[Footnote B: Against Celsum, Lib. 8, p. 386.]
[Footnote C: Ibid, Chap. 27, p. 99.]
Relative to Messiah's hearers being the best interpreters of our Lord's meaning in this case, I suggest that Mr. V. has limited himself too exclusively to this one passage for their interpretation of Messiah's meaning. Mr. V.'s argument is that if Jesus had only declared his moral not his physical union with God, the Jews would not have taken up stones in protest against his making himself God, and asserting his identity with the Father. Let us see. The passage quoted by Mr. V. is not the only one in which Jesus asserts his divinity. Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath. The Jews sought to slay him because he had done this thing on the Sabbath day. "But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the Sabbath day, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God" (John 5:15-18). Observe that this is the same witness that Mr. V. quotes—St. John; and the offense for which they seek to kill Jesus is not because he asserts his identity with the Father, but because he makes himself "equal with God." Hence, the argument of Mr. V., based on the assumption that Jesus asserted not his moral but his physical union or identity with God; and his claim that the Jews would not have sought Messiah's life but for the reason that he claimed physical identity with the Father, falls to the ground, for the reason that we find that the Jews were eager to kill him for asserting not his physical union with God, but his equality with God.
But I shall test Mr. V.'s exegesis of the passage in question by the examination of another passage involving the same ideas, the same expressions; and this in the Latin as well as in the English. Jesus prayed for his disciples as follows:
Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are. * * * * Neither pray I for these [the disciples] alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one: * * * that they may be one, even as we are one.[A]
[Footnote A: St. John 17:11, 20, 21, 22.]
In Latin, the clauses written in Italics in the above, stand: Ut sint unum, sicut et nos (verse 11), "that they may be one, just as we." So in verse 22: Ut sint unum, sicut et nos unum sumus; "that they may be one in us, even as we one are." Here unum, "one," is used in the same manner as it is in St. John, 10:30—"Ego et Pater unum sumus." "I and Father one are." Mr. V. says that unum in the last sentence means, one thing, one essence; hence, Christ's physical union, or identity of substance, with the Father; not agreement of mind, or concord of purpose, or moral union. Very well, for the moment let us adopt his exposition, and see where it will lead us. If unum in the sentence, Ego et Pater unum sumus, means "one thing," "one substance, or essence," and denotes the physical union of the Father and Son in one substance, then it means the same in the sentence—ut sint unum, sicut et nos; that is, "that they [the disciples] may be one [unum] just as we are." So in the other passage before quoted where the same words occur.
Again, to Messiah's statement: "Ego et Pater unum sumus"—"I and my Father are one."—Mr. V. thinks his view of this passage—that it asserts the identity or physical union of the Father and the Son—is strengthened by the fact that it is followed with these remarks of Jesus: "The Father is in me, and I am in the Father." "Which evidently signifies," says Mr. V., "the same as verse 30 (John 10): I and the Father are one and the same individual being, the one God."
But the passage from the prayer of Jesus concerning the oneness of the disciples with the Father and the Son, is emphasized by well-nigh the same words in the context as those which occur in John 10:30, and upon which Mr. V. lays so much stress as sustaining his exposition of the physical union, viz: "The Father is in me, and I in him" (verse 38). "Which evidently signifies," Mr. V. remarks, "the same as verse 30: I and my Father are one." Good; then listen: "Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one as we are: * * as thou Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they may be one in us." There can be no doubt now but what the union between the disciples and the Father and Son is to be of the same nature as that subsisting between the Father and Son. If the Father and Son are physically one substance or essence, so, too, if the prayer of Jesus is to be realized—as surely it will be—then the disciples are to be physically united with God, in one essence or substance—not just the Twelve disciples, either, for whom Jesus immediately prayed, but those, also, in all generations who shall believe on Christ through the words of his first disciples; that is, all the faithful believers through all generations are to become physically united with God, become the same substance or essence as God himself! Is Mr. Van Der Donckt prepared to accept the inevitable conclusion of his own exposition of John 10:30? If so, then what advantage has the Christian over the Hindoo whom he has called a heathen for so many generations? The sincerest desire of the Hindoo is to be "physically united with God," even if that involve "a blowing out," or the attainment of Nirvana—annihilation—to encompass it. Of course, we had all hoped for better things from the Christian religion. We had hoped for the immortality of the individual man; for his persistence through the ages, as an individual entity, associated with God in loving converse and dearest relations of moral union; but not absorbed, or lost in absolute physical union with him. But if Mr. V.'s exposition of John 10:30 be correct, and a physical union is meant by the words—"I and my Father are one," then all Christians are to be made physically one with God under the prayer of Christ—"That they may be one, as we are"—i. e. as the Father and Son are one.
If, however, this doctrine of physical union should be defended up to the point of asserting the physical union of all Christians with each other and with God—and my comparison of this position with that of the heathen Hindoo resented, because that in the case of the Christian after his physical union with, or absorption into God, God would still remain, whereas, with the Hindoo nothing would remain, for his Nirvana is but annihilation—I could still ask, what is the difference? for the terms that describe the Nirvana of the Hindoo describe also the God of the Christian. "Nirvana is represented as something which has no antecedent cause, no qualities, no locality. It is something of which the utmost we may assert is, 'that it is.'"[A] In all of which one may see Mr. V.'s "That which is;" "I Am who Am;" "Infinite Being;" God, "most simple, or not compound"—whose "essence is actual being or existence."