Cujus Filius Est ?
The Historical Life of Christ. By J. Warschauer, M.A., D. Phil.
(Ernest Henn. los.) • .
•
THE material which Christians possess for writing the life of their Master is of -three kinds. The first and chief is, or has long been, invariable : the collection of documents contained in the New Testament. The second—our knowledge of the environment within which that life was lived—expands with the progress of historical research. The third—the interior spiritual discernment which gives depth and colour to the whole—varies with each biographer ; and because . of . its immense importance, should cause us to receive and examine with sympathy each fresh attempt. All lives of Christ are in this sense works of art : they are " Reality seen through a temperament."
It is not surprising that many persons of widely differing outlook, driven by the imperative need of which Mr. Middleton Murry speaks—" to make Him wholly real to myself "- should undertake a fresh intepretation of that inexhaustible Personality. In our own time the immense additions to his- torical knowledge, and the considerable correction of docu- ments which this has made inevitable, has invited fresh bio- graphical efforts, both from the traditional and the liberal camps. The really surprising thing, when we consider the patience, enthusiasm, and intellectual distinction of the best workers in this field, is the inadequacy of the results, when measured against the best spiritual intuitions of men : the perpetual reproduction of a figure who could not possibly have been the object of that awed adoration and love, which colours the New Testament and continues to be the life-blood :if the Church. Nineteenth-century " quests of the historical Jesus " invariably led us either to a self-deluded Jewish visionary whose Messianic claims brought him to an igno- minious death, or to a very good, kind man who taught a humanitarian ethic and had a bias against ceremonial reli- gion : never to the contemplation even of human greatness in its full and lonely majesty, still less to any understanding of the transcendent quality which evoked the confession of Peter and survived the ignominy of the Cross.
It is the peculiar merit of Mr. Middleton Murry's extraor- dinarily beautiful and impressive book that—working upon material which is familiar, and even over-familiar, to all of us— he has caught, and kept in the foreground, that note of strangeness, that heroic quality, which no sensitive reader of the Gospels can miss ; yet which is commonly left. behind by those. who paraphrase or expand them. Written with great literary distinction and with a glowing realism, a re- strained fervour, rare in works of this kind, his portrait of the historic Jesus is, to use Otto's- already classic term, " numinous " in the highest degree. Though rejecting super- natural theories of Our Lord's person, and seeking only to present Him as " the Prince of Men," he yet, in doing this, succeeds in conveying Divine values to us ; and this far more truly and strongly than do many more orthodox scholars. We have here in fact a remarkable demonstration of the cardinal importance of the personal factor in historical criticism. The critical position adopted by Mr. Murry is sub- stantially the same as that from which Dr. Warschauer has built up his clitborate and 'painstaking biography. Both writers base their reconstructions on the Marcan narrative ; both reject the story of the Nativity as given in St. Luke ; both consider the Fourth Gospel an unhistorical document, though
each takes from it the incidents that appeal to him. They adopt the same explanation of the " empty tomb "—that first proposed by Dr. Kirsopp Lake. Neither accepts a Christology which is consistent with the Creeds: Yet Mr. Murry has pro- duced from these sparse materials a work of the highest spiritual significance. The sense of mystery, which haunts all the authentic religious experiences of men, is present in every page of his book. Though orthodox readers will inevitably and perhaps frequently disagree with him, they cannot fail to learn much from him. Again and again they will be startled into admiration by the intuitive genius which seems able to enter the very heart of each situation, to hear with innocence of ear each parable and saying, and so con- stantly sheds fresh and vivid light upon the original texts.
It would be unfair in a short review to epitomize Mr. Murry's interpretation ; and indeed this is unnecessary, for everyone concerned with New Testament problems must read his book: " Borate coeli desuper . . . aperiatur terra et germinet Salvatorem," says the Advent antiphon. Mr. Murry's Christology is based on the second part alone. Some will feel that a different philosophy, a richer, more living and personal concept of God, would have enabled him to give his picture the one thing which it lacks--a metaphysical back- ground. But this very defect throws into higher relief the greatness of his positive achievement. The picture of Christ which he gives us is that of a transcendent spiritual genius, uniquely conscious of Divine sonship, who ". taught Life itself—not how to live—but Life." ; a lonely, august, all- loving figure whose career and teaching, rightly understood, exhibit " a profound and astonishing unity," and in whom he sees, not, it is true, the Divine become human, but the human becoming Divine. He shows us Jesus moving with a steadfast determination towards a terrible and deliberately chosen death, " to save men who would not listen to His teaching " ; and, after death, as self-disclosed to, His followers in that mysterious and objective experience, on belief in which the Christian Church is built. " Of the reality of this conviction, of the reality of the experience that created this conviction," says Mr. Murry in his beautiful Epilogue, " we cannot :doubt . . . that our intellects cannot conceive the nature of an objective presence which is not physical, and that a ' spiritual body' remains for our minds a contradiction in terms, is only evidence that our minds are still inadequate to reality." And if, discarding conventional religious language, we will, by a disciplined imaginative effort, thus make the earthly life of Jesus real to ourselves, then " At the last we shall greatly gain. We shall look, like men, on the man Jesus. He will stand our scrutiny. Keep we our heads as high as we can, they shall be
bowed at the last." • '
Very different is the impression left by Dr. Warschatier's book. He writes, it is true, with a reverent intention, fre- quently pausing to remind us that the personality of JeSus was uniquely 'great ; yet annoys us by the painstaking reditc- tion of every incident in which His transcendency is seen to the level of the ordinary and insignificant. The result isAhat Our Lord's life as here given is considerably less impressive than that of St. Francis, or. even of George Fox. There is much learning, much careful reconstruction 'of social and historical coriditionS here, but no reVelation of the 'Ultimate : whereas it is exactly a revelation of the Ultimate, of Spirit, without any departure from the human and historic, which We receive from Mr. Middleton Murry's work.
EVELYN UNDERII
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