THE

CHRISTIAN EXAMINER

AND

RELIGIOUS MISCELLANY.

SEPTEMBER, 1851.

ART. I.THE CHRIST OF THE JEWS.

GERMAN criticism on the New Testament has been very fruitful of results. Some may take fruitful to be a misprint for barren, or by results may understand bad results. But we mean what we say; that the studies of German critics have been fruitful, and of good results. The impression prevails at large, that these scholars have done little more than annihilate each other, that theory has displaced theory, and interpretation succeeded interpretation, without rule or order,-each hypothesis having its day, and then disappearing to make room for another equally baseless, which in its turn dies, leaving no useful materials for future building. It is the common belief that German Biblical criticism is chaotic. There never was a greater mistake. It is true that hasty generalizations have been made; errors have been committed and rectified; conjectures have proved false. This is the case with every science in its growing up. An extensive generalization taking the form of a theory is made upon a very few facts. Further discoveries cause the gigantic induction to be abandoned, but it only yields place to another equally out of proportion with the new mass of established data. The facts come first, the generalizations afterward. The reverse order seems to VOL. LI. -4TH S. VOL. XVI. NO. II.

15

prevail. The theory so vast appears not only to precede, but to choose, and even to create, the facts. We think the philosopher possessed by a preconceived idea. No doubt he is so to some extent. The theory hastily constructed will modify the facts it is built on, perhaps will imagine some others. Still, in the order of thought it follows them, and is shaped after them, until with the coincidence of theory and fact truth is discovered. So it is with Biblical criticism. One generalization after another has to be abandoned as too wide and sweeping, but no data are lost. Eichhorn yields to Paulus, Paulus to Strauss, Strauss to Schwegler, but all move on in the same line. There have been apparent retrogressions, but the advance has been sure. Notwithstanding diversities of opinion in regard to details, there is a surprising unanimity upon main facts and principles. The great points may be considered as established. The deposits of many students have at last formed a solid foundation. The labors of the last ten years especially have greatly furthered the cause of critical science. The writings of Schwegler and Baur, of Zeller, Planck, and Schwitzer in the Theologische Jahrbücher, are contributions of absolute and permanent value to this literature. There is a large school of critics who pursue a strictly scientific method of inquiry. They take the New Testament for exactly what it is, coming to its perusal with no prepossessions of any kind, traditional or dogmatic. They bring to it the same rules of investigation, literally the same rules, which they would apply to ordinary books. This is no new principle; but their adherence to it is wholly new; and the conclusions they arrive at are owing not to faithlessness, as many suppose, but to a severe obedience unto the method prescribed. Scrutinizing the Gospels with historical keenness, they have thrown much light upon their character and purpose, their age and their authors. By rigid analysis of their contents, many sig nificant things have been discovered; the fine stream of doctrine and argument has been traced through what long appeared a tangled confusion of disconnected words or a bare waste of unsuggestive incidents; nice analogies of thought have been discerned, and the relations which the Gospels bear to each other and to their age have been explained. No longer regarding the New

With

Testament as a single book, having one general character, pervaded by one and the same idea, and written under a common impulse of thought, but rather considering it as a collection of separate documents, each complete in itself, each characterized by a distinct plan, motive, doctrine, and dogmatic purpose, and representing a particular phase of speculation, the scholars we speak of are enabled to assign with very considerable accuracy the place which these writings should hold in the development of contemporaneous opinion. Such results are exceedingly valuable. They may not all be final; they may not all be true so far as they go. Some things will be unsaid. Some will be modified. We expect this. But what has been acquired is of great value, nevertheless. The ablest of these critics are not so presumptuous as to think that the whole truth is found. singular candor, and modesty also, be it said, they confess their mistakes. Baur's masterly exposition of the Pauline and Johannine theology may be unsound in some points, but its leading principles are probably fixed once and for ever. Schwegler's idea, that the belief of the Church was slowly developed by the conflict between Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, and the twelve who were Apostles to the Jews, that the books of the New Testament, and in fact all the theological writings of the first century and a half, were of a controversial character, taking different sides in the discussion, or mediating between the two parties,-may need qualification, as having been made too absolute and pressed too far; but substantially it is admitted, and is likely to be confirmed; at least in the opinion of the foremost men. Biblical criticism is an experimental science. You can only say what general positions in it are about settled, not what special truths are demonstrated.

We propose in this article to report some of the conclusions already reached upon a single point, - namely, the doctrine concerning Christ, his nature and functions, in the New Testament. We purpose reporting these conclusions, not objecting to them, nor yet defending them. We confess our inadequacy to either task. For the scholars who give us these results are prodigiously learned, and whoever undertakes to confute or to vindicate them, or in fact to do any thing but sit under them

as a wary, attentive pupil, must possess erudition and sagacity in some measure proportionable to theirs.

Another explanatory remark must be offered here. The conclusions we give are the conclusions of a particular school of critics; by far the ablest and most consistent, but a distinct school. Other critics, learned men of the orthodox persuasion, Dorner, for example, and old Hengstenberg, fight manfully against them, some think successfully. Moreover, individual members of the school differ among themselves, on minor points. We shall not indicate these differences, which are unimportant; but shall confine ourselves to a general exposition of characteristic views. To do even this accurately, according to the sequence of thought, we must begin somewhat far off.

The connection which Judaism held to exist between God and man, this is the basis of our inquiry. It was a distinctive feature of Judaism, we speak of Judaism, of course, as a whole theological system, not as an historical fact at any one period, it was peculiar to the genius of Judaism, that it absolutely separated God and Nature. God was not immanent in the world, but a solitary, independent Being; not, however, absorbing into himself all being, for the world had a distinct, though accidental, substance and existence. The material universe, however, is of small account in the Hebrew system. It is man, the finite spirit, who represents the contrast of God; man, who is entirely distinct from God, and yet eternally related to him. Nor is it the whole of mankind, the human in itself, that stands thus over against the Divine, but only a small section of mankind, a single race, the Jewish people. It is this elect nation, made the especial object of the Divine care, which God is incessantly seeking to reconcile with himself. Such a view could not fail to narrow exceedingly the Hebrew idea of God. A limited, almost a human personality, must have been ascribed to him who was not the Infinite and Absolute Deity, but the Guardian of à singular race. The personal will of the Divine is opposed to the personal will of the human, and the only relation between the two is that of merit and reward, never that of true inward harmony. Their mutual dealings are represented by the familiar figure of a lawsuit, in which each

party pleads against the other. The people are the servants of God, not his sons. They approach him by means of a covenant, and please him by obedience to a law. No spiritual intercourse is possible between the finite and the infinite; for the finite cannot break over its bounds. This chasm between God and man, which was peculiar to the Jewish religion, remained impassable until heathen philosophy, blending with Hebrew thought in the school of Alexandria, produced the doctrine of the Logos. Long before the birth of this doctrine, however, the Jewish mind had been straining after mediation. Hints of the final reconciliation, by no means obscure, abound in the Old Testament writings. A regular progress may be traced in the theophanies, or modes of Divine manifestation, described in these ancient books. Jehovah at first appears to the senses; then he sends a messenger, an angel; afterward he reveals himself in dreams and visions of the night. Finally, his attributes are personified, power, wisdom, goodness, in their order. God communicates with men through his Spirit, which is imparted to kings and prophets; but the Spirit is only a Divine attribute, not a Divine being. God sends forth his Word; he speaks his will, and it is done. By a word he creates heaven and earth. He sends his Word to his chosen prophets. The Mosaic law is the Word of Jehovah. But this Word is no person; nothing more than an impersonation of the living might of the Most High. The descriptions of Wisdom are far bolder. Wisdom is a moral attribute of Deity, directing and qualifying his will. To the Hebrews, the perfection of God was best displayed in Wisdom. This explains why, in the later books of the Old Testament, in Job, Proverbs, and particularly in the Apocrypha, Wisdom is exalted as the first of the Divine attributes. She is described as an absolute principle; man knows her not, nor is she found in the land of the living. God alone is acquainted with her pathway and dwelling-place. She frames and governs the world, and appoints the relations of God to man. She is the eldest daughter of God, anointed by him to be queen and governess of the earth. But this is figurative, poetical language, not too strong for personification. Wisdom is still an attribute, by no means a distinct person from the Deity. Even in the Apocryphal writings, in the Book of