Jesus and the gospel; Christianity justified in the mind of Christ

Front matter

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Preface

The Introduction to this book makes its purpose sufficiently clear, and a preface is hardly needed except to indicate the readers whom the writer would wish to reach.

The argument appeals, on the one hand, to those who are members of Christian Churches and to the Churches themselves. Amid the vast unsettlement of opinion which has been produced by the emancipation of the mind and its exercise on the general tradition of Christianity, it calls attention anew to the certainty of the things which we have been taught. It demonstrates, as the writer believes, that the attitude to Christ which has always been maintained in the Church is the one which is characteristic of the New Testament from beginning to end, and that this attitude is the only one which is consistent with the self-revelation of Jesus during His life on earth. But it makes clear at the same time that this Christian attitude to Jesus is all that is vital to Christianity, and that it is not bound up, as it is often supposed to be, with this or that intellectual construction of it, or with this or that definition or what it supposes or implies. The Church must bind its members to the Christian attitude to Christ, but it has no right to bind them to anything besides. It can viii JESUS AND THE GOSPEL

never overcome its own divisions, it can never appeal with the power of a unanimous testimony to the world, till both these truths are recognised to the full.

On the other hand, the argument appeals to those who are outside of the Churches, who do not take up the Christian attitude to Christ, and who on general philosophical grounds, as they would say, decline even to discuss it. To them it is simply an appeal to look at the facts. They have a place for Jesus in their world, but it is not the place which Christian faith gives Him. It is the hope of the writer that he may convince some that it is not the place which He claims. This is surely a serious consideration. The mind of Christ is the greatest reality with which we can come into contact in the spiritual world, and it is not treating it with the respect which is its due, if we decide beforehand, as so many do, that Christ can only have in the life and faith of humanity the same kind of place as others who are spoken of as the founders of religions. The section of the book entided The Self-Revelation of Jesus is an attempt to bring out the significance which Jesus had, in His own mind, in relation to God and man. This can be done, as the writer is convinced, in a way which is historically unimpeachable; and unless we are prepared summarily to set aside Christ's consciousness of Himself, it is fatal to such appreciations of Him as have just been referred to. To be a Christian means, in one aspect of it, to take Christ at His own estimate; and it is one step to this to feel that He is putting the most serious of all questions when He asks, Who say ye that I am ?

PREFACE ix

.i

Much of the indifference to Christianity in certain cir- |

cles comes from the refusal to treat this question seriously. |

It would fulfil the deepest desire of the writer if what he I

has said of the self-revelation of Jesus prevailed with any I

one who has regarded it as an unreal question to take it up J

i

in earnest, and to let the Christ who is historically attested i

in the gospels freely appeal to his mind, not as an illus- |

tration of some philosophical theorem of his own about !

God or Man, but as the Sovereign Person that He was 1

and is. '

The writer wishes to express his thanks to Messrs. ,i

T. and T. Clark for the use they have allowed him to \

make of an article on Preaching Christ contributed by \

him to their Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, i

Introduction

PAGE

PLACE OF CHRIST IN NEW TESTAMENT FAITH, AND THE QUESTION WHETHER THIS PLACE IS THAT WHICH HE CLAIMED FOR HIMSELF . . I

Book I

CHRISTIANITY AS IT IS EXHIBITED IN THE NEW TESTAMENT introduction: the unity and variety of the new testament

I. CHRIST IN PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN PREACHING

U CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF PAUL .

m. CHRIST IN THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS

IV. CHRIST IN THE FIRST EPISTLE OF PETER

V. CHRIST IN THE EPISTLE OF JAMES

xi xu

VI. CHRIST IN THE EPISTLE OF JUDE AND IN THE

SECOND EPISTLE OF PETER .... 47

Vn. CHRIST IN THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS

(a) The Gospel according to Mark

(b) The Gospel according to Matthew

(c) The Gospel according to Luke

Vin. CHRIST IN THE JOHANNINE WRITINGS

(a) The Apocalypse

(&) The Epistles of John

(c) The Gospel according to John

SUMMARY AND TRANSITION

SO 52

64 65 71

77 90

BOOK II THE HISTORICAL BASIS OF THE CHRISTIAN j

FAITH i

I. The Resurrection of Jesus.

THE EASTER FAITH AND THE EASTER MESSAGE . . 99

THE OLDEST HISTORICAL EVIDENCE . . . .102

MORAL CONSIDERATIONS INVOLVED IN A TRUE APPRE- CIATION OF IT

IIO

CONTENTS xiii

PAGE

THE HISTORICAL AND THE SPIRITUAL EVIDENCE AS

COMBINED IN I COR. XV 1x8

THE APPEARANCES OF THE RISEN JESUS . . . 126

Difficulties as to their order . . . .126 Progressive materialisation . . . .129

Difficulties as to the scene of the appearings . 132

FUNCTION OF THE EVANGELISTS IN RELATION TO THE

RESURRECTION 1 38

II. The Self-Revelation of Jesus. (a) Preliminary critical considerations,

dogmatic PRECONCEPTIONS TO BE EXCLUDED . . 144

CHARACTER OF THE EVANGELIC DOCUMENTS . . .145

IDEA THAT HISTORICAL CRITICISM IS IRRELEVANT TO

CHRISTIANITY 149

IDEA THAT ITS PRESUPPOSITIONS ARE FATAL TO

CHRISTIANITY 153

HISTORICAL CRITICISM AND THE GOSPEL ACCORDING

TO MARK 156

HISTORICAL CRITICISM OF THE OTHER PRIMITIVE

SOURCE— *Q' 168 xiv JESUS AND THE GOSPEL j

■j (b) Detailed Study oj the earliest sources as illustrating the \

self-consciousness oj Jesus, ]

PAGE

THE TEMPTATIONS * . . l86

I

JESUS AND THE TWELVE ! THE CONDITIONS OF DISCIPLE- \

SHIP 192 j j

THE HEALING OF THE CENTURION'S SERVANT: FAITH \

JESUS AND JOHN THE BAPTIST 228 <

i \

THE GREAT THANKSGIVING OF JESUS . . . .2^6 {

ISOLATED EXPRESSIONS IN WHICH JESUS* CONSCIOUSNESS

OF HIMSELF IS REVEALED: Matt. Il^Off.^ 12 30^ \

PASSAGES IN WHICH JESUS SPEAKS OF HIMSELF AS THE I

SON OF MAN . 255 ;

mark's HISTORY THE HISTORY OF THE SON OF GOD . 269 j

i A TYPICAL 86vafjLt9 OR MIGHTY WORK IN WHICH JESUS' |

CONSCIOUSNESS OF HIMSELF IS REVEALED : FAITH IN \

JESUS .271

CONTENTS XV

PAGE

THE BRIDEGROOM AND THE CHILDREN OF THE

BRIDECHAMBER 279

THE UNPARDONABLE SIN IN MARK . . . .283

THE MESSIAH AND THE cross: Mark 8^^-10^ . . 284

THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM . . . 307

THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN : SERVANTS AND THE SON . 308

DAVID'S SON AND DAVID 'S LORD 3 II

THE DATE OF THE PAROUSIA 313

THE FINAL CONFESSION 324

Conclusion

THE ONE CHRISTIAN FAITH VINDICATED IN THE MIND OF

OBJECTION BASED ON THE IRRELEVANCE OF HISTORY

TO FAITH 330

OBJECTION BASED ON THE UNRELIABLENESS OF THE

HISTORY IN QUESTION . . . . . -332

THE RIGHT OF EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY SECURED . 336

THE RIGHT OF INTELLECTUAL LIBERTY SECURED . -337 xvi JESUS AND THE GOSPEL

PAGE

ATTITUDE OP INDIVIDUALS AND OF CHURCHES TO

THESE CONCLUSIONS 340

THEIR BEARING ON THE UNION OF CHURCHES . . 343

SIMPLIFICATION OF THEOLOGICAL CREEDS FALLACIOUS . 345

A UNITING CONFESSION OF FAITH . . . • . 350

OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 352

THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY AND HOW TO SECURE IT . 358

INDEX OF NEW TESTAMENT PASSAGES .... 363

INTRODUCTION

When we open the New Testament we find ourselves in presence of a glowing religious life. There is nothing in the world which offers any real parallel either to this life, or to the collection of books which attests it. The soul, w^hich in contemporary literature is bound in shallows and in miseries, is here raised as on a great tidal wave of spiritual blessing. Nothing that belongs to a complete religious life is wanting, neither convictions nor motives, neither penitence nor ideals, neither vocation nor the assurance of victory. And from beginning to end, in all its parts and aspects and elements, this reUgious life is determined by Christ. It owes its character at every point to Him. Its convictions are convictions about Him. Its hopes are hopes which He has inspired and which it is for Him to fulfil. Its ideals are born of His teaching and His life. Its strength is,o the strength of His spirit. If we sum it up in the one word faith, it is faith in God through Him — a faith which owes to Him all that is characteristic in it, all that distinguishes it from what is elsewhere known among men by that name.

This, at least, is the prima facie impression which the New Testament makes upon a reader brought up in the Christian Church. The simplest way to express it is to say that Christianity as it is represented in the New Testament is the life of faith in Jesus Christ. It is a life in which faith is directed to Him as its object, and in which everything depends upon the fact that the believer can be sure of his Lord. Christ so conceived is a person of transcendent greatness, but He is a real person, a historical person, and the representations of His greatness are true. They reproduce the reality which He is, and they justify that attitude of the soul to Him which the early Christians called faith, and which was the spring of all their Christian experiences. This, we repeat, is the impression which the New Testament makes on the ordinary Christian reader, but it is possible to react against it. In point of fact, the reaction has taken place, and has been profound and far-reaching. Two main questions have been raised by it which it is the object of the present work to examine. The first is. How far is the description just given of the New Testament correct? Is it the case that the Christian religious life, as the New Testament exhibits it, really puts Jesus into the place indicated, and that everything in this life, and everything especially in the relations of God and man, is determined by Him? In other words, is it the case that from the very beginning Christianity has existed only in the form of a faith which has Christ as its object, and not at all in the form of a faith which has had Christ simply as its living pattern? The second question is of importance to those who accept what seems at a glance the only possible answer to the first. It is this: Can the Christian religion, as the New Testament exhibits it, justify itself by appeal to Jesus? Granting that the spiritual phenomenon is what it is said to be, are the underlying historical facts sufficient to sustain it? In particular, it may be said, is the mind of Christians about Christ supported by the mind of Christ about Himself? Is that which has come to be known in the world as Christian faith — ^known, let us admit, in the apostolic age and ever since — such faith as Jesus lived and died to produce? Did He take for

INTRODUCTION 3

Himself the extraordinary place which He fills in the mind and the world even of primitive Christians, or was this greatness thrust upon Him without His knowledge, against His will, and in inconsistency with His true place and nature? We are familiar with the idea that we can appeal to Christ against any phenomenon of our own age which claims to be Christian; is it not conceivable that we may have to appeal to Him even against the earUest forms which Christianity assumed ?

No one who is familiar with the currents of thought whether within or without the Church can doubt that these questions are of present and urgent interest. To some, indeed, it may seem that there are questions more fundamental, and that when men are discussing whether Jesus ever lived, or whether we know anything about Him, it is trifling to ask whether the apostolic faith in Him is justified by the facts of His history. No serious person, however, doubts that Jesus existed, and the second of our two questions has been stated in the most searching form conceivable. It raises in all its dimensions the problem of the life and mind of Jesus, and in answering it we shall have opportunity to examine fully the sources on which our knowledge of Jesus rests. For those who stand outside the Christian Church, this second question is naturally of greater interest than the other, yet even for them it is impossible to ignore the connexion of the two. For it is in the Church and through its testimony to Jesus that whatever knowledge we have of Him, even in the purely historical sense, has been preserved. But for those who are within the Church, the first question also has an interest of its own. To ask whether the prima facie impression which the New Testament makes upon us is verified by a closer examination — ^whether the interpretation of Christ which is current in the Church is that which is really yielded by the primilive witnesses — ^is to ask in other words whether the Church's faith to-day is continuous with that of apostoHc times; and there can be few Christians who are indifferent to the answer.

But though the profession of indifference would be absurd, it is not absurd to aim at sincerity and truth. No one can be more anxious to know the truth than the man to whom it means a great deal that the truth should be thus or thus. It we could imagine a person to whom it was a matter of indifference whether the Christian Church of to-day imderstood rightly or wrongly what the New Testament means by Christian faith, or who did not care in the least whether the historical facts about Jesus justified that faith or not, we should have imagined a person not ideally competent but absolutely incompetent to deal with either the one question or the other. The writer does not wish to disguise the fact that he is vitally interested in both, for he is convinced that on no other condition is there any likelihood of the true answer being found. But he disclaims at the same time any 'apologetic' intention. There is no policy in what he has written, either in its manner or its substance. Nothing, so far as he is conscious, is set down for any other reason than that he believes it to be the truth, and nothing is to be discounted or allowed for as though he were mediating or negotiating between the progressive and the stationary elements in a Christian society, and would have said more or less if he had been free to speak without reserve. To the best of his knowledge he speaks without reserve, and has neither more nor less to say. This does not exclude the intention and the hope to say what may be of service to Christian faith and to the Christian Church; all it excludes is the idea that Christian faith or the Christian Church can be served by anything else than simple truth.

The two questions with which we have to deal are

INTRODUCTION 5

in one important respect of very different character. The first is quite simple: Is the conception of the Christian religion which prevails and has always prevailed in the Church borne out by the New Testament ? As we know it, and as it has been known in history, the Christian life is the life of faith in Jesus Christ: is this what it was in primitive times? Does the New Testament throughout give that solitary and all-determining place to Jesus which He holds in the later Christian religion? This is a simple question, and no difficulty can be raised about the proper method of answering it. All we have to do is to go to the New Testament and scrutinise its evidence. The laws of interpretation are agreed upon among intelligent people, and no difficulty about 'presuppositions' is raised. But the second question is of a different kind. It has to do with what is historically known of Jesus, and here the difficulty about 'presuppositions' becomes acute. It is possible to argue that much of what the New Testament records concerning Jesus cannot be historically known — ^that it transcends the conception of what is historical, and must either be known on other terms than history, or dismissed from the region of knowledge altogether. It is not necessary at this stage to raise the abstract problem; when we come to the second question it will be considered as far as the case requires. Here the writer would only express his distrust of d, priori determinations of what is possible either in the natural or the historical sphere. There is only one universe: nature is not the whole of it, neither is history; and neither nature nor history is a whole apart from it. Nature and history do not exist in isolation; they are caught up into a moral and spiritual system with which they are throughout in vital relations. It is not for anyone to say offhand and h priori what is or is not naturally or historically conceivable in such a system. Its possibilities, in all likelihood, rather transcend than fall short of our anticipations; we need not be too much surprised if experience calls rather for elasticity than for rigidity of mind. If anything is certain, it is that the world is not made to the measure of any science or philosophy, but on a scale which perpetually summons philosophy and science to construct themselves anew; and it is with the undogmatic temper which recognises this that the problems indicated above are approached in this book.

BOOK I

CHRISTIANITY AS IT IS EXHIBITED IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

BOOK I

CHRISTIANITY AS IT IS EXHIBITED IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

INTRODUCTION

It has been said above that in the New Testament we are confronted with a rehgious life in which everything is determined by Christ, and the question we have to consider is whether this is really so. Is there such a thing as New Testament Christianity, a spiritual phenomenon with a unity of its own, and is this imity constituted by the common attitude of all Christian souls to Christ?

The instinctive answer of those who have been brought up in the Christian faith is in the affirmative. They cannot doubt that New Testament Christianity is one consistent thing. They are equally at home in all parts of the New Testament; they recognise throughout in it the common faith, the faith which gives Jesus the name which is above every name. This instinctive assurance of the unity of the New Testament is not disturbed by even the keenest sense of the differences which persist along with it. Criticism is a science of discrimination, and the critical study of the New Testament has had the greater part of its work to do in bringing into relief the distinctions in what was once supposed to be a uniform and dead level. The science of New Testament theology, if it is a science, has defined the various types of primitive teaching by contrast to one another; it has taught us to distinguish Peter and Paul, James and John, instead of losing them in the vague conception of 'apostolic' Even the reader who is not a professional student is aware of the distinctions, though he has no temptation to press them. He is conscious that the dialectical discussions of Galatians and Romans are profoundly unlike the intuitive and contemplative epistles of John. When he reads the first verses of Hebrews or of the Fourth Gospel he becomes aware that he has entered a new intellectual atmosphere; this is not the air which he breathes in Matthew, Mark, or Luke. That new method of study known to Germans as the * religionsgeschichtliche Methode,' which regards the Christianity of the New Testament as a supreme example of religious syncretism, and by the help of the science of comparative religion traces all the elements of it to their independent sources, of course still further emphasises the differences. To it, Christianity is a stream which has its proximate source in Jesus; but as the stream flows out into the world tributaries pour into it from every side, swelling, colouring, sometimes poisoning its waters. This process does not begin, as we have perhaps been taught to believe, when the New Testament closes, so that we have the New Testament as a standard for the perpetual restoration of the true faith: it begins at the very beginning. The New Testament itself is the earliest witness to it, and it is the New Testament itself which we must purge if we would get Christianity pure and undefiled. All the sacramentarianism, for example, which we find in Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians; all the nascent Catholicism of Acts and the Pastoral Epistles; all the religious materialism which in one form or another connects itself with the Church and its ministry, has to be explained and discounted on these lines. It cannot be traced to Christ, and therefore it is not Christian; it can

NEW TESTAMENT CHRISTIANITY ii

be traced to other sources, and when we know what these are we understand it, and can rate it at its true value. It is not necessary to discuss this method of study here. Its right is unquestioned, and, though Hke all new things it is apt to go to some heads with intoxicating power, it has brought light to a few dark places in the New Testament, and has doubtless more to bring. The point at present is that it emphasises certain differences which exist in the New Testament, differences which (it asserts) may amount to a direct contradiction of essential Christian truth.

No one, it will be admitted, can deny that the New Testament has variety as well as unity. It is the variety which gives interest to the imity. The reality and power of the unity are in exact proportion to the variety; we feel how potent the unity must be which can hold all this variety together in the energies of a common life. The question raised by every demonstration of the undeniable differences which characterise the New Testament is. What is the vital force which triumphs over them all? What is it in which these people, differing as widely as' they do, are vitally and fundamentally at one, so that through all their differences they form a brotherhood, and are conscious of an indissoluble spiritual bond? There can be no doubt that that which unites them is a common relation to Christ — a. common faith in Him involving common religious convictions about Him. Such at any rate is the opinion of the writer, and it is the purpose of the following pages to give the proof of it in detail. Everywhere in the New Testament, it will be shown, we are in contact with a religious life which is determined throughout by Christ. Be the difference between the various witnesses what they will, there is no difference on this point. In the relations of God and man, everything turns upon Christ and upon faith in Him. There is no Christianity known to the New Testament except that in which He has a place all His own, a place of absolute significance, to which there is no analogy elsewhere. We do not raise here the question whether this is right or wrong, whether it agrees or does not agree with the mind or intention of Christ Himself — this is reserved for subsequent treatment: all we are at present concerned with is the fact. It is not assumed, but it will appear as the unquestionable result of the detailed examination, that Christianity never existed in the world as a religion in which men shared the faith of Jesus, but was from the very beginning, and amid all undeniable diversities, a religion in which Jesus was the object of faith. To all believers Jesus belonged to the divine as truly as to the human sphere. In the practical sense of believing in Him they all confessed His Godhead. This is the fact which we now proceed to prove and illustrate.

CHRIST IN PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN PREACHING

Our investigation of the evidence naturally begins with the accounts of the primitive Christian preaching in Acts. Fortunately for our purpose we have no critical questions to encounter here. Even those who hold with Renan that the early pages of Acts are the most unhistorical in the New Testament make an exception in favour of the passages with which we are concerned. 'Almost the only element,' says Schmiedel,^ 'that is historically important (in the early chapters of Acts) is the Christology of the speeches of Peter. This, however, is important in the highest degree. ... It is hardly possible

^ EncyclopcBdia Biblica, 42.

PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN PREACHING 13

not to believe that this Christology of the speeches of Peter must have come from a primitive source.' Perhaps what it is most important to notice is that from the verybeginning there really is a Christology. The question which Jesus put to His disciples while He was with them, Whom say ye that I am? was one which they could not help putting to themselves. If we hold that the Son, properly speaking, has no place in the gospel, but only the Father, then the question is a misleading one; it sets the mind off spiritually on a wrong track. This seems, in spite of ambiguities, to be the conviction of scholars like Harnack, who thinks that Christology is a mistake, and would lighten the distressed ship of the gospel by throwing it overboard.* He goes so far as to censure the primitive Church for turning aside from its proper duty — ^teaching men to observe all things that Jesus had commanded — ^to the apologetic task of proving that Jesus was the Christ.^ Our present question, we repeat, is not whether Peter and the other early preachers fulfilled their calling well or ill, but what it was that they actually did, and of this there can be no doubt. Their own relation to Jesus, as we see it in Acts, depends finally upon His Resurrection and His gift of the Spirit; and though these may be said in a sense to transcend history, they do not lie beyond experience. Peter had seen the Risen Jesus and received the Holy Spirit: in virtue of these experiences, Jesus had a place in his Hfe and his faith which belonged to Him alone. He was both Lord and Christ, and there was nothing in the rehgious world of the apostle that was not henceforth determined by Him. It is this religious significance of Jesus, rather than the Christology of Peter, in the strict sense of the term, which it is our purpose to exhibit.

The apostle starts in his preaching from the historical

^Das Wesen des Christentums, 79 f. ^ Dogmengeschichte, i. 57 f.

person of Jesus, and appeals to his hearers to confirm what he says: 'Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God unto you by miracles and portents and signs which God wrought through Him, as you yourselves know' (Acts 2 ^'2). We cannot tell what precisely was the significance to Peter of the wonderful works of Jesus, which are here assumed to be matter of common knowledge; the expression 'a, man approved of God' is somewhat indefinite, and need not mean that Jesus was demonstrated by these works to be the Messiah. In point of fact, the characteristic of this primitive Christianity is not the beUef that Jesus was the Christ, but the belief that He is the Christ. He was while on earth what all men had seen and known — a man approved of God by His might in word and deed; He is now what the preaching of the apostles declares Him to be — ^both Lord and Christ. This preaching is not, indeed, independent of the historical life of Jesus. When a man was chosen to take the place of Judas, and to be associated with the eleven as a witness of the Resurrection, he was chosen from the men 'who have companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and went out among us, beginning from the baptism of John unto the day that He was received up from us' (Acts i ^^ *)• The criticism which would have us believe that from the Resurrection onv/ard the Jesus of history was practically displaced by an ideal Christ of faith is beside the mark. The Christ of faith was the Jesus of history, and no one was regarded as qualified to bear witness to the Christ unless he had had the fullest opportunity of knowing Jesus. Nevertheless, Jesus is demonstrated to be the Christ and is preached in that character, not merely or even mainly on the ground of what He had said and done on earth, but on the ground of His exaltation to God's right hand, and His gift of the Holy Spirit. It is in this exaltation and