The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour Part 6

but it is more natural to take it in its ordinary sense. When Paul, in his second Epistle to Timothy (iii. 16), says, "Every scripture inspired of G.o.d is also profitable for teaching," this is the usual mode of expression applied to the Scriptures of the Old, not of the New Testament (John v.

39), and would merely signify inspired, breathed in, not revealed in each word and letter.

In any case we learn this much from a comparative study of religions, that the majority of them have their holy books, which are usually the oldest remains of literature, oral or written, that they possess. They look upon the authors of these Scriptures as extraordinary, even superhuman beings; and the later theologians in order to remove from the minds of the people every doubt as to their truth, devised the most ingenious theories, to show how these books were not produced by men, but were merely seen by them, and how in the end even the words and letters of the original text were dictated to certain individuals. It is imagined, therefore, that the Deity condescended to speak Hebrew or Greek in the dialect of that period, and that therefore no letter or accent may be disturbed.

This would, of course, make the matter very easy, and this is no doubt the reason why the theory has found so many adherents. It is only strange that no founder of any religion ever appears to have felt the necessity of leaving anything in his own writing either to his contemporaries or to posterity. No one has ever attempted to prove that Moses wrote books, nor has it ever been said of Christ that he composed a book (John vii. 15).

The same is true of Buddha, in spite of the legend of the alphabets; and of Mohammed we know from himself that he could neither read nor write.

What we possess, therefore, in the way of holy Scriptures is always the product of a later generation, and subject to all the hazards involved in oral tradition. This was not to be avoided, and ought not to surprise us.

If we attempt ourselves to write down without the aid of books or memoranda, occurrences or conversations of which we were witnesses fifty years ago, we shall see how difficult it is, and how untrustworthy is our memory. We may be entirely veracious, but it by no means follows that we are also true and trustworthy. Let any one try to describe the incidents of the Austro-Prussian War without referring to books, and he will see how, with the best intentions, names and dates will waver and reel. When did the German National a.s.sembly elect the German Emperor? Who were the members of the regency? Who was Henry Simon, and were there one or more Simons, like the nine Simons in the New Testament? Who can answer these questions now without newspapers, and yet these are matters only fifty years old, and at the time were well known to all of us. Was it different with the Christians in the year 50 A.D.? It was therefore very natural that a certain inspiration or preeminent endowment should be demanded for the authors of the Gospels; if some do so still, it is on their own responsibility, just as if we demanded for the mother of Mary the same immaculate birth as for Mary herself, _et sic ad infinitum_. These are for the most part merely excuses for human unbelief. Nothing proves the veracity of the authors of the Gospels so clearly as the natural, often derogatory words which they use of themselves, or even more of the apostles. These did not understand, as they say, the simplest parables or teachings; they were jealous of one another; Peter even denied the Lord; in short, the authors of the Gospels cannot be credited with sinlessness and infallibility, supposing that they were really the apostles.

If they were not, then all these difficulties of our own making disappear.

We then find in the Gospels just what we might expect: no ingeniously prepared statements without inconsistencies and without contradictions, but simple, natural accounts, such as were current from the first to the third generations in certain circles or localities, and even according to the attachment of certain families to the personal narrations of one or another of the apostles. We must not forget that in the first generation the necessity for a record was not even felt. Children were still brought up as Jews, for Christianity did not seek to destroy, only to fulfil; and as all the Scriptures, that is the Old Testament, were derived from G.o.d and were good for instruction, they continued in use for teaching without further question. But in the second and third generations the breach between Jews and Christians became wider and wider, and the number of those who had known Christ and the apostles, less and less; the need of books especially for the instruction of children consequently became more urgent, and the four Gospels thus arose by a natural process in answer to a natural and even irresistible want. The difficulties involved even in the smallest contradiction between the Gospels on a theory of inspiration thus disappear of themselves; nay, their discrepancies become welcome, because they entirely exclude every idea of intentional deviation, and simply exhibit what the historical conditions would lead us to expect. Of what harm is it, for instance, that Matthew (viii. 28), in relating the expulsion of the devils in the land of the Gergesenes, speaks of two possessed men, while Mark (v. 2) knows only of one among the Gadarenes?

Mark also speaks only of unclean spirits, while Matthew speaks of devils.

Mark and Luke know the name of the sufferer, Legion; Matthew does not mention the Roman name. These are matters of small import in human traditions and records; in divine revelations they would be difficult to explain.

But it becomes still more difficult when we come to expressions which are really significant and essential for Christianity, for even in these we find inconsistencies. What can be more important than the pa.s.sage in which Christ asks his disciples, "But whom say ye that I am," and Peter answers, "Thou art the Messiah" (Mark viii. 29). That was a purely Jewish-Christian answer, and Jesus accepts it as the perfect truth, which, however, should still remain secret. In (Matthew xvi. 16) Peter says not only, "Thou art the Messiah," but adds, "Son of the living G.o.d." This makes a great difference, and the remarkable thing is, that later on Jesus only commands his disciples to keep secret that he, Jesus, was the Messiah, and says nothing of himself as the Son of G.o.d. So much has been written about other discrepancies in this pa.s.sage, particularly of the promise of the building of the church upon this rock (Peter), which is only found in (Matthew xvi.

18), that we have nothing further to say about it, unless it be that in Mark in this very pa.s.sage Jesus rebukes Peter because he thinks more of the world than of G.o.d, like so many of his later successors.

Let us bear in mind further that neither revelation nor divine inspiration was really necessary for recording most of the things related in the Gospels. The less, the better; for either the witnesses knew that Pilate was at the time governor in Palestine, that Caiaphas was high priest, and that Jairus was ruler of a synagogue, or they did not know it, and in that case we cannot a.s.sume that these things were revealed to them by G.o.d without irreverence. If, however, it is impossible that G.o.d should have inspired or sanctioned the historical part of the Gospels, why then the other part, which contains the teachings of Christ? Is it not much better, much more honest and trustworthy for the writers to have communicated them to us, as they knew and understood them (and that they occasionally misunderstood them they themselves quite honestly admit), than to have been supernaturally inspired for the purpose, and even to have received a revelation in the form of a theophany? Through such weak human ideas we merely drag the Real, the truly Divine, into the dust, and from whom do these ideas of a divine inspiration or revelation come, if not from men as they were everywhere, whether in India or Judea? Everywhere the natural is divine, the supernatural or miraculous is human.

Even for the Apostles and the authors of the Gospels there was only one revelation: that was the revelation through Christ; and this has an entirely different meaning. To understand this, however, we must glance at what we know of the intellectual movements of that time. The Jewish nation cherished two great expectations. The one was ancient and purely Jewish, the expectation of the Messiah, the anointed (Christ), who should be the political and spiritual liberator of the chosen but enslaved people of Israel. The other was also Jewish, but transfused with Greek philosophy, the recognition of the word (Logos) as the Son of G.o.d, who should reconcile or unite humanity with G.o.d. The first declares itself most clearly, though not exclusively, in the three so-called Synoptic Gospels, the second in the so-called Gospel of John. But it is worthy of note how often these apparently remote ideas are found combined in the Gospels. The idea that a man can be the Son of G.o.d was blasphemy in a strict Jewish view, and it was for this reason that the last question of the high priest was, "I adjure thee by the living G.o.d, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of G.o.d" (Matthew xxvi. 63). The Jewish Messiah could never be the Son of G.o.d, the Word, in the Christian sense of the term, but only in the sense in which many nations have called G.o.d the Father of men.

In this sense, also, the Jews say (John viii. 4), "We have one father, even G.o.d," while they start back affrighted at the idea of a divine sons.h.i.+p of man. The Messiah, according to Jewish doctrine, was to be the son of David (Matthew xxii. 42), as the people appear to have called Jesus (Mark x. 47, xv. 39), and in order to counteract this view Christ himself said, in a pa.s.sage of great historical import: "How then doth David in spirit call the Messiah Lord, saying, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand till I make thine enemies thy footstool? If then David called him Lord, how is he his son?" With these words the true Messiah publicly renounced his royal descent from David, whilst he immediately laid claim to a much higher one. Of what use is it, then, that the author of the Gospel takes such pains in the first chapter to trace Joseph's descent genealogically from David, in spite of the fact that he does not represent Joseph himself as the natural father of Jesus?

These contradictions are quite conceivable in an age strongly influenced by different intellectual currents, but they would be intolerable in a revealed or divinely inspired book. All becomes intelligible, clear, and free from contradiction, if we see in the Synoptic Gospels that which they profess to be-narratives of what had long been told and believed in certain circles about the teaching and person of Christ. I say, what they themselves profess to be; for can we believe, that if the authors had really witnessed a miraculous vision, if every word and every letter had been whispered to them, they would have made no mention of it? They relate so many wonders, why not this one, the greatest of all? But it is not enough that they do not claim any miraculous communication for themselves or their works. Luke states in plain words the character of his gospel, "For as much as many have taken in hand to draw up a narrative concerning those matters which have been fulfilled among us, even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eye-witnesses, and ministers of the word (Logos); it seemed good to me also, having traced the course of all things accurately from the first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty concerning the things wherein thou wast instructed."

What can be clearer? Theophilus had evidently received a not very systematic Christian training, such as was possible under the conditions of that time. As Luke says, there were even then several works on the matters of common belief among Christians. In order, however, that Theophilus may have a trustworthy knowledge of them, his friend (whether Luke or any one else) determines to communicate them to him in regular order, as they had been imparted to him, without a.s.serting that he had himself been from the beginning an eye-witness of them, or a minister of the Word. It is apparent, therefore, that the writer rests upon a tradition derived from eye-witnesses, and that he had even investigated everything with care. Is it credible that he would not have made mention of a revelation or a theophany, had either fallen to his lot? He also lays stress upon his orderly arrangement, which probably implies that even at that time there were the same discrepancies in the sequence of events that we observe in the four Gospels, to say nothing about the numerous apocryphal Gospels. This is just what we as historians expected, in fact it could scarcely be otherwise. Christ's message had first to pa.s.s through the colloquial process, the leavening process of oral transmission; then followed the reduction to written form, and it is this that we have, apart from the corruptions of copyists. It is difficult to conceive how it could have been otherwise, and still we are not content with these facts, and imagine that we could have done it much better ourselves.

When we take the Synoptic Gospels one by one, we find in Luke the most complete and probably the latest sequence of all the important events; in Mark, the shortest and probably most original narrative, which only contains that which seemed to him undisputed or of the greatest importance; while Matthew, on the contrary, clearly presents the tradition formed and established among the Jewish Christians and believers in the Messiah.

If we may speak of communities at this early time, the community for which the first Gospel was intended manifestly consisted of converted Jews, who had recognised in Jesus their long-expected Messiah or Christ, and were, therefore, convinced that everything which had been expected of the Messiah came true in this Jesus. They went still farther. When they were once convinced that Jesus was the Messiah, many traditions arose which ascribed to him what he, if he were the Messiah, must have done. This is the pervading feature of the first Gospel, as every one who reads it carefully may easily be convinced. This alone explains the frequent and frank expression that this and that occurred "for thus it was written, and thus it was spoken by the prophet." Every idea of intentional invention of Messianic fulfilments, which has so often been a.s.serted, disappears of itself in our interpretation of the origin of the Gospel. It must be so, people thought, and they soon told themselves and their children that it had been so, and all in good faith, for otherwise Jesus could not have been the expected Messiah.

If we examine the gospel of Matthew from this historical standpoint in detail, we find that it begins with an entirely unnecessary genealogy of Joseph, the ostensible father of Jesus. Then follows the birth, and this is confirmed in i. 22, "For all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet," namely, Isaiah (vii.

14), "Behold a maiden is with child and shall bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." This means simply that it will be the first-born son, and that he will be called "G.o.d is with us," and, therefore, certainly nothing supernatural.

The next story that the birth took place in Bethlehem, and that the wise men from the East saw the star over Bethlehem, is again founded on the prophet's word that the ruler of Israel would come from Bethlehem.

When the flight of Joseph and Mary to Egypt with the Christ child is told, it is again set forth in ii. 15, that what the prophet said might be fulfilled, "Out of Egypt have I called my son."

The ma.s.sacre of the children in Bethlehem, with all its difficulties in the eyes of the historian, finds a sufficient reason in verse 17 on the words which were spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, "A voice was heard in Rama, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children; and she would not be comforted, because they are not."

Later, when Joseph returns with the child and journeys to Nazareth, this too is explained by the words of the prophet, who said, "He shall be called a Nazarene."

On the false idea of the words of the prophet, that a Nazarene is an inhabitant of Nazareth, I shall say nothing here. Everything, even such popular errors, is quite intelligible from this point of view, and only shows how convinced the people were that Jesus was the Messiah, and therefore must have fulfilled everything which was expected of the Messiah. To us these fulfilments of the prophecy may not sound very convincing. But as a presentation of the ideas which then held sway over the people, and as proof of the grasp of the colloquial process, they are of great value to the historian.

The appearance of John the Baptist, too, is immediately explained by reference to prophetic words (iii. 3). And when Jesus, after the imprisonment of John, left his abode and removed to Capernaum, as was quite natural, this, likewise must have occurred (iv. 14-16) that certain words of Isaiah should be fulfilled.

There follows in the fifth to the seventh chapters the real kernel of Christian teaching in the sermon on the mount, and the announcement of the coming kingdom of G.o.d upon earth. Here we ask nothing more than a true statement, such as an apostle or his disciples were fully in a position to give us. No miraculous inspiration is needed for it; on the contrary, it would only injure for us the trustworthiness of the reporter. In the next chapters we read of the works done by Jesus, which were soon construed by the people as miracles, while in another place the evangelist sets the forgiveness of sins higher than all miracles, than all healing of the sick, and even declares this to be a power which G.o.d had given to men (ix.

8). Jesus himself often makes his healing power depend on the faith of the person to be healed, and of miraculous arts he says not a word (ix. 28).

Next follow the appointment and despatch of the disciples, and soon after those words, which are so significant for this Gospel (xi. 27), "All things are delivered unto me of my Father; and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the son willeth to reveal _him_." Here we have in a few words the true spirit, the true inspiration of the teaching which Christ proclaimed, that he was not only the Messiah or the son of David, but the true son of G.o.d, the Logos, which G.o.d willed when he willed man, the highest thought of G.o.d, the highest revelation of G.o.d, which was imparted in Jesus to blind humanity. We cannot judge of this so correctly as those who saw and knew Jesus in his corporeal existence, and found in him all those perfections, particularly in his life and conduct, of which human nature is capable. We must here rely on the evidence of his contemporaries who had no motive to discover in him, the son of a carpenter, the realisation on earth of the divine ideal of man, if this ideal had not stood realised in him, before their eyes, in the flesh. What is true Christianity if it be not the belief in the divine sons.h.i.+p of man, as the Greek philosophers had rightly surmised, but had never seen realised on earth? Here is the point, where the two great intellectual currents of the Aryan and Semitic worlds flow together, in that the long-expected Messiah of the Jews was recognised as the Logos, the true son of G.o.d, and that he opened or revealed to every man the possibility to become what he had always been, but had never before apprehended, the highest thought, the Word, the Logos, the Son of G.o.d. Knowing here means being. A man may be a prince, the son of a king, but if he does not know it, he is not so. Even so from all eternity man was the son of G.o.d, but until he really knew it, he was not so. The reporters in the Synoptic Gospels only occasionally recognise the divine sons.h.i.+p of man with real clearness, for in their view the practical element in Christianity was predominant, but in the end everything practical must be based upon theory or faith. Our duties toward G.o.d and man, our love for G.o.d and for man, are as nothing, without the firm foundation which is formed only by our faith in G.o.d, as the Thinker and Ruler of the world, the Father of the Son, who was revealed through him as the Father of all sons, of all men. Such sayings are especially significant in the Synoptic Evangelists, because it might appear as though they had not recognised the deepest mystery of the revelation of Christ, but were satisfied with the purely practical parts of his teachings.

Shortly after, when Jesus again proves his healing powers among the people, and the Pharisees persecute him because the people were more and more inclined to recognise in him the son of David, the Evangelist again declares (xii. 17) that all this occurred that the words of the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled, "Behold my servant, whom I have chosen, my beloved in whom my soul is well pleased; I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall declare judgment unto the Gentiles."

Then follow many of the profoundest and most beautiful parables which contain the secrets of Christ's teaching, and of which some, as we read, and not by any means the most obscure, remained unintelligible even to the disciples. Even at that time his fame had become so great, that on returning to his own birthplace, the people would scarcely believe that he was the same as the son of the carpenter, that his mother was named Mary, and his brothers, Jacob, Joseph, Simon, and Judas, who like his sisters were all still living. Yet among his own people he could accomplish but few works. The Gospel then goes on to relate that as Herod had caused John to be beheaded, Jesus again withdrew to a lonely place, probably to escape the persecutions of Herod. Then follow the really important chapters, full of teachings and of parables, intended to illumine these teachings and to bring them home to the people. Here we naturally do not expect any appeal to the prophets; on the contrary we often find a very bold advance beyond the ancient law or a higher interpretation of the ancient Jewish teachings. As soon, however, as we return to facts like the last journey to Jerusalem, and the arrest of Jesus through the treachery of Judas, the words immediately recur that all this came to pa.s.s that the Scriptures should be fulfilled (xxvi. 54). Even Jesus himself, when he commands his disciples to make no resistance, must have added the words, "But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be," which clearly refers to the famous prophecy of Isaiah in the fifty-third chapter. Even the thirty pieces of silver which were paid Judas for his betrayal, are considered necessary, that a prophesy of Jeremiah's may be fulfilled. But it seems that this prophesy is not to be found in Jeremiah, and must be sought in Zechariah (xi. 12, 13). Such a confusion might easily occur among the people, imperfectly acquainted with the text of the prophets. In this case, therefore, it is quite harmless; but how could it possibly occur in a revealed gospel? At the crucifixion of Jesus the garments are divided, and another pa.s.sage is immediately recalled, this time in a Psalm (xxii. 19), in which the poet says of himself that his enemies divided his garments between them, but there is no mention of the Messiah. Such an application of the words of the Psalm to Jesus is perfectly intelligible in the contemporary feeling of the Jewish people. Once convinced that Jesus was the Messiah or Christ, all the incidents of his life and death must necessarily remind them of the prophecies which had been current for years, and kept alive among them the hope of their deliverer. Such details were probably employed to deepen the conviction in themselves and others that Jesus was really the Messiah. This is all quite natural and comprehensible; but if we look at it with the idea that the writer was called and inspired by G.o.d, what must we say? First, in some cases there are plain errors which would be impossible in an infallible witness.

Secondly, must we believe that such events as the birth of Christ in Bethlehem and his betrayal by Judas took place merely in order that certain prophecies might be fulfilled? This would reduce the life of Christ to a mere phantasm and rob it of its entire historical significance. Or shall we a.s.sume (as some critics have done) that all these events were simply invented to prove the Messiahs.h.i.+p of Jesus?

From all these difficulties we escape when we recognise in the Gospels a record or deposit of what was developed in the first century in the consciousness of the Christians, and concerning the Gospel of Matthew in particular, Christians who were converts from Judaism. In this view everything that borders on intentional deceit drops away of itself. The facts remain as before, as the people had explained and arranged them.

According to Matthew and his successors, Christianity originated as is described in the Gospel according to Matthew. Many facts may in the minds and mouths of the people have a.s.sumed a more popular or legendary form; that was not to be avoided. We know how much this popular influence, or what I call the colloquial process, has infected the traditions of other nations, and it is very helpful to know this, in order to do justice to the Gospels. For how should this influence have been wanting just in the first and second centuries in Palestine? Everything becomes clear when we accept the historical view, supported by many parallel cases, of the origin of the Gospels in the mouths of the people. The tradition was just such as we should expect under the existing conditions. Of intentional deceit there is no further question. We cannot expect anything other or better than what we have, _i.e._ what the people, or the young Christian community, related about the life of the founder of the new religion, unless it were a record from the hand of the founder of our religion himself; for even the apostles are only depicted as men, and their comprehension is represented as purely human and often very fallible. When we speak of revelation, the term can only refer to the true revelation of the eternal truths through Jesus himself, as we find them in the Gospels, and the verity of which, even where it is somewhat veiled by the tradition, confers on it the character of revelation. For it is a fact which we should never forget, that even the best attested revelation, as it can only reach us in human setting and by human means, does not make truth, but it is truth, deeply felt truth, which makes revelation. Truth const.i.tutes revelation, not revelation truth. We therefore lose nothing by this view, but gain immensely, and are at once relieved from all the little difficulties which a laborious criticism thinks it discovers by a comparison of the Gospels with one another. The only difficulty that seems to remain is this, that the Synoptic Gospels are so often content to put the Jewish conception of Jesus as the Messiah, as the son of David and Abraham, and finally as the bodily son of G.o.d, in the foreground, and only hint at the leading and fundamental truth of Christ's teaching. We must never forget that the apostles were no philosophers, and the Logos idea in its full significance and historical development demands, for its correct understanding, a considerable philosophical training.

Here we are helped by the Fourth Gospel, which must decidedly be ascribed to Christians with more of Greek culture. That Greek ideas had penetrated into Palestine is best seen in the works of Philo Judaeus, the contemporary of Jesus. We cannot suppose that he stood alone, and other Jewish thinkers must like him have accepted the Logos idea as a solution of the riddle of the universe. Out of soil like this, permeated and fructified with such ideas, grew the Fourth Gospel. If we ever make it plain to ourselves that Jews who, like Philo, had adopted the Logos idea with all its consequences, necessarily recognised in the Logos the Son of G.o.d, the chosen of G.o.d (Luke xxiii. 35), the realised image of G.o.d, and then in the actual Jesus the incarnation or realisation, or rather the universalising of this image, the Fourth Gospel ascribed to John will become much clearer to us. Here lies the nucleus of true Christianity, in so far as it deals with the personality of Christ, and the relation of G.o.d to humanity. It is no longer said that G.o.d has made and created the world, but that G.o.d has thought and uttered the world. All existences are thoughts, or collectively the thought (Logos) of G.o.d, and this thought has found its most perfect expression, its truest word, in a man in Jesus. In this sense and in no other was Jesus the Son of G.o.d and the Word, as the Jews of Greek culture believed, and as the author of the Fourth Gospel believed, and as still later the young Athanasius and his contemporaries believed, and as we must believe if we really wish to be Christians. There is no other really Christian explanation of the world than that G.o.d thought and uttered it, and that man follows in life and thought the thoughts of G.o.d.

We must not forget that all our knowledge and hold of the world are again nothing but thoughts, which we transform under the law of causality into objective realities. It was this unswerving dependence on G.o.d in thought and life that made Jesus what he was, and what we should be if we only tried, viz., children of G.o.d. This light or this revelation s.h.i.+nes through here and there even in the Synoptic Gospels, though so often obscured by the Jewish Messianic ideas.

In the Fourth Gospel the influence of these ideas and their employment by Jesus and his disciples cannot be mistaken. And why should not Jesus have adopted and fulfilled the Logos ideas of the Greek world as well as the Messianic ideas of the Jewish people? Do the Jews as thinkers rank so much higher than the Greeks? How does the first verse read, which might well have been said by a Neo-platonic philosopher, "In the beginning was the Word"? This Word is the Logos, and this Greek word is in itself quite enough to indicate the Greek origin of the idea. Word (Logos), however, signified at the same time thought. This creative Word was with G.o.d, nay, G.o.d himself was this Word. And all things were made by this Word, that is to say, in this Word and in all Words G.o.d thought the world. Whoever cannot or will not understand this, will never enter into the deepest depths of the teaching of Christ, good Christian as he may otherwise be, and the Fourth Gospel in its deepest meaning does not exist for him. That there was life in these words or things s.h.i.+ning forth from G.o.d, we know, and this life, be it what it may, was a light to man, the light of the world, even though man had long been blind and imprisoned in darkness, and did not understand the life, the light, the Word.

Now, in pa.s.sing to the gospel story, the evangelist says that Jesus brought or himself was the true light, while John's duty was merely to announce his coming beforehand. This is certainly a great step-it is the Christian recognition of the Word or of the Son of G.o.d in the historical Jesus, whose historical character is confirmed by the character of John the Baptist. The people believed in John, and John believed in Jesus. Of course we must not a.s.sume that the philosophical significance of the Word, or of the Logos, was ever clearly and completely present to the people in the form worked out by the Neo-platonists. That was impossible at the time, and it is so even now with the great ma.s.s of Christians. On the other hand, the many subtleties and oddities which have made the later Neo-platonism so repulsive to us, hardly existed for the consciousness of the ma.s.ses, which could only adopt the fundamental ideas of the Logos system with a great effort. Religion is not philosophy; but there has never been a religion, and there never can be, which is not based on philosophy, and does not presuppose the philosophical notions of the people. The highest aim, toward which all philosophy strives, is and will always remain the idea of G.o.d, and it was this idea which Christianity grasped in the Platonic sense, and presented to us most clearly in its highest form, in the Fourth Gospel. To John, if for brevity we may so call the author of the Fourth Gospel, G.o.d was no longer the Jewish Jehovah, who had created the world in six days, formed Adam out of the dust, and every living creature out of the ground; for him G.o.d had acquired a higher significance, his nature was a spiritual nature, his creation was a spiritual creation, and as for man the Word comprehends everything, represents everything, realises everything that exists for him; so G.o.d was conceived as being in the beginning, and then expressing Himself in the Word, or as one with the Word. To G.o.d the Word, that is the all-comprehensive Word, was the utterance, the actualising or communicating of His subjective divine ideas, which were in Him, and through the Word pa.s.sed out of Him into human perception, and thereby into objective reality. This second reality, inseparable from the first, was the second Logos, inseparable as cause and effect are inseparable in essence. As the highest of all Logoi was man, the most perfect man was recognised as the son of G.o.d, the Logos become flesh, the highest thought and will of G.o.d. In this there is nothing miraculous. Everything is consistently thought out, and in this sense Jesus could have been nothing else than the Word or the Son of G.o.d. All this sounds very strange to us at first, because we have forgotten the full meaning of the utterance or the Word, and are not able to transfer the creation of the Word and the Thought, even though only in the form of a similitude, to that which was in the beginning. A similitude it is and must remain, like everything that we say of G.o.d; but it is a higher and more spiritual similitude than any that have been or can be applied to G.o.d in the various religions and philosophies of the world. G.o.d has thought the world, and in the act of thinking has uttered or expressed it; and these thoughts which were in Him, and were thought and uttered by Him in rational sequence, are the Logoi, or species, or kinds, which we recognise again by reflection in the objective world, as rationally developing one from another. Here we have the true "Origin of Species" long before Darwin's book.

To the philosophers this is all perfectly intelligible. The step taken by Christ and his disciples (those, namely, who speak to us in the Fourth Gospel) was this, that they believed they recognised in the historical Jesus, the son of the carpenter of Nazareth, the highest Logos "Man" in his complete realisation. It was entirely natural, but it can only have occurred after overpowering experiences, for it must have signified more than we understand under the "ideal of a man," although originally both expressions are derived from the same source. Nor was the designation of the Saviour as the Word, or, in more human fas.h.i.+on, the Son of G.o.d, intended so much for him conceived purely spiritually, but rather for his personality as inspired by the highest ideas.

In all these matters we must think of the ever changing medium, in which these expressions moved. Word and Son in the mouths of the people might coalesce or be kept quite apart; Son of David, Son of Abraham, might at times take the place of Son of G.o.d, and all these phrases might appear in popular intercourse to express only what others called the Messiah or Christ. In any case, all these were the highest expressions which could be applied to man or to the son of man. To the ordinary understanding, still permeated with heathen ideas, it was certainly monstrous to elevate a man to Olympus, to transform him into a son of G.o.d. But what was there for man higher than man? Intermediate beings, such as demons, heroes, or angels, had never been seen, nor did they answer the purpose. One step, however small, above the human, could only lead to the divine, or bring into consciousness the divine in man. What seemed blasphemy to the Jewish consciousness was just that truth which Christ proclaimed, the truth for which he laid down his human life. If we enter into this thought, we shall understand not only the occasional expressions of the Synoptics, but the Fourth Gospel especially in all its depth. How it was possible to make this last Gospel intelligible without these ideas, is almost incomprehensible.

What, then, did the readers think of the Word, that was in the beginning, that was with G.o.d, that even was G.o.d, of the Word, by which all things were made? And what was understood when Jesus was called the Word, that was in the world, without the world knowing him, while those who recognised and acknowledged him as the Word, thereby became like him sons of G.o.d? We must ascribe some meaning to these words, and what can we ascribe if we do not take the philosophic term "Logos" in its historic sense? One need only attempt to translate the beginning of the Fourth Gospel into a non-Christian language, and we shall realise that without its heathen antecedents the words remain absolutely unintelligible. We find translations that mean simply, "In the beginning was the substantive." That may seem incredible to us; but what better idea has a poor old peasant woman in reading the first chapter of the Fourth Gospel, and what better idea can the village preacher give her if she asks for an explanation?

For us the greatest difficulty remains in verse 14, "The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us." But what grounds have we for setting our opinion against the unhesitating acceptance of contemporaries, and later even of the Alexandrian philosophers? They must have felt the same difficulties as ourselves, but they overcame them in consideration of what they had seen in Jesus, or even only heard of him. They could not comprehend him in his moral elevation and holiness, except as the Logos, the Word, the Son of G.o.d. If we follow them, we are safe; if not, we can no doubt say much in excuse, but we place ourselves in the strongest opposition to history. We may say that men have never seen any divine idea, any divine word, any divine thought of any kind realised on earth; nay, that man can never have the right to pa.s.s such a deifying judgment, of his own sovereign power, on anything lying within his actual experience. We so easily forget that if G.o.d is once brought near to humanity, and no longer regarded as only transcendent, humanity must, at the same time, be thought and brought nearer to the divine. We may acknowledge this and still maintain that others, like the apostles and the philosophers of Alexandria after them, must have felt the same difficulty, perhaps even more strongly than we, who never were eye-witnesses nor Platonic philosophers. Yet they still insisted that Jesus in his life, conduct, and death demonstrated that human nature could rise no higher than in him, and that he _was_ all and _fulfilled_ all that G.o.d had comprised in the Logos "man." Jesus himself declares, when Peter first called him the son of G.o.d, that flesh and blood had not revealed it unto him, but his Father which is in heaven (Matthew xvi. 17). And this was perfect truth and applies to us also.

We may go through the whole Fourth Gospel, and we shall find that it remains incomprehensible, except from the standpoint that we ascribe to the author. When we read (i. 18), "No man hath seen G.o.d at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him," shall we then think only of the son of the carpenter, the bodily Jesus, and not rather of the Word that was in him, and that was as near to the Father as He to himself; that was in the bosom of the Father, and that declared to us the Father, who was in the beginning? Has not Jesus himself stated (iii. 13) that no man hath ascended up to heaven except him who came down from heaven, that is from G.o.d, and that no one has seen the Father, save he which is of G.o.d, that is the Son (vi. 46)? These are, of course, figurative expressions, but their meaning cannot be doubtful. When Nathanael called Jesus, Rabbi, King of Israel, and Son of G.o.d, his ideas may still have been very immature, but in time the true meaning of the Son of G.o.d breaks through more and more clearly.

The declaration of Jesus to Nicodemus, "Ye must be born anew," is a remarkable one-remarkable, because the Brahmans from the earliest times make use of the same expression, and call themselves the reborn, the twice born (Dvija), and both no doubt attributed the same meaning to the second birth, namely, the recognition of the true nature of man, the Brahmans as one with Brahman, that is, the Word; the Christians as one with the Word, or the Son of G.o.d. And why should this belief in the Son give everlasting life (ii. 16)? Because Jesus has through his own sons.h.i.+p in G.o.d declared to us ours also. This knowledge gives us eternal life through the conviction that we too have something divine and eternal within us, namely, the word of G.o.d, the Son, whom He hath sent (v. 38). Jesus himself, however, is the only begotten Son, the light of the world. He first fulfilled and illumined the divine idea which lies darkly in all men (see John viii. 12, xii. 35, 46), and made it possible for all men to become actually what they have always been potentially-sons of G.o.d.

Further reading in the Fourth Gospel will of course show us many things that are only indirectly connected with this, which I believe to be the supreme truth of Christianity. To the woman of Samaria Jesus only declares that G.o.d is a spirit, and that he must be wors.h.i.+pped in spirit, bound neither to Jerusalem nor to Samaria. She knows only that the Messiah will come, she was scarcely ready for the idea of a son of G.o.d, but like the Pharisees (v. 18) would have considered this only as blasphemy (x. 33).

But again and again the keynote of the new teaching breaks through. When Jesus speaks of his works, he calls them the works of his Father (v. 19); even the resurrection from the dead is explained by him, as clearly as possible, to be an awakening through the Word, "He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life" (v. 14), which means that he is immortal. He, however, who did not recognise the Word and his divine nature, as Jesus taught it, does not yet possess that eternal life, for which he is destined, but which must first be gained through insight, or belief in Jesus. Can anything be clearer than the words (John xvii. 3), "And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true G.o.d, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent"? Of course many of these expressions were not understood by the ma.s.ses, or were even misunderstood.

The words were repeated, and when necessary, especially in the questionings of children, they had to be explained somehow, often by a parable or story, which the mother invents at the moment, to quiet them.

All this is inevitable; it has happened everywhere, and happens still.

Whoever wishes to learn how tradition or common report treats historical facts, should compare the Gunther or Etzel of the Nibelungen with the Gundicarius or Attila of history, or Charles the Great crowned by the Pope with the Charlemagne who besieged Jerusalem, or Hruodlandus with Roland, or Arturus with Arthur. Or, to come to later days, we need only recall the wonderful tales of the French journals during the last Franco-German War, and we shall be astonished at the manner in which, quite unintentionally, the people adapt all tidings to their own views. Nineteen hundred years ago there were no newspapers. Why should it have been different then?

What the children had heard and believed, they remembered when they had grown older, or themselves had become parents. It was convenient and natural to tell their children again what they had heard in their own childhood, and like a rolling stone, with each repet.i.tion the tradition constantly took up new miraculous elements. There is scarcely a miracle in the New Testament that did not account for itself spontaneously in this way, and that did not in its original form reveal to us a far higher truth than the mere miracle itself. And when the time came for a record, was it not quite natural that everything available should be gathered together, according to the tales told and believed from house to house, or village to village? In this process, moreover, the appeal to a voucher, if possible to a contemporary or eye-witness, was not at all surprising, especially if there was a still living tradition, that this or that had been heard from one of the apostles, and could be traced back to him from son to father. Why should we put aside, nay, indignantly reject, this simple, natural theory, suggested by all the circ.u.mstances, and capable of at once removing all difficulties, in order to prefer another, which has the advantage, it is true, of having been generally accepted for centuries, but nevertheless was originally nothing more than a human appeal to a superhuman attestation? It must not be forgotten that if a voice were really heard from heaven, it lies with man to understand it, or, on his own authority, to declare it the voice of G.o.d or an angel. With one-half of Christendom the doctrine of the verbal inspiration of the four Gospels never became an article of faith. It was first made so among the Protestants to provide something incontestable in place of the councils and the Pope. But this only drove Protestants from Scylla into Charybdis, and landed them in inextricable difficulties, because they withdrew the Gospels from the historical soil out of which they sprang. But we do not escape Charybdis by steering again into Scylla, but by endeavouring to rise above Charybdis, ay, even above the Gospels. In our human shortsightedness we may believe that it would have been better for us had Jesus or the apostles themselves left us something in writing. But as this did not happen, why should we not be content with what we have? The ruins of the true Christianity still remain; why should we not endeavour with their help to restore the ancient temple?

Why should we contemptuously reject the tradition which arose in the mouths of the people? Should we be worse Christians if it were clearly and plainly demonstrated that we only possess popular traditions, out of which we must ourselves form a conception of the career and teaching of Christ?

Is it not good for us, that we are free in many points to decide for ourselves what Jesus was and what he taught?

And in a world in which everything develops, everything grows and changes, why should religion alone be an exception? Do we not all freely confess that certain precepts which are ascribed to Jesus in the Gospels are no longer adapted to our times and to our circ.u.mstances? Does any Christian turn his left cheek when he has been struck upon the right? Do we give our cloak when our coat has been taken from us? Do we hold everything that we possess in common as the first Christians did? Do we sell all that we have and give it to the poor (Matthew xix. 21)?

It is quite true that under this method a certain personal freedom in the interpretation of the Gospels is unavoidable, but is not this freedom at the same time accompanied by a very important feeling of personal responsibility, which is of the utmost significance for every religious conviction? It cannot be denied, that this open and honest acknowledgment of the undeniable influence of popular tradition has far-reaching consequences, and will take from us much to which we are accustomed, and that has become near and dear, even sacred, to us. But it has this advantage, that we feel we are candid and honest in our faith, to which we may add that we are never forced in dealing with human hypotheses to give our a.s.sent blindly, but may follow our own judgment. We may adopt or reject the view that in the development of the gospel story much must be ascribed to popular tradition, and I can readily believe that many who do not know, either through the study of legends or their own experience, the transforming influence which school and family traditions exercise on the form of historical narratives, find it incredible that such a carbonising process could have taken place also in the evangelical tradition as related by the men of the next generation. They must then content themselves with the alternative, that the laws of nature, which they themselves ascribe to the Deity, must have been abrogated by their own founder in order that the truth of the teaching of Christ might gain a certain probability in the eyes of the people by so-called miracles.

Let us take an example in order to see what we shall gain on the one side and lose on the other. The original meaning of making the blind see, Jesus has himself told us (John ix. 39), "For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind." This refers to spiritual, not physical blindness, and which is the more difficult to heal, the spiritual or the physical? But when Jesus was repeatedly said to have healed this spiritual blindness, to have opened the eyes of the blind and unbelieving, how was it possible that the ma.s.ses, especially the children, should not misunderstand such cures, and interpret and repeat them as cures of physical blindness? Certainly such an idea carries us a long way. We must then, for instance, explain such an expression as that placed in the mouths of the Pharisees (John x. 21), "Can a devil open the eyes of the blind?" as a further extension of a popular notion already in the field. Nor can it be denied that cures of the physically blind have this in their favour, that so exceptional a personality as Jesus may also have possessed an exceptional healing power.

It then depends only on the character of the blindness, whether it was curable or incurable, and the solution of this question we may be content to leave to the medical man. I only remark, that if the medical man should deny such a possibility, a true Christian would lose nothing in consequence, for under all circ.u.mstances a spiritual healing power in Christ would stand higher with all of us than one merely physical.

This may be called shallow rationalism, but surely the human _ratio_ or reason cannot be entirely rejected. Many know of their own experience that a man of high moral energy can even now drive out devils and base thoughts. Why not also believe that through his appearance and words Jesus made such an impression upon those possessed, for instance, upon the man or the two men who herded swine in the country of the Gadarenes or Gergesenes, that they came to themselves and began to lead new lives? That on such a conversion the swine-herds should forget their swine which rushed headlong into the lake, is easily understood, and when these two incidents came to the ears of the people, what was more natural than the story which we find in Matthew (viii. 28), Mark (v. 1), and Luke (viii.

26), but not in John? We need not now enter into the discrepancies between these three narratives, striking as they would be in a divinely inspired book. Of course it will be said again, that this is a shallow, rationalistic explanation, as if the word "rationalist" contained within itself something condemnatory. At all events, no one can now demonstrate that Jesus did not bewitch the unclean spirits out of the two demoniacs into the two thousand swine; but I confess that the shallow rationalistic explanation seems to me far better calculated to bring clearly to light the influence which Jesus could exercise over the most abandoned men.

One more instance. How often does Jesus say that he is the bread that really satisfies man, and the water that quenches all thirst (vi. 48): "I am the bread of life. This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die. Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day."

Would any one, even the woman of Samaria, take these words literally? Does not Jesus himself help us to a correct understanding of them when he says (vi. 35), "I am the bread of life; he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst," and again, (vii.

37), "If any man thirst let him come unto me, and drink." And in order to s.h.i.+eld his words against any misunderstanding he himself says (vi. 63), "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life." And are we resolved in spite of all this not to understand the deep meaning of his words, to remain blind and deaf; and do we, like the Pharisees, prefer the story of how Jesus by magic means fed thousands with five or seven loaves and two fishes (vi. 9), so that in the end twelve baskets of bread remained after all were satisfied? We can readily comprehend how in the mouths of the people the great miracles of Jesus, the real _mira_ wrought by his life and teaching, became small _miracula_. But if we surrender these small _miracula_, is not something far better left us, namely, that Jesus, who so often called himself the bread and the wine, who even at the Last Supper, as he broke bread with his disciples, commanded them to eat the bread which was his body, and drink the wine which was his blood,-that this teacher could by his teaching satisfy, content, and convert thousands, who came to him and believed in him! It is true that the story of the feeding of thousands with five loaves of bread is more intelligible to women and children, and makes a stronger impression than the metaphorical words of Christ; but nothing is more easy to understand than the transformation of a tale of the conversion or spiritual satisfying of thousands, into a parable of the feeding of thousands with five loaves.