CHAPTER VI

JESUS AS PNEUMATIKOS

For the first group of Jesus' followers, who early had come to identify him with the Apocalyptic Messiah, the earthly career of Jesus did not seem to possess any supreme significance. They were interested chiefly in the heavenly Christ from whom they believed that they were receiving their present spiritual endowment and through whom they hoped to receive their future salvation. Of course, they always conceived of Jesus and the heavenly Christ as the same person; yet the unique importance which the latter had, as they thought, in their attainment of salvation, and the centering of their hopes upon the future, the near future indeed, as the time for the establishment of the Messianic kingdom and for their deliverance from sin and Satan, almost completely overshadowed their interest in the earthly life of Jesus. The almost negligible use which Paul made of the traditions concerning the words and deeds of Jesus indicates that in his time, at least in the circles which he served, the emphasis was not upon Jesus' earthly activity. With him the death, resurrection and exhaltation of Jesus alone were of chief importance.

However, various forces and influences were brought to bear upon the Christians that made them pay greater attention to Jesus' earthly life. The Jewish interest in preserving the words of a great teacher, the deep impress which the life and personality of Jesus had made upon his immediate followers, the need of the Christian organization for an authoritative body of teachings of its own, the miracle-loving disposition of the people of that age, all tended to stimulate a greater interest in the teachings and deeds of Jesus. But there was one influence in particular which because of its relevance to our subject should be mentioned here, and that was the need which the Christians felt of reconciling the picture which they had drawn of the heavenly Christ with the actual life of simplicity and humble service which Jesus had led while upon earth. They were brought face to face with the task of showing that already in his earthly career Jesus had given evidence of his Messianic power and divine personality, and that his work and character while he lived among men was in accord with their conception of the exalted

1 Cf. Case, Evol. of Ear. Xty, pp. 355 ff.

Christ. And they had further to demonstrate the fact that the earthly life of Jesus was of such a nature as to make him worthy of the office either of the Messiah or of the Savior. To accomplish this feat they of necessity had to read back into Jesus' earthly life the notions which they had of the heavenly Lord Jesus. Hence it may be said that current ideas regarding the Apocalyptic Messiah of the Jews and the saviorgods of the Gentiles had much to do with their new portrait of the earthly life and character of Jesus.

We might with propriety call this process in the evolution of early Christian thought the myth-stage, for it must have taken place after the first spontaneous ebullition of joy and enthusiasm had somewhat cooled down and the Christians had begun to reflect upon the meaning of Jesus' life, and hence to form the myth of the cult. Paul's seeming lack of interest in Jesus' earthly career may have been due, at least in part, to the fact that he was still living in the time when the Christian life was the life of the Spirit; the period of reflection had not yet fully come.2

Two considerations should further be made with regard to the reason why the early Christians interpreted the earthly life of Jesus in just the way they did. (1) In the first place their Spirit-endowment entered in as a determining factor in their idea of the earthly Jesus. Since they believed that the Spirit which was active in them had come from the heavenly Christ, and identified this heavenly Christ with Jesus, they of course thought that the Spirit that worked in Jesus was the same that was working in them. Hence they concluded that the spiritual gifts and activities of Jesus while upon earth corresponded with those that prevailed in the churches of their day. If in any church or Christian community the spiritual gift of exorcism, for example, was prevalent, it was natural for the members of that group to regard this as one of the gifts that Jesus also had possessed. If the members were given to prophecy, they would think of this as one of the activities of Jesus, since he was possessed of the same Spirit as they.3 What the Spirit of Christ did in them they thought it did also in Jesus.

(2) Their thought of Jesus' earthly life was also conditioned by their idea of salvation. Of course, they did not believe that Jesus

2 Notice that it is chiefly in the later letters of Paul that he refers to Jesus' earthly life and sojourn (Phil. 2:5 ff.; Col. 1:14 ff.), but even here the emphasis is upon the exalted Christ and his cosmic functions.

This does not mean that the Christians necessarily manufactured stories regarding the life of Jesus to correspond with what they judged from their pneumatic

needed salvation; that never once entered their minds. But their conception of salvation did have an effect upon the emphasis which they placed on the Messianic and redemptive significance of the earthly Jesus. When at the beginning of the movement salvation was considered chiefly as a matter of the future, the emphasis fell upon the Apocalyptic idea of the heavenly Christ who would come as the future Messiah and deliverer. But later when the Messiah delayed his coming and the idea of a present salvation came to prevail, of course the stress was then placed upon the earthly life and work of Jesus. The Christians were not willing to be cheated out of salvation. So they advanced the claim. that Jesus had performed and completed his Messianic work while still on earth. The revelation which he had brought was sufficient to save now, especially in view of the fact that he had left his Spirit behind to aid the believer in the attainment of this salvation. We will notice as we proceed with our investigation that this was the problem that particularly concerned the author of the fourth Gospel.

In this chapter we have to do with the Spirit-endowment of Jesus while he was on earth. And we are concerned here primarily with the interpretations which the authors of the New Testament books placed upon his personality, not with the conception of Jesus himself nor that of his contemporaries regarding his relation to the Spirit. For the latter, in view of the fact that the writers of the Gospels assign statements to Jesus and to the people around him which doubtless arose as a result of the development of the Christian tradition and myth, presents a problem so intricate and involved as to prevent a full discussion here. Suffice it to say, however, that there can be little reason for doubting that Jesus was fully convinced of his own possession of the Spirit. If the story of his first preaching at Nazareth' is at all true to the facts, Jesus must at least have classed himself with the prophets and must have felt the call by the Spirit of God to preach and to heal as the seers of the Old Testament also had done. When he is accused by the people for casting out demons by the power of Satan, he resents the charge, and claims that he was inspired by a beneficent

experiences he must have done. That, of course, may have occurred. But it does mean that the pneumatic experiences of the Christians had much to do with regard to the kind of traditional material which they decided to choose and preserve, as well as with the interpretation which they put upon it.

Luke 4:16-30. Since Luke here uses a source that is doubtless early and gives a representation of Jesus that accords with the Jewish conception of a prophet, we have no reason for supposing that the account is not true to the actual situation.

spirit. This too may indicate that he ascribed the power by which he healed the sick and cast out demons to the presence of the Spirit of God in him.

The estimate which Jesus' contemporaries placed upon his person and work can scarcely be discovered from the Gospel narratives. His relatives are represented as thinking that he was mad. Herod is said to have thought that he was the ghost or transmigrated soul of John the Baptist; others thought that he was Elijah returned to earth, while still others regarded him simply as a prophet. But here again we are unable to tell whether these ideas were really held by these contemporaries of Jesus or whether they were only the sentiments of Mark, ascribed to the people either by him or by his source. Nevertheless one can safely say that the impression of the personality of Jesus upon the people about him must have been so striking that they would surely have attributed the possession of the Spirit to him. In order to account for the rise of the Christian movement and for its connection with the name of Jesus, one can not avoid the necessity of postulating a deep and abiding impression made by Jesus upon his followers. To make such an impression required a forceful personality. And in those days the possession of extraordinary powers and qualities was always ascribed to spiritual or demonic agency. It may be taken for granted therefore that both Jesus and his followers agreed in maintaining his possession of the Spirit of God.

When we turn to the question as to what the early Christians, and particularly the authors of our New Testament books, thought of the spiritual power in Jesus' life, we feel surer of the results of our investigation, for this is a matter which at least some of the writers were especially anxious to emphasize.

Beginning with Paul, we find that, as we have already intimated, he was not concerned so much with the manifestation of the power of the Spirit in the earthly career of Jesus as with the Messianic and redemptive functions of the heavenly Christ. The earthly Jesus, according to Paul's way of thinking, was simply the incarnation of a divine cosmic being. He was the manifestation in human form of an

Mark 3:23-30. The statement that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is unpardonable may however be the reflection of a later age and may represent the idea of Mark rather than that of Jesus.

Mark 3:21. The use of the word, egéσrn, in this connection would point to the idea of Spirit-possession.

7 Mark 6:14. 15.

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eternal Christ-spirit, who before his appearance upon earth lived in heaven, perhaps next to God in rank. This being was God's eiκwv and was the first to be born of all created things. That is, he was the Son of God. God then made use of him as his agent in the creation of the world; and Paul asserts that not only all visible things were created through him, but all the invisible powers of the heaven and earth as well.10 Of all the beings in heaven, on the earth, and in the underworld he is pre-eminent, and he functions as the sustainer of the universe.11 He not only stands closest to God in relative position but is nearest to him in substance or form.

Although Paul nowhere calls this being the Logos, he might just as well have used this term, for the functions of his cosmic being and those of the Logos, as they were conceived of by the people of his day, were to a large extent quite similar. However he prefers to use the terms, image of God's substance, and Son of God. The reason for this preference was doubtless because his Jewish conceptions still played a large part in his thinking. Logos was a Greek and Gentile notion; Son of God was a term understood by both Jews and Greeks.12 And perhaps Paul's belief that Spirit-endowment meant power rather than knowledge made him reticent in the use of the word, Logos, which had such a close relation with gnosis. Furthermore, the fact that authority rather than divine nature was uppermost in Paul's thought of Christ would also have an influence in determining his preference for the title, Son of God.

The earthly Jesus he then conceives of as the Son of God, because a divine entity had come down from heaven and had become incarnate in him. The body of the one chosen to be the embodiment of this heavenly being was that of a descendant of the royal Davidic line and a

Phil. 2:5 ff. The demons were regarded in Greek thought as desiring to become gods. But Paul represents the pre-existent Christ-spirit as giving up his ambitious desire for deification and coming down to the earth in obedience to his spirit of humility and service. The attainment of a position or rank on an equality with the Supreme Deity was in his grasp, but he preferred to serve rather than to be deified.

It should be remembered that, although Paul speaks of Christ as the second or ideal man (I Cor. 15:45-47; Rom. 5:14), yet he never refers to him as the Son of Man. The reason for this is that he, while recognizing the Davidic descent of Jesus (Rom. 1:3; 9:5), nevertheless holds to the idea that the Messiah was a pre-existent heavenly being. The physical descent of the Messiah was a matter of small moment. He was the Apocalyptic, not the Davidic or national Messiah.

10 Col. 1:1-16.

11 Col. 1:17.

12 See Pfleiderer, Ear. Xtian. Concep. of Xst, ch. 1, who shows what ideas prevailed among both Jews and Greeks in New Testament times regarding divine Sonship.