18 f. ship, there is no sufficient reason, either in its Pauline affinities or in its supposed references to one or another form of legalised persecution, to deny it to Peter. The early chapters of Acts have already shown us the place which Jesus held in the faith and life of His chief apostle, and the impression they leave is confirmed by all we find in the epistle. It emphasises as they do the resurrection of Jesus, and the expectation of His return. It calls on Christians to sanctify Christ as Lord in their hearts (3 15), thus applying to Him words which in Isaiah are applied to Jehovah, just as Peter in Acts similarly applies to Jesus words which refer to Jehovah in Joel (Acts 221). The new life of Christians and their hope of immortality are due to Christ's resurrection (1 3), and all that they know as redemption from sin has been accomplished by Him (1 2", 3). The difficult passage extending from 3 18 to 4o, about preaching to the spirits in prison and bringing the gospel to the dead, has at least thus much of undisputed meaning in it: there is no world, no time, no order of being, in which the writer can think of any other salvation than that which comes by Christ. In His universe Christ is supreme, angels and principalities and powers being made subject to Him (3 22). In the salutation of the epistle Christ stands side by side with the Father and the Spirit; and just as in Acts 233 and in various Pauline passages (e.g. 1 Cor. 12, Eph. 218), the three confront man as the one divine causality on which salvation depends. The foreknowledge of God the Father, consecration wrought by the Spirit, and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ, these represent the divine action in the salvation of men (12). But probably the most decisive expression in the epistle, as bringing out the significance of Jesus for the religion of the writer, is that which he employs in 1 20 f. to describe the Christian standing of its recipients: you, he says, who through Him are believers in God. He does not mean that they did not believe in God before they believed in Christ; there was true faith in God in the world before there was Christian faith. But although it was true, it was not faith in its final or adequate form: that is only made possible when men believe in God through Christ. The final faith in God owes its differentia, that which makes it what it is, its specific and characteristic qualities, to Him. The God in whom the Christian believes is the God who is Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God who gave Him up for us all, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, and who has called us to this eternal glory in Him. There could not be such faith in God, or faith in such a God, apart from the presence of Jesus, His atoning death, and His exaltation to God's right hand; it is only as we believe thus in Jesus that we can have the new Christian faith in God. Jesus is not to the writer one of us, who shares a faith in God which is independently accessible to all men; He is the Person to whom alone the Christian religion owes its character and its being; God would be a word of another meaning to us but for Him. It does not seem to go in any way beyond the truth if we say that with the fullest recognition of what Jesus was and suffered as a man upon earth, the risen Lord, in whom the writer believes, stands on the divine side of reality, and is the channel through which all God's power flows to men for their salvation. V CHRIST IN THE EPISTLE OF JAMES The Epistle of James was long one of the cruces of New Testament criticism. It was regarded by many and is still regarded by some as the earliest of the canonical books; by others it is regarded as among the latest, if not the last of all-a writing which was only in time to secure admission to the canon before the door was shut. It says little, comparatively, about Christ, and the place which He fills in the life of the Christian, and this has been used to support both opinions about its age. It is argued, on the one hand, that it agrees with an early date at which Christological ideas were but little developed; and, on the other hand, that it agrees with a decidedly later date, when Christianity was thoroughly settled in the world, and was distinguished by its moral temper rather than by any peculiar relation to a person. It is not easy to assent to either argument. It is not Christological ideas which we are in quest of, or which the apostolic writings anywhere provide; and from the very earliest times, as our examination of Peter's speeches in Acts has shown, the place of Christ in Christian life was central and dominant. In spite of the inevitable difference in an epistle which is not missionary nor evangelistic but disciplinary, we venture to hold that it is so here also. The writer introduces himself as a bond-servant of God, and of the Lord Jesus Christ. The co-ordination of God and Christ in this passage, and the choice of the term doulos to denote the author's relation to God and Christ, are alike remarkable. Again, when he wishes to describe the Christian religion in the most general terms, he calls it 'the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ' (21)—that is, the faith of which He is the object. We cannot be certain in this passage how the writer means us to take the words is dóns; they may be in apposition with 'our Lord Jesus Christ,' who would then be Himself the glory, the manifested holiness and love of God; or, as the English version has it, and as seems on the whole more likely, they may be meant to describe our Lord Jesus Christ as the Lord of glory. This would emphasise the reference to His exaltation contained in the title Lord, and it has an exact parallel in 1 Cor. 2. But in either case it is important to notice that the believing relation of Christians to the Lord Jesus Christ must determine everything in their conduct: whatever is inconsistent with it-like respect of persons-is ipso facto condemned. If the name of Jesus is less frequently mentioned in James than in other New Testament writings, there is none which is more pervaded by the authority of His word. If the Jewish Wisdom literature is present to the writer's mind, the tones of the sermon on the mount echo without ceasing in his conscience. The coming of the Lord is the object of all Christian hope; the demand which its delay makes for patience is the sum of all Christian trials (5 7-8). The name of Jesus is the noble name which has been invoked upon Christians at their baptism (27), and pious regard for it is a decisive Christian motive. The Lord Jesus Christ is the Judge who stands before the door (4 o), and His name is the resource of the Christian when confronted with sickness, sin, and death (5 13-16). It ought to be noticed here that the true reading in 5 14 is, Let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the Name. Of course the Name meant is that of Jesus, but this did not need to be stated: for the writer, as for Peter and for all Christians, there was no other name. The other examples of this use in the New Testament have the same significance. 'They departed from the presence of the council rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for the Name' (Acts 5"). 'For the sake of the Name they went forth taking nothing from the Gentiles' (3 John, ver. 7). A writer who shares this way of thinking about the name of Jesus, who calls himself in one breath slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, who finds in the relation to Christ and His name assumed in baptism and described as faith the finest and most powerful motives, whose conscience has been quickened by the word of Jesus, and whose hope means that Jesus is coming to judge the world and right the wronged, can hardly be said to stand on a lower level of Christianity, whatever his date, than the other New Testament writers. He may or may not have had theologising interests, though he found no call to exhibit them in this letter; but it is clear that in his religion Christ occupied the central and controlling place. He would not have been at home in any Christian society we have yet discovered if it had been otherwise. VI CHRIST IN THE EPISTLE OF JUDE AND IN THE The close but obscure connexion of these two epistles justifies us in taking them together, and even if we regard them both as pseudepigraphic they are witnesses to the place of Jesus in the mind and life of early Christians. If they do not tell us about Peter and Jude, they tell us about other people, whose faith is as much a matter of historical fact as that of the two apostles. Like James (and Paul in some of his epistles) both Jude and Peter announce themselves as bond-servants of Jesus Christ, and both introduce for the first time in their description of Jesus the word deσñóns which is proper to this relation: they speak of false teachers and bad men 'who deny our only Master (deonóry) and Lord Jesus Christ' (Jude, ver. 4), or 'who deny even the Master who bought them' (2 Peter 2 1). In the first of these |