CHAPTER VII THE PERSON AND WORK OF JESUS CHRIST FROM “ SOME RECENT PHASES OF GERMAN THEOLOGY,” * BY BTSHOP JOHN L. NUELSEN, D. D., M. E. CHURCH, OMAHA, NEB, Every Old Testament problem becomes in course of time a New Testament question. Every Biblical question places us after a while face to face with Him who is the center of the whole Bible, with Jesus Christ. In the present discus- sion over the person and Gospel of Jesus Christ, I shall confine myself to pointing out briefly some of the most in- teresting and important features of this subject. WAS JESUS A REAL, HISTORICAL PERSON? In the closing years of the eighteenth century the thought was advanced by a number of rationalistic theologians that the doctrines held by the Church and formulated in her creeds were the joint product of New Testament religion and Greek philosophy. This thought was taken up by Pro- fessor Harnack of Berlin, and in his great work, “History of the Christian Doctrine,” he disclosed the complicated proc- ess by which the Church in developing her doctrines became Hellenized; thus it was made incumbent upon the student of Church history to extricate, by a process of careful analysis and comparison, the genuinely Christian elements from the meshes of foreign thought. Harnack, it is true, applied this principle only to post-apostolic times, but since the appear- ance of his book investigation has proceeded along the same lines and is now covering the Biblical writings as well. «Copyright by Jennings & Graham, and published by permission. 98
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