= • : '--f '-Spitta of this mode of speaking
■rent usage, if the sacrificial meal be left out of account. Assuming, however, that the general phrase * eating the Messiah ciples outside of i '^""'
distributive form m ,>i,i,„it ,..,t i,;,,.^...-. ^.....^.._ ---- -- - -^ «„.,ij
of eating the Messiah's body and drinking His blood, could hardly have possessed such farail^if',';;^^; a^'^',™?^^*'
quoted I
■n°mt°* Assuming, however, that the gem
familiar to Jesus and the dis- 1 with the sacriflcial meal, the which the records present the thou^htj^that Messiah's body and
; rejecting the idea of appropri; n as appropriated in His sacriflcial capacit; Ve turn next to the theories which recogii It stands through the blood in connexion lus. When " "
he Messiah, to think of
that I
I death of
„ Jesus' death is instrumental in intro ducing the covenant. Justice is not done to this when nierel. in some indirect way the death is supposed to prepare the wa, for the covenant, viz., in so far as it forms the transilif— •" higher life which will enable Jesus
. bestow upon His disciple
Thus the direct nexus between tl
w staled is th
der Seligkeit,
the
that th
Thus Johannes
' This is my body,'
meaning, that tiie
nibers of one body,
meal of frieiuUliip.
eleventh hour did not expect to die.
bii't confidently looked forward to the immediate
appearance of "'
J the covenant is a later addi Hoffmann makes Jesus say no more thi • This is mv blood,' and interprets this disciples niiist be closely knit together as Himself forming the centre. The meal • The Sav
! Kingdom of God. With
' asked the disciples to unite themselv
little flock for which the Kingdoi
thought in mind . mbolically into the
„„,^ ^ ^ __ appointed.
this and similar views, because they leave the uu>c..«..v words out of consideration, we note that Spitta has developed a hypothesis which, while cutting loose the Supper from the death of Christ, nevertheless interprets its s.\-mbolism as a covenant symbolism (Xur Geschichte vnd LUeratur des VrchrisUnthums, i. pp. 207-337). According to Spitta. the covenant is none other than the DavidicMe««ianic covenant promised by the prophets, and inasmuch as tins oovin:iiit li.irt been frequently represented under the furiM' our Lord could bv means of the Supper t;ii symbolic anticipation of its approachmg ,v ■ ^
_ enant-blessings.
blood and the covenant U severed. Tl of Titius (DU neiUestamenttiche Lehr. p 1511 ff.). According to this writer, the Supper is to -- explained not from the idea of the forgiveness of sin. but from that of the communication of lite. Titius does not identify this covenant with the consummate eschatological state ; it « some- thing intermediate between that and the conimumon with God into which Jesus introduced His disciples before His death. The new covenant is made possible by the death of Jesus, because through this death He will be raised into heaven, whence the powers of eternal life can descend upon His Church through the gift of the Holy Spirit. It may be justly objected to this construction that in it the death of Jesus appears not as a source of blessing by itself, but as a more or less accidental entrance into the life of glorv, from which the blessing flows. As Titius himself admits, in the abstract it would have been quite possible to procure the new covenant and the perfected commmion with bod without the intervention of Jesus death, viz.. if it had pleased God to exalt the Messiah in some other way Thus it becomes difficult to understand how so much Trnphasis can be placed by Jesus upon the app'opnat.on o. His death, or how He can require the disciples to drink His blood. The appropriation symbolized certainly cannot rdate to the accidental form in which the blessing is prepared, it must have reference to the substance of the blessing itself. If the Seath is the object of appropriation then it must po^ess a direct and intrinsic significance for the covenant in which tne
"^'tI^Ts "co'°n!zed by Wendt ^Lehve Je^, =, p. 502 ff .). accorfing to whom Jesus regirded His death as a covenant-sacnflee. standing in the same relation to the new covenant predicted by ?ereS as the sacrifice brought by Moses sustained t» the Sinaitic covenant. In his opinion, the record of Ex 24 shows tha? the Mosaic sacrifice had nothing to do with atonement, but consisted of burnt-offerings and peace-offerings, meant as n mtt to God expressing the peoples consent to His reieaiea enant relation. The sacnflce
) God expressing law, and hence I;
|)ledged both God and the peoph represents His death t
to be sure, on any strictly hamiony with His inex-
u,i,u„^ „,,....^..„. Wendt's interpretation is wrong.
t so much in what it affirms as in what it denies. 'That Jesus jarded the sacrifice of His life as a gift to God, and ascribed
vhich God
legal 1
, gift dedicated 1 11 establish the new covei e Kingdom of God, not, to 1 ■ of recompense, but i
CO VENA NT
COVENANT
to it saving- significance because it was an act of positive obedience, may be safelv atfirnied. The confidence, however, with which He" appropriates the effects of this act to the dis- ciples does not favour Wendt's assumption, that He made these effects dependent on a gracious will of God, imparting to the sacrifice a value whicli intrinsically it did not possess. But, apart from this, the analogy with the Mosaic sacrifice leads us to believe that Jesus did not confine Himself to viewing His death under the aspect of a gift. The prominence here given to the blood forbids us to interi>ret the sacrifice as exclusively, or even primarily, a symbol of gratitude or consecration to God. Even though the sacrifices brought were not specific sin- offerings, but burnt -offerings and peace-offerings, this does not eliminate from them the element of e\piation The Law itself speaks of evpiation m connexion with the burnt offerings (Lv 14), and the Passes er sacrifice closeh akin to the peace offerings, certainh had e\piatoi\ significance It ma\ e\en be doubted whether the idea of a gift to (rod, except m the most general sense m which e\er\ s-n rifice is % gift, was piesent to the mind of the author of E\ 24 \^ hen Moses calls the blood sprinkled on the people 'tht II d . f tlif (u\enant which Jehovah has made with \ou th i it I man 'the blood by the dedication of whu li i i I I to make the