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COYEXANT
COYEN-AXT
the death of Jesus as foreordained. It is not likely that, holding this, they can have rested in it as sufficient for tlieir faith, and entirely refrained from seeking the reasons for the Divine foreordination, which in this, as well as all other cases, must have appeared to them teleological. In the light of this, the references to Jesus as the Servant of God, which occur in these early dis- courses, sometimes in connexion with His suffer- ing, become highly significant, partly because they sound like reminiscences of Jesus' own teaching, partly because they render it probable that our Lord's death was interpreted in dependence on Is 53. Finally, attention should be called to the central place which the forgiveness of sins occupies in tlie early Apostolic preaching. The prominence of this theme requires for its background a certain definite connexion between the Messiahship of Jesus and the forgiveness of sins, and this is precisely what is afforded by the expiatory inter- pretation of the Saviour's death (cf. Denney, The Death of Christ, pp. 65-85, where the preceding points are luminously discussed).
On the grounds stated we conclude that there is neither exegetical nor historical necessity for departing from the old view, that Jesus repre- sented His death as the sacrificial, expiatory basis of a covenant with God. The next question arising is. Who are meant as the beneficiaries of this expia- tion on which the covenant is founded ? At first .sight it would seem as if only one answer were possible, viz. those to whom lie gives the cup in which the wine, the symbol of the expiating blood, is contained. Nevertheless, the correctness of this view has been of late strenuously disputed. This has been done inaiTily "ii the ground before stated, that for the di-. iiil, - tl,,^ wh.ile tenor of our Lord's teaching reprr~fut< ili>- iMii^iveness of sins as im- conditioned, a-sund l.y the gracious love of God as such. Hence it is assumed that Jesus intended the covenant-sacrifice not for His disciples, but for the unbelieving mass of the people, who were so hardened in their unbelief as to render an atoning sacrifice necessary in order to their reacceptance into the favour of God (thus Johannes Weiss, Predigt Jem vom Eckhe Gottes, p. 28 ft'. ; and R. A. Hoft'mann, Die Abcndnuihlsr/eclanken Jesu Christi, pp. 60-88). Weiss, while believing that the cove- nant-blood is primarily shed for the nation, would not exclude the disciples from its eft'ects. Hoft'- mann, on the other hand, distinguishes sharply between those who are concerned in the covenant- sacrifice as its direct beneficiaries, i.e. the enemies of Jesus, and those whom He desires to appropriate the spirit of His self-sacrifice for others, and therefore invites to eat His body and drink His blood. The words spoken with the cup express on this view two distinct thouglits : (1) the blood is covenant - blood for the unbelieving Jews; (i) the blood as the exponent of the spirit of self- sacrifice of Jesus must pass over into the disciples, so that they too shall give their life for others. In other words, the disciples do not drink the blood in tlie sense in which it is defined by the plirase T^s oioft^M)!, but in the sense in which it symbolizes the subjective spirit on Jesus' ])art which led Him to offer His life for others. It will he readily per- ceived that this introduces an intolerable dualism into the significance of the blood : it must mean at the same time objectively the life poured forth in death as the principle of atonement, and subjec- tively the life pouring itself forth in death as the principle of self-sacrifice. There is no hint in the words themselves at any such double meanini;. From tlie simple statement no one would guess that the blood is drunk by the disciples in .my other capacity than that in which the Lord de- scribes it, as 'blood of the covenant.' St. Paul
and St. Luke have not understood Jesus in the manner proposed ; for, according to their version, the cup, that which the disciples drink, is the new covenant itself in the blood, not merely the blood which for others is tlie covenant-blood. Hoffmann lias to assume that St. Paul and St. Luke mis- interpreted the intent of Jesus, and regards Mark and Matthew as giving the correct version. But even into the words of St. Mark and St. Matthew liis view will not fit readily. If our Lord invited the disciples to drink His blood, in the sense of receiving into themselves the spirit of His self- surrender to death, the description of this blood as covenant-blood becomes irrelevant to the ex- pression of this thought. Whether the blood is covenant-blood or serves any other beneficent pur- pose, is of no direct consequence whatever for the main idea, viz., that it is the exponent of a spirit which the disciples must imitate, nay, the intro- duction of the former thought only tends to ob- scure the latter. Our Lord certainly did not expect the disciples to make the sacrifice of their own life a covenant-sacrifice in the sense His was for tlie nation. The virep xoWCiv in Mark and the Trepi rroWuiv in Matthew, to which Hoffmann appeals, cannot prove the exclusion of the disciples from the covenantal ett'ect of the blood. The plirase is derived from Is 53"- '-', wliere it serves to attirm the fruitfulness. the efficacy of the self-sacrifice of the Servant of Jehovah. This simple thought suttices here as well as in Mk 10*^ to explain Jesus' statement that many will be benefited by His death. Who the many are, disciples or non- disciples, the virip ToWQi/ alone does not enable us to determine.