THE DESIGNATIONS OF OUR LORD IN JOHN AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE
It may certainly be said that, on this showing, little is left by the Synoptists to John, In the way of ascrib- Same Chris- ^"S essential deity to Jesus. This is tology in Syn- true enough. Those who are familiar optics and John -^ith the recent literature of the subject will not need to be told that the contradiction which used to be instituted between the Synoptists and John in this matter tends of late to be abandoned. Not only does Dr. Sanday, for example, speak of the teaching of John as only " a series of variations upon the one theme which has Its classical expression " in the cul- minating chrlstologlcal passage of the Synoptists,* and remark that It Is In Matthew rather than in John that the " only approach to a formulation of the doc- trine of the Trinity" occurs In the Gospels;^ but, as wc have already seen, purely naturalistic critics like Bousset are emphatic In asserting that between the Synoptists and John, In the matter of the ascription of deity to our Lord, there exists only a difference of degree, not of kind." Whatever else we must say of
1 Criticism of N. T.: St. Margaret's Lectures, 1902, by a company of scholars, p. 17. Cf. his early work, The Authorship and Historical Character of the Fourth Gospel, 1873, p. 109, where he speaks of Mt II-'' as containing "the essence of the Johannine theology," and as leaving " nothing in the Johannine christology " which it does not cover.
- Criticism of the Fourth Gospel, 1905, pp. 2x8-19.
3 Was ivissen ivir von Jesus? 1904, p. 54: cf. Schmiedel, Encyclo- pedia Biblica, 1872.
174
The Designations in John 175
Wilhelm Wrede's work on the Gospel of Mark, he has certainly rendered it impossible hereafter to appeal from the christology of John to that of the Synoptists.* Those who will not have a divine Christ must hence- forth seek their human Jesus outside the entire evan- gelical literature. It is not merely his own individual opinion, then, which Professor Shailer Mathews Is giving when he declares that " generally speaking, out- side the references to the early Messianic career of Jesus, the Fourth Gospel contains nothing from Jesus that is new": and that, after all, the differences be- tween the Synoptists and John are " a question of de- gree rather than of sort of treatment."^ He might have omitted, indeed, the qualification with respect to the references to the early Messianic career of Jesus. We have already seen that to the Synoptists also Jesus was consciously the Messiah from the very Inception of His work; or rather, in their case, let us say, from the very beginning of His life. After all, It Is the Synoptists, not John, who tell us of the proclamation of the Messianic character of this Child before His birth: and it Is Luke, not John, who tells us that He was conscious of His unique relation to God as In, a very special sense His Father from His earliest child- hood.
The Synoptists and John certainly stand on the same level In their estimate of the person of Jesus, and differ
In their presentation of It only In the Differences in , ^. r • ^t ^1 ^1 •
Method relative emphasis they throw on this or
the other aspect of it. In the Synoptists it Is the Messlahship of Jesus which receives the pri- mary emphasis, while His proper deity Is Introduced
* Das Messiasgeheimnis, etc.
^ The Messianic Hope in the N. T., p. 61.
176 The Designations of Our Lord