And if it must be allowed that the " real Jesus '* currently called Himself ' the Son of Man,' no doubt with full consciousness of Its impllca- And God tions, and asserted for Himself super- angelic dignity, it would seem mere hypercriticism which would deny to Him the great as- sertion of intercommunion with the Father made in Mt 11"^, Lk 10-^. On the general critical canon that sayings reported by both Matthew and Luke " are to be used with confidence as representing the thought of Jesus,"^° this passage must be accepted as an authorita- tive utterance of HIs.^^ But, in that case, the " real Jesus " must be credited with conceiving His relation to the Father less as that of a servant than as that of a fellow : as the ' Son ' He moves in the sphere of the divine life. And, this once allowed, what reason re- hand, thinks that " It must be admitted that this verse sounds much like a gloss or editorial comment"; and Dalman {Words), p. 194, that " the ending, ' nor the Son, but the Father only,' should be regarded as an accretion." Of course writers like Martineau {Seat of Authority in Religion, 590), and N, Schmidt {The Prophet of Nazareth, 147, 231) take fright at the language, which seems to them redolent of a later time; and thereby bear their unwilling witness to the implications of the passage. In refutation of Dalman see Sanday, Hastings' B. D., IV. 573, whose general remarks are quite convincing.
20 a. Shailer Mathews, p. 58. This is but to say — with the whole body of critics — that passages found in both Matthew and Luke belong to what Weiss calls " the Apostolic source," which contains the oldest (and most trustworthy) record of words of Jesus.
21 A strong defense of the genuineness of the passage is made by
170 The Designations of Our Lord
mains for denying to Him the culminating expression of His divine self-consciousness, the sublime utterance In which He gives the Son a share in the Divine Name itself (Mt 28^^) ? Of course it is denied to Him by the critics of the school we have been considering. But the denial Is In the circumstances purely arbitrary and creates a situation which leaves an important historical sequence unaccounted for. It Is undeniable, for ex- ample, that the trinitarlan mode of speech here illus- trated was current In the Church from Its earliest origin : it already appears in Paul's Epistles, for example, — especially, as a familiar and well-understood form of speech, in 2 Cor 13^*, which was written not more than twenty-five years after our Lord's death and antedates all our Gospels. This current form of speech among Christians of the first age finds Its complete account if the usage were rooted In utterances of our Lord, but it hangs inexplicably in the air without some such sup- position. The occurrence of the passage in Mt 28^^ in the records of our Lord's teaching Is thus too closely
Volkmar Fritzsche, Das Berufsbeivust. Jesu, pp. 32 seq. Harnack [Das Wesen des Christentums, p. 81) pronounces it authentic, and treats it as the most important and characteristic of the words of Jesus. Even Schmiedel does not venture to reject it: he only, by appealing to the " Western " text, attempts to reduce its meaning. The Abbe Loisy, however, {I'E'vangile et I'Egllse, 45; Autour tin petit Litre, 130), casts it out ; but on the express ground that the declaration is too high an one for Jesus to have made ; which is at least an admission that the words involve a claim to ontological Sonship. Prof. N. Schmidt, The Prophet of Nazareth, p. 152, considers "such an utterance out of har- mony with the admittedly genuine sayings of Jesus," and even "to cast an undeserved reflection upon His character." For " how can the gentle Teacher ... be supposed to have imagined Himself pos- sessed of all knowledge and regarded all other men as ignorant of God?" Certainly this is an unanswerable query if Jesus is to be con- ceived as thinking of Himself only as a man among other men: the
The Synoptic Jesus Primitive 171
linked to a historical situation to permit its displace- ment on the purely subjective grounds on which alone its genuineness can be assailed.^^
It would seem to be reasonably clear, therefore, that the attempt to penetrate behind the Synoptic tradition The Synoptic with a view to discovering a " real Jesus the Real Jesus," differing from the Synoptic Jesus Jesus as the natural differs from the
supernatural, has failed. The purely subjective grounds on which such an attempt must proceed in order to reach its goal, lays it open to the exaggeration which would eliminate the figure of Jesus from history alto- gether. From this exaggeration. It can save Itself only by Imposing arbitrary limitations upon the applica-