LiTERATtTRE.— ii'cce Homo, ch. 1 ; Reynolds, John the Baptist, Lecture 4 ; Tennyson, Idylls of the King, ' The Coming of Arthur," ap. fin. ; Morley, Life of Gladstone, ii. 252.
John R. Legge. AZOR.— An ancestor of Jesus, according to the genealogy in the First Gospel (Mt 1""-).
BABE. — 1. (3p^0o!, lit. ' nourished ' — by the mother, is used of an unborn infant (Lk 1'"-'^), of an infant still in swaddling-bands (2'2- 1«), and also of young children brought by their mothers to Jesus that He might touch them (IS''*). 2. vTiirios, liter- ally, 'one that cannot yet speak' (j'77='not,' and ^TTos, 'woi'd'); cf. Lat. m-fans, 'infant,' which is a better rendering of vifirLos, though neither AV nor RV is consistent in the translation of the two Greek words. cTiTrios is a child as contrasted with an older person, e.g. with 'the wise and prudent' in Lk 10=^ and Mt 1P= (cf. Gal 4^, Eph 4^'). It is used also with B-riKaiovTe^, ' sucklings,' in Mt 21'", in which passage the root meaning of v^ttios is speci- ally suggestive, ' Out of the mouth of speechless (babes) tliou hast perfected praise.'
Jesus' fondness for these little ones was shown, both by His rebuke of the disciples who would have sent them and their mothers away when they came to Him for a blessing (Lk IS'^'-, cf. Mt 19"), and by His frequent use of children to illustrate the Christian disposition (cf. Mt 18", VOL. I. — II
Mk W\ Lk IS'"-"). See, further, artt. Infancy, Children.
Tlie word ' babe ' i0pi^oi) is twice used of the infant Jesus Himself (Lie 212- ii>). And it is worth noting that in v." KV brings out a significance of meaning which is lost in AV. In the Gr. there is no art. prefixed to ppi^oi in this verse ; the sign given to the shepherds was 'the sign of a babe." Moreover, according to the reading which is most strongly supported, tr-nu-tm should have the art., so that what the shepherds were told was ' The sign is a babe.' The meaning therefore is, not as AV suggests, ' you shall find the babe you are looking for in such and such a condition,* but rather this 'most extraordinary and
iggestive one. You shall find the Saviour you are looking for.
BACK TO CHRIST.— The movement or tendency described in the phrase 'back to Christ' belongs mainly to the past Jialf century, and both its wide extent and its far-reaching consequences for re- ligious thought justify us in regarding it as the most important theological event of the period.
The phrase can be received as a correct descrip-
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BACK TO CHEIST
BACK TO CHRIST
tion of the movement, only under the explanation that the return has not been to the Christ of dogma, but to the Christ of history. This dis- tinction must be kept clearly in view. The Christ of dogma is Christ as exhibited in the creeds — the eternally begotten Son of God, the second Person in the Trinity, who, for our redemption, assumed our human nature and s\ibmitted to death as an atonement for our sins. He is the God-man, a DiWne Person with two natures and two wUls. It is evident that these determinations move in a diflerent region from that of empirical reality. They cannot be established on merely historical evidence ; they have their ground in a judgment of faith. What we have in dogma is not a portrait of the historical Jesus in the religious and ethical traits of His character, but a speculative construc- tion of His Person ; not an account of His historical ministry, but a doctrinal interpretation of it. The Christ of history is the concrete Person whose image meets us in the Gospels ; the Christ of dogma is the complex of metaphysical or doctrinal characters which the Church, on the ground of its faith, attributed to this Person. So far the dis- tinction is clear enough, and meets with general acceptance. The difficulty begins when we raise the question whether such facts as the Virgin- birth, the Miracles (in the strict sense of the word), and the Kesurrection are to be included in our conception of the historical Christ as resting upon historical evidence, or whether they are not ratlier to be transferred from the domain of history to that of faith. The question will come up again ; in the meantime it may be sufficient to call attention to the ambiguity which must attach to the term ' historical Christ ' so long as it remains undecided.
When we speak of a return to the Christ of history, we imply that His image has been lost sight of, or at least obscured. It was not doubtless the intention of the Chdrch that its doctrinal determinations should supplant the concrete reality in the thought and faith of the community. But this was what actually happened. Mure and more the historical Person was overshadowed bj' the speculative construction, the historical mini- stry by the formulas in which its significance was summed up. The figure of Jesus disappeared be- hind the pre-existent Logos, the earthly ministry behind the idea of the Incarnation, the cross behind the doctrine of the Atonement. This result is not to be explained by the fact that dogma, from its controversial character, attracted to itself an undue share of attention and interest as com- pared with matters that had never been in dispute. The cause lay deeper. It is to be found in the conception of Revelation and of Faith that has dominated the Catholic and also, to a large extent, the Protestant Church. Revelation has been un- derstood as the supernatural communication of a system of doctrine ; Faith, as the submission of the mind to doctrine on the ground of its authority. The emphasis has thus been thrown, not on the historical life, but on the dogmatic construction. The historical life has occupied only a secondarj' place, its significance being found mainly in the basis it supplies for this construction or interpre- tation.