The Christian Faith Under Modern Searchlights Part 2

16, 17.

It has been argued that the saying of Jesus, Johannine in style and substance, is so isolated in the Synoptic narrative that, in spite of its secure position in the sources, doubts of its genuineness must arise. Bousset employs this argument, remarking that the thoughts of our logion "in the remaining Synoptic tradition are scarcely found at all."[27] It is noticeable, however, that the isolation is established only by cutting away a large portion of the Synoptic material. The parable of the Vineyard, in which Jesus speaks of Himself as a beloved son, the heir (Mark xii. 6, 7), is objected to because "never thus did Jesus elsewhere in His parables force His person into the foreground."[28] The Markan saying in which Jesus distinguishes Himself, as Son, from men and angels (xiii. 32) is set aside;[29] the filial consciousness implied in the repeated use by Jesus of the expressions, "My Father," "your Father," "the Father," but never "our Father," is attributed to later theological reflection,[30] and the narratives of the divine voice at the Baptism and the Transfiguration are discredited.

Similarly the incidental claims which Jesus makes for Himself in forgiving sin, in speaking of Himself as the "Bridegroom," the Physician who came to cure the moral ills of men, and as Lord of the Sabbath, are all referred to secondary strata of tradition or to dogmatic overworking of the facts.[31]

27: "Kyrios Christos," p. 61.

28: _Ibid._, p. 51.

29: _Ibid._, p. 52.

30: _Ibid._, p. 64.

31: _Ibid._, pp. 48, 49.

So drastic is the process by which Bousset attempts to reduce the consciousness of Jesus to a purely human level that he even rejects the major part of the narrative of the Trial and Crucifixion. Whatever differences there may be in detail, there is no room for doubt that the charge upon which Jesus was put to death is correctly given by John. "We have a law, and by that law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of G.o.d" (John xix. 7). We may believe that the result would have been different if for one moment He had disclaimed divine prerogatives, and said, "I am of thy brethren the prophets: wors.h.i.+p G.o.d."

If it be denied that Jesus made these claims before and at His trial, the cause of His death is unknown. This is admitted by Bousset, who rejects the whole account of the trial, including the question of Pilate, "Art thou the King of the Jews?" (Mark xv. 2), and the t.i.tle on the cross, retaining only the accusation that He said "I will destroy this temple" (Mark xiv. 58; xv. 29). Apart from this concrete accusation, not in itself sufficient, because not blasphemy "in the strict juristic sense of the word," it is admitted that "we cannot say any more with exactness why Jesus was condemned by Pilate."[32] In the answer of Jesus to the high priest, telling of the Son of Man "sitting at the right hand of power, and coming with the clouds of heaven," it is said that "we hear directly the Christian confession, 'seated on the right hand of G.o.d, from whence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.'"[33] It is to be noted that these pa.s.sages, implying in Bousset's opinion the subst.i.tution of the "day" of Jesus for the Old Testament "day of Jahweh,"[34] and implying the metaphysics of the creeds, are to be found in Mark, not in John, and in the narrative of the trial of Jesus, not in that of His resurrection.

32: "Kyrios Christos," pp. 54 note, 56.

33: _Ibid._, p. 55.

34: _Ibid._, p. 12.

The "isolation" of the great pa.s.sage in Matthew and Luke, as to its essential content, is thus made out only by a thoroughgoing process of elimination running through the whole story of the Gospels. Every page of the Gospels testifies, in fact, to Jesus' consciousness of a unique relation to G.o.d and to men; and an examination of His teaching in whatever part or whatever context confirms the judgment of von Dobschutz that "Jesus implicitly stands everywhere in the centre of His gospel.

The 'I am He,' which is recognized as the leading motive of the Fourth Gospel, runs through all His words also in the Synoptics."[35] The self-revelation of Jesus and the great invitation of Matthew xi. 25-30 may be the climax of Synoptic teaching as to the relation of Jesus alike to the Father and to mankind (unless the words of the risen Christ, Matt. xxviii. 18-20, are so regarded), but the pa.s.sage is no alien or intrusive element in its context. If it is the high point of Synoptic teaching, it is the capstone of a pyramid firmly and broadly supported by the whole Synoptic narrative.

35: "Gibt es ein doppeltes Evangelium in N. T.?" _Theol. Studien u.

Kritiken_, 85 (1912), p. 350.

Carlyle has said that the greatness of a character is measured by the contrasts it exhibits. The words of Jesus we have been studying, taken in their entirety and in their context, show the contrasts between knowledge and humility, between power and humility, and, when the woes on the cities are contrasted with the invitation, "Come unto me,"

between sternness and tenderness. When Socrates was told by the oracle that he was the wisest of men, he was in perplexity for a time, but finally decided that he was wise because he recognized his own ignorance. In His knowledge of the Father and in the mystery of His own person, Jesus places Himself on an equality with G.o.d. Yet this knowledge did not "puff up." There was no need with Jesus as with Peter for the moment of spiritual insight to be followed by a rebuke for presumption; nor did He need like Paul, because of the greatness of the revelation, to have the thorn in the flesh lest He be exalted above measure. These contrasts, not found in any other historical character, are a self-authenticating feature of the words of Jesus. All of His actions, in fact, and all of His att.i.tudes towards men, whether they were friends or foes, and all His words, whether of compa.s.sion, forgiveness, warning or indignation, were those of a "Prince and a Saviour," a Prince in majesty and power and a Saviour in pity. Both deeds and words showed that union of qualities which it would be impossible to invent, "the self-a.s.sertion of the great example of humility."

IV. THE DILEMMA OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM

An indirect evidence of transcendent elements in the consciousness of Jesus, and of the essential harmony between His teaching and that of Paul, is furnished by the increasingly skeptical tendency of liberal criticism and the complete skepticism in which that criticism has culminated. We must discount, say the extreme Liberal critics in effect, the Ascension and Resurrection narratives, because they were written under the belief that Jesus was the exalted Son of G.o.d. We must discount the Pa.s.sion narrative because dominated by the belief that Jesus was and claimed to be the Messiah; we must discount the miracles, and must take from the Gospel page everything that indicates that Jesus claimed divine prerogatives, or Messianic honours, or used t.i.tles such as "the Christ,"

"the Son of G.o.d," "Lord," or even "the Son of Man," because these betray the dogmatic views of the Church. But why not go further with the "mythical" school and discount the whole narrative because written under the prepossession that Jesus was an historical character? If the faith of the Church--"the enemy of history"--has been able to create those features in the portrait of Christ which have been regarded as significant for religion during the ages of Christendom, why cannot its creative activity have extended to the historical foundation? Why could it not have created its portrait of Jesus out of nothing, or at least out of the social strivings and religious needs and practices of a syncretic age?

The mythical hypothesis, it is clear, is not a mere eccentricity of criticism. It is more than an effort of youthful audacity in scholars.h.i.+p striving to gain public attention. It is the natural, if not the inevitable, outcome of the direction in which criticism, discarding more and more of the Gospel narrative, and deserting more and more, it may be said, the sure ground of historical evidence, has been moving. The method of a progressive reduction of the sources and elimination of unacceptable material has been only pushed by the Radicals to an extreme. The Radicals, avowedly basing themselves on the Liberals, contend that the latter have stopped at an untenable half-way position.

Thus Drews says that since the days of Strauss doubts of the historical existence of Jesus have never been lulled to rest;[36] and Reinach, avoiding Drews' extreme, yet declares that "it is contrary to every sound method to compose, as Renan did, a life of Jesus, eliminating the marvellous elements of the Gospel story. It is no more possible to make real history with myths than to make bread with the pollen of flowers."[37] It was thought that an irreducible minimum had been reached in Schmiedel's famous nine "foundation-pillars" for a scientific life of Christ,[38] but even these are shattered by the modern critical artillery.[39]

36: "The Christ-Myth," p. 7.

37: "Orpheus" (E. T.), p. 231.

38: Encycl. Bibl., art., "Gospels," sec. 139.

39: Bousset, _op. cit._, will not admit that we have the actual words of Jesus in Mark xiii. 32 (p. 52), in Matt. xi. 5 (p. 71, note 3), in Matt. xii. 32 (p. 9), in Mark xv. 34 (p. 87), or in viii.

14-20 (p. 82).

When Schmiedel finds the bed-rock of historical truth in a few expressions or incidents which run counter to the general intention of the Gospel writers, it is open to W. B. Smith to base an elaborate argument upon a single phrase or even word "the things concerning Jesus," or "the Jesus," Acts xviii. 25; xxviii. 21, etc., in favour of a pre-Christian Jesus-cult.[40] And when Bousset with the Gospels before him confesses that we cannot know certainly why Jesus was put to death, it is open for Frazer and Reinach to transform the Crucifixion into a sort of Haman-and-Mordecai play;[41] or even for J. M. Robertson, criticizing Frazer, to say that the capital error of the latter is in the postulate that Jesus existed at all.[42] It must be confessed that there is a facile descent from the "reduced Christianity" of the extreme Liberals to the _reductio ad absurdum_ of the Radicals, and that the difference between them is often one of degree rather than of principle.

The astringents used to remove the brilliant colours of miracle and transcendence have proved so strong as to destroy the portrait they were intended to restore. By proposing the dilemma, A miraculous Christ or a mythical Christ, the Radicals have shown the difficulty of drawing the picture of an historical Jesus from which the transcendent elements have been removed. It should be noticed further that the "historical" Jesus who is left has a diminis.h.i.+ng importance for religion, and even for ethics. When Jesus is reduced to the level of mere humanity, that humanity is apt to be of an inferior order. He accepts the t.i.tle and role of Messiah unwillingly, as a burden and under compulsion from His followers, or under the strong delusion that, defeated in His earthly mission, He would immediately come in glory. In either case there is an element of weakness, whether intellectual or moral, in His character; He cannot be the supreme example and moral leader of humanity. Or else, relieved of the Messianic burden in the imagination of the critic, He becomes a "warrior for the truth,"[43] a sort of Galilean Socrates, the wisest and best of men, but with no clear outlines in His personality and no distinctive traits in His message.

40: "Der Vorchristliche Jesus," 1906, Chapter I.

41: "Golden Bough," 2d ed. (1900), III, pp. 187 ff.; "Orpheus" (E.

T.), pp. 229 ff. It is interesting to note that Frazer's section on the death of Christ has in the third edition, 1910-1914, been placed in an appendix, with the remark: "The hypothesis which it sets forth has not been confirmed by subsequent research and is admittedly in a high degree speculative and uncertain." (Part VI, "The Scapegoat,"

p. 412, note 1.)

42: "Pagan Christs," 1903, pp. 138, 139.

43: Bousset, _op. cit._, p. 90.

Whether the Founder of the Christian religion be pictured as "merely a pious preacher of morality in the sense of present day liberalism,"[44]

or a "psychopathic anomaly," obsessed with the idea that He was the Messiah, the picture is not convincing to the historian any more than it is consoling to the Christian. In neither picture can the Christ of the Gospels or the Christ of Christian experience be recognized. Matters are not mended when extremes meet, and Jesus is pictured as at once the sunny and serene Galilean pietist, and the rapt ecstatic obsessed by the thought of His own immediate and glorious return--a deluded enthusiast who saw life steadily and saw it whole. If the representation is not that of a moral or mental weakling, below the level of the normal in clearness of outlook upon life or in sincerity and decision of character, we are left with a largely imaginary figure, from which most of the concrete features have been removed. We do not know what manner of man He was, nor, it must be acknowledged, does it matter very much for religion whether He was at all; for with the increasing vagueness in the historical portrait of Jesus, there comes inevitably a weakening of His influence as a teacher whether of religion or morals.

44: Drews, _op. cit._, p. 15.

His gospel, in the first place, was never intended to become universal, since the Gentile mission is attributed to the influence of later ecclesiastical ideas. But is not the content of Jesus' religious teaching, the Fatherhood of G.o.d and the value of the soul, unaffected by any views which are held as to His Person? Tendencies are observable in modern thought which are not rea.s.suring upon this point; and, in fact, the history of thought shows that theism, apart from the support of Christian doctrine, is apt to pa.s.s into a pantheistic mysticism or a semi-deistic naturalism. The Fatherhood of G.o.d may be regarded as too anthropomorphic a conception, and a semi-pantheistic "all-Father" may be subst.i.tuted for the G.o.d and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Strauss, while he is the cla.s.sical example, is not alone in this pa.s.sage from Liberal Christianity to a more complete skepticism which gives up theistic belief. It is not surprising that in certain circles the expression "Christian pantheism" is now heard, and that a sympathetic att.i.tude towards pantheism should be shown by the Liberal critic. Thus J. Weiss says: "Pantheism may, indeed, have its limitations and defects, yet, without doubt, it lies very near to our time, inspired as it is by both scientific and artistic ideas. Why should we not recognize this form of religious life alongside of other forms, in case it finds vital expression in emotion and action?"[45]

45: "Significance of Paul for Modern Christianity," _American Journal of Theology_, July, 1913, p. 358.

On the other hand, the theistic content of Jesus' teaching is immeasurably strengthened when enforced by His divine authority, and read in the light of His Incarnation, Pa.s.sion and Resurrection. As Drews remarks: "The chief obstacle to a monistic religion and att.i.tude is the belief irreconcilable with reason or history, in the historical reality of a 'unique,' ideal, and unsurpa.s.sable redeemer."[46] Certainly the a.s.surance that G.o.d is a loving Father and that we are His children, said to be the essence of Christianity, is wonderfully safeguarded and b.u.t.tressed by the doctrines, or facts, of an Incarnate, Crucified, and Risen Christ.

46: "The Christ-Myth," p. 300.

Whatever happens to the Christian doctrines and the Christian history, many will declare that the ethical teaching of Jesus will remain, and will continue to exercise its empire over the lives of men. But such an inference finds little support in present conditions. An aggressive militarism maintains that each nation should be free to develop its own religious ideas, and chides Strauss with half-way measures in holding to Christian ethics while discarding Christian doctrines and miracles. A militant feminism which objects to the marriage service, and a militant socialism which sees in the family the main support of the right of private property, will not, if they have their way, leave the marriage relation unaffected. Jesus taught, we are reminded, in a pre-scientific and a pre-Darwinian age. His teaching, in fact, whatever its acknowledged excellence and importance, was but a phase, and that not the final phase, of moral evolution. His teaching, as many hold, was only an _Interimsethik_, not intended to be the norm for all men and all time. There is no a.s.surance that even the character of Christ will remain undimmed in splendour, and undiminished in power of appeal, for there is no evidence for sinlessness, except evidence which is rejected on the ground of exaggeration or idealization in the case of miracles, and other claims implying the supernatural. Christian ethics doubtless makes an appeal of its own, but apart from the support of Christology its supremacy is by no means a.s.sured. If we go back to the moral teaching or to the example of Jesus alone, there will be no teaching with authority, no divine Teacher who is the Truth, and no regenerative power of the Spirit behind the teaching. The power of Christ's example lies in the union of humility and authority. "Take Christ's difference from us out of Christianity and His ident.i.ty with us loses all its glorious power." If their Lord and Master washes the disciples' feet, the example comes with the force of a divine command: "Ye ought also to wash one another's feet." It is not merely a beautiful act to be admired (or perhaps by some to be despised); it is a divine imperative to be obeyed.

The strongest argument for a doctrinal Christianity is not the indirect one to be found in the lessening significance of a merely human-historical Jesus, and the tendency of His figure to become dim upon the field of history, and of His voice to die away as an echo over the Judean hills. It is rather to be found in the positive evidence of the Christian doc.u.ments, in the testimony of Christian experience, and in the broader effects of a doctrinal Christianity in the course of the centuries.

The statements of Harnack in his later essays show the inadequacy of a gospel which does not include in its content the Person of the Redeemer.

"Only G.o.d is the Redeemer--and yet Christendom calls Jesus of Nazareth its Redeemer. How is this contradiction to be solved?"[47] It is a fact that He is the inner possession of His own. "But that which lies behind this fact, which is expressed in the confession 'Christ liveth in me,'

the persuasion of the eternal life of Christ, of His power and glory, that is a secret of the faith which mocks all explanation."[48] When there is such a contradiction between experience and theory, it will be natural to question the adequacy of a theory which finds no interpretation for the deepest experiences of religion. Harnack, indeed, goes far towards admitting the harmony between the gospel of Jesus and that of Paul when he says: "The 'first' gospel contains the truth, the 'second' [Paul's gospel of redemption] the way, and both together the life."[49]

47: "Aus Wissenschaft und Leben," II, p. 87.

48: _Ibid._, p. 91.

49: _Ibid._, p. 224.

There is in essence but one gospel, differently presented by Jesus and Paul, whose focal point in the teaching of both is Christ and Him crucified. The differences, as shown by von Dobschutz in a notable essay, explain themselves naturally from the situation. In John and Paul there is only expansion and repet.i.tion of what was contained implicitly in the words of Jesus in the Synoptists. The later time was not creative, but only selected and developed; its message was an echo, not a new utterance. In the teaching of Paul as compared with that of Jesus there are three points of difference: (1) the person of Jesus is much more strongly emphasized; (2) His death and resurrection appear as basal redemptive acts; and (3) everything is brought into connection with redemption from sin. All three of these differences are explained by the historical situation. Jesus Himself had brought them to G.o.d, and His resurrection had brought them out of their despair and strengthened their faith and given them courage for preaching. As to the differences, two considerations should be borne in mind: "That the gospel should be differently set forth before the death of Jesus than it was after that event is not to be wondered at; and, secondly, it is also natural that the standpoint and exposition of the recipients of grace should be different from the att.i.tude of One who was free from sin, and knew that He was sent to bring man to G.o.d."[50]

50: "Gibt es ein doppeltes Evangelium in N. T.?" _Theol. Studien u.

Kritiken_, 85 (1912), pp. 362, 363.

In the future as in the past, we may believe, doctrinal Christianity, that is a Christianity broad enough to include the teaching and example, and the person and pa.s.sion and resurrection of Christ, will be for men and nations the power of G.o.d unto salvation. If the essence of a thing is shown in its activity, the essence of Christianity cannot be separated from its doctrinal content. Certainly it was Christianity in a doctrinal form that inspired the greatest achievements of the Christian Church in the course of her history. It was doctrinal Christianity that loosed the bonds of Jewish legalism, inspired the missionary enterprise of the primitive and the modern church, raised the standard of the Reformation, laid the foundations of modern democracy, and guided the sanest and bravest attempts at social reform.

Our argument has been that the primitive gospel which began to be preached by the Lord was a doctrinal gospel, a gospel of the Kingdom, the Cross and the Son of G.o.d, that no other message can be found with any distinctness within or beneath the Gospel records, and that this has been at the basis of Christian experience and of the life of the Christian Church. The gospel of the grace of G.o.d is the gospel of the glory of Christ.