Thcf
e developed Chr:
;;round for discrediting them. But without ;?ood reason. The Liter thought is in orjjanic hue with the e-irlier ; both fix atten- tion on what Christ did and does, and not on what He taught ; both rise to the thought of the glorified Christ through the work of Christ on earth. The later illustrates and emphasizes rather than increases the heavenly dignity of Christ, assigning an increment of function rather than of rank (cf. Lightfoot. Col. p. 120).
In the Ep. to the Hebrews there is a remarkable type of doctrine which has not yet been defini- tively located. It has very little in common witli the NT WTitings generally, or even with the Pauline. Its conception of Christ's Person is characterized by significant ditterences in sub- stance and expression. After a prologue (almost in the manner of the Fourth Gosjiel and the Ajio- calypse, which looks like a summary of previous thought) it proceeds to its main tliesis, tlie superi- ority of the New Covenant over the Old. In the first seven chapters Christ is presented as the Son, the Revealer, and the ICin^-Priest. As the Son, He has been prepared for in Israel (1"), has jiar- tieipated in the creation and is its consummation (1=), is the manifestation of the Father's glory as its effulgence (airatjyaafia), and the expres.sion of the Divine essence {inr6aTa<ns) as its embodiment xapaKTTip) (V), and is now at the Father's right hand. As tlie Revealer, He is superior to angels and Moses; while yet a 'partaker of flesh and blood ' (2"), wherein He has done away with sin and death, establishing and vindicating His glory by His sulTerings. As the Iving-Priest He realizes
in perfection the qualifications of the priesthood imperfectly met in the OT system. In his exegesis the author applies to Christ two series of OT texts, the one having in view in their original meaning the Messiah (1', cf. Ps 2' ; l^- », cf. Ps 45'- »), the otlier relating to God (1«, cf. Ps 97' ; 1'"-^=, cf. Ps 102=«-=»). All three aspects point to such pre-eminence of Christ as malces Him incomparable with men, to be equalled with God alone. It is at the same time a pre-eminence appropriated in His human exjierience, made His own by obedience — a point insisted on. These two form the idea of Christ : He is God who by a Divine Incarnation fulfils Himself in man ; and He is man who by a liimian faith and endurance realizes himself in God. If the terminology is less Hebraic than in St. Paul or the Synoptists, the motive is the same, viz. to L.xi'iL'^s in the terms available the new contrasts ami special aspects of Christ's Person impressed on the author's mind by his independent experience of Christ.
The Logos ('the Word') is the term distinctive of St. John (Jn P- ", 1 Jn 1', Rev 19"). It is introduced in a way which indicates that it w^as familiar to the writer and his readers. As a tenu it is traceable in both Palestinian and Alexandrian thought. Its idea is Hebraic not Philonian, and to be taken in connexion with 'the Onhj-bcgottcn.' It is no impersonal abstract Idea. The Logos is, as in the Targums, personal and active as the equivalent of God manifesting Himself (1 Jn P). He is an historical human life (Jn P'', 1 Jn 1'"'), a fact not to be minimized. Yet His coming witliin the conditions of humanity was the coming of One who had been pre-existent with God in and from the beginning (!• 3i=-3'6''=), sharing in the life of God and in the Divine acts of creation and pre- servation, and operative in previous history as an illuminating and quickening potency in the hearts of the righteous (l^- *• »• '= W^ 11^=). Complementary is the thought of the Apocalypse of His eternity or semi-eternity in nature, the Alpha mid Omef/n, and in redemptive acti^^ty— 'Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, and of the perfect and perpetual adoration accorded to Him with God in heaven. The recital of the work of the Logos, so brief, covering the vastest realms, cosmic, historical, personal, in the most summary space, is maje-stic. The absence of any line of intermediate beings between God and man is notable. The identifica- tion of the Word with God (fleis) is deliberate. The description gives no plausibility to the view that here we have a category taken from philo- sophy and applied loosely to the facts. There is nothing in the Synoptic representation of the human character and consciousness of Christ which unfits it or renders it inadequate for the Logos conception ; equally there is nothing in the Logos conceived as becoming incarnate in the man Jesus which contradicts or impairs the reality or the completeness of His humanity as portrayed in the Synoptics.
The two are adequate and congruous to each other. They are also necessary to each other, each being a tor.so without the other. The source of the doctrine was the actual experience of tlie author, but it is the experience of a mind of pro- found spirituality and devout idealism. He gives tlie impression or having been determined in the particular cast he gives his doctrine by contem- porary circumstances. A specific method is ap- l)arent. It is not tliat he seeks to prove that ' Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God ' (Jn 20=') ; it is the special manner of his proof that differen- tiates Ins record, and above all the specially in- tense feeling towards Christ that pervades it, characteristics that have led some to assert that he sees Christ as primarily Divine and less human