29. Holdsworth. The Christ of the Gospels
41st Fernley Lecture. By the Rev. W. W. Holdsworth, M.A.
London: Charles H. Kelly. 1911. 1 r. Holdsworth's Fernley Lecture makes a book of excellent quality.
M If we cannot quite say that it brings a contribution to our knowledge of the great subject with which it deals, we must at least find it a thoughtful and readable discussion of this great subject in the light, and to some extent under the dominance, of modern views. Its subject is "The Christ of the Gospels." But this subject is construed somewhat broadly.
Mr. Holdsworth himself outlines the task he undertakes as follows (p. 18):
"We are not concerned here with the efforts of the Church, nor with the degree of success it attained. Our investigation is with the Records upon which the Church has been built up. What is the doctrine of the Person of our Lord which is given to us in the New Testament? How did it come to find a place in those writings? The double question calls for at least an outline statement from the writings as a whole, and then for some measure
of historical criticism of the Four Gospels. When we have thus considered the Records, it may be possible to build up from the writings such a statement of our Lord's Person as will present Him once again to His
Church as the one true object of her adoration; the God-Man, in fellowship with whom a man may find the very fullness of his life."
We perceive that Mr. Holdsworth has a constructive purpose in view; his object is to reach a new statement of the doctrine of the Person of Christ which will "once again" present Him acceptably to the Church's adoration. The phraseology suggests that he feels dissatisfied with the statements of this doctrine with which the Church has hitherto been compelled to content itself, as well as that he recognizes that in discarding them the Church has fallen away also from its proper attitude to its divine
Lord; he hopes by a restatement to help the Church to recover its lost ground. The method by which he hopes to attain this object is a critical reexamination of the Evangelical records; thus he expects to obtain a basis for interpretation which will yield a truer view of the Person of the Lord than either the new or old views which have hitherto been prevalent. He quite properly, however, supposes that this new interpretation can be most hopefully made in the light of a general view of the teaching as to our
Lord's Person of the New Testament as a whole. Accordingly, after a short Introduction, he begins with a rapid survey of "The Christology of the New Testament," which is very well done indeed, and shows a true historical sense, a clear expository talent, and a thoughtful mind. From this he passes to a somewhat lengthy discussion of what he calls "The Gospel
Record," that is, to a critical investigation of the origin and historical character of our Gospels. Here he does not appear to us to move with such sure step, and seems to speak more as a reporter of the views of others adopted by himself with scarcely sufficient basis of individual consideration. Finally, in four chapters entitled respectively "The Synoptic
Jesus," "The Johannine Christ," "The Higher Synthesis—Jesus Christ," and "The Gospel Message" he presents his constructive view of the Christ of the Gospels, and offers it as the solution of the difficulties created by modern conditions and as a new point of crystallization for the Church's adoration of its Lord. Along with much that is strikingly said and winningly argued here, we cannot help thinking that Mr. Holdsworth is least successful in this part of his task. The conception he offers us of "the God-Man" is vague, and in danger of running off into a subjectivity which affords little support to faith.
Precisely what the view of Christ's Person which Mr. Holdsworth would commend to us is, remains a little difficult to determine. He is constant in his affirmation of the true deity of Christ. And he does not always shun the language of the Chalcedonian Christology. He can speak of "incarnation" (p. 222) as if he were using the term in its historical sense; and indeed of the "incarnation" meaning "the union of two natures, human and divine" (p. 41). He can even employ the precise Chalcedonian affirmation and declare that it is the teaching of the Gospels and the sole firm foundation for faith. "If our faith is to have a sufficient objective we want exactly what is offered us in the Gospels—a true humanity and a complete divinity united in one Person" (p. 237). Yet he can speak of this same doctrine as creating "a fatal dualism" in our Lord's Person (p. 211), and as "representing our Lord as governed by two distinct personalities which, if they do not conflict, at any rate alternate" (p. 138). He declares that "no explanation yet offered as to how perfect God and perfect man could attain to a unity of consciousness in one Person can be considered sufficient" (p. 210). Nothing but a "complete fusion" of the two natures would satisfy him: "It is possible that the Christian Church will never be able to frame a definition that will perfectly express the complete fusion of two natures, one human and one divine" (p. 194). Accordingly he can write
such a passage as the following (p. 132): "We may even accept without fear of loss or compromise in that which has interpreted us to ourselves, and filled us with living hope, that to our Lord Himself the consciousness of a true humanity, simple and undivided, preceded the recognition within Himself of Deity. Nothing but confusion and vagueness of thought awaits us if we allow ourselves to think that the God He was came before His consciousness from the earliest days. The puerilities of the Apocryphal
Gospels are a sufficient warning to us of the penalties which the Church will pay if any attempt be made to confuse or divide the complete
Personality of our Lord by positing in Him a clear sense of inherent Deity from the first. We do not gain, but lose, when we thus divide the Person of Jesus." This is surely a remarkable passage from any point of view: among the others, however, not least from a logical point of view. The assertion is distinct that our Lord was both God and man: the implication is express that in later life He was fully conscious of being both God and man: we are warned, nevertheless, not to suppose that he could have possessed this consciousness of being both man and God in early life: the reason assigned is that this would be to "divide the Person of Jesus." Why, meanwhile, it should "confuse or divide the complete Personality of our Lord" to "posit in Him a clear sense of inherent Deity" "at the first," any more than at the last, remains dark. Light begins to dawn only when we begin to suspect that Mr. Holdsworth does not intend his Chalcedonian language in a Chalcedonian sense. When he speaks of "the union of two natures, human and divine" in Christ, he does not seem to mean that these two natures are two distinct natures; he seems to mean that they are just one nature, which is both human and divine. He does not seem to mean that Christ has a human nature and a divine nature; he seems to mean that Christ has a nature which is both human and divine. And what he seems to mean in the passage before us is that this single nature, in reality as divine as it was
human,—or divine because it was human—as it could not be perceived by others, so could not perceive itself, to be divine until it had reached its perfection of development. Perhaps it is even implied that it is not divine except in its perfect development. It is our Lord's perfect humanity that is
His deity.
Let us hope we are misreading Mr. Holdsworth's meaning. There are passages which would lend some color to such a hope. He speaks, as we have seen, of "two natures" in Christ, and of their "union" to form "one
Personality." We read (p. 41): "It is evident from such passages as we have been considering that to St. Paul the Incarnation meant the union of two natures, human and divine" (cf. p. 29). We read again (p. 47): "No candid critic of such writings can deny that the faith of the first disciples gathers around one who was to them both perfectly human and perfectly divine."
And yet again (p. 48): "For them the human and the divine had made one Personality, unique and consummate." There are other passages which might easily fall in with these, as when we read that (italics his) "it was through His humanity that His first disciples learned to discover in Him a divinity before which they bowed in worship" (p. 131), that "the Synoptic writers, in delineating the humanity of our Lord, lead up to His divinity"
(p. 164), and even that "the humanity they had depicted made an interpretation in terms of divinity inevitable" (p. 165)—though we begin to wonder why any humanity can demand interpretation in "terms of divinity," and this wonder is increased when we read in similar language that "when we find in Him a perfect humanity we are close upon the Deity which transfigures, indeed, but never destroys it" (p. 133), which appears to imply that a perfect humanity approaches divinity. And our hope is quite dashed when we read plainly that "perfect manhood" "stamps Him as divine" (p. 141), and that "a manhood so complete" as His can be
"accounted for only in terms of Deity" (p. 157). In such expressions the
separating lines that divide humanity and deity seem quite washed out and the underlying conception seems to be that to be complete and perfect man is to be God. And therefore it is, doubtless, that instead of speaking of our
Lord's divine-human Person Mr. Holdsworth prefers to reverse the terms and to speak of His "human-divine Person" (p. 215). We regretfully conclude therefore that there is floating before his mind a conception which enables him to speak of our Lord as divine as well as human, because
He is perfectly and completely human. We gladly confess, however, that this conception seems to remain somewhat vague to him and that his recognition of the true deity of our Lord is far more significant of his attitude to Him than the explanation which he seems to suggest of how it is that He can be God as well as man. It is not reassuring, nevertheless, to see him appeal in the end with sympathy to the modes of representation of Wilhelm Herrmann and Albrecht Ritschl.
The lack of clearness in the presentation of his conception of the Person of Christ attends also occasionally Mr. Holdsworth's less important statements. On pp. 30–31, for instance, he cites Rom. 9:5 in this somewhat odd and misleading paraphrase: "As concerning the flesh He is of the patriarchs, but in Himself He is God blessed for ever"—precisely what he means to convey by which it somewhat puzzles us to determine. He adds immediately: "There is good reason for believing that in one passage (Col.
2:3) the true reading directly gives to Christ the name 'God,' but even if we do not press the reading of the Vatican MS. in this passage," etc. From the context, we suppose that Rom. 9:5 is cited as "directly giving to Christ the name God"—as it well might be. The succeeding words therefore are very confusing to the reader, and not less so that it does not appear that the name "God" is directly given to Christ in Col. 2:2, and especially not in the reading of B, where χριστοῦ seems to stand in apposition to τοῦ μυστηρίου τοῦ θεοῦ and not to τοῦ θεοῦ alone. Again, after reading on p. 154 that "the
language used" in Matt. 11:25–30 "indicates the preëxistence of the Messiah" (why, by the way, "the Messiah" here?), with a supporting footnote from Dr. W. C. Allen's "Commentary on St. Matthew," it is rather confusing to read on p. 164 that the Synoptics know nothing of the preëxistence of Christ, and this is introduced only by John in his account of Christ's self-testimony. Of course every time the Synoptics represent Christ as calling Himself "the Son of Man" they record an implication of a claim to preëxistence, and the implication of preëxistence is not easily excluded from His recorded representations of His earthly life as a mission to which He has come forth (Mark 1:38) or upon which He has been sent (Luke
4:43). We cannot think, either, that the suggestion that there was no recognition of our Lord's divinity among the disciples until after His resurrection (p. 49; we are stating the point more strongly than Mr.
Holdsworth does) is quite consistent with the general representation in the volume with regard to our Lord's claims and His disciples' apprehension of them. It was not merely "in the light of Easter Day and of Pentecost" that His followers "knew that 'this Jesus' was 'the very God' " (p. 48). What could His disciples have understood Him to mean by the great declaration of Matt. 11:25–30, which Mr. Holdsworth understands to involve a distinctly divine claim, and also asserts not to stand as a "rock in the sky" in the Synoptic Gospels (pp. 152 f.)? What meaning could they attach to such a declaration as that of Mark. 13:32? What was floating before Peter's mind when he made his "great confession" (Matt. 16:16) with its double designation of his Master as not only "the Christ," but "the Son of the living God"—even though we may agree that in its full reach it "was scarcely understood even by the man who made it" (p. 132)? What meaning did His followers attach to His response to the solemn adjuration of the High Priest (Matt. 26:63–64)? We do not ask here what meaning they could attach to the culminating enunciation of essential deity by our
Lord recorded in Matt. 28:19, because that was spoken after His resurrection and may take its place therefore side by side with Thomas' high ascriptions in John 20:28—and for another reason also, to which we shall immediately advert.
This is the unhappy readiness which Mr. Holdsworth occasionally exhibits to throw doubt on the trustworthiness of the records in their reports of our Lord's sayings. This is of course incidental to his critical position over against the Evangelical documents, which, as we have already hinted, seems to us artificial and secondary. He does not hesitate to argue for the relative priority of one account as over against another on grounds which posit the modification of the language attributed to Jesus in accordance with the changing beliefs of His reporters (p. 61). The small place which such argumentation takes in his pages in comparison with what we have grown accustomed to in writers of less conservative instincts, does not affect the principle on which alone it can rest. Thus he is not at all averse to supposing that there is "a considerable element of subjectivity" to be found in our Lord's discourses as reported by John, which, though given
"in the vivid form of direct speech," yet present us the Master's teaching only as "enlarged and interpreted by the recording apostle" (p. 121). This same "subjectivity" he carries also into the Synoptic reports. Thus, in particular (p. 122): "It has often been pointed out that the words of the great commission (Matt. 28:19) do not read like that which we have been accustomed to find given as sayings of Jesus in the earlier Gospels. The baptismal formula is more like an expansion made when baptism was more of a sacrament than it was in the days of Jesus, and when the Doctrine of the Trinity was seen to be an inevitable deduction from our Lord's teaching of His own relation to the Father. That there was an underlying 'saying' of Jesus thus amplified few will wish to deny, and as the words appear in the earliest MSS. and versions without any suggestion of hesitation, they
cannot be considered an interpolation from later times. It appears, however, in the form of a divinely directed expansion of some simpler phrase. The gift of the Spirit at Pentecost had thrown a flood of light upon the Person of our Lord and upon His relation to the Father, and in that light the injunction of our Lord was interpreted. The great commission is not less authoritative because it contains an interpretation of a command which was probably simpler in expression though equally profound in meaning." Such criticism is essentially frivolous. Jesus could not have said what is here put into His mouth; for what is here put into His mouth belongs to the ecclesiastical usages and the doctrinal formulation of a later time. But He doubtless said something of importance (if only we had it!); and we may accept even the injunctions of a later time as "authoritative."
Meanwhile there is no reason in the world for transferring what Matthew ascribes to Jesus to the later community, except unwillingness on the part of the critic to believe that Jesus could have established "the sacrament of baptism" and could have announced that doctrine of the Trinity which all men afterwards (but not Jesus) could see "to be an inevitable deduction from our Lord's teaching of His own relation to the Father." In a word, the critic's ungrounded theory of the development of doctrine in the first years of Christianity—a theory which denies to our Lord the capacity to draw
"inevitable deductions" from His own claims—becomes a Procrustean bed on which he measures the trustworthiness of all documentary evidence; and that is as much as to say that he imposes his hypothetical construction on the records instead of drawing his constructions from the records. From which we may perceive that whatever we may say of the subjectivity of Matthew's account of our Lord's saying, we cannot deny the intense subjectivity of Mr. Holdsworth's interpretation of Matthew's account.
Mr. Holdsworth's general critical attitude is that of the present dominant school of Gospel-criticism, set forth, however, in as genial and
reverent a tone as it admits of. We suppose very few will go with him in the hearty acceptance he accords to Dr. Arthur Wright's highly artificial hypothesis of successive editions of Mark as the true account of the phenomena of the Synoptic tradition. There are also, of course, other individualisms in his treatment of the critical problem. But these are unimportant. What he gives is in general merely a very clear exposition of current views, supported after the usual fashion. Though he knows and praises Dr. Lightfoot's "admirable discussion of the word logia," he can still tell us that when Papias says that "Matthew composed his logia in the Hebrew tongue, and each man interpreted these as he was able," he
"evidently means that St. Matthew collected and arranged a considerable number of the sayings of Christ which were floating about the Christian
Church" (p. 75). He can still tell us also "that there can be no doubt that the earlier use of the word [ιολόγν] was in the sense of what we know as an 'oracle,' that is, a short condensed utterance" (p. 77). Is a "short condensed utterance" what we know as an "oracle"? Or is an "oracle," with us, not rather, a sacred, an authoritative utterance? In any event the latter is what λόγιον was to the Greeks. The word is not (in usage at least) a diminutive, and it has no implication of brevity. Its implication is that of divinity. And Papias' statement does not represent Matthew as "collecting sayings of Christ" but as "composing his Scriptures." Mr. Holdsworth, even in the company of the great host of New Testament scholars who do the same, should not confound λόγια with λόγοι. The simplicity with which he does so may be perceived by comparing the footnote on p. 74 with the text. In passing we may call attention to what seems to us a remarkable sentence on p. 58: "But the appearance of logia preserved upon pieces of papyrus shows that there were documents at a very much earlier stage of Church history than is indicated by the more ordered collections which we have in the first
Gospel." We pass the employment of the term "logia" to denote the
"sayings" of Christ found on certain fragments of papyrus: it was the term adopted by Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt and though unfortunately adopted and misleading in its use, yet finds some justification in the authoritative manner in which these "sayings" are put forward. But do any of these scraps of papyrus antedate ("very much earlier") a.d. 70, before which Matthew was written, or that earlier date at which the "Discourses" used by Matthew were put together? Is there any reason to imagine that the collection of "sayings" which they draw upon, antedates the "Discoursesource" which Matthew draws upon and which must have been put together within the first decade or so after the Crucifixion?
We must not give the impression that Mr. Holdsworth's book is compact of errors. On the contrary it is a very unusually good book of its kind; so good—so reverent and so generally "positive" in its point of view
—that it is worth while pointing out in what respect it fails to sustain its high level. It will be read with pleasure by everyone who will enjoy a generally sound and telling presentation of the evidence of the deity of our
Lord, derived from the records. And there are scattered through it remarks of unwonted insight and helpfulness. We esteem one of these the suggestion (p. 42) of the source from which Luke may have obtained the speeches of Peter which he incorporates in the early chapters of Acts. Why not from Mark? Mark was a companion of Peter's, and also of Paul's, where
Luke must have come into contact with him. And those who think that Mark's Gospel underlies Luke's (we are not of that number) can scarcely refuse to allow that Mark's reports may also underlie what Luke gives us of Peter's speeches. The whole treatment of the Christology of Peter's speeches (pp. 42 ff.) is suggestive. We shall give ourselves the pleasure, however, of referring to only a couple of passages which show the delicacy and precision with which Mr. Holdsworth is able to deal with burning questions in modern church life. There is, for instance, the question of
"social betterment." Could anything more neatly hit off the truth than this? "The reproach has been flung at the Church that sometimes 'the modern priest is more concerned for the unemployed than for the unrepentant.' That the gospel of Jesus Christ contains a definite social reference and prospect few will wish to deny. In accepting and using the language of Jewish eschatology our Lord shows that He, too, has a social and political promise for the world. But the material good is always a secondary product of the kingdom" (p. 245, italics ours). The world is to be bettered through its conversion—otherwise not: the preaching of the gospel is therefore the prime instrument of social betterment. Then there is the question of "church union." "We are justified, then, in seeking the unity which all desire, not along the lines of organic unity, nor in any system of Church orders, however revered they may have become, and however charged they may be with historic association, but wherever the presence of its one Lord is realized. Where two or three are gathered together in His name, there He is in the midst; and it is impossible for any one, unless blinded with prejudice, to deny that it is the presence of the Christ that makes the Church" (p. 249). These, too, are golden words, and a golden day will dawn for the churches when their leaders cease to seek unity in anything else than "in Christ." There are few names in which more crimes against the Church of Christ have been committed, and are being still committed in our day—not least on mission ground—than the name of "unity." A show of organized strength in the face of the world is everywhere being made to take the place of the only real strength, which comes out of loyalty to Christ and His Word. Everywhere men are busy building a big house over a divided family and reck nothing of that divided heart which can prosper in nothing.
1. 1 The Princeton Theological Review, x. 1912, pp. 481–488.