The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (4th ed.)

In Luke i. 35, we find the narrowest and most literal interpretation of the expression, ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ; namely, as derived from his conception by means of the Holy Ghost. On the contrary, the widest moral and metaphorical sense is given to the expression in Matt. v. 45, where those who imitate the love of God towards his enemies are called the sons of the Father in heaven. There is an intermediate sense which we may term the metaphysical, because while it includes more than mere conformity of will, it is distinct from the notion of actual paternity, and implies a spiritual community of being. In this sense it is profusely employed and referred to in the fourth gospel; as when Jesus says that he speaks and does nothing of himself, but only what as a son he has learned from the Father (v. 19, xii. 49; and elsewhere), who, moreover, is in him (xvii. 21), and notwithstanding his exaltation over him (xiv. 28), is yet one with him (x. 30). There is yet a fourth sense in which the expression is presented. When (Matt. iv. 3) the devil challenges Jesus to change the stones into bread, making the supposition, If thou be the Son of God; when Nathanael says to Jesus, Thou art the Son of God, the King of Israel (John i. 49); when Peter confesses, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matt. xvi. 16; comp.

John vi. 69); when Martha thus expresses her faith in Jesus, I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God (John xi. 27); when the high priest adjures Jesus to tell him if he be the Christ, the Son of God (Matt. xxvi. 63): it is obvious that the devil means nothing more than, If thou be the Messiah; and that in the other passages the υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ, united as it is with Χριστὸς and βασιλεὺς, is but an appellation of the Messiah.

In Hos. xi. 1; Exod. iv. 22, the people of Israel, and in 2 Sam, vii. 14; Ps. ii. 7 (comp. lxxxix. 28), the king of that people, are called the son and the first-born of God. The kings (as also the people) of Israel had this appellation, in virtue of the love which Jehovah bore them, and the tutelary care which he exercised over them (2 Sam. vii. 14); and from the second psalm we gather the farther reason, that as earthly kings choose their sons to reign with or under them, so the Israelitish kings were invested by Jehovah, the supreme ruler, with the government of his favourite province. Thus the designation was originally applicable to every Israelitish king who adhered to the principle of the theocracy; but when the messianic idea was developed, it was pre-eminently assigned to the Messiah, as the best-beloved Son, and the most powerful vicegerent of God on earth.20

If, then, such was the original historical signification of the epithet, Son of God, as applied to the Messiah, we have to ask: is it possible that Jesus used it of himself in this signification only, or did he use it also in either of the three senses previously adduced? The narrowest, the merely physical import of the term is not put into the mouth of Jesus, but into that of the annunciating angel, Luke i. 35; and for this the Evangelist alone is responsible. In the intermediate, metaphysical sense, implying unity of essence [289]and community of existence with God, it might possibly have been understood by Jesus, supposing him to have remodelled in his own conceptions the theocratic interpretation current among his compatriots. It is true that the abundant expressions having this tendency in the Gospel of John, appear to contradict those of Jesus on an occasion recorded by the synoptical writers (Mark x. 17 f.; Luke xviii. 18 f.), when to a disciple who accosts him as Good Master, he replies: Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is God.

Here Jesus so tenaciously maintains the distinction between himself and God, that he renounces the predicate of (perfect) goodness, and insists on its appropriation to God alone.21 Olshausen supposes that this rejection related solely to the particular circumstances of the disciple addressed, who, regarding Jesus as a merely human teacher, ought not from his point of view to have given him a divine epithet, and that it was not intended by Jesus as a denial that he was, according to a just estimate of his character, actually the ἀγαθὸς in whom the one good Being was reflected as in a mirror; but this is to take for granted what is first to be proved, namely, that the declarations of Jesus concerning himself in the fourth gospel are on a level as to credibility with those recorded by the synoptical writers. Two of these writers cite some words of Jesus which have an important bearing on our present subject: All things are delivered to me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son but the Father: neither knoweth any man the Father, but the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him, Matt. xi. 27. Taking this passage in connexion with the one before quoted, we must infer that Jesus had indeed an intimate communion of thought and will with God, but under such limitations, that the attribute of perfect goodness, as well as of absolute knowledge (e.g., of the day and hour of the last day, Mark xiii. 32 parall.) belonged exclusively to God, and hence the boundary line between divine and human was strictly preserved.

Even in the fourth gospel Jesus declares, My Father is greater than I, ὁ πατήρ μον μείζων μου ἐστὶ (xiv. 28), but this slight echo of the synoptical statement does not remove the difficulty of conciliating the numerous discourses of a totally different tenor in the former, with the rejection of the epithet ἀγαθὸς in the latter. It is surprising, too, that Jesus in the fourth gospel appears altogether ignorant of the theocratic sense of the expression υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ, and can only vindicate his use of it in the metaphysical sense, by retreating to its vague and metaphorical application. When, namely (John x. 34 ff.), to justify his assumption of this title, he adduces the scriptural application of the term θεοὶ to other men, such as princes and magistrates, we are at a loss to understand why Jesus should resort to this remote and precarious argument, when close at hand lay the far more cogent one, that in the Old Testament, a theocratic king of Israel, or according to the customary interpretation of the most striking passages, the Messiah, is called the Son of Jehovah, and that therefore he, having declared himself to be the Messiah (v. 25), might consistently claim this appellation.

With respect to the light in which Jesus was viewed as the Son of God by others, we may remark that in the addresses of well-affected persons the title is often so associated as to be obviously a mere synonym of Χριστὸς, and this even in the fourth gospel; while on the other hand the contentious Ἰουδαῖοι of this gospel seem in their objections as ignorant as Jesus in his defence, of the theocratic, and only notice the metaphysical meaning of the expression. [290]It is true that, even in the synoptical gospels, when Jesus answers affirmatively the question whether he be the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matt. xxvi. 65, parall.), the high priest taxes him with blasphemy; but he refers merely to what he considers the unwarranted arrogation of the theocratic dignity of the Messiah, whereas in the fourth gospel, when Jesus represents himself as the Son of God (v. 17 f., x. 30 ff.), the Jews seek to kill him for the express reason that he thereby makes himself ἴσον τῷ θεῷ, nay even ἑαυτὸν θεὸν. According to the synoptical writers, the high priest so unhesitatingly considers the idea of the Son of God to pertain to that of the Messiah, that he associates the two titles as if they were interchangeable, in the question he addresses to Jesus: on the contrary the Jews in the Gospel of John regard the one idea as so far transcending the other, that they listen patiently to the declaration of Jesus that he is the Messiah (x. 25), but as soon as he begins to claim to be the Son of God, they take up stones to stone him.

In the synoptical gospels the reproach cast on Jesus is, that being a common man, he gives himself out for the Messiah; in the fourth gospel, that being a mere man, he gives himself out for a divine being. Hence Olshausen and others have justly insisted that in those passages of the latter gospel to which our remarks have reference, the υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ is not synonymous with Messiah, but is a name far transcending the ordinary idea of the Messiah;22 they are not, however, warranted in concluding that therefore in the first three Evangelists also23 the same expression imports more than the Messiah. For the only legitimate interpretation of the high priest’s question in Matthew makes ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ a synonym of ὁ Χριστὸς, and though in the parallel passage of Luke, the judges first ask Jesus if he be the Christ (xxii. 67)? and when he declines a direct answer,—predicting that they will behold the Son of man seated at the right hand of God,—hastily interrupt him with the question, Art thou the Son of God? (v. 70); yet, after receiving what they consider an affirmative answer, they accuse him before Pilate as one who pretends to be Christ, a king (xxiii. 2), thus clearly showing that Son of man, Son of God, and Messiah, must have been regarded as interchangeable terms.

It must therefore be conceded that there is a discrepancy on this point between the synoptical writers and John, and perhaps also an inconsistency of the latter with himself; for in several addresses to Jesus he retains the customary form, which associated Son of God with Christ or King of Israel, without being conscious of the distinction between the signification which υἱὸς τ. θ. must have in such a connexion, and that in which he used it elsewhere—a want of perception which habitual forms of expression are calculated to induce. We have before cited examples of this oversight in the fourth Evangelist (John i. 49, vi. 69, xi. 27).

The author of the Probabilia reasonably considers it suspicious that, in the fourth gospel, Jesus and his opponents should appear entirely ignorant of the theocratic sense which is elsewhere attached to the expression ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ, and which must have been more familiar to the Jews than any other, unless we suppose some of them to have partaken of Alexandrian culture. To such, we grant, as well as to the fourth Evangelist, judging from his prologue, the metaphysical relation of the λόγος μονογενὴς to God would be the most cherished association. [291]