Part 13
We are now prepared to define more precisely in which way the probation underlay the subsequent execution of Jesus' redemptive work. Thus far we have only found that deliverance from demons is traced back to it. But we must further ask: on what principle? The principle is that of an anticipation of the fruits of Jesus' work based on the partial anticipation in principle of the work itself. The casting out of demons was part of the spoil from the battle of His life, and yet it was done when the work was scarcely begun. In the Fourth Gospel this idea of anticipated fruition, both on Jesus' and on the disciples' part occurs not seldom, but here the same idea is found in the Synoptics. One might say, it is true that, after all, the casting out of demons represents but a small portion of our Lord's saving work, too small indeed to suspend such a weighty construction on it. But perhaps He judged of that somewhat differently from what the modern mind is inclined to do. At any rate He has connected nothing less than the coming in of the Kingdom of God with this part of His ministry [Matt. 12:28; Lk. 11:20], and in all three of the Synoptics the antithesis between Satan's and God's kingdom is sharply brought out; where the former goes, the latter ipso facto rushes in [cp. vs. 30 in Matthew with vs. 23 in Luke].
THE SPECIFIC FORM ASSUMED BY OUR LORD'S TEMPTATION
We must now, in the next place, enquire what specific form the temptation or the probation assumed. Two possibilities suggest themselves: Jesus could be tempted in a matter not particularly belonging to his Messianic office, so that the sinful act held up before Him could have served as a temptation to any man standing under the ethical law. Or the suggestion made to Him could have been in some way connected with his Messianic calling, causing the sin, if committed, to be specifically Messianic sin.
The first two temptations plainly attach themselves to Jesus' Messianic status, being introduced by 'if thou be the Son of God'. In the third temptation this is not explicitly stated, but the obvious reason is that to mention in one and the same breath our Lord's
divine Sonship and a matter of idolatry seemed out of place. The temptations, therefore, are Messianic. And yet the answers given by Jesus apparently proceed from the common human standpoint: 'man shall not live by bread alone'; 'thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God'; 'thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and Him alone shalt thou serve'. Here no Messiahship whatsoever is referred to.
In this contrapointedness between temptation and answer lies the key to a correct understanding of what at bottom was taking place in this crisis. It will be noticed that Jesus, while not directly affirming his Messianic position, does not deny, nay, by indirection rather acknowledges it. It could have been easy for Him to bring the whole transaction to an end by saying: I am not the Son of God. The problem, however, resolves itself into this: how can Messiahship and submission to the ethical obligations of common human conduct go together? For in the abstract, Messiahship might be supposed to be exempt from certain restrictions imposed upon ordinary man. As a Messiah in the abstract, Jesus would have committed no sin, if, when hungering, He had turned stones into bread. He could have assumed a sovereign attitude towards nature, instead of submitting to its limitations. If He insists upon conducting Himself like a man, dependent for his support on God, He must mean that his Messiahship, while quite real, is nevertheless passing through a certain phase to which these creaturely limitations, attended by suffering, inseparably belong.
He existed as Messiah in a state of humiliation. After that had been passed through, a state of exaltation would follow, in which these various things now offered to Him as temptations would become perfectly normal and allowable. What was not inherently sinful became so in His case, because of the law of humiliation and service under which His life had for the present been put. The animus of the temptation, from Satan's point of view, consisted in the attempt to move Him out of this spirit and attitude of service and humiliation, so as to yield to the natural desire for His Messianic glory without an interval of suffering. And this preliminary phase of Messiahship,
which Satan suggests He should overleap, coincided in general with the condition and experience of a suffering man under God. Hence while Satan counsels Him to act like a super-man, in principle like God, our Saviour, with His repeated stress on what a man is obligated to, repudiates such self-exaltation. It is highly significant in this connection, that the words wherewith Jesus repels the tempter are taken from the Torah, the Book of the Law (Deuteronomy), as though by thus placing Himself under the Law Jesus wished to remind Satan of the real matter at issue, the question of humiliation versus the assertion of the prerogatives belonging to a state of glory.
THE LORD'S TEMPTATIONS INTERPRETED
The above is a somewhat different interpretation of this crisis in the life of Jesus from that which may be met with in the stereotyped 'Lives of Jesus', or in the average moralizing versions of the Gospel stories. The theory ordinarily met with will have it that Jesus in these temptations repudiated the Jewish corruption and prostitution of the Messianic hope along the three lines of its principal perversion. In the first temptation, it is held, He spurned the idea of selfish exploitation of the Messiahship for the incumbent's own ends or needs. The Messiah must not use His supernatural power for stilling His own hunger. His Messianic procedure must be altruistic through and through. In the second temptation Jesus waved aside the diversion of the Messiahship for selfish ambition, to be served by the assumption of the role of a wonder-working Messiah. And in the third temptation He was led to reject once for all the political, nationalistic associations of the idea, which, like the preceding two, made an appeal to the thirst for glory. We shall presently see that this view is not in accord with the replies Jesus made to the suggestions of the tempter. He, therefore, at any rate, did not so construe Satan's design.
It is fortunate that in interpreting the individual temptations, we have available the answers of our Lord, enabling us to work our way back to the inner design of the temptation, for we may safely assume
that He meant to answer the tempter to the point. The meaning of the answer supplies the meaning of the Satanic suggestion. And besides this, since the words of the answers were taken from Scripture, and we may again safely assume that Jesus seized upon the real meaning and intent of the Scripture-passages, we can infer from a correct contextual exegesis of these what their point is, what consequently the point of Jesus' answer was, and what, behind the latter, the point in Satan's suggestion was.
DEUTERONOMY 8:3
In answering the first temptation our Lord quoted from Deut. 8:3: 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.' In the context of these words Jehovah reminds the Israelites that, through feeding them supernaturally on manna, He meant to teach them the lesson of the ability of God to supply nourishment without the natural processes. There is no contrast here between spiritual food supplied by the Word of God and bodily food supplied in a physical way; in fact the experience of the Israelites would have been a poor method for teaching them that. Moreover in the discourse of Deuteronomy there is not the slightest point of contact for such an exegesis. The true meaning Jesus applies to Himself in essentially the same way which it applied to the Israelites. He had been brought by the Spirit into this situation, where God expected Him to hunger. Notice the occurrence of the words 'to prove', and 'to humble' in the context in Deuteronomy. And the probation consisted in placing before Him the necessity of exercising implicit trust in God as the One able to sustain His life notwithstanding the protracted fast. The 'word proceeding from the mouth of God' refers to the miracle-working word of omnipotence, the mere word requiring no natural means.
The best comprehensive term available for the state of mind revealed by Jesus is the word 'faith'. Only we should remember what this so richly endowed term involved of content on the present occasion. For Jesus here to exercise faith went much further than to practise the
heroism of an endurance which will keep itself underneath the suffering. This forms part of the conception, indeed the Greek word hypomone, for 'patience', a species of faith, has been modelled upon it. But in the experience of Jesus, as in common Christian experience, the thing needed above all is the inner spirit of submission to God. The question was not in the first place what He should bear, pathologically considered, but how He should bear it. He had to work His way through this painful experience after an ideal fashion from a religious point of view.
And, once more, in this inward spiritual attitude the emphasis did not rest on the negative side only, it lay equally on the positive side. The temptation-suffering had to be borne with full appreciation, with full positive responsiveness to the plan of God. When Satan suggested that He should turn the stones into bread, he was endeavouring to move Jesus out of this faith with reference to His humiliation into an attitude of independent sovereignty, such as properly belonged to His exalted state only. Finally it should be noticed that what became a temptation was not the suffering of hunger only, but the danger of starvation, as also the quotation from Deuteronomy reads: 'Man shall not live by bread only.' Hence Mark and Matthew relate that angels came and ministered to Him.
DEUTERONOMY 6:16
In viewing the second temptation we again take our departure from the answer given by Jesus. This was taken from Deut. 6:16, where Moses says to the Israelites: 'Ye shall not tempt Jehovah your God, as ye tempted Him in Massah.' The event itself is described in Ex. 17, and again referred to in Deut. 9:22; 33:8. To tempt Jehovah has the meaning of 'proving God', that is, of seeking to ascertain by experiment whether His power to lead them to Canaan could be relied upon. It was a proving springing from doubt or outright unbelief. What happened at Massah figured in later times as the typical example of the sin of unbelief [Psa. 95:8; Heb. 3 and 4]. Our Lord plainly implies that casting Himself down from the height of
the temple, trusting that angels would intercept His fall, would not in principle differ from the conduct of these murmuring Hebrews in the wilderness.
At first sight this seems incomprehensible, because such an exhibition on the part of Jesus might be construed as diametrically opposite to the state of mind actuating the Israelites at Massah. It certainly required a degree of trust to perform the act commanded by Satan. And yet, while a momentary abandon to faith, the venture would have been inspired by the shrinking from a protracted life of faith. In the sequel our Lord would have been led on in His ministry, not by an ever-renewed forth-putting of the same act of trust that God would preserve Him, but by the remembrance of this one supreme experiment, which rendered further trust superfluous. It would have involved an impious experimenting with the dependability of God. Afterwards His sense of safety would have depended, not on the promise of God, but on the demonstration solicited by Himself. The answer, therefore, here also addressed itself in the most direct manner to what was the springing-point of the temptation: 'Thou shalt not make experiments with Jehovah, thy God.' This second temptation ranges itself by the side of the first, in that in the latter, safety from starvation, in the former, protection from outside danger were at issue.
DEUTERONOMY 6:13
The third temptation differs from the preceding ones in two respects. First, it suggests an open act of sin, whereas up to this point the sinfulness of the act was skilfully disguised, and represented as lying within the sphere of what the Messiah could legitimately do. Here the act counselled is an act of Satan-worship, sinful per se. And secondly, Satan now for the first time introduces the element of selfinterest, having previously confined himself to the role of a disinterested spectator, counselling Jesus for the latter's own good. In both these respects the third temptation moves on a lower plane of subtlety than the preceding two. It remains a mystery, how Satan,
after the two preceding repulses, could entertain any serious hope of success in this instance. And yet if, psychologically speaking, the attempt appears absurd, it must be acknowledged that the third temptation was a more fundamental one in that it uncovered the ultimate issue around which things had been revolving from the outset. The question at stake was, whether God should be God, or Satan should be God, and correspondingly, whether the Messiah should be God's or Satan's Messiah. For this is the deeper background which Satan's conditional 'if' and his consequent promise about the gift of the glory of the kingdoms reveals to us. The two acts would not have been single, isolated acts of sin. They would have involved a transfer of allegiance on Jesus' part from God to Satan. Hence our Lord's summary dismissal of the tempter: 'Get thee hence [or 'behind me'], Satan.' The appeal is made to Deut. 6:13 where all idolatry is on principle forbidden.
Although Satan in this third attempt, by coming out into the open and counselling something so flagrantly sinful, acted with desperately bad judgment, there are nevertheless some things to be taken into account, to render his conduct up to a certain point intelligible, if not intelligent. These are as follows:
(a) Satan seems to have counted on the effect of the suddenness of the assault; in the two preceding cases he had, as it were, submitted the case to Jesus for deliberate consideration; here he shows Him the object of attraction and fascination in a moment of time;
(b) he appeals to Jesus' deep-seated instinct for obedience and service as evinced in the foregoing answers. This seems an attempt to betray Him into that form of religious subjectiveness, wherein it makes no longer much difference who or what the object of service is, provided there be scope for the unfettered assertion of the religious instinct. This, of course, gives rise to a pseudo-religion, in which the processes are governed by man and not by God. Religion is not worship or service in the abstract; it is worship and service of the true God, and according to His revelation specifically.
In the light of this the quotation from Deuteronomy, 'the Lord thy God, and Him alone', obtains a deepened meaning. Pagan religion at bottom always emancipates itself from this objective bond. In reality to call it 'religion', or to speak of 'religions', in the plural, is a misnomer. That 'false religions' exist at all is due solely to the fact that subjectively the need for religion is innate in the human soul.
TEMPTABILITY AND PECCABILITY
Our view taken of the temptation, while by no means solving all the mysteries of the event, nevertheless is adapted to throw some light on an obscure subject. Two problems meet here. The one is the problem of the temptability of Jesus. The other is the problem of His peccability. How could He be tempted? we first enquire; and then, the temptation being given, how could He sin? It is clear that the first problem in a sense supersedes the second. If a person is liable to being tempted by something, this would seem to involve an imperfection. The absolute goodness would be immunity to sin, such as God always possesses, and the saints in heaven have finally arrived at. As a matter of fact temptation has found entrance both in the First and in the Second Adam. And yet its entrance alone did not imply the presence of sin.
The solution lies in this, that the course of action made to appeal to them was not a course of action inherently sinful, but in the abstract innocent and allowable, and which became productive of sin only owing to the positive prohibition under which God had placed the act. Through the abstract innocence of the act it could enter the mind of man and become an object of desire or undecided contemplation, so long as the divine prohibition was not called to remembrance and defied. If 'temptability' merely means openness of mind to an, in itself, innocent act, the difficulty might perhaps seem to be removed by this. But it might be objected with considerable force that this touches the psychological approach to temptation only, and lies in reality this side of the actual temptation itself. The temptation would begin only when the clear-cut alternative presented itself before the
choosing mind—which shall it be, the taking of the thing in its innocence? or the rejection of it because forbidden by God?
And here the problem returns in all its acuteness: how could the preference of the taking to the obeying of the divine will be contemplated for a moment by the mind of a sinless person? For we must remember that the inclination of a sinless being is always towards God, and away from disobedience because of its love of God. What can we psychologically conceive able to overcome and reverse that? It is a problem that meets us already in the case of our first parents. But it presents a more difficult aspect yet in the case of Jesus. For Jesus differed from Adam in some respects, which make the counterbalancing factors for the repudiation of sin to be much more formidable, and in so far, the solvability of the problem to appear more impossible.
Jesus was not only innocent like Adam, He was possessed of and guided by the Spirit in all its fulness, and still further, if we accept the later teaching of the New Testament, His human nature was owned by the Person of the Son of God. To put the question under such circumstances seems to determine beforehand the negative answer, that He could not be tempted nor sin. The double mystery, therefore, that as to the temptability, and that as to the peccability of the Saviour, here appears as one in its root, and we simply must confess our inability to throw light upon it.
At the same time we should not let ourselves be taken in by the facile solution, which says: Jesus had a true human nature, and therefore, of course, He could be tempted and sin. This may have a certain relative value, because of the divine nature we a priori absolutely know, that it can be neither tempted nor sin. In that abstract, metaphysical impossibility the human nature of Jesus did not share. But the abstract, metaphysical possibility yields only an abstract, metaphysical contingency of being tempted and sinning. What is sought, where the problem is raised, is something different from that, namely, the psychological, ethical, religious conceivability of the
entrance of real temptation and sin. With an appeal to Jesus' human nature as such nothing whatever is gained. To disillusion ourselves in regard to that, it suffices to remember that Jesus in His exalted state, and also the saints in heaven, possess a human nature, and yet are not thereby made capable of sinning.
The most current modern interpretation of the event meets with far greater difficulties in upholding the sinlessness of Jesus, than the one outlined above. The reason is that the Judaistic perversion of the Messianic idea, in the allurement of which is placed on this view the essence of the temptation, was not in itself an innocent thing. If Jesus felt the allurement exercised by it, and had to wage a battle against it, this seems to involve that He had to resist the seduction towards something wrong exerting power within Himself. A suggestion was injected into His soul, which was evil per se. It has been observed, however, that the same can not be evaded so far as the hypothetical part of the third temptation is concerned. But it was not the hypothesis here that made the appeal to Jesus. What was intended to appeal to Him was the rule over the kingdoms, and this again is not ipso facto sinful; on the contrary, it is something explicitly promised to the Messiah [cp. Psa. 2:8; 9; Rev. 11:15].
Still another objection to the popular view is that the replies of Jesus to Satan, if interpreted according to their true Old Testament import, do not contain a fitting refutation of the Satanic suggestion as the modern view understands them. That man shall not live by bread alone has nothing to do with the question of exploiting Messianic resources for selfish purposes. The bid for popular applause has nothing to do intrinsically with the prohibition of tempting God. Only in the third temptation does the quotation from the Old Testament fit better into the proposal of Satan.
The plan of temptation followed by Satan evinces, though not equal subtlety in all its parts, nevertheless a certain profundity of insight into the issues at stake, and a certain strategic eagerness to conquer Jesus, not at some subordinate point, but at the central, pivotal
position, on which the successful outcome of the plan of redemption depended. Satan knew very well that this pivotal point lay in Jesus' absolute and resolute adherence to the principle of humiliation and suffering as the only road to victory and glory. It gave him, no doubt, a sinister satisfaction to attempt to overthrow the work of God and Christ at its very centre. Any kind of sin would have disqualified Jesus for His Messianic task, but the sin suggested here would have been a sin against the very heart and essence of the task.
FIVE:
THE REVELATION OF JESUS' PUBLIC
MINISTRY
[A] THE VARIOUS ASPECTS OF CHRIST'S REVEALING FUNCTION
In thinking of the revelation mediated by Jesus we are in the habit of confining ourselves to His walk and work on earth. This is not an adequate conception, because it leaves out of account that Jesus existed before He was born (pre-existence), and continued to exist after He had been removed from earth (post-existence), and that both of these states, by which his earthly life was surrounded, stood in close relation to the large scheme of divine revelation as a whole.
Jesus' function while revealing God during His earthly life partook of a peculiar adjustment to other organs and epochs of revelation, through which certain limitations were imposed upon it, limitations that did not belong to the two surrounding states. During His earthly life He became One among many, a link, as it were, in the chain of revealing organs. He was not intended, nor intended Himself, to communicate the whole revealable volume of divine truth, so as to
make either what preceded or what followed dispensable. He did His part of the whole, presupposing what the Old Testament had done before, and reckoning with what the subsequent organs of New Testament disclosure of truth concerning the work enacted by Him would do after. In this sense He would be called both a Prophet and an Apostle. Only, in remembering this, it is necessary to add that the limitations under which Jesus put and kept Himself in this respect were of the objective, and not of the subjective kind. They were the result not of any inadequacy of knowledge, but of the enclosure of His function within a scheme extending in both directions towards Him and away from Him. Although He possessed the fulness of the divine truth within Himself, and could have let it shine out through His subjectivity, yet He forebore doing this, adjusting Himself to the process of which He was the acme and centre, a process requiring both preparation and following up.
It will be seen that, thus defined, the idea of limitation of content, inherent in our Lord's earthly work, has nothing to do with the limitations which the theory of Kenosis assumes to have existed in Him. The latter are considered as subjective in nature arising from our Lord's having laid aside, or having divested Himself of the use of, such transcendent attributes as omniscience and omnipotence, so that in consequence His teaching was not free from mistakes, nor His power equal to omnipotence. In our opinion no change had taken place in the Deity, and the human nature did not fall in any sense short of the requirements the work of revelation made upon it. The limitations in what He was sent to do left the completeness and perfection of what He could have done in their full integrity.
FOUR DIVISIONS OF REVELATION BY CHRIST
Jesus' revelation-functioning during the Old Testament and after His ascension did not, however, complete the entire revealing task performed by Him, apart from his public ministry. For all this belongs to the sphere of redemption, and by the side of it we must place His mediation of the knowledge of God in nature. All that is
disclosed of God to the mind of man through nature comes by Him. And we must not conceive of this as something purely preliminary, ceasing as soon as his activity in the Old Testament began or His incarnation took place. It is being continued now and will be continued for ever, interlinked with all that of redemptive disclosure is superimposed upon it.
Enumerating them in order, we obtain four divisions of revelation ministered in by Christ:
(a) that in Natural, or, otherwise called, General Revelation, extending from the creation of the world forward indefinitely;
(b) that under the economy of the Old Testament, extending from the entrance of sin and redemption till the incarnation;
(c) the disclosure of God made during His public ministry on earth, extending from the nativity until His resurrection and ascension;
(d) the revelation mediated by Him through His chosen servants, extending from the ascension until the death of the last inspired witness, speaking under the infallible guidance of the Holy Spirit.
We find these four functions spoken of severally in the Prologue of the Fourth Gospel. It is usually understood that the Evangelist here subsumes them under the name Logos given to Christ. Logos means both reason and word, owing to the fine Hellenic perception, that the two processes of thinking and speaking are intimately related, thinking being a sort of inward speech, speaking a sort of outward thought. The Logos is, therefore, the outward Revealer of the inward mind of God. Some speculative theologians think that the idea does not relate to the process of speech ad extra at all, but describes the inward mode of existence of the Deity, on the principle that the Second Person of the Trinity is, as it were, the reverse, turned-roundside, of the First. Leaving this to one side, and confining ourselves to the sphere of revelation to the world, the question arises whether the
name relates to any part of revelation exclusively, or whether it comprehensively relates to every component part of the process.
The tendency was at one time to keep the term Logos within the range of nature-revelation in contrast to the redemptive disclosure of God. Such a view would rule out from it not merely the redemptive revelation of the New Testament, but likewise that of the Old Testament. It would not have been as Logos that the Son of God appeared to Israel or to the Church after the incarnation. All His revealing work consisted from the creation onward, and through all time, in mediating the natural knowledge of God; that is, so far as the name Logos is concerned, though, of course, under other designations, He was recognized as performing the task of redemptive Revealer.
This view is not a plausible one, because the very point of the Prologue seems to be to link the revelations in nature and in redemption together. But this last point is also lost to view where, as Zahn would interpret the Evangelist, the name Logos is entirely associated with the incarnate, redemptive revelation mediated by Jesus on earth. According to this writer Jesus did not become the Logos or Word as such until the incarnation. Especially the statement in vs. 14 causes great difficulty on this interpretation.
Among those who hold that there is reference to both nature and redemptive revelation there is still a further difference as to whether the Evangelist makes special reference to the Old Testament as a separate stage or not. This touches the exegesis of vs. 11, viz., whether 'his own' there means men in general, 'his own' in virtue of creation, or means the nation of Israel. In the former case the rejection of the incarnate Redeemer on a large scale by the world is referred to, in the latter case the rejection of the incarnate Redeemer by the people of Israel.
A careful exegesis of the Prologue leads to the conclusion that the following stages are part of the Logos-work of which John is
speaking:
(a) first the mediation to mankind of the knowledge of God conveyed through nature; this is a function which by no means ceased when the Logos became flesh, but is going on alongside of His incarnate, redemptive activity from the beginning onward till the end, as long as there shall be a world to need it;
(b) in the second place there is the redemptive revelation given to the Old Testament people of God; this had reference to redemption although it was mediated by the as yet un-incarnate Christ, so that as to the state in which the Logos mediated it there was as yet no difference between what He had been from the beginning of the world and what He was then;
(c) in the third place the Logos-function reached its climax, when the Word became flesh, and in this incarnate state, never to be laid aside again, issued the full interpretation of the redemptive work of God, either during His own earthly career in the state of humiliation, or during His exalted state, possessed since the resurrection and now brought to bear upon the redemptive revelation from heaven.
JESUS' REVEALING WORK IN THE GOSPELS
We here address ourselves particularly to the last-mentioned stage of Jesus' revealing work, that performed on earth and described and recorded in the Gospels. However, the mode of this is by no means uniform. In order to have a right understanding of it, we must draw certain distinctions, and not lose ourselves in the generality that Jesus was the Revealer of God on earth. The Gospels know and speak of two aspects or manners in which this took place. On the one hand Jesus disclosed God through what He was; His nature, His character were God-revealing; ultimately this involves and postulates His being divine in His nature, His being God. On the other hand Jesus also revealed God through the speech He brought from God, through the words He spake.
It goes without saying that these two modes were not sharply separated one from the other. The character-revelation never was entirely a mute one, unaccompanied by words; on the other hand the speech-revelation was in no small part a disclosure of character, first of the Speaker, and next of One duplicated. It is, therefore, not so much the absence or the presence of the thought of word-revelation, but rather the prominence of the thought of character-duplication in one of the sources that distinguishes the two aspects.
In the Fourth Gospel we find this thought in unique prominence. In the Synoptics it occasionally occurs, but what we mostly find there is the idea of revelation through direct speech concerning God. Matt. 11:27 furnishes an example within the Synoptics of the idea of Goddisclosure by means of God-likeness, and for this very reason and its rareness in the Synoptics it has been called 'The Johannine logion'. Certain peculiarities follow in the wake of each of the two aspects distinguished. In John, because the idea in the foreground is that of Person-disclosure, the object of the revelation appears pointedly personal: it is God, or the Father, whom Jesus reveals rather than a thing connected with God. In the Synoptics, on the other hand, objectively represented things, such as the Kingdom of God, righteousness, etc., are more in evidence, although of course, these appear at no point detached from God in such a way as would make them religiously indifferent, after the well-known modern fashion.
Further, in John, because of this object-concentration of the revealed content in God, great stress is laid upon the pre-existence in Heaven through which Jesus was pre-eminently qualified for showing what He had to show, namely God, for in Heaven the main object of His vision was precisely God [cp. 1:51; 3:2; 5:30; 8:38]. Besides the preexistence, the idea of an uninterrupted coexistence, as a source of revelation-knowledge during even the earthly life, is expressed in some of such passages.
Still further, the Johannine revelation concept carries in itself a strong soteric element. Revelation is not merely the prerequisite of
salvation, as might more easily appear from the Synoptics; precisely because it confronts one directly with God in Christ it produces a transforming, cleansing effect through its own inherent action [8:32; 15:3]. The personally concentrated form in which the attributes and potencies of God are represented as incarnate in Jesus, fits in with this trend of thought. He is 'the life', 'the light', 'the truth' in Person.
Over against this complex of peculiarities in John we find in the Synoptics repeated references to the Spirit as the proximate source of the revelation conveyed by Jesus. The Fourth Gospel likewise mentions the Spirit, but not with such prominence in the same connection. The Baptist, while not recording the baptism directly, speaks of it as qualifying Jesus for conferring the Spirit upon others [1:33], but that is not quite the same as revealing through the Spirit. The emphasis on the divine nature has taken away the need of referring to this. Once, we find the characterization of the words of Jesus as 'Spirit and life' [6:63]. On the whole, the Spirit figures in John as a future gift, who will come after the departure of Jesus, and in that season will also act as the medium of revelation from Jesus to the disciples [16:13].
[B] THE QUESTION OF DEVELOPMENT
Having now reached the point where the public ministry of our Lord opens up to our investigation, we are brought face to face with the question, whether there is observable within this teaching a development. In order to ensure clearness we must at the outset distinguish between subjective development in the mind of Jesus, His knowledge of and insight into the truth having grown as He progressed in His ministry, and objective development, the presentation of facts and teachings having been subject to progress from season to season.
Speaking in the abstract, no a priori objection can be raised even against the subjective kind of development. Jesus had a true human nature, and human nature as such is subject to development, which,
however, is not equivalent to saying that it cannot exist under any conditions without development. The idea of evolution has taken such hold of the modern mind, and become so fascinating, that in many cases the existence of the gradual acquisition of knowledge by the mind of Jesus is simply assumed without enquiring into the concrete evidence. As a matter of fact evidence for this assumption does not exist, so long as the faultless nature of the content of the teaching is maintained. There is no point in the life of our Lord at which the inflow of a new substance or principle of thought can be traced. A breach between foregoing and following is nowhere perceptible. The incidents near Caesarea-Philippi have sometimes been seized upon to bear out such a construction, but, as afterwards will be pointed out, there was here no evidence of advance in enlightenment in the mind of Jesus, nor even an injection of something totally new into the minds of the disciples. The point of the episode is not that a confession took place of something wholly unknown before.
Still, progress in objective teaching there was, if not particularly here, yet at other points. The necessity for this would rise from the capability of apprehension in the disciples, which was less at the beginning than afterwards, and from the unfolding of the situation of the public ministry of our Lord, in which the opposition of His enemies was one of the chief determining factors, humanly speaking.
Our position, therefore, is: subjective development is allowable, but not actually proven; objective development in the teaching is necessary, and capable of being pointed out. However, to prevent misunderstanding, we must add to this a somewhat more precise statement. Suppose subjective development were actually discovered, we could not grant that such development might be of every imaginable kind. We must distinguish progress from error to truth, and again progress from partial to more comprehensive and adequate apprehension of the truth. The former would be irreconcilable with the faultlessness of Jesus' teaching, the latter might be in perfect consonance with it.
Now, in consulting the modern discussions of the life and teaching of Jesus, we find that, as a matter of fact, the occasions where a progress of subjective insight into the truth is ascribed to Him are precisely of this kind, that He is assumed to have advanced from error to elimination of error. And this is not confined to matters of relatively smaller importance, such as questions of history and criticism, for these things are deemed nowadays often so trivial as to have lain entirely beyond the need of correction, and Jesus is easily allowed to have shared in such things the common opinions of His time and never to have developed away from them in His entire life. The points singled out, in regard to which the error-eliminating development is by preference affirmed, are rather the cardinal and most weighty subjects of His teaching. We are asked to believe that our Lord, about such matters as the Kingdom of God, His Messiahship, and the necessity or significance of His death, held not only different but contrary convictions at various points. The advocates of this belief frequently do not take pains to base it on evidence; it is simply taken for granted after the most facile manner.
It needs no pointing out that where this is done, both the presence of the divine nature in the Person of Jesus and the infallibility of His human nature have been in principle abandoned. He has become a teacher like every eminent teacher. A prophet He hardly can on such a supposition be called, for with the prophetic office infallibility was generally associated, and this opinion was doubtless shared by Jesus Himself. The consciousness of Messiahship could not possibly have lived in such an atmosphere, for, if even the Baptist was greater than every prophet, how much more Jesus, in His revelationconsciousness, must have considered Himself the summit of stability and reliability as to absolutely representing God always.
All that has been said above relates to the public ministry of Jesus only, for this alone is the section of Jesus' life which the record enables us to observe. As to His preceding private life there must have been psychical and ethico-religious development. The information we have on this is exceedingly scanty. It is confined to
the statements in Lk. 2:49–52. All the rest remains withdrawn in secrecy, and it would require a great deal of critico-historical selfconfidence to construct on so small a basis what has been not infrequently called 'a biography of Jesus', or in a somewhat more modest language 'a life of Jesus'.
[C] THE METHOD OF JESUS' TEACHING
The question of allowable development leads on directly to that of the method of teaching. For it is obvious that in the point of method, more than anywhere else, a degree of variableness and adjustability to the development of the situation is to be observed. That the method of Jesus' teaching bore a specific character is certain, but the peculiarity can be more easily observed by putting the question in the negative: by the absence of which features was the method employed most clearly recognizable?
The features absent are systematizing, doctrinal-cohesive presentation of truth. This can be best realized by comparing the teaching of Paul, which while in no wise unduly theological, comes much nearer to doctrinal organization than does that of our Lord. The Jewish teaching of Jesus' time possessed likewise more of a systematic character than His. This was imparted unto it by the strict lines of the system of the Law within which it moved, but it was, from a theological point of view, shallow, and contained more flagrant inconsistencies than Paul's teaching has ever been charged with. In the whole range of Jesus' teaching there is practically nothing that approaches a definition of any subject, not even in regard to the Kingdom of God, which Paul a couple of times comes near to defining.
Now that which makes up for and corresponds to the absence of this abstract element is the concrete, imaginative way of handling principles for illustration's sake. The philologists say that all language has this concrete, physical background, so that there is really no spiritual thing or process that did not originally find
expression through a material analogue. We cannot name or discuss the simplest thing but we speak in figures. Only we no longer realize it. The language, through oblivion of its own ancestry, has gradually raised itself to the plane of the spiritual world. But conscious employ of figurative modes of expression is something different, because it is intentional. It compares things in the visible, natural sphere to things in the invisible, spiritual. Of this consciously-comparative way of speaking there are several forms, to distinguish which is the business of rhetoric. Without binding ourselves to technical classification we here simply describe the use made of these various forms in our Lord's discourse. The generic name, under which these forms are usually classified in the Gospel exposition is that of 'parables'. It is better, however, to restrict this name to a species of the genus.
SIMILITUDES
The simplest forms of the whole group are what we call, or some books call, the simile and the metaphor. These are at one in comparing a single thing or person to a thing or person in a different sphere. But they differ in that the simile makes the comparison explicit, whereas the metaphor, by naming the thing to be compared outright with the name of the comparing figure, keeps it implicit. 'Herod is like a fox' would be a simile; 'go and tell that fox' is a metaphor. Such likenings of single things to single are rare in the Gospels. The parabolic comparison has this for its peculiarity, that it likens not single things one to the other, but some relation between certain items to some relation between other items. The figure is: as A is related to B, so C is related to D. From the fig tree we, no less than the disciples, can learn her parable: when the branches become tender (A), summer is nigh (B); even so when the eschatological premonitions occur (C), the end of the world is approaching (D). Care must be taken not to find (A) likened to (C), nor (B) likened to (D). Comparisons of this kind belong to the class of parables in the more restricted sense. For the sake of distinguishing them, however, we shall call them similitudes, because they call attention to the
similarity between ever-recurring processes or sequences in nature and sequences in the redemptive world.
PARABLES PROPER
The second group in the circle of parables we designate by the name of parables proper, because to this class of comparative representations the name of 'parable' has become more popularly attached. These differ from the similitudes, in so far as they are clothed in the form of a story, the introductory formula being expressible by 'once upon a time', 'a sower went out to sow'. Although the process is here no less than in the similitude-group an ever-recurring process, yet for rhetorical effect it is pictured as a single event. The narrative-character thus imparted renders these parables-proper like unto fiction-stories designated as 'fables' in ancient literature. The difference lies in this, that the pagan fables introduce as their personages animals. Animals play next to no role in our Lord's parables, most of these being taken from the vegetable kingdom, but cp. Matt. 23:37; Lk. 13:34. Furthermore, the animals used for the furnishing of the pagan fable act unnaturally, from the animal point of view; having been put there in the place of men they are bound to forget their own nature, and must play out the role to the end. And from this again results the feature that the speaking and acting animals adopt a serio-comical behaviour. This lastmentioned feature is entirely absent from Jesus' parabolic teaching as from His teaching in general, for irony, which can here and there be detected, should not be confounded with comedy.
SPECIALIZATION-PARABLES
The third group of so-called parables may be called specializationparables. Their use rests on the employment of the specializationprinciple in our Lord's teaching in a wider sphere, outside of the strictly so-called parabolic material. By the specialization-method of teaching we understand that a lesson or principle, instead of being abstractly described, is placed before us in a single instance of its
working. Thus the internal character of righteousness and sin is vividly illustrated in the Sermon on the Mount by specialization of the various cases of adultery, murder, etc. A little later on, the injunction as to what is to be taken on the propaganda-journey and what is to be left behind serves a similar purpose [Matthew 10]. Now this specialization-method can, instead of being introduced straightforwardly, just as well be presented in the parable form, and then results the specialization-parable. A clear instance of this is the parable of the Pharisee and the publican. Here not one process is taken out of the sphere of nature and another out of the spiritual sphere; both transactions belong to the same spiritual sphere, and by typifying the way in which the thing ought not to be done, and ought to be done, the lesson is carried home to the mind. These specialization-parables have this in common with the parable-proper group, that they likewise borrow the form of fiction: 'Once upon a time a Pharisee and a publican went up', etc.
THE 'ALLEGORICAL' METHOD
The question has been raised, whether Jesus, besides these parabolic forms of teaching, also employed what is called the 'allegorical' method. For practical purposes we may call an allegory a story in which not one central point of comparison is intended to be brought out, but in which around this one point there is intentionally and ingeniously woven a web of detail-comparisons in the two processes placed side by side. We cannot a priori exclude the employment of this method; in the Old Testament there are striking examples of it; use had been made of it in the ancient Stoic philosophy; further in the Alexandrian-Jewish Philonic speculation; then in the medieval theology, and up to most modern times in all sorts of curious twists of mysticizing. In all these successive streams of allegory the ostensible purpose has been to foist a group of ideas upon an underground of thought by nature foreign to it. The tradition became so luxuriant that even in Romanist circles the further employment of it had to be barred by setting up the rule: Theologia parabolica non
est argumentativa. For the loose elaboration of ideas it might be useful, but not for strict theological reasoning.
But, if all parabolical reasoning in the reproduction of our Lord's teaching is to be avoided, it becomes very questionable whether enough material of an unparabolic nature will remain to determine the main strands of His teaching by it at all. Protection, therefore, should not be sought in a surrender of all the parables to theological non-use, but in a careful safeguarding of the rules under which the use of this kind of the material can be safely conducted. One great rule has been framed for this purpose in modern times. It consists in insisting that in every parable there shall be recognized only one point of central comparison, and that all the further correspondences that may by ingenious exegesis be woven around this shall be deemed to lie outside the proper scope of the parable, and not entitled to authority from the intent of the framer, being from His point of view purely accidental. B. Weiss has in his commentaries on the Gospels most rigidly insisted upon this rule. Julicher has in his classic work on the parables gone one step further, in that he makes the presence of allegorical elements an infallible test of the spuriousness of the parts in which they occur, and thus is led to remove considerable material from the text as originally strange to Jesus.
This 'puristic' position is not in accord with the general tenor of Jesus' teaching. So far as we can observe, the question of rhetorical form possessed no independent interest for Him; if the form shines through its excellence, this is due not to conscious intent, but simply to the innate beauty of the vision of truth and of all things in Jesus' mind. Moreover, we have examples in the Gospels where the purity of form is sacrificed to the exigency of inculcating some principle of truth that could only through allegorical pressure be worked into the framework of the parabolic setting: Mk. 2:19, 20 and Matt. 22:2–14 [cp. Lk. 14:16–24]. On the other hand there are cases where the allegorical possibilities of a parable are intentionally destroyed, not because of rhetorical objection to them, but for the sole reason that
they detract from the singleness of purpose pursued in the parable. This is plainly observable in the parables of the unrighteous judge, of the unrighteous steward and of the wise and foolish virgins.
Of course, rhetorically considered, the allegory stands lower than the parable, because it is difficult to shape the account of happenings along two parallel lines belonging to two different spheres in such a way that the items in one series shall naturally correspond to those in the other series. An allegory always partakes of a certain unnaturalness; its composition requires a prolonged fashioning and arranging of the material except in the case where there exists a sort of pre-established harmony between the two lines of occurrence, the one having been shaped in the mind of the Creator of the two spheres with special analogy to the other, as in the case of the operation of fatherhood in the parable of the prodigal. Compare Ezekiel 17 for the inevitable unnaturalness in the ordinary allegory. Our Lord's parabolic teaching bears all the signs of unpremeditation and instantaneousness of utterance.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE PARABOLIC TEACHING
We next enquire into the philosophy of the parabolic teaching. One of the purposes it served was doubtless to render the truth more vivid through putting it in concrete form. Still, this is nowhere stated in so many words by Jesus. We must infer it from the general use to which such a form of representation was put by others at that time, for example, by the Jewish teachers.
Another purpose which can be observed in the working is the employment of the parable to intercept prejudice. Whilst the abstract formulation of some principle apt to create offence would as a rule have set the prejudice in motion before the subject could be dispassionately considered, the bringing of it forward in parabolized form invests it with a degree of innocency, so as to induce the mind to assent within the terms of the figure, an assent which it cannot
easily withdraw when the equivalence of the lesson outside and inside the parable is reflected upon.
Still a third purpose of parabolic speech, and this is something far more strange to the modern mind, is that spoken of by Jesus in Matt. 13:13–16; Mk. 4:11, 12; Lk. 8:10. According to this statement the aim of parabolic teaching is to veil the truth, lest it should become clear and yield benefit to those unworthy of its reception. The difference between 'because they seeing, see not' (Matthew) and 'that seeing they may see, and not perceive', 'that seeing they might not see' (Mark, Luke) ought to be noticed.
Besides the rhetorical point of view, we can study the philosophy of the parables also from a theological point of view. It would be wrong to assume that the parables which Jesus spoke were nothing more than homiletical inventions, not based on any deeper principle or law. It would be more correct to call them spiritual discoveries, because they are based on a certain parallelism between the two strata of creation, the natural and the spiritual (redemptive) one, because the universe has been thus constructed. On the principle of 'spiritual law in the natural world', the nature-things and processes reflect as in a mirror the supernature-things, and it was not necessary for Jesus to invent illustrations. All He had to do was to call attention to what had been lying hidden, more or less, since the time of creation. This seems to be the meaning of Matthew's quotation from Psa. 78:2 [Matt. 13:35]. The marvellous acquaintance of Jesus' mind with the entire compass of natural and economic life, observable in His parables, may be explained from this, that He had been the divine Mediator in bringing this world with all its furnishings into being, and again was the divine Mediator for producing and establishing the order of redemption.
This fact underlies as a broad substratum all the parables in the Synoptics. In John this mode of teaching recedes somewhat into the background. Examples of parables in John are: 3:8; 11:9, 10; 12:24; 13:10; 16:21. But it is precisely in John that the theological principle
of the duplex structure and stratification of the universe is explicitly enunciated. The great contrasts governing the teaching here, both of Jesus and of the Evangelist, are expressed in the terms 'earth' (opp. 'heaven'); the 'world' (opp. 'not this world'); 'the earthly things' (opp. 'the heavenly things'); 'the things beneath' (opp. 'the things above'). Between these fundamental contrasts the relation prevails that in order of thought and pre-eminence the heavenly things precede. They form the original, the opposites are the copies. Practically speaking, the higher sphere is that whither all religious tending and striving must be directed. Hence the 'supernaturalism' of Jesus' Gospel and of His Person, as determining that of the Gospel, finds most pointed expression in John. One might call it the antievolutionistic document in the Scriptures, par excellence, so far as ethics and religion are concerned [8:23].
'TRUE' AND 'TRUTH' IN THE FOURTH GOSPEL
The difference between the higher things and the lower things is not Platonically conceived, as though there were more reality of being in the former than in the latter. Both are equally real. The difference comes in through an appraisal of quality. The technical term in John to mark the contrast is that of aletheia, 'truth'. The things in the supernal world possess the quality of 'true things'. It should be carefully noted that 'true' in such a connection does not have the ordinary sense of 'exact agreement with reality', for 'truth' thus understood is something located in the human mind subjectively, since in the mind alone such a thing as 'agreement' can exist. The true things in this specific Johannine acceptance have the truth inherent in themselves as an objective characteristic. They are true intrinsically. The intrinsic truth residing in them is just the specific character they bear as part of the supernal heavenly sphere.
The usage is found both in the discourses of Jesus and in the reflections upon them by the Evangelist. The Logos is 'the true light', that embodiment of the quality of light of which all other lights in the world are but copies and derivatives [1:9]. On the same principle
Jesus calls Himself 'the true bread', 'the true vine' [6:32, 33; 15:1]. The adjective that is used in such statements is not the ordinary form alethes, but the stronger form alethinos. One might say that the entire supernal sphere is made up of 'alethinities'. The objectivity of the concept becomes most apparent by observing that this heavenly truth is, as it were, condensed, incorporated in the heavenly Logos: He is the truth, not, of course, because He is veracious and reliable, but simply, because He has the reality of heaven in Himself. Almost a definition of the idea in this sense is found in connection with 'the true bread' [6:32, 33]: 'My Father gives you the true bread from heaven, for the bread of God is He which comes down from heaven and gives life unto the world.' Even to God Himself can the predicate alethinos be applied [17:3]. He is the only God having the reality of the essential Godhead in Himself.
Besides this peculiar meaning of truth, there is found in John's Gospel also the ordinary sense of the word 'veracious' [3:33]. As an Old Testament coloured usage, there occurs further the equivalence of 'true' to 'morally good' [3:20, 21], where 'doing evil' and 'doing the truth' appear as opposites.
There are certain passages in the Gospel usually misunderstood, because of ignorance or non-regard of the peculiar notion of 'truth' commented upon. In 1:17: 'The Law was given through Moses; grace and truth came by Jesus Christ', the wrong inference may be easily drawn, that the Law contained not the truth. The meaning simply is, that it did not yet bring that full disclosure of the heavenly reality in Christ, which is 'the truth'. It contained the shadows and types, not as yet the antitypical revelation. 'Not-true' here is not the equivalent of 'false', as though a Gnostic idea came to the surface, an interpretation plainly excluded by the phrase 'through Moses' (not 'by Moses'). The giving of the Law by God through the mediation of Moses is presupposed. In the other member of the statement, 'came by Jesus Christ', the preposition 'by' is used.
In 4:23 the worship of the Father 'in Spirit and truth' bears no immediate reference to the sincerity pertaining to worship, for that, Jesus would probably not have denied to the Jewish or the Samaritan worship. It relates to the worship no longer bound by typical forms as to place and time and ceremony. In the place of these will come a worship directly corresponding in an unshadowy form to the heavenly original of God, who is Spirit. When the Jewish worship in Jerusalem and the Samaritan worship are, in this one respect of typical locality, placed on a line, this does not intend to place them on a line in all other respects, for Jesus says to the woman: 'Ye worship ye know not what: we [including Himself with the Jews] know what we worship: for salvation is from the Jews.'
Again in 14:6: 'I am the way and the truth and the life', truth has the same sense of heavenly reality. The question was as to the way to heaven. Jesus answers Thomas by saying that He Himself is the way. The two following concepts, 'the truth' and 'the life' explain the first; Jesus is the way to heaven, because in Him the heavenly substance is present, and more specifically, because the heavenly life is present. Therefore, in the contact with Him lies the solution of the problem raised by Thomas: 'No one comes unto the Father, but by me.'
Outside of the Fourth Gospel this peculiar connotation of 'the true substances' occurs mainly in the typological system of the Epistle to the Hebrews; compare 8:2, 'a minister of the true tabernacle'. In the Gospels, the only occurrence of it outside of John is in Luke 16:11, 'who will commit to your trust the true (riches)?'
[D] JESUS' ATTITUDE TOWARD THE SCRIPTURES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
It is extremely important to obtain from Jesus' own, inside point of view a definite understanding of His attitude and relation to the Old Testament. The emphasis should not lie in the first place on the testimony He bore to the truthfulness and value of the Scriptures then in existence. This is of great apologetic value, but it is not
something in which Jesus stood alone. Every orthodox person, Jewish or Christian, shared that with Him. In His treatment of the Bible Jesus was the most orthodox of the orthodox. The ascription to Him of a laxer or freer attitude in this matter rests, as we shall presently show, on a lack of discrimination. What is sometimes halfcontemptuously called a 'Bible-religion' was characteristic of His piety. But there was something in His consciousness about the Scriptures that was specifically His own, something which not even Paul nor any other New Testament teacher or organ of revelation could have shared with Him. Jesus, besides deriving much material from the Old Testament, and besides being aware that all His teaching was in strict conformity to the Old Testament, held a conviction that went far beyond this, and in regard to which it would be preposterous for any Christian to say that he could apply the same thing to himself.
What we mean is this, that Jesus regarded the whole Old Testament movement as a divinely directed and inspired movement, as having arrived at its goal in Himself, so that He Himself in His historic appearance and work being taken away, the Old Testament would lose its purpose and significance. This none other could say. He was the confirmation and consummation of the Old Testament in His own Person, and this yielded the one substratum of His interpretation of Himself in the world of religion. At the same time it is proof of the realistic view He took of the Old Testament religion. Neither that, nor His own religion, was a religion of nature pure and simple; it was a religion of factual redemptive interpositions on the basis of a previous, but obscured, natural knowledge of God. To interpret the central religion of Jesus as a species of religious love for nature may be Rousseau-esque or Renan-esque; it is neither OldTestament-like nor Jesus-like.
A 'RELIGION OF THE BOOK'
To what extent our Lord's religion was a 'religion of the Book,' i.e., of the contents of a Book and of the language of a Book, can be shown
in more than one way:
(a) His discourse is full of words, phrases, forms of expression, derived from the Scriptures. These are frequently not formal enough to call them intentional quotations; nevertheless their Biblical origin lies on the surface. An instance is the description of the unbelieving people as 'a wicked and adulterous generation' [Matt. 12:39; 16:4]. Numerous also are the conscious quotations. About these there are two peculiarities … they emerge with frequency where our Lord's teaching is recognized as moving on its highest levels; the higher it soars, the nearer it comes to the world of thought and the speech of the Old Testament. The beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount furnish examples. Compare with the individual beatitudes: Psalm 17:15; 25:13; 37:9; 73:1, and many Psalter passages that turn the conception of poverty into a religious sense [cp. Isa. 57:15; 61:3]. The other peculiarity of the conscious quotations lies in this, that our Lord makes use of them in the supreme crises of His life. Psa. 42:6, 11; 43:5, He quotes in Gethsemane; from the cross He prays in the words of Psalm 22:1; 31:5;
(b) Jesus treats the Scriptures as a 'rule of faith and practice'. His gravest charge against the Pharisaic tradition-mongering is that for the sake of tradition it neglects the commandment of God. To the Sadducees He declares that their denial of the resurrection springs from not knowing the Scriptures. In His Sabbath-controversy with the Pharisees He appeals to the divine declaration in Hosea, 'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice'. His principle that marriage should be indissoluble, He bases on the Genesis record of how it was at the beginning;
(c) Jesus authenticates His own Messianic character and work by pointing out in them the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy [Mk. 9:12; 12:10; 14:21, 27, 49; Lk. 4:17–19; 22:37; 24:25–27; John 3:14; 5:46].
In some of these passages the word dei, 'must', is made use of. Proximately this 'must' relates to the necessity of Scripturefulfilment, although, of course, Scripture being the expression of the mind and purpose of God, the necessity is in its last analysis derivable from the latter. In this respect Jesus does not essentially differ from those whose treatment of prophecy is often stigmatized as literalistic and mechanical. He did not scorn appeal to the letter, where it was strikingly effective. At the same time, however, the Old Testament was to Him an organic expression of the truth and will of God. The great circumstances of the progressive development of revelation He took into account in measuring the applicability of rules of Scripture; His method for keeping the new situation in touch with ancient revelation was not the allegorical method. His hermeneutics were simple and straightforward. The danger of allegorizing His words lies at the present day among the ranks of those who, having inwardly departed from the Gospel teaching, nevertheless desire to make use of the prestige of His name for supporting their quite differently oriented notions. The percentage of 'liberal' sermons committing this sin of allegorizing is far greater than that of those who seek to give the truth greater effectiveness by means of allegorizing hermeneutics. A mistake committed for the sake of the Gospel is less flagrant than one perpetrated in the propagation of error, but, of course, it is still a mistake.
Finally it will be observed that in all His numerous appeals to Scripture our Lord proved the protagonist of those who make of the Scriptures an open book, a book for the people. As a matter of fact, in His life-time the tendency to make of it a book for the learned chiefly was already at work owing to the inherent trend of legalism and traditionalism; our Lord did not consider the common people as those 'who know not the Law' [John 7:49];
(d) While in all the above groups of cases our Lord's attitude towards the Old Testament can be determined indirectly, through observing the use He makes of it, there is a more direct way through noting His explicit deliverances on the character and provenience of Holy
Scripture. In the parable of Dives and Lazarus He implies that Moses and the Prophets bear as plainly and incontrovertibly the signature of the supernatural on their faces as one risen from the dead or come back from Hades would [Lk. 16:29–31]. According to John 5:37–39 the Jews are blamed for not finding eternal life in the Scriptures, for the reason that they do not read them from the point of view of their fulfilment in Him. John 10:35 affirms in so many words that the Scripture cannot be broken. The underlying supposition of all arguing from Scripture as, in common with others, our Lord practised it, consists in this, that the Word of God has received from Him the quality of unbreakableness: not to believe involves an attempt to break something that God has declared sure;
(e) Exceedingly eloquent is, in this connection, that His opponents, who were over-eager to collect data for His heterodoxy, never made an attempt to cast suspicion on His attitude toward Scripture.
CERTAIN CRITICAL CLAIMS DISPROVED
The data just given, though obviously decisive, have nevertheless been called in question in view of certain statements in the Fourth Gospel which are interpreted as evidence of the semi-Gnosticizing character of this document. It is scarcely necessary to argue with those who bring this charge because they themselves do not believe that the statements appealed to are authentic statements of Jesus, the Fourth Gospel being in their opinion a late unhistorical product. Still, for those who place belief in the Gospel, the passages concerned may be briefly touched upon.
From the Prologue 1:17 is quoted. The charge of the falsehood of the Old Testament can be discovered here only through overlooking the peculiar meaning of 'truth' previously commented upon. The same applies to the alleged denial of the truth of the Jerusalem worship; this lacks the truth, not because it is false, but because it is typical, in still being bound to one definite place. Also the statement in 10:8, in which Jesus declares all that came before Him to have been thieves
and robbers, has been interpreted in the Gnostic sense that a huge system of falsehood underlay the Old Testament. In all probability Jesus here refers to the leaders of the nation opposing Him, or to the false Messianic claimants that had preceded Him.
Another ground for denying Jesus' acceptance of the authority of the Old Testament is found in the utterances in which He declares certain institutions of the Old Dispensation abrogated, or at least capable of perfection. The questioning about fasting raised between His disciples and those of the Pharisees and of the Baptist can scarcely be brought under this head, because fasting was not prescribed by the Old Testament, except for the Day of Atonement, and what Jesus was questioned about evidently had reference to a much wider practice. Still, it is noteworthy that in His double parable about the old garment and the new wine Jesus puts the entire question on a wider basis, so as to make of it a question of suitability of forms of religion in general, when the Old is compared with the New (Mk. 2:21, 22]. The passage Mk. 7:14–19, in regard to what things defile man, shifts the rule from the outward to the inward, and thereby virtually abrogates the Mosaic regulations for ceremonial cleanness, as is possibly meant by the phrase 'purging all meats'. Our Lord further speaks of a fulfilment of the Passover in the Kingdom of God [Lk. 22:16].
The saying of the Sermon on the Mount, that He came 'to fulfil' may also be quoted in this connection, but in regard to it, all depends on the sense given the verb 'to fulfil', discussed below. It will be observed that in none of the instances quoted does Jesus criticize the Old Testament mode of life as though having been wrong for its own time, but only supersedes it as unsuitable for the incoming era. And the main point to observe is that He nowhere criticizes the abrogated modes of life on the ground of their not having been instituted by God. Yet this might have been expected, had it been the real ground of His setting these things aside, for He was most unsparing in His rejection of the traditional accretions of the Law, which He characterized as plants not planted by God [Matt. 15:13]. The