The answer of the NT is in the affirmative, and it is not too much to say that the NT as a whole is the proof that this answer is right. ' We have
AUTHORITY OF CHRIST
AUTHORITY OF CHRIST
says
again (in 2 Co 13*), ' Ye seek a inoof of Christ speaking in me '—a proof which he is quite ready to give. He was conscious that in the discharge of Ids Aixjstolie ministry he was not alone : Christ was in Iiim pleading His own cause. Of course the authority of Christ in this case cannot be other than we have already seen it to be in the earthly life of Christ. Its range is the same, and its re- cognition is conditioned in the same way. The Apostle is no more bound literally to reproduce Jesus than Jesus is l>ound literally to reproduce Himself. He is no more bound than Jesus is to prove the tr\ith of his message by credentials ex- ternal to it. He no more hesitates than Jesus does to trace the rejection of his message, the refusal to call Jesus Lord, to a want of moral affinity with Jesus which is the final definition of sin. ' If our gospel is veiled, it is veiled in them that are perishing, in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of the unbelieving' (2 Co 4''-). It is not possible to say beforehand, on the basis of any doctrine of inspiration, whether there are elements in the Aimstolie writings, and if so what, which liave no authority for us. Nothing in them has legal or statutory authority, and spiritual authority must be trusted to win for it-rif till- iviiiLTnition which is its due. There is
s ■thiiiLj tM lie .said for the distinction that while
till' iisliiiiuny of the Apostles to Jesus — a tcsti- iimiiy it^tiiii; on their e.xperience of what He was and of what He had done for them — is perennially authoritative, the theology of the Apostles— a theology conditioned by the intellectual environ- ment in which they lived and to which they had to vindicate their 'iLii'ssu;i( — has only a transient importance. Tlic ilillicult \- is ju^rio draw the distinction between ti-.^tiniouy anil llieolo^'y ; as a matter of fact, the two things iulerpuuelrate in the NT, and there is a point at which the distinction disappears. To insist upon it as if it were absolute is really to introduce again into Christianity (under the form of the Apostolic testimony) that legal or statutory or dogmatic element from which Jesus set all religion free. It is better to read the Apostles as men through whose minds Christ pleads His own cause in the Spirit. The minds may be more or less adequate instruments for His service ; they may be more adequate in some rela- tions, and less so in others ; but they are indi- visible, and it is not helpful in the long run to introduce into them the schism of testimony and theology. We must let them tell upon us in their integrity, and acknowledge their authority when- ever it proves irresistible. (More detailed con- sideration of this point will be found in the article on Preaching Christ).
The part of the NT which raises in the acutest form the question of the authority of Christ— or perhaps we should say here of His Apostle— is the Fourth Gospel. It is practically agreed among scholars that the style of the discourses in that Gospel is due to the author, not to the speakers. Every one speaks in the same style— John the Baptist, Jesus, the Evangelist himself. The words of an actor in the history (Jesus, for example, in the first part of ch. 3, and the Baptist in the latter part) pass over insensibly into words of the liis- torian. The first person plural is used by Jesus (e.g. 3" 9') where it is tempting to say that it is the Christian consciousness which is expressed, the common mind of the Church which owes its being to Him. Further, Jesus says things about Himself in the Fourth r;o>|,e! U, Nvlii.l, tleae is no parallel in the other ilnre. llr ~|,, ;iK^ |il:iiiil\ of His pre- existenee, of ili.- ul.ii\ ^^l,l^h ||,. |,;,.l with the Fatliei- hefov th.- -AoiM «a^, of ,ui eieinal being which was His lieforc Abraliani was born ; He
makes Himself the content and the subject of His teaching — ' I am the bread of life, the light of the world, tlie resurrection and the life' ; He identifies Himself in a mysterious way with the redeeming purpose and power of God — ' I and the Father are one,' ' He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.' It may be difficult for the historian, on purely his- torical grounds, to pi-ove that Jesus uttered a\\ the words thus ascribed to Him, and if the difhculty presses, the authority of the words may seem to disappear. But is this really so? May not the Fourth Gospel itself be the fulfilment of one of the words in question—' I have many thin^ to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. But when he is come, the Spirit of truth, he shall guide you into all the truth : for he shall not speak from himself, but whatsoever things he shall hear, these shall he speak ... He shall take of mine, and shall announce it to you ' ( Jn 16'-'). These words would not be satisfied by a merely literal reproduction of wliat Je.sus had uttered : they imply that with the gift of the Spirit will come a profourider insight into all that He had meant, and ability to render a more adequate testimony to the truth embodied in Him. Twice in the Gospel (2-= 12'«) the writer t«lls us expressly that after Jesus was glorified the disciples remembered incidents in His career and saw a meaning in them unnoticed at the time ; and this principle may well reach further. When Jesus fed the multitudes. He did not, so far as the Syn- optics record, say anything to explain His act ; "all they were conscious of was that He had compas- sion on their hunger. But the Spirit-taught Apostle, long afterwards, saw what He meant, and felt that if they had only had ears to hear as the bread passed from hand to hand, they would have caught the voice of Jesus — ' I am the bread of life.' So when He opened the eyes of the blind, what He meant was, ' I am the light of the world ' ; and when He raised the dead, ' I am the resurrection and the life.' If John did not hear Him say so at the moment, he heard Him afterwards, and the authority of the words need not be less though we have to think of them as spoken, not by the his- torical Christ in Galilee or Judica, but by the exalted Christ through His Spirit in the soul of the beloved disciple. They would be in this case a sublime illustration of what St. Paul calls 'Christ speaking in me.' The peculiarity that they are put into the lips of Jesus Himself, in with definite scenes and incidents in