Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 7.djvu/779

 INCARNATION

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INCARNATION

of the enslaved Jewish nation. The first time, the high priest, Caiphas, stood up and demanded: "I adjure thee by the Hving God, that thou tell us if thou be the Christ the Son of God" (Matt., xxvi, 63). Jesus had before held His peace. Now His mission calls for a reply. "Thou hast said it" (ibid., 64). The answer was likely — in Semitic fashion — a repeti- tion of the question with a tone of affirmation rather than of interrogation. St. Matthew reports that answer in a way that might leave some doubt in our minds, had we not St. Mark's report of the very same answer. According to St. Mark, Jesus replies simply and clearly: "I am" (Mark, xiv, 62). The context of St. Matthew clears vip the difficulty as to the mean- ing of the reply of Jesus. The Jews imderstood Him to make Himself the equal of God. They probably laughed and jeered at His claim. He went on: " Nevertheless I say to you, hereafter you shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of the power of God, and coming in the clouds of heaven" (Matt., xxvi, 64). Caiphas rent his garments and accused Jesus of blasphemy. All joined in condemning Him to death for the blasphemy whereof they accused Him. They clearly understood Him to make claim to be the real Son of God; and He allowed them so to understand Him, and to put Him to death for this understanding and rejection of His claim. It were to blind one's self to evident truth to deny the force of this testimony in favour of the thesis that Jesus made claim to be the real Son of God. The second appearance of Jesus before the Sanhedrim was like to the first ; a second time He was asked to say clearly: " Art thou then the Son of God? " He made reply: "You say that I am." They understood Him to lay claim to Divinity. "What need we any further testimony? for we ourselves have hearii it from his own mouth" (Luke, xxii, 70, 71). This twofold witness is especially important, in that it is made before the great Sanhedrim, and in that it is the cause of the sentence of death. Before Pilate, the Jews put forward a mere pretext at first. "' We have found this man perverting our nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Ciesar, and saying that he is Clirist the king" (Luke, xxiii, 2). What was the result? Pilate found no cause of death in Him! The Jews seek an- other pretext. " He stirreth up the people . . . from Galilee to this place" (ibid., 5). 'This pretext fails. Pilate refers the case of sedition to Herod. Herod finds the charge of sedition not worth his serious con- sideration. Over and again the Jews come to the front with a new subterfuge. Over and again Pilate finds no cause in Him. At last the Jews give their real cause against Jesus. In that they said He made Himself a king and stirred up sedition and refused tribute to C'jesar, they strove to make it out that he violated Roman law. Their real cause of complaint was not that Jesus violated Roman law; but that they branded Him as a violator of the Jewish law. How? "We have a law; and according to that law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God" (John, xix, 7). The charge was most serious; it caused even the Roman governor "to fear the more." What law is here referred to? There can be no doubt. It is the dread law of Leviticus: " He that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, dying let him die: all the multitude shall stone him, whether he be a native or a stranger. He that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, dying let him die" (Lev., xxiv, 17). By virtue of this law, the Jews were often on the very point of stoning Jesus; by virtue of this law, they often took Him to task for blasphemy whensoever He made Himself the Son of God; by virtue of this same law, they now call for His death. It is simply out of the question that these Jews had any intention of accus- ing Jesus of the assumption of that adopted sonship of God which every Jew had by blood and every prophet had had by special free gift of God's grace.

Fifthly, we may only give a summary of the other uses of the title Son of God in regard to Jesus. The angel Gabriel proclaims to Mary that her son will "be called the Son of the most High" (Luke, i, 32); "the Son of God" (Luke, i, 35) ; St. John speaks of Him as "the only begotten of the Father" (John, i, 14); at the Baptism of Jesus and at His Transfiguration, a voice from heaven cries: "This is my beloved Son" (Matt., iii, 17; Mark, i, 11; Luke, iii, 22; Matt., xvii, 3); St. John gives it as his very set purpose, in his Gospel, " that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God" (John, x.x, 31).

Sixthly, in the testimony of John, Jesus identifies Himself absolutely with the Divine Father. Accord- ing to John, Jesus says: "he that seeth me seeth the Father" (ibid., xiv. 9). St. Athanasius links this clear testimony to the other witness of John "I and the Father are one" (ibid., x, 30); and thereby establishes the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son. St. John Chrysostom interprets the text in the same sense. A last proof from John is in the words that bring his first Epistle to a close: "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 tme Son. This is the true God and life eternal" (I John, v, 20). No one denies that "the Son of God" who is come is Jesus Christ. This Son of God is the "true Son" of "the true God"; in fact, this true son of the True God, i. e. Jesus, is the true God and is life eternal. Such is the exegesis of this text given by all the Fathers that have interpreted it (see Corluy, "Spicilegium Dogmatico-Biblicum", ed. Gandavi, 18S4, II, 4S). AH the Fathers that have either interpreted or cited this text, refer outos to Jesus, and interpret "Jesus is the true God and life eternal." The objection is raised that the phrase "true God" (6 &\ii6i.vl>% $ei>i) always refers, in John, to the Father. Yes, the phrase is consecrated to the Father, and is here used precisely on that account, to show that the Father who is, in this very verse, first called "the true God", is one with the Son Who is second called "the true God" in the very same verse. This interpretation is carried out by the grammatical analysis of the phrase; the pronoun MiS (oi'tos) refers of necessity to the noun near by. i. e. His true Son Jesus Christ. Moreover, the Father is never called "life eternal" by John; whereas the term is often given by him to the Son (John, xi, 2.5; xiv, 6: I John, i, 2; V, 11-12). These citations prove beyond a doubt that the Evangelists bear witness to the real and natural Divine Sonship of Jesus Christ.

Outside the Catholic Church, it is to-day the mode to try to explain away all these uses of the phrase Son of God. as if, forsooth, they meant not the Divine Sonship of Jesus, but presumably His .sonship by adop- tion — a sonship due either to His belonging to the Jewish race or derived from His Messiahship. Against both explanations stand our arguments; against the latter explanation stands the fact that nowhere in the Old Testament is the term Son of God given as a name peculiar to the Messias. The advanced Protestants of this twentieth century are not satisfied with this latter and wornout attempt to explain away the assumed title Son of God. To them it means only that Jesus was a Jew (a fact that is now denied by Paul Haupt). We now have to face the strange anomaly of ministers of Christianity who deny that Jesus was Christ. Formerly it was considered bold in the LTnitarian to call himself a Christian and to deny the Divinity of Jesus; now "ministers of the Gospel" are found to deny that Jesus is the Christ, the Messias (see articles in the Hibbert Journal for 1909, by Reverend Mr. Roberts, also the articles collected under the title ".Jesus or Chri.st? " Boston, 1909). Within the pale of the Church, too, there were not wanting some who followed the trend of Modernism to such an extent as to admit that in