Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 14.djvu/659

 THEOLOGY

599

THEOLOGY

Gal., iv, 14; Eph., i, 20-21). If St. Paul is obliged to use the terms "form of God", "image of God", when he speaks of Christ's Divinity, in order to show the personal distinction between the Eternal leather and the Divine Son (Phil., ii, l>; Col., i, 1.5), Christ ia not merely the image and glory of God (I Cor., xi, 7), but also the first-born Ijefore any created beings (Col., i, 1.5), in Whom, and by Whom, and for Whom all things were made (Col., i, 16), in Whom the fulness of the Godhead resides with thai actual reality which we attach to the presence of the material bodies perceptible and measurable through the organs of our senses (Col., ii, 9), in a word, "who is over all things, God blessed forever" (Rom., ix, 5).

(2) Christology of the Cathohc Epistles.— The Epistles of St. John will be considered together with the other writings of the same Apostle in the next paragraph. I'nder the present heading we shall briefly indicate the views concerning Christ held by the Apostles St. James, St. Peter, and St. Jude.

(a) The Epistle of St. James. — The mainly practical scope of the Epistle of St. James does not lead us to expect that Our Lord's Divinity would be formally expressed in it as a doctrine of faith. This doctrine is, however, imphed in the language of the inspired writer. He professes to stand in the same relation to Jesus Christ as to God, being the servant of both (i, 1): he applies the same term to the God of the Old Testament as to Jesus Christ (passim). Jesus Christ is both the sovereign judge and indepen- dent lawgiver, who can save and can destroy (iv, 12) ; thefaith in JesusChrist is faith in theLord of Glory (ii, 1). The language of St. James would be exaggerated and overstrained on any other supjiosition than the writer's firm belief in the Divinity of Jesus Christ.

(b) BeUef of St. Peter. — St. Peter presents himself as the servant and the apostle of Jesus Cliri.^t (I Pet., i, 1; II Pet., i, 1), who was predicted by the Pro])hcts of the Old Testament in such a way that tlic Prnpliets themselves were Christ's own servants, licialls. und organs (I Pet., i, 10-11). It is the iire-cxislcnt ( 'lirist who moulds the utterances of Israel's Prophets to proclaim their anticipations of His advent. St. Peter had witnes.sed the glory of Jesus in the Trans- figuration (II Pet., i, 16); he appears to take pleasure in multiplving His titles: Jesus Our Lord (II Pet., i, 2), our Lord .le.sus Christ (ibid., i, 14, 16), the Lord and Saviour (ibid., iii, 2), our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (ibid., i, 1), Whose power is Divine (ibid., i, 3), through whose promises Christians are made partakers of the nature of God (ibid., i, 4). Throughout his Epistle, therefore, St. Peter feels, as it were, anil implies the Divinity of Jesus Christ.

(c) Epistle of St. Jude. — St. Jude, too, introduces himself as the .servant of Jesus Christ, through union with whom Christians are kept in a life of faith and hoUness (1); Christ is our only Lord and Saviour (4), Who puni.shed Israel in the wilderness and the rebel angels (.5), Who will come to judgment surrounded by myriads of saints (14), and to Whom Christians look for the mercy which He will show them at His coming (21), the issue of which will be hfe everlasting. Can a merely human Christ be the subject of this language?

(3) Johannean Christology. — If there were nothing else in the New Testament to prove the Divinity of Christ, the first fourteen verses in the Fourth Gospel would suffice to convince a believer in the Bible of that dogma. Now the doctrine of this prologue is the fundamental idea of the whole Johannean theol- ogy. The Word made flesh is the same with the Word Who was in the beginning, on the one hand, and with the man Jesus Christ, the subject of the Fourth Gospel, on the other. The whole Gospel is a history of the Eternal Word dwelling in human nature among men.

The teaching of the Fourth Gospel is also found in the Johannean Epistles. In his very opening

words the writer tells his readers that the Word of life has become manifest and that the Apostles had seen and heard and handled the Word incarnate. Tlie denial of the Son implies the loss of the Father (I John, ii, 23), and "wlio.soever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God abideth in him and he in God" (ibid., iv, 15). Towards the end of the Epistle the writer is still more emphatic: "And we know that the Son of God is come: and he hath given us understanding that we may know the true God, and may be in his true Son. This is the true God and hfe eternal" (ibid., v, 20).

According to the Apocalypse, Christ is the first and the last, the alpha and the omega, the eternal and the almighty (i, 8; .xxi, 6; xxii, 13). He is the king of kings and lord of lords (xix, 16), the lord of the unseen world (xii, 10; xiii, 8), the centre of the court of heaven (v, 6) ; He receives the adoration of the highest angels (v, 8), and, as the object of that uninterrupted worship (V, 12), He is associated with the Father (v, 13; x\'u, 14).

(4) Christology of the Synoptists. — There is a real difference between the first three Evangelists and St. John in their respective representations of our Lord. The truth presented by these writers maj' be the same, but they view it from different standpoints. The three Synoptists set forth the humanity of Clirist in its obedience to the law, in its power over nature, and in its tenderness for the weak and afflicted; the fourth Gospel sets forth the life of Christ not in any of the aspects which belong to it as human, but as being the adequate exjjression of the glory of the Divine Person, manifested to men under a visible form. But in spite of this difference, the Synoptists by their suggestive implication practically anticipate the teaching of the Fourth Gospel. This suggestion is implied, first, in the Synoptic use of the title Son of God as a])pliod to Jesus Christ. Jesus is the Son of God, not merely in an ethical or theocratic sense, not merely as one among many sons, but He is the only, the weU-bcloved Son of the Father, so that His son- ship is unshared by any other, and is absolutely unique (Matt., iii, 17; xvii, 5; xxii, 41; cf. iv, 3, 6; Luke, iv, 3, 9); it is derived from the fact that the Holj' Ghost was to come upon Mary, and the power of the Most High was to overshadow her (Luke, i, 35). Again, the Synoptists imply Christ's Divinity in their history of His nativity and its accompanying circum- stances; He is conceived of the Holy tihost (Luke, 1, 35), and His mother knows that all generations shall call her blessed, because the mighty one had done great things unto her (Luke, i, 48). Elizabeth calls Mary blessed among women, blesses the fruit of her womb, and marvels that she herself should be visited by the mother of her Lord (Luke, i, 42-43). Gabriel greets Our Lady as full of grace, and blessed among women; her Son will be great. He will be called the Son of the Most High, and of His kingdom there will be no end (Luke, i, 28, 32). As new-born infant, Christ is adored by the shepherds and the Magi, rep- resentatives of the Jewish and the Gentile world. Simeon sees in the child his Lord's salvation, the light of the Gentiles, and the pride and glory of his pt'ople Israel (Luke, ii, ,30-32). These accounts hardly fit in with the limits of a merely human diild, but they become intelligible in the light of the Fourth (iospel.

The Synopti.sts agree with the teaching of the Fourth Go.spel concerning the per.son of Jesus Christ not merely in their use of the term .Son of God and in their accounts of Christ's birth with its surrounding details, hut also in their narratives of Our Lord's doc- trine, life, and work. The very term Son of Man, which they often apply to Christ, is used in such a way that it shows in Jesus Christ a self-consciousness for which vhe human element is not something pri- mary, but something secondary and superinduced. Often Christ is simply called Son (Matt., xi, 27;