Part 25
were also skilled in the use of the sling, and above
5. Darius I rebellions broke out, in most cases headed by real or pretended descendants of the ancient kings of each country. After at least 3 years' struggle Darius' authority was firmly established everywhere. He then divided the empire into satrapies, or provinces (dahyava), of which there were at first 23 (Beh. Inscription,
all in riding. Boys were taken from the women's into the men's part of the house at the age of 5, and were there trained in "riding, archery and speaking the truth" until 20 years old. In Darius' inscriptions, as well as in the Avesta, lying is regarded as a great crime.
(3) Marriage.—The Persians practised polygamy, and marriages between those ne.xt of kin were approved of. Pride and garrulity are mentioned as distinctive of the Pers character.
col. i, 13-17), and ultimately at least 29 (Naqsh i Rustam Inscription, 22-30). Over these he placed satraps of noble Pers or Median descent, instead of representatives of their ancient kings. His empire extended from the Indus to the Black Sea, from the Jaxartes to beyond the Nile.
///. History.—Pers history, as known to us, begins with Cyrus the Great. His ancestors, for at least some generations, seem to
1. Cyrus have been chiefs or "kings" of Anshan, a district in Persia or Elam. Cyrua himself (WAI, V, plate 35) gives his genealogy up to and including Teispes, entitling all his ancestors whom he mentions, kings of Anshan. Phraortes, king of the Medes, is said to have first subjugated the Persians to that kingdom about 97 years before Cyrus (Plerod. i.l02). Cyrus himself headed his countrymen's revolt against Astyages, who advanced to attack Pasargadae (549 BC). His army mutinied and surrendered him to Cyrus, whom the Greeks held to be his grandson on the mother's
side. Cyrus, becoming supreme ruler of both Medes and Persians, advanced to the conquest of Lydia. He defeated and captured Croesus, overran Lydia, and compelled the Greek colonies in Asia Minor to pay tribute (547 BC).
Tomb of Cyrus.
He overthrew the Sute (Bedawin) across the Tigris the following year, and was then invited by a
a large party in Babylonia to come to
Darius united the latter river witli the Red Sea by a canal, the partly obliterated inscription commemorating which may perhaps be thus restored and rendered; "I am a Persian; with Persia I seized Egypt. I commanded to dig thlscanal from the river named the Nile [Pirava], wliich flows through Egypt, to this sea which comes from Persia. Then this canal was dug. according as I commanded. And I said, 'Come ye from the Nile through this canal to Persia.' "
2. Capture their help against the usurper Nabuof Babylon nahid, whose religious zeal had led him to collect as many as possible of the idols from other parts of Babylonia and remove them to Babylon, thereby increasing the sacredness and magnificence of that city but inflicting injury on neighboring and more ancient sanctuaries. Defeating Nabunahid's army and capturing the king, Cyrus sent his own forces under Gobryas (Gubaru, Gaubaruva) to take possession of Baby-
6. Darius' Suez Canal
Darius' expedition into Scythia, his success in subduing the rebellion among the Asiatic Greeks, his attempts to conquer Greece itself and his overthrow at Marathon (499-490 BC) are part of the history of Greece. A rebellion in Egypt had not been repressed when Darius died in 485 BC.
lon. This he did in June, 538, "without opposition and without a battle." The citadel, however, where Belshazzar "the king's son" was in command, held out for some months, and was then taken in a night attack in which "the king's son" was slain. Cyrus made Gobiyas viceroy of Chaldaea, and he "appointed governors in Babylonia" (Cyrus' "Armalistic Tablet"). When Gobryas died within the year, Cyrus' son Cambyses was made viceroy
Xerxes I, who succeeded his father, regained Egypt, but his failure in his attempts to conquer
Greece largely exhausted his empire. 7. Xerxes I In 464 BC he was murdered. His son Artaxerxcs I, surnamed "the longarmed," succeeded him, being himself succeeded in 424 BC by his son Xerxes H, who was murdered
of the country, now become a provmce of the Pers empire. Cyrus rcslored the gods to their sanc-
2337 THE INTERNATIONAL STANDARD BIBLE ENCYCLOPAEDIA Persians Person
the following year. This ended the legitimate Achacmenian line, the next king, Darius 11 (stjded Nothos, or "bastard," as well
slratum, is rendered "person," "the express image of his person," i.e. of God, which RV renders "the very image of his substance," m "the impress of his substance," i.e. the manifestation or expression of the invisible God and Father. "Person" is also frequently supplied as the substantive imjilied in various adjs., etc, e.g. profane, perjured, vile. In the Apoc we have prosopon tr'' "person" (Jth 7 15, RV "face"; Ecclus 10 5, etc); the "accepting of persons" is condemned (Wisd 6 7; Ecclus 4 22.27; 7 6; 20 22, RV "by a foolish countenance"; 35 13; 42 1 ; "With him [God] is no respect of persons," Ecclus 35 12). RV has "soul" for "person" (Nu 5 6), "face" (.Ter 52 25), "man" (Mt 27 24); " reprobate " for " vile person" (Ps 15 4), ARV, ERVm"fool" (Isa 32 5.6): ARV "men of fal.sehood" for "vain persons" (Ps 26 4); lor "a wicked person," RV has "an evil thing" (Ps 101 4); "bacl£ to thee in his own person" (autnii, diflerent text) for "again thou therefore receive him" (Pliilem ver 12); "take away life" for "respect any person" (2 S 14 14); "with seven others" for "the eighth person" (2 Pet 2 5); "false swearers" for "perjured persons" (1 Tim 1 10); "seven thousand persons" for "of^ men seven thousand" (Rev 11 13).
8. Artaas Oehos), being one of Artaxerxes' xerxes I illegitimate sons (we pass over Sogdianus' brief reign). Artaxerxes 11, Mnemon, succeeded his father and left the throne to his son Artaxerxes III, Ochos. The latter was murdered with all his sons but the
9. Xerxes II youngest. Arses, by an Egyp eunuch Bagoas, probably in revenge for Artaxerxes' conduct in Egypt (338 BC). Arses was murdered by Bagoas 3 years later, when Darius III,
Codomannus, the son of Sisygambis, 10. Later daughter of Artaxerxes II, and her Persian husband, a Pers noble, ascended the Kings throne. Darius was completely overthrown by Alexander the Great in the battle of Gaugamela or Arbela, 331 BC, and shortly after fell by an assassin's hand. This ended the Pers empire of the Achaemenides, the whole of the lands composing it becoming part of the empire of Macedon.
IV. First Mention in Inscriptions.—Persia (Parsua) is first mentioned as a country in an inscription of Rammanu Nirari III (WAI, I, plate 35, no. 1,
Personality is that which constitutes and characterizes a person. The word "person" (Lat persona)
is .derived from the mask through which an actor spoke his part (persona). "From being applied to the mask, it came next to be applied to the actor, then to the character acted, then to any assumed character, then to anyone having any character or station"; lastly, it came to mean an individual, a feeling, thinking and acting being. For full personality there must be self-consciousness, with the capability of free thought and action—self-determination—hence we speak of personal character, personal action, etc. A person is thus a responsible being, while an animal is not. Personality is distinctive of man. The personality is the unit of the entire rational being, perhaps most clearly represented by "the will"; it is that which is deepest in .man, belonging, of course, not to the realm of space or the region of the visible, but existing as a spiritual reality in time, with a destiny beyond it.
1. 8), who boasts of having conquered it and other lands (he reigned from 812 to 783 or from 810 to 781 BC). Literature.—Besides the main authorities mentioned in the text, we learn much from Spiegel, Die Altpersischen Keilinschriften, Arrian, Thucydides, Polybius, Strabo, Curtius.
W. St. Clair Tisdall PERSIS, ptir'sis (Ilepo-Cs, Persis) : The name of a female member of the Christian community at Rome, to whom Paul sent greetings (Rom 16 12). Paul designates her "the beloved, who labored much in the Lord." The name is not found in inscriptions of the imperial household, but it occurs as the name of a freedwoman {CIL, VI, 23, 959).
PERSON, pi^'sun, pAr's'n, PERSONALITY, pHr-
sun-al'i-ti (ICDD, nephesh, TB^N, 'ish, D~S, 'adham,
it is the substance (hupostasis) of the being, that which underlies all its manifestations; hence the rendering "the express image of his person" in He
D''rS, pdnitn; irpoo-wirov, prdsopon, vTroa-Toa-ii, hupd-
etasis) : The most frequent word for "person" in the OT is nephesh, "soul" (Gen 14 21, "Give me the persons, and take the goods"; 36 6, AV "all the persons"; Nu 5 6, AV "that person," etc); 'ish,
1 3 AV. Hupostasis was employed by the early Gr Fathers to express what the Latins intended by persona; afterward prosopon was introduced.
Recent psychology has brought into prominence elements in the subconscious realm, the relation of which to the personality is obscure. There seems to be more in each individual than is normally expressed in the personal consciousness and action. The real, responsible personality, however, is something which is always being formed. The phenomenon of double personality is pathological, as truly the result of brain disease as is insanity.
"a, man," "an individual," is also used (Jgs 9 2, "threescore and ten persons" ; 1 S 16 18, "a comely person," etc); 'adham, "a man," "a human being" (Nu 31 28, "of the persons, and of the oxen"; Prov 6 12, "a worthless person," etc); 'Snosh, "a man," "a weak, mortal man," occurs twice (Jgs 9 4, AV "vain and light persons" ; Zeph 3 4); ba'al, "owner," "lord," is once tr"* "person" (Prov 24
8, AV "a mischievous person"), and mHhim, "men," once (Ps 26 4, AV "vain persons"); panim, "face,"
In the Bible man is throughout regarded as personal, although it was only gradually that the full importance of the individual as distinct from the nation was realized. The use of prosopon for "person" indicates also a more external conception of personality than the modern. With the Hebrews the nephesh was the seat of personality, e.g. "Thou wilt not leave my soul [nephesh] to Sheol" (Ps 16
is frequently tr"' "person" when the reference is to the external appearance, as of persons in high places,
rich persons who could favor or bribe, etc, chiefly
in the phrases "regarding the person," "accepting the person" (Dt 10 17; Mai 1 8). In the NT prosopon, "face," "countenance," stands in the same connection (Mt 22 16, "Thou regardest not the person of men"; Gal 2 6, "God accepteth not man's person"; Acts 10 34, "God
10); "Thou hast brought up my soul from Sheol" (Ps 30 3). God is also always regarded as personal (who has created man in His own image), and although the representations seem often anthropomorphic they are not really such. The Divine personality could only be conceived after the analogy of the human, as far as it could be definitely conceived at all; but God was regarded as transcending, not only the whole of Nature, but all that
is no respecter of persons" ; Rom 2 11, "there is no
respect of persons with God"; Eph 6 9; Col 3
25; Jas 2 1.9); in 2 Cor 1 11 we have "persons" (prosopon), absol. as in the later Gr, "the gift bestowed .... by many persons," the only occur-
rence in the NT; in 2 10 prosopon may stand for "presence," as RV "in the presence of Christy" but
it might mean "as representing Christ"; m He 1 d, AY hupostasis, "that which lies under," sub-
is human, e.g. "God is not a man, that he should lie"
(Nu 23 19; 1 S 15 29); "Canst thou by searching
Person of Christ THE INTERNATIONAL STANDARD BIBLE ENCYCLOPAEDIA 2338
at a single stage of its development, and therefore presents in its fundamental teaching a common
find out God?" (Job 11 7; Isa 40 28; cf Eccl 3 11; 8 17, etc). In the NT the personality of God is, on the warrant of Jesus Himself, conceived after the analogy of human fatherhood, yet as transcending
character. The whole of the NT was written within the limits of about half a century; or, if we except the writings of John, within the narrow bounds of a couple of decades; and the entire body
all our human conceptions: "How much more?"
(Mt 7 U); "Who hath known the mind of the Lord ? or who hath been his counsellor ?" (Rom 11
of writings which enter into it are so much of a piece that it may be plausibly represented that they all bear the stamp of a single mind. In its fundamental teaching, the NT lends itself, therefore, more
34). Man is body, soul and spirit, but God in Himself is Spirit, infinite, perfect, ethical Spirit (Mt 5 48; Jn 4 24). He is forever more than all that is created, "For of him, and through him, and unto him, are all things" (Rom 11 36). The human personality, being spiritual, survives bodily dissolution and in Christ becomes clothed again with a spiritual body (Phil 3 21; 1 Cor 15 44). W. L. Walker PERSON OF CHRIST: Method of the Article
readily to what is called dogmatic than to what is
called genetic treatment; and we shall penetrate most surely into its essential meaning if we take our
start from its clearest and fullest statements, and permit their light to be thrown upon its more incidental allusions. This is peculiarly the case with such a matter as the person of Christ, which is dealt with chiefly incidentally, as a thing already understood by all, and needing only to be alluded to rather than formally expounded. That we may
I. Tb.^ching of Paul 1. Phil 2 5-9
(1) General Drift of Passage (2) Our Lord's Intrinsic Deity (3) No Exinanition (4) Our Lord's Humanity 2. Other Pauline Passages
interpret these allusions aright, it is requisite that we should recover from the first the common conception which underlies them all.
/. The Teaching of Pau/.— (1) General drift of passage.—We begin, then, with the most didactic of
II. Teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews He 2 1 £f (1) Background of E.xpress Deitj'
the N'T writers, the apostle Paul, and
(2) Completeness of Humanity
1. Phil 2: with one of the passages in which he 5-9 most fully intimates his conception of the person of his Lord, Phil 2 5-9. Even here, however, Paul is not formally expounding the doctrine of the Person of Christ; he is only alluding to certain facts concerning His person and action perfectly well known to his readers, in order that he may give point to an adduction of Christ's example. He is exhorting his readers to unselfishness, such unselfishness as esteems others better than ourselves, and looks not only on our own things but also on those of others. Precisely this unselfishness, he declares, was exemplified by Our Lord. He did not look upon His own things but the things of others ; that is to say, He did not stand upon His rights, but was willing to forego all that He might justly have claimed for Himself for the good of others. For, says Paul, though, as we all know, in His intrinsic nature He was nothing other than God, yet He did not, as we all know right well, look greedily on His condition of equality with God, but made no account of Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and, being found in fashion as a man, humbled Himself, becoming obedient up to death itself, and that, the death of the cross. The statement is thrown into historical form; it tells the story of Christ's life on earth. But it presents His life on earth as a life in all its elements alien to His intrinsic nature, and assumed only in the performance of an unselfish purpose. On earth He lived as a man, and subjected Himself to the common lot of men. But He was not by nature a man, nor was He in His own nature subject to the fortunes of human life. By nature He was God; and He would have naturally lived as became God—'on an equahty with God.' He became man by a voluntary act, 'taking no account of Himself,' and, having become man, He voluntarily lived out His human life under the conditions which the fulfilment of His unselfish purpose imposed on Him.
(3) Continued Possession of Deity III. Teaching of Other Epistles IV. Teaching of John
1. The Epistles 2. Prologue to the Gospel (1) The Being "Who Was Incarnated
(2) The Incarnation
(3) The Incarnated Person 3. The Gospel V. Teaching of the Synoptic Gospels VI. Teaching of Jesus
1. 'The Johannine Jesus
(1) His Higlier Nature
(2) His Humiliation 2. The Synoptic Jesus
(1) His Deity
(a) Mk 13 32
(h) Other Passages: Son of Man and Son of God
(rt Mt 11 27; 28 19
(2) His Humanity
(3) Unity of the Person VII. The Two Natures Everywhere Presupposed VIII. Formulation of the Doctrine Literature
It is the purpose of this article to make as clear as possible the conception of the Person of Christ,
in the technical sense of that term, Method of which lies on—or, if we prefer to say the Article so, beneath—the pages of the NT. Were it its purpose to trace out the process by which this great mystery has been revealed to men, a beginning would need to be taken from the intimations as to the nature of the person of the Messiah in OT prophecy, and an attempt would require to be made to discriminate the exact contribution of each organ of revelation to our knowledge. And were there added to this a desire to ascertain the progress of the apprehension of this mystery by men, there would be demanded a further inquiry into the exact degree of understanding which was brought to the truth revealed at each stage of its revelation. The magnitudes with which such investigations deal, however, are very minute; and the profit to be derived from them is not, in a case like the present, very great. It is, of course, of importance to know how the person of the Messiah was represented in the predictions of the OT; and it is a matter at least of interest to note, for example, the difficulty experienced by Our Lord's immediate disciples in comprehending all that was involved in His manifestation. But, after
(2) Our Lord's intrinsic Deity.—The terms in which these great affirmations are made deserve the most careful attention. The language in which Our Lord's intrinsic Deity is expressed, for example, is probably as strong as any that could be devised. Paul does not say simply, "He was God." He says, "He was in the form of God," employing a turn of speech which throws emphasis upon Our Lord's possession of the specific quality of God. "Form" is a term which expresses the sum of those char-
all, the constitution of Our Lord's person is a matter of revelation, not of human thought; and it is preeminently a revelation of the NT, not of the OT. And the NT is all the product of a single movement.
2339 THE INTERNATIONAL STANDARD BIBLE ENCYCLOPAEDIA Person of Christ
acterizing qualities whicli make a thing the precise thing that it is. Thus, the "form" of a sword (in this case mostly matters of external configuration)
consciously ever exercising self-abnegation, living a
life which did not by nature belong to Him, which stood in fact in direct contradiction to the life which was naturally His. It is this underlying implication which determines the whole choice of the language in which Our Lord's earthly life is described. It is because it is kept in mind that He still was "in the form of God," that is, that He still had in possession
is all that makes a given piece of metal specifically a sword, rather than, say, a spade. And "the form of God" is the sum of the characteristics which make the being we call "God," specifically God, rather than some other being—an angel, say, or a man. When Our Lord is said to be in "the form of God," therefore, He is declared, in the most express manner possible, to be all that God is, to possess the whole fulness of attributes which make God God. Paul chooses this manner of expressing himself here instinctively, because, in adducing Our Lord as our example of self-abnegation, hia mind is naturally resting, not on the bare fact that He is God, but on the richness and fulness of His being as God. He was all this, yet He did not look on His own things but on those of others.
all that body of characterizing qualities by which God is made God, for example, that He is said to have been made, not man, but "in the likeness of man," to have been found, not man, but "in fashion as a man"; and that the wonder of His servanthood and obedience, the mark of servanthood, is thought of as so great. Though He was truly man. He was much more than man; and Paul would not have his readers imagine that He had become merely man. In other words, Paul does not teach that Our Lord was once God but had become instead man; he teaches that though He was God, He had become also man.
It should be carefully observed also that in making this great affirmation concerning Our Lord, Paul does not throw it distinctively into the past, as if he were describing a mode of being formerly Our Lord's, indeed, but no longer His because of the action by which He became our example of unselfishness. Our Lord, he says, "being," "existing," "subsisting" "in the form of God"—as it is variously rendered. The rendering proposed by RVm, "being originally," while right in substance, is somewhat misleading. The vb. employed means "strictly 'to be beforehand,' 'to be already' so and so" (Blass, Grammar of NT_ Greek, ET, 244), "to be there and ready," and intimates the existing circumstances, disposition of mind, or, as here, mode of subsistence in which the action to be described takes place. It contains no intimation, however, of the cessation of these circumstances or disposition, or mode of subsistence; and that, the
An impression that Paul means to imply, that in entering upon His earthly life Our Lord had laid aside His Deity, may be created by a very prevalent misinterpretation of the central clause of his statement—a misinterpretation unfortunately given currency by the rendering of ERV: "counted it not a prize to be on an equality with God, but emptied himself," varied without improvement in ARV to: "counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself." The former (negative) member of this clause means just: He did not look greedily upon His being on an equality with God; did not "set supreme store" by
it (see Lightfoot on the clause). The latter (posi-
tive) member of it, however, cannot mean in an-
tithesis to this, that He therefore "emptied himself," divested Himself of this. His being on an equality with God, much less that He "emptied himself," divested Himself of His Deity ("form of God") itself, of which His being on an equality with God is the manifested consequence. The vb. here rendered "emptied" is in constant use in a metaphorical sense
less in a case Kke the present, where it is cast in a tense (the imperfect) which in no way suggests that the mode of subsistence intimated came to an end
in the action described by the succeeding vb. (cf the li's, Lk 16 14.23; 23 50; Acts 2 30; 3 2; 2 Cor 8 17; 12 16; Gal 1 14). Paul is not telling us here, then, what Our Lord was once, but rather what He already was, or, better, what in His intrinsic nature He is ; he is not describing a past mode of existence of Our Lord, before the action he is adducing as an example took place—although the mode of existence he describes was Our Lord's mode of existence before this action—so much as painting in the background upon which the action adduced may be thrown up into prominence. He
(so only in the NT: Rom 4 14; 1 Cor 1 17; 9 15; 2 Cor 9 3) and cannot here be taken literally. This is already apparent from the definition of the manner in which the "emptying" is said to have been accomplished, supphed by the modal clause which is at once attached: by "taking the form of a servant." You cannot "empty" by "taking" adding. It is equally apparent, however, from the strength of the emphasis which, by its position, is thrown upon the "himself." We may speak of Our Lord as "emptying Himself" of something else, but
is telling us who and what He is who did these things for us, that we may appreciate how great the
scarcely, with this strength of emphasis, of His "emptying Himself" of something else. This emphatic "Himself," interposed between the_ preceding clause and the vb. rendered "emptied,"
things He did for us are.
(3) No exinanilion.—And here it is important
to observe that the whole of the action adduced is thrown up thus against this background—not only
builds a barrier over which we cannot climb backward in search of that of which Our Lord emptied Himself. The whole thought is necessarily contained in the two words, "emptied himself," in which the word "emptied" must therefore be taken
its negative description to the effect that Our Lord
(although all that God is) did not look greedily on His (consequent) being on an equality with God; but its positive description as well, introduced by the "but . . . ." and that in both of its elements, not merely that to the effect (ver 7) that 'he took no account of himself (rendered not badly by AV, He "made himself of no reputation"; but quite misleading by RV, He "emptied himself"), but
in a sense analogous to that which it bears in the other passages in the NT where it occurs.
Paul, in a word, says here nothing more than
that Our Lord, who did not look with greedy eyes upon His estate of equality with God, emptied
Himself, if the language may be pardoned, of Him-
equally that to the effect (ver 8) that "he humbled
self; that is to say, in precise accordance with the ex-
himself." It is the whole of what Our Lord is de-
hortation for the enhancement of which His example
scribed as doing in vs 6-8, that He is described as doing despite His "subsistence in the form of God." So far is Paul from intimating, therefore, that Our Lord laid aside His Deity in entering upon His lii:e on earth, that he rather asserts that He retained His Deity throughout His life on earth, and in the whole
is adduced, that He did not look on His own things. 'He made no account of Himself,' we may fau-ly
paraphrase the clause; and thus all question of what He emptied Himself of falls away. What Our Lord actually did, according to Paul, is ex-
pressed in the following clauses; those now before
course of His humiliation, up to death itself, was
Person of Christ THE INTERNATIONAL STANDARD BIBLE ENCYCLOPAEDIA 2340
(emphatic) poor—He who was (again an imper-
us express more the moral character of His act. He took "the form of a servant," and so was "made in the likeness of men." But His doing this showed that He did not set overweening store by His state of equaUty with God, and did not account Himself the sufficient object of all the efforts. He was not self-regarding: He had regard for others. Thus He becomes our supreme example of self-abnegating conduct. See also Kenosis.
fect participle, and therefore without suggestion of
the cessation of the condition described) rich—that we might by His (very emphatic) poverty be made
rich. Here the change in Our Lord's condition at
a point of time perfectly understood between the
writer and his readers is adverted to and assigned
to its motive, but no further definition is given of
the nature of either condition referred to. We are brought closer to the precise nature of the act by which the change was wrought by such a passage
(4) Our Lord's humanity.—The language in which the act by which Our Lord showed that He was self-abnegating is described, requires to be taken in
as Gal 4 4. We read that "When the fulness of the time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem thern that were under the law." The whole transaction is
its complete meaning. He took "the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men," says Paul. The term "form" here, of course, bears the same full meaning as in the preceding instance of
referred to the Father in fulfilment of His eternal plan of redemption, and it is described specifioally
its occurrence in the phrase "the form of God." It imparts the specific quality, the whole body of characteristics, by which a servant is made what we know as a servant. Our Lord assumed, then, according to Paul, not the mere state or condition or outward appearance of a servant, but the reality; He became an actual "servant" in the world. The act by which He did this is described as a "taking,"
as an incarnation: the Son of God is born of a woman—He who is in His own nature the Son of God, abiding with God, is sent forth from God in such a manner as to be born a human being, subject
to law. The primary implications are that this was not the beginning of His being; but that before
this He was neither a man nor subject to law. But there is no suggestion that on becoming man and subject to law. He ceased to be the Son of God or
or, as it has become customary from this description of it to phrase it, as an "assumption." What is meant is that Oin: Lord took up into His personality a human nature; and therefore it is immediately explained that He took the form of a servant by "being made in the likeness of men." That the apostle does not say, shortly, that He assumed a human nature, is due to the engagement of his mind with the contrast which he wishes to bring out forcibly for the enhancement of his appeal to Our Lord's example, between what Our Lord is by nature and what He was willing to become, not looking on His own things but also on the things of others. This contrast is, no doubt, embodied in the simple opposition of God and man ; it is much more pungently expressed in the qualificative terms, "form of God" and "form of a servant." The Lord of the world became a servant in the world; He whose right it was to rule took obedience as His
lost anj'thing intimated by that high designation. The uniqueness of His relation to God as His Son
is emphasized in a kindred passage (Rom 8 3) by the heightening of the designation to that of God's "own Son," and His distinction from other men is intimated in the same passage by the declaration that God sent Him, not in sinful flesh, but only "in the likeness of sinful flesh." The reality of Our Lord's flesh is not thrown into doubt by this turn of speech, but His freedom from the sin which is associated with flesh as it exists in lost humanity is asserted (cf 2 Cor 5 21). Though true man, therefore (1 Cor 15 21; Rom 5 21; Acts 17 31), He is not without differences from other men; and these differences do not concern merely the condition
(as sinful) in which men presently find themselves; but also their very origin : they are from below. He from above—'thefirst man is from the earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven' (1 Cor 15 47). This is His peculiarity: He was born of a woman like other men; yet He descended from heaven
life-characteristic. Naturally therefore Paul employs here a word of quality rather than a word of mere nature; and then defines his meaning in this word of quality by a further epexegetical clause. This further clause—"being made in the likeness of men"—does not throw doubt on the reality of the human nature that was assumed, in contradiction to the emphasis on its reality in the phrase "the form of a servant." It, along with the succeeding clause—"and being found in fashion as a man" owes its peculiar form, as has already been pointed out, to the vividness of the apostle's consciousness, that he is speaking of one who, though really man, possessing all that makes a man a man, is yet, at the same time, infinitely more than a man, no less than God Himself, in possession of all that makes God God. Christ Jesus is in his view, therefore (as in the view of his readers, for he is not instructing his readers here as to the nature of Christ's person, but reminding them of certain elements in it for the purposes of his exhortation), both God and man, God who has "assumed" man into personal union with Himself, and has in this His assumed manhood lived out a human life on earth.
(cf Eph 4 9; Jn 3 13). It is not meant, of course, that already in heaven He was a man; what is meant is that even though man He derives His origin in an exceptional sense from heaven. Paul describes what He was in heaven (but not alone in heaven)—that is to say before He was sent in the likeness of sinful flesh (though not alone before this) —in the great terms of "God's Son," "God's own Son," "the form of God," or yet again in words whose import cannot be mistaken, 'God over all' (Rom 9 5). In the last cited passage, together with its parallel earlier in the same ep. (Rom 1 3), the two sides or elements of Our Lord's person are brought into collocation after a fashion that can leave no doubt of Paul's conception of His twofold nature. In the earlier of these passages he tells us that Jesus Christ was born, indeed, of the seed of David according to the flesh, that is, so far as the human side of His being is concerned, but was powerfully nsarked out as the Son of God according to the Spu-it of Hohness, that is, with respect to His higher nature, by the resurrection of the dead, which in a true sense began in His own rising from the dead. In the later of them, he tells us that Chi'ist sprang indeed, as concerns the flesh, that is on the human side of His being, from Israel, but that, despite this earthly origin of His human nature. He yet is and abides (present participle) nothing less than the Supreme God, '^God over all [emphatic], blessed forever." Thus Paul teaches us that by His coming
The elements of Paul's conception of the person of Christ are brought before us in this suggestive
passage with unwonted fulness. But
2. Other they all receive endless illustration Pauline from his occasional allusions to them, Passages one or another, throughout his Epp. The leading motive of this passage, for example, reappears quite perfectly in 2 Cor 8 9, where we are exhorted to imitate the graciousness of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who became for our sakes
2341 THE INTERNATIONAL STANDARD BIBLE ENCYCLOPAEDIA Person of Christ
forth from God to be born of woman, Our Lord, assurning a human nature to Himself, has, while remaining the Supreme God, become also true and perfect man. Accordingly, in a context in which the resources of language are strained to the utmost to make the exaltation of Our Lord's being clear in which He is described as the image of the invisible God, whose being antedates all that is created, in whom, through whom and to whom all things have been created, and in whom they all subsist—we are told not only that (naturally) in Him all the fulness dwells (Col 1 19), but, with complete explication, that 'all the fulness of the Godhead dwells in him bodily' (Col 2 9); that is to say, the very Deity of God, that which makes God God, in all its completeness, has its permanent home in Our Lord, and that in a "bodily fashion," that is, it is in Him clothed with a body. He who looks upon Jesus Christ sees, no doubt, a body and a man; but as he sees the man clothed with the body, so he sees God Himself, in all the fulness of His Deity, clothed with the humanity. Jesus Christ is therefore God "manifested in the flesh" (1 Tim 3 16), and His appearance on earth is an "epiphany" (2 Tim 1 10), which is the technical term for manifestations on earth of a God. Though truly man. He is nevertheless also our "great God" (Tit 2 13).
first instance described is derived from the context. The establishment of His Divine majesty in ch 1 had taken the form of an exposition of His infinite exaltation above the angels, the highest of all creatures. His humiliation is described here therefore as being "made a little lower than the angels" (2 9). What is meant is simply that He became man ; the phraseology is derived from Ps 8 AV, from which had just been cited the declaration that God had made man (despite his insignificance) "but a little lower than the angels," thus crowning him with glory and honor. The adojition of the language of the psalm to describe Our Lord's humiliation has the secondary effect, accordingly, of greatly enlarging the reader's sense of the immensity of the humiliation of the Son of God in becoming man : He descended an infinite distance to reach man's highest conceivable exaltation. As, however, the primary purpose of the adoption of the language is merely to declare that the Son of God became man, so it is shortly afterward explained (2 14) as an entering into participation in the blood and flesh which are common to men: "Since then the children are sharers in flesh and blood, he also himself in like manner partook of the same." The voluntariness, the reality, the completeness of the assumption of humanity by the Son of God, are all here emphasized.
//. Teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews.— The conception of the person of Christ which under-
The proximate end of Our Lord's assumption of humanity is declared to be that He might die ; He was "made a little lower than the angels .... because of the suffering of death" (2 9) ; He took part in blood and flesh in order "that through death . . . ."
lies and finds expression in the Ep. to the He is indistinguishable from that which governs all the allusions to Our Lord in the Epp. of Paul. To the author of this ep. Our Lord is above all else the Son of God in the most eminent sense of that word; and it is the Divine dignity and majesty belonging to Him from His very nature which forms the fundamental feature of the image of Christ which stands before his mind. And yet it is this author who, perhaps above all others of the NT writers, empha-
(2 14). The Son of God aa such could not die; to Him belongs by nature an "indissoluble life" (7 16 m). If He was to die, therefore. He must take to Himself another nature to which the experience of death were not impossible (2 17). Of course it is not meant that death was desired by Him for its own sake. The purpose of our passage
sizes the truth of the humanity of Christ, and dwells with most particularity upon the elements of His human nature and experience.
is to save its Jewish readers from the offence of the death of Christ. What they are bidden to observe
(1) Background of express Deity.—^The great Christological passage wliich fills ch 2 of the Ep. to the He rivals in its richness and fulHe 2: Iff ness of detail, and its breadth of implication, that of Phil 2. It is thrown up against the background of the remarkable expo-
is, therefore, Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels because of the suffering of death, 'crowned with glory and honor, that by the grace of God the bitterness of death which he tasted might redound to the benefit of every man' (2 9), and the argument is immediately pressed home that
it was eminently suitable for God Almighty, in bringing manjr sons into glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect (as a Saviour) by means of suffering. The meaning is that it was only through suffering that these men, being sinners, could be brought into glory. And therefore in the plainer statement of ver 14 we read that Our Lord took part in flesh and blood in order "that through death he might bring to nought him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and might deliver all them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage"; and in the still plainer statement of ver 17 that the ultimate object of His assimilation to men was that He might "make propitiation for the sins of the people." It is for the salvation of sinners that Our Lord has come into the world; but, as that salvation can be wrought only by suffering and death, the proximate end of His assumption of humanity remains that He might
sition of the Divine dignity of the Son which occu-
pies ch 1 (notice the "therefore" of 2 1). There the Son had been declared to be "the effulgence of his
(God's) glory, and the very image of his substance," through whom the universe has been created and by the word of whose power all things are held in being; and His exaltation above the angels, by means of whom the Old Covenant had been inaugurated, is measured by the difference between the designations "ministering siiirits" proper to the one, and the Son of God, nay, God itself (1 8.9), proper to the other. The purpose of the succeeding statement is to enhance in the thought of the Jewish readers of the ep. the value of the salvation wrought by this Divine Saviour; by removing from their minds the offence they were in danger of taking at His lowly life and shameful death on earth. This
eartlily humiliation finds its abundant justification, we are told, in the greatness of the end which it sought and attained. By it Our Lord has, with His strong feet, broken out a pathway along which,
die; whatever is more than this gathers around
this.
in Him, sinful man may at length climb up to the high destiny which was promised him when it was declared he should have dominion over all creation. Jesus Christ stooped only to conquer, and He stooped to conquer not for Himself (for He was in His own person no less than God), but for us.
The completeness of Our Lord's assumption of humanity and of His identification of Himself with it receives strong emphasis in this passage. He tooli part in the flesh and blood which is the common heritage ot men, after the same fasliion that other men participate in it (2 14); and, having thus become a man among men. He shared with other men the ordinary circumstances and fortunes of hfo. "in all things" (2 17). The stress
(2) Completeness of humanity.—The language
is laid on trials, sufferings, death; but this is due to the actual course in which His life ran—and that it might
in which the humiliation of the Son of God is in the
Person of Christ THE INTERNATIONAL STANDARD BIBLE ENCYCLOPAEDIA 2342
run in which He became man—and is not exclusive of other liuman experiences. What is intended is that He became truly a man. and lived a truly human life, subject to all the experiences natural to a man in the particular circumstances in which He lived.
But it is not merely in this prologue, nor in the Gospel to which it forms a fitting introduction, that
these didactic statements are found. The full emphasis of John's witness to the twofold nature of the Lord is brought out, indeed, only by combining what he says in the Gospel and in the Epp. "In the Gospel," remarks Westcott (on Jn 20 31), "the evangelist shows step by step that the historical Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God (opposed to mere 'flesh') ; in the Ep. he reaffirms that the Christ, the Son of God, was true man (opposed to mere
(3) Continued possession of Deity.—It is not im-
plied, however, that during this human life—"the days of his flesh" (5 7)—He had ceased to be God, or to have at His disposal the attributes which belonged to Him as God. That is already excluded by the representations of ch 1. The glory of this dispensation consists precisely in the bringing of its revelations directly by the Divine Son rather than by mere prophets (1 1), and it was as the effulgence of God's glory and the express image of His substance, upholding the universe by the word of His power, that this Son made purification of sins (1 3). Indeed, we are expressly told that even in the days of the flesh, He continued still a Son (5 8), and that
'spirit'; 1 Jn 4 2)." What John is concerned to show throughout is that it was "the true God"
(1 Jn 5 20) who was "made flesh" (Jn 1 14); and that this 'only God' (Jn 1 18, RVm "God only begotten") has truly come "in ... . flesh" (1 Jn 4 2). In all the universe there is no other being of whom it can be said that He is God come in flesh
(cf 2 Jn ver 7, He that "cometh in the flesh," whose
it was precisely in this that the wonder lay: that though He was and remained (imperfect participle) a Son, He yet learned the obedience He had set Himself to (cf Phil 2 8) by the things which He suffered. Similarly, we are told not only that, though an Israelite of the tribe of Judah, He possessed "the power of an indissoluble life" (7 16 m), but, describing that higher nature which gave Him this power as an "eternal Spirit" (cf "spirit of holiness," Rom 1 4), that it was through this eternal Spirit that He could offer Himself without blemish unto God, a real and sufficing sacrifice, in contrast with the shadows of the Old Covenant
characteristic this is). And of all the marvels which have ever occurred in the marvelous history
of the universe, this is the greatest—that 'what was from the beginning' (1 Jn 2 13.14) has been heard and gazed upon, seen and handled by men
(1 Jn 1 1). From the point of view from which we now approach it, the prologue to the Gospel of John may
be said to fall into three parts. In the
2. Prologue first of these, the nature of the Being
to the who became incarnate in the person Gospel we know as Jesus Christ is described; in the second, the general nature of the act we call the incarnation; and in the third, the nature of the incarnated person. See Johannine Theology, III; John, Gospel of, IV, 1, (3), 2.
(9 14). Though a man, therefore, and truly man, sprung out of Judah (7 14), touched with the feeling of human infu-mities (4 15), and tempted like as we are. He was not altogether like other men. For one thing, He was "without sin" (4 15; 7 26), and, by this characteristic, He was, in every sense of the words, separated from sinners. Despite the completeness of His identification with men. He remained, therefore, even in the days of His flesh different from them and above them,
(1) The Being who was incarnated.—John here
calls the person who became incarnate by a name peculiar to himself in the NT—the "Logos" or "Word." According to the predicates which he here applies to Him, he can mean by the "Word" nothing else but God Himself, "considered in His creative, operative, self-revealing, and communicating character," the sum total of what is Divine
///. Teaching of Other Epistles.—It is only as we carry this conception of the person of Our Lord with us—the conception of Him as at once our Supreme Lord, to whom our adoration is due, and our fellow in the experiences of a human life—that unity is induced in the multiform aUusions to Him throughout, whether the Epp. of Paul or the Ep, to the He, or, indeed, the other epistolary literature of the NT, For in tills matter there is no difference between those and these. There are no doubt a few passages in these other letters in which a plurality of the elements of the person of Christ are brought together and given detailed mention. In 1 Pet 3 IS, for instance, the two constitutive elements of His person are spoken of in the contrast, familiar from Paul, of the "flesh
(C. F. Schmid). In three crisp sentences he declares at the outset His eternal subsistence. His eternal intercommunion 'with God, His eternal identity with God: 'In the beginning the Word was; and the Word was with God; and the Word was God' (Jn 1 1). "In the beginning," at that point of time when things first began to be (Gen 1
1), the Word already "was." He antedates the beginning of all things. And He not merely antedates them, but it is immediately added that He is Himself the creator of all that is: 'All things were made by him, and apart from him was not made one thing that hath been made' (1 3). Thus He is taken out of the category of creatures altogether. Accordingly, what is said of Him is not that He was the first of existences to come into being—that 'in the beginning He already had come into being' but that 'in the beginning, when things began to come into being. He already was.' It is express eternity of being that is asserted: "the imperfect tense of the original suggests in this relation, as far as human language can do so, the notion of absolute, supra-temporal existence" (Westcott). This, His eternal subsistence, was not, however, in isolation: "And the Word was with God." The language is pregnant. It is not merely coexistence ^vith God that is asserted, as of two beings standing side by side, united in a local relation, or even in a common conception. What is suggested is an active relation of intercourse. The distinct personality of the Word is therefore not obscurely intimated. From all eternity the Word has been with God as a fellow : He who in the very beginning already "was," "was" also in communion with God. Though lie
' and tlic "spirit." But ordinarily we meet only witli references to this or that element separately. Everywhere Our Lord is spoken of as having lived out His life as a man; but everywhere also He is spoken of with the supreme reverence which is duo to God alone, and the very name of God is not witiiheld from Him. In 1 Pet 1 11 His preexistence is taken for granted; in Jas 2 1 Ho is identified with the Shekinah, the manifested Jch—'our Lord Jesus Christ, the Glory'; in Jude ver 4 He is "our only Master [Despot] and Lord"; o\er and over again He is the Divine Lord who is Jeh (e.g, 1 Pet 2 3.13; 2 Pet 3 2.18); in 2 Pet 1 1, He is roundly called "our God and Saviour." There is nowhere formal inculcation of the entire doctrine of the person of Christ. But everywhere its elements, now one and now another, are presupposed as the common property of writer and readers. It is only in the Epp. of John that this easy and unstudied presupposition of them gives way to pointed insistence upon them.
IV. Teaching of John.—In the circumstances in which he wrote, John found it necessary to insist upon the elements of the person of
1. The Our Lord—His true Deity, His true Epistles humanity and the unity of His person —in a manner which is more didactic
in form than anything we find in the other writings of the NT. The great depository of his teaching on the subject is, of course, the prologue to his Gospel.
2343 THE INTERNATIONAL STANDARD BIBLE ENCYCLOPAEDIA Person of Christ
was thus in some sense a second along with God, He was nevertheless not a separate being from God:
Glory of God, the Shekinah, dwelt. The flesh of Our Lord became, on its assumption by the Word, the Temple of God on earth (cf Jn 2 19), and the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord. John
"And the Word was"—still the eternal "was" "God." In some sense distinguishable from God, He was in an equally true sense identical with God. There is but one eternal God; this eternal God, the Word is; in whatever sense we may distinguish Him from the God whom He is "with," He is yet not another than this God, but Himself is this God. The predicate "God" occupies the position of emphasis in this great declaration, and is so placed in the sentence as to be thrown up in sharp contrast with the phrase "with God," as if to prevent inadequate inferences as to the nature of the Word being drawn even momentarily from that phrase. John would have us realize that what the Word was in eternity was not merely God's coeternal fellow, but the eternal God's self.
tells us expressly that this glory was visible, that it was precisely what was appropriate to the Son of God as such. "And we beheld his glory," he says; not divined it, or inferred it, but perceived it. It was open to sight, and the actual object of observation. Jesus Christ was obviously more than man; He was obviously God. His actually observed glory, John tells \i.', further, was a "glory as of the only begotten from the Father." It was unique; nothing like it was ever seen in another. And its uniquene.ss consisted precisely in its consonance with what the unique Son of God, sent forth from the Father, would naturally have; men recognized and could not but recognize in Jesus Christ the unique Son of God. When this unique Son of God is further described as "full of grace and truth," the elements of His manifested glory are not to be supposed to be exhausted by this description
(2) The incarnation.—Now, John tells us that
it was this Word, eternal in His subsistence, God's eternal fellow, the eternal God's self, that, as "come in the flesh," was Jesus Christ (1 Jn 4 2). "And the Word became flesh" (Jn 1 14), he says. The terms he employs here are not terms of substance, but of personality. The meaning is not that the substance of God was transmuted into that substance which we call "flesh." "The Word" is a personal name of the eternal God; "flesh" is an appropriate designation of humanity in its entirety, with the implications of dependence and weakness. The meaning, then, is simply that He who had just been described as the eternal God became, by a voluntary act in time, a man. The exact nature of the act by which He "became" man lies outside the statement; it was matter of common knowledge between the writer and the reader. The language employed intimates merely that it was a definite act, and that it involved a change in the life-history of the eternal God, here designated "the Word." The whole emphasis falls on the nature of this change in His life-history. He became ^es/i. That
(cf 2 11). Certain items of it only are singled out
for particular mention. The visible glory of the incarnated Word was such a glory as the unique Son of God, sent forth from the Father, who was full of grace and truth, would naturally manifest.
"That nothing should be lacking to the declaration of the continuity of all that belongs to the Word as such into this new sphere of existence, and its full manifestation through the veil of His flesh, John adds at the close of his exposition the remarkable sentence: 'As for God, no one has even yet seen him; God only begotten, who is in the bosom of the Father—he hath declared him' (1 18 m). It is the incarnate Word which is here called 'only begotten God.' The absence of the article with this designation is doubtless due to its parallelism with the word "God" which stands at the head of the corresponding clause. The eff'ect of its absence is to throw up into emphasis the quality rather than the mere individuality of the person so designated. The adj. "only begotten" conveys the idea, not of derivation and subordination, but of uniqueness and consubstantiality : Jesus is all that God is, and He alone is this. Of this 'only begotten God' it is now declared that He "is"—not "was," the state
is to say, He entered upon a mode of existence in which the e.xperiences that belong to human beings would also be His. The dependence, the weakness, which constitute the very idea of flesh, in contrast with God, would now enter into His personal ex-
perience. And it is precisely because these are the connotations of the term "flesh" that John chooses that term here, instead of the more simply denota-
is not one which has been left behind at the incarna-
tion, but one which continues uninterrupted and unmodified—"into"—not merely "in"—"the bosom of the Father"—that is to say, He continues in the most intimate and complete communion with the Father. Though now incarnate, He is still "with God" in the full sense of the external relation intimated in 1 1. This being true, He has much more than seen God, and is fully able to "interpret" God to men. Though no one has ever yet seen God, yet he who has seen Jesus Christ, "God only begotten," has seen the Father (cf 14 9; 12 45). _ In this remarkable sentence there is asserted in the most direct manner the full Deity of the incarnate Word, and the continuity of His life as such in His incarnate life; thus He is fitted to be the absolute revelation of God to man.
tive term "man." What he means is merely that the eternal God became man. But he elects to say this in the language which throws best up to view what it is to become man. The contrast between the Word as the eternal God and the human nature which He assumed as flesh, is the hinge of the statement. Had the evangelist said (as he does in 1 Jn 4 2) that the Word 'came in flesh,'
it would have been the continuity through^ the change which would have been most emphasized. When he says rather that the Word became flesh, while the continuity of the personal subject is, of
course, intimated, it is the reality and the complete-
ness of the humanity assumed which is made most prominent.
(3) The incarnated person.—That in becoming flesh the Word did not cease to be what He was before
This condensed statement of the whole doctrine
of the incarnation is only the prologue to a his-
torical treatise. The historical treat-
entering upon this new sphere of experiences, the
3. The ise which it introduces, naturally, is Gospel written from the point of view of its prologue. Its object is to present Jesus Christ in His historical manifestation, as obviously the Son of God in flesh. "These are
evangelist does not leave, however, to mere sug-
gestion. The glory of the Word was so far from quenched, in his view, by His becoming flesh, that he
gives us at once to understand that it was rather as
"trailing clouds of glory" that He came.^ "And the Worcl became flesh," he says, and immediately adds
written," the Gospel testifies, "that ye may believe
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God" (20 31); that Jesus who came as a man (1 30) was thoroughly known in His human origin (7 27), con-
"and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory,
glory as of the only begotten from the Father), full
of grace and truth" (1 14). The language is colored by reminiscences from the Tabernacle, in which the
fessed Himself man (8 40), and died as a man dies
Person of Christ THE INTERNATIONAL STANDARD BIBLE ENCYCLOPAEDIA 2344
supposition, all their representations fall into their
(19 5), was, nevertheless, not only the Messiah, the Sent of God, the fulfiUer of all the Divme promises of redemption, but also the very Son of God, that God only begotten, who, abiding in the bosom of the Father, is His sole adequate interpreter. From the beginning of the Gospel onward, this purpose
places as elements in one consistent whole. Within the limits of their common presupposition, each Gospel has no doubt its own peculiarities in the dis-
tribution of its emphasis. Mark lays particular
stress on the Divine power of the man Jesus, aa evidence of His supernatural being; and on the
is pursued: Jesus is pictured as ever, while truly man, yet manifesting Himself as equally truly God, until the veil which covered the eyes of His followers was wholly lifted, and He is greeted as both Lord and God (20 28). But though it is the prime purpose of this Gospel to exhibit the Divinity of the man Jesus, no ofjscuration of His manhood is involved. It is the Deity of the man Jesus which is insisted on,
irresistible impression of a veritable Son of God, a Divine being walking the earth as a man, which He made upon all with whom He came into contact. Luke places his Gospel by the side of the Ep. to the He in the prominence it gives to the human development of the Divine being whose life on earth it ia depicting and to the range of temptation to which He was subjected. Matthew's Gospel is notable
but the true manhood of Jesus is as prominent in the representation as in any other portion of the NT. Nor is any effacement of the humiliation of His earthly life involved. For the Son of man to come from heaven was a descent (3 13), and the mission which He came to fulfil was a mission of contest and conflict, of suffering and death. He brought His glory with Him (1 14), but the glory that was His on earth (17 22) was not all the glory which He had had with the Father before the world was, and to which, after His work was done. He should return (17 5). Here too the glory of the celestial is one and the glory of the terrestrial is another. In any event, John has no difficulty in presenting the life of Our Lord on earth as the life of God in flesh, and in insisting at once on the glory that belongs to Him as God and on the humiliation which is brought to Him by the flesh. It is distinctly a duplex life which he ascribes to Christ, and he attributes to Him without embarrassment all the powers and modes of activity appropriate on the one hand to Deity and on the other to sinless
chiefly for the heights of the Divine self-consciousness which it uncovers in its report of the words of Him whom it represents as nevertheless the Son of David, the Son of Abraham; heights of Divine
self-consciousness which fall in nothing short of those attained in the great utterances preserved for us by John. But amid whatever variety there may
exist in the aspects on which each lays his particular emphasis, it is the same Jesus Christ which all three bring before us, a Jesus Christ who is at once God and man and one individual person. If that be not recognized, the whole narrative of the Synoptic Gospels is thrown into confusion; their portrait of Christ becomes an insoluble puzzle; and the mass of details which they present of His life-experiences is transmuted into a mere set of crass contradictions. See also Gospels, The Synoptic.
VI. Teaching of Jesus.—The Gospel narratives not only present us, however, with dramatizations
of the God-man, according to their
1. The authors' conception of His composite Johaimiiie person. They preserve for us also a Jesus considerable body of the utterances of Jesus Himself, and this enables us to observe the conception of His person which underlay and found expression in Our Lord's own teaching. The discourses of Our Lord which have been selected for record by John have been chosen (among other reasons) expressly for the reason that they bear witness to His essential Deity. They are accordingly peculiarly rich in material for forming a judgment of Our Lord's conception of His higher nature. This conception, it is needless to say, is precisely that which John, taught by it, has announced in the prologue to his Gospel, and has illustrated by his Gospel itself, compacted as it is of these discourses. It will not be necessary to present the evidence for this in its fulness. It will be enough to point to a few characteristic passages, in which Our Lord's conception of His higher nature finds esp. clear expression.
(Jn 8 46; cf 14 30; 1 Jn 3 5) human nature. In a true sense his portrait of Our Lord is a dramatization of the God-man which he presents to our contemplation in his prologue.
V, Teaching of the Synoptic Gospels.—The same may be said of the other Gospels. They are all dramatizations of the God-man set forth in thetical exposition in the prologue to John's Gospel. The Gospel of Luke, written by a known companion of Paul, gives us in a living narrative the same Jesus who is presupposed in all Paul's allusions to Him. That of Mark, who was also a companion of Paul, as also of Peter, is, as truly as the Gospel of John
itself, a presentation of facts in the life of Jesus with a view to making it plain that this was the life of no mere man, human as it was, but of the Son of God Himself. Matthew's Gospel differs from its fellows mainly in the greater richness of Jesus' own testimony to His Deity which it records. What is characteristic of all three is the inextricable interlacing in their narratives of the human and Divine
(1) His higher nature.—That He was of higher than earthly origin and nature. He repeatedly asserts. "Ye are from beneath,' he says to the Jews (8 23), "I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world" (cf 17 16). Therefore, He taught that He, the Son of Man, had "descended out of heaven" (3 13), where was His true abode. This carried with it, of course, an assertion of preexistence; and this preexistence is explicitly affirmed: "What then," He asks, "if ye should behold the Son of man ascending where he was before ?"
traits which alike marked the life they are depicting.
It is possible, by neglecting one series of their representations and attending only to the other, to sift out from them at will the portrait of either a purely Divine or a purely human Jesus. It is impossible to derive from them the portrait of any other than a Divine-human Jesus if we surrender ourselves to their guidance and take off of their pages the portrait they have endeavored to draw. As in their narratives they cursorily suggest now the fulness of His Deity and now the completeness of His humanity and everywhere the unity of His person, they present as real and as forcible a testimony to the constitution of Our Lord's person as uniting in one personal life a truly Divine and a truly human nature, as if they announced this fact
(6 62). It is not merely preexistence, however, but eternal preexistence which He claims for Himself: "And now, Father," He prays (17 5), "glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was" (cf ver 24); and again, as the most impressive language possible, He declares (8 58 AV): "Verily, verily, I say unto you. Before Abraham was, I am," where He claims for Himself the timeless present of eternity as His mode of existence. In the former of these two last-
in analytical statement. Only on the assumption
of this conception of Our Lord's person as underlying and determining their presentation, can unity be given to their representations; while, on this
2345 THE INTERNATIONAL STANDARD BIBLE ENCYCLOPAEDIA Person of Christ
(1) His Deity.— ia) Mk 13 32: The same is true of His self-consciousness as revealed in His sayings recorded by the eynoptists.
cited passages, the character of His preexistent life
is intimated; in it He shared the Father's glory from all eternity ("before the world was"); He stood by the Father's side as a companion in His glory. He came forth, when He descended to earth, therefore, not from heaven only, but from the very side of God (8 42; 17 8). Even this, however, does not express the whole truth; He came forth not only from the Father's side where He had shared in the Father's glory; He came forth out of the Father's very being— "I came out from the Father, and am come into the world" (16 28; of 8 42). "The connection described is inherent and essential, and not that of presence or external fellowship" (Westcott). This prepares us for the great assertion: "I and the Father are one" (10 30), from which it is a mere corollary that "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father" (14 9; cf 8 19; 12 45).
2. The Perhaps no more striking illustration Synoptic of this could be adduced than the Jesus remarkable declaration recorded in Mk 13 32 (cf Mt 24 36) : 'But of that day or that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, nor yet the Son, but the Father.' Here Jesus places Himself, in an ascending scale of being, above "the angels in heaven," that is to say, the highest of all creatures, significantly marked here as supramundane. Accordingly, He presents Him-