p. 191 | SELECTIONS

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 13, 1856

SELECTIONS.

Campbell's Criticism on Mat. xxiv., 36.

"No not the Son."—This sentence has been the subject of much criticism, and many commentators of different creeds have been perplexed with it. Though wanting in some ancient manuscripts, Griesbach has retained it. Macknight argues that the term know is here used as a causative, in the Hebrew sense of the conjugation hiphel, that is, to make known. Adam Clarke thinks this is rather cutting, than untying the knot. The controversies between Calvinists and Socinians have made the difficulty appear much greater than it really is. It seems to bear just as much against the Socinian as the Calvinistic hypothesis. On the supposition that Jesus of Nazareth was but a man of extraordinary endowments, eminently gifted by the Spirit of God, the difficulty is as great as upon any other hypothesis.

He had just been speaking of the destruction of Jerusalem and of the temple, in the most exact and circumstantial manner. He had shown that he both knew the season (a term agreed to be equivalent to the hour,) and all the adjuncts and circumstances of that tremendous catastrophe. He had minutely detailed all the concomitants, and expressly declared that the generation standing around him should not pass away, till every thing he had stated relative to this event was accomplished. This is, in other words, declaring that he knew the day of this calamity. He circumscribes and limits it to a certain day. But the question proposed to him explains the difficulty. He was not asked whether he knew the day, but to make it known.

In the same way he was afterwards interrogated about "the restoration of the kingdom to Israel." In this case, he says, "It was not for them to know the times and seasons which the Father had reserved to himself and did not authorize him to make known." And, taking into view the circumstances of the whole case respecting the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, and the question asked him, his answer is just equivalent to saying: The Father will make it known when it pleases him; but he has not authorized man, angel, or the Son, to make it known. Just in this sense Paul uses the term know, 1 Cor. ii. 2. "I came to you making known the testimony of God, for I determined to make known nothing among you but a crucified Christ." In the order of the words, man, angel, and Son, the Saviour declares his own superiority to any of them.