18 Cf. Sanday, Hastings' B. D., iv. 576 b.: "We may say with con- fidence that a sonship such as is described in the Fourth Gospel would carry with it this conclusion. How could any inferior being either enter so perfectly into the mind of the Father, or reflect it so perfectly to man? Of what created being could it be said, 'He that hath seen
The Designations in John 199
of the relation expressed by the term " only begotten Son" having been already existent before the giving: otherwise how is the greatness of the love expressed in the giving to be measured? Similarly in a passage like 3^'^ there seems an implication of the Sonship as underlying the mission : He was sent on this mission because He was Son, — He did not become Son by be- ing sent. In like manner the remarkable phrase " God only begotten " in Jno i*^ appears to be most readily explained by supposing that it was as God that He was the unique Son: and, if so, it seems easiest to under- stand " the glory of an Only Begotten of the Father," which men saw in the Incarnate Christ (i^*) as the glory brought with Him from heaven. In this case, it is obvious, John goes far toward outlining the foun- dations of the doctrine of the Trinity for us: and it is a mistake not to see in his doctrine of the Logos and of the Only Begotten God and of the Divine Son, the elements of that doctrine.
With this high doctrine of the divine Sonship In connection with Jesus the way Is prepared for the ex- press assertion that He is God. This, 'God' as has already been incidentally pointed out, Is done In express words In this Gos- pel. The evangelist declares that that ' Word,' which, on becoming flesh. Is Identified with ' Jesus Christ,* was In the beginning with God and was 'God' (i^), and calls Him In distinction from the Father, * God only begotten ' (i^^). And Thomas, his doubts of the
me hath seen the Father ' ? We need not stop to pick out other expres- sions that admit of no lower interpretations, because the evangelist has made it clear by his Prologue what construction he himself put upon his own narrative."
200 The DesigJiations of Our Lord
resurrection removed, greets Him with the great cry, " My Lord and my God" (20-^) : and more to the point, our Lord Himself, who had elsewhere declared Himself one with God (10^^), and had asserted that He and the Father interpenetrated one another (10^^), and that to have seen Him was to have seen the Father ( 14*) , expressly commended Thomas for this great con- fession and thereby bore His own testimony to His proper deity (20-^). The deity of Jesus which in the Synoptists is in every way implied is, therefore, in John expressly asserted, and that in the use of the most direct terminology the Greek language afforded. To this extent, it is to be allowed that John's Gospel is in advance of the Synoptists,
This advance is commonly represented as the Index of the development that had taken place between the
time when the Synoptics were written Title ^""^ ^^^ much later time when John was
written. John, coming from a period almost a generation later than the Synoptics, it is said, naturally reflects a later point of view. Of course John's Gospel was written thirty or thirty-five years after the Synoptics. But It Is an Illusion to suppose that it therefore sets forth a later or more developed point of view than that embedded in the Synoptics. The Synoptics present a divine Christ, as we have seen, and are written out of a point of view which is simply sat- urated with reverence for Christ as divine. John is written from no higher point of view, and records noth- ing from the life of Jesus which more profoundly re- veals His consciousness of oneness with the Father than the great utterance of Mt 1 1^'^, or which more clearly an- nounces the fundamental idea of what we call the
The Designations In John 201
Trinity than the great utterance of Mt 28^^. There is no advance in conception in John over the Synoptics: there is only a difference in the phraseology employed to express the same conception. The Synoptics present Jesus Christ as God; only they do not happen to say ' God ' when speaking of Him : they say ' Son of Man,' * Son of God,' Sharer in ' the Name.' It did not, how- ever, require thirty years for men who thoroughly be- lieved Jesus to be divine to learn to express it by calling Him ' God.' In a word, it is in the mere accident of literary expression, not in the substance of doctrine^ that the Synoptics and John differ in their assertion of the deity of Christ. Accidents of literary expression are not products of time, and differences in modes of expression do not argue intervals of time.
THE DESIGNATIONS OF OUR LORD IN ACTS AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE
How great an illusion it is to look upon John as reflecting a new phase of teaching, which had grown up
only in the course of years, in speaking Value of Acts* -• t i • i /^ ^ i mi