SIR ROBERT ANDERSON
Secret Service
Theologian
THE LORD FROM HEAVEN
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE TESTIMONY OF JAMES AND THE HEBREWS
"JAMES, a servant of God, and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to
the twelve tribes which are of the dispersion, greeting" (James i. 1).
It
is almost impossible for a Gentile Christian to appreciate the amazing change
in the mind and heart of a devout Jew which words like these betoken. Though
sects and heresies were many in Judaism, the great truth of the One God was
held with passionate fervour by all, whether orthodox or heretic; and yet here
the Deity of Christ is unequivocally acknowledged by one who in the course of
the Ministry had shared the prevailing unbelief.
Superstition pictures the
Christ of the Ministry with a halo round His head, and scepticism represents
Him as echoing "current Jewish notions." But while the Christian worships Him
as Divine, he recalls the words of the prophet, "He hath no form nor
comeliness, and when we shall see Him there is no beauty that we should desire
Him." And yet, even with the 53rd chapter of Isaiah in view, no Gentile
Christian perhaps can understand how a Jew regarded the Lord and His ministry.
"There was in such a Messiah absolutely nothing - past, present, or possible;
intellectually, religiously, or even nationally - to attract, but all to
repel"
This startling dictum of Dr. Edersheim's (see
Life and Times of the Messiah p.145) may help us to appreciate the
testimony of the Epistle of James. The truth of the Deity of Christ must have
been forced upon the writer by overwhelmingly compelling proofs. And as that
truth is assumed without a word of "apology" or explanation, it must have been
accepted by all the Jewish believers, for it was to them that the Epistle was
addressed.
"James, the Lord's brother," is the only New Testament writer
who never names Him otherwise than as Lord. He names Him indeed only once
again, when he writes, "My brethren, hold not the faith of our Lord Jesus
Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons." Is it conceivable that a
man with the training of a Jew could write such a sentence, unless He believed
that Christ was Divine? And it is a fact of extreme significance that
throughout his Epistle he uses this title, "the Lord," indifferently of both
the Father and the Son.' And his testimony ought to have increased weight with
those who regard the writer as a "Judaiser."
But I would enter a protest in
passing against the disparagement of this Epistle by certain of the Fathers and
Reformers. The current theology of Christendom regards the present
dispensation as the climax of God's purposes of blessing for earth; but the New
Testament represents it as an episode, filling up the interval between the
setting aside of the Covenant people and their restoration again to favour.
During that interval the Church, the body of Christ, is being gathered out; and
the Church in its lower aspect, as a public organisation upon earth, ought,
according to the divine purpose, to fill the place which the Covenant people
were intended to hold. But through the apostasy of Christendom the main channel
has become a stagnant pool; and the professing Church as a whole has lapsed
from the place originally assigned to it.
With us today all this is
elementary truth, but the Fathers had but a very partial apprehension of it,
and the German Reformers shared their ignorance. What specially concerns us
here, however, is that in the transitional Pentecostal dispensation, recorded
in the Acts of the Apostles, the Jew still held a distinctive place. And while
"to the Jew, first," characterised it throughout, "to the Jew only" marked its
initial phase. And it is to that period that the Epistle of James should be
assigned, and to that dispensation his ministry specially pertained.
It is
just because the Pentecostal Church was Jewish that in considering the indirect
evidence for the Deity of Christ, the belief of the early disciples is of such
importance, For it is inconceivable that these Jewish converts could have come
to worship two Gods, and yet the Epistles that were specially their own make it
clear that their belief in Christ as God was outside the sphere of controversy
or doubt.
(Footnote - I here assume that the James of
the Epistle was "the Lord's brother"; for the study of many a treatise to prove
the contrary has satisfied me that he held that relationship. Indeed Matt.
xlii. 55 is conclusive. The ordinary "man-of-the-world" Jew knew nothing of a
"pre-existent divine Messiah." The Christ he looked for was one of his own
people, and therefore that he should have cousins would be regarded as a matter
of course - they supposed that John the Baptist was the Christ (Luke iii. 15);
but the thought of His having brothers and sisters seems to have been repugnant
to him.
And a careful study of the chronological question has convinced me
that they are right who hold the Epistle of James to be perhaps the earliest of
the New Testament writings. It belongs to that period of the Pentecostal
dispensation when the whole Church was Jewish, and when their meeting-places
still bore the Jewish designation of "synagogues" (chap. ii. 2).)
To
many the testimony of the Epistle to the Hebrews may seem more telling in this
respect than that of James, although here we cannot appeal with certainty to
the personality of the writer. No one who has experience in dealing with
questions of the kind will ignore either the weighty evidence which connects
the Apostle Paul with the Epistle, or the difficulties which beset the
hypothesis of his authorship. When dealing in a practical way with such
problems, the expert often finds in some purely incidental point a clew to the
way out of a seeming impasse. And here a sentence in the typically "Pauline"
postscript to the Epistle may possibly suggest the solution of this
much-debated question. "Suffer the word of exhortation," the writer concludes,
"for I have written a letter unto you in few words." This is generally
dismissed as a meaningless conventionalism, for Hebrews is one of the longest
of the Epistles; and moreover, as has been often noticed, the first twelve
chapters are a treatise rather than an Epistle. And as it is to the thirteenth
chapter that the advocates of the Pauline hypothesis specially appeal, may not
that last chapter contain the "few words" added by the great Apostle in sending
the treatise to those for whom it was written ?
(Footnote - This is not a theory hastily formed for the purpose
of my " argument," but a belief which I have held for many years. A statement
of the grounds on which it is based would require a lengthy excursus that would
not be germane to the subject of these pages.)
But whatever view we
take of its authorship, the testimony which the Epistle renders to the Lord's
Deity is conclusive. Even if we dismiss every question of inspiration, and
regard it merely as a human work, it proves beyond doubt that the doctrine of
the Godhood held rank at that time among the certainties of the faith.
Here
we need not go beyond the first chapter, or, indeed, the opening sentences of
it. By the Son it was that God made the worlds. He is the effulgence of the
glory of God, and the impress, or very image, of the Person of God. And He it
is who upholds all things by the word of His power. If all this applies to a
creature, words have no meaning, and "Christian doctrine" may be dismissed as a
tangle of hyperbole and superstition. And if the Son be not a creature, he must
be God. No pagan alternative can be accepted by either Christian or Jew.
And this disposes of that subtle phase of error which ascribes a kind of
secondary Divinity to the Son, while refusing to recognise His Deity. Appeal is
made to numerous passages which represent God as working by and through the
Son, whether in the sphere of creation, or of government, or of redemption. And
stress is laid on the emphatic statement that "to us there is one God, the
Father, of whom are all things, and we unto Him, and one Lord, Jesus Christ,
through whom are all things, and we through Him." But if the Socinian reads
these words aright, then, in view of the uncompromising monotheism of
Scripture, we must relegate our Lord and Saviour to the position of a
fellow-creature; and to pay Him any divine homage whatever is pagan idolatry,
and treason against God.
The prominent place which this difficulty has
occupied in all the controversies of all the centuries is proof of its reality
and its magnitude. But it is to be solved, not by giving up Christianity, but
by accepting the plain and emphatic words of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which He
declares His oneness with the Father - words such as these - "I and My Father
are one" (John x. 80).
"The Father is in Me, and I in Him" (John x. 88).
"He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father" (John xiv. 9). "I am in the Father,
and the Father in Me" (John xiv. 10). It is with the indirect evidence of this
truth that I am dealing; and, as already noticed, the expert sets a high value
upon evidence of that kind. Statements that teach explicitly the Deity of
Christ may be frittered away by those who refuse the truth; but no one can thus
evade the testimony supplied by the beliefs of the early disciples.
And the
force of that testimony is far greater than our theologians recognise. The
learned treatises which discuss whether the Jew believed in a pre-existent
Divine Messiah are strangely unintelligent. For, whether in the first century
or the twentieth, it is only the spiritually enlightened who really believe in
the Godhood of Christ; and every influence of the kind which, with us, leads
men to give a blind assent to that doctrine, operated to prejudice the
unregenerate Jew against it, the Gospels make it clear that with the little
company of those who, in the midstof almost universal apostasy, were "waiting
for the redemption," the question at issue was whether the Nazarene was really
the Son of God; but with the ordinary Jew the very fact of His claiming to be
Son of God was deemed conclusive evidence of blasphemy. The beliefs of the
disciples, therefore, were formed and avowed in opposition to every influence
which ecclesiastical authority could bring to bear on them. In Christendom all
who regard the Church as the oracle of God profess to believe Christ to be
divine, just as they believe that the "consecrated wafer" is His flesh. But the
unregenerate Jew of nineteen hundred years ago stood intellectually on a higher
level than the nominal Christian of to-day, for his beliefs rested upon Holy
Scripture. And yet he shared the incapacity of all unspiritual men to receive
its spiritual teaching. Indeed, the Sadducean heresies were merely a formal
development of thoughts and doubts that are common to all unregenerate men
whose minds are not warped or blinded by superstition. They prevail extensively
to-day. For while the intellectual revolt of the sixteenth century
re-established the authority of the Bible, and resulted in Protestantism, that
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries led to an orgy of infidelity. And
unfortunately the movement of our own day is not on the lines of the
Reformation.
But this is a digression. Every Jew looked for a Messiah. But
in Judaism there was no clear line of division between politics and religion;
and so, while all expected him to be a prophet and a religious leader, the
hopes of ordinary men were fixed on the coming of a great national champion who
would deliver them from Gentile supremacy, and restore to them the prosperity
and greatness of bygone days.'
But the faith of the little band of the
Lord's disciples was far removed from the creeds and hopes of carnal men. "Thou
art the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matt. xvi. 16); "Thou art the Son
of God, Thou art the King of Israel" (John i. 49): these were typical
confessions. None but the Christ could be King of Israel, and Christ was the
Son of God in the pregnant sense which that title signified. The confession of
Thomas, "My Lord and my God" was the full expression of it. And if any one can
suppose that devout Jews could have uttered such words to a fellow-creature, or
that the Lord would have tolerated them had He not claimed to be divine, we
have no common ground for a discussion of the question.
Chapter Eight
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