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 Soûλos 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 Tns 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 (578). 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 (49), 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 1 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 ChrisThe other examples of

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tians, there was no other name. 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"). they went forth taking

For the sake of the Name 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

SECOND EPISTLE OF PETER

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

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description of Jesus the word deσTóτηs, which is proper to this relation: they speak of false teachers and bad men 'who deny our only Master (Seσñóτη) and Lord Jesus Christ' (Jude, ver. 4), or 'who deny even the Master who bought them' (2 Peter 21). In the first of these passages it has been questioned whether two persons are not meant: does not 'our only Master,' it is said, signify God, in distinction from 'our Lord Jesus Christ'? The same question is raised again in 2 Peter 11, where it is open to discussion whether the writer speaks of 'the righteousness of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ' (one person, as it is rendered in the Revised Version); or of the righteousness of our God, and the Saviour Jesus Christ' (two persons, as in margin of Revised Version). The difficulty is the same as in Titus 218, where the text of the Revised Version has 'the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ' (one person); and the margin, 'the glory of the great God, and our Saviour Jesus Christ' (two persons). Strict grammar favours the rendering according to which there is only one person mentioned in all these places, Jesus Christ, who is called 'our only Master and Lord,' and 'our great God and Saviour.' There are cases, however, in which strict grammar is misleading, and these may be among them. It is awkward to call Jesus Christ 'our God and Saviour' in 2 Peter 11, and then to speak in the very next sentence of the knowledge of 'God, and of Jesus our Lord.' Dr. Moulton thinks that 'familiarity with the everlasting apotheosis that flaunts itself in the papyri and inscriptions of Ptolemaic and Imperial times lends strong support to Wendland's contention that Christians from

the latter part of the first century onward, deliberately annexed for their Divine Master the phraseology that was impiously arrogated to themselves by some of the worst of men.' A writer like Jude, however, who is conscious of sustaining a tradition, and exhorts his readers to contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to the saints, would hardly have described Jesus as the only SeσTórηs and kúptos merely under constraint from the impieties of emperor worship. His divine greatness is realised on independent grounds and represented in independent ways. It is conspicuous in the two passages which always redeem Jude in the common Christian mind from the reproach of quoting Enoch. One is the sublime doxology in vv. 24, 25, in which glory, majesty, dominion and power are ascribed to the only wise God our Saviour through Jesus Christ our Lord': it is this mediation of Christ in Christian worship in which His final significance for faith is expressed. The other is the equally sublime exhortation of v. 20: 'But ye, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.' Here as in so many other passages we are confronted with the Holy Spirit, God, and our Lord Jesus Christ, as the total manifestation of that on which our salvation depends. It is in the same region as that in which God and His Spirit work that our Lord Jesus Christ works; it is to that side of reality that He belongs; the whole religious life of men is divinely determined by Him as it could not be

1 Grammar of New Testament Greek, i. 84.