of God and of Christ quite close to each other (comp. I. vi. 15).3 (c) With the exception of the terms, already explained note b, designating the divine glory of the exalted Christ who is to appear again, one searches in vain in our Epistles for dogmatic utterances about His person. On the contrary, in the designation of His coming into the world (I. i. 15), as an Epiphany analogous to His second coming (II. i. 10), the representation of Him as a pre-existent person has found its plastic expression. Of the facts of His historical life, His resurrection and descent from the seed of David (ii. 8) are connected in a way so aphoristic and complete, and introduced with the solemn μvnμóveve, that this must already have been a stereotyped form, by which the Church made good her faith in the Messiahship of Jesus. In the passage I. iii. 16, we 3 In some passages, as II. ii. 7, 14, iii. 11, iv. 17, one may doubt whether ¿ xúpsos is meant for God or Christ; but in i. 16, 18, ii. 19, 22, 24, iv. 8, 14, 18, 22, it stands quite certainly for Christ, but only in the Second Epistle to Timothy. On the other hand, He is called, I. i. 14, II. i. 8: ò xúpios àμwv; I. vi. 3, 14 : ὁ κύριος ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦς Χριστός, and I. i. 2, 12, II. i. 2: Χριστὸς Ἰησοῦς ὁ κύριος ἡμῶν; the formula κύριος Ἰησοῦς Χριστός occurs only five times in very doubtful readings. Generally, the names given to Christ show some variations from § 76, a; § 100, c, footnote 8. The simple name of Jesus has quite disappeared. 'Ingous Xporós is certain only in II. ii. 8, Tit. ii. 13, iii. 6, and with ὁ κύριος ἡμῶν it occurs in the passages above cited. The simple ὁ Χριστός also occurs only I. v. 11; on the contrary, Xprès 'Indous seems to be the most common. It is quite certain I. i. 15, ii. 5, iv. 6, and always (nine times) in the formula i Xpir 'Insou; it may be also, in the eleven passages where the codices waver between Ἰησοῦς Χριστός and Χριστὸς Ἰησοῦς, be the reading most commonly to be preferred. Here, also, the one God is opposed to Christ, not, to be sure, as the one Lord, as § 76, c, § 100, c, footnote 8, but as the Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus (I. ii. 5), which, in fact, comes to the same thing as Christ as Lord is the Redeemer. It has to be therewith considered, that the unity of the Godhead is not made prominent in opposition to the Godhead of Christ, but to account for His uniform universal purpose of love (ver. 4, and therewith § 109, a). 4 It is not, however, to be overlooked that it is just these moments by which Paul, according to Rom. i. 3, 4 (comp. § 77, a, b), proves the divine Sonship of Christ, and that the passages depend directly on the Pauline Gospel. The beautiful confession which Timothy had made before many witnesses (I. vi. 12) can scarcely have contained anything essentially different (comp. the Pauline iusλoyia, Rom. x. 9; Phil. ii. 11); and when it is said, ver. 13, that Christ witnessed the same before Pontius Pilate, one must therefore think of His confession of His Messiahship (Mark xv. 2). Also this reference to a historical fact in the life of Christ occurring in solemn adjurations, points to a form already fixed, by which the Church justified her fundamental confession by an appeal to the first confessors of it. have undoubtedly, as the unrelated beginning (read os instead of eós), and the triple pairs of short homophonous parallel sentences show, a fragment of an old church hymn, by which the Church expresses her confession of Christ, and perhaps the ὁμολογουμένως is expressly to refer to it. Εφανερώθη ἐν σapií, quite as the idea èπiþávera, points to a higher superhuman subject, who previously did not exist ev σapxí, and just became visible in consequence of His coming év σapki. The contrast of ἐν σαρκί and ἐν πνεύματι is most naturally explained from Rom. i. 3, 4 (§ 78, d), according to which, further, Sixalon points to the justification of His claim to Messiahship given Him by the resurrection. By ὤφθη ἀγγέλοις one most naturally thinks of His entrance into the heavenly world when He appeared to the angels as the Exalted One, while He was proclaimed as such to the nations on the earth (exηpúxon ἐν ἔθνεσιν). To the faith which He found in the world (ἐπιστεύθη ἐν κόσμῳ), corresponds conversely the glorification given Him in the divine doğa (§ 76, d), after He was exalted to heaven (åveλýp0n év dókn). Here, therefore, is the Church's confession, in which is embodied the sum of the mystery of salvation, as that confession grew from Pauline preaching. (d) With reference to Christ as our Lord and Mediator, God, in the opening words of our Epistles, in the ordinary apostolic way (§ 77, b), is designated as eòs waτńρ (I. i. 2; II. i. 2; Tit. i. 4). He is the living God (I. iii. 15, iv. 10; comp. § 65, d), and the source of all life (vi. 13; comp. Rom. iv. 17), the ȧfeudns Ocós (Tit. i. 2; comp. Rom. iii. 4), and the fountain of all truth (Tit. ii. 10), the blessed God (I. vi. 15), and the fountain of all blessedness (i. 11; comp. Tit. ii. 13). The great doxologies, I. i. 17, vi. 15, 16, are foreign to the Pauline methods of teaching elsewhere. God is here praised as the μόνος Θεός οι δυνάστης (comp. Rom. xvi. 27: μόνῳ σοφῷ Θεῷ), as the βασιλεὺς τῶν αἰώνων οι βασιλεὺς τῶν βασιλευόντων καὶ κύριος τῶν κυριευόντων, as the ἄφθαρτος (comp. Rom. i. 23), or He who alone possesses immortality, as the ȧóparos (comp. Rom. i. 20), or as He who dwells in unapproachable light, and can hence be seen by none. While, therefore, the individual expressions correspond to Pauline statements about God, yet their doxological construction and the correspondence of the main thought in both doxologies point to a confession of the matchless glory of God, that has come to be in permanent liturgical use in the Church. It corresponds to the whole tendency of our Epistles, as these strive to fix the apostolic doctrine, as the Church's possession, that the individual form of doctrine which has been nowhere more sharply expressed than in Paulinism, should here pass into the general form of Church confession. PART FOURTH. THE EARLY APOSTOLIC DOCTRINAL SYSTEM IN THE POST-PAULINE PERIOD. INTRODUCTION. § 111. The Epistle to the Hebrews. THE Epistle to the Hebrews demands and justifies what had become unavoidable in view of the threatened apostasythe complete separation of the Judaeo-Christian mother Church from national and ecclesiastical fellowship with Judaism (a). The older conception, which ascribed it to a disciple of Paul, or saw in it the production of a phase of a later development of Paulinism, could not account for its peculiarities of teaching (b). The teaching of our Epistle as a more mature form of early apostolic Judaeo-Christianity in all its extent, was first set forth with full intelligence by Boehm (c). The Hellenistic author belongs to a tendency within Judaism, to which the most important point in the old covenant was the priestly institution for atonement, and his method of teaching is formally determined by his Alexandrian education (d). (a) The Epistle to the Hebrews, written no doubt shortly after the middle of the seventh decade, and whose readers are certainly to be found neither in Alexandria nor in Rome, but in Palestine, and specially in Jerusalem, transplants us into the circumstances of the mother Church as she was developing after the passing away of the first generation of Christians, who had seen the Lord Himself. The apostles were already dead, or had left Jerusalem. James, the Lord's brother, had suffered a martyr's death. The Church as yet held fast to the 150 law of the fathers, as the first apostles had themselves done once, and as is evidently presupposed in the apostolic council (§ 43, d). But the consciousness of the motives which had originally justified this firm retention of it, and which even Paul had acknowledged as such (§ 87, b), were fading away. The longer, the more must the prizing of the legal institutions, in particular, the means of salvation given in them, lead to the depreciation and denial of those given in Christianity, especially if the supposition, on which such could alone be offered, became doubtful. But faith in the Messiahship of Jesus, which by the hope of His advent immediately at hand had for the first time removed the contradiction between the Messianic times promised by the prophets and the appearance of the Promised One in the historical present, must have become wavering, when, with the unexpectedly long delay of the advent, the hope of the commencement of the final consummation and the fulfilment of the promises grew faint. Meanwhile Zealotism within unbelieving Judaism, which was getting more hopelessly hardened, was increasing, and the persecution of the Jews who believed on Messiah was multiplying from their side. The bond of national fellowship, which was once maintained with a view to work for Israel's conversion now become without a purpose, could be maintained now only at the cost of the denial of the Christian faith, which did not appear to fulfil to its confessors the expectations raised in them. In such circumstances, there began to gain ground increasingly a critical tendency to fall away from Christianity, to a complete relapse to Judaism. Only a decided separation of the Judaeo-Christian mother Church from her former national and religious fellowship with the Jewish Church, as it had already completely taken place by the Jewish Christians in the missionary regions of Paul (comp. § 105, d), could prevent this threatened danger. While the Epistle to the Hebrews summons to this decisive step, it contains also an exposition of the motives which must justify and compel Jewish Christianity finally to break with its past. (b) The critical dispute as to the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews has led, in the first place, to a more exact examination of its special teaching. In general, the view |