Pilate's question "Whence art thou?" : an essay on the personal claims asserted by Jesus Christ and how to account for them

Front matter

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PART FIRST——EXPOSITION. The singularity of Christ’s claims *

Inspiration of the Gospels not assumed - - General trustworthiness of the Gospels - - Christ His own biographer Christ’s character according to unbelievers’ - - The Fourth Gospel - -

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15 18

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Christ’s words in the Fourth Gospel - - - Speciality of Fourth Gospel admitted - - - Christ’s words in the other Gospels” - - - Even in the Sermon on the Mount - - = Christ’s trial before Caiaphas and Pilate - - The claim of sinlessness -

Part Second—argument

The phenomenon must be solved - - The area of quest must not be limited - - - A Pantheistic solution = - Three more substantial hypotheses. - - = I. Hypotheses involving conscious dishonesty = - - Renan’s interpretation specially discussed - - Specific answers to Renan’s principle - - F

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DR 51

54 54 56

II. Hypotheses which assume that these claims originated in a later age - -

The four acknowledged

letters of Paul - -

The Christ of these letters -

History of apostolic opinion in these letters - -

Between A.D. 33 and A.D.

The then prevailing opinions

unchallenged - -

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67 71

74 75

79 83

The Apocalypse ite.

The same conclusion by other processes - -

‘“‘Christ”’ of Justin Martyr - - - Question about the Alogi and the Ebionites - The Hypothesis that the claims said to have been

The cb hie asserted by ‘Christ are original and true - - - 1. This Hypothesis explains the mystery of ‘the Book,”’ the Bible - Its many parts and its unity ‘‘ Anticipative ’’ character - Has it been verified ? - - Books after Christ - - 2. This Hypothesis explains the fact that at so early a period the Founder of Christianity was recognized as Divine - - Alleged influence of superstition and credulity - Whence the ‘‘ moral Christianity”’ of the Gospels?

Let the charge of superstition be analysed - - Bearing of Christianity on superstitions of world - Allegation of a tendency to deify man - : s

IIO

OONTENTS.

Difference between heathens

and Christians - - Baur on Jewish monotheism De Pressensé on same - Untenableness of the theory

of * Deification ”’ - 3. The Hypothesis of truth and genuineness ex-

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115 116 plains the factthatJesus .

claimed to be the Messiah, and the character of His Messiahship_ - Jesus professed to be the Coming One - - The popular expectation - The Maccabees - - The Hebrew Sibyl - - The Son of the Star - - John the Baptist - - Royalty claimed - - Whence the idea of Jesus ?

From the beginning - .

Messiahship and Miracles - Renan’s theory - - : True facts and inferences - The marvel of Jewish expectation a, a aes oe ee Keim on same - - A How to account’ for Jewish hopes - - - - What they imply as to the personality of their ob- FECL os - - -

CONTENTS. 11

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4. This Hypothesis gives Congruity of His words - 156 consistency to the whole Congruity of His claim of

story, and explains the sinlessness - - °.- 158 consistency of the whole Congruity of His avowed

character of JesusChrist 150 mission = - - - 161 Congruity of His miracles Self-consistency of His per-

withHispersonalclaims 152 sonal consciousness - 164

Conclusion

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The question re-stated + 169 >} Dr. Channing ae: - 176 Fresh testimonies’ - - 171 | Consequences of denial of

Theodore Parker - - 172 Christ’s.claims - - 178

Renan—Frances Cobbe - 173 | Why not believe? - - 182

“The high priest said unto Him, I adjure Thee by the living God, that Thou tell us whether Thou be the Christ, the Son of God.

*‘ Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.”—WMatt. xxvi. 63, 64.

“The Jews answered Pilate, We have a law, and by our law He ought to die, because He made Himself the Son of God.

** When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he was the more afraid;

«And went again into the judgment hall, and saith unto Jesus, Whence art Thoue ”’—Johnm xix, 7—9.

WHENCE ART THOU?

Part First-an Exposition

THE character of Christ, as we find it in the Gospels, is confessedly unique ; and so are those personal claims which were asserted by Him from the first day of His public ministry to the last. Prophets there have been many, and founders of religions true and false; but never has human being other than Jesus of Nazareth stood up before his fellows and claimed to be either Divine or sinless. The highest claim put forth by prophets before Christ, and by apostles after Him, is that which is implied in the words, “‘ Thus saith the Lord.’”? Who? and what? are questions that have not to be asked about any historic personage but the Nazarene. Parentage and place of birth may be topics of inquiry and subjects of controversy. The sources of the wisdom of some great men may not be easily determined. Whether the inspiration of some souls B that have deeply moved mankind was specially Divine or only superlatively human, may be asked and not easily answered. But only in one instance is there any need for Pilate’s question, “‘ Whence art Thou ?” or the High Priest’s, ‘‘Art Thou the Son of God?” Moses, Confucius, Chakya-Mouni, Zoroaster, Socrates, Mohammed—none of them ever used word or sign that could raise doubt or question as to his personality. But Jesus did habitually. ‘“‘He preached Himself,” Renan confesses. ‘‘ He believed Himself to be in direct communion with God; He believed Himself to be the Son of God. The highest consciousness of God which has existed in the bosom of humanity was that of Jesus.” ‘These personal claims of Christ, whatever be their true interpretation, Strauss admits, are of the very essence of Christianity. And Renan, writing much in a see-saw fashion which it is difficult to understand, says of ‘“‘the exaltation of self” in Christ’s preaching, “It is regarded as vainglory by those who see in the new teaching only the personal phantasy of the Founder; but it is the finger of God to those who see the result. The fool stands side by side here with the inspired man, only the fool never succeeds. It has not yet been given to insanity to influence seriously the progress of humanity.”

We have to ask, then, with Pilate, “Whence art Thou?” The question has lost none of its interest by the lapse of centuries. It is the great question of

THE QUESTION OF TO-DAY. 15 to-day, as it has been of all the ages since Jesus Christ was arraigned before the Roman governor. And we are in a position to ask it with a truer understanding of its great bearings, than it was possible for the heathen magistrate to possess. In going to the Four Gospels for an answer to the question, it is not necessary to the argument which I propose to develop, that we assume more than the general historic truthfulness of the record which they contain of the words and discourses of the Prophet of Nazareth; and this is conceded even by critics who labour to eliminate the supernatural from the life of Christ. Their speculations respecting Him and His mission in the world are based on the books which bear the names of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, independently of the question whether these books were written in the first or in the second century. ‘They take exception, it is true, to certain discourses as well as to certain deeds recorded in the books. And by such processes as they apply to these discourses, they pronounce some of them to be ungenuine, or marred by the tradition which has preserved them. But the Gospels, whether wholly

true or only partially true, are the only histories which have survived of the Founder and of the beginnings of Christianity. And that class of the sayings of Christ with which we have to do at present is so large, so varied, so inextricably interwoven with other sayings giving them colour and receiving colour from them— that any attempt to extract and cancel them would be

B2 the destruction of the whole. As well cast the books into the sea at once. A writer, recently deceased, who took his place outside the pale of Christianity, said :— ‘Tt is of no use to say that Christ, as exhibited in the Gospels, is not historical, and that we know not how much of what is admirable has been superadded by the tradition of His followers. The tradition of followers suffices to insert any number of marvels, and may have inserted all the miracles which He is reputed to have wrought. But who among His disciples, or among their proselytes, was capable of inventing the sayings ascribed to Jesus, or of imagining the life and character revealed in the Gospels? Certainly not the fishermen of Galilee; as certainly not St. Paul.”

Mr. Stuart Mill goes on to say that “the long speeches of Christ about Himself’? which we find in St. John are ‘such as the other Gospels contain not a. vestige of ’—those especially which are said to have been delivered at the Last Supper—and that they may have been “imported from Philo and the Alexandrian Platonists ’’ ; and he adds that “‘ the East was full of men who could have stolen any quantity of this poor stuff as the multitudinous Oriental sects of Gnostics afterwards did.” * On which I may remark, in passing, that itis not true that such ‘‘ stuff” as is to be found in our Lord’s discourses at the Last Supper was to be found in the Alexandrian Platonists or in Oriental

* John Stuart Mill—‘“ Three Essays,” pp. 253, 4.

NOT WHAT THE EVANGELISTS SAY. 17

Gnostic sects; and if it was and has perished, the world has lost a priceless treasure, for the last discourses of our Lord have ministered to myriads of souls a blessedness which neither this world’s gold nor its wisdom has ever been able to purchase. The statement that the other Gospels do not contain a vestige of such speeches about Christ Himself as are to be found in St. John, will be seen by-and-by to be not only incorrect but the opposite of truth. And we claim that the sayings about Himself be reckoned among those which neither the fishermen of Galilee, nor St. Paul, nor any other disciple could have invented and interwoven with all His teaching. These sayings, moreover, bear that ‘‘ stamp of personal originality’? which Mr. Mill sees impressed on the general teaching of our Lord; and with reference to them we shall have to maintain in a most special sense that ‘‘never man spake like this Man.”

It will be observed that we have nothing to do at present with any statement made, or opinion expressed, by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John adout Christ. Matthew introduces Him to his readers as ‘‘ Immanuel, God with us.”’ Mark introduces Him as ‘the Son of God.” Luke tells the wonders which accompanied His birth, and represents the father of John the Baptist as saying to his son, ‘‘ Thou, child, shalt be called the Prophet of the Highest; for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord.” John introduces his Jesus to the world as the Eternal Word made flesh. But these and other statements form no part of our argument.

Christ is His own biographer. The evangelists give us no description either of His person or of His character. They tell us what the angel said who announced His birth, what Pilate said, and what Jesus said of Himself. But in no single instance do they use epithets of their own to indicate their idea of His character. They abstain as by miracle—and like a miracle it is—from any attempt to eulogize their Christ. They were restrained, doubtless, by their reverence for Him. As it was blasphemy to speak evil of Him, so it would have been an impertinence to surround His name with their defences and eulogies. They only tell us in the plainest, most artless style, what He did, said, and suffered. And these things are left to produce their own impression.

But what was not done by the evangelists has been done by others—even by men who have not accepted Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ of God. Mr. J. Stuart Mill, for example, says—‘‘ The most valuable part of the effect on the character which Christianity has produced by holding up in a Divine Person a standard of excellence and a model of imitation, is available even to the absolute unbeliever, and can never more be lost to humanity. For it is Christ, rather than God, whom Christianity has held up to believers as the pattern of perfection for humanity. It is the God incarnate, more than the God [of the Jews or of Nature, who, being

TESTIMONIES OF UNBELIEVERS, 19 idealized, has taken so great and salutary a hold on the modern mind. And whatever else may be taken away from us by rational criticism, Christ is still left; a unique figure, not more unlike all His precursors than all His followers, even those who had the direct benefit of His personal teaching.’”? We do not accept Mr. Mill’s idea of the God of the Jews, or of the God of Nature, but his tribute to the glory and singularity of the character of Christ is not the less true.

In his first attempt to reduce Christ from the Divine to the merely human, Strauss said—‘‘ Where shall we find, in such beauty as we find it in Jesus, that mirroring purity of soul, which the fury of the storm may agitate but cannot cloud? Where has there been so grand an idea, so restless an activity, so exalted a sacrifice for it, asin Jesus? Who has been the founder of a work which has endowed with as rich treasures, in as high a degree, the masses of men and nations through the long ages, as the work which bears the name of Christ ? As little as mankind can be without religion, so little can they be without Christ. And this Christ, as inseparable from the supremest shaping of religion, is historical, _ not mythical; He is an individual, not a bare symbol.”

In the same spirit the latest follower of Strauss of any note in this country, the author of ‘‘ Supernatural Religion,” says, ‘“‘ The teaching of Jesus carried morality to the sublimest point attained, or attainable, by humanity. The influence of His religion has been rendered doubly great by the unparalleled purity and elevation of His own character. Surpassing in His sublime simplicity and earnestness the moral grandeur of Chakya-Mouni, and putting to the blush the sometimes sullied, though generally admirable, teaching of Socrates and Plato and the whole round of Greek philosophers, He presented the rare spectacle ofa life, so far as we can estimate it, uniformly noble and consistent with His own lofty principles, so that the ‘imitation of Christ’ has become almost the final word in the preaching of His religion, and must continue to be one of the most powerful elements of its permanence.” * . Now, such is Christ—the deniers of the supernatural themselves being witnesses—whose sayings about Himself we have to explain and to account for. To quote all these sayings would be to quote a very large portion of the Four Gospels. AndI can do little more than may be sufficient to remind the reader of their general character.

In beginning with the Gospel by St. John, I do not forget how boldly and persistently its authenticity is impugned in certain quarters. But I remember at the same time, that, as it has been well put, “the question of the Johannine writings is determined by another graver still, that of the /ohannine Christ; and most frequently it is the latter which sways the solution of the former. Nothing can prevent the critic whose

* Vol. ii. p. 487, second edition.

THE FOURTH GOSPEL. | 21 inward feeling, for one reason or another, is repugnant to the.Christ of John, from resolving the question of the fourth Gospel in a way conformed to the secret wish of his antipathy; as,onthe other hand, the author whose deepest and holiest aspirations are awakened on meeting with the figure of that same Christ, ‘full of grace and truth,’ will soon find in the lights proceeding from such profound sympathy the solution of critical difficulties which have been declared insurmountable.”

Of the assailants of the fourth Gospel, we may say as of those whom the chief priests cited to bear witness against Christ, that their witness doth not agree together. They are perpetually destroying each other’s theories, and, after brief intervals, they do not spare even their own. ‘If the Gospel of John is not the historical narrative of an eye-witness, but a myth,” says Bunsen, who will not be suspected of a too easy credence in the authorship of the books of Scripture, “‘then we have no historical Christ, . . . and it is either a piece of the blindest superficiality or the bitterest irony to beguile us into the belief that a collective Christianity can still subsist on such a supposition.”

The defence of the fourth Gospel, however, is no part of my present task. The writings of Luthardt and Godet, and of Sanday and Lias—I name only the latest defenders of its authenticity—leave nothing to be desired in that direction. And we may, without hesitation, inquire what Jesus Christ is represented in

22 WHENCEHE ART THOU?

this Gospel as saying about Himself or as allowing others to say of Him.

In the very first chapter of St. John’s Gospel, Jesus allows John the Baptist to call Him ‘‘the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world,” and Nathanael to say to Him, “ Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God, Thou art the King of Israel.’ In the second chapter we find Him saying to the sellers in the Temple, ‘‘Make not My Father’s house an house of merchandise,” and speaking mysteriously of His body as a temple, which, if destroyed, He would raise up in three days. In the third chapter we find Him speaking of Himself as the Son of Man who had come down from heaven, and yet of whom He said “who is in heaven’’—of whom heaven is the proper home—and intimating, at the same time, that He is the onlybegotten Son of God, whom God hath sent “that the world through Him might be saved.” In the fourth chapter we find Him revealing Himself to the woman by Jacob’s well as the Messias, and so teaching. the people of Sychar that they concluded that He was ‘the Christ, the Saviour of the world.” In the fifth chapter we find Him addressing the Jews at one of their sacred feasts in a style which led them to seek His death, because He said that ‘‘ God was His Father, making Him-. self equal with God.” And, instead of retracting His words, or saying that they had been misinterpreted, He said much that could only confirm the first impressions

CHRIST’S WORDS IN ST. JOHN. 23° of His hearers. While indicating certain subordination to the Father in His mission, He used these extraordinary words: ‘‘ As the Father raiseth up the dead and giveth them life, even so the Son giveth life to whom He will. For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment to the Son; that all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father.” ‘Verily, I say unto you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God and live.’’ And more to the same effect, asserting His right to “ bear witness of Himself.” In the sixth chapter He speaks of Himself as ‘‘ the Bread’ of God which cometh down from heaven and giveth life to the world,” adding, “the bread that I will give is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world,’ — ‘Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, ye have no life in you”—words which caused;many of His followers to stumble and to forsake Him. Inthe seventh chapter we find Him standing: up in the midst of thousands of Israelites gathered together from all parts of the land, and from other lands, on the last, the great day, of the Feast of Tabernacles, and exclaiming, ‘“‘If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink.” In the eighth chapter, after a long discussion in which He claims extraordinary powers and prerogatives, He utters the mysterious words, ‘‘Before Abraham was, I am’’—words: which not only asserted His pre-existence, but also suggested the idea of identity with the great “I Am”

of the burning bush. The people so understood Him, for they took up stones to cast at Him as a blasphemer. In the ninth chapter, we find Him saying, ‘‘ As long as Iam in the world, I am the Light of the world;” and asking the man born blind, to whom He had given sight, “Dost thou believe on the Son of God?” and, replying to the man’s inquiry, ‘‘ Who is He, Lord, that a might believe on Him?” saying, ‘‘ Thou hast both seen Him, and He it is that talketh with thee.” The tenth chapter contains one of the most extraordinary appropriations of Divine function and prerogative which any one could make. The Psalmist-King had sung in words with which Christ’s hearers were familiar, “‘Jehovah is my Shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters.” And now Jesus of Nazareth says, ‘‘Iam the Good Shepherd ’”’—apparently, at least; identifying Himself with the Divine Shepherd of the Old Testament who had led Joseph like a flock, who had dwelt between the cherubim, and on whose strength and grace both the nation and individuals were dependent for all good. ‘The inevitable impression of His words is confirmed by His saying, “I and My Father are One.” And, when charged with blasphemy, because that, being a man, He made Himself God, He defended Himself by saying, “If I do not the works of My Father, believe Me not. But if I do, though ye believe not Me, believe the works, that ye may know and believe that

CHRIST’S WORDS IN ST. JOHN. 25:

the Father is in Me and I in Him.” The eleventh chapter contains the history of that most memorable miracle, the resurrection of Lazarus, and records these words: ‘‘I am the Resurrection and the Life; he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die.” In the twelfth chapter we find Him Savina il. 1) 1) .bee lifted. up, from’ the: “earth,. will draw all men unto Me.” The thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth chapters are full of Him. “Now is the Son of Man glorified.” ‘“ The Spirit shall glorify Me.” ‘I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no man cometh unto the Father but by Me.” ‘“ He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.” ‘I am the true Vine;

. severed from Me ye can do nothing.” And very much more which will at once occur to every reader of | the Gospel. Thus He said, ‘“‘I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world; again, I leave the world, and go to the Father” (xvi. 28), and in the prayer whichis recorded in the following chapter, when He was preparing to be lifted up on the Cross, He said, “‘O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own self with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was. . . . I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am; that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me: for Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world”? (John Xvii. 5, 24)—an impossible retrospect this, except for One who, in the language of St. John, was “in the bosom of the Father.” ‘‘'That which He felt to be behind Him when He searched into the profoundest depths of His being, was not, as it is with us, the vacuum of non-existence, but the plenitude of Divine life. To Him birth did not appear as the transition from nothingness into existence, but the passage from the fulness of Divine life into the state of dependence which belongs to man.” *

In this connection it is noticeable that, although Jesus was undoubtedly a Man and identified Himself with our humanity, ‘“‘ bearing our griefs and carrying our sorrows,” He always separated Himself from others when He spoke of His relation to the Father. He never said ‘‘our Father” or “‘our God.” In speaking of Himself and His disciples,, He said, ‘‘ My Father and your Father, My God and your God” (John xx. 17). In what is called “the Lord’s Prayer,’ we have the words ‘‘our Father.” But it was His disciples that He taught, “ When ye pray, say, ‘Our Father.’ ”

Now, examine the words I have quoted from every chapter of the Gospel by St. John onward from the first to the seventeenth, and you will observe that they -are not isolated sayings which may be cut out without injury to the connection in which they stand, so that they might be capable of being regarded as interpolations. They are of the very soul and body of the conversations and discourses in which they occur. I have

* Godet’s ‘‘ Biblical Studies on the New Testament,” p. 129.

THE OTHER GOSPELS. 27 quoted them briefly for convenience’ sake. But if the reader will examine them he will find that they might be put as headings or summaries of the teachings of the chapters in which they occur. Cancel them, one by one, and you do not and cannot cancel the witness which Christ bore,concerning Himself. To get rid of the witness you must get rid of the whole book.

Turning to the other Gospels, we are struck at once with a difference. ‘There is a speciality about the discourses recorded by St. John, which, however, it is not difficult to account for. It may be explained in part by the fact that John was supplementing what his predecessors, the other three evangelists, had already written ; ’ but still more by the fact that John was personally the fittest medium for preserving and publishing those discourses which we owe to his pen. We do not forget the Lord’s promise of the Spirit’s assistance to recall His teaching. But Luke tells us expressly that Azs narrative, like other narratives which were already current, was founded on the testimony of eye-witnesses, and it could not but be, unless the facts of our Lord’s life had been revealed to him from heaven. Luke took pains to acquire a perfect understanding of the story, that Theophilus might be assured of the certainty of those things wherein he had been instructed. Matthew and Mark must have done the same, for they relate much of which they had not beeneye-witnesses. Now, it is obvious that many of the discourses recorded by

John were not of a kind that could have been given to the world orally, and could not, therefore, be accessible to Mark and Luke. And although Matthew heard them as well as John, the idiosyncrasy of the two men explains, without any miracle, how the one should not have written them and how the other should.

It was thus left fittingly to John to preserve most fully the testimony which Christ bore to His own person. Godet says well, “ Matthew had demonstrated the Messianic function of Jesus, Mark had described His activity as an Evangelist in Israel, Luke had presented His work as Saviour in respect to the world. But, behind His function, His activity, His work, there was His person itself. Here is the background of all the peculiar mysteries of that life; and of that central mystery, should Jesus never have said anything to His own friends? Should He not have made them understand of what nature that Being was who here below fulfilled this threefold commission of Messiah, Celestial Evangelist, and Saviour of men? Assuredly, when once the Church was established and the work of the first Gospel teaching accomplished, all that part of the personal teaching of Christ which this task had not immediately absorbed could not fail to come to light, by the mouth and by the pen of one of His own followers, of one of the most intimate amongst His friends.”

But it is a great error to allege that the three earlier Gospels contain no vestige of those assertions of Christ

MATTHEW, MARK, AND LUKE. 29 respecting Himself which are so rife in the latest. “ There are passages where Christ calls God As Father in a perfectly unique sense; where He pronounces Himself to be greater than the Temple, greater than Solomon, the Lord of the Sabbath, the Lord of the angels; where He makes Himself the Mediator and Dispenser of the forgiveness of sins; where He strictly distinguishes between His own undefiled conscience and our consciousness of sin; where He attaches to His own work and person the highest, externally .valid authority in all matters of morals and religion; where He attributes to Himself, and His return in heavenly glory, the last judgment and the consummation of the world. Do not such indubitable signs of Christ,” Christlieb asks—and we quote his words, though in doing so we anticipate our argument—‘‘ point to a higher view of His Person contained in His own consciousness ? We cannot evade this conclusion by general phrases, such as that He called Himself Son of God ‘only in the acceptation of a purified Messianic idea,’ &c. No; He gave Himself, as Keim says, ‘overwhelming names and titles, before which all human categories must sink into silence.’ What gave Christ the right to think thus of Himself if He was not truly the Son of God? If we accept this selftestimony of Christ, then His person stands so high above the world and the remainder of humanity that nerther can Fis works be measured according to mere human and creature standards, But if we do not accept this Cc testimony, we must necessarily accuse Christ of extravagance and undue self-exaltation; and then the crushing task remains to reconcile these glaring defects with the light of truth and moral majesty which otherwise shines so brightly in His words and works, and with the world-redeeming and regenerating influences that proceeded from Him.” *