446
GEIs^ TILES
GENTILES
fall in with tliis view, when we think of the books of Job, Jonah, and Kuth — of the larger hope of the later Psalmists (Ps 67, 87, 100, 117, 145), and the remarkable assertion of Malachi (V^) that the name of God is honoured by the sincere worship ofiered to Him among the Gentiles from East to West.
From the Wisdom Literature the national feeling against Gentiles is almost entirely absent. But it is far otherwise witli Jewish apocalyptic, the Book of Daniel and its numerous extra-canonical suc- cessors— far inferior to it in religious value — in whicii much true spiritual insight is mixed with carnal views and human passion. The noble Mac- cabtean struggle, which was contemporaneous with the rise of this class of literature, saved Israel from becoming hellenized ; but it had the result also of intensifying the exclusiveness and intolerance of which Tacitus speaks (Hist. v. 5 : ' adversus omnes alios hostile odium').
The teaching of the OT respecting the Gentiles may be characterized as hostile, hesitating, and hopeful by turns. It is to be observed that in many of its most liberal utterances a position of superiority is assigned to Israel. The Gentiles are still servants, not equals. In Is 60'^ they come and bend at Israel's feet as suppliants and vassals. Even in Is 19'-^"^, while Egypt and Assyria are admitted into covenant with God, Israel is still distinguished as His inheritance. His peculiar possession. ' His house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples' (Is 56''), but it is Jewish feasts that the nations shall keep there (Zee 14^^"'^), and they shall be joined to Israel by absorption, not by co-ordination (Is 452»-2b, Jer 12i8, Zeph 3*, Zee 8^""-^). A great concession in the direction of equality is made in Is 66-', if it be Gentiles whom God is to take to minister in His sanctuary ; but the promise may relate to Jews of the Dispersion. In the magnificent prophecy of Is 2-"^, Mic 4'"* the Temple-mountain is still the centre from which the laws of God go forth to the subjects of a king- dom of universal peace. But the material and spiritual elements in this prophecy are combined in a way that the Christian Church will not fully comprehend before the coming of a glory that shall be revealed.
3. Christ and the Gentiles. — Was there present to the mind of Christ, while accomplishing the work of Him that sent Him, a purpose of salvation that included the Gentiles ? Did He look beyond ' the lost sheep of the house of Israel ' to other sheep far off from the mountains of Canaan, who had also to be sought and found ? When Satan showed Him the kingdoms of the world, did He turn away from the sight of the world with the repugnance of a Jew of His time, or did the sight move Him to compassion, and enkindle a great hope in His heart? It is not easy to see how the Christian Church can cease believing that Christ had a purpose of mercy for the world, and the ex- pectation of subduing it unto Himself, unless she is to revise her wliole doctrine of the Person of her Lord. 'The day and the hour' may be unknown to Christ as the Son, but the Father's purpose of love for tlio world cannot be unknown ; if He be the Son, He must have made that purpose His own.
It has been contended that although His preach- ing contained ' a vital love of God and men, which may be described as "implicit universalism," the Gentile mission cannot have lain within the horizon of Jesus.' It was the Spirit of Jesus that led His disciples to the universal mission, but He issued no positive command to them to undertake it (Harnack, Expansion, i. 40ff. ). This conclusion is based upon an exhaustive, })ut biased, exposition of the relevant texts in the Synoptic Gospels, the Fourth being set aside with the frank avowal that it ' is saturated with statements of a directly uni-
versalistic character' (p. 47). It is to be admitted that the view in qiiestion largely owes its air of ci'edibility to that perplexing feature of the narra- tive of Acts — the delay of the original apostles in undertaking the Gentile mission. On this delay, which is one of the unsolved problems of Apostolic Christianity, something will be said later. At present, let us endeavour to appreciate the strengtli of our position by surveying its defences.
(1) As the fundamental principle of the unity of God implied that He was tiie God of all nations upon earth, so our Saviour's calling Himself 'the Son of man ' expressed His universal relation to the human race. And if a reference to Dn 7'^'- be admitted. His using the title also pointed to His coming Lordship over the world. There is thus an antecedent probability that Mt 28'^"^", which so well agrees with the meaning of the title, is a genuine utterance of the Risen Lord.
(2) He accepted the confession at Cresarea Philippi, ' Thou art the Christ,' with an emotion of which we feel the glow every time we read Mt jgi6. i7_ j^ follows that, from the time when the Voice from heaven had proclaimed Him to be God's Beloved Son, and from the beginning of His ' training of the Twelve,' Jesus had been conscious of His right to ' the name in which all the hopes of the OT were gathered up ' (EBi iii. 3063). The announcement of His Death and Resurrection which immediately followed showed what His being the true Messiah meant for Him, although His disciples were ' slow of heart to believe ' that it could mean what He said. The OT picture of the suffering Saviour, placed as it was side by side with that of the ruling descendant of David, be- came, as Ed. Konig says (Expositor, 8th ser., iv. [1912] 113, 118), dimmed in the centuries pi-eceding His Advent. Christ relumined the Avhole picture by His suffering, and then by His being 'the first by the resurrection of the dead to proclaim light both to the people and to the Gentiles' (Ac 26-^).