(2) The Epistles of St. Paul. — These provide at least valuable confirmation of what may be other- wise ascertained as to the opinion held by the primitive community, partly through direct state- ment by the Apostle as to what was the gospel he had ' received,' and partly through inference which may be made from his own views, as to that out of which they had developed. But beyond tiiis we cannot go. The Epistle of James, even if its date be early, would add nothing to our knowledge of the primitive Christology. The First Epistle of Peter, the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Apoca- lypse all represent a stage in some degree in advance of the common basis from which tiiey started ; and the Johannine Gospel and Epistles embody the results of still longer experience and deeper analysis.
(3) The Acts of the Apostles. — There remains, as the chief source of material for constructing the pre-Pauline Christology, the Book of Acts, more especially the first eleven chapters. Not many years ago it would have been difficult to justify at the bar of scholarly opinion the use of this docu- ment as a trustworthy source. No book was so seriously discredited as a historical source by the representatives of the 'Tubingen theory.' Now, however, that the governing historical principle of that theory has been shown to be untenable, and the conclusions based upon it have been either aban- doned or seriously modified, the way has been opened for a reconsideration of the Acts as to both its date and its historical value. In the opinion of most competent scliolars, the authorship may now be restored to St. Luke and the date placed within the first century, some assigning it to the nineties, some to the eighties. Quite recently a strong case has been made out by Harnack for the still older view that it was written in the sixties before the death of St. Paul.
But what is more important for our purpose than the possible revision of the date is the abandon- ment of the charge of history-making for party (or eirenical) purposes, and the recognition that St. Luke was not simply an echo of St. Paul (sea Julicher, Introd. to AT, Eng. tr., 1904, p. 437 ; J. Motlatt, LNT, 1911, p. 301). In particular there is an increasing disposition to acknowledge that in the speeclies of tlie earlier chapters we have the thought of the primitive community preserved and reproduced with singular fidelity. The admission
178 CHRIST, CHRISTOLOGY
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of Schmiedel in his art. on the Acts (EBi i. 48) is significant :
'A representation of Jesus so simple, and in such exact agree- ment with the impression left by the most genuine passages of the first three gospels, is nowhere else to be found in the whole NT. It is hardly possible not to believe that this Christology of the speeches of Peter must have come from a primitive source.'
In the Acts of the Apostles most of the material is contained in the five speeches of Peter and the speech of Stephen, those of Peter being (a) on the day of Pentecost (9?-*^-) ; (b) in Solomon's portico (31-ff-) ; (c) the first before the Sanhedrin [^^«-) ; (d) the second before the Sanhedrin (o-'^^-) ; and (c) the short speech at Joppa (lO^^*^-)- When we proceed to collect and classify the relevant statements in this part of the Acts, we find that they point to the following conclusions, (i.) The Christians of the early days identified Jesus with the Messiah, (ii. ) They appealed for confirmation of this convic- tion to the fact that God had ' raised him from the dead'; and also that He had been 'exalted' by, and to, the right hand of God, the Resurrection and Exaltation marking a decisive moment in the Messiahship. (iii. ) At the same time they referred back behind the Resurrection to facts and charac- teristics of His earthly ministry, (iv.) In spite of the dignity and authority to which they believed Him raised, they consistently referred to Him in terms of humanity, as to one who had been, while upon earth, a man among men. (v. ) They promptly began to attach to Him certain OT titles and types, some of which had already been recognized as Messianic, others possibly not ; e.g. ' Son of Man,' ' Servant of God,' 'Leader of Salvation,' ' Saviour,' •Judge,' and 'Lord.' (vi.) They connected the death of Jesus, on the one hand, very definitely with the determined purpose of God ; and, on the other, with the blotting out of sin. And for these reasons this Jesus was the subject of the ' good news' (5^^), the object of faith (9*^ w^)^ and the cause of faith in men (S^**).
(i. ) The first point hardly requires to be illustrated. Not only the speeches but the narrative as a whole bear witness to the fact that the ' disciples,' to use St. Luke's word, identified Jesus who had died but risen again with the Messiah of Jewish expectation. This was indeed the one point which at the outset distinguished them from the other Jews in Jeru- salem. Other grounds of distinction, ultimately leading to separation, were doubtless latent in their minds — recollections of the Master's teaching, of His attitude to the Law and the ritual of the Temple. But in the meantime ' the disciples ' are found haunting the Temple and observing the for- mal hours of prayer ; St. Peter proudly claims that no unclean or forbidden food has passed his lips (10^''), and, thirty years later, St. James can assure St. Paul that all the thousands of Jewish Christians in Jerusalem are ' zealous of the law' (212»), But Avith an enthusiasm which no scorn could quench, a determination which neither threats nor imprison- ment could weaken, they proclaimed to high and low their conviction that the Jesus they had known was the Messiah. It is one of the water-marks of the primitive character of St. Luke's narrative that lie everywhere shows his consciousness that this is the meaning of xp"'"''<5s. He never employs it as a proper name. His name for our Saviour is either ' Jesus ' or ' the Lord ' ; and xp'o'^'^s when it stands alone always means 'Messiah.' This is specially significant in passages where ' Christ ' and ' Jesus" ' occur together, in apposition ; e.g. 3-", ' that he may send the Messiah who has been before appointed — Jesus' ; 5^ 17* 18' 18'^, 'shewing by the scriptures that Jesus was the Messiah.' The completeness with which this fact is attested must not blind us, however, to two uncertainties, which immediately arise. The first may be stated thus : What did