The Expositor Volume 4 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1901 Excerpt: ...of value made by this Johannine idea of autonomy. "It was not as an example but as a Master that Christ spellbound the apostles" (Hort, Hulsean Lectures, p. 205). Seen in this light, Jesus requires no suggestions and suffers no force from without. The true embodiment of the Divine Spirit, he controls all by his word, and remains unshaken amid the clash and whirl of things,2 bearing his purpose and task to 1 Harnack acutely points out that the Jewish idea of pre-existenoe really springs from a devout aspiration of faith, namely, from the confidence that all is known to God and controlled by Him, " to whom the events of history do not come as a surprise, but who guides their course" (Dogmengeschichte, E. Tr. vol. i. p. 318). Thus the phenomena described above as belonging to the autonomy of Jesus simply represent, from this standpoint, the natural outcome of this conception as applied to the existent Christ on earth. 2 This Johannine tendency to emancipate the human Jesus more and more from the changes and olaims incident to an earthly career, is probably a development of one feeling whioh, among others, helped to suggest the idea of pre-existence to the apostolio consciousness. Especially in apocalyptio circles, haunted by the transitoriness and dissolution of their age, it was natural to attribute an eternal pre-existence to the loved objects of their faith, and thus to render them independent of time and its ruinous hazards (of. Baldensperger, SelbstbcwiusUein Jesu, pp. 3 f. 86 f.). This disposition had been for long prevalent in Jewish circles, and obviously fitted in with the high Christology of the Fourth gospel. As, however, Christ had to be brought down to earth and exhibited as a being of flesh and blood, the author needed other m...