§ 1. THE exposition of Biblical Theology contained in my second volume was undertaken in order to ascertain what idea of the forgiveness of sins, justification, and reconciliation—together with their relations—had been called into existence by Jesus as the Founder of the Christian Church, and maintained by the apostles as its earliest representatives. In view of the many distortions and obscurations which the intellectual content of Christianity has suffered in the course of history, my aim, in harmony with the theological principles of the Evangelical Church, was to discover the conceptions originally held of the religious relation of Christians to God which the above-mentioned notions express. Once this authentical exposition of the ideas named has been given, however, the interests of theology are satisfied. For succeeding thinkers have been guided, in part intentionally, in part unconsciously, by the models of the New Testament, or should not be followed when they in point of fact diverge from them.
Now it is not sufficient for my purpose to bring out what Jesus has said about the forgiveness of sins attached to His Person and His death. For even if His statements might seem perfectly clear, their significance becomes completely intelligible only when we see how they are reflected in the consciousness of those who believe in Him, and how the members of the Christian community trace back their consciousness of pardon to the Person and the action and passion of Jesus. For thus we are made aware that Jesus’ purpose of pardon has not failed. Its success, however, not only serves to make more clear what His purpose was: it also forms an essential condition of our religious and theological interest in the matter. We should pay no special attention to this purpose of Jesus, nor should we seek to discover its value and its meaning, did we not reckon ourselves part of the religious community which first attested, through the writers of the New Testament, its possession of the forgiveness of sins as effected by Christ. On the other hand, the necessity of this connection with the Church is ignored by those who think themselves competent to arrive at or reproduce “the religion of Jesus”; as also by those who acknowledge in Jesus only the Author of new moral legislation, or one of those who have helped to perfect humanity’s ideal. Those who comprise in the latter view the results of their historical criticism, either ignore Jesus’ sayings about forgiveness as attached to His Person and His death, or regard them as merely casual expressions, or content themselves with supposing that in Jesus’ view forgiveness flows directly of itself from moral obedience to the law (vol. ii. p. 50). The advocates of “the religion of Jesus” are quite well aware that some value belongs to the religious example of Jesus, apart from His moral legislation and His moral example. But in thinking that His significance can be stated completely in terms of personal imitation, they overlook the very fact that Jesus withdraws Himself from imitation when He sets Himself over against His disciples as the Author of forgiveness. The minds of His disciples are so far responsive to His teaching on this point, that they become convinced that pardon must first be appropriated before it is possible to imitate His piety and His moral achievement.
Authentic and complete knowledge of Jesus’ religious significance—His significance, that is, as a Founder of religion—depends, then, on one’s reckoning oneself part of the community which He founded, and this precisely in so far as it believes itself to have received the forgiveness of sins as His peculiar gift. This religious faith does not take an unhistorical view of Jesus, and it is quite possible to reach an historical estimate of Him without first divesting oneself of this faith, this religious valuation of His Person. The opposite view is one of the characteristics which mark that great untruth which exerts a deceptive and confusing influence under the name of an historical “absence of presuppositions.” It is no mere accident that the subversion of Jesus’ religious importance has been undertaken under the guise of writing His life, for this very undertaking implies the surrender of the conviction that Jesus, as the Founder of the perfect moral and spiritual religion, belongs to a higher order than all other men. But for that reason it is likewise vain to attempt to re-establish the importance of Christ by the same biographical expedient. We can discover the full compass of His historical actuality solely from the faith of the Christian community. Not even His purpose to found the community can be quite understood historically save by one who, as a member of it, subordinates himself to His Person.
Thence follows for our present task, however, that the material of the theological doctrines of forgiveness, justification, and reconciliation is to be sought not so much directly in the words of Christ, as in the correlative representations of the original consciousness of the community. The immediate object of theological cognition is the community’s faith that it stands to God in a relation essentially conditioned by the forgiveness of sins. So far, however, as this benefit is traced back to the personal action and passion of Christ, His proved intention to adopt such means makes the mediation of the community more intelligible. Such being the position of affairs, we have now a basis for the practice of theology in attaching its terminology directly to the apostolic circle of ideas. It would be a mistaken purism were anyone, in this respect, to prefer the less developed statements of Jesus to the forms of apostolic thought.