courses of Jesus. For the latter also contain sayings which, in accordance with the popular Jewish idea, suggested the dualistic existence of a Satanic kingdom separate from God (Mark iii. 23 ff.). But the important thing is that, along with this, Jesus expresses, both in the Johannine and the synoptical discourses, an idea of the fatherly love and power of God, in accordance with which He Himself, and all who would unite with Him as His disciples and members of the kingdom of God, could absolutely trust in the perfect attainment of heavenly bliss unimpaired by any demoniac powers.1

If we consider collectively these sayings of the Johannine discourses of Jesus in which the ultimate grounds of believing and unbelieving conduct are mentioned, and do not merely single out some particular sayings, and use them in order to wider inferences, we shall be led to the conclusion that on this point also the Johannine discourses of Jesus stand in no contradiction to the synoptical. Here also Jesus has judged, from His assurance founded on His view of God and His personal experience, that the conditionality of the religious life by God, and the exertion of the will in the service of God, are not mutually exclusive, but rather assist and supplement each other. Just because the perfect inner unity subsisting between the religious and moral mode of view was a self-evident presupposition for Him, He could in particular cases, where He gave expression to the one mode of view, show Himself so uncareful that the other also should be taken into account.

1 Cf. vol. i. pp. 163 ff., 296 f., 317.

FOURTH SECTION.

THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIS MESSIAHSHIP.

CHAP. I. THE PERSON OF THE MESSIAH.

1. ACCORDING to Jewish expectation, the Messiah was to be the Mediator sent of God for the establishment and direction of the kingdom of blessing in the latter day. Just in accordance with the special way in which the nature of this kingdom was regarded, was the view necessarily taken of the nature of the Messiah, so that He might appear rightly to correspond to the task which, in accordance with the idea. formed of Him, lay before Him. So also the idea, which Jesus entertained and expressed of the character of His own Messianic person, stands in indissoluble mutual relationship to His idea of the nature of the kingdom of God. In Himself, in His own inner experience, He learnt what was the nature of the true kingdom of God, and He set Himself as the example whereby others might learn the nature of this kingdom. On the other hand, His consciousness of perfectly corresponding to the nature of the kingdom furnished the certain groundwork of His assurance of being the Messiah, and likewise He regarded His teaching as to the general nature of the

122

kingdom of God as the true means of leading others to the conclusion that He, as the perfect representative of this kingdom, must be the Messiah.

Jesus allowed Himself, as we have already seen, to be openly acknowledged as the Messiah for the first time at the close of His ministry (Mark x. 46xi. 10), and He avowed the same Himself (Mark xiv. 61 f.). But ever since His baptism He had borne within Himself the consciousness of His Messiahship, which, through the conflicts immediately following His baptism, He had won as a secure possession. Only from the steadfastness of this consciousness are the wonderful certainty and consistency of His judgment and teaching in regard to the kingdom of God intelligible. And if He also, during the main period of His ministry, intentionally declined the designation of Messiah, and forbade His disciples openly to apply it to Him, when for the first time they recognised Him as Messiah (Mark viii. 31), it is not therefore precluded that His occasional sayings in regard to Himself, from the beginning of His ministry onwards, should have been produced by the consciousness of His Messiahship, and, in their real significance for those who understood the nature of the kingdom of God proclaimed by Him, made known His claim to be the Messiah of this kingdom. Whilst we would now consider more closely this opinion of Jesus in regard to Himself, we must place His sayings in regard to His Messianic person before His utterances in regard to His Messianic task and His significance for the welfare For He did not first, from the knowledge of

of men.

His Messianic mission, conclude that special qualities of His person were unique, and that He stood in a peculiar personal relation to God; but, on the contrary, His consciousness of a peculiar personal relation to God furnished the sure groundwork for the knowledge of His Messianic mission. The consciousness of special personal qualities, which He possessed in His special fellowship with God, first gave Him the assurance, as well of the capacity as of the obligation, to undertake and carry through the Messianic mission for the welfare of other men.

2. Jesus knew that God was His Father.' We should quite turn aside from the path set before us, on which we seek to follow the ideas of Jesus based upon His own sayings recorded in the MatthewLogia and the Gospel of Mark, if we ascribed to the paternal and filial relation which Jesus regarded as existing between God and Himself, a character different in principle from the paternal and filial relation which, according to His teaching, exists between God and the members of His kingdom.

If Jesus in prayer called God Father, just as He taught His disciples to address Him by that name, and if He spoke by turns of His Father and their Father, or of the Father in general, He must thereby have awakened in His hearers the idea, which we have to regard as according to His intention, that He stood to God in a filial relation of such a kind as applied also to all His disciples, that is, that He was the object of the fatherly, grace-bestowing love of God, and that, on His part, He maintained a

1 Cf. vol. i. p. 191.

deportment of filial loving trust and obedience towards God. We should likewise deviate from the ground of our historical sources, if, in fear of dogmatic consequences, we overlooked the fact that Jesus-not often, indeed, but on certain occasions-designated Himself in distinction from all others as "the Son

of God" in a pre-eminent sense. According to the Logia, when His disciples had returned from their mission, He rejoiced in their success over the demons, and promised them the possession of unlimited supremacy over all hostile hurtful powers, and the certain inheritance of the future life of blessedness in heaven (Luke x. 17-20). He thanked God because He had vouchsafed this revelation of grace to babes (ver. 21), and then added: "All things are delivered to me of my Father and no man knoweth what the Son is, but the Father; and what the Father is, but the Son, and He to whom the Son will reveal Him" (ver. 22; cf. Matt. xi. 27).' From the context it is clear that He means Himself as the Son of God, who was per

1 Cf. Log. § 9a and b, L. J. i. p. 90 ff. We must translate the words, Luke x. 22, τίς ἐστιν ὁ υἱός and τίς ἐστιν ὁ πατήρ: “what (not who) the Son is," and "what (not who) the Father is," since the question there is not, who among many others the Son (or the Father) is, but what character or significance the Son (or the Father) has. Cf. Mark iv. 41 ; viii. 27 and 29; John i. 19 and 22, where, in all the places, the questions are not directed towards ascertaining the person as such (whether it is Jesus, or John, or any other person known or unknown), but to ascertaining the character and significance of the person (whether He is a prophet or the possessor of any other position or endowment). The Greek employs in these cases, not the neuter, but the masculine of the interrogative pronoun, since that would make the meaning of the question to be, To what general category of objects or substances does the subject in question belong? whilst the masculine brings into prominence that it is the character or position of a person which is in question. The meaning of Luke x. 22 is also quite rightly rendered in the somewhat different form given in Matt. xi. 27.