3<* Knowling, The Testimony of St. Paul to Christ, 1905, p. 314, thinks the epithet here means frankly " sinlessness " (cf. Plummer in loc). Perhaps, however, while this implication of "holiness" cannot be excluded, it is going too far to find it prominent here.
3^ Cf. Plummer in loc: "The reference is to the relation to God rather than to the office of the Messiah. The emphatic word is ul6<;.^
32 Cf. Plummer in loc: " In the allusion to Daniel 7^^ they recognize a claim to divinity, and they translate 6 ulo? tou avOpuiizQu into 6 uld<i TOO 6eou. But it is not clear whether by the latter they mean the Messiah or something higher."
The Designations in Luke 117
difficult not to gather from them also that it gave expression to a higher Messianic conception than was conveyed by the simple * Christ' The brief conversa- tion recorded as taking place between our Lord and His judges seems to have, in fact, the precise purport that In accepting the designation of ' the Christ ' He does so in such a manner as to pour Into It a higher content than His judges were willing to accord to it — a higher content which they felt was more appro- priately expressed by another title, — the ' Son of God.' Whence it seems to follow that ' Son of God,' while a current Messianic designation, was a Messianic desig- nation charged with a higher connotation than merely that of the Messianic King — a conclusion we have al- ready drawn from 1^2,35 33
The higher connotation of Sonship to God Is, how- ever. In Luke, as in the other Synoptlsts, most clearly expressed by the undefined term * Son.'
*The Son* Luke, as well as the others, records the divine proclamation of the Sonship of Jesus from heaven, on the occasion as well of His baptism as of His transfiguration : " Thou art my Son, the Beloved; In thee I am well pleased" (3^^), "This Is my Son, the Chosen" (9^^) : and gives us the parable in which Jesus, with evident reference to Himself (20^^'^^), talks of the wicked husbandmen, to whom, after they had evil-entreated his servants, the lord of the vineyard sent In the end his * beloved son ' who was the heir. Luke also records a number of
3^ This seems to be the truth in the view of such commentators as Godet and Hahn, as over against those who, like Weiss, insist that ' Son of God ' is " only another Messianic designation." It is only another Messianic designation ; but a Messianic designation charged with a higher Messianic conception as its content.
ii8 The Designations of Our Lord
those pregnant sayings In which Jesus appeals to God as in a unique sense His ' Father ' : and he begins this series of pregnant sayings at so early a period as to make it clear to us that it represents a unique filial con- sciousness coeval with the dawn of our Lord's intelli- gence. Already in His earliest youth He could speak of being " in His Father's house " as His natural place of abode (2'^^),^* even as in later life He lived in con- stant communion with the Father ( iq-^--^'^^-^^ 2334,46^^ and equally naturally spoke of " the kingdom His Father had appointed Him" (22-^), and at the end spoke of His readiness to send forth " the promise of His Father" (24'*'^). The glory He expected to enter, it is to be observed, was no less His own than His Father's glory (22^). But above all, Luke records for us that remarkable passage (lO"^") in which our Lord declares the perfect mutual knowledge which ex- ists between the ' Father ' and ' Son,' by virtue of which the ' Son ' is constituted the sole adequate revealer of the ' Father ' — that ' Son ' to whom all things were declared by His ' Father ' : on the basis of which He announces that the things seen and heard in Him are the things which prophets and kings have desired to see and hear and have not. The phraseology in which Luke repeats this great saying differs slightly from that found in Matthew. But the two evangelists agree in all that is essential. In both it is unlimitedly " all things " that are said to have been delivered by the ' Father ' to the ' Son,' so that God is affirmed to hold back nothing, but to share all that He has with the
34 Cf. Plummet in loc: " It is notable that the first recorded words of the Messiah are an expression of His Divine Sonship as man; and His question implies that they knew it, or ought to know it."
The Designations in Luke 119
' Son.'^^ In both the intimate knowledge of the ' Father * and ' Son ' of each other is affirmed to be alike com- plete, exhaustive and unbrokenly continuous. In both the ' Son ' is represented to be the sole source of knowl- edge of God. But in Luke it is said, not that the ' Father ' and ' Son ' know each other, but that each knows " what the other is," that is to say, all that each Is. It would be difficult to frame a statement which could more sharply assert the essential deity of the ' Son.'3«