332 REVELATION
Admitting the Divine origin and consequent spiritual character of the Law, its insufficiency to secure righteousness is acknowledged by St. Paul (Ro 77“), The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews equally acknowledges the inefliciency of the ritual sacrifices to cleanse the conscience and to restore communion with God (He 7). Thus the
T recognizes the imperfection and limitation of the former revelation; and J esus, in contrasting what was of old (Mt 52-27-83. 88.43), because of the hardness of men’s hearts, with His own teaching, seals with His own authority this Apostolic doc- trine. The greatest persons of the old revelation are transcended by the supreme Person of the new, and fall far short of the privileges of the humblest and simplest believers. Abraham rejoiced to see the day of Christ (Jn 8°). Moses and Elijah met Him in the Mount (Mt 173). While law came by Moses, grace and truth came by Jesus Christ (Jn 1”). Greater is He than Solomon (Mt 12%). Greatest of prophets, the Baptist is inferior to the least in the kingdom (Mt 11), The saints of old longed in vain to see what the disciples see (Mt 13"), Nevertheless, what is best and truest in the old is carried on and completed in the new revelation. Jesus came not to destroy but to fulfil the Law and the Prophets (Mt 51”). He fulfils the Law by disclosing its essential prin- ciples, and_ by giving to these wider and more inward applications, by securing by His sacrifice the salvation from sin’s guilt and power, which by obedience to the Law could not be attained, and by imparting a spiritual energy the Law could not offer. He fulfilled Prophecy generally by carrying on to its last and highest stage the Prophetic ideal of morality and religion, but especially by realiz- ing in His own person the aspirations and expecta- tions of saints and seers regarding the Day of the Lord, the Messiah in the narrower sense of the term, the Servant of the Lord, and the Priest after the order of Melchizedek (see articles on MESSIAH in vol. iii. and PROPHECY in vol. iv.).
The extent to which the writers of the NT regard this fulfilment as being carried will be shown in considering next the use of the OT in the NT, which yields us the following conclusions regarding their views :—(1) The OT Scriptures are cited as an organic unity, 7 ypagy}, al ypagal, ro yedupara. (2) They are cited as authoritative, as appears from the formule of citation, yéyparra., ka@ws eirev 6 beds, from the purpose of the quota- tions to establish a proof, and from the frequency of the references in exact or approximate quotations or historical allusions.. (3) Christ expressly assigns authority to the OT in the words ‘the Scripture cannot be broken’ (Jn 10°); ‘How then doth David in the Spirit call him Lord’? (Mt 22%), (4) The inspiration (see article INSPIRE, INSPIRATION in vol. ii.) of the Scriptures is expressly asserted in two passages (2 Ti 31617, 9 p 1*!) which, however, are not definite enough to yield a doctrine. (5) The quotations are often inexact, and are drawn from the LXX as well as the Hebrew (see article QUOTATIONS in vol. iv.). To suggest a provisional conclusion at this stage of the discussion, it is evident that, while the writers of the NT treat the whole of the OT as authoritative because in- spired, yet the inaccuracy of many of the quota- tions as well as the use of the LXX show that, even if they would have formally accepted a theo of verbal inspiration, yet they were not limited and controlled by it practically ; but this general im- pression must seek confirmation in a more detailed discussion,
(a) Not only does Jesus Himself quote from the OT frequently, but in His own language the modes of speech of the OT are recalled. I¢ ministered counsel and comfort to His own personal experi-
REVELATION
a ge
ence (Mt 4*7 10, Lk 418, Mt 2746, Lk 234). It was appealed to in His teaching (Mt 52-27-31 154 1919 22-37), It was His weapon in controversy (Mt 9% 158 2118 88: 88 45 9944), OT history served to illus- trate His work, as the serpent in the Wilderness, the preaching of Jonah, and the doom of the cities of the Plain. His use of the OT leads us to recog- nize it as a Divine revelation akin in spirit and purpose to His own. A few quotations there are which raise points of difficulty, as His use of the words of Cod. to Moses in proof of the Resurrection (Mk 12°), His appeal to the taunt to the unjust judges as a justification of His claim to be the Son of God (Jn 10*4), His assumption of the Davidic authorship of the 110th Psalm (Mk 12%), His allusion to Jonah’s story as an illustration of His own resurrection (Mt 12*°). There is good reason for regarding this last allusion as a gloss which has crept into the text; and the other quotations, it may be pointed out, are used in controversy as ad hominem arguments, on which it would be perilous to base any conclusions about Jesus’ exegetical methods; yet in each case we can dis- cern the connecting link of thought between the quotation and its use, which justifies it as neither arbitrary nor artificial, The allusion to Jonah and the reference of the 110th Psalm to David have been used to drag the authority of Christ into modern controversies of literary and histori- cal criticism. Without comment on the reverence or the prudence of this procedure, this argument can be met from the critical standpoint without recourse to the objectionable explanation that He accommodated Himself to His hearers. For, Jirstly, no wise teacher raises avoidable disputes on questions which lie beyond the range of His pur- pose of teaching, but uses the popular language in all matters indifferent. It shows a strange lack of moral insight and spiritual discernment to assume that it was so important that the Jews should have correct views about historical and literary ques- tions, that Jesus was bound to spend time and take pains to put them right on these before He could unpart to them the gospel of His grace. He came to preach the gospel, and nothing else; and, even if He had held other views than His contempor- aries, there was no need of His discussing them with His ignorant and prejudiced hearers. This whole argument is due to a confusion of the acci- dentals and the essentials of Divine revelation. Secondly, the present writer is prepared to go further, not for the sake of getting altogether rid of this argument, but in the interests of a true Christology. One cannot read the Gospels with an open mind without coming to the conclusion that no claim for the omniscience of Jesus is made, nay, even, facts are recorded which disprove such a claim ; that His consciousness of the Father whom He came to reveal did not include a knowledge of all the facts of nature and history which can be ascertained by the exercise of ordinary human powers of observation and inference; that His per- tect wisdom and absolute truth, His moral insight and spiritual discernment, had no relation what- ever to the treatment of literary and historical problems; that, as not embraced in His message and mission, His views on all such questions were the opinions of His age, which He had learned in the same way as all His contemporaries. If the purpose of revelation is practical—the salvation of men by the self-sacrifice of God—then the more complete the reality of the Incarnation, the sub. jection of the Son to the limitations of humanity, the more thorough is the fulfilment of this pur- pose. It is as much in the interests of Christian faith as for the sake of intellectual liberty that the limitation of the knowledge of Jesus must be confidently affirmed. But, to return from this