Chapter IV · JESUS AS THE MESSIAH.1

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§ 61.

JESUS, THE SON OF MAN.

In treating of the relation in which Jesus conceived himself to stand to the messianic idea, we can distinguish his dicta concerning his own person from those concerning the work he had undertaken.

That by the expression in question Jesus meant himself, without relation to the messianic dignity, is less probable than the contrary supposition, that he might often mean the Messiah when he spoke of the Son of Man, without relation to his own person. When, Matt. x. 23, on the first mission of the twelve apostles to announce the kingdom of heaven, he comforts them under the prospect of their future persecutions by the assurance that they would not have gone over all the cities of Israel before the coming of the Son of Man, we should rather, taking this declaration alone, think of a third person, whose speedy messianic appearance Jesus was promising, than of the speaker himself, seeing that he was already come, and it would not be antecedently clear how he could represent his own coming as one still in anticipation. So also when Jesus (Matt. xiii. 37 ff.) interprets the Sower of the parable to be the Son of Man, who at the end of the world will have a harvest and a tribunal, he might be supposed to refer to the Messiah as a third person distinct from himself. This is equally the case, xvi. 27 f., where, to prove the proposition that the loss of the soul is not to be compensated by the gain of the whole world, he urges the speedy coming of the Son of Man, to administer retribution. Lastly, in the connected discourses, Matt. xxiv., xxv. parall., many particulars would be more easily conceived, if the υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου whose παρουσία Jesus describes, were understood to mean another than himself.

But this explanation is far from being applicable to the majority of instances in which Jesus uses this expression. When he represents the Son of Man, not as one still to be expected, but as one already come and actually present, for example, in Matt xviii. 11, where he says: The Son of Man is come to save that which was lost; when he justifies his own acts by the authority with which the Son of Man was invested, as in Matt. ix. 6; when, Mark viii. 31 ff. comp. Matt. xvi. 22, he speaks of the approaching sufferings and death of the Son of Man, so as to elicit from Peter the exclamation, οὐ μὴ ἔσται σοι τοῦτο, this shall not be unto thee; in these and similar cases he can only, by the υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, have intended himself. And even those passages, which, taken singly, we might have found capable of application to a messianic person, distinct from Jesus, lose this capability when considered in their entire connexion. It is possible, however, either that the writer may have misplaced certain expressions, or that the ultimately prevalent conviction that Jesus was the Son of Man caused what was originally said merely of the latter, to be viewed in immediate relation to the former.

Thus besides the fact that Jesus on many occasions called himself the Son of Man, there remains the possibility that on many others, he may have designed another person; and if so, the latter would in the order of time naturally precede the former. Whether this possibility can be heightened ta a reality, must depend on the answer to the following question: Is there, in the period of the life of Jesus, from which all his recorded declarations are taken, any fragment which indicates that he had not yet conceived himself to be the Messiah?

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§ 62.

HOW SOON DID JESUS CONCEIVE HIMSELF TO BE THE MESSIAH, AND FIND RECOGNITION AS SUCH FROM OTHERS?

Jesus held and expressed the conviction that he was the Messiah; this is an indisputable fact. Not only did he, according to the Evangelists, receive with satisfaction the confession of the disciples that he was the Χριστὸς (Matt. xvi. 16 f.) and the salutation of the people, Hosanna to the Son of David (xxi. 15 f.); not only did he before a public tribunal (Matt. xxvi. 64, comp. John xviii. 37) as well as to private individuals (John iv. 26, ix. 37, x. 25) repeatedly declare himself to be the Messiah; but the fact that his disciples after his death believed and proclaimed that he was the Messiah, is not to be comprehended, unless, when living, he had implanted the conviction in their minds.

To the more searching question, how soon Jesus began to declare himself the Messiah and to be regarded as such by others, the Evangelists almost unanimously reply, that he assumed that character from the time of his baptism. All of them attach to his baptism circumstances which must have convinced himself, if yet uncertain, and all others who witnessed or credited them, that he was no less than the Messiah; John makes his earliest disciples recognise his right to that dignity on their first interview (i. 42 ff.), and Matthew attributes to him at the very beginning of his ministry, in the sermon on the mount, a representation of himself as the Judge of the world (vii. 21 ff.) and therefore the Messiah.

Nevertheless, on a closer examination, there appears a remarkable divergency on this subject between the synoptical statement and that of John. While, namely, in John, Jesus remains throughout true to his assertion, and the disciples and his followers among the populace to their conviction, that he is the Messiah; in the synoptical gospels there is a vacillation discernible—the previously expressed persuasion on the part of the disciples and people that Jesus was the Messiah, sometimes vanishes and gives place to a much lower view of him, and even Jesus himself becomes more reserved in his declarations. This is particularly striking when the synoptical statement is compared with that of John; but even when they are separately considered, the result is the same.

But there is a more troublesome divergency relative to the disciples. In John, Andrew, after his first interview with Jesus, says to his brother, we have found the Messiah, εὑρήκαμεν τὸν Μεσσίαν (i. 42); and Philip describes him to Nathanael as the person foretold by Moses and the prophets (v. 46); Nathanael salutes him as the Son of God and King of Israel (v. 50); and the subsequent confession of Peter appears merely a renewed avowal of what had been long a familiar truth. In the synoptical Evangelists it is only after prolonged intercourse with Jesus, and shortly before his sufferings, that the ardent Peter arrives at the conclusion that Jesus is the Χριστὸς, ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ ζῶντος (Matt. xvi. 16, parall.). It is impossible that this confession should make so strong an impression on Jesus that, in consequence of it, he should pronounce Peter blessed, and his confession the fruit of immediate divine revelation, as Matthew narrates; or that, as all the three Evangelists inform us (xvi. 20, viii. 30, ix. 21), he should, as if alarmed, forbid the disciples to promulgate their conviction, unless it represented not an opinion long cherished in the circle of his disciples, but a new light, which had just flashed on the mind of Peter, and through him was communicated to his associates.

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§ 63.

JESUS, THE SON OF GOD.

In Luke i. 35, we find the narrowest and most literal interpretation of the expression, ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ; namely, as derived from his conception by means of the Holy Ghost. On the contrary, the widest moral and metaphorical sense is given to the expression in Matt. v. 45, where those who imitate the love of God towards his enemies are called the sons of the Father in heaven. There is an intermediate sense which we may term the metaphysical, because while it includes more than mere conformity of will, it is distinct from the notion of actual paternity, and implies a spiritual community of being. In this sense it is profusely employed and referred to in the fourth gospel; as when Jesus says that he speaks and does nothing of himself, but only what as a son he has learned from the Father (v. 19, xii. 49; and elsewhere), who, moreover, is in him (xvii. 21), and notwithstanding his exaltation over him (xiv. 28), is yet one with him (x. 30). There is yet a fourth sense in which the expression is presented. When (Matt. iv. 3) the devil challenges Jesus to change the stones into bread, making the supposition, If thou be the Son of God; when Nathanael says to Jesus, Thou art the Son of God, the King of Israel (John i. 49); when Peter confesses, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matt. xvi. 16; comp. John vi. 69); when Martha thus expresses her faith in Jesus, I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God (John xi. 27); when the high priest adjures Jesus to tell him if he be the Christ, the Son of God (Matt. xxvi. 63): it is obvious that the devil means nothing more than, If thou be the Messiah; and that in the other passages the υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ, united as it is with Χριστὸς and βασιλεὺς, is but an appellation of the Messiah.

The author of the Probabilia reasonably considers it suspicious that, in the fourth gospel, Jesus and his opponents should appear entirely ignorant of the theocratic sense which is elsewhere attached to the expression ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ, and which must have been more familiar to the Jews than any other, unless we suppose some of them to have partaken of Alexandrian culture. To such, we grant, as well as to the fourth Evangelist, judging from his prologue, the metaphysical relation of the λόγος μονογενὴς to God would be the most cherished association.

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§ 64.

THE DIVINE MISSION AND AUTHORITY OF JESUS. HIS PRE-EXISTENCE.

The Evangelists are not equally unanimous on another point. According to the synoptical writers, Jesus claims, it is true, the highest human dignity, and the most exalted relation with God, for the present and future, but he never refers to an existence anterior to his earthly career: in the fourth gospel, on the contrary, we find several discourses of Jesus which contain the repeated assertion of such a pre-existence. We grant that when Jesus describes himself as coming down from heaven (John iii. 13, xvi. 28), the expression, taken alone, may be understood as a merely figurative intimation of his superhuman origin. It is more difficult, but perhaps admissible, to interpret, with the Socinian Crell, the declaration of Jesus, Before Abraham was, I am, πρὶν Ἀβραὰμ γενέσθαι, ἐγω εἰμι (John viii. 58), as referring to a purely ideal existence in the pre-determination of God; but scarcely possible to consider the prayer to the Father (John xvii. 5) to confirm the δόξα (glory) which Jesus had with Him before the world was, πρὸ τοῦ τὸν κόσμον εἶναι, as an entreaty for the communication of a glory predestined for Jesus from eternity. But the language of Jesus, John vi. 62, where he speaks of the Son of man reascending αναβαίνειν where he was before ὅπου ἦν τὸ πρότερον, is in its intrinsic meaning, as well as in that which is reflected on it from other passages, unequivocally significative of actual, not merely ideal, pre-existence.

As it is thus evident that, immediately after the time of Jesus, the idea of a pre-existence of the Messiah was incorporated in the higher Jewish theology, it is no far-fetched conjecture, that the same idea was afloat when the mind of Jesus was maturing, and that in his conception of himself as the Messiah, this attribute was included. But whether Jesus were as deeply initiated in the speculations of the Jewish schools as Paul, is yet a question, and as the author of the fourth gospel, versed in the Alexandrian doctrine of the λόγος, stands alone in ascribing to Jesus the assertion of a pre-existence, we are unable to decide whether we are to put the dogma to the account of Jesus, or of his biographer.

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§ 65.

THE MESSIANIC PLAN OF JESUS. INDICATIONS OF A POLITICAL ELEMENT.

The Baptist pointed to a future individual, and Jesus to himself, as the founder of the kingdom of heaven. The idea of that messianic kingdom belonged to the Israelitish nation; did Jesus hold it in the form in which it existed among his cotemporaries, or under modifications of his own?

The idea of the Messiah grew up amongst the Jews in soil half religious, half political: it was nurtured by national adversity, and in the time of Jesus, according to the testimony of the gospels, it was embodied in the expectation that the Messiah would ascend the throne of his ancestor David, free the Jewish people from the Roman yoke, and found a kingdom which would last for ever (Luke i. 32 f., 68 ff.; Acts i. 6). Hence our first question must be this. Did Jesus include this political element in his messianic plan?

Among the actions of Jesus, his last entry into Jerusalem (Matt. xxi. 1 ff.) is especially appealed to as a proof that his plan was partly political. According to the Fragmentist, all the circumstances point to a political design: the time which Jesus chose,—after a sufficiently long preparation of the people in the provinces; the Passover, which they visited in great numbers; the animal on which he rode, and by which, from a popular interpretation of a passage in Zechariah, he announced himself as the destined King of Jerusalem; the approval which he pronounces when the people receive him with a royal greeting; the violent procedure which he hazards in the temple; and finally, his severe philippic on the higher class of the Jews (Matt. xxiii.), at the close of which he seeks to awe them into a reception of him as their messianic king, by the threat that he will show himself to them no more in any other guise.

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§ 66.

DATA FOR THE PURE SPIRITUALITY OF THE MESSIANIC PLAN OF JESUS. BALANCE.

Nowhere in our evangelical narratives is there a trace of Jesus having sought to form a political party. On the contrary, he withdraws from the eagerness of the people to make him a king (John vi. 15); he declares that the messianic kingdom comes not with observation, but is to be sought for in the recesses of the soul (Luke xvii. 20 f.); it is his principle to unite obedience to God with obedience to temporal authority, even when heathen (Matt. xxii. 21); on his solemn entry into the capital, he chooses to ride the animal of peace, and afterwards escapes from the multitude, instead of using their excitement for the purposes of his ambition; lastly, he maintains before his judge, that his kingdom is not from hence οὐκ ἐντεῦθεν, is not of this world οὐκ ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου τούτου (John xvi. 36), and we have no reason in this instance to question either his or the Evangelist’s veracity.

Thus we conclude that the messianic hope of Jesus was not political, nor even merely earthly, for he referred its fulfilment to supernatural means, and to a supermundane theatre (the regenerated earth): as little was it a purely spiritual hope, in the modern sense of the term, for it included important and unprecedented changes in the external condition of things: but it was the national, theocratic hope, spiritualized and ennobled by his own peculiar moral and religious views.

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§ 67.

THE RELATION OF JESUS TO THE MOSAIC LAW.

Jesus, supposing that he had discerned morality and the spiritual worship of God to be the sole essentials in religion, must have rejected all which, being merely ritual and formal, had usurped the importance of a religious obligation, and under this description must fall a large proportion of the Mosaic precepts; but it is well known how slowly such consequences are deduced, when they come into collision with usages consecrated by antiquity. Even Samuel, apparently, was aware that obedience is better than sacrifice (1 Sam. xv. 22), and Asaph, that an offering of thanksgiving is more acceptable to God than one of slain animals (Ps. 1.); yet how long after were sacrifices retained together with true obedience, or in its stead! Jesus was more thoroughly penetrated with this conviction than those ancients; with him, the true commandments of God in the Mosaic law were simply, Honour thy father and thy mother, Thou shalt not kill, etc., and above all, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself. But his deep-rooted respect for the sacred book of the law, caused him, for the sake of these essential contents, to honour the unessential; which was the more natural, as in comparison with the absurdly exaggerated pedantry of the traditional observances, the ritual of the Pentateuch must have appeared highly simple. To honour this latter part of the law as of Divine origin, but to declare it abrogated on the principle, that in the education of the human race, God finds necessary for an earlier period an arrangement which is superfluous for a later one, implies that idea of the law as a schoolmaster, νόμος παιδαγωγὸς (Gal. iii. 24), which seems first to have been developed by the Apostle Paul; nevertheless, its germ lies in the declaration of Jesus, that God had permitted to the early Hebrews, on account of the hardness of their hearts (Matt. xix. 8 f.), many things which, in a more advanced state of culture, were inadmissible.

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§ 68.

SCOPE OF THE MESSIANIC PLAN OF JESUS. RELATION TO THE GENTILES.

This narrative, however, is neutralized by another, in which Jesus is said to act in a directly opposite manner. The centurion of Capernaum, also a Gentile (as we gather from the remarks of Jesus), has scarcely complained of a distress similar to that of the Canaanitish woman, when Jesus himself volunteers to go and heal his servant (Matt. viii. 5). If, then, Jesus has no hesitation, in this instance, to exercise his power of healing in favour of a heathen, how comes it that he refuses to do so in another quite analogous case? Truly if the relative position of the two narratives in the gospels have any weight, he must have shown himself more harsh and narrow at the later period than at the earlier one. Meanwhile, this single act of benevolence to a Gentile, standing as it does in inexplicable contradiction to the narrative above examined, cannot prove, in opposition to the command expressly given to the disciples, not to go to the Gentiles, that Jesus contemplated their admission as such into the messianic kingdom.

Even the prediction of Jesus that the kingdom of heaven would be taken from the Jews and given to the Gentiles, does not prove this. In the above interview with the centurion of Capernaum, Jesus declares that many shall come from the east and the west, and sit down with the patriarchs in the kingdom of heaven, while the children of the kingdom (obviously the Jews), for whom it was originally designed, will be cast out (Matt. viii. 11 f.). Yet more decidedly, when applying the parable of the husbandmen in the vineyard, he warns his countrymen that the kingdom of God shall be taken from them, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof (Matt. xxi. 43). All this may be understood in the sense intended by the prophets, in their promises that the messianic kingdom would extend to all nations; namely, that the Gentiles would turn to the worship of Jehovah, embrace the Mosaic religion in its entire form, and afterwards be received into the Messiah’s kingdom. It would accord very well with this expectation, that, prior to such a conversion, Jesus should forbid his disciples to direct their announcement of his kingdom to the Gentiles.

But in the discourses concerning his re-appearance, Jesus regards the publication of the gospel to all nations as one of the circumstances that must precede that event (Matt. xxiv. 14; Mark xiii. 10); and after his resurrection, according to the synoptists, he gave his disciples the command, Go ye, and teach all nations, baptizing them, etc. (Matt. xxviii. 19; Mark xvi. 15; Luke xxiv. 47); i.e. go to them with the offer of the Messiah’s kingdom, even though they may not beforehand have become Jews. Not only, however, do the disciples, after the first Pentecost, neglect to execute this command, but when a case is thrust on them which offers them an opportunity for compliance with it, they act as if they were altogether ignorant that such a direction had been given by Jesus (Acts x., xi.). The heathen centurion Cornelius, worthy, from his devout life, of a reception into the messianic community, is pointed out by an angel to the Apostle Peter. But because it was not hidden from God, with what difficulty the apostle would be induced to receive a heathen, without further preliminary, into the Messiah’s kingdom, he saw it needful to prepare him for such a step by a symbolical vision. In consequence of such an admonition Peter goes to Cornelius; but to impel him to baptize him and his family, he needs a second sign, the pouring out of the Holy Ghost on these uncircumcised. When, subsequently, the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem call him to account for this reception of Gentiles, Peter appeals in his justification solely to the recent vision, and to the Holy Ghost given to the centurion’s family. Whatever judgment we may form of the credibility of this history, it is a memorial of the many deliberations and contentions which it cost the apostles after the departure of Jesus, to convince themselves of the eligibility of Gentiles for a participation in the kingdom of their Christ, and the reasons which at last brought them to a decision. Now if Jesus had given so explicit a command as that above quoted, what need was there of a vision to encourage Peter to its fulfilment? or, supposing the vision to be a legendary investiture of the natural deliberations of the disciples, why did they go about in search of the reflection, that all men ought to be baptized, because before God all men and all animals, as his creatures, are clean, if they could have appealed to an express injunction of Jesus? Here, then, is the alternative: if Jesus himself gave this command, the disciples cannot have been led to the admission of the Gentiles by the means narrated in Acts x., xi.; if, on the other hand, that narrative is authentic, the alleged command of Jesus cannot be historical. Our canon decides for the latter proposition. For that the subsequent practice and pre-eminent distinction of the Christian Church, its accessibility to all nations, and its indifference to circumcision or uncircumcision, should have lain in the mind of its founder, is the view best adapted to exalt and adorn Jesus; while that, after his death, and through the gradual development of relations, the church, which its Founder had designed for the Gentiles only in so far as they became Jews, should break through these limits, is in the simple, natural, and therefore the probable course of things.

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§ 69.

RELATION OF THE MESSIANIC PLAN OF JESUS TO THE SAMARITANS. HIS INTERVIEW WITH THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA.

Since then of the two extreme narratives at least, in Matthew and John, neither presupposes the other, we must either doubt the authenticity of the exclusive command of Jesus, or of his connexion with the inhabitants of Samaria.

In this conflict between the gospels, we have again the advantage of appealing to the Book of Acts as an umpire. Before Peter, at the divine instigation, had received the firstfruits of the Gentiles into the Messiah’s kingdom, Philip the deacon, being driven from Jerusalem by the persecution of which Stephen’s death was the commencement, journeyed to the city of Samaria, where he preached Christ, and by miracles of all kinds won the Samaritans to the faith, and to the reception of baptism (Acts viii. 5 ff.). This narrative is a complete contrast to that of the first admission of the Gentiles: while in the one there was need of a vision, and a special intimation from the Spirit, to bring Peter into communication with the heathens; in the other, Philip, without any precedent, unhesitatingly baptizes the Samaritans. And lest it should be said that the deacon was perhaps of a more liberal spirit than the apostle, we have Peter himself coming forthwith to Samaria in company with John,—an incident which forms another point of opposition between the two narratives; for, while the first admission of the Gentiles makes a highly unfavourable impression on the mother church at Jerusalem, the report that Samaria had received the word of God meets with so warm an approval there, that the two most distinguished apostles are commissioned to confirm and consummate the work begun by Philip. The tenor of this proceeding makes it not improbable that there was a precedent for it in the conduct of Jesus, or at least a sanction in his expressions.

Farther on (v. 23) Jesus reveals to the woman what Hase terms the sublimest principle of his religion, namely, that the service of God consists in a life of piety; tells her that all ceremonial worship is about to be abolished; and that he is the personage who will effect this momentous change, that is, the Messiah. We have already shown it to be improbable that Jesus, who did not give his disciples to understand that he was the Messiah until a comparatively late period, should make an early and distinct disclosure on the subject to a Samaritan woman. In what respect was she worthy of a communication more explicit than ever fell to the lot of the disciples? What could induce Jesus to send roaming into the futurity of religious history, the contemplation of a woman, whom he should rather have induced to examine herself, and to ponder on the corruptions of her own heart? Nothing but the wish to elicit from her, at any cost, and without regard to her moral benefit, an acknowledgment, not only of his prophetic gifts, but of his Messiahship; to which end it was necessary to give the conversation the above direction. But so contracted a design can never be imputed to Jesus, who, on other occasions, exemplifies a more suitable mode of dealing with mankind: it is the design of the glorifying legend, or of an idealizing biographer.

Renouncing the event in question as unhistorical, we know nothing of any connexion formed by Jesus with the Samaritans, and there remain as indications of his views regarding them, only his favourable notice of an individual from among them (Luke xvii. 16); his unpropitious reception in one of their villages (Luke ix. 53); the prohibition with respect to them, addressed to his disciples (Matt. x. 5); the eulogistic parable (Luke x. 30 ff.); and his valedictory command, that the gospel should be preached in Samaria (Acts i. 8). This express command being subsequent to the resurrection of Jesus, its reality must remain problematical for us until we have examined the evidence for that capital fact; and it is to be questioned whether without it, and notwithstanding the alleged prohibition, the unhesitating conduct of the apostles, Acts viii., can be explained. Are we then to suppose on the part of the apostolic history, a cancelling of hesitations and deliberations that really occurred; or on the part of Matthew, an unwarranted ascription of national bigotry to Jesus; or, finally, on the part of Jesus, a progressive enlargement of view?

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