John 10:34-36

“ Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law I said ye are gods? 35. If it called them gods to whom the word of God was addressed, and the Scripture cannot be broken, 36 do you say of him whom the Father has sanctified and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest! because I said, I am the Son of God? ”

This argument has often been presented as an implicit retractation of the expressions in which Jesus seemed to have affirmed His divine nature. In this sense, He is supposed to say: “Mere creatures have been called gods, because they represent God in some one of His functions, that of judge, for example; this is the only sense in which I have ascribed divinity to myself.” But Jesus would thereby, at the same time, retract all His earlier testimonies, the meaning of which we have established. Jesus is occupied solely, in this first part of His reply, John 10:34-36, with repelling the accusation of blasphemy. With this end in view, He reasons as follows: “The Scripture called mere human beings gods, as being invested with an office in which they were the representatives and organs of God on earth; were I then nothing more than a mere man, sent to accomplish a divine work, I should not deserve, according to the Scripture itself, to be treated as a blasphemer for having called myself Son of God.”

As an argument ad hominem the reasoning is irrefutable. Nevertheless, it still leaves room for this objection: Jesus called Himself God in an altogether different sense from that in which the Scripture gave this title to the Israelite judges. But a second point is to be observed here: it is the gradation in John 10:35-36: “If the Scripture did not blaspheme in calling the persons gods to whom the revelation was addressed, how can I have spoken blasphemy in declaring myself God, I, whom God sends into the world as His revelation itself? ” This altogether different position of Jesus as regards the divine revelation justifies the higher sense in which He attributes to Himself the title of God. The monotheism of the Bible differs absolutely from the cold and dead Deism which Jewish orthodoxy had extracted from the sacred books, and which separates the Creator by a gulf from man.

This petrified monotheism is the connecting link between degenerate Judaism, Mahometanism and modern rationalism; but it is only a gross caricature of the Scriptural conception. Every theocratic function exercised in the name of Jehovah, who has conferred it, places its depositary in living connection with the Most High, makes him participate in His inspiration, and constitutes him His agent. Thereby the man, king, judge or prophet, becomes relatively a manifestation of God Himself. “ At that time, the house of David shall be as Elohim, as the angel of the Lord. ” Zechariah 12:8. The Old Testament is, in its deepest tendency, in a constant advancing progress towards the incarnation, the crowning-point of the increasing approximation between God and man. This is the true basis of the reasoning of Jesus: If this entire course has nothing in it of blasphemy, the end in which it issues, the appearance of a man who declares Himself one with God, has in itself nothing in contempt of the majesty of God.

The quotation is derived from Psalms 82:6; and the term law denotes here, as in John 7:49; John 12:34, etc., the entire Old Testament, not as a denomination a potiori parte, but rather inasmuch as this whole book formed a law for the Israelitish thought and life. On the expression your law, see on John 8:17. Asaph, in this Psalm, addresses the theocratic judges. John 10:1 describes their greatness, in virtue of their function as organs of the divine justice, which has been intrusted to them. God Himself sits in the midst of them; it is from Him that their judgments emanate. Then in John 10:2-5, Asaph contrasts the sad reality, the injustice of the actual judges, with the ideal greatness of their function. In John 10:6, he returns to the idea of the first verse, that of their official dignity. The words: I said, refer undoubtedly to the expression of Asaph himself in John 10:1: “ God is present in the congregation of God. ” And thus he prepares for the transition to the warning of John 10:7-8, in which he reminds them that they will themselves be one day judged, for an account will be demanded of them respecting this divine function with which they had been clothed. Jesus draws from the words of the Psalmist a conclusion a minori ad majus, precisely as in John 7:23. The basis of the reasoning is the admitted principle: that the Scriptures cannot blaspheme. By those to whom the word of God is addressed, Jesus evidently understands those judges, to whom the Holy Spirit addresses Himself, saying: You are...The parenthetical remark: And the Scripture cannot be broken, shows the unlimited respect which Jesus feels for the word of Scripture.

Let us suppose that it was the evangelist who invented all this argument; could he, the so-called author of the theory of the Logos, have resisted the temptation to put into the mouth of Jesus here this favorite title by which he had designated Him in the Prologue? This would be the altogether natural gradation: The law calls them judges to whom the Word is addressed; how much less can I be accused of blasphemy, who am the Word itself, when I attribute to myself the title of God! John does not yield to this temptation; it is because it did not exist for him, since he limited himself to giving a faithful report of what his Master had said. Jesus designates Himself as Him whom the Father has sanctified and sent. The first expression might strictly refer to a fact in the earthly life of Jesus, such as that of the miraculous birth (Luthardt) or that of the baptism (Weiss). But in that case it would be necessary to refer the following expression: sent into the world, to an act later than the one or the other of these two events: according to Weiss, for example, to the command to begin His public ministry. Or it would be necessary to admit a retrograde order in the position of the two terms sanctify and send, which is quite as unnatural. The term to send into the world can of course only designate the mission which He received when He came from God to fulfill His work as Redeemer; and the term to sanctify must consequently designate the celestial act by which God specially set Him apart and consecrated Him for this mission. It was to this commandment, previous to the incarnation, that we were already referred by the expression commandment, ἐντολή, used in John 5:18; comp. 1 Peter 1:20.

There was a consulting together between the Father and the Son before the coming of Jesus to the world, of which He Himself formulates the result when He says: “ I am come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me ” (John 6:38). How great is the superiority of such a being to all those to whom the divine revelation addresses itself here below! In reproducing the charge alleged against Him, Jesus passes to the direct discourse: Thou blasphemest. It is the lively repetition of the accusation, as it was still sounding in His ears. The following words: because I said, depend not on thou blasphemest, but on you say. The title Son of God evidently here reproduces the substance of the declaration of John 10:30: I and my Father are one. This example shows again how erroneous it is to see in the title Son of God the indication of a function, even of the highest theocratic function. Taken in this sense, this term does not involve absolutely any blasphemy at all. These Jews who had just addressed to Him the question: “If thou art the Christ, tell us plainly,” evidently could not have found in this title of Christ a blasphemy. And, as for Jesus, He is here thinking, as John 10:30 shows, on something altogether different from His dignity as Messiah. That is only a corollary following from His altogether peculiar union with God. He is only endeavoring therefore to awaken in the hearts of His hearers the feeling of His close relation to God, being certain, not only that the conviction of His Messiahship will naturally result from it, but also that in this way only that idea will not be erroneously conceived. Hence what follows: