by B. B. Warfield
THE pericope of "the rich young ruler" is found in all three of the Synoptic Gospels, and it is associated in all of them with narratives of a common type. In all three it immediately follows the account of Jesus' receiving and blessing little children; and it is clear from Mark's representation (as also indeed from Matthew's) that the incident actually occurred in immediate sequence to that scene. In Luke, these two narratives are immediately preceded by the parable of the Pharisee and Publican praying in the Temple; in Matthew they are immediately succeeded by the parable of the workmen in the vineyard who were surprised that their rewards were not nicely adjusted to what they deemed their relative services. It cannot be by accident that these four narratives, all of which teach a similar lesson, are brought thus into contiguity. It is the burden of them all that the Kingdom of God is a gratuity, not an acquisition; and the effect of bringing them together is to throw a great emphasis upon this, their common teaching.
Perhaps this teaching finds nowhere more pungent intimation than in the declaration of our Lord which forms the core of the account of His reception of the children: "For of such is the kingdom of heaven," (or "of God": Mt. 19:14; Mk. 10:14; Lk. 18:16). These "little children" were, as we learn from Luke, mere babies (Lk. 18:15: τὰ βρέφη), which Jesus held in His arms (Mk. 10:16: ἐναγκαλισάμενος; cf. 9:36 and also Lk. 2:28). What Jesus says, therefore, is that those who enter the Kingdom of God are like "infants of days." Such infants are not to be debarred from coming to Him, because forsooth they cannot profit by His teaching or profit Him by their service. It is precisely of such as they that the Kingdom of God consists. "And verily I say unto you," He adds, "whosoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child, he shall in no wise enter therein" (Mk. 10:15: Lk. 18:17). The meaning is accurately expressed in Alford's paraphrase (the emphases are his own): "In order for us who are mature to come to Him, we must cast away all that wherein our maturity has caused us to differ from them and become LIKE THEM.… None can enter God's Kingdom except as an infant." But when Alford comes to explain what "as an infant" means, he loses the thread and thinks of the innocence, the simplicity, the trustfulness of childhood, or the like. That in which maturity differs from infancy, however, lies just in its self-dependence and power of self-help. We become "as a little child" when, in the words of the revival hymn which was such an offence to James Anthony Froude, "we cast our deadly doing down" and make our appeal on the sole score of sheer helplessness.
Zahn, therefore, strikes a much truer note when he comments: "Over against the fancy (Dünkel) of the disciples, who ground their claim that the Kingdom belongs to them on their intelligence and will, Jesus reminds them that they must rather, by renunciation of their own intelligence and will, obtain the receptivity (Empfänglichkeit) for the blessings and benefit of the Kingdom which the immature children possess of themselves." And so does Wendt: "But in this very respect, of having no claim, so that they could offer nothing but only wish to have something, Jesus finds the ground for the children being permitted to come to Him, that He might show them His love and give them His blessing. For in this unpretentious receptivity He recognizes the necessary condition which must exist in all who will enter the kingdom of God." "Under this childlike character, He does not understand any virtue of childlike blamelessness, but only the receptivity itself (which is the notion impressively emphasized by Him) on the part of those who do not regard themselves as too good or too bad for the offered gift, but receive it with hearty desire." The emphasis which these expositors throw on "receptivity" as the characteristic of infancy—as if it were an active quality—is not drawn from the text but belongs to the habits of thought derived by them from a Lutheran inheritance. It requires to be eliminated before the meaning of our Lord's enunciation can be purely caught. Infancy is characterized by "receptivity" as little as by "blamelessness" or by "trustfulness"; its characteristic is just helpless need. He who receives the Kingdom of God "as a little child" receives it (in this sense) passively; is the pure recipient, not the earner of its blessings. What our Lord here declares is thus, in brief, that no one enters the Kingdom of God save as an infant enters the world, naked and helpless and without any claim upon it whatever.
No more illuminating comment on our Lord's teaching here could easily be imagined than that which is supplied by the immediately succeeding incident, that of the rich young ruler. No sooner had our Lord announced that "whosoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child, he shall in no wise enter therein," than one appeared before Him bent on making his way into the Kingdom in quite another fashion. And, indeed, if any could hope to acquire it for himself, it might well be supposed to be this eager young man. He had everything to commend him. He was young, he was rich, he was highly placed, he was clean. He was accustomed to desire good things, and, desiring them, he was accustomed to obtain them for himself: and, with the resources at his command,—resources of youthful energy, wealth, position, moral earnestness—he was accustomed to obtain them without much difficulty. He had heard of Jesus, perhaps had heard Him; and he recognized in Him a good man whose counsel were well worth having. And he had conceived a commendable desire for the eternal life which Jesus was proclaiming. What remained but to learn from this good teacher what needed to be done, in order to obtain it? It never occurred to this rich and influential youth, accustomed to get what he wanted, but that this good thing which he now desired might be obtainable at its own proper price; and was he not prepared and fully able to pay the price and so to secure it? It seemed to him an easy thing to purchase eternal life.
It was our Lord's painful task, in response to the young man's appeal for guidance, to reveal him to himself in the shallowness of his nature and outlook; to open his eyes to the nature of that eternal life which he sought, in its radical difference from the life he was living; and to make it clear to him that what he had thought so easy to acquire was to be had only at a great price, a price which he might not be willing to pay, a price which he might find it was impossible for him to pay. And it was our Lord's task, further, on the basis of this incident, to carry home poignantly to the consciousness of His disciples the lesson He had already taught them in the incident of the blessing of the little children, that the Kingdom of God is not a thing into which in any case men can buy their way; that they stand before it helpless, and can make their way into it as little as a camel can force itself through the eye of a needle. It may be conferred by God: it cannot be acquired by men.
As the result of his conversation, the young man departed with his countenance fallen, exceeding sorrowful,12—the eternal life which he had expected to reach out his hand and take was not for him. And the disciples had had borne in upon them with tremendous force the fundamental fact that salvation in every case of its accomplishment is nothing less than an authentic miracle of divine grace; always and everywhere in the strictest sense impossible with man, and possible only with God, with whom all things are possible. The effect of this teaching, if it was naturally to depress those who sought eternal life by their own efforts, was equally naturally to exhilarate those who were looking to God alone for the blessings of the Kingdom, giving them a higher sense of both their certainty and their value. This surely is the right account to give of Peter's question (Mt. 19:27; Mk. 10:28; Lk. 18:28), with our Lord's response to which the conversation closes. We cannot say, then, with Edersheim: "It almost jars on our ears, and prepares us for still stranger and sadder things to come, when Peter, perhaps as spokesman for the rest, seems to remind the Lord that they had forsaken all to follow Him." Peter rather, his heart swelling with freshly inflamed hope (spe ex verbis Salvatoris concepta, remarks Bengel accurately) inquires eagerly (not boastfully but in humble gratitude) into the nature of the blessings which God has in mind for those who have entered the Kingdom. Our Lord meets the inquiry in its own spirit and grants to His followers a splendid vision of their reward,—only closing with words which would leave fixed in their minds the consciousness that all things are reserved to the Divine discretion: "And many shall be last that are first; and first that are last."
There are no substantial differences between the three reports which are given us of this remarkable incident. Each of the Evangelists records details peculiar to himself. Each narrative has its own tone and coloring: Mark's is distinguished by vividness, Luke's by plain straightforwardness, Matthew's by clearness. But it is precisely the same story which is told by them all: the same story in its contents, in its mode of development, in its dénouement, in its lesson. Having any one of the three we have it all, presented after the same fashion and with the same force. It has no doubt been common to represent the descriptions of the opening scene, by Mark and Luke on the one hand and by Matthew on the other, as divergent; and this divergence has been magnified, and serious inferences have been drawn from it, derogatory to Matthew's integrity as a historian and injurious to our Lord's dignity as a Divine person and even to His moral perfection. All this rests upon misunderstanding. The wide-spread vogue it has obtained requires, nevertheless, that it shall be carefully looked into.
A simple reading of the opening two verses in the three accounts reveals at once, of course, a formal difference between Mark and Luke on the one side and Matthew on the other in their reports alike of the words in which the young man addressed Jesus and of those in which our Lord responded to his inquiry. In Mark (and Luke) we read that the young man addressed Jesus as "Good Master" and asked Him broadly, "What shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?" In Matthew, he is represented as addressing Him simply as "Master," and asking Him with more exact definition, "What good thing shall I do that I may have life?" Correspondingly, Jesus is represented in Mark (and Luke) as replying, "Why callest thou me good? No one is good except one, God. Thou knowest the commandments …"; but in Matthew, "Why askest thou me concerning the good? One there is that is good. But if thou wishest to enter into life, keep the commandments.…" We have spoken of these differences as formal; it would seem to be difficult to magnify them into anything more. Though, naturally, a matter of curious interest, they in no way affect the significance of the story itself. Despite them the two narratives, even at this precise point, yield exactly the same general sense and differ only in the details through which this common sense is brought to expression. To make this evident we need only to attend separately to what each mode of telling the story actually places before us.
According to Matthew, then, scarcely had Jesus issued from the house in which He had received and blessed the children, when an individual (there is a slight emphasis upon his being one out of the multitude) came to Him, and, addressing Him as "Master" (that is, "Teacher," or "Rabbi"), asked Him, "What good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?" He is asking, not for general prescriptions of righteousness, but for a particular requirement by doing just which he may secure the eternal life he seeks; and so set is his mind upon this particular good thing that when Jesus refers him to the divine commandments in general, he still demands (verse 18), "Which?" In response to his demand, nevertheless, Jesus points him just to the divine commandments, thus in effect repelling the implication that eternal life can be grounded on anything but that entire righteousness reflected in the law of God; and, behind that, suggesting that it was not instruction in righteousness that the young man needed but the power of a new life. Jesus' reply amounts, thus, to saying: "Why make inquiry concerning the good thing needed? There is One who is good and He has given commandments; keep them." It is the equivalent of, "They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them" of Luke 16:29. What Jesus actually says is: "Why askest thou me concerning the good? There is One that is good, and, if thou wishest to enter into life, keep His commandments."
The thing to be noted particularly is that no emphasis falls on the enclitic με, and therefore no contrast is intimated between Jesus and the One that is good. The contrast intimated is wholly between the good thing inquired of and the known commandments of God. To avoid the almost inevitable emphasizing of the "me" in a translation, it might be well to omit it altogether for the moment and to paraphrase simply: "Why dost thou inquire about the good as if that were a matter still in doubt? God, who is goodness itself, has published the eternal rule of righteousness." Keim, it is true, scoffs at the notion that no contrast is drawn between Jesus and God. "But εἷς," he cries, meaning that quite apart from the με the contrast is inherent in the mere declaration that "there is One"—that is to say, only One—"who is good." There is, however, an inadvertence apparent in this. The declaration that "there is One that is good" does set God in contrast with all others: it is to God in His already published will, not to anyone else whatever, that we are to go to learn the law of life. But it does not set God in contrast specifically with Jesus. So soon as it is read as contrasting God specifically with Jesus an emphasis is necessarily thrown on the enclitic με which it will not bear. Jesus is therefore not contrasting Himself here with God. He is only in the most emphatic way pointing to God and His published law as the unique source of the law of life. His own relation to that God is completely out of sight, and nothing whatever is suggested with reference to it. Zahn is accordingly entirely right when he writes: "For the question of the position Jesus assigns Himself between the one good One who is God and men who are evil, little occasion is given by this pedagogic conversation."
Mark, like Matthew, connects the incident of the rich young man closely with that of the blessing of the little children. It was while Jesus was in the act of coming forth from the house (verse 10) in which the blessing of the children had taken place, for His journeying, that an individual from the crowd (εἷς) came running, and fell on his knees, and, addressing Him by the unusual title of "Good Master," demanded of Him what he should do to inherit eternal life. It is the strangeness of the address, "Good Master"—apparently unexampled in extant Jewish literature—which attracts attention here; and naturally it was this which determined the response of Jesus. It threw into relief—as it would not have done had it been more customary—the levity with which the young man approached Jesus of whom he knew so little, with so remarkable a demand. Jesus' response naturally, therefore, takes the form, "Why callest thou me good? No one is good except one, God. Thou knowest the commandments.…" This response at first sight seems in itself to be capable of two constructions. We may either fill out: "Thou art wrong in calling me good; this predicate, in any worthy sense of it at least, belongs to none but God." Or we may fill out rather: "There is a great deal involved, if only you appreciated it, in calling me good; for there is no one that is good but one, that is God." The primary objection to the former view is that it presses the contrast beyond the power of the enclitic με to bear. For the με is enclitic here as well as in Matthew, and can be emphasized here as little as there. The emphasis certainly falls not on it, but on the ἀγαθόν. The sense is therefore certainly not that the young man had called specifically Jesus good; but that he had called Jesus specifically good. There is no contrast therefore instituted between Jesus and God. This is the fundamental fact regarding the passage which must rule its whole interpretation.
The sense need not be, however, that Jesus identifies Himself here with God, though the words are in themselves flexible to that interpretation: "Why is it that thou dost thus address me as good? Dost thou fully apprehend what is involved in this? Art thou really aware that I am indeed that God who alone is good?" It may rather be that Jesus, without implication as to His own real personality, is only directing attention to God as the only true standard of goodness: "Why dost thou use this strange address of 'Good Master'? Art thou seeking someone good enough to give sure directions as to eternal life? Hast thou forgotten God? And dost thou not know His commandments?" If it be thought that some slight contrast between Jesus and God is still discoverable, even in this understanding of the passage, and the enclitic με is appealed to in order to forbid even so much emphasis on Jesus' person, the remark may be in place here as truly as it was with regard to Matthew's phrase, that the contrast involved in the words "No one is good except one, God," is not between God and Jesus, but between God and all others. There can be imported into the passage, in any case, no denial on Jesus' part, either that He is good or that He is God. It is again merely the "They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them." The whole emphasis is absorbed in the stress laid upon God's sole right to announce the standard of goodness. The question of the relation of Jesus to this God does not emerge: there is equally no denial that He is God, and no affirmation that He is God. The young man is merely pointed to the rule which had been given by the good God as a witness to what it is requisite to do that we may be well-pleasing to Him. He is merely bidden not to look elsewhere for prescriptions as to life save in God's revealed will. The search for a master good enough to lead men to life finds its end in God and His commandments.
Obviously the drift of the conversation in Mark (and Luke) is precisely the same as in Matthew. The two narratives are in substance completely consentaneous. It is not to be supposed that either has reported in full detail all that was said. Actual conversations are ordinarily somewhat repetitious: good reports of them faithfully give their gist, in condensation. It has been said that Jane Austen records the conversations at her dinner-parties with such, not faithfulness but, circumstantiality that her reports bore the reader almost as much as the actual conversations would have done. There is no reason to suppose that the Evangelists aimed at such meticulous particularity in their reports of our Lord's conversations. Not all that He said, any more than all that He did (Jno. 20:30, 21:25), has been recorded. Each selects the line of remark which seems to him to embody the pith of what was said; and the skill and faithfulness with which they have done this are attested by such a phenomenon as now faces us, where, amid even a striking diversity in the details reported, a complete harmony is preserved in the substance of the discourse. Wilhelm Wagner makes himself merry indeed over what he considers the conceit of Olshausen, who recognizes in both forms of narrative exact historical tradition, and looks upon each as preserving only fragments of what was said. And, no doubt, if the state of the case were as Wagner represents it,—if, that is, the two narratives were mutually contradictory and exclusive of one another, so that one could not say of them, Sowohl … wie … but only Entweder … oder …, Olshausen's treatment of them would be absurd. Since, however, they are entirely in agreement in substance, Olshausen's assumption is a mere matter of course. Each gives us in any case only a portion of what was said. It may be plausibly argued, indeed, that Mark intimates as much by his employment of the imperfect tense when introducing the words reported from the lips of the questioner: ἐπηρώτα. We are told, to be sure, that Mark's imperfects are not significant, that he interchanges them arbitrarily with aorists, and that therefore no inferences can be grounded on them.29 This contention seems, however, to be overstrained; and in a case—like that now before us—where the present, aorist and imperfect tenses are brought together in close contiguity, their shades of implication can scarcely be wholly neglected. The general fact, however, does not rest upon the interpretation put upon Mark's ἐπηρώτα. It lies in the nature of the case that two accounts of a conversation which agree as to the substance of what was said, but differ slightly in the details reported, are reporting different fragments of the conversation, selected according to the judgment of each writer as the best vehicles of its substance.
An account of the relations of the two narratives quite different from this, it is true, is very commonly given. The representation which for the moment seems to be most widely adopted, looks upon Mark's narrative as the original one, and supposes it to have been closely followed by Luke but fundamentally altered by Matthew under the influence of dogmatic considerations. This view implies an interpretation of the narrative of Mark different from that offered above, as well as a different account of the relations of the narratives of the Evangelists to one another. According to it, Mark represents Jesus as repelling the attribution to Him of the epithet "good," because He is conscious of creaturely imperfection; and thus as, in His creaturely humility, setting Himself over against God in the strongest possible contrast. Matthew then is supposed to have drawn back from this representation as derogatory to Jesus' dignity as he conceived it, and to have therefore modified the narrative so that it should no longer imply a repudiation on Jesus' part of either goodness or divinity. That the conception of the drift of Mark's narrative which is assumed in this view is exegetically untenable, we have already endeavored to show. It is already wrecked indeed on the simple enclitic με, which will not allow the contrast between Jesus and God which is its core. That it throws into chief prominence a matter which lies quite apart from the main subject under discussion is also fatal to it. There are, however, general considerations which also quite forbid it. That Matthew should be gratuitously charged with falsifying the text that lay before him in the interests of his doctrinal views is an indefensible procedure. There is no reason to believe Matthew capable of such dishonesty. And why the narrative as it lies in Mark's account should have been less acceptable to Matthew than it was to Mark himself and to Luke remains inexplicable. It is not doubted that the dogmatic standpoint of Matthew was fully shared by Mark and Luke. It is quite certain that, if the meaning put upon Mark's narrative by this conception of it is its true meaning, that fact was wholly unsuspected by either Mark or Luke. And there is no reason to suppose it would have been divined by Matthew either. There can be no doubt that Mark and Luke supposed, when they were narrating this incident, that they were writing down words in full harmony with their reverence for Jesus the Divine Savior, for the expression and justification of which they wrote their Gospels. To attribute to incidents which they record with this intent an exactly contrary significance, a meaning which flatly contradicts their most cherished convictions and the whole tenor of their Gospels, is to charge them with a stupidity in "compiling" their Gospels which is wholly incompatible with the character of the Gospels they have written. A critical theory which is inapplicable except on the assumption of stupidity and dishonesty on the part of such writers as the Evangelists show themselves to be, is condemned from the outset.
Despite its impossibility, however, this theory has of late acquired wide vogue; and it is perhaps worth while to see how it is presented by its chief advocates. We may perhaps permit P. W. Schmiedel to expound it for us. He is speaking at the moment of the Gospel of John and remarks: "And equally unacceptable to this Evangelist would be the record in (Mark 10:17f.) and Luke, that to the address of a rich man, 'Good Master, what must I do to obtain eternal life?' Jesus replied: 'Why callest thou me good? No one is good except God alone.' And yet beyond question this reply came from Jesus' lips. How little it could have been invented by any one of His worshippers who write in the Gospels, is shown by Matthew. With him (19:16ff.) the rich man asks: 'Master, what good thing must I do that I may have eternal life?' And Jesus answers: 'Why askest thou me concerning the good? There is one that is good.' How does Jesus come by these last words? Should He not rather, since He was asked concerning the good, proceed: 'There is one thing that is good'? and that would not only be the sole suitable reply, because of what had preceded, but also because of what follows: for Jesus says further: 'If, however, thou wouldst enter into life, keep the commandments.' Accordingly, in Jesus' view, the good concerning which He was asked, consists in keeping the commandments. How did Matthew come by the words: 'There is one that is good'? Only by having before him as he wrote the text of Mark. Here we have our finger on the way in which Matthew with conscious purpose altered this text in its opening words, so that it should no longer be offensive: and on the way in which at the end he has left a few words of it unaltered, which betray to us the manner in which the thing has been done." This representation turns on three hinges. They are, first, that, according to Mark's account, Jesus repels the ascription of goodness to Him because He is conscious of not deserving it; secondly, that Matthew, offended by this attribution to Jesus of a consciousness of sinfulness, has deliberately altered the story so as to remove it; and thirdly, that Matthew has done this so bunglingly as to retain, at an important point, a trait from Mark which is meaningless in his own narrative.
The third of these contentions obviously neutralizes the second. A writer shrewd enough to undertake and so skillfully to begin the dogmatic alterations ascribed to Matthew would be shrewd enough to carry them successfully through. Certainly he would not have deliberately altered Mark's "No one is good except God alone," and yet have altered it so little to his purpose. To have supposed that Matthew, after having taken the trouble to reconstruct the first portion of the conversation of the young man with Jesus in order to adjust it to his own views, should have neglected to reconstruct the second portion of it and have left it in staring contradiction to what he had just written, would have been bad enough. But to suppose that he did not neglect to reconstruct the second portion also, but altered it too, but altered it so bunglingly as to leave it essentially the same in meaning as it was before alteration, and still in crass conflict with his reconstructed version of the former part of the conversation, is past crediting. A critical theory which will not hold unless we suppose not only that Mark and Luke were too stupid to perceive the open meaning of the incident they were recording, but also that Matthew, who was intelligent enough to perceive it and dishonest enough to attempt to adjust it to the view of Jesus common to all three, was yet so stupid that he could not carry the adjustment through—although it required only the substitution of an obvious neuter for a baldly impossibly masculine,—is clearly unworthy of serious consideration. It is very plain that such a theory is violently imposed on the texts and is driven through in the face of impossibilities. We have already seen that it is based on a failure to catch the meaning, natural and easy, of either narrative the relations of which it professes to expound: we perceive now that the explanation it offers of these relations is nothing less than absurd. There is no reason to suppose that Matthew would put a meaning—and, be it remembered, an intrinsically unnatural and linguistically impossible meaning—on Mark's narrative which it is certain that neither Mark nor Luke put on it; there is no justification for imagining that, if he did, he was dishonest enough to attempt to reconstruct the narrative so as to bring it into harmony with his own conception of Jesus (which, be it remembered, was Mark's and Luke's also); there is no propriety in assuming that if he undertook such a task he was capable of botching it as he is, on this theory, represented as doing. Whatever may be the relations of these narratives, it is certain that Matthew's was not made out of Mark's; and assuredly not as a dogmatic revision in the interests of our Lord's sinlessness and deity.
There is no reason, therefore, derivable from this critical speculation why we should desert the natural understanding of Mark's (and Luke's) narrative and its relation to Matthew's which lies on its surface. And our confidence in it will be greatly strengthened, if we will attend for a little to the alternative interpretations of it which have been proposed. These are very numerous and very divergent. They may be arranged, however, in a not unnatural sequence, and we may thus be enabled to survey them without confusion, and to catch their essential significance with some ease.
The interpretation which imposes on Mark's (and Luke's) narrative a repudiation by Jesus of the predicate "good," with its involved contrast of Him with God, was already current among the Arians, and possibly even in certain heretical circles of the second century. It is only natural that it should be widely adopted again in modern Liberal circles. Wilhelm Wagner in an interesting sketch of the history of the interpretation of the passage chooses G. Volkmar as the representative of this mode of interpreting it. In Volkmar's view, what is given expression in Jesus' reply is that in the Kingdom of God proclaimed by Him God is the sole Good, to whom homage is due. God is the supreme Good, and the adoration of Him the highest aim of the Kingdom of God. "Jesus is the announcer and even the King of the Kingdom of God on Earth, but not the supreme Good itself, which is to be adored. The Son of Man sought only to lead man to the perfect worship of God." To make his meaning clearer he adds: "Also He went (Mk. 1:9) to the baptism of repentance in consciousness of sin (sündbewusst)." Perhaps, however, the spirit of this interpretation is better expressed by no one than by H. J. Holtzmann who writes: "We see Him who is addressed, in the consciousness of His own incompleteness, in remembrance of His severe moral battles and conflicts, in prevision of the approaching tidal-wave of a last and most violent trial, draw back, point above, and speak the humbly great word: 'Why callest thou me good? No one is good, except God alone' (Mk. 10:17–18; Lk. 18:18–19; cf. with this the deflection of Mt. 19:16–17 which even the dullest eye must recognize as tendential). There is only one who stands above the world, without variableness or the necessity of ethical development, the eternally unchangeable God. By this, Jesus affirmed the fixed and immovable interval which separates Godhead and manhood in the moral sphere, as in Mk. 13:32 = Mt. 24:36 He opens the same gulf between the two natures in the intellectual sphere. On both occasions Jesus takes His stand simply on the side of manhood." He goes on to say that the Lord's prayer, which he insists was not merely given to His disciples but was prayed by Jesus in company with His disciples, bears witness to the same effect, in its petitions for forgiveness and for protecton from the evil one. Among English writers J. M. Thompson affords an example of the same general point of view. "The stress in the last sentence is on 'good' not 'me,' " he writes, "but this hardly lessens the force of the passage. It is not enough to suggest that the young man's idea of goodness needed correction, and that Jesus would point him from a wrong to a right meaning of the word. Nor is it Jesus' intention to deny as man any equality with God. The address, 'Good Master' contains no such suggestion. Theology is out of place in this passage, which deals with plain words in a plain way. There is in fact no adequate alternative to the natural interpretation. Jesus did not think Himself 'good' in the sense in which the young man had used the word, and in the sense in which it would be commonly used of God.… If He did not at this time feel Himself to be good in the sense in which God is good, neither did He think Himself to be divine in the sense in which God is divine." "A broad distinction is drawn—a distinction which cannot reasonably be confined to the simple ground of 'goodness'—between Jesus and God." Perhaps, however, no more pungent emphasis has been thrown upon this view than that thrown upon it by C. G. Montefiore. "The reply of Jesus," he writes, "is of the utmost significance. It is obvious that no divine being would or could have answered thus. Jesus knew Himself to be a man.… Yet it is a noble character which peeps through the fragmentary and one-sided records—none the less noble because we may be sure that of Jesus, both in fact and in his own estimate of Himself, the adage was true: 'there is no man that sinneth not.' "
The nerve of this interpretation resides of course in the contention that a repudiation of the epithet "good" is necessarily involved in the question, "Why callest thou me good?" (Mk. 10:18; Lk. 18:19). This contention is unjustified: whether the question involves a repudiation of the epithet "good," or is a call to a closer consideration of the implications of the original request, is a matter for the context to determine; and the context very decidedly determines it in the latter sense. Nevertheless the contention is often given very vigorous expression; and by no one is it given more vigorous expression than by Wilhelm Wagner, who writes as follows: "Whoever cannot attribute to Jesus the use of language more to conceal than to reveal His thought, whoever rather holds the opinion that Jesus really meant His words in the sense in which they must be understood by every unprejudiced hearer,—cannot help allowing that Jesus in Mk. 10:18 distinctly distinguishes between God and Himself, and that He just as earnestly rejects the predicate ἀγαθός for Himself here, and reserves it for God, as in Mark 13:32 he denies knowledge of the day of the Parousia for His own person and ascribes it to the Father alone." Wagner does not admit, however, that in thus repudiating the predicate "good" of Himself, Jesus confesses Himself a sinner. Thus we are advised that it has been found possible to hold to the interpretation of Jesus' response to the young ruler which sees in it a repudiation of the predicate "good," and yet escapes from the ascription of conscious sin to Jesus. There are in fact more ways than one in which this has been attempted. A series of variant interpretations of our passage has thus arisen, differing from one another in the sense put upon the term "good" or in the explanation offered of Jesus' intention in repudiating that predicate, but agreeing that He does repudiate it in some sense, not involving the confession of sin on His part. Some account should be given of these mediating methods of exposition.
Wagner himself, in company with a considerable number of recent expositors, wishes to take the term "good" in the sense, not of moral excellence, but of graciousness, kindness. This, in itself attractive, suggestion is rendered nugatory, however, by the unfitness of the address, "Kind Master" as a preparation for Jesus' reply. Johannes Weiss seems to be right when he remarks of the ἀγαθέ: "The questioner clearly wishes to express by it not merely his reverence but also his conviction that Jesus, as a perfect man, is able to give new life and particular information as to the way to eternal life." Jesus' reply puts the sense of moral perfection on the address. The advantage sought by reading the predicate as "gracious" rather than "good," is that in that case its repudiation by Jesus does not imply a confession of sin on His part. "If the word should be so understood," remarks Dalman, "then there is no need to inquire in what sense Jesus disclaims sinlessness." "His sinlessness or moral perfection Jesus has, therefore, not denied in our passage," is Wagner's way of putting it. The inquiry of P. W. Schmiedel whether the repudiation of "kindness" is not also, however, the repudiation of moral goodness, is here very pertinent; and it is observable that Wagner at least does not seem prepared with a plausible answer to it. After declaring that, since what is under discussion is "kindness," Jesus does not deny His sinlessness or moral perfection, that there is no question raised as to that, he continues: "No doubt, however, He does disclaim the predicate 'kind-gracious' (Gütig-gnädig) for His own person and reserve it for God. Should this result nevertheless seem to anyone equally objectionable with Volkmar's exposition, mentioned above, the reply is to be made to him that we must adjust our conception of Jesus to that of the Holy Scriptures and not vice versa.…" No doubt. Therefore the question presses whether it is easy to believe that the Jesus presented to us, we do not say broadly in the Holy Scriptures, but in the Synoptic Gospels, would repudiate the predicate "kind" or "gracious," when applied to Him, especially with the energy which is supposed in this interpretation of His words. It does not appear that the predicate ἀγαθός is elsewhere in the Synoptics attributed to Jesus, nor is it, for the matter of that, elsewhere attributed to God—and it may be a nice question to which limb of this statement we might consider Mt. 20:15 a quasi-exception. But surely it is difficult to suppose that the Synoptists, who attribute "compassion" to Jesus more frequently than any other emotion, and one of whose number represents the sponsor of another as summing up Jesus' career as a "going about, doing good" (εὐεργετῶν, Acts 10:38), could have understood Him to be repelling here the attribution to Him of "kindness." And surely this repudiation of the predicate of "kindness" sounds strange upon the lips of the Jesus who is represented by them as declaring that He had compassion upon the multitude (Mt. 15:32; Mk. 8:2), and as inviting all those who labor and are heavy laden to come to Him that He might give them rest (Mt. 11:28).
Wagner endeavors to ease this difficulty by suggesting that like εὐεργέτης, which Jesus forbids His disciples to permit themselves to be called (Lk. 22:25), ἀγαθός, "gracious," might have come to be employed almost as a divine attribute; and he connects this suggestion with Jesus' disgust at the "honor-hunger" which characterized "the Scribes and Pharisees" of the time, and which provoked Him to forbid His disciples to be called Rabbi or Leader καθηγητής (Mt. 23:10). This line of thought had already been carried a step further by Karl Thieme, and before him by Karl Heinrich Weizsäcker.53 These writers threw the whole burden of Jesus' repudiation of the predicate "good" upon His revulsion from Rabbinical vanity, and hence held that "this interdiction of the designation 'Good Teacher' has nothing at all to do with the self-consciousness of Jesus, but is solely a repulsion of the Rabbinical title." From this point of view, Thieme, who also takes the ἀγαθός in the sense of "gracious," is able to contend that Jesus by no means repudiates that quality for Himself. "According to this interpretation," he writes, "Jesus defended Himself from involvement in the Rabbinical title-seeking. He repelled it from Himself without giving a single thought to whether He Himself had or had not a right to the title of 'gracious.' He did not address Himself here to a solemn deliverance as to His distinction from God, but, painfully affected by the extravagances of the rich man, He gave expression to His old aversion to the whole odious behavior of the Pharisees and Scribes, in a quick and sharply spoken word of reprehension. It is therefore rather an emotional declaration from which may be learned how unlike the Pharisees and Scribes He was."
Attractive as this exposition is it is burdened with the insuperable difficulty that Jesus does not, in point of fact, refuse for Himself any of the titles which He forbids His followers to accept. He forbade them to be called Rabbi or Leader; but He claims both titles for Himself (Mt. 23:8 f.). It is not merely in (John 13:13) that He vindicates His right to the titles of Master and Lord. Both are put upon His lips with reference to Himself by the Synoptists also (Mk. 14:14; Mt. 26:18; Lk. 22:11; Mk. 11:3; Mt. 21:3; Lk. 19:31), and He constantly and without apparent difficulty accepts them both when applied to Him by others. Thieme himself has to acknowledge that "when He was Himself called Rabbi, He found it right, for He was it, He alone and no other in His little flock." If He revolted against the lust for empty titles of the Scribes and Pharisees, that was because those titles were empty for them; they did not rightly belong to or describe them; were mere vanities with no other function than to gratify pride. He would not have His disciples like the Scribes and Pharisees in this. But it does not follow that He would repel these titles when applied to Himself, to whom they rightfully belonged: in point of fact He did not. There is an essential difference between craving vain titles, and accepting just ones. We may be quite sure that Jesus would not have repudiated the ascription of graciousness to Him unless He had felt that it did not rightly describe Him and that He therefore had no right to it.
A far more widely adopted interpretation of the passage, seeking the same end, accepts the term ἀγαθός in the sense of morally good, but distinguishes between the quality of goodness which is proper to man, and that absolute and indeclinable goodness which belongs to God alone. Jesus, it is said, when He repels the predicate "good" of Himself, and declares that God alone is good, means the term good in its highest, its absolute sense, and in no way implies that He is not good as a man wholly without flaw may be good. Sometimes what is meant by this is that only God is Good-of-Himself (αὐτοάγαθος), has the source of His goodness in Himself; men, though wholly good, can have only a derived goodness, and must owe all their goodness to the goodness of God. Origen, indeed, would carry this distinction far beyond the sphere of creaturely relations, into the Trinitarian relations themselves. According to him our Lord speaks here not as a man but as the Son Himself, and yet separates Himself in His goodness as Son from the Father, the Fons Deitatis, from whom is derived all that the Son is. No other goodness exists in the Son as such save that which is in the Father; and when the Savior says that "there is none good save one only, God the Father," He means to declare, not that He, the Son of God, is not good, but that all the goodness in Him is of the Father. God alone is primarily good; the Son and Spirit are good with the goodness of God: while creatures can be said to be good only catachrestically and have in them only an accidental, not an essential goodness. It is not of the subordinationism of Origen, however, that our modern writers are thinking when they say that our Lord, in denying that He was good and reserving this predicate to God alone, meant merely that His goodness was not original with Himself but derived from God the sole source of goodness. They are thinking of the man Jesus who, they suppose, is here referring His goodness to the Father, the source of all goodness. An example of this mode of expounding the passage is supplied by Karl Ullmann in the earlier editions of his famous book on "The Sinlessness of Jesus." According to him what Jesus means is, "If I am good, I am so only in and by means of God, so far as I am one with God," and he expounds his own meaning as follows: "Here, then, ἀγαθός is to be taken in the most pregnant sense: as the ultimate highest source of good, as the absolute good; Jesus is good, but only in His inward complete communion with God, as the expression of the divine; and in this sense He demands of the young man: "Thou must rise above the common human goodness,—sand in so far also above me, considered as a man detached from God, as merely a good teacher in the sense of the Rabbis and Pharisees—and hold to the supreme source of all good, and thence there will flow to thee the good, and eternal life." Another example seems to be supplied by A. Plummer's comment on Luke 18:19. The young man's defect, he tells us, "was that he trusted too much in himself, too little in God. Jesus reminds him that there is only one source of goodness, whether in action (Matthew), or in character (Mark, Luke), viz., God. He Himself is no exception. His goodness is the goodness of God working in Him. 'The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father doing.… For as the Father hath life in Himself, even so gave He to the Son also to have life in Himself.… I can of Myself do nothing; as I hear, I judge: and My judgment is righteous, because I seek not my own will but the will of Him that sent Me' (Jno. 5:19–30). Non se magistrum non esse, sed magistrum absque Deo nullum bonum esse testatur (Bede). There is no need to add to this the thought that the goodness of Jesus was the goodness of perfect development (see on 2:52), whereas the goodness of God is that of absolute perfection (Weiss on Mk. 11:18)." An extraordinary number of expositors have retained the fundamental notion of this interpretation as one, but not the chief, element in their explanations: a clause or two suggesting that the goodness of Jesus finds its source in God is inserted in the midst of other matter. The difficulty with it is that there is nothing in the passage either to suggest or to sustain it. An attempt has, indeed, been made by Karl Wimmer to find a point of attachment for it in what he calls the conditional sense of εἰ μή. Instead of "No one is good except God," he would render rather, "No one is good if not—that is to say, without,—God"; and then explain this as declaring that goodness cannot exist apart from God. But this is only a curiosity of exegesis.
It has been more common, therefore, to seek the contrast which Jesus is supposed to intimate between His goodness and that of God in the essentially developing character of human goodness as distinguished from the absolute goodness of God. A very clear expression is given to this view by the compressed comment of E. P. Gould: "The reason of this question and of the denial of goodness to any one but God which follows it, is that God alone possesses the absolute good. He is what others become. Human goodness is a growth, even where there is no imperfection. It develops, like wisdom, from childhood to youth, and then to manhood. And it was this human goodness which was possessed by Jesus. See Lk. 2:52; Heb. 2:10, 5:8." The longer comment of H. A. W. Meyer on Mark 10:18, which has in substance been retained by B. Weiss through all of his revisions, is perhaps, however, more typical. "Ingeniously and clearly Jesus makes use of the address, διδάσκαλε ἀγαθέ‚ in order to direct the questioner to the highest moral Ideal in whose commands the solution of the question is given (verse 19). He does this in such a manner that He takes the predicate ἀγαθός in the highest moral sense (against Bleek and Klostermann, according to whom He only denies that man as such, and without relation to God can be called good). 'Thou art wrong in calling me good: this predicate, in its complete conception, belongs to none save One, God.' Cf. Ch. F. Fritzsche, in "Fritzschior. Opusc.," pp. 78 ff. This declaration, however, is no evidence against the sinlessness of Jesus; rather, it is the true expression of the distance which human consciousness—even the sinless consciousness as being human—recognizes between itself and the absolute perfection of God (cf. Dorner, "Jesu sündlose Vollkommenheit," p. 14). For the human perfection is necessarily a growing (werdende) one, and even in the case of Jesus was conditioned by His advancing development, even though it can respond at every point to the moral ideal (Lk. 2:52; Heb. 5:8; Lk. 4:13, 22:28. Cf. Ullmann in the TSK, 1842, p. 700); the absolute being-good that excludes all having become and becoming so (das absolute, alles Gewordensein und Werden ausschliessende Gutsein) pertains only to God who is verae bonitatis canon et archetypus, (Beza)." "Even the man Jesus," adds Meyer (omitted by Weiss) "had to wrestle until He attained the victory and peace of the cross." Quite similarly E. K. A. Riehm writes: The emphatic 'No one is good except one, God,' or, as the words stand in Matthew, 'One is good,' does not fit in well with the explanation according to which Jesus does not wish to refuse the predicate 'good' for Himself, but wishes to say only that the young man should not, from his standpoint, that, namely, He was only a human teacher, address Him as 'Good Master.' We are of the opinion that Christ wishes the word 'good' to be taken in the absolute sense (cf. the ὁ ἀγαθός) and really refuses the predicate in this sense for His own person, and ascribes it to God only. When so understood, the expression does not at all show that Jesus had any other consciousness than that of essential unity with the God-will, but it does show that He was conscious that in His moral development He had not yet reached the highest stage of absolute perfection, which still was therefore proper to God alone."
Following Wagner's example we may add some further examples of this exposition, taken from dogmaticians. He selects for the purpose R. A. Lipsius and J. Kaftan. The former maintains for Jesus, indeed, a development free from the consciousness of guilt, but nevertheless conceives of Him so humanly as to open a great gulf between His hardly retained integrity and the absolute perfection of God. To wish to deny for Him the possibility of sin or natural temptability, he declares, would abolish the reality of His humanity, for to it the σάρξ of necessity belongs. Jesus was tempted, and that shows that He was not free from inner vacillations and momentary obscurations of His God-consciousness. All of this He no doubt victoriously overcame: but certainly we cannot wonder that He felt impelled to distinguish His goodness, if He so conceived it, from God's absolute goodness. In much the same spirit, Kaftan, will not hear of the attribution of impeccability to Jesus. This would yield, he thinks, only an unmoral notion of Him. Jesus' sinless perfection was a truly moral condition and receives its content from the uninterrupted moral trial to which He was subjected. In Mk. 10:18 "the predicate ἀγαθός applies in its absolute sense to God only, who is ἀπείραστος‚ not to man who, while living and walking in the world, remains always subject to temptation. It we would wish to find expressed in this declaration of Jesus, instead of this, the consciousness of a moral fault attaching to Him, that would come into contradiction with His testimony with respect to Himself elsewhere. He is the sinlessly perfect man, but He became such by His own act and confirmation, by virtue of actual ethical decision through temptation." If we may appeal to a prophet of our own, we may find the whole tendency and significance of this mode of interpreting the passage very clearly expounded by H. R. Mackintosh. The salutation of the young ruler, he tells us, Jesus waved back with the uncompromising rejoinder, 'None is good save one, even God.' " And then he continues: "The words cannot be a veiled confession of moral delinquency, which certainly would not have taken this ambiguous and all but casual form. What Jesus disclaims, rather, is God's perfect goodness. None but God is good with a goodness unchanging and eternal; He only cannot be tempted of evil but rests for ever in unconditioned and immutable perfection. Jesus, on the contrary, learnt obedience by the things which He suffered, being tempted in all points like as we are (Heb. 5:8, 4:15). In the sense of transcendent superiority to moral conflict and the strenuous obligation to prove His virtue ever afresh in face of new temptation and difficulty, He laid no claim to the absolute goodness of His Father. Which reminds us emphatically that the holiness of Jesus, as displayed in the record of His life, is no automatic effect of a metaphysical substance, but in its perfected form the fruit of continuous moral volition pervaded and sustained by the Spirit. It is at once the Father's gift and progressively realized in an ethical experience. This follows from the moral condition of incarnation."
That the goodness of Jesus' human nature was a developing goodness, and was not only not while He was on earth but never can be the infinite goodness of God is a matter of course. It is further not inconceivable that in referring to His moral quality He might on occasion quite readily speak of the moral quality of His human nature only, as, in a famous instance, in referring to His knowledge, He has spoken only of His human mind (Mk. 13:32). It is certain, still further, that in speaking of God's goodness in our present passage He has the absoluteness of His goodness in view. So far we encounter no grounds of objection to the general line of interpretation which we have just been illustrating. There is no reason in the nature of the case why Jesus might not have contrasted His human goodness with the infinite goodness of God, which is here adverted to. But neither is there any reason obvious why we should suppose Him to wish, at this moment and in the midst of the irrelevant conversation recounted, to interpose a bit of instruction upon the developing character of His human goodness. The remark of Fritzsche seems also pertinent: "the words, τί με λέγεις ἀγαθόν‚ do not mean in what sense do you call me good? but why do you call me good?" If this question has, as Fritzsche also insists, the force of an "objurgation," and means "You wrongly call me good," it is hard to see how Jesus could have expected His interlocutor to understand Him as meaning no more than that His goodness (as respects His human nature) was not the absolute goodness of Deity. To say, 'You are wrong in calling me good, because though, even in my human nature, I am really good, good through and through, good without flaw, I am nevertheless (in my human nature) not good as the infinite God is good,' would not only be a subtlety which this interlocutor could not be expected to follow, but as addressed to him inconsequent. If Jesus means to contrast Himself as not good with God as good, He can scarcely mean less in this context than that He is, in the common sense of the word, not good; that is, that He is not free from sin. The interpretation which would pare this down to a contrast between immaculate goodness and absolute goodness is a refinement unconformable with the simplicity of the language employed and the directness with which the conversation develops. It is idle to appeal to such passages as Job 4:18, 15:15, 25:5; for the point is, not that the distinction in question is not real, nor that it cannot be expressed in natural language, but that it is not suggested by the language of the present passage and breaks in upon the course of its development. From the dogmatic point of view this interpretation is of course more acceptable than that which sees in the passage a plain confession of sin. It has moreover the great advantage of not giving us a Jesus wholly out of harmony with the Jesus of the rest of the Synoptic tradition, and even perhaps with the Jesus of the remainder of this very narrative—where He speaks of "following" Him as the foundation of the new life. But from the narrower exegetical point of view it is at a disadvantage in comparison with the other; and yet lies open to all the exegetical objections which are fatal to that view.
Still another modification of the interpretation which supposes Jesus in our passage to repudiate the predicate good, has had large vogue. Jesus, it is said, repudiates this predicate not from His own but from His questioner's point of view. This interpretation, which is very common among the Fathers, is well illustrated by a passage in one of Athanasius' anti-Arian tracts. "And when He says," we read, " 'Why callest thou me good? No one is good except one, God,' God, reckoning Himself among men, spoke this according to His flesh, and with respect to the opinion of him who came to Him. For that one thought Him man only and not God, and the response keeps this opinion in view. For, if you think me a man, He says, and not God, call me not good, for no one is good. For the good does not belong to human nature but to God." It is obvious, that to say that Jesus repudiates the predicate only from the point of view of His interlocutor is to say that He does not really repudiate it at all. It is not strange, therefore, as Montefiore seems to find it, that "the capable Roman Catholic commentator," Schanz, "who honestly insists on the correct translation of this verse," understanding its repudiation to be meant ad hominem, adds that "the words do not exclude 'that Jesus as respects His higher nature, may belong to this divine Being.' " And Olshausen is quite logical when he writes:75 "The questioner saw in Christ a mere διδάσκαλος.… To such a conception, however, the ἀγαθός was not suitable. He [Jesus] repudiates, therefore the name and directs him to Him who is Goodness itself. By this, however, the Lord does not deny that He is Himself just the ἀγαθός, because the true God is reflected in Him as His image; only this teaching could not be dogmatically presented to the young man, but should vitally form itself in his own heart." And Keil: "Jesus, taking this predicate in its full sense, uses this address to direct the young man to God as the Supreme Being, when He replies: 'Why callest thou me good?' that is, 'Call me not good,' 'no one is good except one, God.' Jesus by no means repudiates goodness or sinlessness by this, but only says that the predicate would not be suitable for Him if He were nothing more than a διδάσκαλος, for which the young man took Him. This question gives no occasion, however, to instruct the young man thoroughly as to His Divine-human nature." This interpretation, therefore, readily passes into the essentially different one—with which we are on the entirely different ground that Jesus does not in any sense repudiate the goodness attributed to Him—which understands Jesus in His response to be really announcing His deity. The transition from the one to the other of these interpretations is perhaps indicated by such a comment as that of M. Lepin, who writes as follows: " 'Why callest thou me good?' says He to the young man who accosts Him; 'No man is good except God only.' The young man, no doubt, saw in the Master only an ordinary Rabbi. Seemingly Jesus refuses, as due to God alone, a title which is given Him only as man. Perhaps, however, He does not refuse it absolutely, and wishes discreetly to insinuate to His interlocutor, or to His disciples, who surrounded Him, that He to whom this title is given and who, as they well know, thoroughly deserves it, is not merely man but is God also. There is indeed nothing to show that our Savior wishes formally to decline such an attribution; that would indeed be strange and out of keeping with His usual attitude; had He not said, 'Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart?' The turn of expression employed, 'Why callest thou me good?' seems rather intended to cause the young man to reflect upon the unconscious bearing of his appellation. It is thus that on another occasion the Divine Master asked the Jews, 'Why do the Scribes say that the Christ is the Son of David?' Considering the subsequent reflection made by the Savior, the method employed when He remitted the sins of the paralytic is recalled: 'God only can forgive sins, as you say; well, I claim to forgive sins; and thus I prove my authority to do so!' Similarly here: 'Thou callest me good. The title is deserved: thou thyself hast judged me in comparison with ordinary masters; I therefore do not decline it; but consider well! there is none that is good but God alone!' "
A comment like this brings us to the point of turning away altogether from the "objurgatory" interpretation of our Lord's demand, "Why callest thou me good?" It remains therefore only to read the question simply as a question, that is to say as an incitement to inquiry on the part of the questioner. In that case only two lines of interpretation lie open. Either the question, along with the succeeding clause, "no one is good but one, God," is intended to suggest to the interlocutor that Jesus is Himself divine, or else it is intended to turn attention for the moment away from Jesus altogether and focus it on God. The former line of interpretation has been taken by many and was for long indeed the ruling view. As so understood, so far from suggesting that our Lord is neither divine nor good, it is an assertion that He is both good and divine. Ambrose will supply us with a good example of this interpretation. Inveighing against the Arians who make out that our Lord here denies that He is good, he asks that we consider when, where and with what circumspection our Lord speaks here. "The Son of God," he continues, "speaks in the form of man, and He speaks to a Scribe,—to him, that is, who called the Son of God 'Good Master,' but denied Him to be God. What he does not believe Christ adds, that he may believe in the Son of God, not as a Good Master but as the Good God. For, if wheresoever the 'One God' is named, the Son of God is never separated from the fullness of the Unity, how, when the one God is declared good is the Only-begotten excluded from the fullness of the divine goodness? They must therefore either deny that the Son of God is God, or confess that He is the good God. With heavenly circumspection, then, He said, not 'No one is good but the Father only,' but 'No one is good but God only.' For 'Father' is the proper name of Him who begets, but the 'one God' by no means excludes the Godhead of the Trinity, and therefore extols the Natures: goodness is therefore in the nature of God, and in the nature of God is also the Son of God, and therefore what is predicated is not predicated of the Singularity but of the Unity. Goodness is, then, not denied by the Lord, but such a disciple is rebuked. For when the Scribe said, 'Good Master,' the Lord responded, 'Why callest thou me good?' And that means, 'It is not enough to call me good whom thou dost not believe to be God. I do not seek such disciples, who rather believe in a good master according to manhood than according to Godhead the good God."
It is not easy to turn up a modern comment moving on precisely these lines. Perhaps something like it is intended by Friedrich Köster, when he writes: "Should it, now, seem as if Jesus in the words, 'Why callest thou me good,' repels the predicate of goodness from Himself, it is already remarked by Wolf (in Curis ad h. l.), Haec quaestio non negantis est, sed examinantis. 'Dost thou consider well, when thou callest me good, that this predicate belongs to God alone?' It belongs to Jesus, therefore, only by virtue of His perfect union with the Father." And Rudolf Stier plays upon the same note amid others which go to make up his chord, when he writes: "Christ takes care not to say, I am not good, for One only is good, my Father.… He deals more exactly with the word than the rationalists, who 'exhaust themselves in phrases, call Him the best, noblest, most excellent, most perfect, etc.,' and yet deny His divine dignity. He said then to the young ruler what He must say still more strongly to these modern panegyrists, not in kindness but in anger: 'Why callest thou me good?' He, however, at the same time attests His divinity (although He does not speak plainly of what is concealed) when He who knew no sin affirms: 'None is good save One, that is God.' " In support, he quotes in a note the following dilemma: "Choose then, ye friends of reason, between these two conclusions dictated by reason itself. None is good but the one God; Christ is good; therefore Christ is the one God. Or: none is good but the one God: Christ is not the one God; therefore Christ is not good." The sober and pregnant comment of Bengel may also find a place here. "Nevertheless," he writes, "He does not say, I am not good; but, Why dost thou call me good? Just as in Mt. 22:43 He does not deny that He, the son of David, is, at one and the same time, also the Lord of David. God is good: there is no goodness without Godhead. This young man perceived in Jesus the presence of goodness in some degree: otherwise he would not have applied to Him: but he did not perceive it in the full extent; otherwise he would not have gone back from Him. Much less did he recognize His Godhead. Wherefore Jesus does not accept from him the title of goodness without the title of Godhead (cf. the 'Why call ye me Lord, Lord,' Lk. 6:46); and thereby He vindicates the honor of the Father with whom He is one. See Jno. 5:19. At the same time He causes a ray of His omniscience to enter into the heart of the young man, and shows that the young man has not as yet the knowledge concerning Himself, Jesus Christ, worthy of so exalted a title, which otherwise is altogether appropriate to Him. Wherefore, He does not say, There is none good save one, that is my Father, but, There is none good save one, that is, God.' Our Lord often adjusted His words to the capacity of those who questioned Him (Jno. 4:22)."
Most recent writers, however, who have come to see that our Lord's question is non negantis sed examinantis, have also come to see that His purpose here is not inconsequently to proclaim His own deity, but in accordance with the demands of the occasion to point the young man inquiring after a law of life to Him who had once for all proclaimed a perfect law of life. They have, of course, varying ways of expressing the general understanding of the passage common to them all; and they inevitably bring out its implications and connections with more or less completeness, and with more or less penetration. The emphasis seems to be particularly well distributed in a passage in A. Schlatter's "Theology of the New Testament," and we therefore venture to quote it here. "To him who sought from Him, the Good Master, direction as to the work by which he could secure for himself eternal life, He replied that no one is good except God, but God is really good; and instead of meeting his wish and Himself giving him a commandment, He binds him to the divine commandments in their simple clearness. The desire to obtain, instead of them, a new prescription which should now for the first time assure eternal life, Jesus calls impious, a denial of God, which is made no better by being attributed to Him too. To permit Himself to be praised as good, while at the same time, or even thereby, God's goodness is denied, could not be endured by Jesus. Against this kind of religion He ever spoke as the Son who defended the goodness of the Father against every doubt, and hallowed His commandments as perfect. A glorifying of His own dignity at the cost of God's, a trust in His judgment along with distrust in God's commandments, an exalting of His own goodness along with reproaches against God—meant to Him absolute impossibility." No doubt, there are elements in this statement which are open to criticism. But the main matter comes in it to clear announcement. Jesus' concern here is not to glorify Himself but God: it is not to give any instruction concerning His own person whatever, but to indicate the published will of God as the sole and the perfect prescription for the pleasing of God. In proportion as we wander away from this central thought, we wander away from the real meaning of the passage and misunderstand and misinterpret it.
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From Christology and Criticism by B. B. Warfield