The Christian Faith Under Modern SearchlightsJohnson, William Hallock
Religion
The Christian Faith Under Modern Searchlights
Johnson, William Hallock
Modernism (Christian theology)
Bousset's theory is that Paul did not originate the title but found it
already in use by the Gentile church. But there is no evidence that at
the time of Paul's conversion there was any church on Gentile soil that
was not composed, in the main, of former Jews and of Jews who had come
from Jerusalem. When it is said that "between Paul and the primitive
church of Palestine stand the Hellenistic churches in Antioch, Damascus,
Tarsus,"[229] it must be remembered that the church at Damascus was
composed primarily of Jerusalem Christians who were persecuted to
foreign cities; that the church at Antioch was founded by those from
Judea, and grew under the leadership of Barnabas, a priest and leader of
the Jerusalem church (Acts xi. 19 f.; Gal. ii. 1, 12); and that there is
no evidence that there were any Christians at Tarsus until the time of
Paul's visit (Acts ix. 30; Gal. i. 21). It is hard to see how there can
be any question of an entirely new title spontaneously arising from the
heathen environment, and free from the influence of the church at
Jerusalem.
229: "Kyrios Christos," p. 92.
If it be asked how Jews could dare to apply the name Kyrios, "the holy
cult-name of the Old Testament Jahwe," to Jesus, the answer is suggested
by Bousset himself when he says: "Therein lay a piece of monotheistic
feeling: God alone should be prayed to and worshipped. This powerful
religious feeling, free from all reflection, has once and again in the
history of Christological dogma asserted itself."[230] The essence of the
matter is that Christian converts both Jewish and Gentile called upon
the name of the Lord, and worshipped Him; but it is evident that Jesus
was first worshipped on Jewish soil as King of Israel, and Lord in the
sense made familiar in the Old Testament (Rom. x. 9-13; Acts ii. 17,
21), before He was worshipped on Gentile soil as King of Kings and Lord
of Lords.
230: "Kyrios Christos," p. 302.
Aside from all else it is highly improbable that in the time of Paul's
conversion the use of the title Lord (Kyrios, Dominus) as applied to the
Emperor was so wide-spread as to have exercised any appreciable
influence upon Christianity. "It would after all," Bousset himself
acknowledges, "in spite of all analogies in substance and words, be an
erroneous and over-hasty inference, were we to bring the Christian
Kyrios-cult and its origin into immediate connection with the cult of
the Cæsars. In the time and in the regions in which the Kyrios-Jesus
cult arose, the worship of the ruler scarcely as yet had possessed so
dominating a rôle that the worship of Jesus as Lord must be regarded as
having arisen in conscious opposition to it."[231]
231: "Kyrios Christos," p. 113.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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