solute significance abstractly
and speculatively. The religious convictions (see Sec. 3. 2): (1) That the
founding of the Kingdom of God on earth, and the mission of Jesus as the
perfect mediator, were from eternity based on God's plan of Salvation,
as his main purpose; (2) that the exalted Christ was called into a
position of Godlike Sovereignty belonging to him of right; (3) that God
himself was manifested in Jesus, and that he therefore surpasses all
mediators of the Old Testament, nay, even all angelic powers,--these
convictions with some took the form that Jesus pre-existed, and that in
him has appeared and taken flesh a heavenly being fashioned like God,
who is older than the world, nay, its creative principle.[103] The
conceptions of the old Teachers, Paul, the author of the Epistle to the
Hebrews, the Apocalypse, the author of the first Epistle of Peter, the
fourth Evangelist, differ in many ways when they attempt to define these
convictions more closely. The latter is the only one who has recognised
with perfect clearness that the premundane Christ must be assumed to be
[Greek: theos hon en arche pros ton theon], so as not to endanger by
this speculation the contents and significance of the revelation of God
which was given in Christ. This, in the earliest period, was essentially
a religious problem, that is, it was not introduced for the explanation
of cosmological problems, (see, especially, Epistle to the Ephesians, I
Peter; but also the Gospel of John), and there stood peacefully beside
it, such conceptions as recognised the equipment of the man Jesus for
his office in a communication of the Spirit at his baptism,[104] or in
virtue of Isaiah VII., found the germ of his unique nature in his
miraculous origin.[105] But as soon as that speculation was detached
from its original foundation, it necessarily withdrew the minds of
believers from the consideration of the work of Christ, and from the
contemplation of the revelation of God which was given in the ministry
of the historical person Jesus. The mystery of the person of Jesus in
itself, would then necessarily appear as the true revelation.[106]

A series of theologoumena and religious problems for the future doctrine
of Christianity lay ready in the teaching of the Pharisees and in the
Apocalypses (see especially the fourth book of Ezra), and was really
fitted for being of service to it; e.g., doctrines about Adam, universal
sinfulness, the fall, predestinat