GREENWICH, OCTOBER 12TH, 1890
[p. 28] GREENWICH, OCTOBER 12TH, 1890
My Dear O, — I return you the enclosed papers. I am rather astonished at the way in which H. uses J.N.D. against me, for the truth of mediatorship in connection with life is what I have maintained, and I do not know how I could be said to leave out entirely the revealed truth that the life of which we are made participants is not ‘the same’ life which was proper to the Son of God in His eternal existence, though of the same moral qualities. I should have thought H. might have seen that this is really what I had maintained. What he meant about the eternal life being constituent in Deity I fail to understand, unless he means the same as I did in saying it was an integral part of His Person.
The way in which he strings together John 5:26 and John 17: 2 is to me most extraordinary. I could not make “So hath he given to the Son to have life in himself” and “eternal life” to be the same. The former is what is proper to the Son (though because He is Man said to be given), and involves self-existence and the power to call the dead into life, while eternal life is what is given to us, and is what is true in Christ and in us, and does not involve self-existence or the quickening of the dead. Christ is Man, and the pattern of the heavenly family; at the same time He is a quickening spirit (in Him is life), and I could not draw a line between the two. So, too, in regard to ‘eternal life’ and the having life in Himself: but I see things in Scripture in certain connections — life in Himself when the Son is seen as a divine Person in John’s gospel — and eternal life (which He gives) when He is seen as Man (”from the beginning”, “handled”, etc.) in connection with others, the pattern of the heavenly family, the children — when He is manifested we shall be like Him. Hence I conclude that eternal life is a truth which is connected with man, whether in [p. 29] Christ or in us; but, as I said, when I think of Christ, though I see certain things connected with Him as Man — firstborn among many brethren, Head of the church, etc., and other things with Him as divine, such as life-giving, etc., I could draw no line between the human and the divine. I believe eternal life is what He is now as Man, but then it takes its character from what He was eternally as divine. But I believe eternal life to be the life of man according to the purpose of God and what has come out fully in Christ in resurrection, though manifested in Him even before. In a word, I believe eternal life to mean a new man in a new scene for man.
I should hardly connect John 1:4 with life-giving. T. in his paper quotes some beautiful remarks of J.N.D. on it, contrasting it with “the darkness is past and the true light now shineth”. (1 John 2:8)
F E. Raven.