ARTICLE III.

STUDIES IN CHRISTOLOGY.1

BY PROFESSOR FRANK HUgh foster, d. d.

THE Conception which Jesus at first presents of the kingdom of God, says Schultz, is an eschatological one. It is a kingdom in which the idea of ethical perfection is to be realized at some distant future time. It naturally follows that the first conception of the deity of Christ is also eschatological, that is, that it is bestowed upon him who proclaims the approach of the kingdom of God by a divine and miraculous act. But this is not the distinctive quality of the deity of Christ, which consists rather in its ethical element. The kingdom of God is itself an ethical magnitude, a society brought into existence and maintained by the preva lence among its members of the principle of love. Such love springs up in consequence of the revelation of the love of God to men through Jesus Christ, and he, as the perfect revelation of God to men, is properly honored by them as God; and this is the proper foundation of their belief in the deity of Christ. "Even when upon earth, he is of the divine species. He reveals the true will of God by opening up his own personality. He does not proclaim the kingdom of God and the conditions of entering into it as one of the scribes, nor with theoretical instruction, but as one having authority,' and he sets his own authority, 'But I say unto you,' over against those of old time and their law. He is conscious that he is led by the Spirit of God not simply in single discourses and single acts done in the discharge of his 1 Continued from page 265 of April number.

calling, but in his entire calling as such. He is conscious of identity with the kingdom of God. He has the power to forgive sins. He is greater than Solomon, or Jonah, or the sanctuary of the ancient covenant. The angels are his servants because they serve the purpose of God. . . . Therefore the worth of the life proceeding from him has the same relation to that of common men in the world as the eternal and divine to the temporal and carnal. In this consciousness of his calling Jesus, with whatever humility he expressed himself about himself as an historical personality, was completely certain of the divine dignity of his person in its divinely prescribed task. He knows that he will be revealed as the goal of the divine government of the world, as the judge and lord of the world, as the Son of God and the heir of the world." Such is the line of argument by which Schultz would establish the deity of Christ and by which he necessarily defines at the same time what he understands by that deity. He soon goes on to say: "But neither in this fulfillment of his vocation nor in the witness which Jesus gives to the deity of the Christ is there any occasion given for conceiving the personality of Christ, on its phenomenal side, as exalted above the measure of the individual life of a man upon the earth. The motives which fill Christ, the purposes which his life serves, are supernatural, are the divine motives, the purposes of God for men without distinction in their earthly and natural conditions. But the human life which these motives and purposes fill, can quite as well be a human life in its nature as the life of the prophets could continue a human life even in the moments in which they, led by the Spirit of God, became revelations of God." Jesus came into being like other men. He did not maintain “in his genuine statements that a divine substance or even a preëxistent divine personality was united in him with his human personality." In plain English, Christ was simply a man filled with the divine love.

Of course, any one can make such statements, and it is in itself of little importance whether he does or does not. All that Schultz has given us to this point is simply Ritschlianism, and falls under the same criticism with that. If there is any importance in such views at all, it lies in the arguments by which they are supported. Turning, then, to the arguments by which Schultz sustains his positions, we select his treatment of the teaching of the Apostle Paul as a good and sufficient example of them all. Paul's doctrine of Christ begins, according to Schultz, in the interest which attaches to the risen and glorified Christ, upon whom he believes God to have "conferred" deity. It is not merely power which has thus been conferred, though Paul thinks much upon that and rejoices in it. "He exults in the glory of him who is 'God over all.' He prays to him as his Lord, and comforts himself that in his own weakness the power of Christ is made perfect. . Yet the true significance of the risen Lord to Paul is this, that from him there stream forth into his church the pure and perfect motives of the divine life." Hence, "the spiritual man, the Lord from heaven, is not a preëxistent ideal man, but the glorified one whom faith recognizes as a member of the spiritual heavenly world, and whose revelations the church receives from heaven." Paul, however, does not understand the deity of Christ in any way which will remove or weaken the distinction of the person of Christ from the person of God.

But there is more in Paul's view of the deity of Christ, according to Schultz, than simply this. "The work of Christ in which Paul believes, demands a deity of Christ which does not merely proceed from this work, but goes before it and makes it possible. The 'flesh' would have excited sin in Christ as well as in other men. if there had not been more in him than in the creatures of this world, if the 'flesh of sin' had been, not a mere imitation, that is, a form of being imparted to him for his work, but the appropriate

expression of his essence, if the motives of the divine life had not been those which determined his personal life." "Paul, therefore, believes in a deity of the earthly Christ.

But this belief is not the result of theological speculation, but the simple expression of the experience of that which the church receives from Christ. There is not the slightest suggestion in Paul that he conceived of two natures united with one another in this personality of Christ, or two substances, or a personality and a nature. The simple point with him is a double mode of conceiving this single personality of Christ. . . . The eye of knowledge sees an earthly personality like that of every other man. The eye of faith sees the divine motives and forces, the surrender of the whole life to the highest divine purpose, and recognizes that the earthly existence for this personality is one in itself inappropriate (though necessary for its aims), a transitory, phenomenal form, that the glorious and dominant position as the goal and condition of the world is the only condition which corresponds to its worth. . . . There is, therefore, not a divine and a human nature in Christ, but a human personality with divine contents, with divine motives and aims. . . . The real contents of the faith of Paul in the deity of Christ is doubtless exhausted in these features."

Schultz is, however, far from teaching that Paul has nothing more to say upon the subject of Christology. But this additional matter, over and above the "real contents of his faith," is "only an auxiliary conception, a lemma (Hilfsbegriff, Hilfssatz), introduced from the metaphysical assumptions and theological culture of the apostle to give the necessary theological consistency to his belief in the divine contents of this personality." The "lemma" thus introduced is, in brief, the preëxistence of Christ. Schultz acknowledges in the clearest terms that Paul Christ's preëxistence. He quotes as evidence of this the

believes in

texts: Gal. iv. 4; Rom. viii. 3; 1 Cor. viii. 6; x. 4, 9; 2 Cor. viii. 9; Col. i. 10-16; Phil. ii. 6; etc. True, Schultz sees in nearly all these passages evidences that the preëxistence of Christ is for the Apostle nothing but the expression of the fact that in Christ is the perfect revelation of the eternal divine thought, and thus the "goal of the world," etc.; but however derived, the conception that Christ really preëxisted is undeniably the conception of Paul.

We may well pause in our review of Schultz with this strange result. Paul sees a divinity in even the earthly form of Christ, which makes him more than a man. He himself says that this divine Christ is a preëxistent being come in the likeness of sinful flesh. But Schultz, using Ritschl's suggestion, calls this a "lemma," and says that what he meant was that there was no divinity there except divine motives. Again, how utterly incompetent to explain confessed facts the Ritschlian theory exhibits itself! It not only fails to build a bridge over which other thinkers may pass to the affirmation which it devoutly desires to make, that Christ is God, but when that bridge is furnished ready built by the Apostle, it is prevented by its theories from passing over, or suffering others, even the Apostle himself, to pass over! The preexistence of Christ would have no worth for us, is therefore no theological truth, and therefore is to be excluded from the scope of theological truths!

Thus far our criticism touches Schultz no more than it does Ritschl. We have simply seen more clearly into Ritschl's meaning by the fuller presentation of the theory we have gained from his pupil. Nor should we gain much by a more extended quotation from Schultz's work. The essential features of his scheme are all before us, and the main fallacy also. This is the entire independence of scriptural support which his work betrays. The teachings of Paul upon the preexistence of Christ are frankly acknowledged, and then quietly waved aside. They are all "theory," taken