Creation:John 1:3—“All things were made through him”;1 Cor. 8:6—“one lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things”;Col. 1:16—“all things have been created through him, and unto him”;Heb, 1:10—“Thou, Lord, in the beginning didst lay the foundation of the earth, And the heavens are the works of thy hands”;3:3, 4—“he that built all things is God”= Christ, the builder of the house of Israel, is the God who made all things;Rev. 3:14—“the beginning of the creation of God”(cf.Plato:“Mind is the ἀρχή of motion”).Upholding:Col. 1:17—“in him all things consist”(marg.“hold together”);Heb. 1:3—“upholding all things by the word of his power.”Raising the dead and judging the world:John 5:27-29—“authority to execute judgment ... all that are in the tombs shall hear his voice, and shall come forth”;Mat. 25:31, 32—“sit on the throne of his glory; and before him shall be gathered all the nations.”If our argument were addressed wholly to believers, we might also urge Christ's work in the world as Revealer of God and Redeemer from sin, as a proof of his deity. [On the works of Christ, see Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 153;per contra, see Examination of Liddon's Bampton Lectures, 72.][pg 311]Statements of Christ's creative and of his upholding activity are combined inJohn 1:3, 4—Πάντα δι᾽ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν. ὅ γέγονεν ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν—“All things were made through him; and without him was not anything made. That which hath been made was life in him”(marg.). Westcott:“It would be difficult to find a more complete consent of ancient authorities in favor of any reading than that which supports this punctuation.”Westcott therefore adopts it. The passage shows that the universe 1. exists within the bounds of Christ's being; 2. is not dead, but living; 3. derives its life from him; see Inge, Christian Mysticism, 46. Creation requires the divine presence, as well as the divine agency. God creates through Christ. All things were made, not ὐπὸ αὐτοῦ—“by him,”but δι᾽ αὐτοῦ—“through him.”Christian believers“Behind creation's throbbing screen Catch movements of the great Unseen.”Van Oosterzee, Christian Dogmatics, iv, lvi—“That which many a philosopher dimly conjectured, namely, that God did not produce the world in an absolute, immediate manner, but in some way or other, mediately, here presents itself to us with the lustre of revelation, and exalts so much the more the claim of the Son of God to our deep and reverential homage.”Would that such scientific men as Tyndall and Huxley might see Christ in nature, and, doing his will, might learn of the doctrine and be led to the Father! The humblest Christian who sees Christ's hand in the physical universe and in human history knows more of the secret of the universe than all the mere scientists put together.Col 1:17—“In him all things consist,”or“hold together,”means nothing less than that Christ is the principle of cohesion in the universe, making it a cosmos instead of a chaos. Tyndall said that the attraction of the sun upon the earth was as inconceivable as if a horse should draw a cart without traces. Sir Isaac Newton:“Gravitation must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws.”Lightfoot:“Gravitation is an expression of the mind of Christ.”Evolution also is a method of his operation. The laws of nature are the habits of Christ, and nature itself is but his steady and constant will. He binds together man and nature in one organic whole, so that we can speak of a“universe.”Without him there would be no intellectual bond, no uniformity of law, no unity of truth. He is the principle of induction, that enables us to argue from one thing to another. The medium of interaction between things is also the medium of intercommunication between minds. It is fitting that he who draws and holds together the physical and intellectual, should also draw and hold together the moral universe, drawing all men to himself (John 12:32) and so to God, and reconciling all things in heaven and earth (Col. 1:20). In Christ“the law appears, Drawn out in living characters,”because he is the ground and source of all law, both in nature and in humanity. See A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 6-12.(e) He receives honor and worship due only to God.In addition to the address of Thomas, in John 20:28, which we have already cited among the proofs that Jesus is expressly called God, and in which divine honor is paid to him, we may refer to the prayer and worship offered by the apostolic and post-apostolic church.John 5:23—“that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father”;14:14—“If ye shall ask me[so אB and Tisch. 8th ed.]anything in my name, that will I do”;Acts 7:59—“Stephen, calling upon the Lord, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”(cf.Luke 23:46—Jesus' words:“Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit”);Rom. 10:9—“confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord”;13—“whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved”(cf.Gen. 4:26—“Then began men to call upon the name of Jehovah”);1 Cor. 11:24, 25—“this do in remembrance of me”= worship of Christ;Heb. 1:6—“let all the angels of God worship him”;Phil. 2:10, 11—“in the name of Jesus every knee should bow ... every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord”;Rev. 5:12-14—“Worthy is the Lamb that hath been slain to receive the power....”;2 Pet. 3:18—“Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory”;2 Tim. 4:18 and Heb. 13:21—“to whom be the glory for ever and ever”—these ascriptions of eternal glory to Christ imply his deity. See also1 Pet. 3:15—“Sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord,”andEph. 5:21—“subjecting yourselves one to another in the fear of Christ.”Here is enjoined an attitude of mind towards Christ which would be idolatrous if Christ were not God. See Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 266, 366.Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 154—“In the eucharistic liturgy of the‘Teaching’we read:‘Hosanna to the God of David’; Ignatius styles him repeatedly God‘begotten and unbegotten, come in the flesh’; speaking once of‘the blood of God’, in evident allusion toActs 20:28; the epistle to Diognetus takes up the Pauline words and calls him the‘architect and world-builder by whom [God] created the heavens’, and[pg 312]names him God (chap. vii); Hermas speaks of him as‘the holy preëxistent Spirit, that created every creature’, which style of expression is followed by Justin, who calls him God, as also all the later great writers. In the second epistle of Clement (130-160, Harnack), we read:‘Brethren, it is fitting that you should think of Jesus Christ as of God—as the Judge of the living and the dead.’And Ignatius describes him as‘begotten and unbegotten, passible and impassible, ... who was before the eternities with the Father.’”These testimonies only give evidence that the Church Fathers saw in Scripture divine honor ascribed to Christ. They were but the precursors of a host of later interpreters. In a lull of the awful massacre of Armenian Christians at Sassouan, one of the Kurdish savages was heard to ask:“Who was that‘Lord Jesus’that they were calling to?”In their death agonies, the Christians, like Stephen of old, called upon the name of the Lord. Robert Browning quoted, in a letter to a lady in her last illness, the words of Charles Lamb, when“in a gay fancy with some friends as to how he and they would feel if the greatest of the dead were to appear suddenly in flesh and blood once more—on the first suggestion,‘And if Christ entered this room?’changed his tone at once and stuttered out as his manner was when moved:‘You see—if Shakespere entered, we should all rise; if He appeared, we must kneel.’”On prayer to Jesus, see Liddon, Bampton Lectures, note F; Bernard, in Hastings' Bib. Dict., 4:44; Zahn, Skizzen aus dem Leben der alten Kirche, 9, 288.(f) His name is associated with that of God upon a footing of equality.We do not here allude to 1 John 5:7 (the three heavenly witnesses), for the latter part of this verse is unquestionably spurious; but to the formula of baptism, to the apostolic benedictions, and to those passages in which eternal life is said to be dependent equally upon Christ and upon God, or in which spiritual gifts are attributed to Christ equally with the Father.The formula of baptism:Mat. 28:19—“baptising them into the name of the father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”;cf.Acts 2:38—“be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ”;Rom. 6:3—“baptized into Christ Jesus.”“In the common baptismal formula the Son and the Spirit are coördinated with the Father, and εἰς ὄνομα has religious significance.”It would be both absurd and profane to speak of baptizing into the name of the Father and of Moses.The apostolic benedictions:1 Cor. 1:3—“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”;2 Cor. 13:14—“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.”“In the benedictions grace is something divine, and Christ has power to impart it. But why do we find‘God,’instead of simply‘the Father,’as in the baptismal formula? Because it is only the Father who does not become man or have a historical existence. Elsewhere he is specially called‘God the Father,’to distinguish him from God the Son and God the Holy Spirit (Gal. 1:3;Eph. 3:14;6:23).”Other passages:John 5:23—“that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father”;John 14:1—“believe in God, believe also in me”—double imperative (so Westcott, Bible Com.,in loco);17:3—“this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ”;Mat. 11:27—“no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him”;1 Cor. 12:4-6—“the same Spirit ... the same Lord[Christ] ...the same God”[the Father] bestow spiritual gifts,e. g., faith:Rom. 10:17—“belief cometh of hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ”; peace:Col. 3:15—“let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.”2 Thess. 2:16, 17—“now our lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father ... comfort your hearts”—two names with a verb in the singular intimate the oneness of the Father and the Son (Lillie).Eph. 5:5—“kingdom of Christ and God”;Col. 3:1—“Christ ... seated on the right hand of God”= participation in the sovereignty of the universe,—the Eastern divan held not only the monarch but his son;Rev. 20:6—“priests of God and of Christ”;22:3—“the throne of God and of the Lamb”;16—“the root and the offspring of David”= both the Lord of David and his son. Hackett:“As the dying Savior said to the Father,‘Into thy hands I commend my spirit’(Luke 23:46), so the dying Stephen said to the Savior,‘receive my spirit’(Acts 7:59).”(g) Equality with God is expressly claimed.Here we may refer to Jesus' testimony to himself, already treated of among the proofs of the supernatural character of the Scripture teaching (see pages189,190). Equality with God is not only claimed for himself by Jesus, but it is claimed for him by his apostles.[pg 313]John 5:18—“called God his own Father, making himself equal with God”;Phil. 2:6—“who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped”—counted not his equality with God a thing to be forcibly retained. Christ made and left upon his contemporaries the impression that he claimed to be God. The New Testament has left, upon the great mass of those who have read it, the impression that Jesus Christ claims to be God. If he is not God, he is a deceiver or is self-deceived, and, in either case,Christus, si non Deus, non bonus. See Nicoll, Life of Jesus Christ, 187.(h) Further proof of Christ's deity may be found in the application to him of the phrases:“Son of God,”“Image of God”; in the declarations of his oneness with God; in the attribution to him of the fulness of the Godhead.Mat. 26:63, 64—“I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou art the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said”—it is for this testimony that Christ dies.Col. 1:15—“the image of the invisible God”;Heb. 1:3—“the effulgence of his[the Father's]glory, and the very image of his substance”;John 10:30—“I and the Father are one”;14:9—“he that hath seen me hath seen the Father”;17:11, 22—“that they may be one, even as we are”—ἕ, not εἰς;unum, notunus; one substance, not one person.“Unumis antidote to the Arian,sumusto the Sabellian heresy.”Col. 2:9—“in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily”;cf.1:19—“for it was the pleasure of the Father that in him should all the fulness dwell;”or (marg.)“for the whole fulness of God was pleased to dwell in him.”John 16:15—“all things whatsoever the Father hath are mine”;17:10—“all things that are mine are thine, and thine are mine.”Meyer onJohn 10:30—“I and the Father are one”—“Here the Arian understanding of a mere ethical harmony as taught in the words‘are one’is unsatisfactory, because irrelevant to the exercise of power. Oneness of essence, though not contained in the words themselves, is, by the necessities of the argument, presupposed in them.”Dalman, The Words of Jesus:“Nowhere do we find that Jesus called himself the Son of God in such a sense as to suggest a merely religious and ethical relation to God—a relation which others also possessed and which they were capable of attaining or were destined to acquire.”We may add that while in the lower sense there are many“sons of God,”there is but one“only begotten Son.”(i) These proofs of Christ's deity from the New Testament are corroborated by Christian experience.Christian experience recognizes Christ as an absolutely perfect Savior, perfectly revealing the Godhead and worthy of unlimited worship and adoration; that is, it practically recognizes him as Deity. But Christian experience also recognizes that through Christ it has introduction and reconciliation to God as one distinct from Jesus Christ, as one who was alienated from the soul by its sin, but who is now reconciled through Jesus's death. In other words, while recognizing Jesus as God, we are also compelled to recognize a distinction between the Father and the Son through whom we come to the Father.Although this experience cannot be regarded as an independent witness to Jesus' claims, since it only tests the truth already made known in the Bible, still the irresistible impulse of every person whom Christ has saved to lift his Redeemer to the highest place, and bow before him in the lowliest worship, is strong evidence that only that interpretation of Scripture can be true which recognizes Christ's absolute Godhead. It is the church's consciousness of her Lord's divinity, indeed, and not mere speculation upon the relations of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, that has compelled the formulation of the Scripture doctrine of the Trinity.
Creation:John 1:3—“All things were made through him”;1 Cor. 8:6—“one lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things”;Col. 1:16—“all things have been created through him, and unto him”;Heb, 1:10—“Thou, Lord, in the beginning didst lay the foundation of the earth, And the heavens are the works of thy hands”;3:3, 4—“he that built all things is God”= Christ, the builder of the house of Israel, is the God who made all things;Rev. 3:14—“the beginning of the creation of God”(cf.Plato:“Mind is the ἀρχή of motion”).Upholding:Col. 1:17—“in him all things consist”(marg.“hold together”);Heb. 1:3—“upholding all things by the word of his power.”Raising the dead and judging the world:John 5:27-29—“authority to execute judgment ... all that are in the tombs shall hear his voice, and shall come forth”;Mat. 25:31, 32—“sit on the throne of his glory; and before him shall be gathered all the nations.”If our argument were addressed wholly to believers, we might also urge Christ's work in the world as Revealer of God and Redeemer from sin, as a proof of his deity. [On the works of Christ, see Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 153;per contra, see Examination of Liddon's Bampton Lectures, 72.][pg 311]Statements of Christ's creative and of his upholding activity are combined inJohn 1:3, 4—Πάντα δι᾽ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν. ὅ γέγονεν ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν—“All things were made through him; and without him was not anything made. That which hath been made was life in him”(marg.). Westcott:“It would be difficult to find a more complete consent of ancient authorities in favor of any reading than that which supports this punctuation.”Westcott therefore adopts it. The passage shows that the universe 1. exists within the bounds of Christ's being; 2. is not dead, but living; 3. derives its life from him; see Inge, Christian Mysticism, 46. Creation requires the divine presence, as well as the divine agency. God creates through Christ. All things were made, not ὐπὸ αὐτοῦ—“by him,”but δι᾽ αὐτοῦ—“through him.”Christian believers“Behind creation's throbbing screen Catch movements of the great Unseen.”Van Oosterzee, Christian Dogmatics, iv, lvi—“That which many a philosopher dimly conjectured, namely, that God did not produce the world in an absolute, immediate manner, but in some way or other, mediately, here presents itself to us with the lustre of revelation, and exalts so much the more the claim of the Son of God to our deep and reverential homage.”Would that such scientific men as Tyndall and Huxley might see Christ in nature, and, doing his will, might learn of the doctrine and be led to the Father! The humblest Christian who sees Christ's hand in the physical universe and in human history knows more of the secret of the universe than all the mere scientists put together.Col 1:17—“In him all things consist,”or“hold together,”means nothing less than that Christ is the principle of cohesion in the universe, making it a cosmos instead of a chaos. Tyndall said that the attraction of the sun upon the earth was as inconceivable as if a horse should draw a cart without traces. Sir Isaac Newton:“Gravitation must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws.”Lightfoot:“Gravitation is an expression of the mind of Christ.”Evolution also is a method of his operation. The laws of nature are the habits of Christ, and nature itself is but his steady and constant will. He binds together man and nature in one organic whole, so that we can speak of a“universe.”Without him there would be no intellectual bond, no uniformity of law, no unity of truth. He is the principle of induction, that enables us to argue from one thing to another. The medium of interaction between things is also the medium of intercommunication between minds. It is fitting that he who draws and holds together the physical and intellectual, should also draw and hold together the moral universe, drawing all men to himself (John 12:32) and so to God, and reconciling all things in heaven and earth (Col. 1:20). In Christ“the law appears, Drawn out in living characters,”because he is the ground and source of all law, both in nature and in humanity. See A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 6-12.(e) He receives honor and worship due only to God.In addition to the address of Thomas, in John 20:28, which we have already cited among the proofs that Jesus is expressly called God, and in which divine honor is paid to him, we may refer to the prayer and worship offered by the apostolic and post-apostolic church.John 5:23—“that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father”;14:14—“If ye shall ask me[so אB and Tisch. 8th ed.]anything in my name, that will I do”;Acts 7:59—“Stephen, calling upon the Lord, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”(cf.Luke 23:46—Jesus' words:“Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit”);Rom. 10:9—“confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord”;13—“whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved”(cf.Gen. 4:26—“Then began men to call upon the name of Jehovah”);1 Cor. 11:24, 25—“this do in remembrance of me”= worship of Christ;Heb. 1:6—“let all the angels of God worship him”;Phil. 2:10, 11—“in the name of Jesus every knee should bow ... every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord”;Rev. 5:12-14—“Worthy is the Lamb that hath been slain to receive the power....”;2 Pet. 3:18—“Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory”;2 Tim. 4:18 and Heb. 13:21—“to whom be the glory for ever and ever”—these ascriptions of eternal glory to Christ imply his deity. See also1 Pet. 3:15—“Sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord,”andEph. 5:21—“subjecting yourselves one to another in the fear of Christ.”Here is enjoined an attitude of mind towards Christ which would be idolatrous if Christ were not God. See Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 266, 366.Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 154—“In the eucharistic liturgy of the‘Teaching’we read:‘Hosanna to the God of David’; Ignatius styles him repeatedly God‘begotten and unbegotten, come in the flesh’; speaking once of‘the blood of God’, in evident allusion toActs 20:28; the epistle to Diognetus takes up the Pauline words and calls him the‘architect and world-builder by whom [God] created the heavens’, and[pg 312]names him God (chap. vii); Hermas speaks of him as‘the holy preëxistent Spirit, that created every creature’, which style of expression is followed by Justin, who calls him God, as also all the later great writers. In the second epistle of Clement (130-160, Harnack), we read:‘Brethren, it is fitting that you should think of Jesus Christ as of God—as the Judge of the living and the dead.’And Ignatius describes him as‘begotten and unbegotten, passible and impassible, ... who was before the eternities with the Father.’”These testimonies only give evidence that the Church Fathers saw in Scripture divine honor ascribed to Christ. They were but the precursors of a host of later interpreters. In a lull of the awful massacre of Armenian Christians at Sassouan, one of the Kurdish savages was heard to ask:“Who was that‘Lord Jesus’that they were calling to?”In their death agonies, the Christians, like Stephen of old, called upon the name of the Lord. Robert Browning quoted, in a letter to a lady in her last illness, the words of Charles Lamb, when“in a gay fancy with some friends as to how he and they would feel if the greatest of the dead were to appear suddenly in flesh and blood once more—on the first suggestion,‘And if Christ entered this room?’changed his tone at once and stuttered out as his manner was when moved:‘You see—if Shakespere entered, we should all rise; if He appeared, we must kneel.’”On prayer to Jesus, see Liddon, Bampton Lectures, note F; Bernard, in Hastings' Bib. Dict., 4:44; Zahn, Skizzen aus dem Leben der alten Kirche, 9, 288.(f) His name is associated with that of God upon a footing of equality.We do not here allude to 1 John 5:7 (the three heavenly witnesses), for the latter part of this verse is unquestionably spurious; but to the formula of baptism, to the apostolic benedictions, and to those passages in which eternal life is said to be dependent equally upon Christ and upon God, or in which spiritual gifts are attributed to Christ equally with the Father.The formula of baptism:Mat. 28:19—“baptising them into the name of the father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”;cf.Acts 2:38—“be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ”;Rom. 6:3—“baptized into Christ Jesus.”“In the common baptismal formula the Son and the Spirit are coördinated with the Father, and εἰς ὄνομα has religious significance.”It would be both absurd and profane to speak of baptizing into the name of the Father and of Moses.The apostolic benedictions:1 Cor. 1:3—“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”;2 Cor. 13:14—“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.”“In the benedictions grace is something divine, and Christ has power to impart it. But why do we find‘God,’instead of simply‘the Father,’as in the baptismal formula? Because it is only the Father who does not become man or have a historical existence. Elsewhere he is specially called‘God the Father,’to distinguish him from God the Son and God the Holy Spirit (Gal. 1:3;Eph. 3:14;6:23).”Other passages:John 5:23—“that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father”;John 14:1—“believe in God, believe also in me”—double imperative (so Westcott, Bible Com.,in loco);17:3—“this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ”;Mat. 11:27—“no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him”;1 Cor. 12:4-6—“the same Spirit ... the same Lord[Christ] ...the same God”[the Father] bestow spiritual gifts,e. g., faith:Rom. 10:17—“belief cometh of hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ”; peace:Col. 3:15—“let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.”2 Thess. 2:16, 17—“now our lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father ... comfort your hearts”—two names with a verb in the singular intimate the oneness of the Father and the Son (Lillie).Eph. 5:5—“kingdom of Christ and God”;Col. 3:1—“Christ ... seated on the right hand of God”= participation in the sovereignty of the universe,—the Eastern divan held not only the monarch but his son;Rev. 20:6—“priests of God and of Christ”;22:3—“the throne of God and of the Lamb”;16—“the root and the offspring of David”= both the Lord of David and his son. Hackett:“As the dying Savior said to the Father,‘Into thy hands I commend my spirit’(Luke 23:46), so the dying Stephen said to the Savior,‘receive my spirit’(Acts 7:59).”(g) Equality with God is expressly claimed.Here we may refer to Jesus' testimony to himself, already treated of among the proofs of the supernatural character of the Scripture teaching (see pages189,190). Equality with God is not only claimed for himself by Jesus, but it is claimed for him by his apostles.[pg 313]John 5:18—“called God his own Father, making himself equal with God”;Phil. 2:6—“who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped”—counted not his equality with God a thing to be forcibly retained. Christ made and left upon his contemporaries the impression that he claimed to be God. The New Testament has left, upon the great mass of those who have read it, the impression that Jesus Christ claims to be God. If he is not God, he is a deceiver or is self-deceived, and, in either case,Christus, si non Deus, non bonus. See Nicoll, Life of Jesus Christ, 187.(h) Further proof of Christ's deity may be found in the application to him of the phrases:“Son of God,”“Image of God”; in the declarations of his oneness with God; in the attribution to him of the fulness of the Godhead.Mat. 26:63, 64—“I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou art the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said”—it is for this testimony that Christ dies.Col. 1:15—“the image of the invisible God”;Heb. 1:3—“the effulgence of his[the Father's]glory, and the very image of his substance”;John 10:30—“I and the Father are one”;14:9—“he that hath seen me hath seen the Father”;17:11, 22—“that they may be one, even as we are”—ἕ, not εἰς;unum, notunus; one substance, not one person.“Unumis antidote to the Arian,sumusto the Sabellian heresy.”Col. 2:9—“in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily”;cf.1:19—“for it was the pleasure of the Father that in him should all the fulness dwell;”or (marg.)“for the whole fulness of God was pleased to dwell in him.”John 16:15—“all things whatsoever the Father hath are mine”;17:10—“all things that are mine are thine, and thine are mine.”Meyer onJohn 10:30—“I and the Father are one”—“Here the Arian understanding of a mere ethical harmony as taught in the words‘are one’is unsatisfactory, because irrelevant to the exercise of power. Oneness of essence, though not contained in the words themselves, is, by the necessities of the argument, presupposed in them.”Dalman, The Words of Jesus:“Nowhere do we find that Jesus called himself the Son of God in such a sense as to suggest a merely religious and ethical relation to God—a relation which others also possessed and which they were capable of attaining or were destined to acquire.”We may add that while in the lower sense there are many“sons of God,”there is but one“only begotten Son.”(i) These proofs of Christ's deity from the New Testament are corroborated by Christian experience.Christian experience recognizes Christ as an absolutely perfect Savior, perfectly revealing the Godhead and worthy of unlimited worship and adoration; that is, it practically recognizes him as Deity. But Christian experience also recognizes that through Christ it has introduction and reconciliation to God as one distinct from Jesus Christ, as one who was alienated from the soul by its sin, but who is now reconciled through Jesus's death. In other words, while recognizing Jesus as God, we are also compelled to recognize a distinction between the Father and the Son through whom we come to the Father.Although this experience cannot be regarded as an independent witness to Jesus' claims, since it only tests the truth already made known in the Bible, still the irresistible impulse of every person whom Christ has saved to lift his Redeemer to the highest place, and bow before him in the lowliest worship, is strong evidence that only that interpretation of Scripture can be true which recognizes Christ's absolute Godhead. It is the church's consciousness of her Lord's divinity, indeed, and not mere speculation upon the relations of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, that has compelled the formulation of the Scripture doctrine of the Trinity.
Creation:John 1:3—“All things were made through him”;1 Cor. 8:6—“one lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things”;Col. 1:16—“all things have been created through him, and unto him”;Heb, 1:10—“Thou, Lord, in the beginning didst lay the foundation of the earth, And the heavens are the works of thy hands”;3:3, 4—“he that built all things is God”= Christ, the builder of the house of Israel, is the God who made all things;Rev. 3:14—“the beginning of the creation of God”(cf.Plato:“Mind is the ἀρχή of motion”).Upholding:Col. 1:17—“in him all things consist”(marg.“hold together”);Heb. 1:3—“upholding all things by the word of his power.”Raising the dead and judging the world:John 5:27-29—“authority to execute judgment ... all that are in the tombs shall hear his voice, and shall come forth”;Mat. 25:31, 32—“sit on the throne of his glory; and before him shall be gathered all the nations.”If our argument were addressed wholly to believers, we might also urge Christ's work in the world as Revealer of God and Redeemer from sin, as a proof of his deity. [On the works of Christ, see Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 153;per contra, see Examination of Liddon's Bampton Lectures, 72.][pg 311]Statements of Christ's creative and of his upholding activity are combined inJohn 1:3, 4—Πάντα δι᾽ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν. ὅ γέγονεν ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν—“All things were made through him; and without him was not anything made. That which hath been made was life in him”(marg.). Westcott:“It would be difficult to find a more complete consent of ancient authorities in favor of any reading than that which supports this punctuation.”Westcott therefore adopts it. The passage shows that the universe 1. exists within the bounds of Christ's being; 2. is not dead, but living; 3. derives its life from him; see Inge, Christian Mysticism, 46. Creation requires the divine presence, as well as the divine agency. God creates through Christ. All things were made, not ὐπὸ αὐτοῦ—“by him,”but δι᾽ αὐτοῦ—“through him.”Christian believers“Behind creation's throbbing screen Catch movements of the great Unseen.”Van Oosterzee, Christian Dogmatics, iv, lvi—“That which many a philosopher dimly conjectured, namely, that God did not produce the world in an absolute, immediate manner, but in some way or other, mediately, here presents itself to us with the lustre of revelation, and exalts so much the more the claim of the Son of God to our deep and reverential homage.”Would that such scientific men as Tyndall and Huxley might see Christ in nature, and, doing his will, might learn of the doctrine and be led to the Father! The humblest Christian who sees Christ's hand in the physical universe and in human history knows more of the secret of the universe than all the mere scientists put together.Col 1:17—“In him all things consist,”or“hold together,”means nothing less than that Christ is the principle of cohesion in the universe, making it a cosmos instead of a chaos. Tyndall said that the attraction of the sun upon the earth was as inconceivable as if a horse should draw a cart without traces. Sir Isaac Newton:“Gravitation must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws.”Lightfoot:“Gravitation is an expression of the mind of Christ.”Evolution also is a method of his operation. The laws of nature are the habits of Christ, and nature itself is but his steady and constant will. He binds together man and nature in one organic whole, so that we can speak of a“universe.”Without him there would be no intellectual bond, no uniformity of law, no unity of truth. He is the principle of induction, that enables us to argue from one thing to another. The medium of interaction between things is also the medium of intercommunication between minds. It is fitting that he who draws and holds together the physical and intellectual, should also draw and hold together the moral universe, drawing all men to himself (John 12:32) and so to God, and reconciling all things in heaven and earth (Col. 1:20). In Christ“the law appears, Drawn out in living characters,”because he is the ground and source of all law, both in nature and in humanity. See A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 6-12.(e) He receives honor and worship due only to God.In addition to the address of Thomas, in John 20:28, which we have already cited among the proofs that Jesus is expressly called God, and in which divine honor is paid to him, we may refer to the prayer and worship offered by the apostolic and post-apostolic church.John 5:23—“that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father”;14:14—“If ye shall ask me[so אB and Tisch. 8th ed.]anything in my name, that will I do”;Acts 7:59—“Stephen, calling upon the Lord, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”(cf.Luke 23:46—Jesus' words:“Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit”);Rom. 10:9—“confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord”;13—“whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved”(cf.Gen. 4:26—“Then began men to call upon the name of Jehovah”);1 Cor. 11:24, 25—“this do in remembrance of me”= worship of Christ;Heb. 1:6—“let all the angels of God worship him”;Phil. 2:10, 11—“in the name of Jesus every knee should bow ... every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord”;Rev. 5:12-14—“Worthy is the Lamb that hath been slain to receive the power....”;2 Pet. 3:18—“Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory”;2 Tim. 4:18 and Heb. 13:21—“to whom be the glory for ever and ever”—these ascriptions of eternal glory to Christ imply his deity. See also1 Pet. 3:15—“Sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord,”andEph. 5:21—“subjecting yourselves one to another in the fear of Christ.”Here is enjoined an attitude of mind towards Christ which would be idolatrous if Christ were not God. See Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 266, 366.Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 154—“In the eucharistic liturgy of the‘Teaching’we read:‘Hosanna to the God of David’; Ignatius styles him repeatedly God‘begotten and unbegotten, come in the flesh’; speaking once of‘the blood of God’, in evident allusion toActs 20:28; the epistle to Diognetus takes up the Pauline words and calls him the‘architect and world-builder by whom [God] created the heavens’, and[pg 312]names him God (chap. vii); Hermas speaks of him as‘the holy preëxistent Spirit, that created every creature’, which style of expression is followed by Justin, who calls him God, as also all the later great writers. In the second epistle of Clement (130-160, Harnack), we read:‘Brethren, it is fitting that you should think of Jesus Christ as of God—as the Judge of the living and the dead.’And Ignatius describes him as‘begotten and unbegotten, passible and impassible, ... who was before the eternities with the Father.’”These testimonies only give evidence that the Church Fathers saw in Scripture divine honor ascribed to Christ. They were but the precursors of a host of later interpreters. In a lull of the awful massacre of Armenian Christians at Sassouan, one of the Kurdish savages was heard to ask:“Who was that‘Lord Jesus’that they were calling to?”In their death agonies, the Christians, like Stephen of old, called upon the name of the Lord. Robert Browning quoted, in a letter to a lady in her last illness, the words of Charles Lamb, when“in a gay fancy with some friends as to how he and they would feel if the greatest of the dead were to appear suddenly in flesh and blood once more—on the first suggestion,‘And if Christ entered this room?’changed his tone at once and stuttered out as his manner was when moved:‘You see—if Shakespere entered, we should all rise; if He appeared, we must kneel.’”On prayer to Jesus, see Liddon, Bampton Lectures, note F; Bernard, in Hastings' Bib. Dict., 4:44; Zahn, Skizzen aus dem Leben der alten Kirche, 9, 288.(f) His name is associated with that of God upon a footing of equality.We do not here allude to 1 John 5:7 (the three heavenly witnesses), for the latter part of this verse is unquestionably spurious; but to the formula of baptism, to the apostolic benedictions, and to those passages in which eternal life is said to be dependent equally upon Christ and upon God, or in which spiritual gifts are attributed to Christ equally with the Father.The formula of baptism:Mat. 28:19—“baptising them into the name of the father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”;cf.Acts 2:38—“be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ”;Rom. 6:3—“baptized into Christ Jesus.”“In the common baptismal formula the Son and the Spirit are coördinated with the Father, and εἰς ὄνομα has religious significance.”It would be both absurd and profane to speak of baptizing into the name of the Father and of Moses.The apostolic benedictions:1 Cor. 1:3—“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”;2 Cor. 13:14—“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.”“In the benedictions grace is something divine, and Christ has power to impart it. But why do we find‘God,’instead of simply‘the Father,’as in the baptismal formula? Because it is only the Father who does not become man or have a historical existence. Elsewhere he is specially called‘God the Father,’to distinguish him from God the Son and God the Holy Spirit (Gal. 1:3;Eph. 3:14;6:23).”Other passages:John 5:23—“that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father”;John 14:1—“believe in God, believe also in me”—double imperative (so Westcott, Bible Com.,in loco);17:3—“this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ”;Mat. 11:27—“no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him”;1 Cor. 12:4-6—“the same Spirit ... the same Lord[Christ] ...the same God”[the Father] bestow spiritual gifts,e. g., faith:Rom. 10:17—“belief cometh of hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ”; peace:Col. 3:15—“let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.”2 Thess. 2:16, 17—“now our lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father ... comfort your hearts”—two names with a verb in the singular intimate the oneness of the Father and the Son (Lillie).Eph. 5:5—“kingdom of Christ and God”;Col. 3:1—“Christ ... seated on the right hand of God”= participation in the sovereignty of the universe,—the Eastern divan held not only the monarch but his son;Rev. 20:6—“priests of God and of Christ”;22:3—“the throne of God and of the Lamb”;16—“the root and the offspring of David”= both the Lord of David and his son. Hackett:“As the dying Savior said to the Father,‘Into thy hands I commend my spirit’(Luke 23:46), so the dying Stephen said to the Savior,‘receive my spirit’(Acts 7:59).”(g) Equality with God is expressly claimed.Here we may refer to Jesus' testimony to himself, already treated of among the proofs of the supernatural character of the Scripture teaching (see pages189,190). Equality with God is not only claimed for himself by Jesus, but it is claimed for him by his apostles.[pg 313]John 5:18—“called God his own Father, making himself equal with God”;Phil. 2:6—“who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped”—counted not his equality with God a thing to be forcibly retained. Christ made and left upon his contemporaries the impression that he claimed to be God. The New Testament has left, upon the great mass of those who have read it, the impression that Jesus Christ claims to be God. If he is not God, he is a deceiver or is self-deceived, and, in either case,Christus, si non Deus, non bonus. See Nicoll, Life of Jesus Christ, 187.(h) Further proof of Christ's deity may be found in the application to him of the phrases:“Son of God,”“Image of God”; in the declarations of his oneness with God; in the attribution to him of the fulness of the Godhead.Mat. 26:63, 64—“I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou art the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said”—it is for this testimony that Christ dies.Col. 1:15—“the image of the invisible God”;Heb. 1:3—“the effulgence of his[the Father's]glory, and the very image of his substance”;John 10:30—“I and the Father are one”;14:9—“he that hath seen me hath seen the Father”;17:11, 22—“that they may be one, even as we are”—ἕ, not εἰς;unum, notunus; one substance, not one person.“Unumis antidote to the Arian,sumusto the Sabellian heresy.”Col. 2:9—“in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily”;cf.1:19—“for it was the pleasure of the Father that in him should all the fulness dwell;”or (marg.)“for the whole fulness of God was pleased to dwell in him.”John 16:15—“all things whatsoever the Father hath are mine”;17:10—“all things that are mine are thine, and thine are mine.”Meyer onJohn 10:30—“I and the Father are one”—“Here the Arian understanding of a mere ethical harmony as taught in the words‘are one’is unsatisfactory, because irrelevant to the exercise of power. Oneness of essence, though not contained in the words themselves, is, by the necessities of the argument, presupposed in them.”Dalman, The Words of Jesus:“Nowhere do we find that Jesus called himself the Son of God in such a sense as to suggest a merely religious and ethical relation to God—a relation which others also possessed and which they were capable of attaining or were destined to acquire.”We may add that while in the lower sense there are many“sons of God,”there is but one“only begotten Son.”(i) These proofs of Christ's deity from the New Testament are corroborated by Christian experience.Christian experience recognizes Christ as an absolutely perfect Savior, perfectly revealing the Godhead and worthy of unlimited worship and adoration; that is, it practically recognizes him as Deity. But Christian experience also recognizes that through Christ it has introduction and reconciliation to God as one distinct from Jesus Christ, as one who was alienated from the soul by its sin, but who is now reconciled through Jesus's death. In other words, while recognizing Jesus as God, we are also compelled to recognize a distinction between the Father and the Son through whom we come to the Father.Although this experience cannot be regarded as an independent witness to Jesus' claims, since it only tests the truth already made known in the Bible, still the irresistible impulse of every person whom Christ has saved to lift his Redeemer to the highest place, and bow before him in the lowliest worship, is strong evidence that only that interpretation of Scripture can be true which recognizes Christ's absolute Godhead. It is the church's consciousness of her Lord's divinity, indeed, and not mere speculation upon the relations of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, that has compelled the formulation of the Scripture doctrine of the Trinity.
Creation:John 1:3—“All things were made through him”;1 Cor. 8:6—“one lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things”;Col. 1:16—“all things have been created through him, and unto him”;Heb, 1:10—“Thou, Lord, in the beginning didst lay the foundation of the earth, And the heavens are the works of thy hands”;3:3, 4—“he that built all things is God”= Christ, the builder of the house of Israel, is the God who made all things;Rev. 3:14—“the beginning of the creation of God”(cf.Plato:“Mind is the ἀρχή of motion”).Upholding:Col. 1:17—“in him all things consist”(marg.“hold together”);Heb. 1:3—“upholding all things by the word of his power.”Raising the dead and judging the world:John 5:27-29—“authority to execute judgment ... all that are in the tombs shall hear his voice, and shall come forth”;Mat. 25:31, 32—“sit on the throne of his glory; and before him shall be gathered all the nations.”If our argument were addressed wholly to believers, we might also urge Christ's work in the world as Revealer of God and Redeemer from sin, as a proof of his deity. [On the works of Christ, see Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 153;per contra, see Examination of Liddon's Bampton Lectures, 72.][pg 311]Statements of Christ's creative and of his upholding activity are combined inJohn 1:3, 4—Πάντα δι᾽ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν. ὅ γέγονεν ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν—“All things were made through him; and without him was not anything made. That which hath been made was life in him”(marg.). Westcott:“It would be difficult to find a more complete consent of ancient authorities in favor of any reading than that which supports this punctuation.”Westcott therefore adopts it. The passage shows that the universe 1. exists within the bounds of Christ's being; 2. is not dead, but living; 3. derives its life from him; see Inge, Christian Mysticism, 46. Creation requires the divine presence, as well as the divine agency. God creates through Christ. All things were made, not ὐπὸ αὐτοῦ—“by him,”but δι᾽ αὐτοῦ—“through him.”Christian believers“Behind creation's throbbing screen Catch movements of the great Unseen.”Van Oosterzee, Christian Dogmatics, iv, lvi—“That which many a philosopher dimly conjectured, namely, that God did not produce the world in an absolute, immediate manner, but in some way or other, mediately, here presents itself to us with the lustre of revelation, and exalts so much the more the claim of the Son of God to our deep and reverential homage.”Would that such scientific men as Tyndall and Huxley might see Christ in nature, and, doing his will, might learn of the doctrine and be led to the Father! The humblest Christian who sees Christ's hand in the physical universe and in human history knows more of the secret of the universe than all the mere scientists put together.Col 1:17—“In him all things consist,”or“hold together,”means nothing less than that Christ is the principle of cohesion in the universe, making it a cosmos instead of a chaos. Tyndall said that the attraction of the sun upon the earth was as inconceivable as if a horse should draw a cart without traces. Sir Isaac Newton:“Gravitation must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws.”Lightfoot:“Gravitation is an expression of the mind of Christ.”Evolution also is a method of his operation. The laws of nature are the habits of Christ, and nature itself is but his steady and constant will. He binds together man and nature in one organic whole, so that we can speak of a“universe.”Without him there would be no intellectual bond, no uniformity of law, no unity of truth. He is the principle of induction, that enables us to argue from one thing to another. The medium of interaction between things is also the medium of intercommunication between minds. It is fitting that he who draws and holds together the physical and intellectual, should also draw and hold together the moral universe, drawing all men to himself (John 12:32) and so to God, and reconciling all things in heaven and earth (Col. 1:20). In Christ“the law appears, Drawn out in living characters,”because he is the ground and source of all law, both in nature and in humanity. See A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 6-12.(e) He receives honor and worship due only to God.In addition to the address of Thomas, in John 20:28, which we have already cited among the proofs that Jesus is expressly called God, and in which divine honor is paid to him, we may refer to the prayer and worship offered by the apostolic and post-apostolic church.John 5:23—“that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father”;14:14—“If ye shall ask me[so אB and Tisch. 8th ed.]anything in my name, that will I do”;Acts 7:59—“Stephen, calling upon the Lord, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”(cf.Luke 23:46—Jesus' words:“Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit”);Rom. 10:9—“confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord”;13—“whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved”(cf.Gen. 4:26—“Then began men to call upon the name of Jehovah”);1 Cor. 11:24, 25—“this do in remembrance of me”= worship of Christ;Heb. 1:6—“let all the angels of God worship him”;Phil. 2:10, 11—“in the name of Jesus every knee should bow ... every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord”;Rev. 5:12-14—“Worthy is the Lamb that hath been slain to receive the power....”;2 Pet. 3:18—“Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory”;2 Tim. 4:18 and Heb. 13:21—“to whom be the glory for ever and ever”—these ascriptions of eternal glory to Christ imply his deity. See also1 Pet. 3:15—“Sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord,”andEph. 5:21—“subjecting yourselves one to another in the fear of Christ.”Here is enjoined an attitude of mind towards Christ which would be idolatrous if Christ were not God. See Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 266, 366.Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 154—“In the eucharistic liturgy of the‘Teaching’we read:‘Hosanna to the God of David’; Ignatius styles him repeatedly God‘begotten and unbegotten, come in the flesh’; speaking once of‘the blood of God’, in evident allusion toActs 20:28; the epistle to Diognetus takes up the Pauline words and calls him the‘architect and world-builder by whom [God] created the heavens’, and[pg 312]names him God (chap. vii); Hermas speaks of him as‘the holy preëxistent Spirit, that created every creature’, which style of expression is followed by Justin, who calls him God, as also all the later great writers. In the second epistle of Clement (130-160, Harnack), we read:‘Brethren, it is fitting that you should think of Jesus Christ as of God—as the Judge of the living and the dead.’And Ignatius describes him as‘begotten and unbegotten, passible and impassible, ... who was before the eternities with the Father.’”These testimonies only give evidence that the Church Fathers saw in Scripture divine honor ascribed to Christ. They were but the precursors of a host of later interpreters. In a lull of the awful massacre of Armenian Christians at Sassouan, one of the Kurdish savages was heard to ask:“Who was that‘Lord Jesus’that they were calling to?”In their death agonies, the Christians, like Stephen of old, called upon the name of the Lord. Robert Browning quoted, in a letter to a lady in her last illness, the words of Charles Lamb, when“in a gay fancy with some friends as to how he and they would feel if the greatest of the dead were to appear suddenly in flesh and blood once more—on the first suggestion,‘And if Christ entered this room?’changed his tone at once and stuttered out as his manner was when moved:‘You see—if Shakespere entered, we should all rise; if He appeared, we must kneel.’”On prayer to Jesus, see Liddon, Bampton Lectures, note F; Bernard, in Hastings' Bib. Dict., 4:44; Zahn, Skizzen aus dem Leben der alten Kirche, 9, 288.(f) His name is associated with that of God upon a footing of equality.We do not here allude to 1 John 5:7 (the three heavenly witnesses), for the latter part of this verse is unquestionably spurious; but to the formula of baptism, to the apostolic benedictions, and to those passages in which eternal life is said to be dependent equally upon Christ and upon God, or in which spiritual gifts are attributed to Christ equally with the Father.The formula of baptism:Mat. 28:19—“baptising them into the name of the father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”;cf.Acts 2:38—“be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ”;Rom. 6:3—“baptized into Christ Jesus.”“In the common baptismal formula the Son and the Spirit are coördinated with the Father, and εἰς ὄνομα has religious significance.”It would be both absurd and profane to speak of baptizing into the name of the Father and of Moses.The apostolic benedictions:1 Cor. 1:3—“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”;2 Cor. 13:14—“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.”“In the benedictions grace is something divine, and Christ has power to impart it. But why do we find‘God,’instead of simply‘the Father,’as in the baptismal formula? Because it is only the Father who does not become man or have a historical existence. Elsewhere he is specially called‘God the Father,’to distinguish him from God the Son and God the Holy Spirit (Gal. 1:3;Eph. 3:14;6:23).”Other passages:John 5:23—“that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father”;John 14:1—“believe in God, believe also in me”—double imperative (so Westcott, Bible Com.,in loco);17:3—“this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ”;Mat. 11:27—“no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him”;1 Cor. 12:4-6—“the same Spirit ... the same Lord[Christ] ...the same God”[the Father] bestow spiritual gifts,e. g., faith:Rom. 10:17—“belief cometh of hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ”; peace:Col. 3:15—“let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.”2 Thess. 2:16, 17—“now our lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father ... comfort your hearts”—two names with a verb in the singular intimate the oneness of the Father and the Son (Lillie).Eph. 5:5—“kingdom of Christ and God”;Col. 3:1—“Christ ... seated on the right hand of God”= participation in the sovereignty of the universe,—the Eastern divan held not only the monarch but his son;Rev. 20:6—“priests of God and of Christ”;22:3—“the throne of God and of the Lamb”;16—“the root and the offspring of David”= both the Lord of David and his son. Hackett:“As the dying Savior said to the Father,‘Into thy hands I commend my spirit’(Luke 23:46), so the dying Stephen said to the Savior,‘receive my spirit’(Acts 7:59).”(g) Equality with God is expressly claimed.Here we may refer to Jesus' testimony to himself, already treated of among the proofs of the supernatural character of the Scripture teaching (see pages189,190). Equality with God is not only claimed for himself by Jesus, but it is claimed for him by his apostles.[pg 313]John 5:18—“called God his own Father, making himself equal with God”;Phil. 2:6—“who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped”—counted not his equality with God a thing to be forcibly retained. Christ made and left upon his contemporaries the impression that he claimed to be God. The New Testament has left, upon the great mass of those who have read it, the impression that Jesus Christ claims to be God. If he is not God, he is a deceiver or is self-deceived, and, in either case,Christus, si non Deus, non bonus. See Nicoll, Life of Jesus Christ, 187.(h) Further proof of Christ's deity may be found in the application to him of the phrases:“Son of God,”“Image of God”; in the declarations of his oneness with God; in the attribution to him of the fulness of the Godhead.Mat. 26:63, 64—“I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou art the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said”—it is for this testimony that Christ dies.Col. 1:15—“the image of the invisible God”;Heb. 1:3—“the effulgence of his[the Father's]glory, and the very image of his substance”;John 10:30—“I and the Father are one”;14:9—“he that hath seen me hath seen the Father”;17:11, 22—“that they may be one, even as we are”—ἕ, not εἰς;unum, notunus; one substance, not one person.“Unumis antidote to the Arian,sumusto the Sabellian heresy.”Col. 2:9—“in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily”;cf.1:19—“for it was the pleasure of the Father that in him should all the fulness dwell;”or (marg.)“for the whole fulness of God was pleased to dwell in him.”John 16:15—“all things whatsoever the Father hath are mine”;17:10—“all things that are mine are thine, and thine are mine.”Meyer onJohn 10:30—“I and the Father are one”—“Here the Arian understanding of a mere ethical harmony as taught in the words‘are one’is unsatisfactory, because irrelevant to the exercise of power. Oneness of essence, though not contained in the words themselves, is, by the necessities of the argument, presupposed in them.”Dalman, The Words of Jesus:“Nowhere do we find that Jesus called himself the Son of God in such a sense as to suggest a merely religious and ethical relation to God—a relation which others also possessed and which they were capable of attaining or were destined to acquire.”We may add that while in the lower sense there are many“sons of God,”there is but one“only begotten Son.”(i) These proofs of Christ's deity from the New Testament are corroborated by Christian experience.Christian experience recognizes Christ as an absolutely perfect Savior, perfectly revealing the Godhead and worthy of unlimited worship and adoration; that is, it practically recognizes him as Deity. But Christian experience also recognizes that through Christ it has introduction and reconciliation to God as one distinct from Jesus Christ, as one who was alienated from the soul by its sin, but who is now reconciled through Jesus's death. In other words, while recognizing Jesus as God, we are also compelled to recognize a distinction between the Father and the Son through whom we come to the Father.Although this experience cannot be regarded as an independent witness to Jesus' claims, since it only tests the truth already made known in the Bible, still the irresistible impulse of every person whom Christ has saved to lift his Redeemer to the highest place, and bow before him in the lowliest worship, is strong evidence that only that interpretation of Scripture can be true which recognizes Christ's absolute Godhead. It is the church's consciousness of her Lord's divinity, indeed, and not mere speculation upon the relations of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, that has compelled the formulation of the Scripture doctrine of the Trinity.
Creation:John 1:3—“All things were made through him”;1 Cor. 8:6—“one lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things”;Col. 1:16—“all things have been created through him, and unto him”;Heb, 1:10—“Thou, Lord, in the beginning didst lay the foundation of the earth, And the heavens are the works of thy hands”;3:3, 4—“he that built all things is God”= Christ, the builder of the house of Israel, is the God who made all things;Rev. 3:14—“the beginning of the creation of God”(cf.Plato:“Mind is the ἀρχή of motion”).Upholding:Col. 1:17—“in him all things consist”(marg.“hold together”);Heb. 1:3—“upholding all things by the word of his power.”Raising the dead and judging the world:John 5:27-29—“authority to execute judgment ... all that are in the tombs shall hear his voice, and shall come forth”;Mat. 25:31, 32—“sit on the throne of his glory; and before him shall be gathered all the nations.”If our argument were addressed wholly to believers, we might also urge Christ's work in the world as Revealer of God and Redeemer from sin, as a proof of his deity. [On the works of Christ, see Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 153;per contra, see Examination of Liddon's Bampton Lectures, 72.][pg 311]Statements of Christ's creative and of his upholding activity are combined inJohn 1:3, 4—Πάντα δι᾽ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν. ὅ γέγονεν ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν—“All things were made through him; and without him was not anything made. That which hath been made was life in him”(marg.). Westcott:“It would be difficult to find a more complete consent of ancient authorities in favor of any reading than that which supports this punctuation.”Westcott therefore adopts it. The passage shows that the universe 1. exists within the bounds of Christ's being; 2. is not dead, but living; 3. derives its life from him; see Inge, Christian Mysticism, 46. Creation requires the divine presence, as well as the divine agency. God creates through Christ. All things were made, not ὐπὸ αὐτοῦ—“by him,”but δι᾽ αὐτοῦ—“through him.”Christian believers“Behind creation's throbbing screen Catch movements of the great Unseen.”Van Oosterzee, Christian Dogmatics, iv, lvi—“That which many a philosopher dimly conjectured, namely, that God did not produce the world in an absolute, immediate manner, but in some way or other, mediately, here presents itself to us with the lustre of revelation, and exalts so much the more the claim of the Son of God to our deep and reverential homage.”Would that such scientific men as Tyndall and Huxley might see Christ in nature, and, doing his will, might learn of the doctrine and be led to the Father! The humblest Christian who sees Christ's hand in the physical universe and in human history knows more of the secret of the universe than all the mere scientists put together.Col 1:17—“In him all things consist,”or“hold together,”means nothing less than that Christ is the principle of cohesion in the universe, making it a cosmos instead of a chaos. Tyndall said that the attraction of the sun upon the earth was as inconceivable as if a horse should draw a cart without traces. Sir Isaac Newton:“Gravitation must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws.”Lightfoot:“Gravitation is an expression of the mind of Christ.”Evolution also is a method of his operation. The laws of nature are the habits of Christ, and nature itself is but his steady and constant will. He binds together man and nature in one organic whole, so that we can speak of a“universe.”Without him there would be no intellectual bond, no uniformity of law, no unity of truth. He is the principle of induction, that enables us to argue from one thing to another. The medium of interaction between things is also the medium of intercommunication between minds. It is fitting that he who draws and holds together the physical and intellectual, should also draw and hold together the moral universe, drawing all men to himself (John 12:32) and so to God, and reconciling all things in heaven and earth (Col. 1:20). In Christ“the law appears, Drawn out in living characters,”because he is the ground and source of all law, both in nature and in humanity. See A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 6-12.(e) He receives honor and worship due only to God.In addition to the address of Thomas, in John 20:28, which we have already cited among the proofs that Jesus is expressly called God, and in which divine honor is paid to him, we may refer to the prayer and worship offered by the apostolic and post-apostolic church.John 5:23—“that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father”;14:14—“If ye shall ask me[so אB and Tisch. 8th ed.]anything in my name, that will I do”;Acts 7:59—“Stephen, calling upon the Lord, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”(cf.Luke 23:46—Jesus' words:“Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit”);Rom. 10:9—“confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord”;13—“whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved”(cf.Gen. 4:26—“Then began men to call upon the name of Jehovah”);1 Cor. 11:24, 25—“this do in remembrance of me”= worship of Christ;Heb. 1:6—“let all the angels of God worship him”;Phil. 2:10, 11—“in the name of Jesus every knee should bow ... every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord”;Rev. 5:12-14—“Worthy is the Lamb that hath been slain to receive the power....”;2 Pet. 3:18—“Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory”;2 Tim. 4:18 and Heb. 13:21—“to whom be the glory for ever and ever”—these ascriptions of eternal glory to Christ imply his deity. See also1 Pet. 3:15—“Sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord,”andEph. 5:21—“subjecting yourselves one to another in the fear of Christ.”Here is enjoined an attitude of mind towards Christ which would be idolatrous if Christ were not God. See Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 266, 366.Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 154—“In the eucharistic liturgy of the‘Teaching’we read:‘Hosanna to the God of David’; Ignatius styles him repeatedly God‘begotten and unbegotten, come in the flesh’; speaking once of‘the blood of God’, in evident allusion toActs 20:28; the epistle to Diognetus takes up the Pauline words and calls him the‘architect and world-builder by whom [God] created the heavens’, and[pg 312]names him God (chap. vii); Hermas speaks of him as‘the holy preëxistent Spirit, that created every creature’, which style of expression is followed by Justin, who calls him God, as also all the later great writers. In the second epistle of Clement (130-160, Harnack), we read:‘Brethren, it is fitting that you should think of Jesus Christ as of God—as the Judge of the living and the dead.’And Ignatius describes him as‘begotten and unbegotten, passible and impassible, ... who was before the eternities with the Father.’”These testimonies only give evidence that the Church Fathers saw in Scripture divine honor ascribed to Christ. They were but the precursors of a host of later interpreters. In a lull of the awful massacre of Armenian Christians at Sassouan, one of the Kurdish savages was heard to ask:“Who was that‘Lord Jesus’that they were calling to?”In their death agonies, the Christians, like Stephen of old, called upon the name of the Lord. Robert Browning quoted, in a letter to a lady in her last illness, the words of Charles Lamb, when“in a gay fancy with some friends as to how he and they would feel if the greatest of the dead were to appear suddenly in flesh and blood once more—on the first suggestion,‘And if Christ entered this room?’changed his tone at once and stuttered out as his manner was when moved:‘You see—if Shakespere entered, we should all rise; if He appeared, we must kneel.’”On prayer to Jesus, see Liddon, Bampton Lectures, note F; Bernard, in Hastings' Bib. Dict., 4:44; Zahn, Skizzen aus dem Leben der alten Kirche, 9, 288.(f) His name is associated with that of God upon a footing of equality.We do not here allude to 1 John 5:7 (the three heavenly witnesses), for the latter part of this verse is unquestionably spurious; but to the formula of baptism, to the apostolic benedictions, and to those passages in which eternal life is said to be dependent equally upon Christ and upon God, or in which spiritual gifts are attributed to Christ equally with the Father.The formula of baptism:Mat. 28:19—“baptising them into the name of the father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”;cf.Acts 2:38—“be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ”;Rom. 6:3—“baptized into Christ Jesus.”“In the common baptismal formula the Son and the Spirit are coördinated with the Father, and εἰς ὄνομα has religious significance.”It would be both absurd and profane to speak of baptizing into the name of the Father and of Moses.The apostolic benedictions:1 Cor. 1:3—“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”;2 Cor. 13:14—“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.”“In the benedictions grace is something divine, and Christ has power to impart it. But why do we find‘God,’instead of simply‘the Father,’as in the baptismal formula? Because it is only the Father who does not become man or have a historical existence. Elsewhere he is specially called‘God the Father,’to distinguish him from God the Son and God the Holy Spirit (Gal. 1:3;Eph. 3:14;6:23).”Other passages:John 5:23—“that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father”;John 14:1—“believe in God, believe also in me”—double imperative (so Westcott, Bible Com.,in loco);17:3—“this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ”;Mat. 11:27—“no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him”;1 Cor. 12:4-6—“the same Spirit ... the same Lord[Christ] ...the same God”[the Father] bestow spiritual gifts,e. g., faith:Rom. 10:17—“belief cometh of hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ”; peace:Col. 3:15—“let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.”2 Thess. 2:16, 17—“now our lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father ... comfort your hearts”—two names with a verb in the singular intimate the oneness of the Father and the Son (Lillie).Eph. 5:5—“kingdom of Christ and God”;Col. 3:1—“Christ ... seated on the right hand of God”= participation in the sovereignty of the universe,—the Eastern divan held not only the monarch but his son;Rev. 20:6—“priests of God and of Christ”;22:3—“the throne of God and of the Lamb”;16—“the root and the offspring of David”= both the Lord of David and his son. Hackett:“As the dying Savior said to the Father,‘Into thy hands I commend my spirit’(Luke 23:46), so the dying Stephen said to the Savior,‘receive my spirit’(Acts 7:59).”(g) Equality with God is expressly claimed.Here we may refer to Jesus' testimony to himself, already treated of among the proofs of the supernatural character of the Scripture teaching (see pages189,190). Equality with God is not only claimed for himself by Jesus, but it is claimed for him by his apostles.[pg 313]John 5:18—“called God his own Father, making himself equal with God”;Phil. 2:6—“who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped”—counted not his equality with God a thing to be forcibly retained. Christ made and left upon his contemporaries the impression that he claimed to be God. The New Testament has left, upon the great mass of those who have read it, the impression that Jesus Christ claims to be God. If he is not God, he is a deceiver or is self-deceived, and, in either case,Christus, si non Deus, non bonus. See Nicoll, Life of Jesus Christ, 187.(h) Further proof of Christ's deity may be found in the application to him of the phrases:“Son of God,”“Image of God”; in the declarations of his oneness with God; in the attribution to him of the fulness of the Godhead.Mat. 26:63, 64—“I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou art the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said”—it is for this testimony that Christ dies.Col. 1:15—“the image of the invisible God”;Heb. 1:3—“the effulgence of his[the Father's]glory, and the very image of his substance”;John 10:30—“I and the Father are one”;14:9—“he that hath seen me hath seen the Father”;17:11, 22—“that they may be one, even as we are”—ἕ, not εἰς;unum, notunus; one substance, not one person.“Unumis antidote to the Arian,sumusto the Sabellian heresy.”Col. 2:9—“in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily”;cf.1:19—“for it was the pleasure of the Father that in him should all the fulness dwell;”or (marg.)“for the whole fulness of God was pleased to dwell in him.”John 16:15—“all things whatsoever the Father hath are mine”;17:10—“all things that are mine are thine, and thine are mine.”Meyer onJohn 10:30—“I and the Father are one”—“Here the Arian understanding of a mere ethical harmony as taught in the words‘are one’is unsatisfactory, because irrelevant to the exercise of power. Oneness of essence, though not contained in the words themselves, is, by the necessities of the argument, presupposed in them.”Dalman, The Words of Jesus:“Nowhere do we find that Jesus called himself the Son of God in such a sense as to suggest a merely religious and ethical relation to God—a relation which others also possessed and which they were capable of attaining or were destined to acquire.”We may add that while in the lower sense there are many“sons of God,”there is but one“only begotten Son.”(i) These proofs of Christ's deity from the New Testament are corroborated by Christian experience.Christian experience recognizes Christ as an absolutely perfect Savior, perfectly revealing the Godhead and worthy of unlimited worship and adoration; that is, it practically recognizes him as Deity. But Christian experience also recognizes that through Christ it has introduction and reconciliation to God as one distinct from Jesus Christ, as one who was alienated from the soul by its sin, but who is now reconciled through Jesus's death. In other words, while recognizing Jesus as God, we are also compelled to recognize a distinction between the Father and the Son through whom we come to the Father.Although this experience cannot be regarded as an independent witness to Jesus' claims, since it only tests the truth already made known in the Bible, still the irresistible impulse of every person whom Christ has saved to lift his Redeemer to the highest place, and bow before him in the lowliest worship, is strong evidence that only that interpretation of Scripture can be true which recognizes Christ's absolute Godhead. It is the church's consciousness of her Lord's divinity, indeed, and not mere speculation upon the relations of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, that has compelled the formulation of the Scripture doctrine of the Trinity.
Creation:John 1:3—“All things were made through him”;1 Cor. 8:6—“one lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things”;Col. 1:16—“all things have been created through him, and unto him”;Heb, 1:10—“Thou, Lord, in the beginning didst lay the foundation of the earth, And the heavens are the works of thy hands”;3:3, 4—“he that built all things is God”= Christ, the builder of the house of Israel, is the God who made all things;Rev. 3:14—“the beginning of the creation of God”(cf.Plato:“Mind is the ἀρχή of motion”).Upholding:Col. 1:17—“in him all things consist”(marg.“hold together”);Heb. 1:3—“upholding all things by the word of his power.”Raising the dead and judging the world:John 5:27-29—“authority to execute judgment ... all that are in the tombs shall hear his voice, and shall come forth”;Mat. 25:31, 32—“sit on the throne of his glory; and before him shall be gathered all the nations.”If our argument were addressed wholly to believers, we might also urge Christ's work in the world as Revealer of God and Redeemer from sin, as a proof of his deity. [On the works of Christ, see Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 153;per contra, see Examination of Liddon's Bampton Lectures, 72.][pg 311]Statements of Christ's creative and of his upholding activity are combined inJohn 1:3, 4—Πάντα δι᾽ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν. ὅ γέγονεν ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν—“All things were made through him; and without him was not anything made. That which hath been made was life in him”(marg.). Westcott:“It would be difficult to find a more complete consent of ancient authorities in favor of any reading than that which supports this punctuation.”Westcott therefore adopts it. The passage shows that the universe 1. exists within the bounds of Christ's being; 2. is not dead, but living; 3. derives its life from him; see Inge, Christian Mysticism, 46. Creation requires the divine presence, as well as the divine agency. God creates through Christ. All things were made, not ὐπὸ αὐτοῦ—“by him,”but δι᾽ αὐτοῦ—“through him.”Christian believers“Behind creation's throbbing screen Catch movements of the great Unseen.”Van Oosterzee, Christian Dogmatics, iv, lvi—“That which many a philosopher dimly conjectured, namely, that God did not produce the world in an absolute, immediate manner, but in some way or other, mediately, here presents itself to us with the lustre of revelation, and exalts so much the more the claim of the Son of God to our deep and reverential homage.”Would that such scientific men as Tyndall and Huxley might see Christ in nature, and, doing his will, might learn of the doctrine and be led to the Father! The humblest Christian who sees Christ's hand in the physical universe and in human history knows more of the secret of the universe than all the mere scientists put together.Col 1:17—“In him all things consist,”or“hold together,”means nothing less than that Christ is the principle of cohesion in the universe, making it a cosmos instead of a chaos. Tyndall said that the attraction of the sun upon the earth was as inconceivable as if a horse should draw a cart without traces. Sir Isaac Newton:“Gravitation must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws.”Lightfoot:“Gravitation is an expression of the mind of Christ.”Evolution also is a method of his operation. The laws of nature are the habits of Christ, and nature itself is but his steady and constant will. He binds together man and nature in one organic whole, so that we can speak of a“universe.”Without him there would be no intellectual bond, no uniformity of law, no unity of truth. He is the principle of induction, that enables us to argue from one thing to another. The medium of interaction between things is also the medium of intercommunication between minds. It is fitting that he who draws and holds together the physical and intellectual, should also draw and hold together the moral universe, drawing all men to himself (John 12:32) and so to God, and reconciling all things in heaven and earth (Col. 1:20). In Christ“the law appears, Drawn out in living characters,”because he is the ground and source of all law, both in nature and in humanity. See A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 6-12.(e) He receives honor and worship due only to God.In addition to the address of Thomas, in John 20:28, which we have already cited among the proofs that Jesus is expressly called God, and in which divine honor is paid to him, we may refer to the prayer and worship offered by the apostolic and post-apostolic church.John 5:23—“that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father”;14:14—“If ye shall ask me[so אB and Tisch. 8th ed.]anything in my name, that will I do”;Acts 7:59—“Stephen, calling upon the Lord, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”(cf.Luke 23:46—Jesus' words:“Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit”);Rom. 10:9—“confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord”;13—“whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved”(cf.Gen. 4:26—“Then began men to call upon the name of Jehovah”);1 Cor. 11:24, 25—“this do in remembrance of me”= worship of Christ;Heb. 1:6—“let all the angels of God worship him”;Phil. 2:10, 11—“in the name of Jesus every knee should bow ... every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord”;Rev. 5:12-14—“Worthy is the Lamb that hath been slain to receive the power....”;2 Pet. 3:18—“Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory”;2 Tim. 4:18 and Heb. 13:21—“to whom be the glory for ever and ever”—these ascriptions of eternal glory to Christ imply his deity. See also1 Pet. 3:15—“Sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord,”andEph. 5:21—“subjecting yourselves one to another in the fear of Christ.”Here is enjoined an attitude of mind towards Christ which would be idolatrous if Christ were not God. See Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 266, 366.Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 154—“In the eucharistic liturgy of the‘Teaching’we read:‘Hosanna to the God of David’; Ignatius styles him repeatedly God‘begotten and unbegotten, come in the flesh’; speaking once of‘the blood of God’, in evident allusion toActs 20:28; the epistle to Diognetus takes up the Pauline words and calls him the‘architect and world-builder by whom [God] created the heavens’, and[pg 312]names him God (chap. vii); Hermas speaks of him as‘the holy preëxistent Spirit, that created every creature’, which style of expression is followed by Justin, who calls him God, as also all the later great writers. In the second epistle of Clement (130-160, Harnack), we read:‘Brethren, it is fitting that you should think of Jesus Christ as of God—as the Judge of the living and the dead.’And Ignatius describes him as‘begotten and unbegotten, passible and impassible, ... who was before the eternities with the Father.’”These testimonies only give evidence that the Church Fathers saw in Scripture divine honor ascribed to Christ. They were but the precursors of a host of later interpreters. In a lull of the awful massacre of Armenian Christians at Sassouan, one of the Kurdish savages was heard to ask:“Who was that‘Lord Jesus’that they were calling to?”In their death agonies, the Christians, like Stephen of old, called upon the name of the Lord. Robert Browning quoted, in a letter to a lady in her last illness, the words of Charles Lamb, when“in a gay fancy with some friends as to how he and they would feel if the greatest of the dead were to appear suddenly in flesh and blood once more—on the first suggestion,‘And if Christ entered this room?’changed his tone at once and stuttered out as his manner was when moved:‘You see—if Shakespere entered, we should all rise; if He appeared, we must kneel.’”On prayer to Jesus, see Liddon, Bampton Lectures, note F; Bernard, in Hastings' Bib. Dict., 4:44; Zahn, Skizzen aus dem Leben der alten Kirche, 9, 288.(f) His name is associated with that of God upon a footing of equality.We do not here allude to 1 John 5:7 (the three heavenly witnesses), for the latter part of this verse is unquestionably spurious; but to the formula of baptism, to the apostolic benedictions, and to those passages in which eternal life is said to be dependent equally upon Christ and upon God, or in which spiritual gifts are attributed to Christ equally with the Father.The formula of baptism:Mat. 28:19—“baptising them into the name of the father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”;cf.Acts 2:38—“be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ”;Rom. 6:3—“baptized into Christ Jesus.”“In the common baptismal formula the Son and the Spirit are coördinated with the Father, and εἰς ὄνομα has religious significance.”It would be both absurd and profane to speak of baptizing into the name of the Father and of Moses.The apostolic benedictions:1 Cor. 1:3—“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”;2 Cor. 13:14—“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.”“In the benedictions grace is something divine, and Christ has power to impart it. But why do we find‘God,’instead of simply‘the Father,’as in the baptismal formula? Because it is only the Father who does not become man or have a historical existence. Elsewhere he is specially called‘God the Father,’to distinguish him from God the Son and God the Holy Spirit (Gal. 1:3;Eph. 3:14;6:23).”Other passages:John 5:23—“that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father”;John 14:1—“believe in God, believe also in me”—double imperative (so Westcott, Bible Com.,in loco);17:3—“this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ”;Mat. 11:27—“no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him”;1 Cor. 12:4-6—“the same Spirit ... the same Lord[Christ] ...the same God”[the Father] bestow spiritual gifts,e. g., faith:Rom. 10:17—“belief cometh of hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ”; peace:Col. 3:15—“let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.”2 Thess. 2:16, 17—“now our lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father ... comfort your hearts”—two names with a verb in the singular intimate the oneness of the Father and the Son (Lillie).Eph. 5:5—“kingdom of Christ and God”;Col. 3:1—“Christ ... seated on the right hand of God”= participation in the sovereignty of the universe,—the Eastern divan held not only the monarch but his son;Rev. 20:6—“priests of God and of Christ”;22:3—“the throne of God and of the Lamb”;16—“the root and the offspring of David”= both the Lord of David and his son. Hackett:“As the dying Savior said to the Father,‘Into thy hands I commend my spirit’(Luke 23:46), so the dying Stephen said to the Savior,‘receive my spirit’(Acts 7:59).”(g) Equality with God is expressly claimed.Here we may refer to Jesus' testimony to himself, already treated of among the proofs of the supernatural character of the Scripture teaching (see pages189,190). Equality with God is not only claimed for himself by Jesus, but it is claimed for him by his apostles.[pg 313]John 5:18—“called God his own Father, making himself equal with God”;Phil. 2:6—“who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped”—counted not his equality with God a thing to be forcibly retained. Christ made and left upon his contemporaries the impression that he claimed to be God. The New Testament has left, upon the great mass of those who have read it, the impression that Jesus Christ claims to be God. If he is not God, he is a deceiver or is self-deceived, and, in either case,Christus, si non Deus, non bonus. See Nicoll, Life of Jesus Christ, 187.(h) Further proof of Christ's deity may be found in the application to him of the phrases:“Son of God,”“Image of God”; in the declarations of his oneness with God; in the attribution to him of the fulness of the Godhead.Mat. 26:63, 64—“I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou art the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said”—it is for this testimony that Christ dies.Col. 1:15—“the image of the invisible God”;Heb. 1:3—“the effulgence of his[the Father's]glory, and the very image of his substance”;John 10:30—“I and the Father are one”;14:9—“he that hath seen me hath seen the Father”;17:11, 22—“that they may be one, even as we are”—ἕ, not εἰς;unum, notunus; one substance, not one person.“Unumis antidote to the Arian,sumusto the Sabellian heresy.”Col. 2:9—“in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily”;cf.1:19—“for it was the pleasure of the Father that in him should all the fulness dwell;”or (marg.)“for the whole fulness of God was pleased to dwell in him.”John 16:15—“all things whatsoever the Father hath are mine”;17:10—“all things that are mine are thine, and thine are mine.”Meyer onJohn 10:30—“I and the Father are one”—“Here the Arian understanding of a mere ethical harmony as taught in the words‘are one’is unsatisfactory, because irrelevant to the exercise of power. Oneness of essence, though not contained in the words themselves, is, by the necessities of the argument, presupposed in them.”Dalman, The Words of Jesus:“Nowhere do we find that Jesus called himself the Son of God in such a sense as to suggest a merely religious and ethical relation to God—a relation which others also possessed and which they were capable of attaining or were destined to acquire.”We may add that while in the lower sense there are many“sons of God,”there is but one“only begotten Son.”(i) These proofs of Christ's deity from the New Testament are corroborated by Christian experience.Christian experience recognizes Christ as an absolutely perfect Savior, perfectly revealing the Godhead and worthy of unlimited worship and adoration; that is, it practically recognizes him as Deity. But Christian experience also recognizes that through Christ it has introduction and reconciliation to God as one distinct from Jesus Christ, as one who was alienated from the soul by its sin, but who is now reconciled through Jesus's death. In other words, while recognizing Jesus as God, we are also compelled to recognize a distinction between the Father and the Son through whom we come to the Father.Although this experience cannot be regarded as an independent witness to Jesus' claims, since it only tests the truth already made known in the Bible, still the irresistible impulse of every person whom Christ has saved to lift his Redeemer to the highest place, and bow before him in the lowliest worship, is strong evidence that only that interpretation of Scripture can be true which recognizes Christ's absolute Godhead. It is the church's consciousness of her Lord's divinity, indeed, and not mere speculation upon the relations of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, that has compelled the formulation of the Scripture doctrine of the Trinity.
Creation:John 1:3—“All things were made through him”;1 Cor. 8:6—“one lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things”;Col. 1:16—“all things have been created through him, and unto him”;Heb, 1:10—“Thou, Lord, in the beginning didst lay the foundation of the earth, And the heavens are the works of thy hands”;3:3, 4—“he that built all things is God”= Christ, the builder of the house of Israel, is the God who made all things;Rev. 3:14—“the beginning of the creation of God”(cf.Plato:“Mind is the ἀρχή of motion”).Upholding:Col. 1:17—“in him all things consist”(marg.“hold together”);Heb. 1:3—“upholding all things by the word of his power.”Raising the dead and judging the world:John 5:27-29—“authority to execute judgment ... all that are in the tombs shall hear his voice, and shall come forth”;Mat. 25:31, 32—“sit on the throne of his glory; and before him shall be gathered all the nations.”If our argument were addressed wholly to believers, we might also urge Christ's work in the world as Revealer of God and Redeemer from sin, as a proof of his deity. [On the works of Christ, see Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 153;per contra, see Examination of Liddon's Bampton Lectures, 72.][pg 311]Statements of Christ's creative and of his upholding activity are combined inJohn 1:3, 4—Πάντα δι᾽ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν. ὅ γέγονεν ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν—“All things were made through him; and without him was not anything made. That which hath been made was life in him”(marg.). Westcott:“It would be difficult to find a more complete consent of ancient authorities in favor of any reading than that which supports this punctuation.”Westcott therefore adopts it. The passage shows that the universe 1. exists within the bounds of Christ's being; 2. is not dead, but living; 3. derives its life from him; see Inge, Christian Mysticism, 46. Creation requires the divine presence, as well as the divine agency. God creates through Christ. All things were made, not ὐπὸ αὐτοῦ—“by him,”but δι᾽ αὐτοῦ—“through him.”Christian believers“Behind creation's throbbing screen Catch movements of the great Unseen.”Van Oosterzee, Christian Dogmatics, iv, lvi—“That which many a philosopher dimly conjectured, namely, that God did not produce the world in an absolute, immediate manner, but in some way or other, mediately, here presents itself to us with the lustre of revelation, and exalts so much the more the claim of the Son of God to our deep and reverential homage.”Would that such scientific men as Tyndall and Huxley might see Christ in nature, and, doing his will, might learn of the doctrine and be led to the Father! The humblest Christian who sees Christ's hand in the physical universe and in human history knows more of the secret of the universe than all the mere scientists put together.Col 1:17—“In him all things consist,”or“hold together,”means nothing less than that Christ is the principle of cohesion in the universe, making it a cosmos instead of a chaos. Tyndall said that the attraction of the sun upon the earth was as inconceivable as if a horse should draw a cart without traces. Sir Isaac Newton:“Gravitation must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws.”Lightfoot:“Gravitation is an expression of the mind of Christ.”Evolution also is a method of his operation. The laws of nature are the habits of Christ, and nature itself is but his steady and constant will. He binds together man and nature in one organic whole, so that we can speak of a“universe.”Without him there would be no intellectual bond, no uniformity of law, no unity of truth. He is the principle of induction, that enables us to argue from one thing to another. The medium of interaction between things is also the medium of intercommunication between minds. It is fitting that he who draws and holds together the physical and intellectual, should also draw and hold together the moral universe, drawing all men to himself (John 12:32) and so to God, and reconciling all things in heaven and earth (Col. 1:20). In Christ“the law appears, Drawn out in living characters,”because he is the ground and source of all law, both in nature and in humanity. See A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 6-12.(e) He receives honor and worship due only to God.In addition to the address of Thomas, in John 20:28, which we have already cited among the proofs that Jesus is expressly called God, and in which divine honor is paid to him, we may refer to the prayer and worship offered by the apostolic and post-apostolic church.John 5:23—“that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father”;14:14—“If ye shall ask me[so אB and Tisch. 8th ed.]anything in my name, that will I do”;Acts 7:59—“Stephen, calling upon the Lord, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”(cf.Luke 23:46—Jesus' words:“Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit”);Rom. 10:9—“confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord”;13—“whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved”(cf.Gen. 4:26—“Then began men to call upon the name of Jehovah”);1 Cor. 11:24, 25—“this do in remembrance of me”= worship of Christ;Heb. 1:6—“let all the angels of God worship him”;Phil. 2:10, 11—“in the name of Jesus every knee should bow ... every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord”;Rev. 5:12-14—“Worthy is the Lamb that hath been slain to receive the power....”;2 Pet. 3:18—“Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory”;2 Tim. 4:18 and Heb. 13:21—“to whom be the glory for ever and ever”—these ascriptions of eternal glory to Christ imply his deity. See also1 Pet. 3:15—“Sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord,”andEph. 5:21—“subjecting yourselves one to another in the fear of Christ.”Here is enjoined an attitude of mind towards Christ which would be idolatrous if Christ were not God. See Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 266, 366.Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 154—“In the eucharistic liturgy of the‘Teaching’we read:‘Hosanna to the God of David’; Ignatius styles him repeatedly God‘begotten and unbegotten, come in the flesh’; speaking once of‘the blood of God’, in evident allusion toActs 20:28; the epistle to Diognetus takes up the Pauline words and calls him the‘architect and world-builder by whom [God] created the heavens’, and[pg 312]names him God (chap. vii); Hermas speaks of him as‘the holy preëxistent Spirit, that created every creature’, which style of expression is followed by Justin, who calls him God, as also all the later great writers. In the second epistle of Clement (130-160, Harnack), we read:‘Brethren, it is fitting that you should think of Jesus Christ as of God—as the Judge of the living and the dead.’And Ignatius describes him as‘begotten and unbegotten, passible and impassible, ... who was before the eternities with the Father.’”These testimonies only give evidence that the Church Fathers saw in Scripture divine honor ascribed to Christ. They were but the precursors of a host of later interpreters. In a lull of the awful massacre of Armenian Christians at Sassouan, one of the Kurdish savages was heard to ask:“Who was that‘Lord Jesus’that they were calling to?”In their death agonies, the Christians, like Stephen of old, called upon the name of the Lord. Robert Browning quoted, in a letter to a lady in her last illness, the words of Charles Lamb, when“in a gay fancy with some friends as to how he and they would feel if the greatest of the dead were to appear suddenly in flesh and blood once more—on the first suggestion,‘And if Christ entered this room?’changed his tone at once and stuttered out as his manner was when moved:‘You see—if Shakespere entered, we should all rise; if He appeared, we must kneel.’”On prayer to Jesus, see Liddon, Bampton Lectures, note F; Bernard, in Hastings' Bib. Dict., 4:44; Zahn, Skizzen aus dem Leben der alten Kirche, 9, 288.(f) His name is associated with that of God upon a footing of equality.We do not here allude to 1 John 5:7 (the three heavenly witnesses), for the latter part of this verse is unquestionably spurious; but to the formula of baptism, to the apostolic benedictions, and to those passages in which eternal life is said to be dependent equally upon Christ and upon God, or in which spiritual gifts are attributed to Christ equally with the Father.The formula of baptism:Mat. 28:19—“baptising them into the name of the father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”;cf.Acts 2:38—“be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ”;Rom. 6:3—“baptized into Christ Jesus.”“In the common baptismal formula the Son and the Spirit are coördinated with the Father, and εἰς ὄνομα has religious significance.”It would be both absurd and profane to speak of baptizing into the name of the Father and of Moses.The apostolic benedictions:1 Cor. 1:3—“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”;2 Cor. 13:14—“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.”“In the benedictions grace is something divine, and Christ has power to impart it. But why do we find‘God,’instead of simply‘the Father,’as in the baptismal formula? Because it is only the Father who does not become man or have a historical existence. Elsewhere he is specially called‘God the Father,’to distinguish him from God the Son and God the Holy Spirit (Gal. 1:3;Eph. 3:14;6:23).”Other passages:John 5:23—“that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father”;John 14:1—“believe in God, believe also in me”—double imperative (so Westcott, Bible Com.,in loco);17:3—“this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ”;Mat. 11:27—“no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him”;1 Cor. 12:4-6—“the same Spirit ... the same Lord[Christ] ...the same God”[the Father] bestow spiritual gifts,e. g., faith:Rom. 10:17—“belief cometh of hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ”; peace:Col. 3:15—“let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.”2 Thess. 2:16, 17—“now our lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father ... comfort your hearts”—two names with a verb in the singular intimate the oneness of the Father and the Son (Lillie).Eph. 5:5—“kingdom of Christ and God”;Col. 3:1—“Christ ... seated on the right hand of God”= participation in the sovereignty of the universe,—the Eastern divan held not only the monarch but his son;Rev. 20:6—“priests of God and of Christ”;22:3—“the throne of God and of the Lamb”;16—“the root and the offspring of David”= both the Lord of David and his son. Hackett:“As the dying Savior said to the Father,‘Into thy hands I commend my spirit’(Luke 23:46), so the dying Stephen said to the Savior,‘receive my spirit’(Acts 7:59).”(g) Equality with God is expressly claimed.Here we may refer to Jesus' testimony to himself, already treated of among the proofs of the supernatural character of the Scripture teaching (see pages189,190). Equality with God is not only claimed for himself by Jesus, but it is claimed for him by his apostles.[pg 313]John 5:18—“called God his own Father, making himself equal with God”;Phil. 2:6—“who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped”—counted not his equality with God a thing to be forcibly retained. Christ made and left upon his contemporaries the impression that he claimed to be God. The New Testament has left, upon the great mass of those who have read it, the impression that Jesus Christ claims to be God. If he is not God, he is a deceiver or is self-deceived, and, in either case,Christus, si non Deus, non bonus. See Nicoll, Life of Jesus Christ, 187.(h) Further proof of Christ's deity may be found in the application to him of the phrases:“Son of God,”“Image of God”; in the declarations of his oneness with God; in the attribution to him of the fulness of the Godhead.Mat. 26:63, 64—“I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou art the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said”—it is for this testimony that Christ dies.Col. 1:15—“the image of the invisible God”;Heb. 1:3—“the effulgence of his[the Father's]glory, and the very image of his substance”;John 10:30—“I and the Father are one”;14:9—“he that hath seen me hath seen the Father”;17:11, 22—“that they may be one, even as we are”—ἕ, not εἰς;unum, notunus; one substance, not one person.“Unumis antidote to the Arian,sumusto the Sabellian heresy.”Col. 2:9—“in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily”;cf.1:19—“for it was the pleasure of the Father that in him should all the fulness dwell;”or (marg.)“for the whole fulness of God was pleased to dwell in him.”John 16:15—“all things whatsoever the Father hath are mine”;17:10—“all things that are mine are thine, and thine are mine.”Meyer onJohn 10:30—“I and the Father are one”—“Here the Arian understanding of a mere ethical harmony as taught in the words‘are one’is unsatisfactory, because irrelevant to the exercise of power. Oneness of essence, though not contained in the words themselves, is, by the necessities of the argument, presupposed in them.”Dalman, The Words of Jesus:“Nowhere do we find that Jesus called himself the Son of God in such a sense as to suggest a merely religious and ethical relation to God—a relation which others also possessed and which they were capable of attaining or were destined to acquire.”We may add that while in the lower sense there are many“sons of God,”there is but one“only begotten Son.”(i) These proofs of Christ's deity from the New Testament are corroborated by Christian experience.Christian experience recognizes Christ as an absolutely perfect Savior, perfectly revealing the Godhead and worthy of unlimited worship and adoration; that is, it practically recognizes him as Deity. But Christian experience also recognizes that through Christ it has introduction and reconciliation to God as one distinct from Jesus Christ, as one who was alienated from the soul by its sin, but who is now reconciled through Jesus's death. In other words, while recognizing Jesus as God, we are also compelled to recognize a distinction between the Father and the Son through whom we come to the Father.Although this experience cannot be regarded as an independent witness to Jesus' claims, since it only tests the truth already made known in the Bible, still the irresistible impulse of every person whom Christ has saved to lift his Redeemer to the highest place, and bow before him in the lowliest worship, is strong evidence that only that interpretation of Scripture can be true which recognizes Christ's absolute Godhead. It is the church's consciousness of her Lord's divinity, indeed, and not mere speculation upon the relations of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, that has compelled the formulation of the Scripture doctrine of the Trinity.
Creation:John 1:3—“All things were made through him”;1 Cor. 8:6—“one lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things”;Col. 1:16—“all things have been created through him, and unto him”;Heb, 1:10—“Thou, Lord, in the beginning didst lay the foundation of the earth, And the heavens are the works of thy hands”;3:3, 4—“he that built all things is God”= Christ, the builder of the house of Israel, is the God who made all things;Rev. 3:14—“the beginning of the creation of God”(cf.Plato:“Mind is the ἀρχή of motion”).Upholding:Col. 1:17—“in him all things consist”(marg.“hold together”);Heb. 1:3—“upholding all things by the word of his power.”Raising the dead and judging the world:John 5:27-29—“authority to execute judgment ... all that are in the tombs shall hear his voice, and shall come forth”;Mat. 25:31, 32—“sit on the throne of his glory; and before him shall be gathered all the nations.”If our argument were addressed wholly to believers, we might also urge Christ's work in the world as Revealer of God and Redeemer from sin, as a proof of his deity. [On the works of Christ, see Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 153;per contra, see Examination of Liddon's Bampton Lectures, 72.][pg 311]Statements of Christ's creative and of his upholding activity are combined inJohn 1:3, 4—Πάντα δι᾽ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν. ὅ γέγονεν ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν—“All things were made through him; and without him was not anything made. That which hath been made was life in him”(marg.). Westcott:“It would be difficult to find a more complete consent of ancient authorities in favor of any reading than that which supports this punctuation.”Westcott therefore adopts it. The passage shows that the universe 1. exists within the bounds of Christ's being; 2. is not dead, but living; 3. derives its life from him; see Inge, Christian Mysticism, 46. Creation requires the divine presence, as well as the divine agency. God creates through Christ. All things were made, not ὐπὸ αὐτοῦ—“by him,”but δι᾽ αὐτοῦ—“through him.”Christian believers“Behind creation's throbbing screen Catch movements of the great Unseen.”Van Oosterzee, Christian Dogmatics, iv, lvi—“That which many a philosopher dimly conjectured, namely, that God did not produce the world in an absolute, immediate manner, but in some way or other, mediately, here presents itself to us with the lustre of revelation, and exalts so much the more the claim of the Son of God to our deep and reverential homage.”Would that such scientific men as Tyndall and Huxley might see Christ in nature, and, doing his will, might learn of the doctrine and be led to the Father! The humblest Christian who sees Christ's hand in the physical universe and in human history knows more of the secret of the universe than all the mere scientists put together.Col 1:17—“In him all things consist,”or“hold together,”means nothing less than that Christ is the principle of cohesion in the universe, making it a cosmos instead of a chaos. Tyndall said that the attraction of the sun upon the earth was as inconceivable as if a horse should draw a cart without traces. Sir Isaac Newton:“Gravitation must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws.”Lightfoot:“Gravitation is an expression of the mind of Christ.”Evolution also is a method of his operation. The laws of nature are the habits of Christ, and nature itself is but his steady and constant will. He binds together man and nature in one organic whole, so that we can speak of a“universe.”Without him there would be no intellectual bond, no uniformity of law, no unity of truth. He is the principle of induction, that enables us to argue from one thing to another. The medium of interaction between things is also the medium of intercommunication between minds. It is fitting that he who draws and holds together the physical and intellectual, should also draw and hold together the moral universe, drawing all men to himself (John 12:32) and so to God, and reconciling all things in heaven and earth (Col. 1:20). In Christ“the law appears, Drawn out in living characters,”because he is the ground and source of all law, both in nature and in humanity. See A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 6-12.
Creation:John 1:3—“All things were made through him”;1 Cor. 8:6—“one lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things”;Col. 1:16—“all things have been created through him, and unto him”;Heb, 1:10—“Thou, Lord, in the beginning didst lay the foundation of the earth, And the heavens are the works of thy hands”;3:3, 4—“he that built all things is God”= Christ, the builder of the house of Israel, is the God who made all things;Rev. 3:14—“the beginning of the creation of God”(cf.Plato:“Mind is the ἀρχή of motion”).Upholding:Col. 1:17—“in him all things consist”(marg.“hold together”);Heb. 1:3—“upholding all things by the word of his power.”Raising the dead and judging the world:John 5:27-29—“authority to execute judgment ... all that are in the tombs shall hear his voice, and shall come forth”;Mat. 25:31, 32—“sit on the throne of his glory; and before him shall be gathered all the nations.”If our argument were addressed wholly to believers, we might also urge Christ's work in the world as Revealer of God and Redeemer from sin, as a proof of his deity. [On the works of Christ, see Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 153;per contra, see Examination of Liddon's Bampton Lectures, 72.]
Statements of Christ's creative and of his upholding activity are combined inJohn 1:3, 4—Πάντα δι᾽ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν. ὅ γέγονεν ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν—“All things were made through him; and without him was not anything made. That which hath been made was life in him”(marg.). Westcott:“It would be difficult to find a more complete consent of ancient authorities in favor of any reading than that which supports this punctuation.”Westcott therefore adopts it. The passage shows that the universe 1. exists within the bounds of Christ's being; 2. is not dead, but living; 3. derives its life from him; see Inge, Christian Mysticism, 46. Creation requires the divine presence, as well as the divine agency. God creates through Christ. All things were made, not ὐπὸ αὐτοῦ—“by him,”but δι᾽ αὐτοῦ—“through him.”Christian believers“Behind creation's throbbing screen Catch movements of the great Unseen.”
Van Oosterzee, Christian Dogmatics, iv, lvi—“That which many a philosopher dimly conjectured, namely, that God did not produce the world in an absolute, immediate manner, but in some way or other, mediately, here presents itself to us with the lustre of revelation, and exalts so much the more the claim of the Son of God to our deep and reverential homage.”Would that such scientific men as Tyndall and Huxley might see Christ in nature, and, doing his will, might learn of the doctrine and be led to the Father! The humblest Christian who sees Christ's hand in the physical universe and in human history knows more of the secret of the universe than all the mere scientists put together.
Col 1:17—“In him all things consist,”or“hold together,”means nothing less than that Christ is the principle of cohesion in the universe, making it a cosmos instead of a chaos. Tyndall said that the attraction of the sun upon the earth was as inconceivable as if a horse should draw a cart without traces. Sir Isaac Newton:“Gravitation must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws.”Lightfoot:“Gravitation is an expression of the mind of Christ.”Evolution also is a method of his operation. The laws of nature are the habits of Christ, and nature itself is but his steady and constant will. He binds together man and nature in one organic whole, so that we can speak of a“universe.”Without him there would be no intellectual bond, no uniformity of law, no unity of truth. He is the principle of induction, that enables us to argue from one thing to another. The medium of interaction between things is also the medium of intercommunication between minds. It is fitting that he who draws and holds together the physical and intellectual, should also draw and hold together the moral universe, drawing all men to himself (John 12:32) and so to God, and reconciling all things in heaven and earth (Col. 1:20). In Christ“the law appears, Drawn out in living characters,”because he is the ground and source of all law, both in nature and in humanity. See A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 6-12.
(e) He receives honor and worship due only to God.
In addition to the address of Thomas, in John 20:28, which we have already cited among the proofs that Jesus is expressly called God, and in which divine honor is paid to him, we may refer to the prayer and worship offered by the apostolic and post-apostolic church.
John 5:23—“that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father”;14:14—“If ye shall ask me[so אB and Tisch. 8th ed.]anything in my name, that will I do”;Acts 7:59—“Stephen, calling upon the Lord, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”(cf.Luke 23:46—Jesus' words:“Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit”);Rom. 10:9—“confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord”;13—“whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved”(cf.Gen. 4:26—“Then began men to call upon the name of Jehovah”);1 Cor. 11:24, 25—“this do in remembrance of me”= worship of Christ;Heb. 1:6—“let all the angels of God worship him”;Phil. 2:10, 11—“in the name of Jesus every knee should bow ... every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord”;Rev. 5:12-14—“Worthy is the Lamb that hath been slain to receive the power....”;2 Pet. 3:18—“Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory”;2 Tim. 4:18 and Heb. 13:21—“to whom be the glory for ever and ever”—these ascriptions of eternal glory to Christ imply his deity. See also1 Pet. 3:15—“Sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord,”andEph. 5:21—“subjecting yourselves one to another in the fear of Christ.”Here is enjoined an attitude of mind towards Christ which would be idolatrous if Christ were not God. See Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 266, 366.Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 154—“In the eucharistic liturgy of the‘Teaching’we read:‘Hosanna to the God of David’; Ignatius styles him repeatedly God‘begotten and unbegotten, come in the flesh’; speaking once of‘the blood of God’, in evident allusion toActs 20:28; the epistle to Diognetus takes up the Pauline words and calls him the‘architect and world-builder by whom [God] created the heavens’, and[pg 312]names him God (chap. vii); Hermas speaks of him as‘the holy preëxistent Spirit, that created every creature’, which style of expression is followed by Justin, who calls him God, as also all the later great writers. In the second epistle of Clement (130-160, Harnack), we read:‘Brethren, it is fitting that you should think of Jesus Christ as of God—as the Judge of the living and the dead.’And Ignatius describes him as‘begotten and unbegotten, passible and impassible, ... who was before the eternities with the Father.’”These testimonies only give evidence that the Church Fathers saw in Scripture divine honor ascribed to Christ. They were but the precursors of a host of later interpreters. In a lull of the awful massacre of Armenian Christians at Sassouan, one of the Kurdish savages was heard to ask:“Who was that‘Lord Jesus’that they were calling to?”In their death agonies, the Christians, like Stephen of old, called upon the name of the Lord. Robert Browning quoted, in a letter to a lady in her last illness, the words of Charles Lamb, when“in a gay fancy with some friends as to how he and they would feel if the greatest of the dead were to appear suddenly in flesh and blood once more—on the first suggestion,‘And if Christ entered this room?’changed his tone at once and stuttered out as his manner was when moved:‘You see—if Shakespere entered, we should all rise; if He appeared, we must kneel.’”On prayer to Jesus, see Liddon, Bampton Lectures, note F; Bernard, in Hastings' Bib. Dict., 4:44; Zahn, Skizzen aus dem Leben der alten Kirche, 9, 288.
John 5:23—“that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father”;14:14—“If ye shall ask me[so אB and Tisch. 8th ed.]anything in my name, that will I do”;Acts 7:59—“Stephen, calling upon the Lord, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”(cf.Luke 23:46—Jesus' words:“Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit”);Rom. 10:9—“confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord”;13—“whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved”(cf.Gen. 4:26—“Then began men to call upon the name of Jehovah”);1 Cor. 11:24, 25—“this do in remembrance of me”= worship of Christ;Heb. 1:6—“let all the angels of God worship him”;Phil. 2:10, 11—“in the name of Jesus every knee should bow ... every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord”;Rev. 5:12-14—“Worthy is the Lamb that hath been slain to receive the power....”;2 Pet. 3:18—“Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory”;2 Tim. 4:18 and Heb. 13:21—“to whom be the glory for ever and ever”—these ascriptions of eternal glory to Christ imply his deity. See also1 Pet. 3:15—“Sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord,”andEph. 5:21—“subjecting yourselves one to another in the fear of Christ.”Here is enjoined an attitude of mind towards Christ which would be idolatrous if Christ were not God. See Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 266, 366.
Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 154—“In the eucharistic liturgy of the‘Teaching’we read:‘Hosanna to the God of David’; Ignatius styles him repeatedly God‘begotten and unbegotten, come in the flesh’; speaking once of‘the blood of God’, in evident allusion toActs 20:28; the epistle to Diognetus takes up the Pauline words and calls him the‘architect and world-builder by whom [God] created the heavens’, and[pg 312]names him God (chap. vii); Hermas speaks of him as‘the holy preëxistent Spirit, that created every creature’, which style of expression is followed by Justin, who calls him God, as also all the later great writers. In the second epistle of Clement (130-160, Harnack), we read:‘Brethren, it is fitting that you should think of Jesus Christ as of God—as the Judge of the living and the dead.’And Ignatius describes him as‘begotten and unbegotten, passible and impassible, ... who was before the eternities with the Father.’”
These testimonies only give evidence that the Church Fathers saw in Scripture divine honor ascribed to Christ. They were but the precursors of a host of later interpreters. In a lull of the awful massacre of Armenian Christians at Sassouan, one of the Kurdish savages was heard to ask:“Who was that‘Lord Jesus’that they were calling to?”In their death agonies, the Christians, like Stephen of old, called upon the name of the Lord. Robert Browning quoted, in a letter to a lady in her last illness, the words of Charles Lamb, when“in a gay fancy with some friends as to how he and they would feel if the greatest of the dead were to appear suddenly in flesh and blood once more—on the first suggestion,‘And if Christ entered this room?’changed his tone at once and stuttered out as his manner was when moved:‘You see—if Shakespere entered, we should all rise; if He appeared, we must kneel.’”On prayer to Jesus, see Liddon, Bampton Lectures, note F; Bernard, in Hastings' Bib. Dict., 4:44; Zahn, Skizzen aus dem Leben der alten Kirche, 9, 288.
(f) His name is associated with that of God upon a footing of equality.
We do not here allude to 1 John 5:7 (the three heavenly witnesses), for the latter part of this verse is unquestionably spurious; but to the formula of baptism, to the apostolic benedictions, and to those passages in which eternal life is said to be dependent equally upon Christ and upon God, or in which spiritual gifts are attributed to Christ equally with the Father.
The formula of baptism:Mat. 28:19—“baptising them into the name of the father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”;cf.Acts 2:38—“be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ”;Rom. 6:3—“baptized into Christ Jesus.”“In the common baptismal formula the Son and the Spirit are coördinated with the Father, and εἰς ὄνομα has religious significance.”It would be both absurd and profane to speak of baptizing into the name of the Father and of Moses.The apostolic benedictions:1 Cor. 1:3—“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”;2 Cor. 13:14—“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.”“In the benedictions grace is something divine, and Christ has power to impart it. But why do we find‘God,’instead of simply‘the Father,’as in the baptismal formula? Because it is only the Father who does not become man or have a historical existence. Elsewhere he is specially called‘God the Father,’to distinguish him from God the Son and God the Holy Spirit (Gal. 1:3;Eph. 3:14;6:23).”Other passages:John 5:23—“that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father”;John 14:1—“believe in God, believe also in me”—double imperative (so Westcott, Bible Com.,in loco);17:3—“this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ”;Mat. 11:27—“no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him”;1 Cor. 12:4-6—“the same Spirit ... the same Lord[Christ] ...the same God”[the Father] bestow spiritual gifts,e. g., faith:Rom. 10:17—“belief cometh of hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ”; peace:Col. 3:15—“let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.”2 Thess. 2:16, 17—“now our lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father ... comfort your hearts”—two names with a verb in the singular intimate the oneness of the Father and the Son (Lillie).Eph. 5:5—“kingdom of Christ and God”;Col. 3:1—“Christ ... seated on the right hand of God”= participation in the sovereignty of the universe,—the Eastern divan held not only the monarch but his son;Rev. 20:6—“priests of God and of Christ”;22:3—“the throne of God and of the Lamb”;16—“the root and the offspring of David”= both the Lord of David and his son. Hackett:“As the dying Savior said to the Father,‘Into thy hands I commend my spirit’(Luke 23:46), so the dying Stephen said to the Savior,‘receive my spirit’(Acts 7:59).”
The formula of baptism:Mat. 28:19—“baptising them into the name of the father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”;cf.Acts 2:38—“be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ”;Rom. 6:3—“baptized into Christ Jesus.”“In the common baptismal formula the Son and the Spirit are coördinated with the Father, and εἰς ὄνομα has religious significance.”It would be both absurd and profane to speak of baptizing into the name of the Father and of Moses.
The apostolic benedictions:1 Cor. 1:3—“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”;2 Cor. 13:14—“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.”“In the benedictions grace is something divine, and Christ has power to impart it. But why do we find‘God,’instead of simply‘the Father,’as in the baptismal formula? Because it is only the Father who does not become man or have a historical existence. Elsewhere he is specially called‘God the Father,’to distinguish him from God the Son and God the Holy Spirit (Gal. 1:3;Eph. 3:14;6:23).”
Other passages:John 5:23—“that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father”;John 14:1—“believe in God, believe also in me”—double imperative (so Westcott, Bible Com.,in loco);17:3—“this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ”;Mat. 11:27—“no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him”;1 Cor. 12:4-6—“the same Spirit ... the same Lord[Christ] ...the same God”[the Father] bestow spiritual gifts,e. g., faith:Rom. 10:17—“belief cometh of hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ”; peace:Col. 3:15—“let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.”2 Thess. 2:16, 17—“now our lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father ... comfort your hearts”—two names with a verb in the singular intimate the oneness of the Father and the Son (Lillie).Eph. 5:5—“kingdom of Christ and God”;Col. 3:1—“Christ ... seated on the right hand of God”= participation in the sovereignty of the universe,—the Eastern divan held not only the monarch but his son;Rev. 20:6—“priests of God and of Christ”;22:3—“the throne of God and of the Lamb”;16—“the root and the offspring of David”= both the Lord of David and his son. Hackett:“As the dying Savior said to the Father,‘Into thy hands I commend my spirit’(Luke 23:46), so the dying Stephen said to the Savior,‘receive my spirit’(Acts 7:59).”
(g) Equality with God is expressly claimed.
Here we may refer to Jesus' testimony to himself, already treated of among the proofs of the supernatural character of the Scripture teaching (see pages189,190). Equality with God is not only claimed for himself by Jesus, but it is claimed for him by his apostles.
John 5:18—“called God his own Father, making himself equal with God”;Phil. 2:6—“who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped”—counted not his equality with God a thing to be forcibly retained. Christ made and left upon his contemporaries the impression that he claimed to be God. The New Testament has left, upon the great mass of those who have read it, the impression that Jesus Christ claims to be God. If he is not God, he is a deceiver or is self-deceived, and, in either case,Christus, si non Deus, non bonus. See Nicoll, Life of Jesus Christ, 187.
John 5:18—“called God his own Father, making himself equal with God”;Phil. 2:6—“who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped”—counted not his equality with God a thing to be forcibly retained. Christ made and left upon his contemporaries the impression that he claimed to be God. The New Testament has left, upon the great mass of those who have read it, the impression that Jesus Christ claims to be God. If he is not God, he is a deceiver or is self-deceived, and, in either case,Christus, si non Deus, non bonus. See Nicoll, Life of Jesus Christ, 187.
(h) Further proof of Christ's deity may be found in the application to him of the phrases:“Son of God,”“Image of God”; in the declarations of his oneness with God; in the attribution to him of the fulness of the Godhead.
Mat. 26:63, 64—“I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou art the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said”—it is for this testimony that Christ dies.Col. 1:15—“the image of the invisible God”;Heb. 1:3—“the effulgence of his[the Father's]glory, and the very image of his substance”;John 10:30—“I and the Father are one”;14:9—“he that hath seen me hath seen the Father”;17:11, 22—“that they may be one, even as we are”—ἕ, not εἰς;unum, notunus; one substance, not one person.“Unumis antidote to the Arian,sumusto the Sabellian heresy.”Col. 2:9—“in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily”;cf.1:19—“for it was the pleasure of the Father that in him should all the fulness dwell;”or (marg.)“for the whole fulness of God was pleased to dwell in him.”John 16:15—“all things whatsoever the Father hath are mine”;17:10—“all things that are mine are thine, and thine are mine.”Meyer onJohn 10:30—“I and the Father are one”—“Here the Arian understanding of a mere ethical harmony as taught in the words‘are one’is unsatisfactory, because irrelevant to the exercise of power. Oneness of essence, though not contained in the words themselves, is, by the necessities of the argument, presupposed in them.”Dalman, The Words of Jesus:“Nowhere do we find that Jesus called himself the Son of God in such a sense as to suggest a merely religious and ethical relation to God—a relation which others also possessed and which they were capable of attaining or were destined to acquire.”We may add that while in the lower sense there are many“sons of God,”there is but one“only begotten Son.”
Mat. 26:63, 64—“I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou art the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said”—it is for this testimony that Christ dies.Col. 1:15—“the image of the invisible God”;Heb. 1:3—“the effulgence of his[the Father's]glory, and the very image of his substance”;John 10:30—“I and the Father are one”;14:9—“he that hath seen me hath seen the Father”;17:11, 22—“that they may be one, even as we are”—ἕ, not εἰς;unum, notunus; one substance, not one person.“Unumis antidote to the Arian,sumusto the Sabellian heresy.”Col. 2:9—“in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily”;cf.1:19—“for it was the pleasure of the Father that in him should all the fulness dwell;”or (marg.)“for the whole fulness of God was pleased to dwell in him.”John 16:15—“all things whatsoever the Father hath are mine”;17:10—“all things that are mine are thine, and thine are mine.”
Meyer onJohn 10:30—“I and the Father are one”—“Here the Arian understanding of a mere ethical harmony as taught in the words‘are one’is unsatisfactory, because irrelevant to the exercise of power. Oneness of essence, though not contained in the words themselves, is, by the necessities of the argument, presupposed in them.”Dalman, The Words of Jesus:“Nowhere do we find that Jesus called himself the Son of God in such a sense as to suggest a merely religious and ethical relation to God—a relation which others also possessed and which they were capable of attaining or were destined to acquire.”We may add that while in the lower sense there are many“sons of God,”there is but one“only begotten Son.”
(i) These proofs of Christ's deity from the New Testament are corroborated by Christian experience.
Christian experience recognizes Christ as an absolutely perfect Savior, perfectly revealing the Godhead and worthy of unlimited worship and adoration; that is, it practically recognizes him as Deity. But Christian experience also recognizes that through Christ it has introduction and reconciliation to God as one distinct from Jesus Christ, as one who was alienated from the soul by its sin, but who is now reconciled through Jesus's death. In other words, while recognizing Jesus as God, we are also compelled to recognize a distinction between the Father and the Son through whom we come to the Father.
Although this experience cannot be regarded as an independent witness to Jesus' claims, since it only tests the truth already made known in the Bible, still the irresistible impulse of every person whom Christ has saved to lift his Redeemer to the highest place, and bow before him in the lowliest worship, is strong evidence that only that interpretation of Scripture can be true which recognizes Christ's absolute Godhead. It is the church's consciousness of her Lord's divinity, indeed, and not mere speculation upon the relations of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, that has compelled the formulation of the Scripture doctrine of the Trinity.