B. Jesus Christ is recognized as God.(a) He is expressly called God.In John 1:1—Θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος—the absence of the article shows Θεός to be the predicate (cf.4:24—πνεῦμα ὁ Θεός). This predicate precedes the verb by way of emphasis, to indicate progress in the thought =“the Logos was[pg 306]not only with God, but was God”(see Meyer and Luthardt, Comm.in loco).“Only ὁ λόγος can be the subject, for in the whole Introduction the question is, not who God is, but who the Logos is”(Godet).Westcott in Bible Commentary,in loco—“The predicate stands emphatically first. It is necessarily without the article, inasmuch as it describes the nature of the Word and does not identify his person. It would be pure Sabellianism to say:‘The Word was ὁ Θεός.’Thus in verse 1 we have set forth the Word in his absolute eternal being, (a) his existence: beyond time; (b) his personal existence: in active communion with God; (c) his nature: God in essence.”Marcus Dods, in Expositor's Greek Testament,in loco:“The Word is distinguishable from God, yet Θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος—the word was God, of divine nature; not‘a God,’which to a Jewish ear would have been abominable, nor yet identical with all that can be called God, for then the article would have been inserted (cf.1 John 3:4).”In John 1:18, μονογενὴς θεός—“the only begotten God”—must be regarded as the correct reading, and as a plain ascription of absolute Deity to Christ. He is not simply the only revealer of God, but he is himself God revealed.John 1:18—“No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.”In this passage, although Tischendorf (8th ed.) has μονογενὴς ὑιός, Westcott and Hort (with א*BC*L Pesh. Syr.) read μονογενὴς Θεός and the Rev. Vers. puts“the only begotten God”in the margin, though it retains“the only begotten Son”in the text. Harnack says the reading μονογενὴς θεός is“established beyond contradiction”; see Westcott, Bib. Com. on John, pages 32, 33. Here then we have a new and unmistakable assertion of the deity of Christ. Meyer says that the apostles actually call Christ God only inJohn 1:1and20:28, and that Paul never so recognizes him. But Meyer is able to maintain his position only by calling the doxologies to Christ, in2 Tim. 4:18,Heb. 13:21and2 Pet. 3:18, post-apostolic. See Thayer, N. T. Lexicon, on Θεός, and on μονογενής.In John 20:28, the address of Thomas Ὁ κύριός μου καὶ ὁ θεός μου—“My Lord and my God”—since it was unrebuked by Christ, is equivalent to an assertion on his own part of his claim to Deity.John 20:28—“Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.”This address cannot be interpreted as a sudden appeal to God in surprise and admiration, without charging the apostle with profanity. Nor can it be considered a mere exhibition of overwrought enthusiasm, since it was accepted by Christ. Contrast the conduct of Paul and Barnabas when the heathen at Lystra were bringing sacrifice to them as Jupiter and Mercury (Acts 14:11-18). The words of Thomas, as addressed directly to Christ and as accepted by Christ, can be regarded only as a just acknowledgment on the part of Thomas that Christ was his Lord and his God. Alford, Commentary,in loco:“The Socinian view that these words are merely an exclamation is refuted (1) by the fact that no such exclamations were in use among the Jews; (2) by the εἶπεν αὐτῷ; (3) by the impossibility of referring the ὁ κύριός μου to another than Jesus: seeverse 13; (4) by the N. T. usage of expressing the vocative by the nominative with an article; (5) by the psychological absurdity of such a supposition: that one just convinced of the presence of him whom he dearly loved should, instead of addressing him, break out into an irrelevant cry; (6) by the further absurdity of supposing that, if such were the case, the Apostle John, who of all the sacred writers most constantly keeps in mind the object for which he is writing, should have recorded anything so beside that object; (7) by the intimate conjunction of πεπίστευκας.”Cf.Mat. 5:34—“Swear not ... by the heaven”—swearing by Jehovah is not mentioned, because no Jew did so swear. This exclamation of Thomas, the greatest doubter among the twelve, is the natural conclusion of John's gospel. The thesis“the Word was God”(John 1:1)has now become part of the life and consciousness of the apostles.Chapter 21is only an Epilogue, or Appendix, written later by John, to correct the error that he was not to die; see Westcott, Bible Com.,in loco. The Deity of Christ is the subject of the apostle who best understood his Master. Lyman Beecher:“Jesus Christ is the acting Deity of the universe.”In Rom. 9:5, the clause ὁ ὢν ἐπὶ πάντων Θεὸς εὐλογητός cannot be translated“blessed be the God over all,”for ὢν is superfluous if the clause is a doxology;“εὐλογητός precedes the name of God in a doxology, but follows it,[pg 307]as here, in a description”(Hovey). The clause can therefore justly be interpreted only as a description of the higher nature of the Christ who had just been said, τὸ κατὰ σάρκα, or according to his lower nature, to have had his origin from Israel (see Tholuck, Com.in loco).Sanday, Com. onRom. 9:5—“The words would naturally refer to Christ, unless‘God’is so definitely a proper name that it would imply a contrast in itself. We have seen that this is not so.”Hence Sanday translates:“of whom is the Christ as concerning the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever”. See President T. Dwight, in Jour. Soc. Bib. Exegesis, 1881:22-55;per contra, Ezra Abbot, in the same journal, 1881:1-19, and Denney, in Expositor's Gk. Test.,in loco.In Titus 2:13, ἐπιφάνειαν τῆς δόξης τοῦ μεγάλου Θεοῦ καὶ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ we regard (with Ellicott) as“a direct, definite, and even studied declaration of Christ's divinity”=“the ... appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ”(so English Revised Version). Ἐπιφάνεια is a term applied specially to the Son and never to the Father, and μεγάλου is uncalled for if used of the Father, but peculiarly appropriate if used of Christ. Upon the same principles we must interpret the similar text 2 Pet. 1:1 (see Huther, in Meyer's Com.:“The close juxtaposition indicates the author's certainty of the oneness of God and Jesus Christ”).Titus 2:13—“looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ”—so the English Revised Version. The American Revisers however translate:“the glory of the great God and Savior”; and Westcott and Hort bracket the word ἡμῶν. These considerations somewhat lessen the cogency of this passage as a proof-text, yet upon the whole the balance of argument seems to us still to incline in favor of Ellicott's interpretation as given above.In Heb. 1:8, πρὸς δὲ τὸν υἱόν; ὁ θρόνος σου, ὁ Θεὸς, εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα is quoted as an address to Christ, and verse 10 which follows—“Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth”—by applying to Christ an Old Testament ascription to Jehovah, shows that ὁ Θεός, in verse 8, is used in the sense of absolute Godhead.It is sometimes objected that the ascription of the name God to Christ proves nothing as to his absolute deity, since angels and even human judges are called gods, as representing God's authority and executing his will. But we reply that, while it is true that the name is sometimes so applied, it is always with adjuncts and in connections which leave no doubt of its figurative and secondary meaning. When, however, the name is applied to Christ, it is, on the contrary, with adjuncts and in connections which leave no doubt that it signifies absolute Godhead. SeeEx. 4:16—“thou shalt be to him as God”;7:1—“See, I have made thee as God to Pharaoh”;22:28—“Thou shalt not revile God, [marg.,the judges],nor curse a ruler of thy people”;Ps. 82:1—“God standeth in the congregation of God; he judgeth among the gods”[among the mighty];6—“I said, Ye are gods, And all of you sons of the Most High”;7—“Nevertheless ye shall die like men, And fall like one of the princes.”Cf.John 10:34-36—“If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came”(who were God's commissioned and appointed representatives), how much more proper for him who is one with the Father to call himself God.As inPs. 82:7those who had been called gods are represented as dying, so inPs. 97:7—“Worship him, all ye gods”—they are bidden to fall down before Jehovah. Ann. Par. Bible:“Although the deities of the heathen have no positive existence, they are often described in Scripture as if they had, and are represented as bowing down before the majesty of Jehovah.”This verse is quoted inHeb. 1:6—“let all the angels of God worship him”—i. e., Christ. Here Christ is identified with Jehovah. The quotation is made from the Septuagint, which has“angels”for“gods.”“Its use here is in accordance with the spirit of the Hebrew word, which includes all that human error might regard as objects of worship.”Those who are figuratively and rhetorically called“gods”are bidden to fall down in worship before him who is the true God, Jesus Christ. See Dick, Lectures on Theology, 1:314; Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 10.[pg 308]In 1 John 5:20—ἐσμεν ἐν τῷ ἀληθινῷ, ἐν τῷ υἱῷ αὐτοῦ Ἰησοῦ Χριστῷ. οὗτος ἐστιν ὁ ἀληθινὸς Θεός—“it would be a flat repetition, after the Father had been twice called ὁ ἀληθινός, to say now again:‘this is ὁ ἀληθενὸς Θεός.’Our being in God has its basis in Christ his Son, and this also makes it more natural that οὖτος should be referred to υἱῷ. But ought not ὁ ἀληθενός then to be without the article (as in John 1:1—Θεός ἦν ὁ λόγος)? No, for it is John's purpose in 1 John 5:20 to say, notwhatChrist is, butwhohe is. In declaringwhatone is, the predicate must have no article; in declaringwhoone is, the predicate must have the article. St. John here says that this Son, on whom our being in the true God rests, is this true God himself”(see Ebrard, Com.in loco).Other passages might be here adduced, asCol. 2:9—“in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily”;Phil 2:6—“existing in the form of God”; but we prefer to consider these under other heads as indirectly proving Christ's divinity. Still other passages once relied upon as direct statements of the doctrine must be given up for textual reasons. Such areActs 20:28, where the correct reading is in all probability not ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ Θεοῦ, but ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ Κυρίου (so ACDE Tregelles and Tischendorf; B and א, however, have τοῦ Θεοῦ. The Rev. Vers. continues to read“church of God”; Amer. Revisers, however, read“church of the Lord”—see Ezra Abbot's investigation in Bib. Sac., 1876: 313-352); and1 Tim. 3:16, where ὅς is unquestionably to be substituted for Θεός, though even here ἐφανερώθη intimates preëxistence.Rev. George E. Ellis, D. D., before the Unitarian Club, Boston, November, 1882—“Fifty years of study, thought and reading given largely to the Bible and to the literature which peculiarly relates to it, have brought me to this conclusion, that the book—taken with the especial divine quality and character claimed for it, and so extensively assigned to it, as inspired and infallible as a whole, and in all its contents—is an Orthodox book. It yields what is called the Orthodox creed. The vast majority of its readers, following its letter, its obvious sense, its natural meaning, and yielding to the impression which some of its emphatic texts make upon them, find in it Orthodoxy. Only that kind of ingenious, special, discriminative, and in candor I must add, forced treatment, which it receives from us liberals can make the book teach anything but Orthodoxy. The evangelical sects, so called, are clearly right in maintaining that their view of Scripture and of its doctrines draws a deep and wide division of creed between them and ourselves. In that earnest controversy by pamphlet warfare between Drs. Channing and Ware on the one side, and Drs. Worcester and Woods and Professor Stuart on the other—a controversy which wrought up the people of our community sixty years ago more than did our recent political campaign—I am fully convinced that the liberal contestants were worsted. Scripture exegesis, logic and argument were clearly on the side of the Orthodox contestants. And this was so, mainly because the liberal party put themselves on the same plane with the Orthodox in their way of regarding and dealing with Scripture texts in their bearing upon the controversy. Liberalism cannot vanquish Orthodoxy, if it yields to the latter in its own way of regarding and treating the whole Bible. Martin Luther said that the Papists burned the Bible because it was not on their side. Now I am not about to attack the Bible because it is not on my side; but I am about to object as emphatically as I can against a character and quality assigned to the Bible, which it does not claim for itself, which cannot be certified for it: and the origin and growth and intensity of the fond and superstitious influences resulting in that view we can trace distinctly to agencies accounting for, but not warranting, the current belief. Orthodoxy cannot readjust its creeds till it readjusts its estimate of the Scriptures. The only relief which one who professes the Orthodox creed can find is either by forcing his ingenuity into the proof-texts or indulging his liberty outside of them.”With this confession of a noted Unitarian it is interesting to compare the opinion of the so-called Trinitarian, Dr. Lyman Abbott, who says that the New Testament nowhere calls Christ God, but everywhere calls him man, as in1 Tim. 2:5—“for there is one God, one mediator also between God and men, himself man, Christ Jesus.”On this passage Prof. L. L. Paine remarks in the New World, Dec. 1894—“That Paul ever confounded Christ with God himself, or regarded him as in any way the Supreme Divinity, is a position invalidated not only by direct statements, but also by the whole drift of his epistles.”[pg 309](b) Old Testament descriptions of God are applied to him.This application to Christ of titles and names exclusively appropriated to God is inexplicable, if Christ was not regarded as being himself God. The peculiar awe with which the term“Jehovah”was set apart by a nation of strenuous monotheists as the sacred and incommunicable name of the one self-existent and covenant-keeping God forbids the belief that the Scripture writers could have used it as the designation of a subordinate and created being.Mat. 3:3—“Make ye ready the way of the Lord”—is a quotation fromIs. 40:3—“Prepare ye ... the way of Jehovah.”John 12:41—“These things said Isaiah, because he saw his glory; and he spake of him”[i. e., Christ]—refers toIs. 6:1—“In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne.”So inEph. 4:7, 8—“measure of the gift of Christ ... led captivity captive”—is an application to Christ of what is said of Jehovah inPs. 68:18. In1 Pet. 3:15, moreover, we read, with all the great uncials, several of the Fathers, and all the best versions:“sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord”; here the apostle borrows his language fromIs. 8:13, where we read:“Jehovah of hosts, him shall ye sanctify.”When we remember that, with the Jews, God's covenant-title was so sacred that for the Kethib (=“written”)Jehovahthere was always substituted the Keri (=“read”—imperative)Adonai, in order to avoid pronunciation of the great Name, it seems the more remarkable that the Greek equivalent of“Jehovah”should have been so constantly used of Christ.Cf.Rom. 10:9—“confess ... Jesus as Lord”;1 Cor. 12:3—“no man can say, Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Spirit.”We must remember also the indignation of the Jews at Christ's assertion of his equality and oneness with the Father. Compare Goethe's,“Wer darf ihn nennen?”with Carlyle's,“the awful Unnameable of this Universe.”The Jews, it has been said, have always vibrated between monotheism and moneytheism. Yet James, the strongest of Hebrews, in his Epistle uses the word 'Lord' freely and alternately of God the Father and of Christ the Son. This would have been impossible if James had not believed in the community of essence between the Son and the Father.It is interesting to note that 1 Maccabees does not once use the word Θεός or κύριος, or any other direct designation of God unless it be οὐρανός (cf.“swear ... by the heaven”—Mat. 5:34). So the book of Esther contains no mention of the name of God, though the apocryphal additions to Esther, which are found only in Greek, contain the name of God in the first verse, and mention it in all eight times. See Bissell, Apocrypha, in Lange's Commentary; Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 93; Max Müller on Semitic Monotheism, in Chips from a German Workshop, 1:337.(c) He possesses the attributes of God.Among these are life, self-existence, immutability, truth, love, holiness, eternity, omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence. All these attributes are ascribed to Christ in connections which show that the terms are used in no secondary sense, nor in any sense predicable of a creature.Life:John 1:4—“In him was life”;14:6—“I am ... the life.”Self-existence:John 5:26—“have life in himself”;Heb. 7:16—“power of an endless life.”Immutability:Heb. 13:8—“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day, yea and forever.”Truth:John 14:6—“I am ... the truth”;Rev. 3:7—“he that is true.”Love:1 John 3:16—“Hereby know we love”(τὴν ἀγάπην = the personal Love, as the personal Truth)“because he laid down his life for us.”Holiness:Luke 1:35—“that which is to be born shall be called holy, the Son of God”;John 6:69—“thou art the Holy One of God”;Heb. 7:26—“holy, guileless, undefiled, separated from sinners.”Eternity:John 1:1—“In the beginning was the Word.”Godet says ἐν ἀρχῇ = not“in eternity,”but“in the beginning of the creation”; the eternity of the Word being an inference from the ἦν—the Wordwas, when the world wascreated:cf.Gen. 1:1—“In the beginning God created.”But Meyer says, ἐν ἀρχῇ here rises above the historical conception of“in the beginning”in Genesis (which includes the beginning of time itself) to the absolute conception of anteriority to time; the creation is something subsequent. He finds a parallel inProv. 8:23—ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸ τοῦ τὴν γῆν ποιῆσαι. The interpretation“in the beginning of the gospel”is entirely unexegetical; so Meyer. SoJohn 17:5—“glory which I had with thee before the world was”;Eph. 1:4—“chose us in him before the foundation of the world.”Dorner also says that ἐν ἀρχῇ inJohn 1:1is not“the beginning of the world,”but designates the point[pg 310]back of which it is impossible to go,i. e., eternity; the world is first spoken of inverse 3. John 8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”;cf.1:15;Col. 1:17—“he is before all things”;Heb. 1:11—the heavens“shall perish; but thou continuest”;Rev. 21:6—“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.”Omnipresence:Mat. 28:20—“I am with you always”;Eph. 1:23—“the fulness of him that filleth all in all.”Omniscience:Mat. 9:4—“Jesus knowing their thoughts”;John 2:24, 25—“knew all men ... knew what was in man”;16:30—“knowest all things”;Acts 1:24—“Thou, Lord, who knowest the hearts of all men”—a prayer offered before the day of Pentecost and showing the attitude of the disciples toward their Master;1 Cor. 4:5—“until the Lord come, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and make manifest the counsels of the hearts”;Col. 2:3—“in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden.”Omnipotence:Mat. 27:18—“All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth”;Rev. 1:8—“the Lord God, which is and which was and which is to come, the Almighty.”Beyschlag, N. T. Theology, 1:249-260, holds that Jesus' preëxistence is simply the concrete form given to an ideal conception. Jesus traces himself back, as everything else holy and divine was traced back in the conceptions of his time, to a heavenly original in which it preëxisted before its earthly appearance;e. g.: the tabernacle, inHeb. 8:5; Jerusalem, inGal. 4:25andRev. 21:10; the kingdom of God inMat. 13:24; much more the Messiah, inJohn 6:62—“ascending where he was before”;8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”;17:4, 5—“glory which I had with thee before the world was”17:24—“thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.”This view that Jesus existed before creation only ideally in the divine mind, means simply that God foreknew him and his coming. The view is refuted by the multiplied intimations of a personal, in distinction from an ideal, preëxistence.Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John, 115—“The words‘In the beginning’(John 1:1)suggest that the author is about to write a second book of Genesis, an account of a new creation.”As creation presupposes a Creator, the preëxistence of the personal Word is assigned as the explanation of the being of the universe. The ἦν indicates absolute existence, which is a loftier idea than that of mere preëxistence, although it includes this. While John the Baptist and Abraham are said to have arisen, appeared, come into being, it is said that the Logoswas, and that the Logos wasGod. This implies coëternity with the Father. But, if the view we are combating were correct, John the Baptist and Abraham preëxisted, equally with Christ. This is certainly not the meaning of Jesus inJohn 8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”;cf.Col. 1:17—“he is before all things”—“αὐτός emphasizes the personality, while ἔστιν declares that the preëxistence is absolute existence”(Lightfoot);John 1:15—“He that cometh after me is become before me: for he was before me”= not that Jesus wasbornearlier than John the Baptist, for he was born six months later, but that heexistedearlier. He stands before John in rank, because he existed long before John in time;6:62—“the Son of man ascending where he was before”;16:28—“I came out from the Father, and am come into the world.”SoIs. 9:6, 7, calls Christ“Everlasting Father”= eternity is an attribute of the Messiah. T. W. Chambers, in Jour. Soc. Bib. Exegesis, 1881:169-171—“Christ is the Everlasting One,‘whose goings forth have been from of old, even from the days of eternity’(Micah 5:2).‘Of the increase of his government ... there shall be no end,’just because of his existence there has been no beginning.”(d) The works of God are ascribed to him.We do not here speak of miracles, which may be wrought by communicated power, but of such works as the creation of the world, the upholding of all things, the final raising of the dead, and the judging of all men. Power to perform these works cannot be delegated, for they are characteristic of omnipotence.
B. Jesus Christ is recognized as God.(a) He is expressly called God.In John 1:1—Θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος—the absence of the article shows Θεός to be the predicate (cf.4:24—πνεῦμα ὁ Θεός). This predicate precedes the verb by way of emphasis, to indicate progress in the thought =“the Logos was[pg 306]not only with God, but was God”(see Meyer and Luthardt, Comm.in loco).“Only ὁ λόγος can be the subject, for in the whole Introduction the question is, not who God is, but who the Logos is”(Godet).Westcott in Bible Commentary,in loco—“The predicate stands emphatically first. It is necessarily without the article, inasmuch as it describes the nature of the Word and does not identify his person. It would be pure Sabellianism to say:‘The Word was ὁ Θεός.’Thus in verse 1 we have set forth the Word in his absolute eternal being, (a) his existence: beyond time; (b) his personal existence: in active communion with God; (c) his nature: God in essence.”Marcus Dods, in Expositor's Greek Testament,in loco:“The Word is distinguishable from God, yet Θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος—the word was God, of divine nature; not‘a God,’which to a Jewish ear would have been abominable, nor yet identical with all that can be called God, for then the article would have been inserted (cf.1 John 3:4).”In John 1:18, μονογενὴς θεός—“the only begotten God”—must be regarded as the correct reading, and as a plain ascription of absolute Deity to Christ. He is not simply the only revealer of God, but he is himself God revealed.John 1:18—“No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.”In this passage, although Tischendorf (8th ed.) has μονογενὴς ὑιός, Westcott and Hort (with א*BC*L Pesh. Syr.) read μονογενὴς Θεός and the Rev. Vers. puts“the only begotten God”in the margin, though it retains“the only begotten Son”in the text. Harnack says the reading μονογενὴς θεός is“established beyond contradiction”; see Westcott, Bib. Com. on John, pages 32, 33. Here then we have a new and unmistakable assertion of the deity of Christ. Meyer says that the apostles actually call Christ God only inJohn 1:1and20:28, and that Paul never so recognizes him. But Meyer is able to maintain his position only by calling the doxologies to Christ, in2 Tim. 4:18,Heb. 13:21and2 Pet. 3:18, post-apostolic. See Thayer, N. T. Lexicon, on Θεός, and on μονογενής.In John 20:28, the address of Thomas Ὁ κύριός μου καὶ ὁ θεός μου—“My Lord and my God”—since it was unrebuked by Christ, is equivalent to an assertion on his own part of his claim to Deity.John 20:28—“Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.”This address cannot be interpreted as a sudden appeal to God in surprise and admiration, without charging the apostle with profanity. Nor can it be considered a mere exhibition of overwrought enthusiasm, since it was accepted by Christ. Contrast the conduct of Paul and Barnabas when the heathen at Lystra were bringing sacrifice to them as Jupiter and Mercury (Acts 14:11-18). The words of Thomas, as addressed directly to Christ and as accepted by Christ, can be regarded only as a just acknowledgment on the part of Thomas that Christ was his Lord and his God. Alford, Commentary,in loco:“The Socinian view that these words are merely an exclamation is refuted (1) by the fact that no such exclamations were in use among the Jews; (2) by the εἶπεν αὐτῷ; (3) by the impossibility of referring the ὁ κύριός μου to another than Jesus: seeverse 13; (4) by the N. T. usage of expressing the vocative by the nominative with an article; (5) by the psychological absurdity of such a supposition: that one just convinced of the presence of him whom he dearly loved should, instead of addressing him, break out into an irrelevant cry; (6) by the further absurdity of supposing that, if such were the case, the Apostle John, who of all the sacred writers most constantly keeps in mind the object for which he is writing, should have recorded anything so beside that object; (7) by the intimate conjunction of πεπίστευκας.”Cf.Mat. 5:34—“Swear not ... by the heaven”—swearing by Jehovah is not mentioned, because no Jew did so swear. This exclamation of Thomas, the greatest doubter among the twelve, is the natural conclusion of John's gospel. The thesis“the Word was God”(John 1:1)has now become part of the life and consciousness of the apostles.Chapter 21is only an Epilogue, or Appendix, written later by John, to correct the error that he was not to die; see Westcott, Bible Com.,in loco. The Deity of Christ is the subject of the apostle who best understood his Master. Lyman Beecher:“Jesus Christ is the acting Deity of the universe.”In Rom. 9:5, the clause ὁ ὢν ἐπὶ πάντων Θεὸς εὐλογητός cannot be translated“blessed be the God over all,”for ὢν is superfluous if the clause is a doxology;“εὐλογητός precedes the name of God in a doxology, but follows it,[pg 307]as here, in a description”(Hovey). The clause can therefore justly be interpreted only as a description of the higher nature of the Christ who had just been said, τὸ κατὰ σάρκα, or according to his lower nature, to have had his origin from Israel (see Tholuck, Com.in loco).Sanday, Com. onRom. 9:5—“The words would naturally refer to Christ, unless‘God’is so definitely a proper name that it would imply a contrast in itself. We have seen that this is not so.”Hence Sanday translates:“of whom is the Christ as concerning the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever”. See President T. Dwight, in Jour. Soc. Bib. Exegesis, 1881:22-55;per contra, Ezra Abbot, in the same journal, 1881:1-19, and Denney, in Expositor's Gk. Test.,in loco.In Titus 2:13, ἐπιφάνειαν τῆς δόξης τοῦ μεγάλου Θεοῦ καὶ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ we regard (with Ellicott) as“a direct, definite, and even studied declaration of Christ's divinity”=“the ... appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ”(so English Revised Version). Ἐπιφάνεια is a term applied specially to the Son and never to the Father, and μεγάλου is uncalled for if used of the Father, but peculiarly appropriate if used of Christ. Upon the same principles we must interpret the similar text 2 Pet. 1:1 (see Huther, in Meyer's Com.:“The close juxtaposition indicates the author's certainty of the oneness of God and Jesus Christ”).Titus 2:13—“looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ”—so the English Revised Version. The American Revisers however translate:“the glory of the great God and Savior”; and Westcott and Hort bracket the word ἡμῶν. These considerations somewhat lessen the cogency of this passage as a proof-text, yet upon the whole the balance of argument seems to us still to incline in favor of Ellicott's interpretation as given above.In Heb. 1:8, πρὸς δὲ τὸν υἱόν; ὁ θρόνος σου, ὁ Θεὸς, εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα is quoted as an address to Christ, and verse 10 which follows—“Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth”—by applying to Christ an Old Testament ascription to Jehovah, shows that ὁ Θεός, in verse 8, is used in the sense of absolute Godhead.It is sometimes objected that the ascription of the name God to Christ proves nothing as to his absolute deity, since angels and even human judges are called gods, as representing God's authority and executing his will. But we reply that, while it is true that the name is sometimes so applied, it is always with adjuncts and in connections which leave no doubt of its figurative and secondary meaning. When, however, the name is applied to Christ, it is, on the contrary, with adjuncts and in connections which leave no doubt that it signifies absolute Godhead. SeeEx. 4:16—“thou shalt be to him as God”;7:1—“See, I have made thee as God to Pharaoh”;22:28—“Thou shalt not revile God, [marg.,the judges],nor curse a ruler of thy people”;Ps. 82:1—“God standeth in the congregation of God; he judgeth among the gods”[among the mighty];6—“I said, Ye are gods, And all of you sons of the Most High”;7—“Nevertheless ye shall die like men, And fall like one of the princes.”Cf.John 10:34-36—“If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came”(who were God's commissioned and appointed representatives), how much more proper for him who is one with the Father to call himself God.As inPs. 82:7those who had been called gods are represented as dying, so inPs. 97:7—“Worship him, all ye gods”—they are bidden to fall down before Jehovah. Ann. Par. Bible:“Although the deities of the heathen have no positive existence, they are often described in Scripture as if they had, and are represented as bowing down before the majesty of Jehovah.”This verse is quoted inHeb. 1:6—“let all the angels of God worship him”—i. e., Christ. Here Christ is identified with Jehovah. The quotation is made from the Septuagint, which has“angels”for“gods.”“Its use here is in accordance with the spirit of the Hebrew word, which includes all that human error might regard as objects of worship.”Those who are figuratively and rhetorically called“gods”are bidden to fall down in worship before him who is the true God, Jesus Christ. See Dick, Lectures on Theology, 1:314; Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 10.[pg 308]In 1 John 5:20—ἐσμεν ἐν τῷ ἀληθινῷ, ἐν τῷ υἱῷ αὐτοῦ Ἰησοῦ Χριστῷ. οὗτος ἐστιν ὁ ἀληθινὸς Θεός—“it would be a flat repetition, after the Father had been twice called ὁ ἀληθινός, to say now again:‘this is ὁ ἀληθενὸς Θεός.’Our being in God has its basis in Christ his Son, and this also makes it more natural that οὖτος should be referred to υἱῷ. But ought not ὁ ἀληθενός then to be without the article (as in John 1:1—Θεός ἦν ὁ λόγος)? No, for it is John's purpose in 1 John 5:20 to say, notwhatChrist is, butwhohe is. In declaringwhatone is, the predicate must have no article; in declaringwhoone is, the predicate must have the article. St. John here says that this Son, on whom our being in the true God rests, is this true God himself”(see Ebrard, Com.in loco).Other passages might be here adduced, asCol. 2:9—“in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily”;Phil 2:6—“existing in the form of God”; but we prefer to consider these under other heads as indirectly proving Christ's divinity. Still other passages once relied upon as direct statements of the doctrine must be given up for textual reasons. Such areActs 20:28, where the correct reading is in all probability not ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ Θεοῦ, but ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ Κυρίου (so ACDE Tregelles and Tischendorf; B and א, however, have τοῦ Θεοῦ. The Rev. Vers. continues to read“church of God”; Amer. Revisers, however, read“church of the Lord”—see Ezra Abbot's investigation in Bib. Sac., 1876: 313-352); and1 Tim. 3:16, where ὅς is unquestionably to be substituted for Θεός, though even here ἐφανερώθη intimates preëxistence.Rev. George E. Ellis, D. D., before the Unitarian Club, Boston, November, 1882—“Fifty years of study, thought and reading given largely to the Bible and to the literature which peculiarly relates to it, have brought me to this conclusion, that the book—taken with the especial divine quality and character claimed for it, and so extensively assigned to it, as inspired and infallible as a whole, and in all its contents—is an Orthodox book. It yields what is called the Orthodox creed. The vast majority of its readers, following its letter, its obvious sense, its natural meaning, and yielding to the impression which some of its emphatic texts make upon them, find in it Orthodoxy. Only that kind of ingenious, special, discriminative, and in candor I must add, forced treatment, which it receives from us liberals can make the book teach anything but Orthodoxy. The evangelical sects, so called, are clearly right in maintaining that their view of Scripture and of its doctrines draws a deep and wide division of creed between them and ourselves. In that earnest controversy by pamphlet warfare between Drs. Channing and Ware on the one side, and Drs. Worcester and Woods and Professor Stuart on the other—a controversy which wrought up the people of our community sixty years ago more than did our recent political campaign—I am fully convinced that the liberal contestants were worsted. Scripture exegesis, logic and argument were clearly on the side of the Orthodox contestants. And this was so, mainly because the liberal party put themselves on the same plane with the Orthodox in their way of regarding and dealing with Scripture texts in their bearing upon the controversy. Liberalism cannot vanquish Orthodoxy, if it yields to the latter in its own way of regarding and treating the whole Bible. Martin Luther said that the Papists burned the Bible because it was not on their side. Now I am not about to attack the Bible because it is not on my side; but I am about to object as emphatically as I can against a character and quality assigned to the Bible, which it does not claim for itself, which cannot be certified for it: and the origin and growth and intensity of the fond and superstitious influences resulting in that view we can trace distinctly to agencies accounting for, but not warranting, the current belief. Orthodoxy cannot readjust its creeds till it readjusts its estimate of the Scriptures. The only relief which one who professes the Orthodox creed can find is either by forcing his ingenuity into the proof-texts or indulging his liberty outside of them.”With this confession of a noted Unitarian it is interesting to compare the opinion of the so-called Trinitarian, Dr. Lyman Abbott, who says that the New Testament nowhere calls Christ God, but everywhere calls him man, as in1 Tim. 2:5—“for there is one God, one mediator also between God and men, himself man, Christ Jesus.”On this passage Prof. L. L. Paine remarks in the New World, Dec. 1894—“That Paul ever confounded Christ with God himself, or regarded him as in any way the Supreme Divinity, is a position invalidated not only by direct statements, but also by the whole drift of his epistles.”[pg 309](b) Old Testament descriptions of God are applied to him.This application to Christ of titles and names exclusively appropriated to God is inexplicable, if Christ was not regarded as being himself God. The peculiar awe with which the term“Jehovah”was set apart by a nation of strenuous monotheists as the sacred and incommunicable name of the one self-existent and covenant-keeping God forbids the belief that the Scripture writers could have used it as the designation of a subordinate and created being.Mat. 3:3—“Make ye ready the way of the Lord”—is a quotation fromIs. 40:3—“Prepare ye ... the way of Jehovah.”John 12:41—“These things said Isaiah, because he saw his glory; and he spake of him”[i. e., Christ]—refers toIs. 6:1—“In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne.”So inEph. 4:7, 8—“measure of the gift of Christ ... led captivity captive”—is an application to Christ of what is said of Jehovah inPs. 68:18. In1 Pet. 3:15, moreover, we read, with all the great uncials, several of the Fathers, and all the best versions:“sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord”; here the apostle borrows his language fromIs. 8:13, where we read:“Jehovah of hosts, him shall ye sanctify.”When we remember that, with the Jews, God's covenant-title was so sacred that for the Kethib (=“written”)Jehovahthere was always substituted the Keri (=“read”—imperative)Adonai, in order to avoid pronunciation of the great Name, it seems the more remarkable that the Greek equivalent of“Jehovah”should have been so constantly used of Christ.Cf.Rom. 10:9—“confess ... Jesus as Lord”;1 Cor. 12:3—“no man can say, Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Spirit.”We must remember also the indignation of the Jews at Christ's assertion of his equality and oneness with the Father. Compare Goethe's,“Wer darf ihn nennen?”with Carlyle's,“the awful Unnameable of this Universe.”The Jews, it has been said, have always vibrated between monotheism and moneytheism. Yet James, the strongest of Hebrews, in his Epistle uses the word 'Lord' freely and alternately of God the Father and of Christ the Son. This would have been impossible if James had not believed in the community of essence between the Son and the Father.It is interesting to note that 1 Maccabees does not once use the word Θεός or κύριος, or any other direct designation of God unless it be οὐρανός (cf.“swear ... by the heaven”—Mat. 5:34). So the book of Esther contains no mention of the name of God, though the apocryphal additions to Esther, which are found only in Greek, contain the name of God in the first verse, and mention it in all eight times. See Bissell, Apocrypha, in Lange's Commentary; Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 93; Max Müller on Semitic Monotheism, in Chips from a German Workshop, 1:337.(c) He possesses the attributes of God.Among these are life, self-existence, immutability, truth, love, holiness, eternity, omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence. All these attributes are ascribed to Christ in connections which show that the terms are used in no secondary sense, nor in any sense predicable of a creature.Life:John 1:4—“In him was life”;14:6—“I am ... the life.”Self-existence:John 5:26—“have life in himself”;Heb. 7:16—“power of an endless life.”Immutability:Heb. 13:8—“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day, yea and forever.”Truth:John 14:6—“I am ... the truth”;Rev. 3:7—“he that is true.”Love:1 John 3:16—“Hereby know we love”(τὴν ἀγάπην = the personal Love, as the personal Truth)“because he laid down his life for us.”Holiness:Luke 1:35—“that which is to be born shall be called holy, the Son of God”;John 6:69—“thou art the Holy One of God”;Heb. 7:26—“holy, guileless, undefiled, separated from sinners.”Eternity:John 1:1—“In the beginning was the Word.”Godet says ἐν ἀρχῇ = not“in eternity,”but“in the beginning of the creation”; the eternity of the Word being an inference from the ἦν—the Wordwas, when the world wascreated:cf.Gen. 1:1—“In the beginning God created.”But Meyer says, ἐν ἀρχῇ here rises above the historical conception of“in the beginning”in Genesis (which includes the beginning of time itself) to the absolute conception of anteriority to time; the creation is something subsequent. He finds a parallel inProv. 8:23—ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸ τοῦ τὴν γῆν ποιῆσαι. The interpretation“in the beginning of the gospel”is entirely unexegetical; so Meyer. SoJohn 17:5—“glory which I had with thee before the world was”;Eph. 1:4—“chose us in him before the foundation of the world.”Dorner also says that ἐν ἀρχῇ inJohn 1:1is not“the beginning of the world,”but designates the point[pg 310]back of which it is impossible to go,i. e., eternity; the world is first spoken of inverse 3. John 8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”;cf.1:15;Col. 1:17—“he is before all things”;Heb. 1:11—the heavens“shall perish; but thou continuest”;Rev. 21:6—“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.”Omnipresence:Mat. 28:20—“I am with you always”;Eph. 1:23—“the fulness of him that filleth all in all.”Omniscience:Mat. 9:4—“Jesus knowing their thoughts”;John 2:24, 25—“knew all men ... knew what was in man”;16:30—“knowest all things”;Acts 1:24—“Thou, Lord, who knowest the hearts of all men”—a prayer offered before the day of Pentecost and showing the attitude of the disciples toward their Master;1 Cor. 4:5—“until the Lord come, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and make manifest the counsels of the hearts”;Col. 2:3—“in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden.”Omnipotence:Mat. 27:18—“All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth”;Rev. 1:8—“the Lord God, which is and which was and which is to come, the Almighty.”Beyschlag, N. T. Theology, 1:249-260, holds that Jesus' preëxistence is simply the concrete form given to an ideal conception. Jesus traces himself back, as everything else holy and divine was traced back in the conceptions of his time, to a heavenly original in which it preëxisted before its earthly appearance;e. g.: the tabernacle, inHeb. 8:5; Jerusalem, inGal. 4:25andRev. 21:10; the kingdom of God inMat. 13:24; much more the Messiah, inJohn 6:62—“ascending where he was before”;8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”;17:4, 5—“glory which I had with thee before the world was”17:24—“thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.”This view that Jesus existed before creation only ideally in the divine mind, means simply that God foreknew him and his coming. The view is refuted by the multiplied intimations of a personal, in distinction from an ideal, preëxistence.Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John, 115—“The words‘In the beginning’(John 1:1)suggest that the author is about to write a second book of Genesis, an account of a new creation.”As creation presupposes a Creator, the preëxistence of the personal Word is assigned as the explanation of the being of the universe. The ἦν indicates absolute existence, which is a loftier idea than that of mere preëxistence, although it includes this. While John the Baptist and Abraham are said to have arisen, appeared, come into being, it is said that the Logoswas, and that the Logos wasGod. This implies coëternity with the Father. But, if the view we are combating were correct, John the Baptist and Abraham preëxisted, equally with Christ. This is certainly not the meaning of Jesus inJohn 8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”;cf.Col. 1:17—“he is before all things”—“αὐτός emphasizes the personality, while ἔστιν declares that the preëxistence is absolute existence”(Lightfoot);John 1:15—“He that cometh after me is become before me: for he was before me”= not that Jesus wasbornearlier than John the Baptist, for he was born six months later, but that heexistedearlier. He stands before John in rank, because he existed long before John in time;6:62—“the Son of man ascending where he was before”;16:28—“I came out from the Father, and am come into the world.”SoIs. 9:6, 7, calls Christ“Everlasting Father”= eternity is an attribute of the Messiah. T. W. Chambers, in Jour. Soc. Bib. Exegesis, 1881:169-171—“Christ is the Everlasting One,‘whose goings forth have been from of old, even from the days of eternity’(Micah 5:2).‘Of the increase of his government ... there shall be no end,’just because of his existence there has been no beginning.”(d) The works of God are ascribed to him.We do not here speak of miracles, which may be wrought by communicated power, but of such works as the creation of the world, the upholding of all things, the final raising of the dead, and the judging of all men. Power to perform these works cannot be delegated, for they are characteristic of omnipotence.
B. Jesus Christ is recognized as God.(a) He is expressly called God.In John 1:1—Θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος—the absence of the article shows Θεός to be the predicate (cf.4:24—πνεῦμα ὁ Θεός). This predicate precedes the verb by way of emphasis, to indicate progress in the thought =“the Logos was[pg 306]not only with God, but was God”(see Meyer and Luthardt, Comm.in loco).“Only ὁ λόγος can be the subject, for in the whole Introduction the question is, not who God is, but who the Logos is”(Godet).Westcott in Bible Commentary,in loco—“The predicate stands emphatically first. It is necessarily without the article, inasmuch as it describes the nature of the Word and does not identify his person. It would be pure Sabellianism to say:‘The Word was ὁ Θεός.’Thus in verse 1 we have set forth the Word in his absolute eternal being, (a) his existence: beyond time; (b) his personal existence: in active communion with God; (c) his nature: God in essence.”Marcus Dods, in Expositor's Greek Testament,in loco:“The Word is distinguishable from God, yet Θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος—the word was God, of divine nature; not‘a God,’which to a Jewish ear would have been abominable, nor yet identical with all that can be called God, for then the article would have been inserted (cf.1 John 3:4).”In John 1:18, μονογενὴς θεός—“the only begotten God”—must be regarded as the correct reading, and as a plain ascription of absolute Deity to Christ. He is not simply the only revealer of God, but he is himself God revealed.John 1:18—“No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.”In this passage, although Tischendorf (8th ed.) has μονογενὴς ὑιός, Westcott and Hort (with א*BC*L Pesh. Syr.) read μονογενὴς Θεός and the Rev. Vers. puts“the only begotten God”in the margin, though it retains“the only begotten Son”in the text. Harnack says the reading μονογενὴς θεός is“established beyond contradiction”; see Westcott, Bib. Com. on John, pages 32, 33. Here then we have a new and unmistakable assertion of the deity of Christ. Meyer says that the apostles actually call Christ God only inJohn 1:1and20:28, and that Paul never so recognizes him. But Meyer is able to maintain his position only by calling the doxologies to Christ, in2 Tim. 4:18,Heb. 13:21and2 Pet. 3:18, post-apostolic. See Thayer, N. T. Lexicon, on Θεός, and on μονογενής.In John 20:28, the address of Thomas Ὁ κύριός μου καὶ ὁ θεός μου—“My Lord and my God”—since it was unrebuked by Christ, is equivalent to an assertion on his own part of his claim to Deity.John 20:28—“Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.”This address cannot be interpreted as a sudden appeal to God in surprise and admiration, without charging the apostle with profanity. Nor can it be considered a mere exhibition of overwrought enthusiasm, since it was accepted by Christ. Contrast the conduct of Paul and Barnabas when the heathen at Lystra were bringing sacrifice to them as Jupiter and Mercury (Acts 14:11-18). The words of Thomas, as addressed directly to Christ and as accepted by Christ, can be regarded only as a just acknowledgment on the part of Thomas that Christ was his Lord and his God. Alford, Commentary,in loco:“The Socinian view that these words are merely an exclamation is refuted (1) by the fact that no such exclamations were in use among the Jews; (2) by the εἶπεν αὐτῷ; (3) by the impossibility of referring the ὁ κύριός μου to another than Jesus: seeverse 13; (4) by the N. T. usage of expressing the vocative by the nominative with an article; (5) by the psychological absurdity of such a supposition: that one just convinced of the presence of him whom he dearly loved should, instead of addressing him, break out into an irrelevant cry; (6) by the further absurdity of supposing that, if such were the case, the Apostle John, who of all the sacred writers most constantly keeps in mind the object for which he is writing, should have recorded anything so beside that object; (7) by the intimate conjunction of πεπίστευκας.”Cf.Mat. 5:34—“Swear not ... by the heaven”—swearing by Jehovah is not mentioned, because no Jew did so swear. This exclamation of Thomas, the greatest doubter among the twelve, is the natural conclusion of John's gospel. The thesis“the Word was God”(John 1:1)has now become part of the life and consciousness of the apostles.Chapter 21is only an Epilogue, or Appendix, written later by John, to correct the error that he was not to die; see Westcott, Bible Com.,in loco. The Deity of Christ is the subject of the apostle who best understood his Master. Lyman Beecher:“Jesus Christ is the acting Deity of the universe.”In Rom. 9:5, the clause ὁ ὢν ἐπὶ πάντων Θεὸς εὐλογητός cannot be translated“blessed be the God over all,”for ὢν is superfluous if the clause is a doxology;“εὐλογητός precedes the name of God in a doxology, but follows it,[pg 307]as here, in a description”(Hovey). The clause can therefore justly be interpreted only as a description of the higher nature of the Christ who had just been said, τὸ κατὰ σάρκα, or according to his lower nature, to have had his origin from Israel (see Tholuck, Com.in loco).Sanday, Com. onRom. 9:5—“The words would naturally refer to Christ, unless‘God’is so definitely a proper name that it would imply a contrast in itself. We have seen that this is not so.”Hence Sanday translates:“of whom is the Christ as concerning the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever”. See President T. Dwight, in Jour. Soc. Bib. Exegesis, 1881:22-55;per contra, Ezra Abbot, in the same journal, 1881:1-19, and Denney, in Expositor's Gk. Test.,in loco.In Titus 2:13, ἐπιφάνειαν τῆς δόξης τοῦ μεγάλου Θεοῦ καὶ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ we regard (with Ellicott) as“a direct, definite, and even studied declaration of Christ's divinity”=“the ... appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ”(so English Revised Version). Ἐπιφάνεια is a term applied specially to the Son and never to the Father, and μεγάλου is uncalled for if used of the Father, but peculiarly appropriate if used of Christ. Upon the same principles we must interpret the similar text 2 Pet. 1:1 (see Huther, in Meyer's Com.:“The close juxtaposition indicates the author's certainty of the oneness of God and Jesus Christ”).Titus 2:13—“looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ”—so the English Revised Version. The American Revisers however translate:“the glory of the great God and Savior”; and Westcott and Hort bracket the word ἡμῶν. These considerations somewhat lessen the cogency of this passage as a proof-text, yet upon the whole the balance of argument seems to us still to incline in favor of Ellicott's interpretation as given above.In Heb. 1:8, πρὸς δὲ τὸν υἱόν; ὁ θρόνος σου, ὁ Θεὸς, εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα is quoted as an address to Christ, and verse 10 which follows—“Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth”—by applying to Christ an Old Testament ascription to Jehovah, shows that ὁ Θεός, in verse 8, is used in the sense of absolute Godhead.It is sometimes objected that the ascription of the name God to Christ proves nothing as to his absolute deity, since angels and even human judges are called gods, as representing God's authority and executing his will. But we reply that, while it is true that the name is sometimes so applied, it is always with adjuncts and in connections which leave no doubt of its figurative and secondary meaning. When, however, the name is applied to Christ, it is, on the contrary, with adjuncts and in connections which leave no doubt that it signifies absolute Godhead. SeeEx. 4:16—“thou shalt be to him as God”;7:1—“See, I have made thee as God to Pharaoh”;22:28—“Thou shalt not revile God, [marg.,the judges],nor curse a ruler of thy people”;Ps. 82:1—“God standeth in the congregation of God; he judgeth among the gods”[among the mighty];6—“I said, Ye are gods, And all of you sons of the Most High”;7—“Nevertheless ye shall die like men, And fall like one of the princes.”Cf.John 10:34-36—“If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came”(who were God's commissioned and appointed representatives), how much more proper for him who is one with the Father to call himself God.As inPs. 82:7those who had been called gods are represented as dying, so inPs. 97:7—“Worship him, all ye gods”—they are bidden to fall down before Jehovah. Ann. Par. Bible:“Although the deities of the heathen have no positive existence, they are often described in Scripture as if they had, and are represented as bowing down before the majesty of Jehovah.”This verse is quoted inHeb. 1:6—“let all the angels of God worship him”—i. e., Christ. Here Christ is identified with Jehovah. The quotation is made from the Septuagint, which has“angels”for“gods.”“Its use here is in accordance with the spirit of the Hebrew word, which includes all that human error might regard as objects of worship.”Those who are figuratively and rhetorically called“gods”are bidden to fall down in worship before him who is the true God, Jesus Christ. See Dick, Lectures on Theology, 1:314; Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 10.[pg 308]In 1 John 5:20—ἐσμεν ἐν τῷ ἀληθινῷ, ἐν τῷ υἱῷ αὐτοῦ Ἰησοῦ Χριστῷ. οὗτος ἐστιν ὁ ἀληθινὸς Θεός—“it would be a flat repetition, after the Father had been twice called ὁ ἀληθινός, to say now again:‘this is ὁ ἀληθενὸς Θεός.’Our being in God has its basis in Christ his Son, and this also makes it more natural that οὖτος should be referred to υἱῷ. But ought not ὁ ἀληθενός then to be without the article (as in John 1:1—Θεός ἦν ὁ λόγος)? No, for it is John's purpose in 1 John 5:20 to say, notwhatChrist is, butwhohe is. In declaringwhatone is, the predicate must have no article; in declaringwhoone is, the predicate must have the article. St. John here says that this Son, on whom our being in the true God rests, is this true God himself”(see Ebrard, Com.in loco).Other passages might be here adduced, asCol. 2:9—“in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily”;Phil 2:6—“existing in the form of God”; but we prefer to consider these under other heads as indirectly proving Christ's divinity. Still other passages once relied upon as direct statements of the doctrine must be given up for textual reasons. Such areActs 20:28, where the correct reading is in all probability not ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ Θεοῦ, but ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ Κυρίου (so ACDE Tregelles and Tischendorf; B and א, however, have τοῦ Θεοῦ. The Rev. Vers. continues to read“church of God”; Amer. Revisers, however, read“church of the Lord”—see Ezra Abbot's investigation in Bib. Sac., 1876: 313-352); and1 Tim. 3:16, where ὅς is unquestionably to be substituted for Θεός, though even here ἐφανερώθη intimates preëxistence.Rev. George E. Ellis, D. D., before the Unitarian Club, Boston, November, 1882—“Fifty years of study, thought and reading given largely to the Bible and to the literature which peculiarly relates to it, have brought me to this conclusion, that the book—taken with the especial divine quality and character claimed for it, and so extensively assigned to it, as inspired and infallible as a whole, and in all its contents—is an Orthodox book. It yields what is called the Orthodox creed. The vast majority of its readers, following its letter, its obvious sense, its natural meaning, and yielding to the impression which some of its emphatic texts make upon them, find in it Orthodoxy. Only that kind of ingenious, special, discriminative, and in candor I must add, forced treatment, which it receives from us liberals can make the book teach anything but Orthodoxy. The evangelical sects, so called, are clearly right in maintaining that their view of Scripture and of its doctrines draws a deep and wide division of creed between them and ourselves. In that earnest controversy by pamphlet warfare between Drs. Channing and Ware on the one side, and Drs. Worcester and Woods and Professor Stuart on the other—a controversy which wrought up the people of our community sixty years ago more than did our recent political campaign—I am fully convinced that the liberal contestants were worsted. Scripture exegesis, logic and argument were clearly on the side of the Orthodox contestants. And this was so, mainly because the liberal party put themselves on the same plane with the Orthodox in their way of regarding and dealing with Scripture texts in their bearing upon the controversy. Liberalism cannot vanquish Orthodoxy, if it yields to the latter in its own way of regarding and treating the whole Bible. Martin Luther said that the Papists burned the Bible because it was not on their side. Now I am not about to attack the Bible because it is not on my side; but I am about to object as emphatically as I can against a character and quality assigned to the Bible, which it does not claim for itself, which cannot be certified for it: and the origin and growth and intensity of the fond and superstitious influences resulting in that view we can trace distinctly to agencies accounting for, but not warranting, the current belief. Orthodoxy cannot readjust its creeds till it readjusts its estimate of the Scriptures. The only relief which one who professes the Orthodox creed can find is either by forcing his ingenuity into the proof-texts or indulging his liberty outside of them.”With this confession of a noted Unitarian it is interesting to compare the opinion of the so-called Trinitarian, Dr. Lyman Abbott, who says that the New Testament nowhere calls Christ God, but everywhere calls him man, as in1 Tim. 2:5—“for there is one God, one mediator also between God and men, himself man, Christ Jesus.”On this passage Prof. L. L. Paine remarks in the New World, Dec. 1894—“That Paul ever confounded Christ with God himself, or regarded him as in any way the Supreme Divinity, is a position invalidated not only by direct statements, but also by the whole drift of his epistles.”[pg 309](b) Old Testament descriptions of God are applied to him.This application to Christ of titles and names exclusively appropriated to God is inexplicable, if Christ was not regarded as being himself God. The peculiar awe with which the term“Jehovah”was set apart by a nation of strenuous monotheists as the sacred and incommunicable name of the one self-existent and covenant-keeping God forbids the belief that the Scripture writers could have used it as the designation of a subordinate and created being.Mat. 3:3—“Make ye ready the way of the Lord”—is a quotation fromIs. 40:3—“Prepare ye ... the way of Jehovah.”John 12:41—“These things said Isaiah, because he saw his glory; and he spake of him”[i. e., Christ]—refers toIs. 6:1—“In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne.”So inEph. 4:7, 8—“measure of the gift of Christ ... led captivity captive”—is an application to Christ of what is said of Jehovah inPs. 68:18. In1 Pet. 3:15, moreover, we read, with all the great uncials, several of the Fathers, and all the best versions:“sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord”; here the apostle borrows his language fromIs. 8:13, where we read:“Jehovah of hosts, him shall ye sanctify.”When we remember that, with the Jews, God's covenant-title was so sacred that for the Kethib (=“written”)Jehovahthere was always substituted the Keri (=“read”—imperative)Adonai, in order to avoid pronunciation of the great Name, it seems the more remarkable that the Greek equivalent of“Jehovah”should have been so constantly used of Christ.Cf.Rom. 10:9—“confess ... Jesus as Lord”;1 Cor. 12:3—“no man can say, Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Spirit.”We must remember also the indignation of the Jews at Christ's assertion of his equality and oneness with the Father. Compare Goethe's,“Wer darf ihn nennen?”with Carlyle's,“the awful Unnameable of this Universe.”The Jews, it has been said, have always vibrated between monotheism and moneytheism. Yet James, the strongest of Hebrews, in his Epistle uses the word 'Lord' freely and alternately of God the Father and of Christ the Son. This would have been impossible if James had not believed in the community of essence between the Son and the Father.It is interesting to note that 1 Maccabees does not once use the word Θεός or κύριος, or any other direct designation of God unless it be οὐρανός (cf.“swear ... by the heaven”—Mat. 5:34). So the book of Esther contains no mention of the name of God, though the apocryphal additions to Esther, which are found only in Greek, contain the name of God in the first verse, and mention it in all eight times. See Bissell, Apocrypha, in Lange's Commentary; Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 93; Max Müller on Semitic Monotheism, in Chips from a German Workshop, 1:337.(c) He possesses the attributes of God.Among these are life, self-existence, immutability, truth, love, holiness, eternity, omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence. All these attributes are ascribed to Christ in connections which show that the terms are used in no secondary sense, nor in any sense predicable of a creature.Life:John 1:4—“In him was life”;14:6—“I am ... the life.”Self-existence:John 5:26—“have life in himself”;Heb. 7:16—“power of an endless life.”Immutability:Heb. 13:8—“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day, yea and forever.”Truth:John 14:6—“I am ... the truth”;Rev. 3:7—“he that is true.”Love:1 John 3:16—“Hereby know we love”(τὴν ἀγάπην = the personal Love, as the personal Truth)“because he laid down his life for us.”Holiness:Luke 1:35—“that which is to be born shall be called holy, the Son of God”;John 6:69—“thou art the Holy One of God”;Heb. 7:26—“holy, guileless, undefiled, separated from sinners.”Eternity:John 1:1—“In the beginning was the Word.”Godet says ἐν ἀρχῇ = not“in eternity,”but“in the beginning of the creation”; the eternity of the Word being an inference from the ἦν—the Wordwas, when the world wascreated:cf.Gen. 1:1—“In the beginning God created.”But Meyer says, ἐν ἀρχῇ here rises above the historical conception of“in the beginning”in Genesis (which includes the beginning of time itself) to the absolute conception of anteriority to time; the creation is something subsequent. He finds a parallel inProv. 8:23—ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸ τοῦ τὴν γῆν ποιῆσαι. The interpretation“in the beginning of the gospel”is entirely unexegetical; so Meyer. SoJohn 17:5—“glory which I had with thee before the world was”;Eph. 1:4—“chose us in him before the foundation of the world.”Dorner also says that ἐν ἀρχῇ inJohn 1:1is not“the beginning of the world,”but designates the point[pg 310]back of which it is impossible to go,i. e., eternity; the world is first spoken of inverse 3. John 8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”;cf.1:15;Col. 1:17—“he is before all things”;Heb. 1:11—the heavens“shall perish; but thou continuest”;Rev. 21:6—“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.”Omnipresence:Mat. 28:20—“I am with you always”;Eph. 1:23—“the fulness of him that filleth all in all.”Omniscience:Mat. 9:4—“Jesus knowing their thoughts”;John 2:24, 25—“knew all men ... knew what was in man”;16:30—“knowest all things”;Acts 1:24—“Thou, Lord, who knowest the hearts of all men”—a prayer offered before the day of Pentecost and showing the attitude of the disciples toward their Master;1 Cor. 4:5—“until the Lord come, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and make manifest the counsels of the hearts”;Col. 2:3—“in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden.”Omnipotence:Mat. 27:18—“All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth”;Rev. 1:8—“the Lord God, which is and which was and which is to come, the Almighty.”Beyschlag, N. T. Theology, 1:249-260, holds that Jesus' preëxistence is simply the concrete form given to an ideal conception. Jesus traces himself back, as everything else holy and divine was traced back in the conceptions of his time, to a heavenly original in which it preëxisted before its earthly appearance;e. g.: the tabernacle, inHeb. 8:5; Jerusalem, inGal. 4:25andRev. 21:10; the kingdom of God inMat. 13:24; much more the Messiah, inJohn 6:62—“ascending where he was before”;8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”;17:4, 5—“glory which I had with thee before the world was”17:24—“thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.”This view that Jesus existed before creation only ideally in the divine mind, means simply that God foreknew him and his coming. The view is refuted by the multiplied intimations of a personal, in distinction from an ideal, preëxistence.Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John, 115—“The words‘In the beginning’(John 1:1)suggest that the author is about to write a second book of Genesis, an account of a new creation.”As creation presupposes a Creator, the preëxistence of the personal Word is assigned as the explanation of the being of the universe. The ἦν indicates absolute existence, which is a loftier idea than that of mere preëxistence, although it includes this. While John the Baptist and Abraham are said to have arisen, appeared, come into being, it is said that the Logoswas, and that the Logos wasGod. This implies coëternity with the Father. But, if the view we are combating were correct, John the Baptist and Abraham preëxisted, equally with Christ. This is certainly not the meaning of Jesus inJohn 8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”;cf.Col. 1:17—“he is before all things”—“αὐτός emphasizes the personality, while ἔστιν declares that the preëxistence is absolute existence”(Lightfoot);John 1:15—“He that cometh after me is become before me: for he was before me”= not that Jesus wasbornearlier than John the Baptist, for he was born six months later, but that heexistedearlier. He stands before John in rank, because he existed long before John in time;6:62—“the Son of man ascending where he was before”;16:28—“I came out from the Father, and am come into the world.”SoIs. 9:6, 7, calls Christ“Everlasting Father”= eternity is an attribute of the Messiah. T. W. Chambers, in Jour. Soc. Bib. Exegesis, 1881:169-171—“Christ is the Everlasting One,‘whose goings forth have been from of old, even from the days of eternity’(Micah 5:2).‘Of the increase of his government ... there shall be no end,’just because of his existence there has been no beginning.”(d) The works of God are ascribed to him.We do not here speak of miracles, which may be wrought by communicated power, but of such works as the creation of the world, the upholding of all things, the final raising of the dead, and the judging of all men. Power to perform these works cannot be delegated, for they are characteristic of omnipotence.
B. Jesus Christ is recognized as God.(a) He is expressly called God.In John 1:1—Θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος—the absence of the article shows Θεός to be the predicate (cf.4:24—πνεῦμα ὁ Θεός). This predicate precedes the verb by way of emphasis, to indicate progress in the thought =“the Logos was[pg 306]not only with God, but was God”(see Meyer and Luthardt, Comm.in loco).“Only ὁ λόγος can be the subject, for in the whole Introduction the question is, not who God is, but who the Logos is”(Godet).Westcott in Bible Commentary,in loco—“The predicate stands emphatically first. It is necessarily without the article, inasmuch as it describes the nature of the Word and does not identify his person. It would be pure Sabellianism to say:‘The Word was ὁ Θεός.’Thus in verse 1 we have set forth the Word in his absolute eternal being, (a) his existence: beyond time; (b) his personal existence: in active communion with God; (c) his nature: God in essence.”Marcus Dods, in Expositor's Greek Testament,in loco:“The Word is distinguishable from God, yet Θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος—the word was God, of divine nature; not‘a God,’which to a Jewish ear would have been abominable, nor yet identical with all that can be called God, for then the article would have been inserted (cf.1 John 3:4).”In John 1:18, μονογενὴς θεός—“the only begotten God”—must be regarded as the correct reading, and as a plain ascription of absolute Deity to Christ. He is not simply the only revealer of God, but he is himself God revealed.John 1:18—“No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.”In this passage, although Tischendorf (8th ed.) has μονογενὴς ὑιός, Westcott and Hort (with א*BC*L Pesh. Syr.) read μονογενὴς Θεός and the Rev. Vers. puts“the only begotten God”in the margin, though it retains“the only begotten Son”in the text. Harnack says the reading μονογενὴς θεός is“established beyond contradiction”; see Westcott, Bib. Com. on John, pages 32, 33. Here then we have a new and unmistakable assertion of the deity of Christ. Meyer says that the apostles actually call Christ God only inJohn 1:1and20:28, and that Paul never so recognizes him. But Meyer is able to maintain his position only by calling the doxologies to Christ, in2 Tim. 4:18,Heb. 13:21and2 Pet. 3:18, post-apostolic. See Thayer, N. T. Lexicon, on Θεός, and on μονογενής.In John 20:28, the address of Thomas Ὁ κύριός μου καὶ ὁ θεός μου—“My Lord and my God”—since it was unrebuked by Christ, is equivalent to an assertion on his own part of his claim to Deity.John 20:28—“Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.”This address cannot be interpreted as a sudden appeal to God in surprise and admiration, without charging the apostle with profanity. Nor can it be considered a mere exhibition of overwrought enthusiasm, since it was accepted by Christ. Contrast the conduct of Paul and Barnabas when the heathen at Lystra were bringing sacrifice to them as Jupiter and Mercury (Acts 14:11-18). The words of Thomas, as addressed directly to Christ and as accepted by Christ, can be regarded only as a just acknowledgment on the part of Thomas that Christ was his Lord and his God. Alford, Commentary,in loco:“The Socinian view that these words are merely an exclamation is refuted (1) by the fact that no such exclamations were in use among the Jews; (2) by the εἶπεν αὐτῷ; (3) by the impossibility of referring the ὁ κύριός μου to another than Jesus: seeverse 13; (4) by the N. T. usage of expressing the vocative by the nominative with an article; (5) by the psychological absurdity of such a supposition: that one just convinced of the presence of him whom he dearly loved should, instead of addressing him, break out into an irrelevant cry; (6) by the further absurdity of supposing that, if such were the case, the Apostle John, who of all the sacred writers most constantly keeps in mind the object for which he is writing, should have recorded anything so beside that object; (7) by the intimate conjunction of πεπίστευκας.”Cf.Mat. 5:34—“Swear not ... by the heaven”—swearing by Jehovah is not mentioned, because no Jew did so swear. This exclamation of Thomas, the greatest doubter among the twelve, is the natural conclusion of John's gospel. The thesis“the Word was God”(John 1:1)has now become part of the life and consciousness of the apostles.Chapter 21is only an Epilogue, or Appendix, written later by John, to correct the error that he was not to die; see Westcott, Bible Com.,in loco. The Deity of Christ is the subject of the apostle who best understood his Master. Lyman Beecher:“Jesus Christ is the acting Deity of the universe.”In Rom. 9:5, the clause ὁ ὢν ἐπὶ πάντων Θεὸς εὐλογητός cannot be translated“blessed be the God over all,”for ὢν is superfluous if the clause is a doxology;“εὐλογητός precedes the name of God in a doxology, but follows it,[pg 307]as here, in a description”(Hovey). The clause can therefore justly be interpreted only as a description of the higher nature of the Christ who had just been said, τὸ κατὰ σάρκα, or according to his lower nature, to have had his origin from Israel (see Tholuck, Com.in loco).Sanday, Com. onRom. 9:5—“The words would naturally refer to Christ, unless‘God’is so definitely a proper name that it would imply a contrast in itself. We have seen that this is not so.”Hence Sanday translates:“of whom is the Christ as concerning the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever”. See President T. Dwight, in Jour. Soc. Bib. Exegesis, 1881:22-55;per contra, Ezra Abbot, in the same journal, 1881:1-19, and Denney, in Expositor's Gk. Test.,in loco.In Titus 2:13, ἐπιφάνειαν τῆς δόξης τοῦ μεγάλου Θεοῦ καὶ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ we regard (with Ellicott) as“a direct, definite, and even studied declaration of Christ's divinity”=“the ... appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ”(so English Revised Version). Ἐπιφάνεια is a term applied specially to the Son and never to the Father, and μεγάλου is uncalled for if used of the Father, but peculiarly appropriate if used of Christ. Upon the same principles we must interpret the similar text 2 Pet. 1:1 (see Huther, in Meyer's Com.:“The close juxtaposition indicates the author's certainty of the oneness of God and Jesus Christ”).Titus 2:13—“looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ”—so the English Revised Version. The American Revisers however translate:“the glory of the great God and Savior”; and Westcott and Hort bracket the word ἡμῶν. These considerations somewhat lessen the cogency of this passage as a proof-text, yet upon the whole the balance of argument seems to us still to incline in favor of Ellicott's interpretation as given above.In Heb. 1:8, πρὸς δὲ τὸν υἱόν; ὁ θρόνος σου, ὁ Θεὸς, εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα is quoted as an address to Christ, and verse 10 which follows—“Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth”—by applying to Christ an Old Testament ascription to Jehovah, shows that ὁ Θεός, in verse 8, is used in the sense of absolute Godhead.It is sometimes objected that the ascription of the name God to Christ proves nothing as to his absolute deity, since angels and even human judges are called gods, as representing God's authority and executing his will. But we reply that, while it is true that the name is sometimes so applied, it is always with adjuncts and in connections which leave no doubt of its figurative and secondary meaning. When, however, the name is applied to Christ, it is, on the contrary, with adjuncts and in connections which leave no doubt that it signifies absolute Godhead. SeeEx. 4:16—“thou shalt be to him as God”;7:1—“See, I have made thee as God to Pharaoh”;22:28—“Thou shalt not revile God, [marg.,the judges],nor curse a ruler of thy people”;Ps. 82:1—“God standeth in the congregation of God; he judgeth among the gods”[among the mighty];6—“I said, Ye are gods, And all of you sons of the Most High”;7—“Nevertheless ye shall die like men, And fall like one of the princes.”Cf.John 10:34-36—“If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came”(who were God's commissioned and appointed representatives), how much more proper for him who is one with the Father to call himself God.As inPs. 82:7those who had been called gods are represented as dying, so inPs. 97:7—“Worship him, all ye gods”—they are bidden to fall down before Jehovah. Ann. Par. Bible:“Although the deities of the heathen have no positive existence, they are often described in Scripture as if they had, and are represented as bowing down before the majesty of Jehovah.”This verse is quoted inHeb. 1:6—“let all the angels of God worship him”—i. e., Christ. Here Christ is identified with Jehovah. The quotation is made from the Septuagint, which has“angels”for“gods.”“Its use here is in accordance with the spirit of the Hebrew word, which includes all that human error might regard as objects of worship.”Those who are figuratively and rhetorically called“gods”are bidden to fall down in worship before him who is the true God, Jesus Christ. See Dick, Lectures on Theology, 1:314; Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 10.[pg 308]In 1 John 5:20—ἐσμεν ἐν τῷ ἀληθινῷ, ἐν τῷ υἱῷ αὐτοῦ Ἰησοῦ Χριστῷ. οὗτος ἐστιν ὁ ἀληθινὸς Θεός—“it would be a flat repetition, after the Father had been twice called ὁ ἀληθινός, to say now again:‘this is ὁ ἀληθενὸς Θεός.’Our being in God has its basis in Christ his Son, and this also makes it more natural that οὖτος should be referred to υἱῷ. But ought not ὁ ἀληθενός then to be without the article (as in John 1:1—Θεός ἦν ὁ λόγος)? No, for it is John's purpose in 1 John 5:20 to say, notwhatChrist is, butwhohe is. In declaringwhatone is, the predicate must have no article; in declaringwhoone is, the predicate must have the article. St. John here says that this Son, on whom our being in the true God rests, is this true God himself”(see Ebrard, Com.in loco).Other passages might be here adduced, asCol. 2:9—“in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily”;Phil 2:6—“existing in the form of God”; but we prefer to consider these under other heads as indirectly proving Christ's divinity. Still other passages once relied upon as direct statements of the doctrine must be given up for textual reasons. Such areActs 20:28, where the correct reading is in all probability not ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ Θεοῦ, but ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ Κυρίου (so ACDE Tregelles and Tischendorf; B and א, however, have τοῦ Θεοῦ. The Rev. Vers. continues to read“church of God”; Amer. Revisers, however, read“church of the Lord”—see Ezra Abbot's investigation in Bib. Sac., 1876: 313-352); and1 Tim. 3:16, where ὅς is unquestionably to be substituted for Θεός, though even here ἐφανερώθη intimates preëxistence.Rev. George E. Ellis, D. D., before the Unitarian Club, Boston, November, 1882—“Fifty years of study, thought and reading given largely to the Bible and to the literature which peculiarly relates to it, have brought me to this conclusion, that the book—taken with the especial divine quality and character claimed for it, and so extensively assigned to it, as inspired and infallible as a whole, and in all its contents—is an Orthodox book. It yields what is called the Orthodox creed. The vast majority of its readers, following its letter, its obvious sense, its natural meaning, and yielding to the impression which some of its emphatic texts make upon them, find in it Orthodoxy. Only that kind of ingenious, special, discriminative, and in candor I must add, forced treatment, which it receives from us liberals can make the book teach anything but Orthodoxy. The evangelical sects, so called, are clearly right in maintaining that their view of Scripture and of its doctrines draws a deep and wide division of creed between them and ourselves. In that earnest controversy by pamphlet warfare between Drs. Channing and Ware on the one side, and Drs. Worcester and Woods and Professor Stuart on the other—a controversy which wrought up the people of our community sixty years ago more than did our recent political campaign—I am fully convinced that the liberal contestants were worsted. Scripture exegesis, logic and argument were clearly on the side of the Orthodox contestants. And this was so, mainly because the liberal party put themselves on the same plane with the Orthodox in their way of regarding and dealing with Scripture texts in their bearing upon the controversy. Liberalism cannot vanquish Orthodoxy, if it yields to the latter in its own way of regarding and treating the whole Bible. Martin Luther said that the Papists burned the Bible because it was not on their side. Now I am not about to attack the Bible because it is not on my side; but I am about to object as emphatically as I can against a character and quality assigned to the Bible, which it does not claim for itself, which cannot be certified for it: and the origin and growth and intensity of the fond and superstitious influences resulting in that view we can trace distinctly to agencies accounting for, but not warranting, the current belief. Orthodoxy cannot readjust its creeds till it readjusts its estimate of the Scriptures. The only relief which one who professes the Orthodox creed can find is either by forcing his ingenuity into the proof-texts or indulging his liberty outside of them.”With this confession of a noted Unitarian it is interesting to compare the opinion of the so-called Trinitarian, Dr. Lyman Abbott, who says that the New Testament nowhere calls Christ God, but everywhere calls him man, as in1 Tim. 2:5—“for there is one God, one mediator also between God and men, himself man, Christ Jesus.”On this passage Prof. L. L. Paine remarks in the New World, Dec. 1894—“That Paul ever confounded Christ with God himself, or regarded him as in any way the Supreme Divinity, is a position invalidated not only by direct statements, but also by the whole drift of his epistles.”[pg 309](b) Old Testament descriptions of God are applied to him.This application to Christ of titles and names exclusively appropriated to God is inexplicable, if Christ was not regarded as being himself God. The peculiar awe with which the term“Jehovah”was set apart by a nation of strenuous monotheists as the sacred and incommunicable name of the one self-existent and covenant-keeping God forbids the belief that the Scripture writers could have used it as the designation of a subordinate and created being.Mat. 3:3—“Make ye ready the way of the Lord”—is a quotation fromIs. 40:3—“Prepare ye ... the way of Jehovah.”John 12:41—“These things said Isaiah, because he saw his glory; and he spake of him”[i. e., Christ]—refers toIs. 6:1—“In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne.”So inEph. 4:7, 8—“measure of the gift of Christ ... led captivity captive”—is an application to Christ of what is said of Jehovah inPs. 68:18. In1 Pet. 3:15, moreover, we read, with all the great uncials, several of the Fathers, and all the best versions:“sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord”; here the apostle borrows his language fromIs. 8:13, where we read:“Jehovah of hosts, him shall ye sanctify.”When we remember that, with the Jews, God's covenant-title was so sacred that for the Kethib (=“written”)Jehovahthere was always substituted the Keri (=“read”—imperative)Adonai, in order to avoid pronunciation of the great Name, it seems the more remarkable that the Greek equivalent of“Jehovah”should have been so constantly used of Christ.Cf.Rom. 10:9—“confess ... Jesus as Lord”;1 Cor. 12:3—“no man can say, Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Spirit.”We must remember also the indignation of the Jews at Christ's assertion of his equality and oneness with the Father. Compare Goethe's,“Wer darf ihn nennen?”with Carlyle's,“the awful Unnameable of this Universe.”The Jews, it has been said, have always vibrated between monotheism and moneytheism. Yet James, the strongest of Hebrews, in his Epistle uses the word 'Lord' freely and alternately of God the Father and of Christ the Son. This would have been impossible if James had not believed in the community of essence between the Son and the Father.It is interesting to note that 1 Maccabees does not once use the word Θεός or κύριος, or any other direct designation of God unless it be οὐρανός (cf.“swear ... by the heaven”—Mat. 5:34). So the book of Esther contains no mention of the name of God, though the apocryphal additions to Esther, which are found only in Greek, contain the name of God in the first verse, and mention it in all eight times. See Bissell, Apocrypha, in Lange's Commentary; Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 93; Max Müller on Semitic Monotheism, in Chips from a German Workshop, 1:337.(c) He possesses the attributes of God.Among these are life, self-existence, immutability, truth, love, holiness, eternity, omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence. All these attributes are ascribed to Christ in connections which show that the terms are used in no secondary sense, nor in any sense predicable of a creature.Life:John 1:4—“In him was life”;14:6—“I am ... the life.”Self-existence:John 5:26—“have life in himself”;Heb. 7:16—“power of an endless life.”Immutability:Heb. 13:8—“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day, yea and forever.”Truth:John 14:6—“I am ... the truth”;Rev. 3:7—“he that is true.”Love:1 John 3:16—“Hereby know we love”(τὴν ἀγάπην = the personal Love, as the personal Truth)“because he laid down his life for us.”Holiness:Luke 1:35—“that which is to be born shall be called holy, the Son of God”;John 6:69—“thou art the Holy One of God”;Heb. 7:26—“holy, guileless, undefiled, separated from sinners.”Eternity:John 1:1—“In the beginning was the Word.”Godet says ἐν ἀρχῇ = not“in eternity,”but“in the beginning of the creation”; the eternity of the Word being an inference from the ἦν—the Wordwas, when the world wascreated:cf.Gen. 1:1—“In the beginning God created.”But Meyer says, ἐν ἀρχῇ here rises above the historical conception of“in the beginning”in Genesis (which includes the beginning of time itself) to the absolute conception of anteriority to time; the creation is something subsequent. He finds a parallel inProv. 8:23—ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸ τοῦ τὴν γῆν ποιῆσαι. The interpretation“in the beginning of the gospel”is entirely unexegetical; so Meyer. SoJohn 17:5—“glory which I had with thee before the world was”;Eph. 1:4—“chose us in him before the foundation of the world.”Dorner also says that ἐν ἀρχῇ inJohn 1:1is not“the beginning of the world,”but designates the point[pg 310]back of which it is impossible to go,i. e., eternity; the world is first spoken of inverse 3. John 8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”;cf.1:15;Col. 1:17—“he is before all things”;Heb. 1:11—the heavens“shall perish; but thou continuest”;Rev. 21:6—“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.”Omnipresence:Mat. 28:20—“I am with you always”;Eph. 1:23—“the fulness of him that filleth all in all.”Omniscience:Mat. 9:4—“Jesus knowing their thoughts”;John 2:24, 25—“knew all men ... knew what was in man”;16:30—“knowest all things”;Acts 1:24—“Thou, Lord, who knowest the hearts of all men”—a prayer offered before the day of Pentecost and showing the attitude of the disciples toward their Master;1 Cor. 4:5—“until the Lord come, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and make manifest the counsels of the hearts”;Col. 2:3—“in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden.”Omnipotence:Mat. 27:18—“All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth”;Rev. 1:8—“the Lord God, which is and which was and which is to come, the Almighty.”Beyschlag, N. T. Theology, 1:249-260, holds that Jesus' preëxistence is simply the concrete form given to an ideal conception. Jesus traces himself back, as everything else holy and divine was traced back in the conceptions of his time, to a heavenly original in which it preëxisted before its earthly appearance;e. g.: the tabernacle, inHeb. 8:5; Jerusalem, inGal. 4:25andRev. 21:10; the kingdom of God inMat. 13:24; much more the Messiah, inJohn 6:62—“ascending where he was before”;8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”;17:4, 5—“glory which I had with thee before the world was”17:24—“thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.”This view that Jesus existed before creation only ideally in the divine mind, means simply that God foreknew him and his coming. The view is refuted by the multiplied intimations of a personal, in distinction from an ideal, preëxistence.Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John, 115—“The words‘In the beginning’(John 1:1)suggest that the author is about to write a second book of Genesis, an account of a new creation.”As creation presupposes a Creator, the preëxistence of the personal Word is assigned as the explanation of the being of the universe. The ἦν indicates absolute existence, which is a loftier idea than that of mere preëxistence, although it includes this. While John the Baptist and Abraham are said to have arisen, appeared, come into being, it is said that the Logoswas, and that the Logos wasGod. This implies coëternity with the Father. But, if the view we are combating were correct, John the Baptist and Abraham preëxisted, equally with Christ. This is certainly not the meaning of Jesus inJohn 8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”;cf.Col. 1:17—“he is before all things”—“αὐτός emphasizes the personality, while ἔστιν declares that the preëxistence is absolute existence”(Lightfoot);John 1:15—“He that cometh after me is become before me: for he was before me”= not that Jesus wasbornearlier than John the Baptist, for he was born six months later, but that heexistedearlier. He stands before John in rank, because he existed long before John in time;6:62—“the Son of man ascending where he was before”;16:28—“I came out from the Father, and am come into the world.”SoIs. 9:6, 7, calls Christ“Everlasting Father”= eternity is an attribute of the Messiah. T. W. Chambers, in Jour. Soc. Bib. Exegesis, 1881:169-171—“Christ is the Everlasting One,‘whose goings forth have been from of old, even from the days of eternity’(Micah 5:2).‘Of the increase of his government ... there shall be no end,’just because of his existence there has been no beginning.”(d) The works of God are ascribed to him.We do not here speak of miracles, which may be wrought by communicated power, but of such works as the creation of the world, the upholding of all things, the final raising of the dead, and the judging of all men. Power to perform these works cannot be delegated, for they are characteristic of omnipotence.
B. Jesus Christ is recognized as God.(a) He is expressly called God.In John 1:1—Θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος—the absence of the article shows Θεός to be the predicate (cf.4:24—πνεῦμα ὁ Θεός). This predicate precedes the verb by way of emphasis, to indicate progress in the thought =“the Logos was[pg 306]not only with God, but was God”(see Meyer and Luthardt, Comm.in loco).“Only ὁ λόγος can be the subject, for in the whole Introduction the question is, not who God is, but who the Logos is”(Godet).Westcott in Bible Commentary,in loco—“The predicate stands emphatically first. It is necessarily without the article, inasmuch as it describes the nature of the Word and does not identify his person. It would be pure Sabellianism to say:‘The Word was ὁ Θεός.’Thus in verse 1 we have set forth the Word in his absolute eternal being, (a) his existence: beyond time; (b) his personal existence: in active communion with God; (c) his nature: God in essence.”Marcus Dods, in Expositor's Greek Testament,in loco:“The Word is distinguishable from God, yet Θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος—the word was God, of divine nature; not‘a God,’which to a Jewish ear would have been abominable, nor yet identical with all that can be called God, for then the article would have been inserted (cf.1 John 3:4).”In John 1:18, μονογενὴς θεός—“the only begotten God”—must be regarded as the correct reading, and as a plain ascription of absolute Deity to Christ. He is not simply the only revealer of God, but he is himself God revealed.John 1:18—“No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.”In this passage, although Tischendorf (8th ed.) has μονογενὴς ὑιός, Westcott and Hort (with א*BC*L Pesh. Syr.) read μονογενὴς Θεός and the Rev. Vers. puts“the only begotten God”in the margin, though it retains“the only begotten Son”in the text. Harnack says the reading μονογενὴς θεός is“established beyond contradiction”; see Westcott, Bib. Com. on John, pages 32, 33. Here then we have a new and unmistakable assertion of the deity of Christ. Meyer says that the apostles actually call Christ God only inJohn 1:1and20:28, and that Paul never so recognizes him. But Meyer is able to maintain his position only by calling the doxologies to Christ, in2 Tim. 4:18,Heb. 13:21and2 Pet. 3:18, post-apostolic. See Thayer, N. T. Lexicon, on Θεός, and on μονογενής.In John 20:28, the address of Thomas Ὁ κύριός μου καὶ ὁ θεός μου—“My Lord and my God”—since it was unrebuked by Christ, is equivalent to an assertion on his own part of his claim to Deity.John 20:28—“Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.”This address cannot be interpreted as a sudden appeal to God in surprise and admiration, without charging the apostle with profanity. Nor can it be considered a mere exhibition of overwrought enthusiasm, since it was accepted by Christ. Contrast the conduct of Paul and Barnabas when the heathen at Lystra were bringing sacrifice to them as Jupiter and Mercury (Acts 14:11-18). The words of Thomas, as addressed directly to Christ and as accepted by Christ, can be regarded only as a just acknowledgment on the part of Thomas that Christ was his Lord and his God. Alford, Commentary,in loco:“The Socinian view that these words are merely an exclamation is refuted (1) by the fact that no such exclamations were in use among the Jews; (2) by the εἶπεν αὐτῷ; (3) by the impossibility of referring the ὁ κύριός μου to another than Jesus: seeverse 13; (4) by the N. T. usage of expressing the vocative by the nominative with an article; (5) by the psychological absurdity of such a supposition: that one just convinced of the presence of him whom he dearly loved should, instead of addressing him, break out into an irrelevant cry; (6) by the further absurdity of supposing that, if such were the case, the Apostle John, who of all the sacred writers most constantly keeps in mind the object for which he is writing, should have recorded anything so beside that object; (7) by the intimate conjunction of πεπίστευκας.”Cf.Mat. 5:34—“Swear not ... by the heaven”—swearing by Jehovah is not mentioned, because no Jew did so swear. This exclamation of Thomas, the greatest doubter among the twelve, is the natural conclusion of John's gospel. The thesis“the Word was God”(John 1:1)has now become part of the life and consciousness of the apostles.Chapter 21is only an Epilogue, or Appendix, written later by John, to correct the error that he was not to die; see Westcott, Bible Com.,in loco. The Deity of Christ is the subject of the apostle who best understood his Master. Lyman Beecher:“Jesus Christ is the acting Deity of the universe.”In Rom. 9:5, the clause ὁ ὢν ἐπὶ πάντων Θεὸς εὐλογητός cannot be translated“blessed be the God over all,”for ὢν is superfluous if the clause is a doxology;“εὐλογητός precedes the name of God in a doxology, but follows it,[pg 307]as here, in a description”(Hovey). The clause can therefore justly be interpreted only as a description of the higher nature of the Christ who had just been said, τὸ κατὰ σάρκα, or according to his lower nature, to have had his origin from Israel (see Tholuck, Com.in loco).Sanday, Com. onRom. 9:5—“The words would naturally refer to Christ, unless‘God’is so definitely a proper name that it would imply a contrast in itself. We have seen that this is not so.”Hence Sanday translates:“of whom is the Christ as concerning the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever”. See President T. Dwight, in Jour. Soc. Bib. Exegesis, 1881:22-55;per contra, Ezra Abbot, in the same journal, 1881:1-19, and Denney, in Expositor's Gk. Test.,in loco.In Titus 2:13, ἐπιφάνειαν τῆς δόξης τοῦ μεγάλου Θεοῦ καὶ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ we regard (with Ellicott) as“a direct, definite, and even studied declaration of Christ's divinity”=“the ... appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ”(so English Revised Version). Ἐπιφάνεια is a term applied specially to the Son and never to the Father, and μεγάλου is uncalled for if used of the Father, but peculiarly appropriate if used of Christ. Upon the same principles we must interpret the similar text 2 Pet. 1:1 (see Huther, in Meyer's Com.:“The close juxtaposition indicates the author's certainty of the oneness of God and Jesus Christ”).Titus 2:13—“looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ”—so the English Revised Version. The American Revisers however translate:“the glory of the great God and Savior”; and Westcott and Hort bracket the word ἡμῶν. These considerations somewhat lessen the cogency of this passage as a proof-text, yet upon the whole the balance of argument seems to us still to incline in favor of Ellicott's interpretation as given above.In Heb. 1:8, πρὸς δὲ τὸν υἱόν; ὁ θρόνος σου, ὁ Θεὸς, εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα is quoted as an address to Christ, and verse 10 which follows—“Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth”—by applying to Christ an Old Testament ascription to Jehovah, shows that ὁ Θεός, in verse 8, is used in the sense of absolute Godhead.It is sometimes objected that the ascription of the name God to Christ proves nothing as to his absolute deity, since angels and even human judges are called gods, as representing God's authority and executing his will. But we reply that, while it is true that the name is sometimes so applied, it is always with adjuncts and in connections which leave no doubt of its figurative and secondary meaning. When, however, the name is applied to Christ, it is, on the contrary, with adjuncts and in connections which leave no doubt that it signifies absolute Godhead. SeeEx. 4:16—“thou shalt be to him as God”;7:1—“See, I have made thee as God to Pharaoh”;22:28—“Thou shalt not revile God, [marg.,the judges],nor curse a ruler of thy people”;Ps. 82:1—“God standeth in the congregation of God; he judgeth among the gods”[among the mighty];6—“I said, Ye are gods, And all of you sons of the Most High”;7—“Nevertheless ye shall die like men, And fall like one of the princes.”Cf.John 10:34-36—“If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came”(who were God's commissioned and appointed representatives), how much more proper for him who is one with the Father to call himself God.As inPs. 82:7those who had been called gods are represented as dying, so inPs. 97:7—“Worship him, all ye gods”—they are bidden to fall down before Jehovah. Ann. Par. Bible:“Although the deities of the heathen have no positive existence, they are often described in Scripture as if they had, and are represented as bowing down before the majesty of Jehovah.”This verse is quoted inHeb. 1:6—“let all the angels of God worship him”—i. e., Christ. Here Christ is identified with Jehovah. The quotation is made from the Septuagint, which has“angels”for“gods.”“Its use here is in accordance with the spirit of the Hebrew word, which includes all that human error might regard as objects of worship.”Those who are figuratively and rhetorically called“gods”are bidden to fall down in worship before him who is the true God, Jesus Christ. See Dick, Lectures on Theology, 1:314; Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 10.[pg 308]In 1 John 5:20—ἐσμεν ἐν τῷ ἀληθινῷ, ἐν τῷ υἱῷ αὐτοῦ Ἰησοῦ Χριστῷ. οὗτος ἐστιν ὁ ἀληθινὸς Θεός—“it would be a flat repetition, after the Father had been twice called ὁ ἀληθινός, to say now again:‘this is ὁ ἀληθενὸς Θεός.’Our being in God has its basis in Christ his Son, and this also makes it more natural that οὖτος should be referred to υἱῷ. But ought not ὁ ἀληθενός then to be without the article (as in John 1:1—Θεός ἦν ὁ λόγος)? No, for it is John's purpose in 1 John 5:20 to say, notwhatChrist is, butwhohe is. In declaringwhatone is, the predicate must have no article; in declaringwhoone is, the predicate must have the article. St. John here says that this Son, on whom our being in the true God rests, is this true God himself”(see Ebrard, Com.in loco).Other passages might be here adduced, asCol. 2:9—“in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily”;Phil 2:6—“existing in the form of God”; but we prefer to consider these under other heads as indirectly proving Christ's divinity. Still other passages once relied upon as direct statements of the doctrine must be given up for textual reasons. Such areActs 20:28, where the correct reading is in all probability not ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ Θεοῦ, but ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ Κυρίου (so ACDE Tregelles and Tischendorf; B and א, however, have τοῦ Θεοῦ. The Rev. Vers. continues to read“church of God”; Amer. Revisers, however, read“church of the Lord”—see Ezra Abbot's investigation in Bib. Sac., 1876: 313-352); and1 Tim. 3:16, where ὅς is unquestionably to be substituted for Θεός, though even here ἐφανερώθη intimates preëxistence.Rev. George E. Ellis, D. D., before the Unitarian Club, Boston, November, 1882—“Fifty years of study, thought and reading given largely to the Bible and to the literature which peculiarly relates to it, have brought me to this conclusion, that the book—taken with the especial divine quality and character claimed for it, and so extensively assigned to it, as inspired and infallible as a whole, and in all its contents—is an Orthodox book. It yields what is called the Orthodox creed. The vast majority of its readers, following its letter, its obvious sense, its natural meaning, and yielding to the impression which some of its emphatic texts make upon them, find in it Orthodoxy. Only that kind of ingenious, special, discriminative, and in candor I must add, forced treatment, which it receives from us liberals can make the book teach anything but Orthodoxy. The evangelical sects, so called, are clearly right in maintaining that their view of Scripture and of its doctrines draws a deep and wide division of creed between them and ourselves. In that earnest controversy by pamphlet warfare between Drs. Channing and Ware on the one side, and Drs. Worcester and Woods and Professor Stuart on the other—a controversy which wrought up the people of our community sixty years ago more than did our recent political campaign—I am fully convinced that the liberal contestants were worsted. Scripture exegesis, logic and argument were clearly on the side of the Orthodox contestants. And this was so, mainly because the liberal party put themselves on the same plane with the Orthodox in their way of regarding and dealing with Scripture texts in their bearing upon the controversy. Liberalism cannot vanquish Orthodoxy, if it yields to the latter in its own way of regarding and treating the whole Bible. Martin Luther said that the Papists burned the Bible because it was not on their side. Now I am not about to attack the Bible because it is not on my side; but I am about to object as emphatically as I can against a character and quality assigned to the Bible, which it does not claim for itself, which cannot be certified for it: and the origin and growth and intensity of the fond and superstitious influences resulting in that view we can trace distinctly to agencies accounting for, but not warranting, the current belief. Orthodoxy cannot readjust its creeds till it readjusts its estimate of the Scriptures. The only relief which one who professes the Orthodox creed can find is either by forcing his ingenuity into the proof-texts or indulging his liberty outside of them.”With this confession of a noted Unitarian it is interesting to compare the opinion of the so-called Trinitarian, Dr. Lyman Abbott, who says that the New Testament nowhere calls Christ God, but everywhere calls him man, as in1 Tim. 2:5—“for there is one God, one mediator also between God and men, himself man, Christ Jesus.”On this passage Prof. L. L. Paine remarks in the New World, Dec. 1894—“That Paul ever confounded Christ with God himself, or regarded him as in any way the Supreme Divinity, is a position invalidated not only by direct statements, but also by the whole drift of his epistles.”[pg 309](b) Old Testament descriptions of God are applied to him.This application to Christ of titles and names exclusively appropriated to God is inexplicable, if Christ was not regarded as being himself God. The peculiar awe with which the term“Jehovah”was set apart by a nation of strenuous monotheists as the sacred and incommunicable name of the one self-existent and covenant-keeping God forbids the belief that the Scripture writers could have used it as the designation of a subordinate and created being.Mat. 3:3—“Make ye ready the way of the Lord”—is a quotation fromIs. 40:3—“Prepare ye ... the way of Jehovah.”John 12:41—“These things said Isaiah, because he saw his glory; and he spake of him”[i. e., Christ]—refers toIs. 6:1—“In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne.”So inEph. 4:7, 8—“measure of the gift of Christ ... led captivity captive”—is an application to Christ of what is said of Jehovah inPs. 68:18. In1 Pet. 3:15, moreover, we read, with all the great uncials, several of the Fathers, and all the best versions:“sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord”; here the apostle borrows his language fromIs. 8:13, where we read:“Jehovah of hosts, him shall ye sanctify.”When we remember that, with the Jews, God's covenant-title was so sacred that for the Kethib (=“written”)Jehovahthere was always substituted the Keri (=“read”—imperative)Adonai, in order to avoid pronunciation of the great Name, it seems the more remarkable that the Greek equivalent of“Jehovah”should have been so constantly used of Christ.Cf.Rom. 10:9—“confess ... Jesus as Lord”;1 Cor. 12:3—“no man can say, Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Spirit.”We must remember also the indignation of the Jews at Christ's assertion of his equality and oneness with the Father. Compare Goethe's,“Wer darf ihn nennen?”with Carlyle's,“the awful Unnameable of this Universe.”The Jews, it has been said, have always vibrated between monotheism and moneytheism. Yet James, the strongest of Hebrews, in his Epistle uses the word 'Lord' freely and alternately of God the Father and of Christ the Son. This would have been impossible if James had not believed in the community of essence between the Son and the Father.It is interesting to note that 1 Maccabees does not once use the word Θεός or κύριος, or any other direct designation of God unless it be οὐρανός (cf.“swear ... by the heaven”—Mat. 5:34). So the book of Esther contains no mention of the name of God, though the apocryphal additions to Esther, which are found only in Greek, contain the name of God in the first verse, and mention it in all eight times. See Bissell, Apocrypha, in Lange's Commentary; Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 93; Max Müller on Semitic Monotheism, in Chips from a German Workshop, 1:337.(c) He possesses the attributes of God.Among these are life, self-existence, immutability, truth, love, holiness, eternity, omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence. All these attributes are ascribed to Christ in connections which show that the terms are used in no secondary sense, nor in any sense predicable of a creature.Life:John 1:4—“In him was life”;14:6—“I am ... the life.”Self-existence:John 5:26—“have life in himself”;Heb. 7:16—“power of an endless life.”Immutability:Heb. 13:8—“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day, yea and forever.”Truth:John 14:6—“I am ... the truth”;Rev. 3:7—“he that is true.”Love:1 John 3:16—“Hereby know we love”(τὴν ἀγάπην = the personal Love, as the personal Truth)“because he laid down his life for us.”Holiness:Luke 1:35—“that which is to be born shall be called holy, the Son of God”;John 6:69—“thou art the Holy One of God”;Heb. 7:26—“holy, guileless, undefiled, separated from sinners.”Eternity:John 1:1—“In the beginning was the Word.”Godet says ἐν ἀρχῇ = not“in eternity,”but“in the beginning of the creation”; the eternity of the Word being an inference from the ἦν—the Wordwas, when the world wascreated:cf.Gen. 1:1—“In the beginning God created.”But Meyer says, ἐν ἀρχῇ here rises above the historical conception of“in the beginning”in Genesis (which includes the beginning of time itself) to the absolute conception of anteriority to time; the creation is something subsequent. He finds a parallel inProv. 8:23—ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸ τοῦ τὴν γῆν ποιῆσαι. The interpretation“in the beginning of the gospel”is entirely unexegetical; so Meyer. SoJohn 17:5—“glory which I had with thee before the world was”;Eph. 1:4—“chose us in him before the foundation of the world.”Dorner also says that ἐν ἀρχῇ inJohn 1:1is not“the beginning of the world,”but designates the point[pg 310]back of which it is impossible to go,i. e., eternity; the world is first spoken of inverse 3. John 8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”;cf.1:15;Col. 1:17—“he is before all things”;Heb. 1:11—the heavens“shall perish; but thou continuest”;Rev. 21:6—“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.”Omnipresence:Mat. 28:20—“I am with you always”;Eph. 1:23—“the fulness of him that filleth all in all.”Omniscience:Mat. 9:4—“Jesus knowing their thoughts”;John 2:24, 25—“knew all men ... knew what was in man”;16:30—“knowest all things”;Acts 1:24—“Thou, Lord, who knowest the hearts of all men”—a prayer offered before the day of Pentecost and showing the attitude of the disciples toward their Master;1 Cor. 4:5—“until the Lord come, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and make manifest the counsels of the hearts”;Col. 2:3—“in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden.”Omnipotence:Mat. 27:18—“All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth”;Rev. 1:8—“the Lord God, which is and which was and which is to come, the Almighty.”Beyschlag, N. T. Theology, 1:249-260, holds that Jesus' preëxistence is simply the concrete form given to an ideal conception. Jesus traces himself back, as everything else holy and divine was traced back in the conceptions of his time, to a heavenly original in which it preëxisted before its earthly appearance;e. g.: the tabernacle, inHeb. 8:5; Jerusalem, inGal. 4:25andRev. 21:10; the kingdom of God inMat. 13:24; much more the Messiah, inJohn 6:62—“ascending where he was before”;8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”;17:4, 5—“glory which I had with thee before the world was”17:24—“thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.”This view that Jesus existed before creation only ideally in the divine mind, means simply that God foreknew him and his coming. The view is refuted by the multiplied intimations of a personal, in distinction from an ideal, preëxistence.Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John, 115—“The words‘In the beginning’(John 1:1)suggest that the author is about to write a second book of Genesis, an account of a new creation.”As creation presupposes a Creator, the preëxistence of the personal Word is assigned as the explanation of the being of the universe. The ἦν indicates absolute existence, which is a loftier idea than that of mere preëxistence, although it includes this. While John the Baptist and Abraham are said to have arisen, appeared, come into being, it is said that the Logoswas, and that the Logos wasGod. This implies coëternity with the Father. But, if the view we are combating were correct, John the Baptist and Abraham preëxisted, equally with Christ. This is certainly not the meaning of Jesus inJohn 8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”;cf.Col. 1:17—“he is before all things”—“αὐτός emphasizes the personality, while ἔστιν declares that the preëxistence is absolute existence”(Lightfoot);John 1:15—“He that cometh after me is become before me: for he was before me”= not that Jesus wasbornearlier than John the Baptist, for he was born six months later, but that heexistedearlier. He stands before John in rank, because he existed long before John in time;6:62—“the Son of man ascending where he was before”;16:28—“I came out from the Father, and am come into the world.”SoIs. 9:6, 7, calls Christ“Everlasting Father”= eternity is an attribute of the Messiah. T. W. Chambers, in Jour. Soc. Bib. Exegesis, 1881:169-171—“Christ is the Everlasting One,‘whose goings forth have been from of old, even from the days of eternity’(Micah 5:2).‘Of the increase of his government ... there shall be no end,’just because of his existence there has been no beginning.”(d) The works of God are ascribed to him.We do not here speak of miracles, which may be wrought by communicated power, but of such works as the creation of the world, the upholding of all things, the final raising of the dead, and the judging of all men. Power to perform these works cannot be delegated, for they are characteristic of omnipotence.
B. Jesus Christ is recognized as God.(a) He is expressly called God.In John 1:1—Θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος—the absence of the article shows Θεός to be the predicate (cf.4:24—πνεῦμα ὁ Θεός). This predicate precedes the verb by way of emphasis, to indicate progress in the thought =“the Logos was[pg 306]not only with God, but was God”(see Meyer and Luthardt, Comm.in loco).“Only ὁ λόγος can be the subject, for in the whole Introduction the question is, not who God is, but who the Logos is”(Godet).Westcott in Bible Commentary,in loco—“The predicate stands emphatically first. It is necessarily without the article, inasmuch as it describes the nature of the Word and does not identify his person. It would be pure Sabellianism to say:‘The Word was ὁ Θεός.’Thus in verse 1 we have set forth the Word in his absolute eternal being, (a) his existence: beyond time; (b) his personal existence: in active communion with God; (c) his nature: God in essence.”Marcus Dods, in Expositor's Greek Testament,in loco:“The Word is distinguishable from God, yet Θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος—the word was God, of divine nature; not‘a God,’which to a Jewish ear would have been abominable, nor yet identical with all that can be called God, for then the article would have been inserted (cf.1 John 3:4).”In John 1:18, μονογενὴς θεός—“the only begotten God”—must be regarded as the correct reading, and as a plain ascription of absolute Deity to Christ. He is not simply the only revealer of God, but he is himself God revealed.John 1:18—“No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.”In this passage, although Tischendorf (8th ed.) has μονογενὴς ὑιός, Westcott and Hort (with א*BC*L Pesh. Syr.) read μονογενὴς Θεός and the Rev. Vers. puts“the only begotten God”in the margin, though it retains“the only begotten Son”in the text. Harnack says the reading μονογενὴς θεός is“established beyond contradiction”; see Westcott, Bib. Com. on John, pages 32, 33. Here then we have a new and unmistakable assertion of the deity of Christ. Meyer says that the apostles actually call Christ God only inJohn 1:1and20:28, and that Paul never so recognizes him. But Meyer is able to maintain his position only by calling the doxologies to Christ, in2 Tim. 4:18,Heb. 13:21and2 Pet. 3:18, post-apostolic. See Thayer, N. T. Lexicon, on Θεός, and on μονογενής.In John 20:28, the address of Thomas Ὁ κύριός μου καὶ ὁ θεός μου—“My Lord and my God”—since it was unrebuked by Christ, is equivalent to an assertion on his own part of his claim to Deity.John 20:28—“Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.”This address cannot be interpreted as a sudden appeal to God in surprise and admiration, without charging the apostle with profanity. Nor can it be considered a mere exhibition of overwrought enthusiasm, since it was accepted by Christ. Contrast the conduct of Paul and Barnabas when the heathen at Lystra were bringing sacrifice to them as Jupiter and Mercury (Acts 14:11-18). The words of Thomas, as addressed directly to Christ and as accepted by Christ, can be regarded only as a just acknowledgment on the part of Thomas that Christ was his Lord and his God. Alford, Commentary,in loco:“The Socinian view that these words are merely an exclamation is refuted (1) by the fact that no such exclamations were in use among the Jews; (2) by the εἶπεν αὐτῷ; (3) by the impossibility of referring the ὁ κύριός μου to another than Jesus: seeverse 13; (4) by the N. T. usage of expressing the vocative by the nominative with an article; (5) by the psychological absurdity of such a supposition: that one just convinced of the presence of him whom he dearly loved should, instead of addressing him, break out into an irrelevant cry; (6) by the further absurdity of supposing that, if such were the case, the Apostle John, who of all the sacred writers most constantly keeps in mind the object for which he is writing, should have recorded anything so beside that object; (7) by the intimate conjunction of πεπίστευκας.”Cf.Mat. 5:34—“Swear not ... by the heaven”—swearing by Jehovah is not mentioned, because no Jew did so swear. This exclamation of Thomas, the greatest doubter among the twelve, is the natural conclusion of John's gospel. The thesis“the Word was God”(John 1:1)has now become part of the life and consciousness of the apostles.Chapter 21is only an Epilogue, or Appendix, written later by John, to correct the error that he was not to die; see Westcott, Bible Com.,in loco. The Deity of Christ is the subject of the apostle who best understood his Master. Lyman Beecher:“Jesus Christ is the acting Deity of the universe.”In Rom. 9:5, the clause ὁ ὢν ἐπὶ πάντων Θεὸς εὐλογητός cannot be translated“blessed be the God over all,”for ὢν is superfluous if the clause is a doxology;“εὐλογητός precedes the name of God in a doxology, but follows it,[pg 307]as here, in a description”(Hovey). The clause can therefore justly be interpreted only as a description of the higher nature of the Christ who had just been said, τὸ κατὰ σάρκα, or according to his lower nature, to have had his origin from Israel (see Tholuck, Com.in loco).Sanday, Com. onRom. 9:5—“The words would naturally refer to Christ, unless‘God’is so definitely a proper name that it would imply a contrast in itself. We have seen that this is not so.”Hence Sanday translates:“of whom is the Christ as concerning the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever”. See President T. Dwight, in Jour. Soc. Bib. Exegesis, 1881:22-55;per contra, Ezra Abbot, in the same journal, 1881:1-19, and Denney, in Expositor's Gk. Test.,in loco.In Titus 2:13, ἐπιφάνειαν τῆς δόξης τοῦ μεγάλου Θεοῦ καὶ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ we regard (with Ellicott) as“a direct, definite, and even studied declaration of Christ's divinity”=“the ... appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ”(so English Revised Version). Ἐπιφάνεια is a term applied specially to the Son and never to the Father, and μεγάλου is uncalled for if used of the Father, but peculiarly appropriate if used of Christ. Upon the same principles we must interpret the similar text 2 Pet. 1:1 (see Huther, in Meyer's Com.:“The close juxtaposition indicates the author's certainty of the oneness of God and Jesus Christ”).Titus 2:13—“looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ”—so the English Revised Version. The American Revisers however translate:“the glory of the great God and Savior”; and Westcott and Hort bracket the word ἡμῶν. These considerations somewhat lessen the cogency of this passage as a proof-text, yet upon the whole the balance of argument seems to us still to incline in favor of Ellicott's interpretation as given above.In Heb. 1:8, πρὸς δὲ τὸν υἱόν; ὁ θρόνος σου, ὁ Θεὸς, εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα is quoted as an address to Christ, and verse 10 which follows—“Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth”—by applying to Christ an Old Testament ascription to Jehovah, shows that ὁ Θεός, in verse 8, is used in the sense of absolute Godhead.It is sometimes objected that the ascription of the name God to Christ proves nothing as to his absolute deity, since angels and even human judges are called gods, as representing God's authority and executing his will. But we reply that, while it is true that the name is sometimes so applied, it is always with adjuncts and in connections which leave no doubt of its figurative and secondary meaning. When, however, the name is applied to Christ, it is, on the contrary, with adjuncts and in connections which leave no doubt that it signifies absolute Godhead. SeeEx. 4:16—“thou shalt be to him as God”;7:1—“See, I have made thee as God to Pharaoh”;22:28—“Thou shalt not revile God, [marg.,the judges],nor curse a ruler of thy people”;Ps. 82:1—“God standeth in the congregation of God; he judgeth among the gods”[among the mighty];6—“I said, Ye are gods, And all of you sons of the Most High”;7—“Nevertheless ye shall die like men, And fall like one of the princes.”Cf.John 10:34-36—“If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came”(who were God's commissioned and appointed representatives), how much more proper for him who is one with the Father to call himself God.As inPs. 82:7those who had been called gods are represented as dying, so inPs. 97:7—“Worship him, all ye gods”—they are bidden to fall down before Jehovah. Ann. Par. Bible:“Although the deities of the heathen have no positive existence, they are often described in Scripture as if they had, and are represented as bowing down before the majesty of Jehovah.”This verse is quoted inHeb. 1:6—“let all the angels of God worship him”—i. e., Christ. Here Christ is identified with Jehovah. The quotation is made from the Septuagint, which has“angels”for“gods.”“Its use here is in accordance with the spirit of the Hebrew word, which includes all that human error might regard as objects of worship.”Those who are figuratively and rhetorically called“gods”are bidden to fall down in worship before him who is the true God, Jesus Christ. See Dick, Lectures on Theology, 1:314; Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 10.[pg 308]In 1 John 5:20—ἐσμεν ἐν τῷ ἀληθινῷ, ἐν τῷ υἱῷ αὐτοῦ Ἰησοῦ Χριστῷ. οὗτος ἐστιν ὁ ἀληθινὸς Θεός—“it would be a flat repetition, after the Father had been twice called ὁ ἀληθινός, to say now again:‘this is ὁ ἀληθενὸς Θεός.’Our being in God has its basis in Christ his Son, and this also makes it more natural that οὖτος should be referred to υἱῷ. But ought not ὁ ἀληθενός then to be without the article (as in John 1:1—Θεός ἦν ὁ λόγος)? No, for it is John's purpose in 1 John 5:20 to say, notwhatChrist is, butwhohe is. In declaringwhatone is, the predicate must have no article; in declaringwhoone is, the predicate must have the article. St. John here says that this Son, on whom our being in the true God rests, is this true God himself”(see Ebrard, Com.in loco).Other passages might be here adduced, asCol. 2:9—“in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily”;Phil 2:6—“existing in the form of God”; but we prefer to consider these under other heads as indirectly proving Christ's divinity. Still other passages once relied upon as direct statements of the doctrine must be given up for textual reasons. Such areActs 20:28, where the correct reading is in all probability not ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ Θεοῦ, but ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ Κυρίου (so ACDE Tregelles and Tischendorf; B and א, however, have τοῦ Θεοῦ. The Rev. Vers. continues to read“church of God”; Amer. Revisers, however, read“church of the Lord”—see Ezra Abbot's investigation in Bib. Sac., 1876: 313-352); and1 Tim. 3:16, where ὅς is unquestionably to be substituted for Θεός, though even here ἐφανερώθη intimates preëxistence.Rev. George E. Ellis, D. D., before the Unitarian Club, Boston, November, 1882—“Fifty years of study, thought and reading given largely to the Bible and to the literature which peculiarly relates to it, have brought me to this conclusion, that the book—taken with the especial divine quality and character claimed for it, and so extensively assigned to it, as inspired and infallible as a whole, and in all its contents—is an Orthodox book. It yields what is called the Orthodox creed. The vast majority of its readers, following its letter, its obvious sense, its natural meaning, and yielding to the impression which some of its emphatic texts make upon them, find in it Orthodoxy. Only that kind of ingenious, special, discriminative, and in candor I must add, forced treatment, which it receives from us liberals can make the book teach anything but Orthodoxy. The evangelical sects, so called, are clearly right in maintaining that their view of Scripture and of its doctrines draws a deep and wide division of creed between them and ourselves. In that earnest controversy by pamphlet warfare between Drs. Channing and Ware on the one side, and Drs. Worcester and Woods and Professor Stuart on the other—a controversy which wrought up the people of our community sixty years ago more than did our recent political campaign—I am fully convinced that the liberal contestants were worsted. Scripture exegesis, logic and argument were clearly on the side of the Orthodox contestants. And this was so, mainly because the liberal party put themselves on the same plane with the Orthodox in their way of regarding and dealing with Scripture texts in their bearing upon the controversy. Liberalism cannot vanquish Orthodoxy, if it yields to the latter in its own way of regarding and treating the whole Bible. Martin Luther said that the Papists burned the Bible because it was not on their side. Now I am not about to attack the Bible because it is not on my side; but I am about to object as emphatically as I can against a character and quality assigned to the Bible, which it does not claim for itself, which cannot be certified for it: and the origin and growth and intensity of the fond and superstitious influences resulting in that view we can trace distinctly to agencies accounting for, but not warranting, the current belief. Orthodoxy cannot readjust its creeds till it readjusts its estimate of the Scriptures. The only relief which one who professes the Orthodox creed can find is either by forcing his ingenuity into the proof-texts or indulging his liberty outside of them.”With this confession of a noted Unitarian it is interesting to compare the opinion of the so-called Trinitarian, Dr. Lyman Abbott, who says that the New Testament nowhere calls Christ God, but everywhere calls him man, as in1 Tim. 2:5—“for there is one God, one mediator also between God and men, himself man, Christ Jesus.”On this passage Prof. L. L. Paine remarks in the New World, Dec. 1894—“That Paul ever confounded Christ with God himself, or regarded him as in any way the Supreme Divinity, is a position invalidated not only by direct statements, but also by the whole drift of his epistles.”[pg 309](b) Old Testament descriptions of God are applied to him.This application to Christ of titles and names exclusively appropriated to God is inexplicable, if Christ was not regarded as being himself God. The peculiar awe with which the term“Jehovah”was set apart by a nation of strenuous monotheists as the sacred and incommunicable name of the one self-existent and covenant-keeping God forbids the belief that the Scripture writers could have used it as the designation of a subordinate and created being.Mat. 3:3—“Make ye ready the way of the Lord”—is a quotation fromIs. 40:3—“Prepare ye ... the way of Jehovah.”John 12:41—“These things said Isaiah, because he saw his glory; and he spake of him”[i. e., Christ]—refers toIs. 6:1—“In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne.”So inEph. 4:7, 8—“measure of the gift of Christ ... led captivity captive”—is an application to Christ of what is said of Jehovah inPs. 68:18. In1 Pet. 3:15, moreover, we read, with all the great uncials, several of the Fathers, and all the best versions:“sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord”; here the apostle borrows his language fromIs. 8:13, where we read:“Jehovah of hosts, him shall ye sanctify.”When we remember that, with the Jews, God's covenant-title was so sacred that for the Kethib (=“written”)Jehovahthere was always substituted the Keri (=“read”—imperative)Adonai, in order to avoid pronunciation of the great Name, it seems the more remarkable that the Greek equivalent of“Jehovah”should have been so constantly used of Christ.Cf.Rom. 10:9—“confess ... Jesus as Lord”;1 Cor. 12:3—“no man can say, Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Spirit.”We must remember also the indignation of the Jews at Christ's assertion of his equality and oneness with the Father. Compare Goethe's,“Wer darf ihn nennen?”with Carlyle's,“the awful Unnameable of this Universe.”The Jews, it has been said, have always vibrated between monotheism and moneytheism. Yet James, the strongest of Hebrews, in his Epistle uses the word 'Lord' freely and alternately of God the Father and of Christ the Son. This would have been impossible if James had not believed in the community of essence between the Son and the Father.It is interesting to note that 1 Maccabees does not once use the word Θεός or κύριος, or any other direct designation of God unless it be οὐρανός (cf.“swear ... by the heaven”—Mat. 5:34). So the book of Esther contains no mention of the name of God, though the apocryphal additions to Esther, which are found only in Greek, contain the name of God in the first verse, and mention it in all eight times. See Bissell, Apocrypha, in Lange's Commentary; Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 93; Max Müller on Semitic Monotheism, in Chips from a German Workshop, 1:337.(c) He possesses the attributes of God.Among these are life, self-existence, immutability, truth, love, holiness, eternity, omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence. All these attributes are ascribed to Christ in connections which show that the terms are used in no secondary sense, nor in any sense predicable of a creature.Life:John 1:4—“In him was life”;14:6—“I am ... the life.”Self-existence:John 5:26—“have life in himself”;Heb. 7:16—“power of an endless life.”Immutability:Heb. 13:8—“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day, yea and forever.”Truth:John 14:6—“I am ... the truth”;Rev. 3:7—“he that is true.”Love:1 John 3:16—“Hereby know we love”(τὴν ἀγάπην = the personal Love, as the personal Truth)“because he laid down his life for us.”Holiness:Luke 1:35—“that which is to be born shall be called holy, the Son of God”;John 6:69—“thou art the Holy One of God”;Heb. 7:26—“holy, guileless, undefiled, separated from sinners.”Eternity:John 1:1—“In the beginning was the Word.”Godet says ἐν ἀρχῇ = not“in eternity,”but“in the beginning of the creation”; the eternity of the Word being an inference from the ἦν—the Wordwas, when the world wascreated:cf.Gen. 1:1—“In the beginning God created.”But Meyer says, ἐν ἀρχῇ here rises above the historical conception of“in the beginning”in Genesis (which includes the beginning of time itself) to the absolute conception of anteriority to time; the creation is something subsequent. He finds a parallel inProv. 8:23—ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸ τοῦ τὴν γῆν ποιῆσαι. The interpretation“in the beginning of the gospel”is entirely unexegetical; so Meyer. SoJohn 17:5—“glory which I had with thee before the world was”;Eph. 1:4—“chose us in him before the foundation of the world.”Dorner also says that ἐν ἀρχῇ inJohn 1:1is not“the beginning of the world,”but designates the point[pg 310]back of which it is impossible to go,i. e., eternity; the world is first spoken of inverse 3. John 8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”;cf.1:15;Col. 1:17—“he is before all things”;Heb. 1:11—the heavens“shall perish; but thou continuest”;Rev. 21:6—“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.”Omnipresence:Mat. 28:20—“I am with you always”;Eph. 1:23—“the fulness of him that filleth all in all.”Omniscience:Mat. 9:4—“Jesus knowing their thoughts”;John 2:24, 25—“knew all men ... knew what was in man”;16:30—“knowest all things”;Acts 1:24—“Thou, Lord, who knowest the hearts of all men”—a prayer offered before the day of Pentecost and showing the attitude of the disciples toward their Master;1 Cor. 4:5—“until the Lord come, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and make manifest the counsels of the hearts”;Col. 2:3—“in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden.”Omnipotence:Mat. 27:18—“All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth”;Rev. 1:8—“the Lord God, which is and which was and which is to come, the Almighty.”Beyschlag, N. T. Theology, 1:249-260, holds that Jesus' preëxistence is simply the concrete form given to an ideal conception. Jesus traces himself back, as everything else holy and divine was traced back in the conceptions of his time, to a heavenly original in which it preëxisted before its earthly appearance;e. g.: the tabernacle, inHeb. 8:5; Jerusalem, inGal. 4:25andRev. 21:10; the kingdom of God inMat. 13:24; much more the Messiah, inJohn 6:62—“ascending where he was before”;8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”;17:4, 5—“glory which I had with thee before the world was”17:24—“thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.”This view that Jesus existed before creation only ideally in the divine mind, means simply that God foreknew him and his coming. The view is refuted by the multiplied intimations of a personal, in distinction from an ideal, preëxistence.Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John, 115—“The words‘In the beginning’(John 1:1)suggest that the author is about to write a second book of Genesis, an account of a new creation.”As creation presupposes a Creator, the preëxistence of the personal Word is assigned as the explanation of the being of the universe. The ἦν indicates absolute existence, which is a loftier idea than that of mere preëxistence, although it includes this. While John the Baptist and Abraham are said to have arisen, appeared, come into being, it is said that the Logoswas, and that the Logos wasGod. This implies coëternity with the Father. But, if the view we are combating were correct, John the Baptist and Abraham preëxisted, equally with Christ. This is certainly not the meaning of Jesus inJohn 8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”;cf.Col. 1:17—“he is before all things”—“αὐτός emphasizes the personality, while ἔστιν declares that the preëxistence is absolute existence”(Lightfoot);John 1:15—“He that cometh after me is become before me: for he was before me”= not that Jesus wasbornearlier than John the Baptist, for he was born six months later, but that heexistedearlier. He stands before John in rank, because he existed long before John in time;6:62—“the Son of man ascending where he was before”;16:28—“I came out from the Father, and am come into the world.”SoIs. 9:6, 7, calls Christ“Everlasting Father”= eternity is an attribute of the Messiah. T. W. Chambers, in Jour. Soc. Bib. Exegesis, 1881:169-171—“Christ is the Everlasting One,‘whose goings forth have been from of old, even from the days of eternity’(Micah 5:2).‘Of the increase of his government ... there shall be no end,’just because of his existence there has been no beginning.”(d) The works of God are ascribed to him.We do not here speak of miracles, which may be wrought by communicated power, but of such works as the creation of the world, the upholding of all things, the final raising of the dead, and the judging of all men. Power to perform these works cannot be delegated, for they are characteristic of omnipotence.
B. Jesus Christ is recognized as God.(a) He is expressly called God.In John 1:1—Θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος—the absence of the article shows Θεός to be the predicate (cf.4:24—πνεῦμα ὁ Θεός). This predicate precedes the verb by way of emphasis, to indicate progress in the thought =“the Logos was[pg 306]not only with God, but was God”(see Meyer and Luthardt, Comm.in loco).“Only ὁ λόγος can be the subject, for in the whole Introduction the question is, not who God is, but who the Logos is”(Godet).Westcott in Bible Commentary,in loco—“The predicate stands emphatically first. It is necessarily without the article, inasmuch as it describes the nature of the Word and does not identify his person. It would be pure Sabellianism to say:‘The Word was ὁ Θεός.’Thus in verse 1 we have set forth the Word in his absolute eternal being, (a) his existence: beyond time; (b) his personal existence: in active communion with God; (c) his nature: God in essence.”Marcus Dods, in Expositor's Greek Testament,in loco:“The Word is distinguishable from God, yet Θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος—the word was God, of divine nature; not‘a God,’which to a Jewish ear would have been abominable, nor yet identical with all that can be called God, for then the article would have been inserted (cf.1 John 3:4).”In John 1:18, μονογενὴς θεός—“the only begotten God”—must be regarded as the correct reading, and as a plain ascription of absolute Deity to Christ. He is not simply the only revealer of God, but he is himself God revealed.John 1:18—“No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.”In this passage, although Tischendorf (8th ed.) has μονογενὴς ὑιός, Westcott and Hort (with א*BC*L Pesh. Syr.) read μονογενὴς Θεός and the Rev. Vers. puts“the only begotten God”in the margin, though it retains“the only begotten Son”in the text. Harnack says the reading μονογενὴς θεός is“established beyond contradiction”; see Westcott, Bib. Com. on John, pages 32, 33. Here then we have a new and unmistakable assertion of the deity of Christ. Meyer says that the apostles actually call Christ God only inJohn 1:1and20:28, and that Paul never so recognizes him. But Meyer is able to maintain his position only by calling the doxologies to Christ, in2 Tim. 4:18,Heb. 13:21and2 Pet. 3:18, post-apostolic. See Thayer, N. T. Lexicon, on Θεός, and on μονογενής.In John 20:28, the address of Thomas Ὁ κύριός μου καὶ ὁ θεός μου—“My Lord and my God”—since it was unrebuked by Christ, is equivalent to an assertion on his own part of his claim to Deity.John 20:28—“Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.”This address cannot be interpreted as a sudden appeal to God in surprise and admiration, without charging the apostle with profanity. Nor can it be considered a mere exhibition of overwrought enthusiasm, since it was accepted by Christ. Contrast the conduct of Paul and Barnabas when the heathen at Lystra were bringing sacrifice to them as Jupiter and Mercury (Acts 14:11-18). The words of Thomas, as addressed directly to Christ and as accepted by Christ, can be regarded only as a just acknowledgment on the part of Thomas that Christ was his Lord and his God. Alford, Commentary,in loco:“The Socinian view that these words are merely an exclamation is refuted (1) by the fact that no such exclamations were in use among the Jews; (2) by the εἶπεν αὐτῷ; (3) by the impossibility of referring the ὁ κύριός μου to another than Jesus: seeverse 13; (4) by the N. T. usage of expressing the vocative by the nominative with an article; (5) by the psychological absurdity of such a supposition: that one just convinced of the presence of him whom he dearly loved should, instead of addressing him, break out into an irrelevant cry; (6) by the further absurdity of supposing that, if such were the case, the Apostle John, who of all the sacred writers most constantly keeps in mind the object for which he is writing, should have recorded anything so beside that object; (7) by the intimate conjunction of πεπίστευκας.”Cf.Mat. 5:34—“Swear not ... by the heaven”—swearing by Jehovah is not mentioned, because no Jew did so swear. This exclamation of Thomas, the greatest doubter among the twelve, is the natural conclusion of John's gospel. The thesis“the Word was God”(John 1:1)has now become part of the life and consciousness of the apostles.Chapter 21is only an Epilogue, or Appendix, written later by John, to correct the error that he was not to die; see Westcott, Bible Com.,in loco. The Deity of Christ is the subject of the apostle who best understood his Master. Lyman Beecher:“Jesus Christ is the acting Deity of the universe.”In Rom. 9:5, the clause ὁ ὢν ἐπὶ πάντων Θεὸς εὐλογητός cannot be translated“blessed be the God over all,”for ὢν is superfluous if the clause is a doxology;“εὐλογητός precedes the name of God in a doxology, but follows it,[pg 307]as here, in a description”(Hovey). The clause can therefore justly be interpreted only as a description of the higher nature of the Christ who had just been said, τὸ κατὰ σάρκα, or according to his lower nature, to have had his origin from Israel (see Tholuck, Com.in loco).Sanday, Com. onRom. 9:5—“The words would naturally refer to Christ, unless‘God’is so definitely a proper name that it would imply a contrast in itself. We have seen that this is not so.”Hence Sanday translates:“of whom is the Christ as concerning the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever”. See President T. Dwight, in Jour. Soc. Bib. Exegesis, 1881:22-55;per contra, Ezra Abbot, in the same journal, 1881:1-19, and Denney, in Expositor's Gk. Test.,in loco.In Titus 2:13, ἐπιφάνειαν τῆς δόξης τοῦ μεγάλου Θεοῦ καὶ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ we regard (with Ellicott) as“a direct, definite, and even studied declaration of Christ's divinity”=“the ... appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ”(so English Revised Version). Ἐπιφάνεια is a term applied specially to the Son and never to the Father, and μεγάλου is uncalled for if used of the Father, but peculiarly appropriate if used of Christ. Upon the same principles we must interpret the similar text 2 Pet. 1:1 (see Huther, in Meyer's Com.:“The close juxtaposition indicates the author's certainty of the oneness of God and Jesus Christ”).Titus 2:13—“looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ”—so the English Revised Version. The American Revisers however translate:“the glory of the great God and Savior”; and Westcott and Hort bracket the word ἡμῶν. These considerations somewhat lessen the cogency of this passage as a proof-text, yet upon the whole the balance of argument seems to us still to incline in favor of Ellicott's interpretation as given above.In Heb. 1:8, πρὸς δὲ τὸν υἱόν; ὁ θρόνος σου, ὁ Θεὸς, εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα is quoted as an address to Christ, and verse 10 which follows—“Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth”—by applying to Christ an Old Testament ascription to Jehovah, shows that ὁ Θεός, in verse 8, is used in the sense of absolute Godhead.It is sometimes objected that the ascription of the name God to Christ proves nothing as to his absolute deity, since angels and even human judges are called gods, as representing God's authority and executing his will. But we reply that, while it is true that the name is sometimes so applied, it is always with adjuncts and in connections which leave no doubt of its figurative and secondary meaning. When, however, the name is applied to Christ, it is, on the contrary, with adjuncts and in connections which leave no doubt that it signifies absolute Godhead. SeeEx. 4:16—“thou shalt be to him as God”;7:1—“See, I have made thee as God to Pharaoh”;22:28—“Thou shalt not revile God, [marg.,the judges],nor curse a ruler of thy people”;Ps. 82:1—“God standeth in the congregation of God; he judgeth among the gods”[among the mighty];6—“I said, Ye are gods, And all of you sons of the Most High”;7—“Nevertheless ye shall die like men, And fall like one of the princes.”Cf.John 10:34-36—“If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came”(who were God's commissioned and appointed representatives), how much more proper for him who is one with the Father to call himself God.As inPs. 82:7those who had been called gods are represented as dying, so inPs. 97:7—“Worship him, all ye gods”—they are bidden to fall down before Jehovah. Ann. Par. Bible:“Although the deities of the heathen have no positive existence, they are often described in Scripture as if they had, and are represented as bowing down before the majesty of Jehovah.”This verse is quoted inHeb. 1:6—“let all the angels of God worship him”—i. e., Christ. Here Christ is identified with Jehovah. The quotation is made from the Septuagint, which has“angels”for“gods.”“Its use here is in accordance with the spirit of the Hebrew word, which includes all that human error might regard as objects of worship.”Those who are figuratively and rhetorically called“gods”are bidden to fall down in worship before him who is the true God, Jesus Christ. See Dick, Lectures on Theology, 1:314; Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 10.[pg 308]In 1 John 5:20—ἐσμεν ἐν τῷ ἀληθινῷ, ἐν τῷ υἱῷ αὐτοῦ Ἰησοῦ Χριστῷ. οὗτος ἐστιν ὁ ἀληθινὸς Θεός—“it would be a flat repetition, after the Father had been twice called ὁ ἀληθινός, to say now again:‘this is ὁ ἀληθενὸς Θεός.’Our being in God has its basis in Christ his Son, and this also makes it more natural that οὖτος should be referred to υἱῷ. But ought not ὁ ἀληθενός then to be without the article (as in John 1:1—Θεός ἦν ὁ λόγος)? No, for it is John's purpose in 1 John 5:20 to say, notwhatChrist is, butwhohe is. In declaringwhatone is, the predicate must have no article; in declaringwhoone is, the predicate must have the article. St. John here says that this Son, on whom our being in the true God rests, is this true God himself”(see Ebrard, Com.in loco).Other passages might be here adduced, asCol. 2:9—“in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily”;Phil 2:6—“existing in the form of God”; but we prefer to consider these under other heads as indirectly proving Christ's divinity. Still other passages once relied upon as direct statements of the doctrine must be given up for textual reasons. Such areActs 20:28, where the correct reading is in all probability not ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ Θεοῦ, but ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ Κυρίου (so ACDE Tregelles and Tischendorf; B and א, however, have τοῦ Θεοῦ. The Rev. Vers. continues to read“church of God”; Amer. Revisers, however, read“church of the Lord”—see Ezra Abbot's investigation in Bib. Sac., 1876: 313-352); and1 Tim. 3:16, where ὅς is unquestionably to be substituted for Θεός, though even here ἐφανερώθη intimates preëxistence.Rev. George E. Ellis, D. D., before the Unitarian Club, Boston, November, 1882—“Fifty years of study, thought and reading given largely to the Bible and to the literature which peculiarly relates to it, have brought me to this conclusion, that the book—taken with the especial divine quality and character claimed for it, and so extensively assigned to it, as inspired and infallible as a whole, and in all its contents—is an Orthodox book. It yields what is called the Orthodox creed. The vast majority of its readers, following its letter, its obvious sense, its natural meaning, and yielding to the impression which some of its emphatic texts make upon them, find in it Orthodoxy. Only that kind of ingenious, special, discriminative, and in candor I must add, forced treatment, which it receives from us liberals can make the book teach anything but Orthodoxy. The evangelical sects, so called, are clearly right in maintaining that their view of Scripture and of its doctrines draws a deep and wide division of creed between them and ourselves. In that earnest controversy by pamphlet warfare between Drs. Channing and Ware on the one side, and Drs. Worcester and Woods and Professor Stuart on the other—a controversy which wrought up the people of our community sixty years ago more than did our recent political campaign—I am fully convinced that the liberal contestants were worsted. Scripture exegesis, logic and argument were clearly on the side of the Orthodox contestants. And this was so, mainly because the liberal party put themselves on the same plane with the Orthodox in their way of regarding and dealing with Scripture texts in their bearing upon the controversy. Liberalism cannot vanquish Orthodoxy, if it yields to the latter in its own way of regarding and treating the whole Bible. Martin Luther said that the Papists burned the Bible because it was not on their side. Now I am not about to attack the Bible because it is not on my side; but I am about to object as emphatically as I can against a character and quality assigned to the Bible, which it does not claim for itself, which cannot be certified for it: and the origin and growth and intensity of the fond and superstitious influences resulting in that view we can trace distinctly to agencies accounting for, but not warranting, the current belief. Orthodoxy cannot readjust its creeds till it readjusts its estimate of the Scriptures. The only relief which one who professes the Orthodox creed can find is either by forcing his ingenuity into the proof-texts or indulging his liberty outside of them.”With this confession of a noted Unitarian it is interesting to compare the opinion of the so-called Trinitarian, Dr. Lyman Abbott, who says that the New Testament nowhere calls Christ God, but everywhere calls him man, as in1 Tim. 2:5—“for there is one God, one mediator also between God and men, himself man, Christ Jesus.”On this passage Prof. L. L. Paine remarks in the New World, Dec. 1894—“That Paul ever confounded Christ with God himself, or regarded him as in any way the Supreme Divinity, is a position invalidated not only by direct statements, but also by the whole drift of his epistles.”[pg 309](b) Old Testament descriptions of God are applied to him.This application to Christ of titles and names exclusively appropriated to God is inexplicable, if Christ was not regarded as being himself God. The peculiar awe with which the term“Jehovah”was set apart by a nation of strenuous monotheists as the sacred and incommunicable name of the one self-existent and covenant-keeping God forbids the belief that the Scripture writers could have used it as the designation of a subordinate and created being.Mat. 3:3—“Make ye ready the way of the Lord”—is a quotation fromIs. 40:3—“Prepare ye ... the way of Jehovah.”John 12:41—“These things said Isaiah, because he saw his glory; and he spake of him”[i. e., Christ]—refers toIs. 6:1—“In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne.”So inEph. 4:7, 8—“measure of the gift of Christ ... led captivity captive”—is an application to Christ of what is said of Jehovah inPs. 68:18. In1 Pet. 3:15, moreover, we read, with all the great uncials, several of the Fathers, and all the best versions:“sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord”; here the apostle borrows his language fromIs. 8:13, where we read:“Jehovah of hosts, him shall ye sanctify.”When we remember that, with the Jews, God's covenant-title was so sacred that for the Kethib (=“written”)Jehovahthere was always substituted the Keri (=“read”—imperative)Adonai, in order to avoid pronunciation of the great Name, it seems the more remarkable that the Greek equivalent of“Jehovah”should have been so constantly used of Christ.Cf.Rom. 10:9—“confess ... Jesus as Lord”;1 Cor. 12:3—“no man can say, Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Spirit.”We must remember also the indignation of the Jews at Christ's assertion of his equality and oneness with the Father. Compare Goethe's,“Wer darf ihn nennen?”with Carlyle's,“the awful Unnameable of this Universe.”The Jews, it has been said, have always vibrated between monotheism and moneytheism. Yet James, the strongest of Hebrews, in his Epistle uses the word 'Lord' freely and alternately of God the Father and of Christ the Son. This would have been impossible if James had not believed in the community of essence between the Son and the Father.It is interesting to note that 1 Maccabees does not once use the word Θεός or κύριος, or any other direct designation of God unless it be οὐρανός (cf.“swear ... by the heaven”—Mat. 5:34). So the book of Esther contains no mention of the name of God, though the apocryphal additions to Esther, which are found only in Greek, contain the name of God in the first verse, and mention it in all eight times. See Bissell, Apocrypha, in Lange's Commentary; Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 93; Max Müller on Semitic Monotheism, in Chips from a German Workshop, 1:337.(c) He possesses the attributes of God.Among these are life, self-existence, immutability, truth, love, holiness, eternity, omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence. All these attributes are ascribed to Christ in connections which show that the terms are used in no secondary sense, nor in any sense predicable of a creature.Life:John 1:4—“In him was life”;14:6—“I am ... the life.”Self-existence:John 5:26—“have life in himself”;Heb. 7:16—“power of an endless life.”Immutability:Heb. 13:8—“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day, yea and forever.”Truth:John 14:6—“I am ... the truth”;Rev. 3:7—“he that is true.”Love:1 John 3:16—“Hereby know we love”(τὴν ἀγάπην = the personal Love, as the personal Truth)“because he laid down his life for us.”Holiness:Luke 1:35—“that which is to be born shall be called holy, the Son of God”;John 6:69—“thou art the Holy One of God”;Heb. 7:26—“holy, guileless, undefiled, separated from sinners.”Eternity:John 1:1—“In the beginning was the Word.”Godet says ἐν ἀρχῇ = not“in eternity,”but“in the beginning of the creation”; the eternity of the Word being an inference from the ἦν—the Wordwas, when the world wascreated:cf.Gen. 1:1—“In the beginning God created.”But Meyer says, ἐν ἀρχῇ here rises above the historical conception of“in the beginning”in Genesis (which includes the beginning of time itself) to the absolute conception of anteriority to time; the creation is something subsequent. He finds a parallel inProv. 8:23—ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸ τοῦ τὴν γῆν ποιῆσαι. The interpretation“in the beginning of the gospel”is entirely unexegetical; so Meyer. SoJohn 17:5—“glory which I had with thee before the world was”;Eph. 1:4—“chose us in him before the foundation of the world.”Dorner also says that ἐν ἀρχῇ inJohn 1:1is not“the beginning of the world,”but designates the point[pg 310]back of which it is impossible to go,i. e., eternity; the world is first spoken of inverse 3. John 8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”;cf.1:15;Col. 1:17—“he is before all things”;Heb. 1:11—the heavens“shall perish; but thou continuest”;Rev. 21:6—“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.”Omnipresence:Mat. 28:20—“I am with you always”;Eph. 1:23—“the fulness of him that filleth all in all.”Omniscience:Mat. 9:4—“Jesus knowing their thoughts”;John 2:24, 25—“knew all men ... knew what was in man”;16:30—“knowest all things”;Acts 1:24—“Thou, Lord, who knowest the hearts of all men”—a prayer offered before the day of Pentecost and showing the attitude of the disciples toward their Master;1 Cor. 4:5—“until the Lord come, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and make manifest the counsels of the hearts”;Col. 2:3—“in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden.”Omnipotence:Mat. 27:18—“All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth”;Rev. 1:8—“the Lord God, which is and which was and which is to come, the Almighty.”Beyschlag, N. T. Theology, 1:249-260, holds that Jesus' preëxistence is simply the concrete form given to an ideal conception. Jesus traces himself back, as everything else holy and divine was traced back in the conceptions of his time, to a heavenly original in which it preëxisted before its earthly appearance;e. g.: the tabernacle, inHeb. 8:5; Jerusalem, inGal. 4:25andRev. 21:10; the kingdom of God inMat. 13:24; much more the Messiah, inJohn 6:62—“ascending where he was before”;8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”;17:4, 5—“glory which I had with thee before the world was”17:24—“thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.”This view that Jesus existed before creation only ideally in the divine mind, means simply that God foreknew him and his coming. The view is refuted by the multiplied intimations of a personal, in distinction from an ideal, preëxistence.Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John, 115—“The words‘In the beginning’(John 1:1)suggest that the author is about to write a second book of Genesis, an account of a new creation.”As creation presupposes a Creator, the preëxistence of the personal Word is assigned as the explanation of the being of the universe. The ἦν indicates absolute existence, which is a loftier idea than that of mere preëxistence, although it includes this. While John the Baptist and Abraham are said to have arisen, appeared, come into being, it is said that the Logoswas, and that the Logos wasGod. This implies coëternity with the Father. But, if the view we are combating were correct, John the Baptist and Abraham preëxisted, equally with Christ. This is certainly not the meaning of Jesus inJohn 8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”;cf.Col. 1:17—“he is before all things”—“αὐτός emphasizes the personality, while ἔστιν declares that the preëxistence is absolute existence”(Lightfoot);John 1:15—“He that cometh after me is become before me: for he was before me”= not that Jesus wasbornearlier than John the Baptist, for he was born six months later, but that heexistedearlier. He stands before John in rank, because he existed long before John in time;6:62—“the Son of man ascending where he was before”;16:28—“I came out from the Father, and am come into the world.”SoIs. 9:6, 7, calls Christ“Everlasting Father”= eternity is an attribute of the Messiah. T. W. Chambers, in Jour. Soc. Bib. Exegesis, 1881:169-171—“Christ is the Everlasting One,‘whose goings forth have been from of old, even from the days of eternity’(Micah 5:2).‘Of the increase of his government ... there shall be no end,’just because of his existence there has been no beginning.”(d) The works of God are ascribed to him.We do not here speak of miracles, which may be wrought by communicated power, but of such works as the creation of the world, the upholding of all things, the final raising of the dead, and the judging of all men. Power to perform these works cannot be delegated, for they are characteristic of omnipotence.
(a) He is expressly called God.
In John 1:1—Θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος—the absence of the article shows Θεός to be the predicate (cf.4:24—πνεῦμα ὁ Θεός). This predicate precedes the verb by way of emphasis, to indicate progress in the thought =“the Logos was[pg 306]not only with God, but was God”(see Meyer and Luthardt, Comm.in loco).“Only ὁ λόγος can be the subject, for in the whole Introduction the question is, not who God is, but who the Logos is”(Godet).
Westcott in Bible Commentary,in loco—“The predicate stands emphatically first. It is necessarily without the article, inasmuch as it describes the nature of the Word and does not identify his person. It would be pure Sabellianism to say:‘The Word was ὁ Θεός.’Thus in verse 1 we have set forth the Word in his absolute eternal being, (a) his existence: beyond time; (b) his personal existence: in active communion with God; (c) his nature: God in essence.”Marcus Dods, in Expositor's Greek Testament,in loco:“The Word is distinguishable from God, yet Θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος—the word was God, of divine nature; not‘a God,’which to a Jewish ear would have been abominable, nor yet identical with all that can be called God, for then the article would have been inserted (cf.1 John 3:4).”
Westcott in Bible Commentary,in loco—“The predicate stands emphatically first. It is necessarily without the article, inasmuch as it describes the nature of the Word and does not identify his person. It would be pure Sabellianism to say:‘The Word was ὁ Θεός.’Thus in verse 1 we have set forth the Word in his absolute eternal being, (a) his existence: beyond time; (b) his personal existence: in active communion with God; (c) his nature: God in essence.”Marcus Dods, in Expositor's Greek Testament,in loco:“The Word is distinguishable from God, yet Θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος—the word was God, of divine nature; not‘a God,’which to a Jewish ear would have been abominable, nor yet identical with all that can be called God, for then the article would have been inserted (cf.1 John 3:4).”
In John 1:18, μονογενὴς θεός—“the only begotten God”—must be regarded as the correct reading, and as a plain ascription of absolute Deity to Christ. He is not simply the only revealer of God, but he is himself God revealed.
John 1:18—“No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.”In this passage, although Tischendorf (8th ed.) has μονογενὴς ὑιός, Westcott and Hort (with א*BC*L Pesh. Syr.) read μονογενὴς Θεός and the Rev. Vers. puts“the only begotten God”in the margin, though it retains“the only begotten Son”in the text. Harnack says the reading μονογενὴς θεός is“established beyond contradiction”; see Westcott, Bib. Com. on John, pages 32, 33. Here then we have a new and unmistakable assertion of the deity of Christ. Meyer says that the apostles actually call Christ God only inJohn 1:1and20:28, and that Paul never so recognizes him. But Meyer is able to maintain his position only by calling the doxologies to Christ, in2 Tim. 4:18,Heb. 13:21and2 Pet. 3:18, post-apostolic. See Thayer, N. T. Lexicon, on Θεός, and on μονογενής.
John 1:18—“No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.”In this passage, although Tischendorf (8th ed.) has μονογενὴς ὑιός, Westcott and Hort (with א*BC*L Pesh. Syr.) read μονογενὴς Θεός and the Rev. Vers. puts“the only begotten God”in the margin, though it retains“the only begotten Son”in the text. Harnack says the reading μονογενὴς θεός is“established beyond contradiction”; see Westcott, Bib. Com. on John, pages 32, 33. Here then we have a new and unmistakable assertion of the deity of Christ. Meyer says that the apostles actually call Christ God only inJohn 1:1and20:28, and that Paul never so recognizes him. But Meyer is able to maintain his position only by calling the doxologies to Christ, in2 Tim. 4:18,Heb. 13:21and2 Pet. 3:18, post-apostolic. See Thayer, N. T. Lexicon, on Θεός, and on μονογενής.
In John 20:28, the address of Thomas Ὁ κύριός μου καὶ ὁ θεός μου—“My Lord and my God”—since it was unrebuked by Christ, is equivalent to an assertion on his own part of his claim to Deity.
John 20:28—“Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.”This address cannot be interpreted as a sudden appeal to God in surprise and admiration, without charging the apostle with profanity. Nor can it be considered a mere exhibition of overwrought enthusiasm, since it was accepted by Christ. Contrast the conduct of Paul and Barnabas when the heathen at Lystra were bringing sacrifice to them as Jupiter and Mercury (Acts 14:11-18). The words of Thomas, as addressed directly to Christ and as accepted by Christ, can be regarded only as a just acknowledgment on the part of Thomas that Christ was his Lord and his God. Alford, Commentary,in loco:“The Socinian view that these words are merely an exclamation is refuted (1) by the fact that no such exclamations were in use among the Jews; (2) by the εἶπεν αὐτῷ; (3) by the impossibility of referring the ὁ κύριός μου to another than Jesus: seeverse 13; (4) by the N. T. usage of expressing the vocative by the nominative with an article; (5) by the psychological absurdity of such a supposition: that one just convinced of the presence of him whom he dearly loved should, instead of addressing him, break out into an irrelevant cry; (6) by the further absurdity of supposing that, if such were the case, the Apostle John, who of all the sacred writers most constantly keeps in mind the object for which he is writing, should have recorded anything so beside that object; (7) by the intimate conjunction of πεπίστευκας.”Cf.Mat. 5:34—“Swear not ... by the heaven”—swearing by Jehovah is not mentioned, because no Jew did so swear. This exclamation of Thomas, the greatest doubter among the twelve, is the natural conclusion of John's gospel. The thesis“the Word was God”(John 1:1)has now become part of the life and consciousness of the apostles.Chapter 21is only an Epilogue, or Appendix, written later by John, to correct the error that he was not to die; see Westcott, Bible Com.,in loco. The Deity of Christ is the subject of the apostle who best understood his Master. Lyman Beecher:“Jesus Christ is the acting Deity of the universe.”
John 20:28—“Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.”This address cannot be interpreted as a sudden appeal to God in surprise and admiration, without charging the apostle with profanity. Nor can it be considered a mere exhibition of overwrought enthusiasm, since it was accepted by Christ. Contrast the conduct of Paul and Barnabas when the heathen at Lystra were bringing sacrifice to them as Jupiter and Mercury (Acts 14:11-18). The words of Thomas, as addressed directly to Christ and as accepted by Christ, can be regarded only as a just acknowledgment on the part of Thomas that Christ was his Lord and his God. Alford, Commentary,in loco:“The Socinian view that these words are merely an exclamation is refuted (1) by the fact that no such exclamations were in use among the Jews; (2) by the εἶπεν αὐτῷ; (3) by the impossibility of referring the ὁ κύριός μου to another than Jesus: seeverse 13; (4) by the N. T. usage of expressing the vocative by the nominative with an article; (5) by the psychological absurdity of such a supposition: that one just convinced of the presence of him whom he dearly loved should, instead of addressing him, break out into an irrelevant cry; (6) by the further absurdity of supposing that, if such were the case, the Apostle John, who of all the sacred writers most constantly keeps in mind the object for which he is writing, should have recorded anything so beside that object; (7) by the intimate conjunction of πεπίστευκας.”Cf.Mat. 5:34—“Swear not ... by the heaven”—swearing by Jehovah is not mentioned, because no Jew did so swear. This exclamation of Thomas, the greatest doubter among the twelve, is the natural conclusion of John's gospel. The thesis“the Word was God”(John 1:1)has now become part of the life and consciousness of the apostles.Chapter 21is only an Epilogue, or Appendix, written later by John, to correct the error that he was not to die; see Westcott, Bible Com.,in loco. The Deity of Christ is the subject of the apostle who best understood his Master. Lyman Beecher:“Jesus Christ is the acting Deity of the universe.”
In Rom. 9:5, the clause ὁ ὢν ἐπὶ πάντων Θεὸς εὐλογητός cannot be translated“blessed be the God over all,”for ὢν is superfluous if the clause is a doxology;“εὐλογητός precedes the name of God in a doxology, but follows it,[pg 307]as here, in a description”(Hovey). The clause can therefore justly be interpreted only as a description of the higher nature of the Christ who had just been said, τὸ κατὰ σάρκα, or according to his lower nature, to have had his origin from Israel (see Tholuck, Com.in loco).
Sanday, Com. onRom. 9:5—“The words would naturally refer to Christ, unless‘God’is so definitely a proper name that it would imply a contrast in itself. We have seen that this is not so.”Hence Sanday translates:“of whom is the Christ as concerning the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever”. See President T. Dwight, in Jour. Soc. Bib. Exegesis, 1881:22-55;per contra, Ezra Abbot, in the same journal, 1881:1-19, and Denney, in Expositor's Gk. Test.,in loco.
Sanday, Com. onRom. 9:5—“The words would naturally refer to Christ, unless‘God’is so definitely a proper name that it would imply a contrast in itself. We have seen that this is not so.”Hence Sanday translates:“of whom is the Christ as concerning the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever”. See President T. Dwight, in Jour. Soc. Bib. Exegesis, 1881:22-55;per contra, Ezra Abbot, in the same journal, 1881:1-19, and Denney, in Expositor's Gk. Test.,in loco.
In Titus 2:13, ἐπιφάνειαν τῆς δόξης τοῦ μεγάλου Θεοῦ καὶ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ we regard (with Ellicott) as“a direct, definite, and even studied declaration of Christ's divinity”=“the ... appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ”(so English Revised Version). Ἐπιφάνεια is a term applied specially to the Son and never to the Father, and μεγάλου is uncalled for if used of the Father, but peculiarly appropriate if used of Christ. Upon the same principles we must interpret the similar text 2 Pet. 1:1 (see Huther, in Meyer's Com.:“The close juxtaposition indicates the author's certainty of the oneness of God and Jesus Christ”).
Titus 2:13—“looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ”—so the English Revised Version. The American Revisers however translate:“the glory of the great God and Savior”; and Westcott and Hort bracket the word ἡμῶν. These considerations somewhat lessen the cogency of this passage as a proof-text, yet upon the whole the balance of argument seems to us still to incline in favor of Ellicott's interpretation as given above.
Titus 2:13—“looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ”—so the English Revised Version. The American Revisers however translate:“the glory of the great God and Savior”; and Westcott and Hort bracket the word ἡμῶν. These considerations somewhat lessen the cogency of this passage as a proof-text, yet upon the whole the balance of argument seems to us still to incline in favor of Ellicott's interpretation as given above.
In Heb. 1:8, πρὸς δὲ τὸν υἱόν; ὁ θρόνος σου, ὁ Θεὸς, εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα is quoted as an address to Christ, and verse 10 which follows—“Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth”—by applying to Christ an Old Testament ascription to Jehovah, shows that ὁ Θεός, in verse 8, is used in the sense of absolute Godhead.
It is sometimes objected that the ascription of the name God to Christ proves nothing as to his absolute deity, since angels and even human judges are called gods, as representing God's authority and executing his will. But we reply that, while it is true that the name is sometimes so applied, it is always with adjuncts and in connections which leave no doubt of its figurative and secondary meaning. When, however, the name is applied to Christ, it is, on the contrary, with adjuncts and in connections which leave no doubt that it signifies absolute Godhead. SeeEx. 4:16—“thou shalt be to him as God”;7:1—“See, I have made thee as God to Pharaoh”;22:28—“Thou shalt not revile God, [marg.,the judges],nor curse a ruler of thy people”;Ps. 82:1—“God standeth in the congregation of God; he judgeth among the gods”[among the mighty];6—“I said, Ye are gods, And all of you sons of the Most High”;7—“Nevertheless ye shall die like men, And fall like one of the princes.”Cf.John 10:34-36—“If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came”(who were God's commissioned and appointed representatives), how much more proper for him who is one with the Father to call himself God.As inPs. 82:7those who had been called gods are represented as dying, so inPs. 97:7—“Worship him, all ye gods”—they are bidden to fall down before Jehovah. Ann. Par. Bible:“Although the deities of the heathen have no positive existence, they are often described in Scripture as if they had, and are represented as bowing down before the majesty of Jehovah.”This verse is quoted inHeb. 1:6—“let all the angels of God worship him”—i. e., Christ. Here Christ is identified with Jehovah. The quotation is made from the Septuagint, which has“angels”for“gods.”“Its use here is in accordance with the spirit of the Hebrew word, which includes all that human error might regard as objects of worship.”Those who are figuratively and rhetorically called“gods”are bidden to fall down in worship before him who is the true God, Jesus Christ. See Dick, Lectures on Theology, 1:314; Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 10.
It is sometimes objected that the ascription of the name God to Christ proves nothing as to his absolute deity, since angels and even human judges are called gods, as representing God's authority and executing his will. But we reply that, while it is true that the name is sometimes so applied, it is always with adjuncts and in connections which leave no doubt of its figurative and secondary meaning. When, however, the name is applied to Christ, it is, on the contrary, with adjuncts and in connections which leave no doubt that it signifies absolute Godhead. SeeEx. 4:16—“thou shalt be to him as God”;7:1—“See, I have made thee as God to Pharaoh”;22:28—“Thou shalt not revile God, [marg.,the judges],nor curse a ruler of thy people”;Ps. 82:1—“God standeth in the congregation of God; he judgeth among the gods”[among the mighty];6—“I said, Ye are gods, And all of you sons of the Most High”;7—“Nevertheless ye shall die like men, And fall like one of the princes.”Cf.John 10:34-36—“If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came”(who were God's commissioned and appointed representatives), how much more proper for him who is one with the Father to call himself God.
As inPs. 82:7those who had been called gods are represented as dying, so inPs. 97:7—“Worship him, all ye gods”—they are bidden to fall down before Jehovah. Ann. Par. Bible:“Although the deities of the heathen have no positive existence, they are often described in Scripture as if they had, and are represented as bowing down before the majesty of Jehovah.”This verse is quoted inHeb. 1:6—“let all the angels of God worship him”—i. e., Christ. Here Christ is identified with Jehovah. The quotation is made from the Septuagint, which has“angels”for“gods.”“Its use here is in accordance with the spirit of the Hebrew word, which includes all that human error might regard as objects of worship.”Those who are figuratively and rhetorically called“gods”are bidden to fall down in worship before him who is the true God, Jesus Christ. See Dick, Lectures on Theology, 1:314; Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 10.
In 1 John 5:20—ἐσμεν ἐν τῷ ἀληθινῷ, ἐν τῷ υἱῷ αὐτοῦ Ἰησοῦ Χριστῷ. οὗτος ἐστιν ὁ ἀληθινὸς Θεός—“it would be a flat repetition, after the Father had been twice called ὁ ἀληθινός, to say now again:‘this is ὁ ἀληθενὸς Θεός.’Our being in God has its basis in Christ his Son, and this also makes it more natural that οὖτος should be referred to υἱῷ. But ought not ὁ ἀληθενός then to be without the article (as in John 1:1—Θεός ἦν ὁ λόγος)? No, for it is John's purpose in 1 John 5:20 to say, notwhatChrist is, butwhohe is. In declaringwhatone is, the predicate must have no article; in declaringwhoone is, the predicate must have the article. St. John here says that this Son, on whom our being in the true God rests, is this true God himself”(see Ebrard, Com.in loco).
Other passages might be here adduced, asCol. 2:9—“in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily”;Phil 2:6—“existing in the form of God”; but we prefer to consider these under other heads as indirectly proving Christ's divinity. Still other passages once relied upon as direct statements of the doctrine must be given up for textual reasons. Such areActs 20:28, where the correct reading is in all probability not ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ Θεοῦ, but ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ Κυρίου (so ACDE Tregelles and Tischendorf; B and א, however, have τοῦ Θεοῦ. The Rev. Vers. continues to read“church of God”; Amer. Revisers, however, read“church of the Lord”—see Ezra Abbot's investigation in Bib. Sac., 1876: 313-352); and1 Tim. 3:16, where ὅς is unquestionably to be substituted for Θεός, though even here ἐφανερώθη intimates preëxistence.Rev. George E. Ellis, D. D., before the Unitarian Club, Boston, November, 1882—“Fifty years of study, thought and reading given largely to the Bible and to the literature which peculiarly relates to it, have brought me to this conclusion, that the book—taken with the especial divine quality and character claimed for it, and so extensively assigned to it, as inspired and infallible as a whole, and in all its contents—is an Orthodox book. It yields what is called the Orthodox creed. The vast majority of its readers, following its letter, its obvious sense, its natural meaning, and yielding to the impression which some of its emphatic texts make upon them, find in it Orthodoxy. Only that kind of ingenious, special, discriminative, and in candor I must add, forced treatment, which it receives from us liberals can make the book teach anything but Orthodoxy. The evangelical sects, so called, are clearly right in maintaining that their view of Scripture and of its doctrines draws a deep and wide division of creed between them and ourselves. In that earnest controversy by pamphlet warfare between Drs. Channing and Ware on the one side, and Drs. Worcester and Woods and Professor Stuart on the other—a controversy which wrought up the people of our community sixty years ago more than did our recent political campaign—I am fully convinced that the liberal contestants were worsted. Scripture exegesis, logic and argument were clearly on the side of the Orthodox contestants. And this was so, mainly because the liberal party put themselves on the same plane with the Orthodox in their way of regarding and dealing with Scripture texts in their bearing upon the controversy. Liberalism cannot vanquish Orthodoxy, if it yields to the latter in its own way of regarding and treating the whole Bible. Martin Luther said that the Papists burned the Bible because it was not on their side. Now I am not about to attack the Bible because it is not on my side; but I am about to object as emphatically as I can against a character and quality assigned to the Bible, which it does not claim for itself, which cannot be certified for it: and the origin and growth and intensity of the fond and superstitious influences resulting in that view we can trace distinctly to agencies accounting for, but not warranting, the current belief. Orthodoxy cannot readjust its creeds till it readjusts its estimate of the Scriptures. The only relief which one who professes the Orthodox creed can find is either by forcing his ingenuity into the proof-texts or indulging his liberty outside of them.”With this confession of a noted Unitarian it is interesting to compare the opinion of the so-called Trinitarian, Dr. Lyman Abbott, who says that the New Testament nowhere calls Christ God, but everywhere calls him man, as in1 Tim. 2:5—“for there is one God, one mediator also between God and men, himself man, Christ Jesus.”On this passage Prof. L. L. Paine remarks in the New World, Dec. 1894—“That Paul ever confounded Christ with God himself, or regarded him as in any way the Supreme Divinity, is a position invalidated not only by direct statements, but also by the whole drift of his epistles.”
Other passages might be here adduced, asCol. 2:9—“in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily”;Phil 2:6—“existing in the form of God”; but we prefer to consider these under other heads as indirectly proving Christ's divinity. Still other passages once relied upon as direct statements of the doctrine must be given up for textual reasons. Such areActs 20:28, where the correct reading is in all probability not ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ Θεοῦ, but ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ Κυρίου (so ACDE Tregelles and Tischendorf; B and א, however, have τοῦ Θεοῦ. The Rev. Vers. continues to read“church of God”; Amer. Revisers, however, read“church of the Lord”—see Ezra Abbot's investigation in Bib. Sac., 1876: 313-352); and1 Tim. 3:16, where ὅς is unquestionably to be substituted for Θεός, though even here ἐφανερώθη intimates preëxistence.
Rev. George E. Ellis, D. D., before the Unitarian Club, Boston, November, 1882—“Fifty years of study, thought and reading given largely to the Bible and to the literature which peculiarly relates to it, have brought me to this conclusion, that the book—taken with the especial divine quality and character claimed for it, and so extensively assigned to it, as inspired and infallible as a whole, and in all its contents—is an Orthodox book. It yields what is called the Orthodox creed. The vast majority of its readers, following its letter, its obvious sense, its natural meaning, and yielding to the impression which some of its emphatic texts make upon them, find in it Orthodoxy. Only that kind of ingenious, special, discriminative, and in candor I must add, forced treatment, which it receives from us liberals can make the book teach anything but Orthodoxy. The evangelical sects, so called, are clearly right in maintaining that their view of Scripture and of its doctrines draws a deep and wide division of creed between them and ourselves. In that earnest controversy by pamphlet warfare between Drs. Channing and Ware on the one side, and Drs. Worcester and Woods and Professor Stuart on the other—a controversy which wrought up the people of our community sixty years ago more than did our recent political campaign—I am fully convinced that the liberal contestants were worsted. Scripture exegesis, logic and argument were clearly on the side of the Orthodox contestants. And this was so, mainly because the liberal party put themselves on the same plane with the Orthodox in their way of regarding and dealing with Scripture texts in their bearing upon the controversy. Liberalism cannot vanquish Orthodoxy, if it yields to the latter in its own way of regarding and treating the whole Bible. Martin Luther said that the Papists burned the Bible because it was not on their side. Now I am not about to attack the Bible because it is not on my side; but I am about to object as emphatically as I can against a character and quality assigned to the Bible, which it does not claim for itself, which cannot be certified for it: and the origin and growth and intensity of the fond and superstitious influences resulting in that view we can trace distinctly to agencies accounting for, but not warranting, the current belief. Orthodoxy cannot readjust its creeds till it readjusts its estimate of the Scriptures. The only relief which one who professes the Orthodox creed can find is either by forcing his ingenuity into the proof-texts or indulging his liberty outside of them.”
With this confession of a noted Unitarian it is interesting to compare the opinion of the so-called Trinitarian, Dr. Lyman Abbott, who says that the New Testament nowhere calls Christ God, but everywhere calls him man, as in1 Tim. 2:5—“for there is one God, one mediator also between God and men, himself man, Christ Jesus.”On this passage Prof. L. L. Paine remarks in the New World, Dec. 1894—“That Paul ever confounded Christ with God himself, or regarded him as in any way the Supreme Divinity, is a position invalidated not only by direct statements, but also by the whole drift of his epistles.”
(b) Old Testament descriptions of God are applied to him.
This application to Christ of titles and names exclusively appropriated to God is inexplicable, if Christ was not regarded as being himself God. The peculiar awe with which the term“Jehovah”was set apart by a nation of strenuous monotheists as the sacred and incommunicable name of the one self-existent and covenant-keeping God forbids the belief that the Scripture writers could have used it as the designation of a subordinate and created being.
Mat. 3:3—“Make ye ready the way of the Lord”—is a quotation fromIs. 40:3—“Prepare ye ... the way of Jehovah.”John 12:41—“These things said Isaiah, because he saw his glory; and he spake of him”[i. e., Christ]—refers toIs. 6:1—“In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne.”So inEph. 4:7, 8—“measure of the gift of Christ ... led captivity captive”—is an application to Christ of what is said of Jehovah inPs. 68:18. In1 Pet. 3:15, moreover, we read, with all the great uncials, several of the Fathers, and all the best versions:“sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord”; here the apostle borrows his language fromIs. 8:13, where we read:“Jehovah of hosts, him shall ye sanctify.”When we remember that, with the Jews, God's covenant-title was so sacred that for the Kethib (=“written”)Jehovahthere was always substituted the Keri (=“read”—imperative)Adonai, in order to avoid pronunciation of the great Name, it seems the more remarkable that the Greek equivalent of“Jehovah”should have been so constantly used of Christ.Cf.Rom. 10:9—“confess ... Jesus as Lord”;1 Cor. 12:3—“no man can say, Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Spirit.”We must remember also the indignation of the Jews at Christ's assertion of his equality and oneness with the Father. Compare Goethe's,“Wer darf ihn nennen?”with Carlyle's,“the awful Unnameable of this Universe.”The Jews, it has been said, have always vibrated between monotheism and moneytheism. Yet James, the strongest of Hebrews, in his Epistle uses the word 'Lord' freely and alternately of God the Father and of Christ the Son. This would have been impossible if James had not believed in the community of essence between the Son and the Father.It is interesting to note that 1 Maccabees does not once use the word Θεός or κύριος, or any other direct designation of God unless it be οὐρανός (cf.“swear ... by the heaven”—Mat. 5:34). So the book of Esther contains no mention of the name of God, though the apocryphal additions to Esther, which are found only in Greek, contain the name of God in the first verse, and mention it in all eight times. See Bissell, Apocrypha, in Lange's Commentary; Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 93; Max Müller on Semitic Monotheism, in Chips from a German Workshop, 1:337.
Mat. 3:3—“Make ye ready the way of the Lord”—is a quotation fromIs. 40:3—“Prepare ye ... the way of Jehovah.”John 12:41—“These things said Isaiah, because he saw his glory; and he spake of him”[i. e., Christ]—refers toIs. 6:1—“In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne.”So inEph. 4:7, 8—“measure of the gift of Christ ... led captivity captive”—is an application to Christ of what is said of Jehovah inPs. 68:18. In1 Pet. 3:15, moreover, we read, with all the great uncials, several of the Fathers, and all the best versions:“sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord”; here the apostle borrows his language fromIs. 8:13, where we read:“Jehovah of hosts, him shall ye sanctify.”When we remember that, with the Jews, God's covenant-title was so sacred that for the Kethib (=“written”)Jehovahthere was always substituted the Keri (=“read”—imperative)Adonai, in order to avoid pronunciation of the great Name, it seems the more remarkable that the Greek equivalent of“Jehovah”should have been so constantly used of Christ.Cf.Rom. 10:9—“confess ... Jesus as Lord”;1 Cor. 12:3—“no man can say, Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Spirit.”We must remember also the indignation of the Jews at Christ's assertion of his equality and oneness with the Father. Compare Goethe's,“Wer darf ihn nennen?”with Carlyle's,“the awful Unnameable of this Universe.”The Jews, it has been said, have always vibrated between monotheism and moneytheism. Yet James, the strongest of Hebrews, in his Epistle uses the word 'Lord' freely and alternately of God the Father and of Christ the Son. This would have been impossible if James had not believed in the community of essence between the Son and the Father.
It is interesting to note that 1 Maccabees does not once use the word Θεός or κύριος, or any other direct designation of God unless it be οὐρανός (cf.“swear ... by the heaven”—Mat. 5:34). So the book of Esther contains no mention of the name of God, though the apocryphal additions to Esther, which are found only in Greek, contain the name of God in the first verse, and mention it in all eight times. See Bissell, Apocrypha, in Lange's Commentary; Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 93; Max Müller on Semitic Monotheism, in Chips from a German Workshop, 1:337.
(c) He possesses the attributes of God.
Among these are life, self-existence, immutability, truth, love, holiness, eternity, omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence. All these attributes are ascribed to Christ in connections which show that the terms are used in no secondary sense, nor in any sense predicable of a creature.
Life:John 1:4—“In him was life”;14:6—“I am ... the life.”Self-existence:John 5:26—“have life in himself”;Heb. 7:16—“power of an endless life.”Immutability:Heb. 13:8—“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day, yea and forever.”Truth:John 14:6—“I am ... the truth”;Rev. 3:7—“he that is true.”Love:1 John 3:16—“Hereby know we love”(τὴν ἀγάπην = the personal Love, as the personal Truth)“because he laid down his life for us.”Holiness:Luke 1:35—“that which is to be born shall be called holy, the Son of God”;John 6:69—“thou art the Holy One of God”;Heb. 7:26—“holy, guileless, undefiled, separated from sinners.”Eternity:John 1:1—“In the beginning was the Word.”Godet says ἐν ἀρχῇ = not“in eternity,”but“in the beginning of the creation”; the eternity of the Word being an inference from the ἦν—the Wordwas, when the world wascreated:cf.Gen. 1:1—“In the beginning God created.”But Meyer says, ἐν ἀρχῇ here rises above the historical conception of“in the beginning”in Genesis (which includes the beginning of time itself) to the absolute conception of anteriority to time; the creation is something subsequent. He finds a parallel inProv. 8:23—ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸ τοῦ τὴν γῆν ποιῆσαι. The interpretation“in the beginning of the gospel”is entirely unexegetical; so Meyer. SoJohn 17:5—“glory which I had with thee before the world was”;Eph. 1:4—“chose us in him before the foundation of the world.”Dorner also says that ἐν ἀρχῇ inJohn 1:1is not“the beginning of the world,”but designates the point[pg 310]back of which it is impossible to go,i. e., eternity; the world is first spoken of inverse 3. John 8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”;cf.1:15;Col. 1:17—“he is before all things”;Heb. 1:11—the heavens“shall perish; but thou continuest”;Rev. 21:6—“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.”Omnipresence:Mat. 28:20—“I am with you always”;Eph. 1:23—“the fulness of him that filleth all in all.”Omniscience:Mat. 9:4—“Jesus knowing their thoughts”;John 2:24, 25—“knew all men ... knew what was in man”;16:30—“knowest all things”;Acts 1:24—“Thou, Lord, who knowest the hearts of all men”—a prayer offered before the day of Pentecost and showing the attitude of the disciples toward their Master;1 Cor. 4:5—“until the Lord come, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and make manifest the counsels of the hearts”;Col. 2:3—“in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden.”Omnipotence:Mat. 27:18—“All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth”;Rev. 1:8—“the Lord God, which is and which was and which is to come, the Almighty.”Beyschlag, N. T. Theology, 1:249-260, holds that Jesus' preëxistence is simply the concrete form given to an ideal conception. Jesus traces himself back, as everything else holy and divine was traced back in the conceptions of his time, to a heavenly original in which it preëxisted before its earthly appearance;e. g.: the tabernacle, inHeb. 8:5; Jerusalem, inGal. 4:25andRev. 21:10; the kingdom of God inMat. 13:24; much more the Messiah, inJohn 6:62—“ascending where he was before”;8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”;17:4, 5—“glory which I had with thee before the world was”17:24—“thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.”This view that Jesus existed before creation only ideally in the divine mind, means simply that God foreknew him and his coming. The view is refuted by the multiplied intimations of a personal, in distinction from an ideal, preëxistence.Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John, 115—“The words‘In the beginning’(John 1:1)suggest that the author is about to write a second book of Genesis, an account of a new creation.”As creation presupposes a Creator, the preëxistence of the personal Word is assigned as the explanation of the being of the universe. The ἦν indicates absolute existence, which is a loftier idea than that of mere preëxistence, although it includes this. While John the Baptist and Abraham are said to have arisen, appeared, come into being, it is said that the Logoswas, and that the Logos wasGod. This implies coëternity with the Father. But, if the view we are combating were correct, John the Baptist and Abraham preëxisted, equally with Christ. This is certainly not the meaning of Jesus inJohn 8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”;cf.Col. 1:17—“he is before all things”—“αὐτός emphasizes the personality, while ἔστιν declares that the preëxistence is absolute existence”(Lightfoot);John 1:15—“He that cometh after me is become before me: for he was before me”= not that Jesus wasbornearlier than John the Baptist, for he was born six months later, but that heexistedearlier. He stands before John in rank, because he existed long before John in time;6:62—“the Son of man ascending where he was before”;16:28—“I came out from the Father, and am come into the world.”SoIs. 9:6, 7, calls Christ“Everlasting Father”= eternity is an attribute of the Messiah. T. W. Chambers, in Jour. Soc. Bib. Exegesis, 1881:169-171—“Christ is the Everlasting One,‘whose goings forth have been from of old, even from the days of eternity’(Micah 5:2).‘Of the increase of his government ... there shall be no end,’just because of his existence there has been no beginning.”
Life:John 1:4—“In him was life”;14:6—“I am ... the life.”Self-existence:John 5:26—“have life in himself”;Heb. 7:16—“power of an endless life.”Immutability:Heb. 13:8—“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day, yea and forever.”Truth:John 14:6—“I am ... the truth”;Rev. 3:7—“he that is true.”Love:1 John 3:16—“Hereby know we love”(τὴν ἀγάπην = the personal Love, as the personal Truth)“because he laid down his life for us.”Holiness:Luke 1:35—“that which is to be born shall be called holy, the Son of God”;John 6:69—“thou art the Holy One of God”;Heb. 7:26—“holy, guileless, undefiled, separated from sinners.”
Eternity:John 1:1—“In the beginning was the Word.”Godet says ἐν ἀρχῇ = not“in eternity,”but“in the beginning of the creation”; the eternity of the Word being an inference from the ἦν—the Wordwas, when the world wascreated:cf.Gen. 1:1—“In the beginning God created.”But Meyer says, ἐν ἀρχῇ here rises above the historical conception of“in the beginning”in Genesis (which includes the beginning of time itself) to the absolute conception of anteriority to time; the creation is something subsequent. He finds a parallel inProv. 8:23—ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸ τοῦ τὴν γῆν ποιῆσαι. The interpretation“in the beginning of the gospel”is entirely unexegetical; so Meyer. SoJohn 17:5—“glory which I had with thee before the world was”;Eph. 1:4—“chose us in him before the foundation of the world.”Dorner also says that ἐν ἀρχῇ inJohn 1:1is not“the beginning of the world,”but designates the point[pg 310]back of which it is impossible to go,i. e., eternity; the world is first spoken of inverse 3. John 8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”;cf.1:15;Col. 1:17—“he is before all things”;Heb. 1:11—the heavens“shall perish; but thou continuest”;Rev. 21:6—“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.”
Omnipresence:Mat. 28:20—“I am with you always”;Eph. 1:23—“the fulness of him that filleth all in all.”Omniscience:Mat. 9:4—“Jesus knowing their thoughts”;John 2:24, 25—“knew all men ... knew what was in man”;16:30—“knowest all things”;Acts 1:24—“Thou, Lord, who knowest the hearts of all men”—a prayer offered before the day of Pentecost and showing the attitude of the disciples toward their Master;1 Cor. 4:5—“until the Lord come, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and make manifest the counsels of the hearts”;Col. 2:3—“in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden.”Omnipotence:Mat. 27:18—“All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth”;Rev. 1:8—“the Lord God, which is and which was and which is to come, the Almighty.”
Beyschlag, N. T. Theology, 1:249-260, holds that Jesus' preëxistence is simply the concrete form given to an ideal conception. Jesus traces himself back, as everything else holy and divine was traced back in the conceptions of his time, to a heavenly original in which it preëxisted before its earthly appearance;e. g.: the tabernacle, inHeb. 8:5; Jerusalem, inGal. 4:25andRev. 21:10; the kingdom of God inMat. 13:24; much more the Messiah, inJohn 6:62—“ascending where he was before”;8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”;17:4, 5—“glory which I had with thee before the world was”17:24—“thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.”This view that Jesus existed before creation only ideally in the divine mind, means simply that God foreknew him and his coming. The view is refuted by the multiplied intimations of a personal, in distinction from an ideal, preëxistence.
Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John, 115—“The words‘In the beginning’(John 1:1)suggest that the author is about to write a second book of Genesis, an account of a new creation.”As creation presupposes a Creator, the preëxistence of the personal Word is assigned as the explanation of the being of the universe. The ἦν indicates absolute existence, which is a loftier idea than that of mere preëxistence, although it includes this. While John the Baptist and Abraham are said to have arisen, appeared, come into being, it is said that the Logoswas, and that the Logos wasGod. This implies coëternity with the Father. But, if the view we are combating were correct, John the Baptist and Abraham preëxisted, equally with Christ. This is certainly not the meaning of Jesus inJohn 8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”;cf.Col. 1:17—“he is before all things”—“αὐτός emphasizes the personality, while ἔστιν declares that the preëxistence is absolute existence”(Lightfoot);John 1:15—“He that cometh after me is become before me: for he was before me”= not that Jesus wasbornearlier than John the Baptist, for he was born six months later, but that heexistedearlier. He stands before John in rank, because he existed long before John in time;6:62—“the Son of man ascending where he was before”;16:28—“I came out from the Father, and am come into the world.”SoIs. 9:6, 7, calls Christ“Everlasting Father”= eternity is an attribute of the Messiah. T. W. Chambers, in Jour. Soc. Bib. Exegesis, 1881:169-171—“Christ is the Everlasting One,‘whose goings forth have been from of old, even from the days of eternity’(Micah 5:2).‘Of the increase of his government ... there shall be no end,’just because of his existence there has been no beginning.”
(d) The works of God are ascribed to him.
We do not here speak of miracles, which may be wrought by communicated power, but of such works as the creation of the world, the upholding of all things, the final raising of the dead, and the judging of all men. Power to perform these works cannot be delegated, for they are characteristic of omnipotence.