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then, should we hesitate to subscribe the word of a scholar,' who has devoted his time and zeal to a most thorough examination of this subject: "The old church deserves with the fullest right the name of a witness to the human but not less to the divine nature of Christ, whether we look at its literature or its liturgy, its festivals or its art. Notwithstanding all mutual difference, the oriental and occidental churches all agree in that conviction of the Godhead of Christ which was the apostolic faith, and is ours still!"

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But even

III. Which was the apostolic faith. . . .?" this remains the question," somebody might infer. Already the oldest church has gone beyond the simplicity of the original apostolic instruction. You allude to writings as the Acts and the Epistles. But you know, no doubt, nearly all of these are spurious." "Nearly all?" Well, let it be so. For a moment we will take this as granted. But even according to the most negative critics, some monuments at least of the apostolic literature are of undoubted authenticity. Now, then, let us look at these alone, in order to see what they have to tell us about the genuine apostolic testimony concerning the Son of Man.

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Designedly it is the last Bible-book to which we turn first our attention. The boldest criticism itself never doubted the apostolic origin of John's Revelation, and has even fixed its date at early as the year 68 or 69 of our era. Leaving here aside the question whether this supposition be right, we only wish to ask now: In what light did John place the personality of Christ? In the very introduction of this book, Christ is called the Faithful Witness, the First-begotten of the dead, the Prince of the kings of the earth." These names already would have more than a scent of idolatry, if the apostle-prophet had acknowledged in the Lord nothing but an eminent man. No wonder, indeed, that theologians of the most "extreme left" were forced to avow that John here looks at the Master "in his exalted state," in the glorified light of Israel's crowned Messiah and King; but is it possible in truth to keep us on this standpoint, when we consider and join the different features of the

'Dorner, a. a. O. I. s. 295.

? Rev. I: 5, 6.

image of Christ as depicted in the book of Revelation? Is it nothing, perhaps, that Christ is announced with quite the same names, which are commonly used of God, that he is called

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Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last," and elsewhere" the Amen, the Beginning of the Creation of God; the Faithful and True; the Word of God; King of kings, and Lord of lords''? Is it nothing, when he speaks of his God in a quite special sense, when he receives and accepts in the temple of heaven the incense of an adoration, which is expressly denied in the same book to the highest of angels? No wonder, indeed, that a more impartial adherent of modern views was urged to the avowal, "Certainly we must acknowledge that in the Revelation Christ is elevated equally to God Himself." In our days it has become a kind of fashion to sustain that the supernaturalistic representation of Christ is the result of a later theology; but how, then, these words of John, written thirty or forty years after the death of Jesus? Is it likely that a strict monotheistic Israelite, however zealous of his Master's honor, could have used such expressions, if he did not really consider him as participating the divine nature and majesty? And how, besides, could he reasonably expect for these expressions a sympathetic echo from his first readers, the Christians in Asia Minor, if he had not been conscious that his conviction was in the main points theirs too? So it is quite clearly evinced what the general belief of the Christians concerning the person of Christ was in those early days.

There is more the same faith in the same days of primæval Christianity may be traced not only among the Asiatic Christians, but even among the Jewish, of whom it is generally asserted that they stood, on the whole, on a lower, more Ebionistic stand-point. For this fact we have a witness in the Epistle to the Hebrews, evidently written before the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple. The author of this letter not only renders homage to Christ as "the brightness of God's glory and

Rev. 22:13; comp. 1: 8.

3 Rev. 3: 2, 12; 5:8; 19: 10; 22: 8, 9.

Rev. 3 12-19, 11-16.

E. Reuss., " Hist. de la Theol. Chrét.," i. p. 346; 'il faut reconnaître sans hésiter que Christ dans l'Apocalypse est élevé au niveau de Dieu."

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the express image of his person, but urges, from the beginning to the end, as emphatically as can be done, the divine nature of Christ. And this especially must not be overlooked -nowhere it appears that there exists any discrepancy of opinion between him and his readers. He does not argue his views, but merely reminds others that which they might possibly forget, though they had known and confessed it before. According to this document, the confession of Christ's divine nature must have belonged to those "principles of the doctrine of Christ" (Heb. 6:1), which. were accepted by the Jewish Christians, and can therefore not have been a produce of the second century, as modern naturalism affirms ever and again. If we do not urge this point any more, if we leave the Epistles of Peter, John, and Jude altogether aside, it is because we now wish to use merely those weapons the validity of which is not even contested by modern criticism. These already, few as they may seem, are utterly sufficient victoriously to withstand the fiercest assaults of our antagonists, even when we restrict ourselves to the undeniably authentic words of the Apostle Paul.

It is generally known that the Tübingen school, amongst the thirteen epistles ascribed to Paul, only acknowledges four as really authentic: those to the Romans, Corinthians, and Galatians. The adherents of this school take it for granted that those letters have been written between 55 and 58 A.D., about twelve years before the Revelation of John. Some of the Tübingen scholars, by more recent investigations, have been brought to acknowledge the authenticity of two other Epistles, that to the Philippians, and the First to the Thessalonians ; very likely they will go further back, when once the fever of negation has somewhat remitted. But let us rest contented with the first mentioned four. We do not want any more. Being rich enough by what must be conceded to us, we can afford to be liberal. From this quadrilateral of strongholds, no enemy will be able to dislodge us. We take first the oldest of the four apostolic letters, that to the Galatians, and behold! the very first word is, "Paul, an apostle not of men, neither by men, but by Jesus Christ." So he calls himself in the first verse of

1 Heb. I : 3.

2

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the Epistle to the Romans, "a servant of Jesus Christ," and never certainly Paul would have called himself a servant of any man, even if this had been a Moses or a Socrates. But we would have to peruse the whole of these four writings, were we to indicate all the expressions by which an answer is given to the question, how Paul, the indubitably genuine Paul, the man of philosophic mind and highly cultivated standing, judges on the nature of Christ. To set forth one thing at least the apostle evidently discerns in the Lord a higher, divine nature, differing from that which he has in common with all other men,' and he honors him as God's own Son, which God sent into the world, in the likeness of sinful flesh." To Paul, Jesus Christ was most truly a man, but descended from heaven, and now participating in the majesty and glory of God, whose names and properties he often indiscriminately ascribed to Christ. According to the apostle, Jesus Christ is the living Divine Being, who still sees and hears us, who is willing and mighty to succor his followers; he invocates him in need,' and shows thereby that he thinks him omnipresent and almighty. And this man, who on every page of his writings glorifies Christ equally with God himself, can certainly not be reckoned among either impostors or fanatics. Every new research of his life and work makes this only the more apparent : here we have a personality, a conversion, a devotion never to be explained without a supernatural agency and influence. This to every impartial eye is as clear as daylight itself; and Paul's whole life will remain forever an unexplained enigma, if indeed of Jesus, the great David's Son, nothing else could be said than has been said of the patriarch David himself, "that he is both dead and buried, and his sepulchre is with us unto this day." Paul's whole life is an undeniable argument for the Divine nature and exaltation of the Lord, a witness far easier ignored than refuted. Before taking leave of the great apostle, we must fix the attention still on two more special points.

We allude first to the strong and stringent proof of the

Rom. I: 3, 4.

* Rom. 8: 3, 4-32; 1 Cor. 13: 47. Compare my "Christology of the New Testament," translated by Prof. G. E. Day, 1871, p. 182.

32 Cor. 12: 8, 9; comp. 1 Thess. 3: II.

4 Acts 2: 29.

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Lord's bodily resurrection on the third day the apostle has given in that most remarkable and indestructible fifteenth chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians, a testimony of the higher value, when we consider how that which was written there about the year 57 had been already personally preached by him some years before. "Delivering," according to his own word, unto those of Corinth that which he also had received" himself earlier still (1 Cor. 15: 3), so that we see ourselves brought back here to a period only a very few years posterior to the memorable event itself, about which even unbelief has been compelled to confess, "nothing but the miracle of resurrection could overcome a doubt, which would have doomed faith itself to the night of an eternal death."'' Indeed, if the subject were not too serious, it would be almost amusing to notice the skilful but neck-breaking performances by which so-called criticism and text explication—this last often more implicating than explicating have tried to escape the pinch of pressing arguments, and could merely succeed in proving the impotence of their own despondency.

In the second place, I must refer to the surprising light Paul's well-known representation of Christ as the "second Adam” throws on the relation of the miraculous conception and supernatural birth of our Lord.' It is often asserted that Paul seems to know nothing about that wonderful event, mentioned by Matthew and Luke alone. Leaving aside here that which could fitly be opposed to this assertion, I now only indicate the logical consequence resulting from the apostle's often repeated antithesis between Adam and Christ. According to Paul's doctrine, sin and death come from the first Adam to all his descendants without any exception. How now can He, from whom flows a quite opposite stream of life and salvation, possibly have sprung from the first by mere natural derivation; must He not necessarily be regarded as a new sprig, grafted by a supernatural act and fact on the old unsound stem?

I mean now to have sufficiently demonstrated that the superhuman character in Jesus Christ has not merely been ex

'F. C. Baur," Das Christenth. und die Chr. Kirche der drei esten Jahrhund.," 1860, s. 39.

Rom. 5: 12-21; comp. 1 Cor. 15: 21, 22.

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