been rashly inferred that Jesus Christ is here by impli- cation affirmed not to be God; at least not in the highest and truest sense. This, however, it is obvious, would throw the declarations in this Gospel of the relation of Christ to the Father into the greatest con- fusion. He who has explained that He and the Father are One (10^^, cf. 5^^), and that to have seen Him is to have seen the Father (14^, cf. 8^^ 10^^ 14^)) and who commended the confession of Him by His fol- lower as "his Lord and his God" (20^^), can scarcely be supposed here so pointedly to deny Himself inci- dentally to be the God He so frequently affirms Himself to be. It is quite clear, indeed, that the relation of our Lord to the Father is not represented by John, whether in his own person or in the words he reports from the lips of Jesus, as a perfectly simple one. Its complexity is already apparent In the puzzling opening words of the Gospel, where the evangelist is not content to de- clare Him merely to have been from eternity with God, or merely to have been from eternity God, but unites the two statements as if only by their union could the whole truth be enunciated. We may legitimately say
edge," says Meyer with his usual point, " are stated with the precision of a Confession — a summary of faith in opposition to the polytheistic T, p.6vov aXrjd. deov (cf. s**, Deut 6*, i Cor 8^, i Thess i^), and the Jeivish xoffjio'i, the latter of which rejected Jesus as Messiah, although in Him there was given, notwithstanding, the very highest revelation of the only true God." Our Lord, in other words, is not contrasting God and Jesus Christ ontologically, but declaring that to have eternal life we must know not only the only true God — for there is but one true God; but also the only Mediator between God and man, Jesus Christ — who, however, may Himself very well be, and in the teaching of our Lord is. Himself the true God. How He can be the true God and yet the sent of God raises the deeper questions of the Trinity and the Covenant and the Two Natures which are alluded to in the text.
1 88 The Designations of Our Lord
that this double way of speaking of Christ confuses us; and that we cannot fully understand it. We are not entitled to say that it is the index of confusion in the mind of the evangelist — or in the mind of the greater Speaker whose words the evangelist reports, — unless it is perfectly clear that there is no conception of the relation to the Father of Him whom the evan- gelist calls by predilection the ' Son of God,' even the ' Only begotten Son ' or indeed ' God only begotten,' on the supposition of which as lying in his mind the double mode of speaking of Him which we find con- fusing may be reduced to a real harmony. And it Is undeniable that on the supposition of that conception which has come in the Church to be called the doctrine of the Trinity, — especially as supplemented by those other two conceptions known as the doctrines of the Two Natures of Christ and of the Eternal Covenant of Redemption, — as forming the background of the evangelist's varied modes of speaking of Christ, and of our Lord's own varied mode of speaking of Himself as reported by John, all appearance of disharmony be- tween these declarations disappears. To say this, how- ever, is to say that these great doctrines are taught by John and by our Lord as reported by Him : for surely there is no more effective way of teaching doctrines than always to speak on their presupposition, and in a manner which is confusing and apparently self-con- tradictory except they be presupposed. Whatever we may ourselves find of mystery in these doctrines. It Is only fair to recognize that they express part of the fundamental basis of the religious thought of the Gospel of John and of the great Teacher whose words that Gospel so richly reports to us.^**
i<* Cf. further below, on 2 Cor. i.?^* and on i Jno 520,
The Designat'wns in John 189