The Apocalypse of John as a whole leaves the impression of a conception of Christ so exalted, so majestical in the history of mankind, that it could not be carried further without either impinging on the writer's monotheism or demanding the em- ployment of metaphysical categories which were beyond his range of thought. It has been main- tained by some [e.g. Bousset) that in the descrip- tion of Christ as Alpha and Omega the writer goes beyond St. Paul, and actually represents the furthest point in the development of Christology within the NT. B. Weiss says that ' the fact that the Messiah is an originally divine Being (gottliches IFesen) is taken for granted' {Bib. Theol. of NT, Eng. tr., 1882-83, vol. ii. p. 172). But it may be doubted whether this outgoing of St. Paul by the Apocalypse is not more apparent than real. The impression is due partly to the continuous occupation of the author's mind with the same theme. Christ is the Hero of every scene in the drama of the end. There is none of that wide sweep of interest in things
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both human and Divine which marks the letters of St. Paul. It is due also in part to the natural ten- dency of the modern reader to accept as evidence of a theory or conception of Christ's Person what for the author was only concrete imagery gathered from many sources to set forth and enhance the glory of his Lord. It may indeed be doubted whether he held any proposition regarding Christ which was not included in the convictions of the primitive community. All that he has to say was involved in the tacit assertion that Christ is an object of worship and a hearer of prayer. And with all the Divine honours and attributes which he lavishes on the Glorified Messiah he never loses sight of His identity Avith the man Jesus. After the title ' the Lamb ' he uses with most frequency the simple name * Jesus ' (nine times). The phenomenon was so noticeable that in several passages inferior MSS have inserted the word ' Christ,' which copyists felt to be missing. It was ' for the testimony of Jesus ' that John was in Patmos (P ; cf. 12^'' 19") ; it was with the blood of ' the martyi's {or witnesses) of Jesus ' that Rome was intoxicated ; and in 22^** the heavenly Christ speaks of Himself by this human name — ' I Jesus have sent my messenger,' while the response to the message with which the book closes addresses the Risen Christ in the same form, reminiscent of ' the days of his flesh ' — ' Even so, come. Lord Jesus.' The Apocalypse, therefore, is no exception to the rule that, so far from being accompanied by a loosening of the tie between Christ and the historical Jesus, the increasing em- phasis on His Divine significance for the world goes along with the same or even clearer assertion of the oneness of Jesus and the Christ. The Christ they worshipped was the Jesus whom they had known.
3. The Chrlstology of St. PauL— The material for Christology which was already present in the con- sciousness of the primitive community, or within its grasp, received its fullest and richest develop- ment at the hands of St. Paul. The task of the student is to do equal justice to what he received from, and shared with, those who were before him in Christ, and to those elements which were original with him. This will supply the right answer to a question which has become a living issue for modern Christology — Is the Pauline Christology a legiti- mate and necessary development of the relevant material provided by the contents of the Gospels and the experience of the Church, or does it repre- sent a new departure, a conception of Christ so distinct from, and disparate to, what had gone be- fore, that it must be held to rest not on the revela- tion of Jesus, but on the speculation of the Apostle ? There has Vjeen for some time a tendency in one school of NT criticism to exaggerate beyond all reason the distinction between Christianity accord- ing to the Gospels and Christianity according to St. Paul, and to do so by minimizing or eliminat- ing what is ' Pauline ' in the Gospels and by over- emphasizing the ' Pauline ' elements in St. Paul. Whatever is distinctive in St. Paul — his 'Calvin- ism,' his ' sacramentarianism,' his ' mysticism,' his ' eschatology ' — is apt to be isolated and exagL;erated, with the result, if not the intention, of difi'erentiat- ing him more emphatically from his Master. It needs to be borne in mind that we are working here in a highly charged electric field, where men of all schools of thought are in danger of being swayed even unconsciously by a general prceiudi- cium.
In examining the evidence as to St. Paul's con- ception of Christ, certain general considerations have to be kept in view. It is now commonly agreed that it is a mistake to regard St. Paul as one who was constructing or had constructed a system of dogmatic theology. We are probably
nearer the truth if we think of him as a man supremely interested in the practical conduct of life, whose mind was speculative in the sense that he was not content to register phenomena, but must seek for their relations and their causes, ami that he constantly referred details to their correla- tive principles. That he was moved to this by the impulse of a practical demand rather than of an intellectual necessity is plainly suggested by what we can gather concerning his ' missionary preaching.' The Epistles to the Thessalonians furnish evidence as to its comparatively elementary character up till A.D. 52. And it is within the last ten years of his life that we are to place those Epistles in which his distinctive theological ideas are developed and exposed, within six of these last ten j'ears that we place the great group of Epistles in which they find their classical and all but final expression. Everything points to the fact that the specifically Pauline combinations or inferences were due to the stimulus of specific situations or to the demands created by definite opposition. St. Paul's mind ' is logical enough when his spiritual experience demands it, but a large part of his affirmations regarding the religious life and destiny of men is thrown off, as occasion prompts, in vague hints, in outbursts of intense spiritual emotion, in pictures set within the framework of his inherited training, in arguments devised to meet the needs of a par- ticular church or a particular group of converts ' (H. A. A. Kennedy, St. Paul's Conceptions of the Last Things, 1904, p. 22). It is impossible to separ- ate the practical and ethical from the doctrinal, in the interests of the Apostle ; and only imperfect success can attend any attempt to study Pauline con- ceptions by isolating their intellectual expression.