4 Religion and Theology. has nothing to do with intellectual skill in projecting definitions, and that it is at bottom a feeling of tranquil dependence upon some higher Powerh, you cannot altogether set aside the capital question which arises as to the nature of that Power upon which religion thus depends. Even if you should contend that feeling is the essential element in religion, still you cannot seriously maintain that the reality of that to which such feeling relates is altogether a matter of indifference i. For the adequate satisfaction of this religious feeling lies not in itself but in its object; and therefore it is impossible to represent religion as indifferent to the absolute truth of that object, and in a purely aesthetical spirit, concerned only with the beauty of the idea before it, even in a case where the reflective understanding may have condemned that idea as logically false. Religion, to support itself, must rest consciously on its object: the intellectual apprehension of that object as true is an integral element of religion. In other words, religion is practically inseparable from theology. The religious Mahommedan sees in Allah a being to whose absolute decrees he must implicitly resign himself; a theological dogma then is the basis of the specific Mahommedan form of religion. A child reads in the Sermon on the Mount that our Heavenly Father takes care of the sparrows, and of the lilies of the field, and the child prays to Him accordingly. The truth upon which the child rests is the dogma of the Divine Providence, which encourages trust, and warrants prayer, and lies at the root of the child's religion. In short, religion cannot exist without some view of its object, namely, God; but no sooner do you introduce any intellectual aspect whatever of God, nay, the bare idea that such a Being exists, than you have before you not merely a religion, but at least, in some sense, a theologyk hAbhängigkeitsgefühl.' Schleiermacher's account of religion has been widely adopted in our own day and country. But (1) it ignores the active side of true religion, (2) it loses sight of man's freedom no less than of God's, and (3) it may imply nothing better than a passive submission to the laws of the Universe, without any belief whatever as to their Author. i Dorner gives an account of this extreme theory as maintained by De Wette in his Religion und Theologie, 1815. De Wette appears to have followed out some hints of Herder's, while applying Jacobi's doctrine of feeling, as 'the immediate perception of the Divine,' and the substitute for the practical reason, to theology. Cf. Dorner, Person Christi, Zw. Th. p. 996, sqq. St. Matt. vi. 25-30. * Religion includes in its complete idea the knowledge and the worship Place of Christ in His own doctrine. 5 Had our Lord revealed no one truth except the Parental character of God, while at the same time He insisted upon a certain morality and posture of the soul as proper to man's reception of this revelation, He would have been the Author of a theology as well as of a religion. In point of fact, besides teaching various truths concerning God, which were unknown before, or at most only guessed at, He did that which in a merely human teacher of high purpose would have been morally intolerable. He drew the eyes of men towards Himself. He claimed to be something more than the Founder of a new religious spirit, or than the authoritative promulgator of a higher truth than men had yet known. He taught true religion. indeed as no man had yet taught it, but He bent the religious spirit which He had summoned into life to do homage to Himself, as being its lawful and adequate Object. He taught ( the highest theology, but He also placed Himself at the very centre of His doctrine, and He announced Himself as sharing the very throne of that God Whom He so clearly unveiled. If He was the organ and author of a new and final revelation, He also claimed to be the very substance and material of His own message; His most startling revelation was Himself. These are statements which will be justified, it is hoped, hereafter; and, if some later portions of our subject are for a moment anticipated, it is only that we may note the true and extreme significance of our Lord's question in the text. But let us also ask ourselves what would be the duty of a merely human teacher of the highest moral aim, entrusted with a great spiritual mission and lesson for the benefit of mankind? The example of St. John Baptist is an answer to this enquiry. Such a teacher would represent himself as a mere 'voice' crying aloud in the moral wilderness around him, and anxious, beyond aught else, to shroud his own insignificant person beneath the majesty of his message. Not to do this would be to proclaim his own of God. (S. Aug. de Util. Cred. c. 12. n. 27.) Cicero gives the limited sense which Pagan Rome attached to the word: 'Qui omnia quæ ad cultum deorum pertinerent, diligenter retractarent et tanquam relegerent, sunt dicti religiosi, ex relegendo.' (De Nat. Deorum, ii. 28.) Lactantius gives the Christian form of the idea, whatever may be thought of his etymology: 'Vinculo pietatis obstricti Deo, et religati sumus, unde ipsa religio nomen accepit. (Inst. Div. iv. 24.) Religion is the bond between God and man's whole nature: in God the heart finds its happiness, the reason its rule of truth, the will its freedom. 1 See Lecture IV. moral degradation; it would be a public confession that he could only regard a great spiritual work for others as furnishing an opportunity for adding to his own social capital, or to his official reputation. When then Jesus Christ so urgently draws the attention of men to His Personal Self, He places us in a dilemma. We must either say that He was unworthy of His own words in the Sermon on the Mount m, or we must confess that He has some right, and is under the pressure of some necessity, to do that which would be morally insupportable in a merely human teacher. Now if this right and necessity exist, it follows that when our Lord bids us to consider His Personal rank in the hierarchy of beings, He challenges an answer. Remark moreover that in the popular sense of the term the answer is not less a theological answer if it be that of the Ebionitic heresy than if it be the language of the Nicene Creed. The Christology of the Church is in reality an integral part of its theology; and Jesus Christ raises the central question of Christian theology when He asks, 'Whom do men say that I the Son of Man am?' It may be urged that our Lord is inviting attention, not to His essential Personality, but to His assumed office as the Jewish Messiah; that He is, in fact, asking for a confession of His Messiahship. Now observe the exact form of our Lord's question, as given in St. Matthew's Gospel; which, as Olshausen has remarked, is manifestly here the leading narrative: Whom do men say that I the Son of Man am? This question involves an assertion, namely, that the Speaker is the Son of Man. What did He mean by that designation? It is important to remember that with two exceptions" the title is only applied to our Lord in the New Testament by His own lips. It was His self-chosen Name: why did He choose it? First, then, it was in itself, to Jewish ears, a clear assertion of Messiahship. In the vision of Daniel 'One like unto the Son of Man had come with the clouds of heaven,.... and there was given Him dominion and glory and a kingdom.' This kingdom succeeded in the prophet's vision to four inhuman kingdoms, correspondent to the four typical beasts; it was the kingdom of a prince, human indeed, and yet from heaven. In consequence m Observe the principle involved in St. Matt. vi. 1-8. • IN 120-ŵs vids ávēpŵnov, LXX. Dan. vii. 13, sqq. The 'Son of Man.' 7 of this prophecy, the Son of Man' became a popular and official title of the Messiah. In the Book of Enoch, which is assigned with the highest probability by recent criticism to the second century before our era P, this and kindred titles are continually applied to Messiah. Our Lord in His prophecy over Jerusalem predicted that at the last day 'they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with power and great glory 4.' And when standing at the tribunal of Caiaphas He thus addressed His judges: I say unto you, hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.' In these passages there is absolutely no room for doubting either His distinct reference to the vision in Daniel, or the claim which the title Son of Man was intended to assert. As habitually used by our Lord, it was a constant setting forth of His Messianic dignity, in the face of the people of Israel s. Why indeed He chose this one, out of the many titles of Messiah, is a further question, a brief consideration of which lies in the track of the subject before us. It would not appear to be sufficient to reply that the title Son of Man is the most unpresuming, the least glorious of the titles of Messiah, and was adopted by our Lord as such. For if such a title claimed, as it did claim, Messiahship, the precise etymological force of the word could not neutralize its current and recognised value in the estimation of the Jewish people. The claim thus advanced was independent of any analysis of the exact sense of the title which asserted it. The title derived its popular force from the office with which it was associated. To adopt the title, however humble might be its strict and intrinsic meaning, was to claim the great office to which in the minds of men it was indissolubly attached. P Cf. Dillmann, Das Buch Enoch, 1853, p. 157. Dillmann places the book in the time of John Hyrcanus, B. C. 130-109, Dr. Pusey would assign to it a still earlier date. Cf. Daniel the Prophet, p. 390, note 2, and 391, note 3. a St. Matt. xxiv. 30. r Ibid. xxvi. 64. Den Namen des vids Toû àveрúnov gebraucht Jesus Selbst auf eine so eigenthümliche Weise von Sich, dass man nur annehmen kann, Er habe mit jenem Namen, wie man auch seine Bedeutung genauer bestimmen mag, irgend eine Beziehung auf die Messiasidee ausdrücken wollen.' Baur, Das Christenthum, p. 37. Cf. also the same author's Vorlesungen über Neutestamentliche Theologie, p. 76, sqq. In St. Matt. x. 23, xiii. 37-41, the official force of the title is obvious. That it was a simple periphrasis for the personal pronoun, without any reference to the office or Person of the Speaker, is inconsistent with Acts vii. 56, and St. Matt. xvi. 13. 8 ་ The Son of Man. As it had been addressed to the prophet Ezekiel', the title Son of Man seemed to contrast the frail and shortlived life of men with the boundless strength and the eternal years of the Infinite GOD. And as applied to Himself by Jesus, it doubtless expresses a real Humanity, a perfect and penetrating community of nature and feeling with the lot of human kind. Thus, when our Lord says that authority was given Him to execute judgment because He is the Son of Man, it is plain that the point of the reason lies, not in His being Messiah, but in His being Human. He displays a genuine Humanity which could deem nothing human strange, and could be touched with a feeling of the infirmities of the race which He was to judge". But the title Son of Man means more than this in its application to our Lord. It does not merely assert His real incorporation with our kind; it exalts Him indefinitely above us all as the representative, the ideal, the pattern Man. He is, in a special sense, the Son of Mankind, the genuine offspring of the race. His is the Human Life which does justice to the idea of Humanity. All human history tends to Him or radiates from Him. He is the point in which humanity finds its unity; as St. Irenæus says, He recapitulates' ity. He closes the earlier history of our race; He inaugurates its future. Nothing local, transient, individualizing, national, sectarian, dwarfs the proportions of His world-embracing Character; He rises above the parentage, the blood, the narrow horizon which bounded, as it seemed, His Human Life; He is the Archetypal Man in Whose presence distinctions of race, intervals of ages, types of civilization, degrees of mental culture are as nothing. This sense of the title seems to be implied in such passages as that in which He contrasts the foxes which have holes, and the birds of the air which have nests,' with 'the Son of Man Who hath not where to lay His Head".' It is not the official Messiah, as i.e. mortal.' (Cf. Gesen, in voc. nine times in Ezekiel. Compare Num. xxiii. this sense it occurs frequently in the plural. it refers, at least ultimately, to our Lord. u St. John v. 27; Heb. iv. 15. 18.) It is so used eighty19; Job xxv. 6, xxxv. 8. In In Ps. viii. 4, 5 and lxxx. 17 Urbild der Menscheit.' Neander, Das Leben Jesu Christi, p. 130, sqq. Mr. Keble draws out the remedial force of the title as signifying that Jesus was the very seed of the woman, the Second Adam promised to undo what the first had done.' Eucharistical Adoration, pp. 31-33. y Adv. Hær. III. 18. 1. Longam hominum expositionem in Se Ipso recapitulavit, in compendio nobis salutem præstans.' 2 St. Matt. viii. 20; St. Luke ix. 58. |