'holy, harmless, undefiled' (7"^), and 'faithful to liim that appointed him' (3'-). He Himself was ' made for a season lower than the angels ' (2"), and is specifically described as a sharer in ' the blood and flesh of men ' (2''*), seeing that ' it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren' (2"). In particular, the likeness in experience extended to temptation, and the temptation was such as arose from His likeness to men, though there was no sin either as its cause or as its result (2'^ 4'*). The writer does not shrink from ascribing to His human nature progress and also weakness and shrinking from death : ' in the daj^s of his flesh . . . though he was Son yet learned he obedience through the things which he suffered ' ; 'he ottered prayers and supplications to him that was able to save him from death with strong crying and tears' (5^'"*).
The author does not, however, even in this passage (Kal reXeiw^ets) teach that Christ was de- livered from moral infirmity, and so made morally perfect. A study of the word reXetwcris and its cog- nates, as used in the Epistle, shows that it connotes ' complete development,' arriving at the destined end, consummation. 'To "make perfect" does not mean to endow with all excellent qualities, but to bring to the end, that is, the appropriate or appointed end, the end corresponding to the idea' (A. B. Davidson, ad loc). Here the idea is ade- quacy to be the Author of Salvation (2^" 5'), or Sanctifier (2"), or High Priest (7-«; cf. 6^). It is in this sense that Christ was ' made perfect,' and that ' through sufiering ' ; and in this sense that He is the Author [or Pioneer] and Perfecter of faith (12-).
6. The Johannine literature. — It is now commonly understood that the Fourth Gospel contains two elements, combined in proportions which are still uncertain — history and its religious interpretation. And these so interpenetrate one another that not only is it difficult to separate them, but the form given to the history is in a lesser or greater degree aflected by the interpretation. What we are con- cerned with here is the conception of Christ which gave rise to the interpretation, and left its mark on the historical material. At least the first of the Johannine Epistles, proceeding from the same source, adds its witness to the same conception.
The Christology of the Johannine literature is remarkable, in the first place, for the combinatiun and reproduction of practically all the elements which had emerged in the earlier documents of the NT. Christ is presented as Messiah (Son of God, Son of Man), Son, Priest, Judge, and Creator, and also as adequately replaced by the Spirit. The combination is the more remarkable when justice is done to the large measure of independence among the documents in which these aspects of Christ are severally emphasized. The various lines which radiate from the common centre of primitive con- ceptions are brotight together again in the Johan- nine Christology. Only the title Kvpios practically disappears (except in 2u^) from the Gospel and the Epistles alike, a fact in which Bousset {op. cit. p. 187) sees the effect of the same deep mysticism which claims for the disciples the position of friends.
But though these elements are present in the same form, their connotation is modified in com- parison with tlie earlier writings. Each of them has undergone a subtle change, partly in conse- quence of their being subsumed under one general conception, and partly because of the character of that over-ruling principle, which is commonly but inadequately described as the 'Logos-idea.' One general rule applies to, and partly explains, these subtle clianges. The Johannine conception of Christ differs from those that had gone before in that it is static, not dynamic. All that Christ has since become to the Church or been discovered to
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be, He must have been from the beginning. That eternal and intrinsic relation to God towards the expression of which other writers had been moving, has now become the central and govei'ning idea, in the light of which all His other relations, all His functions, are beheld and set. And there is no need, because there is no room, for the recognition of crises in His experience, such as the Baptism and the Transfiguration, or ' being declared the Son of God with power,' or being 'made a priest for ever' at the Exaltation. The only change allowed for is a change of form, at the beginning from the Logos to the Logos made flesh, and again at the end from the human manifestation to the spiritual condition of being.
The writer distinctly states the purpose he had in view when composing his Gosjjel (20^'): 'these [signs] are written tliat ye may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God ; and that believing ye may have life in his name.' But the two titles have interchanged their relative importance. In the Synoptic Gospels Jesus is ' Son of God ' because He is Messiah, in accordance with the interpreta- tion of Ps 2''. Here He is Messiah because He is Son of God. And the Sonship is uniformly con- ceived as a relation, intrinsic, unique, and eternal, involving and resting upon essential unity with the Father (11 lO^^ 14i"etc.).