Part 11
Israel ought to love Jehovah supremely for His own sake, and should seek the external blessings only because in them His love expresses itself. As it is, the very opposite takes place, the people care only for the gifts and are indifferent to the Giver. 'They sacrifice upon the tops of the mountains, and burn incense upon the hills, under oaks and poplars and terebinths, because their shadow is good' [4:13]. The sweet cakes of raisins, of which 3:1 says that they love them, are the figure for this sensual cult. Because inspired by this motive, it flourishes in times of plenty: 'Israel is a luxuriant vine which putteth forth his fruit; according to the multitude of his fruit he has multiplied his altars; according to the prosperity of his land he has made goodly pillars' [10:1]. When plenty and prosperity cease, the allegiance is lightly shifted from one god to another; 'I will go and return to my first husband, for then it was better with me than now' [2:7].
As to the cult Hosea condemns the selfish spirit in which it is conducted, and this for the sole reason, that it vitiates the relation between Israel and Jehovah at the very root. This type of polemic is peculiar to Hosea. What Ephraim brings is only a fleeting affection. Their chesed is like the morning-cloud and like the dew that goes early away [6:4]. Jehovah will not accept such service; it belongs to paganism. Hence the prophet says that she has loved the wages of religious prostitution upon every corn floor. She has sold herself to the strange gods for the produce of the land [9:1].
But the same principle determines Hosea's opinion with regard to the social and political sin of Israel. The prophet traces a connection between the faithlessness of the people to Jehovah and the dissolution of all social ties. This is the sequence of thought in 4:1, 2. Because faithfulness, lovingkindness (towards God) and knowledge of God fail in the land, therefore in the intercourse between man and man also, there is nothing but swearing and breaking faith and killing and stealing and committing adultery; they exceed and blood touches blood. Where the religious union with Jehovah is not kept sacred, there no human marriage can be secure. Sensuality produces religious whoredom, and religious whoredom again issues into physical whoredom [4:11, 14].
The sin of striving after riches and luxury, which Amos condemns for more obvious reasons, Hosea regards as an alienation of love from Jehovah. So we must understand 12:7–9, where Jehovah charges Israel with this sin, and then, by way of explanation, declares: 'I am Jehovah thy God from the land of Egypt', that is to say, I have remained faithful; ye have become faithless. They have become like the Canaanites, that is, like the Phoenicians, the traffickers of the ancient world. They have missed their theocratic vocation by striving to engage in trade. And their trading was dishonest; balances of deceit were in their hand [12:7].
Finally, in what Hosea says about the political sin of Israel it is not difficult to trace the influence of the same principle. A characteristic
sin is in his view 'the pride of Israel' [5:5; 7:10]. This is the haughtiness born of self-reliance, the opposite to that spirit of dependence which ought to characterize behaviour towards Jehovah. Before all else, it is an act of disloyalty, when Ephraim seeks help with Assyria, whereas God ought to be her Saviour [5:13]. And, having once forsaken Jehovah, her heart has become so void of all constant attachment, that, while intriguing with Assyria, she at the same time seeks the favour of Egypt [8:9; 12:1]. Like a silly dove Ephraim is fluttering around; they call unto Egypt, they go to Assyria [7:11]. Hosea does not speak of faith positively, as Isaiah does, but this rebuke of the pride of Israel shows that the essence of the grace is familiar to him.
Among the political sins of Israel, the prophet further gives a prominent place to the manner in which they dealt with the institution of the kingdom. Not that he rejected the kingdom on principle, as some expositors claim. This can be maintained only by exscinding 3:5. If these words are genuine, then Hosea must have regarded the Davidic dynasty as the only legitimate one for Israel. But it is just as incorrect to assume that he condemned certain individual rulers of the northern kingdom for individual reasons alone. The terms in which he speaks are too general for that. It is not so much what the kings did, but rather what Israel did with the kingship and the kings, that meets with the prophet's disapproval. And he disapproves of it, because it was based on a wrong attitude towards Jehovah [8:4; 13:10]. The kingship was founded on the pride of Israel. This applies not merely to the later kings, rapidly succeeding one another; it applies to all the successive dynasties that the northern kingdom had seen. Hosea speaks in equally condemnatory terms of the kingship of Saul, for it had its origin in the same spirit [9:9; 10:9]. Only the kingdom of David escapes, because it was distinctly initiated by Jehovah, an instrument of the salvation He desired to give to His people.
Because thus viewing sin from the one principle of unfaithfulness to Jehovah, Hosea reaches a profound conception of its character as a
disposition, an enslaving power, as something deeper and more serious than single acts of transgression. It is a bent, rendering its victims unable to reform [5:4; 7:2]. The 'spirit of whoredom' is within them, they are bent to backsliding [11:7]. 'Ephraim is a cake not turned'; he remains unconcernedly on the wrong, already burnt, side, however disastrous the consequences may be.
ISAIAH'S DOCTRINE OF SIN
We now turn to Isaiah and his conception of sin. It likewise reveals a point of view clearly his own. On the whole it is the deepest that the revelation of the Old Testament has to teach about sin. What the idea of the berith-marriage is to Hosea, that the thought of Jehovah's glory is to Isaiah. Sin appears to him as, first of all, an infringement upon the honour of God. The idolatrous practices of the people are denounced for this reason. God has forsaken Israel, because they are filled from the east (perhaps the emendation 'with divination', qesem for qedem, is to be preferred), and soothsayers like the Philistines [2:6; 8:19]. Note carefully what is to Isaiah the offensive feature in sin of this kind. Such practices are a slight put upon Jehovah's divinity. It is His right to supply all teaching and information of this sort to His people. They are to walk in His light, to be open always to the influx of divine truth [2:5]. The ideal in the prophet's mind is, that Israel as a whole shall live in such unbroken communication with Jehovah, as he was aware of possessing for himself (note the plural 'let us walk'). What they possess, or imagine themselves to possess, is a caricature of revelation.
In the same way idolatry is a caricature of religion in general, highly dishonouring to God. 'Their land is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made' [2:8]. That God's people are capable of exchanging the living God for something lifeless, manufactured by themselves, appears to the prophet the height of irreverence and irreligion. Subjectively the offensive feature of this kind of sin consists in its humiliating, degrading influence upon man [2:9]. The true greatness of man
consists in the service of Jehovah; this being abandoned for idolatry, a universal abasement takes place. The idols are to the prophet's view the opposite of all Jehovah stands for. As Jehovah is the Holy One, so the idols contract, as it were, a sort of positive unholiness; they are to be defiled, to be dishonoured [30:22].
It is, however, not through paganistic forms of divination and the cult of idols alone that Israel has dishonoured Jehovah. In 2:7 luxury, wealth and military pride stand between divination and idolatry, and the combination is very significant. Luxurious and riotous living are condemned from the point of view that these produce carelessness and forgetfulness of God. Those Judaeans who rise up early in the morning to follow strong drink, and tarry late in the night till wine inflame them, whose feasts are harp and lute and tabret and pipe, they are the ones who do not regard the work of Jehovah, neither have considered the operation of His hands. The work of Jehovah here is His work in history, the momentous issues that He is working out in regard to the lot of His people. Every truly religious man ought to have his eyes and ears open to what the course of history portends. Isaiah has here distinctly formulated the thought that history is a revelation of Jehovah, in which there is no place for accident or confusion. Primarily it is, of course, the task of the prophet to watch what is developing. But the specific task of the prophet is destined to be universalized. Had Israel complied with this requirement, they might have adjusted themselves to the coming events and have escaped. As it is, they go into captivity for lack of knowledge [5:13].
Isaiah speaks once and again of the sin of intoxication [5:11, 12, 22; 22:2, 13; 28:1, 3, 7]. Especially the last of these passages is extremely realistic in its picture of the drunken revels of the priests and prophets. The prophet does not, of course, condemn the use of wine as such. On the contrary, some of his noblest figures are derived from it [1:22; 5; 16:8–10; 18:5; 25:6]. But intoxication is irreligious and degrading, because it darkens the perception of the divine spiritual realities in man, and so renders him brutish. The drunkards
at Jerusalem 'err through wine and through strong drink go astray; they err in vision, they stumble in judgment' [28:7].
An equally prominent form of sin with this prophet is pride. Isaiah speaks of the lofty looks of man, the haughtiness of men [2:11, 17], and of things in general in the land that are haughty and proud and lifted up, vss. 12–15. The daughters of Zion are haughty and walk with stretched-forth necks and wanton eyes. The glory and pomp of the Israelites are to be humbled [5:14]. 'Ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria say in pride and in stoutness of heart: 'the bricks are fallen, but we will build with hewn stone; the sycamores are cut down, but we will replace them by cedars' [9:9, 10]. Of the pride of intellect 5:21 speaks. Pride based on wealth and aesthetic pretence likewise comes in for rebuke. Isaiah himself was responsive to all things of beauty and grandeur that the world presented to his sight. And yet he condemns the silver and the gold, the pleasant pictures, the fine apparel of the daughters of Zion, so elaborately described in 3:16–24. Beauty, irreligiously esteemed, infringes upon the glory of Jehovah. To take any natural object or product of art, intended to reflect the divine beauty, so as to make it serve the magnifying of the creature is a species of godlessness. Pride and vanity are closely connected with each other. Pride is vanity, in so far as there is no real worth and greatness behind it.
Pride, however, is not found among Israel alone. To Isaiah it made no difference whether the boasters were the petty grandees of Judaea, or the mighty monarchs of the East. Because the Assyrian claims that by the strength of his hand he has done things, and by his wisdom removed the bounds of the peoples, Jehovah will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his high looks [10:12]. The highest embodiment that this sin of pride had found, to the far-reaching vision of Isaiah, was in that King of Babel, who said in his heart: 'I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will sit upon the mount of congregation (the mythical mountain, where the gods assembled), in the uttermost parts of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High.'
[14:13, 14]. Pride is in its essence a form of self-deification. Satanic sin, a type of Satan, has been found in the King of Babel thus described [cp. 14:12; Rev. 9:1], and because the King is here addressed as morning star, the name Lucifer has been transferred from him to Satan.
Still other forms of sin castigated by Isaiah are avarice and oppression [3:12, 15; 5:7, 8, 23]. With this we are familiar from Amos and Hosea. The commercial prosperity of the earlier part of Isaiah's ministry fostered this evil. During the first centuries of their settlement in Canaan the Israelites were a purely agricultural people. Later on, however, a trading class sprang up among them. As the structure of society still continued to be based on agriculture, the increase of wealth meant the acquisition of vast landed properties. The rich made the poor their debtors, and then drove them from their ancient estates. Now the use of the soil had among Israel a religious significance. Jehovah is Lord of the entire land. He gives the people only the usufruct of the soil. The massing of lands in the hands of a few, therefore, was not only an ethical evil because accomplished through foul means, nor merely a social evil because productive of great disparity, but it was likewise a religious evil because it deprived the poor man of the very basis of his religious existence. Deprived of his land, he could no longer bring his tithes, nor his firstlings, nor his sacrifices; he could no longer participate in the celebration of the feasts. Hence Isaiah calls a woe upon those that join house to house, that they may dwell alone in the midst of the land [5:8]. That Isaiah's motive is at least partly religious, may be seen from 3:13–15. Jehovah here enters into judgment with the elders of his people, because they have eaten up the vineyard. Chap. 5 throws light on this; it is called the vineyard, because in reality the property of Jehovah. The poor are called Jehovah's people. We can here already observe the religious colouring which the word gradually acquires [10:2; 11:4; 14:30–32].
ISRAEL'S SIN AS VIEWED BY THE PROPHETS HISTORICALLY
In conclusion we must look at the prophetic statements concerning the sin of Israel from a historical point of view. What light do they throw on the state and course of Israel's religion in the pre-prophetic period? Do these sins and errors appear to the prophets as a lower stage of development, quite natural and unavoidable at the time before the purer prophetic religion arose? This is the critical view.
It is admitted on all sides that the historical writings of the Old Testament contradict it on almost every page. Their testimony is that there was:
(a) a relatively perfect and pure beginning of Israel's religion in revelation;
(b) an almost immediate falling away from this;
(c) an effort on the part of the prophets to reclaim the nation.
What the adherents of the critical hypothesis claim, is that the writers or redactors of these historical books, under the influence of unhistoric views, so manipulated the sources, that these books no longer reflect the actual course of events, but instead a totally different, imaginary course of events, construed from the subsequent orthodox legalistic standpoint.
Now what we are interested in is, whether the prophets give an account of the history of Israel before their own times which agrees with the critical representation, or one which agrees with this testimony of the historical books.
The point at issue should be sharply formulated. The question is not whether the popular religion did or did not actually constitute a lower form of belief and practice than what the prophets stood for. That it did admits of no denial. The mass of the people lived on a low plane religiously. We may go further than this. This was not confined to the particular period or juncture at which the prophets arose; such had been the condition of the mass for a long time previously. Their
actual religion may well have borne many of the features which the critics ascribe to it. We may even say that, through the critical controversy with the Wellhausenians, our eyes have been first opened to this in its full extent. We apprehend better now that during the entire course of Old Testament history the supernatural element introduced by revelation had to wage war with the paganistic tendencies of the people. And, since no false practice can in the long run exist without reacting on beliefs and conceptions, a paganistic cult must have had for its correlate a paganistic creed. In so far we and the critics need not widely disagree as to the state of affairs depicted in the prophetic writings.
But the difference between them and us concerns the question whether, over against this popular religion, there did, or did not exist a better historical tradition, going back to ancient times, to which the prophets could appeal, and on the ground of which they could charge the mass with apostasy. Do the prophets oppose to the degraded practices and belief of their time another type of religion, simply because it is better and their own, or because it is the only legitimate religion in Israel? Do they appeal to their own convictions, as to intuitive verities, in the judgments pronounced and in the ideals set up, or do they call back to a standard fixed before?
But even this does not quite suffice to formulate the point at issue. In a certain sense even our opponents admit that the popular religion in the days of the prophets represented a decline from a previous better state. It is believed that the Hebrews in their nomadic period, before they entered upon the life in Canaan, had had a much simpler form of religion than afterwards. Through adopting many of the customs of the Canaanites they deteriorated. There had been a downward process. For the simple, austere religion of the desert had been substituted the sensual, luxurious religion of the inhabitants of the land. But what the prophets preached was, according to the critics, not identical with this primitive nomadic religion. It differed from it as the ethical differs from the sub-ethical, the spiritual from the naturalistic. So that, while in one sense, the popular religion was a
degenerated religion, in another sense, as compared with the prophetic religion, it was also a lower stage of evolution. There had never been something like those views of the prophets before. Consequently the question must be put as follows: Do the prophets teach that the people had fallen away from a relatively better faith, or do they claim that they had fallen away from an absolute norm, imposed upon them in the past by Jehovah and in substance identical with their own prophetic teaching?
In endeavouring to answer this question, we observe, in the first place, that the prophets charge the people with apostasy from a legitimate religion revealed to them at the time of the Exodus. This is the testimony of Amos 2:10; 3:1; 5:25; 9:7. It is implied also, as we have seen, in what Hosea teaches about the origin of the marriageunion, and the marriage-law resulting from it, in the same period. Israel's sin goes back, not merely to the time of the secession of the ten tribes, nor merely to the time of Saul ('the days of Gibeah' 10:9), but to the time before their entering Canaan [9:10]. Isaiah has numerous references to a better past, when the religious conditions were nearer to the ideal. This refers proximately to the time of David [1:21, 26]. But it reaches further back to the time of the Exodus and the wilderness-journey [4:5; 10:24; 10:26; 11:16]. Israel's first father already sinned, and her interpreters transgressed against Jehovah [43:27]. God knew from the beginning that Israel was very treacherous, called a transgressor from the womb [48:1–8, especially vs. 8]. Immediately after the redemption from Egypt they rebelled and grieved God's Holy Spirit, so that He turned into their enemy and fought against them [63:10]. Micah likewise appeals to the saving acts of Jehovah at the time of the Exodus, and appeals to them in order to call Israel back to obedience. Jehovah sent Moses, Aaron and Miriam before them and made known to them what is good [6:3–8].
The prophets view the people's religious condition, not merely as degraded and deplorable, but as a guilty condition. It is not necessary to point this out in detail; the threat of judgment against it is
inconceivable on any other supposition. The moral indignation which so strongly colours their discourses can only have flowed from the knowledge that wilful transgression was involved.
The prophets identify this old ideal from which Israel has departed with their own teaching. Nowhere do they make a distinction between what Jehovah once demanded and what He now demands. None of the prophets ever betrays that his teaching appears to him in the light of an innovation. Though they were aware that their teaching marked an advance upon what lay before, yet they never indicate that there was an advance in the principles upheld. By these constant principles they judge the conduct of Israel. But not only this, explicitly and positively also they make the identification between their own message and the older one. Hosea says that in former times Jehovah has hewn Israel by the prophets, and slain them by the words of his mouth, because He desired lovingkindness and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God and not burnt-offerings [6:5, 6]. By a prophet Jehovah brought Israel up out of Egypt and by a prophet was he preserved, [12:13]. Israel made answer to Jehovah's approach unto her in the days of her youth [2:15].
It is the same in Amos. When Jehovah knew Israel among all the families of the earth, it was in order that among them righteousness should be cultivated [3:2]. Israel was originally a wall made by a plumbline; when Jehovah afterwards finds it otherwise, this is due to departure from the erstwhile rectitude [7:7]. Amos even declares that the same unresponsiveness and impenitence that met the prophetic teaching of his day, characterized the Israel of past generations [2:9– 12]. The earlier prophets had preached along the same lines as he himself followed in his preaching. It is because Israel has rejected them, that he is now sent to announce the judgment. The earlier Israel had said to its prophets, 'Prophesy not'. Amos strongly feels his continuity with them as to the substance of the message. These prophets of old must have proclaimed unpleasant truths, otherwise there could not have been the same unpleasant reaction. And this
could only mean that they, in the same manner as Amos, insisted upon the righteous nature of Jehovah, and foretold a judgment.
This carries back the knowledge of the ethical demands of Jehovah to a much earlier time than that of Amos. Isaiah in a similar way represents everything Jehovah has done to his vineyard as done for the purpose of reaping good fruit, namely, the fruit of righteousness [5:7].
The attitude assumed by the prophets towards the people precludes the idea of their having been conscious of innovation in the traditional faith of Israel. They boldly appeal to the popular conscience, while at the same time attacking the popular religion. Amos, in describing what had taken place in connection with the Exodus, including the raising up of unpopular prophets, asks: 'Is it not even thus, O ye children of Israel?' [2:11]. This means something more than that the people are asked to acknowledge the historicity of the facts; the appeal is to their consciousness of favours despised. This interrogative way of reasoning with the people is characteristic of Amos; 5:25; 6:2; 9:7. The last of these passages takes for granted that the people believe in Jehovah's control over the history of other nations than Israel.
But not only did the prophets expect the popular conscience to give at least a theoretical consent to their position; to some extent this assent must have been actually given; in other words, the people must have felt themselves in the wrong historically. There is no trace whatsoever of any defensive attitude assumed by the people, which nevertheless would have been unavoidable, had the prophets preached a new doctrine. There are not a few passages which give us glimpses of the struggle between prophets and people, but in none of these are the prophets charged with being innovators or iconoclasts in regard to the traditional faith of Israel [Amos 7:11–17; Hos. 9:8, 9; Isa. 28:1–13; 30:10, 11; Mic. 2:6–11]. How could Amos ever have adopted the interrogative form of speaking commented upon, had he been confronting a sceptical and gainsaying audience?
It might be said that the prophets whose writings we possess were not historians, that their aim was not to draw a faithful picture of the times with their conflicting forces and tendencies, but rather to present their own side in the controversy, and that in receiving their testimony without cross-questioning we do the people injustice. But this answer can not invalidate the above argument. For, unless the prophets have on purpose eliminated or obliterated every trace of this historical aspect of the controversy, we must expect to find traces of it in their record.
[D] THE JUDGMENT AND THE RESTORATION: PROPHETIC ESCHATOLOGY
THE VIEWS OF THE WELLHAUSEN SCHOOL OF CRITICISM
According to the Wellhausen school of criticism, eschatology resembles the ethical monotheism of the Old Testament in this respect, that it is a specifically prophetic creation. This implies that, as there was no ethical monotheism before the prophetic period, so there was no eschatology. And as an explanatory hypothesis has been devised to explain the origin of the former out of historical and psychological factors, so one has been constructed to explain on a basis of similar causes the rise of an eschatology among Israel. The difference, say the critics, is that in the construction of their ethical monotheism the prophets were more thoroughly ethical and spiritual than in their upbuilding of the eschatological scheme. While the ethical teaching, as to its substance, has perpetual validity and everlasting significance, the framework of eschatology has in it much that is perishable. In the minds of the prophets it was, to be sure, largely a matter of fantastic expectations. In the sequel, however, it proved highly potential. In fact it has become the source of the supernaturalistic, theological, metaphysical world-view to which the Biblical religion has become wedded. Whatever there is in Christianity beyond ethical idealism and sentimental spirituality, all that transcends the present life and the evolutionary development of things, all that reckons from a definite beginning of creation and
looks forward to a definite winding up of things, and, finally all that cleaves to the Messianic interpretation of Jesus, and has made of historic Christianity a realistic, concrete, factual religion, placing itself at the centre of the development of the world, all this in its last analysis springs from this one source. Hence eschatology, as the prophets preached it, has become in critical quarters not merely a problem for explanation, but likewise an object of criticism.
Since the ethical monotheism and the eschatology are two more or less incompatible things, the natural inclination, from the critical point of view, was to magnify the former and to minimize the latter, at least so far as the earlier prophets, the great heroes of the ethicizing of religion, are concerned. Much material of an eschatological complexion is eliminated by divisive methods from the writings of Isaiah and Micah especially, to a lesser extent also from the prophecies of Amos and Hosea. In the opinion of the critical school these books are not, as books, derived from the men whose names they bear, but are later crystallizations around nuclei of original, authentic material. In the long process of redaction they have undergone much of the accretion that is supposed to have come through the eschatological impulse. The original prophecies may have had a moderate admixture of this kind of material, but the rank growth of it that luxuriates in the present collections is of later origin. This principle finds especial application to the promissory pieces that lie scattered through the denunciatory, pessimistic material. If we distinguish in the full-grown eschatology between the two strands of threat and of hope, then the strand of threat is assumed to have been far more indigenous in prophecy than that of hope. In later times the element of threat was, however, also strongly elaborated as was the element of hope. In the original preaching of men like Amos and Hosea it was, if not less intense, at least more sober and kept subject to the ethical motive.
A distinction is made by the critics between the two strands of 'woeeschatology' and 'weal-eschatology' as to their precedence of origin in the prophetic mind. The eschatology of woe always came first, and
remained first in order, even after the other had taken its place by the side of it. The eschatology of woe was the natural product of the prophets' ethical indignation at the corrupt moral and religious conditions they found prevailing. It all deserved to be swept aside in one great overwhelming catastrophe. From this, to the conviction that it would be, was not a great distance. The historical conjunction of forces favoured the expectation. Such a catastrophe was, of course, apt to be measured both in terms of intensity and in terms of compass by the urge of resentment in the prophet's heart.
Still, it is believed that the terms in which the early prophets described the coming woe were always derived from the nationalpolitical sphere. Their eschatology was a military one. Some earthly power would be the instrument of executing the judgment of Jehovah, and what it did would consist in national convulsions and overthrows. Later on, owing to the influx of all sorts of ideas of mythological origin from the Orient, this military picture was mixed with cosmical elements, and much more complicated schemes resulted. When, and in the measure that, this came about, the change from eschatology to what is called apocalyptic was made. Ezekiel marks the incision in this respect. Afterwards this mythological, cosmical element was retroactively introduced into the earlier prophets, so that the difference is now no longer clearly perceptible.
But the prophets were not entirely heralds of woe. They could not help remaining patriots, and had more of the traditional attachment to the old religion of Israel in them, than they themselves knew. Hence their own predictions of woe caused in them a reaction, and they began to soften these through holding in prospect a future of restoration to the favour of Jehovah and blessedness. Into this likewise crept later on the same mythological elements that had become mixed with the eschatology of woe. There was, however, a time at the beginning when the woe occupied the field alone. The earliest prophets were prophets of calamity pure and simple, and even found the distinction between themselves and the false
prophets in this feature, that the false prophets prophesied of pleasant things to come.
Such is the Wellhausenian construction of the origin of prophetic eschatology. Of late it has lost its monopoly in critical circles through the influence of Babylonian archaeology upon the interpretation of the Old Testament. The views of men like Gunkel and Gressman have begun to supplant it. These men claim that there existed from ancient times an eschatology in the Orient, and that Hebrew belief, as it was influenced from this quarter in many other things, can not have escaped being so in the matter of eschatology. The Hebrews knew about these things long before the great prophets arose. And the prophets themselves knew about them and incorporated them into their message. These elements were from the outset mythological and cosmical.
The difference between the Wellhausen view and this modified view is that the streaming in of the ideas from the Orient is now put at a much earlier date, so early indeed, that it is believed that, before the prophets handled them, the ideas had become quite assimilated by the Hebrews. At first the prophets put them to an ethical and religious use. At a later stage the rank material outgrew their power of adaptation and the ideas were cherished and studied for their own inherent interest.
It will be felt that this shifting of critical opinion immediately made an important difference in the appraisal of the eschatological teaching of the early prophets. In two respects the method of treatment was changed. First, the mere fact of a prophecy being promissory and consolatory was no longer considered as prejudicial to its authenticity. Amos could promise and console, and so could Isaiah, for the material lay ready to hand, and it had acquired a sort of traditionalness and independence, which facilitated its introduction everywhere. There was no special motive required. It belonged to the general spirit of prophesying. Much of the material recently cast out as unworthy of the onesided ethicized prophets was
thus reclaimed. And the same applies to the so-called mythological, realistic strand in the prophetic writings. There was now no longer any occasion to ascribe its introduction to a later vogue of apocalyptic.
THE ESCHATOLOGICAL TEACHING OF THE PROPHETS
After this brief orientation we may now study with equal brevity the eschatological teaching of two prophets, Hosea and Isaiah. It is sufficient to deal with Amos and Micah by way of side-reference only, because the material found in these is largely found in the other two likewise. The two topics with which we have to deal may be called the doctrine of the judgment and that of the restoration. In order to justify the characterization of these as eschatology, we should sharply mark what is the specific difference of eschatology from the Biblical standpoint. In the abstract it might seem more appropriate to fit in the crises described by the prophets with the general up-anddownward movement of history, each one being co-ordinated with preceding and following events. But this would miss the very point of the eschatological peculiarity. This consists in that the crises described are not ordinary upheavals, but such as lead to an abiding order of things, in which the prophetic vision comes to rest. Finality and consummation form the specific difference of prophetic, as of all other Biblical eschatology. The judgment predicted is the judgment, and the restoration is the restoration, of the end.
One other peculiarity to be noted is really a consequence of the one just stated. Whenever the prophets speak in terms of judgment, immediately the vision of the state of glory obtrudes itself upon their view, and they concatenate the two in a way altogether regardless of chronological interludes. Isaiah couples with the defeat of the Assyrians under Sennacherib the unequalled pictures of the glory of the end, and the impression might be created that the latter was just waiting for the former, to make its immediate appearance. The vision 'hastens' under their eye. The philosophy of this foreshortening of the beyond-prospect is one of the most difficult things in the
interpretation of prophecy in Old Testament and New Testament alike. We cannot here further dwell upon it.
HOSEA
The manner of the description of the judgment varies according to the individual manner and style of the prophet. In Hosea the idea is more fully elaborated than with the others, precisely because there is more of the individual in it. Hosea, indeed, agrees with the others in declaring it 'punishment' inspired by wrath [9:15; 11:8, 9]. But on the other hand the same judgment also serves the opposite purpose. It serves as a chastisement imposed by love to discipline Israel, Jehovah's son. With reference to the former, notice that national death is specified as the wages of national sin [5:2; 7:9; 13:14]. The last passage should be rendered interrogatively: 'Shall I ransom them from the power of the grave, redeem them from death?' The answer required is negative, and Jehovah Himself proceeds to give it by summoning the plagues of death to overwhelm them: 'O death, where are thy plagues; O grave, where is thy destruction? Repentance shall be hid from mine eyes.' (Observe the magnificent manner in which Paul has turned this question into its triumphant opposite in 1 Cor. 15:55.)
Chap. 13:13 is the passage in which these two aspects of the judgment, the destructive and the disciplinary one, are most clearly distinguished. Here the new Israel is the son to be born, the old sinful Israel the mother, who dies in giving birth to the child. In dependence on the marriage-idea, all calamities of the judgment result from this, that Jehovah personally withdraws from Israel [5:6, 15; 9:12]. The judgment leads to conversion in more than one way. It enlightens as to the causes which have provoked Jehovah's wrath; it does this by striking the instruments of sinning involved in each, and thus prepares the way for conviction of sin [8:6; 10:2–8, 14, 15; 11:6]. Forcibly it separates Israel from the objects of her adulterous love [2:9, 12; 3:3–5]. Symbolically this is expressed by the feature that there is no intercourse between Hosea and his wife. But the prophet
also keeps his wife isolated from himself after having received her back [3:3]: 'so will I also be toward thee.'Jehovah in like manner will keep Himself separated from the people during the exile, to enable them to obtain a truer conception of His character, for otherwise they would only have turned from the other gods to their own caricature of Jehovah. After these preparations Israel is won back by an unparalleled new revelation of Jehovah's love [2:14, 15].
The conscious results of these experiences are described in chap. 14. Here is the picture of Israel's conversion. It involves the profound recognition, not merely of sin, but sinfulness. In vs. 2 the word 'all' is to be stressed. The two principal forms of sin, pride and sensual idolatry, are specified [vs. 3]. The conviction is voiced that no external worship can buy back Jehovah's favour [vs. 2]. God's free forgiving love is the sole source of salvation. The profound humility suffusing the experience strikingly appears in this, that Israel does not call herself Jehovah's wife, nor even His son, but an orphan [vs. 3]; compare also 3:5 and 11:6, passages in which the same peculiar state of mind, penitence mingled with newly-awakened trust and fear, is finely depicted.
ISAIAH
In Isaiah the pictures of the judgment are, no less than with Hosea, in keeping with the general tone and temper of the prophet. His mode of thinking and seeing things is theocentric. The vision of the judgment in chap. 2 of itself turns into a theophany. The theophany comes in storm and earthquake. Here the political-military feature is absent. For the theophanic display of the majesty of Jehovah the prophet even loses sight of the destruction that overtakes the sinners, which in reality he had planned to describe. The judgment as to its intent is with Isaiah (and Micah) mainly a judgment of purification. But the purification is obtained through extirpation of the evil elements. It is the process by which the remnant is, as it were, distilled [4:3, 4; 6:11–13; 10:20–23; 17:6, 7; 24:13, 14; 28:5, 6, 23–29].
The comprehensive phrase for all this is 'the day of Jehovah' [2:12]. This phrase occurs also in Amos. It furnishes one of the proofs for the existence of an ancient pre-prophetic eschatology. It has become very important for New Testament revelation as 'the day of the Lord'. Some give it a general theocentric explanation for Isaiah [2:11]. It is quite possible that Isaiah gave the idea this turn, but the original sense can hardly have been such. A martial explanation has been suggested: the day monopolized by Jehovah as his day of victory; compare 'the day of Midian' [9:4]. A more plausible derivation, in dependence on Amos 5:20, is that it rests upon the contrast between darkness and light. These would be its two diverse manifestations, the one immediately preceding the other. An objection is that on this view it would have been denominated from its better side exclusively, whereas in Old Testament and New Testament alike the emphasis seems differently distributed. In Amos the doing away with all that is evil stands in the foreground, but with Isaiah it is rather the sweeping away of all that is a caricature of divinity. In the later pieces, chaps. 28–38. a more positive connection between the judgment and the conversion is traceable. The experiences of the Sennacherib-crisis will not only destroy the wicked and unbelieving; they will also teach the others how great is the sin of Israel and how great the grace of Jehovah.
In the second part of the book the captivity is represented as an atonement (in the Old Testament sense) for the sin of Israel, and this idea of expiation reaches its highest expression in the figure of the 'Servant of Jehovah' of chapter 53. The captivity is also represented as leading the true Israel to repentance [59:12–15]. The idea of 'the remnant' thus obtains for Isaiah a more positive aspect than it had for Amos. For Amos it means: 'nothing more than a remnant', for Isaiah 'only, but still a remnant'. In Micah, chap. 7:7–20 corresponds to the second part of the prophecies of Isaiah. Here a confession is put into the mouth of Israel, implying that the experience of the exile has produced a deep consciousness of sin.
Amos and Hosea do not reflect upon the consequences of either a favourable or unfavourable kind, which the judgment will entail for the foreign nations. Their negative and positive eschatology lack the universalistic element. Isaiah and Micah dwell upon both the adverse and the beneficent way in which the world at large will be affected by the crisis approaching for Israel.
Another difference is that the judgment-eschatology of Amos and Hosea is simple, that of Isaiah and Micah complex. The simple eschatology divides itself into two acts, the judgment and the restoration, both considered as units. With Isaiah and Micah this simple scheme becomes complicated. First of all a distinction is made between the judgment upon the Northern and that upon the Southern kingdom. These two are seen to fall apart in time. The complexity, however, arises from still another distinction. Both Isaiah and Micah expect a preliminary judgment of Assyria, which they do not identify with the final collapse of the world-power, and which, therefore, does not interfere with the continued hostile attitude of the latter toward Israel in the future.
From our standpoint we would say that this proximate deliverance stood in a typical relation to the final one. Isaiah and Micah begin to view the judgment after the manner of a process completing itself in successive acts. Assyria will not be the only, nor the last instrument wielded by God in judgment of Israel. After Assyria comes Babylon, mentioned by both prophets [Isa. 13 and 14; Mic. 4:10]. And, besides this specific mention made of Babylon, there still looms in the farther distance an ominous conglomeration of many nations preparing to come up for the attack, and to be destroyed in an even more mysterious, spectacular manner than the proximate foe [Isa. 17:12; 24–27, frequently called the Apocalypse of Isaiah; Mic. 4:11–13].
Finally, the most important difference arises from the appearance and activity of the Messiah in the judgment-drama of Isaiah and Micah, and his absence as a judgment-figure in the other two
prophets [Isa. 9 and 11; Mic. 5:2ff.]. In Hosea he enters only as a static element of the future state [3:5].
THE 'LATTER DAYS' IN HOSEA
In outlining the make-up of the future state of the people we again consider Hosea and Isaiah separately. In Hosea the following points must be noted: a new union between Jehovah and Israel will be established. (Observe that this is not represented as the remarriage of the formerly divorced husband and wife. It is a new marriage altogether.) A new betrothal, like unto a first betrothal, precedes. In this the prophecy falls out of the setting of the story. But this is allowed to take place on purpose in order to indicate that the past will be entirely blotted out, so as not to cast forward its dark shadow on the future blessedness of the eschatological union. For this reason the prophet drops the recital of his own marriage-experience in chapter 3. He steps out of the picture, because to him the indelible stain of the former disruption clung, which should not cleave to the final relation between Jehovah and Israel. The new union will be absolutely undissolvable. This is nought but the expression of the eschatological in terms of the marriage-figure.
The personal, spiritual aspect of the new union is depicted in 2:18– 20. The nature-aspect with its supernaturalistic colouring is found in vss. 21–23. In chap. 14 the two intermingle. The Israelites will become individually sons of Jehovah [1:10]. This promise is applied by Peter and Paul [1 Pet. 2:10; Rom. 9:25, 26] to the calling of the Gentiles, not, however, because Hosea was thinking of that, but because the underlying principle was the same, and because the Gentiles had been organically incorporated into the covenant of Israel.
A great increase of posterity will follow the restoration of Israel. [1:10]. The name 'Jezreel', which, according to 1:4, had an ominous, meaning, will obtain a favourable sense. Jehovah will sow the handful of remaining Israelites in the land to make of them a great
multitude. Israel and Judah will be reunited. Thus the sinful disruption between them will be healed. The reunited people will appoint over themselves one head of the house of David. This also is the opposite to what their sin had consisted in; hence they are represented as doing it themselves. As they had chosen many heads, so now they will seek one head [1:11; 3:5]. Israel's rule will be victoriously extended over the neighbouring peoples [1:11].
As a comprehensive name for the approaching future Hosea uses the phrase 'acherith hayyamim, 'the latter days' [3:5]. It seems to denote in this place, not so much the future blessed state, but rather the final crisis leading up to it.
THE FUTURE 'GLORY' IN ISAIAH
Isaiah delights in depicting the era after the judgment as a supreme revelation of Jehovah's glory. His vision of it centres in the sanctuary and the city, whereas to Amos and Hosea, and even Micah, it rested upon the land. There is a priestly dignity about the prophet's language ultimately to be explained from the predominance of the note of the divine glory in his message. The future will be a state in which the people will be able to engage in the service of God without interruption. Over the whole of Mount Zion and over her assemblies will hang the protecting cloud and fire of the wilderness-journey, a covering for all the glory [4:5]. At the same time the prophet introduces the idyllic blessedness of an ideal life of agriculture into his picture. But this is done again with a clear reference to the greater opportunity such manner of life affords for maintaining the proper attitude of humbleness and simplicity towards God, in contrast to the luxury and artificial refinement which the prophet had learned to interpret as lying at the root of forgetfulness of Jehovah. Israel will in these perfect days put her pride in the fruit of the soil which Jehovah provides [4:2; cp. 30:23–26; 32:16–20]. The meaning of the phrase 'branch of Jehovah', which later in Jeremiah and Zechariah has a Messianic meaning, may be thus interpreted in
Isa. 4:2 also, but according to others it means the produce of the soil with the associations just indicated.
In its most majestic form this thought appears where the prophet describes the future state as the restored paradise of the days of creation [11:6–9 in a Messianic context; 65:17–25]. Here the supernaturalizing of the entire state of existence is implied. The thought of the return of primeval golden conditions seems to have formed an ancient ingredient in much, even pagan, eschatology, with this difference, that in the latter there is a succession of cycles, from the highest to the lowest, whilst in Scripture things come permanently to rest in the consummation of the end. The transition from a restored Canaan to a restored paradise is not difficult because, from the outset, Canaan, the land flowing with milk and honey, seems to have been regarded as paradise-land [Amos 9:13; Hos. 2:21–22; 14:5–7]. A still higher flight the prophecy of Isaiah takes, where it speaks of 'new heavens and a new earth' created by Jehovah [65:17; 66:22].
The conception of a personal Messiah appears in Isa. 9:1–7, possibly also in chaps. 32; 33. It occurs in Mic. 5, and according to one interpretation in Hos. 3:5, where David might be a personal name of the Messiah. It is not found with Amos. The point of view from which the Messianic concept is introduced is in Isaiah the sacramental one: He is a pledge and constant vehicle of the gracious presence of Jehovah with His people. The name 'Immanuel' strikingly expresses this fundamental concept. Afterwards, in Isa. 53, under the name 'Servant of Jehovah' he becomes the sacrificial expiator of the sin of Israel on the principle of vicarious sin-bearing. But the original idea is larger in scope. In chap. 9 the Messiah appears as the ideal King. The prophet here seems to move his vision along from the dark scene of the deportation of a part of Northern Israel by Tiglath-Pileser to the scene of light, characteristic of the Messianic glory. Thick darkness has settled upon the territory of the north-eastern tribes, but the light, while first seen by them in its rising, shines in the end on the whole people. The Messiah is the central figure of this vision
of light. His appearance explains all that precedes. (Notice the repeated 'for' in vss. 4, 5, 6, introducing each time an explanation of the immediately preceding, with the Messiah as the last factor, beyond whom no explanation is necessary.)
Further, emphasis is thrown on the Messiah's being the gift of God. 'A son is given.' He is identified with Jehovah in such a profound sense as to reveal His Deity. No one not possessed of the attributes enumerated could fulfil the sacramental function ascribed to Him. The names given are four: 'Wonder of a Counsellor', 'God-of-a-Hero', 'Father for Eternity', 'Prince of Peace'. The first two describe what the Messiah is in Himself, the last two what He is in reference to the people. Of the former pair again the first describes His wisdom to counsel and the second His power to execute. From the recurrence of some of these attributes in 10:21 and 40:28 as attributes of Jehovah Himself, it may be seen on how high a plane the Messianic teaching of the prophet here moves. In chap. 11, on the other hand, the emphasis is thrown on the equipment of the Messiah for his functions by the gift of the Spirit. The Spirit of Jehovah 'rests' upon Him. What He enjoys is not a temporary visitation of the Spirit, but His abiding influence [cp. 61:1–3].
One might say that the former of these two Messianic representations is reproduced in the Fourth Gospel, the latter in the Synoptics. The Spirit here also is a Spirit of counsel first, and a Spirit of might in the second place. To these are added the two phrases descriptive of His judging activity, which takes place in knowledge of the actual state of things, and in the fear of Jehovah, that is to say, under the controlling influence of the religious principle. His saving work for the poor and meek is stressed. Together with this, mention is made of the destruction of the wicked. The latter takes place after a supernatural fashion: 'With the rod of his mouth' and 'the breath of his lips' [cp. Ps. 2:9; 2 Thess. 2:8].
The New Testament
ONE:
THE STRUCTURE OF NEW TESTAMENT
REVELATION
There are three ways in which the structure of New Testament Revelation can be determined from within Scripture itself. To add 'from within Scripture itself" is essential, for we dare not impose upon the divine process and its product a scheme from any outside source. If redemption and revelation form an organism, then, like every other organism, it should be permitted to reveal to us its own articulation, either by way of our observing it, or by our receiving from it the formula of its make-up, where at certain high-points it reaches a consciousness of its inner growth.
[1] From indications in the Old Testament
The first of the three ways spoken of runs through the Old Testament. The Old Testament dispensation is a forward-stretching and forward-looking dispensation. Owing to the factual character of Biblical religion its face is necessarily set towards new things. Prophecy is the best indicator of this, for prediction is not an accidental element in prophecy, but of its very essence. But more particularly eschatological and Messianic prophecy are pointed towards the future, and not merely towards the future as a relatively higher state, but as an absolutely perfect and enduring state to be contrasted with the present and its succession of developments. Here, then, the distinction between something old and something
new, both comprehensively taken, is in principle apprehended. The Old Testament, through its prophetic attitude, postulates the New Testament. And there are passages in which the term 'new' emerges in a semi-conscious manner, as it were, to give expression to the contrast between what is and what shall be [Isa. 65:17; Ezek. 11:19]. This technical use of 'new' has passed over even into the vocabulary of the dispensation of fulfilment [Matt. 13:52; Mk. 16:17; 2 Cor. 5:17; Rev. 2:17].
There is, however, one prophetic utterance in which this form of thought crystallizes into the phrase 'New Berith': Greek, 'New Diatheke'. This is Jer. 31:31–34. Although here the correlative 'Old Berith' does not explicitly appear by the side of 'New Berith', still the idea itself is clearly given in the words: 'Not according to the berith that I made with their fathers—to bring them out of the land of Egypt.' As a matter of fact, in this prophecy, besides the name 'New Berith', the two most distinctive features of the new order of affairs are described. The one is: Jehovah will create obedience to the law through writing it in the heart. The other is: there will be complete forgiveness of sin. And, what most closely concerns our present purpose, the 'newness' is applied not merely in a general way to religious status, but is most specifically extended to the sphere of revelation and of knowlege of God: 'They shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them.'
[2] From the teachings of Jesus
After Jeremiah the phrase does not recur in the Old Testament Scriptures. We first meet with it again in the words spoken by Jesus at the Last Supper. His blood He calls 'my blood of the diatheke' (Matthew and Mark), the cup 'the new diatheke in my blood' (Luke and Paul). It is evident that our Lord here represents His blood (death) as the basis and inauguration of a new religious relationship of the disciples to God. While the former relationship is not referred to as 'the old', the implied allusions to Ex. 24 and Jer. 31, even apart from the use of the adjective 'new' in Luke (and Paul, 1 Cor. 11:25)
reveal the presence in His mind of a contrast between something past abrogated and something new substituted. This is altogether independent of the choice between rendering diatheke 'testament' or 'covenant'. On either rendering the contrast between two distinct dispensations of religious privilege is involved.
Further, it is not obscurely intimated, that the new order of affairs, so far from being in its turn again subject to change or abrogation, is of final significance. It reaches over into the eschatological state, which of itself makes it eternal. This may be gathered from Jesus' solemn declaration about not expecting to drink of the fruit of the vine again, until He shall drink it new (Matthew adds 'with you') in the Kingdom of God (Luke, 'until the Kingdom of God shall have come'). What we call the 'New Covenant' here appears at the outset as an eternal covenant. Into the question of what induced our Lord, who had never before made use of the concept in His teaching, but exclusively spoken of 'the Kingdom', to employ it at this one late point, we cannot here enter.
It ought to be further noticed, that the contrast here drawn is not in the first place a contrast of revelation. The words speak of a new era in religious access to God. Of a new period of divine self-disclosure they do not speak, although that, of course, is presupposed under the general law that progress in religion follows progress in revelation.
[3] From the teachings of Paul and the other Apostles
From Jesus we pass on to Paul. Paul is in the New Testament the great exponent of the fundamental bisection in the history of redemption and of revelation. Thus he speaks not only of the two regimes of law and faith, but even expresses himself in the consecutive form of statement: 'after that faith is come' [Gal. 3:25]. It is no wonder, then, that with him we find the formal distinction between the 'New Diatheke' and the 'Old Diatheke' [2 Cor. 3:6, 14]. Here also, to be sure, we have in the first place a contrast between two religious ministrations, that of the letter and that of the Spirit,
that of condemnation and that of righteousness. Nevertheless, the idea of difference in revelation, as underlying the difference in ministration between Moses and Paul, clearly enters. There is a 'reading' of Moses, that is, of the law, and a 'speech', a 'vision' of the Lord of glory [vss. 12, 14, 15, 16]. From the phrase 'reading of the Old Diatheke' in vs. 14, some have even inferred that the Apostle had in mind the idea of a second, a new canon to take its place by the side of the old. Vs. 15, however, shows that 'reading of the Old Diatheke' simply means reading of the Law, the Law being frequently in the Old Testament called by the name of berith, diatheke; hence in vs. 15 the 'reading of Moses' is substituted for the 'reading of the Old Diatheke'.
The Epistle to the Hebrews gives us the clearest information in regard to the structure of redemptive procedure, and that particularly, as based on and determined by the structure of revelation. It is not necessary to quote single passages, the whole Epistle is full of it. We read here of the 'New Diatheke' [9:15]. The phrase 'Old Diatheke' does not occur, although other phrases, practically equivalent, do. How intimately to the writer the unfolding from the Old into the New is bound up with the unfolding of revelation, may be seen from the opening words of the Epistle. 'God having spoken—spake—in a Son—whom He has appointed heir of all things, who—when He had in Himself purged our sins, sat down', etc. The participle aorist 'having spoken' and the finite verb 'spake' link the old and the new together, representing the former as preparatory to the latter.
THE NEW DISPENSATION IS FINAL
It will be noticed that in Hebrews 1:1–2, as in the statements of the Old Testament, and of Jesus and Paul, the new dispensation appears as final. And this applies likewise to the revelation introducing it. It is not one new disclosure to be followed by others, but the consummate disclosure beyond which nothing is expected. After speech in 'a Son' (qualitatively so called) no higher speech were
possible. Paul also speaks of the sending forth of God's Son from God as taking place in the pleroma of the time [Gal. 4:4]. Consequently there is nowhere any trace of the cumulative point of view: Prophets, Jesus, Apostles; the New Testament revelation is one organic, and in itself completed, whole. It includes the Apostles, who are witnesses and interpreters of the Christ, but does not have them ab extra added to itself as separate instruments of information. It is a total misunderstanding both of the consciousness of Jesus and of that of the New Testament writers, to conceive of the thought of 'going back' from the Apostles, particularly Paul, to Jesus. Such a thought is born out of the inorganic, arithmetical frame of mind, which knows only to work with addition of numbers, or at best with multiplication of witnesses. To take Christ at all He must be taken as the centre of a movement of revelation organized around Him, and winding up the whole process of revelation. When cut loose from what went before and came after, Jesus not only becomes uninterpretable, but owing to the meteoric character of His appearance, remains scarcely sufficient for bearing by Himself alone the tremendous weight of a supernaturalistic world-view.
As a matter of fact, Jesus does not represent Himself anywhere as being by his human earthly activity the exhaustive expounder of truth. Much rather He is the great fact to be expounded. And He has nowhere isolated Himself from His interpreters, but on the contrary identified them with Himself, both as to absoluteness of authority and adequacy of knowledge imparted [Luke 24:44; John 16:12–15]. And through the promise and gift of the Spirit He has made the identity real. The Spirit takes of the things of Christ and shows them unto the recipients. Besides this, the course of our Lord's redemptive career was such as to make the important facts accumulate towards the end, where the departure of Jesus from the disciples rendered explanation by Himself of the significance of these impossible. For this reason the teaching of Jesus, so far from rendering the teaching of the Apostles negligible, absolutely postulates it. As the latter would have been empty, lacking the fact, so the former would have been blind, at least in part, because of lacking the light.
The relation between Jesus and the Apostolate is in general that between the fact to be interpreted and the subsequent interpretation of this fact. This is none other than the principle under which all revelation proceeds. The New Testament Canon is constructed on it. The Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles stand first, although from a literary point of view this is not the chronological sequence. Theirs is the first place, because there is embodied in them the great actuality of New Testament redemption. Still, it ought not to be overlooked, that within the Gospels and the Acts themselves we meet with a certain preformation of this same law. Jesus' task is not confined to furnishing the fact or the facts; He interweaves and accompanies the creation of the facts with a preliminary illumination of them, for by the side of His work stands His teaching. Only the teaching is more sporadic and less comprehensive than that supplied by the Epistles. It resembles the embryo, which though after an indistinct fashion, yet truly contains the structure, which the full-grown organism will clearly exhibit.
The foregoing gives us the warrant for speaking of New Testament revelation and of its historic exposition, New Testament theology. It also explains to us the seeming disproportion in chronological extent of the Old Testament and the New Testament. This disproportion arises from viewing the new revelation too much by itself, and not sufficiently as introductory and basic to the large period following. Looking at it in too mechanical a manner, one might place the thousands of years of the Old Testament over against the scarce one hundred years of the life of Jesus and the Apostles. In reality, the New Testament revelation, being the final one, stretches over all the extent of the order of things Christ came to inaugurate, whence also the Diatheke which it serves is called an 'eternal Diatheke' [Heb. 13:20]. It is the eschatological Diatheke, and in regard to that, timecomparisons are out of place.
The dispropoition is felt somewhat over-keenly by us, because we lack the eschatological point of view, which regards Christ as the 'Consummator'. Hence we are inclined to speak of the New
Testament in its canonical, literary sense, extending, say, from the nativity of Jesus to the death of the last writer in the New Testament Canon. Still, we know full well that we ourselves live just as much in the New Testament as did Peter and Paul and John. For clearness' sake we may distinguish between the revelation-overture which opened the salvation-era, and the salvation-era itself, giving to both the name New Testament. In our Biblico-theological investigation the former alone is dealt with.
The first and great division within our field, then, is that between revelation through Christ directly and revelation mediated by Christ through the Apostolate. Calling this the overture of the New Testament dispensation, we can still distinguish certain preludes played before the setting in of the overture itself. All that precedes the public ministry may be considered in this light. The voices accompanying the Nativity, the preaching of John the Baptist, the baptism of Jesus by John, the probation (temptation) of Jesus, require preliminary attention before entering upon a survey of the revelation-content of His work. On the other hand, such matters as the question of development, and of the method of our Lord's teaching, are so vitally interwoven with the substance of the message brought as to appear of far more than preliminary importance. And to a still stronger degree, of course, this applies to the teaching on the Old Testament and on the Nature of God. This yields the grouping of the table of Contents prefixed to the present volume.
IS A FURTHER REVELATION TO BE EXPECTED?
The question may be raised, whether, within the limits of the principles here laid down, there can be expected still further revelation entitled to a place in the scheme of New Testament revelation. Unless we adopt the mystical standpoint, which cuts loose the subjective from the objective, the only proper answer to this question is, that new revelation can be added only, in case new objective events of a supernatural character take place, needing for their understanding a new body of interpretation supplied by God.
This will actually be the case in the eschatological issue of things. What then occurs will constitute a new epoch in redemption worthy to be placed by the side of the great epochs in the Mosaic age and the age of the first Advent. Hence the Apocalypse mingles with the pictures of the final events transpiring the word of prophecy and of interpretation.
We may say, then, that a third epoch of revelation is still outstanding. Strictly speaking, however, this will form less a group by itself than a consummation of the second group. It will belong to New Testament revelation as a final division. Mystical revelation claimed by many in the interim as a personal privilege is out of keeping with the genius of Biblical religion. Mysticism in this detached form is not specifically Christian. It occurs in all types of religion, better or worse. At best it is a manifestation of the religion of nature, subject to all the defects and faults of the latter. As to its content and inherent value it is unverifiable, except on the principle of submitting it to the test of harmony with Scripture. And submitting it to this it ceases to be a separate source of revelation concerning God.
TWO:
REVELATION CONNECTED WITH THE
NATIVITY
The law above spoken of is, we repeat, that the event precedes, the interpreting revelations follow. What happened was nothing else than what theology calls 'the incarnation'. If nevertheless we prefer
to speak of 'the nativity', this is in recognition of the point of view from which the accompanying disclosures present it. Not first in later theology, but already in the subsequent course of revelation itself, the incarnation-point-of-view is adopted. It describes, as it were, a vertical movement from heaven to earth, from the divine to the human, in which the pre-existent Messiah appears entering into human nature, the super-historical descends into the stream of history. In the teaching of our Lord (even in the Synoptics) there are references and allusions to this; in the Johannine teaching (of Jesus) these are much more numerous and plain; with Paul the doctrine emerges in rounded-off explicit form; in the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel and his Epistles the Apostle John gives it classical formulation.
But these all mark later stages in the progress of New Testament revelation. Here, at the point where the event actually occurs, the movement is seen to partake of a horizontal character. Without in any way excluding or denying the other aspect of the occurrence, which veiled itself behind the curtain of mystery, it preferred to continue speaking in terms of prophecy and fulfilment, thus moving along the level pathway of history. What Jehovah had promised to the fathers of Messianic eventuation, that came here to pass; the ideality of prediction now assumed the concrete form of the actual. This is not identical with saying that what happened in the course of history was on that account purely natural. The historical can be supernatural, the supernatural can enter history, and so become a piece of the historical in its highest form. There is no mutual exclusiveness. It is pure prejudice, when historians lay down the principle that they are allowed to reckon with the natural only.
ASPECTS OF THE NATIVITY
The pieces pertaining to this group are: the annunciation of the angel to Joseph [Matt. 1:20, 21, 23]; the annunciation of Gabriel to Zacharias, Lk. 1:11–22; the annunciation of Gabriel to Mary [Lk. 1:26–38]; the prophecy of Elizabeth [Lk. 1:42–45]; the Psalm of
Mary (the 'Magnificat') [Lk. 1:46–55]; the prophecy of Zacharias [Lk. 1:68–79]; the announcement of the Angels to the shepherds, followed by the angelic song [Lk. 2:10–14]; the prophecy of Simeon (the 'Nunc Dimittis') [Lk. 2:29–35]; the prophecy of Anna [vs. 38]. The characteristic features of these pieces are as follows:
(a) There is in them a close adjustment to the Old Testament as to the mode of expression used. This feature brings out the continuity between the two revelations. The young dispensation begins with the speech of the fathers. This was inherently fit, but it likewise served the purpose of rendering the revelations more easily understandable by those to whom they were proximately addressed, people whose piety had been nurtured on the Old Testament. Thus the Magnificat is full of reminiscences from the Psalms, and from its Old Testament prototype, the prayer-song of Hannah, [1 Sam. 2:1–10].
(b) There is likewise a perceptible intent to fit the new things into the organism of the Old Testament History of Redemption. The nativity is connected with the house of God's servant David, as was spoken by the holy prophets, [Lk. 1:69, 70]; it is the fulfilment of the oath sworn to Abraham, [vs. 73]; the prophecy of which it is the culmination extends from the beginning of the world, [vs. 70]. In David, Abraham, the Creation, the dominating epochs of the Old Testament are seized upon; the chronological nexus is, as it were, the exponent of the oneness of the divine work through the ages and of the divine purpose from the outset to lead up to the Messiah.