AUTHORITY IN RELIGION
AUTHORITY IN RELIGION 155
even so do ye also unto them,' is, according to our Lord, but a just summary of ' the law and the proijhets ' in terms that may lie appreciated by the moral sense of all men. He teaches that the whole OT, so far as it has to do witli duty towards man, is but an unfolding, in relation to this or that set of circumstances, of the ' Golden Rule,' whose Divine origin and authority are self- evidencing (cf. Mk 1228f-).
(b) Whetlier Christ represents the Apostles also as organs through whom God exercises His legis- lative authority is, perhaps, not quite so clear. Doubtless they were. But even passages such as Mt 102» 16i», Jn 20^3 W^ may refer to a grant of judicial rather than of strictly legislative authority. The authority conferred in these passages is, in- deed, large and significant, but none of them neces- sarily implies that the Apostles were to be organs through whom God would make substantive addi- tions to the commands laid upon the human con- science. Nor has the writer been able to satisfy himself that Christ anywhere uses of them lan- guage either demanding, or even susceptible of such an interpretation. In other words, while he thinks it unquestionable that the Apostles were media through whom God exercised His legislative authority, he is of opinion that we have to go outside of the Gospels for the evidence of this fact.
(c) With Christ Himsdf, however, the case is different. No doubt much of the aiithority we find Him using in the Gospels is judicial and not legislative. At the same time, intermingled with His judicial expositions of the law of God, we hear Him lay His own commands upon the conscience. Not only does He declare what is the Law, and what its meaning (see above), but He enunciates many specific precepts that stand related to His comprehensive summaries very much as the statutes of the land stand related to its constitu- tion.
treasures \ i holy \ your pearls before the swine,' etc. (Mt 71>) ;
1 upon earth," etc. (Mt : unto the dogs, neither cast ' Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you," etc. (Lk 62?) ; ' Repent ye, and believe in the gospel " (Mk 116)— will gerve as samples. Very significant for Chnst"s claims to be a special organ of the legis- lative authority of the Godhead is such a statement as, 'The Son of man is Lord of the Sabbath " (Mt 128), and equally so this other, ' Ye call me Teacher and Lord : and ye say well ; for so I am ' (Jn 1313). In both these instances i't is clear that Christ asserts for Himself an authority going beyond any that can with propriety be considered as merely judicial. The ' Lord " is a giver of law, not simply its interpreter. The conclusion fol' — - - ..
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more stringently, perhaps, when our Lord says, ' I and the Father are one," thereby, as the Jews ned, and He Himself did not deny, * making himself (thy- self) equal with God " (Jn 1030, cf. 1033, Mt IV"- » note the word ' yoke •). And, finally, here we must not overlook Mt 28181> 'AH authority is given to me in heaven and on earth," which cer- tainly constitutes a claim comprehensive enough to include the See preceding
prescribe laws to the conscience.
(3) But to say that Christ teaches that all legis- lative authority in religion vests exclusively in God, is hardly to put the case either as fully or as strongly as it needs to be put. For not only does our Lord represent God as ' Lord of the conscience,' but witli equal emphasis and great explicitness He teaches that ' God alone is Lord of tlie conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and com- mandments of men which are in anything contrary to His word, or beside it in matters of ' religious truth and duty. (For the purposes of this article ' His word ' here may be taken quite broadly for any form in which God has made His will known).
This explains His word at the baptism, when the Baptist 'would have hindered him," and He said, 'Suffer it now : for thus It becometh us to fulfil all righteousness' (Mt 315). go He denies to the human reason the prerogative, by
the same time sets the seal of His disapprobation upon all man-devisedlsubstitutions for, or modifications of. Divine ordi- nances. These are all either acts of open rebellion, or well meant but real usurpations of legislative functions pertaining exclusively to God. The same view finds yet more palpabll and pungent expression in His rebuke to the Pharisees (Mk TOff). And, as is well known, it was His resistance in word and deed to the traditions of the elders regarding the Sabbath— these being 'beside" God's word — that earned for Him, with the Pharisees, the odium of being Himself a Sabbath-breaker (Jn 6, Mt 12, Mk 3).
Indeed, at the beginning of His Galitean ministry, our Lord is careful to disclaim, even for Himself, either purpose or authori^ to disannul any of God's commandments. ' Think not,' said He, ' that I am come to destroy the law or the pro- phets : I came not to destroy, but to fulfil ' (Mt 5"). See, further, article Commandment, below. Thus He, as it were, anticipated and forestalled the malice of His own, and the mistaken zeal of a later day. The former made it a charge against Him that He taught contrary to Moses and the prophets ; and the latter, strangely enough, has supposed that it honours Him by .affirming the same. And, lofty as were the claims that He made for Himself, Christ still impressed it upon His hearers that He not only did not assume to lay upon them anything contrary to God's revealed will but that He taught, and could teach nothing that was ' beside ' that will (Jn 5^", cf. 5'^ S-^'-). And that nothing ' contrary to or beside ' the Scriptures correctly interpreted was to be toler- ated, is abundantly evident from the finality attached to them in all Christ's appeals to the OT. For Him its declarations were an end of controversy (Mt 22'^ 19" 123'r-, Jn W%