayer of the Church in Matt, xviii. 19, which is also 
 characterised in ver. 20 as " prayer in the name of Jesus " ; 
 yet we have no right to limit the various invitations and pro- 
 mises to public prayer. All the synoptic exhortations and 
 promises with regard to prayer are summarised here, and at 
 the same time it is explained how they are sure of being heard. 
 To " pray in the name of Jesus," that is, to plead the relation- 
 ship to God in which they stand through Jesus, can only be 
 truly done by believers when they pray for what He, were He 
 still visibly among them, would ask for them ; therefore when 
 their prayers spring from communion with Him, from His 
 mind and spirit, they cannot fail to be in agreement with the 
 heavenly Father's thoughts of love, and are therefore certain 
 
 BEYSCHLAG. — I. 1 9 
 
290 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 to be heard. This enables us to understand how — amid the 
 anxiety of the world — the peace of Jesus, and the perfect 
 joyousness {x'^pd) which He was at all times able to maintain 
 in this world, in virtue of His unbroken communion with the 
 Father, can and will dwell also in the circle of His disciples 
 (xvi. 24, xvii. 13, 14, 27). The relation in which Jesus 
 places His disciples to each other, corresponds with this rela- 
 tion to Him and to the Father : " A new commandment I give 
 unto you, That ye love one another ; as I have loved you " (xiii. 
 34, XV. 17). A new commandment — for whatever the Old 
 Testament preached about love for our neighbour, a love such 
 as He bore to His own, the love which lays down its life for 
 its friends, was something completely new in the world. Here 
 is comprehended in one great saying what is set forth in the 
 Synoptics in the sayings : " One is your Father ; One is your 
 Master, and all ye are brethren. Who among you will be great, 
 let him be the servant of all : even as the Son of Man came 
 not to be ministered unto, but to minister, etc. ; and the feet- 
 washing (xiii. 3-17) is added as an expressive illustration of 
 this last idea of a brotherly love which renders self-denying 
 service, and thus grows better and purer. 
 
 § 3, Eelation of the Disciples to the Woeld 
 
 But Jesus also foretells the future relation of His com- 
 munity of disciples to the world. As, in His synoptic dis- 
 courses, He prepares them first of all for the hatred to be 
 expected from the world, the suffering and persecution they 
 will have to experience for His sake : " If the world hate you, 
 ye know that it hated Me before it hated you. If ye were of 
 the world " (that is, had the character of men of the world) " the 
 world would love its own : but because ye are not of the world, 
 but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world 
 hateth you. Eemember the words which I said unto you, The 
 servant is not greater than his lord. They will put you out 
 of the synagogue: yea, the time will come, that whosoever 
 killeth you will think that he doeth God service. And these 
 things will they do unto you, because they have neither known 
 the Father nor Me" (xv. 18-20, xvi. 1-3). In contrast 
 with that He points them to the superior power of God which 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF ETEENAL LIFE 291 
 
 shall be in them, and to the great task which devolves upon 
 them in virtue of that power, in this world estranged from 
 God and filled with hatred. The Spirit of the Father and the 
 Son, ruling in the disciples, must through them bear testimony 
 to the world regarding Christ (xv. 26), — a testimony that will 
 reprove, that is, convict (iXeyx^eiv), the world of its sin, of His 
 righteousness, and of the judgment corresponding to both (xvi. 
 1 8). That is to say, the Holy Spirit, who witnesses through the 
 disciples, is to convince the world of the sin which consists in 
 its unbelief in Jesus; of the righteousness in which He has 
 been manifested who was rejected as an evil-doer, but is now 
 exalted to the Father, having passed into the invisible world ; 
 and of the judgment which has been executed once for all on 
 the spirit of this world by His appearance and death, and 
 which for that reason will ultimately be completely accom- 
 plished on the world also (xvi. 9—11).^ It is evident that an 
 operation of the Spirit which aims at conversion and deliver- 
 ance is meant by this iXiy^eiv, that is, the testimony convinces 
 the heart, and so this saying forms the transition to that which 
 Jesus charged His disciples concerning their mission for the 
 world. The community of disciples is indeed the bearer of 
 that Spirit which is to convince the world ; it has to serve as 
 His organ in a twofold way, direct and indirect. Indirectly, 
 by convincing the world of the truth of the gospel through 
 the spirit of harmony and self-denying love that rules in it, 
 that is, through the preaching of good works as enjoined in 
 Matt, v.- 1 6, " By this shall all men know that ye are My 
 disciples, if ye love one another " ; and " (I pray) that they also 
 may be one in us, that the world may believe that Thou hast 
 sent Me" (xiii. 35, xvii. 21). The more the spirit of hatred 
 rules in the world, the more powerfully must the loving 
 fellowship of believers testify to the divinity of their cause. 
 But a direct mission must also be exercised in the world 
 through the testimony of the word (xvii. 20, xv. 27); and in 
 this appears the significance of the apostolic office, on which 
 
 '■ We have endeavoured to paraphrase these obscure words with the view 
 of explaining them. The manifest original reference to the Jewish people 
 guarantees their genuineness ; for the Spirit could only, in the first place, 
 convict the Jewish people of their sin and unbelief, since to them alone 
 salvation had hitherto been offered in vain. 
 
292 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 and ou His call of them to it Jesus repeatedly lays stress (vi. 
 70, XV. 16). When in xv. 26, 27, He says : "The Spirit of 
 truth, which proceedeth from the Father, will testify of Me ; 
 and ye also shall bear witness, since you have been with me 
 from the beginning," He does not mean by the testimony of 
 the Spirit one which is not mediated through believers, or by 
 the testimony of the disciples, one in which the Spirit would 
 have no share. But He does distinguish the spiritual testi- 
 mony which may be given by all believers through word and 
 work, from the historical testimony which rests upon the eye- 
 witness of His apostles. He had chosen them in order that 
 they might be the personal witnesses to His earthly life, and 
 had ordained them to bring forth much fruit after His de- 
 parture (xv. 16). He had even prepared them in a certain 
 sense to accomplish greater things than Himself on earth — 
 viz. in immediate results (xiv. 12). But there is nothing to 
 indicate that He had conferred on them the commission to 
 preach in anyway of privilege beyond His other and later 
 disciples. There is nowhere any mention of an establishing 
 of of&ces with a view to their transmission ; even the words 
 " feed my lambs," which the Eisen One addressed to Peter 
 (xxi. 16 f.), are simply the commission to the most masculine 
 and mature among the Twelve to interest himself in his weaker 
 companions (cf. Luke xxii. 32). And therefore there is not 
 the slightest reason for finding in the breathing of the Spirit 
 (xx. 22,23), and the authority united with it, " Whose soever sins 
 ye remit, they are remitted unto them ; and whose soever sins ye 
 retain, they are retained," anything else than a communication 
 of authority which is to pass over from these first disciples to 
 the whole future Church. If the intention here had been to 
 establish, an official authority in or over the Church, there 
 would surely have been arrangements for an official succession 
 too. But, as in the farewell discourse and elsewhere, the Holy 
 Spirit is promised equally to every believer, to everyone who 
 thirsts for Him (vii. 37-39); so also in this passage, which 
 manifestly refers to those promises, it is the authority of the 
 whole Church of disciples derived from the communication of 
 the Spirit which is decisive. The remission or retaining of 
 sins there, is nothing else than the twofold influence which 
 the spiritual testimony of the Church exercises on the sinful 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF ETERNAL LIFE 293 
 
 world. This spiritual testimony will relieve of their guilt 
 those who repent by leading them to faith, but will only bind 
 the burden of their sins on those who harden themselves in 
 unbelief, and make their guilt permanent.^ In all these 
 features, accordingly, we find no trace of those Church ideas 
 which moved the second century, but rather the same Church 
 ideas which we met with in the synoptic sayings. 
 
 § 4. The Judgment of the World 
 
 Finally, as to the questions about the completion of 
 salvation, the judgment of the world, and the resurrection of 
 the dead, the distinction between the synoptic and Johannine 
 testimony consists, above all, in this, that what is future in 
 the Synoptics is emphatically brought into the present in 
 John. It is true that, as was remarked before, the idea of 
 the parousia of Jesus lies also at the basis of the Johannine 
 farewell discourse ; but while the parousia in the Synoptics, 
 under the pressure of the primitive tendency to lay all stress 
 on the future, is interpreted always in an esehatological sense, 
 and its real sense of " henceforth " (a7r' apri, airo rov vvv) 
 only once appears in the farewell discourses in John ; on the 
 other hand, the esehatological element is expressed only once 
 in the passage xiv. 3 (ttoXiv epypiiai koX irapaXrjii'y^o^i vfia<s 
 irpot; eiravTov, "va oirov elfu iyo) koI viiel<} ^re) ; ^ in the other 
 passages the second coming is virtually equivalent to the 
 facts of Easter and Pentecost, which the prophetic view unites 
 in one. The treatment of the idea of the judgment of the world 
 in the Johannine sayings is of a corresponding nature ; it is 
 repeatedly assigned to the future, but still more frequently 
 and emphatically it is asserted as (in principle) already in 
 operation. The notion of KpicrK or Kpijjba, of KpCveiv, is so 
 variously applied in our Gospel that there is room for the 
 
 ^ Weiss, N. T. Theol. ii. 404, applies this authority rather to the dis- 
 tinction of mortal and venial sins in the discipline of the Church. An 
 explanation which is connected with his (antiquated) conception of the 
 binding and loosing in Matt, xviii., and for which no kind of support can 
 be found in John's Gospel, which nowhere treats of church discipline. 
 
 ^ Besides this we need only refer to the passage in the Appendix, chap, 
 xxi. 22, which speaks of His return in quite a synoptic way. 
 
294 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 strongest apparent contradiction. At one time Jesus declares 
 that He judgeth no man, that He has not come to judge ; and 
 immediately thereafter He says that He does judge, and that 
 all judgment is delivered unto Him ; and He asserts the same 
 contradiction of His Father (cf., for example, v. 22 with viii. 
 50). Of itself Kpiveiv, KplaK, signifies a judgment or moral 
 decision which need not be one of condemnation, and therefore 
 it may be taken in the ordinary sense of dispensing justice, as 
 vii. 24: "Judge not according to the appearance, but judge 
 righteous judgment." In the same sense Jesus can at one 
 time decline it, for He condemns no man without love (viii. 
 15; cf. Matt. vii. 1); at another time and in the same 
 breath He can maintain it, in so far as He has certainly many 
 things to judge concerning His people, that is, He must 
 deliver manifold moral judgments (viii. 16, 26). On the 
 other hand, where the Kpicnf or the Kplveiv comes into ques- 
 tion as a peculiar Messianic duty, the idea certainly 
 approximates to that of condemning, inasmuch as those who 
 believe and are being saved are exempted from it (iii. 18, v. 
 24); it really then signifies an effective sentence, as when 
 "the prince of this world" is described as judged (xvi. 11); 
 or it means bringing the world to a reproving consciousness 
 of its sinful and lost condition, as contrasted with deliverance 
 and quickening. Now in this sense Jesus seems at first 
 desirous of rejecting the Messianic office of judging the 
 world : " God sent not His Son to condemn the world, but that 
 the world through Him might be saved " (iii. 17 ; cf. xii. 47). 
 But that only assserts the essential aim of His mission ; from 
 the threats of judgment in the preaching of the Baptist (Matt, 
 iii. 10-12), it might appear as though the judgment of the 
 world was the essential aim of the Messianic mission, while it 
 is really grace, forgiveness, deliverance ; that is what Jesus 
 desires to settle in presence of Nicodemus. But at the same 
 time He does not conceal that judgment is inseparable from 
 the Messanic work, that it is the unavoidable other side of His 
 saving activity: "Whosoever believeth in Him is not con- 
 demned; whosoever believeth not is condemned already, 
 because he hath not believed in the name of the only 
 deliverer. This is the condemnation, that light has come 
 into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light " 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF ETERNAL LIFE 295 
 
 (iii. 18. 19). As in Jesus, the light of the world, the pure 
 manifestation of the eternal truth and goodness, the hearts of 
 men are made manifest, as one class of men, in particular, 
 consciously decide against the light and in favour of the 
 darkness, He who came not to condemn but to save the world, 
 causes the self-judgment of those who despise Him. In the 
 same sense Jesus says (ix. 39), after the healing and conver- 
 sion of the man born blind, " For judgment am I come into 
 the world, that they who see not might see, and they who see 
 might become blind " ; that is, that the spiritually blind, the 
 ignorant, might know the truth through me, but the wise and 
 prudent might close their eyes to it. If the appearing of the 
 Son of God already accomplishes a silent judgment of the 
 world, how much more His death ; xii. 3 1 : vvv Kpia-i,^ scttIv 
 Tov Koa/Mov rovToV vvv 6 dp'^av rov Kocrfiov rovrov iK^Xrjdrj- 
 crerai e^oa. The perfect judgment of the actual condition of 
 the world is, that it had nothing else for the Son of God than 
 the Gross; in its murderous hatred against the Prince of 
 truth and love, the world is judged, convicted of its lost and 
 guilty condition as at no other point of its history. And 
 yet, at this very point the idea of the Kpiaci has almost the 
 significance of a crisis for recovery, for life ; for Jesus con- 
 tinues : " Now is the prince of this world cast out, that is, 
 the world-ruling spirit of deceit and hatred hurled from his 
 throne ; and I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all 
 men unto Me." Accordingly, the judgment of the world is 
 notably here a moral judgment, which cannot and is not 
 meant to lead to eternal condemnation, but to eternal 
 salvation. But this judgment of the world, which has 
 already taken place, does not exclude the future final 
 judgment, but demands it. Por now the light which has 
 come into the world, and proved victorious in conflict 
 with the darkness, pervades humanity and the history of 
 the world, and puts everyone in the position of letting him- 
 self be lightened by it, or of closing his eyes against it. And 
 the final result of this enlightening or refusing in presence of 
 the light must at last appear, and determine the eternal 
 worth or worthlessness of each man's life. And so the 
 Johannine Christ certainly keeps in view a final judgment, a 
 judgment at the last day. Just as in the synoptic sayings, 
 
296 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 He knows that this judgment is delivered to Him as the Son 
 of Man: "For the Father judgeth no man, but hath com- 
 mitted all judgment to the Son : that all men should honour 
 the Son even as they honour the Father " (v. 22). " He hath 
 given to the Son to have life in Himself, and hath given Him 
 authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of 
 Man " (vv. 26, 27). " The hour cometh, when all that are in 
 their graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth ; they 
 that have done good, to the resurrection of life ; and they that 
 have done evil, unto the resurrection of condemnation" (vv. 28, 
 29 ; cf. with respect to the last day, vi. 39, 40, 44, 54, xii. 
 48). Here, therefore, we have the idea of a universal final 
 judgment of all who are in their graves ; but only the wicked 
 are affected by the judgment {avdaTacn<; Kpicreci)<;), — those who 
 have done good are not judged, that is, condemned, but are 
 called to everlasting life. The judgment takes place accord- 
 ing to works or deeds, that is, according to the moral outcome 
 of the life ; and yet faith is not a matter of indifference, for 
 whosoever believeth, it is said, is not condemned (iii. 18). 
 The certain presupposition here is, that believers, as those 
 who have surrendered themselves to the eternal light, prove 
 also to be the doers of good ; unbelievers, as those who have 
 closed themselves against the light, will be and remain the 
 doers of evil (cf. iii. 19, 21). It remains to be noticed 
 above all that here also the Son exercises judgment. " The 
 Father judges no man," the eternal love condemns no man 
 because he is a sinner ; strictly speaking, it does not condemn 
 any, but leaves it for men to judge themselves by their rejec- 
 tion of the offered Saviour. The Son of Man is the Judge of the 
 world, just because He offers eternal life, the kingdom of heaven, 
 to all, compels them all to a final decision, and condemns those 
 who continue in unbelief. But even He can say that He 
 judgeth not, that is, condemns not ; but " whosoever despiseth 
 Me, and receiveth not My word, hath already his judge : the 
 word that I have spoken will judge him at the last day " (xii. 
 48). The whole depth and spirituality of the idea of the judg- 
 ment lies in this declaration ; the rejected truth, the rejected 
 gospel of salvation, becomes the sword that shall pierce the 
 soul. That no man, accordingly, shall be finally condemned 
 to whom this word — either in this world or the next — has 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF ETEENAL LIFE 297 
 
 not been impressively presented, is manifest ; and even the 
 idea that the Son of Man, the Saviour of the world, is to be 
 the only executor of the divine judgment, leads, as we have 
 seen already, to the same result. " He," it is said (v. 30), " does 
 nothing of Himself: as He hears (from the Father) He 
 judgeth ; for He seeketh not His own will, but that of Him 
 who sent Him." " But this is the will of Him who sent Him, 
 that of all who are given unto Him He should lose nothing, 
 but should raise it up again at the last day " (vi. 39; cf. 
 Matt, xviii. 14). The Son therefore proceeds in the judgment 
 according to this loving will of the Father; that is a 
 guarantee, that however much He may have to condemn in 
 men, the aim of His judgment will be, that nothing capable of 
 being saved will be lost. 
 
 'to 
 
 § 5. The Eesuekection and Eternal Life 
 
 Besides the judgment of the world, there emerges, as we 
 have already seen in the idea of the completion of salvation, 
 the idea of the raising of the dead. It appears in v. 28, 29 
 in closest connection with the idea of judgment, and there is 
 assumed a double resurrection, an avdaracri^ fw^? and an 
 avda-raavi Kpiaetc<;. That corresponds to the view given in 
 Dan. xii. 2, which was the prevailing view among the Jews ; 
 but it does not correspond to the view of Jesus which we 
 found in the Synoptics, according to which there is but one 
 az/acTTacrts tS)v SiKaiav. On closer examination we find that 
 this passage stands alone even in John. Wherever else men- 
 tion is made of dva.crTaai,<; it is united with the foj??, the 
 eternal, blessed life, — " I am the resurrection and the life," — 
 and the being raised at the last day is repeatedly and directly 
 co-ordinated with having eternal life, and is opposed to being 
 lost (vi. 39, 40, 54); that is, resurrection relates solely to 
 believers, who are just the righteous. Consequently, the 
 passage v. 29 does not attest Jesus' real view of the resurrec- 
 tion. Possibly the popular expression, which is connected 
 with the notion of a coming forth of the departed from their 
 graves (ver. 28), is to be put solely to the account of the 
 evangelist, and, at anyrate, it expresses nothing else than the 
 idea of a possibly twofold close of the course of human life ; 
 
298 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 besides those who attain the eternal goal, there are those who 
 come short of it, and are lost (iii. 16, vi. 39), as is also indi- 
 cated in the Parable of the Vine and the Branches by the 
 cutting off and burning of the unfruitful branch (xv. 6). In 
 all other passages the idea which we find in the synoptic 
 sayings, that the resurrection is the completion of life, stands 
 out with increased clearness. Not only is it that here — as in 
 the controversy with the Sadducees — Jesus frequently turns 
 from the idea of the resurrection to that of the true life, of 
 living unto God (Luke xx. 38), but He also brings the resur- 
 rection and the ^co'ij ald)vi,o<; into this life. " He that heareth 
 my words, and believeth on Him that sent Me," it is said 
 (v. 24), "hath everlasting life, and shall not come into con- 
 demnation ; but is passed from death to life " (fieTa^e^rjKev) ; 
 and in like manner the great saying (xi. 25, 26), ''He that 
 believeth on Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live," is, 
 as it were, surpassed by a greater, which regards the death of 
 the body as of no importance, " And he that liveth and 
 believeth in Me shall never die" (cf. vi. 50, 51, x. 28). 
 Now, if the real inner resurrection is that which is described 
 in the passage v. 24, 25, when the spiritual dead hear the 
 voice of the Son of God, and are wakened by it into life, the 
 hour in which a man in this present life lays hold of and 
 receives the eternal, then what else can the future resurrection 
 of life (which in the same context, ver. 28, points back to 
 this) be, than the complete development of the true life 
 already begun here, the manifestation in glory of the life 
 hid with Christ in God ? (Col. iii. 4). But the inferences 
 which we were forced to draw from the synoptic testimony 
 obtrude themselves also in the Johannine : Jesus cannot pos- 
 sibly have supposed after the bodily death of those who 
 through Him " have passed from death to life " an empty 
 time of expectation, to be filled up perchance by a sleep of 
 the soul till the resurrection at the last day, a time of expec- 
 tation that is longest for those who first became partakers of 
 eternal life on earth ; on the contrary, as in His own case 
 the day of resurrection came on the second morning, so in the 
 case of each of His own the resurrection morning will be 
 nothing else than the attainment of inner perfection. It is 
 true that here the constant union of the resurrection with the 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OE ETEENAL LIFE 299 
 
 ea-^aTT) ^fiipa (vi. 39, 40, 54) seems to stand in the way of 
 this idea; but is it not as though Jesus Himself would teach 
 us to break through this mechanical form of the notion when 
 He answers Martha's utterance, " I know that my brother will 
 rise at the last day," with the words, " I am the resurrection 
 and the life : he that believeth on Me, though he were dead, 
 yet shall he live" ? (xi. 24, 25). That means at least, the re- 
 surrection does not depend on the last day, but on Me, and 
 communion with My life. The last day is in John also — as 
 we have proved already in the synoptic teaching — only the 
 inadequate symbol for that which comes to all, the final and 
 deliberate issue of the life's history, the ultimate result which 
 God will some day draw from every life, and consequently 
 from the whole course of the world ; the particular day is 
 only a pictorial form. Still less according to John than in 
 the case of the Synoptics does Jesus enter into a painting of 
 the future eternal life. Once in John, oftener in the Synoptics, 
 there is mention of a reward ; in both cases, indeed, with refer- 
 ence to those who sow and those who reap, that is, to Himself 
 and His disciples ; the picture of the common joy of harvest 
 stands beside both (iv. 36). Again, Jesus speaks of the 
 Father's house of many mansions whither He goes before in 
 order to prepare for them a place, and then to fetch them 
 home (xiv. 2—4); an idea which reminds us of Matt. xxiv. 
 31, 1 Thess. iv. 16, 17, but is immediately spiritualised by 
 what follows, " I am the way, the truth, and the life " (ver. 
 6) ; that is to say, from heaven He through His Spirit will 
 draw His own after Him into the eternal world of perfection. 
 But the inmost, and at the same time simplest human ex- 
 pression of what He has to guarantee to His own as the 
 contents of eternal life, is contained in the words of the inter- 
 cessory prayer : " Father, I will that they also whom Thou hast 
 given Me be with Me where I am ; that they may behold My 
 glory, the glory which Thou hast given Me" (xvii. 24); and 
 that beholding is certainly conceived in ver. 22 also as a 
 joint possession. 
 
BOOK III 
 
 VIEWS OF THE FIRST APOSTLES 
 
 I. THE FIRST APOSTLES AND THE FIRST COM- 
 MUNITY, ACCORDING TO THE ACTS 
 OF THE APOSTLES 
 
 CHAPTEE I 
 
 THE STANDPOINT OF THE FIEST APOSTLES 
 
 § 1. Credibility of the Acts of the Apostles 
 
 Apart from particular suggestions and inferences which we 
 may gather from the Gospels and Epistles, we have no other 
 account of the mode of thought, experiences, and activity of 
 the disciples of Jesus, immediately after the departure of their 
 Master, than that of the Acts of the Apostles. And this 
 report has recently been contested by the critical school in 
 very much the same way as the Gospels, and degraded into a 
 pretty late collection of legends. It is true that the conception 
 of the Acts of the Apostles as a work written with a view to 
 mediation, to reconcile Peter with Paul, and Paul with Peter, 
 along with the whole view of Baur of primitive Church history, 
 has recently been much questioned even within the critical 
 school ; but its place has been taken by a general scepticism, 
 extending even to those parts of the book that are not involved 
 in this theory. It is difficult to contend with this mood and 
 method, as it does not take its rise in historical and critical 
 reasons, so much as in the modern repugnance to everything 
 supernatural in the beginning of Christianity, and it exchanges 
 
 300 
 
THE STANDPOINT OF THE FIRST APOSTLES 301 
 
 historical criticism for utter doubt of all tradition, and opens 
 the way for subjective inventions as more worthy of confidence. 
 A thoughtful criticism, not entangled in these errors, will find 
 in the Acts of the Apostles — even in the earlier Petrine part, 
 which is here to be considered — ^just as firm historical ground 
 as in the Gospels. It may be granted to that criticism, that 
 the earliest Church historian who speaks here does not fulfil 
 all our modern claims, that the sources he apparently made use 
 of were defective and unequal, that he lacked the full keenness 
 of historical investigation as well as the power of characterisa- 
 tion. Misconceptions and legendary deposits here and there 
 are clearly discernible, and, in particular, a thin veil of 
 legendary embellishing already hung over the narrative of the 
 origin and development of the primitive Church in Palestine, 
 which forms the basis of the first twelve chapters. But through 
 this veil the facts still shine with such vividness and unique- 
 ness, that we can determine the real state of things in all its 
 essential features. How faithfully the book has preserved the 
 conditions of antiquity is attested by the one notable example, 
 that it has nowhere put the trinitarian baptismal formula 
 already current at the time in which Matthew's Gospel was 
 written (Matt, xxviii. 19) in the place of the more simple and 
 original "in the name of Jesus." It is a good proof of the 
 credibility of the Acts of the Apostles, that as regards its 
 doctrinal contents it represents the primitive apostolic mode 
 of thought, feature by feature, just as we should have expected 
 to find it from the general conditions of that first period, viz. 
 in the twofold aspect of a life entirely Christian in its con- 
 tents, and yet entirely Jewish in the forms of its doctrine and 
 customs. 
 
 § 2. Standpoint of the Disciples dueing the Lifetime 
 
 OF Jesus 
 
 It has been said that the apostles were still true Jews 
 except in the one point, that they no longer expected the 
 Messiah from the future, but believed that He had appeared 
 in Jesus of Nazareth. Eightly understood, that is perfectly 
 correct ; they were Jews as before, except in the one point that 
 made the Jew a Christian. As is represented in Matt. xvi. 
 
302 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 1 3 f . they had recognised the Messiah in Jesus at a time when 
 their people as a whole were in error as to His Messiahship ; 
 they had recognised Him as such, not because flesh and blood 
 had disclosed it, but because the Father in heaven had revealed 
 it to them, that is, in virtue of an inner experience which laid 
 in their hearts the foundation of a new life. This inner 
 experience had enabled them to look beyond the fact that Jesus 
 had not fulfilled the popular Messianic expectations such as 
 even they had received from the prophets and cherished ; the 
 personal impression which they received from Jesus, and 
 the fruit of this impression in their hearts, were stronger than 
 the contradiction between His ministry and all the Messianic 
 notions in which they had been educated (cf. John vi. 66—69). 
 And thus, under cover of their old Jewish way of thinking, a 
 new life sprang up in them which He had begotten in them, 
 the sense of communion with God, and sonship which raised 
 them far above the old Jewish relation to God. But that 
 cover still existed, a tissue of all that had been true and sacred 
 to them from their childhood. Although their souls tasted the 
 freedom of the children of God (Mark ii. 19), yet as a matter 
 of course they maintained their walk as pious Israelites in all 
 the commandments and traditions of the law, both written and 
 unwritten. Moreover, after as before, they occupied the old 
 Jewish standpoint even in their understanding of Messianic 
 prophecy ; they clung to the expectation of a visible Messianic 
 kingdom, part of heaven part of earth, which was to establish 
 a theocracy over all the world with Israel as centre. The 
 Messiah they believed had come in Jesus, but not the Messianic 
 kingdom : only they expected day by day that their Master 
 would set it up (Luke xix. 1 1 ; Acts i. 6). This whole con- 
 tradiction between their inner Christian life, which resembled 
 a swelling bud, and their Jewish notions, which enclosed this 
 bud like a rigid sheath, was only possible because they did not 
 yet really understand Jesus' doctrine of the kingdom of heaven. 
 For we can conceive the knowledge of the disciples during the 
 lifetime of Jesus only as like a child's learning who takes in 
 the words with a dim sense of their meaning, but can only 
 fully understand the lesson at a later and maturer age (cf. 
 Johnxiv. 5, 8, 22, xvi. 12-15). 
 
the standpoint of the fiest apostles 303 
 
 § 3. Impression of the Death and the Eesueeection 
 
 OF Jesus 
 
 In this inner condition they are startled by their Master's 
 terrible death. No clearer ray of light could fall on their 
 manner of thought at that time than the words of the disciples 
 on the way to Emmaus. " He was a prophet mighty in word 
 and deed before God and all the people : our chief priests and 
 rulers have delivered Him to death. But we thought it had 
 been He who should have redeemed Israel" (Luke xxiv. 19, 20). 
 They looked upon His whole past life and work, not as that of 
 the Messiah, but as that of a prophet, and so it really was in 
 its form ; but they had believed that under this prophetic 
 mantle the Messiah was concealed, and that some day He would 
 exchange it for the king's mantle, and that on that day all that 
 Israel had longed to see and possess would be realised. This 
 hope was now destroyed, annihilated by the fearful guilt of 
 their people and rulers. It certainly was not yet completely 
 extinguished in their hearts. There continued in their hearts 
 a love for Him, and with it a belief in Him also ; their inner 
 relation to Him, even without the resurrection, might not have 
 given them anything to preach, but it would have remained. 
 They would have clung to His promise of returning, which 
 would DOW first have truly come to life in them ; and loving 
 hope rooting itself in that, would have accompanied them 
 through life. But that would not have been a victorious hope, • 
 a hope so energetic as to impel them to joyous activity ; their 
 life would have been passed in unfruitful longing and idle 
 waiting, which would have gradually become more faint through 
 hope deferred. The miracle of the resurrection preserved them 
 from this stunting of their inner life, which at the same time 
 would have frustrated all the wider results of Jesus' life for 
 which they hoped, but it did not change their general view. 
 It is wasted effort trying to explain the resurrection on purely 
 subjective, psychological, or pathological grounds. Only as a 
 truly objective supernatural event does it take its place in the 
 historical and psychological conditions of the time.^ The 
 
 ^ I may be allowed to express this briefly and tersely here after having 
 repeatedly entered upon the minute proof of it, cf. my arguments against 
 Holsten in the Stud, und Krit. 1870, 1871, and in my Leben Jesu, vol. i. ; 
 
304 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 resurrection of Jesus, as well as the death of the Messiah, broke 
 through the disciples' Jewish view of the world, in which there 
 was no resurrection to a glorified immortal life before the last 
 day; it cannot therefore have been a product of their own 
 mind ; and though for that very reason it revived their Messianic 
 expectations, it did not by any means satisfy them or radically 
 remodel them. They did not from that moment transfer 
 their hopes to another higher world, to which notwithstanding 
 His reappearance at the resurrection it was clear He henceforth 
 belonged, but they continued to look for a return which should 
 give Him back entirely to the earth and to His Church upon 
 it, and so bring about the expected Messianic kingdom on the 
 earth. His assumption into heaven, prepared for by the 
 resurrection, appeared to them as but a brief delay which, 
 unforeseen in their original expectations, was to be referred 
 solely to the guilt of the people. We may even perceive that 
 the disciples in the days immediately after the resurrection 
 were employed in finding reason in Scripture for the course 
 which events had taken, so unlike anything in their original 
 expectations ; they were searching through the Old Testament 
 with the view of discovering that " the Messiah must suffer 
 such things, and enter into His glory" (Luke xxiv. 26, 27, 
 44-46 ; Acts ii. 25-28, 34, 35). To them, therefore, nothing 
 
 also the two works by Steude, Die Visions hypothese in ihrer neueslen 
 Vertretung, and Die Vertheidigung der Auferstehung Christi (both 1887). 
 With reference to this, it seems to be the desire of the most recent and 
 only scientific method, not to refute but to ignore such investigations and 
 proofs, and to find some detail in the New Testament tradition which 
 may serve as the starting-point for a thin woven and imaginative construc- 
 tion of history which gets rid of the miracle of the resurrection. Such a 
 starting-point is given in 'irpox^a y^aj slg TaT^iT^tau, Mark xiv. 28 ; Matt, 
 xxvi. 32, wherein it is supposed we have the evidence of that flight on 
 Good Friday which is attributed to the disciples, that far from the grave 
 of Joseph of Arimathea, and under the power of old impressions in Galilee, 
 they may dream of a resurrection of their Master. Criticism, otherwise so 
 sharp sighted, does not see that thus itself passes into vision. For if the 
 genuine kernel of the evangelic tradition is that He went before them into 
 Galilee, then it was only after this period that they followed into Galilee 
 Him who rose on the third day ; and so the flight on the very night of the 
 betrayal which is charged against them loses its last apparent support, and 
 must positively be dismissed. See this more in detail in the recent third 
 edition of my Lehen Jesu. 
 
THE STANDPOINT OF THE FIRST APOSTLES 305 
 
 is yet fulfilled by the resurrection of Jesus ; only they have 
 received an imperishable pledge that He lives and is exalted 
 above all the malice of His foes, and that He can be near to 
 them though they do not see Him ; and certainly through this 
 experience their inner relation to Him must have been very 
 greatly strengthened, and themselves made fit for giving heroic 
 effect to it in a hostile world. 
 
 § 4. The Outpoueing of the Spirit 
 
 A new experience which followed naturally on the event 
 of Easter gave the immediate impulse to this. The wonder- 
 ful experiences of Easter Day had their issue in a festival of 
 their little community which made them altogether certain of 
 their new connection with their glorified Master, a connection 
 no longer visible, but all the more spiritual and inward. The 
 new spiritual life which He breathed into them had glowed 
 higher and hotter since Easter, and the hour must come when 
 it would burst into flame. The Pentecost narrative of the 
 Acts of the Apostles is simply the witness by one who only 
 half understood it to a fact which, psychologically, is quite 
 intelligible. At a time when the national festival of 
 Pentecost had gathered them together, under the influence of 
 their reflections on what they had seen at Easter, there 
 appeared amongst them prophetic gifts, and even ecstatic con- 
 ditions, in which they joyfully discovered the fulfilment of 
 the promise of the Eisen One to endow them with His Spirit. 
 Those gifts of prophetic inspiration and ecstatic speech were 
 not the Holy Spirit, which He had announced to them as the 
 indwelling of His own glorified life. This Spirit, that is, the 
 power of His own holy life operative in them, had been 
 planted in germ within them long ago, and since the mighty 
 events of His death and resurrection, to which the evangelist 
 John immediately attaches the communication of the Spirit 
 (xx. 22), that power had struggled upwards within them. 
 But as they were wont, after the manner of the Old 
 Testament, to regard the prophetic gifts as the supreme 
 evidence of the Spirit, those phenomena were signs and 
 pledges to them of that Spirit (Acts ii. 1 7 f.), and so they felt 
 themselves from that hour endowed with power from on high, 
 
 BEYSCHLAG. — I. 20 
 
306 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 and produced thereby on that day greater results than ever 
 Jesus Himself had obtained. Besides, this new miraculous 
 event seemed to belong to their Jewish Messianic trains of 
 thought. The prophets had predicted that the Messianic time 
 should be announced, and the Messianic kingdom begin, with 
 a universalising of God's prophetic gifts and an outpouring of 
 His Spirit upon all flesh (Joel iii. 1-5; Acts ii. 17-21). 
 Jesus, exalted to the right hand of God had now exercised 
 the first act of His sovereignty, and sent down from heaven 
 His first gift ; in it they had the earnest of that fulfilment of 
 all that the prophets had spoken, which should continuously 
 make progress and could not be arrested. The view of the 
 original apostles is thus throughout composed of two dis- 
 similar elements ; new and transcendent experiences are 
 conceived by them in Old Testament forms, but these give 
 only an elementary understanding of the experiences. The 
 limits which this imposed upon their knowledge are made 
 very apparent in two respects especially : in the preponder- 
 ance of the parousia idea, and in the correspondingly imper- 
 fect appreciation of the death upon the cross. Whilst the 
 forces that were destined to renew the world's history were 
 stirring in them, they thought that the end of time had come. 
 Because, from the first, they had regarded the Messianic 
 kingdom of glory as the real revelation of God's salvation, 
 everything which they saw to be great was subordinated 
 by them to this goal of their desire ; everything is 
 viewed in relation to this main fact, either as a prepara- 
 tion or a hindrance, and in their opinion these things 
 cannot be long delayed after the Messiah has appeared. 
 "When they believed that they were already standing close 
 beside this goal in the earthly days of Jesus, the unsuscepti- 
 bility of their people and the rejection of the Messiah, which 
 that brought about, can have appeared to them only as 
 delaying it, and this view must have temporarily prevented 
 them from seeing the independent greatness of the event on 
 Golgotha as the turning-point of human history. The life of 
 Jesus reached its completion upon the cross ; in His death He 
 overcame the world, and in that victory of His there should 
 blossom a new life for the world ; but these facts did not so 
 much enlist their sympathy as fill them with an infinite 
 
THE STANDPOINT OF THE FIRST APOSTLES 307 
 
 sorrow that Israel had rejected and trifled with her God-given 
 Saviour. Now — they say to themselves — God has taken Him 
 back to heaven, as the people were not worthy of Him ; but 
 He has granted to the guilty, whose ignorance is a sort of 
 plea (Acts iii. 17), a last time for repentance and conversion. 
 If the people perceive this, then they trust that God will 
 again grant Him to His people, and bring about through Him 
 all that He has graciously promised. If they do not perceive 
 this, but continue in their wickedness, then will the irresistible 
 day of the Lord come to judge them ; and that day, whose 
 a,nticipation lay on all earnest minds in Israel, could only be 
 conceived by any prophet reared in Israel's ways of thought 
 as the coming of the universal judgment of the world. This 
 onesided view of salvation, with its longings all directed to 
 the future, is certainly far from doing justice to the full 
 significance of what the disciples had experienced in Jesus. 
 It could not allow them to unfold in thought and doctrine the 
 full meaning of that great divine event which went far 
 beyond and even contradicted the Old Testament expectations, 
 and so it hindered them also from exhibiting Christianity in 
 its complete novelty and peculiarity in contrast to Judaism, — 
 that was reserved for another, who had to be fitted for it in 
 another way and by a different experience from the original 
 apostles. But even for him that limited Jewish standpoint 
 was, in the first place, not only unavoidable, but was the only 
 one suited to his immediate task. This Jewish form and 
 limitation brought the gospel close to the Jewish nation to 
 which it was necessarily first offered ; through it the primitive 
 Church was made possible, that noble shoot on the dry stump 
 of the Old Testament Church which has been the means of 
 blessing to the whole world. Let us now see whether from 
 the standpoint of the original apostles (which is the only 
 possible historical standpoint), the meagre and fragmentary 
 communications of the Acts of the Apostles disclose a living 
 whole. 
 
308 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 CHAPTEE II 
 THE PREACHING OF THE ORIGINAL APOSTLES 
 
 § 1. The "Witnesses 
 
 The Acts of the Apostles in its earlier part reports a 
 series of addresses and defences of Peter, a church prayer, a 
 doctrinal discourse of the almoner Philip, and his fellow 
 official Stephen's defence. All these fragments may be 
 regarded as testimonies of the mode of teaching of the original 
 apostles : though they are, of course, preserved only in the 
 form of extracts, and to some extent have been remodelled by 
 the historian, they exhibit a peculiarity which is certainly 
 not that of Luke. Of these testimonies the speech of Stephen 
 demands separate consideration, as in it a peculiar standpoint 
 appears ; all the rest may be regarded as a common experience 
 of the views of the first disciples, whose bravest and most 
 eloquent speaker was manifestly Peter. 
 
 § 2. Jesus the Cheist 
 
 It scarcely needs to be said that the apostles after the 
 spirit of witness was once awakened in them, had nothing 
 more urgent to proclaim to their people than that the Jesus 
 whom they had rejected and crucified was the Messiah. 
 Prom this follows the simple fundamental Christian con- 
 fession: Jesus 6 Xpto-To? (ii. 38); and this confession now 
 leads to the coining of the double name 'Irjaov'i Xpto-To?, a 
 name which is seldom used in the Gospels, and could, of 
 course, be used only by a believer in Jesus. The name 
 Christ still continues to be used entirely as a title ; 6 XjOto-ro? 
 avrov {tov 6eov), "God's anointed," it is said iii. 18, and 
 expK^ev avrov 6 6e6<;, iv. 27, x. 38. The Christology which 
 lies at the basis of this confession and its proclamation, is 
 the simple Christology of the synoptic Gospels ; and here we 
 have the correctness of our view confirmed, that, even in the 
 Fourth Gospel, that is the fundamental Christology resting on 
 Jesus' own consciousness and testimony; Christ throughout is 
 
THE PREACHING OF THE ORIGINAL APOSTLES 309 
 
 distinguished from God, and put in a relation of human 
 dependence to Him. Jesus is what He is through God's will 
 and free act. It is said in the sermon of Peter in presence 
 of Cornelius, which is specially explicit on this point, " God 
 anointed Him with the Holy Spirit, and with power. God 
 through Him proclaimed peace to the people. God was with 
 Him, so that He could heal all that were oppressed of the 
 devil. God ordained Him to be the Judge of quick and dead " 
 (x. 38—42). It is the same in the sermon at Pentecost; it 
 is " God who has given Him the power to send the Holy 
 Spirit. God hath made Him to be both Lord and Christ " (ii. 
 32, 33, 36). There is no expression which in anyway goes 
 beyond the idea of a man entirely filled and moved by the 
 Spirit of God. Some have thought to find such an expression 
 in the title Kvpio<;, which is frequently applied to Jesus in the 
 Acts of the Apostles, and which they regard as a transference 
 of the Old Testament name Jehovah to Jesus. But Peter in 
 the passage (ii. 34) expresses himself quite differently about the 
 meaning and origin of this name of homage. He borrows it 
 from the introduction to the 110th Psalm: "Jehovah said to 
 my (the poet-prophet's) Lord : Sit Thou at My right hand." 
 Jesus, therefore, is not recognised as Jehovah who speaks 
 there, but as the king addressed by Jehovah ; He is " Lord " 
 since His exaltation to the right hand of God, which is con- 
 ceived as a taking possession of the Messianic throne. Accord- 
 ing to ii. 36, God has made Jesus Kvpio<;, viz. by exalting Him 
 to His right hand ; if the name Kvpioii had the meaning of 
 eternal Deity, that expression would be impossible, for to be 
 made and by eternal nature to be are mutually exclusive 
 terms. Neither is there a single word about the idea of pre- 
 existence. If Jesus uttered sayings which point in that 
 direction, as, according to the Gospel of John we must 
 believe He did, they cannot, at anyrate, have been understood 
 in that sense by the disciples, for the anthropocentric Christo- 
 logy which the disciples confess would not then be the correct 
 one. Even the expression used in iii. 20, tov TrpoKe'x^eipia- 
 fievov vfiiv 'Itjo-ovv Xpicnov, that is, " Jesus Christ who is 
 ordained for you," contains no thought of pre- existence, as 
 the irpo here has not a time but a space significance.^ As to 
 1 Tpo x^ipo; = &t hand, or ready ; ■7rp(i-jciip'i,uv, to make ready, appoint. 
 
310 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 the further names of this Xpi.aTO's koX Kvpioi, the Son of Man 
 once more appears in the mouth of the dying Stephen (vii. 
 56, probably in allusion to Matt. xxvi. 64); but that enig- 
 matic name of Jesus for Himself did not, as may be easily 
 understood, pass over into the usage of the Church. It is 
 more surprising that the Petrine part of the Acts also does 
 not know the name " Son of God " ; for the one passage which 
 has it in the Textus Beceptus — viii. 37 — is not genuine.^ The 
 designation of God as Father is indeed used both by Jesus 
 and by Peter in the book (i. 4, 7, ii. 33), but Jesus' corre- 
 sponding name for Himself does not seem to have been in 
 use among the disciples at the beginning. In its place, to 
 our surprise, appears as a favourite designation for Jesus the 
 •n-ats deov, which is not to be translated child, but servant. 
 In "the Servant of God" of Deutero-Isaiah, the primitive 
 Church found again the clearest picture of her Lord (cf. iii. 
 13, 26, iv. 27, 30; Matt. xii. 17-21). And certainly the 
 original apostles could not have proclaimed Jesus more effect- 
 ively as Messiah under any other Old Testament image and 
 name ; a whole apologetic lay in this conception. If anyone 
 took his stand upon the fact that Jesus never displayed the 
 outward kingly glory that was expected of Messiah, — here 
 was a scriptural designation which (according to the exposi- 
 tion then authoritative) altogether disregarded that outer 
 glory, and reckoned among the very marks of God's chosen 
 and beloved, that He would be despised of all, without form 
 or beauty ; while, on the other hand, all that made up for this 
 apparent defect in the Servant of God, His patience and 
 modesty. His gentle compassion, His self-sacrifice in the ser- 
 vice of God, His character embodying the very ideal of 
 religion, all of which is expressed in the name Servant of God, 
 recalled most vividly to the memory of the people the picture 
 of Jesus. The witness to His innocence and righteousness 
 and sinlessness, which the apostles give with special emphasis, 
 is most intimately connected with this proclamation of Jesus 
 as the Servant of Jehovah (iii. 14, 15, iv. 27, 30). This 
 must have been the more effective, inasmuch as while calling 
 forth an emphatic response from the people's own conscious- 
 
 1 The name o via; rou kav first appears (ix. 20) in the mouth of Paul, 
 manifestly in the current Messianic sense. 
 
THE PREACHING OF THE ORIGINAL APOSTLES 311 
 
 ness, it stood in such glaring contradiction with the destiny 
 they had prepared for the holy and righteous Servant of God. 
 A similar service was performed by another Old Testament 
 type, viz. that prophet, /car' e^o^vv, who was predicted in 
 Deut. xviii. 15—19 as a fit successor of Moses, and commended 
 to the dutiful hearing of the people under the threat of death 
 if they disobeyed. The Scripture exegesis of the time, or at 
 least the popular belief, saw in this prophet, too, the Messiah 
 (cf. John vi. 14) ; and when he presented Jesus to the people 
 in this form, Peter not only reminded them that Jesus had 
 appeared as a prophet, which no one denied, but at the same 
 time he gave a reason why that appearance had so little of 
 Messianic dignity, for here the Scriptures themselves in their 
 predictions of Messiah spoke not of a king but a prophet. 
 Thus the vivid presentation of the prophetic office of Jesus 
 seems on all occasions to have formed a main element in the 
 preaching of the original apostles, as could scarcely be other- 
 wise in view of the fresh memory which both disciples and 
 people had of Jesus. Even the preaching of Peter before the 
 Puoman centurion Cornelius assumes the great events of a 
 recent past as well known to all, and sets them forth in vivid 
 touches ; the appearance of the Baptist, the preaching of 
 Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem, His works of wonder and 
 healing of the diseased. His shameful death with which His 
 people had rewarded Him for all His kindness (x. 37 f.). 
 How much more would the apostles remind their own country- 
 men of the signs and wonders which Jesus had done before all 
 the people, and which they (the disciples) now were continu- 
 ing in His name ! (ii. 22 f., iii. 12 f.); These recollections must 
 have cut to the heart the better and more susceptible of the 
 people, and called on them to ponder the dreadful words of 
 God, " He that will not hear that Prophet, that soul will be 
 destroyed from among the people" (iii. 23), 
 
 § 3. The Preaching of the Death and Kesurkection 
 OF Jesus 
 
 Thus the apologetic preaching passes naturally into an 
 accusation of the people of their sins, a call to them to repent. 
 This naturally reaches its climax when it touches on the 
 
312 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 crucifixion of Jesus. One still feels all the pain and moral 
 indignation of the disciple when he cries to the people in his 
 sermon, " Ye men of Israel, the man approved of God among 
 you by miracles and wonders and signs which God did by Him 
 in your midst, as ye yourselves know : Him have ye taken, and 
 by wicked hands have crucified and slain " ; " Ye have delivered 
 up Jesus the Servant of God, and denied Him in the presence 
 of Pilate, who was determined to let Him go. But ye denied the 
 Holy One and the Just, and desired that a murderer be granted 
 you; and killed the Prince of Life" (ii. 22, 23, iii. 13-15). 
 So sounds the dreadful accusation through all the sermons to 
 the people, as well as through the answers before the Sanhedrim, 
 down to Stephen's speech of defence. " Which of the prophets 
 have not your fathers persecuted ? and slain those who showed 
 before the coming of the Just One ; of whom ye have now 
 become the betrayers and murderers" (vii. 52). The phrase 
 which still leaves room for repentance, " I know that ye did it 
 in ignorance, as did also your rulers " (iii. 17), scarcely modifies 
 in anything the severity of the condemnation. But there is 
 nowhere mixed up with these discussions of the death upon 
 the cross a suggestion of its having been necessary to salvation ; 
 of its having been required as an atonement for the siiis of the 
 people, as a satisfaction to God. Some have sought to explain 
 this silence, doubly strange to our dogmatic custom, by saying 
 that the doctrine of the suffering Messiah was still too strange 
 for the people;^ but this wonderful attempt at explanation 
 condemns itself. If Jesus was the Messiah, He had at any- 
 rate, been a suffering Messiah ; this fact could not be got rid 
 of, and if it was unintelligible to the people, or even if it gave 
 them most grievous offence (1 Cor. i. 23), the apostles must 
 all the more have declared it to them as necessary to salvation 
 — if they themselves knew of such an explanation. But even in 
 passages where everything urges them to give such an explana- 
 tion, and where no conceivable hindrance stands in the way, 
 as, for example, in the case of the conversion of the chamberlain 
 from Ethiopia (viii. 26 f.), it is not given. The stranger reads 
 the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, which yields the idea of the 
 vicarious atoning sufferings as no other passage of Scripture ; 
 he asks Philip of whom the prophet speaks, and Philip 
 1 Thus Weiss, N. T. Theol. i. 177. 
 
THE PEEACHING OF THE ORIGINAL APOSTLES 313 
 
 interprets to him the obscure writing with reference to Jesus. 
 But in doing so there is not a single syllable of allusion to the 
 " surely he hath borne our guilt ; the stripes were laid on Him 
 that we might have peace." The only thing brought into pro- 
 minence in the prophet's words is the innocence and patience 
 of the sufferer, and His final exaltation. That cannot be 
 accidental. And if we now add, that the polemic discourses 
 of the Acts connect the forgiveness of sin with simple repent- 
 ance and conversion, without any reference to the death of 
 Jesus ; that the Epistle of James proceeds in exactly the same 
 way, and does not use one word about the high-priestly office 
 of Christ ; further, that the Epistle to the Hebrews, in all prob- 
 ability addressed to the Church at Jerusalem, presupposes an 
 ignorance of the High-Priesthood and the sacrificial death of 
 Jesus in this Church, — we can have no further doubt that a 
 point which was afterwards in Pauline Christianity to be 
 cardinal in doctrine, but which appeared only late in Jesus' 
 own teaching, in a few prophetic indications which His disciples 
 had never understood, had not yet dawned on the consciousness 
 of the original apostles.^ Not that the original apostles and 
 the original Church had not words of Jesus such as Matt. xx. 
 28, xxvi. 28 ; every celebration of the Supper called to their 
 remembrance the "for you," the relation of the death of Jesus to 
 the Passover and the covenant sacrifice. But this idea manifestly 
 had not yet entered into their doctrine of the Messiahship, so 
 that they were not able to make any use of it in their preaching. 
 Moreover, the impression of His suffering and death crossing 
 their dearest hopes, was without doubt too fresh and strong to 
 allow them to feel or think that His death could be a special 
 source of comfort. And the whole course of the public life of 
 Jesus which they shared with Him, and which in Jesus' own 
 view was planned, not for defeat on the cross, but for a victory 
 through the preaching of the gospel for the salvation of His 
 people (Matt, xxiii. 37), seemed to entitle them to regard the 
 violent death of the Messiah as a crossing of God's gracious 
 
 ^ Appeal is indeed made for the contrary to 1 Cor. xv. 3 : ■jrxpilaxa 
 vfiTm ill ■Ttpinoi;, S xai ■Trapi^.x^oii, or; XpinTOs xviSaum v'nip run ificcpTiZu 
 ilftZii xxrd rd; ypci<l:ii;. But Paul with the o xcci 5r«p£7i«/3oj/ was probably 
 thinking solely of the transmission of the fact, which he then transmitted 
 to the Corinthians with a religious interpretation taken ex suis. 
 
314 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 intentions also. Yet they were not in any difficulty about 
 reconciling this with their faith in God and salvation. 
 Accustomed as pious Israelites to see in history an interplay 
 of human freedom and God's rule in the world, in which God 
 made room for men's freedom in order to reach His end by 
 indirect means, they fancied that even this crossing of God's 
 saving purpose was foreseen and permitted by Him ; it should 
 be met by the raising of the Crucified from death, and as they 
 turned with this thought to their Holy Scriptures they found 
 confirmation of it in them. That fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, 
 in particular, said to them that it was God's counsel and will 
 to let His righteous Servant suffer as an evil-doer and die 
 through the sin of His people. But there also was found the 
 words, " When He hath made His soul an offering for sin. He 
 shall prolong His days — who shall declare His generation ? " 
 and passages of the Psalms spoke of the flesh of the righteous 
 resting in hope, and that God would not leave His Holy One to 
 see corruption (ii. 2 5 f.). All that had now to them been con- 
 solingly and gloriously fulfilled in Jesus. And so they never 
 reminded the people of the death of Jesus without adding : 
 all that has taken place has been according to God's deter- 
 minate counsel and foreknowledge (ii. 23, iii. 18); and as it 
 was not possible that the Holy One of God could be holden 
 of death, your crime has been gloriously neutralised by His 
 resurrection of which we are eye-witnesses (ii. 31, 32, iii. 15,iv. 
 10). The offence of the death upon the cross was thereby 
 removed both for them and for the people, and, considering all 
 the recollections and sense of guilt on the part of the people, 
 it is easy to conceive what an overpowering impression must 
 have been made by the glad, confident, and palpably true testi- 
 mony : " God raised Him on the third day, and showed Him 
 unto us. "We have eaten and drunk with Him after His resur- 
 rection from the dead " (x. 40, 41). This was all the more 
 impressive that there were now added to the testimony of the 
 word, signs and wonders wrought by the apostles' hands which 
 could not be denied. They pointed triumphantly to the fact 
 that these were not the outcome of their own power or piety, 
 but the effect of faith in Him the Crucified and Eisen One to 
 whom God gloriously bears witness by such deeds (iii. 12- 
 16). 
 
the pkeaching of the original apostles 315 
 
 § 4. The Future and the Present Salvation 
 
 Now, of course, Jesus was not given back to His nation 
 through the resurrection. He did not even appear to them ; 
 He showed Himself only to His chosen witnesses, in order 
 that they might proclaim Him as the Saviour and Judge 
 chosen by God (x. 40-43). For Israel had lost Him through 
 her sin, and should only get Him again when converted from that 
 sin. God had taken Him back into His heaven, as if to wait 
 to see whether the people would repent of their outrage and 
 make themselves worthy again of their Messiah. This view, 
 which although strange to us was quite familiar in the thoughts 
 of the original apostles, is especially prominent in the passage 
 iii. 1 9—2 1 : " Eepent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins 
 may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come 
 from the presence of the Lord ; and He shall send Jesus Christ 
 which before was preached unto you : whom the heavens must 
 receive until the times of the restitution of all things, which God 
 hath spoken by the mouth of His holy prophets in the past." 
 In virtue of this view, the disciples considered that in a certain 
 measure the days of John the Baptist had returned for the 
 people, but in a higher manner. The call to repentance was 
 again issued in the name of the kingdom of heaven, which had 
 come near ; but this call had increased in force, owing to the 
 representation that the greatest sin which could be imagined 
 had been committed in the interval, in the rejection of the 
 Lord's anointed. Baptism was again proffered to the people 
 as the seal of this repentance and the pledge of the divine for- 
 giveness, but no longer now as a mere water baptism in the 
 name of a greater who was to come ; it was the baptism of 
 water and of the Spirit in the name of Jesus as the Messiah 
 vrho was to come again to judge the world (ii. 38, x. 42, 43). 
 This last period of repentance and conversion, from its very 
 nature, could only be a short one. If the original plan of 
 God's salvation was only interrupted by the people's sin, if it 
 were necessary on that account to postpone to a second advent 
 of Messiah what, according to the prophets, the first and only 
 advent should have accomplished, then the great day of the 
 Lord must be at hand, before the door. With the outpouring of 
 the Spirit, the prophet (Joel iii. 1 f.) had predicted, at the same 
 
316 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 time, the preliminary signs of the judgment of the world, 
 " "Wonders in the heavens above, and in the earth beneath ; 
 blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke," and it was not without a 
 reason that Peter quoted these words in the Pentecost sermon 
 (ii. 1 6 f.), when he was explaining the outpouring of the Spirit 
 from the prophecy of Joel. Israel's heaven, at least, was 
 already overcast with blood and fire, signs of God's approach- 
 ing judgment. The apostle's real preaching of salvation is 
 thrown into relief by the dark background of this picture of 
 the future ; there is salvation (o-cDTTjpta) in no other (than in 
 Jesus), for there is no other name under heaven given among 
 men whereby we are to be saved (iv. 12). The final choice 
 was placed before their people at the last hour. If they now 
 continued impenitent and unbelieving, their sin, which as sin 
 of ignorance might yet find forgiveness (iii. 17, 19), would be 
 transformed into wanton outrage, into that mortal sin to which 
 the words applied, " The soul that will not hear that Prophet 
 shall be destroyed from the people" (iii. 23). On the other 
 hand, the man who submitted to conversion and baptism, 
 believing in the name of Jesus, might be sure of the forgive- 
 ness of his sin ; the name of Jesus would be imprinted on him 
 in this baptism as the name of his Lord, who would take him 
 as one of His own under His wings when the storm of judg- 
 ment broke forth — the name which he should call upon, in the 
 final distress, in order by it to be saved — " And it shall come 
 to pass that whosoever will call on the name of the Lord 
 will be saved" (ii. 21). This is the full Christian proclama- 
 tion of salvation, conceived, however, entirely from the Israelite 
 view of the world and its present situation ; Jesus is the only 
 Mediator, the Founder of communion between God and man, and 
 faith in Him,therfore,is the decisive action of the heart by which 
 a man lays hold of his eternal salvation. The idea of iriaTeveiv 
 et? avTov visibly advances in the preaching of the original 
 apostles (iii. 16, x. 43) as the positive side of the fierdvoia, 
 and neither faith nor repentance can stand alone. Salvation 
 in the Jewish conception was essentially placed in the future, 
 in that day of final decision when all Israel's hopes should 
 rise like a phoenix from the flames of the world's judgment ; 
 that conception alone was possible for the apostles, though it 
 was certainly onesided, and hindered the growth of their 
 
THE LIFE OF THE PEIMITIVE CHURCH 317 
 
 knowledge. But it did not really detract from the idea of 
 salvation as a present possession ; though it had to be perfected 
 in the future, Jesus had preached and founded it as a present 
 fact. Salvation was viewed as present, and was really given 
 as present in the possession of the Holy Spirit. That Spirit 
 was indeed infinitely more than the source of prophetic 
 gifts ; and although the other elements were not at present 
 comprehended as gifts of the Spirit, yet it was felt by the 
 apostles and all believers that a higher power was operative 
 in them than was known in Israel ; that a new nature in faith, 
 hope, and love had come into the world in them, which every 
 sincere man had to admit had the true child's likeness to God 
 the Father. And they themselves, the bearers of this new 
 nature, felt that it was so, and knew who it was who was 
 mighty in them. They felt themselves to be the first stones 
 of a building of God miraculously joined together, which in 
 point of fact was the kingdom founded by Jesus, though they 
 did not apply that name to it, but reserved it for the kingdom 
 of glory which they expected as near at hand. They gave 
 expression to this feeling of present salvation and to the 
 founding of the kingdom of God already accomplished by Jesus 
 the Christ, by triumphantly holding up to the persecuting 
 authorities of Israel a verse of a psalm which Jesus Himself 
 had applied prophetically to Himself : " The stone which the 
 builders rejected, the same has become the head of the corner " 
 (iv. 11). He who was rejected and shamefully killed by you, 
 is already the pillar of a new building of God in Israel, which 
 human hands have neither put together nor will overthrow. 
 
 CHAPTEE III 
 
 THE LIFE OF THE PEIMITIVE CHURCH 
 
 § 1. Biblico-Theological Significance of the Peimitive 
 
 Chukch 
 
 This new divine building, which Jesus had begun on 
 earth by the preaching of His apostles, was first of all the 
 primitive Church. Its life offers us a welcome complement 
 
318 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 to our brief reports of the preaching of the original apostles, 
 as no doubt it received this preaching in a much more 
 complete state than that in which we have it. A comple- 
 ment also, inasmuch as in this whole primitive Christianity 
 the life, the fulness and purity of the new nature in Christ, 
 naturally surpasses the undeveloped doctrinal expression, and 
 spontaneously exhibits in action principles which had not yet 
 in anyway become objects of reflection. It is true that this 
 Church life as soon as it begins to express its peculiar 
 Christian character in institutions, moves, within just such 
 forms and limits as the primitive apostles did in their 
 preaching, viz. the limits of Jewish nationality and legality. 
 And so the immediate expression of this Church life is 
 important as giving a clearer reflection of the spirit and 
 teaching of Jesus than any such deliberate expression. 
 
 § 2. Its Position in Judaism 
 
 As was to be expected from the entirely Jewish origin of 
 the Messianic movement, the primitive Church had at first no 
 thought of separating from the Jewish commonwealth. On 
 the contrary, the Messianic salvation was considered to be 
 meant first and specially for the Jewish people, and the hope 
 was kept alive of winning that people for it even as a whole. 
 Consideration of the Gentile world is not, indeed, entirely 
 wanting — "The promise is to you and your children," it is 
 said in the sermon at Pentecost, " and to all who are afar off, 
 to as many as the Lord our God shall call " (ii. 3 9). But 
 these very words show that the apostles did not at first think 
 of a mission to the Gentiles to be undertaken by them, but 
 left it to God to devise means of bringing His salvation to the 
 Gentile world. It was undoubtedly supposed, in virtue of 
 Isa. Ix., that the Messianic kingdom would first take shape 
 in Israel under its Head, who should speedily return from 
 heaven, and that the ingathering of the Gentiles to it would 
 only then take place.^ The primitive Church was then in 
 
 1 An echo of this view is found in Rev. xxi. 26, xxii. 2. That the 
 words in Matt, xxviii. 18, 19, are only a later summary of the com- 
 mission of Jesus whose meaning was gradually recognised, has already 
 been noted in connection with the trinitarian baptismal formula ; it 
 
THE LIFE OF THE PEIMITIVE CHUECH 319 
 
 appearance wholly within Judaism ; it was, as it is called 
 (Acts xxiv. 14), an aipea-t^, a union held together by certain 
 views and practices, within the Jewish national and religious 
 community, just as the Pharisees and Essenes were such 
 aipia-ei'i (xxvi. 5). Its members took part in the services 
 of the Jewish temple and the Jewish synagogue (ii. 46, 
 iii. 1, ix. 20), and there can be no doubt that they fre- 
 quently took part in Jewish sacrificial ceremonies (cf. xxi. 
 20—24). But in the special gatherings for worship which 
 they held in a hall of the temple, or in private houses, 
 a different spirit prevailed than in the Jewish public 
 worship ; in them the voices of psalms and prophets 
 had again awakened to celebrate the praises of Jesus, the 
 holy Servant of God, with an enthusiasm that sometimes 
 rose to rapture (cf. iv. 24—31). And the novelty and 
 peculiarity of the Christian system were also visibly main- 
 tained through baptism and the Supper which Jesus insti- 
 tuted. Through baptism (in John's form of immersion) a 
 man separated himself from the unbelieving Israel which had 
 crucified its Messiah, confessed Him as Lord and Saviour, 
 and entered into fellowship with His disciples. Baptism 
 was originally, of course, in the name of Jesus (ii. 38, viii. 16, 
 X. 48, xix. 5), and it was only administered to adults ; all that 
 has been read into the Acts of the Apostles about the baptism 
 of children is pure fancy.^ It presupposed as a matter of 
 course the repentance and conversion of the baptized, and his 
 faith in the name of Jesus as the only name in which there 
 was salvation (ii. 38, 41). For that very reason the baptism 
 
 is here confirmed with respect to the " Go unto all the world, and teach 
 all nations." 
 
 1 Appeal has been made to the repeated statement : " He was baptized 
 with his whole house." But who is to tell us that infant children 
 belonged to this house ? The possibility of an apostolic baptism of 
 children is destroyed by the reasoning of Paul (1 Cor. vii. 14), where he 
 places the children of Christian parents on the same level with non- 
 Christian husbands and wives, and calls them oiyix because of their life 
 connection with Christian parents, and not because of having received 
 baptism. But still more convincing is the argument, that if there had 
 been a tradition of apostolic baptism of children, the wavering of the 
 Church on the subject even so late as the age of Tertullian and Augustine 
 would have been impossible. 
 
320 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 with water could, as a rule, be represented as a baptism 
 of the Spirit at the same time ; those prophetic ecstatic 
 phenomena which had made the first hundred-and-twenty 
 at Pentecost sure of the possession of the Spirit, were as 
 a rule repeated in the case of baptism, and marked it as 
 baptism with the Holy Spirit. Not that the primitive 
 Church conceived the communication of the Spirit to be 
 inseparably connected with baptism. The Spirit comes upon 
 Cornelius and his household before the water of baptism 
 touches them (x. 44-48) ; and the disciples at Pentecost, so 
 far as we know, received Him without a succeeding water 
 baptism. On the other hand, in the case of the Samaritans 
 whom Philip baptized (viii. 14-17), the signs of the Spirit are 
 wanting, and only appear after the apostle's prayer and laying 
 on of hands. But it is easy to conceive that the solemn hour 
 of baptism, in which a profession of repentance and faith 
 formed the crucial feature, was, as a rule, a climax of the 
 inner life, and that the new enthusiasm of that life appeared 
 then in those prophetic manifestations which had become the 
 common possession of Christianity. Those who thus separated 
 themselves from the world by the token of forgiveness of sin 
 and the new nature in Christ, then celebrated their communion 
 with Him and with one another in the Supper, in the break- 
 ing of bread, as it is called in the Acts of the Apostles. It 
 was in its nature a household celebration, not observed, 
 indeed, like the Passover by separate families, for it repre- 
 sented the Church itself as a family, though probably when 
 the Church grew there had to be divisions into groups. It 
 was an actual and regularly repeated meal, which solemnly 
 showed forth not only their communion with the Lord, but 
 also their brotherly love one towards another (1 Cor. x. 
 16, 17, xi. 20 ff.), and was therefore called later Agape (that 
 is, love or love-feast) (Acts iv. 46; Jude 12). There was 
 continually renewed the remembrance of that never-to-be- 
 forgotten parting, when He gave them in this service the signs 
 and pledges of His fellowship, continuing even after death ; 
 and in celebrating His love, which had gone to death and 
 beyond it, their love for one another was rekindled, which, 
 in departing, He had urged upon them as the new com- 
 mandment, and the mark of His disciples. 
 
the xife of the primitive church 321 
 
 § 3. Brotherly Love and Earthly Possessions 
 
 One particular expression of this brotherly love has 
 become specially celebrated, the so-called community of goods 
 of the primitive Church. It is important, even in the interests 
 of biblical theology, to make it clear that this was no social- 
 istic experiment. That would have required a statutory 
 abolition of private property and a corporate administration 
 of the whole wealth of the community, along with the con- 
 signing of the individual earnings to a common purse, as well 
 as a distribution of money for the daily needs of all the 
 members ; not only is there no trace of such arrangements, 
 but the contrary is plainly set before us. The administration 
 is the simplest imaginable : it is attended to by the twelve 
 apostles in the midst of their other duties, on behalf of a 
 Church of five thousand. All do not by any means receive 
 through them their daily bread, but charity is dispensed to 
 the widows and other helpless members (vi. 1). Private 
 property, and still more private earnings, continue to subsist, 
 as is testified above all by the words of Peter to Ananias 
 (v. 4) : " While it remained, was it not thine own ? and after it 
 was sold, was it not in thine own power ? " (the money). The 
 actual state of things at Jerusalem has been expressed by 
 Luke in the most fitting words : " The multitude of believers 
 were of one heart and one soul ; neither said any of them that 
 aught of the things which he possessed was his own, but they 
 had all things common." It was a community of goods there- 
 fore not in a judicial statutory sense, but in the sense of a 
 free, ideal brotherly love. For love's sake those who possessed 
 real estate went and sold it, in order that no one belonging to 
 the Church should be in want (ii. 32, iv. 34). That was a 
 sacrifice of love which no one had commanded and which was 
 by no means a universal rule ; or how could special attention 
 be called to such an act on the part of Barnabas ? (iv. 36, 37), 
 or how could Mary the mother of Mark, a zealous Chris- 
 tian, possess a house of her own in Jerusalem in which the 
 Church met? (xii. 12). The disproportionately great number 
 of poor people in the Church of Judea undoubtedly explains 
 why this practice did not continue in the later apostolic 
 Church (Matt. xi. 5 ; Luke vi. 20 ; Jas. ii. 5); and it was the 
 
 BEYSCHLAG. — I. 21 
 
322 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 same peculiarity of circumstance in Judea which afterwards 
 occasioned the request of the original apostles to Paul, that 
 he would do something for the mother Church (Gal. ii. 10). 
 Manifestly the poverty of this Church was much greater than 
 that of the Churches which Paul founded, poor as they were. 
 But that poverty, which was due to the rise of Christianity 
 amongst the poor and lowly in Israel, was met from the first, 
 on the part of the well-to-do members, with that nobleness of 
 feeling as to earthly possessions which Jesus had communi- 
 cated to His people. He had taught them to prize these as 
 the least of all blessings, and to esteem them only as the 
 means for laying up treasure in heaven, and for procuring 
 friends who might welcome them into the eternal habitations. 
 
 § 4. The Eegulations of the Community 
 
 But in another notable way the idea of a brotherhood was 
 carried out in the primitive Church, — that is, in its constitution, 
 or rather its want of constitution, if we wish to describe 
 accurately the earliest condition of all. Por it would be a 
 great error to imagine the apostles as its official preachers or 
 born rulers. Certainly the apostles exercised in it great 
 natural influence, as the familiar friends of Jesus and the 
 founders of the Church, so that to them in the beginning was 
 delivered not merely the word of edification, but also the 
 administration of charity. But they had not these duties 
 officially; and in a somewhat later period one who was not 
 an apostle, James the brother of the Lord, enjoyed a respect 
 which manifestly surpassed that of the apostles (Acts xv. 13 ; 
 Gal. ii. 9, 11, 12). The apostles undoubtedly considered the 
 preaching of the gospel as their real commission, and excluded 
 from it the administration of charity (vi. 2); but even that 
 commission to preach, whether carried out in the form of mis- 
 sion preaching or preaching to the Church, belongs to everyone 
 who has the gift for it as much as to them. Stephen preaches 
 powerfully without having been in any way ordained to it ; 
 the Almoner Philip converts Samaria and baptizes wherever 
 he finds faith ; and the fugitives from the persecution that 
 arose about Stephen, wherever they go found churches through 
 preaching and baptism (vi. 10, viii. 5, 12, 38, xi. 19-21). 
 
THE LIFE OF THE PRIMITIVE CHUECH 323 
 
 Certainly there was not a regular order of teachers for the 
 edifying of the Church any more than for the work of evan- 
 gelism ; but it was the business of every Christian, according 
 to the measure of his gifts, to preach the word for the edifica- 
 tion of his brethren in their assemblies. At the outset, 
 however, there was no ordained office at all; but the feeling 
 of need awakened by the growth of the Church first impelled 
 her to change somewhat the nature of a society quite informal, 
 which had trusted solely to the Spirit of God and love of the 
 brethren. The informal ministering to the poor, as carried 
 on by the apostles with their other work, proves in the long 
 run insufficient ; and then the apostles propose that the Church 
 should choose for herself seven men to care for the poor 
 (vi. 1 ff.). These are not deacons, as is often said — the Book of 
 Acts never uses this name for them, but calls them the seven 
 even long afterwards (xxi. 8). It was a first form of official 
 ordination which perished with the dispersion of the Church at 
 the death of Stephen, and was not in the same form restored 
 afterwards. The choice of the seven by the Church, and the 
 way in which the apostles simply give counsel in the matter, 
 shows that nothing is thought of in the office except a trans- 
 ference to definite officials of powers which belong to the 
 • Church as a Church. The laying-on of the apostles' hands 
 which follows the choice of persons to care for the poor, is a 
 recognition of the spiritual character of this office also, for 
 which men are required who are " full of the Holy Spirit and of 
 wisdom"; but it by no means implies a transference of apostolic 
 official authority, to which indeed, according to vv. 2—4, care of 
 the poor does not at all belong, but only — as we see also in the 
 sending out of Paul and Barnabas as missionaries (xiii. 3) — the 
 invoking of a divine blessing. When the Church is restored 
 after the persecution, it is elders instead of those almoners who 
 receive the gifts of love flowing in upon the Church (xi. 30), 
 and who in other respects appear as overseers of the Church ; 
 and so we must conclude that it was found advisable, in the 
 readjustment of the Church, to institute real overseers with 
 more comprehensive powers, but that these powers in relation 
 to the Church were conceived and conferred in the same way 
 as those of the seven. That the elders also Were chosen by 
 the Church may be. concluded from the fact that, after his 
 
324 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 detailed account in chapter vi., Luke does not find it necessary 
 to give any account of the origin of the elder's office. The 
 expression '^eipoTovijcravTe<; auxot? ( = getting men elected by 
 them) used in Acts xiv. 23, in connection with the introduc- 
 tion of the elder's office into the Churches of Asia Minor, 
 favours this inference, while a choice for which Paul and 
 Barnabas were responsible would rather lead us to expect 
 eKXe^dixevot, (cf. 2 Cor. viii. 19); and this is confirmed by the 
 right to choose bishops and elders which existed in the post- 
 apostolic age of the Church. And even the introduction of 
 this new and extended office is not intended to exclude the 
 direct decision of the Church in important cases ; the whole 
 Church was called together for considering the great question 
 as to what was to be imposed or not imposed on Gentile Chris- 
 tians (xv. 4, 22). We see then Jesus' idea of the community 
 realised in the Church arrangements at Jerusalem ; and what 
 other arrangements would have corresponded to the universal 
 possession of the Holy Spirit on which this Church rested ? 
 
 § 5. Legal or Evangelical Standpoint 
 
 But whilst the Church thus lives in the fulness of the 
 Christian spirit of love and freedom, does it not make us feel 
 that in one main point the purity of its Christian consciousness is 
 marred by the old Judaism, namely, in seeking its righteousness 
 with God, not in Christ but in the fulfilling of the Mosaic law ? 
 This is a question of great consequence for the understanding 
 of the apostolic age and teaching, to which present-day theology 
 is for the most part inclined to give an affirmative answer. 
 "We have the strongest testimony, direct and indirect, in the 
 Book of Acts {e.g. xxi. 20) that the primitive Church held with 
 great strictness to the observance of the Mosaic institutions ; 
 and in the later apostolic age there appeared also a Jewish- 
 Christian party, — probably connected with the first community, 
 — which certainly saw in the observance of these institutions 
 its righteousness before God, or at least a necessary condition 
 of that righteousness. We, must not, however, reason back- 
 ward from a later phenomena .to the primitive period and 
 Church, more especially as, after the death of Stephen, that 
 Church was altogether .scattered (viii. 1); and that Judaising 
 
THE LIFE OF THE PRIMITIVE CHUECH 325 
 
 party, as we shall see, by no means affected the whole of the 
 Jerusalem Church itself. But as regards the strict observance 
 of the law by the primitive Church, the question stUl remains, 
 Whether this observance, in the case of pious Israelites, — 
 especially in Palestine, — which was quite natural to them, was 
 really meant as a means of salvation and as a way of becoming 
 just before God ? There is no justification for the assumption 
 which Baur has silently made the starting-point of his con- 
 sideration of the earliest Church history, namely, that at the time 
 of Jesus all pious Israelites were on the Pharisees' side, and 
 hoped to merit God's favour by their keeping of the law. The 
 piety of the Prophets and Psalms, which confidently trusted in 
 the grace of God, who was rich in forgiveness, and not in its own 
 righteousness, and least of all in any ritual righteousness, was 
 not extinct in the nation from which Jesus and His disciples came 
 forth. If we listen to the Acts of the Apostles, we find that the 
 members of the early Church at anyrate did not seek their 
 righteousness before God in the fulfilling of the law, but in 
 God's grace, inasmuch as they every one became Christians on 
 the basis of a forgiveness of sin received in baptism. And 
 even with regard to the decision of God in the final judgment, 
 the first apostolic confession runs to the effect, that whosoever 
 will call on the name of the Lord will be saved (Joel iii. 5 ; 
 Acts ii. 21), that there is salvation in no other, " that there is 
 no other name under heaven given among men whereby we 
 must be saved than the name of Jesus the Lord " (iv. 1 2). 
 That is in direct opposition to the righteousness of the law. 
 But if anyone is inclined to contest the genuineness of these 
 Petrine confessions, the testimony of the contemporary who 
 was most capable of judging in the matter refutes him : Paul, 
 in Gal. ii. 15, 16, expressly represents to Peter that they alike 
 had sought and found salvation in Christ, in the knowledge 
 that righteousness before God could not be attained by the 
 works of the law. Those Jewish Christians of course found 
 that the name of Jesus, in which they trusted, constrained 
 them also to follow Jesus in their conduct; and they held to 
 the view that not to say Lord, Lord, but to do the will of God, 
 was required for the kingdom of heaven. And this will of 
 God they were to seek in the law, which He declared He had 
 come not to destroy but to fulfil. But they must have viewed 
 
326 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 and kept the law as He exhibited it to them in doctrine and 
 life, — that is, they regarded love of God and our neighbour as 
 the essential fulfilment of it, and the ritual commandments as 
 only forms and customs in which God had clothed the outer 
 life of His people. Thns the great fallacy, " the first apostolic 
 Christians strictly observed the law, therefore they sought 
 their righteousness before God in that observance," melts away 
 in every respect. The observance even of the externals of the 
 law was certainly a matter of course for these Palestinian 
 Christians, for without it they would have denied their nation- 
 ality, despised the rules and regulations which God had given 
 to Israel to mark it off from all other nations, and placed 
 themselves on the level of publicans and sinners. But the old 
 prophets had already demonstrated that one could observe 
 these regulations with perfect piety and strictness, and indeed 
 hold himself bound to them for God's sake, and yet find 
 his righteousness before God alone in love and fidelity to Him. 
 So much may be granted to that celebrated and widely accepted 
 fallacy, that in the early Church, and even in the first apostles, 
 there was at first no reflection concerning this question of the 
 law and of righteousness ; Christian faith rested simply within 
 the limits of the old order of life. The law comprehends the 
 most outward and the most inward things. Christ had indeed 
 made a clear distinction between the value of the two, but yet 
 everywhere treated the outward with consideration where they 
 did not become a hindrance to the inward. The Christians 
 were children of Israel and lived in their mother country, 
 where the Mosaic customs were a matter of course to all who 
 were not foreigners or outcasts ; how should they even have 
 thought of giving themselves a reason for obeying the law ? 
 No doubt this standpoint of naive unconsciousness was not 
 without danger in the long run. As soon as the mighty 
 spiritual impulses of the primitive period began to be lost, 
 when many entered the Church whose convictions were less 
 deep, to whom Christianity was more an intellectual conviction 
 of the Messiahship of Jesus than an experience of His renew- 
 ing spiritual power, then danger arose. For, owing to that 
 want of clearness, it was possible to think of Christianity as 
 only a new patch on an old garment, and righteousness by faith 
 in Christ as a complement of righteousness by the works of 
 
FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS 327 
 
 the law (Gal. iL 4 ; Acts xv. 5) ; and in fact it was with men 
 holding such a view that Paul carried on a death -and -life 
 struggle between Jewish bondage and evangelical freedom. 
 But the brotherly attitude which the original apostles took up 
 and then maintained towards Paul, shows sufficiently that their 
 inner position from the first was not the same as that of those 
 zealots for the law, and their position was no doubt that of the 
 better part of the early Church. 
 
 CHAPTEE IV 
 FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS 
 
 § 1. Stephen 
 
 Moreover, it must be noted that the strict legal standpoint 
 of the early Church did not altogether escape contradiction. 
 Jesus' own attitude made two courses possible. One might 
 adhere to Christ's programme, " Not destroy, but fulfil," and 
 might imitate His considerate accommodation of His life to 
 the outer Mosaic institutions, content if he could put into this 
 strict observance of the law a new spirit of inwardness and 
 love, as Jesus had suggested in the introduction of His Sermon 
 on the Mount. But one might also proceed on the lines of 
 His occasional indifference to the outer institutions ; and on 
 the authority of His own prediction of the destruction of the 
 temple, and of the future worship of God in spirit and in 
 truth, or of His words about the new skins into which the 
 new wine is to be put, one might come to regard that naive 
 union of Christianity and Judaism in a temper of criticism 
 resting upon an anticipation of a better order. It is quite 
 credible, because based in the historical circumstances, that 
 the latter course was taken by a Hellenist, the Almoner 
 Stephen, as the Book of Acts records ; Hellenists, that is, those 
 Jews who were born in lands of Greek culture, and spoke 
 Greek as their mother tongue, formed, beside the Hebrews, 
 that is, Hebraic- (Aramaic) speaking Jews of Palestine, a 
 considerable part of the early Church (vL 1 ff.). They held 
 from the first a freer relation towards the ceremonial law, 
 
328 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 whose observance could not be strictly carried out in Greek 
 countries, and whose glory had to a great extent paled through 
 distance and in presence of the seductive customs of the 
 Greeks. The choice of the seven almoners in Jerusalem was 
 occasioned by the grievances of Hellenists, and fell therefore 
 chiefly on prominent men of their own circle. But Stephen, 
 a highly gifted and fiery spirit, and likewise a man mighty in 
 the word, surpassed all, and in him the freer mode of thought 
 with regard to the ceremonial law now finds its prophet. He 
 fell into a dispute with foreign Jews, — scribes, as it appears, — 
 and the result of their defeat is an accusation before the 
 Sanhedrim : " He ceaseth not to speak blasphemous words 
 against this holy place, and the law : he teacheth that Jesus 
 will destroy this place, and change the customs which were 
 given to us by Moses (vi. 13, 14). If we translate these 
 statements out of the misconception of the malicious wit- 
 nesses into the meaning of the accused, that meaning will be 
 that Stephen predicted that Jesus, in consequence of His 
 Messianic work now begun in Israel, will set aside the temple- 
 worship and abolish the validity of the Mosaic regulations, or, 
 to use modern terms, that the young Christianity carried in 
 itself as a necessary consequence the breach with the Mosaic 
 ritual law. It is a significant anticipation of what Paul after- 
 wards established in doctrine, and of what has been ratified 
 by history ; and as the words are an echo of the saying of 
 Jesus about the destroying and building again of the temple, 
 it may be supposed that Stephen, by pure insight, got to the 
 real meaning of the words and deeds of Jesus in which He 
 proved His inner freedom from the law. His view of the 
 future course of religious history, expressed at first in this 
 prophetic form, is further exhibited in the speech which he 
 made in his defence, one of the most notable and unique 
 fragments of the Acts of the Apostles (ch. vii). It is to be 
 regarded as genuine throughout. Its peculiarity defends it 
 from every suspicion of being a fabrication of the historian, 
 while the question whence he got the speech is easily answered. 
 The great respect which Stephen must have enjoyed from all 
 noble men in Jerusalem, even outside of the Church (cf. viii. 2), 
 makes it likely that his remarkable speech was taken down 
 immediately after his death, and preserved as a memorial of 
 
FUKTHEE DEVELOPMENTS 329 
 
 him. And the address shows that the idea of Stephen was 
 not merely a flash of thought, born of genius, but — as is con- 
 ceivable in the case of a man disputing with scribes — a well- 
 considered view, followed out in the history of Israel, and 
 based on an original conception of the Old Testament. 
 
 § 2. The Speech of Stephen 
 
 If we look over the speech in a merely superficial way, it 
 seems an aimless prolix recital of the Old Testament history 
 from Abraham to Solomon, which then somewhat abruptly 
 takes a sharply polemical turn. On closer consideration, the 
 polemic references are seen coming into prominence even in 
 the historical narrative. Above all, the detailed presentation 
 of the events between Israel and Moses is unmistakably meant 
 to reprove the Jewish people, by presenting a picture of their 
 conduct towards Jesus ; and Jesus is expressly referred to (ver. 
 37) as the Prophet whom Moses predicted. " This Moses whom 
 they refused, saying, Who made thee a ruler and a judge ? the 
 same did God send to be a ruler and deliverer. This is that 
 Moses who said to the children of Israel, A Prophet shall the 
 Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren : — this was 
 He who received the lively oracles of God to give unto us, — 
 whom our fathers would not obey, but thrust Him out from 
 them," etc., (vv. 35—39). The reproach of resistance to God 
 and His revelation runs so emphatically through the speech, 
 that the final application, " ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised 
 in heart, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost : as your fathers 
 did," seems prepared for from the beginning. Accordingly, a 
 great number of expositors have regarded as the fundamental 
 thought of the speech, that, turning from defence to accusation, 
 it aims at holding before the people and their rulers their old 
 inherited disobedience to God's guidance, which they had now 
 crowned by the crucifixion of Jesus. Well grounded as this 
 view is, its relation to the accusation is too loose to be entirely 
 satisfactory, and it does not sufficiently explain the various 
 parts of the speech, especially in its earlier statements. The 
 dwelling on the wanderings of the patriarchs ; the revelations 
 of God in the wilderness ; the tabernacle which had been a 
 source of blessing to the people for so many centuries ; finally. 
 
330 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 the breaking off of the historical consideration with the building 
 of Solomon's temple, which is mentioned (ver. 48) without any 
 praise, and indeed with a scarcely doubtful disapprobation ; 
 all this points to another fundamental thought, to which other 
 expositors give preference. Stephen was reproached with 
 speaking blasphemous words against this holy place, by an- 
 nouncing its destruction. He justifies himself against that 
 reproach by the proof that God never bound His revealing 
 presence to this place,— that His revealing presence accom- 
 panied the people in their wanderings, from Abraham to Solo- 
 mon, among foreigners, in the desert, and attested itself in the 
 wandering tabernacle, and had been at last enclosed within 
 these temple walls very much against God's mind. This 
 course of thought is manifestly considered, and it comes to 
 clearest utterance at the close in the words : " Howbeit the 
 Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands ; as saith 
 the prophet. Heaven is My throne, and earth is My foot- 
 stool : what house will ye build Me ? " But the whole dispute 
 regarding the interpretation is an idle one. The two funda- 
 mental thoughts insisted on belong to one another, and 
 together make up the one purpose of the discourse. Stephen 
 wishes to show that from the beginning God's revelation was 
 free from forms, bound to no definite place and no definite 
 ceremonies — it was spirit and life from the first ; " but you have 
 continually misjudged, denied, and drawn it down to the level 
 of material things. Your whole history is an ever-renewed 
 opposition between God's Spirit and your fleshly minds, and 
 you have now crowned that opposition by the murder of the 
 Eighteous One, whom God had given you as Messiah and 
 Eedeemer." Stephen thus unites defence and assault in the 
 most lively way, though with no other result than to seal the 
 truth of his at once apologetic and polemic presentation of 
 history with his blood. He has been called, not without truth, 
 the forerunner of him who was then rejoicing in his death, 
 namely, Paul. He resembles him not only in the open deprecia- 
 tion of the ceremonial law, but still more in the spiritual use 
 to which he turns the Old Testament for the Christian criti- 
 cism of Judaism. Still his method is different and unique. This 
 tracing of an element of spirituality in worship right through the 
 Old Testament history of revelation is rather Hellenistic than 
 
FUETHEK DEVELOPMENTS 331 
 
 Pauline. On the other hand, when he calls Christ the Pro- 
 phet promised in Deuteronomy, — although he renders divine 
 honours to Him in his dying invocation, as the exalted Son 
 of Man and Kvpio'i, as the future Judge of the people (vii. 59, 
 6 0), — and when He regards the crucifixion solely as a crime of 
 the people, he shows his primitive and apostolic standpoint. 
 Virtually his free criticism of the ceremonial law and of the 
 connection between Judaism and Christianity is all that distin- 
 guishes him from the original apostles. In this respect, finally, 
 there is a view to be noted which he significantly shares with 
 Paul, and with the Epistle to the Hebrews, — the view that the 
 Mosaic law was not given immediately by God, but by the 
 mediation of angels (vii. 53; cf. Gal. iii. 1 9 ; Heb. ii. 2). Com- 
 pared with the immediateness with which God is conceived as 
 speaking personally to the patriarchs (vii. 3, 6), this might 
 point to the fact that even to Stephen — as at anyrate to 
 Paul — the law in comparison with the promise was the less 
 immediate, that is, the less important revelation of God, and 
 that the mediation through angels helped him to explain to 
 himself the various external and perishable, that is, not truly 
 divine, elements which the law contained. The sure faith 
 with which, in dying, he saw the exalted Son of Man at the 
 right hand of God, and the love for enemies which enabled 
 him to pray for his murderous people (vii. 56, 60), complete 
 the memorable picture. 
 
 § 3. The Question Eegaeding the Conveesion of the 
 Gentiles 
 
 Undoubtedly Stephen, in his inner freedom from the 
 limits of Judaism, had far outrun the greater part of the early 
 Church and the first apostles themselves. But as the question 
 of the conversion of the Gentiles gradually forced itself on the 
 apostles, it brought to them a certain expansion of their 
 horizon. Judiasm becoming more hostile, pressed beyond its 
 outer as well as inner limits. The appearance of Stephen had 
 destroyed the favour which the Christian Church, faithful to 
 the Jewish law, had at first enjoyed. The hidden gulf which 
 separated Judaism and Christianity had become manifest, and 
 the ruling classes had the people on their side when they pro- 
 
332 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 ceeded to inflict on the Church the fate of its Founder. The 
 early Church was almost wholly broken up by a systematic 
 persecution ; numerous fugitives were dispersed in the neigh- 
 bouring northern countries, and became preachers of the 
 gospel to these countries. The evangelising of Samaria (viii. 
 5 f.) already formed a sort of bridge over to the mission to the 
 Gentiles. And this began naturally with the conversion of 
 individuals who had been proselytes to Judaism, and who of 
 themselves inquired about the gospel. Tradition has preserved 
 the names of two such converts, and with something of poetic 
 embellishment it describes the conversion of a distinguished 
 Ethiopian pilgrim by the Almoner Philip, and of the Eoman 
 Centurion, Cornelius, by Peter (viii. 26 f., x. 1 f.). This latter 
 event, especially, is intentionally made prominent by the Acts, 
 as the bridge which leads from the Jewish-Christian to the 
 Gentile-Christian part, and without doubt it marked an epoch in 
 the life of Peter. Both his history and Peter's own character 
 make it likely that it cost him an inner struggle to accept, 
 in opposition to the religious custom of the Jews, the invitation 
 into a heathen house ; and it is also credible that this conflict 
 was decided by a direction of the Spirit, an enlightenment from 
 above in the form of a vision which revealed to him that with 
 God there was no respect of persons, no favouring of the Jews 
 above the Gentiles, but that out of every nation he that feareth 
 God and doeth righteousness is welcomed by Him to His 
 kingdom (x. 34, 35). Still there was not in these conversions 
 of individual Gentiles any essential infringement of the Jewish 
 character of the Church, since these individuals appeared in no 
 other relation to the Jewish believers in Christ than that in 
 which they formerly stood to Judaism as proselytes. But the 
 mission occasioned by the dispersion of the first Church went 
 further. While one part of the fugitives in Phoenicia, Cyprus, 
 and Syria turned only to the Jews, some Cypriotes and 
 Cyreneans — Hellenists again — broke through these limits. 
 They began to preach also to the Greeks, that is Gentiles, and 
 thus through them there arose in the Greek metropolis, 
 Antioch, the first Christian Church in which Gentiles pre- 
 dominated, a Church in which Christianity first slipped off 
 the garments of a Jewish sect to such an extent that there 
 arose the name Xpicmavoi, to mark a new third party beside 
 
FUETHEK DEVELOPMENTS 333 
 
 Jew and Gentile (xi. 20, 26) ; and in this Church there was 
 also born later the idea of a great systematic mission to the 
 Gentiles (xiii. 2 f.). The noise of this new phenomenon 
 penetrates to the mother Church at Jerusalem, which sends 
 Barnabas, again an Hellenist, to Antioch, in order to examine 
 the Christianity there. He finds in it nothing to take excep- 
 tion to, and indeed feels himself constrained to remain for the 
 further fostering of this development ; and afterwards, with 
 great tact, calls to his assistance the converted Paul of Tarsus. 
 From the events described in Gal. ii. 11 f., it is evident that 
 Barnabas had neither found existing, nor had he introduced, 
 the observance of the Jewish ceremonial law among the Gentile 
 Christians of Antioch, and that even the Jewish Christians 
 there had no scruple in holding fellowship with their Gentile 
 brethren free from the law. And this gives a certain assur- 
 ance about the first community in Jerusalem, from which both 
 the founders of the Church at Antioch and Barnabas also had 
 come, — that in it the observance of the Mosaic law, however 
 pious and strict it might be, cannot generally have been 
 regarded as necessary to salvation. 
 
 § 4. The Convention of Apostles 
 
 Certainly the Church at Jerusalem was not unanimous. 
 Already, at the conversion of Cornelius, we read that Peter 
 was questioned on account of his procedure, and that his 
 critics could be quieted only by the appeal to the manifest 
 judgment of God, in the outpouring of the Spirit on Cornelius 
 and his house (xi. 2—18). How much more must reflection 
 have been excited in Jerusalem by the state of things at 
 Antioch, where the non-observance of the ritual law was at 
 the very foundation of the Church's life ! Judaic Christians 
 came to Antioch, disapproved of what they saw, and urged the 
 additional acceptance of circumcision, and indeed of all the 
 Mosaic regulations, as conditions of salvation (xv. 1). It is 
 the first public appearance of that Judaising mode of thought 
 which afterwards opposed the Apostle Paul in the whole course 
 of his activity, and sought to snatch from him the Churches 
 he had created. The logic, that whoever would have part in 
 the Messianic promises of Israel must also take upon himself 
 
334 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 the legal obligations of Israel, was to the common understand- 
 ing of men at that time extremely simple and clear, although 
 it contained a falsification of Christianity so fundamental that 
 Paul, with the utmost severity, describes its representatives as 
 false brethren creeping in unawares, and hurls straight against 
 them an anathema (Gal. i. 8, 9, ii. 4). The Acts of the 
 Apostles does not conceal that this mode of thought was 
 strongly supported by certain believing Phasisees in the early 
 Church (Acts xv. 5). That it was not, however, the 
 fundamental conviction of the Church, and especially of 
 her leaders, — of James the brother of Jesus, and the 
 Apostles Peter and John, — may be proved from that 
 very occasion, Paul and Barnabas, in name of the Church 
 at Antioch, which was thrown into great confusion, journeyed 
 to Jerusalem in order to seek an understanding with the 
 primitive Church and apostles. Whatever deviations from 
 each other there may be in the two representations we have 
 of this apostolic convention (Acts xv. and Gal. ii. 1—10), 
 deviations arising from the different points of view from which 
 the account is given, they quite agree in the main point. 
 When Paul, after a fruitless public discussion as it appears 
 (Gal. ii. 3-5), records that he explained his gospel privately to 
 the men of note, namely, James, Peter, and John, and that they 
 found nothing defective in it, but gave him the right-hand of 
 fellowship, and, in recognition of special endowments on both 
 sides, shared with him the mission to the Jews and to the 
 Gentiles, the agreement of both sides in principle is therewith 
 put beyond question. And there is not the slightest justifica- 
 tion for transforming this agreement into a momentary surprise 
 of the first apostles which could not last, or into an unprin- 
 cipled compromise such as would never have been agreed to 
 by men who daily risked their life for their faith. As to the 
 other source, the Acts of the Apostles, it brings before us chiefly 
 the closing public discussion, omitted by Paul, which succeeded 
 that private understanding, in which Barnabas and Paul 
 naturally fall into the background behind Peter and James, 
 though these two all the more show that their opinions were 
 genuine and in no way extorted from them. Both Peter and 
 James agree that the Mosaic ritual law is not to be imposed 
 upon the Gentiles ; and so they make it plain that for Jewish 
 
FUKTHEK DEVELOPMENTS 335 
 
 Christians to continue in that law is simply for the preserva- 
 tion of customs which God ordained for His people, and is 
 certainly not required for salvation. But even the slight dis- 
 tinction which the representation makes here between the 
 appearance of Peter and of James, in which Peter seems the 
 more liberal, James the more conservative, has complete 
 historical credibility. Peter reminded the assembly of his 
 experience with Cornelius, spoke of the hearts of the Gentiles 
 being purified by faith, that is, their becoming believers in 
 Jesus, and warned them against laying a yoke on the neck of 
 the disciples which neither we (without injury to our con- 
 science) nor our fathers could bear (xv. 7—11). This Peter, 
 who felt himself purified by faith and freed from the yoke of 
 the law, is the man who, according to Gal. ii. 1 1 f., in his 
 visit to' Antioch, overleaping Jewish customs and scruples, ate 
 with the Gentiles ; out of an anxious regard for the confidence 
 of his countrymen, he allowed himself to be driven to the 
 denial of his better knowledge ; but Paul, who knew him inti- 
 mately, charged him with having and with denying that better 
 knowledge in public meeting. James was a somewhat different 
 man, if we may infer his own way of thinking from the 
 appearance of his delegates (Gal. ii. 12). He, indeed, as well 
 as Peter, acquitted the Gentiles from the ritual law, and 
 therefore voted against what those Pharisaic Christians (Acts 
 XV. 1, 5) claimed for it, that it was essential to salvation. But 
 as regards the Jews, — even in the diaspora, — he insists 
 that they should continue as before to hold strictly by their 
 national customs given them by God. That is a principle 
 which in itself Paul does not find fault with (1 Cor. vii. 17- 
 20), but he subordinates it to the higher requirements of 
 Christian communion; while James, who had never been out- 
 side Palestine, had not perhaps made clear to himself that 
 such holding by their national customs on the part of Jews 
 must either rend the Christian community at Antioch in two 
 or compel the Gentiles to fall in with the Jewish way of life 
 (Gal. ii. 14). With that agrees the mediating proposal of 
 James, recorded by the Acts as having been finally adopted 
 by the apostolic convention (xv. 19, 20). However one may 
 estimate the silence of the Epistle to the Galatians about the 
 so-called decree of the apostles (xv. 23-29), of which there 
 
336 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 seems to be a trace in Eev. ii. 24, this is certain, that the 
 James of the Acts in no way retracts his concession, that 
 the law should not be imposed on the Gentiles. For his 
 four requirements, corresponding to the so-called Noachian or 
 proselyte commandments, are neither the Mosaic law nor an 
 extract from it. But along with a supreme moral requirement, 
 which Paul preaches with equal decision, as a requirement of 
 Christian life, — the prohibition of ■jropvela, demanded by the 
 general confusion of ideas among the Gentiles regarding the 
 intercourse of the sexes, — they embrace only some acts of 
 abstinence in food and drink, desirable for preventing offence 
 in the intercourse of Jews and Gentiles, such as Paul likewise 
 requires of his Gentile Christians for the sake of brotherly 
 love, but which could not possibly be thought of by James as 
 conditions of salvation. In this affair then both James and 
 Peter, and the majority of the primitive Church which adhered 
 to them, are seen to have rested their righteousness before God 
 and their assurance of salvation not in any ritual observance, 
 however great their attachment and veneration for the law of 
 their fathers may have been. If they had not as yet made 
 clear to themselves all that was involved in their fundamental 
 Christian experience, those discussions with Paul and Barnabas 
 must have served to enlighten them on the subject. Por that 
 reason also it is not conceivable that an understanding such 
 as that of the apostolic convention could have been a merely 
 transitory one, or that an incident such as that at Antioch 
 (GaL ii. 1 1 f.) could have been, as we are told again and again, 
 the starting-point for Peter's permanently relapsing into 
 legality. Still those views and explanations of the first 
 apostles only cleared the way for the deliverance of the gospel 
 from Jewish legality. The gospel was not thought out and 
 doctrinally developed from the principle of that freedom from 
 Judaism which was indispensable to its becoming at home in 
 the Gentile world. To perform that spiritual work was not 
 the business of the first apostles, but of the man to whom 
 they, with a correct feeling about their respective gifts and 
 tasks, said, " We to the Jews, and you to the Gentiles " (Gal 
 ii. 9). 
 
INTEODUCTOEY 337 
 
 11. THE EPISTLE OF JAMES 
 
 CHAPTEE I 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 § 1. Opinions regaeding the Epistle of James 
 
 The records of the Acts of the Apostles concerning primi- 
 tive Christianity leave something to be desired in the way of 
 supplement. They give us, on the one hand, the main points 
 of the Church's evangelism and defence, and, on the other 
 hand, a picture of the Church's life, with its practical prin- 
 ciples. But we get no view of how the first apostles con- 
 tinued Jesus' own teaching and fulfilled the commission : 
 " Teach them to observe all things whatsoever I have com- 
 manded you" (Matt, xxviii. 19). The Epistle of James fills 
 this gap ; if it is genuine, it is the work of a man who, through 
 his near relationship with Jesus, as well as his striking 
 personality, certainly enjoyed, as we saw above, the highest 
 respect in the mother Church as restored after the persecu- 
 tion. For it is indisputable that this James the brother of the 
 Lord (Gal. i. 19, ii. 9 ; Acts xv, 13 f., xxi. 18) is meant in the 
 heading of the Epistle, and not the Apostle James, Zebedee's 
 son, who v/as already killed (Acts xii. 2), nor even the younger 
 Apostle James, who remains entirely unknown. The Epistle 
 called after him has met with much disfavour, and its 
 genuineness has also been contested. But that which, from 
 the dogmatic point of view, makes some question its genuine- 
 ness is rather, as we shall prove, in its favour from the 
 historic point of view, which here can alone settle the matter. 
 If the wavering of the early Church on the point is explained 
 by the want of an apostolic name, by the exclusiveness of the 
 Jewish Christian circles in whose possession it originally was, 
 and by the surprise which, when it came into wider circula- 
 tion, the meagreness of its dogmatic and especially christo- 
 logical contents could not fail to excite, the testimony 
 of the Peshito, which includes it in the Canon in the place 
 where it probably originated, outweighs the absence of a great 
 
338 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 deal of other testimony. Even Luther's notable rejection of 
 the Epistle proceeded from dogmatic offence. Its apparent 
 want of positively Christian teaching, and especially its 
 supposed contradiction to Paul in the matter of sola fides, 
 turns the scale. Even the moderns have carped long enough 
 at the supposed polemic against the Epistle to the Eomans, 
 which is not even well directed ; and now in recent times the 
 alternative has been reached, that the Epistle must either be 
 post-apostolic or pre-Pauline. Those who follow the first 
 view wish to recognise in it the standpoint of the old 
 Catholic period, in which the gospel is conceived as nova lex, 
 and a simple practical Christianity insisted on, in opposition 
 to the Pauline speculations. But the perfect law of liberty 
 (i. 25), which the Epistle proclaims as the essential foundation 
 of Christianity, is not a nova lex, opposed to the old Mosaic 
 law, but the old Mosaic law itself made inward, and in 
 Christ's sense perfect, which yields the standpoint of the 
 Sermon on the Mount, and not that of the old Catholic age. 
 Even apart from this, it can only be regarded as critical 
 violence to compare the youthful freshness of this, in every 
 respect primitive document with the initiative productions of 
 the second century. The acceptance of the Epistle as decidedly 
 pre-Pauline, and the earliest New Testament document, has now 
 become necessary, and is ever gaining new adherents. This 
 view, which we have defended elsewhere, we maintain here also.^ 
 
 § 2. The Circle of Eeadees 
 
 The following exposition will show how far the doctrinal 
 contents of the Epistle, especially the celebrated discussion 
 about justification by faith and works, go to support this 
 view. But even apart from this, the historical situation of 
 the readers, when one gets a clear idea of it, decides in 
 favour of the pre-Pauline age of the Epistle. These readers, 
 from the whole style in which they are addressed, and from 
 all indications of their manners and customs, are Jewish 
 
 1 Cf. for this conception, represented by Schneckenburger, Ritsohl, 
 Weiss, Mangold, etc., my essay, "Der Jaoobusbrief als urcbristliclies 
 Geschichtsdenkmal " (Stud, und Krit. 1874), and my revision of Meyer's 
 xjommentary on the Epistle. 
 
INTIiODUCTOEY 339 
 
 Christians. When the writer salutes them as the twelve 
 tribes of the dispersion, that is, the nation of Israel scattered 
 in foreign lands, and since they are manifestly Christians, his 
 view must be, that believers in Christ are the true representa- 
 tives of the Jewish nation, and that Christianity is still 
 within Judaism. There runs through the whole Epistle a 
 remarkable relation of religious opposition, and social con- 
 nection of rich and poor. The Christians are for the most part 
 poor, and the poor are essentially fitted for Christianity (ii. 6). 
 On the other hand, the rich are throughout thought of as 
 non-Christian, even where, as in i. 9—11, v. If., nothing is 
 announced to them but destruction by God's judgment. They 
 oppress the poor Christians, drag them before the judgment- 
 seat, and blaspheme the worthy name by which they are 
 called, that is, the name of Jesus into which they have been 
 baptized (ii. 6, 7). Yet both classes have to do with each 
 other. The rich are employers of the poor (v. 4), and have 
 in other respects judicial power over them (ii. 6, 7), and 
 sometimes one of them comes as a guest into the assemblies 
 of the poor Christians, and is honoured by them in a submis- 
 sive manner (ii. 2). The riddle of this relation can only be 
 solved in a natural way when we see in the rich the non- 
 Christians, countrymen of the readers, who are held together 
 with them by the bond of Jewish communal polity in the 
 diaspora. In Syria, the neighbouring country to the north 
 of Palestine, the early existence of Christian circles which 
 remained under the jurisdiction of the Jewish synagogue is 
 placed beyond all doubt by the history of Paul as the 
 persecutor (Acts ix. 1, 2), and the readers of the Epistle of 
 James are in the very same circumstances. The Jewish com- 
 munities in the diaspora, to which the Eomans had given 
 considerable rights of self-government vested in the synagogue 
 authorities, contain a minority of believers in Christ, who in 
 their own meeting-place come together (ii. 2), but in other 
 respects are subject to the jurisdiction of the Jewish 
 synagogue, in which they can be persecuted and punished for 
 the name of Jesus (ii. 6, 7). There is also mirrored in this 
 diaspora a relation between the rich and the poor, which 
 appeared in the later history of Israel, and appears mo];e than 
 once in the Gospel, viz. that the pious are the poor, and the 
 
340 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 poor the pious. The believers in Christ here, as in the 
 primitive Church, are composed chiefly of the poor and lowly, 
 while the rich and mighty of their people, by whom they must 
 partly live, stand in opposition to them, and oppress them in 
 every way. If this describes correctly the historical condi- 
 tions of the receivers of the Epistle, — and no other view of 
 the Epistle has yet been able to make this situation probable 
 or clear, — then the Epistle can only be placed before the great 
 mission to the Gentiles carried on from Antioch, and therefore 
 before the apostolic convention. For such Church relations 
 in the lands about Palestine must have been speedily trans- 
 formed by the large scale of the mission to the Gentiles. As 
 soon as large numbers of Gentile Christians appeared by the 
 side of Jewish Christians, the latter detached themselves from 
 the Jewish synagogue and joined themselves with the former 
 in a religious society, which formed a tertium over against 
 Jews and Gentiles (Xpicmavol,, Acts xi. 26 ; 1 Pet. iv. 16), 
 and so won an essentially different social position from that 
 which is mirrored in our Epistle. These purely Jewish- 
 Christian Churches of the diaspora are indeed no longer in 
 their first love and enthusiasm as we have known it in the 
 primitive Church, and that is just what causes James to 
 write to them. Outward misery, social oppression, continuous 
 persecution, besides the delay of the parousia, which was 
 hoped for as quite near, have without doubt discouraged them, 
 and produced among them conditions of decline in which may 
 be easily seen the reaction of the old Jewish nature. Com- 
 plaints against God, who makes it too hard for the poor man 
 (i. 13), a hankering after the renounced goods and enjoy- 
 ments of this world (iv. 1-4), indolent reliance on the 
 possession of objective truth and a dead faith had taken hold 
 on them (ii. 14), and in place of meekness of mind before God 
 (i. 21, iii. 13) and zeal in the works of love and sanctification 
 (i. 22, 27), had entered quarrels and contentions and all kinds 
 of sins of the tongue (iii. 1 f., iv. 1 f., v. 12). These are con- 
 ditions of decay in primitive Christianity which do not require 
 a longer period from the founding of the Church than, in the 
 case of the Corinthian Church, lies between its founding and 
 the conditions mirrored in the First Epistle to the Corinthians. 
 "We may fairly think of the time of Herod Agrippa (45), 
 
INTEODUCTOKY 341 
 
 whose bigoted and antichristian government in the mother 
 country (Acts xii.) had undoubtedly encouraged the Jewish 
 diaspora in neighbouring countries to oppressive intolerance 
 towards the Christians in their midst. 
 
 § 3. The Author 
 
 If the Epistle belongs to these circumstances, then there 
 can be no doubt as to its actual composition by James the 
 brother of Jesus. But it would also be difficult to discover 
 any reason why a later age should attribute the Epistle to 
 this author; and if it had, its author would certainly have 
 designated himself the aBeXcfio^ tov Kvpiov, and not merely 
 His SovXo'i (i. 1), which would suit any other James just as 
 well. But the author gives us an unconscious but thoroughly 
 characteristic portrait, which is in remarkable agreement with 
 what is known to us from other quarters of the historical 
 James. It is the portrait of one of those " meek in the land," 
 who, in immediately pre-Christian times, preserved, as the 
 best inheritance of the nation, the inward piety of the psalmists 
 and prophets in their retirement and godly poverty, one of 
 those whom Jesus, in the introduction to His Sermon on the 
 Mount, greets as members of His kingdom, and whose watch- 
 word He acknowledges in His saying, oti vpav^ el/ii koi 
 raTreivot rrj KapSla (Matt. xi. 29). This is the portrait of a 
 man who, although himself mighty in earnest and powerful 
 words, makes little of words and more of a quiet reverential 
 hearing of the divine word, and most of a real doing of the 
 same ; a Christian sage whose quiet firmness rests on indif- 
 ference to the world's wealth, and desire for the riches of God. 
 The expression of his piety is partly of the Old and partly of 
 the New Testament, so that it is evident that he has passed 
 into Christianity from that in Judaism which was nearest to 
 it, and has therefore never felt the need of detaching himself 
 from Jewish forms of thought and life. Law and gospel are 
 to him not contrasts, but rather equivalents, for the law of 
 Moses has become to him. the perfect law of liberty, it is the 
 law of love to God and his neighbour written on his heart, 
 which rules him from within. And so also there has come 
 to him the blessed experience of a new life from God (i. 18) 
 
342 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 through " the implanted word of truth," through faith in the 
 " Lord Jesus, the Messiah of glory," which in the irpavTT}'; 
 avo)9ev ao(f>ia<;, in the meekness of the wisdom from above 
 (iii. 13, 17), lifts him high above the desire and suffering of 
 this world. But all that this experience of salvation implies 
 has not yet been considered by him, and so, whilst he boldly 
 confesses Jesus as the Christ and Lord, he has scarcely any- 
 thing to say about His person and work. There is no book 
 in the New Testament which gives so much of Jesus and so 
 little of Christ, and there is no one which so often reminds 
 us, both in tone and even in word, of the synoptic records of 
 Jesus' teaching, though there is nothing to suggest a written 
 source. The Epistle is written in the style of the Old Testa- 
 ment wisdom, nourished with the marrow of the prophets and 
 psalmists, in Greek, which, though handled with intelligence 
 and power, yet sometimes betrays the awkwardness of a man 
 not learned and instructed in it ; it is by no means without plan 
 or connection, as has been asserted, but is a genuine letter 
 and not an essay, and it passes from one thing to another by 
 consideration of the spiritual needs of the readers. What 
 prominent man is there in all Christian antiquity in whom 
 all these strong features of character are so well marked as 
 in James the brother of the Lord ? James, belonging to the 
 circle of the pious poor, as doubtless did the whole family of 
 Jesus (Luke i. 2 ; Matt. v. 3), standing long in doubt at a 
 distance, and only becoming a believer after the resurrection 
 of Jesus (Mark iii. 21, 31 f . ; John vii. 5 ; 1 Cor. xv. 7; 
 Acts i. 14), one of the pillars of the primitive Church, most 
 heartily attached to the Jewish law and nationality, and yet 
 free enough to give the right hand of fellowship to Paul 
 (Gal. ii. ; Acts xv.), James the Just, as he was called in the 
 early Church tradition, a saint in the eyes both of Christians 
 and Jews, who prayed without ceasing for his people, and was 
 finally a witness unto blood for Jesus; such a man was 
 supremely fitted for speaking with holy earnestness to Jewish 
 Christianity in its incipient languor and decadence, as these 
 are mirrored in the Epistle, and are displayed on another side 
 a little later by the Judaising opponents of Paul. And if he 
 spoke, must it not be in such words as these ? It has been 
 objected here that the historical James, as we know him from 
 
GOD AND MAN 343 
 
 the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistle to the Galatians, as 
 well as from Jewish- Christian reminiscences, could not possibly 
 have been silent about the ritual law, whose observance on 
 the part of Jewish Christians lay so near to his heart (Gal. 
 ii. 12). A most wonderful objection, for it was not the 
 observance of the ritual law that was endangered in those 
 exclusively Jewish-Christian circles. His readers were defec- 
 tive, not in its observance, but in living Christianity. There 
 was no occasion to allude to what was self-evident and was not 
 called in question, and especially as James, though he honoured 
 the ritual law, did not, at anyrate, make salvation dependent 
 on it. The ritual piety {dprjcTKeia) of the readers is only once 
 touched on (i. 26, 27), and that reference is in the tone of a 
 man in whom lived the spirit of the prophets and of Jesus, 
 as contrasted with a declining Jewish Christianity. He 
 reminds them that BpTqaKeia is nothing if it coexists with an 
 unbridled tongue and self-deception, and that the true Op-qa-- 
 Kela, which is well-pleasing to the heavenly Father, is that of 
 works of love and of sanctification. 
 
 This man's mode of thought, so far as it may be gathered 
 from hints in an Epistle which, properly speaking, discusses 
 only one doctrinal theme, and that partially, while it barely 
 touches on all others, may be best described under the follow- 
 ing heads :- — - 
 
 I. God and man. 
 II. The Christian revelation of salvation. 
 
 III. Faith and works. 
 
 IV. Justification. 
 
 V. The Christian life. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 GOD AND MAN 
 
 James' whole view of the world is conditioned by a very 
 definite idea of God on which he insists in his teaching, whilst 
 he suffers the doctrine of the Mediator of salvation to fall 
 into the background. This is really Jesus' own idea of God, 
 the new and perfect Christian idea of God, though in James 
 
344 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 it has an Old Testament form. As a rule, God in Old Testa- 
 ment fashion is called o Kvpt,o<s (this name seldom refers to 
 Christ in James, and there is always express indication when 
 this is the case), or in the fuller expression, Lord of Sabaoth 
 (v. 4) ; yet the New Testament name of Father is not wanting 
 {6ea> Kol irarpl, i. 27; tov Kvpiov Koi irarepa, iii. 9), and is 
 applied without an added genitive, that is, it does not so 
 much describe God's relation as God's nature. And the 
 nature of God is more closely described in the peculiar 
 expression tov iraTpov twv cpatTiov (i, 17). The ^wra are the 
 lights of heaven, sun, moon, and stars (cf. Gen. i. 16). God 
 is not, however, called their Father because He created them, 
 for He would in like manner be the Father of every creature ; 
 as the context testifies. He is their Father because they are in 
 His likeness, as it were His children who resemble Him. The 
 name is meant to remind us that God's nature is light, ex- 
 cluding all darkness (cf. 1 John i. 5). But in the spiritual 
 and moral sphere God far surpasses these images of Him 
 which belong to the kingdom of nature. They as lights in- 
 crease and decrease, and are subject to temporary eclipse ; but 
 with Him is no change nor shadow of turning (i. 17). In 
 plain words. His nature is pure goodness, moral perfection. 
 Therefore He is also called (i. 13) oTretjoao-To? KaKcov, un- 
 tempted of evil, that is, incapable of being tempted. He is 
 raised above all temptation to evil, because He is goodness 
 itself personified, and so also He can tempt no one, i. 13 (to 
 evil). On the contrary, none but good and perfect gifts come 
 from above from the Father of lights, — for Tracra, just as in 
 ver. 2, must be translated thus, if it is to fit into the connee- 
 tion.i We see that it is the same idea of God which Jesus 
 expresses when in the presence of the rich young man He calls 
 God the eh ajad6<s, or describes Him to His disciples as the 
 original of all kindness and goodness, as the Perfect One 
 (Matt. V. 48). But the Old Testament was not yet able to 
 speak of God in this way. 
 
 1 That God is untemptable, and entices no man to evil, cannot lie 
 based upon the fact that all good gifts come from Him, for then evil gifts 
 might also come from Him. It is based alone upon the fact that only- 
 good and perfect gifts come from Him. 
 
god and man 345 
 
 § 2. Man 
 
 The chief object of this eternal goodness and fatherly love 
 is man, who is created in God's image (iii. 9). The way in 
 which James insists on the latter idea, especially when he 
 rebukes sins of the tongue against tov? Kad' ofjiotwffiv 6eov 
 'yeyovoTa'i, shows plainly that he knows nothing of a loss of 
 the divine image through the Fall, of which the later Church 
 doctrine speaks ; but (just as in Gen. ix. 6) he recognises in 
 man as we know him, that is, in sinful man, the divine image 
 — an affinity to God which ought to make every man an 
 inviolable being for his neighbour. Man created in God's 
 image is, in his original nature, meant and fitted for loving 
 God and attaining the crown of (eternal) life which the Lord 
 hath promised to them that love Him (i. 12). But as God is 
 the one true, perfect, and eternal Good for man, so He desires 
 to be loved and sought with the whole heart. His Spirit, 
 which He has made to dwell in us, is in iv. 5 said to love 
 jealously : He will share with no other the heart which He 
 has chosen as His own; His is like the exclusive matrimonial 
 love of marriage, and a holy fidelity He requites with the 
 greater grace (iv. 6). But there is another who contends with 
 God for the human heart, viz. the world. The world is to 
 James, as is proved by ii. 5, iv. 4, with their context, the 
 sum of all that is finite, vain, and worthless. Man, in virtue 
 of the sensuous side of his nature, — his members, in which are 
 rooted his lusts and passions (iv. 1 ; cf. i. 14), — has likewise 
 a relation to this world ; and hence arises the temptation 
 for the soul to love God and the world at the same time, and 
 so become an adulteress (iv. 4). But this attempt to be, as 
 it were, two souls (iv. 8) is vain ; the love of the world is 
 enmity to God ; he who will be the friend of the world, 
 becomes the enemy of God (iv. 4). Por he no longer sees in 
 God the one true and eternal Good. He esteems Him little, 
 and will also esteem His commandments little in contrast 
 with the lusts and passions which draw him to vanity. It is 
 as though we were listening to Jesus' preaching : " No man can 
 serve two masters : ye cannot serve God and mammon. What 
 shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his 
 own soul ? " 
 
346 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 The sin which is thus possible through the double relation 
 of man to God and to the world, is now fact and reality. 
 James simply assumes this, without, so far as we can see, 
 asking about the coming of sin into the world. He only 
 describes the way in which the sinful process advances in the 
 individual. " Every man is tempted, when he is drawn away 
 by his own lust, and is enticed. Then, when lust hath con- 
 ceived, it bringeth forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth 
 forth death (i. 14, 15). Here lust, evil desire, is conceived as 
 the root of sin in man. It is not the real man, the man of 
 the will, who appears rather as the object of its allurement 
 and seduction, and so it is not yet sin in the actual sense of 
 the word. Sin appears only when the lust, the courtesan, 
 succeeds in capturing the man's will, so that he surrenders to 
 it. Sin is thus an unlawful child of the desire and the will. 
 James does not mean by sin simply the solitary act, he prefers 
 to think of sinful tendencies, such as murmuring, doubting, 
 envying, hating (iv. 2). When such sins have grown up, their 
 fruit is death ; that is, not the moment of bodily death, but 
 spiritual death, despair, the falling away from faith, the destruc- 
 tion of the soul. This peculiar use of the word death occurs 
 again in v. 20 (crmaei ^jrvx^vv 6« Bavdrov), and we meet it also 
 in Paul and John. Its origin seems to be in Gen. ii. 17 
 (" the day in which thou eatest, thou shalt surely die "), for 
 Adam on the day of his sin did not die bodily, but he became 
 a child of death. Death here is not the opposite of existence, 
 but the opposite of life in the full sense of the word ; it is 
 the spiritual destruction from which there is still, according 
 to V. 20, deliverance {a-wcrei e« Oavdrov). According to this 
 description of the course of sin in man, James seems to seek 
 its cause in the sensuous side of human nature, for the eVt- 
 6vfiiat have their roots in the fieXT}, the bodily organs, in which 
 also the lusts carry on war (iv. 1), that is, are actively 
 desirous of plunder and conquest. And that the sensuous 
 side of man must be eminently active in sin follows also from 
 the opposition, above alluded to, of God and the world of 
 sense in which man is placed. Still there are two things to 
 be observed. First, according to i. 14, 15, actual sin takes 
 
GOD AND MAN 347 
 
 place only in virtue of the consent of the man, the personal 
 will, to the solicitation of desire. And second, James re- 
 cognises other than immediately sensuous sins, such as envy, 
 contentions, murmurings and slander, pride, and even doubt 
 (that is, the want of serious belief that God is the only true 
 Good, and so it is a wavering between God and the world) ; 
 finally, he recognises as sin the indolent omission of the good 
 which one could have done (iv. 17). Even these spiritual 
 sins, as the context proves (iv. 1—1 0), spring from the warring 
 lusts in the members. They appear naturally in the train of 
 the sinful longing for earthly enjoyment. Self-seeking is at 
 the root of this desire ; as a natural principle it has its place 
 in the whole life of sense, and when this principle of self-seek- 
 ing is unrestrained it manifests itself also in tendencies of the 
 will, which are not of themselves of a sensuous nature. It is 
 thus easy to understand how sin in James, although it rests on 
 the sensuous nature in man, should develop a kind of wisdom, 
 viz. that selfish prudence, which, as it belongs to the baser 
 and worldly side of the soul, and is thus called "■^v^t'it'n" 
 manifests itself in envy, intrigue, and confusion of the social 
 life of men (iii. 14—16) {aKaTaaraaia). And so we may also 
 understand that one great group of sins is composed of the 
 misdeeds of the unbridled tongue, which are certainly not 
 sensuous but are selfish. It is easy to understand, further, 
 that besides the sinful human world, there exists also to James 
 an evil world of spirits, the Sta/3oXo? (iv. 7) and the Sacfiovia 
 (ii. 19, ef. iii. 15, where the ao^ia eirCyeioi; is also called 
 SaifiovuoBTj'i). For evil is a power that encroaches on the 
 individual life, a world-spirit which seductively assails the 
 individual, although, if he cling to God, he can put him to 
 flight (iv. 7). And this single principle of evil in the world 
 is again divided into a number of pernicious powers within its 
 sphere : these are the demons whom James undoubtedly con- 
 ceives in a popular and mythological way, and whose terror 
 before the living God, asserted in ii. 19, he probably learned 
 from the conduct of the possessed, who were exorcised in the 
 name of God. 
 
348 new testament theology 
 
 § 4. The Position of God towards sinful Men 
 
 The position of God towards man as sinful is described in 
 accordance with His nature as the simply good, His nature as 
 light. His moral perfection has necessarily the two sides, that 
 He demands everything good, and that He grants everything 
 good. In respect of the first, He has revealed His perfect 
 goodness in His law (i. 25, ii. 8-12). That the Mosaic law 
 is meant by this vofio^ is shown by the reference to the 
 Ten Commandments in ii. 11 ; but a different view of this law 
 is taken from that which was fostered by the scribes and 
 Pharisees among the Jews, though such a view as might be 
 expected from a deeper and more genuine Judaism even 
 before Christ. For while the Pharisaic-Eabbinic doctrine of 
 the law was split up into a thousand particular maxims, 
 James conceived it as a living and inviolable unity. " Who- 
 soever shall keep the whole law," he says (ii. 10, 11), " and yet 
 offend in one point, is guilty of all. Por He who said, Thou 
 shalt not commit adultery, said also, Thou shalt not kill. 
 Now, if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art 
 become a transgressor of the law." In other words, the holy 
 will of God which is expressed in the law is in itself an 
 undivided indissoluble whole. The satisfaction of all its 
 demands is required in order to give a truly righteous man, 
 and whoever violates it in one point has violated its collective 
 demand, and is not righteous in the sight of God, but sinful 
 and guilty. But although the one Lawgiver and Judge, 
 " who is able to save and to destroy " (iv. 1 2), appears so 
 infinitely strict in this view, yet His desire is — and this leads 
 us over to the beneficent side of His goodness — not to destroy, 
 but to save, for He is very pitiful and of tender mercy (v. 11). 
 He giveth willingly and aTrXco?, simply, without upbraiding 
 the petitioner, or reproaching him beforehand, as a half 
 merciful man does (i. 5). He gives readily, especially to him 
 who asks for wisdom. For the wisdom, the Old Testament 
 notion of which approximates in James to the New Testa- 
 ment notion of the Holy Spirit (cf. iii. 17), is the one true 
 means of help in attaining the moral goal, the divine power 
 for becoming perfect (i. 4, 5). But God also forgives sin 
 (v. 15); wherever a sinner is converted a multitude of sins 
 
GOD AND MAN 349 
 
 are covered, that is, forgiven (v. 20), and mercy rejoices 
 against judgment (ii. 13), that is, it has not to fear judgment 
 — the merciful will obtain mercy (Matt, v^ 7). Thus the 
 rigour of the divine judgment is modified as regards those 
 who turn themselves to His mercy. If he who transgresses 
 only one commandment is guilty of all, and he only who 
 offends not in word a perfect man (iii. 2), yet even in the 
 Old Testament God pardoned sinful men, not only an Abra- 
 ham, but also a Eahab, the forerunner of publicans and sinners 
 (ii. 25), and prepared a glorious end for Job, who certainly 
 was not a man who offended not in word (v. 11). James 
 does not tell us how those inviolable demands of the law for 
 righteousness are reconciled with such gracious procedure on 
 God's part. But this is certain, that he has put no gulf, 
 which must be mediated by some deed of expiation, embracing 
 the world, between divine righteousness and grace. But just 
 as we have already found in the teaching of Jesus, and as 
 corresponds to the faith of prophets and psalmists, he thinks 
 rather of a righteous conduct of God which gives suum cuique, 
 in the sense of love which renders help where one will let 
 himself be helped, and only denies itself where one denies 
 himself to it. " Draw near to God, and He will draw near 
 to you " (iv. 1 8). " God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace 
 to the humble " (iv. 6). To him who prays aright in believing 
 surrender He gives His divine wisdom, but the doubting who 
 waver between Him and the world will receive nothing 
 (i. 5, 7). Judgment without mercy will be passed on him 
 who does not exercise mercy ; on the other hand, mercy 
 rejoiceth against judgment (ii. 13). All these sayings, 
 reminding us of well - known synoptic sayings of Jesus, 
 rest upon the idea of that righteousness of love, that holy 
 goodness, which comes to meet all those who seek it, and 
 will confront with the full strictness of judgment only those 
 who will not allow themselves to be helped by it into good- 
 ness. From this it is clear that the righteous and good God 
 wiU reach His hand to the sinful man, especially with the 
 view to his becoming righteous and good ; and that leads us 
 over to the experience and preaching of salvation peculiar to 
 James. 
 
350 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 CHAPTEE III 
 
 THE SALVATION THAT IS IN CHRIST 
 
 § 1. The Second Bieth 
 
 James represents the fundamental Christian experience 
 in one great, simple declaration : " He, that is, God, of His 
 own will begat us through the word of truth, that we should 
 be a kind of first-fruits of His creatures " — you know it, my 
 beloved brethren (i. 18, 19). It it is almost the only direct 
 declaration of the Epistle concerning the salvation experienced 
 in Christ ; but it is significant enough. It is the fact of a 
 new life from God on which the Christian consciousness rests ; 
 not the mere fact of forgiveness of sin, or justification, but an 
 inner transformation, a spiritual renewal from the bottom of 
 the heart, such as Jesus set before Nicodemus as the funda- 
 mental condition of sharing in the kingdom of God (John 
 iii. 3, 5), and such as was already required in the synoptic 
 introduction to the Sermon on the Mount when that is rightly 
 understood, jMeTavoeiTe. This fundamental condition is ful- 
 filled in the author and his readers, not by their own doings 
 and performances, but by God's free goodness : " ^ovXTjOeU 
 aiTeKwjaev '^fj-a,';," of His own free will. James immediately 
 before had reminded them that none but good and perfect 
 gifts could come down from the Father of lights, the pure 
 goodness of heaven ; and of that, this the best and the most 
 perfect gift which he or his readers could receive is the full 
 and sufficient proof. And this greatest favour of God is 
 enhanced by the fact that in it they have been privileged 
 above innumerable others — that we should be a kind of first- 
 fruits of His creatures. God of His free goodness has chosen 
 them before other nations, before the mass of their own people, 
 and made them an aTrap^ij, consecrated to Him out of His 
 whole rational creation. In them, as the first-fruits. He has 
 initiated humanity into the kingdom of God. And He has 
 done so by the Xojtp aXr]deia<;, by the word of truth, by which 
 we are, of course, to think of the gospel as the word of God's 
 perfect revelation. This second birth by the word has some- 
 
THE SALVATION THAT IS IN CHRIST 351 
 
 times been described as a mystic element peculiar to James ; 
 but in this the fact is overlooked that the same view, only 
 somewhat more diffusely stated, is repeated in the First Epistle 
 of Peter (1 Pet. i, 23-25), and also that both authors only 
 repeat a fundamental thought of Jesus. When, in the Parable 
 of the Sower, Jesus compares the word preached by Him to 
 good seed which He scatters in the heart, and which, wherever 
 it finds good soil, brings forth a new development of life 
 leading to good fruits, what is that but the new birth through 
 the word of truth ? It is quite a cognate image when James 
 (i. 21) describes the word of truth as the Xoyo^ efi<f)VTo? which 
 is able to save their souls (in the final judgment), as the word 
 implanted in the heart of the readers whose final result is 
 their ultimate acoTrjpLa. 
 
 § 2. The Election and Promise 
 
 The same fact of salvation is described in another way in 
 ii. 5 : " Hearken, my beloved brethren. Hath not God chosen 
 the poor of this world that they may be rich in faith, and 
 heirs of the kingdom which He hath promised to them that 
 love Him ? " Eedemption is here brought to remembrance 
 more on its objective historical side. Of course, we are not 
 to think of an act of God before the world was in the case of 
 the c'^eXefaTo o 0eo? ; but just as the choice of Abraham or 
 of Israel in the Old Testament is simply the divine thought 
 of love appearing in history and carried out in a divine work 
 for Abraham and Israel, so here also in the first days of the 
 gospel the election is conceived as the divine purpose to 
 make especially the poor and humble in Israel citizens of the 
 kingdom of heaven. We are thus carried back to the days of 
 Jesus and the beginnings of the Church, in which the poor and 
 lowly were the very people who were laid hold of by the 
 gospel, and the rich and mighty were excluded. Their special 
 susceptibility for the glad message was that in them which 
 corresponded to the divine choice, and gave them the advan- 
 tage over those. This confirms our idea that the word of 
 truth through which God has regenerated the poor was Jesus' 
 preaching of the kingdom of heaven. In the KKTjpovofiovi rrj^ 
 ^acnXeCa<i, ^? iirrjyyeiXaTo, the kingdom of heaven or kingdom 
 
352 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 of God, this main theme of Jesus, we recognise an unmistakable 
 echo of the introductory words of the Sermon on the Mount 
 (Luke vi. 20 ; Matt. v. 3). But we see at the same time 
 that James, like the first apostles, conceives the kingdom as 
 still in the future. It is promised, they are chosen to inherit 
 it, but they have not yet inherited it ; they are rich, but only 
 in faith. The predominating tendency of the primitive 
 apostolic Christianity to dwell in the future meets us here 
 again, and will still further meet us. The idea of the 
 kingdom as already present is not yet formally appropriated, 
 though being born again, and rich in faith, the present 
 possession of salvation is fully felt. Besides the idea of the 
 kingdom, there likewise appears that of life, true eternal 
 life, as a designation of salvation, and it is also conceived 
 as in the future, and is described as the very substance of 
 the gospel (cf. i. 12, a-recfiavov ttj? ^wt}?, ov eTrrjyjetXaTo rot? 
 dyaircoa-iv avrov with ii. 5, t'^? ^acnXeM<;, r)<i iTrrjyyeiXaTo tok 
 dya'n-coai.v avrov) ; but this corresponds to the kindred meaning 
 of the two words which we have noted in the synoptic teach- 
 ing of Jesus. As salvation proper is regarded as future, the 
 gospel of Jesus in this aspect appears under the Old 
 Testament idea of the promise (i. 12, ii. 5). On the other 
 hand, which is a still more remarkable evidence of the Old 
 Testament form of his Christian thought, the author conceives 
 it as law, in order to emphasise what value it has for the 
 Christian even now. 
 
 § 3. The Law of Liberty 
 
 After James has connected the new birth with the act of 
 God through the word of truth, and has exhorted to a fuller 
 reception of this word now planted in the soul, he goes on to 
 remind them that it is not sufficient to be mere hearers, but 
 that they must likewise be doers of the word (i. 22). And 
 in carrying out this idea he changes his phrase, and the word 
 (of truth) becomes a perfect law of liberty (i. 25). The 
 expression recurs once more (ii. 12) in the statement that the 
 Christian shall one day be judged by the law of liberty ; and 
 immediately before, the commandment to love our neighbour 
 gets a similar designation, w/io? ^aa-iXiKo^ (ii. 8.) It is 
 
THE SALVATION THAT IS IN CHKIST 353 
 
 clear then that a word of truth which is not merely to be 
 heard but (like John iii. 21) is to be done, must somehow be 
 comprehended under the concept of law, that is, of a rule of 
 action ; and the concepts 'koyo'? akTjdeia'} and i'o//.o? t^? 
 ekevdepla<;,i. 18, 22, and 25, must coincide to a great extent, 
 though not completely. But what kind of law is meant by 
 the perfect law of liberty ? That we cannot think of a 
 Christian rule of life different from the Mosiac law, like the 
 nova lex which was thought of in the second century, is 
 proved by the passage noted above (ii. 10, 11) in which two of 
 the Mosaic Ten Commandments are adduced as constituent 
 parts of that voiMot ; while, on the other hand, there is nothing 
 to suggest a distinction from the Mosaic law. And yet the 
 mere Mosaic law, in the sense in which it formed the Jewish 
 rule of life, cannot be meant either ; for it is no z/o/xo? re^eto?, 
 and still less a i/o/xo? t?}? iXevOeplwi, and there is nowhere 
 mention of the ritual part of the Mosaic law. The expres- 
 sion vofio'i reXeto? reminds us of Jesus' declaration in the 
 Sermon on the Mount, that He wished to fulfil the law, that 
 is, to make it perfect. K"ow, since that fulfilment consists in 
 giving the individual commandments their true meaning as 
 parts of the fundamental commandment of love to God and 
 to our neighbour, and since James, in an expression directly 
 reminding us of Jesus' words as to the greatest command- 
 ment, declares the commandment of love to our neighbour to 
 be vofjLO'i ^aaCKiKO!;, the foremost and dominating command- 
 ment, the conclusion forces itself upon us that he can only 
 have meant by the perfect law, the Mosaic law as expounded 
 by Jesus. And it is called " the law of liberty," not because 
 it is given for the state of Christian freedom, for redeemed 
 men, for such concepts are unknown to the Epistle, and the 
 phrase cannot be naturally made to yield them,^ but simply 
 because it is not a slavish law constraining from without, but 
 a law of the heart which freely obeys. A law of love — and 
 according to ii. 8, the law of liberty is that to James — can 
 only rule from within, and therefore freely, since love can 
 neither be commanded nor threatened, but only guided from 
 within, that is, freely or not at all. The expression reminds 
 us of Jeremiah's prophecy of the new covenant, in which the 
 1 Against Weiss, N. T. Theol i. 251. 
 
 BEYSCHLAG. — I. 23 
 
354 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 law is to be written on the heart and put in the inward parts, 
 and as James calls the X070S a\r]6eia<;, which, according to 
 i. 23, includes the commandment of the law of liberty, a 
 X0709 efj,j,vTo<;, we learn from his own lips the way in which 
 the perfect law has become spiritualised to the Christians, 
 and thus at the same time a law of liberty. It is easy to see 
 how closely this view of the gospel, on the one hand, as a 
 promise of the kingdom of heaven, and on the other, as the 
 perfected and spiritualised law, follows Jesus' method of 
 teaching, in which, besides the glad tidings of the near 
 approach of the kingdom, there is an exhibition of that 
 kingdom's demand for righteousness in a more spiritual 
 exposition of the Mosaic law, and at the close of the Sermon 
 on the Mount there is a demand, almost in the same words as 
 in James, for a hearing and doing of the word. On the other 
 hand, no greater contrast can be conceived, in form at least, 
 to the Pauline mode of teaching, in which law and gospel are 
 the opposite poles of divine revelation, than this view, which 
 brings the gospel itself, at least as seen from one side, under 
 the notion of law. If in this contrast James has the Old 
 Testament joy in the law on his side, and the devout life of 
 the Old Testament saints in the commandments of God (ef. 
 the -n-apatcvTrreiv, the steeping oneself in the law, i. 25), it 
 cannot be denied that the greater keenness and comprehensive- 
 ness of theological idea is on the side of Paul. For if the 
 saving character of the gospel cannot be sufficiently compre- 
 hended in the notion of promise, how much less in that of 
 law ! The power by which the law is put within men and 
 written on their hearts, and so made the law of liberty, is 
 neither promise nor legislation, and yet it is the main thing. 
 This power James knows and rejoices in (i. 18), but he is not 
 yet able to grasp its significance as the central point of 
 Christian thought and teaching, or to make it his starting- 
 point in exhibiting Christianity in its novelty and peculiarity. 
 This also means, that to him Christ, the personal source of 
 that power, has not yet become the central point of his 
 doctrinal thought. 
 
the salvation that is in christ 355 
 
 § 4. Jesus the Cheist and Loed 
 
 For this is the remarkable thing that distinguishes the 
 Epistle of James from all other New Testament writings, that 
 the person of the Saviour comes so little to the front in it. 
 Apart from the greeting, there is but one passage (ii. 1) that 
 declares anything directly about Him. Not that the Epistle 
 does not contain, in the way of suggestion and presupposition, 
 everything which the first apostolic Church and preaching has 
 and honours in the one name in which alone is salvation, 
 Jesus is indeed XpiaT6<;, the Messiah ; the name Christ has 
 become His own name, and that is confession enough. But 
 Jesus is also KvpiO'j, 6 iciipio'i tjfi&v (i. 1, ii. 1), and James calls 
 himself His SoOXo?, just as he names himself the SoO\o9 of 
 God. He knows Him, therefore, as One who is exalted to 
 the right hand of God and to divine honour, as the addi- 
 tion X/3K7TOS rijs So^Tj? (ii. 1) expregsly attests : he knows that 
 for salvation he depends not only on God, but also on Jesus 
 Christ. The worthy name mentioned in ii. 7 {kuXov ovofia), 
 which is named over the readers, and is reviled by their per- 
 secutors after the custom of " naming over anyone the name 
 of Him whose he is to be, can only be the name of Jesus, 
 which in baptism was named over the readers, that so they 
 might become His possession." And so, too, the faith of the 
 readers is directed to Jesus as it is to God : it is a Trto-rt? toO 
 Kvpiov fjfifav 'Ir)a-ov (ii. 1).^ Now if, in spite of this, the name 
 of the Saviour falls into the background in James, so that it 
 is only twice mentioned, that is due chiefly to the fact that 
 he is wont to consider Christianity solely as the completion of 
 Judaism, as a crowning of God's way of salvation begun with 
 Abraham, and he goes back beyond the person of the historical 
 Mediator of salvation to the yet higher Author of eternal 
 salvation. It is God who has regenerated him and his readers 
 through the word of truth — of course through Christ. It is 
 God who will finally judge men by the law of liberty 
 offered to them (ii. 12, iv. 12) — of course through Christ, 
 
 ^ Tliat the genitive tow itvpiov iifiuu is to be taken in the objective sense 
 =belief in Jesus, just as in the synoptic slaTig kav (Mark xi. 22), cannot 
 in the least be doubted, since a viaTis kov in the subjective sense is an 
 absurdity. 
 
356 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 whose judicial parousia is near at hand (v. 8). Since (joq 
 has already justified Abraham just as the Christian hopes to 
 be justified by Him (ii. 21, 23) ; since God has already given 
 the law through Moses, which, made perfect and planted ia 
 the heart through Christ, now rules those who believe in Him, 
 the author does not yet feel himself urged, like the later 
 writers of the New Testament, to give distinct prominence in 
 his preaching to the epoch-making significance of Christ's 
 appearance, although he fully recognises it in his heart. On 
 the other hand, he puts the name of Jesus in the background, 
 because, whilst he has felt the power of His saving work, he 
 has not yet fully comprehended its meaning. As in the case 
 of the first apostles, so also in the case of James, it is the pro- 
 phetic and kingly offices on which all weight is laid. Jesus 
 is the Prophet who has perfectly revealed the purpose of God, 
 and the King in whose grace they hope in the judgment — the 
 high-priestly office of Christ is essentially unrevealed to their 
 understanding. The second birth has been brought about by 
 the word of truth which Jesus has preached, and by the joyful 
 message of the kingdom of God which He has promised to 
 them that love Him (i. 12, ii. 5). This word has been planted 
 in the heart as a power of sanctification and deliverance, 
 whilst God has been making the fertilising rain of His Spirit 
 follow on the sowing of Jesus (iv. 5). The completed saving 
 work of Jesus thus presented itself to James as to the original 
 apostles. He does not think of Christ's death upon the cross, 
 for he has not unbelieving Jews before him to whom he would 
 have to hold it up as blood-guiltiness, and he does not yet 
 think of it as an expiating saving act, as is clear from the 
 fact that he connects the forgiveness of sins only with the 
 conversion of the sinner (v. 20) and with pious prayer and 
 intercession, after the manner of the Old Testament (v. 15). 
 More significant to him is the glory into which Jesus has 
 entered through His death, and in which He will speedily- 
 return (v. 8). It is significant that the one christological 
 declaration of the Epistle which goes beyond the name of 
 Saviour, refers to this glory : tov Kvpiov ■^/muv 'Irjcrov Xpicnov 
 Tri<; B6^ri<: (ii. 1). Whether we refer the difficult t^? Sofi??, 
 which in any case has an adjective sense, to the whole expres- 
 sion or specially to Xpia-rov (Messiah of glory), it at least 
 
FAITH AND WOEKS 357 
 
 expresses the expectation of that day on which Jesus will 
 reappear in a glory which He did not yet possess on earth, 
 and the view that, in virtue of this glory, He will justify to 
 the full the names Xpia-ro'; and Kvpi,o<; given to Him by faith. 
 Then will He judge the world (v. 9), and give to those who 
 love God and have believed on His Anointed the crown of life, 
 the promised kingdom. And one feels from the prophetic 
 swing of his closing chapter (v. 1-8) how eagerly in the 
 author the TrwrTt? ^Itjaov was directed to this fulfiment in the 
 future of all Messianic expectations. 
 
 CHAPTEE IV 
 
 FAITH AND WORKS 
 
 § 1. Concept of Woeks 
 
 His readers' practical defects and the practical tendency 
 of James' own thought give the result that, although the 
 objective announcements of salvation are so scanty, the main 
 ideas of subjective Christianity, faith and works, are fully dis- 
 cussed. This appears specially in the celebrated section (ii. 
 14—26) which treats of justification by faith and by works. 
 But insistence on an active Christianity comes earlier into 
 prominence as a main concern of the Epistle. In i. 4, 
 iirofiov)] is to have its perfect work, that is, to achieve all 
 that is possible for it in virtue of which the Christian man 
 shall be seen perfect and complete, that is, morally perfect. 
 So also in the following chapters, works are not separate acts 
 apart from the Christian character, but the practical proofs 
 and confirmation of that character. The doer of works (Troti^T^?, 
 epr/ov, i. 25) does not perform certain Pharisaic good works, 
 he is a doer of the word which has been planted in his heart, 
 and in which he lives and moves (i. 21, 25): that perfect 
 law of liberty is a unity throughout all its commandments, and 
 therefore can only be kept or transgressed as a whole (ii. 10, 
 1 2). His works, therefore, are exhibitions of love to God and 
 to his neighbour, and they appear in other parts of the Epistle 
 as the fundamental requirements of both law and gospel (i. 
 12, ii. 5, 8), or, in i. 27, as religion, pure and undefiled, mercy. 
 
358 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 and sanctification. Distinguished examples of such works are 
 the act of Abraham in bringing his son to the altar, for he 
 could not more completely have proved his love for God ; or 
 the act of Eahab in receiving and sending away the spies of 
 the Israelites, for she saved their life at the risk of her own 
 (ii. 21, 25). 
 
 § 2. Concept of Faith 
 
 It is more difficult to say what James means by faith. 
 The fact that, in accordance with his undeveloped doctrine of sal- 
 vation, he refers faith at one time to Christ, and again, and much 
 more frequently, to God (ii. 1, cf. with i. 6, ii. 19, 22, 23), 
 makes the comprehension of the idea difficult. Bub more 
 significant is the fact that James speaks of a dead faith, which 
 he does not recognise as the true, but yet allows it to pass as 
 an actual faith ; for that the eav irumv f^iyr] Tt9 e^^eiv of ii. 
 14 is not meant in the sense of a mere apparent faith, is 
 made plain by the words immediately following, as well as by 
 vv. 20, 24, 26. The question, therefore, is to discover a 
 notion of faith that unites in itself the two possibilities of 
 being alive or dead. The notion usually accepted of a mere 
 intellectual assent without fiducia, is not sufficient even for 
 the dead faith of James, not to speak of the living. It is true 
 that this notion seems to be justified by the passage ii. 19, 
 where the dead faith of the readers is described by way of 
 example as a belief that there is one God, and compared with 
 the faith of devils who also believe that and tremble at it ; 
 but too much should not be deduced from this passage. Just 
 as the faith of the readers was not limited in its object to the 
 unity of God, for it was also faith in the Messiahship of Jesus 
 at anyrate (ii. 1), so we cannot suppose this attitude in faith 
 to be exactly the same as that of devils, though, of course, 
 there must be a sinister likeness and affinity between the two. 
 The context, in particular, excludes the idea that an intel- 
 lectual faith viithowt fiducia was in his mind ; the men of dead 
 faith really had their trust in it — though a delusive trust. 
 They thought, according to ii. 14, that mere faith could save 
 them. The passage i. 6 carries us further, " But let him ask 
 in faith, nothing doubting." Here we must not in vague 
 
FAITH AND WORKS 359 
 
 fashion understand by faith the assurance that one will get 
 what he asks ; for even the doubter, according to ver. 7, has 
 this cheap and, as experience shows, delusive oceadai. But 
 as the doubter, according to i. 7, ii. 4, is to James the " double- 
 minded " man who wavers between God and the world, who 
 is not really and truly convinced that God is the one true 
 Good and this world nothing but the aggregate of transitory 
 blessings, it follows that faith in i. 6 is to him the conviction 
 that God is, and that He is the rewarder of them that seek 
 Him (Heb. xi. 6) ; in other words, that the world of the in- 
 visible and eternal possessions is the only actual world. We 
 thus come, in the case of James, to the same notion of faith 
 as is found in the celebrated passage Heb. xi. 1 : the conviction 
 of the reality of supersensuous facts and blessings ; and this 
 idea of faith — which belongs to all religions, and does not 
 bear the special stamp of Christianity — solves the riddle lying 
 before us. For this conviction, which, of course, includes for 
 men a reliance on these facts and blessings of salvation, may 
 be living and operative, the motive power of the moral life in 
 those who cherish it ; or it be may dead and inactive, and en- 
 courage men in an unreasonable confidence. And in the latter 
 case the faith of the man has a far-reaching likeness to that 
 of demons, who, as is proved by their trembling, know that 
 those facts and saving blessings are of no use to them ; both 
 have the certainty in which is no blessing or moral fruit, and 
 in which at last there is condemnation. And it is not without 
 meaning that James (ii. 19) takes hold of the main article of 
 Jewish faith, the confession of monotheism. Just as all Jews 
 prided themselves on this point of distinction from heathendom, 
 and excused themselves for all their ungodliness because they 
 were right in this, for which Paul reproaches them (Rom. ii. 
 1 7 ff.), the readers of our Epistle, under the influence of a 
 reaction in which what was bad in Judaism had reappeared, 
 had also allowed this indolent reliance in the mere facts and 
 hopes of their Christian faith to take hold of them. 
 
 § 3. Eelation between Faith and Works 
 
 But we only gain perfect clearness about the concepts 
 faith and works when we contemplate the relation which 
 
360 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 James conceives to exist between the two. It has been 
 thought that we must understand them in James as two 
 independent powers standing beside each other, and barely 
 capable of a union, or connection, and that we must, on the 
 other hand, set aside the idea of works as proceeding from 
 faith.i This view, which is supported especially by the co- 
 operation of faith and works, asserted in ii. 22, cannot, how- 
 ever, be maintained. The injunction ii. 1, "Have not your 
 faith in the Lord Jesus Christ with respect of persons " (not in 
 any sectional spirit), shows that the author regards Christian 
 faith as carrying with it moral consequences. That appears 
 still more plainly in ii. 18; if faith cannot be proved without 
 works, if it can and must be proved by works, then works 
 must somehow proceed from faith. And how could James, 
 from the examples he adduces, have conceived the relation 
 otherwise than he has done ? James could not fail to see 
 that Abraham's willingness to offer his son in sacrifice to God 
 sprang from his trust in God, and the confidence that God is 
 better than the dearest earthly possession ; in the same way 
 he must have seen that the deed of Eahab proceeded from 
 her faith in the superior might and approaching victory of the 
 God of Israel. Therefore, according to James, faith and works 
 do stand in the relation of tree and fruit ; but there are un- 
 fruitful trees, and there is a faith which lacks the normal 
 impulse to prove its quality in conduct. That is in no way 
 opposed by the declaration of ver. 22, that faith co-operates 
 with works (avvepyeT), and by works is made perfect. Por 
 the crvvepyel does not mean that faith helps works, springing 
 up independently of it, to perfect themselves, but that it co- 
 operates with them in order to bring about justification ; this 
 reading is absolutely necessary, for it could not be said of the 
 works, which are also described as active in the word a-vvepjet, 
 that they produced themselves. So also the oti, f) ttlo-tk 
 T^&)|Ot? TMv epycop apjij ecmv does not mean : it is worthless 
 to good works, for James did not need to tell anybody that a 
 faith without works is inoperative, apy^ ; but it means, that 
 such a faith is ineffectual for justification. But that tree and 
 fruit combine to secure the approval of the Gardener, that 
 religious faith and its moral proof work together to win for 
 ^ So Weissenbach, Exegetisch-theologische Studie iiber Jaa. ii. 14-26. 1871. 
 
FAITH AND WORKS 361 
 
 man the divine recognition of being just, is no unsuitable 
 thought. The deduction of works from faith is also not con- 
 tradicted by the statement of ver. 22, that faith is perfected 
 by works. Any conviction is strengthened in the very act of 
 living up to it, and certainly the faith of Abraham reached its 
 perfection when he was able to offer in sacrifice to God the 
 dearest that he had on earth. The passage ii. 2 6 (" as the 
 body without the soul is dead, so also faith without works is 
 dead ") would give a different and almost contrary relation of 
 faith and works, if works in it were conceived as the soul of 
 faith. That would not be a co-ordinating of two powers, 
 independent and only capable of being united, for body and 
 soul do not first exist independently beside one another, in 
 order then to enter into union ; but faith as the more active 
 would rather proceed from works than works from the living 
 faith. But James cannot have thought that, because it 
 would directly contradict ver. 18. If faith is not recognis- 
 able in itself, but first becomes visible by works, then it 
 cannot possibly be thought of as the visible, the body, and 
 works as the invisible, the soul. But this comparison, which 
 is not to be overstrained, can only mean, as a body without a 
 soul is a corpse, so is faith without moral proof ; it lacks the 
 living impulse which gives it practical worth. Thus James, 
 in conformity with the whole character of his doctrinal system, 
 conceived works in true Christian fashion as the practical 
 proofs of the new life which God has begotten in Christian 
 men, and which they must not allow to die in them again. 
 But his conception of faith hangs between the Old and New 
 Testament, it is partly Christian and partly universal in its 
 religious character; and whilst he recognises, what he has 
 learnt from life, that it may be living or dead, active or 
 merely passive, he from the first excluded the idea that it 
 should have such absolute value assigned to it as it has in 
 Paul's world of thought, where it appears as the foundation of 
 justification. 
 
362 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 CHAPTEE V 
 
 JUSTIFICATION 
 § 1. The Concept Justification in general 
 
 The Epistle of James, in the famous passage ii. 14-26, 
 bases justification on faith and works, and so suggests a con- 
 tradiction, and even an intentional contradiction, to the Pauline 
 teaching, and a polemic against the author of the Epistle to 
 the Eomans. In so far as this appearance rests on the bare 
 idea of justification in itself, it is removed by a history of 
 that idea. It is not in its origin peculiarly Pauline, but is a 
 common possession of the Old and New Testament. The 
 word SiKMovv, P'''!Vn^ describes in the Old Testament the action 
 of a judge who declares a man innocent, and so the word 
 justify in the so-called forensic sense, as borrowed from legal 
 speech, has become a current expression for acquittal ; it is a 
 declaration of innocence, especially it is the sentence of God 
 acquitting or justifying a man in His judgment. It cannot 
 therefore be in the least surprising to find the expression in 
 the mouth of James, since it is in no way the peculiar posses- 
 sion of Paul. The Jewish theology of the synagogue makes 
 frequent use of it,^ and it was well known to the primitive 
 Church, all the more as that Church, convinced of the near 
 approach of the Messianic day of judgment, was led to discuss 
 with greater eagerness the alternatives of the KaraSiKa^ea-dai 
 or BoKaiovaOai on that day (Matt. xii. 3 7).^ But in the usage 
 of the Old Testament two possible senses appear. He who is 
 
 1 Weber, in Ms Altsynagogalen Theologie, proves that. 
 
 ^ It is, notwithstanding, a favourite objection to our whole conception 
 of the Epistle of James, that it is improbable, and cannot be proved that' 
 the primitive Christianity before Paul spoke of justification by faith, 
 or by faith and works. This is an argvrnientum e silentio of the most 
 sorry kind. What do we know at all of the doctrinal and religious 
 speech of pre-Pauline Christendom? The Epistle of James either is a 
 pre-Pauline writing, and then this one development of pre-JPauliue Church 
 history attests that that notion was current among Christians before Paul, 
 or it is not a pre-Pauline document, and then there exists no document at 
 all which can bear witness to the pre-Pauline usage of Christendom. 
 
JUSTIFICATION 363 
 
 really righteous may be recognised as such, as when an inno- 
 cent man is acquitted before the judgment-seat, or when God 
 in His righteousness is recognised by man, or when a really 
 righteous pious man receives God's recognition as such. But 
 an unrighteous man may also be acquitted, that is, declared 
 righteous, justified by a judge, for example, who allows him- 
 self to be bribed (cf. Ex. xxiii. 7, LXX. : ov SiKaiQ>t7ei<; rov 
 atre^rj eveKev Smpav) ; or by a king who pardons a guilty 
 man, and by that act of grace justifies him ; or by God, who, 
 letting grace come before righteousness, declares a sinner just. 
 And in this twofold sense of a justificatio justi and a justifi- 
 catio injusti, the notion Bokmovv, BiKatovadai found its applica- 
 tion in the New Testament. The first is the common ; when 
 Jesus, in Matt. xii. 3 7, says, e«; yap twv Xoymv aov hiKamdriari, 
 Kol e'/e Twv Xojcov aov KaTaBiKacrO^arj, the reference is to a 
 justificatio justi — if thy words have been really good, thou 
 wilt be justified on the ground of them ; and if they have 
 been evil, thou wilt be condemned on the ground of them. 
 The words in the Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican 
 approximate to the notion of a justifxiatio injusti : KaTe^rj 
 o5to9 BeBiKacofievo^ ek rov oIkov avrov -Trap eicelvov (Luke 
 xviii. 14). Yet even here, as the note of comparison shows, 
 the emphasis is not so much upon the fact that a sinner was 
 pardoned, as that the publican, humbling himself before God, 
 was really, in virtue of his conversion, more righteous before 
 God than the proud impenitent Pharisee. And so the main 
 idea, according to the simpler and more natural reading, is 
 that of justificatio justi ; this is a statement of the standard 
 of justice. If thus it should appear that James follows this 
 view, and that Paul in his peculiar doctrine of salvation gives 
 religious form to the other and more artificial application of 
 the notion of justification, we must recognise in James the 
 source of the primitive thought on the subject before Paul. 
 It was undoubtedly more natural for a religion, which, like 
 Judaism, endeavoured to obtain the favour of God by means 
 of a righteousness of works, to speak of a SiKatovaSai in the 
 religious sense, in the sense of the justificatio justi, than in that 
 of justificatio injusti ; and even primitive Christianity, in its 
 endeavour to reach moral reXetoTT?? (Matt. v. 18) and future 
 salvation by observance of the righteousness which Jesus 
 
364 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 had taught in the Sermon on the Mount, could not start from 
 any other meaning or usage. The word Bikuiovv, even to 
 Paul, where he does not develop his peculiar doctrine of grace, 
 is familiar only in the sense of the justifioatio justi (cf. Eom. 
 ii. 13; 1 Cor. iv. 4). 
 
 § 2. James' Docteine oe Justification 
 
 The doctrine of James is most simply comprised in the 
 statement of ii. 24 : 'Opare, on i^ epycov SiicaiovTai civdpa)iro<s, 
 Kal ovK £K iricTTeca fiovov. The fiovov indicates that faith 
 also belongs to justification ; that it co-operates with works 
 in respect of it (ii. 22). And we cannot conceive anything 
 other than this from the nature of the works which justify 
 before God ; works which do not result from faith, that is, 
 from a religious basis, could not, for that very reason, justify 
 anyone. In the same way, we cannot conceive anything 
 else as regards faith itself ; for how could a man without 
 faith, an unbelieving man, please God ? (cf. Heb. xi. 6). But 
 James most emphatically denies justifying power to faith 
 alone, faith without works (ii. 14); for that is not a living, 
 but a dead faith, and as such, of course, useless, ineffectual, 
 0/3717 in respect to justification, that is, in presenting man in 
 God's eyes as righteous (ii. 20). It may now be asked, in 
 what moment or stage of the Christian life does James place 
 this divine justification by faith and works ? He cannot have 
 placed it in the beginning of the Christian profession, for then 
 the young faith has had no possibility of proving and exhibit- 
 ing itself in works. There lies rather in the idea of a 
 justification by works — works in the sense of James — that 
 the conclusion is drawn from the completed life, and the two 
 Old Testament examples of Abraham and Eahab, adduced by 
 James, show that this was also his idea. The justification of 
 Abraham, of which he speaks (ii. 21), takes place after the 
 offering of Isaac, after the last and greatest proof of love for 
 God in the life of the patriarch, which in the Scripture narra- 
 tive falls also tolerably near the end of his history. And 
 the justification of Eahab immediately precedes the judgment 
 of God upon Jericho, a symbol of the divine judgment of the 
 world. If we add that, according to ii. 14, BiKaiovaOai is to 
 
JUSTIFICATION 365 
 
 James synonymous with am^eaOai, and that aw^eadai, almost 
 throughout, in Paul even, is conceived as taking place in the 
 future at the final judgment (cf. Eom. v. 9, viii. 24), then we 
 are forced to recognise that this justifying judgment of God 
 meant by James is the divine final judgment. Not that 
 James directly understood by SiKaiovcrffat the acquittal by 
 God at the last day, the statement otl e'f (pyav BiKaiovTai 
 avOpcoiTo^, KoX ovK e« iria-Tewi /j,6vov in its present tense is too 
 indefinite and general for that ; he meant that judgment of 
 complacency which God forms to Himself about the life of a 
 pious man spent in His sight, on which He will, in His own 
 time, base His final decision. That the final decision will not 
 be made on the basis of a man's mere faith, but on the basis 
 of his works, of having done or not done the will of God, is 
 the simple and emphatic teaching of Jesus Himself, which no 
 one can expect James to disavow. " Not everyone that saith 
 unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven ; 
 but he that doeth the will of My Father in heaven " (Matt, 
 vii. 21; cf. vv. 23-27). But it is also the teaching of the 
 Apostle Paul, who nowhere makes the final and saving deci- 
 sion of God follow on mere faith, but on the doing of the 
 divine will, on the completed sanctification (Rom. ii. 1 3 ; 2 Cor. 
 V. 10 ; 1 Thess. v. 23, etc.). If James thus teaches that 
 God, in order to recognise a man ultimately as righteous, 
 and to let him stand as such in His final judgment (ffwa-ai, 
 ii. 14), takes into consideration, not merely his faith, but also 
 his works, that is, his life and walk, he has both Scripture and 
 reason on his side, and there is nothing in his doctrine either 
 to surprise or raise question. There is only one main point 
 that can perplex, and which has given the main occasion for 
 attributing to James a polemic against Eom. iv. — a polemic 
 that would be excessively clumsy — viz. that James appeals 
 for his doctrine of justification by faith and works to the 
 example of Abraham, which, according to the wording of Gen. 
 XV. 6, rather favours the opinion he contests of a Si/caiova-0ai 
 eK ma-Tecjof /lovov ; and he appeals to this example with the 
 passages of Scripture in his mind, as is shown by ver. 23. 
 But this surprise disappears when we consider that James, as 
 ver. 21 undoubtedly shows, starts from a quite definite tradi- 
 tional representation about Abraham in which his readers 
 
366 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 shared, and which he can therefore hold up to them as an 
 axiom, and by which also his comprehension and exposition 
 of the apparently opposing passage (Gen. xv. 6) are conditioned. 
 In spite of the saying, " Abraham believed God, and it was 
 counted to him for rightepusness," the firm Jewish conviction 
 was that Abraham had God's favour, not merely on account 
 of his faith, but also, as an actual righteous and pious man, 
 on account of his walk, his works, and especially on account 
 of that unsurpassable deed of obedience, the offering of his 
 son. Abraham, says the Pirst Book of Maccabees ii. 52, offered 
 his son, and God counted that to him for righteousness. From 
 this view, common to him and his readers, he can plead to 
 them, " Was not then Abraham our father justified by works 
 when he had offered his son Isaac upon the altar ? " He thinks 
 of the promise of God, connected in the Old Testament narra- 
 tive with this very deed of Abraham, and whilst he cannot, 
 of course, leave unmentioned the apparently contradictory 
 passage xv. 6, he can harmonise it with his view and teaching. 
 He notes the necessary co-operation of faith and works, and 
 the way in which works come in to perfect faith (ver. 22), 
 and he brings in harmony by taking the words of Gen. xv. 6 
 as a provisional or prophetic declaration which can only be 
 fulfilled when Abraham's faith is perfected in the work of 
 offering Isaac. 
 
 § 3. James and Paul 
 
 Now, if this is James' doctrine of justification, in what 
 relation does it stand to that of Paul ? Not, at anyrate, in 
 that of a polemic. For James has a different conception, 
 not only of works but of faith and justification, from that 
 which Paul has when he teaches that man is justified by God 
 through faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, and 
 so a polemic on the part of James against Paul would be a 
 beating of the air, the most complete misunderstanding that 
 could be imagined. But it is quite inconceivable that the 
 historical James, to whom, according to Gal. ii., Paul explained 
 his preaching of the gospel, and who declared himself in 
 harmony with it and gave him the right hand of fellowship, 
 should have cherished such a misunderstanding. And even 
 
JUSTIFICATION 367 
 
 if we assume a psuedo-James as author of the Epistle, and 
 make him contend, not against the actual, but against a mis- 
 understood and degenerate Paulinism, we do not improve the 
 case. It certainly is hard to conceive that the peculiar 
 doctrine of the Apostle to the Gentiles should have entered 
 and been perverted within exclusive and unmixedly Jewish- 
 Christian circles. But in such a case one would expect from 
 the polemic that it should distinguish between real and mis- 
 understood Paulinism of which there is no trace in our Epistle. 
 If we assume a polemic directed against the Epistles to the 
 Komans and Galatians, we have to decide that the example 
 of Abraham, turned specially to account in these Epistles, 
 was applied in a contrary sense by James. But James amply 
 shows by the example of Eahab, which Paul does not 
 mention, that he did not borrow his examples from the 
 Pauline Epistles. Surely the example of Abraham, whom 
 his people honoured as the friend of God on account of his 
 virtues, might have been suggested without the example of 
 Paul, more readily than that of Eahab. Above all, the 
 way in which he introduces the example of Abraham (ver. 21) 
 as an unquestioned and unquestionable proof for his own 
 doctrine, makes the assumption of a polemical reference to 
 Eom. iv. absolutely impossible, for no reasonable man would 
 quote a disputed case as conclusively establishing his point. 
 But there is not even an objective conflict between the 
 Pauline and Jacobean doctrine ; both forms of teaching exist 
 peacefully beside each other. James manifestly contem- 
 plated justification in the simple and most natural sense of 
 justificatio justi, as the divine recognition of an actually 
 righteous man (for he acknowledges that there are such as 
 is shown by ver. 16), and he thought of it as the final 
 judgment of God upon a man who is to stand in the last 
 judgment and become a partaker of the final a-coTtjpia. Paul 
 also, as already noted, demands as a requisite for this last 
 judgment and the final amrripla, right works, the love that 
 fulfils the law, and the perfected sanctification, but he (except 
 in Eom. ii. 13) does not apply the expression SiKaiovaOai to 
 the final judgment of God, which recognises this righteous- 
 ness of life as actual. He applies it rather to that first 
 sentence of God with which He graciously receives the 
 
368 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 believing sinner returning to Him, and takes him into 
 fellowship with Himself, that is, he takes the notion of 
 justification in the sense of the justificatio injusti (Eom. iv. 5, 
 BiKaiovvTa tov aae^rj), and thus refers it to the first moment 
 of the Christian profession, to the forgiveness of sin which 
 establishes the standing of the believer in grace. 
 
 Wow as James undoubtedly taught with the first apostles 
 that whoever believeth in Christ and is baptized receives 
 forgiveness of his sins (Acts ii. 38, iii. 19, x. 43), though 
 the expression justification for this act of forgiveness might 
 have been strange to him, he would not in anyway have con- 
 tested the Pauline idea of a justification by grace on account 
 of faith ; he would simply have insisted that works must 
 follow (cf. Acts XV. 11). The distinction of James' and 
 Paul's doctrine is thus a purely formal one, but as such is 
 certainly not without significance. In the first place, it is 
 clear how much nearer the doctrine of James is in point of 
 form to Jesus' own doctrine, how much more primitive it is 
 than the Pauline, which, with a bold stroke, makes EtKaiovv 
 rov aae^ri, which was forbidden to the judge in the Old 
 Testament, the expression of God's right to put grace before 
 justice and to justify sinners. For that very reason, how- 
 ever, James' doctrine of justification is the more imperfect 
 and unsatisfying in point of form. It cannot be doubted, 
 that if we take the doctrine of James in its strict literalness, 
 only the man who is perfect in his works (i. 4) could reckon 
 on God's favour. And if, on the one hand, we all offend in 
 many things (iii. 2), while, on the other, he who keeps the 
 whole law and offends in one point is guilty of all (ii. 9), it 
 appears as if no man can stand in that future judgment which 
 is to take place according to the perfect law of liberty (ii. 12). 
 But that is not James' meaning. He knows of a forgiveness 
 of sin, not merely when a man becomes a Christian, but also 
 within the Christian life, a forgiveness that is ever new and 
 plenteous (v. 15, 20), for God is very pitiful and of tender 
 mercy (v. 11), and the merciful shall also in his judgment 
 obtain mercy (ii. 13). Eut this doctrine of pardon is in no 
 way formally introduced into that doctrine of justice and of 
 judgment, just because Christ and Christ's cross have not yet 
 become to James the central point of his doctrine. He is 
 
THE CHKISTIAN LIFE 369 
 
 satisfied, after the manner of the Old Testament, to derive 
 the forgiveness of sin immediately from God, and to connect 
 it with the conversion of the sinner (v. 20); he seeks for an 
 understanding of that saving act of God which is peculiar to 
 the New Testament, in virtue of which God can bring to the 
 believer in Christ the assurance of an infinite forgiveness, 
 because in the same Christ is the guarantee for the perfect 
 sanctification of those who believe on Him. It is entirely 
 different in the case of Paul, who finds in Christ's death the 
 source both of the pardon and the renewal of the man ; Paul 
 is therefore able to show us how God, without any self-contra- 
 diction, can justify the ungodly who believes, and yet can at 
 last demand of him a perfect righteousness not imputed, but 
 bestowed and made his own. 
 
 CHAPTEE VI 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 § 1. Love of God and Contempt for the Woeld 
 
 James' doctrinal account of Christianity is thus an im- 
 perfect one ; but all the more distinctly marked is the ideal 
 of Christian life as it appears in his exhortations, which are 
 urged with the greatest moral earnestness, and was evidently 
 realised to some extent in his own character. Certainly this 
 ideal of life is characteristic of an individual, or perhaps 
 rather of a class. It is the ideal of one of the " quiet in the 
 land," one of the pious poor of Israel, who before he was a 
 Christian had Kved by what in the Old Testament piety was 
 most closely related to the gospel, and consequently, even 
 after he had found in Christianity the fulfilment of his 
 longings and a complete inner freedom, could remain on 
 the peaceful boundary line of the Old and New Testament. 
 That earnest and unforced love of God which saw in Him the 
 highest and the only true good, so that the heart was not 
 divided between God and the world, was for James and the 
 best of his readers the fundamental fact in personal religion, 
 just as Jesus Himself had taught (i. 12, ii. 5, iv. 4). In 
 
 BEySCHLAG. — 1. 24 
 
370 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 this disposition James calls it believing to prize only the 
 eternal blessings, and doubting to waver between them and 
 the temporal blessings (i. 6, 7, ii. 4). In this disposition he 
 demands of his readers that they hold the miseries and 
 vexations of the earthly existence for pure joy, because 
 through the trial of faith is produced that brave patience, 
 that endurance which overcomes the world, and makes them 
 worthy of the eternal crown of victory (i, 2, 12). And, in 
 the same spirit, there is rooted in him that noble pride which 
 will not bend before riches and the power connected with 
 them, but, in the high consciousness of being rich in God, 
 treats rich and poor with the same independence and kind- 
 ness (ii. 1-9). Poverty as such is not made a virtue and 
 riches a sin, nor is asceticism and the outward flight from 
 the world preached. Our Epistle shows no trace of this 
 spirit which was already mighty in the second century. It 
 is in the Christianity of personal sanctification, of active 
 brotherly love and patient hope, that that fundamental dis- 
 position of love for God manifests itself. 
 
 § 2. Sanctification and its Means 
 
 The idea of sanctification meets us in two forms: negatively, 
 as a demand to keep oneself unspotted from the world (i. 27), 
 and positively, as the task of becoming perfect and complete, 
 lacking nothing (i. 4). Of course this goal is not to be reached 
 without an ever-renewed repentance and conversion ; man, by 
 nature inclined to yield to his lusts and passions and to be 
 the friend of the world, has to turn himself ever more com- 
 pletely from the world to God. " Submit yourselves to God," 
 cries James in this sense to his readers (iv. 7) ; but " resist 
 the devil, — the world-spirit, who provokes and allures you, — 
 and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and He will 
 draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, — namely, for prayer, 
 — ye sinners ; and purify your hearts, ye double-minded > Be 
 afflicted, and mourn, and weep : let your laughter be turned to 
 mourning, and your joy to heaviness. Humble yourselves in 
 the sight of God, and He will lift you up." The fundamental 
 mood, however, of the Christian, which must grow out of this 
 submission to God, and which forms the presupposition of any 
 
THE CHKISTIAN LIFE 371 
 
 positive growth in sanctification, is •irpaiiTr]<i (i. 21, iii. 13); 
 this is not so much meekness towards men, as quietness before 
 God ; the meekness which, as the contrary of opy^, all restless, 
 excited, passionate frames of mind, enables the man at all 
 times to listen to the voice of God, and allows himself to be 
 guided by His word and will. Not that James by this meek- 
 ness, which was manifestly a favourite idea of the " quiet in 
 the land" (cf. Matt. v. 4, xi. 29), meant a purely passionless 
 and will-less piety ; on it he rested an active spontaneous life 
 in God, a life in prayer, in the word of God, in the doing of 
 the divine will. All moods of mind and experiences of life 
 were to drive the Christian to intercourse with God. " If any 
 man suffer, it is said (v. 13), let him pray. Is any merry ? let 
 him sing psalms." Even the earthly necessaries of life may 
 be prayed for, though not from covetousness and longing for 
 enjoyment (iv. 3). And the prayer to which brotherly love 
 and compassion for a brother's need in soul or body impels, 
 has its own great promise : " The prayer of a righteous man 
 availeth much, if it is earnest," it is said (v. 16-18), with 
 reference to what Elijah accomplished by his prayer. But 
 the Christian has most of all to ask God for wisdom from 
 above, for the heavenly light of His Spirit, which, in the dark- 
 ness of his misery and temptations, will show him the right 
 way, and grant him the power of perseverance. Therefore, in 
 i. 5, immediately after the exhortation to see in the manifold 
 temptations so many instruments for the trial of faith and 
 means of inner perfection, it is said : " If any man lack wisdom, 
 let him ask of God, who giveth to all men liberally, and up- 
 braideth not ; and it shall be given him." And, further, the 
 life of the Christian is an active life in the word of God. This 
 word, which was once planted in his heart, in his second 
 birth, and which is able to save his soul, filling it with the 
 powers of eternal life, he needs and desires to appropriate ever 
 afresh in meekness, in a quiet collected frame of mind, whilst 
 he puts away everything of an ungodly nature (i. 21). And 
 he does this not as a forgetful hearer, who only looks for a 
 moment at this glass of self-knowledge, he steeps himself in 
 the divine word in order to live and move in it, and in this 
 way he receives strong and constant incitements to the doing 
 of it (i. 22-25). In thus doing the divine will, and, if need 
 
372 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 be, suffering under it with joy and patience, personal Chris- 
 tianity on earth reaches its goal of peace. " He who is not a 
 forgetful hearer, but a doer of the word, shall be blessed in his 
 doing " (i. 25). His whole life then is a continuous worship of 
 God in spirit and in truth. "Pure and undefiled worship 
 before God the Father," it is said (i. 2 7), " is to visit the widows 
 and fatherless in their affliction, and to keep himself un- 
 spotted from the world." That is a contrast, quite in the 
 prophetic style, to the Pharisaic manner of regarding oneself 
 as religious and pious, although one does not bridle his tongue 
 but deceives his heart (that is, deceives himself about his 
 heart). 
 
 § 3. Warning against Sins of the Tongue 
 
 This Christianity of the heart and of active love is opposed 
 also to the pious and impious talk too largely prevailing among 
 his readers. It may be a feature in James, characteristic of 
 pre-Christian times, that he, like the " quiet in the land," 
 values silence more than speech ; the golden rule of life (i. 
 19) sounds like a saying of the proverbial wisdom before 
 Christ : " Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow 
 to wrath." But this pious inclination, which was perhaps the 
 result of training, had been deepened in him and become a 
 Christian virtue. The mastery of the tongue appears to him 
 the most decisive proof of Christian sanctification ; this little 
 member, which is yet so powerful, appears to him, after pro- 
 found observation of his talkative, quarrelsome, murmuring, 
 swearing, cursing people, the most untamed of all. " If any 
 man," he exclaims, " offend not in word, he is a perfect man, 
 and able also to bridle the whole body " (iii. 2). And again, 
 '^very kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of 
 things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind : 
 but the tongue can no man tame ; it is an unruly evil, full of 
 deadly poison" (iii. 7, 8). There are special kinds of the 
 abuse of speech which he chiefly condemns. Above all, mur- 
 muring, slandering, judging, cursing, which he regards as out- 
 breaks of lovelessness towards our neighbour, are in his view 
 sins of the tongue, and he felt it was hypocrisy at the same 
 time with the same tongue to praise God. " Therewith bless 
 
THE CHKISTIAN LIFE 373 
 
 we God, even the Father ; and therewith curse we men, who 
 are made after the similitude of God. Out of the same mouth 
 proceedeth blessing and cursing. Doth a fountain send forth 
 from the same opening sweet water and bitter?" (iii. 9-11). 
 In another passage he deals with swearing in order to forbid 
 it entirely among Christians, just as Jesus does in the Sermon 
 on the Mount; he manifestly regards it as opposed to the 
 Christian duty of truthfulness. "Above all things, my 
 brethren, swear not ; neither by heaven, nor by earth, nor by 
 any oath : but let your yea be yea ; and your nay, nay ; lest ye 
 fall into condemnation " (v. 12). Again he forbids the speech 
 of arrogance, which claims for itself the future, without think- 
 ing of God the Lord of our life. " Go to now, ye that say. 
 To-day, or to-morrow, we will go into such a city, and continue 
 there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain ; ye who know not 
 what shall be on the morrow" (iv. 13, 14). The Christian 
 knows that his life is a fleeting vapour, and that in every hour 
 of it he is in God's hands ; if he knows that and does not act 
 accordingly, he sins (iv. 14-17). But it is remarkable that 
 James also dissuades from much discussion of the faith, and 
 from thrusting oneself forward as a teacher of the Church (iii. 
 1). Manifestly he regards this as encroaching on quiet hear- 
 ing and then on patient doing of the word by his readers ; he 
 saw that the desire for controversy and quarrelling and conten- 
 tion go hand in hand with teaching, and so he looked upon this 
 zeal for teaching as connected with opr^r). For just as the 
 quiet and reverent hearing of the divine word, and the quiet- 
 ness of temper, or irpavT7j<;, are mutually dependent ; so, on the 
 other hand, the ambitious desire to become a teacher, the many 
 and thoughtless words generally, are connected with the opyij, 
 the excited and passionate frame of mind, which fails to do 
 that which is right before God (i. 20), because it is not able 
 to give attention to God's word and will. A special wisdom 
 may indeed appear to be shown in speaking and teaching ; 
 but if it goes with bitter envying and strife, it is not " the 
 wisdom that cometh from above ; but earthly, sensual, devilish." 
 The true wisdom that cometh from above is " first pure, then 
 peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and 
 good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy " (iii. 17). 
 " And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that 
 
374 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 make peace" (iii. 18): in quarrels and contentions it does not 
 thrive. Thus the theme of faith and works returns here in 
 another form, and one understands how James can compare a 
 compassion, which finds utterance in mere words, to faith 
 without works (ii. 16, 17). Not the much and eager discus- 
 sion of the faith, but the quiet doing of that which flows from 
 it, is the proof of its genuineness and acceptableness with God. 
 " Who is a wise man, and endued with knowledge ? let him 
 show out of a good conversation ; let him show in the meekness, 
 which is the mark of the true wisdom, his good works " (iii. 13). 
 That is a concise summary of the practical Christianity of the 
 Sermon on the Mount as taught by James. 
 
 § 4. The Christian Community 
 
 These exhortations to peacefulness show that James in 
 his commendation of silence has no wish to train anchorites. 
 The Christian community is throughout the presupposition of 
 his words, and we get a glimpse of the simplest and most 
 original Church order. The poor believers in Christ form 
 separate conventicles within the Jewish synagogue : they 
 have their own synagogue (ii. 1), in which they now and then 
 receive a visit from their unbelieving countrymen, rich and 
 poor. The duty, then, is to manifest kindness without dis- 
 tinction, according to the royal law of love to one's neighbour 
 (ii. 8, 9). There are elders who have to care for the suffer- 
 ing and the sick, but what they can do, can and should be 
 done by all for each other (v. 14—16). Teaching in the 
 Church is as yet bound to no official order, but falls to every- 
 one, only everyone should remember the great responsibility 
 it involves (iii. 1). The miraculous gift of healing the sick 
 still continues in the Church ; just as the Twelve, when they 
 were sent out by Jesus, were to anoint the sick with oil as a 
 symbol of the miraculous healing which they invoked upon them 
 in His name (Mark vi. 13); so the elders were to anoint the 
 sick with oil, and pray over them, that the Lord may raise them 
 up and forgive their sins (v. 13, 14). But the whole Church 
 has the office of mutual pastoral care and loving service ; it 
 is a part of worship to take an interest in the fatherless and 
 widows in their affliction ; all are to pray for one another, 
 
THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 375 
 
 especially in cases of sickness, that they may be healed (v. 
 16). They are to confess their sins one to another, in order 
 to help one another to conversion and forgiveness. For, and 
 this is the great closing exhortation and promise of the 
 Epistle, "He who converteth one of the Church who has 
 erred from the truth, is to know, that he who converteth a 
 sinner from the error of his ways shall save a soul from 
 death, and shall hide a multitude of sins," that is, shall bring 
 to him the divine forgiveness (v. 20). Thus amid circum- 
 stances of decline, which we cannot imagine to have affected 
 the whole Church though the Epistle is exclusively occupied 
 with them, there shines out the apostolic ideal of the true 
 Church of brethren, in which office belongs to all, and the 
 one law is active, protecting, interceding, and saving love for 
 the brethren. 
 
 § 5. The Christian Hope 
 
 This personal and social Christianity, finally, has its 
 stimulus in the hope of the nearness of the day of the Lord. 
 That looking to the future which prevails in the faith of the 
 earliest period is very strongly marked throughout our 
 Epistle. In the very first chapter there is set before the 
 rich man a picture of his swift and sudden destruction ; just 
 as in the Holy Land the flower of the meadow withers under 
 the blaze of the sun, so will he fade away in his ways (i. 10, 
 11). And in the fifth chapter this announcement of judg- 
 ment rises to a truly prophetic height. The God-forgotten 
 rich, though they do not belong to the readers, are yet 
 addressed, or rather are thundered at in vivid pictures, just as 
 Tyre and Sidon or Babylon are in the old prophets. Their 
 sins are held up before them as at the judgment day of God, 
 and the frightful destruction that awaits them is pictured as 
 close at hand, or even as if it had already come. " Your 
 riches are corrupted, your gold and silver is cankered ; and 
 the rust of them shall eat your flesh as it were fire. You 
 have heaped treasure together for the last days. You have 
 nourished your heart, as in a day of slaughter. The coming 
 of the Lord draweth nigh ; the Judge standeth at the door " 
 (v. 2, 3, 5, 8, 9). If this announcement of judgment was 
 
376 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 not fulfilled in the way James imagined, it still found 
 abundant fulfilment in the fearful days of the Jewish in- 
 surrection, with its butcheries, and in the Syrian diaspora. 
 But that which is the day of wrath and terror to the godless 
 rich, is the day of hope and redemption to the pious poor. 
 Their cries have entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth ; 
 and as the husbandman waits patiently for the early and the 
 latter rain, that it may bless his sowing and produce the 
 precious fruits of the earth, so should they wait for the day 
 of the Lord, which will reward their sufferings and patience 
 (v. 7, 8). These consolations show that James had before 
 him among his readers not merely a declining and degenerate 
 Christianity, notwithstanding that he finds it necessary, as 
 Jesus did once in the case of His disciples, to bridle the im- 
 patient expectations of the pious among his readers, and 
 prevent the danger of discouragement. Take, he cries to 
 them, the prophets who have spoken in the name of the Lord 
 for an example of suffering and affliction and of patience — 
 a word of comfort which reminds us of Jesus' own words 
 (Matt. V. 12) : " Beloved, we count them happy which endure : 
 ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end 
 of the Lord, that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender 
 mercy" (v. 11). "Blessed is the man that endureth tempta- 
 tion : for when he hath been tried, he will receive the crown 
 of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love Him " 
 (i. 12). That, then, is the teaching of James, whom we have 
 learned to know above as a pillar of the primitive Church, 
 and the representative of an evangelical Jewish Christianity, 
 as contrasted with the Pauline Gentile Christianity. Along 
 with the sketches of Peter's gospel preaching which we have 
 in the Book of Acts, it illustrates for us how the Church of 
 that time was taught in gospel and in duty. Certainly 
 James had to drop many Old Testament views which veiled 
 the truth, and to look more deeply into the New Testament 
 mystery of salvation. But no one can dispute that even 
 from his point of view he was able to produce and to establish 
 a true and full Christianity. And so the Epistle of James 
 has its providential place in our New Testament, in illustrat- 
 ing to us how the full vigour of Christian life may be united 
 with elementary dogmatic perceptions, and in reminding us 
 
INTRODUCTOKY 377 
 
 that full rights of citizenship in the Christian Church belong 
 not only to a Pauline Christianity, but also to one formed 
 after the manner of James. 
 
 III. THE FIRST EPISTLE OF PETER 
 
 CHAPTEE I 
 INTKODUCTORY 
 
 § 1. Difference between the two Epistles of Peter 
 
 Next to the Epistle of James, there are two Epistles of 
 Peter in the New Testament which, if they could be regarded 
 as genuine, would supplement our view of the original apos- 
 tolic mode of teaching, and especially would give evidence of 
 a freer development of it, such as the Acts of the Apostles 
 would lead us to expect from Peter in comparison with 
 James. The second of these two Epistles has been much 
 disputed even in Christian antiquity, and in point of fact, 
 as will be shown later on, it bears all the marks of a 
 spurious writing. In the first, however. Christian antiquity 
 unanimously saw a genuine work of the Apostle Peter, and 
 even the more recent criticism up to Baur was not on the 
 whole unfavourable to it. The criticism of the present, which 
 regards every traditional view with so much scepticism, and 
 every negative hypothesis with so much credulity, seeks to 
 disprove its genuineness also. We may be allowed to indi- 
 cate briefly why this judgment cannot satisfy us, and cannot 
 hinder us from treating the Epistle here as a genuine Petrine 
 monument in the course of our historical considerations. 
 
 § 2. Mares of Genuineness in the First Epistle 
 
 The Eirst Epistle of Peter presents itself as a letter of 
 comfort and advice to a circle of Churches specially op- 
 pressed at the time (i. 6, iii. 14 f., iv. 1, 12, 16, 19, v. 8-10). 
 
378 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 These Churches are found in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, 
 Asia, and Bithynia, that is, partly in the region of Paul's early 
 mission, and, as is shown by the phrase, o" irore ov \ao<! in 
 ii. 10, as well as the backward glance at former idolatry and 
 heathen vices renounced in the passage iv. 3, are essentially 
 of heathen origin.^ It is not a formal and ofBcial persecution 
 with -which they are visited, but social pressure and an out- 
 break of hostile public opinion. The Christian communities 
 were in great part composed of classes already oppressed, of 
 women and slaves (ii. 18, iii. 1), and had thus become the 
 objects of evil rumours and prejudices (ii. 15, iii. 16, iv. 4). 
 These features do not all suit, as has been confidently main- 
 tained, the time of Trajan, of whose orderly judicial procedure 
 against the Christians there is no trace, but they do harmonise 
 with the time of Nero, in which Tacitus expressly bears witness 
 to that popular prejudice against the Christians. The cruel 
 measures of the emperor against the Christians of the capital 
 do not appear to have been imitated by the officials of the 
 provinces ; but, as was natural, and as we see from the 
 apocalyptic letters, these persecutions encouraged the animosity 
 of the surrounding Jews and heathen, and thus made the 
 already insecure position of the Christians a position of real 
 hardship. According to v. 12, our Epistle was occasioned 
 by a journey of Sylvanus, the old travelling companion of 
 Paul (Acts XV. 22, 40), to those regions of Asia Minor, and, 
 according to v. 13, it appears to have been written from 
 Eome, and directly under the impression of the Neronic 
 persecution. The words are indeed " at Babylon," but the 
 phrase, " those chosen together with you in Babylon salute 
 you," makes us look for a metaphorical meaning of this 
 designation of peace in connection with the metaphorical 
 designation of the saluting Church. The designation of Eome 
 as the New Testament Babylon, which runs through our 
 
 1 Weiss advocates the contrary view, and at the same time places the 
 Epistle in the pre-Pauline age. Though I expressed agreement with this 
 view some years ago in a review of "Weiss' doctrinal system of Peter, I 
 must now dissent from it, and pray that I be no longer quoted as holding 
 it. I have long been convinced of the untenableness of Weiss' con- 
 ception of the Epistle, and regard the existence of a pre-Pauline Jewish 
 Christian Church, stretching from Pontus to Bithynia and Asia, as a 
 historical absurdity. 
 
INTEODUCTOEY 379 
 
 Apocalypse, had undoubtedly become current far and near 
 among the Christians from the time of Nero's cruel treatment 
 of them there. That Peter found himself at Eome in those 
 days, and finally suffered martyrdom under Nero, is an old 
 and credible tradition,^ and therefore all historical probabilities 
 unite in suggesting that it was he who, induced by the 
 journey of Sylvanus, and probably by some earlier relations 
 with these Churches in Asia Minor, felt himself constrained 
 to send them this letter of encouragement. The personal 
 traces in the letter only serve to strengthen that probability. 
 In strong contrast with the premeditation of the second 
 spurious Epistle, the name of the apostle is mentioned only 
 ia the simplest way (i. 1), and reference made to his having 
 been an eye-witness of the sufferings of Christ only in the 
 passage v. 1, and without any further object. The phrase 
 used (i. 8), " Christ, whom, having not seen, ye love," is most 
 naturally explained as the involuntary expression of one who 
 has seen Him, and the passage i. 3, " Blessed be God, the 
 Father of all mercy, who hath begotten us again unto a living 
 hope by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead," strikes the 
 reader as having the tone of jubilation over the event of 
 Easter which would be in a heart awakened by it to a new 
 life out of the death of despair. In other respects, also, the 
 Epistle contains features of the first Christian age. The 
 expectation of the immediate return of the Lord is uninter- 
 rupted (iv. 6, 7, 17), and the constitution of the Church is 
 so primitive that the notion of the -Trpea^inepoL (v. 1, 5) still 
 wavers between the official and the natural sense, in which 
 latter they are contrasted with the vediTepoi, as in Acts v. 6, 
 10. Add to all this that no motive can be discovered for 
 the false attribution of the Epistle, and that the apostolic 
 dignity and eye-witness of Peter are not brought forward to 
 support any particular doctrine in it, we can thus say that 
 the critics ought to consider well before they contradict, 
 in the case of such a document, the unanimous judgment of 
 antiquity. 
 
 1 A tradition in which even Weizsacker (Apostolic Age) believes on the 
 evidence of the well-known passage of Clement of Eome. 
 
380 !ne"w testament theology 
 
 § 3. Answer to certain Objections 
 
 As to the reasons urged against its genuineness, the 
 remark of Holtzmann has perhaps the greatest plausibility : 
 "It is inconceivable that the fundamental notions of the 
 synoptic preaching of Jesus, the kingdom of God, the Son of 
 Man, etc., should have been entirely lost, that the law should 
 have vanished from his horizon, and that the earthly appear- 
 ance of Jesus should have given place to reflections on His 
 death which were not due to his own impression, but to 
 Isa. liii." That all that must have been lost to him, and 
 fallen into the background, is a bold conclusion to draw from 
 the silence of a document of eight pages, and of definitely 
 practical aims. We perceive throughout that the apostles did 
 not so much fasten upon the separate doctrinal ideas of Jesus 
 as upon His whole appearance and the conclusion of His life 
 in its relation to the Old Testament. We should think 
 that the personal impression of the Christ suffering in ideal 
 patience was sufficiently plain in ii. 21—23, and that the 
 citing of Isa. liii., the Old Testament passage which was 
 above all fitted to remove for the apostle the offence of the 
 cross, is conceivable enough in the case of Peter, seeing that 
 it agrees well with the testimony of the Acts of the Apostles 
 about the earliest christologieal view. Moreover, if one 
 sought as diligently in the First Epistle of Peter for echoes 
 of Christ's own words as for echoes of Pauline passages, one 
 would find a considerable number.^ All else that is urged 
 against the genuineness of the Epistle consists in the reproach 
 that it is dependent on other New Testament Epistles, 
 especially Eomans, Ephesians, and James. First of all, we 
 should have to determine the exact measure of these alleged 
 borrowings. For our part we must admit that we can form 
 no idea of the mental condition of an early Christian writer, 
 whether Peter or any other, who, in order to say to his 
 readers, " reward not evil with evil," or in order to avail 
 himself of the phrase, " for conscience' sake," must go and 
 borrow from another.^ And of this stamp are most of the 
 
 1 Cf. i. 6 with Mark v. 12 ; i. 8 with Job xx. 19 ; i. 13 with Luke xii. 35 ; 
 ii. 7 with Matt. xxi. 42 ; iii. 9 with Luke vi. 28 ; iii. 14 with Matt. v. 10, etc. 
 
 2 Cf. Holtzmann, Einleitung ins N. T. p. 488. 
 
INTEODUCTOEY 381 
 
 alleged borrowings. But while there are real echoes of 
 Pauline or Jacobean utterances, there is, on the other hand, 
 unquestionable independence of the whole mode of teaching 
 either of Paul or of James. And it may be asked whether 
 such marks of affinity, along with a marked individuality, do 
 not excellently harmonise with the later Peter. According 
 to Gal. i.-ii.. Acts xv., Peter was spiritually in close touch 
 with James on the one hand and with Paul on the other, and 
 took a certain middle position between the two. That the 
 scene narrated in Gal. ii. 1 2 f. permanently estranged him 
 from Paul and drove him back into a narrow-hearted Jewish 
 Christianity, can only be supposed by a criticism which thinks 
 very meanly of the ability of a disciple of Jesus to submit to 
 a fellow apostle when he tells him the truth. The respectful 
 way in which Paul repeatedly refers to him in the First 
 Epistle to the Corinthians (iii. 22, ix. 5, xv. 5) rather 
 attests the continued brotherly relation. That Peter's 
 mission circle became ever wider (cf. 1 Cor. ix. 5, -rrepidyeiv), 
 that he was specially attracted to the Eoman Church, which 
 in all probability sprang from the intercourse between 
 Jerusalem and Eome, and was from the beginning under 
 a Petrine influence, has recently been considered probable 
 even by Weizsacker.^ Now, if he esteemed James as well as 
 Paul, and put value on spiritual sympathy with them, what 
 is more natural than that he should take cognisance of the 
 letters which the one or the other sent here and there, and 
 perhaps even possessed copies of them ? And if he appeared 
 in Eome soon after the death of Paul, hastening to the help 
 of the cruelly persecuted Eoman Church, how very likely it 
 is that he should read with reverence the precious legacy 
 which this Church possessed in the Epistle to the Eomans ? 
 Nay, it may even be supposed that this man, unaccustomed to 
 writing, would regard this and that letter of his friend directly 
 as a model when he proposed to himself the task of writing 
 to aid far off and afflicted Churches. No doubt all that might 
 be supposed just as well of any later Pauline Christian who 
 had abrogated to himself the name of Peter. But such a one 
 would have done more ; even though he had not understood 
 the fundamental views of the Pauline system, he would have 
 1 Weizsacker, Apostolic Age, p. 487. 
 
382 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 used its dogmatic watchwords, which confessedly are entirely 
 wanting in our Epistle. The independence and peculiarity 
 of our Epistle, which far outweigh the traces of relation- 
 ship with Paul and James, and the combination of 
 independence and relation, point directly to an apostolic 
 colleague rather than to a post-apostolic successor; for 
 to say that the post-apostolic and Paulinising author has 
 in this Epistle "allowed the Pauline dogmatic theories to 
 drop," ^ explains nothing. On the contrary, if the mode of 
 thought and teaching lying before us in the Epistle show a 
 simpler and more undeveloped character than the Pauline, if 
 they hold that middle position between the Pauline and 
 Jacobean methods which the historical Peter, according to 
 Gal. ii.. Acts xv., actually held, and if, besides, they exhibit 
 throughout a relationship with the preaching of Peter in the 
 Acts of the Apostles, then all signs that may be fairly 
 required unite in favour of a genuine Petrine origin of our 
 Epistle. 
 
 § 4. The Doctrinal Peculiarity of the Epistle 
 
 In point of fact, the doctrinal character of our Epistle is 
 just of this kind. It is quite what we must have expected 
 from the Peter of the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles 
 after he had exchanged opinions with Paul, and passed through 
 the further school of experience. The Old and N'ew Testa- 
 ments do not appear here in any relation of opposition or com- 
 promise any more than in the Petrine discourses of the Acts 
 of the Apostles ; they are seen as prediction and fulfilment. 
 The only distinction between the author and James on this 
 point is, that he finds the centre of gravity of the Old Testa- 
 ment to lie, not in the law, but in the prophets (cf. i. 10-12, 
 ii. 6, 22-25). We have manifestly here a man who has not 
 passed over to the gospel like James by spiritualising the law, 
 but — ^just as we must imagine Peter in the Gospel history — 
 one who from the beginning has sought and found in Jesus 
 Him of whom Moses and the prophets wrote (John i. 45), the 
 fulfiUer of the Messianic hopes. This accounts for what 
 further distinguishes our Epistle from that of James, that the 
 1 So Pfleiderer, Urchristenthum, p. 600. 
 
INTEODUCTOEY 383 
 
 person and history of Jesus are thrown here into much bolder 
 relief. That is natural in the case of a personal disciple of 
 Jesus, who, in the full sense of the word, lived through every- 
 thing, while James still stood at a distance from it ; especially 
 do we feel from the Epistle, as already mentioned, the impres- 
 sion which the suffering and resurrection of Jesus left upon 
 the author. That the teaching office of Jesus is not expressly 
 mentioned, as it is in the sermon to Cornelius, can only be 
 accidental, and is connected with the fact that he has not in 
 view, as he had there, a missionary discourse in which he must 
 start from the very foundation, but an exhortation and 
 strengthening of already instructed Christians. For the 
 author's doctrine of the regenerating power of the gospel re- 
 minds us, even more than Jas. i. 18, of Jesus' Parable of the 
 Sower (i. 23), and the remarkable doctrine of the preaching of 
 Jesus to the departed spirits (iii. 19, iv. 6), traces back the 
 deliverance of these spirits in the same way to the power of 
 His word. In this very doctrine of the going of Jesus to the 
 dead, in order to preach to them, we have an entirely pecuHar 
 element of our Epistle, which, however, as we shall see, agrees 
 most thoroughly with the universalistic character, which is 
 more and more developed in the case of the Peter of the Acts 
 of the Apostles. The most important point on which the 
 Epistle goes beyond the early Petrine preaching of the Acts of 
 the Apostles comes out in the consideration of the death of 
 Christ, to which is here ascribed a saving significance, a 
 redeeming power ; yet even this advance lies on the lines of a 
 natural and inevitable development. In this doctrinal advance 
 we may conjecture an influence of Paul on Peter ; but even 
 without such an influence, words of Jesus, such as Matt. xx. 
 28, about the Xvrpov avrl ttoXXmv, and still more the institution 
 of the Supper, as well as the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, in 
 which the disciples long since saw the prophetic image of their 
 Master, must have forced the first apostles along this way of 
 knowledge. Yet the author of our Epistle received his most 
 decisive impression, not from the death, but from the resurrec- 
 tion of Jesus. It had begotten him again to that living hope 
 (L 3) which makes him feel and contemplate the whole 
 Christian life on earth as a pilgrimage (i. 1, 17, ii. 11), a 
 pilgrimage to the true and heavenly home. That living hope 
 
384 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 penetrates and dominates his whole Christian consciousness so 
 much, that to him it has become the very foundation of his 
 Christian teaching. Where Paul would speak of faith, Peter 
 speaks of hope (cf. i. 13, 21, iii. 5, 15, etc.). Thus the main 
 feature of the first apostolic Christianity is not less clear here 
 than in James, and in the early preaching of the Acts of the 
 Apostles ; in fact, it is clearer than in any New Testament 
 writing, except the Apocalypse. The hopeful outlook to the 
 salvation yet to be revealed, formally outweighs the lofty feel- 
 ing, which is so powerful in Paul, of possessing the salvation 
 already established. Nevertheless, the moral earnestness of 
 the author avoids an actual displacement of the healthy 
 balance between present and future. That living hope kindled 
 at the resurrection of Jesus is to him living, just for this 
 reason, that it thoroughly sanctifies the earthly life. It is, on 
 its subjective side, the fruit of the experience of a second birth 
 (i. 3), and to preserve this through all the relations and con- 
 flicts of the earthly life is the Christian task corresponding to 
 that gift of hope. The author comprehends this task in the 
 idea of sanctification (i. 15), which he makes the fundamental 
 idea of all his exhortations, just as the idea of hope is the 
 fundamental idea of all his consolation. On the other hand, 
 we find no trace formally in his writings of the Pauline 
 doctrine of justification by faith. And thus we may sum up 
 the Petrine conception of Christianity, as it meets us in this 
 Epistle, in the simple proposition : Salvation in Christ is a 
 gracious divine communication of a sanctifying hope. His 
 detailed exposition of this main idea may be considered under 
 the following heads : — 
 
 I. God the Father, and the people of His inheritance. 
 II. The person and sufferings of Christ. 
 
 III. The pilgrim condition and walk of the Christian. 
 
 IV. The preaching to the dead, and the judgment of the 
 
 world. 
 
GOD THE FATHER AND THE PEOPLE OF HIS INHERITANCE 385 
 
 CHAPTEE II 
 
 GOD THE FATHER AND THE PEOPLE OF HIS 
 INHERITANCE 
 
 § 1. Idea of God 
 
 It is a more developed view of the world than that of his 
 early missiou preaching, which the mature Peter in his Epistle 
 presents to the already existing Christian Churches. It starts 
 from the eternal purpose of God's love to procure for a chosen 
 people an imperishable inheritance. But by proclaiming, as 
 he does, that this purpose of God's love has fulfilled itself, not 
 in the Jewish people, but in the Christian Church, the whole 
 novelty and greatness of the experience which transformed 
 the apostle from a Jew into a Christian is shown. In the 
 first place, the idea of God, from which he comprehends that 
 purpose, is new. He applies the name Father to God much 
 more abundantly than James, and thereby shows that he is 
 clearly conscious of the Christian distinction which lies in 
 calling on God as the Father (i. 17). The more detailed 
 application is quite after the way of Jesus Himself : God is, in 
 the first place, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (i. 3), then, 
 our Father also (i. 17), finally, the Father simply (i. 2), so that 
 the name becomes a designation of nature. This designation 
 of nature means to Peter, as to Jesus also, that God is absolute 
 goodness and holy love ; and this idea of God is developed on 
 two sides, as in the teaching of Jesus, that God is the morally 
 perfect Being, who stands before man as an ideal to be copied 
 (Matt. v. 45, 48), and at the same time that He is the gracious 
 power which comes down to meet man to enable him to reach 
 this his destiny. The first aspect of the idea of God is 
 described by Peter as holiness, the other as mercy or grace ; 
 from both, then, flow God's several glorious attributes, which 
 the apostle calls (ii. 9) His aperai, virtues, a name very 
 significant of the absolutely ethical character of his idea of 
 God. The holiness of God (i. 1 6), related to that righteousness 
 which judges without respect of persons (i. 1 7), belongs more 
 to the Old Testament circle of ideas than the moral reXetoTi;? 
 on which Jesus lays stress, but the sense is certainly the same. 
 
 BEYSGHLAG. — I. 2$ 
 
386 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 Peter draws from it the same deduction as Jesus from the per- 
 fection of God :" Be ye holy ; for I am holy " (i. 1 6 ). Mercy (to 
 TToXii avTov e'\eo9, i. 3) is related to grace as the disposition of 
 heart to its exhibition, at least %a/3t9 throughout is used in the 
 latter sense (cl i. 2, 10, 13, ii. 19, iii. 7, iv. 10, v. 5, 10, 12). 
 
 § 2. The Inheritance and its Tkansfekence to the 
 Chkistians 
 
 In this holy love of His which is His very nature, God 
 has prepared an imperishable, uadefiled and unfading in- 
 heritance, which is preserved in heaven in order to be 
 revealed in the last time (i. 4, 5). Angels desire to look into 
 its glory (i. 12), but it is intended for the children of men 
 (ver. 4). Peter might have applied to it the name kingdom of 
 heaven, but only in the onesided future sense, which would 
 not have corresponded to the teaching of Jesus ; or he might 
 have used the kindred term eternal life, which, iii. 7 (crvyKKr]- 
 povo/jLov; ■^dpiTo<; ^(orj^), he actually brings into connection 
 with it. He has preferred the common Old Testament 
 notion of the promise KXijpovofiia, and has thus (as Jesus also 
 does. Matt. v. 4) spiritualised the idea of the land of promise, 
 just as he afterwards spiritualises the idea of the chosen 
 people. Hope is connected by him with this notion of the 
 final incorruptible inheritance from the first, and the hope of 
 this inheritance is indeed the fundamental idea of Christianity. 
 It is the deepest meaning and the highest consecration of the 
 earthly life, and was awakened by God in the children of men 
 long before Christ. For already Sarah and other holy women 
 hoped in God (iii. 5), that is, even the patriarchs had a 
 promise of that eternal inheritance. Afterwards God made it 
 known to the prophets, and though He let them see that they 
 should not themselves behold the works of the Messiah, by 
 which the inheritance was to be secured, they could announce 
 them for a later generation (i. 12). For though the nation in 
 which they lived was chosen and called by God to be His 
 priestly kingdom and His holy and peculiar people, it was 
 not such in reality as yet (cf. ii. 9). On the contrary, when 
 God laid in its midst the foundation-stone of salvation in 
 Jesus the Messiah, it rejected Him (ii. 14), and so it threw 
 
GOD THE FATHER ANT) THE PEOPLE OF HIS INHERITANCE 387 
 
 away its title to that eternal inheritance (Acts iv. 11). God 
 has indeed made this Jesus whom He had chosen, and who 
 was dear to Him, the foundation-stone of the spiritual house 
 that is to be built on earth, but for Israel He has made Him 
 the corner-stone on which it is to strike and stumble (ii. 7). 
 And He has laid it that it may be a stone of stumbling and 
 rock of offence (ii. 8) ; that is to say, the holy and righteous 
 order of the world is perfectly exhibited in the fact that the 
 Jewish nation is now ruined and completes its judgment in 
 this very Jesus Christ, in whom as its deliverer it might 
 have been established. But the prophetic promise, " He that 
 believeth on Him shall not be put to shame " (ii. 6), has not 
 on that account remained unfulfilled. The spiritual house, 
 the temple which God desired to build on this foundation- 
 stone, has arisen, though built of other stones ; those who 
 were once not a people and had not obtained mercy, have 
 now been pardoned and made a people of God's inheritance 
 (ii. 10). And so Peter can exclaim to his readers in the 
 heathen lands of Asia Minor : " Ye are a chosen generation, a 
 royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people, that ye 
 should show forth the virtues of Him who hath called you out 
 of darkness into His marvellous light" (ii. 9); that is, all 
 that Israel should have been and was not, all that of which it 
 has become the very opposite by the wickedness of its rejec- 
 tion of Messiah, that you now are in reality the chosen 
 people of God. As already noted above, there can be no 
 doubt that the apostle addresses these words to communities 
 essentially Gentile ; not only are Christian Churches made up 
 wholly of Jews reaching from Pontus to Galatia and Bithynia 
 historically inconceivable, but Peter describes his readers as 
 not Jews : o'i vore ov \a6<;, vvv he Xao'i 6eov (ii. 10 ; cf. iv. 3). 
 That certainly means a great change in the views of the 
 apostle between the days of his first preaching and the days 
 when he wrote this Epistle. But not only had Peter since 
 learned that " with God there is no respect of persons, but in 
 all nations he that feareth God and doeth righteousness is 
 accepted of Him " (Acts x. 34, 35) ; he must also have learned, 
 with Paul, that only a remnant of Israel would be converted, 
 while the Gentiles in great numbers were entering into the 
 kingdom of Christ. He writes his Epistle, unless we are mis- 
 
388 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 taken, after the martyrdom of James at the beginning of the 
 Jewish war, when it had become apparent, even to the 
 a7ro<7ToXo9 tjjs TrepiTOfifj^ (Gal. ii. 9), that God had withdrawn 
 His choice from the Jewish nation, as a nation, in order to 
 fix it on a new people of God gathered out of all nations. 
 
 § 3. The Way of Salvation 
 
 The readers as formerly heathen were originally little 
 fitted for the position of God's people. Their conduct, 
 received by tradition from their fathers, was vain, that is, 
 morally null ; it was a walking in lasciviousness, lusts, excess 
 of wine, revellings, banquetings and abominable idolatries 
 (iv. 3). They then found themselves in the power of those 
 fleshly lusts which are opposed to the will of God (iv. 2), and 
 war against the soul (ii. 11), that is, are in discord with the 
 inner man. This lets us understand something of the views 
 of the Epistle about the natural sinfulness of man. These 
 are essentially the same as Paul's in Eom. vii., except that 
 Paul never names the higher principle in man ■^v)(ri, but eaw 
 dvdpanroi; or irvevfia} But this Petrine anthropology agrees 
 not only with Paul, but also with James (Jas. i. 14, iv. 1), 
 in regarding the power of the adp^ in man as the real ground 
 of all sin, and deducing from it not merely sensuous vices, 
 but all selfish phenomena — iracrav KaKiav koI TravTa So\ov 
 Kol inroKpicrei<; Kal <j)66vov<; koI KaTaXaXlai (ii. 1, cf. with i. 
 14, ii. 11), where all the sins of the pre-Christian condition 
 are traced back to the aapKiKoX i-mOvfjuiai, — that appears to 
 have been the common early Christian view. In God's eyes, 
 however, all such natural sins are viewed, according to Peter, 
 from the (Old Testament) point of view as sins of ignorance, 
 as is shown by the expression used in i. 14: rats irpoTepov 
 iv rfi ayvola vn&v iinOvfjbiai'i? On the other hand, under the 
 class of mortal sins, which in the Old Testament could not 
 be atoned for or forgiven, is aireiOeiv rw eiiajyeXia, the 
 conscious rejection of the message of salvation (cf. iv. 1 7, 1 8). 
 
 1 ^/vx'i Peter says with Jesiis, Matt. x. 28, xvi. 26. 
 
 ' aymU as designation of the whole pre-Christian condition of the 
 heathen. The same view is similarly, and yet differently, applied in 
 respect of the Jewish nation, Acts iii. 17. 
 
GOD THE FATHER AND THE PEOPLE OF HIS INHERITANCE 389 
 
 All those sins of ignorance have thus not prevented the 
 merciful God from choosing the readers to share in His eternal 
 inheritance (i. 1), while He has given up to hardness of heart 
 Israel, who rejected her Messiah, who has been made a stone 
 of stumbling (ii. 8). Sinners as such cannot, of course, attain 
 to that inheritance, but only sanctified men (ii. 15, 16), since 
 it consists in communion with the holy God ; and so there 
 comes here a description of the way of personal salvation, a 
 doctrine of the way of salvation which in its introductory 
 ideas of calling and election comes into contact with Paul, 
 though it does not advance to his idea of justification ; rather 
 with James (i. 18), it makes the second birth the central 
 idea and the starting-point for attaining sanctification. As 
 to the election ascribed to the readers (i. 1), it is undoubtedly 
 not conceived as before the world was, it is a historical elec- 
 tion like that of Israel ; only Israel as a nation was elected 
 from the multitude of nations, while the Christians, as 
 individuals, are chosen from the mass of the heathen among 
 whom they live. The kuto, •Kpo'^vwcrw 6eov irarpov, which is 
 added in i. 2, must have a similar meaning ; they are just 
 those who have been chosen because of a divine forethought ; 
 God saw their hearts, and His appointment rested on what 
 He saw. For although the foreknowledge in /care irpoyvoxriv 
 cannot directly coincide in time with the election in e/cXe/cro?;, 
 but must express a preliminary condition of it, yet there is, 
 at anyrate, more in it than the self-evident fact that God 
 knows what He does, — an idea which would not even suit 
 i. 20, Acts ii. 23; it expresses a divine foreknowledge, a 
 previous seeing into the heart of the person in question which 
 leads to the resolution to elect him (cf. Eom. viii. 29). But 
 the execution of this thought of distinguishing and electing 
 love consisted for the readers mainly in the fact that God 
 had called them (i. 15), — called them out of darkness into 
 His marvellous light, to inherit His blessing and His glory 
 (ii. 9, iii. 9, v. 10). That took place when, through the Holy 
 Spirit, the glad tidings was proclaimed to them of God's 
 living and eternal word (i. 12, i. 23-25). The fruit of this 
 calHng is their regeneration, that inward and fundamental 
 transformation through which a new life has been established 
 in them (i. 3, 23), in conformity with the announcement of 
 
390 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 Jesus to Nicodemus (John iii. 3, 5). And the second birth is 
 traced back to the word of God, just as in James, though 
 with a still plainer reference to Jesus' Parable of the Sower, 
 the word of God, that is, as is expressly declared, the gospel 
 preached to the readers (i, 25), is not corruptible but incor- 
 ruptible seed (Mark iv. 14), through which has been planted 
 in them the germ and the power of a new life (i. 23). From 
 this there follow, finally, the two connected and fundamental 
 features of their Christian position, which are at the same 
 time root ideas of our Epistle, Christian hope and Christian 
 sanctification. For, on the one hand, the readers along with 
 the author are " begotten again to a living hope " (i. 3) ; the 
 life begotten in them passes beyond the temporal into the 
 eternal, and the earthly existence is glorified with the 
 certainty of a future blessed life. And, on the other hand, 
 the life begotten in them by God is at first an incipient, 
 immature life, which like that of new-born children (ii. 2) 
 needs further development and suitable nourishment. But as 
 a life partly divine, partly human, it can only grow up accord- 
 ing to the law : "Be ye holy; for I am holy " (ii. 2, i. 15 : 
 Kara top KaXeaavra {///.a? ajiov Koi v/ieK ayioi iv •Kaarj 
 avaa-Tpo(f>§ yevijOrjTe). In virtue of these two interdependent 
 features of the Christian life the readers are 6«Xe«To«. 
 ■irapeTriBr]fj,ot BiacrTropd's {Hovtov TaXaria<;, k.t.X.), strangers 
 and pilgrims on earth, belonging to a people of God scattered 
 in the lands of their residence. The expressions are 
 borrowed from the Jewish diaspora, the members of which in 
 the Gentile lands were only irapeirihrjijioi, strangers, not 
 settled citizens ; but, as the iicXeKTOi at once shows, the words 
 are translated from the worldly into the spiritual sense. 
 Christians are strangers and pilgrims upon earth, scattered 
 here and there ; they are a select few amongst the multitudes 
 of people of another way of thinking ; their real fatherland is 
 in the promised land of the future in which they hope, and 
 they walk even now according to the laws and ordinances of this 
 higher fatherland. The looking to the future which prevails in 
 all the primitive Christianity has been expressed by the aged 
 Peter in the profounder way which we find in his discourses 
 in the Book of Acts, and also in the Epistle of James. But 
 although a-(OTTjpia as a negative idea, equivalent to the positive 
 
THE PEKSON AND SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST 391 
 
 idea of the KXrjpovofjLia, is conceived throughout as future, 
 {amrrjpia erolfir} airoKoXv^Orivai, ev Kaipw ia-j(aT(p, i. 5), Peter 
 also recognises that salvation is a present inward possession. 
 It presents itself to him under the idea of the %a/3t? Oeov. 
 The grace of God, although still an object of hope, in its 
 perfection (^epofiivrjv vfuv x^'P''" ^^ aTTOKaXv^frei 'Irjaov 
 Xpta-Tov, i. 1 3 ; a-vyicXrjpovofioi.'i ')(<^piTo<i ^(ofji;, iii. 7) is also a 
 grace in which the readers already stand {TavTtjv ehai oXtjOt] 
 %a/3ti/ Tov deov, eh fjv a-rrjTe, v. 12 ; cf. iv. 10, v. 5), for they 
 stand ev a^Mo-fim irvev/jLaroi, in the sanctifying element of the 
 spirit of God. What must strike us most in this clear and 
 thorough sketch of the Christian way of salvation and the 
 state of grace is, that the religious aspect in the narrower 
 sense is insignificant compared with the ethical aspect of 
 religion. The notion, so very prominent in Paul, of deliver- 
 ance from guilt and justification, is not indeed entirely 
 wanting here beside that of regeneration and renewal ; in the 
 salvation (i. 2) eV ajiaa-fim irvevp.aro'; is followed by a refer- 
 ence to the pavriaficx; a"iiaTO<i Xpia-rov, to which we will have 
 to return in considering the saving death of Jesus. But just 
 as the indication of forgiveness secured in the blood of Christ 
 only follows after an et? vwaKorjv, so the exculpating and 
 justifying side of salvation in Peter is subordinate to the 
 transforming and sanctifying side ; the ethical view of salva- 
 tion preponderates, just as in James. 
 
 CHAPTEK III 
 
 THE PERSON AND SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST 
 
 § 1. The Person of Christ 
 
 That the entire salvation just described rests on the person 
 and work of Jesus, is a matter of course in the case of an 
 apostle of Jesus Christ (i. 1), and is a common conviction 
 of the first apostles, which we also found indicated and pre- 
 supposed in the Epistle of James. But, as already noted, the 
 character of Jesus as the Founder of salvation is much more 
 prominent in Peter than in James ; this corresponds to the 
 
392 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 closer relation of discipleship in which he stood to Jesus 
 from the beginning, and it also corresponds to the growth in 
 clearness of doctrine in the course of the apostolic age, 
 through the influence of Paul. Nevertheless, the Petrine 
 Christology is distinguished, not only from the Pauline, but 
 also from that of the Epistle to the Hebrews and of the 
 writings of John, by a preservation of the full early apostolic 
 simplicity. Jesus, in our Epistle, as in the Petrine dis- 
 courses of the Book of Acts, is simply the chosen and 
 anointed of God. Of course the name Christ has already 
 become a proper name, instead of an appellation, and is 
 therefore, as a rule, added to Jesus without the article, or is 
 even used alone ; but the original meaning, the reference in 
 it to the Holy Spirit who filled Jesus, has not been lost, as 
 will be shown. While the name Son is wanting, just as in 
 the early part of the Acts of the Apostles, and is only indi- 
 rectly suggested in the designation of God as the Pather of 
 our Lord Jesus Christ, the name of honour, o Kvpto^, just as 
 in the Petrine discourses, is used (i. 3, ii. 13, iii. 15). But it 
 does not imply, as might appear from the Old Testament 
 quotations in which God Himself is called o Kvpuo'i, any 
 transference of the name of Jehovah to Jesus, but just as 
 Peter himself explains it in Acts ii. 34-36, it describes Jesus 
 as the King of God's grace (Ps. ex. 1), as the dp-x^iiroifii^v 
 whom God has given to His people (v. 4). Eor in every way 
 Peter places the Lord in genuine human dependence upon 
 God. God has chosen Him as the foundation-stone of His 
 house on earth (ii. 6), and has given Him the glory which 
 He possesses in virtue of His resurrection (i. 21). Jesus 
 therefore has not this glory in virtue of an eternal nature, 
 since the very idea of election presupposes a number of similar 
 beings, in this case the whole of humanity, from whom one 
 is chosen. Certainly that choice, or rather the irpoyvcoaK 
 leading to it, existed already, according to i. 20: -n-pb kutu- 
 ^oXrj<; Koa-fiov, and so the irpoeyvoKr/u.evov in this passage has 
 been interpreted in , the sense of a pre-existence, and appeal 
 has been made for this to the contrast of the ^avepwOevTO'^ 
 as a coming forth in time from a pretemporal concealment. 
 But this (fjavepcodevTOii, as the following Si v/ia^ Bt avrov 
 •7ria-Tov<; el? deov shows, refers not so much to the coming 
 
THE PEESON AND SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST 393 
 
 into the world, as to the coming to light in the world, and 
 the "Trpoeyvcoa/Mevov cannot express any pre-existenee, because 
 in i. 2 it is declared likewise of believers. It means simply 
 that the Messiah, in whom is realised the eternal purpose of 
 God's love, which God had formed when He made the world, 
 was foreseen by God before that creation, and destined to 
 appear in the future. Nor does the expression used in i. 11, 
 TO iv avTol^ (the prophets) nrvevfia Xpia-rov, imply a pre- 
 existence. The Spirit of Christ, as the wholly historical use 
 of the name Christ in the same verse shows (Trpo/xaprvpofievov 
 TO, 64? Xpia-Tov -KaOrjiiaTa), is not the spirit proceeding from 
 the pre-existent Christ, an idea that would lack all biblical 
 analogies, but is simply the spirit which afterwards iilled the 
 Messiah; it is His spirit, because He alone had it without 
 measure, and had it truly as His possession. What dis- 
 tinguishes Christ from all other men, and makes Him God's 
 chosen and beloved, is in this Epistle, above all, His sinless- 
 ness; this is as prominent here as in the Petrine discourses 
 of the Book of Acts, which is an evidence both of the concep- 
 tion of Christ's person as human and of the impression which 
 Jesus made upon Peter. Jesus is " the Lamb without blemish 
 and without spot," who had to give His life for the sinful 
 world (i. 19). "He did no sin, neither was guile found in 
 His mouth" (ii. 22); "He died for sin, the just for the 
 unjust" (iii. 18). As in the early apostolic discourses. Acts 
 ii— viii., the servant of Jehovah in Isaiah, that ideal image of 
 the pious man, is recognised in Him (cf. ii. 22-25). God 
 has poured the fulness of His Spirit into this absolutely pure 
 vessel, and has thus been able to make of this Jesus His 
 X/jwTTo?. It may be'asked here whether Peter traces back 
 this relation only to the baptism, as in Acts x. 38 (exptcyev 
 avTov 6 deo'; irvev/MaTi aylm ical Swdfiei), or whether he now 
 traces it back to the origin and nature of Christ's personality. 
 When in iii. 18 it is said of Christ, davarcodeU fiev a-apKt,, ^wo- 
 iroirjdel'i Be irvevfiaTi, iv a koI to?? iv (j)v\a/cfj 7rvevp,acnv 
 iropevdeh iicijpv^ev, one cannot really see anything else in the 
 ■7rvevfji,a in which Jesus goes to the irvevfiaTa, the departed, 
 than His personal spirit. His inward man, as it awakes to life 
 again after the killing of the adp^. If we now compare this 
 passage with the expression to iv ai/Tol^ Trvev/xa Xpicrrov (i. 12), 
 
394 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 it appears almost as if Peter directly conceived the soul of 
 Christ to be the Spirit of God. Such an idea would make 
 us feel the want of a psychological distinction between the 
 human spirit and the divine Spirit, which fills and sways the 
 human ; but as a popular expression it would all the more 
 perfectly describe the absolute coincidence of the human and 
 the divine Spirit in Jesus. Paul chooses a similar though 
 more cautious expression, when, in Eom. i. 3, 4, he designates 
 the TTvevfia, which, together with the adp^ makes up the 
 historical personality of Jesus, as irveviia a'^iwavvi)';. How- 
 ever that may be, Peter, in describing the irvev/Ma 6eov as it 
 spoke in the prophets, directly as irvev/ia Xpia-Tov, gives, at 
 the same time, the simplest and most satisfactory expression 
 to the complete spiritual unity of Christ and God. For what 
 more need the Christ of Peter have in order to give to 
 humanity everything it needs for the restoration of its com- 
 munion with God ? 1 
 
 § 2. Saving Significance of the Sufferings and 
 Death of Christ 
 
 That this one righteous and divine person among the 
 sons of men should suffer the disgrace and torture of the 
 most miserable felon's death, remained for those who had 
 lived with Him in love and faith a riddle which they could 
 not solve until they perceived it in a part of His God-given 
 vocation as Saviour, and indeed the crown and conclusion of 
 it. In his preaching of repentance to the Jewish nation, 
 Peter had been content to view Jesus' death upon the cross 
 as the greatest crime of this nation, and to consider, on the 
 authority of the Old Testament, and in particular of Isaiah 
 liii., this crime as taking place according to the determinate 
 
 ' It is self-evident that tlie apostle ascribes divine glory to the exalted 
 Christ (ef. i. 11, 21). But that cannot be inferred, as Weiss would have 
 it, from the transference to Christ of a passage in the Old Testament where 
 xvpio; refers to God, or from the transformation of the expression of Isaiah, 
 hou xyix^im h rxi; xuph'a.; into Xpiarou dyia^eiu iu t«7j xaplietig (iii. 15). 
 Moreover, even the exalted Christ remains binder God, who is called the 
 God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (i. 1), and the divine 8o'|» does 
 not abolish His original and abiding humanity, especially as that glory is 
 communicated to His own (v. 1, 4, 10). 
 
THE PERSON AND SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST 395 
 
 counsel and will of God. But this counsel and will of God 
 was somewhat obscure so long as it was not also known as a 
 counsel of salvation and a will of love. The apostle, a 
 generation after his first preaching, is in a position to tell the 
 Gentile Christians to whom he is writing something more 
 satisfactory about the sufferings and death of the Messiah, to 
 show them that it contains a source of divine comfort and 
 sanctifying power. He explains the death of Christ to them 
 as a fact of salvation from three points of view, that of 
 example, that of redeeming power, and that of comfort against 
 the sense of guilt. His object is to comfort and strengthen 
 men who are suffering and persecuted although innocent, and 
 the readiest way of doing so is to set before them the example 
 of the suffering Christ. How comforting for innocent sufferers 
 that even He, the most innocent of all, must needs suffer so 
 sorely ; but what admonition it gives at the same time that 
 they should suffer as He did in divine meekness and patience ! 
 " For this is acceptable with God, if a man for conscience' sake 
 endure grief, suffering wrongfully. For even hereunto were 
 ye called : because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an 
 example, that we should follow in His steps ; who, when He 
 was reviled, reviled not again ; when He suffered, He threatened 
 not ; but committed Himself to Him who judgeth righteously " 
 (ii. 21-23). It is the same in iii. 17, iv. 1: "It is better, 
 if the will of God be so, to suffer for well-doing than for evil- 
 doing. For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just 
 for the unjust. Forasmuch as Christ hath suffered in the 
 flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind : for he that 
 hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin." This simple 
 moral view of the suffering image of Christ stands out 
 nowhere in the New Testament as in our Epistle. It suits a 
 personal disciple of Jesus, and shows the independence of his 
 view of that of Paul. But another thought is conjoined with 
 that of the moral example in the suffering of Christ, the 
 thought of its redeeming power. In the first passage adduced 
 He is said to have suffered uirep vimwv, and in the second, 
 aira^ irepl d/iapTt&v dvidavev, SiKat,o<; inrep dBiKcav, iva rjfidt; 
 ■n-poa-ajdyr) tw 6ea>. That is, the suffering and dying Saviour 
 appears in order to lead sinners, estranged from God, back to 
 God. And this appearance is more strictly defined in another 
 
396 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 passage as His giving an innocent and faultless life for a 
 ransom : et'Sore?, ort ou (pdaproi';, apyvpop r) xpva-iq> i\vTp(odT]T€ 
 €K Trj^ fiaraiai; vp,Siv dvaa-Tpo(f>r}<; iraTpoTrapaSoTov, dXKa Tt/xtw 
 aifiUTL tt)? d/ivov dfMufiov km da-TrlXov Xpio-rov (i. 18,1 9). Only 
 we must be on our guard against interpreting this laying down 
 of His life for sinners, on the part of the Holy One, in accord- 
 ance with the traditional theory of substitutionary penal suffer- 
 ings by which the innocent sufferer delivers sinners from 
 their guilt and punishment, for of this there is nothing in the 
 words. The abstract juridical substitution would require an 
 dvrl vficav, dvrl dSUcov ; but here we have virep, that is, not 
 instead of, but for the advantage of. And then he does not 
 speak of a deliverance from guilt or penalty, but, as we have 
 found in Jesus' own words about the Xvrpov avrl iroiW&v, 
 Matt. XX. 28, of a redemption from the bondage of sin, — 
 eK T7i<; fiaraMi vfiaiv dvaarpo (f)yv, as it is unmistakably said 
 in i. 8. The same thought recurs with equal plainness in the 
 passage, ii. 24 : o? ra? dfiapTua^ ^/mwv avTo<i dvrjveyKev iv tw 
 (TWfiaTi. avTov iiri to ^vKov, "va tavi dfjiap'riai,'; aTrojevofievoi, 
 Tfl ZiKaboavvrj ^rja'afiev ov Ta> i^wKwirt avrov Iddrjre. That is, 
 Jesus has taken our sins with Him to the cross, taken them 
 as it were into His death, in order to put them to death, in order 
 to secure our freedom from them to the end that we might live 
 to righteousness, and thus are we healed (morally) "through 
 His stripes." If we now ask how the death of Jesus has or 
 can exercise this emancipating influence, it is clear that the 
 apostle cannot have meant that all men became free from the 
 bonds of sin from the moment that Christ died ; all men have 
 not become,' free, but only believers. What Jesus therefore 
 has created in His suffering and death is not a charm which 
 works of itself, but a power and a possibility for those who 
 let it work on them. This brings us to the fact that this 
 moral deliverance, this influence which redeems in the proper 
 sense of the word, is mediated through the moral impression 
 of Jesus' sufferings and death ; and this is confirmed by the 
 consideration that only from this point of view is it possible to 
 explain the connection which exists in ^the apostle's mind 
 between the redeeming power of the death of Christ and its 
 significance as an example. The suffering of Christ can only 
 work as an example by means of the moral impression which 
 
THE PBESON AND SUFFEKINGS OF CHEIST 397 
 
 it makes, and only for those who resign themselves to this 
 impression. But this impression is deepened by the fact 
 that here there is far more than example ; they perceive that 
 this suffering and death are not unconnected with themselves, 
 but are for their sake. The sin of those who murdered Him, 
 and the suffering, sacrificing love by which that sin was borne, 
 have both a reference to themselves. That is an impression 
 which makes sin revolting to susceptible minds, and bursts the 
 bands of lust which sin binds round the heart. What the 
 apostle has in view in the much perverted and yet simple 
 passage, iv. 1, o iraOwp iv aapici, ireTravTai, afiaprias, is that 
 suffering kills the evil desire and subdues the blaze of selfish, 
 sinful passions that are rooted in the adp^ ; and that is true 
 not merely of the effect one's own suffering has on a mind 
 open to God, it is still more true of the effect which the 
 sufferings of another, and especially of one innocent and 
 loving, has when it is accepted for our sake. The suffering 
 and death of a father or a mother whose heart has been 
 broken by an erring child, would be the most powerful means 
 of breaking the evil desire in that child, and rending the bands 
 in which sin held him captive. The apostle manifestly sup- 
 posed such a connection between the death of Christ and the 
 sins of all men when he wrote that Jesus died aira^ irepl 
 cLfiapnuv (iii. 18). He has borne our sins in His own body 
 to the tree. Though immediately Jesus had borne only the 
 sins of His nation, culminating in its crucifixion of Him, yet 
 the apostle cannot have failed to observe that the nature of 
 the sin that rules the world generally revealed itself as never 
 before in this darkest crime of history, and that Jesus em- 
 braced in the suffering and pitiful love with which that sin 
 was borne, not only His own erring people, but the whole of 
 humanity in its sinful ruin. He might and must have said 
 to himself, that Jesus fought through that decisive conflict 
 between the selfishness that rules the world and the love of 
 God that overcomes the world, and triumphed in His death 
 for all time {aira^, and for all the world, as far as men allow 
 this eternal deed to have its influence upon them ; He really 
 gave His life a Xvrpov avrl ttoXKcov for the moral deliverance 
 of all who believe on Him. But the saving significance of 
 the death of Jesus is not to the apostle exhausted even in 
 
398 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 this redeeming power. In harmony with his prevailing mode 
 of thought and the object of his Epistle, in which holiness is 
 supreme, he regards the influence of Christ's death in this 
 direction as all - important, and so he insists upon it con- 
 tinually, alongside of its importance as an example ; but he 
 also indicates a power of the " blood of Christ " to deliver 
 from guilt, to stay the accusations of conscience. In the 
 salutation of the Epistle (i. 2), where he calls the Tr/aoyz/wo-ts 
 of God and the ayiaa/xoi; irvev/iaTo^ the foundation of the 
 Christian position, he then adds to the eh viraKorjv the words 
 Kol pavrtafibv ai/iaro? XpiaTov. This sprinkling with the blood 
 of Christ, reminding us of the Old Testament sprinkling with 
 the sacrificial blood of atonement, can only have independent 
 significance beside sanctification, whose principle is "the 
 spirit," and " the obedience " towards God's commandments 
 in which this sanctification shows itself, if it is referred to 
 the expiation of those arrears which still continue to cleave 
 to the Christian in sanctification and obedience, that is, to the 
 daily forgiveness of sins for Christ's sake. Thus the apostle 
 perceived in the blood of Christ, that is, the self-sacrifice of 
 the Saviour, the pledge of divine forgiveness, an effectual 
 sacrifice presented by God Himself against the daily offences 
 of the believer ; but he did not give doctrinal expression to 
 this idea and its connection with the redeeming power of the 
 blood of Christ. 
 
 § 3. Old Testament Types 
 
 These considerations about the saving value of the death 
 of Jesus, and especially that last touched on, have manifestly 
 been developed by the apostle on the basis of the Old Testa- 
 ment types to which his own words allude, and it may be 
 well to glance even now at the Old Testament allusions in 
 order to test our comprehension of his meaning and complete 
 it in this relation. First of all, the expression pavTia-fio<; 
 aXfiaro'i XpitTTov unmistakably points back to the sacrifice 
 which concluded the Old Testament covenant (Ex. xxiv. 7, 
 8). There sprinkling with the blood of the sacrifice followed 
 the people's vow of obedience, just as in our passage the 
 pavTia-fio'i follows the vTraKorj ; and Peter undoubtedly meant 
 
THE PERSON AND SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST 399 
 
 by these two expressions to transfer directly the presupposi- 
 tions of the Old Testament covenant to his readers as the 
 people of the new covenant (ii. 9). These presuppositions are, 
 above all, obedience to the commandments of God, and, on the 
 promise of this obedience, the assurance of divine forgiveness 
 for the guilt which, nevertheless, is ever being contracted. 
 After the same manner, in His own teaching Jesus had first 
 educated His disciples in the righteousness of God, and then 
 on His way to death He described to them His blood, which 
 He was about to shed, as the blood of a new covenant ; — He 
 did not mean that He had to win through this the divine grace 
 and forgiveness which He had proclaimed to them from the 
 beginning as a present boon, but the blood was to be a 
 guarantee of this grace and forgiveness, it was the seal of the 
 new covenant. And there is no doubt that Peter thus con- 
 ceived of the relation of the pavTiafioi; atfiaro'; Xpiarov to the 
 ayiaa/jLo? TTvevfiaToi;, and the new inraKor) of the believer. A 
 second Old Testament type, in which Peter obtains a view of 
 the meaning of Christ's death, is the Passover lamb referred 
 to in the words, " as a lamb without blemish and without spot." 
 The allusion to this and to the whole Old Testament idea of 
 sacrifice has been disputed ; for while the expression a/Moifio^ 
 suits the ritual spotlessness of the sacrificial lamb, ao-TrtXo? 
 does not, and the Old Testament sacrifice had significance as 
 an atonement but not as a ransom, and the latter is here 
 ascribed to the blood of Christ in the word eXvrpmdrjTe. But 
 these reasons are not sufificient to lead us to find in the passage 
 only an allusion to Isa. liii. 7 (as a lamb which is led to 
 the slaughter, so he opened not his mouth). This passage of 
 Isaiah gives prominence only to the quiet lamb-like patience 
 of the servant of God, but not to the spotlessness and the 
 value of his blood (Tt/J-ia a^/iari). These are features which 
 point back to the Paschal lamb, which, as faultless (Ex. xii. 
 5), might doubtless be called a/icSyiio? (and why not also 
 aa'TrlXo';'?), and undoubtedly stood in a causal connection 
 with the deliverance from Egypt (Kr/Tpaatv), that is, had a 
 redemptive significance. It is possible that the name, " the 
 Lamb of God," for Jesus going to death, which we have also 
 in John i. 29, 37, had passed into the Christian vocabulary, 
 before the composition of the Apocalypse, from a union of the 
 
400 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 ideas of Isa. liii. 7 with the Paschal sacrifice, and that our 
 passage rests both on Ex. xii. 5 and Isa. liii. 7. But the 
 reference to the Paschal lamb cannot be excluded, as, in the 
 institution of the Supper, Jesus Himself suggested it to the 
 disciples, and in the " take eat " had represented Himself as 
 the Paschal lamb of the new covenant. If that is so, then 
 we have here again the same logical relation between the recon- 
 ciling and redeeming power of Jesus as between the pavTiafio<; 
 aLfiaTO<; XpLcxTov and the viraKor] (i. 2). For the blood of the 
 Passover lamb, which was to be sprinkled on the doorposts of 
 the house that was to be spared, has unquestionably an aton- 
 ing significance ; ^ but the expiation is only for the advantage 
 of those who have taken into themselves (eating) the sacrifice, 
 and purified their life (by the purging of the leaven). There 
 remains, however, the main significance of the Passover sacri- 
 fice, that it delivers from Egyptian bondage, which in the 
 Christian interpretation is, that it redeems from the vain con- 
 versation received from the Fathers (i. 18). The most certain 
 and expressive type applied by Peter is undoubtedly that of 
 the suffering servant of Jehovah in the fifty-third chapter of 
 Isaiah. Its application to Jesus and the death of Jesus lies 
 obviously before us in the passage ii. 21— 2 5, in which phrases 
 from Isaiah are interwoven, and the notion of a vicarious 
 penal suffering, which is traditionally connected with the 
 " truly He hath borne our griefs : the punishment was laid 
 upon Him that we might have peace," seem to be necessarily 
 supported by the passage of Peter. The more likely this is, 
 the more worthy of note is the change which Peter has made 
 on the saying, " He hath borne our griefs " ; it appears here 
 as, " Who hath borne our sins in His own body to the tree." 
 So little does Peter thinlc of a substitutionary penal suffering, 
 to take away our guilt and punishment and not break our sin 
 itself, and so much is the latter to him, the redemption from 
 sin itself, the wa Tai<; a.fi.apTiai'; airo'^evofievoi, rfj BiKaiwcrvvr) 
 ^rjcrcofiev (ii. 24), the main thing, that he changes the prophetic 
 words in that way. Now, from other elements in the passage 
 of Isaiah which he does not quote, and from the whole idea 
 of vicarious suffering, we may infer what is in itself probable, 
 that here, too, Peter thought of an expiation, an act of justi- 
 1 Cf. Oehler, 0. T. Theol. p. 541. 
 
THE PERSON AND SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST 401 
 
 fication as well as of moral emancipation through the death of 
 Jesus. But this expiation can only have been thought of by 
 him as the XvTpov in i. 21, not as an equivalent which God 
 receives in order to set the guilty free, but as something pre- 
 cious which God gives up in order to deliver the slaves of sin ; 
 it is a sacrifice of love offered by God, which, as a matter of 
 course, guarantees forgiveness to those who allow themselves 
 to be freed by it. For expiation in the Scriptures is not a 
 covering up, a making amends, which God demands and 
 accepts, it is an assurance of His forgiveness which He Himself 
 offers, and offers solely to those who turn from their sins to 
 Him. As to the servant of God in Isaiah, the meaning of the 
 prophet is not that God punishes the sins of His people in 
 their ideal representative, for the expression " chastisement," 
 in Isa. liii., is only a poetic expression which cannot be 
 dogmatised about ; the Servant of Jehovah is appointed for 
 the purpose of renewing His people. He is to see of the 
 fruit of His suffering and death, to have the strong for a spoil, 
 to heal the moral diseases of His people ; and this is just what 
 Peter in his application insists on as the main thing, that we 
 who like sheep have gone astray, are now returned to the 
 Shepherd and Bishop of our souls (ii. 25). And thus even 
 here we may sum up the apostle's view of the saving value 
 of the death of Jesus in the terse words which he uses of it 
 in iii. 18:" Christ died for sin, the just for the unjust "va r)iia<i 
 ■irpoa-wyajyr) ra 6ea>," To lead us back again into communion 
 with God remains the great work of salvation, and for that 
 two things are required, viz. that we get rid of sin, and that 
 we become sure of forgiveness. Jesus has made both possible 
 to us in His death, and the one not without the other. But 
 Peter, in accordance with his prevailing ethical view, puts the 
 getting rid of sin first, and makes the other subordinate, as 
 the religious condition, and the indispensable condition of that 
 moral result. Attention should also be given to the way in 
 which the Old Testament examples discussed have helped the 
 apostle to understand the New Testament facts ; he does not 
 subject these facts to preconceived Old Testament views, but 
 he contemplates the New Testament impressions in the glass 
 of the Old Testament, and so we have in him the reciprocal 
 effects of immediate experience, and the searching of scripture. 
 
 BEYSCHLAG. — I. 26 
 
402 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 Everything that Peter says about Christ's suffering as forming 
 an example, goes back to the direct impression of what he had 
 experienced, though it may be seen that the words of Christ 
 and His institution of the Supper were the starting-point of 
 his consideration. The words of Jesus about the \vTpov avrl 
 iroWSiv lie plainly at the basis of the statement in i. 18. 
 Jesus' own memorial institution points him back to the Old 
 Testament covenant sacrifice and Paschal lamb, and the 
 picture of the suffering servant of Jehovah immediately con- 
 fronted him in the Crucified. In all this we recognise the 
 genuine primitive apostle, who may, indeed, have been helped 
 by Paul to make progress in his knowledge, but who has his 
 own independent sources of knowledge, and goes his own way 
 in using them. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE PILGRIM STATE AND "WALK OP THE CHRISTIAN 
 § 1. The Eesureection of Cheist as the Foundation 
 
 OF CHRISTLA.N LiFE 
 
 If the sufferings and death of Christ are to the apostle the 
 one pillar of salvation, the resurrection and exaltation are the 
 other. If the first is the source of Christian sanctification, 
 the second is the source of Christian hope (i. 3). God's 
 raising of Jesus from the dead has not only abolished the 
 shame of His death upon the cross, it has also raised Him to 
 a heavenly glory in which He can complete His saving work 
 begun on earth. The Eisen One is gone into heaven (iii. 22), 
 where He sits on the right hand of God, angels, authorities, 
 and powers (the ruling powers of the present order of the 
 world of whom we shall hear more in Paul) being made 
 subject unto Him, and thence He shall soon come again to 
 judge the living and the dead, and to bring His own into 
 possession of their eternal inheritance which is preserved in 
 heaven. But His resurrection has glorious results, not merely 
 for Himself and the future perfection of His own ; their 
 present life on earth has through it become different from the 
 life of other men. They are, as the apostle says (i. 3), be- 
 
THE PILGRIM STATE AND WALK OF THE CHRISTIAN 403 
 
 gotten again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus 
 Christ. This declaration seems indeed to fit only the apostle's 
 personal experience of Christ's resurrection, while it is said of 
 the readers (i. 23) that they are born again through the 
 living word of God. But the contradiction is only apparent ; 
 the word of God would not have regenerated the readers, 
 could not at least have begotten them to a living hope, if it 
 had not had a risen Saviour to announce to them ; this is 
 expressed in remarkable phraseology in the passage i. 20, 21 : 
 "You who by Him (Christ) do believe in God, who raised 
 Him from the dead, and gave Him glory ; that your faith and 
 hope might be in God." The centre of gravity of their 
 Christian life is laid, through the resurrection of Christ, in 
 that higher world into which He has entered, and into which 
 they hope to follow Him. Their life on earth has become a 
 pilgrimage to an eternal home which is certain and secured 
 for them. They are but pilgrims and strangers on earth; 
 their true fatherland, their land of promise, lies in heaven 
 (i. 1, 17, ii. 11). But this standpoint of strangeness to 
 the world does not imply a flight from the world or an idle 
 longing, it is the first thing that ennobles, consecrates, and 
 glorifies the earthly life. It inclines men to hold themselves 
 worthy of that high Fatherland, and to walk according to its 
 holy ordinances ; the living hope of the heavenly inheritance 
 is only preserved by the continuous work of sanctification. 
 And thus, as the passages just quoted show, the apostle can 
 make this view of life as a pilgrimage, as a living by hope, 
 the direct and essential motive of his exhortations to sanctifi- 
 cation, and from it he can portray the Christian moral ideal 
 of life. The life of the Christian is accordingly a life in the 
 word of God, and at the same time in the Spirit, in the 
 Lord, in God ; it is a life in hope and faith, and in believing 
 obedience; it is further a life in love and brotherly com- 
 munion, a life of discipline and of resignation to all natural 
 ordinances of God; finally, it is a life of patience and 
 endurance in suffering. Let us study in these several 
 relations the ethic of the apostle, which grows up freely 
 from the Christian idea, from the teaching of Jesus inwardly 
 digested, and without formally falling back upon the Old 
 Testament law. 
 
404 new testament theology 
 
 § 2. Life tn the Woed, in the Spieit, in the 
 LoKD, IN God 
 
 The Christian life, in the case of Peter, as in James, is 
 above all a life in the word of God, only the former emphasises 
 the New Testament element more strongly than the latter. 
 Though the word sown in the heart has produced the re- 
 generation of the readers (i. 23), yet birth is only a beginning 
 of life which requires a further development, and for this the 
 word of God is the indispensable nourishment. The apostle 
 compares his readers to new-born children, and the word of 
 God to the pure milk with which they must be fed. He 
 exhorts them after having once tasted of God's goodness to 
 lay aside all that remains of the old man, and to long ever anew 
 for this pure spiritual milk (ii. 1, 2). By expressly describ- 
 ing the gospel preached to them as the means of nourishment 
 for the spiritual life (i. 25), he not only makes it equal to 
 the Old Testament word of God, but actually places it above 
 the Old Testament, inasmuch as he does not ascribe to the 
 latter the power of begetting and nourishing the new life. 
 At the same time he attests the deep and blessed impression 
 which he himself received from Jesus' words and gospel. 
 His praise of the living word which abideth for ever is like 
 an echo of the confession (John vi. 68): "Lord, to whom 
 shall we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life." But where 
 God's word is, there also is His spirit. The spirit of God is 
 the soul of His word. Those who brought the glad message 
 to the readers have, it is said (i. 12), in a phrase which plainly 
 refers to Pentecost, preached in the Holy Spirit sent down 
 from heaven, and therefore the readers also, through their 
 second birth, from God's living word, have become partakers 
 of the spirit. " Blessed are you," it is said (iv. 14), with refer- 
 ence to the reproach for Christ's sake, " for the spirit of glory 
 and of God resteth on you." It is worthy of note that Peter 
 has already got beyond the onesided view of the Holy 
 Spirit as a source of inspiration and prediction, and the 
 ethical significance of the spirit as a principle of sanctification 
 has made itself apparent to him, as is attested by the iv 
 opfiafffiw TTvev/iaro'} (i. 2). But the spirit of God is in 
 particular the spirit of Christ (i. 11), and therefore com- 
 
THE PILGRIM STATE AND WALK OF THE CHEISTIAN 405 
 
 munity of life with the glorified Christ is given with the 
 possession of the spirit. This idea has been denied to our 
 Epistle without reason. We have it in phrases such as 
 iii. 16 {ttjv ayadrjv iv Xptarm avaarpo^'^v) or v. 14 (pracriv 
 T049 iv Xpicrrw), and the idea of the example of Christ, which 
 is also found, does not conflict with it. Christ remains, of 
 course, a historical as well as a glorified personality distinct 
 from the Spirit. As a historical personality He is an example, 
 as a glorified personality He is the object of religious worship 
 (iii. 15, Kvpiov St' Tov Xpicrrbv ayida-aje iv rat? /capBiaK vfiS>v, 
 that is, give to Christ in your hearts the honour that is due to 
 Him ; hallow His name) ; but that does not hinder His being 
 thought of at the same time as working in His own by 
 means of the Spirit. And that this is the apostle's meaning 
 is shown by the striking phrase in iii. 21, that baptism saves 
 us St' avaa-Tdcrewi Xpiarov, which has meaning oaly if it is 
 communion with the life of the Risen One into which baptism 
 translates us. And how could Christians — as is required of 
 them in ii. 5 — be built as living stones on Christ the founda- 
 tion laid by God, if there was not on His part a real life 
 connection between Him and His own ? All this does not 
 hinder him from tracing back the Christian state of grace and 
 life directly to God, just as James does, since word, spirit. 
 Lord, are only God's instruments. It is God who has called 
 the readers to His marvellous light (ii. 9) and His eternal 
 glory (v. 10). In His great mercy God has begotten them 
 again to a living hope (i. 3). It is God's grace in which they 
 stand (i. 13, v. 12), and the God of all grace will set them 
 up, establish, strengthen, settle them (v. 10). Their faith is 
 trust in God, and their hope is hope in God (i. 21); even 
 baptism as a-vvei^aeaj^ dya9ri<; iireparnfia ek 6e6v (iii. 21),^ 
 puts them in an immediate relation to Him; and since 
 believers call on Him the Holy One as Father, they are, 
 ^ I am not in a position to explain more satisfactorily than has hitherto 
 been done the obscure expression used of baptism in iii. 21. But whether 
 we render " request of a good conscience toward God," that is, seeking for 
 forgiveness of sin, or compact, bond of a good conscience with God, or 
 otherwise, baptism is stUl considered only on its subjective side, and no 
 sacramental doctrine follows from it. For that it saves is not meant 
 literally ; it does not save of itself, but S;' »m<sr«.<iiai Xpinrcv, that is, the 
 Risen One into whom they are baptized, saves. 
 
406 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 as a matter of course, His children — reicva v7raKoii<; (i. 15, 
 i. 14). 
 
 § 3. The Life in Faith, Hope, Obedience, and 
 Sanctification 
 
 Faith appears first of all as the subjective principle of 
 Christian life. It appears as such, especially in those pas- 
 sages where, without qualification, and without prejudice to 
 its fundamental significance of " trust," Trto-rt? is manifestly- 
 used as a general description for the religion of the Christian, 
 man. Such are i. 7 ("va to SoKifitov iifiaiv t»5? Trtfrxea)? . . . 
 evpeOrf), i. 9 (KO/M^6/j,evoi to tsXo? tjj? iricrTeo)'; vfiuv ataTTj- 
 plav yjrv^av), v. 7 (oo avTiaT7)Te crTepeoi Ty ■jrio'Tei). The 
 fundamental idea of " trust " comes out most obviously in the 
 Old Testament quotation (ii. 6, 7), where the point in question 
 is trust in the foundation of salvation laid by God ("n-KTreveiv 
 eirC . . . ), and then with vfuv Tots •jrta-Tevova-iv follows the 
 New Testament application in the same sense. Even the 
 characteristic New Testament phrase ■maTmieiv eh Xpta-rov is 
 found in the passage i. 8, reminding us of the words of Jesus 
 in John xx. 2 9, which opposes faith to bodily sight (of Jesus). 
 On the other hand, the oldest synoptic application of the 
 idea of faith, referring it to God Himself (Mark xi. 22; cf . 
 John xiv. 1), comes out in i. 21, which reminds the readers 
 who were formerly heathen that they had become believers 
 in God only through Christ. But we see how primitive and 
 how much belonging to the Old Testament the teaching still 
 is in form, when we note that the conception of faith has not 
 become sufiicient for the Christian relation to God, but is 
 variously represented by hope and by obedience, which corre- 
 spond to the Old Testament dualism of promise and command- 
 ment. Hope and faith are indeed related ; both are trust in 
 God, but faith refers essentially to an act of divine love that 
 has taken place, while hope is directed to the future. And 
 it belongs to the spirit of his time, which was specially strong 
 in Peter, that he prefers to describe the Christian relation to 
 God as hope rather than as faith. If Paul praises the faith 
 of Abraham, Peter prefers to praise Sarah's hope in God, and 
 that of those like her (iii. 5). The being begotten again 
 
THE PILGRIM STATE AND WALK OF THE CHEISTIAN 407 
 
 through the resurrection of Christ, for which thanks are 
 given in i. 3, is a being begotten again to a living hope, and 
 i. 21 declares to us how our faith through that resurrection 
 has, as it were, received its crown in hope, " that your faith 
 and hope might be in God." Peter directly sums up in hope 
 the whole of subjective Christianity, when he comprehends 
 the business of the Christian life in the words (i. 13) : " Hope 
 to the end (TeXetw?), for the grace that is to be brought to 
 you at the resurrection of Jesus Christ" ; or when, in iii. 15, 
 he calls to the Christians who are questioned by the heathen : 
 " Be ready at all times to give an answer to every man that 
 asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you." When, in 
 the passage i. 3, he calls his hope ^waa, just as, in Gal. v. 6, 
 Paul calls his faith ivepyovfiivrj, he seems to mean by the 
 epithet to describe hope as the ruling motive of the Chris- 
 tian life. The passage i. 13—15, at anyrate, in which the 
 summons reXelax; ekiriaaTe immediately follows on the exhor- 
 tation to sanetification, shows that he thinks of hope in this 
 way. With regard to obedience, on the other hand, as an 
 interchangeable expression for faith, the relationship of the 
 two comes out most obviously in the fact that the contrast to 
 TTio-Tf?, m-ia-Tevcov, is throughout not aTrto-ro?, but diretOaiv 
 (ii. 7, 8, iii. 1, 20, iv. 17).^ But the positive idea, also 
 vTraKor), viraKor] t^? aXr]9el,a^, appears repeatedly as a mark 
 of the Christian condition (i. 2, 14, 22). The Old Testament 
 character of this language comes out still more clearly when 
 Peter calls the Christian a servant of God as well as a child 
 of God (ft>? 6eov SovTu)!,, ii. 16), and when he passes over the 
 love of God, though that was present in the Old Testament; 
 in order to lay stress on the fear of God. " If ye call on 
 Him as Pather, who without respect of persons judgeth 
 according to every man's work, pass the time of your 
 sojourning here in fear," it is said (i. 17); and in the same 
 way, in iii. 2, 15, "fear'' (that is, fear of God) is incul- 
 cated upon Christians. Of course the fear, as is shown 
 especially by the first passage, is a childlike and not a slavish 
 fear, a fear of God which casteth out the fear of man 
 (iii. 16); and in this sense Jesus also on one occasion com- 
 mended fear to His disciples alongside of trust (Matt. x. 28). 
 1 Only ii. 7, the reading wavers between diriaraiaiu and a.'jrsiSouirii/. 
 
408 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 It is more in keeping with the New Testament that Peter 
 does not, as already noted, borrow the rule for this " walking 
 in fear " from the Mosaic law, but, just as Jesus does in 
 Matt. V. 45, 46, from the nature of God, which it is the 
 business of a child of God to copy. As children of obedience, 
 he writes (i. 14) like the Holy One, who hath called you, "be 
 ye holy ; for I am holy." The fundamental commandment of 
 sanctification {dryi,aa/j,6<;, i. 2) originates here as a summary 
 of the most inward ethics. This sanctification consists, nega- 
 tively, in the purifying of the soul, in obedience to the truth 
 revealed in God's word (i. 22), in the laying aside of all 
 sinful lusts and fleshly passions, all malice, guile, hypocrisies, 
 envies, and evil speaking (i. 13, ii. 1,11, iv. 3) ; and, positively, 
 in the developing of all virtues in which the aperai of God 
 (ii. 9), His glorious ethical attributes, are imitated, and thus 
 are made known (cf. Matt. v. 10); or more briefly, in a t,fiv 
 rfj BoKaioa-vvT} (ii. 24), where righteousness, as in the Sermon 
 on the Mount (Matt. v. 20, vi. 33), is the summary of all 
 that is like God. The apostle has called attention to the 
 way in which the divine original is made vivid and clear to 
 the Christian through the example of Christ, especially on 
 the side of self-denying love, meekness, and submission (ii. 23, 
 iii. 17, 18, iv. 1). 
 
 § 4. The Life in Chkistian and in Natural Fellowship 
 
 The several obvious duties of the Christian in the world 
 grow out of his great obligation to God and the Saviour. As 
 special spheres of duty appear first the Christian community 
 proper, and then the different natural communities ordained 
 by God. The Christians, as children of one Father, form a 
 bond of brotherhood with one another, an dBe\,(j>6Trji; (ii. 17, 
 V. 9) : by this name, which excludes everything institutional, 
 theocratic, unevangelic, Peter intends what we call the 
 Church. And he also uses the figure of a temple, a house of 
 God in which the living God has taken up His abode, and in 
 which spiritual sacrifices are offered to Him through Christ : — 
 Christ is its foundation-stone laid by God, and believers are 
 the living stones which are joined to this foundation (ii. 5). 
 In this community of believers brotherly love is the law, and 
 
THE PILGKIM STATE AND WALK OF THE CHRISTIAN 409 
 
 therefore follows immediately upon sanctification as a first- 
 fruit of the Spirit, which drives out the natural selfishness 
 Tfl? y}rv^a<i vfimv rj'yvtKOTe'; iv rfj viraKofi Tri<; aXrjdeia^ eh 
 (})tXaSeX,^iav dwTroKpirov (i. 22). It is required that it come 
 from the heart, and be accompanied by peaceableness, 
 sympathy, and mercy (iii. 8) ; that it be eKTevrj^, unfeigned 
 (i. 22, iv. 8), an attribute in virtue of which it is also able to 
 save an erring brother and cover a multitude of sins (iv. 8 ; 
 cf. Jas. V. 20; Prov. x. 12). The demand for humility, in 
 virtue of which Christians become able to serve each other, is 
 as emphatic (iii. 8, v. 5). There is here an echo of Jesus' words : 
 " A new commandment give I you. That ye love one another as 
 I have loved you," and " Who among you will be great, let him 
 be the servant of all." Yet, with all their brotherly equality. 
 Christians are differently gifted, and thus are meant for 
 mutual service ; and thus it is their duty as each has received 
 his (special) gift of grace that he should use it for others, as 
 a good steward of the manifold grace of God (iv. 1 0). For 
 example, they ought to use hospitality without grudging 
 (iv. 9) ; he who speaks for the edification of others should 
 speak as the oracles of God, that is, should see to it that he 
 do not utter his own conceits, but the thoughts of God (iv. 
 11); he who ministereth should do it as of the ability 
 which God giveth — without vanity and pride (iv. 11). 
 Finally, the community has its regulations, though they are 
 very simple. It is still the community itself and not the 
 officials that is called kX^/so?, God's heritage (v. 2, 3), and the 
 only existing office is that of elder, which, as has been noted, is 
 in a state of transition from a natural to a legal position of 
 honour. The elders are to feed the flock of God, not by con- 
 straint, but willingly ; there were undoubtedly great burdens 
 connected with the office of administrator ; not for filthy 
 lucre, but of a ready mind ; not as being lords of the com- 
 munity, but as examples to it (v. 2, 3). The younger are 
 to be subject to them, but finally all are to be subject 
 to one another in humility (v. 5). As regards life in 
 the ordinary relations of society, the fundamental law of 
 honouring every man prevails here (ii. 1 7), that is, of recog- 
 nising what God has given him, an individuality and a station 
 of his own. That finds its application, above all, in the 
 
410 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 fundamental relation of society, marriage. We see the 
 wisdom and delicacy with which the young Christianity 
 labours to exalt it morally without giving way to a fa,lse 
 spiritual zeal. The apostle in presence of the prevailing 
 contempt for women exhorts men to give them, as "the 
 weaker vessel," their own honour — to live with them according 
 to (Christian) knowledge (iii. 7), with respect for their 
 personality, as they also — the women — are fellow-heirs of 
 eternal life. This injunction is strengthened by reference to 
 the fact that the non-fulfilment of this duty of respectful love 
 (Tt/jLij) prevents the prayers of the men — that is, makes their 
 worship vain. Just as fine and tender is his injunction to 
 the Christian women, who, undoubtedly more numerous in the 
 Church than men, had frequently to live with non-Christian 
 husbands. He holds up to them the example of the deference 
 which Sarah exhibited to Abraham in calling him lord, and 
 warns them against seeking to convert their husbands with 
 words, with sermonising ; — the best means for that is a pure 
 walk in the fear of God. And the true adornment of the 
 woman is not plaiting of the hair and wearing of gold and 
 brilliance of apparel, but the meek, quiet spirit which adorns 
 the hidden man of the heart with incorruptible beauty (iii. 
 3, 4). Further, the apostle also speaks of the great and 
 powerful commonwealth of Eome, under whose control the 
 Christian Churches were comprehended ; and what he says 
 here is a fine testimony to the freedom with which the 
 young Christianity from the first rose above the mutinous 
 temper of the Jewish theocratism. The apostle has learned 
 from His Lord and Master to give to Caesar what is Caesar's, 
 and to recognise in the political constitution of the heathen 
 world a moral order of God. If he does not, like Paul, 
 directly designate the order of the State as divine, but rather 
 as an dvOpwirivq ktio-k, a human creation, yet he regards it 
 as serving a moral end, the punishment of evil-doers and the 
 commendation of them that do well, and therefore one is to 
 be subject to it for the Lord's sake (ii. 1 3 ff.). Not that the 
 Christian in doing so denies the kingly freedom which as a 
 child of God he enjoys. He is the truly free man who does 
 not use his freedom as a cloak of wickedness, but knows 
 himself to be a servant of God. As such " he honours all 
 
THE PILURIM STATE AND WALK OF THE CHRISTIAN 411 
 
 men, loves the brotherhood, fears God, honours the king" 
 (ii. 17). And the king — for this was the name of the emperor 
 in the East — ^he honours also in his representatives, the 
 governors sent by him as supreme lord, the virepexo>v, to whom 
 he has transferred a portion of his official authority (ii. 14). 
 
 § 5. The Christian in Suffering 
 
 But the Christian in this world finds himself not merely 
 in presence of divine ordinances, but also of a multitude of 
 ungodly systems, against which he has to guard himself by 
 conflict. Many of the readers found themselves in the dis- 
 credited position of slaves, and therefore in the arbitrary 
 power of their masters, who were not always well disposed, 
 but often the reverse (ii. 18). And that Eoman executive 
 power, although not without the consciousness that it had to 
 be a terror to evil-doers and a protection to those who do 
 well, fell far short of its ideal. It was, if we are not mis- 
 taken, the time of Nero ; and not only did the Christian com- 
 munity and the worship of God, however innocent it was, 
 enjoy no kind of protection, but the name of Christ was one 
 decried (iv. 16), and every possible calumny circulated about 
 it (ii. 12, 15, iii. 16, iv. 14). The atrocities of the emperor 
 towards the community at Eome had not indeed caused a 
 State persecution in the whole empire, but they had every- 
 where excited the prejudice and hatred of the populace 
 against the Christians as they went their way misunderstood 
 by all (iv. 2-4). Thus a flood of suffering broke upon the 
 chosen pilgrims and strangers scattered abroad, and the 
 special aim of the Epistle is to strengthen them in it. For 
 it is the first care of the apostle that no Christian should 
 suffer for evil-doing. " Let no one among you suffer as a 
 murderer, or thief, or evil-doer, as a busybody in other men's 
 matters Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be 
 ashamed ; but glorify God in this (the Christian) name" (iv 
 16) And there can be no more honourable suffermg than that 
 which he goes on to advise. " Be not afraid of their terror, 
 neither be ye troubled ; but sanctify Christ as the Lord m 
 your heart," that is, consider Him before all as your Lord 
 whom you are to follow in holy awe (iii. 14, 1 5). " Be ready 
 
412 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a 
 reason of the hope that is in you, but with meekness and fear 
 (of God, iii. 15), having a good conscience; that whereas they 
 speak evil of your good conversation in Christ, they may be 
 put to shame in that wherein they falsely accuse you " (iii. 16). 
 " Keward not evil with evil, or railing with railing : but con- 
 trariwise with blessing ; for thereunto are ye called, that ye 
 should inherit a blessing" (iii. 9). These words, reminding us 
 of known sayings of the Sermon on the Mount, bring us from 
 exhortation to comfort ; and how richly does the apostle 
 contrive to present it ! " Who can injure you," he exclaims, 
 " if ye be followers of that which is good " ; and he adds in 
 Jesus' own words, " If ye should suffer for righteousness' sake, 
 happy are ye" (iii. 14; Matt. v. 10). Slaves especially he 
 exhorts to be subject to their masters, not only to the good, 
 but also to the froward " ; for this is thankworthy, if a man for 
 conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully (ii. 
 18, 19). It is thankworthy with God; for — it is said for 
 all — "he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from 
 sin " ; the suffering quenches the sinful lusts and educates to 
 the following of Christ (iv. 1). Suffering is a fire of purifica- 
 tion, in which faith, a more incorruptible good than gold 
 purified in the fire, is tried, and so fitted to attain its goal, the 
 amTt^pia (i. 7—9). Christians were not to think that anything 
 strange had befallen them when they suffered innocently 
 (iv. 12) ; the same sufferings come upon their brethren in the 
 world (v. 9), and the same sufferings came upon their Lord 
 and Master. But if the readers are partakers of the 
 sufferings of Christ they should rejoice, because when His 
 glory shall be revealed they also may be glad with exceeding 
 joy (iv. 13). But this is true only when innocent suffering 
 is rightly received and borne ; for in itself suffering may over- 
 whelm the soul and plunge it in despair. " Your adversary the 
 devil goeth about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may 
 devour '' (v. 8). The spirit of the world would fain drive the 
 Christians to despair, and to apostasy from the faith through 
 excess of suffering. Hence the closing exhortations as to the 
 way in which the Christian is to bear suffering, and as to the 
 virtues connected with it. (1) Eesignation : "Humble your- 
 selves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you 
 
PREACHING TO THE DEAD AND JUDGMENT OF THE WORLD 413 
 
 in due season" (v. 6). (2) Vigilance, circumspection, and 
 bravery : " Be sober, be vigilant, gird up the loins of your 
 mind with soberness" (cf. Luke xii. 35 ; Matt. xxvi. 41) ; " resist 
 the tempter, firm in the faith " (v. 8, i. 13, v. 9). (3) Joyful 
 trust in God and calm continuance in the doing of His will : 
 " Cast all your care on Him, for He careth for you " (v. 6) ; 
 they who suffer according to the will of God are to commend 
 their souls to the faithful Creator (who will not faithlessly 
 abandon His creatures) in well-doing (iv. 19). "And He, the 
 God of all grace, who has called them to His eternal glory in 
 Christ Jesus, will, after they have suffered awhile, make them 
 perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle them" (v. 10). The whole 
 power of the young Christianity to overcome the world lies 
 in these simple exhortations and words of comfort of the apostle. 
 
 CHAPTEE V 
 
 THE PREACHING TO THE DEAD AND THE JUDGMENT 
 OF THE WORLD 
 
 § 1. The Sphere of Hope 
 
 The speedy and glorious return of Christ for the redemp- 
 tion and beatification of His own, is, of course, the background 
 of these exhortations and connections. But we would err if 
 we expected that the hope of Christendom extended only to 
 the deliverance of its own allotted number of members among 
 the thousand times ten thousands of humanity. Its hope 
 goes further; there appears in our Epistle a peculiar tenet 
 about a work of salvation which Christ performed for the 
 departed after He had given up His life for the living ; and 
 this remarkable tenet, with which we close our consideration 
 of the Epistle, throws an unexpected light on the whole idea 
 of the judgment of the world. But the obscurity of the words 
 in question demands a searching discussion. 
 
 § 2. The Preaching to the Dead 
 
 After the announcement of the approaching judgment of 
 the living and the dead by Christ in iv. 5 {eroiixm exovri 
 
414 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 Kpivab ^wvTa^ Koi veKpovt) the apostle (ver. 6) continues : " For, 
 for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are 
 dead, that they might be judged according to men in the 
 flesh, but live according to God in the spirit." Here, there- 
 fore, is mention of a preaching of salvation to the dead ; for 
 the evTiyyeXia-Br] allows us only to think of a preaching of 
 salvation not of a preaching of judgment, and besides, the 
 ^waiv Be Kara deov irvevfjian puts the redeeming object 
 beyond all question. But this brief and great utterance 
 points back to a more detailed and yet more obscure pass- 
 age (iii. 18 f). Here, after mention of the saving death of 
 Jesus, it is further unexpectedly said : OavaTcoOeU jMev aapKi, 
 ^cooTToirjOei'i Se irvev/Mart, iv a> Kal rot? iv ^vKaK'p irvevfiaaiv 
 iropevOel'; iKrjpv^ev, airetOrjo-ao'LV irore, ore aire^eSe'^eTO 
 r] Tov deov fiuKpodv/iia ev 7)fiepai<; Nae, Karao'Keva^o/iivr]'; 
 Ki/BcoTov, €45 ^v oKIp/oi, tovt icrrlv oktco yjrv^^^al hieadaOrjcrav hi! 
 vSaTo<; ; whereupon follows an interpretation of the water of 
 the Flood as typical of the saving water of baptism, with a 
 further reference to the resurrection and present glory of 
 Christ. In the first place, the connection of thought in this 
 passage is difficult; the whole saying in reference to the 
 preaching of Christ to the spirits appears at first sight to be 
 a departure from the path that he is following, which he 
 regains by his comparison with baptism followed by the 
 reference to the resurrection of Jesus. On a closer examina- 
 tion, however, we discover a thread of logical connection ; the 
 paragraph starts from the fact that to suffer for well-doing 
 and not for evil-doing is not anything that man need fear 
 (ver. 1 7), and in support of this is brought forward the highest 
 example (ver. 18). Christ could indeed be killed according to 
 the flesh, but He came forth from death in such a manner 
 that He was able to be the author of blessing even to the 
 departed spirits, and through resurrection, for the salvation of 
 His own, to enter into the highest glory. If this is the right 
 connection, then it favours the view that fwoTrotT/^et? irvev- 
 liari, which forms the second difficulty in the passage, is 
 something falling between death and resurrection. The 
 words are frequently applied to the resurrection itself by 
 making use of the Pauline idea of the a&fia nrvev^ariKov. 
 But apart from the fact that this idea is nowhere in our 
 
PREACHING TO THE DEAD AND JUDGMENT OP THE WORLD 415 
 
 Epistle, it is very improbable that an apostle, who believed 
 in the reanimation of the crucified body of Jesus, should have 
 described the resurrection of the Lord in such words as seem 
 to deny the corporeity of the resurrection — ^ajoironideh 
 ■jTveviMari. Still more improbable is it that he meant the 
 resurrection here, and yet in the next words regarded it as 
 not yet having taken place ; for it cannot be disputed that in 
 the following words, ev w (irvev/jbaTi,) koI rot? ev (pvXaKfi 
 irvevfiaaiv eKripv^ev, Christ is thought of in a condition 
 analogous to that of the departed spirits, that is, in a disem- 
 bodied state between death and resurrection.^ Manifestly 
 the apostle in the ^(ooTroirjOeif Se irvevfjuari following on the 
 davaraOeh fiev aapKi, is speaking of something which imme- 
 diately followed the moment of death ; he had in his thoughts 
 either the natural reawakening of the soul from the darkness 
 of the death conflict, or a supernatural reanimation of His 
 spiritual nature, by which Christ was immediately in a 
 position to act on others. That is, he places the preaching of 
 Jesus to the spirits in a point of time when Jesus Himself 
 is a departed spirit, in the hours between His death and His 
 resurrection, when, according to God's decree. He went 
 (■jropevdeLs) whither the souls of the departed go, and so 
 naturally sojourned among the dead. But if that is so, why 
 is His preaching of salvation addressed only to those who 
 were surprised by the Flood in their unbelief, and not to the 
 great mass of those who had departed before Him ? This is 
 the third riddle which the passage presents, and it is usually 
 got over by the suggestion, that the contemporaries of Noah are 
 brought forward by way of example, in order to lead us from 
 the Plood to baptism, of which it was made a type ; but the 
 dead in general are in iv. 6 thbught of as receiving the 
 preaching of salvation. The latter is undoubtedly correct, 
 for immediately after the Kplvai fwyra? Kat veKpovi it is im- 
 possible to attach any importance to the want of the article 
 in Koi ve/cpoii evriyyeXia-Orj, and a limitation of the idea to 
 some of the dead is not found in it. But that in no way 
 justifies the naming of the contemporaries of N"oah alone in 
 
 1 Against Weiss, who seeks to make i^atfroiiiM; vuivfiUTi refer to the 
 resurrection, but refers the following words to the intermediate state 
 between death and the resurrection. 
 
416 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 iii. 18, the less so that the mention of baptism is so incidental 
 that the Flood may indeed have led the writer to think of 
 baptism, but not baptism here of the Flood. We must rather 
 assume that the contemporaries of Noah were regarded by 
 the apostle as the most hopelessly lost of the sinners of 
 antiquity, so that Christ's preaching of salvation to them 
 appears as something quite special, a surpassing act of mercy, 
 and therefore the extension in iv. 6 of this mercy to the 
 veicpoi in general becomes self-evident. In the cf/vXaKi], in 
 which the contemporaries of Noah find themselves, we have 
 without doubt a representation, not of Hades generally, but of 
 a quite special place of punishment in Hades, the dark prison 
 to which are already committed those who have received 
 sentence, the condemned. That alone would correspond to 
 the biblical view in general, and in particular to that of our 
 apostle. The contemporaries of Noah represent the depth of 
 the degeneracy and ruin of the primitive world, a corruption 
 which made God repent that He had made man, and called 
 forth a divine judgment of extermination, the like of which 
 will not take place till the end of time. The apostle looks 
 upon the Flood as the judgment of antiquity, and therefore 
 the type of the final judgment of the world. And thus it is 
 evident that what the death of Jesus accomplished for those 
 already judged among the departed has not been withheld 
 from the departed in general, as the second passage (iv. 6) 
 presupposes. Thus from all the obscurities of this remark- 
 able utterance the bright thought stands out, that the mercy of 
 God revealed in Christ and Christ's death is not limited to the 
 world of the living, but reaches beyond it into the quiet of 
 that other world of the departed, and is made manifest in it 
 by Christ Himself. What seems strange to us in Peter's 
 expression of this idea is the apparently fabulous and fanciful 
 nature of the representation, which suddenly appears here and 
 here only in the New Testament ; the question seems to be 
 insoluble from what source Peter got his mysterious informa- 
 tion. And yet we feel from his words that they present 
 nothing completely new to the first readers, but allude to 
 what is already familiar. We should not forget that our 
 New Testament Scriptures present only a small part of the 
 rich world of thought which early Christian prophecy brought 
 
PKEACHING TO THE DEAD AND JUDGMENT OF THE WOKLD 417 
 
 to light. Even the legendary passage Matt, xxvii. 52, 53, 
 according to which, at the death of Jesus, the gates of Hades 
 were opened for the pious of the Old Testament, shows that 
 the effect of Christ's death on the circle of the departed was 
 peculiarly a subject of conjecture. And the question as to 
 the fate of the great army of the departed, who on earth were 
 never touched even by the hope of the glad message, was well 
 worthy of the reflection of an apostle. It was no greater 
 advance for Peter to extend the salvation in Christ from the 
 living to the dead, than it had once been to carry it beyond 
 the Jews to the Gentiles. He learned then " that God is no 
 respecter of persons " (Acts x. 34, 36) ; and if he asked him- 
 self whether that applied also to the dead of old times, the 
 spirit of prophecy which was in him might well have 
 answered in such forms as were natural to him, and given 
 him the reply which appears in his Epistle. 
 
 § 3. The Judgment of the "World 
 
 That Christ, who brought the message of salvation to the 
 living and the dead, is also the appointed Judge of the living 
 and the dead, is undoubtedly the presupposition of the passage 
 iv. 5, 6, for it turns to speak once more of Christ's preaching 
 of salvation to the dead, after saying that He stands ready to 
 judge the living and the dead. The words have, indeed, been 
 referred to God Himself, because it is said of Him in i. 17 
 that He judges every man without respect of person ; but that 
 Christ expected soon to return is meant by Itoi/^w? exoov, 
 is suggested not only by the common teaching of the whole 
 New Testament about Christ's office of Judge of the world, 
 but it follows also from the inseparable connection between 
 the judgment of the world and the reappearance (d-n-ovaXui/rt?) 
 of Christ for the deliverance and glorification of His own, 
 which reappearance is so emphatically promised in our Epistle 
 (i. 7, 13, iv. 13, V. 4 ; cf. iv. 7, 17). That this judgment of 
 the world is placed at a particular, and, indeed, at no distant 
 point of time, is due to the representation found in the Old 
 Testament, from which Peter departed as little as any of the 
 apostles. But his ideas of the judgment of the world are 
 somewhat different from those which are traditionally im- 
 
 BEYSCHLA.G. — I. 27 
 
418 NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 
 
 ported into the New Testament, that it has only to pronounce 
 believers blessed and condemn unbelievers. First of all, he 
 relates the approaching judgment of Christendom. "The 
 time is come," he says (iv. 17)," that judgment must begin at 
 the house of God," that is, at the Church of the believers. He 
 looks upon the momentary storms of history as examples and 
 beginnings of the approaching judgment, in which lies a pre- 
 sentiment of the fact that the judgment of the world does not 
 begin only at the close of its history, and he relates these 
 beginnings of judgment to the communities of believers by 
 requiring of them always purification and consecrating per- 
 fection, that they may be worthy of the eternal inheritance 
 and crown of victory (i. 4, v. 4). Faith must be purified in 
 the fiery furnace of affiiction like gold in the fire (i. 7, iv. 12), 
 that it may be found unto praise and honour and glory at the 
 apppearing of Jesus Christ (i. 7). But this already suggests 
 that the judgment includes a saving influence ; and, as is shown 
 by the passage iv. 6, the apostle applies this idea to un- 
 believers also. It is usually said : The gospel must be preached 
 to the dead also, in order that, in case of their rejecting it, 
 they may commit the mortal sin on which then follows the 
 righteous judgment of eternal condemnation. But Peter does 
 not thus speak, " For, for this cause was the gospel also preached 
 to them that are dead, that they might be judged according 
 to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit." 
 The end at which God aims is not their condemnation, but 
 their salvation (John iii. 17); and the judgment of death 
 executed on them, though it were so clearly a penal judg- 
 ment as the Flood, is no obstacle to that. On the contrary, a 
 condemnation which is yet to result in salvation cannot have 
 any other meaning than to chasten and purify ; and when the 
 apostle expressly asserts this in the case of believers, and 
 assumes it in the case of the godless of the past, is it possible 
 that he excluded it in the case of the unbelievers of his own 
 day, who he expected would be speedily overtaken by the 
 final judgment? As surely as he regarded the Flood as a 
 type of the final judgment, so surely was the contrary his 
 opinion. Yet in iv. 5 he speaks of the approaching judgment 
 of the living and the dead, quite in the same way as in ver. 6 
 concerning the judgment already passed upon the dead, which 
 
PKKACHING TO THE DEAD AND JUDGMENT OF THE WOELD 419 
 
 has for its aim that they Kara deov ^wcriv irvev/iaTt. In what 
 state the approaching judgment finds men, whether Christian 
 or unchristian, children of obedience or children of dis- 
 obedience, certainly appears to him a very important matter, 
 and we are perfectly conscious of that when in the passage about 
 " judgment beginning at the house of God " he goes on to say : 
 '' But if it first begin at us (the judgment), what shall be the end 
 of those who obey not the gospel of God ? And if the righteous 
 (pious) are scarcely saved (through the fire of the judgment), 
 where will the ungodly and sinner appear ? " (iv. 1 7, 1 8). 
 Yet it would be an error if we were to understand from this 
 the eternal condemnation of all those who found themselves 
 in opposition to Christ then ; the remembrance of the divine 
 treatment of the contemporaries of Noah tells us something 
 different. It says : If the Judge of the world were to appear 
 to-day. He would once more, as then, bring a terrible 
 judgment to the d-n-eidovvTe^. While believers would inherit 
 eternal life, these would be given over to death, and com- 
 mitted to the dark ^vXaKrj, perhaps for immeasurable ages. 
 But that would be 'Cva KpiOuaiv fiev Kara dvOpcoirovi crapKi ; 
 ^maiv Se Kara 6eov irvevfiart,, and yet to them as dead the 
 gospel would be preached. Or otherwise, what meaning would 
 then be in the comparison of the Flood with baptism, or 
 the emphasis put upon the fact that through it only eight 
 souls were saved and all the rest condemned ? In connec- 
 tion with the extension of the gospel of grace to the latter, 
 at least, it can only mean that in like manner even now they 
 are only few in number who in the approach of the last judg- 
 ment are sheltered through baptism in the saving ark of God, 
 while the great mass of men will be devoured by His judg- 
 ment. But all those, who as yet have not been brought by 
 baptism into saving communion with the Eisen One, are not 
 on that account for ever lost. How loving and large-hearted 
 are the contemplations of the apostle concerning a world that 
 was engaged in the most bitter persecution of his brethren of 
 the faith, contemplations which Christendom even till to-day 
 has forgotten ! But they will surprise us the less in a personal 
 disciple of Jesus, as we have already found them indicated in 
 prophetic words of the Master Himself. 
 
MORBISON AND QIBBj PRINTEES, EDINBURGH 
 
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