In Defence of the Faith
The Nature of Christ
[The writer of this article, Dr. Alfred Garde, is Principal of New College, Hampstead, and Hackney College. He was formerly Chairman of the Congregational Union and President
of The National Free Church Council.—ED. Spectator.] '
THE religions which are the most advanced look back to a historical founder, and assign ..to him a dominant place. But none of the other religions gives so large a significance and so high a value to its founder as does Christianity. Confucius gave new life and power to the ancient classics. Gautama the Buddha discovered the way of salvation, and imparted it to Others ; but each man must tread that path for himself. Mohammed is the prophet of Allah. Jesus Christ is confesSed the Son of God, and the Saviour and Lord of mankind. The question of the nature of Christ is crucial for Christian faith. - - I cannot share the view which is advanced by some modernists, that it makes no difference to the truth of the religious ideas and the moral ideals He taught by word and deed, as these areself-evidencing, self-evidencing, whether His historical reality corresponded or not to the con- ception of Him which the New Testament enshrines. His teaching does commend itself as true to the receptive reason and responsive conscience. How far, however, does this commendation depend on the impression His historical personality as represented in the New Testament has made upon us ?. But further reflection raises the doubt-; true as it may seem, does His teaching disclose to us the secret of reality ; is the nature of things as -He apprehended and represented it ? If we act as He commands, are we engaged in a forlorn hope, or an advancing victory ? There is so much in the world around us to force this question upon us. If, however, He be related to God as Christian faith believes Him to be, because it believes that He knew Himself to be, so that what He reveals of God is rooted in His own self-consciousness, then in Him reality is disclosed ; the nature of things does not contradict His ideas or ideals ; "and we can be sure that all things are working together for good to those who in Him have got to know and to love God as Father. If we have been deceived, Or He was deceived, as to His nature,. how can we be so confident that His teaching is true; because it- corn- mends itself to our minds as true, when these have fallen into such an ' error ? - The truth- Of Christianity cannot be divorced from the historical reality of Jesus Christ as apprehended - by Christian faith. - It need hardly be said that this conviction does not demand that every:detail of the records must be accurate ; but that the memory He left behind, and the impression He made, must have afforded an adecniate bakiS for the subsequent Christian experience of Him as risen, Hiring, saving, and reigning Lord; and for the conceptionS in Which' that experience sought to : interpret what He was and did. That Easter and Penteccist made a differ- ence in the disciples' apprehension must be conceded ; but it did not turn a mere man into- a demi-god. He must already have been enough to them td make such a development 'AS the confession of His divinity within Jewish monotheism at all possible. In His earthly life there must have been, as the Gospels witness, reasons for the faith of the priMitive community. If this be not so, then our faith rests on what men on inadequate grounds .believed about Him, and not on what He really was Himself. The Gospels as historical documents will be dealt with by another hand ; here the result of literary and historical criticism must be assumed, that Jesus Christ was and is as Christian faith thinks of Him, and believei in Him. In dealing with His nature we are concerned with historical reality. - - - - This determines our approach ; not from above, the metaphysics of God, but from beloW, the history of Man. His manhood must not be described-in the interests of a conception of God, derived from other sources than His revelation as Son of God as Father. His manhood must be- described as the Gospels (sometimes it would seem, despite the intention of their authors) disclose Him to have been. As a result Our conception of God, if need- be, can be so modified as to make intelligible and credible the belief that He is God as reality of- God present and active under the conditions; and With the limitations, of real manhood. This does not, and need- not, mean that He was only the average man, capable of knowing and doing only what common experi- ence: shows. The average man hai not realized the -human ideal, has not fulfilled the human promise ; if in any man that ideal were realized and that promise fulfilled, we should expect him to be able to know and do as no other man has, without thereby annulling the reality of his manhood. If such a man were, as we might expect him to be, in a unique relation with God, of an immediate contact, intimate communion, complete consciousness, must not that relation realize possibilities, release powers in manhood, which apart from it would remain concealed ? If in Jesus the human ideal was realized, if in Him the human promise was fulfilled, if that ideal humanity made possible a unique relation to God, and the evangelical record justifies throe con- clusions, then we must not " crib, cabin and confine " what He could know and do to what 4 possible for the average man or even the best man, who is still conscious of his imperfection. We must revise our conception of God as well as man in the light of the revelation in Jesus, of what God is, and man ought to be and may become: While being on our guard against credulity, • while •not only claiming the right but accepting the duty of criticism of the literary sources, we must avoid the rash judgments of many scholars as to what Jesus can have said or done, and the rash assumption that faith imagined much which is recorded as fact. Whether He was born of a Virgin, whether He performed miracles, whether He had a more than human insight and fore- sight. regarding God and man, or not, are questions which we must, answer after examining all the relevant evidence, and not dismiss on , the ground of any such assumption.
Jesus was limited in knowledge : facts, causes, Jaws, dates, names, He learned as any other man learns ; but such a limitation of knowledge was not inconsistent with .a mental, moral, and spiritual.discernment which in the .realm of religion reached the truth about God, and in the realm of morals the wisdom which affords sure guidance in duty. He was liable to temptation ; but that liability did not involve the necessity of sinning ; and His triumph by His free choice did not lessen the reality of the moral experience, so that He can sympathize with the tempted, as one in all points tempted, even if without Sin. He was subject to emotion ; and His love for God and man made Him more sensitive to the sorrow and suffering of man, and of God as Father for man as child. His transcendence of the common human _limitations did not annul His humanity, but only made it receptive of, and responsive to, God to such a degree that throughout there was a perfect personal unity, not an alternation, as has sometimes been imagined, between the human and the divine state. In Him is revealed. the new humanity to which by His grace the old is yet to be raised ; and He is the beginning of the new creation of mankind as the family of God. For His perfect moral character, and as Son His absolute religious consciousness of God as Father combine with His adequacy and efficacy, unfailing and unmeasured, as Mediator between God and man, revealing God to man, and redeeming .man to God, in making Him for Christian faith nothing else or less than God present and • active creatively in the history of man. His certainty • even in the days of His earthly- ministry of His authority . from God on behalf of men to heal, forgive, command, • and save inspired the confidence in men which brought • them to God, as God had drawn near to men in Him. It is in His whole historical personality, its total function- ing in human experience, and the results of that .functioning in human thought and life, that God as . man becomes real to man, the perfect Father who wills to save in the perfect Son who does save. To know the benefits of Christ is to know Him truly and fully divine, for He bestows what God alone can give. The Christian Church is the permanent monument of the - reality of these benefits.
Thus to.know God in Christ, however, involves a new idea of God ; and the irremediable defect of much Christian theology has been that it has worked with an alien conception of God. It is not the transcendence .of God—His difference and distance from man—but His immanence—His likeness and nearness to man—which must be emphasized. It is not a static nature, but a dynamic purpose of God, of which we must think, and which we may best describe to ourselves in terms of the modern hypothesis of evolution. The philosophical Conceptions of Infinite and Absolute must yield to the religious idea . of God as the perfect Father, in His love seeking to share. His holiness with men, and therefore so making man in His own .likeness that manhood: is capable of receiving and responding to God in a perfect personal unity. Thus only can the Incarnation become 'intelligible and credible. For it, would be a singular eOmpliment to pay to God's omnipotence to maintain tliat it made Him impotent to create a bunion per- sonality, capable of receiving and responding to His Presence and activity, and impotent Himself to become progressively immanent personally in that personality in a perfect personal unity. The upward movement of man's faith and the downward movement of God's grace Meet in that historical personality, which is not 'explicable, yet was prepared for by all that went before of human religion and divine revelation, but can be understood Only by a divine initiative in human' history, the beginning of a new stage in the creative activity of God. For the Son of God as man is both the perfect pat tern and the potent agent of the new mental, moral, and spiritual creation of mankind, redeemed from sin and reconciled to God. The nature of Christ is itself a new- revelation of God's reality and man's possibility ; for He maketh all things new, for our thought as well as in our life. ALFRED GARVIE. [The subject of next week's article will be " The Gospels as -Historical Documents," by Professor C. Turner, of Oxford. Precious articles in this series have been : " Philosophy and Religion," by the Archbishop of York, " The Elements of Religion," by Professor Albert A. Cock, of University College, Southampton, and " Evolution and Revealed Religion," by Dr. Charles E. Raven.]
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