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THE HISTORICAL JESUS AND THE 
 THEOLOGICAL CHRIST 
 
The 
 
 Historical Jesus 
 
 and the 
 
 Theological Christ 
 
 BY 
 
 J. ESTLIN CARPENTER 
 
 M.A., D.LITT.,''d.D., D.THEOL. 
 Principal of Manchester College, Oxford 
 
 London 
 
 PHILIP GREEN, 5 ESSEX STREET, STRAND, W.G. 
 
 1911 
 

 First Edition, June, 191 1 
 
 IN MEMORIAM 
 
 PRINTED BY ELSOM AND CO., MARKET PLACE, HULL 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The Addresses which are reproduced with some 
 expansions in this Httle book, were intended to give 
 to those unacquainted with the details of historical 
 study some insight into the results of modern investiga- 
 tion in the Gospel-field, and some knowledge of the 
 process by which the ecclesiastical conception of the 
 person of Jesus Christ was slowly formed. In such 
 brief surveys much was necessarily left unsaid, and 
 the relation of Jesus to our religious experience did 
 not fall within the lecturer's scope. 
 
 If any reader should desire a fuUer view of Jesus 
 and his teaching as presented in the earliest records, 
 he wiU find the Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels 
 by Mr. C. G. Montefiore of great service : while from 
 the philosophical side a lofty and penetrating estimate 
 is contained in the Problems oj Human Lije by Prof. 
 Rudolf Eucken. 
 
 My sincerest thanks are due to the Rev. J. Edwin 
 Odgers, D.D., for his kindness in reading through the 
 proofs, and giving me the advantage of his wide and 
 varied knowledge. 
 
 J. E. C. 
 
 Oxford, May 24, 1911. 
 
 943931 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. The Historical Jesus. page 
 
 Christianity a Historical Religion 9 
 
 i. Conditions of the Study 10 
 
 ii. Did Jesus never Uve ? 16 
 
 iii. The Gospels and the BeHefs of their Age ... 37 
 
 iv. The Nature of their Testimony to a Historical Person 47 
 
 II. Jesus and the Kingdom of God. 
 
 John the Baptist and Jesus 60 
 
 i. The Kingdom of God 62 
 
 ii. The Preaching of Jesus 73 
 
 iii. The Kingdom as a spiritual Rule S$ 
 
 iv. At Caesarea Philippi Sy 
 
 V. The Coming of the Son of Man 94 
 
 vi. The Alleged Failure of Liberal Christianity. . . 102 
 
 III. The Theological Christ. 
 
 An Anolagous Development 113 
 
 i. Complex influences in Judaism 118 
 
 ii. The Apostle Paul 125 
 
 iii. The Divine King 131 
 
 iv. The 'Son of God* in the Fourth Gospel . . .137 
 
 V. The Advance of the Logos-Theology up to 325 a.d. . 159 
 
 IV. The Doctrine of the Two Natures. 
 
 Christianity and the Roman Empire 177 
 
 i. Factors in the Dogmatic Settlement 179 
 
 ii. Opposite Methods of approaching the Problem. . 183 
 
 iii. Nestorius and Cyril 189 
 
 iv. The Council of Chalcedon, 451 a.d 193 
 
 v. Modem Difficulties and Ancient Solutions . . .201 
 
 vi. Theories of Kenosis 208 
 
 vii. The Sub-conscious Self 220 
 
 Conclusion 229 
 
I 
 
 THE HISTORICAL JESUS 
 
 Christianity, as we receive it through the 
 New Testament, is a historical reUgion. It pro- 
 fesses to be derived from a particular ^rson. 
 Whatever else he may be in the eternal counsels 
 of God according to the definitions of the creeds 
 of the Church, Jesus of Nazareth belongs to a 
 particular country ; he sprang from a particular 
 people ; he belonged to a particular age.; and the 
 circumstances of his life, his spoken word, the 
 events of his career from birth to death, can be 
 known to us only through testimony. And what- 
 ever he may appear now to the experience of the 
 believer, whether in the mystical communion of 
 the Eucharist, or in the EvangeHcal experiences of 
 forgiveness and justification, what he was on earth 
 we can apprehend only by evidence. That evid- 
 ence is sununed up for us in the Gospels ; they 
 
.10...... . IHK HISTORICAL JESUS 
 
 have generated a gigantic literature for their 
 explanation ; but it is not too much to say that 
 only within the last fifty years, in this country, 
 has their reasoned study been established. 
 
 (i) 
 
 It is just over half a century since Benjamin 
 Jowett, then Regius Professor of Greek in the 
 University of Oxford, laid down the famous 
 principle in Essays and Reviews (i860) that the 
 New Testament must be interpreted like any 
 other book. The saying appears simple, but it 
 has far-reaching appHcations. For if we are to 
 study the Gospels to reconstruct the life and 
 teaching of Jesus as we study the Memorabilia 
 of Xenophon and the Dialogues of Plato to under- 
 stand Socrates, or the Scriptures of the Three 
 Baskets to realize the person and work of Gotama 
 the Buddha, — ^we at once take the records out of 
 the control of the Church. We no longer apply to 
 them the standards of a long dogmatic develop- 
 ment. We cease to read them with the pre- 
 suppositions supplied by later theological decrees, 
 or to expound them on the basis of formulae 
 devised hundreds of years later in a totally 
 
CONDITIONS OF MODERN STUDY II 
 
 different intellectual and moral atmosphere. We 
 bring them into the field of history, and test them 
 by the methods of scientific investigation. 
 
 Not without significance was it that the publica- 
 tion of Essays and Reviews followed in a few months 
 after Darwin had issued the Origin of Species. 
 That book, as all the world knows, opened a new 
 era in many departments of enquiry. It gave to 
 the conception of evolution, which had haunted 
 so many minds, a clear and definite expression. 
 What was the bearing of this conception when it 
 was transferred from the field of organic life to that 
 of history ? Among other results it estabHshed a 
 definite relation between great personalities and 
 their age. However much they may transcend 
 their environment of contemporary thought or 
 practice, they are reared in it, they must speak its 
 language, they start with its ideas, they react upon 
 its religious beliefs and its moral standards. The 
 message of Jesus took one form because he was 
 bom a Jew and not a Greek ; it has another 
 because he was bred in Nazareth and not in 
 Alexandria. The study of the Ufe of Jesus — 
 stimulated by the works of Continental scholars 
 (Renan, Strauss, and Keim, to name but three 
 
12 THE HISTORICAL JESUS 
 
 of the most important) — was consequently pur- 
 sued upon fresh Unes. A vast amount of energy 
 was devoted to the reconstruction of the scene 
 and the age in which he had Hved. In connexion 
 with the historical investigation of the Old Testa- 
 ment the country was mapped ; sites were 
 explored ; places were identified, monuments 
 examined, and inscriptions collected. The his- 
 tories of Josephus and the prodigious accumula- 
 tions of Talmudic lore were searched for whatever 
 could illustrate the Gospel story. The institutions 
 of government, the trades and industries of the 
 people, their schools and teachers, their parties 
 and sects, were all investigated in the light of 
 contemporary record or later tradition. The 
 ceremonial of Temple and feast, the simple 
 Sabbath meeting in the Synagogue, the ritual oi 
 public worship and the prayers of private devotion, 
 disclosed the fundamental conceptions of national 
 and personal piety. Moreover, a whole series of 
 works came into view, extending from the book 
 of Daniel in the middle of the second century B.C. 
 to the age immediately following the great catas- 
 trophe which involved the overthrow of the Jewish 
 State when Jerusalem fell in the year 70 a.d. 
 
MATERIALS FOR GOSPEL STUDY I3 
 
 Under ancient names like Enoch, the Twelve 
 Patriarchs, Moses, Solomon, Baruch and others 
 (the fourth book of Ezra, or II Esdras, will be 
 found in our Apocrypha), the hope of deliverance 
 from foreign rule, of resurrection and judgment 
 and an age of blessedness in the kingdom of God, 
 found passionate expression ; and the study of 
 the apocalyptic literature in the age preceding 
 and following the Hfetime of Jesus has thrown 
 a flood of light upon much of the language of the 
 Gospels and the faith of the early Church. The 
 enquiry into the relations of the earliest narratives 
 of Jesus* career, and the sources which their 
 authors employed, has shown that these docu- 
 ments, like other records of the personages of 
 antiquity, contain elements of various worth, and 
 cannot be regarded as in the strict sense historical. 
 In particular it is clear that while many re- 
 semblances unite the First Three Gospels, the 
 Fourth is marked off from its predecessors by 
 wide divergences in the sequence of the events of 
 Jesus' ministry and in the nature of his teaching. 
 Lastly, among the influences which have con- 
 tributed to the truer comprehension of the Gospels 
 we must include the rise into view of other historic 
 
14 THE HISTORICAL JESUS 
 
 religions, some of them covering mighty empires, 
 embracing hundreds of millions of believers, 
 founded on scriptures more ancient than our New 
 Testament, and begetting rites and institutions no 
 less enduring than those of Christianity itself. 
 The' modern student may cast his glance over a 
 whole continent ; the scriptures of India and 
 Persia, the cults of Egypt and S5rria, the philo- 
 sophies of Greece, and — more ancient still — the 
 mythology of Babylonia, may all throw some light 
 upon the figure who is still central in the history 
 of religion. 
 
 A vast mass of new materials has thus become 
 available for the student of the Gospel story. It 
 is frankly recognized that the New Testament 
 contains elements from various sources. A great 
 imaginative seer Hke the author of the Apocalypse 
 constructs his marvellous pictures with symbols 
 of many kinds. We may not always divine his 
 secrets ; the origins of the traditional emblems 
 which he employs may have been often hid from 
 his own eyes. They have been combined and 
 recombined in various successive forms, and have 
 behind them an immense antiquity. There are 
 scenes in the Gospels which seem no less mythical. 
 
HISTORY AND MYTH I5 
 
 There is a grotto at Nazareth where a silver star 
 shines in the marble floor. It is encircled by an 
 inscription, also in silver letters, Hie Verbum caro 
 factum est, ' on this spot the Word was made flesh.' 
 Here Roman CathoUc tradition locates the miracle 
 of the Incarnation. But this is not history. 
 From the miraculous conception of Jesus to his 
 ascension into the sky, his life appears to be 
 enveloped in a radiant haze of myth. We are 
 necessarily ignorant of many things. We do not 
 know within a margin of some years the dates of 
 his birth or death. The length of his public career 
 cannot be determined with any certainty. All 
 the particulars of a biography in the modern sense 
 are wanting. But we may have the same kind of 
 assurance that Jesus taught in Galilee, and was 
 crucified under Pontius Pilate, as that Augustus 
 was emperor of Rome, or that Socrates died in 
 Athens after drinking the hemlock. 
 
 But the historian finds himself challenged from 
 two sides. On the one hand he is plumply told 
 that no such person ever existed : the events of 
 his career show that he is only a humanized deity, 
 provided (no one knows how) with a local base 
 in Galilee, and credited with a mass of teaching 
 
l6 THE HISTORICAL JESUS 
 
 such as formed the common store of a Jewish rabbi. 
 And on the other hand we are assured that Jesus 
 of Nazareth was no other than the Second Person 
 of the Trinity incarnate in a human being, so 
 that he was at the same time ' very God and very 
 Man.' Here is an immense range of possibiHties. 
 Their full discussion would require a volume. 
 They involve the most complicated and intricate 
 problems : in the brief limits of four lectures it 
 is only practicable to state in the briefest way 
 some present-day solutions. 
 
 (ii) 
 More than two generations ago David Frederick 
 Strauss in his famous Life of Jesus (1835) applied 
 to many of the Gospel stories the mythological 
 key which converted them from records of fact 
 into symbols of ideas. It was an effective weapon 
 against the crude rationalism of the first part of 
 the last century. Nearly thirty years later (1864) 
 he retold the tale in somewhat different fashion, 
 with more strenuous emphasis upon the Teacher's 
 words. But the Hues of enquiry which he had 
 been the first to open, led Bruno Bauer, after a 
 long series of studies, to present the figure of Jesus 
 
HIS REALITY CHALLENGED 17 
 
 (1878) as an ideal blended of Jewish, Greek, and 
 Roman elements. In our own country, during 
 the last decade, Mr. J. M. Robertson poured the 
 results of his wide reading into two volumes de- 
 signed to show that various elements from different 
 oriental cults had been fused together around an 
 imaginary personality ; while in Germany the 
 brave voice of Pastor Kalthoff at Bremen WcLS 
 heard pleading that Jesus and his gospel were 
 the symbolic embodiment of new social aspirations 
 begotten out of the economic distresses of the 
 Roman Empire. In America Prof. W. B. Smith, 
 of Tulane University, New Orleans, sought to 
 prove the existence of a widespread pre-Christian 
 cult of a divine Jesus, and his arguments have been 
 recently reproduced and expanded by Prof. Drews, 
 of Carlsruhe, whose book The Christ-Myth has 
 recently aroused an animated discussion. But 
 before dealing with these arguments a few words 
 must be said concerning an attack from another 
 quarter on a very different line. 
 
 Five years ago Prof. Jensen, of Marburg, one 
 of the foremost Assyriologists of Germany, pub- 
 lished the first volume of an immense treatise (it 
 contained more than a thousand pages) on a 
 
 B 
 
l8 THE HISTORICAL JESUS 
 
 famous poem of Babylonian antiquity known as 
 the Gilgamesh Epic. It is believed to have been 
 in existence at least two thousand years before 
 our era. The hero, Gilgamesh, was king of Erech 
 in South Babylonia, and the poem dealt with his 
 adventures and those of his friend Eabani. Some 
 tablets of the poem are lost, and there are gaps 
 in the story ; but the famous narrative of the 
 Deluge, discovered by Mr. George Smith in 1872, 
 belonged to the series. In the view of Prof. 
 Jensen this poem has been the parent of innumer- 
 able tales, rimning through wide ramifications of 
 literature. Story after story in many lands, east, 
 west, north, and south, betrays its influence. 
 The personaHties of the Old Testament are again 
 and again built up on this ancient pair. In 
 patriarch and king, in Moses and Aaron, in Elijah 
 and Elisha, the forms of Gilgamesh and Eabani 
 live again ; and the same origin is proclaimed for 
 the supposed founders of the Christian Church. 
 Unable to secure the attention of the theologian, 
 Prof. Jensen has appealed to the laity in a 
 pamphlet entitled * Moses, Jesus, Paul, Three 
 Variants of the Babylonian God-man Gilgamesh ' 
 (1909). Without any inquiry into the literary 
 
SUPPOSED CUNEIFORM PARALLELS I9 
 
 origins of the Gospels, or the authenticity of 
 the letters of Paul, the documents of the New 
 Testament are flung away as inconsistent with 
 the theory. The Evangelic traditions describe a 
 being who never really lived : the apostolic 
 correspondence is a mass of forgeries ; the narra- 
 tives in Acts have no historical foundation. On 
 what grounds are these large assertions based ? 
 The answer is presented in the much vaunted 
 method of parallels. In page after page and 
 column after column the incidents of the Gospel 
 story are placed over against those of the Baby- 
 lonian saga. Likenesses no doubt there are, and 
 common incidents in legend and folk-tale all round 
 the globe. Details in the careers of Moses and 
 Elijah may well have influenced the presenta- 
 tion of Jesus. But who will believe the simple 
 sequences of the GaUlean lake to have originated 
 out of the following parallels collected by Prof. 
 Jensen (p. 28) ? 
 
 Eabani returns from the Jesus returns from the 
 wilderness to his dwelling, wilderness to his home. . . . 
 the home of Gilgamesh. . . . 
 
 A plague of fever, Xisu- The mother-in-law of Peter 
 
 thros intercedes for suffering is sick of a fever and Jesus 
 
 humanity, by which probably heals her. 
 the plague is stopped. 
 
20 THE HISTORICAL JESUS 
 
 Xisuthros builds himself a A boat is kept ready for 
 
 ship and keeps it ready. Jesus. 
 
 Xisuthros with his family Jesus and his disciples enter 
 
 and his immediate friends the boat one evening, 
 enters the ship one evening. 
 
 A storm arises and falls. A storm arises and falls. 
 
 Xisuthros lands with his Jesus lands in Peraea, the 
 
 family iai from his dwelling. other side of the lake from 
 
 his home. 
 
 Sinful humanity and most Two thousand demons or 
 
 of the animals, including the more, and two thousand swine 
 
 swine, are drowned in the are drowned in the lake over 
 
 flood. which Jesus sailed. 
 
 Such parallels, it is plain, have no value what- 
 ever. Prof. Jensen maikes no attempt to establish 
 any kind of connexion through literary history. 
 The tale of Noah follows the Mesopotamian version 
 of the flood in one incident after another, so that 
 its dependence cannot be questioned. But be- 
 tween the Deluge as a world- judgment, sweeping 
 away a sinful race, and a storm on the Lake of 
 Galilee, there is not a particle of resemblance. 
 Moreover, the destruction of the Gadarene swine is 
 in no way connected with the rise of the wind 
 and the danger of the boat ; there is no parallel 
 between the legion of demons and the multitude 
 
SUPPOSED CUNEIFORM PARALLELS 21 
 
 of human kind, and the specification of the swine 
 among the animals that perished as the source of 
 the miracle ascribed to Jesus is grotesque in the 
 extreme. The series abruptly ends before the 
 entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. To the scenes of 
 the last days the Gilgamesh story offers not the 
 faintest resemblance. There remain, however, a 
 few trifles like the Sermon on the Mount. Some 
 one, Prof. Jensen admits, must have said the 
 things set down to Jesus. Let us agree that it 
 was not anyone who was miraculously bom or 
 mysteriously transfigured. Such a Jesus doubt- 
 less never lived. But the student learns to dis- 
 tinguish between history and myth. 
 
 From a totally different point of view does Prof. 
 Drews attempt to demonstrate a similar thesis.^ 
 He writes avowedly in the name of spiritual 
 religion, and advocates a lofty mode of ideaHstic 
 monism. He finds Christian theology blocking 
 his way, and he seeks therefore to clear the path 
 by demonstrating that its central figure has no 
 
 1 The Christ Myth, translated by C. Delisle Bums, M.A., 
 London (1910). For a more extended criticism of this work 
 the reader may be referred to a ' reply ' by Mr. Herbert J. 
 Rossington, M.A., B.D., Did Jesus reaily live ? London, 191 1. 
 
22 THE HISTORICAL JESUS 
 
 place in history. In one sense, indeed, he proposes 
 to interpret and develop the Christian conception 
 of redemption. He conceives the world's activity 
 as God's activity. He presents the drama of 
 history filled with pain and struggle as the long 
 Passion of Deity. In each human soul God fights, 
 suffers, conquers, and dies, that he may triumph 
 over limitation and evil. In thus universalizing 
 the conflict which the Church has seen imperson- 
 ated in Christ, the author claims to preserve his- 
 torical continuity no less than the liberal Christian 
 who discards from the Gospels what does not suit 
 the twentieth century, and only keeps what 
 modem thought does not compel him to reject. 
 The ministry of Jesus is described in our four 
 Gospels under the presupposition that he was the 
 Christ or Messiah. It might have been expected 
 that our critic would have analysed this conception 
 in detail, and would have examined the various 
 forms which it had assumed in the literature of 
 elder prophecy or later apocalypse. There is 
 much to be said on this theme, and investigation 
 bas recently been busy with the Hterature in which 
 the mysterious form of the Son of Man appears 
 seated on a heavenly throne beside the Ancient 
 
* THE CHRIST MYTH ' 23 
 
 of Daj^.^ Here is, truly, the beginning of a 
 * Christ-myth ' proper ; and Prof. Drews has no 
 difficulty in connecting the group of ideas which 
 gathers round this central figure with the concep- 
 tions of resurrection and judgment which be- 
 longed to the great scheme for the close of the 
 long conflict between Ahura Mazda (the 'Lord 
 omniscient ') and the Spirit of Evil (Afiramainyu) 
 in the theology of Persia. But we learn afterwards 
 with astonishment- that both the Persian expecta- 
 tion of a deUverer (Saoshyant) and the Jewish 
 doctrine of a Messiah * rest upon a prophecy accord- 
 ing to which Vishnu Jesudu (I)^ was to be bom 
 a Brahmin in the city of Skambelam ' (p. 107). 
 There is no such prophecy. Jesudu is unknown 
 to Sanskrit. If by the ' ancient sacred poem, 
 the Bharta Chastram,' which Prof. Drews vaguely 
 cites as his authority, he means the great epic 
 known as the Mahabharata,^ the late prophecy 
 that Vishnu will become incarnate in a Brahmin 
 
 iThe English reader will find a valuable article in the 
 Journal of Theological Studies, Oct., 19 10, by Dr. W. V. Hague. 
 
 *This note of admiration is Prof. Drews's own. 
 
 2 Chastram sounds like a French rendering of the Sanskrit 
 shastra. 
 
24 THE HISTORICAL JESUS 
 
 family is, of course, no antecedent either of the 
 eschatology of the Zend Avesta or of Hebrew 
 Messianic hope. Misstatements such as these 
 compel the student to test every assertion with 
 care ; and when the argument passes from the 
 conception of Christ to the person of Jesus, the 
 result does not inspire confidence in the writer's 
 accuracy. 
 
 His main thesis is cognate with that of Mr. J. M. 
 Robertson in his volumes on Christianity and 
 Mythology (1900) and Pagan Christs (1903), 
 supplemented by the investigations of Prof. W. B. 
 Smith imder the title Der Vorchristliche Jesus 
 (1906). Prior to the Gospel story or the work of 
 the Apostle Paul, it is alleged, there existed a wide- 
 spread cult of Jesus as a deity in Jewish sects. 
 The name Jesus is the Greek form of the Hebrew 
 Joshua ^ ; and its application to a deity is carried 
 back to the successor of Moses, interpreted as an 
 ancient Ephraimitic god of the sun and fruitful- 
 ness. But even supposing Joshua to be a mythical 
 figure, no proof is offered of any worship founded 
 
 1 The reader need hardly be reminded that it is of common 
 occurrence ; it is reckoned that the historian Josephus 
 mentions twenty different persons so called. 
 
*THE CHRIST MYTH ' 25 
 
 on his name in subsequent periods of Israel's his- 
 tory. The High Priest Joshua to whom Zechariah 
 (in our present text vi. 12^) assigns the function 
 of rebuilding the Temple, is indeed called * the 
 Branch,' by which Jeremiah (xxiii. 5) had desig- 
 nated a prince of the Davidic house, but this sup- 
 plies no basis for a secret cult. What then of the 
 Jessaioi and the Nazoraioi (Nazarenes) described 
 by Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis in Cyprus (died 
 403 A.D.) ? The good father was apt to be 
 confused, and Prof. Drews adds to his confusion. 
 Epiphanius certainly states that the Nazoraioi 
 were called Jessaioi before they were called Chris- 
 tians at Antioch, and he fancifully derives their 
 designation from Jesse or Jesus (the reader will 
 hardly need to be reminded that in Hebrew 
 Yishai and Yehoshua were quite different names). 
 Such an etymology supplies no proof that either 
 Jesse or Jesus was a cult-god. Moreover, 
 Epiphanius's yoimger contemporary Nilus (died 
 430) gives a very different account. According to 
 him the Jessaioi were not Christians at all, but a 
 kind of posterity of Jonadab, living in tents, 
 
 1 Prof. Drews rightly points out that the passage originally 
 included the name of Zerubbabel (p. 58). 
 
26 THE HISTORICAL JESUS 
 
 abstaining from wine and other luxuries like the 
 Rechabites of old, early exemplars of the simple 
 life. Without noticing this conflict of testimony, 
 however, Prof. Drews advances one step further, 
 and aflirms that the Nazarenes ' were, as 
 Epiphanius shows, in existence long before Christ, 
 and had no knowledge of him ' (p. 59). The 
 statement is founded on a misunderstanding. 
 Epiphanius distinguishes between the Christian 
 Nazoraioi and a Jewish sect named Nasaraioi, 
 who Hved east of the Jordan, practised circum- 
 cision, observed Sabbaths and feasts, but rejected 
 animal food and sacrifices, and declared the Penta- 
 teuch a forgery. These Nasaraioi, says Epiphanius, 
 were older than Christ. The alleged proof from 
 the Nazarenes falls to pieces.^ 
 
 What, then, of the phrase 'the things concern- 
 ing Jesus ' ? Have we not in this, argues Prof. 
 Smith, indisputable evidence of an earlier faith ? 
 'According to all appearance,' we are assured, 
 the expression ' has no reference to the history 
 of Jesus ' ; it ' only means the doctrines concern- 
 
 1 Space is lacking here to investigate the confused statements 
 of Epiphanius ; it is only necessary to deal with those of 
 Prof. Drews as his interpreter. 
 
* THE CHRIST MYTH ' 27 
 
 ing him.' It involves, therefore, ' a pre-Christian 
 form of belief in a Jesus ' (pp. 62-63). If so it is 
 certainly curious that it should first occur in the 
 story of the woman with an issue of blood, who, 
 
 * having heard the things concerning Jesus, came 
 in the crowd behind and touched his garment* 
 {Mark V. 27). In the second instance Luke attri- 
 butes it to the disciples on the way to Emmaus, 
 who related to their unknown companion * the 
 things concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was 
 a prophet mighty in deed and word before God 
 and all the people ' (Luke xxiv. 19). Paul, in the 
 same writer's phrase, taught at Rome ' the things 
 concerning the Lord Jesus Christ ' {Ads xxviii. 31). 
 These may certainly, in the apostle's mouth, have 
 included much beside a recital of traditions ; but 
 there is no reason for refusing to this passage 
 the meaning which the words obviously bear in 
 those just cited. One more instance, however, 
 must be quoted. Did not the learned and zealous 
 Apollos, knowing only the baptism of John, speak 
 boldly in the S5niagogue at Ephesus and teach 
 
 * the things concerning Jesus ' {Acts xviii. 25) ? 
 This Jesus, it is affirmed, could be no successor of 
 John, no prophet and Messiah crucified and risen, 
 
28 THE HISTORICAL JESUS 
 
 or Apollos would have already received Christian 
 initiation ; he must have been the centre of a secret 
 doctrine cherished among Jews and Hellenists for 
 more than a himdred years ! That is a large infer- 
 ence to draw from slender data. There is no proof 
 that Christian preaching was always accompanied 
 by baptism. The apostle Paul declared that 
 Christ had sent him not to baptize but to preach 
 the Gospel (I Cor. i. 17). * The things concerning 
 Jesus,' accordingly, might have been imparted to 
 new beUevers and carried by them into fresh circles 
 without any rite of baptism. This was not neces- 
 sarily at the outset conferred upon every one. 
 The disciples of the Baptist were evidently spread 
 over a wider area than the Gospel traditions have 
 occasion to describe ; and some twelve of them at 
 Ephesus were apparently associated with the 
 Christian brethren {Acts xix. 1-3) without having 
 received an5d:hing more than John's baptism of 
 repentance, t^ Paul proceeded to baptize them into 
 the name of the Lord Jesus, but we do not read 
 that Aquila or the brethren at Ephesus had found 
 it necessary to baptize Apollos before sending him on 
 with commendatory letters to Corinth (xviii.26,27). 
 The plea for a secret Jesus-cult seems to lack proof. 
 
* THE CHRIST MYTH ' 29 
 
 Undeterred, however, by the scantiness of his 
 evidence, Prof. Drews beHeves himself able to 
 account for the whole story of the death of Jesus 
 — ^no attempt is made to explain the incidents of 
 his public ministry — out of the conception of the 
 dying God, which belonged to various cults in 
 Western Asia. This is traced back to the worship 
 of the fire-god Agni (Latin ignis) in the ancient 
 Aryan hymns of the Rig Veda, and we are 
 told that * Agnus Dei, the Lamb of God, as 
 Christ is very frequently called, is in fact 
 nothing else than Agni Deus, since Agnus stands 
 in a certain measure as the Latin translation 
 for Agni ' (p. 145, cp. p. 161). Every school- 
 boy knows that such an equation is impossible. 
 The confidence with which Prof. Drews makes 
 unsupported assertions may easily beguile those 
 who have not the means at hand of testing his 
 statements, and one instance must suffice to put 
 readers on their guard. The details of the Passion, 
 we are assured, are certainly unhistorical : * the 
 derision,^ the flagellation, both the thieves, the 
 crying out on the cross, the sponge with vinegar 
 (Ps. Ixix. 21), the piercing with a lance,^ the 
 
 1 7s. 1. 6 sq. 2 Zech. xii. 10. 
 
30 THE HISTORICAL JESUS 
 
 soldiers casting dice for the dead man's garments, 
 also the women at the place of execution and at 
 the grave, the grave in a rock, are to be found 
 in just the same form in the worship of Adonis, 
 Attis, Mithras, and Osiris ' (p. 241). What does 
 antiquity say about these deities ? 
 
 According to one account Adonis was slain 
 by a wild boar, sent against him by jealous Ares. 
 According to another, he perished through Artemis, 
 goddess of the chase. According to a third, 
 Apollo transformed himself into a boar and killed 
 him. 
 
 Attis owed his death in one story to the anger 
 of the king of Phrygia whose daughter Kybele 
 he had betrayed. A variant of the Adonis tale 
 ascribed his death also to a wild boar, sent to 
 destroy him by Zeus, who was jealous of the 
 honour paid to him by the Lydians. The Christian 
 writer Amobius relates a brutal legend from an 
 unknown mythologist, Timotheus, in which Attis 
 unmans himself in frenzy, and dies beneath a 
 pine tree. 
 
 Mithras does not appear to have died at all. 
 The brilliant scholar who has thrown so much light 
 upon his mysteries. Prof. Franz Cumont, describes 
 
' THE CHRIST MYTH ' 3I 
 
 him, when his earthly labours are completed, as 
 celebrating their close at a final meal with Helios 
 and the other companions of his toil. Then he 
 is borne by the Sun in his shining car across the 
 ocean to the heavenly height, and ascends to the 
 sky without passing through the gates of death. 
 
 The ancient Egyptian texts have much to say 
 about the resurrection of Osiris, but the story of 
 the mode in which he was done to death is known 
 only in a late Greek form. It is Plutarch (if he be 
 the author of the treatise on Isis and Osiris) who 
 relates the well-known tale that his brother 
 Typhon induced him in sport to enter a splendid 
 chest made exactly to fit his person, shut down 
 the lid with the help of his confederates, and sent 
 it forth by one of the arms of the Nile into the sea. 
 
 The statement that the details of the Christian 
 narrative are all to be found in one or other of these 
 mythologic groups, suggests the following ques- 
 tions : — 
 
 Which of the four deities was mocked ? 
 
 Which was scourged ? 
 
 Which suffered between two thieves ? 
 
 Which uttered a dying cry ? 
 
 To which was a sponge offered with vinegar ? 
 
32 THE HISTORICAL JESUS 
 
 Which was pierced with a lance after death ? 
 
 For whose garments did the soldiers cast dice ? 
 
 At whose execution were women present ? 
 
 Which was buried in a rock ? 
 
 Until these questions can be answered, the 
 summary in the Creed, * Crucified under Pontius 
 Pilate,' supported as it is by the historian Tacitus, 
 who was a boy in the cruel days of Nero, may be 
 allowed to stand .^ 
 
 Concerning another element in the Gospels Prof. 
 Drews is silent, the preaching of the kingdom of 
 God. The conception of a suffering, dying, and 
 rising God which he desires to disengage as the 
 t5^e of universal Christian experience, belongs to 
 a different order of ideas from that of the approach- 
 ing catastrophe, the end of the world-age, the 
 advent of the Son of Man from the sky, the 
 resurrection and the judgment. In this respect 
 great importance attaches to the testimony of 
 the Apostle Paul. He wrote to the Galatians 
 
 1 This does not of course imply that all the Gospel details 
 are of equal historic worth. Prof. Drews' own references point 
 at least to a possible source for some of them. The evidence 
 of Tacitus {Ann. xv. 44), has of course to be discredited 
 as an interpolation. But no serious historian supports that 
 treatment. 
 
*THE CHRIST myth' 33 
 
 that on his first visit to Jerusalem after his con- 
 version he stayed a fortnight with Peter, and 
 saw James, the Lord's brother.^ This statement 
 is conclusive as to the historical reality of Jesus, 
 unless it can be set aside. Prof. Drews suggests 
 three modes of weakening its force. 
 
 (i) The term 'brother' may have been em- 
 ployed in the sense of ' follower,' without implying 
 any family relationship. Doubtless the term of 
 intimate affection was used to characterize the 
 members of the Christian fellowship who were 
 * brethren one of another.' But there is no trace 
 of this usage in connexion with Jesus himself. 
 Peter and John, who, with James, were reputed 
 to be ' pillars,' nowhere bear the name of the 
 Lord's brothers. 
 
 (2) The passage may be an interpolation. Of 
 this there is not a particle of evidence. No known 
 manuscript, no version, no patristic quotation, 
 suggests any disturbance of the text. 
 
 (3) But perhaps the whole group of Pauline 
 letters belongs to the second century. Prof. 
 Drews does not offer any proof, and it is difficult 
 to meet the vague allegations sometimes made 
 
 1 Mentioned in Mark vi. 3, Matt. xiii. 55. 
 
 c 
 
34 THE HISTORICAL JESUS 
 
 on behalf of this view, such as that the atmosphere 
 of the letters is that of a later day. Two themes, 
 however, which again and again appear in these 
 documents, seem specifically to belong to the 
 early history of the Church. The admission of 
 the Gentiles without subjection to the Jewish 
 law, which is argued so passionately in the letter 
 to the Galatians, was soon settled, as the Fourth 
 Gospel shows, in favour of the principle of liberty. 
 Before the second century set in, the controversy 
 had disappeared. And the expectation of the 
 speedy advent of * the Lord ' which occupies so 
 prominent a place in the Apostle's hope, is alto- 
 gether unsuited to a time when the Church was 
 accommodating itself to the existing scene, and 
 preparing for the responsibilities of continued 
 existence in this world. The eschatology of I 
 Thessalonians iv. 15-17 would be entirely out of 
 keeping in the second century. It may be 
 difficult to harmonize the description of the 
 descent of Jesus from the sky with a shout — the 
 archangel's summons, the trumpet-blast — and the 
 mystical life of the Christ who is formed within, 
 the hidden spirit, given in baptism and carrying 
 with it the germ of a new creation. But it appears 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF PAUL 35 
 
 impossible to eliminate the personal elements 
 from the Apostle's thought. * Man's Saviour,' 
 we are told, * is not historical, as St. Paul is never 
 tired of reiterating.'^ But he calls him Jesus, 
 though he does not add ' of Nazareth.' He 
 assures the Thessalonians that he will deliver 
 them from the coming wrath, and the Philippians 
 that he will transform their earthly bodies to 
 resemble his glorious body, just as he tells the 
 Galatians that he had met his brother in Jeru- 
 salem ! The repeated references to the cross and 
 the parousia, the details of the advent — ' we 
 shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 
 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the 
 last trump ' — all imply definite external events, 
 in which a known historic person is to hold the 
 great assize, ' in the day when God shall judge 
 the secrets of men, according to my gospel, by 
 Jesus Christ ' (Rom. ii. i6). 
 
 To treat Christ, therefore, as simply Paul's 
 * name for the consciousness of the Divine within 
 him ' is to ignore one very important aspect of the 
 Apostle's message. It was the impassioned an- 
 ticipation of Christ's speedy return — even from 
 1 Dr. Anderson, in the Hibhert Journal, Jan., 191 1, p. 350. 
 
36 THE HISTORICAL JESUS 
 
 his Roman prison Paul still writes * The Lord is 
 at hand ' (Phil. iv. 5) — which supplied the motive- 
 power of his preaching, and hurried him from 
 land to land. The submission of such a being to 
 a shameful death which could not be inflicted on 
 himself as a Roman citizen, was an actual incident 
 which filled him with awe and love. It is the 
 same with our Synoptic narratives. They are 
 something more than pictorial illustrations of 
 the growth of the soul. There can be no doubt 
 that the EvangeUsts believed themselves to be 
 describing the life of an actual person. The 
 descent of the Spirit into Jesus at the Baptism 
 was unquestionably for Mark a literal event, 
 just as the wondrous birth was for Matthew, 
 Stories no doubt there are which we interpret as 
 symbols ; the Temptation, the multiplication of 
 the loaves, the walking on the water, the withering 
 of the fig-tree. No distinction was drawn at 
 that time between historic accuracy and devout 
 edification. Each Evangelist has his own point 
 of view, selects his materials, and disposes 
 his traditions, to produce a specific religious 
 effect. It may be granted that the earliest nar- 
 ratives were not shaped until Paul's letters had 
 
THE SYNOPTIC NARRATIVES 37 
 
 been written. But there is no trace in these 
 books that the writers supposed themselves to 
 be depicting internal experiences instead of out- 
 ward facts. They are concerned with a real 
 being though they may relate of him unreal events. 
 Unlike the Fourth Evangelist they hint at no 
 differences between * earthly' and 'heavenly' 
 things. They are planted firmly on a particular 
 scene, and engaged with a special type of religious 
 and social Ufe. What have *pubHcans and 
 sinners ' to do with the * finding of the Universal 
 Self ' ? Sever the S3mibol from history, and a 
 few refined minds may cherish it in their chambers 
 of imagery, but for the majority its power will 
 be gone ; it will no longer present a human 
 experience in a universally intelligible form ; men 
 will cast it out like salt which has lost its savour, 
 and it will be trodden in the mire under their feet. 
 
 (iii) 
 
 We turn then to the Gospels and ask for their 
 testimony. The differences between the First 
 Three and the Fourth no longer need reiterated 
 display. Whatever historical data may lie em- 
 bedded in the latter, it rests upon the former even 
 
38 THE HISTORICAL JESUS 
 
 while it may (as some think) correct them ; and the 
 witness to the reaHty of the person must be sought 
 in the earUer rather than the latest works. By 
 almost universal consent — an agreement reached 
 by various methods of investigation and from 
 very different theological and ecclesiastical pre- 
 suppositions — Mark presents the oldest view of 
 the public career of Jesus. It was employed, 
 whether in its existing form or in an earlier 
 edition, by the other Evangelists who are known 
 to us under the names Matthew and Luke. The 
 tradition of the Church supposed it to embody 
 the recollections of Peter, reduced after his death 
 into consecutive story by his interpreter Mark, 
 probably at Rome. It doubtless also contains 
 various elements which cannot be ascribed to the 
 reminiscences of an eye-witness ; and the long 
 discourse on the last things in Mark xiii. bears 
 traces of dependence on some document, probably 
 of Jewish or Jewish-Christian origin. But various 
 considerations lead to the belief that it acquired 
 substantially its present contents and character 
 soon after the great catastrophe of the overthrow 
 of Jerusalem in the year 70 a.d.^ 
 
 1 See the Table in The Bible in the Nineteenth Century, p. 340. 
 
THE FIRST THREE GOSPELS 39 
 
 In the composition of the other Gospels of 
 Matthew and Luke a second document would 
 seem to have been employed besides the Marcan 
 narrative, for they contain a quantity of sig- 
 nificant teaching in common, which seems best 
 explained by assuming the use of a collection 
 of the sayings of Jesus, such as may have existed 
 in more than one form in different Christian circles. 
 The scope of this collection is indeed variously 
 conceived ; but modern students are coming 
 more and more to the conclusion that it was 
 made before the earUest of our First Three Gospels 
 was written, and was probably used (whether 
 directly or in reminiscence) by the author of 
 our Mark. Matthew and Luke followed — in what 
 order it is not possible to decide with certainty — 
 and both were probably written before the j&rst 
 century ran out, though Matthew may have 
 received some additions at an even later date. 
 
 These books are naturally the product of their 
 age. The writers share the culture of their time ; 
 they gather up traditions from varying sources ; 
 and they look out upon a world very different 
 from ours. Over it rises a vast pile of seven 
 heavens above the sky. Contemporary literature 
 
40 THE HISTORICAL JESUS 
 
 describes their occupants. There in their several 
 orders dwelt the principalities and powers, the 
 thrones and lordships, which loomed before the 
 imagination of the Apostle Paul. There in the 
 third heaven lay the paradise into which he 
 beheved himself to have been caught up, whether 
 in the body or out of the body he could not tell. 
 Thence, too, heavenly messengers might descend 
 to earth, Hke Gabriel, one of the four great Angels 
 of the Presence from the topmost height. And 
 thither might the risen Messiah be conveyed 
 through the air, till, wrapped in cloud, he dis- 
 appeared from sight. 
 
 Not even the powers of the upper worlds, how- 
 ever, were all good : and the sovereignty of God 
 was invaded by that of the Opposer, the Satan. 
 Over against the Father stood the Adversary, 
 who challenged his power and limited his sway. 
 From the abyss came the demons which swarmed 
 upon the earth. It was their malign power 
 which produced disease ; the bhnd and deaf, the 
 epileptic and insane, were under their control; 
 and it would be the function of the Messiah to 
 reduce them to impotence and subjugate their 
 lord. The Gospels themselves tell us, however, 
 
THE WORLD AND ITS POWER^S 4I 
 
 that Jesus was not alone in the ability to master 
 them. When the malicious charge was brought 
 against him that he cast out demons by the help 
 of Beelzebub, prince of the demons, * Then by 
 whom,' he asked, * do your sons cast them out ? 
 Therefore they shall be your judges.' The 
 student, however, now knows that these concep- 
 tions are thousands of years old, and are spread 
 at the present day all round the world. They 
 underlie the ancient magical books of Egypt and 
 Babylonia ; they may be followed in Christian 
 history all through mediaeval Europe ; while the 
 testimony of innumerable travellers proves that 
 they ;iiay be traced from continent to continent 
 and island to island in every phase of the lower 
 culture. In view of the modern science of 
 anthropology the plea once pathetically raised on 
 behalf of the Gospel narratives that there was a 
 special creation of demons in the age of Jesus and 
 his apostles, falls to the ground as absurd. 
 
 Into a scene thus constituted the Gospel of Mark 
 introduces Jesus, whose title Christ or Messiah has 
 already become a kind of proper name.^ Its 
 history and significance will be expounded later. 
 
 1 Mark i. I, ' The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ.' 
 
42 THE HISTORICAL JESUS 
 
 It is the centre of a group of impassioned expecta- 
 tions which had passed through many forms, had 
 taken up various foreign elements into their 
 midst, and had been kindled into vehement 
 activity in many minds by the announcement of 
 the Baptist that the kingdom of God had come 
 nigh. Its watchwords were the division of time 
 into two ages, the age that now is, and the age 
 that is to come ; the judgment and the resurrec- 
 tion ; the Son of David and the Son of Man. The 
 story of Jesus is told through this medium ; his 
 person is enveloped in it from end to end. The 
 Gospels are not so much lives of Jesus in the 
 modem sense, as apologies for Christianity, and, 
 above all, for the Messiah's death. They do not 
 fulfil any of the conditions of biography as we 
 imderstand it ; they are edifying narratives 
 explanatory of the origin and claims of the Church. 
 * To such an extent,' observes Prof. Burkitt, * are 
 the S5^optic Gospels Jewish books, occupied 
 with problems belonging originally to first-century 
 Judaism, that it makes large parts of them 
 difficult to use as books of universal religion.'^ 
 The Evangelists describe the career of Jesus under 
 
 1 The Earliest Sources for the Life of Jesus (1910), p. 27. 
 
PRESENTED AS THE MESSIAH 43 
 
 the preconception that he is the Christ, just as 
 the compilers of the Buddhist scriptures assume 
 that their teacher Gotama was^a Buddha. The 
 first Buddhist books which came into the hands 
 of Western scholars teemed with such wonders 
 that it was natural to view him as a god. Marvels 
 attended his birth, when the world was full of 
 light, and the shining devas in the heavens 
 above waved their robes and sang their songs of 
 praise. Then the bUnd saw and the dumb spake ; 
 the deaf heard, the lame walked, and the fires 
 in the hells were put out. The Buddha also must 
 be tempted by the Evil One. He, too, can control 
 the demonic powers. He, too, can feed six 
 hundred disciples out of a basket of cakes pre- 
 pared by an old woman for her husband and 
 herself, and have enough left to supply the poor 
 of the nearest village. A disciple on his way to 
 hear the Master teach finds no boat at the ferry, 
 steps boldly on to the water, and it bears up his 
 feet. But in the middle of the broad stream he 
 is frightened at the waves and begins to sink, 
 when he makes an act of J05rful confidence in the 
 Buddha, the water is once more firm as dry 
 ground, and he passes on in safety to the other 
 
44 THE HISTORICAL JESUS 
 
 side. In the last year of his Hfe the Buddha 
 predicts his death after three months ; he is 
 transfigured in the presence of two disciples on 
 the night before ; and when he passes out of Hfe 
 a mighty earthquake testifies to the sympathy of 
 nature with his decease. Here is a series of 
 wonders of the most significant description. But 
 no student now doubts the historic reality of the 
 person round whom this robe of miracle has been 
 thrown. It would be perfectly easy to argue that 
 no human being ever lived who did all the things 
 ascribed to the Buddha. Such reasoning would 
 not touch the evidence derived from an immense 
 mass of teaching, often stamped with a lofty 
 individuality, and congruous with many features 
 of Indian life known from other sources. At this 
 point, however, the historian finds support in 
 archaeology which Palestine fails to yield. To 
 say nothing of earlier discoveries it may be 
 sufficient to mention that in the autumn of 1909 a 
 large mound was opened near Peshawar. It 
 was a commemorative shrine of the usual type, 
 a soHd dome of brick, containing at its core a 
 small square chamber. Ancient tradition led 
 the explorers to expect to find within it some 
 
MIRACLE AND HISTORY 45 
 
 relics of the Buddha. The expectation was not 
 disappointed. On the floor of the chamber lay 
 a stone casket which contained some tiny frag- 
 ments of calcined bone. An inscription identified 
 them with the Buddha's remains. There was no 
 reason to doubt their genuineness ; and they 
 were solemnly presented by the Viceroy himself 
 in March, 1910, to a deputation of Burmese 
 Buddhists as the nearest heirs of the faith within 
 the Indian Empire. 
 
 From the age of the Buddha to the last century 
 the glamour of miracle shines round the long 
 succession of India's teachers. The lives of 
 Christian saints are adorned again and again with 
 the same tissue of marvel. No long time is needed 
 for its growth. The freedman of the Emperor 
 Augustus related that wondrous portents had 
 heralded his master's birth. The Roman Senate, 
 warned of coming danger to their power, resolved 
 that no child bom that year should be reared. A 
 little later it was affirmed that the mother of the 
 future ruler of Rome had conceived in the temple 
 of Apollo. Even during his own Hfetime the most 
 exalted attributes were ascribed to him. A 
 German archaeological expedition in Asia Minor 
 
46 THE HISTORICAL JESUS 
 
 in the last decade of the last century discovered 
 some remarkable inscriptions among the remains 
 of the ancient cities Halicarnassus and Priene, 
 Apameia and Eumeneia. They were concerned 
 partly with the introduction into Asia of the 
 Julian calendar, and partly with the institution 
 of a general holiday on the birthday of Augustus, 
 September 23rd. The historian Mommsen re- 
 ferred them to the year 11 or 9 B.C. Very note- 
 worthy is the employment of the word evangelia, 
 glad tidings or gospels : ' the birthday of the god 
 (tov 6iov) is become the beginning of glad tidings 
 (ivayytkimv) through him to the world.' He is 
 designated * the Saviour (ctwttJp) of the whole 
 human race ' ; he is the beginning of life and the 
 end of sorrow that man was ever born ; he has 
 been sent by Providence to put an end to war ; and 
 peace prevails on earth and sea. When such 
 hopes gathered round the reigning Caesar, was it 
 surprising that he should be regarded as a 
 very impersonation of Deity ? An inscription at 
 Philae described him as * star of all Greece who 
 has arisen as great Saviour Zeus ' ; while the 
 echoes of Egyptian theology are heard in the 
 preceding language which calls him ' Zeus out of 
 
THE REALITY OF HIS TEACHING 47 
 
 Father Zeus.'^ Yet no one doubts the humanity 
 of Augustus, or the soHd reaUty of his imperial 
 sway. 
 
 (iv) 
 Where, then, shall we seek for the real evidence 
 of the historical character of Jesus ? There is in 
 some quarters a growing impression that the 
 modem methods of critical inquiry into the 
 Gospels leave, after all, very little to be known. 
 It is quite true that much remains uncertain. We 
 cannot tell with any precision the year of his birth 
 or death. What impulses sent him to the Jordan 
 bank among the crowd which gathered around 
 John the Baptist, are hidden from us. When he 
 began to teach, how long he was occupied in 
 Galilee, why he retired into Phoenicia, whether 
 he ever visited Jerusalem in his public ministry 
 prior to the passover at which he suffered — these 
 and many other details must remain obscure. 
 But these difficulties do not affect the claim of 
 the large mass of teaching which the First Three 
 Gospels contain to proceed from a real person. 
 It is doubtless the case that various elements have 
 
 1 Wendland, in Preuschen's Zeitschr. fUr N.T. Wissenschaft, 
 1904, p. 343. 
 
48 THE HISTORICAL JESUS 
 
 been absorbed into the Evangelic traditions ; just 
 as it is freely admitted that the process of trans- 
 mission from memory to memory and from mouth 
 to mouth, and of translation from the Aramean 
 vernacular into Greek, renders us unable to affirm 
 that we have any of the great sayings of Jesus 
 precisely as he uttered them. The supporters of 
 the theory of a * Christ-m)rth,' however, make 
 no attempt to show how its various items were 
 precipitated on a single personality ; why that 
 personaHty was attached to a place that never 
 existed yet was afterwards located on the map ; 
 by what means it was provided with a group of 
 family relations and conducted from Capernaum 
 to Pontius Pilate's judgment hall ; and under 
 whose inspiration it was endowed with a tongue in 
 whose words subsequent generations might find 
 guidance and support. The reader who approaches 
 the Wisdom of Jesus the son of Joseph through 
 the prior * Wisdom of Jesus the son of Sirach,' or 
 the * Sayings of the Fathers ' who both pre- 
 ceded and followed him, will hardly dismiss the 
 Gospel teachings as * Jewish commonplaces.' The 
 Taknudist Fiebig will tell him, for example, 
 that the Talmud contains no parables of the 
 
REALITY OF HIS TEACHING 49 
 
 kingdom such as those ascribed to Jesus ; and 
 Mr. Montefiore will invite him to recognize that 
 * even if you could find separate close parallels for 
 nine hundred and seventy out of, say, the thousand 
 verses in the Gospel in which Jesus is the speaker, 
 and even if you put them together and made a nice 
 little book of them, you would not have produced 
 a substitute of equal religious value. The unity, 
 the aroma, the spirit, the genius, would all have 
 fled. Or, rather, you could not infuse them into 
 your elegant collection of fragments and tit-bits.'^ 
 Here seems to me to lie the ultimate guarantee 
 for the historical reality of Jesus of Nazareth. 
 Readers of Renan's Vie de Jesus may remember 
 how during his preliminary studies in the Syria 
 of to-day the scenery and Hfe of the people shaped 
 themselves in his mind into a kind of fifth gospel. 
 It is impossible in a few sentences to reproduce 
 this impression. There is no philosophy in Jesus' 
 teaching which sums up a past development or 
 opens new lines of thought. He is not a theologian 
 who creates a creed, or a man of science who in- 
 terprets the physical world. He belongs to the 
 order of prophets, that unique product of Israel's 
 
 1 The Synoptic Gospels, vol. i., Introduction, p. cv. 
 
 D 
 
50 THE HISTORICAL JESUS 
 
 Spiritual life ; and the novelty of his speech lies 
 in the note of authority which rests not upon 
 tradition but upon the freshness of experience 
 within. Here lay the ultimate sovereignty of 
 the heart ; this was the final court of appeal. 
 * Why,' he cried, * judge ye not even of yourselves 
 what is right ? ' 
 
 The time was full of tyranny and tribulation. 
 The death of Herod, the subsequent deposition 
 of his son Archelaus in Judea, and the encroach- 
 ments of Rome, produced unrest and agitation, 
 which the heavy burdens of taxation and the 
 contrasts between wealth and poverty only in- 
 tensified. In the midst of extravagance on the 
 one hand and want on the other were little groups 
 of men and women who ' waited for the consola- 
 tion of Israel.' They fed their hopes on the 
 language of ancient prophecy or later apocalyptic ; 
 and scanned the heavens for signs of coming 
 change. Suddenly from the banks of the Jordan 
 a voice rings through the land, * Repent, for the 
 kingdom of God has drawn nigh ! ' Crowds 
 gather round the austere figure who wears the 
 prophet's mantle and uses the prophet's speech, 
 and go down into the river to receive at his hand 
 
HIS EARLY YEARS 5I 
 
 the baptism of repentance unto forgiveness of sins. 
 Among the Baptist's hearers is a young man 
 from Nazareth in Galilee, some thirty years old. 
 He is the son of a carpenter or builder, the eldest 
 of a large family, with four brothers and several 
 sisters. He has received the usual education of 
 a Jewish boy. At his mother's knee, or in the 
 village school, he has early learned the great 
 confession of Jewish piety, ' Hear, O Israel, the 
 Lord thy God, the Lord is one.' He knows the 
 service in the synagogue, and can stand up and 
 read a lesson in the Sabbath worship, or can sit 
 and preach when prayers are over. Maxims of 
 law and precedents of history and principles of 
 prophecy are laid up ready for instant use in a 
 well-stored memory ; he can supersede Moses 
 out of his own writings ; and he is apparently 
 imbued with eschatologic lore. He comes out of 
 an upland village, but the great caravans of 
 merchandise between Egypt and Syria have passed 
 to and fro over the Galilean hills ; he may be 
 provincial in dialect, he is not so in thought ; 
 his outlook reaches north and south and east 
 and west ; he glances over court and cottage, 
 over the professors of piety and the disreputable 
 
52 THE HISTORICAL JESUS 
 
 and forlorn ; he sees cruelty and lust among 
 princes, and hypocrisy among teachers of religion ; 
 and he, too, is moved by the vision of ' the 
 coming wrath,' and joins in the great act of 
 penitence in Jordan's stream. 
 
 New hopes, fresh ideas, plans, expectations, 
 rise with swift movement in his mind, and he must 
 needs go apart and wrestle with them. He seeks 
 in solitude the opportunity to shape his course, 
 and the Church afterwards fills it with pictures of 
 the Messiah's trials. But the wilderness cannot 
 hold him long. Does he return to the Jordan 
 bank to find the prophet a prisoner and the 
 crowds dispersed, or did he listen again to his 
 teacher's burning words ? We do not know. 
 The brief tale of Mark leaves an unnamed interval 
 between Jesus' baptism and John's arrest, and we 
 can only infer that it was the Baptist's imprison- 
 ment which sent Jesus back to GaHlee. There he 
 abandons the comparative isolation of his obscure 
 home, and carries his message to the busy lake 
 with its little towns and thriving industries. Many 
 are the occupations reflected in his words. Still 
 do the fishermen mend their nets in their boats 
 by the lake side ; still do they launch out into 
 
REALITY OF HIS TEACHING 53 
 
 the deep for a cast ; still do they come up out 
 of the water dragging it to shore, and sort the 
 contents, flinging the bad away. Along the plain 
 and on the gentle slopes the sower passes scattering 
 the grain ; or when the harvest is ripe the reapers 
 gather the tares into bundles for fuel. The 
 declivities behind are gemmed with red anemones 
 more splendid than all Solomon's array. Above 
 them the pastures stretch over the hills where the 
 shepherd seeks the wandering sheep. The raven 
 sails out to-day as of old from his nest among 
 the crags, and floats in the air poised high above 
 the lake below. Look to the east, and behind the 
 mountain wall you may see the dawn come up 
 red and lowring. The storm gathers and breaks 
 upon the heights ; the torrent-beds in the ravines 
 are quickly filled with rushing waters, and the 
 ill-built house upon the sandy floor of the valley's 
 mouth is undermined ; the lake is churned into 
 foam as the wind rushes down the gorges, and 
 the boatmen strain and labour at the oar. Enter 
 the peasant's house and you may see the mother 
 kneading the bread for the family meal, patching 
 the clothes of husband or child, or sweeping the 
 floor for a lost coin. Pass to the chandler's shop. 
 
54 THE HISTORICAL JESUS 
 
 and learn how to give good measure, pressed down, 
 shaken together and running over. At the wine- 
 seller's you may find out why new wine should 
 not be put into old skins. The builder will show 
 you how to distinguish the green wood from the 
 dry ; where the chips are flying you will know the 
 meaning of a splinter in the eye ; or as the joiner 
 measures and fits his planks, you will realize 
 why you cannot lengthen your own stature 
 by a cubit. Visit the bazaars, the rich stuffs 
 heaped in profusion among carpet and tapestry 
 are for court-robes ; the precious pearl, jealously 
 guarded, is a ransom for a king. Or watch the 
 games of the children in the market-square, the 
 mimic wedding and the funeral. Yonder labourers 
 huddled in the shade through the noonday heat, 
 are waiting for a job : the owner of the vineyard 
 calls them time after time till the last hour of 
 daylight. Here are no maxims of moralists, no 
 pedantry of the schools. This is no academic 
 discussion, no formal lecture from the teacher's 
 chair. It is speech coined in the sunlight, minted 
 in the open air. The breath of freedom plays 
 through it ; listen, and you can hear the echoes of 
 the waves lapping on the beach, and the winds 
 
PERSONALITY IN HIS TEACHING 55 
 
 blowing on the hills. A psalmist might have said 
 * Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the 
 land.' A rabbi or a Chinese sage might have 
 enjoined * Do not to others what you would not 
 that they should do to you.' A Greek moralist 
 might teach that the wise man was a son of God. 
 A Hindu seer might lay down the overcoming of 
 evil by good as the prime rule of life. You may 
 gather gems from out the centuries as you plod 
 slowly through the literatures of antiquity ; but 
 where in so brief a compass will you find so much 
 which the common heart has since recognized as 
 highest ? Here is concentrated into a few pages 
 a wisdom which is only found elsewhere scattered 
 through climes and generations. What is its 
 source ? It is no scrap-heap of commonplaces, 
 the product of a general insight where everybody 
 is wiser than anybody ; it bears the impress of a 
 great creative personality who can make the 
 homeliest symbols, the simplest imaginative forms, 
 instinct with the spirit of life. 
 
 And the action corresponds. There is an 
 originality of conduct as well as of speech. Jesus 
 does what neither Jew nor Greek had done before. 
 He goes to dine with a tax-gatherer ; he sits at 
 
56 THE HISTORICAL JESUS 
 
 table with the social outcast ; he consorts with 
 all kinds of undesirable types of men and women 
 of low occupation or of none. This is no inven- 
 tion ; it is reality. He opens new paths of 
 redeeming activity ; he seeks out the wanderer 
 and binds up the bruised. We do not hear of 
 Attis that he went about doing good, or of Adonis 
 that he came to save the lost. This is a human 
 novelty, not a mythological datum ; and it has 
 very human issues, which do not admit of explain- 
 ing a mother's anxieties by the theory that she 
 was a degraded deity. Jesus was well aware of 
 the reputation which he earned. His own half- 
 humorous comments as he compares himself with 
 John, sum up the contrast : * Abstain from 
 ordinary food, and you are mad ; eat and drink 
 like the rest, you are a glutton and a drunkard.' 
 Was he prepared for the bitterest blow of all, that 
 mother and brothers, alarmed for his sanity, 
 should seek to lay hold on him, to protect him 
 against himself ? The breach was inevitable ; 
 for whom was it harder, for him to say, or for them 
 to hear — ' Whosoever shall do the will of God, the 
 same is my brother, and sister, and mother ' ? 
 The traditions of Jesus, then, present us with 
 
PERMANENT ELEMENTS IN HIS TEACHING 57 
 
 principles, not laws. They are the vehicle of an 
 immense moral impulse, not of a code of rules. 
 Here is spirit instead of system ; a summons to 
 an unworldly life, not a programme of duty ; a 
 challenge to an endeavour, rather than a pattern 
 of conduct. The contrasts between the old order 
 and the new are always conceived in view of the 
 great event so near at hand. But the teaching 
 which rests on universal relations, concerned with 
 man and God, does not lose its worth when its 
 time-frame is shattered. Be it that he accepted 
 the title of Messiah ; be it that he announced the 
 speedy coming of the Son of Man ; be it that the 
 end of the age did not arrive — this may prevent 
 us from worshipping him as God ' out of God,' it 
 does not impair the elements in his thought and 
 word, his character and work, which experience 
 confirms. ' Why must you have a personal 
 Jesus ? ' asks Prof. Drews. Did not the wor- 
 shippers of Mithra carry their faith through 
 Europe, and plant it even on our own Tyne ? 
 But Mithraism failed because no imitatio Mithrae 
 was possible. The Church conquered with the 
 Gospels in its hand. There was a figure of flesh 
 and blood which all could understand and revere. 
 
58 THE HISTORICAL JESUS 
 
 The victory of Christianity over the Roman 
 Empire was won impHcitly when the first collec- 
 tion of Jesus' words was written down. The 
 essence of the Gospel may not lie for us in that 
 which seemed most significant to Jesus and his 
 age. The visions of impending change have 
 passed away, and the world still spins its annual 
 round. But the relation of God and man which 
 Jesus set at the heart of his expectation of the 
 kingdom is our possession for ever. Time has 
 sifted out its transient elements ; it has enlarged 
 its perspective, it has changed its emphasis, and 
 brought its hidden treasures to light. What, 
 then, remains ? Deep in the experience of 
 Christendom is planted that sense of the in- 
 dissoluble union between our nature and the 
 divine which enabled Jesus to summon the 
 sinner to the highest possible achievement, sure 
 of a response to his call. This is what a modern 
 interpreter, the late Master of Balliol, called his 
 * idealism.' For the Gospel means that the selfish 
 and the dissolute, the faint-hearted and the feeble- 
 willed, the reckless, the despairing, the defiant, 
 the cruel, are all alike the children of God's 
 providence, have a share in his purpose, and 
 
59 
 
 are bidden by Jesus — with a courage and a 
 confidence which no lapse of years can shake — 
 to be perfect as the Father which is in heaven is 
 perfect. And those who have learned this faith ^, 
 of him will stand by his side, whoever else may \ 
 go away ; and if he calls across the ages * Will ye ) 
 go too ? ' they will answer as of old, though with / 
 a wider outlook and different emphasis, ' To / 
 whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words of/ 
 eternal life.' 
 
II 
 
 JESUS AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 About the year 28 or 29 a.d. a rumour flew 
 through Judea that a prophet, in the prime of 
 early manhood, had appeared in the wilderness, 
 announcing that the kingdom of God had come 
 nigh. Crowds from the capital as well as from 
 the country assembled on the bank of the Jordan, 
 and received the baptism of repentance unto 
 forgiveness of sins. A few months later another 
 young man of about the same age proclaims the 
 same message beside the Lake of Galilee, and carries 
 it from synagogue to synagogue through town and 
 village among the northern hills. Again a few 
 months later, and he commits the same word to 
 twelve followers, sending them out two and two, 
 with instructions to ' Preach, saying, The kingdom 
 of God has come nigh.' 
 
THE KINGDOM AND ITS INTERPRETATION 6l 
 
 What did this mean ? The question takes us 
 into the heart of the most difficult problems of 
 Gospel study. The language ascribed to Jesus 
 in the First Three Gospels is not always consistent. 
 It depends on traditions which may have been 
 already modified through unconscious influences 
 of memory and hope before they were recorded 
 in writing. Moreover, our Evangelists present us 
 with the speech of Jesus transferred from his native 
 vernacular into Greek, and in the process of 
 translation new shades of meaning may have been 
 imparted to his words. There are differences in 
 the point of view of his reporters. The sayings of 
 the Teacher about the future and the end of the 
 age emerge out of a circle of fully formed beliefs 
 in the early Church at a period when they had had 
 time to take up fresh items of popular expectation, 
 and even to be associated with later forms of 
 literary expression. To disentangle all these 
 influences is a problem of extraordinary intricacy. 
 Fresh light has been thrown on it in recent years, 
 partly by more delicate methods of documentary 
 investigation, partly by the study of the long 
 series of apocalyptic works which illuminate the 
 interval between the books of Daniel and of 
 
62 JESUS AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 Revelation, and partly by the endeavour to trace 
 the origins of their mysterious symbols in the 
 older faiths of Persia and of Babylon. 
 
 (i) 
 
 The term * kingdom ' is in one respect an 
 inadequate rendering of the ancient name. Its 
 true meaning is kingship or rule. The political 
 analogy which presented the divine government 
 after the fashion of human sovereignty, was 
 employed all the way from India to Greece. 
 Among the ancient Vedic hymns some of the 
 noblest gather round the lordly figure of king 
 Varuna. His messengers fly through the world ; 
 his ordinances are fixed ; he numbers the winkings 
 of men's eyes ; he knows the flight of birds, the 
 paths of ships upon the ocean, the course of the 
 far-travelling wind ; and where two men plot 
 together in secret, he is aware of it, being present 
 there as third. Among the hills and vales of 
 Hellas Zeus is king of gods and men, and Pindar 
 sang of his house in the highest, warning the 
 wrong-doer that ' if a man thinketh that in doing 
 aught he shall be hidden from God, he erreth ' ; 
 * for aU the sins sinned in this realm of Zeus One 
 
TYPES OF HEAVENLY RULE 63 
 
 judge th under earth.' Among the most popular 
 of the Egyptian cults which had made their way 
 in the Empire during the first century of our era, 
 was that of Isis. She, too, was sovereign of a 
 
 * kingdom,' into which she * called ' the believer, 
 that he might * enter in ' ; she, too, * saved ' from 
 danger, ignorance, and sin ; she, too, gave new 
 life to the disciple, so that he was * born again,' 
 
 * changed,' or * transfigured.'^ But it was in the 
 ancient Persian theology, in the teachings ascribed 
 to the prophet Zarathustra, that this conception re- 
 ceived its most conspicuous development. Among 
 the six *Holy Immortals' who stood around Ahura 
 Mazda, ' the Lord omniscient,' was the angel of 
 khshathra or sovereignty, the kingdom or rule 
 of the divine will. ' We praise the good kingdom ' 
 ran the ancient hymn. Even in those early days 
 the service of human need was the best acknow- 
 ledgment of the kingship of God ; for the daily 
 prayer of the believer declared that * he gives the 
 kingdom to Ahura who bestows succour on the 
 poor.' But this sovereignty was opposed by 
 Aiiro Mainyu (Ahriman), the evil spirit with his 
 
 1 See Reitzenstein, Die Hellenistischen Mysterien-Religion, 
 1910, p. 26. 
 
64 JESUS AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 demon powers ; and prophetic hope looked for- 
 ward to a time when the kingdom should come, 
 and the ' forwards-making ' (frasho-kereti), the 
 world's advance to the victory of good, should be 
 accompHshed. The outlines of this scheme are 
 well known. Later texts might tell of tribula- 
 tions and calamities, of signs in the heavens, of 
 earthquake and storm on earth. But even the 
 old Avesta announces the advent of a Saviour 
 (Saoshyant) who should be the helper or agent in 
 the great consummation. The souls that had been 
 judged after death, and had passed the interval 
 in the heaven of good thoughts, good words, good 
 deeds, or the upper home of song round Ahura's 
 throne, and the condemned who had been con- 
 signed to the hell of evil thoughts, words, deeds, 
 would resume their bodies, and the resurrection 
 would take place. A general judgment would 
 once more sever the wicked from the just, but only 
 for three days of pain. For the mountains and 
 the hills would melt, and the fiery stream would 
 overspread the earth. To the righteous it would 
 be like a bath of milk ; the guilty would find it a 
 purifying flame. With a mighty onset the powers 
 of good would overwhelm their antagonists ; 
 
THE PERSIAN HOPE 65 
 
 Ahura himself would appear upon the scene ; the 
 great Serpent would be burned ; the hiding-place 
 in which Ahriman would take refuge would be 
 flung into the molten stream, and he too would 
 perish ; then hell should be brought back for the 
 enlargement of the world, and the universe should 
 be immortal for ever and ever. 
 
 The main features of this picture of the future 
 were already familiar to the Greeks who followed 
 Alexander the Great into the East. The deported 
 Israelites in Mesopotamia might have become 
 acquainted with it at an earlier date, after 
 C3mis had swept away the empire of Babylon. 
 The Hebrew seers had long since formulated 
 a doctrine of the divine sovereignty. Isaiah, 
 giving external shape to the profound experi- 
 ence which had summoned him forth to the 
 prophet's task, believed that he had *seen the 
 King, Yahweh of hosts.' Psalmists sang of his 
 rule as everlasting. It embraced the visible 
 world, the angel-powers to which were delegated 
 the control of the stars, marching in nightly 
 array across the sky, as well as other agencies 
 of nature — ^wind, rain, dew, and the like — ^and 
 lastly the motley company of the nations of the 
 
 E 
 
66 JESUS AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 earth and their guardians in the realms above. 
 The chief function of the human king was to give 
 judgment, and popular expectation in Israel as 
 early as the eighth century B.C. had already begun 
 to look forward to ' Yahweh's day,' a day of 
 victory over national enemies, when Yahweh's 
 people should be established in prosperity. It was 
 the daring message of Amos that this would be 
 instead a day of doom, darkness and not light. 
 In varying tones the warning is repeated to a guilty 
 people. First it is Assyria who will be the rod of 
 Yahweh's anger. Then it is from Babylon that 
 the chastisement will come, and Jeremiah actually 
 hails Nebuchadrezzar as the servant of Yahweh's 
 will. Wider is the outlook of a later day, as the 
 prophets predict the dissolution of the world, and 
 announce the creation of new heavens and a new 
 earth. The contact with Persian thought would 
 seem to have begun. Dim hints that the dead 
 may live, and the earth shall cast forth the shades, 
 imply that the stimulus of foreign suggestion is 
 at work. But it is not till the age of Antiochus 
 Epiphanes that the author of the Book of Daniel 
 (about 165 B.C.) definitely promises the great 
 awakening, * some to everlasting life, some to 
 
THE WORLD- JUDGMENT 67 
 
 shame and everlasting abhorrence.' It is the first 
 formal separation between the destinies of the 
 suffering righteous and the guilty apostates. And 
 here, too, for the first time the doctrine of the 
 kingdom is closely combined with that of a vast 
 world- judgment (Dan. vii.). 
 
 The seer stands looking over the tumultuous 
 ocean of human life where the four winds of heaven 
 war with the great sea. All is dim, undefined, 
 confused. Up from the sea, one after the other, 
 come four huge beasts. They are the symbols of 
 four empires, in which the writer arranges his 
 scheme of history, Babylonian, Median, Persian, 
 Greek. Suddenly the scene changes. A solemn 
 court is prepared for the great assize. Unnamed 
 ministering agents erect thrones for the judge 
 and the assisting powers. The locality is obscure, 
 but is presumably the earth. God, figured as a 
 venerable man, sits in the midst. The whiteness 
 of his vesture and his hair is the symbol of his 
 radiant purity. M)nriads of beings fill the ranks 
 around him as the agents of his decrees. The 
 records of men's doings are brought, and the books 
 are opened. The blasphemies of Antiochus, who 
 had so proudly called himself * God manifest,' 
 
68 JESUS AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 draw down the first doom on him. The other 
 beasts are judged in turn ; their empire passes, 
 but their peoples survive. And then, descending 
 (it would seem) on clouds from the sky, a new 
 figure is escorted by an angel-retinue, who bring 
 him near to the Ancient of Days. This is no brute 
 form ; he wears a human shape, distinguished from 
 lion, bear, and leopard, as * like unto a son of man.' 
 And to him is given a kingdom which shall not 
 pass away, but shall withstand all shocks of time 
 and last for ever. 
 
 Who is intended by this mysterious figure ? 
 The author himself seems to append an explanation 
 (ver. 27). Like the vanished beasts, this, too, is an 
 earthly sovereignty, that of the people of the saints 
 of the Most High, exalted to power which all 
 dominions must obey. His higher dignity is seen 
 in the human, contrasted with the bestial, form. 
 Had Israel, then, no personal head ? Was there 
 a kingdom without a king ? There is no mention 
 of any Davidic prince ; the ' Branch ' of older 
 prophecy has disappeared. Recent prophecy had 
 hoped for a great divine theophany,^ without 
 mentioning any national deHverer who should 
 
 1 Joel iii. ; Zech. xiv. ; Is. xxiv.-xxvii. 
 
THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ISRAEL 69 
 
 lead Israel to victorious war, and place it on a 
 universal throne. The Son of Sirach^ prays that 
 God will lift up his hand against the strange 
 nations, and crush the heads of the hostile rulers ; 
 but his hopes turn to Elijah as the agent of 
 the restoration of the scattered tribes.^ Elijah 
 had already been caught up into heaven ; if 
 he was to return, and assume the leadership 
 of Israel, must he not descend in a cloud-chariot 
 from above ? The parallel vision of four suc- 
 cessive empires, however, in Nebuchadrezzar's 
 dream {Dan. ii), closes with the enduring king- 
 dom set up by God (ver. 44) without any 
 human intervention. In the vague pictures of 
 apocal5^tic literature, vast and indefinite and 
 grandiose, we must not lay too much stress upon 
 analogies, and insist that if Persia or S)n*ia had 
 its d3mastic rulers, triumphant Israel also must 
 have its royal house. That view certainly held 
 its ground in some schools of thought, and the 
 noble description of the Davidic prince in the 
 Psalms of Solomon^ gives elevated expression to 
 
 ^Ecclus. xxxvi, 3 ff ; about 180 b.c. 
 2xlviii, 10 cp. Mah iv. 5-6. 
 • Ps. xvii. Perhaps between 50 and 40 B.C. 
 
yO JESUS AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 this form of the great hope. But it does not 
 explain the appearance of Daniel's solemn figure 
 from the sky. 
 
 Later Apocalyptists had no hesitation in 
 identifying him with a specific person. In one of 
 the Books of Enoch, known as the Similitudes 
 (xxxvii.-lxxi.) the Son of Man is very definitely 
 presented in this character (xlvi.). 
 
 And there I saw One who had a head of days, and his head 
 was white like wool, and with him was another being whose 
 countenance had the appearance of a man, and his face 
 was full of graciousness, like one of the holy angels And I 
 asked the angel who went with me and showed me all the 
 hidden things concerning that Son of Man, who he was and 
 whence he was, and why he went with the Head of Days ? 
 And he answered and said unto me ' This is the Son of Man 
 who hath righteousness, with whom dwelleth righteousness, 
 and who reveals all the treasures of that which is hidden, 
 because the Lord of Spirits hath chosen him, and his lot 
 before the Lord of Spirits hath surpassed everything in 
 uprightness for ever. And this Son of Man whom thou hast 
 seen will arouse the kings and the mighty ones from their 
 couches and the strong from their thrones, and will loosen 
 the reins of the strong and grind to powder the teeth of the 
 sinners. And he will put down the kings from their thrones 
 and kingdoms because they do not extol and praise him, nor 
 thankfully acknowledge whence the kingdom was bestowed 
 upon them.'i 
 
 1 Translation of Dr. Charles. 
 
THE SON OF MAN 7I 
 
 He is subsequently described as the * Elect ' 
 or * Chosen ' ; he is the * Anointed ' who will be 
 the Hght of the Gentiles, and the hope of those 
 who are troubled of heart. Ere the sun and stars 
 were created his name was named before the Lord 
 of Spirits, so that he was brought into being 
 before the world : and judgment will be committed 
 to him when the Lord of Spirits seats him on the 
 throne of his glory, and all evil shall pass away 
 before him and depart.^ He is not here as in 
 Daniel a symbol of the sovereignty of Israel ; he 
 is its actual administrator ; he is identified with 
 a person and designated as the Messiah. 
 
 Later expectation naturally followed this line. 
 The seer of 4 Ezra (xiii. zf combines the details 
 which Daniel separates. He, too, stands by the sea. 
 A wind arises and the waters are lashed into waves, 
 and from the midst arises as it were the likeness 
 of a man who flies with the clouds of heaven. It 
 is he whom the Most High hath kept to deliver 
 them that are upon the earth ; he will stand on 
 the top of Mount Zion and rebuke the nations 
 for their wickedness ; he will thus be both 
 Saviour and Judge. Still later the teachers of the 
 
 1 xlviii. 2-4 ; Ixii. 2 ; Ixix. 22. * After 70 a.d. 
 
72 JESUS AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 Synagogue held out the hope that, if Israel were 
 worthy, the Messiah would appear with the clouds 
 of heaven ; but if not, he would come lowly and 
 afflicted, riding upon an ass ; and the last name 
 in the Davidic genealogy in i Chron. iii. 24, Anani, 
 was identified as a title of the Messiah, and con- 
 nected fancifully with the word anan * cloud.' 
 In this stream of testimony the Gospel language 
 takes its place, when Jesus announces the coming 
 of the Son of Man in the glory of the Father with 
 the holy angels, and pictures the nations gathered 
 together for judgment before his throne.^ 
 
 1 Scholars have of late been busy with conjectures con- 
 cerning the antecedents of the Daniel figure. Was it Michael, 
 the angel-patron of Israel, xii. i ? so Dr. Cheyne and Prof. 
 N. P. Schmidt. Or was it a being like the angel of Peniel, 
 Gen. Toaai. 30, 31, without a name, yet a personal mediator 
 between God and the world, who was at the same time the 
 transcendent and primeval type of humanity, destined to be 
 realized in the kingdom of the saints ? The doctrine of 
 heavenly counterparts belonged to difierent forms of oriental 
 thought, and had established itself, as the language of St. Paul 
 shows, in Jewish theology before the days of Jesus. The Rabbis 
 had much to say about the glories of the First Man, which 
 were lost by the Fall. It Is quite possible that this celestial 
 being had become an apocalyptic figure, as easily recognizable 
 in S3anbol as the eagle of Rome or the lion of England. The 
 precise original significance it may be beyond our power to 
 
CONTEMPORARY BELIEF 73 
 
 (ii) 
 Around this doctrine of judgment other items 
 of expectation slowly gathered. They were never 
 welded into complete coherence, any more than 
 the Messianic type was uniform and consistent. 
 But certain distinctive features of contemporary 
 thought reappear in the preaching of Jesus. A 
 time-scheme has been formulated, and the * age 
 that now is ' will pass into ' the age that is to come.' 
 We hear of ' the judgment ' and * the resurrection '; 
 of * the kingdom prepared for the righteous from 
 the foundation of the world ' ; of * the beginning 
 of travail '^ ; of the parousia^ of the Son of Man. 
 His whole teaching is cast into this frame in the 
 
 recover. It belongs to a tradition of which only faint traces 
 remain, capable of various interpretations. The problem is 
 complicated by linguistic considerations which appear to 
 show that in the Galilean vernacular the * Son of Man ' would 
 really mean ' the Man.' Modem students of Apocalyptic 
 like Gunkel, Gressmann, Grill, Bousset, Volz, refer ' the 
 Man ' to the same group of ideas as the well-known terms 
 ' the Days,' ' the Tribulation,' ' the End,' ' the Second Death. 
 
 1 Matt. xxiv. 8, cf. the so-called ' birth-pains ' of the new 
 order. 
 
 2 For the appUcation of this term to the ' advent ' of kings 
 and princes, and even of the Saviour-god Asklepios, see 
 Deissmann, Light from the East, p. 37 2&. 
 
74 JESUS AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 First Three Gospels. The Hebrew view of the 
 world was essentially dramatic. It was under the 
 government of persons ; it was the scene in which 
 powers of good and evil clashed. Unlike the 
 Greek conceptions of a ruling Mind, expressing 
 itself through a scientific order, Hebrew piety 
 delighted to celebrate the praises of a supreme 
 Will. ' He spake and it was done,' sang the 
 Psalmists ; * he commanded and it stood fast.' 
 The idea of law in nature was certainly not wanting 
 to the thinkers of Israel, as the Wisdom literature 
 abundantly proves. But their fundamental inter- 
 pretation of history, under the influence of a 
 passionate nationaHsm, demanded the accomplish- 
 ment of a purpose, the fulfilment of a promise. 
 First, the seed of Abraham must inherit the land ; 
 at a later stage it must become the teacher of the 
 nations, the revealer of God to the whole world. 
 Whatever forces opposed it must be overcome ; 
 the victory of good was assured j the vicissi- 
 tudes of conquest and defeat might endure for a 
 while, but there was an inner meaning within 
 them which must be realized ; at any moment 
 the mystery of the divine intent might break 
 through, and the goal to which Israel had been 
 
THE NEW ORDER 75 
 
 advancing would be reached. This was the * time 
 of consummation,' the ' consummation of the 
 age.'^ So great an event would shatter the existing 
 order. It would involve the entry of fresh forces 
 into the world of earth and sky, which would be 
 reshaped to become the scene of the divine 
 presence, the sphere of God's rule. The approach 
 of the kingdom, accordingly, denoted the speedy 
 manifestation of powers hitherto held in reserve. 
 The warning cry of the Baptist, ' It is at hand,' 
 announced that the crisis so long awaited would be 
 delayed no more. In vivid figures he described 
 the judgment as in actual process. The axe of 
 the woodman was laid already at the root of the 
 trees ; the gigantic harvester would soon march 
 through the earth, winnowing fan in hand, ready 
 to gamer the wheat and bum up the chaff in 
 quenchless flame. 
 
 To this appeal Jesus responds. Alone, it would 
 seem, among the Baptist's hearers, he must carry 
 forth the same message, ^ but with a different 
 
 1 Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, Zeb. ix. 9 ; Benj. xi. 3 ; 
 Matt. xiii. 39-40, 49, xxiv. 3, xxviii. 20. 
 
 2 It appears, however, both from the picture of the Baptist's 
 activity in the Fourth Gospel, and from the curious episode 
 
76 JESUS AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 emphasis on its contents. New interpretations, 
 fresh possibilities, rise in his mind. He chooses 
 for the scene of his work the busiest group of 
 towns in the region of his own home. He assumes 
 no unusual character, however endeared by 
 national tradition. He wears no prophet's mantle, 
 eats no ascetic's food. He utters no threats of 
 national doom. He has learned to live in fellow- 
 ship with the Father who is in heaven ; and to 
 bring men and women to him is more urgent than 
 to utter warnings of terror and paint prospects 
 of hell. So he passes from the Teacher's seat in 
 the sjmagogue to stand by the sick bed. He has 
 an immense S5mipathy with the poor, the forsaken, 
 the disreputable, the social outcast. He is not 
 afraid to consort with the lax in ceremonial 
 observances, those who were technically sinners 
 because they did not keep the sabbath, or dis- 
 tinguish the clean from the unclean . The righteous 
 could find the way into the kingdom for them- 
 selves ; it was the degraded, engaged in occupa- 
 tions that defiled, — the wastrel, condemned by 
 
 in Acts xix. 1-7, that the movement which he inaugurated 
 spread more widely than we might have imagined from our 
 Synoptic authorities. 
 
THE PREACHING OF JESUS 77 
 
 conventional piety — whom he had come to invite. 
 Soon would the great banquet be spread J 
 Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, would take their seats 
 and summon the guests ; who would be ready 
 to attend the feast ? A note of urgency runs 
 through the speaker's words. Much of his lan- 
 guage is addressed to those who have already 
 given up all home-ties to follow him. The time 
 is short : there is so much to be done ; the nation 
 must be won ere it is too late ; * let Gentile and 
 Samaritan alone ; seek out Israel's lost sheep.' 
 The atmosphere is charged with an intensity of 
 expectation, reflected in the rapidity of Mark's 
 narrative, which moves from incident to incident 
 in breathless speed, as he links one to another 
 by * immediately.' It reaches its cUmax in the 
 announcement attributed to Jesus (Matt x. 23) 
 in his directions to the Twelve about their first 
 missionary expedition, * You will not have gone 
 over the cities of Israel before the son of Man 
 arrives.' 
 
 Did Jesus, then, as Albert Schweitzer has 
 argued,^ suppose that while the Twelve were 
 absent on their preaching tour, he would himself 
 
 1 The Quest of the Historical Jesus, p. 357flE. 
 
78 JESUS AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 be transformed into this mysterious being ? Did 
 he expect the end so soon, and so confidently, 
 that he could assure his disciples of his appearance 
 from the sky on clouds of glory before they re- 
 turned from their several fields of toil ? That view 
 involves so many incongruities that only a robust 
 faith in the Evangelist's accuracy can sustain it. 
 If Jesus had already disclosed himself in that 
 character to his immediate followers, how is it 
 that his instructions to preach the near arrival 
 of the kingdom contain no hint of this august 
 function ? Why was he silent about his own 
 share in the coming change ? And why at a 
 later stage in his ministry does he enquire not 
 only what common rumour said about him, but 
 also what they themselves imagined him to 
 be ? The question at Caesarea Philippi has no 
 meaning if he has already announced his advent 
 as the Man from heaven. The course of events 
 did not correspond with this expectation. The 
 shock of personal disappointment is assumed to 
 have driven him to the desperate venture of 
 going to Jerusalem and courting death, in order 
 to constrain the Father to send him back out of 
 the sky to judge the world. But what of the dis- 
 
THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE 79 
 
 appointment of the Twelve ? Would they have 
 continued to trust a leader who thus mistook the 
 purposes of God ? No doubt the story of Second 
 Advent prophecy is not without significant 
 instances of faith that triumphed over frus- 
 trated prediction, and, when one date passed and 
 nothing happened, only asked confidently for the 
 next to be fixed. But it is hard to believe that 
 even the singular attraction which Jesus exercised 
 over those most closely associated with him could 
 have suffered no wound from so great a failure. 
 Does it not seem more probable that among the 
 mixed elements of the whole discourse this saying 
 reflects the eager hope of a later day, and really 
 belongs to counsels and warnings given to the 
 early missionaries who went forth from Jerusalem 
 in their Master's name ? 
 
 But though this particular saying cannot with 
 any certainty be ascribed to Jesus> at least in 
 its present context, there remain many others 
 which entirely confirm the belief that he looked for 
 the arrival of the kingdom in the immediate future. 
 The disciple must watch with girded loins and 
 burning lamp, for the Son of Man will come at an 
 hour imforeseen (Luke xii. 35-40 ; Matt. xxiv. 44). 
 
80 JESUS AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 So near is the great event that at his last meal with 
 the apostles, to whom (according to Matt. xix. 28) 
 he has already promised twelve thrones for 
 judging the twelve tribes of Israel, he makes a 
 rendezvous with them to drink new wine together 
 in the kingdom where they shall be the honoured 
 companions at his table. ^ The national element 
 here imexpectedly breaks through. It is of rare 
 occurrence in his teaching. The pictures which 
 Jewish hope delighted to hang in its chambers of 
 imagery had no charm for him. The overthrow 
 of foreign tyrannies, nations submissive beneath 
 Israel's rule, tributes and gifts of kings, Jerusalem 
 exalted in splendour, the land miraculously fertile, 
 mothers giving birth without pain, the saints 
 reigning in Palestine — such details did not belong 
 to the kingdom of God and his righteousness^ 
 which he proclaimed as the objects of an untiring 
 quest (Matt, vi. 33). Nevertheless its scene would 
 be on earth, though an earth restored to paradisal 
 innocence ; it would involve an immense trans- 
 formation of the existing order ; the suffering poor 
 
 ^ Matt. xxvi. 29; Luke xxii. 18-30. 
 
 2 The righteousness required by God as a condition of 
 acquittal in the judgment and entry into the kingdom. 
 
ITS ETHICAL DEMANDS 8l 
 
 should receive in it the compensation for their 
 pain ; and the rich, the full, the laughing, would 
 find their lot reversed. 
 
 For the kingdom of God would take its character 
 from God. Inasmuch as he was a righteous God, 
 the lord of purity and peace, his rule would make 
 similar demands on those who came beneath his 
 sway. The physical conditions of the new life 
 hardly come into view. The humanity of the 
 future will need marriage no more ; the earthly 
 bodies will be changed into angelic glory. But 
 the figures of the bridal and the feast imply 
 throughout that the kingdom will have some 
 collective character, and whatever be its locality 
 and conditions, its inhabitants, engaged in ful- 
 filling the will of God, will still be involved in 
 moral relations both to him and to each other. 
 In that world where there are greater and lesser, 
 there are differences of capacity as there also are 
 of opportunity, and these at once carry with them 
 ethical demands. The teaching of Jesus, however, 
 rarely projects itself so far, and then only to hint, 
 as in the parable of the talents, that faithful 
 service here will be rewarded by increased responsi- 
 bility hereafter. But that impHes that the con- 
 
82 JESUS AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 duct and temper which would qualify men for 
 entrance into the kingdom, would be continued 
 \mder the changed conditions of the blessed life. 
 When Jesus tells the scribe who has commended 
 his selection of the two great conunandments, 
 that he is not far from the kingdom, he does not 
 mean that on reaching it God and his neighbour 
 will have no more claim on him for love. These 
 obligations would still continue, but they would 
 not be fulfilled in bondage to law, they would be 
 the joyous outflow of spiritual affection. In 
 preaching the coming of the kingdom Jesus never 
 supposed himself to be either proclaiming the 
 future abrogation of all duty, or founding a new 
 religion and inaugurating a new morality for ages 
 yet unborn. He was the herald of a vast super- 
 natural event, which, whatever its issue for 
 others, would affect Israel first and chief of all. 
 The scope of this event was undefined ; around 
 its margin he drew no precise limits ; but his 
 first function was to prepare his people for it, 
 and though few might be chosen, to carry the 
 great invitation forth to all. In doing so he 
 shed so much light upon the spiritual foundations 
 of all social life that his insights have supplied 
 
THE PERMANENCE OF MORALITY 83 
 
 the best guidance for feeling and action ever since. 
 It is quite true that the stories of the wandering 
 son or the Samaritan traveller are not confined 
 within the time-frame in which so many of Jesus' 
 sayings are presented. They belong to humanity 
 at large, and have just as much significance 
 whether the resurrection and the judgment be 
 near or remote. But it is no less true that 
 much more, the heroic note of renunciation, the 
 summons to immediate surrender of property, or 
 the breach with family ties, imply an order 
 which is about to pass away. ' Let me bid fare- 
 well to them that are at my house,' pleads a would- 
 be disciple. * No man,' rephes Jesus austerely, 
 ' having put his hand to the plough, and looking 
 back, is fit for the kingdom of God.' 
 
 (iii) 
 
 There was, however, in Jewish usage another 
 sense in which the kingdom was not something 
 destined to arrive from outside, it was already 
 realized through religion itself. The hearts of 
 the faithful recognized the rule of God as a present 
 fact. The divine sovereignty might be exercised 
 through the Law. A convert who repeated the 
 
84 JESUS AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 sacred confession of the Divine Unity beginning 
 ' Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God, the Lord is 
 one ' {Deut. vi. 4-9), was said to ' take upon himself 
 the yoke of the kingdom.' Why, it was asked, did 
 this precede the second passage selected as its 
 sequel, Deut. xi. 13-21, with its promises to the 
 obedient and its warnings to the disloyal ? ' In 
 order,' was the answer, ' that a man may first 
 take on himself the yoke of the kingdom, and 
 afterwards the yoke of the commandments.' 
 This was no galling burden, but a privilege and 
 delight ; it was contrasted with the yoke of 
 worldly care, or again with the yoke of political 
 subjection. The service of the Law was the 
 response of Israel to its heavenly Lord ; and 
 while the rabbis piled up their rules of minute 
 observance round the sabbath, they did so in 
 honour of it as ' a day of the holy kingdom for all 
 Israel.' It is only a step — though a step of far- 
 reaching significance — from this conception of the 
 kingdom as a rule of God embodied in an actual 
 collection of positive laws to the more spiritual 
 view of it implied in the usual interpretation of 
 the saying of Jesus (Luke xvii. 21), ' The kingdom 
 of God is within you.' The conscience is the sphere 
 
INWARDNESS OF THE KINGDOM 85 
 
 of God's government. He dwells as king and 
 judge within the heart. Through our affections 
 he claims our allegiance, as law and love meet 
 and blend within the soul, and the obedience of 
 the subject is transmuted into the fellowship of 
 the son. Here, it is suggested, the kingdom 
 appears as a universal spiritual fact, potential 
 at any rate, if not actually realized. It is the 
 expression of an ethical sovereignty, which 
 exercises its sway over all conscious moral agents, 
 and reveals itself in man through the authority 
 of right. The interpretation is, however, chal- 
 lenged even in the margin of our Revised Version, 
 where an alternative rendering is offered, ' The 
 kingdom of heaven is in the midst of you.' For 
 the kingdom was not, it is pleaded, in the hearts 
 of the Pharisees, to whom Jesus was replying. 
 They showed none of its righteousness, its peace, 
 its joy in the Holy Spirit. * Among them ' it 
 might be ; it was already planted in the com- 
 munity around them ; could they but open their 
 eyes to see, they would find the seed already 
 sprouting ; had they only the real insight, they 
 would note how the leaven had begun to work. 
 But early students of the Gospel understood the 
 
86 JESUS AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 words in yet another sense : * it is in your hands, 
 in your power,' said TertuUian, ' if you hear and 
 do the command of God ' ; ' it lies in your power 
 to lay hold of it,' said Cyril, ' by loyal purpose 
 and steadfast act.' Is that, however, an adequate 
 explanation of the words in their present context ? 
 The Pharisees have enquired when the kingdom, 
 which Jesus declared to be so near, would really 
 come. The Teacher answers that it will be no use 
 to watch for it ; no brightening dawn will precede 
 its sun-rise ; it will appear like lightning (ver. 24), 
 flashing unheralded across the sky ; so sudden will 
 be its arrival, there will be no time to point to its 
 approach and say ' Lo, here ! lo, there,' for it 
 will be already in their midst. ^ 
 
 1 Those who take this view point out that in the Aramean 
 speech of Jesus the verb * is ' would not be required or prob- 
 ably expressed. The future ' shall say * suggests a parallel 
 * will be.' A similar observation applies to some other 
 passages, such as Matt. v. 3, 10, all the other blessings having 
 the future in the second clause. An interesting glimpse into 
 a more mystical interpretation is gained from one of the 
 Oxyrhynchus Logia {Oxyrhynchus Papyri, iv. 6) : ' You 
 ask who are those that draw us to the kingdom if the kingdom 
 is In heaven ? . . . The fowls of the air and all the beasts 
 that are under the earth or upon the earth, these are they 
 which draw you, and the kingdom of heaven is within you, 
 whosoever shall know himself shall find it.' 
 
THE KINGDOM AS A PRESENT FACT 87 
 
 (iv) 
 Whatever be the particular interpretation of 
 these famous words, it is clear that the eschato- 
 logical view of the kingdom is too deeply planted 
 in the Gospels to be other than original. But this 
 was not inconsistent at the outset of Jesus' preach- 
 ing with the belief that it was also in some sense 
 present. When Jesus pronounces a blessing on 
 the poor in the crowd of Hsteners before him, ' for 
 yours is the kingdom of God ' (Luke vi, 20), it is 
 probable that he is not stating a spiritual fact (as 
 Matt. v. 3 suggests), but declaring that the kingdom 
 will hereafter belong to them, when those that weep 
 now imder oppression shall laugh in liberty. But 
 the 'little flock' who would receive the gift of 
 the kingdom at God's hand (Luke xii. 32), might be 
 said to be its seed already. As their numbers 
 grew, the heavenly rule would silently extend its 
 sway. The leaven was at work, gradually per- 
 vading the community, carrying its expanding 
 force into unexpected quarters, and effecting the 
 preparation for the great arrival of the sovereignty 
 from on high. But the period within which these 
 forces of growth would operate, was very short. 
 We read these parables in the midst of an age-long 
 
SS JESUS AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 development. We use them as symbols of vast 
 perspectives of moral and religious evolution, the 
 future phases of which have yet to be fulfilled, and 
 are beyond our power to forecast. Their original 
 application, however, was much more confined, 
 and a kind of riddle is produced by the attempt 
 to present the process in a totally different time- 
 frame. In the light of history we suppose that 
 Jesus figured the kingdom to himself as originally 
 lodged in a small group of chosen followers who 
 should ultimately swell into a mighty host spread 
 all over the face of the earth ; or possibly as an 
 ethical-spiritual influence which should slowly 
 transform the institutions of human things into the 
 vehicles of a divine Order, where God's will should 
 be done on earth as in heaven. Neither of these 
 conceptions corresponds to the apocalyptic element 
 in his teaching. He looks for a great trans- 
 cendent manifestation ; it is his part to awaken 
 his people to its imminence, to win them to repent 
 ere it arrives, and show them the dispositions 
 God demands from those who would enter it. 
 But the heavenly rule will be much more than the 
 harmony of a few select wills on earth ; it will be 
 something immeasurable, marvellous, for the 
 
THE VICTORY OVER EVIL 89 
 
 forces of evil must be overthrown, and the power 
 of the Adversary crushed. 
 
 In the course of his activity Jesus seems to have 
 reached the conviction that this victory had 
 already begun. Over against the rule of God lay 
 the rule of the Opposer, the Satan. It was exerted 
 in many ways, and so completely enveloped the 
 existing scene that it was possible for the disciple 
 of a later day to affirm that the whole world lay 
 in the Evil One (i John v. 19). Its demonic forces 
 swarmed out of the abyss, and the sufferers whom 
 they drove to disease and madness became the 
 victims of its tyranny. The ability of Jesus to 
 control these hapless patients drew down upon 
 him the malignant charge that he cast out demons 
 by the aid of their own prince, Beelzebub. How 
 foolish, retorts Jesus, to suppose that Satan will 
 divide his power and cast out himself ! And if 
 he was leagued with a lord of hell, by whom, he 
 asks the Pharisees, did their disciples work their 
 cures ? * Let them judge you ! ' But if he 
 wrought by God's spirit, it was plain that God's 
 rule was already extending itself over them. The 
 kingdom, then, was actually entering the existing 
 scene ; it lay, in some sense, with him ; he was 
 
90 JESUS AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 more than its herald, he was its inaugurator, its 
 representative, its organ, the first instrument of 
 its great transformation. The germ of a new hope 
 was thus planted in his heart. He looked back over 
 the great days of king and prophet. The Queen 
 of the South had come to learn wisdom of Solomon ; 
 Jonah had persuaded the men of Nineveh to 
 repent ; but in the promise of the kingdom there 
 was something greater stilP ; woe to the indifferent 
 generation which they would arise to condemn. 
 His own success was confirmed by his followers. 
 When the disciples return full of gladness in their 
 unexpected powers — the demons had submitted 
 at their Master's name — he joyously declares that 
 he has seen Satan fall like lightning from the sky ; 
 the power of evil is expelled from the heaven 
 where the Adversary still dared to claim a place, 
 and is cast out as swiftly as the kingdom, he after- 
 wards affirms, shall enter in^ (ante p. 86.) These 
 seasons of exaltation Hfted him above hours of 
 disappointment and moments of anger at mis- 
 
 ^ Matt. xii. 41-42. The neuter adjective, as the Revisers' 
 margin indicates, should not be interpreted personally. 
 
 2 Luke X. 1 8. The saying has all the appearance of origin- 
 ality, though the Evangelist seems to have placed it in a 
 later connexion than it probably originally occupied. 
 
THE QUESTION AT CAESAREA PHILIPPI 9I 
 
 understanding or failure, coldness or opposition ; 
 and they finally led him to ask of his disciples 
 at Csesarea Philippi, the decisive questions * Who 
 do men say I am ? ' and * Wlao say you ? ' 
 
 The answers to these questions are significant. 
 Common talk had already been busy with his 
 name. Rumour had carried it all through the 
 country-side . It had even penetrated into Herod's 
 court, and the conscience-stricken king had identi- 
 fied him with the murdered John come back to 
 life. Others conjectured that one of the ancient 
 prophets had been allowed to reappear ; and 
 imagination fixed on the preacher of the * new 
 covenant,' Jeremiah, or the forerunner of the 
 great divine event, Elijah. None of these guesses 
 had divined the truth. Plainly, no claim to any 
 special dignity had yet been made ; he might still 
 be addressed as Rabbi ; he might describe himself 
 — ^perhaps in a proverbial phrase — as a prophet 
 (Mark vi. 4) ; among his countrymen, at any rate, 
 he had won no distinctive place in the kingdom 
 which he preached. But in the inner circle of the 
 disciples a new conviction had been gaining 
 ground. Who was this teacher who had sent them 
 forth ? When he bade them preach the advent 
 
92 JESUS AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 of the kingdom, he had said nothing of himself ; 
 yet he had charged them to heal the sick and cast 
 out demons, and disease had fled at their word 
 {Mark vi. 7-13) ! The power he exercised he could 
 impart to them ; nay, so mighty was his name 
 that others could use it successfully who had not 
 joined their little band (Mark ix. 38). To those 
 most intimately associated with him he must needs 
 seem incomparably greater than any tales about 
 him could suggest. That mysterious power of 
 personality which wrought in word and look and 
 touch, no gossip about him in synagogue or bazaar 
 or village market-place could ever convey. As his 
 own secret hope grew clearer, a parallel conviction 
 rose in the minds of the disciples. They must 
 have been questioned often enough about him. 
 When they entered a hamlet to buy food or seek a 
 night's lodging, they must have been asked whose 
 messengers they were. Curiosity might have to 
 remain unsatisfied ; but the wonder of it all would 
 grow larger day by day till at length the moment 
 of confidence and disclosure comes, and Peter 
 bursts forth, * Thou art the Messiah.'^ 
 
 The secret which teacher and disciples had 
 
 ^Mark viii. 29. 
 
THE MESSIAHSHIP 93 
 
 thus come to share without communicating it to 
 each other, is at last revealed. True, it is full of 
 peril and must be kept in strict reserve, for the 
 name might easily rouse expectations which lay 
 outside Jesus' whole vision. He would be no 
 national leader to expel the Romans and lead 
 Israel to victory. But the 'gospel of the king- 
 dom ' must be preached in the capital. Pharisee 
 and Sadducee had gone out to the Jordan to hear 
 John ; he would carry * the word ' to them in 
 the centre of their activity, and challenge the 
 whole hierarchy to repent. The enterprise in- 
 volved grave risks. No one could tell how a 
 conflict with the temple-authorities might end. 
 There were dismal traditions of the persecutions 
 of the preachers of righteousness. Jerusalem had 
 an evil fame as the slayer of prophets. The 
 disciples, therefore, must be forewarned, and in 
 the light of later issues these warnings assumed 
 more definite and specific shape. ^ But the 
 traditions embodied in Mark, and moulded by 
 the Evangelist into a kind of apology for the cross, 
 clearly indicate the presence of a new element 
 
 ^ It does not, however, seem possible to suppose that Jesus 
 meant deliberately to provoke his own death. 
 
94 JESUS AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 in Jesus' outlook. For the first time he makes 
 definite reference to the appearance of the Son of 
 Man/ who will come in the glory of his Father with 
 the holy angels (Mark viii. 38). The purpose of 
 this advent is not defined ; it is, however, implied 
 in the words that follow : * Verily I say unto you. 
 There be some here of them that stand by, which 
 shall in no wise taste of death, till they see the 
 kingdom of God come with power.' The kingdom 
 would be inaugurated with the judgment, when 
 the Son of Man would sit on the throne of his 
 glory.2 The language of Matt. xvi. 27-28 is, 
 accordingly, more explicit : — 
 
 The Son of Man shall come in the glory of his Father, with 
 his angels ; and then shall he render unto every man according 
 to his deeds. Verily I say unto you. There be some of them 
 that stand here which shall in no wise taste of death, till they 
 see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. 
 
 (V) 
 
 The journey to Jerusalem is full of mingled hope 
 and apprehension. Prospects of danger and of 
 
 iQn Matt, x, 23 see p. 77!. It may be noticed that the 
 preceding passage 17-22 corresponds to a section in the great 
 eschatological discourse placed by Mark on the Mount of 
 Olives, xiii. 9-13, which contains indications of later date. 
 
 * Enoch xlv. 3, Ixix 27 ; Matt. xxv. 31. 
 
JESUS AT JERUSALEM 95 
 
 triumph alternate before the leader's vision as 
 he presses ever forwards, and his adherents follow 
 dumb with amazement and alarm. To James and 
 John he puts the searching question, * Can you 
 drink the cup that I drink ? ' f or a bitter draught 
 of suffering and sorrow may be offered to him. 
 But to the Twelve he blithely promises twelve 
 thrones for judgment over the twelve tribes of 
 Israel. The little procession passes through 
 Jericho and the crowd grows apace. He rides in 
 to Jerusalem upon an ass, prophetic emblem of a 
 peaceful king ; acclaimed as * he that cometh ' 
 with blessing in the Lord's name by those who 
 marched in front and rear. The procession climbs 
 the steep slope beneath the city-walls, and, un- 
 checked, enters the Temple, where his spirit is 
 roused to the one high-handed act of his career, 
 and he drives the traffickers and money-changers 
 forth. Questioned about his right to disturb the 
 sanctuary with such violence, he parries the 
 attack with a counter-question as to the source 
 of John's baptism, from heaven, or of men. The 
 situation grows more hopeless day by day. The 
 deputations bring their pitiful dilemmas ; but 
 strained expectation begins to give way, and he 
 
g6 JESUS AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 is at length convinced that nothing can be expected 
 from the professed teachers of religion ; the 
 Temple must fall ; and the kingdom pass to an- 
 other and more fruitful people. 
 
 It is at this point that Mark inserts the long 
 apocalyptic discourse ascribed to Jesus as he 
 sits with his four earliest followers on the Mount 
 of Olives, gazing across the valley at the glittering 
 buildings of the ' city of the great King.'^ No- 
 where else does Mark attempt to mass together 
 so many sayings in continuous sequence. They 
 are singularly mixed in character. Warnings 
 against false Christs, predictions of wars, earth- 
 quakes, and famines, visions of the sufferings 
 and terror of the Roman invasion, blend with 
 encouragements to endurance in persecution, fore- 
 sight of apostles before Sanhedrin and governor, 
 or even, possibly, prevision of the horrors of the 
 Neronian orgy at Rome.^ The prophecy cul- 
 minates in the announcement of the coming of 
 
 iXhe privacy of this utterance to a small select group is 
 a way of indicating that it was not commonly known. 
 
 2 Cp. the Rev. B. H. Streeter, in Studies in the Synoptic 
 Problem, edited by Prof. Sanday, 191 1, p. 181. 
 
THE COMING OF THE SON OF MAN 
 
 97 
 
 the Son of Man, which Matthew adorns with some 
 additional details. 
 
 Mark xiii 24-27. 
 
 But in those days, after 
 that tribulation, the sun shall 
 be darkened, and the moon 
 shall not give her light, and 
 the stars shall be falling from 
 heaven, and the powers that 
 are in the heavens shall be 
 shaken : 
 
 and then shall they see 
 the Son of Man coming in 
 clouds with great power and 
 glory. And then shall he send 
 forth the angels, 
 
 and shall gather to- 
 gether his elect from the four 
 winds, from the uttermost 
 part of the earth, to the 
 uttermost part of heaven. 
 
 Matt, xxlvi 29-31. 
 
 But immediately, after the 
 tribulation of those days the 
 sun shall be darkened, and 
 the moon shall not give her 
 light, and the stars shall fall 
 from heaven, and the powers 
 of the heavens shall be 
 shaken : and then shall ap- 
 pear the sign of the Son of 
 Man in heaven ; and then 
 shall all the tribes of the 
 earth mourn, and they shall 
 see the Son of Man coming on 
 the clouds of heaven with 
 great glory. And he shall 
 send forth his angels with a 
 great sound of a trumpet, and 
 they shall gather together his 
 elect from the four winds, 
 from one end of heaven to 
 the other. 
 
 The day and the hour of this crisis are unknown ; 
 that secret is reserved for God alone. But its 
 arrival in the immediate future is declared with 
 the utmost clearness, in language common to all 
 three Evangelists (Mark xiii. 13-31 ; Matt. xxiv. 
 34-35 ; Luke xxii 32-33) *•— 
 
 Verily I say unto you. This generation shall not pass away, 
 
 G 
 
98 JESUS AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 until all these things be accomplished. Heaven and earth 
 shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. 
 
 It has been long recognized that various 
 elements are here in combination. Luke has 
 handled them most freely, and given to them the 
 most explicit application to the destruction of 
 Jerusalem (xxi. 21-24). From what sources, 
 however, have they been derived ? What alien 
 prophecies have been mixed with the words of the 
 Teacher ? And by what marks can they be 
 distinguished ? Such questions are more easily 
 asked than answered. But the most cautious 
 EngHsh scholarship is beginning to acknowledge 
 the diversity of points of view which the discourse 
 contains. Prof. Charles long ago noted the 
 combination of two mutually exclusive anticipa- 
 tions of the great change.^ According to one the 
 Advent of the Son of Man would take the world by 
 surprise ; while another expected a long and 
 terrible series of premonitory signs. Some 
 students still see no reason for such partition, 
 while they admit the probability of some editorial 
 changes. Prof. Stanton, of Cambridge, on the 
 
 ^Hebrew and Christian Eschatology, p. 323fE. He even 
 referred the crucial verses, quoted above, to a Jewish source. 
 
THE APOCALYPSE IN MARK XIII 99 
 
 other hand, in the course of an elaborate inquiry 
 into the materials employed by the Evangelists,* 
 concludes that this piece probably came into 
 Mark's hands as a separate written composition, 
 founded on a Jewish Christian document, written 
 in Palestine before 70 a.d., perhaps a little after 
 the year 60. * More adventurous investigators 
 like Wellhausen and Loisy (not to mention their 
 predecessors) suppose that a short Jewish 
 apocalypse lies at the base, with Christian expan- 
 sions and additions, in which some actual words 
 of Jesus may perhaps be incorporated. In 
 this confusion certainty is impossible. Even Dr. 
 Plummer reminds us that * we have constantly to 
 remember that we cannot be sure that we have 
 got the exact words which our Lord employed.'^ 
 
 1 The Gospels as Historical Documents, pt. II, p. ii5flE. 
 
 *Mr. Streeter takes a similar view, with a preference for 
 a date about 70, Studies in the Synoptic Problem, p. 183. 
 
 3 Commentary on Matthew, 1909, p. 338. How heavily the 
 difficulty presses on traditional orthodoxy may be seen in 
 the words of Prof. Inge, of Cambridge, in a sermon before 
 the University. ' Very few critics accept as authentic the 
 apocalyptic prophecy in Mark 1 3 ; may there not be one or 
 two more innocent interpolations of the same kind ? I do 
 not wish entirely to exclude the possibility that our Lord in 
 becoming man may have been willing to share, to some 
 
100 JESUS AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 If the Gospel evidence is thus indecisive, is there 
 any other testimony ? 
 
 One further scene must be briefly noted before 
 we leave our Synoptic narratives. The passover 
 approaches, and (according to our present texts) 
 Jesus prepares to celebrate it with the Twelve.^ 
 He has divined his danger ; the gathering opposi- 
 tion of the priestly party is culminating in a plot ; 
 and mingled yearnings, hopes, and fears, sound 
 through his words. How he has longed to eat 
 that meal with them ! The next time they drink 
 wine together will be at the great banquet in the 
 
 extent, the current popular illusions, both with regard to the 
 Messianic hope and demoniacal possession. But this certainly 
 must not be stretched so far as to admit that he fancied 
 himself filling the r61e of Daniel's Son of Man in the near 
 future. Such a notion would not be compatible with sanity, 
 far less with those attributes which all Christians believe him 
 to have possessed.' — Guardian, May 13, 19 10. Prof. Burkitt, 
 on the other hand, ascribing this or similar language to Jesus 
 himself, thinks that he can only be relieved of the charge of 
 ' megalomania ' by the consideration that though ' the end 
 so clearly foretold did not come,* the Church did. The 
 Athanasian Creed accordingly provides a * starting-point in 
 justifying ourselves for paying worship ' to him. — The 
 Athanasian Creed and Liberal Christianity, 19 10, pp. 17, 24. 
 
 iThe grave divergence now admitted between the First 
 Three Gospels and the Fourth does not concern us here. 
 
IN THE HIGH PRIEST'5 HAtt ' 101 
 
 kingdom ! Is it, then, so near, that he can 
 appoint a meeting among the thrones in the new 
 life (Luke xxii. 18-30 ; Matt. xxvi. 29) ? For him, 
 at any rate, the passage to it lies through the valley 
 of the shadow of death. The crisis that has been 
 a possibiHty for weeks is close at hand. Under 
 the olives in Gethsemane he gains strength to 
 meet it. The issue is not clear to him, but God's 
 will shall be done, and if the cup is given him he 
 wiU drink it. The moment of arrest fixes the issue, 
 and brings with it the calm of anticipated doom. 
 Amid confused charges and contradictory testi- 
 mony he bears himself in silence in the judgment- 
 hall. At length the high-priest can contain himself 
 no longer ; he rises from his seat and confronts his 
 victim with the direct question, * Are you the 
 Messiah ? ' It is met without quahfication or 
 reserve by the direct assertion : ' I am, and ye 
 shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand 
 of the Power, and coming with the clouds of 
 heaven.'^ In the usual identification of the Son 
 
 1 So Mark xiv. 62 ; from the indirect reply in Matt. xxvi. 64 
 others have inferred a refusal to answer. ' The Power ' is 
 a well-known Aramaic equivalent for God. — Daknan, Words 
 of Jesus, pp. 200-1. 
 
102 JESUS AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 of man with Jesus but one interpretation can be 
 put upon these words. The scene will soon be 
 changed, and the situation will be reversed. He 
 will be seated on the judge's throne, and his captors 
 will receive their doom at his hands. 
 But that did not happen. 
 
 (vi) 
 
 It is pleaded that we cannot trust an exceptional 
 detail. None of the immediate followers of Jesus 
 was present at the trial. He was, however, 
 executed as * the king of the Jews,' according to 
 the popular notion of the Messiah. That is, of 
 course, no guarantee of the authenticity of his 
 confession. But it is difficult to believe that the 
 general tenor of the charges brought against him, 
 and the nature of his reply, were not known with 
 substantial accuracy. The disciples were not 
 dependent afterwards solely on hostile testimony, 
 Joseph of Arimathea, who begged his body from 
 Pilate, was himself a member of the Sanhedrin, 
 and may be presumed to have been at the council- 
 meeting and heard his words. When the apostles 
 returned to Jerusalem from Galilee, and gathered 
 up the remembrances of the fatal night, can we 
 
THE HOPE OF THE EARLY CHURCH IO3 
 
 suppose that they had not some first-hand 
 evidence of incident and speech ? 
 
 At any rate, the expectation of the early Church 
 was plain. If we are warned by modem scholars 
 that we must not interpret vivid oriental meta- 
 phors too rigidly, it may be said that this caution 
 should have been addressed to the Apostle Paul. 
 Before any of our present gospels had been written, 
 he had already described the approaching advent 
 of the Messiah from the sky in the near future. 
 Writing to the church at Thessalonica to comfort 
 those who feared lest their dead kin should be left 
 out of the benefits of the parousia, he assures them 
 that those who had already died should be the 
 first to rise (i Thess, iv. 15-17). 
 
 For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord,i that 
 we that are alive, that are left in the coming {parousia) of 
 the Lord, shall in no wise precede them that are fallen asleep. 
 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven, with a 
 shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump 
 of God* ; and the dead in Christ shall rise first : then we 
 that are alive, that are left, shall together with them be caught 
 
 1 It is not necessary here to inquire whether this is to be 
 understood of a direct revelation to Paul himself, or of the 
 authority of apostolic tradition. 
 
 2 For the trumpet cp. I Cor. xv. 52, Matt. xxiv. 31, Rev. 
 viii. 2, 2 Esdras vi. 23. 
 
104 JESUS AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air : and so shall 
 we be ever with the Lord. 
 
 The predictions attributed to Jesus, then, can- 
 not be regarded as fulfilled at Pentecost, seven 
 weeks after his death, on the ground of St. Paul's 
 identification of ' the Lord ' with ' the Spirit,' for 
 twenty years or so later the great Apostle was still 
 looking for the Messiah's return. How could this 
 hope, which pervades the literature of the first 
 age of the Church, have been so passionately 
 cherished if it had not had some foundation in 
 the language of Jesus himself ? The nature of 
 that foundation, however, is exceedingly obscure^ 
 If Jesus expected himself to appear in the char- 
 acter of the Son of Man on clouds of light, it is 
 strange that he should never have said * You shall 
 see me coming.' Moreover, this mysterious figure 
 had already shared the heavenly Hf e before sun and 
 star were made (p. 71). If Jesus identified himself 
 with it, why does he give no hint that he had 
 already descended to occupy a human form ? The 
 Fourth EvangeHst does not hesitate to explain 
 that the Son will return by the way of the cross 
 to the glory which he had with the Father before 
 the world came into beiug. But ui the Synoptic 
 
105 
 
 presentment the Rabbi-prophet tells of no earlier 
 home above the skies. And the uncertainty 
 and anguish of Gethsemane are unintelligible in 
 the prospect of impending triumph. What were 
 a few hours of suffering compared with the 
 exaltation of the Judge of all mankind ! It is of 
 course obvious on the gospel-page that Jesus 
 again and again applies the title * Son of Man ' to 
 himself. But there are sufficient instances to 
 show how readily tradition might shape his words 
 into this mould, for while one Evangelist reports 
 them in the third person, another unhesitatingly 
 employs the first. In the two following cases, 
 for example, priority seems to be alternately with 
 Matthew and Luke. 
 
 Matt. v. II. Luke vi. 22. 
 
 Blessed are ye when men Blessed are ye when men 
 
 shall reproach you, . . . and shall . . . reproach you, and 
 
 say all manner of evil against cast out your name as evil for 
 
 you falsely for my sake. the Son of Man's sake. 
 
 Matt. XX. 28. Luke xxii. 27. 
 
 Even as the Son of Man I am in the midst of you as 
 
 came not to be served but he that serveth. 
 to serve. 
 
 In one significant sa5dng Luke employs the 
 designation ' Son of Man ' in such a way as to 
 
I06 JESUS AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 imply a clear difference between Jesus and that 
 exalted personality, xii. 8. 
 
 Every one who shall confess me before men, him shall the 
 Son of Man also confess before the angels of God. 
 
 No one, probably, reading these words for the 
 first time, would identify the speaker with the 
 Son of Man. Matthew* s version of the phrase 
 significantly omits the title, and only states (x. 32) 
 that whoever acknowledges Jesus before men, 
 shall be acknowledged by him before his Father 
 in heaven. This seems the function of a witness 
 rather than a judge. When the language thus 
 varies from gospel to gospel, it is impossible to 
 feel any absolute security about the words in any 
 specific passage. He never says ' I shall judge 
 the nations.' I can, therefore, but state a per- 
 sonal impression, namely, that Jesus did use the 
 figure of the coming of the Son of Man as a symbol 
 of the inauguration of the kingdom, connecting 
 it more or less definitely with the anticipation 
 of the judgment. That he supposed himself to 
 be designated to that high office, and expected 
 after death to take his seat at God's right hand, 
 and descend thence amid the angelic throng to 
 simmion the world to his great assize, appears to 
 
HAS LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY FAILED ? IO7 
 
 pass the bounds of likelihood. His own concep- 
 tion of his Messiahship appears to have attached 
 itself to the prophetic figure of the Servant 
 of the Lord.^ His confidence in the speedy 
 close of the age, ere his own generation should 
 have passed away, rose out of his conviction 
 that the evils of the time must soon provoke 
 God's purifying work. It is always the prophet's 
 faith that the triumph of the good must be at 
 hand. The victory of God's will cannot be 
 delayed ; his purpose of righteousness must be 
 already on the way ; no human opposition can 
 arrest it ; those to whom Jesus speaks shall see 
 the kingdom. 
 
 Their hope, however, was not fulfilled. Jesus 
 did not come back. The attempts to connect the 
 coming of the Son of Man with the experiences of 
 Pentecost or the fall of Jerusalem break down in 
 view of the fixed idea of the early Church that the 
 vanished Christ would personally reappear. But if 
 that great event never occurred, and is no longer 
 part of modem faith, does Christianity pass away 
 with it ? We are told that ' Liberal Christianity ' 
 has failed, because the teaching of Jesus which is 
 iCp. The First Three Gospels, 4th ed. 1909, pp. 383, 390. 
 
I08 JESUS AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 the salt of our higher life was never designed for 
 the vast historic evolution in which it still holds 
 the central place. Be it that he did not foresee 
 that his name would be carried round the globe, 
 or that the thoughts and hopes which he awakened 
 would suffice to sustain the trust of continents and 
 generations to our day. The fact remains that 
 the Christian ideal conquered the ancient paganism 
 and proved the animating spirit of the Church. 
 Which was the more potent argument of Christian 
 apologetic (for both were used), * You need not 
 hesitate to believe in our Christ, because 
 like wonders are related of your Perseus or 
 -^sculapius,' or * Believe, because no man ever 
 said like him, " Love your enemies, bless them 
 that curse you, and pray for them that despitefully 
 use you." ? ' Here is the power which subdued 
 Rome, and bore the tremendous burden of 
 mediaeval claims to keep the keys of heaven and 
 hell. That which preserved Christianity alive 
 from age to age, and prevented it from being stifled 
 by a vast mass of alien importations, was its 
 moral and religious ideal, the constant challenge 
 of a higher and holier character, impersonated in 
 a great historic figure so that all could see. It 
 
FAILURE OF ESCHATOLOGICAL CHRISTIANITY IO9 
 
 is in reality eschatological Christianity which has 
 failed. It did its work in supplying the immediate 
 motive for the Christian missions ; but it was 
 soon found necessary to transmute it into the 
 forms of the inner life suggested in the Fourth 
 gospel ; or to reply to the question * Where is 
 the promise of his coming ? ' by non-natural 
 interpretations of Scripture ; or to evade the 
 difficulty which its sacred books contained by 
 planting them securely on the authority of the 
 Church. When the teachers of a later age ceased 
 to present Jesus as the * deliverer from the 
 coming wrath ' (i Thess. i. lo), the triumph of 
 Christianity over the cults which surrounded it 
 was due to the intrinsic superiority of its moral 
 and spiritual force. It is the task of modem 
 liberalism to disengage this force from the 
 ideas and hopes through which it was first 
 conveyed, as well as from the dogmatic forms 
 by which it was subsequently circumscribed. 
 The robes of an unreal dignity are being slowly 
 removed from its central personality. The world 
 in which Jesus now takes his place is infinitely 
 vaster both in space and time than he or his 
 contemporaries could have conceived. The per- 
 
no JESUS AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 spectives of the future which were closed to him, 
 have akeady lengthened to embrace nineteen cen- 
 turies, and no one dreams of fixing an approach- 
 ing term for the world's life. But the ideals of 
 the Gospel have awakened with new might. The 
 more clearly their temporary associations are 
 eliminated, the more powerful is their permanent 
 appeal. Truly is it said that ' Christianity has 
 yet its grandest victories to win.'^ It has been the 
 inspiration of the highest art and the noblest 
 poetry. It has largely evoked and sustained the 
 most significant energy of our time — whatever 
 extravagance it may assume — the passion for 
 social welfare. It lies at the heart of the move- 
 ment of international peace and goodwill. It has 
 descended as a great tradition into a scene infinitely 
 more complex than that in which it first saw the 
 light, and it is advancing towards wider and 
 deeper sway. Beneath the lip-service paid to it 
 too often in its churches, its mighty impulses are 
 yet moving multitudes outside who never wish 
 to hear its name. Eschatological Christianity — 
 when it is really understood — will pass away, and 
 it will carry a good deal of decaying doctrine with 
 
 1 Dr. Drummond, in Jesus or Christ, 1909, p. 208. 
 
PERMANENT ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY III 
 
 it. The Apocalyptic Christ will be seen to be the 
 centre of a mirage, the brilliant but elusive figure 
 of a dream. We shall cease to cherish expecta- 
 tions which history so soon refuted. But the 
 spirit of life which was in Jesus Christ will continue 
 to inspire man's best efforts for human progress : 
 and the eternal longing for justice will still prompt 
 the prayer for the ' rule of God ' — 
 
 Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, 
 As in heaven, so on earth. 
 
 NOTE 
 
 Among many recent discussions, beside that 
 of Schweitzer already cited, the attention of 
 English readers may be directed to the following 
 works : — 
 
 The Prophet of Nazareth, by Prof. N. P. Schmidt, 
 
 1905; 
 
 The Life of Christ in Recent Research, by Prof. 
 Sanday, 1907 ; 
 
 The Papers read by Prof. F. G. Peabody (of 
 Harvard University) and Prof. Burkitt (Cam- 
 bridge) at the Third Congress of the History 
 
112 JESUS AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 of Religions, Transactions, vol. ii., Oxford, 
 
 1908; 
 Jesus according to S. Marky by the Rev. J. M. 
 
 Thompson, 1909 ; 
 The valuable Commentary on the Synoptic 
 
 Gospels, by Mr. C. G. Montefiore, 2 vols., 1909, 
 
 and the same writer's Elements of the Religious 
 
 Teaching of Jesus, 1910 ; 
 And The Eschatology of the Gospels, by Prof. 
 
 von Dobschiitz, 1910 (lectures at the Summer 
 
 School of Theology, Oxford, 1909). 
 
Ill 
 
 THE THEOLOGICAL CHRIST 
 
 Between the Sermon on the Mount and the 
 Creed of the Council of Nicea (325 a.d.) there is 
 an interval of nearly three centuries. It was a 
 period big with momentous issues, for it was the 
 formative age of the Church. It saw Christianity 
 launched into the midst of the Roman Empire, at 
 first derided and persecuted, then victorious and 
 triumphant. The teachings of the Galilean were 
 carried forth to the Greek ; and the apocal5q)se 
 of the wrath of God was captured and transformed 
 by philosophy. Singular indeed is the combina- 
 tion implied in the ascription of the Book of 
 Revelation and the Fourth Gospel to one author. 
 The one is full of passion and tumult, the other 
 mirrors a wondrous calm ; but the same person 
 is the hero of both. To trace in detail the steps 
 by which these two conceptions were fused to- 
 
 H 
 
114 THE THEOLOGICAL CHRIST 
 
 gether, is the work of the historian of Christian 
 doctrine. He must take account of a wide variety 
 of influences, and record numerous experiments 
 ere the result was reached. Here it is possible 
 only to suggest a point of view. We all of us have 
 of necessity our presuppositions. Our previous 
 training, our range of knowledge, the forms of our 
 religious experience, all contribute to mould our 
 judgment and shape our thought. Among the 
 preconceptions which are often brought to the 
 great enquiry, is the belief that the process of 
 the development of doctrine concerning the 
 person of Jesus Christ was really unique. The 
 interpretation of the * prophet of Nazareth ' as 
 * true God out of true God ' rests on the authority 
 of the Church, but it is the result of generations 
 of discussion, and it is not without parallel else- 
 where. The historian of religion learns that 
 Christianity is not the only religion whose founder 
 was first presented in human form and afterwards 
 worshipped as divine. The person of Gotama 
 the Buddha passed through a similar (though 
 not identical) transformation. 
 
 It is well known that the founder of Buddhism 
 repudiated all ontological conceptions, and de- 
 
THE THEOLOGICAL BUDDHA II5 
 
 clined to envelop his ethical teachings in any 
 metaphysical web. He would answer none of the 
 catch-questions of contemporary sophists, and 
 refused to affirm either that the world was eternal 
 or that it had an origin in time, that it was infinite 
 in extension or bounded in space. So he explained 
 life without the hypothesis of a soul, the universe 
 without the need of Cause or God. He himself 
 died the death of man, and passed away leaving 
 no trace behind. His followers might reverently 
 commemorate the chief incidents of his career; 
 they might make pious pilgrimages to the spots 
 hallowed by his birth or his attainment of supreme 
 wisdom. But they never approached him in 
 prayer, or sought of him guidance or strength. 
 The disciple might obey his words, and imitate 
 afar off his example. But he offered him no 
 worship, and entered into no communion with the 
 author and finisher of his faith. Had not the 
 Teacher said * Live, mendicants, as lamps to 
 yourselves, as a refuge to yourselves ; with 
 the Truth as your lamp and the Truth as 
 your refuge and no other ' ? ^ Some three cen- 
 turies or more, however, after the Buddha's death 
 
 1 Digha Nikaya, vol. iii. p. 58. 
 
Il6 THE THEOLOGICAL CHRIST 
 
 a new type of Buddhism began to rise into 
 view. The steps of its development cannot be 
 indicated here. It must suffice to say that 
 metaphysics demanded recognition on the side 
 of philosophy, while religion sought for a living 
 and permanent object for its affections ; and 
 under the influence of these two powerful impulses 
 of thought and feeling the discarded ontology was 
 reinstated in the centre of the new teaching, and 
 the person of the Buddha was interpreted as a 
 manifestation of the Infinite and Eternal, the 
 Self -existent and the Absolute. Here was one 
 who revealed himself from age to age, to meet the 
 manifold needs of the ignorant and erring ; who 
 made himself known as the Father of all creatures, 
 the Healer of their sicknesses and sins. On the 
 basis of this new teaching vast masses of Scripture 
 were compiled, and gigantic canonical collections 
 gathered. Heroic missionary efforts carried the 
 religion of revelation through Eastern Asia, till 
 China, Tibet, Mongolia, Corea and Japan, had 
 received the saving truth ; for when the world's 
 welfare was concerned, said an old chronicler, 
 who could be idle or indifferent ? Immense 
 ecclesiastical institutions were founded ; worship 
 
THE THEOLOGICAL BUDDHA II7 
 
 was organized ; temples were built ; hymns and 
 liturgies were composed ; poetry, philosophy, art, 
 philanthropy, became the handmaids of faith ; 
 and unnumbered millions have lived and died in 
 devout gratitude to the Buddha who thus deigned 
 to give himself again and again for the welfare 
 and deliverance of the children of men. Here is a 
 historical process analogous to that of Christianity 
 among peoples far more numerous than those of 
 the Roman empire. It expresses itself in forms 
 of experience which in some cases bear astonishing 
 resemblance to those of western Christianity.^ 
 They have every right to be regarded as genuine. 
 The historian cannot mark off one set alone as 
 true, and dismiss the other as the products of 
 falsehood, folly, or fraud. He must examine 
 both impartially ; and if the preconception of 
 the uniqueness of Christianity prevents him from 
 recognizing Buddhist values, he must not be sur- 
 prised if the theologians of the East decline on 
 similar grounds to admit the exclusive claims of 
 those of the West. 
 
 1 See an article by the present writer on ' Religion in the 
 Far East, or Salvation by Faith : a Study in Japanese 
 Buddhism,' in The Quest, April and July, 1910. 
 
Il8 THE THEOLOGICAL CHRIST 
 
 {i) 
 
 The development of Christian speculation took 
 
 place under the influence of two great groups of 
 facts. Its foundation is to be sought, in the first 
 place, in the experiences, beliefs, and hopes of 
 the Church as recorded in the literature of the 
 New Testament. These were shaped, in the 
 second place, in an atmosphere of thought and 
 life where many currents mingled, and Jewish 
 elements were blended with the manifold types 
 presented by Egyptian, Greek, and West Asiatic 
 cults. Even the Christian Scriptures themselves 
 presuppose a very varied background of ideas ; 
 and the labours of the last thirty years have 
 brought much new light to bear both on the 
 Judaism out of which Christianity emerged, and 
 the panorama of faiths and philosophies by which 
 it was immediately surrounded. Old books have 
 been re-studied and are better understood ; books 
 hitherto xmknown have been discovered ; con- 
 temporary religions have been investigated ; and 
 the student is beginning to trace the effects of 
 their contact and influence in the Jewish and 
 the Christian fields. 
 
 Under these influences the traditional ideas of 
 
THE WORLD OF THE JEW IIQ 
 
 Jewish monotheism have been seriously modified. 
 The simple but profound relations between man 
 and God which are presented in the teachings of 
 Jesus, and are reflected (though with less force 
 and vividness) in the oldest elements of the Jewish 
 liturgy, stand out in front of a manifold variety 
 of powers both good and evil, which peopled the 
 worlds above and below. Seven heavens,^ it was 
 beUeved, rose above the earth beyond the firma- 
 ment, corresponding to the Babylonian system 
 founded on the sim, moon, and five planets. 
 For a universe conceived on this more elaborate 
 scale new series of inhabitants must be provided. 
 As Enoch is conducted to the first heaven, he 
 sees there the rulers of the orders of the stars, 
 the angels who guard the treasuries of ice and snow, 
 of cloud and dew. Jewish imagination placed 
 angels or spirits behind hail and hoar-frost, 
 behind wind and thunder, behind cold and heat, 
 even behind the changing seasons, with a vigorous 
 animism delightful to the anthropologist. In 
 
 iThe material in this and the following paragraphs in 
 this section is reproduced (by the kind permission of the 
 Editor of the Hibbert Journal) from the writer's article in 
 the Hibbert Journal Supplement, 1909. ' Jesus or Christ/ 
 p. 227, where detailed references will be found. 
 
120 THE THEOLOGICAL CHRIST 
 
 the Upper worlds were innumerable ranks of 
 loftier beings of mingled good and ill, the thrones 
 and lordships, the principalities, authorities, and 
 powers, so often named by the Apostle Paul. 
 Those that were hostile or rebellious against the 
 establishment of the rule of God, it would be the 
 task of the Messiah to overcome and bring to 
 naught, among them being the * rulers of this 
 world ' who had been the real agents of the 
 crucifixion ; and when they came up for judgment 
 the followers of the Messiah would join in their 
 condemnation at the great assize.^ 
 
 Here, too, were the celestial counterparts of 
 the sacred localities of earth ; the Paradise (in 
 the third heaven) into which the Apostle Paul 
 believed himself to have been caught up ; the 
 Jerusalem which is above, which was shown to 
 Adam, to Abraham, and Moses, and was seen 
 in the visions of the Apocalypse descending from 
 the sky. And there, likewise, in the fourth 
 heaven, was the altar where Michael, prince-angel 
 of the people of Israel, served as heavenly high- 
 priest, and acted as advocate and intercessor for 
 the nation. Exalted indeed was his personality. 
 
 1 I Cor. vi. 3. 
 
THE WORLD OF THE JEW 121 
 
 He was one of the four great Angels of the Presence. 
 He bore in his hand the oath which governed 
 creation and directed the worlds. He had been 
 Israel's guide amid the vicissitudes of its history. 
 Through him had the Law been given to Moses, 
 so that he was designated as * the Mediator be- 
 tween God and man.' ^ He led the people through 
 the wilderness, and intervened, sometimes success- 
 fully and sometimes ineffectually, at the crises 
 of its fate. Later imagination credited him with 
 having arrested the attack of Sennacherib, but 
 supposed that he had failed to persuade the 
 Almighty to save Israel from Nebuchadrezzar. 
 He contended with Sammael for the body of Moses, 
 and would finally lead the angelic hosts to battle 
 with the great dragon, whom he would overthrow 
 like the Messiah with whom he had so much in 
 common. That such a being should be invoked 
 in distress was natural. Even the New Testament 
 has its warnings against angel-worship ; and the 
 S5magogue found it necessary to enjoin that 
 * when a man is in need he must pray directly 
 to God, and neither to Michael nor to Gabriel.' 
 Many dim forms pass through the mazes of 
 
 1 Test. XII Patriarchs, ' Dan.' vi. Cp. Gal. iii. 19. 
 
122 THE THEOLOGICAL CHRIST 
 
 later Jewish literature ; the sacramental Presence 
 or Shekhinah, which had brooded over the 
 Sanctuary ; the Metatron, sometimes the symbol 
 of the divine sovereignty over the world, the 
 representative of both orders of God's powers, the 
 intellectual and the active ; the Memra or Word 
 which again and again in the Targums takes the 
 place of the divine form in intercourse with the 
 patriarchs ; the Power and the Wisdom of God, 
 which the Apostle Paul afterwards saw im- 
 personated in Christ ; with other attributes like 
 Judgment and Mercy capable of half independent 
 action — obscure and elusive figures to which it 
 is by no means always clear how much of 
 separate existence is to be ascribed. Some 
 objects are caught up into a realm of being 
 which is variously interpreted as purely ideal, 
 belonging only to the thought of God, or as 
 possessed of some kind of reality in the spheres 
 above. Such were the heavenly Law, compris- 
 ing the sum of intellectual relations constitut- 
 ing possible imiverses into which God looked 
 when he would create the world, the throne 
 of glory, the Patriarchs, Israel, the sanctuary, 
 and Messiah's name (equivalent in the philosophy 
 
THE WORLD OF THE JEW 123 
 
 of an older day to his personality or essence). 
 In the Assumption of Moses (assigned by Dr. 
 Charles to the beginning of our era) Moses is said 
 to have been created before the world, and 
 mysteriously reserved as a future instrument of 
 the divine purpose. So it is not surprising that 
 the radiant form of the Son of Man, identified in 
 the Book of Enoch with the Messiah, should be 
 presented as brought into being before sun and 
 stars {ante, p. 71). Strange, indeed, were the 
 conceptions of the first man, and stranger still 
 the arguments by which they were supported. 
 From a perversion of Ps, cxxxix. 5, interpreted 
 as *thou hast formed me behind and before,' 
 it was inferred that he was created in spirit 
 before the first day, and in actual body as 
 Adam after the last day of creation. A bold 
 equation of the spirit which moved on the 
 face of the waters then served to connect the 
 Messiah with the first man, whose appearance is 
 elsewhere described as like a second angel in an 
 honourable, great and glorious way. Moreover, it 
 was part of ancient tradition that superhuman 
 persons should appear on earth as men. Imagina- 
 tion suffered from no scientific restraint in 
 
124 THE THEOLOGICAL CHRIST 
 
 conceiving such transformations. When Gabriel 
 brought to Mary the great announcement of her 
 future motherhood, he doubtless laid aside his 
 heavenly glory, just as in the Christian portion 
 of the Ascension of Isaiah the Lord is instructed 
 after quitting the sixth heaven to assume the 
 likeness of the angels of each successively lower 
 region till he reaches the angels of the air, and 
 thus passes to earth to become incarnate with- 
 out attracting any notice. Popular anticipation 
 looked for a Messiah from the Davidic line. Here, 
 then, were all the elements for a doctrine of 
 * descent,' resembling the avataras of Indian 
 theology. Just as the future Buddha would leave 
 his home in the Tusita heaven to be born of a 
 woman upon earth * for the good, the gain, and 
 the welfare of gods and men,' so must the Messiah- 
 to-be quit the scene of supernal glory to enter 
 the ranks of humanity so as to become the 
 deliverer of Israel, and return to the celestial 
 sphere to accomplish the victory over the powers 
 of evil. The elements of a Christ ology were thus 
 £ill prepared. They needed only a personality 
 to which they could be attached. 
 
THE *SON OF god' 125 
 
 (ii) 
 
 The public ministry of Jesus, though it culmin- 
 ated in his appearance at Jerusalem as the Messiah, 
 afforded no opportunity at first of interpreting 
 his career in connexion with these exalted char- 
 acters. But the conviction of the disciples that 
 death could not hold him, and that he had been 
 exalted to the seat at God's right hand {Ps, ex. i), 
 provided an adequate occasion. To this Peter 
 appeals on the day of Pentecost to support his 
 declaration that ' God hath made him both Lord 
 and Christ ' (Acts ii. 36) ; while Paul tells the 
 Romans that while he was of the seed of David 
 according to the flesh, he was defined as Son of 
 God by the resurrection (Rom. i. 4). There was the 
 proof of what constituted for Paul one of the chief 
 features of his Gospel, namely, that God would 
 judge the world through him (Rom. ii. 16). Steeped 
 in contemporary eschatology, the apostle had 
 already, no doubt, before his conversion, his 
 own ideas of what the Messiah would be. The 
 scope and application of the term ' son of God ' 
 are, indeed, not wholly clear. It is the name of a 
 class, in ancient Hebrew poetry, the angel-powers 
 who shcired in creation's joy (Job xxxviii. 7). It is 
 
126 THE THEOLOGICAL CHRIST 
 
 part of the prophetic promise to the Davidic king, 
 
 * I will be his father, and he shall be my son ' 
 (2 Sam. vii. 14). It is the dignity of the Anointed 
 (Messiah), newly enthroned upon the holy hill, 
 
 * Thou art my son, this day have I begotten 
 thee' (Psi ii. 7). When the high-priest will 
 extort from his prisoner a confession which will 
 secure sentence of death, he asks him * Art thou 
 the son of the Blessed ? ' {Mark xiv. 61). In 
 endeavouring to determine when this function 
 began, one line of Christian tradition fixed on the 
 baptism as the moment when Jesus was invested 
 with this dignity. The well-known reading of 
 the Cambridge Codex D, which reports the 
 heavenly utterance (Luke iii. 22) in the words 
 ' Thou art my son, I this day have begotten thee,' 
 points to the early identification of Jesus with 
 the Messianic figure of the second Psalm ; while 
 the apostle Paul is related to have applied the 
 same passage to the resurrection in his address 
 at Antioch in Pisidia (Acts xiii. 33). 
 
 But the student of the Pauline letters soon 
 discovers that this title has for their author a 
 higher meaning than that of official rank and 
 theocratic dignity. It was not an honour con- 
 
THE CHRIST OF PAUL 127 
 
 f erred by a kind of adoption, it belonged to him 
 by nature. When he entered the earthly scene 
 he was already in a special manner God's * own ' 
 son {Rom. viii. 32). Vague and undetermined, 
 indeed, are the apostle's references to the pre- 
 himian condition of the Messiah. He appears to 
 have belonged to the world above ; in some sense 
 he preceded creation itself, since he was the actual 
 agent of its production (i Cor. viii. 6). But he 
 was nevertheless man, the man * from heaven,'* 
 who had quitted the glory and liberty of his 
 celestial state to wear the himianity of David's 
 line and submit himself to the bondage of the 
 Jewish law (Phil. ii. 6ff.). That which filled the 
 apostle with wonder and adoring passion was the 
 thought that this being, once radiant in light, had 
 condescended to die upon the cross. The love 
 of the Father in sending forth his Son, and the 
 love of the Son in thus giving himself for man, 
 awoke an enthusiastic devotion which carried 
 the great missionary through every peril from 
 Damascus to Rome. The splendour surrendered 
 
 1 1 Cor. XV. 47. Paul does not actually use the title ' Son 
 of Man,' but his allusion to Ps. viii. in i Cor. xv. 27 shows that 
 he was well acquainted with it. 
 
128 THE THEOLOGICAL CHRIST 
 
 by descending into our mortality was resumed 
 when God, after his obedience to death, exalted 
 him to place and power above every name. It 
 would seem, however, that the function to which 
 he was thus elevated, that of * Lord,' implying his 
 sovereignty over the whole of creation, carried 
 with it a rank which he had not possessed before. 
 The conception was derived from Ps. ex. i (origin- 
 ally composed, according to a widely received view, 
 in honour of the Asmonean priest-prince Simon, 
 143-135 B.C.). The title was frequently used in 
 the language of the Greek and oriental cults. ^ It 
 was the name of a special class of angels, the 
 * lordships ' (R.V., dominions) of Col. i. 16 and 
 the Secrets of Enochy xx. i. When Paul, therefore, 
 affirms that while there are gods many and lords 
 many. Christians recognize only one God, the 
 Father, and one Lord, Jesus Christ (i Cor. viii. 6), 
 he at once draws a distinction between their 
 respective spheres of being, power, and agency, 
 while he also raises the exalted Messiah above 
 every other superhuman rank. That is the honour 
 earned by his submission to the Father's purpose. 
 
 1 For example, of Apollo, Asklepios, Serapis, Zeus, and 
 many another, in Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, and Greece. 
 
THE CHRIST OF PAUL I29 
 
 It is, therefore, the supreme term of the disciple's 
 confession {Rom, x. 9), which does not consist 
 in declaring that he is Son of God (still less, * God 
 the Son '), but in accepting him as Lord. ' One 
 God the Father ' and ' one Lord Jesus Christ ' 
 are thus the earliest terms of the Pauline creed, 
 the first being further defined as the God of the 
 second {Eph, i. 17). 
 
 The post-human hfe of the Messiah was thus 
 of far higher significance for the Apostle than his 
 pre-natal existence. In the strange series of 
 headships, woman, man, Christ, God (i Cor. xi. 3), 
 Christ occupies an intermediary place between the 
 mortals of earth and the Creator. But in con- 
 nexion with the Church he is presented in varying 
 figures, now as the body, now as the head, and 
 again, with one of the unexpected turns which put 
 all system-builders to rout, he is identified with the 
 Spirit (2 Cor. iii. 17). Language is strained to the 
 uttermost to express the intimacy of the relation. 
 The believer is in Christ, and he is also in the Spirit ; 
 but the terms can be inverted, and Christ and the 
 Spirit are each in the believer. So as the dispenser 
 of gifts and graces, and judge in the great assize 
 which closed the immediate prospect of the world's 
 
130 THE THEOLOGICAL CHRIST 
 
 history, his relations to man were of more im- 
 portance than those to nature. If, like Wisdom, 
 or the Son of Man in the Enoch-Similitudes, he 
 had existed before sun and stars, and helped to 
 bring creation into being, as Son of Man he should 
 also subject all the hostile powers, and the faithful 
 should be in some way associated with him in 
 sovereignty and judgment. But as God was the 
 ultimate fount of all existence, and the source of 
 all creation, so likewise he is the goal to which all 
 things tend and in which all shall at length fulfil 
 their Maker's purpose. When in the last great 
 conflict even death itself has been brought to 
 naught, and the victory of the Son is complete, 
 he will resign the powers entrusted to him, give 
 back the authority by which he reigned, and 
 submit himself beneath the Father's rule, that 
 God may be all in all (i Cor. xv. 28). In the world 
 of the redeemed his task is over, and the Father 
 is supreme.^ 
 
 1 In the face of these and other facts It seems impossible 
 to believe that the apostle could have intended to identify 
 the Messiah with * God blessed for ever ' (Rom. Ix. 5). As 
 he elsewhere applies this adjective only to ' the God and 
 Father of the (our) Lord Jesus (Christ) ' (2 Cor. i. 3, xi. 31 ; 
 Eph. i. 3), and to the Creator {Rom. i. 25), I cannot think that 
 
THE DIVINE KING I3I 
 
 (iii) 
 
 Among the different elements of the apostle's 
 conception of Jesus two aspects were destined 
 to important developments. As Christ or Messiah 
 he had the function of king and judge. As the 
 image of God, the instrument of creation, the 
 principle in which all things subsist, the provi- 
 dential guide of Israel through the successive 
 phases of history, he is the embodiment of the 
 divine Wisdom and Power. These were in truth 
 the attributes both of his royal and of his cosmic 
 state ; and they bring him very close to the 
 Hellenistic Logos, intermediary between the 
 Eternal Father and the world of our experience. 
 
 in this passage he departs from his usual practice. More 
 than half a century ago Prof. Jowett pointed out that as the 
 apostle nowhere else calls Jesus God it is extremely unlikely 
 that he did so in this solitary passage. Had he so regarded 
 him, he would have used the designation more frequently. 
 The statement of Col. i. 19 that the Fulness was pleased to 
 dwell in the Son, cannot identify him with Deity, as he is 
 expressly called ' the first-bom of creation.' Even in his 
 pre-human state, therefore, he belonged to the order of 
 created beings, preceding the rest of the powers and objects 
 of the world. How this description of his incarnate life is 
 to be reconciled with the theories of Kenosis, or the voluntary 
 relinquishment of his omniscience and omnipotence (see chap. 
 IV, §§ V. vi.), is not clear. 
 
132 THE THEOLOGICAL CHRIST 
 
 The first of these characters was naturally 
 attached with special closeness to the apocalyptic 
 scheme. The typical presentment of the Messiah's 
 reign as Son of David (Psalms of Solomon, xvii.) 
 does not transcend the limits of humanity, unless 
 it be in the statement that he will be pure from sin. 
 But from ancient times divinity had hedged the 
 mighty monarchs of the East. The sovereigns of 
 Egypt claimed in their inscriptions direct generation 
 from on high, and the whole process was exhibited 
 with startling realism on their temple walls. Ra- 
 meses the Great before the days of Moses was 
 described by his court-scribes as * Son of Ra,^ 
 giver of everlasting life.' * Heaven,' they boldly 
 asserted, * rejoiced at his birth. The gods said 
 '* We have brought him up (or begotten him)." 
 The goddesses said " He was bom of us to be the 
 leader of the kingdom of Ra." Amon^ said " I 
 am he who made him. I seated truth in her place. 
 For his sake the earth is established, the heavens 
 satisfied, the gods contented, Rameses the daily 
 giver of everlasting life, like his father Ra." '* 
 
 1 The visible solar orb. The syllable mes means ' son.' 
 
 2 The great hidden God of Thebes. 
 
 8Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt (1894), p. 57. 
 
THE DIVINE KING 133 
 
 The language of Babylonia was couched in 
 different style, but implicitly contained a cognate 
 idea. Sargon prefixes the sign of deity to his 
 name ; Naramsin is repeatedly designated in 
 his inscriptions * God of Akkad.' This is not 
 identical with the innate deity of the Pharaohs, 
 it is the expression of universal sovereignty.* 
 It is even possible that the address to the sovereign 
 in the wedding hynm, Ps. xlv. — * Thy throne, 
 O God (Hebrew Elohim), is for ever and ever ' — 
 is to be explained from similar court-homage. 
 After the days of Alexander the Great like titles 
 are employed by Greeks. As early as 307 B.C., 
 Demetrius and his father Antigonus, who Hberated 
 Athens from the tyranny of Cassander, were hailed 
 by grateful citizens as 'saviour gods,' and 
 Demetrius was provided with divine parentage 
 through Poseidon and Aphrodite.^ In the Syrian 
 house of Seleucus, Antiochus took the title of 
 Theos (god), and his son added the epithet 
 Epiphanes, * god manifest.' On the Rosetta stone 
 
 1 Meyer, Gesch. des AUerthums, 2nd ed., 1909 (2nd part), 
 p. 478. 
 
 2 See the contemporary hjrmn translated by Frazer, Early 
 History of the Kingship, p. 146. 
 
134 THE THEOLOGICAL CHRIST 
 
 Ptolemy V, 205 B.C., claims the same divine char- 
 acter ; he is, moreover, ' eternal-lived,' and the 
 
 * living image of Zeus.' Julius Caesar was desig- 
 nated * god manifest ' at Ephesus, and the 
 
 * common saviour of human life.' The exalted 
 language of the cities of Asia Minor concerning 
 the Emperor Augustus has been already quoted.^ 
 Was it surprising that a tale should be early 
 circulated describing a prodigy before his birth, 
 which was understood to portend that Nature 
 would bring forth a king for the Roman people ? 
 The terrified senate, his freedman Marathus 
 related, promptly issued a decree enjoining the 
 slaughter of all children born that year ! To him, 
 also, were applied the titles ' lord,' ' saviour,' and 
 
 * son of God,' and the day of his birth was the 
 beginning of ' good tidings ' (gospels) for the 
 world. 
 
 A whole religious vocabulary was thus in exist- 
 ence to describe the prerogatives of sovereignty, 
 and the Christian naturally applied its terms to the 
 sublime kingship of the Messiah. He was the 
 head of the citizenship of the saints, and the 
 attributes of empire all belonged to him. This is 
 
 1 Ante, p. 46. 
 
THE DIVINE KING 135 
 
 accordingly one of the leading themes of the 
 Apocalypse. Fierce is the wrath which this book 
 expresses against Rome, her idolatries, and her 
 persecutions. Strange is the contrast between 
 the picture drawn by historians at the end of the 
 first century of our era, and that sketched by the 
 seer of Revelation. On the one hand Rome is 
 the author of peace from the Persian Gulf to the 
 Atlantic, from the cataracts of the Nile to the 
 Tyne. She is the giver of equal laws, the guardian 
 of civic welfare, the promoter of education, the 
 nurse of commerce, the protector of trade, the 
 patron of the arts. But the Christian prophet 
 cares for none of these things. Of what use are 
 the great roads that knit the peoples of the 
 empire together ; of what use the safety of fleets 
 and argosies which no pirate can touch ; of what 
 use the wealth gathered from all parts of the earth ; 
 of what use the tributes of kings whom she has 
 dragged into her harlotries : she is the persecutor 
 of prophets, she reeks with the blood of the 
 saints ; the unhallowed worship of her emperor 
 identifies her power with Satan's, and nothing 
 can avert her doom. Using the symbols of 
 ancient Babylonian mythology in which the 
 
136 THE THEOLOGICAL CHRIST 
 
 dragon of the deep was overcome by the might of 
 the god of hght, the seer, in a succession of 
 strangely confused and frequently incoherent 
 scenes, depicts the overthrow of the greatest 
 empire the world had known. The struggle is 
 waged partly on earth, and partly in the world 
 above. On one side are arrayed the whole forces 
 of evil, human and diabolic. On the other is 
 the conquering Christ. The victory must lie 
 with God's Messiah. But when his task was 
 appointed on this cosmic scale, the person of the 
 victor must be conceived to match. So he is more 
 than the * Hon of the tribe of Judah ' or * the root 
 of David.' As he rides forth on his white horse 
 to the holy war he bears upon his cloak and on 
 his thigh the august title * King of kings and Lord 
 of lords ' (Rev. xix. 16). And though he was 
 dead, yet he now lives for ever, and can describe 
 himself as the first and last, the beginning and the 
 end (xxii. 13), as if all existence were summed 
 up in him no less than in the Almighty himself. 
 The elevation of the divine king can go no further ; 
 and it is not without surprise that we also read 
 (xix. 13) — is it a later editorial gloss ? — ' And his 
 name is called the Word of God.' 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 137 
 
 (iv) 
 
 * In the beginning was the Word ; and the Word 
 was with God, and the Word was God.'^ 
 
 So runs the solemn opening of the Fourth 
 Gospel. Wlien Christianity was carried by the 
 apostle Paul and the earhest band of Christian 
 missionaries to city after city round the Mediter- 
 ranean, they found hearers among the thoughtful 
 and educated Greek-speaking people who had 
 been attracted to Judaism by its monotheistic 
 doctrine and simple imsacrificial worship. They 
 were described in early Christian literature as 
 the * God-fearers.' Great cities like Alexandria, 
 Tarsus, Ephesus, were the meeting-places of all 
 kinds of beliefs, and centres of religious and 
 philosophical culture. Community of government, 
 the spread of the Greek language, commercial 
 intercourse, facilities of travel, helped to diffuse 
 new ideas ; and it soon became necessary for the 
 Church, in addressing itself to fresh modes of 
 thought, to tell the story of its Founder in different 
 
 1 The English language here fails to convey the distinction 
 of the Greek between the intimate relation of the Word 
 ' towards the God,' and its own nature as God, i.e. Uttle more 
 than divine. 
 
138 THE THEOLOGICAL CHRIST 
 
 terms from those of primitive Palestinian tradition. 
 To minds trained in the Hellenic view of the order 
 of nature, the framework of Jewish eschatology 
 in which the life and teaching of Jesus were first 
 set, was not congenial. It was needful, therefore, 
 to reinterpret its main conceptions ; and provide 
 them with forms which would appeal to another 
 type of experience. This was the work accomp- 
 lished by the Fourth Evangelist. For him, as for 
 Peter, Jesus was the Messiah ; for him, as for 
 Paul, he was the Son of God. But this august 
 character did not wait for definitive proof till 
 the resurrection. It must have been continually 
 manifested in word and deed throughout the 
 months and years from the Baptist's testimony 
 to the cross. Paul had presented a figure which 
 involved the descent of a heavenly being to earth, 
 though that mysterious personality was a celestial 
 Man. But of his human life the Apostle found 
 so little occasion to write, that it has been actually 
 doubted whether he knew anything of it before 
 its close. At any rate he never undertook the 
 formal task of picturing his ministry. Christ 
 sent him, he might have said, in the language of 
 a later day, not to write a gospel but to preach 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 139 
 
 the gospel. Even the author of the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews was content to set two aspects side by 
 side in impressive contrast, without attempting 
 to reconcile or combine them, — the divine Son, 
 the express image of God's person, sustaining 
 creation by his utterance of power, and the 
 historic Jesus who learned obedience, who was 
 made perfect by suffering, and only through 
 strong crying and tears won his way to self- 
 surrender and to victory. The Fourth Evangehst, 
 however, boldly essayed the task, and for the 
 benefit of his readers defined his purpose as he 
 ended, * These things are written that ye may 
 beheve that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of 
 God, and that, believing, ye may have Hfe in 
 his name.' ^ 
 
 The determining idea, then, in the writer's 
 mind is ' Son of God,' and the real function of 
 the Christ in that character is to reveal the Father. 
 The problem is to adapt the Synoptic tradition, 
 
 ^ John XX. 31. The last chapter is an appendix, whether 
 by the hand of the Evangelist or by another is still disputed. 
 It is not necessary any longer to argue that whoever the 
 Evangelist may have been and whatever sources he may have 
 had besides the Synoptic narratives, his presentation includes 
 what is conveniently called a very large ' subjective element.' 
 
140 THE THEOLOGICAL CHRIST 
 
 from which the author starts, to the advanced 
 conception of ' the Son.' On the one hand Jesus 
 frankly describes himself as ' a man that hath 
 told you the truth which I heard from God ' 
 (viii. 40). He comes out of Nazareth ; and the 
 paternity of Joseph is emphasized (vi. 42). When 
 the objection is raised that the Messiah should be 
 of David's seed and spring from David's home, it 
 is noteworthy that there is no reference to the 
 genealogies or the birth-stories in the earlier 
 gospels. But this is not due to the emphasis on 
 birth from above, or birth out of God, for this is 
 not inconsistent with human parentage, any more 
 than origin out of the devil in the case of the 
 opposing Jews. Jesus shares the bodily needs 
 of a man, and in contrast with the heretical view 
 that he had only worn a phantom form stress is 
 laid upon his incidental weariness, his thirst, his 
 tears. He possesses the life which rises out of 
 the bodily frame, and which (like the good 
 shepherd for his sheep) he lays down for his 
 friends (x. 11, xv. 13). This same life (psyM) 
 has its higher conscious aspects, and in the con- 
 templation of death can be distraught (xii. 27, 
 * soui' ^psyche) y yet he cannot pray, like the 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL I4I 
 
 sjmoptic Jesus, * not my will, but thine be done,' 
 for he has strictly speaking no will of his own : 
 he has not descended from heaven to do his own 
 will ; of himself he can do nothing ; he is but the 
 instrument of the Father who has sent him (vi. 38, 
 V. 19, viii. 28) ; a conflict is impossible, ' I do 
 always the things that are pleasing to him ' (viii. 
 29). So the temptation at the opening of his 
 career has no longer any meaning, and is dropped ; 
 and the anguish of Gethsemane is replaced by a 
 serene majesty which overawes his captors — no 
 mob of untrained servants, but a Roman cohort 
 of disciplined soldiers — and flings them in a mass 
 upon the ground. Yet upon the cross he really 
 suffers, and at death he yields up his spirit 
 (pneuma, cp. Matt, xxvii. 50 ; Luke xxiii. 46). 
 Here are once more the characteristics of a human 
 person, too firmly lodged in tradition to be ignored. 
 But on the other hand these are blended with 
 others which point clearly to a heavenly origin 
 and constitution. Difficult, indeed, is the inter- 
 preter's task, no less than the writer's. His 
 phrases, couched in the utmost simplicity of words, 
 seem alternately to expand and contract, and 
 carry a range of meanings which it is never easy 
 
142 THE THEOLOGICAL CHRIST 
 
 to define. On the side of Christian experience a 
 series of parallels is drawn between the disciple 
 and the teacher in the two cognate works, the 
 Gospel and the First Letter. The believer, no 
 less than the Messiah himself, is bom out of God. 
 He, too, cannot sin (i John iii. 9). He, too, has 
 passed from death to life (iii. 14). He, too, can 
 lay down his life for the brethren (iii. 16). He, too, 
 has overcome the Evil One (ii. 13), and when his 
 Lord is in the heavenly home he does even greater 
 works in opening blind eyes to the truth, and 
 raising the dead out of trespasses and sins (John 
 xiv. 12). But this, after all, implies no real 
 equality of being. For the Son has descended 
 from the celestial splendour which he shared with 
 the Father ere the world was made. His being 
 was not indeed absolute or self-existent, it was 
 bestowed upon him by the Father, and is appar- 
 ently identified in one passage with the precosmic 
 Son of Man (vi. 62) of earlier speculation. But 
 that was in the timeless depths of eternity, so that 
 he is presented in contrast to the historic process 
 of Abraham's birth as the continuous * I am ' 
 (viii. 58). There in the supersensual world he 
 lived as spirit like God himself, participating 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL I43 
 
 in the Father's life of ceaseless activity and love. 
 In this august self-communication to the Son 
 there was no reserve ; the Son was consequently 
 empowered to make a full disclosure of the 
 Father's words and works. As the Father is 
 light, so also is the Son ; and, as light is the 
 s5mibol of truth, the Son is also the truth. The 
 substance of his utterance has been heard from 
 the Father : he can only speak what he has been 
 taught (viii. 28), and this teaching is a constant 
 inflow from a divine source. It is even described 
 as the Father's word (logos), which Jesus expressly 
 declares is not his own (xiv. 24). The Sonship 
 thus portrayed is imique in kind. The Fourth 
 Evangelist does not use the Synoptic expressions 
 such as ' blessed are the peacemakers, for they 
 shall be called sons of God,' * that ye may be sons 
 of your Father which is in heaven.' Paul had 
 not yet found it necessary to mark off the sonship 
 of Christ from that of the believer led by the spirit 
 of God (Rom, viii. 14). But the Fourth Evangelist 
 will allow no such parallel with the Only-begotten, ^ 
 
 1 This was also a term of the earlier Orphic theology. It 
 was applied to the deity of mysteries, especially to Kor6 
 (the Maid)« and also to Demeter, Athena, and Hekatd. 
 
144 THE THEOLOGICAL CHRIST 
 
 and applies to the disciple the less intimate 
 designation * child.' For the union of the Father 
 and the Son is so close that they are but one (x. 30), 
 where our language fails to convey the distinction 
 (in the Greek) between the masculine of person- 
 ality and the impersonal neuter. 
 
 Is this imion conceived as simply moral, arising 
 out of harmony of will, or has it any transcendental 
 or metaphysical quality ? Like so many other 
 questions concerning the Fourth Gospel, this is 
 more easily asked than answered. On the one 
 side are those lofty assurances that the Son alone 
 knows the Father, and so to know Christ is to 
 know God. The relation between them is so 
 intimate that each is in the other, the Father has 
 no secrets from the Son, and the Son can do and 
 say nothing of himself. Their reciprocal know- 
 ledge and mutual inherence seem only explicable 
 through some community of nature ; and the 
 Son, though he expressly affirms the superior 
 greatness of the Father (xiv. 28), is neverthe- 
 less in some high sense a partner in the divine 
 life* But on the other hand the unity of the 
 beHevers is expressed in similar terms. Not 
 only are they to be one with each other, they 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL I45 
 
 are also to be one in the Father and the 
 Son ; God in Christ, and Christ in the disciples, 
 as though the inherence of the Father were 
 mediated through the Son (xiv. 20, xvii. 11, 21-23). 
 Yet, once more, the transcendence of the Son is 
 implied at the close of this prayer of consecration, 
 for though the Father's love is conditioned by 
 his obedience, it really belongs to the timeless 
 order, and began before the foundation of the 
 world. Manifold, indeed, are the contradictions 
 which result from the attempt to picture on the 
 scale of humanity a being who was intrinsically 
 divine. 
 
 These incongruities are in no way relieved by 
 the philosophical conception which the author 
 calls to his aid in the prologue. The doctrine of 
 the Logos or Word had a long history behind it, 
 and from the days of Heraclitus of Ephesus in 
 the sixth century b.c.^ it had played a part in 
 various Greek Schools. Founding himself partly 
 on Plato and partly on the Stoics, Philo of Alex- 
 andria had employed it as a means for reconciling 
 the ancient Hebrew scriptures with Hellenic 
 culture. The prophets and singers of Israel 
 1 Known as * the Obscure.' 
 
 K 
 
146 THE THEOLOGICAL CHRIST 
 
 had never speculated on metaphysical problems^ 
 Their conception of creation rested on the image 
 of divine power. * God said, Let there be light, 
 and there was light.' * He spake and it was done.' 
 Further back than speech they did not go in the 
 analysis of God's productive might. Utterance 
 for them was creation. But the reflective Greek 
 enquired what lay behind speech, and the reply 
 immediately was * thought.' Even the carpenter 
 who makes a table must have some idea of its 
 shape and size, its height, its surface, and its legs. 
 The sculptor who released an Athena from the 
 marble in which she lay embedded till he set her 
 free, must first have seen with the mind's eye her 
 imprisoned form. In laying out a city, argued 
 Philo, the architect does not proceed haphazard ; 
 he has a plan which shows already the sites of 
 market-place and quay, temple and senate-house. 
 Even so in bringing a universe into being the Deity 
 must have conceived it first as an intellectual 
 whole, whose ordered parts constituted a mighty 
 sum of inter-connected thoughts. To this totality 
 Philo gave the name of Logos, Reason or Word. 
 A long series of problems was immediately started. 
 What was the relation of this Logos to God on 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL I47 
 
 the one hand, and on the other to the kinds or 
 types of classes in which the objects of nature 
 might be arranged ? The artist who has ever 
 reflected on the rise of a design, the poet who 
 has watched the birth of song, knows how feel- 
 ings are wedded with ideas, and gradually take 
 shape within the mind till that which was in- 
 articulate has gained expression, and the inner 
 impulse has received outward form. In the mind 
 of God, where Philo, greatly daring, strove to 
 picture a like process on the scale of creation, 
 there thus arose a thought which comprehended 
 all possible dependent being. It contained within 
 itself implicitly a miniature of the entire world, or 
 rather, since space dimensions could not properly 
 be ascribed to ideas, it provided the intellectual 
 forms which manifested themselves in the genera 
 and species of the heaven and earth we know. 
 The Logos thus embraced all parts and processes 
 of visible things, on which it impressed their 
 proper characters, marking them off from each 
 other, and at the same time uniting them together 
 in the reasoned order of the whole. It was thus 
 the agent in the production of sun and star, of 
 earth and sea, and every hving thing, and served 
 
148 THE THEOLOGICAL CHRIST 
 
 as mediator between the One fount of existence 
 raised in sublime immutability above all change, 
 and the growth and decay which make the 
 vicissitudes of our experience. Generated within 
 the Infinite and Eternal, it might be called ' the 
 second God,' or * God not in the proper sense,' 
 in distinction from the real or true God. Of the 
 mode of its conception no mortal tongue could tell, 
 but as the offspring of Deity it might be termed 
 the * first-bom ' or ' eldest son of God.' 
 
 The Logos which appeared in the visible scene 
 as the intellectual bond knitting all created things 
 into one whole of thought, might enter likewise 
 into relations with humanity. It appeared in 
 Abraham as the representative of divine wisdom, 
 in Moses as the prophet, in Aaron as the high- 
 priest. The patriarchal histories related in 
 Genesis were thus resolved in Philo's hands 
 into a series of allegories and types. The real 
 world was above, where dwelt the ideal realities 
 of our world of sense. Noteworthy, for instance, 
 was the symboHsm of the high-priest's robes in 
 connexion with the service of the tabernacle, of 
 which Moses had beheld the pattern on the mount. 
 The dwelling prepared for the Father and Ruler 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL I49 
 
 of the world must typify in its parts and arrange- 
 ments the universe itself. So the seven-branched 
 candlestick represented the seven heavens of the 
 sun, moon, and five planets, while the altar of 
 incense was the emblem of the earth. The robes 
 of the high-priest received a similar interpretation, 
 with the remarkable explanation * that whenever 
 he enters the temple to offer up the prayers and 
 sacrifices in use among his nation, all the world 
 may likewise enter in with him by means of the 
 imitation of it which he bears about him.'^ 
 Fanciful, indeed, were the identifications. The 
 vestment reaching to the feet typified the ambient 
 air ; the flowery hem, the earth ; the scarlet dye, 
 fire ; the twelve stones upon the breast, the Logos 
 which holds together and regulates the universe. 
 So garbed, the high-priest would be reminded to 
 make his Hfe worthy of the world, and the whole 
 world would co-operate with him in the sacred 
 rite, and the Son (i.e., the world) would thus 
 be brought to the service of his Begetter, and in 
 the exalted character of the Paraclete or Advocate 
 
 1 Life of Moses, ill. § 14 ; On the Monarchy, li. { 5-6. Com- 
 pare the Identification of the great high-priest with the Logos 
 in the book of The Migration of Abraham, § 18. 
 
150 THE THEOLOGICAL CHRIST 
 
 (R.V., * Comforter,* John xiv. i6, i John ii. i) 
 would even make for forgiveness of sins and 
 abundance of freely given blessings. In such 
 language as this lie divers anticipations of 
 the ideas of the Fourth Gospel. The Evangelist 
 transfers them from the world, conceived as Son 
 of God, to Jesus ; and a living person, rather than 
 an interconnected scheme of things, becomes the 
 vital expression of the Father's Mind. 
 
 Philo, however, was not the only religious 
 teacher of the first century of our era who em- 
 ployed the conception of the Logos to express the 
 process of God's revelation to man. In the 
 literature which has come down to us from the 
 later stages of Gentile mysticism there is a strange 
 series of books grouped under the general name 
 of Hermes the Thrice-Great. The Greek Hermes 
 was the accepted representative of the Egyptian 
 Thoth, though the latter deity in many ways 
 transcended his Greek equivalent. For Thoth 
 became one of the most interesting figures in the 
 higher Egyptian theology. He was the im- 
 personation of law in both the physical and moral 
 worlds. In his latter capacity he acted as the 
 recording scribe at the weighing of the soul after 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 15I 
 
 death in the Hall of the Two Truths. He possessed 
 the knowledge of divine speech, and was the god 
 of Reason and Revelation. His will kept the 
 forces of heaven and earth in equiUbrium ; he 
 was the representative of the hidden Mind in all 
 things, and the guardian of the institutions of 
 society, in which intelligence was allied with 
 righteous order. It is possible that some of the 
 mystical elements prominent in the Hermetic 
 books may have been derived from Egyptian 
 teaching in which Thoth was thus a prominent 
 figure. Here, at any rate, are the same antitheses 
 between light and darkness, hfe and death, which 
 meet us in the Fourth Gospel. They are grouped 
 around the figure of Hermes, who, with lamb or 
 ram upon his shoulders, served as the type of the 
 Good Shepherd for the earliest representations of 
 Christian art. In the Poimandres or * Shepherd 
 of Men,' assigned by Reitzenstein to the end of the 
 first century of our era, but beHeved to be entirely 
 independent of Christian influence, phrase after 
 phrase recalls the language of the Fourth Gospel. 
 Consider such words of prayer as these^ : * Holy 
 art thou, O God, father of the universe ! Holy 
 
 1 Poimandres, § 31, trans, by Mr. G. R. S. Mead. 
 
152 THE THEOLOGICAL CHRIST 
 
 art thou whose will is perfected by its own powers. 
 Holy art thou who wiliest to be known, and art 
 known by thine own. Holy art thou who didst 
 by the Word make to consist all things that are. 
 Empower me and fill me with this grace, that I 
 may enlighten those who are in ignorance of their 
 origin, my brethren and thy sons, wherefore I 
 believe and bear witness, I go to life and light.' 
 
 Here are traces of a mode of thought which 
 was probably widely spread in Egypt, Syria, and 
 Asia Minor. Some of the language in the recently 
 discovered Odes of Solomon seems to approach it ; 
 e.g. in xii. ii, * the dwelling-place of the Word 
 is man, and its truth is love.' The Fourth 
 EvangeHst employs it for the expression of 
 Christian truth. It may indeed be doubted 
 how far the author intended it to be the 
 determining element in the conception of the 
 person of Jesus. Introduced with a solemn 
 parallel to the story of the creation, the Logos 
 has no sooner become flesh in Christ than it 
 passes from the scene. Jesus never refers to 
 it as the occupant of his own frame. He does 
 indeed rebuke the Jews who have not his Logos 
 dwelling in them (John viii. 37) ; just as the 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 153 
 
 author of the First Letter writes to the young 
 men because they are strong, and God's Logos 
 abides in them (i John ii. 14). But if he speaks 
 of his own Logos it is not with reference to his 
 divine nature, but to his teaching ; this is the 
 norm or standard which shall judge men at the last 
 day (John xii. 48) ; and it is not really his own, 
 it belongs to the Father who sent him (xiv. 24). 
 The * word ' is thus a term of marked elasticity ; 
 and as the exalted use of it does not reappear 
 in the Gospel, it would not seem essential to the 
 writer's view. It is in fact wholly inconsistent 
 with a very important feature in his scheme. It 
 was the function of the Messiah to vanquish the 
 Adversary or Opposer, who is described by the 
 Fourth Evangelist as the * Prince of this world.' 
 But if the universe is created and upheld by the 
 Logos, if every man coming into the world shares 
 its light, there is no place for the devil. Philo, 
 accordingly, never introduces Satan into human 
 life. The hostile Jews, however, in the Fourth 
 Gospel, are represented as his offspring (viii. 44) ; 
 they belong to the realm of darkness, falsehood, 
 and death. What, then, has become of the 
 immanence of the Logos ? Once more, we are 
 
154 THE THEOLOGICAL CHRIST 
 
 confronted with different modes of thought. The 
 dramatic conception of a conflict with the ruler 
 of this world in which the Messiah vanquishes his 
 foe, is incongruous with the philosophy of the 
 Logos. The world of the Jew could not be com- 
 bined with that of the Greek, and fresh proof is 
 found that the introduction of the Word is after 
 all subordinate and not essential in the writer's 
 thought. 
 
 It remains to ask how was the Logos united with 
 the person of Jesus of Nazareth. When the Word 
 became flesh, did it also become Man ? The 
 question is beset with difficulty. When the 
 EvangeUst describes it as knit in timeless fellow- 
 ship with God, does he conceive it in terms of 
 distinct personality, or is it only the supreme 
 expression of the reason in creative thought, and 
 the energy in creative thinking, where thought 
 is action, and thoughts become things ? In the 
 Philonic philosophy the Logos, as Dr. Drummond 
 has happily said, was * personal, but not a person.' 
 It impresses itself with different characteristics on 
 different human representatives, wisdom in one, 
 prophecy in another, but there is no suggestion 
 of the presence of a transcendent personality in 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 155 
 
 Abraham or Moses. When Wisdom fixed its 
 * tabernacle ' in Jacob (Ecclus. xxiv. 8), it was, 
 so to speak, embooked in Israel's law (ver. 23) : 
 and when the Word * tabernacled among us,' it 
 was enfleshed in Jesus. Did this mean more than 
 that the divine idea of truth and righteousness 
 and love — of all that we imagine to constitute the 
 character of God — was planted as a seed within 
 a human form, so that the growth of the one 
 in wisdom should match the growth in stature 
 of the other ? In that case Jesus presented the 
 divine Hfe to men within the Umits of our moral 
 experience ; and the union in which he lived with 
 God was a harmony of affection and of will. This 
 is to explain the Sonship in terms of character. 
 
 The Church, however, adopted a contrary 
 interpretation. In the * only begotten Son ' it 
 saw a conscious personality, dowered with a 
 separate though dependent existence by the 
 Father's love. When this was identified with 
 the Logos, the Word also attained this distinct 
 being. It was no longer God's own Reason 
 acting within the Infinite Mind ; it was projected 
 into the field of the external world, and was 
 finally concentrated into Christ. This led to the 
 
156 THE THEOLOGICAL CHRIST 
 
 identification of the Son with the Father in terms 
 of substance. But how and when did the Word 
 unite with the flesh of Jesus ? Did the divine 
 Logos only * play the part of soul to a human 
 body ' ?^ The EvangeHst subsequently attri- 
 butes to him, as we have seen, both * soul ' (or 
 * life,' psyche) and * spirit ' (pneuma). Were there, 
 then, four constituents of his person, flesh, life, 
 spirit, and Logos ? Surely there is here another 
 indication of the imperfect connexion of the 
 Logos theory with the actual delineation of the 
 person of Jesus on the basis of the Synoptic 
 tradition. Another exponent of the Logos philo- 
 sophy, who made no definite use of the Gospel, 
 Justin the Martyr, solved the problem in the 
 fashion of the modern critic by enumerating only 
 three elements, body, life, and Logos,^ omitting 
 the term * spirit.' The whole higher activity of 
 thought and will, marked off by voluntary control 
 from the ordinary experience or corporeal sense, 
 was assigned to the divine visitant, who tempor- 
 arily occupied the bodily frame. The difficulty 
 reappeared again and again in the course of 
 
 1 So Dr. Martineau, Seat of Authority, p. 427. 
 2 Second Apology, x. 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL I57 
 
 subsequent speculation. It arose from the fact 
 that the Fourth Gospel was not a work of 
 systematic theology. It was an attempt to recast 
 a historic experience in a new form. It spoke the 
 language of religion, not of psychology or of a creed. 
 But, it may be urged, the EvangeHst surely had 
 some conception of the time and mode of the 
 Incarnation. His silence on the story of the 
 birth of Jesus suggests that he did not imagine it 
 to have been effected by a physical process in the 
 Virgin's womb. On the other hand the ministry 
 of Jesus was more than a solitary theophany of 
 the Old Testament type, when Yahweh might 
 present himself at Abraham's tent-door in a body 
 specially assumed for the purpose, Uke Athena 
 or Brahma adopting temporarily a human form. 
 The body of Jesus was no Docetic appearance ; 
 he tells Pilate that he had been born ; the refer- 
 ences to his mother and brothers clearly imply 
 that he had shared from the outset in the family 
 life. Was Mary, then, as later beUef averred, 
 the ' mother of God ' ? And was the unborn babe 
 at the same time maintaining the order of the 
 most ancient heavens ? Such have been the 
 inferences of theologians. But it would seem 
 
158 THE THEOLOGICAL CHRIST 
 
 that the Evangelist hints at another way. He 
 shrank from presenting the Logos as subject to 
 human birth, or involved in the development of 
 child, youth, and man. That pre-natal union of 
 the divine personality with the human was in- 
 consistent with the descent of the spirit by which 
 the Baptist recognized the Son of God. What 
 need had the Incarnate Logos of that heavenly 
 unction ? The ascription of this vision to John 
 (i* 33> 34) suggests that the Evangelist intended 
 to indicate (by a reference to the primitive 
 Synoptic tradition) that the entry of the Spirit 
 into Jesus^ was the Hebrew equivalent of the 
 Hellenic incarnation of the Word. The Baptist 
 added that the Spirit ' abode ' upon him. It is 
 the Johannine term of the closest spiritual fellow- 
 ship : this was the beginning of the life-long 
 presence of the heavenly Son in the person of the 
 Nazarene. The theology of the first half of the 
 second century affords more than one instance of 
 failure to distinguish between Logos and Spirit as 
 constituting the Son. * God,' we are told by 
 Hermas in the Shepherd ^^ ' made the holy pre- 
 
 1 So all the best modem editors of Mark i. 10. 
 2 Similitudes, v. 5, 6. 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL I59 
 
 existent spirit that created every creature to 
 dwell in the flesh which he chose,' and a variant 
 of the text adds the affirmation * the Son is the 
 holy Spirit.* Justin the Martyr, who comes very 
 near to identifying the Word, the Son, and the Old 
 Testament spirit of prophecy, declares that the 
 Spirit and Power of God (Luke i. 35) are no other 
 than the Word who is God's first-born. ^ If this 
 interpretation be correct,* the Son of God first 
 enters the human scene when Jesus of Nazareth 
 becomes the Messiah through the gift of the 
 spirit without measure (John iii. 34) from above. 
 It is in virtue of this endowment that Thomas 
 can address him as * my Lord and my God.'* 
 
 (V) 
 
 Many were the problems which were started 
 by the Logos doctrine, and various were the solu- 
 tions which were offered. Their detailed display 
 
 1 First Apology, xxxiii. 
 
 * So apparently Hennas in the Shepherd, and among 
 modems Hilgenfeld and Jean R6ville, Pfleiderer and Loisy. 
 
 3 It is a contemporary contraist that the secretary of the 
 emperor Domitian wrote In his master's name * Domlnus et 
 deus mens.' 
 
l60 THE THEOLOGICAL CHRIST 
 
 belongs to the history of the expanding Church. 
 Engaged during the second century in a struggle 
 for very existence with Gnosticism, the Church 
 emerges triumphant with a sacred tradition, an 
 episcopal authority, a collection of scriptures, 
 and a rule of faith. But the creed which was 
 hereafter to bear the name of the Apostles contains 
 no mention of the Word. 
 
 Only slowly, it would seem, did the Fourth 
 Gospel acquire general recognition, and meantime 
 the conception of the Logos might be applied in 
 different ways. Justin (born at Neapolis in 
 Samaria, the ancient Shechem), who found in 
 Christianity what philosophy had failed to give 
 him, declared that Socrates was done to death 
 for the same cause as the Christians,^ and actually 
 designated Christ as the Socrates of barbarians. 
 The Word sent forth as God out of God was, as 
 such, another or a second God, distinguished from 
 the absolute Deity. So indefinite were both 
 speculation and language that the Logos might 
 be described indifferently as begotten or created, 
 and called a * work ' or product. A little later, 
 when our four Gospels are firmly established, 
 1 Justin himself suffered martyrdom at Rome about i6o a.d. 
 
THE LOGOS CHRISTOLOGY l6l 
 
 Irenaeus, who had been trained in Asia Minor 
 and had listened to the saintly Polycarp in his 
 youth, wrestles with heresy in the home which 
 he had found at Lyons on the Rhone. Many of 
 his phrases show the germs of future difficulties. 
 * The Father is the invisible of the Son, the Son 
 is the visible of the Father,' as though they had 
 no separate personality, but were only contrasted 
 modes of the same being. When he pictures the 
 Word and Wisdom (or the Spirit) as the two hands 
 of God, the figure implies instruments rather than 
 co-equal agents. More significant still was his 
 endeavour to harmonize the representation of 
 Jesus as tried and suffering with the continued 
 presence and energy of the Logos. The Word 
 must have ' rested,' he explained, or been quiescent 
 during the temptation and on the cross. The 
 fiery Tertullian (of Carthage), on the other hand, 
 constructed his Christology in complete in- 
 dependence of the actual life of Jesus. The doc- 
 trine of one substance and three persons is coming 
 into view, and Tertullian coins the word Trinitas 
 to express it. But it is presented in a surprisingly 
 crude form. Ratio ^ the hidden Reason, and 
 SermOy the uttered Word, both dwelt in God who 
 
l62 THE THEOLOGICAL CHRIST 
 
 existed alone. The Father was the whole sub- 
 stance, and the Son a portion of it, Deity 
 adapted to the world, no longer inaccessible and 
 incomprehensible, a ray from the sun, a stream 
 from the source, a stem from the root, * light out 
 of light.' From the human standpoint he was a 
 Deity whom men could apprehend ; from the 
 divine he was subordinate and even temporary. 
 For, in a formula which was to become famous 
 as a watchword of heresy a century later, Ter- 
 tullian affirmed that * there was a time when there 
 was neither sin nor Son to make the Lord either 
 Judge or Father.' When, then, had the Son 
 come into being ? TertuUian knew the moment, 
 when the Word went forth and God said * Let there 
 be light.' Begun at the origin of creation, his 
 work would be completed when death should be 
 destroyed, and the Son restored the * monarchy » 
 to the Father. 
 
 The Logos-Christology, however, did not pass 
 unchallenged. There are traces of an obscure sect, 
 once powerful, in Asia Minor, whose name Alogi 
 implies their rejection of the whole scheme of 
 Christian doctrine based upon it. Their criticism 
 of the Fourth Gospel brought on them the charge 
 
THE ADOPTIONIST CHRISTOLOGY 163 
 
 of ' word-hunting.' They pointed to the differ- 
 ences which marked it off from the other three, its 
 altered order of events, its omission of some im- 
 portant facts and its insertion of others inconsistent 
 with their predecessors ; they contrasted its doc- 
 trine of birth from above with Mark's account of 
 the Jordan baptism. Even at Rome, between the 
 years 211 and 217, the presbyter Gains, whom the 
 historian Eusebius describes as * learned and 
 orthodox,' wrote a book in which he raised objec- 
 tions both to the Gospel and the Apocalypse. 
 The type of Christology which was thus suggested 
 was widely spread through both East and West 
 in the first half of the third century. It exhibited 
 Jesus as a man, chosen by God, tested and found 
 worthy, and so * anointed with holy Spirit and 
 with power ' at his baptism. In virtue of his 
 holiness he was adopted by God as his Son, and 
 lived in the constant fulfilment of the heavenly 
 will. This conception (sometimes called * Adop- 
 tionist ') shines through the Shepherd ascribed to 
 Hermas at Rome, about 140 a.d., a work included 
 in the New Testament in the famous manuscript 
 discovered by Constantine Tischendorf at Moimt 
 Sinai. It held its ground for more than a hun- 
 
l64 THE THEOLOGICAL CHRIST 
 
 dred years, having several important representa- 
 tives in Rome, and gave occasion to the famous 
 trial of Paul of Samosata in Syria in the year 
 269 A.D. Bishop of Antioch, one of the greatest 
 cities in the East, popular preacher, and withal 
 magistrate and city-treasurer, he combined the 
 secular with the clerical life. Jesus, he asserted, 
 had been truly man, but the Logos had inspired 
 him from above and made him divine. The Word 
 was in Christ what the apostle Paul called in the 
 Christian ' the inner man.' It was the principle 
 of thought which existed in God, was manifested 
 in creation, and dwelt as a divine element in the 
 reason and the will of all humanity. In Christ 
 the union between God and man was morally 
 complete. But it was a union not of substance 
 but of disposition or character, through which 
 God revealed himself for the salvation of the race. 
 Political antagonism appears to have veiled itself 
 under theological strife. Paul was protected by 
 the powerful queen Zenobia, of Palmyra. Charges 
 of heresy were at length brought against him, 
 and a synod assembled at Antioch and condemned 
 him. The citizens, however, defied the S5n:ian 
 bishops, and maintained him for three years in 
 
PAUL OF SAMOSATA 165 
 
 his chair. Only the fall of Zenobia led to his 
 deposition. Urged by his episcopal judges, the 
 emperor Aurelian deprived him of his see, announc- 
 ing that no one should be bishop in the city who 
 was not in accord with the bishops of Italy and 
 Rome. Paul went into exile ; but the council 
 which had found him guilty of heresy also declared 
 that the Son was not homo-ousios — * of the same 
 substance ' — with the Father. 
 
 Other influences, however, were steadily driving 
 Christian doctrine in that direction. The constant 
 growth of the Church and its conquests in various 
 fields tended to enhance the greatness of its 
 founder and its Lord. The speculations of philo- 
 sophy, possible influences in Alexandria from 
 the theology of the Nile, the relative ease with 
 which Hellenic and Egyptian thought could admit 
 doctrines of manifestation of a hidden essence 
 and find some links between the One and the 
 Many — all may have contributed to the great 
 issue. The fundamental conception, common to 
 the Jewish Philo and the Christian teachers 
 Clement and Origen, was the simplicity and 
 changelessness of the ultimate being of God. To 
 connect this with the manifold character of the 
 
1 66 THE THEOLOGICAL CHRIST 
 
 world of our experience Philo had called in the 
 help of the Logos. Clement of Alexandria (about 
 200 A.D.) builds upon the same foundation, and 
 with the broadest outlook over Greek culture 
 seeks to establish a philosophy of religion. But 
 so nearly does he approach to the Gnostic view 
 of the unreality of Christ's actual humanity that 
 he supposes Jesus only to have taken food and 
 drink out of condescension to men ; and so 
 distinct was the separation between the divine 
 element and the flesh that the Word suffered 
 no pain upon the cross. 
 
 It was, however, to Origen^ that Christian 
 theology owed the most important formative 
 impulse for its development. With vast learning 
 and unwearied industry he devoted himself alike 
 to Biblical study, and to the elaboration of a far- 
 reaching scheme of doctrine which supplied a 
 basis for the later ecclesiastical dogmatics. In 
 writings spread through a life of incessant activity 
 it cannot be surprising that there should be 
 incongruities and even contradictions. And there 
 
 1 Bom 185-6 A.D., he became in his eighteenth year the 
 acting head of the Christian school at Alexandria. Died 
 at Tyre, 253. 
 
ORIGEN 167 
 
 were elements in his teaching which orthodoxy 
 could not permanently tolerate, such as the pre- 
 existence of souls, or the final reunion of all 
 creatures (including even the Devil) in the 
 heavenly fellowship. But though these and other 
 pious opinions exposed his writings to mutilation 
 and his memory to condemnation, he nevertheless 
 holds not only the leading place among the 
 teachers of the third century, but a foremost 
 position among the creative minds of the whole 
 Church. Deeply imbued with the Neoplatonic 
 conception of the immutability of God, he could 
 not admit philosophically that God could ever 
 have been without his Reason, or religiously that 
 the Father could ever have been without a Son. 
 That wisdom to which the Gospel had given the 
 name of the Word, must have been ever with him. 
 That there could ever have been a time when he 
 did not possess his Son in the most intimate 
 relationship, was inconceivable. But the Son was 
 begotten by no single act. That would at once 
 have brought him into the realm of succession, 
 and assigned him to a specific date. The divine 
 wisdom must have been for ever arising within 
 the divine mind ; the reason of God must have 
 
l68 THE THEOLOGICAL CHRIST 
 
 been everlasting as his thought ; but the ' genera- 
 tion ' which produced it was no sohtary resolve, 
 it was perpetually renewed and never ceased. 
 In other words it was the result not of a particular 
 volition but of an eternal process : * The Father 
 is for ever begetting him.' The Son thus ever 
 rising within the Father's being was necessarily 
 his image, partook of his immutability, and shared 
 his substance (homo-ousios). He is always being 
 begotten, ' one Lord, one out of one, God out of 
 God.' As such he may be popularly called a 
 second God. This involved the strong affirma- 
 tion of the subordination of the Son ; and with 
 a breach of his fundamental conception Origen 
 can actually declare him * other in substance 
 than the Father,' and designate him as some- 
 thing created. So hard is it to preserve con- 
 sistency at such lofty levels. When he carried 
 the idea of the divine immutability into the 
 incarnation, he was inevitably beset by the 
 difficulty of combining it with our experience. 
 Not only had he to translate it out of the order 
 of eternity into that of time, and represent the 
 Logos as choosing the person of Jesus for his 
 moral dignity ; it was necessary also to save the 
 
ORIGEN 169 
 
 divine Word from the mutations of sense. In 
 the incarnation there was no mingUng of qualities ; 
 the Logos could not feel hunger, or suffer the 
 pangs of death. Nor could it be enclosed within 
 the body and soul of Jesus. The infinite could 
 not contract itself within a span. The Word must 
 have acted freely everywhere, and joined in union 
 with all souls that opened themselves to his 
 entrance. The hfe of Christ involved the per- 
 petual tension of his human will to cleave to the 
 indwelling Logos. God condescended to show 
 forth the nature of his being in a man, and a 
 man showed that the human spirit is capable of 
 becoming entirely God's. ^ 
 
 Origen died a few years before the Syrian bishops 
 had at the same time condemned the bishop of 
 Antioch and rejected the idea of the Homo-ousion. 
 But the impulse which he had given to the higher 
 view of the person of Christ by his doctrine of the 
 eternal generation of the Son, harmonized too 
 closely with the general tendency to exaltation 
 not to provide occasions for yet further advance. 
 Early in the fourth century a young scholar named 
 Arius arrived in Alexandria from Antioch, and 
 
 1 Hamack, History of Dogma, vol, ii., p. 174. 
 
170 THE THEOLOGICAL CHRIST 
 
 was appointed presbyter in one of the city parishes. 
 He had been trained in the great Syrian school of 
 Scripture study, and had learned to rely on the 
 methods of grammar and history instead of 
 allegory or tradition. Austere in personal habit, 
 with the eloquence of an orator, and a pastor's 
 devotion to the instruction of the ignorant, he 
 was already well known in the city, when, in the 
 year 318, he ventured to criticize an address 
 delivered by his bishop, Alexander, at a meeting 
 of clergy. All Christendom, he argued, regarded 
 the Son as subordinate to the Father. He was not, 
 therefore, absolutely God ; he was in some sense 
 derived ; he did not possess the same substance as 
 the eternal ; in other words, he was something 
 created, and there was a time when he was not.^ 
 Against this doctrine Alexander gathered his 
 forces, and in 321 Arius was deposed and ex- 
 communicated. Arius sought for support among 
 his friends further east, and a violent controversy 
 arose. The situation was critical. Const ant ine 
 had only recently legalized Christianity ; and the 
 Church, emerging from the terror and suffering of 
 persecution, was now threatened with divisions 
 
 1 Cp. Tertullian, ante, p. 162. 
 
ARIUS AND ATHANASIUS IJl 
 
 which might react seriously upon the empire. 
 Edicts imposing silence failed to hush the strife, 
 and the Emperor took the bold step of summoning 
 the whole order of the bishops to a general council 
 at Nicaea,^ not far from his own residence at 
 Nicomedia. It was a notable assembly. Three 
 himdred and eighteen bishops, with crowds of 
 attendant clergy, made their way to the Bithynian 
 city in answer to the imperial call. They came 
 from Persia and from Spain ; the Egyptian and 
 the North African met the Greek and the Goth. 
 Alexander of course was present, and with him 
 was a young presbyter hardly five-and-twenty 
 years of age (Arius was over fifty), on whom he 
 placed great reliance. His name was Athanasius. 
 The Emperor himself opened the proceedings, 
 but delegated the presidency to Bishop Hosius of 
 Cordova who had assisted him in the preparations. 
 Stormy and vehement were the debates as the 
 majority at first accused Arius of innovation. In 
 actual struggle documents were torn to pieces ; 
 and one aged bishop inflicted a blow upon a heretic's 
 ear. But at length the forces of dissension began 
 to wear away. Conciliation and compromise were 
 1 In Bithynia, Asia Minor. 
 
172 THE THEOLOGICAL CHRIST 
 
 set to work. It was known that the Emperor 
 expected a definite pronouncement, and that he 
 was not disposed to overlook the insubordination 
 of Arius in challenging the doctrine of his bishop. 
 Little by little the friends of Arius were won 
 over, and when Hosius produced a creed, only 
 two refused to sign it, while two more withheld 
 their signatures from the concluding anathema 
 pronounced on those who held the Arian formulae 
 * there was a time when the Son was not,' * before 
 he was begotten he was not,' and * he was made 
 out of nothing.'^ 
 
 The Nicene Creed was the first authoritative 
 declaration of faith sanctioned by the representa- 
 tives of the entire Church. It was built upon the 
 terms of primitive Christian confession, one God 
 the Father, and one Lord Jesus Christ. But in 
 describing the second of these two persons it 
 summed up the movement of more than two 
 hundred years of speculation since the Fourth 
 Gospel was composed. Without employing the 
 
 1 Arius had treated ' begotten ' as equivalent to ' created ' ; 
 and contended that as God could not communicate his own 
 essence to a creature, the Son could not possess the same 
 substance as the Father, but was a separate being. 
 
THE NICENE CREED I73 
 
 term Word, it adopted and elaborated the Evan- 
 gelist's conception of the Son of God, adding 
 phrases such as ' true God out of true God,** 
 which far outstrip, if they do not positively 
 contradict, the Gospel language. Here is the 
 culmination of the long struggle with Judaism, 
 with Gnosticism, and with the religions of the 
 Empire. Against the first it vindicated the exist- 
 ence at least of a dual relation within the Godhead, 
 an eternal Father and an eternal Son.^ Against 
 the second it enforced on the one hand the im- 
 mediate connexion of these two august persons, 
 and the real human experience of the Son, who 
 became not only flesh but also man, exposed to 
 actual suffering and death. And against the 
 varied cults and philosophies which had fought 
 for supremacy over the Galilean, it emphasized 
 the devotion of the Church to its Founder as the 
 real source of the power by which it had at last 
 
 1 Contrast John xvii. 3, ' that they may know thee the only 
 true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.' 
 
 2 The concluding clause of the original creed, ' And in the 
 Holy Spirit,' showed how vague was Church doctrine on the 
 subject, and how indeterminate were the nature and function 
 of the Spirit in the Godhead. 
 
174 THE THEOLOGICAL CHRIST 
 
 captured the mighty forces of Rome. The 
 spiritual energy by which it had won its way was 
 his gift. ' Be of good courage,' he had said to 
 his disciples, * I have conquered the world.' The 
 promise (if in another sense) was at last fulfilled. 
 If the Emperor had once stood to those beneath 
 him as their * Lord and God,' how much more 
 did the religious consciousness of the Church 
 demand for its satisfaction a still higher dignity 
 for * the Christ, the Son of God.' 
 
 From another point of view Christianity was a 
 religion of reconciliation. Jesus had sought to 
 make men feel that they were sons of God. 
 Athanasius, almost in the words of Tertullian in 
 an earlier day, afterwards declared that ' God 
 became man in order that man might become 
 God.' The realization of this was accomplished 
 in the person of Jesus. Athanasius might in- 
 deed almost completely ignore the actual story. 
 But Arius with all his historic sense could interpret 
 it no better. For he presented a figure without a 
 human soul, inhabited by the Word which did 
 indeed possess free will, and was in some sense 
 susceptible of a development of moral life, but 
 was nevertheless wholly estranged from our 
 
THE NICENE CREED I75 
 
 experience. Jesus was neither man, nor God, 
 but a being midway between the two. The time- 
 measure which Arius applied to demonstrate that 
 there was a period when God was not a father, had 
 no religious value, and only created a chasm 
 between God and the world. The doctrine of 
 which Athanasius was to be the great exponent 
 might involve contradictions even more glaring 
 than those implicit in the Arian scheme. But 
 it contained the precious truth that God reveals 
 himself in man, and the life of religion is a life of 
 spiritual fellowship with him. Vain is it to debate 
 what might have happened, had Arius triumphed 
 at Nicaea. It is enough that the church main- 
 tained, even in a single isolated experience, the 
 sublime reality of a union of God with our 
 humanity. It remains for it to throw open to all 
 in the boundless future what it has hitherto 
 believed to be the sole prerogative of Jesus Christ. 
 
 NOTE 
 
 The Biblical argument concerning the person 
 of Jesus has recently been stated with great force 
 by Prof. Denney, in Jesus and the Gospel, 3rd ed., 
 1909. The Rev. C. F. NoUoth has endeavoured 
 
176 THE THEOLOGICAL CHRIST 
 
 to deal with some aspects of modern criticism in 
 his volume on The Person of our Lord and Recent 
 Thought, 1908. A learned Roman Catholic ex- 
 position is presented by Prof. Lebreton, Les 
 Origines du Dogme de la TrinitS, Paris, 1910. 
 
 A convenient summary of the later process 
 sketched in the latter part of this Lecture, from 
 the point of view of a generation ago, will be 
 found in Reville's History of the Dogma of the 
 Deity of Jesus Christ , 1878. All students will be 
 deeply indebted to Harnack's great History of 
 Dogma, vols, ii.-iv. (Engl, trans., 1896-98). The 
 Anglican point of view is ably represented by 
 Prof. Ottley, The Doctrine of the Incarnation, 1902, 
 and Mr. Bethune-Baker, Introduction to the Early 
 History of Christian Doctrine, 1903. Prof. Sanday's 
 volume, Christologies Ancient and Modern, 1910, 
 selects certain aspects for exposition and discus- 
 sion, and will be considered in the next lecture. 
 Since these lectures were drafted an excellent 
 translation of the little manual of Prof. J. Weiss, 
 Christ, the Beginnings of Dogma, by the Rev. V. D. 
 Davis, has been published. 
 
IV 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE TWO NATURES 
 
 The Nicene settlement produced a fresh crop 
 of theological problems. The details of the 
 subsequent ecclesiastical warfare show how firmly 
 the general type of doctrine out of which Arianism 
 emerged, had been planted in different quarters 
 of the Church. The Emperor discovered that it 
 was not so easy to impose uniformity of belief. 
 There were friends of Arius in the court, and even 
 in his own family ; and three years later, in 328, 
 he recalled the presbyter from exile, and after 
 another three years demanded his reinstatement 
 at Alexandria. Meanwhile the young Athanasius 
 had been elected to the episcopal chair. With a 
 dauntless courage he maintained his ground in 
 spite of a sentence of deposition passed by the 
 Synod of Tyre in 335.^ The next year he was 
 
 1 This arose, however, out of another matter. 
 
178 THE DOCTRINE OF THE TWO NATURES 
 
 banished by the Emperor to Treves, and orders 
 were given for the solemn reception of Arius at 
 Constantinople. A grand procession was arranged 
 from the Imperial palace to the Church of the 
 Apostles. But the evening before, Arius suddenly 
 died. Some of his followers suspected treachery 
 and poison. His opponents declared that by a 
 stroke of Providence the Judas of orthodoxy had 
 met his merited fate. 
 
 The strife, however, was not allayed. Theology 
 and politics, personal intrigues and local struggles, 
 were hopelessly mingled. There were councils and 
 persecutions, checks and counter-checks. The 
 tendencies out of which Arianism had emerged, 
 could not be suddenly and everywhere repressed. 
 The general forces of rationalism were enlisted on 
 its side. It represented a protest against innova- 
 tions, and repudiated the growing practices of 
 prayers for the dead, the celibacy of the clergy, 
 the worship of saints, and the extreme austerities 
 of monks. But the conflict which it engendered 
 involved grave dangers to the empire. Was it 
 for this that Christianity had been adopted 
 as the state-religion ? From such quarrels the 
 romantic Julian endeavoured to lead men's minds 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE EMPIRE I79 
 
 back to the ancient cults ; but his brief reign 
 sufficed to prove that the forces of the old religions 
 were spent. When the Spanish soldier Theodosius 
 ascended the throne with Gratian and Valentinian 
 II, orthodoxy triumphed. His famous edict, 
 issued in 380, imposed the doctrine of the Trinity 
 upon his subjects as * the religion taught by St. 
 Peter to the Romans.' The next year, 381, a 
 council at Constantinople re-enacted the creed of 
 Nicaea, expanding the earlier clause concerning 
 the Holy Spirit. But Arianism was still strong 
 enough to hold the Germanic invaders who had 
 received it from the missionaries of the fourth 
 century ; and it was only in the course of genera- 
 tions that Lombard and Goth submitted to the 
 authority of the Catholic Christianity of Rome. 
 
 (i) 
 Meanwhile, the problem of the Incarnation 
 remained unsolved. The fact, affirmed at Nicaea, 
 and reaffirmed at Constantinople, was stated thus : 
 * The only begotten Son of God, being of one 
 substance with the Father, was incarnate and was 
 made man.' But the mode of this incarnation 
 was undefined. What was the nature of this 
 
l80 THE DOCTRINE OF THE TWO NATURES 
 
 humanity ? How was it related to the divine 
 Person who had deigned to unite himself with it ? 
 In what fashion should it be conceived ? Various 
 possibilities were open ; which corresponded with 
 reality ? 
 
 The way to a solution was long and difficult ; 
 the questions involved were numerous and 
 intricate. Within the field of organized Christ- 
 ianity the influences at work were manifold. The 
 victory of the Church over the expiring Paganism 
 of the fourth century inevitably promoted the 
 exaltation of the person of Christ. In contrast 
 with the traditional forms of Hellenic or Roman 
 worship, with the cults of the East which had 
 sought to establish themselves in permanent 
 possession of the people's faith, or with the refined 
 philosophical pantheism which still appealed to 
 many cultivated minds, the distinctive element 
 in Christianity lay in a doctrine of salvation for 
 which the life and death of its founder were both 
 needed. In their interpretation the influences of 
 powerful personalities and great schools of teach- 
 ing naturally played a vigorous part. The modes 
 of thought current at Rome or Antioch, Alexandria 
 or Constantinople, were by no means the same. 
 
FACTORS IN THE SETTLEMENT l8l 
 
 Different methods of study, different traditions 
 of approach to the problems of theology, marked 
 the far-sundered branches of the Church. They 
 were increased by diversities of language, as the 
 cultivated Greek speech, the organ of literature 
 and philosophy, was rendered into Syriac in the 
 East, or Latin in the West. And a different 
 metaphysic, Platonist, Aristotelian, Stoic, or 
 Neoplatonist, might shape the issues along varying 
 lines. 
 
 But, again, the alliance with the empire effected 
 by Constantine brought fresh factors into play. 
 The Church now stood in close connexion with the 
 State. Legislation was enacted for its benefit. 
 Privileges and immunities were conferred upon it. 
 Whatever tended to weaken its power and disrupt 
 its unity, was full of peril. Heresy might mean 
 more than ecclesiastical division ; the lapse of 
 a province from orthodoxy might be much more 
 than a scandal for the bishops, it might lead to 
 defiance of imperial control, and false doctrine 
 might spell dismemberment. The personal opin- 
 ions of emperors, consequently, gained addi- 
 tional significance. The court, also, guided by the 
 proclivities of the reigning house, and sometimes 
 
l82 THE DOCTRINE OF THE TWO NATURES 
 
 peculiarly susceptible to the counsels of a favourite 
 preacher, claimed its share of attention. More- 
 over, the power to summon a general council of 
 the Church did not lie within its hierarchy. The 
 right of initiative belonged to the Emperor alone. ^ 
 Yet, once more, the increased importance of 
 the bishops contributed another element of great 
 force. They constituted the teaching body ; and 
 the leadership of parties lay with them. The 
 influence of the great Sees like Rome, Alexandria, 
 Antioch, Constantinople, extended over areas far 
 wider than their local jurisdiction. Their occu- 
 pants demanded the allegiance of their brethren 
 of Italy, Egypt, or Syria. Large crowds of 
 followers accompanied them to support their 
 views ; and in the East immense bands of 
 monks, roused often to passion by the 
 vicissitudes of controversy, added an element 
 of vehemence — not to say violence — gravely 
 opposed to calm reflexion or temperate debate. 
 Moreover the jealousies of rival ecclesiastics 
 
 iThe twenty-first article of the Church of England still 
 emphasizes this lay authority : ' General councils may not 
 be gathered together without the commandment and will 
 of princes.' 
 
FACTORS IN THE SETTLEMENT 183 
 
 led to intrigues for vindicating special claims. 
 Rome and Alexandria might drop their hostility 
 to combine against the assumptions of Con- 
 stantinople, which not even an emperor's presence 
 could endow with three or four centuries of 
 Christian tradition. But behind all these conflict- 
 ing factors lay an increasing reverence for the 
 decisions of the great oecumenical councils. 
 Through these the Church spoke with increasing 
 power. Their decrees carried with them an 
 authority far transcending that of the individual 
 bishops which composed them. For the belief 
 grew clearer that they were guarded from error 
 by their heavenly Lord, and that the voice of 
 the episcopate was the guarantee of truth. The 
 successors of the apostles, in defining and interpret- 
 ing the faith committed to their predecessors, 
 could not fall away from the deposit originally 
 entrusted to the Twelve. 
 
 (ii) 
 
 Under these general conditions for the formation 
 
 and settlement of doctrine the great theme of the 
 
 incarnation was pursued. In what form did it 
 
 take place, and what were its consequences for 
 
184 THE DOCTRINE OF THE TWO NATURES 
 
 the two discrepant elements, divine and human, 
 the only begotten Son of God and the man Jesus ? 
 ' The Word was made flesh,' said the Gospel. 
 ' True God out of true God . . . was made man,' 
 said the Creed. There was certainly a difference 
 of language ; perhaps there was one of interpreta- 
 tion. Scripture was, of course, the ultimate 
 authority, but there were different ways of 
 handling it. The question might be approached 
 from either side, that of God or man, and it was 
 likely that the answers would show great diverg- 
 ence. The theological method would start from 
 the nature of the Deity, and would ask what would 
 be the a priori conditions of such an event ; what 
 kind of union could conceivably take place between 
 a person in the Godhead and a human being on 
 earth for the purpose of salvation ; what would 
 be the resultant type of experience ; how far 
 could the energies and aptitudes of the one be 
 communicated to the other ; to what extent 
 could they feel and think and act together ? On 
 the other hand, the historical method would start 
 from the records of the incarnate Person in the 
 Gospels. It would enquire what the Scriptures 
 related of his actual career. It would note the 
 
METHODS OF APPROACH 1 85 
 
 hints contained in the brief delineation of his 
 passage from infancy to manhood. It would 
 study the manner of his daily walk and conversa- 
 tion, and endeavour to apprehend the character of 
 his inner life by the evidences of his words and 
 deeds. From the picture thus wrought out of 
 the facts it would infer the nature and relations 
 of the Godhead and the manhood which produced 
 them. An example of each of these methods 
 must suffice to illustrate their tendencies and 
 issues. 
 
 Apollinaris, the cultured son of a cultured 
 father, was bishop of Laodicea in the second half 
 of the fourth century. He had been the champion 
 of Christianity against the philosopher and critic 
 Porph3n*y, and the Emperor Julian. A trained 
 student of metaphysics, at home in the schools 
 of Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle, he was also 
 familiar with the exegetical learning of the Bib- 
 lical theologians of Antioch ; and with imtiring 
 industry had defended the Nicene orthodoxy 
 against the Arians, the Manicheans, and other 
 heretics. The ontological postulate which he 
 brought to the interpretation of the person of 
 Christ was that of the inamut ability of Deity. 
 
l86 THE DOCTRINE OF THE TWO NATURES 
 
 Origen had admitted his possession of a human 
 soul as a middle term between the Logos and 
 the flesh. To ApoUinaris this seemed a fatal 
 concession. It introduced into the person of 
 the Incarnate Son a free will exposed to the 
 possibilities of change, and therefore sin. The 
 Athanasian doctrine had demanded that the 
 Redeemer should be lifted above all variations 
 such as rise out of our mortal experience. The 
 conception of freedom implied moral probation ; 
 it involved the idea of a development in the 
 interior life. Such a view savoured of the sub- 
 ordinate position assigned by Arianism to the 
 Son. The divine Word, consubstantial with the 
 Father, could not be liable to vicissitudes of 
 purpose or disposition. It could not, therefore, 
 have been associated with that human intelligence 
 which, in the Platonic psychology, was the seat 
 of ignorance and sinful instinct. The Gospel 
 declared that the Word became flesh, not man. 
 That signified that in clothing himself with the 
 animated form of Jesus, the only begotten Son 
 had taken the place of the human spirit, and wore 
 the earthly body as its visible and temporary robe. 
 ApoUinaris pleaded, therefore, for the 'single 
 
METHODS OF APPROACH 187 
 
 nature of the Word made flesh.* He did not 
 shrink from comparing the Man-God of orthodoxy 
 to the fanciful forms of Greek mythology like 
 satyrs and minotaurs. And he affirmed that the 
 ' mingling ' of the divine and human attributes 
 was so complete that what belonged to one might 
 be affirmed of the other. The divine Word, 
 accordingly, condescended to be bom of Mary, 
 and died upon the cross. It was the last result 
 of the principle of the consubstantiality of the 
 Father and the Son. But ApoUinaris was con- 
 demned by the council of Constantinople, and 
 an imperial decree prohibited his followers from 
 worshipping together. 
 
 ApoUinaris knew how to find in Scripture what 
 suited his philosophical theology. His younger 
 contemporary, Theodore, reversed his method. 
 Bom about 350 a.d. at Antioch, he had studied 
 under John ' of the golden mouth,' and after 
 receiving priest's orders about 383 was appointed 
 to a church at Tarsus. Thence, nine years later, 
 about the time when ApoUinaris died, he passed, 
 as bishop, to Mopsuestia, some forty mUes away. 
 The Scriptural theologians of Antioch started 
 from the traditions of Christ's human life. They 
 
l88 THE DOCTRINE OF THE TWO NATURES 
 
 found the Gospels full of indications of a moral 
 experience. The public career of the Messiah 
 was prefaced by a temptation and a victory, and 
 his trials lasted till its close. These could have 
 had no meaning had he not possessed a rational 
 human soul, capable of choice between good and 
 evil. What, then, was the nature of its connexion 
 with the Word ? They could not have been one 
 in essence ; for the divine Word could not have 
 been changed into a man, or even circumscribed by 
 his bodily frame. Nor was the unity simply one 
 of * working ' or energy, for the Deity is present 
 everywhere, and always operating ; his presence 
 in Christ in this character conferred no peculiar 
 privilege. It was a moral union, resembling 
 that of God with his saints in virtue of their 
 harmony with his mind and will. In Jesus 
 the perfection of obedience and piety brought 
 as its sublime result the indwelling of Deity. 
 True, this began with his conception, for God 
 foresaw the course of his development, and 
 in anticipation of his holiness deigned to unite 
 with him from the outset of his life. At each 
 stage of his advance, with each fresh step forwards 
 on the path of good, the union became more 
 
TWO CONFLICTING TENDENCIES 189 
 
 intimate. But there were after all two natures 
 combined within one outward form, two * hypo- 
 stases * or persons, in closest combination of grace 
 so that they might be adored as one. Theodore 
 could not abandon his firm hold of the Gospel 
 picture of the humanity of Christ ; he could not 
 allow that God could be born and die. 
 
 (iii) 
 
 Two tendencies, accordingly, were involved in 
 the language of the Nicene Creed, and they 
 struggled vehemently together. In the year 428 
 another student from Antioch became archbishop 
 of Constantinople. Pious, eloquent, austere, living 
 an ascetic life in the gay city, he was contemptu- 
 ously described by his enemies as ' ignorant of 
 theology.* The refusal of one of his clergy, 
 Anastasius, to apply to the Virgin Mary the title 
 * Mother of God,'^ brought Nestorius into the field 
 for his support. He could not admit such a union 
 between the two natures that the terms suited 
 to the one could be applied to the other. * God 
 wrapped in swaddling clothes was a heathen 
 
 ^ This was already current about 360, and may be traced 
 still earlier. Hamack, Hist, of Dogma, vol. iv., p. 168, note 2. 
 
1 90 THE DOCTRINE OF THE TWO NATURES 
 
 fable ' ; he would not endure to worship a God 
 three months old. 
 
 The report of such language was not long in 
 reaching Alexandria, where the bishop's chair 
 was occupied by C3^il. A strange mingling of 
 ambition, unscrupulousness, and devotion, marked 
 his character. On one side he showed a violent 
 and persecuting spirit ; he prompted outrages 
 upon the Jews ; his clergy were responsible for 
 the murder of Hypatia. But his writings fill an 
 important place in the development of Christo- 
 logical doctrine, for he was profoundly interested 
 in the question of salvation. The Athanasian 
 doctrine had this for its chief end ; * God became 
 man in order that man might become God.' But 
 what kind of man ? Not, argued Cyril, a single 
 individual, for in that case the benefit of redemp- 
 tion would have been limited to Jesus. The 
 Incarnation of the Son was designed for the 
 redemption of humanity, and the manhood with 
 which the Word was irnited must, therefore, have 
 been generic or universal. Like Athanasius (and 
 Apollinaris) C5^il laid stress also on the divine 
 immutabihty, and consequently denied the pre- 
 sence of free will in Christ. Before the union 
 
NESTORIUS AND CYRIL I9I 
 
 the two natures were distinct ; but in the union 
 the humanity was transformed. There was but 
 * one nature of the Word enfieshed.' The sub- 
 stance of the manhood, body and reasonable soul, 
 — all was incorporated in his own person, so that 
 the properties of either nature were mutually 
 blended and completely fused. Out of two natures 
 there thus emerged one Christ. But the divine 
 so completely absorbed the human that Cyril 
 could affirm that even while in the manger Christ 
 filled the whole creation as God. Cyril shrank 
 from none of the contradictions involved in his 
 conception of this oneness. The Logos remained 
 unchangeable, yet it could hunger and pray. 
 God was crucified, God suffered — yet, Cyril 
 was obliged to add almost Docetically, without 
 suffering. 
 
 The antagonism between the doctrines of 
 Nestorius and C5^il was aggravated by the stress 
 of ecclesiastical jealousy. To thwart Constanti- 
 nople Cyril appealed to Ccelestine who then filled 
 the See of Rome. Ccelestine had no objection to 
 play off Alexandria against New Rome. Pre- 
 occupied with the Pelagian controversy, and 
 without really considering the teaching of Nes- 
 
192 THE DOCTRINE OF THE TWO NATURES 
 
 torius, he hastened to condemn him. A Roman 
 synod held in 430 required his recantation, 
 and charged Cyril to carry out the sentence. 
 Nestorius retorted by urging the Emperor to call 
 a general council. It met at Ephesus at Whitsun- 
 tide, 431. Before the arrival of the Roman 
 legates or the Syrian bishops, Cyril adroitly seized 
 the presidency, and without waiting for John of 
 Antioch hastened to depose Nestorius, who had, 
 meanwhile, refused to appear. When the Syrian 
 contingent reached Ephesus, they held their 
 council under the direction of the Imperial Com- 
 missioner, and in their turn proceeded to depose 
 Cyril. Last of all came the representatives from 
 Rome, pledged to espouse the cause of Alexandria. 
 The adherents of Cyril consented to the reopening 
 of the council so as to exalt the Apostolic See. 
 The acts were read over, and the legates gave their 
 sanction to the sentence against Nestorius. Amid 
 shouts of ' A new Paul, one Coelestine, one Cyril, 
 one faith ! ' the conflict of parties came to a close. 
 It was a short-lived triumph. The Emperor 
 deposed both of the protagonists. Nestorius, 
 persecuted and dishonoured, was driven from 
 place to place, and died nine years later in 440. 
 
NESTORIANS IN THE EAST I93 
 
 Cyril, in 433, signed a fonnula admitting two 
 natures after the Incarnation, which his opponent 
 could have equally accepted, and was reinstated 
 in his old authority. But the followers of 
 Nestorius spread farther and farther through the 
 East, till in 781 they erected a famous stone 
 tablet at Singan in the Chinese Empire^ ; and 
 their descendants are still found in scattered 
 communities in the valley of the Euphrates and 
 on the Western coast of India. 
 
 (iv) 
 
 The struggle for a definition was by no means 
 over ; the unreconciled elements in the Nicene 
 orthodoxy could not be repressed. But from the 
 death of Cyril in 444 the forces which were engaged 
 were rather political than theological. Cyril was 
 followed by Dioscorus, who cherished the same 
 ambition to secure for Alexandria the leadership 
 of the Church of the East. He reverted to the 
 
 1 Under the Emperor Tai-tsung in the seventh century 
 this was a great centre of intellectual activity. An immense 
 library of 200.000 volumes was collected there, and religious 
 discussion was actively pursued. The Nestorian mission is 
 said to have arrived from Persia in 635. 
 
 N 
 
194 THE DOCTRINE OF THE TWO NATURES 
 
 older Athanasian type of doctrine, and revived 
 the formula of C3rrirs earlier teaching, ' one 
 nature of God the Word made flesh.' He laboured 
 to secure the deposition of Nestorian bishops, and 
 made it his business to drive out ' the two natures.' 
 In forcing his authority on unwilling churches he 
 made claims to power rivalling those of Rome, and 
 exposed himself to danger from two sides. Leo 
 was ready and watchful in the West. Upon the 
 Bosporus the Emperor raised his own court- 
 bishop to the dignity of patriarch, equal in rank 
 to the holders of the ancient sees ; but the prestige 
 of imperial favour could not convey the sanctity 
 of antiquity. Relations became more and more 
 strained, and an occasion for dispute was soon 
 at hand. 
 
 A venerable archimandrite (or abbot) in 
 Constantinople, Eutyches by name, who had 
 spent thirty of his seventy years of life in quietly 
 ruling his monks, was denounced to the synod 
 in the imperial city for heresy. He stood for the 
 * one nature ' of Cyril, the opposite doctrine to 
 the Nestorianism which he had strenuously 
 combated. Vainly did he appeal to the old 
 formula of Athanasius and Cyril ; vainly did he 
 
EUTYCHES AND * ONE NATURE ' I95 
 
 protest that he would not go beyond the Scriptures, 
 and found nothing there about * two natures.' 
 He was condemned as a follower of Apollinaris, 
 and the newly decorated patriarch Flavian pro- 
 ceeded to circulate a decree of excommunication. 
 Eutyches naturally appealed to the Emperor, 
 Theodosius II, and further laid his case before 
 Leo at Rome. He also obtained the support of 
 Dioscorus at Alexandria in his demand for a 
 council, which the Emperor conceded. It met at 
 Ephesus, in August, 449. One hundred and 
 thirty-five bishops were present. The violence of 
 its proceedings under the presidency of Dioscorus 
 gained for it from Leo the contemptuous name of 
 * the Robber Synod.' The stories of terrorism 
 may have been exaggerated, but Dioscorus was 
 resolved to secure his own supremacy. A letter 
 from Leo had been brought by the representative 
 from Rome, but he was not allowed to read it, 
 though Dioscorus deposited it among the minutes. 
 It was alleged afterwards that with the aid of the 
 civil power Dioscorus had posted armed soldiers to 
 command the approaches of the council chamber, 
 and the proconsul actually appeared at the door 
 with a bundle of chains. The patriarch Flavian 
 
196 THE DOCTRINE OF THE TWO NATURES 
 
 was deposed, and appealed in his turn to the 
 authority of Rome. Barsumas, abbot of a Syrian 
 monastery, had brought his monks to overawe 
 the Fathers. The unfortunate patriarch (so ran 
 the tale), brutally treated, kicked and beaten, 
 was thrown into prison, and died three days later 
 at Hypepe on his way into exile. ^ The bishops 
 were compelled to sign blank documents, and 
 after other opponents of Dioscorus had been also 
 condemned, Eutyches was acquitted and restored; 
 When the legates reported the proceedings at 
 Rome, Leo rejected the Ephesian resolutions, 
 whereupon Dioscorus, in the spring of 450, took 
 the audacious step of excommunicating his hated 
 rival. 
 
 Suddenly the knot was cut. On July 28 
 Theodosius died. His sister Pulcheria, who be- 
 came empress, quickly gave her hand to the 
 soldier Marcian, and the reversal of the policy 
 of Theodosius began. The imperial support of 
 Dioscorus was withdrawn. The temporary pri- 
 macy which he had enjoyed fell away. Com- 
 mimications were opened with Rome, and arrange- 
 
 1 Hamack, Hist, of Dogma, vol. iv., p, 210, seriously doubts 
 all these charges. 
 
THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON I97 
 
 raents were made for another council to undo the 
 work of Ephesus. It met at Chalcedon, nearly 
 opposite to Byzantium,^ on October 8, 451. 
 The number of bishops attending it was the largest 
 on record ; moved by the recent dangers about 
 six hundred assembled. Both politically and 
 ecclesiastically, as Ranke has noted, it was the 
 most important council of all. The presidency 
 was assigned to Leo, who did not attend in person, 
 but was, as before, represented by his legates, the 
 imperial commissioners acting as effective presi- 
 dents. Leo, however, had sent a lengthy letter 
 conveying his own interpretation of the Nicene 
 creed, insisting upon ' one person in two natures.' 
 It is probable that the majority of the Fathers, 
 especially the bishops of Egypt, Palestine, and 
 Ill57ria, would have accepted the resolutions of 
 Ephesus in 431, as interpreted by Cyril, * out of 
 two natures Christ is,' meaning that after the 
 Incarnation the Logos had only one nature which 
 had become flesh. ^ But the pressure of the 
 imperial authority was strong. It was necessary 
 to tranquiUize the distracted East. There were 
 
 1 About two miles south of the modem Scutari. 
 1 Hamack, Hist, of Dogma, vol. iv., p. 216. 
 
198 THE DOCTRINE OF THE TWO NATURES 
 
 vehement debates, and dramatic incidents, as 
 one after another of the bishops who had supported 
 Dioscorus two years before alleged that his 
 signature had been extorted from him by force. 
 The Roman representatives secured the condem- 
 nation of Dioscorus, who persisted in maintaining 
 that he was the true follower of Athanasius and 
 Cyril, and the way was gradually prepared for 
 Leo's triumph. It seems likely that a formula 
 had been drawn up by a secret commission under 
 imperial orders before the council met. It was 
 based upon Leo's letter, and embodied his views. 
 Introduced at the fifth session, on October 22, 
 it condemned every form of confusion, mixture, 
 or blending, ascribed to Eutyches, and concluded 
 as follows : — 
 
 * We, then, following the holy fathers, all with one consent 
 teach men to confess one and the same Son our Lord Jesus 
 Christ : the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in 
 Manhood ; truly God and truly Man ; of a reasonable soul 
 and body ; consubstantial with the Father according to the 
 Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the Man- 
 hood ; in all things like unto us without sin ; begotten before 
 all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these 
 latter days for us and our salvation bom of the virgin Marj 
 the mother of God according to the Manhood ; one and the 
 same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten, to be acknowledged ia 
 
THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON I99 
 
 two natures, unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, insepar- 
 ably, the distinction of natures being by no means taken away 
 by the union, but rather the property of each nature being pre 
 served, and concurring in one person and one hypostasis, not 
 parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same 
 Son and only begotten God, Word, Lord, Jesus Christ, as the 
 prophets, from the beginning have declared concerning him, 
 and the Lord Jesus Christ himself hath taught us, and the 
 Creed of the holy fathers hath delivered to us.' 
 
 Three days later, on October 25, the sixth session 
 was held. Pulcheria and Marcian were present 
 in state. The Emperor delivered an address in 
 favour of unity, and the question was put. Amid 
 loud cries of assent — ' We are all orthodox ! ' 
 ' Long live Marcian, the new Constantine, the 
 new Paul, the new David ! ' ' Long live Pulcheria, 
 the new Helena ! ' — the formula was carried. The 
 problem was in fact abandoned. Its contradic- 
 tions were stated in the plainest terms ; each 
 nature continued to exist in its own mode of being ; 
 but the fashion in which they were held together 
 by one person remained unexplained. 
 
 The story was not ended, for the Greek intellect 
 could not wholly relinquish the attempt. The 
 crude assertion of the Deity and the Humanity in 
 juxtaposition was unacceptable to the subtler 
 
200 THE DOCTRINE OF THE TWO NATURES 
 
 Eastern mind. The sense of the overwhelming 
 superiority of the divine, the incongruousness of 
 its miion with what was Hable to decay, begot 
 various strange forms of speculation in the next 
 two hundred years traceable ultimately to the 
 conception of one nature after the Incarnation. 
 But in the West about the eighth century a Latin 
 h)min, known by its opening words as Quicunqne 
 vult, *the Creed commonly called of Saint 
 Athanasius,' began to make its way, which may 
 possibly be as old as the latter part of the sixth. 
 At any rate its doctrinal type is the Roman view 
 which triumphed at Chalcedon. In the English 
 churches which followed the Sarum rite it was 
 daily sung before the Apostles' creed. The 
 Prayer Book of the present day requires its 
 recitation fourteen times a year. The verses 
 defining the nature of Christ run thus ; — 
 
 The right faith is that we believe and confess that our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and man : 
 
 God of the substance of the Father, begotten before the 
 worlds, and man of the substance of his mother, bom 
 in the world ; 
 
 Perfect God and perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human 
 flesh subsisting ; equal to the Father as touching hi* 
 Godhead, and inferior to the Father as touching hi* 
 manhood ; 
 
THE MANHOOD AFFIRMED 201 
 
 Who, although he be God and man, yet is he not two, but one 
 Christ ; one, not by conversion of the Godhead into 
 flesh, but by taking of the manhood into God : 
 
 One altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by unity 
 of person ; for as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man» 
 so God and man is one Christ. 
 
 The author of the Creed is unknown ; the one 
 thing certain is that it was not Athanasius, for 
 the true sequel of his Christology would be some 
 form of Monophysitism, or the doctrine of One 
 Nature. Like the formula of Chalcedon, it did 
 not attempt to reHeve the metaphysical difficulty, 
 but it clung to the fact of Christ's manhood. 
 Placing the two natures side by side, each in its 
 own perfection, it left the contradiction of their 
 co-existence in one person unresolved, and offered 
 no account of their union. The method and effect 
 of their mutual operation remained undetermined, 
 but whatever else Jesus may have been besides, 
 he was still a man. 
 
 (V) 
 
 The Church is now confronted once more with 
 the same problem. The Anglican movement in 
 the last century shifted the theological centre of 
 interest from the Evangelical conception of 
 
202 THE DOCTRINE OF THE TWO NATURES 
 
 atonement to the ecclesiastical doctrine of the 
 incarnation. Here was the fundamental idea of 
 Christianity, and the whole of the sacramental 
 institutions of the Church had for their principal 
 object to extend its benefits to the believer. 
 Moreover, with the reaction against different 
 modifications of the Calvinistic type, the student 
 of the New Testament found that behind St. Paul 
 stood Jesus. The spirit of historical enquiry, 
 once roused, was not content till it brought the 
 Gospels within the range of accepted scientific 
 methods, and the long series of lives of Christ, 
 German, French, and English, testifies to the zeal 
 with which this object has been pursued. One 
 single illustration must suffice to show how 
 psychological fidelity has modified dogmatic 
 control. In the article on Jesus Christ contributed 
 by Dr. Thomson (then Archbishop of York) to 
 the Dictionary of the Bible edited by Dr. William 
 Smith in 1863 we read the following account of 
 the Temptation : 
 
 ' It was the trial of one who could not possibly have fallen. 
 This makes a complete conception of the temptation im- 
 possible for minds wherein temptation is always associated 
 with the possibility of sin.' 
 
 It is obvious that under such circumstances 
 
MODERN DIFFICULTIES 203 
 
 temptation loses its meaning altogether. Very 
 different is the treatment of the same theme by 
 Prof. Sanday, in the corresponding article in the 
 Dictionary edited by Dr. Hastings (1899) : 
 
 ' It is impossible for us to understand it, in the sense of 
 understanding how what we call temptation could affect the 
 Son of God. It could not have touched him at all, unless 
 he had been also, and no less really, Son of Man.' 
 
 Various circumstances have combined to bring 
 the question of the relation of the two natures 
 once more to the front place in connexion with 
 the doctrine of the person of Jesus. The critical 
 study of the Old Testament, for example, has 
 gravely modified many traditional views of the 
 authorship of its different books. Moses, it is 
 now known, did not write the Pentateuch, nor 
 David the hundred and tenth Psalm, nor Daniel 
 the book which bears his name. Yet the 
 Gospels attribute such ascriptions to Jesus. 
 How were such erroneous literary judgments 
 to be explained ? The enquiry opened wider 
 issues, which were frankly faced by Dr. Gore 
 in his essay on 'the Consciousness of our Lord,' 
 published in his volume of Dissertations on 
 Subjects connected with the Incarnation (1895). 
 
204 THE DOCTRINE OF THE TWO NATURES 
 
 * Up to the time of his death,' we read (p. 87), 
 
 * he lived and taught, he thought and was inspired 
 and was tempted, as true and proper man, under 
 the limitations of consciousness which alone make 
 possible a real human experience. Of this part 
 of our heritage we must not allow ourselves to 
 be robbed by being " wise above that which is 
 written." ' The evidence of this lies on the 
 surface of the First Three Gospels. Jesus was 
 taught as the young are taught. There was a real 
 growth in mental apprehension and in spiritual 
 capacity. When we are told that he advanced 
 in wisdom as in stature, it is plain that his intel- 
 lectual and moral Hfe developed with expanding 
 knowledge and the transition from youth to 
 maturity. He was subjected to temptations such 
 as might beset a man ; and he met them by 
 the free exercise of a human will. He asked for 
 information and received it ; he could express 
 surprise ; his knowledge was limited. On the 
 last night of his life he is seen in Gethsemane to 
 be weighted with an almost crushing burden. 
 The future is not clear to him. He stands before 
 a catastrophe which threatens to destroy all his 
 hopes. It falls upon him, and on the cross he 
 
MODERN DIFFICULTIES 205 
 
 feels himself really forsaken. In such a being it 
 would seem impossible to suppose that two 
 consciousnesses, divine and human, were going 
 on together. 
 
 Such facts could not be wholly ignored by the 
 Fathers who were engaged in working out the 
 issues of the Nicene doctrine. Athanasius, indeed, 
 had been so occupied with the vindication of the 
 presence of Deity in Christ that he paid but 
 scanty attention to his humanity ; but in rejecting 
 the idea that his will was ' mutable,' he un- 
 doubtedly intended to differentiate him from 
 other men. The favourite method of accounting 
 for the apparent limitations of his knowledge 
 was based on the doctrine of his ' economic ignor- 
 ance.' By this was meant that he was ignorant, 
 as man, of what he at the same time knew as God. 
 This singular conception inevitably led to moral 
 confusion. Under its influence * the process by 
 which God reveals himself in such a way as to be 
 intelligible to man, passes imperceptibly into 
 meaning a process of divine reserve which is in 
 fact deception.'^ If Jesus affirmed that not even 
 the Son knew the day and the hour of the coming 
 
 1 Gore, Dissertations, p. 151. 
 
206 THE DOCTRINE OF THE TWO NATURES 
 
 of the Son of Man, he only pretended, said 
 Cyril, not to know. More boldly still the Syrian 
 Ephraira (about 308-373) declared, ' Christ, 
 though he knew the moment of his advent, yet 
 that they might not ask him any more about it, 
 said " I know it not." ' Was it surprising that 
 to such pleas Theodoret^ should indignantly 
 reply, * If he knew the day, and, wishing to conceal 
 it, said he was ignorant, see what blasphemy is 
 the result of this conclusion, the Truth tells 
 a lie.'2 
 
 Partial relief from this difficulty has been found 
 m the doctrine known by its Greek name as 
 kenosis or * emptying.' Founded on the well 
 known words of the apostle Paul,^ it endeavours to 
 conceive the process by which the divine Son 
 divested himself of certain of his powers in passing 
 from the heavenly glory to submit to the con- 
 ditions of our human state. Among the earliest 
 exponents of this view was Hilary of Poitiers 
 (died 368). He had been a follower of Athanasius, 
 
 1 Bom at Antioch towards the end of the Fourth Century ; 
 died soon after the Council of Chalcedon. 
 
 * Gore, Dissertations, pp. 1 30-1 31. 
 
 « Philippians ii. 7, see ante, p. 127. 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF KENOSIS 207 
 
 and had suffered exile in the Arian struggle. His 
 treatise on the Trinity was afterwards over- 
 shadowed by the great work of Augustine, but 
 it was not without influence as the later references 
 of the Schoolmen show, Lanfranc and Peter the 
 Lombard, Aquinas and Bonaventura. All souls, 
 taught Hilary, derive their being from God. The 
 soul of Jesus was created undefiled by the Logos, 
 who fashioned a body to match out of the sub- 
 stance of Mary. In uniting himself with this 
 soul the Logos, with self -renouncing love, relin- 
 quished his heavenly glory, and kept back the 
 attributes of his Deity. At every moment he 
 possessed power over himself ; he could allow his 
 physical nature to grow, to hunger, to suffer, and 
 to die, while he held back his own omniscience 
 and omnipotence. The Son of God thus subsisted 
 simultaneously in two spheres, the glory which he 
 possessed before the incarnation, and the humilia- 
 tion involving the passage from birth to maturity 
 as man. Hilary positively revelled in the an- 
 tinomies of this dual existence : ' God was born 
 in man, but did not cease to be God. He con- 
 tracted himself to conception, and the manger, 
 and infancy, without declining from the power of 
 
208 THE DOCTRINE OF THE TWO NATURES 
 
 God.'^ The doctrine had attractions for later 
 theologians, and the professors of Giessen and 
 Tubingen in the seventeenth century actively- 
 disputed whether the Son voluntarily laid aside 
 the divine attributes, or whether he continued to 
 possess them but concealed them and held them 
 in reserve. The problem has been approached 
 afresh in our own time by an influential school of 
 Anglican theologians, reinforced by independent 
 voices from other communions. Does the solution 
 which they offer really meet the case ? 
 
 (vi) 
 That Jesus Christ accepted the current views 
 about the Scriptures of his people, that he shared 
 the ideas of his time about angels and demons 
 which science has discarded, that he foretold the 
 impending close of the existing order, and in no 
 way foresaw the course of history, the growth of 
 the Church, the dangers of government and 
 society, or the immense developments of modern 
 knowledge — is now widely recognized. How are 
 such results to be harmonized with the doctrine 
 that the Second Person of the Godhead was 
 incarnate in him ? It is answered that in be- 
 
 1 Ottley, The Doctrine of the Incarnation, p. 385. 
 
THEORIES OF KENOSIS 209 
 
 coming man the Son relinquished the omniscience 
 which belonged to him in the heavenly life. 
 But what is the relation of knowledge to mind ? 
 Can we ever resolve not to know, or discard by 
 any act of will the gains of thought ? The father 
 who instructs his children, it is urged, speaks 
 from their point of view, bringing his own attain- 
 ments to their ignorance, and opening fresh 
 glimpses to their inexperienced minds. The 
 analogy is inexact ; for it is not suggested that 
 Jesus assumed his hearer's beliefs knowing them 
 to be erroneous, and intending to correct them ; 
 he employs them as his own, and, in one notable 
 case, bases on his power to cast out demons 
 an important argument concerning the actual 
 presence of the Rule of God. Moreover, it must 
 be asked, within what limits is this process 
 confined ? If Jesus were in error on the subject 
 of demoniacal possession, he was so seriously 
 mistaken (we are warned) on the whole theme of 
 the powers of good and evil, that he could not 
 be regarded even as a perfect prophet.^ . Some 
 
 1 Dr. Gore in the posthumous publication of the Thoughts 
 on Religion of the late J. G. Romanes, p. 181. Cp. Dr. Strong. 
 Manual of Theology, 2nd ed., pp. 126-128. 
 
 O 
 
210 THE DOCTRINE OF THE TWO NATURES 
 
 clearer test must be laid down by which to dis- 
 criminate the words of human ignorance from 
 those of divine truth. The theory that while 
 some heavenly knowledge was abandoned other 
 portions were retained, introduces a division 
 into the consciousness of Jesus which has no 
 analogy in our experience, and makes him speak 
 now in one character and then in another. 
 Nor can any such partition be carried up into 
 the thought of God. To such apprehension of 
 the Infinite Mind as our poor endeavour can attain, 
 it must appear that thinking and being are in 
 him identical. To his view all things are open, 
 all possible relations known. Immensity with 
 its boundless range of creative options is for ever 
 present, and every imaginable issue is discerned. 
 All visions of beauty, all unheard melodies, abide 
 in him ; not only is he cognizant of all conceivable 
 modes of our experience, but in an infinite variety 
 of ways he transcends our world and lives in ever- 
 lasting activity and joy. We say of one aspect of 
 his being, where our thought touches his, that he 
 is Truth. That is his ' substance ' : he is the 
 begetter and the sum of all ideas. Can we con- 
 ceive the Word, the sharer of this knowledge, the 
 
THEORIES OF KENOSIS 211 
 
 partner of this essence, when preparing to be 
 bom a Jew, arranging beforehand to forget who 
 wrote the Pentateuch, but to remember Beelzebub ? 
 Or, stranger still, in uttermost surrender, not only 
 emptying out the contents of knowledge,^ but 
 dispossessing himself of the ability to think, and 
 divesting himself of his own self-consciousness ? 
 How can the Eternal and the Omnipresent thus 
 cease to be, for when he ceases to know himself 
 thinker and thought exist no more ? Yet we are 
 told that the everlasting Word, the Father's agent 
 in making heaven and earth, grew up for thirty 
 years ignorant who he was, till, at his baptism, 
 the Holy Spirit revealed him to himself I^ 
 
 Hardly less difficult is it to apprehend the idea 
 of the Son's relinquishment of his omnipotence. 
 The world, conceived as the manifestation of the 
 divine thought, is continuously maintained by 
 the divine energy. Moment by moment, hour by 
 hour, age by age, the mind and will of God express 
 
 1 The Pauline figure inevitably involves these spatial con- 
 ceptions. But knowledge, of course, cannot subsist in- 
 dependently without a mind. 
 
 '•^ Godet in his Commentary on St. John, and The Thinker, 
 May, 1895, p. 391. 
 
212 THE DOCTRINE OF THE TWO NATURES 
 
 themselves in our universe. One type of Christian 
 theology declares that the Son was even in Jesus 
 * upholding all things by the word of his power.* 
 How shall we reconcile this with the figure learning 
 obedience through suffering, and bowed in suppli- 
 cation with strong crying and tears ? The author 
 of the Epistle to the Hebrews made no attempt 
 to harmonize them. He simply set his pictures 
 side by side. Later theologians were more bold. 
 Proclus, the adversary and successor of Nestorius, 
 replying to the Presbyter Anastasius in the 
 Cathedral of St. Sophia at Constantinople, de- 
 clared that * He, the same, was in his Father's 
 bosom and in the Virgin's womb ; in his mother's 
 arms and on the wings of the wind, worshipped 
 by angels in heaven, and supping with publicans 
 on earth.' ^ Cyril asserted that even while in the 
 manger he nevertheless filled the whole creation 
 as God. The German divines affirmed that when 
 he hung on the cross he was also ruling in Athens ; 
 and by like reasoning it might be argued that 
 from the depths of his desolation — * My God, my 
 God, why hast thou forsaken me ? ' — he was 
 conducting the eclipse which testified to Nature's 
 
 1 Gore, Dissertations, p. 104. 
 
THEORIES OF KENOSIS 213 
 
 sympathy with his decease !^ But the Gospel 
 evidences of the limitations of his power strip 
 such contradictions of all semblance of reality. 
 At Nazareth the hostility of his fellow-townsmen 
 rendered him unable to do any mighty work 
 {Mark vi. 5). We are told, accordingly, that 
 the Son in visiting the earth abandoned his 
 physical attributes. ^ He ceased to live the life 
 of Godhead, and discontinued his cosmic func- 
 tions. Such an act, like that of parting with 
 his omniscience, implies a conscious purpose. 
 It can be no accident, it is the issue of deliberate 
 resolve. But that, again, involves the interpreta- 
 tion of the persons of the Trinity as constituted 
 with separate minds and wills, which brings the 
 doctrine to the verge of tritheism. Moreover, 
 
 1 Dr. Strong, in his Manual of Theology, 2nd ed., 1903, p. 123, 
 writes : ' As Word of God we believe that He created and 
 sustains the world ; the world was sustained by the Word 
 no less during the days of the humiliation.' I have heard a 
 modern Roman Catholic preacher, enlarging on the poverty 
 of the family at Nazareth, use these words, ' Think, the 
 Almighty God, Maker of heaven and earth, asked his 
 mother for bread, and she had none.' 
 
 * Dr. Fairbaim, The Place of Christ in Modern Theology, 
 p. 477. So, also. Prof. Godet. 
 
214 THE DOCTRINE OF THE TWO NATURES 
 
 how can we conceive of an infinite physical 
 energy divesting itself of itself ? In this divorce 
 from the thought which directed it, how is it 
 controlled ? What regulates it ? Boundless force 
 unguided might dissolve instead of sustaining 
 the world. Wliat prescribes its course, guards it 
 from aberration, conducts it to its end ? And how 
 is it resumed when the Son has regained the 
 knowledge he discarded ? Will it come back 
 when it is wanted, and by what means is the Son 
 reinstated in its possession ? Is it surprising that 
 one distinguished advocate of this hypothesis 
 should prefer not to enquire into the cosmic 
 functions of the Son during the Incarnation,^ 
 while another should frankly admit that the 
 metaphysical difficulties involved in his accepting 
 even the limitations of human knowledge are 
 insuperable P^ 
 
 Once more, the incarnate life of the Son presents 
 a moral problem of no little difficulty on the basis 
 of the S5moptic tradition. The pictures of the 
 temptation which follow the descent of the Spirit 
 are not reproduced by the Fourth Gospel. The 
 
 ^Gore, Bampton Lectures, 1891, p. 266. 
 * Ottley, The Doctrine of the Incarnatiori, p. 6t}, 
 
THE MORAL PROBLEM 215 
 
 transcendent Son was elevated above all such 
 trials as followed him to the last night of his life 
 (Luke xxii. 28). No conflict of wills was possible 
 for him who always did what pleased the Father 
 (John viii. 29), and the agony of Gethsemane 
 is replaced by a majestic calm. The Messianic 
 king, divinely endowed with the spirit of wisdom 
 and might, of knowledge and the fear of the Lord, 
 would be lifted, according to Jewish expectation, 
 above sin.^ To avoid the faintest suspicion of 
 contamination through bodily desire, the apostle 
 Paul would only concede that God had sent his 
 Son ' in the Hkeness of sinful flesh * (Rom. viii. 3). 
 Over against the Gospel testimony — * Why callest 
 thou me good ? None is good save one, that is 
 God ' (Mark x. 18^) — stands the Greek idea of 
 the immutableness of the ultimate Being. God, 
 by his essential nature, can be exposed to no 
 vicissitude. The alternations of our human ex- 
 
 ^Psalms of Solomon xvii. 41. The Buddha, in the same 
 way, was morally perfect. But this sinlessness was not due 
 to the presence within him of a celestial power, it was the 
 fruit of the attainment of perfect knowledge after age-long 
 devotion. 
 
 * On the alteration of this text in Matt. xix. 16, see The 
 First Three Gospels, 4th ed., 1909, p. 310, 
 
2l6 THE DOCTRINE OF THE TWO NATURES 
 
 perience affect him not. His substance must 
 for ever remain unchanged, and his holiness no 
 thought of evil can ever cloud. How, then, 
 should the variations of hunger and thirst, the 
 small conflicts of appetite, the trials of weariness 
 and disappointment, the impulses of anger or 
 ambition, affect the heavenly Word ? The theory 
 of Irenaeus has been recently revived with the 
 suggestion that the Word was in some manner 
 ' quiescent ' during the temptation,^ and held 
 itself in mysterious reserve during the awful hours 
 of crucifixion and death. But the temptation 
 was no solitary incident, it was a permanent 
 condition, of the ministry of Jesus. Did the Word, 
 then, * rest ' during his whole career ? And a 
 still further limitation is imposed upon the Word 
 by the necessity of laying aside those attributes 
 which would have hindered a real human develop- 
 ment. For this it was requisite that the manhood 
 should have unimpeded scope. Only in a realm 
 of freedom could temptation have any meaning. 
 To accomplish the purpose of redemption it was 
 indispensable that the humanity with which the 
 Son was associated should be without sin. But in 
 
 1 Ottley, The Doctrine of the Incarnation, p. 6io. 
 
THE MORAL PROBLEM 217 
 
 ts union in one person with the divine Word how 
 could it possess any Hberty to err ? Anointed with 
 the Holy Spirit how should it even be liable to 
 temptation ? What dark thoughts could cloud 
 that radiant endowment ? Could the need of food, 
 or the wish for rest, ever interfere with its holy 
 activity in doing good ? How should the gratifica- 
 tion of any innocent affection — the sweetness of 
 friendship at Bethany, for instance — ever tempt 
 such a being into an enjoyment contrary in time 
 or occasion to the heavenly will ? To preserve 
 the reaUty of temptation he was actually solicited 
 to evade the law of consecrated obedience ; but 
 a countervailing force enabled him to master the 
 trial. He was, we are assured, undoubtedly free, 
 and yet the issue was predetermined, for the 
 victory was inevitable. The beams of Deity 
 were restrained ; the All-holy kept its righteous- 
 ness in reserve ; but it was still there with a silent 
 though unescapable control. The manhood, after 
 all, could not will to sin, ^ it was kept from swerving 
 by the might of the Word. Surely the moral diffi- 
 culties are no less serious than the metaphysical. 
 
 *Cp. Dr. strong, Manual of Theology, p. 124, ' Our Lord, 
 even though really tempted, was incapable of sin.' 
 
2l8 THE DOCTRINE OF THE TWO NATURES 
 
 Nor are they lightened by association with the 
 doctrine of C5n:il which, we are assured, the Church 
 has ever taught, namely, that the humanity of 
 Jesus was impersonal,^ a nature not individual but 
 generic. Had it been that of a single person, it 
 is affirmed, the benefits of the redemption effected 
 by its imion with the Word would have been 
 limited to the man of Nazareth. That the great 
 saving act wrought by the Incarnation might be 
 extended to all, it was necessary that the manhood 
 should not be limited to a single being, but be 
 really universal. It is true that in the Gospels 
 Jesus is displayed as a particular person. He 
 was subject to the ordinary laws of nurture and 
 
 1 Ottley, The Doctrine of the Incarnation, p. 602 ; Strong, 
 Maytual of Theology, p. 130. I know not if I rightly under- 
 stand the meaning of Hooker {Eccl. Polity, Book V., ch. lii. 3) ; 
 ' The Son of God did not assume a man's person unto his own. 
 but a man's nature to his own Person. . . . His making and 
 taking to himself our flesh was but one act, so that in Christ 
 there is no personal subsistence but one, and that from ever- 
 lasting. By taking only the nature of man, he still continueth 
 one person, and changeth but the manner of his subsisting, 
 which was before in the mere glory of the Son of God, and is 
 now in the habit of our flesh.' This looks at first sight like 
 Apollinarianism ; but in §4 we hear that Christ not only had 
 a human body, but also a human soul. 
 
IMPERSONAL HUMANITY 2l<) 
 
 growth, though his body, we are informed (not 
 by the EvangeUsts), was incapable of defect or 
 disease. He felt real sensations, like hunger and 
 pain ; he thought real thoughts ; he willed real 
 acts ; he possessed all the elements of manhood, 
 body, life, mind ; there was nothing outwardly 
 to distinguish him from those who shared his daily 
 intimacy, like Peter, James, and John ; and yet 
 we are assured his manhood was an abstraction ; 
 the Incarnation took place in Humanity, not in a 
 personal human being; in Man, not in a man. 
 Had Jesus been an individual like one of ourselves, 
 his ascension would have taken a fourth person 
 into the Godhead, and converted the Trias into 
 a Tetras.^ But how can we present to ourselves 
 a generic manhood in a specific form, unlimited 
 by personal consciousness ? The universal char- 
 acteristics of the race, divested of an animating 
 personality, are a pure abstraction of the mind. 
 For us they exist only in thought, and are seen 
 only in the particular. They cannot be localized 
 by themselves in any place, or bom in any time. 
 
 ^ I have heard an Anglican preacher describe the ascended 
 Christ as sitting with his physical body, head, hands, feet, in 
 the middle of the Trinity ! 
 
220 THE DOCTRINE OF THE TWO NATURES 
 
 It is confessed that Jesus manifested self-conscious- 
 ness, intelligence, emotion, resolve, through a real 
 mouth, and actual eyes, and visible hands. This 
 is, however, exactly what we denote by personality. 
 Precisely in these manifestations lie our means of 
 distinguishing one man from another. To say 
 that the teacher on the mount possessed only the 
 elements of humanity common also to the China- 
 man and the Hottentot, the generalized sum of 
 what belongs to all members of the race, without 
 identification with any special individuality, is to 
 make havoc of history and philosophy. Only 
 the direst theological necessity can point to such 
 an issue. A humanity comprising the whole race, 
 unconfined by a person, yet occupying one 
 physical frame, with a pedigree behind it and a 
 cross in front, is beyond our power to conceive. 
 Does not the difficulty prove the need of revising 
 the whole scheme of the Trinity, Incarnation, and 
 Redemption ? 
 
 (vii) 
 The conceptions thus briefly discussed are all 
 concerned with the metaphysical aspects of the 
 Incarnation, and are involved in various difficul- 
 ties arising out of the idea that the divine sub- 
 
THE SUBCONSCIOUS SELF 221 
 
 Stance, infinite and eternal, omniscient and 
 omnipotent, can voluntarily divest itself of its 
 own properties. A few words may finally be said 
 concerning another suggestion recently offered 
 by Prof. Sanday, to meet the advocates of what 
 he designates ' reduced Christology.'^ It leaves 
 on one side all ontological perplexities, and 
 bravely starts from the present theories of 
 psychology. On the one hand, in accordance with 
 the Gospel testimony Prof. Sanday writes (p. 167) : 
 ' The life of our Lord, so far as it was visible, was 
 a strictly human life ; He was, as the Creeds 
 teach, ** very man " ; there is nothing to prevent 
 us from speaking of this human life of His just 
 as we should speak of the life of one of ourselves.' 
 * But, on the other hand,' it is added, * we no less 
 emphatically refuse to rule out or ignore or explain 
 away the evidence which the Gospels and the rest 
 of the New Testament afford that this human life 
 was, in its deepest roots, directly continuous with 
 the life of God Himself.' The problem is how to 
 conceive and express this in modern terms. 
 Without laying any stress on the doctrine of the 
 Homoousion in its Greek form, Prof. Sanday 
 
 1 Christologies Ancient and Modern, 19 10, lecture V. 
 
222 THE DOCTRINE OF THE TWO NATURES 
 
 boldly invokes the current notion of the sub- 
 conscious self. 
 
 That many processes of thought and feeling 
 take place below the surface of our conscious 
 life has long been recognized.^ But it was only 
 a quarter of a century ago (in the chronology of 
 the late Prof. William James) that a real step 
 forward was made by the discovery that in some 
 persons at least beside the ordinary modes of 
 our experience there may be forms of mental 
 activity in memory or reasoning or emotion which 
 proceed without their knowledge, and only show 
 themselves in their results. The field of their 
 conscious self does not, in other words, cover their 
 whole life. Just as at either end of the spectrum 
 there are waves of light which our senses do not 
 enable us to translate into colour, so on the 
 borders of the inner history we know from hour 
 to hour there lie tracts of activity which we do 
 not habitually discern. The inquirer into these 
 obscure processes is always in danger of being 
 
 1 1 may be permitted to recall the fact that my father, Dr. 
 W. B. Carpenter, drew attention to them from the physio- 
 logical side under the term ' unconscious cerebration,' as 
 early as about 1853. 
 
THE SUBCONSCIOUS SELF 223 
 
 misled by his own metaphors. He is obliged to 
 describe in terms of space what really has no 
 extension whatsoever. We commonly speak of 
 thoughts as in our minds ; but minds take up 
 no room, they have no dimensions, and it is only 
 for convenience that the language of inclusion or 
 figure is employed. The special term which has 
 become estabHshed in recent usage, is founded 
 on the image of the threshold (Latin limen) of a 
 room or house. There is * a level above which 
 sensation or thought must rise before it can enter 
 into our conscious life.'* The activities that 
 engage our attention, which we watch, direct, and 
 control, all proceed above this level ; they have 
 crossed the threshold ; they are described, there- 
 fore, as supra-liminal. But beneath them, it is 
 now realized, is an obscure scene where sensa- 
 tions, thoughts, and emotions, continually act and 
 react, without definitely entering into the upper 
 field within our view. These are all sub-liminal ; 
 they lie below the threshold ; and from time to 
 time through some access of energy one or another 
 makes its way above, and some idea, suggestion, 
 fancy, purpose, passion, arises into full conscious- 
 1 F. W. Myers, Human Personality, p. 14. 
 
224 THE DOCTRINE OF THE TWO NATURES 
 
 ness in our mind. It is in this region that modern 
 investigation seeks for the explanation of a wide 
 range of our inner life. Much of what happens to 
 us day by day, much of what we ourselves think, 
 feel, say, do, seems to leave no trace in our actual 
 memory. But it is registered in the sub-conscious 
 sphere. There it contributes to the formation 
 of character, to the enrichment or the corruption 
 of our interior strength. For this is the real seat 
 of habit ; here are stored up the results of our 
 experience ; on this field conflicts of instinct are 
 fought out, of which we often know only the 
 results, in the shape of impulses or propensities 
 which surge up unexpectedly into the midst of 
 the region of our control. Deep down within us 
 are these diverse elements of character, which are 
 sometimes capable of being separated in groups 
 so as to constitute what seem distinct personalities 
 within one physical being, with separate aptitudes 
 and dispositions, tastes, humours, capacities, and 
 memories. Here also, it is suggested, are those 
 energies which in heightened form transcend the 
 normal exercise of our thought ; those flashes of 
 insight into intellectual and moral truth which 
 open to the inner eye visions of reality that 
 
THE SUBCONSCIOUS SELF 225 
 
 our ordinary intelligence could not reach ; that 
 power of artistic creation which is no process of 
 mechanical structure or even of rational develop- 
 ment, but the unsought uprising of a great idea 
 to which eye and hand may only be able to give 
 imperfect shape, or language inadequate expres- 
 sion. This is the spontaneous activity of genius, 
 in which many races have dimly seen the presence 
 and action of some higher power. And here it is, 
 suggests Prof. Sanday, that we may see the proper 
 seat of all divine indwelling, or action on the 
 human soul, and, in particular, the place of the 
 Deity of the incarnate Christ 
 
 That one side of our nature is open to the deeps 
 of Being, some of us learned long ago from 
 Emerson. Prof. Sanday prefers the more guarded 
 statement of Wordsworth, ' We feel that we are 
 greater than we know.' The curious figure which 
 he devises to present his thoughts to us pictorially, 
 takes the shape of a narrow-necked vessel, across 
 the orifice of which a porous web of consciousness 
 is stretched. Much of what comes up from below 
 can get through ; but some of the contents never 
 pass the little barrier. At the lower end, however, 
 there is an opening imstopped, unconiined ; and 
 
 p 
 
226 THE DOCTRINE OF THE TWO NATURES 
 
 through this * there are incomings and outgoings, 
 which stretch away into infinity, and in fact 
 proceed from, and are, God Himself.' In such a 
 personality it is plain that there are not two 
 simultaneous consciousnesses proceeding together, 
 one of which encompasses the other. Nor is the 
 divine depicted as in any way controlling or 
 ruling the human so as to deprive it of its natural 
 freedom. The higher acts upon the lower by 
 way of suggestion ; it must be conceived as 
 stimulating the energies in the midst of which it 
 works ; it quickens some thoughts and feelings 
 into a livelier activity ; it begets others which had 
 had no existence at all before. How far this 
 energy of God differs from what may be called 
 the action of the Spirit, in what respect it consti- 
 tuted in Christ a unique manifestation of the 
 Deity, it is not easy to infer. The figure might be 
 applied to various types of prophet, seer, or saint ; 
 and as an interpretation of the divine element in 
 the person of Christ in terms applicable in various 
 degrees to other forms of human experience we 
 might welcome it with sincere goodwill. The 
 mystics of many ages and of various lands might 
 here meet on common ground. 
 
THE SUBCONSCIOUS SELF 227 
 
 But the divine is not the only element in the 
 sub-liminal self. This dim-lit region is the home 
 of all kinds of experiences which have left no 
 visible trace upon the conscious life. Here they 
 build up unseen connexions, which mould and 
 shape the hidden forces of character ; here 
 instincts long driven out of the higher nature still 
 live a suppressed life ; here old habits yet clog the 
 powers of clearer resolve. Many of these elements 
 have no moral character. Some are mere survivals 
 of mechanical processes which have long since 
 passed into automatic action. Others are the 
 unconsidered trifles, the flotsam and jetsam 
 deposited by little eddies out of the course of the 
 main stream. And yet again others belong to 
 dark and sinister groups, which, coming together 
 we know not how, produce those sudden intrusions 
 of evil thought, of unholy temper, which some- 
 times disturb even lofty minds. Who that has 
 striven to control the uprising of passion, or master 
 the impulse of fear, or conquer the suggestions of 
 mahce, does not look back even with horror at 
 the secret depths of his own nature, where a riot 
 of evil can take place without his knowledge ! 
 The difiiculty is not unfelt by Prof. Sanday, who 
 
228 THE DOCTRINE OF THE TWO NATURES 
 
 has recognized that the unconscious is not only 
 the seat of the divine, it is that of the diabolical 
 as well (p. 163). 
 
 Moreover, of the functions of the Son in the 
 maintenance of the world this theory gives no 
 account. That uniform and steadfast action 
 which the order of the universe implies, can hardly 
 be realized through the obscure, and, it must be 
 added, often fitful activities of the sub-conscious 
 self. In that life which is so frankly likened to 
 our own no place is left for the infinite energy 
 required to uphold the fabric of heaven and earth. 
 It is, however, apparently in his consciousness as 
 Messiah that the proof of his Deity really 
 culminates : ' the title Messiah included the 
 functions of the Judge — the Judge of all mankind. 
 And we cannot doubt that our Lord thought of 
 Himself as destined to hold this great assize.' 
 But if the descriptions of the judgment by the 
 Son of Man attributed to Jesus in the Gospels 
 are to be put to this use, it must not be forgotten 
 that they contain an element of time which was 
 never fulfilled. The event which was to happen 
 in the life-time of that generation would un- 
 doubtedly have conclusively established the claims 
 
THE SUBCONSCIOUS SELF 229 
 
 based upon it, had it taken place. But with every 
 century that has since elapsed, its probative value 
 has declined ; and now that this great expectation 
 has passed out of our world-view, the Messianic 
 character no longer expresses what Jesus really 
 stands for in history, and the lofty pretensions 
 which Christendom has associated with it will 
 slowly be dissolved and fade away. 
 
 But through the strife of creeds, the conflicts 
 of philosophies, the struggles of parties, and the 
 rivalries of ecclesiastics, we may still discern in 
 the story of Christian dogma an ideal side. It is 
 the record of an attempt — often marred by 
 bigotry and frustrated by misunderstanding — to 
 grapple with a mighty truth. The revelation of 
 God to man can only take place in and through 
 man. If he has learned to trace the orbit of the 
 planets, and think God's thoughts after him, it 
 is because the Father of our spirits has made our 
 minds kindred with his own, and has wrought 
 such reason in us as shall match the reason he has 
 wrought into the world. We could not win an 
 answer from Nature to the simplest of our ques- 
 tions, were there not a community of intelhgence 
 
230 THE DOCTRINE OF THE TWO NATURES 
 
 between us. But while her order is the eternal 
 condition of all our morality, the relations of spirit 
 between souls open to us new visions of character 
 beyond the scope of sun and star. In our self- 
 conscious life only does the highest vision of the 
 Infinite break upon our view. If God is to show 
 himself possessed of what we call goodness, if he 
 is the creator and guide of our experience, if he is 
 training us by the slow steps of an age-long ascent 
 for the high destiny of fellowship with himself, such 
 self -disclosure must take place for us through our 
 humanity. Our own nature must become in some 
 way at once the witness and the manifestation 
 of the Unseen. Accordingly in the holiest human 
 souls we see with greater clearness that which 
 we dimly apprehend even within our own. Above 
 the sins and follies of our mortal days we discern 
 the growth of loftier ideals. They are revealed 
 to us first by the nobler being of those among 
 whom we live. These have in their turn learned 
 from prophet and saint and hero, through whom 
 they looked as through a window into whole worlds 
 of beauty, grace, and light, and they reflect the 
 vision on to our hearts. Paul saw this divine 
 glory in the face of Jesus Christ ; and many a 
 
REVELATION AND RECONCILIATION 23I 
 
 lowly disciple, doubtless, as he listened to the 
 unwearied preacher of God's love for man, saw 
 the same glory shining in Paul's face. God, said 
 the apostle, was reconciling the world in Christ 
 imto himself. Was not the work extended in the 
 ambassador who pleaded his Lord's cause, in 
 mart}^ and confessor, and in the humble and 
 lowly of heart who have all added their contribu- 
 tion to the great process ? For wherever thought 
 and life are spent in loving service for the simplest 
 ends of human good, there the ministry of Jesus is 
 continued. And to apply that truth in the home 
 and the school, in the factory and the shop, in 
 the hospital and the mission, in the exchanges 
 of trade, in the councils of the city and the state — 
 this is the age-long duty of the Church. 
 
Books by Dr. J. Estlin Carpenter 
 
 Large Cr. 8vo, 636 pp. yl6 net. 
 James Martineau: Theologian and Teacher 
 
 A Study of his Life and Thouglit. Two photogravure 
 portraits. 
 
 ' An exceedingly valuable " Study," in which the 
 incidents of the life and the characteristics of the man 
 and the thinker are made to throw light upon one another 
 in a way which is possible only to one who, having mastered 
 every detail of his subject, is able to select the essential 
 and significant elements.' — Hibbert Journal. 
 
 Cr. 8vo, 420 pp. 2/- net, paper covers 6d. net. 
 The First Three Gospels: their Origin and Relations 
 
 Fourth Edition. With a New Chapter on the Histori- 
 cal Value of the Gospels. 
 
 Mrs. Humphry Ward, in reviewing the first edition in 
 the Nineteenth Century, wrote : — ' It is certainly no ordinary 
 text-book, and the public at large would do well to read it 
 and ponder some of the problems it suggests.' 
 
 Second edition, Cr. 8vo., 113 pp. 2/- net. 
 The Place of Christianity among the Religions of 
 the World 
 
 This book takes its title from an Address delivered at 
 the second meeting of the International Council of Unit- 
 arian and other Liberal Religious Thinkers and Workers, 
 held at Amsterdam in 1903. The sketches which precede 
 it were originally contributed to a series of articles in the 
 Inquirer, designed to illustrate the gains of religious 
 thought in the nineteenth century. As they have been 
 found useful in their collected form by readers who were 
 entering on the study of the comparative history of religion, 
 they are now reprinted with some additions. 
 
 Fcap. 8vo, 88 pp. i/- net. 
 The Relation of Jesus to his Age and Our Own 
 
 The object of the author is to present a view of the 
 person of Jesus as it emerges from critical enquiry in 
 relation to some of the intellectual and moral tendencies 
 of our time. 
 
 BOOK ROOM, ESSEX HALL, ESSEX STREET, STRAND, W.C. 
 
j-fM'-- 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 BERKELEY 
 
 Return to desk from which borrowed. 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 '^fC 1 7947 
 
 
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