Our dependence on the world under the natural conditions of moral existence is such that our horizon is bounded by our own family and our own nation, for we adjust and attach ourselves to the prejudices and customs which in these circles have come down to us. As for Jesus, His connection with the Chosen People had for Him the greater significance, because the peculiar character of this people, its religion, its institutions, and more especially its hopes, were the necessary historical presupposition of His own vocation, and because, in the exercise of that vocation, He saw Himself confined to this one people (Mark vii. 27). But although He was bound to His nation by the most passionate sympathy (Matt. xxiii. 37), He not only freed Himself from the Old Testament preconceptions as to its political destiny, but also made it known that He did not regard Himself as inwardly bound by any of those ceremonial ordinances in which spiritual adhesion to the Chosen People was required to find expression (xvii. 25-27). Even if for Him it was not difficult to oppose the conditions of the new religious family to the claims of the natural family (Mark iii. 33-35), yet by so doing He certainly renounced the support of the family relation; He also overcame the natural sympathy that bound Him to His nation, despite the powerful religious motives in its favour, through the fixed anticipation that He would not complete His vocation among the Israelites; that, on the contrary, the other nations of mankind would succeed to Israel’s destiny (Matt. viii. 11, 12, xxi. 43). In spite of this, He confined the actual discharge of His vocation to the Chosen People, and never apparently had to resist the temptation to extend His activity before the time to other peoples. Thus, although it was only as a born Israelite and in connection with His own nation that Jesus could fulfil His vocation, yet He raised Himself above these particular or earthly limitations of His existence, not only by the width of His horizon which embraced all mankind, but by His religious judgment of Himself, which was independent of all Old Testament standards. This instance of Christ’s supremacy over the world is the more characteristic that the Apostle of the Gentiles never attained a like measure of inward freedom from the preconceptions of Judaism. Paul remained so staunchly loyal to the distinctive position assigned by the Old Testament to his race, that, in spite of all contrary considerations, he preserved unshaken the hope of the ultimate conversion of Israel to Christ (Rom. xi. 25). In this respect he not only falls short of Christ’s inward freedom, but comes into direct collision with the expectation of Christ. The aforesaid attitude of Jesus is at the same time an evidence of the degree in which He realised in His own person that universal human nature which is required by the idea of His vocation. The fact of His belonging to one particular nation in reality only serves Him as a means of fulfilling His vocation; inwardly He is untrammelled by any constraint of earthly prejudice reflecting the narrow spirit of the family or the nation.

Inconspicuous enough is this exercise of supremacy over the world, and I can imagine that even those who accept the exposition here given of the loftiness of Christ’s judgment of Himself, may yet regard the present inquiry as an uncalled for digression. They may be inclined, that is, to rest content with the expedient of previous theologians, that Christ possessed supremacy over the world as right and might, but in His existence as a human individual would on no account exercise this supremacy, postponing it to the future, when, at the right hand of power, He should wield it through His community (Mark xiv. 62). But I have already shown (p. 406) that this exercise of supremacy by the exalted Christ is intelligible only if, in His life on earth, it is not confined to a mere claim of right or an unexercised endowment. For how can we prove the existence of such attributes unless by some corresponding activity of the earthly Christ? Moreover, Christ’s exercise of power upon His community, and through His community upon the world, is anything but a fact of objective and palpable experience. The phenomena in which many seek the real proof of the might of Christianity, namely, political influence and the legal authority of Church officials and ecclesiastical institutions, are the very things that come under strong suspicion of falsifying the intention of Christ; indeed, it is only a really strong faith in the invisible that, amid the miry abominations and miserable trivialities of Church history, can trace the advancing power of Christ over this world at all. Finally, the power over the world which Paul ascribes to the Christian, and which must serve as our guiding analogy in interpreting the original assertion of Christ, falls entirely within the sphere of the spiritual, and cannot become palpable or evident in any corresponding degree. If, therefore, our concern be to find in the historical portrait of Christ other proofs than those already quoted of His characteristic independence of the spirit of His nation, the inconspicuous character of these proofs cannot afford any ground for doubting the correctness of the result.

What I mean is, that Christ’s patience under suffering, which has already come under notice as a consequence of His loyalty to His vocation, is the real test not only of His constancy in this regard, but also of His unique power over the world. For the individual impulses of self-preservation, avoidance of pain, and the keeping inviolate of personal honour —impulses which in every case He subordinated to the consciousness of His vocation—imply as their correlative term the world as a whole. No doubt, more immediately, it is the hostile human world which evokes the collision between Christ’s life-work and His material and social self-preservation, and it is only a very narrow section of the world of men with which He comes into painful contact. But since Christ recognised His life-work as the cause of God, His immediate opponents represented for Him the whole world of mankind, so far as it revolts against God’s ruling of the world. Wherefore He declares that, by His determination to submit patiently even to the probable issue of its opposition to Himself, He has overcome the world (John xvi. 33). When in steadfast loyalty to His vocation He refuses to bring the motive of physical and social self-preservation into harmony with the claims of His opponents, who represent the ungodly tendency of the human world, He demonstrates in their case His power over the world. For unless this human society had tongues wherewith to slander, and hands wherewith to strike, it would not be an object of fear at all, or an occasion of victory. But as every evil is a natural event (p. 351), so any suffering imposed by human society can affect us, and become at once a temptation and an occasion of victory, only in so far as it represents at the same time the opposition of the system of nature as a whole. The pain of soul caused by slander, as by blows dealt to the body, denotes the collision of the whole fabric of the material world with the personal sense of worth in the individual spiritual man. For the whole mechanical and organic connection of the individual man with the world is involved, when we are aggrieved by a physical blow, or an uttered slander, as effects of human ill-will. This connection of things is not, as a rule, present to our mind, but we can easily understand that Christ was in a position to take this view of the matter, since He drew the sharpest possible contrast between Himself, as the Bearer of God’s peculiar purpose in this world, and the world itself. Under this assumption He knew not only that power over the world had been given Him, but also that by the patient endurance of all suffering, as the test of His loyalty to His vocation, He was overcoming the seductive opposition of the world. This view is involved in the idea of God on which Jesus based His religious conception of the world and His judgment of Himself, and it is just this worth assigned to patience in His own person which forms an essential part of that view of the world which He has brought to light.

A valuable confirmation of this result is afforded by the words which occur in Matthew (xi. 28–30), in immediate connection with the declaration of Jesus that all things have been delivered unto Him by His Father. The central point of this utterance, which, as a rule, is not rightly understood, is the description of Jesus as one who, despite His inherent righteousness, is, like the righteous men of the Old Testament, in a state of oppression and suffering, but who willingly accepts the same. For the predicates πραΰς καὶ ταπεινός appear in the LXX as equivalent to the Hebrew עָנִי, and this word, or rather the equivalent Aramaic word עֲנָיָא, is the only word Jesus can have used. Now this word is the conventional designation of the righteous man in view of the consistent oppression which he has to endure at the hands of the godless; which circumstance is certainly included here, since it is the reason why Jesus compares Himself with those who labour and are heavy laden. The addition τῇ καρδίᾳ, which is equivalent to עָנִיו־לֵב, is not inconsistent with a state of external oppression, but represents the latter as that in which, because of His righteousness, Jesus acquiesces. He thereby distinguishes Himself from the men to whom He offers His help, but also from the righteous of the Old Testament, who always regard their oppressed condition with complaint and longing for deliverance. Here, therefore, we see the advance upon the Old Testament made by the righteousness of Jesus in its attitude to the world. By acquiescing in the obstructions of the world as a dispensation of God, Jesus subordinates to Himself the relation between Himself and the world, in consequence of the mutual knowledge subsisting between the Father and the Son, even as on this same account He recognises His sufferings to be the yoke by which He is led of God, by Whom He, the Son, is first recognised. Wherefore, when He calls to Himself those who would fain carve out their own fate and are succumbing under the obstructions to their freedom, His aim is to lead them to see in their burdens dispensations of God; on these terms the said burdens will become light, because, by the patience which springs from the religious motive, men lift themselves above their misfortunes and the world. From this point of view their sufferings even become for them a helpful yoke, which brings them experience of the guiding of God. This is the proof Jesus Himself offers us of the supremacy over the world which belongs to Himself through the mutual knowledge existing between Himself and God. It forms the material also of the view summed up by Bernard (p. 415) in the predicates superans fortunam and passus indigna, as the distinctive marks of the world-controlling Divinity of Christ.

According to the hints given us in the New Testament, the grace and truth (faithfulness) manifested in the discharge of His vocation, and the loftiness of His self-determination as compared with the particular and natural impulses which spring from the world, are the features in the earthly life of Christ which are summed up in the attribute of His Godhead. Nor are these two elements, when more closely examined, really different. For the patience in suffering, which proves Christ’s power over the world, is at the same time a manifestation of His faithfulness toward men; and His persistent faithfulness to the Jews, despite His anticipation that His work among them would be fruitless, is the proof of His inner freedom and victory over the external circumstances of His life. From the human point of view, this patience and faithfulness, as the purpose pervading Christ’s life, have their source in the desire, inspired by His vocation and sustained by His unique knowledge of God, to set up the Kingdom of God among men as their supramundane final end. Viewed from the Godward side, this human life falls to be regarded as the perfect revelation of God, because the supreme end of the world, to which Christ’s life is devoted, rests upon the self-end of God, that is, on His essential will of love. The notes of Christ’s Divinity, therefore, have only such scope as is provided by His life-purpose, in so far as that purpose is the Divine end for the world, and the correlate of the self-end of God. To the creating and sustaining of the natural world this attribute cannot directly, at least, be referred; though it may be so indirectly, in as far as God creates and sustains the world with a view to its final end, as realised through the special work of Christ. This connection of ideas is indicated by Bernard, when he finds in the predicate passus indigna a special instance of God’s wise government of the world. The expediency of innocent suffering endured for the good of the community is synonymous with God’s wise government of the world for this reason, because the Christian community is God’s supreme end in the world. A complete definition of the Godhead of Christ must therefore take account of the fact that Christ’s grace and truth and world-subduing patience have had their effect in the existence of the community of the Kingdom of God under corresponding moral attributes. For to Him Who wields the lordship of God, or Who, to borrow Luther’s phrase, is in virtue of His redeeming work “My Lord,” we must reckon all those to belong who experience this same lordship in themselves; in this connection the community of the Kingdom of God must be regarded as such, in so far as its members, through conduct prompted by universal brotherly love, and through the various possible manifestations of supremacy over the world and independence of the same, display in themselves the successful issue of Christ’s peculiar work. Here also is the explanation of the fact that the conception of Christ’s Divinity, or the application to Christ of the Old Testament Divine name, first arose in the Christian community; Christ Himself was never in the position thus to describe Himself. Therefore this attribute can be rightly appraised by theology only when Christ is conceived as the living Head of the community of God’s Kingdom. For we must bring Christ into relation to His people, before we are in a position to recognise that in His own order He is unique.

That this is so, the religious consciousness of the Christian community assumes as certain. And hitherto theology has done nothing more than accept the assumption; she has never proved it. All forms of the doctrine of the Incarnate Word are imperfect, because none of them faces the question whether incarnation took place once and for ever in the Person of Jesus, or whether it may not be supplemented or repeated in the persons of others. I have already had occasion to point out (p. 408) that, neither in its Lutheran nor Reformed nor modern pietistic form, does Christology provide against the possible inference, that the God-man can be realised only in the race of mankind as a whole, or that His appearance may be repeated in each of the several spheres of moral and intellectual life. But our present line of thought makes it clear, that only in the sphere of the ethico-religious life, viewed from the standpoint of the Kingdom of God, does the God-man find His place, because that Kingdom, and nothing else, is the direct correlate of the Divine self-end. It follows, therefore, that, as the historical Author of this communion of men with God and with each other, Christ is necessarily unique in His own order. For if a second could be produced who, really, was on a level with Christ in grace and truth, in world-conquering patience, in scope alike of purpose and of achievement, he would yet stand in historical dependence upon Christ, and therefore, logically, would be subordinate to Him. Hence, as compared with those who succeed Him in the realisation of the Kingdom of God, the fact that this end is the self-end of God has for Him quite a different meaning. For the members of Christ’s community come to take this attitude as those who have had within them, originally, another bent of will; whereas the figure of Christ cannot be understood at all unless it is His original and distinguishing characteristic, that He finds His own personal end in the self-end of God. If Christ is thus the personal revelation of the will of God as essentially love, then certainly, from the point of view of degree, the love of God finds its perfect revelation in the fact, that the members of the Kingdom of God fulfil the law of brotherly love (p. 291); but from the point of view of kind, these manifestations of brotherly love in their widest extent must be regarded as the intended result of the Divine lordship introduced through Christ in grace and truth and spiritual freedom over the world. Similarly, the position of power which the Christian community occupies in the world, the transformation through the principle of love of the public conscience, the intrenchment of the same in public institutions, the progressive liberation of the human mind from the dominion of nature, and the corresponding subjection of nature through knowledge and application of her laws to human ends, must also be reckoned results of the Divine lordship among men, and ascribed to its historical Author. In this estimate of Christ, the Christian faith approves itself as the view of the world which corresponds to the recognition of God as Spirit and as Love.

The exposition here given of Christ’s Divinity it has been thought to disparage by the remark, that the attribute of Divinity is proved only of the will, but not of the nature of Christ, and that therefore, even in the case of the will, it remains unexplained. Whence the further inference is drawn, that Christ’s Godhead is by this method not really recognised at all, but rather denied. Now this distinction between nature and will is not religious but scientific, although our opponents, as a rule, are not aware of the fact, and make the dispute to be about religious truth. If they are really the religious men and the experts in religion which they claim to be, let them prove it by showing that, even when they treat religious and scientific knowledge as one, they are capable of distinguishing between them; else they will not be able to maintain their claim to be the most competent judges in matters of religion. In all other cases we estimate character on the supposition that its essence is manifest in the will. Excellence of character is that state of the will in which the natural impulses are so restrained and governed as to be subordinate and subservient to the good and unselfish end which the will pursues. For the created spirit has as his allotted task to take the inborn propensities of his soul, which correspond in some way to his physical equipment, and are known as his natural disposition, and, through the development of his will, to transform these into his obedient instruments. It is by his measure of success in this achievement that we judge the character of a fully developed man; and it must appear to us odd if a strong personality in his more mature years is judged by the natural disposition which he manifested in his youth, as if the latter were his real nature. It would be a parallel case to this if, in estimating the character of Christ, we were compelled straightway to disregard every trace of Divine lordship over the world, on the ground that this constitutes nothing essential in Him, but is only, as it were, the outward manifestation of the natural endowment with which He was born of Mary; for this, they tell us, is the correct description of His nature. But the will for good is never the simple mechanical result of the natural endowment within which it comes into being. Given a natural disposition the most favourable, from a moral point of view, that can be imagined, it must still be educated, and therefore transformed, by the ends which it adopts at the bidding of a will bent on good. The latter would cease to be a will for good, if it had to be regarded as the mechanical result of an assumed natural endowment. This is the absurd idea suggested to us by our opponents, when they require us to find the essential nature of Christ, not in His world-conquering will, which marks Him as the God-man, but in His physical origin, which has never yet been reconciled with His historical appearance, and never can be. If Christ is to be judged by categories that are applied to no other object than Himself, then He is rendered unintelligible. Or, if it is not beyond me to see from within the working of my opponents’ minds, I should say that they regard Christ’s will as a mere appendage of His nature, in the same way that acceptance of the idea of God as the Absolute reduces what is His essential characteristic, namely, His love, to a mere appendage of His nature. If, as my opponents make me responsible for conclusions which they, with their alien ideas, have drawn from my statements, I in like manner seek to make intelligible to myself the distinction they draw in the case before us between nature and spirit or will (p. 238), then I find myself compelled to insist that this distinction of spirit and nature depends on the material constitution of the latter. Even in my conception of the Divine nature, I cannot get away from this characteristic. Therefore I conclude that, when my opponents will not allow Christ’s good and world-conquering will, under the other characteristics already discussed, to be regarded as His true essence, because they do not believe in the independence of the good will as against all nature, they have fallen into a materialistic mode of thought.

When we investigated the Kingdom of God as the correlate of the thought that God is love, it appeared that this organisation of men can be construed as the object and end of God’s love, only in so far as it is conformed to the type of its Founder, the Son of God. The harmony with God and likeness to Him which the Kingdom of God must maintain in order to be understood as the objective of God’s love, attaches to the said Kingdom only in so far as it is called into being by the Son of God, and bows to Him as its Lord (p. 281). In other words, it is on the Son of God that in the first place the Father’s love falls, and, only for His sake, on the community of which He is Lord. Moreover, if these relations are eternally involved in God’s will of love (p. 301), it follows from our recognition of this fact, that the special significance Christ has for us is by no means exhausted in our appreciation of Him as a revelation conditioned by time. On the contrary, it is implied that, as Founder and Lord of the Kingdom of God, Christ is as much the object of God’s eternal knowledge and will as is the moral unification of mankind, which is made possible through Him, and whose prototype He is; or rather, that, not only in time but in the eternity of the Divine knowledge and will, Christ precedes His community. Of course, to this statement a certain qualification must be added. For whatever belonged to the natural and generic limitations of Christ, more especially His individual natural endowments and His Jewish nationality, cannot be taken as the object of the eternal will of God, since these things are by their very nature bound up with the world, consequently can be fore-ordered, even by God, only through a volition in time. But Christ, we know, reduced the significance of these limitations to mere means toward His own spiritual life, in particular toward the apprehension of His own religious fellowship with God, and the carrying out of the vocation He had embraced. Sharing the religious and moral customs of the Jews, He yet knows Himself, as the Son of God, exalted above them; in discharging the duties of His vocation toward His countrymen, He knows His work destined to be fruitful, at the same time that He distinctly foresees its fruitlessness among the Jews; in His own life-conduct, that universal human morality of which the Kingdom of God shall be the perfect realisation so markedly preponderates, that we fail to notice in Him those traces of individual temperament which are wont to count for something even in the most perfect of men. Yet Christ’s life was not a mere abstract presentation of universal human morality; for He gave the whole wealth of personal devotion to the universal content of His vocation. Rather is He Himself the prototype of that life of love and elevation above worldly motive, which forms the distinguishing characteristic of the Kingdom of God; and this as the deliberate result of His vocation to be the Founder of that Kingdom, not in any mere application of the principle of the Kingdom to the separate details of human life, which is the source from which other men derive their ethical vocations. If, therefore, the Kingdom of God as the correlate of the Divine self-end is the eternal object of the love of God, this is so because Christ as the prototype and inspiring force of that union of the many in one, in other words, as the Head and Lord of that Kingdom, is the eternal object of the love of God, so that in this special form the Kingdom of God is present eternally to the Divine knowledge and will, while its individual members are objects of the knowledge of God in time (p. 122).

The congruity between the Son of God and God as His Father, by which the conceivability of this eternal relation must be determined, reaches, however, still further. For if the idea of love is necessarily confined to beings of a like order, then, of course, it cannot be applied to God in any such way that the thought of God must be subsumed under some higher genus. Rather must everything that is compared with God be first regarded in the light of the distinction between being and becoming. Here theological tradition comes to meet us with the thesis that no being shares in the aseity of God. Yet the distinction between God and all forms of being is specific, in so far as it can just as little be got rid of or dispensed with in actual life as can the distinction between two members of a species. On the other hand, the individual spirit is marked by every possible characteristic we think of as existing originally in God. Therefore we may use the idea of species in order to compare spiritual beings with God, provided we make the reservation, that everything we class in the same species with God comes ever from God, while God, in regard to what He is, does not become, but everlastingly is, and that nothing we compare with God ever attains the character of aseity. With this, theological tradition in so far corresponds, that, in affirming the Divinity of Christ, it expressly excludes aseity, and by asserting the eternal generation of the Son, applies the category of becoming, as distinct from being, to that Existence which is to be denoted as the eternal object of the Divine love. Under this condition, the view expounded above—that the eternally-beloved Son of God, on the ground of the like content of His personal will, and of the uniqueness of the relation He holds to the community of the Kingdom of God and to the world, is to be conceived under the attribute of Godhead—accords with the traditional theology. Of course our time-conditioned view of things cannot get rid of the antithesis between God’s eternal decree and the realisation of the same in the empirical phenomena of time, just as our conception of the community of the Kingdom of God is bound up with the antithesis between the calling in time and the choosing before the foundation of the world. At the same time we must premise that this relation does not mean for God that there is in Him any want or need; rather is His self-sufficiency everlastingly satisfied in what to us, in the long series of preparatory stages, looks like the expression of a want (p. 299). For this reason the eternal Godhead of the Son, in the sense here described, is perfectly intelligible only as object of the Divine mind and will, that is, only for God Himself. But if at the same time we discount, in the case of God, the interval between purpose and accomplishment, then we get the formula that Christ exists for God eternally as that which He appears to us under the limitations of time. But only for God, since for us, as pre-existent, Christ is hidden. Inasmuch, then, as God’s standpoint is impossible for us, we shall be wise if we content ourselves with this formal proof of our religious estimate of Christ. Only this, too, may be added by way of conclusion, namely, that by the same line of reasoning the Spirit of God, as the Holy Spirit, also becomes intelligible. The Spirit of God is the knowledge God has of Himself, as of His own self-end. The Holy Spirit denotes in the New Testament the Spirit of God, in so far as the latter is the ground of that knowledge of God and that specific moral and religious life which exist in the Christian community (p. 273). Since the community has for its conscious purpose the realisation of the Kingdom of God as the Divine self-end, it is correct to say, that the practical knowledge of God in this community which is dependent upon God, is identical with the knowledge which God has of Himself, even as the love of God is perfected in the fact that within the community love is practised toward the brethren. But if in His Son God loves eternally the community that is like His Son, in other words, if the community is eo ipso the eternal object of God’s will of love, then also it is God’s eternal will that His Spirit should be the Holy Spirit in the community of the Kingdom of God. In the form of this eternal purpose, the Spirit of God proceeds from God, inasmuch, namely, as He is destined to enter into the community which enjoys the perfect knowledge of God.

§ 50. The ethical view of the life of Christ in the light of His vocation found its appropriate sequel in the religious estimate of His life as the revelation of the love of God, and of that freedom which, as the characteristic power over the world, is the mark of Godhead. This discussion has followed essentially the point of view expressed in the kingly Prophethood of Christ; it diverged from the traditional interpretation of that title only in this, that the whole moral conduct of Christ, as the presentation of the Divine grace and truth, was included in Christ’s activity as Prophet. It remains to be seen whether and how the ethical view of the priestly character, which was at the same time claimed for the life and sufferings of Christ, may in like manner be turned to account from the religious point of view. Under the head of Priest the old theology attempts only an ethical, not a religious interpretation, for the priestly character of Christ has for its content His obedience, that purely human and voluntary achievement. The estimate of this obedience under the aforesaid title never for a moment leaves the lines of ethical, in specie forensic, judgment, nor does it issue in any distinctively religious attitude. Only indirectly does the interpretation of Christ’s priestly work fall within the view of religion, namely, in so far as it was initiated by God and is recognised by Him; but a religious significance for us is secured to the content or result of this priestly work only through its being taken up into Christ’s prophetic activity, and through the corresponding proclamation in the Church of how Christ has determined God to the grace of forgiveness. This formal inconsistency with the representation given of the prophetic office becomes the more painful in view of the fact, that the forensic interpretation of Christ’s priestly work conflicts in every respect with the religious interest of the Christian. For, as standards of conduct, law and religion are in Christian experience diametrically opposed, and the assumption that in God righteousness and grace work in opposite directions is in so far irreligious, that the unity of the Divine will forms an inviolable condition of all confidence in God. Therefore, the introduction into the theology of Protestantism since Töllner of the fundamental position of Abelard is a distinct advance upon orthodoxy. There only remains the question whether the thought of Christ’s priestly work can be duly and logically combined with the religious value already attached to His life. It is true we cannot in this case avoid a complete remodelling of the traditional doctrine of Christ’s priesthood and sacrifice. But this step is forced upon us, on the one hand by the established facts of Biblical theology, and on the other by the ethical consideration that what Christ in any way achieved for others must be included in what He thereby achieved for Himself.

It is unbiblical, then, to assume that between God’s grace or love and His righteousness there is an opposition, which in its bearing upon the sinful race of men would lead to a contradiction, only to be solved through the interference of Christ. The righteousness of inexorable retribution, which would be expressed in the sentence Fiat justitia, pereat mundus, is not in itself a religious conception, nor is it the meaning of the righteousness which in the sources of the Old and New Testaments is ascribed to God. God’s righteousness is His self-consistent and undeviating action in behalf of the salvation of the members of His community; in essence it is identical with His grace (vol. ii. p. 102). Between the two, therefore, there is no contradiction needing to be solved. It is unbiblical to assume that any one of the Old Testament sacrifices, after the analogy of which Christ’s death is judged, is meant to move God from wrath to grace (vol. ii. p. 184). On the contrary, these sacrifices rely implicitly upon the reality of God’s grace toward the covenant people, and merely define certain positive conditions which the members of the covenant people must fulfil in order to enjoy the nearness of the God of grace. It is unbiblical to assume that the sacrificial offering includes in itself a penal act, executed not upon the guilty person, but upon the victim who takes his place. Representation by priest and sacrament is meant not in any exclusive, but in an inclusive sense. Because the priest draws near to God when he brings near the gift, therefore he represents before God those in whose behalf he is acting; it is not meant that because the priest and the sacrifice come near to God, the others may remain at a distance from God. These relations hold even when it is sins of ignorance which give occasion for sacrifices; in the latter case forgiveness results from the fact that, with the sacrifice, the priest has indirectly brought the sinners also into the presence of God. Lastly, it is unbiblical to assume that a sacrifice has its significance directly for God, and only under certain other conditions also for men. On the contrary, the sacrificial act is just what combines these two relations.

The ethical conditions of a satisfactory theory are not met by the orthodox doctrine of Christ’s priesthood, in so far as the latter has no regard for the distinct expression in the historical portrait of Christ of this fact, that Christ is first of all a Priest in His own behalf before He is a priest for others. The traditional theology overlooks this, since it conceives the idea of priest solely in the derivative sense of official priesthood, that is, as the mediation in behalf of others with God. But whoever is regarded as wielding an influence in this direction, must surely in the first place be a priest in his own behalf, that is, must possess and exercise the right of drawing near to God (Num. xvi. 5). Is that, then, a complete doctrine of Christ which has not one word of explanation for the fact that Christ prays regularly to God, and desires to transmit to His disciples His own religious fellowship with God expressed thereby? The appreciation of this feature of Christ’s character is obscured by the material conception of His Godhead, although surely it is evident that all specific action of God upon Christ, in virtue of which Christ reveals the Father and accomplishes His work, depends upon that spiritual interaction which appears in Christ’s intercourse through prayer with God as His Father. The error in the interpretation of Christ’s position as Prophet may be allowed to pass, since in this case the needful amplification and correction is easily supplied; but every interpretation of Christ’s activity as Priest is for us distinctly incomplete, which is not based upon the fact that Christ is in the first place a Priest in His own behalf, that is to say, that He is the subject of personal religion, or, more definitely, that He is the subject of that true and perfect religion, compared with which no other has been able to bring men to the desired goal of nearness to God. For since Christ was the first to possess complete and exhaustive knowledge of God, He is therefore also the first who was qualified in the true and final manner to exercise that fellowship with God which was the aim of every religion, and to experience in Himself in its fulness the reciprocal and saving influence of God. If with the attitude adopted by Christ we compare the method of the Old Testament sacrifices, then these latter as separate transactions fall short of the constancy, and as ceremonial transactions of the spirituality, of Christ’s nearness to God, and since they express only an indirect and material approach to Him, necessarily fail to effect for any man that personal attitude to God which pervades the consciousness of Jesus (Heb. x. 1–4). A nearer analogy is presented by the religious practice of the Psalmists, but in this case with an effort the success of which is not at every moment assured, but as a rule is rather anticipated for the future. Besides, there is the further difference, that the piety of the Psalmists does not as such possess the power of establishing a community, whereas Christ lives in the intention of transmitting to His disciples His own fellowship with God; and that we ourselves are able to institute these inquiries at all is only possible because this intention of Christ has had success in us.

If, then, Christ is to be thought of as Priest, the fundamental form for this priestly activity is contained in each moment of His unique consciousness, that as the Son of God He stands to God as Father in a relation of incomparable fellowship, which is realised in His knowledge of God, in the surrender of His will to God’s providential guiding, and in the security of feeling which accompanies the same. When, in prayer especially, He collects Himself for this fellowship, He asserts the nearness of God, and assures Himself of the love of God as the ground of His own position as God’s Son (John xv. 10, 11). At the same time this function is not exercised outside His consciousness of His vocation and the activity resulting therefrom, but of necessity opens out to include the whole range of this activity, even as it receives thence in return stimulus and support. For Christ recognises His vocation, and exercises it, as the direct work of God; the aim of His own efforts is known to Him as the very aim of God; His conduct therefore is intelligible to Him as a service rendered to God, which in its own way brings Him just as near to God as prayer itself. Thus the particular instance of loyalty to His vocation to which the circumstances led, namely, His readiness to die, served as really to support His conviction of the love of God toward Himself as did the consciousness He enjoyed of fulfilling God’s commands as a whole (John x. 17, xv. 10). Paul has framed the twofold conception, first, that the fruit of his own efforts in his vocation, namely, the converted heathen, are a sacrifice to God in the offering of which he renders priestly service (Rom. xv. 16); and, on the other hand, that that personal sanctification, which makes the body the fit instrument of the God-honouring life of the soul, is the spiritual sacrifice which each believer is to offer to God (xii. 1). Regarded in this light, Christ’s activity in His vocation and His consistent personal virtue also fall within the view of His priestly approach to God.

But under what conditions are we to understand that Christ’s loyalty to His vocation as a whole, and more especially His willingness to endure death as a consequence of that loyalty, have the significance of priestly service for others? It is true that this extreme instance of obedience to His vocation is the only one which is directly viewed by Christ Himself under the aspect of sacrifice, namely, in His words at the Last Supper, to which the less distinct references in John (x. 11, 17, xii. 24, xv. 13, xvii. 19) add nothing that is specific. The inclusion of this active obedience in the priestly work of Christ for others does not rest on any direct statement of the New Testament. At the same time, the value thus attached to the active conduct of Christ, so that His patience in suffering and willingness to die are included along with it under the one conception of His meritorious obedience, is the one point in the traditional interpretation which comes nearest to the truth. It is not the mere fate of dying that determines the value of Christ’s death as a sacrifice; what renders this issue of His life significant for others is His willing acceptance of the death inflicted on Him by His adversaries as a dispensation of God, and the highest proof of faithfulness to His vocation. Thus it is impossible to accept an interpretation of Christ’s sacrificial death which, under the head of satisfaction, combines in a superficial manner His death and His active life, while at bottom it ascribes to the death of Christ quite a different meaning, namely, that of substitutionary punishment. I have shown how alien this interpretation is to the whole Biblical idea of sacrifice as rightly understood, also how little the only utterance of Paul which points in this direction (Gal. iii. 13) has to do with the idea of sacrifice, how exactly rather it corresponds with Paul’s apocryphal conception of the Mosaic Law, a conception which cannot as such be theologically binding (vol. ii. p. 248). I have shown that the asserted necessity of a penal satisfaction to God as a condition of the exercise of His grace has no foundation in the Biblical conception of God; on the contrary, it is an intellectual inference from the principle of Hellenic religion that the gods practise a twofold retribution, a principle further supplemented by the assumption that the original adjustment of the relation between God and man is to be interpreted in terms of a legal ordinance (§ 32). It only remains, therefore, to show that the idea of a penalty borne for others in the manner in which this is here asserted, is as inconsistent with the conditions of moral life in the individual as it is foreign to the words of Christ.

The sufferings of Christ in His death are said to have been equivalent to the penalty which through sin the whole human race has brought upon itself. This proposition is based, not upon the ground that in the two cases the exact amount of suffering is the same, which is incapable of proof, but on the ground that there is an equivalence in quality and worth, in so far as Christ by the immeasurable worth of His Divinity counterbalanced the immeasurable worthlessness of sin, and consciously accepted as the punishment of sin the evils that befell Him, in other words realised momentarily in His own experience eternal damnation. Certainly this latter supposition is the indispensable condition of any value as satisfaction attaching in the sight of God to the sufferings of Christ. A punishment which is not felt as punishment lies beyond the horizon of a theology which regards legal retribution in its strictest form as the fundamental order of the world. But we have seen that the idea of punishment is not complete when it regards merely these objective conditions of legal order; to render it complete, the evils inflicted by public authority, in consequence of unlawful actions, must be accompanied by the sense of guilt in the person concerned (§ 14). Apart from this, the individual does not feel or reckon the punishment as punishment, but as an unpleasant interlude, perhaps, or even as an injustice done to himself. Now the doctrine of a penal satisfaction rendered by Christ stands in so direct a relation to this imperfect conception of punishment, which is due to inaccurate observation, that this fact alone is fatal to its validity. For Christ had no sense of guilt in His sufferings, consequently He cannot have regarded them as punishment, nor even as punishment accepted in the place of the guilty, or in order to deter men from sin. It may well be that an innocent man, who is a member of the same community with guilty men, shares the experience of evils which the guilty have brought upon themselves as punishment. But whether the innocent man, because of his innocence, finds such evil consequences of others’ guilt the easier or the heavier to bear, he at least cannot feel them as punishment, seeing he is himself wholly innocent, or, at any rate, not a partner in their guilt. Crell has rightly remarked against Grotius, that when God afflicts a family or a nation for the crime of its head, and thereby causes even innocent children to suffer, the evil for the latter is afflictio, not poena (vol. i. p. 339). In the same way Christ, Who was conscious of not deserving any punishment when He encountered death as a consequence of faithfulness to His vocation, cannot possibly have regarded as punishment the sufferings which, through the fellowship with sinful humanity attaching to His vocation, He brought on Himself as the consequence of man’s hostility to good—even although He cherished the compassionate purpose of contributing by His death toward the removal of this guilt.

While this theory of Christ’s sufferings has resulted from certain arbitrary assumptions anent the original Divine order of the world, assumptions not Christian but legal and Hellenic, yet, as a matter of fact, a certain religious interest has come to attach to the same; the question is whether the theory has thereby become the more convincing. In this connection, two different arguments are presented to us. On the one hand, von Meyer and Beck (vol. i. pp. 626, 630) maintain that the penal value of the sufferings of Christ is reflected and confirmed in the similar experience of believers, when the latter are crucified with Christ. But the alleged similarity is contrary to fact. Even the old theologians perceived that for the believer all evils are disciplinary in character, and serve to purify and try the soul (§ 9). In other words, if the “ crucifixion ” of believers is to be understood as an inward process, then it means the transformation of the old man into the new, which transformation takes place through self-discipline and the attainment of virtue, and each act of dying to the flesh is immediately recompensed by the bliss of living to the spirit. These experiences of the believer have no resemblance whatever to simple retributive punishment. Granting that they resemble the sufferings of Christ, the only conclusion we can draw is the one already arrived at, namely, that for Christ His sufferings served as a means of testing His faithfulness to His vocation—this and nothing else. The religious interest attaching to the penal value of Christ’s sufferings has been expressed in another form by Philippi (vol. i. p. 626). Philippi makes his conviction of the truth of Christianity rest upon the consideration, that Christ, by the penal satisfaction He offered to God, proves Himself his surety against the wrath and retributive justice of God; but for this, Philippi would have been quite content with the religion of his fathers. Here the question arises, by what means is the individual to know that Christ, in offering a general satisfaction, is surety also for him? He could be assured of this only if Christ suffered the particular punishment which, as regards quantity and quality, would correspond to his own personal transgressions. But these are by no means the lines on which the doctrine championed by Philippi is actually laid. Just as the assumed conception of original sin obscures the particular guilt of individual men, so the penal satisfaction offered by Christ is made the equivalent of the eternal damnation due to all mankind, and is by no means fitted to counteract the sense of guilt of each separate individual. However much we may widen it out into sympathy with the common guilt of men, the fact remains that the personal aspect is the point of least concern to the orthodox dogma. The latter appropriates the sense of guilt so pre-eminently for original sin that an individual sense of guilt cannot arise, because all separate transgressions are represented merely as unavoidable consequences of original sin, and add nothing to its guilt. In the same way, therefore, that the conception of original sin admits no distinction of individual sin, so the worth of the satisfaction offered by Christ for hereditary sin as a whole provides no guarantee that He is surety for the particular sins of the individual, which the latter distinguishes from original sin. To bridge the gap here disclosed is logically just as impossible as it has proved for Lutheran theology to establish a logical reconciliation between the universal promise of grace and its application to the individual believer (§ 24). One would need to know beforehand that he is himself elected.

But yet another defence might be offered. I recall, with this view, the remarkable position of Wessel (p. 371), who distributes Christ’s penal satisfaction over the various amounts of punishment merited by each individual, whether elect or reprobate, and makes room for all this punishment in the consciousness of Christ, Who is represented as having made satisfaction for the separate penalty due by each individual. It has been pointed out that this view of Wessel corresponds with the fact that he ignores altogether original sin; at the same time it is due to a far more exact appreciation of the individual sense of guilt than was possessed by the Reformers, whose own intention it was to deepen this sense of guilt to the utmost. In this interest they adopted Augustine’s doctrine of original sin; but there is no doubt that thereby the sense of individual responsibility, which we must regard as one of the strongest motives of the Christian religion, has in part been weakened and in part perverted. Wherefore also the religious interest which Philippi here manifests is clearly inconsistent with the theology which he describes as the theology of the Church. What a pity that Luther did not devote some attention to the theory of Wessel, and discuss the bearing of his own doctrine upon it! For that it stands in some direct relation to the emphasis needing to be laid on the individual sense of guilt, is confirmed to me by a communication I have received from a pastor, who, without knowing anything of Wessel, was led by his own experience in dealing with men, to the very same view. If, namely, the individual sense of guilt is to be met by the thought of the penal satisfaction offered by Christ, then nothing is left us but the hypothesis that Christ in His sufferings had a distinct and separate experience of the amount of punishment due to each separate individual of all mankind. The impossibility of this supposition is at once apparent, for there is as little evidence in the history of Christ’s life, as there is room within the range of His human consciousness, for an omniscience of this kind; so that we have here a conclusive reason against the interpretation of Christ’s sufferings as the conscious experience by Him of the punishment due to all mankind.

Christ’s Priesthood, therefore, is a well-grounded expression of the fact that, as the subject of the perfect spiritual religion, Christ stood in the highest possible relation of fellowship with God, and exercised this fellowship at each moment of His life, since every act and word of His vocation arose out of His religious relation to God. The union of mankind through the motive of universal love, He regarded as the Kingdom of God; in bringing about this union He was conscious of exercising in His own person the lordship of God; and this association of His own moral ideal with the thought of God is only possible as the result of His consistent religious attitude, whether in His view of the world, in His apprehension of Himself, or in His worship of God. In other words, the certainty He enjoyed as to His own particular vocation of necessity presupposes that His apprehension of Himself as the Son of God is ever attained through the exercise of His religious relation toward God, that is, through the adoration of God as His Father. Therefore, when we have placed the one common material of Christ’s life, His speech and conduct as well as His patience in suffering, under the two separate categories of prophetic and priestly activity, we exhaust the significance of His person as Bearer of the Divine lordship, or founder of the Divine Kingdom. Inasmuch as at each moment of His life the same historical material affords confirmation of His religious character as subject of the perfect religion, and of His personal vocation as the ambassador of God, He hereby displays His specific and unique significance for those who through His kingly Prophethood are led to enter into the same religious attitude to God, so as to adopt as the supreme aim of their own life the realisation of God’s Kingdom. To what extent the priestly relation which was exercised by Christ in His own person becomes also significant for others, forms the theme of a later discussion.

1. In order to determine the specific significance of the Person of Christ in Christian thought, whether as regards our view of the world or our judgment of ourselves, account must be taken of the whole range of Christ’s activity, and of these two essential considerations——first, that the Christian religion is not a national religion; and, second, that the Christian religion, as the perfect and complete revelation of God, has this object, namely, to render men, in virtue of their relation to the supramundane spiritual God, free and independent with regard to the world.

2. In so far as the speech and conduct and patience under suffering, which make up the life of Christ, arise out of His vocation to exercise the moral lordship of God and realise God’s Kingdom, and are the perfect fulfilment of this vocation, even to the extent of His willingly and patiently enduring the pains of death, it follows from the relation of this purpose of Christ to the essential will of God, that Christ as the kingly Prophet is the perfect revelation of God; that, in virtue of the motive which inspired Him, namely, love, and the lordship which in His estimate of Himself and in His patience He exercised over the world, He is equal to God; and that He is the eternal object of the Divine love, and as such also the ground of the eternal election of the community of the Kingdom of God.

3. In so far as the unbroken faithfulness of Christ to His vocation not only exhibits in detail the religious relation of the Son of God to God as His Father, but always arises out of this relation, Christ maintains in His whole life His priestly relation toward God. If, therefore, His Priesthood is to be regarded as availing for others, it can only be in virtue of this fact.

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Footnotes

1. By this is meant that the disciples of Jesus take the rank of sons of God (Matt. xvii. 26), and are received into the same relation to God in which Christ stands to His Father (John xvii. 21-23). ↩

2. Summa theol. P. iii. qu. 2, art. 7: “ Unio, de qua loquimur, est relatio quaedam, quae consideratur inter divinam naturam et humanam, secundum quod conveniunt in una persona filii dei. Omnis relatio autem, quae consideratur inter deum et creaturam, realiter quidem est in creatura, per cuius mutationem talis relatio innascitur; non autem est realiter in deo sed secundum rationem tantum, quia non innascitur secundum mutationem dei.” ↩

3. Geschichte des Pietismus, i. p. 49. ↩

4. Von Conciliis und Kirchen, Walch, xvi. p. 2724 ff. ↩

5. Kurze Form, die zehn Gebote, Glauben und Vaterunser zu betrachten (1520), Walch, x. p. 182. ↩

6. Loci theol. 1535, C. R. xxi. pp. 366, 367: “ Sicut scriptura docet nos de filii divinitate non tantum speculative sed practice, hoc est iubet, ut Christum invocemus, ut Christo confidamus—sic enim vere tribuetur ei honos divinitatis—ita vult nos spiritus sancti divinitatem in ipsa consolatione et vivificatione cognoscere… . Haec officia spiritus prodest considerare… . In hac invocatione, in his exercitiis fidei melius cognoscemus trinitatem, quam in otiosis speculationibus, quae disputant, quid personae inter se agant, non quid nobiscum agant.”—The subject is discussed also by A. H. Francke, Christus s. scripturae nucleus (Halae, 1724), pp. 121-150: “ Ille, de quo omnes dei servi in V. et N. test. unanimiter testantur, quod omnes homines in eum credere debeant, et quidem tam excellenti modo, quo sine gravissimo idololatriae crimine in rem ullam credere nemo potest, ille est cum patre verus vivens ac essentialis deus. Atqui in Christum talis fides requiritur. Ergo Christus una cum patre est verus vivens ac essentialis deus.” ↩

7. Exposition of the second Article of the Creed, concerning Jesus Christ, preached in the castle of Torgau (1533). Walch, x. p. 1309. ↩

8. Evangelienpostille: Sermon on the fifth Sunday after Easter: “To believe on Christ does not mean to believe that Christ is a person who is both God and man, for that will not be any help to any man, but to believe that this same person is Christ, that is, that for our sake He is come out from God, and is come into the world, and then again leaves the world and goes to the Father. It is from this office He gets the name Jesus Christ; and to believe this of Him is to be and to abide in His name.” Second sermon on Whitsunday: “The devil can be doing with a sinner who clings merely to the man Christ, he is even content to let folk say and hear the words that Christ is true God; but one thing he will not suffer—that the heart should take such a true and inseparable hold of Christ that Christ’s word and the Father’s word become one and the same word and will” (Walch, xi. pp. 1251, 1443). ↩

9. Decem praecepta, Wittembergensi praedicata populo (1518, Erl. lat. xii. p. 5): “Ubi audis, quod Christus pro te passus est et credis, iam oritur fiducia in eum et amor dulcis et sic periit omnis rerum affectus ut inutilium, et oritur aestimatio solius Christi ut rei necessariae vehementer, remansitque tibi nonnisi solus Iesus solus satis et sufficiens tibi, ita ut de omnibus desperans unicum habeas hunc, in quo omnia speras, ideoque super omnia eum diligas. At Iesus est verus, unus, solus deus, quem cum habes non habes alienum deum. Iudaei vero timentes, ne alienum deum haberent, si hominem Christum adorent, eo peius a lorant alienum deum, scilicet idola cordis sui, quae de deo fingunt.” ↩

10. This is the attitude of Theremin in a sermon on the Divinity of Christ, of the year 1818, edited with a preface for 1881 by Kögel. The preacher’s desire is to convince his contemporaries of the Divinity of Christ, if only they believe (1) that Christ is a good man, (2) that God is our Father, and (3) that there is a future life of blessedness. “This will suffice us to bring you to the avowal that Christ is the only-begotten Son of God” (p. 7). Compare herewith the following sentences (p. 11): “The confession that Christ is true God lay already involved in your moral sense… . Beyond this, then, we will not go… . That we should be able to understand and explain in what way the Divine nature unites itself with the human—this God does not ask of us, He has not put it within the grasp of our understanding. But that holiness cannot lie—that we understand, and that may suffice us,” ↩

11. Compare the remark of Luther on John xvii. 3 (Walch, viii. p. 697): “Observe how Christ in this word weaves into one web the knowledge of Himself and of the Father, so that only through Christ and in Him alone do we know the Father. I have often said this, and I keep on saying it, so that even when I am dead men may remember it, and may be on their guard against all teachers, as devil-driven and devil-led, who begin their teaching and preaching about God up in the heights, altogether separate and apart from Christ, in the way that hitherto in such schools they have speculated and played with His works in heaven above—what He is, thinks, and does in Himself.” ↩

12. I refer to Schneckenburger, Zur kirchlichen Christologie, 1848; 2nd edition, 1861. ↩

13. Beiträge zur kirchlichen Christologie, 1845. Cf. on this point Schneckenburger, op. cit. p. 196 ff. ↩

14. Cf. Stephan, Das heutige Aegypten (1872), pp. 257–261. ↩

15. Cf. Lesefrüchte aus dem heiligen Bernhard, Stud. u. Krit. 1879, p. 322. ↩

16. Sermo xx. 2: “Multum laboravit in eo salvator, nec in omni mundi fabrica tantum fatigationis auctor assumsit. At vero hic et in dictis suis sustinuit contradictores et in factis observatores et in tormentis illusores et in morte exprobratores. Ecce quomodo dilexit.” ↩

17. On this point compare A. H. Francke, “De magnitudine et maiestate Iesu Christi (programmata diversis temporibus in acad. Hal. proposita, 1714), p. 170: “Tantus cum esset dei filius, an in carne se manifestantem, humanam naturam adsumentem minorem factum opinabimur? Absit, ut quem magnum caritate, ipsamque caritatem esse agnovimus, eum minorem putemus in eo ipso, quo magnitudinem suae caritatis non verbis aut promissis amplius sed re ipsa declaravit, factoque stupendo, ipsis angelis mirabili, hominibus depravatis incredibili ostendit, comprobavit et ipse ut caritas in mundo apparuit.” P. 180: “Detinuit nos diutius consideratio magnitudinis Christi in ipsa morte elucentis. At cum in hac morte eius, morte inquam Christi, quem mors retinere non potuit, omnis vita et salus sita sit, imo omnis ex ea fidei victoria et futura eorum, quos fides ad finem servata coronabit, gloria dependeat, de tanta re ne incepisse quidem aliquid dicere nobis videmur.” ↩

18. For other upholders of this theory, since Eusebius, compare Krauss, Das Mittlerwerk nach dem Schema des munus triplex, Jahrb. für deutsche Theol. xvii. (1872) p. 595 ff. ↩

19. Cf. Heppe, Dogmatik des deutschen Protestantismus im 16 Jahrh. ii. pp. 209–212. The statement holds of Strigel, Hemming, Hesshus, Homberger, Selnecker, Heerbrand. Hafenreffer, on the other hand, in explaining the name Christ, has first the two titles, and afterwards the three. ↩

20. C. R. xxix. p. 69: “Credimus et Christum ipsum esse, hoc est, omnibus sancti spiritus gratiis perfusum, ut de plenitudine eius omnes accipiamus, quicunque simul per fidem eius consortes ac participes; hac denique unctione constitutum esse a patre regem, ut in ipso reges essemus, imperium habentes supra diabolum, peccatum, mortem et inferos; deinde sacerdotem, qui suo sacrificio patrem placaret ac reconciliaret, ut in ipso sacerdotes essemus, ipso intercessore ac mediatore patri preces, gratiarum actiones, nosmetipsos et nostra omnia offerentes.” ↩

21. L.c. p. 515: “Quantum ad regnum attinet, non terrenum aut carnale est, sed spirituale, quod in coelum magis, futuramque et aeternam vitam respiciat. Deinde talis illi est regnandi ratio, ut non tam sibi regnet quam nobis. Potentia enim sua nos armat et instruit, decore et magnificentia ornat, opibus locupletat, denique in regni participationem exaltat et evehit. Siquidem eius communionis, qua se nobis illigavit beneficio, reges et ipsi constituimur, robore eius ad certamen cum diabolo, peccato et morte depugnandum armati, iustitiae eius ornamentis ad spem immortalitatis vestiti, divitiis sanctitatis eius ad fructificandum deo per bona opera locupletati. — At sacerdotis functionem nihilo minori nostro bono sustinet; non ideo tantum, quod sua intercessione placatum patrem nobis propitium reddit, sed quod nos quoque in sacerdotii consortium asciscit, ut ipso freti intercessore ac mediatore patri preces, gratiarum actiones, nosmetipsos et nostra omnia offeramus.” ↩

22. Lib. ii. 15. 4: “Unde colligimus, ipsum nobis magis regnare quam sibi, idque intus et extra, ut scilicet donis spiritus referti ex iis primitiis sentiamus vere nos deo coniunctos esse ad perfectam beatitudinem. Deinde ut eiusdem spiritus virtute freti non dubitemus, contra diabolum, mundum et quodvis noxae genus nos semper fore victores… . Ad aeternam usque vitam nos attolit, ut patienter hanc vitam sub aerumnis, inedia, frigore, contemtu, probris aliisque molestiis transigamus hoc uno contenti, quod nunquam destituet nos rex noster, quin necessitatibus nostris subveniat.” ↩

23. Cf. Köstlin, ii. p. 380; Melanchthon, Loci C. R. xxi. pp. 519, 920; vid. supra, p. 287. ↩

24. Niemeyer, l.c. p. 129: “Regnum Christi spirituale, quod verbo et spiritu dei continetur, quae iustitiam et vitam secum ferunt… . Propheta Christus est, quum in mundum descendit, patris se legatum apud homines et interpretem professus est idque in eum finem, ut patris voluntate ad plenum exposita finem poneret revelationibus omnibus et prophetiis.” ↩

25. L.c. p. 457; Cat. Pal. 31: “Christus appellatur unctus, quod a patre ordinatus et spiritu sancto unctus sit summus propheta ac doctor, qui nobis arcanum consilium et omnem voluntatem patris de redemtione nostri patefecit, et summus pontifex, qui nos unico sacrificio corporis sui redemit, assidueque pro nobis apud patrem intercedit, et rex, qui nos suo verbo et spiritu gubernat, et partam nobis salutem tuetur ac conservat.” ↩

26. Christ. theol. compend. i. 18: “Regium officium in humiliationis statu administravit ecclesiam verbo ac spiritu sic congregando et conservando, ut nihil externae regiae maiestatis in ipso apparuerit.” ↩

27. C. R. xxix. p. 516: “Postremo illi domini elogium adscribitur, quoniam hac lege mundo praefectus est a patre, ut eius dominationem hic exerceat… . Sic autem significatur, non tantum praeceptorem esse et magistrum, cui auscultandum sit docenti, sed caput ac principem, cuius imperio parendum sit, cuius nutui obtemperandum, cuius ad voluntatem obsequia nostra sint dirigenda.” ↩

28. The Life and Manners of all True Christians, 1582. ↩

29. Ioh. a Lasco, Opera, ed. Kuyper, tom. ii. pp. 416, 430, 304, 306; Niemeyer, Coll. Conf. p. 345, Appendix, p. 54; Weingarten, Revolutionskirchen Englands, p. 21. ↩

30. Person of Christ, God and Man, chap. vii. (Works, London, 1721, p. 51): “Some seem to imagine that the kingly power of Christ towards the Church consists only in external rule by the gospel and the laws thereof, requiring obedience unto the officers and rulers, that He hath appointed therein. It is true that this also belongs unto His kingly power and rule. But to suppose that it consisteth solely therein, is an ebullition from the poisonous fountain of the denial of His Divine person.” P. 53: “The rule of Christ as King of the Church is internal and spiritual over the minds, souls, and consciences of all that do believe.” ↩

31. Syntagma theol. vi. 29. p. 443. ↩

32. Cf. Schneckenburger, Zur kirchl. Christologie, p. 74 ff. ↩

33. Schneckenburger, op. cit. p. 47, quotes Cocceius, De foed. et test. dei, v. 92: ” Deus sibimet ipsi satisfecit ” ; Hulsius, Systema Controversiarum, p. 310: ” Formale principium est natura divina … haec obtulit victimam humanae naturae.” ↩