Part 15

if the latter were the case, faith would carry within itself an inner antinomy, being on the one hand a recognition that God alone must work, on the other hand an urge to fulfil at least a preliminary condition. We are told that Jesus could do no miracles where faith was absent, that a mere sign from heaven as such He could not give, and yet at the same time we are told that the miracles were to act as stimulators of faith. The solution lies in a distinction between two kinds of unbelief. Where the absence of faith amounted to deepseated distrust of the divine method of saving, the mere doing of miracles could not have acted as an inducement of faith. It might have convinced of the presence of a supernatural power, but would have related the latter neither to God nor to Jesus, but to some demonic agency [Matt. 12:24]. Ii such a case, Jesus would do no miracle, because no true full-orbed faith would have resulted. Where it was a mere question of the absence of evidence, there the miracle could play its proper part to stimulate faith. What Jesus affirms of the demon cases is equally true of the miracle of salvation in general [Matt. 19:26]. Such things are possible to God and to God only. Faith, being the work of God, is something to be prayed for by Jesus on behalf of one in danger of losing it [Lk. 22:31, 32; Mk. 9:24].

In the principle that faith is a work of God, the other fact is given of its not being the mere arbitrary choice of man who simply wills or refuses to exercise it. It has behind it a motivation. Nor can it be explained as the upwelling of an irrational mystical urge, such as would need no rational motive. Faith presupposes knowledge, because it needs a mental complex, person or thing, to be occupied about. Therefore, the whole modern idea of preaching Jesus, but preaching Him without a creed, is not only theologically, not merely Scripturally, but psychologically impossible in itself. In fact knowledge is so interwoven with faith that the question arises, whether it be sufficient to call it a prerequisite, and not rather an ingredient of faith.

The very names by means of which Jesus would have to be presented to people are nuclei of creed and doctrine. If it were possible to

eliminate this, the message would turn to pure magic, but even the magic requires some name-sound and cannot be wholly described as preaching without a creed. The vogue which this programme has acquired is to some extent due to the unfortunate, and altogether undeserved, flavour clinging to the term 'creed', as though this necessarily meant a minutely worked out theological structure of belief. That is not meant, but belief there must be before faith can begin to function, and belief includes knowledge [Matt. 8:10; Lk. 7:9]. This knowledge may have been gathered gradually, almost imperceptibly, from countless impressions received during a briefer or longer period of time, but epistemologically it does not differ from any other kind of mental act however acquired. To be sure, mere knowledge is not equivalent to full-orbed faith, it must develop into trust, before it is entitled to that name.

How closely faith is connected with the cognition-complex of the soul can best be gathered from our Lord's statements on the causes of unbelief. So far as these are not due to mere absence of informative knowledge, they can be reduced to the one case of 'being offended'. The Greek for this term is skandalizesthai. The skandalon is the chip of wood that holds the bait in a trap and causes the animal to be caught. Metaphorically speaking and with reference to faith, the offence is a temptation to unbelief. The peculiar feature of this representation is that Jesus has placed the 'offence' in Himself. There is something in His Person and claims and activity and ideals that becomes to his opponents an occasion for unbelief. The reason for this is that in all these respects He is diametrically opposite to what the Jews expected their Messiah to be and to do. They had their own preconceptions and ideal preferences about the Messiahship, and about the coming era of which this formed the centre. But these preconceptions and preferences were by no means so detached from their internal state of mind as to be innocent. The offence, therefore, was in the last analysis engendered by their nature, and thus the unbelief to which it gave rise was an outcome of their corrupt state of heart.

The psychology of the action of faith receives light from the verbal constructions used for describing it. The verb is pisteuein, the adjective is pistos, but in the Gospels this occurs only in the negative form of apistos: the positive has the passive sense of 'believed in', 'reliable'. Oligopistos means 'short of faith', not in the sense of lacking volume, but rather in the sense of not reaching far enough to attain the end. Of the prepositions used, en seems to be the least informing, since neither to the modern mind, nor to the Greek mind, either classical or Hellenistic, is it an indigenous, intelligible construction. Perhaps it derived from the Hebrew preposition beth, which had its own idiomatic local associations. The preposition eis is construed, of course, with the accusative; its meaning may be that of mental projection, 'towards' the object of faith, or that of local entrance into the object, 'to exercise faith into Christ'. The latter would be a more Johannine and Pauline than a Synoptical idea. Epi has two constructions, one with the dative, and one with the accusative; the former expresses the idea of believing 'on the ground of' (a connotation given by some also to en), the faith rising, as it were, out of the evidence; the latter resembles closely the construction with eis, except that the projection of the believing mind upwards towards the object of faith enters as a peculiar shade of colouring.

'FAITH' AS USED IN JOHN

The Johannine teaching on faith has certain sharply outstanding peculiarities which may here be briefly enumerated:

(a) Faith is throughout related to Jesus, co-ordinately with God, on account of the idea of Jesus' being the duplicate of God. In the Synoptics Jesus is not mentioned as the personal object of faith, except in Matt. 18:6; Mk. 9:42 (with somewhat uncertain text). The wrong inference that Jesus did not consider Himself the object of faith, or as a factor in salvation, has been drawn from this, but the inadequacy of the argument is clear from the fact that with reference to God also there is only one such explicit passage [Mk. 11:22], so

that in point of statistics there is no difference. In John 14:1 (where the imperative rendering is to be preferred) the implication seems to be that the disciples, who through the tragic experience of the passion might be in danger of losing their faith in Christ, should, as it were, recover it through vigorously asserted faith in the Father. It is of course psychologically inconceivable that those who had been healed by Jesus should not have developed an attitude of trust towards Him.

(b) Faith is more a continuous, habitual relation between Jesus and the believer; in the Synoptics it appears mostly as a momentary act in those upon whom the miracles are wrought. Even here, however, attention is called by Jesus to the fact that what faith has done once it will do again; 'thy faith hath made thee whole'. In the storm Jesus remonstrates with the disciples for not having considered His presence with them a guarantee of continuous safety. Also the figure of 'shortness' of faith points to the nascent idea of faith as a habit, afterwards so fully worked out by Paul. Thus faith begins to cover the entire religious life as its indispensable basis.

(c) Faith, as by anticipation, lays hold of the glorified Jesus; it works in the present with the same effects as it will work in the future: Jesus is the bread of life; the cleansing of sins is given now.

(d) There is a most intimate association between faith and knowledge. This does not rest on any philosophical, particularly Gnostic, concept of the process of salvation. The knowledge is a practical knowledge of acquaintance and intimacy, more of the Shemitic than of the Hellenic type, as it is said of the sheep that they are known by the shepherd and know the shepherd's voice. Besides believing and knowing there is still a third term descriptive of close and intense religious occupation, namely, 'to behold', literally 'to gaze upon' (theorein). Interesting is the application of these several terms to the several subjects and objects of the act. In regard to Jesus' relation to the Father the verb 'to believe' is never found, the relation evidently being too direct and intimate for that. The Father

'knows the Son' and the Son 'knows the Father'. Of the relation between Christ and the disciple, all three—'to believe', 'to know', and of the Holy Spirit, 'to behold' and 'to know' Him, not to believe on Him, are found.

(e) The doctrine as to the connection between unbelief and its source is more clearly set forth in John than in the Synoptics. Unbelief is shown to spring from a radically wrong attitude of man's nature towards God, for which even the name 'hatred' is not shunned. Unbelief is called 'the sin', not, as is sometimes imagined, as if under the regime of the gospel all other sins were discounted, and a totally new record begun in which only faith and unbelief would henceforth be decisive factors. Underlying the phrase 'the sin' is rather the recognition that in unbelief the deep inherent character of sin as a turning against God reveals itself.

(f) As to the sources of faith, these are described in four ways:

(a) faith is the result of a course of conduct; those believe who do the truth and walk in the truth, etc.;

(b) going farther back, it is the result of right spiritual perception wrought by God; they believe who have learned it or heard it from the Father;

(d) finally, going back to the ultimate source: believers are those, who on the principle of sovereign election, have been given by the Father to the Son, or drawn to the Son by the Father.

These various terms are so strong as to have given rise to the charge that the Gospel is infectedwith Gnosticism, a heresy which distinguished between those who are not capable of salvation, on the one hand, and such as are not in need of salvation, on the other hand. But the Gospel has behind it a full and strong recognition of

the Old Testament, from which an antecedent attitude towards the truth as determinative of the subsequent attitude towards Jesus can be explained.

DIVINE SUPREMACY IN THE SPHERE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

The second line along which the supremacy of God in the Kingdom is worked out by Jesus is that of righteousness. Before all else it is necessary to fix sharply the Biblical concept of 'righteousness', common to both the Old Testament and the New Testament. Now, notwithstanding all our acquaintance with the Bible, we are hindered from correctly apprehending this by the common-parlance use the word has developed on the basis of legal tradition. Right is, according to the latter, what is equitable. The concept is framed on the mutual delimitation of rights between man and man; God does not enter into it, except indirectly as the guardian or champion for what ought to prevail inter-humanly.

At bottom this conception is, of course, a pagan one. According to Scripture 'righteousness' is that which agrees with and pleases God, and exists for His sake, and can only be adjudicated by Him. He is first of all, and above all, the interested Person. Without reckoning with Him in the three relations named there can be no actual existence of righteousness. There might be good or evil intrinsically considered as to results, but to speak of righteousness would under such circumstances have no meaning. And this God-referred righteousness is by no means a small department of religious life. Ethically considered, it covers all converse with God; to be righteous acquires the meaning of possessing and practising the true religion: righteousness is equivalent to piety. Our Lord's teaching on righteousness partakes throughout of this general character. Righteousness is from God as its source, it exists for God as its end, and it is subject to God as the ultimate Justifier.

This Scriptural idea of righteousness, however, stands in the closest connection with the Scriptural idea of the Kingdom of God. In the

American political system there is no such intimate union between kingship and judgeship; the law-giving and executive functions are assigned to separate organs in the body politic. To the ancient (Shemitic) consciousness the King is ipso facto the Lawgiver and the Executor of the law [cp. Psa. 72; Isa. 33:22]. Far more also than we can imagine, the King is the centre of political life, for whose sake the state and the subjects exist. Modern individualism was not known. If we subtract from the words of Louis XIV their proud flippancy, the statement, 'L'état, c'est mei' would most nearly express the idea. This is not from our point of view good politics. But in religion it is not only allowable; it is the only principle on which a truly religious relation can be built, and revelation has made use of this monarchial and King-centred state of affairs to build up its doctrine of the Kingdom of God in the sphere of righteousness.

We must now trace the presence of these ideas in the teaching of our Lord on the subject. This will be most conveniently done by defining the close identity and association affirmed by Him as between the Kingdom and righteousness, because in this way the theocentric character of His idea of righteousness will soon appear to be naught else in substance than His theocentric conception of the Kingdom.

This is observable along three lines:

(a) first the Kingdom (Kingship) of God is identified with righteousness. They are concurrent, or mutually in-existent, because the doing of righteousness amounts to the practical recognition and furtherance of His Kingship. The best example of this is in the sequence of the two petitions of our Lord's prayer: 'thy Kingdom come' and 'thy will be done'. Here in all probability both 'coming' and 'being done' are, in harmony with Western exegesis, to be understood eschatologically.

(b) In the second place, righteousness appears as a consequent to the Kingdom, one of the many gifts which the new reign of God freely bestows upon its members. The Old Testament had already held this

new kind of righteousness in prospect. Jeremiah promises that Jehovah will write His Law upon the hearts of the people, and Ezekiel predicts that Jehovah will make them to walk in His statutes. That according to Jesus' conception the participants of this righteousness sustain a receptive attitude towards it appears from Matt. 5:6. It would, of course, be very easy, but none the less anachronistic, to import into this line of teaching all the Pauline ideas, according to which righteousness is the one great central gift in the life of the Christian, that on which everything else is based. As a matter of fact the parable of the Pharisee and the publican invites one to do this: the publican went home justified and not the Pharisee, because the former professed not to possess any subjective righteousness, and the Pharisee was rejected because of his consciousness of possessing much. As a matter of fact the principle of the Pauline doctrine and that of Jesus thus appear identical. The difference lies in two things: Jesus treats the entire gift as an undifferentiated unit, whereas Paul has learned to distinguish between the objective righteousness which becomes ours through imputation and the subjective kind which becomes ours through the inworking of the Spirit. But at bottom both are one as the gift of God, and according to Paul the latter comes as the fruit of the former. The second thing in which a difference is perceptible concerns the terminology. What Paul calls justification, Jesus calls entrance into the Kingdom or becoming a son of God. Righteousness is with Paul largely objective status, with Jesus largely subjective condition.

(c) In the third place the sequence between the two is reversed, righteousness coming first and the Kingdom as the ensuing reward. This is, of course, to be understood of the eschatological Kingdom, which is in such sayings promised as a recompense for the practice of righteousness in this life. It comes in appearance nearest to the Judaistic position, and has been consequently criticized not seldom as a remnant in our Lord's religion of the self-righteousness of Judaism. One need not wonder at this, when observing that in Matt. 6:5, 6, a reward is set even upon the proper observance of prayer. It has been attempted to remove words of this kind as non-cognate to

the general religious mentality of Jesus. This affords no relief because the idea appears interwoven with so much of our Lord's practical exhortations, all labour in the Kingdom being represented as a labour behind the plough and in the vineyard, so that the matter, considered as a flaw, would vitiate a large strand in Jesus' teaching.

In order to reach clearness on the question we must first disabuse ourselves of the modern idea, as though every thought of reward in ethical relations were unworthy of the sacredness of ethics. This is an opinion ultimately based on the philosophy of the autonomy or deification of ethics, and behind that on the principle of unmotived free will. Man is not such an autonomous being that he can afford to scorn a reward from God, provided the idea of meritoriousness be kept absent from it. If that were man's normal ethical attitude, then man would be in ethics like unto God. Of Jesus Himself it is said that the idea of reward attracted and sustained Him and determined the result of His work [Heb. 12:2].

An important further consideration is, whether the reward promised is in principle of a lower, less noble nature than the conduct on which it is suspended. This is actually the case in Judaism, but the contrary is true of Jesus' teaching. Compare the conjoined clauses in the beatitudes. It is also of importance to note, whether the attraction of the peripheral reward operates to the exclusion of the supreme reward in the possession and enjoyment of God Himself, in which respect again the beatitudes may be consulted. Judaism put the doctrine of reward on a commercial (and therefore self-righteous) basis. It was a matter of man paying so much and getting back a proper equivalent. This principle of quid pro quo is destructive of the religious relation. Moreover it was applied equally to both rewards and retributive punishment. Of this there is no trace in the teaching of Jesus. He treats the idea of punishment of sin as something inseparable from the ethical nature of God, but does not affirm anywhere that God, by force of the same principle, must reward the practice of what is good. On the contrary, the servants who have done all that was required of them are still unprofitable servants

(which is a different thing from saying that they are useless servants). The thought is that having served God to the full they are not inherently entitled to any reward; and, because the reward is not of necessity, neither can it be of exact equivalence: those that have worked a short time receive the same wages as those who have laboured long. On the basis of economic equity this would be disastrous, but on the basis of righteousness sovereignly applied it serves to bring out that important principle.

OUR LORD'S CRITIQUE OF JEWISH ETHICS

This is the place to insert a brief survey of our Lord's critique of Jewish ethics, which occupies considerable space in the Gospels. The Jewish ethic suffered from two fundamental defects: its tendency towards Deism and its infection by self-centredness. From these two main defects resulted the following serious faults:

(a) Externalism: the law was not obeyed with the idea of the supervision of God in mind; the service of the Law had taken the place of the service of the living God [Gal. 2:18–21].

(b) The breaking up of the Law from a well-organized state to a state of utter disorganization; great principles were not distinguished and in the light of these the minor questions judged; on the contrary, every single commandment was reduced to a level of casuistry. Over against this Jesus knows of the greater and the lesser commandment, of the things that ought to be done, and other things not to be left undone.

(c) From the same source sprang the negativism that so largely characterized the Judaistic law-practice. The main concern was not to attain the positive end of the Law, but rather to avoid negatively the disasters feared from non-observance; the system degenerated into a system of avoidance.

(d) The self-righteousness so severely castigated by Jesus grew on the same root, for where God is not recognized as the Inlooker into

the moral process, it becomes relatively easy to believe that the essence of the Law has been kept, whereas in reality only the surface, that which falls under man's observation, has been skimmed.

(e) Last of all, from this delusive sense of performance springs the fault of hypocrisy, meaning by this here the objective kind of hypocrisy, discord between the heart and the outward life, which can, however, exist without conscious knowledge of the same on the hypocrite's part, which latter we call subjective hypocrisy.

REPENTANCE

Connected with our Lord's teaching on the righteousness of the Kingdom is His teaching on repentance. Just as His teaching on faith is the correlative of the power-aspect of the Kingdom, so that on repentance corresponds to the righteousness-aspect of the same. Hence the preaching began with the demand jointly for repentance and faith in the gospel. In this there is a perpetual witness to the constancy of the assumption of sin as the background of the offer of the gospel. The necessity for repentance as essential to participation in the Kingdom is not, however, of a meritorious significance. The man cast out from the feast on account of not having a weddinggarment, was excluded because his condition was not appropriate to the feast, not because he had not deserved the feast, for all the guests were taken from the highways and hedges [Matt. 22:11–13].

The state of mind described by what is theologically called repentance can be best ascertained from the Greek words found for it in the Gospels, although the possibility must be always reckoned with that the terms may have become stereotyped terms not any longer connoting consciously the original associations. These terms are the following:

(a) metamelesthai (impersonal) literally 'after-sorrow'. It denotes the emotional element of regret for a past act or course of action. Because of its emotional associations it has sometimes been thought

to describe repentance as a superficial experience. This is incorrect; the experience can be superficial, but likewise can be profound, and when profound, can be taken in bonum sensum, as what Paul calls the 'sorrow after God', or in malum sensum, as when Judas is said to have 'repented himself'. In the bad sense it describes what is named 'remorse', literally the 'backbiting' of the soul upon herself; the noun to this is metameleia.

(b) metanoein, a change or rather reversal of nous; nous does not narrowly signify the mind, but the entire conscious life, will and affections included. In this word the preposition meta does not have, as in the preceding term, the temporal sense of 'after', but the metaphorical sense of 'round about'. The noun corresponding to this is metanoia. The terms are always used of saving repentance, that which is elsewhere called 'a repentance not to be repented of' [2 Cor. 7:10].

(c) epistrephesthai, 'to turn one's self about'. This describes not, as the two preceding terms do, an inner state of mind reflecting upon its past, or an inner change of mind turned into its opposite, but the turning of the will towards a new, opposite goal. It corresponds, strictly speaking, rather to 'conversion' than to repentance.

The specific character of Biblical repentance, as distinguished from experiences so named in paganism, lies first of all in the comprehensiveness of the turn of mind. It is 'after-sorrow', or reversal of consciousness, or redirection of the life upon an opposite goal, with regard to the whole content of the ethico-religious life. To the non-Christian mind repentance took place from one act to another, or from one course of action to another only. The cause of this difference is found in the lack on the pagan side of a comprehensive conception of sin. Where 'sin' in its comprehensive sense is not known, there real repentance cannot develop, even as a conception.

Secondly, and as a necessary result of the foregoing, the demand for repentance is addressed to all men. The disciples are not exempt from the clause 'if ye being evil' at a late point of their association with Jesus [Lk. 11:13]. Repentance must be preached among all nations [Lk. 24:47]. That Jesus sometimes seems to establish a difference between some to whom He feels called to preach and the greater number of those who need no repentance, and calls the latter in such a connection 'righteous' is to be understood from the standpoint of the estimate such people are apt self-righteously to put upon themselves [Mk. 2:17].

Even more specific than this is the God-centred character of the experience. Its point of departure, that from which the repentance takes place, is always something considered in its relation to God. The idea is religious, not world-ethical. The technical term for this state rendering repentance necessary is 'being lost', i.e. missing in one's normal relation to God. Those in need of repentance are like lost sheep, lost coins; the sin of the prodigal consists at bottom in this, that he has left the father's house. In the same way God is the central object on whom the repenting consciousness is focused; it is the offence offered to Him that stands in the foreground of the sorrow experienced.

Finally, the new direction of life which the repentance brings about finds its explanation in the absolute and exclusive subjection of the whole life with all its desires and purposes to God. In this connection there are found in the Gospels many apparently extreme sayings in regard to giving up all human interests and ties even of the most sacred nature, nay, of life itself, for the sake of a single-minded devotion to God. Such statements are not to be understood purely paradoxically. However, they are qualified in their range of obligation by Jesus Himself. Our Lord says: If thy hand, thy foot, thine eye offend thee, cut it off, pluck it out; it is only when these natural things become occasions for failing in the whole-souled devotion to God, that their absolute renouncement is demanded. From this, however, it follows that an abstract rule of universal

surrender of such things cannot be laid down. It is the inner pseudoreligious attachment to something outside of God that must be given up in the interest of the true religion. And, on the other side, the facile excuse should not be too frequently urged that outward surrender is in no case needed, for in some situations this external renunciation may be the very thing needed to bring about the internal detachment of the soul which the Kingdom requires from all other things.

DIVINE SUPREMACY IN THE SPHERE OF BLESSEDNESS

In the third place, the Kingdom of God is the supremacy of God in the sphere of blessedness. The connection between God's kingship and blessedness is partly of a generally eschatological character, partly of a specific kingdom-eschatological character. It is inherent in the eschatological conception of things that the final, perfect order of things shall also be the order of things productive of the supreme state of happiness. From the point of view of the kingship it ought to be remembered that in the Orient the royal office had attached to it the regular belief and expectation that it existed for conferring blessedness upon the subjects of the realm. The thought of blessedness involved can be indiscriminately derived from the Fatherhood and from the Kingship of God; even the entire Kingdom can in this way be explained as a gift to the disciples from the divine Fatherhood [Lk. 12:32]. On account of the blessedness involved the Kingdom appears under the figure of a treasure or a precious pearl, in each case it being explicitly stated that the finder sold all he had in order to possess himself of the coveted object, which means, of course, that it was more precious than all other values combined.

The blessedness conferred by and with the Kingdom can be classified under the heads of a negative and of a positive blessedness. There are three principal ideas, that of salvation, that of sonship, and that of life. The idea of salvation is from the nature of the case both negative and positive, with the emphasis oscillating from the one side to the other. The idea of life is positive, and so is that of sonship.

KINGDOM AND CHURCH

The one subject remaining concerns the organization of the Kingdom into the form of the Church. The one clear case of development in our Lord's objective teaching on the Kingdom subject is to be found here. The two points on which the Caesarea-Philippi epoch shows an addition and an advancement are the providing of the Kingdom with an outward organism, and the endowment of it with a new dynamic of the Spirit. At all times there have been those who depreciated the Church in favour of the Kingdom. The reasons for such an attitude are varying. Sometimes 'anti-sectarianism' comes into play, and the ignoble sound of the word alone works havoc with verities of the gospel teaching. At other times it is pre-millenarianism, which desires to put off the Kingdom state to the ultimate temporal dispensation and consequently feels interested in keeping Kingdom and Church apart. On the other side undue identification of the Kingdom with the Church in every respect indiscriminately is insisted upon, as in Romanism where the Church visible draws under its power and jurisdiction every phase of life, such as science, art and others.

Sometimes theologians endeavour to make a distinction in this matter between the so-called visible and invisible Church, identifying the latter with the Kingdom, whilst excluding the former from it. And sometimes the exclusion goes farther, when to the Church only the character of a means to an end is conceded, whilst the Kingdom is regarded as the summum bonum and end in itself. The abovementioned motive of anti-sectarianism is apt to ally itself with such an attitude, for disrespect is more easily entertained and cultivated where means rather than ends are in view.

A close study of the pericope Matt. 16:18–20 will show what value, if any, is to be allowed to these varying positions. We notice, first, that the Church and the Kingdom of God do not appear here as separate institutions. The figure of which our Lord avails Himself for speaking of the Church and speaking of the Kingdom closely unites the two.

On Peter, confessing His Christhood and divine Sonship, He promises to build up the Church in the near future. This is the structure in building, vs. 18. In vs. 19, however, still using the same figure of building, He promises to Peter the keys of administration in this structure when completed. Undoubtedly then, the Church and the Kingdom are in principle one, and all such distinctions as are above enumerated break down before the simple logic of this unavoidable exegesis. So much is certain at least, that the Church is included in the Kingdom, and that it were foolish to seek to escape the reproach of the former in order to gain the imaginary distinction of the latter. And this does not merely render part of the Church Kingdom-territory, for example, the invisible Church; it will have to be extended likewise to the visible Church, for only with regard to that can 'keys' of administration and the functions of binding and loosing be spoken of.

It will be noticed that Jesus speaks of 'His Church'. The idea is not that hitherto no Church has existed. 'His Church' should be understood in contrast to the Old Testament Church organization which had now come to an end to make place for the Messiah's Church. This is the inner connection between the Church doctrine enunciated and the prediction of His suffering and death interwoven with it. In His rejection the Old Testament Church abrogated itself. The future is spoken of, because the new dynamic could not enter into the Church until after His exaltation.

This dynamic seems to be referred to in the statement about 'the gates of Hades' in vs. 18, at least on one interpretation of this figure, according to which Hades is depicted as a citadel from which a host of warriors stream forth, the corresponding picture to be supplied being that of the citadel of the Kingdom from which a power will issue overcoming the power of death. The underlying idea would be that Jesus through His resurrection will so fill His Church with unconquerable life, infusing it into her by the Spirit, that death will be wholly conquered by the Church [Rev. 1:18]. The other exegesis attaches itself to a proverbial use made of 'the gates of Hades' to

describe figuratively the strongest structure conceivable, since from these gates no one has ever succeeded in escaping. Applied to the Church the figure would then mean that she is the strongest structure in existence, and would be simply a pendant to the characterization of Peter as a rock. The former view is to be preferred in a context where so many novel and weighty ideas emerge.

Besides this description of the Church in the figure of a building there are other sayings of our Lord which are sometimes quoted to establish a close connection between the Church and the Kingdom. Jesus speaks in several statements, belonging to this closing period of His life on earth, not only of a coming of Himself, but also of a very near coming of the Kingdom. The language is such that it could be readily applied, both as to nearness and forcibleness, to the eschatological coming of the Kingdom. The implication would then have to be that He did not anticipate a protracted existence of the Church in this world, but looked forward both to His own coming and to that of the consummate Kingdom as shortly to supervene. This, of course, would carry with it His fallibility in regard to this central topic of the eschatological hope. On the other hand, there are several sayings, especially in the closing discourses of the Fourth Gospel, in which a corning of Himself in invisible form, intended for the disciples, is referred to in semi-eschatological language. If there could be such an anticipated coming of Himself, distinct evidently from the eschatological coming, which is by no means eliminated from the Fourth Gospel teaching, then there can be no objection on principle to applying this same idea to the Kingdom-Church.

In conclusion we should observe that the Matthew pericope, as little as any other New Testament passage, gives countenance to the idea of the Church as a mere instrument of propaganda or an institute of missions, or whatever goal to which she may stand in a vital relation. The Church is all these things in part, but no one can truthfully say that these objectives are exhaustive of the purpose of existence of the Church. The conception of a thing as a mere instrument for endlessly reiterated self-reproduction is a hopeless conception in itself, for why

should one exist to make others or an organism of others in perpetuation or extension of what exists at the present time, if this process is to have no fixed end? This whole view is a virtual denial of the eschatological setting of Biblical religion. The Church was born in and stands in the sign of consummation and rest as well as of motion. She consists not of mere doing, but likewise of fruition, and this fruition pertains not exclusively to the future; it is the most blessed part of the present life. And the best proof for the Church as an end in itself lies in the inclusion of the Church in the eschatological world, for that world is not the world of things aimed at, but of things attained unto.

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