CHAPTER III

THE GOD OF JESUS

PHILO, the Alexandrian contemporary of Jesus, closes his treatise, De Opificio Mundi, with a summary of the five supremely important lessons which are taught by Moses in the Genesis-story of the creation. (i) To refute atheists, he teaches that God really exists; (ii) to refute polytheists, he shows that God is one; (iii) in opposition to those who hold that the universe is eternal and self-existing, he emphasises its creation by God, (iv) and also its unity, as the work of the God who is Himself one, in opposition to speculations about a plurality of worlds; (v) finally, we learn the truth of providence, for it must needs be that the Maker should duly care for what He has made, just as parents take thought for their children.' Jesus never called God the creator. He believed the Genesis-tradition, as is evident from His references to sex and the sabbath, but He generally states in other forms the moral and religious significance which attaches to the doctrine of creation. God is the Father, for Jesus, but not because He is creator. The truth of the divine providence is connected specifically with the Fatherly interest of God. Jesus assumes the Jewish belief in the existence and the unity of God; He did not require to teach men that God forgave sins, and His teaching contains no theories about

creation; He never had to argue with people who denied the power or righteousness of God.1 The stress of His teaching falls on the practical issues of belief in God as the Father of men.

(a) The first of these is that the Father cares for their interests. Thus, in the very act of insisting that His disciples must subordinate every other consideration to the interests of the divine kingdom, Jesus assures them that God the Father is not indifferent to such matters as their food and clothing. Your Father knows that you need these; only seek his kingdom and they shall be added to you.2 The very dangers and deaths which may be encountered in the Christian mission lie within His fatherly providence :

Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing?

Yet not one of them drops to the ground without your Father.

Fear not, then you are of far more value than sparrows.3

This is a belief which dominates the central conception of God's relation to men, in the theology of the gospels. But it neither absolves men from legitimate activity in the matter of providing for themselves, nor from prudence in safeguarding life against normal dangers. By His actions as well as by His teaching, Jesus shows that this unswerving trust in God as the Father implies a use of ordinary

1 The omniscience of God is assumed, but in the religious sense of Matt. vi. 4, 6, 18 (cf. ver. 32), not as a dogma.

2 Luke xii. 31.

3 So Wellhausen on Matt. x. 31, arguing that оλŵv is a mistranslation of the Aramaic original as above rendered.

means to secure one's livelihood, and a recourse to reasonable precautions in order to ensure one's personal safety. It does not justify carelessness or presumption. The doctrine of the divine providence, which is implicit and explicit in the gospels, is not a premium put on the recklessness even of good men. A concrete example of this is afforded by the refusal of Jesus to be deterred from His mission by the reported threat of Herod to murder Him (Luke xiii. 31 f.). He replied, Go and tell that fox, Behold I cast out demons and perform cures to-day and to-morrow, . . . to-day and to-morrow and the next day I must go on. The third day I shall be perfected. The providence of God is over Him until His mission is accomplished. But it is not accomplished without suffering. With a touch of deep irony, He adds: For it is impossible that any prophet should perish except in Jerusalem. The Holy City must retain its monopoly of killing the messengers of God! Nevertheless, even this fate is part of God's providence, since without it the divine work of Jesus could not be accomplished. He believes in this providence and has courage to face risks in carrying out God's purpose, but at the same time, as His withdrawal from Galilee and His precautions before the Last Supper show, this is perfectly consonant with a careful avoidance of needless dangers. When they persecute you in one city, He told His disciples similarly, flee to another. But the clearest

1 Matt. x. 23. This text was abused in the later church by weakkneed Christians who, in times of persecution, as Tertullian caustically remarked (de Corona, i.), thought there was no word equal to it in the gospel. The best comment on the verse is Acts xvii. 10, 14.

statement of the principle involved is presented by the temptation-narrative in Matt. iv. 5-6, where Jesus refuses to presume upon the providence of God by thrusting Himself into dangerous positions, and expecting God to intervene on His behalf. The point is that in order to believe in God's providential care, it is not necessary to claim arbitrary proofs of it. The first temptation is to abuse the feeling of independence which comes from the consciousness of divine sonship, by claiming exemption from the ordinary duty of relying upon God's goodness in the sphere of natural wants; the second is, to abuse the feeling of dependence by an arbitrary test of God's willingness to intervene miraculously on behalf of those who are in peril. Jesus believed God's angels had charge of the faithful. But He declined to presume on this belief in providence ; He felt that the more genuine it was, the less it would look for such exceptional proofs of the divine interest.

The same thought recurs in Matt. xxvi. 53, and again in connection with the function of angels in providence. The popular belief in angels, which Jesus shared, is most prominent in the birth-stories of Matthew and Luke. Mark has comparatively few allusions to them, and there is little special development of the belief in the other gospels; while Matthew's 1 special parables, like Luke's (xv. 10, xvi. 22), mention angels (xiii. 39, xxv. 41), and while an angel appears in connection with the resurrection (xxviii. 2, 5),2 Luke twice in one passage (xii. 6-9) substitutes the angels of God for the original

1 The saying in xviii. 10 is the only other allusion peculiar to this gospel. It is a reference to guardian angels.

2 Cf. John xx. 12 for a different tradition.

My Father in heaven (Matt. x. 29-33). The reticence of the Fourth gospel upon angels is connected with its omission of any reference to demons. So far as the synoptic tradition is concerned, the function of angels in the life of Jesus is confined to their support in crises (Mark i. 13, Luke xxii. 43); they are to be His agents and retinue in the final establishment of the kingdom, but they play a noticeably small rôle in mediating between men and God, compared with their corresponding functions in Judaism. The direct and deep faith of Jesus in God as the Father tended to confine the operations of providence and the mediation of revelation to His immediate contact with men.1

(b) A further outcome of this fundamental belief in God's fatherly providence is the conviction that He is able to see His purpose through, and to ensure the success of His cause in the world. The relation of the Father to the order of the universe implies that this spiritual aim will be effected, and this purpose of the kingdom is brought out in three ways.

(i) Faith,' says Mazzini, 'requires a purpose that shall embrace life as a whole, that shall concentrate all its manifestations, and either direct its various energies or subordinate them to the control of a single activity; it requires an earnest, unshaken belief that the purpose will be attained, a profound conviction of a mission and the obligation to fulfil that mission, and the consciousness of a supreme power that watches over the believer's progress to the goal. These elements are indispensable. Where any

1 It is by angels that God's will is done in heaven (Matt. vi. 10), and the condition of Christians at the resurrection is to be angelic (Mark xii. 25), i.e. according to Luke (xx. 36), immortal as well as unmarried.