Part 1 (2/2)

were the central themes of apostolic preaching, which included in the case of Peter, an eye-witness, the teaching and mighty words of Jesus (ii. 22; x. 36-38).

1: See especially v. 30, 31; x. 39, 40, 43; xiii. 37-39.

In the Gospels it will be found that almost exactly one-third of the textual material (in the Westcott and Hort edition about eighty out of the two hundred and forty pages) is taken up with events connected with the Pa.s.sion and Resurrection, including the incidents and teachings of the Pa.s.sion week. In Luke the proportion is somewhat smaller (some sixteen out of seventy-three pages) than in the other Gospels; but that the Pa.s.sion is equally prominent in the mind of the writer is shown by the fact that the shadow of it is projected back even to chapter ix.

51, and that in Luke alone the ”exodus” at Jerusalem is the theme of conversation in the Transfiguration scene (ix. 31). Even Mark, showing least of all, it used to be said, the influence of later theological reflection, has been called a history of the Pa.s.sion with an introduction. As Harnack has said: ”The whole work of Mark is so disposed and composed that death and resurrection appear as the aim of the entire presentation.”[2]

2: ”Aus Wissenschaft und Leben,” II, 1911, p. 217.

The centre of interest for the Evangelists as well as for Paul and the author of Hebrews is Christ and Him crucified, the Pa.s.sion and Resurrection. It may be said, though, that the interest of the Evangelists is a biographical one, an interest in a beloved teacher or martyred leader, comparable with that of Plato and Xenophon in the last days and words of Socrates, and not a distinctly theological interest such as Paul felt in the death of Christ, as intimately connected with his own experience of redemption from sin.

One answer to this is that the interest of the Evangelists is not merely in the death but in the resurrection of Jesus. It is worthy also of note that the author of the Fourth Gospel and First Epistle of John has shown that, to one New Testament writer at least, description and interpretation were equally important. John's description of the death of Christ is as detailed and as objective as that of the other Gospel writers; yet his interpretation of the Pa.s.sion as a propitiation for sin (I John ii. 2; iv. 10) is the same as that of the Apostle Paul. While John places the words ”Lamb of G.o.d” in the mouth of the Baptist (i. 29, 36), and uses the expression, ”the blood of Jesus his Son who cleanses us from all sin” (I John i. 7), he never, except possibly in a veiled way, places the language of sacrifice in the mouth of Jesus Himself.

There is no reason to doubt that the other Evangelists who record the thrice repeated prediction of the Crucifixion (see Mark viii. 31; ix.

12; x. 33, and parallels) would, equally with John, be interested in its doctrinal interpretation. Such an interpretation is in fact suggested by the words of Jesus Himself. At the Last Supper, He brought His death into connection with the forgiveness of sins, and when He spoke of it as a ”ransom for many”[3] used language which is naturally interpreted in a sacrificial sense. Luke, it is true, nowhere uses the word ”ransom,” but there is no reason to doubt that he shared the Pauline view of the death of Christ. This is clearly indicated by the expression, ”purchased with his own blood,” contained in one of the ”we-sections” of Acts (xx. 28), and in fact by the words of the risen Jesus (Luke xxiv. 46, 47). As the altar was central in the Old Testament, so, from the standpoint of its writers, is the Pa.s.sion in the New Testament.

3: ??t??? ??t? p????? [lytron anti pollon]. Mark x. 45; Matt. xx. 28.

It is needless to show in detail that an exalted view of the person of Christ is with the New Testament writers connected with the central place which they a.s.sign to His death and resurrection. Mark, whose Christology is thought to be least developed, may be taken as a single example. In the opening scene of the ministry, as in the Transfiguration scene, the divine voice says: ”Thou art (this is) my beloved Son” (i.

11; ix. 7); and in the closing scene the centurion exclaims, ”Truly this man was the Son of G.o.d” (or a son of G.o.d, Mark xv. 39). The climax of the narrative is said to be the confession of Peter, ”Thou art the Christ” (viii. 29); and Jesus alludes to Himself as ”the Son,” above prophets and men and angels (xii. 6; xiii. 32). At the trial, in answer to the solemn question of the high priest, ”Art thou the Christ, the Son of the blessed?” He said, ”I am” (xiv. 61-62). Bousset admits that the three first Gospels differ from the Fourth only in degree,[4] and in his latest work he says that if the phrase ”Son of G.o.d” (i. 1), omitted in many ma.n.u.scripts of Mark, is really an interpolation, it is a suitable one as indicating the theme of the book.[5] Wrede even says the Gospel of Mark belongs in a sense to the history of dogma.[6]

4: ”Was Wissen Wir von Jesus?” 1904, p. 54.

5: ”Kyrios Christos,” 1913, p. 70, note 1, and p. 65.

6: See Schweitzer: ”Von Reimarus zu Wrede,” p. 336; E. T., ”Quest of the Historical Jesus,” p. 337.

For the writers of the New Testament, leaving out for the present the question of sources, in spite of differences in time and place and race and circ.u.mstances, and by implication for the various circles of readers, Jewish, Greek and Roman, whom they addressed, there was but one kind of Christianity, one gospel of the Kingdom and the Cross and the Son of G.o.d.

II. PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY AND PAULINE CHRISTIANITY

It is a.s.serted that the striking unanimity of the New Testament writers in their view of Christianity is not due to the teaching of Jesus, but to the powerful influence of the Apostle Paul. The statement is made in many quarters that not Jesus but Paul was the virtual founder of Christianity, so far as its central doctrines, its inst.i.tutions, its wors.h.i.+p of a divine Christ, and its world-wide propaganda are concerned.

In Paul, it is said, the gospel of a simple piety and a pure ethic, the gospel of Jesus, was so overlaid by the incrustations of dogma that its true nature was hidden until rediscovered by modern criticism; and it had thus lost the simplicity that is in Christ. It was Paul himself, whose missionary labours carried the gospel throughout Europe, that really preached ”another gospel.” As Schweitzer, following Kalthoff, suggests with some irony, there was, under this supposition, ”an immediate declension from and falsification of a pure original principle” in Christianity, comparable only to the Fall in the moral history of mankind.[7]

7: ”Von Reimarus zu Wrede,” p. 312; E. T., ”Quest, etc.,” p. 314.

The teaching of the primitive apostles is sometimes declared to be an intermediate step between the gospel of Jesus and the doctrinal Christianity of Paul. It is desirable then to compare the Pauline teaching, first with the teaching of the other apostles and the Jerusalem church, and then with the teaching of Jesus.

When we examine the historical situation, the lines of connection between Paul and the primitive apostles and the Jerusalem church are so many and so strong as practically to negative the supposition of a fundamental difference between them in their conception of the gospel.

(1) If Luke had written the Fourth Gospel, the case would be different; but Luke wrote (a.s.suming his authors.h.i.+p of the Third Gospel and the Acts)[8] the Gospel which contains the Sermon on the Mount and the parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son. When one remembers that Luke was the intimate companion of Paul and his co-labourer in missionary work before he wrote his Gospel, that he derived his material largely from ”eye-witnesses of the word,” and that afterwards he recorded the teaching of both Peter and Paul in the Acts, it is clear that Luke himself saw no essential difference between the Christianity of the primitive apostles and that of Paul, and it becomes improbable that such a difference existed.

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