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nothing is gained for Schmiedel's interpretation by saying that what Jesus revealed was not the Father but Himself. He Himself was Son, and as the knowledge of relatives is one, to reveal Himself is to reveal the Father. It is difficult to understand why a writer who not only accepts as certain, but presents as the very type of certainty, the passage in Mark 13 32 in which there is an absolute correlation of the Father and the Son, should so strenuously object to it here, and argue that Jesus cannot have called Himself Son of God in a sense applicable to Himself alone. If He did it there, why not here? To avoid all misunderstanding, Schmiedel says, we must state as the import of the passage not that Jesus was conscious of Himself as the Son of God, but that He was conscious of Himself as a child of God. That is, we must decline the only expression which is known to the New Testament, and adopt an expression of which the New Testament does not furnish a single example. We must set the whole of the evidence aside, and construct the consciousness of Jesus out of our own heads. It is impossible to regard this as serious criticism.

There is one consideration which of itself is conclusive against all minimising constructions of this passage. It is contained in the words, All things have been delivered unto Me by My Father. (Harnack thinks the original was 'by the Father'; but it makes no difference.) These words are surely not the preface to such a rationalistic commonplace as Schmiedel evolves from what comes after; they imply in Jesus a consciousness of His place and vocation to which nothing but the Christian attitude to Him does justice. It is vain to isolate words like these about the Father and the Son, and then to torture them into agreement with some preconceived idea of what Jesus must have been: they do not stand alone in our evidence, and when we take

them with utterances of Jesus such as have been already examined they refuse to accept any but the highest interpretation. There may be theories of man and the universe which have antecedent antipathies to them; but it is no objection to them, in the eyes of a student of history, that they furnish a historical justification for the Christian faith in Jesus. It may not be amiss, however, to remark that while we accept this justification, we admit that it is idle to ask whether the Sonship of Jesus here spoken of is Messianic or ethical or metaphysical. We gain nothing by separating in thought what cannot be separated in reality. That Jesus was conscious of a unique vocation in connexion with God's Kingdom is true: in that sense He was the Messianic Son of God, and the passage illustrates His Messianic consciousness. But the relation to to God which this involved was not 'official'; even in His Messianic vocation His consciousness was filial; the God whose kingdom He was to inaugurate was His Father in a vital and ethical sense-One with whom He lived in perfect mutual understanding, who was loved and trusted by Him without reserve, and to whom He could say in the most disconcerting situations, Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight. The least serviceable, however, of all these distinctions is metaphysical. It means something when we say that Jesus was Messianic Son of God-we can put into the adjective all we know of His vocation in God's Kingdom. It means something when we say He was Son of God in the ethical sense: we can fill up the idea of Sonship with the love, trust, and obedience which belong to the filial life. But it does not mean anything which we can correspondingly define if we say He was Son in the metaphysical sense. It is only another way of saying with emphasis that He was Son, and of suggesting that

there was something in His Sonship which goes beyond us.

ISOLATED EXPRESSIONS IN WHICH JESUS' CONSCIOUSNESS OF HIMSELF IS REVEALED

Up till now we have examined passages common to Matthew and Luke in which there was a certain continuity, but it is necessary to look at others in which, though fragmentary and isolated, there is a similar revelation of the mind of Jesus. It is impossible to take them in any chronological order, but the following are the most important.

In Matt. 11 20-24, Luke 10 13-15 we have the woes pronounced by Jesus on Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum. The mighty works He has done in them are referred to-miracles of healing, evidently, in which the goodness of God was leading them to repentance-and the doom of their impenitence is pronounced. It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon, more tolerable for Sodom, in the day of judgment than for them. The work of Jesus is connected in His own mind with the last day. Nothing less than the final destiny of men is determined by their attitude to it. This sense of the absolute significance of the manifestation of God's saving power in Him pervades many of the words of Jesus, and is the ultimate basis of what is called faith in His divinity.

Another significant passage is Matt. 1230, which is found verbatim also in Luke 11 23: He that is not with Me is against Me, and he that gathereth not with Me scattereth. This is on the same plane, even if it is not in the same key, as 'he that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me.' It betrays the consciousness in Jesus of a significance attaching to His

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own personality and work such as has no parallel in Scripture. What, in His own mind, is the Person who thus summons men to identify themselves with Him, and declares neutrality impossible? Every one feels how weighty His words are if they really express the mind of Jesus about Himself, and though for those who remember other sayings of Jesus with which we are now familiar there is no reason to question them, we need not be surprised to find that they have been assailed from various sides. Wellhausen thinks that, to be relevant to the context-that is, to fit into their place in the argument-they must be capable of being generalised. Jesus is only taking Himself as an ple of a principle: He says, He who is not with Me is against Me, but He is not specially thinking of Himself; what He means is that in any battle he who is not a friend is a foe. How any one can say this of a passage in which the standing of Jesus is the very point at issue (notice the repeated and emphatic tyú in Matt. 12 27-28 which immediately precedes, and the saying about speaking against the Son of Man in Matt. 12 32 which immediately follows) it is hard to comprehend. Loisy 2 does not attempt to eviscerate the words, but suggests that they do not come from Jesus. He points to the fact that in Mark 940 and Luke 950 we have a saying in a somewhat similar situation-in both places exorcism is being discussed-but of a different spirit, though an analogous form. In Luke it reads, He that is not against you is on your side; in Mark, according to the generally accepted text, though Wellhausen would make it agree with Luke, He who is not against us is on our side. This is more genial, more tolerant, than the saying in Matt. 12 30, Luke 11 23, and therefore may be

1 Das Evangelium Matthaei, ad loc.
Les Evangiles Synoptiques, i. 708.

assumed to be a word of Jesus. Loisy assumes that it is the only word of Jesus on the subject, but the writer must confess himself quite unable to follow the process by which a rédacteur is conjured up qui aurait cru devoir retourner la sentence: 'Qui n'est pas contre vous est pour vous,' en: 'Qui n'est pas avec moi est contre moi.' Aurait cru devoir is good, but it does not justify M. Loisy in laying on the conscience of an imaginary rédacteur the responsibility of producing the reasons which he himself owes to his readers. There is in fact no reason whatever for this fantastic supposition, except the reason that Jesus must not say things which indicate that He had in His own mind the absolute significance which He has in Christian faith. The two sayings are quite independent-Luke, as we have seen, gives both -and they are strictly relevant to the context in which they occur. In Matt. 12 30, In Matt. 12 30, Luke 11 23 Jesus is discussing exorcism with His enemies, who wish to arrest His beneficent work, and He says naturally, in the tone of warning, He that is not with Me is against Me, and he that gathereth not with Me scattereth. In Mark 9", Luke 950 He is discussing the same subject with His disciples, one of whom has just told Him that he had seen a man casting out devils in Jesus' name and forbidden him, because he did not follow with them. Just as naturally Jesus answers here, Forbid him not: he who is not against you is on your side. There is no reason to doubt either the one saying or the other, and both belong to the oldest stratum of evangelic tradition.

The twelfth chapter of Matthew preserves other words of Jesus in which we hear Him speak of His own greatness. Two of these (in verses 41, 42) are found also in Luke (11 31 f.): Behold, there is more than Jonah here; Behold, there is more than Solomon here. A third occurs in Matthew only (v. 6): I say unto you,

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