By John Gresham Machen

But does the infrequency of the use of the title "Lord" in the Gospels necessarily indicate that that title was not prevalent in the primitive Jerusalem Church? It must be remembered that the title "Christ," which was of course applied to Jesus by the Jerusalem Church, is also very infrequent in the Gospels. Why should the infrequency in the Gospel use of one title be regarded as an argument against the use of that title in the Jerusalem Church, when in the case of the other title no such argument can possibly be set up? Bousset is ready with his answer. But the answer is entirely inadequate. The title "Christ," Bousset says, was an eschatological title; it referred to a dignity which in the belief of the Jerusalem Church Jesus was not to attain until His coming in glory. Therefore it could not readily be applied to Jesus in the accounts of His earthly ministry. Hence in the case of that title there was a special obstacle which hindered the intrusion of the title into the Gospel tradition. But in the case of the title "Lord," there was no such obstacle; therefore the non-intrusion of that title into the Gospel tradition requires a special explanation; and the only possible explanation is that the title was not used in the Jerusalem Church.

It would be difficult to crowd into brief compass so many highly debatable assertions as are crowded together in this argument. Was the title "Christ" a purely eschatological title? It is not a purely eschatological title in Paul. It is not really a purely eschatological title anywhere in the New Testament. At any rate, Bousset is here adopting a conception of the Messiahship of Jesus which is at best problematical and is rejected by men of the most widely divergent points of view. And did the title "Lord" designate Jesus especially as the present Lord of the Church, rather than as the one who was finally to usher in the Kingdom? Was Jesus in the belief of the early Church the "coming" Christ any more than He was the "coming" Lord; and was He the present Lord any more than He was the present Christ? These questions cannot be answered with absolute certainty. At any rate, even if Bousset can point to a larger proportion of eschatological interest in the one title than that which appears in the other, yet such a distinction is relative only. And it still remains true that if the infrequency of the title "Christ" in the Gospels does not indicate the non-existence of that title in the Jerusalem Church, the infrequency of the title "Lord" in the Gospels is not any more significant.

With regard to the title "Son of Man," Bousset makes a remark somewhat similar to that which he makes about the title "Christ." The title "Son of Man," he says, was eschatological; therefore it could not be introduced into the narrative part of the Gospels. But it will always remain one of the paradoxes of Bousset's theory that according to Bousset the title "Son of Man," which (except in Acts vii. 56) appears in the tradition only in the words of Jesus, and never as the title used when men spoke about Jesus, should be supposed to have been the characteristic title used in speaking about Jesus in the Jerusalem Church. If the belief of the Jerusalem Church about Jesus was so exclusively a Son-of-Man dogma, as Bousset supposes it was, and if that church was so little concerned with historical fact, it seems somewhat strange that the title, "Son of Man," has not been allowed, despite its eschatological character, to intrude into the Gospel narrative. Another hypothesis will always suggest itself—the hypothesis that Jesus really used the title, "Son of Man," in a somewhat mysterious way, in speaking about Himself, and that the memory of the fact that it was His own special designation of Himself has been preserved in the curious limitation of the use of the title in the New Testament. In that case, in view of the accuracy thus established with regard to one title, the testimony of the Gospels with regard to the other title, "Lord," cannot lightly be rejected.

But the evidence for the use of the title "Lord" in the primitive Jerusalem Church is not contained merely in the Gospels. Other evidence appears in the Pauline Epistles.

The most obvious fact is that Paul himself uses the term as the characteristic title of Jesus. And it is equally evident that he did not invent this usage. Evidently it was a continuation of a usage which prevailed before he began his work. So much is fully admitted by Bousset. But whence did Paul derive the usage? Or rather, supposing that he began his own use of the title at the moment of the conversion, in accordance with the representation in Acts ("Who art thou, Lord?"), whence did he derive his assumption that the title was already in use? The most obvious view is that he assumed the title to be already known because it was in use in the early Jerusalem Church. The matter-of-course way in which Paul applies the title "Lord" to Jesus has always, until recently, been taken as indicating that the title had been prevalent from the very beginning of the Church's life.

But at this point appears one of the most important features of Bousset's theory. Paul derived the title "Lord," Bousset believes, from those who had been Christians before him; but he derived it, not from the Jerusalem Church, but from the Christian communities in such cities as Antioch, Tarsus, and perhaps Damascus. It is in these communities, therefore, that the genesis of the title "Lord," as applied to Jesus, is to be placed.

Attention has already been called to the difficulties which beset this interposition of an extra link between Paul and the Jerusalem Church. It has been shown that what Paul "received" he received not from the churches at Antioch and Tarsus but from the original disciples at Jerusalem. But in addition to the general considerations which connect the whole of Paulinism with the Jerusalem tradition about Jesus, there are certain special indications of a Jerusalem origin of the title "Lord."

One such indication may be found, perhaps, in Gal. i. 19. When, in connection with a visit to Jerusalem which occurred three years after the conversion, Paul speaks of "James the brother of the Lord," the natural inference is that "the brother of the Lord" was a designation which was applied to James in Jerusalem; and if so, then the title "Lord" was current in the Jerusalem Church. Of course, the inference is not absolutely certain; Paul might have designated James as "the brother of the Lord" because that was the designation of James in the Galatian Churches and the designation which Paul himself commonly used, even if it was not current in Jerusalem. But the natural impression which the passage will always make upon an unsophisticated reader is that Paul is using a terminology which was already fixed among James' associates at the time and place to which the narrative refers. It should be observed that in speaking of Peter, Paul actually uses the Aramaic form and not the Greek form of the name. The indications are that with regard to the leaders of the Jerusalem Church Paul is accustomed generally to follow the Jerusalem usage. And the evidence of such a passage as Gal. i. 18, 19, where Jerusalem conditions are mentioned, is doubly strong. The use in this passage of the title "brother of the Lord" would indeed not be absolutely decisive if it stood alone. But taken in connection with the other evidence, it does point strongly to the prevalence in the early Jerusalem Church of the title "Lord" as applied to Jesus.