Part 2 (2/2)

+The divine Man.+--The idea of a divine Man, the emanation of the infinite, the soul of the universe, the source and goal of all humanity, is ages older than Christian theology. It can be traced in Babylonian religious literature, for instance, at a period older even than the Old Testament. It played a not unimportant part in Greek thought, and Philo of Alexandria, a contemporary of Jesus, works it out in some detail in his religio-philosophic system, which aimed to combine the wide outlook of Greek culture with the high seriousness of Hebrew religion. It is a true, indeed an inevitable, conception, if we hold anything like a consistent view of the immanence of G.o.d in His universe. With what G.o.d have we to do except the G.o.d who is eternally man? This aspect of the nature of G.o.d has been variously described in the course of its history. It has been called the Word, the Son, and, as we have seen, the second person in the Trinity. For various reasons I prefer to call it--or rather Him--the eternal Christ. I do this because, for one thing, the word ”Christ” is a living word with a clearly marked ethical content and a great religious value.

Originally, of course, it was but the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Messiah, and meant the ”anointed one,” the person chosen for a special divine work. But in the New Testament, especially the writings of St.

Paul, as well as all Christian history through, it is a.s.sociated on the one hand with the personality of Jesus, and, on the other, with the fontal or ideal Man who contains and is expressed in all human kind.

According to the New Testament writers, Jesus was and is the Christ, but in His earthly life His consciousness of the fact was limited.

But, as we have come forth from this fontal manhood, we too must be to some extent expressions of this eternal Christ; and it is in virtue of that fact that we stand related to Jesus, and that the personality of Jesus has anything to do with us. Here is where the value of our belief in the interaction of the higher and the lower self comes in.

Fundamentally our being is already one with that of the eternal Christ, and faith in Jesus is faith in Him. Jesus is not one being and the Christ another; the two are one, and Jesus seems to have known it during His earthly ministry. He lived His life in such a way as to reveal the very essence of the Christ nature. He is therefore central for us, and we are complete in Him. Here is the goal of all moral effort--Christ. Here, too, is the highest reach of the religious ideal--Christ. ”For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us.”

+The Christ of St. Paul.+--I am persuaded that we have here the key to the Christology of that great thinker and preacher, the apostle Paul.

It is this ideal or eternal Christ who is the object of his faith and devotion. He even goes so far as to warn his readers not to dwell too much upon the limited earthly Jesus, but upon His true being in the eternal reality: ”Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh; yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more.” He does not say, ”To me to live is Jesus,” but, ”To me to live is _Christ_.” If ever there was a Christian who really loved Jesus with pa.s.sionate and whole-hearted devotion, it was the apostle Paul, but he says almost nothing about the earthly ministry of his Lord. He seems to have had a vivid impression as to what the character of Jesus was really like, and he gave himself up to the wors.h.i.+p of this with all his heart; but he does not draw for us any of the beautiful gospel pictures of the Jesus in the peasant's dress who taught on the hillsides of Galilee, went about doing good, was a welcome guest in the home at Bethany, lived a true human life, and died a shameful death. Paul always thought of Him, and truly, as the Lord who came down from heaven, but he does _not_ draw a sharp line of distinction between Him and the rest of humanity. He calls Jesus ”the first-born among many brethren.” He speaks of the summing up of all things in Christ, and of the final consummation when G.o.d shall be all in all. Here is the New Theology with a vengeance. Paul requires to be rescued from the inadequate and distorting interpretations his thought has received in the course of its history. He brought this conception of the eternal Christ into Christianity from pre-Christian thought, saw it ideally revealed in Jesus, and then bade mankind respond to it and realise it to be the true explanation of our own being. Sometimes he appears to deviate from this view, and to say things inconsistent with it, but that we need not mind; he saw it, and that is enough. It forms the foundation of his gospel.

CHAPTER VII

THE INCARNATION OF THE SON OF G.o.d

+Jesus all that Christian devotion has believed Him to be.+--So far we have seen that the personality of Jesus is central for Christian faith.

We deny nothing about Him that Christian devotion has ever affirmed, but we affirm the same things of humanity as a whole in a differing degree. The practical dualism which regards Jesus as coming into humanity from something that beforehand was not humanity we declare to be misleading. Our view of the subject does not belittle Jesus but it exalts human nature. Let this be clearly understood and most of the objections to it will vanish. Briefly summed up, the position is as follows: Jesus was G.o.d, but so are we. He was G.o.d because His life was the expression of divine love; we too are one with G.o.d in so far as our lives express the same thing. Jesus was not G.o.d in the sense that He possessed an infinite consciousness; no more are we. Jesus expressed fully and completely, in so far as a finite consciousness ever could, that aspect of the nature of G.o.d which we have called the eternal Son, or Christ, or ideal Man who is the Soul of the universe, and ”the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world;” we are expressions of the same primordial being. Fundamentally we are all one in this eternal Christ. This is the most difficult statement of all to make clear, for the average westerner cannot grasp it; it is different from his ordinary way of looking at things. The best way of demonstrating it, as I have already shown, is to draw attention to the fact that Christian orthodoxy has all along been affirming the mystic union between Christ and the soul, and that the limited earthly consciousness of Jesus did not prevent Him from being really and truly G.o.d. Why should we not speak in a similar way about any other human consciousness? If we could only get men to do so habitually and sincerely, it would be the greatest gain to religion that could possibly be imagined. In the third chapter I have pointed out that psychological science is doing much to help us toward this realisation.

We are beginning to see, however hard it may be to understand it, that our limited individual consciousness is no barrier to the true identification of the lesser with the larger self. What Christian doctrine, therefore, has been affirming of Jesus for hundreds of years past is receiving impressive confirmation from modern science and is being seen to be true of every human being--that is, the lesser and the larger are one, however little the earthly consciousness may be able to grasp the fact. To me this is a most helpful and inspiring truth, one of the most important that has ever found a place in Christian thought; it elucidates much that would otherwise be obscure. It enables us to see how the human and divine were blended in Jesus without making Him essentially different from the rest of the human race; it enables us to realise our own true origin and to believe in the salvability of every soul that has ever come to moral consciousness. If this truth will not lift a man toward the higher life, I do not know one that will. It is the truth implied in all redemptive effort that has ever been made, and in every message that has ever gripped conscience and heart; it is, as the Nicene creed has it, ”the taking of the manhood into G.o.d.”

+The preeminence of Jesus.+--Lest anyone should think that this position involves in the slightest degree the diminution of the religious value and the moral preeminence of Jesus, let me say that it does the very opposite. Nothing can be higher than the highest, and the life of Jesus was the undimmed revelation of the highest. Faith to be effective must centre on a living person, and the highest objective it has ever found is Jesus. He is no abstraction but a spiritual reality, an ever-present friend and guide, our brother and our Lord.

No one will ever compete with Jesus for this position in human hearts.

When I speak of the eternal Christ, I do not mean someone different from Jesus, although I certainly do mean the basal principle of all human goodness; Jesus was and is that Christ, and we can only understand what the Christ is because we have seen Him. Whole-hearted faith in Him has proved itself to be the most effective means to the manifestation of our own Christhood.

+Jesus and the incarnation.+--This thought at once opens up another great question to which we have already alluded, that of the incarnation of this eternal Christ or Son of G.o.d in the finite universe. According to the received theology the incarnation of G.o.d in human life was limited to the life of Jesus only, and through Him to mankind. I purposely say popular theology because the best Christian thought has always known better. Popular theology has it that Jesus, the only-begotten eternal Son of G.o.d, took human flesh and a human nature, was conceived by the Holy Ghost in the womb of a virgin, and was born into the world in a wholly miraculous way--a way which stamps Him as different from all that were ever born of woman before or since.

It seems strange that belief in the virgin birth of Jesus should ever have been held to be a cardinal article of the Christian faith, but it is so even to-day. There is not much need to combat it, for most reputable theologians have now given it up, but it is still a stumbling-block to many minds. Perhaps, therefore, a brief examination of the subject may not be altogether out of place.

+The virgin birth not demonstrable from Scripture.+--The virgin birth of Jesus was apparently unknown to the primitive church, for the earliest New Testament writings make no mention of it. Paul's letters do not allude to it, neither does the gospel of St. Mark. ”In the fulness of time,” says the great apostle, ”G.o.d sent forth His Son born of a woman.” He was ”of the seed of David according to the flesh,” but nowhere does Paul give us so much as a hint of anything supernatural attending the mode of His entry into the world. Mark does not even tell us anything about the childhood of the Master; his account begins with the baptism of Jesus in Jordan. The fourth gospel, although written much later, ignores the belief in the virgin birth, and even seems to do so of set purpose as belittling and materialising the truth. The supposed Old Testament prophecies of the event have nothing whatever to do with it. The famous pa.s.sage, ”Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call His name Immanuel,” is a reference to contemporary events, and the word translated ”virgin”

simply means a young woman. It is a prophecy of the birth of a prince whose work it should be to put right for Judah what the reigning king Ahaz had been putting wrong. The story in the seventh of Isaiah is as follows: Ahaz, a rather weak ruler, was greatly concerned by the news that Rezin, king of Syria and Pekah, king of northern Israel, had formed an alliance against him and were marching on Jerusalem. In his extremity this monarch of a petty state turned toward the mighty ruler of a.s.syria, the greatest military power in the world, and asked his help against the combination. Isaiah, statesman as well as prophet, saw that this was a wrong move. a.s.syria was aspiring to universal dominion, and to form an alliance with the military master of that mighty state would be to supply him with an excuse for further interference. The policy of Ahaz was therefore as suicidal as that of John Balliol when he called in Edward the First to adjudicate on his claim to the crown of Scotland, or the policy of Spain when she called in Napoleon. Sargon, king of a.s.syria, was overturning thrones in all directions, profiting by the divisions and jealousies of his foes. The great empires of Egypt and Babylonia went down before him as well as the smaller states. The condition of things in this ancient world was just like that of Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century when the star of Napoleon was in the ascendant. For Ahaz to turn for help to Sargon was to court disaster in the end. Isaiah saw this and went out to meet Ahaz one day ”at the end of the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller's field”--a vivid descriptive touch.

The king was apparently preparing to stand a siege in his capital and was making sure of the water supply. Isaiah's remonstrance was in substance: You need not take so much trouble with your preparations; Syria and Israel will have more than enough to do presently to defend their own borders from Sargon. Besides, men like Rezin and Pekah are not men to be afraid of in any case; they have neither strength nor skill. But do not for heaven's sake call in Sargon; if you do you will supply him with an excuse for meddling and we shall never get rid of him. This was good counsel, but Ahaz was too short-sighted and panic-stricken to take much notice of it, so in oriental fas.h.i.+on Isaiah goes on to paint a picture of future disaster. The land, he says, will soon be laid waste, and future generations will rue the policy now being determined upon. In the end, of course, things will come all right, for G.o.d will not abandon His people. A better and wiser prince shall arise who shall restore prosperity to Judah. That prince is not yet born, but when he is, his name shall be called Immanuel,--G.o.d with us. In another place he describes him as Wonderful Counsellor, Divine Hero, Father Everlasting, Prince of Peace. ”b.u.t.ter and honey shall he eat,” because there will be nothing else left after a.s.syria has swept over the country, but the discipline may have good results in the end, and will serve to bring Judah to her senses.

There is something strikingly modern about all this, and it is a good example of the way in which the same conditions arise over and over again in the course of human history. It is plain to be seen that the prophecy here indicated was only the shrewd common sense of a wise and patriotic man who loved his country and believed in G.o.d. But what on earth have his words to do with the birth of Jesus? It is only by a very long stretch of the pious imagination that they can be held to apply to Christianity at all. They have an interest of their own, and a very considerable interest, too, even from the point of view of religion; but Isaiah would have been considerably astonished to be told that they would have to wait seven hundred years for fulfilment. To a certain extent they were fulfilled soon afterward in the advent of the well-meaning but not very brilliant king Hezekiah. I have dwelt upon this pa.s.sage at some length because it is a fair example of the way in which Old Testament literature has been pressed into the service of Christian dogma. What I am now saying, as I need hardly point out, is not my _ipse dixit_; expert biblical scholars.h.i.+p has been saying it for a long time, but somehow or other its bearing upon generally accepted dogmas is not popularly realised. It can hardly be maintained that Christian preachers who know the truth about these matters and refrain from stating it plainly are doing their duty to their congregations.

No Old Testament pa.s.sage whatever is directly or indirectly a prophecy of the virgin birth of Jesus. To insist upon this may seem to many like beating a man of straw, but if so the man of straw still retains a good deal of vitality.

+The virgin birth in the gospels.+--The only two gospels in which the virgin birth is alluded to are Matthew and Luke, and the nativity stories contained in these are very beautiful, especially those peculiar to Luke. But the two gospels are mutually contradictory in their account of the circ.u.mstances attending the miraculous birth.

Each contains a genealogy which professes to be that of Joseph, not of Mary, and these are inconsistent with each other. What has the genealogy of Joseph got to do with the birth of Jesus if Jesus were not his own son? The conclusion seems probable that in the earlier versions of these gospels the miraculous conception did not find a place, or else that two inconsistent sources have been drawn upon without sufficient care being taken to reconcile them. But this is not the only discrepancy. Matthew gives Bethlehem as the native place of Joseph and Mary, Luke says Nazareth. Matthew says not a word about the census of Cyrenius as the motive for the journey to Bethlehem, but leads us to suppose that the holy family were already in residence there. Then again he tells us of the coming of the wise men from the East, their public inquiry as to the whereabouts of the holy child, the jealousy of Herod, the ma.s.sacre of the innocents, and the flight into Egypt. Luke says nothing about these things, but gives us an entirely different set of wonders, including the attendance of an angelic host and the annunciation to the shepherds. So far from recording any ma.s.sacre, or any hasty flight, he tells us that some time after His birth the babe was taken to the Temple at Jerusalem to be presented to the Lord, and that afterwards He and His parents ”returned into Galilee to their own city Nazareth.” According to Matthew Nazareth was an afterthought and only became the residence of the holy family after the return from Egypt. These accounts do not tally, and no ingenuity can reconcile them. The nativity stories belong to the poetry of religion, not to history. To regard them as narrations of actual fact is to misunderstand them. They are better than that; they take us into the region of exalted feeling and give us a vision of truth too great for prosaic statement. Christianity would be poorer by the loss of them, but they are not indigenous to Christianity. They have their parallels in other religions, some of them much older than the advent of Jesus.

The beautiful legends surrounding the infancy of Gautama, for example, are startlingly similar to those contained in the first and third gospels. Like Jesus, the Buddhist messiah is stated to have been of royal descent and was born of a virgin mother. At his birth a supernatural radiance illuminated the whole district, and a troop of heavenly beings sang the praises of the holy child. Later on a wise man, guided by special portents, recognised him as the long-expected and divinely appointed light-bringer and life-giver of mankind. When but a youth he was lost for a time and was found by his father in the midst of a circle of holy men, sunk in rapt contemplation of the great mystery of existence. The parallel between these legends and the Christian version of the marvels attending the birth of Jesus is so close as to preclude the possibility of its being altogether accidental. There must have been a connection somewhere, and indeed there is no need to think otherwise, for nothing is to be gained or lost by admitting it.

+Christianity not dependent on a virgin birth.+--But why hesitate about the question? The greatness of Jesus and the value of His revelation to mankind are in no way either a.s.sisted or diminished by the manner of His entry into the world. Every birth is just as wonderful as a virgin birth could possibly be, and just as much a direct act of G.o.d. A supernatural conception bears no relation whatever to the moral and spiritual worth of the person who is supposed to enter the world in this abnormal way. The credibility and significance of Christianity are in no way affected by the doctrine of the virgin birth otherwise than that the belief tends to put a barrier between Jesus and the race and to make Him something which cannot properly be called human. Those who insist on the doctrine will find themselves in danger of proving too much, for, pressed to its logical conclusion, it removes Jesus altogether from the category of humanity in any real sense. Like many others, I used to take the position that acceptance or non-acceptance of the doctrine of the virgin birth was immaterial because Christianity was quite independent of it, but later reflection has convinced me that in point of fact it operates as a hindrance to spiritual religion and a real living faith in Jesus. The simple and natural conclusion is that Jesus was the child of Joseph and Mary and had an uneventful childhood.

+The truth in the doctrine of the virgin birth.+--And yet, as with every tenet which has held a place in human thought for any considerable length of time, there is a great truth contained in the idea of a virgin birth. It is the truth that the emergence of anything great and beautiful in human character and achievement is the work of the divine spirit operating within human limitations. This idea is very ancient, and there is no great religion which does not contain it in some form or other. One form of it, for example, can be discerned in the Babylonian creation myth with its parallel in the book of Genesis. The home of the primitive Chaldeans, the stock whence Israelites, Babylonians, a.s.syrians, and other Semitic communities sprang, was in the low-lying territory surrounding the Persian gulf.

During the rainy seasons these lands were flooded by the overflow of the great rivers. The sun of springtime, rising upon this ma.s.s of waters which stretched in every direction as far as the eye could see, drew forth from their bosom the life and beauty of summer flowers and fruit. From observation of this regularly recurring phenomenon the primitive Semites constructed their creation myth, one version of which appeared in the first chapter of the book of Genesis, a version much later than the Babylonian, but an outgrowth of the same idea. They thought of a primeval waste of water covering everything. As the writer of the Genesis account has it: ”The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” In the Babylonian version this primeval water was personified as a woman--Tiamat. They thought of the sun of heaven as impregnating this virgin matrix with the seeds of cosmic life--quite an accurate conception from the modern point of view. Later on this idea became spiritualised in a much higher degree. The religious mind came to regard the physical, mundane, or distinctively human principle as the matrix upon which the spirit of G.o.d brooded, bringing to the birth a divine idea. And this is perfectly true too, as anyone can see. Nothing great and n.o.ble in human experience can be accounted for merely in terms of atoms and molecules. That is where materialism always comes to grief, for on its own premises it cannot account for the emergence of intelligence and all the higher qualities of human nature. A divine element, a spiritual quickening, is required for the evolution of anything G.o.dlike in our mundane sphere; it is a virgin birth. Lower acting upon lower can never produce a higher. It is the downpouring and incoming of the higher to the lower which produces through the lower the divine manhood which leaves the brute behind. This is the sense in which it is true that Jesus was of divine as well as human parentage. We do not account for Him merely by saying that He was the son of Joseph and Mary and the descendant of a long line of prophets, priests, and kings; we have to recognise that His true greatness came from above.

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