(c) If Jesus' works, as to their contents, show that He is the Son, then one learns, from the way by which they are done, to acknowledge more exactly at the same time the specific relation of the Son to the Father. Here too, that is to say, as in § 18, b, Jesus does these works not by His own will and power. God has Himself given to Him to execute them (v. 36), God's glory is seen in them (xi. 40; comp. ver. 4); for God does them Himself, inasmuch as He abides continually in Him (xiv. 10: ὁ πατὴρ ἐν ἐμοὶ μένων ποιεῖ τὰ epya avтós), the actual centre of His life and of His works (comp. xvii. 23: où év époí). This is, too, the first thing, x. 38, to be recognised from His works. But in this is realized what was promised for Messianic times. Jehovah is Himself come to His people (Luke i. 17, 76). He no longer speaks or works incidentally by means of His messengers; He has found a perfect organ, in whom He can continually abide and work, to whom therefore He gives to do everything (v. 20; comp. footnote 3), whom He has made to be the exclusive and abiding organ for His final saving work, so that He hands. over to Him everything (xiii. 3; comp. Matt. xi. 27), and retains nothing any more to be His own exclusive possession (xvi. 15: πάντα ὅσα ἔχει ὁ πατὴρ ἐμά ἐστιν). But it can only be involved in this, that the Father, as the heart-searcher, has acknowledged in Him the organ perfectly suited for this end (x. 15; comp. Matt. xi. 27, and therewith § 17, a, footnote 1). As it is involved in the essence of Sonship in general that the Father loves Him (viii. 42; comp. xv. 23), so He loves the Father, and shows it, in that He hopes in childlike trust on His abiding help (xvi. 32), and in childlike obedience fulfils all His commands (xiv. 31; comp. iv. 34, viii. 29, 46, 55, xv. 10). It is peculiar to this perfect love that nothing is called its own in any exclusive sense (xvii. 10: τὰ ἐμὰ πάντα σά ἐστιν), and hence the Father can give to Him everything, which is His own (xaì тà σà éμá), because

(x. 37, 38, xiv. 11), as to the evidence that the Father has borne witness for Him (viii. 18). For these works, which none other had done, rendered them inexcusable (xv. 24), if they did not acknowledge that the Father had sent Him (ver. 21). Whoever was not in a position to acknowledge Him, in His highest spiritual activity (v. 24-27), as the Son entrusted with God's Messianic works, these suggestive symbols ought at least to be guides to enable them to understand the significance of His appearance.

the Son yet receives all as a gift from Him (ver. 7). Nay, that love is nothing else than that perfect personal dependence, by which one's whole being is rooted in another; and because the Son is in this sense in the Father, so can the Father be in the Son (x. 38, xvii. 21), the one is the condition of the other (xiv. 10, 11). For He will not be thought of as selfless organ. As the Father has life in Himself, so has He given to the Son to have life in Himself (v. 26). It is implied in this, to be sure, that the life of the Son, even objectively, is rooted in the Father; but only in so far as the Son willingly and constantly acknowledges this, is the being in Him the expression for the fullest personal dependence on Him.3

(d) This mutual relationship between the Father and the Son constitutes what Jesus calls their oneness, since without more ado, xvii. 21, 22, it is exchanged with ev elvai, and both are similarly put parallel with the ev eival of believers. What Jesus says, x. 38, of this mutual relationship is, from the connection, but an exposition of, and an apology for, the declaration: èy Kai ó πатηρ ev coμev (ver. 30); and this declaration is to show how the Son, sent by God, knows

7 Hence Jesus, in answer to His prayer, obtains everything He does from God (xi. 22, 41), by which He is always sure of being heard (ver. 42), because God likewise certainly hears Him, who does His will, because He cannot hear sinners (ix. 16, 31), so that His prayers always at once pass over into thanksgiving (vi. 11, xi. 41). Whatever, then, the Father gives Him to do, that He does in His name (x. 25). And thus there is here perfected, but in an absolute way, what was even involved in the relation of a messenger (footnote 1). Because the Son is in the Father, He speaks nothing of Himself (xiv. 10; comp. xii. 49), and He does nothing of Himself (viii. 28; comp. x. 32); it is involved in the very nature of the relation of Son, that He can do nothing of Himself (v. 19, 30; comp. footnote 3). This, however, is not thought of as a metaphysical impotence, but only moral, inasmuch as the love of the Son to the Father, by which His complete dependence rests on Him, leads Him to continual obedience to the Father, and so enables Him to be His perfect organ.

8 The living Father can send only the living Son as His organ, but the Son so sent is conscious to Himself, now and continually, that He lives, because the Father wills that He live, and gives to Him life (vi. 57 : Cã dià ròv xaripa). The continual free joyful impulse of this consciousness is the abiding in Him, as the connection with ver. 56 shows that Jesus will say of Himself what implies an abiding in the Father, and an abiding of the Father in Him. This peculiarity of His life from God, and in God, cannot here be perfectly manifested to the disciples, when they see Him put in many ways under the conditions of their own earthly existence. But when He has been delivered unto death, and they see Him return again living, then only will they quite acknowledge Him as Son, who with His life is rooted in the Father alone, and is in Him (xiv. 19, 20).

that those who are made partakers of the Messianic salvation are as safe in His hand (ver. 28) as in the almighty hand of the Father (ver. 29). The Father is in the Son, and keeps only by means of His hand; the Son is in the Father, and keeps only by His power. The position of the Son as the perfect organ of the Father, implies in itself, that any separate working of the Father and the Son is excluded, that both are one in their working. It is on that account likewise but another expression for this unity, if it is said, xiv. 9, that whoever has seen the Son has seen the Father, which in ver. 10 is likewise referred back as that unity to the Son's being in the Father, and the Father in the Son. Because in virtue of that oneness in all His working, the working of the Father is revealed, therefore is the Father seen in the Son as soon as the former is acknowledged in His specific relation to the Father (ver. 7). There is not required any more a theophany in the Old Testament fashion, as Philip desires (ver. 8); the perfect theophany is given in the Son, the self-manifestation of God in Him by whom He brings about His highest purposes of salvation. And therefore no one acknowledges the Father, who hath sent Him, who has not acknowledged the Son to be what He is, His perfect revelation (viii. 19, xv. 21).

§ 144. The Heavenly Origin of the Son of Man.

Jesus traces back His special knowledge of God to a seeing of God in His original existence with the Father, in which from eternity, as the object of the divine love, He possessed the divine glory (a). But He has come down from heaven to earth, because His Messianic calling required His appearing upon the earth (6). As He who was originally in heaven, Jesus

9 Thus neither are the words, x. 30, used of the substantial unity of both (comp. Köstlin, p. 93 f.), or of their identity of nature (comp. Baur, p. 357), nor those of xiv. 9 of their equality of nature (comp. Köstlin, p. 95), or of their equality in dignity (comp. Frommann, p. 390); but there is nothing said in either passage about the original (trinitarian) relation of the Son to the Father; nay, He who appeared on the earth only speaks of Himself and of His works. In the latter passage especially is it evident, that what is true in a certain sense even of any messenger of God (xii. 45; comp. footnote 1), must be true in an absolute sense of the Son sent by God. He is the highest revelation of the Father, who hath sent Him.

is the peerless Son of man, who even now does not possess the divine glory, but yet is certain of constant divine miraculous help (c). In His earthly existence He is, like every son of man, put under the divine law, and looks up to the Father as His God, while He feels Himself a stranger in no way to human joys and conflicts (d).

(a) As the living organ of the revelation of the Father, Jesus must know Himself as such, and this presupposes that He perfectly knows the Father, who is revealed in His works. This perfect knowledge of God, which can be compared only with the knowledge of the Son by the Father, because none other but He has it (x. 15, xvii. 25), Jesus claims for Himself, even in the oldest tradition (Matt. xi. 27; comp. § 17, a; 20, a); but here, too, is the point where the Johannean self-testimony of Jesus decisively goes beyond that of the Synoptists. While Jesus sinks Himself in the origin of this peerless knowledge of God, He is conscious that it is to be traced to no point in His earthly life, and to no analogy in the religious experience of other messengers of God. It is a particular fact of the past to which He points, which now continues (ééρaxa) in its workings. He describes it as a seeing of the Father unapproachable to every other (vi. 46, iii. 11; comp. ver. 32), which He has had with the Father Himself (viii. 38; comp. vi. 46, vii. 29).1 And He points thereby to a prehistorical existence with the Father, in which He has seen God, as the perfected hope one day in the heavenly life to see Him (§ 34, b). This existence of His, which excludes all becoming, Jesus puts in opposition to the historical appearing of Abraham (viii. 58), and He speaks of the glory which He had then with the Father before the foundation of the world, as He hopes to receive it at His exaltation (xvii. 5).2

1 Although the vas mapà roû esou may in itself also designate the divine sending (ix. 16, 33), yet is it, vii. 29, distinguished from it (comp. xvii. 8); and vi. 46 can also only designate a coming from an existence with the Father, because Jesus alone lays claim to it. Because He alone, in virtue of direct intuition, which presupposes an existence with the Father, possesses the perfect knowledge of God, He can announce the heavenly things, to the knowledge of which none can come without Him (iii. 13). On the other hand, He nowhere speaks of divine revelations or visions given to Him here on the earth, although Beyschlag, p. 96 f., undertakes to point out such.

2

* Thus, as certainly as the rapà σsaur refers to the exaltation to heavenly

This glory, which distinguishes the Being of God from all creatures, the Son could possess only in that prehistorical life, because the Father has loved the Son before the foundation of the world (ver. 24); and this love, involved in the nature of the paternal relation, drew Him to the Son from the beginning, to share all with Him (comp. § 143). Thus it is shown that Jesus knew Himself from eternity to be elected to be the object of the divine love.

(b) If the Son was originally with the Father, then the sending (iii. 17) of Him is not only the commissioning of an earth-born one with a divine mission, but the giving up of the Son into the relative distance from God of an earthly life (ver. 16 edwкev). The Father, from whom He is, because He was with Him, has sent Him (vii. 19), and so is He come (into the earthly world) (viii. 42: кw), although He was not ἐκ τῶν κάτω but ἐκ τῶν ἄνω (ver. 23), which, according to the connection with vv. 21, 22, can but designate His origin from the heavenly world, to which He returns again at His departure (comp. iii. 31: ὁ ἄνωθεν = ὁ ἐκ τοῦ ovρavoû éρxóμevos). To this heavenly origin He points back, οὐρανοῦ ἐρχόμενος). when His coming into the world, i.e. His historical appearance (iii. 19, ix. 39, xii. 46; comp. i. 9), is preceded by 3

life, in which He is to receive this déğa, so certainly does the rapá o speak of a pretemporal heavenly existence with the Father, in which He really already possessed it. If Beyschlag, p. 87 f., refers this passage again to the glory ideally suitable for Jesus, i.e. appointed for Him in the divine purposes, then has Scholten, p. 96, even in this explanation acknowledged the xapá ☛ and the x... as containing proof for the pre-existence; and likewise the passage viii. 58 itself is an explanation of the Messianic destination of Jesus approaching that of Beyschlag. But the siμí in it excludes every reference to a pre-existence in the divine purpose (yet comp. Beyschlag, p. 86); and in answer to the objection of the Jews (ver. 57), it claims for the historical person Jesus a prehistorical preexistence without any beginning, and so even the unbelieving Jews rightly grounded on it a complaint of blasphemy worthy of death (ver. 59). A word of the Baptist, also, John has already understood in the sense that it speaks of this prehistorical existence of Jesus (i. 15, 30: parós μov žv).

3 Scholten (pp. 102, 103) mistakes the significance of this expression, in that he refers it to His heavenly origin, and finds himself thereby compelled to explain the preceding ysyivnμas (xviii. 37), in contradiction to the entirely synonymous yvntñvai ris tòv xóoμov (xvi. 21), of a being born spiritually of God. That the analogous ἀποστέλλειν εἰς τὸν κόσμον (xvii. 18) is characterized by the parallel sending out of the disciples as a mission to the world entrusted to Him, he admits, p. 101; but then x. 36 must also be so understood, where, likewise, the sending of other messengers of God stands parallel; and if, iii. 17, the sending