SON or GOD
SON OF GOD
657
.In., to say 'my Father is greater than I' (14^), or to speak of God as ' my God ' (20'''). We have liere the same three elements in tlie sonship as formerly — the theocratic - Messianic, the ethico- religious, and the pliysical or metapliysical — only they may be mingleu in somewhat dillerent pro- portions. The Messianic we see in its most unmis- takable form in the testimonies of the Bajitist d''-'), of Nathanael (l-"'), of Martha (11-^), and of uthers ; but the boundaries of the other two will re(]uire more careful investigation.
Two things are new — the description of the Son as 'only begotten' (P''- ^'^ S'"- '^), and the claim to pre-existence on the part of Jesus.
(!) The adjective fMoi/oyevrji describes the unique Sonship of Jesus. St. John is not unaware that there are other .sons of God. So far from it, his (iospel opens with the great statement, already <luoted, ' But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the .sons of God, even to them that believe on his name' (Jn 1'-); and in his First Epistle he exclaims, ' Beloved, now are we the .sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be : l)ut we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him ; for we shall see him as he is' (1 Jn 3-) ; but such are not sons of God in the same sense in which Jesus is ' the Son of God.' Wherein, then, does the uniqueness consist? It cannot lie in the etliico - spiritual region ; for it is there that in this respect Jesus and those who receive Him are one, except in degree of intimacy with the Father. Most assume that it lies in Messiahship ; and, no doubt, in being the Messiah, Jesus is unique. Even Weiss takes it for granted that this is where it lies, contend- ing again and again that nothing metaphysical is suggested. This, however, is a mere piece of dogmatism ; for the uniqueness nught quite as \\ell lie in this quarter. In fact, the verbal idea in the adjective rather suggests it ; and it is very significant that St. John treats the claim of Jesus to Sonship as involving equality with God. In 5"* we read, ' Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the S;ibl)ath, but said that God was his Father, making liiniself equal with God'; and in 10^^ 'The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not, but becau.se that thou, being a man, make.st thy.self God,' this being becau.se He had .•^tated, 'I and my Father are one' (v. 2").
The force of this is turned aside by Wendt with the assump- tion that these notes are from the pen of a redactor, who, both licre and elsewhere, has wroufjrht confusion in the record tnianating from the disciple wlioni .Jesus loved. Beyschlag tatcfs the bull more boldly by the horns witli the suggestion that these remarks of the Jews are quoted as evidences of their Iierversity and stupidity, the sayings of Jesus on which they were comments not having implied at all what the.\' supposed. But it may be left to everyone to say whether or iiot this is a natural manner of reading St. John's narrative. At all events, as a historical statement, it is of the utmost importance that by the contemporaries of Jesus His claim to be the Son of God, put forward as it was by Him, was interpreted in this waj-.
(2) The passages in which Jesus claims pre- existence are four— 6"- 'What and if ye sliall see the Son of Man ascend up where he Avas before?' ; 8" 'Verily I say unto you. Before Abraham was, I am'; IV- ^ 'I have glorified thee on the earth, I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do ; and now, () Father, ghn'ify thou me with tliine own self, with the glory which T had with thee before the world was'; and especially, IT-"* ' Fatlier, I will that tliey also whom thou hast given me be with me, that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me ; for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the Morld ' ; to which may be added 16-" ' 1 came forth from the Fatlier, and am come into tlie world ; again, T leave the world, and go to the Fatlier.' In all these ca.ses, not excepting the last, the leaving of the world —
VOL. II. — 42
surely a real, historical event— is put in the plain- est terms in ojiposition to His entry into the world, which must, therefore, be equally a real, historical event.
Beyschlag attacks the pre-existence with \ igour, and displays remarkable ingenuity in e.xplaining it of an ideal e;;istence "in tlie mind and purpose of God. Thus, before God thought of Abraham, He was thinking of Jesus, who was anterior and superior in the Divine plan. But, after the laborious analysis is over, these great sayings draw themselves together again and stare the reader in tlie face as a united and coherent aspect of the self-consciousness of Jesus. Wendt applies to these texts his favourite device of showing that what is said of Jesus, and is supposed to imply sometliiiig superhuman, is also applied to others of whom notliing superhuman can be predicated. Thus, if Jesus (S^S) says to the Jews, ' I speak that which I have seen witli my Father,' He adds, ' And ye do that which ye have seen with } our father,' explaining, further on, ' Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do ' (v.'W) ; and the argument is, that if this implies that Jesus pre-existed with God, it must imply also that the Jew s v. ith whom He w as con- tending had pre-existed with the devil. But how futile this kind of argumentation may sometimes be, is shown when the statement of St. Paul, that 'the saints shall judge the world' (1 Co 6-), is used to take all the greatness and solemnity out of the statements of Jesus as to the position which He is to occupy at the Last Day as the Judge of the quick and the dead. Wendt habitually reduces the great sayings of Jesus to the lowest possible terms, and then assumes that this must be the meaning in every case. But the reader wearies of such a process : he feels that surely Jesus cannot have put the minimum of significance into His words on all occasions ; or, if so, how is He to escape the charge of employing big language to express small ideas, or confusing His hearers with enigmas which might easily have been cleared up, had He only uttered a few plain words of explanation ? Holtzmann gives up the attempt to read a commonplace meaning into words like these. Such sayings, according to him, are not genuine words of Jesus : they are utterances of Christianity rather than of Christ, and of Christianity after it had passed through the mind of St. Paul (np. cit. infr. ii. p. 433). But the situation is in all probability the reverse : the deep resemblance between the Christology of St. John and that of St. Paul, which undoubtedly exists in sjaite of superficial unlikeness, is due rather to what St. Paul learned from the older Apostle either directly or through the knowledge and ideas of the beloved disciple being diffused in the atmos- phere of that age ; while the consent on this great subject, not only of these two but of the primitive Church as a whole, may be traced back without hesitation to the tradition of our Lord's own testimony to Himself.