The Testimony of Christ: His Divine Mission and His Teaching on God and the Trinity
§ 1. His Mission
Heterodox opinions. Some Rationalists — Wellhausen, Schmidt, Wrede among them — deny outright that Christ ever claimed to be the Messiah, holding that Messiahship was ascribed to Him by His own disciples only after His death, once they had come to believe in His Resurrection. Other Rationalists, Harnack and Holtzmann among them, allow that Christ did declare Himself the Messiah. A third group, represented by Weiss and Loisy, takes a middle position: Christ, on this view, had at first no consciousness of any Messianic dignity, and during the early exercise of His ministry neither said that He was the Messiah nor allowed His miracles to carry any such implication; only toward the end of His life did He teach that He was the Messiah — or, more precisely, that He would become King of the coming heavenly kingdom whose arrival, together with the world’s destruction, the prophets had foretold as imminent.
Christ taught most emphatically that He was the Messiah. At the beginning of His ministry He declared Himself an ambassador of God, and asserted with increasing explicitness, as His ministry advanced, that He was the promised Messiah and Redeemer. The word “Messiah” (Hebrew mashiach; Greek christos; cf. John 1:41, 4:25–26) means “anointed” — one set apart by God for a high office, in the manner that priests, prophets, and kings had all anciently been anointed. But the Jews of Christ’s own day had corrupted the notion of the Messiah into that of a great political liberator who would restore the kingdom of Israel and subdue the nations; Christ, wishing His hearers to grasp instead His purely spiritual mission, more than once asked those He had healed to keep silent, lest the crowds mistake His power for a claim to earthly kingship (cf. John 6:15). His self-revelation accordingly unfolds in two clearly marked stages.
(A) The beginning of His ministry. His public declarations were unmistakable from the outset. He preached that “the time is accomplished, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent, and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:15); He called His first disciples with the words, “Come ye after me, and I will make you to be fishers of men” (Matt. 4:19), and went about all Galilee “teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom” (Matt. 4:23). In the Sermon on the Mount He completed and perfected the Mosaic Law on His own personal authority — “it was said to them of old … but I say to you” — and “taught as one having power” (Matt. 7:29). He told the Pharisees that He was “Lord even of the Sabbath” (Matt. 12:8), greater than Jonah and than Solomon (Matt. 12:41–42), greater than David (Mark 12:35–37); and in the synagogue at Nazareth, having read aloud the words of Isaiah concerning the coming Messiah, He declared: “This day is fulfilled this scripture in your ears” (Luke 4:18–21). After curing the paralytic at the pool, Christ declared not merely His Messiahship but His Divinity so plainly that the Jews, fully understanding Him, sought to kill Him (John 5).
His private teaching to His intimate followers was, if anything, still more direct. Andrew, on hearing the Baptist’s testimony and speaking with Christ himself, sought out his brother Peter, saying, “We have found the Messias” (John 1:41); and Nathanael confessed, “Rabbi, thou art the Son of God, thou art the king of Israel” (John 1:49). Christ gave His twelve disciples wonderful power — to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out devils — telling them, “it is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you,” and “he that receiveth you receiveth me” (Matt. 10:1, 8, 20, 40). When John the Baptist, then in prison, sent disciples to ask, “Art thou he that art to come, or look we for another?” Jesus answered by pointing to the fulfilment of Isaiah’s Messianic prophecy in His own works: “the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead rise again, the poor have the gospel preached to them” (Matt. 11:2–5; cf. Is. 35:5–6). To Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, He spoke of having come down from heaven as the only-begotten Son of God (John 3:13–16), and to the Samaritan woman, who alluded to the coming Messiah, He said simply, “I am he, who am speaking with thee” (John 4:25–26). Teaching openly in the Temple, He declared that He had not come of Himself but had been sent, and that He knew the one who sent Him because He was from Him (John 7:14–16, 28–29); His enemies’ own officers, sent to arrest Him, returned instead reporting, “Never did man speak like this man” (John 7:46). The following day He taught, “I am the light of the world: he that followeth me walketh not in darkness.”
(B) The last year of His life. Christ now revealed His Messianic dignity, and even His Divinity, with growing directness. When He asked His disciples, “Whom do men say that the Son of man is?” Peter replied, “Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God” — words which Christ Himself approved as revealed by the Father (Matt. 16:13–19). Teaching later in the Temple, and drawing the charge that His self-testimony alone could not be trusted, He replied that the Father who sent Him bore witness to Him as well, and went on to declare, of Himself, “before Abraham was made, I am” (John 8:14–59) — words the Jews took as blasphemy, and for which they took up stones against Him. Still more directly He said, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30), provoking the same response; when His hearers pressed Him — “for a good work we stone thee not, but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God” — He did not retract the claim, but appealed instead to the works He had done in His Father’s name (John 10:31–36).
At His triumphal entry into Jerusalem the multitudes cried out, “Hosanna to the son of David: blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord” (Matt. 21:9); and when some of the Pharisees asked Him to silence them, He answered that if these held their peace, the very stones would cry out (Luke 19:39–40). That same day He entered the Temple and drove out the sellers, saying, “My house shall be called the house of prayer; but you have made it a den of thieves” (Matt. 21:13). Many Rationalists, Harnack and Holtzmann among them, concede that this entry into Jerusalem alone shows clearly enough that Christ claimed for Himself the office and title of Messiah.
During His Passion, before the Sanhedrin, the high priest demanded of Him directly: “I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us if thou be Christ the Son of God.” Jesus answered: “Thou hast said it. 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” — at which the high priest tore his garments, crying, “He hath blasphemed” (Matt. 26:63–65; cf. Mark 14:61–64). In this single reply Jesus declared both that He was the Messiah and that to Him belonged the divine prerogatives of sitting at the Father’s right hand and of judging mankind. After His Resurrection, speaking to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, He said, “O foolish, and slow of heart to believe in all things which the prophets have spoken. Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and so to enter into his glory?” — and, beginning from Moses and all the prophets, He expounded to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures (Luke 24:25–27, 44–45).
Synthesis of the teaching of Christ. Even Harnack, against Wellhausen, allows that these testimonies are so tightly interwoven with the Gospel narrative as a whole that, were they removed, practically nothing would remain of the life of Christ, and His death itself would become inexplicable. There was, moreover, no time for any gradual process of idealization: from the very day of Pentecost the Apostles were already preaching that Jesus was the Messiah and the Author of life (Acts 2:36; 3:15). Catholic and conservative critics alike hold that Luke’s Gospel was written before A.D. 70 — Harnack himself proposes either A.D. 78–83 or, perhaps, as early as 60–70. It cannot, therefore, be maintained, with Loisy, that Jesus affirmed only that He would become the Messiah of some future kingdom: in text after text already cited, He declares Himself the Messiah in the present. The parable of the mustard seed — “the kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed… but when it is grown up, it is a tree” (Matt. 13:31–32) — captures the true relation: the Kingdom of God began already in the preaching of Christ, was made glorious by His Resurrection and Ascension, and will only be consummated at His final coming.
Modernists, for their part, claim that Christ taught no fixed body of doctrine at all, but simply set a religious movement in motion; others hold that His original teaching was successively reshaped — first Judaic, then Pauline, then Johannine, and finally Greek and universal in character. Both propositions have been formally condemned by the Church (cf. Lamentabili, props. 59, 60).
Article I — The Teaching of Christ on God and the Trinity
I. The Synoptic Gospels. Christ everywhere presupposes and confirms the Old Testament’s teaching on God the Creator. “Hear, O Israel: the Lord thy God is one God” (Mark 12:29); He is “Lord of heaven and earth” (Matt. 11:25); “heaven is his throne” and “the earth is his footstool” (Matt. 5:34–35); “your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48); “one is good, God” (Matt. 19:17); “the things that are impossible with men, are possible with God” (Luke 18:27); He is “thy Father who seeth in secret” (Matt. 6:4, 6, 18), who “knoweth what is needful for you, before you ask him” (Matt. 6:8).
Relative to man, God is presented above all as Father — provident, merciful, and just. “Be you perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48); the Lord’s Prayer itself begins, “Our Father, who art in heaven” (Matt. 6:9); “behold the birds of the air … your heavenly Father feedeth them; are not you of much more value than they?” (Matt. 6:26); “ask, and it shall be given you” (Matt. 7:7); “your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36). He requires of each a labour proportioned to the talents received (Matt. 25:14ff.), and renders to each according to his works — “come, ye blessed of my Father, possess you the kingdom” to the just, and “depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire” to the wicked (Matt. 25:34, 41). He it is who seeks the lost sheep (Luke 15:4–7), and who mercifully and joyfully receives the penitent prodigal (Luke 15:24).
God, moreover, has a Son equal to Himself. “No one knoweth the Son, but the Father: neither doth any one know the Father, but the Son” (Matt. 11:27; Luke 10:22); “as the Father raiseth up the dead, and giveth life; so the Son also giveth life to whom he will” (John 5:21); “as the Father hath life in himself, so he hath given to the Son also to have life in himself” (John 5:26); “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30; 17:11, 21); “God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son” (John 3:16).
The Holy Ghost, likewise, is spoken of by Christ as a distinct divine Person. “When the Paraclete cometh, whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceedeth from the Father, he shall give testimony of me” (John 15:26); this Spirit of truth “shall abide with you, and shall be in you,” and “shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you” (John 14:17, 26); “he shall glorify me: because he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it to you. All things whatsoever the Father hath, are mine” (John 16:14–15). Christ promises to “send the promise of my Father upon you” (Luke 24:49); tells His disciples that when delivered up, “it is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you” (Matt. 10:19–20); and that “the Holy Ghost shall teach you in that hour what you must say” (Luke 12:12). Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, He warns, shall not be forgiven, “neither in this world, nor in the world to come” (Matt. 12:32; Mark 3:29); and He commissions His Apostles in the words: “Going therefore, teach ye all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Matt. 28:19).
From this body of teaching it is clear that the Holy Spirit is God, personally distinct from the Father and the Son by whom He is sent, and that the mystery of the Trinity is explicitly revealed by Christ Himself — the same doctrine that is found, fully developed, in the epistles of St. Paul. Toward the end of the first century, when Pope St. Clement of Rome wished to echo the Old Testament formula “as the Lord liveth,” he wrote instead: “as God liveth, and the Lord Jesus Christ liveth, and the Holy Spirit” (1 Clem., 58:2) — evidence that the distinction and equality of the three divine Persons, asserted by Christ in the baptismal formula given to His Apostles, was already fixed Christian doctrine within a single generation of the Apostolic age.
II. The Gospel of St. John confirms this same teaching in its own idiom. Regarding God: “God is a spirit; and they that adore him, must adore him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). And regarding the Son’s equality with the Father: “My Father worketh until now; and I work” (John 5:17) — a claim to a divine prerogative that the Jews of His own day understood at once, and for which, as St. John goes on to relate, they sought all the more to kill Him.