The doctrine of the Pre-existence of Christ is part of Christianity’s inheritance from ancient pagan sources. In pagan philosophy it had a wider basis: “The notion that human souls were in existence before the generation of the bodies with which they were united in this world was anciently, and still is, widely spread throughout the East. Among the early christians the assumption of such pre-existence was connected with the belief that God had created the souls of men before the world, and that these were united with human bodies at generation Or at birth. It was associated with the doctrine of the transmigration of souls.”1
Among modern Christians it finds no expression except in regard to Christ, who, as Son of God, is presumed to have been with God from before the foundation of the world, in the creation of which he was associated.
The Jewish view of Messiah was based essentially upon the Old Testament, which offered no grounds for his pre-existence. The Christ was to be an historical person manifested in due time as the seed of Abraham and the lineal descendant of David. His function was to bring the restitution of the fortunes of Israel, to make them the head of the nations and not the tail, to bring in the wealth of the gentiles as tribute and to produce plenty, to bring into practical being the golden age of which Israel had dreamed. He should be the glory of Israel and the light of the gentiles, and all kings should bow down to him. Jerusalem should be his political capital from which law and peace should flow as a river unto all nations. He was the “one like the son of man” who should receive his Kingdom and Power from the Ancient of Days.
The Jewish view of Messiah’s reign, therefore, was essentially political and material.
The early Christians accepted this same view. The disciples, for example, just prior to Jesus’ suffering had enquired what should be their portion in his Kingdom, and had received the assurance that they should sit upon thrones judging the restored tribes of Israel. And again, as he was about to ascend into Heaven, they asked him if that was the time of the restoration. The question with them was not “if” but “when”. This purely Judaic view received a wider interpretation due to Jesus’ teaching and their subsequent experience.
There were certain features of the Old Testament teaching of which they were made aware. For example, Christ had to suffer death, and to be glorified by resurrection, and made the “Son of God with power”. By him forgiveness of sins and redemption were to be extended to all believers. He was to return from heaven to judge the world and give eternal life to his saints.
These revelations and experiences gave to former Jewish expectations a spiritual element. The Christ of the christians was calling out of the nations a people for his Name who should be the basis of his kingdom when he returned to establish it.
The following is illuminating:
“Early Jewish Christian thought recurred to the suffering servant of Isaiah, who was ‘wounded for our transgressions’. This primitive conception of the suffering servant exalted, persisted. It is that, in spite of a good deal of Pauline admixture, of the epistle known as 1 Peter (3. 18-22). Clement writing from Rome to the Corinthians, 93-97, also shares it. It does not necessarily imply pre-existence. It does not makes clear the relationship of Christ to God. It had not thought that problem out.”
This short excerpt reveals as much as any other the weak reasoning upon which the doctrine of the Pre-existence was based—It had not thought it out”, as if true doctrine had to be reasoned out philosophical rather than received by inspiration.
Subsequently, the suffering and glorified servant conception underwent great changes with the split which occurred in the church between Jewish and gentile believers as a result of the activities of Judaisers. Gentile believers, offended by the Jewish materialism, drifted away into mystical interpretations of the Christ. The first of the heretics were the Docetists, who denied that Jesus had come in the flesh: he was a spirit emanation from heaven. From this point there developed the idea of the Son of God by adoption only. With Gentile believers theSon of God was conceived to be co-existent and co-eternal with the Father from before the foundation of the world in which it was supposed he took part. From this developed the doctrine of the Trinity and other abstruse doctrines about the nature of Jesus Christ: whether, for example, he was of the same substance as the Father or of similar substance; and, again, whether he was motivated by only one will—the divine—or by two wills—human and divine—and how much ofeach. Such controversies continued unabated until they wore themselves out and were set aside by the lust for power which dominated the Church of the Middle Ages.
From the lively story of the great apostacy a number of problems emerge for the student to contemplate and to draw lessons for his own and others* guidance.
One is that neither Old nor New Testaments give the slightest support to the doctrine of the pre-existence or for the associated error of the immortality of the soul. They are the product of pagan philosophy adopted into the Church under the provocation of materialism.
Another is that the violent controversy achieved nothing toward the correction of apostacy, but rather hardened the schism.
And a third instruction is that it is profitable to pay strict attention to the literal meaning of the words which scripture employs, before indulging in figurative interpretations—for this is the means by which the Church declined into false beliefs.
And over them all rides the consideration that human conceit and pride in its own reasoning soon makes havoc of the inspired word of God.
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