McCABE CON'T...
"A Broad View
It is a commonplace of religious literature that, if the Jesus of the Gospels did not exist, the creation of his personality by some obscure writers of the first century must itself be considered a miracle. Jesus is said to be "the grandest figure in all literature," and so on. The more the Modernist feels compelled to sacrifice the miracles and divinity of Jesus, the more zealous he is to magnify the grandeur of his personality.
Let us try, on the sober common-sense lines which we are following, to form an impartial opinion on this "figure of Jesus." Many Rationalist writers have used language about him just as superlative as that of the liberal theologians. Renan thought that there was "something divine" about Jesus. J.S. Mill was little less complimentary. Even Conybeare uses very high language. On the other hand, G.B. Shaw (in the preface to "Androcles") bluntly says that Jesus was insane. George Moore (in the preface to his "Apostle" -- one of the most refreshing impressions of the Gospels that you could read) says that the figure of Christ in Luke, to which the preachers generally turn, is "a lifeless, waxen figure, daintily curled, with tinted cheeks, uttering pretty commonplaces gathered from 'The Treasury of the Lowly' as he goes by." A collection of the sayings about Jesus by able writers would beautifully illustrate the truth that on such subjects scarcely anybody tells the truth.
I have not the least interest in belittling the figure of Jesus. A liberal parson once genially asked me to "take off my hat to the universe." I replied that I was not a fool; but that I would not mind raising my hat to the figure of Christ on the cross -- or of Bruno at the stake or Socrates in prison. But, mind you, these others met death more serenely than Jesus did: I mean, if we are to take Jesus as he is described in the Gospels. No amount of theological ingenuity will explain that "sweat of blood" in the garden of Gethsemane; and, if you point to the "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," I point to the other words, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
If you recall how Jesus loved little children, I remind you how by his advocacy of virginity as the higher ideal he cut at the root of family life and blighted love, and how he believed in eternal torment for people of weak will. If you bring up the gentleness to the adulterous woman, I remind you of the bitter and rather vulgar abuse of the Pharisees, to which you will find no parallel in any pagan moralist of the time. In the Gospels Jesus utters hardly a single sentiment which, apart from chastity, he does not violate. He even scorns synagogues and meeting-places, and then founds a Church. He has not one word of guidance in the great problems of social life because be believes that the world is coming to an end. He is the archetype of the Puritans: scornful of all that is fair in life, bitter and unjust to those who differ from him, quite impracticable -- nay foolish -- in many of his counsels. It is absurd to say that our modern world has any use for Christ.
Now, the plain solution of all this tissue of contradictions, this mixture of sentiments of humanity with fierce intolerance, this gentleness to women and children and scorn of love and comfort, is quite easy after what we have seen: a dozen different conceptions of Jesus have been blended -- or, not blended, mixed together -- in these composite writings which we call the Gospels. Theologians have for ages perspired in attempting to reconcile the two different genealogies and other contradictions. It is a waste of time. One man did not write any Gospel. One spirit did not dictate them. They embody the contradictory opinions of the isolated and often hostile communities in different parts of the Greco-Roman world. There is no "figure of Jesus" in the Gospels. There are a dozen figures. It was not the same man who made Jesus love children and scorn his mother. It was not the same man who made Jesus turn water into wine for marriage roisterers (probably singing what we now call indecent songs) and then advise us to live on bread and sleep on stones: who made Jesus the warm friend of the painted lady of Magdala and the advocate of barren isolation from all that is human. Jesus of Nazareth became in time the Jesus of Tarsus, of Ephesus, of Corinth, of Antioch, of Alexandria, and so on. The figure of the pale enthusiast was shaped and colored differently in a score of different environments. Paul's letters picture them for us. To one group he has to talk much about fornication and feasting, to another about correct ritual, to another about points of theology, and so on.
Must we, then, despair of finding any human Jesus at all, and suppose that he is a myth who became man in the imaginations of his followers?
There are some very potent reasons why I cannot agree with my learned friends in this. Let it be understood that there is no reason for bias either way. No Rationalist could in our time -- what-ever might be said of Matthew Arnold or Renan or Mill -- be tempted to think that favoring the historicity of Jesus lessened the odium of his position. Most people now do not care a cent what you think about Jesus.
It seems probable that the phenomena of a Christianity in the first century imply an historical personage. I have not made a special study of the point, but from a general knowledge of Hindu and Chinese sacred literature I should say that we have less evidence of the personal existence of Kong-fu-tse or Buddha than of Jesus. The documents are even further removed from the events than the Epistles and Gospels are. Yet no historian doubts their historicity. Dr. Couchoud tells of a learned Buddhist priest who seems to have wondered how far Buddha was historical. But it is not clear from his five or six words to Dr. Couchoud that he meant more than that actual details of Buddha's life were unreliable, as in the case of Jesus.
Broad views are often the best views. We have a large number of historical and literary events to explain. Beyond any question there were great numbers of Christian churches in existence before the end of the first century. Probably Peter was never at Rome, but the other Roman bishops named, from about 70 A.D. onward, are not doubted. This group was a thousand miles from Judea; and there were churches all the way between, with overseers (bishops), elders (priests), and servers (deacons). Lives of Jesus were circulating amongst them, and, with all respect to Professor Smith, those lives or Gospels do unquestionably represent Jesus as a man, living in Judea. The Church made short work of the Gnostics who held that Jesus was never contaminated by a bodily frame. Basilides, one of the ablest of the Gnostics, an Alexandrian, tried to teach in the first half of the second century that Jesus was never a man; and the whole Church promptly and emphatically repudiated him. He had to found a special half-Persian, half-Christian sect.
The Epistles of Paul take us back to about the middle of the first century. There are then groups of Christians in every large city. They have no bishops or priests in the modern sense, but there are "elders" (Timothy, Titus, etc.), and there are some sort of higher men who appoint them and consider complaints about their conduct. It is clear that this situation existed certainly by 60 A.D. Paul was closer in touch with them all than any other man was. I am not relying on Acts, though part of it may be fairly early, but on the generally accepted Epistles. And Paul's gospel, which in these respects he does not find challenged anywhere, is quite clear. His belief in the physical resurrection of Jesus is, he admits, not accepted by all. That belief is on a different plane, One could easily be mistaken about it. But that Jesus was born, taught, and was executed in Judea is at the very basis of Paul's teaching; and he never mentions any member of a church who doubts it. The Gnostics with their spiritual Jesus came later.
Moreover, Paul, as we saw, habitually speaks of Cephas and others who were actual companions of Jesus. We have to deny the genuineness of all the Epistles to doubt this. In II Corinthians (iv, 10) Paul says that it is fourteen years since he first came to believe in Jesus: that is to say, to believe that he was God, not that he was man. So he joined the Christian body, and mingled with them in Jerusalem, within less than ten years of the execution of Jesus. No Jew there seems to have told him that Jesus was a mere myth. In all the bitter strife of Jew and Christian the idea seems to have occurred to nobody. Setting aside the Gospels entirely, ignoring all that Latin writers are supposed to have said in the second century, we have a large and roughly organized body of Christians at a time when men were still alive who remembered events of the fourth decade of the century.
I conclude only that it is more reasonable to believe in the historicity of Jesus. There is no parallel in history to the sudden growth of a myth and its conversion into a human personage in one generation. Moreover, to these early Christians Jesus is not primarily a teacher. A collection of wise teachings might in time get a mythical name attached to it -- though why the name "Jesus" it is hard to see and the myth might in further time become a real person. But from the earliest moment that we catch sight of Christians in history the essence of their belief is that Jesus was an incarnation, in Judea, of the great God of the universe. The supreme emphasis is on the fact that he assumed a human form and shed human blood on a cross. So it seems to me far more reasonable, far more scientific, far more consonant with the facts of religious history which we know, to conclude that Jesus was a man who was gradually turned into a God." |
