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name ' Jesus' occurs frequently. Our Lord is described as the root and the offspring of David, and as of the tribe of Judah. Primitive Christian thought comes out in the picture of Him as ruling the nations with a rod of iron (Rev 2^'), or, quite in terms of the Danielle passage, as 'one like unto a son of man' (14"). He is repeatedly set forth in eschatological language; He is the bright and morning star (22i8), ushering in the day of final triumph. His redeeming work on the cross is compendiously summarized in the profoundly significant title of 'the Lamb,' which may almost be called the writer's favourite designation of Him.

2. Yet all memories of history are lost in the higher view of Christ which centres in His exalted glory. It is not too much to say that the strain of praise to Christ rises from point to point until, in His essential qualities and attributes. He is frankly identified with God. He is the 'Living One,' whose victory over the grave has given Him the keys of death and the underworld (1"); He can unlock the secrets of human destiny (ch. S); with eyes that are like a flame of fire He searches the reins and hearts (2i8. a). He is ranked with God, not with finite being, in phrases like ' the beginning of the creation of God' (3"; cf. Col l"), the 'Son of God' (2") who names God His Father in some unique sense (2" 3M; cf. 1«), and 'the Word of God' (19"), — this last being introduced with much solemnity. The specifically Divine title 'the First and the Last' (cf. Is 44" and Rev 1«) He applies three times directly to Himself (1" 2* 22"), thereby signalizing His own Person as the source and end of all that is. This claim is echoed passionately throughout the book. Not-withstanding the prohibition of 19'°, all creation unites to worship Him, in strains offered elsewhere to God Almighty (1«; cf. 7"); and 'God and the Lamb' receive united adoration (5" 7'"). One meaning of such phenomena is plain. They are 'the most con-vincing proof of the impression made by Jesus upon His disciples, one which had been sufficient to revolu-tionize their most cherished religious belief; for them He had the value of God' (Anderson Scott).

3. Yet even here the subordinationist note which is audible in other Apostolic writings does not fail. Thus the revelation forming the book was given to Jesus Christ by God (1'); His authority over the nations He has received of His Father (2^'); and more than once, in the letters to the Churches, the phrase 'my God' is put upon His lips. Similarly, in 3^' and 5" there appears the conception — present also in Ph 2'-" and Jn 17'- ' — that our Lord's risen glory is the issue and the reward of His saving word. In reply to the argument that this is incongruous with pre-existent Divinity, Weiss remarks, with great point, that so far from the assertion of His original Divine nature being neutralized by this representation of Jesus' exalted glory as the gift of God, the one is rather the ground and justification of the other.

VI. JoHANNiNB Chhistologt. — 1. The view of Christ presented in the Fourth Gospel, it should be noted at the outset, is based firmly upon common NT beliefs. The writer — a Jew and an Apostle — declares it his purpose to prove that Jesus is the Messiah (Jn 20"). though no doubt he went far beyond primitive Christian reflexion in perceiving all that Messiahship implies. This interest is everywhere present. Thus in Jn 1" Nathanael hails Jesus as the Christ on the ground of His preterhuman insight; the woman of Samaria is led to the same conclusion; and a similar movement of thought on the part of the multitude is indicated by their question (7"): 'When the Christ cometh, will he do more signs than this man?' And the work entrusted to Jesus is specifically Messianic. He comes to raise the dead, to execute judgment, to confer the gift of the Spirit according to the ancient promise, to take to Himself universal Lordship (3» 16") — in a word, to exert a delegated but competent

PERSON OF CHRIST

authority from above, such as none but the Messiah could assume. Only, the Jewish horizon has dis-appeared. All that Jesus is as Messiah, He is for the whole world.

2. It is observable, further, that the writer deliber-ately makes Christology his main theme. The relation of the Father to the Son, thrown up so conspicuously on one occasion in the Synoptics (Mt IV^), now be-comes the central interest. The book opens with an assertion of the Godhead of the Son (Prologue), and it closes upon the same note (20''*). What, in the self-revelation of daily life and act, the Synoptist had shown Christ to be, the Fourth Evangelist explicitly proclaims and demonstrates that He is; or, as we inay express it otherwise, while Matthew, Mark, and Luke exhibit Jesus as Messiah, the Gospel of John goes a step further, and discloses the ultimate ground on which Messiahship rests. Christ is Messiah, in the absolute sense of that word, because He is the Eternal Son, the personal, articulate expression of God, in whom the Father is perfectly revealed; and the changing inci-dents of the narrative are so disposed as to bring out, by a variety of selected scenes, both the content of this revelation and its diverse reception by men.

As to the historical accuracy of the discourses, it ought to be said that there is a growing consent among scholars that Jesus' words have passed through the medium of the writer's mind, and somewhat taken the colour of his mature thinking. As Haupt has expressed it, the teaching of Jesus has bound up with it an authentic commentary, showing that all, and more than all, the truth which St. John and the Church around him had learned by the close of the Apostolic age was really present in the teaching of the historic Jesus. It is thus that we can understand the comparative absence of growthorprogressalikein Jesus' self -revelation and in thedis-ciples' apprehension of it; ' to the Evangelist looking back, theevolutionary process was foreshortened' (Sanday). He carries out Jesus teaching about Himself to its last conse-quence; he views it svb specie tetemitaiis: but he does so with unerring perception , for it is remarkable that when we analyze a Johannine discourse into its simplest elements we invariably come to what is present also in the Synoptics. This being granted, however, it ought to be considered an axiom that the writer's conception of Christ had undergone along, rich development. Influences which must have acted on it can easily be imagined, such as his daily communion with Christ in prayer, the general teaching of St. Paul, of whichhe cannot have been ignorant, and the challenge of the wistful religious questionings everywhere current in the Grseco-Romau world of his day. Unless experience is something of which God can make no use in conveying truth to man, these forces, playing on the writer's memories of the historic Jesus, must nave gone to evoke an ever fuller appreciation of His significance for humanity. Hence we may conclude that i;he Fourth Gospel is the work of one who, in the late evening of life, was moved to communicate to men the intuition he had reached of the permanent and essential factors in the Person of Christ — His unique relation to God as only-begotten Son, His unique relation to men as Life and Truth; and who, in doing so, has really seized the inmost centre of the self -consciousness of Jesus with greater firmness and profounder truth than even the Synoptic writers.

3. The Johannine picture of Jesus impresses the reader, from the first, by a certain wonderful and harmonious transcendence. Incessu patet deus, we say instinctively; this is in very deed God manifest in the fiesh. Such a figure is not of our world; yet, on the other hand, it would be a grave mistake to conceive Him as out of touch with the realities of human life. No misgiving should ever have been felt as to the genuine humanity of the Christ of St. John (cf. Bur-kitt. The Gospel History, p. 233). Can we forget His weariness at Jacob's well. His tears beside the grave of Lazarus, His joy in the fellowship of the Twelve, the dark troubles of His foreboding soul. His thirst upon the cross? Especially does His real oneness of nature with us come out in His uninterrupted de-pendence upon God, which is accentuated in the most striking way. The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father do (5"; cf. 728 S^s 10"

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