LiTERATi'RE. — Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, voL i. ; EBr^ xxii. 205 £f., .\xxii. 6(Uff. ; Schiirer, UJP, passim ; Robert E. Speer, The Principles 0/ Jesus ; Rae, Contemporary Socialism ; Pea- body, Jesus Christ and the Social Question, and also The Mess- age of Christ to Society ; Kaufiuann, Christian Socialism ; kirkup, An Inquiry into Socialism ; F. Naumann, Das soziate Proijramin der evangel. Kirche; Fliiit, Socialism, ch. ix. ; Martensen, Chr. Ethics, iii. 126 ff.; H. Holtzinann, Die ersten Christen und die soziale Frage; Nitti, Catholic Socialism; Newman Smyth, Chr. Ethics, 448 ff. ; Schaefle, Quintessence of Socialism; Dale, Laws of Christ, ch. ii. ; J. F. Maurice, Life of Frederick Denison Maurice ; A. Stocker, Christlich-soziale Redeii und Aufsiitze; Herron, The Larger Christianity, and Between Ccesar and Jesus ; Ciore, The Sermon on the Mount ; Westcott, Social Aspects of Christianity ; Lyman Abbott, Christianity and Social Problems; S. Mathews, Social Teaching of Jesus; Keim, Jesus of Sazara, vols. iii. and iv. ; Lightfoot, Colos- ■tians, p. 397 ff. ; Renan, Life of Jesus, passim ; Colin Campbell, Crit. Studies i)i Luke's Gospel ; Dykes, Manifesto of the King, 449 ff. ; Gladden, Tools and the Man, 55, 86.
Andrew N. Bogle. PROPHET.— I. The Messiah a prophet.—!. Our
Lord's redemptive work is usually divided into the threefold — prophetic, priestly, and kingly functions; and for this thei-e is ancient precedent. Eusebius (HE i. 3) speaks of Him as 'the only High Priest of all men, the only King of all creation, and the Father's only supreme Prophet of prophets' (see also Ambrose on Ps 118"", and Cassiodorus on Ps 132'-). The Church has rightly felt that the unction bestowed on Jesus as the ]\Iessiah separated and endowed Him to these offices. She recognized that the old dispensation was established and preserved by those who were anointed to be prophets, priests, and kings, and she believed that each of these offices found its perfection in the Person and work of Jesus Christ. When, therefore, we dwell separately on any one of these three vocations of the Messiah (as we do in this article), we must remember that we are necessarily taking a partial ^•iew of His Person: for to hold that He is only a prophet, is to fall into a heresy that has ever faced the Church.
Early in the Church's history the Gnostic Ebionites rejected the Catholic doctrine of Christ's Person, but felt no difficulty in believing: Him to be an inspired prophet of the highest order. They regarded Him as one of the TfotiiTai aXr,Bi,<c;, and as superior to Tpufy.Txi rjyia-iu; olx a.'/.r,8six; ; and, as such, placed Him in line with Adam, Enoch, Xoah, etc. etc., upon all of whom had rested the pre-existent Christ ; and in their Gospel we find the following words ascribed to Him: 'lam he concerning whom Moses prophesied, saying, A prophet shall the Lord God raise unto you, like unto me' (Clem. Horn. iii. 53 ; cf. Dorner, Hist, of Person of Chri.9t, r. i. 20S ff.) ; but they refused to accept the Church's teaching as to His Deity. Similarly, the Mohammedan Koran says : ' The Jlessiah, the son of Mary, is only a prophet ' (v. 79, also iv. 160 and xix. 30) ; and the Ilacovian Catechism (a.d. 1W)5) of the Socinians (§ 5) accepts and accentuates the prophetic aspect of His work.
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2. But while the Church thus early classified the redemptive activities of our Lord under this three- fold division, it must not be assumed that the Jews of His own time had reached tliis full conception. It is clear from our Gospels that His contemporaries did not regard the 'coming prophet' as one -witii the coming Messiah ; for when tlie multitude were astonished at Jesus' discourse at the Feast of Taber- nacles, and were divided in opinion regarding Him, some saying, ' This is of a truth the Prophet,' and others, 'This is the Christ' (Jn T'*"), none declared Him to be the Christ, and therefore the Prophet.
A similar disfcinctioii is found in their view of the Baptist (Jn 1-1). The only exception in the Gospels is the words of the woman of Samaria : ' Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet. . . . When Christ is come, he will declare unto us all things ' (Jn 4i9- 25). But probabl\' the Samaritans g-enerally had small reason to expect the coming of a kingly Messiah (see Westcott, Study of the Gospels, note 2, oh. 2 ; Stanton, Jewish and Christian Messiah, pp. 126, 293).
3. Nor does this separation of the offices of ' the Prophet ' and ' the Messiah ' seem to be due to any special obtuseness on the part of our Lord's con- temporaries ; the OT prophets themselves api^ear also to have been unable to rise above it. Isaiah, prophesying during the monarchy, pictures the Messiah as a Davidic king, and foretells the out- pouring of a fuller revelation during His reign, predicting that then the God of Jacob would teach Israel His way (Is 2^), and thcji Israel's teacher(s) would not be hidden any more, but the people would see their teacher(s), and hear a word behind them saying, ' This is the way ' (SO-**) ; but he does not unite these kingly and proplietic endowments in the one i)erson of the Christ. Fuller light of truth is to be a mark of the Messianic reign, but Isaiah does not recognize the Messiah as the organ of the revelation.