Читать книгу The Cradle of the Christ: A Study in Primitive Christianity - Octavius Brooks Frothingham - Страница 3

Table of Contents

The literary intention of this volume is sufficiently declared in the opening paragraph, and need not be foreshadowed in a preface; but as the author's deeper motive may be called in question, he takes the liberty to say a word or two in more particular explanation. The thought has occurred to him on reading over what he has written, as a casual reader might, that, in his solicitude to make his positions perfectly clear, and to state his points concisely, he may have laid himself open to the charge of carrying on a controversy under the pretence of explaining a literature. Such a reproach, his heart tells him, would be undeserved. He disclaims all purpose and desire to weaken the moral supports of any form of religion; as little purpose or desire to undermine Christianity, as to revive Judaism. It is his honest belief that no genuine interests of religion are compromised by scientific or literary studies; that religion is independent of history, that Christianity is independent of the New Testament. He is cordially persuaded that the admission of every one of his conclusions would leave the institutions of the church precisely, in every spiritual respect, as they are; and in thus declaring he has no mental reserve, no misty philosophical meaning that preserves expressions while destroying ideas; he uses candid, intelligible speech. The lily's perfect charm suffers no abatement from the chemist's analysis of the slime into which it strikes its slender root; the grape of the Johannisberg vineyards is no less luscious from the fact that the soil has been subjected to the microscope; the fine qualities of the human being, man or woman, are the same on any theory, the bible theory of the perfect Adam, or Darwin's of the anthropoid ape. The hero is hero still, and the saint saint, whatever his ancestry. We reject the inference of writers like Godfrey Higgins, Thomas Inman, and Jules Soury, who would persuade us that Christianity must be a form of nature-worship, because nature-worship was a large constituent element in the faiths from which it sprung; why should we not reject the inference of those who would persuade us that Christianity is doomed because the four gospels are pronounced ungenuine? Christianity is a historical fact; an institution; it stands upon its merits, and must justify its merits by its performances; first demonstrating its power, afterward pressing its claim; vindicating its title to exist by its capacity to meet the actual conditions of existence, and then asking respect the ground of good service. The church that arrogates for itself the right to control the spiritual concerns of the modern world must not plead in justification of its pretension that it satisfied the requirements of devout people of another hemisphere, two thousand years ago. The religion that fails to represent the religious sentiments of living men will not support itself by demonstrating the genuineness of the New Testament, the supernatural birth of Jesus, or the inspiration of Paul. Other questions than these are asked now. When a serious man wishes to know what Christianity has to say in regard to the position of woman in modern society, a quotation from a letter to the christians in the Greek city of Corinth, is not a satisfactory reply. Christianity must prove its adaptation to the hour that now is; its adaptation to days gone by, is not to the purpose.

The church of Rome had a glimpse of this, and revealed it when it took the ground that the New Testament did not contain the whole revelation; that the source of inspiration lay behind that, used that as one of its manifestations, and constantly supplied new suggestions as they were needed. Cardinal Wiseman did not hesitate to admit that the doctrine of trinity was not stated in the New Testament, though undoubtedly a belief of the church. It would have been but a step further in the same direction, if Dr. Newman should declare that the critics might have their way with the early records of the religion, which, however curious as literary remains, were not essential to the constitution or the work of the church. Strauss and Renan may speculate and welcome; the mission of the church being to bless mankind, their labors are innocent. A church that does not bless mankind cannot be saved by Auguste Nicolas; a church that does bless mankind cannot be injured by Ernest Renan.

Leading protestant minds, without making so much concession as the church of Rome, have practically accepted the position here maintained. It is becoming less common, every day, to base the claims of Christianity on the New Testament. The most learned, earnest, and intelligent commend their faith on its reasonableness, confronting modern problems in a modern way. St. George Mivart quotes no scripture against the doctrine of evolution. No one reading Dr. McCosh on the development hypothesis, would suppose him to be a believer in the inspiration of the bible. He reasons like a reasonable man, meeting argument with argument, feeling disposed to confront facts with something harder than texts. The well instructed christian, if he enters the arena of scientific discussion at all, uses scientific weapons, and follows the rules of scientific warfare. The problems laid before the modern world are new; scarcely one of them was propounded during the first two centuries of our era; not one was propounded in modern terms. The most universal of them, like poverty, vice, the relations of the strong and the weak, present an aspect which neither church, Father, nor Apostle would recognize. Whatever bearing Christianity has on these questions must be timely if it is to be efficacious.

The doctrine of christian development, as it is held now by distinguished teachers of the christian church, implying as it does incompleteness and therefore defect in the antecedent stages of progress points clearly to the apostolic and post apostolic times as ages of rudimental experience, tentative and crude. Why should not the entertainers of this doctrine calmly surrender the records and remains of the preparatory generations to antiquarian scholars who are willing to investigate their character? No discovery they can make will alter the results which the centuries have matured. They will simply more clearly exhibit the process whereby the results have been reached.

We may go further than this, and maintain that the unreserved abandonment to criticism of the literature and men of the early epochs would be a positive advantage to Christianity, for thereby the religion would be relieved from a serious embarrassment. The duty, assumed by christians, of vindicating the truth of whatever is found in the New Testament imposes grave difficulties. It is safe to say that a very large part of the disbelief in Christianity proceeds from doubts raised by Strauss, Renan, and others who have cast discredit on some portions of this literature. Christians have their faith shaken by those authors; and doubtless some who are not christians are prejudiced against the religion by books of rational criticism. The romanist, failing to establish by the New Testament, or by the history of the first two centuries, the primacy of Peter, the supremacy of Rome, the validity of the sacraments, the divine sanction of the episcopacy, loses the convert whom the majestic order of the papacy might attract. The protestant, failing to prove by apostolic texts his cardinal dogmas, pre-destination, atonement, election, must see depart unsatisfied, the inquirer whom a philosophical exposition might have won. The necessity of justifying the account of the miraculous birth of Jesus repels the doubter whom a purely intellectual conception of incarnation might have fascinated; and the obligation to believe the story of a physical resurrection is an added obstacle to the reception of a spiritual faith in immortality. Scholarship has so effectually shown the impossibility of bringing apostolical guarantee for the creed of christendom, that the creed cannot get even common justice done it while it compromises itself with the beliefs of the primitive church. The inspiration of the New Testament is an article that unsettles. Naturally it is the first point of attack, and its extreme vulnerability raises a suspicion of weakness in the whole system. The protestant theology, as held by the more enlightened minds, is capable of philosophical statement and defence; but it cannot be stated in New Testament language, or defended on apostolical authority. The creed really has not a fair chance to be appreciated. Its power to uphold spiritual ideas, and develop spiritual truths; its speculative resources as an antagonist of scientific materialism, animal fatalism, and sensualism, are rendered all but useless. Powerful minds are fettered, and good scholarship is wasted in the attempt to identify beginnings with results, roots with fruits.

This is a consideration of much weight. When we remember how much time and concern are given to the study of the New Testament for controversial or apologetic purposes, to establish its genuineness, maintain its authority, justify its miracles, explain away its difficulties, reconcile its contradictions, harmonize its differences, read into its texts the thoughts of later generations, and then reflect on the lack of mind bestowed on the important task of recommending religious ideas to a world that is spending enormous sums of intellectual force on the problems of physical science and the arts of material civilization, the close association of the latest with the earliest faith seems a deplorable misfortune. If there ever was a time when the purely spiritual elements in the religion of the foremost races of mankind should be developed and pressed, the time is now; and to miss the opportunity by misplacing the energy that would redeem it is anything but consoling to earnest minds.

Thus might reason a full believer in the creed of christendom, a devoted member of the church; Greek, Roman, German, English. The man of letters viewing the situation from his own point, will, of course, feel less intensely the mischiefs entailed by the error; but the error will be to him no less evident. It is sometimes, in war, an advantage to lose outworks that cannot be defended without fatally weakening the line, drawing the strength of the garrison away from vulnerable points, and exposing the centre to formidable assault. The present writer, though no friend to the christian system, believes himself to be a friend of spiritual beliefs, and would gladly feel that he is, by his essay, rather strengthening than weakening the cause of faith, by whatever class of men maintained.