[ p. 210 ]
WHEN the Romans sentenced a criminal to execution, a placard [1] was placed on the cross, stating the nature of the crime. In Jesus’ case this placard read, “The King of the Jews.”
The historic accuracy of this fact is beyond question. No Christian could have invented it, for the wording of this placard was a constant menace to Christianity. Rome was morbidly sensitive to the slightest hint of political opposition, and for Christians to profess themselves followers of a man who had been condemned to death because of his royal claims was perilous in the last degree. Within a generation [2] they were sentenced wholesale as traitors to the Empire, and for two hundred and fifty years thereafter to be a Christian meant to live in constant peril of martyrdom. Nothing save the hard necessity of historical fact could have led believers to include and preserve in their traditions the statement that such a declaration was written over their Master’s cross. Even in the earliest period, when the inclusion of the new faith within Judaism still offered some measure of protection, danger was none the less present; Christian [ p. 211 ] Jews in Judea were always liable to denunciation as bad citizens. [3]
Jesus, then, was executed as a quasi-royal pretender. But history is full of stories of earnest men who have been put to death on trumped-up charges; might not Jesus be of their number? There is not the slightest evidence in support of such a contention. Jesus’ disciples, of course, protested that Pilate had been given a distorted version of their Master’s claims; but that there was a basic claim of this sort which could be distorted the disciples acknowledged to all the world. The first Christians declared triumphantly that Jesus had actually claimed to be royal. His Kingdom, to be sure, was not of this world, but nevertheless—or, rather, all the more—Jesus claimed to be and actually was a King. The Christians charged the Jews with perverting this claim, and with thus procuring a judicial murder; but they never charged the Jews with inventing the claim. Since none of our sources, friendly or hostile, does anything but affirm the fact, we are bound to conclude, then, that Jesus actually claimed to be Messiah. This conclusion we should have to reach wholly apart from the record of his explicit declarations found in the Gospel narratives. The evidence of the “title” on the cross is sufficient in itself.
As Messiah, he felt, not only that he was to reveal the way to God’s salvation, but that he was to bring believers into that salvation. Acceptance of the truth of his teaching, consequently, carried with it devotion [ p. 212 ] to himself; God’s true children, who heard Jesus, could not fail to be his disciples. Moreover, he knew that actually he was bringing men into God’s salvation. In his own acts and teaching, first of all, the mighty powers of the present Kingdom were felt. Then these powers were extended further into the circle of the disciples, who thus, through their obedience to him, became in turn new centers of spiritual strength.
Not that only his own disciples could be “saved.” He pictured the Old Testament saints, who had never known him, as matter-of-course citizens of heaven. He praised faith wherever he found it, even outside the ranks of Israel. According to his message, prodigals everywhere could be certain of their reception by the Father. Penitent publicans in all places could surely look for forgiveness. But to be “saved” at the end was one thing; to be already in the present Kingdom was another and greater thing. It was only through contact with Jesus personally that such a share in that Kingdom was possible.
As God’s Messiah, his personal mission could not fail. Therefore, when confronted with the certainty of death, his faith rose above it. His vocation must be fulfilled; if not in this world, then hereafter. The more closely we read his story, the more clearly do we see that his faith in himself reached the highest possible point: his destiny was to be the celestial Son-ofMan-Messiah. Such was his profession before the Sanhedrin—calling out the horrified cry of “Blasphemy!” Such was the claim that could be so perverted as to lead Pilate to execute him as “King of [ p. 213 ] the Jews.” Such was the faith—no other—for which Jesus died. Such was the faith he left with his disciples as he died.
To these disciples Jesus had been friendly, affectionate, and tender. Their devotion to him was unlimited. Yet their love was always touched with awe; “they were afraid to ask him.” In Jesus, even at the moments of deepest intimacy, they felt a constant sense of “otherness.” He was not as they were. In him they were conscious of a perpetual mystery. He had command of powers beyond other men’s reach. Not only could he heal as no other man ever healed, but—there cannot be the slightest doubt that the disciples believed this—the very forces of nature were subject to him. Most misterious of all was his knowledge of God. When he spoke, he spoke “with authority.” In his words there was never a shadow of doubt or hesitation. “I say unto you” was his allsufficient formula. When he spoke, God seemed real. When he was with his disciples, God seemed near. [4] “What manner of man is this?” The only answer they could give to such a question was that he was the one who, alone among human beings, stood wholly on God’s side and not on man’s; he was God’s Messiah. And Jesus assured them that they were right.
His death shook their faith for a time; but with their knowledge of his resurrection all hesitation was swept away forever. He was proved now to be truly [ p. 214 ] Messiah. Risen from the dead and gone into the heavens, as Son of Man he had taken his place on “God’s right hand.” That was the apostolic faith. And Jesus’ teaching about himself and this apostolic faith were identical.
The triumphant joy of the Easter experience brought a thrill of unspeakable ecstasy to the entire band of believers. Within the next few weeks this ecstasy mounted to new and unparalleled heights, manifesting itself in undreamed-of gifts of power. Power was displayed in ecstatic phenomena, which had special appeal to men of the first century; but more permanently important was the sense of power in spiritual achievement. The leaders of the apostolic group proclaimed their message as men inspired, sweeping converts into the new faith by the hundreds. Every member of the community felt new strength coming into his life, making possible for him “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control.” The believers were transformed by the gift of God’s Holy Spirit. [5]
It is clear that the general conception regarded the Spirit as sent by the Messiah. Toward this teaching Jewish apocalyptic had steadily tended, and John the Baptist had given the doctrine explicit formulation: [ p. 215 ] “He shall baptize you with Holy Spirit.” Thus far, then, the whole “gospel about Jesus” was still expressed in strict terms of Jewish Messianism.
It is one thing, however, to predict an occurrence, and another to experience it. The first apostolic experiences of the Spirit brought to the disciples a knowledge such as Jewish expectations had never imagined. As giver of the Spirit, Jesus (who by his resurrection had returned to earth and into contact with his followers) was now still in perpetual contact with them. He could reach his own—and they could reach him. Such a conception was wholly new. At this point the Jewish tradition breaks down, and genuinely Christian teaching about Jesus—“Christology”—begins. It is the result of Jesus’ teaching about himself, -plus the historic experience of the result of believing this teaching. Jesus’ claims were justified in the lives of his disciples. Acceptance of Jesus as Master brings with it a certainty of the unceasing possession of spiritual power. This is the basic faith of Christianity. [6]
The formal prayers of the first disciples were, of course, addressed to the Father, but since through the Spirit they were bound to Jesus, they could pray to him as well. [7] They addressed him as “Lord,” or more commonly as “Our Lord”; in Aramaic “Mara” and [ p. 216 ] “Marana.” [8] The earliest known Christian prayer is the invocation “Marana tha!” “Our Lord come!” [9] and the New Testament closes with this most primitive Christian formula. [10] So “Lord” takes its place beside “Messiah” as an accepted title for Jesus, the former emphasizing his present care, the latter his future victory. Thus in the speech ascribed to Peter at Pentecost we read:
“Let all the house of Israel know assuredly.
That God had made him both Lord and. Messiah,
This Jesus whom ye crucified !” [11]
Jews are rarely philosophically minded. Their genius is practical. They ordinarily face problems in concrete form. They were a race which did not cloud religion with metaphysical speculations. The first Christians, in particular, were men whose whole training had diverted their thoughts and lives from metaphysics in any form. They concerned themselves only with their immediate experience. As Jews they held the fundamental dogma that God is One; but, along with this, they learned that Jesus, too, was rightly the object of a genuinely religious devotion. How could these two facts be reconciled? In their experience, and therefore in their teaching, they knew Jesus to be invested with attributes that were properly divine. But, on the basis of a rigid monotheism, can the divine attributes be divided? Must not the possession of any [ p. 217 ] of them carry with it the possession of them all? To Peter and the rest this problem hardly occurred; yet as time passed and the new faith made converts of a more reflective type such questions demanded an answer.
The result was a development—but only in the sense that it was the result of steady thinking. Effort must be made to give adequate expression to a faith already proclaimed in its essentials. We cannot trace, exactly, all steps here. The disciples’ task was difficult. All the inherited vocabularies were inadequate. Old terms and concepts had to be modified—sometimes strained almost out of recognition. New terms had to be borrowed from other thought-systems. There was of necessity much experimenting; some of it was in directions very obscure today, and some of it was along lines that proved futile or even harmful. Terms and concepts, time after time, were taken up hopefully, only to be discarded as their insufficiency was discovered. [12]
Broadly speaking, the title “Lord” gradually took precedence of “Messiah.” Then the latter began to disappear, its Greek translation “Christ” losing its original force and taking on the sense of a proper name.[13] This went hand-in-hand with an ever growing emphasis on present needs and a corresponding lack of stress on the future. With passing years the expectation of the end of the world, intensely vivid at the [ p. 218 ] beginning, receded more and more into the background; the apocalyptic scaffolding was taken down. [14] The Christians, therefore, sought increasingly to embody their experience of Jesus in other Jewish terms, chiefly connected with the teaching about the Spirit; “Wisdom” was a special favorite. As one result of this early speculation, the consciousness forced itself upon thinkers that Jesus’ appearance on earth could not have been the beginning of his existence; he who so shares in God’s activity must always have shared in it. How soon this doctrine came to be generally accepted we do not know exactly, but it was very early, so long before the time of Paul’s epistles that the apostle takes it for granted everywhere, and never argues it. [15] In the famous passage that follows, he echoes feelings which he assumes to be undisputed; indeed, there is some reason to think that he is merely quoting a hymn already in use by the Christians:
Who, being in the form of God,
Thought God-equality no prize,
But emptied himself.
Taking the form of a servant.
When, around the year 50, Christianity spread on [ p. 219 ] Gentile soil, [16] Greek converts attacked the problem with the aid of other thought-forms. Of these the concept of a “Logos,” or “Word,” is most familiar. [17] According to the most recent research, this term was not taken directly from the usage of classical Greek philosophy, but from the popular philosophic teaching current in Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor. [18] To search for any recondite depth of meaning in the expression would therefore be a mistake. The “word” is the means by which one person expresses his thought to another. The “Word of God” is accordingly the means by which God impresses His thought on the universe—and this “Word” is a Person, Jesus Christ. The new term gave first-century Christian thinking a certain precision of expression, but in substance there was actually little advance on the earlier Jewish-Christian point of view. In fact, the latest treatises on the Fourth Gospel maintain that the use of “Word” was earlier than the Gospel, and that it was not introduced by the Evangelist. It seems very probable, indeed, that he, like Paul, utilized a current Christian hymn. If this is so, he added some phrases of his own to adapt the hymn to his purpose; without his additions the hymn might be thus reconstructed:
In the beginning was the Word,
And the Word was with God,
And the Word was God. [ p. 220 ]
In the beginning he was with God,
All things were made through him,
Apart from him was nothing made.
In him was life,
And the life was the light of men.
The light shineth in darkness,
And the darkness did not understand it.
The true light,
Which lighteneth every man,
Came into the world.
He was in the world,
And the world was made through him,
And the world knew him not.
The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,
We beheld his glory, as of the Father’s only-begotten,
Full of grace and truth.
For of his fullness we all received,
And grace upon grace.
No man has seen God at any time,
God Only-Begotten, in the Father’s bosom,
He has declared him.
“The Word was God”: here the New Testament development ends. From the first this development was inevitable. Given the faith in Jesus as the heavenly Son of Man, given the experience of the Spirit through calling on his name, and no other end was possible. [ p. 221 ] Like Thomas, in St. John, men learned irresistibly that the only title fit for Jesus is “My Lord and my God.” [19]
Technically a titulum or “title.” ↩︎
After the great fire in Rome in the year 64. ↩︎
e.g., Acts xxiv: 6. ↩︎
In modern technical language, the disciples, impression of Jesus was “numinous.” ↩︎
The Book of the Acts of the Apostles concentrates this outpouring in the Pentecostal experience of the hundred and twenty disciples at Jerusalem. John xx: 22, however, connects the gifts directly with the resurrection experiences. For early Christianity as a whole, John expresses better the general truth. There were hundreds of believers scattered throughout Palestine, and we cannot believe that for all of them the first experiences of the new life of the Spirit occurred simultaneously. ↩︎
In part, it should be noted, this teaching was anticipated in Jesus’ lifetime. The doctrine of the Spirit given through faith in Jesus simply continues on a higher plane the doctrine of the present Kingdom entered through faith in Jesus. ↩︎
e.g., Acts vii: 59. ↩︎
According to rabbinical sources, the correct title to use to the Messiah when he appears. ↩︎
1 Corinthians xvi: 22. ↩︎
Revelation xxii: 20. ↩︎
Acts ii: 36. ↩︎
Not infrequently, however, such terms persisted in devotional language. Liturgical usage never quite keeps abreast of doctrinal development—perhaps this is “all to the good!” ↩︎
Today we are conscious of no impropriety when we say, for instance, “Christ was the Messiah.” ↩︎
While apocalyptic provided the first terminology almost completely, the faith itself proved to be independent of eschatology. Christianity adjusted itself almost without effort to a realization that this world might go on indefinitely. ↩︎
Those interested in technical problems, however, might notice that modern philosophical theology usually places God above all time-space categories, so that such a term as “pre-existence” is scarcely appropriate, philosophically. ↩︎
We cannot here discuss the steps by which Christians came to realize that the message was for the Gentiles as well as for Jews, nor the effect of this realization on their conception of Christ. ↩︎
John i: i, 14 and perhaps x: 35 ↩︎
There are purely Jewish antecedents as well. ↩︎
This climax of the New Testament doctrine became in turn the starting-point of a further development in the Christian church— a long, laborious and painful development that continued past the middle of the fifth century. It terminated finally in the formula, “Two distinct Natures, one human and one divine, in a single undivided Person.” Here theology—Protestant, in a later day, as well as Catholic—was content to rest for some fourteen hundred years. Modern research and modern speculation, however, have raised fresh problems, and theology is once more on the march. To quote the words of a wise and reverent contemporary writer, Professor Leonard Hodgson: “It took four and a half centuries to think out the problem in the terms of ancient philosophy. It may take as long again in those of modern. But ‘he that believeth shall not make haste.’ ” ↩︎