The gospel and the modern man

Front matter

SHAILER MATHEWS

Class

Book.

Chapter I Pagb

The Gospel of the New Testament . . . . i The gospel in our modern society. I. The question of method. The distinction between Christianity as a contemporary religion and the gospel. The method of a positive evangelical theology. — II. The gospel as contained in the New Testament, i . In the Synoptic Gospels. The teaching of Jesus. Place of Apocalyptic in his teaching. His messianic self-consciousness. 2. The teaching of the apostles. Christ as a deliverer from Satan, sin, and death. 3. Is there more than one gospel in the New Testament? The relation of Paul to Jesus one of elaboration rather than of fundamental difference. 4. The function of Apocalyptic. — III. The gospel in its New Testament form involves historical elements, i. The historical experiences of Jesus and the apostles. 2. The gospel as the product of historical development: (a) Messianism as a world-view ; ((5) Two final thoughtforces of the Jewish social mind ; (<:) Sacrifice ; (<^) Social ideals of the ancient world. — IV. The gospel in the New Testament although eschatological not wholly other-worldly.

CHAPTER II The Modern Man 35

Elements common to the New Testament and modern times. I. Four fundamental differences between the

vii viii CONTENTS

PAGE

two periods. I. The modern age primarily scientific and controlled by the conception of process. The struggle toward free personality. The supremacy of the historical spirit. 2. God now conceived of as immanent in universal process rather than as a monarch. The question of miracle. 3. The modern world filled with a sense of social solidarity. Differences between such conceptions and the social inequalities of the New Testament period. 4. The modern world demands a scientific and empirical basis of truth as contrasted with authority and metaphysics. Universality of this attitude of mind. Difficulties arising from these four classes of differences. — II. Who is the modern man? i. Not necessarily contemporary persons. 2. Nor merely the man in revolt against the past. 3. The modern man is he who is controlled by the forces making To-morrow. — III. Objections to this definition, i. It gives too little prominence to theological reconstruction. 2. It gives too much prominence to theology.

Chapter III

Why should we attempt to bring the gospel rather than a revised Christian system to the modern man? I. Two current methods of adjusting the gospel to our modern age. I. The method of literalism and its dangers. 2. The method of a philosophy of religion indifferent to the New Testament. — II. The method of historical resolution and interpretative equivalents, i. The method in general. 2. Messianism as the interpretative and systematizing concept. 3. Result of such process as expressing the content of the gospel. 4. The content of the gospel one of life rather than of philosophy. — III. Doctrine-making as a social process. The method of finding equivalents for the constructive and interpretative conception of the New Testament, i. The equivalent for the sovereignty of God. 2. The equivalent for escha-

CONTENTS IX tology as a method of portraying: (a) the teleology of social evolution ; (3) personal immortality and resurrection ; {c) causality in the moral order. 3. The equivalent for messianic salvation. — IV. The gospel as a message of salvation, an exposition of the possibilities of the spiritual life and order. Forecast of further discussion.

Chapter IV

The gospel conceives of Jesus as primarily a savior rather than a teacher ; as historical rather than as ideal. I. The gospel as amenable to the laws governing historical investigation, i. Universal recognition of the historical aspect of the gospel. Radical criticism. 2. The gospels as historical documents. 3. The gospels as records of primitive Christian faith rather than of objective facts. The case of the resurrection of Jesus. — 11. The Jesus of history, i. In the Synoptic Gospels. 2. In the Pauline literature. 3. In the Johannine literature. General conclusion. — III. The Christ of experience, i. The content of the term " Christ." 2. Jesus as the embodiment of the absolute moral supremacy of the spiritual life. In what sense he was sinless. 3. Jesus as the object of religious worship. 4. An existential conception of the person of Christ demanded by judgment of his moral worth. The New Testament explanations of his person. — IV. Modern equivalents of the Hellenistic doctrine of the two natures. A Christological creed inevitable for the modern man. Evangelicalism as distinguished from orthodoxy.

X CONTENTS

Chapter V Page

The universal sense of weakness. I. The problem of physical evil, i . Satan as an explanation of evil. 2. The immanence of God and evil. — II. Is God Love ? i . The prior question as to the existence of God. 2. The problem of evil: (i) The answer of Christian Science; (2) The answer of Jesus. 3. What is deliverance from evil? — III. The gospel and pessimism, i. The growth of pessimism. 2. The indifference of the " superman." — IV. The courage of the cross.

Chapter VI

The place of sin in life. I. The nature of sin. I. The teaching of Jesus. 2. The teaching of Paul. 3. The modern equivalent for the evangelic conception of sin. Corporate sin. 4. Three alarming facts; the ease, the socialization, and the pleasure of sin. — II. The evangelic warning against sin. i. The gospel's exposition of the danger of sin. The modern man's conception of punishment. 2. Sin as the violation of God's will. 3. The reasonableness of the belief in the punishment of sin. 4. The power of Jesus to awake moral shame. — HI. Deliverance from sin as a spiritual process, i. Deliverance of sin not identical with complete moral perfection. 2. The Pauline doctrine of justification of faith. The regenerate power of the divine spirit appropriated through faith in Jesus as Christ. — IV. The question of the moral order involved in the forgiveness of sin. The Pauline doctrine of atonement. — V. The doctrine of the atonement in the history of Christianity: i. The early conceptions of ransom, sacrifice, and satisfaction; 2. The permanent element in the Christian consciousness lying back of theories of the atonement. — VI. The significance of the death of Christ to the modern man. i. His death as an exposition of the justice of the moral order: Ci3 As

CONTENTS XI

PAGE

involvedin the socialization of other effects of sin ; (2) As regards suffering resulting from altruistic service. 2. His suffering a testimony to the divine love: (i) Jesus' faith in such love ; (2) What is really meant by the forgiveness of sins ; (3) The resurrection as a complement of the death of Christ. 3. The death of Christ as an exposition of the ethical unity of God. — VII. The forgiveness of sins positive as well as negative.

Chapter VII

A belief in immortality is the answer of the race to the challenge of death. 1. The place of death in the New Testament, i . Hebrew and Jewish views. 2. Early Christian conception of the resurrection and of death as a punishment of sin. — II. The a priori objection to the resurrection weakened by the following considerations: I. A belief in immortality involved in our knowledge of life ; 2. The spiritual individual rather than society the outcome of the evolutionary process ; 3. Argument from the subliminal self ; 4. Prospect of scientific demonstration of the future life. — III. The resurrection of Jesusj.

1. Starting-point of the faith of the early disciples.

2. Hypothetical explanations of this belief. — IV. The content of the disciples' experience of the risen Christ. I. Pauline beliefs the point of departure. 2. The gospels' account of the resurrection as compared with the Pauline.

3. The resurrection as distinguished from the ascension. — V. The resurrection of Jesus as an exposition of the finality of the spiritual life. I. The resurrection more than a mere wonder. 2. Its significance to the modern man.

XU CONTENTS

Chapter VIII Page

Summary of the preceding discussion. I. The general grounds for the alleged impracticability of the gospel. I. An oriental religion. 2. Its individualism. — II. Specific grounds for denial of its practicability, i. Its appeal to rewards and punishments. 2. Will to power vs. love. 3. Love inferior to justice. 4. Excessive ethical idealism. 5. Alleged ad interim ethics. 6. The fundamental struggle between the non-religious modern man and spiritual order.

Chapter IX

The gospel must submit to the test of immediate efficiency. I. The meaning of salvation, i. In the teaching of Jesus. The identity of the eternal life with the spiritual life, to gain which is to be saved. 2. In the teaching of Paul. Life in the Spirit and in Christ identical with the triumph of the spiritual life. — II. The psychology of the spiritual life. i. The gospel as "suggestion." 2. The gospel as the ideal governing religious impulse. 3. The gospel as presenting the faith evoking Jesus. — III. The gospel as a way to spiritual regeneration through the spirit of God. i. The spiritual life not to be explained wholly in terms of psychology. 2. Religion as a search for reconciliation with God. 3. Moral regeneration through spiritual life, because of reconciliation and union with the Holy Spirit. — IV. The continuity of Christian experience as an expression of the spiritual life despite doctrinal variations.

CONTENTS Xlll

Chapter X Page

I. The social significance of the spiritual life. i. The kingdom of God in the teaching of Jesus. 2. The struggle between the spiritual and the materialistic orders. — 11. The power of socialized hatred. i. The social power of the gospel commensurate with its power to rouse a hatred of sin. 2. The place of tolerance in the spiritual life. — III. The function of the church as the social expression of the spiritual life resulting from the gospel. I. The modern man's obligation to the church. 2. The development of social sympathy. 3. The socializing of the spiritual life, the supreme social function of the church. 4. The spiritualizing of the new formative forces in society. 5. The social meaning of the cross. 6. The insistence on faith in the working of God in society. — IV. The problem of a divided church. Conclusion.

Index 329

Chapter I

Is the gospel of the New Testament to be "the power of God unto salvation" for the modem man? Or must it be replaced by a philosophy of religious values that reduces the historical Jesus to a creature of the unwarranted faith of Galilean fishermen, and changes the church into a polite audience listening to discussions of social reform ?

These questions are not merely rhetorical. Christianity was founded upon the Christ of the New Testament. The history of the church is the history of an attempt to make that Christ the inspiration for Godlike living and the basis of an assurance of divine forgiveness. Philosophies have come and

B I gone, theologies have been supplanted by newer doctrines, but the gospel of a way of salvation revealed by a real Jesus has been the perennial source of constructive Christian experience. Now, however, we are told that the gospel in its original New Testament sense cannot be combined with the other beliefs of modem men and is to be replaced by some religious message more consonant with modern thinking. We can see on all sides tendencies which promise the fulfillment of this prophecy. We do well, therefore, to raise the question frankly whether the modern man's attitude towards evangelical Christianity must be essentially skeptical and negative, and whether the gospel can be truly a force in our modem world.

The situation is as critical for the church as for the modern world. Unless the gospel can control the formative men of to-day, it will require more than one generation to regain the ground Christianity will lose. The gospel, it is true, will remain the possession of the theologically simple minded; it will continue to furnish the individualistic morality of our common life; but it will not keep men and women who have come under the influence of the truly modern world from pessimism, moral indifference, and the practice and philosophy of force. The

THE GOSPEL OF THE NEW TESTAMENT J

church needs these formative lives. Society needs them even more. Evangelized leaders are as indispensable as evangelized masses. If without their influence the church will grow intellectually and socially flaccid, without their power to infuse the gospel into social transformation society will grow materialistic. For a man, even though he be rich and learned and formative, needs to be saved. And a social order, even though it build transcontinental railroads and turn its forests into books, needs to be made the kingdom of God.

I

At the very outset of our discussion we are confronted by the question of method. Where shall the gospel be found? Modem Christianity as a religion is an historically developed system of doctrines, each the product of a particular period. Far more than the non-technical student of our religion is aware, this body of dogma is the common property of all Christendom. It is embodied in the various symbols of Protestantism, but Protestants gained it from the Roman church; the Roman church and the Greek church as well drew it from those ecumenical councils which recall not only the worldwide controversies they sought to settle, but also the time when all Christians were at one except as they were heretics or schismatics.

Although ecumenical theology is derived from scriptural teachings, it need only be read in the creeds of Constantinople and Chalcedon to be recognized as something different from the gospel of the New Testament. Every word of the creedal sentences is a shibboleth intended to separate some independent thinker or school of thinkers from the Catholic church. But is this Christianity the religion of Christ ? And is it to be the starting point of that theological reconstruction we are all but unanimously agreed must be undertaken if our rapidly growing educated class is to be kept loyal to the church? No questions are discussed more earnestly or with more learning. And the more we know of what might be called the natural history of this Christianity of ecclesiastical authority, the more are we convinced that it is the descendant of a numerous ancestry of which the gospel of the New Testament is only one member. In our inherited corpus of doctrine we Can see the survivals of Greek philosophy, Roman distrust of logical thoroughness, the rites and mysteries of an orientalized Graeco-Roman world, mediaeval politics, and even the traces of Indian theosophy and asceticism.

This is not to say that such eclecticism and solidification of religious survivals into a religion nucleated around the gospel could have been avoided, or that on the whole it is to be lamented. For my part I cannot see how the gospel ever could have become the religion of a Hellenized civilization without being clothed in Greek concepts. Nor could it have become a power in the mediaeval world except it had been expressed in mediaeval terms and methods. The only thing that need here concern us beyond the undeniable fact that dogma has a pedigree is the question as to whether such a theological system shall be our point of departure. In a search for the method by which the gospel can be made more influential in our modem world, shall we recast inherited beliefs, or shall we begin with the New Testament itself, and, as it were, repeat in our own day the process by which the gospel has always been brought into intellectual harmony and expression in earlier periods ?

I have no hesitation in declaring for the second alternative.

The study of the history of doctrine is illuminating if a man would gain a conception of the actual situation created by orthodoxy to which he must adjust his own message. It is helpful in developing religious interest and theological balance ; it is indispensable as indicating the process by which we may bring the gospel to our modern life. But it is not a point of departure for theological reconstruction. The great demand to-day is not for a manipulation of our inherited theology into some form more acceptable to our modern ways of thinking. It is rather for a frank disregard of inherited dogma except by way of historical evaluation and a return to the primitive gospel itself ; to the gospel that founded Christianity, conquered the Roman Empire, and embodies the continuous realities of the spiritual life. True, the apperceptive mass of doctrine — if the expression may be pardoned — is one element in the situation to which the gospel must be presented in that it affects the method of presentation, and suggests caution in adopting a radical program of illumination. But this mass of doctrine does not constitute in itself the substance of a truly spiritual Christianity. A sense of the truth of this assertion is the real cause of the widespread demand to "go back to Christ," or, rather, to bring Christ back to us. Inherited orthodoxy is so colored by outgrown philosophies, prescientific conceptions, outgrown political ideals and prejudices, as to be unusable by many an earnest man and woman. To remodel the old house is more expensive than to tear it down and use such materials of it as are sound in erecting a new building.

THE GOSPEL OF THE NEW TESTAMENT f

Here is one characteristic of a positive, evangelical theology : it uses the material which theologies of the past have employed. It would throw away nothing which its analysis of the doctrinal development may discover to be more than concepts used to interpret eternal realities to a given age. But it starts with the strictly evangelic data which have been worked into the corpus of doctrine, rather than with that corpus itself. It would use the bits of glass of the mosaic figure, but it would not seek above all to preserve the figure.

II

What then is that gospel of the New Testament which we would bring to our modem world?

Sometimes we speak of it as if it were the Sermon on the Mount, or some philosophy of religion, or some general message about deliverance in Heaven. There is truth in each of these conceptions, for each embodies some aspect or implication of the gospel; but the definition which we seek is not in any of them. If we would formulate the gospel with precision, we must place ourselves back at the moment when Christianity was first preached as a distinctive message. Our method must be historical, not dogmatic.

I. In the Synoptic Gospels we find the gospel as first announced, a message of the approaching fulfillment of a religious-social hope — the establishment of God's own kingdom through one whom God had appointed and empowered for the task. John the Baptist did not undertake to define what was meant by Christ or the kingdom or the Day of Judgment. He appealed to the definite expectations of those to whom he spoke. His emphasis was not laid upon a new doctrine, but on the fulfillment of the noblest hope of Judaism. God was about to act. The Judge was at the doors. The Christ, although they did not know him, was already in the midst of the people whom he would deliver. To prepare themselves for his Day and his new kingdom, men had only to repent, be baptized, and live a life of social helpfulness.

When Jesus took up the work which John was forced to abandon, he began with the same message : The kingdom of God is at hand. Men were to believe that message. But while with John the expectation was centered on the Day of Judgment with which the kingdom was to be inaugurated, with Jesus it was centered upon the deliverance which was to be accomplished. It was good news — the gospel. Therein he changed a negative to a positive hope.

Jesus was, however, not content to announce that the prayer for national deliverance was about to be answered. He knew that God's deliverance could not be national and ethnic, but was to be personal and social. The kingdom which God was to establish could be enjoyed only by those who were like its King. Thus there grew up his exposition of himself as the Son of Man, the embodiment of the ideal life, and the proclamation of the conditions under which this life is to be lived in an evil world.

Four joyous truths combined to make the message which he delivered ; God can be trusted as a Father to save his children from Satan, sin, and death; the kingdom of God is a certain and supreme good for those who seek forgiveness of the Father ; eternal life is a life of love, in quality like that of God ; and this divine life is revealed in Jesus himself, as a forgiving ministry of love to others, even though that ministry brings loss and death.

It is difficult to say which of these four elements is the more important, but as the substance of an evangelical message the last was the more characteristic of the religion which Jesus inaugurated. The original gospel of Jesus was the product of a life-process — the self-revelation of its author. He was living the life of the Spirit. Distressed by circumstance though he was, he was the type of that kingdom lO THE GOSPEL AND THE MODERN MAN

which was to come. His teachings were not the result of speculation but of experience. To believe his teaching as to the Fatherliness of God, the supremacy of righteousness, faith, and love, was to listen to exposition of the supreme values of life by one who was able to make them supreme in his own living. For a man to make them controlling in one's own life was to be morally like Jesus, possessed like him of a joyous, emancipating trust in the Father and a self-sacrificing love for men. As Jesus himself declared, it was to be perfect like God. The sense of union which Jesus had with God was the source of the Truth which was to be men's Way to Life. Whether or not they used the term, when men believed this they believed that Jesus was indeed the Messiah.

The program, if we may use such a term, in which Jesus set forth this spiritual deliverance born of a unique experience of God was to a considerable extent the messianic hope of the Pharisees, but that program is never obtrusive in his teaching. The early Christians attributed to him certain messianic expressions which he himself probably never used, at least in the precise form in which they stand in the New Testament and in the other early Christian writings; but it is not difficult for a thoroughly

THE GOSPEL OF THE NEW TESTAMENT II

objective criticism to dissociate such words from those which were really his. Apocalyptic his teachings indubitably were, but it is possible to distort and overemphasize the importance of this element. The kingdom of God was still future, but he, its founder and herald, was present and its spiritual life could be lived in untoward surroundings if men only dared. If he expected the kingdom would be established by catastrophe — and after all legitimate allowance is made for apostolic coloring in the reports of his words it is not improbable that this was in his expectations — such a catastrophe was not central in his teachings. Indeed it all but disappears before an impartial criticism of the sources. He looked across the chasm that separated the two ages recognized by current messianism, and centered the thought of his followers on the present forgiving love of God, the new social order the Father would establish, the freedom, the love, the joyousness by which it was to be characterized. This new sort of life, the Age- or eternal-life, he embodied and sought so to describe that his followers might seek and gain it. The eschatological pictures which we find in Jewish literature, like the Book of Enoch and the other apocalypses, were not the content, but the clothing of his message. They might all be omitted and his teaching would still be the richest of all the sages. To change the figure, they were the point of contact, or rather the point of departure, of his teaching.

But one thing cannot be overlooked by any unprejudiced interpreter : Jesus believed that he was the Christ. Not the Christ in the strictly Jewish sense that in the future he would establish Judaism and judge the nations, but in the deeper sense that he saw himself embodying the very heart of a redemptive, regenerating God. The spirit of the Lord was upon him, empowering him to minister to the needs of those who needed divine assistance and to save those who needed to be delivered from Satan, sin, and death.

2. When one passes from the teaching of Jesus to that of the apostles, he is conscious of a change of atmosphere. That which was secondary or implicit in the teaching of Jesus becomes prominent with Peter and Paul. Jesus was Christ the Lord. That was the simple creed of the first Christians, grounded not only on their acquaintance with Jesus, but on their experience of the Spirit, and primarily upon Jesus' character, power, and resurrection from the dead. Once having recognized in him this messianic value, like true children of their time they forecast his future in its light. His earthly life became of less importance as they compared it with the future. Its

THE GOSPEL OF THE l^W TESTAMENT 1 3

supreme humiliation was not that merely of poverty, defeat, and death. It was also the humiliation of a heavenly being who humbled himself to be a man and sufferer. Yet even thus he had been the one who was to deliver Israel. Although his real messianic work was yet in the future, it was daily drawing nearer. At any moment they believed the trumpet might sound, the dead rise from Sheol, the Judgment Seat be established, the New Jerusalem descend from Heaven, the Christ conquer his enemies, and his church be called to an eternity of bliss. Because they believed him to be thus superhuman, they worshiped him as the Lord of their lives and their future. Their gospel thus did not center about a dead, defeated Jesus, but about the triumphant, triumph-sharing Christ. It was a message not of the finality of suffering and self-repression, but of the supremacy of the spiritual surplus of the Christlike life. For those who look at the central rather than the outer elements of the thought of both Jesus and Paul, there is no divergence sufficient to break an essential imity in this elaboration of the gospel. To both alike it is a message of a personal and social salvation revealed and wrought through Jesus by God. If we analyze Paul's message as it appears or is involved in his writings, the messianic work which was to be accomplished by Jesus the Christ was the same as that expected by all the early Christians, a divine deliverance from the same three great and terrible enemies we find in the teaching of Jesus: from Satan, who had established his kingdom in the world and who was bringing misery of all sorts upon men, both bad and good alike; from Sin, that half -personified principle which held humanity in its power because humanity began in sinful Adam, and which no man could escape because all men were *' carnal"; and from death, the horror of which ran throughout all Jewish life.

This message of deliverance involved many subordinate matters. Time was divided into two ages : the first, in which the Prince of Evil reigned, and the followers of Christ were to expect sorrow ; the second the Age which was to come in which Christ would establish the kingdom of God — an age in which the wicked were to suffer and the righteous were to be happy. This new age was to be ushered in by the Day of Judgment. The writers of the Jewish apocalypses described this awful day in detail and it was no less real to the early church. But with this difference : the apostles, like Jesus, made the basis of eternal destinies then to be fixed, not one of Jewish or Gentile birth, but rather the actual possession of the sort of life which could make membership in the kingdom possible. With the Christian the message of the judgment was fundamentally a message of deliverance by transformation of the individual by God's Spirit into the likeness of Jesus. The man who had accepted Jesus as Christ and had consequently received the spirit of Christ into his soul awaited calmly this day of terror to others. He was already acquitted. The Judge was his Savior, in whom he trusted. Death would separate him from the flesh, the agent of sin, and the resurrection was to save him from both Satan and death. The certainty of this triumph was assured by the incontestable experience bom of faith in the goodness of God, and by the historic fact that the Jesus who had embodied this life of the Spirit had shown the way to the divine threefold deliverance.

It is only a hasty estimate that fails to see that the deliverance thus foretold by both Jesus and Paul is positive rather than negative, ethical rather than magical. Although in its complete sense it was yet future, germinantly it was already a present possession. Salvation did not mechanically come to a man ; he waited, a new creation, for the coming kingdom. Satan might buffet, but Satan could bring only temporary sorrow; his age was about to end.