(3) More than Memra, Shekina, or Angel. We may go further and maintain that the use of Memra, Dibbura, and Shekina in the Targums and what is said of the angel of Jehovah appearing in the bush, and accompanying the Israelites through the desert, are not sufficient to furnish a full or satisfactory interpretation of the Johannine Logos who "was in the beginning with God and who was God." These words of John and those also which relate to Christ's preëxistence, point to a more definite belief, a conception which cannot without unnatural violence be fitted to the vague, fanciful, and abstract ideals of the later Jewish theosophy. John's conception is notably positive and realistic.

14. John's Doctrine Far Above the Current Theosophy. Over against all these attempts to explain the Logos of John's gospel we submit that the apostle presents a doctrine far in advance of the current theosophic speculations of his time. He appropriates a well-known term, long employed with various shades of meaning in Hellenic and in Hellenistic literature, and fills it with a new and higher significance. With him the Logos of God is conceived rather in the light of God's activity and self-manifestation at the beginning of the creation. The Hebrew poets as well as the writer of Gen. i had made it a familiar thought in Jewish circles that God spoke the world into being. John places this idea in a new setting at the beginning of his gospel, appropriates for his purpose the suggestive term Logos, and declares that the Word of God and God himself are one. The Logos is God, the eternal Spirit, speaking, acting, manifesting himself, first in creation and afterward in the incarnate Son of his love. This manifestation of God embodies all that is deepest, highest, and most glorious in the suggestions attaching to the terms Logos, Dibbura, Memra, and Shekina. In him is the perfection of Might, Wisdom, and Love, but not as so many attributes personified or hypostatized after the manner of poetic and philosophic thought. "The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father," is the living, conscious embodiment of Deity, and the only one capable of interpreting (ényéouai, explain, unfold, declare) the invisible God by a visible incarnation.

1 The phrase ó v ci5 Tòv KÓλπOV Tov xarpó5, who is in the bosom of the Father, is equivalent in meaning to the Word was with God (iv æрòs ròv Deóv) in verse 1. The ¿v, however, of verse 18, points rather to the timeless existence of the Only Begotten, as the points to the preëxistence of the Logos; and the preposition eic in verse 18, as distinguished from ярó in verse 1, may indicate entrance (reëntrance) into the antemundane glory (comp. xvii, 5) consequent upon the historical manifestation in flesh; as if the writer for the moment thought of the fellowship of Father and Son as temporarily interrupted by the necessary conditions of incarnation. The definite historical character of the incarnate manifestation, conceived as a completed fact, is shown by the use of the aorist in ¿§nynoaro, he declared.

15. Erroneous Metaphysical Distinctions. The chief difficulty in conceiving the whole subject of the incarnation of the Logos has been, perhaps, an erroneous notion of the deity of Christ as of something distinct from the deity of the Father. The agelong controversies over metaphysical distinctions between essence (ovoía), substance (vпóσтaσis), and person (прóσшпоv, Persona) have involved these words in such confusion that it seems desirable to avoid the use of them entirely, and to adopt if possible some other forms of stating the biblical doctrine of Christ and of God. Some distinction must be recognized in John i, 1, between the Logos and God, and some explanation should be given of the love of the Father for the Son before the foundation of the world (xvii, 24). The distinctions here implied point to real facts and experiences in the personality of God, but the mystery is not to be solved by any interpretation which supposes the preexistent Logos to possess an individual will and intelligence distinct from the will and intelligence of God. Such a dual concept of the nature of Deity is not the doctrine of John's gospel. The Holy Spirit and God himself are one. There is no other Holy Spirit. When it is said that "God is Spirit" (iv, 24) the reference is to the Father who is repeatedly mentioned in the context. And so also, in i, 1, the Logos, who was with God in the beginning, was God. Whatever the distinction intended in the phrase πpòs Tov deóv, with God, there is no mistaking the emphatic declaration that "the Logos was God." Our author nowhere attempts to describe or explain the incarnation. His whole portraiture of the Lord Jesus is ideal, mystical, all-comprehensive, and therefore we should not look in his record for accounts of the infancy, growth, and human limitations of the man Christ Jesus. The scope and plan of his writing did not make use of those facts; but it does not follow that he did not know and believe them. He is not so much the annalist as the interpreter of the incarnate Word of God. He thinks the thoughts of the Lord Jesus after him, and gives them mystic expression.

16. Jesus Christ in the Flesh. But while the Christ of the fourth gospel is the preexistent Word, who both came down from heaven and ascended into heaven, he is also a man, and speaks of himself as such (viii, 40). He is no other than "Jesus of Nazareth,

'The statement that Christ "was foreknown before the foundation of the world" (1 Pet. i, 20) presents no difficulty, for that is a simple truism of the divine prescience, like that of the election of the sojourners to whom Peter's epistle was addressed (i, 1, 2). Any prophet or apostle of God may be spoken of, like Jeremiah (1, 5), as known, sanctified, and appointed in the purpose of God for a holy work before his appearance or existence in the world. But such a statement as "thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world," coming from the lips of Jesus himself in the act of prayer, cannot be thus explained as a matter of knowledge or of purpose.

the son of Joseph" (i, 45). That "the Word became flesh" is affirmed as positively as that he "was in the beginning with God." The reality of the incarnation is made emphatic at the beginning of the first epistle: "That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld, and our hands handled concerning the Word of Life." Here we have unquestionably the same style of thought and expression as in the Johannine gospel, and the language points to a real, tangible personality, not to an abstract idea. It is fundamental in the teaching of this epistle "that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh" (iv, 2). The denial of this fact is a mark of "the deceiver and the antichrist" (2 John, 7). He "came by water and blood" (v, 6), for the baptism in Jordan and the death of the cross attested the reality of his life in the flesh. In 3 John, 7, the word Name is employed with a peculiar emphasis instead of the fuller phrase name of the Son of God, in 1 John v, 13. Compare John xv, 21, and Acts v, 41. So these epistles represent the common apostolic preaching and confession "that Jesus is the Christ" (v, 1), and in ii, 1, he is called our "Comforter," or "Advocate with the Father." The fact that Jesus in the flesh was a manifestation of God, and of the life and love of God, is affirmed in the gospel (ix, 3; xiv, 9; xvii, 6) and in the first epistle (i, 2; iii, 5, 8; iv, 9). In no part of the New Testament is the subordination of Jesus to the Father so explicitly and repeatedly affirmed as in the fourth gospel. Over and over he declares that "the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father doing." His human sympathy and affection appear incidentally but most significantly in connection with Lazarus and his sisters at Bethany (John xi, 3-5). His weeping at the tomb of his friend gave the Jewish lookers-on occasion to say, "Behold how he loved him!" And he was very human and tender to the last, and commended his mother, standing at the cross, to the disciple whom he loved (xix, 26, 27). It cannot therefore be said, with any reasonable propriety, that the humanity of Jesus is overlooked or disparaged in the Johannine books. On the contrary, it is most positively presented. But the great aim of the writer is not so much that of a reporter of the facts of Jesus's earthly life as of an interpreter of the Saviour of the world, who came forth from the bosom of God. An old disciple, who had intimately known Jesus in the flesh, and had leaned upon his bosom, after more than fifty years of meditation, teaching, and worship, gives his own translation of the thoughts of his Master.

CHAPTER X

SUMMARY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT DOCTRINE OF THE

PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST

1. The Divers Dogmas of Historical Christology. Historical theology acquaints us with divers attempts to formulate the various biblical statements touching the person of Christ into one coherent doctrine. A vast literature has grown up around this subject, and in connection with the great ecumenical creeds, known as the Nicene, the Chalcedonian, and the Athanasian, and the later confessions in substantial accord with them, other opinions and theories of the person of Christ became historic under such names as the Arian, Apollinarian, Nestorian, Eutychian, and Socinian Christology. Each one of these represented a strenuous effort to define the relation which Jesus Christ, the Word and Son of God, sustains to the eternal Divine Nature, whom we worship as God, the Father Almighty. Was he of the same identical divine nature (homoousian), or of a similar nature (homoiousian)? Or was he even of a different nature or essence (heteroousian)? Whatever partisan feeling, or whatever dishonesty of procedure appeared at times among any of the different parties in the long conflict of opinion, we should credit all of the great leaders with a profound sincerity in their search for the truth. The one conspicuous fact is that these ancient leaders and teachers in the Church differed in their conclusions concerning the person of Christ. And probably everyone of the dogmas on this subject, maintained in the ancient or in the later times, has its defenders at the present day. Exact unanimity of opinion and uniformity of statement have never universally prevailed since the subject first became a matter of controversy; nor is such unanimity ever likely to prevail among all the disciples who call themselves Christians. All these dogmatists have appealed to the Scriptures in maintaining their particular views, confessedly willing to abide by the unquestionable teaching of Jesus Christ, and of his prophets and apostles. But the fact of their differences of interpretation shows the utter fallacy of the claim that the Scriptures are an "infallible" revelation and means of determining questions of this kind.

2. Divers Types of the Biblical Doctrine. But our study of the Christology of the different New Testament writers discloses the fact that the evangelists and apostles are not all in strict accord.

They represent different types of doctrine when they speak at length about the person of Christ. Biblical theology has in modern times put this fact in such conspicuous light that many of the contentions of former times have become nugatory. The notion that all the biblical writers, being inspired of God, must needs exhibit unanimity of opinion and statement is fast becoming obsolete. It is seen that the greatest and purest men of all the Christian ages have honestly differed on matters of grave importance, and all the evidence in hand goes to show that the first college of apostles was no exception. Paul, and Apollos, and Cephas, and James, and John looked upon Jesus from different points of view; each saw some things which the others did not seem to apprehend or emphasize; to each was given a distinctive message and ministry; and yet they were, in life and spirit, "all one in Christ Jesus." A number of men may differ widely on certain subjects, and yet all be true. Varieties of conception and statement are not necessarily contradictions. By means of the different presentations of Jesus the Christ, as found in the New Testament, we are richer in our spiritual possession than we could have been had we been left shut up to any one writer's report and portraiture of our Lord.

3. One-sidedness of Polemics. In view of these facts it ought to be seen that we do not truly honor our Lord Jesus by suppression of any of the facts reported of him in the gospels, or by magnifying any one aspect of his nature and personality to the neglect of others. Some theologians seem to feel scandalized by the plain statement in Luke's gospel that Jesus grew in grace and in wisdom; also by the fact of Jesus's own positive declaration, according to Matthew and Mark, that he himself did not know the day and the hour of the coming events of which he spoke. The older Christology was in the habit of building an argument for the deity of Christ on the claim that he is repeatedly called God in Paul's epistles and in Heb. i, 8; but textual criticism and the most painstaking exegesis now concede that all the texts on which that claim was founded are capable of another interpretation. One-sided dogmatism has nowhere, perhaps, displayed its partisan bias more notoriously than in reading the doctrine of the preexistence of Christ and also that of his absolute equality with God into Phil. ii, 5-8, while it has at the same time ignored, or dismissed with few words, the statement of verse 9, immediately following, that "God highly exalted him." Some partisan writers have even displayed confusion and distress over this latter statement. They appear also unwilling to observe that it accords better with the teachings of Christ and his apostles to say that "God was in Christ"