188 Christ speaks of having come down from heaven,

was, I was,' but 'I am.' He claims pre-existence indeed, but He does not merely claim pre-existence; He unveils a consciousness of Eternal Being. He speaks as One on Whom time has no effect, and for Whom it has no meaning. He is the I AM of ancient Israel; He knows no past, as He knows no future; He is unbeginning, unending Being; He is the eternal 'Now.' This is the plain sense of His language, and perhaps the most instructive commentary upon its force is to be found in the violent expedients to which Humanitarian writers have been driven in order to evade it h.

Here again the Jews understood our Lord, and attempted to kill Him; while He, instead of explaining Himself in any sense which would have disarmed their anger, simply withdrew from the temple i.

With this statement we may compare Christ's references to His pre-existence in His two great sacramental Discourses. Conversing with Nicodemus He describes Himself as the Son of Man Who had come down from heaven, and Who while yet speaking was in heaven k. Preaching in the great synagogue of Capernaum, He calls Himself the Bread of Life Which had come down from heaven.' He repeats and expands this description of Himself. His pre-existence is the warrant of His lifegiving power. The Jews objected that they knew His father and mother, and did not understand His advancing any such claim as this to a Pre-existent Life. Our Lord replied by saying that no man could come to Him unless taught of God to do so, and then proceeded to re-assert His pre-existence in the same terms as before m. He pursued His former statement into its mysterious consequences. Since He was the heaven-descended Bread of Life, His Flesh was meat indeed and His Blood was drink indeedo. They only would have life in them who should

h Cf. Meyer on St. John viii. 58: 'Das èyú eiu ist aber weder: Ich bin es (der Messias) zu deuten (Faustus Socinus, Paulus, ganz contextwidrig), noch in den Rathschluss Gottes, zu verlegen (Sam. Crell, Grotius, Paulus, B. Crusius), was schon durch das Praes. verboten wird. Nur noch geschichtlich bemerkenswerth ist die von Faustus Socinus auch in das Socinianische Bekenntniss (s. Catech. Racov. ed. Oeder, p. 144, f.) übergegangene Auslegung: "Ehe Abraham, Abraham, d. i. der Vater vieler Völker, wird, bin Ich es, nämlich der Messias, das Licht der Welt." Damit ermahne Er die Juden, an Ihn zu glauben, so lange es noch Zeit sei, ehe die Gnade von ihnen genommen und auf die Heiden übergetragen werde, wodurch dann Abraham der Vater vieler Völker werde.' k Ibid. iii. 13. 1 Ibid. vi. 33. m Ibid. vers. 44-51.

i St. John viii. 59.

n Ibid. ver. 55.

and of ascending up to where He was before. 189

eat this Flesh and drink this Blood o. Life eternal, Resurrection at the last day P, and His own Presence even now within the soul, would follow upon a due partaking of that heavenly food. When the disciples murmured at this doctrine as a 'hard sayingr,' our Lord met their objections by predicting His coming Ascension into heaven as an event which would justify His allusions to His pre-existence, no less than to the life-giving virtue of His Manhood. 'What and if ye shall see the Son of Man ascend up where He was before s?' Again, the reality of our Lord's pre-existence lightens up such mysterious sayings as the following: 'I know whence I came, and whither I go; but ye cannot tell whence I come, and whither I got;' 'I am from above: I am not of this world u;' 'If ye believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins ;' 'I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world again, I leave the world, and go to the Fathery. Once more, how full of solemn significance is that reference to 'the glory which I had with Thee before the world was 2,' in the great intercession which our Incarnate Saviour offered to the Eternal Father on the eve of His agony !

Certainly taken alone, our Lord's allusions to His Pre-existence need not imply His true Divinity. There is indeed no ground for the theory of a Palestinian doctrine of metempsychosis; and even Strauss shrinks from supposing that the fourth Evangelist makes Jesus the mouthpiece of Alexandrian theories of which a Jewish peasant would never have heard. Arianism however would argue, and with reason, that in some of the passages just

• St. John vi. 53.

a Ibid. ver. 56.

p Ibid. ver. 54.

r Ibid. ver. 60.

s Ibid. ver. 62. Strauss thinks it difficult but admissible' to interpret St. John viii. 58, with the Socinian Crell, of a purely ideal existence in the predetermination of God. He considers it however 'scarcely possible to view the prayer to the Father (St. John xvii. 5) to confirm the doğa which Jesus had with Him before the world was, as an entreaty for the communication of a glory predestined for Jesus from eternity.' He adds that the language of Jesus (St. John vi. 62) where He speaks of the Son of Man re-ascending where He was before, ἀναβαίνειν 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 of ideal pre-existence.' Leben Jesu, pt. ii. kap. 4. § 65.

Here, as sometimes elsewhere, Strauss incidentally upholds the natural and Catholic interpretation of the text of the Gospels; nor are we now concerned with the theory to which he eventually applies it. It may be further observed, that Strauss might have at least interpreted St. John viii. 58 by the light of St. John vi. 62,

x Ibid. ver. 24.

t Ibid. viii. 14.

y Ibid. xvi. 28.

u Ibid. ver. 23. z Ibid. xvii. 5.

190 Our Lord's testimony when before the Sanhedrin.

referred to, though not in all, our Lord might conceivably have been speaking of a created, although pre-existent, life. Yet if we take these passages in connexion with our Lord's assertion of His being One with the Father, each truth will be seen to support and complete the other. On the one hand, Christ asserts His substantial oneness with Deity, on the other, His distinct pre-existent Personality. He might be an inferior and created Being, if He were not thus absolutely One with God. He might be only a saintly man, and, as such, described as an 'aspect,' a 'manifestation' of the Divine Life, if His language about His pre-existence did not clearly imply that before His birth of Mary He was already a living and superhuman Person.

If indeed, in His dealings with the multitude, our Lord had been really misunderstood, He had a last opportunity for explaining Himself when He was arraigned before the Sanhedrin. Nothing is more certain than that, whatever was the dominant motive that prompted our Lord's apprehension, the Sanhedrin condemned Him because He claimed Divinity. The members of the court stated this before Pilate. 'We have a law, and by our law He ought to die, because He made Himself the Son of Goda.' Their language would have been meaningless if they had understood by the 'Son of God' nothing more than the ethical or theocratic Sonship of their own ancient kings and saints. If the Jews held Christ to be a false Messiah, a false prophet, a blasphemer, it was because He claimed literal Divinity. True, the Messiah was to have been Divine. But the Jews had secularized the Messianic promises; and the Sanhedrin held Jesus Christ to be worthy of death under the terms of the Mosaic law, as expressed in Leviticus and Deuteronomy b. After the witnesses had delivered their various and inconsistent testimonies, the high priest arose and said, 'I adjure Thee by the living God, that Thou tell us whether Thou be the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven. Then the high priest rent his clothes, saying, He hath spoken blasphemyc.'

a St. John xix. 7. 'Devant ce procurateur,' observes M. Salvador, 'chacune des parties émit une parole capitale. Telle fut celle du conseil ou de ses délégués: “Nous avons une loi; d'après cette loi il doit mourir," non parcequ'il s'est fait Fils de Dieu, selon l'expression familière à notre langue et à nos prophètes; mais parcequ'il se fait égal à Dieu, et Dieu même.' Salvador, Jésus-Christ, ii. p. 204.

b Lev. xxiv. 16; Deut. xiii. 5; cf. Wilson, Illustration of the Method of Explaining the New Testament, p. 26. c St. Matt. xxvi. 63-65.

He is condemned for claiming to be Divine. 191

The blasphemy did not consist, either in the assumption of the title Son of Man, or in the claim to be Messiah, or even, excepting indirectly, in that which by the terms of Daniel's prophecy was involved in Messiahship, namely, the commission to judge the world. It was the further claimd to be the Son of God, not in any moral or theocratic, but in the natural sense, at which the high priest and his coadjutors professed to be so deeply shocked. The Jews felt, as our Lord intended, that the Son of Man in Daniel's prophecy could not but be Divine; they knew what He meant by appropriating such words as applicable to Himself. Just as one body of Jews had endeavoured to destroy Jesus when He called God His Father in such sense as to claim Divinity e; and another when He contrasted His Eternal Being with the fleeting life of Abraham in a distant pastf; and another when He termed Himself Son of God, and associated Himself with His Father as being dynamically and so substantially Ones; —just as they murmured at His pretension to 'have come down from heaven h,' and detected blasphemy in His authoritative remission of sinsi;-so when, before His judges, He admitted that He claimed to be the Son of God, all further discussion was at an end. The high priest exclaimed 'Ye have heard His blasphemy;' and they all condemned Him to be guilty of death. And a very accomplished Jew of our own day, M. Salvador, has shewn that this question of our Lord's Divinity was the real point at issue in that momentous trial. He maintains that a Jew had no logical alternative to belief in the Godhead of Jesus Christ except the imperative duty of putting Him to death k

d Pressensé, Jésus-Christ, pp. 341, 615. f Ibid. viii. 58, 59.

e St. John v. 17, 18. h Ibid. vi. 42.

g Ibid. x. 30, 31, 39. i St. Matt. ix. 3; St. Luke v. 20, 21. * Salvador, Jésus-Christ, ii. pp. 132, 133, 195: 'La question avait un côté politique ou national juif: c'était la résistance du Fils de Marie, dans Jérusalem même, aux ordres et avertissements du grand Conseil. Au point de vue religieux, selon la loi, Jésus se trouvait en cause pour s'être déclaré égal à Dieu et Dieu lui-même.' See also the Rev. W. Wilson's Illustration of the Method of Explaining the New Testament, p. 77, sqq. Mr. Wilson shews that the Sanhedrin sincerely believed our Lord to be guilty of the crime of blasphemy, as inseparable, to a Jewish apprehension, from His claim to be Divine. This is argued (1) from the regularity of the proceedings of the Sanhedrin, the length of the trial, and the earnestness and unanimity of the judges. The false witnesses were considered as such by the Sanhedrin: our Lord was condemned on the strength of His Own confession; (2) from the language of the members of the Sanhedrin before Pilate: 'By our law He ought to die, because He made Himself the Son of God;' (3) from the fact

192 Christ's Self-assertion and His character.

III. In order to do justice to the significance of our Lord's language about Himself, let us for a moment reflect on our very fundamental conceptions of His character. There is indeed a certain seeming impropriety in using that word 'character' with respect to Jesus Christ at all. For in modern language. 'character' generally implies the predominance or the absence. of some side or sides of that great whole, which we picture to ourselves in the background of each individual man as the true and complete ideal of human nature. This predominance or absence of particular traits or faculties, this precise combination of active or of passive qualities, determines the moral flavour of each individual life, and constitutes character. Character is that whereby the individual is marked off from the presumed standard or level of typical manhood. Yet the closest analysis of the actual Human Life of Jesus reveals a moral Portrait not only unlike any that men have witnessed before or since, but especially remarkable in that it presents an equally balanced and entirely harmonious representation of all the normal elements of our perfected moral nature1. Still, we may dare to ask the question: What are the features in that perfectly harmonious moral Life, upon which the reverence and the love of Christians dwells most constantly, most thankfully, most enthusiastically?

1. If then on such a subject I may utter a truism without irreverence, I say first of all that Jesus Christ was sincere. He possessed that one indispensable qualification for any teacher, specially for a teacher of religion: He believed in what He said, without reserve; and He said what He believed, without regard to consequences. Material error is very pardonable, if it be error which in good faith believes itself to be truth. But evident insincerity we cannot pardon; we cannot regard with any other

that the members of the Sanhedrin had no material object to gain by pronouncing Jesus guilty, without being persuaded of His criminality in claiming to be a Divine Person. Mr. Wilson fortifies these considerations by appealing to our Lord's silence, to St. Peter's address to his countrymen in Acts iii. 14-17, and to the general conduct of the Jewish people.

1 Young, Christ of History, p. 217: The difficulty which we chiefly feel in dealing with the character of Christ, as it unfolded itself before men, arises from its absolute perfection. On this very account it is less fitted to arrest observation. A single excellence unusually developed, though in the neighbourhood of great faults, is instantly and universally attractive. Perfect symmetry, on the other hand, does not startle, and is hidden from common and casual observers. But it is this which belongs emphatically to the Christ of the Gospels; and we distinguish in Him at each moment that precise manifestation which is most natural and most right.'