International Theological Library. By H. R. Mackintosh, D.Phil., D.D. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark; New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1912.1
Prof. Mackintosh tells us in his Preface that he has designed his book “chiefly as a student’s manual,” and (that it may serve that end) that he has wished to make it “cover with a fair measure of completeness, the whole field of Christology.” This seems to promise us a plain, objective, comprehensive treatise. But we are afraid these qualities are scarcely those which most strikingly characterize it. The language in which it is written is overloaded, burdened with superfluous qualificatives, and, though often brilliant, often also not very exact. The presentation is individualistic to its finger-tips. And comprehensiveness of treatment is sought chiefly by prefixing to the constructive discussion—the author calls it, significantly, “the reconstructive statement”—an equally long survey of the “history of Christological doctrine.” Under this heading we class together the first two Books, which are entitled respectively “Christology in the New Testament” and “History of Christological Doctrine,” because, though formally distinguished, their subject-matters are dealt with much after the same fashion. They together occupy two hundred and eighty-four pages, leaving for the “reconstructive statement” the remaining two hundred and fifty pages.
Perhaps we ought to give some illustration of the looseness of the language of which we have complained. We begin with the simplest forms. On p. 43 our attention is directed to the “suggestion that in the earliest faith two forms of faith in Christ went side by side, in peaceful rivalry: that to which He was but a prophet and forerunner, and that to which He already appeared as authentically Divine in majesty and redeeming power.” It is then very correctly remarked that no such division of opinion is traceable in the New Testament, but it is surprisingly added (italics his): “Both estimates were held by all Christians.” What is intended is clear enough and very true: but what is actually said is, strictly taken, nonsense—for no one could possibly have combined the beliefs that Jesus was both “but a prophet” and that He was God. The fatally pleonastic “but” wrecks the precision of the statement. Similarly we read on p. 108 of “St. John’s usage of the title ‘Son of Man,’ ” whereas the fact of course is that John never uses that title, but only quotes Christ as using it; on p. 118, in an exposition of the Prologue to John, that it declares of the Logos that “He was from the beginning,” when what it really declares of course is that in the beginning He already was, which is something very different; on p. 125, that the apostolic habit of praying to Christ may be regarded “as the practical ‘deifying’ of Jesus,” whereas the truth is that Jesus was not held to be God because He was prayed to but was prayed to because He was held to be God; on p. 129, that it was possible for the first Christians “to accentuate either Christ’s Divine unity with, or His personal distinction from, the Father,” where the adjective “Divine” is quite without meaning; on p. 228, that according to Thomas Aquinas the two natures of our Lord “are not so much united, as brought into a common relation to the Logos,” which after some reflection may no doubt be made to yield its meaning, but is a very awkward way of expressing it; on p. 266, that according to Thomasius the Logos by His exinanition “became capable of forming the centre of a single personal Life,” as if He had not formed the center of a single personal life from all eternity; on p. 318, that the “influence” of Jesus has in every age “continued to reconcile men with God,” an expression which we would be loath to believe fairly embodied Prof. Mackintosh’s conception of the work of Christ; on p. 323, that the Greek idea of salvation naturally led to defining our Lord’s Person “in terms of substance, not spirit,” an instance of an inveterate habit of false antithesis; on p. 386, with respect to the attribution of “an impersonal humanity” to our Lord, that “we are rightly told that the truth against which the phrase is designed to safeguard is this, that the humanity of our Lord had no independent personality,” where, however, the disturbing “against” is probably a printer’s error22; on p. 397, with reference to Mark 13:32, that if Jesus “could thus be ignorant of a detail connected in some measure with His redemptive work, the conclusion is unavoidable that in secular affairs His knowledge was but the knowledge of His time”—certainly as fine a specimen of non sequitur as could easily be turned up anywhere. We have purposely chosen these instances from statements of no great intrinsic importance: they illustrate better on that account a fault of style.