| 141. The Last Commands and Peomises of Jesus. | ||||
IN The Last Interview of Jesus with his disciples, which according to Mark and Luke closed with the ascension, the three first evangelists (the fourth has something similar on the ery first interview) represent Jesus as delivering testamentary commands and promises, which referred to the establishment and propagation of the Messianic kingdom on earth. | ||||
With regard to the commands, Jesus in Luke (xxiv. 47 ; Acts i. 8.) in parting from his disciples appoints them to be witnesses of his Messiahship, and charges them to preach repentance and remission of sins in his name from Jerusalem to the uttermost parts of the earth. In Mark (xvi. 15 f.) he enjoins them to go into all the world and bring to every creature the glad tidings of the Messianic kingdom founded by him; he who believes and is baptized will be saved, he who bclieves not, will (in the future Messianic judgment) be condemned. In Matthew (xxviii. 19 f.) the disciples are also commissioned to make disciples of all nations and here baptism is not mentioned incidentally merely, as in Mark, but is made the subject of an express command by Jesus, and is besides more precisely described as a baptism "in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." | ||||
The impediments to the supposition that Jesus delivered to his disciples the express command to carry the announcement of the gospel to the Gentiles, have been already pointed out in an earlier connection. But that this more definite form of baptism proceeded from Jesus, is also opposed by the fact, that such an allocation of Father, Son, and Spirit does not elsewhere appear, except as a form {P.854} of salutation in apostolic epistles (2 Cor. xiii. 14: the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, etc.); while as a more definite form of baptism it is not to be met with throughout the whole New Testament save in the above passage of the first gospel: for in the apostolic epistles and even in the Acts, baptism is designated as a baptising in Christ Jesus, or in the name of the Lord Jesus, or their equivalent (Rom. vi. 3; Gal. iii. 27; Acts ii. 38; viii. 16; x. 48; xix. 5), and the same threefold reference to God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit is only i'uund in ecclesiastical writers, as, for example, Justin. Indeed the formula in Matthew sounds so exactly as if it had been borrowed from the ecclesiastical ritual, that there is no slight probability in the supposition that it was transferred from thence into the mouth of Jesus. But this does not authorize us to throw the passage out of the text as an interpolation, since, if every thing in the gospes which cannot have happened to Jesus, or which cannot have been done or spoken by him in the manner there described, were to be pronounced foreign to the original text, the interpolations would soon become too numerous. So far it is with justice that others have defended the genuineness of the baptismal formula; but their grounds;ur the assertion that it was delivered in this manner by Jesus himself tii'e insufficient: the two opinions then resolve themselves into a third, namely, that this more definite form of baptism does indeed belong to the original context of the first gospel, but without having been so delivered by Jesus. Jesus had, during his life, predicted in divers ways the propagation of his kingdom beyond the limits of the Jewish nation, perhaps also had intimated the introduction of baptism to be his will; and-whether it be the fact, that, as we learn in the fourth gospel, the disciples already practised baptism in the lifetime of Jesus, or that they first made this rite a sign of receptio into the new Messianic society after his death, in any ease it was entirely in the manner of the legend to place the injunction to baptize, as well as to go out into all the world, in the mouth of the departing Christ as a last declaration of his will. | ||||
The promises which Jesus gives to his adherents in parting from them, are in Matthew, where they are directed exclusively to the eleven, limited simply to the assurance that he, to whom as the exalted Messiah all power was delivered both in heaven and on earth, would be invisibly with them during the present age aiuv, until at the consummation of this term, he should enter into permanent visible communion with them: precisely the expression of the belief which was formed in the first Christian community, when its equilibrium was recovered after the oscillations caused by the death of Jesus. In Mark, the last promises of Jesus seem to be gathered from the popular opinion concerning the gifts of the {P.855} Christians, which was current at the period of the composition of this Gospel of the signs (shmeia), which are here promised to believers in general, the speaking with (new) tongues in the sense intended 1 Cor. xiv., not in the manner de scribed in Acts ii. which is a mythical modification, actually appeared in the primitive Church; as also the casting out of devils ; and it may even be conceived that sick persons were cured in a natural manner by faith in the laying on of hands by a Christian: on the contrary the taking up of serpents (comp. Luke x. 19.) and the power of drinking poisons with impunity, have never had any existence except in the superstitious belief of the vulgar, and such signs of discipleship would have been the last to which Jesus would have attached any value. In Luke, the object of the last promise of Jesus is the power from on high which according to the promise of the Father he would send on the apostles, and the impartation of which they were to await in Jerusalem (xxiv. 49.); and in Acts i.5ff. Jesus more precisely designates this impartation of power as a baptism with the Holy Spirit, TrvKvpa dyiov, which in a few days would be granted to the disciples in order to qualify them for the announcement of the gospel. These passages of Luke, which place the impartation of the Holy Spirit in the days after the ascension, seem to be in contradiction with the statement of the fourth gospel, that Jesus communicated the Holy Spirit to his disciples in the days of his resurrection, indeed, on his very first appearance in the circle of the eleven. In John xx. 22 f. we read, that Jesus, appearing among the disciples when the doors were closed, breathed on them and said: "Receive the Holy Ghost," wherewith he connected the authority to remit and retain sins. | ||||
If this were the only passage relating to the impartation of the Spirit, every one would believe that the disciples had it communicated to them by Jesus when he was personally present among them, and not first after his exaltation to heaven. But in accordance with the harmonizing interest, it has been concluded, first by Theodore of Mopsuestia, and recently by Thol ck, that the word labete receive, in John, must be taken in the sense of "you shall receive," because according to Luke the Holy Spirit was not imparted to the disciples until later, at Pentecost. But as if he wished to preclude such a wresting of his words, the Jesus of John adds to them the symbolical action of breathing on the disciples, which unmistakeably represents the receiving of the Holy Spirit as a present fact. It is true that expositors have found out a way of eluding even this act of breathing, by attributing to it the following signification: as certainly as Jesus now breathes upon them, so certainly {P.856} will they at a future time receive the Holy Ghost. But the act of breathing upon a person is as decided a symbol of a present imparta-tion as the laying on of hands, and as those on whom the apostles laid their hands were immediately filled with the Spirit (Acts viii. 17; xix. 6), so, according to the above narrative, the author of the fourth gospel must have thought that the apostles on that occasion received the Spirit from Jesus. In order to avoid the necessity of denying, in opposition to the clear meaning of John, that an ini-partation of the Spirit actually took place immediately after the resurrection, or of coming into contradiction with Luke, who assigns the outpouring of the Spirit to a later period, expositors now ordinarily suppose that the Spirit was granted to the apostles both at the earlier and the later period, the impartation at Pentecost being only an increasing and perfecting of the former, Or more correctly, since Matthew x. 20. speaks of the Spirit of the Father as already ustaining the disciples in their first mission: it is supposed that they were first endowed with some extraordinary power before that mission, in the life-time of Jesus; that on the occasion in question, shortly after his resurrection, he heightened this power; but that all the fulness of the Spirit was not poured out upon them until Pentecost.: What constitutes the distinction between these steps, and especially in what the increase of the gifts of the Spirit consisted in the present instance, is, however, as Michaelis has already remarked, not easy to discern. If in the first instance the apostles were endowed with the power of working miracles (Matt. x. 1. 8) together with the gift of speaking freely (napprjaid) before tribunals (v. 20), it could only be a more correct insight into the spirituality of Ms kingdom that Jesus communicated to them by breathing on them; but of this they were still destitute immediately before the ascension, when, according to Acts i. 6., they asked whether, with the mpartation of the Spirit, within the next few days, would be,associated the restoration of the kingdom to Israel. If however it be supposed that each successive impartation of the Spirit conferred no new powers on the disciples, but was merely an addition in measure to that which was already present in all its diversified powers: it must still be held surprising that no evangelist mentions, together with an earlier impartation, a later amplification; but instead of this, besides an incidental mention of the Spirit as enabling the disciples to defend themselves before tribunals, in Luke (xii. 12), which, since it is not here, as in Matthew, connected with a mission, may be regarded merely as a reference to the time after the later outpouring of the Spirit, each of the evangelists mentions only one impartation, and represents this as the first and last. This is, indeed, a clear proof that, to place in juxtaposition three impartations and to regard them as so many different degrees, is only an effort to {P.857} harmonize the Gospels by introducing into them what is foreign to the text. | ||||
Thus there are in the New Testament three distinct opinions concerning the impartation of the Spirit to the disciples of Jesus; and in two respects they form a climax. As regards the time, Matthew places the impartation the earlist-within the period of the natural life of Jesus; Luke, the latest-in the time after his complete departure from the earth; John in an intermediate position in the days of the resurrection. As regards the conception of the fact, it is the simplest in Matthew, the least perceptible to the senses, for he has no special and external act of impartation; John already has such a feature, in the act of breathing on the disciples; while with Luke, in the Acts-, the gentle breathing has become a violent storm, which shakes the house, and with which other miraculous appearances are united. These two series of gradations stand in opposite relations to historical probability. That the Spirit irvevpa, which, whether it be regarded as natural or as supernatural, is in either case th animating power of the Messianic idea in its Christian modification, was communicated to the adherents of Jesus so early as Matthew narrates, is contradicted by his own representation, for according to him, that Christian modification-the introduction O of the characteristics of suffering and death into the idea of the Messiah, was not comprehended by the disciples long after the mission described in Matt. x; and as the discourse of instructions there given contains other particulars also, which will only suit later times and circumstances: it is easy to imagine that the promise in question may have been erroneously referred to that earlier period. Only after the death and resurrection of Jesus can we conceive what the New Testament calls the Trveva ayiov to have been developed in the disciples, and in so far the representation of John stands nearer to reality than that of Matthew; but, as certainly the revolution in the sentiments of the disciples described in the foregoing section, had not taken place so early as two days after the crucifixion: the account of John does not approach so near to the truth as that of Luke, who allows an interval of at least fifty days for the formation of the new opinions in the disciples. The position of the narrative with respect to historical truth is reversed by the other climax. For in proportion as a narrative represents the impartation of a spiritual power as perceptible to the senses, the formation of a sentiment which might spring from natural causes as miraculous, the origin of a faculty which can only have been developed gradually, as instantaneous: in the same proportion does such a narrative diverge from the truth; and in this respect, Matthew would stand at the least distance from the truth, Luke at the greatest. If we therefore recognize in the representation of the latter the most mature product of tradition, it may be wondered how tradition can have wrought in two opposite ways: receding from the truth in relation to the determination of the manner and form of the impartation, approaching {P.858} the truth in relation to the determination of the time. But this is explained as soon as it is considered, that in the changes in the determination of the time, tradition was not guided by critical inquiry after truth-this might well have caused surprise, but by the same tendency that led to the other alteration, namely, to present the impartation of the Spirit as a single miraculous act. If Jesus was said to have shed the Spirit on his disciples by a special act: it must seem appropriate to assign this act to his state of glorification, and thus either with John to place it after the resurrection, or with Luke after the ascension; indeed the fourth evangelist expressly remarks that in the lifetime of Jesus, the Spirit was not yet given, because, Jesus was not yet glorified (vii. 39.). | ||||
This interpretation of the opinion of the fourth evangelist con cerning the impartation of the Spirit to the disciples, is attested as the correct one by the fact, that it throws unexpected light on an obscurity in his gospel with respect to which we were previously unable to come to a decision. In relation to the farewell discourses of Jesus, it was not possible to settle the dispute, whether what Jesus there says of his return is to be referred to the days of his resurrection, or to the outpouring of the Spirit, because the description of that return as a seeing again seemed to speak as decidedly for the former, as the observation that in that time they would no longer ask him anything, and would understand him fully, for the latter: a dispute which is decided in the most welcome manner, if it can be shown to be the opinion of the narrator that the impartation of the Spirit fell in the days of the resurrection. At first indeed it might be thought, that this impartation, especially as in John it is conncted with the formal appointment of his disciples as his envoys, and the communication of the authority to remit and retain sins (comp. Matt, xviii. 18), would have been more appropriate at the close than the beginning of the appearances of the risen Jesus, and in a full assembly of the apostles than in one from which Thomas was absent; but on this account to suppose with Olshausen that the evangelist for the sake of brevity merely appends the impartation of the Spirit to the first appearance, though it really belonged to a later interview, is an inadmissible violence; and we must rather allow, that the author of the fourth gospel regarded this first appearance of Jesus as the principal one, and the one eight days later as merely supernumerary in favour of Thomas. The appearance chap. xxi. is also a supplement, which the author, when he wrote his gospel, either had not known, or at least did not recollect. | ||||