To understand the Evangelist's conception, we have to remember that here as elsewhere he converts into present reality what is future and apocalyptic in the Synoptic teaching. Jesus had spoken of life as a reward laid up in ' the world to come,' and h.ad contrasted it with the 'casting out' or 'destruction' (diruXcio) which is reserved for the wicked. These ideas reappear in the Fourth Gospel, divested of their pictorial, eschato- logical form. Life is a spiritual possession here and now, and has its counterpart in ' death,' which is likemse realized in the present world. St. John, indeed, contemplates a future in which the life, and by implication the death, will become com- plete and final (6^'- **■ ^) ; but they will continue the same in essence as they already are on earth.
Death is thus regarded not a.s a .single incident but as a condition, in which the soul remains until, through the power of Christ, it pa.«ses into the opposite condition of life. It is not, however, a
DEATH OF CHRIST
DEATH OF CHEI8T
429
state of moral apathy and disobedience, or at least does not primarily bear this ethical character. Life, in the view of St. John, is the absolute, Divine life, in which man, as a creature of earth, does not participate (see Life). His natural state is one of ' death,' not because of his moral sinful- ness, but because he belongs to a lower world, and the life he possesses is therefore relative and un- real. It is life only in a physical sense, and is more properly described as 'death.' The work of Christ is to deliver men from the state of priva- tion in which they are involved by their earthly nature (3''). As the Word made flesh, He com- municates to tliem His own higher essence, and makes possible for them the mysterious transition ' from death unto life ' (5-^).
In this Johannine doctrine Greek-philosophical ideas, transmitted through Philo, have blended with the original teaching of Jesus as recorded in the Synoptics. Tlie simple ethical distinction has become a distiiKlioii ..f two kinds of being,— earthly and spiiihial, |ilMii.,ni('nal and real. Jesus 'raises the dua.r iu tin' mjuso that He eftects a miraculous change in l.liu very constitution of man's nature. At the same time the etliical idea, while not directly emphasized, is everywhere implied. It is assumed that the state of exclusion from the true life is also a state of moral darkness, into which men have fallen ' because their deeds are evil ' (3''). The ' freedom ' which Jesus promises is described in one passage (in which, however, the borrowed Pauline ideas are imperfectly assimilated) as freedom from sin (5^'"^^). In the great verse, 'God so loved the world,' etc. (S'S), the ethical conception almost completely overpowers the theo- logical. Men were ' perishing ' through their estrangement from God, and from this death God sought to deliver them by His love revealed in Christ.
For the teaching of Jesus in regard to the significance of His own deatli see tlie following article.
Literature.— Cremer, Lex. s.v. «i««To; ; Titius, Die mutest. Lehre von dee Seligkeit (1895-1900), esp. i. 67-87, iii. 17-31 ; Fries, 'Jesu Vorstellungen von der Auferstehung der Toten," ZSTW (Dec. 1900); Schrcnck, Die johannelsche Ansch. mm Leben (1898). See also the literature mentioned in art. Life.
E. F. Scott. DEATH OP CHRIST.-I. In the GasPELS.— The aim of the present article is to examine the place of the de;ifh of Christ in the moral order of the world. Wliat is the moral order of the world? The fiinstiun \n:iy !«■ .answered as follows : — The will and iiiii]i(isi: i>t (Jod are in the way of coming to realization in the individual and
social life and destiny of humanity. They are still very far from having attained to universal realiza- tion, but they are destined to reach it in the per- fected kingdom of God. This is ^^■hat is here understood as the moral order of the world. It began to exist and to be evolved on the earth with man's appearance as a being with a moral nature and created for a moral destiny. Its evolu- tion is still very incomplete, but it is certainly though slowly making for a predestined end in which all men in Christ shall be morally perfect as God is ; and in the moral relations of God to men, and of men to God and to one another, an order of perfect moral unity and universality shall reign for ever.
In this order of things, then, and its evolution, the death of Christ occupies a place of the highest importance and value. It is only from the point of view of this moral order of things and its evolu- tion that the essential merits of His death can be properly understood. A consideration of it from the same point of view is called for by the methods of modern thought and inquiry. And it is only
thus that the cultured Christian conscience can iind true, adequate, abiding moral satisfaction. But it is necessary, in order to prevent confusion of ideas, to mark the important distinction that exists in the nature of things as they now are in man's moral history, between the moral order of the world and the moral course of the world. Tlie moral order of the world as just defined is only one of the constituent factors of the world's moral course. Besides it there are two more. There is, on the one hand, the factor which consists of all those facts or phenomena in the individual and social life and history of mankind which fall under the designation of sin or moral evil ; and, on the other, the moral government of God, which pre- sides immanently, persistently, and universally over the relations between sin and the moral order of things or the order of righteousness. These three factors constitute that actual moral course that the world is ever following ; and the predestined end of their relation to one another will be realized in the complete and eternal victory and triumph of righteousness over sin, through the unerring and all-sufficient administrative judgments of God's moral government of the world (Mt IS^'-'^, 1 Co 15^"-*). It is the moral course of the world as so understood that explains the nature and methods of the historical revelation, contained in the Bible, of God's will and purpose in their relation to man's moral life and destiny. The course of the world as so understood occupied a determinative place in our Lord's conceptions of man's moral life and destiny (see Peogress). And it was from the point of view of Sin, Righteousness, and Judgment that He contemplated the fullest and profoundest significance of His obedience unto death. It was on the place of His death in the moral order of the world, and as therein related to man's sin and God's governmental judgment, that He depended for the victory and triumph of Righteousness over Sin in the dispensation of the Spirit (Jn 17''"). From the point of view here raised His death may be con- sidered in various aspects.