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Critical acumen, says Lemme, may seek to empty the saying of its content, but "there remains the exclusiveness of the mediatorial work of Jesus for the totality of mankind, there remains the absolute uniqueness of His redemption, there remains His lonely elevation above the entire realm of the human, there remains His unique fellowship of life with the Father, which enabled Him, and Him alone, to know God adequately, or, what is the same thing, to reveal the truth. We must take our choice: such an utterance is either the delirium of a reckless self-exaltation, or the appropriate testimony of a divine Being demanding unreserved faith."[16]

The logion has been made the subject of an exhaustive monograph by Schumacher, who concludes that the reciprocal knowledge of the Father and the Son implies the consciousness of divine Sonship in a full metaphysical sense.[17]

In his lectures on the "Essence of Christianity," Harnack takes the text as it stands, but, ignoring the implications of reciprocal knowledge, says: "The consciousness he possessed of being the Son of God is, therefore, nothing but the practical consequence of knowing God as the Father and as His Father. Rightly understood, the name of Son means nothing but the knowledge of God."[18] In his critique of Harnack, Loisy objects to this interpretation as being "artificial and superficial,"[19] and says: "Obviously the text indicates a transcendental relationship, whence springs the lofty dignity of Christ, and not a psychological reality, which in regard to God is clearly impossible. Father and Son are not here simply religious terms, but have already become metaphysical theological expressions, and dogmatic speculation has been able to take possession of them, without much modification of their sense."[20] Loisy takes the meaning as fundamentally the same as John i. 18, and cannot accept it in the form we have it as a genuine word of Jesus.[21]