In

to speak of a divinity of Christ, is based by Himself on this moral uniqueness and faultlessness as a man, and not on any metaphysical, trinitarian community of nature with God. viii. 16 He says: "If I judge, My judgment is true: for I am not alone, but I and He who sent Me." That is to say, He alone would be a weak, fallible man; but the Father, who sent Him, is with Him, and does not allow Him to fail in a single word. In viii. 29 He says: "He who sent Me is with Me: He does not leave me alone because I do always what is pleasing in His sight." Thus in the simplest and most intelligible way-but dogmatic prejudice often makes the simplest the hardest for us to understand-He rests His communion with God on what is ethical. But "with Me" is a less perfect expression for this communion, the more perfect and also more frequent expression is "in Me," or the reciprocal in one another. "The Father, who dwelleth in Me," it is said (xiv. 10), with the added word of description, "the Father in Me and I in the Father" (x. 38); "I in the Father, and the Father in Me" (xiv. 11); "Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee" (xvii. 21). And from this follows in the same intercessory prayer (xvii. 10) the jubilant : are Thine, and Thine are Mine" (cf. Matt. xi. 27). follows the great saying already quoted (x. 30): Father are one (ἕν ἐσμεν). 'I and the Father are one" does not mean: we form together with the Holy Spirit a triune God; but, as the context undeniably proves, we are so completely of one heart and one soul, that what is in My hand is at the same time in My Almighty Father's hand, from which no man can pluck it. No Christology can be simpler or more transparent than this of the Johannine sayings of Jesus. Christ's was a human heart, distinguished from all others by the fact that it cherished nothing ungodly, nothing that separated it from God; He was related to God in pure humility, childlikeness, and obedient love, and in Him, for that very reason, the eternal holy God was able to make His dwelling-place as in no other,-in Him God dwelt, full of grace and truth (i. 14); and so in this human heart God's perfect revelation, His true incarnation, has now taken place: "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." We asked before, in considering the Synoptics, what need of faith does

"

"All Mine

From this "I and the

this Christology leave unsatisfied? what is wanting in the Christ so understood in order to His being the perfect Mediator between God and man? But if people continue to protest so excitedly that a man would not say such things of himself as, "I and the Father are one: he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father," the offence springs solely from the confusion of the ordinary concept man as known in experience, with the biblical idea of man which posits the image of God as the ideal of humanity, and therefore exhibits the true God-man in the man who is the real ideal, and who realises the idea in perfect communion with God.

§ 6. THE IDEA OF PRE-EXISTENCE

But this simple, sufficient, and purely religious Christology of the Johannine discourses seems to be crowned by another speculative Christology, to which the orthodox dogmatic, as well as the modern critical, standpoint can appeal. It is a fact that the Johannine Christ claims for Himself a previous heavenly life; and from this pre-existence an entirely different Christology obtrudes itself, which unquestionably transcends the measure of the human anthropocentric Christology which we have hitherto found. Though that were so, as both wings of our present theology agree in accepting, it would not in anyway do away with what we have already proved. That cannot be got rid of by ingenious interpretations. The fact would even then remain that the whole synoptic testimony and the greater part of the Johannine know nothing of a pre-existence, and agree in presenting only the Christology hitherto unfolded; and this would, according to all principles of historical criticism, settle the historical question about the self-consciousness of Jesus, so far as it could be answered from the Gospels. Whatever in the Fourth Gospel does not agree with the common assumptions of the Synoptics and John, must unquestionably be attributed to the fourth evangelist. As in his preface he offers the Logos idea as the key to the understanding of the person of Christ, it might easily be supposed that this idea affected his recollection of some sayings of Jesus, and that he read into them beginnings of speculation, just as he had done even with obscure words of

the Baptist (i. 15, 30). However, before we decide on such an assumption, we may ask whether the apparent discordance in the Johannine discourses of Jesus really exists, or whether -which must be regarded from the first as the more probable-what in John's report seems to go beyond the Synoptics' report of Jesus' testimony to Himself cannot be harmonised with what has been already set forth.

§ 7. HISTORICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPLANATION OF IT

We begin with the immediate and express declarations of pre-existence. There are four of them, all belonging to the very agitated moments of the closing days of our Lord's life. In the after discussions on the great mystic discourse on the bread of life, and the eating and drinking of His flesh and blood, Jesus (vi. 62) cries to His hearers, who are offended: "Does this offend you? what and if ye shall see the Son of Man ascend up where He was before?" At the close of the very excited controversy about the children of Abraham (viii. 58), the Jews, misunderstanding the words, "Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it," scornfully cry to Him, "Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast Thou seen Abraham?” and Jesus majestically answers: "Before Abraham was, I am." The other two declarations belong to the intercessory prayer, xvii. 4, 5: "I have glorified Thee on the earth; I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own self with the glory I had with Thee before the world was." And ver. 24: "Father, I will that they also whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am; that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me for Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world." Principally on these passages, taken in connection with the prologue of the Gospel, and with other traits of the Johannine discourses to which we shall yet come, is based the conception that Jesus, according to John, knows Himself to be the personal Logos or eternal Son of God, who, before He came incarnate into the world, lived in heavenly glory with the Father, and brought into the world with Him the memory of that pretemporal and superhuman existence. But is not that to use the trinitarian notions of the fourth and fifth

centuries, which are certainly unknown to the New Testament age and writings, as a key to the mysterious elements of the discourses of Jesus? Another key to these should lie still nearer. In the circles to which Jesus historically belonged, pre-existence was by no means a quite new idea, or one having to do only with the Logos. Everything holy and divine that appeared on earth, or was expected, was traced back to a heavenly original in which it pre-existed before its earthly appearance. Thus the tabernacle (Heb. viii. 5), the city of Jerusalem (Gal. iv. 26; Rev. xxi. 10), the kingdom of God of which Jesus expressly says (Matt. xv. 34) that it was prepared for the pious from the beginning of the world,-how much more then its personal bearer the Messiah. This presented itself, not merely to the biblical writers, but also to Jesus Himself as a form in which to conceive what was a great idea, the idea of the appearance of an eternal Being in time. If Jesus knew the kingdom of heaven to be the Alpha and Omega of the thoughts of God (cf. Matt. xxv. 34), and Himself to be its personal bearer; if, accordingly, He comprehended its appearance as a fact in time, as the appearance of an Eternal-nay, of the Eternal-in time, how could He clothe this consciousness in any other form than that of being before Abraham was? He was sprung from that heaven from which all good and perfect gifts came down to earth; He was with the Father before the world was. Although, therefore, the idea of the pre-existence of the Messiah was one of the favourite thoughts of the fourth evangelist, as is shown by the introduction to his Gospel as well as His First Epistle, yet it is not to be doubted that Jesus Himself, by some expressions which pointed in that direction, gave him ground for that view. Especially in the tense final period of His life, in excited moments and conflicts such as are presented in chaps. vi. and viii., and, above all, in the frame of mind of the intercessory prayer, where He is raised above the world and time, it appears quite credible that such a consciousness of eternal existence should at times flash up in Him like a mental vision. There His understanding of Himself for a moment reached its height, but that was by no means the starting-point or permanent background of His thoughts about Himself. For if that had been the case then-and the fact

cannot be too carefully noted-His whole testimony to Himself must have taken another plan and character, and the complete silence of the synoptic and early apostolic tradition regarding those fundamental facts of consciousness would be inconceivable. The objection which has been commonly advanced against this historical and psychological explanation of His words about pre-existence is, that it leads only to an ideal pre-existence in the decree of God, while the relevant passages bear upon the real existence of a personality distinct from God. This objection appears to us very unimportant; not only because it rests upon the literal accuracy of John's reports of the words of Jesus, which cannot be maintained, but still more because it imparts a modern distinction, which is foreign to the concrete biblical thought, into the exposition of biblical words. The heavenly originals of what appeared on earth were realities to the Scripture writers, just as Plato's ideas were to him. The originals in heaven are more and not less real than the phenomena of earth. For all that, it is evident that this existence in God is an existence different from that in the world, that it remains in comparison with the historical realisation a sort of ideal existence. It will not be difficult to apply this scheme of interpretation to all the four utterances of Jesus about His pre-existence, and to show that in each of them the pre-existence is simply the concrete form given to an ideal conception.

§ S. THE SEVERAL UTTERANCES CONCERNING PRE-EXISTENCE

The first of those four passages is very instructive (vi. 62): ἐὰν οὖν θεωρῆτε τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἀναβαίνοντα, ὅπου ἦν τὸ πρότερον. No impartial reader will escape the impression that Jesus here conceives Himself as pre-existent just as the Son of Man, for the object of the first proposition is the subject of the second. One may indeed twist and interpret the passage ingeniously in order to harmonise it with the traditional conception: "When you shall see the Son of Man ascend up where He was before "-not, however, as the Son of Man, but as second person of the Trinity. But when we remember that the words are clearly related to Dan. 1 Thus still Weiss, N. T. Theol. p. 604; vol. ii. p. 335, Eng. trans.

1