calmly accepts the designation. But subsequently He refers to it so little that a long time later the confession of Peter, "Thou art the Holy One of God" (that is, just the Messiah, vi. 69; cf. Matt. xvi. 16), appears as a special act of faith. Only once, among foreigners, at Jacob's well in Samaria, where the situation of the moment compelled the confession, does Jesus avow the name Messiah (iv. 25, 26). Only a few months before His death the Jews in Jerusalem press Him and say: "How long makest Thou us to doubt? If Thou be the Christ, tell us plainly" (x. 24); and even then His answer does not satisfy them. We have learned above, in our examination of the Synoptics, the reason of this reserve. It is not that the name Messiah, by which the Israelites certainly understood simply a man specially favoured and anointed by God. (Ps. ii. 2; cf. John i. 45), would not have been sufficiently exalted; for He gladly accepted it from His most familiar friends (cf. besides vi. 69, ix. 22, xi. 27). Instead of the name that was encompassed with political passion, and liable to be misunderstood, He prefers the more indefinite and simple "Sent of God," that is but faintly echoed in the Synoptics, perhaps in the repeated and significant λov (Matt. v. 17, x. 34), or in ó áπоσтeíλas μe (Mark x. 40). In John, Jesus prefers to speak of the Father who sent Him (ò méμyas or Téμаs Tаτýρ, v. 37, vii. 16, 28, viii. 16, 18, etc.), and designates Himself with a certain solemnity as ov ȧTéσTeiλev Ó πατηρ, Ó ОEÓs (v. 38, vi. 29, vii. 29, x. 36, xvii. 3). In doing so He seems to place Himself in the series of prophets (cf. i. 6), and He can in point of fact apply to Himself a proverb that holds good of a prophet (iv. 44), or include Himself with the last of the prophets, the Baptist, as witness of a divine revelation (iii. 11, μaprupíav pôv). But He immediately distinguishes Himself again from the Baptist, who could only speak ἐπίγεια, whilst He alone can proclaim τὰ ἐπουρανία (iii. 12), corresponding to the synoptic μvoτńpia Tĥs Baoiλeías. It is simply the character of one sent of God, the perfect revealer of God, that He claims for Himself. But that it is a man who is sent by God, and not God the Son coming into the world, is quite plain from the solemn passage xvii. 3: σè τὸν μονὸν ἀληθινὸν θεὸν, καὶ ὃν ἀπέστειλας Ἰησοῦν Χριστόν, though some have tried to extract the latter meaning from

He who places

the use of the word Father as sending Him. Himself beside the only true God, as God's messenger, marks Himself out, according to every law of logic and language, as a being who is not God but man.1 On the other hand, it follows from this idea of the Sent of God, the perfect instrument of the revelation of God to the world, that this man can lack nothing of what is required for the setting up of the perfect knowledge of God and communion with God in the world. This Messenger of God can call Himself the "Light of the world" (viii. 12), as the servant of Jehovah in Isaiah had already been called "the light of the Gentiles," just because He is the bearer of the divine revelation that gives light to the world. He can call Himself the Way, the Truth, and the Life (xiv. 6, xi. 25); for He forms the bridge, and the only bridge, by which men may come into communion with the heavenly Father: He is the historical fountain of life out of which all

may draw eternal truth and eternal life. He can say, "He that hath seen Me (viz. with the eyes of the spirit) hath seen the Father" (xiv. 9); for in Him the eternal Father has indeed. made Himself perfectly known to the world, and translated, as it were, His secret divine nature into the human. And in the strength of all this He can demand "that all men should honour the Son even as they honour the Father" (v. 23).2

1 Weiss, who wrongly applies to Jesus the οὗτος ἐστιν ὁ ἀληθινὸς θεὸς (in 1 John v. 22), finds it quite intelligible that one who is Himself a nivòs θεός should yet call the Father τὸν μονὸν ἀληθινὸν θεόν. I confess that I would find it absolutely unintelligible. For we should have to assume, by help of the kenotic theory, that Jesus even in His intercessory prayer did not know that He was not a man but was God. But of what value would His whole testimony to Himself be if He did not know this?

2 That leaves the most decided subordination to the Father. "The Father," says Jesus (xiv. 28), " is greater than I"; and this saying, which in the context is meant to express that it is for Him an elevation of life to go to the Father, is as little offensive on human lips as the saying of the First Epistle of John (iii. 20), that "God is greater than our heart." If, in spite of this, Weiss maintains against me, with regard to the passage v. 23, that it speaks not only of being honoured along with God, but of being honoured as highly as God, I do not know how he can appeal to the context in favour of this. The connection shows that Jesus claimed that honour simply in His character as the Sent of God. An ambassador may demand that he be honoured for the sake of the king who sends him, and say that to dishonour him means dishonouring his king. But no reason

All these declarations, which are so often adduced in favour of a superhuman glory possessed by Christ, do not carry us beyond the ideal conception of human nature, though they certainly do transcend all our experience of mankind. They find place in that Son of Man who alone realises the idea of humanity, in whom is disclosed the fulness of the eternal love, and who is the perfect image of God among men. But these declarations do not even go beyond what the Synoptics report of the consciousness of Jesus and His testimony to Himself. They are all comprehended in the one synoptic saying (Matt. xi. 27): “All things are delivered unto Me of My Father and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal Him."

§ 3. THE SON OF MAN AND SON OF GOD

But even the two synoptic designations of Jesus as the "Son of Man" and "Son of God" are found again in John, and manifestly in the same sense as there. The former notable name appears twelve times,-for ix. 35 should also be read τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου,—and with the exception of xii. 34 only in the mouth of Jesus Himself. The question of the people (xii. 34), “ τίς ἐστιν οὗτος ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου,” shows that the name was not a designation of Messiah. familiar among the Jewish people. They manifestly came to know the expression first as a possible designation of Messiah from the lips of Jesus. That as used by Jesus, however, it rests on Dan. vii. 13, and is meant to designate the bearer of the kingdom of heaven, is confirmed by all the other passages, and especially by the close relation in which the "Son of Man" is placed to heaven. As in Dan. vii. 13 He appears "in the clouds of heaven," so in John i. 51 the heaven opens above Him that the angels of God may ascend and descend upon Him. According to iii. 13, He has come down from heaven and is (constantly and inwardly) in heaven. According to iii. 14, viii. 28, xii. 34, He must be lifted up, and able ambassador demands to be honoured just as highly as his king. Such a demand would also be entirely opposed to the humility of the Johannine Christ, who calls the Father His God (xx. 17).

lifted up (vi. 62) to where He was before, that is, to heaven. In vi. 27 He offers the heavenly bread of life; in vi. 53 He makes His flesh and blood the food and drink of eternal life; in ix. 35 He is the object of faith; and in xii. 23, xiii. 31, He must be glorified through suffering and death, all of which agree with what the Synoptics report of the fundamental significance of the God-sent Bearer of salvation. The one notable distinction is, that in iii. 13, vi. 62, the Son of Man is thought of as pre-existent, existing in heaven before His life on earth. We shall return to this point in its proper place. Peculiar is the passage, v. 27: God has given His Son power, καὶ κρίσιν ποιεῖν, ὅτι υἱὸς ἀνθρώπου ἐστιν. Some have entirely rejected this passage from the examples of the name Son of Man, and wished to take the viòs aveρáπov as equal simply to ǎvoρwτos, because it lacks the double article of the others. But this lack of the article is explained by the fact that the expression stands here only as predicate, and it is not elsewhere John's manner to put the poetic viòs ȧveрáπov instead of the simple aveрwπоs. God has given His Son authority to administer judgment because He is a man, would not by any means be so evident as: He hath done so because He is the man from heaven, who forms the divine standard for the worth or worthlessness of all other men, and has subjected all to His righteous judgment through the offer of the kingdom of heaven. If the passage be so understood, like Mark ii. 27, 28, it lays stress on the fact that the Son of Man does belong to humanity. But even if we explain v. 27 differently, the human and not divine personality of the υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου lies in the ineffaceable significance of the expression itself. But the designation of Jesus for Himself, which is oftenest repeated in John, is that which but seldom meets us in the Synoptics, the name "Son of God." Sometimes it is fully expressed; sometimes it appears in the significant abbreviation, the Son; and sometimes it is implied in the uncommonly frequent, "My Father," with reference to God, which has chiefly helped to bring the later theological idea, "God the Son," into our Gospel. We have here also to distinguish in John the sense in which the name is used by Jesus Himself, and that in which it is applied to Him by others. On the lips of others it is simply the name of honour, springing from Ps. ii. 7, which is given to

BEYSCHLAG.-I.

16

In this

Messiah conceived throughout as a man, in order to describe Him as the special favourite and chosen of God. sense the Baptist (i. 34) describes Jesus to his disciples as the Son of God, because he had seen the Messianic anointing of this child of man. Nathanael, overawed, to whom Jesus has just been proclaimed as the Messiah, but also described as Joseph's son from Nazareth, cries to Him, i. 49: “Thou art the Son of God; Thou art the King of Israel," the two names of homage explain each other in the popular Messianic sense. In like manner, Martha (xi. 27) makes her confession of faith. to the effect that He is the Messiah, "the Son of God, who should come into the world"; and in ver. 22 she conceives Him as a man who is so much the beloved of God as to obtain from Him whatever He may ask. Jesus could not possibly have accepted the name in this human sense from His friends and applied it to Himself in a wholly different sense, uniting with it a metaphysical suggestion of divinity. Certainly even in John, as in the Synoptics, He expresses by the name Son, not so much His Messianic dignity as the personal relation to God which lay at the basis of that dignity, and which both entitled and bound Him to call God His Father in a special unique sense. And this personal usage of His is so strange to the hostile Jews, and in its familiarity with God it strikes them at times as so extravagant, that they repeatedly find it blasphemous, and connect with it the reproach that Jesus makes Himself a God, or equal to God (v. 18, x. 33). But to make this idea of the Jews an argument for the orthodox or critical conception of the name Son is indeed very strange; as if the Jews in the Fourth Gospel did not regularly misunderstand Jesus, and as if Jesus in both cases did not expressly repel the reproach of making Himself equal with. God. When Jesus says of Himself as the Son of God, that the Father has sent or given Him to the world (iii. 16, 17), has intrusted Him with this or that great office or work (v. 22, 26); that the Father loves Him, and shows Him all things; that He leaves Him not alone, but will glorify Him (v. 20, viii. 29, xvii. 1 f.),—all that does not go beyond the idea of the favourite and chosen among the children of men whom God has intrusted with His highest mission-the less so that it is expressly based on the human moral obedience of