ing and modernising explanations of Jesus have
not been due to too much but to too little psychology;
if they have failed to do justice to the Christ of the
gospels, the fault has lain elsewhere than in the
refusal to estimate so great a personality on the
score of texts and current ideas.

It is the recognition of this filial consciousness of
Jesus as the crucial element in the synoptic christology
which really enables us to understand the continuity
between the first three gospels and the Fourth. In
the latter the messianic categories fall comparatively
into the background, but the absorption of the
Fourth gospel in the relation between the Father and
the Son is theologically, rather than historically,
organic to the underlying basis of the synoptic
christology. ¹ When the filial consciousness of
Jesus is seen to be prior to the messianic, the start-
ing-point for the special christology of the Fourth
gospel is at once granted. This is brought out even
when we turn to a conception which at first sight
marks one of the broadest differences between the
first three gospels and the Fourth, viz. the conception
of the Spirit.

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